What do Franklin Roosevelt, Dr. Seuss, the U.S. Navy, and Mr. Magoo have in common? They are all part of the surprising story of the pioneering cartoon studio UPA (United Productions of America). Throughout the 1950s, a group of artists ran a business that broke all the rules, pushing animated films beyond the fluffy fantasy of the Walt Disney Studio and the crash-bang anarchy of Warner Bros. Instead, UPA's films were innovative and graphically bold-the cartoon equivalent to modern art. When Magoo Flew is the first book-length study to chronicle the complete story of this unique American enterprise. The book features cameo appearances by Aldous Huxley, James Thurber, Orson Welles, Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Jim Backus, Eddie Albert, and Woody Allen, as well as a select filmography of the best of UPA.


Reconnection of two antiparallel vortex tubes is studied as a prototypical coherent structure interaction to quantify compressibility effects in vorticity dynamics. Direct numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations for a perfect gas are carried out with initially polytropically related pressure and density fields. For an initial Reynolds number (Re = Γ /v, circulation divided by the kinematic viscosity) of 1000, the pointwise initial maximum Mach number (M) is varied from 0.5 to 1.45. At M=0.5, not surprisingly, the dynamics are essentially incompressible. As M increases, the transfer of Γ starts earlier. For the highest M, we find that shocklet formation between the two vortex tubes enhances early Γ transfer due to viscous cross-diffusion as well as baroclinic vorticity generation. The reconnection at later times occurs primarily due to viscous cross-diffusion for all M. However, with increasing M, the higher early Γ transfer reduces the vortices' curvature growth and hence the Γ transfer rate; i.e. for the Re case studied, the reconnection timescale increases with M. With increasing M, reduced vortex stretching by weaker 'bridges' decreases the peak vorticity at late times. Compressibility effects are significant in countering the stretching of the bridges even at late times. Our observations suggest significantly altered coherent structure dynamics in turbulent flows, when compressible.


In this study, we have investigated GCC stock market volatilities exploiting a number of asymmetric models (EGARCH, ICSS-EGARCH, GJR-GARCH, and ICSS-GJR-GARCH).This paper uses the weekly data over the period 2003-2010. The ICSS-EGARCH and ICSS-GJR-GARCH models take into account the discrete regime shifts in stochastic errors. The finding supports the widely accepted view that accounting for the regime shifts detected by the iterated cumulative sums of squares (ICSS) algorithm in the variance equations overcomes the overestimation of volatility persistence. In addition, we have discovered that the sudden changes are generally associated with global, regional, and domestic economic as well as political events. Importantly, the asymmetric model estimations use normal as well as heavy-tailed conditional densities.


Organising that is separate from state and market orgamsmg is variously called voluntary, nonprofit, not-for-profit, informal or grassroots and increasingly third sector at the more formalised scale of organising. Such third sector organising is deemed to involve people working together to serve or advocate for self or others beyond profit and coercion and is considered to support civil society.

Considerable analytical and political energy has been expended in recent decades in many jurisdictions to create the third sector as a policy entity alongside the state and market. Some claim that the third sector is being created, from the seemingly disparate array of principles and logics outside of those ofthe state and the market, in order for it to be governed. Such political creation of the third sector has occurred within the dominance of an economic paradigm and can been a considerable distraction from the triumph of such market-based principles and logics. No less energy has been expended on creating the third sector as a social space with a value-base and logics outside of those of the state and the market, but perhaps with less demonstrable results.

Classic representations of third sector positioning depict the quadratic of 'the market', 'the state', 'the third sector' and a fourth sector (such as community, households, families, or informal sectors) and their relations, variously arranging them as separate but relating, overlapping or parts of a whole. An alternate depiction of a market paradigm positioning for the third sector is posited and explored through a number of tentative accounts of manifestations or indicators of such new 'positioning' of actors and change directions. Three major flows of change are considered: from the informal sector via the third sector to market; from the third sector via the state to market; and from the state via the informal sector to the market.

Such demonstration begins to highlight some of the new 'business' of the third sector as a consumable for social entrepreneurs; as elites of business-like large providers; and as distant brokers for the state. These flows from, to and through the third sector both demonstrate the dominance of economic thinking and the precarious nature of the third sector as created 'partner' within the national political realm. Such an approach lifts our gaze to focus on transformative flows in change rather than the instrumentalism of particular changes, from a focus on changes in the third sector to third sector space as a conduit for wider change.


Border Gateway Protocol v4 (BGP-4) [1] is an inter-Autonomous System
routing protocol. It is built on experience gained with BGP as defined
in RFC-1267 [2] and BGP usage in the connected Internet as described
in RFC-1268 [3]. This memo provides information for the Internet
community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
kind.


This paper presents an analysis of regional start-up rates in the knowledge intensive services and high-tech industries. To supplement prevailing frameworks focusing mainly on supply-side economic factors, we integrate insights from economic geography and population ecology to the entrepreneurship literature as to present a theoretical framework that captures both supply-and demand-side factors, with a specific emphasis on the demand side. Using a rich multi-level data material on all knowledge intensive start-ups across the 286 Swedish municipalities between 1994 and 2002, the empirical analysis focuses on how characteristics of the economic milieu of regions influence firm births. We find that economically affluent regions dominate entrepreneurial activity in terms of firm births, yet a number of much smaller rural region revealed high levels of start ups. Both economic and sociological variables such as knowledge spillovers from universities and firm R&D, and the political regulatory regime within the municipality, exhibit strong influences on firm births. These patterns points to strong support for the notion that 'the geographic connection' is important for analyzing entrepreneurial processes.


ABSTRACT Herein we provide the first report of the diversity of fungi and fungus-like organisms within a Mesozoic hot spring ecosystem. The Jurassic San Agustín hot spring deposit (Patagonia, Argentina), represents only the second known Phanerozoic hot spring ecosystem with an associated microflora and contains diverse, exceptionally preserved microorganisms. Preserved propagules include flask-shaped pycnidia produced by extant coelomycetes, shield-like and nearly round thyriothecia of extant Microthyriales in the ascomycetes, variously shaped spore-like bodies representing chytrid and chytrid-like zoosporangia and other life cycle forms, and additional fungal and fungus-like remains (spores, hyphal fragments, reproductive structures) of uncertain affinity. Many of these microorganisms are associated with variously decayed organic remains, most commonly of horsetails. This expands the fungal fossil record and provides a unique opportunity to learn about the biology of Mesozoic microorganisms.


The present thesis set out to investigate how sensory modality and spatial presentation influence visual and auditory duration judgments in the millisecond range. The effects of modality and spatial location were explored by considering right and left side presentations of mixed or blocked visual and auditory stimuli. Several studies have shown that perceived duration of a stimulus can be affected by various extra-temporal factors such as modality and spatial position. Auditory stimuli lead to more precise duration judgments than visual stimuli and often last subjectively longer than visual stimuli of equal duration. The circumstances under which these modality differences occur are not clear yet. Recent studies indicated an interaction between temporal and spatial processing. Overestimation of durations was associated with right side presentation of visual stimuli, underestimation with left side presentation. However, the effect of spatial presentation has not been explored in the auditory temporal judgments. Furthermore, there is a debate concerning the mechanisms underlying processing of visual and auditory intervals with some researchers supporting the view that there is a central, amodal temporal mechanism and others arguing in favour of distinct, modality specific temporal mechanisms. The above issues were examined in a series of experiments using the duration discrimination paradigm. Processing demands where iv varied between experiments by varying the number of stimuli positions and the way that different modality trials were presented (mixed or blocked). Across all experiments we found no effect of location either in visual or auditory domain. However, in experiments in which different modality trials were intermixed, participants in the visual versions of the task tended to overestimate durations of comparison stimuli that were presented at different locations to the standard stimuli. In such conditions, visual stimuli were also judged to be longer than the auditory. However, when the location of the comparison stimulus was at the same side as the standard a reverse effect was observed. These findings call into question an influence of the position per se on temporal judgments as the visual duration judgments were affected rather by the change of the location. Auditory judgments were not affected by location manipulations, suggesting that different mechanisms might underlie visual and auditory temporal processing. Based on these results, we propose the existence of an error-correction mechanism, according to which a specific duration is added in order to compensate for the loss of time caused by spatial attention shifts. This mechanism is revealed under some circumstances (such as mixed modality) where it is over-activated, resulting into a systematic bias. This work has important implications for the contemporary research in time perception as it is shedding new light on the possible ways that a unified experience of timing arises from modally and spatially specific temporal mechanisms.


Nontranspiring (covered) leaf water potential on greenhouse-grown chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) leaves was measured with the pressure chamber and leaf-cutter psychrometer techniques over a range of water potentials. Potentials measured with the leaf-cutter psychrometer technique were highly variable and not well correlated with the values measured with the pressure chamber. The objectives of this study were to identify the basis for the discrepancy between the two techniques and to identify procedures to minimize the errors. Intentionally damaging 15% of the disc caused an increase (less negative) in the potentials measured in the psychrometers relative to those measured in the pressure chamber. When leaves were sampled with a sharp razor or a new biopsy punch, however, potential values similar to those measured by the pressure chamber were obtained. We conclude that unintentional damage caused by the psychrometer's cutter can give erroneous values of leaf water potential measured by leaf-cutter psychrometry.


Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of whether working capital management (WCM) has an effect on the profitability of small- and medium-sized Norwegian firms. Design/methodology/approach - – The data comprise 21,075 Norwegian small- and medium-sized enterprises and 84,300 observations made between 2010 and 2013. Panel data regressions were applied with fixed effects and a two-stage least squares analysis was employed to control for endogeneity. Findings - – The results indicate that reducing cash conversion cycle will increase profitability. Even though endogeneity may exist, this does not affect the results from the previous analysis. Similar results are also obtained when industry-specific effects are controlled for, supporting the robustness of the results. The relevance of quadratic dependencies of the profitability on independent variables was also identified and suggests a decreasing trend of return on assets with increasing values of the WCM's characteristic variables. Research limitations/implications - – Drawing on similar studies, this study confirms that WCM is relevant for firms' profitability. Practical implications - – The practice of aggressive working capital policy in Norwegian firms is confirmed by the results of this study. Originality/value - – This study contributes to the current research on the relationship between WCM and profitability by using a large dataset to add further robustness to results, and thus verifying whether or not the results in previous studies may be confirmed or not. Moreover, this is the first published study about this relationship among Norwegian firms in different industries, thus filling a gap in similar research conducted in other European countries.


Background: Depression is the mental disorder that affects the population and is also a major cause of disability in the world has become an increasingly common factor in the population, particularly in adolescents; a stage in life that has been considered risk to suffer depression.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study, with a population of 120 teenage students from 12 to 19 years, a representative sample of 84 students was chosen, they were excluded those who did not meet the inclusion criteria for a total of 77 students. Underwent a semi structured survey designed for this purpose and are applied S.Q.R test for depression, Rosenberg test for self-esteem, Cage test for alcohol abuse and family APGAR for family functioning.
Discussion: 19.5% with a presumptive diagnosis of depressive disorder, of which 60% have low self-esteem, 80% belong to a dysfunctional family and 20% consume alcohol was found.
Conclusion: as predisposing psychosocial factors are low self-esteem and belonging to a dysfunctional family but need further studies to determine the level of association of these factors with the presumptive diagnosis of depression in school adolescents.


In this paper we sketch out a two-way-path from the general definition of collective intelligence to the specific usage of collective intelligence in 'corporate web 2.0' and back again. On the one hand we argue for a better formal underpinning of the connection of micro-level activities and macro-level emergents in the context of collective intelligence. On the other hand we reason that explicit consideration of examples from the web 2.0 in the discussion of collective intelligence will lead to better models of collective intelligence if done systematically. We propose a first step towards a model that could help to understand emergence and individual motivation in collective intelligence systems.


Role-playing games, and other types of contemporary video games, usually contain a main storyline consisting of several causally related quests. As players have different motivations, tastes and preferences, it can be beneficial to customize game plotlines. In this paper, we present an offline algorithm for adapting human-authored game plotlines for computer role-playing games to suit the unique needs of individual players, thereby customizing gaming experiences and enhancing re-playability. Our approach uses an plan refinement technique based on partial-order planning to (a) optimize the global structure of the plotline according to input from a player model, (b) maintain plotline coherence, and (c) facilitate authorial intent by preserving as much of the original plotline as possible. A theoretical analysis of the authorial leverage and a user study suggest the benefits of this approach.


In this chapter I traverse the empirical cycle to analyze the use of conceptual metaphors for anger, love, and sadness in authentic discourse between experts and laypersons. The results gained by examining corpus data of expert-lay communication in psychology guide me in formulating my hypothesis regarding the factors that account for the differences between experts and laypersons in metaphor use. Following the empirical cycle, this hypothesis is then tested by collecting evidence from a methodologically different study in which data are elicited in guided interviews with laypersons. Relating the evidence from the two studies leads to a refinement of my initial hypothesis about the aspects contributing to the differences in the use of emotion metaphors between experts and laypersons.


Kiswahili has historically been used as a lingua franca since pre-colonial times in Kenya. The attainment of independence over fifty one years ago saw the political recognition of Kiswahili as a national language. This has resulted in the progressive enhancement in status of Kiswahili, both as a compulsory examinable subject and lately, as an official language. As a result of its checkered past, and also as a consequence of language contact, Kiswahili is represented in two broad varieties in Kenya: the theoretical standard variety and the regional non-standard varieties which are a stark reality in the present day Kenya. It is from this background that the current study examined morphosyntactic variability in a regional variety of Kiswahili spoken in Kakamega County. The study was guided by the Labovian Language Variation Theory (Labov, 1972) and the Generative Morphological Theory (Katamba, 1993). This was a variationist sociolinguistic study that employed combined quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative linguistic descriptions were employed to examine variations in the use of verbal affixes in Luhya Kiswahili. This was complemented by quantitative analyses of the patterns of morphological variations which were correlated with social variables. The study targeted natives of Kakamega County who were first language speakers of Luhya and second language speakers of Kiswahili. They were rural men and women of ages ranging between 14 and 59 years old. Data were collected in sociolinguistic interviews from a sample of sixteen speakers who were identified using judgmental procedures from Khayega location in Kakamega East district. Three morphosyntactic variables were correlated with the social variables of age, gender and educational level. Findings show that the three linguistic variables exhibit clear and consistent differences between Luhya Kiswahili and standard Kiswahili. Variations in three linguistic variables suggest the possibility of substratum interference whereby Luhya linguistic structures seem to influence the Kiswahili linguistic structures. A principal claim of the study is that the verbal suffixes [-ANGA] and [-KO] represent stereotypes of Luhya Kiswahili. As regards the effect of the three social variables on the three linguistic variables, this study established that educational level was highly significant, while gender was shown to be minimally significant. Age, on the other hand, was not significant at all. A major implication of this study is that regional Kiswahili varieties like Luhya Kiswahili mark ethnicity.


Received 12 July 2006; revised manuscript received 29 November 2006; published 9 February 2007 Coupled quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical QM/MM calculations were used to study the effects of large defects and cracks on the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes and graphene sheets. The semi-empirical method PM3 was used to treat the QM subdomains and a Tersoff-Brenner potential was used for the molecular mechanics; some of the QM calculations were also done using density functional theory DFT. Scaling of the Tersoff-Brenner potential so that the modulus and overall stress-strain behavior of the QM and MM models matched quite closely was essential for obtaining meaningful coupled calculations of the mechanical properties. The numerical results show that at the nanoscale, the weakening effects of holes, slits, and cracks vary only moderately with the shape of the defect, and instead depend primarily on the cross section of the defect perpendicular to the loading direction and the structure near the fracture initiation point. The fracture stresses for defective graphene sheets are in surprisingly good agreement with the Griffith formula for defects as small as 10 A, which calls into question the notion of nanoscale flaw tolerance. The energy release rate at the point of crack extension in graphene was calculated by the J-integral method and exceeds twice the surface energy density by 10% for the QMDFT/MM results, which indicates a modest lattice trapping effect.


Measurements of brain electrical activity in animals are essential for the validation of the pharmaco-effect of drugs. The way to evaluate these recordings should be comparable to that of EEG in humans. Methods that visualize the results of the measured EEG recording include brain mapping in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. The most commonly used methods of interpolation techniques in humans are spherical splines and 3D splines. We measured nine brains of Wistar rats and compared them with a brain model from the atlas (Brain Atlas Reconstructor, BAR). We validated the brain model of Wistar rat for future use. We implemented a module in MATLAB 2015a for brain mapping, specifically, we implemented algorithms for spherical and 3D spline mapping. The root mean square error of the spherical spline method is 0.5943 in the case of testing signal and 0.6291/0.6388 in the case of real data estimation. The root mean square error of the 3D spline method is 0.4334 in the case of testing signal and 0.0849/0.0768 in the case of real data estimation. Our results show that the 3D spline method with the projection on sphere gives significantly better 3D potential map than spherical splines.


Few educators believe that the complex processes contributing to learning in classrooms occur randomly or chaotically. Quite the contrary,
most argue that there Is an order in classrooms that is stable and repeatable and ultimately allows students to achieve. Curriculum guides are written,· textbooks selected, and teachers trained to ensure the presence of certain Critical ingredients required for "effective instruction." Yet, despite the care and control involved in the educational process, wide discrepancies appear when students are evaluated. Educators point to the variables that influence the quality of the learning process: the heterogeneity of learners, economic disparity among school districts, and questionable teaching practices.


Sutherlandia frutescens  (L) R. Br. contains several essential, bioactive compounds with clinically proven pharmacological activities. Sutherlandia is prescribed for people with tuberculosis but it is still not known what compounds in this plant act against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its mode of action. This study is aimed at determining if  S. frutescens  extracts contain antimycobacterial compounds. Aerial parts of  S. frutescens  were dried, ground and extracted with ethanol, dichloromethane: methanol 1:1 (v/v) and water. The chemical profiling was done using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy (HPLC-MS) and thin layer chromatography (TLC). TLC plates were developed in butanol:acetic acid:water (BAW) to the ratio of 21:6:3; chloroform:methanol:water:formic acid (CMWF1) [60:15:2:1] and (CMWF2) [21:9:1:0.3]. Qualitative antioxidant activity was done, using 2.2-diphenylpacryl-1-hydrazyl (DPPH). Antimycobacterial activity of the plant extracts was evaluated, using micro-dilution and bioautographic methods against  Mycobacterium smegmatis . Low antimycobacterial activity against  M. smegmatis  was observed on the bioautograms. The ethanol extracts contained more compounds compared to water extracts on HPLC-MS chromatographic profiles. The average Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) values for all the extracts were 0.61 mg/mL units and the DCM:MeOH (1:1) extract had the lowest MIC value of 0.28 mg/mL. The results showed that the plant could be further explored for possible antimycobacterial agents. Low activity was observed, possibly due to low replication of bacilli and non-replicating organisms. The study provides preliminary scientific validation of the traditional medicinal use of this plant. Further studies are required to identify the bioactive compounds in the DCM:MeOH 1:1 extract which showed significant antimycobacterial activities. Research correlation:  This article is the original version, of which an Afrikaans translation was made available to provide access to a larger readership, available here:  https://doi.org/10.4102/satnt.v36i1.1494


The acquisition of distinct cell fates is central to the development of multicellular organisms and is largely mediated by gene expression patterns specific to individual cells and tissues. A spatially and temporally resolved analysis of gene expression facilitates the elucidation of transcriptional networks linked to cellular identity and function. We present an approach that allows cell type-specific transcriptional profiling of distinct target cells, which are rare and difficult to access, with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. We combined laser-assisted microdissection (LAM), linear amplification starting from <1 ng of total RNA, and RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq). As a model we used the central cell of the Arabidopsis thaliana female gametophyte, one of the female gametes harbored in the reproductive organs of the flower. We estimated the number of expressed genes to be more than twice the number reported previously in a study using LAM and ATH1 microarrays, and identified several classes of genes that were systematically underrepresented in the transcriptome measured with the ATH1 microarray. Among them are many genes that are likely to be important for developmental processes and specific cellular functions. In addition, we identified several intergenic regions, which are likely to be transcribed, and describe a considerable fraction of reads mapping to introns and regions flanking annotated loci, which may represent alternative transcript isoforms. Finally, we performed a de novo assembly of the transcriptome and show that the method is suitable for studying individual cell types of organisms lacking reference sequence information, demonstrating that this approach can be applied to most eukaryotic organisms.


Lalley and Weyl (Quadratic voting, 2016) propose a mechanism for binary collective decisions, Quadratic Voting (QV), and prove its approximate efficiency in large populations in a stylized environment. They motivate their proposal substantially based on its greater robustness when compared with pre-existing efficient collective decision mechanisms. However, these suggestions are based purely on discussion of structural properties of the mechanism. In this paper, I study these robustness properties quantitatively in an equilibrium model. Given the mathematical challenges with establishing results on QV fully formally, my analysis relies on a number of structural conjectures that have been proven in analogous settings in the literature, but in the models I consider here. While most of the factors I study reduce the efficiency of QV to some extent, it is reasonably robust to all of them and quite robustly outperforms one-person-one-vote. Collusion and fraud, except on a very large scale, are deterred either by unilateral deviation incentives or by the reactions of non-participants to the possibility of their occurring. I am able to study aggregate uncertainty only for particular parametric distributions, but using the most canonical structures in the literature I find that such uncertainty reduces limiting efficiency, but never by a large magnitude. Voter mistakes or non-instrumental motivations for voting, so long as they are uncorrelated with values, may either enhance or harm efficiency depending on the setting. These findings contrast with existing (approximately) efficient mechanisms, all of which are highly sensitive to at least one of these factors.


Previous efforts to enhance thermoelectric performance have primarily focused on reduction in lattice thermal conductivity caused by broad-based phonon scattering across multiple length scales. Herein, we demonstrate a design strategy which provides for simultaneous improvement of electrical and thermal properties of p-type PbSe and leads to ZT ~ 1.6 at 923 K, the highest ever reported for a tellurium-free chalcogenide. Our strategy goes beyond the recent ideas of reducing thermal conductivity by adding two key new theory-guided concepts in engineering, both electronic structure and band alignment across nanostructure-matrix interface. Utilizing density functional theory for calculations of valence band energy levels of nanoscale precipitates of CdS, CdSe, ZnS, and ZnSe, we infer favorable valence band alignments between PbSe and compositionally alloyed nanostructures of CdS1-xSex/ZnS1-xSex. Then by alloying Cd on the cation sublattice of PbSe, we tailor the electronic structure of its two valence bands (light hole L and heavy hole Σ) to move closer in energy, thereby enabling the enhancement of the Seebeck coefficients and the power factor.


This paper argues that the socialist episode in East Germany, which constituted a radical experiment in gender equality in the labor market and other instances, has left persistent tracks on gender norms. We focus on one of the most resilient and pervasive gender gaps in modern societies: mathematics. Using the German division as a natural experiment, we show that the underperformance of girls in math is sharply reduced in the regions of the former GDR, in contrast with those of the former FRG. We show that this East-West difference is due to girls' attitudes, confidence and competitiveness in math, and not to other confounding factors, such as the difference in economic conditions or teaching styles across the former political border. We also provide illustrative evidence that the gender gap in math is smaller in European countries that used to be part of the Soviet bloc, as opposed to the rest of Europe. The lesson is twofold: (1) a large part of the pervasive gender gap in math is due to social stereotypes; (2) institutions can durably modify these stereotypes. JEL codes: I2, J16, J24, P36, Z13


This article argues that the Council of Europe's European Language Portfolio is capable of supporting the implementation of language learner autonomy on a large scale. It begins by explaining what the author understands by 'language learner autonomy', then introduces the European Language Portfolio and explains how it can stimulate reflective learning in which goal setting and self-assessment play a central role. It concludes by giving two practical examples that involve the learning of L2 English in Ireland, in one case by adult immigrants with refugee status and in the other by newcomer pupils in primary schools.


This paper introduces a novel approach to monitor pressure dynamics in turbomachinery. This innovation is motivated by the need expressed by machine OEMs and end-users to detect and avoid combustion instabilities, as well as lean-blowout (LBO), in low emission combustion systems. Such situations are often characterised by a marked increase of pressure signals in low frequency range. The piezoelectric technology, conventionally used for pressure measurements, presents sensitivity and stability issues at high temperatures and low frequencies. Here a new paradigm for pressure sensing, based on optical interferometry, is characterised and validated.
 The interferometric sensing system is designed to provide a larger range of measurement frequencies with better performance, in the low frequency range (< 50Hz), while exposed to high temperatures. This unique feature allows the real-time observation of events, such as the specific behaviour of a low frequency flame dynamic, which is characteristic of an imminent LBO. This improved monitoring system will support an optimisation of the machine performance, leading to a safer, cleaner, more flexible and more cost-efficient operation for the end-user.
 The novel measurement system has been characterised under non-reactive and reactive conditions within the frame of a joint study between Meggitt SA, Combustion Bay One e.U. and FH Joanneum GmbH. The technology is first described, including the relevant hardware and software components of the measurement chain. The different experimental set-ups and conditions are also illustrated. The results of the test campaign and their subsequent analysis are then presented, supporting the expected advantages over piezoelectric technology. In conclusion, a possible strategy for the detection of LBO precursors based on low frequency data is proposed.


The work described here explores the problem of how digital technologies can enrich the experience of spatiality and social interaction in space(s). An existing café space at the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is linked to a "twin" in the form of an online-accessible environment. Sensors and displays establish channels of communication between the virtual and the physical space, enabling on-site visitors to the café and online visitors to the website to share a spatial experience. The article explains the design of modes of communication between the spaces, outlining the theory and genesis of the project and discussing issues and principles in the design and realization of such spaces, including the interplay between the three-dimensionality of the physical space and the two-dimensional picture-plane-based monitor interface through which the website is experienced, as well as strategies for the transmission of spatial experience within the constraints of commonly-available hardware and software.


In modern business, standards are too important to be ignored. But what is the rationale for active engagement in long and costly standardization processes when most of those standards will be openly available for a much lower price once they are finalized? What are the strategic motives for engaging in such processes? And even when the motives are clear, how is corporate standardization managed, both inside and outside of the organization? Prior standardization and strategic management literatures have not explored these inquiries, leading to a limited understanding of corporate standardization management and its drivers, complexities, and potential.An in-depth comparative case study of two heavy-truck manufacturers, Scania AB and Volvo Group, provides insights into organizations' varied choices, rationales and desired outcomes in regard to corporate standardization management. Depending on the organizations' corporate strategies and particular needs, different standardization approaches may serve them most effectively. The findings from this qualitative study provide empirical evidence for at least two standardization approaches emerging in the context of voluntary consensus-driven standardization settings, namely the assertive approach and the vigilant one. The choice of standardization approach should comprise a deliberate and informed managerial decision, while the findings indicate that active engagement in standardization work could function as an effective way for managing organizations' resource dependence and environmental uncertainties and hence shall be catalogued as such, advancing Resource Dependence theory.Finally, this study highlights corporate standardization management from a coopetitive angle, which to some degree appears to resolve inter-organizational tensions within standardization settings, by demonstrating the possibilities of "win-win strategies". In other words, this thesis manifests the theoretical relevance of coopetitive stances in the contemporary, increasingly complex business environments, where old-school competitive viewpoints might prove insufficient for success or even survival. (Less)


365 days. 365 stories. Some of them are familiar to every football fan, such as the 1966 World Cup Final or the 1985 Heysel disaster, but what about the day a dog urinated on Jimmy Greaves mid-match in 1962, or the accidental death of Celtic goalkeeper John Thomson during a 1931 Old Firm game? From FA Cup shocks to betting scandals and from football's greatest games to football's greatest battles (a toss-up between Estudiantes vs Milan in 1969 and Batty vs Le Saux in 1995), "Day of the Match" is entertaining football trivia at its very best, bursting at the seams with funny, tragic, forgotten stories from the history of the beautiful game.


Despite the success of kernel-based nonparametric methods, kernel selection still requires considerable expertise, and is often described as a "black art." We present a sophisticated method for automatically searching for an appropriate kernel from an infinite space of potential choices. Previous efforts in this direction have focused on traversing a kernel grammar, only examining the data via computation of marginal likelihood. Our proposed search method is based on Bayesian optimization in model space, where we reason about model evidence as a function to be maximized. We explicitly reason about the data distribution and how it induces similarity between potential model choices in terms of the explanations they can offer for observed data. In this light, we construct a novel kernel between models to explain a given dataset. Our method is capable of finding a model that explains a given dataset well without any human assistance, often with fewer computations of model evidence than previous approaches, a claim we demonstrate empirically.


In Marchenko imaging, wavefields are retrieved at specified focal points in the subsurface through an iterative scheme derived from the multidimensional Marchenko equation. The method requires seismic-reflection data at the earth's surface (after free-surface multiple elimination) and an estimate of the direct wavefield from the surface to each focal point, which can be computed, for instance, in a macrovelocity model. In the first iteration, the direct wavefield is crosscorrelated with the reflection data. This operation is identical to inverse-wavefield extrapolation as is applied commonly in various imaging schemes, for instance, in reverse time migration (RTM). At each succeeding iteration, the result of the previous iteration is truncated in time and crosscorrelated with the reflection data again. To obtain a seismic image, a multidimensional deconvolution-based imaging condition can be applied to the retrieved wavefields. By this approach, both primary reflections and internal multiples contribute to the construction of the image. Alternatively, a crosscorrelation-based imaging condition can be used in which only the primary reflections are imaged and the contributions of internal multiples are subtracted. The latter strategy offers more flexibility because the subtraction of redatumed internal multiples can be implemented adaptively. Through this approach, the artifacts from internal multiples can be removed effectively from a conventional RTM image.


The paper focuses on how a model could be learnt for determining at runtime how much of spoken input needs to be understood, and what configuration of processes can be expected to yield that result. Typically, a dialogue system applies a fixed configuration of shallow and deep forms of processing to its input. The configuration tries to balance robustness with depth of understanding, creating a system that always tries to understand as well as it can. The paper adopts a different view, assuming that what needs to be understood can vary per context. To facilitate this any-depth processing, the paper proposes an approach based on learnable controllers. The paper illustrates the main ideas of the approach on examples from a robot acquiring situated dialogue competence, and a robot working with users on a task.


SUMMARY 1. Nutrient recycling by fish can be an important part of nutrient cycles in both freshwater and marine ecosystems. As a result, understanding the mechanisms that influence excretion elemental ratios of fish is of great importance to a complete understanding of aquatic nutrient cycles. As fish consume a wide range of diets that differ in elemental composition, stoichiometric theory can inform predictions about dietary effects on excretion ratios. 2. We conducted a meta-analysis to test the effects of diet elemental composition on consumption and nutrient excretion by fish. We examined the relationship between consumption rate and diet N : P across all laboratory studies and calculated effect sizes for each excretion metric to test for significant effects. 3. Consumption rate of N, but not P, was significantly negatively affected by diet N : P. Effect sizes of diet elemental composition on consumption-specific excretion N, P and N : P in laboratory studies were all significantly different from 0, but effect size for raw excretion N : P was not significantly different from zero in laboratory or field surveys. 4. Our results highlight the importance of having a mechanistic understanding of the drivers of consumer excretion rates and ratios. We suggest that more research is needed on how consumption and assimilation efficiency vary with N : P and in natural ecosystems in order to further understand mechanistic processes in consumer-driven nutrient recycling.


In this paper, we present a new framework for organizing image collections into structures that can be used for indexing, browsing, retrieval and summarization. Instead of using tree-based techniques which are not suitable for images, we develop a new solution that is specifically designed for image collections. We consider both low-level image content and high-level semantics in an attempt to alleviate the semantic gap encountered by many systems. The fact that our model is based on a probabilistic framework makes it possible to combine it in a natural way with probabilistic techniques developed recently for image retrieval. The structure our model generates is applied for four purposes. The first is to provide retrieval module with an index, which allows it to improve retrieval time and accuracy, while the second is to provide users with a hierarchical browsing catalog that allows them to navigate the image collection by subject. This represents an additional step towards facilitating human-computer interaction in the context of image retrieval and navigation. The third aim is to provide users with a summarization of the general content of each class in the collection, and the fourth is a retrieval mechanism. Related issues such as relevance feedback and feature selection are also addressed. The experiments at the end of the paper show that the proposed framework yields some significant improvements


A major retrospective exhibition of the work of acclaimed Indian artist Sheela Gowda co-curated by Annie Fletcher and Grant Watson. Open Eye Policy is an overview of the artist's work from 1992 to 2012. This exhibition provides the opportunity to discover the work of this extraordinary artist, who was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize 2014. The exhibition presents artworks never exhibited together and constitutes the basis for a proper evaluation of the artist's historical and cultural significance.

The series of artworks presented can be divided into different, though interlinked, sections regarding works with cow dung, small and big installations, and digital works. In the selected works the cow dung is used on the picture surface as well as in sculptures, taking the shape of a dense pigment on paintings and of concrete material in sculptural installations such as Stock. The most significant large-scale installations include Kagebangara, Of All people, And… and Some Place, are made from materials as diverse as threads coated in KumKum (a red organic pigment used on the forehead and in rituals), flattened tar barrels (from which road workers make temporary shelters), metal piping, woven hair ropes and small wooden figures with votive functions.

Born 1957 in India, Gowda trained as a painter, and now works with a variety of media and material, which are often presented as installations. Selected international exhibitions include Documenta 12, 2007; Sharjah Biennale 2008, 53rd Venice Biennale 2009; and Singapore Biennial 2011. She has had solo exhibitions at InIVA London; NAS Gallery, Sydney; OCA, Oslo; Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, and GallerySKE, Bangalore. Gowda lives and works in Bangalore.

This exhibition is a touring project co-produced with Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Lunds Konsthall and IMMA. The exhibition has been shown at the Van Abbemuseum and Lunds Konsthall and is currently showing at the Centre international d'art et du paysage, Vassiviere Island, France.


The propagation of solitons in low-birefringent optical fiber is considered when four-wave-mixing leads to energy exchange between polarization components. The stability of stationary solutions is addressed with a linear stability analysis expressed as an eigenvalue equation. It is shown that in the vicinity of the bifurcation point the eigenvalues must be either pure real (stable) or pure imaginary (unstable). The transition between these (zero eigenvalue) lends itself to analytical solutions, in spite of the nonintegrability of the original system of partial differential equations. It is demonstrated that the marginally stable perturbations of phase shift and temporal shift also apply to mixed-mode stationary solutions. The bifurcation point is found exactly along with the corresponding eigenfunction. This analysis provides the elliptically polarized stationary solution just above the bifurcation point. It is also shown that the fast-mode soliton just below the bifurcation point and the elliptically polarized soliton just above the bifurcation point are stable.


Abstract Augmented reality (AR) deepens learning interactions by imposing digital information on top of physical settings. This study implemented an AR-enhanced theme-based contextualized learning and aimed to examine the effects of captions (non-caption, English caption and Chinese caption) and English proficiency (less proficient and proficient) on junior high school students' English learning effectiveness, motivation and attitude. Six classes of ninth-graders voluntarily participated in the experimental learning sessions using tablets. A factorial design was employed, and the participants' learning performance, motivation and attitude were evaluated. The results indicated that captions did not affect knowledge comprehension, but English proficiency played a significant role in it. The effects of captions and English proficiency on knowledge application indicated that English captions placed high cognitive load and hindered less proficient learners' knowledge application, but proficient learners performed equally under different caption conditions. Generally, students demonstrated positive motivation toward learning from the AR-enhanced contextualized learning. The proficient learners were more motivated in terms of self-efficacy, proactive learning and learning value. All learners expressed positive attitude toward learning, among whom, those who learned without captions showed greater degrees of confidence and preferences, and the proficient learners showed greater degrees of confidence, preferences, learning process and learning strategy but lower degrees of anxiety.


Rifampicin is a first-line drug widely used in the treatment of tuberculosis both in the intensive and in the treatment phase. In this work we characterized the crystal structure of form I of anhydrous rifampicin mainly by using X-ray powder diffraction data combined with the Rietveld method. Other complementary techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermal analysis were also employed. It crystallized in a monoclinic crystal system with space group C2 and the following unit cell parameters: a = 25.8846(2) A, b = 14.2965(2) A, c = 14.2796(2) A, β = 122.98(1)°, V = 4432.81(7) A3, Z = 4, Z′ = 1 and ρcalc = 1.23310(2) g cm−3. A BFDH model was used to inspect the crystal morphology prediction, and great similarity with crystals observed on an optical microscope was found. The FTIR spectrum confirmed the results obtained by X-ray powder diffraction, which indicates that all the functional groups involved in H bonding are intramolecularly connected. This polymorphic form presented a thermal stability up to approximately 230 °C.


This memo provides the supporting test plan and results to advance RFC
2680, a performance metric RFC defining one-way packet loss metrics,
along the Standards Track. Observing that the metric definitions
themselves should be the primary focus rather than the implementations
of metrics, this memo describes the test procedures to evaluate
specific metric requirement clauses to determine if the requirement
has been interpreted and implemented as intended. Two completely
independent implementations have been tested against the key
specifications of RFC 2680.


Distributed computing environments allow collaborative problem solving across teams and organisations. A fundamental precondition for collaboration is the ability to find available participants and be able to exchange information. One way to approach this conceptual formulation are central directories or registry services. A major disadvantage of centralized components is, that they limit the flexibility to form ad hoc networks that are targeted to solve a specific problem. To facilitate flexible and dynamic collaborations, ideas from decentralized and self-organising networks can be combined with concepts of service oriented computing. This project aims to investigate potential solutions for dynamic discovery of network participants and outlines how to manage challenges associated with the development of a discovery protocol for distributed systems. During the course of this project a prototypical implementation was created that integrates into the open source distributed, collaborative problem solving environment RCE [9]. It is currently developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) but is planned to make the framework available to broader community.


Vision in infant primates is poor, but it is not known which structures in the eye or brain set the main limits to its development. We studied the visual response properties of 348 neurons recorded in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of macaque monkeys aged 1 week to adult. We measured spatial and temporal frequency tuning curves and contrast responses with drifting achromatic sinusoidal gratings. Even in animals as young as 1 week, the main visual response properties of neurons in the magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) divisions of the LGN were qualitatively normal, including the spatial organization of receptive fields and the characteristic response properties that differentiate M- and P-cells. At 1 and 4 weeks, spatial and temporal resolution were less than one-half of adult values, whereas contrast gain and peak response rates for optimal stimuli were about two-thirds of adult values. Adult levels were reached by 24 weeks. Analysis of correlations between S-potentials representing retinal inputs and LGN cells suggested that the LGN follows retinal input as faithfully in infants as in adults, implicating retinal development as the main driving force in LGN development. Comparisons with previously published psychophysical data and ideal observer models suggest that the relatively modest changes in LGN responses during maturation impose no significant limits on visual performance. In contrast to previous studies, we conclude that these limits are set by neural development in the visual cortex, not in or peripheral to the LGN.


GEO-REFERENCED VIDEO-MOSAICKING AS AMEANS TO GIS-SUPPORTED SEA FLOORCOMMUNITY MAPPING AT HAKON MOSBY MUDVOLCANOK. Jerosch (1), M. Schluter (1), J.-P. Foucher (2)(1) Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany, (2) InstituteFrancais de Recherche pour l Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), FranceDuring RV Polarstern cruise ARK XIX3b (2003), we conducted geo-referenced videomosaickingto enhance our knowledge of the distribution of different community typesat the Hakon Mosby Mud Volcano (HMMV). This distribution is most likely linked tocertain biological and sedimentological characteristics which select for these communities.Special emphasis was put on the distribution and density of conspicuous whitemats that consisted of sulphur-oxidizing bacteria(dominant species: Beggiatoa)and ofpogonophoran worms, who rely on endosymbiotic bacteria.A vertical camera that was mounted onto the remotely operated vehicle Victor 6000generated a video flow which was processed by means of the IFREMER software MATISSE.This software facilitated the process of digital merging of images to mosaics.Navigational data including dead-reckoning and acoustic USBL positioning providedthe basis for geo-referencing of the images.As all data were geo-referenced we were able to carry out spatial analyses (GIS).This analysis allowed us to estimate the percentage coverage of different habitat typeswhich can subsequently be overlaid with other parameters defining habitat structure,e.g. bottom temperature and salinity, to accomplish a multi-disciplinary view of theHMMV and improve our understanding of this ecosystem.The mosaics obtained encompass 9% of the total edifice of the volcano increasing boththe accuracy and resolution of previous community and habitat maps. The footageshowed that bacterial mats and pogonophoran worms colonized extensive areas ofHMMV. Areas with a rough topography and small patches of sulfide oxidizing communitieswere interpreted to indicate large methane release. A provided methane releaserate can be estimated for each habitat type. The spatial analysis of the habitatdistribution that we conducted is a major step toward yielding the total discharge ofmethane through the surface of HMMV.


This paper investigates the effect that manipulation of soil and vegetation conditions has on plant community development during attempts to create neutral hay meadow communities on a clay‐capped landfill in Somerset, United Kingdom. The objectives are (1) to determine the effect of manipulation of soil and vegetation on the development of the target plant community, (2) to identify whether these treatments had an effect on edaphic factors (physical and chemical properties, earthworm populations), and (3) to establish which, if any, of these edaphic parameters are underlying factors in determining the vascular plant community composition. In 2001 a commercial hay meadow seed mix was sown on three substrate treatments: (i) bare clay, (ii) a mixture of topsoil and compost ameliorant in equal proportions, and (iii) over naturally colonized vegetation. Plant community development and edaphic factors were monitored between 2001 and 2007. Although initially the presence of ameliorant promoted germination and growth of seeded species, after 2004 nonseeded competitive grasses dominated the sward. Where ameliorant was removed the target community continued to develop proving this to be the most successful treatment. This was found to be a due to suppression of competition from Elytrigia repens (Common couch), which grew most abundantly on soils with high organic matter and high soil water levels within the soil. Contrary to previous research, Trifolium repens (white clover) was not found to reduce forb diversity in this study. No evidence was found of earthworm abundance affecting plant community development.


Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) is considered as an important therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer, chronic infections and other diseases that are associated with immune suppression. Recent developments in understanding the catalytic mechanism of the IDO1 enzyme revealed that conversion of l-tryptophan (l-Trp) to N-formylkynurenine proceeded through an epoxide intermediate state. Accordingly, we synthesized a series of 3-substituted oxindoles from l-Trp, tryptamine and isatin. Compounds with C3-substituted oxindole moieties showed moderate inhibitory activity against the purified human IDO1 enzyme. Their optimization led to the identification of potent compounds, 6, 22, 23 and 25 (IC50 = 0.19 to 0.62 μM), which are competitive inhibitors of IDO1 with respect to l-Trp. These potent compounds also showed IDO1 inhibition potencies in the low-micromolar range (IC50 = 0.33-0.49 μM) in MDA-MB-231 cells. The cytotoxicity of these potent compounds was trivial in different model cancer (MDA-MB-231, A549 and HeLa) cells and macrophage (J774A.1) cells. Stronger selectivity for the IDO1 enzyme (124 to 210-fold) over the tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) enzyme was also observed for these compounds. These results suggest that the oxindole moiety of the compounds could mimic the epoxide intermediate state of l-Trp. Therefore, the structural simplicity and low-micromolar inhibition potencies of these 3-substituted oxindoles make them quite attractive for further investigation of IDO1 function and immunotherapeutic applications.


In Abay v. Ashcroft, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a noncitizen mother qualified for asylum based on her fear that her daughter, who qualified as a refugee, would undergo female genital mutilation if her daughter were to return to the family's home country. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides derivative asylum for spouses and children, but not parents, of refugees granted asylum. Parents of asylees must therefore independently qualify for asylum under INA § 101(a)(42)(A), which requires that the applicant show a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to the applicant's home country. The circuit courts of appeals have generally denied refugee status to mothers in situations similar to that of the petitioner in Abay. Nevertheless, the Abay court concluded that there is a "governing principle" in favor of granting asylum to mothers when their daughters would face genital mutilation upon return to the family's home country. This Note argues that the Abay court erred in granting asylum to the petitioner mother because no such "governing principle" exists. Further, this Note argues that the mother in Abay lacked a well-founded fear of persecution, making her ineligible for asylum, for two reasons. First, harm to her daughter did not amount to persecution of the mother. Second, because her daughter is a refugee, the petitioner cannot reasonably fear the genital mutilation of her daughter in the family's home country. When the law is correctly applied in cases such as Abay, a mother of an asylee must choose between abandoning her child in the United States or taking the child back to her home country where the child may be persecuted. Congress did not contemplate this appalling predicament when it drafted the current asylum laws. Accordingly, this Note concludes that Congress should amend the INA to grant derivative asylum to parents of asylees.


The in vitro in silico experimental flow (multispectroscopy and docking) demonstrated the binding of Luteolin and Quercetin separately with Bovine Serum Albumin. For the first time, we are reporting the relative UV-visible spectroscopy-based hypsochromic shifts for both luteolin (3nm) and quercetin (4.1 nm) respectively. The drug-induced conformational change may lead to the possible shift in the tryptophan residue to a more hydrophobic environment. Our demonstration of an increased static quenching of the endogenous fluorophore in BSA validated the UV-visible spectroscopy data. However, detailed experiments will further delineate the possible relative contribution of dynamic quenching processes. The strong binding (binding constant values -105 L/mol) and the number of binding sites (1 for luteolin and quercetin) is consistent with published findings. Under our defined conditions, the hitherto unreported non-cooperative binding was demonstrated, based on the Hill's coefficient. Thermodynamic data qualitatively validated hydrophobicity (a positive entropy change ΔS0); hydrogen bonding (a negative ΔH0) and electrostatic interactions (a negative ΔH0 and a positive ΔS0). For the first time, the Infra-Red Spectroscopy (FT-IR) data showed ground state complex formation of the molecules with the model protein and may serve to corroborate our fluorescence (static quenching) data. Hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions for both molecules (Ligplot Analysis) provide corroborative evidence for the molecular spectroscopy and thermodynamic data. This hitherto unreported, unique, combinatorial in vitro (multispectroscopy and thermodynamic measurements) in silico (docking and Ligplot-based analysis) experimental flow (specifically for luteolin and quercetin) provides a basis for extending such binding studies for novel receptors and/or ligands.


Patent administrators across the globe currently face the most challenging operating environment they have ever known. Soaring application rates, lean fiscal policies and an increasingly ambitious range of patentable subject matter are among the difficulties faced by the world's leading patent offices. These trends have resulted in persistent concerns over the quality of issued patents. Responding to recent writings questioning the value of maintaining high levels of patent quality, Professor Jay Thomas asserts both that patent quality matters, and that increasing the responsibilities of patent applicants provides a fair and efficient mechanism for improving patent office work product. This Article then' assesses recent reform agendas pursued by the European Patent Office, Japanese Patent Office and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that have elevated applicant obligations. After distilling broader policy trends from these distinct programs, Professor Thomas presents several proposals for patent administration reform.


Despite attempted curative resection of localized adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, most patients experience a recurrence and die of their disease. The Gastrointestinal Tumor Study Group, European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, and European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer trials have suggested the benefit of adjuvant therapy. However, the relatively few randomized trials available have not established a definite standard of care due to study limitations. Although these trials, and the recently published Charite Onkologie (CONKO)-001 trial, have shown a definite advantage of adjuvant chemotherapy, the most effective chemotherapy and the role of radiation therapy remain unclear. This review will discuss the data available from reported trials of adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer, address the issues leading to the ongoing controversies, and consider future directions for clinical trials.


Here we propose an approach for developing a diagnosis system for mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder, based on language analysis from speech and text. Our system is based on the Mood State Indicator algorithm (MSI) for real-time analysis of a patient's mental state. MSI is designed to give a quantitative measure of cognitive state based on axiological values and time orientation of lexical features. MSI's multi-layered analytic engine consists of multiple information processing modules to systematically retrieve, parse and process features of a patient's discourse. Gold standard clinical criteria will be used to match language analysis indicators to mood disorder diagnosis.


Abstract This paper discusses an innovative real-time oriented image compression system, based on a simple algorithm designed explicitly to be implemented on a low-cost SIMD computer architecture featuring a much lower power consumption than traditional DSPs or dedicated hardware. For this reason the considered approach is suitable to be integrated on portable systems, where power consumption is a critical design issue. The algorithm, based on a hierarchical decomposition of the input image, has been tested on a special purpose SIMD system, PAPRICA, exploiting its features such as its massive parallelism and its capability to operate on local data as well as to handle hierarchical data structures. According to the proposed approach, the quality of the decompressed image can be traded for a lower power consumption as well as a higher processing speed. A comparison between the discussed algorithm and the standard JPEG compression technique is also presented.


Objective: To investigate the impacts of different nutritional supports on the nutritional status,immune function and prognosis in patients with the gastrointestinal cancer after surgery. Methods: The enrolled patients were randomly assigned to parenteral nutrition(PN) group(n=270) and enteral nutrition(EN) group(n=270).Both nutritional supports were initiated on the first day after surgery under isoenergetic [125 kJ/(kg·d)] and isonitrogenous [0.25 g/(kg·d)] conditions.The nutritional status,immune function,outcome and prognosis of the two groups were compared. Results: In respect of nutritional parameters,the level of transferrin in PN group decreased but other parameters showed no obvious alterations after operation,while in EN group,the levels of total protein,albumin,pre-albumin and transferrin all increased after operation and were all significantly higher than those of PN group(all P0.05).In terms of immune function,only the level of NK cells increased and other parameters showed no evident alterations after operation,while in EN group,the levels of CD3,CD4,CD8,NK cells and IL-2 receptor all increased after operation and were all significantly higher than those of PN group(all P0.05).As for the complications and prognosis,the overall incidence of complications in PN and EN group was 56.3% and 28.9%,respectively(P0.05),while no significant difference was noted in the mortality rate between the two groups(P0.05).In addition,the length of time of complications,administration of antibiotics and average hospital stay of EN group were all significantly shorter than those of PN group(all P0.05). Conclusion: Early postoperative EN support is better than PN support for patients with gastrointestinal cancer.EN support can effectively improve the nutritional status and immune function as well as reduce the incidence of postoperative complications.


Bioluminescence, the cold living light or the cold fire of the sea is extremely common in all oceans at all depths. However, this phenomenon is nearly absent in freshwater, with the exception of a freshwater limpet. More than 75% of deep-sea creatures have been reported to produce their own light. The luminescent marine plankton such as dinoflagellate, radiolarians, jellyfish, comb jellies, annelids, copepods, ostracods, mysids, amphipods, euphausiids, and tunicates form an important component in the marine food chain. Research on luminescent marine plankton is gaining momentum owing to its importance in life science research and medicine. The glowing Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) extracted from the North Pacific jellyfish, Aqueorea victoria (for which the Japanese biologist, Osamu Shimonmura won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008) has helped shed light on key processes such as the spread of cancer, the development of brain cells, the growth of bacteria, damage to cells by Alzheimer's disease, and the development of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Therefore, it is difficult to underscore the importance of bioluminescence and the organisms associated with this phenomenon.

Bioluminescent Marine Plankton is a unique reference that attempts to provide answers to questions about bioluminescence. The first of its kind, this book attempts to answer questions on the subject with a focus on planktonic organisms. 12 chapters provide information about the chemistry of bioluminescence, types of bioluminescent displays, distribution of bioluminescence among marine plankton, ecological functions and utility of planktonic bioluminescence. Chapters are dedicated to the biology and ecology of specific groups of plankton that span about 200 luminescent marine species.

The detailed book is an essential compendium on marine plankton for a broad range of readers who want to learn about bioluminescent plankton. A list of detailed references is also provided for the benefit of teachers, students, researchers and enthusiasts interested in marine biology, aquaculture, and environmental sciences.


Residual stress has a significant effect for improving engineering properties for metals .Most of the surface treatments produce compressive residual stress at the metal surfaces, which reduce crack initiation and increasing the metal resistance to fatigue, which is shot peening process. Shot peening is usually used for this purpose for producing plastic deformations of surface of the metal which can lead to creation high residual compressive stresses at metal surface .This research include study the influence of shot peening process on fatigue resistance, surface hardness and surface roughness for low carbon steel (AISI 1008). This process accomplished with different times which were (10, 20 and 30(minutes. The result of the fatigue test showed that the fatigue limit increase when shot peening time increased and the best fatigue limit obtained when shot peening process was carried out at 30 minutes. Results of hardness test showed that surface hardness increased with increase of shot peening time. It can be seen that highest value of surface hardness is obtained from shot peening process at time (30 minutes) which is (235.1 HVN). Results of surface roughness test showed that the surface roughness of metal increased when time of shot peening increased.


Hyperledger Fabric has become one of the most widely used consortium blockchain frameworks with the ability to execute custom smart contracts. Performance modeling and network evaluation are necessary for performance estimation and optimization of the Fabric blockchain platform. The compatibility and effectiveness of existing performance modeling methods must be improved. For this reason, we proposed a compatible performance modeling method using queuing theory for Fabric considering the limited transaction pool. Taking the 2.0 version of Fabric as a case, we have established the model for the transaction process in the Fabric network. By analyzing the two-dimensional continuous-time Markov process of this model, we solved the system stationary equation and obtained the analytical expressions of performance indicators such as the system throughput, the system steady-state queue length, and the system's average response time. We collected the required parameter values through the official test suite. An extensive analysis and simulation was performed to verify the accuracy and the effectiveness of the model and formula. We believe that this method can be extended to a wide range of scenarios in other blockchain systems.


Water security aims to provide safe, reliable, affordable and sufficient water for people, agriculture, industry and ecosystems, subject to societal choices across related trade-offs and risks. Managing resource risks, delivering effective governance, promoting financial sustainability and achieving social equity are central to achieving water security. We explore how innovations in mobile communications have created an inclusive, secure and low cost architecture for financial and data flows to reduce risk and enhance water security. In Africa, water security challenges associated with climate extremes and population growth outstripping improved water services' access are juxtaposed with its global lead in mobile commerce innovations, including mobile water payments. Market driven expansion of mobile network coverage and low cost, mobile handsets mean more Africans will be connected to mobile phone services than those receiving improved water services in 2012. The confluence of rapid mobile network expansion, mobile phone ownership, mobile water payments and smart metering technologies offer new policy pathways to water security to accelerate progress on sustainable, safe water access, particularly for those in the greatest need and those most difficult to reach. We chart emerging mobile water innovations in Africa and policy implications in the region and beyond.


According to Peter Ludlow, there is a very close relation between the structure of natural language and that of reality, and one can gain insights into long-standing metaphysical questions by studying the semantics of natural language. In this book Ludlow uses the metaphysics of time as a case study and focuses on the dispute between A-theorists and B-theorists about the nature of time. According to B-theorists, there is no genuine change, but a permanent sequence of events ordered by an earlier-than/later-than relation. According to the version of the A-theory adopted by Ludlow (a position sometimes called "presentism"), there are no past or future events or times; what makes something past or future is how the world stands right now.Ludlow argues that each metaphysical picture is tied to a particular semantical theory of tense and that the dispute can be adjudicated on semantical grounds. A presentism-compatible semantics, he claims, is superior to a B-theory semantics in a number of respects, including its abilities to handle the indexical nature of temporal discourse and to account for facts about language acquisition. Along the way, Ludlow develops a conception of "E-type" temporal anaphora that can account for both temporal anaphora and complex tenses without reference to past and future events. His view has philosophical consequences for theories of logic, self-knowledge, and memory. As for linguistic consequences, Ludlow suggests that the very idea of grammatical tense may have to be dispensed with and replaced with some combination of aspect, modality, and evidentiality.


THE AIM OF THIS STUDY WAS TO ASSESS the effects of left- and right-sided MTL damage on melodic memory using a newly developed arbitrary relational learning task. Participants included patients with MTL damage, patient controls,musicians, and musician controls. The learning curves of these groups showed striking differences, with right MTL patients failing to learn tonal (easy) melody pairs. Both patient groups had difficulty learning nontonal (hard) pairs. Performance was greatest for the musicians, particularly for the nontonal melody pairs. These differences were not primarily attributable to pitch discrimination or pitch working memory impairments. The findings point to differential contributions of the left and right mesial temporal lobes to melodic memory, with specificity of the right mesial temporal lobe emerging for melodic learning within a tonal musical context.


This paper places Kydland and Prescott's classic analysis of time inconsistency in a fuller context by examining their result in five different economic environments. Pedagogically, the paper uses a consistent mathematical treatment of the subject throughout. To understand the motivations of the central bank, the paper begins with the environment that Kydland-Prescott successfully criticized wherein the public has static inflationary expectations and the central bank assumes that they do. The main sections of the paper go on to analyze time inconsistency in four alternative environments defined by the belief structure of the central bank with respect to the nature of the economy and the mechanism by which the public forms its inflationary expectations. It is shown that the inconsistency result holds when the central bank does not understand the natural rate hypothesis and does not believe that the public forms their inflationary expectations rationally. The inconsistency result, however, does not hold in the other cases.


The effect of subsidies on the performance of farms has received a great deal of attention in the literature, although results are inconclusive. Furthermore, much of the related literature examines the effect of subsidies only on technical efficiency (TE). We examine the effect of different types of subsidies on the different components of total factor productivity (TFP) in Slovenian agriculture over the period 2006–2013. We first estimate a Random Parameter Stochastic production frontier model. Then, based on the estimates of this model, we calculate and decompose the TFP index into TE, scale efficiency and technological change. Third, we apply combined difference‐in‐difference and a matching estimator to examine the effect of investment, less favoured area (LFA) and agri‐environmental (AE) subsidies on the different components of TFP. In our case, these subsidies are found to have no significant effect on either TFP or on its components.


Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) has emerged as an important area of study for both practitioners and researchers, reflecting the magnitude and impact of data-related problems to be solved in contemporary business organizations. This introduction to the MIS Quarterly Special Issue on Business Intelligence Research first provides a framework that identifies the evolution, applications, and emerging research areas of BI&A. BI&A 1.0, BI&A 2.0, and BI&A 3.0 are defined and described in terms of their key characteristics and capabilities. Current research in BI&A is analyzed and challenges and opportunities associated with BI&A research and education are identified. We also report a bibliometric study of critical BI&A publications, researchers, and research topics based on more than a decade of related academic and industry publications. Finally, the six articles that comprise this special issue are introduced and characterized in terms of the proposed BI&A research framework.


The control of a mechanical robotic hand is plagued by an inability to derive accurate dynamic models of such a mechanism. The aspects of static and kinetic friction are major obstacles in the control of a mechanical hand. This paper presents a fuzzy-based controller which has the ability to automatically regenerate the member set during the translation of any arbitrary joint in such a mechanism. A series of simulations has been conducted which illustrate the effectiveness of this controller for providing smooth translation, independent of frictional forces. This controller is applied to a custom-designed hand mechanism and is capable of operating via an IBM compatible computer. A hand with a progressively linked finger structure is used for simplicity. An acquisition system has also been designed which allows bi-directional communication with the sensors and actuators of the hand.


Objective: To assess the effect of age and gender on suprasystolic acquired indices of vascular stiffness using a novel device – Pulsecor® R6.5. Design: Suprasystolic blood pressure measurements were taken in 294 subjects from primary care facilities in Auckland, New Zealand. Three measurements were taken with patients sitting for at least 5 minutes. Subjects were excluded if on any medications, pregnant or a known diabetic. The median of 3 values was obtained. The Pulsecor device assesses a reflection wave ratio (RWR) from the ratios of the amplitude of the reflection to incident wave. Results: Intraclass correlation coefficient for the groups of three measurements of RWR was 0.93. RWR was significantly related to age, gender, height and systolic blood pressure. Age and gender were the most significant correlation using a multivariate model. RWR = 0.629 + 0.010 (age) – 0.00833 (height) + 0.00655 (SBP) + 0.205 (if female) Significant variability remained unexplained by this model. A weighted exercise score was acquired in 166 subjects, which showed no age bias. Subjects exercising >2 hours per day (according to the formula) had significantly lower RWR, mean (sd) of 43 (22) vs. 64 (37) (p < 0.001) (Two-Sided t-Test). Conclusion: RWR – is a repeatable measure of arterial stiffness measured from suprasystolic signals and is related to age, is increased in female and lower in subjects who exercise regularly.


Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English you can write poetry. But it is no fun if you don't know where to start or have been led to believe that Anything Goes. Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms. Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, The Ode Less Travelled will give you the tools and the confidence to do so. Brimful of enjoyable exercises, witty insights and simple step-by-step advice, "The Ode Less Travelled" guides the reader towards mastery and confidence in the Mother of the Arts.


THE Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has produced this special publication to commemorate 25 years of sterling work by its Zimbabwe chapter in helping to promote access to information, in defending press freedom and developing a plural media environment to serve the needs of the public in the region. While there is still so much to do to advance this work, the commendable contribution by the MISA Zimbabwe family in advancing the interests of the larger public deserves to be celebrated. This work has included the establishment of a !ourishing network of active provincial membership structures to assist in protecting the media space, lobby against restrictive laws, upgrade skills and in growing the industry. It has been a case of collective e"ort by many people, from the struggles of the founders of the regional body and successive o#ce holders in national chapters, to the solidarity secured from a wide range of structures across professional, community, social, economic and political sectors. A quarter of a century after the establishment of MISA Zimbabwe, the media world has changed in many respects, and it continues to change. MISA Zimbabwe, as a national chapter and as a member of the regional collective, needs to continue playing the role that it has been critically ful$lling over the years: o"ering strong thought and inspiring leadership in the implementation of impactful and practical programmes in the information and media sphere. Other chapters in southern Africa have acknowledged this key contribution by electing the MISA Zimbabwe National Governing Council (NGC) chairperson, Golden Maunganidze, and national director, Tabani Moyo, as chairperson MISA Regional Governing Council and director MISA Regional, respectively. This leadership responsibility means there is a need to take stock of the past and the present, and to look ahead to the challenges of the future. This also means an ability to mobilise resources and skills to tackle these challenges, de$ne and secure the complementary supporting roles that the state, the general public, the media, civil society, commerce and industry and other social forces, need to play in countering damaging trends threatening the information and media ecosystem,and working for a better system. Besides the usual dark cloud that politics and monopolies cast on the media and information environment, the stratospheric rise in misinformation and disinformation, the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic and the uncertainty arising from climate change, have compounded the crisis the world is facing. This includes Zimbabwe and the Southern African region in which MISA is working. While we are rightly celebrating yesterday's achievements, our major focus today should be on tomorrow. The cause is simple and straightforward: to work for a media and information ecosystem that serves the greater public interest.


In resource-dependent regions, work camps have reshaped workforce recruitment and retention strategies and relationships with communities as they are increasingly deployed within municipal boundaries. This has prompted important, but controversial, questions about local government policies and regulations guiding workforce accommodations to support rapid growth in resource regions. Even as mobile workforces become more prevalent, however, few researchers have examined the development, operations, and decommissioning of these work camps. Drawing upon the experiences of local governments in Australia, Canada, Scotland, and the United States, this research examines how mobile workforces are shaping the opportunities and challenges of planning and local government operations through work camps integrated in mature staples-dependent resource regions. Our findings reveal that while some industries have taken the initiative to implement new protocols and operating procedures to improve the quality and safety of work camp environments, local governments have underdeveloped policy tools and capacities to guide the development, operations, and decommissioning of work camps. Failure to purposefully address work camps as a land-use issue, however, is significant for mature staples-dependent towns that ultimately fail to capture taxation revenues while incurring the accelerating costs for infrastructure and services associated with large mobile workforces.


The article traces the development of attorney approval clauses and describes the court rulings on the unauthorized practice of law that led to the development of these clauses. The article describes how a well-trained attorney can protect home buyers and sellers at the contract formation stage and thereafter far better than a broker, a title company, or a lender. Understanding what a well-trained attorney would ordinarily do when representing a party contemplating entering into a purchase and sales contract is fundamental to analyzing whether attorney approval clauses are serving their intended function.The author argues that, to the extent that attorney approval clauses were intended to provide buyers and sellers with the means to be competently and legitimately represented by an attorney, the typical wording of many attorney approval clauses and certain court interpretations of the clauses have greatly impeded this goal. The article critiques the different wording contained in attorney approval clauses and then identifies instances of judicial misapplication of contract principles when interpreting attorney approval clauses (mischaracterizing the clauses as conditional acceptances and any proposed modifications to the contract as counteroffers). The author argues that such mischaracterizations have opened the door to bad faith rejections of a contract, and have impeded an attorney's ability to competently and legitimately represent their client. In addition, the article contends that, although courts require that attorneys act in good faith when exercising the attorney approval clause, courts' failure to require that attorneys state the reason(s) for their disapproval of the contract or to provide proposed changes to the contract weakens the effectiveness of such a requirement and forces attorneys into real dilemmas when their clients pressure them to improperly disapprove a contract. The article asserts that courts' failure to adequately define the "good faith-bad faith" dichotomy forces many attorneys to make shot-in-the dark type judgments on how to zealously represent their client while properly exercising the attorney approval clause.The article concludes by recommending that courts interpret these attorney approval clauses in a fashion that better comports with the public interest. It also recommends to associations of brokers and bar associations of lawyers how to draft attorney clauses for residential purchase agreements to better serve the purpose of such clauses. The author advises attorneys on how to fulfill their duty of zealous representation and, at the same time, satisfy the good faith requirement when exercising an attorney approval clause under current case law.


Since the emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking in the late '90s, P2P applications have multiplied, evolved and established themselves as the leading `growth app' of Internet traffic workload. In contrast to first-generation P2P networks which used well-defined port numbers, current P2P applications have the ability to disguise their existence through the use of arbitrary ports. As a result, reliable estimates of P2P traffic require examination of packet payload, a methodological landmine from legal, privacy, technical, logistic, and fiscal perspectives. Indeed, access to user payload is often rendered impossible by one of these factors, inhibiting trustworthy estimation of P2P traffic growth and dynamics. In this paper, we develop a systematic methodology to identify P2P flows at the transport layer, i.e., based on connection patterns of P2P networks, and without relying on packet payload. We believe our approach is the first method for characterizing P2P traffic using only knowledge of network dynamics rather than any user payload. To evaluate our methodology, we also develop a payload technique for P2P traffic identification, by reverse engineering and analyzing the nine most popular P2P protocols, and demonstrate its efficacy with the discovery of P2P protocols in our traces that were previously unknown to us. Finally, our results indicate that P2P traffic continues to grow unabatedly, contrary to reports in the popular media.


Soft tissue deformation is of great importance to virtual-reality-based-surgery simulation. This paper presents a new neural-dynamics-based methodology for simulation of soft tissue deformation from the perspective of energy propagation. A novel neural network is established to propagate the energy generated by an external force among mass points of a soft tissue. The stability of the proposed neural network system is proved by using the Lyapunov stability theory. A potential-based method is presented to derive the internal forces from the natural energy distribution established by the neural dynamics. Integration with a haptic device has been achieved for interactive deformation simulation with force feedback. The proposed methodology not only accommodates isotropic, anisotropic and inhomogeneous materials by simple modification of the control coefficients, but it also accepts large-range deformations.


We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost per expected life saved cut-off for health and safety regulations is $7 million to $8 million per life saved, but the VSL varies considerably across the labor force. Our results reconcile the previous discrepancies between hedonic VSL estimates and the values implied by theories linked to the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Because the VSL varies elastically with income, regulatory agencies should regularly update the VSL used in benefit assessments, increasing the VSL proportionally with changes in income over time.


Global simulations of tropospheric sulfur are performed in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) general circulation model (GCM) and used to calculate anthropogenic sulfate direct radiative forcing. Prognostic species are in-cloud oxidant H2O2, dimethylsulfide (DMS), methanesulfonic acid (MSA), SO2 and sulfate. Compared with most previous models (except others with prognostic H2O2), this model has relatively high anthropogenic SO2 and sulfate burden. We show that this is due partly to the depletion of the prognostic H2O2 and that moist convection delivers significant levels of SO2 to the free troposphere in polluted regions. Model agreement with surface observations is not remarkably different from previous studies. Following some previous studies, we propose that an additional in-cloud or heterogeneous oxidant is likely to improve the simulation near the surface. Our DMS source is lower than sources in previous studies, and sulfur values in remote regions are generally lower than those observed. Because of the high flux of SO2 to the free troposphere and the relatively low natural source, our model indicates a larger global anthropogenic contribution to the sulfate burden (77%) than was estimated by previous global models. Additional high-altitude observations of the sulfur species are needed for model validation and resolution of this issue. Direct radiative forcing calculations give an annual average anthropogenic sulfate forcing of −0.67 W/m2. We compare the radiative forcings due to online (hourly varying) versus offline (monthly average) sulfate and find little difference on a global average, but we do find differences as great as 10% in some regions. Thus, for example, over some polluted continental regions the forcing due to offline sulfate exceeds that of online sulfate, while over some oceanic regions the online sulfate forcing is larger. We show that these patterns are probably related to the correlation between clouds and sulfate, with positive correlations occuring over some polluted continental regions and negative correlations over high-latitude oceanic regions.


Several studies have shown that slopes of hills are greatly overestimated. We have recently demonstrated that the overestimates increase logarithmically as the end point of the domain to be estimated increases - every doubling of the distance to the end point results in a constant increment in perceived slope. A theoretical analysis showed that a critical parameter is the angle v between the observer's line of sight and the slope of the hill, when the observer fixates the far point of the required domain. The theory predicts that increasing observers' eye height above the surface of the hill will reduce the slope overestimates by increasing this angle. Here we test that theory by having observers stand on a 37 cm high box to increase their eye height. Observers estimated an outdoor slope in front of them in degrees, at ranges from 2 to 16 m. Estimates for various ranges defined by traffic cones again followed a logarithmic function (r2 = 0.997), with lower estimates compared to other observers standing directly on the surface of the hill. Apparent slope increased more rapidly with distance than in a group standing on the hill's surface, however, so that at larger distances slope estimates with and without increased eye height converged. As the length of the domain to be judged increases, enhanced eye height has a smaller and smaller effect on the angle v between the line of regard and the hill's surface. A demand characteristic might induce observers to give different estimates for the four distances tested; an analysis of just the first estimate of each observer, however, showed that the distance vs apparent slope function remained logarithmic. We conclude that anticipated effort, perceived danger and other factors play only a minor role if any in slope estimates. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


There is a trend in the machine learning community to adopt self-supervised approaches to pre-train deep networks. Self-supervised representation learning (SSL) utilizes proxy supervised learning tasks, for example, distinguishing parts of the input signal from distractors, or generating masked input segments conditioned on the unmasked ones, to obtain training data from unlabeled corpora. BERT and GPT in NLP and SimCLR and BYOL in CV are famous examples in this direction. These approaches make it possible to use a tremendous amount of unlabeled data available on the web to train large networks and solve complicated tasks. Thus, SSL has the potential to scale up current machine learning technologies, especially for low-resourced, under-represented use cases, and democratize the technologies. Recently self-supervised approaches for speech processing are also gaining popularity. There are several workshops in relevant topics hosted at ICML 2020 (https://icml-sas.gitlab.io/), NeurIPS 2020 (https://neurips-sas-2020.github.io/), and AAAI 2022 (https://aaai-sas-2022.github.io/). However, there is no previous tutorial about a similar topic based on the authors' best knowledge. Due to the growing popularity of SSL, and the shared mission of the areas in bringing speech and language technologies to more use cases with better quality and scaling the technologies for under-represented languages, we propose this tutorial to systematically survey the latest SSL techniques, tools, datasets, and performance achievement in speech processing. The proposed tutorial is highly relevant to the special theme of ACL about language diversity. One of the main focuses of the tutorial is leveraging SSL to reduce the dependence of speech technologies on labeled data, and to scale up the technologies especially for under-represented languages and use cases.