Background Many of the burgeoning megacities in developing countries have witnessed poorly planned urban sprawls. The absence of a coherent mass public transport system encourages the acquisition of inexpensive motorcycles for commuting and this has distorted the traffic mix. In Karachi the proportion of motorcycles on the road has risen from 34% of registered vehicles to 55% over the past decade. We have sought to assess the impact of this on road use fatalities by analysis of data captured by ongoing road traffic injury surveillance based in 5 city hospitals. Methods The recorded road-use deaths were those dying within 30 days of being admitted to hospital and included cases brought dead to the EDs or the mortuaries of the hospitals. The case information included gender, age, number of vehicles involved in the crash, road-user type (motorcycle rider or pillion rider), helmet use and injury scoring. Results During 8 years, 2007–2014, motorcycle occupants accounted for 3901 of the 9192 fatalities and over the study period these increased from 36% to 53% of the recorded road deaths (p < 0.001). 69% of them were aged 35 years or less. Though most motorcycle collisions resulting in death involved heavy commercial vehicles, 185 fatalities resulted from motorcycle to motorcycle collisions. Of the 3253 pedestrian fatalities recorded, a motorcycle had struck 19% of them. Of the 2179 instances where a cause could be ascribed to the motorcycle fatality, over speeding was reported in over 50% and the top 6 roads for motorcyclist fatalities were signal-free corridors. Conclusions An escalating socio-economic tragedy is being played out in the urban centres of many developing countries by the juxtaposition of poor public transport and availability of inexpensive motorcycles. Our study suggests that while the implementation of mass transit schemes are awaited, strategies that segregate traffic and reduce speeds should be prioritised along with strict enforcement of helmet laws.


Abstract. Accurate representation of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics in Earth system models is critical for future climate prediction, yet large uncertainties exist regarding how, and to what extent, the suite of proposed relevant mechanisms should be included. To investigate how various mechanisms interact to influence SOM storage and dynamics, we developed an SOM reaction network integrated in a one-dimensional, multi-phase, and multi-component reactive transport solver. The model includes representations of bacterial and fungal activity, multiple archetypal polymeric and monomeric carbon substrate groups, aqueous chemistry, aqueous advection and diffusion, gaseous diffusion, and adsorption (and protection) and desorption from the soil mineral phase. The model predictions reasonably matched observed depth-resolved SOM and dissolved organic matter (DOM) stocks and fluxes, lignin content, and fungi to aerobic bacteria ratios. We performed a suite of sensitivity analyses under equilibrium and dynamic conditions to examine the role of dynamic sorption, microbial assimilation rates, and carbon inputs. To our knowledge, observations do not exist to fully test such a complicated model structure or to test the hypotheses used to explain observations of substantial storage of very old SOM below the rooting depth. Nevertheless, we demonstrated that a reasonable combination of sorption parameters, microbial biomass and necromass dynamics, and advective transport can match observations without resorting to an arbitrary depth-dependent decline in SOM turnover rates, as is often done. We conclude that, contrary to assertions derived from existing turnover time based model formulations, observed carbon content and Δ14C vertical profiles are consistent with a representation of SOM consisting of carbon compounds with relatively fast reaction rates, vertical aqueous transport, and dynamic protection on mineral surfaces.


Abstract Thrombelastography (TEG) measured by the TEG5000 Hemostasis Analyzer is an established but the labor-intensive method for assessing global hemostasis. The first true point-of-care TEG, the TEG6s system, uses resonance-frequency viscoelasticity measurements and a disposable multi-channel microfluidic cartridge to assess hemostasis and response to antiplatelet therapy. TEG assays (n = 5,100) were performed on the blood of healthy volunteers (n = 157) and patients undergoing coronary revascularization at three hospitals (n = 300). The results from the TEG6s were compared with the conventional TEG5000 in accordance with Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and FDA recommendations. Precision testing was conducted using blood from healthy donors, all assays were run for 5 consecutive days in duplicate using multiple operators, lots, and instruments. Reference ranges were comparable between the TEG systems. Deming regression analysis demonstrated a strong correlation between the two systems for the standard hemostasis tests (R r = 0.932, MA r = 0.972, LY30 r = 0.938). Method comparison analysis showed an acceptable agreement between PlateletMapping (PM) assays for measuring arachidonic acid (indicator of aspirin response)- and adenosine diphosphate (indicator of P2Y12 inhibitor response)-induced platelet aggregation (total agreement = 90%, and 72%, respectively). TEG6s precision testing yielded low variability (CV 0–13%) in all measures. The new point-of-care TEG6s is associated with greater ease of use than the TEG5000 and provides precise results. The results correlated between methods for all variables. TEG6s is a promising device for near-patient hemostasis monitoring and future trials of personalized therapy designed to reduce bleeding and thrombosis.


Public opinion generally supports the conclusion that our public schools face serious problems. Common views, supported by a variety of media stories about poor performance of students, provide the backdrop for much of school policy. But, even if concern about schools is a prevalent view, the precise causes of problems are less clear. Some hold that student preparation for schools—resulting from increasing family problems, more immigrants, more poverty, or whatever—has declined over time, leading to falls in student performance. Others hold that support for schools has fallen. Budgets are turned down; pressures to lower taxes take precedence over schools; an increasingly older population has less interest in schooling. And, to the extent that teachers or other personnel contribute to any problems, it is poor pay and lack of resources that make teaching an undesirable occupation. In short, resources are the key, either directly to deal with the needs of schools or indirectly to compensate for the poorer preparation of students. Unfortunately, these common conceptions—oft-repeated in the press, in legislatures, and even in courtrooms—are for the most part simply wrong. Resource support for schools has been high, and the problems of performance—which are real—result from other forces.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) is often narrowly defined by abstinence from alcohol and improvements in functioning (e.g. mental health, social functioning, employment). This study used latent profile analysis to examine variability in recovery outcomes, defined by alcohol use, alcohol-related problems and psychosocial functioning at 3 years following treatment. Secondary analysis investigated pre-treatment, post-treatment and 1- and 3-year post-treatment covariate predictors of the latent profiles.

DESIGN
Secondary analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial.

SETTING
United States.

PARTICIPANTS
We used data from the out-patient arm of Project MATCH (n = 806; 29.7% female, 22.2% non-white).

MEASUREMENTS
Recovery was defined by latent profile analyses including measures of psychosocial functioning and life satisfaction (Psychosocial Functioning Inventory), unemployment and mental health (Addiction Severity Index), alcohol and other drug use (Form 90) and alcohol-related consequences (Drinker Inventory of Consequences) 3 years following treatment. Mixture modeling was used to examine correlates of profiles.

FINDINGS
We identified four profiles at 3 years following treatment: (1) poor functioning frequent heavy drinkers, (2) poor functioning infrequent heavy drinkers, (3) high functioning occasional heavy drinkers and (4) high-functioning infrequent non-heavy drinkers. There were relatively few differences on indicators of functioning and treatment-related variables between the high functioning infrequent non-heavy drinkers and the high-functioning occasional heavy drinkers, other than high-functioning occasional heavy drinkers having lower alcohol dependence severity [odds ratio (OR) = 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.90, 0.98], fewer post-treatment coping skills (OR = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.32, 0.90) and lower 3-year post-treatment abstinence self-efficacy (OR = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.28, 0.49) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) involvement (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.85, 0.99). The two high-functioning profiles showed the greatest improvements in functioning from baseline through the 3-year follow-up, whereas the low-functioning profiles showed the least amount of improvement. High-functioning occasional heavy drinkers had higher purpose in life than the poor-functioning profiles.

CONCLUSIONS
Some individuals who engage in heavy drinking following treatment for alcohol use disorder may function as well as those who are mostly abstinent with respect to psychosocial functioning, employment, life satisfaction and mental health.


Poster presented at Vision Science Society Annual Meeting, May 2014, St. Pete Beach, FL
A growing interest in individual differences in face and object recognition motivates the development of visual learning tests such as the Cambridge Face Memory Test (Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006) and the Vanderbilt Expertise Test (VET; McGugin et al., 2012). But experience with a category may also result in non-perceptual knowledge. We seek a reliable and valid measure of non-perceptual semantic knowledge in a standard format for a variety of object categories (rather than one category, Barton et al. 2009; Van Gulick & Gauthier, VSS2013) that applies to the full range of expertise in a domain. The Semantic Vanderbilt Expertise Test (SVET) focuses on one aspect of semantic knowledge that can be measured across categories: acquisition of relevant nomenclature. Each trial consists of a triplet of names, one real name of an object in that category and two foils. The SVET 1.0 includes 7 categories: birds, cars, dinosaurs, planes, shoes, Transformers, and trees. Through multiple iterations of data collected on Amazon Mechanical Turk test items were fine-tuned based on factor analysis, classical item analyses, and item response theory. In data from samples of 96-101 subjects per category, all tests showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha). We validated each SVET against subjects' self-reports of their category knowledge, assessed with 7 domain-specific questions (Gauthier et al., submitted). Across all categories, subjects' general rating of their category experience was most strongly correlated with SVET performance (r=.38) followed by their rating of how detailed an essay they could write about the category (r=.35). Interestingly, just like perceptual performance on the VET, the SVET correlation with age and gender differed across categories, suggesting a role for experience. The SVET can provide assessment of semantic knowledge to complement visual measures, and to help understand how performance is determined by the interaction of perceptual and cognitive abilities with experience.
This work is supported by NSF (SBE-0542013), the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center (P30-EY008126), and the National Eye Institute (R01 EY013441).


The aim of the research presented in this thesis was to come to a deeper understanding of clinical decision making from within the interpretive paradigm. The project draws on ideas from a number of schools of thought which have the common emphasis that the interpretive use of language is at the core of all human activity. This research project studied settings where health professionals and medical students engage in clinical decision making in groups. Settings included medical students participating in problembased learning tutorials and a team of health professionals working in a multidisciplinary clinic. An underlying assumption of this project was that in such group settings, where health professionals are required to articulate their clinical reasoning for each other, the individuals involved are likely to have insights that could reveal the nature of clinical decision making. Another important assumption of this research is that human activities, such as clinical reasoning, take place in cultural contexts, are mediated by language and other symbol systems, and can be best understood when investigated in their historical development. Data were gathered by interviews of medical students and health professionals working in the two settings, and by non-participant observation. Data analysis and interpretation revealed that clinical decision making is primarily a social and linguistic skill, acquired by participating in communities of practice called health professions. These communities of practice have their own subculture including the language game called clinical decision making which includes an interpretive repertoire of specific language tools and skills. New participants to the profession must come to embody these skills under the guidance of more capable members of the profession, and do so by working through many cases. The interpretive repertoire that health professionals need to master includes skills with words, categories, metaphors, heuristics, narratives, rituals, rhetoric, and hermeneutics. All these skills need to be coordinated, both in constructing a diagnosis and management plan and in communicating clinical decisions to other people, in a manner that can be judged as intelligible, legitimate, persuasive, and carrying the moral authority for subsequent action.


The aim of this chapter is to contribute to understanding how humor comprehension and production occur, through the analysis of a corpus of cartoons published in Spanish press adopting a pragmatic perspective of analysis. Special attention will be paid to analyzing the way in which the dialogue between the artist and the reader takes place, additionally highlighting the mechanisms used by both parties to ensure a successful communication. Our work is part of general research of GRIALE group (University of Alicante) is carried out on irony and humour, taking as its starting point a neo-gricean perspective, as presented in Rodriguez Rosique (2009). Our hypothesis is that cartoons, as humour in a general way, do not really violate the pre-requisite of quality, but it is a way to lie to the reader only in a first phase of his interpretive approach.


Given datasets from multiple domains, a key challenge is to efficiently exploit these data sources for modeling a target domain. Variants of this problem have been studied in many contexts, such as cross-domain translation and domain adaptation. We propose AlignFlow, a generative modeling framework that models each domain via a normalizing flow. The use of normalizing flows allows for a) flexibility in specifying learning objectives via adversarial training, maximum likelihood estimation, or a hybrid of the two methods; and b) learning and exact inference of a shared representation in the latent space of the generative model. We derive a uniform set of conditions under which AlignFlow is marginally-consistent for the different learning objectives. Furthermore, we show that AlignFlow guarantees exact cycle consistency in mapping datapoints from a source domain to target and back to the source domain. Empirically, AlignFlow outperforms relevant baselines on image-to-image translation and unsupervised domain adaptation and can be used to simultaneously interpolate across the various domains using the learned representation.


Whether overseeing institutional repositories, digital library collections, or digital preservation services, repository managers often establish file format policies intended to extend the longevity of collections under their care. While concerted efforts have been made in the library community to encourage common standards, digital preservation policies regularly vary from one digital library service to another. In the interest of gaining a broad view of contemporary digital preservation practice in North American research libraries, this paper presents the findings of a study of file format policies at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. It is intended to present the digital preservation community with an assessment of the level of trust currently placed in common file formats in digital library collections and institutional repositories. Beginning with a summary of file format research to date, the authors describe the research methodology they used to collect and analyze data from the file format policies of ARL Library repositories and digital library services. The paper concludes with a presentation and analysis of findings that explore levels of confidence placed in image, text, audio, video, tabular data, software application, presentation, geospatial, and computer program file formats. The data show that file format policies have evolved little beyond the document and image digitization standards of traditional library reformatting programs, and that current approaches to file format policymaking must evolve to meet the challenges of research libraries' expanding digital repository services.


Asset
   allocation
   is
   concerned
   with
   the
   development
   of
   multi-‐asset
   portfolio strategies
  that
  are
  likely
  to
  meet
  an
  investor's
  objectives
  based
  on
  the
  interaction of
   expected
   returns,
   risk,
   correlation
   and
   implementation
   from
   a
   range
   of distinct
  asset
  classes
  or
  beta
  sources.

  Challenges
  associated
  with
  the
  discipline are
   often
   particularly
   significant
   in
   private
   markets.

   Specifically,
   composition differences
   between
   the
   'index'
   or
   'benchmark'
   universe
   and
   the
   investible universe
   mean
   that
   there
   can
   often
   be
   substantial
   and
   meaningful
   deviations between
  the
  investment
  characteristics
  implied
  in
  asset
  allocation
  decisions
  and those
  delivered
  by
  investment
  teams. For
   example,
   while
   allocation
   decisions
   are
   often
   based
   on
   relatively
   low-‐risk diversified
   real
   estate
   'equity'
   exposure,
   implementation
   decisions
   frequently include
  exposure
  to
  higher
  risk
  forms
  of
  the
  asset
  class
  as
  well
  as
  investments
  in debt
  based
  instruments.

  These
  differences
  can
  have
  a
  meaningful
  impact
  on
  the contribution
   of
   the
   asset
   class
   to
   the
   overall
   portfolio
   and,
   therefore,
   lead
   to
   a potential
  misalignment
  between
  asset
  allocation
  decisions
  and
  implementation. Despite
  this,
  the
  key
  conclusion
  from
  this
  paper
  is
  not
  that
  real
  estate
  investors should
  become
  slaves
  to
  a
  narrowly
  defined
  mandate
  based
  on
  IPD
  /
  NCREIF
  or other
   forms
   of
   benchmark
   replication.

   The
   discussion
   suggests
   that
   such
   an approach
  would
   likely
   lead
   to
   the
  underutilization
  of
   real
   estate
   in
  multi-‐asset portfolio
  strategies. Instead,
   it
   is
   that
   to
   achieve
   asset
   allocation
   alignment,
   real
   estate
   exposure should
   be
   divided
   into
  multiple
   pools
   representing
   distinct
   forms
   of
   the
   asset class.

  In
  addition,
  the
  paper
  suggests
  that
  associated
  investment
  guidelines
  and processes
  should
  be
  collaborative
  and
  reflect
  the
  portfolio
  wide
  asset
  allocation objectives
   of
   each
   pool.

   Further,
   where
   appropriate
   they
   should
   specifically target
  potential
  for
  'additional'
  beta
  or,
  more
  marginally,
  'alpha'. JEL
  classification:

  R33,
  G01,
  G02,
  G11,
  G17 Keywords:

  asset
  allocation,
  real
  estate,
  benchmarks Page
  2
  of
  67


About the Book:A range of genres, rooted in local impulses, reaching global audiences; a main prop of commercial culture and an art form open to aspirants and fans from every background: About the vast and diverse topic of pop, scholars and critics, journalists and musicians have much to say, but rarely to each other. A crossover venture begun at Seattle's Experience Music Project, this book captures the academic and the critical, the musical and the literary in an impromptu dialogue that suggests the breadth and vitality of pop inquiry today.

This Is Pop illustrates what can happen when the best of scholarship, criticism, and pop's inherent unruliness intersect. Robert Christgau and Gary Giddins, pivotal critics, encounter Simon Frith and Robert Walser, pioneers in the study of popular music. Luc Sante and Geoffrey O'Brien write about sound with the same prose elegance they apply to noir or New York streetlife. Musicians Carrie Brownstein and Sarah Dougher, both active in the riot grrl and rock scenes of the Pacific Northwest, examine how audience responses affect their craft. John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats and the idiosyncratic zine Last Plane to Jakarta, attends to the web postings of hair metal fans. From film tracks to Merle Travis, from Ray Davies to rock infighting, from indie poetry to the Carly Simon Principle of pop sincerity, this book reflects the welter of ambition, style, and meaning that draw us to pop in the first place. The result is a collection as cluttered with treasures as a good music store.


Objective: The administration of chemotherapy forms a major part of the clinical role of oncology nurses. When a mistake is made during chemotherapy administration, admitting and reporting the error timely could save the lives of cancer patients. The main objective of this study was to assess the perceptions of oncology nurses about why chemotherapy administration errors are not reported. Methods: This is a descriptive study that surveyed a convenient sample of 128 oncology nurses currently practicing in the Ogun State University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria. The tool for data collection was a structured questionnaire that consisted of two sections. The first section was for the demographic data of participants and the second section consisted of questions constructed based on the Medication Administration Error (MAE) reporting survey developed by Wakefield and his team. Results: Findings showed that majority of the nurses (89.8%) have made at least one MAE in the course of their professional practice. Fear (mean = 3.63) and managerial response (mean = 2.87) were the two major barriers to MAE reporting perceived among oncology nurses. Conclusion: Critically analyzing why medication errors are not reported among oncology nurses is crucial to identifying strategic interventions that would promote reporting of all errors, especially those related to chemotherapy administration. It is therefore recommended that nurse managers and health care administrators should create a favorable atmosphere that does not only prevent medication errors but also supports nurses′ voluntary reporting of MAEs. Education, information and communication strategies should also be put in place to train nurses on the need to report, if possible prevent, all medication errors.


The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (47 U.S.C. § 227), enacted in response to abuses by telemarketers, prohibits the sending of unsolicited advertisements to telephone facsimile machines, which it defines as equipment which can transcribe electronic signals received over a telephone line onto paper. This definition arguably includes electronic mail messages received using a personal computer equipped with a modem, courts have not yet addressed the applicability of the TCPA to e-mail. Unsolicited commercial e-mail is widely disfavored on the Internet and within commercial online services. Network service providers and individual users fight unsolicited e-mail using contractual prohibitions, rules of netiquette, and various self-help mechanisms, but the TCPA could add a strong legal tool to their arsenal. Congress does not appear to have considered the Act's potential applicability to e-mail; the breadth of its definition of telephone facsimile machine appears to be accidental. However, the policies behind the ban on unsolicited fax advertising apply to e-mail as well as to conventional facsimile transmissions, and restrictions on unsolicited e-mail advertising would probably pass constitutional muster. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that courts will extend the TCPA as it currently stands to include e-mail advertising, and alternative methods of addressing the junk e-mail problem are likely to have fewer undesirable side effects.


BACKGROUND
Low-dose aspirin reduces cardiovascular risk; however, monitoring over-the-counter medication use relies on the time-consuming and costly manual review of medical records. Our objective is to validate natural language processing (NLP) of the electronic medical record (EMR) for extracting medication exposure and contraindication information.

METHODS
The text of EMRs for 499 patients with type 2 diabetes was searched using NLP for evidence of aspirin use and its contraindications. The results were compared to a standardised manual records review.

RESULTS
Of the 499 patients, 351 (70%) were using aspirin and 148 (30%) were not, according to manual review. NLP correctly identified 346 of the 351 aspirin-positive and 134 of the 148 aspirin-negative patients, indicating a sensitivity of 99% (95% CI 97-100) and specificity of 91% (95% CI 88-97). Of the 148 aspirin-negative patients, 66 (45%) had contraindications and 82 (55%) did not, according to manual review. NLP search for contraindications correctly identified 61 of the 66 patients with contraindications and 58 of the 82 patients without, yielding a sensitivity of 92% (95% CI 84-97) and a specificity of 71% (95% CI 60-80).

CONCLUSIONS
NLP of the EMR is accurate in ascertaining documented aspirin use and could potentially be used for epidemiological research as a source of cardiovascular risk factor information.


The set of proteins required for mitotic division remains poorly characterised. Here, an extensive series of correlation analyses of human and mouse transcriptomics data was performed to identify genes strongly and reproducibly associated with cells undergoing S/G2-M phases of the cell cycle. In so doing, a list of 701 cell cycle-associated genes was defined and shown that whilst many are only expressed during these phases, the expression of others is also driven by alternative promoters. Of this list, 496 genes have known cell cycle functions, whereas 205 were assigned as putative cell cycle genes, 53 of which are functionally uncharacterised. Among these, 27 were screened for subcellular localisation revealing many to be nuclear localised and at least four to be novel centrosomal proteins. Furthermore, 10 others inhibited cell proliferation upon siRNA knockdown. This study presents the first comprehensive list of human cell cycle proteins, identifying many new candidate proteins.


In a screen for proteins that could protect cells from apoptosis induced though Fas (a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family also called CD95 or Apo-1), Somia et al. identified a gene that encodes a protein they call lifeguard (LFG). LFG appears to be a seven-transmembrane spanning protein. It has similarity to a glutamate--binding protein from rat and the Drosophila NMDA receptor--associated protein and is abundant in the hippocampus. LFG is the human homolog of a protein from rat called neural membrane protein 35, which is highly expressed in the nervous system during postnatal development. Ectopic expression of LFG protected HeLa cells from apoptosis-induced by Fas, but not that induced through the tumor necrosis factor receptor. The mechanism by which LFG functions is not known, but it does not decrease expression of Fas or inhibit binding of the adapter molecule FADD to the receptor. The authors speculate that LFG could have a role in protecting brain cells from Fas-induced cell death. Somia, N.V., Schmitt, M.J., Vetter, D.E., Van Antwerp, D., Heinemann, S.F., and Verma, I.M.(1999) LFG: An anti-apoptotic gene that provides protection from Fas-mediated cell death. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 96: 12667-12672. [Abstract] [Full Text]


From previous ed.: Differential Equations with MATLAB (2nd ed.) by B. Hunt, R. Lipsman, J.Osborn and J.Rosenberg is a supplemental text that can enrich and enhance any first course in ordinary differential equations. Designed to accompany Wiley's ODE texts written by Boyce/DiPrima, Borrelli/Coleman and Lomen/Lovelock, this supplement helps instructors move towards an earlier use of numerical and geometric methods, place a greater emphasis on systems (including nonlinear ones), and increase discussions of both the benefits and possible pitfalls in numerical solution of ODEs. By providing an introduction to the software that is integrated with the relevant mathematics, Differential Equations with MATLAB can perfectly complement and enhance these texts.


The conformation of polyelectrolyte aggregates as a function of the backbone rigidity is investigated by coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation. The polyelectrolyte is represented by a bead-spring chain with charged side chains. The simulations start from the uniform distributions of the polyelectrolytes, and the resultant polyelectrolyte conformation after a few microseconds exhibits spherical self-aggregates, clusters, or bending bundle-like aggregates, depending on the backbone rigidity. The interaggregate structures on a large scale are featured by the static structure factor (SSF). The simulated SSFs of the bending bundle-like aggregates are consistent with those of the small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurement so we successfully assign the microscopic structures of polyelectrolytes to the SAXS measurement. The power-law of the SSFs for the bundle conditions is steeper than that of the conventional cylinder model. The present study finds that such discrepancy in the power-law results from the bending of the bundle-like aggregates. In addition, the relaxation behavior includes slow dynamics. The present study proposes that such slow dynamics results from diffusion-limited aggregation and from gliding processes to reduce local metastable folding within the aggregates.


The prediction of recoverable resources at an operating manganese mine is currently undertaken using univariate ordinary kriging of the target variable manganese, and 5 deleterious variables. Input data densities at the time of this calculation are considerably lower than at the time of final selection (grade control), and the potential for unnacceptable conditional bias to be introduced through the use of linear geostatistical methods when determining grade estimates over a small support has led to assessment of the potential benefit of employing the local change of support methods Localised Uniform Conditioning (LUC) and Conditional Simulation (CS). Allowances for the operating conditions, including time frames for estimation / simulation, and likely software limitations are accounted for by also requiring decorrelation to be used in instances where the data are considered in a multivariate sense. A novel method for decorrelation of geostatistical datasets, Independent Components Analysis (ICA), is compared against the more common method of Minimum-Maximum Autocorrelation Factorisation (MAF). ICA performs comparably against MAF in terms of its ability to diagonalise the variance-covariance matrix of the test dataset over multiple lags, for a variety of input data densities and treatments (log-ratio transformed and raw oxide data). Based on these results, ICA decorrelated data were incorporated into a comparative study of LUC and CS against block ordinary kriging (BOK), using an input dataset of reduced density, treated variously as raw univariate oxide data, decorrelated oxide data, and log-ratio transformed decorrelated data. The use of the log-ratio transform, designed to account for the 100% sum constraint inherent to the input data, proved impractical for LUC due to difficulties associated with the discrete Gaussian model change of support method employed by this technique. Log-ratio data transformation was restricted to use with CS where back transformation to raw oxide space could take place on a pseudo-equivalent vii support to the input data, prior to change of support. While use of the log-ratio transformation for CS guaranteed adherence to the sum constraint for results (the only method to do so) it resulted in distortion to both the spatial and grade distribution of results. Decorrelation by ICA also posed difficulties, with biases introduced to final back transformed results as a result of the decorrelation algorithm in both log-ratio transformed and oxide data, which in some instances caused impossible negative values to be returned for some variables in the final results. In a comparison of net profit calculations for each method, the distortions introduced from both log-ratio transformation, and decorrelation become evident in either overly optimistic or conservative profit distributions for methods in which they were used. Of the results presented, only BOK, CS and LUC of non-decorrelated oxide data appear to show results similar to those which would be used at the operation during final selection (based on ordinary kriging of a complete dataset). Based on the comparison of spatial grade distributions and both net profit spatial distribution and summary, the decision to employ a non-linear method of recoverable resource calculation at the operation under question would be questionable in terms of its reward for effort, given that the current method of BOK appears to produce equivalent results.


In recent years, the theme of artificial and/or mediated reality has been recurrent in popular cinema (The Matrix, The Truman Show, The Cell, etc.). This trend reflects a growing awareness of how information technologies obfuscate traditional boundaries of what is real and what is not. The article draws a cultural background to these films, and, by extension, to our so-called age of information by examining a number of older fictional works in which technologies of representation and simulation are explored in more or less dystopian terms. In a trajectory including otherwise unrelated works, such as J. K. Huysmans' Against Nature and William Gibson's Neuromancer, we find a number of familiar themes and images presented with a striking degree of continuity: the neglect of the body, the deterioration of social and familial bonds, the loss of history and literary culture, the retreat from reality into a world of engineered hallucinations.


Abstract:This article examines two 2013 TV miniseries, The Heirs and My Love from the Star, by relating their melodramatic aesthetics to the survivalist imperative under neoliberal governance. From the colonial sinp'a theater to Golden Age films, melodrama has operated as a popular mode of imagination that expresses inarticulate experiences generated over the course of Korea's modernization. To extend and complicate existing scholarship on modern melodrama, this study approaches recent K-dramas' melodramatic modes as both an affective response to and an everyday tactic for coping with failing economic democracy in contemporary Korea. In this light, the intensifying fantastic elements of the genre are deemed not so much anachronistic as tactical, as they are deployed to reclaim the justice and equality that are felt to be hopelessly disappearing in daily lives. As I look at their excessive aesthetics within the context of diminishing social mobility in the neoliberal era, my analysis of the two miniseries further notes the gendered structure of these melodramatic fantasies in which the survival of women, who have fewer privileges, is achieved through the reform of male elites.


This paper presents a simulation study on procurement contract management. The purpose of the study is to develop a general framework for supply contracts, which aims to drive costs down and reduce risks of inventory and price flexibility. The first part of the paper emphasizes the important role of procurement strategy in the supply chain management and introduces the main supply contracts. On the basis of the reference modes, the research problems are articulated. Then, system dynamics is used as the main research approach and fulfil three main tasks. Firstly, system dynamics models are developed to link the key variables and present the feedback structure of the supply chain system. The second task is to compare the influences of different contracts on the performance of the buyer and supplier. Last but not least, it shows the dynamics of the system and tests the scenarios, which is critical for the policy design. The innovation of the study is to propose the portfolio contract. The computational simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of optimal portfolio contracts and their sensitivity to the parameter selection. The study helps to foster in-depth view on highly dynamic and complex problem, and thus contributes to a better understanding of procurement portfolio contracts and supply chain system. This paper indicates that portfolio contracts not only reduce the company's cost, increase the expected profit but also help to control the risks. The work would, hopefully, be a framework for supply contracts that could help the player in the supply chain to optimise their performances like reducing costs and controlling inventory and price risks.


The identification of disease genes (genes that when mutated cause human diseases) is an important and challenging problem. Proper diagnosis, prevention, as well as care for patients require an understanding of disease pathophysiology, which is best understood when the underlying causative gene(s) or genetic element(s) are identified. While the availability of the sequenced human genome helped to lead to the discovery of more than 1,900 disease genes, the rate of disease gene discovery is still occurring at a slow pace. The use of genetic linkage methods have successfully led to the identification of numerous disease genes. However, linkage studies are ultimately restricted by available meioses (clinical samples) which result in numerous candidate disease genes. This thesis addresses candidate gene prioritizations in disease gene discovery as applied toward a genetically heterogeneous disease known as Bardet-Biedl Syndrome (BBS). Specifically, the integration of various functional information and the development of a novel comparative genomic approach (Computational Orthologous Prioritization – COP) that led to the identification of BBS3 and BBS11. Functional data integration and application of the COP method may be helpful toward the identification of other disease genes. Abstract Approved:______________________________________ Thesis Co-SupervisorApproved:______________________________________ Thesis Co-Supervisor Assistant Professor, Opthalmology Title and Department


Most modern production systems, especially in temperate climates, do not offer wallowing facilities to pigs and, to date, this has neither generated much concern in welfare science nor public debate on pig welfare. Nevertheless, wallowing is a natural behaviour of pigs which may be important to them. This paper systematically examines the overall importance of wallowing for pig welfare using principles developed in semantic modelling. As a first step, relevant citations were collected from the scientific literature. Secondly, since the importance of the attribute ('wallowing') is dependent upon the discrepancy between its best and worst levels, these levels were specified in relation to the status quo in pig husbandry, ie no pool (even during periods of overheating) and the ideal mud pool, respectively. Criteria for an ideal mud pool were formulated in terms of pool location and size, substrate, thermal conditions, body care and hygiene. Thirdly, available scientific information about wallowing was systematically described in relation to ten so-called weighting categories identified in semantic modelling (pain and illness, survival/heat stress, fitness, stress, aggression, abnormal behaviour, frustration, natural behaviour, preferences and demand). Fourthly, the welfare importance of wallowing was assessed by tentatively comparing it to several other welfare attributes, such as food, foraging substrate, social contact and non-castration. This leads to the suggestion that wallowing is important for pig welfare because of its multifaceted nature. It may even be very important when other forms of thermoregulation are sub-optimal. This paper, finally, discusses the 'ethical room for manoeuvre' concerning the (non-) implementation of mud pools in practice. An integrated approach is suggested to address related scientific, technological and ethical issues, because stakeholders are faced not only with scientific and technological gaps in knowledge but also with economical, ecological, food-safety and psychological barriers. As an important element of natural behaviour and positive welfare, the subject may provide an opportunity for pig farming. This should be recognised more explicitly in transition processes towards fully sustainable pig production systems.


The existence of a negative relationship between cartel stability and the level of excess capacity in an industry has for a long time been the dominant view in the traditional IO literature. Recent supergame-theoretic contributions (e.g. Brock and Scheinkman, 1985) appear to show that this view is ill-founded. Focussing on the issue of enforcement of cartel rules ('incentive contraints'), however, this literature completely ignores firms' 'participation constraints'. Reverting the focus of attention, the present paper restores the traditional view: large cartels will not be sustainable in periods of high excess capacity (low demand). In contrast to the supergame-theoretic literature, it predicts a negative relationship between excess capacity and the collusive price.


For the past six years the conservation and collection management departments at Museums Victoria have been conducting a major survey to determine the type and extent of hazardous substances in the collections to better inform safe handling and storage practices. This paper focuses on mercury compounds in the collection, including mercury chloride applied as a pesticide, mercury sulfide pigments, liquid mercury used in scientific equipment, and mineral specimens such as native mercury and cinnabar. All these compounds can release volatile mercury vapour into storage furniture and have the potential to contaminate both the cabinet and other specimens stored nearby.
 Although previous testing had confirmed that the air in storage rooms and workspaces contained no detectable levels of mercury vapour, recent publications by Hawks et al. 2004, Havermans et al. 2015 and Marcotte et al. 2017 showing high levels of mercury vapour inside storage containers in herbaria raised concern that there could be higher than acceptable levels of mercury vapour building up inside storage cabinets at Museums Victoria. This prompted analysis of the headspace in cabinets using a Jerome J405 portable mercury vapour meter. Testing was informed by the results of previous hazards surveys using X-ray fluorescence spectrography to target cabinets where mercury vapour was likely to be present.
 Air from cabinets was sampled across the indigenous cultures, history, technology and natural sciences collections. Results showed levels of mercury vapour could be considerably above 25 μg/m3 the Australian time-weighted average (TWA) exposure standard for an 8 hour workday in cabinets of bird skins and indigenous artefacts treated with mercuric chloride pesticides. Results above 150 μg/m3 the temporary emergency exposure level (TEEL) were measured in the mineralogy collection. Mitigation strategies are being implemented to reduce the risks to staff health and contamination of other collection materials, including enclosing mercury-containing species of minerals in gas barrier film, venting high risk cabinets to dissipate vapour before accessing specimens, and engineering controls during the handling of specimens.


Roundtable discussion featuring Pier Vittorio Aureli, Alex Coles, Catharine Rossi and Verina Gfader. Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, London. 12 December 2013.

The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968–1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013) is the first in the EP series, a new discursive platform. The Italian Avant-Garde emphasises the multiple correspondences between well-known radical art, architecture and design phenomena, figures such as Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini, and previously overlooked spaces, works, and performances, while also featuring newly commissioned interviews and essays by historians, curators, critics and practitioners. At this event the editors will be joined by one of the book's contributors, Pier Vittorio Aureli, to shed new light on the era and discuss its complex legacy.
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=2280


Active vibration control (AVC) is a relatively new technology for the mitigation of annoying human-induced vibrations in floors. However, recent technological developments have demonstrated its great potential application in this field. Despite this, when a floor is found to have problematic floor vibrations after construction the unfamiliar technology of AVC is usually avoided in favour of more common techniques, such as Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) which have a proven track record of successful application, particularly for footbridges and staircases. This study aims to investigate the advantages and disadvantages that AVC has, when compared with TMDs, for the application of mitigation of pedestrian-induced floor vibrations in offices. Simulations are performed using the results from a finite element model of a typical office layout that has a high vibration response level. The vibration problems on this floor are then alleviated through the use of both AVC and TMDs and the results of each mitigation configuration compared. The results of this study will enable a more informed decision to be made by building owners and structural engineers regarding suitable technologies for reducing floor vibrations.


Under the doctrine of informed consent, if a person is competent to understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives to proposed treatment, that person is allowed to decide whether to accept or reject the proposed treatment. Informed consent is not required if the person is incompetent or if an emergency arises that necessitates treatment to save the person's life. Nevertheless, various devices are used to deny mentally disordered persons their right to refuse treatment even when they are competent decision makers and even when no emergency exists. For example, some courts substitute a limited due process model for a full due process model, allowing doctors to decide whether the proposed treatment is appropriate, rather than requiring a court's determination of the patient's competence to withhold consent. Some states substitute the decision to involuntarily commit the patient, or a decision to appoint a guardian or conservator to assist the patient, for the requirement that the patient be incompetent to make treatment decisions. In some states, the limited emergency exception to the requirement of informed consent has been expanded to allow involuntary treatment of dangerous patients - without requiring that an emergency exists. In some states, the requirement of voluntary and informed consent has been replaced by uninformed or coerced assent. For example, if the patient does not object to the treatment, some courts have allowed doctors to medicate the patient - without informing the patient of the risks, benefits, and alternatives to that medication and obtaining the patient's informed consent to its administration. Outpatient commitment laws have been enacted - such as Kendra's Law in New York - through which courts order mentally disordered persons to accept medication, even though such persons are not subject to involuntary civil commitment. These various devices so erode the competent patient's right to autonomous medical decision making that the right of competent, though mentally disordered, persons to refuse treatment is, in reality, refused.


This 2-in-1 training kit delivers in-depth preparation plus practice for 70-680, the exam for the new MCTS: Windows 7, Configuration certification. Ace your exam prepand build real-world job skillswith lessons, labs, and practice tests. Test How Much You Know with Sample Case Scenarios from MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-680) Case Scenario 1: Installing Windows 7 at Contoso You work for Contoso, Ltd. The company has a head office and two branch office locations. The company has just purchased 50 small form factor laptops on which you want to deploy Windows 7. A total of 40 of these computers will be deployed at the head office site, with 5 deployed to each of the branch office sites. The small computers do not include DVD-ROM drives, but they do have PXE-compliant network adapters and USB ports. You have tested the default version of Windows PE available with the WAIK and found that it is not compatible with the network adapters on these computers. Contoso, Ltd has a volume license agreement with Microsoft. All servers at Contoso, Ltd have the Windows Server 2008 operating system installed. You would like to ensure that the computers' hard disks are protected with encryption so that data is protected in case they are lost. Considering these facts, answer the following questions: 1. Which installation media or source could you use to deploy Windows 7 in the head office? 2. Which installation media or source could you use to deploy Windows 7 in the branch offices? 3. Which edition of Windows 7 should you deploy to the computers? Answers 1. You could use WDS or a USB storage device as an installation source for deploying Windows 7. Because you do not have access to Windows PE, you cannot use a network share. 2. You could use a USB storage device as an installation source for deploying Windows 7. Because you do not have access to Windows PE, you cannot use a network share. You would not use WDS when you need to deploy operating systems to only five computers at each location. 3. Windows 7 Enterprise supports BitLocker hard disk drive encryption and is available to volume license customers. Although Windows 7 Ultimate also supports BitLocker hard disk drive encryption, it uses a retail license rather than a volume one. Case Scenario 2: Migrating User Data at Fabrikam You are in charge of supporting client operating systems at Fabrikam. In the head office, you have 20 users that have computers running Windows 7 Enterprise (x86). You will be increasing the amount of RAM in these computers from 4 GB to 16 GB and need to upgrade the operating system to Windows 7 Enterprise (x64). After the upgrade is complete, users should not be able to boot into the x86 version of Windows 7. You have 10 users at a branch office who currently have computers running Windows XP Professional that are more than 5 years old. These computers each have only 256 MB of RAM. You do not have any Windows Easy Transfer cables and do not want to store branch office user profile data on network drives or on USB storage devices. You will replace these computers with 10 new computers running Windows 7 Professional. Considering these facts, answer the following questions: 1. What sort of migration should you perform at the branch office, side-by-side or wipe-and-load? 2. What sort of migration should you perform at the head office, side-by-side or wipe-and-load? 3. Which technology and method would you use to perform the migrations in the branch office? Answers 1. Side-by-side migrations are appropriate because you are moving users in the branch offices from old computers to new computers. Wipe-and-load migrations are appropriate only when the same computer hardware is being used. 2. You should perform a wipe-and-load because the users in the head office will be using the same hardware and should not be able to boot into the x86 version of Windows 7 Enterprise after the upgrade is complete. 3. Use Windows Easy Transfer with the network method.


Political parties act as gatekeepers, meaning that improvements in the representation of women depend on parties' willingness to nominate women candidates. Previous research suggests that party characteristics and gender quotas largely explain women's nominations, but overlooks the political context in which parties operate. This study highlights the gendered outcomes that occur when parties make nomination decisions in times of public discontent, namely increasing political distrust and increasing perceived corruption. We theorize that parties hold similar biases to voters: gender stereotypes that regard women as more trustworthy and honest should advantage women as political trust falls and perceptions of corruption rise. We hypothesize that parties nominate larger percentages of women in these circumstances. Using two waves of data from over 100 political parties in 18 Latin American countries, we find that parties nominate more women when a large proportion of the public distrusts the national legislature, providing support for the theory.


We present a computational framework for the inference of dense descriptions from multiple view stereo with general camera placement. Thus far research on dense multiple view stereo has evolved along three axes: computation of scene approximations in the form of visual hulls; merging of depth maps derived from simple configurations, such as binocular or trinocular; and multiple view stereo with restricted camera placement. These approaches are either suboptimal, since they do not maximize the use of available information, or cannot be applied to general camera configurations. Our approach does not involve binocular processing other than the detection of tentative pixel correspondences. We require calibration information for all cameras and that there exist camera pairs which enable automatic pixel matching. The inference of scene surfaces is based on the premise that correct pixel correspondences, reconstructed in 3-D, form salient, coherent surfaces, while wrong correspondences form less coherent structures. The tensor voting framework is suitable for this task since it can process the very large datasets we generate with reasonable computational complexity. We show results on real images that present numerous challenges.


This paper presents a
database of glacial till gradations that are compiled from laboratory internal
stability tests from the literature and from core soils of existing dams, some
of which have experienced internal erosion. The potential internal instability of
these gradations is assessed using empirical methods. Two approaches of
evaluation are used: the Kenney-Lau method, which analyzes the shape of the
gradation curve; and the Burenkova method, which uses factors of uniformity of
the slope of the gradation. Although they include some uncertainties in terms
of soils with fines, these methods, which are primarily developed from
laboratory studies of sand and gravels, are used in engineering practice to
evaluate widely graded soils that include fines, such as glacial tills. This
study evaluates the glacial till gradations of the database using these
approaches and discusses their applicability and relative predictive success.
This study indicates that both the Kenney-Lau method and the Burenkova method
have merit, but a closer analysis indicates that the Kenney-Lau approach has
relatively better predictive ability based on the glacial till gradations
analyzed in this study.


The purpose of this article is to provide better understanding of the export behaviour of Czech small and medium sized enterprises in certain aspects and to follow the development in this area.The intention of this paper is to provide the topical overview of the patterns and barriers faced by SMEs in their path to internationalization, and to discuss changes in SMEs' perception of international business doing over time.This article is based on an original research among 500 SMEs active in international business. For comparison, the article uses also the previous studies. Some of the interesting findings were appreciated export support tools and the inessential ones, as well as the changes in obstacles perceived in export.The main contribution of this article is in providing exploitable overview of export patterns of SMEs and in their systematic monitoring based on annual export surveys.


In the new era of technology and advanced communications, coding theory and cryptography play a particularly significant role with a huge amount of research being done in both areas. This book presents some of that research, authored by prominent experts in the field. The book contains articles from a variety of topics most of which are from coding theory. Such topics include codes over order domains, Groebner representation of linear codes, Griesmer codes, optical orthogonal codes, lattices and theta functions related to codes, Goppa codes and Tschirnhausen modules, s-extremal codes, automorphisms of codes, etc. There are also papers in cryptography which include articles on extremal graph theory and its applications in cryptography, fast arithmetic on hyperelliptic curves via continued fraction expansions, etc. Researchers working in coding theory and cryptography will find this book an excellent source of information on recent research.


Discontinuous Galerkin methods have desirable properties, which make them suitable for the com- putation of wave problems. Being parallelizable and hp-adaptive makes them attractive for the simulation of large-scale tsunami propagation. In order to retrieve such a scheme, we formulate the shallow water equations on the spherical shell and apply the discontinuous Galerkin discretiza- tion to construct a numerical method which is able to handle the effects of curvature and Coriolis forces naturally. Common challenges in solving the shallow water equations numerically are well- balancedness and wetting/drying. To overcome this, we utilize a method based on a timestep restriction, which guarantees the positivity of the numerical solution. Moreover, we show that our discretization yields a well-balanced numerical scheme. In this talk we will present our method as well as the numerical results, that we have obtained with our implementation.


Nutritional status of traditional weaning meals used in OriadeLocal Government Area of Osun State Nigeria, were evaluated. Five different fortified weaning meals were labeled as Red beans based diet (RBD), White beans based diet (WBD), Groundnut based diet (GND), Soya beans based diet (SBD) and Sorghum based diet (SGD) were used to feed five groups of young rats of three weeks old. The initial weights of rats were noted and thereafter maintained on their respective diet for twelve weeks. The final body weights of the rats were also noted after the twelve weeks of experiment. The rats were then sacrificed and their liver, heart and kidney weights were noted and compared. The results revealed that soya beans based diet produced the best growth compared with other formulas and control. However, this study concluded by advising nursing mothers to complement these weaning formulas with one another to wean their babies since, if prepared hygienically may improve nutritional status of their babies.


Background Rhabdoid tumor is a highly aggressive pediatric cancer characterized by biallelic loss and/or mutation of SMARCB1. Outcomes remain poor, and there are no established ways to target the tumorigenic pathways driven by SMARCB1 inactivation. SMARCB1 loss leads to an increase in cyclin D transcription. Procedure We characterized the cell line WT-CLS1, which has been described previously as Wilms tumor, by whole-exome sequencing, RNA-seq, and xenograft histology. We measured the effect of microRNA overexpression on WT-CLS1, BT-12, and CHLA-06-ATRT. Results We found that WT-CLS1 demonstrates the histological, mutational, and transcriptional hallmarks of rhabdoid tumor. Because the microRNAs let-7 and miR-16 can target cyclin D genes, we next overexpressed each of these microRNAs in WT-CLS1. We found that miR-16 reduced cell accumulation. This was accompanied by a decrease in proliferation markers and an increase in apoptosis markers. These results were replicated in the BT-12 and CHLA-06-ATRT cell lines. Conclusions The loss-of-function SMARCB1 mutation found in WT-CLS1, in conjunction with immunohistochemical and gene expression analysis, warrants reclassification of this cell line as rhabdoid tumor. Proliferation of WT-CLS1 and other rhabdoid tumor cell lines is significantly abrogated by miR-16 overexpression. Further studies are necessary to gain insight into the potential for miR-16 to be used as a novel therapeutic in rhabdoid tumor. Abbreviations (ATRT) atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor (miRNA) microRNA (dox) doxycycline (OD595) optical density at 595 nm (CDK4) cyclin-dependent kinase 4


Background & Objective: Using fertility treatment has increased markedly in recent decades. However, various concerns associated with the use of fertility drugs, such as increased risk of cancer, has developed. The objective of the present study is to overview studies in the field of infertility, ovulation induction, and its impact on cancer risks in women. Material & Methods: This study is a review of all articles published during the years 1995 and 2014 through databases SID, magiran, Medlib, pubmed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Science Direct. Comprehensive search was done with the keywords of infertility, ovulation induction, the risk of cancer, gynecological cancer, clomiphene citrate, human chorionic gonadotropin, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, and breast cancer for Persian articles and their English equivalents for English articles. After reviewing, a total of 79 articles were included in the study. Results: Various studies revealed the possibility of an increased risk of uterine, ovarian, and breast cancer and hormonal changes associated with ovulation stimulation. But these results are not conclusive because of small sample size, short follow-up periods, and vague information about the type and the way drug is consumed. Conclusion: Mainly women's cancer are associated with hormonal issues. Controversy over research results requisite further evaluation in order to investigate the impact of ovulation-inducing drugs on cancer risk which needs a well designed study.


This study evaluated the utility of a structured descriptive assessment (SDA) as an alternative method of functional assessment. Initially, an analogue functional analysis, conducted to assess the problem behavior of two adults with developmental disabilities, produced inconclusive results. Subsequently, SDAs was conducted in the individuals' natural environment with the direct-contact caregivers acting as therapists. This assessment manipulated antecedent variables similarly to the analogue functional analysis but allowed for consequences to occur naturally. The results from SDAs suggested that problem behaviors, for both participants, were occasioned by removal of personal items and maintained by their return. Treatments based on the results of SDAs were implemented in a reversal design and resulted in a notable reduction in the occurrences of problem behavior for both participants. These outcomes suggest that SDA procedures may be useful when results from the analogue functional analysis are inconclusive.


The phrase "tax structure of interest rates" (also known as the "muni bond puzzle") refers to the observed downwardsloping relation between tax rates implied by relative municipal and taxable yields and time to maturity. This article examines the impact of taxes on relative taxable and municipal bond yields and reveals that a tax structure of interest rates can appear to exist even when investor marginal tax rates are constant across maturities. As a consequence, the tax rate implied by relative bond yields can substantially and systematically understate the true rate, and the bias increases with maturity and interest rate volatility. The main conclusion is that, at least potentially, much (or even all) of the apparent tax structure of interest rates may simply be an illusion, and the muni bond puzzle may not be much of a puzzle.


Objective: The purpose of this presentation is to show the difficulty in prosthetization of a clinical case with a pronounced atrophy of the upper jaw and the various types and nature of restrictions imposed by the requirements of the patient. Methods: The clinical analysis, surgical protocol and prosthetic solution are presented in the treatment of 72 yearold woman with a pronounced atrophy of the upper jaw. OPG, standard CT of the upper jaw was used in the planning and a special surgical template was fabricated, helping us to find intraoperatively the exact locations of implants. The preliminary analysis of the number, height and diameter of intraossal implants helped us to find the exact prosthetic solution in this clinical case. The preparation of the implant bed was done by conical osteotomy in order to expand and condense the existing bone, which allowed us to use endoossal implants with a possible maximum size in a very limited maxillary volume and the reluctance of the patient to use other methods and surgical techniques. Conical threaded and self-tapping intraossal implants were used, placed according to a classic two-stage methodology with a flap and a long-term functional loading after a period of four months. Results and Conclusion: The applied surgical and prosthetic solution allowed us to achieve a good functional and aesthetic rehabilitation in this case of severe atrophy of the upper jaw, following a number of restrictions imposed on us by the reluctance of the patient to use other surgical solutions. This shows that in the case of severe atrophy of the upper jaw, a good clinical result can be achieved. For this reason, the use of CT, a well-planned surgical template, sufficient preparation, the maximum use of available bone volume and the choice of a good prosthetic solution is very important.


The Siemens ECAT HRRT PET scanner has the potential to produce images of the human brain with spatial resolution better than 3 mm. MOLAR (a motion-compensation OSEM List-mode Algorithm for Resolution-recovery) was developed to provide reconstructions of HRRT data with the best possible accuracy and precision. However, a computer cluster is required to generate reconstructions in a reasonable amount of time. Strategies for computational efficiency have already been implemented in MOLAR but room for improvement remains. In this study we have begun the process of converting time- consuming components of MOLAR to parallelized code that runs on commodity graphics cards (GPUs) with much faster turnaround. We evaluated the performance of list-mode event forward projections and component-based normalization factor calculations, and we confirmed the numerical accuracy of images reconstructed with GPU-assisted code running on an HP xw8400 workstation with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 graphics card. We evaluated simulated data projected through a 128times128times128 image volume that included the direct calculation of a gaussian resolution function for simulated list-mode events. This was done using the Cg and CUDA programming APIs for implementation comparison. Both GPU versions ran up to 100 times faster than the CPU-only code. The CUDA version showed some improvement over Cg and was easier to program. We also examined measured Ge-68 phantom data projected through a 256times256times207 image volume with resolution functions obtained through array lookup rather than by direct calculation. The GPU-assisted code was observed to be up to 14 times faster than the CPU-only code, particularly when one million or more events were processed. Normalization processing was found to be up to 36 times faster. However, speedup decreased to a factor of 3 when disk I/O became dominant as more than one billion events were processed. We anticipate further acceleration of MOLAR as we convert other components to GPU-assisted code, in particular backprojection and scatter correction. (Backprojection is on hold until a next generation GPU which has atomic write capability becomes available.)


It is among the most iconic images of American art. A young woman lies in the grass, raised on her arms in a pose of vigilant expectancy: across parched undulating fields lie a farmhouse and outhouses. Viewed across the treeless landscape, the figure and her unusual pose radiate vulnerability against this vast openness (www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php? criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A6464&page_number=1& template_id=1&sort_order=1). This is not purely happenstance. Christina Olson (1893-1968) had a progressive neurological illness that led to increasing immobility. She had chosen to crawl around the farm and grounds shown in the painting for many years before its creation. This subtle masterpiece affords many insights into the narrative of neurodegenerative illness. Tellingly, we do not see someone with an illness but rather a figure who demands our attention, prompting us to wonder what she is thinking and how she relates to this environment. The artist, Andrew Wyeth, has thus gifted us with a key message from those with neurological disease: see me, not my disease. A second perspective is that of the remarkable adaptation and compensation strategies of those with disabling disease. From an early age her mother sewed knee pads to protect her from falls, and even when very immobile Christina continued to engage in the social life of her rural town in Maine, where her baking was highly prized. To travel around by crawling might be considered by many to lack dignity—yet the beauty of this painting is that the poise and context radiate a secure dignity that no words could ever adequately explain. Her underlying diagnosis remains speculative (Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease is probably the bookies' favourite), reflecting a further facet of progressive illness of the nervous system—the choice of patients to limit engagement with diagnosis or treatment. Christina avoided assessment, agreeing only to an unsatisfactory admission for one week to Boston City Hospital. Despite frustrating the diagnostic philately of some clinicians, such resistance draws not onlymy admiration but also reflects encounters in everyday practice—and engenders professional humility about what we have to offer to our patients. But the deepest achievement of Wyeth's art is to intimate to us the world view of this remarkable woman. Wyeth was married to a close friend of Christina, and he made many drawings, watercolours, and paintings of her over a 30 year period of visiting Maine in the summer. In her stillness and immobility he communicates not limitation and isolation but wonder and eternal possibilities, and in so doing refreshes our sense of how our humanity inevitably transcends our physical limitations and geographical constraints.


Predictive modeling using machine learning is an effective method for building compiler heuristics, but there is a shortage of benchmarks. Typical machine learning experiments outside of the compilation field train over thousands or millions of examples. In machine learning for compilers, however, there are typically only a few dozen common benchmarks available. This limits the quality of learned models, as they have very sparse training data for what are often high-dimensional feature spaces. What is needed is a way to generate an unbounded number of training programs that finely cover the feature space. At the same time the generated programs must be similar to the types of programs that human developers actually write, otherwise the learning will target the wrong parts of the feature space. We mine open source repositories for program fragments and apply deep learning techniques to automatically construct models for how humans write programs. We sample these models to generate an unbounded number of runnable training programs. The quality of the programs is such that even human developers struggle to distinguish our generated programs from hand-written code. We use our generator for OpenCL programs, CLgen, to automatically synthesize thousands of programs and show that learning over these improves the performance of a state of the art predictive model by 1.27x. In addition, the fine covering of the feature space automatically exposes weaknesses in the feature design which are invisible with the sparse training examples from existing benchmark suites. Correcting these weaknesses further increases performance by 4.30x.


Adalaide Morris removes the work of the iconic poet, dramatist, and novelist H.D. from compartments into which it has historically been placed. As she examines the \u0022ongoingness\u0022 of H.D.'s writing, Morris makes an eloquent and compelling case for a consideration of poems--all poems--as forms of cultural mediation, instructive historical documents that engage the reader in wide-ranging contemporary debates and use their acoustical richness to generate tangible cultural effects. As she argues in this volume, the writing and, crucially, the reading of poetry is a process in which meaning is produced by the interplay of words on a page and in the ear of the reader. Morris shows H.D. to be a playful linguistic innovator whose writings bear on debates in science, technology, and cinema as well as on poetry. Foremost, however, H.D. was a profound reshaper of the boundaries and possibilities of poetry, a generative form that, as this book shows, can indeed serve the cultural work of survival and resistance against the violence of modern culture.


In order to derive plural values of fluorescence lifetimes simultaneously from a multi-component sample, we formulate a mathematical method for analyzing data obtained from a frequency-multiplexed phase-modulation fluorometer (FM-PMF) using an autoregressive (AR) model. Various parameter settings necessary for performing accurate data analysis based on the AR model are studied through numerical simulations. Measurement results of fluorescence lifetimes of real samples, 10 ppm quinine sulfate in 0.1 N H2SO4, 10 ppm rhodamine 6G in ethanol, and their mixture with a volume ratio of 1:1, demonstrate that the proposed method works quite well.


INTRODUCTION The voice is nothing but beaten air Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca), Naturalinum Quoestionum (bk. II) DESPITE THE FUNDAMENTAL SIMPLICITY of the vocal mechanism, it holds extraordinary power. While an expressive, confident, engaging voice is extremely useful in most areas of life, a tired, lackadaisical voice can have equally damaging impact on a persons social interactions and self-esteem.1 Voice function also can have a sizeable social and economic impact; in November 2004, the TUC, Britain's congress of trades union, stated the UK economy was losing an estimated £200m a year because of voice problems among workers.2 The prevention of voice problems has a psychological, medical, social, and economic rationale. But what is the nature of these problems? The most commonly reported voice problem is vocal fatigue, typified by effortful phonation and a self-perceived tired, weak voice.3 It tends to be related to specific vocal behaviors, including misuse and overuse of the voice. Recently, a number of authors have assessed the impact of vocal fatigue within different occupational environments.4 How can voice problems be prevented? We all have intuitive ideas about what types of behavior are "good for the voice." Singing websites advocate a range of "vocal hygiene" (VH) measures that do not appear to be based on any empirical findings. However, evidence does exist that the speech and language therapist has an important role in supplying vocal hygiene advice to a range of groups susceptible to voice problems, including professional actors, singers, and teachers.5 In clinic, a range of measures often is recommended to those complaining of vocal problems, including various voice supporting measures such as direct steam inhalation, ambient humidification, and ingestion of mucolytics (drugs that thin the mucus lining of the laryngeal mucosa). Conversely, it is advised that certain behaviors are avoided that will tend to "dry out" the voice, including, smoking, drinking alcohol and caffeine, and spending time in smoky or dusty environments. While a number of pharmacological agents have detrimental effects on voice production, avoidance of these agents is not part of the standard vocal hygiene regimen, except in the case of caffeine. Avoidance of caffeine is a feature of the advice given out not only by speech and language therapists, but also by teachers of singing and other voice "experts." Despite the prevalence of this advice, it seems only a limited amount of scientific work has been done to link caffeine ingestion with changes in voice quality.6 Why does VH advice take the form it does? While empirical data may have played a significant role in originating VH advice, it seems likely that historical and anecdotal factors account for some aspects of vocal hygiene behavior. For example, there is a popularly held belief that milk intake is detrimental to voice quality because of effects on mucus production;7 however, a Medline search produced no clinical data that assessed the impact of milk on voice production. A complex meshwork of historical factors and anecdotal evidence appears to have originated much of today's frequently used VH advice. This is especially the case among singers, where the practice of a vocal warm-up is usual before a performance. Despite the undoubted popularity of vocal warm-ups, there is as yet only a limited understanding of what is going in the larynx physiologically as the voice "warms up." AU in all, behaviors invoked as being "good for the voice" by the scientific community and others do not seem to carry a large body of scientific data. This does not represent an ideal situation; a rigorously tested program of "evidence-based" vocal hygiene advice would be preferable to a situation where some advice appears to lack a significant basis in experimental fact. Thorough programs of research in this area have been hampered by the confounding effect of different levels of training among study participants; voice function varies considerably with the amount of vocal experience a person has. …


"What do we mean by the Revolution?" John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson in 1815. "The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it." As the distinguished historian Thomas P. Slaughter shows in this landmark history, the roots of the Revolution went back even further than Adams may have realized. In Slaughter's account, colonists in British North America starting in the early seventeenth century chafed under imperial rule. Though successive British kings called them lawless, they insisted on their moral courage and political principles, and regarded their independence as a great virtue. Their struggles to define this independence took many forms: from New England and Nova Scotia to New York and Pennsylvania and south to the Carolinas, colonists resisted unsympathetic royal governors, smuggled to evade British duties, and organized for armed uprisings. In the eighteenth century-especially after victories over France-the British were eager to crush these rebellions, but American opposition only intensified. In Independence, Slaughter resets and clarifies the terms of this remarkable development, showing how and why a critical mass of colonists determined that they could not be both independent and subject to the British Crown. By 1775-76, they had become revolutionaries-willing to go to war to defend their independence, not simply to gain it.


At present, the complexity and scale of modern digital conversations between people is at its highest level but there is a gap in how to represent these conversations to a user. As a result, it is often hard for a user to understand the flow of a conversation and make an informed decision over it. However, an aesthetic and efficient visualisation can mitigate this drawback of data representation. In this paper, a case-based approach was proposed for choosing an appropriate visualisation for user's conversations. A case was formulated as a visualisation of a conversa-tion which a user decided to use for his analysis of the conversation. When a user decides to visualise a new conversation, the most similar visualisation type from previous users' experiences is selected for the visualisation of the new conversation. In this paper, the cases of visualisations of conversations from the IBM Many Eyes platform were collected and a case-based reasoning approach for choosing a visualisation of user's conversation was designed. Finally, the work of the proposed approach was tested on a sample email conversation, and then four participants eval-uated the appropriateness of the chosen visualisation types in comparison with other eight possible visualisations for the email conversation.


The objective of a total market approach (TMA) for family planning is to increase use of family planning products and services by means of a rational and efficiently segmented market in which key groups have access to a full range of family planning products and services (USAID, n.d.). TMA may also help reduce dependence on public funding. TMA requires a coordinated approach in which family planning suppliers and donors from the three sectors—the public, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and commercial sectors—work together and use their comparative advantage to grow the total market (Brady, Wedeen, Hutchings, & Parks, 2016; Pollard, 2007). Because coordination between the sectors is an important element of TMA, it is more likely to succeed when a specific entity takes responsibility for stewarding this coordination. Ideally, the government will take on this role (Brady, et al., 2016). A landscaping exercise is recommended to assess the levels of interest of the government, donors, and key stakeholders from the other sectors to pursue TMA programming (Brady et al., 2016). If they decide to move forward, the government and its partners should make TMA decisions that are based on a thorough analysis of data about aspects of the family planning market, which may include consumer use and preferences, their willingness and ability to pay for products and services, and data about trends in the family planning market itself. This requires an in-depth analysis of the family planning market. Such an analysis should build on the desk review of the literature and the stakeholder analysis conducted during the TMA landscaping exercise, by incorporating additional data or conducting new analyses of data. This document reviews the issues involved in in-depth analyses of the family planning market that can be used to inform the development of a TMA.


This article examines the language ideologies of the lead teacher and of five Mexican mothers of Spanish-speaking, emergent bilingual children in a Head Start program in Arizona. Data from semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and participant-observation field notes were analyzed using the interrelated concepts of language ideologies and family language policy. The teacher and mothers adhered to ideologies that benefit children's emergent bilingualism such as expressing pride for the children's bilingual skills and the view that parents should use Spanish with their children to maintain the children's bilingualism. However, some of their notions were more in line with ideologies of language separation where linguistic labor and instruction was divided in such a manner that children developed their English skills at school and Spanish abilities at home. The findings highlight the important role of the mothers' and teacher's positive and negative lived experiences with language and bilingualism.


ABSTRACT This study reports for the first time the molecular characterization of Cryptosporidium spp. in Salmo trutta. A total number of 613 brown trout was captured by local anglers in 44 Galician rivers within 10 river basins (NW Spain) during the 2015 fishing season (March–August) and classified into groups according to their size. The gastrointestinal tracts were dissected and differentiated in pyloric ceca and intestine, which were homogenized and concentrated in phosphate-buffered saline 0.04 M pH 7.2/diethyl ether (2:1). Cryptosporidium oocysts were observed by immunofluorescence microscopy in 103 of 613 specimens (16.8%), with a mean intensity of 326.7 oocysts/trout. The highest prevalence rate was detected in specimens <2 yr (23.1%). Considering the anatomical location, Cryptosporidium oocysts were observed in pyloric ceca (72 trout, 69.9%), intestine (15 trout, 14.6%), or in both locations (16 trout, 15.5%), showing statistically significant differences between the 2 locations (P < 0.01). The prevalence rate in the pyloric ceca increased with the age/size of the fish (62.2% vs. 70.8% vs. 83.3% for trout <2, 2–3, and >3 yr, respectively). By contrast, the prevalence rate in the intestinal location decreased with the age/size of specimens (21.6% vs. 12.5% vs. 7.7% for trout <2, 2–3, and >3 yr, respectively), but statistically significant differences were not determined. The microscopic observation of clusters of 4–20 oocysts in the pyloric ceca from 5 specimens of 20–28-cm body length is remarkable. By polymerase chain reaction amplification and sequencing of fragments of small-subunit ribosomal DNA (SSU-rDNA), GP60, hsp70, and actin loci, Cryptosporidium molnari-like genotype was identified in 1 trout and Cryptosporidium parvum (subtypes IIaA15G2R1 and IIaA18G3R1) in 47 fish, including those specimens in which oocyst clusters were observed. This finding may indicate a true infection by C. parvum, as the homogenization process would break the epithelial cells, releasing oocysts, free or in clusters. Cryptosporidium oocysts were detected in wild trout captured from 27 of 44 rivers sampled in Galicia (61.4%), belonging to 9 of the 10 river basins considered, confirming the presence of this protozoan parasite in Galician rivers and proving their wide dispersion in aquatic freshwater environments. The identification of the zoonotic species C. parvum in brown trout may indicate a risk to public health as trout may be a potential source of infection to humans. Thus, edible wild fish extend the range of foodstuffs involved in the transmission of cryptosporidiosis.


AbstractThe annual cycles of upward and downward longwave fluxes at the earth's surface are investigated by use of the NASA Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Surface Radiation Budget Dataset. Principal component analysis is used to quantify the annual cycles. Because of the immense difference between the heat capacity of land and ocean, the surface of the earth is partitioned into these two categories. Over land, the first principal component describes over 95% of the variance of the annual cycle of the upward and downward longwave fluxes. Over ocean the first term describes more than 87% of these annual cycles. Empirical orthogonal functions show the corresponding geographical distributions of these cycles. Phase-plane diagrams of the annual cycles of upward longwave fluxes as a function of net shortwave flux show the thermal inertia of land and ocean.


This article analyzes the paradigm of Cloud Computing technology adoption in current global business environment in order to optimize expenditures, cash-flows and revenues for various commercial and even non-commercial entities. The subject is treated in a holistic approach emphasizing both the investing perspective and the specific principles of project management that are employed in this area. The purpose of this article is to offer both the economic and engineering community a unified perspective regarding the current trends in business dynamics based on new technology adoption and in the same time the perspective of the application of old value investing principles in this subject.


Abstract Context. Since European settlement in 1788, much of the Australian terrestrial mammal fauna has declined or become extinct. The pattern of, and reason for, that decline was little documented, and is now difficult to decipher. Many mammal species are still declining, providing (an unfortunate) opportunity to better document the process, identify the causal factors and attempt to redress the problem. Aim. We compare trends in mammal abundance reported in three recent longitudinal studies in conservation reserves in Australia. The studies were not established with the intention of documenting mammal decline, but marked simultaneous decline of co-existing species was the most striking feature of their results. Methods. Long-term monitoring in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory (2001–04 and 2007–09), the Upper Warren region of Western Australia (since 1974) and the Great Otway National Park, Victoria (since 1975) principally relied on trapping, but also some spotlighting and sand plots, to document changes and trends in abundance in their respective mammal assemblages. Key results. Decline was reported in most mammal species, across taxonomic groups, diets and size classes, but mostly involved species <5500 g. The studies differed in their monitoring protocols and varied in the degree to which potential causal factors were monitored, thereby constraining interpretation of the drivers of declines. Inappropriate fire regimes and predation by feral cats are likely contributing factors in at least two study areas, and periods of markedly below-average rainfall are implicated in two areas. Conclusions. We conclude the following: (1) conservation reserves in Australia may be failing to maintain at least some elements of the biodiversity that they were established to protect, and substantially enhanced management is required to redress this problem; (2) with current threats, mammal assemblages in Australia may be highly unstable; (3) substantial increase in effective long-term biodiversity monitoring programs in an adaptive management framework is needed; and (4) such monitoring programs will be more insightful if they also monitor factors driving population change. Implications. Native mammal species declines and community disassembly may be occurring elsewhere. Long-term monitoring is critical for assessing trends in biodiversity and if done well, it can guide more effective and efficient management to deliver better conservation outcomes.


The Mediterranean region is characterized by increasing pressures over its natural resources and significant disparities among countries (UNEP/MAP, 2016). The region is considered as one of the most water scarce regions in the World with an average water availability below 1000m3 per capita for most of the countries located in the Southern and Eastern rims of the Mediterranean, and even below 500m3 in many of them (e.g. Algeria, Libya, Tunisia or Jordan). Growing population, irrigation expansion and urbanization are increasing pressures on water resources quantity and quality that will be likely exacerbated by political instability and climate change, reducing available water resources per capita and affecting socio-economic and environmental conditions. In light of this, a number of international initiatives are being developed to ensure sustainable development in the region and contribute to a sustainable management and use of water resources.
In this context, the MADFORWATER project tries to address different water resources management issues that include the low availability and use of locally-adapted technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse for irrigation; a lack or inefficiency of economic and regulatory instruments to foster water saving irrigation technologies and practices and water reuse in agriculture; limited capacity building and social acceptance of treated wastewater reuse in agriculture; and, in essence, insufficiently integrated water management strategies. To respond to these challenges, the MADFORWATER project general objective is "to develop an integrated set of technological and management instruments for the enhancement of wastewater treatment, treated wastewater reuse for irrigation and water efficiency in agriculture, with the final aim to reduce water vulnerability in selected basins in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia" (MADFORWATER Document of Action – part B – page 1).The selected basins, chosen due to their relevance and representativeness for the Mediterranean region in relation to population, GDP, wastewater, hydrology and geographical location, are all subjected to exacerbating water scarcity, and count on high potential to increase wastewater reuse (currently 7% used), (MADFORWATER Document of Action – part B – page 1).
This Deliverable (D1.1) "Report on needs and priorities in the field of international cooperation agreements on water management in the target Mediterranean African Countries (MACs)" is part of Work Package 1 (WP1) "Water and water-related vulnerabilities in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia". The main objective of this work package is to analyze water stress and water vulnerability in the three MACs, paying special attention to wastewater treatment, water reuse and water efficiency in agriculture and the impacts on food security, socio-economic growth, sustainability of agriculture and environmental protection. For this, D1.1 aims to provide a revision of the water related goals within the international agreements joined by the three case study countries, while emphasizing the critical points that should be developed and reinforced in the near future through an integrated approach for water policies, initiatives and management. It also sets a reference framework and knowledge base for different activities in the MADFORWATER project.


Recent developments in optical communications have allowed simpler optical devices to improve network resource utilization. As such, we propose adding a lambda-monitoring device to a wavelength-routing switch (WRS) allowing better performance when traffic is routed and groomed. This device may allow a WRS to aggregate traffic over optical routes without incurring in optical-electrical-optical conversion for the existing traffic. In other words, optical routes can be taken partially to route demands creating a sort of "lighttours". In this paper, we compare the number of OEO conversions needed to route a complete given traffic matrix using either lighttours or lightpaths


We examine correlations between dialogue characteristics and learning in two corpora of spoken tutoring dialogues: a human-human corpus and a human-computer corpus, both of which have been manually annotated with dialogue acts relative to the tutoring domain. The results from our human-computer corpus show that the presence of student utterances that display reasoning, as well as the presence of reasoning questions asked by the computer tutor, both positively correlate with learning. The results from our human-human corpus show that the introduction of a new concept into the dialogue by students positively correlates with learning, but student attempts at deeper reasoning do not, and the human tutor's attempts to direct the dialogue negatively correlate with learning.


In this paper we present a framework for using multi-layer perceptron (MLP) networks in nonlinear generative models trained by variational Bayesian learning. The nonlinearity is handled by linearizing it using a Gauss-Hermite quadrature at the hidden neurons. This yields an accurate approximation for cases of large posterior variance. The method can be used to derive nonlinear counterparts for linear algorithms such as factor analysis, independent component/factor analysis and state-space models. This is demonstrated with a nonlinear factor analysis experiment in which even 20 sources can be estimated from a real world speech data set.


Many Galactic black hole and neutron star sources in low X-ray mass binaries show QPOs (quasi periodic oscillations) in their observed X-ray fluxes, i.e. peaks in the Fourier variability power spectra. Pairs of twin peaks are observed, and in black-hole systems their frequencies (upp), (down) are in rational ratios. For example, in all four microquasars with twin peaks observed, (upp):(down) = 3:2. The rational ratios have been postulated in a model that explained twin peak QPOs as a non-linear resonance between modes of accretion disk oscillations. For those microquasars where the mass of the X-ray source is known, we determine the black-hole spin, following from the observed QPO frequencies within various models of resonance.