Purpose. Retrograde neurotrophic factor transport blockade has been implicated in the pathophysiology of glaucoma. Stem cell transplantation appears to ameliorate some neurodegenerative conditions in the brain and spinal cord, in part by neurotrophic factor secretion. The present study was conducted to determine whether local or systemic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation can confer neuroprotection in a rat model of laser-induced ocular hypertensive glaucoma. Methods. MSCs were isolated from the bone marrow of adult wild-type and transgenic rats that ubiquitously express green fluorescent protein. MSCs were transplanted intravitreally 1 week before, or intravenously on the day of, ocular hypertension induction by laser photocoagulation of the trabecular meshwork. Ocular MSC localization and integration were determined by immunohistochemistry. Optic nerve damage was quantified by counting axons within optic nerve cross-sections 4 weeks after laser treatment. Results. After intravitreal transplantation, MSCs survived for at least 5 weeks. Cells were found mainly in the vitreous cavity, though a small proportion of discrete cells migrated into the host retina. Intravitreal MSC transplantation resulted in a statistically significant increase in overall RGC axon survival and a significant decrease in the rate of RGC axon loss normalized to cumulative intraocular pressure exposure. After intravenous transplantation, MSCs did not migrate to the injured eye. Intravenous transplantation had no effect on optic nerve damage. Conclusions. Local, but not systemic, transplantation of MSCs was neuroprotective in a rat glaucoma model. Autologous intravitreal transplantation of MSCs should be investigated further as a potential neuroprotective therapy for glaucoma.


Empirical analysis of a sample of companies with private equity (PE) ownership in the UK shows that PE firms act as deep-pocket investors for their portfolio companies, rescuing them if they fall in financial distress. In contrast, external financing is expensive for companies without PE-ownership in financial distress. The paper builds a model that shows how companies form rational expectations about the costs of financial distress, and how these expectations affect ex-ante policies. The model explains the empirically-observed differences in how companies with and without PE-ownership invest, pay dividends, and issue debt. In particular, the model quantitatively explains the difference in leverage of companies with and without PE-ownership. The model shows that greater tax-shield benefits and superior growth of PE-backed companies can explain 6.4% of the abnormal return of PE firms. The conclusion that follows from the paper, however, is that abnormal returns PE firms cannot be replicated by other investors.


Abstract. This work investigates the influence of meteoric smoke particles (MSP) on the charge balance in the D-region ionosphere. Both experimental in situ measurements and a one-dimensional ionospheric model reveal a clear impact of MSP on the ionospheric composition of the D-region. The study reviews rocket-borne in situ measurements of electron and positive ion density, which show a distinct deficit of electrons in comparison to positive ions between 80 and 95 km. This deficit can be explained by the ambient negatively charged MSP measured simultaneously with a Faraday cup. The influence of MSP on the D-region charge balance is addressed with a simplified ionospheric model with only six components, i.e. electrons, positive and negative ions and neutral and charged MSP (both signs). The scheme includes reactions of plasma captured by MSP and MSP photo reactions as well as the standard ionospheric processes, e.g. ion-ion recombination. The model shows that the capture of plasma constituents by MSP is an important process leading to scavenging of electrons. Since Faraday cup measurements are biased towards heavy MSP because of aerodynamical filtering, we have applied an estimate of this filter on the modelled MSP densities. By doing that, we find good qualitative agreement between the experimental data and our model results. In addition, the model study reveals an increase of positive ions in the presence of MSP. That is primarily caused by the reduced dissociative recombination with electrons which have been removed from the gas phase by the MSP.


Property developers, investors and financiers usually have reservations about
the investment performance of rehabilitated and refurbished properties.This is
due to the uncertainties introduced by low rental income, higher yields and
shorter leases associated with secondhand properties. This situation is thought
to be changing as more and more successful schemes are reported in the
property and business press.
What is changing attitudes is the improved economics of refurbishment
schemes. Occupiers are seeking to reduce occupancy costs after the last
recession. Rehabilitated properties which can offer facilities comparable to new
build but at a fraction of new build rents are therefore becoming attractive.
Furthermore, recent innovations in services and communication technology is
making it possible to service older properties to the same level as new
buildings. This is creating investment value in buildings that might otherwise
have remained unlet.
Despite the improved situation, there seemed to be no formal framework to aid
building rehabilitation versus redevelopment decisions in the private
commercial property sector. The critical decision determinants are scattered
over several publications. What this research has done is to assemble all
factors within a single framework.
Examining the nature of buildings, it is apparent that different groups evaluate
buildings differently. To some they are symbols of prestige or image and to
others they help create the environment we live in. Yet more, some see
buildings as shelters and investment assets. In the private sector, the main
actors that influence property development are occupiers, developers and
investors. Each of these actors evaluate buildings on different criteria. This
makes the building rehabilitate-redevelop decision a conflicting multi-criteria
problem. The framework created by this research is therefore based on
Multiattribute utility theory (MAUT).
The research identified the objectives of building renewal from the perspectives
of occupiers, developers and investors using the principles of value-focused thinking. The common indicators linking these objectives became the decision
attributes over which utility and value functions are to be created. By the
research results, the option chosen in the decision scenario described above is
determined by the attributes: profit, maintenance cost, energy cost, floor to floor
height, floorplate area, floor load-bearing capacity, floorplate width and on-site
car parking provisions. The preferred option is the one that maximises the
subjective value of the decision maker over these attributes.


How do non-practicing entities ("Patent Trolls") impact innovation and technological progress? Although this question has important implications for industrial policy, little direct evidence about it exists. This paper provides new theoretical and empirical evidence to fill that gap. In the process, we inform a debate that has historically portrayed non-practicing entities (NPEs) as either "benign middlemen", who help to reallocate IP to where it is most productive, or "stick-up artists", who exploit the patent system to extract rents and thereby hurt innovation. We employ unprecedented access to NPE-derived patent and financial data, as well as a novel model that guides our data analysis. We find that NPEs acquire patents from small firms and those that are more litigation-prone, as well as ones that are not core to the seller's business. When NPEs license patents, those that generate higher fees are closer to the licensee's business and more likely to be litigated. We also find that downstream innovation drops in fields where patents have been acquired by NPEs. Finally, our numerical analysis shows that the existence of NPEs encourages upstream innovation and discourages downstream innovation. The overall impact of NPEs depends on the share of patent infringements that come from non-innovating producers. Our results provide some support for both views of NPEs and suggests that a more nuanced perspective on NPEs and additional empirical work are needed to make informed policy decisions.


Given the importance of the early stage of a child`s life and taking into account that there various initiatives underway to improve preschool programs in German, it is remarkable that there are only a few microdatasets covering the field of preschool education in Germany - even less if the focus is on nationally representative datasets. The majority of these at least provide information on attendance of preschool programs. In principle there are two main groups of data: data that comprise part of the official statistics and survey data. However, there are hardly any data which allow a linkage between preschool program information and child outcome data. Furthermore, better data for children up to three years are needed, as well as data for children from migrant families. In particular, there is a need for good panel data allowing to match individual data and institutional information Given the developments in the German data infrastructure, the potentials for preschool education research will certainly improve. Nevertheless there remain a number of gaps. Among the mentioned recommendations the paper recommend improvements in fields, such as better data on the quality of preschool programs, better data on the family context and the costs of preschool education and finally the paper addresses the need for detailed intervention studies (on a representative (generalizable) level, which help to learn more about the most effective and efficient parameters of preschool programs.


Contents Preface to Fourth Edition Preface to Third Edition Preface to Second Edition Preface to First Edition Author's Acknowledgements Publisher's Acknowledgements 1. What do sociolinguists study? What is a sociolinguist? Why do we say the same thing in different ways? What are the different ways we say things? Social factors, dimensions and explanations Section I: Multilingual Speech Communities 2. Language choice in multilingual communities Choosing your variety or code Diglossia Code-switching or code-mixing 3. Language maintenance and shift Language shift in different communities Language death and language loss Factors contributing to language shift How can a minority language be maintained? Language revival 4. Linguistic varieties and multilingual nations Vernacular languages Standard languages Lingua francas Pidgins and creoles 5. National languages and language planning National and official languages Planning for a national official language Developing a standard variety in Norway The linguist's role in language planning Section II: Language Variation: Focus on Users 6. Regional and social dialects Regional variation Social variation Social dialects 7. Gender and age Gender-exclusive speech differences: non-Western communities Gender-preferential speech features: social dialect research Gender and social class Explanations of women's linguistic behaviour Age-graded features of speech Age and social dialect data Age grading and language change 8. Ethnicity and social networks Ethnicity Social networks 9. Language change Variation and change How do changes spread? How do we study language change? Reasons for language change Section III: Language Variation: Focus on Uses 10. Style, context and register Addressee as an influence on style Accommodation theory Context, style and class Style in non-Western societies Register 11. Speech functions, politeness and cross-cultural communication The functions of speech Politeness and address forms Linguistic politeness in different cultures 12. Gender, politeness and stereotypes Women's language and confidence Interaction Gossip The linguistic construction of gender The linguistic construction of sexuality Sexist language 13. Language, cognition and culture Language and perception Whorf Linguistic categories and culture Discourse patterns and culture Language, social class, and cognition 14. Analysing Discourse Pragmatics and politeness theory Ethnography of speaking Interactional sociolinguistics Conversation Analysis (CA) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 15. Attitudes and applications Attitudes to language Sociolinguistics and education Sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics 16. Conclusion Sociolinguistic competence Dimensions of sociolinguistic analysis Sociolinguistic universals References Appendix: phonetic symbols Glossary Index


Abstract This paper reports the results of an exploratory qualitative study of adult ESL students' humorous personal narratives shared in the college-level ESL class. The purpose of the study was to investigate the reasons why some of the stories were more successful with the multicultural audience in terms of audience involvement. The effective use of basic narrative template as well as theme choice seemed to be the reasons that made some stories stand out. Language proficiency did not seem to have an overwhelming effect on the success of the stories shared by the students. Pedagogical recommendations are also presented. ********** Study Background Verbal humor can be defined as "a social message intended to produce laughter or smiling" and communicated through language (Ziv, 1988, p. ix). There has never been reported a culture where humor does not exist. However, it is one of the most difficult subject matters both to understand and to express in a second language. According to Ziv (1988), humor techniques, such as incongruity, surprise and the use of contextual logic as well as humor functions are universal as they reflect human needs. However, "the greatest difference among cultures should be found in the contents and situations of humor" (Ziv, 1988, p. xi). As an example, most American jokes are focused on the topics of sexuality and aggression, whereas Chinese humor is centered around the issues related to social interactions (Shultz, 1977). Even though incongruity is a major humorous technique, it is "... only relative to someone's conceptual scheme" (McGhee et al., 1983 p. 60). What an individual finds incongruous or humorous depends to a large extent on his/her culture, previous experience and current expectations. This is one of the reasons why adults from different cultures often have trouble understanding and therefore appreciating each other's humor. As Shakespeare wrote in his play "Love's Labour Lost": A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him who makes it. Verbal humor plays a pivotal role in personal narratives, making us laugh at our own troubles and seeing the ridiculous in our own behavior. Within each nation, storytelling traditions have been passed from one generation to another, with humor being skillfully woven into the cultural fabric of folk tales, jokes, sayings and proverbs. We as individuals are constantly involved in the process of reshaping our storytelling traditions by creating and listening to other people's narratives, which enables us to relive our experience once again and put it in a broader context of life. Stories are crucial for our communication with others and furnish us with information on the personality and identity of the storyteller and her characters (Lieblich et. al, 1998, p. 7). Propp (1928) pioneered rhetorical analysis of narrative texts by examining the structure of Russian folk tales. Central to Propp's analysis is the notion that a story is a text that relates to the audience a change of state or an event. Propp analyzed types of characters and kinds of actions performed in Russian folk tales and arrived at the conclusion that there are thirty-one fundamental events or `narratemes'. Propp showed that though not all of the thirty-one narratemes were present in all stories, all the tales displayed these fundamental events in a predictable stable sequence. Labov (1972) applied Propp's ideas to the analysis of spontaneous narratives collected from lower-class young black males in New York City and concluded that `fully-formed oral narratives' have a six-part structure, including: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result, and coda. Comparing stories from different cultures, psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists came to the conclusion that narratives share a common basic template (Labov, 1972, Labov & Waletsky, 1967, Mandler, 1982, Hatch, 1999). …


Extension is often called the "best-kept secret" having low awareness with the public but high satisfaction with clientele. Extension services nationwide have faced budget cuts, creating a need for the organization to re-evaluate its activities, including how it communicates with its stakeholders. While Extension personnel are the ones who will do most of the communicating, their supervisors impact the personnel's actions, which means it is important to assess both groups. A survey was conducted with Extension personnel and their supervisors in Mississippi assessing engagement in communications activities and perceptions of those activities, as well as personnel's preference of professional development activities. Personnel reported higher use, comfort, and importance of more traditional (e.g. making a speech) and written activities (e.g. writing a promotional handout) than media-relations activities (e.g. being interviewed for TV), social media-related activities (e.g. managing a Twitter account), and visual communication activities (e.g. graphic design). Supervisors perceived individual communications activities as less important overall than personnel did, and although supervisor and communication scores for use and comfort/capability were similar for most communication activities, there were noticeable exceptions. Additionally, personnel preferred professional development activities that were hands-on or showing the activities first-hand (e.g. demonstrations and field days). Future research should be expanded to other states, conducted in a case study format to study specific relationships, and involve qualitative components. Extension should ensure clear supervisor-communication dialogue on prioritizing communication activities, provide training on communication activities with low use and comfort, and utilize early innovators who are comfortable using newer communication activities.


In the Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice (Oxford 2002), Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel discuss the relationship between tax policy and contemporary political philosophy. Murphy and Nagel essentially argue for the priority of political philosophy over tax policy. For them, there is little room for tax policy per se; they argue that tax policy ought to serve the ends of a philosophical conception of justice. They maintain that questions of fairness are, in and of themselves, irrelevant to tax policy, which should be understood as a slave to philosophical conceptions of justice. While we embrace Murphy and Nagel's central claim that it makes little sense to engage arguments over tax policy without an antecedently held conception of distributive justice and that questions of tax policy must be consistent with that conception, we argue that some aspects of their argument are ultimately too strong. Traditional metrics of tax policy analysis such as the benefit principle and the equal sacrifice principle are neither completely irrelevant to tax policy, nor inconsistent with all versions of political liberalism. We distinguish between "pre-institutional" and "post-institutional" conceptions of liberalism, and between "maximizing" and "non-maximizing" conceptions of distributive justice. We argue that while Murphy and Nagel's argument is powerful in the context of maximizing, post-institutional conceptions, it is less persuasive in the context of pre-institutional versions of liberalism and, perhaps, in the context of non-maximizing versions of post-institutional liberalism. Finally, we conclude by arguing that the central claims of Murphy and Nagel's argument are, to some extent, in tension with what they take to be their view's practical applications.


Abstract. Glacier retreat since the Little Ice Age has resulted in the development or expansion of hundreds of glacial lakes in Patagonia. Some of these lakes have produced large (≥ 106 m3) Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) damaging inhabited areas. GLOF hazard studies in Patagonia have been mainly based on the analysis of short-term series (≤ 50 years) of flood data and until now no attempt has been made to identify the relative susceptibility of lakes to failure. Power schemes and associated infrastructure are planned for Patagonian basins that have historically been affected by GLOFs, and we now require a thorough understanding of the characteristics of dangerous lakes in order to assist with hazard assessment and planning. In this paper, the conditioning factors of 16 outbursts from moraine-dammed lakes in Patagonia were analysed. These data were used to develop a classification scheme designed to assess outburst susceptibility, based on image classification techniques, flow routine algorithms and the Analytical Hierarchy Process. This scheme was applied to the Baker Basin, Chile, where at least seven moraine-dammed lakes have failed in historic time. We identified 386 moraine-dammed lakes in the Baker Basin of which 28 were classified with high or very high outburst susceptibility. Commonly, lakes with high outburst susceptibility are in contact with glaciers and have moderate (> 8°) to steep (> 15°) dam outlet slopes, akin to failed lakes in Patagonia. The proposed classification scheme is suitable for first-order GLOF hazard assessments in this region. However, rapidly changing glaciers in Patagonia make detailed analysis and monitoring of hazardous lakes and glaciated areas upstream from inhabited areas or critical infrastructure necessary, in order to better prepare for hazards emerging from an evolving cryosphere.


There is a finite supply of global fresh water available for human consumption, which is in great demand from both humans and the environment. As technology and populations increase, so do the demands and pressure on this limited resource. Demand far too often outstrips supply, requiring authorities to impose restrictions on water use. Recent research undertaken by Rand Water, in the Rand Water supply area (in and around Gauteng, South Africa) points to the desire from end users to be empowered with knowledge to make their own decisions on water use reduction, rather than to have authoritative restrictions imposed on them. This observation indicates the importance of water conservation education and awareness campaigns to facilitate the reduction in water consumption by consumers, and suggests that education is a priority in the implementation of water conservation strategies.


Abstract Pink nanofibers were extracted from rose quartz from 29 different pegmatitic and massive vein localities throughout the world. Their width varied from 0.1 to 0.5 μm. On the basis of optical absorption spectra of the fibers and the initial rose quartz, we conclude that these nanofibrous inclusions are the cause of coloration of massive rose quartz worldwide. These fibers do not occur in the rare, euhedral variety of pink quartz. Redox and heating experiments showed that the pink color of the fibers is due to Fe-Ti intervalence charge transfer that produces an optical absorption band at 500 nm. Based on the XRD patterns and characteristics of pleochroism, the best match for these inclusions is dumortierite. However, FTIR and Raman spectra consistently did not exactly match the standard dumortierite patterns, suggesting that this fibrous nano-phase may not be dumortierite itself, but rather a closely related material.


The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.


In recent years, mobile devices have become more and more popular. In 2011, for the first time, more smart-phones than PCs were sold. This has also been realized by malware authors who have made great progress in developing malware for mobile platforms. At the same time, vendors of security solutions are limited by the restrictive security architecture of the mobile platforms. This master thesis will investigate in what way, these security solutions are limited and to what degree, the restrictive security measures apply to malware. One potential way for a security solution to overcome the restrictions of the platforms is not to protect the whole platform, but only processes that deal with sensitive information. This is referred to as app hardening and will be investigated concerning its applicability in a mobile environment.


Inoculation of alfalfa plants with either incompatible Rhizobium or a Rhizobium mutant blocked in Nod factor synthesis led to an accumulation of salicylic acid in roots, in contrast to plants inoculated with a wild-type (compatible) R. meliloti strain. When salicylic acid was exogenously applied prior to inoculation of alfalfa plants with either purified Nod factor or compatible Rhizobium strains, a significant inhibition of nodule primordia formation and a reduction of the number of emerging nodules, respectively, as well as a delay in nodule visualization, were observed. These results suggest an involvement of Rhizobium-synthesized Nod factors in the inhibition of salicylic acid-mediated defense in legumes.


Ionic conductivity in relation to the morphology of lithium-doped high-molecular-weight polystyrene-block-polyethylene oxide (PS-b-PEO) diblock copolymer films was investigated as solid-state membranes for lithium-ion batteries. The tendency of the polyethylene (PEO) block to crystallize was highly suppressed by increasing both the salt-doping level and the temperature. The PEO crystallites completely vanished at a salt-doping ratio of Li/EO>0.08, at which the PEO segments were hindered from entering the crystalline unit of the PEO chain. A kinetically trapped lamella morphology of PS-b-PEO was observed, due to PEO crystallization. The increase in the lamella spacing with increasing salt concentration was attributed to the conformation of the PEO chain rather than the volume contribution of the salt or the previously reported increase in the effective interaction parameter. Upon loading the salt, the PEO chains changed from a compact/highly folded conformation to an amorphous/expanded-like conformation. The ionic conductivity was enhanced by amorphization of PEO and thereby the mobility of the PEO blocks increased upon increasing the salt-doping level.


Lauwerys, R. R., Buchet, J.-P., and Roels, H. A. (1973).British Journal of Industrial Medicine,30, 359-364. Comparative study of effect of inorganic lead and cadmium on blood δ-aminolevulinate dehydratase in man. δ-Aminolevulinate dehydratase (ALA1-D) of red blood cells, lead concentration in blood (Pb-B) and in urine (Pb-U), cadmium concentration in blood (Cd-B) and in urine (Cd-U), and ALA in urine (ALA-U) were measured in 77 workers occupationally exposed to cadmium, and in 73 control workers. An excellent negative correlation was found between log ALA-D and Pb-B (r = - 0·660) or Pb-U (r = - 0·501), but no significant correlation was found between Cd-B and log ALA-D activity. Unlike ALA-D, ALA-U is not correlated with Pb and Pb-U in the `normal' range of Pb concentration investigated. Mean ALA-D activity in smokers is lower than in nonsmokers, and this is probably related to the fact that a higher mean Pb-B concentration is found in smokers than in nonsmokers. It is clear from this investigation that in the general population, and even in Cd-exposed workers, Cd has no significant effect on ALA-D. Moreover, all the available evidence indicates that ALA-D activity of erythrocytes is a very sensitive and specific parameter of lead in blood.


Contributors. Preface. 1. Engineering of Mineral Extraction (Michael G. Nelson). 2. Waste Reduction in Metals manufacturing (Carl C. Nesbitt). 3. Life-cycle Evaluation of Chemical Processing Plants (David Brennan). 4. Waste Reduction for Chemical Plant Operations (Ali Elkamel, Cheng Seong Khor and Chandra Mouli R. Madhuranthakam). 5. Industrial Waste Auditing (C. Visvanathan). 6. Reverse production Systems: Production from Waste materials (I-Hsuan Hong, Jane C. Ammons and Mathew J. Realff). 7. Environmental Life-cycle Analysis of Alternative Building Materials (Bruce Lippke and Jim L. Bowyer). 8. Wastewater Engineering (Say Kee Ong). 9. The Environmental Impacts of Packaging (Eva Pongracz). 10. Aqueous Processing for Environmental Protection (Fiona M. Doyle and Gretchen Lapidus-Lavine). 11. Solid Waste Disposal and Recycling (Georgios N. Anastassakis). 12. Processing Postconsumer Recycled Plastics (Gajanan Bhat). 13. Supercritical Water Oxidation (Philip A. Marrone and Glenn T. Hong). Index.


Considering that, while seeking means to preserve peace and prevent armed conflicts among nations, it is likewise necessary to have regard to cases where an appeal to arms may be caused by events which their solicitude could not avert; Animated by the desire to serve, even in this extreme hypothesis, the interests of humanity and the ever increasing requirements of civilization; Thinking it important, with this object, to revise the laws and general customs of war, either with the view of defining them more precisely or of laying down certain limits for the purpose of modifying their severity as far as possible; Inspired by these views which are enjoined at the present day, as they were twenty-five years ago at the time of the Brussels Conference in 1874, by a wise and generous foresight; Have, in this spirit, adopted a great number of provisions, the object of which is to define and govern the usages of war on land. In view of the High Contracting Parties, these provisions, the wording of which has been inspired by the desire to diminish the evils of war so far as military necessities permit, are destined to serve as general rules of conduct for belligerents in their relations with each other and with populations. It has not, however, been possible to agree forthwith on provisions embracing all the circumstances which occur in practice. On the other hand, it could not be intended by the High Contracting Parties that the cases not provided for should, for want of a written provision, be left to the arbitrary judgment of the military commanders. Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity, and the requirements of the public conscience; They declare that it is in this sense especially that Articles 1 and 2 of the Regulations adopted must be understood; The High Contracting Parties, desiring to conclude a Convention to this effect, have appointed as their Plenipotentiaries, to wit:


Motivated by applications in Optimization, Game Theory, and the training of Generative Adversarial Networks, the convergence properties of first order methods in min-max problems have received extensive study. It has been recognized that they may cycle, and there is no good understanding of their limit points when they do not. When they converge, do they converge to local min-max solutions? We characterize the limit points of two basic first order methods, namely Gradient Descent/Ascent (GDA) and Optimistic Gradient Descent Ascent (OGDA). We show that both dynamics avoid unstable critical points for almost all initializations. Moreover, for small step sizes and under mild assumptions, the set of \{OGDA\}-stable critical points is a superset of \{GDA\}-stable critical points, which is a superset of local min-max solutions (strict in some cases). The connecting thread is that the behavior of these dynamics can be studied from a dynamical systems perspective.


This dissertation examines the legacy of secrecy, silences, and the unspoken in twentieth century African American literary texts. Using a range of texts representing various eras within the genre of African American literature, this dissertation contends that secrecy is a trope and may be attributed to inherited, maintained traditional practices from West and West Central Africa. Having read a number of African American texts and connecting my personal experiences with these works, I noticed a pattern of withheld discourse throughout. Most notably, Leslie Lewis's Telling Narratives posits a reason for this trope by examining earlier narratives, specifically nineteenth-century African American texts. She argues the master/slave relationship as the prevailing reason for the secretive motif. Yet, traditional and cultural practices noted in early African publications demonstrate that Africans were keeping secrets prior to their diasporic scatterings. By examining early West African-derived works, as well as nineteenth-century African American texts, I ground my position that secrecy as we see it evolves from or relates to early signifying and language manipulations, particular to African-derived people. Thus, the early works connect sustained homeland ties to the literature that follows, providing an explanation for the secrecy reflected in African American literature. This study highlights three types of secrets: identity, family, and sexual, all of which are interrelated and, out of one, the other type may result. The texts that best demonstrate these silences are James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Nella Larsen's Passing; James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain and Alice Walker's The Color Purple; and Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Lalita Tademy's Cane River . Each text group corresponds with a secret type. Overall, this dissertation challenges the notion that secrecy as a trope in African American literature limits itself to the master/slave relationship in the United States. The previously mentioned texts highlight a direct link to West and West Central African traditions maintained after the Middle Passage. Hence, these preserved homeland customs, including secrecy, are reflected in twentieth-century African American literature.


India's move towards the digital economy has facilitated the formation of a cohesive ecosystem and accelerated the growth in sector-specific integrated services. However, at the same time, these digital developments have made the organisations vulnerable and prone to myriad cyber threats. With the surge in cyber incidents, if proactive measures are not put into place, nefarious actors may find more innovative ways to attack the cyberspace. India's existing national Cyber Security policy framework should be overhauled with an eye on the emerging technologies and emphasis on international cooperation and collaboration. This paper highlights the current status of cybersecurity in India and puts forth a few recommendations for a dynamic and resilient cyberspace. KRITIKA ROY RONNIE NINAN SSPC RESEARCH PAPER


Past and recent development of perennial grasses in the rainfed Euro-Mediterranean region is reviewed concerning climatic constraints and main types of farming systems. The few Mediterranean cultivars that are registered and available are used for livestock production and cover crops only in subtemperate areas. These cultivars are adapted where annual rainfall exceeds 500 mm and accumulated water deficit from May to September is <800 mm. For the future, grass-legume mixtures need to be developed to meet the contrasting situations of livestock production and environmental use, with both functions contributing to farm income through the market and from public subsidies. Concern for environmental uses of perennial grasses raises interest in new germplasm that could accelerate cultivar breeding and seed production. Research programs should ensure a diversification of available germplasm in the principal forage species for phenology, drought tolerance, summer dormancy levels, and dehydration tolerance.


An interaction of a jet-shaped subcooled water flow with a lateral steam flow in saturated and/or superheated state can be found at the downcomer of the reactor vessel of nuclear power plants during the reflood phase of loss-of-coolantaccident (LOCA). These phenomena may increase the amount of water bypassed toward the break outside the vessel and may have an impact on peak cladding temperature which is one of the key safety parameters of the reactor safety, especially for the plants which has an emergency core cooling system (ECCS) injected to the reactor vessel downcomer directly (DVI). A device 'ECBD (ECCS core barrel duct)', a duct which is attached to the core barrel wall and has a horizontal opening for the ECC water jet incoming and an vertical outlet to the lower part of the downcomer, has been proposed in the advanced ECCS design to improve the adverse effect of ECC water bypass. The present study aims at predicting the phenomena using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis based on the simple air–water duct experiment and the interaction with a gas in terms of the fraction of water bypassing the ECBD. The assumed velocities of the air and the water are ranged to be close to the actual accident situation. To simulate the air–water two-phase flow, the homogeneous model considering the surface tension and volume fraction at each phase is used. The effect of turbulence during the interaction, the SST turbulence model is used. From the result of the CFD calculation, the form loss factor at the opening of the ECBD is derived for a reasonable calculation of the one-dimensional two-phase system code to be used in the accident analysis.


Modern distributed computing developed from the traditional supercomputing community rooted firmly
in the culture of batch management. Therefore, the field has been dominated by queuing-based resource
managers and work flow based job submission environments where static resource demands needed be
determined and reserved prior to launching executions. This has made it difficult to support resource
environments (e.g. Grid, Cloud) where the available resources as well as the resource requirements
of applications may be both dynamic and unpredictable. This thesis introduces a flexible execution
model where the compute capacity can be adapted to fit the needs of applications as they change during
execution. Resource provision in this model is based on a fine-grained, self-service approach instead
of the traditional one-time, system-level model. The thesis introduces a middleware based Application
Agent (AA) that provides a platform for the applications to dynamically interact and negotiate resources
with the underlying resource infrastructure.
We also consider the issue of transparency, i.e., hiding the provision and management of the distributed
environment. This is the key to attracting public to use the technology. The AA not only replaces
user-controlled process of preparing and executing an application with a transparent software-controlled
process, it also hides the complexity of selecting right resources to ensure execution QoS. This service
is provided by an On-line Feedback-based Automatic Resource Configuration (OAC) mechanism cooperating
with the flexible execution model. The AA constantly monitors utility-based feedbacks from the
application during execution and thus is able to learn its behaviour and resource characteristics. This
allows it to automatically compose the most efficient execution environment on the fly and satisfy any
execution requirements defined by users. Two policies are introduced to supervise the information learning
and resource tuning in the OAC. The Utility Classification policy classifies hosts according to their
historical performance contributions to the application. According to this classification, the AA chooses
high utility hosts and withdraws low utility hosts to configure an optimum environment. The Desired
Processing Power Estimation (DPPE) policy dynamically configures the execution environment according
to the estimated desired total processing power needed to satisfy users' execution requirements.
Through the introducing of flexibility and transparency, a user is able to run a dynamic/normal
distributed application anywhere with optimised execution performance, without managing distributed
resources. Based on the standalone model, the thesis further introduces a federated resource negotiation
framework as a step forward towards an autonomous multi-user distributed computing world.


This product provides an authoritative, insider's perspective on the events and factors that have historically led to financial crises in the United States and the ways in which the system can be reformed. Featuring partners and chairs from some of the nation's leading law firms, these experts offer their insight into the status of the nation's financial market, including how this system was established and what issues may have led to the subprime mortgage and credit crises. Emphasizing the need to change how our financial markets operate, the authors walk the readers through a history of corporate fraud and regulatory reform.


Following Clifford Geertz and other cultural anthropologists, the New Historicist critics have evolved a method for describing culture in action. Their "thick descriptions" seize upon an event or anecdote--colonist John Rolfe's conversation with Pocohontas's father, a note found among Nietzsche's papers to the effect that "I have lost my umbrella"--and re-read it to reveal through the analysis of tiny particulars the motive forces controlling a whole society. Contributors: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gerald Graff, Jean Franco, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frank Lentricchia, Vincent Pecora, Jane Marcus, Jon Klancher, Jonathan Arac, Hayden White, Stanley Fish, Judith Newton, Joel Fineman, John Schaffer, Richard Terdiman, Donald Pease, Brooks Thomas.


We propose a depth extraction method by using the correlation between an elemental image and a periodic function in computational integral imaging. Because each elemental image corresponds to a different perspective of the three-dimensional (3-D) object, an elemental image is regarded as the sum of the periodic spatial frequencies depending on the depth of a 3-D object. In this regard, we analyze the property of correlation between the same periodic functions and vice versa. To show the feasibility of the proposed method, we carried out our experiment and presented the results.


In this paper, we describe an efficient methodology to guide investigators during network forensic analysis. To this end, we introduce the concept of core attack graph, a compact representation of the main routes an attacker can take towards specific network targets. Such compactness allows forensic investigators to focus their efforts on critical nodes that are more likely to be part of attack paths, thus reducing the overall number of nodes (devices, network privileges) that need to be examined. Nevertheless, core graphs also allow investigators to hierarchically explore the graph in order to retrieve different levels of summarised information. We have evaluated our approach over different network topologies varying parameters such as network size, density, and forensic evaluation threshold. Our results demonstrate that we can achieve the same level of accuracy provided by standard logical attack graphs while significantly reducing the exploration rate of the network.


This book illuminates the shift in approaches to the uses of theatre and performance technology in the past twenty-five years and develops an account of new media dramaturgy (NMD), an approach to theatre informed by what the technology itself seems to want to say. Born of the synthesis of new media and new dramaturgy, NMD is practiced and performed in the work of a range of important artists from dumb type and their 1989 analog-industrial machine performance pH, to more recent examples from the work of Kris Verdonck and his A Two Dogs Company. Engaging with works from a range of artists and companies including: Blast Theory, Olafur Eliasson, Nakaya Fujiko and Janet Cardiff, we see a range of extruded performative technologies operating overtly on, with and against human bodies alongside more subtle dispersed, interactive and experiential media.


This paper studies the effects of financial development, taking into account both formal and informal financing. Using cross-country firm-level data, we document that informal financing is utilized more by rich countries than poor countries. To account for this empirical pattern, we build a model in which the supply of informal financing increases with financial development, while the demand for informal financing declines with it. The model generates a hump-shaped relationship between the incidence of informal financing and GDP per capita. Our analysis shows that, at the early stage of economic development, the output loss from financial frictions is reinforced by the low supply of informal financing. Informal financing contributes more to the aggregate output of the richest countries than to that of the poorer countries in our sample.


Objectives To evaluate experiences and reactions after receiving a mailed, unsolicited human papillomavirus self-sampling kit and identify psychosocial correlates of using kits. Methods Survey participants were underscreened women aged 30–64 who were mailed human papillomavirus kits as part of a pragmatic trial at Kaiser Permanente Washington, a United States integrated health care system. Six months after the mailing, we invited kit returners and non-returners to complete a web survey that measured psychosocial factors (e.g. cervical cancer/human papillomavirus knowledge, attitudes toward screening), experiences, and reactions to kits. We compared responses between kit returners and non-returners. Results Comparing 116 kit returners (272 invited) and 119 non-returners (1083 invited), we found no clinically significant differences in psychosocial factors. Overall, survey respondents showed knowledge gaps in human papillomavirus natural history (82% did not know human papillomavirus infection can clear on its own) and interpreting human papillomavirus test results (37% did not know a human papillomavirus-negative result indicates low cancer risk). Kit returners found kits convenient and easy to use (>90%). The most common reason for non-return was low confidence in ability to correctly use a kit, although many non-returners (49%) indicated that they would consider future use. Women reported low trust in human papillomavirus testing to identify women at high risk for cervical cancer (52% in returners, 42% in non-returners). Conclusions Screening programs could improve uptake and acceptability of human papillomavirus self-sampling through outreach materials that emphasize the high efficacy of human papillomavirus testing for cervical cancer screening and educate patients about how to interpret results.


The estimation of fatigue life in the design process is particularly important for weight-optimised ships such as high-speed aluminium craft, but to date no research has been published on the fatigue accumulation on large wave-piercing catamarans, focusing on long-term operations. This paper assesses the applicability of classification society rules for high-speed catamarans with respect to fatigue design. This was achieved by comparing the long-term distributions of stress, measured on a 111m long wave-piercing catamaran ferry whilst operating in the Canary Islands and during the delivery voyage, with load spectra estimated using a method accepted by the classification society, DNV. The paper also proposes an improved distribution fitment method for fatigue analysis. A detailed method to convert measured stress histories in the time domain into an appropriate stress-spectrum and fitment of Weibull parameters is presented. Results show that the simplified method accepted by the classification society is highly conservative regarding fatigue estimation compared to fatigue results based on measured data. The proposed combined Weibull fitment method substantially improves the accuracy of simplified fatigue analysis methods.


This article is in response to If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, and Citizenship, by Carliss N. Chatman.

It is pointless to approach Professor Chatman's argument on its own terms (to wit, "tak[ing] our laws seriously," or equal application across myriad legal categories of "full personhood" rights) because these terms are neither seriously intended nor legally comprehensible. Instead, her essay is intended to create the impression that legally protecting unborn human lives against abortion opens up a Pandora's box of legal complications so "ridiculous" and "far-fetched" that we should rather just leave things where they are under the federal Constitution post-Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This impression, in turn, is a tool to forward Professor Chatman's personal preference for legal abortion — which she gives away by calling legal abortion by its political name: "the right to choose."

But her arguments, sounding in law, about the alleged chaos to flow from a law protecting unborn human lives from abortion are false on the grounds of basic legal principles concerning federal constitutional and immigration law, as well as the legal principles underlying state legislation and statutory interpretation. I will set these legal principles out below before turning to the more interesting and legally plausible matter of whether or not lawmakers should choose to take into account both the needs of pregnant women and the humanity of unborn life when crafting laws affecting both, whether the situation involves immigration, incarceration, or women's need for financial support.


Plants are capable to enhance basal defense strategies against harmful organisms upon the perception of certain stimuli. This enhanced resistance is not necessarily accompanied by direct activation of defenses, but often depends on a sensitization of the plant tissue to express defenses faster and/or stronger when the plant is under attack. In analogy with a similar phenomenon in animals, this is commonly called priming. This thesis describes that priming induced in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana by exogenous application of the non-protein amino acid ?-aminobutyric acid (BABA) or root colonization by the non-pathogenic rhizobacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens WCS417r is accompanied by direct transcriptional activation of distinct sets of transciptionfactor (TF) genes. It is believed that these TFs will further remain inactive until subsequent pathogen attack, when they will enhance the expression of salicylic acid (SA)- and jasmonic acid (JA)-dependent defenses, respectively. BABA induced the expression of 22 out of the 72 known WRKY TF genes, mostly in a NPR1-dependent manner. This fits the SA-dependency of resistance induced by BABA (BABA-IR), since WRKYs are key transcriptional regulators of SA-dependent defenses. Promoter analysis identified an overrepresentation of a certain motif in the promoters of these BABA-inducible WRKY genes. This motif, TAG[TA]CT, may represent an important cis-acting element in BABA-induced priming of SA-dependent defenses. However, BABA also primes SA-independent cell wall defense, resulting in an enhanced deposition of callose containing papillae in response to fungal or oomycetal penetration. This priming for cell wall defense by BABA is dependent on intact absicic acid (ABA) and phosphoinositide signaling. In order to identify novel regulators involved in BABA-induced priming of callose depositions, an ethylmethance sulfonate (EMS)-mutagenesis screen was set up to identify mutants impaired in BABA-induced immunity (ibi). This resulted in the identification of ibi1, whose mutation maps to the lower arm of chromosome 4. IBI1 acts likely upstream of or parallel to ABA. Preliminary results points towards a possible role for IBI1 in the regulation of the redox state of the cell. Further characterization of ibi1 will lead to new insights in BABA-induced priming of cell wall defense. A cost-benefit analysis of priming indicated that priming is a cost-efficient method for plants to protect themselves in regions with high disease incidence, since priming induces only marginal trade-offs on growth and seed set under enemy free conditions. The existence of natural Arabidopsis accessions that have genetically acquired a primed capacity to express SA- and/or JA-dependent defenses fits the hypothesis that priming seems a beneficial strategy for plants in hostile environments. The question remains whether plants grown in nature have already acquired a primed defensive capacity. A preliminary field experiment indeed showed that wild-type plants may have acquired a primed defensive capacity under the specific environmental conditions of that field experiment, although more field-experiments should be conducted to study the extent and the conditions of priming in crop plants. A better understanding of the priming phenomenon may ultimately lead to the use of priming as a durable protection strategy in agriculture.


The introduction of non-native species and the alteration of seawater nutrient regimes due to anthropogenic impacts are two important threats to marine environments. Moreover, these disturbances may interact in such a way that promotes the success of invasive species in coastal habitats. This thesis contributes to current gaps in knowledge in these areas for low-intertidal communities. Algal community dynamics and ecological effects of the invasive kelp Undaria pinnatifida on low shores in the Wellington region, New Zealand, were examined, using field surveys and experiments. In addition, the role of variability in nutrient concentrations in coastal waters in mediating algal community structure and diversity, and the success of U. pinnatifida reproduction were investigated. Algal surveys were used in two locations thought to differ in nutrient regimes, the Wellington Harbour and the Wellington south coast, to explore the structure and dynamics of algal assemblages. Results showed high variability of low-intertidal algal communities among sites, but no consistent differences in algal community composition were found between the two locations, despite higher U. pinnatifida cover in the harbour. Over the duration of the study, nutrient regimes did not differ greatly between the locations. The response of rocky intertidal algal assemblages to chronic exposure to high nutrient effluent was investigated using two nearshore sewage outfalls in the Wellington region. The Titahi Bay outfall showed a stronger relationship between nutrients and algal community composition. Variation in algal assemblage structure and diversity was best explained by phosphate concentrations. By contrast, at the more wave-exposed Pencarrow outfall, patterns of change in the algal community were less clear and there was a much weaker relationship with seawater nutrients. Because removal of native algal canopy species may facilitate the establishment of invasive macroalgae, the invasion process of U. pinnatifida in disturbed patches in a rocky low-intertidal habitat was investigated. In a site where U. pinnatifida had not yet established, patches were scraped clear of native algal cover at two different times of year, and recruitment of U. pinnatifida was monitored. While U. pinnatifida invaded the site, it recruited in control plots at a similar rate as cleared plots, suggesting that physical disturbance of the native algal assemblage is not a key requirement for this kelp to invade and establish in new areas in the low intertidal zone. The response of native algal assemblages to removal of U. pinnatifida individuals was investigated at intertidal sites in the Wellington Harbour and on the south coast. No significant effect of U. pinnatifida on community composition, diversity, and species richness was detected. Removal of this invader did not change native intertidal assemblage structure in either harbour or south coast sites. Lastly, effects of different nutrient regimes and light intensities on early development and reproduction of U. pinnatifida were studied using a laboratory experiment. Under low light conditions U. pinnatifida gametophyte growth and reproduction stalled and was not increased by the addition of nutrients. However, at medium and high light levels, gametophyte growth and reproduction, and particularly early stage sporophyte growth rates increased when exposed to higher nutrient concentrations.These effects could have implications for U. pinnatifida population dynamics in intertidal habitats where light is not often a limiting resource. This research contributed to a better understanding of factors that underlie invasion dynamics, distribution, and ecological effects of U. pinnatifida and seawater nutrient regimes on low-intertidal assemblages in the Wellington region. The outcomes can assist in setting up strategic environmental protection and conservation plans.


This article is an original work of scholarship in several respects. As the title suggests, it presents a novel interpretation of the "original understanding" of the Constitution, which I call the inherent national sovereignty theory. This theory viewed the national government as a sovereign government and Congress as a sovereign legislature imbued with the countless legislative powers that sovereign legislatures possesses. The sources of this understanding are themselves original. The article is based in part on a systematic analysis of the political debates relating to politically defining actions of the federal government in this nation's early history: the incorporation of the First Bank of the United States in 1791; the decision to allow the bank's charter to expire in 1811; and the decision to incorporate the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. No one has previously engaged in a systematic constitutional analysis of these political debates. I have found that bank proponents asserted Congress's inherent sovereign legislative power to explain Congress's authority to incorporate the First and Second Banks. The article also presents a novel interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, which upheld the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United States in an opinion that many scholars believe to be the most important in the Court's history. Viewed for the first time within the context of over twenty years of political/constitutional debates relating to the First and Second Banks, this article shows that the opposing lawyers in this case argued the inherent national sovereignty theory and the strict construction, states' rights theory of the Constitution popular among today's conservatives. It shows that Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion for a unanimous Court upheld the constitutionality of the Second Bank by affirming Congress's inherent sovereign legislative powers. The article also shows that Congress based other actions, and the Court upheld these actions in other cases, by affirming the inherent national sovereignty theory of the Constitution.This article is original in other significant ways. In identifying actions taken by the federal government pursuant to a theory of inherent national sovereignty, the article presents a novel rebuttal to the current "new originalists" who argue that the original understanding of the Constitution posited a strict construction, states' rights-oriented, and fixed understanding of limited powers. The McCulloch Court expressly rejected this theory. More broadly, this article presents a discussion of the original understandings of the Constitution within the constitutional/political process of governing. In this context, proponents of inherent national sovereignty understood the Constitution as a dynamically-evolving framework of government whose meaning would develop over time through the political process and by the specific actions taken by Congress and the executive branch of the federal government. Many of the leading political actors in the nation's founding generation considered the constitutional/political process itself as an authoritative means of constitutional construction. They regarded congressional actions as having precedential authority in deciding questions of constitutional construction. Consequently, political practice gave meaning to the text of the Constitution. The Constitution was to be constructed by the political branches of the federal government, primarily by Congress, through the dynamic process of governing. The Court's role was to uphold the constitutionality of congressional actions to meet the nation's needs unless Congress exercised a power that was expressly prohibited or explicitly reserved to the states or to the people. Inherent national sovereignty constitutionalism is fundamentally different from today's understanding of the Constitution, of the constitutional/political process, and of the relationships of the branches of government within the constitutional structure. It entrusts much greater autonomy to Congress and the executive to govern and much greater authoritativeness to Congress's interpretation of the Constitution in its function to make law and public policy than our system today allows. It envisions a more modest role for the judiciary in reviewing Congress's legislative actions and the policies they entail. This theory centers policy making in the political branches of the government rather than in the Supreme Court where it currently exists. Moreover, inherent national sovereignty constitutionalism relegates constitutional interpretation in making political decisions to a less important role and requires decision makers to justify their actions on their practical merits instead of the Constitution's meaning. In short, inherent national sovereignty constitutionalism presents a fundamentally different understanding of the way government should function under the Constitution.


The tourism industry is one of the most important industries in the Pacific Island countries. It has been the source of employment, foreign exchange earnings, employment and investment in the Pacific Island countries. The competition in the tourism industry is becoming aggressive as countries are trying to increase its tourism numbers. For a small island developing country like Samoa, one of its key competencies is its naturally friendly labour supply. Managing labour in the tourism industry of Samoa is a challenging task as there is lack of supply of skilled human resource managers. Other issues such as lack of finance makes recruiting expatriates from abroad an unfavourable option. The main aim of this research is to examine the types of HRM practices adopted by the hotels sector in Samoa and how the tourism industry of Samoa be improved by efficiently and effectively managing its labour supply.


The vasculopathy of ESRD affects both arteries and veins. The arteries develop arteriosclerosis, which is largely a disease of the media characterized by increased collagen content, calcification, and both hypertrophy and hyperplasia of vascular smooth muscle cells. Veins may exhibit increased width of the intimal and medial layers, and may develop neointimal hyperplasia and calcification. Successful fistula maturation depends upon dilatation and remodeling of the artery and vein, but the stiff and thickened vessels of ESRD patients may respond poorly to signals that promote these adaptations. There is intense interest in accurately predicting fistula maturation outcome and preventing maturation failure. However, definitive criteria for preoperative testing of vessel elasticity have not yet been established. Tests that are adopted for widespread clinical use will need to be easy to apply - a standard that many of these tests may not meet. Finally, effective treatments are needed that prevent or reduce the stiffness of vessels. In conclusion, although there are many promising developments in this emerging field, effective methods of predicting fistula maturation outcome and preventing maturation failure remain to be established.


From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Aperture is pleased to release this book in an affordable paperback edition. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of the pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations from the Photo-Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1950s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, Barbara Kasten, Ellen Carey, and James Welling among them took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists most prominently Penelope Umbrico, Michael Flomen, and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin reject classic definitions of photography's documentary dimension in favor of other conceptually inflected possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexers engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and interviews with key practitioners and critics, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gottfried Jagger, Silvio Wolf, and Walead Beshty.


In vivo brain microdialysis was used to monitor changes in dopamine (DA) release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) during anticipatory and consummatory components of feeding behavior. During 10 daily training sessions, rats were first confined to one compartment of a testing chamber for 10 minutes. During this period (anticipatory phase) they were prevented from gaining access to a highly palatable liquid meal by a wire mesh screen. The screen was then removed and the animals were permitted to consume the meal for 20 min (consummatory phase). On removal of the screen, the latency to begin drinking decreased and the amount consumed increased as a function of days of training, both measures reaching asymptotic levels by day 7. Trained animals were implanted with dialysis probes in the NAc on day 10, and on day 12 DA release was monitored during the feeding session. Compared to controls, trained animals failed to show significantly greater increases in accumbal DA release during the anticipatory phase, all groups showing small (approximately 10%) increases on being placed in the test chamber. In contrast, compared to controls, DA release increased significantly in the NAc during consumption of the palatable meal. The magnitude of this increase was significantly enhanced (30% vs 71% peak increase) in animals that were 20 hr food deprived at the time of testing. The latter animals also showed a statistically significant increase (24%) in DA release during the anticipatory phase. A subsequent experiment in which consumption of the palatable liquid was limited to 5 ml in deprived and nondeprived animals indicated that only part of the deprivation-induced potentiation of accumbal DA release could be attributed to the larger volume consumed by the deprived animals. That is, the same volume and rate of consumption of a small amount of the liquid diet produced a significantly greater increase in accumbal DA release in deprived than in nondeprived animals (42% vs 23% peak increase). Feeding-induced increases in accumbal DA release were not due to postingestional factors as direct injections of the liquid diet into the stomach by gavage failed to produce this effect. The results of these experiments indicate (1) that consummatory rather than anticipatory aspects of feeding are robustly associated with increases in DA release in the NAc, and (2) that motivational state can influence the magnitude of the neurochemical events that are associated with goal- directed behaviors.


As tools for content editing mature, and artificial intelligence (AI) based algorithms for synthesizing media grow, the presence of manipulated content across online media is increasing. This phenomenon causes the spread of misinformation, creating a greater need to distinguish between "real" and "manipulated" content. To this end, we present Videosham, a dataset consisting of 826 videos (413 real and 413 manipulated). Many of the existing deepfake datasets focus exclusively on two types of facial manipulations-swapping with a different subject's face or altering the existing face. Videosham, on the other hand, contains more diverse, context-rich, and human-centric, high-resolution videos manipulated using a combination of 6 different spatial and temporal attacks. Our analysis shows that state-of-the-art manipulation detection algorithms only work for a few specific attacks and do not scale well on Videosham. We performed a user study on Amazon Mechanical Turk with 1200 participants to understand if they can differentiate between the real and manipulated videos in Videosham. Finally, we dig deeper into the strengths and weaknesses of performances by humans and SOTA-algorithms to identify gaps that need to be filled with better AI algorithms. We present the dataset here11VideoSham dataset link..


This paper addresses the changing nature of markets in an IT-rich and Internet connected world. Through a combination of case studies, theoretical analysis and parallels between issues in developed and emerging worlds, it explores whether technology can help create economic futures that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable for the emergent economies and also offer fresh directions for the culturally homogenised and resource wasteful west. The paper suggests that IT radically changes the 'ground rules' compared with the periods of intense development in western countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, IT opens the way for less centralised growth, where global communications enable local collaboration, and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid can have presence on the world stage. However, realising the potential of IT to aid sustainability may require strategic efforts to create suitable information and economic infrastructures.


In this study, simulations over Southeast Asia (15°S–40°N, 80°–145°E) at 36 km resolution were conducted for the period 1989–2007 using the Regional Climate Model version 4.3 (RegCM4.3) under the framework of the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Downscaling/Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment – Southeast Asia (or SEACLID/CORDEX‐SEA) project. Forced by the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Interim Reanalysis (ERA‐Interim), 18 experiments were carried out using different combinations of cumulus parameterization and ocean flux schemes. Twelve extreme indices for both rainfall and temperature were estimated from the model output. A statistical omega index was used to measure the degree of similarity among the 18 experiments in phase and shape. The results showed relatively high similarities among the experiments over mainland Asia compared to those over the Maritime Continent for both seasonal and inter‐annual variability. The extreme rainfall indices had a lower omega compared to that of temperature. Observed daily rainfall and temperature data at 52 meteorological stations over the SEA region were used to validate the simulated extreme indices. The results showed that extreme temperature indices were generally underestimated across the region. Systematic biases for each simulated rainfall index were also identified. A score ranking system was established to compare the relative performance of the 18 experiments over the 52 selected stations objectively. It was shown that the experiments with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)‐Emanuel scheme performed relatively better than the other convective schemes. The combination of the MIT‐Emanuel convective scheme with the Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer scheme (BATS1e) ocean flux scheme produced the best performance.


ABSTRACT Community Action for Preventing Extremism (CAPE) is Australia's only not-for-profit counter-extremism project focused specifically on preventing a growth in right-wing extremism. By disseminating counter-narratives to extremism through the exitwhitepower.com website and directly engaging with individuals at-risk via social media, CAPE seeks to sow a seed of doubt that will reduce individual's vulnerability to involvement in the far-right. This paper will outline CAPE's practitioner experience in developing online interventions to challenge far-right narratives and the advantages of using this method of engagement. The paper will also outline distinctions between traditional white supremacist far-right groups and the increasingly active anti-Muslim groups, which create challenges for CAPE's work in countering far-right online activity.


This paper defines rules for an ontology server that enables the selection of the relevant portion of an ontology based on the notion of existence dependency (ED). We examine the ED on the part-whole relation represented in a unified modeling language (UML) and discuss its importance as a modeling primitive for the systems such as OWL (ontology Web language) and UML for ontology definition meta-model (ODM). We then raise a few anomalies in these systems regarding ontological semantics. We then employ the theory of formal ontology which ontologically resolves the semantics of the part-whole relation. As a result, we define rules so the server can find what is needed and present it to the user.


Harmonics, which may be placed in electrical systems, have important effects on performance parameters of electrical motors. In this paper, effects of electrical power system voltage harmonics on torque position of induction motors are dealt with. System modeling with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) type Active Power Filter (APF) is used for reducing these effects. APF, as a subsystem, is placed into torque control system entrance to save the control system and induction motor output torque. Motor outputs, that are before-after APF connections, are handed for understanding effects of voltage harmonics. Since APF design was based on voltage harmonics, Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) has not changed. Main goal of the filter is zero effect of voltage harmonics on motor torque. A new place is selected for APF and the filter control system is designed with using Lyapunov function at the same time. Classical PI controlled APF is used like as a reference filter system and final result is that motor and system elements are defended by nonlinear controlled APF.


The 2.0-angstrom structure of the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)–dependent protein kinase (PKA) catalytic subunit bound to a deletion mutant of a regulatory subunit (RIα) defines a previously unidentified extended interface. The complex provides a molecular mechanism for inhibition of PKA and suggests how cAMP binding leads to activation. The interface defines the large lobe of the catalytic subunit as a stable scaffold where Tyr247 in the G helix and Trp196 in the phosphorylated activation loop serve as anchor points for binding RIα. These residues compete with cAMP for the phosphate binding cassette in RIα. In contrast to the catalytic subunit, RIα undergoes major conformational changes when the complex is compared with cAMP-bound RIα. The inhibitor sequence docks to the active site, whereas the linker, also disordered in free RIα, folds across the extended interface. The β barrel of cAMP binding domain A, which is the docking site for cAMP, remains largely intact in the complex, whereas the helical subdomain undergoes major reorganization.


It was nearly 20 years ago, but I remember the day clearly. I sat down and wrote a letter resigning from my faculty position in Turkey. "I have been subjected to injustices," I wrote in Turkish. "I want to resign from my duty as of 17 September 2001." I had spent the preceding 5 years fighting for the pay raise that I was owed when I was promoted to associate professor. University administrators argued that I hadn't completed my military service, and the dispute eventually went to court. I was fed up, so my wife and I decided to make a new beginning—on the other side of the world.

> "I'm glad that I took a risk to rebuild my career from scratch in another country."

After completing my Ph.D. in the United Kingdom, I had returned to my home country—Turkey—to fulfill the conditions of a scholarship that I received to study abroad. As the first person in my family to attend a university, I was looking forward to serving as an educator and academic leader in the place where I was raised; I wanted to make a difference. Within a few months, I was appointed to a tenure-track faculty position, and I began to teach courses and ramp up my research lab.

My career seemed to be sailing along until the salary dispute. I no longer felt valued by my university, which made it hard to stay motivated. But I carried on with my research, at one point attending a conference in Colombia. There I met a professor from an Australian university who shared many of my research interests, and we stayed in touch.

Over the next few years, we swapped occasional emails. Then one day, he wrote to offer me a postdoc position in his lab. The rank was well below my position; at that point, I was 6 months away from being eligible to apply for a promotion to full professor. But the position in Australia offered me a chance to get out of my work situation in Turkey, which was making me profoundly unhappy, so I took it seriously.

My wife liked the idea of moving to Australia. We had one small child at the time—with plans to have another—and she thought we'd have better opportunities to raise our family there. So, with her encouragement, I took a leave of absence from my faculty position to do a reconnaissance trip to Australia. Before I left, I typed out a resignation letter, signed a printed copy, and gave it to my wife for safekeeping.

After a month, it was clear to me that we'd enjoy living in Australia and that it was the right career move for me. My wife agreed. So she put my letter in the mail; our decision was final.

When I look back now, I realize what a daring decision that was—for both of us. My wife couldn't speak a word of English and, as a trained lawyer, couldn't practice her profession in Australia, which has a very different legal system. It was hard for us to say goodbye to our relatives in Turkey. Our finances also tightened. The cross-continent move was expensive, and my postdoc salary was our only source of income in Australia.

But we never looked back with regret. My wife quickly became proficient in English and eventually went back to school part-time to study accounting. And I've been much happier professionally. I left my legal disputes behind and got a chance to work with supportive colleagues on a research project that I was excited about. My postdoc adviser also entrusted me with co-supervising some of his Ph.D. students, which made me feel as though my expertise was valued.

When I quit my faculty position in Turkey, I was hopeful that I could work my way back up the academic ladder. And, indeed, that's what happened: After 2.5 years, I secured a tenure-track job at another university in Australia, which is where I am now.

I hope that others can gain inspiration from my nontraditional career path. It was devastating when my professional life appeared to crumble. But that challenge set me on a new path, one that has led to a productive and enjoyable career. I'm glad I took a risk to rebuild my career from scratch in another country—and that my wife was excited to make a change along with me. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor."


The predominant aggregate resources located in the western parts of Virginia are carbonate rocks. The mineral components of these rocks tend to be relatively soft and subject to abrasive wear under traffic that leads to a fairly rapid smoothing of the aggregate surface and the surface of pavements containing them. This smoothing or polishing leads to a loss of surface friction and thus skid resistance of the pavement, creating potential safety issues. As a consequence, surface courses of pavements are constructed with nonpolishing aggregates, which in the western districts can mean lengthy transport of materials. With rising economic and environmental costs associated with transportation, increasing the use of locally available materials through improved methods to discern subtle differences in polishing tendencies or blending of polishing with nonpolishing aggregates could translate into significant cost savings. In this study, a suite of carbonate aggregates suspected to show a range of polishing characteristics based on previous studies was selected for evaluation along with several sources currently used as nonpolishing aggregates. The aggregates were examined petrographically, and the carbonate sources were tested for insoluble residue and subjected to a dilute acid etch to form the basis for a tentative classification of polishing susceptibility. The aggregates were tested in the Micro-Deval apparatus using both the standard procedure for coarse aggregates and a cyclical A/P procedure with silica sand devised for this study to examine how the various aggregate types responded when subjected to various degrees of wearing under similar conditions. Following abrasion cycles, 2-D digital aggregate images were obtained and analyzed using specialized software to assess their morphological properties with emphasis on angularity and surface texture. These properties were assessed before and after abrasion to determine the degree and rate of change in surface texture as well as the texture distribution within an aggregate sample. In addition, pictures were taken of the exposed surfaces of three experimental pavement sections in the Virginia Department of Transportation's Bristol District containing carbonate rock as the fine aggregate blended with nonpolishing coarse aggregate to visually assess the effect of traffic in the last 3 years. The carbonate rocks evaluated could be grouped according to polishing and wear tendency based on petrographic characteristics and mass loss in the Micro-Deval tests. Although visual distinctions could be discerned, these differences were not identified statistically by the image analysis program, but factors affecting the program were identified. A second phase of work is proposed that focuses on developing an accelerated pavement wearing protocol for assessing polishing tendencies and evaluating various mixtures of carbonate and nonpolishing aggregates.


As Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) usually are overparameterized and have millions of weight parameters, it is challenging to deploy these large DNN models on resource-constrained hardware platforms, e.g., smartphones. Numerous network compression methods such as pruning and quantization are proposed to reduce the model size significantly, of which the key is to find suitable compression allocation (e.g., pruning sparsity and quantization codebook) of each layer. Existing solutions obtain the compression allocation in an iterative/manual fashion while finetuning the compressed model, thus suffering from the efficiency issue. Different from the prior art, we propose a novel One-shot Pruning-Quantization (OPQ) in this paper, which analytically solves the compression allocation with pre-trained weight parameters only. During finetuning, the compression module is fixed and only weight parameters are updated. To our knowledge, OPQ is the first work that reveals pre-trained model is sufficient for solving pruning and quantization simultaneously, without any complex iterative/manual optimization at the finetuning stage. Furthermore, we propose a unified channel-wise quantization method that enforces all channels of each layer to share a common codebook, which leads to low bit-rate allocation without introducing extra overhead brought by traditional channel-wise quantization. Comprehensive experiments on ImageNet with AlexNet/MobileNet-V1/ResNet-50 show that our method improves accuracy and training efficiency while obtains significantly higher compression rates compared to the state-of-the-art.


This qualitative study examines the influence of a grant from the Lilly Endowment to recruit and retain intellectual capital of part-time faculty in a community college system. Through the use of grant funds, the college used in this study developed and implemented nine college-wide initiatives. This study examined adjunct faculty members" awareness of the grant and the nine initiatives, as well as examined the influence the grant had on their experience. Qualitative data on the lived experiences of adjunct faculty were collected and analyzed. Based upon the analysis of data, five themes emerged in this study: (a) limited awareness of the grant; (b) limited knowledge of the nine initiatives developed and implemented under the grant; (c) lack of formal communication regarding the grant and its initiatives; (d) the adjunct faculty experience was significantly influenced by orientation to the position; and (e) mentoring had a significant influence on their experience. The findings of this study resulted in implications for institutions of higher education, as well as generated recommendations for future practice and research.


Cars have been the symbols of modern civilization. However, in the beginning of the introduction of cars in China, they had not been favorite things for everyone in Republican China. The social image of cars had been complicated, including the symbols of civilization, luxury goods, and the dangerous tigers in cities. This article had compared the car accident discourse with Automobile Topics Weekly and the other sections in Shenbao. It had shown the changed attitudes about cars of the Shanghai people, from rejection, compromise to searching for the regulative balance between people and cars. It also had shown the conflicts of interest between people and cars. The people had legally given way to cars in distribution of the urban space, and developed the habitual conception of traffic safety.


For me, writing is like a r iver that runs through my veins, coursing more deeply than any other current in my life. Along with being a clinical psychologist and artist, I am also a wife and mother. I used to feel guilty about the intensity of my preoccupation with writing, as if this meant I didn't love my husband and children enough. I've come to realize the falsity of that fear. If I don't take care of myself fully first, how can I possibly serve others? This realization has freed me up. I now experience my personal history as marked by twin births. The birth of my body occurred more than 50 years ago, signaling my physical arrival on Earth. The birth of my spirit occurs in an ongoing fashion, through my writings, outside of time. This second birth feels like a successive awakening, an integration of intellect, passion, and spirit. This is the realm where I cobble together meaning on the grandest scale.


This study investigates the modulation of frontal EEG dynamics with respect to progress in motor learning. Using a computerized visual-motor task similar to mirror drawing, our work demonstrated that overall EEG activities in all frequency bands decreased with an increase in motor task familiarity. In particular, frontal EEG activities in delta band of the whole trial and gamma band at the beginning of each trial are having a significant negative relationship with the overall familiarity level of the task. The findings suggest that frontal EEG spectra are significantly modulated during motor skill acquisition.


Breast cancer is reported as the second largest case, after cervical, of total cancer cases in Indonesian women. Although several conventional therapies for breast cancer are available such as surgery, cytostatic therapy and radiotherapy, there are times when those treatments could not give good result in a desirable patient's recovery. Moreover, in the situation when patients are not able to pay the conventional treatments, it is common that those patients seek alternative therapies. Red Papua  (Pandanus conoideus Lam.), one of Indonesian natural properties from Papua province, has been taken as daily food. Although people believe that Red Papua Oil (RPO) can be used to treat cancer, including breast cancer, the scientific evidence proving the anti-cancer effect of RPO is still very limited. It is important that there is a need to investigate whether or not oral intake of RPO inhibit proliferation activity  and cancer growth, and induce apoptosis activity of mammary gland tumor of C3H strain mice. Forty mice were randomly divided into four groups, three groups of RPO-treated and one control group. After tumor was transplanted to all of the mice, three doses of RPO (0.05 ml, 0.1 ml and 0.2 ml) were given orally to the three treated-groups once a day for twenty eight days. The tumor volume was measured every three days. By the twenty ninth day, the mice were euthanised and tumors were taken. The volume and weight of tumor were measured and macroscopically preparations were made. TUNEL essay was used to detect apoptosis activity.  The proliferation activity was assessed using AgNOR. Inferential statistic ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis were conducted to determine significance. It was found that there were no significant differences in the tumor volume, tumor weight and apoptosis index among treated and control groups; however there was a tendency to increased apoptosis activity on the treated groups. On the contrary, there were differences on the AgNOR values among the treated and control groups. These differences were statistically significant (p<0.05). It can be concluded that there was an inhibition of proliferation activity on RPO-treated mice. However, those three doses were noaat able to induce apoptosis activity and to reduce the tumor growth.


A tunable membrane-type thin film bulk acoustic wave resonator (TFBAR) based on a Ba0.3Sr0.7TiO3 (BST) thin film has been fabricated. The resonance and antiresonance frequencies of the device can be altered by applying a dc bias: both shift down with increasing dc electric field. The resonance and antiresonance frequencies showed a tuning of -2.4% and -0.6%, respectively, at a maximum dc electric field of 615 kV/cm. The electromechanical coupling factor of the device increased up to 4.4%. We demonstrate that the tuning of the TFBAR is nonhysteretic. The Q-factor of the device showed some variation with dc bias and is about 200. The tuning of the TFBAR is caused by the dc bias dependence of the sound velocity and the intrinsic electromechanical coupling factor of the BST layer. We apply our recently developed theory on the electrical tuning of dc bias induced acoustic resonances in paraelectric thin films to successfully model the tuning behavior of the TFBAR. The modeling enabled us to de-embed the intrinsic electromechanical properties of the BST thin film. We show that the mechanical load of our device does not significantly degrade the tuning performance of the BST layer. The performance of the TFBAR is compared with the available data on varactor tuned TFBARs.


Background: There is little known about how people live
or manage coping with motor neurone disease or
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, (MND/ALS) which is
essential knowledge for developing approaches to enhance
quality of life and patient self-management. This study
used narrative research methods to explore how patients
with MND/ALS talk about living and coping with this
disease. Narrative research, whereby people who are ill are
encouraged to tell their stories, can elucidate issues
previously overlooked in biomedical approaches to disease
management. One approach to classifying illness narratives
involves identification of storylines or 'plots'. This
paper presents four 'plots' which were identified and
developed into a framework of narrative styles which may
be helpful for patients, family care-givers and professionals
to enhance quality of care and patient self-management. Objectives: 1) To explore patient experiences of living
and coping through MND/ALS; 2) to ascertain how
people talk about living and coping with MND/ALS Methods: The study involved a series of longitudinal
narrative case studies. Thirteen patients were recruited
through purposeful sampling. Six rounds of in-depth narrative interviews were conducted every three months
over an eighteen month period. A narrative thematic
framework approach (1,2) was developed which takes into
account an entire story and focuses on its form to identify
narrative themes. This approach is responsive to emergent
issues allowing construction and revision of the themes
and the developing framework as new and emergent
themes are noted and added. Results are summarised in a
final thematic frame and also presented with illustrative
quotations relating to the themes. Results: A framework of four narrative styles was
identified and the styles named fracturing, sustaining,
preserving and enduring. Some participants presented a
kaleidoscopic interchange of the four narrative styles
whereas others presented a consistent style throughout
their experience. Discussion: Identification of patient narrative styles offers
unique insight into patients' approaches and responses to
coping with MND/ALS. It is suggested that knowledge of
the narrative styles may be helpful for patients, family caregivers
and professionals as a framework for understanding
patient approaches to living with a life-limiting illness
which may enhance patient self-management and quality
of life.


Estimated external radiative forcings, model results, and proxy-based climate reconstructions have been used over the past several decades to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying observed climate variability and change over the past millennium. Here, the recent set of temperature reconstructions at the continental-scale generated by the PAGES 2k project and a collection of state-of-the-art model simulations driven by realistic external forcings are jointly analysed. The first aim is to estimate the consistency between model results and reconstructions for each continental-scale region over the time and frequency domains. Secondly, the links between regions are investigated to determine whether reconstructed global-scale covariability patterns are similar to those identified in model simulations. The third aim is to assess the role of external forcings in the observed temperature variations. From a large set of analyses, we conclude that models are in relatively good agreement with temperature reconstructions for Northern Hemisphere regions, particularly in the Arctic. This is likely due to the relatively large amplitude of the externally forced response across northern and high-latitude regions, which results in a clearly detectable signature in both reconstructions and simulations. Conversely, models disagree strongly with the reconstructions in the Southern Hemisphere. Furthermore, the simulations are more regionally coherent than the reconstructions, perhaps due to an underestimation of the magnitude of internal variability in models or to an overestimation of the response to the external forcing in the Southern Hemisphere. Part of the disagreement might also reflect large uncertainties in the reconstructions, specifically in some Southern Hemisphere regions, which are based on fewer palaeoclimate records than in the Northern Hemisphere.