The upper Neogene Pisco Formation of Peru is known worldwide as one of the most significant Cenozoic marine vertebrate Konservatt-Lagerstätten, even featuring cetacean specimens that retain remains of soft tissues or stomach contents. Previous works showed that biomediated precipitation of dolomite concretions around large-sized decaying carcasses was one of the most relevant processes responsible for exceptional fossil preservation. In turn, little is known about the modes of fossilization of well-preserved small-sized vertebrates, which are rather common in the Pisco Formation, but mostly do not exhibit dolomite concretions. We report on a cetacean specimen, identified as belonging to the extinct short-snouted, small dolphin species Brachydelphis mazeasi (Pontoporiidae), preserved within a late Miocene sandy deposit at the site of Pampa Corre Viento. This specimen consists of a moderately disarticulated partial skeleton exhibiting well-mineralized bones; it is not enclosed within a dolomite concretion, being however delimited by an evident dark boundary in the host sediment. Scanning electron microscopy and microanalytical investigations identify Mn-oxides and apatite as early diagenetic minerals around the skeleton. We argue that a rapid burial of the specimen was pivotal for the preservation of the bones, and allowed the early establishment of anoxic processes for degradation of organic matter. Coupled with availability of P in porewater, the reducing conditions and the lowered pH allowed precipitation of Ca-phosphate while increasing Mn solubility close to the pontoporiid carcass. Mn-oxides precipitated at the redox boundary, the latter defining the outer edge of the volume of sediment affected by altered chemical conditions due to the decaying processes. The permeability of the sediment and the small size of the carcass were possible factors unfavorable to extensive sulfate reduction, thus preventing the formation of a dolomite concretion and allowing bone phosphatization. This record emphasizes the role of conditions favorable to bone mineralization in absence of an isolating carbonate concretion, in cases of high quality preservation of small-sized vertebrates observed in the Pisco Formation. The observation of patterns in the distribution of diagenetic minerals in the sediment enclosing vertebrate remains without, or with limited carbonate concretions provides insights into early taphonomic processes.


In recent decades, investigators have developed therapies for depression, Parkinson's disease, deafness, and other conditions that rely on electrodes sending signals into the brain. But moving from laboratory experiments to the clinic has been difficult. Last week, in a workshop at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, researchers focused on ways to remove some of the obstacles to developing new therapies using invasive neuromodulating devices, as well as the ethical and practical issues such devices raise. Two new rounds of grants from President Barack Obama's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative this summer aim to bridge the gap between promising preclinical studies with invasive brain devices and large human trials.


We obtain stationary solution for optical solitons propagating in a Kerr-effect nonlinear cavity using elliptic functions and quantize them semiclassically. On invoking box boundary conditions, a constraint relating the number of particles, wavelength, and a parameter associated with the elliptic function emerges. This constraint fundamentally modifies the binding energy of the soliton and lends the system a rich plethora of solution types with diverse behavior as a function of excitation number. We also speculate on how the bright soliton can thermalize through a path of frequency conversion.


This paper is an extension of 'The Midas Touch in a Digital Glove' project undertaken in 2009 to investigate the public's viewpoints of welcomed architectural and urban design elements in the development of Putrajaya. Eight proposed street scenes of the Boulevard presented as digital animations were compared to its then existing street quality. This 'before-after' comparative study was carried out through a survey. The statistical analysis offered the level of acceptance and perception of the Boulevard's street quality and walkability among the public. The findings from the survey indicated that the public preferred green-oriented development for the area. Several years have passed and the Boulevard has undergone many changes. Many more buildings are completed along its 2km stretch. The second author has developed an architectural scheme for vertical farming entitled 'SuperFarm' as her M.Arch. Design thesis. This scheme has been used in a survey using digital animation to test the public's receptivity of it as a form of green development within Putrajaya. The findings from 'The Midas Touch in a Digital Glove' project served as the base-line comparison. The results from the current survey will validate or modify the findings from 'The Midas Touch in a Digital Glove' project and elucidate the appropriateness of this vertical farm for Putrajaya. The research outcomes have provided new insights of what would be public preferred developments for the future. This will be beneficial for the master developer of the city, Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd, (PJH), to generate projects that will be people-responsive in Putrajaya. The three-dimensional (3D) digital animation and simulated street-scene survey-approach could also be a facilitating participative mechanism for PJH and consultants in designing towards sustainable cities.


This note examines the factors that lead to the implementation of the Law of Return in Israel. The Law of Return plays an important role by permitting members of the Jewish faith to receive Israeli citizenship. The author begins by providing a history of the development of Israel as a nation and exploring the origins of its Law of Return. Next, he traces the historical impact of the Law of Return on the country and on those immigrating to this nation, with a special emphasis on those emigrating from Russia. Next, the author analyzes the recent movement toward amendment of the Law of Return. Religious leaders propose that the Law of Return should be amended to recognize immigrants as Jews (under religious law) only if the immigrants undergo an Orthodox conversion. The author notes that this proposal, however, could alienate Jewish Americans as well as Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. On the other hand, some politicians and intellectuals recommend a more radical reform of the Law of Return. Arguing that the Law of Return demonstrates an "intolerance for its minority population," they recommend that the Law of Return be drastically changed or abolished. The author proposes that the two sides reach a compromise that requires Israel to establish the Orthodox-Conservative-Reform Conversion Institute. This institute would encourage the continued immigration of Jews to Israel because it would permit entire families to immigrate to Israel and eventually enable the non-Jewish members of the family to convert to Judaism. Such an institute will help alleviate the concern that while some immigrants are considered to be Jewish in their home country, these same individuals may not be considered Jewish under Israel's Law of Return. An issue of this magnitude affects immigrant identity within the community as well as immigrant prospects for marriage (since interfaith marriage is looked down upon).


Using the recently built Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database, containing data on the distribution of naturalized alien plants in 483 mainland and 361 island regions of the world, we describe patterns in diversity and geographic distribution of naturalized and invasive plant species, taxonomic, phylogenetic and life-history structure of the global naturalized flora as well as levels of naturalization and their determinants. The mainland regions with the highest numbers of naturalized aliens are some Australian states (with New South Wales being the richest on this continent) and several North American regions (of which California with 1753 naturalized plant species represents the world's richest region in terms of naturalized alien vascular plants). England, Japan, New Zealand and the Hawaiian archipelago harbour most naturalized plants among islands or island groups. These regions also form the main hotspots of the regional levels of naturalization, measured as the percentage of naturalized aliens in the total flora of the region. Such hotspots of relative naturalized species richness appear on both the western and eastern coasts of North America, in north-western Europe, South Africa, south-eastern Australia, New Zealand, and India. High levels of island invasions by naturalized plants are concentrated in the Pacific, but also occur on individual islands across all oceans. The numbers of naturalized species are closely correlated with those of native species, with a stronger correlation and steeper increase for islands than mainland regions, indicating a greater vulnerability of islands to invasion by species that become successfully naturalized. South Africa, India, California, Cuba, Florida, Queensland and Japan have the highest numbers of invasive species. Regions in temperate and tropical zonobiomes harbour in total 9036 and 6774 naturalized species, respectively, followed by 3280 species naturalized in the Mediterranean zonobiome, 3057 in the subtropical zonobiome and 321 in the Arctic. The New World is richer in naturalized alien plants, with 9905 species compared to 7923 recorded in the Old World. While isolation is the key factor driving the level of naturalization on islands, zonobiomes differing in climatic regimes, and socioeconomy represented by per capita GDP, are central for mainland regions. The 11 most widely distributed species each occur in regions covering about one third of the globe or more in terms of the number of regions where they are naturalized and at least 35% of the Earth's land surface in terms of those regions' areas, with the most widely distributed species Sonchus oleraceus occuring in 48% of the regions that cover 42% of the world area. Other widely distributed species are Ricinus communis, Oxalis corniculata, Portulaca oleracea, Eleusine indica, Chenopodium album, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Stellaria media, Bidens pilosa, Datura stramonium and Echinochloa crus-galli. Using the occurrence as invasive rather than only naturalized yields a different ranking, with Lantana camara (120 regions out of 349 for which data on invasive status are known), Calotropis procera (118), Eichhornia crassipes (113), Sonchus oleraceus (108) and Leucaena leucocephala (103) on top. As to the life-history spectra, islands harbour more naturalized woody species (34.4%) thanmainland regions (29.5%), and fewer annual herbs (18.7% compared to 22.3%). Ranking families by their absolute numbers of naturalized species reveals that Compositae (1343 species), Poaceae (1267) and Leguminosae (1189) contribute most to the global naturalized alien flora. Some families are disproportionally represented by naturalized aliens on islands (Arecaceae, Araceae, Acanthaceae, Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae, Convolvulaceae, Rubiaceae, Malvaceae), and much fewer so on mainland (e.g. Brassicaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Boraginaceae). Relating the numbers of naturalized species in a family to its total global richness shows that some of the large species-rich families are over-represented among naturalized aliens (e.g. Poaceae, Leguminosae, Rosaceae, Amaranthaceae, Pinaceae), some under-represented (e.g. Euphorbiaceae, Rubiaceae), whereas the one richest in naturalized species, Compositae, reaches a value expected from its global species richness. Significant phylogenetic signal indicates that families with an increased potential of their species to naturalize are not distributed randomly on the evolutionary tree. Solanum (112 species), Euphorbia (108) and Carex (106) are the genera richest in terms of naturalized species; over-represented on islands are Cotoneaster, Juncus, Eucalyptus, Salix, Hypericum, Geranium and Persicaria, while those relatively richer in naturalized species on the mainland are Atriplex, Opuntia, Oenothera, Artemisia, Vicia, Galium and Rosa. The data presented in this paper also point to where information is lacking and set priorities for future data collection. The GloNAF database has potential for designing concerted action to fill such data gaps, and provide a basis for allocating resources most efficiently towards better understanding and management of plant invasions worldwide.


In this thesis the author examines certain values (judicial values) supposed to have been in operation in situations where the relation to the legislator was foregrounded. The study covers the period 1974-1988. Judicial decision-making is discussed in terms of four different situations: statutory interpretation, clarifying of balancing norms, statutory analogy and the creating of new rules. Statutory interpretation and clarifying of balancing norms (interpretation in a wide sense) are assigned to a sphere of metanorms with respect to the Labour Court's view of three legal sources: statute. legislative preparatory material, and precedent. For this part of the study a theoretical framework is used where two main orientations are distinguished: orientation towards the legislator and orientation towards the consequences. The orientation towards the legislator may go in two different directions, either towards the wording of the statute (Swed. lagens ordalydelse) or towards the intention of the legislator. The intention, in turn, can refer to either the linguistic meaning or to the purpose. Statutory analogy and the creation of new rules are instead assigned to a sphere of metanorms with respect to the Court's view of a proper division of roles between the legislator and the Court as far as the development of the law is concerned. They are seen as examples of "gap-filling". The aim of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of judicial decision-making with the emphasis placed on the judicial values underlying this decision-making and their influence on it. Conclusions concerning the existence of different approaches in questions of interpretation and gap-filling are drawn from an extensive legal material consisting of the Labour Court's published judgements. It is maintained that there was considerable room for different outcomes in the decision-making and that there were considerable variations in opinions within the Court concerning the issue how decision-making was to be carried out. It is also maintained that the importance of courts will increase in the future and that this makes them a worthwhile object of study. The author also touches upon some aspects of explaining judicial decision-making and of designing reasons in such a context.


The global climate crisis is an ongoing event the likes of which we have yet to experience. The science is clear, the phenomenon is traceable, and the effects are far-reaching. But, the consequences of the climate crisis affect particular populations more so than others, and often times the affected populations are voiceless. Among those most impacted are indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples stand in a unique place in the context of climate change. In general, indigenous peoples have a comprehensive relationship with their place and surroundings, which incorporates culture, livelihood, economy, and a defining sense of self. Land and resources are not simply commodities to be bought and sold, but they function to give us our stories, directions, and identity. With many indigenous peoples existing in remote areas, the effects of climate change — like sea level rise and changing rainfall — have an enhanced negative effect. Indigenous relationships with land renders what is at stake all the more dire.

Given the political invisibility of most indigenous communities and the longstanding global resistance to indigenous self-determination, indigenous peoples are left without plausible means to engage in traditional democratic processes with any hope of success. Furthermore, the commons nature of the problem of climate change precludes indigenous peoples from simply utilizing their resources differently in order to avoid the effects of climate change. Therefore, the law is where indigenous peoples must look for aid. The framework of human rights law has the potential for employment as an important legal tool to further indigenous resistance and resilience in the face of the climate crisis and continuing domestic political paralysis. This Article outlines the unique commons problems presented by the global climate crisis. I argue that indigenous peoples are negatively affected at a far greater rate and to a far greater extent than nonindigenous populations. The past few years have highlighted the role that indigenous peoples play in the fight against climate change by the mainstream focus on the fight over pipelines in indigenous areas. Indigenous peoples across the globe will not stand idle while carbon industries march on, but the fight must utilize the law rather than merely act despite it through direct action protests. The opportunity to couple the human rights framework with the indigenous rights framework carries great possibility for enhancing advocacy on behalf of indigenous peoples.


Traces of user behaviour can be a valuable source of knowledge that can be used during case-based reasoning. This paper presents an approach for analyzing and cleaning user traces. The analysis looks to identify three properties in traces: reasoning with an internal state, non-deterministic behaviour and error. The existence of any of these properties may influence how a system should reason or store knowledge in cases. Initially, each trace is examined to see areas that might contain one of the three properties. Multiple versions of the trace are then generated in order to determine which specific property is present. The analysis is applied to traces generated by observing both a computer and human controller for an obstacle avoidance robot. The results demonstrate that the analysis is able to successfully identify which properties are present and clean many of the errors that exist in the traces.


Parkinson's disease results from the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, manifesting as a spectrum of motor, cognitive and affective deficits. Parkinson's disease also affects reward processing, but disease-related deficits in reinforcement learning are thought to emerge at a slower pace than motor symptoms as the degeneration progresses from dorsal to ventral striatum. Dysfunctions in reward processing are difficult to study in Parkinson's disease as most patients have been treated with dopaminergic drugs, which sensitize reward responses in the ventral striatum, commonly resulting in impulse control disorders. To circumvent this treatment confound, we assayed the neural basis of reward processing in a group of newly diagnosed patients with Parkinson's disease that had never been treated with dopaminergic drugs. Thirteen drug-naive patients with Parkinson's disease and 12 healthy age-matched control subjects underwent whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a simple two-choice gambling task resulting in stochastic and parametrically variable monetary gains and losses. In patients with Parkinson's disease, the neural response to reward outcome (as reflected by the blood oxygen level-dependent signal) was attenuated in a large group of mesolimbic and mesocortical regions, comprising the ventral putamen, ventral tegmental area, thalamus and hippocampus. Although these regions showed a linear response to reward outcome in healthy individuals, this response was either markedly reduced or undetectable in drug-naive patients with Parkinson's disease. The results show that the core regions of the meso-cortico-limbic dopaminergic system, including the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum, and medial orbitofrontal cortex, are already significantly compromised in the early stages of the disease and that these deficits cannot be attributed to the contaminating effect of dopaminergic treatment.


Paleomagnetic data from the sheeted dike complex north of the Arakapas fault reveal significant internal rotations. The north-south-trending dikes have remanent magnetization directions close to the well-known westerly paleomagnetic direction of the Troodos massif, whereas the east-west-trending dikes near the Arakapas fault have northerly remanent magnetization directions. The paleomagnetic data are in agreement with the apparent clockwise rotation of the dikes. Contrary to recent geological analyses which postulate that the pattern of dike trends is due to dike injection into a sigmoidal stress field along a sinistral transform fault, the paleomagnetic results indicate clockwise rotations about vertical axes in response to a dextral shear. In addition to the rotations around vertical axes, small rotations around subhorizontal axes are inferred from the paleomagnetic data for tilted dikes. Thus, these data reinforce the vertical intrusion hypothesis.


The rise in female labour supply in developed economies has stimulated research on the combination of family and work. The aim of this thesis is to provide some empirical evidence on the factors driving family formation and mothers' employment across Europe over the period 1960-2000. After the Introduction, Chapter 2 describes a theory to explain the elements (e.g. public provided childcare, taxation system, subsidies to childcare, flexi-time at work, and unemployment rates) that affect the sign of the correlation between fertility and employment. The two subsequent chapters are both divided into two core sections: a Spanish case and a comprehensive European comparison (Belgium, West-Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden). Chapter 3 analyses how the labour market affects individual fertility decisions (i.e. marriage/cohabitation, first, second and third birth) using a Cox hazard approach. Results suggest that if we would like to reverse the declining path in fertility in Spain, we need to accomplish three main things: overturn the negative impact of female employment on childbearing through policies that facilitate reconciliation of work and family, reduce the instability of working patterns, and implement policies that raise male employment. Interestingly, the cross-country comparison reveals that Sweden is the only country where being employed encourages earlier childbearing. Chapter 4 investigates transitions from employment to non-employment around childbearing and its evolution across time. The European comparison suggests that the probabilities of staying-on employed are different across countries and these have changed substantially over the period 1973-93. This evolution is mainly explained by the taxation system (joint vs. separate), the removal of barriers to part-time work and the increase in education. Chapter 5 focuses on female employment in the UK between 1974-2002. A first section aims to quantify how much of the rise in female participation is due to changes in the structure of the female population and how much is caused by changes in behaviour. A second section investigates the rise in the employment of married mothers. We isolate those birth cohorts whose mothers experienced significant increases in employment and relate those to changes in policies (maternity rights, taxation and childcare). Maternity rights have induced a change in behaviour toward returning to work in the first year post-birth, mostly among better-educated and higher-paid mothers.


The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil inherited, in its National Forest Program, a formidable proposal to increase the area designated to national forests (FLONAs) in the Amazon from eight to 50 million hectares by the year 2010. This objective is an ambitious and worthy conservation goal, and one that appears to be holding approval, give or take a few million hectares, within the new government. Attached to this plan, however, is a lingering desire to allow private timber harvesting on FLONAs through a system of forest concessions. The decision of the previous government to adopt concessions was based on the premise that such a program would increase profits from forestry, reduce illegal logging, and increase the adoption of sustainable forest management practices. The current government has taken a more cautious approach, but nonetheless continues to be tied to the idea of timber concessions in FLONAs. In this article, we question the need for concessions and then identify some major concerns should they become a reality. We argue that while expanding FLONAs is a good idea, allowing timber harvests within these forests is a risk that, for now, Brazilian society should not take.


Innovation processes in emerging fields of technology frequently utilize scientific knowledge and technical skills from several research areas. Likewise, technological development frequently involves a diverse set of organizations including for example private firms, universities, corporate research labs and public or semi-public research and technology organizations (RTOs). These processes spur the need for both organizational and institutional change and adjustment, e.g. in order to facilitate research and development (R&D) and formation of innovation networks. The main question analyzed in the paper is how RTOs cope with integrating new skills in their competence base in the quest for exploring new emerging science fields and technology applications. The empirical setting consists of Swedish semi-public industrial research institutes active in the fields of pulp & paper technology and electronics, optics & communication technology respectively. The results of the study bring attention to three ways of integrating diverse skills and types of actors in R&D networks. These are: organization of collaborative research in formalized industry-specific R&D programs, purposeful organizational change also including redefinition of categories of core research competence and finally by targeting 'open' innovation processes characterized by incorporation of both end-users and skills of neighboring technology areas.


The flexibility of the end users in the electricity markets is becoming more pertinent with the evolution of market mechanisms allowing consumers to participate actively. The advent of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and energy storage systems is gradually and continuously changing the roles of the market operators. The impact of the uncertainty of DERs and load demands on community-based market structures has not been fully investigated. In this paper, we propose a robust solution to community-based market operations under uncertainty and compare the optimal decisions on energy trades with deterministic, stochastic, and opportunistic models. Also, we employ the Taguchi's orthogonal array testing (TOAT) to generate proficient scenarios from uncertain variables of prosumers. The proposed method is tested on a community-based microgrid with 15 prosumers assuming a single-rate tariff structure. Simulation results demonstrate the cost of robustness and the impact of uncertainty.


Discharge noises caused by contaminated insulator string were studied using anechoic room where the difference of the noise waveform due to insulator shape was found. In this study, sound wave propagation of the discharge noises have been simulated using two-dimensional FDTD method to examine the effect of insulator shape on the observed waveform. In the course of the study, the shape data of the insulator was expressed as the set of elements that typify the media (air and solid), directions of air-solid (porcelain) boundary, and directions of 'Free Space' boundary by allocating the colors on the corresponding bitmap image file. The source points of the sound were also arranged into the bitmap. Calculated wave propagation for each time step is again expressed in the form of bitmap for visualization. The nature of the calculated sound waveforms for different insulator shapes and discharge positions are compared with that in the experiment.


We demonstrate graphene electro-absorption modulators (EAM) integrated on 300mm wafers. The integration is based on imec's 300mm silicon photonics platform and the full integration sequence is using standard CMOS production tools expect for the 6-inch CVD graphene growth and transfer, transferred by Graphenea. 164x TE EAMs were measured per wafer and demonstrate 90% yield with modulation efficiency (ME) of 41±5.6 dB/mm for 8V voltage swing, after process optimization. The 3dB bandwidth of the EAMs is 14.9±1.2 GHz for the device with 50µm active length. Both parameters show comparable performance with lab-based devices, obtained on coupons using similar CVD graphene. This work paves the way to enable high-volume manufacturing of 2D-material-based photonics devices.


One of the challenges of using mobile devices for ubiquitous remote control is the creation of the user interface. If automatically generated designs are used, then they must be close in quality to hand-designed interfaces. Automatically generated interfaces can be dramatically improved if they use standard conventions to which users are accustomed, such as the arrangement of buttons on a telephone dial-pad or the conventional play, stop, and pause icons on a media player. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for a system to determine where to apply design conventions because each appliance may represent its functionality differently. Smart Templates is a technique that uses parameterized templates in the appliance model to specify when such conventions might be automatically applied in the user interface. Our templates easily adapt to existing appliance models, and interface generators on different platforms can apply appropriate design conventions using templates.


The aim of this paper is to describe the I-X system with its principal user interface, the I-X Process Panel, its underlying ontology, , and how this panel can be used as an intelligent to-do list that assists emergency responders in applying pre-defined standard operating procedures in different types of emergencies. In particular, multiple instances of I-X Process Panels can be used as a distributed system to coordinate the efforts of independent emergency responders as well as responders within the same organization. Furthermore, it can be used as an agent wrapper for other software systems, such as web services, to integrate these into the emergency response team as virtual members. The heart of the I-X system is an automated planner that can be used to synthesize courses of action or explore alternative options manually. In the Co-OPR project that is currently underway the I-X framework has been used to develop a prototypical application to support training exercises for personnel recovery. This paper will describe some of the initial findings that are the result of an experiment conducted to evaluate the suitability and extent to which personnel recovery trainees and trainers can be supported by I-X in so-called "Command Post Exercises". The result shows that an I-X application can be usefully used in such a scenario eliminating some of the basic problems that often occur.


Paddy soils are naturally heterogeneous in terms of their physico-chemical properties which influence rice productivity. Currently, uniform application of agricultural fertilizers for the entire field is not efficient and could result in either insufficient or excess nutrient supply. Good agricultural practices can be achieved if soil and nutrient variations within a farm are considered, and a soil-yield interrelationship is established. Simple, rapid and accurate methods to characterize variation in soil properties are needed.

This study was conducted on two different plots within Malaysia Agricultural Development and Research Institute (MARDI) Research Station located at the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia. One of the plots is a single large contiguous plot of 9-ha, free of farm encumbrances and the other is equipped with subsurface drainage facilities. Soil samples were collected at regular grid spacing from the upper (0-20 cm) and lower (30-50 cm) soil layers respectively. These samples were analyzed for their soil texture and chemical properties. Crop cutting test yields were taken at the same soil sampling locations. Geo-referenced apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) measurements were obtained by using Veris 3100 cart equipped with a data logger and a differential global positioning system.

Soil ECa mapping is a simple and rapid tool that can be used to provide estimate of the within field soil differences associated with soil properties which is a measure of field conditions and soil suitability for crop growth and yield. The significant correlations of soil ECa and mapping date showed that the patterns of soil ECa within a field do not tend to change significantly over time. Generally, once an ECa map has been made, it will remain relatively accurate unless significant soil movements occur. The correlations between shallow and deep soil ECa were found to be significant too. And significant relationships between potential grain yield and ECa were found using a form of boundary line analysis in scatter plots with r2 > 0.58 in all the six investigations in three crop-seasons. The log-normal function chosen to fit the boundary datasets was flexible in representing various responses combination to ECa values and could correctly indicated significant higher yield can be obtained from areas with high predicted potential yield. Comparison of Ypo and Yob can delineate farm areas into different management zones and allows for discriminate management practices particularly to low yield areas due to less then ideal field conditions, thus resulting good agricultural practices. These practices could result in less wastage of applied inputs, less pollution, lower input costs and most important higher return.


Patient safety relies on effective and efficient communication among healthcare providers. Tools, such as standardized checklists, ensure information sharing in a consistent, predictable format. In the perioperative setting, where handoffs occur at several points and among various disciplines, high reliability is essential. This systematic review focused on the impact of standardized communication practices on perioperative staff satisfaction as it relates to sustainability of the new practice. The electronic databases PubMed and Google Scholar were used. Six articles met inclusion for the systematic review and of these six, four were determined to be of high quality through the application of The CASE Worksheet. The handoff tools implemented in these four studies were the electronic anesthesia information management system (AIMS), I-PASS mnemonic that described the illness, patient summary, action list, situation awareness and synthesis by receiver, Peri-op Handoff Protocol and a variation of the 'Surgical Safety Checklist' originally developed by WHO. Results of this systematic review suggest that these standardized communication methods are effective in improving perioperative staff satisfaction. Further research may prove helpful to determine if one handoff tool design is superior to the others. While future research could be performed to provide a larger sample size, the limited data gathered from this systematic review shows promising results. Implementing a standardized approach to perioperative communication and patient handoff has been shown in these studies to be beneficial in terms of staff satisfaction. Furthermore, it would be valuable to examine the indirect impact these communication tools have on patient care. Healthcare providers have the responsibility and opportunity to improve patient care through the adoption of standardized communication processes.


Norway9s largest yarn factory, Sandnes Uldvarefabrikk, produces knitting wool from 1,000 tons of raw wool a year. The raw wool is washed in 55°C water with high pH detergents. The resulting wastewater has a chemical oxygen demand, COD, of up to 100,000 mg/l and was previously piped directly to the public sewer. The Norwegian Environmental Protection Agency ordered the factory to reduce the COD loading by 75%, effective at the end of 1989. The winter and spring of 1989 was used to test membranes and gather design information for a fullscale separation plant for treating the wool washwater. The results from the pilot testing were encouraging and a fullscale membrane plant was designed, manufactured and installed during the fall of 1989. The wool factory gradually increased the wool scouring capacity, however, and two years later the capacity of the full scale membrane plant was doubled simply by doubling the membrane area of the original plant. The membrane separation plant is tubular ultrafiltration (UF) and the treatment is on a batch basis with a volume reduction of ten. The 31 m 2 UF membrane area has an average permeate production capacity of 2 m 3 /h at 8 kg/cm 2 inlet pressure and 3.8 m/s fluid velocity. The feed temperature is never allowed below 40°C due to the high concentration of fat which tends to solidify at lower temperatures and would plug the membranes. The retentate from UF separation is returned to the feed tank whereas the permeate is routed through a heat exchanger to the public sewer. The start volume of each batch is between 15 m 3 and 25 m 3 with the UF plant manually started. The shutoff is automatic by a level switch set at 2 m 3 batch volume. The retentate or sludge is pumped to a second holding tank and the accumulated sludge is once a week transported and dewatered in a lagoon at the local sanitary landfill. The UF membrane plant has a 10 kW power consumption and has more than 700 operating days since 1989. The operator spends two hours a day managing the UF plant including cleaning the membranes after each daily batch, pumping the sludge, logging the data and reporting to the plant management. Membrane replacement is performed once a year at a cost of ₤3,800. The COD, fat and solids reductions have consistently been above 80%.


In this paper we propose an extension of grayscale histogram equalization for color images. For aesthetic reasons, previously proposed color histogram equalization techniques do not generate uniform color histograms. Our method will always generate an almost uniform color histogram thus making an optimal use of the color space. This is particularly interesting for pseudo-color scientific visualization. The method is based on deforming a mesh in color space to fit the existing histogram and then map it to a uniform histogram. It is a natural extension of grayscale histogram equalization and it can be applied to spatial and color space of any dimension.


System and method for operating reputation-based communication or content service. Method includes obtaining metric related to first user contributor reputation; identifying communication or content having association with first user contributor; and processing communication or content to generate processed communication or content based on the obtained objective contributor reputation. Service is broadly defined and may be selected from bulletin board, message board, chat room, forum, information provision service, content delivery service, email service, information provision service, search engine service, content delivery service, communication or content screening service, communication or content screening service, or other. System for providing reputation processed based on-line communication or content. Communication or content provided or generated by the inventive system or method. Business method for operating a communications or content provision service. Computer program and computer program product stored either on a tangible media or in an electronically accessible and readable form to implement method.


Since the start of the twentieth century, when the White House first became "a full-time propaganda machine," the president's relationship with the media has been in a state of constant flux.[1] The underlying cause has been the media's technological evolution, from its newspaper and magazine roots to the radio and television era, and finally to the modern landscape of cable broadcasting and the internet. With the addition of each new media form, presidents have faced fresh challenges related to coordination, speed, and packaging. But the more innovative among them—William McKinley in the newspaper age, Franklin D. Roosevelt in the radio era, and John F. Kennedy with the advent of television—managed to devise new ways of dealing with the altered landscape, which their successors then copied.


We consider laminar high-Reynolds-number flow through a finite-length planar channel, where a portion of one wall is replaced by a thin massless elastic membrane that is held under longitudinal tension T and subject to a linear external pressure distribution. The flow is driven by a fixed pressure drop along the full length of the channel. We investigate the global stability of two-dimensional Poiseuille flow using a method of matched local eigenfunction expansions, which is compared to direct numerical simulations. We trace the neutral stability curve of the primary oscillatory instability of the system, illustrating a transition from high-frequency 'sloshing' oscillations at high T to vigorous 'slamming' motion at low T. Small-amplitude sloshing at high T can be captured using a low-order eigenmode truncation involving four surface-based modes in the compliant segment of the channel coupled to Womersley flow in the rigid segments. At lower tensions, we show that hydrodynamic modes increasingly contribute to the global instability, and we demonstrate a change in the mechanism of energy transfer from the mean flow, with viscous effects being destabilizing. Simulations of finite-amplitude oscillations at low T reveal a generic slamming motion, in which the flexible membrane is drawn close to the opposite rigid wall before recovering rapidly. A simple model is used to demonstrate how fluid inertia in the downstream rigid channel segment, coupled to membrane curvature downstream of the moving constriction, together control slamming dynamics.


Real time monitoring of stem cells has been a growing area of interest over the past decade because of new regenerative medicine approaches. Also, the effect of culture composition on stem cell metabolic pathways and their regulation of cellular fate are of increasing importance. In our project, non-destructive metabolomic analysis of stem cells and their physiological status during proliferation and differentiation stages will be investigated. This will be achieved through mass spectrometric analysis of released metabolites by LCMS and GC/MS; therefore stem cells should ideally be cultured in a specialized format to maintain their physiological properties during non-invasive live analysis while being compatible with real time GC/MS. To address this issue, mesenchymal stem cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation were tested in 20ml glass vials required for GC/MS analysis. Environmental conditions in which MSCs can proliferate under sealed condition and at room temperature were also optimized. Our data show the potential of MSCs to attach, proliferate and differentiate in 20ml glass vessels. Furthermore, cells could maintain their metabolic activity for approximately 6hrs not only under hypoxic but also hypothermic conditions. Therefore, live time analysis of their chemical volatiles could be performed in a format compatible for LC-MS and GC/MS which will be performed for undifferentiated MSCs and their differentiated populations (osteogenic and adipogenic lineages) in the next phase of the project. A specific treatment approach has emerged from hMSCs osteogenic study and identified a particular pathway suggested to be involved in chondrogenesis, and linked to the collagen II biosynthesis. The treatment is based on on natural products (L-lysine and ascorbic acid) and when tested on human cell cultures, was observed to significantly increase the morphological and functional markers of chondrogenesis, suggesting its potential to promote de novo cartilage formation in vitro.


Nanoparticles are very fascinating area of science not only due to their unique properties but also possibility of producing new more complex materials, which may find an application in modern chemistry, engineering and medicine. In process of nanoparticles formation very important aspect is a rate of individual stage i.e. reduction, nucleation and autocatalytic growth, because this knowledge allows for proper materials design, morphology manipulation, stability. The last one aspect can be realized using proper electrostatic, steric and electrosteric stabilization. However until now nobody reports and measures kinetic rates of all stages during process of particles formation in the presence of steric stabilizers. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is determination of individual rate constants for nanoparticles formation in the presence of steric stabilizers and their comparison to the system without stabilizer. For this purpose, an aqueous solution of Au(III) and Pt(IV) ions were mixed with steric stabilizers like PVA and PVP, and reduced using L-ascorbic acid as a mild and sodium borohydride as a strong reductant. As a results stable nanoparticles were formed and process of their formation was registered spectrophotometrically. From obtained kinetic curves the values of observed rate constants for reduction metal ions, slow nucleation and fast autocatalytic growth were determined using Watzky-Finke model. It was found that the addition of polymer affects the rate of the individual stages. The addition of steric stabilizers to gold ions reduced with L-ascorbic acid causes that the process of nucleation and autocatalytic growth slows down and the value of observed rate constants for nucleation changes from 3.79·10–3 (without polymer) to 7.15·10–5s–1 (with PVA) and for growth changes from 1.15·103 (without polymer) to 0.48·102s–1M–1 (with PVA). However, the rate of the reduction reaction of Au(III) ions is practically unchanged. In case of using strong reductant the addition of polymer effects on the shape of kinetic curve for reduction of Au(III) and it suggests that mechanism is changed. In case of Pt(IV) ions reduction with L-ascorbic acid, the process speeds up a little when PVA was added. Determined values of observed rate constants for nucleation and growth platinum nanoparticles decrease twice comparing to the system without polymer. The reduction of Pt(IV) ions with sodium borohydride accelerates when PVP was added and slows down when PVA was used. Moreover, the size of obtained colloidal gold and platinum was also analysed using DLS method. Obtained results (rate constants) may be useful in the process of nanomaterials synthesis, in particular in microflow.


The federal government makes Payments in Lieu of Taxes ("PILT") to local governments to help ease the tax burden of federal ownership of land. Because federally owned land is nontaxable, PILT payments are intended to compensate local governments for losses in property taxes due to federal ownership of land within local governments' boundaries. This Article explains the history and application of the PILT program, analyzes the equity and efficiency of the legislation, concludes that certain aspects of the PILT Act are both inequitable and inefficient, and proposes appropriate revisions. Specifically, this Article concludes and proposes the following: (1) shifting to a tax equivalency payment system based on states' property valuation laws would be too complicated and inefficient, despite the benefit that such a program would provide more consistent, foreseeable payments to local governments; (2) PILT payments unjustifiably discriminate against less populated counties that contain substantial federal acreage, so the PILT calculation method should be revised to remedy this discrimination; (3) PILT distribution methods creates an inefficient incentive for states to form alternative political subdivisions to maximize payments, so this incentive should be eliminated; and (4) Congress must find a long-term funding solution so that local governments can rely on PILT payments in their long-term planning endeavors.


Mental health court programs have proliferated in the United States in the past few decades in response to the growth of persons with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system. Research has previously been conducted on the impact of these programs, but few studies have been done to identify themes among the research as a whole in regard to their impact on three main goals: reducing recidivism, improving mental health and connecting participants to treatment and services. This systematic review was designed to explore the question: what is the impact of mental health court programs on recidivism, connection to treatment services, and clinical outcomes for participants? Database searches of SocINDEX, Academic Search Premier, Criminal Justice Abstracts and Social Work Abstracts were conducted in September and October of 2016 using a combination of the following search terms: "mental health court NOT juvenile" AND "outcome" or "effect" or "impact" or "effectiveness" AND "recidivism" or "re-arrest" or "clinical" or "treatment". The search resulted in 13 articles meeting inclusion criteria, which were subsequently used in the final review.( The three main themes of recidivism, connection to treatment services and clinical outcomes each were evaluated to identify subthemes. These subthemes were: mental health courts have a positive impact on reducing recidivism, the importance of graduation from the program as opposed to being terminated or opting-out, the maintenance of a positive effect on recidivism beyond the supervision period, and finally, that mental health courts reduce the need for crisis services or hospitalization and increase the therapeutic treatment intensity for participants.) The research found conflicting findings regarding mental health courts' impact on clinical outcomes. IMPACT OF MENTAL HEALTH COURTS 3


We present an overview on observables in gravity mainly from a loop quantum gravity perspective. The gauge group of general relativity is the diffeomorphism group of the underlying manifold. Consequently, general relativity is a totally constrained theory with vanishing canonical Hamiltonian. This fact, often referred to as the problem of time, provides the main conceptual difficulty towards the construction of gauge-invariant local observables. Nevertheless, within the framework of complete observables, that encode relations between dynamical fields, remarkable progress has been made during the last 20 years. Although analytic control over observables for full gravity is still lacking, perturbative calculations have been performed and within de-parameterizable toy models it was possible for the first time to construct a full set of gauge invariant observables for a background independent field theory. We review these developments and comment on their implications for quantum gravity.


Abstract As social media becomes increasingly ubiquitous, many events are recorded and released on social media platforms, including chemical weapon attacks. We develop an objective tool in order to evaluate brief and unstructured social media videos for analysing sarin exposure from a civilian medical pathology perspective. We developed and validated this new questionnaire using a standardized procedure that includes content domain specification, item pool generation, content validity evaluation, a pilot study, and assessment of reliability and validity. In total, 51 sarin attacks and 48 matched videos were analysed. Cronbach's α for all 20 items was 0.75, which indicates adequate internal reliability. The test–retest reliability was 0.96, which indicates good internal reliability. The inter-observer intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.97. After verifying sampling adequacy with the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure and the factorability of the items with Barlett's test of sphericity, a factor analysis was performed. According to the principal axis factoring, a six-factor solution explained 51.86% of the total variance. The receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis showed that the Video Score Questionnaire has a sensitivity of 0.817, a specificity of 0.478, and an efficiency of 65.3. Therefore, the Video Score Questionnaire is reliable and valid for evaluating sarin attacks from brief and unstructured social media videos. Key points Chemical weapons are still used as a method of warfare. Social media videos are an important source of information. We developed a validated scale which can analyse sarin exposure in short and unstructured videos.


The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" upon the economic situation of Ireland prior to 1745. While Dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral of Dublin, Swift wrote several articles in which he discussed the problems and oppressions of the Irish people. In his work entitle The Drapier's Letters Swift attacked the grant which had been given William Wood for the coining of halfpence for Ireland. The Irish became very disturbed when they learned that the proposed halfpence would not be worth as much as that which was already in circulation, and Wood was forced to withdraw his patent. This action won for Swift the love of the Irish, and he became a national hero. He continued to write for the cause of the Irish although he never again enjoyed the immediate results he had experienced with the Drapier's Letters. Swift's political writings reached a climax in 1729 when he published "A Modest Proposal". In this essay he combined all the points he had made earlier in regard to the condition of the Irish people, together with his latest ideas for improving the entire nation. "A Modest Proposal" is a satire which suggests that the Irish rear their children for the purpose of being sold for meat; however, it also lists, point by point, the serious recommendations Swift proposed for Ireland. It is these serious suggestions which provide the basis for the study of this thesis. Although nearly all the proposals would have benefited the Irish, no evidence has been found which indicates that these points were ever seriously considered. Ireland continued to suffer because of oppression by the English, and from the indifference of the Irish people. Swift appeared to give up on the idea that the Irish might help themselves, and he returned to writing articles for the clergy. In 1742 he was declared unable to care for himself, and shortly thereafter completely lost his mind. Swift died in 1745 leaving the conditions under which the Irish existed nearly as terrible as when he first began his effort to improve their situation.


To enhance our understanding of the seismic characteristics of the Tatun volcanic area, a small aperture seismic array consisting of 5 seismic stations has been deployed in the area since May 2003. Each of the seismic stations was installed with both short-period and broadband sensors to record micro-earthquakes as well as long-period volcanic tremors. The preliminary results of the seismic monitoring of the Tatun volcanic area show a large number of shallow micro-earthquakes clustered beneath the Chihsingshan volcano and Tayoikeng areas. Among these, some swarms were also detected. Intensifying the issue further, some complex seismograms with harmonic codas and seismic tremors have been identified. Considlerable crustal heterogeneity in the Tatun volcanic area is indicated by the presence of strong coda waves. Combining our findings with other geological and geochemical observations, we postulate that volcanic activities might not be totally extinct in the Tatun volcanic area. Thus, further investigations of Tatun volcanic area ought be conducted to examine the possibility of such potential volcanic activity.


Tumor necrosis factor–related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is considered an attractive anticancer agent due to its tumor cell–specific cytotoxicity. However, its low stability, solubility, unexpected side effects, and weak pharmacokinetic profiles restrict its successful clinical application. To develop efficient TRAIL-based anticancer biotherapeutics, a new version of trimeric TRAIL was constructed by incorporating trimer-forming zipper sequences (HZ-TRAIL), and then NH2-terminal–specific PEGylation was done to produce PEGylated TRAIL (PEG-HZ-TRAIL). The biological, physicochemical, and pharmaceutical characteristics of PEG-HZ-TRAIL were then investigated using various in vitro and in vivo experiments, including a cell-based cytotoxicity test, a solubility test, pharmacokinetic analysis, and antitumor efficacy evaluations. Although slight activity loss occurred after PEGylation, PEG-HZ-TRAIL showed excellent tumor cell–specific cytotoxic effects via apoptotic pathways with negligible normal cell toxicity. The stability and pharmacokinetic problems of HZ-TRAIL were successfully overcome by PEGylation. Furthermore, in vivo antitumor tests revealed that PEG-HZ-TRAIL treatment enhanced therapeutic potentials compared with HZ-TRAIL in tumor xenograft animal models, and these enhancements were attributed to its better pharmacokinetic properties and tumor-targeting performance. These findings show that PEG-HZ-TRAIL administration provides an effective antitumor treatment, which exhibits superior tumor targeting and better inhibits tumor growth, and suggest that PEG-HZ-TRAIL should be considered a potential candidate for antitumor biotherapy. Mol Cancer Ther; 9(6); 1719–29. ©2010 AACR.


In the mid-eighteenth century the Irish Court of Admiralty formed one component in the network of courts of vice-admiralty - extending from Gibraltar to the colonies of America - commissioned by the Lord Admiral of England. Throughout the first part of the eighteenth century the Irish Court of Admiralty operated discretely, its activities confined to processing very modest quantities of instance work. Then unexpectedly, starting about 1745, there commenced a period of turbulence. The cause of this agitation was the appointment as judge of a highly combative and indiscrete Scots civilian emigre, Dr Hugh Baillie. This 'pushing and somewhat multi-pated personality' determined on extending the power of the Court: on expanding the Court's instance jurisdiction past the limits set by the courts of common law; on obtaining prize jurisdiction (which had always been prohibited to it); and on converting the constitutional status of the Court from a mere court of vice-admiralty to an independent court of admiralty for Ireland. In the course of ten years of fighting Dr Baillie managed to provoke virtually every important interest group (the Commissioners of Admiralty in England, Dublin mercantile interests, the justices of the Irish Court of King's Bench and the English Court of Admiralty) on which his success as judge depended. Eventually, the Admiralty, tired of its contentious and chaotic Irish judge, summoned the Attorney General, William Murray (later Lord Mansfield), to a crisis meeting on the state of the Irish Admiralty Court. In November 1756 judge Baillie was dismissed.


The Sonority Cycle (Clements 1990), consisting of the Core Syllabification Principle (CSP) and Feature Dispersion Principle (FDP), is a model of syllable structure that systematically reveals the markedness relationships among syllable margins. This paper presents the results of two studies testing the Sonority Cycle. The first study examines the production of biliteral and triliteral onsets, the latter being more marked than the former. The second study examines the production of three biliteral onsets differing in their sonority profile. Of the three, /.st-/ is the most marked because it violates the CSP. In turn /.sn-/ is more marked than /.sl-/ because of its higher dispersion value according to the FDP. Both studies found that less marked onsets are correctly produced more frequently than are more marked onsets.


BACKGROUND
Previous research suggests that adequate dietary zinc intake may be important in determining the sensory experience of food, appetite and consequently, dietary quality. The aim of this pilot study was to explore relationships between taste sensitivity and dietary zinc intake in healthy young adults (age 20-40 years: 24 male, mean age +/- SD = 27 +/- 4.86 years; 26 female, mean age +/- SD = 23 +/- 2.10).

METHOD
A signal detection method was used to assess taste acuity for the four basic tastes: sweet (glucose), sour (citric acid), salt (sodium chloride) and bitter (quinine). A 4-day food diary was used to determine dietary intakes of zinc (mg day(-1)) and salt.

RESULTS
Males reported a higher zinc intake than females (P=0.001). Higher dietary zinc intake was associated with better taste acuity for salt in females (P=0.017) but not in males. Acuity for bitter taste appeared to be related to zinc intake in males (P=0.007) but not females. Among those whose average daily zinc intake was below the RNI, males were less sensitive than females to sour (P=0.02) and bitter (P=0.014) taste.

CONCLUSION
These findings suggest that zinc is more important for taste acuity in males than females and indicate the importance of taking sex differences into account when studying taste acuity.


Hippocampal sharp wave (SW)/ripple complexes are thought to contribute to memory consolidation. Previous studies suggest that behavioral rewards facilitate SW occurrence in vivo. However, little is known about the precise mechanism underlying this enhancement. Here, we examined the effect of dopaminergic neuromodulation on spontaneously occurring SWs in acute hippocampal slices. Local field potentials were recorded from the CA1 region. A brief (1 min) treatment with dopamine led to a persistent increase in the event frequency and the magnitude of SWs. This effect lasted at least for our recording period of 45 min and did not occur in the presence of a dopamine D1/D5 receptor antagonist. Functional multineuron calcium imaging revealed that dopamine-induced SW augmentation was associated with an enriched repertoire of the firing patterns in SW events, whereas the overall tendency of individual neurons to participate in SWs and the mean number of cells participating in a single SW were maintained. Therefore, dopaminergic activation is likely to reorganize cell assemblies during SWs.


We study the intrinsic fully-gapped odd-parity superconducting order in doped nodal-loop materials with a torus-shaped Fermi surface. We show that the mirror symmetry, which protects the nodal loop in the normal state, also protects the superconducting state as a topological crystalline superconductor. As a result, the surfaces preserving the mirror symmetry host gapless Majorana cones. Moreover, for a Weyl loop system (two-fold degenerate at the nodal loop), the surfaces that break the mirror symmetry (those parallel to the bulk nodal loop) contribute a Chern (winding) number to the quasi-two-dimensional system in a slab geometry, which leads to a quantized thermal Hall effect and a single Majorana zero mode bound at a vortex line penetrating the system. This Chern number can be viewed as a higher-order topological invariant, which supports hinge modes in a cubic sample when mirror symmetry is broken. For a Dirac loop system (four-fold degenerate at the nodal loop), the fully gapped odd-parity can be either time-reversal symmetry-breaking or symmetric, similar to the $A$- and $B$- phases of $^3$He. In a slab geometry, the $A$-phase has a Chern number two, while the $B$-phase carries a nontrivial $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant. We discuss the experimental relevance of our results to nodal-loop materials such as CaAgAs.


A solution processable, molecular organic semiconductor, 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS-pentacene), was employed as hole transport material (HTM) in mesoscopic methylammonium lead iodide perovskite solar cells. TIPS-pentacene is potentially cost effective, exhibits a relatively high hole mobility and has a favourable HOMO level with respect to the valence band of perovskite. The photovoltaic performance of perovskite solar cells with TIPS-pentacene as HTM in its pristine form and with a dopant/additive was investigated and compared with classical spiro-OMeTAD based devices. Through solvoneering (solvent engineering) and concentration optimization TIPS-pentacene in its pristine form gave a very competitive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 11.8% under 1 sun conditions. The open circuit voltage of 0.92 V and a short circuit current density of 20.86 mA cm−2 for the devices with pristine TIPS-pentacene were higher compared to doped spiro-OMeTAD based devices under similar conditions, thus paving the use of TIPS-pentacene as an alternative to an expensive spiro-OMeTAD for large area integration in perovskite based solar cells.


While most western democracies have renounced the death penalty, capital punishment enjoys vast and growing support in the United States. A significant and vocal minority, however, continues to oppose it. Against Capital Punishment is the first full account of anti-death penalty activism in America during the years since the ten-year moratorium on executions ended. Building on in-depth interviews with movement leaders and the records of key abolitionist organizations, this work traces the struggle against the pro-death penalty backlash that has steadily gained momentum since the 1970s. It reviews the conservative turn in the courts which, over the last two decades, has forced death penalty opponents to rely less on the litigation strategies that once served them well. It describes their efforts to mount a broad-based educational and political assault on what they see as the most cruel, racist, ineffective, and expensive manifestation of a criminal justice system gone wrong. Despite the efforts of death-penalty opponents, executions in the United States are on the increase. Against Capital Punishment diagnoses the reasons for the failure to mobilize widespread opposition to executions, and assesses the prospects for opposition to capital punishment in the future of the United States.


The paper analyzes one important aspect of the constitutional debate: the allocation of econornie competences between the EU and the mernber states. It takes the theory of fiscal federalism as a starting point for an optimal allocation of economic competences. The main message of the theory is that a transfer of econornie competences from a lower to a higher political level always leads to a negligence of individual preferences and, therefore, can only be economically justified if national policies cause strong spillovers (externalities) to other jurisdictions. Based on this approach, the paper proposes an allocation of econornic conipetences that can serve as an overall. guideline for a European constitution.


Background: While an estimated 14-20% of young adults experience mental health conditions worldwide, the best strategies for prevention and management are not fully understood. The ubiquity of smartphone use among young people makes them excellent candidates for collecting data about lived experiences and their relationships to mental health. However, not much is known about the factors affecting young peoples' willingness to share information about their mental health. Objective: We aim to understand the data governance and engagement strategies influencing young peoples' (aged 16-24) participation in app-based studies of mental health. We hypothesize that willingness to participate in research is influenced by involvement in how their data is collected, shared, and used. Methods: Here, we describe the MindKind Study, which employs mixed methods to understand the feasibility of global, smartphone-based studies of youth mental health. A pilot 12-week app-based substudy will query participants' willingness to engage with remote mental health studies. Participants will be randomized into one of four different data governance models designed to understand their preferences, as well as the acceptability of models that allow them more or less control over how their data are accessed and used. Enrolees will receive one of two different engagement strategies. A companion qualitative study will employ a deliberative democracy approach to examine the preferences, concerns and expectations of young people, with respect to remote mental health research. We also detail our engagement with young people as co-researchers in this study. This pilot study is being conducted in India, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Conclusions: This study is expected to generate new insights into the feasibility of, and best practices for, remote smartphone-based studies of mental health in youth and represents an important step toward understanding which approaches could help people better manage their mental health.


In recent years, public debate has raged over the issue of maternal choice. While personal testimony and political argument have received widespread attention, artistic representations of birth and abortion have been submerged. Judith Wilt offers the first look at how contemporary writers tell and retell the stories that shape our perceptions about abortion. She reveals that the struggle to plot these painful, complex narratives of choice, control, guilt, loss, and liberation has preoccupied an astonishing number of our most distinguished novelists, male and female alike. Readers of twentieth-century novels are more likely to encounter plots centered on maternal choice than those dealing with the more traditional problems of courtship and marriage. In the opening of the book, Wilt discusses real case histories of several women. After studying the ambiguities of their decisions, she turns to their counterpoints depicted in contemporary fiction. Working from a feminist perspective, Wilt traces the theme of maternal choice in works by Margaret Atwood, Margaret Drabble, Joan Didion, Mary Gordon, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Marge Piercy, Thomas Keneally, Graham Swift, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Barth, John Irving, and others. Behind the political, medical, and moral debates on abortion, Wilt argues, is a profound psychocultural shock at the recognition that maternity is passing from the domain of instinct to that of conscious choice. Although never wholly instinctual, maternity's potential capture by consciousness raises complex questions. The novels Wilt discusses portray worlds in which principles are endangered by sexual inequality, male power and hidden male fear of abandonment, impotence, female submission, and covert rage, and, in the case of black maternity, the hideous aftermath of slavery. Wilt provides a resonant new context for debates--whether political or personal--on the issue of abortion and maternal choice. Ultimately she enables us to rethink how we shape our own identities and lives.


This article explores selected aspects of southern culture as presented in contemporary children's picture books. It analyzes children's stories which celebrate New Orleans' residents and their traditions. Unlike many scholars who point to the end of the New Orleans spirit due to recent economic and demographic changes, children's authors perceive the culture as a resource which regenerates the city. By means of writing for children they keep the city's distinct black culture from disappearing.

The aim of this article is to examine to what extent the spirit of the South has survived in the minds of contemporary authors and artists addressing young generations of readers. It discusses the presence of such cultural elements as jazz music, body movement and the ritual of parading in selected children's picture books set in New Orleans. Among others, it analyzes such titles as Freedom in Congo Square (2016) by C. Weatherford, and Trombone Shortly (2015) and The 5 O' Clock Band (2018) by Troy Andrews. The article focuses on the interaction between the verbal and the visual elements of the books, and the ways they convey the meaning of the stories.


This paper examines the effects of taxation on the liability structure of banks. We derive testable predictions from a dynamic model of optimal bank liability structure that incorporates bank runs, regulatory closure and endogenous default. Using the supervisory data provided by the Bank of Italy, we empirically test these predictions by exploiting exogenous variations of the Italian tax rates on productive activities (IRAP) across regions and over time (especially since the global financial crisis). We show that banks endogenously respond to a reduction in tax rates by reducing nondeposit liabilities more than deposits in addition to lowering leverage. The response on the asset side depends on the financial strength of the bank: well-capitalized banks respond to a reduction in tax rates by increasing their assets, but poorly-capitalized banks respond by cleaning up their balance sheet.


Social media has drawn growing attention from crisis communication researchers. The purpose of this study was to provide an overview of the current paradigm of research on social media and crisis communication, to identify the research gaps, and to help scholars understand future research directions in this area. The current study examined the trends and patterns of social media-related crisis communication research published in 11 communication and public relations journals from 2009 to 2017. More specifically, it focused on the trends and characteristics of research topics, theories and theoretical models, crisis types, social media platforms, sample types, and research methods. This study found that public relations-focused journals published most of the social media-related crisis communication articles. Most studies adopted theories or theoretical models and examined the role of social media in crisis communication, which focused on product tampering and general crisis. Additionally, a considerable number of studies employed content analysis techniques that used social media content as the sample. This study discussed the trends of social media-related crisis communication research and the directions for future research. Keywords: Crisis communication, social media, research trend, public relations, communication.


The Src homology 2 (SH2) domain has a highly conserved architecture that recognizes linear phosphotyrosine motifs and is present in a wide range of signaling pathways across different evolutionary taxa. A hallmark of SH2 domains is the arginine residue in the conserved FLVR motif that forms a direct salt bridge with bound phosphotyrosine. Here, we solve the X-ray crystal structures of the C-terminal SH2 domain of p120RasGAP (RASA1) in its apo and peptide-bound form. We find that the arginine residue in the FLVR motif does not directly contact pTyr1087 of a bound phosphopeptide derived from p190RhoGAP; rather, it makes an intramolecular salt bridge to an aspartic acid. Unexpectedly, coordination of phosphotyrosine is achieved by a modified binding pocket that appears early in evolution. Using isothermal titration calorimetry, we find that substitution of the FLVR arginine R377A does not cause a significant loss of phosphopeptide binding, but rather a tandem substitution of R398A (SH2 position βD4) and K400A (SH2 position βD6) is required to disrupt the binding. These results indicate a hitherto unrecognized diversity in SH2 domain interactions with phosphotyrosine and classify the C-terminal SH2 domain of p120RasGAP as "FLVR-unique."


There is increasing evidence for strong genetic influences on athletic performance and for an evolutionary "trade-off" between performance traits for speed and endurance activities. We have recently demonstrated that the skeletal-muscle actin-binding protein alpha-actinin-3 is absent in 18% of healthy white individuals because of homozygosity for a common stop-codon polymorphism in the ACTN3 gene, R577X. alpha-Actinin-3 is specifically expressed in fast-twitch myofibers responsible for generating force at high velocity. The absence of a disease phenotype secondary to alpha-actinin-3 deficiency is likely due to compensation by the homologous protein, alpha-actinin-2. However, the high degree of evolutionary conservation of ACTN3 suggests function(s) independent of ACTN2. Here, we demonstrate highly significant associations between ACTN3 genotype and athletic performance. Both male and female elite sprint athletes have significantly higher frequencies of the 577R allele than do controls. This suggests that the presence of alpha-actinin-3 has a beneficial effect on the function of skeletal muscle in generating forceful contractions at high velocity, and provides an evolutionary advantage because of increased sprint performance. There is also a genotype effect in female sprint and endurance athletes, with higher than expected numbers of 577RX heterozygotes among sprint athletes and lower than expected numbers among endurance athletes. The lack of a similar effect in males suggests that the ACTN3 genotype affects athletic performance differently in males and females. The differential effects in sprint and endurance athletes suggests that the R577X polymorphism may have been maintained in the human population by balancing natural selection.


The term "natural product" refers to secondary metabolites produced by living organisms, and therefore encompasses a number of research concentrations ranging from traditional medicines to microbial lead compounds to the impacts of diet on human health. The projects described here involve several diverse investigations that cover some of the great breadth of natural products research. One of these examined the drug-diet interaction between grapefruit constituents and first-pass metabolism enzymes, including cytochrome P450s and organic anion transporter proteins. The bioactive components of grapefruit juices and dietary supplements, including several furanocoumarins and flavonoids, were quantified. A contrasting project, related to drug discovery through the screening of fungi, explores a different facet of natural products research. The impact of media modification on the production of fungal secondary metabolites was examined, using known metabolites to track production potential of various culture media. In addition, a chemical epigenetics approach was used to induce new secondary metabolites by causing the transcription of normally silent fungal genes. Finally, a review article explored the history of a microbial metabolite that made it through the drug development process to become an anti-cancer treatment.


We show that an ideal $I$ of an $MV$-algebra $A$ is linearly ordered if and only if every non-zero element of $I$ is a molecule. The set of molecules of $A$ is contained in $\operatorname{Inf}(A)\cup B_2(A)$ where $B_2(A)$ is the set of all elements $x\in A$ such that $2x$ is idempotent. It is shown that $I\ne \{0\}$ is weakly essential if and only if $B^\perp \subset B(A).$ Connections are shown among the classes of ideals that have various combinations of the properties of being implicative, essential, weakly essential, maximal or prime.


Improvements in treatment over the past century have greatly increased survival for retinoblastoma, a rare childhood tumour of the eye, caused by mutations of the RB1 tumour suppressor gene. However, as survival for retinoblastoma has improved, those with the hereditary form of the disease (RB1 germline mutation) have elevated risks of developing additional cancers, mostly bone and soft tissue sarcomas and melanoma. Despite advances in understanding of second cancer risks following treatment for retinoblastoma, key research questions remained including 1) risks of common adult onset cancers, some of which have somatic mutations in the RB1 pathway and are
associated with ionizing radiation; 2) persistence of increased risks of bone and soft tissue sarcomas into adulthood; 3) clarification of risks of second cancers following chemotherapy to treat retinoblastoma and 4) role of genetic susceptibility to second cancers following retinoblastoma.

In response to these questions, a large cohort of 1852 long-term survivors of retinoblastoma was assembled to evaluate systematically the risk of second cancers. The work described in this thesis, which comprises six major studies, that have used this cohort to identify a higher risk than previously assumed of lung cancer; confirmed the increased risk of second cancers in survivors with a RB1 germline mutation and past radiotherapy; documented for the first time that risk of soft tissue sarcomas varied by subtype; demonstrated that mortality from second cancers exceeded that from retinoblastoma; provided new information on variation in second cancer risk by family history of retinoblastoma; and clarified that chemotherapy in addition to radiotherapy for retinoblastoma confers a higher risk for second cancers compared with radiotherapy alone. These studies collectively have provided risk data that can be used to inform survivors and their health care providers to facilitate screening or surveillance and early identification of second cancers.


Users are often frustrated when they encounter a sudden decrease in the responsiveness of their personal computers. However, it is often difficult to pinpoint a particular offending process and the resource it is overconsuming, even when such a simple explanation does exist. We present preliminary results from several weeks of PC usage showing that user-perceived unresponsiveness often has such a simple explanation and that simple statistical models often suffice to pinpoint the problem. The statistical models we build use all the performance counters for all running processes. When the user expresses frustration at a given time point, we can use these models to determine which processes are acting most anomalously, and in turn which features of those processes are most anomalous. We present an investigative tool that ranks processes and features according to their degree of anomaly, and allows the user to interactively examine the relevant time series.


Abstract. Traffic sign provides road users with the specified instruction and information to enhance traffic safety. Automatic detection of traffic sign is important for navigation, autonomous driving, transportation asset management, etc. With the advance of laser and imaging sensors, Mobile Mapping System (MMS) becomes widely used in transportation agencies to map the transportation infrastructure. Although many algorithms of traffic sign detection are developed in the literature, they are still a tradeoff between the detection speed and accuracy, especially for the large-scale mobile mapping of both the rural and urban roads. This paper is motivated to efficiently survey traffic signs while mapping the road network and the roadside landscape. Inspired by the manual delineation of traffic sign, a drawing strategy is proposed to quickly approximate the boundary of traffic sign. Both the shape and color prior of the traffic sign are simultaneously involved during the drawing process. The most common speed-limit sign circle and the statistic color model of traffic sign are studied in this paper. Anchor points of traffic sign edge are located with the local maxima of color and gradient difference. Starting with the anchor points, contour of traffic sign is drawn smartly along the most significant direction of color and intensity consistency. The drawing process is also constrained by the curvature feature of the traffic sign circle. The drawing of linear growth is discarded immediately if it fails to form an arc over some steps. The Kalman filter principle is adopted to predict the temporal context of traffic sign. Based on the estimated point,we can predict and double check the traffic sign in consecutive frames.The event probability of having a traffic sign over the consecutive observations is compared with the null hypothesis of no perceptible traffic sign. The temporally salient traffic sign is then detected statistically and automatically as the rare event of having a traffic sign.The proposed algorithm is tested with a diverse set of images that are taken inWuhan, China with theMMS ofWuhan University. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can detect traffic signs at the rate of over 80% in around 10 milliseconds. It is promising for the large-scale traffic sign survey and change detection using the mobile mapping system.


This paper is oriented at foreign and Lithuanian capital companies based in Lithuania and the differences between their social responsibility and predominant management types. The research conducted in this paper is based on the public opinion that leads to believing that foreign capital business entities are far more ahead that Lithuanian capital companies as far as corporate social responsibility (CSR) is concerned, and the fact that there is no solid ground to confirm this assumption. The results of the research revealed that the differences do exist, but they are not as vast as the society thinks. It was established that Lithuanian capital companies still lack a fully developed understanding of CSR, meaning that they are still a bit less socially responsible than foreign capital entities, because the idea of CSR is relatively new in the country. Nevertheless, a promising tendency leads to believing that CSR is steadily gaining its significance in the Lithuanian business world.


Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are being studied intensively. The major motivation for this is the heavily underutilized frequency spectrum. CRN has the capability to utilize the unutilized frequency spectrum. Routing in CRN is a challenging task due the diversity in the available channels and data rates. In this paper, we present a survey of the state-of-the-art routing techniques in CRNs. We first outline the design challenges for routing protocols in CRNs followed by a comprehensive survey of different routing techniques. Furthermore we classified these routing protocols into spectrum aware-based, multipathbased, local coordination-based, reactive source-based and tree-based routing techniques depending on the protocol operation.


Computational manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing hold the potential for creating objects with previously undreamed‐of combinations of functionality and physical properties. Human designers, however, typically cannot exploit the full geometric (and often material) complexity of which these devices are capable. This STAR examines recent systems developed by the computer graphics community in which designers specify higher‐level goals ranging from structural integrity and deformation to appearance and aesthetics, with the final detailed shape and manufacturing instructions emerging as the result of computation. It summarizes frameworks for interaction, simulation, and optimization, as well as documents the range of general objectives and domain‐specific goals that have been considered. An important unifying thread in this analysis is that different underlying geometric and physical representations are necessary for different tasks: we document over a dozen classes of representations that have been used for fabrication‐aware design in the literature. We analyze how these classes possess obvious advantages for some needs, but have also been used in creative manners to facilitate unexpected problem solutions.


Transcription factors and cofactors play critical roles in cell growth and differentiation. Alterations of their activities either through genetic mutations or by viral oncoproteins often result in aberrant cell growth and tumorigenesis. The transcriptional cofactor p300 has recently been shown to be complexed with transcription factors YY1 and CREB. Adenovirus E1A oncoproteins target these transcription complexes via physical interactions with p300, resulting in alterations of transcription mediated by these transcription factors. Here we show that p300 is also critical for repression by E1A of the activities of cJun and JunB, two members of the AP-1 transcriptional complexes. This repressive effect of E1A is dependent on the p300-binding domain of E1A and can be relieved by overexpression of p300. These results suggest that p300 serves as a mediator protein for downregulation of AP-1 activity by E1A. This hypothesis was further supported by the following observations: (i) in the absence of E1A, overexpression of p300 stimulated transcription both through an AP-1 site present in the collagenase promoter and through Jun proteins in GAL4 fusion protein-based assays; and (ii) overexpression of a mutant p300 lacking the E1A-interacting domain reduced the responsiveness of Jun-dependent transcription to E1A repression. As predicted from the functional results, p300 physically interacted with the Jun proteins. These findings thus established that p300 is a cofactor for cJun and JunB. We propose that p300 is a common mediator protein through which E1A gains control over multiple transcriptional regulatory pathways in the host cells.


In pursuance of retaining a competitive advantage on the market, businesses continuously ought to be ahead of time, meaning that they have to produce innovative products which respond to customer needs on a regular basis. This can only be accomplished if organizations are able to detect future market trends and customer needs. Social Media generated data offers the insights which are required to make predictions of future market trends and customer needs. Marketers have to be aware of the complexity of Social Media generated data as it can present various obstacles. Diverse data processing methods need to be applied in order to turn raw data into something meaningful and useful.
The purpose of this paper is to review research findings and results on the role of Social Media as a forecasting tool; the study is conducted on the basis of a critical literature review in order to give a clear impression of the potential and the value of Social Media data for forecasting purposes. It was detected that Social Media does have the potential of predicting future market trends and customer needs. Marketers however have to be cautious due to numerous limitations of Social Media data.


Firstly, a dynamical analysis of adiabatic perturbations of a perfect fluid is performed to first-order about a general FLRW background using the 1 + 3 covariant and gauge-invariant formalism. The 1 + 3 covariant analog of the Mukhanov-Sasaki and Grishchuk variables needed to quantise the scalar and tensor perturbations respectively about a spatially-curved FLRW background space-time are identied. The dynamics of the vector perturbations is also discussed. Secondly, a dynamical analysis of an inhomogeneous and anisotropic effective Weyssenhoff fluid, which is a perfect fluid with spin in the Einstein-Cartan theory, is performed in a gauge-invariant manner using the 1+3 covariant and gauge-invariant approach. A verication of the dynamical equations is performed for the special case of irrotational flow with zero peculiar acceleration by evolving the constraints. Thirdly, a dynamical analysis of an effective homogeneous and irrotational Weyssenhoff fluid in general relativity is performed using the 1 + 3 covariant and gauge-invariant approach. The spin contributions to the field equations produce a bounce that averts an initial singularity, provided that the spin density exceeds the rate of shear. At later times, when the spin contribution can be neglected, a Weyssenhoff fluid reduces to a standard cosmological fluid in general relativity. Numerical solutions for the time evolution of the generalised scale factor in spatially-curved models are presented, some of which exhibit eternal oscillatory behaviour without any singularities. In spatially- at models, analytical solutions for particular values of the equation-of-state parameter are derived. Although the scale factor of a Weyssenhoff fluid generically has a positive temporal curvature near a bounce, it requires unreasonable fine tuning of the equation-of-state parameter to produce a sufficiently extended period of inflation to fit the current observational data. Fourthly, in order to determine numerically the background dynamics of general in inflationary models, suitable classical initial conditions have to be found from which to start the integration of the equations of motion. The method proposed by Boyanovsky, de Vega and Sanchez assumes a spatially-flat model with an inflaton potential typical of new inflation and determines the initial conditions at a time when the inflaton field is at the local maximum of the potential by assuming equipartition of the kinetic and potential energies of the inflaton field. This leaves the normalisation of the solutions undetermined. The procedure followed by Lasenby and Doran assumes a spatially closed model with a chaotic inflaton potential and determines the initial conditions as the model emerges from the initial singularity by performing a series expansion. We note that quite generically immediately after the initial singularity, the pre-inflationary dynamics of the universe is dominated by the kinetic energy of the inflaton, which naturally yields analytic solutions for any spatial curvature - provided there is no bounce - with no dependence on the potential. This therefore suggests a new generic way of setting initial conditions for inflation. Using this new procedure, we determine the initial conditions for chaotic and new inflation potentials and study both the subsequent background evolution and the spectrum of scalar perturbations produced in the spatially-flat case.


Craig Owens' 1984 essay, "The Problem with Puerilism," was written for a very specific context: as a response to the predominantly celebratory tone taken in Artforum at the time with regard to the emerging East Village art scene.1 Much hyped for its energy, youthfulness, and general coolness, the scene was widely taken for granted. As such, it was exported as a generation rather than as a style or an -ism, or, for that matter, as individual artists (though individual artists were inevitably to emerge from it once its moment passed). The packaging of the East Village art scene is exemplary—it was, after all, the first conscious attempt at establishing and selling such a scene. It was also significant for having marketed itself through an idea of seamless connection between art production and general, generational (sub)cultural production in the form of cultural artefacts such as fashion, music, and a certain lifestyle.