A field experiment examined stability and stratification in a disused mine Fit filled with 1.75 × 107 m3 of water. Vertical profiles of conductivity and temperature indicated that, due to substantial chemical stratification, spring and autumn overturn did not penetrate to the base of the pit. Although parameterization indicated that double diffusion should be expected, we found only circumstantial evidence of associated step structure. The available data suggest that groundwater inflow created a warm salty pool of water at the base of the water column, giving the appearance of a meromictic structure with a monimolimnion. However, this pool was not a consistent feature, suggesting both a variable inflow and significant diffusion rates. From the temperature data, estimates indicated that hypolimnetic vertical eddy diffusivity varied between 1 × 10−7 and 5 × 10−5 m2 s−1. The observations identify short‐term relatively energetic internal wave events that may have a significant impact on this value. The present study is useful in two ways: first, it shows how pit‐lakes form a natural laboratory for a range of processes, and second, it illustrates how these processes relate to diffusion paranieterization. It is clear that reliable parameterization is vital for long‐term modeling required for prediction of water quality over decadal timescales.


Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) based ceramics have been fabricated by hot-pressing in a nitrogen atmosphere at 1900°C for 60 min. under a pressure of 50 MPa with B2O3 as sintering additive. The phase composition was confirmed by XRD. The microstructural properties of h-BN powders and hot-pressed surfaces were evaluated by SEM-EDS analysis. The formation of the secondary phase was also investigated with particular interest on grain boundaries. The sintered densities were also determined by Archimedes' method. The maximum relative density was obtained to be about 92 %. The effect of the existence of boron oxide on the boron nitride grain growth behaviour was discussed on the basis of microstructural features.


This lecture addresses the relationship between law and culture in three general parts. The first part consists of a brief review of the theories addressing the relationship of law and culture, mainly the mirror theory. But I will suggest that there is more to the relationship of law and culture than one being an inert reflection of the other; hence my proposal for what I call, as a working concept, a cross-constitutive paradigm of law and culture. The second part reviews the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW"), a law that seeks to effect change by mandating equality for women in part by identifying and attempting to change what are perceived as deleterious cultural practices. As such, CEDAW has been both successful and unsuccessful: in some instances, at least on paper, CEDAW has changed culture; in other cases, it has failed to do so. Third, I will look at Cuba as a particular location in which to explore the relationship between legal change and cultural change. Specifically, I will compare two laws in the context of Cubans in exile and Cubans on the island. This analysis allows me to suggest some factors that may provide insight as to whether or not law will be effective in changing culture. It probably need not be underscored here that, by talking about Cuba, a socialist state, I am intentionally toying with the notion of markets which, in globalization terms, are synonymous with capitalism and the so called "free markets."


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To identify indicators involving circadian activity/rest cycles associated with higher levels of cancer-related fatigue (CRF) during the first three chemotherapy cycles after surgery for stage I/II breast cancer.

DESIGN
Prospective, descriptive, repeated measures.

SETTING
Midwestern oncology clinics and subjects' homes.

SAMPLE
72 women, ages 33-69 and free of unstable chronic illnesses, entered the study. Complete data were obtained from 30-47 subjects at each time.

METHODS
CRF was measured using the Piper Fatigue Scale at the start and midpoint of each chemotherapy cycle. Circadian activity/rest indicators were obtained using Mini-Motionlogger wrist actigraphs for 96 hours at the start of each treatment and for 72 hours at the midpoint of each chemotherapy cycle.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Fatigue and circadian activity/rest indicators.

FINDINGS
Women who were less active and had increased night awakenings reported higher CRF levels at all three cycle midpoints, with the strongest association being number of night awakenings. During the third chemotherapy cycle, women who were less active during the day, took more naps, and spent more time resting during a 24-hour period experienced higher CRF.

CONCLUSIONS
Women whose sleep is disrupted at cycle midpoints are at risk for CRF. The cumulative effects of less daytime activity, more daytime sleep, and night awakenings are associated with higher CRF levels.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE
Assessment of CRF and night awakenings at the midpoints of each chemotherapy cycle and development of nursing interventions to promote daytime activity and nighttime rest are key to managing fatigue and preventing loss of biologic rhythmicity.


This dissertation reports a PhD research on mathematical-computational models, methods, and techniques for analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of spatial configurations in architecture and urban design. Spatial configuration is a technical term that refers to the particular way in which a set of spaces are connected to one another as a network. Spatial configuration affects safety, security, and efficiency of functioning of complex buildings by facilitating certain patterns of movement and/or impeding other patterns. In cities and suburban built environments, spatial configuration affects accessibilities and influences travel behavioural patterns, e.g. choosing walking and cycling for short trips instead of travelling by cars. As such, spatial configuration effectively influences the social, economic, and environmental functioning of cities and complex buildings, by conducting human movement patterns.

In this research, graph theory is used to mathematically model spatial configurations in order to provide intuitive ways of studying and designing spatial arrangements for architects and urban designers. The methods and tools presented in this dissertation are applicable in:

• arranging spatial layouts based on configuration graphs, e.g. by using bubble diagrams to ensure certain spatial requirements and qualities in complex buildings; and

• analysing the potential effects of decisions on the likely spatial performance of buildings and on mobility patterns in built environments for systematic comparison of designs or plans, e.g. as to their aptitude for pedestrians and cyclists.

The dissertation reports two parallel tracks of work on architectural and urban configurations. The core concept of the architectural configuration track is the 'bubble diagram' and the core concept of the urban configuration track is the 'easiest paths' for walking and cycling. Walking and cycling have been chosen as the foci of this theme as they involve active physical, cognitive, and social encounter of people with built environments, all of which are influenced by spatial configuration. The methodologies presented in this dissertation have been implemented in design toolkits and made publicly available as freeware applications.


This brief concerns a new digital redesign (DR) technique for an observer-based output-feedback control (OBOFC) system. The term DR involves converting an analog controller into an equivalent digital one in the sense of state-matching. The considered DR problem is viewed as a convex minimization problem of the norm distances between linear operators to be matched and its constructive condition is formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The main features of the proposed method are that the state estimation error in the plant dynamics is considered for the state-matching condition that was ignored in the earlier works; the stability is guaranteed within the redesign procedure; the separation principle on the DR of the OBOFC is explicitly shown. A numerical example is included for visualizing the feasibility of the proposed technique.


Abstract : The task of having computers able to understand their environments through direct imaging has proved to be formidable. With its beginnings about 30 years ago (1). the field of computer vision has grown as a major part of the pursuit for artificial intelligence. Most elements of this pursuit language understanding, reasoning and planning, speech - are very difficult challenges, but vision, with its high dimensionality of space, time, scale, color, dynamics, and so forth, may be the most challenging. Early attempts to develop computer vision focused on restricted situations in which it was feasible to provide the computer with fairly complete descriptions of what it would encounter. In such cases, single images provided the sensory information for analysis. As the domains of application grew, the requirements for more competent descriptions of the world increased. Dealing with three-dimensional (3D) dynamic structures (the real world) from 3D dynamic platforms (we humans) calls for greater capabilities on both the analysis and synthesis sides of the issue. The analysis side is the processing of sensory data for such tasks as recognition and navigation, and a number of techniques are discussed here for dealing wlth these two-, three-, and higher-dimensional data. The synthesis side is the construction of `internal' descriptions of what is seen in the environment - constructed now so that they may be used subsequently for the above tasks. This latter issue is the underlying theme we pose in this paper - developing representations from vision that will later enable effective automated operation in our 3D dynamic environments.


Formed through a closed domain magnetic heterostructure on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator, a quantum dot permits a class of quantized interfacial states of topological origin. We find that these states exhibit a remarkable reverse Stark effect in response to an applied electric field. In particular, those topological states whose energies are within the gap exhibit peculiar electrical alignments that are opposite to those associated with the conventional quantum-confined Stark effect in that the positive(negative-) energy states tend to align with (against) the direction of the field. The phenomenon has unusual implications for the associated optical transitions. Furthermore, the exotic topological states exhibit polarized spin textures that can be effectively controlled electrically or optically, opening an avenue for potential applications in Dirac-material-based spintronics.


"II Kings" (Volume 11 in the acclaimed "Anchor Bible") is the chronicle of the raging conflicts that tore the United Kingdom of Israel apart, creating the rival nations of Israel to the north and Judah to the south. It tells of the time of the great prophecies of Elijah and Elisha, and of the legendary conquerors of not only the Jews, but the whole of the Middle East - Sennacherib, Hazael, Tiglath-pileser III, Nebuchadnezzar, and Shalmaneser.The book of "II Kings" was written with a dual purpose. It provided a chronological history of the divided kingdoms of Israel, from the time of division, through the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, and the final exile of the Jews into Babylonia. It also served as a reminder to all Israelite monarchs that their loyalty to the God of Israel, as worshipped in Jerusalem, determined the course of history. In his telling of the story, the book's author emphasized to his contemporaries and future generations that in order to avert the calamities that befell the Chosen People (their conquest by nonbelievers, the destruction of Jerusalem, and their ignominious exile), they would have to avoid a repetition of the misdeeds of the past. If they remained loyal to their God, their God would remain loyal to them.Complete with maps, charts, photographs, and extra-biblical documentation, "II Kings" presents an important and illuminating new translation which explores a tumultuous epoch of change that forever affected theological and world history.


The limits of visual awareness are often attributed to a finite supply of visual attention (Chun & Wolfe, 2001) and processing constraints of the prefronto-parietal network (Dehaene & Changeux, 2011). Here, we investigate the extent to which the limits of visual awareness are related to representational constraints within the higher-level visual system. To measure the limits of visual awareness, we used two different behavioral paradigms that render stimuli invisible. In Experiment 1, we used visual masking to measure how well items from different categories mask one other (e.g., buildings masking cars). In Experiment 2, we used continuous flash suppression to measure how long it takes an item from one category (e.g., a face) to break through suppression by items from another category (e.g., bodies). We then used fMRI to measure the similarity of the neural responses elicited by those categories across the visual hierarchy and used representational similarity analysis (Kriegeskorte & Kievit, 2013) to compare the behavioral and neural results. In both experiments, we found that pairs of categories that strongly mask and suppress each other in behavior also elicit more similar neural response patterns. Brain/behavior correlations were strong within ventral occipital cortex (Exp. 1: r=0.84*; Exp. 2: r=0.64*) and lateral occipital cortex (Exp. 1: r=0.70*; Exp. 2: r=0.73*), weaker within occipitoparietal cortex (Exp. 1: r=0.52*; Exp. 2: r=0.44), and not significant within V1-V3 (Exp. 1: r=0.05; Exp. 2: r=-0.39). Together, these results show that the organization of higher-level visual cortex predicts the degree to which different stimuli will compete for visual awareness. We suggest that this organization imposes a limit on the capacity of visual awareness. Under this view, the extent to which items activate overlapping, capacity-limited neural channels constrains the amount of information that can be accessed by visual awareness. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


The total electron content (TEC) derived from two Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers localized at Palmas (PAL, 10.2oS, 48.2oW, dip latitude 5.5oS), near equatorial region, and Sao Jose dos Campos (SJC, 23.2oS, 45.9oW, dip latitude 17.6oS), under the southern crest of the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA), in the Brazilian sector are used in this paper. TEC from the latest available IRI-2012 model at the same locations is also used. A comparative study between GPS-TEC and the IRI-2012 model is analyzed during the deep low solar activity period of 2009 in the unusual solar cycle 23. The measurements and the modeled data show that the IRI-TEC model gives the better estima- tes of the GPS-TEC during the nighttime from January to December months at PAL and SJC. The IRI-TEC model shows larger differences from the GPS-TEC in the afternoon hours, mainly at SJC. These di- screpancies observed at SJC in the afternoon hours for all months are possibly due to the dynamics of EIA in consequence of the equatorial fountain effect. At PAL and SJC, oscillations of GPS-TEC with pe- riods around 16 days in April and periods around 27-32 days between September and December possibly are noticed which could be related to a modulation of the semidiurnal tide and Sun's rotation, respecti- vely. Also, oscillations with periods around 2-4 and 5-10 days from January to December are observed at PAL and SJC, possibly associated with the propagation of planetary waves.


A simplistic explanation of why tropical forests degrade or disappear all together is, because loggers take out too many trees, companies convert forest for plantations, and small farmers slash forest to make agricultural fields. Political ecology is a scientific inter-discipline that tries to identify the political dimension of forest resource appropriation, contestation over forest benefits, and the role of power and discourse in the processes of unsustainable use and resulting forest degradation. This chapter summarizes ten chapters in the volume in which it is published. Several of chapters demonstrate that modern struggles over forests have their roots in colonial periods. Colonial powers used force, but also the argument that deforestation negatively affected the local climate, to expulse forest farmers from timber rich forest lands. Often control of the trade of lucrative forest products like rattan was decided by force. In these struggles, colonial powers used force against local Sultans, local Sultans used force against forest dwellers, and powerful forest dweller groups used force against weaker groups.


Understanding of one of the major building blocks of real estate development is at least partial. How do firms in the construction sector perform? Does the relative performance change over the business cycle? Do differences in performance relate to observable characteristics? Understanding the performance within the construction industry is of importance in advising both policy makers and managing boards how to boost productive performance. Also, with a better understanding one would better understand real estate fundamentals across regions over time. We propose unlike neoclassical theory of the firm that firms not necessarily operate fully efficiently due to organizational or market failures like perverse incentives, hidden actions, imperfect information, strategic behaviour and moral hazard. Subsequently we formulate a nonparametric efficiency framework DEA in which production is related to inputs used in the production process. We apply the framework to a micro sample of Dutch firms in the Construction Industry to calculate the performance within the sample over various years. As such we would like to get a better understanding of the real estate market building on contributions of others; brick by brick.


Despite the importance of adequately measuring ethnicity to keep track of ethnic disparities in important outcomes, there is little consensus on how this is best achieved. Different countries apply widely differing standards, seemingly guided by convenience more than conviction. We employ unique data on 3035 15-year-olds living in England to investigate inconsistencies when two different measures are used: (i) ethnic group self-identification by respondents and (ii) information on parents' birth country. The former is currently standard in England and Wales and the latter in many European countries. After having aligned our country-of-origin-based measure to the ethnic categories currently in use in England and Wales, we are able to show substantial agreement across measures, and estimates of disparities in language proficiency and delinquency appear little affected by the choice of measure. We conclude that comparative research using secondary data need not be badly biased due to inconsistent measures if sufficient care is taken in harmonisation.


100 Years of Swiss Design offers a new perspective of Switzerland's achievements in furniture and product design. The book presents the essential historical designs in chronological sequence, from the regional roots of the early days around 1900 to the globalized network of today. Thirty essays by known experts shed light on themes typical of their times in word and image. Besides the design process, manufacturing techniques, distribution, and reception, the changing roles of the designer--from mediator between form and function, entrepreneur, social worker, to branding architect--are examined. Featuring one hundred key works from the Designsammlung, the world's largest collection of Swiss design, this reference work is the first to present and discuss a comprehensive show of Swiss designers' achievements, from the anonymous to the famous.


The article studies the problems of formation and implementation of the state industrial policy of the Russian Federation. The main methods, values and goals underlying the formation of the modern industrial policy of the Russian Federation are emphasized. Under the conditions of deepening risks of economic isolation the issues of achieving economic independence and economic sovereignty are the main factors of the national security. Therefore, a sufficiently high level of autarchy should act as a safety cushion in the face of unfavorable global economic conditions.Based on the current challenges facing the Russian system of state administration it is concluded that in order to carry out re-industrialization it is necessary to conduct a further transition to an active model of industrial policy based on the essential role of state intervention in economic activity. The world experience shows that if a forced development is needed, then a free market system unregulated by the state is not used. The transition from protectionism to the free market is possible only after the development of the national productive forces.The modern economy is a system of management, the effective functioning and innovative development of which is ensured by the state of its infrastructure. Therefore, the implementation of big infrastructural projects is one of the most important elements of the state industrial policy formed in the Russian Federation.


A fundamental challenge in imperfect-information games is that states do not have well-defined values. As a result, depth-limited search algorithms used in single-agent settings and perfect-information games do not apply. This paper introduces a principled way to conduct depth-limited solving in imperfect-information games by allowing the opponent to choose among a number of strategies for the remainder of the game at the depth limit. Each one of these strategies results in a different set of values for leaf nodes. This forces an agent to be robust to the different strategies an opponent may employ. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by building a master-level heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em poker AI that defeats two prior top agents using only a 4-core CPU and 16 GB of memory. Developing such a powerful agent would have previously required a supercomputer.


This pilot study compared and evaluated lifeguard perceptions of accidents and rescues with actual accident and rescue reports. Although lifeguards were relatively accurate in identifying locations, they were not so in identifying causes. Obviously, knowing what causes accidents is the first step in their reduction or prevention. Additional analysis was conducted on lifeguard perceptions of obstacles and challenges to vigilance and the value of in-service training and periodic staff meetings. All are important components of providing a safe swimming environment. It should be noted that this study was limited in size and scope and should be followed by more geographically diverse research.


This thesis covers two topics of robotic grasping: stable grasping and semantic grasping. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to the stable grasping problem, where we focus on a grasping pipeline that robustly executes a planned-to-be stable grasp under uncertainty. To this end, we first present a learning method which estimates the stability of a grasp based on tactile feedback and hand kinematic data. We then show our hand adjustment algorithm which works with the grasp stability estimator and synthesizes hand adjustments to optimize a grasp towards a stable one. With these two methods, we obtain a grasping pipeline with a closed-loop grasp adjustment process which increases the grasping performance under uncertainty.
The second part of the thesis considers how robotic grasping should be accomplished to facilitate a manipulation task that follows the grasp. Certain task-related constraints should be satisfied by the grasp in use, which we refer to as semantic constraints. We first develop an example-based method to encode semantic constraints and to plan stable grasps according to the encoded semantic constraints. We then design a task description framework to abstract an object manipulation task. Within this framework, we also present a method which could automatically construct this manipulation task abstraction from a human demonstration.


In this paper, we consider the problem of source code abridgment, where the goal is to remove statements from a source code in order to display the source code in a small space, while at the same time leaving the ``important'' parts of the source code intact, so that an engineer can read the code and quickly understand purpose of the code. To this end, we develop an algorithm that looks at a number of examples, human-created source code abridgments, and learns how to remove lines from the code in order to mimic the human abridger. The learning algorithm takes into account syntactic features of the code, as well as semantic features such as control flow and data dependencies. Through a comprehensive user study, we show that the abridgments that our system produces can decrease the time that a user must look at code in order to understand its functionality, as well as increase the accuracy of the assessment, while displaying the code in a greatly reduced area.


Mobile wireless ad hoc and sensor networks can be permanently partitioned in many interesting scenarios. This implies that instantaneous end-to-end routes do not exist. Nevertheless, when nodes are mobile, it is possible to forward messages to their destinations through mobility. We observe that in many practical settings, spatial node distributions are very heterogeneous and possess concentration points of high node density. The locations of these concentration points and the flow of nodes between them tend to be stable over time. This motivates a novel mobility model, where nodes move randomly between stable islands of connectivity, where they are likely to encounter other nodes, while connectivity is very limited outside these islands. Our goal is to exploit such a stable topology of concentration points by developing algorithms that allow nodes to collaborate to discover this topology and to use it for efficient mobility forwarding. We achieve this without any external signals to nodes, such as geographic positions or fixed beacons; instead, we rely only on the evolution of the set of neighbors of each node. We propose an algorithm for this collaborative graph discovery problem and show that the inferred topology can greatly improve the efficiency of mobility forwarding. Using both synthetic and data-driven mobility models we show through simulations that our approach achieves end-to-end delays comparable to those of epidemic approaches, while requiring a significantly lower transmission overhead


Safe exploration is regarded as a key priority area for reinforcement learning research.
With separate reward and safety signals, it is natural to cast it as constrained reinforcement learning, where expected long-term costs of policies are constrained.
However, it can be hazardous to set constraints on the expected safety signal without considering the tail of the distribution.
For instance, in safety-critical domains, worst-case analysis is required to avoid disastrous results.
We present a novel reinforcement learning algorithm called Worst-Case Soft Actor Critic, which extends the Soft Actor Critic algorithm with a safety critic to achieve risk control.
More specifically, a certain level of conditional Value-at-Risk from the distribution is regarded as a safety measure to judge the constraint satisfaction, which guides the change of adaptive safety weights to achieve a trade-off between reward and safety.
As a result, we can optimize policies under the premise that their worst-case performance satisfies the constraints. The empirical analysis shows that our algorithm attains better risk control compared to expectation-based methods.


Abstract Venomous snakebite continues to exact a tremendous toll in human suffering and mortality in India. Contributing to this problem is the fact that all of the current Indian snake antivenom manufacturers include a great deal of misinformation in the package inserts and guidelines that accompany their products. Examples include erroneous recommendations regarding first aid, misleading information regarding the signs and symptoms to be anticipated after Indian snakebite, and misleading and ambiguous recommendations as to initial dosing and repeat dosing of antivenom. In addition, the significant problem of acute adverse reactions to Indian antivenoms is compounded by a lack of appropriate recommendations regarding prevention, diagnosis, and management of such reactions. It is the intent of this article to point out problems with the current Indian antivenom product guidelines and to encourage these manufacturers to produce new literature to accompany their products based on the best available evidence.


A core set of sociological values considered by most Americans as essential to the American way of life are discussed within the context of denial and opportunity for a large minority. These core values guarantee equal opportunity and justice for all Americans as expressed in, and supported by, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Yet, historically, Black Americans experienced systematic injustices. A discussion of the Civil Rights Movement focuses on the organized, disciplined, nonviolent action employed as the means of calling attention to the incivility perpetrated upon Blacks while arousing the consciousness of the Nation. The author examines the nonviolent, passive–resistance movement as an expression of civility in pursuit of justice as accorded by the Constitution and in the expressed value system of the American society.

We hold these truths to be self–evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (The Declaration of Independence in Congress, July 4, 1776)


This report reviews selected image binarization and segmentation methods that have been proposed and which are suitable for the processing of volume images. The focus is on thresholding, region growing, and shape–based methods. Rather than trying to give a complete overview of the field, we review the original ideas and concepts of selected methods, because we believe this information to be important for judging when and under what circumstances a segmentation algorithm can be expected to work properly.


In several of her novels, Margaret Atwood offers a clear picture of Toronto. That picture is so accurate that, when the Modern Language Association met in Toronto in 1997, The Margaret Atwood Society could sponsor a walking tour of the city guided by the text of Cat's Eye (1989). Whether the novel is the early The Edible Woman (1969) or the later The Robber Bride (1993), this geographical precision is present throughout the fiction. Atwood, however, gradually moves beyond the simple provision of accurately rendered scenes; she uses mapped places in Toronto metaphorically in the novels that intervene between The Edible Woman and The Robber Bride. More importantly, she grasps the oppressive quality of mapping and acts subversively toward city maps and other maps in the latter novel. Atwood's literal and metaphorical uses of mapped places require some explication, the purpose of this essay. Most particularly, The Robber Bride requires both more contextualization in contemporary thinking about mapping and more ex planation, because in it Atwood subverts mapping as an imaginative construct. This essay will therefore stress both that critical context at its onset and that specific text after it surveys the less subversive uses of mapping in novels from The Edible Woman to Cat's Eye. Theories of Mapping Mapping has recently attracted a great deal of attention--so much so that we cannot, in the few pages we have, survey the many theoretical treatments of it. Instead, we will look at five very different treatments: one that considers mapping literally; two that consider mapping metaphorically but in the very different contexts of technoscience and women's autobiography; and two that consider mapping as an important concern in Canadian literature. Although the five proceed from different assumptions and along different courses, what they say about mapping coalesces into a theoretical position that premises our work on Atwood and especially on The Robber Bride. Rose Gillian's Feminism and Geography (1993) surveys several attempts to reform what she terms the masculinist practice of geography. The subdiscipline of Time Geography acknowledges that there are social spaces beyond the spaces that meet the eye, the ones that geography traditionally privileges. The subdiscipline of Human Geography goes further and tries to incorporate in mappings "broader social power relations" (44). It also rejects scientific rationality, undermines dualism, recovers emotion, and calls for reflexivity by the geographer. Feminist Geography finds much of value in both of these reforms of traditional practice, especially in the latter. Even these reforms, however, privilege the male gaze, one that identifies the land to be mapped with the horizontally reclining female body. Feminist geography, then, must replace this male gaze with a female perspective. That perspective foregrounds networks of interaction. The resulting "feminist maps are multiple and intersecting, and they require...intric ate skills in cartography" (155). Gillian's study deals with the academic practice of geography, and it deals with literal maps. Donna J. Haraway's Modest Witness @ Second Millennium (1997) brings together, as its subtitle notes, Feminism and Technoscience. It deals extensively with maps that are figures but deny their status as such, hiding behind the aura of technoscience. A good example is the human genome project, which claims to offer a map of the human body. Like many other maps, this one seems neutral but, once the figure is recognized as such, it becomes apparent how the illusion of objectivity is used to obscure controversial aspects of the project. Like other projects embarked upon for economic reasons, this project hides those very reasons behind the mapping metaphor. Haraway reproduces and analyzes an advertisement for DNA-cutting enzymes by New England Bio Labs that promotes the project as a whole. The advertisement is titled "Mapping the Human Genome" and it features a nude female draped in a form-fitting map of the world with t he only continent visible being Africa. …


Abnormalities in the H-cadherin gene have been described in several human cancers. However, their biological significance remains undetermined. To investigate the role of H-cadherin in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a chimera H-cadherin-green fluorescent protein (GFP) expressed in Cos-7 cells was used to identify an anti-H- cadherin antibody, HCD-1. Western blot analysis was performed in six NSCLC cell lines and 35 pairs of primary NSCLC tumors and nonmalignant lung tissue obtained from surgical resections using HCD-1. Loss of H-cadherin expression was seen in five (83%) of the six NSCLC cell lines, whereas loss of E-cadherin was seen in three (50%) of the six. H-cadherin expression was lost in 15 (43%) of 35 NSCLC surgical tumor specimens, whereas E-cadherin expression was lost in 6 (17%) of 35. H-cadherin was expressed in all of the nonmalignant lung tissue from all of the surgical specimens. Fourteen of 35 tumors were heterotransplanted s.c. in nude mice. Tumorigenicity in nude mice was associated with both loss of H-cadherin expression (P = 0.03) and loss of E-cadherin expression (P = 0.05). Loss of H-cadherin was also associated with a more advanced local tumor growth, although the difference was not significant. The results indicate that loss of H-cadherin is frequent in human NSCLC and suggest that it facilitates the implantation and local growth of human NSCLC tumors.


In the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, the federal government put thousands of unemployed writers to work in the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Out of their efforts came the American Guide series, the first comprehensive guidebooks to the people, resources, and traditions of each state in the union. The WPA Guide to Minnesota is a lively and detailed introduction to the state and its people. Much has changed since the book's first publication in 1938 when, as the authors noted, some Minnesotans could "clearly recall ... the sight of browsing buffalo herds, and the creaking of thong-tied Red River carts." But the book vividly recaptures the era when annual fishing licenses cost fifty cents, farmers ran barn dances for motoring townfolk, Duluth was the headquarters of the Hay Fever Club of America, and the nearly new Foshay Tower loomed on the Minneapolis skyline. The guide has much more than nostalgia to offer today's readers. Twenty auto tours and six special city tours tell the stories of the state's people and places and offer a fascinating alternative to freeway travel. Essays on major themes such as native peoples, history, arts, transportation, and sports provide an authentic self-portrait of 1930s Minnesota in humorous, loving, and literary prose. This time-travelers' guide to Minnesota is an evocative reminder of the state's past and a challenge to contemporary readers who seek to find how that past lives on today. Special features include 20 road trips, 6 city tours, 15 boundary waters canoe trips, 12 maps, 22 drawings, an introduction by the renowned Midwestern writer Frederick Manfred, a chronology, and a revisedbibliography.


Species occurrence observations are increasingly available for scientific analyses through citizen science projects and digitization of museum records, representing a largely untapped ecological resource. When combined with open-source data, there is unparalleled potential for understanding many aspects of the ecology and biogeography of organisms. Here we describe the process of assembling a pan-European mycological meta-database (ClimFun) and integrating it with open-source data to advance the fields of macroecology and biogeography against a backdrop of global change. Initially 7.3 million unique fungal species fruit body records, spanning nine countries, were processed and assembled into 6 million records of more than 10,000 species. This is an extraordinary amount of fungal data to address macro-ecological questions. We provide two examples of fungal species with different life histories, one ectomycorrhizal and one wood decaying, to demonstrate how such continental-scale meta-databases can offer unique insights into climate change effects on fungal phenology and fruiting patterns in recent decades.


This article attempts to present the conflicts between the Byzantines and the Arabs, in the period that Nicephorus Phocas was active on the eastern front. It aims to fill certain gaps in the history of this period in the light of medieval Arabic sources. Arab historiographers and geographers recount the deeds of Nicephorus Phocas, both as Domestic and as Emperor, informing us of how the Islamic world reacted to Byzantium's renewed aggressiveness. Except for the military sector, historians can benefit from the information provided by the Arabic sources regarding internal affairs of the Byzantien Empire, such as the bad relations of Nicephorus Phocas with the circle of Emperor Romanos II or the active role of the Armenians in the wars of that period. This study focuses also on all the conflicts of Nicephorus Phocas, both with the Hamdanids and with the Arabs of Sicily, but allso on the campaigns against Crete and Cyprus. Particular attention is given to the demeanor of the Byzantine Emperor in these operations, as seen by the Arabic sources.


This thesis is focused on the implication of de dynamics of clusters on the HI content of galaxies. Target of this study has been the Virgo cluster region.
We have first inferred the three-dimensional galaxy distribution of the Virgo cluster using Tully-Fisher distance estimates from eight published datasets. The spiral distribution is found to be very elongated along the line of sight. This filamentary structure is also reflected by the HI-deficient objects. We found a central enhancement in the HI distribution, arising from galaxies that belong to the Virgo cluster proper. However, significant gas deficiencies were also detected outside the main body of the cluster in a probable group of galaxies at distances "circa" 25 to 30 Mpc, as well as in various foreground galaxies.
The presence on the Virgo cluster outskirts of spiral galaxies with gas deficiencies as strong as those of the inner galaxies likely stripped by the intracluster medium (ICM) has led us to explore the possibility that some of these peripheral objects were not newcomers. A dynamical model for the collapse and rebound of spherical shells was developed. According to our analysis, it is not unfeasible that galaxies far from the cluster went through its core a few Gyr ago. In order to further investigate this possibility, we have estimated the maximum radius out to which galaxies can bounce out of a virialized system, using both cosmological "N"-body simulations and analytical arguments. We have shown that material that falls into a cosmological structure cannot bounce out beyond "circa"2.5 virial radii. This would explain the presence of stripped galaxies up to "circa"2 virial radii, which is more than twice the extension of the ICM revealed by the X-ray maps. After estimating the virial radius and mass of the Virgo cluster from X-ray observations, the peripheral HI-deficient galaxies appear to lie significantly farther away from the cluster centre. Therefore, it does not seen plausible that these galaxies have crossed the cluster core if their distance estimates are accurate.
The velocity field drawn by the Virgo cluster has been further studied by comparing the positions of both spiral and elliptical galaxies in velocity-distance plots with simulated diagrams obtained from cosmological "N"-body simulations. We have found that "circa"20% relative Tully-Fisher distance error is consistent with the great majority of the galaxies. We have shown, moreover, that distance errors may lead to an incorrect fitting of infall models that can generate significant errors in the distance and, specially, in the mass estimates of clusters.
In addition, we have investigated in detail the feasibility of four possibilities for the origin of the dearth of neutral gas in the outlying HI-deficient Virgo spirals: 1) large relative distance errors so these galaxies have passed through its core and seen their gas removed by ram pressure stripping; 2) tidal interactions with other galaxies; 3) recent mergers with smaller galaxies; and 4) an erroneous determination of their gas content (e.g. S0/as misclassified as Sas).
Finally, the cosmological "N"-body simulations of dark matter halos have also been used to study the effects of non-sphericity, substructure and streaming motions on the structure and internal kinematics of clusters recovered from the Jeans analysis. We found that the virial mass, concentration parameter and velocity anisotropy of the halos can be reproduced satisfactory independently of the halo shape, although the viral mass tends to be underestimated, the concentration parameter overestimated, while the recovered anisotropy is typically more tangential that the true one. The mass, concentration and velocity anisotropy of halos are recovered with better precision when their mean velocity profiles are near zero.


Heterogeneous networks have the potential to improve coverage, throughput, and energy efficiency of wireless networks through the use of specialized cellular structures, in particular femtocells and macrocells. However, to reduce interference between different cells, ensure smooth hand-offs from cell to cell, and achieve seamless operation the overall network needs to be synchronized. In this paper a new distributed clock synchronization scheme for heterogeneous networks is proposed that employs the clock drift ratio (CDR) information available at user-equipments (UEs) to achieve synchronization between non-interacting femtocells and macrocells. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly reduce the clock drift between macrocells and femtocells and result in timing synchronization throughout the network without introducing significant overhead.


Drawing on the history of four independent transportation agencies, this essay suggests models for place-based systems that promote urban mobility. It accounts for the adversarial relationship between contemporary champions of automobile-oriented infrastructure and mass transit advocates by tracing the political and institutional history of passenger transport in America. It also points out several significant exceptions to the overall pattern of modal separation and competition, describing how revenue from bridges and tunnels in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area was harnessed to finance and support complementary mass transit. The author notes how tolls and fees paid by drivers subsidized transit that reduced traffic congestion and supported urban vitality. Observing that regime change and economic stimulus spending now presents a rare window of opportunity for change, the author calls for reconceptualizing policy and reconstructing institutions to support efficient, equitable transportation systems that transcend modes and promote sustainable urban development.


Most deep ocean carbon flux profiles show low and almost constant fluxes of particulate organic carbon (POC) in the deep ocean. However, the reason for the non-changing POC fluxes at depths is unknown. This study presents direct measurements of formation, degradation, and sinking velocity of diatom aggregates from laboratory studies performed at 15 °C and 4 °C during a three-week experiment. The average carbon-specific respiration rate during the experiment was 0.12 ± 0.03 at 15 °C, and decreased 3.5-fold when the temperature was lowered to 4 °C. No direct influence of temperature on aggregate sinking speed was observed. Using the remineralisation rate measured at 4 °C and an average particle sinking speed of 150 m d −1 , calculated carbon fluxes were similar to those collected in deep ocean sediment traps from a global data set, indicating that temperature plays a major role for deep ocean fluxes of POC.


Information processing using biochemical circuits is essential for survival and reproduction of natural organisms. Construction of synthetic biochemical circuits from simple components provides a useful approach to establish the minimal determinants required for complex logical functions. As stripped-down analogues of genetic regulatory networks in cells, we engineered artificial transcriptional networks consisting of synthetic DNA switches, regulated by RNA signals acting as transcription activators or repressors, and two enzymes, bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase and Escherichia coli ribonuclease H. The synthetic switch design is modular with programmable connectivity and allows dynamic control of RNA signals through enzyme-mediated production and degradation. The switches support sharp and adjustable thresholds using a competitive hybridization mechanism, analogous to a biological threshold mechanism, "inhibitor ultrasensitivity," thus allowing arbitrary analog or digital circuits to be created in principle. Theoretical correspondence of our biochemical network to neural networks where synaptic weights and thresholds are encoded by concentrations of DNA strands greatly facilitates network design and analysis. Experimentally, we have constructed and analyzed several simple networks: positive and negative autoregulatory circuits, a mutual inhibitory circuit, and oscillators with positive and negative feedback. Reasonable agreement between experimental data and a simple mathematical model was obtained for switch input/output functions, phaseplane trajectories, the bifurcation diagram, and oscillation periods. A systematic quantitative characterization lead to identification of important network properties such as the saturation of degradation machinery and challenges to understand such as the interference by incomplete RNA signals. Construction of larger synthetic circuits provides a unique opportunity for evaluating model inference, prediction, and design of complex biochemical systems and could be used to ontrol nanoscale devices and artificial cells.


˚ ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between sagittal skeletal class and transverse or vertical conditions in subjects with facial deformity without presence of facial asymmetry; A comparative study was conducted between the results of the cephalometric analysis of the sagittal, transverse and vertical skeletal class in 115 subjects with indications for orthognathic surgery. The Steiner cephalometric analysis in the sagittal direction was used to determine the facial skeletal class and the Ricketts cephalometric analysis in the sagittal analysis. At the transverse level it was determined the facial transverse dimension, maxillary transverse dimension and mandibular transverse dimension. At a vertical level it is determined the occlusal vertical dimension and total vertical dimension. When comparing cross-sectional and vertical measurements between female and male subjects, it was observed that male subjects presented greater dimensions than female subjects (p=0.0001). Class III subjects present greater facial transverse dimension (p=0.0002) and mandibular transverse dimension (p=0.001) than class II subjects. Also, it was observed that class III subjects had a greater total vertical dimension (p=0.002) than class II subjects; It is possible to conclude that there are facial characteristics transverse and vertical that can be related with the sagittal position of the maxillo-mandibular structures.˚


This paper examines the Federal Trade Commission's recent settlement with Intel. Evaluating the FTC's case against Intel turns on tricky issues regarding the dynamics of cross-licensing. These are essentially barter transactions, and we have only a weak understanding of when firms will turn to barter. Interfering with cross-licensing will make it more difficult for these transactions to take place, and to understand the importance of that, we need to have a better handle on the relative importance for a licensor of cash returns versus the in-kind returns that are obtained from cross-licenses. We can say with more confidence that the FTC's case appears to give very little weight to the benefits that arise from royalty-free cross-licenses. These licenses eliminate the double monopoly problem that can arise when two patent holders hold essential patents. Royalty-free cross-licensing eliminates through a contract an externality between the patent holders that would otherwise push up prices, to the detriment of the patent holders and their customers. The settlement may very well make it more difficult for Intel to negotiate royalty-free cross-licenses and may harm society in doing so. The licensing regime that emerges from the settlement may have the benefit of making it possible for prospective PC makers who might not deal with Intel to do so -- though this point does not appear to have figured in the FTC's calculus. These prospective PC makers will have less reason to fear that Intel will later pressure them into a cross-license. This will increase the pool of PC makers, though the benefits of this are quite speculative. Equally speculative is whether the settlement will foster R&D on microprocessors -- the chief focus of the FTC's complaint -- though there is little public evidence to suggest that outcome.


The ramp loss is a robust but non-convex loss for classification. Compared with other non-convex losses, a local minimum of the ramp loss can be effectively found. The effectiveness of local search comes from the piecewise linearity of the ramp loss. Motivated by the fact that the l1-penalty is piecewise linear as well, the l1-penalty is applied for the ramp loss, resulting in a ramp loss linear programming support vector machine (ramp-LPSVM). The proposed ramp-LPSVM is a piecewise linear minimization problem and the related optimization techniques are applicable. Moreover, the l1-penalty can enhance the sparsity. In this paper, the corresponding misclassification error and convergence behavior are discussed. Generally, the ramp loss is a truncated hinge loss. Therefore ramp-LPSVM possesses some similar properties as hinge loss SVMs. A local minimization algorithm and a global search strategy are discussed. The good optimization capability of the proposed algorithms makes ramp-LPSVM perform well in numerical experiments: the result of ramp-LPSVM is more robust than that of hinge SVMs and is sparser than that of ramp-SVM, which consists of the || ċ || k-penalty and the ramp loss.


The rapid development of information and communication technologies has opened a whole new realm of applications for these technologies. One such application is the development of virtual reality, which aspires to immerse the user within the system such that they feel more "present" within the portrayed virtual plane of existence than within their true reality. Many studies have developed a variety of approaches and methods on measuring immersion and presence in these systems, yet few have addressed the underlying technology for what it really is – namely communication technology – and evaluated the technology's potential for immersion and presence before exposing the user to the virtual experience. Part of the issue lies in the difficulty in quantifying arguably subjective experiences such as immersion and presence. This study examines the existing literature on the definition and evaluation of immersion, presence, and virtual reality technologies, and aims to provide a theoretical framework through which virtual reality technology may be evaluated based on the human biological apparatus it appeals to. The framework is constructed on a modified version of the Media Naturalness Theory, which was selected as a basis due to the evolutionary support it provides in explaining our communication preferences. The framework may then be utilized to analyze prospective technologies for their potential to provide immersive experiences and incite presence in the users before any exposure or use has taken place, possibly providing further validity to any findings of post-exposure studies (such as with questionnaires so ubiquitous in the literature of the field).


In the study of entrepreneurial behavior types, "ambitious entrepreneurship" recently emerged as a new research concept. Unfortunately, a systematic overview of what is known (and not known) about this topic is missing. In particular, insights into the various definitions, measures, and antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship are lacking. In this chapter, we offer a state-of-the-art review and analysis of extant research on ambitious entrepreneurship. We structure the literature review by providing insights into antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship, and extensively discuss the conceptualization and operationalization of this research concept. We clarify the differences between related concepts such as growth intention, expectation, and aspiration, and argue how all these concepts fit into a unifying framework of ambitious entrepreneurship. We summarize promising future research avenues for the study of ambitious entrepreneurship, both from a methodological and a conceptual point of view.


Abstract First order Hamiltonian operators of differential-geometric type were introduced by Dubrovin and Novikov in 1983, and thoroughly investigated by Mokhov. In 2D, they are generated by a pair of compatible flat metrics g and g̃ which satisfy a set of additional constraints coming from the skew-symmetry condition and the Jacobi identity. We demonstrate that these constraints are equivalent to the requirement that g̃ is a linear Killing tensor of g with zero Nijenhuis torsion. This allowed us to obtain a complete classification of ncomponent operators with n ≤ 4 (for n = 1, 2 this was done before). For 2D operators the Darboux theorem does not hold: the operator may not be reducible to constant coefficient form. All interesting (non-constant) examples correspond to the case when the flat pencil g, g̃ is not semisimple, that is, the affinor g̃g−1 has non-trivial Jordan block structure. In the case of a direct sum of Jordan blocks with distinct eigenvalues we obtain a complete classification of Hamiltonian operators for any number of components n, revealing a remarkable correspondence with the class of trivial Frobenius manifolds modelled on H∗(CP).


The report documents laboratory investigations undertaken to develop high performance concrete (HPC) for precast and pre-stressed bridge deck components that would reduce the life-cycle cost of bridges by improving the studded tire wear (abrasion) resistance and the durability of bridge decks. Phase I of the project involved an initial investigation of candidate mixtures incorporating type I portland cement, supplementary cementitious materials (silica fume, slag, and fly ash), natural aggregate (river gravel), and crushed rock. Three laboratory-curing methods were utilized in this effort including ordinary water curing and two accelerated steam-curing methods. A Pilot Study was undertaken to refine the laboratory steam curing methods as well as to determine if the duration of Oregon Department of Transportation's (ODOT's) field curing requirement for cast-in-place (CIP) bridge decks could be shortened. Phase II of the project utilized the findings from Phase I and the Pilot Study to develop HPC mixtures that had improved abrasion resistance and durability characteristics relative to a newly-specified ODOT bridge deck mixture. The mixtures investigated in Phase II incorporated type III portland cement and the same supplementary cementitious materials and natural aggregate that were used in Phase I. The silica fume content was varied in Phase II (i.e., 4%, 7%, and 10%), but held constant at 4% in Phase I. Findings from Phase I indicated that mixtures containing a combination of silica fume and slag clearly had superior abrasion resistance, durability characteristics, and compressive strength relative to the mixtures containing a combination of silica fume and fly ash, and that the mixtures with crushed rock clearly outperformed those with river gravel in terms of abrasion resistance and strength characteristics (durability characteristics were essentially unaffected by aggregate type). Findings from the Pilot Study indicated that steam curing followed by application of a curing compound prior to ambient curing provided strength characteristics similar to that of concrete cured continuously in water, and that the 14-day field curing requirement for CIP bridge decks could be shortened to as few as 3 days without sacrificing 28-day strength provided that adequate measures are taken to ensure that the HPC is kept in saturated conditions. Three HPC mixtures were developed under Phase II of the study that provided better wear resistance, durability characteristics, and strength properties than ODOT's newly specified HPC for bridge decks (fabricated with fly ash at a w/b ratio of 0.30). All contained silica fume and slag and had w/b ratios of 0.30 or less. One did not contain entrained air. Overall, the mixture with the same mix design as ODOT's newly specified HPC, except with slag in lieu of fly ash, provided the best balance between initial costs and enhanced performance.


This essay is based on my closing presentation at the Washburn Law Journal's 2015 symposium entitled "The Future of Housing -- Equity, Stability and Sustainability.�? It explores how land banks and land trusts promote social goods, including socioeconomic integration, by connecting with and shielding against, respectively, market forces. Both engage in stewardship of land. Land banks take temporary ownership of vacant, abandoned properties in order to make them available for productive use. Land trusts hold land indefinitely to ensure a social purpose is met. Community land trusts hold land for a purpose that is responsive to the human environment, often permanently affordable housing in areas where affordable housing is rare to nonexistent. Land banks encourage people with choices to move into neighborhoods beset by abandonment and poverty. Community land trusts allow lower-income residents to become long-term members of neighborhoods otherwise inaccessible to them. Land banks reduce transaction costs to get the market moving. Land trusts increase transaction costs in order to protect affordable housing and other public goods against elimination by market-driven transfers. The use by these two publicly minded real estate market interventions of opposing tools in starkly different types of neighborhoods raises the following questions: First, do they meet somewhere in the middle? Second, does sustaining neighborhoods of choice hinge on the handoff of some critical mass of real property from land banks to land trusts? The answers to these both questions are negative, if we focus our attention solely on the work done directly by land banks and land trusts. The neighborhoods that warrant the housing stewardship activity of land trusts are just too different from those needing the help of land banks to talk of a continuum of care between the two poles of community land resource control. But, if land banking and its conceptual counterpart, "land trusting�?, are thought of more broadly as the strategic adjustment of transaction costs for the promotion of social goods, such as residential socioeconomic integration, then an array of intermediate possibilities present themselves. The essay begins with a brief examination of the importance of residential socioeconomic integration and how it might be advanced appropriately. After looking at some misconceptions about the market's role in segregating neighborhoods by class, I then explore how land banks and land trusts intervene to move neighborhoods toward a healthy diversity. The essay concludes with a discussion of land banking and, particularly, land trusting as alternatives to formal stewardship that nevertheless also foster the needed diversity of housing types, land tenure types, and ultimately, resident socioeconomic status to sustain neighborhoods of choice.


The psychology of play recognises that there are benefits of incorporating play and games at work. In this paper we report the results of an investigation into the use of gaming to develop the cooperative human aspects of team behaviour in organisations that want to increase their social network-centric capability. We show how online team gaming sessions can enhance people's awareness and mastery of collective processes underlying teamwork and cooperation in the context of the workplace. The conduct of such a session is described and the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data is presented. Lessons were learnt from use of this engaging but 'serious' game for building cooperation in modern network-centric organisations through play. This contributes not only to our understanding of the use of play and gaming in the workplace but also to the methods for practice and research on this important topic.


We study mode locking of a titanium-doped sapphire laser with a slow saturable absorber in the cavity. We show that the presence of the absorber stabilizes the pulsed mode of laser operation over a broader range of cavity mirror position and for a wider aperture. However, the basic principle of operation is unchanged from that of a conventional Kerr-lens mode-locked laser, in that, in all cases, we observed strong space–time focusing of the pulses into the laser crystal. Thus the absorber cannot lead to shortening of the pulse below the limit imposed by the Kerr-lens mode locking.


The physical appearance of a great number of granular media shows, together with the heterogeneity of grain sizes, suggests the existence of geometrical scale invariance. This note focuses its attention on discussing how such physicoempirical property, visually perceived, can be mathematically formulated and used in the modeling of particle size distribution (PSD). Two ways of encoding that property by means of respective equations of different natures are analyzed. They lead to respective fractal particle size distribution (PSD) models coming from sources from the literature. The nature and features of the two different models are analyzed and the simulation of the PSD by means of both models are compared. In addition, the parameters that both models provide and their role in characterizing PSD are discussed. This note aims mainly to contribute to the clarification of some conceptual, methodological, and historical aspects within the frame of the fractal modeling of PSD of granular media.


Combustion is a kind of important reaction that affects people's daily lives and the development of aerospace. Exploring the reaction mechanism contributes to the understanding of combustion and the more efficient use of fuels. Ab initio quantum mechanical (QM) calculation is precise but limited by its computational time for large-scale systems. In order to carry out reactive molecular dynamics (MD) simulation for combustion accurately and quickly, we develop the MFCC-combustion method in this study, which calculates the interaction between atoms using QM method at the level of MN15/6-31G(d). Each molecule in systems is treated as a fragment, and when the distance between any two atoms in different molecules is greater than 3.5 Å, a new fragment involved two molecules is produced in order to consider the two-body interaction. The deviations of MFCC-combustion from full system calculations are within a few kcal/mol, and the result clearly shows that the calculated energies of the different systems using MFCC-combustion are close to converging after the distance thresholds are larger than 3.5 Å for the two-body QM interactions. The methane combustion was studied with the MFCC-combustion method to explore the combustion mechanism of the methane-oxygen system.


The process of river bank erosion is conditional to a number of different governing factors which all have a differentiating amount of influence with each specific river site. This process is especially important as it has the ability to change the very landscape in which a river flows. With reference to previous research then main components have been investigated in this paper. These include Vegetation, Bank composition, Bank angle and in channel factors such as velocity, all of which have been stated to have an impact upon the rate of bank erosion or bank stability. The paper will look at the relationships which exist between erosion and the controlling factors theorised by previous academics.

The investigation will take place on a 400 metre reach of the tributary Marshaw Wyre in the Trough of Bowland, Lancashire which is ideal due to the sinuosity of this river reach. In this study a vegetation survey was conducted using empirical sampling techniques and classified as grass, shrub or tree. The cover of vegetation was expressed as percentage on both the left and right bank meanwhile bank composition was assessed using its texture. The rest of the fieldwork data was collated using quantitative fieldwork techniques.

The Results of this study are not definitive; however it did provide insight into the relationships which are present between erosions and its controls. It was obvious that the presence of vegetation and its roots provides great stability for a river bank and greatly helped consolidate bank material. In addition, Bank composition was mostly consistent and it was identified there was a strong relationship between this and erosion.


Applications that have been a huge success in private collaboration - such as video conferencing, application sharing or social tagging systems -, have been failures in business collaboration. The benefits of Collaborative Information Technology (CIT) have been discussed in research and acknowledged by many companies for quite some time. However, the usage of such technology in business context is still surprisingly low. Explanations have been sought through the investigation of CIT in various settings. These studies have been mostly conducted in the specific context of a single CIT tool and/or task, whereas in some businesses several CIT tools are used concurrently when attempting to achieve a certain goal. In this paper we aim for a more holistic view of CIT usage by relating task, CIT functionality and its impacts. We followed a qualitative approach and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with team leaders of collocated teams in 10 different companies. Our preliminary results show that this approach has promise to further explain the usage of CIT tools and that CITs are used opportunistically. The employee seems to rather use a few established functionalities for different tasks than substituting functionalities and therefore changing her habit, even though new functionalities might better suit a task at hand.


Abstract : This article discusses the biopolitical dimension of digital circulation in the specific context of refugee relief. Drawing up on observational fieldwork conducted in Nahr el Bared, one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in North Lebanon, it explores how the digital capture of social and spatial evidences fundamentally transforms the social capital invested in local knowledge, gradually eroding critical capacities for community selfgovernance. Building upon the concept of "data derivatives" developed by Louise Amore's, the article focuses in particular on the speculative dimension of data to suggest that the conversion of an embodied memory into data-based forms provides powerful means for rendering unsanctioned claims of ownership and belonging visible, actionable and effective. At the same time it opens up new modes of "probalistic containment" that restrict individual and collective life chances under the pretext of democratic participation and empowerment. Keywords : Data derivatives; bio-politics; social capital; risk; speculation; political claim making.


The concept of social identity is being reconsidered in the social sciences due to transformations undergone by (post)modern societies, such as globalization, localization, and the intensification of global migration. In this context, the Siberian identity (being "Sibiriak") is an interesting object of research for it reflects the cultural, political, and economic effects of globalization and localization, as well as transformations in individual self-perception. This paper demonstrates that Siberian identity is not only a personal matter but also a new type of social solidarity and political claim. Using an actionist approach to identity studies, this article explores the core elements and "versions" of Siberian identity, the contexts of its formation and actualization, and regional variations in its manifestations. Two manifestations of Siberian identity—the "Siberian character" and the "Siberian civic nationhood"—are discussed, key dimensions of their actualization (territorial, ethnic, and political) are described, and regional differences in the actualization of identities are analyzed. We conclude by suggesting that the study of Siberian identity highlights the need for, and the value of, the constructionist perspective in the analysis of regional identities in mobile, "resettlement" societies. In Russian, extended summary in English.


In 2000, Congress decided to move away from a fixed-dollar-per-acre premium subsidy to a subsidy percentage that applies to any crop insurance product offered. This change reduced the cost to farmers of moving from yield insurance to revenue insurance by more than 50%. In addition, Congress decided to pay a large proportion of the additional premium for higher coverage levels, paying for more than half the cost of moving from the 65% to the 75% coverage level and about 25% of the additional cost of moving from 75% to 80% coverage. Not surprisingly, farmers responded to these lower costs by moving to more expensive revenue insurance policies and higher coverage levels. This response is part of the reason why the Congressional Budget Office projects that the cost of the crop insurance program exceeds $7 billion per year. The changes to the premium subsidy structure were made in an era of projected budget surpluses. Does this change still make sense now that federal deficits and overall debt levels are so high? How much could spending be reduced if the premium subsidy structure were changed back? This policy briefing paper provides insights into these questions. Congress has demonstrated repeatedly that it wants a large proportion of acres to be enrolled in the crop insurance program. The proven way to expand insured acreage is to subsidize farmers' crop insurance premiums with either a "lump sum" subsidy that gives farmers a set amount to participate in the program or a proportional subsidy that pays a set fraction of a farmer's premium. The added benefit to the crop insurance industry of a proportional subsidy is that it incentivizes farmers to buy higher coverage levels and more expensive revenue insurance. If Congress had decided in 2010 to move away from the current system of proportional subsidies to the amount of premium subsidy available for yield insurance, then the 2011 projected cost of the crop insurance program would have declined by about $1.4 billion from the direct savings in premium subsidies, and by another $300 million in lower underwriting gains as farmers moved away from expensive revenue insurance. Further savings would accrue if premium subsidies were fixed at a set dollar amount because this would remove the incentive for farmers to buy more crop insurance than they would buy if they were spending their own money rather than taxpayer dollars. Total savings approaching $2 billion would likely accrue by simply returning to the premium structure that we had before the Agricultural Risk Protection Act. Farmers would respond to this policy change by buying less revenue insurance and lower coverage levels. This would also reduce their out-of-pocket expenditures. Farm groups would undoubtedly oppose this change, but such opposition would be tempered if the choice were between this change and a reduction in a more valued program, such as direct payments. Underwriting gains to crop insurance companies would decline significantly. Both companies and agents would have the most to lose from this policy change so they would be expected to oppose it strongly. But in an era of tight budgets, the tax dollars spent on subsidies that incentivize farmers to buy more and different types of crop insurance than they would buy with their own dollars could fall under intense scrutiny.


Work and Society is an important new text about the sociology of work and employment. It provides both undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, business and politics, with a firm and enjoyable foundation to this fascinating area of sociology, giving comprehensive coverage of traditional areas of the sub-discipline as well as new trends and developments.

The book is divided into three complementary and interconnected sections – investigating work, work and social change and understanding work. These sections allow readers to explore themes, issues and approaches by examining how sociologists have thought about, and researched work and how the sub-discipline has been influenced by wider society itself. Novel features include separate chapters on researching work, domestic work, unemployment and work, and the representation of work in literary and visual media.


The lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) is one of the concepts of the Generation IV reactorsystems. There are some issues that have to be solved before a research orcommercial LFR can be built. The objective of this thesis was to identify these keyissues and analyse them by studying results from previous research: choice of fuel,corrosion on structural materials and corrosion/erosion on pumps.The major fuel candidates for the LFR are MOX fuel (Mixed OXide fuel), metallic fuel,nitride fuel and carbide fuel. Nitride fuel has desirable properties but its production ismore difficult than for MOX fuel.Most of today's commercial steels are not corrosion resistant at higher temperaturesbut they could possibly be used for an LFR test demonstrator with an operatingtemperature lower than 450 oC. A new type of steel called oxide dispersionstrengthened (ODS) steel and a new ceramic material MAXTHAL both showpromising corrosion resistance even at higher temperatures.By controlling the oxygen concentration a protective oxide film is produced. Flowingliquid coolant causes erosion and wears down the oxide film. Pumps are exposed tocoolant velocities of 10-15 m/s causing both erosion and corrosion. There is nosolution today, but MAXTHAL shows promising results in tests with liquid lead of lowvelocity. There are also other issues unsolved, such as irradiation damage onstructural materials, thus more research is needed.Economic and political aspects were not covered in this study. This thesis work wasperformed at Vattenfall Research and Development AB.


We demonstrate with simulations and experiments that an optical parametric oscillator using two different crystals with orthogonal walk-off planes can generate a symmetric, high-quality beam even if the resonator has a high Fresnel number. In the experiments we used KTA and BBO crystals to convert 5 ns pulses at 1.06 microm to 1.7 microm pulses with more than 10 mJ energy and beam quality M(2) approximately 2.


Opinion target is defined as the object about which user expresses their opinions, typically as nouns or noun phrases. Opinion words are the words that are used to express user's opinions. Constructing an opinion words lexicon is also important because the lexicon is beneficial for identifying opinion expressions. Opinion mining is also called sentiment analysis, involves building a system to collect and categorize opinions about a product. Existing system uses Sentence-level extraction and corpus –level extraction. Sentence level extraction is the task of opinion target/word extraction is to identify the opinion target mentions or opinion expressions in sentences. These tasks are usually regarded as sequence-labeling problems. Sequence labeling models are used to build the extractor, such HMM. Corpus-level extraction did not identify the opinion target/word mentions in sentences, but aimed to extract a list of opinion targets or generate a sentiment word lexicon from texts. To overcome these problems by using alignment models.


Several structural and optical properties of ceria (band gap, refractive index and lattice parameter) make this material very promising for applications in optoelectronics and photovoltaics. In this paper, we show that CeO2 can be efficiently functionalized by doping with trivalent rare earth ions to give rise to photon management properties. The trivalent ions can be successfully inserted by solid-state reaction of the elementary oxide powders. By combining the information obtained from the absorbance spectra with that of the PL excitation spectra, we demonstrate the presence of the trivalent ions in CeO2 and provide insight in the electronic level structure and transfer mechanism. In particular, we prove that both the complex absorption spectra and the energy transfer mechanisms cannot be fully explained without considering the presence of isolated Ce3+ ions in CeO2.


BACKGROUND
This study reports the experiences of developing and pre-testing an Easy Read version of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) for self-report by people with intellectual disabilities.

METHODS
The study has combined survey development and pre-testing methods with approaches to create accessible information for people with intellectual disabilities. A working group assisted researchers in identifying appropriate question formats, pictures and wording. Focus groups and cognitive interviews were conducted to test various iterations of the instrument.

RESULTS
Substantial changes were made to the questionnaire, which included changes to illustrations, the wording of question stems and response options.

CONCLUSIONS
The process demonstrated the benefits of involving people with intellectual disabilities in the design and testing of data collection instruments. Adequately adapted questionnaires can be useful tools to collect information from people with intellectual disabilities in survey research; however, its limitations must be recognized.


Aim: The present study (PTDC/SAU-SAP/110799/2009) funded by the Portuguese Government (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia – FCT) aimed to test the effectiveness of a behaviour based intervention combined with a cognitive based one, designed to increase physical activity levels in older adults at Primary Health Care Centres. Method: A total of 108 participants aged over 65 years participated in the study. Participants were referred by their General Practitioner (GP) and randomized by gender and marital status at the moment they started the program (single vs. couple), and allocated into one of three conditions: goal intention, action planning, action planning and coping planning. All participants received a pedometer and a logbook and were asked to register their daily number of steps for a period of 24 weeks. Study follows a longitudinal design with five assessments over a 6-month after baseline. Results: The test between subjects' effects revealed an interaction between condition and participating in the study as single vs. couple. Older adults participating as singles walked more steps on average in the condition goal intention plus action planning and coping planning, whereas participants that entered in the study with their spouse, goal intention without any other planning intervention was the most effective intervention. Conclusion: The 24-week physical activity program based on the recent developments of behavioural-cognitive framework, has proven useful increasing older adults daily walking behaviour.


Aim of study: To facilitate REDD+ implementation and identify relevant attributes for robust REDD+ policies, this study evaluated and synthesized information from national forest programs in South and Southeast Asian countries. Area of study : Data was collected from six countries: Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Philippines, India and Thailand. Methods: The data sources for the evaluation was an in-depth desk review of relevant documents and focus group discussion among experts from each study country. Main Results: We found out that diverse factors may influence program feasibility and the ability to achieve 'triple benefits': the nature of the forest targeted by the policy, the characteristics of the population affected by the policy, attributes of the policy instrument and the different actors involved. Research highlights: We argue that national policies and programs targeted for REDD+ implementation should focus on the identified features to achieve REDD+ goals. Keywords: policy evaluation; policy instruments; triple benefits; Southeast Asia.


Bundle authentication, which ensures the authenticity and integrity of bundles, is critical in space Delay/disruption-Tolerant Networks (DTNs). When bundle fragment services are needed, the previous solutions directly using digital signatures suffer from heavy computational costs and bandwidth overheads. This paper addresses the issue of fragment authentication for Bundle Protocol by exploiting erasure codes and the batch transmission characteristic of DTNs. Erasure codes are adopted to allow all the fragments of a bundle to equally share only one signature, to tolerate high delays as well as unexpected loss of connectivity. Following this generic idea, we present two approaches, both of which are effective in filtering inauthentic fragments as early as possible. The first one takes a surprisingly low bandwidth overhead, while it makes all received fragments of a bundle to be removed when there is an inauthentic one, because of its failure in locating the inauthentic fragments. Considering this defect, we present an improved scheme which is able to detect inauthentic fragments thanks to a special hash chain and then only remove these inauthentic ones. The performance simulation demonstrates that both our schemes significantly reduce bandwidth overheads and computational costs as compared to the prior works.


The objective of this research is to develop a case-based reasoning system (CBRS) to assist engineers develop new products in shorter time by providing important relevant information about the product under development. The framework of the system is built upon the product data management system (PDMS). Most of the product data is stored in the PDMS. Only the relevant information is stored in the CBRS. An object-oriented framework was used to organize the relevant information of the product. The system can retrieve information of the most relevant design cases by comparing the attributes in the cases. The class structure and necessary attributes in the class used to describe the product can be defined by users. UML modeling is used to model the system. The pilot implementation is web centric and Tomcat of Apache Software Foundation is used as the main server tool. The back-light modules in TFT-LCD display design is used as the examples in the pilot system


Animated GIFs are increasingly popular in text-based communication. Like other forms of nonverbal communication, animated GIFs are susceptible to open interpretation. We explore whether people have different interpretations of animated GIFs, how those interpretations differ, and what factors impact the degree of difference. Through an online survey, we solicited people's interpretations of a sample of GIFs, and analyzed the variance in sentiment based on the emotions participants used to describe GIFs. We find diverse interpretations of GIFs, and that duration of GIFs has a significant impact on interpretation. Positive GIFs also have more variance in interpretation than negative GIFs. Overall, we show that there is potential for miscommunication in animated GIFs, and animated GIFs may be a more nuanced form of nonverbal communication than emoticons and emoji.


Three hundred eighty-four growing-finishing pigs were used in two experiments to determine the effect of dietary fluorine (F) on growth, blood and bone physical characteristics. Fourteen dietary treatments were formulated by supplementing F (as NaF) to a milo-soybean meal basal diet (7 ppm F) to provide levels of 7, 132, 257, 382, 507 and 632 ppm F for Exp. 1, and 7, 25, 43, 61, 79, 97, 115 and 133 ppm F for Exp. 2. Average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI) were not affected (P greater than .09) when F was fed at levels between 7 and approximately 132 ppm. Average daily gain and ADFI were reduced (P less than .0001) for pigs consuming diets with F concentrations greater than 132 ppm (Exp. 1). Feed conversion was not affected (P greater than .17) by any level of F fed. Serum F and alkaline phosphatase concentrations increased (P less than .01) with increasing dietary F levels. Serum and bone Ca and P concentrations were not affected (P greater than .13) by dietary F levels (Exp. 1). In Exp. 1 and 2, bone F increased (P less than .0001) and metatarsal stress and modulus of elasticity decreased (P less than .0001) as level of F increased in the diet. Bone thickness decreased quadratically (P less than .02) in Exp. 1 and linearly (P less than .0007) in Exp. 2 with increased dietary F levels. Scanning electron microscopy showed an increase in porosity of bones from pigs fed the higher levels of F. Growing-finishing pigs were able to tolerate approximately 132 ppm F for growth, but all of the F levels (greater than or equal to 7 ppm) fed in these two experiments affected bone integrity.


Deep convolutional neural networks have achieved great success on various image recognition tasks. However, it is nontrivial to transfer the existing networks to video due to the fact that most of them are developed for static image. Frame-byframe processing is suboptimal because temporal information that is vital for video understanding is totally abandoned. Furthermore, frame-by-frame processing is slow and inefficient, which can hinder the practical usage. In this paper, we propose LWDN (Locally-Weighted Deformable Neighbors) for video object detection without utilizing time-consuming optical flow extraction networks. LWDN can latently align the high-level features between keyframes and keyframes or nonkeyframes. Inspired by (Zhu et al. 2017a) and (Hetang et al. 2017) who propose to aggregate features between keyframes and keyframes, we adopt brain-inspired memory mechanism to propagate and update the memory feature from keyframes to keyframes. We call this process Memory-Guided Propagation. With such a memory mechanism, the discriminative ability of features in keyframes and non-keyframes are both enhanced, which helps to improve the detection accuracy. Extensive experiments on VID dataset demonstrate that our method achieves superior performance in a speed and accuracy trade-off, i.e., 76.3% on the challenging VID dataset while maintaining 20fps in speed on Titan X GPU.


Stellate ganglion block (SGB) is used for the treatment of many medical conditions including complex regional pain syndrome and peripheral vascular disease. Historically, the anesthetic has been injected at the C6 or C7 vertebral level with the Chassignac's tubercle, the cricoid cartilage, and the carotid artery serving as the anatomic landmarks to the procedure. Due to a high risk of side effects, for example, pneumothorax and vascular puncture, an image-guided approach is strongly suggested, even with the "safer" C6 approach.[1]


The current study examined perceptual differences between adults and youth in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions. We estimated individuals' internal representation for facial expressions and compared it between age groups (adolescents: N = 108, Mage = 13.04 years, 43.52% female; adults: N = 81, Mage = 31.54, 65.43% female). We found that adolescents' perceptual representation for facial emotion is broader than that of adults', such that adolescents experience more difficulty in identifying subtle configurational differences of facial expressions. At the neural level, perceptual uncertainty in face-selective regions (e.g., fusiform face area, occipital face area) were significantly higher for adolescents than for adults, suggesting that adolescents' brains more similarly represent lower intensity emotional faces than do adults'. Our results provide evidence for age-related differences concerning psychophysical differences in perceptual representation of emotional faces at the neural and behavioral level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).


Burchell's Zebra ( Equus Burchelli Antiquorum ) were sampled for gastrointestinal parasites at the Lewa Downs Game Ranch in Isiolo District between 4/7/95 and 11/7/95. The stomach, small intestines and abdominal cavity were searched for parasites. The parasites were identified to genus level but in some cases to species level. Feacal egg counts, hematology and serum biochemistry screening were also performed.

All animals were infested with at least three genera of gastrointestinal parasites including at least one nematode genus. A total of nine genera were recovered representing eight families. These included six nematode families, Strongylidae, Strongylinae, Atractidae, Oxyuridae, Spiruridae, and Setaridae one cestode family, Anoplocephalidae and one family of the larvae of Gasterophilus bot flies, Gastrophilidae. The most prevalent families were Atracidae (100%) and Strongylinae (80%).

The mean total worm burden was 78,764. The average of individual genera varied from 0-77,890worms. The average worm burdens were higher in females than in males. In comparing the mean total egg counts, there were generally higher egg counts in animals with higher worm burdens.

Hematology results were within baseline values for Burchell's zebra. Blood biochemistry showed high levels of Alkaline Phosphatase, Creatine Kinase, Lactase dehydrogenase and Aspartate transaminase was partly attributed to exertion before death.
 The Kenya Veterinarian Vol. 25 2002: pp. 44-49


Information technology (IT) has tremendously influenced and changed library and information services at libraries and information agencies. The education of library and information science (LIS) professionals is also strongly impacted by IT, because of the current ne ed for changed competences of professional librarians and information scientists, and the consequent changes of educational pedagogies and instructional techniques. The changes driven by IT have presented a challenge to LIS education. The impacts of IT on LIS education involve the establishment of new curricula for LIS, new LIS course design, new ways to organize the LIS education (e.g. iSchools vs. L-Schools), the different knowledge backgrounds and competencies of LIS faculty, extensive recruitments of LIS students, and the expanded job markets and career opportunities for LIS graduates. In addition, the impacts of IT on LIS education will generate challenges such as the changing educational/instructional environment, competition between LIS education and education from other related subject fields, IT based teaching/instructing tec hniques, comprehensive assessments of LIS courses compared with other courses, and incr easing possibilities for collaborations among LIS educational institutions. This paper will present a quantitative analysis and comparative descriptions of several se lected American LIS educational institutions for the above issues and conclude with some emerging trends on the curriculum and educational techniques for LIS education.


The Captain Field is located in Block 13/22a in the Western Moray Firth Basin of the UK North Sea, 80 miles northeast of Aberdeen in a water depth of 340 ft. Hydrocarbons are trapped in two geographical regions, the Main and Eastern closures, both with a significant stratigraphic pinchout component. The principal reservoirs are the Lower Cretaceous Upper and Lower Captain Sands, which are predominantly of turbiditic origin. Reservoir quality is uniformly excellent with in situ permeability averaging 7 D and porosity in the range 28-34%. The reservoir is largely unconsolidated sandstone with the depth to the crest of the field at "2700 ft TVDSS. The reservoirs contain a total oil-in-place of 1500 MMBO. The Upper Captain Sand has a small associated gas cap containing 29 BCF gas-in-place. The oil is heavy, by North Sea standards, with oil gravity ranging from 19 degrees and 21 degrees API and in situ viscosity between 88 and 47 cP, at the mean reservoir temperature of 87 degrees F. The fluid properties and offshore location necessitate the employment of innovative horizontal drilling methods, completion design and artificial lift technology in order to achieve an economically viable field development. Extended reach horizontal wells, with reservoir completion lengths of up to 6500 ft, are proposed for all oil producers and water injectors. Development risks were significantly reduced following two appraisal drilling campaigns in 1990 and 1993 culminating with the successful drilling and extended testing of a prototype horizontal field development well (13/22a-10). First oil production commenced from the Captain platform in early 1997.


OONI, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, is a global observation network which aims to collect high quality data using open methodologies, using Free and Open Source Software (FL/OSS) to share observations and open data about the various types, methods, and amounts of network tampering in the world. Furthermore, OONI is a human rights observation project – observation is a fundamental requirement for the advancement of knowledge and OONI aims to ensure that the tools to make such observations are freely available to all. With the belief that unfettered access to information is an intrinsic human right, OONI seeks to observe levels of surveillance, censorship, and network discrimination in order for people worldwide to have a clearer understanding of the ways in which their access to information and speech is monitored, censored or otherwise filtered. The end goal of OONI is to collect data which will show an accurate topology of network surveillance, interference and outright censorship. Through this data, it will be possible to draw conclusions about how the internet functions from any location where an OONI probe is present. This data includes which websites are censored, or which services have been tampered with, and by whom. The data also includes information about the observer and will attempt to classify the results. We use the term filternet to describe network connections that are under measurable surveillance, tampering, or subject to censorship.