Grade is a condition of equilibrium in streams as agents of transportation. The validity of the concept has been questioned, but it is indispensable in any genetic study of fluvial erosional features and deposits. This paper modifies and extends the theory of grade originally set forth by Gilbert and Davis. A graded stream is one in which, over a period of years, slope is delicately adjusted to provide, with available discharge and the prevailing channel characteristics, just the velocity required for transportation of all of the load supplied from above. Slope usually decreases in a downvalley direction, but because discharge, channel characteristics, and load do not vary systematically along the stream, the graded profile is not a simple mathematical curve. Corrasive power and bed rock resistance to corrasion determine the slope of the ungraded profile, but have no direct influence on the graded profile. Chiefly because of a difference in rate of downvalley decrease in caliber of load, the aggrading profile differs in form from the graded profile; the aggrading profile is, and the graded profile is not, asymptotic with respect to a horizontal line passing through base level. It is critical in any analysis of stream profiles to recognize the difference in slope-controlling factors in parts of the overall profile that are (1) graded, (2) ungraded, and (3) aggrading. A graded stream responds to a change in conditions in accordance with Le Chatelier9s general law:—"if a stress is brought to bear on a system in equilibrium, a reaction occurs, displacing the equilibrium in a direction that tends to absorb the effect of the stress." Readjustment is effected primarily by appropriate modification of slope by upbuilding or downcutting, and only to a minor extent or not at all by concomitant changes in channel characteristics. Paired examples illustrate (1) the almost telegraphic rapidity with which the first phases of the reaction of a graded stream to a number of artificial changes are propagated upvalley and downvalley and, (2) the more or less complete readjustment that is effected over a period of thousands of years to analogous natural changes. The engineer is necessarily concerned chiefly with short-term and quantitative aspects of the reaction of a graded stream to changes in control, while the attention of the geologist is usually focused on the long-term and genetic aspects of the stream9s response to changes. But the basic problems are the same, and a pooling of ideas and data may enable the engineer to improve his long range planning of river control measures and permit the geologist to interpret, in quantitative terms, the deposits of ancient streams.


This project's main objective was to develop and implement a molecular imaging tool based on hyperpolarized 13C magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantitatively interrogate lung metabolism. The pulmonary system plays a major role in performing a variety of biochemical functions that maintain body homeostasis, but that undergo significant detrimental alteration in the setting of lung injury and/or inflammation. Such changes cause lactic acid to be released from the lungs and are associated with increased patient mortality. The ability to directly measure both changes in lung metabolism and its spatial heterogeneity can provide insight into the relationship between abnormal mechanics and cellularity in diseased lung tissue. This work primarily focuses on small and large mammalian species as a stepping stone toward translation to human subjects. The key deliverables of this project are acquisition and quantification tools for the regional assessment of hyperpolarized pyruvate's conversion to lactate in lung tissue. To demonstrate the utility of our method, we used a two-hit animal model of acid aspiration and ventilator-induced lung injury that mimics a variety of inflammatory pulmonary diseases including acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We measure the conversion of pyruvate to lactate using hyperpolarized lactate-to-pyruvate ratio, and show that this ratio is significantly correlated with inflammatory activity in the lung tissue as well as the degree of systemic hypoxemia. To further investigate hypoxia's contribution to increased pulmonary lactate production, we assessed overall lung metabolism in non-injured hypoxic animals: while pulmonary pyruvate metabolism is resilient to moderate levels of hypoxemia, it changes significantly as a result of severe hypoxemia. Our data suggest that the increased lactate-to-pyruvate ratio in injured lungs is predominantly caused by inflammation. Next, we used our techniques to image both healthy and injured pigs on a clinical scanner in order to demonstrate the potential clinical translatability of hyperpolarized 13C imaging. Finally, we explored the possibility of using other imaging pulse sequences to achieve higher spatial and temporal resolution in both small and large animals, concluding that our method can serve as a future basis for rapid, highresolution metabolic imaging of the lungs. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Electrical & Systems Engineering First Advisor Rahim R. Rizi Second Advisor Nader Engheta


A methodology is proposed for the assessment of error dynamics in large-eddy simulations. It is demonstrated that the optimization of model parameters with respect to one flow property can be obtained at the expense of the accuracy with which other flow properties are predicted. Therefore, an approach is introduced which allows to assess the total errors based on various flow properties simultaneously. We show that parameter settings exist, for which all monitored errors are "near optimal," and refer to such regions as "multi-objective optimal parameter regions." We focus on multi-objective errors that are obtained from weighted spectra, emphasizing both large- as well small-scale errors. These multi-objective optimal parameter regions depend strongly on the simulation Reynolds number and the resolution. At too coarse resolutions, no multi-objective optimal regions might exist as not all error-components might simultaneously be sufficiently small. The identification of multi-objective optimal parameter regions can be adopted to effectively compare different subgrid models. A comparison between large-eddy simulations using the Lilly-Smagorinsky model, the dynamic Smagorinsky model and a new Re-consistent eddy-viscosity model is made, which illustrates this. Based on the new methodology for error assessment the latter model is found to be the most accurate and robust among the selected subgrid models, in combination with the finite volume discretization used in the present study.


1. Hypoxic and hypercapnic ventilatory drives were measured in eight healthy male subjects before and after ingestion of ethanol, in a dose of 17 mmol/kg body weight. 2. A significant decrease in hypoxic ventilatory drive was observed at 20 min after ethanol (P less than 0.05). A significant depression in hypercapnic drive was observed at 70 min after indigestion of ethanol (P less than 0.05). The mean peak blood ethanol (24mmol/1) occurred at 20 min, at which time the lowest mean hypoxic drive was recorded. 3. Ethanol in moderate doses produced a depression of both hypoxic and hypercapnic ventilatory drives in normal subjects. This suggests that ethanol may play a role in the precipitation of acute respiratory failure in certain patients in whom the ventilatory drive is already impaired, as in chronic airways obstruction.


This study is concerned with the fundamental characteristics of a new nondestructive measuring technique of the tooth roughness with precisely. In the dental clinics, the estimation of roughness of tooth surfaces with a hand explorer is one of the important tests for the finishing the crown re-shaping and resin fillings. If the tooth surface is rough enough to hold dental plaque, it occasio-nally causes dental diseases around it. Therefore, it is important to measure the roughness of the tooth surfaces for the prevention of furthermore distraction of the tooth. Laser speckle measurement is used as an evaluation method for objectively measuring the surface roughness with non-contact. In this study, a laser speckle measurement system for measuring the surface roughness is constructed. Comparison measurement is carried out for the tooth pieces with the various unidirectional roughness and the metallic test pieces with the standard roughness. The experimental results using the actual measuring system show some important points as follows. Firstly, there is a good correla-tion between the laser speckle pattern and the tooth roughness as well as that of the metallic test pieces. Secondly, the reflection from the tooth shows a different tendency in comparison with the reflection from the metallic test pieces.


Many health care professionals have to make morally difficult decisions during acute, stressful situations. The aim was to explore the applicability of an existing qualitatively developed model of individual reactions among professional first responders following such situations using a quantitative approach. According to the model, the interaction of antecedent individual and contextual characteristics affect the immediate emotional reactions to acute, stressful events involving a moral dilemma. Continuous coping efforts and the quality of social support will also affect the long-term positive and negative reactions to the event. The participants (n = 204, about 50% response rate) represented three Swedish health care professions stationed at a university hospital and a regional hospital: Physicians (n = 50), nurses (n = 94) and "others" (n =60, mainly social welfare officers and assistant nurses). Except for the personality dimension emotional stability which was measured using an established instrument, all measurement scales were operationalizations of codes and categories from the qualitative study (ten scales altogether). Four multiple regression analyses were performed with long-term positive and negative reactions in everyday acute and morally extremely taxing situations respectively as dependent variables. The outcome showed that long-term positive reactions covaried with much use of the coping strategies Emotional distancing and Constructive emotional confrontation and a perception of a well-functioning Formal social support. Regarding long-term negative reactions, higher age and little use of Emotional distancing accounted for much of the variance. Immediate emotional reactions also contributed significantly.

CONCLUSION
the results largely supported the model concepts and their assumed relationships.


Light Cashmere of Benetton blossoms in themed packaging: a new knitwear collection of precious cashmere and cotton, ideal for spring summer. Seven new ideas in women's knitwear together with two men's styles. All of which are available in sixteen different colours. Eight are decidedly bright and cool, while the others are classic, traditional shades. Mauve, wisteria blue, violet, cyclamen red, grass green, forget-me-not blue and lilium orange; as attractive as a fresh floral bouquet, perfect for her and – why not? – for him too. White, mottled grey, navy blue, beige and black are some of the shades in the classic palette. Just as there are many kinds of flowers, Light Cashmere of Benetton also offers a variety of styles to please all tastes. Simple round-necks or unusual vests; T-shirts with mini kimono sleeves or cropped, one-button cardigans. All in perfect United Colors of Benetton tradition, world leader in the game of "coloring" its clothes. The Light Cashmere of Benetton collection will be available from midFebruary 2006.


The current evaluation functions for heuristic planning are expensive to compute. In numerous domains these functions give good guidance on the solution, so it worths the computation effort. On the contrary, where this is not true, heuristics planners compute loads of useless node evaluations that make them scale-up poorly. In this paper we present a novel approach for boosting the scalability of heuristic planners based on automatically learning domain-specific search control knowledge in the form of relational decision trees. Particularly, we define the learning of planning search control as a standard classification process. Then, we use an off-the-shelf relational classifier to build domain-specific relational decision trees that capture the preferred action in the different planning contexts of a planning domain. These contexts are defined by the set of helpful actions extracted from the relaxed planning graph of a given state, the goals remaining to be achieved, and the static predicates of the planning task. Additionally, we show two methods for guiding the search of a heuristic planner with relational decision trees. The first one consists of using the resulting decision trees as an action policy. The second one consists of ordering the node evaluation of the Enforced Hill Climbing algorithm with the learned decision trees. Experiments over a variety of domains from the IPC test-benchmarks reveal that in both cases the use of the learned decision trees increase the number of problems solved together with a reduction of the time spent.


Objective To assess an internet-delivered intervention providing advice to manage respiratory tract infections (RTIs). Design Open pragmatic parallel group randomised controlled trial. Setting Primary care in UK. Participants Adults (aged ≥18) registered with general practitioners, recruited by postal invitation. Intervention Patients were randomised with computer-generated random numbers to access the intervention website (intervention) or not (control). The intervention tailored advice about the diagnosis, natural history, symptom management (particularly paracetamol/ibuprofen use) and when to seek further help. Outcomes Primary: National Health Service (NHS) contacts for those reporting RTIs from monthly online questionnaires for 20 weeks. Secondary: hospitalisations; symptom duration/severity. Results 3044 participants were recruited. 852 in the intervention group and 920 in the control group reported 1 or more RTIs, among whom there was a modest increase in NHS direct contacts in the intervention group (intervention 37/1574 (2.4%) versus control 20/1661 (1.2%); multivariate risk ratio (RR) 2.25 (95% CI 1.00 to 5.07, p=0.048)). Conversely, reduced contact with doctors occurred (239/1574 (15.2%) vs 304/1664 (18.3%); RR 0.71, 0.52 to 0.98, p=0.037). Reduction in contacts occurred despite slightly longer illness duration (11.3 days vs 10.7 days, respectively; multivariate estimate 0.60 days longer (−0.15 to 1.36, p=0.118) and more days of illness rated moderately bad or worse illness (0.52 days; 0.06 to 0.97, p=0.026). The estimate of slower symptom resolution in the intervention group was attenuated when controlling for whether individuals had used web pages which advocated ibuprofen use (length of illness 0.22 days, −0.51 to 0.95, p=0.551; moderately bad or worse symptoms 0.36 days, −0.08 to 0.80, p=0.105). There was no evidence of increased hospitalisations (risk ratio 0.25; 0.05 to 1.12; p=0.069). Conclusions An internet-delivered intervention for the self-management of RTIs modifies help-seeking behaviour, and does not result in more hospital admissions due to delayed help seeking. Advising the use of ibuprofen may not be helpful. Trial registration number ISRCTN91518452.


Calls for breakthroughs in science and technology have never been louder, and yet the demand for innovation is made more challenging by public and political misconceptions surrounding where, when, and how it happens. Professor Andrew Hargadon uses historical research to advance our current understanding of the innovation process. He discussed the social and technical context in which electric light, and the modern electric power infrastructure, were born and considers its implications for managing innovation in science and technology today.


Reviewing the basics of mean–variance portfolio optimization and the capital asset pricing model, this paper discusses the plausibility of some of the underlying assumptions. It is pointed out that a positive in-sample relationship between the expected return of an asset and its covariance with the market portfolio can be a statistical artifact because it can be explained without using any economic arguments. In an empirical analysis of two sets of assets consisting of individual stocks and indices, respectively, no indication of any out-of-sample relationship is found. In the absence of such a relationship or any other additional information about the expected returns, simple averages of past returns must be used as input for portfolio-optimization procedures. Empirical evidence is presented which suggests that portfolio optimization is of little practical value in this case and, in addition, that the use of robust estimators can hardly make any difference. JEL classification numbers: C58, G11, G17


Evaluating the Performance of Computational Approaches for Identifying Critical Sites in Protein-coding DNA Sequences Matthew L. Bendall Department of Biology, BYU Master of Science The ability to link a particular phenotype to its causative genotype is one of the most challenging objectives for biological research. Although the genetic code provides an explicit formula for determining the sequence of amino acid phenotypes produced by a given nucleotide sequence, identifying specific residues that are functionally important remains problematic. Many computational approaches have been developed that use patterns observed in DNA sequences to identify these critical sites. However, very few research studies have used empirical data to test whether these approaches are truly able to identify sites of interest. In most empirical studies, the actual protein function and selective pressures are unknown; thus it is difficult to assess whether computational approaches are correctly identifying critical sites. Here I present two studies that utilize well-characterized empirical systems to evaluate and compare the performance of several computational approaches. In both cases, the proteins under study have specific amino acid substitutions that are confirmed to alter protein function and expected to be constrained by natural selection. In chapter 2, I examine functional variants in angiopoietin-like protein 4 (ANGPTL4), a protein involved in regulating plasma triglyceride levels; loss-of-function variants in this gene are believed to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease. I apply several computational approaches to identify functional variants, including phylogenetic approaches for detecting positive selection. In chapter 3, I investigate the emergence of drug-resistance in HIV-1 during the course of antiretroviral drug therapy. I compare the performance of eight selection detection methods in identifying drug-resistant mutations in 109 intrapatient datasets with HIV-1 sequences isolated at multiple timepoints throughout drug treatment. It is critical that we develop methods to detect positively selected sites. The ability to detect these sites in silico, without the need for expensive and time consuming assays, would be invaluable to researchers in evolutionary biology, human genetics, and medicine. Through the research presented in this thesis, I hope to provide insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches, thereby facilitating future research towards the development and improvement of evolutionary models.


Introduction A strategic business alliance (SBA) can be defined as a long term cooperative business agreement between two or more companies to pool, exchange and/or integrate specified company resources for achieving some agreed objectives. This broad definition embodies a vast array of corporate linkage arrangements ranging from almost an arm's length vendor-customer relationship to an affiliation just short of a complete merger. These include joint ventures, cross licensing, reciprocal distribution and promotion arrangements, technology swaps, information exchange agreements, collaborative research programs, sharing of complementary assets, and cooperative product development and servicing contracts. Irrespective of the form, all SBAs must possess: (a) a business objective, (b) a long term agreement indicating a continuous relationship, (c) distinct and identifiable non-equity contributions by both parties, and (d) active participation and interaction in the management of the alliance by both parties. Cooperation between companies in the form of joint ventures and distribution agreements have existed for many years, but today's SBAs portray something qualitatively very different. While traditional corporate linkages tend to take place in areas peripheral to the partner companies' core skills and competitive strength and are formed mostly by non-competing companies, SBAs are often formed by hither-to rivalling companies in order to enhance their respective capabilities and competitive positions in non-competing lines of operations or markets. Yet, at the same time, they may face each other as competitors in different lines of operations or markets. Notable examples are the alliances formed by General Motors and Toyota, Siemens and Philips, Canon and Kodak, Thomson and JVC, Apple and Canon, Honeywell and NEC, Texas Instruments and Hitachi, and most recently, I.B.M. and Apple, and Northern Telecom and Motorola. But apart from these alliances between industry giants, there are also thousands of alliances between companies of different sizes and strengths. While one company may enter into an alliance with another company in search for entrepreneurial capabilities and market niches, the latter may be looking to the former as a source for venture capital and research support for innovative ideas. SBAs have grown exponentially in number in recent years, and are now a very popular instrument for global market competition. In a Survey Research International survey on 419 U.S. firms in 1990, SBAs were used by over half (51.2%) of the companies for world wide expansion. This proportion exceeded by a significant margin those of the other modes such as acquisitions (36.3%), direct exporting (34.8%), new product introduction (34.2%) and start-up (18.8%). In the 1980s, U.S. companies formed over 2,000 alliances with European companies alone (Kraar 1989). While the proliferation of SBAs in recent years has definitely been enhanced by improved communication technology linking geographically dispersed companies, the underlying driving force is unquestionably the realization of their necessity and benefits. The world market of today is characterised by a move towards globalization, escalating capital requirements for research and development, increased sophistication of new products and rapid technological obsolescence which shortens the product life cycle. These trends are forcing companies to reexamine the feasibility and wisdom of traditional market development methods and market positioning strategies. Inevitably, they come to realize that no matter how strong and resourceful is a company, there is no way it can have competitive advantage in each and every step of the value added process in all national markets, nor can it maintain a cutting edge in all the different critical technologies required for the development, production and marketing of today's sophisticated products. There are tremendous and often prohibitive costs, risks and time required to set up new research, manufacturing and distribution facilities. …


Mice carrying any one of three murine tumors in their right hind foot pad were incapable of eliminating an inoculum of the bacterial parasite Listeria monocytogenes from the progressive tumor. In contrast, they were as capable as control mice in efficiently eliminating the organism from their contralateral tumor-free foot pad, and from their lymph nodes and livers. The results serve to show, therefore, that conditions within an established tumor are not only antagonistic to the expression of concomitant anti-tumor immunity, but that they are also antagonistic to the expression of T-cell-mediated anti-bacterial immunity. The possibility was discussed that the tumor contains factors that act pharmacologically to locally suppress the function of sensitized T cells and activated macrophages.


In 1990 the highest court in the land held, in Administrator, Transvaal, and Another v Zenzile and Others, that the principles of administrative law provide public servants with a platform to challenge a decision terminating their employment. If a dismissed public servant could show that the decision was procedurally unfair or substantively unjustified, the decision would be reversed and, as an axiomatic consequence of such a finding, the employee would be reinstated with retrospective effect (that is, with full back-pay).


The supposedly commercial products of the culture industry are increasingly facing sales difficulties because growing numbers of self-assertive consumers are downloading products at will, thus no longer following the given rules of the market. Not only multinational record companies, but also representatives of 'high' culture are adamant in their criticism of the current 'culture for free' tendency. The latter can hardly be characterized as profit-oriented – nor would they describe themselves that way – but they contend that bootleg copies are a threat to their livelihood, and that the culture of piracy paves the way for harebrained mass products. The discussion encompasses copyright laws and the ways consumers are appropriating cultural products as well as the question whether or not these tendencies will fundamentally change the production of culture. Such debates are charged with cultural criticism, but in essence of economic nature. In addition, the cultural sector is faced with the accusation of waning societal relevance. In the arts and features sections of newspapers and magazines, journalists and essayists bemoan that pop culture is no longer 'the voice and mirror of political and social change, like twenty or thirty years ago'. Although popular culture may have evolved from its original return and distribution strategies as well as its constitutive (at least for some) connection to youth and protest movements, a medially conveyed, market-driven culture that is accessible to a wide audience remains a characteristic feature of modern societies and their self-perceptions.


Abstract
 This article presents the characteristics of liverworts of snowbeds of the entire Tatra Mountains (Western Carpathians) area based upon studies conducted during 2002–2014. The studies concerned four groups of snowbeds (located on covering and rock slopes) distinguished by geomorphologic criteria. The list of liverworts is composed of 38 species of various degrees of linkage to the studied habitats. The species exclusive to the Tatra Mts snowbeds (i.e., not growing in other habitats) include Marsupella condensata, M. apiculata, and Nardia breidleri. The most frequent and most abundant include Anthelia juratzkana, Fuscocephaloziopsis (= Pleurocladula) albescens, and Pseudolophozia (= Lophozia) sudetica. Based upon all available data published from 1814–2014 as well as personal studies (more than 18000 records), the degree of endangerment of snowbed liverworts in the Tatra Mts was determined according to IUCN criteria. New localities are presented for snowbed liverworts thus far considered very rare and previously reported in the Tatra Mts in few localities only (e.g., Marsupella condensata, M. boeckii, Nardia breidleri, and Moerckia blyttii), which significantly changes the view of their rarity in the Tatra Mts.


Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) was found by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to be not fully systemic in naturally infected kava (Piper methysticum) plants in Fiji. Twenty-six of 48 samples (54%) from various tissues of three recently infected plants were CMV-positive compared with 7/51 samples (14%) from three long-term infections (plants affected by dieback for more than 1 year). The virus was also found to have a limited ability to move into newly formed stems. CMV was detected in only 2/23 samples taken from re-growth stems arising from known CMV infected/dieback affected plants. Mechanical inoculation experiments conducted in Fiji indicate that the known kava intercrop plants banana (Musa spp.), pineapple (Ananas comosus), peanut (Arachis hypogaea) and the common weed Mikania micrantha are potential hosts for a dieback-causing strain of CMV. It was not possible to transmit the virus mechanically to the common kava intercrop plants taro (Colocasia esculenta), Xanthosoma sp., sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), yam (Dioscorea alata), papaya (Carica papaya) or the weed Momordica charantia. Implications of the results of this research on a possible integrated disease management strategy are discussed.


A Lust for Life Anxious to undress, these dangerous dolls ply their womanly wares to get whatever they want: men, power and sex - lots of sex. Yet to quench their fiery desires they crave more, much more. See, even sultry sinners long for love.Bad Girls Need Love Too is a frolicking celebration of pulp fiction floozies doomed to keep looking for love in all the wrong places. Thankfully, repeating the same mistake over and over again has never been more fun, or outrageous.For more about these hard-boiled vixens, visit BadGirlsNeedLove2.com.


School based activity, involving participative observation and inquiry can help in discovering, creating and supporting creative teaching.

In this chapter, I argue that creative practices have not only been marginalised by the current educational emphasis on the bureaucratic aspects of teaching and learning but that they have also been made invisible by teachers' isolated practices, and their lack of interpretive frame, or perspectives, to appreciate each other's creativity. I suggest that there are opportunities within new supervisory, collaborative, mentoring and professional development practices for teachers to recover the acknowledgement of their artistry. Through the case study of a recent research project in which I was involved, I introduce a model of collaborative professional development in which teachers support one another in reflecting back, reflecting on and developing their classroom practice.

I suggest four interpretive frames on practice, which emerged through this project, and explore conversational stategies which formed part of the enquiry, with the intention that other teachers may find these useful. Though drawn from research in primary schools it is hoped that teachers across the 3-13 age range will find it of relevance.


In this study, the feasibility of using coagulation, flocculation, and sedimentation (CF-S) for advanced treatment of secondary effluent released from the Yazd Intermittent Cycle Extended Aeration System was investigated. Four coagulants including ferric chloride (FeCl3), polyaluminum chloride (PAC), ferrous sulfate (FeSo4), and potassium ferrate (K2FeSo4) along with Gflog C-150 as flocculant polymer were used. In this study, returned chemical sludge was considered as a modification. Preliminary CF-S processes showed that FeSO4 and K2FeO4 had low removal efficiencies. Thus, these two coagulants were abandoned and CF-S processes were continued only with PAC and FeCL3 coagulants which had higher efficiencies in the removal of BOD5, COD, TSS, and turbidity. Removal efficiency was higher when half of the chemical producing sludge was returned as compared with using both coagulants simultaneously along with 2 mg L−1 of C-150 as flocculant. In the optimum dosage, when half of PAC and FeCL3 sludge were returned, the volume of produced sludge was reduced by 40% and 28%, respectively, as compared without returned sludge. For the PAC coagulant in the optimum dosage with half of the sludge returned, all 2012 EPA standards of irrigation were met for both 'processed and non-processed type' agricultural crops.


Title of Thesis: Microwave Treatment of Hazardous Wastes: "Chemical Fixation" of Insoluble, Non-Volatite Chemically Non-Reactive Organics in Soil Naihong Zhu: Master of Science, 1991 Thesis Directed By: Leonard Dauerman, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Environmental Science Microwave treatment of hazardous wastes like dioxin-contaminated soil potentially fills a great need for a remediation technology which potentially can be applied insitu: the EPA has concluded from a risk assessment study that it is the excavation and transportation of such wastes that poses the greatest risk. Studies have been carried out on a surrogate for dioxin, namely, 9,10-anthraquinone because it has similar chemical and physical properties but it is not toxic. It was found in microwave treatment studies that, at temperatures attainable in-situ, anthraquinone became non-extractable. A model was proposed which postulated that as water was removed from soil aggregates, anthraquinone adsorbed directly on the humus and clay fractions, and then reacted chemically. This led to spectroscopic studies to determine directly whether or not anthraquinone did undergo a chemical reaction. Those studies were carried out using DRIFT (diffuse reflectance Fourier transform spectroscopy) and ATR/FTIR (horizontal attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform spectroscopy). Bands shifts and formation suggestive of possible chemical reactions were found after microwave treatment of anthraquinone adsorbed on humus and kaolin clay, respectively. MICROWAVE TREATMENT OF HAZARDOUS WASTES: ,"CHEMICAL FIXATION' OF INSOLUBLE, NON-VOLATILE, CHEMICALLY NON-REACTIVE ORGANICS IN SOIL


The effects of oligopeptide insertions on the adsorption of the protein ZZ, where Z is the IgG binding domain of staphylococcal Protein A, was investigated by in situ ellipsometry. In particular, the interplay between hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions as driving force for adsorption was investigated by studying the effects of oligopeptide insertions of the type Tn((AlaTrpTrpPro)n), Nn((AlaTrpTrpAspPro)n), and Pn((AlaTrpTrpLysPro)n) on the adsorption at silica, methylated silica, and diaminocyclohexane (DACH) plasma polymer surfaces. For comparison, the adsorption of the inserted peptide stretches was also investigated. It was found that the adsorption of all the peptides increases with the molecular weight at methylated silica. At silica, only the Pn peptides were found to adsorb. The net negatively charged proteins modified through peptide insertions did not adsorb at the hydrophilic and negatively charged silica, irrespective of the peptide insertion, whereas an extensive adsorption was found for the positively charged DACH surface for all the proteins investigated. For hydrophobic and negatively charged methylated silica, on the other hand, the peptide insertions were found to have a major influence on the protein interfacial behavior, and the adsorption followed the peptide stretch charge, thus increasing in the order ZZNn < ZZTn < ZZPn. These effects are discussed in terms of the relative importance of hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions as driving force for the adsorption. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.


&NA; This study aimed to investigate the energy dependence and the angular dependence of commercially available optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) point dosimeters in the mammography energy range. The energy dependence was evaluated to calculate calibration factors (CFs). The half‐value layer range was 0.31–0.60 mmAl (Mo/Mo 22–28 kV, Mo/Rh 28–32 kV, and W/Rh 30–34 kV at 2‐kV intervals). Mo/Rh 28 kV was the reference condition. Angular dependence was tested by rotating the X‐ray tube from −90° to 90° in 30° increments, and signal counts from angled nanoDots were normalized to the 0° signal counts. Angular dependence was compared with three tube voltage and target/filter combinations (Mo/Mo 26 kV, Mo/Rh 28 kV and W/Rh 32 kV). The CFs of energy dependence were 0.94–1.06. In Mo/Mo 26–28 kV and Mo/Rh 28–32 kV, the range of CF was 0.99–1.01, which was very similar. For angular dependence, the most deteriorated normalized values (Mo/Mo, 0.37; Mo/Rh, 0.43; and W/Rh, 0.58) were observed when the X‐ray tube was rotated at a 90° angle, compared to 0°. The most angular dependences of ± 30°, 60°, and 90° decreased by approximately 4%, 14%, and 63% respectively. The mean deteriorated measurement 30° intervals from 0° to ± 30° was 2%, from ± 30° to ± 60° was 8%, and from ± 60° to ± 90° was 40%. The range of energy dependence in typical mammography energy range was not as much as that in general radiography and computed tomography. For accurate measurement using nanoDot, the tilt needs to be under 30°.


INTRODUCTION
Countermeasures to prevent or partially offset the negative physiologic changes that are caused by the effects of microgravity play an important role in supporting the performance of crewmembers in flight and their safe return to Earth. Research conducted in Russia on the orbital stations Salyut and Mir, as well as simulation experiments on the ground, have demonstrated that changes that occur during extended spaceflight in various physiologic systems can be prevented or significantly decreased by using countermeasures. Hardware and techniques used on the ISS have been substantially improved to reflect the experience of previous extended missions on Russian orbital stations. Countermeasures used during early ISS missions consisted of the U.S. treadmill (TVIS), cycle ergometer (ВБ-3), a set of resistance bands, a postural muscle loading suit (Penguin-3), electrical stimulator (Tonus-3), compression thigh cuffs (Braslet-М), a lower body negative pressure (LBNP) suit (Chibis), a lower body g-loading suit (Kentavr), and water/salt supplements. These countermeasures are described in this article.


In recent decades, the Supreme Court has lost its ability to base its legitimacy solely on its legal expertise yet it has gained public support as a new source to legitimize its authority. Due to growing public understanding that legal expertise does not award the Court with determinate answers, the Court has partly lost expertise as a source of legitimacy. The idea that judges decide salient cases based on their political preferences has become part of common sense and has eroded the Court's image as an expert in the public mind. On the other hand, as a result of the invention of scientific public opinion polls and their current centrality in the public mind, the Court has now available a new source of legitimacy. Thanks to public opinion polls that measure public support for the Court, the Court for the first time in its history, has now an independent and public metric demonstrating its public support. The monopoly elected institutions had on claiming to hold public mandate has been broken. As a result of these changes as well as the lessons the Court took from the Lochner decisional line and Brown, an important shift in the political balance of power and subsequently in the Rehnquist Court's understanding of its own sources of legitimacy occurred.


Nanowires (NWs) have the potential for a wide range of new optoelectronic applications. For example, light-emitting diodes that span over the whole visible spectrum are currently being developed from NWs to overcome the well known green gap problem. However, due to their small size, NW devices exhibit special properties that complicate their analysis, characterization, and further development. In this paper, we develop a full optoelectronic simulation tool for NW array light emitters accounting for carrier transport and wave-optical emission enhancement (EE), and we use the model to simulate InGaAs/GaAs NW array light emitters with different geometries and temperatures. Our results show that NW arrays emit light preferentially to certain angles depending on the NW diameter and temperature, encouraging temperature- and angle-resolved measurements of NW array light emission. On the other hand, based on our results both the EE and light extraction efficiency can easily change by at least a factor of two between room temperature and 77 K, complicating the characterization of NW light emitters if conventional methods are used. Finally, simulations accounting for surface recombination emphasize its major effect on the device performance. For example, a surface recombination velocity of 104 cm s−1 reported earlier for bare InGaAs surfaces results in internal quantum efficiencies less than 30% for small-diameter NWs even at the temperature of 30 K. This highlights that core–shell structures or high-quality passivation techniques are eventually needed to achieve efficient NW-based light emitters.


Fetch performance is a very important factor because it effectively limits the overall processor performance. However there is little performance advantage in increasing front-end performance beyond what the back-end can consume. For each processor design, the target is to build the best possible fetch engine for the required performance level. A fetch engine will be better if it provides better performance, but also if it takes fewer resources, requires less chip area, or consumes less power. In this paper we propose a novel fetch architecture based on the execution of long streams of sequential instructions, taking maximum advantage of code layout optimizations. We describe our architecture in detail, and show that it requires less complexity and resources than other high performance fetch architectures like the trace cache, while providing a high fetch performance suitable for wide-issue superscalar processors. Our results show that using our fetch architecture and code layout optimizations obtains 10% higher performance than the EV8 fetch architecture, and 4% higher than the FTB architecture using state-of-the-art branch predictors, while being only 1.5% slower than the trace cache. Even in the absence of code layout optimizations, fetching instruction streams is still 10% faster than the EV8, and only 4% slower than the trace cache. Fetching instruction streams effectively exploits the special characteristics of layout optimized codes to provide a high fetch performance, close to that of a trace cache, but has a much lower cost and complexity, similar to that of a basic block architecture.


Upon Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), neo-classical trade theory assumed, first, that it had the greatest potential for higher rates of growth, productivity and overall welfare gains due to its relatively underdeveloped status; and second, that Mexico's adjustment to an integrated, liberal economy would be the most painful but also the most beneficial. It was envisioned that the blending of Mexico's endowment factors - cheap labour, natural resources, and proximity to the US market - with the abundant capital and advanced technology of Canada and the US would maximize on NAFTA's competitive potential over the long-term. However, these expectations have yet to fully materialize. This paper reviews the convergence/divergence debate with regard to NAFTA and Mexico, and analyzes the empirical data that have been used to tout both the benefits and the costs of asymmetrical integration. In light of the standstill in Mexico's per capita growth since 2001, this paper concludes with a critique of the potential role of NAFTA as a development tool and argues that the steep regional asymmetries call for a more proactive continental strategy.


Lowering of the detection limit of ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) as well as their simple construction, low production cost and low power requirements make ISEs an ideal candidate for detector systems that can be integrated into autonomous, deployable sensing devices. Routine analysis and early warning systems are applications that first spring to mind, however great added value can be obtained by integration of many such devices into a wireless sensing network.
In this work we describe our work towards the miniaturization of ISEs and their integration of with all-solid-state reference electrode into an all-solid-state sensor with a view of integration in autonomous, deployable sensing device. This work has two avenues: 1) development of a platform that can house all-solid-state ISEs and reference electrodes and 2) development of electronic circuitry for data acquisition and wireless transmission of the data. The latter utilizes novel, in-house made motes (a node in a wireless sensor network that is capable of performing some processing, gathering sensory information and communicating with other connected nodes in the network) that operate at lower frequency and therefore consume lower power then other, commercially available ones. In addition, they are easier to program which bridges the gap of communication between chemists and computer scientists.
Intensification of the work in producing all-solid-state reference electrodes has enabled us to work on development of a platform that houses all-solid-state ISEs and reference electrode. We will here describe our progress in this avenue of our research.


Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a complex clinical condition characterized by hyperandrogenism and chronic oligo/anovulation. Infrequent ovulation and metabolic alterations in women with PCOS are associated with subfertility and probably increased miscarriage rates compared with normal fertile women. The overall risk of developing type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) is three- to sevenfold higher in PCOS women, and the onset of glucose intolerance seems to occur at an earlier age than in healthy controls. Women with PCOS also have several risk factors for cardiovascular disease, although it is unclear whether they actually experience more cardiovascular events than other women. Very few studies assessing the long-term reproductive and metabolic consequences in older women with previously confirmed PCOS have been conducted. In this long-term follow-up of women with PCOS, 84 women with a diagnosis of PCOS between 1987 and 1995 and age at the follow-up > 35 years and an age-matched population-based group of control women participated. Data on reproductive outcome, ovarian reserve, endothelial function, insulin sensitivity and beta-cell function were collected. According to our results most women with PCOS had given birth and the rate of spontaneous pregnancies was relatively high. The rate of miscarriages was not increased in PCOS patients and the ultrasound findings together with increased levels of anti-mullerian hormone suggested that their ovarian reserve is superior to women of similar age. PCOS women displayed signs of endothelial dysfunction, but this was largely due to the increased prevalence of independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as increased BMI, triglycerides and blood pressures. IGT and type 2 diabetes occurred more often in PCOS women. Free androgen levels and beta-cell function decreased over time whereas insulin sensitivity remained unchanged. Obesity at young age and progressive weight-gain rendered them more prone to be insulin resistant at the follow-up. Beta-cell function was increased in PCOS women in comparison with control subjects but declined over time. Independent of PCOS phenotype at the index assessment and persistence of PCOS symptoms at the follow-up investigation, premenopausal women with PCOS had lower insulin sensitivity and increased beta cell function in comparison with control subjects. Conclusion: The long-term reproductive outcomes of PCOS are similar compared to women with normal ovaries. Although symptoms and androgen levels are normalized over time, women with PCOS continue to display reduced insulin sensitivity and increased beta-cell function and they also have an increased risk of IGT and type 2 diabetes.


INTRODUCTION Neural stem cells (NSCs) proliferate and generate new neurons throughout the lifetime in neurogenic areas of the adult brain. Identifying microenvironmental cues that tightly control their self-renewal, proliferation and lineage decisions is crucial for the development of novel therapies in regenerative medicine. Among key diffusible factors, Sonic hedgehog (Shh) is thought to be involved in adult NSC maintenance and proliferation control (The canonical Wnt pathway has also proven to be an important regulator of proliferation and neurogenesis in adult hippocampal or subventricular zones (Adachi et al., 2007; Kuwabara et al., 2009; Lie et al., 2005). Thus, both signalling pathways seem to share a mitogenic function within these neurogenic niches of the adult nervous system. However, whether the two pathways establish functional interactions in this context has not been addressed. To date, this issue has only been investigated during embryonic development. A recent study reported that these pathways cooperate in the developing spinal cord to coordinately regulate neural cell cycle progression (Alvarez-Medina et al., 2009). This clearly contrasts with the situation described in the midbrain in which Shh repression by Wnt signalling is required for floor plate neurogenesis (Joksimovic et al., 2009). Therefore, despite the vast literature on Wnt and Hedgehog mitogenic effects, the nature of their interactions is difficult to predict and clearly deserves further investigation.


This study extends a recently-developed [1] cellular automata (CA) elastodynamic modeling approach to arbitrary two-dimensional geometries through development of a rule set appropriate for triangular cells. The approach is fully object-oriented (OO) and exploits OO conventions to produce compact, general, and easily-extended CA classes. Meshes composed of triangular cells allow the elastodynamic response of arbitrary two-dimensional geometries to be computed accurately and efficiently. As in the previous rectangular CA method, each cell represents a state machine which updates in a stepped-manner using a local "bottom-up" rule set and state input from neighboring cells. The approach avoids the need to develop partial differential equations and the complexity therein. Several advantages result from the method's discrete, local and object-oriented nature, including the ability to compute on a massively-parallel basis and to easily add or subtract cells in a multi-resolution manner. The extended approach is used to generate the elastodynamic responses of a variety of general geometries and loading cases (Dirichlet and Neumann), which are compared to previous results and/or comparison results generated using the commercial finite element code, COMSOL. These include harmonic interior plate loading, uniform boundary traction, and ramped boundary displacement. Favorable results are reported in all cases, with the CA approach requiring fewer degrees of freedom to achieve similar accuracy, and considerably less code development.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


Using spreadsheets, students could perform probability experiments, illustrate the outcomes, experience, understand, and represent mathematics with motivation in an inspirational manner. Although GeoGebra Dynamic Software has been mostly used with geometry and algebra explorations, its recently improved statistics feature in Version 4 provides students and teachers with more opportunities for probability and statistics investigations. The lesson presented in this article emphasizes the use of spreadsheets to record the outcomes of probability experiments as a method for delivering mathematical ideas, which support the teaching of sampling with / without replacement in the context of urn problem.


The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is seen as offering a credible platform for evaluating the pricing policies for pharmaceutical products and devices. Over the past few years ICER has presented a stream of reports, many of which have recommended substantial price discounts where the results of a lifetime cost-per-QALY modeling suggests they are out of line with notional willingness to pay thresholds and arbitrary budget constraints. At the same time, there have been growing concerns over the lack of transparency in the ICER value assessment process, focusing in particular on the refusal by ICER to allow access to its value assessment modeling framework. The purpose of this brief commentary is to point out that the position taken by ICER over model access is not defensible; the arguments given are specious. This ongoing refusal undercuts the ICER claim to be independent and the credibility of ICER recommendations for price discounting. The solution is for ICER to commit to a transparent process of value assessment, allowing in particular access to its models and for the ICER model to be subject to an independent assessment. At the same time, manufacturers and other stakeholders should have access to the model with the opportunity to challenge the model through developing model frameworks which they feel better represent product value. This advocacy, it should be noted, does not reflect acceptance of the ICER lifetime cost-per-QALY value assessment framework. Health care decision makers would be better served by a value assessment framework that provided short-term credible, evaluable and replicable claims, facilitating meaningful feedback to decision makers, and not on the construction of simulated imaginary worlds.
Conflict of Interest: None

Type: Commentary


ABSTRACT The fabric, mineralogy, and geochemistry of a 0.5-1.5 cm-thick Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary claystone parting from eastern Montana indicate that certain of its features are the result of contemporaneous pedogenesis. Although the two layers composing the parting show general similarities in moldic porosity and in major element compositions, the upper layer is dominantly composed of 2:1 clay minerals (smectite), while the lower layer is dominated by a 1:1 clay mineral (halloysite and/or poorly crystalline kaolinite). Moreover, the upper layer is richer in mobile and immobile trace elements than is the lower layer. The dominant fabric element of the 2:1 claystone is laminations with interbedded, horizontally aligned organic debris. This is interpreted as a primary depositional fabric with little diagenetic alteration. Extremely uncommon root traces penetrate the unit. In contrast, the 1:1 claystone is characterized by a complex arrangement of discrete mineral and organic components which are rounded or fragmented, and distributed throughout a microporous matrix. This fabric implies turbation. Pedogenic features, including root traces, void coatings, and void hypo-coatings of ferric oxyhydroxides and clays, are more abundant in the 1:1 layer than in the 2:1 layer. Subaerial weathering of the 1:1 claystone layer is therefore suggested. The Montana K/T boundary claystone parting is thus interpreted as preserving a diastem (i.e., micro-disconformity) between the 2:1 and 1:1 claystone layers. The temporal separation between these two layers, indicated by the contrast in the nature and arrangement of pedogenic features as well as by the textural, mineralogical, and geochemical distinctness of the two layers, militates against the two layers of the parting resulting from the same event. In this respect, our conclusions differ from those of previous workers.


IMPORTANCE
Late-onset Alzheimer disease (AD), the most common form of dementia, places a large burden on families and society. Although epidemiological and clinical evidence suggests a relationship between inflammation and AD, their relationship is not well understood and could have implications for treatment and prevention strategies.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether a subset of genes involved with increased risk of inflammation are also associated with increased risk for AD.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
In a genetic epidemiology study conducted in July 2015, we systematically investigated genetic overlap between AD (International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project stage 1) and Crohn disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, and psoriasis using summary data from genome-wide association studies at multiple academic clinical research centers. P values and odds ratios from genome-wide association studies of more than 100 000 individuals were from previous comparisons of patients vs respective control cohorts. Diagnosis for each disorder was previously established for the parent study using consensus criteria.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The primary outcome was the pleiotropic (conjunction) false discovery rate P value. Follow-up for candidate variants included neuritic plaque and neurofibrillary tangle pathology; longitudinal Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale scores as a measure of cognitive dysfunction (Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative); and gene expression in AD vs control brains (Gene Expression Omnibus data).

RESULTS
Eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms (false discovery rate P < .05) were associated with both AD and immune-mediated diseases. Of these, rs2516049 (closest gene HLA-DRB5; conjunction false discovery rate P = .04 for AD and psoriasis, 5.37 × 10-5 for AD, and 6.03 × 10-15 for psoriasis) and rs12570088 (closest gene IPMK; conjunction false discovery rate P = .009 for AD and Crohn disease, P = 5.73 × 10-6 for AD, and 6.57 × 10-5 for Crohn disease) demonstrated the same direction of allelic effect between AD and the immune-mediated diseases. Both rs2516049 and rs12570088 were significantly associated with neurofibrillary tangle pathology (P = .01352 and .03151, respectively); rs2516049 additionally correlated with longitudinal decline on Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale scores (β [SE], 0.405 [0.190]; P = .03). Regarding gene expression, HLA-DRA and IPMK transcript expression was significantly altered in AD brains compared with control brains (HLA-DRA: β [SE], 0.155 [0.024]; P = 1.97 × 10-10; IPMK: β [SE], -0.096 [0.013]; P = 7.57 × 10-13).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Our findings demonstrate genetic overlap between AD and immune-mediated diseases and suggest that immune system processes influence AD pathogenesis and progression.


Using a narratological synchronic reading, this article argues that Reuben and Judah are contrastively juxtaposed in their rhetoric and intentions in Genesis 37. Reuben considers the brothers' plot a criminal act and bans both their internal intentions and their external evildoings against Joseph, whereas Judah repeatedly forbids them from killing Joseph, their own brother, posing a moral argument against fratricide. Problematically, however, he permits another evildoing, the sale of their own brother. The contrastive parallel of the two brothers in Genesis 37 does not support the classic documentary hypothesis, nor the supplementary expansion in favour of Judah. Rather, Judah's problematic dealings with his own brother harkens to the practice of selling of own "flesh" and "kindred" into slavery in the post-exilic period. Genesis 37 in its present position provides a natural link to Genesis 38, as both chapters are identical in their negative depiction of Judah.


Abstract This article examines the nature of disclosure standards, under the assumption that (i) standards preferred by more firms are collectively chosen and (ii) privately informed firms prefer standards that increase market perceptions about the value of their assets. A standard is stable if it is preferred by a large enough super-majority of firms over any other standards. Absent any restriction on possible standards, only unanimity would make a standard stable. By contrast, when requiring standards that classify news from best to worst, there is at most a single stable standard, and it must be full disclosure. For a large class of distributions over valuations, the required super-majority is about two-thirds, close to the majority required in many standard-setting boards. Value distributions with heavy tails, such as news that contains extreme risks, require higher super-majorities to be stable. These insights are robust to settings in which the information is used in decision-making.


The field of information technology continues to impact more organizations worldwide as new technologies and applications are implemented to strengthen everyday business processes. Individuals within these organizations continue to face the challenge of developing and implementing the latest innovative programs that successfully apply information technology applications within various types and sizes of companies and businesses. "Emerging Trends and Challenges in Information Technology Management" presents the latest issues surrounding the management of information technology in organizations, and explains how these issues are addressed and used for the benefit of practitioners and educators around the world. These proceedings from the 17th Annual Information Resources Management Association (IRMA) International Conference provide knowledge related to the latest trends and challenges dealing with all aspects of information technology applications and management. Topics presented within the proceedings include: distance learning technologies, data warehousing and mining, information quality management, geographic information systems, knowledge management, information technology education, and many more. "Emerging Trends and Challenges in Information Technology Management" includes the latest research in the area of IT utilization and management, and supports those involved in the research and teaching of information technology aspects worldwide.


We present a human-centric method to sample and synthesize 3D room layouts and 2D images thereof, to obtain large-scale 2D/3D image data with the perfect per-pixel ground truth. An attributed spatial And-Or graph (S-AOG) is proposed to represent indoor scenes. The S-AOG is a probabilistic grammar model, in which the terminal nodes are object entities including room, furniture, and supported objects. Human contexts as contextual relations are encoded by Markov Random Fields (MRF) on the terminal nodes. We learn the distributions from an indoor scene dataset and sample new layouts using Monte Carlo Markov Chain. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can robustly sample a large variety of realistic room layouts based on three criteria: (i) visual realism comparing to a state-of-the-art room arrangement method, (ii) accuracy of the affordance maps with respect to ground-truth, and (ii) the functionality and naturalness of synthesized rooms evaluated by human subjects.


The total ozone data over Europe are available for only few ground-based stations in the pre-satellite era disallowing examination of the spatial trend variability over the whole continent. A need of having gridded ozone data for a trend analysis and input to radiative transfer models stimulated a reconstruction of the daily ozone values since January 1950. Description of the reconstruction model and its validation were a subject of our previous paper. The data base used was built within the objectives of the COST action 726 "Long-term changes and climatology of UV radiation over Europe". Here we focus on trend analyses. The long-term variability of total ozone is discussed using results of a flexible trend model applied to the reconstructed total ozone data for the period 1950–2004. The trend pattern, which comprises both anthropogenic and "natural" component, is not a priori assumed but it comes from a smooth curve fit to the zonal monthly means and monthly grid values. The ozone long-term changes are calculated separately for cold (October–next year April) and warm (May–September) seasons. The confidence intervals for the estimated ozone changes are derived by the block bootstrapping. The statistically significant negative trends are found almost over the whole Europe only in the period 1985–1994. Negative trends up to −3% per decade appeared over small areas in earlier periods when the anthropogenic forcing on the ozone layer was weak . The statistically positive trends are found only during warm seasons 1995–2004 over Svalbard archipelago. The reduction of ozone level in 2004 relative to that before the satellite era is not dramatic, i.e., up to ~−5% and ~−3.5% in the cold and warm subperiod, respectively. Present ozone level is still depleted over many popular resorts in southern Europe and northern Africa. For high latitude regions the trend overturning could be inferred in last decade (1995–2004) as the ozone depleted areas are not found there in 2004 in spite of substantial ozone depletion in the period 1985–1994.


Crowdsourcing Creativity: Generating and Combining Ideas using Crowds Jin Bao Stevens Institute of Technology Yasuaki Sakamoto Stevens Institute of Technology Abstract: We introduce and test a crowdsourcing technique for creative problem solving. In total, 1853 workers from Amazon's Mechanical Turk produced 468 ideas for solving the 2010 oil spill problem in the Gulf of Mexico. In our technique, one crowd generated initial ideas, another crowd evaluated the creativity of these ideas, and yet another crowd combined pairs of ideas produced by the previous crowd. The selection of the two ideas to be combined was random in one condition, and in the other condition, biased toward more creative ideas. A new crowd judged the best 5 solutions by crowds to be as creative as the best 5 solutions by experts. This crowd also rated the crowds' solutions combined through the biased selection as more creative than the initial solutions. Through the collective process of generating, evaluating, and combining ideas, crowds can produce solutions that are as creative as experts'.


The half-length Penitent Magdalen was probably the most commercially successful and most repeated subject painted by Titian and his studio. In treating it Titian was no doubt stimulated by the comparably extensive production of Penitent Magdalens by the Milanese painter Giampietrino, but it was Titian's visualisation of the subject that became canonical. Titian produced the Penitent Magdalen in two closely related types, in both of which her pose is based on the antique model of the Venus Pudica. In Type I, a nocturne, she is set in an unforgiving grotto and is entirely nude but covered with her abundant hair. Titian seems to have invented this formula around 1530 and to have continued to paint versions of it for about a decade. In Type II, probably invented c. 1550 and repeated with variations into the 1570s, the Magdalen is placed in more hospitable country and draped: in all but one instance she wears a prayer-shawl. This type is diurnal and Titian sometimes indicates different times of day. Both types exist in different sizes but all known autograph or studio examples of Type II are larger than all known examples of Type I. Between the abandonment of Type I and the development of Type II, Titian experimented with at least two variant arrangements, although the evidence for these is limited.
This article was prompted by the appearance of two hitherto unknown versions of Type II and aided by the opportunity of examining little-studied versions of both types. It makes use of previously unpublished X-rays of some of the surviving examples and includes discussion of painted and engraved copies of paintings now unlocated or destroyed. It endeavours to arrange Titian's and his studio's versions of the Penitent Magdalen in a plausible chronological sequence and, as far as possible, to connect surviving or recorded paintings with references in written sources.


Reinforcement learning is the process by which individuals alter their decisions to maximize positive outcomes, and minimize negative outcomes. It is a cognitive process that is widely used in our daily lives and is often disrupted during psychiatric disease. Thus, a major goal of neuroscience is to characterize the neural underpinnings of reinforcement learning. Whereas animal studies have utilized invasive physiological methods to characterize several neural mechanisms that underlie reinforcement learning, human studies have largely relied on non-invasive techniques that have reduced physiological precision. Although ethical limitations preclude the use of invasive physiological methods in healthy human populations, patient populations undergoing certain neurosurgical interventions offer a rare opportunity to directly assay neural activity from the brain during human reinforcement learning. This dissertation presents early findings from this research effort. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Neuroscience First Advisor Michael J. Kahana


Changing predator communities have potential to complicate management focused on ensuring sustainable white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations. Recent research reported that predation on neonates by coyotes (Canis latrans) and bobcats (Lynx rufus) can limit recruitment. However, no research has been conducted in areas of the southeastern United States with 3 sympatric neonate predators such as coyote, American black bear (Ursus americanus), and bobcat. Our objectives were to estimate neonate survival rates, identify causes of neonate mortality, and determine which biological and landscape characteristics were related to neonate survival. During 2013–2015, we captured 70 neonates with the aid of vaginal implant transmitters on Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Louisiana, USA. We monitored neonates every 8 hours until 6 weeks of age and daily until 12 weeks of age, and assigned cause of death from field and DNA evidence. Survival of neonates to 12 weeks was 0.271 (95% CI = 0.185–0.398). Of 51 mortalities, 45 (88%) were attributed to predation, 4 (8%) to starvation, 1 (2%) to other causes, and 1 (2%) to unknown causes. We used an information-theoretic approach to compare Cox proportional hazards models containing various combinations of biological and habitat covariates. Our best-supported model contained sex, mass at birth, distance to cropland, young reforestation (planted 2000–2009), and old reforestation (planted 1980–1989). Based on hazard ratios, survival was 81% higher for males than females, and survival increased 81% with every 1-kg increase in birth mass. Survival increased 8% for every 100-m increase in distance from cropland or young reforestation, and decreased 11% with every 100-m increase in distance from old reforestation, which may be a result of spatial variation in predator distribution. Our results emphasize the importance of site-specific monitoring of neonate recruitment rates in areas with burgeoning predator communities. We conclude, however, that although predation pressure was high, survival rates were similar to those observed in 2-predator systems in the region, suggesting the possibility that an upper limit to predation rates may exist for white-tailed deer neonates. © 2017 The Wildlife Society.


This paper considers issues relating to the identification and categorisation of interruptive acts for cross- cultural study, as revealed by the conflicting methodological requirements of a medium-scale project involving contrastive analysis of confrontational native speaker and non-native speaker talk in French and English. The paper opens with a brief introduction to the project, followed by a review of issues from the conflicting ends of corpus annotation and Conversation Analysis, the main locus of information about, and research into, sequential aspects of talk and interruptive phenomena. It then uses two examples from the project data for native English and French respectively to reveal and discuss tensions between diverging requirements in the categorisation of interruptive acts. It shows that, while categorising interruptive phenomena inevitably entails a degree of arbitrariness - minimised in either very large corpora or small scale situated analysis -, medium-size data are peculiarly vulnerable to issues of empirical validity, but that their function and the options they create to derive critical findings from the tensions between approaches make them an important tool for research, notably cross-cultural research.


Elite athletic competition carries with it an unavoidably high risk of injury and disability. As a result it has become commonplace and good business practice that the participating athletes and/or their contracts be covered by disability insurance policies. Although the professional sports industry still pales in comparison to that of other non-sports businesses, combined revenues for the NFL, MLB, NBA and the NHL were almost $20 billion in 2009. Roughly 50% of all those revenues end up as player salaries. Consequently many of the interested parties, including teams, athletes, leagues, unions, agents and more have a vested interest in obtaining different types of disability insurance policies on or for the athlete. In college athletics, disability insurance policies provide a valuable peace of mind to student-athletes with professional potential. In part to help keep student-athletes in college, the NCAA and its member-institutions administer an Exceptional Student-Athlete Disability Insurance (ESDI) program. Insurance policies have three main components: the coverage amount, the term of the contract and the premium amount. The components of an insurance policy depend in large part on statistical analysis to help determine the insurer's level of risk and the necessary premiums to offset that risk. The relatively high risk of injury and the often millions of dollars at stake have made disability insurance policies in sports more complex and riskier. In particular, payout of athlete disability insurance policies often depends on whether the athlete suffered a career-ending injury, a term open for debate. As a result, the sports insurance industry has some particularly unique policies, including those based on loss of value and loss of draft position. Almost all disability insurance policies direct any disputes to confidential arbitration. As a result, there has been minimal litigation and minimal public information available about athlete disability insurance policies. Some of the issues that due arise in athlete disability insurance disputes include misrepresentation by the athlete, pre-existing conditions, statutes of limitations, the definition of a career-ending injury and returning after a career-ending injury. It is important for anyone working in the sports industry to have a good, overall understanding on how insurance works, the process and the options. Insurance in the sports industry is relatively new, and has changed and evolved considerably throughout its short history. It is important for people in the industry to keep up with developments as changes will be made to address market conditions, to address the needs of athletes, teams and leagues, to address changes in medical issues and rehabilitation and return from injuries and litigation decisions.


Inequity in the payment mechanism for healthcare systematically affects poorer households more than the rich. This article examines the impoverishing effect of healthcare expenditure on households in Yenagoa. Data was obtained from a crosssectional survey of households in 2 communities in Yenagoa selected by simple random sampling. A pretested, structured, interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain information on household (HH) income, general expenditures and financing for healthcare. Two international poverty lines designed by World Bank were employed to classify households as poor, extremely poor and to determine the impoverishing effects of households' healthcare expenditures. Responses were received from 525 HHs with 9.2% of HHs falling below poverty line, another 9% pushed deeper into poverty after healthcare spending. A 12.3% and 16% increase in the poverty and extreme poverty gaps respectively were attributable to health payment. A significant percentage of households who were non-poor were pushed into poverty after healthcare spending. There is need for increased public spending and implementation of innovative pre-payment mechanisms and social insurance that assures financialrisk protection and equity in health financing in Yenagoa.


Importance Polyneuropathy is one of the most common painful conditions managed within general and specialty clinics. Neuropathic pain frequently leads to decisions about using long-term opioid therapy. Understanding the association of long-term opioid use with functional status, adverse outcomes, and mortality among patients with polyneuropathy could influence disease-specific decisions about opioid treatment. Objectives To quantify the prevalence of long-term opioid use among patients with polyneuropathy and to assess the association of long-term opioid use with functional status, adverse outcomes, and mortality. Design, Setting, and Participants A retrospective population-based cohort study was conducted of prescriptions given to patients with polyneuropathy and to controls in ambulatory practice between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2010, to determine exposure to long-term opioid use as well as other outcomes. The latest follow-up was conducted through November 25, 2016. Exposures Long-term opioid therapy, defined by 1 or multiple consecutive opioid prescriptions resulting in 90 continuous days or more of opioid use. Main Outcomes and Measures Prevalence of long-term opioid therapy among patients with polyneuropathy and controls. Patient-reported functional status, documented adverse outcomes, and mortality were compared between patients with polyneuropathy receiving long-term opioid therapy (≥90 days) and patients with polyneuropathy receiving shorter durations of opioid therapy. Results Among the 2892 patients with polyneuropathy (1364 women and 1528 men; mean [SD] age, 67.5 [16.6] years) and the 14 435 controls (6827 women and 7608 men; mean [SD] age, 67.5 [16.5] years), patients with polyneuropathy received long-term opioids more often than did controls (545 [18.8%] vs 780 [5.4%]). Patients with polyneuropathy who were receiving long-term opioids had multiple functional status markers that were modestly poorer even after adjusting for medical comorbidity, including increased reliance on gait aids (adjusted odds ratio, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.4-2.6); no functional status markers were improved by long-term use of opioids. Adverse outcomes were more common among patients with polyneuropathy receiving long-term opioids, including depression (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.29-1.82), opioid dependence (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.85; 95% CI, 1.54-5.47), and opioid overdose (adjusted hazard ratio, 5.12; 95% CI, 1.63-19.62). Conclusions and Relevance Polyneuropathy increased the likelihood of long-term opioid therapy. Chronic pain itself cannot be ruled out as a source of worsened functional status among patients receiving long-term opioid therapy. However, long-term opioid therapy did not improve functional status but rather was associated with a higher risk of subsequent opioid dependency and overdose.


Stressful stimuli inhibit the activation of retinoids, but the mechanism of this inhibition has remained a mystery. Now Lee et al. have uncovered some of the molecular steps required for retinoid inhibition. Cells treated with anisomycin or expressing the constitutively activated stress-associated protein kinase kinase SEK1 (MKK4) showed reduced retinoic acid (RA)-mediated gene expression. Similarly treated cells contained phosphorylated retinoic X receptor (RXR) α but not phospho-RARα. MKK4 and JNK1 (Jun NH2-terminal kinase 1), the kinase downstream of MKK4 both phosphorylated RXRα, however, only phosphorylation of RXRα on Tyr249 by MKK4 was essential for inhibiting RA-mediated transcription. Anisomycin-induced phosphorylation of RXRα was decreased in cells lacking MKK4. Thus, MKK4-directed RXRα phosphorylation may be important for attenuating RA responses in the presence of stress. Lee, H.-Y., Suh, Y.-A., Robinson, M.J., Clifford, J.L., Hong, W.K., Woodgett, J.R., Cobb, M.H., Mangelsdorf, D.J., and Kurie, J.M. (2000) Stress pathway activation induces phosphorylation of retinoid X receptor. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 32193-32199. [Abstract] [Full Text]


In this thesis, we test the hypothesis that banks provide monitoring services that benefit client firm shareholders. We argue that if the value of firm-bank relationships stems from monitoring services provided by banks, then share price responses associated with announcements of bank loans should be cross-sectionally related to variables that proxy the degree of monitoring to which firms are already subject. Our sample differs from previous studies of bank debt , i m lounct-merit s in two key aspects: inclusion of NASDAQ firms, and inclusion of announcements carried by the newswlre but not the Wal1 Street Journal. Consistent with suggestions by Fama (1985) and Diamond (1985) and theoretical models In the accounting literature, we find that firm size is a significant determinant of capital market reactions to bank debt announcements— average share price responses are statistically positive only for small firms. Moreover, share price responses are negatively related to firm size within the small firm sample. We also find that initiations of bank debt generate statistically positive average share price responses, a result strikingly different from previous anomalous findings of statistical significance only for renewals of bank debt.


The recent editorials by Dr George Thomas and Dr Sunil K Pandya in the IJME with respect to the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI) force us to think about how reforms can be introduced inthe MCI (1,2). Dr Pandya suggests that we would do well to learn a lesson from the General Medical Council (GMC) of the United Kingdom (UK). It is true that the MCI can learn from many aspects of the GMC reforms which were introduced in the 1980s, especially after the Bristol case and the Shipman affair One of the most notable reforms introduced by the GMC was greater representation of lay members in its fitness-to-practice committee (3). At the moment, there are equal numbers of medical and lay members in the GMC. This suggests that the public has an equally important role as do physicians in regulating clinicians in the UK. In contrast, in the MCI, there is not a single representative of the public among the total of 89 members under different categories. As for the GMC, of its 12 members, half (ie six) are from among the public.


Determination of bowel viability in patients undergoing bowel resection is essential in gastrointestinal surgery. One of the most common operations in gastrointestinal surgery is bowel resection for patients who have different kinds of bowel cancer or any other occlusion in which anastomosis has to be carried out following the removal of an unhealthy segment of the bowel. Monitoring blood flow in abdominal surgery especially intraoperatively would be a valuable tool for prevention of a postoperative anastomosis complication (e.g. anastomotic leak, which is the main complication after colorectal resection).
The development of a continuous method for monitoring perfusion of bowel tissue would assist in early detection of inadequate blood supply which then help to reduce the occurrence of an anastomosis complication. Although various monitoring techniques have been proposed to assess intestinal viability intraoperatively, none of these techniques have proved to be reliable enough to replace visual observation. Therefore, to date there is no widely accepted and readily available intraoperative technique to reliably assess the viability of bowel tissue.
The aim of this study was to combine the established techniques, laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) and Photoplethysmography (PPG), into one probe intended for assessment of perfusion in abdominal tissue during bowel resection intraoperatively. In PPG, changes in transmission of light through tissue due to pulsation of small arteries can be monitored whereas in LDF microcirculatory blood cell velocity and flux can be studied. Such a probe could alert the surgeon immediately of any compromise in blood flow so further investigation and, if necessary, therapeutic steps can be applied immediately to prevent severe consequences. Therefore, custom reflectance PPG along with LDF sensor was designed and built in the form of a probe to investigate the changes in blood volume, blood flow and arterial oxygen saturation in patients undergoing bowel resection.
The instrumentation was designed successfully and the data was saved for the further analysis. Twenty-four patients undergoing bowel resection were recruited for monitoring of perfusion and blood flowintraoperatively; twenty had undergone laparoscopy and the remainder had a laparotomy operation. Eight different measurements were performed during each trial. The results revealed that the probe could be an indicator of evaluating perfusion and blood flow changes at different stages of the surgery. The results also suggest that laser Doppler is more sensitive to artefact compared to PPG. Differences in amplitude of PPG between different measurements reveal that the sensor does detect changes in blood volume and flow confirming that it has the ability to verify that pulsatile flow is being preferentially preserved at the last step of the resection procedure (at the edges of the anastomosis sites after anastomosis is been constructed.


Background: To assess the nutrition and micronutrient status of elderly population in the rural area of Bangladesh.
Method: Healthy 44 elderly (≥ 60 years) and 88 middle aged (40–59 years) men and women were studied during April-September 2010. Their anthropometric status, micronutrient status and biochemical markers were assessed.
Result: Mean body mass index (BMI), hemoglobin, alanine transaminase (ALT), albumin, vitamin B12, and fasting blood sugar (FBS) were significantly lower and serum creatinine, vitamin D and folate were significantly higher among elderly compared to that of middle aged population. However, uric acid (UA), calcium, zinc, and retinol were identical in both the groups. Individual being elderly, impacted on decreased level of hemoglobin (0.67 gm/dl), vitamin B12 (38.76 pmol/L), albumin (0.12 gm/dL), zinc (0.03 mg/L) and FBS (0.88 μmol/L) after adjusting for covariates.
Conclusion: Elderly had compromised nutritional status with lower levels of hemoglobin, FBS, vitamin and micronutrient.


This study examines whether pension cuts affecting current public employees encourage mid-career teachers and civil servants to separate from their employers. The analysis takes advantage of a 2005 reform to the Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI) that dramatically reduced the generosity of benefits for current workers. Importantly, the cuts applied only to ERSRI members who had not vested by June 30, 2005. Vested ERSRI members and municipal government employees in Rhode Island were unaffected. This sharp difference in benefit generosity permits a triple-differences research design in which non-vested ERSRI members are compared, before and after the reform, to vested members and to all members of the Municipal Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island. The results show that the pension cut caused a 2.4-percentage-point increase in the rate of separation, implying an elasticity of labor supply with respect to pension benefits of around 0.25. Rhode Island teachers were significantly less responsive to the benefit cut than other occupations, in line with an existing literature on teacher labor supply, suggesting that the results from that literature may not generalize to the broader workforce.


Since 1990 the Web has changed from a distributed hypertext system to an efficient environment for application delivery. Due to the legacy of the Web implementation model the development, management, and evolution of complex Web applications suffer from the coarse-grained model-entities. The demands can not be achieved without the application of programming technology and software engineering practice to applications in the Web, which is also referred to as Web Engineering. It has been recognized that the gap between design models and the implementation model of the Web leads to a development process that is hard to maintain, because fine-grained design entities get lost in the coarse-grained implementation model. Therefore, the coarse-grained implementation model hinders the maintenance and reuse of parts of an application. In this paper, the impacts on Web Engineering due to the coarse-grained Web implementation model are discussed and typical solutions that are related to the above problems are introduced. Then, the object-oriented WebComposition Markup Language will be presented as basis for a generic approach to component-based Web-application development.


This volume expands and improves the AAPG 1978 classic, A Color Illustrated Guide to Carbonate Rock Constituents, Textures, Cements, and Porosities(AAPG Memoir 27). Carbonate petrography can be quite complicated. Changing assemblages of organisms through time, coupled with the randomness of thin-section cuts through complex shell forms, add to the difficulty of identifying skeletal grains. Furthermore, because many primary carbonate grains are composed of unstable minerals (especially aragonite and high-Mg calcite), diagenetic alteration commonly is quite extensive in carbonate rocks. The variability of inorganic and biogenic carbonate mineralogy through time, however, complicates prediction of patterns of diagenetic alteration. This book is designed to help deal with such challenges. It includes a wide variety of examples of commonly encountered skeletal and nonskeletal grains, cements, fabrics, and porosity types. It includes extensive new tables of age distributions, mineralogy, morphologic characteristics, environmental implications and keys to grain identification. It also encompasses a number of noncarbonate grains, that occur as accessory minerals in carbonate rocks or that may provide important biostratigraphic or paleoenvironmental information in carbonate strata. With this guide, students and other workers with little formal petrographic training should be able to examine thin sections or acetate peels under the microscope and interpret the main rock constituents and their depositional and diagenetic history.


The introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data applications have garnered a massive amount of digital data. Processing and analysing these data demand vast computing resources, proportionately. The major downside of producing and using computing resources in such volumes is the deterioration of the Earth's environment. The production process of the electronic devices involves hazardous and toxic substances which not only harm human and other living being's health but also contaminate the water and soil. The production and operations of these computers in largescale also results in massive energy consumption and greenhouse gas generation. Moreover, the low use cycle of these devices produces a huge amount of not-easy-to-decompose e-waste. In this outlook, instead of buying new devices, it is advisable to use the existing resources to their fullest, which will minimize the environmental penalties of production and e-waste. This paper advocates for using smartphones and smartphone crowd computing (SCC) to ease off the use of PCs/laptops and centralized high-performance computers (HPCs) such as data centres and supercomputers. The paper aims to establish SCC as the most feasible computing system solution for sustainable computing. Detailed comparisons, in terms of environmental effects (e.g., energy consumption, greenhouse gas generation, etc.), between SCC and supercomputers and other green computing initiatives such as Grid and Cloud Computing, are presented. The key enablers of SCC are identified and discussed. One of them is today's computationally powerful smartphones. A comprehensive statistical survey of the various commercial CPUs, GPUs, SoCs for smartphones is presented confirming the capability of the SCC as an alternative to HPC. The challenges involved in realizing SCC are also considered. One of the major challenges is handling the issue of limited battery in smartphones. The reasons for battery drain are recognized with probable measures. An exhaustive survey is presented on the present and optimistic future of the continuous improvement and research on different aspects of smartphone battery and other alternative power sources which will allow users to use their smartphones for SCC without worrying about the battery running out.


Since the end of the Cold War a more complex civil-military interface has emerged, and with it a variety of doctrines and policies concerning civil-military cooperation and coordination. This study focuses on the NATO concept Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC), and the Norwegian CIMIC capability. Norwegian CIMIC aspires to follow the CIMIC doctrine of NATO. Yet, in this study Lene Kristoffersen argues that the Norwegian approach in Afghanistan did not wholly concur with NATO's doctrine. On these grounds, she questions whether different operational realities require an elastic NATO CIMIC concept? And if so, how can it be combined with the goal of achieving unity of effort and a common understanding of the concept in the operational theatre? How can the thin line between the military and civilian spheres be demarcated? Are NATO CIMIC officers supposed to act like soldiers or saints?


Recent years have witnessed a change in focus from considerations of factors which could impede competition, for example over-regulation, to the need to strike a balance between over-regulation and insufficient regulation – in order to provide the right level of safety for consumers (such that they are protected from risky investments). A driving force behind the need for deregulation over the past two decades has been the objective and desire to foster competition. Re-regulation thereafter assumed centre stage in some jurisdictions in response to the need to manage cross sector services' risks more efficiently. Rescue cases involving guarantees (contrasted with restructuring cases) during the recent Financial Crisis, have illustrated the prominent position which the goal of promoting financial stability has assumed over that of the prevention or limitation of possible distortions of competition which may arise when granting State aid. The importance attached to maintaining and promoting financial stability - as well as the need to facilitate rescue and restructuring measures aimed at preventing systemically relevant financial institutions from failure, demonstrate how far authorities are willing to overlook certain competition policies. However increased government and central bank intervention also simultaneously trigger the usual concerns – which include moral hazard and the danger of serving as long term substitutes for market discipline. An interesting observation derives from the relationship between State aid grants, competition, and the potential to induce higher risk taking levels. Whilst the need to promote and maintain financial stability is paramount, safeguards need to be implemented and enforced to ensure that measures geared towards the aim of sustaining system stability (measures such as lender of last resort arrangements and State rescues) do not unduly distort competition as well as induce higher risk taking levels. This paper will draw attention to safeguards which have been provided by the Commission where approval is considered for the grant of State aid to financial institutions whose problems are attributable to inefficiencies, poor asset liability management or risky strategies. Whether the distinction drawn by the Commission – with regards to the preferential grant of recapitalisation packages to fundamentally sound banks (which require less restructuring measures)is justified, will also be considered. How far central banks and governments should intervene and how far distortions of competition should be permitted ultimately depends on how systemically relevant a financial institution is.


The purpose of this research was to derive a statistical model comprising the
significant factors influencing the accuracy of a designer's price forecast and as an aid
to providing a theoretical framework for further study. To this end data, comprising 181
building contract details, was collected from the Singapore office of an international firm
of quantity surveyors over the period 1980 to 1991.
Bivariate analysis showed a number of independent variables having significant
effect on bias which was in general agreement with previous work in this domain. The
research also identified a number of independent variables having significant effect on
the consistency, or precision, of designers' building price forecasts. With information
gleaned from bivariate results attempts were made to build a multivariate model which
would explain a significant portion of the errors occurring in building price forecasts.
The results of the models built were inconclusive because they failed to satisfy the
assumptions inherent in ordinary least squares regression. The main failure in the
models was in satisfying the assumption of homoscedasticity, that is, the conditional
variances of the residuals are equal around the mean. Five recognised methodologies
were applied to the data in attempts to remove heteroscedasticity but none were
successful.
A different approach to model building was then adopted and a tenable model
was constructed which satisfied all of the regression assumptions and internal validity
checks. The statistically significant model also revealed that the variable of Price
Intensity was the sole underlying influence when tested against all other independentpage xiv
variables in the data of this work and after partialling out the effect of all other
independent variables. From this a Price Intensity theory of accuracy is developed and
a further review of the previous work in this field suggests that this may be of universal
application.


Some communities sustain ethnic diversity by design. Others have it thrust upon them. Over the past one-quarter century, Jackson Heights, a middle-class community in northern Queens, New York, has become one of the Nation's most ethnically mixed neighborhoods. Little in the area's earlier history prepared it to play this role, and few of its long-term residents ever consciously chose to live in a diverse community. Yet despite the massive in-migration of Latinos and Asians, Jackson Heights has not experienced the rounds of panic selling and disinvestment that so commonly accompany racial transition. Today White, Latino, and Asian, as well as middle- and working-class residents, live side by side, not always in harmony, but united in a commitment to make their neighborhood work.