Hematology is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood. It involves treating diseases that affect the production of blood and its components, such as blood cells, hemoglobin, blood proteins, bone marrow, platelets, blood vessels, spleen, and the mechanism of coagulation. Such diseases might include hemophilia, blood clots (thrombus), other bleeding disorders, and blood cancers such as leukemia, multiple myeloma, and lymphoma. The laboratory work that goes into the study of blood is frequently performed by a medical technologist or medical laboratory scientist.


Whilst there is a growing body of literature on working with issues of difference in psychotherapy, there is very little literature and almost no empirical research on the implications of 'sameness' in the therapeutic dyad. This research continues the conversation on how contextual issues may impact therapy, but does so from the 'inside', with the aim of developing intra-cultural competence. Intra-cultural competence is defined as the ability to work ethically and reflexively in a therapeutic dyad in which the therapist and client share culture, values, lifestyle, worldview or identity in significant ways, by holding a paradoxical stance of affirmation, acceptance and curiosity with respect to those aspects of shared experience. The focus of this research was on developing Christian counselling, where the client and therapist explicitly share faith, and this is the story of that exploration in the context of my work as a lecturer in Christian counselling at London School of Theology (LST).
Using the insider action research paradigm, some of the relational dynamics and ethical implications of clients and therapists sharing faith in Christian counselling were explored, initially by interviewing the teaching team at LST about their experiences of clinical work with Christian clients. Based on the analysis of the focus group interview, the team then decided to further explore the concepts of power and liminality in Christian counselling. A number of activities were carried out as a result, including a workshop on power dynamics in Christian counselling, followed by the incorporation of this material into the undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
The insider action research approach offers some interesting parallels to intra-cultural work with its similar challenges of reflexivity, belonging and distance. Both the researcher and the therapist in intra-cultural therapy find him or herself in a position of 'in' and 'out' with respect to their own group to which they belong, and it is argued that the emotional toll of this needs careful consideration at times.
As well as the power dynamics associated with difference, it is argued that there is the kinship power of belonging and sameness that deserves equal attention in the therapeutic process. On the one hand, this may facilitate an initial openness and trust in the therapeutic relationship, but may also be associated with unexamined assumptions, expectations and collusion. Though, at first, less obvious to the eye, being part of the same tribe as our clients raises challenges but also interesting and creative opportunities. This research has begun to articulate and discuss some of these, and considers the implications for other dyads in which there is meaningful sameness, such as Islamic counselling.


Background— Noninvasive stress testing might guide the use of aspirin and statins for primary prevention of coronary heart disease, but it is unclear if such a strategy would be cost effective. Methods and Results— We compared the status quo, in which the current national use of aspirin and statins was simulated, with 3 other strategies: (1) full implementation of Adult Treatment Panel III guidelines, (2) a treat-all strategy in which all intermediate-risk persons received statins (men and women) and aspirin (men only), and (3) a test-and-treat strategy in which all persons with an intermediate risk of coronary heart disease underwent stress testing and those with a positive test were treated with high-intensity statins (men and women) and aspirin (men only). Healthcare costs, coronary heart disease events, and quality-adjusted life years from 2011 to 2040 were projected. Under a variety of assumptions, the treat-all strategy was the most effective and least expensive strategy. Stress electrocardiography was more effective and less expensive than other test-and-treat strategies, but it was less expensive than treat all only if statin cost exceeded $3.16/pill or if testing increased adherence from <22% to >75%. However, stress electrocardiography could be cost effective in persons initially nonadherent to the treat-all strategy if it raised their adherence to 5% and cost saving if it raised their adherence to 13%. Conclusions— When generic high-potency statins are available, noninvasive cardiac stress testing to target preventive medications is not cost effective unless it substantially improves adherence.


From the 1960s to the 1980s revolutionary nationalists in Central America believed that only armed struggle could free their countries from US domination and oligarchical rule. Saul Landau tells the story of three bitter and bloody civil wars. In the 1980s the wars being fought in these tiny nations engaged the entire political world, as the US obsession with the Sandinistas produced the Iran-Contra scandal. In El Salvador the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero focussed world attention on the torture and murder of Catholic priests in Latin America. In Guatemala, US intervention in the 1950s helped to produce the bloodiest sequence of military governments in Central America. These conflicts had their roots in the extreme inequalities of the region and were fuelled by US financial and military intervention, as US policy-makers saw in every regional conflict a Cold War dimension.


The third dredge-up phenomenon in asymptotic gi- ant branch (AGB) stars is analyzed through evolutionary model calculations of a3M, solar metallicity star. The Schwarzschild criterion is used to test the stability of a given layer against convection, and the calculations are performed either with or without extra-mixing below the convective envelope. Based on these calculations, several questions are addressed regarding the occurrence of the third dredge-up in AGB star models, the laws governing that phenomenon, and some of its implications on the structural and chemical evolution of those stars. The use of the Schwarzschild criterion without extra-mixing of any sort is shown to lead to unphysical afterpulse models which prevent the occurrence of third dredge-up. Model calcu- lations of a 3M star using no extra-mixing confirm the fail- ure to obtain dredge-up in those conditions. That conclusion is found to be independent of the mixing length parameter, stellar mass, or numerical accuracy of the models. Model calculations performed on selected afterpulses of the 3M star, but with extra-mixing (using a decreasing bub- ble velocity field in the radiative layers and a diffusion algo- rithm for the mixing of the chemical elements), lead to efficient dredge-ups at a rate of 10 5 10 4 M/yr. Test calculations using different extra-mixing extents and efficiencies reveal that the dredge-up predictions are rather insensitive to those extra- mixing parameters. This important conclusion is understood by analyzing the physics involved in the dredge-up process. It is shown that the dredge-up rate is determined by the thermal re- laxation time-scale of the envelope as C-rich matter is added from the core into the envelope. The dredge-up predictions are, however, expected to depend on the convection prescription in the envelope. Linear relations both between the dredge-up rate and the core mass Mc and between the dredge-up efficiency and Mc are predicted by the model calculations. Those linear relations are expected to still hold when the feedback of the dredge-ups on the AGB evolution is taken into account. They predict the dredge-up efficiency to level off at unity during the AGB evo- lution, at which point the core mass remains constant from one pulse to the next. The core mass is concomitantly predicted to evolve towards an asymptotic value. The existence of such an asymptotic core mass naturally provides an upper limit to the mass of the white dwarf remnant, and helps to constrain the initial-final mass of white dwarfs. Synthetic calculations taking into account the dredge-up laws obtained from the full AGB model calculations predict a continuous increase of the stellar luminosity L with time, con- trary to the predicted behavior of Mc and . This results from an adopted dependence of L on both Mc and the radius Rc of the H-depleted core of the form L / M 2 c =Rc. As a result of this in- crease of L with time, the initial-final mass relation can further be constrained if mass loss is taken into account. If, for exam- ple, a superwind is assumed to eject all the remaining envelope of the 3M star at L = 15000L, then the mass of the white dwarf remnant is predicted to be 0:66M, instead of 0:73M predicted by models without dredge-up. Finally, the synthetic calculations predict the formation of a 3M carbon star after about 20 pulses experiencing dredge-up. Taking into account the fact that the luminosity decreases by a factor of two during about 20% of the interpulse phases, such a 3M carbon star could be observed at luminosities as low as 7500L.


The promotion of biofuel use in preference to traditional petroleum-based transportation fuel has linked agricultural commodity markets and energy markets more closely together. Biofuel policies can involve multiple policy instruments, but studies examining their effects on biofuel feedstock and energy markets are scarce. In addition, the impact of alternative policy approaches in the context of variability in petroleum prices and the supply of biofuel feedstock has received limited attention. Focusing on the current situation in the United States, in which prohibitively high duties prevent imports of ethanol, this paper examines how variability in the price of petroleum and corn supply affects domestic market variability under three types of domestic policies, inclusive of their combinations, for promoting the use of ethanol: 1) the provision of a fixed subsidy (tax credit) for blending ethanol with gasoline; 2) the use of a blending mandate; and 3) the use of a consumption mandate. Varying relative variability in petroleum price and corn supply, we analyze numerically the implications of changes in domestic biofuel policy for variability (measured by the coefficient of variation) in ethanol use and corn prices. We also provide some brief insights into the design of market stabilization policies. Results obtained from Monte Carlo simulations show that in the absence of mandates the quantity of ethanol used under a subsidy policy is highly susceptible to fluctuations in oil prices and corn supply, providing that there are no constraints to adjustment in ethanol demand. The impact of oil price fluctuations on the price of corn is large, but corn supply fluctuations have no or a small impact on the equilibrium corn price, depending on the flexibility of the use of corn in ethanol refining. This is because variations in ethanol volume absorb shocks caused by corn supply fluctuations. Consequently, high fluctuations in the price of petroleum are expected to result in high variability in the corn price in the absence of mandates. With a mandate (with or without a subsidy), as the likelihood that the mandate becomes binding increases, variability in ethanol use declines, the impact of variations in petroleum price on corn prices is reduced, and the impact of variations in corn supply on prices is accentuated. Therefore, if the mandate is likely to be binding, high fluctuations in corn supply are expected to result in high variability in the corn price. If the likelihood that ethanol use exceeds the mandated level is high, the effects are similar to those in the absence of a mandate. The effects of changes in biofuel policy, such as a reduction in the level of tax credit under a mandate and an increase in its level, on the price of corn depend on the relative magnitudes of world oil price and domestic corn supply fluctuations.


A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policy makers have doubled down on efforts to go beyond income when measuring well-being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well-being. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure well-being in four different ways including incomes. This makes it possible to determine if the way well-being is measured matters for identifying who the opportunity-deprived are and for tracking inequality of opportunity over time. We find that, regardless of how well-being is measured, the same people are opportunity-deprived and equality of opportunity has improved over the past 20 years. This suggests that going beyond income has little relevance if the objective is to provide equal opportunities.


This book constitutes Extended Selections of the Best Papers of the Fourteenth International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration of System on Chip (VLSI-SoC2007), October 15-17, 2007, Atlanta, USA. The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.


Abstract
 Alligators and caimans share a close relationship, supported by both molecular and morphological characters. The divergence between alligators and caimans has been difficult to discern in the fossil record. Two basal taxa have recently been described from the Miocene of Panama and Venezuela but have not yet been presented in a joint phylogeny. Continued preparation of the type material of the Venezuelan Globidentosuchus brachyrostris Scheyer et al., 2013 has revealed new characters for scoring in a cladistic framework. In addition, the first lower jaw of the Panamanian Centenariosuchus gilmorei Hastings et al., 2013 is described herein, and additional characters were scored. In total, we conducted five cladistic analyses to better understand the character evolution involved in the establishment of Caimaninae. In each case, Globidentosuchus appears as the basal-most of the caimanine lineage, followed by Culebrasuchus mesoamericanus Hastings et al., 2013 from Panama. Stepwise character additions of synapomorphies define progressively more derived caimanines, but stratigraphic context creates ghost lineages extending from the Miocene to Paleocene. The persistence of two basal taxa into the Miocene of northern South America and Central America supports the concept of a relict basal population in this region. This further supports biogeographic hypotheses of dispersals in both directions between North and South America prior to full land connection.


[W]e need ultimately to "catch up" to the events, to move forward and backward from them in order to work through their traumatic impact and to address the social and political contexts that help to foster (without necessarily leading to) acts of extreme violence. Such contexts are not ... only explainable in terms of the problems of US foreign policy. Nevertheless, any attempt at explanation must go beyond the local events of September 11 and their reception and must include discussion, among other aspects of the historical background, of how the United States has been complicit in preparing the grounds for terrorism, both at home and in the rest of the world.--Michael Rothberg (151) As a national tragedy and a traumatic experience, the events of 9/11, represented by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, marked a turning point in the lives of many Americans. Arab Americans, who not unlike other citizens had to grapple with the consequences of this tragedy, found themselves the target of the "war on terror" initiated by the Bush Administration and used to limit civil liberties and to persecute people perceived as a threat to the security of the American nation. These people included a number of immigrants and Americans, especially of Arab or Muslim origin. (1) In this atmosphere characterized by animosity and fear, Arab American writers insisted on making their voices heard and their perspectives represented. They gave talks on American campuses and circulated poems, essays, and letters online in the days and weeks following the events of 9/11. The few years after 9/11 also saw a surge in Arab American texts, attesting to these authors' awareness of the danger of silence and misrepresentation. Situating my analysis within the context of Arab American writing about 9/11, my paper probes questions of associative remembering as a mode of contrapuntal reading of history in the following texts: "Where Is Home? Fragmented Lives, Border Crossings, and the Politics of Exile" by Rabab Abdulhadi; "first writing since" by Suheir Hammad; "america" by Dima Hilal; "We Will Continue Like Twin Towers" by Mohja Kahf; and "Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet: To Any Would-Be Terrorists" and the introduction of 19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye. (2) Two of the texts discussed, "Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye" and "first writing since," were circulated online in the few weeks immediately following 9/11; the introduction to 19 Varieties of Gazelle was published one year after 9/11; "Where Is Home?" was presented closely after 9/11 on American college campuses, (3) and "We Will Continue" and "america" were published in the few years following 9/11 (2003 and 2004 respectively). (4) These texts capture a particular atmosphere in Arab American literary production as they convey their authors' feelings of responsibility and anxiousness related to the urgent need for Arab American individual and communal self-definition in this tragedy. (5) Despite the fact that they belong to different genres, each with its own logic and politics, what brings the works discussed together is the similarity of their approach to the representation of the events of 9/11, namely their use of contrapuntality and associative remembering. While poetry and letters usually can be conceived as an adequate tool to convey the personal character of memory because they are often used to reflect intimate dimensions of experience, the essay is traditionally understood as an impersonal genre that has "assumed a measured relationship with its audience" (Mittlefehldt 197). However, it is worth noting that this genre has undergone major shifts and transformations as marginalized voices have been claiming access to it and redefining its elements. These transformations are represented by a new stress on the personal and intimate aspects of these subjects' experiences; as such, the essay has become a "weapon of choice" sustaining different types of struggle against "racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, ageism, poverty, and injustice" (Mittlefehldt 196). …


Trade unions played a substantial role in the 'old politics' of expanding pension systems in Europe; they are still active in the 'new politics' of pension reforms. Given the electoral impact and political veto points, governments may seek to overcome reform blockage in political decision-making and implementation by seeking social consensus with trade unions and employers. Various modes of social governance in addition to political interest politics allow trade union influence: institutionalized forms of self-administration of pension insurance, self-regulation via negotiated occupational pensions, institutional consultation of interest groups and tripartite concertation (or social pacts) between government and the social partners.


Every language teacher is in need of intercultural competence. In Germany, the terms "culture" and "intercultural" are under attack and, thus, the necessity of intercultural trainings is often negated. In my article, I will combine two approaches concerned with cultural differences, the so called Dialogic Action Game (Mixed Game Model; MGM) and the approach of Multi-Collectivity. The linking of these two approaches will focus shared values on the one hand and diversity on the other. Applying both approaches in teaching intercultural competence transcends the dissenting opinions of the impact of culture.


In this paper a new method is used to calculate unsteady wind loadings acting on a railway vehicle. The method takes input data from wind tunnel testing or from computational fluid dynamics simulations (one example of each is presented in this article), for aerodynamic force and moment coefficients and combines these with fluctuating wind velocity time histories and train speed to produce wind force time histories on the train. This method is fast and efficient and this has allowed the wind forces to be applied to a vehicle dynamics simulation for a long length of track. Two typical vehicles (one passenger, one freight) have been modelled using the vehicle dynamics simulation package 'VAMPIRE®', which allows detailed modelling of the vehicle suspension and wheel—rail contact. The aerodynamic coefficients of the passenger train have been obtained from wind tunnel tests while those of the freight train have been obtained through fluid dynamic computations using large-eddy simulation. Wind loadings were calculated for the same vehicles for a range of average wind speeds and applied to the vehicle models using a user routine within the VAMPIRE package. Track irregularities measured by a track recording coach for a 40 km section of the main line route from London to King's Lynn were used as input to the vehicle simulations. The simulated vehicle behaviour was assessed against two key indicators for derailment; the Y/Q ratio, which is an indicator of wheel climb derailment, and the Δ Q/Q value, which indicates wheel unloading and therefore potential roll over. The results show that vehicle derailment by either indicator is not predicted for either vehicle for any mean wind speed up to 20 m/s (with consequent gusts up to around 30 m/s). At a higher mean wind speed of 25 m/s derailment is predicted for the passenger vehicle and the unladen freight vehicle (but not for the laden freight vehicle).


The research described throughout this doctoral thesis has been carried out at CICenergiGUNE, an Energy Cooperative Research Centre, located in Minano (Alava,Spain).Doctor Javier Carretero-Gonzalez and Professor Teofilo Rojo Aparicio have beenthe supervisors of this work. During the development of this thesis and as part ofthe doctoral training, Miss Adriana M. Navarro-Suarez, the PhD candidate, hascarried out a 6-month stay at A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute (Philadelphia,USA). Professor Yury Gogotsi is the founder and director of this institute.In the development of this doctoral thesis, the PhD candidate has explored thepotential applications of graphene-related materials for electrochemical energystorage (EES), specifically in supercapacitors. Supercapacitors are expected tofind many forthcoming applications in hybrid electric vehicles and other loadlevellingapplications. In order to achieve that end, their energy density must bemaximized while the power capability continues intact. In the constantly changingtechnological landscape, it is relevant to face new strategies and mechanisms toachieve high energy density materials. Hence, in this thesis, the preparation ofinnovative redox active materials along with their nanostructuration withgraphene or other nanomaterials to lead a high energy and high powerdensity electrode in supercapacitors were our main goal.Graphene has a large theoretical specific surface area and a very high intrinsicelectrical conductivity in plane as well as high mechanical strength and chemicalstability. Because of these characteristics, graphene has been projected to providebetter means for storing electricity. In this thesis, we explored and evaluated newelectrode materials that either showed graphene-type structure or contained directlygraphene layers. By using these materials, we expected to develop supercapacitorsthat exhibit double-layer capacitance, redox pseudo-capacitance, extrinsic redoxpseudo-capacitance, or intercalation pseudo-capacitance.To this end, this Doctoral Thesis has four defined objectives.1. Synthesis of a nanoporous carbon with graphene-like structure to use it asdouble-layer capacitors.2. Design, characterization and development of novel polymer-graphene cellswith enhanced redox-pseudocapacitive behaviour.3. Synthesis of an electrochemically active polymer as electrode material andthe nanostructuration of the electrode by introducing low-dimensionalcarbon nanostructures.4. Development of an asymmetric supercapacitor with two 2D nanomaterialsshowing intercalating pseudocapacitance.


We generalize the internal labor markets (ILM) analysis of the employment relationship to provide a comprehensive model of the relationships among employees, capital providers (particularly shareholders), and the firm. We start by showing that all are variable claimants and all participate in governance, but that the characteristic differences in the payment streams and governance rights of employees and shareholders can be explained by differences in the four principal industrial organization (IO) factors -- investments in match, asymmetry of information, risk aversion and transaction costs. In arriving at these results, we analyze the ways in which employees are typically variable but not residual claimants and why making employees residual claimants over the relevant set of assets, while providing strong incentives for maximizing the value of those assets, is typically not incentive compatible. Our principal conclusions are the following. First, the ownership rights of shareholders have direct parallels in the employment relationship, with the difference between the two parallel tracks reflecting the parties' ability to gain from investments in match, their willingness to trade off higher return for greater risk and their incentive-compatible solutions to the problems of asymmetric information and transaction costs. Second, in terms of the four critical IO factors, the shareholder/managers of the closely held corporation share many features with employees in the classic internal labor market, and that the characteristic arrangements that emerge strongly resemble the solutions of the ILM. Finally, we show that both relationships are fundamentally different from the relationship between the publicly held firm and its suppliers of equity capital, and that the arrangements between shareholders and the publicly held firm are the limit case in which investments in match approach zero.


According to the statistics from American Cancer Society, the 5-year survival rate for patients with advanced melanoma is as low as 5%. Treatment of advanced melanoma, therefore, represents an unmet medical need. In this dissertation, I will show the effort to develop new generations of bioavailable tubulin inhibitors targeting the colchicine binding site and selective small-molecule survivin inhibitors for treating advanced melanoma. Extensive structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies of lead molecules ABI-231 and UC-112 have been performed. Chapter 1 will introduce the current situation of advanced or metastatic melanoma, its clinical drug treatments, as well as problems in current drug treatments. Microtubule dynamics and survivin will be discussed as promising therapeutic targets for developing anticancer drugs. 20S-hydroxyvitamin D3 (20S-OH-D3) will be introduced as a promising anti-inflammatory scaffold. Chapter 2 will disclose the SAR study of ABI-231, a previously reported potent tubulin inhibitor from our lab. In this chapter, a new synthetic method was developed to enable the synthesis of ABI-231 analogues modifying the indole moiety. The novel synthetic method involved the synthesis of a key diamine intermediate and imidazoline formation. From the new synthetic method, thirty ABI-231 analogues were synthesized and tested for activities. Among all analogues, 10ab with a 4-methyl-3-indole moiety and 10bb with a 4-indole moiety showed the most potent antiproliferative activities against a panel of melanoma cell lines. 10ab and 10bb had IC50s of 2.2 and 3.0 nM, respectively. The SAR result revealed that modification of the indole moiety in ABI-231 was beneficial to activity. In Chapter 3, we will describe our effort to develop the SAR study of ABI-231 focusing on modification of the 3,4,5-TMP moiety. This is selected since it is one of the most common moieties in current tubulin inhibitors targeting the colchicine binding site. To circumvent the use of potentially explosive azide reported in Chapter 2, an alternative was established to efficiently generate ABI-231 analogues. This new synthetic method involved Suzuki coupling and Grignard reactions to modify the 3,4,5-TMP moiety and to produce target compounds in gram-scale. Among the eight analogues synthesized, the one containing an unique 3-methoxybenzo[4,5]-dioxene moiety had the strongest antiproliferative activity against a panel of melanoma cell lines with an average IC50 of 1.9 nM. To our best knowledge, it represents the most successful instance of isosterically modifying the 3,4,5-TMP moiety in CA-4 derivatives. Chapter 4 will highlight our effort to synthesize reverse ABI (RABI) analogues for SAR study. In this chapter, a novel and concise synthetic route was established toaccess RABI scaffold. RABI scaffold was constructed through a Grignard reaction/Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction strategy. From this new synthetic method, twelve novel RABI analogues were synthesized. Compared to MX-RABI (the previously reported most potent RABI), several new RABI analogues showed significantly improved cytotoxicities. In particular, analogue 15i with a 4-indazole moiety showed the most potent antiproliferative activity against a panel of melanoma cell lines and had an average IC50 of 0.8 nM. This is the first sub-nM anti-tubulin compound in the related scaffolds. Chapter 5 will reveal our latest SAR study of UC-112, a previously reported selective survivin inhibitor. Fourteen UC-112 analogues modifying the benzyloxy moiety of UC-112 were synthesized. Their corresponding SAR result demonstrated that indole moiety was the most favorable (analogue 12a). Subsequent structural optimization of 12a by introducing either mono-substituent or di-substituent to the indole moiety led to the synthesis of another twenty-four new UC-112 analogues. Several substituted indole analogues showed equipotency to that of UC-112 and MX-106. Importantly, new indole analogues exhibited significant abilities to overcome multidrug-resistance mediated by Pgp overexpression. Chapter 6 is characterized by the establishment of a total synthetic method of 20SOH-D3 which showed comparable antiproliferative activity to 1,25α-dihydroxyvitamin D3 without hypercalcemic toxic effect upto a concentration of 60 μg/kg in vivo. The total synthesis of 20S-OH-D3 involved parallel generation of key intermediates from ergocalciferol. The vitamin D3 core structure was constructed through Wittig-Horner coupling reaction. Deprotection of SEM and TBS was achieved in one step. 20S-OH-D3 was furnished in sixteen steps with an overall yield of 0.4%.


In two massive volumes, Steve McCaffery, Canada's most challenging, experimental and innovative poet/critic amasses the best of his previously published and ungathered work. From the early concrete and visual poems of "Broken Mandala" and "Transitions to the Beast" to the Ludwig Wittgenstein-inspired philosophical investigations of "EVOBA, " from the innovative novel "Panopticon" to the Governor General's Award-nominated "Theory of Sediment" and the recent "The Cheat of Words, " this comprehensive edition covers all phases of McCaffery's vast and heterogeneous poetic oeuvre. Many works that have previously only been available in small, privately circulated editions, such as "Shifters" and "Every Way Oakly, " are available in perfect-bound form here for the first time. Volume 2, following in the wake of the extraordinarily successful first volume, collects the best of McCaffery's ungathered work. Along with selections from his concrete and visual poetry, this book contains sound poem and performance scores, excerpts from early chapbooks, 'pataphysical essays and sections of the often-discussed but rarely seen text "The Abstract Ruin." For new readers and long-time fans of McCaffery alike, Volume 2 of "Seven Pages Missing" is essential reading.


Peanut production in Zambia is often characterized by low yields and high aflatoxin incidence in harvested kernels. Soil amendments such as farmyard manure have shown potential to increase yields and reduce pre-harvest aflatoxin incidence. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the effects of composted cattle manure on soil properties that relate to yield and pre-harvest aflatoxin contamination of peanut kernels. Research evaluated the effects of composted cattle manure on soil respiration, plant-available water (PAW), peanut yield and pre-harvest aflatoxin contamination in a field experiment conducted in two successive rain-fed cropping seasons starting in December, 2015 and ending in April 2017, in Chongwe District, Zambia. Six (6) levels of compost were incorporated into the top 10 cm of the soil at rates of 0, 4.5, 12.0, 19.5, 27.0, and 34.5 metric tons/ha 1 wk before planting. There was a strong positive relationship between levels of compost and soil microbial respiration (R2=0.84) and PAW (R2=0.86). Secondly, compost manure was associated with increases in pod (R2=0.65) and kernel (R2=0.61) yield. The kernel yield potential of the planted cultivar was achieved at the rate of 12 metric tons per ha. Thirdly, there was a reduction in total aflatoxin levels with increasing levels of compost (R2=0.85). The improvement in peanut yield and the decrease in aflatoxin concentrations in kernels can be attributed to the improvement in soil moisture retention capacity and soil microbial activity arising from manure amendments. This study demonstrated the potential of compost manure to increase soil microbial activity, PAW, peanut yield and minimize aflatoxin contamination at field level.


The world's oldest emerald deposit occurs in the Gravelotte-Leydsdorp area of the Limpopo Province of South Africa. Emeralds have been mined from the main emerald working, the Cobra pit, since 1927, although emeralds were discovered in the area much earlier. The emerald mineralisation is closely linked with albitite pegmatites, with the emeralds confined almost entirely to metasomatic zones at the margins of strongly deformed pegmatoid bodies in biotite, talc and actinolite schists. While the surrounding Murchison greenstone belt has been extensively studied, very little geochemical information is available for the emeralds in the deposit. This paper documents the geochemical characteristics of 57 low-quality emeralds from the Leydsdorp area, Murchison Greenstone Belt. The emeralds range in size from 3 to 12 mm and were studied using both visual examination and electron microprobe analysis with 960 microprobe analyses on 54 specimens. The emeralds in the present study are subhedral to euhedral with a well-formed prismatic habit, and range in colour from light green to a dark green or bluish green. A number of samples are characterised by colour zoning, typically comprising of a green to dark green transition from core to rim, while small colourless areas within crystals are also seen. Many of the emeralds examined are practically opaque owing to the presence of very abundant mineral (and fluid) inclusions. Numerous small cracks and veins are also present. A wide variety of inclusion species are encountered, comprising dominant biotite, apatite and quartz, as well as a host of other minerals including hematite, pyrite, pyrrhotite, zircon, molybdenite and galena. SiO 2 content varies between 64 and 67 wt%, Al 2 O 3 range from 13 to 17 wt%, MgO concentrations vary between 0.08 and 3.46 wt% and Na 2 O contents range from 0.76 to 2.33 wt%. The Cr content of Leydsdorp emeralds range up to 1.07 wt% Cr 2 O 3 , with an average of 0.23 wt%. Samples are often heterogeneous with a maximum variation of 0.17 to 0.9 wt% Cr 2 O 3 observed in one specimen. Darker green crystals and dark green patches in individual crystals have significantly higher Cr contents compared to light green crystals and crystal sections. An inverse relationship between Al and the amount of Cr, Mg, Na and Cs is seen, while substitution of Al by Fe is also evident. The major and minor element chemistry of the emeralds are broadly similar to other emerald deposits worldwide. The major chromophore appears to be Cr as opposed to V. Na contents are somewhat higher than the world-wide average and this, along with the inclusion suite, could serve to distinguish these emeralds from other emerald deposits.


In this paper we review the academic transportation literature published between 2014 and 2018 to evaluate where the field stands regarding the use and misuse of statistical significance in empirical analysis, with a focus on discrete choice models. Our results show that 39% of studies explained model results exclusively based on the sign of the coefficient, 67% of studies did not distinguish statistical significance from economic, policy or scientific significance in their conclusions, and none of the reviewed studies considered the statistical power of the tests. Based on these results we put forth a set of recommendations aimed at shifting the focus away from statistical significance towards proper and comprehensive assessment of effect magnitudes and other policy relevant quantities.


1.1 This practice covers procedures for the design, preparation, and use of axially loaded, tension test specimens and fatigue pre-cracked (fracture mechanics) specimens for use in slow strain rate (SSR) tests to investigate the resistance of metallic materials to environmentally assisted cracking (EAC). While some investigators utilize SSR test techniques in combination with cyclic or fatigue loading, no attempt has been made to incorporate such techniques into this practice. 1.2 Slow strain rate testing is applicable to the evaluation of a wide variety of metallic materials in test environments which simulate aqueous, nonaqueous, and gaseous service environments over a wide range of temperatures and pressures that may cause EAC of susceptible materials. 1.3 The primary use of this practice is to furnish accepted procedures for the accelerated testing of the resistance of metallic materials to EAC under various environmental conditions. In many cases, the initiation of EAC is accelerated through the application of a dynamic strain in the gage section or at a notch tip or crack tip, or both, of a specimen. Due to the accelerated nature of this test, the results are not intended to necessarily represent service performance, but rather to provide a basis for screening, for detection of an environmental interaction with a material, and for comparative evaluation of the effects of metallurgical and environmental variables on sensitivity to known environmental cracking problems. 1.4 Further information on SSR test methods is available in ISO 7539 and in the references provided with this practice (1-6). 1.5 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as the standard. The values given in parentheses are provided for information only. 1.6 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.Furthermore, in some cases, special facilities will be required to isolate these tests from laboratory personnel if high pressures or toxic chemical environments, or both, are utilized in SSR testing.


It has been well established that the wages of individual workers react little, especially downwards, to shocks that hit their employer. This paper presents new evidence from a unique survey of firms across Europe on the prevalence of downward wage rigidity in both real and nominal terms. We analyse which firm-level and institutional factors are associated with wage rigidity. Our results indicate that it is related to workforce composition at the establishment level in a manner that is consistent with related theoretical models (e.g. efficiency wage theory, insideroutsider theory). We also find that wage rigidity depends on the labour market institutional environment. Collective bargaining coverage is positively related with downward real wage rigidity, measured on the basis of wage indexation. Downward nominal wage rigidity is positively associated with the extent of permanent contracts and this effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection regulations.


Background: Choroid plexus tumors are uncommon neoplasms derived from the neuroepithelium that covers the ventricular cavity and the central canal of the spinal cord that are characterized by papillar aspect and intraventricular growth. It occurs more commonly in dogs, but it has been reported in horses, cows, ferrets and is rare in cats. After the meningiomas and gliomas, choroid plexus tumors are the third encephalic tumors in dogs. In veterinary medicine, there are not many actual reports of this type of neoplasia, therefore, the aim of this paper was to report a case of a choroid plexus papilloma in a poodle dog. Case: A six year old dog, female, poodle, was admitted at the Veterinary Hospital of the Sao Paulo State University 'Julio de Mesquita Filho' with a complaint of seizures for 15 days, blindness and head tilt to the right side. At the neurological examination, it had depression, head tilt to the right, circling and ataxia, postural reactions defi cits, absent menace response, absent light pupillary refl ex with mydriasis and augmented patellar refl ex. The patient was submitted to blood harvest to perform CBC count and biochemical profi le (renal and hepatic), which were normal. The cerebrospinal fl uid analysis presented a discrete raise of proteins. The animal was treated with phenobarbital and prednisone, under suspicion of infl ammatory disease or encephalic neoplasia. The patient developed a progressive paresis of the four limbs and the seizures remained unaltered. After approximately one month of the fi rst consultation, the dog was admitted in status epileticus, without success of control. Necropsy revealed fl attening of convolutions due to cerebral edema, dilatation of the lateral ventricles (hydrocephalus) and the presence of a greyish nodule, soft and measuring 0.6 x 0.8 cm in length coming out of the fourth ventricle and extending laterally between the cerebellum and brainstem and cranially to the thalamus. At the cut of the tissue, it presented a dark area at the region of the thalamus. Neoplastic tissue was composed of cuboidal to columnar epithelial cells with oval and regular nuclei, supported by richly vascular stroma, arranged in papillae. Discussion: Choroid plexus papillomas are tumors that originate in the choroid plexus epithelium. Affected dogs usually have six or more years, earlier than most brain tumors. However, cases have been observed in younger dogs, and dogs affected by carcinoma are generally older than those affected by the papilloma. In dogs, the tumor occurs most commonly in the fourth ventricle, as in the present report, but can also occur in the third ventricle and the lateral ventricles. The clinical signs in patients with choroid plexus tumors are varied depending on the location of the tumor in the central nervous system, but may include behavioral changes, ataxia, paresis, seizures, circling, cranial nerve and proprioceptive refl exes changes. Macroscopically, the choroid plexus papilloma is a well-defi ned mass, expansive, granular to papillary, grayishwhite to red color. Microscopically, this tumor resembles the choroid plexus and have arboriform and vascular stroma which is coated by a single layer of cuboidal to columnar epithelial cells. The fi ndings were consistent with choroid plexus papilloma located in the fourth ventricle.


Recently, large samples of visually classified early-type galaxies (ETGs) containing dust have been identified using space-based infrared observations with the Herschel Space Telescope. The presence of large quantities of dust in massive ETGs is peculiar as X-ray haloes of these galaxies are expected to destroy dust in ∼10^7 yr (or less). This has sparked a debate regarding the origin of the dust: Is it internally produced by asymptotic giant branch stars, or is it accreted externally through mergers? We examine the 2D stellar and ionized gas kinematics of dusty ETGs using integral field spectroscopy observations from the SAMI Galaxy Survey, and integrated star formation rates, stellar masses and dust masses from the GAMA survey. Only 8 per cent (4/49) of visually classified ETGs are kinematically consistent with being dispersion-supported systems. These 'dispersion-dominated galaxies' exhibit discrepancies between stellar and ionized gas kinematics, either offsets in the kinematic position angle or large differences in the rotational velocity, and are outliers in star formation rate at a fixed dust mass compared to normal star-forming galaxies. These properties are suggestive of recent merger activity. The remaining ∼90 per cent of dusty ETGs have low velocity dispersions and/or large circular velocities, typical of 'rotation-dominated galaxies'. These results, along with the general evidence of published works on X-ray emission in ETGs, suggest that they are unlikely to host hot, X-ray gas consistent with their low M* when compared to dispersion-dominated galaxies. This means that dust will be long-lived and thus these galaxies do not require external scenarios for the origin of their dust content.


Q-Learning is a method for solving reinforcement learning problems. Reinforcement learning problems require improvement of behaviour based on received rewards. Q-Learning has the potential to reduce robot programming effort and increase the range of robot abilities. However, most currentQ-learning systems are not suitable for robotics problems: they treat continuous variables, for example speeds or positions, as discretised values. Discretisation does not allow smooth control and does not fully exploit sensed information. A practical algorithm must also cope with real-time constraints, sensing and actuation delays, and incorrect sensor data.

This research describes an algorithm that deals with continuous state and action variables without discretising. The algorithm is evaluated with vision-based mobile robot and active head gaze control tasks. As well as learning the basic control tasks, the algorithm learns to compensate for delays in sensing and actuation by predicting the behaviour of its environment. Although the learned dynamic model is implicit in the controller, it is possible to extract some aspects of the model. The extracted models are compared to theoretically derived models of environment behaviour.

The difficulty of working with robots motivates development of methods that reduce experimentation time. This research exploits Q-learning's ability to learn by passively observing the robot's actions—rather than necessarily controlling the robot. This is a valuable tool for shortening the duration of learning experiments.


Among infectious agents, measles virus (MV) remains a scourge responsible for 1 million deaths per year and is a leading cause of childhood deaths in developing countries. Although MV infection itself is not commonly lethal, MV-induced suppression of the immune system results in a greatly increased susceptibility to opportunistic bacterial infections that are largely responsible for the morbidity and mortality associated with this disease. Despite its clinical importance, the underlying mechanisms of MV-induced immunosuppression remain unresolved. To begin to understand the basis of increased susceptibility to bacterial infections during MV infection, we inoculated transgenic mice expressing the MV receptor, CD46, with MV and Listeria monocytogenes. We found that MV-infected mice were more susceptible to infection with Listeria and that this corresponded with significantly decreased numbers of macrophages and neutrophils in the spleen and substantial defects in IFN-gamma production by CD4(+) T cells. The reduction in CD11b(+) macrophages and IFN-gamma-producing T cells was due to reduced proliferative expansion and not to enhanced apoptosis or to altered distribution of these cells between spleen, blood, and the lymphatic system. These results document that MV infection can suppress both innate and adaptive immune responses and lead to increased susceptibility to bacterial infection.


OBJECTIVES: The US Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) is a primary source for children's consumer product injury surveillance data in the US. Differing interpretations of the emergency department based NEISS baby walker data by various parties prompted this detailed examination, reclassification, and analysis of the NEISS data to explain these discrepancies. METHODS: Case selection was performed by searching the NEISS 1982-91 database for the baby walker product code and various text strings for children less than 24 months old. False negative and false positive cases were identified and reclassified. Adjusted population rates were computed and the types and locations of hospitals contributing to the sample were examined. RESULTS: One per cent false positive and 4% false negative misclassification rates were observed. In 1991, two children's hospitals reported 14% of the baby walker related injuries, though these hospitals made up just 2% of the sample frame. Through random allocation, one state currently contains four acute care hospitals and the only two children's hospitals reporting to the NEISS system. These six hospitals contributed 18% of the walker cases whereas the state represents only 3% of the US infant population. CONCLUSIONS: Misclassification in NEISS baby walker reports is minimal, with false negatives outweighing false positives. For trend analysis of product related injuries at the frequency of occurrence observed for baby walkers, NEISS suffers from low sensitivity due to sampling error. For children's injuries, NEISS' estimates have been affected by children's hospitals coming in and out of the sample and currently reflects a random geographic imbalance because one state contributes both of the reporting children's hospitals. To overcome these problems improved multiple product coding, a unique baby walker code, and stratification of children's hospitals in an enlarged NEISS sample is recommended.


This annotated bibliography documents the wealth of scholarship on gender and higher education in the Commonwealth, particularly in low-income countries. It contains the results of a major literature search of published and 'grey' literature: the texts that do not reach the public domain, including conference papers, seminar papers and MA and doctoral theses. The aim is to present as full a picture as possible of issues, debates and concerns that have arisen over the past ten years. The bibliography originated in the Gender Equity in Commonwealth Higher Education Research Project, directed by Louise Morley at the Institute of Education, University of London. In the early stages of the project it became apparent that there is a paucity of published literature on women and higher education outside the West. While there is literature on girls and education in low-income countries, there appeared to be little material published about women's experiences of higher education, depsite the research on gender equity in higher education across the Commonwealth. Somehow descriptions and analysis of this work did not seem to be getting into the public domain. This meant that opportunities for dissemination and sharing were being severely limited. Researching Women addresses this lack by describing the location and reviewing the content of writing from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Australasia and the UK. As such, it should be a valuable resource for gender scholars who are interested in international patterns and interventions for gender equity in higher education.


Robert Reischauer and Phil Joyce's "The Federal Line Item Veto: What Is It and What Will It Do?" (Public Administration Review, March/April 1997) is a very informative and useful piece for both researchers and practitioners. However, even though the article provides a careful explanation of the federal line-item veto, it is inadequate in providing a good framework of analysis for researchers to follow in evaluating Its effects. One problem with evaluating the line-item veto is that it isn't necessarily one procedure or rule that is always the same in its stringency or manner of operation. There are loopholes in the legislation itself, as well as strategies that can be used by Congress to limit or circumvent the new line-item power of the president (e.g., Congress can simply change the way appropriation bills are packaged). Most importantly, Congress can choose to preempt the president's item-veto power entirely by writing an exemption clause in the legislation. These loopholes imply that the line-item veto is less a limitation on the power of Congress than a statement of self-restraint that is as good as the level of control Congress is willing to put upon itself. That level may well vary. A second problem in evaluating the effects of the line-item veto is that it Is difficult to determine whether this veto is an independent or dependent variable. In empirical analysis, in general, when an event is going to be evaluated for its effect or impact, the researcher assumes that it Is exogenous to the system of events. In a simple sense, if the change is exogenous (i.e., its value is determined outside the system or model) Its impact on the system can be determined. On the other hand, if a change is endogenous (i.e., its value is determined inside die system) it is not scientifically appropriate to evaluate the impact of this change to the system. Instead of being an agent of change, an endogenous event or process is an object of change. In other words, the first decision a researcher has to make is whether the federal line-item veto should be considered as an independent variable (cause) or a dependent variable (effect) (Cook and Campbell, 1979). Whether a variable is independent or dependent all depends on the way a researcher sets up his or her model of analysis and the actual interaction among the events. If the line-item veto were introduced as a constitutional amendment in which there was independent interpretation from the Supreme Court and binding power on other constitutional players, especially Congress, then it would be appropriate to view the line-item veto as an exogenous change and look at its impact in the federal budgeting system. However, the current form of federal line-item veto can be redefined and modified by Congress relatively easily. It is obvious that the stringency of the federal line-item veto is determined inside the system by Congress. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to model the veto power as an endogenous change or a dependent variable. Sorting out the exogenous and endogenous changes may change the questions one should ask in studying the subject and, most importantly, may lead to different research results and subsequent policy implications. If one treats the line-item veto power as exogenous and finds that there is a reduction in the deficit after its implementation, one may conclude that the line-item veto is a "magic bullet" for reducing the deficit. But if one views the line-item veto as endogenous (which should be the more appropriate research lens here), and there is reduction in the size of the deficit, that reduction will be interpreted as the outcome of other factors, instead of the line-item veto. Those factors may include political pressure from the public and interest groups on Congress, the political skills of the president, and changing attitutdes and power distributions inside Congress. That is, when the line-item veto is endogenous, the factors that affect it also affect the outcomes. …


ABSTRACT Interaction is the distinctive feature of focus groups, yet little attention has been devoted to understanding techniques for enhancing the quality of interactions. We argue that using a quantitative survey instrument with focus groups has specific benefits beyond traditional open-ended topic lists or questions. We describe particular features of a survey that provoke reflection and reaction by participants, thereby deepening dialogue. When using this approach, we recommend that individuals complete the survey privately first, reflecting and taking a position on the statements individually, and then engage in discussion, which can surface differences and similarities. Drawing on our work with the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative involving collaborative cross-disciplinary research, we demonstrate the benefits of such a survey instrument to initiate and sustain productive dialogue, in this case regarding scientific beliefs and values. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, as well as recommendations for designing and using survey items for focus groups.


The article discusses the historical relationship between economics and the tradition of experimental psychology established at Cambridge University. At the same time, we explore how the Cambridge model of the mind was implemented in the United States by Thorstein Veblen, who claimed instinct theory as a novel foundation for his evolutionary-institutional economics. While Veblen identified Alfred Marshall's economics with an older version of psychology, our comparison of the psychological thought of these two economists, as well as our investigation into the social dimensions and possibilities of the Cambridge psychological tradition as developed in the early twentieth century by F. C. Bartlett, points to substantial common ground.


In 2012, a number of news headlines captured a growing trend in fertility medicine—the increased presence of lenders specializing in fertility loans, often promoted or featured by fertility clinics and physicians. Streamlining the financing of assisted reproduction connects patients with loan company representatives either on-site or through a clinic's webpage. While medical professionals and clinics do not receive a commission for product promotion, this recent spate of news reports identified investment opportunities for physicians in private lending firms and some of the physicians involved in such investments. In facilitating the process to obtain credit and, in some instances, benefiting financially through equity ownership in private lending firms, participating physicians declare this a "win-win situation" with no clear conflict of interest. The emergence of these specialty lenders seems a natural development in the current fertility market, but the growing use of private fertility loans suggests the need for further inquiry.


For the thin-disk laser the increased amplification of spontaneous emission for larger disks limits the scalability. An analytical model of the influence of the amplified spontaneous emission on the effective lifetime of the excited ions is developed and with this model optimized parameters for the minimization of the lifetime reduction are found. It is shown that output powers up to the megawatt level are achievable with a single disk, but with disk dimensions far beyond the actual technical limits. The model is also used to evaluate the limits of achievable energy.


Moisture content determination is a routine laboratory test to determine the
amount of water present in a quantity of soil sample. It is normally being
expressed in terms of the dry mass of soil. The standard practice for moisture
content determination of soil can be determined, e.g., using electrical oven
(ASTM D 2216) or microwave oven (ASTM D 4643). This study presents a
unique equipment developed for the determination of soil moisture content using
far infrared radiation (FIR). The pulse infrared radiation is generated by passing
the conventional electric heater tube through a thin film of specific powdered
ceramic radicals.
By applying experimental design matrix to minimise the number of test and using
SPSS Programme to analyse the linear regression, the formula of time for
complete drying is compared to the time measured in experiment. The correlation of time by formula and time measured proved the reliability of the formula
developed in this study.
Throughout the study, the results of time in moisture content determination using
the application of FIR ranges from 20 minutes (0.33 hour) to 180 minutes (3
hour). The developed equipment can also be used for rapid moisture content
determination. This is particularly useful for high volume repeated testing such as
in highway construction.


Violent conflict is the most visible threat to the achievement of sustainable development in any society. The source of conflict is conventionally the warfare among countries. In the last fifty years, however, the cause for conflict has changed and been mostly related to the process of nation building in the post-colonial states in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the new nations, conflicts on the choice of state's ideology are perhaps the most common, and if unresolved, often lead to the separation or partition of the respected nations. In this case, China vs. Taiwan and India vs. Pakistan are perhaps good examples in history. While ideology plays a critical role, it cannot be isolated from the influence of seemingly non political factors of demography and ethnicity. Majority-minority group conflicts are always related to the demographic composition of the population in which ethnicity, religion and economic classes are politically played out. In the aftermath of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts were unleashed. And they often led to the disintegration of nation-states. The breakdown of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and perhaps Indonesia are illustrative cases. Myron Weiner, Thomas Homer-Dixon and Milica Zarkovic Bookman are among the pioneers in studying the interconnectedness of demography, politics and conflict. Ethno-demographic composition and its influence in the politics of nation building generally has been overlooked in many theories on violent conflicts. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the discourse on the nexus of population and conflict by assessing the existing theoretical knowledge and its empirical evidence from the Southeast Asian region.


Summary In the emerging world of electronic publishing how we create, distribute, and read books will be in a large part determined by an underlying framework of content standards that establishes the range of technological opportunities and constraints for publishing and reading systems. But efforts to develop content standards based on sound engineering models must skillfully negotiate competing and sometimes apparently irreconcilable objectives if they are to produce results relevant to the rapidly changing course of technology. The Open eBook Forum's Publication Structure, an XML-based specification for electronic books, is an example of the sort of timely and innovative problem solving required for successful real-world standards development. As a result of this effort, the electronic book industry will not only happen sooner and on a larger scale than it would have otherwise, but the electronic books it produces will be more functional, more interoperable, and more accessible to all readers. Public interest participants have a critical role in this process.


A distributed virtual environment (DVE) is a shared virtual environment where multiple users at their workstations interact with each other. Some of these systems may support a large number of users, e.g., massive multi-player online games, and these users may be geographically distributed. An important performance measure in a DVE system is the delay for an update of a user's state (e.g., his position in the virtual environment) to arrive at the workstations of those users who are affected by the update. This update delay often has a stringent requirement (e.g., less than 100 ms) in order to ensure interactivity among users.
In designing a DVE system, an important issue is how well the system scales as the number of users increases. In terms of scalability, a promising system architecture is a two-level hierarchical architecture. At the lower level, multiple service facilities (or basic systems) are deployed; each basic system interacts with its assigned users. At the higher level, the various basic systems ensure that their copies of the virtual environment are as consistent as possible. Although this architecture is believed to have good properties with respect to scalability, not much is known about its performance characteristics.
This thesis is concerned with the performance characteristics of the two-level hierarchical architecture. We first investigate the issue of scalability. We obtain analytic results on the workload experienced by the various basic systems as a function of the number of users. Our results provide valuable insights into the scalability of the architecture. We also propose a novel technique to achieve weak consistency among copies of the virtual environment at the various basic systems. Simulation results on the consistency/scalability tradeoff are presented.
We next study the update delay in the two-level hierarchical architecture. The update delay has two main components, namely the delay at the basic system (or server delay) and the network delay. For the server delay, we use a network of queues model where each basic system may have one or more processors. We develop an approximation method to obtain results for the distribution of server delay. Comparisons with simulation show that our approximation method yields accurate results. We also measure the time to process an update on an existing online game server. Our approximate results are then used to characterize the 95th-percentile of the server delay, using the measurement data as input.
As to the network delay, we develop a general network model and obtain analytic results for the network delay distribution. Numerical examples are presented to show the conditions under which geographical distribution of basic systems will lead to an improvement in the network delay. We also develop an efficient heuristic algorithm that can be used to determine the best locations for the basic systems in a network.


Personal service robots, such as the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner provide a promising opportunity to study human-robot interaction (HRI) in domestic environments. Still rather little is known about long-term impacts of robotic home appliances on people's daily routines and attitudes and how they evolve over time. We investigate these aspects through a longitudinal ethnographic study with nine households, to which we gave a Roomba cleaning robot. During six months, data is gathered through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.


Volcanic eruptions are considered to be some of the most important
events affecting local and global ecosystems and climate. An
increasing body of research has been concerned with discerning the
influence of volcanic ash on marine ecosystems. However, studies
on the responses of autotrophic and heterotrophic microorganisms
to volcanic ash are rare. In this study we conducted two microcosm
experiments in the low-nutrient and low-chlorophyll western Pacific
Ocean and found that volcanic ash first stimulated the abundance of
heterotrophic bacterioplankton, followed by phytoplankton bloom
that included both picoeukaryotes and larger eukaryotes such as diatoms.
Using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and
clone library analyses, we observed an altered bacterial diversity and
community structure with volcanic ash addition. Our study showed
that volcanic ash affects the community composition of both heterotrophic
bacterioplankton and phytoplankton in the surface ocean.
These results elucidate the overlooked impacts of natural volcanic
eruption events on microbial communities, which play important
ecological and biogeochemical roles in the marine ecosystem.


We describe a method to obtain the brightness and number of molecules at each pixel of an image stack obtained with a laser scanning microscope. The method is based on intensity fluctuations due to the diffusion of molecules in a pixel. For a detector operating in the analog mode, the variance must be proportional to the intensity. Once this constant has been calibrated, we use the ratio between the variance and the intensity to derive the particle brightness. Then, from the ratio of the intensity to the brightness we obtain the average number of particles in the pixel. We show that the method works with molecules in solution and that the results are comparable to those obtained with fluctuation correlation spectroscopy. We compare the results obtained with the detector operating in the analog and photon counting mode. Although the dynamic range of the detector operating in the photon counting mode is superior, the performance of the analog detector is acceptable under common experimental conditions. Since most commercial laser scanning microscopes operate in the analog mode, the calculation of brightness and number of particles can be applied to data obtained with these instruments, provided that the variance is proportional to the intensity. We demonstrate that the recovered brightness of mEGFP, independent of concentration, is similar whether measured in solution or in two different cell types. Furthermore, we distinguish between mobile and immobile components, and introduce a method to correct for slow variations in intensity. Microsc. Res. Tech. 71:69–81, 2008. VC 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


We consider models for random interval graphs that are based on stochastic service systems, with vertices corresponding to customers and edges corresponding to pairs of customers that are in the system simultaneously. The number N of vertices in a connected component thus corresponds to the number of customers arriving during a busy period, while the size K of the largest clique (which for interval graphs is equal to the chromatic number) corresponds to the maximum number of customers in the system during a busy period. We obtain the following results for both the M/D/∞ and the M/M/∞ models, with arrival rate λ per mean service time. The expected number of vertices is eλ, and the distribution of the N/eλ converges pointwise to an exponential distribution with mean 1 as λ tends to infinity. This implies that the distribution of log N−λ converges pointwise to a distribution with mean −γ (where γ is Euler's constant) and variance π2/6. The size K of the largest clique falls in the interval [eλ−2 log λ, eλ+1] with probability tending to 1 as λ tends to infinity. Thus the distribution of the ratio K/log N converges pointwise to that of the constant e, in contrast to the situation for random graphs generated by unbiased coin flips, in which the distribution of K/log N converges pointwise to that of the constant 2/log 2. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 12: 361–380, 1998


One of the deepest differences of conviction in the Anglican Church at the present time, which has revived one of the sharpest conflicts of the Reformation, and is reproducing itself once more upon the ecumenical stage, concerns the issues of priesthood and sacrifice. In what sense are the ordained ministry (as distinct from Christians in general) priests? And in what sense is the Holy Communion (beyond being a feast upon the sacrifice Christ offered) the actual offering of a sacrifice, whether of his sacrifice, or of the spiritual sacrifices of Christians? In other words, how are Christ's sacrifice and priesthood related to those of the Church, and, within the Church, to the work of its ordained ministers? To understand this debate, one needs to trace the main stages of its development in the history of the Church, and the present essay is an attempt to do this in brief compass, beginning with the New Testament and ending at the present day.


[Abstract]: This dissertation explored how gender identity is constructed in elite sport. I argued that sport is a unique socio-cultural context where gender category membership, may be enacted both the same and differently than in other contexts. Historically, most gender stereotyping, gender trait, and gender identity research in sport (e.g., Andre & Holland, 1995; Csizma, Wittig, & Schurr, 1988; Harris & Griffin, 1997) has employed researcher-generated constructions of masculinity and femininity, or non-sporting constructions of masculinity and femininity. By failing to define and construct gender from the participants' perspective, researchers have imposed their own preconceived cultural standards of gender upon participants (Doyle & Paludi, 1995). To generalise these preconceptions to other groups is to do so without consideration of cultural diversity and possible difference (Doyle & Paludi). Therefore, previous sport gender studies that have used these methodologies are tenuous as contemporary and future models upon which to base gender work.
Further, gender identity research that has utilised a discursive psychological theoretical and methodological framework has produced findings that question the empirical validity of current models of gender in sport and exercise psychology (see Wetherell & Edley, 1999). These discursive results suggest that gender is a multifaceted, multidimensional, multifactorial, negotiated, dynamic, and variable concept (Wetherell & Edley, 1999). Therefore, two research questions were addressed by this dissertation: 1) How do participants perceive themselves in terms of gender-related characteristics?; and 2) How do elite sportswomen and sportsmen enact and negotiate membership of idiosyncratic, gender, and gender identity in sport categories?
In order to address these research questions two self-report measures were utilised, the 24-item Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and a semi-structured interview concerning identity prescription. Thirty-eight elite level coaches (19 women, 19 men) and 37 elite level athletes (19 women, 18 men) voluntarily participated in this study. The interview data were analysed using two divergent theoretical and analytical frameworks, an a-priori content analysis (imposition of the PAQ items on interview responses) and a discursive psychological framework.
The results of the PAQ analysis suggest that sportswomen and sportsmen perceive themselves differently in relation to gender-related characteristics. Differences which did not reach statistical significance, were found between male and female responses on the PAQ Masculine (M), Feminine (F), and Masculine-Feminine (M-F) sub-scales. Statistically significant differences were found with reference to PAQ classification, with women more likely to be classified as Androgynous and men as Masculine. There were no statistically significant occupational differences on either PAQ sub-scale responding or PAQ classification. The above results call into question the underlying assumptions and theoretical foundations of the PAQ.
The a-priori content analysis also revealed a number of contradictory findings with reference to the assumptions and foundations of the PAQ scale. For example, women were more likely to utilise the PAQ M item Self-confident to describe themselves as gendered individuals than men. Whereas men were more likely to use the PAQ F item Gentle than women in the same identity category. Further, Feminine classified people were more likely to use the PAQ M-F item Very Dominant when describing themselves as women/men in elite sport. Therefore, the PAQ and a priori results cast doubt on the empirical utility of two factor models of gender to understand gender as a complex and dynamic construct. The results suggest that elite sport might be a context where gender is distinctively enacted and constituted.
In order to determine how gender identity is enacted and negotiated in competitive sport, the interview data were analysed using a discursive psychological approach. Discursive psychology focuses upon how representations are constructed within, and constitutive of, the social practices that are found in language. In this respect, gender is conceptualised as being negotiated within the local interactive context where culture, history, and social contexts are reflected within discursive practices. In Research Question Two, interest centred on the interpretative repertoires and reflexive positions that participants used to prescribe themselves as idiosyncratic, gendered, and gendered individuals in sport.
Interpretative repertoires are recurrent, culturally familiar global discursive patterns that individuals use to make sense of themselves in conversations (Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell & Potter, 1988). Reflexive positions are offered as an alternative discursive notion to the social psychological concept of role (Davies & Harre, 1990). A person is not considered as an individual free agent, but rather as the subject of the interaction, where the individual takes up or is placed in various subject positions depending upon the discourse and the particular social context in which the individual interacts. Thus we make sense of ourselves, or position ourselves, within social interactions through the cultural and personal resources (interpretative repertoires) that are made available to us in our discourse.
Overall, the results of the discursive analysis suggest that participants enacted something gender scholars would call Masculinity, Femininity, and Androgyny when prescribing themselves across the three identity categories. That is, participants used gendered, culturally familiar discursive patterns (interpretative repertoires) to make sense of themselves across identity categories. However, participants were also able to draw upon non gender-related discourses during this process. Thus, identity work was characterised by variability, inconsistency, and contradiction. Different interpretative repertoires and reflexive positions were used by participants both within and across identity categories.
Therefore, the use of gender-related interpretative repertoires differed according to the identity that was being scripted up. Thus participants were able to be Masculine, Androgynous, and Feminine, and position themselves differently depending upon the identity that was being prescribed and the local interaction context. That is, participants used interpretative repertoires to talk one way, but walk another (e.g., Androgynous interpretative repertoire, Hegemonic Masculine reflexive position) that was specific to the social, historical, and cultural context, and the local interactional context. The above results call into question Spence and Helmreich's (1978) postulation that there is one Masculine and one Feminine identity. Indeed the results are suggestive of many Masculinities and many Femininities.
Participants also deployed specific discursive strategies that incorporated the action and epistemological orientation of their talk when constituting their identities. That is, they worked to increase the facticity of their talk and worked to align themselves with certain positions (e.g., Hegemonic Masculine man) and not others (Feminine man) through their discourse. Thus gendered talk carried with it gendered ideological practices that participants used to reproduce, reinforce, and challenge the current gender order.
The above results, combined with the disparity between the PAQ results and the a-priori content analysis, suggest that earlier and current models of gender that conceptualise gender as a multifaceted, multidimensional, bi-directional but static concept are probably not representative of how people do gender in everyday talk. The results support extant theory that gender identities might exist rather than a single gender identity. Overall, the results of this dissertation -suggest that elite sportswomen and sportsmen enact and negotiate membership of identity categories that is specific to the local interactional context, as well as the cultural, social (i.e., sport), and historical context. I infer, therefore, that current static gender models in sport and exercise psychology may not fully capture the complexity of gender in everyday talk and that alternative ways of understanding gender in sport are needed.


Vocabulary knowledge is a fundamental requirement for school success, not least because of its importance for the acquisition of literacy skills. However, the acquisition of word knowledge entails more than simply extending vocabulary size. In this dissertation, three other aspects of word knowledge were studied: firstly, semantic access, that is the speed with which words' semantic representations are retrieved; secondly, the structure of individuals' semantic networks, i.e. the relative prominence of different types of semantic relations represented within these networks; and thirdly, the amount of priming, i.e. automatic activation, of these semantic relations. For each of these aspects of word knowledge, the contribution to individual differences in reading comprehension was assessed, in an attempt to tease apart the vocabulary components that feed into the complex skill that is comprehension. Additionally, differences between monolingual and bilingual minority children were studied. The three empirical studies comprising this dissertation – word association, single-word semantic priming and sentence-level semantic priming – showed limited significant differences between monolingual and bilingual participants. On each of the focal vocabulary aspects and most other tasks such as reading comprehension and vocabulary size, the bilingual minority children appeared to perform similarly to their monolingual peers. The predictive value of the vocabulary measures for individual differences in reading comprehension was also found to be limited: although significant contributions of certain associative preferences could be identified, semantic access and priming showed no significant influence on the reading comprehension scores. Overall, the findings emphasize size as the main vocabulary component contributing to reading comprehension.


Beyond organisms experiencing direct impacts (mortality) from the presence of anthropogenic features, interactive relationships may exacerbate the effects of anthropogenic disturbance within the context of these features. For example, mortality risk may be affected by the road infrastructure associated with energy development by influencing space use of predators including human hunters. To assess these relationships, we conducted research on northern bobwhite Colinus virginianus across a hunted and non-hunted area of Beaver River Wildlife Management Area, Oklahoma, using radiotelemetry from 2012–2015. We found that bobwhite mortality risk decreased as the distance from primary roads (m) increased across weeks (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.008, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.0003 to 1.0013). The interaction between unit (hunted and non-hunted) and distance from primary roads was not significant (HR = 1.00, 95% CI = 0.999 to 1.001) indicating that hunting pressure was not a likely explanation for the observed decrease in survival related to primary roads. Bobwhite on the hunted unit avoided exposed soil/sparse vegetation ( = -0.01, CI = -0.02 to -0.002) and bare ground ( =-0.01, CI =-0.02 to -0.002) more than bobwhite on the non-hunted unit, however these were weak relationships. No other differences in bobwhite space use were detected related to hunting. Though we were limited to estimating theoretical rather than empirical amounts of hunting pressure during our study, we were unable to detect any negative compounding effects of anthropogenic development and hunting pressure on bobwhite ecology during the hunting season.


SUMMARY The size of the pancreas is determined by intrinsic factors, such as the number of progenitor cells, and by extrinsic signals that control the fate and proliferation of those progenitors. Both the exocrine and endocrine compartments of the pancreas undergo dramatic expansion after birth and are capable of at least partial regeneration following injury. Whether the expansion of these lineages relies on similar mechanisms is unknown. Although we have shown that the Wnt signaling component β-catenin is selectively required in mouse embryos for the generation of exocrine acinar cells, this protein has been ascribed various functions in the postnatal pancreas, including proliferation and regeneration of islet as well as acinar cells. To address whether β-catenin remains important for the maintenance and expansion of mature acinar cells, we have established a system to follow the behavior and fate of β-catenin-deficient cells during postnatal growth and regeneration in mice. We find that β-catenin is continuously required for the establishment and maintenance of acinar cell mass, extending from embryonic specification through juvenile and adult self-renewal and regeneration. This requirement is not shared with islet cells, which proliferate and function normally in the absence of β-catenin. These results make distinct predictions for the relative role of Wnt–β-catenin signaling in the etiology of human endocrine and exocrine disease. We suggest that loss of Wnt–β-catenin activity is unlikely to drive islet dysfunction, as occurs in type 2 diabetes, but that β-catenin is likely to promote human acinar cell proliferation following injury, and might therefore contribute to the resolution of acute or chronic pancreatitis.


We employ numerical simulations to explore the development of flow-induced self-excited oscillations in three-dimensional collapsible tubes which are subject to boundary conditions (flow rate prescribed at the outflow boundary) that encourage the development of high-frequency oscillations via an instability mechanism originally proposed by Jensen & Heil (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 481, 2003, p. 235). The simulations show that self-excited oscillations tend to arise preferentially from steady equilibrium configurations in which the tube is buckled non-axisymmetrically. We follow the growing oscillations into the large-amplitude regime and show that short tubes tend to approach an approximately axisymmetric equilibrium configuration in which the oscillations decay, whereas sufficiently long tubes develop sustained large-amplitude limit-cycle oscillations. The period of the oscillations and the critical Reynolds number beyond which their amplitude grows are found to be in good agreement with theoretical scaling estimates.


Abstract M-learning is a form of distance learning in that it provides a communication tool( the mobile phone) to bridge the distance between the providing institution and the learners and facilitates 2-way (synchronous and asynchronous) interactivity between teacher and the learner (McWilliams et al, 2007). M-learning allows the remote teachers to stay in frequent contact with teacher educators, to ask questions and discuss issues as they adapt new teaching practices. This programme has been initiated by Ministry of Education upon requested by ADB, Manila to implement technology based training programme for reaching remote and disadvantaged areas. M - learning has been piloted by teacher educators of Government Teachers' Training College in one district (Barisal, located in the southern part of Bangladesh) and later extended to four districts to train teachers of remote schools of Patuakhali, Sandwip, Hatya and Thakurgaon districts. Regular 14 day and 5 day follow-up face-to-face inservice Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training was adapted as a two day face-to-face orientation, followed by a 6 week programme with regular conference calls to support classroom practices. Findings of the programme are very promising for adapting new practices. The CPD training by using mobile phone became very successful for increasing teachers and student's competence level. Government of Bangladesh and Development Partners are very keen to maximize the use of technology in CPD for teachers especially for addressing female teachers and reaching training facilities to remote areas.


Where a convicted person has exhausted all recognised legal procedures pertaining to appeal and review and further evidence has since become available which materially affects the conviction, such a person can apply to be pardoned by the President, in which circumstances section 327 of the Criminal Procedure Act empowers the President to enact such pardon. After evaluating this procedure, it can be said that it adequately provides for the admissibility of newly discovered evidence, but that it falls short where a claim of innocence can be conclusively proven with newly discovered DNA evidence. The probative force of DNA-evidence necessitates that its admissibility be treated differently from the usual types of newly discovered evidence. Measures similar to those currently awaiting approval in the United States of America should be put into place to ensure access to post-conviction DNA testing in appropriate cases. The essence of these measures is that a convicted person must be given the opportunity to apply to a court to have such evidence tested. In addition, provision should be made to ensure that all evidence was secured in relation to the investigation or prosecution of a crime and that could be subjected to DNA testing, be preserved for at least the period of time that any person remains subject to incarceration in connection with the investigation or prosecution.


Like us, some kinds of animals require passports to enable movements across national borders. Passports tell all kinds of multispecies stories, in which humans and nonhumans are entangled in myriad ways. But what is a passport — human or nonhuman? What kind of symbolic, legal, material, relational identity and not least control and disciplinary work do they "do"? The article departs from autoethnographical notes in a European context, and discusses these questions in dialogue with animal studies literature and actor network theory.So, what kinds of stories do passports tell? In the article, the authors consider first what role passports serve, and then analyze their function, in various forms of surveillance — around disease and global bio-security, around mobility/travel, and around identities. Finally, some issues raised about technologies of identification, and what these say about identity and belonging, particularly with respect to human-animal relationships, are discussed. For all that these passports signify human-animal separation, they also signify the shared, mobile enmeshment of humans and animals in citizenship as well as social life.


A set of previously unrecognised quartz-pyrite veins are present in the Assynt Terrane of the mainland Lewisian Complex, NW Scotland. The veins cross-cut the Badcallian and Inverian fabrics, and the Scourie Dykes. The veins have been reworked by Laxfordian deformation fabrics (ca. 1.8 Ga) and later brittle faults of various ages. Fieldwork analyses suggest that the veins are a multi-modal system of tensile/hybrid fractures which are locally influenced by the existing foliation of the gneisses. They are inferred to have formed during regional NW-SE extension, an orientation that is almost orthogonal to the NE-SW extension direction associated with the intrusion of the Scourie Dykes. Microstructures within the quartz veins suggest that overprinting Laxfordian events reached maximum temperatures of 500°C under moderate strain rates, while pervasive ductile deformation was restricted mainly to the Canisp Shear Zone and was succeeded by brittle deformation as the temperature decreased but strain rates remained high within the shear zone. Re-Os dating of the pyrite within the quartz veins gives an age of 2259±61 Ma, placing the emplacement of the veins after the oldest dates for the Scourie Dykes (2420, 2400 & 2375 Ma) but before the youngest ages (1990 Ma). Sulphur isotope analysis suggests that the pyrite is of primitive mantle origin and may have been either stripped from the crust by fluid circulation or was associated with the intrusion of the Scourie dykes. The presence of the quartz-pyrite veins in both the Assynt and Gruinard Terranes suggest they were amalgamated during or prior to Inverian deformation while the absence of the veins in the Rhiconich Terrane is consistent with the suggestion that this terrane was not amalgamated until the Laxfordian Orogeny. The emplacement of the veins may linked to the formation and/or amalgamation of the Loch Maree Group supracrustal sequence.


[(By None) Decree] The present text, scripted as an essay, was prepared to the event organized by the Researchers Groups in Contemporary Political Theory; Ethics, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature, and Literary Studies, entitled "Interlocutions between Literature, Philosophy and Law", which occurred in 06 and 08 of December of 2016, in the Federal University of Rondonia. The aim of the essay is to demonstrate, from a transdisciplinary reading of Paulo Leminski's poem "Bem no Fundo", that the alleged struggle of society in general, and of social movements in particular, by an regulamantation more comprehensive and particularized of all aspects of the human life - juridicization of life - is, in fact, a trap that we ourselves have armed to the detriment of our freedoms, autonomies and potentialites. When this juridicization meets the judicialization of life and politics, the path to totalitarian rule is, as it were, perfectly paved. Therefore, there will be no more life, but only Law and Sentences, and with them the respective "little problems". The essay, therefore, is also intended to be a warning sign and a sign of the need to renew the democratically founded struggle for moral and political autonomy, indifference to difference and the preservation of our freedoms in the form of potentialities of yes or do not.


This article reports on research addressing the role of incident reporting at the workplace as a textual representation of lean management techniques. It draws on text and discourse analysis as well as on ethnographic data, including interviews, recorded interaction, and observations, from two projects on workplace literacy in Sweden: a study in an eldercare facility and a study in a large factory. Analysis of the data set demonstrates striking similarities, both in the way incident reporting texts are structured and worded and in the literacy practices that contextualize them. Dominant characteristics in the texts are the absence of actors and the structured, process-based approach of problems and problem handling. The forms often generate conflicts in the ways workers are asked to textually represent an incident. In this article, we argue that lean thinking has penetrated texts and literacy practices of two considerably different workplaces, and this has a large impact on the way workers are instructed to think and act with regard to problem handling techniques.


Abstract. Since the launch of the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) in 2009, retrieval algorithms designed to infer the column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of carbon dioxide (XCO2) from hyperspectral near-infrared observations of reflected sunlight have been greatly improved. They now generally include the scattering effects of clouds and aerosols, as early work found that absorption-only retrievals, which neglected these effects, often incurred unacceptably large errors, even for scenes with optically thin cloud or aerosol layers. However, these "full-physics" retrievals tend to be computationally expensive and may incur biases from trying to deduce the properties of clouds and aerosols when there are none present. Additionally, algorithms are now available that can quickly and effectively identify and remove most scenes in which cloud or aerosol scattering plays a significant role. In this work, we test the hypothesis that non-scattering, or "clear-sky", retrievals may perform as well as full-physics retrievals for sufficiently clear scenes. Clear-sky retrievals could potentially avoid errors and biases brought about by trying to infer properties of clouds and aerosols when none are present. Clear-sky retrievals are also desirable because they are orders of magnitude faster than full-physics retrievals. Here we use a simplified version of the Atmospheric Carbon Observations from Space (ACOS) XCO2 retrieval algorithm that does not include the scattering and absorption effects of clouds or aerosols. It was found that for simulated Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) measurements, the clear-sky retrieval had errors comparable to those of the full-physics retrieval. For real GOSAT data, the clear-sky retrieval had errors 0–20 % larger than the full-physics retrieval over land and errors roughly 20–35 % larger over ocean, depending on filtration level. In general, the clear-sky retrieval had XCO2 root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of less than 2.0 ppm, relative to Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) measurements and a suite of CO2 models, when adequately filtered through the use of a custom genetic algorithm filtering system. These results imply that non-scattering XCO2 retrievals are potentially more useful than previous literature suggests, as the filtering methods we employ are able to remove measurements in which scattering can cause significant errors. Additionally, the computational benefits of non-scattering retrievals means they may be useful for certain applications that require large amounts of data but have less stringent error requirements.