The structural geometry and kinematic variations along curved fold and thrust belts and their interaction with neighboring rigid basement blocks are not well understood. In this study, we present a structural mapping and stratigraphic analysis of the Talesh Mountains, Iran, to document the timing and evolution of this curved orogen due to collision with the South Caspian Block. NE and SW verging oblique slip thrust faults are the main structural features in the northern and southern parts of the mountains. The N-trending central part of the range is connected to the curved ends of the Talesh Mountains by a system of high angle reverse faults with right lateral strike-slip sense of motion. Restored cross sections indicate greater horizontal shortening (25–30%) in the southern parts which gradually decreases toward the center (13–16%), and then increases to the north (22%). A compilation of stratigraphic sections across the region indicates three major phases of regional deformation in the early Oligocene, middle Miocene and early Pliocene. The middle Miocene phase, in good agreement with other data sets across the Iranian Plateau, is the onset time of deformation for the Talesh Mountains. The regional convergence direction has changed during this major phase of deformation in the NW margins of the Iranian Plateau. The observed kinematic variation along the major faults across the Talesh Mountains is likely resulted from a regional change in the shortening direction in middle Miocene. Variations on the measured Late Cenozoic horizontal shortening across the northern, central and southern parts of the Talesh Mountains resulted from their different orientations with respect to the regional convergent direction as well as interaction with the rigid south Caspian block. These results highlight that the orientation and timing of deformation was strongly influenced by the neighboring Caspian block and regional variations in the convergence direction associated with evolution of the Iranian Plateau.


Abstract. Geometric calibration is able to provide high-accuracy geometric coordinates of spaceborne SAR image through accurate geometric parameters in the Range-Doppler model by ground control points (GCPs). However, it is very difficult to obtain GCPs that covering large-scale areas, especially in the mountainous regions. In addition, the traditional calibration method is only used for single platform SAR images and can't support the hybrid geometric calibration for multi-platform images. To solve the above problems, a hybrid geometric calibration method for multi-platform spaceborne SAR images with sparse GCPs is proposed in this paper. First, we calibrate the master image that contains GCPs. Secondly, the point tracking algorithm is used to obtain the tie points (TPs) between the master and slave images. Finally, we calibrate the slave images using TPs as the GCPs. We take the Beijing-Tianjin- Hebei region as an example to study SAR image hybrid geometric calibration method using 3 TerraSAR-X images, 3 TanDEM-X images and 5 GF-3 images covering more than 235 kilometers in the north-south direction. Geometric calibration of all images is completed using only 5 GCPs. The GPS data extracted from GNSS receiver are used to assess the plane accuracy after calibration. The results after geometric calibration with sparse GCPs show that the geometric positioning accuracy is 3 m for TSX/TDX images and 7.5 m for GF-3 images.


Gloxinia (Sinningia speciosa Hierm) belongs to the family Gesneriaceae and is a commercially important ornamental plant. Gloxinia produces single or double flowers that are available in a variety of colors. This plant can be traditionally propagated by leaf, stem, rhizome, seed, and crown cuttings from a mature plant after blooming. The biological material was composed of five genotypes of Gloxinia (Sinningia speciosa): Kaiser Wilhelm; Kaiser Friedrich; Mont Blanc; Prince Albert; hybrid MA. The aim of this study was to investigate the in vitro regeneration potential of different gloxinia genotypes on different hormonal balances, in order to further increase the efficiency of their multiplication rate. The hormonal balance has the highest contribution on the variability of this trait (85.73%), followed by the genotype (5,51 %), while the culture duration had a lower contribution of 2.24 %. Kaiser Friedrich variety recorded average values of shoots number/explant significantly higher to other genotypes. The balance BA4+ANA0.1 proved to be the most effective for the initiation and formation of shoots, thus resulting statistically assured increases of shoots number/explant compared to the other studied hormonal combinations.


Whether Goethe actually cried "More light!" on his deathbed, or whether Conrad Hilton checked out of this world after uttering "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub," last words, regardless of authenticity, have long captured the imagination of Western society. In this playfully serious investigation based on factual accounts, anecdotes, literary works, and films, Karl Guthke explores the cultural importance of those words spoken at the border between this world and the next. The exit lines of both famous and ordinary people embody for us a sense of drama and truthfulness and reveal much about our thoughts on living and dying. Why this interest in last words? Presenting statements from such figures as Socrates, Nathan Hale, Marie Antoinette, and Oscar Wilde ("I am dying as I have lived, beyond my means"), Guthke examines our fascination in terms of our need for closure, our desire for immortality, and our attraction to the mystique of death scenes. The author considers both authentic and invented final statements as he looks at the formation of symbols and legends and their function in our culture. Last words, handed down from generation to generation like cultural heirlooms, have a good chance of surviving in our collective memory. They are shown to epitomize a life, convey a sense of irony, or play to an audience, as in the case of the assassinated Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who is said to have died imploring journalists: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.".


Star identification is the most critical and important process for attitude estimation, given data from any star sensor. The main purpose of the Star identification (Star-ID) process is to identify the observed/measured stars with the corresponding cataloged stars. The precision of the observed star directions highly depend on the calibrated accuracy of the star camera parameters, mainly the focal length f , and the optical axis offsets (x0, y0). When these parameters are not accurate or when the camera is not well calibrated, the proposed Non-Dimensional Star-ID method becomes very suitable, because it does not require accurate knowledge of these parameters. The Non-Dimensional Star-ID method represents a unique tool to identify the stars of uncalibrated or inaccurate parameters cameras. The basic idea derives the identification process from the observed focal plane angles which are, to first order, independent from both the focal length and the optical axis offsets. The adoption of the kvector range search technique, makes this method very fast. Moreover, it is easy to implement, accurate, and the probability of failing Star-ID is less than 0.1% for typical star tracker design parameters.


SUMMARY Until recently, mental health professionals have given little attention to the growing phenomenon of adolescent dating violence (ADV). Although society has given increased attention to the problem of domestic violence, it has been reluctant to acknowledge that adolescents are the fastest growing population at risk. The sad truth is that 1 in 8 high school students and 1 in 5 college students will become involved in violent relationships (Jersey Battered Woman's Service, 1995). It is also horrifying that ADV often leads to murder. In 1993, 600 teenage girls were murdered by their partners (Wertheimer, 1994). According to FBI reports, 20% of all female homicide victims are between the ages of 15 and 24 and 1 out of 3 female homicides is committed by the victim's husband or boyfriend (Levy, 1993). This article explores the subject of Adolescent Dating Violence and examines the elements which distinguish ADV from domestic violence, the three forms of ADV, the cycles of abuse involved in ADV, the reasons for the occurrence of ADV, useful intervention and prevention methods and different social policies which should be implemented to combat Adolescent Dating Violence.


Cross-cultural research is rife with ethical and methodological challenges but, despite the increased demand for such research, discussions on 'culturally sensitive methodologies' are still largely neglected. Consequently, researchers often find themselves faced with difficulties but lack information on how to deal with them. This text provides an in-depth discussion on how to perform qualitative research in cross-cultural contexts with an emphasis on a more ethical, sensible and responsible approach. Pranee Liamputtong suggests culturally sensitive and appropriate research methods that would work well with cultural groups. She offers thoughtprovoking perspectives and diverse cultural examples that will be of value to both novice and experienced cross-cultural researchers. Throughout the volume there are references to the excellent work of many cross-cultural researchers who have paved the way in different social and cultural settings.


Seismic data are usually contaminated with two common types of noise, namely random and coherence. Such noise, if not tackled appropriately, prevents their accurate imaging. Small-scale geologic features such as thin channels, or subtle faults, etc. might not be seen clearly in the presence of noise. Similarly, seismic attributes generated on noise-contaminated data are seen as compromised on their quality, and hence their interpretation. Noise reduction techniques have been developed for poststack and prestack seismic data and are implemented wherever appropriate for enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio and achieving the goals set for reservoir characterization exercises. While coherent noise is usually handled during processing of seismic data, mean and median filters are commonly used for random noise suppression on poststack seismic data, but tend to smear the discontinuities in the data. A more desirable application is of structure-oriented filters applied to seismic data, which has the effect of enhancing laterally continuous events by reducing randomly-distributed noise, without suppressing details in the reflection events consistent with the structure. Usually, event focusing and reduced background noise after structure-oriented filtering are clearly evident. Attribute computation on such preconditioned seismic data is seen to yield promising results, and thus interpretation. Much of such work and procedures are handled on poststack seismic data. For prestack data analysis, such as extraction of amplitude-versus-offset (AVO) attributes (intercept/gradient analysis) or simultaneous impedance inversion, the input seismic data must be preconditioned in an amplitudepreserving manner. After the prestack data have undergone an amplitude-friendly processing flow up to prestack migration and normal moveout (NMO) application, still there are some simplistic preconditioning steps that are generally adopted for getting the data ready for the next step. Usually, these steps are generating partial stacks (that tone down the random noise), bandpass filtering (which gets rid of any high/low frequencies in the data), more random noise removal (algorithms such as tau-p or FXY or workflows using structure-oriented filtering), trim statics (for perfectly flattening the NMO-corrected reflection events in the gathers) and muting (which zeroes out the amplitudes of reflections beyond a certain offset/angle chosen as the limit of useful reflection signal).


The reissue of this classic history allows us to once again journey into the past and rediscover for the first time the forgotten men and methods of logging history in the Northwest United States and Canada. This book contain the best photographs of a dozen famous collections: Davis and Benson rafts, river drives, hand logging spar topping big wheels in the pine, saw mills of 1890 to 1915, historical ox teams, tractors, blumes. In this chronicle of the Big Woods, bunk house ballads, humorous sketches and eyewitness accounts of work and life in the tall uncut as well as the rich photographs help the reader to actually feel the old logging atmosphere.


The hemodynamic effect of moderate K+ depletion in hypertension is unknown. Since severe K+ depletion reduces systemic vascular resistance in normotensive rats, we determined the effect of K+ depletion on the natural history of hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) and SHR were fed a K+-replete, a moderately K+-depleted, or a severely K+-depleted diet. After 6 weeks, systemic vascular resistance was reduced by 25% in WKY on the severely K+-depleted diet while mean arterial pressure and systemic vascular resistance were comparable in WKY on the other two diets. In SHR on the severely K+-depleted diet for 6 weeks, muscle K+ was reduced by 23% and growth rate by 65%. In SHR on the moderately K+-depleted diet, growth rate was reduced by 23% after 3 weeks. By 6 weeks, however, muscle K+ was reduced by 5 to 6% and growth rate was comparable to that in SHR receiving the K+-replete diet. The administration of either K+-depleted diet prevented the development of hypertension (systolic blood pressure: severely depleted, 116 +/- 4; moderately depleted, 122 +/- 3; K+-replete, 155 +/- 5 mm Hg; p less than 0.001 compared with both K+-depleted groups) and reversed established hypertension (systolic blood pressure: severely depleted, 116 +/- 4; moderately depleted, 128 +/- 3; K+-replete, 171 +/- 5 mm Hg; p less than 0.001 compared with both K+-depleted groups). The protective effect of K+ depletion was mediated by a 40% reduction in systemic vascular resistance. These results suggest that K+ depletion has a potent antihypertensive effect in SHR.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Consumers and businesses alike cite the lack of free parking as one of the major problems associated with working, playing, and shopping downtown. A shortage of parking spaces can also lead to higher prices for those parking slots available as well as violation of parking ordinances by frustrated citizens. In light of widespread concerns about parking downtown, should large cities adopt policies to encourage more parking in a central business district (CBD), or should they improve public transit as an alternative to driving? Cities must consider many factors before answering such questions. Effective parking policies must strike a balance between convenient parking and maintenance of the dense urban fabric that makes the CBD unique


It is well known that the presence of noise produces an increase in vocal levels [E. Lombard, Ann. Maladies Oreille Larynx 37, 101–119 (1911); H. Lane and B. Tranel, J. Speech Hear. Res. 14, 677–709 (1971)]. Pick et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 894–900 (1989)] suggested that through training the effect could either be enhanced or reduced but not completely eliminated. It is possible, nevertheless, that people with voice training react differently to that effect [W. D. Ward and E. M. Burns, J. Res. Singing 1 (2), 24–44 (1978)]. Two groups, one with voice training (n=23) and one without voice training (n=23) were recorded with and without masking noise. It was found that 39% of the masked speech samples of the trained group failed to produce the Lombard sign whereas only 9% of the untrained (n=23) did not increase vocal levels under masking noise. Voice training was significantly related to cases where the Lombard effect was absent. This contradicts Pick et al.'s conclusion that the Lombard sign is always p...


This report explains the ecology and social profile of coastal systems in Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania in order to contribute to the development of effective strategies to enhance the resilience of marine and coastal systems in the Western Indian Ocean. Special consideration is given to the effects and consequences of climate change and economic development.


A sample of Campo del Cielo with any other name would have the same composition. During the last three decades, our instrumental neutron activation analyses (INAA) of many supposedly new iron meteorites have shown an anomalously large fraction to have compositions within the compositional field of the IAB‐MG iron Campo del Cielo. A plot of Ir versus Au provides the best discrimination; only two independent‐fall irons found after 1980 with good recovery documentation fall within the 90% contour ellipse around the centroid of this Campo field, and one of these is from Antarctica. Now (early 2018) a total of 36 other irons attributed to other geographical locations have compositions that cannot be resolved from the Campo compositional field. Because it is possible that some of these are actually independent falls, the Meteoritical Society Nomenclature Committee has chosen to assign about half these meteorites Nova XXX names used for meteorites whose discovery localities are not adequately documented. However, for Campo‐like irons with too little information (e.g., total weight not known) or for which no adequately large type specimens are available, the decision is to call them Campos with the working name used during the UCLA analysis. In the UCLA Meteorite Collection, they are cataloged together with the documented Campos.


The paper's thesis is that the chief causes for the well-known `industrial crisis' of the traditional English textile towns during the period c.1290 - c.1340 was not the emergence of supposedly superior, lower-cost rural competition, as is generally supposed, but rather a far-reaching economic crisis that was afflicting their major cloth markets, those in the Mediterranean basin; and furthermore, that during this same era almost all of the textile towns, small and large, in northern France and the Low Countries were then experiencing an almost identical crisis. Most of these northern textile producers had been sending the bulk of their exports as price-takers', in the form of cheap, coarse, light, undifferentiated textiles, to the Mediterranean, where warm climates, mass urban markets, and -- during the 12th and 13th centuries -- low transaction costs had made such exports from north-west Europe profitable. From the 1290s, however, the entire Mediterranean basin and much of wester Europe were beset with incessant, spreading warfare, piracy, and political instability, which cumulatively led to rising taxes, transport, and marketing costs, while disrupting and contracting markets; by the 1320s transaction costs had risen to such a high level that northern producers could no longer profit from sending send cheap textiles over such long and hazardous routes to what had become saturated Mediterranean markets. For reasons explored elsewhere, by the 1340s, some Flemish and Brabantine towns had adjusted to this crisis by shifting production, as `price-makers', to very high-priced highly differentiated luxury woollens, which could better bear these rising transaction costs. From the 1360s, English cloth manufacturers pursued this same route, while enjoying a virtual monopoly on very high quality wools, and the protection of high export taxes on those wools to overseas competitors producing luxury woollens. In this era production from the now revived and expanding Englishcloth industry was in fact still much more urban than rural. The more pronounced though still gradual shift to rural cloth making took place in the following century, for reasons beyond the scope of this paper.


With growing concerns for the environment, dwindling amounts of fossil fuels available for worldwide consumption and more resistant strains of diseases and infections becoming a reality, organic chemistry plays a vital role in the improvement and sustainability of modern society. Industrial chemicals from renewable sources has become an important area of research in recent years, while the synthesis and study of biologically active small molecules and their analogues leads to advancements which can help improve overall human health. In this dissertation, we explore methods to create important industrial molecules from biorenewable sources, extend a novel cyclization to make heterocyclic compounds, and develop a new route towards a natural product that is active against tumor cells which resist current cancer treatments. Chapter 1 discusses the synthesis of an important industrial compound, terephthalic acid, from malic acid, which can be obtained from biorenewable feedstocks. This work was performed in collaboration with chemical engineers at the Center for Biorenewable Chemicals. Chapter 2 describes the extension of the Kraus indole synthesis to biologically important natural products such as isocryptolepine and the indolo[2,1-a]isoquinoline series. Chapter 3 discusses advances made towards the total synthesis of a marine alkaloid, oroidin, including a novel cyclization to install the important 2-aminoimidazole portion of the molecule.


This abstract relates to the recent publication [Viverge K., Boutin C., Sallet F. : Model of highly contrasted plates versus experiments on laminated glass, IJSS, 102-103, 238-258 (2016)]. This contribution provides a synthetic analytic formulation describing the behaviour of laminated glass under static and dynamic loadings, that is validated by experiments. We only give here a synoptic overview and for in depth reading one may refer to the above mentioned publication.
As the laminated glass is made of stiff glass layers pasted with soft viscoelastic interlayers a specific model is established to account for the high contrast of mechanical properties. The effective plate model is derived from (i) the constitutive laws of the materials combined with (ii) an asymptotic expansion formulation and (iii) the appropriate scaling of the stiffness contrast.  The different regimes of behaviour are clearly specified, according to the mechanical and geometrical parameters of the layers, and to the loading. The analysis evidences the enriched kinematics of highly contrasted plates and yields to an analytic bi-torsor representation that encompasses (i) the shear related to the sliding within the PVB, (ii) the local  bending of each glass layer, and (iii) global bending of the whole laminate. Hence, the model can degenerate in either Reissner–Mindlin plate or shear-bending plate model, depending on the parameters of the constituents. In general it results in a tri-Laplacian formulation that help in understanding the behaviour and enables to derive analytical solutions under basic loadings. Furthermore, the theory applies to viscoelastic layers as PVB in laminated glass. This enriched plate model is validated through experiments conducted on two layers laminated glass with viscoelastic PVB interlayers. The theoretical result stating that the principle of time-temperature superposition of the PVB also applies, with the same time factor to the laminated glass, is observed experimentally. In addition, bending creep tests evidence the theoretically predicted transition from the (quasi-) monolithic behaviour at short time to the (quasi-) bi-layers behaviour at long time. The theoretical results describing the influence of both the temperature and frequency are also in good agreement with the experimental data. To conclude, the proposed model provides a simple easy-to-use theoretical framework for engineering purposes. For instance, it allows simple comparisons of the performances - in time and temperature - of laminated glasses made with different polymeric layers. In addition, the presented analytical results are suitable for determining the optimal design of structural elements made of laminated glass. Applications to the assessment or the improvement of the sound attenuation by laminated glass may also be considered.


Differential cross sections (DCSs) for collisions in 3 He-HBr, 4 He-HBr, 6 He-HBr and 7 He-HBr are calculated by the close-coupling approach from the anisotropic intermolecular potential of the He-HBr system established by the author. The calculations are performed separately at the collision energies of 40 and 75 meV. The influence of the incident isotope He atoms on DCSs is discussed in detail. The results show that the angular distribution of the total DCSs at zero degree increases and the position of oscillation minimum of the same order gradually shifts towards small scattering angle along with the increase of the incident isotope He atom mass at identical collision energy. And crossing angle between the elastic and total inelastic DCSs gradually decreases and the total inelastic DCS gradually increases. The rainbow phenomenon becomes more evident the lower the collision energy and the larger mass of the incident He isotope atom.


New energy policy, industry regulation, and market investment are influencing the development of renewable energy technologies, setting the stage for rural America to provide the energy of tomorrow. This article describes how Extension's renewable energy programming was implemented in two Ohio communities to engage elected officials and residents in learning applied aspects of renewable energy development. Through outreach and education, Extension can assist communities in making informed decisions about renewable energy projects. Reflecting on the impacts from renewable energy programming delivered in Ohio, the authors recommend that Extension systems across the country engage communities in renewable energy education.


This study examined the operation of unconscionability in the law of
franchising and the nature of existence of unconscionability in practice of
franchising. Franchising is relatively a new branch of commercial law and
practically opened to various forms of abuses by the franchisors and
franchisees. Meanwhile, unconscionability has a rather uncertain scope
within the general sphere of contract law. It is therefore, important to also
identify the true nature of franchising, the development of unconscionability
and its relationship with the relevant contractual theories and other doctrines
or notions, the probabilities of unconscionable practices in franchising and
the totality of the whole spectrum of the idea of unconscionability from the
legal perspectives.
Applying the qualitative approach by means of inductive reasoning using the
historical research method, this study found that franchising resulted from the
commercial practices or conveniences rather than any legal tradition. It is
multidimensional in nature, which incorporates, among other, the concept of contract law, a notion of licence and some features of usufruct.
Unconscionability is the most proper doctrine to deal with the abuses and
unfair practices that occur in franchising. In fact, there are probable
occurrences of unconscionable practices in franchising in Malaysia based on
the empirical studies of actual cases. As unconscionability is still evolving
and the formulation of another parameter could still be contemplated, a new
parameter is proposed in this research whereby the broad doctrine of
unconscionability encompasses fairness, good faith, fair dealing and undue
influence, while inequality of bargaining power and honesty in certain
circumstances become the supporting factors in proving unconscionability.
From this research, it is concluded that unconscionability is the situation
whereby the contract is entered into, negotiated and obtained. As the
contract is a bargain, when the bargain is unconscionable it becomes
unconscionable bargain. Unconscionability is an essential doctrine in the law
of contract and the formulation of the new parameters of unconscionability in
the contract law is also applicable to the law of franchising. The parameters
can assist in promoting conscionability in the franchise business environment
locally and internationally.


Advances in eye-tracking technology have promoted its widespread use to understand and improve target searches in psychology, industrial engineering, human factors, medical diagnostics, and marketing. Eye movements are the realization of a complex, unobserved spatiotemporal attention process with many sources of variation. Eye-tracking data often have been aggregated and/or summarized descriptively, because few adequate statistical models are available for their analysis. This article proposes a model that may serve to uncover the latent attention processes of people searching for targets in complex scenes. It recognizes the spatial nature of eye movements and represents two latent attention states, a localization state and an identification state, between which people may switch over time according to a Markov process. A saliency map, based on low-level perceptual features and the scene's organization, guide target searches in the localization state. In the identification state, people verify whether a selected candidate object is the target. The model is applied to analyze commercial eye-tracking data from more than 100 people engaged in a target search task on a computer-simulated retail shelf display. Rapid switching between attention states over time is revealed. Estimates of the feature and saliency maps are provided and found to be related to search performance. The results facilitate the evaluation of the effectiveness of alternative visual search strategies.


We present a computational model exploring goal-directed deployment of attention during object tracking. Once selected, objects are tracked in parallel, but serial attention can be directed to an object that is visually crowded and in danger of being lost. An attended object's future position can be extrapolated from its past motion trajectory, allowing the object to be tracked even when it is briefly occluded. Using the model, we demonstrate that the difficulty of tracking through occlusions increases with the number of objects because they compete for serial attention.


A very promising tool for data mining and bioinformatics is ensemble gene (feature) selection. Ensemble feature selection is the process of performing multiple runs of feature selection and then aggregating the results into a final ranked list. However, a central question of ensemble feature selection is how to aggregate the individual results into a single ranked feature list. There are a number of techniques available, ranging from simple to complex; the question is which one to choose. This paper is a comprehensive study on the use of nine different rank aggregation techniques for building classification models to use gene microarray data for distinguishing between cancerous and non-cancerous cells (or between patients who did or did not respond well to cancer treatment). The techniques are tested using an ensemble with twenty-five feature selection techniques and fifty iterations along with eleven bioinformatics datasets and five learners. Our results show that Lowest Rank is the worst performing aggregation technique by a clear margin. The other techniques perform similarly well and a simple technique (e.g., Mean aggregation) is preferable due to computation time and the limited possible benefit of a more complex technique. To our knowledge there has never been a study this intensive on the classification abilities of rank aggregation techniques in the field


Localization and tracking of colloidal particles in microscopy images generates the raw data necessary to understand both the dynamics and the mechanical properties of colloidal model systems. Yet, despite the obvious importance of analyzing particle movement in three dimensions (3D), accurate sub-pixel localization of the particles in 3D has received little attention so far. Tracking has been limited by the choice of whether to track all particles in a low-density system, or whether to neglect the most mobile fraction of particles in a dense system. Moreover, assertions are frequently made on the accuracies of methods for locating particles in colloid physics and in biology, and the field of particle locating and tracking can be well-served by quantitative comparison of relative performances. We show that by iterating sub-pixel localization in three dimensions, the centers of particles can be more accurately located in three-dimensions (3D) than with all previous methods by at least half an order of magnitude. In addition, we show that implementing a multi-pass deflation approach, greater fidelity can be achieved in reconstruction of trajectories, once particle positions are known. In general, all future work must defend the accuracy of the particle tracks to be considered reliable. Specifically, other researchers must use the methods presented here (or an alternative whose accuracy can be substantianted) in order for the entire investigation to be considered legitimate, if the basis of the physical argument (in colloids, biology, or any other application) depends on quantitative accuracy of particle positions. We compare our algorithms to other recent and related advances in location/tracking in colloids and in biology, and discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of all the algorithms in various situations. We carry out performance tests directly comparing the accuracy of our and other 3D methods with simulated data for both location and tracking, and in providing relative performance data, we assess just how accurately software can locate particles. We discuss how our methods, now applied to colloids, could improve the location and tracking of features such as quantum dots in cells.


This paper addresses Bayesian inference of sparse signals by censored measurements. To reduce the sensor's duty-cycle, signals below a threshold are censored, i.e., are set to zero. Sparse signals are random vectors that, or whose elements, are zero with given probabilities. The corresponding probabilistic model induces random measurement and signal vectors of mixed absolute-continuous, discrete, and singular-continuous nature. Therefore, mixed probability densities, the expectation regarding these densities, and a generalized Bayes' rule are constructively derived. For the inference, proper a-posteriori expected loss functions are defined. Their derivative-free minimizations gives Bayesian inferrers similar to traditional minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE), maximum a-posteriori (MAP), and median estimators and detectors. The result provides a unified Bayesian-inference framework. Eventually, this leads to closed-form solutions for the inference problem, numerical results, and the analysis of the probability of censorship.


Two major clay-rich fault zones (Betic Cordillera, SE Spain) exhumed under arid conditions were studied to establish the origin and nature of phyllosilicates in deformed mica schists and the role of fault zones in the genesis of rocks rich in clay minerals. Both areas contain wide zones (≈200 m across) of alternating fault gouge and protolith creating a complex arrangement of sheared lenses along fault strand cores. Minerals in schists were characterized by X-ray diffractometry and scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and two samples were selected for 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of four clay grain-size fractions each. Quartz, chlorite and K-micas are the principal phases in all samples (crystalline protolith and faulted schists). Paragonite and Fe and Ti-oxides are present in some samples and, additionally, most of the damaged samples have kaolinite, illite and gypsum. Backscattered electron images show irregularly oriented stacks of phyllosilicates with curved shapes in the fault rocks and quartz grains deformed by brittle fracturing. Clay fabrics in the damaged rocks are poorly developed. Lattice fringe images of faulted damaged samples revealed defect-free dioctahedral mica and Fe-rich chlorite packets which were generally with no more than several tens of nm thickness, although chlorite grains were usually thicker than micas. Chlorite showed more obvious deformation features. The calculated ages of the authigenic clay component in the two samples are 6.3 ± 0.8 Ma and 6.2 ± 0.4 Ma, while the ages calculated for the protolith clays are 22.8 ± 1.9 Ma and 11.7 ± 1.3 Ma. The age of the authigenic clay overlaps the range of ages from the nearby Cabo de Gata volcanic series (SE Spain). Textural and chemical results point toward that although the fault gouge is mostly a product of mechanical crushing of the protolith, the presence of quartz provided a strong and fragile behaviour to the faulted rocks increasing their permeability, and creating permeable paths through which low-temperature hydrothermal fluids circulated producing an intense leaching of the parent material and promoting crystallization of new authigenic minerals (illite, kaolinite, smectite and gypsum).


Anna Z, Saputra DS. 2017. Economic valuation of whale shark tourism in Cenderawasih Bay National Park, Papua, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 18: 1026-1034. The whale sharks aggregation in the waters of Cenderawasih Bay has an impact on improving the marine tourism industry in the region. On the other hands, Whale Shark is one of the species listed in the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the vulnerable status, means that a whale shark populations have been reduced by 20% to 50% within 10 years or three generations. The decline numbers of whale sharks caused by human activities that damage the fish and the habitat, such as fishing and tourism activities. This is due to the lack of public awareness about the function and value of these resources and its habitat. The whale shark has inherent value as marine resources, and has an environmental services value, in relation to tourism activities. This paper measures the economic value and environmental services of the whale shark and its habitat. The method of Travel Cost is used to calculate the value of expenditures incurred by both foreign and local tourists. The study also measured the value obtained by tourist operators, the value of fishing activities, and the value of the habitat, through the people's Willingness to Pay (WTP), using Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). From the result of the overall economic valuation can be determined the estimated value of whale shark tourism, as well as Cenderawasih Bay National Park area, amounted to IDR 35.5 trillion. The policy implication of this research is the need for appreciation of the whale sharks value, as well as its habitat, by managing and developing conservation areas, and community capacity building on the understanding of the importance of whale sharks and its conservation.


Video streaming traffic often dominates mobile wireless networks, forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to deploy video shaping to identify and then manage traffic during congested periods Unfortunately, the increasing use of end-to-end encryption (e.g., TSL/SSL) makes it difficult to identify video flows even with deep packet inspection. As an alternative, this paper presents Silhouette -- a real-time, lightweight video classification method suitable for ISP middle-boxes. Silhouette uses only flow statistics (i.e., "shape") for video identification making it payload-agnostic, effective for identifying video flow even when encrypted. Preliminary results with pre-classified YouTube traffic shows the promise of the Silhouette approach, yielding high identification accuracy over a range of video content and encoding qualities.


Extracted from text ... Internationalizing and
privatizing war and peace*
Herbert Wulf
* Palgrave Macmillan, August 2005, ISBN 1403949174, 280 pages, hardcover.
Herbert Wulf's Internationalizing and privatizing war and peace poses two critical questions
about the current state of war, peace and the various militaries of the world. First, what
does the internationalisation of armed forces mean for their democratic control? Second,
how does privatisation affect and impact on militaries and their democratic control? Each
question is in itself a topic for a substantial publication, yet Wulf manages, succinctly and
coherently, to marry the two related analyses into a mere 214 pages.
During the ..


Background: Medication adherence in patients with diabetes is one of the main factors in diabetic patients care. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of educational intervention based on the Health Belief Model (HBM) on medication adherence in patients with diabetes referred to a diabetes center in Zarand, Iran, in 2014.

Methods: This quasi-experimental study was performed on 100 patients with diabetes. The patients were divided into two groups (intervention and control). Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire including demographic variables, constructs of HBM, and the Morisky self-report questionnaire. The intervention group were divided into 5 groups including 8-12 patients, and according to the HBM, education was performed in four 60-90 minute sessions during one month. One month after the intervention, data were collected again and analyzed using descriptive statistics, linear regression, and Mann–Whitney U test.

Results: There was a significant difference in mean score of knowledge, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, perceived efficacy, and cues to action between intervention and control groups after the intervention. Medication adherence was significantly related to the level of education (P=0.006). Among constructs of HBM, perceived self-efficiency was the strongest predicting factor (P=0.03). After the intervention, the mean scores of perceived sensitivity (P<0.001), perceived severity (P<0.001), perceived benefits (P<0.001), perceived barriers (P<0.001), perceived self-efficiency (P<0.0001), cue to action (P<0.0001), and medication adherence (P<0.0001) increased significantly.

Conclusion: Education based on the HBM was effective in increasing adherence to medical instructions in patients with type 2 diabetes.


From the Publisher:
Written like a California noir thriller by way of William Gibson, The Watchman brings to life the wildest, most audacious crime spree in the history of cyberspace. Busted as a teenager for hacking into Pac Bell phone networks, Kevin Poulsen would find his punishment was a job with a Silicon Valley defense contractor. By day he seemed to have gone straight, toiling on systems for computer-aided war. But by night he burglarized telephone switching offices, adopting the personae and aliases of his favorite comic-book anti heroes - the Watchmen. When authorities found a locker crammed with swiped telecommunications equipment, Poulsen became a fugitive from the FBI, living the life of a cyberpunk in a neon Hollywood underground. Soon he made the front pages of the New York Times and became the first hacker charged with espionage. Littman takes us behind the headlines and into the world of Poulsen and his rogues' gallery of cyberthieves. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Poulsen, his confederates, and the authorities, he spins a thrilling chase story on the electronic frontier. The nation's phone network was Poulsen's playground. On Los Angeles's lucrative radio giveaways, Poulsen worked his magic, winning Porsches and tens of thousands of dollars. He secretly switched on the numbers of defunct Yellow Pages escort ads and took his cut of the profits. And he could wiretap or electronically stalk whomever he pleased, his childhood love or movie stars. The FBI seemed no match for Poulsen. But as Unsolved Mysteries prepared a broadcast on the hacker's crimes, LAPD vice stumbled onto his trail, and an undercover operation began on Sunset Strip.


The paper discusses the first stage of a research pro ect which addresses itself to the perspectives for metal manufacturing in Kenya. It relates the issue to mechanisms of industrialization in developing countries, referring to theories of internationalization of capital on the one hand and to theories of establishment of 'attraction moments' for industrial capital in peripheral societies, on the other. The role of the state in industrialization is emphasised, and the paper relates to an ongoing debate about the role of the national bourgeoisie and the Kenyan State for expanded capitalist production. The availability and creation of skilled labour is seen as a vital condition particularly for expansion of metal manufac turing. The study will analyse how state and capital supplement each other in training labour in metal manufacturing trades. It will investigate how tr&inin may contribute to segmentation and competition in the industrial labour market. From the point of view of the individual worker it will be asked in the second stage of the study, how workand training experiences influence his/her level of reproduction.


This research set out to explore the nature of business-to-business (B2B) relationships in the UK higher education postgraduate sector. More specifically, it sought to address the strategic issue of how relationships between a UK business school (in this case, Nottingham Business School) and its corporate clients could be organised and managed effectively over the longer-term in order to provide, maintain or, where appropriate, enhance the mutual satisfaction of all parties concerned. It is argued that such research is relevant and timely given that revenue generated from commercial activity (third stream income) is considered increasingly vital to UK business schools as they attempt to remain financially solvent in a toughening market that is faced with the additional threat of longer-term reductions in Higher Education Funding Council grants (Watling et al., 2003; Prince, 2004; Prince, 2007). It is not only commercial activity that would appear to be a relatively underdeveloped activity in most new universities (Prince, 2004). B2B literature shows little or no research into business relationships within the UK corporate education sector (Murray and Underhill, 2002). Additionally, Ellis and Mayer (2001) and Wright (2004) are typical of those calling for more research across different B2B sectors. Having scoped the research problem (Document 1) and undertaken a critical review of the B2B relationship marketing literature (Document 2), exploratory qualitative research in Document 3 focused on NBS lecturers with responsibility for managing both open and client-specific postgraduate programmes.


The three chapters of my dissertation examine immigrant assimilation in the Canadian labour market. Through three levels of analysis, which are distinguished by the sample restrictions that are employed, I investigate immigrant labour force and job dynamics, immigrant propensity for self-employment, and immigrant wage assimilation, respectively. In the first chapter, I exploit recently-introduced immigrant identifiers in the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the longitudinal dimension of these data to compare the labor force and job dynamics of Canada's native-born and immigrant populations. I am particularly interested in the role of job, as opposed to worker, heterogeneity in driving immigrant wage disparities and in how the paths into and out of jobs of varying quality compares between immigrants and the native-born. The main finding is that the disparity in immigrant job quality, which does not appear to diminish with years since arrival, reflects a combination of relatively low transitions into high-wage jobs and high transitions out of these jobs. The former result appears about equally due to difficulties obtaining high-wage jobs directly out of unemployment and in using low-wage jobs as stepping-stones. I find little or no evidence, however, that immigrant jobseekers face barriers to low-wage jobs. We interpret these findings as emphasizing the empirical importance of the quintessential immigrant anecdote of a low-quality "survival job" becoming a "dead-end job". The second chapter analyzes immigrant choice of self-employment versus paid employment. Using the Canadian Census public use microdata files from 1981 to 2006, I update the Canadian literature on immigrant self-employment by examining changes in the likelihood of self-employment across arrival cohorts of immigrants and how self-employment rates evolve in the years following migration to Canada. This study finds that new immigrants, who arrived between 1996 and 2005, turned to self-employment at a faster rate than the earlier cohorts and that immigrants become increasingly likely to be self-employed as they spend more time in Canada. More important, I examine immigrant earnings outcomes relative to the native-born, instead of within, sectors and thus explore the extent to which a comparative advantage in self-employment, captured by the difference in potential earnings between the selfand paid-employment sectors, can explain the tremendous shift toward self-employment in the immigrant population. The results show that the earnings advantage between the selfand the paid-employment sectors accounts for the higher likelihood of self-employment for traditional immigrants in the years following migration. However, the potential earnings difference cannot explain the reason that non-traditional immigrants are more likely to be self-employed as they consistently lose an earnings advantage in the self-employment sector relative to the paid-employment sector. My paper suggests that immigrants may face barriers to accessing paid-employment, or immigrants are attracted to self-employment by non-monetary benefits. Lastly, in the third chapter, studies which estimate separate returns to foreign and host-country sources of human capital have burgeoned in the immigration literature in


The storage ring at the Australian Synchrotron Light Source (ASLS) is an intense source of radiation that is used in applications such as spectroscopy and imaging. The source of the radiation comes from individual electrons that are grouped in bunches and confined in the storage ring. The observed radiation is usually temporally incoherent and the radiation power scales linearly with the number of electrons, N. If all the electrons have a longitudinal distribution of σz, the degree of temporal coherence of the emitted radiation increases and the power of the radiation will scale as N2 for radiated wavelengths, λ, that are longer than 2πσz. Using this property of coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR), the intensity of the observed radiation at wavelengths longer than λ can be increased by a factor of N above that of the incoherent radiation. With typical values of N around 10^9, the potential enhancement of the radiation power is significant. This property of CSR is used to enhance the radiation in the Far-IR (Footnote: Far Infrared.) spectrum between the wavelengths of 0.3 mm (1 THz) and 3 mm (100 GHz). This region of the radiation spectrum is used by the Far-IR beamline at the ASLS for absorption spectroscopy. The increase in the radiation power will benefit the beamline by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the beamline's detector, thereby enabling the measurement of spectra for weakly absorbing materials and providing the capacity to measure spectra at longer wavelengths. To generate CSR, the bunch length in the storage ring is shortened by reducing the momentum compaction factor, αc, using the negative dispersion technique. When αc is reduced by a factor of 100, the storage ring becomes sensitive to perturbations introduced by the accelerator subsystems (e.g., RF system, magnet power supplies and stray electromagnetic fields). An investigation of the various accelerator subsystems showed that the strongest perturbation is at the mains AC frequency of 50 Hz and is caused by currents conducted through the metallic elements of the storage ring. These perturbations limit the shortest achievable bunch length to 1 ps at an electron energy of 3 GeV. A bunch length of 1 ps is not short enough to enhance the radiation power at wavelengths less than 0.3 mm (1 THz). A reduction in the electron beam energy is required to achieve shorter bunch lengths.
An alternative method for generating CSR is to excite a longitudinal single bunch instability. The instability that modulates the charge density can be utilised to create periodic bursts of CSR. The onset of the instability creates quasi-periodic bursts of CSR. For CSR to be used as a source of IR radiation, the frequency and the intensity of the bursts of radiation must be constant. Any fluctuation in the frequency or intensity reduces the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of any measurements using the CSR. In this thesis a method is developed for optimising the SNR using a microwave diode detector. A microwave diode detector with a fast response time of 1 ns is used to characterise the temporal profile of the CSR bursts. The measurements show a temporal profile with growth and damping rates of 20 kHz which far exceed the natural damping rate expected for the storage ring. Moreover, the results show small oscillations that are believed to be the result of the filamentation of the electron bunch. The observed features of the growth rate, decay rate and small oscillations closely resemble the behaviour seen in numerical simulations by Venturini and Warnock, which show a CSR driven microbunching instability. This model provides a framework for describing the process leading to bursts of CSR. The microwave diode detector is also used to measure the temporal profile's dependence on N. The data collected was used to calculate the change in the SNR to find the optimal working current where the SNR is maximised. The results show that the SNR depends on the burst frequency; in particular when a harmonic of the burst frequency is the same as the characteristic longitudinal oscillation frequency (synchrotron frequency). Measurements were also conducted on the beamline, and the results agree with the observations made using the diode detector. These observations were used to define a low alpha lattice configuration to generate CSR. The CSR created from this configuration was used to measure the absorption spectrum of a sample of N2O with a spectral resolution of 0.025 cm(-1) (750 MHz). For these measurements a Bruker IFS125HR spectrometer was utilised on the IR beamline. This is a challenging measurement as the scan takes 15 minutes to complete, during which the intensity of the source must remain constant. Any fluctuation in the intensity will introduce noise into the spectrum. The results of 20 scans show good agreement between our measurements and previously documented absorption lines for N2O. The outcome shows that the quasi-periodic bursts of CSR can be used to extend the utility of the IR beamline into the Far-IR spectrum. In summary we have used a diode detector to characterise the burst of CSR at the onset of the microwave instability. We have shown that the measurements with a microwave diode detector are in agreement with numerical simulations carried out for this form of instability. A method has also been developed to create a low alpha operational mode that generates bursts of CSR optimised for the IR beamline.


Calving of glaciers generates sound audible underwater, useful in studying glacier processes and ice floes dynamics. Measurements of underwater ambient noise were carried out in two completely different Spitsbergen fjords - Hornsund, surrounded by melting glaciers, and Murchison, devoid of glaciers but full of floating ice floes, at frequencies from 20 Hz to 24 kHz using an omnidirectional hydrophone deployed at 18 meters deep. Calm weather during the experiments enabled measurements without noise coming from wind, rain or breaking waves. Statistical and spectral analyses of its variations were used to identify calving events and phenomena associated with the dynamics of ice floes. We hypothesise that, at low frequencies, the probability density distribution of the noise significantly differs from the normal distribution and gives clues about the number and diversity of contributing sources. Goodness-of-fit tests were performed across all frequency bands, and their results showed central-limit behavior in a high frequency range (>2.5 kHz). For low frequencies (below 1 kHz), the histograms of instantaneous noise spectrum level averaged over 1-minute intervals were compared to the theoretical Gaussian distribution, whose 0.9th quantile was determined as a threshold value in order to distinguish high energy spectral components of non-Gaussian origin (long-tail part of distribution).


Background: Concussion occurs more frequently in contact sports, such as rugby, and is furthermore not fully recognised during play. It is also underreported in the literature, to medical personnel, or to coaches.
Objectives: The objective of this study was to describe the knowledge about and attitudes towards concussion by Stellenbosch University hostel rugby players.
Methods: The study focussed on gathering quantitative information through implementing a cross-sectional study design. One hundred and eighty Stellenbosch University hostel rugby players completed the modified Rosenbaum Concussion Knowledge and Attitudes Survey - Student Version (RoCKAS-ST). The RoCKAS-ST questionnaire is divided into three parts, namely, the evaluation of the Concussion Knowledge Index (CKI) and Concussion Attitudes Index (CAI), and a 16-symptom checklist.
Results: The participants scored on average 75% in the CKI and 81% in the CAI. The correlation between CKI and CAI was r=0.14 which is considered a weak positive correlation.
Discussion: The participants demonstrated sufficient knowledge of concussion and thus a safer attitude towards concussion. There were some concerning factors from the knowledge of the concussion questions and the symptoms that may have an effect on attitudes towards concussion.
Conclusion: The study revealed that Stellenbosch University hostel rugby players have sufficient knowledge of what constitutes concussion, as well as the necessity of having safe attitude towards it. However, a small number of participants showed that they still may lack knowledge in certain areas concerning concussion.


The ability of science to produce experimental data greatly surpasses our current ability to effectively visualize, conceptualize, and integrate the vast volumes of available data into a unified understanding of how complex biological systems work. This inability is a hindrance to scientific progress, and is particularly daunting when one considers multidimensional and shape-based observations as in the field of regenerative biology. For example, for at least the last 200 years, scientists have been interested in the exceptional ability of Planaria to regenerate lost tissues from damage, and there is a large amount of experimental data available on this organism. However, until recently, none of these experiments had been collected into a single database. To this end, a repository (PlanformDB) has been created that includes formal descriptions of planaria experiments, including morphological descriptions of the worms using a graph formalism. PlanformDB opens the door to automated, formal approaches for analyzing and understanding the large amount of available experimental data for planaria. This work seeks to automate the search for models of planaria regeneration against the Planform database with experiments. Regeneration models not only help the understanding of how planarians maintain their shape based on the experiments observed up to today, but also provide a tool to predict the outcomes of future experiments. An automated model discovery framework was setup to simulate the experiments described in PlanformDB using an agent-based modeling platform comvii bined with evolutionary search to identify plausible mechanisms for the biological behavior. The automation has been achieved through the linking of the simulation platform to PlanformDB and development of fitness metrics that enable the evolutionary search. The proposed fitness metrics were developed, implemented, and then evaluated by assessing their fitness landscapes. A fitness landscape represents the range of possible fitness values that can be assigned to various models. In this work, the roughness, flatness, and the presence of local maxima in the fitness landscapes were evaluated for the proposed fitness functions. To further test the utility of the proposed fitness functions, a simple evolutionary search was performed.


Fluoroquinolones are an essential class of antibacterial, and widely used in clinical application. This article concerns the spectroscopic and theoretical investigation of Ofloxacin. The experiment results were performed with Infra-Red (IR) spectroscopy, Ultra-Violet (UV) visible spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Theoretical calculations were performed with Gaussian 09W and Gauss View 5 software Packages. The structure, conformational stability, geometry optimization and vibrational frequencies of Ofloxacin (OFL) have been investigated using density functional theory DFT-B3LYP methods with the 6-31++G(d,p) basis set. The Mulliken atomic charges of the title molecule were also performed using the DFT method. The presented spectroscopic investigation on OFL shows the good agreement between observed spectra and theoretical predictions of the drug. In IR spectra, the difference in intensities is seen may be due the intramolecular H-bonding in experimental study. In the experimental and theoretical studies of UV absorption energy of OFL are almost similar. For the Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR) observed and theoretical predicted spectra are shown as the same results.


The eyes are a valuable source of information for a range of social processes. The stare-in-the-crowd effect describes the ability to detect self-directed gaze. Impairment in gaze detection mechanisms, such as the stare-in-the-crowd effect, has implications for social interactions and development of social relationships. Given the frequency with which humans utilize gaze detection in interactions, there is a need to better characterize the stare-in-the-crowd effect. This study utilized a previously validated dynamic visual paradigm to capture the stare-in-the-crowd effect. We compared typically-developing (TD) young adults and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on multiple measures of psychophysiology, including eye tracking and heart rate monitoring. Four conditions of visual stimuli were presented: averted gaze, mutual gaze, catching another staring, and getting caught staring. Eye tracking outcomes and arousal (pupil size and heart rate variability) were compared by diagnosis (TD or ASD) and condition (averted, mutual, catching another staring, getting caught staring) using repeated measure ANOVA. Significant interaction of diagnosis and condition was found for IA dwell time, IA fixation count, and IA second fixation duration. Hierarchical regression was used to assess how dimensional behavioral measures predicted eye tracking outcomes and arousal; only two models with advanced theory of mind as a predictor were significant. Overall, we demonstrated that individuals with ASD do respond differently to various gaze conditions in similar patterns to TD individuals, but to a lesser extent. This offers potential targets to social interventions to capitalize on this present but underdeveloped response to gaze. Implications and future directions are discussed.


Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is a widespread yet often hidden problem in adolescents and young adults. Though most DSH can be classified as "non-suicidal self-cutting", some do go on to commit suicide. In this paper, deliberate self-harm is examined, including its prevalence, etiology, management, and future research directions using self-cutting and self-burning as examples. This article reviews recent literature to help understand what is known about self-cutting behavior and its potential relationship to suicide as well as provide direction for research. Research shows that different ecological factors at the individual, family, peer, and societal levels are related to deliberate self-harm. Although there is an association between some self-injurers and drug abuse (including alcohol abuse) as well as eating disorders, there are various subgroups of self-cutters and most are not at high risk for suicide. However, all acts of self-injury should be taken seriously by health care professionals and comprehensive therapy offered to any adolescent with a history of DSH. Future research directions on deliberate self-harm are also discussed.


This eBook will teach you how to use several interesting and exciting features from PowerPoint 2010. For example how to change the slide layout, insert objects and format slides in your PowerPoint presentation. Another interesting feature is animation. Read this eBook and learn how to apply entry (transition) effects to slides, how to use custom animation and how to use animation schemes


In 2007, Senate Democrats blocked President Bush from making recess appointments by conducting thirty-second pro forma sessions over the Senate's Thanksgiving holiday. Senators deployed the maneuver throughout the remainder of the Bush administration, and again against President Obama. Though these sessions have transformed the appointments landscape, and have already generated severe burdens on effective governance, they have been virtually ignored by constitutional scholars. This Note provides the first sustained analysis of these sessions. The Note begins by revealing a methodological asymmetry in the jurisprudence on presidential personnel decisions. While the Supreme Court has employed a dynamic and creative interpretive method in removal power cases, lower courts adjudicating the boundaries of the Recess Appointments Clause have hewn to a static and deferential method. The Note argues for resolving this asymmetry in favor of the removal case method, and then applies this method to the pro forma sessions. In the contemporary separation of powers, recess appointments function as a constitutional safety valve, preserving the President's ability to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. By depriving him of this safety valve, pro forma sessions violate the principle of effective governance embedded in the Recess Appointments Clause, and should be rejected.


The lack of labeled training data has limited the development of natural language processing tools, such as named entity recognition, for many languages spoken in developing countries. Techniques such as distant and weak supervision can be used to create labeled data in a (semi-) automatic way. Additionally, to alleviate some of the negative effects of the errors in automatic annotation, noise-handling methods can be integrated. Pretrained word embeddings are another key component of most neural named entity classifiers. With the advent of more complex contextual word embeddings, an interesting trade-off between model size and performance arises. While these techniques have been shown to work well in high-resource settings, we want to study how they perform in low-resource scenarios. In this work, we perform named entity recognition for Hausa and Yor\`ub\'a, two languages that are widely spoken in several developing countries. We evaluate different embedding approaches and show that distant supervision can be successfully leveraged in a realistic low-resource scenario where it can more than double a classifier's performance.


This study was carried out to evaluate the in vitro antimicrobial activities of dried roots of a Romanian indigenous population of Inula helenium L. The powdered dried root of the plant was extracted in ethanol (using 30%, 50% and 70% v/v). The antimicrobial activity has been tested on five potential pathogenic bacterial species (Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus) and four fungal species (Candida albicans, C. parapsilosis, C. lipolytica and Aspergillus niger), all of veterinary interest. Antimicrobial activity was investigated by the drop-diffusion test method, measuring the inhibition zones. The preliminary results of our study indicated that ethanolic extracts (50% and 70%) from the roots of a Romanian cultivar of I. helenium L. showed significant antimicrobial activity against all tested microorganisms, except the pathogenic philamentous fungi A. niger. On the dermatophytic species (Candida sp.) the inhibitory effects of 50% and 70% extracts are very similar. Further investigation will be done to determine the minimal inhibitory concentrations for each susceptible microorganism. As final goal is the design of a new veterinary product with antimicrobial effects.


The research was intended to produce an empowerment model for improving the performance of public employee cooperative (KPRI). The model is called as the KPRI's Strategic Performance Management (SPM) model. The research was designed by using developmental research design during two phases. The research is the first one and the output is the draft of KPRI's SPM model. The sample was taken by using a purposive technique including sample of KPRI and personnel sample of KPRI. Four KPRIs, namely KPRI Universitas Negeri Malang, KPRI Budi Pogalan Trenggalek, KPRI Keluarga SMPN 1 Sidoarjo, and KPRI Jaya Tuban, were selected as sample of KPRI. Five people were also selected from each KPRI as personnel sample. People were involved in field information collecting, namely assessing the implementation level of main elements of the KPRI's SPM model. The result showed that in general, the implementation level accomplished the high level, but not equal in four KPRIs. Expert judgment was involved in validating the draft. Keywords: manajemen kinerja strategik, expert judgment, KPRI


This chapter explores the international monetary and financial system, which plays a central role in the global political economy (GPE). Since the late nineteenth century, the nature of this system has undergone several pivotal transformations in response to changing political and economic conditions at both domestic and international levels. The first was the collapse of the integrated pre-1914 international monetary and financial regime during the interwar years. The second transformation took place after the Second World War, when the Bretton Woods order was put in place. Since the early 1970s, various features of the Bretton Woods order have unravelled with the globalization of finance, the collapse of the gold exchange standard, and the breakdown of the adjustable peg exchange rate regime. These changes have important political consequences for the key issue of who gets what, when, and how in the GPE.


Abstract The results of the Outcome Reduction with an Initial Glargine Intervention (ORIGIN) trial were presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting in June 2012. The purpose of this study was to assess whether there would be any reduction in cardiovascular (CV) events if insulin glargine was started early in the course of diabetes. Therefore, the selected patients were those who were at high risk of CV events, but with impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance or recent onset of type 2 diabetes. After 6.5 years, no differences were seen in primary outcomes, namely CV death, myocardial infarction, stroke, revascularisation procedures or hospitalisation for heart failure. However, the early institution of insulin therapy using glargine was found to be an effective means of maintaining glycaemic control in this patient group. As expected, patients on glargine insulin experienced slightly increased rates of both non-severe and severe hypoglycaemia, and slight weight gain. Neither of these problems was considered to be a limiting factor in the early use of glargine insulin. A second arm of the study was designed to assess the role of omega-3 fatty acids in the prevention of CV events. The results of this arm showed no benefit and do not support the use of omega-3 fatty acids as prophylactic therapy in these patients. While the ORIGIN trial is unlikely to alter clinical practice regarding the treatment of either dysglycaemia or new-onset diabetes, it has demonstrated that glargine insulin is relatively safe when used early in diabetes and can maintain near-normal glycaemic control for over six years, without increased cancer risk and with a neutral effect on CV outcomes.


The powerful information processing capabilities of computers have made them an indispensable part of our modern societies. As we become more reliant on computers and want them to handle more critical and difficult tasks it becomes important that we can depend on the software that controls them. Methods that help ensure software dependability is thus of utmost importance. While we struggle to keep our software dependable despite its increasing complexity, even the smallest biological system in nature shows features of dependability. This thesis applies ideas from and algorithms modeled after biological systems in the research for and development of dependable software. Based on a theory of software development focusing on the internal models of the developer and how to support their refinement we present a design for an interactive software development workbench where a biomimetic system searches for test sequences. A prototype of the workbench has been implemented and evaluated in a case study. It showed that the system successfully finds tests that show faults in both the software and its specification. Like biological systems in nature exploits a niche in the environment the biomimetic search system exploits the behavior of the software being developed. In another study we applied genetic programming to evolve programs for an embedded control system. Although the procedure did not show much potential for use in real fault-tolerant software, the program variants could be used to visualize the difficulty of the problem domain, explore the effects of design decisions and trade off requirements. Taken together the works in this thesis support the claim that biomimetic algorithms can be used to explore requirements, design and test spaces in early software engineering phases and thus help in building dependable software.


Reworking and redeposition of tektites is a highly complex and multistage geological process including many factors. A tumbling experiment was therefore undertaken with the aim of estimating a distance of transport that such moldavites can withstand. Though the experiment probably did not accurately mimic natural conditions, our results proved that moldavites can withstand considerable transport only over a distance of a few kilometers. Observed abrasion of tektites was significant in the early stage of experimental transport; the rate of abrasion decreased correlatively with increasing distance of transport as usual. Overall, given the results obtained from this experimental study and their state of preservation described in the literature, it is very likely that Polish tektites were reworked and redeposited by rivers from the Sudetes Mountains. Based on the paleoreconstruction of river flows, it can be assumed that the Polish tektites originated from two independent sediment supply areas.


The clouded leopard, a spotted, mid-sized cat native to southeast Asia, is classified as Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Species Survival Plan (SSP) program has designated that clouded leopards in North American zoological institutions are a research population with the focus of enhancing management and developing assisted reproductive techniques. In this study, we examined (1) ovarian response to exogenous gonadotropin stimulation, (2) in vitro production of embryos by IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and (3) in vivo developmental ability of in vitro-derived embryos. Eight females at Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species (ACRES) in New Orleans, LA, were used as oocyte donors and embryo recipients. During non-estrual, but otherwise unknown, stages of the estrous cycle, females 4 to 10 years old at our first treatment were administered a total of 15 (n = 8) or 20 (n = 7) IU of porcine FSH (i.m; Sioux Biochemical Co., Sioux City, IA) daily for 4 days. On Day 5, 10 (n = 8) or 15 (n = 7) IU of porcine LH (i.m; Sioux Biochemical Co.) was given and laparoscopic oocyte retrieval (LOR) was done 24 h later. One, 2, or 3 LOR were performed on 3, 3, and 2 females, respectively (total n LOR = 15), 10 (67%) of which were done on females that were 8 to 12 years of age. A total of 176 pre-ovulatory oocytes (mean = 14.7; range = 3-31) were recovered from 12 LOR performed on 6 females. Two females, a 5-year-old and an 11-year-old, did not respond to gonadotropin treatment. Of 5 females with ≥2 LOR, an average of 16.2 and 14.6 oocytes were recovered at the first and second LOR, respectively. Luteal tissue was present on the ovaries at 3 of 4 LOR performed during January-April as compared with 0 of 11 LOR performed from June-December. Semen was obtained by electroejaculation of 3 males (6, 9, and 11 years of age) and used after cryopreservation [TEST-yolk (media prepared with egg yolk, TES, and Tris) + 6% glycerol] or after storage at 4°C for 24 h (cooled). In vitro production, cryopreservation, and transfer of embryos were done as described by Pope et al. (2006 Theriogenology 66, 1518-1524). Cleavage frequency was 43% overall, 55% (64/117) after IVF, and 20% after ICSI with frozen (10/43) or cooled (2/16) sperm. After IVF with frozen sperm, cleavage rate was 63% (48/76) v. 39% (16/41) with cooled sperm. On Days 5, 57, 26, and 17% of embryos were morula (> 16 cells), early morula (≈16 cells) and pre-morula (< 16 cells), respectively. Forty-four Day 5 embryos were cryopreserved at a slow, controlled rate, 24 of which were thawed and transferred by laparotomy to the uteri of 3 Day 5 gonadotropin-treated recipients (7-9 embryos/female). Similarly, 28 Day 5 fresh embryos were auto-transferred to 3 Day 5 recipients (5-15 embryos/female). Most embryos transferred were morulae (83%) produced by IVF using frozen sperm (71%). None of the recipients established pregnancies, a failure that, undoubtedly, was multifaceted. Age may have been a factor because most recipients were 8 to 11 years old. Nonetheless, we have (1) shown that clouded leopard females are responsive to exogenous gonadotropins, (2) produced embryos in vitro, both by IVF and ICSI, using both cryopreserved and cooled sperm, and (3) provided further evidence of seasonality in ovarian activity.


Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is increasingly used in higher education, but it is not without problems. The effectiveness of CMC depends on many factors, including the characteristics of CMC systems themselves. The research reported here therefore aimed to investigate how an educational CMC system might be improved, in order to support learning more effectively.

The main context for the research was distance learning at the UK Open University (OU). A two-stage, mixed methods research approach was adopted. In the first stage, interviews and observations were carried out to explore the benefits and problems experienced by users. This revealed two major issues: information overload and lack of social presence. Information overload relates to users' problems dealing with large numbers of messages. Social presence relates to the need for users to feel connected with each other.

The second stage investigated system features aimed at addressing these issues, implemented in a prototype computer conferencing system. Features to address overload included branched message threading and user recommendations. Features to address social presence were 'resumes' and instant messaging. These features were evaluated using questionnaires, with several cohorts of students in an OU course.

Students expressed approval of the features, although some features were not widely used. Students preferred branched threading to chronological threading because branching helped them to follow 'conversations'. Students were uncomfortable recommending messages, feeling that the value of a message would vary between people. They were also uncomfortable using instant messaging to contact others whom they did not know. However, the awareness aspect of instant messaging provided a sense of solidarity.

The research demonstrated that the problems of overload and lack of social presence are significant, and each has social aspects which must be addressed. Students' relationships with each other affect whether and how they use the features of CMC systems. We can conclude that particular attention must be paid to the social aspects of online communication, both when designing educational CMC systems and when considering how they are used. To maximise the benefits for learning, students need to feel comfortable with each other online, and there are few short cuts to achieving this.


On March 13, 2018, the IRS announced that it would end its long-running Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program ("OVDP") on September 28, 2018. With the closure of one of the IRS's most successful compliance enforcement programs, practitioners were anxious for the IRS to announce a new program to take its place. On November 20, 2018, the IRS issued a memorandum titled "Updated Voluntary Disclosure Practice," which announced new guidance for the way the IRS would process new voluntary disclosure applications made after the closure of the OVDP.

The November memorandum provides some guidance and clarification for taxpayers and their professionals seeking to make a voluntary disclosure. However, as compared to the OVDP's guidance, which was very detailed and rigid, the November Memorandum is far less detailed and lacking in specificity. This lack of certainty will likely result in unpredictability, but may also allow for more flexibility.

Background

The IRS has a long-standing policy contained within its Internal Revenue Manual ("IRM") to not criminally prosecute those taxpayers who come forward and confess their tax sins before the IRS catches up with them. To qualify under this policy, a taxpayer must disclose his or her conduct before the IRS learns of it, cooperate with the IRS in determining the correct amount of tax due, and pay or make arrangements to pay the amount of tax, interest, and penalties determined to be due. This voluntary disclosure policy, however, only applies to income that is legally earned. Thus, unreported income from illegal conduct such as narcotics trafficking, embezzlement, money-laundering, and others, cannot be cleansed through an IRS voluntary disclosure. The mere failure to pay taxes, however, does not make otherwise legally obtained income illegal. Thus, a landlord who illegally (in violation of the tax laws) fails to report cash rent can come clean and avoid criminal prosecution by making a voluntary disclosure.

While a voluntary disclosure will allow a taxpayer to avoid criminal prosecution, a voluntary disclosure does not in itself provide any relief from the civil penalties that may be applicable to a taxpayer's conduct. Thus, taxpayers who make a voluntary disclosure under the IRM's voluntary disclosure policy are left with uncertainty as to the financial costs of doing so.

The OVDP

In an effort to address this uncertainty and the resulting lack of consistency, the IRS introduced the first iteration of the OVDP in March 2009. The OVDP combined the IRM's criminal voluntary disclosure policy with a civil penalty framework that provided certainty. Taxpayers who participated in the OVDP generally faced a predictable, but often rigid, outcome. Under the OVDP, a taxpayer was required to amend his income tax returns for eight years, and pay the tax due along with interest and a penalty equal to 20% of the additional tax due. In addition, the OVDP required taxpayers to pay either a 27.5% or 50% penalty (depending on whether the taxpayer held assets at certain foreign banks) based on the value of the taxpayer's foreign assets. For most taxpayers, this penalty amounted to the largest portion of the OVDP's overall financial cost. This penalty applied to any noncompliant foreign asset. Thus, if a taxpayer owned a foreign rental property from which the taxpayer derived unreported income, the value of the property was subject to a penalty of either 27.5% or 50%. As would be expected, this penalty structure led to disproportionate results for some taxpayers, whereby a large penalty was imposed with respect to conduct that resulted only in minimal tax savings. For example, under the OVDP, a rental property that generated only minimal taxable income would still be subject to a penalty based on the value of the property.

The OVDP's rigid penalty structure, however, also meant predictability. Taxpayers who participated in the OVDP generally knew in advance what the OVDP would cost. The OVDP's penalty structure provided certainty and relief from the myriad of penalties that could otherwise apply to a taxpayer's noncompliant offshore activities. These benefits included avoiding the civil fraud penalty (75% of the tax due), penalties for failing to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts ("FBAR" or Form FinCEN 114) (up to 50% of the balance in the account for each year), penalties for failing to file International Information Returns (such as Forms 3520, 3520-A, and 5471), and the possibility that the IRS would pursue the taxpayer's tax liabilities for a period beyond the OVDP's eight-year look-back period.

Judging by the OVDP's success, its rigid but predictable formula was the right panacea for the times. The timing of the OVDP overlapped with the timing of the IRS's and Department of Justice's very public attack on secret offshore banking, in particular, banks in secrecy jurisdictions, such as Switzerland. During this time period, many taxpayers needed to come forward and disclose tax noncompliance stemming from the ownership of unreported foreign bank accounts. Early on, the IRS correctly determined that a fixed and predictable OVDP was the best option because it provided certainty for taxpayers and allowed for simplified administration of those disclosures. The IRS was right, and it attracted more than 56,000 disclosures, collecting over $11.1 billion in taxes, interest, and penalties through the OVDP.

The OVDP's rigidity was partly mitigated in 2014, when the IRS announced the Streamlined Compliance Procedures, the Delinquent International Information Return Submission Procedures, and the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures. These newer offshoots of the OVDP, which, unlike the OVDP, remain open to taxpayers, can be used by taxpayers whose conduct was not willful and whose noncompliance stems from mistake or innocent lack of knowledge. Under these procedures, taxpayers can cure noncompliance with limited or no penalties. However, these programs do not provide protection from criminal prosecution and are thus not appropriate for taxpayers whose conduct could be deemed criminal.

At the height of the OVDP, 18,000 applications were received in a single year; by 2017, only 600 new applications were received. The IRS cited the decline in new applications as one of the reasons for closing the OVDP.

The New Voluntary Disclosure Guidance

On the surface, the new guidance issued in the November Memorandum seems intended to more harshly punish those who are only now coming forward with their noncompliance. But at the same time, the new guidance will allow for flexibility that was absent in the OVDP. For certain taxpayers, the terms of the new guidance may actually prove to be more favorable than the OVDP.

Under the new guidance, taxpayers seeking to make an offshore related voluntary disclosure generally will be required to correct their tax returns for the past six years. In addition, these taxpayers will be subject to "interest, and penalties under existing law and procedures." The 75% civil fraud penalty under IRC Section 6663 and 6651(f), however, will only apply to the one tax year with the highest tax liability. The remaining five tax years will instead be subject to the ordinary accuracy penalty, which, for offshore income, will generally be 40%. As is typical of the new guidance, this result is not an absolute certainty, as the guidance notes that in limited circumstances the fraud penalty may be applied to multiple years.

Moving on to the FBAR penalty, the November memorandum provides that FBAR penalties will be applied in accordance with the IRS's existing guidelines, which generally cap willful FBAR penalties at 50%, but allow for a 100% FBAR penalty in certain circumstances. With respect to the penalties that may apply for the failure to file Foreign Information Returns (such as IRS Forms 3520, 3520-A, 5471, and 8938), which often arise in the context of an offshore voluntary disclosure, the memorandum notes that such penalties will not be "automatically" assessed. Rather, "[e]xaminer discretion will take into account the application of other penalties (such as civil fraud penalty and willful FBAR penalty) and resolve the examination by agreement." Again, this language indicates flexibility. Information return penalties, which can apply for each year and for each entity that was not reported, can add a significant sum to the total cost of making a voluntary disclosure. Under the OVDP, these penalties were all eliminated in exchange for its one-size-fits-all approach.

For most taxpayers, the flexibility of the new guidance will likely result in an overall increase to the cost of making a voluntary disclosure. This was likely the intent of the IRS as it would be deemed unfair to impose a lower cost on those whose noncompliance has continued despite the OVDP's near ten-year existence. However, this increased flexibility may ultimately work to address some of the shortcomings of the otherwise successful OVDP, which mainly stemmed from the rigidity of its penalty structure. Take, for example, the taxpayer noted above who entered the OVDP to disclose a small amount of rental income from a foreign property. Under the OVDP, the full value of the property was subject to a penalty, and examiners had no discretion to mitigate that penalty, even if the income from the property was minimal. Under the new guidance, only the tax liability at issue would be subject to a penalty. Similarly, under the OVDP, examiners had no discretion to exclude certain bank accounts from the OVDP's penalty base, even if the circumstances surrounding one account were different than the circumstances surrounding other foreign accounts held by the taxpayer. Under the new guidance, a taxpayer may be subject to a large willful FBAR penalty for any foreign accounts that were willfully not reported, but can


This research explores the conflicts that emerge when applying recording and registration practices to performance art. Although the ephemerality of the actions is perceived as essential for this art genre, museum professionals and artists are often not in favor of disappearance of all aspects of these artworks. The case studies in this article demonstrate that the ephemerality of the original performance artwork becomes even more considered when the performativity of the action is preserved through specific forms of fragmented documentation. This enables the survival and continuation of a performance artwork's activating character, the embodied experience evoked, the work's contingent meanings, and its continuous reinterpretations, such as through re-enactments.


When micrometric drops coalesce in-plane on a superhydrophobic surface, a surprising out-of-plane jumping motion was observed. Such jumping motion triggered by drop coalescence was reproduced on a Leidenfrost surface. High-speed imaging revealed that this jumping motion results from the elastic interaction of the bridged drops with the superhydrophobic/Leidenfrost surface. Experiments on both the superhydrophobic and Leidenfrost surfaces compare favorably to a simple scaling model relating the kinetic energy of the merged drop to the surface energy released upon coalescence. The spontaneous jumping motion on water repellent surfaces enables the autonomous removal of water condensate independently of gravity; this process is highly desirable for sustained dropwise condensation.


Background: Although adhesive arachnoiditis of the spinal cord can cause progressive symptoms associated with syringomyelia or myelomalacia, its surgical resolution based on the imaging diagnosis is not well characterized. This study aims to describe the use of imaging for the diagnosis of focal adhesive arachnoiditis of the spinal cord and its surgical resolution using microsurgical arachnoidolysis. Materials and Methods: Four consecutive patients with symptomatic syringomyelia or myelomalacia caused by focal adhesive arachnoiditis underwent microsurgical arachnoidolysis. Comprehensive imaging evaluation using constructive interference in steady-state (CISS) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or myelographic MR imaging using true fast imaging with steady-state precession (TrueFISP) sequences was included before surgery to determine the surgical indication. Results: In all four patients a focal adhesion was identified at the cervical or thoracic level of the spinal cord, a consequence of infection or trauma. Three patients showed modest or minor improvement in neurological function, and one patient was unchanged after surgery. The syringomyelia or myelomalacia resolved after surgery and no recurrence was noted within the follow-up period, which ranged from 5 months to 30 months. Conclusions: MRI diagnosis of focal adhesive arachnoiditis is critical to determine the surgical indication. Microsurgical arachnoidolysis appears to be a straightforward method for stabilizing the progressive symptoms, though the procedure is technically demanding.


Abstract Rationale: Invasive community-acquired infections, including pyogenic liver abscesses, caused by hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKp) strains have been well recognized worldwide. Among these, sporadic hvKp-related community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is an acute-onset, rapidly progressing disease that can likely turn fatal, if left untreated. However, the clinical diagnosis of hvKp infection remains challenging due to its non-specific symptoms, lack of awareness regarding this disease, and no consensus definition of hvKp. Patient concerns: A 39-year-old man presented with high-grade fever and sudden-onset chest pain. Laboratory testing revealed an elevated white blood cell count of 11,600 cells/μl and C-reactive protein level (>32 mg/dl). A chest X-ray and computed tomography revealed a focal consolidation in the left lower lung field. Diagnosis: Diagnosis of fulminant CAP caused by a hvKp K2-ST86 strain was made based upon multilocus sequencing typing (MLST). Interventions: The patient was treated with ampicillin/sulbactam. Outcomes: The pneumonia became fulminant. Despite intensive care and treatment, he eventually died 15.5 hours after admission. Lessons: This is the first case of fatal fulminant CAP caused by a hvKp K2-ST86 strain reported in Japan. MLST was extremely useful for providing a definitive diagnosis for this infection. Thus, we propose that a biomarker-based approach should be considered even for an exploratory diagnosis of CAP related to hvKp infection.


This essay proposes that the rise of sentient cities inaugurates an era of pervasive citizenship wherein individual citizens function as wearable devices for a collective body. To understand what rhetorical practices are available in this problematic, the essay proceeds in three parts. First, it surveys how information systems help determine rhetoric through and as a kind of systems theory. Second, the essay traces how technologies and techniques that form individual bodies are now emerging at larger scales and shape collective bodies. Through several examples, the essay shows how these multipartner ventures to install data collection sensors in cities are informing a new problematic that we term #SenseCommons. Third, the project offers extradisciplinary resources for rhetorically navigating today's increasingly pervasive information spaces. Ultimately, this essay proposes that the emergence of sentient cities introduces a system of continuous rhetoric whose primary function is not to persuade but to inform.


A coherence optimization method, which makes use of polarimetry to enhance the quality of SAR interferograms, has been experimentally tested under laboratory conditions in an anechoic chamber. By carefully selecting the polarization in both images, the resulting interferogram exhibits an improved coherence above the standard HH or VV channel. This higher coherence produces a lower phase variance, thus estimating the underlying topography more accurately. The potential improvement that this technique provides in the generation of digital elevation models (DEM) of non-vegetated natural surfaces has been observed for the first time on some artificial surfaces created with gravel. An experiment on a true outdoor DEM has not been accomplished yet, but the first laboratory results show that the height error for an almost planar surface can be drastically reduced within a wide range of baselines by using the optimization algorithm. This algorithm leads to three possible interferograms associated with statistically independent scattering mechanisms. The phase difference between those interferograms has been employed for extracting the height of vegetation samples. This retrieval technique has been tested on three different samples: maize, rice, and young fir trees. The inverted heights are compared with ground truth for different frequency bands. The estimates are quite variable with frequency, but their complete physical justification is still in progress. Finally, an alternative simplified scheme for the optimization is proposed. The new approach (called polarization subspace method) yields suboptimum results but is more intuitive and has been used for illustrating the working principle of the original optimization algorithm.