The RONOCO (ROle of Nighttime chemistry in controlling the Oxidising Capacity of the AtmOsphere) aircraft campaign during July 2010 and January 2011 made observations of OH, HO2, NO3, N2O5 and a number of supporting measurements at night over the UK, and reflects the first simultaneous airborne measurements of these species. We compare the observed concentrations of these short-lived species with those calculated by a box model constrained by the concentrations of the longer lived species using a detailed chemical scheme. OH concentrations were below the limit of detection, consistent with model predictions. The model systematically underpredicts HO2 by ∼200% and overpredicts NO3 and N2O5 by around 80 and 50%, respectively. Cycling between NO3 and N2O5 is fast and thus we define the NO3x (NO3xCombining double low lineNO3+N2O5) family. Production of NO3x is overwhelmingly dominated by the reaction of NO2 with O3, whereas its loss is dominated by aerosol uptake of N2O5, with NO3+VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and NO3+RO2 playing smaller roles. The production of HOx and ROx radicals is mainly due to the reaction of NO3 with VOCs. The loss of these radicals occurs through a combination of HO2+RO2 reactions, heterogeneous processes and production of HNO3 from OH+NO2, with radical propagation primarily achieved through reactions of NO3 with peroxy radicals. Thus NO3 at night plays a similar role to both OH and NO during the day in that it both initiates ROx radical production and acts to propagate the tropospheric oxidation chain. Model sensitivity to the N2O5 aerosol uptake coefficient (γN2O5) is discussed and we find that a value of γN2O5Combining double low line0.05 improves model simulations for NO3 and N2O5, but that these improvements are at the expense of model success for HO2. Improvements to model simulations for HO2, NO3 and N2O5 can be realised simultaneously on inclusion of additional unsaturated volatile organic compounds, however the nature of these compounds is extremely uncertain.


Water demands for agricultural, industry, domestic and environmental uses in arid and semiarid regions continue to grow, while available surface and ground water resources remains the same or could even decline because of climate change. Decision makers need tools to support the implementation of sustainable water management policies. Hydro-economic modeling could be used for this task, because of its capacity to integrate key biophysical and socio economic components within a unified framework. However, linking a hydro-economic model with a high-resolution hydrological model is needed in order to incorporate an adequate representation of present and future elements of the water balance. Here we show the coupling of the Extended Continental-scale Hydro-economic Optimization model(ECHO), an integrated economic-technological modeling tool for application to long-term transboundary river basin planning with the Community Water Model (CWATM), a high-resolution global hydrological model. The trajectories of run-off and baseflow are simulated at high resolution (5', daily) with CWATM and processed to define average inflow scenarios (monthly) for the sub-basin units represented in ECHO. Estimates of industrial, domestic and agricultural water withdrawals, return flows and environmental flow requirements are also taken from the hydrological simulations. Based on this, the ECHO model assesses the cost-effective combination of solutions that could address water scarcity at basin level. Solutions in this context represent transformative policies, basin-wide infrastructure configurations, and investment strategies that enable sustainable development. As an example the novel framework is applied to the Zambezi basin, the largest river basin in Southern Africa, covering 1.4 million square km across eight countries and home to about 40 million people. CWATM provides projections of water availability and demand till 2050 at high spatial resolution under alternative socio-economic and climatic scenarios, while ECHO provides information on the least-cost combination of water management options that can satisfy those water demands subject to available water resources at basin level.


FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) can be found in applications such as smart phones, mp3 players, medical imaging devices, and for aerospace and defense technology. FPGAs consist of logic blocks and programmable interconnects. This allows an engineer to start with a blank slate and program the FPGA for a specific task, for instance, digital signal processing, or a specific device, for example, a software-defined radio. Due to the short time to market and ability to reprogram to fix bugs without having to respin FPGAs are in increasingly high demand. This book is for the engineer that has not yet had any experience with this electrifying and growing field. The complex issue of FPGA design is broken down into four distinct phases - Design / Synthesis / Simulation / Place & Route. Numerous step-by-step examples along with source code accompany the discussion. A brief primer of one of the popular FPGA and hardware languages, VHDL, is incorporated for a simple yet comprehensive learning tool. While a general technology background is assumed, no direct hardware development understanding is needed. Also, included are details on tool-set up, verifaction techniques, and test benches. Reference material consists of a quick reference guide, reserved words, and common VHDL/FPGA terms. Learn how to design and develop FPGAs -- no prior experience necessary!Breaks down the complex design and development of FPGAs into easy-to-learn building blocksContains examples, helpful tips, and step-by-step tutorials for synthesis, implementation, simulation, and programming phases


Audiovisual speech synthesis involves synthesizing a talking face while maximizing the coherency of the acoustic and visual speech. To solve this problem, we propose using AVTacotron2, which is an end-to-end text-to-audiovisual speech synthesizer based on the Tacotron2 architecture. AVTacotron2 converts a sequence of phonemes into a sequence of acoustic features and the corresponding controllers of a face model. The output acoustic features are passed through a WaveRNN model to reconstruct the speech waveform. The speech waveform and the output facial controllers are used to generate the corresponding video of the talking face. As a baseline, we use a modular system, where acoustic speech is synthesized from text using the traditional Tacotron2. The reconstructed acoustic speech is then used to drive the controls of the face model using an independently trained audio-to-facial-animation neural network. We further condition both the end-to-end and modular approaches on emotion embeddings that encode the required prosody to generate emotional audiovisual speech. A comprehensive analysis shows that the end-to-end system is able to synthesize close to human-like audiovisual speech with mean opinion scores (MOS) of 4.1, which is the same MOS obtained on the ground truth generated from professionally recorded videos.


An essential function of the brain is to detect threats, such as those posed by objects or predators on a collision course. A wide-field, movement-sensitive visual neuron in the brain of the locust was studied by presenting simulated approaching, receding, and translating objects. The neuron's responses could be described simply by multiplying the velocity of the image edge (dθ/dt) with an exponential function of the size of the object's image on the retina (e−αθ). Because this product peaks before the image reaches its maximum size during approach, this neuron can anticipate collision. The neuron's activity peaks approximately when the approaching object reaches a certain angular size. Because this neuron receives distinct inputs about image size and velocity, the dendritic tree of a single neuron may function as a biophysical device that can carry out a multiplication of two independent input signals.


We explore how political identity affects trust. Using an incentivized experimental survey conducted on a representative sample of the U.S. population, we vary information about partners' partisan identity to elicit trust behavior, beliefs about trustworthiness, and actual reciprocation. By eliciting beliefs, we are able to assess whether differences in trust rates are due to stereotyping or a "taste for discrimination." By measuring actual trustworthiness, we are able to determine whether beliefs are statistically correct. We find that trust is pervasive and depends on the partisan identity of the trustee. Differential trust rates are explained by incorrect stereotypes about the other's lack of trustworthiness rather than by a "taste for discrimination." Given the importance of beliefs, we run additional treatments in which we disclose previous reciprocation rates before participants decide whether to trust. We find that beliefs are slightly more optimistic compared with the previous treatments, suggesting that incorrect stereotypes are hard to change.


Widespread use of the Internet and the Web has transformed the public management 'quasi-paradigm' in advanced industrial countries. The toolkit for public management reform has shifted away from a 'new public management' (NPM) approach stressing fragmentation, competition and incentivization and towards a 'digital-era governance' (DEG) one, focusing on reintegrating services, providing holistic services for citizens and implementing thoroughgoing digital changes in administration. We review the current status of NPM and DEG approaches, showing how the development of the social Web has already helped trigger a 'second wave' of DEG2 changes. Web science and organizational studies are converging swiftly in public management and public services, opening up an extensive agenda for future redesign of state organization and interventions. So far, DEG changes have survived austerity pressures well, whereas key NPM elements have been rolled back.


Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Those were the conditions we worked in at Bollag International Corporation, a textile recycling plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. I photographed and interviewed the women I worked with in 1989 and 1990. The women spent long days standing at tables, sorting scraps of textiles by color, content, and weave, or extracting bits of pattern paper and then bagging the fabric so it could be baled up and resold in countries such as Spain, Italy, and Africa to make new fibers and textiles. It was hard work, and the community of strong women became my role models. I began the project thinking I was going to explore African American folklore, but the photographs and voices of the women tell another story, a story of deeply independent and caring women whose lives weren't easy. But they were doing what they had to do: taking care of their families and one another. Their voices reveal the love, courage, despair, and optimism of their daily lives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Attachment to place is the core of Rappahannock Indian identity. The Rappahannock's sense of place along the Virginia river that bears their name shaped their sense of themselves, their community, and their place in the world. This devoted connection to their homeland constricted Rappahannock responses to change.

To identify Rappahannock place, this study begins with an account of human development on Virginia's Coastal Plain. Algonquian creation stories recall both the centers of Algonquian residence and the evolution of local belief systems. These accounts highlight the eternal tension between antiquity and modernity and provide a model to understand change. The Rappahannock sought to control that tension, and so lessen the imbalance that accompanied change, through careful attention to ritual and the cultivation of reciprocal relationships. Ritual provided the model for proper action. Reciprocity obligated each to all. Obligated peoples created kin and exchange networks. These networks brought corn agriculture to the Coastal Plain and further promoted peoples' attachment to particular places. The subsequent ideology of communal burial reinforced networks and provided for the return of people to their ancestral homeland.

Throughout this long history, the Rappahannock's sense of place often forced them to modify their settlement patterns in response to environmental and human change. The pattern alternated between coalescence and dispersal, or, agglomeration and seclusion. This ebb and flow of community and village life reflected the periodic pressures placed on people determined to maintain their place and balance their world. In the seventeenth century, the arrival of European settlers presented new challenges to which the Rappahannock responded to in familiar ways.

In 1603, the first contact between Rappahannocks and Englishmen began with reciprocity and ended in a murder and theft that immediately destabilized the Rappahannock's world. The Rappahannock's subsequent interactions with Englishmen, those now at Jamestown, centered on restoration of Rappahannock loss and the reconstruction of reciprocal relations with the English. That happened in May 1607, with Christopher Newport, and in December with John Smith. Both engaged the rituals of reciprocity and created exchange networks with the Rappahannock, though the sole evidence of that exchange are the glass beads and copper that the Rappahannock buried with their dead.

In 1651, the Rappahannock's world destabilized again when the English settlers flooded the Rappahannock River valley and patented the Rappahannock's land. Dislocation and violence, not reciprocity and exchange, marked the next fifty years. Across Virginia, English settlers pushed native communities inland, from the rivers' fertile floodplain to the interior of Virginia's peninsulas. To prevent this constant encroachment upon Indian land, provincial authorities attempted to define the bounds of Indian towns and restrict Indians' mobility. In defiance, communities like the Rappahannock, abandoned their villages and secluded themselves on marginal, unseated lands.

In 1705, Robert Beverley wrote in his History and Present State of Virginia that the Rappahannock lived "scatter'd upon the English Seats," much like Appomattox who lived "in Collonel Byrd's Pasture." Once again, Rappahannock families lived dispersed across their ancestral homeland, much as they had done before English colonization. Now secluded, the Rappahannock people maintained their extended kin networks, created new ones, and modified their culture to accommodate the altered environment in their ancestral homeland. The attachment of people to place remained the foundation of community for the Rappahannock people. The significance of this history is that it challenges the conventions across the Eastern Woodlands of indigenous stasis, decline, and disappearance. Instead, for the Rappahannock, European cultural contact presented immense challenges and resulted in ultimate persistence.


Pharmacological blockade of the ANG II type 1 receptor (AT1R) is a common therapy for treatment of congestive heart failure and hypertension. Increasing evidence suggests that selective engagement of β-arrestin-mediated AT1R signaling, referred to as biased signaling, promotes cardioprotective signaling. Here, we tested the hypothesis that a β-arrestin-biased AT1R ligand TRV120023 would confer cardioprotection in response to acute cardiac injury compared with the traditional AT1R blocker (ARB), losartan. TRV120023 promotes cardiac contractility, assessed by pressure-volume loop analyses, while blocking the effects of endogenous ANG II. Compared with losartan, TRV120023 significantly activates MAPK and Akt signaling pathways. These hemodynamic and biochemical effects were lost in β-arrestin-2 knockout (KO) mice. In response to cardiac injury induced by ischemia reperfusion injury or mechanical stretch, pretreatment with TRV120023 significantly diminishes cell death compared with losartan, which did not appear to be cardioprotective. This cytoprotective effect was lost in β-arrestin-2 KO mice. The β-arrestin-biased AT1R ligand, TRV120023, has cardioprotective and functional properties in vivo, which are distinct from losartan. Our data suggest that this novel class of drugs may provide an advantage over conventional ARBs by supporting cardiac function and reducing cellular injury during acute cardiac injury.


BACKGROUND
Natalizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against alpha4 integrin, inhibits leukocyte adhesion and migration into inflamed tissue.

METHODS
We conducted two controlled trials to evaluate natalizumab as induction and maintenance therapy in patients with active Crohn's disease. In the first trial, 905 patients were randomly assigned to receive 300 mg of natalizumab or placebo at weeks 0, 4, and 8. The primary outcome was response, defined by a decrease in the Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CDAI) score of at least 70 points, at week 10. In the second trial, 339 patients who had a response to natalizumab in the first trial were randomly reassigned to receive 300 mg of natalizumab or placebo every four weeks through week 56. The primary outcome was a sustained response through week 36. A secondary outcome in both trials was disease remission (a CDAI score of less than 150).

RESULTS
In the first trial, the natalizumab and placebo groups had similar rates of response (56 percent and 49 percent, respectively; P=0.05) and remission (37 percent and 30 percent, respectively; P=0.12) at 10 weeks. Continuing natalizumab in the second trial resulted in higher rates of sustained response (61 percent vs. 28 percent, P<0.001) and remission (44 percent vs. 26 percent, P=0.003) through week 36 than did switching to placebo. Serious adverse events occurred in 7 percent of each group in the first trial and in 10 percent of the placebo group and 8 percent of the natalizumab group in the second trial. In an open-label extension study, a patient treated with natalizumab died from progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, associated with the JC virus, a human polyomavirus.

CONCLUSIONS
Induction therapy with natalizumab for Crohn's disease resulted in small, nonsignificant improvements in response and remission rates. Patients who had a response had significantly increased rates of sustained response and remission if natalizumab was continued every four weeks. The benefit of natalizumab will need to be weighed against the risk of serious adverse events, including progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. (ClinicalTrials.gov numbers, NCT00032786 and NCT00032799.)


KIRSTY HUGHES is Head of the European Institute Policy Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was formerly Deputy Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. A confident British government, no longer at odds with its European partners as in the darker days of Conservative rows and crises with the European Union, is looking to the future with the aim of matching French and German influence and leadership in Europe. The broad immediate questions this raises are first, whether this is a realistic aim, and second, whether Prime Minister Tony Blair's government possesses the right strategies to achieve such a leading role. The current political conjuncture looks promising--center-left governments hold power in 11 out of the 15 EU member states. And, while some suspicions remain about Britain's reliability over time in its support for the European Union, the tone and nature of the United Kingdom's relations with its European partners have been transformed since the new Labour government took over in May 1997, leaving a Conservative Party nearly destroyed by its internal divisions over Europe. The leading Labour politicians, most significantly Tony Blair himself, take a constructive and pragmatic approach to the European Union, without any of the hostility or paranoia about potential loss of sovereignty embodied by the Tories, whose negative attitude significantly damaged Britain's reputation and influence in Europe. Nevertheless, Britain for now is outside the central EU project of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and is thus facing a continuing decline in influence in the coming years. Even in the medium run of eight to ten years, it seems unlikely that Britain will be able to match the overall weight of France and Germany. Rather, the prospects are high for a constructive role for the United Kingdom as a serious player, but not as a leader at the heart of Europe. This is not only due to the United Kingdom's failure to join European Monetary Union at the start, but also from its abasence from the single currency. This is the most important factor ensuring that it is left on the sidelines as the European Union develops. Single Currency The new Labour government appears to have recognized, if somewhat belatedly, that its political influence across a range of areas will become progressively weaker while the United Kingdom remains outside the single currency. In terms of European politics, the obvious choice would be to join European Monetary Union as soon as possible; but in the context of economics and domestic politics, timing and strategy are more complex. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown addressed the related economics and domestic politics in his key statement to the House of Commons in October 1997. He set out five economic criteria to be met before the United Kingdom could decide to join the European Monetary Union (still leaving the final decision open), the most important of which is the resolution of the ongoing misalignment of British and continental cycles. Crucially, in an attempt to neutralize controversy over the single currency in the short to medium run, he also announced that barring exceptional circumstances, the promised referendum on the single currency would not be held until after the next general election. This delay partly reflected hesitations based on the persistent opposition to European Monetary Union among the general public, in addition to serious concerns about the hostility of large segments of the British media. But with the launch of the euro on January 1, 1999, there is now increasing concern among large sections of the British policy elite, big business, and the City about the impact of remaining outside of the euro in its crucial early years. Tony Blair launched the government's so-called changeover plan on what would be necessary to be accomplished if and when the United Kingdom joins the European Monetary Union at the end of February with his most positive notes yet on the currency, but with no change in the actual rhetoric (apart from the spin doctors emphasis that "if" and "when" should now be read as interchangeable terms). …


The lived experiences of young people are becoming increasingly marginalised within the narrowly defined curricula of neoliberal contexts. Many young people are also cast within the media according to deficit discourses of youth, which contributes to the fragmentation of communities and the limitation of interaction between generations. This article describes a film project in which young people living in an ex-mining community in the Midlands of England worked in and with their community to create a representation of where they live. As part of the process, the young filmmakers did more than connect to other people's memories as repositories of information; both as process and as product, their film can be seen to connect shared narratives of people and place, across time and space. We argue that this project offers a timely opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which we understand learning in and out of English classrooms.


Our design, production and consumption patterns must be redefined to address the new challenges faced by our society. Problems generated by traditional "industrial production" cannot be solved with the same "industrial" thinking paradigms. Eco-Design (Design for the Environment, DfE) has been widely developed and is currently taught and used in many design fields. However, DfE has recently evolved to Design for Sustainability (DfS, D4S) which not only considers environmental, but also social and economic aspects. This book discusses the use of Biomimicry as a tool for D4S. Historically, many types of bio-inspired design have imitated form and function from nature. Today, imitation of processes or ecosystems is proving very useful in rethinking our world. Biomimicry is redefining the way we design products and services. Diverse study cases in industry and education were analyzed and discussed. The book provides insight into new and exciting multidisciplinary design possibilities and is especially useful for biologists and ecologists interested in design, as well as designers, students, educators, and anybody interested in new ways to make our world more sustainable.


The two channels of default on unsecured consumer debt are (i) bankruptcy, which legally grants partial or complete removal of unsecured debt under certain circumstances, and (ii) delinquency, which is informal default via nonpayment. In the United States, both channels are used routinely. This paper introduces a model of unsecured consumer credit in the presence of both bankruptcy and delinquency. Our model yields three new findings: First, with respect to the choice between bankruptcy and delinquency, labor income shocks matter. Specifically, we find delinquency is readily used by borrowers with the worst labor market outcomes, even those with relatively minor levels of debt. In contrast, bankruptcy is used by households with relatively high debts, but whose long-run earnings prospects are high enough to make interest rate penalties from delinquency too large. Second, financial distress is persistent: households in poor financial conditions stay in that state for several quarters. Third, in broad terms, bankruptcy and delinquency are "substitutes," with bankruptcy increasing as delinquency costs rise. JEL: E43, E44, G33.


UNLABELLED
Pancreatic and other upper abdominal organ malignancies can produce intense visceral pain syndromes that are frequently treated with splanchnic nerve neurolysis (SNN) or celiac plexus neurolysis (CPN). Although commonly performed with either alcohol or phenol, there is scant literature on the comparative effectiveness, duration of benefit, and complication profile comparing the 2 agents. This study presents a retrospective chart review of 93 patients who underwent SNN for cancer-related abdominal pain in order to describe patient characteristics, examine comparative efficacy, duration of benefit, and incidence of complications with alcohol vs. those of phenol. Consistent with previous studies, SNN reduced reported pain scores while not significantly reducing opioid consumption. No difference in pain outcomes was found comparing alcohol versus phenol based neurolytic techniques. Celiac axis tumor infiltration and pre-procedural local radiation therapy did not change the effectiveness of the procedure. Our data demonstrated that 44.57% of patients had = 30% pain reduction while 43.54% did not have pain reduction. Interestingly, the procedure produced significant improvements in anxiety, depression, difficulty thinking clearly, and feeling of well-being. In addition, no difference in complications was seen between the agents either. SNN was an effective and relatively safe procedure for the treatment of pain associated with pancreatic and other upper abdominal organ malignancies in our sample of patients. Choice of neurolytic agent can appropriately be left to the clinical judgment and local availability of the treating physician. The change in ancillary symptoms has a theoretical basis that supports a biopsychosocial model of pain since changes in one target area (pain) impact other related ones (depression and anxiety).

KEY WORDS
Celiac plexus, splanchnic nerves, neurolysis, nerve block, alcohol, ethanol, phenol, pain, cancer pain, abdominal pain, visceral pain, symptom assessment.


Because of the increasing computational power of workstations and the PCs, the peak processing power of clusters of workstations has been increasing at a rapid pace. However, the sustained performance on a variety of applications lags far behind, because these systems offer lower communication performance. In this paper, we focus on improving the communication performance of the applications run on the clusters through aggressive compiler optimizations. We present a general interprocedural technique for performing communication optimizations across procedure boundaries. Our technique uses the result of local analysis to model the communication as a communication loop, and then performs flow-sensitive interprocedural data-flow analysis to avoid redundant communication, and to perform communication aggregation. Our experimental results and the projected analysis on the clusters shows that aggressive communication optimizations from compilers are very important for system with low communication performance and high computational power.


The agricultural sector is one of the most important consumer of electrical energy and the most significant oil product is gas oil; on the one hand, due to lack of some energy sources and their nonrenewability and high financial burden for the government, we should find solutions to reduce energy consumption, thus, in this way, sustainable development is to be achieved and the interests of future generations would also have been provided. Therefore, a general equilibrium model was developed and related information was used in the framework of social accounting matrix year 2001 as statistical base. In order to derivate and solve the model, the technique of mixed combination issues were used, the increase in prices of energy carriers in the four scenarios of increasing prices to border prices level with exchange rates of dollar, free rate of dollar, 38% increase of all carriers and increase in the oil gas and electricity prices to the world prices level were examined on the prices of agricultural crops. In the first scenario by increasing the prices of energy carriers, agricultural activities level in manufacturing wheat and other agricultural products were faced with the most reduced production by 95.1, 92.1; in the second scenario like the first, production changes in most products accompany negative growth. In total, the results indicated that in four scenarios, the production growth of honey and bee's products and other agricultural products has been positive and others products were faced with reduced production.


The interaction between art and urban space has been historically useful to both phenomena. However, the accelerated developments of the past century have led to formation of some challenges in the interaction between art and urban space in Iran. So that the art used in cities has an inspired and space-attached nature, rather than being popular, meaningful and consistent with space features. Regarding the qualitative development of urban spaces, there are two major attitudes towards the art: 'art as a means to beautify spaces' and 'art as a means to enhance the addressees' mindset on urban space.' The second attitude emphasizes on improving the meaning of urban space through art. The main concern of this research is that the interaction between art and urban space in deeper subjective and semantic layers requires the discovery of the mechanism of addressee /actor interaction with urban space and art. This research seeks to provide a conceptual framework for explaining the optimal interaction between art and space. Therefore, having examined the semantic aspect of urban space through experts' views and also having studied the mechanism of the transfer of meanings via art, a model is proposed to explain how the involvement of art in formation, enhancement, and regeneration of urban space meaning. This research uses qualitative content analysis. In the first step, the initial research model is presented through a comparative analysis of the mechanism of transfer in which the meanings are transferred through art to the urban space.Interaction contents are obtained from the model in the form of 'artist and authorities/ body', 'collective addressee/ community', 'individual addressee/ person'. Thereafter, these contents are studied by analyzing the research conducted in the field, and the main norms, and norms concerning urban space and art are deduced. The main norms are crystalized in three main concepts, including: 'cultural contextualism', 'democracy' and 'everyday experience' that are derived from the norms concerning the use of art in space as well as the adaption of space to art. Eventually, the effects of these norms on the quality of urban space are mentioned by meaningfulness.


The definitive analysis of the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Obama s foreign policyWhen Barack Obama took office, he brought with him a new group of foreign policy advisers intent on carving out a new global role for America in the wake of the Bush administration s war in Iraq. Now the acclaimed author of "Rise of the Vulcans" offers a definitive, even-handed account of the messier realities they ve faced in implementing their policies.In "The Obamians," acclaimed author James Mann tells the compelling story of the administration s struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global turmoil. At the heart of this struggle are the generational conflicts between the Democratic establishment including Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph Biden and Obama and his inner circle of largely unknown, remarkably youthful advisers, who came of age after the Cold War had ended.Written by a proven master at elucidating political underpinnings even to the politicians themselves, "The Obamians" is a pivotal reckoning of this historic president and his inner circle, and of how their policies may or may not continue to shape America and the world."


Credit risk models should reflect the observation that the relevant value of collateral is generally not the average value of the asset over all possible states of nature. In most cases, the relevant value of collateral for the lender is its secondary market value in bad states of nature, where marginal utilities are high. Although the negative correlation between recovery rates and default probabilities is well documented, the majority of pricing models does not allow for correlation between the two. In this paper, we propose a relatively parsimonious reduced-form continuous time model that estimates expected recovery rates and default probabilities from the term structure of CDS spreads. The parameters of the model and latent factors driving recovery risk and default risk are estimated using a Bayesian MCMC algorithm. We find that the Bayesian deviance information criterion (DIC) favors the model with stochastic recovery over constant recovery. We also observe that for companies with a good rating, implied constant recovery rates do not differ much from stochastic recovery. However, if a company is very risky, then forward stochastic recovery rates are significantly lower at longer maturities.


The display quality, as well as the speed of electrophoretic displays (EPDs), is highly affected by the design of driving waveforms. A typical driving waveform contains the phases of image erase, particle activation, and driving each pixel to the target gray level. Due to the difficulty of modeling a complete EPD device, the designers still lack a systematic approach to driving waveform design. In this paper, we study the property of the viscosity of the suspension, characterize the response latency of the device, and propose a new driving waveform. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can effectively reduce driving time while still maintaining good image quality.


A range of siliceous, ferruginous and ferromanganiferous deposits are intercalated with, and overlie the lavas of the Late Cretaceous northern Oman ophiolite. Most of the deposits lie on the upper surface of the spreading event lavas; spreading event magmatism and later seamount-building events are coeval to relatively small metalliferous sediment deposits. The mineralogical and geochemical characteristics of these sediments are a function of the interaction between local hydrothermal systems, the marine depositional environment, and early diagenetic transformations. Various techniques are employed to objectively determine the actual end-member component compositions from which the metalliferous sediments formed. The sediments are a mixture of primary biosiliceous oozes and hydrothermal metallic components which were deposited at or near a marginal ocean-basin spreading axis during Cenomanian time. Factor analysis, selective acid leaching experiments and linear programming modelling identify six geologically reasonable end-members, which represent biosiliceous sediment, carbonate sediment, detrital sediment, hydrogenous sediment, and hydrothermal sediment. The techniques show that the sediments have a complicated hydrothermal history which is associated with the evolution of the Oman ophiolite. The hydrothermal component is sub-divided into high temperature and low temperature end-members which are characteristic of the proto-seamount and proto- rift event environments respectively. Vent proximal and vent-distal facies are described. The geochemistry of the deposits provides evidence for calcareous pelagic dissolution by hydrothermal fluids, which resulted in the relative concentration of a hyaloclastic component. The deposits which were not early-lithified are epidotized. Metamorphic transformation of the primary sediment occurred prior to eruption of the upper lava unit. The techniques which have been used to describe the range, composition and distribution of the end-member components provide a flexible framework for the characterisation of geological mixing in all marine metalliferous sediments.


INTRODUCTION
For health professionals, the development of insight into their performance is vital for safe practice, professional development and self-regulation. This study investigates whether the development of dental trainees' insight, when provided with external feedback on performance, can be assessed using a single criterion on a simple global ratings form such as the Longitudinal Evaluation of Performance or Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise.

METHODS
Postgraduate dental trainees (N = 139) were assessed using this tool on a weekly basis for 6 months. Regression analysis of the data was carried out using SPSS, and a short trainer questionnaire was implemented to investigate feasibility.

RESULTS
Ratings for insight were shown to increase with time in a similar manner to the growth observed in other essential skills. The gradient of the slope for growth of insight was slightly less than that of the other observed skills. Trainers were mostly positive about the new criterion assessing trainees' insight, although the importance of training for trainers in this process was highlighted.

DISCUSSION
Our data suggest that practitioners' insight into their performance can be developed with experience and regular feedback. However, this is most likely a complex skill dependent on a number of intrinsic and external factors.

CONCLUSION
The development of trainees' insight into their performance can be assessed using a single criterion on a simple global ratings form. The process involves no additional burden on evaluators in terms of their time or cost, and promotes best practice in the provision of feedback for trainees.


In this work, we look back into the proof of the PCP theorem, with the goal of finding new proofs that are "more combinatorial" and arguably simpler. For that, we introduce the notion of an assignment tester, which is a strengthening of the standard PCP verifier, in the following sense. Given a statement and an alleged proof for it, while the PCP verifier checks correctness of the statement, the assignment-tester checks correctness of the statement and the proof. This notion enables composition that is truly modular, i.e., one can compose two assignment-testers without any assumptions on how they are constructed. A related notion was independently introduced in (Ben-Sasson et. al. STOC 04). We provide a toolkit of (non-trivial) generic transformations on assignment testers. These transformations may be interesting in their own right, and allow us to present the following two main results: 1. The first is a new proof of the PCP theorem. This proof relies on a rather weak assignment tester given as a "black box". From this, we construct combinatorially the full PCP. An important component of this proof is a new combinatorial aggregation technique (i.e., a new transformation that allows the verifier to read fewer, though possibly longer, "pieces" of the proof). An implementation of the black-box tester can be obtained from the algebraic proof techniques that already appear in L. Babai et al., 1991 and U. Feige et al., 1991. Obtaining a combinatorial implementation of this tester would give a purely combinatorial proof for the PCP theorem, which we view as an interesting open problem. 2. Our second construction is a "standalone" combinatorial construction showing NP /spl sube/ PCP (S. Arora et al., 1998). This implies, for example, that approximating max-SAT is quasi-NP-hard. This construction relies on a transformation that makes an assignment tester "oblivious": so that the proof locations read are independent of the statement that is being proven. This eliminates, in a rather surprising manner, the need for aggregation in a crucial point in the proof.


The rapid growth of network access and the development of Web 2.0 have resulted in the popularity of virtual communities (VCs), such as Wikipedia, Facebook, professional forums and social network communities. The impact of VCs increasingly spreads over a broad range of fields, from social and educational to business. The content (i.e., knowledge) that VC members provide is the factor that determines the growth and survival of VCs. Previous studies have investigated the factors that influence knowledge-sharing behavior in the VC environment. Despite the fact that these studies have examined the same factors, their findings have been inconsistent. In this paper, we argue that group identity mediates the relationships between knowledge sharing and these factors. This study adopts social identity theory as a theoretical foundation and collects data from a popular virtual community in Taiwan. The results show that group identity indeed mediates the relationships between VC member knowledge sharing and both organizational commitment and organizational support.


Vasoneuroactive substances were applied through intradermal microdialysis membranes and characterized as itch- or pain-inducing in psychophysical experiments. Histamine always provoked itching and rarely pain, capsaicin always pain but never itching. Prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) led preferentially to moderate itching. Serotonin, acetylcholine, and bradykinin induced pain more often than itching. Subsequently the same substances were used in microneurography experiments to characterize the sensitivity profile of human cutaneous C-nociceptors. The responses of 89 mechanoresponsive (CMH, polymodal nociceptors), 52 mechanoinsensitive, histamine-negative (CMi(His-)), and 24 mechanoinsensitive, histamine-positive (CMi(His+)) units were compared. CMi(His+) units were most responsive to histamine and to PGE(2) and less to serotonin, ACh, bradykinin, and capsaicin. CMH units (polymodal nociceptors) and CMi(His-) units showed significantly weaker responses to histamine, PGE(2), and acetylcholine. Capsaicin and bradykinin responses were not significantly different in the two classes of mechano-insensitive units. We conclude that CMi(His+) units are "selective," but not "specific" for pruritogenic substances and that the pruritic potency of a mediator increases with its ability to activate CMi(His+) units but decreases with activation of CMH and CMi(His-) units.


Four of the five major sensory systems (vision, olfaction, somatosensation, and audition) are thought to use different but partially overlapping sets of neurons to form unique representations of vast numbers of stimuli. The only exception is gustation, which is thought to represent only small numbers of basic taste categories. However, using new methods for delivering tastant chemicals and making electrophysiological recordings from the tractable gustatory system of the moth Manduca sexta, we found chemical-specific information is as follows: (1) initially encoded in the population of gustatory receptor neurons as broadly distributed spatiotemporal patterns of activity; (2) dramatically integrated and temporally transformed as it propagates to monosynaptically connected second-order neurons; and (3) observed in tastant-specific behavior. Our results are consistent with an emerging view of the gustatory system: rather than constructing basic taste categories, it uses a spatiotemporal population code to generate unique neural representations of individual tastant chemicals. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Our results provide a new view of taste processing. Using a new, relatively simple model system and a new set of techniques to deliver taste stimuli and to examine gustatory receptor neurons and their immediate followers, we found no evidence for labeled line connectivity, or basic taste categories such as sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Rather, individual tastant chemicals are represented as patterns of spiking activity distributed across populations of receptor neurons. These representations are transformed substantially as multiple types of receptor neurons converge upon follower neurons, leading to a combinatorial coding format that uniquely, rapidly, and efficiently represents individual taste chemicals. Finally, we found that the information content of these neurons can drive tastant-specific behavior.


The overall aim of the paper is to analyse the distribution of state agricultural support in Ukraine with the purpose of drawing up proposals on how to make it more objective-oriented. The investigation is based on the results of a case study conducted in Zdolbuniv district3, in the Rivne region of Ukraine, where interviews with local agricultural experts were held. The research is founded on the Linear Programming (LP) methodological approach, which is applied to calculate an objective-oriented agricultural budget allocation. This approach also integrates judgements from district agricultural experts. The outcomes show that agricultural support should have been redistributed in a slightly different way from the district perspective. However, the calculated changes in most cases match with the overall development directions in the Ukrainian agricultural support policy. Furthermore, the developed model has proved to be a useful and, at the same time, quite simple tool in application support, and one which could have been used by the agricultural decision-makers in the process of the distribution of agricultural support.


We study experimentally and numerically the electromagnetic resonances in split ring resonators (SRRs), around 1 GHz. For an individual SRR, we show that both electric and magnetic fields can induce resonances, the magnetic one being the strongest. The utilization of such resonant structures as efficient microwave filter is also demonstrated. The coupling between two or more SRRs can be quite complex and strongly depends on their geometrical arrangement. For small separation distances, very strong coupling, leading to sharp resonances with high quality factors are observed. In that case a magnetic field circulation which connects neighboring elements is established. The practical implications of these results for the fabrication of a left-handed metamaterial are discussed.


Multicore architectures impose great pressure on resource management. The exploration spaces available for resource management increase explosively, especially for large-scale highend computing systems. The availability of abundant parallelism causes scalability concerns at all levels. Multicore architectures also impose pressure on power management. Growth in the number of cores causes continuous growth in power. In this dissertation, we introduce methods and techniques to enable scalable and energy efficient execution of parallel applications on multicore architectures. We study strategies and methodologies that combine DCT and DVFS for the hybrid MPI/OpenMP programming model. Our algorithms yield substantial energy saving (8.74% on average and up to 13.8%) with either negligible performance loss or performance gain (up to 7.5%). To save additional energy for high-end computing systems, we propose a power-aware MPI task aggregation framework. The framework predicts the performance effect of task aggregation in both computation and communication phases and its impact in terms of execution time and energy of MPI programs. Our framework provides accurate predictions that lead to substantial energy saving through aggregation (64.87% on average and up to 70.03%) with tolerable performance loss (under 5%). As we aggregate multiple MPI tasks within the same node, we have the scalability concern of memory registration for high performance networking. We propose a new memory registration/deregistration strategy to reduce registered memory on multicore architectures with helper threads. We investigate design polices and performance implications of the helper thread approach. Our method efficiently reduces registered memory (23.62% on average and up to 49.39%) and avoids memory registration/deregistration costs for reused communication memory. Our system enables the execution of application input sets that could not run to the completion with the memory registration limitation.


Laboratory experiments and quasi-experimental field studies have documented beneficial effects of indoor plants on outcomes such as psychophysiological stress, task performance, and symptoms of ill health. Such studies have taken an interest in the value of indoor plants in work settings, but they typically have not considered how the effects of plants might compare with effects of other workplace characteristics. The present study makes an initial attempt to situate the potential benefits of indoor plants in a broader workplace context. With cross-sectional survey data from 385 Norwegian office workers, we used hierarchical regression analyses to estimate the associations that plants and several often-studied workplace factors have with perceived stress, sick leave, and productivity. Other variables included in our models were gender, age, physical workplace factors (e.g., noise, temperature, lighting, air quality), and psychosocial workplace factors (demands, control, social support). After controlling for these variables, the number of indoor plants proximal to a worker's desk had small but statistically reliable associations with sick leave and productivity. Although small, such associations can have substantial practical significance given aggregation over the large number of office workers over time.


This dissertation builds a meta-theoretical approach to creating alliances across differences in order to meet shared objectives. The research took place over two years (2003-2005) within an asset management company of 80 employees in South Africa. Managing diversity well is an organisational leadership capacity, crucially capable of transforming organisations in the direction of high-trust, high-performance environments. The research site was caught up in the challenges of transformation on several fronts, not least that of being in a country moving into a plural democracy from the restrictive rigours of apartheid and the impact of decades of institutionalised racism. The research places this South African client site in the context of global issues of diversity management and leadership mastery. This work introduces to the field of professional coaching and consulting sociological theories of the identity construction of groups including critical discourse theory, as well as integral theory and human development theory as the academic underpinning of a practical coaching model. Sociological perspectives of identity construction trace the different competing discourses or narratives that 'brand' our diverse identities. The growing multi-disciplinary field of Integral theory maintains the importance of regarding different knowledge systems as each holding truth value. The Integral approach contradicts the notion of competing perspectives among particular knowledge systems, preferring to see both-and connections rather than binary opposites - either-or 'silo' thinking. A selection of the literature is viewed through an integral lens to illustrate truthful but partial contributions to leadership development, diversity management and coaching. Case study examples demonstrate the practical application of a basic integral framework for coach and client to map and understand the multi-perspectival complexity inherent in individuals, groups and corporate entities. The coaching model uses Ken Wilber's four-quadrant map of integral theory (AQAL) to 'diagnose' and map the competing discourses in organisations of individuals in a dynamic system.


California's Disability Insurance (DI) and Paid Family Leave (PFL) programs have become important sources of social insurance, with benefit payments now exceeding those of the state's Unemployment Insurance program. However, there is considerable inequality in program take-up. While existing research shows that firm-specific factors explain a significant part of the growing earnings inequality in the U.S., little is known about the role of firms in determining the use of public leave-taking benefits. Using administrative data from California, we find strong evidence that DI and PFL program take-up is substantially higher in firms with high earnings premiums. A one standard deviation increase in the firm premium is associated with a 57 percent higher claim rate incidence. Our results suggest that changes in firm behavior have the potential to impact social insurance use and thus reduce an important dimension of inequality in America.


The paper reports on qualitative case studies of a purposeful sample of e-commerce companies. This is part of ongoing research, aiming at pointing out the qualities that characterize profitable e-commerce activities. The findings are compared with the success criteria derived from previous research on consumers' evaluation of the e-channel. The paper concludes by discussing the prerequisites for a successful e-business. From our previous research, we have hypothesized that the e-channel should be seen as a complementary channel to the traditional channels. Therefore, we particularly focus on multi-channel retailers.


The temporal patterns of evapotranspiration were monitored for 2 yr for four species of differing life form that currently form near monoculture communities in the Great Basin, USA, a region with a growing season spanning early spring to autumn and predictable overwinter water accumulation in the vadose zone. Species included an annual grass (Bromus tectorum L.), a perennial grass [Agropyron desertorum (Fisch. ex Link) Schult.], a shrub (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. wyomingensis Beetle and Young), and a tree [Juniperus osteosperma (Torr.) Little]. The two grasses and shrub were growing on the same soil type with uniform texture and subject to near surface percolation of the vadose zone only, while J. osteosperma was growing on soils with a petrocalcic layer below which water was near field capacity. These monotypic stands were found to differ in quantity and timing of vadose zone water use, in use pattern of shallow and deeper water resource pools, and in depth and quantity of rainwater hydraulically redistributed. All species rapidly utilized shallow vadose zone water in the spring when growth was observed, but use of deep vadose zone water varied by life form and was not linked with the period of growth for any species. Water in the vadose zone of the grass species increased between years, with evapotranspiration less than precipitation inputs and contrasted to water use in A. tridentata where water use approximately equaled precipitation inputs. Juniperus osteosperma used water below the petrocalcic zone, particularly in late summer. Water use by all species was consistent with the concept of a shallow vadose zone "growth pool" of water and a deeper vadose zone "maintenance pool" used during the summer drought period. The patterns of water use suggest that water per se is not a limited resource for survival, but influences the availability of nutrients necessary for plant growth that are associated with shallow vadose zone water. We postulate that cold‐adapted plants in the Great Basin have converged on a general pattern of rapidly utilizing soil moisture in shallow depths, in part, to influence nutrient availability. Our results strongly suggest describing the pool dynamics of vadose zone water will be necessary to further our understanding of plant fitness, interactions among species for resources, and species coexistence in arid and semiarid ecosystems.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "You think you are the first generation who's ever done this; you ought to go out and learn some things." Louisville activist Anne Braden, whose own work with southern progressive movements began in the 1940s, offered that advice to Sue Thrasher, a Braden protege and student organizer in the 1960s. That call to learn from an earlier generation inspired Thrasher, along with historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and fellow student activist Leah Wise, to begin recording in the early 1970s the memories of veteran southern progressives. At the time of the project's inception, all three women were working in Atlanta for the newly formed Institute for Southern Studies. In 1973 Hall left for the University of North Carolina, where her commitment to recovering voices from the South's earlier radical traditions became one of the driving impulses behind her founding of the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). Two years later, that ongoing interest in learning from first-generation Civil Rights activists, combined with a new SOHP initiative on southern women, brought Hall and Thrasher to the Wetumpka, Alabama, home of Virginia Foster Durr. Like her longtime friend Anne Braden, Durr stood as a living embodiment of what Hall would later term the "Long Civil Rights Movement." (1) Born in Alabama in 1903, Durr grew up in Birmingham hearing stories of her slaveholding ancestors. Though the family's wealth had declined significantly by the early twentieth century, Durr formed an early identification with elite society that never completely faded, even as she later fought against institutions of race and class privilege. "You could not be around Virginia without acknowledging and just observing that she did lay claim to coming from aristocracy," Thrasher recalled. Durr took pride in her aristocratic roots but also demonstrated an early unwillingness to play the role of the stereotypical southern belle. Her entry into political activism came in the early thirties, when she and her husband, Alabama attorney Clifford Durr, moved to Washington, D. C. There Clifford served in the Roosevelt administration, while Virginia became active with the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, especially its work to abolish the poll tax. In association with other like-minded New Dealers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Durr became in 1938 one of the founding members of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, one of the South's first interracial organizations that actively opposed segregation. Her work for voting rights continued throughout the 1940s, and she served as a lead organizer for the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax, all the while raising four daughters. She was an ardent supporter of Henry Wallace's 1948 bid for the presidency on the Progressive Party ticket and ran that same year for the United States Senate as the Progressive Party's candidate from Virginia. In 1951 the Durrs returned to Alabama, where Clifford established a law practice in Montgomery. For a time, Virginia scaled back her political activism, partly in an effort to shield her family from reprisal. Yet, in 1954, she came under public scrutiny when Senator James Eastland, from Mississippi, called her to testify in New Orleans before his Internal Security Subcommittee. Eastland failed to draw convincing links between Durr and "subversive" activity; her chief sin, as Durr later put it, was not in being a Communist but rather in refusing to become an anti-Communist. The publicity surrounding the hearing, however, did expose Durr as an opponent of segregation. From that time on, she made little attempt to conceal her racial politics and became an active supporter of the emerging Civil Rights Movement, most famously giving aid to Rosa Parks during the years surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With Clifford at her side, Virginia sat with Hall and Thrasher for initial interviews in the spring of 1975. …


ABSTRACT In this paper we describe fragments of silicified wood specimens found in "EI Barranquillo" outcrop (Castellote, Teruel, Spain) in the Aragonese branch of the Iberian Range. This new species without any growth ring and with mixed radial pitting could represent an ancestral form of the modern Sequoioideae subfamily. This anatomical study, in association with an observation of the lithological facies, the position and the preservation of the fossil woods, evidences a subtropical climate with abundant precipitation and without seasonal contrasts, during the deposition of the Utrillas Formation.


The aim of the study was to consider whether opera performances could exert an influence such that audiences travel and stay away from home overnight in order to experience those performances. In particular, it was to be considered whether such visits were undertaken as a holiday and whether opera was the sole or most important reason for that holiday. Additionally, an opera-producing organisation (Buxton Arts Festival) was to be studied in order to assess its recognition of the tourism connection and any influence of that upon the organisation. It was concluded, from an examination and synthesis of existing work, that there were grounds for believing that some of those in an opera audience could be tourists and holiday tourists for whom opera dominated as the reason for the tourist visit. A consideration of Buxton, the geographical location of the opera performances, confirmed its partial function as a tourist resort. Concern about the present and future nature of that function was identified. The Festival company was studied through a combination of observation, examination of internal papers and discussions. It was concluded that the company had acknowledged a need for and/or a desire to attract audiences from a widespread area. This tourism dimension did not dominate policy nor influence the product. Audiences at Festival operas were surveyed directly and by post. The surveys showed that there were tourists in the audiences and also those who classified their tourist visit as a holiday. For both holiday and non-holiday tourists itwas concluded that the operas had been the most important factors influencing the decision to visit. Despite some differences between holiday and non-holiday tourists, the factors causing the holiday/non-holiday distinction remained unclear. The distinction between the tourist and non-tourist was largely, though not necessarily, one of distance from Buxton.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the days leading up to the presidential election, a punctured and weakening economy was still very much in the frame, and the post-mortem of dysfunctional world credit markets had cycled through denial, rage, and despair. In the weeks following news of economic rescue, a more sober analysis was beginning to surface. Risk management systems and credit risk models, which didn't get mentioned all that much during the first, explosive phase of the crisis, were quietly being recalibrated at the offices on Wall Street--and off. That's when ABABJ interviewed experts in the field to find out how, if at all, risk management let lenders and dealmakers down. What, if anything, could be done differently? Paul Stark, senior vice-president of credit risk at $10. 4 billion assets FirstMerit, a Cleveland based supercommunity bank, says that his bank, like many others, stayed out of trouble by remembering fundamentals. "A lot of the deals that I was hearing about just didn't make sense to me," Stark says, adding that he was still trying to make sense of the National City scenario, which featured so prominently in Cleveland. "Some banks were making loans based on nebulous criteria for people they'd never met," Stark recalls. "And the derivatives based on subprime loans didn't make much sense to me either. The idea that you can subdivide risks sounds good, but how do you know which loans will actually go bad? Tranche making is a guessing game." Protecting the enterprise Not surprisingly, many indicated that risk management systems should be set up to "blanket" the entire bank environment from middle-to-front office, although models would have to be adjusted to better reflect liquidity risk and have broader application in managing derivatives. This makes sense because enterprise risk management (ERM) isn't new, having been called for since Basel II had been under development and has the virtue of being a thorough method. (Although Basel II's reliance on internal models and credit rating agencies has been questioned by groups such as the Financial Stability Forum's Working Group on Market and Institutional Resilience.) Still, many interviewed took educated guesses that improved credit management in the context of ERM would be called for with new urgency, and with louder voices after the government shifted out of emergency response mode. Stark, for instance, says that his bank is interested in--and has begun to deploy tools to support--an enterprise approach, although FirstMerit doesn't need to meet Basel II requirements. Yet, the reality on the ground at many banks--especially the spawn of new mega-mergers--is that they are burdened by a series of redundant data marts, missing support of models, and complex legacy systems, says Frank McKeon, financial services industry director, Cognos, Burlington, Mass. So bringing more effective measures and mitigations will be big projects. "The issue will be that a given bank, having spent millions on a project, will consider their risk program completed," says McKeon. "Beyond the infrastructure development to accommodate a better risk program, which can be a relatively short term project, actual risk monitoring and management is an ongoing process." Extreme remedies called for While extreme voices in the market were calling for everything from a ban on derivatives to a rollback on aggressive home ownership policy objectives, those in the middle acknowledged that individual practices of lending, packaging debt for liquidity, and trading complex instruments needed to be revised--and nothing scrapped. "There is nothing wrong with trading derivatives or making loans to new segments of the market, but the risk needs to be evaluated from the start as part of strategy development," says Leo Tilman, president of L.M. Tilman & Co., a strategic advisory firm based in New York. "That is, the language of risk management--the delineating of new risk exposures and hedging strategies--has to happen among the senior officers and key business executives. …


ABSTRACT Burr hole evacuation has been the most frequently-used procedure for the treatment of chronic subdural hematomas (CSDH). Objective: To evaluate whether the use of a drain and/or the number of burr holes for treatment of CSDH modifies the rates of recurrence and complications. Methods: A retrospective review of 142 patients operated on because of CSDH, between 2006 and 2015, analyzing recurrence and complications of the use of one or two burr holes with or without the use of a drain. Results: Thirty-seven patients had bilateral CSDH (26%) and 105 (73.9%) patients had unilateral CSDH. Twenty-two (59.4%) patients were given a drain and 15 (40.6%) were not. A total number of recurrences occurred in 22 (15.5%) patients and the total number of complications was in six (4.2%) patients. Mean follow-up time was 7.67 months. Conclusions: The number of burr holes and the use of the drain did not alter the rates of recurrence and complications in the treatment of CSDH.


ABSTRACT Male corncrakes Crex crex produce characteristic repetitive calls composed of two elements. Duration of each element, and the interval between elements and between calls, were measured for a single bird on three nights and for five birds on a single night. Element durations were similar on all three nights but interval durations differed between nights. Element durations differed between birds but some pairs of birds could not be separated using measures of element duration. Call elements are made up of pulses and the number of pulses differs between elements of a call.


Sewage is the mainly liquid waste containing some solids produced by humans which typically consists of washing water, faeces, urine, laundry waste and other material which goes down drains and toilets from households and industry. It is one type of wastewater, and is a major actual or potential source of pollution especially in urban areas. Sewage services exist to manage sewage by collection,
treatment and recycling or safe disposal into the environment. Sewage is created by residences, institutions, and commercial and industrial establishments. It can be treated close to where it is created (in septic tanks or on site package plants and other aerobic treatment systems), or collected and transported via a network of pipes and pump stations to a municipal treatment plant. Sewage collection and treatment is typically subject to local, state and federal regulations and standards (regulation and controls). Industrial sources of
wastewater often require specialized treatment processes.
Sewage is treated to remove or alter contaminants in order to minimize the impact of discharging wastewater into the environment. Beside that, sewage needs to treat in order to avoid water pollution. Water pollution not only gives effect to the aquatic habitat but also to the human.


Our aim is to establish the partial metric spaces within the context of Theoretical Computer Science. We present a thesis in which the big "idea" is to develop a more (classically) analytic approach to problems in Computer Science. The partial metric spaces are the means by which we discuss our ideas. We build directly on the initial work of Matthews and Wadge in this area. Wadge introduced the notion of healthy programs corresponding to complete elements in a semantic domain, and of size being the extent to which a point is complete. To extend these concepts to a wider context, Matthews placed this work in a generalised metric framework. The resulting partial metric axioms are the starting point for our own research.

In an original presentation, we show that Ta-metrics are either quasi-metrics, if we discard symmetry, or partial metrics, if we allow non-zero self-distances. These self-distances are how we capture Wadge's notion of size (or weight) in an abstract setting, and Edalat's computational models of metric spaces are examples of partial metric spaces. Our contributions to the theory of partial metric spaces include abstracting their essential topological characteristics to develop the hierarchical spaces, investigating their To-topological properties, and developing metric notions such as completions. We identify a quantitative domain to be a continuous domain with a To-metric inducing the Scott topology, and introduce the weighted spaces as a special class of partial metric spaces derived from an auxiliary weight function.

Developing a new area of application, we model deterministic Petri nets as dynamical systems, which we analyse to prove liveness properties of the nets. Generalising to the framework of weighted spaces, we can develop model-independent analytic techniques. To develop a framework in which we can perform the more difficult analysis required for non-deterministic Petri nets, we identify the measure-theoretic aspects of partial metric spaces as fundamental, and use valuations as the link between weight functions and information measures. We are led to develop a notion of local sobriety, which itself appears to be of interest.


Herbicides are one of the major contributing pollutants in water
bodies. Several detection methods have been developed to monitor
herbicide pollution including the use of bio-indicators. The competency
of a bio-indicator in herbicide detection must comply with the sensitivity
and efficiency of the method. In this study, Chlorella vulgaris as a bioindicator
was immobilised in alginate and compared with the free cell to
determine its ability as a bio-indicator.
There were two immobilised conditions; immobilised cells of
recommended cell concentration (2x10⁴cells/ml) and immobilised cells
based upon suitability test. In the suitability test, four bead
concentrations were tested; 0.1%w/w, 0.2%w/w, 0.4%w/w and
0.8%w/w. 0.1%w/w was selected as test bead based on stability and water and 26 days in calcium chloride. The other bead concentrations
were stable for less than 20 days. The 0.1%w/w bead had constant
growth rate and exponential rate pattern of oxygen production for 7
days, compared with the other beads.
Free cells and two immobilised conditions were compared using
two methods; oxygen production rate inhibition test and 96 hour's
toxicity test. Four herbicides were used in this study; Atrazine, Simazine,
Diuron and Paraquat. The first three are photosystem II inhibitor and
Paraquat is a photosystem I inhibitor.
Immobilised microalgae was dark incubated in herbicide for 30
minutes before measuring the oxygen production rate. 30 minutes was
chosen as incubation time due to significant inhibition of oxygen
production rate by herbicide at this period. Light and temperature values
during detection were previously examined and selected for suitability.
The selected light intensity was 90µmol/sec/m2 and 28°C for sample
chamber's temperature due to the production of oxygen at exponential
rate.
Cells were incubated for 96 hours in herbicide with 12: 12h light
cycle for 96 hour's toxicity test. Cells were enumerated and compare to
reference. For immobilised cells, cells were counted after dissolving the
beads with trisodium citrate. There were three significant findings in this study. First, the
ability to immobilise Chlorella vulgaris as a 2mm bead, which can
survive for more than three months. Second, immobilisation of the
recommended cell number was the better choice as bio-indicator using
oxygen production rate change compared to free cells or test bead.
There was 50% inhibition using this condition at 0.12µM Atrazine, 5.8µM
Simazine, 0.4µM Diuron and calculated value at 3.913 mM for Paraquat,
while the other cell conditions needed higher concentration than
1000µM for 50% inhibition or could not exhibit 50% inhibition. Third, for
toxicity testing, free cells is recommended compared to the immobilised
cells. Toxicity of free cells at 1000µM was higher in Simazine > Atrazine
> Diuron > Paraquat, while at 0.01µM: Diuron > Paraquat > Atrazine>
Simazine. For the immobilised conditions, no 50% inhibition of cell
number was observed, suggesting the cells were protected by alginate.
In conclusion, immobilised cells are potential useful bio-indicator for
herbicide or other pollutant that interfere with photosynthesis in water
body. However, further research should be done to improve and simplify
the method.


This study shows that mt-sDNA has high specificity among average-risk 45–49 year olds, supporting its use as a non-invasive option for colorectal cancer screening. High-specificity colorectal cancer screening is desirable to triage patients <50 years for colonoscopy; however, most endorsed colorectal cancer screening tests have not been rigorously evaluated in younger populations. This prospective cross-sectional study determined the specificity of the multitarget stool DNA (mt-sDNA) test in an average-risk screening population of 45 to 49 year-olds. Specificity was the primary outcome and was measured in participants without colorectal cancer or advanced precancerous lesions [APL– advanced adenomas (AA), and sessile serrated lesions ≥10 mm], and in the subgroup of participants with negative colonoscopic findings. APL sensitivity was a secondary outcome. The evaluable cohort included those who completed the study without protocol deviations and had a usable mt-sDNA test. Of 983 enrolled participants, 816 formed the evaluable cohort, with a mean age of 47.8 (SD, 1.5) years; 47.7% were women. No participants had colorectal cancer, 49 had APL, 253 had nonadvanced adenomas (NAA), and 514 had negative colonoscopic findings. mt-sDNA test specificity was 95.2% (95% CI, 93.4–96.6) in participants with NAA or negative findings [96.3% (confidence interval (CI), 94.3%–97.8%)] in those with negative findings, and did not differ by sex (P = 0.75) or race (P = 0.36) in participants with NAA or negative findings. Sensitivity for APL was 32.7% (CI, 19.9–47.5%), with most APL (83.7%) measuring 10–19 mm and none having high-grade dysplasia. The area under the ROC curve for discriminating between APL and lesser findings was 0.72 (CI, 0.64–0.81). mt-sDNA's high specificity would help minimize risk from unnecessary diagnostic procedures in this age group. This study shows that mt-sDNA has high specificity among average-risk 45 to 49-year olds, supporting its use as a noninvasive option for colorectal cancer screening. Prevention Relevance: This study shows that mt-sDNA has high specificity among average-risk 45–49 year olds, supporting its use as a non-invasive option for colorectal cancer screening.


This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.


While working for the federal courts of the United States in 1993, I was asked to staff a Task Force on Tribal Courts charged with addressing jurisdictional gaps and tensions between the federal courts and the tribal courts in Indian Country in the western United States. My introduction to the topic came at a conference in Santa Fe with the tribal justice community. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There, a representative of the new Clinton administration with a New York accent and a bow tie briefly addressed what the Justice and Interior Departments would and would not do on issues regarding tribal sovereignty. Immediately after he completed his remarks, an elderly Pueblo prosecutor, in braids and beads, stood up, looked around the room, and said, "I hope you have not all lost your sold like this man!" It was a sobering moment for me. I slipped out at the break, and swapped my own neckwear for black and silver bolo (string) tie being sold by an artisan on the streets of Santa Fe, and promised myself that rather than speak at this conference, I would listen and learn. Later that day, a young Native American law student shared her award-winning paper with the conference participants, in which she discussed the story and significance of the Supreme Court case Ex Parte Crow Dog. At this point, the moment ceased to be merely sobering, and became transformative. She described the ethic of tribal justice at play in the Brule Sioux tribe of the 1880s. Crow Dog murdered Spotted Tail and conceded guilt. Because the crime took place in Indian Country in the Dakota territory, the tribal authorities had exclusive jurisdiction over the case, which was resolved under the auspices of tribal leaders. Both the perpetrator's and victim's family sat in a circle, together with tribal authorities. Crow Dog's family provided Spotted Tail's family with cash, some horses, and a blanket to resolve the issue. The purpose of the proceeding, the student author explained, was to heal the wounded Brule Sioux community. The wrongdoer needed be integrated back into society, and the crime had to be acknowledged so that healing could begin. White settlers in the surrounding area were aghast with this outcome. From their perspective, these "savages" had just countenanced a gross injustice: the murderer himself remained a free man. Federal authorities quickly intervened, arresting Crow Dog, jailing him, and then trying him for murder. The process was swift and sure, bringing a sentence of death. Before Crow Dog could be hanged, however, the appeals process had to be completed, and in time, the case ended up before the United States Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over this crime, and that the tribal authorities had exclusive jurisdiction. Crow Dog was set free. "What would have happened to the Sioux community, had Crow Dog been executed?" the young commentator asked. "It would have wounded them a second time, as Crow Dog's death would be another blow to the Sioux community, another act of violence that would deprive the community of yet another of its members, harming the community all over again," she wrote. The case presents a classic clash of cultural values in the fundamental concepts of criminal law. Justice for the Brule Sioux was all about healing and peacemaking. Justice for the Anglo community surrounding Indian Country was all about punishment and retribution. The respective justice systems were dedicated to entirely different objectives. There is no question that the Brule Sioux failed to carry out effective retribution, but the US federal courts similarly failed to promote reconciliation and healing. Legal Pluralism "Legal pluralism" describes the situation in which different legal systems co-exist in the same geographic area, not unique to the Dakota Territory of the 1880s. We continue to see clashes between state power and indigenous justice throughout the world, much of it exacerbated by the spread of Western law. …


Introduction: Palatal fistula is the most common complication after palatoplasty, and its presence entails various implications. Its presentation is diverse and repair can be difficult, which is reflected in the existence of a numerous surgical techniques described for its treatment. Objective: To report the surgical correction of palatal fistula with a myomucosal upper lip flap, along with a brief review of the literature. Case Report: The patient underwent repair of complete cleft palate. At the immediate postoperative time, an anterior fistula of the hard palate and alveolar process was present and was subjected to a correction with an oronasal myomucosal upper lip flap. The patient progressed satisfactorily, without complications or lesion recurrence after 1 year of follow-up. Conclusion: The technique presented is a simple and efficient method for correction of an anterior palatal fistula.


In this paper, a game theoretic approach is used to derive the optimal power allocation in multiple access channels (MAC) for decentralized systems. Unlike previous results, a simple coordination mechanism is used between selfish users. The nature and influence of the coordination mechanism is studied in details for single antenna and multiple antenna terminals. In the proposed framework, the coordination signal indicates to the users in which order the receiver applies successive interference cancelation and with which frequency this order is used: it establishes the rule of the game. Remarkably, in Gaussian single input single output MACs, it is shown that, whatever the rule of the game, the selfish behavior of the users leads to a socially efficient network that is to say it is always sum-capacity achieving. However, for fast fading MAC with multi-antenna terminals, there can be a performance gap between the decentralized system and its centralized counterpart. Analytical and simulation results are provided to assess this gap.


M Abstract— In 2020, mobile access networks will experience significant challenges as compared to the situation of today. Traffic volumes are expected to increase 1000 times, and the number of connected devices will be 10-100 times higher than today in a networked society with unconstrained access to information and sharing of data available anywhere and anytime to anyone and anything. One of the big challenges is to provide this 1000-fold capacity increase to billions of devices in an affordable and sustainable way. Low energy consumption is the key to achieve this. This paper takes as starting point the situation of today, and tries to pinpoint important focus areas and potential solutions when designing an energy efficient 5G mobile network architecture. These include system architecture, where a logical separation of data and control planes is seen as a promising solution; network deployment, where (heterogeneous) ultra dense layouts will have a positive effect; radio transmission, where the introduction of massive antenna configurations is identified as an important enabler; and, finally, backhauling solutions that need to be more energy efficient than today.


Raptors can be parasitized by numerous helminth species due to their feeding behavior. When the parasite load is high, the bird's life can be affected. A total of 21 common buzzards, Buteo buteo, from different districts of Bursa, in Northwest Turkey, were examined for helminth infections. The results of the postmortem examination revealed that 15 of 21 buzzards (71.43%) harbored 1 or more helminth species. Seven species/genera of helminths were detected at the following prevalence rates: ascarid larvae (47.62%), Strigea falconis (38.09%), Neodiplostomum attenuatum (33.33%), Cladotaenia globifera (14.29%), Centrorhynchus amphibius (14.29%), Physaloptera alata (9.52%), and Synhimantus laticeps (4.76%). The most common helminth species was S. falconis, which was found in the small intestine of its hosts. This study is the first report to describe the presence of N. attenuatum, S. falconis, C. globifera, P. alata, and C. amphibius in the common buzzards of Turkey. This study is also the first to report the presence of S. laticeps in common buzzards, although this helminth had been previously reported in a sparrow hawk in Turkey.


Now fully updated for the new Cisco CAPPS 300-085 exam, Implementing Cisco Collaboration Applications (CAPPS) Foundation Learning Guide is your Cisco authorized learning tool for CCNP Collaboration preparation. Part of the Cisco Press Foundation Learning Series, it teaches advanced skills for designing, deploying, configuring, and troubleshooting Cisco Collaboration and Unified Communications applications, devices, and networks. Author Chris Olsen shows how to effectively use Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco Unity Express, Cisco Instant Message and Presence, Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server, and Cisco TelePresence Management Suite in production environments. He begins by introducing the server platforms and overlays that are the basis for all Cisco Unity Connection design and integration. Next, he presents in-depth coverage of a wide range of essential tasksfrom user configuration to voicemail redundancy, configuring Cisco Jabber Mobile, to provisioning Cisco Prime Collaboration. Each chapter opens with a list of topics that clearly identifies its focus. Each chapter ends with a summary of key concepts for quick study, as well as review questions to assess and reinforce your understanding. Throughout, configuration examples and sample verification outputs illustrate critical issues in network operation and troubleshooting. Whether you are preparing for the CCNP Collaboration certification exams or you are just interested in learning about how to deploy and operate Cisco collaboration applications, you will find this book to be an invaluable resource. Shows how to integrate Cisco Unity Connection with Cisco Unified Communications Manager or other PBXs Covers configuring Cisco Unity Connection users, templates, service classes, distribution lists, security, LDAP, dial plans, and callmanagement Walks through Unified Messaging single Inbox configuration Shows how to design, integrate, and configure feature-rich branch office messaging solutions with Cisco Unity Express Explains Cisco Unified IM and Presence components, design, integration, deployment, and feature configuration Covers Cisco Jabber and Cisco Jabber Mobile configuration Guides you through deploying Cisco Collaboration Systems Applications with Cisco Prime Collaboration Introduces Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (Cisco TMS) capabilities and scheduling options This book is in the Foundation Learning Guide Series. These guides are developed together with Cisco as the only authorized, self-paced learning tools that help networking professionals build their understanding of networking concepts and prepare for Cisco certification exams.


This paper provides preliminary data about EPG contact for 3 different vowels in Southern British English (SBE) and Scottish English (SE) across eleven speakers. The EPG data were compared with vowel formants to test the hypothesis that the amount of EPG contact as an indicator of tongue height or anteriority will resu lt in a corresponding change in F1 and F2. The results suggest that Percent Contact varies with th e three monopthongs. F1, F2 and F2-F1 difference varies with the amount of Percent Contact.


This is an introduction to graphical convergence of set-valued maps and the epigraphical convergence of extended real-valued functions.

It is now well established that maps and, more generally, set-valued maps should be regarded not only as maps from one space to another, but should be characterized in an intrinsic and symmetric way by their graphs.

When dealing with limits of maps, either single-valued or set-valued, it is quite advantageous to overcome the natural reluctance to handle convergence of subsets and to replace pointwise convergence by "graphical convergence": Instead of studying (more or less uniform) limits of the images, one consider the limits of their graphs.

One of the main reasons is that doing so is that a map and its inverse are treated on the same footing. This is quite important in approximation theory and numerical analysis.

The concepts of graphical convergence of set-valued maps are related to the concepts of epigraphical limits of functions, which had recently met an important success to overcome the failure of pointwise convergence in many problems of calculus of variations, optimization. stochastic programming. etc.

Finally, this report provides a first study of the Kuratowski upper and lower limits of tangent cones, which is needed to compute generalized derivatives and epi-derivatives of graphical and epigraphical limits of maps and functions.


The behavioral impacts of providing users with real-time energy use feedback—even at the aggregate level—can reduce energy use by 10-15%. Though comparison is a feedback method shown to encourage additional savings, home-energy research studies exploring social communication around feedback devices are limited. As a result, the relationship between feedback technologies and energy-conservation behaviors has become an increasingly important focus in the field of human-computer interaction. Furthermore, few studies explore this phenomenon among households, specifically, low-income households.
To bridge this gap, we conducted 26 photo-elicitation interviews with low-income tenant households across two locations, Pittsburgh, PA and eastern NC. Our studies of low-income households show that comparison across households can have an important impact on how energy is used (or saved). These studies also reveal conflict between various internal and external stakeholders such as family members and landlords. To better understand this conflict, we re-analyzed data from the first study for specific landlord / tenant conflicts and resolutions, held semi-structured interviews with landlords to understand their perspectives, and held a role-play exercise with tenants to understand ways to resolve the conflicts between landlords and tenants. Finally, based on our qualitative study results, we developed an Android-based application called the Community Monitor that supports comparison and provides household energy-use information. After conducting a longitudinal energy use study with 15 collocated U.S. households in Pittsburgh, PA, we were able to better understand the impact of engagement around social sharing and community energy monitoring in residential communities, identify energy-related and personal concerns, and provide design implications for home-energy applications that share consumption data among community members.


Attacker-Defender Stackelberg security games (SSGs) have emerged as an important research area in multi-agent systems. However, existing SSGs models yield fixed, static, schedules which fail in dynamic domains where defenders face execution uncertainty, i.e., in domains where defenders may face unanticipated disruptions of their schedules. A concrete example is an application involving checking fares on trains, where a defender's schedule is frequently interrupted by fare evaders, making static schedules useless.

To address this shortcoming, this paper provides four main contributions. First, we present a novel general Bayesian Stackelberg game model for security resource allocation in dynamic uncertain domains. In this new model, execution uncertainty is handled by using a Markov decision process (MDP) for generating defender policies. Second, we study the problem of computing a Stackelberg equilibrium for this game and exploit problem structure to reduce it to a polynomial-sized optimization problem. Shifting to evaluation, our third contribution shows, in simulation, that our MDP-based policies overcome the failures of previous SSG algorithms. In so doing, we can now build a complete system, that enables handling of schedule interruptions and, consequently, to conduct some of the first controlled experiments on SSGs in the field. Hence, as our final contribution, we present results from a real-world experiment on Metro trains in Los Angeles validating our MDP-based model, and most importantly, concretely measuring the benefits of SSGs for security resource allocation.


We present a detailed discussion of the three-interface surface plasmon resonance (SPR) geometry with the "angular interrogation" approach, and study the effect of thermal changes on the SPR curve through numerical simulations. An optical temperature sensor based on SPR, which has been shown to be a promising method to be used in the development of chemical, physical, and biomedical sensors, is proposed. The temperature sensor employs a three-interface SPR geometry where the layer making the interface with the environment has a refractive index highly sensitive to the changes in the temperature of the environment. The resolution of the temperature measurement is dependent on the angular resolution of the detection system and the temperature sensitivity of the sensing layer. The comparison of thermal sensitivities of three and two-interface SPR geometries is also presented.