Cardiovascular disease is currently the leading cause of death in the U.S. that frequently requires bypass surgery using vascular grafts for treatment. Current limitations with fully synthetic grafts have led researchers to bioengineered alternatives that consist of a combination of vascular scaffolds and cells. A major challenge in creating a functional bioengineered vascular graft is development of a confluent endothelium on the lumen that is able to resist detachment under physiologic fluid flow. In addition, methodologies used to assess the growth and maturation of the endothelium in a noninvasive and dynamic manner are severely lacking. Therefore, the overall goal of this research is to advance the field of vascular tissue engineering by 1) creating methodologies to enhance EC adherence to a vascular graft and 2) development of a noninvasive and real-time imaging system capable of assessing the graft endothelium. To achieve these objectives, three separate studies were performed. In the first study, electrospun scaffold fiber diameter and alignment were systematically varied to determine their effect on endothelial cell (EC) morphology and adherence under fluid flow. ECs on uniaxially aligned nanofibers displayed elongated and aligned morphologies leading to higher adherence to the scaffolds under physiologic levels of fluid flow as compared to those on randomly oriented scaffolds. In the second study, a fiber optic based (FOB) imaging system was developed to image fluorescent ECs through a thick electrospun scaffold. Results demonstrated that the FOB imaging system was able to accurately visualize fluorescent ECs in a noninvasive manner through the thick and highly opaque scaffold. In the final study, the FOB imaging system was used to noninvasively quantify vascular graft endothelialization, EC detachment, and apoptosis through the vessel wall with greater imaging penetration depth than two-photon microscopy. Additionally, the FOB method was capable of continuously tracking EC migration and endothelialization of a bioengineered graft in a bioreactor. Overall, these results demonstrate that aligned scaffold topographies enhance EC adherence under fluid flow and the FOB imaging system is a promising tool to monitor endothelium development and response to fluid flow in a manner that has not previously been afforded using conventional imaging methods.


The links between macroalgae-covered reefs and diversity and biomass of epiphytic algae assemblages in adjacent seagrass meadows were investigated. Algae assemblages were sam- pled in 3 habitats: on-reef, seagrass meadow near-reef ( 3000 m), off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia. We interpreted differences among these habitats as evidence that proximity to reefs influences epiphytic algae assemblages. Propagules in the water column, epiphytes recruiting onto artificial seagrass units (ASU) and assem- blages on natural Posidonia sinuosa were sampled in each habitat. For propagules, ASU and natural P. sinuosa, there were significant differences in the structure of algae assemblages near and distant from reefs, while assemblages near reefs tended to resemble those found on reefs. Multivariate analysis (ANOSIM) confirmed that propagule assemblages near reefs and on reefs were similar, but those distant from reefs differed from those on reefs. Near-reef habitat recorded the highest total number of algal taxa growing on ASU (53), followed by on-reef (44) and distant-from-reef (37) habi- tats. ANOSIM again confirmed that assemblages at on- and near-reef sites were not significantly dif- ferent, but both differed from those at sites distant from reef. We identified 59 species of algal epi- phytes growing on mature P. sinuosa leaves at near-reef and distant-from-reef sites, with only 19 species being common to both habitats, and multivariate analyses were suggestive of differences in assemblage structure. Biomass was only recorded for the ASU epiphyte assemblages and was great- est in the near-reef habitat (0.63 ± 0.11 g shoot -1 ) followed by the on-reef habitat and the distant- from-reef habitat (0.18 ± 0.04 and 0.11 ± 0.01 g shoot -1 , respectively). Our results demonstrate that diversity and biomass of macroalgae epiphytes in seagrass ecosystems differ between habitats of varying proximity to reefs.


Agriculture in the catchment areas adjacent to the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Marine Park generates pollutants that are a concern for the health of the Reef. Under the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting program (P2R) of the Reef Plan, the impacts of improved agricultural management practices on water quality entering the GBR are modelled to evaluate the effectiveness of Government water quality improvement policies. The Source Catchments modelling framework estimates loads of pollutants entering the GBR lagoon from rivers. However, Source Catchments does not have the capacity to represent the collection of management practices available to farmers that affect water quality in runoff and drainage at a paddock scale. Therefore, paddock scale agricultural systems models were used to demonstrate the effects of management practice adoption and to provide input to the catchment scale models. Paddock scale models were used because they represent a level of process detail compatible with the management practice investments and implementation on-ground. A fit-for-purpose modelling approach was used, where the paddock model most suited to a given land use and/or water quality pollutant was applied. Three one-dimensional agricultural systems models were employed; HowLeaky in grains, APSIM in sugarcane with HowLeaky post-processing for herbicides and phosphorous and GRASP in grazing lands. These models share similar soil water balance, ground cover and runoff sub-models. However, they vary in the level of detail, particularly in terms of representing crop growth and in the processes considered, such as pesticide degradation and export. In grains and sugarcane cropping, the pollutant time-series (e.g. load per day per unit area) in the Source Catchments models was replaced with an output time-series from HowLeaky or APSIM for each soil-climate spatial combination. Management practices were grouped into systems classed as A, B, C or D. The proportion of each of these management systems contributing to the modelled loads was adjusted to reflect data on the prevalence of adoption of improved management practices in the GBR catchment. In grazing lands, GRASP pasture utilisation and ground cover time-series outputs were interrogated to derive relationships between changes in grazing system management and changes in the USLE C-factors. The USLE is used to predict hillslope erosion in the Source Catchments model. Scaling indices derived from GRASP outputs were used to adjust the USLE C-factors applied in Source Catchments where management practices had changed. The P2R program has demonstrated the effectiveness of linking paddock scale models or emergent models derived from them with catchment scale models. This has enabled detailed management options to be simulated to investigate broad scale water quality impacts of the adoption of improved agricultural practices.


We set up six media clubs for refugee and migrant children (ages 10-14) in six European countries. The clubs met weekly after school hours over a year with some extra full days during school holidays. The clubs made videos and exchanged them on the internet. In each participating country, researchers and media educators employed by the project collaborated with youth workers and teachers, already working with the children. The clubs became social centres as well as a place to learn about and make media. Using the internet we established a communications network to facilitate the sharing of children's media productions, in order to generate dialogues between them. As a research project CHICAM addressed three major aspects of structural change in contemporary European society: the increase in global migration, the uses of new communication technologies, and the specific needs of children. Through the work of the clubs it focused on the social and cultural worlds of refugee and migrant children in centres across Europe; and was mainly concerned with first generation refugees or migrants, for whom the experience of re-location is relatively recent. The children came from many different countries including Iraq, Sierra Leone, Angola, Somalia, Albania, Kosovo, Columbia, Turkey. We investigated how these children represent and express their experiences of migration into the different host countries, and how their use of new media might enable their perspectives to inform the development of European educational and cultural policies. In the process, we were seeking to identify how particular experiences of reception, educational practice, family re-unification and community involvement may more effectively promote social inclusion and economic and cultural integration.


At the very dawn of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo liberated from a large chunk of discarded marble the most famous statue in the history of western art. After a few centuries standing outside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, today his David resides in the Galleria dell'Accademia, the academic gallery, where he contemplates his victory over Goliath, and daily hundreds of tourists and art lovers contemplate him. This incredible work of sculpture seems today to have two primary functions. The first, alas, is to provide a certain number of giggling philistines with sophomorically smutty postcards and other souvenirs that focus on David's distinctly masculine nudity. The second is to stand as an emblem of the pinnacle of human aspirations in the Renaissance. Michelangelo's David is a model of reason, piety, and athleticism. In our honors programs and colleges, in today's academies, I have come to think that in our eagerness to cultivate the first of these virtues, thoughtful rationality, we have grown to ignore, to our loss, the other two: spiritual depth and serious attention to physical vigor. I want to say a few words about collegiate athletics from what is increasingly being designated the "30,000 ft." perspective. If your experience at 30,000 ft. is at all like mine, this means we all enter a tiny space that can barely contain us, lugging heavy little suitcases that won't quite fit into the overhead compartments, rather than paying to put our luggage in an actual baggage compartment. Then, an overworked attendant circulates among us, offering to sell us such luxuries as water or coffee, after announcing (as on a recent flight) that three of the four bathrooms to which we have access are unfortunately not working. Maybe the time has come to kill forever that "30,000 ft." metaphor. In any event, my primary subject here is honors and intercollegiate athletics for women and men. By and large, what I say would apply equally to less formal sporting activities--intramural sports and recreation as well as wholly unprogrammed individual and group endeavors. Of course, I would heartily endorse these ventures, too, especially since many honors programs field intramural teams for softball or touch football, and honors students often engage in pick-up Frisbee or volleyball games. I'm focusing on interscholastic athletics because it is the most extreme form of regular physical activity on college and university campuses, and if the case can be made for athletics, it more or less goes without saying for intramural or casual exercise. Too, I confess, it seems to me more of a challenge to link honors and athletics since these are often seen as, if not hostile, certainly wholly disconnected collegiate endeavors. Colleges have lots of reasons to develop and support intercollegiate athletics programs, some of which are quite pragmatic, and there are lots of reasons why such development and support should be viewed with suspicion. Sports programs help us with student recruiting, which is certainly a pragmatic, fiscal rationale for maintaining them; at many smaller colleges, as many as half of the students participate in intercollegiate athletics. On the other hand, they can be incredibly costly in lots of ways, including time commitment and raw dollars. Most of us don't really want to know what it costs just to outfit each of our 40-80 football players, much less to coach, transport, feed, and house them. Our central mission as colleges is not fiscal well-being but education, so I want to ask what it is that young women and men, including honors students, can learn in their athletics careers. Since most honors programs and colleges see their enterprise as liberal learning, what sorts of liberating collegiate experiences might we be providing our student athletes that reinforce or complement what they are learning in the classroom, laboratory, library, faculty office, or elsewhere in honors. One caveat: the positive lessons of college sports will occur when the institution has a sensible, balanced, and appropriate perspective on the relationships between athletics and academics and when there is strong, solid collegiate leadership--from presidents and provosts, athletics directors and coaches, and even honors directors/deans-steadily affirming productive links; when institutions lose that good sense and/or when leaders do not seek and reward it, positive results are unlikely, and, as we all know, negative ones can take their place. …


ABSTRACT Personalised medicine implies that treatment is based on molecular analysis of an individual tumour specimen. A biomarker may define groups of patients who can benefit from a specific treatment, such as the Estrogen Receptor and HER2 in breast cancer, B-RAF mutation in melanoma and EGFR and ALK mutation in lung cancer. Large clinical trials support treatments based on these tests but whether they should be used in countries of limited resources depends on their cost-effectiveness compared to other potential use of limited resources for health-care. ER and tamoxifen and HER2 and trastuzumab as adjuvant therapy for breast cancer should be available in all European countries. The other strategies for palliation of cancer may not represent cost-effective use of limited resources in some countries Personalised medicine is more often used to describe complex molecular analysis followed by selection of a molecular targeted agent active against pathways with activating mutations to provide individualised treatment. This strategy is experimental and there is no high level evidence to indicate that selected therapies lead to better outcome than standard treatment for a given type of cancer. The concept is attractive but substantial problems may limit benefit, even when agents targeting different molecular pathways are available and affordable. There is heterogeneity not only between tumours but within them, so that a biopsy will not be representative of the whole tumour. Cancer cells are expert at developing resistance to all drugs, and if one pathway is inhibited another will usually promote cell survival and avoid cell death. Using several targeted agents might prevent this but is usually impossible because combinations are toxic. Personalised medicine should be investigated in a small number of well-designed studies. My bias is that these programs will lead to only modest benefits for patients, and such programs should be coordinated to avoid duplication. There is no basis for using individualised anticancer therapy based on genetic analysis outside of a well-designed clinical research protocol. Funding of personalised medicine is not appropriate in countries with limited resources. Disclosure: The author has declared no conflicts of interest.


Introduction: When a child is in a critical condition, it may not be hundred percent possible to determine the body weight using weighing scale. Under such a condition, paediatricians estimate weight using the age of the child. Material and Method: The weight was measured using a weighing scale. In cases where the babies were too small and unable to stand on the weighing scale alone, the mother was weighed alone and while carrying the baby and the weight of the baby was determined by subtracting the weight of the mother from the weight of the mother and the baby. Results: Mean weight for male children is 10.98kg, Mean foot length for male children is 5.04 inches , R 2 = 0.61, F statistics = 7.57 , Probability = 0.0001531, Standard deviation of weight for males is 5.2 , Standard deviation of foot length is 0.009 Conclusion: Base on Foot length, weight of children below two years can be predicted in emergency condition.


Mechanisms underlying the dynamics of two shallow coral reef communities at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia, over a twenty five year period (1981-2005 inclusive) were investigated using time series of photographs and a spatial model. At the first study site (sub-tidal, ~2 m depth) methods were developed to generate a spatial model based on local processes and disturbances. Rates for coral growth, mortality, recruitment and outcomes of pair-wise competitive interactions determined from the photographs were used to parameterise the model. Three acute disturbance events occurred at the site and determine the disturbance schedule of the model: 1982- a combination of coral bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish; 1990 - cyclone waves; and 1996 - crown-of-thorns starfish.
Predicted coral community trajectories at the first site were not sensitive to the outcomes of competitive interactions, probably due to the high proportion of substratum not covered by coral (average 68%) and strong vertical separation among established corals), or to major changes in recruitment rates. The model trajectory accurately matched the observed trajectory until the 1996 disturbance, but only if coral mortality was confined to the three years of acute disturbance. Beyond that date (1997-2003), when the observed community failed to recover, it was necessary to introduce annual background mortality to obtain a good match between modelled and observed coral cover. This qualitative switch in the model may reflect a loss of resilience in the real community. Simulated over a century, an 8 year disturbance frequency most closely reproduced the mean community composition observed in the field prior to major disturbance.
At the second site (inter-tidal) a second spatial model was generated based on rates of coral growth, mortality, recruitment and outcomes of pair-wise competitive interactions measured at that site. The disturbance schedule (duration, timing and impact of disturbance events) varied between sites and illustrates how the manifestation of reef-wide disturbances (namely bleaching, crown-of-thorns starfish and cyclones) was highly variable at small spatial scales. Three putative causes of disturbance were as follow at the site: 1982 to 1989 - a combination of coral bleaching
iii
and crown-of-thorns starfish; 1990 to 1992 cyclone damage / structural weakening; and 1996 to 1999 - crown-of-thorns starfish.
While coral species represented at the two sites (separated by several kilometres) were similar, their starting states and 25 year trajectories describing temporal change in community structure were very different. Obtaining a reasonable fit of the model to observed trajectories, required inclusion of site-specific disturbance schedules that reflected local site-specific variations in shelter and depth. Manipulation of the model revealed that differences in disturbance schedule between sites were more important than differences in growth, recruitment or interaction outcomes in driving community dynamics. Importantly, despite differences in disturbance schedules and community dynamics, the model indicates a qualitative switch from acute to chronic disturbance around the turn of the century, which is independent of local community structure and site-specific disturbance schedules.


Weed, herb, grass, bud, ganja, Mary Jane, hash oil, sinsemilla, budder, and shatter. Marijuana – whether viewed as a medicine or intoxicant – is fast becoming a part of everyday life, with the CDC reporting 7,000 new users every day and the American market projected to grow to $20 billion by 2020. Based on early campaign rhetoric, by that same year the U.S. could have a pro-marijuana president.

Despite its growing acceptance and popularity, marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, marijuana is a DEA Schedule I drug reflecting a Congressional determination that marijuana is both overly addictive and medically useless.

So what is the truth about pot? The current massive pro-marijuana momentum and increased use, obscures the fact that we still know almost nothing about marijuana's treatment and palliative potential. Marijuana's main psychoactive chemical is THC; but it also contains over 500 other chemicals with unknown physiological and psychological effects that vary based on dosage and consumption method. Medical marijuana may be legal in 32 states and supported by 84% of Americans, but federal constraints shield marijuana from basic scientific inquiry. This means that lawmakers and voters are enthusiastically supporting greater access to a drug without demanding critical scientific data. For policymaking purposes, this data should include marijuana's short and long-term brain effects, possible lung and cardiac implications, chemical interactions with alcohol and other drugs, addiction risks, pregnancy and breast-feeding concerns, and the effects of secondhand smoke.

This Article treats marijuana as a significant contemporary science and law problem. It focuses on the fundamental question of regulating a substance that has not been adequately researched. The Article examines the extant scientific data, deficiencies, and inconsistencies and explains why legislators should not rely on copycat laws governing alcohol or prescription narcotics. It also explores how marijuana's hybrid federal (illegality)/state (legality) raises compelling theoretical and practical Constitutional questions of preemption, the anti-commandeering rule, and congressional spending power. Marijuana legalization has, thus far, been treated as a niche academic concern. This approach is short-sighted and narrowminded. Marijuana regulation implicates the reach of national drug policy, the depth of state sovereignty, and the shared obligation to ensure the health and safety of our citizenry.


ABSTRACT The dominant theoretical approach to the prohibition of exclusionary conduct in competition law distinguishes exclusionary conduct from normal competitive conduct based on their economic outcomes. However, this approach fails to provide a uniform and consistent test for distinguishing the two categories. This article outlines a new account of the wrongness of exclusionary conduct that integrates consequentialist factors within the deontological framework of the moral duty to promote the common good. Exclusionary conduct is wrong because it undermines the role of markets as a salient response to an important social coordination problem in a way that harms the competitive process and social welfare. The prohibition arises from the moral duty to promote the common good in combination with evolved social and economic norms. This approach helps make sense of the distinction between exclusionary conduct and normal competitive behaviour. The article explores and applies this account to the European Union approach to the prohibition of exclusionary conduct under the legal framework provided by art 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.


Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -and nearly everything in-between -our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity.


Municipal water consumption planning is an active area of research because of infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, supply constraints, and water quality assurance. In spite of that, relatively few water forecast accuracy assessments have been completed to date, although some internal documentation may exist as part of the proprietary "grey literature." This study utilizes a data set of previously published municipal consumption forecasts to partially fill that gap in the empirical water economics literature. Previously published municipal water econometric forecasts for three public utilities are examined for predictive accuracy against two random walk benchmarks commonly used in regional analyses. Descriptive metrics used to quantify forecast accuracy include root‐mean‐square error and Theil inequality statistics. Formal statistical assessments are completed using four‐pronged error differential regression F tests. Similar to studies for other metropolitan econometric forecasts in areas with similar demographic and labor market characteristics, model predictive performances for the municipal water aggregates in this effort are mixed for each of the municipalities included in the sample. Given the competitiveness of the benchmarks, analysts should employ care when utilizing econometric forecasts of municipal water consumption for planning purposes, comparing them to recent historical observations and trends to insure reliability. Comparative results using data from other markets, including regions facing differing labor and demographic conditions, would also be helpful.


Babor, T. (2016). How should we define, document, and prevent conflicts of interest in alcohol research?.  The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 5 (1), 5-7. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v5i1.232 Aims: Conflicts of interest (COIs) in science and medicine have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. This article reviews definitions of COI, as well as measures used to document, prevent, and manage COIs. Findings: The positive association between COIs and the outcomes of research has been documented in a substantial body of research covering a variety of fields, including addiction research. Attempts to address COIs include funding declarations, voluntary bans of receipt of industry funding, and ethical analyses. Conclusions: To protect the scientific integrity of the alcohol field from further influence from commercial and other competing interests, reasonable and consistent reporting procedures are needed at a minimum. Direct funding from major transnational alcohol producers involves major reputational and ethical risks that may require more stringent measures by professional societies, university administrators, and journal editors.


Organic photovoltaic cells possess desirable practical characteristics, such as the potential for low‐cost fabrication on flexible substrates, but they lag behind their inorganic counterparts in performance due in part to fundamental energy loss mechanisms, such as overcoming the charge transfer (CT) state binding energy when photogenerated charge is transferred across the donor/acceptor interface. However, recent work has suggested that crystalline interfaces can reduce this binding energy due to enhanced CT state delocalization. Solar cells based on rubrene and C60 are investigated as an archetypal system because it allows the degree of crystallinity to be moldulated from a highly disordered to highly ordered system. Using a postdeposition annealing method to transform as‐deposited amorphous rubrene thin films into ones that are highly crystalline, it is shown that the CT state of a highly crystalline rubrene/C60 heterojunction undergoes extreme delocalization parallel to the interface leading to a band‐like state that exhibits a linear Stark effect. This state parallels the direct charge formation of inorganic solar cells and reduces energetic losses by 220 meV compared with 12 other archetypal heterojunctions reported in the literature.


This study examines the time series behaviour of South African house prices within a fractional integration modelling framework while identifying potential breaks and outliers. We used quarterly data on the six house price indexes, namely affordable, luxury, middle-segment (all sizes, large, medium and small sizes), covering the periods 1966:Q1-2012:Q1 for the different middle-segments, 1966:Q3-2012:Q1 for the luxury segment and 1969:Q4-2012:Q1 for the affordable segment. In general, there is persistence in South African house prices with breaks identified. Our results show that in the cases of affordable and luxury, shocks will be transitory, disappearing in the long run, while for the remaining four series of the middle-segment, shocks will be permanent. Hence, for the middle-segment series strong policy measures must be adopted in the event of negative shocks, in order to recover the original trends.


Deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are powerful tools for solving visuomotor decision tasks. However, the trained models are often difficult to interpret, because they are represented as end-to-end deep neural networks. In this paper, we shed light on the inner workings of such trained models by analyzing the pixels that they attend to during task execution, and comparing them with the pixels attended to by humans executing the same tasks. To this end, we investigate the following two questions that, to the best of our knowledge, have not been previously studied. 1) How similar are the visual representations learned by RL agents and humans when performing the same task? and, 2) How do similarities and differences in these learned representations explain RL agents' performance on these tasks? Specifically, we compare the saliency maps of RL agents against visual attention models of human experts when learning to play Atari games. Further, we analyze how hyperparameters of the deep RL algorithm affect the learned representations and saliency maps of the trained agents. The insights provided have the potential to inform novel algorithms for closing the performance gap between human experts and RL agents.


This paper investigates the relationship between insider trading and positive abnormal return. More specifically, whether CEO share purchases generates a positive abnormal return. In order to investigate this relationship, this study is based on event study methods. An event study is a statistical method which calculates the impact of an event on another variable under a specific time period, and in this paper, the impact of CEO share purchases on the stock price during 11 days. Furthermore, the result from this study is insufficient and cannot be used to generalize the concrete conclusions. It has been shown that the probability of positive abnormal return varies depending on what period of time is analyzed. A positive abnormal return did not occur when analyzing the whole period (11 days). However, the results were somewhat significant when we analyzed and compared specific periods with each other. Thus, we find it hard to justify whether CEO share purchases within the own company generates a positive abnormal return.


IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) based on RFC 4861 is not designed for non-transitive wireless links. Its heavy use of multicast transmission makes it inefficient and sometimes impractical for IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN). Recently, further optimizations have been proposed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to make ND more suitable for 6LoWPAN. In this paper, we provide an implementation of the most prominent features of the new optimized ND protocol based on RFC 6775 over the Contiki operating system (OS). First, we evaluate the performance of the basic non-optimized IPv6 ND protocol, and analyze its originally implemented functions to set up a good foundation for our implementation and to maintain compatibility. Then, we implement the new optimized Router Solicitation (RS) and Router Advertisement (RA) messaging scheme that reduces the effect of multicasting and unfavorable periodic RA messages. Our results show that the optimized RFC 6775 ND protocol reduces the number of the exchange radio messages in the network by 60-80%. Such optimization alleviates network congestion and saves more power.


Rubbers in general are seldom used in their pristine form. They are too weak to fulfill practical requirements because of lack of hardness, strength properties and wear resistance. So they are used with a number of other components called fillers which improve the processability, performance properties and life of the final product. Calcium carbonate has been mainly used as filler to reduce the cost of rubber products. With the development of technology in superfine filler production and especially in surface modification, calcium carbonate used as reinforcing filler has caught great attention. As inert inorganic filler, nano calcium carbonate has not exhibited the similar reinforcing effect as traditional reinforcing fillers such as carbon black till now. In this chapter, we will discuss the distribution of rubber around the globe, and the development of elastomeric composites with the incorporation of micro and nanocalcium carbonate as a filler material. Also, this chapter will cover the effect of various filler parameters on the material properties of composites with special focus on natural rubber, Acrylonitrile butadiene rubber and Styrene butadiene rubber based composites. These findings may be useful as a guideline for the development of rubber materials for various engineering purposes with required performance.


On the heels of his 2010 New York Times bestseller Conspiracy of the Rich, Robert Kiyosaki takes a new and hard-hitting look at the factors that impact people from all walks of life as they struggle to cope with change and challenges that impact their financial world. In Unfair Advantage -- The Power of Financial Education Robert underscores his messages and challenges readers to change their context and act in a new way. Readers are advised to stop blindly accepting that they are 'disadvantaged' people with limited options. They are encouraged to act beyond their concept of limited options and challenge the preconception that they will struggle financially all of their lives. Robert's fresh approach to his time-tested messages includes clear, actionable steps that any individual or family can take, starting with education. Education becomes applied knowledge, a powerful tactic with measurable results. In true Rich Dad style, readers will be challenged to understand two points of view, and experience how financial knowledge is their unfair advantage. Why do the rich get richer even in a financial crisis? In his new book, An Unfair Advantage, Robert confirms his message and challenges readers to change their context and act in a new way. Readers are advised to stop blindly accepting that they are 'disadvantaged' people with limited options and challenge the notion that they will struggle, financially, all their lives. What does school teach you about money? In most cases, the answer is "Not much." If there is any financial education, the courses are taught by financial planners and bankers...the agents of Wall Street and the big banks, the very people that caused and profited from the financial crisis. This book is about real financial education. This book is about how debt and taxes make the rich richer &hellip and why debt and taxes makes the poor and middle class struggle. This book explains why the rich get richer, paying less in taxes, while the middle class shrinks -- with many losing jobs, homes, and retirement -- and paying more in taxes. This book is about the five unfair advantages a real financial education offers. The Unfair Advantage of Knowledge The Unfair Advantage of Taxes The Unfair Advantage of Debt The Unfair Advantage of Risk The Unfair Advantage of Compensation These five unfair advantages are the outcomes of real financial education.


Liberty, Dominion and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political Theology (180-398). By Lester L. Field, Jr. Publications in Medieval Studies 28. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. xviii + 542 pp. $95.00 (cloth). The doctrine of "two swords" is usually understood as a medieval notion of political dualism with patristic roots, specifically the enduring interpretation by Pope Gelasius of Luke 22:38. The most obvious aim of this complex book is to present earlier Christian formulations which emphasize the liberty and autonomy of the Christian Church, particularly in terms of the image of the sword-hence a book whose scope does not extend beyond the fourth century, appearing in a leading medieval studies series. Yet Lester Field's discussion is hardly narrow in chronological terms, moving from the second-century emergence of a Latin Christian literature to the letters of Pope Siricius, constructing an over-arching vision from various authors and events. The structure is somewhat telescoped, the thirteen chapters arranged in three parts: the first and shortest part ("The Church of the Martyrs") covers the period 180-312 and the earliest Latin Christian references to the language of "the sword," notably but not exclusively in North Africa. Part IT ("The `Constantinian Revolution' (312-374)") moves from religious freedom under Constantine and his successors to focused explorations of Donatism and the figures of Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers. Last, "The Age of Ambrose" devotes four chapters to the shorter period 374-398. Much of interest comes along the way. From intriguing niceties such as the correlation between these issues and the greater western acceptance of the dualistic Revelation to John (pp. 140-141), to startling connections between Arian or Nicene Christologies and the politics they supported (e.g., Eudoxius of Constantinople, p. 165), Field shows a deft touch with a large and complex array of evidence. This scope and learning comes at some cost to the prospective reader. Based on a dissertation, the study is somewhat unusual in form itself. About half of the well over five hundred pages are notes and bibliography. Field usually avoids dealing with historical niceties in the text itself-specific judgments upon which his synthesis depends are usually consigned to the copious notes. The recurring exceptions (e.g., a discussion of imperial coinage, pp. 83-7) are curious and sometimes jarring. Field tends to efface not only his own authorial voice, but also those of the ancient personalities and their opponents; engagement with contemporary scholarship is implied rather than stated. …


Small molecule inhibitors of AKT (v-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog) signaling are being evaluated in patients with various cancer types, but have so far proven therapeutically disappointing for reasons that remain unclear. Here, we treat cancer cells with subtherapeutic doses of Akti-1/2, an allosteric small molecule AKT inhibitor, in order to experimentally model pharmacologic inhibition of AKT signaling in vitro. We then apply a combined RNA, protein, and metabolite profiling approach to develop an integrated, multiscale, molecular snapshot of this "AKTlow" cancer cell state. We find that AKT-inhibited cancer cells suppress thousands of mRNA transcripts, and proteins related to the cell cycle, ribosome, and protein translation. Surprisingly, however, these AKT-inhibited cells simultaneously upregulate a host of other proteins and metabolites posttranscriptionally, reflecting activation of their endo-vesiculo-membrane system, secretion of inflammatory proteins, and elaboration of extracellular microvesicles. Importantly, these microvesicles enable rapidly proliferating cancer cells of various types to better withstand different stress conditions, including serum deprivation, hypoxia, or cytotoxic chemotherapy in vitro and xenografting in vivo. These findings suggest a model whereby cancer cells experiencing a partial inhibition of AKT signaling may actually promote the survival of neighbors through non-cell autonomous communication. Mol Cancer Ther; 15(1); 142–53. ©2015 AACR.


This is the third in a series of edited volumes exploring the evolving landscape of learning systems research which spans theory and experiment, symbols and signals. It continues the exploration of the synthesis of the machine learning subdisciplines begun in volumes I and II. The nineteen contributions cover learning theory, empirical comparisons of learning algorithms, the use of prior knowledge, probabilistic concepts, and the effect of variations over time in the concepts and feedback from the environment. The goal of this series is to explore the intersection of three historically distinct areas of learning research: computational learning theory, neural networks andAI machine learning. Although each field has its own conferences, journals, language, research, results, and directions, there is a growing intersection and effort to bring these fields into closer coordination. Can the various communities learn anything from one another? These volumes present research that should be of interest to practitioners of the various subdisciplines of machine learning, addressing questions that are of interest across the range of machine learning approaches, comparing various approaches on specific problems and expanding the theory to cover more realistic cases. A Bradford Book


The temporal evolution of the domain size and free boundary distributions is calculated for a Poisson–Voronoi transformation. In this kind of transformation a set of randomly distributed domain seeds start growing simultaneously, all with equal isotropic growth rate, occupying the original untransformed space. At the end of the transformation, all the space is occupied and the final configuration is the well-known Poisson–Voronoi tessellation. In this work, the temporal evolution of the domain structure in a two-dimensional transformation is obtained by means of a calculation method presented recently (Pineda et al 2007 Phys. Rev. E 75 040107(R)). The method is based on the differentiation of the domains through their number of extended collisions. It is found that the probability distribution of geometrical configurations for domains with a certain number of extended collisions is time invariant throughout the transformation. The calculation of these time-invariant probability distributions allows us to obtain the probability density function of any geometric characteristic of the domains at any finite time during the transformation. In this work this is applied to obtain the size and the free boundary fraction distributions. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that an analytical solution has been obtained for this system.


In this paper, we examine patient-centered care through analyzing communicative constructions of patients, on the basis of their native language, in consultations with physicians. Whereas patient-centered care is of current interest in health care, research has not addressed its implications in this dimension. Previous studies indicate that non-native Swedish speaking patients, experience substandard interpersonal treatment far more than native Swedish speaking patients. Our findings show that the non-native Swedish speaking patients presented themselves as participating, whereas the native Swedish speaking patients presented themselves as amenable. The physicians responded in two different ways, argumentatively towards the non-native Swedish speaking patients and acknowl- edging vis-à-vis the native Swedish speaking patients. When decisions and conclusions were made by the patients and physicians, this resulted in preservation of the status quo in the consultations with the non-native Swedish speaking patients, while the corresponding result with the native Swedish speaking patients was monitoring of their health status. So, whereas the non-native Swedish speaking patients actually were model patient-centered care patients, physicians were more amenable towards the native Swedish speaking patients. We suggest that patient-centered care is desirable, but its practical application must be more thoroughly scrutinized from both a patient and a health care worker perspective.


We present results on the commissioning and performance of the CMS electromagnetic and hadron calorimeters in pp collisions at a centre of mass energy of 7 TeV at the LHC. The first LHC beams have been used to finalize the commissioning of the readouts and triggers. The calibrations and synchronisations of the calorimeters using cosmic muons, beam splash events (where the LHC beam is targeted on upstream collimators), and collision data including reconstructed physics objects are presented. The quality of the offline data reconstruction, from low level quantities to showers, has been investigated and optimised using known physics processes. In-situ data and thorough data/MC comparisons have been used to measure and tune the detector performance. First performance results are given.


The wide application of face recognition technology may expose us to unforeseen situations. Our ability to cope with this technological innovation may have important consequences for human rights and citizens privacy. One of the most bothering issues is information asymmetry being introduced not only in the web, but also in real life situations. Some imaginary situations are listed, along with the technical and normative means to restore information symmetry. One of the possible solutions being the creation of an openly accessible face recognition search engine.


Decision-making about infrastructure is very complex. Decisions to develop the Rotterdam harbour are being taken in a network of local, regional and national actors and influenced by international actors (firms, NGOÂ's etc.) both public and private. This decision-making process shows a lot of uncertainty and complexity and the outcomes are of great importance for the development of the harbour. Network theory has been widely used to indicate, explain and manage uncertainty in decision-making processes. The theory is well equipped for empirical research and has shown many applicable results. The attention for influences from outside the network to decision-making inside the network is however still poorly developed. In the case of decision-making with a strong international component this is a handicap. In this paper the relation between influences from outside and decision-making inside networks is studied both theoretically and empirically. A distinction is made between locally bound and non-locally bound networks to theorise the complex decision-making process. The well-known scientific concept of space of flows versus space of places from Manuel Castells is used as an inspiration to describe the relation between the locally and non-locally bounded networks of decision making. The locally bounded network is formed by the formal decision making process between the governmental and non-governmental organisations in countries, regions and municipalities. The non-locally bounded networks exist of organizations that are footloose and act globally mainly according to economic principals. The concept of inclusion is used to analyse the various actors in the decision-making process. The paper starts with the description of the external influences in port areas in general. The balance between the influence of local and non-local bounded networks depends on the multiple-inclusion of the different actors in the decision-making process in both networks. In areas in which many actors are included in the place-bounded networks, the external influences can be expected to be marginal. The port area of Rotterdam is a node in international networks and so the hypothesis can be set that in the Rotterdam port area the influence of actors mainly included in non-place bounded networks is significant in decision making networks. To explore this assumption various networks, which are relevant for decision-making about spatial issues in the Rotterdam port are identified and the differences in inclusion of the relevant actors is analysed. By means of the analysis of perceptions of the various actors (locally bound or non-locally bound) and their strategic choices and decisions we show that notions on international port development are being interpreted and transformed quite differently by the various actors. This first part of analysis highlights the possible gap between the awareness of the various actors of the non-locally bounded networks and their translation into their strategies in local bounded networks. We also trace difference of perceptions and strategies between actors who solely operate in locally bound networks and actors who are both included in locally and non-locally bound networks (like shipping firms etc). This second part of analysis indicates if there are differences in what the actors use as input for their respective positions in the decision-making networks. The paper shows that the influence of external developments in non-locally bound networks manifests itself in locally bound networks but is transformed and interpreted in many ways by the different actors. The paper ends with some conclusions about decision-making on large ports and the possibilities to influence this complex decision-making process that takes place in locally bound and non-locally bounded networks at the same time.


In a world increasingly globalised, it is crucial that preservice teachers are equipped with a range of pedagogical knowledges, understandings and practices related to diversity and difference. This paper reports on the implementation and learning outcomes of a teacher preparation initiative in an Australian university called Refugee Action Support, which seeks to develop and enhance such awareness. The initiative provides targeted training to preservice teachers in the vital areas of literacy and numeracy tuition, with the specific aim of preparing them to tutor humanitarian refugee students in high schools in Western Sydney, Australia. Drawing on key principles of academic service learning, the program promotes a context for reciprocal learning where young students are supported in their development of academic skills and sociocultural understandings while, simultaneously, preservice teachers gain an appreciation of the complex dynamics related to teaching, students and diversity.


Measurements of the ionospheric E-region during total solar eclipses have been used to provide information about the evolution of the solar magnetic field and EUV and X-ray emissions from the solar corona and chromosphere. By measuring levels of ionisation during an eclipse and comparing these measurements with an estimate of the unperturbed ionisation levels (such as those made during a control day, where available) it is possible to estimate the percentage of ionising radiation being emitted by the solar corona and chromosphere. Previously unpublished data from the two eclipses presented here are particularly valuable as they provide information that supplements the data published to date. The eclipse of 23 October 1976 over Australia provides information in a data gap that would otherwise have spanned the years 1966 to 1991. The eclipse of 4 December 2002 over Southern Africa is important as it extends the published sequence of measurements. Comparing measurements from eclipses between 1932 and 2002 with the solar magnetic source flux reveals that changes in the solar EUV and X-ray flux lag the open source flux measurements by approximately 1.5 years. We suggest that this unexpected result comes about from changes to the relative size of the limb corona between eclipses, with the lag representing the time taken to populate the coronal field with plasma hot enough to emit the EUV and X-rays ionising our atmosphere.


Walking in the footway environment is an essential activity of daily living and the physical activity associated can also improve an individual's quality of life. The possibility and ability for the individual to reach opportunities and participate in activities on foot indicate the accessibility of the footway environment. One of the major hazards in the footway environment that impedes the accessibility is falling. While it may happen to anyone, falling is more common in older people and the consequence of falling could seriously deteriorate their quality of life. Falls among older people is one of the major public health problems. Fall-induced injuries, either physical or psychological, can lead to further physical frailty and social isolation. Although falls study on the elderly has been widely discussed, there is little information available on risk factors in the outdoor footway environment. The current guidance of design and condition of footway environment, however, is short of scientific justification. The potential hazard of a single step-height, such as defects and kerbs on the pavement, is commonly encountered as well as negotiated by the individual under different lighting conditions. Therefore, a framework within which the interaction among sensory and physical capability and environmental factors could be well investigated is needed. This thesis investigates the process of planning for negotiating upcoming step-heights on the pavement, and aims at establishing changes in gaze (where people look) and gait (how people walk) behaviour in relation to combinations of environmental factors such as step-heights and lighting levels. About 17 young (aged 25-34) and 17 older (aged 65-74) participants walked on a straight walkway with 16 experimental conditions (8 step-heights at 2 lighting levels, one step-height in each environmental setting), and the visual and walking patterns were collected. The results demonstrated the inconspicuous descending step-heights (due to a lack of visibility) as well as the lower lighting level demanded additional visual attention and additional time to plan footsteps. Step-height of 60 mm was found to be the threshold of sensory as well as physical capability, which should be considered as suggested guideline for pavement design. Both 125 and 30 mm were perceived as VI more dangerous due in part to additional body function requirement and the nature of visual ambiguity respectively. More importantly, young participants demonstrated the agility and adaptability to different environmental setting whereas older people demonstrated more disturbed gait pattern and increased visual attention. Also, older people were more likely to face the risk of falling as they detected the step-heights later, had shorter time for response than young participants. Therefore in footway design, older people's perception as well as reaction to response to the footway environment should be considered and the pavement should be designed to accommodate their needs. Bringing together the gaze and gait analysis is proved to be important in this thesis and it is essential for further research in understanding the cognitive process in between. The responses to risks of falling could not be understood without knowing the association between the visual perception and gait adjustments. The approach developed in this thesis might be used to further analyse microscopic as well as macroscopic scales of accessibility of the footway environment and provide some insights into how the individual's sensory, cognitive and physical capability affect the decision making process while walking.


The high-order irradiance moments recently measured in turbulent air up to the fifth order in connection with the K distribution are compared with previous theory based on a cluster expansion of the irradiance moments mν = 〈Iν〉/〈I〉ν, ν = 1, 2, 3, …. Good agreement is confirmed over the entire observed range 0.1 ≲ σI2/〈I〉2 ≲ 6 of the normalized variance of irradiance σI2/〈I〉2, including the regions of both unsaturated and saturated scintillations. Also shown are the theoretical curves of the mean and the variance of the log-amplitude, and good consistency is found with values of previous experiments made exclusively in terms of the log-amplitude and also of recent experiments made simultaneously on both log-amplitude and irradiance. The K distribution fits the experimental results of the mν values well within the range σI2/〈I〉2 ≳ 2 but definitely fails to fit those of the mean and the variance of the log-amplitude.


The President routinely enters into international agreements with foreign states that circumvent the requirements in the Treaty Clause, leaving many researchers with a cloudy understanding of the international agreement-making process in the United States. In many instances, Congress has preauthorized the President to negotiate and conclude an international commitment. In others, the majority of both houses of Congress, rather than two-thirds of the Senate, approve of an international agreement. Even more troublingly, in the last half century, the United States has come to rely on yet another form of international agreements, called "political commitments," that create nonlegally binding expectations and norms. These agreements are often made without congressional participation or knowledge. They are also not required to be published, further mystifying the international agreement-making process.This article sets out to explain variations in international agreement forms, focusing particularly on congressional involvement and authorization. In addition, this article provides advice on locating the text of the agreements, and advice on locating the acts that give the President's agreements legal effect, when constitutionally required.


Federated learning is a distributed machine learning paradigm in which a large number of clients coordinate with a central server to learn a model without sharing their own training data. Due to the heterogeneity of the client datasets, standard federated optimization methods such as Federated Averaging (FedAvg) are often difficult to tune and exhibit unfavorable convergence behavior. In non-federated settings, adaptive optimization methods have had notable success in combating such issues. In this work, we propose federated versions of adaptive optimizers, including Adagrad, Adam, and Yogi, and analyze their convergence in the presence of heterogeneous data for general nonconvex settings. Our results highlight the interplay between client heterogeneity and communication efficiency. We also perform extensive experiments on these methods and show that the use of adaptive optimizers can significantly improve the performance of federated learning.


Measurements made during flight with the triple recording device which gives the horizontal and vertical speeds of an airplane and the angle it makes with the horizon, render it possible to calculate its lift, its drag, and R the resultant of the action of the air both in magnitude and direction, but with these data alone, it is impossible to determine the position of this resultant in the plane of symmetry of the airplane. We will also see how we may determine the position of R during flight and then calculate the variations in the stability of an airplane.


Systematic geological mapping of the East Greenland Caledonides demonstrates that the orogen is built up of WNW-directed thrust sheets displaced across foreland windows. The foreland windows in the southern half of the orogen are characterized by a thin (220–400 m) Neoproterozoic to Lower Palaeozoic succession, structurally overlain by two major Caledonian thrust sheets (Niggli Spids and Hagar Bjerg Thrust Sheets). The metasediments of the upper-level Hagar Bjerg Thrust Sheet host 940–910 Ma granites and migmatites formed during an early Neoproterozoic thermal or orogenic event, as well as Caledonian 435–425 Ma granites and migmatites. The uppermost unit of the thrust pile, the Franz Joseph Allochthon, comprises a very thick (18.5 km) Neoproterozoic to lower Palaeozoic sedimentary succession (Eleonore Bay Supergroup, Tillite Group, Kong Oscar Fjord Group). Total westward displacement of the thrust sheets was about 200–400 km, with shortening estimated at 40–60%. Major extensional faults post-date thrusting. Restoration of the thrust sheets indicates that the sequence of Caledonian orogenic events now preserved in East Greenland was initiated several hundred kilometres ESE of present-day East Greenland, as Baltica and its marginal assemblage of Early Palaeozoic accretions began to impinge on the Laurentian margin.


DIY-making can be an expensive pastime if makers are relying on ready-made toolkits, specialised materials and off-shelf components. Many prefabricated commercial kits seek to lower the learning barrier of making and to help beginners to successfully take their first steps in engineering. However, as soon as the novices become a little more advanced, these toolkits often do not fit the specific requirements of personal maker projects anymore. We introduce the idea of a Schnittmuster (or a meta-toolkit) as a novel approach to toolkit design that seeks to address these creativity-limiting factors as well as practical entrance hurdles. To demonstrate the adaptive power of the Schnittmuster concept, we discuss an exemplar in the context of capacitive touch sensing (FlexE-Touch). Implemented under the constraints of materials, user skill sets and making environments, we illustrate how the Schnittmuster facilitated four cheap and flexible toolkit instantiations for crafting custom touch sensor electrodes.


Herniated disc is one of the most common problems of the musculoskeletal system, and the spine, in particular. This article presents a modern algorithm of methods of treatment constituting comprehensive rehabilitation of herniated disc in the lumbar section of the spine, including: physical therapy, active and passive kinesitherapy, medical massage and manual techniques, applied in the medical practice. Rehabilitation and physioprophylaxis facilitate the reduction of the risk of occurrence and development of herniated disc in the lumbar section of the spine through natural (water, air, movement and sunshine) and preformed physical factors, the main aim being achieving a good quality of life of both the sick and the healthy. The so called 'spine school', which includes training the patient to have a good posture, a good stance, to walk correctly and to improve his/her motor stereotype through control and self-control, plays a major role. In developing the individual treatment scheme for each patient at a certain stage of his/her condition, it is vital to attempt to achieve a synergic effect of the optimal combination of electrotherapeutic, peloid therapeutic and kinesitherapeutic methods. Regular courses in physioprophylaxis and kinesio-prophylaxis significantly boost the effect of the medicamentous therapy in patients with herniated lumbar disc and improve their quality of life.


This document is part of an ongoing effort to standardize transmission of laboratory data across cultural and linguistic domains, without attempting to standardize the routine language used by clinicians and laboratory practitioners. It comprises a general introduction and an alphabetic list of properties. The list is based on the syntax for properties recommended by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). The nomenclature is primarily from the Working Party on Terminology of the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT).


IT strategy is often intended to be driven by the organisational vision and strategy to achieve its goals periodically. IT has significant impact on an organisation's success or failure. It therefore does not operate in a vacuum. The issue is not just about information technology. Rather, it is the strategic application of technology, including management, which is about people and the process. This research applied Structuration Theory to examine the types of structures that exist during the development and implementation of IT strategy, and the structures that actually emerge as a result of human action in the computing environment of the organisation and through that, identify its impact and how they derail IT strategy in the organisation.


iii Acknowledgments I wish to extend my gratitude to the members of my graduate advisory committee, Professors They provided me with the knowledge, theoretical tools, and inspiration that greatly assisted me in carrying out this research. I am also greatly indebted to members of David Pisoni's Speech Research Laboratory and James Townsend's Cognitive Modeling Laboratory for helpful comments and stimulating discussion over the years. The participation of my subjects is also greatly appreciated. iv TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF AUDIOVISUAL INTEGRATION IN SPEECH PERCEPTION Auditory and visual speech recognition unfolds in real time and occurs effortlessly for normal hearing listeners. However, model theoretic descriptions of the systems level cognitive processes responsible for " integrating " auditory and visual speech information are currently lacking, primarily because they rely too heavily on accuracy rather than reaction time predictions. Speech and language researchers have argued about whether audiovisual integration occurs in a parallel or in coactive fashion, and also the extent to which audiovisual occurs in an " efficient " manner. The Double Factorial Paradigm introduced in Section 1 is an experimental paradigm that is equipped to address dynamical processing issues related to architecture (parallel vs. coactive processing) as well as efficiency (capacity). Experiment 1 employed a simple word discrimination task to assess both architecture and capacity in high accuracy settings. Experiments 2 and 3 assessed these same issues using auditory and visual distractors in Divided Attention and Focused Attention tasks respectively. Experiment 4 investigated audiovisual integration efficiency across different auditory signal-to-noise ratios. The results can be summarized follows: Integration typically occurs in parallel with an efficient stopping rule, integration occurs automatically in both focused and divided attention versions of the task, and audiovisual integration is only efficient (in the time domain) when the clarity of the auditory signal is relatively poor—although considerable individual differences were observed. In Section 3, these results were captured within the milieu of parallel linear dynamic processing models with cross channel interactions. Finally, in Section 4, I discussed broader implications for this research, including applications for clinical research and neural-biological models of audiovisual convergence.


This paper presents the concept and design of a novel roadway microgrid. It operates as a smart microgrid that optimally utilizes the public right-of-way and roadway infrastructure to provide cost-effective, highly efficient, and reliable wind/solar electric power production, distribution, storage, and utilization. The fundamental unit of the microgrid is called the energy-plus roadway/traffic signal light (EPRTL), which contains a grid-connected wind/solar hybrid generation system installed on the pole of a roadway/traffic signal light for clean electric power production. The term "energy-plus" stands for annual energy consumption that is less than production. The generated electric power will be consumed locally by the roadway/traffic signal light; the excess power generated will be stored in batteries, optimally distributed in the microgrid, and supplied to the utility main grid. The deployment of the proposed roadway microgrid will dramatically change the role of the public right-of-way from an energy consumer to an energy producer, leading to energy-plus roadways. This will not only reduce the roadway agency operating costs but also generate new revenues for the Highway Trust Fund. The use of renewable electric power will also promote the development of green roadways.


A BSTRACT . Community stability is an objective of USDA Forest Service timber sales. This paper examines that objective, and the success the Forest Service can have in attaining it, through its intended maintenance of a constant volume timber harvest schedule. We apply a three-factor, two-sector modified general equilibrium model with empirical evidence from the timber-based counties of western Montana. Departure from a market responsive timber policy can have positive impacts on the wood products sector, but the net effects on the local community are very small. The costs to the public treasury of pursuing such a policy dwarf these small community benefits. FOR. %I. 37(1):245-260.


Using the spiritual autobiographies of selected nineteenth-century African American women, this inquiry reveals how these women constructed subversive discourses as moral actors and social reformers, even in the midst of religious, racial and gender oppression. Cuffee argues that their discursive self-assertion involved them in transformative acts that moved them from the status of marginalized survivors of white supremacy and chattel slavery to empowered, moral subjects at the intersection of religion, race, gender, and identity ideologies. This article examines how these women appropriated biblical rhetoric, abolitionist ideals, and the Protestant evangelical conversion and sanctification doctrine to realign themselves in opposition to and in disruption of dominant stereotypes and negative perceptions about their race and gender to liberate themselves from hegemonic structures, as well as to sustain them in their preaching missions and gender-justice protests.


City of South Lake Tahoe Subdivision Ordinance: An Opportunity for Smart Growth, Sustainability and Application Streamlining Hilary Kay Hodges The City of South Lake Tahoe currently does not have an adopted subdivision ordinance. This has caused confusion about the approval process and regulatory requirements as well as delays in application processing. This Professional Project will explore the opportunity for the City to adopt a subdivision ordinance that would provide direction for subdivision design and approval and further the City's smart growth and sustainability policies. However, there would need to be careful consideration for the potential increase in costs that are associated with additional fees or off-site improvement requirements. The Subdivision Ordinance would be written with the goals of achieving a streamlined process and incorporating design standards consistent with smart growth principles and sustainability consistent with the City's Sustainability Plan. In addition, the Subdivision Ordinance must be consistent with the goals, policies, and programs of the City of South Lake Tahoe General Plan. The project would begin with a literature review on subdivision regulation and the regulatory environment in South Lake Tahoe. Several subdivision ordinances would be reviewed for their ability to meet the goals of the South Lake Tahoe Ordinance. Throughout the process there will be consultation with other professionals. The final product will be a draft subdivision ordinance and an analysis of how well the draft achieves the goals. South Lake Tahoe Subdivision Ordinance iii


The deposition of Mn on to reconstructed InSb and GaAs surfaces has been
studied by re
ection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), atomic force microscopy
and scanning tunnelling microscopy. On both Ga- and As-terminated GaAs(001), a
Mn-induced (2x2) reconstruction is observed. In contrast, there are no well defined
Mn-induced surface reconstructions on InSb. Islands are observed to form on all of the
surfaces studied, with islands on the Group III-rich surfaces composed of elemental Mn
and of an alloy on the Group V-rich surfaces. The conversion from Group III(V)-rich to
Group V(III)-rich surfaces are discussed in terms of basic thermodynamic quantities and
a number of models for surface atom substitution are proposed as pathways for MnAs
and MnSb island formation.
A high resolution X-ray diffraction study (HRXRD) has been performed on niccolite,
cubic and wurtzite crystallites present within MnSb thin films grown on GaAs(111)
substrates. It is observed that the lattice parameters of the polymorphs do not depend
on the film thickness or the time-corrected beam
ux ratio, J. The niccolite phase is
found to relax rapidly (within 3 nm) and the average c lattice parameter of these films is
5.791(1) A. Variations in the c lattice parameter indicate that the average stoichiometry
of the films varies on a per sample basis and this may act to promote the formation of
polymorphs. Cubic MnSb crystallites exhibit a large strain dispersion of approximately
1 % and a rhombohedral or trigonal distortion is believed to be the origin. Quantitative
analysis of asymmetric reciprocal space maps reveals that films grown using the
optimised conditions have the highest concentration of the cubic polymorph, with lower
values of J in the optimised range promoting this polymorph.
The growth of MnSb on Ge(001) and Ge(111) substrates has been investigated.
On Ge(001) growth proceeds through the formation of three dimensional islands and
no dependence on the growth conditions is observed. Evidence for (1102) and (1120)
crystallites is seen in XRD and RHEED, respectively. The interface between the MnSb
islands and the Ge(001) substrate is sharp with no evidence for interfacial reactivity.
The epitaxial growth of MnSb on Ge(111) is reported for the first time. The growth
orientation is confirmed to be (0001) by X-ray diffraction while the layers are found to
be ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature in excess of 300 K.


Seeking to divorce California from its rough and tumble Gold Rush–era image of lawlessness and barbarity, turn-of-the-century Californians capitalized on the state's climate, soil, and relatively open landscapes to try to create businesses and a society that promoted messages of California as a cultured space. Drawing on increased commercial possibilities created by the completion of the transcontinental railroad and later the Panama Canal, many of these California companies focused on their connectedness to the middle and eastern portions of the nation as well as their European roots. For some, a range of ethnic, native, and foreign plants demonstrated the fecundity of the space and the civilized cosmopolitanism of the state. Others focused on specific blooms; by examining this phenomenon within seed company C. C. Morse & Co. and through the work of its employees—including Chinese immigrant cousins Wong Ah Hem and Henry Ohn—the sweet pea emerges as the perfect flower to explore the efforts of those crafting their narrative of California as a blossom routinely drenched in British whiteness.


The USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program makes and keeps current an inventory of all forest land in the United States. To comply with privacy laws while at the same time offering its data to the public, FIA makes approximate plot locations available through a process known as perturbing ("fuzzing") and swapping. The free spatial scanning software program SaTScan together with FIA data was used to examine the effects of this process and other arrangements of FIA data on the detection of hotspots of standing dead trees in South Carolina. Only 77.8%, 85.7%, and 66.7% of the hotspots identified in datasets with unaltered plot coordinates were observed when the coordinates were fuzzed, swapped, or both fuzzed and swapped, respectively. Aggregating plot-level data to census tract and county dampened the effect of fuzzing and swapping but resulted in the identification of fewer hotspots overall. Within the framework of forest health monitoring in which failing to identify a problem that truly exists can have serious repercussions, neither relying solely on fuzzed and swapped data nor aggregated data will suffice. The addition of buffer data to evaluate the stability of hotspots located near the study area boundary is recommended.


The electronic structure of the optimally hole-doped pnictide compound Ba0:6K0:4Fe2As2 was obtained and studied by angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). The light polarization dependence of the bands is explained by the selection rules contained in the photoemission transition matrix elements, and gives novel information on the possible orbital character of the bands. The Fermi surface geometry also shows important variations with light polarization. An attempt is made to analyze its more complex link with the selection rules by taking a comparison with Fermi surface orbital character simulations. While some good correspondence can be observed, a number of inconstistancies and a large photon energy dependence seems to underline the importance of the more global matrix elements.


The energy consumption of the Internet is anticipated to be one of the main contributors to global energy consumption in the coming decades. As a result, renewed attention has been given to the energy efficient design and operation of network services. The video on demand (VoD) service is expected to be one of the most prominent services through the Internet in the near future. Due to the enormous energy consumption arising from storage and transport of movies, energy efficient design and operation of VoD systems are important considerations. In this paper, we formulate energy consumption models to analyze the energy consumption arising from storage and transport of movies in VoD systems. We consider five strategic content placement locations located at different levels of the video distribution network and we comparatively analyze the energy consumption of storage and transport when the movies are stored and delivered from these locations. Moreover, we derive thresholds for movie request arrival rates which determine whether replication of a movie in a given content placement location is energy efficient and whether turning ON a set of content storages located at a particular level of the network is energy efficient. By numerically analyzing the energy consumption models, we show that the energy efficiency of VoD services can be significantly improved by delivering movies from the most energy efficient content placement locations in the network. We show that this can be achieved by designing and operating VoD systems based on our derived thresholds which optimize the energy efficiency of VoD services for all user request arrival rates.


In this thesis a data-driven and linguistically interpretable intonation model for the
automatic analysis and synthesis of fundamental frequency (F0) contours was developed.
The intonation model:
The model can be characterised as parametric, contour-based, and superpositional. F0 contours are treated as a superposition of global and local components.
These components are anchored in a hierarchic prosodic structure defined by global and local segments which correspond roughly to intonation phrases and accent groups respectively. The stylisation of the F0 contours is carried out as follows: Within each global segment a linear F0 base contour is fitted. After the subtraction of this global baseline a third order polynomial is fitted to the F0 residual within each local segment.
Subsequently, a symbolic description of the intonation inventory in form of global and local contour classes is derived by polynomial coefficient clustering. On the phonetic level, linear regression models adjust these abstract units to the respective prosodic context.
As to the parametric and contour-based description, the model stands in the tradition of Fujisaki (1987), Mohler (1998b) and Taylor (2000). As to superposition, it stands in the tradition of Fujisaki (1987). As in Mohler und Conkie (1998) stylisation parameter clustering is carried out. Regarding the following aspects the approach chosen here provides additional benefit to intonation research: (1) The requirements for data preprocessing are comparably low. F0 stylisation was carried out in F0 sections at syllable nuclei, rendering an exact syllable segmentation unnecessary. The extraction of the prosodic structure is restricted to prosodic phrase boundaries guided by signal pauses, punctuation and partof-speech information. Pitch accent localisation and classification is not needed. Due to this a complete automation of the preprocessing steps with acceptable quality is achieved, so that there is no need for a manual data preparation by experts. This property allows for a fast adaptation of the model to new speech data and avoids inconsistencies caused by incomplete inter-labeller agreement. Due to the partly text-based definition of prosodic structure, automatic preprocessing includes a signal-text alignment needed for subsequent linguistic interpretation. (2) In contrast to the more complex stylisation functions of the models mentioned above, the polynomial stylisation chosen in this study guarantees an analytic approximation and thus a biunique relation between the F0 to be modelled and its abstraction. This property is essential to partition the F0 stylisations into intonation classes based on their contour similarity as well as for later linguistic interpretation. At the same time the chosen polynomial order is capable of capturing F0-coded prominence and boundary behaviour.
Linguistic interpretation:
The linguistic interpretability of local contour classes was examined for the concepts significance, informational novelty, and utterance finality. The approach chosen here can be described as follows: first, by automatic linguistic corpus analyses hypotheses about possible relations between contour classes and linguistic concepts are generated. These hypotheses are subsequently tested by perception experiments. By these means a systematic linguistic anchoring of the model was achieved in form of a decision tree to predict the linguistically appropriate contour class. The adequacy of its predictions was assured by a further perception test.
Conclusion:
It has been shown, that it is possible to build a perceptually acceptable and linguistically interpretable representation of intonation in a purely data-driven manner.
This bottom-up approach guarantees consistency and easy adaptability of the model to new data. Due to its simultaneous signal proximity and linguistic anchoring, it covers the entire chain from text to signal and therefore can be used for intonation analysis and generation on a linguistic as well as on a phonetic-acoustic level. It is qualified for
employment in speech technology applications as well as in phonetic fundamental research to automatically analyse raw speech data.


Human rights are a complex concept with distinct parts, whose histories are often independent from one another. Histories of human rights are almost always partial histories, and we cannot reduce their history to that of one part. This article challenges one of the central tenets of the early-modern history of human rights, namely that it was the "discovery" of subjective rights in the late medieval period that was the critical move in the development of human rights. It examines in particular the work of Richard Tuck, and exposes his debt to the French legal historian Michel Villey and to Leo Strauss. In so doing, it disputes the existence of a "modern school" of natural law theory, and sketches an alternative history of natural rights, which passes from the Huguenot monarchomachs and the English Levellers to the American and French revolutionaries.


RNA plays key roles in essential biological processes, such as protein synthesis, transcriptional regulation, splicing and retroviral replication. The structural diversity of RNA molecules and the lack of known RNA repair mechanisms make these biopolymers a challenging, yet very important target for therapeutic intervention. In particular, the increasing problems of bacterial resistance to antibiotics make the search for novel RNA binders of crucial importance. Among known RNA binders, aminoglycosides were among the first to be recognized as effectors of RNA functions. Despite the established bactericidal properties of aminoglycoside antibiotics, their therapeutic use is limited, as internal administration of aminoglycoside antibiotics at high doses results in clinical side effects. The 1,3-hydroxylamine motifs and deoxystreptamine moiety, present in all aminoglycosides, are the elements of recognition of RNA. Binding properties of these compounds is believed to be a three-dimensional electrostatic complementarity rather than highly specific contacts between the aminoglycosides and an RNA receptor site. Macrolides are a second class of compounds that bind to the ribosome. A large variety of natural compounds displaying various biological activities are recorded through literature. Most of them, share a macrocyclic lactone ring. Macrolides and aminoglycosides, despite their high potency, remain structurally highly sophisticated. The exploration of new pathways toward molecules of lower structural complexity was performed. Starting from a non iterative method for the synthesis of 15 carbon polyolic chains, (2R,4S)-1,5-bis[(2RS,4SR)-6-(benzyloxy)methoxy]tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-yl]pentane-2,4-diol, a new intermediate, was isolated and selectively functionalised. In addition, efficient tools for the selective protection of hydroxyl moieties on polyol chains were developed allowing the synthesis of a library of structurally diverse 1,3-hydroxylamine and deoxystreptamine containing compounds. Deoxystreptamine dimers were found to be better RNA binders than 2-deoxystreptamine itself, while linear aminopolyols were found to be good linker candidates for the synthesis of deoxystreptamine dimers. Dynamic combinatorial libraries with a bacterial RNA fragment as biological target were implemented for the identification of new potent RNA binders. Based on macrolactonisation reaction or ring closing metathesis, efficient synthetic routes were explored for the synthesis of polyhydroxylated macrolactones requiring the isolation of few synthetic intermediate and limited protecting groups' manipulations. Glycolipids analogs were also produced on bis amides formation or ring closing metathesis for the synthesis of macrocyclic rings containing a bis(hemiacetal) scaffold and diamino or diamido linkers.


In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva addresses the subject of melancholia, examining this phenomenon in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart. In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated.


IPPY 2012 Gold Award in the Fine Arts category (Independent Publisher Book Awards)ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year Award Finalist For centuries, great artists have been drawn together in friendship and in love. In "Artists in Love," curator and writer Veronica Kavass delves into the passionate and creative underpinnings of the art world's most provocative romances. From Picasso and Francoise Gilot to Lee Miler and Man Ray to Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne, Kavass' graceful and daring text provides a generous glimpse into the inspiring and sometimes tempestuous relationships between celebrated artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. From poetic beginnings to shocking endings (and vice-versa), the various dimensions of the artist couple archetypes are ceaselessly explored. Some are enduring and collaborative, yielding astonishing parallel bodies of work, as with Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Others are adoring and explosive, such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Essays revealing what compelled these dynamic artists to partner, how their pairing influenced their work, and why their love may have faltered, are accompanied by lush illustrations of their art and documentary photographs of the couple. The first visual book to explore this subject in such epic scope, "Artists in Love"is a revelatory and riveting journey into the hearts and minds of artists in love. Artists featured include: Wassily Kandinsky & Gabriele MunterRobert & Sonia DelaunayAlfred Stieglitz & Georgia O KeeffeJean Arp & Sophie Taeuber-ArpAnni & Josef AlbersFrida Kahlo & Diego RiveraLee Miller & Man RayJacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn KnightBarbara Hepworth & Ben NicholsonElaine & Willem de KooningPablo Picasso & Francoise GilotJackson Pollock & Lee KrasnerDorothea Tanning & Max ErnstNancy Spero & Leon GolubJasper Johns & Robert RauschenbergRobert Motherwell & Helen FrankenthalerChristo & Jeanne-ClaudeBernd & Hilla BecherEva Hesse & Tom DoyleCharles and Ray Eames Kay Sage and Yves TanguySaul Steinberg and Hedda SterneRobert Smithson & Nancy HoltNiki de Saint Phalle & Jean TinguelyMarina Abramovi & UlayClaes Oldenburg & Coosje van BruggenBruce Nauman & Susan RothenbergDavid McDermott and Peter McGough"


Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human industrial activities are causing a progressive alteration of seawater chemistry, termed ocean acidification, which has decreased seawater pH and carbonate ion concentration markedly since the Industrial Revolution. Many marine organisms, like molluscs and corals, build hard shells and skeletons using carbonate ions, and they exhibit negative overall responses to ocean acidification. This adds to other chronic and acute environmental pressures and promotes shifts away from calcifier-rich communities. In this study, we examine the possible implications of ocean acidification on mollusc harvests worldwide by examining present production, consumption and export and by relating those data to present and future surface ocean chemistry forecast by a coupled climate-ocean model (Community Climate System 3.1; CCSM3). We identify the 'transition decade' when future ocean chemistry will distinctly differ from that of today (2010), and when mollusc harvest levels similar to those of the present cannot be guaranteed if present ocean chemistry is a significant determinant of today's mollusc production. We assess nations' vulnerability to ocean acidification-driven decreases in mollusc harvests by comparing nutritional and economic dependences on mollusc harvests, overall societal adaptability, and the amount of time until the transition decade. Projected transition decades for individual countries will occur 10‐ 50 years after 2010. Countries with low adaptability, high nutritional or economic dependence on molluscs, rapidly approaching transition decades or rapidly growing populations will therefore be most vulnerable to ocean acidification-driven mollusc harvest decreases. These transition decades suggest how soon nations should implement strategies, such as increased aquaculture of resilient species, to help maintain current per capita mollusc harvests.


Courts and scholars have long noted the constitutional exceptionalism of the federal immigration power, decried the injustice it produces, and appealed for greater constitutional protection for noncitizens. This Article builds on this robust literature while focusing on a particularly critical conceptual and doctrinal obstacle to legal reform — the notion that laws governing the rights of noncitizens to enter and remain within the United States comprise a distinct body of "immigration laws" presumed to be part and parcel of foreign affairs and national security. This Article argues that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent immigration jurisprudence suggests a willingness to temper, and perhaps even retire, that presumption. In particular, the majority opinions in Zadvydas v. Davis and Padilla v. Kentucky evidence a growing skepticism among the Justices that the regulation of noncitizens comprises a discrete, constitutionally privileged domain of distinctly "political" subject matter that is properly buffered against judicial scrutiny. To rescind that presumption would, in effect, disaggregate the category of "immigration law" for the purpose of constitutional review and subject federal authority over noncitizens to the same judicially enforceable constitutional constraints that apply to most other federal lawmaking. The disaggregation of immigration law would thus give full expression to noncitizens' constitutional personhood. Foreign policy and national security considerations would continue to serve as constitutionally viable warrants for laws burdening noncitizens, but Congress and the President would no longer enjoy the extraordinary judicial deference that they currently receive as a matter of course.


This thesis explored the leadership role of the Primary School Principal in Ireland. It examined the making of a principal (formation), becoming a principal (accession) and being a principal (incumbency). It painted a portrait of accession to principalship and investigated how participating principals perceive the role of principal early in the second decade of 21st century and moreover what inspires and sustains them in their work.

A review of literature included works on leadership, leadership in education, career history approaches and the history of the Primary School Principal in Ireland. Twelve principals were interviewed for a period of between one and half and two and a half hours each.

The study was located within a phenomenological paradigm using a qualitative methodology. The research tool used was the face to face semi- structured interview combined with a life story and career history approach to studying school leaders.

The thesis found that Irish Primary Principals are very highly motivated, they believe they have high levels of autonomy in many areas of their work and that they are accountable to many stakeholders. Further findings are described under five themes; Values/Moral Purpose/Interests of Children; Empowerment; Frustrations; Passion and Pride and Emerging Landscapes. While principals are extremely positive about their role they acknowledge many significant frustrations accompanying the role in a time of uncertainty. A number of recommendations were made which may be of interest to principals, policy makers and researchers.


We present results from an experimental investigation of turbulent transport and molecular mixing of a Sc [Gt ] 1 conserved scalar in the fully developed self-similar far field of a steady, axisymmetric, momentum-driven, free turbulent jet issuing into a quiescent medium. Our experiments cover the axial range from the jet exit to 350 diameters downstream, and span the range of Reynolds numbers from 1500 to 20000. Flow visualizations of the scalar concentration field directly verify the presence of an underlying characteristic large-scale organization in the jet far field essentially consistent with a simplified conceptual picture proposed in an earlier study (Dahm & Dimotakis 1987). High-resolution imaging measurements of successive instantaneous scalar concentration profiles in the jet support the presence of such a large-scale organization and provide details of its implications for mixing. These results also establish the proper similarity scaling for the mean concentration in the jet far field and give the scaling constant on the jet centreline as 5.4. We also present conserved scalar concentration p.d.f.s throughout the jet far field, and introduce a chemical reaction method for measuring the p.d.f.s with potentially molecular resolution. The amount of unmixed ambient fluid that reaches the jet centreline is found to decrease with increasing Reynolds number over the range investigated. The distribution of mixed fluid compositions in the concentration p.d.f. also appears to change over this range of Reynolds numbers, indicating that some aspects of large Schmidt number mixing in the jet far field have not yet become Reynolds number independent.


Anomalies are an inevitable occurrence while operating enterprise software systems. Traditionally, anomalies are detected by threshold-based alarms for critical metrics, or health probing requests. However, fully automated detection in complex systems is challenging, since it is very difficult to distinguish truly anomalous behavior from normal operation. To this end, the traditional approaches may not be sufficient. Thus, we propose machine learning classifiers to predict the system's health status. We evaluated our approach in an industrial case study, on a large, real-world dataset of 7.5 • 106 data points for 231 features. Our results show that recurrent neural networks with long short-term memory (LSTM) are more effective in detecting anomalies and health issues, as compared to other classifiers. We achieved an area under precision-recall curve of 0.44. At the default threshold, we can automatically detect 70% of the anomalies. Despite the low precision of 31 %, the rate in which false positives occur is only 4 %.