Tax administration is often perceived as separate from tax policy, and at best as the implementation of tax policy. The aim of this article is to highlight the necessary mutual dependence that exists between tax policy and administration, designated here as tax policy-administration symbiosis. It employs the case-study of VAT fraud in African countries, where this phenomenon is thought to be commonplace, to consider the range of anti-VAT fraud measures that have been installed in those developing contexts. It is argued that fighting this fraud requires a concerted approach that encompasses various twinned measures of both a legal/policy and administrative nature; in contrast, ad hoc measures, whether legal or administrative, are unlikely to yield as significant results. Specifically, it is defended that administrative measures which seek to enhance compliance are at their most effective when adopted in conjunction with, or in the context of, a legal system that has been designed to minimize the incidence of fraud. Conversely, whilst policy measures can significantly contribute to an increase in VAT compliance in developing countries – particularly through the introduction of a broad base – such measures will be most effective when adopted in conjunction with administrative measures that take into account the administrative constraints, as well as other social factors, that are often present in those settings. The article concludes by asserting that combating VAT fraud in developing countries requires recognition of the wider dynamics of the tax policy-administration symbiosis.


Most "green" thought and action fails to grasp that this society involves levels of resource consumption and environmental impact that are far beyond those that can be sustained or spread to all people. Technical advance and reforms within consumer-capitalist society cannot solve the problems; this will be illustrated by reference to greenhouse and energy problems. Although present levels of consumption are grossly unsustainable, the supreme priority is economic growth, i.e. to raise them without limit. In addition a system based on free market principles cannot be just. Rich world affluence would not be possible if wealth was not being transferred from poor countries. The only way out of the alarming global situation is via transition to some kind of Simpler Way, which is unlikely to be taken. Implications for bringing about such a transition will be indicated.


ABSTRACT This article uses comparative micro data from the 2004 European Union Labour Force Survey (EULFS) for 23 European countries to study the impact of labour market institutions on the youth relative temporary employment probability. We find relatively high temporary employment rates for young workers in all countries but also a large cross-country variation in this respect. The results of multi-level regression analyses confirm that neither employment protection of regular contracts nor its interaction with the level of employment protection of temporary contracts affects the young people's relative risk. Instead, we find a positive association between collective bargaining coverage as a measure of insider–outsider cleavages and the relative temporary employment risk of young persons. These results remain robust even after controlling for macro-structural conditions, such as unemployment rate and business uncertainty.


The main faced difficulty while preparing doses to be administered, is to provide information without disturbing the manipulator work. Confronted with this issue, we started the integration of Augmented Reality (AR) glasses during the phase of injectable drugs preparation in order to reduce the number of medication errors (ME) related to lack of information. Three different structures, one is made up of engineers, the second was pharmacists while the third has nurses and doctors, have therefore developed an innovative solution based on AR glasses which allow the operator to have both of his hands free. Our system displays on the AR glasses the different instructions for the drug preparation in an ergonomic and practical way. It indicates to the operator the various steps of its preparation. Markers (QR code) are used for the user interaction with the application. This software prototype has been tested by 7 nurses in a neonatology department for the preparation of an insulin dose following a new protocol that nobody knew or has used before. The tests feedbacks were positive : the nurses are ready to work with the technology of AR. They are more guided in their medicines preparation with a visual freedom. With AR glasses, they perform their tasks faster and more precisely. During a satisfaction survey, it was interesting to note, in addition to the conclusive results of the first tests, the nurses would most desired that some problems of adaptability related to the change of users and mechanical adjustment of the glasses will be resolved. This prototype is probably the beginning of this innovative technology integration in drugs preparation process to reduce the number of ME. However, it is currently being developed in order to optimize its functionalities. Eventually, it will also incorporate a double checking system for products subject.


In this thesis we study ventricular-arterial coupling in rodents under the influence of arterial stiffening and myocardial infarction (MI), combination of the two considered as a novel cardiovascular research model for diseased hearts pumping against an aged, stiffened arterial tree. The stiffened arterial tree yields isolated systolic hypertension and is obtained by administration of vitamin D and nicotine (VDN). The investigation cardiac performance and ventricular-arterial coupling using such a combined model (VDN/MI) is of particular relevance to cardiac research, as cardiac disease in elderly often takes place in presence of a atherosclerotic or stiff arterial tree.. The thesis consists of an Introduction, 4 scientific papers and a brief Conclusion. The Introduction is an overview of the epidemiology of heart failure, structure and functional changes that occur during MI and VDN, material and methods used in evaluating cardiac function invasively and non-invasively (using trans-thoracic echocardiography, TTE), methods for evaluating arterial function, and finally an overview of the interaction between the heart and vessels. Paper 1: This paper addresses the issue of the universality of the normalized time-varying elastance curve. It is demonstrated that the waveform of the normalized time-varying elastance curve (En(tn)) is qualitatively comparable between the control and MI hearts, however, when En(tn) is compared quantitatively between the two groups, statistical significance is found at the ejection phase and during diastole. These differences need to be taken into account when assessing cardiac contractility based on a generalized En(tn) in different animal models or in the human in different physiological or pathological states. Paper 2: Using trans-thoracic echo (TTE), we were able to follow serial changes of cardiac function post MI using two novel parameters, the myocardioal performance index (MPI) and its ratio to left ventricular fractional shortening (LVFS/MPI), both indices being monitor successfully and as efficiently as other classical TTE parameters. More so, LVFS/MPI visually expressed better the serial modifications in cardiac function. Both MPI and LVFS/MPI were correlated to the load-independent contractile parameter, PRSW, and to the preload parameter, LVEDP, being thus pertinent in following preload changes post MI. Finally, chamber remodeling post MI can successfully be followed due to the fact that ESV and EDV both correlate to MPI and LVFS/MPI. Paper 3: We studied hemodynamics, arterial function, cardiac function and ventricular-arterial coupling in a rat model of reduced arterial compliance. The results show that arterial stiffening after VDN treatment provokes important changes in vascular impedance and wave reflections, leading to isolated systolic hypertension and LV hypertrophy, Ventricular-arterial coupling was also altered. The effects are quantitatively similar to those of arterial stiffening with age. Paper 4: We studied changes in cardiac geometry, structure and function in response to MI in control and VDN-treated (stiffened aorta) rats. The combined VDN/MI model showed the largest compromise in cardiac structure and function and exhibited the strongest biochemical signs of heart failure as compared to all other groups. The addition of MI on top of a raised afterload, seems to have accelerated the progression of heart failure. Vascular alterations also reflected well a model of ageing and calcification. This combined pathology model of failing hearts in presence of a stiff arterial tree might be fruitful in better understanding the evolution of disease and may help improving or developing novel treatment therapies. The Conclusion chapter summarizes the findings of the thesis and brings into perspective their importance and future relevance into cardiovascular research models.


Prof. Atsunori Matsuda, Prof. Hiroyuki Muto, Assistant Prof. Kazuhiro Hikima, Assistant Prof. Nguyen Huu Huy Phuc, Researcher Reiko Matsuda, and Mr. Takaki Maeda (Master Program) at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology have made an active sulfur material and carbon nanofiber (CNF) composite using a lowcost and straightforward liquid phase process. Allsolid-state lithium-sulfur batteries using a sulfurCNF composite material obtained by liquid phase process show a higher discharge capacity and better cycle stability than those of lithium-ion secondary batteries. Thus, these all-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries enable leading to applications in large scale batteries such as electric vehicles in the future.


Using observations of the INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), we place upper limits on the gamma-ray and hard X-ray prompt emission associated with the gravitational wave event GW150914, which was discovered by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration. The omnidirectional view of the INTEGRAL/SPI-ACS has allowed us to constrain the fraction of energy emitted in the hard X-ray electromagnetic component for the full high-probability sky region of LIGO triggers. Our upper limits on the hard X-ray fluence at the time of the event range from F γ = 2 × 10 − 8 ?> erg cm−2 to F γ = 10 − 6 ?> erg cm−2 in the 75 keV–2 MeV energy range for typical spectral models. Our results constrain the ratio of the energy promptly released in gamma-rays in the direction of the observer to the gravitational wave energy E γ / ?> E GW < 10 − 6 ?> . We discuss the implication of gamma-ray limits for the characteristics of the gravitational wave source, based on the available predictions for prompt electromagnetic emission.


ABSTRACT We implemented the first operational automated seismic‐event classification system for monitoring activity at the Piton de la Fournaise volcano observatory (OVPF, La Reunion Island). Our classifier is based on the Random Forest algorithm. It distinguishes between eight classes of seismic signals: summit and deep volcano tectonic events, local, regional, and teleseismic earthquakes, T phases, rockfalls, and sound waves. It adopts a multistation approach and automatically selects the best features for each station and combination of stations from a large set of waveform‐ and spectrum‐based features. It reaches peak performance when it runs on a three‐station combination: one station on the summit of Piton de la Fournaise, one in its caldera, and one on the volcano flank. We interfaced our classification system with the observatory management interface WebObs used at OVPF.


Multisided platforms are ubiquitous in today's economy. Although newspapers demonstrate that the platform business model is scarcely new, recent economic analysis has explored more deeply the manner of its operation. Drawing upon these insights, we conclude that enforcers and courts should use a multiple-markets approach in which different groups of users on different sides of a platform belong in different product markets. This approach appropriately accounts for cross-market network effects without collapsing all of a platform's users into a single product market. Furthermore, we advocate the use of a separate-effects analysis, which rejects the view that anticompetitive conduct harming users on one side of a platform can be justified so long as that harm funds benefits for users on another side. Courts should consider the price structure, and not simply the net price, of a platform in assessing competitive effects. This approach in turn supports our final conclusion: that antitrust plaintiffs should not be required to prove as part of their prima facie case more than occurrence of competitive harm in a properly-defined market; thereafter, the burden to produce procompetitive justifications should shift to defendants.


A series of new 1-(4-(3,4-dihydroquinolin-2(1H)-one-7-yloxy)butyl)-3-methyl-2,7-diphenyl-1,4-diazepan-5-one analogs of aripiprazole was synthesized by the replacement of 2,3-dichlorophenyl-4-piperazine/diazepane moiety with 3-methyl-2,7-diphenyl-1,4-diazepan-5-one to explore the influence of structural features. All the synthesized compounds are characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR), Carbon-13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (13C-NMR), Heteronuclear Single Quantum Coherence (HSQC) (2D NMR) and mass spectrometry of compound 4a. All the multi target ligands have been docked against, human A2A adenosine receptor and human β2-adrenergic G-protein-coupled Receptors (GPCRs), both receptor and ligand interaction shows an excellent dock score. Absorption Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME), properties were also evaluated in the desirable range, finally these compounds have orally drug-likeness property. In this event was done to screening the neuroleptic activity of the synthesized compounds with different anti-psychotic animal models.


Macular pigment (MP) is the collective name for three carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin, which are found at high concentrations in the central macula. The macular carotenoids, like all carotenoids, are entirely of dietary origin. The term 'macular pigment optical density' (MPOD) refers to the peak concentration of MP in the retina, which varies from one individual to the next and is measurable in vivo. On account of its blue-light-filtering and antioxidant properties, MP has become a subject of interest with respect to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the hypothesis being that MP helps to protect against AMD; the higher the MPOD, the lower the risk for AMD. Recently, a new MPOD-measuring device, the MPS 9000 (MPS), entered the ophthalmic market. Using this device, the research described here aimed to contribute new information to the MP literature. A second MPOD instrument, the Macular Pigment Reflectometer, was also used at times, but a reliability study (included in the thesis) demonstrated that it was unsuitable for use on its own. First, a series of exploratory investigations were undertaken to maximize the accuracy and consistency of MPOD measurements taken with the MPS; a protocol was established that substantially improved repeatability. Subsequently, a series of MPOD-based studies were conducted on anisometropia, South Asian race, blue-light-filtering contact lenses, and dietary modification with kale. The principle findings were as follows: interocular MPOD differences were not attributable to interocular refractive error differences; young adults of South Asian origin had significant gender-related MPOD differences (males>females, p<0.01), and they also had significantly higher MPOD than Caucasians (p<0.0005); wearing blue-light-filtering contact lenses for eight months did not affect MPOD; and dietary modification with kale for 16 weeks did not increase MPOD. This body of research adds new insights to MP knowledge, which in turn may contribute to MP knowledge in the context of AMD.


Traditional computer vision models are trained to predict a fixed set of predefined categories. Recently, natural language has been shown to be a broader and richer source of supervision that provides finer descriptions to visual concepts than supervised"gold"labels. Previous works, such as CLIP, use InfoNCE loss to train a model to predict the pairing between images and text captions. CLIP, however, is data hungry and requires more than 400M image-text pairs for training. The inefficiency can be partially attributed to the fact that the image-text pairs are noisy. To address this, we propose OTTER (Optimal TransporT distillation for Efficient zero-shot Recognition), which uses online entropic optimal transport to find a soft image-text match as labels for contrastive learning. Based on pretrained image and text encoders, models trained with OTTER achieve strong performance with only 3M image text pairs. Compared with InfoNCE loss, label smoothing, and knowledge distillation, OTTER consistently outperforms these baselines in zero shot evaluation on Google Open Images (19,958 classes) and multi-labeled ImageNet 10K (10032 classes) from Tencent ML-Images. Over 42 evaluations on 7 different dataset/architecture settings x 6 metrics, OTTER outperforms (32) or ties (2) all baselines in 34 of them.


User-managed-events is a popular feature on social networks. Take Facebook Events as an example: over 135 million events were created in 2015 and over 550 million people use events each month. In this work, we consider the heavy sparseness in both user and event feedback history caused by short lifespans (transiency) of events and user participation patterns in a production event system. We propose to solve the resulting cold-start problems by introducing a joint representation model to project users and events into the same latent space. Our model based on parallel Convolutional Neural Networks captures semantic meaning in event text and also utilizes heterogeneous user knowledge available in the social network. By feeding the model output as user and event representation into a combiner prediction model, we show that our representation model improves the prediction accuracy over existing techniques (+6% AUC lift). Our method provides a generic way to match heterogeneous information from different domains and applies to a wide range of applications in social


Using an error correction version of an autoregressive distributed lag model, we investigate the dynamics of the Korean J-Curve against her eight trading partners. The strict version of the J-Curve is observed with a few major Korean trading partners, such as the U.S. and Indonesia. The estimation results from the Trade Balance Model and the Error Correction Model confirm that, after a depreciation of the Korean won, there has been a long-run adjustment toward the improvement of Korean trade balance against most trading partners. The findings are consistent over different sample periods, including before and after the financial crisis in 1997, and with different trading partners. After the Asian financial crisis, we find that the J-Curve relationship with Korean trading partners has become much more apparent than it was before the crisis.


Due to the effects of image resolution, camera calibration and work environment in stereo vision-based robot's SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), there are certain problems in location accuracy, robustness and anti-jamming capability. Meanwhile, because pose estimation is achieved through incremental iteration, there is also cumulative error. In this paper, an integrated location algorithm based on stereo vision and electronic compass is proposed to improve accuracy and robustness through information fusion. The rotation angles obtained by electronic compass and stereo vision respectively are fused by an improved fuzzy adaptive extended Kalman filter. Then initial pose estimation is obtained by the rotation angles and 3D coordinates of the time t and the time t +1, and accurate pose estimation is realized by an adaptive particle filter. Finally, the map is updated by a Kalman filter. Experiment results show that the location accuracy, robustness and real-time performance are better than stereo vision alone and the traditional fuzzy adaptive extended Kalman filter.


Due to geographically variable species interactions, plants may become locally adapted to their sympatric herbivores and pollinators. However, adaptation to the abiotic environment may significantly affect plant interactions with herbivores and pollinators. Local adaptation to the abiotic environment may constrain local adaptation to herbivores and pollinators under contrasting selection pressures, resulting in trade‐offs in local adaptation. We studied local adaptation of a perennial herb, Vincetoxicum hirundinaria, in a reciprocal transplant experiment among four populations and measured plant fitness, pollination success and resistance to two specialist herbivores. We also estimated local adaptation of these two herbivores and generalist pollinators to their sympatric plant populations. Local adaptation was compared with within‐population genetic variation, genetic and geographical divergence, and with divergence in terms of population size, environmental conditions and plant secondary chemistry. We further compared local adaptation to the environment, to local adaptation to herbivores and pollinators to detect possible trade‐offs in local adaptation. The existence and degree of local adaptation varied among the plant populations. Plants from two populations were locally adapted to their sympatric leaf herbivores and plants from two populations were locally adapted to their abiotic environment. Herbivores from one population were locally adapted to their sympatric plant population. Local adaptation of V. hirundinaria to the seed predator increased with increasing among‐population divergence in precipitation and temperature. Local adaptation to the seed predator and the environment increased with increasing population genetic variation. Local adaptation of V. hirundinaria in fitness and in herbivore resistance also correlated positively, suggesting lack of trade‐offs in local adaptation. Synthesis. These results demonstrate that species interactions can lead to a mosaic of locally adapted plant, herbivore and pollinator populations. In addition to natural enemies, genetic variation, the abiotic environment and mutualistic interactions contribute to the evolution of local adaptation in long‐lived plants. These results provide new insights into the patterns and causes of variation in local adaptation and are among the first to demonstrate that conflicting selection pressures within a population do not constrain local adaptation in multiple traits.


BACKGROUND/AIM
This study determined the effects of cotinine concentrations in follicular fluid (FF) and seminal plasma (SP) on the pregnancy outcome of couples using assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study was conducted as a case-control study. A total of 217 couples were included in the study. Among these couples, there were nonsmokers (66 women and 40 men), passive smokers (106 women and 54 men), and active smokers (45 women and 123 men). Demographic and smoking data were collected by questionnaire at the onset of treatment. FF and SP samples were obtained from the couples on the day of oocyte retrieval.

RESULTS
The cotinine concentrations in the FF and SP of nonsmokers were significantly lower than they were in the other groups (P = 0.001). The difference in cotinine concentrations detected in FF between women with positive pregnancy test results and women with negative pregnancy test results was statistically insignificant. It was also determined that the percentage of clinical pregnancy was lower in nonsmoker women than in passive smoker or smoker women (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Although we found there was no significant difference in the pregnancy outcome between nonsmoker and passive smoker or smoker women, smoking cessation should be an integral part of ARTs.


Kant considered it to be scandalous that philosophy still had not found a rational proof of the existence of the external world during his time. Arguably, the scandal continues today because scepticism remains a widely debated and extremely divisive issue among contemporary thinkers. Although scholars have devoted considerable attention to Kant's arguments against Cartesian scepticism, the literature still presents gaps and inaccuracies that obscure a full understanding of this issue and its significance for contemporary philosophy. In Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy, Luigi Caranti corrects this omission, providing a thorough historical analysis of Kant's anti-sceptical arguments from the pre-critical period up to the 'Reflexionen zum Idealismus' (1788-93). Caranti demonstrates how reconstructing Kant's critique of scepticism is crucial for understanding the origin of his philosophy and for avoiding serious mistakes that still serve as obstacles to the proper understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, Caranti shows how the sceptical challenge leads Kant to the critical stage of his thought. Moreover, this study responds to recent criticism of transcendental idealism, showing how it can serve as the main premise of a powerful anti-sceptical argument whose main structure is suggested by Kant in the 1781 Fourth Paralogism. Erudite and engaging, Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy fills an important void in the literature and breathes new life into this field of inquiry.


The new AACSB Eligibility Procedures and Standards for Business Accreditation and for Accounting Accreditation, as of January 31,2007, place much greater emphasis on assurance of learning. It requires colleges of business and accounting departments to utilize direct and indirect measures to assure learning. This study reports the results of a survey of accounting departments at U.S. institutions of higher education. The study determines the purposes of assessment, assessment approaches and instruments used by accounting departments, and usages of assessment activities. Most accounting departments (68 percent) had formal assessment programs and department chairs were responsible for assessment processes at the department level. Overwhelming majority of accounting departments continue to utilize indirect measures (e.9. surveys) of assessment, followed by course-embedded direct measures of assessment. Accounting departments perceive monitoring of the effectiveness of the program and guide planning and improvements efforts to be the major purposes of assessment.


Nearly all industrial processes require objects to be moved, manipulated or subjected to some sort of force. Such movements and manipulations are frequently accomplished by means of devices driven by liquids (hydraulics) or air (pneumatics), the subject of this book. Hydraulics and Pneumatics is written by a practicing process control engineer as a guide to the successful operation of hydraulic and pneumatic systems for all engineers and technicians working with them. Keeping mathematics and theory to a minimum, this practical guide is thorough but accessible to technicians without an advanced engineering background, and offers clear, complete coverage of the latest pumps, valves and other hydraulic and pneumatic equipment Designed to serve as an introduction to those who are training and a day-to-day reference for use on the job, the book also offers an essential section on industrial safety and compliance with regulation.

Covers both hydraulic and pneumatic machinery, with a practical, practitioner-led approach that does not demand great theoretical and mathematical understanding.
Thorough and updated coverage of safety standards, helping control engineers and shop floor managers to ensure their operations are in compliance with regulations.
More abundant referencing, new and updated web-links, look-up tables and graphical keys offer even easier referencing while providing quick access to other related materials.


A majority of diseases are caused by a combination of factors, for example, composite genetic mutation profiles have been found in many cases to predict a deleterious outcome. There are several statistical techniques that have been used to analyze these types of biological data. This article implements a general strategy which uses data adaptive regression methods to build a specific pathway model, thus predicting a disease outcome by a combination of biological factors and assesses the significance of this model, or pathway, by using a permutation based null distribution. We also provide several simulation comparisons with other techniques. In addition, this method is applied in several different ways to an HIV-1 dataset in order to assess the potential biological pathways in the data.


his reference distills information about emerging technologies and applications for smart city design and sustainable urban planning. Chapters present technology use-cases that have radical novelty and high scalability with a prominent impact on community living standards. These technologies prepare urban and rural dwellings for the transformation to the smart world.

Applications and techniques highlighted in the book use a combination of artificial intelligence and IoT technologies in areas like transportation, energy, healthcare, education, governance, and manufacturing, to name a few.

The book serves as a learning resource for smart city design and sustainable infrastructure planning. Scholars and professionals who are interested in understanding ways for transforming communities into smart communities can also benefit from the cases presented in the book.


Today's institutions of higher education are facing an increased number of significant challenges taking place in the political, economic, social and technological environment. Accordingly, the issues of performance, accountability, and marketing strategies have become ever more important. It has been suggested that universities that are more market or customer orientated can perform better. In dealing with customers, most universities have utilised Web technologies for both informational and promotional purposes. The question is whether they have designed their Web sites well enough in order to gain the benefits from Web utilisation. Previous studies on quality of Web sites are not lacking, but most of them have focussed mainly on business Web sites. Empirical research that focuses on the Web site quality of institutions of higher education has been scarce. This study focuses on the websites of Schools of Accounting, and selects the websites of Schools of Accounting in New Zealand's universities as the research objects. The main objectives of this study are to develop and validate an instrument for measuring School of Accounting website quality from the perspectives of the users, and to implement the proposed instrument to measure and rank the quality of websites of Schools of Accounting in New Zealand. The results from this initial application substantiated the validity and reliability of the instrument.


Despite multi-view learning progressed fast in past decades, it is still challenging due to the difficulty in modeling complex correlation among different views, especially under the context of view missing. To address the challenge, we propose a novel framework termed Cross Partial Multi-View Networks (CPM-Nets). In this framework, we first give a formal definition of completeness and versatility for multi-view representation and then theoretically prove the versatility of the latent representation learned from our algorithm. To achieve the completeness, the task of learning latent multi-view representation is specifically translated to degradation process through mimicking data transmitting, such that the optimal tradeoff between consistence and complementarity across different views could be achieved. In contrast with methods that either complete missing views or group samples according to view-missing patterns, our model fully exploits all samples and all views to produce structured representation for interpretability. Extensive experimental results validate the effectiveness of our algorithm over existing state-of-the-arts.


A major challenge in reinforcement learning is the design of exploration strategies, especially for environments with sparse reward structures and continuous state and action spaces. Intuitively, if the reinforcement signal is very scarce, the agent should rely on some form of short-term memory in order to cover its environment efficiently. We propose a new exploration method, based on two intuitions: (1) the choice of the next exploratory action should depend not only on the (Markovian) state of the environment, but also on the agent's trajectory so far, and (2) the agent should utilize a measure of spread in the state space to avoid getting stuck in a small region. Our method leverages concepts often used in statistical physics to provide explanations for the behavior of simplified (polymer) chains in order to generate persistent (locally self-avoiding) trajectories in state space. We discuss the theoretical properties of locally self-avoiding walks and their ability to provide a kind of short-term memory through a decaying temporal correlation within the trajectory. We provide empirical evaluations of our approach in a simulated 2D navigation task, as well as higher-dimensional MuJoCo continuous control locomotion tasks with sparse rewards.


This study examined predictors of pre-service science teachers' behavioral intention toward eresources use for teaching in Nigeria. The study used cross-sectional survey research method and a questionnaire with a set of items that measure technology preparedness, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to gather the data of the study. The sample of the study is comprised of 124 pre-service science teachers graduating from a teacher education program in a Nigerian university. The research instrument of the study was subjected to validity and reliability check. Structural Equation modeling and t-test analysis was used to test the hypotheses of the study and the data collected were used to fit the specified model of the study. The findings of the study showed that technology preparedness does not statistically influence students' behavioral intention towards e-resources use for teaching, but perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use does. The study also revealed that significant difference exists between male and female pre-service teachers behavioral intention towards e-resources use for teaching. Thus, the findings of the study confirm the validity of technology acceptance model construct and provide evidence that technology preparedness of pre-service teacher is inadequate to induce their behavioral beliefs toward future use of e-resources for classroom practice.


This paper argues the urgent need to better understand the e-democracy pilots that have taken place so far and that are currently being developed. It addresses the issues of what should be characterized in e-democracy pilots so as to better identify types of citizen participation exercises and the appropriate technology to support them, as such it offers an analytical framework for electronic participation. Over the last decade there has been a gradual awareness of the need to consider the innovative application of ICTs for participation that enables a wider audience to contribute to democratic debate and where contributions themselves are broader and deeper. This awareness has resulted in a number of isolated e-democracy pilots and research studies. It is important to consolidate this work and characterizes the level of participation, the technology used, the stage in the policy-making process and various issues and constraints, including the potential benefits.


This publication examines the risks associated with the release of excessive nitrogen into the environment (climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, air pollution, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, deterioration of soil quality). The report also examines the uncertainty associated with the ability of nitrogen to move from one ecosystem to another and cause "cascading effects". In addition to better management of nitrogen risks at the local level, there is a need to consider the global risks associated with the continued increase in nitrous oxide concentrations and to prevent excess nitrogen in all its forms by developing cost-effective strategies for all its sources. Other than the reduction of nitrogen pollution, this report provides guidance on the use of nitrogen policy instruments and how to ensure coherence with objectives such as food security, energy security and environmental objectives.


Hotel operators and observers often employ industry-wide averages as key points of comparison and analysis for room rates, occupancy, and revenues. The use of simple averages, however, can be misleading if one does not take into account the possibility that a mean will be pulled in one direction or another by extreme values. This analysis of three industry averages shows that those averages are, indeed, subject to distortion, or skew. The analysis, which examines figures for virtually all brand-name hotels in the United States, determined that the means for average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) are skewed in a positive direction by hotels with extremely high rates. On the other hand, occupancy is skewed in a negative direction by a group of hotels with inordinately low occupancy levels. A more complete picture of the industry's ADR, RevPAR, and occupancy is gained by examining two other measures: the median, which is a measure of the data's middle value, and the mode, which states the most common data point. By comparing the mean with the median and the mode, one can determine the extent to which the mean overstates the industry's ADR and RevPAR and understates the typical occupancy. Specifically, 61 percent of U.S. hotels recorded a RevPAR below the overall mean and 63 percent saw an ADR below the mean, but only 48 percent reported occupancy below the mean. Many of the extreme values are found in the top-25 markets, which have hotels with inordinately high ADRs. Analysis of those markets shows that, once again, the overall statistics are distorted by a relatively small set of hotels with exceptional ADRs and occupancies. However, each of the top markets shows a distinctive rate and occupancy pattern. The pattern of skewed operating statistics carries over into individual lodging segments. The greatest distortions arise in the luxury and upscale segments, while economy and budget hotels record more consistent (normally distributed) statistics. Finally, the analysis shows that although the events of September 11, 2001, created much turmoil for the industry, the hotel business had already cooled substantially from its record pace of a year earlier. In conclusion, managers must be careful in applying overall industry statistics to their own situation and should take into account the factors that distort operating statistics.


We have constructed a soluble chimeric fusion protein between the mouse CD8 alpha chain and the mouse CD40 T cell ligand. This protein binds to both human and mouse B cells. By itself it induced a modest degree of B cell proliferation, but together with anti-immunoglobulin (anti-Ig) antibody it greatly stimulated B cell proliferation, as determined by both [3H]thymidine uptake and increase in cell numbers. These data are evidence that the CD40 ligand on T cells provides a signal that drives B cell proliferation. This signal is synergistic with that delivered by anti-Ig antibody.


A Brief Introduction In choosing my topic I wanted to do something that would serve more than my own interest in getting a grade. I chose this topic in order to put together information that could be shared, information that would serve not just my library but my community as a whole. This paper could not have been done without the cooperation of the community. I would like to thank the Board Members and the Library Director who helped me choose my topic and supplied me with the information I needed; also the residents of Smoky Valley with their fierce independence, who make this frontier community not a place to be taken lightly. I will do my best not to bore you. I see no reason why term papers cannot be eloquent, readable, and informative. A Brief History of the Community I will probably take the greatest pleasure in writing this first section of this paper. This is the only place it will be appropriate for me to use a descriptive voice, rather than simple, unadorned facts. It is the duty of any writer to speak for those who can not speak for themselves, and then to present that information to the reader in a way that will, hopefully, make them see what the writer has seen, feel what the writer feels; to present the information as three dimensional as possible. It is writing that employs all five senses. I feel I can personalize this brief history of this community, and this valley in which it resides, because I myself live here. First, I will tell you plainly that in many ways this place is difficult to describe, and it is not a matter to be taken lightly. It is one of the most isolated communities in the lower forty-eight states. When people have come out from California for a visit, I notice almost at once a detectable change in them. A peculiar effect the desert has on people is that it immediately gives one the feeling of exposure. It lays bare the mind; and can bring out the best and the worst in an individual. This transformation begins when they have left the city of Fallon behind, going east on Highway 50, and travel into the empty landscape of salt flats and ever higher and higher mountain ranges and the age old ruins of those who have come before. Those who have left behind the foundations of Pony Express stations, and the lonely stone chimneys signifying where a ranch house sheltered a family, a dwelling place no more. And all the while there is the relentless glare of the sun, a most grand inquisitor, smiling on the land. They pass through Austin with its picturesque old buildings, perhaps not even stopping but following the lonely, winding mountain road over the passes to where it will come out in our valley. The dominant feature in the landscape here is the mountains. We are blessed with two magnificent mountain ranges in Smoky Valley; the first snowfall of the season changes the upturned keel of the mountains to white. Having whole mountain ranges all to themselves will daunt some and the very loneliness of the place embodies the casting off of earthly attachments, which is the essence of any journey. Upon arriving at my house they will usually say one of two things. Either, "how can you stand it here?" Or, "I bet you really love it here." I laugh and say, "If you ever find that you have come to the edge of the world, just look around, my house is close by." When you have come to the junction of highway 376 and head south down the Big Smoky Valley, you will drive for about sixty miles when you will notice a community. That would be Carver's, and further on is Round Mountain and the subdivision of Hadley, the subject of our profile and the location of the library. If you look to the eastern mountain range you will see the mine. The tailings are very neatly groomed and resemble the Pharaoh's half-finished pyramids, although more rudely formed. In the subdivision on the valley floor the wind is a predominant feature. It blows most days. However, it is not a gentle breeze. …


The exact maximum likelihood estimator of the direct-to-scattered ratio of the Rician channel in a reverberation chamber is derived and its performance analysed. It is shown that the estimator obeys a non-central F-distribution, the mean value and variance of which are derived. For well stirred chambers, it is shown that the systematic error in the estimated ratio may be significant.


Gram-positive, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped bacteria were isolated from the blood of a patient with endocarditis (strain 5401744T) and from the hip joint fluid of a patient with an infected orthopaedic prosthesis (strain 5402485T). These strains were characterized by using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Based on cellular morphology and biochemical criteria the two isolates were tentatively assigned to the genus Corynebacterium, although they did not correspond to any recognized species. The predominant fatty acids were a mix of C18:2omega6,9c and anteiso-C18:0 (32.1% of the total), C16:0 (26.3%) and C18:1omega9c (22.5%) for strain 5402485T and C18:1omega9c (36.4%), C17:1omega9c (27.1%) and C16:0 (10.9%) for strain 5401744T. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons showed that strain 5401744T was closely related to the type strains of Corynebacterium auris, Corynebacterium capitovis, Corynebacterium lipophiloflavum and Corynebacterium mycetoides (97.0, 96.6, 96.5 and 96.3% similarity, respectively) and strain 5402485T was closely related to the type strains of Corynebacterium macginleyi, Corynebacterium accolens, Corynebacterium tuberculostearicum, Corynebacterium confusum, Corynebacterium mastitidis and Corynebacterium renale (95.6, 95.3, 95.3, 94.5, 94.0 and 93.5%, respectively). On the basis of phenotypic data and phylogenetic inference, these isolates are considered to represent two novel species of the genus Corynebacterium, for which the names Corynebacterium timonense sp. nov. (type strain, 5401744T=CSUR P20T=CIP 109424T=CCUG 53856T) and Corynebacterium massiliense sp. nov. (type strain, 5402485T=CSUR P19T=CIP 109423T=CCUG 53857T) are proposed.


The current study investigates multiple dimensions of individual participants' protest participation experiences (PPEs) and identifies different clusters involved in candlelight protests in South Korea. An online survey was conducted with 225 participants who attended at least one of the candlelight protests demanding President Park's impeachment that were held in South Korea over a span of 27 weeks in 2016 and 2017. We found that protest participants' experiences could be classified into five categories: independent, entertaining, reflective, solidary, and distributive. Based on these five PPEs, we identified three clusters of participant groups in the candlelight protests: carnivalesque, consumerist, and autonomous/critical. The three groups were different not only in terms of their PPEs but also their media use patterns and sociodemographic characteristics.


Background: The involvement of neuropsychiatry is reported in 6% to 91% of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) patients. It can cause fatal morbidity and mortality. Memory impairment is one of the most common symptoms of neuropsychiatry involvement. This study aims to find out the performance of memory test in SLE patients using Indonesian version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-Ina).Method: This cross sectional study recruited 30 SLE patients. Cognitive abilities and patient's memory were examined using Indonesian version of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-Ina). Cognitive impairment was determined when total MoCA-Ina score was below 26. For memory evaluation, immediate recall or delayed recall impairment was determined when the patient failed in each memory subtests.Results: The mean of total MoCA-Ina score was 24.97 (SD±3.14). Fifty percent of the SLE patients had cognitive impairment, with the domain involved being delayed recall (86.67%), attention (60%), language (56.67%), abstraction (53.33%), and visuo-spatial/ executive function (36.67%). Most patients (86.67%) could completely repeat immediate recall. Whileonly 4 (13.33%) subjects could repeat delayed recall completely without any clue. Of the 26 SLE patients who failed to recall completely, 24 (92.3%) of them succeeded to recall completely after getting clue(s).Conclusion: Memory impairment is the most frequent cognitive impairment in SLE patients, especially in delayed recall. By using the memory subtests of MoCAIna, more than four fifth of patients with SLE was detected having delayed recall memory impairment and almost all of them could recalled completely after getting clue(s). This findings indicated that the finalstep of memory process retrieval in SLE was interrupted while being encoded, but retention pathway were stillintact.Keywords: Systemic Lupus Erythematous, Memory, MoCA-Ina


The present paper describes a data acquisition wearable device for hand rehabilitation. The main goal of this glove is to be used by patients with hand movement impairment. It has position sensors to measure the bending of synovial joints and sensors to measure the fingertip contact pressure. There is a coin motor and a LED placed on each finger to produce a vibratory and visual stimulus. The glove also tracks the hand rotation and translation using a MPU (Motion Processing Unit) that contains an accelerometer and a gyroscope. A graphical application for an HMI module was developed in order to create rehabilitation game like exercises where sensor data can be logged for further analysis by a therapist. The wearable device electronic hardware comprises a Glove module and an HMI module that communicate through SPI protocol (Serial Peripheral Interface). The wearable device supports USB connection to send data to a computer or to be used as a peripheral device in virtual or augmented reality applications.


The utilization of functional organic materials holds great promise for applications in electronic devices. Semiconducting organic molecules are frequently used as channel material in field effect transistors, due to the ease by which they can be assembled as such components, and the ease with which their properties can be specifically tailored. An extension of the use of organic materials in field effect transistors with the potential to substantially improve the performance of such devices is investigated in this thesis. It is the miniaturization of the functional parts of these devices, including their conductive channel or the gate dielectric, down to nanoscopic dimensions, which is important for their integration into complex device architectures. The materials under consideration offer advantages over conventional field effect transistor channels, including improved processibility, high mobility and electrical stability. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to the fabrication and electrochemical functionalization of nanoscopic field effect transistors comprising individual semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes. The combination of an ultra-thin gate dielectric based on an organic self-assembled monolayer is used for the fabrication of high-performance field effect transistors that show large on-state transconductance, as well as a large on/off ratio of 107, negligible hysteresis in the drain current, and a subthreshold swing that approaches the room temperature limit of 60 mV/decade. Two different types of self-assembled monolayers are used. The first, a silane-based self-assembled monolayer, is utilized to build field effect transistors in a global back gate geometry. This layout is useful for demonstrating the benefits of the use of a self-assembled monolayer for nanotube field effect transistors. Secondly, a gate dielectric incorporating a self-assembled monolayer composed of an alkane phosphonic-acid is exploited for the fabrication of high-performance field effect transistors with patterned aluminum gate electrodes. This geometry allows for the fabrication of more than one gate electrode per substrate and thus for the realization of logic circuits with all field effect transistors located on the same substrate. The technological relevance of nanotube field-effect transistors is proven by showing that nanotube field effect transistors can be cycled for more than 104 times between their on and off state and stored in ambient air for more than 200 days without degradation of their electrical performance. The electrochemical functionalization of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes with the organic coordination magnet Prussian Blue is investigated in the second part of this thesis. While this modification leaves metallic tubes unaffected, semiconducting SWCNTs become strongly p-doped during the electrochemical process. The temperature-dependent electrical behavior of Prussian Blue-functionalized semiconducting tubes can be understood by the freeze-out of the transfer of holes from the Prussian Blue below 150 K. In the third part of this thesis, novel core-cyanated perylene carboxylic diimides end-functionalized with substituents of varying flourine content and geometry are utilized as active material in air-stable n-channel thin film field- effect transistors. The relation between the thin-film structure and the air stability of the charge carrier mobility is investigated. Contrary to previous reports, it is found that the air stability is not related to the redox potential of the molecules. In addition, one of the compounds is used for the fabrication of field-effect transistors with a nanoribbon channel. These nanoribbons self-assemble from the solution phase, and, owing to their high crystalline order, field-effect transistors with mobilities of up to 0.2 cm2/Vs in air could be realized. The air stability of their mobility is found to be superior to that of thin-film transistors based on the same compound. Since the investigated perylene derivatives offer the possibility of fabricating thin-film as well as nanobelt field-effect transistors, they represent a valuable model system for the investigation of the relation between the crystalline order, mobility, stability and the performance of organic n-channel field-effect transistors. The last part is dedicated to a novel method for the fabrication of nanoscale polymer wires of diameters as small as 25 nm that offer potential as channel material for nanofiber field-effect transistors. These fibers emerge from a polymer solution during a standard spin-coating process. The fiber formation relies upon the Raleigh-Taylor instability of the spin-coated liquid film that arises due to a competition of the centrifugal force and the Laplace force induced by the surface curvature.


I retired from the Bench at sixty-three, after ten years as a trial judge and seventeen as an appeal judge. In Canada, judges are appointed for "life," which constitutionally ends at age 75. So why quit twelve years before I was required to do so? Therein lies a tale. When we were young, my law partner and I decided that a stimulating lifestyle requires a career change every decade or so, and we both tried to do that. He did it by moving in and out of politics, but that was not for me. Because I had started my career as trial judge with the District Court and Queen's Bench in Alberta, the move from trial to appeal work when I was appointed to the Court of Appeal was like a career change for me, and I found both careers stimulating. But after seventeen years as an appeal judge, I was finding little in the way of new challenges. And it was learning as much as we could from new challenges to which my partner and I had committed ourselves long before. I confess that I hesitated to consider any form of a retirement career. To return to a lawyer's career or to move to a different career after retirement would be to buck a strong tradition, one that held sway through generations for Canadian and British judges. Followed throughout the British Commonwealth, that limiting tradition was expressed this way by an Irish Court: "[W]ith security of tenure and fixed and adequate remuneration and pension, the practice of the profession of the law is abandoned [forever] by the person appointed." (1) Although it is in form addressed only to the situation of the judge who considers a return to the practice of law, the spirit of that decision would apply to his taking up any remunerated activity. And so it was in Canada: The Canadian tradition was that a retired judge grew roses, and little else. Times change. Canadian judges do not continue to sit into their nineties today, as they did in my youth. When the Canadian constitution was amended in 1958 to require judges to leave the bench at seventy-five, that age was widely accepted as a fair line to draw between competence and senility. Fifty years later, better health has produced improved longevity, and many judges are keen to work after seventy-five. Moreover, Canadians have accepted the idea of burnout, and now permit judges who are as young as sixty-five to retire. It seems inevitable, then, that judges will increasingly plan to have post-retirement careers. This will raise many interesting issues, but I will address here only those that I encountered. I had a good pension upon retirement, and was not uncomfortable, but having lived on a judge's salary since age thirty-six, I was certainly not rich. I decided in consequence that I should plan on a second career, and I started by trying to make a list of the activities that I would find most stimulating and for which I had some merchantable skills. Outside the law, it was an embarrassingly short list. Inside the law, and mindful of tradition, I thought of teaching and writing. I got into both, and enjoyed them, but they had limits. When I started teaching, I immediately ran into the restraints any well-run law school would impose. I suppose they were all reasonable, but they were not for me. I did not want to move out of one institutional box into another. Writing, on the other hand, was fun. Not well paid, but fun. I wrote mostly about legal and judicial issues for the Comment page in newspapers. (2) I soon learned that the content would before very long become thin indeed if I was to keep this up on a regular basis, which was a daunting thought for me after years of mocking hack journalism and complaining about columnists who continue writing when they have nothing to say. I stuck it out for about three years, but then I realized that it was time to move on, although I keep my hand in still. (3) Just before I retired, I had asked a lawyer friend for advice about a second career, and he immediately offered me a position at his large and successful firm. …


Three bioretention cells in Norway were monitored for 23 to 36 months to evaluate the hydrological performance of bioretention cells operated in regions with cold climates and to test if cell size equations can be used to predict hydrological performance. Values of saturated hydraulic conductivity ( K sat ) were determined for separate events by analyzing the observed infiltration rates and via infiltration tests. The two cells with the highest K sat values (15.9 and 45.0 cm/h) performed excellently during the study period infiltrating nearly all of the incoming runoff. In contrast, the cell with low K sat value (1.3 cm/h) infiltrated barely half of the incoming runoff. The latter cell had a clear seasonal variation in hydrological performance relating to changes in the K sat values over the year. The size equation that gave the best predictions of the observed hydrological performance accounts for both surface storage and infiltration. By using this equation to evaluate various bioretention cell designs, it was found that the most effective way to increase the hydrologic performance is to have a K sat value above 10 cm/h.


In this paper, ultrasonic wave propagation analysis in fluid filled single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is studied using nonlocal elasticity theory. The SWCNT is modeled using Flugge's shell theory, with the wall having axial, circumferential and radial degrees of freedom and also including small scale effects. The fluid inside the SWCNT is assumed as water. Nonlocal governing equations for this system are derived and wave propagation analysis is also carried out. The presence of fluid in SWCNT alters the ultrasonic wave dispersion behavior. The wavenumber and wave velocity are smaller in presence of fluid as compared to the empty SWCNT. The nonlocal elasticity calculation shows that the wavenumber tends to reach the continuum limit at certain frequencies and the corresponding wave velocity tends to zero at those frequencies indicating localization and stationary behavior. It has been shown that the circumferential. waves will propagate non-dispersively at higher frequencies in nonlocality. The magnitudes of wave velocities of circumferential waves are smaller in nonlocal elasticity as compared to local elasticity. We also show that the cut-off frequency depend on the nonlocal scaling parameter and also on the density of the fluid inside the SWCNT, and the axial wavenumber, as the fluid becomes denser the cut-off frequency decreases. The effect of axial wavenumber on the ultrasonic wave behavior in SWCNTS filled with water is also discussed.


This research was undertaken in 2010n2011 to appraise evidence from three New Zealand cities (Auckland, Dunedin, Hamilton) and four Australian cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth) on the market impacts of improvements in urban bus services at off-peak periods. The primary focus was on the estimation of patronage changes and the corresponding demand elasticities in response to service frequency changes. Particular attention was given to the following aspects of service frequency impacts, as measured through elasticities: impacts in the various off-peak periods (principally weekday interpeak, weekday evening, Saturday, Sunday); progressive impacts over time following the service change; and variations in elasticities according to initial service frequency, extent of service change, direction (increase/decrease) of service change, and other service and market characteristics. Recommendations have been made on the most appropriate set of service frequency elasticities, for the various off-peak periods, to be used in New Zealand and Australia for assessing the impacts of bus service improvement schemes over the short and medium terms.


Sustainability of water resources is imperative for the continued prosperity of Sri Lanka where the economy is dependent upon agriculture. The Mahaweli river is the longest in Sri Lanka, with the upper catchment covering an area of 3124 sq .km .. The Mahaweli Development programme, a major undertaking in the upper catchment has been implemented with the aims of providing Mahaweli water to the dry zone of the country through a massive diversion scheme and also for generating hydropower. Under this programme, seven large reservoirs have been constructed across the river and large scale land use changes in the catchment have occurred during the last two decades. Critics now say that the hydrological regime has been adversely affected due to indiscriminate land use changes and, as a result, river flows have diminished during the last two decades, thus jeopardising the expectations of this massive development programme. Reforestation programmes have been recommended because of the benefits of forest in resource conservation and also the water derived from fog interception. Selection of the best sites for these forest plantations for maximum benefits, especially in terms of water yield from fog interception has the utmost importance. This created the need for a comprehensive model to represent the hydrology and to simulate the hydrological dynamics of the catchment In conceptual terms, GIS is well suited for modelling with large and complex databases associated with hydrological parameters. However, hydrological modelling efforts in GIS are constrained by the limitations in the representation of time in its spatial data ,structures. The SPANS GIS software used in this study provided the capability of linking spatially distributed numerical parameters with corresponding tabulated data through mathematical and statistical expressions while implicitly representing temporality through iterative procedures. Ranjilh PreR/IJ1a1 de Silva W.P. PhD Thesis .1997 Abstract ii Cranfield UNIVERSITY The spatial distribution of land use was identified through the supervised classification of IRS-IA LISS II imagery. Daily rainfall data for a 30 year period and corresponding gauging locations derived from GPS were managed and retrieved through a Lotus 1-23 database. The fog interception component was estimated based on elevation and the monsoon season. Hydrological processes such as interception and evapotranspiration were derived from individual sub models and finally combined within the overall hydrological model structure. The model was run with daily time steps on numerical 'values of each quad cell of the thematic coverage. The information on flow derived from the model was depicted as a series of thematic maps in addition to the time series of numerical values at subcatchment and catchment outlets. The results confirmed that the model is capable of simulating catchment response of the UMCA successfully. The time dimension was accommodated through a senes of non-interactive REXX programmes in developing the customised version of the model. It is concluded that the software architecture of SPANS GIS is capable of accommodating spatiotemporal modelling implicitly in its spatial data structures although changes in the model structure may necessitate considerable reprogramming. Sensitivity of the model for different spatial interpolation techniques was evaluated. Further, sensitivity of the model for the defined hydrological parameters, spatial 'resolution and land use was also assessed. The model is sensitive to land use changes in the catchment and it shows 15-35% annual increase of runoff when forests are converted to grassland. Further studies are required to develop a more detailed set of hydrological parameters for the model. Ranjith Pref1UJlal de Silva W.P. PhD Thesis· 1997 Abstract iii Cranfield UNIVERSITY


Traditional community rules are formally recognized in multiple constitutions across Latin America. Scholars debate the extent to which these practices conform to broader principles of gender equality. A unique institutional feature in the impoverished state of Oaxaca, Mexico, divides municipalities into traditional and party-based governance. We exploit this feature with original survey data and find that rates of female participation in traditional communities are not different when compared to non-traditional ones. We also conduct a survey experiment to explore how perceptions about female leadership change with factual information about female mayors. We find the strongest demonstration effect on women recipient of the conditional cashtransfer program Oportunidades. Our evidence suggests overall that traditional governance is not a relevant dimension to understand female disempowerment, and that entrenched discriminatory practices against women (which exist but are not inherent to traditional rule) are sensitive to community bargains and well-designed policy.


Locally increased porosity of carbonate reservoir rocks may result from acidic fluids that migrated as a pre-oil phase through the reservoir. Here, hydrogeochemical modelling, which is based on the principles of chemical equilibrium thermodynamics, is performed to test such a hypothetical concept. Despite the generic nature of the model, the modelling results give basic and quantitative insights into the mechanisms of calcite dissolution in carbonate reservoirs induced by migrating acidic and corrosive aqueous fluids. The hydrogeochemical batch modelling considers pre-oil-phase aqueous fluids that form by kerogen maturation in siliciclastic source rocks underlying the carbonate reservoir rocks. Although saturated with respect to calcite, migration of such fluids through the carbonate reservoir triggers continuous calcite dissolution along their migration path following a decreasing pressure and temperature regime. One-dimensional reactive transport modelling reveals that thermodynamically controlled chemical re-equilibration among pre-oil-phase fluids, calcite and CO2(g) is the driving force for continuous calcite dissolution along this migration path. This reflects the increasing solubility of calcite in the system 'pre-oil-phase fluids/calcite/CO2(g)' with decreasing pressure and temperature. In consequence, such fluids can preserve their calcite-corrosive character, if they are exposed to continuously decreasing pressure and temperature along their migration path through the reservoir. Supplementary material: The modelling input files to ensure retraceability of our modelling approach and its results are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18802.


To clinically measure blood pressure at extra corporeal bloodlines involves a hazard due to the infection risk and a risk for thrombosis formation. The aim was to design a non-invasive pressure sensor, measuring directly on a tube section. A modified tube cross-section was used to improve sensitivity. Using the developed sensing principle, a consistent relation (r=0.999) was obtained between pressure and output signal. The output was stable and an acceptable drift within the temperature-range. The method shows great promise for applications in monitoring of the dialysis process.


This thesis deals with language-specific patterns in the selection and organization of information (i.e., conceptualization) reflected in the expression of events by monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Previous research on language specificity in event conceptualization shows that speakers of languages with grammatical aspect exhibit fine-grained event segmentation and deictic temporal linkage patterns, whereas speakers of non-aspect languages resort to coarse-grained segmentation patterns and anaphoric linkage. This finding has led to the hypothesis that grammatical aspect induces specific event conceptualization patterns. The overall aim of the current thesis is, first, to test this hypothesis on Spanish and Swedish, and second, to extend this line of research to the domain of bilingualism. The thesis is based on four individual studies: Study I examines monolingual speakers of Spanish and Swedish. The results show that event conceptualization in these languages patterns with the dichotomy +/- grammatical aspect; Study II explores the relationship between endpoint encoding patterns and proficiency with aspectual contrasts in the Spanish of Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. The findings show that the less Spanish-like a participant's endpoint encoding frequencies are, the less sensitive he/she is to aspectual contrasts; Study III explores the degree to which language-specific patterns of segmentation and temporal linking of events are fused/separated in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. The results show that whereas the bilinguals resort to an event segmentation pattern that is midway between the Spanish fine-grained patterns and the Swedish coarse-grained patterns, they exhibit nativelike temporal linking patterns in both Spanish and Swedish; Study IV contextualizes some of the author's studies from a general viewpoint, with the intention of illustrating the fruitfulness of extending the research on event conceptualization to the domain of bilingualism.


In many fields of science researchers are faced with the problem of estimating causal eects from non-experimental data. A key issue is to avoid inconsistent estimators due to confounding by measured or unmeasured covariates, a problem commonly solved by 'adjusting for' a subset of the observed variables. When the data generating process can be represented by a directed acyclic graph, and this graph structure is known, there exist simple graphical procedures for determining which subset of covariates should be adjusted for to obtain consistent estimators of the causal effects. However, when the graph is not known no general and complete procedures for this task are available. In this paper we introduce such a method for linear non-Gaussian models, requiring only partial knowledge about the temporal ordering of the variables: We provide a simple statistical test for inferring whether an estimator of a causal eect is consistent when controlling for a subset of measured covariates, and we present heuristics to search for such a set. We show empirically that this statistical test identifies consistent vs inconsistent estimates, and that the search =


Many options are currently available to treat the symptoms of endometriosis. Of these options, surgery is the only one that actually removes or destroys the endometriosis itself. There seems to be a fair amount of confusion surrounding the issue of which surgical technique (excision, laser vaporization, etc.) is the best method to surgically remove endometriosis.


Abstract Germany represents a new and unconventional actor in the field of energy foreign policy. Based on its reputation as an energy transition frontrunner, it is pursuing a soft power strategy aimed at promoting its Energiewende policy approach abroad. Germany's bilateral energy partnerships, this paper argues, represent the government's central policy instrument for this purpose. After a discussion of the German energy transition as a soft power resource, the paper provides an in-depth empirical analysis of Germany's bilateral energy partnerships. The paper argues that the partnerships have been deliberately designed as instruments for mobilizing the Energiewende narrative as soft power. Linking it to concepts in the soft power debate, it discusses the main channels through which the partnerships aim to boost the attractiveness of German policy solutions and persuade partners to consider their adoption. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for further research on the international political economy of energy.


Maya art and hieroglyphs constitute one of the world's most fascinating, visually striking, and complex systems of expression. Most scholarly interpretations of Maya art and culture have emphasized that this ancient civilization was oriented toward inland centers and preoccupied with the blood of royal lineage and ritual sacrifice. Drawing on recent archaeological discoveries and developments in deciphering Maya glyphs, this groundbreaking volume presents a revisionist reading that shifts the emphasis of interpretation to the mythic power of the sea as the basis of a larger, deeper cultural narrative and history for the Maya. Surrounded by the sea in all directions, the Maya viewed water as a source of both life and danger. Through the artworks presented-including acknowledged masterpieces and many never before exhibited in the United States-readers will gain a new appreciation for water's influence on Maya cosmology, its role in their interpretation of the supernatural, as well as its impact on Maya cross-cultural contacts, trading practices, and power dynamics. Essays by prominent scholars provide an interdisciplinary context for understanding Maya art as well as new interpretations of traditional iconography and symbolism. Accompanying a monumental exhibition comprising almost 100 artworks ranging from carved stone monuments to delicate jade sculptures, this compelling, richly illustrated publication will fundamentally transform the interpretation of Maya art.


Fluctuating asymmetries (left–right differences in symmetric traits) can be negatively related to fitness parameters in a number of biological systems. Hence, it has been suggested that symmetric individuals should outcompete asymmetric individuals during intraspecific agonistic encounters. However, there is a lack of experimental evidence for such a relationship. We investigated the relationship between trait asymmetry (both directional and fluctuating asymmetry) and the outcome of agonistic encounters among size-matched male shore crabs. Our findings indicate that cheliped ('weapon claw') directional asymmetry is not related to the outcome of fights, whereas fluctuating asymmetry in the fifth pereiopod, but not the second pereiopod, is negatively related to the likelihood of winning conspecific aggressive encounters. This relationship is most readily explained by a biomechanical advantage in symmetric individuals, as the fifth pereiopod is likely to be mechanically important in maintaining stability and balance during fighting. There is no evidence that asymmetry (in traits that display fluctuating asymmetry) is related to an intrinsic individual quality factor. None the less, the relative mechanical advantage of low asymmetry may give rise to fitness benefits in symmetric crabs that may have evolutionary consequences.


The aim of this research is to use the porosity property in anodic alumina to produce well-ordered silicon Nanowires for solar cell applications. The study uses a single step anodizing process as a main process in the experiments. Samples produced from a 99.97% purity Aluminum (AL) foil, and others produced from AL-silicon wafers coated by an AL film with different AL thicknesses are used in the study. The study investigates the effects of varying the anodizing conditions (voltage, acid concentration, electrolyte type, and time) on the parameters of the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) including pore diameter and interpore distance. Samples were characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM). Results show a stable performance of both AL foils and AL-silicon wafers in growing silicon Nanowires for solar cell applications.


Swearing is a part of everyday language use. To date it has been infrequently studied, though some recent work on swearing in American English, Australian English and British English has addressed the topic. Nonetheless, there is still no systematic account of swear-words in English. In terms of approaches, swearing has been approached from the points of view of history, lexicography, psycholinguistics and semantics. There have been few studies of swearing based on sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age and social class. Such a study has been difficult in the absence of corpus resources. With the production of the British National Corpus (BNC), a 100,000,000-word balanced corpus of modern British English, such a study became possible. In addition to parts of speech, the corpus is richly annotated with metadata pertaining to demographic features such as age, gender and social class, and textual features such as register, publication medium and domain. While bad language may be related to religion (e.g. Jesus, heaven, hell and damn), sex (e.g. fuck), racism (e.g. nigger), defecation (e.g. shit), homophobia (e.g. queer) and other matters, we will, in this article, examine only the pattern of uses of fuck and its morphological variants, because this is a typical swear-word that occurs frequently in the BNC. This article will build and expand upon the examination of fuck by McEnery et al. (2000) by examining the distribution pattern of fuck within and across spoken and written registers.


Low-frequency turbulence and the resultant cross-field plasma transport in mirror-based systems are studied by means of direct computer simulations of nonlinear plasma dynamics. Under the low-beta assumption the nonlinear dynamics are simulated in a frame of adiabatically reduced one-fluid MHD model. Simulations of self-consistent plasma evolutions have shown formation of large-scale flute-like stochastic vortex structures, which have broad-band frequency and wave-number spectra and are similar to the intermittent vortex-like structures observed in GAMMA 10 experiments. Simulations were performed both for the conventional tandem mirror configuration and for axisymmetric non-paraxial configuration with divertor-like separatrix. Various regimes of plasma confinement with sheared plasma rotation have been modeled and analyzed.


In this paper we attempt to compare the responses of consumers and professionals to questions related to organic food retailing, in order to highlight the differences and the similarities of viewpoints between them and to understand the links between consumer perception of organic food and the sales channel. In order to do this, we analyse the results of three studies, two of them conducted with consumers, the third one with professionals. The first study deals with the links between consumer trust orientations and the frequentation of the different sales channels where organic food can be found. The results of this study conducted in France and Germany show that consumers in organic food stores put trust in their store but are neither the heaviest nor the most trusting consumers. Consumers in hypermarkets or supermarkets do not really trust the store, and only really trust the label. In the second study, respondents were asked what their preferred outlet for organic products would be and why. Results show that organic food consumers like being something more than an anonymous consumer when shopping. They seem to appreciate markets particularly, and appear to attach no particular value to organic food stores, nor to the acknowledged greater convenience of shopping in supermarkets. This study also raises interesting questions relating to the experience of purchasing in terms of shop location, image and atmosphere, and factors that contribute to consumer trust in organic foods. The third study is based upon two surveys (autumn 2003 and autumn 2004) among organic food stores in France, on market development and on actors' perception of their situation and their customers. According to shopkeepers, customers of organic food stores are looking more for quality and competence, than for attractive prices, and attach more and more value to traceability and trustworthiness. This paper shows important similarities of viewpoints between consumers and organic food stores shopkeepers, and gives researchers and professionals a better insight into the links between consumer perception of organic food and the sales channel.


The first application of choice experiments as an environmental valuation method in Germany clearly demonstrates the potential of this method for the valuation of agriculture's multifunctionality. Choice experiments are a reasonable enhancement of the conjoint analysis as they are capable of calculating the theoretically correct welfare measures in the form of implicit prices. In combination with business and ecological models this allows for the comprehensive valuation of agriculture's multifunctionality in the sense, that in addition to the supply or cost side of land use scenarios the demand or benefit side is accounted for. In this study the integrated ecological and economical valuation of land use scenarios was demonstrated for two different scenarios. The welfare changes for the regional population due to changes in the quality or quantity of several landscape functions like drinking water quality, biodiversity, food production and landscape aesthetics were calculated. The inclusion of both supply and demand in this cost-benefit study is an important step forward for the development of sustainable land use concepts.


Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a familiar field of practice, particularly in English-speaking and Northern European nations, but now emerging too in countries such as Italy and France which have traditionally followed more community‐ and offender-oriented paths in crime prevention; and in Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. Although worthy of support, CPTED does have some serious limitations, which may limit its theoretical and empirical sharpness, practical relevance and its lasting adoption; and may even introduce harmful side-effects. So 'old hands' and 'new hands' alike need to proceed with some caution. The idea behind this thematic issue of EJCPR is to support the concept of CPTED, and to respect the practical experience that has built up over the years, but to subject the language, the methodology, the theory, the detailed evidence and the working practice to constructive criticism. The intention, too, is to indicate directions in which CPTED should update and evolve as a practical but rigorous and evidence-based discipline. (Evidence of impact on crime of CPTED programmes is not covered here although equally important to the future of the approach.) In this introduction I will very briefly define and describe the basic principles of CPTED, as they are now; identify some of the main problems and limitations of CPTED; suggest some strategic ways in which CPTED and its component concepts could evolve and improve; look ahead to the papers in this issue which take things forward in quite diverse ways; and finish with a proposed redefinition of CPTED. Ideally the debate will not stop with this issue but continue elsewhere, contributing to a much-needed reinvigoration of the field. Eur J Crim Policy Res (2011) 17:1–5 DOI 10.1007/s10610-010-9137-4


Research on the Semantic Web and Web/Grid resource description, discovery and composition is booming but there is currently little effort on a systematic and integrated approach to the management of resources' Semantic Metadata (SMD), nor on key tools that add, store and reuse SMD. In this paper we propose a generic framework for managing resource SMD, in which ontologies are used for metadata modeling and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for semantic representation. Generated resource SMD are archived in a knowledge repository enhanced with Description Logic (DL) based reasoning capability. A raft of tools, mechanisms and APIs are developed to support SMD management lifecycle, including metadata generation, semantic annotation, knowledge storage and semantic reuse. Both the framework and its supporting technologies have been applied to a large existing e-Science project, which has produced a working resource management prototype. While SMD can be exploited in many ways with regards to resource discovery, provenance and trust, we illustrate their usage through a knowledge advisor that assists resource assembly and configuration in the context of engineering design search and optimisation.


Achieving high performance on stencil computations poses a number of challenges on modern architectures. The optimization strategy varies significantly across architectures, types of stencils, and types of applications. The standard approach to adapting stencil computations to different architectures, used by both compilers and application programmers, is through the use of iteration space tiling, whereby the data footprint of the computation and its computation partitioning are adjusted to match the memory hierarchy and available parallelism of different platforms. In this paper, we explore an alternative performance portability strategy for stencils, a data layout library for stencils called bricks, that adapts data footprint and parallelism through fine-grained data blocking. Bricks are designed to exploit the inherent multi-dimensional spatial locality of stencils, facilitating improved code generation that can adapt to CPUs or GPUs, and reducing pressure on the memory system. We demonstrate that bricks are performance-portable across CPU and GPU architectures and afford performance advantages over various tiling strategies, particularly for modern multi-stencil and high-order stencil computations. For a range of stencil computations, we achieve high performance on both the Intel Knights Landing (Xeon Phi) and Skylake (Xeon) CPUs as well as the NVIDIA P100 (Pascal) GPU delivering up to a 5x speedup against tiled code.


That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated with its under use. We then offer a high-level view of the emerging advantages for organisations of taking an ethical approach to developing and deploying AI. Finally, we introduce a set of five principles which should guide the development and deployment of AI technologies. The development of laws, policies and best practices for seizing the opportunities and minimizing the risks posed by AI technologies would benefit from building on ethical frameworks such as the one offered here.


AbstractSeismic diffractions may play an important role in seismic interpretation because they characterize geologic objects that might not be visible for conventional seismic attribute analysis. Diffractivity may be caused by, and consequently may define, tectonic dislocations (faults and fractures), lithologic variations, and fluid saturation within rocks. We have tied seismic diffractions extracted from vertical seismic profiling (VSP) data and borehole logging, from which we recognized the reasons that were responsible for diffractivity of the strata. First, we processed a multisource multicomponent VSP data set to extract seismic diffractions and constructed diffraction images of the strata for all three of the VSP data components. Then, we performed joint analysis of well logs and diffractions to obtain petrophysical attributes associated with diffraction images. We divided the rock succession into several units, which have different diffraction properties. We identified compacted rock, alternating ...


Often we discuss about student's educational needs and wishes. What about teacher's needs and/or wishes in terms of educational system functional rules? Simply the teachers should sometimes use paper and students should always use computers or others devices for the same material or task? We think not. But we estimate they both needs a minimal package of teaching and learning tools for a well-structured learning management system (LMS) that will compose a reliable and decent virtual learning environment. Successfully distance learning imply a well-organized pedagogical approach and, subsequently, a structured learning environment. In this perspective, if we struggle to improve the results, we consider that both teachers' and students' perspective must be taken into account. We agree that the students must have all the tools that they need to learn. But for this purpose, the teachers should also have the essential tools for managing the learning process. If we demand why the LMS's are not entirely accepted as good learning environments, a good reasons seems to be even the lack of this minimal technical tools for managing teaching-learning processes. This paper emphasizes the teachers' experience of the most utilized learning management systems (LMS), in both technical and pedagogical perspective. First, in technical perspective, we focus on the strengths and weakness of some commonly used LMSs: Moodle, Blackboard, Google Drive and Google Scholar, Sakai, Joomla LMS, Wordpress LMS. Second, we struggle about pedagogical demands for an ideal LMS: we outlined some of the most useful tools for teacher as didactic process manager, as they result from a survey on some existing software applications (the most used LMS's). We tried to propose the most necessary tools for teachers and students in order to cover the entire teaching and learning process. Also, we propose an "ideal" LMS, completed with functionalities imposed by the pedagogical and administrative norms.


Acquiring cheap, moving video was impossible in a vacuum environment, due to camera overheating. This overheating is brought on by the lack of cooling media in vacuum. A water-jacketed camera cooler enclosure machined and assembled from copper plate and tube has been developed. The camera cooler (see figure) is cup-shaped and cooled by circulating water or nitrogen gas through copper tubing. The camera, a store-bought "spy type," is not designed to work in a vacuum. With some modifications the unit can be thermally connected when mounted in the cup portion of the camera cooler. The thermal conductivity is provided by copper tape between parts of the camera and the cooled enclosure. During initial testing of the demonstration unit, the camera cooler kept the CPU (central processing unit) of this video camera at operating temperature. This development allowed video recording of an in-progress test, within a vacuum environment.


Introduction In 2003 one of the authors of this article visited a historically disadvantaged university in South Africa where a colleague – a well known South African specialist on ubuntu – lectured in the Philosophy department at that time. The author gave a presentation on Genomics and Africa in one of the lecture rooms of the School of Molecular and Life Sciences of this university. On the wall outside the lecture hall there was a show case, containing a brochure of the school that stated:


Agriculture is the mainstay of the Zimbabwean economy and land is the key resource in agricultural production. During the colonial era in Zimbabwe, land was distributed along racial lines, approximately 4660 large scale commercial farms mainly white owned occupy 11.2 million ha and about 6 million black smallholder farmers occupy 16.4 million ha in mainly low agricultural potential areas (UNDP, 1998). Resolving the land issue is arguably one of the greatest challenges that face the Mugabe government. Since independence, the government has been undertaking programmes to reallocate land mainly from the white large-scale commercial fanners to the black smallholder fanners to address the inequities of the past. The objective of this paper is to review the progress to date. The paper begins with a description of land distribution over time and move on to review the land acquired and reallocated by the government since 1980. It also reviews the legislative and institutional framework and government financing of the land redistribution and resettlement programmes


Abstract This paper focuses on the use of concretely felt experience in phenomenological methodology and theory construction. Using the example of a stepwise process of theory making called Thinking at the Edge (Gendlin, 2004), the author shows how experience functions in the creation of a new theory on the self-as-becoming. In the process, he attempts to demonstrate how the ongoing work relating to creating a new theory of self is germane to phenomenology. The paper draws on the major philosophical work of Eugene Gendlin (1962 & 2004) in his development of "The Philosophy of the Implicit" (POI), and the two distinct practices, Focusing (1982) and Thinking at the Edge (2004), which grew out of it. This philosophy forms the theoretical basis upon which the assertion is made that experience that is directly referred to can be utilized as the core of a method in the explication of theory. Two challenges facing phenomenological researchers and theorists who desire to utilize felt experience in their work are addressed, namely (1) the fact that the intimately felt aspect underlying the creation of new ideas is basically hidden from the view of others and is thus not verifiable in the usual way, and (2) the lack of a larger public language for articulating the process and progress that follows concretely from felt experience. It is argued that Thinking at the Edge provides scientists or specialists in any field, including phenomenologists, with a means whereby they can explicitly use felt experience in their work. It also opens the way for fresh theoretical language, of a kind characterized by reflexivity of felt experience, within the broader public language of the various fields, in the process specifically demonstrating how theory instances and exceeds itself.


This review is biennially produced by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). It describes the environment within which the transport sector is developing and the principal challenges that this environment poses to governments, the transport industry and society at large. The publication also focuses on tracing the significant development of roads, railways, shipping, ports, inland waterways and air transport industries and infrastructure in the region. In addition, it considers the changing delivery mechanisms across all transport sectors and discusses urban transport issues. Finally, the review examines the process of globalization, trade agreements related to transport, regionalism, collocation of production transport facilities, as well as intermodal transport systems.


We present an approximate step-index waveguide model for the study of lithium-niobate (LiNbO3 ) electrooptic (EO) long-period waveguide grating filters. The model takes into account the non-uniform spatial distributions of the EO coefficient and the applied electric field. Using this model, we analyze in detail the effects of the grating and waveguide parameters on the performance of the filter with the objective of identifying a set of optimal design parameters for the realization of an efficient filter. Guided by the results from the analysis, we fabricated a 12-mm-long EO grating, which produced a 24-dB rejection band at a driving voltage of 49 V.