In multicultural Australia, the state of Victoria is identified as the most culturally diverse state with a thriving multicultural society. To enhance this cultural diversity, the provision of global and multicultural education for school children is prioritised through current legislative, policy and curriculum frameworks. Music education is recognised as one of the most effective mediums of providing such education. An online survey was conducted targeting Victorian school music teachers (n=100) to investigate and to generate a snapshot of the current situation regarding the provision of multicultural music education. The survey found that, many school teachers do not possess apposite knowledge and resources hence as an alternative strategy, artists in residence are often invited to teach multicultural music in schools. Most participants acknowledged this practice as the most effective and authentic approach to educate students. To explore this further, a research study was conducted in an urban school where a range of strategies were employed to provide multicultural education including music. By witnessing the music program in action, it was found that these strategies answered the Australian governmental policy expectations for the formation of future citizens who are tolerant, caring, compassionate and fair and offered an engaging, effective and valued music education program.


There is ample evidence that tube-dwelling invertebrates such as chironomids significantly alter multiple important ecosystem functions, particularly in shallow lakes. Chironomids pump large water volumes, and associated suspended and dissolved substances, through the sediment and thereby compete with pelagic filter feeders for particulate organic matter. This can exert a high grazing pressure on phytoplankton, microorganisms, and perhaps small zooplankton and thus strengthen benthic-pelagic coupling. Furthermore, intermittent pumping by tube-dwelling invertebrates oxygenates sediments and creates a dynamic, three-dimensional mosaic of redox conditions. This shapes microbial community composition and spatial distribution, and alters microbe-mediated biogeochemical functions, which often depend on redox potential. As a result, extended hotspots of element cycling occur at the oxic-anoxic interfaces, controlling the fate of organic matter and nutrients as well as fluxes of nutrients between sediments and water. Surprisingly, the mechanisms and magnitude of interactions mediated by these organisms are still poorly understood. To provide a synthesis of the importance of tube-dwelling invertebrates, we review existing research and integrate previously disregarded functional traits into an ecosystem model. Based on existing research and our models, we conclude that tube-dwelling invertebrates play a central role in controlling water column nutrient pools, and hence water quality and trophic state. Furthermore, these tiny ecosystem engineers can influence the thresholds that determine shifts between alternate clear and turbid states of shallow lakes. The large effects stand in contrast to the conventional limnological paradigm emphasizing predominantly pelagic food webs. Given the vast number of shallow lakes worldwide, benthic invertebrates are likely to be relevant drivers of biogeochemical processes at regional and global scales, thereby mediating feedback mechanisms linked to climate change.


A multipoint videoconference was webcast live to an audience who could communicate with conference panelists and each other via chat. The videoconference, webcast, and chat were done entirely over the Internet. Seven panelists at four conference sites that had Internet2 connectivity and were located in different time zones within the continental United States discussed the topic of "Evaluating Health Professions Education and Information Resources on the Web." This discussion was broadcast to individuals and groups at various U.S. locations who had expressed an interest in the topic and had sufficient connectivity for receiving the video stream. Webcast recipients could log on a chat server and type questions and comments to the panelists and other viewers. The experiment's rationale, procedures, and outcomes are described, and issues associated with the use of the technologies are identified.


Destructive solitary (tsunami) waves are capable of moving large amounts of coastal sediments and causing subsequent morphological changes in sandy beaches. Experimental studies can be significantly helpful to assess the process of sediment transport brought about by a tsunami. The present study is an experimental one that aims to investigate sediment transport and deformation of sandy beaches caused by tsunami waves. Waves were generated by a gate wave-producing system to simulate tsunami waves. Laboratory equipment and mounted cameras were applied to examine run-up and run-down processes of waves and the beach profile changes were drawn. The techniques of estimating the transport rate of sediment particles is based on the four traps set in different parts of the beach. The obtained results showed that waves were not capable of transporting the sediment in regions far from the coast where shoaling effects were not considerable. Furthermore, wave breaking point and its distance from each trap have significant effects on the sediment transport assessment of that region. Moreover, the achieved findings indicate that sediment transport that occurred in the run-down of the waves was more effective than that from run-up.


We are building a framework physical infrastructure across the soybean genome by using SSR (simple sequence repeat) and RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism) markers to identify BACs (bacterial artificial chromosomes) from two soybean BAC libraries. The libraries were prepared from two genotypes, each digested with a different restriction enzyme. The BACs identified by each marker were grouped into contigs. We have obtained BAC- end sequence from BACs within each contig. The sequences were analyzed by the University of Minnesota Center for Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics using BLAST algorithms to search nucleotide and protein databases. The SSR-identified BACs had a higher percentage of significant BLAST hits than did the RFLP-identified BACs. This difference was due to a higher percentage of hits to repetitive-type sequences for the SSR-identified BACs that was offset in part, however, by a somewhat larger proportion of RFLP-identified significant hits with similarity to experimentally defined genes and soybean ESTs (expressed sequence tags). These genes represented a wide range of metabolic functions. In these analyses, only repetitive sequences from SSR-identified contigs appeared to be clustered. The BAC-end sequences also allowed us to identify microsynteny between soybean and the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and Medicago truncatula. This map-based approach to genome sampling provides a means of assaying soybean genome structure and organization.


Background Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains a leading cause of mortality and severe neurological disability. Survival from OHCA depends on good quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation from EMS personnel. The 'time on the chest' and interruption time for defibrillation have recently been shown to be pivotal to survival. Electrocardiograph impedance analysis software allows retrospective quality control and feedback to EMS crews after a resuscitation attempt. Whilst this technique has been used by several EMS services worldwide, routine use and acceptance has yet to be established. Aims To establish the feasibility of using impedance software for pre-hospital resuscitation quality control and to gain baseline data on pre-hospital resuscitation practice in the Lothians region of Scotland. Methods Prospective, observational pilot study. After a resuscitation attempt the attending EMS crew was asked to consent to the ECG trace from the defibrillator being downloaded onto a research computer. The impedance trace was then analysed using computer software (Codestat – Physio Control) and a report on the resuscitation attempt generated. Results 9 OHCA were included in the pilot. All EMS crews agreed to the download from the defibrillator and all found viewing the trace informative. Downloading the ECG trace was straightforward in all cases. The mean time of the resuscitation attempt spent performing chest compressions was 50%. The mean chest compression rate was 141 min. The mean time from cessation of chest compressions to delivery of defibrillatory shock was 46 s. Conclusion ECG impedance analysis is a straightforward, accurate, accepted method of assessing quality of pre-hospital resuscitation by EMS personnel. Baseline data from our region suggests that the quality of advanced life support could be improved by focussing on basic elements of resuscitation. Using software-generated resuscitation reports could be useful for EMS personnel feedback and monitoring effectiveness of training programmes. Further research is warranted on the widespread use of this technique.


Essay questions designed to measure writing ability, along with open-ended questions
requiring short answers, are highly-valued components of effective assessment
programs, but the expense and logistics of scoring them reliably often present a barrier
to their use. Extensive research and development efforts at Educational Testing
Service (ETS) over the past several years (see http://www.ets.org/research/erater.html)
in natural language processing have produced two applications with the potential to
dramatically reduce the difficulties associated with scoring these types of assessments.


Google App Engine makes it easy to create a web application that can serve millions of people as easily as serving hundreds, with minimal up-front investment. With Programming Google App Engine, Google engineer Dan Sanderson provides practical guidance for designing and developing your application on Googles vast infrastructure, using App Engines scalable services and simple development model.Through clear and concise instructions, youll learn how to get the most out of App Engines nearly unlimited computing power. This second edition is fully updated and expanded to cover Python 2.7 and Java 6 support, multithreading, asynchronous service APIs, and the use of frameworks such as Django 1.3 and webapp2.Understand how App Engine handles web requests and executes application code Learn about new datastore features for queries and indexes, transactions, and data modeling Create, manipulate, and serve large data files with the Blobstore Use task queues to parallelize and distribute computation across the infrastructure Employ scalable services for email, instant messaging, and communicating with web services Track resource consumption, and optimize your application for speed and cost effectiveness


Involving patients in research broadens a researcher's field of influence and may generate novel ideas. Preclinical research is integral to the progression of innovative healthcare. These are not patient-facing disciplines and implementing meaningful PPI can be a challenge. A discussion forum and thematic analysis identified key challenges of implementing PPI for preclinical researchers. In response we developed a "PPI Ready" planning canvas. For contemporaneous evaluation of PPI, a psychometric questionnaire and an open source tool for its evaluation were developed. The questionnaire measures information, procedural and quality assessment. Combined with the open source evaluation tool, researchers are notified if PPI is unsatisfactory in any of these areas. The tool is easy to use and adapts a psychometric test into a format familiar to preclinical scientists. Designed to be used iteratively across a research project, it provides a simple reporting grade to document satisfaction trend over the research lifecycle.


Pedestrian detection is an active research topic for driving assistance systems. To install pedestrian detection in a regular vehicle, however, there is a need to reduce its cost and ensure high accuracy. Although many approaches have been developed, vision-based methods of pedestrian detection are best suited to these requirements. In this paper, we propose the methods based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) that achieves high accuracy in various fields. To achieve such generalization, our CNN-based method introduces Random Dropout and Ensemble Inference Network (EIN) to the training and classification processes, respectively. Random Dropout selects units that have a flexible rate, instead of the fixed rate in conventional Dropout. EIN constructs multiple networks that have different structures in fully connected layers. The proposed methods achieves comparable performance to state-of-the-art methods, even though the structure of the proposed methods are considerably simpler.


It is known that in pancreatectomized dogs completely deprived of insulin, hypophysectomy normalizes plasma glucagon and prevents ketoacidosis, but rarely normalizes glucose levels. The present study concerns diabetic dogs with only partial insulin deficiency in whom we studied the effects of hypophysectomy on glucoregulatory mechanisms. Eleven dogs were alloxanized and hypophysectomized 2–3 wk later. Withholding exogenous insulin from alloxan-diabetic dogs resulted in hypoinsulinemia (6 ± 1 μU/ml), hyperglucagonemia (341 ± 44 pg/ml), elevated plasma FFA levels (1442 ±125 μeq/ml), hyperglycemia (333 ± 27 mg/dl), increased hepatic glucose production (Ra, 4.2 ± 0.3 mg/kg/min) and decreased clearance of glucose (CR, 1.8 ± 0.1 ml/kg/min). After hypophysectomy, glucagon and FFA fell to normal in 7 of 11 hypophysectomized alloxan-diabetic dogs (106 ± 7), while 4 remained hyperglycemic (337 ± 28 mg/dl). Normoglycemia was the result of a reduced Ra to subnormal in the presence of unaltered glucose clearance. However, normoglycemia could not be equated with normal metabolism: glucose turnover was well below normal, and peripheral glucose uptake was impaired. The sensitivity of the liver to glucagon was investigated by infusing somatostatin alone (ST, 0.24 μg/kg/min) and with replacement (1 mg/kg/min) or with excess of glucagon (3.6 ng/kg/min). Even in hypophysectomized dogs, glucagon suppression resulted in a sustained decrease in Ra and plasma glucose. Glucagon replacement restored glucose kinetics and excess of glucagon led to hyperglycemia (300 ± 20 mg/dl). This was due to a prompt rise in Ra which, however, plateaued at levels lower than in diabetic dogs, suggesting that normalization of glucagon following hypophysectomy is an important but not the sole factor responsible for the marked reduction in Ra. The persistence of hyperglycemia in four diabetic dogs was attributed to a diminished effect of the hypophysectomy: in spite of hyperglycemia, Ra was not lower than in normoglycemic dogs, it was insensitive to glucagon suppression, and glucose clearance was more impaired than in normoglycemic dogs. It is hypothesized, therefore, that these dogs had a smaller residual insulin reserve than normoglycemic hypophysectomized dogs. Thus a critical amount of insulin may be indispensible for the maintenance of normoglycemia. In conclusion, in alloxan-diabetic dogs, hypophysectomy can fully normalize postabsorptive glycemia, due to suppression of glucose production. Normoglycemia is, however, associated with an abnormally low glucose turnover. Hyperglucagonemia is important but not the sole factor responsible for diabetic overproduction of glucose. Hypophysectomy does not abolish the hepatic sensitivity to glucagon in insulin-deficient dogs. Persistence of hyperglycemia in some dogs after hypophysectomy is associated with less effective suppression of glucose production and with a very low glucose clearance.


The lack or destruction of indigenous forests in the southern hemisphere has in some cases led to extensive afforestation with exotic softwoods that subsequently developed into large successful forestry industries. Pinus radiana is the predominant softwood species in the southern hemisphere, with over 3 million ha planted. In its natural environment on the West coast of the United States, P. radiata has been decimated by an epidemic outbreak of pitch canker caused by Fusarium circinatum. The potential devastation of softwood industries in the southern hemisphere, as a consequence of introducing this pathogen, has resulted in strict quarantine regulations. However, this may be too little, too late. F. circinatum is already present in South Africa and it appears that only the lack of an insect vector that has prevented its movement from seedlings to mature trees in plantations. This review considers the risk of introducing new pathogens into the southern hemisphere softwood plantations. The pine pathogen Sphaeropsis sapinea is used as a model to assess future risks, particularly of introducing seed-borne pathogens. The genotypic diversity observed in the pine endophyte S. sapinea, is consistent with historical records of the frequency and quantity of seed and germplasm importation to and within the southern hemisphere. The diversity in South Africa is high, moderate in New Zealand and low in Australia. Many of the genotypes observed were probably introduced before the advent of quarantine. However, new introduced genotypes may be more pathogenic than existing genotypes, potentially leading to more severe disease outbreaks. In pathogens capable of sexual reproduction such as F. circinatum, newly introduced genotypes crossing with existing genotypes would allow for more gene diversity and a greater risk of the pathogen overcoming the trees' resistance. Thus, quarantine is now more important than ever, as limiting the genetic diversity of an exisiting introduced pathogen can be as important as excluding new pathogens.


A survey of the diatom (Bacillariophyceae) populations in 14 lakes and ponds on sub-Antarctic
Macquarie Island identified 102 species
hom 34 genera, including species considered endemic to the sub-Antarctic region.
Multivariate analysis of the diatom communities divided the lakes into two broad groups;
oligotrophic plateau lakes dominated by species including Bmchysira exilis, Fragilaria capucina
var. gracilis, Psammothidium abundans, Ps. confosum and Ps. confusum var. atomoides, and lowland
peat-based lakes dominated by species including Fragilaria pulchella, Planothidium lanceolatum
and Pl. quadripunctatum. Factors relating to lake elevation rather than water pH or conductivity
appeared to have most influence on the lake diatom communities.


Most people would agree that it makes sense to tax a company that pollutes in a way that directly reflects the amount of environmental and social damage it has done. Yet in practice, such taxes are fraught with difficulty and have far-reaching implications. A company facing a new tax may lay off workers, for example, exacerbating an unemployment problem. This volume focuses on such external issues and examines in detail the trade-offs involved in designing policies to deal with environmental problems. Reflecting the broad nature of the subject, the contributors include leading economists in the areas of public finance, industrial organization, and trade theory, as well as environmental economists. Integrating both theoretical and empirical methods, they examine environmental policy design as it relates to location decisions, compliance costs, administrative costs, effects on research and development, and international factor movements. Shedding light on an extraordinarily complex and important topic, this collection will be of interest to all those involved in designing effective environmental policy.


Pragmatism, decentralization, and pluralism are typically associated with modern democracies. Yet these are also the attributes that make Islam a widely accessible political-cultural resource. Indeed, such attributes allow for multiple activisms while sparing activists the macro-coordination challenges that often hamper growing movements, and the inertia that can seize vertical organizations. But while Islamists across the spectrum have increasingly deployed this resource, secularists of various stripes have mostly eschewed it. The aggregate effect has been to amplify the voices and to raise the profiles of Islamist groups at the expense of self-described moderns and their secular ideologies. I call this Islamism's reverberation effect. Deliberate integration of Islamic tradition with democratic thought and action holds substantial promise. Pro-democratic Muslims, backed by Islam's renovated classical principles and practices, can better counter supremacist claims as they arise in the plural contestations that Islam itself helps generate. They can also realistically seek a firm consensus on the inviolable status of Islamic tolerance, which in turn can serve as a functional equivalent to the central authority that Islam lacks. Most importantly, by reconsidering the modernist ideational boundary that separates religion and politics, pro-democratic Muslims can begin to reclaim the transformative power of tradition.Anna Seleny is Professor of the Practice of International Politics at Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (email@example.com). She would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University in the research and writing of this article. She is grateful to Hassan Abbas, Sheri Berman, Consuelo Cruz, Malik Mufti, Assaf Moghadam, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.


Abstract In September 2010 and February 2011, the Canterbury region was rocked by a series of earthquakes. The success or otherwise, of a recovery from a crisis can be found in the perceptions of stakeholders. Many different stakeholders exist, including different levels of Government, bureaucratic institutions and state institutions, private enterprise, non-governmental organisations and the public. In this article, the public are the focus and their perception of the recovery is collected. An online survey was conducted, and it demonstrates a significant gap between the Government's perception and the perception of residents of Christchurch. How do publics react when they feel as though they have been marginalised by the authorities charged with the crisis event recovery? The Government's account of success is not shared by the majority of respondents, who have mobilised politically using social media platforms. There are implications for Governments and authorities that are seen to fail segments of the public in the age of social media, where crisis management and public relations meet and political mobilisation against officials and official bodies takes place.


The central theme of this article is to assess whether the mandate of national reconciliation has been fulfilled in the ECCC. Recent retreats in the scope of victims' participatory rights reveal a palpable gap between the Court's rhetorical promises and the manifested reality. This article begins with providing some justifications for the primitive role given to national reconciliation. Then, in traversing the evolution of international criminal justice, this article highlights its departure from the traditional model of the exclusive retributive justice paradigm. Rather, there is a synergy of the retributive justice and the restorative justice paradigms within international criminal trials in the 21st century. The expanded role of victims in proceedings and the ECCC reparation regime will then be examined in this context. This article will thereafter emphasize the recurrent themes that could promote victims' rights and herald the fulfilment of national reconciliation.


Background: Bilateral strength imbalance in the lower extremities has been studied in several sports as well as cycling and running. However, there has been little investigation of the differences in muscle strength and leg asymmetries in vertical jump between elite runners and cyclists.
Research question: The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine the differences in vertical jump capacity between elite athletes (runners and cyclists). A secondary purpose was to describe single leg vertical jump capacity and leg asymmetries in elite athletes.
Type of study: The evaluation sessions consisted of a different vertical jump tests.
Methods: 27 elite male endurance athletes (endurance runners and road cyclists) performed a countermovement jump (CMJ), single leg CMJ, arm swing CMJ and a 10 s repeat jump (RJ) test.
Results: The runners had a significantly greater (p < 0.01) jump performance in the double leg CMJ (19%), arm swing CMJ (27%) and RJ (16%) compared with cyclists. Similarly, single leg vertical jump performance was significantly better in runners compared with cyclists both with reference to the right leg CMJ (13.4%, p < 0.05), left leg CMJ (15.5%, p < 0.05), dominant leg CMJ (12.6%, p < 0.05) and non-dominant leg CMJ (16.4%, p < 0.01). Significant differences between dominant leg CMJ and non-dominant leg CMJ performance in jump height (leg asymmetry 5.5%) and power production (leg asymmetry 6.5%) were found in the runners' group. In the cyclists' group, significant differences were also found between dominant leg CMJ and non-dominant leg CMJ jump height (leg asymmetry 9.7%) and power production (leg asymmetry 14.6%).
Conclusions: The present study demonstrated a markedly higher single and double leg vertical jump capacity in elite endurance runners compared with professional road cyclists.


The sex of 746 great reed warbler fledglings (from 175 broods) was determined by the use of single primer polymerase chain reaction. The reliability of the technique was confirmed as 104 of the fledglings were subsequently recorded as adults of known sex. The overall sex ratio did not differ from unity. Variation in sex ratios between broods was larger than expected from a binomial distribution. Female identity explained some of the variation of brood sex ratio indicating that certain females consistently produced sex ratios that departed from the average value in the population. The theory of sex allocation predicts that parents should adjust the sex ratio of their brood to the relative value of sons and daughters and this may vary in relation to the quality of the parents or to the time of breeding. In the great reed warbler, the proportion of sons was not related to time of breeding, or to any of five female variables. Of five male variables, males with early arrival date tended to produce more daughters. The sex ratio of fledglings that were a result of extra‐pair fertilizations did not differ from that of legitimate fledglings. Hence, there is currently no evidence of that female great reed warblers invest in a higher proportion of sons when mated with attractive males.


Autonomous mobile sensor networks are employed to measure large-scale environmental fields. Yet an optimal strategy for mission design addressing both the cooperative motion control and the cooperative sensing is still an open problem. We develop strategies for multiple sensor platforms to explore a noisy scalar field in the plane. Our method consists of three parts. First, we design provably convergent cooperative Kalman filters that apply to general cooperative exploration missions. Second, we present a novel method to determine the shape of the platform formation to minimize error in the estimates and design a cooperative formation control law to asymptotically achieve the optimal formation shape. Third, we use the cooperative filter estimates in a provably convergent motion control law that drives the center of the platform formation to move along level curves of the field. This control law can be replaced by control laws enabling other cooperative exploration motion, such as gradient climbing, without changing the cooperative filters and the cooperative formation control laws. Performance is demonstrated on simulated underwater platforms in simulated ocean fields.


Abstract. Over the past few years closer cooperation can be observed in various aspects of digital techniques in such disciplines as dentistry and anthropology. And in most cases that consists in imaging and image processing which results in obtaining 3D reconstructions. And indeed, they can significantly improve research and practice. Thus, depending on imaging technique and application, they can support CAD/CAM technology or precisely reconstruct morphology of invisible structures. However the currently presented study refers to technical aspects of shade and texture mapping, which is more aimed to obtain more realistic 3D reconstructions of palaeoanthropological material. Colour or shade matching has become an integral part of dental practice. It can be carried in a traditional manner though matching the tooth with conventional shade-guides, or, which is in line with the subjects of our study, by means of spectrophotometry. And the main procedures of shade detection have been performed by SpectroShade (MHT). Necessary attention has been paid to conditions influencing shade detection process with respect to the studied material teeth taken from the Bronze Age findings. Reconstructive techniques have traditionally been a scientific and practical part of palaeoanthropological research which is directed at appearance reconstruction. Though the leading part of this branch has been always aimed at analysis of skull morphology. In our time of rapidly developing digital techniques reconstructions have become to a large extent a matter of improvements of imaging and image processing techniques. Even though this doesnt directly refer to soft tissue reconstruction, it undoubtedly applies to dental reconstructions. And the current study presents improvements in reconstruction through combining imaging with shade and texture mapping on 3D models of teeth.


The simple action of passing laser light through an optically transparent system may enable researchers to control a number of mechanical and optoelectronic processes. These novel interactions of light present an array of useful applications in optical switching, optical binding and fluorescence imaging.


In this article, the control and drawing up of the cultural borders between the Finns and the Skolt Sami are studied. Before the Second World War, as illustrated in the travel book by Sakari Palsi, the writer as well as the whole state of Finland tried to come to terms with the new "colony" and the new exotic "Other," the Skolt Sami, within the Finnish boundaries. This led to ambivalent relations with both the new citizens of Finland and with the drawing up and control of borders. This was especially the case in crossing the cultural border, where no respect was shown to the guardians of the border, even though this role was paternalistically awarded to them. By the time of the release of the main work by Karl Nickul, the author himself and the state of Finland had come to terms with their "colonial" past. The "good state" was condemned by Nickul, ambivalence was absent and Nickul produced a true post-colonial piece, where the view emanates from the other side of the border, thus completing his per- sonal quest to restore the Skolt Sami agency in research.


Mutualistic networks are crucial to the maintenance of ecosystem services. Unfortunately, what we know about seed dispersal networks is based only on bird-fruit interactions. Therefore, we aimed at filling part of this gap by investigating bat-fruit networks. It is known from population studies that: (i) some bat species depend more on fruits than others, and (ii) that some specialized frugivorous bats prefer particular plant genera. We tested whether those preferences affected the structure and robustness of the whole network and the functional roles of species. Nine bat-fruit datasets from the literature were analyzed and all networks showed lower complementary specialization (H2' = 0.37±0.10, mean ± SD) and similar nestedness (NODF = 0.56±0.12) than pollination networks. All networks were modular (M = 0.32±0.07), and had on average four cohesive subgroups (modules) of tightly connected bats and plants. The composition of those modules followed the genus-genus associations observed at population level (Artibeus-Ficus, Carollia-Piper, and Sturnira-Solanum), although a few of those plant genera were dispersed also by other bats. Bat-fruit networks showed high robustness to simulated cumulative removals of both bats (R = 0.55±0.10) and plants (R = 0.68±0.09). Primary frugivores interacted with a larger proportion of the plants available and also occupied more central positions; furthermore, their extinction caused larger changes in network structure. We conclude that bat-fruit networks are highly cohesive and robust mutualistic systems, in which redundancy is high within modules, although modules are complementary to each other. Dietary specialization seems to be an important structuring factor that affects the topology, the guild structure and functional roles in bat-fruit networks.


Purpose: Most referral health facilities are faced with challenges ranging from congestion of patients at these health facilities, strained/ limited resources (both human and material) to deal with the voluminous patients, slow rate of service delivery to the patients which normally results in compromised quality of medical care provided to the patients.  The study therefore aimed to find out the determinants of a functional referral system in two high level health facilities; Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Referral Hospital (JOOTRH) and Kisumu County Referral Hospital (KCH).
Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted using a quantitative approach to data collection. Three hundred and thirty eight out-patient clients were systemically selected to participate in the study. Data was collected using Individual questionnaire. The collected quantitative data were coded and analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 Computer program. The quantitative data were then analyzed using the descriptive statistics and logistic regression models.
Results: The research findings revealed that there is a positive significant correlation between primary health facility characteristics (r = 0.474**; P<0.000).It also revealed that there is a positive significant correlation between receiving facility characteristics (r = 0.475**; P<0.000) to a functional referral system. Further Multivariate analysis also revealed a significant association between referral health facility characteristics and a functional referral system, (β3 = .425, P =.000).The results further revealed that there was a negative significant association between receiving health facility characteristics and a functional referral system, (β4 =.-0.156, P < .000).
Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The County government of Kisumu should supply adequate drugs and equipment's to attract more patients seeking medical care services to the primary level facilities. Quality of services offered and general cleanliness at the primary health facilities should also be improved to boost patient's confidence in them.


Practical Perioperative Transoesophageal Echocardiography, 3rd edition, is a concise guide to the use of transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) for patients undergoing cardiac surgical and interventional cardiological procedures. The text is aimed at anaesthetists and cardiologists, particularly those in training and those preparing for examinations. Three-dimensional imaging is integrated throughout the text. New to the third edition are chapters on mitral valve repair, aortic valve repair, TOE in the interventional catheter laboratory, and TOE assessment of pericardial disease. The first three chapters address the fundamentals of ultrasound imaging: physical principles, artefacts, image optimization, and quantitative echocardiography. Chapters 4 and 5 cover standard views, anatomical variants, and cardiac masses. Chapters 6 and 7 address left ventricular systolic and diastolic function, respectively. The subsequent eight chapters form the core of the book and deal with the cardiac valves and the thoracic aorta. Emphasis is placed on those aspects relevant to cardiac surgery; therefore, the mitral and aortic valves are afforded particular prominence. The role of three-dimensional imaging for the mitral valve is highlighted. Chapter 17 covers the emerging role of TOE for patients undergoing procedures in the catheter laboratory and covers topics such as transcatheter aortic valve replacement and edge-to-edge mitral valve repair. Chapter 18 provides an overview of the common congenital abnormalities encountered in adults. Two chapters address the important subjects of thoracic transplantation and mechanical cardiorespiratory support. Finally, Chapter 21 brings many threads from previous chapters together to describe the role of TOE in assessing haemodynamic instability.


Long-term measurements of fine particle number-size distributions were carried out over 9.5 yr (May 1997–December 2006), in the urban background atmosphere of Helsinki. The total number of days was 3528 with about 91.9% valid data. A new particle formation event (NPF) is defined if a distinct nucleation mode of aerosol particles is observed below 25 nm for several hours, and it shows a growth pattern.We observed 185 NPF events, 111 d were clear non-events and most of the days (around 83.5%) were undefined. The observed events were regional because they were observed at Hyytiälä (250 km north of Helsinki). The events occurred most frequently during spring and autumn. The observed formation rate was maximum during the spring and summer (monthly median 2.87 cm-3 s-1) and the modal growth rate was maximum during late summer and Autumn (monthly median 6.55 nm h-1). The events were observed around noon, and the growth pattern often continued on the following day. The observation of weak NPF events was hindered due to pre-existing particles from both local sources. It is clear that regional NPF events have a clear influence on the dynamic behaviour of aerosol particles in the urban atmosphere.


Over 6,000 Mongolian college students, on three separate occasions, poured into the streets of Huhhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) of the People's Republic of China, in the autumn of 1981, shouting slogans, singing songs, petitioning the public and disrupting all manner of commerce and traffic. To many Huhhotians, it was another public demonstration of the lingering wounds of the Cultural Revolution, a period of social turbulence that the Chinese govemment now refers to as 'a national disaster'. The Mongols poignantly refer to the period as the Great Sorrow (da ku), for it was during this period that an extraordinary number of Mongols were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed. The repercussions of these acts continue to reverberate throughout much of the IMAR and have contributed to a generalized yet sharp sense of moral ambiguity, outrage and ethnic assertiveness.


One of the most classic normative functions of media in democracies is to be vigilant of power, both to serve as defenders of the citizens and for the public opinion to make correct decisions. This paper discusses from a critical perspective the accountability of the media in Latin America from the Third Wave of Democracy up to date, which has been important in denouncing and investigating certain cases of political corruption, but has been limited for two reasons: the first is the high concentration of ownership of regional media systems, have led to a very low level of informative pluralism which calls into question the true scope and intentions of the surveillance that the media can carry out of power and its contribution to democracy. On the other hand, the second reason is the reforms carried out in recent years by the leadership of some progressive or populist governments that have not created a proper environment for this function, and on the contrary, have provided shortcomings for the freedom of information, a basic principle for media accountability. As a conclusion, this paper reflects on the importance of promoting informative pluralism and freedom of expression as the basis of media surveillance of power in the Latin American region.


Hemispatial neglect is a spatial attention deficit that occurs in 25 up to 50% of stroke survivors and has a negative impact on functional recovery. Despite an increased understanding of the mechanisms underlying hemispatial neglect, there is no effective treatment yet. In particular, the transfer of treatment effects to daily life is often missing. A more ecological approach to rehabilitation may therefore produce better treatment effects. Here we present the design of a virtual reality game for stroke patients with spatial attention deficits. Moreover, we present the use of our 'Intervention Logic -- Game Mechanic' model which details how theory-grounded intervention principles were translated into game mechanics and desired treatment outcomes. Additionally, we demonstrate how simulations on the basis of player models aid in designing a dynamic difficulty adjustment algorithm and reduce the need for elaborate gameplay testing.


Objective: To investigate whether supplementing older men with vitamins B12, B6, and folic acid improves cognitive function. Methods: The investigators recruited 299 community-representative hypertensive men 75 years and older to a randomized, double-blind controlled clinical trial of folic acid, vitamin B6, and B12 supplementation vs placebo over 2 years. The primary outcome of interest was the change in the cognitive subscale of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-cog). A secondary aim of the study was to determine if supplementation with vitamins decreased the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia over 8 years. Results: The groups were well-balanced for demographic and biochemical parameters. There was no difference in the ADAS-cog change from baseline to 24 months between the placebo (0.8, SD 4.0) and vitamins group (0.7, SD 3.4). The adjusted scores in the treatment groups did not differ over time (placebo 0.2 lower, z = 0.71, p = 0.478). There was a nonsignificant 28% decrease in the risk of cognitive impairment (odds ratio 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.25–2.09) and dementia (hazard ratio 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.29–1.78) over 8 years of follow-up. Conclusions: The daily supplementation of vitamins B12, B6, and folic acid does not benefit cognitive function in older men, nor does it reduce the risk of cognitive impairment or dementia. Classification of evidence: This study provides Class I evidence that vitamin supplementation with daily doses of 400 μg of B12, 2 mg of folic acid, and 25 mg of B6 over 2 years does not improve cognitive function in hypertensive men aged 75 and older.


We tackle the problem of Human Locomotion Forecasting, a task for jointly predicting the spatial positions of several keypoints on human body in the near future under an egocentric setting. In contrast to the previous work that aims to solve either the task of pose prediction or trajectory forecasting in isolation, we propose a framework to unify these two problems and address the practically useful task of pedestrian locomotion prediction in the wild. Among the major challenges in solving this task is the scarcity of annotated egocentric video datasets with dense annotations for pose, depth, or egomotion. To surmount this difficulty, we use state-of-the-art models to generate (noisy) annotations and propose robust forecasting models that can learn from this noisy supervision. We present a method to disentangle the overall pedestrian motion into easier to learn subparts by uti-lizing a pose completion and a decomposition module. The completion module fills in the missing key-point annotations and the decomposition module breaks the cleaned locomotion down to global (trajectory) and local (pose keypoint movements). Further, with Quasi RNN as our backbone, we propose a novel hierarchical trajectory forecasting network that utilizes low-level vision domain specific signals like egomotion and depth to predict the global trajectory. Our method leads to state-of-the-art results for the prediction of human locomotion in the egocentric view.


Background: Chemotherapy is an important treatment for cancer, yet some of its side effects are serious and painful. Many patients with cancer suffer from psychiatric disorders that most likely result from therapeutic drugs or mental strategies to cope with their illness. Progressive muscle relaxation is one of the cost effective, self-help methods that promotes mental health in healthy participants. This study aims to determine the effect of progressive muscle relaxation training on anxiety and depression in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.Methods: This was a randomized, clinical study that enrolled 60 patients who received inpatient chemotherapy in the Tabriz Hematology and Oncology Research Center in 2010. We divided patients into two groups, intervention and control. All participants signed written formal consents and completed the Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale questionnaires. Intervention group participants were trained in progressive muscle relaxation in groups of 3-6 to enable participants to perform this technique when they were alone in the hospital and after discharge, two to three times each day. After one and three months, questionnaires were completed again by both groups and the results compared. 17th version of SPSS software was used for data analysis.Results:After data analysis, most participants were satisfied with learning and experiencing this technique. There was no significant difference between scales in the case and control groups after one month (P>0.05). However after three months, anxiety and depression considerably improved in patients who underwent progressive muscle relaxation training (P<0.05).Conclusion: Progressive muscle relaxation training can improve anxiety and depression in cancer patients.


Ventilative cooling (VC) is an application (distribution in time and space) of air flow rates to reduce cooling loads in spaces using outside air driven by natural, mechanical or hybrid ventilation strategies. VC reduces overheating in both existing and new buildings being both a sustainable and energy efficient solution to improve indoor thermal comfort. VC is promising low energy cooling technology that has potential to substantially reduce the use of mechanical cooling in airtight and highly insulated buildings. However, architects and engineers are skeptic to apply natural VC in their building design due to the uncertainty in the prediction of energy performance and thermal comfort. Firstly, BSim software, that is a whole building simulation tool, is validated according to procedure proposed in EN 15255 standard (Thermal performance of buildings – Sensible room cooling load calculation – General criteria and validation procedures). The aim of validation according to standard is to control if BSim modules provide reliable results and would not cause the discrepancy between measured and simulated operative temperature. Secondly, simulated operative temperatures for five different ventilation system configurations are compared to on-site building measurements of a single sided ventilated office room. Paper shows that simulation model is capable of estimating the operative temperature during a summer period reasonably accurate. The maximum obtained deviation of the simulated operative temperature for five different system configurations, is within -19% and 5.1%. Moreover, out of 13 selected validation cases proposed in EN 15255, 11 have passed and 2 have not pass the validation procedure. The paper provides explanation for the 2 cases that did not pass the validation procedure and share the conclusions drawn from validation procedure.


This book explores factors relevant in the choices speakers and writers make in regard to explicitness of reference to the subjects and objects in their utterances. Bulgarian is a particularly felicitous target language for this type of study, since it possesses a rich inventory of available packaging techniques, ranging from zero reference, to various stressed and unstressed single forms, to actual doubled ("reduplicated") constructions. The study systematically addresses the need to avoid referential and grammatical ambiguity, and the crucial influence of emphasis. Another, and perhaps most interesting central factor is the status of what the communication is about, which is assessed on two different levels. The book makes use of data from both published Bulgarian fiction and naturally occurring oral conversations. The fundamental similarities between these modes of communication with respect to noun phrase selection is demonstrated, but explanations are also proposed for the observable differences.


Do memories of highly emotional stock market crashes permanently affect the investment decisions of households? The Initial Public Offerings of Deutsche Telekom during 1996- 2000 provide an optimal base to address this question, as it is known for its emotional character and is reputedly "the last time Germans invested in stocks." Using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) household survey data, I show that having experienced this event leads to persistently lower stock market participation in the future. In addition, this effect is greater for households that had directly invested in Telekom shares, those being more likely to have high emotional experiences. Finally, I also show that such traumatic experiences on investment decisions have intergenerational consequences, significantly affecting how the next generation invests in the financial market.


hDlg, a human homologue of the Drosophila Dig tumor suppressor, contains two binding sites for protein 4.1, one within a domain containing three PSD-95/Dlg/ZO-1 (PDZ) repeats and another within the alternatively spliced I3 domain. Here, we further define the PDZ- protein 4.1 interaction in vitro and show the functional role of both 4.1 binding sites in situ. A single protease-resistant structure formed by the entirety of both PDZ repeats 1 and 2 (PDZ1-2) contains the protein 4.1-binding site. Both this PDZ1-2 site and the I3 domain associate with a 30-kD NH2-terminal domain of protein 4.1 that is conserved in ezrin/radixin/moesin (ERM) proteins. We show that both protein 4.1 and the ezrin ERM protein interact with the murine form of hDlg in a coprecipitating immune complex. In permeabilized cells and tissues, either the PDZ1-2 domain or the I3 domain alone are sufficient for proper subcellular targeting of exogenous hDlg. In situ, PDZ1-2- mediated targeting involves interactions with both 4.1/ERM proteins and proteins containing the COOH-terminal T/SXV motif. I3-mediated targeting depends exclusively on interactions with 4.1/ERM proteins. Our data elucidates the multivalent nature of membrane-associated guanylate kinase homologue (MAGUK) targeting, thus beginning to define those protein interactions that are critical in MAGUK function.


Numerous studies have now demonstrated that the most common method of ageing sharks and rays, counting growth zones on calcified structures, can underestimate true age. I reviewed bomb carbon dating (n = 15) and fluorochrome chemical marking (n = 44) age validation studies to investigate the frequency and magnitude of this phenomenon. Age was likely to have been underestimated in nine of 29 genera and 30% of the 53 populations studied, including 50% of those validated using bomb carbon dating. Length and age were strongly significant predictors of occurrence, with age typically underestimated in larger and older individuals. These characteristics suggest age underestimation is likely a systemic issue associated with the current methods and structures used for ageing. Where detected using bomb carbon dating, growth zones were reliable up to 88% of asymptotic length (L∞) and 41% of maximum age (AMax). The maximum magnitude of age underestimation, ΔMax, ranged from five to 34 years, averaging 18 years across species. Current perceptions of shark and ray life histories are informed to a large extent by growth studies that assume calcified ageing structures are valid throughout life. The widespread age underestimation documented here shows this assumption is frequently violated, with potentially important consequences for conservation and management. In addition to leading to an underestimation of longevity, the apparent loss of population age-structure associated with it may unexpectedly bias growth and mortality parameters. Awareness of these biases is essential given shark and ray population assessments often rely exclusively on life history parameters derived from ageing studies.


Parameterizing source code for architecture-bound optimization is a common approach to highperformance programming but one that makes the programmer's task arduous and the resulting code difficult to maintain. Certain parameterizations, such as changing loop order, may require elaborate code instrumenting that distract from the main objective. In this paper, we propose a templating and automatic code generation approach based on standard Python modules and the Opal library for algorithm optimization. Advantages of our approach include its programmatic simplicity and the flexibility offered by the templating engine. We provide a complete example for the matrix multiply where optimization with respect to blocking, loop unrolling and compiler flags takes place.


Candida albicans has an elaborate, yet efficient, mating system that promotes conjugation between diploid a and α strains. The product of mating is a tetraploid a/α cell that must undergo a reductional division to return to the diploid state. Despite the presence of several "meiosis-specific" genes in the C. albicans genome, a meiotic program has not been observed. Instead, tetraploid products of mating can be induced to undergo efficient, random chromosome loss, often producing strains that are diploid, or close to diploid, in ploidy. Using SNP and comparative genome hybridization arrays we have now analyzed the genotypes of products from the C. albicans parasexual cycle. We show that the parasexual cycle generates progeny strains with shuffled combinations of the eight C. albicans chromosomes. In addition, several isolates had undergone extensive genetic recombination between homologous chromosomes, including multiple gene conversion events. Progeny strains exhibited altered colony morphologies on laboratory media, demonstrating that the parasexual cycle generates phenotypic variants of C. albicans. In several fungi, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the conserved Spo11 protein is integral to meiotic recombination, where it is required for the formation of DNA double-strand breaks. We show that deletion of SPO11 prevented genetic recombination between homologous chromosomes during the C. albicans parasexual cycle. These findings suggest that at least one meiosis-specific gene has been re-programmed to mediate genetic recombination during the alternative parasexual life cycle of C. albicans. We discuss, in light of the long association of C. albicans with warm-blooded animals, the potential advantages of a parasexual cycle over a conventional sexual cycle.


A 68-year-old woman referred to the emergency department for impaired consciousness and involuntary right-sided movements. She was affected by epilepsy secondary to cerebral palsy, and she presented partial seizures, occasionally followed by secondary generalisation, well controlled by drug treatment. Brain CT scan, performed in the emergency, showed diffuse hypodensity of the left cerebral hemisphere and of the right cerebellar hemisphere (figure 1). Electroencephalography showed continuous epileptic discharges in the left hemisphere (figure 2). Treatment for seizures with intravenous valproic acid was initiated, and the patient progressively recovered consciousness. Neurological examination showed right spastic hemiparesis as a result of cerebral palsy; in particular, clinical signs of cerebellar dysfunction were absent. Routine blood tests were normal except for high level of sodium (158 mmol/L). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination showed a normal cell count and glucose level and a mild increase in proteins (42 mg/dL). Bacterioscopic CSF examination was negative. The search on serum for antibodies and the …


The results of an investigation on the effect of a weak heterogeneity of a porous medium on natural convection are presented. A medium heterogeneity is represented by spatial variations of the permeability and of the effective thermal conductivity. As a general rule the existence of horizontal thermal gradients in heterogeneous porous media provides a sufficient condition for the occurrence of natural convection. The implications of this condition are investigated for horizontal layers or rectangular domains subject to isothermal top and bottom boundary conditions. Results lead to a restriction on the classes of thermal conductivity functions which allow a motionless solution. Analytical solutions for rectangular weak heterogeneous porous domains heated from below, consistent with a basic motionless solution, are obtained by applying the weak nonlinear theory. The amplitude of the convection is obtained from an ordinary non-homogeneous differential equation, with a forcing term representative of the medium heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity. A smooth transition through the critical Rayleigh number is obtained, thus removing a bifurcation which usually appears in homogeneous domains with perfect boundaries, at the critical value of the Rayleigh number. Within a certain range of slightly supercritical Rayleigh numbers, a symmetric thermal conductivity function is shown to reinforce a symmetrical flow while antisymmetric functions favour an antisymmetric flow. Except for the higher-order solutions, the weak heterogeneity with respect to permeability plays a relatively passive role and does not affect the solutions at the leading order. In contrast, the weak heterogeneity with respect to the effective thermal conductivity does have a significant effect on the resulting flow pattern.


Four major initiatives to restructure the governance of Africa were launched between 2000 and 2004; the Constitutive Act of the African Union (CAAU), the Protocol leading to the establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and The Memorandum of Understanding on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA). In this study Edward Shalala argues that these initiatives reflect a new positive development in the African continent concerning peace and security architecture. This concurs with increasing interest from the Western countries in helping to solve the continents problems. Is this a sign that Africa, and its security relationship with the West, is moving in the right direction?


What were the consequences of penal transportation to the New World for eighteenth-century British criminal justice? Transportation has been described by scholars as either a replacement of the death penalty responsible for its decline, or a penal innovation responsible for punishing a multitude of people more severely than they would have been punished before. Using data from the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and the Parliamentary Papers, this study examines sentencing and execution trends in eighteenth-century London. It takes advantage of the natural experiment provided by the passage of the 1718 Transportation Act that made transportation available as a penal sentence, thus enabling one to assess the "effect" of transportation on penal trends. This study finds that the primary consequence of the adoption of transportation was to make the criminal justice net more dense by subjecting people to a more intense punishment. While it was also associated with a small decline in capital sentences for some types of offenders, the adoption of transportation was also associated with an increase in the rate at which condemned inmates were executed. The study closes with a discussion of the conditions that may lead to law's unintended consequences, including the mesh-thinning consequences observed here.(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)The law rarely behaves as its creators intended, while people and organizations respond to the law in unexpected ways. This can lead to a number of unintended consequences. First, the law has a tendency to diffuse beyond its original target. For example, in the wake of Civil Rights legislation, businesses often went beyond the letter of the law to protect against legal sanctioning (Dobbin 2009). More mundanely, disputants who do not use the courts to settle their dispute rely on the threat of going to court to achieve a better outcome (Mnookin and Kornhauser 1979). Second, while the law has a certain amount of "creep," it also leads to results that may be contrary to the original intention. In some cases, business organizations' compliance with legal regulation is purely symbolic, without the anticipated substantive effects (Edelman 1992). In other cases, business organizations' "internalization of law" frustrates the progressive democratic and rights foci of the law (Edelman and Suchman 1999). Third, the law may be generally disregarded in decision-making processes. Individuals may disregard the law, whether out of poor knowledge or normative preferences, and resolve disputes without relying on the law (Ellickson 1986; see also Macaulay 1963). In other contexts, the effect of the law in shaping organizational practice regulated by law may be eclipsed by other powerful social institutions (Heimer 1999). Perhaps most disturbingly, significant court victories can have a minimal impact in practice on the rights these victories endorsed (e.g., Rosenberg 1988). In a large variety of contexts, then, the law may have larger-thanintended effects, somewhat sinister effects, or simply no effect on the various practices and activities it is thought to regulate.In the criminal justice context, we see this theme of unintended consequences emerge most clearly following the adoption of new penal policies and innovations. Many penal innovations are the product of well-intentioned reformers who seek to reduce the number of individuals receiving a severe form of punishment by replacing it with a more lenient punishment. Historically, however, instead of replacing this punishment, the new punishment often leads to two unexpected consequences. First, the new punishment "widens the net" of criminal justice in that more people are punished under the new regime: given this more attractive alternative, criminal justice agents use the new punishment against many more individuals than would have previously received the more severe punishment reformers sought to avoid. Included in this number are some individuals who would not have been punished at all under the old regime or those who previously would have been punished less severely, leading to the second consequence. …


The official CAIA Level 1 curriculum bookAlternative Investments: CAIA Level I, 3rd Edition is the curriculum book for the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Level I professional examination. Covering the fundamentals of the alternative investment space, this book helps you build a foundation in  alternative investment markets. You'll look closely at the different types of hedge fund strategies and the range of statistics used to define investment performance as you gain a deep familiarity with alternative investment terms and develop the computational ability to solve investment problems. From strategy characteristics to portfolio management strategies, this book contains the core material you will need to succeed on the CAIA Level I exam. This updated third edition tracks to the latest version of the exam, and is accompanied by the following ancillaries: a workbook, study guide, learning objectives, and an ethics handbook.
Most investment analyst education programs focus primarily on the traditional asset classes, pushing alternative investments to the sidelines. The CAIA designation was developed in response to the tremendous growth of alternative investing, and is the industry's premier educational standard. This book is your official study companion, bringing you fully up to speed on everything you need to know (with the exception of the ethics material covered in a separate handbook).

Understand the complexities of each alternative asset class
Learn the quantitative techniques professionals use every day
Dig into the unique aspects of alternative investments
Master the core material covered by the CAIA Level I exam

More than 300 financial institutions and hedge funds have committed key executives to the CAIA exam, and this rapidly growing trend speaks to the designation's rising status as a must-have credential for anyone in the alternative investment sphere. Increase your chances of success by getting your information straight from the source in CAIA Level I.


Recent food shortages in Southern Africa, induced by rainfall variability but compounded by problems of governance and rising food prices, have resulted in massive relief efforts. A recent scientific innovation - supplying farmers with seasonal climate forecasts - has been touted as a way to increase preparedness for such situations. This book examines how climate forecasts are used by the agricultural community in Southern Africa. Based on a workshop funded by the World Bank, it covers a broad set of issues related to the use of seasonal forecasts, including factors that constrain users' capacities to respond. Case studies presented in the book explore how forecasts can potentially increase production and food security among a population highly dependent on agriculture and vulnerable to climate variability. The book reflects on how the production, delivery and uptake of seasonal forecasts might be improved, as well as the limitations to their usefulness, and it should catalyse future thinking and research in this field.


Does anthropology matter to law? As phrased, this provocation, worthy
of address though it certainly is, may ultimately be unanswerable.
The reason? Because, like all questions of this sort, it harbours others
within it. Precisely which 'anthropology'? 'Law' as what? As everyday
practice, as theorised praxis, as pedagogy, as politics by other means?
What, moreover, counts as mattering? And from where, in particular,
is the provocation being posed? All these questions, patently, make
a difference.


In this article, I discuss some earlier debates about the foundations of utility and its measurement, focusing on the contributions of Francis Y. Edgeworth (1845-1926), a famous British economist who was a leader in the development of a more mathematically structured economics in the late 1800s, and Irving Fisher (1867-1947), one of the first quantitative U.S. economists, best-known today for his work on the quantity theory and interest rate theory. Edgeworth argued that utility was directly measurable and that new developments in "physio-psychology" would make it possible to develop a "hedonimeter" that would allow economists to develop a firm physiological underpinning of utility. Fisher, while agreeing with Edgeworth that it was important to have a workable measure of utility, disagreed with Edgeworth about the possibility of doing so with a hedonimeter and, hence, of having any physiological underpinnings of utility. He argued that instead of searching for physiological underpinnings of utility, economists should instead rely upon backward induction from observed behavior to measured utility. Neither of these views about the possibility of utility measurement carried through, and attempts to measure utility were abandoned in the 1930s, when utility measurement and happiness considerations were determined to be outside the purview of economics. Both Edgeworth and Fisher knew that their approaches to utility measurement opened up a Pandora's box of problems; they opened that box, nonetheless, because they felt that theoretical economics had to be relevant to policy, and, to be relevant, it had to face the problems.


Our abilities in scene understanding, which allow us to perceive the 3D structure of our surroundings and intuitively recognise the objects we see, are things that we largely take for granted, but for robots, the task of understanding large scenes quickly remains extremely challenging. Recently, scene understanding approaches based on 3D reconstruction and semantic segmentation have become popular, but existing methods either do not scale, fail outdoors, provide only sparse reconstructions or are rather slow. In this paper, we build on a recent hash-based technique for large-scale fusion and an efficient mean-field inference algorithm for densely-connected CRFs to present what to our knowledge is the first system that can perform dense, large-scale, outdoor semantic reconstruction of a scene in (near) real time. We also present a `semantic fusion' approach that allows us to handle dynamic objects more effectively than previous approaches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on the KITTI dataset, and provide qualitative and quantitative results showing high-quality dense reconstruction and labelling of a number of scenes.


This essay is meant to prompt professional self-reflection for academics, particularly legal academics, on the appropriate relationship between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of power. Academic institutions, in theory, should be among the most robust sites in which dissent against conventional or widely-shared views of policy and law ought to find easy expression. That has long been part of the justification for the general principle of institutional academic freedom, as well as for specific organizational features of the academy, such as tenure. Yet the legal academy risks being more compromised, and increasingly so, in its ability to play this role than is often recognized. The reason is the paradox of the relationship of legal academics to actual political power. Legal academics are not just independent scholars of public policy, law, legal or political institutions. They are also often direct participants in the systems of public and private power they study. Unlike academics in most other disciplines (except, perhaps, economics), legal academics have greater opportunity for effective influence over policy, law, and politics. The various forms of practical engagement which legal scholars undertake -- consulting, litigating, testifying to Congress or courts, service in government -- have significant benefits, both in the classroom and in scholarship. But they also come with significant risks, including risk to the ability to play an essential role that justifies academic institutions, the role of being able to stand apart from existing constellations of power or interest or conventional wisdom on issues of moment.This essay identifies the various ways in which the paradoxical position of the legal academic and the temptations of access to political and legal power threaten the ability of the legal academy to be a source of dissent. The essay then explores how legal academics ought to think about the benefits and risks of the unique position of academics closely connected to the institutions and actors who wield actual political and legal power. I emphasize that the foundation for considering the role of legal academics as potentially important sources of dissent must be a belief in the existence and importance to collective decision making of expert knowledge about the kinds of questions legal academics teach, research, and write about. This premise needs emphasis because many forces press against it. American democracy since the Jacksonian era has always contained a strong strand of anti-elitism capable of being mobilized by political actors against various claims to specialized knowledge and expertise. In my view, Intellectual independence, and the capacity to dissent from various orthodoxies and structures of power is more difficult to attain and maintain than academics often recognize. That is so even though academics are institutionally and structurally situated to be in most able to resist the political or ideological conventions of the moment. As one example, I discuss the political scientist Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s distortion of history in his public attempt to legitimate President Truman's unilateral decision, without congressional authorization, to commit massive military force to defend South Korea against North Korea's attack in the 1950s. The unauthorized Korean War was a turning point in American political practice regarding unilateral presidential commitments of military force. Twenty years later, during the Vietnam War, Schlesinger publicly recanted and acknowledged that he had distorted the history to support Truman's war. This necessarily brief essay is meant mainly to raise and provoke further discussion of these issues, rather than to offer a comprehensive analysis. It is not offered as a moralistic exercise, and I have engaged in many of the practical activities I describe. But power -- political, financial, and other -- is seductive, and the tensions between it and intellectual independence are central to the modern legal academy and warrant fuller discussion.


The concrete-filled double skin tubular column (CFDST) is an innovative type of steel-concrete element which has potential for use as piers in bridges and columns in buildings. The use of self-compacting concrete (SCC) in CFDST is seen as a solution to resolve the challenge of concrete compaction in the columns. The behaviour of CFDST under static and cyclic loading at ambient temperature has been extensively studied. The fire performance of CFDST is crucial due to the direct fire exposure of the outer steel tube. Nevertheless, there is at present little information about the fire performance of CFDST. This thesis reports on research into the fire performance of SCC-filled CFDST columns. The research aims to understand the fundamental behaviour of SCC-filled CFDST columns under standard fire exposure by means of standard fire tests and finite element modelling and to develop guidance for fire resistance design of the columns. Given the complexity in the responses of SCC-filled CFDST in fires, SCC-filled steel tubular stub columns (CFST), a specific type of CFDST without an inner steel tube, were selected for study in the first phase of the research program because of their simple configuration. Six SCC-filled CFST stub columns were prepared for standard fire tests and a finite element model to simulate the thermal and structural responses was developed. The main purpose of this phase of research was to develop a methodology for the further study of fire behaviour of CDFST columns by investigating how SCC affects the fire behaviour of composite columns and how steel tube affords confinement of the SCC to alter its behaviour at elevated temperature. A series of standard fire tests for CFDST columns was conducted in the second phase of the research. Six CFDST columns and sixteen CFDST stub columns were prepared for standard fire tests. A further two CFDST stub columns were prepared as reference specimens to test the axial capacity at ambient temperature. The columns and stub columns in the tests represent slender and stub columns in authentic engineering practice in which the failure modes are buckling and compression failure respectively. Data obtained from the fire tests, i.e. temperatures, axial deformation, failure modes and fire resistance, were used to investigate the fire behaviour of the columns. Interaction among the three components in the columns during fire exposure was clearly shown in the tests. Such interaction is beneficial to the fire performance of CFDST columns. Confinement of the tubes on the SCC prevents its spalling. Components which help each other through a load transfer mechanism are typical of the composite interaction in CFDST columns. Methods to enhance the fire resistance performance of CFDST, i.e. fire protection and steel fibre reinforced concrete, were also validated in the tests. In addition, the fire tests accumulated data to verify the numerical model in the subsequent research. A finite element model was developed and used to study in detail the fire behaviour of CFDST columns and for the parametric study in the third phase of the research. An advanced finite element model which accounts for material and geometric non-linearity and the interaction of tubes and concrete was proposed to simulate the thermal and structural responses of CFDST columns under standard fire exposure. A concrete material model for confined concrete in CFDST at elevated temperature was developed accordingly. The model was then used to analyse the fire behaviour of the columns in terms of stress, strain and load share in components which cannot be obtained directly from fire tests. Yield of the inner steel tube was found to be a major cause of the final failure of the columns. The influence of a number of parameters on the fire resistance performance of the columns was investigated. The parameters which have significant influence on the fire resistance performance of the columns were identified. Finally, guidelines for the fire resistance design of CFDST columns are proposed. These guidelines deal with how to appropriately select parameters for CFDST columns to ensure the columns achieve the anticipated fire resistance. Several practical design tables are also presented to illustrate how to use the guidelines to design CFDST columns to achieve a certain level of fire resistance.


The influence of a developing bird embryo on eggshell thinning is well known, however this phenomenon has been described mainly for poultry, and in wild birds is poorly understood. This study focussed on Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), in which the effect of a developing embryo on the change of eggshell thickness has not been described. However, problems relating to a large number of dead embryos and eggs cracking during incubation are observed in captive breeding centres giving us the opportunity to test how the developing embryo affects the eggshell and thereby its properties, including eggshell strength and thickness. In total, 196 unhatched eggs, including 146 infertile and 50 eggs with embryos which died at various stages of development, were analysed in relation to eggshell shape, thickness and strength. Moreover, 102 posthatched eggshells were also examined. Although the strength of eggshell was affected by egg shape and shell thickness, contrary to expectations, the stage of embryonic development had no significant influence on eggshell strength. As has been demonstrated in other species, etching of eggshells by the developing embryo reduces shell thickness in Capercaillie but it has minimal effect on the strength of the eggshell. Egg viability is not compromised during the later stages of development by contact incubation with the female. The eggshell of infertile eggs or eggs containing early-dead embryos were 10% thicker than posthatched eggshells and eggs with late-dead embryos, confirming that eggshell thinning in Capercaillie is typical for precocial species.


We present methane (CH4) emissions for East Asia from a Bayesian inversion of CH4 mole fraction and stable isotope (δ13C‐CH4) measurements. Emissions were estimated at monthly resolution from 2000 to 2011. A posteriori, the total emission for East Asia increased from 43 ± 4 to 59 ± 4 Tg yr−1 between 2000 and 2011, owing largely to the increase in emissions from China, from 39 ± 4 to 54 ± 4 Tg yr−1, while emissions in other East Asian countries remained relatively stable. For China, South Korea, and Japan, the total emissions were smaller than the prior estimates (i.e., Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research 4.2 FT2010 for anthropogenic emissions) by an average of 29%, 20%, and 23%, respectively. For Mongolia, Taiwan, and North Korea, the total emission was less than 2 Tg yr−1 and was not significantly different from the prior. The largest reductions in emissions, compared to the prior, occurred in summer in regions important for rice agriculture suggesting that this source is overestimated in the prior. Furthermore, an analysis of the isotope data suggests that the prior underestimates emissions from landfills and ruminant animals for winter 2010 to spring 2011 (no data available for other times). The inversion also found a lower average emission trend for China, 1.2 Tg yr−1 compared to 2.8 Tg yr−1 in the prior. This trend was not constant, however, and increased significantly after 2005, up to 2.0 Tg yr−1. Overall, the changes in emissions from China explain up to 40% of the increase in global emissions in the 2000s.


Modern machine learning techniques can discover complicated statistical dependencies between ran- dom variables, usually in the form a statistical model, and make use of these dependencies to per- form predictions on future observations. How- ever, many real problems involve causal inference, which aims to infer how the data generating sys- tem should behave under changing conditions. To perform causal inference, we need not only statisti- cal dependencies but also causal structures to deter- mine the system's behavior under external interven- tions. In this paper, I will be focusing on two essen- tial problems that bridge causality and learning and investigate how they can benefit from each other. On the one hand, since conducting randomized controlled experiments for causal structure discov- ery is often expensive or infeasible, it would be valuable to investigate how we can explore modern machine learning algorithms to search for causal structures from observational data. On the other hand, since causal structure provides information about the distribution changing properties, it can be used as a fundamental tool to tackle a major chal- lenge for machine learning: the capability of gener- alization to new distributions and prediction in non- stationary environment.


In this work, critical ontogenetic stages for wing traits affected by temperature-sensitive mutation Walker (Wk) were determined. The interaction between the Wk gene and some genes responsible for the cell-cycle control was studied. At various ontogenetic stages, the mutants were exposed to 17 degrees C for 12 h, and, at the beginning of oviposition, the fly age was registered. Nine types of wing abnormalities were classified. The temperature treatment during three developmental stages (12-24, 48-60, and 96-108 h) resulted in a decrease in normal wing number and a substantial increase in wing abnormalities. Different morphological types of imaginal disks were revealed: nondifferentiated disks, those lacking the notum region, and those with duplications of wing-forming regions. The allele-specific interaction between Wk and allele v27 of the Klp61F gene was also revealed. We suggest that gene Wk is a high-ranking gene in the system of genetic control of ontogeny, because the Wk mutation is manifested in numerous phenotypic variants both in the control and in the experiment and a complete set of these variants was observed at each developmental stage upon temperature treatment. The pleiotropic effect of the Wk gene on the formation of some Drosophila organs, including eyes and halters which are beyond the scope of this report, is in agreement with this suggestion.


Parking policies and regulations are important tools in planning for the governance of urban mobility. The proper design and location of parking facilities, in fact, contributes to an efficient use of the transportation system (or it may reduce its efficiency, when these infrastructures are not properly planned). This paper discusses the role of parking as part of the policy packages for strategic planning aimed at increasing the sustainability of urban and metropolitan areas. In particular, the integration of parking strategies in a comprehensive vision for the future of a city may significantly improve the allocation of resources and the reduction of the overall environmental externalities. The role of parking in the strategic planning of cities is discussed through the analysis of several recent projects in the city of Bari (Italy). The paper discusses the way these projects are linked (or eventually not linked) to broader strategies for urban mobility, and how they might be coordinated into policy packages that promote more sustainable transportation. The use of an integrated land use transportation modeling approach to simulate the long-term evolution of the urban area may significantly contribute to estimate the long-term effects of the proposed policies. This approach may successfully support the process of policy evaluation and the selection of the optimal strategies to implement.


Even as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) expands, the study of Foreign
languages (FL) in Australia continually fails to achieve the goals described in policy or
recommended in empirical, speculative and evaluative research. At a time when active,
experiential and learner-centred education is valorised, a major gap in FL discourse is the
near-total absence of learner voices.
This educational study used ethnographic methods including an open-ended questionnaire to
investigate university learner perceptions of i) H knowledge; interactions meant to promote
FL knowledge construction; and iii) issues of motivation and connectedness. The paradigm
swings and oscillations in foreign language teaching methodology - from the Grammar
Translation Method to the communicative era - have collided with the advent of learnercentred
constructivism and a rethinking of the significance of intercultural learning. At the
same time, networked multimedia computers have sponsored expansion of Computer Assisted
Language Learning.
In this exploratory study in 1997, learners were introduced to a web-based component in their
second semester Indonesian language studies. Learner perspectives on what knowledge
construction may be mediated using this limited computer interactivity and what impact this
has on motivation and sense of connectedness were gathered for interpretive analysis.
Among findings are a clarification of the core mission of language teaching as promoting the
communicative power of learners, the role of FL teachers as negotiators of the curriculum, and
development of the emerging paradigm of Experiential, Intercultural Foreign Language
Learning. The interpretation also treats the significance of the personal and interpersonal in
Foreign Language Learning.


Originally published in 1960, "Summerhill "became an instant bestseller and a classic volume of education for an entire generation. Now, this thoroughly expanded and revised version of the original "Summerhill "reinstates the revolutionary "free school" traditions begun by Summerhill's founder A.S. Neill. As American education lags behind the rest of the world, this new edition is more timely than ever. The children of today face struggles far greater than any previous generation and we, as parents and teachers, must teach them now to make choices for themselves and to learn from the outcome of their decisions. This classic work yet again invites a new view of childhood and presents an essential treatise that challenges us to rethink our approach to education.


Mathematics (ABSTRACT) This work is concerned with the construction of preconditioners for indefinite linear systems. The systems under investigation arise in the numerical solution of quadratic programming problems, for example in the form of Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions or in interior–point methods. Therefore, the system matrix is referred to as a KKT matrix. It is not the purpose of this thesis to investigate systems arising from general quadratic programming problems, but to study systems arising in linear quadratic control problems governed by partial differential equations. The KKT matrix is symmetric, nonsingular, and indefinite. For the solution of the linear systems generalizations of the conjugate gradient method, MINRES and SYMMLQ, are used. The performance of these iterative solution methods depends on the eigenvalue distribution of the matrix and of the cost of the multiplication of the system matrix with a vector. To increase the performance of these methods, one tries to transform the system to favorably change its eigenvalue distribution. This is called preconditioning and the nonsingular transformation matrices are called preconditioners. Since the overall performance of the iterative methods also depends on the cost of matrix–vector multiplications, the preconditioner has to be constructed so that it can be applied efficiently. The preconditioners designed in this thesis are positive definite and they maintain the symmetry of the system. For the construction of the preconditioners we strongly exploit the structure of the underlying system. The preconditioners are composed of preconditioners for the submatrices in the KKT system. Therefore, known efficient preconditioners can be readily adapted to this context. The derivation of the preconditioners is motivated by the properties of the KKT matrices arising in optimal control problems. An analysis of the preconditioners is given and various cases which are important for interior point methods are treated separately. The preconditioners are tested on a typical problem, a Neumann boundary control for an elliptic equation. In many important situations the preconditioners substantially reduce the number of iterations needed by the solvers. In some cases, it can even be shown that the number of iterations for the preconditioned system is independent of the refinement of the discretization of the partial differential equation. Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor and committee chairman, Dr. Matthias Heinkenschloss, for his support and guidance which made this work possible. I want to thank Dr. Burns and Dr. Beattie for serving on my committee. They …


This thesis describes the preparation of microcrystalline dispersions of a series of organic semiconductors (the alkali metal salts of tetracyanoquinodimethane) within a host polymer. The linear optical properties of these composites are found to be dependent on the method of preparation. Their third order nonlinear optical properties are then investigated by measurement of the intensity dependence of their transmision. Close to the low energy, local excitation band saturable absorption is observed. In the region of the charge transfer band reverse saturable absorption is observed. The results are discussed in terms of a two level model.


Our national political dysfunction is rooted in constitutionally dysfunctional states. States today are devolving into modern aristocracies through laws that depress popular control, entwine wealth and power, and insulate incumbents from democratic oversight and accountability. These un-republican states corrupt the entire United States. It is for this reason that the Constitution obligates the United States to restore ailing states to their full republican strength. But how? For all its attention to process, the Constitution is silent on how the United States may exercise its sweeping Article IV power to "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." As states descend into aristocratic cabals, the question of how to enforce the guarantee is of existential importance. This article illuminates three enforcement mechanisms: direct legislation, federal incentives, and reconstructing state governments. It establishes that Congress, not the Supreme Court, is the most institutionally capable actor of addressing the republican rot now plaguing the states.


Introduction and purpose
Hip and groin injuries are a common and frequently complex problem in intense multidirectional sports such as soccer (1,2). Whilst the aetiology is thought to be multifactorial, previous research has highlighted a loss of hip muscle strength to be an important internal risk factor in the development of hip and groin injury (2). During soccer match play hip strength deficiency due to fatigue and the magnitude of this change in strength may increase the risk of injury. Therefore, the purpose of study was to investigate the effect of multidirectional soccer match play on hip muscle strength.

Methods
Seventy one male international soccer academy players (age 19.2 ±0.9, height 175.9cm ±5.8, weight 73kg ±8.2) provided consent and were recruited to the study. All players completed a 90-minute simulated soccer match play protocol using the Soccer Specific Aerobic Field Test (SAFT90, 3). Isometric strength of the players left and right hip adductor and abductor muscles was tested at 450 hip flexion using a Groinbar (Vald Performance, Queensland, Australia). Testing of hip muscle strength took place at baseline, during a standardised half time interval, and at full time upon SAFT90 completion. The SAFT90 was carried out in small groups (range 5-9 players) on a familiar synthetic pitch surface, with testing carried out over a period of eight weeks. We employed a magnitude-based inference (MBI) approach to the data analysis with the magnitude of all fixed effects interpreted using a threshold of 0.2 of the between-subject standard deviation derived from mixed linear modelling using 90% confidence intervals. Given the preliminary nature of our study, we adopted a conservative approach to inference whereby substantial effects were only declared when the probability likelihood for the effect was ≥75%.

Results
Both hip adductor and abductor muscle strength decreased as a result of participation in the SAFT90 (Table 1). Analysis using MBI's found that there was substantial (e.g. at least a likely) negative change when comparing baseline muscle adductor and abductor strength to half time and full time. This means a >75% probability participating in the SAFT90 negatively effected players hip strength. All measurements of hip strength at baseline compared to full time found a mostly likely (100%) negative change.

Conclusions
The findings from this study suggest that soccer match play leads to a substantial (>75% probability) reduction in hip adductor and abductor muscle strength. The greatest negative change was seen comparing baseline hip strength to full time strength. These results together with previous research (2) infer that towards the end of each half, and in particular the second half players may be vulnerable to hip and groin injury. This also highlights the risk of frequent soccer match play with insufficient recovery to restore hip strength may further compound this, albeit no direct injury measurement was taken. Practitioners should seek to condition hip muscle strength and resistance to fatigue, whilst ensuring sufficient recovery from match play to manage the risk of hip and groin injury and re-injury.

References
1. Werner J, Hagglund M, Walden M, and Ekstrand J. UEFA injury Study: a prospective Study of hip and groin inuries in profesional Football over seven consecutive seasons. Br J Sports Med 2009; 43:1036-1040.
2. Whittaker J, Small C, Maffey L, and Emery C. Risk factors for groin injury in sport: an updated systematic review. Br J Sports Med 2015; 49:803-809.
3. Lovell R, Knapper B, and Small K. Physiological responses to SAFT90: a new soccer-specific match simulation. In: Verona-Ghirada Team Sports Conference Proceedings 2008.


Natural language user interfaces for robots with cognitive capabilities should be designed to reduce the occurrence of miscommunication in order to be perceived as providing a smooth and intuitive interaction to its users. This paper describes how miscommunication analysis is integrated in the design process. Observations from 12 user sessions revealed that users misunderstand the robot's functionality; and that feedback sometimes is ill-timed with respect to the situation. We provide a set of design implications to prevent errors from occurring, to influence or adapt to users' behavior


Background: Though small enterprises are regarded as engine for the modern economy, they are not pioneers when it comes to implementing new advances like tacit knowledge transfer procedures. Tacit knowledge is often referred as skill, know-how and expertise which are embedded in each individual in an organization. The critical skills and competences of employees are intangible assets and firms' intellectual resources. In this context, the tacit dimension of knowledge is potentially important to be transferred among individuals, either in tacit or explicit form, to build the core capabilities of small enterprises. Problem Discussion: The existent Knowledge Management (KM) research has been mainly focused on big companies, providing little information for small enterprises. Authors believe the lack of attention that those small enterprises are putting on the strategic management of their knowledge is worrying. Tacit knowledge is one of the less explored areas within KM due to the difficulty to codify, formulate or express it. Despite this fact, it is perceived as "some kind of Holy Grail that will enable magnificent things to happen as soon as the codes of tacit knowledge have been deciphered". Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the transference of tacit knowledge among individuals within small segment of small enterprises. Method: To gather the information pertaining to tacit knowledge transfer in the small segment of small enterprises, authors have performed a qualitative and explanatory research by conducting several interviews with two small companies. Result: Tacit to tacit knowledge transfer has been identified as more relevant than tacit to explicit conversion in the small segment of small enterprises. Therefore the main drivers of the transference of tacit knowledge are learning at personal level and common culture. Time, cost and distance have been recognized as major problems for small enterprises when transferring tacit knowledge.