Climate change research has often been critiqued for focussing on abstract impacts far into the future that are not perceived and understood in the context of daily life. This case proposes the use of life history interviewing as a methodological approach to study how people perceive and negotiate multiple risks to their lives and livelihoods (one of which may be climate variability) in highly dynamic contexts such as dryland areas. The case examines vulnerability to climate change (among other risks) at household and intrahousehold levels to uncover how personal attributes such as caste, age, and gender, as well as contextual factors such as reduced natural resources and socio-political trajectories shape people's daily lives, their livelihood choices, and aspirations for the future. Using research conducted in two districts in Southern India, I demonstrate how life histories can expand the existing methodological toolkit available to social scientists working on climate change vulnerability and contribute to understanding the temporality inherent in livelihood decisions, the often-intangible aspirations that motivate people's choices, and how household responses are tapestries of negotiations made within their immediate and larger environment.


If you are a researcher or student with experience in multiple linear regression and want to learn about logistic regression, this book is for you! Informal and nontechnical, this book both explains the theory behind logistic regression and looks at all the practical details involved in its implementation using SAS. Several social science real-world examples are included in full detail. The book also explains the differences and similarities among the many generalizations of the logistic regression model. The following topics are covered: binary logit analysis, logit analysis of contingency tables, multinomial logit analysis, ordered logit analysis, discrete-choice analysis with the PHREG procedure, and Poisson regression. Other highlights include discussions of how to use the GENMOD procedure to do log-linear analysis and GEE estimation for longitudinal binary data. Only basic knowledge of the SAS DATA step is assumed


This article explores how differences in scientist and citizen mental models regarding logging in a US national forest can lead the two groups to support divergent policies, although they agree about the goals that logging policies should achieve in the forest. A case-study methodology of logging in the Chattahoochee National Forest in the United States is used. The case study is informed by two methods: in-depth interviews and a written questionnaire. The in-depth interviews were conducted with both scientists and citizens to elicit their mental models regarding logging in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Upon completion of the in-depth interviews, respondents were asked to complete a written questionnaire that elicited demographic information, as well as information regarding management goals for the forest. We conclude that scientists and citizens agree about the management goals for the Chattahoochee National Forest, but differences in the mental models of the two groups regarding the scientific effects of logging cause disagreement about the optimal logging policy option required to achieve those goals. The article considers the implications of the case study findings for risk communication and public involvement in environmental decision-making.


With advances in CMOS- technology and sub-micron process, leakage power dissipation has become a critical design metric. To incorporate more functions, designs are getting complex, thereby increases leakage power dissipation. Low power design objective requires early exploration and estimation. In this paper, we present the power estimation models for ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) based designs at the C-level of abstraction. The method includes analysis and extraction of the application specific information from the LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine) bit-code; which further applies to train the neural network. The trained model is applied in the estimation of the leakage power. Estimation of design power using our models is compared to the implemented measurement, which demonstrates its accuracy. In addition, the proposed methodology is significantly quicker and abolishes the need of synthesis based exploration.


Bayesian model comparison involves the evaluation of the marginal likelihood, the expectation of the likelihood under the prior distribution. Typically, this high-dimensional integral over all model parameters is approximated using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Thermodynamic integration is a popular method to estimate the marginal likelihood by using samples from annealed posteriors. Here we show that there exists a robust and flexible alternative. The new method estimates the density of states, which counts the number of states associated with a particular value of the likelihood. If the density of states is known, computation of the marginal likelihood reduces to a onedimensional integral. We outline a maximum likelihood procedure to estimate the density of states from annealed posterior samples. We apply our method to various likelihoods and show that it is superior to thermodynamic integration in that it is more flexible with regard to the annealing schedule and the family of bridging distributions. Finally, we discuss the relation of our method with Skilling's nested sampling.


Listed property trusts (LPTs), the Australian version of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) make up a large proportion of the Australian investment market. Currently $6Bn are invested in Australian LPTs. Since their emergence in the 1970s growth in this type of investment has been exponential and in recent years the business models employed by the LPTs have included much higher levels of gearing. This paper examines this market against the background of the sub-prime crisis emerging from the US financial markets and seeks to identify future developments in the Australian LPT market, and the repercussions, if any, of this crisis. Since December 2007 many of the leading Australian LPTs have shown negative returns in excess of 20% - with a number who appear to have significant overseas exposure well in excess of this percentage. The market capitalisation of many of the LPTs have declined well below the stated net asset backing of the funds. Since December 2007 the market capitalisation of many of the LPTs has fallen dramatically as the markets react to the sub prime crisis. The paper will review that changing market capitalisation of LPTs compared with the broader changes in the Australian Stock Exchange and compare those changes with change in the underlying value of commercial property in Australia through the use of secondary data. It is expected that the impact on consumer / investor confidence due to issues such as the sub prime crisis, the higher level of gearing adopted by many LPTs, the shorter term loans adopted, the apparent lack of disclosure of short and longer term finance and the valuation basis adopted has meant that there has been a market sell off of these securities.


In this paper, we conducted a comprehensive survey of the effects of different frame rates (FRs) on human performance and reviewed more than 50 studies and summarized them in the areas of psychomotor performance, perceptual performance, behavioral effects, and subjective perception. Overall, there seems to be strong support for a threshold of around 15 Hz for many tasks, including those that are psychomotor and perceptual in nature. Less impressive yet acceptable performance may be accomplished at around 10 Hz for many tasks. Subjective reactions to the quality and watchability of videos seem to support rates of 5 Hz, although videos presented at 15 Hz and above are generally more widely preferred. These generalizations regarding superior and acceptable FRs may also be subject to the effects of several moderating factors such as display characteristics, nature of the tasks, viewing condition, additional cues, and user experience.


Terri Ochiagha, in her paper "African Literature and the Role of the Nigerian Government College Umuahia," discusses how the college contributed towards nurturing the talent of some of the most relevant authors in African literary history. With the help of the testimonies of these authors in interviews, correspondence, essays, autobiographies, and with the aid of literary critics and scholars who realized the role the Umuahia College played in creating a literary elite, Ochiagha analyses this literary phenomenon and takes us on a journey through the school's literary ambience: its library and the novels which were later to prompt the authors' writing back to the Empire, the school magazine that first provided the alumni with a space in which to develop their writing and editing skills, the rising nationalistic fight for the creation of a legitimate university in Nigeria, the suppression of African history from the school curricula, and the literary works written by these authors in which their experience at the college is reflected. It all goes to prove how a school founded on tenets of the British system of elite schools went on to be the seedbed of some of the icons of African literature in English. Terri Ochiagha, "African Literature and the Role of the Nigerian Government College Umuahia" page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.1 (2007):


Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers Vol. 167, 2002 contains abstracts for all ASCE journal and periodical papers and technical notes, Civil Engineering - ASCE feature articles, special publications, and Manuals and Reports on engineering Practice published by the Society during 2002. In addition, the President's annual address to the Society, abstracts for all papers published by ASCE that won 2002 awards or prizes, and memoirs of distinguished deceased members are presented. A Subject Index and an Author Index are provided to help the user locate an abstract by subject or author.


We review and discuss methods for including the role of point defects in calculations of the free energy, composition and phase stability of elements and compounds. Our principle aim is to explain and to reconcile, with examples, the perspectives on this problem that are often strikingly different between exponents of CALPHAD, and others working in the overlapping fields of physics, chemistry and materials science. Current methodologies described here include the compound energy formalism of CALPHAD, besides the rather different but related canonical and grand‐canonical formalisms. We show how the calculation of appropriate defect formation energies should be formulated, how they are included in the different formalisms and in turn how these yield equilibrium defect concentrations and their contribution to free energies and chemical potentials. Furthermore, we briefly review the current state‐of‐the‐art and challenges in determining point defect properties from first‐principles calculations as well as from experimental measurements.


Much social gerontological research has focused on partner loss in later life and how it affects social, emotional and practical exchanges between generations. In this paper we instead ask how a newintimate relationship in later life affects these inter-‐generational exchanges. The results are based both on qualitative interviews with 28 Swedes (63–91 years) either dating or living in new relationships initiated after the age of 60 (marriage, cohabitation, LAT), and a quantitative survey to 60–90 year old Swedes (n=1225). In the interviews we found that the informants described changes in what we conceptualize as the 'relationship chain' –a hierarchy in social and care responsibilities–where the new partner stepped in at the very front of the chain. The follow-‐up survey confirmed a hierarchy of dependencies, where partners tend to come first, followed by children, friends and the state. The interviews further showed that the informants recurrently described their partners as a resource for their own autonomy as well as that of their children and friends. We interpret these findings in light of an individualist culture of independence that characterizes the Nordic countries, aided by a strong welfare state, involving a strong ethic of not being a burden, even to your own children.


Sorbent-sorbate interactions heavily retard the movement of P during water flow in most soils. The effect of soil/solution ratio on sorption kinetics and movement of P during unsteady unsaturated water flow were investigated. A series of batch experiments with soil/solution ratios ranging from 0.1 to 6.4 Mg m -3 were conducted to obtain sorption rate coefficients. Aqueous P solutions (100-800 g m -3 ) were applied at two constant fluxes (1.4 x 10 -6 and 6.9 x 10 -6 m s -1 ) to columns of an air-dry spodic soil. The experimental data were simulated with a parallel two-site nonlinear, nonequilibrium transport model during unsteady, unsaturated water flow. Phosphorous sorption followed Freundlich-type reversible kinetics with a very fast reaction occurring in Type I sites and a slow reaction occurring in Type II sites. The sorption reaction of P in batch experiments was satisfactorily described by the model but the rate coefficients varied with the soil/solution ratio. Experimentally determined rate coefficients described P movement in column experiments at an influx rate of 6.9 x 10 -6 m s -1 , but not for the slower influx rate of 1.4 x 10 -6 m s -1 , hence calibration of rate coefficients was necessary for describing P movement during the slower water influx. We developed a technique for determining rate coefficients under water saturated-unsaturated conditions that provides a way to validate P transport models during transient, unsaturated water flow.


The paper proposes the durability prediction method for external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS), which could be applied in cold and wet climate regions. This improved method is based on the international and nowadays applicable standards for systems service life assessment (ETAG 004, ISO 15462), and completes them with other necessary impact criteria. This study examines the main climate exposures and how these impacts reproduced in the laboratories. The paper analyses the extreme air temperature and rainfall changes, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UV) in Lithuania. The analysis is based on evaluation of daily and yearly data recorded by meteorological stations. The aim of the research is to compose the accelerated ageing cycle for ETICS taking into account the characteristics of building materials and identifying the potential degradation factors and indicators. In order to establish the combinations of impacts in ageing cycles, it is necessary the adequate evaluation of intensity of environmental exposures of a certain locality. The basic goal is to create the reliable accelerated ageing cycle which would be as similar as natural ageing.


Mobile telemedical applications are of crucial importance today as they do offer the potential to improve the quality of the health care related services. It has been proven that the leading cause of several illnesses and diseases are stress and the lack of fitness practices. Based on that, a system capable of estimating and monitoring both stress and fitness levels without a physical consultation of a medical specialist is presented in this work. A correlation between physiological parameters and stress or fitness is explored in the developed intelligent expert system. In order to enable the implementation of such a complex system, a flexible Telematics Platform is conceived. This Telematics Platform does guarantee a secure data communication involving encryption and a suitable visualization of the fitness and stress assessment results on both the patient's mobile phone and on a web-based portal. Moreover, the platform is scalable and can therefore be easily extended in order to support different kinds of telemedical applications. The system presented in this paper does enable the efficient and cost-effective stress and fitness monitoring of patients while being at home or practicing their daily jobs with their subsequent eventual mobility.


The dominance of conduction and the negligible effect of gravity, and hence free convection, are verified in the case of microscale heat sources surrounded by air at atmospheric pressure. A list of temperature-dependent heat transfer coefficients is provided. In contrast to previous approaches based on free convection, supplied coefficients converge with increasing temperature. Instead of creating a new external function for the definition of boundary conditions via conductive heat transfer, convective thin film coefficients already embedded in commercial finite element software are utilized under a constant heat flux condition. This facilitates direct implementation of coefficients, i.e. the list supplied in this work can directly be plugged into commercial software. Finally, the following four-step methodology is proposed for modeling: (i) determination of the thermal time constant of a specific microactuator, (ii) determination of the boundary layer size corresponding to this time constant, (iii) extraction of the appropriate heat transfer coefficients from a list provided and (iv) application of these coefficients as boundary conditions in thermomechanical finite element simulations. An experimental procedure is established for the determination of the thermal time constant, the first step of the proposed methodology. Based on conduction, the proposed method provides a physically sound solution to heat transfer issues encountered in the modeling of thermal microactuators.


High voltage insulators are essential for the reliable performance of electric power systems. Polymeric insulators are widely used as outdoor H.V insulators. In the presence of heavy polluted and wet condition, resistance to vandalism and high dielectric strength voltage. Polymer insulators particularly those made of Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer and silicone rubber are increasingly being used today. Blending of two polymers is an attractive way to develop a new material combining the best properties of these two materials. In 1986 the first alloy of silicone rubber/EPDM was prepared. Today the most widely used insulators weather shed materials are silicone rubber /EPDM blends. This paper aims to improve silicone rubber /EPDM blends electrical properties by adding SiR to EPDM in different percentages. Also aims to study dielectric strength and tracking resistance under several conditions of SiR/ EPDM blend samples. Then trying to find an appropriate weight percentage composition of such blend in order to enhance the dielectric strength and tracking resistance in different conditions.


An approximation for the distribution of time delays experienced by a customer in a network of queues is presented. Approximate analytical models are necessary since exact solutions are only available for a very restricted class of networks, and are too complex computationally to be viable in practice. Approximations have so far often proved inadequate, particularly for closed networks with first come first served queueing disciplines. We also prove that the correlation between the sojourn times at successive servers on a customer's path in a closed queueing network with exponential servers is negative.


Models of iterated computation, such as (completely) iterative monads, often depend on a notion of guardedness, which guarantees unique solvability of recursive equations and requires roughly that recursive calls happen only under certain guarding operations. On the other hand, many models of iteration do admit unguarded iteration. Solutions are then no longer unique, and in general not even determined as least or greatest fixpoints, being instead governed by quasi-equational axioms. Monads that support unguarded iteration in this sense are called (complete) Elgot monads. Here, we propose to equip (Kleisli categories of) monads with an abstract notion of guardedness and then require solvability of abstractly guarded recursive equations; examples of such abstractly guarded pre-iterative monads include both iterative monads and Elgot monads, the latter by deeming any recursive definition to be abstractly guarded. Our main result is then that Elgot monads are precisely the iteration-congruent retracts of abstractly guarded iterative monads, the latter being defined as admitting unique solutions of abstractly guarded recursive equations; in other words, models of unguarded iteration come about by quotienting models of guarded iteration.


In this paper, the scientific outcomes of the 2016 Data Fusion Contest organized by the Image Analysis and Data Fusion Technical Committee of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society are discussed. The 2016 Contest was an open topic competition based on a multitemporal and multimodal dataset, which included a temporal pair of very high resolution panchromatic and multispectral Deimos-2 images and a video captured by the Iris camera on-board the International Space Station. The problems addressed and the techniques proposed by the participants to the Contest spanned across a rather broad range of topics, and mixed ideas and methodologies from the remote sensing, video processing, and computer vision. In particular, the winning team developed a deep learning method to jointly address spatial scene labeling and temporal activity modeling using the available image and video data. The second place team proposed a random field model to simultaneously perform coregistration of multitemporal data, semantic segmentation, and change detection. The methodological key ideas of both these approaches and the main results of the corresponding experimental validation are discussed in this paper.


The cultural turn in copyright law identified authorship as a rhetorical construct employed by economic interests to strengthen claims to property rights. Grassroots intellectual property political movements have been seen as both a means of countering these interests' everexpanding proprietary control of knowledge and establishing a more public regarding copyright system. This Article examines one of the most notable intellectual property political movements, the emergence of late nineteenth-century agitation to provide copyright protection for foreign authors as a social movement. It places this political and legal activism within the larger framework of Progressive Era reform. During this period, activists promoted the idea of the public — and not simply the author — as primary to the workings of American copyright. The framing of the purposes of copyright, the appeal to a broader public, and the complex negotiations surrounding the passage of an international copyright act after a long period of gestation was formative to the creation of modern United States copyright law. Ironically, the movement for international copyright also sharpened the identification of interest groups. The first modern American comprehensive copyright legislation, the 1909 Copyright Act, was drafted by gathering together these groups for negotiations remarkably similar in style to those which led to the protection of the rights of foreign authors — but which would strongly embrace a proprietary model.


Based on the analysis of 20 different monocot and eudicot species, we propose that the centromeric distribution of the phosphorylated histone H2AThr120 is evolutionary highly conserved across species with mono- and holocentric chromosomes. Therefore, antibodies recognizing the phosphorylated threonine 120 of the histone H2A can serve as a universal marker for the cytological detection of centromeres of mono- and holokinetic plant species. In addition, super resolution microscopy of signals specific to the centromere-specific histone H3 variant CENH3 and to H2AThr120ph revealed that these histone variants are incorporated into different nucleosomes, which form distinct, partly intermingled chromatin domains. This specific arrangement of both histone variants suggests different centromeric functions during the cell cycle.


ABSTRACT The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is known to have experienced widespread retreat over the last century. Information on outlet glacier dynamics, prior to this, are limited due to both a lack of observations and a paucity of mapped or mappable deglacial evidence which restricts our understanding of centennial to millennial timescale dynamics of the GrIS. Here we present glacial geomorphological mapping, for upper Godthåbsfjord, covering 5800 km2 at a scale of 1:92,000, using a combination of ASTER GDEM V2, a medium-resolution DEM (error <10 m horizontal and <6 m vertical accuracy), panchromatic orthophotographs and ground truthing. This work provides a detailed geomorphological assessment for the area, compiled as a single map, comprising of moraines, meltwater channels, streamlined bedrock, sediment lineations, ice-dammed lakes, trimlines, terraces, gullied sediment and marine limits. Whilst some of the landforms have been previously identified, the new information presented here improves our understanding of ice margin behaviour and can be used for future numerical modelling and landform dating programmes. Data also form the basis for palaeoglaciological reconstructions and contribute towards understanding of the centennial to millennial timescale record of this sector of the GrIS.


This comprehensive book considers new and emerging IP issues from a development perspective, examining recent trends and developments in this area. Presenting an overview of the IP landscape in general, the contributing authors subsequently narrow their focus, providing wide-ranging case studies from countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America on topical issues in the current IP discourse. These include the impact of IP on the pharmaceutical sector, the protection of life forms and traditional knowledge, geographical indications, access to knowledge and public research institutes, and the role of competition policy. The challenges developing countries face in the TRIPS-Plus world are also explored in detail.


his paper deal with aggregation of AR(1) micro variables driven by a common and idiosyncratic shock with random coefficients. We provide a rigorous analysis, based on results on sums of r.v.'s with a possibly finite first moment, of the aggregate variance and spectral density, as the number of micro units tends to infinity. If the AR coefficients lie below a critical away from unity, the aggregate process may exhibit infinite variance and long memory. Surprisingly, if the key parameter of the density function of the AR coefficients lies below a critical value (high density near unity), common and idiosyncratic components have the same importance in explaining aggregate variance, whereas the usual result, i.e. a vanishing importance of the idiosyncratic component, is obtained when the parameter lies above the critical value (low density near unity). Empirical analysis relative to major U.S. macroeconomic series, both in previous literature and in this paper, provides estimates of the parameter below the critical value.


Foliar application of phosphite, a systemic fungicide, to Phytophthora cinnamomi infected plants results in the control of disease symptoms and a reduction in the spread and impact of the pathogenic in native plant communities. Calcium ions have also been shown to affect the interaction between Phytophthora species and their plant hosts and to reduce the impact and spread of disease caused by soil‐borne Phytophthora species. Calcium may enhance plant defence mechanisms or interfere with sporangial production, zoospore release and encystment on plant roots. Phosphite has been shown to have similar effects. The addition of calcium salts to soil inhibits the infection of plants by P. cinnamomi, and there is a correlation between the incidence in dieback disease caused by P. cinnamomi in natural ecosystems and the distribution of calcareous soil. This study used a susceptible Australian native plant species Banksia leptophilia, to investigate whether the disease control of P. cinnamomi by phosphite could be augmented by soil supplementation with calcium sulphate. The results showed that the effects of applying both calcium and phosphite were synergistic, and that the addition of calcium sulphate to the soil augmented and significantly prolonged the effect of foliar phosphite application. A mechanism involving the disruption of intracellular calcium signatures caused by phosphite induced accumulation of pyrophosphate in the cytosol of P. cinnamomi is discussed.


Objectives: Substantial evidence showing an association between type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cerebral atrophy, cognitive impairment, and dementia is accumulating. However, relatively little is known about the subclinical effects of high plasma glucose levels within the normal range. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between plasma glucose levels and hippocampal and amygdalar atrophy in a sample of 266 cognitively healthy individuals free of T2D, aged 60–64 years, taking part in a longitudinal study of aging. Methods: Fasting plasma glucose was assessed at wave 1. Hippocampal and amygdalar volumes were manually traced on 1.5 T MRI scans collected at wave 1 and at wave 2 4 years later. General linear model analyses were used to assess the relationship between plasma glucose and incident medial temporal lobe atrophy after controlling for a range of sociodemographic and health variables. Results: Plasma glucose levels were found to be significantly associated with hippocampal and amygdalar atrophy and accounted for 6%–10% in volume change after controlling for age, sex, body mass index, hypertension, alcohol, and smoking. Conclusions: High plasma glucose levels within the normal range (<6.1 mmol/L) were associated with greater atrophy of structures relevant to aging and neurodegenerative processes, the hippocampus and amygdala. These findings suggest that even in the subclinical range and in the absence of diabetes, monitoring and management of plasma glucose levels could have an impact on cerebral health. If replicated, this finding may contribute to a reevaluation of the concept of normal blood glucose levels and the definition of diabetes.


The marine green macroalgal genus Ulva (Chlorophyta) requires the presence of a combination of regulatory morphogenetic compounds released by their associated epiphytic bacteria in addition to nutritional parameters. The activity of algal growthand morphogenesispromoting factors (AGMPFs) derived from bacteria was determined in a land-based integrated multitrophic aquaculture (IMTA) system of fish and macroalgae (located at the coastal lagoon Ria de Aveiro, Portugal) using a standardised bioassay with axenic cultures of Ulva mutabilis during a snapshot study. The study thus informs aspects of various potential aquaculture− environment interactions. It was observed that both the water from the lagoon (external to the farm system) and the water from the fish pond (input for algae cultures) could completely restore the normal growth and morphology of the macroalga under axenic conditions. The results highlight the presence of a sufficient chemical cocktail of AGMPFs in this IMTA system required for growth and morphogenesis of the sea lettuce Ulva spp. In addition, the water from fish farming increased the nutrient availability (nitrate and ammonium) needed for macroalgae production at low concentrations of metal contaminants. Interestingly, the abundances of known morphogenesis-inducing bacteria (e.g. Maribacter mutabilis, Sulfitobacter spp.) were enriched in the Ulva aquaculture water compared to the water from the lagoon. We thus conclude that sustainable growth and development of Ulva spp. can benefit from multitrophic aquaculture systems and shallow-water systems, due to the naturally enriched AGMPFs and their in situ production by bacteria in intensive algal aquacultures.


Rise in temperature is one of the predicted impacts of climate change with significant implications on water resources management. An attempt has been made to calculate the water requirement of crops in different agro-ecological zones of Palakkad district in humid tropical Kerala using the CROPWAT 8.0 model. Sensitivity analysis was done for a simulated rise in temperature from 0.5 to 3.0 °C keeping other parameters the same. The analysis showed that the total crop water requirement of all the major crops, like coconut, paddy and banana, increased with rising temperature thereby increasing the simulated irrigation water demand. The gross water demand inclusive of irrigation, domestic and industries will be 1,496 Mm3. The simulated gross water demand for an increase in temperature of 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 °C will be 1,523, 1,791, 1,822 and 1,853 Mm3, respectively. The maximum utilizable water resource available in the district is only 1,579 Mm3 and better water management, focusing particularly on improving the irrigation efficiency, has to be adopted to cater for the demands of the user sectors under changing climate scenario. A wide spectrum of climate change scenarios is also discussed in the paper along with guidelines for the future management of water resources.


Anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation impacts are no longer a worry for the distant future but a real concern for the present. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the poor, who often live by fragile ecosystems, are amongst the most vulnerable and exposed to the impacts of climate change. For these populations, climate related risks exacerbate other stressors and negatively impact livelihoods, security, and health. For low lying SIDS in particular, an additional fear is that climate change endangers their whole way
of life, with their nationhood and culture being slowly engulfed by the approaching sea.
Whilst the need to adapt is apparent, adaptation funding and motivating people to take up adaptive behaviours is a serious challenge. According to the ODI, financing climate change adaptation in the developing world can cost upwards of US$ 100-450 billion a year. Building adaptive capacity through cost effective solutions such as microloans for adaptive investments can be a promising strategy. By utilising the case study of Fiji, this Thesis attempts to unpack the cognitive drivers of climate change adaptive stated investment behaviour through a survey-based experiment (N=205). The prominent empirical method employed in this thesis was mediation analysis and specifically path analysis whereby the model specified is driven by theory. The choice of this method is justified through a comparison with multinomial logit.
In the first instance, the antecedents of climate adaptive stated behaviour and the impact of information on subsequent stated behaviour were assessed through the framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. In addition perceptions to climate change in Fiji were explored through guided interviews (N=50). Overall positive attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control towards conservation and adaptation positively influenced intention to invest in adaptive strategies though intention only significantly influenced subsequent stated behaviour when information on climate change adaptation was provided.
Next, the efficacy of incentives in engaging adaptive investments was assessed. The results indicated that the use of 'green' incentives (whereby loans are contingent on ecosystem impacts) was most conducive to the choice of adaptive investments over nonadaptive. In addition behavioural intention significantly mediated stated investment behaviour under the green incentive condition – which it is argued may show that such incentives crowd-in internal motives for engaging in environmentally protective behaviours. We also found that ethnicity was a strong positive moderator of behavioural antecedents and subsequent stated investment behaviour.
Lastly the moderators of stated behaviour and its antecedents were examined by exploring resource dependence, perceived shocks, and perceived severity of environmental and other issues. Again, it was found that green incentives were successful in engaging people to take up adaptive investments more so then under a dynamic (whereby loans are contingent on repayement) and a no incentive condition. It was found that perceived shocks,
and resource dependence could significantly impact cognitive antecedents of behaviour as specified by the Theory of Planned Behaviour and in particular perceptions of behavioural control. Shocks, resource dependence and perceived severity also moderated subsequent stated behaviour, with greater variability between between adaptive and non-adaptive investment choices under the no incentive and dynamic incentive conditions. The latter had a
greater probablity of agents choosing non-adaptive over adaptive investments whilst in the former the opposite was true. Overall the results can be useful for adaptation policies, microloan best practice, and behavioural change interventions in SIDS in particular.


Over the counter oral relief aids or dietary supplements, namely calcium carbonate, calcium hydroxyapatite, magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, Tums® and Pepto-Bismol® have been investigated in the melt ring-opening polymerization of lactide and a direct comparison with that involving tin(II) octanoate has been made. Of these, Pepto-Bismol® is shown to be the most active and comparable to tin octanoate. The active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol® is bismuth subsalicylate and when this is employed as the initiator similar results are obtained in melt polymerizations which suggests it could be employed as an alternative to the commercially used tin(II) octanoate.


This paper explores new possibilities for social interaction between a human user and a robot with an abstract shape. The social interaction takes place by simulating behaviors such as submissiveness and dominance and analyzing the corresponding human reactions. We used an object that has no resemblance with human features in its shape or expression mode, in order to exclude the effect of these features on the human behavior. An intelligent walk-in closet was made to behave either dominantly or submissively using lighting effects. The behaviors of the closet were rated by participants using the Bem Sex Role Inventory in a pilot study, resulting in the selection of one submissive and one dominant lighting behavior for the closet. Participants' personality was measured using the Social Dominance Orientation questionnaire. These data were then compared to measurements of user satisfaction and feelings of dominance, arousal, and valence after scenario completion. A surprising effect was revealed as participants with a dominant personality reported feeling submissive to a dominant system, while in comparison, persons with a submissive personality felt more dominant in the same condition. Furthermore, it was found that a submissive system was generally more preferred by users. We draw a careful conclusion that people interact differently with systems that show human-like attitudes, than they would in response to similar attitude expressed by other person. These findings need to be investigated further with dominant/submissive nonverbal behaviors that are then simulated on a humanoid robot.


Combined isometric exercise or metaboreflex activation (post-exercise muscle ischaemia (PEMI)) and cold pressor test (CPT) increase cardiac afterload, which may lead to adverse cardiovascular events. l-Citrulline supplementation (l-CIT) reduces systemic arterial stiffness (brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV)) at rest and aortic haemodynamic responses to CPT. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of l-CIT on aortic haemodynamic and baPWV responses to PEMI+CPT. In all, sixteen healthy, overweight/obese males (age 24 (sem 6) years; BMI 29·3 (sem 4·0) kg/m2) were randomly assigned to placebo or l-CIT (6 g/d) for 14 d in a cross-over design. Brachial and aortic systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and mean arterial pressure (MAP), aortic augmented pressure (AP), augmentation index (AIx), baPWV, reflection timing (Tr) and heart rate (HR) were evaluated at rest and during isometric handgrip exercise (IHG), PEMI and PEMI+CPT at baseline and after 14 d. No significant effects were evident after l-CIT at rest. l-CIT attenuated the increases in aortic SBP and wave reflection (AP and AIx) during IHG, aortic DBP, MAP and AIx during PEMI, and aortic SBP, DBP, MAP, AP, AIx and baPWV during PEMI+CPT compared with placebo. HR and Tr were unaffected by l-CIT in all conditions. Our findings demonstrate that l-CIT attenuates aortic blood pressure and wave reflection responses to exercise-related metabolites. Moreover, l-CIT attenuates the exaggerated arterial stiffness response to combined metaboreflex activation and cold exposure, suggesting a protective effect against increased cardiac afterload during physical stress.


Lactation is associated with a lower risk of subsequent cardiometabolic disease among parous women; however, the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Further, the potential protective effects of lactation on cardiometabolic risk markers at mid-life among high-risk women with past gestational diabetes (GDM) are not established. Using data from the Diabetes & Women's Health Study (2012–2014; n = 577), a longitudinal cohort of women with past GDM from the Danish National Birth Cohort (1996–2002), we assessed associations of cumulative lactation duration (none, <6 months, 6–12 months, ≥12–24 months, and ≥24 months) with clinical metabolic outcomes (including type 2 diabetes [T2D], prediabetes, and obesity) and cardiometabolic biomarkers (including biomarkers of glucose/insulin metabolism, fasting lipids, inflammation, and anthropometrics) 9–16 years after enrollment when women were at mid-life. At follow-up, women were 43.9 years old (SD 4.6) with a BMI of 28.7 kg/m2 (IQR 24.6, 33.0); 28.6% of participants had T2D, 39.7% had prediabetes, and 41.2% had obesity. Relative risks (95% CI) of T2D for 0–6, 6–12, 12–24, and ≥24 months of cumulative lactation duration compared to none were 0.94 (0.62,1.44), 0.88 (0.59,1.32), 0.73 (0.46,1.17), and 0.71 (0.40,1.27), respectively. Cumulative lactation duration was not significantly associated with any other clinical outcome or continuous biomarker. In this high-risk cohort of middle-aged women with past GDM, T2D, prediabetes, and obesity were common at follow-up, but not associated with history of cumulative lactation duration 9–16 years after the index pregnancy. Further studies in diverse populations among women at mid-age are needed to understand associations of breastfeeding with T2D.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
Many gastrointestinal tumors appearing as diffuse circumferential malignancies, for example, diffuse signet ring adenocarcinoma and lymphoma, might primarily involve the submucosal layer and hence are difficult to diagnose because they frequently yield negative endoscopic biopsies. This main aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and EUS-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) in the diagnosis of diffuse gastrointestinal lesions with inconclusive endoscopic biopsies.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This prospective study included 92 patients with diffuse or circumferential gastrointestinal lesions with non-conclusive biopsies that were taken during upper or lower endoscopy. EUS and EUS-FNA were performed on all patients with cytopathological examination.

RESULTS
This study included 58 males (63%) and 34 females (37%) with a mean age of 54.2 years. Seventy-two cases (78.3%) were shown to have malignant lesions, and 20 cases (21.7%) were shown to be benign. EUS had a sensitivity of 94.4%, a specificity of 65%, a positive predictive value (PPV) of 90.7%, and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 45.1% with a p<0.0001 in diagnosing malignant lesions. EUS-FNA had a sensitivity of 83%, specificity of 100%, PPV of 100%, and NPV of 61.9% with a p<0.0001.

CONCLUSION
Endoscopic ultrasound with EUS-FNA is an accurate procedure in the diagnosis of endoscopic biopsy-negative diffuse or circumferential gastrointestinal lesions.


We take the well-established use of physical scale models in architecture and identify new opportunities for using them to interactively visualize and examine multiple streams of geospatial data. Over-laying, comparing, or integrating visualizations of complementary data sets in the same physical space is often challenging given the constraints of various data types and the limited design space of possible visual encodings. Our vision of "simultaneous worlds" uses physical models as a substrate upon which visualizations of multiple data streams can be dynamically and concurrently integrated. To explore the potential of this concept, we created three design explorations that use an illuminated campus model to integrate visualizations about building energy use, climate, and movement paths on a university campus. We use a research through design approach, documenting how our interdisciplinary collaborations with domain experts, students, and architects informed our designs. Based on our observations, we characterize the benefits of models for 1) situating visualizations, 2) composing visualizations, and 3) manipulating and authoring visualizations. Our work highlights the potential of physical models to support embodied exploration of spatial and non-spatial visualizations through fluid interactions.


The Selfs Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in Hobart was upgraded to biological nutrient removal standard in early 1997. The upgrade incorporated the existing trickling filter and anaerobic digesters. The new nutrient removal capability is provided by the BioDenipho process, and is supported by prefermentation and alum dosing of the digested sludge sidestream.
This study reviews the development of wastewater treatment processes and the history of sewage treatment and collection in Hobart leading to this upgrade. All of the major processes at the Plant are reviewed as to how each impacts and is impacted by nutrient removal processes. Results from the first 18 months of operation of the plant following commissioning of nutrient removal are discussed, along with some of the factors affecting performance.
Prefermentation has been found to be critical in achieving good biological phosphorus removal. A solids residence time of 5 days in a combined activated primary tank and sidestream prefermenter system has provided good performance. Use of existing rock trickling filters in a combined carbonaceous removal and nitrification role has permitted a smaller BNR reactor volume and a plant with greater flexibility for treating high influent loads or flows. The anaerobic digestion of phosphorus rich activated sludge led to a solubilisation of about 30% of the phosphorus entering the digesters. Alum dosing of the digested, sludge prior to the belt filter press at 1 to 1 1:1 molar (Al:P) ratio has been effective at reducing return of phosphorus to the main process to less than 1%.


We study the multi-channel sparse blind deconvolution (MCS-BD) problem, whose task is to simultaneously recover a kernel $\mathbf a$ and multiple sparse inputs $\{\mathbf x_i\}_{i=1}^p$ from their circulant convolution $\mathbf y_i = \mb a \circledast \mb x_i $ ($i=1,\cdots,p$). We formulate the task as a nonconvex optimization problem over the sphere. Under mild statistical assumptions of the data, we prove that the vanilla Riemannian gradient descent (RGD) method, with random initializations, provably recovers both the kernel $\mathbf a$ and the signals $\{\mathbf x_i\}_{i=1}^p$ up to a signed shift ambiguity. In comparison with state-of-the-art results, our work shows significant improvements in terms of sample complexity and computational efficiency. Our theoretical results are corroborated by numerical experiments, which demonstrate superior performance of the proposed approach over the previous methods on both synthetic and real datasets.


Previous studies suggest that one characteristic of friendship should be similarity in terms of attributions, attitudes, and behavioral tendencies. Using an experimental approach, the present study investigated whether preschool children judge that similarity in physical appearance or behavioral tendencies affects friendship selection. Experiment 1, which used human-like figures as stimuli, revealed that both 4- and 5-year-olds (n = 32 and n = 30, respectively) judged that similar physical appearance affects friendship selection. We conducted a second experiment to test whether children were making judgments according to friendship selection, and not merely physical similarity; thus, in Experiment 2, we used nonhuman figures as stimuli, and found that 5-year-old children (n = 31) judged that similar physical appearance would affect friendship selection, whereas 4-year-old children (n = 31) showed no significant responses to any stimuli; this might be related to the development of the ability to make mental attributions to inanimate figures. The present findings suggest that young children regard similar physical appearance as an important factor for friendship selection. At least at the age of five, similarity might be an antecedent to friendship.


The estimation of robot's motion at the prediction step of any localization framework is commonly performed using a motion model in conjunction with inertial measurements. In the context of field robotics, articulated mobile robots have complex chassis. They might require a complete model in comparison with the traditionally used planar assumption. In this paper, we use a Jacobian motion model-based approach for real-time inertial-aided odometry. The work makes use of the transformation approach [1] to accurately model 6-DoF kinematics. The algorithm relates normal forces with the probability of a contact-point to slip. The result increases the accuracy by weighting the least-squares solution using static forces prediction. The method is applied to the Asguard v3 system, a simple but highly capable leg-wheel hybrid robot. The performance of the approach is demonstrated in extensive field testing within different unstructured environments. In-depth error analysis and comparison with planar odometry is discussed, resulting in a more accurate localization.


Monitoring the development of vegetation height through time provides a key indicator of crop health and overall condition. Traditional manual approaches for monitoring crop height are generally time consuming, labor intensive and impractical for large-scale operations. Dynamic crop heights collected through the season allow for the identification of within-field problems at critical stages of the growth cycle, providing a mechanism for remedial action to be taken against end of season yield losses. With advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies, routine monitoring of height is now feasible at any time throughout the growth cycle. To demonstrate this capability, five digital surface maps (DSM) were reconstructed from high-resolution RGB imagery collected over a field of maize during the course of a single growing season. The UAV retrievals were compared against LiDAR scans for the purpose of evaluating the derived point clouds capacity to capture ground surface variability and spatially variable crop height. A strong correlation was observed between structure-from-motion (SfM) derived heights and pixel-to-pixel comparison against LiDAR scan data for the intra-season bare-ground surface (R2 = 0.77 − 0.99, rRMSE = 0.44% − 0.85%), while there was reasonable agreement between canopy comparisons (R2 = 0.57 − 0.65, rRMSE = 37% − 50%). To examine the effect of resolution on retrieval accuracy and processing time, an evaluation of several ground sampling distances (GSD) was also performed. Our results indicate that a 10 cm resolution retrieval delivers a reliable product that provides a compromise between computational cost and spatial fidelity. Overall, UAV retrievals were able to accurately reproduce the observed spatial variability of crop heights within the maize field through the growing season and provide a valuable source of information with which to inform precision agricultural management in an operational context.


Nicotinic acid dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP) is a second messenger that produces calcium transients in sea urchin eggs and mammalian and plant cells. Binding of NAADP to its receptor is irreversible, and NAADP responses inactivate. When caged NAADP was released in the localized area of a sea urchin egg, a calcium gradient was produced, which was highest at the site of uncaging. If NAADP levels were then increased globally in the same egg, a calcium gradient that was the inverse of the first was produced, reflecting the gradient of inactivation of the NAADP response. This phenomenon was reversible if the local and global releases of NAADP were separated sufficiently in time, presumably allowing recovery of inactivation. Churchill and Galione propose that the NAADP inactivation, which produces the inversion of the calcium gradient, serves as a spatiotemporal memory of recent calcium transients. G. C. Churchill, A. Galione, Prolonged inactivation of nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate-induced Ca2+ release mediates a spatiotemporal Ca2+ memory. J. Biol. Chem. 276, 11223-11225 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This article examines electoral volatility in Iceland. The impact of aggregate and block volatility on the cleavage structure of the Icelandic party system is studied and compared with the situation applying to a group of west European democracies. The Icelandic parties are divided into blocks according to their stand on the socio-economic issue dimension. This gives an opportunity to see whether the high increase in electoral volatility at the aggregate level was followed by similar increase across the cleavage line, with the party system therefore becoming less and less frozen into place, as the upsurge in electoral volatility at the aggregate level seems to suggest. The main reason for the increase in volatility across the cleavage line is traced to party splitting. The main conclusion drawn is that this has not occurred in the case of Iceland. Most of the increase in volatility has occurred within the blocks and therefore the stability of the cleavage structure of the Icelandic party system has not evidenced an overall decline.


We adopt the beam-splitter model for losses to analyze the performance of a recent compact continuous-variable entanglement distillation protocol implemented using realistic quantum memories. We show that the decoherence undergone by a two-mode squeezed state while stored in a quantum memory can strongly modify the results of the preparatory step of the protocol. We find that the well-known method for locally increasing entanglement, phonon subtraction, may not result in entanglement gain when losses are taken into account. Thus, we investigate the critical number mc of phonon subtraction attempts from the matter modes of the quantum memory. If the initial state is not de-Gaussified within mc attempts, the protocol should be restarted to obtain any entanglement increase. Moreover, the condition m c>1 implies an additional constraint on the subtraction beam-splitter interaction transmissivity, viz., it should be about 50% for a wide range of protocol parameters. Additionally, we consider the average entanglement rate, which takes into account both the unavoidable probabilistic nature of the protocol and its possible failure as a result of a large number of unsuccessful subtraction attempts. We find that a higher value of the average entanglement can be achieved by increasing the subtraction beam-splitter interaction transmissivity. We conclude that the compact distillation protocol with the practical constraints coming from realistic quantum memories allows a feasible experimental realization within existing technologies. © 2013 American Physical Society.


Federal agencies routinely trade money, regulatory power, and governmental services with each other. Collectively, these interagency exchanges create a vast public institution that I call the interagency marketplace. In this article, I offer a comprehensive descriptive and normative account of the legal rules governing the interagency marketplace. My overarching claim is that the interagency marketplace has the potential to generate significant governmental efficiencies by allowing agencies to hire other, more expert agencies to perform tasks for them. However, efficient interagency exchanges are stifled by a set of outdated statutory rules. In particular, current restrictions on interagency redelegation — that is, the transfer of regulatory power from one agency to another — are too severe. The current prohibition on profits from services provided in the interagency marketplace is also misguided. Removing the bar on profits would create financial incentives for expert agencies to offer their services and enter into mutually beneficial exchanges with other agencies. At a time when the most pressing regulatory problems are beyond the capacity of any single agency, the law should do more to facilitate efficient interagency arrangements. My suggestions to broaden relegation powers and permit agency profits would move the law in this direction.


Subject at Risk for Eating Disorders: Study of a Population of Children Aged between 8 and 13 Years
Background: early onset eating disorders (EOED) are increasing. Epidemiological studies provided that the overall prevalence is estimated at around 10% in the school population. The present study aims to evaluate those at risk for EOED in a population of students from Campania Region, Italy and to identify some correlated factors associated with the disorder (BMI, age, gender, sport/activities involvement, meal-time characteristics).
Method: sample consisted of the students of the primary and secondary schools in six municipalities near the city of Caserta (Campania-Italy). Children eating attitude test-26 (Ch-EAT-26) has been used to collect data on eating disorder behaviors and attitudes.
Results: 137 subjects, 61 female and 76 male composed the sample. Mean age was 115,38 months (SD: 10,4). Mean BMI was 20 (SD: 5). The means score at the ChEAT was 13.25 (SD: 9) and 30 children exceeded the clinical cut-off score (>20). There was no correlation between ChEAT score and BMI and age. Sport/activities outside the school and key figure for the child at meal time were significantly different between the clinical and non-clinical group (Ch-EAT score).
Conclusion: data showed that our sample had a higher risk for EOED compared to the overall prevalence. Dance and physical exercise were confirmed such as risk factors for eating disorders. Finally according to the results of our research, the presence of the mother at the meal- time may be a protective factor for the risk of developing and eating disorder in childhood.


Health care workers need artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a set of studies and techniques that tend to the realization of machines, which solve complex problems automatically, simulating or emulating human intelligence activities. Human intelligence is innate, creative, emotional, sporting, social in the collective and connected future. Knowledge is the faculty, act, mode, effect of taking possession, intellectually or psychologically, with systematic activity of any certain aspect of reality. The dates are given in the form of text, number, symbol, image, sounds that are used or stored in computers. Having many data or data does not mean having much information. Having a lot of information does not mean having a lot of knowledge. Symbolic reasoning uses symbolic logic, logical connectives, expert systems, production rules, genetic algorithms, validation, explanation, justification, verification of inference, heuristic research. The knowledge of symbolic reasoning is deterministic. Machine learning is the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being programmed to do so. Use algorithms for statistical and probability calculations, the learning phases may not be verifiable. They are mathematically structured human opinions, spoiled by the pre -understandings of those who design them, of those who want to look for something. The association between symbolic reasoning and automatic learning is excellent. The intelligence of health workers work connected and collective, develop knowledge bases to be subjected to symbolic reasoning, expert systems and rules to have deterministic knowledge. The deterministic knowledge subsequently elaborated by artificial intelligence will be returned to human intelligences.


BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to examine the quality of life (QoL) of the live donor renal transplant (LDRTx) recipients pre- and post-transplantation and correlate with their pre-transplant (pre-Tx) dialysis status and immunosuppressive regimens post-transplantation (post-Tx).

MATERIAL/METHODS
57 LDRTx recipients and 38 healthy individuals as controls participated in the study. The Kidney Transplant Questionnaire (KTQ) and the Medical Outcome Survey Short Form 36 (SF-36) questionnaires were used to assess QoL.

RESULTS
The post-Tx scores in all SF-36 dimensions were significantly higher in the LDRTx recipients, but remained lower than that of the control group. However, in the KTQ, all dimensions except Appearance (p=0.035), significantly increased post-Tx Patients transplanted pre-emptively and those on tacrolimus-based immunosuppressive drugs had significantly better QoL.

CONCLUSIONS
LDRTx significantly improved QoL, which was best with preemptive transplantation and tacrolimus-based immunosuppressive regimens.


Lameness in breeding swine has a large negative economic impact and is a welfare concern. Pain-related behaviour, such as postural changes, may be used to evaluate the presence and severity of pain in animals. The objective of this work was to determine the effects of flunixin meglumine (FM) and meloxicam (M) on postural changes in lame sows. Lameness was induced in 24 mature sows (Sus scrofa) using a chemical synovitis model. Three treatments were compared: FM (2.2 mg kg; n = 24, intramuscular [IM]), M (1.0 mg kg; n = 24, by mouth [PO]) and sterile saline (equivalent volume to FM; n = 24 [IM]), administered approximately 28 and 52 h after lameness induction. Behavioural data were collected in the home pen during 12-h periods and quantified using 15-min scan sampling on the day prior to (–24 h; Day –1) through +168 h post lameness induction. Frequency of behaviour was analysed by day using generalised linear mixed model methods. The frequency of standing postures significantly decreased and lying postures increased 24–72 h post lameness induction relative to baseline day. All postures returned to baseline frequencies by +168 h. Meloxicam-treated sows demonstrated lower frequencies of lying postures +48 and +72 h after lameness induction compared to saline-treated sows. Flunixin-treated sows did not differ in lying behaviours compared to saline-treated sows. No differences were noted in standing or sitting postures between treatments. The results of this study suggest that meloxicam mitigates pain sensitivity as demonstrated by higher frequency of standing and lower frequency of lying compared to saline-treated sows.


Once thought of as a 'vanishing people', the Ainu are now reasserting both their culture and their claims to be the 'indigenous' people of Japan. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan is the first major study to trace the outlines of Ainu history. It explores the ways in which competing versions of Ainu identity have been constructed and articulated, shedding light on the way modern relations between the Ainu and the Japanese have been shaped.


The passing of Security Council Resolution 1325 entitled "Women, Peace and Security" solidified the understanding that women bring a much- needed presence to the resolution of violent conflict by declaring, "[women's] full participation in the peace process can significantly contribute to the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security." In order to understand why women are considered necessary for the peace process and how they can be included in these processes, one must first ask: how does female peacemaking impact the durability of peace? This study employs a quantitative analysis to test this question on 156 peace agreements using binary logistic regression on thirteen models measuring peace at three different points in time. The findings reveal that in the short term, advancing the role of local female representation in the peace process can aid in establishing a more durable peace. Furthermore, the results from this study point to the successful establishment of quotas aiding the durability of peace in post-conflict states.


The authors build a model for predicting current-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) growth using anywhere from zero to three months of indicators from that quarter. Their equation links quarterly Canadian GDP growth with monthly data on retail sales, housing starts, consumer confidence, total hours worked, and U.S. industrial production. The authors use time-series methods to forecast missing observations of the monthy indicators; this allows them to assess the performance of the method under various amounts of monthly information. The authors' model forecasts GDP growth as early as the first month of the reference quarter, and its accuracy generally improves with incremental monthly data releases. The final forecast from the model, available five to six weeks before the release of the National Income and Expenditure Accounts, delivers improved accuracy relative to those of several macroeconomic models used for short-term forecasting of Canadian output. The implications of real-time versus pseudo-real-time forecasting are investigated, and the authors find that the choice between real-time and latestavailable data affects the performance ranking among alternative models.


Abstract—This paper describes the four systems RMIT fielded for the TREC 2016 LiveQA task and the associated experiments. Similar to last year, the results show that simple solutions tend to work best, and that our improved baseline systems achieved an above-average performance. We use a commercial search engine as a first stage retrieval mechanism and compare it with our internal system which uses a carefully curated document collection. Somewhat surprisingly, we found that on average the small curated collection performed better within our current framework, warranting further studies on when and when not to use an external resource, such as a publicly available search engine API. Finally, we show that small improvements to performance can substantially reduce failure rates.


Most Swedish newspapers have experienced receding advertising revenues during the last years and are now searching for new ways to profit from their online editions. We have conducted three future workshops with both management and end users to envision possible new services that could be profitable for the local newspapers. Furthermore we have conducted an online survey with users selected from a previous study. The objective of this paper is to describe these services and to give a user response to them. We have identified three kinds of services: advertisement services, intermediary services and news services. The results show that the end users preferred the intermediary services and that there is an interest for advertisements in a new setting.


The connection between economics and ethics is as old as economics itself, and central to both disciplines. It is an issue that has recently attracted much interest from economists and philosophers. The connection is, in part, a result of the desire of economists to make policy prescriptions, which clearly require some normative criteria. More deeply, much economic theory is founded on the assumption of utility maximization, thereby creating an immediate connection between the foundations of economics and the philosophical literature on utilitarianism and reasons for action. In fact, some influential contemporary approaches to ethics advocate decision-theoretic or game-theoretic foundations of some sort for moral principles, while several economic theorists are now prepared to take into account the ethical dimensions of rational decisions. As a result, it appears that economics and ethics are somehow inextricably linked through theories of rational decision-making. Most of us would probably find it disturbing to concede that there are contradictions between the prescriptions of rationality and the requirements of moral `rightness'. The essays included in the present volume provide a detailed analysis of the connections between ethics and economics as viewed from several different - sometimes conflicting - perspectives. This book, the outcome of a joint meeting of philosophers and economists, has three main themes: the validity of utilitarianism much used by economists, the notion of fairness and equity, and the coherence of the rationality postulate of economics. The book does not reach any final conclusions, but it greatly illuminates the exact areas of possible disagreement and indeed the open-ended nature of ethical reasoning. There is much that economists, and especially welfare economists, can learn from these papers - not least circumspection.


Human factors and usability issues have traditionally played a limited role in security research and secure systems development. Security experts have largely ignored usability issues--both because they often failed to recognize the importance of human factors and because they lacked the expertise to address them. But there is a growing recognition that today's security problems can be solved only by addressing issues of usability and human factors. Increasingly, well-publicized security breaches are attributed to human errors that might have been prevented through more usable software. Indeed, the world's future cyber-security depends upon the deployment of security technology that can be broadly used by untrained computer users. Still, many people believe there is an inherent tradeoff between computer security and usability. It's true that a computer without passwords is usable, but not very secure. A computer that makes you authenticate every five minutes with a password and a fresh drop of blood might be very secure, but nobody would use it. Clearly, people need computers, and if they can't use one that's secure, they'll use one that isn't. Unfortunately, unsecured systems aren't usable for long, either. They get hacked, compromised, and otherwise rendered useless. There is increasing agreement that we need to design secure systems that people can actually use, but less agreement about how to reach this goal. Security & Usability is the first book-length work describing the current state of the art in this emerging field. Edited by security experts Dr. Lorrie Faith Cranor and Dr. Simson Garfinkel, and authored by cutting-edge security and human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers world-wide, this volume is expected to become both a classic reference and an inspiration for future research. Security & Usability groups 34 essays into six parts: Realigning Usability and Security---with careful attention to user-centered design principles, security and usability can be synergistic. Authentication Mechanisms-- techniques for identifying and authenticating computer users. Secure Systems--how system software can deliver or destroy a secure user experience. Privacy and Anonymity Systems--methods for allowing people to control the release of personal information. Commercializing Usability: The Vendor Perspective--specific experiences of security and software vendors (e.g., IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Firefox, and Zone Labs) in addressing usability. The Classics--groundbreaking papers that sparked the field of security and usability. This book is expected to start an avalanche of discussion, new ideas, and further advances in this important field.


America has recently seen an increasing epidemic of diet related diseases in people of all backgrounds. However, the brunt of these health risks, especially those stemming from obesity, seem to disproportionately fall on those of lower socioeconomic status. One contributing factor is that those of lower social status simply do not have the geographic access to food stores whose products are nutritionally healthy. Instead, convenience store food, as well as fast food, is more readily available, leaving these people to not only consume too little of the right foods, but too much of the wrong foods. It is also apparent that individuals who are at a socioeconomic disadvantage are less informed about their choices, and continues to choose less nutritious food even when it is within their financial means. A wide variety of components, including, race, class, education level, occupation, and domestic location all have an impact on this issue, which makes it extremely complicated to work towards a solution.


The early glaciation history of the Northern Hemisphere is a subject of controversy. Speculations about the onset of the glaciation of East Greenland varies from Plio/Pleistocene to middle Miocene. An ODP drill hole to study the age information of glacially influenced sediments does not exist on the North East Greenland shelf. So the beginning of the advances and retreats of the ice sheets is largely unknown.Seismic reflection data, gathered in 2003 along the North East Greenland margin in combination with analyses on the ODP site 913 provide a first age estimation of the sediments on the Greenland shelf. Major sedimentary elements of the Greenland shelf are thick Plio/Pleistocene deposits of more or less glacially related origin, which form widespread prograding sequences of variable extend. A comparison between shelf regions in the north and south of East Greenland show that prograding sequences are visible over a distance of about 25-80 km on the North East Greeland shelf and 5-30 km on the South East Greenland shelf. The occurrences of topsets within the shelf region along the East Greenland margin change from north to south. Topsets north of the Greenland Basin between 78°N to 81°N can be identified up to the shelf edge. However, data from South East Greenland show mostly an outer shelf with almost completely eroded topsets.Due to partially interpolation and extrapolation of age times we assume a starting of progradation in middle/early Miocene time on the North East Greenland shelf (77°N). A first age model for the Northern Greenland Basin will be introduced.


PURPOSE
To identify differentially expressed glycogenes in trabecular meshwork (TM) of eyes with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG).

METHODS
Total RNA was isolated from TM of cadaveric eyes derived from donors with diagnosed glaucomas of different etiologies and from normal control subjects. RNA was amplified and hybridized to the GLYCOv2 oligonucleotide microarray that contains probes for carbohydrate-binding proteins, glycosyltransferases, and other genes involved in the regulation of glycosylation. Statistical analysis was used to identify differentially expressed genes between normal and POAG samples.

RESULTS
This study revealed that POAG TM and normal TM have distinct gene expression profiles. Of the 2001 genes on the array, 19 genes showed differential expression of greater than 1.4-fold in POAG. Mimecan and activinA, which have been shown to be upregulated in models of glaucoma, were both found to be elevated in POAG TM. Many genes were identified for the first time to be differentially regulated in POAG. Among the upregulated genes were: (1) cell adhesion molecules including platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 and P-selectin, both of which are targets of NFkappaB, which has been shown to be activated in glaucomatous TM; (2) lumican, a core protein of keratan sulfate proteoglycans; and (3) the receptor for IL6, a cytokine that has been shown to be upregulated in TM in response to elevated intraocular pressure. Among the downregulated genes were chondroitin-4-O-sulfotransferase involved in the synthesis of chondroitin sulfate chains and the receptor for PDGFbeta, a growth factor that has been shown to stimulate both TM cell proliferation and phagocytic activity. Results for several genes were confirmed by RTq-PCR.

CONCLUSIONS
Microarray technology was used to show, for the first time, that POAG TM has a distinct glycogene expression profile. Differentially expressed glycogenes identified in this study have not been previously investigated for their role in the pathogenesis of POAG and thus are novel factors for further study of the mechanism of the disease and for their possible use as diagnostic markers.


Previous studies show a lack of deference and activities when it comes to women's human rights and gender equality in the multi-level governance of the Arctic. According to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, women in the Arctic are vulnerable, in particular indigenous and rural women. Their rights are not upheld in the Arctic states for example when it comes to exposure to violence, equal participation in governing bodies, and economic self-support. The public governing bodies have almost no focus on gender equality at all, despite far-reaching international obligations and, for several of the states, national ambitious agendas for gender equality politics. International instruments with obligations to strive for gender equality, such as the CEDAW, the ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIP, are scarcely referred to and not sufficiently implemented by the public governance bodies.The aim of this article is to raise awareness of the obligations set up by human rights documents to promote women's rights in the governance of the Arctic, in order to put pressure on the states to develop strategies for a future gender equal governance. We have a special focus on the general lack of awareness within public governance, and on men's intimate partner violence against indigenous women.


Cough is a forced expulsive manoeuvre, usually against a closed glottis and with a characteristic sound. Voluntary and reflex cough are distinguished. Some authors describe the laryngeal expiratory reflex, a more immediate expulsive reflex without complete inspiratory phase. The neurophysiology of cough is complex and involves vagus nerve afferents, brainstem and cortical neural circuits, and phrenic, spinal motor and recurrent laryngeal nerve efferents to the diaphragm, intercostal, abdominal and laryngeal muscles. From a clinical perspective, cough may present a positive sign of respiratory disease; it may serve as a mechanism for clearing excess respiratory secretions; or it may serve as a defense against aspiration threat.
Objective assessments of cough include reflex cough sensitivity testing, measurement of cough frequency, assessment of psychosocial aspects of cough (e.g. cough-related quality of life), and measurement of cough intensity (e.g. peak cough flow measurement). Current cough research is largely driven by the search for anti-tussive agents, but cough in the context of dysphagia has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Here, several aspects may be of interest. Unexplained coughing has long been interpreted as a potential red flag for undiagnosed dysphagia. More recently, the idea that cough impairment may correlate with presence and severity of dysphagia has inspired research. Could cough assessments at the bedside provide a convenient, non-invasive alternative to instrumental swallowing assessment for detecting silent aspiration? A slightly different line of reasoning explores cough assessment as an adjunct to clinical assessment of swallow. Could this added piece of information enhance clinical reasoning and management of dysphagic patients?
The evidence base is growing, although clinical utility remains to be established. Variations in cough assessment methods complicate interpretation of the evidence base. Consensus on test standardisation (for example for reflex cough test or for peak cough flow measurement) will become important, if the intention is to establish absolute threshold values to guide clinical practice.


The goal of this tutorial is to promote interest in the study of random Boolean networks (RBNs). These can be very interesting models, since one does not have to assume any functionality or particular connectivity of the networks to study their generic properties. Like this, RBNs have been used for exploring the configurations where life could emerge. The fact that RBNs are a generalization of cellular automata makes their research a very important topic. The tutorial, intended for a broad audience, presents the state of the art in RBNs, spanning over several lines of research carried out by different groups. We focus on research done within artificial life, as we cannot exhaust the abundant research done over the decades related to RBNs.


The receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE) is a member of the immunoglobulin super family of cell surface receptors. It acts as the direct mediator of physiological and pathological responses such as inflammation, chemotaxis, neurite outgrowth, angiogenesis, apoptosis and proliferation. RAGE is known to bind with structurally and functionally diverse ligands, such as advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), high mobility group family proteins including HMGB-1/amphoterin, matrix proteins, such as amyloid β peptides, and members of the S100/calgranulin protein family. The up-regulation of RAGE via its ligands and thereby its role in development of disease pathologies in humans is well understood. The blockage of RAGE is considered a therapeutic approach to overcome RAGE-related disease development. One major isoform of RAGE, known as soluble RAGE (sRAGE) acts as a decoy receptor by scavenging RAGE ligands, and prevents them from binding to RAGE or other cell surface receptors. Recent studies have revealed that sRAGE might be useful in treating pathologies caused through RAGE-ligand interactions. Therefore, sRAGE has potential therapeutic properties. In the present study, sRAGE was successfully expressed in hairy root cultures to obtain a yield of ~300 µg purified protein from ~100 g of hairy roots. Plant expression systems, including tobacco hairy root cultures, have the advantage of producing glycosylated proteins similar to mammalian expression system. Although the complex modification of glycans differs between plants and mammals, the core glycans and the frequency and sites of glycosylation are identical. Purified plant-made sRAGE predominantly existed in its monomeric form (as determined by SDS-PAGE analysis) with a molecular weight of ~45 kDa. Enzymatic N-linked deglycosylation assays using PNGase F suggests that the sRAGE produced was N-linked glycosylated. sRAGE was also successfully expressed in E. coli-Rosetta-gami strain as a HaloTag® fusion protein, yielding ~0.3 g Lˉ¹ (monomeric form), with a purity of 90 %. In contrast to plant-made sRAGE, E. coli-made sRAGE produced putative protein aggregates along with the monomeric form. As expected the E. coli expression system produced non-glycosylated sRAGE. The purified monomeric form of plant and E. coli derived sRAGE was used to perform in vitro ligand binding studies with HMGB-1 and S100A8/A9 complex to determine the affinities of these glycosylated and non-glycosylated sRAGE proteins to the ligands. It was shown that glycosylated plant-made sRAGE has a higher affinity to both HMGB-1 and S100A8/A9 than E. coli-made or deglycosylated plant-made sRAGE. The observed higher affinity was statistically significant for HMGB-1. However, the observed higher affinity of plant-made sRAGE to S100A8/A9 complex was not statistically significant compared to E. coli-made sRAGE or the deglycosylated (non-denatured) plant-made sRAGE. The higher affinity of plant-made sRAGE to ligands was related to the N-linked glycosylation of sRAGE. The effects of extracellular components and conditions on sRAGE-ligand binding was tested by the addition of EDTA and several cations. In our study, Mg²⁺/Zn²⁺ enhanced in vitro binding of sRAGE-S100A8/A9 complex with a similar capacity to Ca²⁺/Zn²⁺. The importance of Ca²⁺/Zn²⁺ cations for RAGE binding to S100A9 has been reported previously. The inhibitory effect of EDTA (2.0 mM) observed for HMGB-1 binding could be tested in vivo studies in future, as a potential treatment for RAGE-mediated inflammatory diseases. This is the first report of the expression of biologically active recombinant sRAGE in a plant expression system. Our research has found that if sRAGE is to be used as a therapeutic protein in the future, plant expression system could be used as a potential production platform. The enhanced binding potential of the N-linked glycosylated plant-made sRAGE showed the importance of glycosylation on the activity of the protein. Therefore, in future studies, glycoengineering could be investigated to introduce important glycans and then to enhance the activity of sRAGE. Thus, a bio-better potential therapeutic protein could be produced in a plant expression system.


Saudi Arabian foreign policy decisions are made by a small group in private and with little public discussion or explanation. Open debates on issues are not encouraged, particularly those that have a direct relation to the nation's security. No concept of public accountability exists. Secrecy is stressed to ensure internal security, as well as stability in the society. However, foreign policy decisions are not made without considerable thought and time spent in discussing the issues with those the leaders of government believe can make a contribution to their understanding of the problems.

The decision-making process has the following four characteristics:

1) There is a strong link between domestic and foreign policies because of the historical legacy of the state. For this reason, decision-making includes members of the royal family and religious establishment.

2) Other groups do participate and wield differing degrees of influence depending on the issue area.

3) Much bargaining occurs before an important decision is announced.

4) The process is slow, as the leaders are not prepared to meet crisis situations. For this reason, the leadership usually turns to outside powers to settle the problem. In addition to the delay in making a decision, there is also the failure to follow through.

These characteristics are influenced by the increasing complexity of Saudi Arabia's regional and global environment, and by the growing demand on the country to play a larger role in global politics.

The methods used by the government result more in a reactive rather than a pro-active policy. The Saudis are more likely to react to events, panic in crises, and delay making decisions at the time the decisions should be made.


The Interpreter and the Canadian Convention Refugee Hearing: Crossing the potentially life-threatening boundaries between "coccode-e-eh," "cluck-cluck," and "cot-cot-cot" — This paper discusses the obstacles facing interpreters and translators in inter-cultural situations with reference to Canadian Convention refugee hearings, taped in 1987. The author sets forth a theory of interpretation suited to the sometimes comical, but usually tragic elements of failed human interaction as they occur in legal hearings. The article begins with a comparison between a fictional rendering of failed communication from the work of Primo Levi, but then moves on to the plight of persecuted persons who have come to Canada to claim Convention refugee status. Obvious similarities emerge in a comparison of the two processes; but ultimately it is the language of persecution — silence, scars, tears, pleas, and impassioned cries — that is the most difficult to interpret and translate. Given the dynamics of inter-cultural legal discourse and the gravity of the issues at stake, the author argues for a broader mandate for the interpreter, such that s/he will also be permitted to act as a medium through which inter-cultural information can pass, rather than yet another grid into which pained words must fit.


The paradox of China's failure to industrialize despite its thriving commercialization before the 19th century has been debated intensively, especially in terms of whether market efficiency is sufficient for industrialization in the pre-modern period. This thesis sheds light on this question using archival data on grain prices covering Qing China's most prosperous episode (1740-1820) to identify the determinants of market evolution as well as the true extent of market integration. My results suggest that China's market efficiency on the eve of Western industrialization has been grossly overstated, and further imply that China's market was heavily influenced by its bureaucratic structure. My analysis is based on a historical dataset of monthly grain prices (rice, wheat) in 211 prefectures across China and I match these with new data on the physical geography of the postal and river network and physiographic distribution. My analysis first confirms the close relationship between market integration and geographic proximity but shows that geographical influence is dominated by provincial boundaries. I then employ novel panel time series methods to account for the impact of local and global shocks and to investigate the evolving process of market integration over time. This analysis indicates that China experienced continuous market disintegration with fragmentation driven by political structure. These results support my hypothesis that Qing China's political system was not conducive to the development of the market mechanism since its primary concern was market regulation rather than revenue.


Microbial size spectra, including bacteria through nanophytoplankton, were measured by use of flow cytometry across the western north Atlantic Ocean and during two nutrient enrichment studies: bottle enrichments in the Sargasso Sea and an in situ iron enrichment in the equatorial Pacific (IronEx II). Spectral shapes, or the relative conformity to a function described by a power law, ranged from smooth and log linear during the spring bloom in the Sargasso Sea to being distinctly non‐log linear in coastal waters. Overall, the individual spectra within large regions characterized by similar ecological conditions showed remarkable consistency, inviting speculation that powerful organizing mechanisms are at work in these communities. Moreover, the ensemble average of all of the spectra along the transect displays clear power‐law behavior. Slopes ranged from 21.0, in which biomass was equally distributed between all size classes, to 21.4, in which proportionally more biomass was contained in smaller size classes; there was no clear relationship between nutrient concentrations and spectral slopes over the entire data set. Species succession in nutrient‐enriched bottles caused spectra to evolve from relatively smooth power laws to distributions showing preferred sizes (i.e., nonlinear on a log‐log plot). The IronEx II spectra, however, remained similar over the course of the experiment. It could be that the elimination of bottle effects in this experiment buffered the system in ways that maintained the size structure of the microbial community over the size range we measured. Our results suggest conditions that lead to log‐linear size distributions; these should be verified over a broader range of scales and environments.


Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution has been performed by photoirradiation (λ > 420 nm) of a mixed solution of a phthalate buffer and acetonitrile (MeCN) (1 : 1 (v/v)) containing EDTA disodium salt (EDTA), [RuII(bpy)3]2+ (bpy = 2,2′-bipyiridine), 9-phenyl-10-methylacridinium ion (Ph–Acr+–Me), and Pt nanoparticles (PtNPs) as a sacrificial electron donor, a photosensitiser, an electron mediator, and a hydrogen-evolution catalyst, respectively. The hydrogen-evolution rate of the reaction system employing Ph–Acr+–Me as an electron mediator was more than 10 times higher than that employing a conventional electron mediator of methyl viologen. In this reaction system, ruthenium nanoparticles (RuNPs) also act as a hydrogen-evolution catalyst as well as the PtNPs. The immobilization of the efficient electron mediator on the surface of a hydrogen-evolution catalyst is expected to enhance the hydrogen-evolution rate. The methyl group of Ph–Acr+–Me was chemically modified with a carboxy group (Ph–Acr+–CH2COOH) to interact with metal oxide surfaces. In the photocatalytic hydrogen-evolution system using Ph–Acr+–CH2COOH and Pt-loaded ruthenium oxide nanoparticles (Pt/RuO2NPs) as electron donor and hydrogen-evolution catalyst, respectively, the hydrogen-evolution rate was 1.5–2 times faster than the reaction system using Ph–Acr+–Me as an electron mediator. On the other hand, no enhancement in the hydrogen-evolution rate was observed in the reaction system using Ph–Acr+–CH2COOH with PtNPs. Thus, the enhancement of hydrogen-evolution rate originated from the favourable interaction between Ph–Acr+–CH2COOH and RuO2NPs. These results suggest that the use of Ph–Acr+–Me as an electron mediator enables the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution using PtNPs and RuNPs as hydrogen-evolution catalysts, and the chemical modification of Ph–Acr+–Me with a carboxy group paves the way to utilise a supporting catalyst, Pt loaded on a metal oxide, as a hydrogen-evolution catalyst.


Pellet-based extrusion deposition of carbon fiber-reinforced composites at high material deposition rates has recently gained much attention due to its applications in large-scale additive manufacturing. The mechanical and physical properties of large-volume components largely depend on their reinforcing fiber length. However, very few studies have been done thus far to have a direct comparison of additively fabricated composites reinforced with different carbon fiber lengths. In this study, a new additive manufacturing (AM) approach to fabricate long fiber-reinforced polymer (LFRP) was first proposed. A pellet-based extrusion deposition method was implemented, which directly used thermoplastic pellets and continuous fiber tows as feedstock materials. Discontinuous long carbon fibers, with an average fiber length of 20.1 mm, were successfully incorporated into printed LFRP samples. The printed LFRP samples were compared with short fiber-reinforced polymer (SFRP) and continuous fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) counterparts through mechanical tests and microstructural analyses. The carbon fiber dispersion, distribution of carbon fiber length and orientation, and fiber wetting were studied. As expected, a steady increase in flexural strength was observed with increasing fiber length. The carbon fibers were highly oriented along the printing direction. A more uniformly distributed discontinuous fiber reinforcement was found within printed SFRP and LFRP samples. Due to decreased fiber impregnation time and lowered impregnation rate, the printed CFRP samples showed a lower degree of impregnation and worse fiber wetting conditions. The feasibility of the proposed AM methods was further demonstrated by fabricating large-volume components with complex geometries.


Today information and communication cause the daily growth of published information. Studying all scientific production content and structures for specialist in different fields and publications is impossible. This study aims to analyze the articles regarding information retrieval based on the concepts of co-occurrence network analysis and centrality indicators published in Clarivate Analytics Web of Science during 1983-2017. This is a descriptive study, using Scientometric approach. Its statistical population contains all articles related to Information retrieval in Clarivate Analytics Web of Science during1983-2017. The scientific research on Information retrieval starts in 2002. Based on the scientific map of countries, America, England, Canada and Singapore have the most articles in information retrieval field. Iran and Brazil have also been active in research on this field from 2012. The top authors of Articles in IR field articles during 1989-2017 are: Spink, Boregman, Chowdhury and Meado. In the analysis of IR field articles based on co-word anlaysis, 8 subject cluster were observed. Among them related to internal and external factors in information retrieval. Key word: Scientometric method, Information retrieval, Search engine, Mapping intellectual structure


The most common optical amplified spontaneous emission sources can become the ultimate tools for the generation of ultra-broadband truly random bit sequences (TRBS). By using a straightforward configuration we experimentally prove that the amplified spontaneous emission noise of an optical amplifier-either an Er+3 -doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) or an InGaAs semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-is an efficient source for TRBS generation. A bit rate up to 560 Gb/s has been recorded, seeded by the direct detection of the unfiltered spontaneous-spontaneous (sp-sp) optical intensity beat noise on a broadband photoreceiver. The generation rate is practically limited only by the detection bandwidth, the electronic digitization process and the post-processing circuitry. The proposed mechanism passes the existing benchmarks of randomness.


We describe a new interactive system for 3D design review, built to exploit the visual perception cue of motion parallax, in order to enhance shape perception and aesthetic evaluation. Traditional CAD applications typically use "bookmarked" static views for design evaluation. In our system, we replace static views with moving "shots" interspersed with cinematic visual transitions. Furthermore, users can access shots by picking object features on the 3D model, which invokes a spatial search over all shots, selects the ones deemed relevant to the feature, and plays back those shots. In this paper we describe the rationale behind this system, the main components, the implementation of the search technique, and the initial user evaluation of the system.


The lecture highlights the use of polymer optical fibers (POFs) as sensors in selected applications like structural health monitoring in geotechnical and civil engineering, composites monitoring, healthcare monitoring and personnel protection. The results achieved in these applications fields in the framework of several German and European projects will be reviewed.