A country's productive structure determines its future path of economic diversification, economic growth, and income inequality. In this article, we identify Paraguay's structural constraints and opportunities for economic diversification and inclusive growth. For this purpose, we advance methods from research on economic complexity and the product space to estimate how feasible and desirable are different types of new products and economic diversification strategies for Paraguay. To estimate the feasibility of different diversification opportunities, we measure the revealed comparative advantages and relatedness of 763 SITC products to Paraguay's current product structure. To estimate the desirability of each product, we measure the expected level of income, economic complexity, technology and income inequality associated with these products. Our results indicate that despite Paraguay's strong dependence on primary goods and resource-based manufactures, it has significant opportunities to diversify into more complex, high-income, and inclusive products. These opportunities include manufacturing products related to agricultural activities (such as machines for harvesting or food-processing) as well as chemical products (such as medicaments and vaccines). We present a scoreboard of feasible and desirable product options that helps to discuss different diversification strategies. Paraguay could for instance (1) only focus on the relatedness criteria; (2) further develop the products with intermediate capabilities; (3) promote diversification into related, higher income products; or (4) push towards complex and inclusive industries. Our results imply that only focusing on feasibility may lead developing countries like Paraguay further into an economic development trap, consisting in the focus on simple products and the large distance to high complexity and low inequality products. Instead promoting products that combine minimum standards regarding both feasibility and desirability criteria might be the best strategy for smart diversification and inclusive growth.


The rural architectural heritage has become a field of study in which many studies have been carried out and the importance of which has been recognized in the world in recent years. The rural areas, which are unique in their physical and social sense with their unique characteristics, are unique in their architectural terms. In this context, conserving the architectural heritage in rural areas and making these areas sustainable have great importance. Rural architectural heritage conservation is an issue discussed in Turkey as in many countries around the world. However, the developments seen in this area in Turkey, considered a fairly new compared with developments in the world. Thus, when looking at studies in Turkey, for the conservation of the rural architectural heritage, it is seen that there are many studies in literature and practice in some rural areas. But, there are no studies on that heritage in some areas. There are many parameters that characterize the rural architectural heritage. One of these parameters is the building material. Considering the rural architectural heritage in Turkey, especially building materials according to geography and climate conditions, it is observed that the shape of use. In this context, natural materials such as stone, wood and earthen are common in rural areas. In particular, the earthen material used by conventional techniques is not long lasting; the widespread use of these materials causes rapid destruction of architectural elements. In this sense, it has great importance to accelerate the efforts for the conservation of the architectural heritage built with earthen material and to implement the practices as soon as possible. In Turkey, one of four in rural architectural heritage built with earthen material located in the most intense region is Malatya. Karaca Village, which is located in the east of the Malatya, is a very striking example with its qualities. However, there are no studies on this and many other examples. In this context, the aim of the study; in Turkey, especially earthen material should attract attention to rural architectural heritage and to contribute to the preservation of this heritage. In the study, as first, the conservation of the rural architectural heritage in the world and Turkey and will be examined for the sustainability process; then, the rapidly losing areas of earthen material will be emphasized. Thus, in this sense stands out in Turkey, Malatya, located in the village of Karaca will be elaborated. As a result of the study, both in the world, in both Turkey; to discuss the current status of the rural architectural heritage built with earthen material; it is aimed to contribute to the preservation and sustainability of this heritage.


There are currently over 4000 functioning oil and gas platforms in the northern Gulf of Mexico (Gulf). Platform operations, and their prior drilling operations, produce trace amounts of lead, barium, vanadium, and lanthanum residues that are leached into the surrounding waters and are deposited on the sea floor. These residues have isotopic ratios different from those typical of the Gulf seafloor and can be used as harmless 'fingerprints' if they become incorporated into hard-parts or tissues in fishes associated with oil and gas platforms. From 2002 to 2004, 115 red snapper were collected from oil and gas platforms and artificial reefs off Louisiana and Alabama. Otoliths were removed and analyzed using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The objective of this study was to determine if a trace element isotope ratio fingerprint could be detected and described as unique to red snapper inhabiting the platforms. Stepwise and canonical discriminant function analyses were used to compare red snapper otolith fingerprints from on and off platforms, and from east and west of the Mississippi River. Classification accuracies based on the probability of an individual fish being correctly classified into the habitat from which it was sampled were over 90% for each of the two main comparisons. When comparing the elemental composition of red snapper otoliths from Louisiana oil and gas platforms and Louisiana artificial reefs, the classification accuracy was 93.75%. When comparing the elemental composition of red snapper otoliths from Louisiana artificial reefs and Alabama artificial reefs, the classification accuracy was 91.06%. Vanadium 51, Lead 206, Lead 207, and Lead 208 all appear to be linked with oil and gas platforms or their prior drilling operations, as the concentrations of these four elements or isotopes were significantly higher in otoliths sampled on


Two distinct families of human retroviruses, the human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) and human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs), cause significant infections worldwide. The viruses have common modes of transmission, both vertically and horizontally, and share an in vivo tropism for cells of the immune system, and in particular, T lymphocytes. As a result a significant number of individuals worldwide have coinfection. At present, it is unclear if coinfection influences the natural history of infection or alters the pathogenicity of an individual virus and/or if this results in the development of unique clinical features. This chapter summarizes one's current understanding of these issues with a specific focus on the influence of the HTLVs on the progression and outcome of HIV type 1 (HIV-1) infection. In contrast to HTLV type 1 (HTLV-1), the role of HTLV type 2 (HTLV-2) in human disease remains poorly defined; however, increasing evidence shows that the infection may also be associated with rare lymphoproliferative and a spectrum of neurological disorders. In addition, several epidemiological studies have suggested that underlying HTLV-2 infection may predispose to the development of a wide range of bacterial infections. The major limitations of many of these studies are that they have often been based on individual case reports and that many patients have also had concomitant HIV-1 infection. The chapter summarizes the clinical disorders that have been associated with HTLV-2 infection, and discusses the role and impact of HIV-1 coinfection.


Transitions of care are currently a major area of focus for hospitals across the country, as healthcare providers are recognizing that the current system leaves much to be desired and patient satisfaction scores regarding communication of medications continue to be an improvement opportunity. For hospitals, the focus for streamlining and improving transitions of care centers on the discharge process. Discharge is also the time at which patients are most receptive to health care recommendations, which places even further emphasis on maximizing the impact of patient education. A new focus and emphasis towards increasing the quality of counseling and patient satisfaction, as well as improving medication adherence, is warranted. This quality improvement project examines whether a pharmacist-led discharge counseling program could improve patient satisfaction scores, self-reported patient compliance rates, and the patient's knowledge of the medications they are taking upon discharge.
Public Health Significance: The study assesses the quality of medication discharge counseling in the general medicine patient population, excluding patients who are younger than 18 years of age, who have conditions that would present significant challenges to understanding counseling, or who are discharged to outside facilities. Upon initiation of the assessment period, nurses continued to provide discharge counseling as they had been. After two weeks, pharmacists provided the counseling to these patients at time of discharge for a similar two-week time frame. The counselors documented how long they spent counseling and captured medication lists and contact information so that patients could be reached by telephone for a follow-up survey. The survey was conducted two weeks post-discharge and assessed each patient's compliance with and knowledge of their prescribed discharge medications, as well as their satisfaction with their discharge counseling session.


Double modal constructions (DMCs) such as 'I might could get it for you' are employed by speakers of Southern American and African American English. These constructions appear to counter-exemplify traditional analyses of English modal structure which typically (i) allow only one tensed element per clause and (ii) locate modal auxiliaries only in the tensed position. Previous analyses have attempted to account for these structures by treating DMs as single lexical units (Di Paolo, 1989), or by treating one of the two modals as a "non-modal" (Turner, 1981; Battistella, 1995; Marrano, 1998; Van Gelderen, 2003). Di Paolo's lexicalist analysis is contraindicated by the separability of the constituent modals, while the others are contradicted by the modals' tense-like behavior. Following observations in McDowell (1987), we claim that 'might,' 'may,' and 'must' (in their epistemic readings) are sentential polarity operators (P-modals). P-modals head a POLP (Cormack and Smith, 2002), must raise at LF to take scope over the proposition, and may also bear Tense (in which case they move to T at LF). V-modals (i.e., all other modals) head VP and behave as AUX verbs, moving to T overtly when they bear Tense. Under this account, both modals in the DMC can be analyzed as true modals, behaving exactly as they would in a single modal construction. They are, at the same time, syntactically distinct, and the properties of the DMC result from the interactions between these two modal types. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/ vol15/iss1/10 U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 15.1, 2009 Double Modal Syntactic Patterns as Single Modal Interactions Minta Elsman and Stanley Dubinsky


In A Priori Justification, Albert Casullo argues that extant attempts to explicate experiential justification—by stipulation, introspection, conceptual analysis, thought experimentation, and/or appeal to intuitions about hypothetical cases—are unsuccessful. He draws the following conclusion: "armchair methods" such as these are inadequate to the task. Instead, empirical methods should be used to investigate the distinction between experiential and non-experiential justification and to address questions concerning the nature, extent, and existence of the a priori. In this essay, I show that Casullo has not refuted armchair explications of experiential justification, in particular those that appeal to introspectively accessible phenomenology. I do this by presenting a phenomenal theory of experiential justification that (a) has a significant degree of initial plausibility and (b) survives Casullo's general attack on such theories. As a result, a premise in the central argument for Casullo's signature proposal concerning the a priori is undermined.


Indoor positioning, as often needed by mobile robots operating indoor and in other indoor navigation applications, usually has to be obtained without access to GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) signals. Many indoor localization techniques, such as RF-beacon-based ones and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) techniques, are either susceptible to tampering, environmental noise, or are costly. Alternatively, indoor landmarks, either permanent ones such as doors, windows and light fixtures or human-introduced ones such as pictures and QR codes, can be identified through image processing techniques and used to determine a user's location based on known landmark locations. This paper explored how to use the high-definition RGB camera and the depth sensor of the Kinect to detect the QR-code-based landmarks and measure the distance to the QR codes, so that it can assist a robot or other user to navigate in indoor environment. The RGB camera of the Kinect sensor was used to capture the images of the QR codes attached on the wall in different locations in the room. Each one of this QR codes has unique identifier and was coded to contain the indoor reference location information. Then the ZBar open-source barcode reading algorithm was applied to decode the QR codes and extract the reference coordinate information within the QR codes. After that, the depth sensor of the Kinect was initiated to measure the distance from the Kinect sensor to these QR codes. These raw data collected from the RGB camera and the depth sensor were calibrated and then used to locate the position of the Kinect within the indoor coordinate frame. In this paper, the preliminary results from testing the algorithm to locate the stationary position of the Kinect sensor using QR codes were presented.


At a sufficiently weak toroidal magnetic field, neutral beam injection heated, limited plasmas in the TEXTOR tokamak exhibit bursts of beam-ion driven 'fishbone' and Alfvén modes, which are characterized for the first time using the multi-antenna reflectometer and Mirnov coils. In H-mode the fishbone triggers edge-localized modes (ELMs) and in L-mode it triggers previously unobserved bursts of particle recycling, resembling the ELMs. The reflectometer phase shows statistically significant bispectral coherence between the fishbone and the Alfvén modes, indicative of non-linear coupling between them. Additionally, using conditional averaging techniques, two ELM precursor modes are found that are not related to the beam ions. The first is a coherent mode with toroidal mode number n = −2, which is also seen with the Mirnov coils. Bispectral analysis of the reflectometer signals shows that this mode modulates the amplitude of broadband turbulence in the pedestal. The second ELM precursor is a semi-coherent, down-chirping mode with a poloidal wavelength of 6 cm.


Biotechnology education as practised in the New Zealand technology education curriculum provides an opportunity for students to use their scientific understanding during the exploration of technological solutions. This paper describes and analyses a science-focused teaching programme taught to year 2 and 3 (6 and 7 year olds) children that develops an understanding of yeast physiology and scientific methodology. These science understandings are utilised in a subsequent biotechnology-focused programme where children developed a niche market bun product . The science and biotechnology-focused programmes are described and analysed to illustrate how science can be utilised in technology education so that the technology focus is maintained without losing the integrity of the science contribution . The programme was analysed to illustrate the transformation of science knowledge and technical skills into technological knowledge that drove the realisation of this biotechnological learning experience.


Most studies of mammal extinctions during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition explore the relative effects of climate change vs. human impacts on these extinctions, but the relative importance of the different environmental factors involved remains poorly understood. Moreover, these studies are strongly biased towards megafauna, which may have been more influenced by human hunting than species of small body size. We examined the potential environmental causes of Pleistocene–Holocene mammal extinctions by linking regional environmental characteristics with the regional extinction rates of large and small mammals in 14 Palaearctic regions. We found that regional extinction rates were larger for megafauna, but extinction patterns across regions were similar for both size groups, emphasizing the importance of environmental change as an extinction factor as opposed to hunting. Still, the bias towards megafauna extinctions was larger in Southern Europe and smaller in central Eurasia. The loss of suitable habitats, low macroclimatic heterogeneity within regions and an increase in precipitation were identified as the strongest predictors of regional extinction rates. Suitable habitats for many species of the Last Glacial fauna were grassland and desert, but not tundra or forest. The low-extinction regions identified in central Eurasia are characterized by the continuous presence of grasslands and deserts until the present. In contrast, forest expansion associated with an increase in precipitation and temperature was likely the main factor causing habitat loss in the high-extinction regions. The shift of grassland into tundra also contributed to the loss of suitable habitats in northern Eurasia. Habitat loss was more strongly related to the extinctions of megafauna than of small mammals. Ungulate species with low tolerance to deep snow were more likely to go regionally extinct. Thus, the increase in precipitation at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition may have also directly contributed to the extinctions by creating deep snow cover which decreases forage availability in winter.

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A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Veterinary Science to the School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto. 1957


This paper presents a System Dynamics (SD) model of an assembly system in ramp-up with special focus on inspections. The time in-between product development and stable series production is characterized by dynamically changing conditions referring to the product, processes and the assembly system's organization. Thus, SD serves as an excellent method to model the system's behavior within the ramp-up period. Based on a qualitative derivation of the system variables an explanation of their interconnection is conducted in order to be able to model the system quantitatively and thereafter to simulate effects which parametrical variations have on the superior ramp-up target time to volume. A special focus is set on the role of inspections as they verify the product quality which is a precondition for achieving an as short as possible time to volume. So far the analysis of inspections has not been in the focus of the existing research on ramp-up.


Continuing his research into a subject he has been studying for some time, the Author intends here to expound the status quaestionis of theological reflection on the "sentiments" or "feelings" of the Lord Jesus. His treatment of the subject matter is distributed in two parts: The first surveys the presence of this thematics in some of the documents of the Pontifical Magisterium and of the Second Vatican Council, in the Roman Missal, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in texts of ecumenical dialogues. The second part presents the main methodological tools, and makes the main substantive points. The whole is intended to highlight the validity - and the importance - of the relevant Christological model for the definition of an integral educational and formative project for any of the states of life in the Church.


As against the view represented here by Peter Hacker and John Canfield, I urge that the philosophies of Quine and Wittgenstein can be reconciled. Both replace the orthodox view of language as resting on reference: Quine with the notion of linguistic disposition, Wittgenstein with the notions of grammar and forms of life. I argue that Wittgenstein's insistence, in the rule-following discussion, that at bottom these are matters of practice, of 'what we do', is not only compatible in a rough sort of way with Quine's outlook, but is very close to Quine's naturalistic view of language. And I argue that the likely objections to this can on the one hand be explained away as Quine's having been interested in a very narrow slice of language in comparison with Wittgenstein, and on the other by a failure to take into account later developments in Quine's views.


Alicia King is an Australian interdisciplinary artist. Her practice explores biological relationships between humans, animals and the wider environment, and alludes to that which generally lies outside of the everyday category of the 'living'. In 2009 Alicia was awarded a PhD Transformations of the flesh; rupturing embodiment through biotechnology - an artistic exploration of relationships between biotech practices and the physical, ethical and ritual human and animal body. Her practice spans sculpture, video, biotech, installation and performance. In recent years she has developed biotech art projects at SymbioticA, as well as the University of Tasmania School of Medicine, and the Vrij University Amsterdam.
Alicia has exhibited throughout Australia and beyond, most recently inVISCERAL, at Science Gallery, Dublin, and Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan. She is recipient of various state and national funding grants, and international Residencies including Asialink's Tokyo Wonder Site Residency; Australia Council Tokyo Studio; Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris; Vrij Glas Foundation, Amsterdam; and Foundation B.A.D, Rotterdam. Alicia's work is being published by the MoMA New York in their upcoming Publication Bio-Design; Nature + Science + Creativity.


The authors map the route undertaken by the Project Management Office of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) in Gansu Province, China, in instituting measures to ensure good learning opportunities for children with special educational needs within the four poor counties benefiting from this DFID supported project. The main purpose of GBEP has been to increase enrolment and retention in these poor, minority areas so as to achieve universal basic education. As general enrolment increased so did that of pupils with special needs, the educational needs of which the schools began responding to in an unconscious way. However, at the start there was little understanding at the classroom and management levels of how to ensure access to learning as well as access to school. The authors map out the road to change and the methods undertaken to change practice at various management and classroom levels so as to enable schools to provide more adequately for these children. Experiences of and lessons from project implementation have been analysed so as to generate implications which might be beneficial to inclusive education initiatives in areas, in China and elsewhere, with similar conditions.


We present EDA: easy data augmentation techniques for boosting performance on text classification tasks. EDA consists of four simple but powerful operations: synonym replacement, random insertion, random swap, and random deletion. On five text classification tasks, we show that EDA improves performance for both convolutional and recurrent neural networks. EDA demonstrates particularly strong results for smaller datasets; on average, across five datasets, training with EDA while using only 50% of the available training set achieved the same accuracy as normal training with all available data. We also performed extensive ablation studies and suggest parameters for practical use.


The goal of this work is to study Alexander-Whitney coalgebras (first defined in [HPST06]) from a topological point of view. An Alexander-Whitney coalgebra is a coassociative chain coalgebra over Z with an extra algebraic structure : the comultiplication must respect the coalgebra structure up to an infinite sequence of homotopies (this sequence is part of the data of the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure). Alexander-Whitney coalgebras are interesting for topologists because the normalized chain complex C(K) of a simplicial set K is endowed with an Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure. This theorem is proved for the first time here (generalising a result proven in [HPST06]). This theorem gives the hope that the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure of C(K) contains interesting information that can be used to solve topological problems. This hope is strengthened by the success already obtained in the work of several topologists. Among others, [HPST06], [HL07], [Boy08], and [HR] use the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure of the normalized chains of a simplicial set in an essential way to solve topological problems. This thesis begins with some background material. In particular, the definition of a DCSH morphism between two coassociative chain coalgebras is recalled in complete detail. For example, signs are determined with great precision. Next we devote a chapter to the definition of Alexander-Whitney coalgebras and to their importance in topology. In the following chapter we begin the conceptual study of Alexander-Whitney coalgebras. A global study of these objects had not yet been carried out even if the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure has been studied and used in order to answer some specific questions. With the aim of studying Alexander-Whitney coalgebras in a nice setting, we develop an operadic description of these coalgebras in the following chapter. More precisely, we show that there is an explicit operad AW such that the coalgebras over this operad are exactly the Alexander-Whitney coalgebras. Furthermore, AW is shown to be a Hopf operad, so that the category formed by the Alexander-Whitney coalgebras is actually a monoidal category. These results are proven in a reasonably general framework. In fact, we associate an operad to each bimodule (over the associative operad) of a certain type, such that we get AW if this bimodule is well chosen. In particular, these results enable us to study Alexander-Whitney coalgebras from the standpoint of operads. This strategy is recognised to be successful in various mathematical situations, and especially in algebraic topology. Moreover, we develop a minimal model notion in the setting of right module over a chosen operad (which has to satisfy some reasonable conditions), with the aim of applying this result to the special case of the Alexander-Whitney coalgebras. This is possible because coalgebras over some fixed operad P can be seen as right modules over P. And the category of right modules over P has some nice features which do not appear to hold in the category of P-coalgebras. The inspiration for this part of our work comes from the notion of minimal model developed in the framework of rational homotopy theory. The two following facts show that it is reasonable to try to adapt some ideas of rational homotopy theory to the category of Alexander-Whitney coalgebras. A. There is a theorem that says that studying topological spaces up to rational equivalences is, essentially, equivalent to studying cocommutative chain coalgebras over the field of rational numbers. This is false if the ring of integers replaces the field of rational numbers, but Alexander-Whitney coalgebras are "almost" cocommutative in the sense which is explained in this thesis. B. It could be that the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure of the normalized chains of a simplicial set is weak enough to allow explicit computations. At least, it is clear that the Alexander-Whitney coalgebra structure on the normalized chains is far from being an E∞-structure (such a structure determines the homotopy type of the considered simplicial set, at least under some conditions). The chapter about minimal models in the framework of right modules over an operad includes an existence theorem and a discussion of the unicity of this model. In the second part of this chapter, we construct an explicit path-object in the model category of right modules over an operad. This path-object is then used to investigate the topologically relevant information that could stem from the minimal model in the case of the operad AW. Finally, we present and examine some interesting open questions about Alexander-Whitney coalgebras. These questions give a nice outlook on future research in this area.


Resistance mutations to the HIV-1 fusion inhibitor enfuvirtide emerge mainly within the drug's target region, HR1, and compensatory mutations have been described within HR2. The surrounding envelope (env) genetic context might also contribute to resistance, although to what extent and through which determinants remains elusive. To quantify the direct role of the env context in resistance to enfuvirtide and in viral infectivity, we compared enfuvirtide susceptibility and infectivity of recombinant viral pairs harboring the HR1–HR2 region or the full Env ectodomain of longitudinal env clones from 5 heavily treated patients failing enfuvirtide therapy. Prior to enfuvirtide treatment onset, no env carried known resistance mutations and full Env viruses were on average less susceptible than HR1–HR2 recombinants. All escape clones carried at least one of G36D, V38A, N42D and/or N43D/S in HR1, and accordingly, resistance increased 11- to 2800-fold relative to baseline. Resistance of full Env recombinant viruses was similar to resistance of their HR1–HR2 counterpart, indicating that HR1 and HR2 are the main contributors to resistance. Strictly X4 viruses were more resistant than strictly R5 viruses, while dual-tropic Envs featured similar resistance levels irrespective of the coreceptor expressed by the cell line used. Full Env recombinants from all patients gained infectivity under prolonged drug pressure; for HR1–HR2 viruses, infectivity remained steady for 3/5 patients, while for 2/5 patients, gains in infectivity paralleled those of the corresponding full Env recombinants, indicating that the env genetic context accounts mainly for infectivity adjustments. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that quasispecies selection is a step-wise process where selection of enfuvirtide resistance is a dominant factor early during therapy, while increased infectivity is the prominent driver under prolonged therapy.


The bit-rock interaction has long been studied to assess PDC drill bit performance, which is driven both by cutting and non-cutting parts of the drill bit. While the cutter-rock interaction has been studied by many authors in the literature, only a few studies have focused on the interaction between the rock and non-cutting parts of the drill bit.
 In this paper, we introduce a new method designed to model the interaction between the whole drill bit and the rock formation within a full three-dimensional framework. This approach is based on a generic computational geometry algorithm which simulates the drilling process considering both the drill bit and the hole being drilled as a set of 3D meshed surfaces. The volume of rock removed by the PDC cutters as well as the area and the volume of contact between the rock and the non-cutting parts of the drill bit can be computed with a high accuracy based on the 3D CAD model of the drill bit.
 The in-house drill bit simulator implementing this algorithm primarily allows the engineer to estimate how bit-rock interactions distribute between cutting and non-cutting parts of the drill bit and to balance the bit design in the 3D space accordingly over a given range of drilling parameters. This approach has been brought to the field in order to address cutter breakage based on rubbing contacts optimization. Field results associated to some case studies in US shale plays and Canada are described and clearly show that contact points predictions closely match field observations. Moreover, design modifications applied following this process have led to an overall increase in bit performance and bit durability while preventing core-out issues.
 The bit design methodology presented in this paper is dedicated to design drill bits whose interaction with the rock formation is predicted with a higher accuracy by accounting for the exact 3D shape of the drill bit.


The process of collecting and transforming data can extend across different platforms, both physical and digital. Capturing provenance that reflects the actions involved in such a process in a consistent manner can be difficult and involve the use of multiple tools. An approach based on formal ontologies and software engineering practices is presented to capture data provenance. The approach starts by creating ontologies about data collection and transformation processes. These ontologies, referred to as Workflow-Driven Ontologies, establish a consistent view of the process that is independent of the platform used to carry out the process. Next, software modules are generated, targeting specific types of platforms on which data processes are implemented, so that data provenance can be captured as the process is being carried out. This paper presents the software architecture of the approach and discusses the generation of software modules, leveraging the structure and terminology of Workflow Driven Ontologies to capture data provenance. The result of this approach is the creation and population of knowledge bases that capture the processes used to collect and transform data, as well as provenance about how individual datasets were produced.


This chapter provides a review of methods and perspectives for pathogen surveillance and discovery, and discusses the challenges in proving a causal relationship between the presence of a candidate organism and disease. To illustrate the complexity of pursuing pathogen discovery research, examples from the authors' own work that are intended to provide insights into the process that leads to the selection of particular strategies have been included. Although this chapter focuses on molecular methods for pathogen surveillance and discovery, the importance of clinicians, for both humans and animals, as well as experimentalists with expertise in pathology, serology, and culture techniques is emphasized. Mass spectrometry is an intriguing approach to pathogen discovery; however, potential problems include mutations in flora that alter spectra without clinical correlation, the requirement for establishment of large libraries of spectra representing flora of thousands of organisms propagated in vitro and isolated in vivo, and the difficulties associated with extending this technology to viruses, where disease may occur without robust protein expression and pathogenicity may be correlated with single base substitutions. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a syndrome wherein honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies inexplicably lose the majority of their adult workers. The observation that CCD is transmissible through reuse of equipment from affected colonies, and that such transmission can be broken by irradiation of the equipment before use, is consistent with a role for an infectious agent in the pathogenesis of CCD.


The short-run Phillips curve describes a positive short-run relationship between the level of economic activity and inflation. When the level of demand in the economy as a whole runs ahead of the level of output that the economy can supply in the short run, price pressures increase and inflation rises. This article reviews the origins of the short-run Phillips curve with particular emphasis on the long-standing idea that the shape of this curve may be non-linear, with inflation becoming more sensitive to changes in output when the cycle of economic activity is high than when it is low. This type of non-linearity in the short-run Phillips curve, which is typically motivated by the effects of capacity constraints that limit the ability of the economy to expand in the short run, has recently attracted renewed attention. The article surveys recent research that finds some evidence of this type of non-linearity in the Phillips curve in Canada and considers the potential implications for monetary policy.


In 2001 the "McCracken group", through a multi-institutional study, concluded that many students finishing their introductory programming courses could not program due to a lack of problem solving skills. In 2004 Lister established that students have a fragile grasp of skills to read and interpret code. Humphrey suggests that educators must shift their focus from the programs that the students create to the data of the processes the students use. This paper addresses the problem of poor performing students through an investigation of their quality appraisal techniques (QATs) and development processes. Firstly, a survey was conducted to determine the current software development practices used by a group of undergraduate Computer Science students. Numeric data collected revealed that the current practices used by the majority of students would not be sufficient to produce quality programs. Secondly, a case study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the various factors that are likely to influence students' intention to use QATs. Analysis of numeric data collected through a survey revealed that students' intentions to use QATs are driven by ease of use, compatibility, usefulness, result demonstrability, subjective norm and career consequences. Thirdly, an experiment was conducted to determine students' perceptions on the use of process measurement data to improve their current software development practices. Analysis of numeric and narrative data revealed that performance measurement data could provide students with useful information to adopt proper development practices.


This paper focuses on two desired properties of cell-based switches for digital data networks: (1) data cells should not be detained inside the switch any longer than necessary (the work-conserving property) and (2) data cells that have been in the switch longer (older cells) should have priority over younger cells (the order-conserving property). A well-known, but expensive design of a workand order-conserving switch is the outputqueued switch. A different switch design is the speedup crossbar switch, in which input buffers are connected to output buffers through a crossbar that runs at a multiple (called the speedup) of the external cell rate. A matching algorithm determines which cells are forwarded through the crossbar at any given time. Previous work has proposed a matching algorithm called the lowest output occupancy first algorithm (LOOFA). It is known that a LOOFA switch with speedup at least 2 is work-conserving. We propose a refinement of LOOFA called the lowest output occupancy and timestamp first algorithm (LOOTFA). The main result of this paper is that a LOOTFA crossbar switch is workand order-conserving provided that the speedup is at least 3. We prove this result and consider some generalizations.


Rolling contact fatigue is accompanied by complex microstructural transitions occurring at a variety of scales; its understanding may lead to enhancing bearing life. However, a challenge faced by the metallurgist is the spread of scales at which contact fatigue spans. Alterations in precipitate morphology and cellular structures forming down to the scale of a few nanometres are common. This demands the use of a wide range of characterisation techniques. In addition to this, a quantitative description of the microstructural transitions remains a challenge. By employing high resolution experimental techniques, such as three dimensional atom probe, and by postulating new dislocation-based models for describing plasticity, the present work aims at providing a clearer view of the nature of white etching areas and dark etching regions. Observations down to the atomic scale indicate that carbon and silicon shun each other on the formation of nanometric cellular structures in white etching areas. Modelling indicates that dislocations may provide a vehicle for carbon transport in dark etching region formation. This provides a more integral picture of the transitions occurring throughout rolling contact fatigue in bearings.


Philip Hoffman shatters the widespread myth that traditional agricultural societies in early modern Europe were socially and economically stagnant and ultimately dependent on wide-scale political revolution for their growth. Through a richly detailed historical investigation of the peasant agriculture of "ancien-regime" France, the author uncovers evidence that requires a new understanding of what constituted economic growth in such societies. His arguments rest on a measurement of long-term growth that enables him to analyse the economic, institutional, and political factors that explain its forms and rhythms. In comparing France with England and Germany, Hoffman arrives at fresh answers to some classic questions: Did French agriculture lag behind farming in other countries? If so, did the obstacles in French agriculture lurk within peasant society itself, in the peasants' culture, in their communal property rights, or in the small scale of their farms? Or did the obstacles hide elsewhere, in politics, in the tax system, or in meager opportunites for trade? The author discovers that growth cannot be explained by culture, property rights, or farm size, and argues that the real causes of growth derived from politics and gains from trade. By challenging other widely held beliefs, such as the nature of the commons and the workings of the rural economy, Hoffman offers a new analysis of peasant society and culture, one based on microeconomics and game theory and intended for a wide range of social scientists.


Companies in the 21st century are exposed to a variety of pressures to respond to a plethora of environmental issues. Understanding how these issues impact companies over time is, therefore, important for corporate practitioners and policy makers alike. This thesis investigates the state and evolution of corporate environmental strategy with the help of a multi-study, longitudinal research design. Theoretically grounded in complexity theory, a conceptual framework is developed that portrays organisations as open systems within which agents interact and attempt to improve organisational fitness. By conceptualising the organisational metaphor of 'rugged fitness landscapes', firms are depicted as complex adaptive systems searching for peaks on a constantly changing fitness landscape in order to guarantee economic long-term profit and survival. While study one examines environmental responses among a stratified sample of UK companies through repeated interviews both in 2006 and 2008, the second study draws on KLD data from S&P500 corporations for the period 1991 to 2006 by distinguishing between changes at firm and at population level. The findings suggest that the state and evolution of corporate environmental strategy are effectively subordinated to contributing towards firms' fitness, whereby firms mostly attempt to remain profitable and obtain social legitimacy. Even over longer periods of time this behaviour has not changed markedly, except that starting from around 2004 higher levels of oil prices and lower interest rates have spurred more proactive environmental changes among a number of firms. Equally, different motivations, individuals and contextual factors appear to influence the varying patterns of evolution. The thesis fills a gap in the existing literature with respect to the lack of conceptual and empirical contributions about the evolution of corporate environmental strategy by providing new insights into how firms are responding to environmental issues over time and by extending various strands of theory.


A key change agent role is to help clients understand the systems to which they belong to improve performance. A major challenge is how to facilitate this understanding. Typically, the change agent collects the data and provides an interpretation about its significance for the client organization. This approach, however, often meets with resistance. What is needed is an approach that engages the author of the data in its interpretation and this article introduces just such an approach— PathMAP®. A case study is used to introduce PathMAP® and show how it can be used to engage system agents in a rigorous process of data interpretation leading to an increased understanding of the variables that influence system dynamics and of how to engage the system in change. This article will demonstrate how PathMAP® enables change agents to get an accurate picture of the current state of an organization by identifying the key issues facing the organization and their interrelationship, and using this knowledge to create meaningful action plans that make deep and intuitive sense to organization's members.


In this work, we propose a No-Reference (NR) bitstream-based model for predicting the quality of H.264/AVC video sequences, affected by both compression artifacts and transmission impairments. The proposed model is based on a feature extraction procedure, where a large number of features are calculated from the packet-loss impaired bitstream. Many of the features are firstly proposed in this work, and the specific set of the features as a whole is applied for the first time for making NR video quality predictions. All feature observations are taken as input to the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression method. LASSO indicates the most important features, and using only them, it is possible to estimate the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) with high accuracy. Indicatively, we point out that only 13 features are able to produce a Pearson Correlation Coefficient of 0.92 with the MOS. Interestingly, the performance statistics we computed in order to assess our method for predicting the Structural Similarity Index and the Video Quality Metric are equally good. Thus, the obtained experimental results verified the suitability of the features selected by LASSO as well as the ability of LASSO in making accurate predictions through sparse modeling.


Focus Serial: Frontiers of Nonlinear Optics We theoretically investigate the generation of high harmonics and attosecond pulses by mid-infrared (IR) driving fields. Conditions for coherent build-up of high harmonics are revisited. We show that the coherence length dictated by ionization-induced dephasing does not constitute an ultimate limitation to the coherent growth of soft X-ray (> 100 eV) harmonics driven by few-cycle mid-IR driving pulses: perfect phase-matching, similar to non-adiabatic self-phase- matching, can be achieved even without non-linear deformation of the driving pulse. Our trajectory-based analysis of phase-matching reveals several important advantages of using longer laser wavelengths: conversion efficiency can be improved by orders of magnitude, phase-matched build-up of harmonics can be achieved in a jet with a high gas pressure, and isolated attosecond pulses can be extracted from plateau harmonics.


Meta search engines allow multiple engine searches to minimize biased information and improve the quality of the results it generates. However, existing meta engine applications contain many foreign language results, and only run on Windows platform. The meta search engine we develop will resolve these problems. Our search engine will run on both Windows and Linus platforms, and has some desirable properties: 1) users can shorten the search waiting time if one of the search engines is down 2) users can sort the result titles in an alphabetic or relevancy order. Current meta search websites only allow users to sort results by relevancy. Our search engine allows users to do an alphabetical search from the previous relevancy search result, so that the users can identify the required title within a shorter time frame.


This technical paper focuses primarily on price transmissions in small-scale and large-scale fishery and aquaculture value chains in 14 developed and developing countries. Although the study is focused on the small-scale sector, both the small-scale and large-scale sectors were analysed in order to demonstrate differences between the two. The document begins with an overview of the entire project and its global implications, reviewing the importance of fisheries and aquaculture to livelihoods, food security and trade as well as the rationale for value chain analysis. It then presents detailed and summarized country-specific information on the research and analysis conducted, presenting analysis methodology, findings and policy recommendations within each country. An additional section focuses on women, summarizing their significant role in fishery and aquaculture value chains in selected countries. Finally, the document outlines the general findings and policy recommendations that emerged as key themes across all value chains analysed.


In this paper we investigate the effect of announcements of mergers and acquisitions on bank shareholder wealth. Despite the major impact of the phenomenon of mergers and acquisitions on the future of the European banking industry, there are currently few studies that investigated this area. This is largely due to the fact that it is a relatively recent phenomenon since it began to grow in 1997. Based on a sample of 97 European banks over the period 1997-2008, our study showed that the European banking mergers and acquisitions create value but all of this value created by the purchaser's bid is received by the shareholders of the target. These appear to be the main beneficiaries of mergers and acquisition. However, shareholders of acquiring banks, meanwhile, are not harmed by the operations of mergers and acquisitions initiated by their leaders.


Proliferative activity of 94 pituitary adenomas was assessed by the determination of the growth fraction, using MIB-1 monoclonal antibody in formalin fixed, paraffin embedded sections. This index was correlated with clinical and radiological evidence of invasiveness. The mean Ki-67 labeling index for all pituitary adenomas was 0.84% (range 0-17.45%). Hardy stage E tumours (1.44%) had a higher Ki-67 labeling index (LI) as compared with Hardy stage 0 tumours (0.36%). The difference in the Ki-67 labeling indices between invasive and non-invasive adenomas was not statistically significant. Hence, the Ki-67 labeling index is not a reliable indicator of invasiveness in pituitary adenomas.


A series of SNS ligands have been successfully synthesised and characterised by IR, NMR and MS. The ligands are divided into two groups and represented by the general formulae: 2,6bis(RSCH2)pyridine [R= methyl, ethyl, butyl, cyclohexyl, phenyl] and bis(RSCH2CH2)amine [R= ethyl, butyl, decyl]. Cobalt complexes of the respective ligands with the general formulae Co[2,6-bis(RSCH2)pyridine]Cl2 and Co[bis(RSCH2CH2)amine]Cl2 were synthesised and characterised by IR, elemental analysis and X-ray crystallography (for selected complexes). Thus, to investigate the electronic and steric effects of the ligand structure on the chemistry and reactivity of the complexes, the substituents bonded to the two sulfur donor atoms were sequentially varied and two different nitrogen sources were chosen. Crystal structures of Co[2,6bis(CH2SCH2)pyridine]Cl2 (Ia), Co[2,6-bis(CH2CH2SCH2) pyridine]Cl2 (IIa) and Co[2,6bis(CH2CH2CH2CH2SCH2)pyridine]Cl2 (IIIa) were obtained. It was found that complex Ia exists as a molecular dimer linked through two chloride bridges resulting in an octahedral geometry around each metal centre, while complexes IIa and IIIa are monomers exhibiting a trigonal bypyrimidal geometry. The complexes were tested as catalysts for the activation of paraffinic C−H bonds towards the formation of oxygenated products: octanol, octanone, octanal and octanoic acid from the substrate n-octane. Gas chromatography was utilised to quantify the products formed and also to calculate the conversion and selectivity of each catalyst system. The catalytic testing revealed that the ketone products were the most dominant with selectivities of ca. 90%. The catalyst that was the most active was Co[bis(CH2CH2SCH2CH2)amine]Cl2 (Ib) with a total n-octane conversion of 23%.


Considering the perturbation, the results of theoretical calculation of five Rydberg series energy levels 6s^2ns^2S_1/2(n=7-20),6s^2nd^2D_3/2(n=6-20),6s^2nd^2D_5/2(n=6-20),6s^2np^2P^(0)_(1/2)(n=7-20), and 6s^2np^2P^(0)_(3/2)(n=7-20) for Tl I are presented using the weakest bound electron potential model (WBEPM) theory. Furthermore, the radiative lifetimes of this five series are also calculated. The calculated values of energy levels and lifetimes are in good agreement with the experimental results.


A conventional Network-on-Chip (NoC) router uses input buffers to store in-flight packets. These buffers improve performance, but consume significant power. It is possible to bypass these buffers when they are empty, reducing dynamic power, but static buffer power, and dynamic power when buffers are utilized, remain. To improve energy efficiency, buffer less deflection routing removes input buffers, and instead uses deflection (misrouting) to resolve contention. However, at high network load, deflections cause unnecessary network hops, wasting power and reducing performance. In this work, we propose a new NoC router design called the minimally-buffered deflection (MinBD) router. This router combines deflection routing with a small "side buffer," which is much smaller than conventional input buffers. A MinBD router places some network traffic that would have otherwise been deflected in this side buffer, reducing deflections significantly. The router buffers only a fraction of traffic, thus making more efficient use of buffer space than a router that holds every flit in its input buffers. We evaluate MinBD against input-buffered routers of various sizes that implement buffer bypassing, a buffer less router, and a hybrid design, and show that MinBD is more energy efficient than all prior designs, and has performance that approaches the conventional input-buffered router with area and power close to the buffer less router.


European global banks played a significant role in the international transmission of liquidity during the period prior to the global financial crisis. This paper examines how European global banks channelled finance, raised in US wholesale funding markets, via cross-border banking flows to Irish retail banks during the first decade of the euro. The results indicate that global factors, namely the US-sourced funding of European global banks and global risk, were influential in driving cross-border banking inflows to Ireland. Furthermore, the empirical analysis suggests these global factors contributed to changes in domestic private non-financial sector credit during the Irish credit boom. These results shed new light on the factors influencing the international funding of Irish retail banks and changes in domestic credit during the credit boom.


Today intellectual property (IP) is constituting an increasing share of firms' resources and IP rights (IPRs) are important sources of competitiveness. Consequently, there is an increasing interest in how to properly manage IP. IP lawyers need to better understand business decisions and business managers need to better understand IP law. These needs are addressed by a growing area of research on IP management in the intersection between IP law and management. This article presents a literature review of the broad field of IP management research, with the aim to provide IP law practitioners, managers, and academics with an overview of what we know about IP management, to guide readers in how/where to learn more, and how to move forward in both research and practice. A general conclusion is that the research is rich and quickly growing, but has too little focus and data on strategic IP management issues. Both research and practice need to adopt a more holistic perspective on IP, including different rights and integrating with strategic decision-making.


Much of the conventional economic wisdom prevailing in financial circles, largely subscribed to as a basis for governmental policy, and widely accepted by the media and the public, is based on incomplete analysis, contrafactual assumptions, and false analogy. For instance, encouragement to save is advocated without attention to the fact that for most people encouraging saving is equivalent to discouraging consumption and reducing market demand, and a purchase by a consumer is also income to vendors and suppliers. Equally fallacious are implications that what is possible or desirable for individuals one at a time will be equally possible or desirable for all who might wish to do so or for the economy as a whole.

And often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another. This might be justifiable in an economy at chock-full employment, or it might be validated in a sense by postulating that the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) will pursue and succeed in a policy of holding unemployment strictly to a fixed "non-inflation-accelerating" or "natural" rate. But under current conditions such success is neither likely nor desirable.

Some of the fallacies that result from such modes of thought are as follows. Taken together, their acceptance is leading to policies that at best are keeping us in the economic doldrums with overall unemployment rates stuck in the 5–6% range. This is bad enough merely in terms of the loss of 10–15% of our potential production, even if shared equitably, but when it translates into unemployment of 10%, 20%, and 40% among disadvantaged groups, the further damages in terms of poverty, family breakup, school truancy …


The quantity of carbon (C) held in organic matter in the world's soils to a depth of 1m is estimated at about 1500 Gt, about twice that currently in atmospheric CO2, and thus significant in the global C cycle and in influencing climate change. The "4 per mille" initiative, launched at the Paris Climate Conference in 2015, proposed that current annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning could be completely offset if the global stock of soil organic carbon (SOC) was increased annually at the rate of 4 parts per 1000 (4‰ or 0.4%) of the current value.
At Rothamsted Research we used SOC data from our long-term experiments, providing 114 treatment comparisons on 3 soil types over 7 to 157 years, to assess the rate at which SOC could be increased. Treatments included organic additions (manure, straw, cover crops), N fertilisers, introducing pasture leys into continuous arable systems, and converting arable land to woodland. With drastic changes to soil management or land use, the annual 4‰ rate of SOC increase was met or exceeded, in some cases over many years. But within management practices more easily adopted in practice it is very difficult to reach this rate of increase. Practices that were very effective at sequestering C included (a) removing land from arable cropping and converting to woodland and (b) changing from continuous arable cropping to a ley-arable rotation comprising 8 yrs pasture followed by 2 yrs of arable crops. However, both changes would have major impacts on food security and farmers' incomes. Manure applications caused large SOC increases but there are major practical and environmental constraints to applying the large rates (35 t fresh material ha-1 annually) used in the longest running experiments. It is also questionable whether manure applications represent genuine climate mitigation as opposed to relocation of organic C; though manure delivers numerous soil quality benefits. Changing to zero tillage and the wider use of cover crops are practical measures that offer potential to increase SOC. However, we consider that the 4‰ annual rate of SOC increase is unachievable in most agricultural situations and cannot be regarded as a major contributor to climate change mitigation. It is more realistic to promote practices for increasing SOC because they improve soil quality and functioning, especially as small increases can have disproportionately large beneficial impacts, though not necessarily translating into increased crop yield. Improved management of nitrogen in agriculture, decreasing direct and indirect nitrous oxide emissions, is probably a more effective means of mitigating climate change in agriculture.


Product modularity is an extremely powerful principle that can be used by industry to gain many advantages such as ease of product upgrade, maintenance, repair and disposal, increased product variety and greater product development speed.
Researchers have outlined the advantages of modularity at various stages of the product lifecycle and have developed many modularity measures and identification techniques. However there are a lack of computerised methods that can be applied to optimise modularity for multiple lifecycle objectives.
To this end a multi-objective methodology has been developed to search for optimal modules within a design structure matrix (DSM) representation of the product. Firstly, an analytic hierarchy process is applied to create a hierarchical weighting system for the modular driver based component interactions. Then an genetic algorithm(GA) with a goal based programming fitness function is applied to search for a set of module combinations that will maximise modularity for multiple product lifecycle objectives.


The widespread adoption of the Computers and Information Technology in every field has opened up immense possibilities for using Information Technology in an unethical manner. Cases of hacking, software piracy etc. have become major concerns. However the IS literature is somewhat limited on this. Specifically, the factors leading to such behavior have not been generically studied in detail. The paper aims to fill this gap and tries to develop a model of unethical IT usage based on the underlying framework of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Drawing from research in IS, psychology, ethics and a little of Transaction Cost Economics, it adapts the TRA to the IS context and posits individual, social and technological factors as important in understanding unethical IT usage. This paper, currently research in progress, develops the model and includes propositions that can be developed into testable hypotheses for empirical work.


Streptococcus oralis is a member of the normal human oral microbiota, capable of opportunistic pathogenicity; like related oral streptococci, it exhibits appreciable phenotypic and genetic variation. A multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for S. oralis was developed and the resultant data analysed to examine the population structure of the species. Analysis of 113 isolates, confirmed as belonging to the S. oralis/mitis group by 16S rRNA gene sequencing, characterized the population as highly diverse and undergoing inter- and intra-species recombination with a probable clonal complex structure. ClonalFrame analysis of these S. oralis isolates along with examples of Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus mitis and Streptococcus pseudopneumoniae grouped the named species into distinct, coherent populations and did not support the clustering of S. pseudopneumoniae with S. mitis as reported previously using distance-based methods. Analysis of the individual loci suggested that this discrepancy was due to the possible hybrid nature of S. pseudopneumoniae. The data are available on the public MLST website (http://pubmlst.org/soralis/).


We develop a mechanism for setting discriminated reward prices in order to group crowd workers according to their abilities. Generally, a worker has a certain level of confidence in the correctness of her answers, and asking about it is useful for estimating the probability of correctness. However, we need to overcome two main obstacles to utilize confidence for inferring correct answers. One is that a worker is not always well-calibrated. Since she is sometimes over/underconfident, her confidence does not always coincide with the probability of correctness. The other is that she does not always truthfully report her confidence. Thus, we design an indirect mechanism that enables a worker to declare her confidence by choosing a desirable reward plan from the set of plans that correspond to different confidence intervals. Our mechanism ensures that choosing a plan including true confidence maximizes the worker's expected utility. We also propose a method that composes a set of plans that can achieve requester-specified accuracy in estimating the correct answer using a small number of workers. We show our experimental results using Amazon Mechanical Turk.


Treatment with oral corticosteroids at high doses with an escalation and de-escalation schedule is effective against myasthena gravis (MG). In fact, the use of corticosteroids has led to a reduction in mortality to below 10% after the 1960s. However, long-term use of oral steroids above a certain dosage level is known to cause a number of problems. In 2014, the Japanese clinical guidelines for MG proposed that the first goal in MG treatment (treatment target) should be set at minimal manifestations (MM) with oral prednisolone (PSL) 5 mg/day or below, and that treatment strategies should strive to attain this level as rapidly as possible. In 2015, a multicenter, cross-sectional study revealed that higher PSL dose and longer PSL treatment do not ensure better outcome. In the absence of good response, the PSL dose should be decreased by combining with modalities such as plasma exchange/plasmapheresis and intravenous immunoglobulin (fast-acting treatments). In 2018, we conducted a multicenter, cross-sectional study in a large population of Japanese patients with generalized MG, aiming to elucidate the correlation between oral PSL regimens and achievement of treatment goals. The ORs for low vs. high dose to achieve treatment goals at 1, 2, and 3 years were 10.4, 2.75, and 1.86, respectively, whereas the corresponding ORs for low vs. medium dose were 13.4, 3.99, and 4.92. Early combination with fast-acting therapy (OR 2.19 at 2 years, 2.11 at 3 years) or combination with calcineurin inhibitors (OR 2.09 at 2 years, 2.36 at 3 years) were also positively associated with achieving treatment goals. These results indicate that early combination of low-dose PSL regimens with other therapies is the key for early achievement of treatment goals in generalized MG. However, even with this regimen, ~35% of patients did not achieve the treatment target after 3 years. These results suggest the limitation of the current oral corticosteroid therapy. We need to develop new treatment options to increase the rate of satisfactory outcome.


We consider a queuing system with coupled processors (CPS), in which the service rate at each queue varies over time in function of the set of active queues in the system. Performance analysis of CPS has so far been based on simulations or on complex Markov chains under restricting assumptions on input traffic statistics. In contrast, we propose a fully analytical approach to CPS, based on a worst case analysis of system dynamics, and applicable to a large family of traffic characterizations. We derive sufficient conditions for stability for traffic characterized stochastically as well as for traffic constrained by arrival curves, and we show how to compute bounds on backlog and delay. We illustrate our approach and assess our results by means of an example of coupling of wireless transmissions.


The hypothesis of this article is that the performance and, in particular, the rate of saving in the postwar U.S. economy has been influenced by the changes in the public perception of the threat of a catastrophic nuclear war. An increased threat shortens the expected horizon of individuals, and thus reduces their willingness to postpone present consumption in favor of investment. The hypothesis is tested by expanding a standard savings function estimation technique to include a measure of the perceived threat of nuclear war. Several alternative measures of the perceived threat are considered, based either on the setting of the "doomsday" clock published monthly in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which reflects the editors' judgement about the likelihood of a nuclear conflict, or on an index of the extent of press coverage of nuclear war issues. The tests all support a large and statistically significant impact of the threat of nuclear war on the rate of private saving. These tests are not viewed as conclusive evidence in favor of the economic impact of the perceived threat of nuclear war. Nevertheless, this research suggests that economists may have been overlooking an important source of influence in the postwar, postnuclear U.S. economy. Conceivably, it could affect not only the private savings rate but also other economic variables such as the level of investment in human capital, the level of asset prices, the term structure of interest rates, and the rate of inflation.


Abstract The Mediterranean region has a rich history of domestication and cultivation of lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). Landraces have been grown and repeatedly selected by local farmers under different agro-environments. Characterization of molecular variation and genetic differentiation helps to ensure enhanced valorization, conservation and use of these genetic resources. Nineteen Simple Sequence Repeat DNA markers were used for molecular variance analysis (AMOVA) and population structure assessment underlying 74 lentil landraces from four Mediterranean countries: Morocco, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Based on AMOVA, presence of population structure and genetic differentiation at different levels were evidenced. Genetic diversity among Turkish landraces was higher than that of other countries. These landraces were more homogeneous as shown by low genetic differentiation among individuals within each landrace. Whereas Moroccan landraces followed by Italian and Greek provenances showed higher diversity and differentiation among individuals within landraces. The wide genetic variability of these landraces could help to better adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses. Moreover, they could provide useful alleles related to adaptive traits for breeding purposes. Based on structure analysis, we obtained indications of possible presence of two major gene pools: a northern gene pool composed of Turkish, Italian and Greek landraces, and a southern gene pool composed of Moroccan landraces. Our results could be of interest when designing future diversity studies, collection missions, conservation and core collection construction strategies on Mediterranean lentil landraces.


Notch signaling regulates multiple developmental processes and is implicated in various human diseases. Through use of the Notch transcriptional co-activator mastermind, we conducted a screen for Notch signal modifiers using the Exelixis collection of insertional mutations, which affects ∼50% of the Drosophila genome, recovering 160 genes never before associated with Notch, extending the previous roster of genes that interact functionally with the Notch pathway and mastermind. As the molecular identity for most recovered genes is known, gene ontology (GO) analysis was applied, grouping genes according to functional classifications. We identify novel Notch-associated GO categories, uncover nodes of integration between Notch and other signaling pathways, and unveil groups of modifiers that suggest the existence of Notch-independent mastermind functions, including a conserved ability to regulate Wnt signaling.


We consider a source coding problem where the encoder can take actions that influence the availability and/or quality of the side information which is available partially and noncausally at the encoder and the decoder. We then characterize the associated achievable tradeoffs between rate, distortion, and cost. In addition, we state and discuss a capacity result for the channel coding dual problem where the formula duality of special cases is recognized.


There has been limited research examining the pedagogical benefits of peer feedback for facilitating project-based learning in an online environment. Using a mixed method approach, this paper examines graduate students' participation and perceptions of peer feedback activity that supports project-based learning in an online instructional design course. Our findings indicate that peer feedback can be implemented in an online learning environment to effectively support project-based learning. Students actively participated in the peer feedback activity and responded positively about how the peer feedback activity facilitated their project-based learning experiences. The results of content analysis exploring the peer feedback reveal that learners were mostly supportive of peers' work and they frequently asked questions to help advance their peers' thinking. The implications and challenges of implementing peer feedback activity in an online learning environment are discussed.


Abstract Although reptile diversity in Africa is high, it is poorly represented in Angola, with just 257 species known. Despite its greater surface area and habitat diversity Angola has significantly lower lacertid lizard diversity than adjacent Namibia. This is particularly notable in African sand lizards (Pedioplanis), where 10 species (two endemic) are known from Namibia but only two are recorded from adjacent Angola. Pedioplanis benguellensis was described from Angola, but its taxonomic status is problematic and it was previously synonymised with P. namaquensis. All other Angolan Pedioplanis were referred to Namibian P. undata, although this taxon is now known to comprise a complex of at least five different species and the relationship of Angolan material to this complex has not been assessed. In this study, we investigated the phylogenetic placement of Angolan Pedioplanis using two mitochondrial (ND2 and 16S) and one nuclear (RAG-1) markers. A Bayesian analysis was conducted on 21 samples from Angola, combined with existing data for 45 individuals from GenBank and three additional samples from central Namibia. The phylogeny demonstrates that P. benguellensis is a valid species and that it is not the sister taxon to P. namaquensis with which it has been morphologically confused. In addition, Angolan lacertids previously referred to P. undata are not conspecific with any of the Namibian or South African species in that complex. Rather, there is strong support for the presence in Angola of additional species of Pedioplanis, which form a well-supported sister clade to the P. undata complex (sensu stricto) of Namibia and two of which are described herein. These discoveries highlight the need for further biodiversity surveys in Angola, as similar increases in species diversity in other Angolan taxa might be found given sufficient investment in biodiversity surveys.


This article is the first major study of protection and valuation of trade secrets under federal criminal law. Trade secrecy is more important than ever as an economic complement and substitute for other intellectual property protections, particularly patents. Accordingly, U.S. public policy correctly places a growing emphasis on characterizing the scope of trade secrets, creating incentives for their productive use, and imposing penalties for their theft. Yet amid this complex ecosystem of legal doctrine, economic policy, commercial strategy, and enforcement, there is little research or consensus on how to assign value to trade secrets. One reason for this gap is that intangible assets in general are notoriously difficult to value, and trade secrecy by its opaque nature is ill-suited to the market-signaling mechanisms that offer at least some traction in other forms of valuation. Another reason is that criminal trade secret law is relatively young, and the usual corrective approaches to valuation in civil trade secrecy are not synonymous with the greater distributive concerns of criminal law. To begin to fill this gap, we examine over a decade of trade secret protection and valuation under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act of 1996. From original data on EEA prosecutions, we show that trade secret valuations are lognormally distributed as predicted by Gibrat's Law, with valuations typically low on the order of $5 million but reaching as high as $250 million. There is no notable difference among estimates from various valuation methods, but a difference between high and low estimates on one hand and the sentencing estimates on the other. These findings suggest that the EEA has not been used to its full capacity, a conclusion buttressed by recent Congressional actions to strengthen the EEA.


Biogenic birnessite is the most prevalent form of Mn-oxide in nature and it plays important roles in controlling the mobility of heavy metals such as Cu(II). This study focuses on the fine mineralogical characteristics of Cu(II)-incorporated biogenic (bio-) birnessite produced by the Pseudomonas putida strain MnB1, and discusses the structural stability of Cu-binding birnessite. Compared to the structural analog, hexagonal (abio-) birnessite, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns of bio-birnessite showed an enlarged interlayer space from 7.33 to ∼9.17 A. The reduced in-plane crystallinity and increased lattice parameter b were indicated after Cu(II) adsorption. The linear combination fitting of the Mn K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) indicated ∼13% Mn(II), and only a small amount of Mn(III) was present. The saturated sorption amount of Cu(II) was 0.17 and 0.25 mol Cu/mol Mn for bio- and abio-birnessite, respectively. By conducting extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopic analysis, multiple coordination paths of Cu–Mn ∼2.85 A, Cu–Cu ∼3.00 A and Cu–Mn ∼3.43 A were shown to exist in both bio- and abio-birnessite, showing the diversity of the Cu coordination structure. The fitted coordination numbers for these three paths were much larger (with identical Debye–Waller factors) in bio-birnessite (1.9, 1.9 and 2.5, respectively) compared to abio-birnessite (1.1, 1.1, 1.6), indicating that Cu had more surrounding atoms in bio-birnessite. The results indicate that Cu sorption by vacant sites, i.e. incorporation into the vacancy (INC species) or adsorption on the vacancy (TCS species), was more dominant for bio-birnessite, which may have benefitted from the larger interlayer space for accommodation of the Cu inner-sphere complex and the very low content of structural Mn(III) competing for vacant sites. In turn, the Cu inner-sphere complex modified both the layer and interlayer structures of bio-birnessite. In abio-birnessite, Cu binds favorably at abundant edge sites as dimers or multinuclear clusters, which contributes to a larger sorption amount. This binding style was depressed in bio-birnessite because the organic ligands released by microbial activity could block the layer edges. Theoretically, the structural stability of Cu clusters at the edges should be weaker than the TCS and INC species. This work also provides insight into the geochemical behaviors of Cu(II) controlled by widespread biogenic birnessite.


Eukaryotic cells have adapted unique mechanisms to respond to environmental stressors. The Nrf2-ARE system is one of these mechanisms and is used to combat chemical stressors such as environmental toxins or endogenous metabolites. Chemopreventive compounds are chemical agents that in low doses cause Nrf2 nuclear accumulation and the subsequent up-regulation of a battery of cytoprotective enzymes which decrease carcinogenesis. These same compounds have been shown to react with and covalently modify components of the ubiquitin E3 ligase complex that directly affects the stability of Nrf2. Determining how this complex's quaternary structure is altered upon reaction with chemopreventive compounds will provide a greater understanding of how the complex functions and is regulated. It is hypothesized that chemopreventive compounds, most of which are electrophilic in nature, react with specific cysteines within the complex to bring about a structural change thereby affecting the ability of the complex to ubiquitinate Nrf2. To test this hypothesis, ultracentrifugation and small angle X-ray scattering experiments were performed to measure the size and shape of the E3 ligase bound to its substrate Nrf2. In addition, the alteration of the size and shape of the Keap1-Nrf2 system upon site-directed mutation or modification by chemopreventive compounds was also performed. Results suggest that upon modification, conformational changes occur within the E3 ligase complex, which alter the ubiquitination of Nrf2. This research was supported by a grant from NCI of the NIH (5PO1 CA48112).


Integrating interactive faceted filtering with intelligent recommendation techniques has shown to be a promising means for increasing user control in Recommender Systems. In this paper, we extend the concept of blended recommending by automatically extracting meaningful facets from social media by means of Natural Language Processing. Concretely, we allow users to influence the recommendations by selecting facet values and weighting them based on information other users provided in their reviews. We conducted a user study with an interactive recommender implemented in the hotel domain. This evaluation shows that users are consequently able to find items fitting interests that are typically difficult to take into account when only structured content data is available. For instance, the extracted facets representing the opinions of hotel visitors make it possible to effectively search for hotels with comfortable beds or that are located in quiet surroundings without having to read the user reviews.


This paper presents a hyperbolic trigonometric (HT) transformation procedure for empirically estimating a cumulative probability distribution function (cdf), from which the probability density function (pdf) can be obtained by differentiation. Maximum likelihood (ML) is the appropriate estimation technique, but a particularly appealing feature of the HT transformation as opposed to other zero-one transformations is that the transformed cdf can be fitted with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Although OLS estimates are biased and inconsistent, they are usually very close to ML estimates; thus use of OLS estimates as starting values greatly facilitates use of numerical search procedures to obtain ML estimates. ML estimates have desirable asymptotic properties. The procedure is no more difficult to use than unconstrained nonlinear regression. Advantages of the procedure as compared to alternative procedures for fitting probability functions are discussed in the manuscript. Use of the conditional method is illustrated by application to two sets of yield response data.


We study the intensity dependence of single-photon emission from a single semiconductor quantum dot after pulsed excitation. A semiconductor model is introduced that accounts for various configurations resulting from the occupation of the localized single-particle states with carriers. A detailed account is given on how the photon correlation dynamics and the antibunching can be calculated. We predict a novel effect, where, for strong excitation, the formation of multiexciton configurations during the excitation pulse leads to an improved antibunching signature in g(2).


Navassa is a small, undeveloped island in the Windward Passage between Jamaica and Haiti. It was designated a National Wildlife Refuge under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1999, but the remote location makes management and enforcement challenging, and the area is regularly fished by artisanal fishermen from Haiti. In April 2006, the NOAA Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research conducted a research cruise to Navassa. The cruise produced the first high-resolution multibeam bathymetry for the area, which will facilitate habitat mapping and assist in refuge management. A major emphasis of the cruise was to study the impact of Haitian fishing gear on benthic habitats and fish communities; however, in 10 days on station only one small boat was observed with five fishermen and seven traps. Fifteen monitoring stations were established to characterize fish and benthic communities along the deep (28-34 m) shelf, as these areas have been largely unstudied by previous cruises. The fish communities included numerous squirrelfishes, triggerfishes, and parrotfishes. Snappers and grouper were also present but no small individuals were observed. Similarly, conch surveys indicated the population was in low abundance and was heavily skewed towards adults. Analysis of the benthic photoquadrats is currently underway. Other cruise activities included installation of a temperature logger network, sample collection for stable isotope analyses to examine trophic structure, and drop camera surveys to ground-truth habitat maps and overhead imagery. (PDF contains 58 pages)


Abstract GA-based clustering approaches have the advantage of automatically determining the optimal number of clusters. In a previous work, we proposed an efficient GA-based clustering algorithm, the PMCC method, and compared it with a representative GA-based clustering algorithm, the GCUK method, to prove its efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper we modify this PMCC method to obtain an improved version: the WPMCC method. This modification pre-vents premature convergence problem caused in the PMCC method while maintaining the advantage of the PMCC method. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm not only solves the problem of premature convergence, thereby providing a more stable clustering performance in terms of number of clusters and clustering results, but it also improves the efficiency in terms of time.


This is a review of Philip Hamburger's book, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? Most scholars believe that administrative law began with the rise of administrative agencies in the late nineteenth century. Hamburger, by contrast, suggests that administrative law — by which he means legally binding rules that are developed through unilateral actions by the executive branch — has existed since colonial times and beyond, and that claims of administrative autonomy are direct descendants of the claims of the English monarchy to executive omnipotence. The Framers of the Constitution were well aware of such claims, and utterly rejected them. Yet, Hamburger argues, modern administrative law embodies precisely the evils that the Constitution and its separation of powers sought to prevent. I predict that most readers will find Hamburger's historical analysis compelling. Somewhat fewer will share his "originalist-ish" claim that the Constitution, properly understood, is at odds with modern administrative law. Many fewer, given pre-existing ideological commitments, will agree that the administrative state is despotic and must be dismantled, with power flowing instead back to the judiciary and Congress. Nevertheless, anyone interested in the rise of the American administrative state will benefit from this original, erudite, and thought-provoking book.


ABSTRACT Chromatin remodeling at promoters of activated genes spans from mild histone modifications to outright displacement of nucleosomes in trans. Factors affecting these events are not always clear. Our results indicate that histone H3 acetylation associated with histone displacement differs drastically even between promoters of such closely related heat shock genes as HSP12, SSA4, and HSP82. The HSP12 promoter, with the highest level of histone displacement, showed the highest level of H3 acetylation, while the SSA4 promoter, with a lower histone displacement, showed only modest H3 acetylation. Moreover, for the HSP12 promoter, the level of acetylated H3 is temporarily increased prior to nucleosome departure. Individual promoters in strains expressing truncated versions of heat shock factor (HSF) showed that deletion of either one of two activating regions in HSF led to the diminished histone displacement and correspondingly lower H3 acetylation. The deletion of both regions simultaneously severely decreased histone displacement for all promoters tested, showing the dependence of these processes on HSF. The level of histone H3 acetylation at individual promoters in strains expressing truncated HSF also correlated with the extent of histone displacement. The beginning of chromatin remodeling coincides with the polymerase II loading on heat shock gene promoters and is regulated either by HSF binding or activation of preloaded HSF.


In the present study, two surface engineering technologies have been used for distinctively different purposes. Whilst nickel/aluminium has been deposited using unbalanced magnetron sputtering for thermal barrier applications, a separate investigation was carried out involving the deposition and characterisation of diamond like carbon (DLC) coating using plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD).
Unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating at various flow rates, magnetron power and substrates has been used to deposit novel intermetalic NiAI and nitrogen doped NiAI thin films. These have been characterised using surface stylus profilometry, energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDAX), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Scratch tester (CSM) combined with acoustic emission during loading have been utilised in order to compare the coating adhesion. Acoustic emission was used during the indentation process to determine the critical load under which the film begins to crack and/ or break off the substrate. The average thickness of the films was found to be approximately 1 pm. EDAX data revealed that all of the NiAl and nitrogen doped NiAI thin films exhibited near equiatomic NiAI composition with the best results being achieved
using 300 Watt DC power for Ni, and 400 Watt DC power for Al targets respectively. X-Ray diffraction spectra revealed the presence of the 3 NiAI phase. AFM results films on glass samples exhibited a surface roughness of :5 100 nm. The nanoindentor results for coatings on glass substrates displayed hardness and elastic modulus of 7.7 GPa and 100 CPa respectively. The hardest coatings were obtained with 10% of nitrogen. Scratch test results indicated that the best adhesion was achieved at 300 W for Ni, and 400 W for Al targets compared to that of samples with other power values.
DLC and Ti doped DLC films using Titanium Isopropoxide (TIPOT) were deposited at various flow rates, bias voltages and substrates using PECVD. The as-grown film thicknesses were in the thickness range of 90-1 00 nm and were dependent on the TIPOT flow rate. As the flow rate of TIPOT was increased the average roughness was found to decrease in conjunction with the film thickness. The 10/10 ratio obtained from Raman spectra decreased when the bias voltage on the stainless steel substrates was increased. This indicates an increase in the graphitic nature of the film deposited. In addition, SIMS analysis
showed that the Ti peak became much more pronounced at TIPOT flow rates above 25 sccm. On the glass substrates the ID/to ratio increased when the bias voltage was increased indicating a greater degree of diamond like character.
For a different set of experimental conditions, the as-grown films were of the order 200-400nm. When the bias voltage was altered from 100 to 400V the thickness decreased and Raman 'D'1G ratio increased with increasing bias voltage on the glass substrates. However, in contrast, on the stainless steel substrates the 1D110 ratio decreased with bias voltage. For both of the coatings, the contact angle of the films decreased with increasing bias voltages.


Many African countries have begun implementation of national programs to eliminate measles by the year 2015. However, measles continues to be endemic in Africa. This study describes the first molecular epidemiological study of measles virus circulating in Central African Republic. Two hundred and ten blood samples were tested for measles IgM. Sixty‐seven urine samples were collected during measles outbreak in Bangui in 2000 and 2004 and used for genotyping studies. Two different methods were used to determine measles virus genotypes; the recently described real‐time PCR‐based method and the nucleotide sequencing and phylogenetic analysis methods. These tests revealed the cocirculation of two distinct viruses in Bangui. The proposed subgroup of the B3 genotype, B3.1 was found in 14 samples. This virus has been found in other neighboring countries. More surprising, genotype B2 was found in samples from four patients. The first measles genotype B2 viruses were isolated in Gabon in 1984, but have not been detected until recently when they were identified during a measles outbreak in 2003 in South Africa. This suggests that the circulation of measles genotype B2 has continued in Central Africa during the last 20 years. This study provides the baseline for genetic surveillance of measles virus in Central African Republic. Knowledge of currently circulating measles virus genotype in Central African Republic will help in monitoring the success of measles elimination program. J. Med. Virol. 78:964–970, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Revised and Expanded Edition This long-awaited revision of a popular book provides information and activities to assist educators and parents in exploring the local environment with children. Grouped around five themes (Adaptations, Habitats, Cycles, Designs of Nature, and Earth and Sky), fact-filled essays introduce each subject, followed by field-tested, experiential activities that engage students in learning about the natural world. With complete instructions and background information for teaching over 40 natural science units, and scientifically accurate drawings illustrating each topic, this easy-to-use, beautifully illustrated, up-to-date environmental education handbook both enables novice leaders to teach nature subjects successfully and offers creative new approaches for experienced educators.


Recognized cases of autism spectrum disorders are on the rise. It is unclear whether this increase is attributable to secular trends in biological susceptibility, or to a change in diagnostic practices and recognition. One hint concerning etiological influences is the universally reported male excess (in the range of 4:1 to 10:1). Evidence suggests that genetic influences from the X chromosome play a crucial role in engendering this male vulnerability. In this review, we discuss three categories of genetic disease that highlight the importance of X-linked genes in the manifestation of an autistic phenotype: aneuploides (Turner syndrome and Klinefelter syndrome), trinucleotide expansions (Fragile X syndrome) and nucleotide mutations (Rett Syndrome, Neuroligins 3 & 4, and SLC6A8). The lessons from these diseases include an understanding of autistic features as a broad phenotype rather than as a single clinical entity, the role of multiple genes either alone or in concert with the manifestation of autistic features, and the role of epigenetic factors such as imprinting and X-inactivation in the expression of disease severity. Better understanding of the clinical phenotypes of social cognition and the molecular neurogenetics of X-linked gene disorders will certainly provide additional tools for understanding autism in the years to come.