There is an increasing necessity for new long-term planning models to adequately assess the flexibility requirements of significant levels of short-term operational uncertainty in power systems with large shares of variable renewable energy. In this context, this paper proposes an adaptive robust optimization model for the generation and transmission expansion planning problem. The proposed model has a two-stage structure that separates investment and operational decisions, over a given planning horizon. The key attribute of this model is the representation of daily operational uncertainty through the concept of representative days and the design of uncertainty sets that determine load and renewable power over such days. This setup allows an effective representation of the flexibility requirements of a system with large shares of variable renewable energy, and the consideration of a broad range of operational conditions. To efficiently solve the problem, the column and constraint generation method is employed. Extensive computational experiments on a 20-bus and a 149-bus representation of the Chilean power system over a 20-year horizon show the computational efficiency of the proposed approach, and the advantages as compared to a deterministic model with representative days, due to an effective spatial placement of both variable resources and flexible resources.


This paper examines the relations between temporal processing and reading performance by comparing the performance of 38 children with learning impairments (LI) to 32 age-matched, typically developing subjects (controls) on these tasks. Subjects were tested on four auditory and four visual temporal processing tasks, and four language/reading tasks. Subjects in the LI group were also tested for auditory processing disorder (APD). Kruskal-Wallis tests and Spearman correlation coeffi cients were used to evaluate the differences and relations between group test scores (alpha = 0.05, Bonferroni corrected). LI subjects performed more poorly than controls on reading and phonological awareness tasks, as well as on the subset of temporal processing tasks that required the relative timing of two stimulus events. There was a trend for performance on language/reading and several auditory temporal processing tasks to drop from control subjects, to those with LI alone, to those with both APD and LI. Scores on a subset of relative timing tasks were positively correlated with reading scores for controls, but not LI subjects. The results suggest that relative timing judgements of auditory and visual stimuli, rather than the identifi cation of a single, brief stimulus event, may play a key role in reading development.


This report is one of a series of reports documenting the methods and findings of a multi-year, multi-disciplinary project coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) and funded by the California Earthquake Authority (CEA). The overall project is titled "Quantifying the Performance of Retrofit of Cripple Walls and Sill Anchorage in Single-Family Wood-Frame Buildings," henceforth referred to as the "PEER–CEA Project." The overall objective of the PEER–CEA Project is to provide scientifically based information (e.g., testing, analysis, and resulting loss models) that measure and assess the effectiveness of seismic retrofit to reduce the risk of damage and associated losses (repair costs) of wood-frame houses with cripple wall and sill anchorage deficiencies as well as retrofitted conditions that address those deficiencies. Tasks that support and inform the loss-modeling effort are: (1) collecting and summarizing existing information and results of previous research on the performance of wood-frame houses; (2) identifying construction features to characterize alternative variants of wood-frame houses; (3) characterizing earthquake hazard and ground motions at representative sites in California; (4) developing cyclic loading protocols and conducting laboratory tests of cripple wall panels, wood-frame wall subassemblies, and sill anchorages to measure and document their response (strength and stiffness) under cyclic loading; and (5) the computer modeling, simulations, and the development of loss models as informed by a workshop with claims adjustors. This report is a product of Working Group 4 (WG4): Testing, whose central focus was to experimentally investigate the seismic performance of retrofit and existing cripple walls. Amongst the body of reports from WG4, in the present report, a suite of four small cripple wall test phases, in total 28 specimens, are cross compared with varied exterior finishes, namely stucco (wet) and non-stucco (dry) exterior finishes. Details representative of era specific construction, specifically the most vulnerable pre-1960s construction are of predominant focus in the present effort. Experiments involved imposition of combined vertical loading and quasi-static reversed cyclic lateral load onto cripple walls of 12 ft in length and 2 ft or 6 ft in height. All specimens in this report were constructed with the same boundary conditions and tested with the same vertical load. Parameters addressed in this report include: wet exterior finishes (stucco over framing, stucco over horizontal lumber sheathing, and stucco over diagonal lumber sheathing); and dry exterior finishes (horizontal siding, horizontal siding over diagonal sheathing, and T1-11 wood structural panels) with attention towards cripple wall height and the retrofit condition. The present report provides only a brief overview of the test program and setup; whereas a series of three prior reports present results of test groupings nominally by exterior finish type (wet versus dry). As such, herein the focus is to cross compare key measurements and observations of the in-plane seismic behavior of all 28 specimens.


In vehicular communication systems, cooperative awareness messages provide contextual information required for transportation safety and efficiency applications. However, without the appropriate design, these messages introduce a new attack vector to compromise passenger privacy. The use of ephemeral credentials – pseudonyms – was therefore proposed, essentially to split a journey into unlinkable segments. To protect segment transitions, encrypted mix-zones provide regions where vehicles can covertly change their pseudonyms. While previous work focused on the placement, shape, and protocols for mix-zones, attacks that correlate vehicles entering and existing these zones still remain a problem. Furthermore, existing schemes have only considered homogeneous traffic, disregarding variations in vehicle density due to differences in driver population, road layout, and time of day. Without realistic experimental results, any conclusion on real-world applicability is precarious. In this paper, we address this challenge and present a novel scheme that works independent of vehicles' mobility patterns. More precisely, our system generates fictive chaff vehicles when needed and broadcasts their traces, while it remains unobtrusive if sufficiently many vehicles are present. This greatly improves privacy protection in situations with inherently low traffic density, e.g., suburban areas, and during low traffic periods. Our scheme ensure that an external attacker cannot distinguish between real and chaff vehicles, while legitimate vehicles can recognize chaff messages; this is important, because chaff vehicles (and messages) must not affect the operation of safety applications. In our evaluation, we compare our chaff-based approach with an existing cryptographic mix-zone scheme. Our results under realistic traffic conditions show that by introducing fictive vehicles, traffic flow variations can be smoothed and privacy protection can be enhanced up to 76%.


This article, the second in the series of four on a Value for Funding (VfF) analytical approach, focuses on an infrastructure funding question and on a meaningful distinction between funding and financing. In particular, this article explores the extent to which different infrastructure delivery options provide new revenue sources and truly address the funding needs without creating new financial liability to the public sponsor; how the nature of such funding affects the public sector deficit risk; and how the intersection of funding and financing helps to further illuminate the underlying funding problem. The authors identify taxes, user fees, and the leveraging of brownfield assets as three primary sources of infrastructure funding. They reveal potential economic distortions that can add to the funding challenges, including the effects of inefficiencies from tax-exempt financing and of the hidden cost of equity capital for public assets largely unaccounted for in current government accounting practices. They also identify the recapitalization and secondary financing market as a potential venue to generate additional funding and also as presenting deeper and wider access points to engage private investors more effectively. Finally, using the VfF framework, the authors show analytically how different delivery options contribute to the funding equation and how such funding directly impacts the public-sector deficit risk profile, especially under a non-revenue-neutral situation when public sponsors are fiscally constrained. Overall, they demonstrate how VfF enhances Value for Money assessments, enabling an accurate and balanced look into the overall fiscal conditions of the public sponsor, thus enhancing the infrastructure delivery decision making.


The trial was carried out in a sheep flock with mixed Mannheimia haemolytica/Mycoplasma spp. respiratory infection; 60 lambs were included therein and allocated as follows: lambs in group MH were subcutaneously injected with marbofloxacin (3.0 mg/kg bodyweight) on two occasions, once daily 2 days apart – lambs in group ML3 were given marbofloxacin (2.0 mg/kg) on three occasion, once daily for three consecutive days – lambs in group ML2 were given marbofloxacin (2.0 mg/kg) on two occasions, 2 days apart – lambs in group T were subcutaneously injected with tilmicosin (15 mg/kg) on two occasions, 4 days apart – lambs in group C were untreated controls. The lambs were monitored before and after treatment and the clinical findings were scored; they were euthanatised 42 days after treatment for pathological examination of the lungs. Groups were similar at the start of a field trial with respect to all parameters (general clinical condition, presence of nasal discharge, presence of ophthalmic discharge, results of lung auscultation) evaluated (P> 0.05). After treatment, no systemic or local adverse reactions were observed in any lamb. Forty-two days after treatment, the median general clinical assessment score of groups MH, ML3 and T was 0, that of group ML2 was 1 and that of group C lambs was 2 (P< 0.01). Treatment with marbofloxacin was associated with improved clinical scores; the results were similar for all evaluations 14 days after treatment and subsequently. Clinical cure rate 42 days after treatment was 100, 100, 42, 100 and 0% for group MH, ML3, ML2, T and C lambs, respectively (P< 0.01). After controlling for initial weight, treatment was found to have a significant effect on carcass weight (P< 0.01). Pairwise differences in lung lesion scores between any of the four treated groups and the untreated controls were significant (P< 0.02). It is concluded that marbofloxacin is effective against respiratory infections of lambs at a dose rate of 3.0 mg/kg bodyweight given on two occasions, once daily 2 days apart or at a dose rate of 2.0 mg/kg given on three occasions for three consecutive days. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. nnheim


Neuromodulation of olfactory circuits by acetylcholine (ACh) plays an important role in odor discrimination and learning. Early processing of chemosensory signals occurs in two functionally and anatomically distinct regions, the main and accessory olfactory bulbs (MOB and AOB), which receive significant cholinergic input from the basal forebrain. Here we explore the regulation of AOB and MOB circuits by ACh, and how this modulation influences olfactory mediated behaviors. Surprisingly, despite the presence of a conserved circuit, activation of muscarinic ACh receptors revealed marked differences in cholinergic modulation of output neurons: excitation in the AOB and inhibition in the MOB. Granule cells (GCs), the most abundant intrinsic neuron in the OB, also exhibited a complex muscarinic response. While GCs in the AOB were excited, MOB GCs exhibited a dual muscarinic action, a hyperpolarization and an increase in excitability uncovered by cell depolarization. Furthermore, ACh had a different effect on the input/output relationship of MCs in the AOB and MOB, showing a net effect on gain in MCs of the MOB, but not in the AOB. Interestingly, despite the striking differences in neuromodulatory actions on output neurons, chemogenetic inhibition of ACh release produced similar perturbations in olfactory behaviors mediated by these two regions. Decreasing ACh in the OB disrupted the natural discrimination of molecularly related odors and the natural investigation of odors associated with social behaviors. Thus, the distinct neuromodulation by ACh in these circuits could underlie different solutions to the processing of general odors and semiochemicals, and the diverse olfactory behaviors they trigger.


We develop a tax competition framework in which some jurisdictions, called tax havens, are parasitic on the revenues of other countries. The havens use real resources to help companies camouflage their home-country tax avoidance, and countries use resources in an attempt to limit the transfer of tax revenues to the havens. The equilibrium price for this service depends on the demand and supply for such protection. Recognizing that taxes on wage income are also evaded, we solve for the equilibrium tax rates on mobile capital and immobile labor, and we demonstrate that the full or partial elimination of tax havens would improve welfare in non-haven countries, in part because countries would be induced to increase their tax rates, which they have set at inefficiently low levels in an attempt to attract mobile capital. We also demonstrate that the smaller countries choose to become tax havens, and we show that the abolishment of a sufficiently small number of the relatively large havens leaves all countries better off, including the remaining havens.


Helping prospective teachers become more knowledgeable and skilled in the use of technology in education is an important goal of today's teacher preparation programs. This article reports the results of a survey, 'Pre-service Teacher Technology Survey: technology usage and needs of science educators', that determined pre-service science education teachers' perceptions of their preparation vis-à-vis technology and the pre-service teachers' knowledge and desired knowledge of technology. More specifically, the focus was to address the understandings of Turkish pre-service teachers regarding their current and desired knowledge of educational technology. The findings of this study show that Turkish pre-service science education teachers are relatively unfamiliar with the advantages of educational technology and do not maximize its use. However, they have a desire to know more about the advantages of educational technology and its use in the education of Turkish children.


Grain elevators often use paper markets to mitigate the risk of (or hedge) their cash grain positions, as well as establish a profit margin through basis trading. Typically, merchandisers use futures or forward contracts to perform these transactions. However, in order to liquidate a cash grain position, grain transportation must be arranged in order to deliver the grain to the buyer. For elevators located along the Mississippi River system selling to Gulf export elevators in New Orleans, that mode of grain transportation is most likely river barge. Contracts for barges are bought and sold by grain merchants either directly with barge lines or through private brokers, and barge contract freight rates fluctuate daily based on supply and demand. Many elevators attempt to mitigate barge freight price risk by forward contracting barges. Unlike typical forward contracts, however, these barge contracts are for the purchase of a service, grain transportation, rather than a commodity such as the grain itself. The question that this study seeks to answer is whether a systematic pricing bias exists in this market that creates a forward contracting cost to either party (buyers or sellers). Results show that a cost of forward contracting barge freight exists at three months out, but the magnitude and the party incurring the cost varies by season. An additional important price discovery and risk management "paper market" also exists in the form of CIF NOLA (cost of insurance and freight, to port of New Orleans) basis bids, traded through brokers. These bids function similar to traditional forward contracts, however, like a futures market, firms can offset their forward contractual obligations by offsetting positions in a liquid off-exchange paper market. Analysis shows that this liquidity, coupled with a good institutional balance of long and short market participants mostly removes the pricing bias commonly found in forward contracting in corn and soybeans, although a small risk premium still exists in wheat and especially sorghum. Table of


There is a growing urge for a shift from 'lowest-price wins' to 'multi-criteria selection' practices in the contractor selection process. The rationale is to achieve best value (for money) for the client. Earlier investigations have found that the tender price (i.e. capital cost) still dominates the final selection decision despite increased emphases on the need for contractor selection based on 'value'. This paper provides insights into the evaluation of contractors' attributes, particularly for project-specific criteria (PSC), that is, criteria against which tendering contractors may be considered. The importance attached by clients to the 'lowestprice wins' philosophy is also reported. The perceived importance of PSC (i.e. their influence on final selection choice) is determined through a structured questionnaire survey of UK construction clients. The results show an increasing use of PSC. It is also found that 'lowest-price' is not now necessarily the client's principal selection criterion, but rather, the realization that cost has to be tempered with evaluation of PSC in any attempt to identify value for money.


The growth of the particles was restricted by carrying out these reactions in different matrices, such as in polymer films or the silicate cages of zeolites, and capping ligands were also sometimes used to limit particle growth. While these reactions did produce nanoparticles, in general a broad distribution of particle sizes was obtained. The particles were also unstable to Ostwald ripening in which large particles grow at the expense of smaller ones in order to minimize the total surface energy because of the reversibility of the acid-forming synthetic reactions in aqueous media. The lack of good samples prevented detailed studies and the development of applications for semiconductor quantum dots.


Abstract We present and discuss the Agent Designer, a system that enables users of digital audio workstations to generate novel high-level structures for their compositions based on previous examples. The system uses variable-order Markov models and rule induction to learn both temporal relations and structural relations between parts in a piece of music. As is usual in machine learning, however, the quality of the learning can be improved greatly by users specifying relevant features. The Agent Designer therefore points to important design and human–computer interaction problems, as well as algorithmic challenges. We present a number of studies that help to understand how effective the Agent Designer is and how we might design a user interface that best enables users to obtain quality results from the system. We show that the Agent Designer is effective for certain musical styles, such as loop-based electronic music, and that we as expert users can design agents that produce the most effective results. We also note that it remains a challenge to automate this process fully.


The understanding of the fundamental behaviour of clays subjected to high temperatures is essential when working with clay barriers in nuclear waste storage, drilling of deep offshore wells or using clay liners on landfills. The effect of temperature on the soil's response under different wetting and stress paths has been studied on this research project. A series of single and double temperaturecontrolled oedometer tests were performed on kaolin clay samples at different initial suction values. Initial suction of the studied material, at different temperatures, was obtained using the filter paper methodology. The oedometer tests were undertaken to characterise the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of the kaolin clay and to quantify the collapse potential in non-isothermal conditions. Based on the experimental results, it was possible to observe a significant influence of the temperature magnitude as well as the initial level of suction on the material's behaviour.


To investigate whether aberrant interactions between brain structure and function present similarly or differently across probands with psychotic illnesses [schizophrenia (SZ), schizoaffective disorder (SAD), and bipolar I disorder with psychosis (BP)] and whether these deficits are shared with their first-degree non-psychotic relatives. A total of 1199 subjects were assessed, including 220 SZ, 147 SAD, 180 psychotic BP, 150 first-degree relatives of SZ, 126 SAD relatives, 134 BP relatives, and 242 healthy controls (1). All subjects underwent structural MRI (sMRI) and resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) scanning. Joint-independent component analysis (jICA) was used to fuse sMRI gray matter and rs-fMRI amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations data to identify the relationship between the two modalities. jICA revealed two significantly fused components. The association between functional brain alteration in a prefrontal–striatal–thalamic–cerebellar network and structural abnormalities in the default mode network was found to be common across psychotic diagnoses and correlated with cognitive function, social function, and schizo-bipolar scale scores. The fused alteration in the temporal lobe was unique to SZ and SAD. The above effects were not seen in any relative group (including those with cluster-A personality). Using a multivariate-fused approach involving two widely used imaging markers, we demonstrate both shared and distinct biological traits across the psychosis spectrum. Furthermore, our results suggest that the above traits are psychosis biomarkers rather than endophenotypes.


It is widely believed that Hume often wrote carelessly and contradicted himself, and that no unified, sound philosophy emerges from his writings. Don Garrett demonstrates that such criticisms of Hume are without basis. Offering fresh and trenchant solutions to longstanding problems in Hume studies, Garrett's penetrating analysis also makes clear the continuing relevance of Hume's philosophy.


Recent decisions in the realm of Canadian public law have opened the door to Charter values. Administrative decision-makers must have regard to these values when making decisions. Through the use of a fictional example this paper is intended provide a guide for laypersons, lawyers, judges, administrators, arbitrators and academics on how to further substantive equality through administrative law. Our focus in this paper is on education law, but the framework we propose is capable of application across a wide range of areas. Those in other jurisdictions can replace Charter values with "constitutional values" and adopt a similar analysis.The obligation to educate children about a "diversity of opinions and cultures" is at the heart of our exploration of administrative decision-making in the education system. We argue, however, that the obligation to pay attention to Charter values provides the lifeblood of substantive equality in the administrative law context.The concept of applying Charter values as a juridical tool in decision-making, while not new, has been given a more dominant role in administrative decision-making by the Supreme Court of Canada in its Dore decision (2012). While the exact meanings and practical applications of this concept are as yet unclear, this paper makes a small step towards imagining the contours of Charter values. In particular we attempt to establish, as a first principle, the role of substantive equality as Charter values begin to solidify and take shape in the jurisprudence. The paper is divided into three parts. In Part One we present a fictional administrative law decision-making scenario located within the public school system. This scenario provides a concrete backdrop against which to imagine the function of substantive equality within Charter values. In Part One we also discuss the public school system in Canada as a key site for the application of Charter values, and we lay out the empirical evidence showing that GLBTQ students, and the children of GLBTQ parents suffer an equality deficit in Canadian public schools. A deficit which, in our view, can be addressed through the proper application of Charter values by decision-makers within the education system.Part Two develops an administrative law framework for furthering substantive equality. Specifically Part Two situates substantive equality within the existing framework of administrative law, and provides a blueprint for what substantive claims might look like under our proposed framework. Part Three treats the precise role of substantive equality, outlining a methodology for blending existing equality jurisprudence with the Court's decision in Dore, using the fictional scenario as a backdrop.We conclude with a demonstration of our proposed framework in the context of our fictional example.


CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of S2-SLFI of Petunia inflata established the essential role of SLF proteins in self-compatibility and reveals their complex interactions with S-RNases. Self-incompatibility (SI) in Petunia is regulated by a polymorphic S-locus. For each S-haplotype, the S-locus contains a pistil-specific S-RNase gene and multiple pollen-specific S-locus F-box (SLF) genes. Both gain-of-function and loss-of-function experiments have shown that S-RNase alone regulates pistil specificity in SI. Gain-of-function experiments on SLF genes suggest that the entire suite of encoded proteins constitute the pollen specificity determinant. However, clear-cut loss-of-function experiments must be performed to determine if SLF proteins are essential for SI of pollen. Here, we used CRISPR/Cas9 to generate two frame-shift indel alleles of S2-SLF1 (SLF1 of S2-haplotype) in S2S3 plants of P. inflata and examined the effect on the SI behavior of S2 pollen. In the absence of a functional S2-SLF1, S2 pollen was either rejected by or remained compatible with pistils carrying one of eight normally compatible S-haplotypes. All results are consistent with interaction relationships between the 17 SLF proteins of S2-haplotype and these eight S-RNases that had been determined by gain-of-function experiments performed previously or in this work. Our loss-of-function results provide definitive evidence that SLF proteins are solely responsible for SI of pollen, and they reveal their diverse and complex interaction relationships with S-RNases to maintain SI while ensuring cross-compatibility.


Regional disparities have increased in Hungary over the course of the last two decades, despite the declared intentions of the government as well as domestic and foreign capital injections. Even our EU membership has not brought a substantial change in this respect. A social and economic divergence began instead of convergence between the centre and periphery; the resulting differences have become salient. That raises the question: can this process be halted, is there any chance for the lagging and depressed regions to undergo a real convergence? The answer is clear; it is hardly possible without the evolution of regional policy. Namely, it is increasingly difficult to create a macroeconomic equilibrium while such a large regional disequilibrium exists. The fiscal practice of the past eight years should be broken away from, and an integrative and complex regional policy (aiming at creating individual equilibrium paths for the regions) is necessary instead of a virtual one.


This article contains a lengthy reaction to the Supreme Court's recent GPS tracking decision, United States v. Jones, 2012 WL 171117 (Jan. 23, 2012), along with the results of an original empirical study that impact the unresolved aspects of GPS tracking and a host of other cutting edge Fourth Amendment issues. This article begins by uncovering a fundamental flaw in Fourth Amendment analysis. Under the Katz test, a Fourth Amendment "search" occurs only when the government conduct's violates "a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable." The Katz test, by its very wording, hinges upon society's actual expectations of privacy, expectations that are inherently fluid and case-specific. However, when courts analyze "search" claims, particularly in cases involving sophisticated technologies, courts often rely upon analogies to prior "search" cases. Usually, the analogized forms of surveillance are so distinct that analogies to them only confuse, rather than clarify, the analysis required by Katz. Highlighting this concern, this article argues that analogical reasoning to cases of an earlier technological era is a flawed approach for resolving Fourth Amendment claims, and that the actual privacy expectations of today's society should instead control. While there are multiple instances where analogical reasoning has been misapplied to resolve Katz claims, this article highlights the GPS tracking cases decided prior to Jones, and cases involving warrantless police access of certain electronic files. In the pre-Jones GPS tracking cases, courts often relied upon analogies to investigative activities far removed from the particular form of surveillance at hand, such as trailing a car by vehicle. Yet, as the five concurring Justices in Jones recognized, an officer trailing a car turn-by-turn is fundamentally distinct from the long-term monitoring of a vehicle by GPS. The second series of cases highlighted in this article derives from the Supreme Court's 1979 decision, Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), which established that society cannot reasonably expect privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. In recent years, Smith has been extended by analogy to a range of distinct forms of communication. For example, in United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500 (9th Cir. 2007), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals invoked Smith and reasoned that individuals cannot expect privacy in websites they visit and in e-mail addresses with which they correspond because that information has been knowingly conveyed to a third-party provider. The analogy between phone numbers dialed from a home phone, the type of information deemed unprotected in Smith, and e-mail addresses, an arguably similar type of "addressing information," is plausible on its face. However, the analogy is flawed if it does not comport with the actual expectations of today's society, ones that are undoubtedly shaped by factors non-existent in the pre-digital era. In her concurrence in Jones, Justice Sotomayor highlighted this potential flaw, worrying that "[t]his approach is ill suited to the digital age" and stating that "it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties." To test Justice Sotomayor's hypothesis, and to help inform future cases involving GPS tracking in the absence of a physical trespass, an issue left unresolved in Jones and potentially dependent upon Smith's assumption of risk rationale, I designed and administered an original empirical study which seeks to uncover the actual views of society on these issues. The results of my survey, which are set forth in Part IV of this article, are striking. First, my survey results indicate that most respondents would not permit GPS tracking in the absence of a warrant, particularly with respect to the type of suspect at issue in Jones. These results validate the unanimous Jones ruling, and empirically demonstrate that the Government's analogy to visual observation of a vehicle in public, as argued in Jones, does not adequately resolve the issue. Second, my survey results refute Smith's distinction between content and addressing information. Regardless of the form of communication at issue, respondents believed both content and addressing information should be protected by the Fourth Amendment. Finally, and most significantly, my survey results refute the assumption of risk rationale underlying Smith. Contrary to Smith, society does not believe that a person relinquishes any expectation of privacy in information voluntarily conveyed to third parties. This empirical evidence strongly supports Justice Sotomayor's hypothesis, and impacts likely future cases of GPS monitoring in which the Government obtains GPS information directly from a third-party, such as a cell phone provider, an issue left unresolved in Jones. These results further highlight the dangers of simplistic analogies in Fourth Amendment analysis.


This research contends that the public image of Surrealism is grossly misrepresented and therefore misunderstood in terms of its nature, its manifestations and its duration. Widely seen as an art movement of the inter-war period that tried to combine Marxism and Psychoanalysis to produce irrational images, Surrealism saw itself as nothing of the sort. In fact Surrealism was, and is, an attempt at an entirely new and revolutionary understanding and experience of life, entailing both social and internal transformation. The art works issuing from the movement are therefore a by-product not an end in themselves. Several typical examples of this misrepresentation are cited and the surrealist perspective given.

The theme is developed by outlining the post-war history of Surrealism in France. This is not the main area of research, but is contextually important to what follows.

The main section is concerned with a critical history of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia. Within the Surrealist Movement the activities of the Czech and Slovak surrealists, both individually and collectively, are considered to be of the greatest importance, perhaps along with Belgium second only to manifestations in France. The reason for this resides not only in the evident quality of individual artists, but in their collective activities and their whole, very distinctive, intellectual approach, employing a range of disciplines from linguistics to Hermeticism.

The most important reason for the Czechoslovak surrealists being so little known until now is shown to be due in large measure to their having been forced to work clandestinely under hostile political regimes, first under the Nazis and then the Communists. Key works are critically examined in their internal and wider surrealist contexts and in the context of general artistic and social issues of the time.

The collaborations between the post-1969 surrealist group around Bounoure and the Czechoslovak group on the journal Bulletin de Liaison Surrealiste are discussed, and their importance in promoting the continuation of surrealist activity.

In the last years of the Communist regime the work of Jan Svankmajer became well known and since the Velvet Revolution along with the growth of his international reputation as a film-maker his fellow members have become better known. This recent period and its likely consequences are discussed.

Having brought the historical aspects up to date, it is possible to place Surrealism in its wider cultural context, its conflicts and parallels with other movements in art, philosophy and politics, such as its relationship with Critical Theory and Post Modernism.


Objective Primary to provide an overview of diagnostic accuracy for clinical tests for common elbow (sport) injuries, secondary accompanied by reproducible instructions to perform these tests. Design A systematic literature review according to the PRISMA statement. Data sources A comprehensive literature search was performed in MEDLINE via PubMed and EMBASE. Eligibility criteria We included studies reporting diagnostic accuracy and a description on the performance for elbow tests, targeting the following conditions: distal biceps rupture, triceps rupture, posteromedial impingement, medial collateral ligament (MCL) insufficiency, posterolateral rotatory instability (PLRI), lateral epicondylitis and medial epicondylitis. After identifying the articles, the methodological quality was assessed using the QUADAS-2 checklist. Results Our primary literature search yielded 1144 hits. After assessment 10 articles were included: six for distal biceps rupture, one for MCL insufficiency, two for PLRI and one for lateral epicondylitis. No articles were selected for triceps rupture, posteromedial impingement and medial epicondylitis. Quality assessment showed high or unclear risk of bias in nine studies. We described 24 test procedures of which 14 tests contained data on diagnostic accuracy. Conclusions Numerous clinical tests for the elbow were described in literature, seldom accompanied with data on diagnostic accuracy. None of the described tests can provide adequate certainty to rule in or rule out a disease based on sufficient diagnostic accuracy.


Tuning Biological Nutrient Removal Plants increases interest in tuning to enhance both performance and capacity, to provide insight into typical plant operating characteristics, and to stimulate operators' interest in studying the behaviour of their own plants. The book focuses on understanding of plant behavioural characteristics so that optimum performance can be achieved and maintained.

Tuning Biological Nutrient Removal Plants is carefully organized to cover:

The approach is practical and the use of mathematics is kept to a minimum and information is supplied in graphical and tabular form. Real operating data from a wide range of plant experiences is included. The book draws on the generosity of many Australian plant owners in permitting their plant data to be incorporated. Not all process types are covered but the tuning principles expounded are universally applicable.

The capacity and performance capabilities of a plant are not fixed; both are amenable to on-going enhancement through systematic and enthusiastic effort. The book will help to set new benchmarks in plant operation.

Tuning Biological Nutrient Removal Plants is a valuable resource for sewage treatment operations and operations support personnel, sewage process design engineers - operating authorities, consultants, contractors, operators of industrial wastewater treatment plants and sewage treatment lecturers in chemical engineering departments and other training organisations.

ISBN: 9781780404837 (eBook)

ISBN: 9781780404820 (Print)


Guanabenz, a small-molecule inhibitor, protects cells from lethal accrual of misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum. The reversible phosphorylation of proteins allows cells to adapt to sudden changes in their environment. Tsaytler et al. (see the Perspective by Wiseman and Kelly) describe a specific small-molecule inhibitor of a regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1, guanabenz. Guanabenz selectively bound to a regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1 and selectively disrupted the stress-induced dephosphorylation of a subunit of translation initiation factor 2, thereby prolonging translation attenuation in stressed cells. This favored protein folding, promoting resistance to protein misfolding in the endoplasmic reticulum. P. Tsaytler, H. P. Harding, D. Ron, A. Bertolotti, Selective inhibition of a regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1 restores proteostasis. Science 332, 91–94 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] R. L. Wiseman, J. W. Kelly, Phosphatase inhibition delays translational recovery. Science 332, 44–45 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


It is established that the integration of the higher education of Ukraine to the European educational space is connected to the problems of vocational education system reformation in order with the international requirements. It was determined that an effective way to implement the requirements to the future specialists' professional qualities is to diversify their professional training as well as to create and provide conditions for a positive synergy with the aim to ensure scientific character, conformity to culture, fundamentals, humanization, consistency, innovation, accessibility, unity and accessibility, continuity and diversity training for applicants. The research work deals with the terminological aspects of future specialists' psychological and pedagogical training in higher education institutions. The essential analysis of vocational training teachers' psychological and pedagogical training is based on the unity of pedagogical theory and practice and considers contextual education and upbringing, based on the laws and mechanisms of pedagogical creativity. The analysis of scientific works, published up till now by domestic and foreign researchers, made us come to the conclusions that one of the reasons for the backwardness of the students' psychological and pedagogical training is a low level of pedagogical science development, inflexibility of educational programs, fragmented courses, lack of practical orientation. Development of requirements for the training of vocational teachers, with sectorial and integrated psychological and pedagogical components, is a priority now. The main task of higher vocational education is to prepare teachers who are ready for the organization and implementation of fundamental, technical and vocational training in practice at all levels of vocational education: vocational schools, technical schools, colleges, professional lyceums and gymnasiums, etc. The research work analyzes the terminology and clarifies the concepts "training", "vocational teacher training", "general pedagogical training" and "psycho-pedagogical training of future specialists in pedagogical institutions".


To tackle real-world challenges, deep and complex neural networks are generally used with a massive number of parameters, which require large memory size, extensive computational operations, and high energy consumption in neuromorphic hardware systems. In this work, we propose an unsupervised online adaptive weight pruning method that dynamically removes non-critical weights from a spiking neural network (SNN) to reduce network complexity and improve energy efficiency. The adaptive pruning method explores neural dynamics and firing activity of SNNs and adapts the pruning threshold over time and neurons during training. The proposed adaptation scheme allows the network to effectively identify critical weights associated with each neuron by changing the pruning threshold dynamically over time and neurons. It balances the connection strength of neurons with the previous layer with adaptive thresholds and prevents weak neurons from failure after pruning. We also evaluated improvement in the energy efficiency of SNNs with our method by computing synaptic operations (SOPs). Simulation results and detailed analyses have revealed that applying adaptation in the pruning threshold can significantly improve network performance and reduce the number of SOPs. The pruned SNN with 800 excitatory neurons can achieve a 30% reduction in SOPs during training and a 55% reduction during inference, with only 0.44% accuracy loss on MNIST dataset. Compared with a previously reported online soft pruning method, the proposed adaptive pruning method shows 3.33% higher classification accuracy and 67% more reduction in SOPs. The effectiveness of our method was confirmed on different datasets and for different network sizes. Our evaluation showed that the implementation overhead of the adaptive method regarding speed, area, and energy is negligible in the network. Therefore, this work offers a promising solution for effective network compression and building highly energy-efficient neuromorphic systems in real-time applications.


If sociologists are to be trusted, reflexivity, focused on itself and devoid of any religious or at least ideological framework, leads to the weakening of control mechanisms. Such changes are accompanied by the polarization of social classes and by the exclusion of the so-called underclass (which certainly includes a vast majority of criminals) from the civil society. In the doctrine of criminal law of "mature modernism", within the framework of a liberal-democratic state, the civil society, together with the idea of communication, is supposed to constitute a central reference point in the research on criminal liability. Reflexivity brings up new problems. New citizen-oriented criminal law is being shaped, based upon mediation and communication (e.g. restorative justice, Expressive Theory). The civil society does not include the area of politics or political nature of things, where the problem is not the justification of the punishment but the effectiveness of mere spatial isolation. In this sense, it is difficult to talk about the merits of the emancipation of an individual from the limitations imposed by the society. The weakening of any external authority and of political duties owed to the state is replaced by self-control proper to reflexive modernity only in cases where the individuals have adequate intellectual and ethical predispositions. Disappearance of the influence of external rules and values together with the mechanism of exclusion from the civil society results in the weakening of self-control and in selfish care only about one's own perspective (but also in repressive subordination by the state). Such a state of affairs creates favourable conditions for objectifying criminal liability, abandoning the concept of guilt, and for attempts to provide an ethical justification of penalty – which are concepts taken from the "world of citizens".


Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular paradigm for optimizing the hyperparameters of machine learning (ML) models due to its sample efficiency. Many ML models require running an iterative training procedure (e.g., stochastic gradient descent). This motivates the question whether information available during the training process (e.g., validation accuracy after each epoch) can be exploited for improving the epoch efficiency of BO algorithms by early-stopping model training under hyperparameter settings that will end up under-performing and hence eliminating unnecessary training epochs. This paper proposes to unify BO (specifically, Gaussian process-upper confidence bound (GP-UCB)) with Bayesian optimal stopping (BO-BOS) to boost the epoch efficiency of BO. To achieve this, while GP-UCB is sampleefficient in the number of function evaluations, BOS complements it with epoch efficiency for each function evaluation by providing a principled optimal stopping mechanism for early stopping. BO-BOS preserves the (asymptotic) no-regret performance of GP-UCB using our specified choice of BOS parameters that is amenable to an elegant interpretation in terms of the explorationexploitation trade-off. We empirically evaluate the performance of BO-BOS and demonstrate its generality in hyperparameter optimization of ML models and two other interesting applications.


The severity of cyber threats towards existing and future industrial systems has resulted in an increase of security awareness in the industrial automation domain. Compared to traditional information security, industrial communication systems have different performance and reliability requirements. The safety and availability requirements can also sometimes conflict with the system security design of plants. For instance, it is not acceptable to create a secure system which may take up additional time to establish security and as a consequence disrupt the production in plants. Similarly, a system which requires authentication and authorization procedures before any emergency action may not be suitable in industrial plants.Therefore, there is a need for improvement of the security workflow in industrial plants, so that the security can be realized in practice. This also leads to the requirement of secure device deployment and secure data communication inside the industrial plants. In this thesis, the focus is on the initial trust establishment in industrial devices. The initial trust establishment is the starting point for enabling a secure communication infrastructure. Reusability analysis with financial sectors has been considered as the reuse of security solutions from this adjacent application domain can be a simple and an effective way to achieve the desired system security. Through this analysis, the reusability features have been identified and workflows have been proposed which can be used to bootstrap initial trust in the industrial process control devices and manage security workflow. A proof-of-concept implementation to prove the feasibility of the device deployment workflow has also been provided.


This paper reviews the changes in river flow of the European part of Russia during the low-flow period, characterizing groundwater flow feeding. River flow oscillations were analyzed for winter and summer periods. Statistical analyses of average low flow and the minimum monthly summer and winter discharges for 1946–1977 and 1978–2010 showed significant positive trends for all parameters of low-water period. The greatest increase is observed in the Middle Volga, where low flow has almost doubled. The low flow discharges increased by up to 50–70 % in the center of the European part of Russia and the Upper Don and its tributaries, ranging from 0 to 30 % for the northern rivers. Despite the low flow increase, the lack of water in 2010 and 2014 caused economic damage. It is shown that the observed hydrological hazards occur as a result of snow melt draughts and water management instability.


Alternative RNA splicing may provide unique opportunities to identify drug targets and therapeutics. We identified an alternative spliced transcript for B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) resulting from intronic retention. This transcript is present in failing human hearts and is reduced following mechanical unloading. The intron-retained transcript would generate a unique 34 amino acid (aa) carboxyl terminus while maintaining the remaining structure of native BNP. We generated antisera to this carboxyl terminus and identified immunoreactivity in failing human heart tissue. The alternatively spliced peptide (ASBNP) was synthesized and unlike BNP, failed to stimulate cGMP in vascular cells or vasorelax preconstricted arterial rings. This suggests that ASBNP may lack the dose-limiting effects of recombinant BNP. Given structural considerations, a carboxyl-terminal truncated form of ASBNP was generated (ASBNP.1) and was determined to retain the ability of BNP to stimulate cGMP in canine glomerular isolates and cultured human mesangial cells but lacked similar effects in vascular cells. In a canine-pacing model of heart failure, systemic infusion of ASBNP.1 did not alter mean arterial pressure but increased the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), suppressed plasma renin and angiotensin, while inducing natriuresis and diuresis. Consistent with its distinct in vivo effects, the activity of ASBNP.1 may not be explained through binding and activation of NPR-A or NPR-B. Thus, the biodesigner peptide ASBNP.1 enhances GFR associated with heart failure while lacking the vasoactive properties of BNP. These findings demonstrate that peptides with unique properties may be designed based on products of alternatively splicing.


The Denmark side of the 1980s was one of the last truly iconic international football teams. Although they did not win a trophy, they claimed something much more important and enduring: glory, and in industrial quantities. They were a bewitching fusion of futuristic attacking football, effortless Scandinavian cool and laid-back living. They played like angels and lived like you and I, and they were everyone's second team in the mid-1980s. The story of Danish Dynamite, as the team became known, is the story of a team of rock stars in a polyester Hummel kit. Heralding from a country with no real football history to speak of and a population of five million, this humble and likeable team was unique. Everymen off the field and superheroes on it, they were totally of their time, and their approach to the game was in complete contrast to the gaudy excess and charmless arrogance of today's football stars. That they ultimately imploded in spectacular style, with a shocking 5-1 defeat to Spain in the 1986 World Cup in a game that almost everyone expected them to win, only adds to their legend. For the first time in English, Danish Dynamite tells the story of perhaps the coolest team in football history, a team that had it all and blew it in spectacular style after a live-fast-die-young World Cup campaign. Featuring interviews with the players themselves, including Michael Laudrup, Preben Elkjaer and Jesper Olsen, as well as with those who played or managed against them, this is a joyous celebration of one of the most life-affirming teams the world has ever seen.


Automatic target tracking in forward-looking infrared (FLIR) imagery is a challenging research area in computer vision. This task could be even more critical when real-time requirements have to be taken into account. In this context, techniques exploiting the target intensity profile generated by an intensity variation function (IVF) proved to be capable of providing significant results. However, one of their main limitations is represented by the associated computational cost. In this paper, an alternative approach based on genetic algorithms (GAs) is proposed. GAs are search methods based on evolutionary computations, which exploit operators inspired by genetic variation and natural selection rules. They have been proven to be theoretically and empirically robust in complex space searches by their founder, J. H. Holland. Contrary to most optimization techniques, whose goal is to improve performances toward the optimum, GAs aim at finding near-optimal solutions by performing parallel searches in the solution space. In this paper, an optimized target search strategy relying on GAs and exploiting an evolutionary approach for the computation of the IVF is presented. The proposed methodology was validated on several data sets, and it was compared against the original IVF implementation by Bal and Alam. Experimental results showed that the proposed approach is capable of significantly improving performances by dramatically reducing algorithm processing time.


Abstract. The extent to which cognitive behaviour therapy can be used with children is
unclear. In meta analyses older children and teenagers seem to derive greater benefit than
young children. This may be because the cognitive immaturity of young children means that
they cannot manage the cognitive demands of cognitive behaviour therapy. This paper seeks
to establish how well children aged 7–8 and aged 10–11 can complete a task requiring them
to distinguish between thoughts and behaviours (based on Greenberger & Padesky, 1995).
Half of the children were provided with a visual cue and half were not. The effects of age,
the visual cue, and verbal IQ on performance were examined. Seventy-two children were
randomized to the cue and no-cue condition and individually tested during school time. Both
age groups performed well and there was a significant difference between older and younger
children, with the older children performing better. Visual cues did not aid performance.
Verbal IQ was significantly associated with performance in the younger but not the older
children. The implications of these results for the delivery of cognitive behaviour therapy
with children and future research are discussed.
Keywords: Children, thoughts, behaviours, cognitive, development


A significant contourite depositional system (CDS) on the continental slope of the southern Argentine margin is described here for the first time. This system contains both erosive and depositional features that have resulted from several factors, including topographic intensification of the Antarctic-sourced water masses, the systematic northward decrease in speed of these water masses, a northward increase of downslope sedimentary processes, and local tectonic influences. This system is an exceptional example of a CDS that started to develop at the time of the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, potentially coeval with the opening of the Drake Passage. However, a new margin morphology, characterized by a complex terraced slope lacking any continental rise, developed after a major paleoceanographic change in the middle to late Miocene. We infer that this change resulted from the extension of North Atlantic Deep Water circulation into the Southern Hemisphere and the deepening of Antarctic Bottom Water circulation in the Argentine Basin.


: This study aimed to compare the fracture resistance of endodontically treated roots filled by different obturation systems. Material and methods: Ninety-six upper central incisors were used and decoronated, retaining 12 mm of the roots. On the basis of obturation systems, the roots were divided into 4 groups (n=24): Group1 (COGR): control group (unprepared, unfilled), Group 2 (AVGR): ActiV GP points/ActiV GP sealer, Group3 (GPGR): Gutta percha points/AH plus sealer, and Group4 (GAGR): Gutta percha points/ActiV GP sealer. The last three groups were obturated with the single cone technique. The roots were then stored in 100% relative humidity at 37 °C for 2 weeks. A vertical compressive force was exerted with a universal testing machine until a fracture occurred. Data were statistically analyzed with one-way ANOVA. Results: Mean (SD) failure loads for groups ranged from 920.51 ± 210.37 to 1113.44 ± 489.42 N. The fracture resistance between the different study groups indicated no statistical difference. Conclusions: ActiV GP system did not exert a significant effect on the fracture resistance of endodontically treated teeth. ABSTRACT Objective: This study aimed to compare the fracture resistance of endodontically treated roots filled by different obturation systems. Material and methods: Ninety-six maxillary central incisors were used and decoronated, retaining 12 mm of the roots. On the basis of obturation systems, the roots were randomly divided into 4 groups (n=24): Group1 (COGR): control group (unprepared, unfilled), Group 2 (AVGR): ActiV GP points/ActiV GP sealer, Group3 (GPGR): Gutta percha points/AH plus sealer, and Group4 (GAGR): Gutta percha points/ActiV GP sealer. The last three groups were obturated with the single cone technique. The roots were then stored in 100% relative humidity at 37°C for 2 weeks. A vertical compressive force was exerted in a universal testing machine until fracture occurred. Data were statistically analyzed using one-way ANOVA. Results: Mean (SD) failure loads for groups ranged from 920.51 ± 210.37 to 1113.44 ± 489.42 N. The fracture resistance between the different study groups indicated no statistical difference (p>0.05). Conclusions: ActiV GP system did not exert a significant effect on the fracture resistance of endodontically treated teeth.


The "four-day war", fought between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces from 1-5 April 2016, has forced the international community to take a fresh look at the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Although the fighting ended with a truce reached under Russia's auspices, it showed the threat for further escalation and violence to be very real, raising the stakes for both sides in the conflict, and for the international community. In this Discussion Paper, Amanda Paul and Dennis Sammut discuss the latest developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and argue that, with prospects of a resolution once more on the horizon, it is important that the momentum of any breakthrough is quickly consolidated. Peacekeeping and confidence building are an essential part of this process and the international community, most particularly the EU, must move fast to ensure that such measures are in place as soon as they are needed.


The Canadian fixed-income market is in the midst of a structural transformation similar to those occurring in other national financial markets around the world. The authors examine recent developments and trends in the market and discuss their possible effects. The simultaneous shrinking of the federal government's financial requirements and steady rise in issues of corporate securities have significantly altered the composition of Canada's fixed-income market. Government of Canada securities constitute a predominant portion of outstanding fixed-income securities and play a pivotal role, serving as benchmarks for the valuation of other traded securities and as a hedging vehicle for market participants trying to control their exposure to risk. The reduced issuance of federal government securities has contributed to a decline in the liquidity of the benchmark market. This raises broader issues regarding the future of the Canadian fixed-income market, since the corporate market is still fairly underdeveloped and illiquid compared with that for Government of Canada issues. There are thus currently few benchmark and hedging alternatives. The federal government is, however, committed to preserving the integrity of the market for benchmark issues and is adopting initiatives to enhance market liquidity and alleviate some of the pressures on the effective supply of these securities. Another evolving trend in the market is the emergence of electronic trading platforms. These platforms have the potential to facilitate the price-discovery mechanism, increase cost efficiency, and improve the liquidity and transparency of the market.


On March 8, 2007, one of Cameroon's foremost scholars died in a ghastly traffic accident barely hours after launching his most forthright and acerbic collection of poems: Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus. Dr. Bate Besong was a social activist, a critic, troubadour, and playwright; an avant-garde, steeped in the tradition of the absurd, who fought against the corrupt system of governance that transmuted Cameroonians into a comatose and apathetic citizenry neutered by fear engendered by the workings of an existing Gestapo. For the first time, Emmanuel Fru Doh has gone beyond an analysis of Besong's plays into giving an in-depth appraisal of his poems which have, for a long time, held back critics because of their opacity. Doh examines each of Besong's plays and collections of poems in separate sections and succeeds in setting Besong's work in perspective—mindful of their concerns and the nation's history—as informed by a succinct political vision and an already established technique modified only by genre. The Obasinjom Warrior, which amounts to a brief look at the scholar's life and a detailed study of his works, is a befitting tribute to a true patriot and scholar who died fighting the forces of evil, in positions of power, which have transformed his native Cameroon into a province of hell. This is a careful, detailed, and authoritative study of one of the most significant literary figures ever to emerge from Cameroon.


The costs of disinflation are explored using the Board's new sticky-price rational expectations macroeconometric model of the U.S. economy, FRB/US. The model nests both model consistent and `restricted-information rational' expectations. Monetary policy is governed by interest-rate reaction functions of which two are considered: the well-known Taylor rule and another rule that is more aggressive and richer in its specification, estimated using data for the last 15 years. Agents are required to learn of shifts of the inflation target using linear updating rules. The simulated costs of disinflation are compared with other estimates of sacrifice ratios.


Background: For lower abdomen and lower limb surgery, spinal anaesthesia is most common modality used in routine. This study was conducted on 50 ASA 1 and 2 planned for lower limb and lower abdomen surgery.
Methods: 50 patients of ASA 1 and 2 scheduled for lower limb and lower abdominal surgery were selected. Each patient received 4 milliliter volume of 0.75% isobaric ropivacaine + 5 microgram dexmedetomidine. At the intervals of 1 minute, 2 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute, 20 minute, 30 minute and 1 hour, 2 hour and 3 hour reading of pulse rate and blood pressure were recorded. Postoperatively, pain scores were recorded by using Visual Analogue Scale.
Results: There were no significant changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure after induction. The combination of ropivacaine and dexmedetomidine provided better postoperative analgesia and reduced requirement of diclofenac injection in first 24 hour.
Conclusions: The patients showed excellent hemodynamic stability and postoperative analgesia to ropivacaine + dexmedetomidine. Thus it is a safe modality for lower limb and lower abdomen surgery as far as haemodynamic effects and postoperative analgesia is concerned.


An important parameter for the overall quality of SLS parts is the density of powder layers before sintering. Previous studies have shown that the control of powder particle shape and size distribution can increase the density of non-packed powder beds. However, these studies concerned beds several orders of magnitude larger than the SLS layers. The purpose of this study is to determine if, and to what extent, the density of thin powder layers can be increased. Experiments show that the density of thin layers increases from 53% to 63% when adding 30% fine powder to the coarse powder, with a coarse-to-fine ratio of 1:10. Compared with the bulk experiments, this density improvement method is less efficient, because the particles do not arrange as efficiently, and the wall effects can become predominant.


We propose a model of data provision and data pricing. A single data provider controls a large database that contains information about the match value between individual consumers and individual firms (advertisers). Advertisers seek to tailor their spending to the individual match value. The data provider prices queries about individual consumers' characteristics (cookies). We determine the equilibrium data acquisition and pricing policies. Advertisers choose positive and/or negative targeting policies. The optimal query price influences the composition of the targeted set. The price of data decreases with the reach of the database and increases with the fragmentation of data sales.


This is a cautionary tale, told by one whose venture into interdisciplinary work began with a social psychology experiment. Realizing there were moral dimensions to the experiment, he began following his interests across conventional boundaries. Ultimately, this led to studies of how people think about responsibility and, more recently, the ethical dilemmas faced by nurses and doctors who care for seriously ill newborns, an area that reaches far beyond the boundaries of moral philosophy into economics, sociology, and health policy. These experiences suggest that interdisciplinary theorists would do well to study what actually happens when people do interdisciplinary research. By creating and studying narratives about cases of interdisciplinary research, those who study interdisciplinarity will be able to temper abstract theory with experience.


Liquid drops were levitated and deformed with acoustic techniques and illuminated with monochromatic light. Changes in the rainbow-angle scattering induced by the deformations were detected. Reflected and refracted rays form an interference pattern that changes with shape and the angle of Airy's diffraction pattern shifts. A calculation by W. Möbius [Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 33, 1493 (1910)] was modified to facilitate the use of these changes for the measurement of micron amplitude shape oscillations of millimeter radius drops.


This paper uses the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) water governance principles to assess the governance of the implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), with a focus on the eutrophication segment. Whilst governance assessments can be used as auditing functions, this study was done with the goal of stimulating reflection, in order to investigate whether the governance systems have made any improvements. This is especially needed, since the BSAP is to be renewed in 2021, so that any assessment of it at this moment is timely. This review has focused on the 12 principles of water governance and the three complementary drivers into which the principles are grouped: Effectiveness, efficiency and trust, and engagement. This paper focuses on national implementation actions. It uses qualitative thematic analysis to analyze the content of the national implementation plans for Baltic Sea Coastal countries. It identifies gaps in water governance and makes recommendations for enhancing effectiveness, efficiency and trust, and engagement in the governance of the Baltic Sea, including improved stakeholder participation, the establishment of a permanent lead agency for the implementation of BSAP, increased funding for implementation actions, and a better governance of trade-offs.


Purpose: To develop a Zaocys dhumnades (Cantor) DNA test kit, evaluate its quality indexes including specificity, stability, sensitivity and repeatability, and inspect the qualities of commercial Zaocys dhumnades samples.
Methods: Modern DNA fingerprint technology was used to optimize and improve the detection method of Zaocys dhumnades recorded in Pharmacopoeia of People's Republic of China (2015), Zaocys dhumnades DNA extraction and detection reagents were research and developed, a Zaocys dhumnades DNA test kit were developed, and detection parameters of the kit were also evaluated. Eighteen samples from Beijing, Tianjin, Changchun and Jilin Cities were detected using the kit, and a comparative test of using the kit with the method recorded in the pharmacopoeia was conducted at the same time.
Results: The Zaocys dhumnades DNA detection kit was still effective after repeated freezing and thawing 5, 10 and 20 times. Fourteen of the 18 commercial Zaocys dhumnades samples were the certified products and 4 of them were counterfeits. Repeated tests demonstrated that the specificity, stability and repeatability of the kit were exactly the same. The results by the kit method were consistent with those by the pharmacopoeia method, and the DNA testing could be completed using the kid in a common laboratory.
Conclusion: The Zaocys dhumnades identification using the Zaocys dhumnades DNA detection kit is simple, convenient, accurate and effective, suitable for the rapid detection of Zaocys dhumnades DNA.


Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are widely used as starter cultures in the manufacture of foods. Upon preparation, these cultures undergo various stresses resulting in losses of survival and fitness. In order to find conditions for the subsequent identification of proteomic biomarkers and their exploitation for preconditioning of strains, we subjected Lactobacillus (Lb.) paracasei subsp. paracasei TMW 1.1434 (F19) to different stress qualities (osmotic stress, oxidative stress, temperature stress, pH stress and starvation stress). We analysed the dynamics of its stress responses based on the expression of stress proteins using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry (MS), which has so far been used for species identification. Exploiting the methodology of accumulating protein expression profiles by MALDI-TOF MS followed by the statistical evaluation with cluster analysis and discriminant analysis of principle components (DAPC), it was possible to monitor the expression of low molecular weight stress proteins, identify a specific time point when the expression of stress proteins reached its maximum, and statistically differentiate types of adaptive responses into groups. Above the specific result for F19 and its stress response, these results demonstrate the discriminatory power of MALDI-TOF MS to characterize even dynamics of stress responses of bacteria and enable a knowledge-based focus on the laborious identification of biomarkers and stress proteins. To our knowledge, the implementation of MALDI-TOF MS protein profiling for the fast and comprehensive analysis of various stress responses is new to the field of bacterial stress responses. Consequently, we generally propose MALDI-TOF MS as an easy and quick method to characterize responses of microbes to different environmental conditions, to focus efforts of more elaborate approaches on time points and dynamics of stress responses.


Family carers are often involved in decisions concerning the health and social care needs of people with dementia. These decisions frequently involve considering risks inherent in daily living situations and discussing these with care recipients and professionals. The purpose of this study is to understand the risks that present most concern to family carers; explore attitudes and approaches of this group towards risk; and examine how information about risks is shared between familial carers, care recipients and professionals working in dementia care. Five focus groups were held across Northern Ireland between April and July 2015 involving 22 carers. Risks of most concern were driving, falls, financial risks, getting lost and using electrical appliances. Concepts of 'risk' related to terms such as danger, harm and vulnerability with emphasis on consequences rather than likelihoods. The psychosocial benefits of taking risk were recognised by some participants. Discussion of risks with family members with dementia primarily involved bringing risk matters to the attention of the individual. Family carers talked with a wide range of professionals about risks. Divergences in perspectives were noted, particularly in relation to matters of health and safety. A model of risk communication is developed illustrating how this can play a key role in informed, shared decision-making where a family member has dementia, serving an important role in risk management processes in informal community dementia care.


Abstract Although the causes of mass extinctions have been studied in detail, recoveries have received little attention until recently. In this study, I examine the influence of extinction versus recovery intervals on ecological patterns across the end-Cretaceous (K/T) event in veneroid bivalves. Systematic and stratigraphic data were collected for 140 subgenera of veneroids, ranging from the Late Cretaceous through Oligocene of North America and Europe. Morphological data were collected for 1236 specimens representing 101 subgenera. Extinction selectivity and differential recovery were assessed with respect to morphology, and by extension, burrowing ecology in these bivalves. Eighty-one percent of veneroid subgenera went extinct at the K/T and diversity did not return to preextinction levels until 12 million years later. Despite the severity of the K/T extinction, I found little evidence of morphological or ecological selectivity. The K/T recovery, in contrast, was strongly biased toward taxa with deep pallial sinuses (i.e., toward deeper burrowers). For veneroids, the morphological and ecological effects of the K/T event are not tied to the extinction itself, but to the recovery that followed. The K/T recovery initiated a trend toward deeper burrowing that helped to establish veneroids as one of the most abundant and successful groups of modern marine bivalves.


This study reviewed the trajectory of American visceral leishmaniasis (AVL) in Brazilian Amazon, since that time of Dr. Evandro Chagas, who founded the Instituto de Pathologia Experimental do Norte, in 1936, which following the tragic death of its patron, in 1940, was renamed Instituto Evandro Chagas till the actual days, aiming the best visibility on the medical-scientific legacy left by that distinguished person, as well as trying to describe the ways that made AVL leaves the epidemiologic anonymity five decades ago for arising as one of greatest parasitic disease at the beginning of this century. In this context, Chagas et al have left three marked contributions: i) described a new parasitic species responsible for AVL, Leishmania chagasi; ii) incriminated the phlebotomine species Phlebotomus longipalpis as the likely vector of AVL; and iii) postulated that the human disease origin should be in any forest animal. The AVL situation in Brazilian Amazon has not changed in the following decades, however, in the early 1980s the disease resurfaced with a greater frequency in rural foci and in the suburban and urban areas of medium-size cities as Santarém, Pará State. In the last two decades, the expansive process increased due to the deforestation, socio-economic factor and unorganized occupation in the outskirts of cities, where the presence of Lutzomyia longipalpis in the peridomiciliar human area and the domestic dog highly susceptible to infection have facilitated its dissemination. Actually, AVL has already arrived in the Metropolitan Region of Belém (Cotijuba island), capital of Pará.


Magneto-plasmonic nanostructures functionalized with cell targeting units are of great interest for nanobiotechnology applications. Photothermal treatment of cells targeted with antibody functionalized nanostructures and followed by magnetic isolation, allows killing selected cells and hence is one of the applications of great interest. The magneto-plasmonic nanostructures reported herein were synthesized using naked gold and magnetite nanoparticles obtained through a green approach based on laser ablation of bulk materials in water. These particles do not need purifications steps for biocompatibility and are functionalized with a SERRS (surface enhanced resonance Raman scattering) active molecule for detection and with an antibody for targeting prostate tumor cells. Quantitative results for the cell targeting and selection efficiency show an overall accuracy of 94% at picomolar concentrations. The photothermal treatment efficiently kills targeted and magneto-selected cells producing a viability below 5% after 3 min of irradiation, compared with almost 100% viability of incubated and irradiated, but non targeted cells.

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The Canadian Water Network, the Alberta Water Research Institute, and the Ontario Centres of Excellence have collaborated to create the Canadian Municipal Water Management Research Consortium, a new initiative to engage municipal water authorities and allow them to access research capacity to tackle mutually identified, critical issues. The challenge of managing uncertainty in the provision of safe drinking water was selected as one such issue. An international expert panel with scientists from Australia, Canada, the USA and Europe was assembled to work with a steering committee of municipal water providers and drinking water regulators. This group has posed the challenge: How best can drinking water providers address risk and uncertainty to assure safe drinking water? Five key drivers to this challenge were identified: the current large list of drinking water contaminants, the inevitable growth of that list as a result of analytical advances not matched by our ability to assess small, mostly immeasurable health risks, the lack of clarity on public expectations for safe drinking water, misunderstanding of new, small risks and a need to assure aesthetic quality. Promoting the means for achieving a common understanding of risk and uncertainty among water providers and regulators was identified as a priority objective. The project has been initiated by developing, in a Canadian drinking water context, working definitions for safe drinking water, risk and uncertainty, with appropriate illustrative examples. The limitations of sole reliance on compliance monitoring for numerical contaminant limits compared with the merits of a preventive risk management/water safety plan approach were elaborated. Based on the foundations adopted, a toolkit is being developed to assist with issues ranging from a risk hierarchy, various products to promote better understanding of how risk assessment is performed, and products to enhance communications with consumers about drinking water safety.


: Amiodarone HCl is an against of arrhythmic medication. This prescription is utilized to treat specific sorts of genuine (potentially deadly) unpredictable heartbeat, (for example, determined ventricular fibrillation/tachycardia). It is utilized to reestablish typical heart cadence and keep an ordinary, consistent heartbeat. Co precious stones is an elective methodology dependent on gem designing to upgrade explicit physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties of dynamic drug fixings (APIs) when the ways to deal with salt or polymorph arrangement don't meet the normal targets. A precious stone designing methodology was utilized to configuration; build up a Co gem of the API. Co precious stones are strong substances, which comprise of not many segments combined. Co gems are multi segment frameworks in which two parts, a functioning drug fixing and a co previous were available in stoichiometric proportion and fortified along with non-covalent associations or Hydrogen holding in the precious stone cross section. There are a great deal of methods of co precious stones creation and application. The goal of the current work was centered around the improvement of watery solvency of medication by figuring Co-precious stone of Amiodarone HCl.


Everybody loves an innovation, an idea that sells. But how do we arrive at such ideas that sell? And is it possible to learn how to become an innovator? Over the years Design Thinking a program originally developed in the engineering department of Stanford University and offered by the two D-schools at the Hasso Plattner Institutes in Stanford and in Potsdam has proved to be really successful in educating innovators. It blends an end-user focus with multidisciplinary collaboration and iterative improvement to produce innovative products, systems, and services. Design Thinking creates a vibrant interactive environment that promotes learning through rapid conceptual prototyping. In 2008, the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program was initiated, a venture that encourages multidisciplinary teams to investigate various phenomena of innovation in its technical, business, and human aspects. The researchers are guided by two general questions: 1. What are people really thinking and doing when they are engaged in creative design innovation? How can new frameworks, tools, systems, and methods augment, capture, and reuse successful practices? 2. What is the impact on technology, business, and human performance when design thinking is practiced? How do the tools, systems, and methods really work to get the innovation you want when you want it? How do they fail? In this book, the researchers take a systems view that begins with a demand for deep, evidence-based understanding of design thinking phenomena. They continue with an exploration of tools which can help improve the adaptive expertise needed for design thinking. The final part of the book concerns design thinking in information technology and its relevance for business process modeling and agile software development, i.e. real world creation and deployment of products, services, and enterprise systems.


Trickle Bed Reactors have etched a ubiquitous presence in chemical processing sector. From petroleum and petrochemical products, fine chemicals to biochemical, wastewater treatment, they are almost everywhere. Products worth of 300 billion US $ are processed by these reactors on an annual average. A complete understanding of hydrodynamics, fluid phase mixing, interphase and interparticle heat and mass transfer and reaction kinetics of TBR can help us to extract the full potential of TBR. Studying the variation of pressure drop and liquid holdup is crucial for evaluation of performance of trickle bed reactors and can help in further optimizing their performance. This project focuses on the effect of gas and liquid velocities on the pressure drop and liquid holdup in a trickle-Bed reactor operating at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. Pressure drop and liquid holdup are two critical hydrodynamics parameters that influence other parameters directly and indirectly and hence, these two parameters are preferred for hydrodynamic study of TBR. Their variation along longitudinal and transverse direction is the focus of this project. A comparison of results from different simulation scenarios (using different pressure values as patching values) made in this project helps in understanding how different initial guess can affect the final solution in simulating real-life TBR operation. It is found that pressure ranging up to 10000 Pa as patching pressure value can lead to a converging solution. Afterwards, solution instability creeps in leading to impractically higher values of pressure and liquid holdup and sometimes ending up with divergence. Even the effect of gas and liquid velocity is studied on the two parameters. The variation of the two hydrodynamic parameters with changing liquid velocities and gas velocities are also studied.


The moire-less condition is found for non-square grids. The exact solution is found in form of a quartic equation depending on the geometric parameter. The root gives the optimal angle for minimized moires. The approximate solution is also found as well as the upper limit for residual moires. The proximity of the two solutions is proven. Experiments confirm the theoretical findings. The results can be used for minimizing moires in display devices which include several layers of regular grids.


Students of social-ecological systems have emphasized the need for effective cross-scale governance. We theorized that discursive barriers, particularly between technical and traditional practices, can act as a barrier to cross-scale collaboration. We analyzed the effects of discursive divides on collaboration on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo selected in 2010 to pilot subnational REDD+ policy. We argue that the complexities of bridging local land management practices and technical approaches to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon offsetting create barriers to cross-scale collaboration. We tested these hypotheses using an exponential random graph model of collaboration among 36 organizations active in REDD+ policy in the province. We found that discursive divides were associated with a decreased probability of collaboration between organizations and that organizations headquartered outside the province were less likely to collaborate with organizations headquartered in the province. We conclude that bridging discursive communities presents a chicken-and-egg problem for cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems. In precisely the situations where it is most important, when bridging transnational standards with local knowledge and land management practices, it is the most difficult.


It is important to Ockelbogardar to have knowledge about different needs by the segments on a market, while they can bring a product into line with consumer needs by marketing. To survey the needs of consumers, demographic segmentation could be in use. It is about to survey the most importent factors or advantages the consumers have in their living environment.The purpose of the essay is to investigate how Ockelbogardar could make their marketing better against several target groups, in the existing building population, by distribute the consumers into segments. On the basis of the investigation and the segments that will introduces, Ockelbogardar can offer the consumer a living which fits the indivdual consumer.A poll have been done by the conusmers of Ockelbogardar. The poll have been delivered by post and a quantity data about the needs of the consumer have been evaluated. Literatur, mainly Kotler, Echeverri and Edvardsson has been studied. Also spontaneous interviews with relevent persons have been made.Conclusion Each part of the three segments that have been investigated, had different needs:1. The pensioner who needs social activities and ask for smaller measure on the private level2. The family with children whose wish a pleasant surroundings to get a better comfort3. The student who wants a increase maintenance in their livingIn the end of the essay an episode with proposals package of measures will be presentated.


This paper presents a theoretical investigation of the issue of lying from a semiotic perspective and its specific aim is the analysis of the theory of the lie as conceived by Aurelius Augustinus, bishop of Hippo (354–430 A.D.), also known as Augustine or St. Augustine. The latter devoted two short treatises to the issue of lying: De mendacio (On lying) and Contra mendacium (Against lying), written in ca. 395 DC and 420 DC, respectively. The paper will focus on duplicity and intention to deceive as fundamental and necessary features of the lie. Augustine's chief contribution to the study of human deception was to have severed the assessment of what is a lie from factual falsity. For Augustine, at the kernel of the notion of lying lies the idea of intentionality. Following this line of thought, the paper singles out two types of intentionality, namely the intention to assert a falsehood and the intention to mislead. On the basis of this double nature of intentionality, the present paper seeks to outline a theoretical framework for the study of species of falsehoods. The outcome is a typology of untruthfulness that envisages a fourfold inventory of falsehoods based on the difference between jokes, errors, lies and pretences.


Whenever people move through their environments they do not move randomly. Instead, they usually follow specific trajectories or motion patterns corresponding to their intentions. Knowledge about such patterns enables a mobile robot to robustly keep track of persons in its environment and to improve its behavior. In this paper we propose a technique for learning collections of trajectories that characterize typical motion patterns of persons. Data recorded with laser-range finders are clustered using the expectation maximization algorithm. Based on the result of the clustering process, we derive a hidden Markov model that is applied to estimate the current and future positions of persons based on sensory input. We also describe how to incorporate the probabilistic belief about the potential trajectories of persons into the path planning process of a mobile robot. We present several experiments carried out in different environments with a mobile robot equipped with a laser-range scanner and a camera system. The results demonstrate that our approach can reliably learn motion patterns of persons, can robustly estimate and predict positions of persons, and can be used to improve the navigation behavior of a mobile robot.


In this contribution we highlight several aspects concerning the numerical simulation of ultra-short pulse mode-locked fiber lasers by a non-distributed model. We show that for fixed system parameters multiple attractors are accessible by different initial conditions especially in the transient region between different mode-locking regimes. The reduction of multiple attractors stabilizing from different quantum noise fields to a single solution by gain ramping is demonstrated. Based on this analysis and model, different regimes of mode-locking obtained by varying the intra-cavity dispersion and saturation energy of the gain fiber are revised and it is shown that a regime producing linearly chirped parabolic pulses known from self-similar evolution is embedded in the wave-breaking free mode-locking regime.


Non-line-of-sight optical wireless transmission, operated in the unlicensed ultraviolet UV-C band, has been recently suggested as an alternative means of communication. However, due to limited coverage, relayed UV-C networks need to be deployed in order to supply communication services at large distances. In this paper, we consider a serial multi-hop UV-C network where the nodes are distributed at fixed positions on a given service interval. We adopt a suitable path loss model and derive analytical expressions for the node isolation probability assuming on-off keying and pulse position modulation formats. Moreover, we investigate the node density required to achieve connectivity for several geometrical transceiver configurations. The numerical results of this paper are of significant value for telecom researchers working toward a flexible UV-C network deployment in practice.


Abstract We describe a new extinct lineage Manipulatoridae (new family) of cockroaches from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) amber of Myanmar. Manipulator modificaputis gen. et sp. n. is a morphologically unique extinct cockroach that represents the first (of a total of 29 known worldwide) cockroach family reported exclusively from the Myanmar amber. This family represents an early side branch of the stem group of Mantodea (most probably a sister group of Eadiidae within Blattaria/Corydioidea) because it has some synapomorphies with the Mantodea (including the stem group and Eadiidae). This family also retains symplesiomorphies that exclude a position in the crown group, and furthermore has unique autapomorphies that exclude a position as a direct ancestor of Mantodea. The unique adaptations such as strongly elongated extremities and freely movable head on a long neck suggest that these animals were pursuit predators. Five additional specimens (including two immatures) reported from the Myanmar amber suggest that this group was relatively rare but belonged to the indigenous and autochthonous inhabitants of the ancient amber forest of the Myanmar region.


The objectives of this experiment were to study the effects of photoperiods, hormone, and phosphor on the increases of quality and longevity of soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) seeds. The experiment was conducted both during dry and wet seasons at Sebapo Experimental Station, Jambi and Center for Post Harvest Research and Development, Bogor from November 2009 until November 2010. The experiment used factorial split split plot designed which consisted of three factors, i.e. photoperiod (12 hrs and 14 hours 54 minutes) as the main plot, concentrations of IAA (0, 75 and 150 ppm) as sub plot, and dosages of phosphor (0, 60 and 120 kg P2O5 ha-1) as sub sub plot. The parameters being observed included seed quality (carbohydrate, protein and lipid seed content) seed viability and vigor after storage for three months at room temperature and respiration rate during storage. The results showed that treatment of photoperiod 14 hours
54 minutes, IAA 75 ppm and P2O5 120 kg ha-1 increased seed quality and longevity indicated by the increased of soybean seed yield from 4.07 to 14.21 g plant-1; increased protein, carbohydrate, and lipid content to 40.15, 32.23 and 14.21% respectively; increased seed longevity during storage at room temperature (seed viability before and after 90 days stored at room temperature were 97 and 90.77% respectively; rate of germination were 41.33 and 33.12%KN etmal-1 respectively;
and decreased respiration rate during storage (only 0.683 ml CO2 kg seed-1 hr-1). Seed quality and longevity which were produced during dry season were much better compared to wet season. Good agronomic practices resulted in increasing not only yield but also the quality and longevity of soybean seed during storage.