Abstract. We discuss the spatial and temporal resolution of monthly carbon flux estimates for the period 1983–2002 using a fixed-lag Kalman Smoother technique with a global chemical transport model, and the GLOBALVIEW data product. The observational network has expanded substantially over this period, and the flux estimates are better constrained provided by observations for the 1990's in comparison to the 1980's. The estimated uncertainties also decrease as observational coverage expands. In this study, we use the Globalview data product for a network that changes every 5 yr, rather than using a small number of continually-operating sites (fewer observational constraints) or a large number of sites, some of which may consist almost entirely of extrapolated data. We show that the discontinuities resulting from network changes reflect uncertainty due to a sparse and variable network. This uncertainty effectively limits the resolution of trends in carbon fluxes, and is a potentially significant source of noise in assimilation systems that allow changes in observation distribution between assimilation time steps. The ability of the inversion to distinguish, or resolve, carbon fluxes at various spatial scales is examined using a diagnostic known as the resolution kernel. We find that the global partition between land and ocean fluxes is well-resolved even for the very sparse network of the 1980's, although prior information makes a significant contribution to the resolution. The ability to distinguish zonal average fluxes has improved significantly since the 1980's, especially for the tropics, where the zonal ocean and land biosphere fluxes can be distinguished. Care must be taken when interpreting zonal average fluxes, however, since the lack of air samples for some regions in a zone may result in a large influence from prior flux estimates for these regions. We show that many of the TransCom 3 source regions are distinguishable throughout the period over which estimates are produced. Examples are Boreal and Temperate North America. The resolution of fluxes from Europe and Australia has greatly improved since the 1990's. Other regions, notably Tropical South America and the Equatorial Atlantic remain practically unresolved. Comparisons of the average seasonal cycle of the estimated carbon fluxes with the seasonal cycle of the prior flux estimates reveals a large adjustment of the summertime uptake of carbon for Boreal Eurasia, and an earlier onset of springtime uptake for Temperate North America. In addition, significantly larger seasonal cycles are obtained for some ocean regions, such as the Northern Ocean, North Pacific, North Atlantic and Western Equatorial Pacific, regions that appear to be well-resolved by the inversion.


To understand which populations and species are most sensitive to climate change, studies correlate time series of climate variables with those of traits important for population dynamics, and subsequently compare which aspects of a species' ecology or life-history best explain variation in climate sensitivity. Often large-scale oceanic climate indices (LOCIs) are used as a proxy for local climatic drivers, with many studies reporting geographic gradients in climate sensitivity to LOCIs (e.g. suggesting that species living further from the equator are relatively climate sensitive). However, the relationship between LOCIs and local weather variables also varies geographically, raising the possibility that apparent intra- and inter-specific differences in climate sensitivity to LOCIs could also reflect geographic variation in how well LOCIs function as a proxy for local climatic drivers. This hypothesis is rarely tested due to lack of knowledge about the specific local climatic drivers. Here we show, using reproductive and climate data from 16 long-term population studies of 7 Australian fairy-wren species (Malurus genus), that the use of LOCIs can result in 1) strong overestimation of the amount of inter-specific variation in climate sensitivity and 2) spurious patterns, particularly geographic gradients. Consequently a paradox emerges: LOCIs often explain much of the temporal variation in traits important for population dynamics, but the common usage of LOCIs may prevent meaningful intra- and inter-specific comparisons of climate sensitivities over large spatial scales. Our results thus may offer an alternative interpretation of the widely reported geographic gradients in sensitivity to LOCIs. Future progress will likely require better knowledge about the identity and temporal features of local environmental drivers of population dynamics.


Classification based on association rule mining, also known as associative classification, is a promising approach in data mining that builds accurate classifiers. In this paper, a rule ranking process within the associative classification approach is investigated. Specifically, two common rule ranking methods in associative classification are compared with reference to their impact on accuracy. We also propose a new rule ranking procedure that adds more tie breaking conditions to the existing methods in order to reduce rule random selection. In particular, our method looks at the class distribution frequency associated with the tied rules and favours those that are associated with the majority class. We compare the impact of the proposed rule ranking method and two other methods presented in associative classification against 14 highly dense classification data sets. Our results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed rule ranking method on the quality of the resulting classifiers for the majority of the benchmark problems, which we consider. This provides evidence that adding more appropriate constraints to break ties between rules positively affects the predictive power of the resulting associative classifiers.


The Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC) Industry is well noted for its fragmented nature, leading to several flaws in communication and information processing, which have led to a proliferation of adversarial relationships amongst project participants, thereby affecting the integrity of design information throughout the project life cycle. Likewise, Construction Education is bedevilled by multitudinous issues due to its practice-based, interdisciplinary nature of the industry, its professional and institutional history, and its evolving context and composition. These challenges have influenced the purpose of construction as well as the requirements or strategies needed to achieve it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of Construction Education and learning requirements for successful training and implementation of Level 2 (with the aid of a process map) and also of Level 3, to meeting the ever-changing nature of the AEC industry. This process map seeks to identify the educational requirements for existing industry practitioners and for fresh graduates entering into the industry. In order to achieve this aim, a case study methodology was adopted using semi-structured interviews with BIM experts in purposively selected organisations in the UK, which were further analysed using single case narrative and cross-case synthesis techniques. The BIM sub-processes at each project phase of the construction process were extracted from the interviews conducted. Then the process map linking all the BIM activities in the project was developed. In conclusion, the process map formalises the knowledge and skills set required to successfully implement Level 2 and 3 BIM, facilitating project collaboration, communication flow and agreement amongst project participants on construction processes throughout the project lifecycle. The finding of this research are highly aligned with the seminal literature which argued that new skills required for the creation and management of a BIM model fall into the three categories of technological tools, organisational processes, and project team roles and responsibilities, and that these three skill sets contribute to the success of the entire BIM project and adoption in any organisation.


Josef Šediva (Schediwa), a czech instrument maker, invented a family of brass instruments with a distinctive construction that allows a player to switch between waveguides to achieve trombone-like (brighter) or euphonium-like (softer) sound. The case study presents the instrument housed in the Czech Museum of Music as a part of unique collection. In order to document this, feature spectra and radiation characteristics are presented, as well as other general characteristics of brass instruments (profiles of the both horns, input impedance, etc.). The acoustic documentation is supplemented by historical background. The case study presents theses of a future wider study.


This work combines interdisciplinary knowledge and experience from research fields of psychology, linguistics, audio-processing, machine learning, and computer science. The work systematically explores a novel research topic devoted to automated modeling of personality expression from speech. For this aim, it introduces a novel personality assessment questionnaire and presents the results of extensive labeling sessions to annotate the speech data with personality assessments. It provides estimates of the Big 5 personality traits, i.e. openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, andneuroticism. Based on a database built on the questionnaire, the book presents models to tell apart different personality types or classes from speech automatically.


The issues presented in this project have been considered by
commentators on planning for at least half a century in the context of
discussion surrounding the relationship between physical planning and
cultural values. As early as 1946, United States activist and social
commentator Saul Alinsky in Reveille For Radicals wrote of the
interrelatedness of the social and the physical, and the need for processes
which gave people a voice and power within community decision
making. (Alinsky, 1969).
Jane Jacobs was highly critical of the internationalist approach to the
design of cities. Writing in 1961, in The Life and Death of Great American
Cities, she discounted the reliance on the experts, the planners, and
focused instead on the reality of people's experience of cities. She
concluded that how people live should be the focus of decision making
and not how planners think the city should work. She stated that
decisions needed to be based on the understanding of the social
background of people without generalising and making assumptions
(Jacobs, 1961). In 1965, Paul Davidoff called for
'... a practice that openly invites political and social values to be
examined and debated. Acceptance of this position means the
rejection of prescriptions for planning which would have the
planner act solely as a technician.' (Davidoff, 1965).
Herbert Gans in his book, People and Plans wrote of the failure of
planning, in particular its two major fallacies:
1. That the physical environment was a major determinant of
society and culture; and 2. that only an environment based on professional planning
principles could deliver the good life (Gans, 1968).
During this period, in Great Britain, the Committee on Public Participation
in Planning was developing its report, People and Planning. At its focus
was community involvement in planning, concluding that
'People should be able to say what kind of community they want
and how it should develop: and should be able to do so in a way that
is positive and first hand.' (Committee on Public Participation in
Planning, 1969).
In the 1970s theorists such as Foglesong offered Marxist approaches to
planning, raising questions such as the relationship between planners,
class interests and the state as well as the contradictions between capitalism
and planning (Sandercock, 1998). Leonie Sandercock comments '...the
most significant contribution of Marxist approaches to planning history is
the focus on class, and the deconstruction of the idea of 'the public
interest' (1998). During the 1970s and 80s, Amos Rapoport was offering an anthropological
approach to planning and environmental design decision making. He
states 'the nature of the group which is being considered in planning and
design cannot be assumed but needs to be discovered' (Rapoport, 1980). He
suggests that in order to understand the relationship between people and
their environment, one must get beyond material aspects of the
environment and understand the nature of culture (1980). It is necessary
to gain a knowledge of ideals, imagery and values to better understand
cultural landscapes as well as to design appropriate settings (Rapoport,
1977).
Concurrent to this was the feminist debate and contribution to planning
theory. Feminist planning theory is very much a socially based model, which focuses on processes and approaches as opposed to detailing the
physical shape or form of settlement. Feminist planning theory asserts
'... an arrangement of space in which the domination of men over
women was written into the architecture, urban design, and form of
the city not recognising that their (women's) needs in the city
were different from those of men, based as they were primarily
around the home, neighbourhood and caring for children and the
elderly.' (Sandercock, 1998).
Feminist theory brings difference very much into the fore of the debate.
As do more recent discussions of the potential impact of multiculturalism
on planning by commentators such as Sandercock and Qadeer in the
1990's.
It is an appropriate time to reassess how decisions are made for
communities, A journey has been undertaken in the above discussions
which initially recognised the importance of the people on whose behalf
decisions were being made and pointed out the inability of the expert to
ever be in a position to adequately make such decisions. Also the notion
that it may be undesirable to make decisions for others without first
identifying the values, assumptions and power base which underpins
those decisions. The debate then moved towards an examination of that
power base and with this, the recognition of who does or does not benefit
from decisions. The question of 'difference' is now on the agenda. The fact that people are
not the same as each other and have divergent needs and interests must be
an important consideration in decision making. Difference is not just a
characteristic of the 'other', the minority in our community but is a true
characteristic of whole communities and as such should be addressed in
decision making for the benefit of all.


Security-critical real-time applications such as military aircraft flight control systems have mandatory security requirements in addition to stringent timing constraints. Conventional real-time scheduling algorithms, however, either disregard applications' security needs and thus expose the applications to security threats or run applications at inferior security levels without optimizing security performance. In recognition that many applications running on clusters demand both real-time performance and security, we investigate the problem of scheduling a set of independent real-time tasks with various security requirements. We build a security overhead model that can be used to reasonably measure security overheads incurred by the security-critical tasks. Next, we propose a security-aware real-time heuristic strategy for clusters (SAREC), which integrates security requirements into the scheduling for real-time applications on clusters. Further, to evaluate the performance of SAREC, we incorporate the earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling policy into SAREC to implement a novel security-aware real-time scheduling algorithm (SAEDF). Experimental results from both real-world traces and a real application show that SAEDF significantly improves security over three existing scheduling algorithms (EDF, least laxity first, and first come first serve) by up to 266.7 percent while achieving high schedulability.


Probe measurements of electrostatic plasma fluctuations in the scrape-off layer (SOL) of the TCV tokamak are compared with the results from two-dimensional interchange turbulence simulations. Excellent agreement is found for both the radial variation of statistical moments and temporal correlations, clearly indicating that turbulent transport in the tokamak SOL is due to radial advection of blob-like filamentary structures. This offers an explanation both for the basic mechanism driving the anomalous SOL particle transport and the now commonly observed broad particle density profiles, extending deep into the SOL and thought to be the cause of high levels of main chamber plasma-wall interactions.


Our objectives were to evaluate the effects of sire breed, type of protein supplement, level of supplementation and sex on wool spinning fineness (SF), its correlations with other wool characteristics and prediction accuracy in F1 Merino crossbred lambs.

Texel, Coopworth, White Suffolk, East Friesian and Dorset rams were mated with 500 purebred Merino dams at a ratio of 1:100 in separate paddocks within a single management system. The F1 progeny were raised on ryegrass pasture until weaning, before forty lambs were randomly allocated to treatments in a 5 x 2 x 2 x 2 factorial experimental design representing 5 sire breeds, 2 supplementary feeds (canola or lupins), 2 levels of supplementation (1% or 2% of liveweight) and sex (wethers or ewes). Lambs were supplemented for six weeks after an initial three weeks of adjustment, wool sampled at the commencement and conclusion of the feeding trial and analyzed for SF, mean fibre diameter (FD), coefficient of variation (CV), standard deviation, comfort factor (CF), fibre curvature (CURV), and clean fleece yield.

Data were analyzed using mixed linear model procedures with sire fitted as a random effect, and sire breed, sex, supplementary feed type, level of supplementation and their second-order interactions as fixed effects. Sire breed (P<0.001), sex (P<0.004), sire breed x level of supplementation (P<0.004), and sire breed x sex (P<0.019) interactions significantly influenced SF. SF ranged from 22.7 ± 0.2µm in White Suffolk-sired lambs to 25.1 ± 0.2µm in East Friesian crossbred lambs. Ewes had higher SF than wethers. There were significant (P<0.001) correlations between SF and FD (0.93), CV (0.40), CF (-0.94) and CURV (-0.12).

Its strong relationship with other wool quality traits enabled accurate predictions explaining up to about 93% of the observed variation. The interactions between sire breed genetics and nutrition will have an impact on the choices that dual-purpose sheep producers make when selecting sire breeds and protein supplementary feed levels to achieve optimal wool spinning fineness at the farmgate level. This will facilitate selective breeding programs being able to better account for SF and its interactions with other wool characteristics.


Abstract This contribution investigates the link between female labour force participation and household income inequality using data from the Swiss Household Panel (2000-2014). Through index decomposition analyses, we find that female labour force participation has slightly attenuated household income inequality over time. Women's entry into the labour market, higher work percentages within part-time work - but not the shift from part-time to full-time work - and the weak correlation in partner's earnings have contributed to this effect.


Examines how the US-Mexico border is seen through visual codes of surveillance When Donald Trump promised to "build a wall" on the U.S.-Mexico border, both supporters and opponents visualized a snaking barrier of concrete cleaving through nearly two thousand miles of arid desert. Though only 4 percent of the US population lives in proximity to the border, imagining what the wall would look like came easily to most Americans, in part because of how images of the border are reproduced and circulated for national audiences. Border Optics considers the US-Mexico border as one of the most visualized and imagined spaces in the US. As a place of continual crisis, permanent visibility, and territorial defense, the border is rendered as a layered visual space of policing—one that is seen from watchtowers, camera-mounted vehicles, helicopters, surveillance balloons, radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and live streaming websites. It is also a space that is visualized across various forms and genres of media, from maps to geographical surveys, military strategic plans, illustrations, photographs, postcards, novels, film, and television, which combine fascination with the region with the visual codes of surveillance and survey. Border Optics elaborates on the expanded vision of the border as a consequence of the interface of militarism, technology, and media. Camilla Fojas describes how the perception of the viewing public is controlled through a booming security-industrial complex made up of entertainment media, local and federal police, prisons and detention centers, the aerospace industry, and all manner of security technology industries. The first study to examine visual codes of surveillance within an analysis of the history and culture of the border region, Border Optics is an innovative and groundbreaking examination of security cultures, race, gender, and colonialism.... Download ebook, read file pdf Surveillance Cultures on the USMexico Frontier


Richard (Dick) Henry Dalitz was a theoretical physicist whose principal contributions were intimately connected to some of the major breakthroughs of the twentieth century in particle and nuclear physics. His formulation of the 'τ–θ' puzzle led to the discovery that parity is not a symmetry of nature—the first of the assumed space-time symmetries to fail. He pioneered the theoretical study of hypernuclei, of strange baryon resonances, and of baryon spectroscopy in the quark model (at a time when many considered it 'naive'), to all of which he made lasting contributions. The 'Dalitz plot' and 'Dalitz pairs' are part of the vocabulary of particle physics. Throughout his career he remained in close touch with many experimentalists, and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the data. Many of his papers were stimulated by experimental results and were concerned with their analysis and interpretation, work that often required the forging of new phenomenological tools; many also indicated what new experiments needed to be done. As a consequence, he was a theorist exceptionally valued by experimentalists. He created and ran a strong particle theory group at Oxford, which attracted many talented students and researchers, and which has continued to thrive.


The world's energy structure underpins the global environmental crisis and changing it will require regulatory change at a massive level. Energy is highly regulated in international law, but the field has never been comprehensively mapped. The legal sources on which the governance of energy is based are plentiful but they are scattered across a vast legal expanse. This book is the first single-authored study of the international law of energy as a whole. Written by a world-leading expert, it provides a comprehensive account of the international law of energy and analyses the implications of the ongoing energy transformation for international law. The study combines conceptual and doctrinal analysis of all the main rules, processes and institutions to consider the past, present and likely future of global energy governance. Providing a solid foundation for teaching, research and practice, this book addresses both the theory and real-world policy dimension of the international law of energy.


Priority health-risk behaviors, which contribute to the leading causes of mortality and morbidity among youth and adults, often are established during youth, extend into adulthood, are interrelated, and are preventable. This report covers data during February-December 2001. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) monitors six categories of priority health-risk behaviors among youth and young adults; these behaviors contribute to unintentional injuries and violence; tobacco use; alcohol and other drug use; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity. The YRBSS includes a national school-based survey conducted by CDC as well as state, territorial, and local school-based surveys conducted by education and health agencies. This report summarizes results from the national survey, 34 state surveys, and 18 local surveys conducted among students in grades 9-12 during February-December 2001. In the United States, approximately three-fourths of all deaths among persons aged 10-24 years result from only four causes: motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide. Results from the 2001 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey demonstrated that numerous high school students engage in behaviors that increase their likelihood of death from these four causes: 14.1% had rarely or never worn a seat belt during the 30 days preceding the survey; 30.7% had ridden with a driver who had been drinking alcohol; 17.4% had carried a weapon during the 30 days preceding the survey; 47.1% had drunk alcohol during the 30 days preceding the survey; 23.9% had used marijuana during the 30 days preceding the survey; and 8.8% had attempted suicide during the 12 months preceding the survey. Substantial morbidity and social problems among young persons also result from unintended pregnancies and STDs, including HIV infection. In 2001, 45.6% of high school students had ever had sexual intercourse; 42.1% of sexually active students had not used a condom at last sexual intercourse; and 2.3% had ever injected an illegal drug. Two-thirds of all deaths among persons aged > or = 25 years result from only two causes: cardiovascular disease and cancer. The majority of risk behaviors associated with these two causes of death are initiated during adolescence. In 2001, 28.5% of high school students had smoked cigarettes during the 30 days preceding the survey; 78.6% had not eaten > or = 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables during the 7 days preceding the survey; 10.5% were overweight; and 67.8% did not attend physical education class daily. Health and education officials at national, state, and local levels are using these YRBSS data to analyze and improve policies and programs to reduce priority health-risk behaviors among youth. The YRBSS data also are being used to measure progress toward achieving 16 national health objectives for 2010 and 3 of the 10 leading health indicators.


Exactly 500 years after its first publication by the great Venetian printing house Aldus Manutius, Francesco Colonna's weird, erotic, allegorical antiquarian tale, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, was translated into English and reprinted in full, together with all of its 174 original - and enchanting - woodcut illustrations. It is one of the most important documents of Renaissance imagination and fantasy, and its woodcuts are a primary source for Renaissance ideas on both buildings and gardens. This translation was first published in 1999 in a large format that exactly matched the original in size, design and typography. This new, smaller paperback edition retains all the text and illustrations and is easy to handle and read. Long prized by bibliophiles, pored over by generations of scholars, this classic book may now gain the wider audience its melancholy genius merits.


We present the first release of EMTerms (Emergency Management Terms), the largest crisis-related terminological resource to date, containing over 7,000 terms used in Twitter to describe various crises. This resource can be used by practitioners to search for relevant messages in Twitter during crises, and by computer scientists to develop new automatic methods for crises in Twitter. The terms have been collected from a seed set of terms manually annotated by a linguist and an emergency manager from tweets broadcast during 4 crisis events. A Conditional Random Fields (CRF) method was then applied to tweets from 35 crisis events, in order to expand the set of terms while overcoming the difficulty of getting more emergency managers' annotations. The terms are classified into 23 information-specific categories, by using a combination of expert annotations and crowdsourcing. This article presents the detailed terminology extraction methodology, as well as final results.


Gamification aims at addressing problems in various fields such as the high dropout rates, the lack of engagement, isolation, or the lack of personalisation faced by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Even though gamification is widely applied, not only in MOOCs, only few cases are meaningfully designed and empirically tested. The Gamification Design Process (GaDeP) aims to cover this gap. This article first briefly introduces GaDeP, presents the concept of meaningful gamification, and derives how it motivates the need for the Gamifire platform (as a scalable and platform-independent reference infrastructure for MOOC). Secondly, it defines the requirements for platformindependent gamification and describes the development of the Gamifire infrastructure. Thirdly we describe how Gamifire was successfully applied in four different cases. Finally, the applicability of GaDeP beyond MOOC is presented by reporting on a case study where GaDeP has been successfully applied by four student research and development projects. From both, the Gamifire cases and the GaDeP cases we derive the key contribution of this article: insights in the strengths and weaknesses of the Gamifire infrastructure as well as lessons learned about the applicability and limitations of the GaDeP framework. The paper ends detailing our future works and planned development activities.


Exceptional C++ shows by example how to go about sound software engineering in standard C++. Do you enjoy solving thorny C++ problems and puzzles? Do you relish writing robust and extensible code? Then take a few minutes and challenge yourself with some tough C++ design and programming problems.The puzzles and problems in Exceptional C++ not only entertain, they will help you hone your skills to become the sharpest C++ programmer you can be. Many of these problems are culled from the famous Guru of the Week feature of the Internet newsgroup comp.lang.c++.moderated, expanded and updated to conform to the official ISO/ANSI C++ Standard.Each problem is rated according to difficulty and is designed to illustrate subtle programming mistakes or design considerations. After you've had a chance to attempt a solution yourself, the book then dissects the code, illustrates what went wrong, and shows how the problem can be fixed. Covering a broad range of C++ topics, the problems and solutions address critical issues such as: Generic programming and how to write reusable templates Exception safety issues and techniques Robust class design and inheritance Compiler firewalls and the Pimpl Idiom Name lookup, namespaces, and the Interface Principle Memory management issues and techniques Traps, pitfalls, and anti-idioms Optimization Try your skills against the C++ masters and come away with the insight and experience to create more efficient, effective, robust, and portable C++ code. 0201615622B04062001


In this study, I explore the role of metaphor in shaping web-based e-governance portals. Specifically I analyze how a seemingly diverse set of portals is underpinned by a limited number of root metaphors, and how these metaphors are enacted through combinations of discursive resources and strategies. I then analyze the implications of specific metaphors on participation. I do this through a case study of the Development Gateway, a multimillion-dollar, multi-stakeholder web-based portal initiated by the World Bank, which has as one of its main features a set of 52 "Country Gateways", each one a site set up by a different country, yet all established under the same mandate of using information technology for sustainable development. I use discourse analytic techniques to analyze these websites' words, visuals, and interactivity resources, using a framework of 21 categories broken down into 84 sub-questions. I find that there are three root metaphors underpinning these portals: the metaphors of community, expert, and market. I note that a single metaphor can be enacted in different ways; for example, multiple portals underpinned the "expert" metaphor can nevertheless end up playing significantly different roles. I then examine the implications of these roles on the process of participation.


From the Publisher:

Design and implement flexible, extensible, and maintainable applications with servlets and JSP technology
Master powerful authentication and internationalization techniques
Learn how to integrate industry-standard XML and XSLT with JSP technology
Use JSP technology-based templates to develop robust applications from modular components

Advanced JavaServer Pages delivers:

Web application design techniques based on JSP and servlets technology
Proven strategies for achieving enterprise-class robustness and scalability with JSP technology
Expert guidance on implementing JSP technology-based applications with reusable components

To fully exploit the power of JavaServer Pages technology in Web application development, based on J2EE technology, you need to master the sophisticated server-side techniques that David Geary presents in Advanced JavaServer Pages.

Geary tackles JavaServer Pages technology with the same exhaustive, authoritative approach that made his Graphic Java books into worldwide best sellers. He presents in-depth coverage of advanced topics including:

Implementing custom JSP technology tags
Designing scalable and extensible Web applications
Using authentication to build secure JSP technology-based applications
Internationalizing JSP technology-based applications for global environments

Advanced JavaServer Pages features detailed chapters on internationalization, authentication, JSP technology templates, design, and XML. It concludes with a comprehensive case study that ties together key topics developed in thebook and demonstrates how to integrate advanced techniques based on JSP technology. This book is a must-have resource for every developer of Java technology creating server-side applications with JSP technology and servlets.


It is widely believed that the cortical mechanisms of color vision are monocular because stereopsis is poor for isoluminant patterns. By measuring and comparing the chromatic tuning of binocular and monocular neurons in cortical areas V1 and V2 of macaque, we show that this is not the case. Not only are many color-preferring cells in early visual cortex well-driven binocularly, but their color preferences are unusually well-matched in the two eyes. The receptive fields of these neurons are well equipped to convey information about binocular surface color, but because they are insensitive to local spatial contrast they are ill-suited to convey information about stereoscopic depth. Our observations suggest that in early cortical processing, binocular depth and binocular surface color are represented by two different groups of neurons: one that encodes binocular spatial detail at the expense of binocular chromatic detail and another that does the reverse.


Surprisingly few gods appear in the eleven surviving comedies of Aristophanes. This article examines what roles the gods do play when they are present. It further argues that humans with divine attributes often appear in lieu of the gods themselves. These humans, together with the handful of gods who are present, fall into the broad functional categories of helpers and opponents of the comic protagonist. The gods' absence is to be attributed to an Aristophanic conception of human agency, namely that humans in comedy, especially when compared to tragedy, have extraordinary control of their lives. A god's presence would be too great a threat to comic inventiveness.


This thesis analyses musical imagery created by Victorian artists. It considers paintings, decorative arts and photography, as well as contemporary art criticism and poetry. Focusing on artists associated with
Pre-Raphaelitism and aestheticism, it shows how they used musical subjects to sidestep narrative conventions and concentrate instead on explorations of femininity, colour, mood and sensuality.
This thesis begins by considering the musical experience of four artists - Frederic Leighton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and James Whistler - and the influence of personal taste on their musical subjects. It
then looks at the depiction of non-Western performance, including images of dancing girls. The third chapter explores the links between music and worship, and the subversion of traditional religious iconography by
aestheticist artists. Chapter four analyses images of musical women, and especially the late-Victorian interest in mermaids and sirens. The theme of sensuality continues with an investigation of the connections between music
and colour, by assessing the influence of Renaissance Venice, Wagner and French theories of synaesthesia on the Victorian art-world. The final chapter looks at the interconnectedness of music, nostalgia and bereavement in aestheticist painting.
Although this study approaches the subject of music-in-art from a number of different directions, there are two key themes that underpin the interpretation of musical images. The first is that musical symbolism was malleable: music could signify both religious devotion and sexual passion. The second is that, in the Victorian imagination, music was oppositional and unstable. It was
linked with femininity, emotion, colour, desire and the supernatural.
This thesis demonstrates that the idea of music was a key component in the emergence of anti-Establishment art in Victorian England.


Superannuation is the Commonwealth Government's preferred system for the provision of income in retirement. By definition, occupational superannuation benefits those with a strong attachment to the workforce. Employment in a part-time capacity and/or a low-paid, low status occupation places a significant constraint on the capacity of individuals to accumulate private retirement savings. The policy shift towards this form of retirement income system thus has particular adverse consequences for women. Using micro-simulations this paper estimates the final lump-sums that women with a range of different work and other characteristics could expect to achieve. Adequacy assessments suggest that, even under a fully-matured Superannuation Guarantee Charge system, a typical woman will remain heavily dependent on the age pension in retirement. The results highlight the need for greater public debate over government policy with respect to the whole retirement income system, rather than a narrow focus on superannuation.


This study examines current trends in tourism and agriculture in Caribbean countries and the strategy for linking them in order to facilitate their future development. The tourism industry has, in the past, developed largely apart from other sectors such as agriculture. On the other hand, agriculture has developed mainly to satisfy export markets. Domestic agriculture has had limited development and has therefore been displaced to a considerable extent by food imports. The recent promotion of agriculture tourism linkages is an attempt to enhance the local value added of the tourism industry, while at the same time promoting the development of domestic agriculture. However, it is argued that agriculture-tourism linkage per se will not facilitate the development of either tourism or agriculture. The nature of the tourism product in each country has to be understood before effective strategies could be devised for improving competitiveness. A similar approach is also necessary in respect of the agriculture sector. Increased linkage between tourism and agriculture could be enhanced through the adoption of a cluster-based strategy for improving the competitiveness of the tourism sector and for improving the livelihoods of communities and rural areas.


A ceux enfin dent les chemins d'encre et de sang passent par les vocables et par les hommes Edmond Jabes IN THE COMPANY OF CONTEMPORARY SWEDISH WRITERS, Birgitta Trotzig is probably not to be counted among the most widely read. She has been, though, the recipient of numerous awards, prizes, and distinctions--among which must certainly be counted her election to the Swedish academy in 1993--and has engaged the attention of an ever-growing circle of readers, who admire the sensitivity of her ethical vision, the empathy of her social engagement, and the resonances of her fundamentally religious but never facile hope of engaging the divine in spite of the overwhelming abundance of evil and injustice in the world. From within a context that has in recent years become aggressively more secular in both a social-political as well as an aesthetic-intellectual sense, her voice has invited a reassessment of both the historical as well as the contemporary role that traditional religious considerations might play in society even in the face of extreme forms of deprivations, humiliation, and dehumanization. Her career as a novelist, poet, and essayist is notable for its singularity and is widely recognized as virtually without parallel in the history contemporary Swedish literature. She, thus, is not in any obvious ways to be readily understood in terms of any of the major trends or developments that have characterized the development of Swedish literature over the last forty years. She too has eschewed attempts at categorization in terms of the usual literary historical categories insisting, rather, that she has never belonged to any school or group. Relatively few obvious points of thematic, stylistic, or conceptual contact to other important recent writers, moreover, immediately suggest themselves. As recent intertextual studies have demonstrated, hers is not a voice crying in the wilderness. Her expanding oeuvre consists in many respects of an ongoing conversation with a wide variety of other texts extending over several centuries. Trotzig was born in 1929 in Goteborg, where she later studied art and literary history and received her degree in 1948. Upon the completion of her education, she became a regular and appreciated contributor to Aftonbladet and Bonniers Litterara Magasin writing on a wide range of topics of broadly cultural, intellectual, and social interest. These articles revealed the shifting and maturing concerns that were part of a deeply personal search. In the early `60s, she moved from Sweden to Paris with her husband, the respected artist Ulf Trotzig. In Paris, she converted to Roman Catholicism, an important step in her long and ongoing spiritual quest that had been portended in her works for more than ten years. As had been the case with Osten Sjostrand a decade earlier, her conversion brought her into intimate spiritual and intellectual proximity with the broader neo-Catholic tradition and important aspects of French culture; it also introduced her to Christian as well as Jewish mysticism--especially that of San Juan de la Cruz--and to the thinking of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), in whom she has maintained an abiding interest.(1) Although she finds spiritual sustenance in many of the same strains of Catholicism as Sjostrand had, their reflection in her works is more subtle and indirect than they are in Sj6strand's early works--unio and Invigelse--which embody the most direct literary expression of his religious commitment. A powerful undercurrent flowing through her works uniting them in a way that offers a degree of interpretive cohesion is a profounnd but never simple religious commitment that struggles--often seemingly in vain--to account for the suffering and evil in the world. Trotzig has become widely understood as a writer whose evocative narratives disclose a dark and disconsolate view of the human condition with little possibility of circumventing humiliating, degrading, and at times tragic defeat while searching with considerable anguish for some elusive trace of divine benevolence, mercy, or love. …


ABSTRACT The Tra1 protein is a direct transcription activator target that is essential for coactivator function of both the SAGA and NuA4 histone acetyltransferase (HAT) complexes. The ∼400-kDa Saccharomyces cerevisiae Tra1 polypeptide and its human counterpart TRRAP contain 67 or 68 tandem α-helical HEAT and TPR protein repeats that extend from the N terminus to the conserved yet catalytically inactive phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) domain. We generated a series of mutations spanning the length of the protein and assayed for defects in transcription, coactivator recruitment, and histone acetylation at SAGA- and NuA4-dependent genes. Inviable TRA1 mutants all showed defects in SAGA and NuA4 complex stability, suggesting that similar surfaces of Tra1 mediate assembly of these two very different coactivator complexes. Nearly all of the viable Tra1 mutants showed transcription defects that fell into one of three classes: (i) defective recruitment to promoters, (ii) reduced stability of the SAGA and NuA4 HAT modules, or (iii) normal recruitment of Tra1-associated subunits but reduced HAT activity in vivo. Our results show that Tra1 recruitment at Gcn4-dependent and Rap1-dependent promoters requires the same regions of Tra1 and that separate regions of Tra1 contribute to the HAT activity and stability of the SAGA and NuA4 HAT modules.


Davies: Principles of Tax Law is an accessible and straightforward guide to the UK tax system. Since its first edition in 1980 the work has sought to distil not only the statutory material but also the substantial number of judicial decisions on tax law into an understandable form.

The work focuses on explaining the various principles underlying the five major taxes – income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and VAT – and how they work in practice. Major pieces of legislation and relevant case law are discussed to show how the UK tax system works both in principle and practice, offering an insight into how tax law has developed and is applied.

Davies: Principles of Tax Law continues to demystify the jargon surrounding tax law making it an essential textbook for undergraduates and a source of reference for practitioners requiring a simple guide to the subject.


J. A. Evans & N. J. Soper write: We comment on two papers on Caledonian geology recently published in the Journal; Dempster et al. 1995 and Cliff et al. 1996. These papers investigate two inter-linked themes, the timing of the Grampian/Caledonian orogeny in the Dalradian and the role of the Newer Gabbro suite in the metamorphism. The former paper is concerned with NE Scotland, the latter with western Ireland; they arrive at startlingly different conclusions. Dempster et al. 1995 present mica-whole-rock Rb-Sr ages from metamorphic rocks along the Buchan coast which they interpret as a record of cooling after the main Buchan tectonometamorphism. They infer a minimum age of 505 Ma for the D1–D2 orogenic peak, the oldest apparent age recorded, and favour a pre-590 Ma age for D1, the age of Ben Vurich intrusion (Rogers et al. 1989). On this basis they conclude that emplacement of the gabbros was not responsible for the high heat flow Buchan metamorphism (the traditional interpretation) but, somewhat counter-intuitively, for development of the higher pressure Barrovian assemblages by a process of 'magmatic loading'. In contrast, the conclusion reached by Cliff et al. 1996 from a combined U–Pb and Rb–Sr study in Connemara is that the low pressure metamorphism in this part of the Dalradian tract is linked with the syn-orogenic gabbros but that advective heat pulses were short-lived and thus show complex relationships to the deformation. All the new isotope data presented in the Irish paper are compatible with mid-Ordovician peak


A central paradox of coding theory has been noted for many years, and concerns the existence and construction of the best codes. Virtually every linear code is "good" in the sense that it meets the Gilbert-Varshamov bound on distance versus redundancy. Despite the sophisticated constructions for codes derived over the years, however, no one has succeeded in demonstrating a constructive procedure which yields such codes over arbitrary symbol fields. A quarter of a century ago, Wozencraft and Reiffen, in discussing this problem, stated that "we are tempted to infer that any code of which we cannot think is good." Using the theory of Kolmogorov complexity, we show the remarkable fact that this statement holds true in a rigorous mathematical sense: any linear code which is truly random, in the sense that there is no concise way of specifying the code, is good. Furthermore, random selection of a code which does contain some constructive pattern results, with probability bounded away from zero, in a code which does not meet the Gilbert-Varshamov bound regardless of the block length of the code. In contrast to the situation for linear codes, we show that there are effectively random non-linear codes which have no guarantee on distance, and that over all rates, the average non-linear code has much lower distance than the average linear code.

These techniques are used to derive original results on the performance of various classes of codes, including shortened cyclic, generalized Reed-Solomon, and general non-linear codes, under a variety of decoding strategies involving mixed burst- and random-error correction.

The second part of the thesis deals with the problem of finding decoding algorithms for general linear codes. These algorithms are capable of full hard decision decoding or bounded soft decision decoding, and do not rely on any rare structure for their effectiveness.

After a brief discussion of some aspects of the theory of NP-completeness as it relates to coding theory, we propose a simple model of a general decoding algorithm which is sufficiently powerful to be able to describe most of the known approaches to the problem. We provide asymptotic analysis of the complexity of various approaches to the problem under various decoding strategies (full hard decision decoding and bounded hard- and soft-decision decoding) and show that a generalization of information set decoding gives more efficient algorithms than any other approach known.

Finally, we propose a new type of algorithm that synthesizes some of the advantages of information set decoding and other algorithms that exploit the weight structure of the code, such as the zero neighbours algorithm, and discuss its effectiveness.


Analytic theories of knowledge have traditionally maintained that the provenance of a true belief is critically important to deciding whether it is knowledge. However, a comparably widespread view is that it is our beliefs alone, regardless of their (potentially dubious) provenance which feature in psychological explanation, including the explanation of action: thus, that knowledge itself and as such is irrelevant in psychological explanation. The paper gives initial reasons why the 'beliefs alone' view of explanation should be resisted—arguments deriving ultimately from the Meno indicate that the provenance of a true belief may be relevant to the explanation of action. However, closer scrutiny of these arguments shows that they are incapable of according provenance anything like as central a role in action explanation as provenance has traditionally been given in the theory of knowledge. A consideration of the history of science suggests anyway that all knowledge has a compromised provenance if one looks back any significant distance. It is concluded that the importance of the provenance of our beliefs is something that has been seriously over-emphasised in epistemology.


In this innovative practice full paper we present the implementation of the distant laboratory for the Internet of Things teaching and training. The recent outbreak of the SARS-COV-2 virus and related COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world has caused governments across the world to shut down schools and universities, to slow down the spread of the coronavirus that is causing the disease. As a result, some universities and schools have switched from physical classrooms to virtual or online classrooms. This approach is working well for theoretical subjects and courses, but it is not straight forward in the case of laboratory subjects and courses that require access to hardware resources. The IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory infrastructure presented in this paper is a timely solution. In this paper, we present current advances in distant learning, distant laboratory models, and the IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory implemented as part of the IOT-OPEN.EU ERASMUS+ project, along with short analysis on current advances in distant learning, where students are interacting with physical hardware remote way.


Congested city centers have become a nightmare of traffic planners. They propose a variety of measures to overcome the problem: more funds to road construction, tighter parking controls, dedicated bus lines in order to make public transport more attractive, etc. Usually they ignore the pricing of road use which, however, is the easiest way to manage demand, i.e. the traffic volumes. When an appropriate price is set on scarce road space, an acceptable level of congestion and other negative externalities of road use (e.g. pollution and noise) can be reached. The objective of the `right price' or marginal cost pricing is to minimize the total cost of the road sector. In the optimum, road users pay for highway maintenance, capacity expansion, and environmental damage according to the principles of marginal cost pricing. The theoretical solution as well as practical applications from Europe, the USA, and Asia are given.


Surface drifters released in the central Red Sea during April 2010 detected a well-defined anticyclonic eddy around 23°N. This eddy was ∼45–60 km in radius, with a swirl speed up to ∼0.5 m/s. The eddy feature was also evident in monthly averaged sea surface height fields and in current profiles measured on a cross-isobath, shipboard CTD/ADCP survey around that region. The unstructured-grid, Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) was configured for the Red Sea and process studies were conducted to establish the conditions necessary for the eddy to form and to establish its robustness. The model was capable of reproducing the observed anticyclonic eddy with the same location and size. Diagnosis of model results suggests that the eddy can be formed in a Red Sea that is subject to seasonally varying buoyancy forcing, with no wind, but that its location and structure are significantly altered by wind forcing, initial distribution of water stratification and southward coastal flow from the upstream area. Momentum analysis indicates that the flow field of the eddy was in geostrophic balance, with the baroclinic pressure gradient forcing about the same order of magnitude as the surface pressure gradient forcing.


Summary. The paper aims at presenting the present state of law and food safety regarding traditional/regional foods. The production has to be carried out hygienically assuring food safety to the products. Legal regulations connected with production and protection of the traditional foods arecontained in COUNCIL REGULATIONS (EC) No 509/2006 and No 510/2006. The mentioned above decrees create marking and requirement for three groups of food products: Traditional Specialities Guaranteed (TSG), Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected of Geographical Indication (PGI). Manufacturers must produce this type of foodstuff according to general hygienic rules. In order to protect the consumer, they should be subject to inspection based on COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 882/2004. Foodstuff should be subject to ensure that operators comply with the product specification before marketing. Verification of compliance with the specifications of any agricultural product and foodstuff produced within the EC shall be ensured by one or more competent verification organisation/body or/and authorities certification bodies operating as a product certification body after accreditation in accordance with European standard EN 45011 (2000). Foodstuffs should not contain microorganisms or their toxins or metabolites in quantities that present an unacceptable risk for human health. Foodstuff producers are obligated to fulfil microbiological requirements. Products should be monitored according to the national plan of monitoring, in range of residues of pesticides, heavy metals, dioxin or inhibitory substances and also controlled on permitted additives. The promotion of our traditional and regional foods is carried out by several organisations which are active in Poland, i.e. Polish Chamber of Regional and Local Products and Centre for Studies of Natural and Traditional Food (at University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn).


In this paper we develop a distributed rate control algorithm for multiple-unicast-sessions when network coding is allowed. Building on our recent flow-based characterization of network coding, we formulate the problem as a convex optimization problem. The formulation exploits pairwise coding possibilities between any pair of sessions, where the objective function is the sum of the utilities based on the rates supported by each session. With some manipulation on the Lagrangian of the formulated problem, a distributed algorithm is developed with no interaction between intermediate nodes, and each source having the freedom to choose its own utility function. The only information required by the source is the weighted sum of the queue length updates of each link, which can be piggy-backed on the acknowledgment messages. In addition to the optimal rate control algorithm, we propose a decentralized pairwise random coding scheme (PRC) that is optimal when a sufficiently large finite field is used for network coding. The convergence of the rate control algorithm is proved analytically and verified by extensive simulations. Simulations also demonstrate the advantage of our algorithm over the state-of-the-art in terms of throughput and fairness.


This paper discusses data from a survey and in-depth interviews on elite perceptions of poverty in Brazil. De Swaan tried to identify the circumstances under which elites are willing to mobilize resources in order to promote poverty reduction. This paper questions if de Swaan's analysis applies to Brazil. The main finding is that two parts of de Swaan's thesis do apply: that poverty is a problem for the rich in the sense that it generates negative externalities that they would like to reduce; and that the elite believe that there are effective remedies. What is missing for Brazilian elites is the third element, namely that the elite see poverty as their responsibility to do something about it.


Numerical simulations of diesel sprays in a constant-volume vessel have been performed with the conditional moment closure (CMC) combustion model for a broad range of conditions. On the oxidizer side these include variations in ambient temperature (800-1100 K), oxygen volume fraction (15-21 %) and density (7.3-58.5 kg/m) and on the fuel side variation in injector orifice diameter (50-363 μm) and fuel pressure (600-1900 bar); in total 22 conditions. Results are compared to experimental data by means of ignition delay and flame lift-off length (LOL). Good agreement for both quantities is reported for the vast majority of conditions without any changes to model constants: the variations relating to the air side are quantitatively accurately predicted; for the fuel side (viz. orifice diameter and injection pressure) the trends are qualitatively well reproduced. For the reference case, three different n-heptane chemical mechanisms (with 22, 29 and 67 species) have further been compared with respect to the ignition process and the subsequent flame stabilization and the flame structure is compared to conceptual models presented in the literature. At those conditions all three mechanisms showed comparable results. Based on the findings reported, CMC is seen as a highly promising approach to model spray combustion for a very broad range of diesel engine relevant conditions.


The 2017 coming into force of the WTO Agreement of Trade Facilitation, and its special and differential treatment provisions for developing and least developed countries is expected to leverage substantial international development resources, along with the dominant discourse of development, including the deployment of Western-trained experts to support the implementation of complex border management measures on the basis of a neoliberal discourse of good governance. Critical development scholarship, informed by Escobar (2011), Ferguson (1994) and Li (2007) helps to inform the texture of expert-beneficiary relations, while a post-structuralist discourse analysis helps to reveal the underlying power relationships as reflected in texts and practices. This study will explore these dominant discourses, paying particular attention to the peer-to-peer expert deployment mechanism employed by the Brussels-based World Customs Organization and the case of Sierra Leone, which offers potential to challenge the dominant tactics employed by international development agencies.


A student-led research seminar was utilized to develop and validate an innovative 4-part undergraduate chemistry laboratory module that exposes students to a more environmentally benign method for the extraction and analysis of pharmaceutical-precursor alkaloids from the leaves of a medicinal plant, the Madagascar periwinkle. This plant is well known for its production of valuable pharmaceutical alkaloids but obtaining these compounds in therapeutic amounts has relied on traditional techniques that often ignore environmental impacts. Our student-directed design team has optimized an instructional protocol for extracting alkaloids from leaves by successfully, and for the first time, replacing the traditionally used dichloromethane extraction solvent with cyclopentyl methyl ether, a less environmentally harmful solvent. As a pedagogical exercise in the principles of green chemistry, students work in teams performing extractions with conventional vs. "green" solvents for comparison. We also introduce the student to the concept of the qualitative assay for alkaloid presence. Thin layer chromatography is performed with various solvents to optimize resolution of major alkaloid components, as well as to introduce fundamental principles of chromatography to the students. Finally, supercritical fluid chromatography is utilized as a previously unexplored, and less waste-producing analytical technique for confirmation of the presence of the valuable pharmaceutical precursors vindoline and catharanthine.


1-4Dept. Information Science Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering Bangalore, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract In a multilingual country like India, a document may contain text words in more than one language. For a multilingual environment in order to reach a larger cross section of people, it is necessary that a document should be composed of text contents in different languages. But on the other hand, this causes practical difficulty in OCR such a document, because the language type of the text should be predetermined, before employing a particular OCR. It is perhaps impossible to design a single recognizer which can identify a large number of scripts/languages. So, it is necessary to identify the language region of the document before feeding the document to the corresponding Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system. Identification aims to extract information presented in digital documents namely articles, newspapers, magazines and ebooks. This has given rise to many language identification systems. The objective is to develop visual clues based procedures to identify different text portions of a document. In this work eight features namely top max row, bottom max row, top horizontal lines, vertical lines, bottom components, tick components, top holes and bottom holes have been used to identify the script type.


Introduction According to guidelines for the management of hyperthyroidism, patients with hyperthyroidism should be treated with radioactive iodine, antithyroid drugs, or thyroidectomy. Oral administration of radioiodine is a safe and cost effective treatment option for patients with toxic multinodular goiter (TMG)/toxic adenoma (TA) or Grave's disease (GD). The aim of the study was to evaluate the use of thyroglobulin values as a possible predictor of a dose of radioiodine therapy (RAI) in hyperthyroidism in patients GD, TA and TMG. Results The study included 105 patients (14.4 % males and 85.6% females). The average duration of the disease was 9 years. Graves's disease is registered among 50.68%, toxic multinodular goiter among 30.83% and toxic adenoma among 18.49% of patients. Patients were divided into four groups, and they received four doses of radioiodine therapy: 10mCi, 15mCi, 20mCi and 25mCi. The values of thyroglubulin were measured before RAI, and in period of one, three and six months after the therapy. Conclusion It can be concluded that the higher average value of thyroglobulin before therapy suggests the need for administering a higher doses of RAI, so determination of thyroglobulin levels in serum, may serve as a good predictor to assist in monitoring the administered dose of RAI in patients with hyperthyroidism.


" ...a marvelous source for the social history of Russian peasant society in the years before the revolution...The translation is superb." - Steven Hoch. " ...one of the best ethnographic portraits that we have of the Russian village...a highly readable text that is an excellent introduction to the world of the Russian peasantry." - Samuel C. Ramer. "Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia" provides a unique firsthand portrait of peasant family life as recorded by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, an ethnographer and painter who spent four years at the turn of the twentieth century observing the life and customs of villagers in a central Russian province. Unusual in its awareness of the rapid changes in the Russian village in the late nineteenth century and in its concentration on the treatment of women and children, Semyonova's ethnography vividly describes courting rituals, marriage and sexual practices, childbirth, infanticide, child-rearing practices, the lives of women, food and drink, work habits, and the household economy. In contrast to a tradition of rosy, romanticized descriptions of peasant communities by Russian upper-class observers, Semyonova gives an unvarnished account of the harsh living conditions and often brutal relationships within peasant families.


This study presents our methods to produce multi-day Terra, Aqua, and Terra-Aqua moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover composite images respectively from daily Terra MODIS, Aqua MODIS, and both Terra and Aqua MODIS snow cover products, with flexible starting and ending dates and a user-defined cloud cover threshold. The methods are applied to Colorado Plateau, USA and northern Xinjiang, China. The statistical comparison gives the following results. For the 2003-2004 hydrologic year, the daily Terra-Aqua composite images exhibited ~10-15% less on annual mean cloud cover and ~1-4% more on annual mean snow cover, compared with their daily Terra or Aqua counterparts. Using 10% cloud cover as a user-defined threshold, we produced 152 (northern Xinjiang) and 162 (Colorado Plateau) multi-day Terra-Aqua composite images for the 2003-2004 hydrological year, respectively. On average, it is 2.4 and 2.2 days per composite image for northern Xinjiang and Colorado Plateau, respectively. The multi-day Terra, Aqua, and Terra-Aqua composite products result in similar annual mean snow covers (~15% for the Colorado Plateau and ~30% for the northern Xinjiang), as those from the corresponding standard NASA 8-day products, ~3 times as those from the standard NASA daily products. The lower snow cover percentage retrieved from the daily standard products is mainly due to larger cloud cover in the daily products. The Aqua products always have lower annual mean snow cover and higher annual mean cloud cover than those of the Terra products. The daily Terra-Aqua composite products have higher agreement with ground measurements than either of the standard NASA daily Terra or Aqua products. The multi-day Terra-Aqua composite products have much higher agreement with ground measurements than that of the standard daily products and have similar agreement as that of the standard 8-day products. Therefore, those new composite products generated from our methods are a significant contribution to the current MODIS snow cover product series.


Surprise signals a discrepancy between past and current beliefs. It is theorized to be linked to affective experiences, the creation of particularly resilient memories, and segmentation of the flow of experience into discrete perceived events. However, the ability to precisely measure naturalistic surprise has remained elusive. We used advanced basketball analytics to derive a quantitative measure of surprise and characterized its behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates in human subjects observing basketball games. We found that surprise was associated with segmentation of ongoing experiences, as reflected by subjectively perceived event boundaries and shifts in neocortical patterns underlying belief states. Interestingly, these effects differed by whether surprising moments contradicted or bolstered current predominant beliefs. Surprise also positively correlated with pupil dilation, activation in subcortical regions associated with dopamine, game enjoyment, and long-term memory. These investigations support key predictions from event segmentation theory and extend theoretical conceptualizations of surprise to real-world contexts.


Recently it was shown that Pi concentration regulates biofilm formation by Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1 through a cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) signaling pathway. Study of this response has produced one of the more complete pictures of how c-di-GMP signaling can link an environmental signal to a complex biological output. This research supports the idea that c-di-GMP is a conserved modality in biofilm regulation, with distinct outputs in different organisms, and provides a paradigm for conditional, transcriptional control of c-di-GMP signaling pathways. The cellular c-di-GMP levels in wild-type (WT) and the rapA mutant were compared under Pi starvation conditions. While LapA was secreted by lapD mutants, it was not retained in the cell-associated protein fraction and was lost to the culture supernatant. This phenomenon is notably similar to what happens to LapA in these fractions when the WT is grown in low Pi, prompting investigation of LapD's role in Pho regulon control of LapA localization, discussed. LapD and RapA both affect LapA localization to the cell surface, and lapD was required for biofilm formation by the pstrapA mutant. The description above represents the current extent of our knowledge about c-di-GMP signaling in Pseudomonas fluorescens strain Pf0-1. The Wsp chemosensory pathway regulates adherence and EPS production by P. fluorescens strain SBW25 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA01. Transcriptional regulation of RapA in P. fluorescens Pf0-1 seems a relatively straightforward strategy for modulating c-di-GMP levels when compared to other mechanisms shown to regulate DGC and PDE activities, including allosteric activation, subcellular localization, and mRNA stability.


Eph receptors and their membrane associated ephrin ligands mediate cell-cell repulsion to guide migrating cells and axons. A peculiarity of this signaling system is that both receptors and ligands can transduce signals into the cell resulting in a bidirectional signaling mode. An important step of ephrinB ligand 'reverse signaling' is the regulated tyrosine phosphorylation of the cytoplasmic domain, initiating docking sites for downstream signaling adaptors. Moreover, ephrinB ligands can signal by interactions with various PDZ-domain containing proteins.
Using a broad range of in vitro assays the presented work demonstrates that upon binding to their cognate receptor, ephrinB ligands rapidly activate Src family kinases (SFKs) which subsequently phosphorylate ephrinB. Tyrosine phosphorylation appears to be a transient event that is downregulated by the tyrosine phosphatase PTP-BL, which interacts with ephrinB via one of its PDZ-domains. Studies on PTP-BL and another multiple PDZ domain containing protein GRIP (Glutamate Receptor Interacting Protein) revealed that PDZ interactions with ephrinB are also regulated by EphB receptor binding but, unlike tyrosine phosphorylation, these interactions are long lasting. These findings led to postulate a 'switch model' for ephrinB reverse signaling: Tyrosine dependent signaling appears to be a rapid and transient event which is later replaced by stable PDZ-dependent signaling.
EphB 'forward' signaling as well as ephrinB 'reverse' signaling are important for axonal pathfinding and cell migration during development. Prior to their repellent effect on migrating cells and growth cones, Eph receptors form a high affinity complex with their ligands at sites of cell-cell contact. Therefore, mechanisms have to be in place that allow cells to detach from each other permitting retraction and withdrawal. To overcome this adhesive barrier, the ectodomain of ephrinA ligands is cleaved by metalloproteinases and shed upon receptor binding. Intrigued by the previous findings that activated ephrins cluster in cells, we hypothesized that these Eph/ephrin clusters undergo endocytosis. We developed immunofluorescence internalization and co-culture assays to study clustering and endocytosis at cell-cell contact sites. We established an experimental setup to perform fast time lapse imaging studies of cells expressing different fluorescently tagged proteins. Cell contact-induced ephrinB-EphB complexes are rapidly endocytosed during the retraction of cells and neuronal growth cones. Endocytosis occurs in a bidirectional manner, leading to internalized complexes of full length receptor and ligand, a yet rarely observed phenomenon. Signaling inactive mutants of EphB receptors and ephrinB ligands lead to a strong adhesion between cells. Endocytosis is sufficient to convert this adhesion into the detachment of cells. Bidirectional endocytosis is necessary to efficiently promote axon detachment during growth cone collapse mediated by ephrinB ligands. On the cell biological level, bidirectional endocytosis of two full length transmembrane (TM) proteins is a new phenomenon. Moreover, these studies reveal a novel mechanism of signal termination, de-adhesion and promotion of cell repulsion after intercellular (trans) interaction between two TM proteins.


Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) communicate using various acoustic signals, including whistles and pulsed sounds. Many studies have been conducted on dolphin whistle development over a long span, but little research has been done on sounds produced by neonatal dolphins just after birth. For this reason, we studied the acoustic characteristics of underwater sounds produced by two neonatal dolphins. Both whistles and burstpulses were identified as neonatal sounds at 1.5 h after birth. Whistles became longer by the hour. Whistle durations were highly correlated with respiration intervals. The neonate randomly produced various types of whistles, but no dominant whistles were documented. There were significant differences between neonates in the proportion of whistles to burst-pulses used, and also in the acoustic characteristics of their whistles. Acoustic characteristics that are unique to each individual neonate might help a mother dolphin to recognize her neonate.


BACKGROUND
Vitamin D status is known to be important for bone health but may also affect the development of several chronic diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which are 2 major causes of death.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to examine how vitamin D status relates to overall and cause-specific mortality.

DESIGN
The Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men, a community-based cohort of elderly men (mean age at baseline: 71 y; n = 1194), was used to investigate the association between plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and mortality. Total plasma 25(OH)D was determined with HPLC atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry. Proportional hazards regression was used to compute hazard ratios (HRs).

RESULTS
During follow-up (median: 12.7 y), 584 (49%) participants died. There was a U-shaped association between vitamin D concentrations and total mortality. An approximately 50% higher total mortality rate was observed among men in the lowest 10% (<46 nmol/L) and the highest 5% (>98 nmol/L) of plasma 25(OH)D concentrations compared with intermediate concentrations. Cancer mortality was also higher at low plasma concentrations (multivariable-adjusted HR: 2.20; 95% CI: 1.44, 3.38) and at high concentrations (HR: 2.64; 95% CI: 1.46, 4.78). For cardiovascular death, only low (HR: 1.89; 95% CI: 1.21, 2.96) but not high (HR: 1.33; 95% CI: 0.69, 2.54) concentrations indicated higher risk.

CONCLUSIONS
Both high and low concentrations of plasma 25(OH)D are associated with elevated risks of overall and cancer mortality. Low concentrations are associated with cardiovascular mortality.


Since their first discovery in the early 1990s, mesoporous crystals (MCs) have fascinated researchers in various fields because of their interesting structures and their potential uses. Electron crystallography (EC) gives the direct three-dimensional (3D) realization of a crystal as a reconstructed electrostatic potential map (EPM). Various 3D-EPMs of silica MCs with cubic symmetry have been previously obtained by EC. The main task in this thesis is the development of structural analyses focusing on MCs and thus to evaluate the properties of periodic mesopores within EC data. How MC structures can be described and solved by EC is discussed in terms of the interpretation of the reconstructed 3D-EPM. Assuming a regime of an equi-potential surface (EPS), a structural description for MCs is suggested as a surface that optimizes the curvature elasticity evaluated on every EPS. The geometric properties of cubic MCs so far already reconstructed by EC, are then analyzed on the basis of the optimized EPSs. The analysis provides the property of the mesopores independently from gas adsorption measurements. A large cage-like MC is further studied by in-situ synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction to help understand the nitrogen adsorption process onto the mesopore wall. As an additional study, a silica MC showing its crystal morphologies of icosahedron, decahedron, etc. is studied. Results by EC suggest that the spherical uni-modal cages form the cubic close packing. The morphologies observed are explained in terms of the multiple twinning, which is analogous to metal nanoparticles. The occurrence of multiple twinning in MCs is discussed in light of the synthesis condition and the shape of micelles.


The level of sexual or pornographic Web searching is a major subject of political debate, particularly in the United States. United States federal prosecutors recently, as of 2006, requested that the major Web search engines, Yahoo, American Online (AOL), MSN and Google provide a sampling of their search queries and indexes of Web sites, in order to allow the examination of various aspects of pornographic searching and retrieval. This paper examines studies that have analyzed Web search logs to determine the level of sexual or pornographic searches on publically available Web search engines from 1997 to 2005. Results show that sexual or pornographic queries have declined as a proportion of all Web queries since 1997 and currently represented less than four percent of Web queries. In conclusion, the paper provides perspectives on the results, including issues of self–regulated choice and human mating behavior.


The topic of this chapter is the social psychology of cross-cultural interaction. We discuss the psychological processes that take place during and after meetings between individuals and groups who differ in their cultural backgrounds. We identify two types of cross-cultural contact: a) meetings that occur between two societies when individuals travel from their place of origin to another country for a specific purpose and a limited amount of time, such people being called sojourners in the literature; and b) meetings within multi-cultural societies among its ethnically diverse permanent residents. Contact with culturally unfamiliar people and places can be unsettling, and the term "culture shock" is frequently used to describe how people react to novel or unaccustomed situations. Although the unknown can be terrifying, we nevertheless argue that "culture shock" is not inevitable, or for that matter as widespread as is often suggested. Indeed, in many circumstances culture contact can be a satisfying experience. We draw on the ABC model of culture contact to provide a framework for the discussion, that is, we distinguish between the Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive components of cross-cultural interaction. In the chapter we describe the conditions that determine whether the contact will have positive or adverse consequences, and the psychological techniques that can be deployed to increase cross-cultural understanding among the individuals, groups and societies in contact. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol8/iss1/7


The purpose of this study was to investigate how Thai undergraduate students do to improve their reading comprehension skills. This paper presents a qualitative investigation. A semi-structured interview is served as the main source of data. Forty students from different faculties of Khon Kaen University participated in the study. The transcribed interview data was analyzed with 'open and axial coding' techniques. The data analyses revealed two main emergent categories of reading strategies: 1) reading comprehension strategies (RC); and 2) reading comprehension enhancement strategies (RCE) with altogether 39 individual reading strategies. The interview result showed that the most frequently found strategies being reported were from the first category, e.g. looking for unfamiliar vocabulary items and then searching for their meanings before reading (BRC 1), and searching for the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary items while reading (WRC 1). On the contrary, the students reported not to rely heavily on the strategies from the second category. คําสําคัญ : การอานเชิงวิชาการ กลวิธีในการอาน นักศึกษาระดับปริญญาตรี การสํารวจเชิงคุณภาพ


We investigate the stability and dynamics of nonlinear structures that arise from the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation. For initially flat propagating cnoidal waves and solitons, the region of instability in perturbed wavevector K–space is found. This is done by combining information obtained both by approximate and exact calculations. Growth rates are found. Interesting analogies with the deep–water wave problem are pointed out. It might seem strange that this analysis should be necessary when the problem has been 'solved' exactly by Kuznetsov and co–workers. However, as those authors admit, their treatment is extremely difficult to apply to any but a few specific limits. So much so that they miss a stability boundary even in one of those limits. We will comment on this. Here, by combining all our results, we are able to present a reasonably complete picture. Formulae are explicit and simple. Once the instability develops, two–dimensional 'lumps' are produced, as well as a new diminished cnoidal wave. We will concentrate on the lumps and their further fate. The two–dimensional solitons or lumps are then investigated in three dimensions by numerical simulations. A distortion in a plane perpendicular to the motion leads to an oscillation of the lumps. This result is in contradistinction to the result of a perturbation in a plane containing the direction of motion. In that simulation of Senatorski and Infeld, lumps were destroyed completely and three–dimensional solitons were formed. Thus a link was found between two entities that were hitherto considered separately. In all, we have an initially two–dimensional soliton that can either produce a three–dimensional decay product or else exhibit a new oscillation. This will depend on the plane of the perturbation.


We present a system called Smyth for program sketching in a typed functional language whereby the concrete evaluation of ordinary assertions gives rise to input-output examples, which are then used to guide the search to complete the holes. The key innovation, called live bidirectional evaluation, propagates examples "backward" through partially evaluated sketches. Live bidirectional evaluation enables Smyth to (a) synthesize recursive functions without trace-complete sets of examples and (b) specify and solve interdependent synthesis goals. Eliminating the trace-completeness requirement resolves a significant limitation faced by prior synthesis techniques when given partial specifications in the form of input-output examples. To assess the practical implications of our techniques, we ran several experiments on benchmarks used to evaluate Myth, a state-of-the-art example-based synthesis tool. First, given expert examples (and no partial implementations), we find that Smyth requires on average 66% of the number of expert examples required by Myth. Second, we find that Smyth is robust to randomly-generated examples, synthesizing many tasks with relatively few more random examples than those provided by an expert. Third, we create a suite of small sketching tasks by systematically employing a simple sketching strategy to the Myth benchmarks; we find that user-provided sketches in Smyth often further reduce the total specification burden (i.e. the combination of partial implementations and examples). Lastly, we find that Leon and Synquid, two state-of-the-art logic-based synthesis tools, fail to complete several tasks on which Smyth succeeds.


This product accompanies: Mishkin, Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, The: The Business School Edition: International Edition, 3/EThe Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets set the standard for money and banking courses when it published in its first edition, and it continues to be the worldwide market leader. For professors who teach with less emphasis on monetary theory and prefer to focus more time on financial institutions, the Business School Edition is an ideal alternative. By applying a unified analytical framework to the models, Mishkin makes theory intuitive for students, and the rich array of current, real-world events keeps students motivated. Authoritative, comprehensive, and flexible, the text is easy to integrate into a wide variety of syllabi, and its ancillaries provide complete support when teaching the course. This edition continues to expand on the discussion of the current financial crisis.


Abnormalities of coronary artery, congenital or acquired, are rare in the pediatric population, but they frequently present unexpectedly. They may result in life-threatening conditions if unrecognized; however, in infants and children, preclinical coronary abnormalities usually do not present with the typical clinical manifestations seen in adults with myocardial ischemia. Timely diagnosis of silent myocardial ischemia is frequently challenging in children. Myocardial infarction may occur in anomalous left coronary artery from pulmonary artery (ALCAPA), right ventricle-dependent coronary artery seen in pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum (PA/IVS), and coronary aneurysm complicated in Kawasaki disease. On the other hand, some coronary artery abnormalities tend to present with unexpected ventricular arrhythmia or sudden cardiac death (SCD). These include aberrant aortic origin of coronary artery (AAOCA) and acquired coronary stenosis after arterial switch operation (ASO) for transposition of the great arteries (TGA), and post-transplant cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV), in which affected patients develop cardiac arrest or SCD without anginal pain or before having myocardial infarction. The pathological outcomes of myocardial ischemia in children are significantly different from those in adults with an atherosclerotic coronary disease; thus, the early recognition and detection of preclinical coronary anomalies and silent myocardial ischemia are essential. The underlying mechanism that determines myocardial responses to tissue ischemia involves complex processes, but it is plausible that mitochondrial signaling plays a critical role in determining these pathological paths. The involvement of the autonomic nervous system and the degree of collateral vessel development are contributing factors. In this review, pathobiology of myocardial ischemia and subsequent events will be discussed. The current paradigm of "myocardial ischemia" needs to be revisited in the field of pediatric cardiology.


Background Antimicrobials are extensively used both prophylactically and therapeutically in poultry production. Despite this, there are little data on the effect of antimicrobial use (AMU) on disease incidence and mortality rate. Objective We investigated the relationships between AMU and disease and between AMU and mortality using data from a large (n=322 flocks) cohort of small-scale chicken flocks in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, that were followed longitudinally from day-old to slaughter (5,566 observation weeks). Methods We developed a parameterized algorithm to categorize the observation weeks into 'non-AMU', 'prophylactic AMU' and 'therapeutic AMU'. To evaluate the prophylactic AMU effect, we compared the frequencies of clinical signs in 'non-AMU' and 'prophylactic AMU' periods. To analyse therapeutic AMU, we compared mortality rates between the weeks of disease episodes before and after AMU. Analyses were stratified by clinical signs (4) and antimicrobial classes (13). Results Prophylactic AMU never reduced the probability of disease, some antimicrobial classes such as lincosamides, amphenicols and penicillins increased the risk. The risk of diarrhoea consistently increased with prophylactic AMU. Therapeutic AMU often had an effect on mortality but the pattern was inconsistent across the combinations of antimicrobial classes and clinical signs with 14/29 decreasing and 11/29 increasing the mortality rate. Lincosamides, methenamines and cephalosporins were the only three antimicrobial classes that always decreased the mortality rate when used therapeutically. Results were robust respective to the parameters values of the weeks categorization algorithm. Conclusion This information should help support policy efforts and interventions aiming at reducing AMU in animal production.


Though it may sound surprising, there is a great deal of debate about whether speakers have free speech rights. Those who deny it say that the freedom of speech protects listeners, not speakers. Lately, these skeptics can point for support to First Amendment case law, which is expanding in ways that draw speakers' rights into question. When search engines, internet service providers, food producers, and so on are claiming immunity to regulation because they are speakers, the time has come to reevaluate speakers' rights.
This piece does just that. It confronts hard questions about whether speakers have rights, including arguments that it is illogical for speakers to have rights. It shows that this is not the case. In fact, under the most plausible views of freedom of speech, speakers must have free speech rights.
Nevertheless, recognizing speakers' rights is often inconvenient and difficult. Above all else, recognizing speakers' rights has tended to distract from listeners' rights, to less than salutary effect. These problems are real. But rights by definition complicate matters. The fact that they do so is not a reason to reject them.


Purpose We evaluated the expression of microsatellite instability (MSI) in sporadic ovarian tumors using 5 standard and 9 new MSI markers to determine the clinical significance of MSI in sporadic epithelial ovarian tumors. Materials and Methods MSI was examined in 21 borderline and 25 malignant ovarian tumors. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed using the 5 markers recommended by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for colon cancer and 9 additional markers. MSI was determined using fractional analysis by mixing the PCR products and size markers. Results Using the 5 conventional MSI markers, MSI was found in 4 of 46 (8.6%) ovarian tumors, including 2 of 21 (9.5%) borderline ovarian tumors and 2 of 25 (8%) malignant ovarian tumors. Using the 9 additional MSI markers, MSI was observed in 7 of 46 (15.2%) ovarian tumors, including 3 of 21 (14.3%) borderline ovarian tumors and 4 of 25 (16%) malignant ovarian tumors. There was no statistically significant difference between MSI and clinicopathological factors, including histology and stage, although there was a trend toward an increased incidence of MSI in the serous type. Conclusion MSI was infrequent in ovarian tumors, including both borderline and malignant tumors. MSI was found to be uncommon in sporadic ovarian tumors, even by using additional MSI markers. The clinical significance of MSI is not strong in patients with sporadic ovarian tumors.


This study is one of the very few investigating the dioxin body burden of a group of child-bearing-aged women at an electronic waste (e-waste) recycling site (Taizhou, Zhejiang Province) (24 +/- 2.83 years of age, 40% were primiparae) and a reference site (Lin'an city, Zhejiang Province, about 245 km away from Taizhou) (24 +/- 2.35 years of age, 100% were primiparae) in China. Five sets of samples (each set consisted of human milk, placenta, and hair) were collected from each site. Body burdens of people from the e-waste processing site (human milk, 21.02 +/- 13.81 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g fat (World Health Organization toxic equivalency 1998); placenta, 31.15 +/- 15.67 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g fat; hair, 33.82 +/- 17.74 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g dry wt) showed significantly higher levels of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/ Fs) than those from the reference site (human milk, 9.35 +/- 7.39 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g fat; placenta, 11.91 +/- 7.05 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g fat; hair, 5.59 +/- 4.36 pg WHO-TEQ1998/g dry wt) and were comparatively higher than other studies. The difference between the two sites was due to e-waste recycling operations, for example, open burning, which led to high background levels. Moreover, mothers from the e-waste recycling site consumed more foods of animal origin. The estimated daily intake of PCDD/Fs within 6 months by breastfed infants from the e-waste processing site was 2 times higher than that from the reference site. Both values exceeded the WHO tolerable daily intake for adults by at least 25 and 11 times, respectively. Our results implicated that e-waste recycling operations cause prominent PCDD/F levels in the environment and in humans. The elevated body burden may have health implications for the next generation.


Let me brief you a little bit about the background of this conference. This conference is organized jointly by the Sunan Ampel State Islamic University in Surabaya and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The idea behind this conference is our common interest in the need to understand better the nature, future and the fate of our Islamic communities in this very difficult time. We also are interested in developing new theories and critical views of our environment in which our religion of Islam is part of. This conference is therefore aimed at offering new understanding concerning our community and also of our religion vis-a-vis modernity. It also is aimed at challenging uncritical and unsympathetic views not only concerning Islam but also on other religions and religious communities at large. At the practical level, we gather here to build a commitment on the necessity of working together for the betterment of our Islamic community but also for humanity in general. Researchers and scientists should have a common view on how a better community can be achieved. Scientists like ourselves have a moral obligation to do something to build a better future. And what we can do toward that end is to share our views and expertise and see how that can be applied on the ground. In a nutshell, we gather here to build an intellectual platform on which our commitment to nourish the Islamic community can be carried out. A gathering such as this is a matter of urgency, considering that our community and religion –like any others- faces serious and demanding challenges. Whether we can survive these challenges or not very depends upon our ability to organize ourselves. Two things must be done to survive the challenges. First is to explore the potentials of the Islamic community in such a way as to make them ready to face those challenges. Our community cannot stay silent and passive in times of great difficulty such as this. Second, is to dig deep into the epistemological contents of our religion so as to provide a strong theoretical and metaphysical ground for our community to act accordingly. Hence the name of our conference is, International Conference on Muslim Society and Thought. We do hope that you enjoy your stay in Surabaya and the conference. We equally hope that you will benefit from the conference. It has been our pleasure to organize this conference and to host you all. So, be our guests. We thank you very much.