The aim of this study is to determine the influence of selected environmental factors on the dynamic changes in the landscape in the Czech Republic: 1) to detect land use changes between 1986–2013 along altitudinal gradients in two neighbouring Czech districts (Třebic and Znojmo), 2) to test if there is a relationship between the spatial distribution of the main changes and selected environmental factors, 3) to identify differences in the sizes of agricultural fields between 1953 and 2013, and whether they are associated with changes in agricultural land use. Satellite Landsat TM/ETM scenes for 1986, 1994, 2002 and 2013 were used to define land cover categories (arable land, grassland, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, mixed forest, urban areas and inland water). The association between the distribution of changes in land-cover with environmental factors such as gradient, aspect, altitude, topographic wetness index (TWI), less-favoured areas (LFA), main soil units and climate zones was determined. Only a limited proportion of landscape changes were dependent on environmental factors in the study area. Over the period 1994–2013 there was a decrease in arable land and increase in grassland, mainly in the LFA zone. Slope of the terrain was a dominating factor in landscape changes. The association with TWI values was most significant in permanent arable land and in grassland in transition to arable land. There was an increasing trend in the annual average temperature and sum of solar radiation in both the districts, Třebic and Znojmo. A change from small fields (1953) to large fields (2013) was recorded in the study area. Distribution of field sizes was different in LULC classes for different climatic zones and the main soil units.


Relay ramps form at different scales in extensional terrains to accommodate the differential stretching among the overlapping bounding-normal fault segments. The major boundary structure of the Gediz Graben (SW Turkey) is segmented, with formation, evolution and active breaching of relay ramps. The Akçapınar relay ramp is an example of these processes that forms within a 2 km wide overlap zone between ∼ E–W-trending segments on the southern margin of the Gediz Graben. Change of structural style at the ramp area is clearly evident from variations in the orientation of fractures and faults of the relay ramp. As a site of local stress field anomaly, ∼ N–S-trending structures in the Akçapınar relay ramp are conformable with the extension that is parallel to the bounding faults of the relay ramp. These structures are also superimposed onto the ∼ E–W-trending regional structural style by an obvious cross-cutting relationship, suggesting both spatial and temporal variation of the state of stress at the ramp area during the relay ramp formation. The regional stress field and the resulting regional structural style characterize the earlier stages of ramp evolution, during which segment interaction is limited. As segment interaction and relay ramp formation advances towards the breaching phase, an anomalous local stress field arises and the relay ramp area experiences extension parallel to the bounding normal faults, that is, transverse to the regional direction of extension. This creates a new structural style at the ramp area.


In this personal essay, I discuss how shifts in my positionality as an educator changed the dynamics of power between me and my students, how the threshold between informal education and the School marked a clear delineation of power that placed us on opposite sides. My journey as an educator paralleled my personal journey as a Black man in the United States, during which I had to navigate the troubled intersection between race and disability. Along the way I became aware of a "potential-realization gap" — internalized as a hovering sense of inadequacy, and externalized as a deep disillusionment with people and the world. Where once race had operated on my consciousness from the margins, certain experiences forced me to contend with my identity in ways I had been able to avoid before, in part due to a stark divide between mind and body. With racial consciousness came indignation, manifest in my orientation as a teacher activist, and which I imposed upon my students as the imperative for their — but not my own — liberation. Wading through toxic environments, spaces of collective trauma and bureaucratic rot, any attempts to make change were usually met with fierce resistance. This disconnect, between mind and body, theory and praxis, school and community, reality and my ideals — exacerbated by racial trauma and ADHD — tore a jagged fissure through my career. Lost in all of this were the young people I was ostensibly fighting for, yet for so long failed to recognize as agents in their own liberation. I had sought in vain the pedagogical method, the repositioning, the creative freedom — something — that would allow me to reconcile the disparities. But it wasn't until I approached the decision to leave schools in favor of community education, that I discovered participatory action research (PAR), and with it the need to ground my own work, and that of my charges, in identity, history, shared struggle, and building community. In PAR, I discovered the possibility for collective liberation — a means for bridging the gap within myself, and between myself and the communities I serve.


In developing countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, motorcycles are part of the essential mode of transportation. In the case of the Philippines, motorcycle propelled public transport in the form of tricycles and/or "habal-habal", also known in other countries as "motorcycle taxi" exists. The study illustrates the history and policy approach on rationalizing the informal transport services at the national and local level in the case of tricycles and "habal-habal".The Philippine planning and policy system has two levels: national and local. At the national level, the study describes the development of local transport policy by integrating national policies (Land Transportation and Traffic Code, Public Service Act and the Local Government Code of 1991) and responses to related issues (congestion, etc) in devolving the government's regulatory policy approach to the presence of tricycles. The study also illustrates the role of national transport related policies in the emergence of informal public transport such as "habal-habal" and open-can tricycles. Davao City, as a new and highly urbanizing area in the region of Mindanao was chosen as study site since it has a wide variation of motorcycle-propelled public transportation. Tricycles in the Philippines is legally classified as motor vehicle composed of a motorcycle fitted with a single wheel sidecar or a motorcycle with a twowheel cab operated to render transport to a general public for a fee. In Davao City, it can be found in the form of side-cab, center-cab and open cab. The latter, due to safety reason is considered illegal. Moreover, an emerging mode in the form motorcycle taxi mode known as "habal-habal" can also be found. The study described and classified the different types of motorcycle-propelled vehicles according to design, passenger loading capacity and legitimacy of operations. The local policy process review indicates that factors considered in policy development. This involved the presence of national policy guidelines, experience from the implementation of previous local policy as well as public inputs among others. Likewise, the local policy on tricycles were reviewed and further segregated according to its consequences such as its effect in local government/income generation, transportation service level, safety, congestion and environment. The former showed the issues and gaps in policy implementation while the latter present the importance of relating policies to local urban transport planning and management as well as local needs.


The Core Knowledge curriculum is a K-8 curriculum focused on building students General Knowledge about the world they live in that is hypothesized to increase reading comprehension and Reading/English-LA achievement. This study utilizes an experimental design to evaluate the long term effects of attending Charter schools teaching the Core Knowledge curriculum. Fourteen oversubscribed kindergarten lotteries for enrollment in nine Core Knowledge Charter schools using the curriculum had 2310 students applying from parents in predominately middle/high income school districts. State achievement data was collected at 3rd6th grade in Reading/English-LA and Mathematics and at 5th Grade in Science. A new methodology addresses two previously undiscovered sources of bias inherent in kindergarten lotteries that include middle/high income families. The unbiased confirmatory Reading-English-LA results show statistically significant ITT (0.241***) and TOT (0.473***) effects for 3rd-6th grade achievement with statistically significant ITT and TOT effects at each grade. Exploratory analyses also showed significant ITT (0.15*) and TOT (0.300*) unbiased effects at 5th grade in Science. A CK-Charter school in a low income school district also had statistically significant, moderate to large unbiased ITT and TOT effects in English Language Arts (ITT= 0.944**; TOT = 1.299**), Mathematics (ITT= 0.735*; TOT = 0.997*) and positive, but insignificant Science effects (ITT= 0.468; TOT = 0.622) that eliminated achievement gaps in all subjects.


The Economic and Monetary Union was constructed on poor foundations which sought to impose inappropriate macroeconomic policies. This construction did not pay heed to the differences between countries with regard to their economic position and interests nor to the institutional and historical differences. The EMU was faltering before the financial crisis which highlighted and added to the problems of EMU. The neo- and ordo-liberal constraints on policy and policy reform are indicated. The outline of a policy agenda for prosperity in EMU is given.


Biological systems with their complex biochemical networks are known to be intrinsically noisy. The interplay between noise and dynamical behavior is particularly relevant in the case of chemotactic amoeboid cells as their cytoskeleton operates close to an oscillatory instability. Here, we investigate the oscillatory dynamics in the actin system of chemotactic amoeboid cells. We show that the large phenotypic variability in the polymerization dynamics can be accurately captured by a generic nonlinear oscillator model, in the presence of noise. The relative role of the noise is fully determined by a single dimensionless parameter, experimentally measurable, and whose distribution completely characterizes the possible cellular behavior. We find that cells operate either below or above the threshold of self-oscillation, always in a regime where noise plays a very substantial role. To test the limits of this phenomenological description, we perturbed experimentally the cytoskeletal dynamics by a short chemoattractant pulse and measured the spatio-temporal response of filamentous actin reporter,  LimE, and depolymerization regulators Coronin1 and Aip1. After pulsing, we observed self oscillating cells to relax back to their oscillatory state after a noisy transient. Particularly long transients were observed for cells initially displaying highly correlated oscillations. The observation of a slow recovery time of the actin polymerizing network provides a link to the long times scales, characteristic of chemotactic cell motility. In the second part of this work, we have characterized the response of LimE, Aip1, and Coronin to cAMP in non oscillating cells. We have used a proposed method that transforms the observed time series into symbolic dynamics, that gives partial information on the interactions between these proteins. We tested the predictions by studying the LimE response in mutant cells that either lacked Aip1 or Coronin. Finally, a model is proposed where Aip1 and Coronin synergizes to control actin polymerization.


Adaptive optics (AO) is used in ground-based astronomical telescopes to improve the resolution by counteracting the effects of atmospheric turbulence. Most AO systems are based on a simple control law that neglects the temporal evolution of the distortions introduced by the atmosphere. This paper presents a datadriven control design approach that is able to exploit the spatiotemporal correlation in the wavefront, without assuming any form of decoupling. The approach consists of a dedicated subspace-identification algorithm to identify an atmospheric disturbance model from open-loop wavefront sensor data, followed by 2-optimal control design. It is shown that in the case that the deformable mirror and wavefront sensor dynamics can be represented by a delay and a two taps impulse response, it is possible to derive an analytical expression for the 2-optimal controller. Numerical simulations on AO test bench data demonstrate a performance improvement with respect to the common AO control approach.


Urban heat advection (UHA) can extend the climatic impact of a city into the surrounding countryside. This may lead to an intensification of already well‐documented urban heat island (UHI) impacts on health and infrastructure, and challenge the representativeness of long‐term reference temperature records taken near urban areas. However, previous UHA studies have been unable to accurately quantify surface‐level UHA due to challenges arising from complex urban land‐use patterns. To address this, the numerical Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model coupled with the Building Energy Parameterization urban canopy scheme is used to simulate meteorological fields for idealized land‐use cases. Hypothetical square cities (up to 32 km in size) are simulated for a year's period. A time‐mean 2‐m temperature field (representing the canopy UHI) shows that the mean UHI intensity (up to 4.3 °C [SD 1.7 °C]), wind speed <3.9 m/s) is linearly related to the logarithm of city size. This finding, entirely derived from numerical modelling, is consistent with the log‐linear relationships previously found in the observational data of many cities in the world. A UHA methodology was then applied to the temperature fields to separate UHA from the UHI, with up to 2.9 °C (SD 1.7 °C) of UHA found downwind of the largest city size. For this hypothetical city size, an UHA intensity of 0.5 °C is found up to 24‐km downwind from the urban boundary. In addition, the UHA‐distance profiles along the central horizontal transect for various urban sizes are found to follow a scaling rule as a good approximation. As a result, the findings of this paper can be used as a starting point for climate impact assessments for areas surrounding urban areas without the need for complex, computation‐intensive simulations.


OBJECTIVES
Assess periodontal disease progression among GullahAfrican Americans with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) according to health insurance coverage.

METHODS
From an ongoing clinical trial among T2DM Gullah, we extracted a cohort that was previously enrolled in a cross-sectional study (N=93). Comparing prior exam to trial initiation, total tooth sites/person with periodontal disease progression events [evaluated separately: 2+ mm of clinical attachment loss (CAL), 2+ mm increased periodontal probing depths (PPD), bleeding on probing (BOP) emergence] were evaluated according to health insurance coverage using regression techniques appropriate for data with different counts of potential events per subject (varying tooth sites available). We used negative binomial regression techniques to account for overdispersion and fit multivariable models that also included baseline glycemic control (poor: glycated hemoglobin > OR =7 percent, well: glycated hemoglobin <7 percent), history of established periodontitis, age, gender, body mass index, annual income, and oral hygiene behaviors. Final models included health insurance status, other significant predictors, and any observed confounders.

RESULTS
Privately insured were most prevalent (41.94 percent), followed by uninsured (23.66 percent), Medicare (19.35 percent), and Medicaid (15.05 percent). Those with poor glycemic control (65.59 percent) were more prevalent than well-controlled (34.41 percent). CAL events ranged from 0 to 58.8 percent tooth sites/ person (11.83 +/- 12.44 percent), while PPD events ranged from 0 to 44.2 percent (8.66 +/- 10.97 percent) and BOP events ranged from 0 to 95.8 percent (23.65 +/- 17.21 percent). Rates of CAL events were increased among those who were uninsured [rate ratio (RR) = 1.75, P = 0.02], Medicare-insured (RR = 1.90, P = 0.03), and Medicaid-insured (RR = 1.89, P = 0.06).

CONCLUSIONS
Increased access to health care, including dental services, may achieve reduction in chronic periodontal disease progression (as determined by CAL) for this study population. These results are very timely given the March 2010 passing of the US healthcare reform bills.


A vector autoregression model with time-varying coefficients is used to examine the evolution of wage cyclicality in four Latin American economies: Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, during the period 1980-2010. Wages are highly pro-cyclical in all countries up to the mid-1990s except in Chile. Wage cyclicality declines thereafter, especially in Brazil and Colombia. This decline in wage cyclicality is in accordance with declining real-wage flexibility in a low-inflation environment. Controlling for compositional effects caused by changes in labor force participation along the business cycle does not alter these results.


ABSTRACT We report the discovery of remains of a large chelonian from the base of the early Paleocene Khadro Formation exposed in the Ranikot Fort area (Ranikot Group, Sindh Province, Southern Pakistan). This formation already yielded the snake Gigantophis Andrews, 1901, studied by our friend Jean-Claude Rage. The chelonian specimens consist of a large carapace and a shell fragment of Bothremydidae, a family of Gondwanan origin. A new genus and species, Sindhochelys ragei n. gen., n. sp. is identified from the first specimen and named in honor of Jean-Claude Rage. It is the first report of a Bothremydidae in Southern Pakistan. Its affinities with Cretaceous and Paleocene representatives of the family are discussed. The association of characters such as the shape of the shell, anterior plastral scute pattern and strongly marked decoration characterize the taxon and, despite some similarities, allows excluding close phylogenetic affinities with Taphrosphyini and Carteremys group; other well-documented bothremydids are also excluded. The shell fragment, also strongly decorated, is left undetermined. The discovery of two new littoral bothremydid specimens in the early Paleocene of Pakistan fills a geographic and stratigraphic gap in our knowledge of the family, which is known since the continental early Cretaceous of Africa, diversifying in the world up to the Miocene deposits of the Neotethys. A particular diversification during the Maastrichtian-Paleocene is recognized along the neotethyan coasts, and occasional dispersals across this ocean were possible. Sindhochelys ragei n. gen., n. sp. may have colonized the Indian subcontinent by this time, or may represent an older diversification before the Gondwana breakup.


The Handbook of Moduli , comprising three volumes, offers a multi-faceted survey of a rapidly developing subject aimed not just at specialists but at a broad community of producers of algebraic geometry, and even at some consumers from cognate areas. The thirty-five articles in the Handbook , written by fifty leading experts, cover nearly the entire range of the field. They reveal the relations between these many threads and explore their connections to other areas of algebraic geometry, number theory, differential geometry, and topology. The goals of the Handbook are to introduce the techniques, examples, and results essential to each topic, and to say enough about recent developments to provide a gateway to the primary sources. Many articles are original treatments commissioned to bridge gaps in the literature and to make important problems accessible to a wide audience for the first time, and many others illustrate yogas and heuristics that experts use privately to guide intuition or simplify calculation, but that do not appear in published work aimed at other specialists. This is the third of three volumes constituting the Handbook of Moduli , and is also available as part of a three volume set.


Diagnostic criteria of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and fatal transmissible nervous system disease with public health implications, are determined by clinical data, electroencephalogram (EEG), detection of 14-3-3 protein in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), brain magnetic resonance imaging and prion protein gene examination. The specificity of protein 14-3-3 has been questioned. We reviewed data from 1,572 autopsied patients collected over an 18-year period (1992–2009) and assessed whether and how 14-3-3 detection impacted the diagnosis of sporadic CJD in France, and whether this led to the misdiagnosis of treatable disorders. 14-3-3 detection was introduced into diagnostic criteria for CJD in 1998. Diagnostic accuracy decreased from 92% for the 1992–1997 period to 85% for the 1998–2009 period. This was associated with positive detections of 14-3-3 in cases with negative EEG and alternative diagnosis at autopsy. Potentially treatable diseases were found in 163 patients (10.5%). This study confirms the usefulness of the recent modification of diagnosis criteria by the addition of the results of CSF real-time quaking-induced conversion, a method based on prion seed-induced misfolding and aggregation of recombinant prion protein substrate that has proven to be a highly specific test for diagnosis of sporadic CJD.


Citizens often mirror the behavior of their peers, but our understanding of the dynamics of this influence is limited. For example, in what settings does the choice of one person to vote cascade through a community and lead to high voter turnout? Despite substantial theoretical inroads into this question, direct empirical tests remain scarce. Using data on the social networks of 15 villages in rural Uganda, this paper develops theoretical predictions about expected cross-village variation in turnout based on the network structure of each village, and demonstrates that these predictions are tightly linked with actual turnout in low-salience local elections with limited media attention, though not in high-salience presidential elections. These results provide the first direct empirical validation of "social context" theory, and introduce a finding of importance for future empirical network research: the salience of social networks may be conditional on the information environment.


Many reactions catalyzed by Pd complexes with N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands are performed in the presence of amines which usually act as coupling reagents or mild bases. However, amines can react with Pd/NHC complexes in a number of ways: enhancing molecular catalysis, causing the catalyst deactivation or triggering the ligandless modes of catalysis by producing NHC-free active palladium species. This study gains insight into conditions required for the efficient use of amines as activators of molecular Pd/NHC catalysis and preventing the undesirable reductive cleavage of the Pd–NHC bond in catalytic systems. Reactions of Pd/NHC complexes with various amines within a temperature range of 25–140 °C and thermal stability of the resulting amino-complexes are examined. The results indicate the major influence of the amine structure and reaction temperature on the catalyst transformation. In particular, thermal decomposition of Pd/NHC complexes with aliphatic amine ligands predominantly leads to reductive Pd–NHC bond cleavage, while deprotonation of the complexes with primary and secondary aliphatic amine ligands in the presence of strong bases at 25–60 °C promotes the activation of molecular Pd/NHC catalysis. Efficient Pd–PEPPSI complex–amine systems suitable for strong-base-promoted C–S cross-coupling reactions between aryl halides and thiols are suggested on the basis of these findings.


Transient global amnesia is described in two patients suffering from classical and common migraine, respectively. These cases are peculiar in that the amnesic attack was part of the aura in one patient, while it behaved like an accompanying symptom in the other. The close temporal relation between the attacks of transient global amnesia and migraine strengthens the hypothesis of an etiologic role of migraine. The nature of this mechanism could be the cerebral blood flow changes or the neural perturbation which characterize migraine attacks.


Epigramma Graecum BE still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. Think rather,—call to thought, if now you grieve a little, The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation— Oh why did I awake ? when shall I sleep again ? A. E. HOUSMAN. (We are indebted to the Author and the Richards Press Ltd. for permission to print the English.)


1, The growth of Sphagnum fallax was studied in a glasshouse experiment. Capitulum diaspores of S. fallax were cultivated on five different types of bare peat core, representing a gradient of increasing disturbance. Increases in length and weight were measured. Three microclimates were simulated by protecting the bare peat with a shading mesh and a plastic cover in combination with two water levels. 2, Significant differences in the growth of S. fallax were observed in relation to microclimate changes. Protection techniques such as shading mesh and perforated plastic film allowed a better development of the diaspores compared to bare peat. A plastic cover caused the best growth and compensated for a low water table level. 3. Feat properties are critical when diaspores grow in direct contact with decomposed peat. The porosity, and especially its vertical pattern in the peat profile, proved to be an important factor. A particular combination of microclimate conditions at the surface of the bare pest, and physical properties of the upper. peat layers, may favour the growth of S. fallax diaspores even where there is a low water table. 4. Restoration of Sphagnum species on cut-over bogs needs to consider both the microclimate conditions at the surface of the bare peat and the peat properties themselves. These factors are important for the diaspores, particularly in periods of climatic and hydrological stress. In such situations, commensalism with some vascular plants may be a useful trigger for Sphagnum growth.


Sealing faults may have a major impact on reservoir compartmentalization and play a key role in advanced oil recovery strategies. Because of the different approaches and scales used to characterize faults, a considerable gap remains between engineers' and geologists' conceptions of faulted reservoirs. The fundamental difficulty in integrating these views lies in constructing realistic reservoir-scale models incorporating relevant fault properties on several scales, so that fault connectivity and its impact on fluid flow can be simulated and quantified properly. This paper is a step towards examining quantitatively the impact of fault connectivity on fluid flow at a reservoir scale. A stochastic reservoir model incorporating sealing faults was constructed. The number of faults in the model were gradually increased and several fluid flow simulations performed in order to verify the impact of fault density and fault connectivity on the spatial pressure variation. Despite being synthetic, the model incorporates some properties of an actual carbonate reservoir, the Xaréu oil field (XOF) in the Ceará Basin, NE Brazil. In the XOF, thin (<15 m) oil-bearing carbonate layers are interlayered in a thick (>50 m) shale bed. Sealing effects may be caused by the faults because they usually have a normal slip component, so that the thick shale layer becomes juxtaposed against the thin carbonate layers, behaving as barriers to fluid flow in the carbonate layers. It appears that there is no reservoir compartmentalization in the carbonate layers because there is overall pressure depletion in XOF – all the new wells drilled in the carbonate layers, before starting production, showed formation pressure values smaller than the formation pressure measured in the first wells drilled in the field. Nevertheless, it was not understood how such communication throughout the entire reservoir (approx. 19 km2) could occur, given the presence of laterally extensive faults, with up to 5 km in strike and maximum vertical displacement greater than the reservoir thickness. In the synthetic model, fault population follows a displacement-length property derived from seismic data. Sub-seismic faults were also incorporated in the model using a downscaling law. The location, direction and length of each fault were also generated stochastically. In order to quantify the 'degree of faulting', two criteria were used: fault density (the fraction's 'total fault length per occurrence area'; f1) and fault connectivity (the fraction's 'number of fault intercepts per occurrence area'; f2). By comparing f1 and f2 for the real and simulated versions of the XOF carbonate reservoir it is concluded that the carbonate layers remain interconnected so that compartmentalization does not exist. From a methodological viewpoint, the most important aspect of the modelling is the change of focus regarding sealing. At least for the purposes of investigating interconnection, the adequate focus is on the 'percolation core' of the reservoir (its hydraulically connected and undamaged parts) and not on the faults themselves, regardless of their sealing nature.


The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have published On the front line: A review of programmes that address HIV among international peacekeepers and uniformed services 2005–2010. This report outlines the progress made and the obstacles encountered in implementing Resolution 1308 and will serve as background when the Security Council meet on 7 June to deliberate progress towards the resolution. In 2000 when the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1308 it was a watershed moment in the global AIDS response. It was the first time in its history that the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution addressing a public health concern and its implications for international peace and security. There are clearly new opportunities for consolidating the progress and addressing new challenges. The imperative to further explore the relationship between AIDS and insecurity is also clear Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS Executive Director and Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations The resolution recognized that societal violence and instability exacerbate the spread of HIV and, left unchecked, could pose a threat to international peace and security. It called on UNAIDS and DPKO to develop HIV-specific strategies and programmes within the context of United Nations peacekeeping operations. The report notes that significant progress has been made in providing access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services for all sections of society—including peacekeepers and other uniformed services personnel. Nevertheless, during the past 10 years, the evolving landscape of crises and conflicts throughout the world has reshaped these challenges and underscored the need for a new response to AIDS in the context of United Nations actions to help prevent conflict, ensure security and build peace.


Recasting Ritual explores how ritualized action diversifies in response to varying cultural, political and physical contexts. The contributors look at how issues such as globalisation and technology affect ritual performance and how minorities often utilise performances to affirm their own identites while also speaking to outsiders. The contributors examine the relationship between ritual meaning and social identity through case-studies drawn from the Pacific, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, Latin America, Indonesia, and East and West Africa. Study of the theoretical underpinnings of social action affirms the independence of anthropology as a discipline from cultural, media and performance studies, according it a distinctive role in elucidating contemporary and emergent human conditions.


The purpose of this paper is to suggest a possible approach to the recovery of the spectral density function g(ω) through a knowledge of the first few measured complex zeros of the complex degree of coherence γ(τ). The assumption that γ(τ) is band-limited allows us to express the sums of inverse powers of the complex zeros of γ(τ) in terms of the moments of g(ω). Only the lowest-order moments can be evaluated in this manner with any accuracy for reasons discussed in the text. We use two estimation-type solutions that utilize lower-order moments: beta distribution model and the Shannon maximum entropy model to estimate g(CD). Representative numerical calculations are discussed.


The genetics of heifer performance in tropical 'wet' and 'dry' seasons, and relationships with steer performance, were studied in Brahman (BRAH) and Tropical Composite (TCOMP) (50% Bos indicus, African Sanga or other tropically adapted Bos taurus; 50% non-tropically adapted Bos taurus) cattle of northern Australia. Data were from 2159 heifers (1027 BRAH, 1132 TCOMP), representing 54 BRAH and 51 TCOMP sires. Heifers were assessed after post-weaning 'wet' (ENDWET) and 'dry' (ENDDRY) seasons. Steers were assessed post-weaning, at feedlot entry, over a 70-day feed test, and after similar to 120-day finishing. Measures studied in both heifers and steers were liveweight (LWT), scanned rump fat, rib fat and M. longissimus area (SEMA), body condition score (CS), hip height (HH), serum insulin-like growth factor-I concentration (IGF-I), and average daily gains (ADG). Additional steer measures were scanned intra-muscular fat%, flight time, and daily (DFI) and residual feed intake (RFI). Uni- and bivariate analyses were conducted for combined genotypes and for individual genotypes. Genotype means were predicted for a subset of data involving 34 BRAH and 26 TCOMP sires. A meta-analysis of genetic correlation estimates examined how these were related to the difference between measurement environments for specific traits. There were genotype differences at the level of means, variances and genetic correlations. BRAH heifers were significantly (P < 0.05) faster-growing in the 'wet' season, slower-growing in the 'dry' season, lighter at ENDDRY, and taller and fatter with greater CS and IGF-I at both ENDWET and ENDDRY. Heritabilities were generally in the 20 to 60% range for both genotypes. Phenotypic and genetic variances, and genetic correlations, were commonly lower for BRAH. Differences were often explained by the long period of tropical adaptation of B. indicus. Genetic correlations were high between corresponding measures at ENDWET and ENDDRY, positive between fat and muscle measures in TCOMP but negative in BRAH (mean of 13 estimates 0.50 and -0.19, respectively), and approximately zero between steer feedlot ADG and heifer ADG in BRAH. Numerous genetic correlations between heifers and steers differed substantially from unity, especially in BRAH, suggesting there may be scope to select differently in the sexes where that would aid the differing roles of heifers and steers in production. Genetic correlations declined as measurement environments became more different, the rates of decline (environment sensitivity) sometimes differing with genotype. Similar measures (LWT, HH and ADG; IGF-I at ENDWET in TCOMP) were genetically correlated with steer DFI in heifers as in steers. Heifer SEMA was genetically correlated with steer feedlot RFI in BRAH (0.75 +/- 0.27 at ENDWET, 0.66 +/- 0.24 at ENDDRY). Selection to reduce steer RFI would reduce SEMA in BRAH heifers but otherwise have only small effects on heifers before their first joining.


The standard highway assignment model in the Florida Standard Urban Transportation Model Structure (FSUTMS) is based on the equilibrium trip assignment method. The method involves running several iterations of all-or-nothing capacity-restraint assignment with an adjustment for travel time to reflect delays encountered in the associated iteration. This iterative link time adjustment process is accomplished through the widely used Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) volume-delay equation. While the output assignments from traditional forecasting models are usually given in daily traffic, the input capacities are typically given in hourly traffic. A peak-to-daily ratio (CONFAC) is computed as the highest hourly volume of a day divided by the total daily volume. Although the current version of FSUTMS allows the use of different CONFACs for individual facility types, it still assumes that all roadways belonging to a specific type have the same peaking characteristics. The objective of this research is to improve the accuracy of trip assignments in FSUTMS by: (1) calibrating the relationships between CONFAC and a congestion measure for each facility type, using traffic count data, and (2) applying the calibrated relationships in FSUTMS's trip assignment. It was found that the output accuracy between constant and variable CONFAC assignments was not significantly different and the desired improvement in assignment results of the variable CONFAC model was not empirically evident.


The research on Photo-Realistic rendering intends to develop algorithms in order to render images of synthetic or artificial high quality models. One of the most popular methods that allows to obtain this kind of images is ray tracing. This technique requires the evaluation of a very large number of light contributions in a scene that could be defined by several hundred thousand objects. To this end, the ray tracing algorithm must calculate a large number of ray-object intersections, which makes this algorithm very expensive in computation time. Fortunately, ray tracing is an algorithm intrinsically parallel which offers several potential acceleration techniques to reduce such higher rendering time in generating one single image. This paper presents a survey of the parallel processing for the image synthesis by means of ray tracing. Firstly, we describe the ray tracing algorithm and the different sequential acceleration techniques briefly. This paper focuses on the different parallelization strategies of ray tracing. These strategies are presented from the point of view of their main differences, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Afterward, we analyze the main interesting and promising research fields on the ray tracing acceleration technique, although these same fields can also help in other rendering algorithms.


Monte Carlo simulations are used to discern scaling relationships for photon migration occurring within homogeneous, anisotropic scattering media of semi-infinite extent. Special attention is given to events associated with short path lengths. Empirical scaling relationships for path lengths and surface intensities are shown to agree with a consistency equation derived in an earlier study of anisotropic random walks. They are augmented here by a procedure that accounts for concomitant scaling of optical absorption coefficients. Results then are used to transform expressions that were obtained previously by analytical random-walk theory developed for an isotropic scattering model of photon migration. Quantities that are studied include the diffuse surface reflectance, the depth distribution of the fluence, and the time-resolved intensity of backreflected photons.


White supremacy is a ubiquitous ideology that can surreptitiously greet us, like sunrise in the morning does after yet another night of insomnia, or can punch us squarely on the jaw with brass knuckles after an impassioned lesson about the virtues of turning the other cheek. Micro- and macro-presentations of white supremacy, othering and socio-political phobias are direct results of the insecurities and laziness of colonialists and their contemporary progeny, neocolonialists. Whichever way it shows up (and it does relentlessly, surviving on something more than oxygen), this so-called supremacy and those committed to working on its behalf inherently resist freedom. Conversely, autonomy is inevitable when we take for ourselves the chief components of what is necessary for any deep-rooted infrastructure, personal or otherwise: space and time. Taking space and time to learn, strategize, explore and create—individually and cooperatively—are essential to persevere and overturn an intangible, inescapable ideology meant to snuff out our very life force.


Shammah is a traditional form of chewing tobacco [Smokeless tobacco, (ST)] that is commonly used in the Middle east specially Saudi Arabia (KSA), Yemen and Sudan. The cytotoxicity of Sudanese and Yemenis ST hexane and methanol extracts was evaluated using MTT assay. Annexin-V assay has been used to detect the induction of apoptosis. Luminescence based assay also been conducted to check the level of caspases enzyme. The involvement of cell cycle check point arrest has been performed using flow cytometry analysis. The current study found that ST has the capacity to induce cell toxicity in human liver cells. The inhibitory capacity of ST in HepG2 and WRL 68 has been found to be 151 ± 2.5 and 305 ± 11.5 µg/ml for 24 h. An early apoptosis induction in HepG2 cells was observed by annexin V assay, which clearly exhibited significantly increased early and late apoptosis phases both at 24 and 48 h. Both the caspases-8 and-9 level was found to be increased by the introduction of ST to HepG2 cells significantly (p<0.05). Moreover the ST extract was able to arrest the cell cycle check point at G2/M phase. A significantly increasing pattern of hypodiploid phases of cells also been observed, which confirm the apoptosis induction again. Collectively, results presented in this study demonstrated that the ST, which is used as a euphoritic substance of abuse also, has significant level of toxicity in human cells. Moreover the mode of cell death was found to be though programmed cell death which is closely associated with cell cycle arrest.


DNA-based capture-mark-recapture (CMR) techniques are commonly used to obtain population parameters of black bears (Ursus americanus) in rural and wildland landscapes; however, these techniques have not been implemented in urban clusters (i.e., 2,500 to 50,000 residents). Black bears can readily habituate to urban clusters, and wildlife managers need to monitor and manage these urban bear populations. We modifi ed DNAbased CMR for black bear using hair-snares to take into account the small home ranges of urban bears, urban bear behavior, and human safety within Mammoth Lakes, California, USA. We conducted this study for 3 fi eld seasons in 2010, 2011, and 2012 from June to July. Each fi eld season, we implemented a CMR with 6 encounter occasions, each 7 days in length. We used the traditional corral hair-snare design modifi ed for human safety and chose multiple non-consumable and minimally consumable lure types to prevent food conditioning and a trap-happy response. In 2012, we also tested 3 additional hair-snare designs more appropriate for urban areas: natural rub, haphazard-wire snare, and tennis ball snare. In 2010, we collected an insuffi cient number of hair samples for CMR by putting hair-snares in the periphery of the urban cluster, which we call the urban–wildland interface. However, in 2011 and 2012, when we put hair-snares in the city center as well as the surrounding urban–wildlife interface and increased hair-snare density, we obtained a suffi cient number of hair samples to estimate population density using closed capture CMR models. These adjustments to hairsnaring study design in urban areas helped increase capture and recapture rates to be similar to our wildland area. To achieve high capture rates using hair-snares in the urban area, we put out hair-snares at a density approximately 4 times greater than in our wildland study area and distributed them throughout the entire urban area, and not just on the urban–wildlife interface. In addition, setting hair-snares near anthropogenic features used by bears in urban areas (e.g., culverts, utility poles, dumpsters) and adding spent cooking oil to lures also increased our capture rate. Finally, the corral hair-snare had the highest capture rates of our 4 hair-snare designs. After adapting a study design for hair-snaring wildland bears, our methods were effi cient for urban areas, having high capture and recapture rates (>0.30) and good precision for abundance estimates (coeffi cient of variation <0.2), while maintaining human safety.


In 1994 the city of Tel Aviv replaced its existing school integration program based on inter-district busing, with a new program that allowed students to choose freely between schools in and out of district. This paper explores the impact of this program on high school outcomes while distinguishing the effect of choice on individual students from general equilibrium effects on affected districts. The identification is based on a regression discontinuity design that yields comparison groups drawn from untreated tangent neighborhoods in adjacent cities and on instrumental variables. The results suggest that the choice program had significant general equilibrium effects on high school dropout rates, matriculation rates and program of study. The gains are more pronounced among disadvantaged children but not among students who took advantage of the option to attend out of district schools with higher mean outcomes. These results and other evidence related to the behavioral responses of schools and students to the program suggest that the positive impact of the program is mainly due to better matching between students and schools and to productivity effects of choice and competition among schools.


The introduction of new modulations on the global navigation satellite systems brings potential improvements for ground positioning. Clever receiver designs taking advantage of the characteristics of the new signals will be able to achieve better accuracy, higher sensitivity, improved multipath mitigation and tracking robustness. In this context, this paper focuses on the Galileo E5a signal and study different acquisition architectures that can be applied on this signal. Their performances are discussed in terms of detection sensitivity and by a theoretical characterization of the false alarm and detection probabilities. The theoretical results are validated by measurements using a Spirent constellation simulator, a Fraunhofer triple band front-end and a non real time software receiver.


This article examines the narratives of more than fifty students and teachers who live and work in inner-city areas of the U.S. and South Africa. The purpose of this investigation was to consider some striking similarities in the themes that emerged from the narratives of "most memorable learning experiences" shared by these inner-city learners and their implications for policy. In this article, attention is given not only to the value of these narratives to the individuals who have shared them, but also to the value of sharing these narratives with "Others" (i.e., policy makers, administrators, and curriculum developers) who are engaged in dialogues about the reform of education for inner-city populations here in the U.S. and in South Africa. The U.S. and South Africa are two countries with similarities that make them well-suited for this investigation. Structurally, the U.S. and South Africa are both seeking ways to more effectively educate large numbers of inner-city students who are culturally and linguistically different from the "mainstream" and from the students for whom the majority of instructional materials and school expectations are tailored. With an end to legal segregation in the U.S. and apartheid in South Africa, policy makers in both countries are making critical decisions concerning the reconstruction of education systems for students whom they know very little about. A disjunction exists between the lives of the students and the policy environment that seeks to design and control the educational experiences of inner-city youth. Through narratives, this article helps the reader to appreciate this disjunction and exposes a sharp contrast between the world in which the inner-city youth lives and the world implied by the policies and practices that are proposed. I propose that narratives of memorable learning experiences collected from students and teachers who live and work in inner-city areas can provide insight concerning "what counts" as learning and what aspects of life and school experiences have most shaped their lives as learners. This article demonstrates two important functions of narrative: it demonstrates how students and teachers who live and work in inner-city areas make sense of their experiences through narrative, and how (by listening to the voices of inner-city students and teachers) others can gain a data base from which to craft expanded visions of the possibilities for the change and restructuring of schools. (Content analyses of oral and written narrative data)


Using a web-based environment for assessment can provide several advantages and disadvantages for both academics and students. The purpose of this study is to examine university students' testing preferences in mathematics comparing their views on web-based and paper-based assessment. Two groups of engineering students, daytime and distance learners, were studied about their preferences and rationale. Based on the survey, statistical hypotheses were formulated and validated using chi-squared test statistics for categorical data. The results of this study showed that the vast majority of respondents thought that an opportunity to take web-based assessment tests in math was a good innovation. However, there were no statistically significant differences between the percentages of students who preferred to take assessment tests in math on computer, or on paper, or it did not matter to them. Those students who preferred to take web-based assessment tests were generally in favour of the replacement of paper-based classroom assessment tests with web-based tests, and vice versa. Those students who did not care whether to take paper-based or web-based assessment tests were in favour of partial replacement. The students' willingness to replace web-based homework with paper-based tasks only slightly depended on their preferences. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse open questions. The research has shown that the reasons for the learners' preferences were mostly related to convenience and flexibility, environmental sustainability, complexity and academic fraud.


Defibrillation of the heart is used widely to resuscitate patients with fibrillating heart, being the most effective therapy for this otherwise lethal disturbance of cardiac rhythm. The basic electrophysilogical mechanisms of this procedure are not well understood. The aim of this work is to investigate the conditions that influence the so called virtual electrodes that appear in human ventricular myocardium and also their effects. A two-dimensional and a threedimensional computer model of cardiac tissue is used. For this the temporal evolution of the transmembrane voltage is studied until the entire tissue is repolarized, the needed time interval being around 400 ms.


Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) is a rare disease with an incidence of 0.4/per 100,000 person-years. As there is a limited number of prospective randomized trials in PCNSL, large retrospective studies on this rare disease may yield information that might prove useful for the future design of randomized clinical trials. We retrospectively analyzed the data of 222 newly diagnosed PCNSL patients treated in five referral centers in Israel between 2001 and 2020. During this period, combination therapy became the treatment of choice, rituximab has been added to the induction therapy, and consolidation with irradiation was largely laid off and was mostly replaced by high-dose chemotherapy with or without autologous stem cell transplantation (HDC-ASCT). Patients older than 60 comprised 67.5% of the study population. First-line treatment included high-dose methotrexate (HD-MTX) in 94% of patients with a median MTX dose of 3.5 g/m2 (range 1.14-6 g/m2 ) and a median cycle number of 5 (range 1-16). Rituximab was given to 136 patients (61%) and consolidation treatment to 124 patients (58%). Patients treated after 2012 received significantly more treatment with HD-MTX and rituximab, more consolidation treatments, and autologous stem cell transplantation. The overall response rate was 85% and the complete response (CR)/unconfirmed CR rate was 62.1%. After a median follow-up of 24 months, the median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 21.9 and 43.5 months respectively with a significant improvement since 2012 (PFS: 12.5 vs. 34.2 p = 0.006 and OS: 19.9 vs. 77.3 p = 0.0003). A multivariate analysis found that the most important factors related to OS were obtaining a CR followed by rituximab treatment and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status. The observed improvement in outcomes may be due to multiple components such as an intention to treat all patients regardless of age with HD-MTX-based combination chemotherapy, treatment in dedicated centers, and more aggressive consolidation with the introduction of HDC-ASCT.


In The Scalawags, James Alex Baggett ambitiously uncovers the genesis of scalawag leaders throughout the former Confederacy. Using a collective biography approach, Baggett profiles 742 white southerners who supported Congressional Reconstruction and the Republican Party. He then compares and contrasts the scalawags with 666 redeemer-Democrats who opposed and eventually replaced them. Significantly, he analyzes this rich data by region -- the Upper South, the Southeast, and the Southwest -- as well as for the South as a whole. Baggett follows the life of each scalawag before, during, and after the war, revealing real personalities and not mere statistics. Examining such features as birthplace, vocation, estate, slaveholding status, education, political antecedents and experience, stand on secession, war record, and postwar political activities, he finds striking uniformity among scalawags. This is the first Southwide study of the scalawags, its scope and astounding wealth in quantity and quality of sources make it the definitive work on the subject.


Plagiarism, fake or even falsified presentation has become a major plague for scientific publications. This paper is a response to personal appeal by David JW Lane the Editor-in-Chief of Research and Reports in Biodiversity Studies to support and promote the international author standards as developed by COPE for authors and editors-in-chief posted to me April 3rd 2012 (International standards for editors and authors http://www.dovepress.com/rrbscope.t9699812). As corresponding author for more than 100 scientific papers, dozens of scientific reviews, several chapters in scientific books, and author and editor of a book Historical Overview of Chromatography and Related Techniques in Analysis of Antimalarial Drug Primaquine, and as a reviewer of Journal of Chromatography, Journal of Chromatography A, Journal of Chromatography B: Biomedical Sciences and Applications, Lipids, Journal of General Microbiology, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Journal of Microbiological Methods, Oral Microbiology and Immunology, Analytica Chimica Acta, Mycological Research and Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, and member of editorial board of Electronic Components and Systems, American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, ISRN Chromatography and Open Journal of Clinical Diagnostics I was adhered to a new ethical and moral standards in scientific publications. The presented paper is an example of use the analytical methods in visualizing of plagiarism and falsification in the published scientific literature. It is obvious that some of scientific publications need careful quality control. Some papers should have been rejected but were not. These papers clearly pollute the field of scientific information. It is not always easy to demonstrate inappropriate presentation even when many supporting facts are available. The facts should be obvious; there should be no hesitation about the quality or value of a paper presented for consideration to be published. Plagiarism is most common and harmful phenomenon in scientific publications. The plagiarism is based on an original discovery or reproduction of the results from the other authors. The analytical methods used in the quality control of the data can disclose plagiarism. An example is the publication under scrutiny "Applications of GC-EI-MS for the Identification of Positional Isomer in Primaquine, an Antimalarial Drug" by Dongre et al. (2005) Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis 39, No. 1-2, 111-116.


Recently, great interest has been shown in understanding the functional roles of specific gap junction proteins (connexins) in brain, lens, retina, and elsewhere. Some progress has been made by studying knockout mice with targeted connexin deletions. For example, such studies have implicated the gap junction protein Cx36 in synchronizing rhythmic activity of neurons in several brain regions. Although knockout strategies are informative, they can be problematic, because compensatory changes sometimes occur during development. Therefore, it would be extremely useful to have pharmacological agents that block specific connexins, without major effects on other gap junctions or membrane channels. We show that mefloquine, an antimalarial drug, is one such agent. It blocked Cx36 channels, expressed in transfected N2A neuroblastoma cells, at low concentrations (IC(50) approximately 300 nM). Mefloquine also blocked channels formed by the lens gap junction protein, Cx50 (IC(50) approximately 1.1 microM). However, other gap junctions (e.g., Cx43, Cx32, and Cx26) were only affected at concentrations 10- to 100-fold higher. To further examine the utility and specificity of this compound, we characterized its effects in acute brain slices. Mefloquine, at 25 microM, blocked gap junctional coupling between interneurons in neocortical slices, with minimal nonspecific actions. At this concentration, the only major side effect was an increase in spontaneous synaptic activity. Mefloquine (25 microM) caused no significant change in evoked excitatory or inhibitory postsynaptic potentials, and intrinsic cellular properties were also mostly unaffected. Thus, mefloquine is expected to be a useful tool to study the functional roles of Cx36 and Cx50.


word (word) n. Abbr. Wd. 1. A sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning .... (American Heritage Dictionary) Words are symbols, symbols that only represent meaning. They are, in and of themselves, of no value except to the extent that they communicate to their reader or hearer some associated understanding. But like other, nonverbal symbols, the meanings associated with words vary widely across cultures, classes, and times. The meanings given by one group may be quite at odds with those provided by another. The significance of this variety increases with the importance of the symbol being interpreted. When it comes to words, no symbols are more important to Americans than the foundational canons of their religious and civic societies. In religion, the foundational source for most Americans is the Bible, of course. In a country founded by Puritans, but populated by peoples of a wide array of doctrines and beliefs, the variations on what the Bible means to Americans are nearly as broad and vast as the country's terrain. Equally divergent are the interpretations Americans give to their civic manifesto, the U.S. Constitution. Debates about the terms, conditions, and understandings of that document have provided backdrops against which much of American history has been played. From the Civil War to the War Powers Act, the interpretation of the Constitution has provided Americans with a key focal point regarding the structuring of society. Many groups vie for recognition for having paramount interpretations of the Bible and the Constitution. Within and between different religious traditions, proponents of various biblical interpretations compete for an indication that their understanding is ultimately authoritative. Similarly, in legal and political circles, lawyers, historians, and political scientists promote their interpretative analyses of the Constitution in hopes that society will in some way acknowledge the validity of their claims. The interpretation of either source, however, requires the application of hermeneutical principles. These principles, whether recognized or assumed, are shared in a number of ways between the Bible and the Constitution. Of interest here are the ways in which the methods used to interpret the two sources compare on the question of "originalism." By originalism, I refer to the hermeneutical approach used by both biblical and constitutional scholars (and followed by millions of lay persons) that accords binding authority to the strict text of the source document or to the intentions of its authors or adopters (Brest). The claim that the original text of the Constitution, or the intentions of its framers and ratifiers, has authoritative value surfaced most recently in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration, and culminated in the events surrounding the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. This, however, was not the first time that originalism had surfaced on the American political scene. On numerous occasions, originalism has been promoted as the defining mode for resolution of public crisis, from the chartering of a national bank in McCulloch v. Maryland, to the extension of the Bill of Rights through the fourteenth amendment in Brown v. Board of Education, to the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" employed in the Nixon and Clinton impeachment processes (Rakove). In this light, the assertions provided by originalists come not as new theories or understandings, but as part of a quasi-cyclical fluctuation in political rhetoric. So, too, are the promotions of biblical originalism that emerged from the sixteenth-century reformation in the Western church. From the writings of Puritan reformers such as Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, to the orations of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes 11 monkey trial," to present religious sentiments expressed by such bumper stickers as "God wrote it, I believe it, end of discussion," biblical originalism has cycled regularly through religious societies. …


We present a mass-spring system for interactive simulation of deformable bodies. For the amount of springs we target, numerical time integration of spring displacements needs to be accelerated and the transfer of displaced point positions for rendering must be avoided. To fulfill these requirements, we exploit features of recent graphics accelerators to simulate spring elongation and compression in the graphics processing unit (GPU), saving displaced point masses in graphics memory, and then sending these positions through the GPU again to render the deformed body. This approach allows for interactive simulation and rendering of about one hundred thousand elements and it enables the display of internal properties of the deformed body. To further increase the physical realism of this simulation, we have integrated volume preservation and additional physics based constraints into the GPU mass-spring system.


The effectiveness of the construction of jetties near the entrance channel of a coastal marina in reducing marina sedimentation has been analyzed using a modified hybrid model. The modified hybrid model consists of a coupled two-dimensional, finite-element, hydrodynamic and cohesive-sediment transport model and a physical model. The finite element model was used to model the hydrodynamics and cohesive sediment transport in Winyah Bay and Belle Isle Marina, South Carolina, and the physical model was used to aid in the calibration of the numerical model to the near-field flow in proximity to the marina. The physical model features an artificial boundary corresponding to the location of the dredged navigation channel in Winyah Bay. The use of this artificial boundary is justified by streamline observations in the calibrated numerical model. Using the calibrated hydrodynamic and cohesive-sediment transport model, the marina sedimentation rates for the various proposed jetty configurations were determined. The modified hybrid model was analyzed and found to be effective in modeling the dominant processes affecting sedimentation in Belle Isle marina.


We postulate an exact permutation symmetry acting on 10(32) standard model copies as the largest possible symmetry extension of the standard model. This setup automatically lowers the fundamental gravity cutoff down to TeV, and thus, accounts for the quantum stability of the weak scale. We study the phenomenology of this framework and show that below TeV energies the copies are well hidden, obeying all the existing observational bounds. Nevertheless, we identify a potential low energy window into the hidden world, the oscillation of the neutron into its dark copies. At the same time, proton decay can be suppressed by gauging the diagonal baryon number of the different copies. This framework offers an alternative approach to several particle physics questions. For example, we suggest a novel mechanism for generating naturally small neutrino masses that are suppressed by the number of neutrino species. The mirror copies of the standard model naturally house dark matter candidates. The general experimentally observable prediction of this scenario is an emergence of strong gravitational effects at the LHC. The low energy permutation symmetry powerfully constrains the form of this new gravitational physics and allows to make observational predictions, such as, production of micro black holes with very peculiar properties.


The fluxes of energy and momentum over the Arctic sea ice covered ocean arestrongly influenced by the various sources of surface inhomogeneity. The firsttype of inhomogeneity concerns the existance of open water within theice covered regions. It occurs e.g., in the marginal sea ice zones and very often even in the inner Arctic regions in form of ice free leads and polynjas.During winter, the large differences between the near-surface air temperatureand the surface temperature of open water cause very strong heat fluxes fromthe ocean to the atmosphere. The second type of inhomogeneity concerns the surface topography. Roughness elements like ridges and floe edges are distributed irregularly, and they have a large influence on the near-surface transport of momentum from the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) to sea ice.Investigations of the effect of the various sources of inhomogeneityon the Arctic ABL have been carried out in a subproject of the German contribution to the international ACSYS project. A nonhydrostatic mesoscale model (METRAS), mainly developed at the university of Hamburg in cooperation with AWI, was applied to several scenarios differingby the sea ice concentration, by the roughness of sea ice, and by themeteorological forcing. For a realistic representation of the effects ofinhomogeneity, new parameterizations of the surface roughness, suitablefor models of different scales, and of convection over leads for microscalemodels have been developed and applied to the model METRAS. It is shown bythe model runs that the Arctic ABL is significantly influenced by both typesof surface inhomogeneities and that they should be accountedfor in regional and large scale models.


The conversion of carbon dioxide and water into fuels in a solar refinery presents a potential solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while providing a sustainable source of fuels and chemicals. Towards realizing such a solar refinery, there are many technological advances that must be met in terms of capturing and sourcing the feedstocks (namely CO2, H2O, and solar energy) and in catalytically converting CO2 and H2O. In the first part of this paper, we review the state-of-the-art in solar energy collection and conversion to solar utilities (heat, electricity, and as a photon source for photo-chemical reactions), CO2 capture and separation technology, and non-biological methods for converting CO2 and H2O to fuels. The two principal methods for CO2 conversion include (1) catalytic conversion using solar-derived hydrogen and (2) direct reduction of CO2 using H2O and solar energy. Both hydrogen production and direct CO2 reduction can be performed electro-catalytically, photo-electrochemically, photo-catalytically, and thermochemically. All four of these methods are discussed. In the second part of this paper, we utilize process modeling to assess the energy efficiency and economic feasibility of a generic solar refinery. The analysis demonstrates that the realization of a solar refinery is contingent upon significant technological improvements in all areas described above (solar energy capture and conversion, CO2 capture, and catalytic conversion processes).


"The one source that sets reference collections on Latin American studies apart from all other geographic areas of the world...The Handbook has provided scholars interested in Latin America with a bibliographical source of a quality unavailable to scholars in most other branches of area studies."-Latin American Research Review Beginning with Number 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 140 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and research under way in specialized areas. The subject categories for Number 70 are as follows: ** Art** History** Literature** Music** Philosophy: Latin American Thought


The Leadership Program's HERstory is a school-based, universal, preventative intervention designed to promote healthy youth development among adolescent girls by increasing their connections to pro-social peers and to school and community while developing social-emotional skills that serve as protective factors. In this school-year-long program, a facilitator implements three program phases: group development activities in Community Building, self-reflective Writing Workshop exercises, and a final Creative Output project, an ethnographic theater production or literary journal developed from participants' Writing Workshop responses. The current mixed-methods study presents early evidence of program effectiveness based on focus groups and school record data review at two NYC public schools during the 2010-2011 school year. Participants reported improvements in key areas targeted by HERstory, including peer connectedness, academic achievement, and a range of protective factors including future orientation and goal setting. Results suggest this program approach may be suitable promoting healthy adolescent development for girls.


A new method is proposed that allows broadband homonuclear decoupled CLIP/CLAP-HSQC NMR spectra to be acquired at virtually no extra cost in measurement time. The real-time (windowed) acquisition protocol applied follows a scheme recently devised for recording pure shift (broadband homonuclear decoupled) heteronuclear single quantum correlation (HSQC) spectra. To minimize systematic errors in the apparent coupling constants obtained using real-time homonuclear decoupling, we extended the acquisition scheme to include cycling of radiofrequency pulse phases both from chunk to chunk during windowed acquisition, and from scan to scan during time averaging, allowing robust coupling constant measurement. The new real-time pure shift CLIP/CLAP-HSQC experiments are designed to speed up coupling constant determination, to increase the sensitivity of measurement in favorable cases, and to simplify the extraction of accurate one-bond heteronuclear couplings from pure in- or anti-phase doublets using automatic peak picking. The scope and limitations of the method are discussed, and a variety of experimental tests are reported.


Cerebral blood flow changes were measured to examine the cortical basis for perceptual analysis of musical information. Twelve normal right‐handed volunteers underwent positron emission tomography (PET) scanning using the bolus water technique while listening to two types of stimuli: (1) unfamiliar tonal melodies, and (2) sequences of noise bursts, acoustically matched to the melodies for duration, intensity, and onset/offset characteristics. Subtracting the latter from the former PET image provides information regarding melodic processing beyond that associated with nonspecific auditory stimulation. Anatomical localization was provided by superimposing the average PET subtraction image on the average magnetic resonance image for the subjects tested. Results indicated significant increases in blood flow while listening to melodies in the right associative auditory cortex, suggesting that specialized neural systems in the right temporal lobe participate in higher‐order perceptual analysis. In addition, regions of significant activity were observed in the right occipital lobe, within areas classically described as associative visual cortex. This result may implicate these regions in hitherto unexplored aspects of auditory processings, or may possibly reflect engagement of visuospatial processing mechanisms in perception of melodies.Cerebral blood flow changes were measured to examine the cortical basis for perceptual analysis of musical information. Twelve normal right‐handed volunteers underwent positron emission tomography (PET) scanning using the bolus water technique while listening to two types of stimuli: (1) unfamiliar tonal melodies, and (2) sequences of noise bursts, acoustically matched to the melodies for duration, intensity, and onset/offset characteristics. Subtracting the latter from the former PET image provides information regarding melodic processing beyond that associated with nonspecific auditory stimulation. Anatomical localization was provided by superimposing the average PET subtraction image on the average magnetic resonance image for the subjects tested. Results indicated significant increases in blood flow while listening to melodies in the right associative auditory cortex, suggesting that specialized neural systems in the right temporal lobe participate in higher‐order perceptual analysis. In addition, reg...


The advent of globalization problematizes and challenges the notion of bounded citizenship as conceptualized and perceived among established democracies and nations of the world. It threatens to undermine the key characteristics of the nation-state such as sovereignty, autonomy and democracy. The major purpose of this study was to explore the social studies teachers' conceptualizations and experiences on citizenship through the teaching of social studies in primary schools in Botswana. Anchored within post colonial theory, the study was qualitative and employed the naturalistic inquiry paradigm. Qualitative methods were used to collect data. Data were analyzed using grounded theory through the constant comparative technique. The findings of the study revealed that social studies teachers' conceptualize citizenship in multiple ways. The findings lead to the conclusion that citizenship in Botswana is fluid and not homogeneous as one might have thought given the national aspirations of social harmony, unity and nation building that were adopted at independence in 1966. The study recommends that citizenship be re-imagined in schools in an effort to deconstruct the master narratives that are often western oriented.


Green water problem and its loading effects on high speed containerships was investigated with the purpose of developing a modelling framework that can practically guide naval architects to a better understanding of this problem and improvements in design.

The research began by reviewing extensive publications relevant to the understanding of green water, limitations in the ways the problem had been addressed and establishing a methodology that could effectively unlock the physics and efficiently solve the problem.

As a first step, a summarised background to how green water started, developed and finally took place was presented. An experimental programme was then implemented in order to observe the occurrence and to explore the physics behind these events.

From the outcome of the experiments, it was obvious that green water modelling could be developed and solved by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique through Volume of Fluid (VoF) method. To provide a starting point for this research, theoretical background of CFD was briefly introduced. Furthermore, in order to validate this approach, two benchmark tests were implemented and compared with published experimental data. It showed that in both cases, the simulation could accurately reproduce the results obtained from experiments.

Following this analysis, research continued to expand the CFD simulation to modelling of green water. Due to the complex and random nature of green water, development of the simulation framework was semi-empirical and based partly on experimental data. A pure theoretical approach could have been adopted. However, taking into consideration current limitations in ship motion prediction theories and sensitivity of green water to elemental factors, it was justified that semi-empirical approach was appropriate.

The simulation was conducted and the output results were compared with experimental results for a variety of test conditions that involved ship velocity, wave height and period. Good agreement between simulation and experiment was obtained. For all loading cases, experimental results were reproduced fairly well. This suggested that the modelling framework was adequate for all practical purposes.

Investigation was also conducted on a series of rectangular breakwaters that were fitted on the forecastle deck. Changes in water behaviour and loading following changes in the breakwater were well reflected. This implied that instead of a rectangular breakwater, the simulation model could also be applied to other types of breakwaters.

The results suggested that the simulation methodology has many practical applications. Within naval architecture, it can be used to perform parametric studies in order to select an optimal design of breakwater for a ship. In other sectors such as coastal engineering, the methodology can be adopted to investigate the interaction between water surge and a seawall or offshore breakwater.

In conclusion, it was found that the developed modelling framework shows potential for simple modelling of green water in which the behaviour of the water and its loading effects could be well reflected. It was further concluded that, provided appropriate principles are applied, the methodology has potential for other engineering applications. While it is acknowledged that current model may be limited by its semi-empirical basis and issues associated with computational requirements, it is noted that considerable possibilities for future research and development remains to be explored.


High stakes constitution-writing exercises have burst into the headlines in recent years from Iraq and Afghanistan to Egypt and Tunisia. In some cases, heated debates have given way to conflict and even violence as transitioning societies struggle to resolve fundamental conflicts over identity. The challenges of constitution-making are more acute in societies that are marked by deep religious divisions, as is the case in many Muslim-majority countries that are currently undergoing political transitions. In this Article, we examine a distinctive feature of the current wave of new constitutional exercises: the challenge of constitution-drafting under conditions of deep disagreement over the state's religious or secular identity.The Article offers three major contributions. First, we provide a detailed qualitative examination and comparison of constitution-making in the seven relatively understudied cases of Egypt, Indonesia, India, Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia and Turkey. Second, our examination of these cases informs a critical assessment of some common assumptions in the literature that are drawn from well-studied, Western cases of constitution-drafting like those of the United States and France. We argue that an understanding of constitution-drafting as higher-order law-making that is designed to resolve questions of identity and entrench a foundational definition of "we the people" is inapposite at best and, at worst, may exacerbate conflict in religiously-divided countries. Thirdly, we develop a framework that expands the range of constitution-drafting tools and strategies discussed in the comparative law literature by identifying novel design features drawn from the qualitative cases and their potential merits.


Because of the recent economic crisis, both the regulations to lower down emissions and fuel prices have remarkably increased. For this reason, the main goal of many aircraft companies is to make an airplane project cost efficient. In other words, the Life-Cycle-Cost (LCC) of it needs to be analyzed. In particular, considerations concerning cost savings are especially important during the preliminary design phase, for it is during this phase that fundamental decisions are taken. The main purpose of this thesis is to deeply describe a cost estimation method: the Roskam method. As a matter of fact, this method takes into account 4 different cost categories: the RDTE phase, the Manufacturing & Acquisition phase, the Operating phase and the Disposal phase. Each of them depends on many factors which are linked to the aircraft performances themselves. Once computed the costs of these categories, the LCC cost is found just by summing the costs of these 4 cost phases. Then, some technologies that can be of interest in the aviation industry in the near future (concerning the airframe, the engine, alternative fuels and wing) are presented. After that, a detailed description of 9 new technologies which are currently available on modern commercial aircrafts or still under development is done. For each of them an estimation of cost savings per each category has been done. Finally, in the last part of this thesis, two small to medium range commercial aircrafts have been studied. In particular, an ATR-72 500 and an Airbus A-320 200 have been taken into account. The Roskam cost estimation model has been applied on each of them, showing their RDTE cost, Acquisition & Manufacturing cost, the Operating cost, the Disposal one and finally, the entire LCC. After that, it has been calculated the benefits each of the 9 new technologies brought to the aircraft in terms of cost categories savings. At the end of this chapter, a consideration about the extra benefits a combination of 2 new technologies could bring has been done, showing the results in terms of money saved per each combination.


The emergence of the long-tail in the market of software applications is shifting the role of end-users from mere consumers to becoming developers of applications addressing their unique, personal, and transient needs. On the Web, a popular form of such applications is called mashup, built out of the lightweight composition of Web APIs (reusable software components delivered as a service through the Web). To enable end-users to build mashups, there is a key problem that must be overcome: End-users lack programming knowledge as well as the interest to learn how to master the complex set of Web technologies required to develop mashups. End-User Development (EUD) is an emerging research field dealing with this type of problems. Its main goal is to design tools and techniques facilitating the development of software applications by nonprogrammers. In this dissertation, we designed and implemented NaturalMash, an EUD system that empowers end-users to develop mashups. NaturalMash adopts a novel hybrid end-user programming technique combining natural language programming with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface in a live programming environment. We followed an iterative user-centered design process, in which three formative evaluations drove the incremental design of our system. At the end of the process, we conducted a summative usability evaluation, whose results suggest that the system is highly usable by non-programmers. Also, we proposed a novel benchmarking framework to evaluate mashup tools against each other. Using the framework, we conducted a comparative evaluation of 28 state-of-the-art mashup tools (NaturalMash included) against their expressive power. According to the results, our proposed system has a moderate yet competitive level of expressiveness. All in all, NaturalMash contributes a novel design featuring a unique combination of end-user programming techniques, a suitable metaphor, and the ability to enable an optimal learning experience. Our extensive evaluation results indicate that NaturalMash is located at a sweet spot along the classical trade-off between expressiveness and usability/learnability.


Basal stem rot (BSR) caused by Ganoderma boninense is the most serious disease of oil palms in Malaysia. Thus, changes in the gene expression patterns of infected palms have gained interests among researchers as a tool to understand the disease. An indication that there are differences in susceptibility to BSR between germplasm materials from different genetic origins have provided hope in generating oil palm varieties with reduced levels of susceptibility by using existing genetic materials. The study of differentially expressed genes may also pave the way towards developing diagnostic tools for early disease detection in oil palms. A novel method combining elements of suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) permits the efficient and rapid cloning of rarely transcribed differentially expressed genes. The experimental strategy virtually excludes the possibility of isolating false positive clones. This study used SSH and isolated 1,038 differentially expressed cDNAs from the G. boninense-inoculated oil palm seedlings (T1) when subtracted from its uninoculated counterpart (T2), using the basal stem and spear leaf tissues. Sequence data indicated that of the 1,038 clones obtained, 86% showed sequence similarity to proteins already registered in public databases, 10% showed similarity to putative protein sequences and 4% were unknown proteins with no records in public databases. Seven clones harboring genes encoding for defense mechanisms against fungal and insect pathogens in plants were identified. They were pathogenesis-related (PR)-genes and defense-related genes depending on their direct or indirect roles in plant defense against pathogens. Reverse northern analysis of these 7 clones demonstrated that 4 were differentially expressed in T1 but northern analysis showed that only 3 were differentially expressed. Further analysis via reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) confirmed these 3 genes to be differentially expressed in G. boninense infected oil palms. They were MAG 43 that codes for serine palmitoyltransferase, MAG 59 for chitinase and MAG 225 for endochitinase.


The sex technology industry is already estimated to be worth US$30 billion.1 While sex toys are well-established, sex robots ('sexbots'), anthropomorphic devices created for sexual gratification, are no longer science fiction. Four companies sell adult sexbots priced between US$5000 and US$15 000. They must be distinguished from 'paedobots' – childlike robotic models at present only produced by one company.2 The market appears to be men, and so far only 'female' adult sexbots have been created, although one company reports aiming to sell 'male' devices later in 2018.3 Sex robots are realistic mannequins with variable ages, appearances and textures, and customisable oral, vaginal and anal openings.

The medical profession needs to be prepared for inevitable questions about the impact of sex robots on health. Apart from free-market profits, the majority of arguments in their favour use 'harm limitation' somewhat defensively to convince others that this is one way to protect the vulnerable. Opponents reject the hypothesis that they reduce sexual crimes, and instead raise concerns about the potential for harm by further promoting the pervasive idea that living women too are sex objects that should be constantly available - 'misogynistic objectification' - and intensifying existing physical and sexual violence against women and children.

What characterises all discussions of this issue is the paucity of an evidence base. This might falsely reassure clinicians not to concern themselves with changing their current clinical practice. However, an absence of evidence does not excuse the medical profession from discussing and debating the issues, as there will inevitably be consequences for physical, mental and social well-being.

We aim to provide a succinct summary of the arguments for and against the sex robot industry and to assess the potential health implications that may affect both patients and clinicians. To find information about the health consequences of …


Changes in the abundance of an endemic amphipod, Jesogammarus annandalei, that inhabits the profundal zone of Lake Biwa were examined from 1966 to 1999. The abundance of J. annandalei increased suddenly during the mid‐1980s and thereafter stayed at a level that was seven‐fold higher than that before 1980. Compared with the amphipod in the 1960s, both the clutch and body size of the matured individuals decreased during the 1990s, which suggests that per capita food supply decreased. Thus, the increase in the abundance of J. annandalei appeared to be due largely to an increase in their survival rate and not their growth or reproduction rates. In accord with the increase in amphipod abundance, the fishery catch of an endemic gobiid fish species that is dominant in the profundal zone and preys on this amphipod as a major food, decreased dramatically during the mid1980s. These results suggest that long‐term changes in abundance of J. annandalei in Lake Biwa are mainly regulated by fish predation rather than by food supply.


In recent years, the growing integration of economies and societies around the world has required that graduates of all institutions and disciplines be prepared to work in an economy that is now best seen as essentially international. Global markets are dictating the way that national economies around the world design, distribute, and consume goods and services. Engineers are in the midst of this dynamic development. Most large engineering projects currently require multi-national teams of multi-disciplinary professionals to work together and, therefore, a better understanding of the global economy, communication skills, cultural awareness, and interpersonal skills are critical to engineers. In this context, universities around the world are increasingly moving to establish international partnerships in their education and research programs. This growing trend is fuelled by many factors, including the need to give students the education they require to work in an increasingly globalized world. In this paper, the authors discuss the key concepts of an engineering educational consortium between the United States and Brazil, formed with the objective to establish a sustainable exchange of undergraduate students in engineering between the U.S. and Brazil. The consortium is identifying the main barriers that currently prevent the existence of exchange of engineering students between the U.S. and Brazil that is consistent with the geographic location and the geopolitical importance of these two countries, so that these barriers can be addressed during the program. The consortium is focusing engineering education in the disciplines of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering technology, with emphasis in the area of renewable and alternative sources of energy. The authors describe the preliminary stages of this multidisciplinary project, and the goals and progress made in first year of the fouryear project (October'07 to September'11). The consortium is under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) on the U.S. side, and under the auspices of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES) of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, on the Brazilian side. One of the main purposes of international programs is to provide students value-added technical and cultural experiences. Engineering students typically do not have the same variety of International Program offerings as students of other disciplines have, such as humanities or social science students. Our consortium partnering institutions focus on use the exchange of engineering students and faculty to study questions of credit equivalents, shared curriculum, distance education and professional practice. Our program also focus on actively pursue sustainable partnerships with the regional industry to provide internship opportunities to complement the education and the cultural exchange of the students in order to illustrate how two different cultures approach a common problem. Specific activities in the program include language preparation, Web based teleconferencing using voice over Internet, preand postdeparture team building and distance education to allow students rapid emergence into the host country's culture.


Analysis of interviews with first‐year undergraduate mathematics students shows that 'not belonging' is a prevalent theme in their accounts of the experience of studying mathematics, even though their choice of degree‐level study indicates a belief that they are at least at some level 'good at maths'. Instead, they tend to describe themselves as marginalised: they are aligned with mathematical procedures but do not contribute to them. A perception of oneself as a 'legitimate peripheral participant'—as a novice with the potential to make constructive connections in mathematics—is rare. This article examines the potentially conflicting communities of practice within which undergraduate students find themselves, and presents a typology of their related learner identities. The analysis shows that undergraduate functionality in the sense of belief in oneself as a learner is not necessarily associated with the identity of novice/apprentice, as might be predicted by a community of practice model. On the contrary, students who describe identities of heavily alignment can appear unworried by their lack of participation in mathematics, successful as they are in the more dominant local communities of practice. It is argued that these, together with an institutional culture of entrenched beliefs about ability and ownership of knowledge, determine students' experiences and identities in ways which are noticeably gendered. The implications for teaching in mathematics and in higher education more generally are discussed.


There have been some conflicting results on the importance and relationship between intellectual capital and organizational performance especially in Nigeria. While some scholars agree that intellectual capital relates positively and significantly with organizational financial performance and as such accord organizations competitive edge over others, others believe that there are no relationships between intellectual capital and organizational performance and that physical assets still maintain the key determinants of organizational financial performance. Intellectual capital as the knowledge based equity of organizations has attracted a significant amount of practical interest. Although the importance of intellectual capital is constantly increasing, many organizations face the problems of its management, mostly due to measurement difficulties. This study therefore succinctly examines salient issues on the impact of intellectual capital on the financial performance of corporate establishments in Nigeria. Secondary sources of data collection were employed with the help of the Nigerian Stock Exchange Fact Book. The timeframe for this study was five (5) years and five (5) quoted banks out of the listed banks in Nigeria were used based on purposive sampling. It was discovered that intellectual capital positively and significantly impacted on the financial performance of establishments. Also, physical and structural capitals have positive relationship with the financial performance of the organizations studied. It is therefore advanced that a vibrant and robust training and retraining programmes be put in place to ensure the availability of human resources in the right quantity and quality. Physical and structural capitals' economic and technical capacities should be enhanced to boost the contributions of the human assets .Strategic human resources policies must also be carefully formulated and properly implemented to x-ray the possibility of including human assets in the balance sheet of corporate entities and to promote intellectual capital reporting.