Abstract. A new model, FLOWSTAR-Energy, has been developed for the practical calculation of wind farm energy production. It includes a semi-analytic model for airflow over complex surfaces (FLOWSTAR) and a wind turbine wake model that simulates wake-wake interaction by exploiting some similarities between the decay of a wind turbine wake and the dispersion of plume of passive gas emitted from an elevated source. Additional turbulence due to the wind shear at the wake edge is included and the assumption is made that wind turbines are only affected by wakes from upstream wind turbines. The model takes account of the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer, which means that the effect of atmospheric stability is included. A marine boundary layer scheme is also included to enable offshore as well as onshore sites to be modelled. FLOWSTAR-Energy has been used to model three different wind farms and the predicted energy output compared with measured data. Maps of wind speed and turbulence have also been calculated for two of the wind farms. The Tjaaereborg wind farm is an onshore site consisting of a single 2 MW wind turbine, the NoordZee offshore wind farm consists of 36 V90 VESTAS 3 MW turbines and the Nysted offshore wind farm consists of 72 Bonus 2.3 MW turbines. The NoordZee and Nysted measurement datasets include stability distribution data, which was included in the modelling. Of the two offshore wind farm datasets, the Noordzee dataset focuses on a single 5-degree wind direction sector and therefore only represents a limited number of measurements (1,284); whereas the Nysted dataset captures data for seven 5-degree wind direction sectors and represents a larger number of measurements (84,363). The best agreement between modelled and measured data was obtained with the Nysted dataset, with high correlation (0.98 or above) and low normalised mean square error (0.007 or below) for all three flow cases. The results from Tjaereborg show that the model replicates the Gaussian shape of the wake deficit two turbine diameters downstream of the turbine, but the lack of stability information in this dataset makes it difficult to draw conclusions about model performance. One of the key strengths of FLOWSTAR-Energy is its ability to model the effects of complex terrain on the airflow. However, although the airflow model has been previously compared extensively with flow data, it has so far not been used in detail to predict energy yields from wind farms in complex terrain. This will be the subject of a further validation study for FLOWSTAR-Energy.


Wood thermal properties specify the answers to the questions related to heat transfer. The values of specific heat, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusivity were simultaneously determined with quasistationary method. Wood is distinguished as a natural material for accumulating the energy by heat transfer, as isolating material, with the ability to slowly equilibrate its different temperatures. The measured thermal properties value of beech and fir wood samples support those conclusions. Known dependences of wood thermal properties on anatomical direction, density at given moisture content, temperature are modelled and incorporated into heat conduction equation to provide base for next evaluation of measured data. The heat conduction solutions, based on known wood thermal properties, are used in similar problems. It is shown that thermal properties influence the surface equilibrium temperature between skin and wooden sample and the solution of heat conduction equation describes the flux passing through the log as an element of log-cabin house. Also thermal diffusivity is a component of equation that determines the position of observed point of wood during conduction. The results served as a base point for planning the experiments, for designing the processes of heat transfer, for designing the furniture and wooden houses, for designing the machines and equipment in woodworking industry and others.


There is a lot of interest in patient safety, but there is still little useable national level information on the actual magnitude of patient safety problems that can be used by providers and policy makers to judge performance. The AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) are a set of measures that can be used with hospital inpatient administrative (discharge) data to provide a perspective on patient safety. They screen for problems that patients experience as a result of exposure to the healthcare system and that are likely amenable to prevention by changes at the system or provider level. There is a growing interest in the possible use of the AHRQ PSIs in international settings. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) maintains an ongoing project on Health Care Quality Indicators (HCQI) and whose goal is to develop a set of quality indicators that can be used to reliably assess quality of care across countries and raise questions about differences in quality of care internationally. Work is ongoing though a partnership between AHRQ and the Italian National Observatory on Health in the Italian Regions to test the AHRQ QIs with the Italian national hospital discharge data set. Preliminary results indicate that many of the operational issues associated with differences in coding schemes and data set structure are surmountable. With additional refinements on their clinical specificity, increased stability in their definitions over time to permit long-term monitoring and country interest within organizations such as the OECD to build on the existing scientific work of these indicators, their to help answer questions about patient safety worldwide will be significantly enhanced.


We surveyed 111 male clients of an HIV/AIDS service organization in New York City in 2008 and 2009. Seventeen percent had used the female condom for anal intercourse; of these, 89.3% had used the female condom with male partners, 21.4% with female partners, and 10.7% with both. Users of the female condom for vaginal intercourse were more likely to use it for anal intercourse (odds ratio = 12.7; 95% confidence interval = 2.5, 64.9; P = .002). The safety and efficacy of the female condom for anal intercourse are unknown and should be evaluated.


Stochastic Processes and Models provides a concise and lucid introduction to simple stochastic processes and models. Including numerous exercises, problems and solutions, it covers the key concepts and tools, in particular: random walks, renewals, Markov chains, martingales, the Wiener process model for Brownian motion, and diffusion processes, concluding with a brief account of the stochastic integral and stochastic differential equations as they arise in option-pricing. The text has been thoroughly class-tested and is ideal for an undergraduate second course in probability.


Direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medicines has generated considerable controversy in both New Zealand and the United States, the only two countries that currently permit promotion ofrestricted medicines. Arguments against DTCA include the effect this may have on doctor-patient relationships, its implications for drug costs, and the extent to which it fully informs potential patients. Conversely, proponents of DTCA claim that it increases knowledge of a variety of common medical conditions, thus fostering earlier diagnosis and better compliance with treatments. However, although arguments for and against DTCA have merit, neither side has supported its position with empirical evidence. In particular, the extent to which DTC promotions communicate effectively and achieve their objective of improving wider consumer knowledge remains unclear. This paper critically evaluates the alleged effects of DTCA and outlines our research agenda, which is designed to bridge current knowledge gaps and provide a more informed basis for public policy decisions. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Hoek, J., Gendall, P., Holdershaw, J. , Jones, S. C., and Rossiter, J. R. & (2002). Promotion of prescription medicines: A critical review and research agenda. In R. Shaw, S. Adam & H. McDonald (Eds.), Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference, 2-4 December 2002 (pp. 2221-2227). Melbourne, Australia: Deakin University. This conference paper is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/hbspapers/504 Promotion of Prescription Medicines: A Critical Review and Research Agenda Janet Hoek, Philip Gendall and Judith Holdershaw, Massey University Sandra Jones and John Rossiter, University ofWollongong


Paid family caregiving can be the best of care and, unfortunately, the worst of care. In their article, Simon-Rusinowitz, Mahoney, and Benjamin will detail how paying family for the care of elderly family members can be the best of care and benefits the client, the family, and society. This article will detail how paying family can produce the worst of care, and why taxpayers should not support such payments. This position is based on experience derived from managing the Community Care Program in Illinois, which provides home- and community-based care to over 35,000 older people a month. Eligibility is based on a need for care, as measured by a standardized instrument termed the Determination of Need. The instrument assesses functioning with fifteen activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living, and for each activity with which the older person has difficulty, the availability of family and informal supports is addressed. Need for care is determined by a look at those activities with which the applicant has difficulty and lacks necessary assistance. In this way, the program is designed to complement and supplement family support, but not replace it. In the first years of the program, as a result of a policy decision by another state agency, a significant portion of the caseload was served by family members who were paid as personal care attendants. When the program was transferred to the Illinois Department on Aging, detected abuses led the department to close that subprogram, allowing no more clients to have personal care attendants, and to allow payments only to contracted agencies. Since that time, however, a number of agency providers have elected to hire family members as "preferred" workers, assigning them to care for an elderly family member. As a result, the department has a considerable history to draw upon regarding the problems that can occur when a family member is a paid caregiver. EXPLOITATION Advocates may argue that a policy of paying the family caregiver supports and strengthens basic family values. On the other hand, it can be argued that such a policy exploits family values by paying the family member less than the going "market" rate for provided services. Under the banner of "consumer-directed care,' states can reduce the costs of home- and community-based care by providing vouchers or direct payments to clients who, in turn, hire their own workers, termed personal care attendants. By avoiding the administrative costs of recruiting, hiring, training, and supervising workers, the cost per unit of service is substantially reduced. The cost is further reduced by not having to pay mandated fringe benefits such as unemployment and workman's compensation, although most states may pay Social Security taxes on behalf of the client. And, of course, no health insurance, retirement benefits, sick leave, or vacation are offered. Indeed, the states are careful not to pay for these benefits lest they be open to a charge that these workers are state employees and subject to all the benefits state workers enjoy. It is a well-established fact that reimbursements to homecare workers are inadequate in most areas of the country. In these times of full or nearly full employment, workers can demand and receive higher wages. Because fewer are willing to accept the low salary and lack of benefits paid to personal care attendants, there is a severe shortage of homecare workers. However, family workers, who can be considered to be a subset of the larger class of personal care attendants, can be an exception to this general finding. Family members are more likely to be trapped into accepting such employment because they are unable to recruit and hire a nonfamily worker. Faced with the prospect of placing their family member in a nursing home, these family workers will sacrifice higher wages to care for their family member at home. One such family member detailed this problem in a public hearing on providing a "living wage" for homecare workers. …


The ROSE survey explores which science topics 15-year-old students want to study. By carrying out a factor analysis on results from Sweden it was possible to describe ten interest profiles. The interest profile with the strongest connection to the students' interest in school science consists of topics such as explosive chemicals, ABC weapons, electric shocks, atoms and molecules. Only a minority of the students has these interests, but it is this minority who appreciates school science and who chooses to study science at upper secondary school. The factor analysis also reveals large differences between genders and furthermore, that the students' own interests govern their choice of study programme at upper secondary school.


This thesis presents a theoretical attempt to look into the process of political translation in China and the textual products from a functional-cognitive perspective by combining the CDA models of Fairclough and van Dijk. The functional linguistic parameters parallel to Fairclough's functional forms of textual analysis serve as a micro-level device for the close examination of texts. At the macro-level, van Dijk's direction of CDA from a socio-cognitive perspective accounts for the core relation between the power enactment and discourse production in a more profound manner. Meanwhile, anchored in the Chesterman's model of translation norms, it sets out to argue that political translation in China is both an institutional operation and a reciprocal process of norm-reformation practice in specific context models. The theoretical propositions are instantiated by comprehensive text analysis from a functional perspective. The corpus of data is formed by five sets of Chinese political speeches and their English translations delivered by the state leaders in each of their periods of leadership. The focus is on presenting a holistic picture of the translation of Chinese political discourse through a spectrum of political genres. The thesis is concluded with the theoretical insights that the roles translation intends to play in mediating between the source and target communities manifest themselves as the power-mediated knowledge transfer between the source group and the target group depending on which group holds more discursive power in specific context models. Practically, it is observed that translation, as a form of political engagement in an era when China is governed under a more open and settled leadership, demonstrates a growing tendency to interact with the target readership and engages in the negotiation with the orthodox norms.


This paper discusses woman's social representations constructed by the hip-hop movement. This movement constitutes a possibility of younger generations to politically manifest themselves, as well as a possibility of artistic production that at the start was more present in non-institutionalized spaces and aimed at the populations living in marginal districts, it is now being currently consumed by youths of distinct social classes. However, the participation of women has not been significant (even though there are women taking part), and frequently negative images of women are conveyed from these songs (or raps). Thus, this study analyses the woman's social representations which are in rap lyrics, querying how such representations have built social ways of "being" a woman.


This article examines how inhabitants of Heerlen, a town in the province of Limburg in the southeast of the Netherlands, renew the cultural memory of coal mining in the area through parodic linguistic and cultural practices linked to the (re)articulation of collective local and social identities. Heerlen became a center for the coal mining industry in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The closure of the mines between 1965 and 1974 had devastating consequences for the economic, social, and cultural developments of the area. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the region's mining past, creating new momentum for Heerlen in its transition from a struggling former mining area to a city focusing on long-term socio-economic development and cultural innovation. In this context, new practices of cultural memory are emerging through local performances of language and culture that operate to reconstruct Heerlen's coal mining past through parodic repetition. By discussing two case studies exemplifying the creative ways in which dominant accounts of the mining past are being rearticulated, we explain how the use of parody may serve to undermine the interacting social norms, identities, and hierarchies that have come to shape cultural memories of mining in communities historically defined by working-class and male-dominated labor. The article integrates linguistic and sociolinguistic research, studies of regional history, and theories of parody rooted in contemporary literary criticism and gender studies, to demonstrate the importance of place-bound practices of languageculture as a compelling force of linguistic and socio-cultural renewal.


Approximately 60% of the households in Ulaanbaatar live in gers (a traditional Mongolian dwelling) in districts outside the legal limits of the city, without access to basic infrastructure, such as water, sewage systems, central heating, and paved roads, in contrast to apartment residents. This stark difference in living conditions creates different public health challenges for Ulaanbaatar residents. Through this research study we aim to test our hypothesis that women living in gers burning coal in traditional stoves for cooking and heating during the winter are exposed to higher concentrations of airborne PM2.5 than women living in apartments in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and this exposure may include exposures to lead in coal with effects on blood lead levels. This cross-sectional study recruited a total of 50 women, 40–60 years of age, from these two settings. Air sampling was carried out during peak cooking and heating times, 5:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m., using a direct-reading instrument (TSI SidePak™) and integrated polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) filters using the SKC Personal Environmental Monitor. Blood lead level (BLL) was measured using a LeadCare II rapid field test method. In our study population, measured PM2.5 geometric mean (GM) concentrations using the SidePak™ in the apartment group was 31.5 (95% CI:17–99) μg/m3, and 100 (95% CI: 67–187) μg/m3 in ger households (p < 0.001). The GM integrated gravimetric PM2.5 concentrations in the apartment group were 52.8 (95% CI: 39–297) μg/m3 and 127.8 (95% CI: 86–190) μg/m3 in ger households (p = 0.004). The correlation coefficient for the SidePak™ PM2.5 concentrations and filter based PM2.5 concentrations was r = 0.72 (p < 0.001). Blood Lead Levels were not statistically significant different between apartment residents and ger residents (p = 0.15). The BLL is statistically significant different (p = 0.01) when stratified by length of exposures outside of the home. This statistically significant difference in increased BLL could be due to occupational or frequent exposure to other sources of indoor or outdoor air pollution that were not measured. Blood lead levels from our study population are the first study measurements published on women aged 40–60 years of age in Mongolia.


Sir We read this article with interest. Although we agree with the technical merits of the anastomotic technique that Kleespies and colleagues have described, we are concerned about the authors' failure to consult with Professor Blumgart about this study before its publication. Doing so would seem to be appropriate academically as the authors have formally attached Professor Blumgart's name to this technique of pancreaticojejunostomy for the first time. In addition, the authors of the published report have incorrectly referenced the procedure to the fourth edition of Surgery of the Liver and Biliary Tract when in fact the procedure is well highlighted in the third edition of this book (Figure 56.18)1. It should be noted that we have analysed and presented our institutional experiences with this novel technique2. In our larger series of 187 patients from the USA, we reported a similarly low postoperative mortality rate of 1·6 per cent and a very low rate (6·4 per cent) of clinically significant (grade B and C) pancreatic fistula2,3. There were no deaths related to pancreatic anastomotic failure in our series. We agree with the authors' assertion that the anastomosis is favourable as it avoids shear forces that may lead to disruption of the pancreaticojejunal anastomosis, but also believe that the anastomosis is preferred because it permits excellent visualization for creation of a tension-free duct-to-mucosal anastomosis. Furthermore, the mild compression provided between the pancreas and jejunal serosa afforded by this technique may help reduce leaks from accessory pancreatic ducts. These reported experiences favour the widespread application of this unique anastomosis for pancreaticojejunal reconstruction after pancreaticoduodenectomy. S. R. Grobmyer, D. A. Kooby, S. N. Hochwald and L. H. Blumgart University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA DOI: 10.1002/bjs.6953


Contemporary family life and intimate relationships today are characterised by increasing heterogeneity. In the growing body of research on this differentiation, the role of the elderly people has largely been ignored. But to an increasing extent the "young old" (65-74 years of age), in particular, are active participants in the process of the differentiation of intimate relationships. One of the least researched contributions of the elderly to the restructuring of contemporary intimate relationships is the establishment of lastint intimate relationships that do not include a mutual home, i.e. an alternative to marriage or other forms of cohabition. This type of relationship is referred to as Living Apart Together (henceforth LAT-relationships. In Swedish: sarboende). The aim of this thesis is to examine LAT-relationships among elderly heterosexual individuals in Sweden, focusing in particular on the influence of this type of relationship on commitments, intimacy and autonomy. A major dilemma is the question of who should provide the care and service that ageing often demands. A pluralistic methodological approach has been adopted in the four differnt papers in this thesis, whick includes the use of a qualitative pilot study, a broad quantitative questionnaire study, a qualitative interview study and finally a qualitative study with a lifestory perspective.


In this thesis, we propose a novel measurement methodology for long term monitoring and assessment of stroke survivors' functional motion. Our long-term goal is to measure and provide feedback about changes in functional movements that happen in everyday environments across days, months or years. The research contained in the thesis consists of three parts. First, therapists were interviewed to determine common observations they make about stroke survivors functional activity for the purpose of assessment. Protocol analysis was used to gain insight onto parts of the body as well as motor symptoms that were particular points of focus. Next, a prototype system was built to measure functional movement and its ability to capture statistics that discriminate between levels of functional impairment was tested. The technologies explored were primarily chosen because they are inexpensive and robust. They include simple computer vision and force sensing devices. Several different score prediction paradigms were tested, including some that are task specific and others that score movements, like lifts or grasps, across many tasks. We illustrate the accuracy of each paradigm, and discuss several of the underlying statistics found to correlate strongly and consistently with functional score. These statistics included the measured variance about the elbow and motion of the torso. Finally, we present initial results from an effort to bring low cost and automated assessment technologies to the home. Cameras and force sensing devices were installed in the home of a single stroke survivor, and desktop activity was measured in this environment over the course of two weeks. We believe that the technologies we highlight in this thesis have the capacity to inexpensively enhance the quality and character of therapy that stroke survivors receive after hospital discharge. This is primarily because they can focus therapy on real world tasks that take place in the home. We expect the tools we prototype here ultimately to enable: 1. Quantification of long term changes in functional mobility; 2. Evaluation of interventions that relate to functioning; 3. Motivating feedback about real world movement quality.


Precision healthcare, also known as personalised medicine, is based on our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of biological systems, with the ultimate aim to clinically identify the best therapeutic strategy for each individual. Genomics and sequencing technologies have brought this to the foreground by enabling an individual's entire genome to be mapped for less than a thousand dollar in just one day. Recently, metabolomics, the quantitative measurement of small molecules, has emerged as a field to understand an individual's molecular profile in terms of both genetics and environmental factors. This is crucial because a genome could only indicate an individual's susceptibility to a particular disease, whereas a metabolome provides an immediate measurement of body function, enabling a means of diagnosis. However, the current approach of measurements depends on large-scale and expensive equipment such as mass spectroscopy and NMR instrumentation, which does not offer a single analytical platform to detect the entire metabolome.
This thesis describes the development of an integrated CMOS sensor array technology as a single platform to quantify different metabolites using specific enzymes. The key stages in the work were: to construct instrumentation systems to perform enzyme assays on the CMOS sensor array; to establish techniques to package the CMOS sensor array for an aqueous environment; to implement and develop a room temperature Ta2O5 sputtering process on CMOS sensor array for hydrogen ion detection; to collaborate with a chemist and investigate an inorganic layer on top of the CMOS ISFET sensor to show an improvement of sensitivity towards potassium ion; to test several different enzyme assays electrochemically and optically and show the functionalities of the sensors; to devise microfluidic channels for segregation of the sensor array into different compartments and perform enzyme immobilisation techniques on CMOS chips; and integrate the packaged chip with microfluidic channels and enzyme immobilisation using 2D inkjet printer into a complete system that has the potential to be used as a multi-enzyme platform for detection of different metabolites.
Two CMOS sensor array chips (1) a 256×256-pixel ISFET array chip and (2) a 16×16-pixel Multi-Corder chip were fully understood. Therefore, a high-speed instrumentation system was constructed for the ISFET array chip with a maximum readout speed of 500 frames per second, with 2D and 3D imaging capability, as well as single pixel analysis. Follow by that, a miniaturised measurement platform was implemented for the Multi-Corder chip that has three different sensor arrays, which are ISFET, PD and SPAD. All the sensor arrays can be operated independently or together (ionic sensor and one of the optical sensors).
Several post-processing steps were investigated to allow suitable fabrication process on small 4×4 mm2 CMOS chips. Post-processing of the CMOS chips was first established using room temperature sputtering process for Ta2O5 layer, achieving Ta:O ratio of 1:1.77 and a surface roughness of 0.42 nm. This Ta2O5 layer was then fabricated on top of CMOS ISFETs, which improves the ISFET pH sensitivity to 45 mV/pH, with an average drift of 6.5 ± 8.6 mV/hour from chip to chip and a working pH range of 2 to 12. Furthermore, a layer of POMs was drop casted on top of Ta2O5 ISFET to make ISFET sensitive to potassium ions. This was investigated in terms of potassium ions sensitivity, hydrogen ions sensitivity and sodium ions as interfering background ions. The POMs Ta2O5 ISFET was found to have a net potassium sensitivity of 75 mV/pK, with a linear range between pH 1.5 to 3. Moreover, the POMs ISFET has -5 mV/pH in pH sensitivity, showing that it is selectivity towards potassium ions and not hydrogen ions. However, sodium ions were found to produce a large interference towards the pK sensitivity of POMs ISFET and reduced the pK sensitivity of POMs ISFET. Hence, further work is still required to modify POMs layer for better selectivity and sensitivity. Besides that, microfluidic channels were fabricated on top of the CMOS chips that could provide segregation for multiple enzyme assays on a single chip. In addition, a PDMS and a manual dam and fill method were developed to encapsulate the CMOS chips for wet biochemistry measurements.
The CMOS sensor array was found to have the ensemble averaging capability to reduce noise as a function of √N , where N is the number of sensors used for averaging. Several enzyme assays that include: hexokinase, lactate dehydrogenase, urease and lipase were tested on the ISFET sensor array. Moreover, using an optical sensor array, namely a PD on the Multi-Corder chip and using LED illumination, quantification of cholesterol levels in human blood serum was demonstrated. Enzyme kinetics calculations were performed for hexokinase and cholesterol oxidase assays and the results were comparable to that obtained from a bench top spectrophotometer. This shows the CMOS sensor array can be used as a low cost portable diagnostic device.
Several enzyme immobilisation techniques were explored but were unsuccessful. Alginate enzyme gel immobilisation with a 2D inkjet printer was found to be the best candidate to bio-functionalise the CMOS sensor array. The packaged chip was integrated with microfluidic channels and alginate enzyme gel immobilisation into a complete system, in order to perform an enzyme assay with its control experiments simultaneously on a single chip. As a proof-of-concept, this complete system has the potential to be used as a multiple metabolite quantification platform.


A noteworthy investigation of the Darwinian element in American fiction from the realist through the Freudian eras. In Evolution and "the Sex Problem" author Bert Bender argues that Darwin's theories of sexual selection and of the emotions are essential elements in American fiction from the late 1800s through the 1950s, particularly during the Freudian era and the years surrounding the Scopes trial. Bender contends that novelists with different social points of view explored "the Sex Problem", and what resulted was a great diversity of American narratives aligned with either Darwinian or a number of anti-Darwinian theories of evolution. Included are intriguing discussions of works by Frank Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, five writers of the Harlem Renaissance, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway. Among the ideas explored are Darwin's theory of common descent; the question of man's place in nature; the possibility of evolutionary progress; the issues of heredity and eugenics; the Darwinian basis of Freud's theory of sexual repression; the quandary of male violence and the role of female choice in sexual selection; the power of and the problems of racial and sexual selection; the power of and the problems of racial and sexual difference; and the ecological problems that arose directly from Darwin's theory of evolution. This volume provides a valuable treatment of an underappreciated aspect of America's major narratives of human life and love and will be appreciated by literary scholars and readers interested in Darwinism and culture.


*Corresponding Author E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Ghana Research Reactor-1 (GHARR-1) is a low power reactor of 30 kW (th) tank-in-pool type with parallel multichannel core, operating presently with a Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). The data on GHARR-1 was used for this research work. The GHARR-1 under normal operating conditions experiences single-phase flow. Under abnormal operating conditions GHARR-1 experiences two-phase flow regime which is caused by large reactivity insertions associated with the abnormal operating conditions of the low power reactor. This theoretical research purposely investigated twophase flow properties (parameters) which are normally associated with nucleate boiling that develops at abnormal operating conditions of the low power reactor. A FORTRAN code, conservation laws and correlations were employed to compute the two-phase flow parameters, which include boiling boundary, vapor quality, pressure drop, single-phase and nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients, onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) heat flux, critical heat flux and safety margins (ONB ratio (ONBR) and DNB ratio (DNBR)). The boiling boundary of 229.2 mm from the inlet at 37 kW reactor power, ONBR of 1.23 and DNBR of 134.44 were obtained for 30 kW GHARR-1. For abnormal reactor powers from 40-260 kW, the values of -0.005-0.106, 2.2031.153 kPa, 1.161-1.795 kW/m2K, 4.013-14.878 kW/m2K, 11.949-158.730 kW/m2 and 2951.917-2953.687 kW/m2 were obtained for exit vapor quality, pressure drop, single-phase and nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients, ONB heat flux and critical heat flux respectively. These results indicated that subcooled nucleate boiling will commence if the 30 kW GHARR-1 is operated above 37 kW reactor power, the coolant in the GHARR-1 core will not evaporate if it is operated below 40 kW, coolant heat removal from the core at low reactor powers would be more effective and low power reactors operating at low reactor powers can hardly experience nuclear accident. At abnormal operating conditions with high reactor powers, the low power GHARR-1 is safe and can have longer life span if it is continued to be operated at low reactor powers.


Purpose: Daily imaging protocols using kilovoltage cone beam CT (kV CBCT) have the potential to accumulate non‐trivial doses (up to several percent of the prescription dose) to the imaged volume which could have implications for planning decisions or the induction of secondary cancers. When CBCT dose is added to therapeutic dose, it may be necessary to account for differences in the relative biological effectiveness (RBE). We conducted a Monte Carlo study to investigate the relative number and complexity of DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) that Result from kV CBCT radiation compared to Co‐60 as a reference for general external beam radiation. Methods: A method was developed for coupling the radiation transport code (PENELOPE) with a Monte Carlo Damage Simulation (MCDS) code that predicts relative numbers and complexity of DSBs. The PENELOPE simulations generated electron spectra relevant for the MCDS input consisting of (i) electrons generated outside of a cell nucleus that drift in and (ii) electrons created within the nuclear volume, both without the continued slowing within the nucleus itself that is simulated implicitly by the MCDS code. Various configurations were considered (surface/depth, bowtie filter thickness, kV energy, and degrees of oxygenation). Results: The RBE for DSB induction in the kV CBCT sources ranged from 1.14 to 1.19 with increased complexity compared to that of Co‐60 for the majority of conditions; however, values as high as 1.45 were calculated in extreme circumstances. The RBE increased for anoxic conditions, at the phantom surface, for lower energies and for less filtration. Conclusions:Our results suggest kV CBCT sources produce more DNA damage than therapeutic radiation for a given absorbed dose and the relative difference can depend on several factors. This has potential implications for calculating the probability for inducing secondary cancers through the use of image guidance radiation.


This final rule updates the meal patterns and nutrition standards for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs to align them with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This rule requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their calorie requirements. These improvements to the school meal programs, largely based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, are expected to enhance the diet and health of school children, and help mitigate the childhood obesity trend.


Thermoplastic bio-composite have a higher potential of use based on the sustainability benefits. Natural fibres today are a popular choice for applications in bio- composite manufacturing. Hybrid yarns are a satisfactory solution to improve the fabrication of composites containing a thermoplastic matrix and plant-based fibres. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to produce bio-composites with superior mechanical properties, due to problematic impregnation and consolidation results during the production process. This paper investigates the processing parameters for the compression moulding of two different hemp/PLA textiles structure bio-composites (warp knitting and weaving structure). Finite element simulations are used to optimise the processing parameters (pressure, temperature, and time). The results demonstrated that the textile structure has a small effect on the time of production. Main while the pressure and temperature of processing parameters depend only on the type of matrix and the thickness of biocomposite has a big impact on the time of production.


Defining key parameters for a charge sustaining supervisory (torque split) control strategy as well as an engine and catalyst warm-up strategy for a Split Parallel Architecture Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (SPA E-REV) is accomplished through empirically and experimentally measuring vehicle tailpipe emissions and energy consumption for two distinct control strategies. The results of the experimental testing and analysis define how the vehicle reduces fuel consumption, petroleum energy use and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining low tailpipe emissions. For a SPA E-REV operating in charge sustaining mode with the engine providing net propulsive energy, simply operating the engine in regions of highest efficiency does not equate to the most efficient operation of the vehicle as a system and can have adverse effects on tailpipe emissions. Engine and catalyst warm-up during the transition from all-electric charge depleting to engine-dominant charge sustaining modes is experimentally analyzed to evaluate tailpipe emissions. The results presented are meant to define key parameters for a highlevel torque-split strategy and to provide an understanding of the tradeoffs between low energy consumption and low tailpipe emissions. The literature review gives a background of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicle control publications including tailpipe emissions studies, but does not include experimental results and comparisons of supervisory strategies designed for low fuel consumption and low tailpipe emissions the SPA E-REV architecture. This paper details the high-level control strategy chosen for balancing low energy consumption and low tailpipe emissions while the engine is operating. Vehicle testing data from a chassis dynamometer is presented in support of the research.


Abstract The main purpose of this research is to describe and sift the overall level of motivation of the employees of hotel enterprises in the region of Ferizaj, in the Republic of Kosova regarding the factors affecting it as well as measuring the relationship between motivation and quality of service. The first objective of this study is to measure and describe work relationship among the employees of hotel enterprises in the Ferizaj Region, while the second objective is to measure and describe payroll and bonuses among the employees of hotel enterprises in the Ferizaj Region. Part of the study were 467 workers of the hotel enterprises of which 36% ( n=171) were women, and 63.4% (n=296) men. Analysis of empirical data is performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) system. From the findings of this study it has been founded that the employees of hotel enterprises in Ferizaj region are above average motivated in their work. Salary is the most important factor that has an impact on motivation, followed by the work-related relationships. However, comparing level of motivation among different places, we can see that the workers in Ferizaj and Shterpce were more motivated because more motivational techniques were used by their managers, whereas employees in Shtime and Kaqanik were less motivated. The variance analysis identified significant statistical differences in terms of motivation at work. Regarding the quality of service from the statistical data, we see that the quality of service is in right proportion to motivation. Clients were satisfied with the hotel services in general but the citizens of Ferizaj and Shterpca were more satisfied whereas citizens of Shtime and Kaqanik were less satisfied. Finally, it can be asserted that the findings of this study can help the structures of hotel establishments to use efficient techniques to motivate their employees,which could lead to the increase of the quality of service provided.


Depending on the quality of the zircon grains available for analysis, two methods may be used to date igneous rock emplacement, namely U-Pb TIMS with isotope dilution or in situ U-Pb SIMS (SHRIMP). Both methods have been used to determine, in a precise and accurate manner, the emplacement age of the granitic protolith of the various orthogneisses in the Pyrenean Axial Zone. More specifically, four representative samples of G1, G2 and a "transition gneiss" yielded reliable datings with an average age of 473 ± 4 Ma for each sample. The surrounding sediments of the Canaveilles Group were constrained by zircon grains from interlayered metarhyodacite and dated at 581 ± 10 Ma using the SHRIMP method, clearly giving this group a late Proterozoic (Vendian) age. Finally, the Somail orthogneiss of the Montagne Noire, equivalent to that of the Canigou, yielded an age of 471 ± 4 Ma with the in situ U-Pb method, which is identical to the dating of the Pyrenean samples. In addition, most of the studied orthogneisses recorded a wide range of significant concordant inherited ages spanning from early Archaean (3.5 Ga) to Pan-African/Cadomian (600-800 Ma). Bearing in mind the calc-alkaline affinity of the studied rocks, this work demonstrates the huge contrast between the active Gondwana margin in the north ("South European terrane") and the remarkably homogeneous continental plate that existed from Arabia to Morocco during the Ordovician.


In a distributed storage system, client caches managed on the basis of small granularity objects can provide better memory utilization then page-based caches. However, object servers, unlike page servers, must perform additional disk reads. These installation reads are required to install modified objects onto their corresponding disk pages. The opportunistic log is a new technique that significantly reduces the cost of installation reads. It defers the installation reads, removing them from the modification commit path, and manages a large pool of pending installation reads that can be scheduled efficiently.
 Using simulations, we show that the opportunistic log substantially enhances the I/O performance of reliable storage servers. An object server without the opportunistic log requires much better client caching to outperform a page server. With an opportunistic log, only a small client cache improvement suffices.
 Our results imply that efficient scheduling of installation reads can substantially improve the performance of large-scale storage systems and therefore introduces a new performance tradeoff between page-based and object-based architectures.


Running parallel to the economic theory of development, from Adam Smith to the present, has been expression of concern, what may be called an ecological preoccupation, about the capacity of the planet to support the increasing human population and to withstand the operations humans were carrying out on it. For Malthus this focussed especially on limits to food supplies, for his successors on limits of other raw materials, most recently on the sensitive dynamics of the planet.

At the start there was no problem of communication between the economic and the ecological side; the same scholars wrote on both and they could be consistent with themselves. But in the past two or three decades the two sides have diverged. It would be too much to say that a debate is going on, for a debate requires that each side answer the points raised by the other, and that does not seem to be happening. How can the conditions for debate be established, and the public understanding and democratic decision making advantages of a debate be secured.

The simple answer is for each of economists and biologists to acknowledge the results of the other in the field of its expertise, and to build its theory around these. That may ultimately lead to an overall consensus formula for sustainable development. But with the amount of knowledge now at hand and for a considerable time in the future the best we can hope for is incremental steps towards sustainability that are at least in the right direction. Some ten such steps are suggested.


Microgrids have become an attractive way of integrating several distributed generators to the utility network via a common point of coupling (PCC) to minimize network complexity and improve stability, amongst other attributes. Africa receives an abundance of solar radiation. Solar PV have, rightly, become a popular alternative clean energy. However, because of the nature of solar radiation, produced power is intermittent. On top of this, the power electronics used to integrate PV solar systems into the grid have limited maximum allowable current. These attributes negatively impact the capability of existing protection systems and thus the call to find effective protection solutions. R-Criterion was identified as a potential fault detection system. However, it is unable to detect a balanced 3-phase fault as well as differentiating a balanced 3-phase fault from a switched load in the network.


Students often struggle with solving mechanism problems in organic chemistry courses. They frequently focus on surface features, have difficulty attributing meaning to symbols, and do not recognize tasks that are different from the exact tasks practiced. To be more successful, students need to be able to extract salient features, map similarities to problems seen previously, and extrapolate while solving problems. In short, students must be able to recognize and generate abstractions. To help students in learning to solve problems, we need a better understanding of the nature of students' capacity for abstraction. Building upon an exploratory study (Sevian H., Bernholt S., Szteinberg G. A., Auguste S. and Perez L. C., (2015), Use of representation mapping to capture abstraction in problem solving in different courses in chemistry, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 16(3), 429–446), we applied the representation mapping model of Hahn and Chater (1998a) to characterize the abstraction employed by students while solving mechanistic problems in organic chemistry, and to measure students' growth in abstraction capacity across a semester. This model operationalizes abstraction by considering (a) the ways in which students match existing knowledge to new instances (abstracting) and (b) the level of abstractness of students' representations. We describe characteristic indicators of abstracting and abstractness. Trends were observable in the abstraction present in the reasoning of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers. Students who proposed plausible solutions used both strict or partial matching, but students who proposed implausible solutions tended to use strict matching. Students who proposed plausible solutions utilized higher levels of abstractness. This indicates that flexibility in abstraction processes may be important to successfully solve problems. The findings have implications for developing instructors' assessment practices in ways that build students' abstraction capacity.


This paper shows the adaptation to climate change (CC) in localities with frequent exposure to hydro meteorological phenomena. A questionnaire was applied into representative samples in three Mexican localities. Social representation was the approach with a special interest of the community resilience. A majority recognize the responsibility of the human activity on CC. Nevertheless, the disasters are adjudged mainly to natural causes, only thirty percent recognized themselves as "guilty"; whereas more than half recognized themselves as "victim" of the disaster and the authorities when the measures of prevention are not enough. Some habitants consider changing their place of residence. Others look to collaborate with local authorities in a diagnostic program to construct preventive information; also collaborate in processes of reconstruction of the community, among other actions of community participation. Some practical implications are in the design of strategies of communication and environmental education, as well as a public policy more preventive than reactive.


With the promotion of demand side responses (DSRs) and low carbon technologies (LCTs), there is a growing interest in visualising the demand information at individual consumer and low voltage (LV) network level, where demands are less aggregated and highly volatile. Yet, traditional load profiling techniques, which are carried out on small data, are struggling to meet the requirements on accuracy and granularity. This thesis contributes to this area by extending traditional load profiling to a big-data context, where refined load profiles (smart data) can be extracted by two novel load profiling techniques for LV networks and individual consumers. The refined load profiles aim to: i) economically visualise LV networks with limited smart-grid monitoring data; ii) transform the smart metering data into a high-detail granular representation of the customers' daily demand. For the LV networks, this thesis develops a novel concept, LV network templates, which aim to visualise the LV networks in a cost-effective manner. A novel three-stage load profiling method is proposed as: clustering, classification and scaling. By using statistical time-series analysis, three steps are undertaken: i) cluster a vast amount of load data according to their load shapes; ii) classify un-monitored substations to the most similar cluster without sample metering; iii) and also scale them to the right magnitude without sample metering. Through this method, limited representative monitoring data can be used to develop a library of typical load profiles for un-monitored networks, thus saving the cost of extensive monitoring for every single substation. In addition, it is the first load profiling method that can accurately express both load shapes and magnitudes for LV networks. Regarding the customer's demand representation, the developed time-series analysis needs to be updated due to the volatile and uncertain nature of smart metering data, including inter-related factors such as overall load shapes, sudden spikes and magnitudes. Therefore, an innovative spectral load profiling is proposed to decompose these factors into different spectral levels, characterised by spectral features. By analysing the extracted features on each spectral level separately through multi-resolution analysis, the interference among different factors can effectively be prevented. The proposed method, for the first time, is able to fully capture the energy characteristics at the household level. The developed LV network load templates provide an economical but straightforward way to quantify the available headroom of unmonitored substations over time, providing quantitative information for distribution network operators to integrate LTCs at the minimal costs. The spectral load profiling gives an insight into customer's energy behaviours with high granularity and accuracy. It can support the customer-specified DSR, tariff design, smart metering validation and load forecasting.


The law under which government officials operate permits them to inflict injury on others, under prescribed circumstances, in established ways, and in carefully (and sometimes not so carefully) calibrated amounts. Indeed, the law goes further: it sometimes tells the official that a failure to injure-that is, to coerce compliance with a predetermined rule of conduct-is a dereliction of official duty. For although there may be interminable argument over the social goals that justify the state in using force, all but the most extreme libertarians concede some place to governmental, and therefore official, coercion. The legal system's permitting-or requiring-officially inflicted harms need not, however, be viewed as meaning that official harms have a peculiar legal position. At its most general level the law governing civil liability imposes an obligation to repair any negligent or intentional harm inflicted upon another.1 This liability rule obtains unless the harmful action can be justified by appeal to special circumstances.2 When harmful action is authorized by the statutes, regulations, customs, and interpretations empowering and instructing officials, such authorization may be viewed as merely one form of justification. Neither the constable who enters blackacre pursuant to a valid warrant nor the buyer who enters pursuant to a contract of sale will be held liable for trespass. But in fact, the major legal rules that govern the civil liability of government officers seem to be quite different from the model sketched above that harm requires reparation unless authorized. Indeed, the basic proposition governing official liability might be stated: Harm requires reparation unless


It's official: Windows 8 is on its way! Microsoft announced today the new Windows 8 developer version at Build, the company's conference for independant developers in Los Angeles. It is first Windows system ever designed from scratch to work on both tablets and PCs. Microsoft seems to be aiming for Apple and Android world with…


Abstract. We examined the reaction of N 2 O 5 on frozen halide salt solutions as a function of temperature and composition using a coated wall flow tube technique coupled to a chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS). The molar yield of photo-labile halogen compounds was near unity for almost all conditions studied, with the observed reaction products being nitryl chloride (ClNO 2 ) and/or molecular bromine (Br 2 ). The relative yield of ClNO 2 and Br 2 depended on the ratio of bromide to chloride ions in the solutions used to form the ice. At a bromide to chloride ion molar ratio greater than 1/30 in the starting solution, Br 2 was the dominant product otherwise ClNO 2 was primarily produced on these near pH-neutral brines. We demonstrate that the competition between chlorine and bromine activation is a function of the ice/brine temperature presumably due to the preferential precipitation of NaCl hydrates from the brine below 250 K. Our results provide new experimental confirmation that the chemical environment of the brine layer changes with temperature and that these changes can directly affect multiphase chemistry. These findings have implications for modeling air-snow-ice interactions in polar regions and likely in polluted mid-latitude regions during winter as well.


Background and aims: From the information science perspective making the right information accessible to patients ensures the healthcare promotion and empowers the patient to contribute and involve in his/her healthcare decision making and change. This study aimed at analyzing and visualizing the Iran's Patients Right Charter from the Medical Library and Information Sciences' viewpoints. Methods: A mix method of qualitative and quantitative was used to push the study. Content Analyzing and Descriptive method were used to analyze and describe data. It was also benefited the documentary methods to review the related literature in citation databases and gray literatures. And descriptive analysis also was hired to show the share of each concept in total knowledge depiction of Patient's Right to Information. The Iranian patient right charters were reviewed to trace the concept of information/right to information in every Para and articles. The Library Congress Subject Heading (LCHS) was used to extract the equivalent/parallel concepts related to ontology of information in the concept of health and medicine as well as law. All the LCSH based terms were then converted to main categories and subcategories. Patient right charters were reviewed with the LCSH based categories to reveal does the patient right charter include the right to information parameters, and which concepts, Para or articles is supporting right to information? Conclusion: Access to the right information at the right time is advocated by ethical and legal issues of clinical governance through the patients' rights. But to execute the patient's rights to information in practice it is essential to create clinical guidelines and to develop rules for information therapy service in Iran.


Community engagement in water and sanitation service delivery is key for ensuring project sustainability and accountability. In all of its programmes, WSUP works with local service providers, community groups and local authorities to enhance stakeholder participation. This Topic Brief looks at community engagement approaches used by WSUP in three cities within the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme: Antananarivo (Madagascar), Kumasi (Ghana) and Maputo (Mozambique). The specific focus is on ways to encourage community involvement in the design of water supply and sanitation projects, and ways in which service providers can elicit input and feedback from people living in low-income communities. The Topic Brief discusses several cases in which community engagement has positively contributed to the development of WASH services. It highlights some of the key challenges currently faced by WSUP and other sector organisations, and ends with practical recommendations for programme managers about how to engage low-income communities. Getting communities engaged in water and sanitation projects: participatory design and consumer feedback


In EMAT field, spiral RF coils are much more widely used when compared with solenoid coils. In the field of the magnetostrictive strip transducers for long range ultrasonic testing of cylindrical structures, however, solenoid coils has been used. This seems to be attributed to the difficulty in fabricating low frequency (i.e., large size) spiral coils. In this paper, we describe a method for fabricating spiral coil magnetostrictive strip guided wave transducers from FFC (flexible flat cable). It is demonstrated through a comparison experiment that the spiral coil transducer has much superior performance (sensitivity, SNR, and guided wave direction control capability) than the previous transducer with solenoid coils.


Two recent parallel developments, the widespread deployment of wireless networks and increased use of handheld devices like the personal digital assistant (PDA), have contributed to the development of mobile access to the Internet. Recent surveys show that approximately 25% or more of physicians use PDAs. Although used mainly for personal information management and static medical applications, PDAs have capabilities to connect to the Internet. We studied the use of handheld devices to access MEDLINE and other knowledge sources in a wireless setting.


Many localities have in recent years regulated the use of questions about criminal history in hiring, or "banned the box." We show that these regulations increased employment of residents in high-crime neighborhoods by up to 4 percent, consistent with the central objective of these measures. This effect can be seen in both aggregate employment patterns for high-crime neighborhoods and commuting patterns to workplace destinations with this type of ban. The increases are particularly large in the public sector and in lower-wage jobs. This is the first nationwide evidence that these policies do indeed increase employment opportunities in neighborhoods with many ex-offenders.


The p42 and p44 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), also called Erk2 and Erk1, respectively, have been implicated in proliferation as well as in differentiation programs. The specific role of the p44 MAPK isoform in the whole animal was evaluated by generation of p44 MAPK-deficient mice by homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells. The p44 MAPK-/- mice were viable, fertile, and of normal size. Thus, p44 MAPK is apparently dispensable and p42 MAPK (Erk2) may compensate for its loss. However, in p44 MAPK-/- mice, thymocyte maturation beyond the CD4+CD8+ stage was reduced by half, with a similar diminution in the thymocyte subpopulation expressing high levels of T cell receptor (CD3high). In p44 MAPK-/- thymocytes, proliferation in response to activation with a monoclonal antibody to the T cell receptor in the presence of phorbol myristate acetate was severely reduced even though activation of p42 MAPK was more sustained in these cells. The p44 MAPK apparently has a specific role in thymocyte development.


Counting answers to a query is an operation supported by virtually all database management systems.

In this paper we focus on counting answers over a Knowledge Base (KB), which may be viewed as a database enriched with background knowledge about the domain under consideration.

In particular, we place our work in the context of Ontology-Mediated Query Answering/Ontology-based Data Access (OMQA/OBDA), where the language used for the ontology is a member of the DL-Lite family and the data is a (usually virtual) set of assertions.

We study the data complexity of query answering, for different members of the DL-Lite family that include number restrictions, and for variants of conjunctive queries with counting that differ with respect to their shape (connected, branching, rooted).

We improve upon existing results by providing PTIME and coNP lower bounds, and upper bounds in PTIME and LOGSPACE.

For the LOGSPACE case, we have devised a novel query rewriting technique into first-order logic with counting.


There has never been a better time to invest in young people in developing countries. Those who are 12-24 years of age number 1.3 billion and make up the largest youth cohort in history. They are, on average, more educated and healthier than generations before them. They represent a potentially stronger base on which to build in a world that is increasingly demanding more than basic skills. Today's young people are the next generation of workers, entrepreneurs, parents, active citizens and leaders who have relatively fewer dependents because of lower birth rates. Countries need to seize this window of opportunity to invest in the future before the aging process closes it. World Development Report 2007 discusses priorities for government action across five youth transitions that shape young people's human capital: learning, working, staying healthy, forming families, and excercising citizenship. Within these transitions, priorities for investment vary across countries. The Report highlights three lenses that help assess priorities: expanding opportunities, enhancing capabilities, and providing second chances. Expanding opportunities focuses on increasing the quality (not just quantity) of education, smoothing the transition to work, and providing young people with a platform for civic engagement. Enhancing capabilities involves making young people aware of the consequences of their actions, especially consequences that will affect them much later in life; building their decision-making skills; and giving them the right incentives. Providing second chances calls for helping young people recover from missed opportunities through remedial education, retraining, treatment, and rehabilitation.


In recent years, microgrid technologies have gained considerable interest, where a common dc-bus is generally used to interconnect multiple power sources. The existing technology of common dc bus-based direct integration of multiple sources has some critical problems, such as isolation and the requirement of additional control circuit for voltage imbalance and common mode. A common high-frequency magnetic bus (instead of the common dc bus) is proposed in this paper to overcome the limitations and complications of the existing technology of dc bus-based direct integration of multiple sources. In this paper, an extensive investigation on electromagnetic performance of advanced magnetic materials (amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys) is presented. The design process of an efficient and compact high-frequency common magnetic bus for integration of multiple power sources is also discussed. The new technology will be a fundamental component for the future grids to interconnect various sources magnetically, providing an inherent solution to voltage imbalance and isolation problems.


De novo genome assembly provides comprehensive, unbiased genomic information and makes it possible to gain insight into new DNA sequences not present in reference genomes. Many de novo human genomes have been published in the last few years, leveraging a combination of inexpensive short-read and single-molecule long-read technologies. As long-read DNA sequencers become more prevalent, the computational burden of generating assemblies persists as a critical factor. The most common approach to long-read assembly, using an overlap-layout-consensus (OLC) paradigm, requires all-to-all read comparisons, which quadratically scales in computational complexity with the number of reads. We assert that recently achievements in sequencing technology (i.e. with accuracy ~99% and read length ~10-15k) enables a fundamentally better strategy for OLC that is effectively linear rather than quadratic. Our genome assembly implementation, Peregrine uses sparse hierarchical minimizers (SHIMMER) to index reads thereby avoiding the need for an all-to-all read comparison step. Peregrine can assemble 30x human PacBio CCS read datasets in less than 30 CPU hours and around 100 wall-clock minutes to a high contiguity assembly (N50 > 20Mb). The continued advance of sequencing technologies coupled with the Peregrine assembler enables routine generation of human de novo assemblies. This will allow for population scale measurements of more comprehensive genomic variations -- beyond SNPs and small indels -- as well as novel applications requiring rapid access to de novo assemblies.


This paper addresses epistemological issues raised by the use of elicited data in linguistic analyses. A common suspicion raised by experimental settings is this: participants in the lab do not replicate their everyday use of language, due to the artificiality of the tasks and of the contexts involved, so that elicited speech should not constitute a reliable source of data. I set out the experimental settings and results of four empirical studies – two studies investigating the pragmatic value of prosodic focalization through the controversial use of elicited data, one study on dative alternations based on a corpus and on a rating task, and one study on the contextual determinants of intonational contours based on a production task – to dispel this methodological suspicion: the artificiality of elicitation protocols does not prevent participants from using language as they do in spontaneous interactions. Careful examination reveals that the biases observed in the first two studies arise because subjects are not provided with sufficient cues concerning the context. I borrow the Gibsonian notion of affordance to characterise the state in which a context provides optimal resources to enable the production of the targeted construction, and argue that elicited data are reliable only when contexts optimise affordances.


Faba bean is an important legume crop because of its high‐yield potential and nutrition‐dense grains. There have been significant achievements in faba bean improvement in the last four decades, which led to the doubling of the global yield average. This study reviews the genetic diversity, the breeding methodologies, major achievement on biotic and abiotic traits, and the recent molecular approaches. The high genetic diversity among faba bean accessions has been useful for increasing yield potential of the crop. Substantial increase in yield potential can be gained through the development of cultivars in open pollinated conditions. In the past, many faba bean varieties that are tolerant to abiotic and biotic stresses were released worldwide. The average yield gains varied from 1.65% per year in Syria to 4.17% per year in Ethiopia. The recent advances in molecular technologies will be used to develop more coherent genetic maps, which would also facilitate assembling and ordering genomic scaffolds in a future genome‐sequencing effort and molecular‐breeding approach.


This updated fourteenth edition concentrates on the SAT's Critical Reading section with exercises reflecting both SAT question types: sentence completion and reading comprehension. Exercises are divided according to three levels of increasing difficulty, labeled from A to C Features a helpful self-assessment test and three full-length Critical Reading practice tests All questions are answered and explained Students who can answer all level C questions are ready to excel on the actual exam The workbook also presents test-taking tips and an extensive vocabulary review.


The Supreme Court's decision in Alexander v. Sandoval significantly altered options for bringing an environmental justice claim. Several causes of action still remain, however, that can be an effective means of achieving environmental justice. This Article will explore these causes of action and show that each has unique characteristics and can present distinct opportunities. This Article will also address the importance of tailoring environmen tal justice claims to best suit the plaintiff. Finally, this Article will present a case study of a proposal to build a geothermal power plant in an area of California that is sacred to Native Americans, and suggest an effective strategy for bringing an environmental justice claim.


Many latent (factorized) models have been proposed for recommendation tasks like collaborative filtering and for ranking tasks like document or image retrieval and annotation. Common to all those methods is that during inference the items are scored independently by their similarity to the query in the latent embedding space. The structure of the ranked list (i.e. considering the set of items returned as a whole) is not taken into account. This can be a problem because the set of top predictions can be either too diverse (contain results that contradict each other) or are not diverse enough. In this paper we introduce a method for learning latent structured rankings that improves over existing methods by providing the right blend of predictions at the top of the ranked list. Particular emphasis is put on making this method scalable. Empirical results on large scale image annotation and music recommendation tasks show improvements over existing approaches.


An electronic nose (E-nose) coupled to gas chromatography was tested to monitor alcoholic fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae ICV-K1 and Saccharomyces cerevisiae T306, two strains well-known for their use in oenology. The biomass and ethanol concentrations and conductance changes were measured during cultivations and allowed to observe the standard growth phases for both yeast strains. The two strains were characterized by a very similar tendency in biomass or ethanol production during the fermentation. E-nose was able to establish a kinetic of the production of aroma compounds production and which was then easy to associate with the fermentation phases. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed that the data collected by E-nose during the fermentation mainly contained cultivation course information. Discriminant factorial analysis (DFA) was able to clearly identify differences between the two strains using the four main principal components of PCA as input data. Nevertheless, the electronic nose responses being mainly influenced by cultivation course, a specific data treatment limiting the time influence on data was carried out and permitted to achieve an overall performance of 83.5%.


This thesis shows a novel contribution to computational biology alongside with developed machine learning methods. It shows how the graphical representation of KEGG pathways can be refined using machine learning of graphical models. The focus mainly is on a set of graphical models called Bayesian networks. Throughout this thesis , different ways of learning Bayesian networks are discussed. The work is based on Affymetrix gene expression microarray profiles
and penalised Gaussian linear models. Penalisation in linear models includes choosing the most important parents and estimating the associated coefficients simultaneously using L1-regression. The sparse dataset that is generated from Affymetrix microarray technology is the key point in this thesis when learning Bayesian networks. Thus, the work in this thesis can be viewed as developing robust methods to avoid overfitting that usually associated with gene expression datasets and contributing to invoke more details about a well known discrepancy in KEGG pathways. So,the problem we have is to learn from a large number of candidates, small samples,(p>>n), and for such problem the goal is to apply model selection methods that hopefully achieve an accurate prediction , interpretable models, and stable models. The prediction and the most powerful predictors can be improved by using methods that trade-off between bias and variance. Also, providing which predictors are meaningful rather than using all predictors will provide interpretable models, and finally by choosing the most important predictors, a small change in the data will not result in large changes in the subset of predictors which consequently gives the stability to the models that are learnt.


Abstract How do people make sense of, and deal with, a changing media landscape perceived to be filled with misinformation and fake news? To answer this, we draw upon data from seventy-one in-depth interviews in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami. We found that perceptions about the overall media ecosystem were characterized by a: a) negative view of the current quality of news reporting, b) particular distrust of news circulation on social media; and c) concern about the effects of these trends mainly on the information habits of others. To counter these perceptions, participants indicated to rely on: a) traditional fact-based media, accompanied by a rejection of opinionated outlets; b) personal experience and knowledge; c) repetition of information across outlets; d) consumption of cross-ideological sources; e) fact-checking; and f) trust in certain personal contacts on social media, who are perceived as assessors of news quality. Our findings suggest that: a) news consumption is being ritualized in new and more personalized ways; b) social media is seen as a gateway to news partly because audiences find opinion leaders in terms of their skills as credibility assessors; and c) journalism could cater more to audiences' demands for more fact-oriented and less discussion-based content.


Tomato fruits infected by Aspergillus flavus Linn produced proteins with cellulolytic activity. The enzyme was partially purified by Ammonium Sulphate Precipitation, Gel filtration and ion-exchange chromatography. Three peaks of absorption A, B and C were obtained. Peak B had Cellulase activity with molecular weight of approximately 30,200 Daltons while Peaks A and C lacked Cellulase activity. Elution of components of Peak B on CM Sephadex C-25 produced four peaks of absorption designated Ba, Bb, Bc and Bd. Only components of Peaks Bb and Bc possessed Cellulase activity. Purification folds of approximately 80 and 81 were obtained for components of Peaks Bb and Bc respectively for Cellulase of A. flavus. The apparent Km values for the hydrolysis of carboxymethylcellulose by A.flavus Cellulase fractions, Bb and Bc were approximately 16.7 and 15.4mg/ml respectively. The partially purified enzyme preparations obtained from A.flavus during the deterioration of tomato fruits caused tissue maceration and cellular death. This result can be very useful in splitting and solubilization of pectic substances and pathogenicity.


See Article on Page 365

Ascites is the most common complication in liver cirrhosis (LC), occurring in 60% of the patients with compensated LC within 10 years.1 Therapeutic paracentesis is an effective treatment for tension-type ascites, because it relieves the symptom more quickly than diuretics and shortens hospitalization.2 Refractory ascites is defined as fluid overload that is not controlled despite restriction of sodium intake and the maximum dose of diuretics, and recurs rapidly after paracentesis.3 Large volume paracentesis (LVP) has become the first line of treatment for patients with severe and refractory ascites.4 Paracentesis-induced circulatory dysfunction (PICD) occurs as a complication of LVP. Though PICD remains clinically silent, it is an important predictor of mortality in patients with severe ascites treated by LVP.5 A recent meta-analysis concluded that PICD is associated with a high rate of ascites recurrence, development of hepatorenal syndrome, dilutional hyponatremia, and high mortality.6 PICD is definitively diagnosed through laboratory results, with increases of more than 50% of baseline plasma rennin activity to > 4 ng/mL/h on the 5th to 6th days after paracentesis.5,7

The exact pathophysiology of PICD is not entirely understood. PICD was initially thought to occur secondary to fluid shifting after paracentesis, resulting in decreased circulating volume.8 Additional studies demonstrated that decreased systemic vascular resistance also plays an essential role in PICD.7,9,10 The resulting effective hypovolemia due to arteriolar vasodilation in turn leads to a prolonged activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the rennin-angiotensin-aldosterone pathway. Increased plasma rennin activity in particular is characteristic of PICD, however general hyporesponsiveness to vasoconstrictors in the setting of cirrhosis decreases the ability to compensate for the accentuated vasodilation.11

One of the simplest ways to prevent PICD is to limit the volume of fluid removed to 5 to 6 L at a time.5,12,13 The incidence of PICD approaches 80% when a LVP is performed without additional therapeutic management; the incidence is reduced to 15 to 35% when volume expanders are used.14 Of all the plasma expanders, human albumin infusion is considered as the best option due to its long half-life of 21 days. In addition to its oncotic value, albumin has antioxidant, detoxification, immunoprotective, drug binding and delivery properties.15,16 One recent meta-analysis concluded that albumin was superior to other volume expanders and alternative treatments in decreasing the risk of PICD, hyponatremia, and mortality.6 A separate recent meta-analysis demonstrated the benefit of albumin administration in decreasing the incidence of PICD after paracentesis as well as morbidity and mortality in patients with any type of infection.17

Current guidelines recommend albumin infusion when LVP > 5 liter is removed as it prevents 85% of cirrhotic patients from developing PICD.18,19 Albumin therapy has also been shown to improve survival in cirrhotic patients with spontaneous bacterial peritonitis by reducing incidence of renal impairment.20 The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines state that it is reasonable but not mandatory to give 6 to 8 g of albumin per liter of ascites removed when more than 5 L are removed.19

Reducing the flow rate of fluid removed during the paracentesis is also theorized to decrease the incidence of PICD.21 Some physicians have tried this method to prevent PICD in real clinical practice. However, clinical evidence of this approach is lacking. In the current issue, Elsabaawy et al.22 evaluated the impact of paracentesis flow rate on PICD. Sixty patients with refractory ascites underwent LVP randomized into 3 groups and controlled with different flow rate extraction each. Results showed flow rate was not significant factor of PICD development and only female was a predictor of PICD. Authors concluded that paracentesis flow rate did not correlate with PICD development. Although there is limitation of small scale, this study has strength of prospective design. In addition to need of larger scale study, author did not reveal the reason why female was only significant predictor of PICD development. In the era of albumin infusion during LVP, flow rate of parecentesis may do not matter. In this point of view, one question is still remained. Will flow rate not impact on PICD development even without albumin infusion during LVP?

In conclusion, this study showed that flow rate of paracentesis did not correlate with PICD development. To date, there is little data about this correlation. Therefore, such information may be useful to clinician. Further well designed larger research is needed to confirm this result.


SUMMARY Amphibians face an extinction crisis. Hundreds of species may be lost as conservation scientists and practitioners struggle to identify remedies to poorly understood declines spanning several decades. Due to various life history characteristics and a range of drivers, amphibians continue to be especially hardhit, more so than any other vertebrate group. In this special issue of Conservation Evidence, studies that report the effectiveness of amphibian conservation interventions are presented to add to the rapidly growing body of literature on this topic. We here summarise the current understanding of global amphibian declines to highlight the importance of applying evidence-based strategies to amphibian conservation.


This Article presents a case study in designing cooperative interstate institutions. It takes as its subject the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement ("SSUTA"), a recently-developed compact among the States now awaiting congressional ratification. The SSUTA's primary goal is to bring uniformity to the field of state and local sales taxation, a regime in which multi-jurisdictional sellers now confront thousands of different sets of rules. I predict here that the SSUTA as currently designed is unlikely to accomplish that goal, and attempt to suggest possible amendments that could improve its expected performance. From these efforts I extract larger lessons about the workings of many similar cooperative ventures. My prognosis for the SSUTA turns largely on the political economy of state taxation. Extending Daniel Shaviro's seminal work on state incentives for tax-law disuniformity, I examine how the institutional arrangements set out by the SSUTA respond to the pressures identified by Shaviro. I additionally weigh a number of factors omitted in his analysis. For example, I consider the possible public-regarding tendencies of bureaucratic ideology or sense of mission among either state-level tax administrators, state courts, or the governing body of the SSUTA Having made a more precise diagnosis of the problems that confront the SSUTA, I am able to suggest more precisely targeted solutions, such as tying the deductibility of businesses' federal deduction for state and local tax paid to federal administrative approval of the taxing state's compliance with SSUTA, with approval subject in turn to federal judicial review. In this way, the businesses are made to internalize the costs they impose on others. And the most politically remote actors, federal judges, would have a reliable interpretive partner to supplement their own, ordinarily rather weak, fact finding and policy analysis.


The feasibility and efficiency of a seismic retrofit intervention using externally bonded fiber-reinforced polymer composites on existing reinforced concrete frame systems, designed prior to the introduction of modern standard seismic design code provisions in the mid-1970s, are herein presented, based on analytical and experimental investigations on beam-column joint subassemblies and frame systems. A multilevel retrofit strategy, following hierarchy of strength considerations, is adopted to achieve the desired performance. The expected sequence of events is visualized through capacity-demand curves within M-N performance domains. An analytical procedure able to predict the enhanced nonlinear behavior of the panel zone region, due to the application of CFRP laminates, in terms of shear strength principal stresses versus shear deformation, has been developed and is herein proposed as a fundamental step for the definition of a proper retrofit solution. The experimental results from quasistatic tests on beam-column subassemblies, either interior and exterior, and on three-storey three-bay frame systems in their as-built and CFRP retrofitted configurations, provided very satisfactory confirmation of the viability and reliability of the adopted retrofit solution as well as of the proposed analytical procedure to predict the actual sequence of events.


Co-evolutionary EAs are often applied to optimization and machine learning problems with disappointing results. One of the contributing factors to this is the complexity of the dynamics exhibited by co-evolutionary systems. In this paper we focus on a particular form of competitive co-evolutionary EA and study the dynamics of the fitness of the best individuals in the evolving populations. Our approach is to try to understand the characteristics of the fitness landscapes that produce particular kinds of fitness dynamics such as stable fixed points, stable cycles, and instability. In particular, we show how landscapes can be constructed that produce each of these dynamics. These landscapes are extremely similar when inspected with respect to traditional properties such as ruggedness / modality, yet they yield very different results. This shows there is a need for co-evolutionary specific analysis tools.


Herpes simplex virus 2 is a human herpesvirus found worldwide that causes genital lesions and more rarely causes encephalitis. This pathogen is most common in Africa, and particularly in central and east Africa, an area of particular significance for the evolution of modern humans. Unlike HSV1, HSV2 has not simply co-speciated with humans from their last common ancestor with primates. HSV2 jumped the species barrier between 1.4 and 3 MYA, most likely through an intermediate but unknown hominin species. In this paper, we use probability-based network analysis to determine the probable path between intermediate hosts of HSV2, from chimpanzees to modern humans, using paleoenvironmental data on the distribution of African tropical rainforest over the last 3 million years and data on the age and distribution of fossil species of hominin present in Africa between 1.4 and 3 MYA. Our model identifies Homo rudolfensis as the most likely intermediate host of HSV2


The Swedish education system is governed by national steering documents, like the Education Act, curriculi and syllabuses. The democratic assignment is a central issue in these documents. The thesis aims to investigate how teachers handle this democratic assignment and how they are influenced by forces on different social levels.

The concept of democracy is open to many interpretations. Democracy in education has a wide meaning, according to John Dewey, including forms of life in society and not only decision making and political matters. The concept of recognition has been elaborated by writers like Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur in a way that is suitable for an analysis of democratic processes in education. Basil Bernstein´s model for rights in pedagogy also fits well into the background of the concept of democracy.

The relation between human action and law is a central area for studies in Sociology of Law. In Sociology of Law at Lund University these studies have been centered around the concept of norms. In this study the norm concept is placed in the environment of professional teaching. The relative freedom of acting in a professional area focuses intentional norms, classified as teleological norms.

An empirical study of teachers working with democracy projects was carried out using both indivdual and groups interviews. The interviews showed that teachers took responsibility for democratic goals and that they needed support to be able to succeed The results showed that the teachers´ acting was influenced by several factors and that different situations showed specific features. Democratic teaching was thus set in multi-variate conditions of a complex system. It was however possible to detect a general dynamic teaching process with three dimensions of professional teaching. Teachers´ actions aimed to:
 Improve the capacity to see the child/student
 Become more critically aware of their own role
 Increase the awareness of democratic issues
My conlusion is that this forms three active meta-norms in education for democracy. The meta-norms serve as a support for teachers in the complex and multi layered assignment of teaching democracy. As the meta-norms can clearly be linked to the theories of recognition they gain support by an ethical discussion in social philosophy. A practical consequence of this is that the concept of recognition presents both meaning and potentially powerful possibilities in developing methods for teaching democracy. Further studies in teachers acting can contrubute to the philosophical discussion on recognition, the knowledge on building of a future democracy and a deeper understanding of the relation between legislation and education.


Background: There is growing pressure in some of New Zealand's export markets for product information on sustainability credentials and on carbon emissions with several schemes under development worldwide. The aim of this study is to assess in two key markets consumer attitudes, knowledge and preferences towards sustainability; including carbon emissions information on food products. Method: Focus groups and surveys in the UK and Japan. Results: This study finds evidence that consumers in both countries desire labels that display sustainability credentials. Differences were observed between countries in terms of perceived knowledge about specific issues. Similar preferences for environmental product features were observed. Conclusion: The information gained from this study may support producers' and manufacturers' labeling policy and practices.


We designed a quantum cascade semiconductor optical amplifier (QCSOA) structure for enhanced four-wave mixing (FWM) of short optical pulses in midinfrared. To analyze FWM characteristics in a QCSOA, the evolution in the time and spectral domains of two input optical pulses with different frequencies during propagation is calculated using the finite-difference beam propagation method. Calculated third-order susceptibility responsible for FWM resonance nonlinearity of the modified structure is enhanced by two orders of magnitude. Simulation results reveal that quantum cascade structure parameters and injected pump and probe powers are extremely important in determining the amplified FWM optical pulse characteristics in both the time and frequency domains.


In this article, the authors explore recent developments in urban regeneration in Istanbul, and specifically in the important historic district of Beyoğlu. In one respect, these developments, which are linked to the promotion of cruise ship tourism, are on the same predictable lines as neoliberal projects in other cities across the world. Significantly, in the Istanbul context, local agency is being sidelined, and projects are being financed and managed through the intervention of the central state. In this Turkish version of urban transformation, however, there is a locally distinctive aspect that merits attention. Istanbul is a city that was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, and the discourse of conquest has remained significant within the urban imaginary. And at the present time, it is being mobilized by the state and its cultural ministry, in the cause of creating a new urban image conforming to its Islamist principles. The key project involves the establishment of what is called the Beyoğlu Cultural Route, which is essentially a touristic itinerary. The authors argue that the state's initiatives, and the route project in particular, involve an erasure—a conquest—of Beyoğlu's legacy of cosmopolitan values. This discussion explores what has been of civic and cultural value in the lifeworld of Beyoğlu, past and present. Resistance to the state's control of resources and institutions, and to its conquest ideology, needs to be grounded in civic principles open to diversity and difference in the city.


In 1940, in the context of choosing optimum reinsurance levels, Bruno de Finetti essentially proposed mean-variance analysis with correlated risks. It was not until 1952 that Markowitz and Roy introduced mean-variance analysis with correlated risks into the financial literature. De Finetti solved the problem of computing mean-variance efficient frontiers for a particular constraint set (one that describes the reinsurance problem) assuming uncorrelated risks. While he understood and explained the importance of the case with correlated risks, he did not provide an algorithm for this case. In fact, one of his conjectures concerning its solution was incorrect. The present article summarizes de Finetti's contribution, presents an algorithm for solving "the de Finetti problem" when risks are correlated, and illustrates these matters with an easily visualized two-policy reinsurance problem.


It took many centuries for the basal ganglia (BG) to be recognized as specific brain entities involved in the control of psychomotor behavior. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was the first to delineate this set of structures, but he did not name them nor payany attention to their functional significance. This was left to the English physician Thomas Willis (1621-1675), who used the term corpus striatum (striated or chamfered body) to designate the largest BG constituent, which he considered a major sensorimotor integration center. Willis's pioneering description influenced markedly some 18th and 19th centuries scholars, particularly the German physician and anatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776-1847). Burdach's insightful studies of the human brain are summarized in a three-volume treatise entitled Vom Baue und Leben des Gehirns (1819-1826). This landmark opus provides a description of the BGwhose originality has largely been overlooked. Burdach's careful investigation allowed him to differentiate the caudate nucleus from the putamen, which he respectively termed Streifenhugel (elongated hillock) and Schale (shell). He also called the putamen Linsenkern (lens-shaped nucleus), a term that he admittedly borrowed from his compatriot Johann Christian Reil (1759-1813). He further identified a paler structure (blasser Klumpen) within the inner portion of the lentiform nucleus that he called globus pallidus, and correctly identified its inner and outer segments (innern und ?ussern Theil). He aptly pointed out that the major BG nuclei are separated from one another by fibers fascicles that he termed inner and ?ussre Capsel (internal and external capsules). Burdach also referred to the substantia nigra (schwarzgraue Schicht or stratum nigrum) and claustrum (Vormauer), but gave full credit to the French anatomist Felix Vicq-d'Azyr (1748-1794) for their discovery. Although Burdach did not comment much on BG function, his anatomical description was sufficiently cogent to be still in use two centuries after its inception.