We provide an in-depth description of virtual evidence and its application to Bayesian networks. As we will see, virtual evidence significantly extends the power of Bayesia n networks, and makes them much more widely applicable. It does this by giving Bayesian networks the ability to represent aspects from both directed and undirected graphical models. We describe how both evidence and virtual evidence can be seen as having the evidence nodes in the Bayesian network possess virtual children who are always observed to have value unity, and where the conditional probability table of these children imbue their parents either with a sin gle value (hard evidence) or with a collection of values (soft evidenced), the latter case allowing each such value possessing a weight which gets applied to the probability score. This soft evidence is seen as a straightforward gener alization of evidence, where the soft evidence phenomena is interpreted as information provided from outside the context of the process modeled by the Bayesian network (or alternatively, as an extension to the event space that is par titioned normally by the collection of random variables in the Bayesian network). We discuss Pearl's example of soft ev idence, interpret hybrid ANN/HMM (artificial-neural network/hidden Markov model) systems as soft evidence, and conclude that while the form of soft evidence depends only on ratios of scores and not on the scores' absolute value s, the actual score values may be obtained from any information source so desired. We find that some information sources, however, might be more intuitively justifiable than others.


Public participation has become a central concern of modern democratic politics. It is increasingly recognised that citizens have the right to ongoing involvement in their own governance, and that systems to facilitate it need to be put in place. Concurrently, countries around the world are undertaking decentralisation initiatives, moving political responsibilities downwards to bring them 'closer' to ordinary people. Conceptually, decentralisation presents major opportunities for enhancing citizens' capacity to engage in governance. The role of regional governments – provinces, states and so on – in participatory processes has not been explored in much detail. This poses a particular challenge where regional government is being introduced and constructed from scratch. This paper argues that the basic methods of participation are consistent across different levels of government. However, looking at the experiences of South Africa, a key problem at the regional level is a lack of clarity in respect of the overall institutional design. A clear division of responsibilities between different levels of government, paired with avenues for citizen entry, is essential for robust and meaningful public participation. To this must be added the commitment of governments to involve their citizens and the capacity of citizens to mobilise towards this end. Finally, modern technology offers exciting opportunities to expand the frontiers of participation, and should be enthusiastically embraced.


This PhD thesis develops a comprehensive disaster risk management framework that is tailor-made for the strategic management of disasters in Bangladesh. It provides a background study of the concept of disaster risk management and its components and focuses on key disaster risk management issues associated with both international best practice and in the context of Bangladesh. To address this task, the research focuses on three main questions: i. Based on the critical analysis of existing international frameworks and national policy documents, what are their relevant features for the development of a disaster risk management framework for Bangladesh? ii. Based on the perception of the individuals who are affected by disasters and who are involved in the disaster risk management processes in Bangladesh, what components are required for an effective disaster risk management framework for Bangladesh? and iii. Based on the internationally existing knowledge base and local inputs, what components in combination should be incorporated in a comprehensive disaster risk management framework for Bangladesh? In order to answer these questions, this research adopts the theoretical approach of social constructivism that recognises disasters as socially constructed phenomena. Therefore, disaster risk management should be approached through an understanding of social and cultural processes, where the affected community members and others who are also involved in the process determine the basic constructs of disaster risk management. Using a qualitative research design most suited for the investigation of a complex phenomenon such as disaster, this research first explores the international development of the concept of disaster risk management and its components. It analyses the international, regional and national disaster risk management frameworks that have a potential influence on, or relevance for, Bangladesh. It explores the concept of disaster risk management and its components based on empirical data from field research in Bangladesh. Finally, based on the theoretical knowledge base created through the analysis of existing frameworks and the socio-cultural perspectives derived from field research, it develops a Comprehensive Framework for Disaster Risk Management for Bangladesh (CFDRMB). Furthermore, it develops qualitative benchmarks and process maps to guide the implementation of the framework. This framework will assist professionals and academics who are involved in the disaster risk management process and who are keen to implement disaster risk management programmes or projects more effectively, both in Bangladesh and elsewhere. The research significantly contributes to the body of knowledge that currently exists on disaster risk management in Bangladesh and internationally. This study is the first of its kind in Bangladesh to analyse the specific components that contribute to disaster risk management through a comprehensive framework developed using content analysis of existing frameworks and local-level insights of affected populations and practitioners. Thus, this thesis is a useful resource for engaged disaster risk management practitioners and researchers, because it presents a range of discourses of disaster risk management and details the generic components required for disaster risk management as a whole and specifically in the context of Bangladesh.


Contemporary fuzz testing techniques focus on identifying memory corruption vulnerabilities that allow adversaries to achieve either remote code execution or information disclosure. Meanwhile, Algorithmic Complexity (AC)vulnerabilities, which are a common attack vector for denial-of-service attacks, remain an understudied threat. In this paper, we present HotFuzz, a framework for automatically discovering AC vulnerabilities in Java libraries. HotFuzz uses micro-fuzzing, a genetic algorithm that evolves arbitrary Java objects in order to trigger the worst-case performance for a method under test. We define Small Recursive Instantiation (SRI) as a technique to derive seed inputs represented as Java objects to micro-fuzzing. After micro-fuzzing, HotFuzz synthesizes test cases that triggered AC vulnerabilities into Java programs and monitors their execution in order to reproduce vulnerabilities outside the fuzzing framework. HotFuzz outputs those programs that exhibit high CPU utilization as witnesses for AC vulnerabilities in a Java library. We evaluate HotFuzz over the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the 100 most popular Java libraries on Maven, and challenges contained in the DARPA Space and Time Analysis for Cybersecurity (STAC) program. We evaluate SRI's effectiveness by comparing the performance of micro-fuzzing with SRI, measured by the number of AC vulnerabilities detected, to simply using empty values as seed inputs. In this evaluation, we verified known AC vulnerabilities, discovered previously unknown AC vulnerabilities that we responsibly reported to vendors, and received confirmation from both IBM and Oracle. Our results demonstrate that micro-fuzzing finds AC vulnerabilities in real-world software, and that micro-fuzzing with SRI-derived seed inputs outperforms using empty values.


This paper describes the behavior of present participles in a corpus of Old Portuguese and it raises some hypotheses concerning their syntactic status, compared to other non-finite forms. Although present participles in contemporary Portuguese no longer exist as verbal forms, in Old Portuguese we could find verbal occurrences of this form. In Old Portuguese, present participles could occur in typical adjectival contexts, while still maintaining verbal properties. Although there is some overlapping between present participles and gerunds, we argue that the functional structure of present participle clauses is more defective than the functional structure of gerund clauses.


Three studies on the assessment and diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) were conducted. The first study measured the failure rate of AP tests (speech and non-speech) and the APD diagnosis rate using four different diagnostic criteria. A retrospective analysis was conducted on test scores of 117 individuals with suspected APD. Failure rate was 3 to 4 times higher on the speech tests than the non-speech tests and consequently, there was a decrease in the diagnosis rate of APD when non-speech tests were included. Based on these findings, it was recommended that test batteries used to diagnose APD should include at least one non-speech test. The second study questioned whether an adding 2 seconds to the response time in three AP tests would benefit both typically developing students and those with learning disabilities. Learning disabled (LD) and 12 typically developing (TD) children (24 and 12 children, respectively) were administered three AP tests, Dichotic Digits (DD), Duration Pattern Sequence (DPS), and Random Gap Detection (RGD), under standard and extended time conditions. Students with LD improved significantly on the DD and DPS tests in the extended time condition. These findings indicate that adding 2 seconds to response time will significantly reduce the rate of APD diagnosis in students with LD. The third study investigated whether children with suspected APD are normally distributed between 1 and 2 standard deviations (SDs) below the mean. Retrospective analysis of AP assessments of 98 children did in fact show a normal distribution. Analysis revealed that the measured difference in the sample was not significantly different from the expected difference of 13.59% between 1 and 2SD. Consistent with AAA and ASHA guidelines, performance below 2 SD on at least two tests should be used to diagnose APD.


Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice, Fourth Edition prepares nurse educators, clinical nurse specialists, and nurse practitioners for their ever-increasing role in patient teaching, health education, health promotion, and nursing education. This text can be used in undergraduate or even graduate courses; one of the strengths of this text is that it is written in a style that enables students to easily understand new concepts and readily apply them. Other strong features include coverage of the motivational and sociocultural differences that affect teaching and learning. The Fourth Edition of this best-selling text has been updated and revised to include the latest research and data in the field of nurse education. Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice, Fourth Edition is the text of choice in nursing education courses and programs, as well as for institutional and community-based settings. The text includes access to the Navigate Companion Website for students which features engaging learning tools. Updates to the new edition include discussion of the following: The IOM's new report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change Advancing Health New material on how to teach motor skill learning National Action Plan around health literacy New content on the transgender population Updated formulas to measure patient health literacy Completely revised chapter on Educating Learners with Disabilities This text is a must have for either undergraduate or graduate courses.


Pulses from a cw mode-locked Nd:YAG laser, spectrally broadened and chirped by self-phase modulation in a single-mode optical fiber, have been compressed in a multiple-stage amplifier system to a pulse width of 12 psec without a grating-pair delay line. Single pulses are amplified in pulsed Nd:YAG stages to energies greater than 10 mJ and are synchronous with the cw mode-locked laser source. We find the amplified pulses to be stable, free of satellite pulses, and close to the transform limit.


After the spectacular successes of the 1960's and 1970's, the mineral exploration business is at a crossroads, facing uncertain t: imes in the decades ahead. This situation requires a re-thinking of the philosophy guiding mineral exploration if it is to emulate its recent performance. The ma: i. n argument of a previous volume titled "Designing Opt: lmal Strategies for Mineral Exploration," published in 1985 by Plenum Publishing Corporation of New York, is that a possible answer to the challenge facing mineral explorationists lies in the philosophy of opt: irn1zation. This new approach should help exploration staff make the best achievable use of the sophisticated and costly technology which is presently available for the detection of ore deposits. The main emphasis of the present volume is placed on the mathematical and computational aspects of the opt: irn1zation of mineral exploration. The seven chapters making up the ma: i. n body of the book are devoted to the description and application of various types of computerized geomathematical models which underpin the optimization of the mineral exploration sequence. The topics covered include: (a) the opt: lmal selection of ore deposit types and regions of search, as well as prospecting areas within the regions (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 6), (b) the designing of airborne and ground field programs for the opt: lmal coverage of prospecting areas (Chapters 2, 3, 4), (c) delineation and evaluation of exploration targets within prospecting areas by means of opt: irn1zed models (Ch


An identified gap in the higher education sector is the development of leadership capacity for teaching and learning. Significant funding has been allocated by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) to support the development of academic leadership in higher education. The outcomes of this initiative will ultimately improve the student experience as a more scholarly approach to the many aspects of teaching and learning is adopted. One project funded by ALTC supported four universities to develop and trial a framework for leadership capacity development. Five critical factors for success were identified including authentic learning activities that were situated in real contexts; formal leadership training and professional development initiatives; engagement in reflective practice including opportunities for dialogue about leadership practice and experiences; and activities that expanded current professional networks. In this paper we specifically examine how authentic learning environments enabled leadership capacity development and informed assessment practices within institutional and national contexts.


The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of seven music educators who designed and implemented teacher research in their classrooms in relation to the Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner (2007) theory of adult learning. Findings are presented within participant profiles and suggest that motivations to participate included a desire to be a better teacher and an interest in collaborating with the University. The collaboration helped the participants to continue with their studies as did their curiosity about the learning of their students. The issue of time hindered some of the participants' ability to complete their studies.


This study reports chemical changes occurring in the pulp of both whole and minimally processed (MP) durian (Durio zibethinus) stored at ambient and refrigerated temperatures. In the first part of this study, the pH, total soluble solids, titratable acidity, sugars, organic acids, flavour compounds and sensory properties of five Malaysian durian cultivars ('D2', 'D24', 'MDUR78', 'D101' and 'Chuk') were determined. There were significant differences in physicochemical characteristics among the cultivars. Analysis using solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled to gas chromatography- time of flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOFMS) revealed a total of 22 esters, 14 sulphur compounds, 7 alcohols, 3 aldehydes and 1 ketone in the pulp of the 5 durian cultivars. Sensory properties of four durian cultivars were compared. Twelve descriptors (sweet, fruity, sulphury, alcohol, nutty and green aroma, surface color, sweetness, bitterness, stickiness, moistness and overall aftertaste) were generated. A strong correlation was observed between sensory properties, flavour compounds and physicochemical characteristics of the fruit.
In the second part of this study, activities of four cell wall hydrolases, pectinmethylesterase (PME), polygalacturonase (PG), cellulase and β-galactosidase (β-Gal) and physicochemical changes of ripen whole durian fruit (cultivar D24 and an accession from Kampung Bentong, Pahang) stored at 28 + 1 °C (RH 60-80%) for 4 days, were investigated. During storage, significant interaction effect of 'accession x day of storage' on weight loss, glucose content, PG and PME enzymes activities were observed. Weight loss increased linearly with an average weight loss of 3.9 and 4.9% per day for durian kampung and D24 respectively. The softer texture observed in the Kampung Bentong accession as compared to the D24, corresponded to its higher PG and cellulase activity. Transmission electron microscopy observations showed middle lamella dissolution and loss of intercellular materials in Kampung Bentong accession after 4 days of storage but not in the D24.
The effect of storage temperature on the changes in the physicochemical, microbial and sensory quality of MP durian cultivar D24 was then determined at 28+1 oC for 3 days and 4+2 oC for 35 days. Around 400 g pulp was placed on a polystyrene tray and wrapped with LDPE film for storage. At 28+1 oC, the pulp retained its colour but softened rapidly after 24 h of storage and became acidic (pH 4.71) after 2 days of storage due to the formation of citric, succinic, acetic and lactic acids. Titratable acidity of the pulp that increased significantly after 2 days of storage was correlated to the decrease in pH. Sucrose decreased concomitantly with an increase in glucose and fructose concentrations during storage. For pulp stored at 4+2 oC, no noticeable changes in pH were observed. After 1 week of storage, there was a progressive increase in glucose, fructose and sucrose concentration with concomitant increase in total soluble solids. The firmness increased significantly at the end of storage. The organic acid content remained constant throughout the storage period with a slight increase in tartaric acid. Titratable acidity of the pulp decreased significantly after one-week storage and remained constant thereafter. The MP durian fruit could be kept at 4+2 oC for 14 days with acceptable microbiological quality and without development of off-odour. At ambient temperature, MP durian could only be stored for 1 day, after which the pulp became acidic.
The volatile flavour compounds and sensory attributes of MP durian cultivar D24 stored at 4+2 oC for 42 days were examined. The volatile compounds were extracted by SPME and analysed by GC-TOFMS. During storage of MP durian at 4+2 oC, diminution of the major ester compounds was observed after 14 days of storage. All ester compounds decreased significantly after 7 days of storage except for ethyl acetate that decreased significantly after 2 weeks of storage. Ethanethiol, 1-propanethiol, and both isomers of 3,5-dimethyl 1,2,4-trithiolane decreased significantly after 7 days of storage. Total sulfur content of the pulp remained unchanged after 42 days of storage. However, sulfur notes perceived by panellists decreased gradually throughout storage. Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA) was carried out using sixteen descriptors to describe the surface colour, odour, flavour and texture of pulp during storage. Results revealed that pulp could be stored for 21 days, after which off flavour developed and the green aroma became too intense and rendered the pulp unacceptable.


Abstract : The Software Architecture Technology Initiative at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has developed a number of architecture-centric methods that are currently in use. The initiative is now focusing on integrating these methods, as well as building bridges between them and software-development processes and software-architecture efforts outside the SEI, while continuing to refine existing methods and models. The goal is to provide software architects with a comprehensive, end-to-end approach for creating and using the right software architecture for the job at hand. This technical note reports on a proposal to integrate the SEI Quality Attribute Workshop (QAW) and the SEI Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) method. The QAW is a way to elicit and articulate detailed quality attribute requirements for a system, which the architecture must support. ADD is an architectural design method that starts with statements of quality attribute requirements and guides the architect through a series of design decisions that help to meet those requirements. Integrating these methods involves tailoring the QAW to provide the types of results needed by ADD and tailoring the ADD method to take full advantage of the results provided by the QAW.


Purpose: Although a great number of research studies for service quality take place in the context of developed countries, the similar studies in the context of developing countries like in Egypt are limited. The purpose of this study is to modify a service quality scale for measuring the performance of Islamic Banks in Egypt using the SERVQUAL multi-item scale after adapting it to fit the Egyptian culture. Research design: The popular multi-item scale of measuring service quality used in this study is SERVQUAL (developed and modified by Parasuraman et al.1985, 1988, 1991,1994). Qualitative research in the form of focus groups was conducted to modify the SERVQUAL scale to fit the Egyptian Islamic banking culture. Three focus groups were conducted with managers and employees working in Islamic banks. Furthermore, a convenience sample of 30 Islamic bank clients was surveyed in order to measure the reliability and validity of the new SERQUAL dimensions derived from the focus groups conducted. Findings: Transcriptions from the 3 focus groups were analyzed using initial and focused coding techniques. Exploratory and factor analytic techniques were used to explore the dimensionality of the scale. The study developed 22 statements for measuring the five different dimensions of service quality in Islamic banks that included: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, Empathy, Assurance and two new dimensions of trust and Shariah- compliance. Research Implications: After the 25th of January revolution, there has been a significant rise of Islamic banking and finance in Egypt. However, this trend is still considered in it's growth stage in Egypt compared to other countries specifically in the Gulf and parts of Europe where Islamic finance and banking is very well established and understood amongst vast amounts of both Muslims and non Muslims. Thus understanding points of weakness and strengths through analyzing the SERVQUAL scale dimensions is essential for Islamic banks as well as the perceptions of current clients about the service quality delivered by such banks. This paper shows that the SERVQUAL after modifications is valid and reliable in the banking industry in Egypt. Based on this study and other studies cited, it appears that future research on Service Quality should involve the development of industry specific measure of service quality.


For more than 100 years dithranol has been successfully used for the treatment of psoriasis . It is still not fully understood, however, how it exerts its antipsoriatic effect. From the information available to date it is clear that the actual process of decomposition is central to the therapeutic action of dithranol. Since there is an obvious parallel between the mechanism of decomposition in solution and that of decomposition/metabolism in skin stability studies were carried out in aqueous buffer (PH 5.5). The effect of various factors such as the presence of various metal ions and surfactants on the decomposition pattern (individual rates of dimer and danthron formation) of dithranol in solution were quantified. The effect of, in particular, surfactants on the skin permeation and decomposition/metabolism of dithranol were then investigated. Because of dithranol's poor water solubility it was necessary to develop an analytical technique capable of the successful quantification of low levels of dithranol and breakdown products in aqueous systems. A previously reported hplc system, which has adequate sensitivity for dithranol and danthron quantification, was used. Improved sensitivity for dimer (3 fold increase), thus allowing the accurate quantification of low levels of dimer in aqueous solutions, was achieved by a modification of the mobile phase. As it was also necessary to establish the amounts of dithranol and breakdown products on and in skin an appropriate extraction method was needed. A procedure whereby skin was first extracted using a mixture of trichloro acetic acid and methanol followed by hplc analysis of the extract was developed. Surfactant solubilisation of dithranol was used to enhance the water solubility of dithranol. Data from the solubilisation studies shows that in sodium lauryl sulphate and tween 80 (above c. m.c in aqueous buffer pH 5.5) the amount of dithranol in solution is directly proportional to the % of surfactant present. In cetrimide, solubilisatiori was observed only at low pH e.g pH 0.4. At pH 5.5, because of the interaction that takes place between dithranol and cetrimide causing dithranol to ionise, dithranol ionisation is responsible for enhanced solubility. About 3 fold more dithranol goes into such cetrimide solutions compared to equivalent concentrations of sodium lauryl sulphate and tween 80. Surfactant presence, however, had implications on dithranol's decomposition pattern. In the sodium lauryl sulphate and tween 80 solutions little change from that seen in buffer pH 5.5 was observed namely - 94 % dimer and - 4 % danthron were produced following complete decomposition. In the presence of cetrimide (PH 5.5) a marked change was seen with - 84% danthron and -14% dimer being formed on complete decomposition. The effect of the inclusion of metal ions i.e Cu2+, Zn2+ and Fe2+ on the kinetics of the decomposition of dithranol to dimer and danthron were quantified. All had a catalytic effect on the rate of dimer formation, while suppressing that of danthron.The catalytic coefficients were in the order of Cu2+ > Fe2+ > Zn2+. Concentration vs time data generated on placing surfactant solutions of dithranol in contact with animal skin (in vitro) and human skin (in vivo) allowed estimates of the amount of dithranol and breakdown products penetrating into the skin, along with the degree of skin surface decomposition taking place during the permeation process.A pronounced deviation was observed for dithranol decomposition in the formulations on the skin and when not in contact with skin. Skin surface decomposition was found to result in the formation of an ,as yet unknown, breakdown product (P4). Using the 12-0-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate/hairless mouse psonasls model it was visually established that the cetrimide-dithranol formulation negated the anti inflammatory effects of dithranol . The tween 80 and sodium lauryl sulphate dithranol formulations reduced the inflammatory response in the psoriasis model to the same degree as an equivalent amount of dithranol delivered in acetone. A preliminary clinical investigation on the influence of cetrimide on the therapeutic outcome of conventional dithranol therapy was carried out using two patients with psoriasis. Cleansing the skin with a solution of cetrimide before and after treatment with dithranol resulted in both a reduction of side effects and a loss in the therapeutic effectiveness of dithranol. The data gathered allowed the discussion of the effect of dithranol's decomposition pathway on its therapeutic outcome.


ABSTRACT This paper examines the expanding needs of the entrepreneurial community and how Small Business Institute (SBI) directors may utilize academic resources outside the business school to meet these demands. An exploratory investigation of non-business departments completing SBI projects was conducted. A random sample of Region VI SBIs was surveyed to determine if SBI directors were using non-business academic departments for SBI cases; none were. An example of how non-business resources could be used is described. INTRODUCTION It is not uncommon for a Small Business Institute (SBI) director to receive requests for assistance requiring expertise not normally found within the resources of the business school. The SBI usually will have to turn down the request or seek help outside the business school. Consider the following examples. A West Texas rancher was interested in the possibility of commercially harvesting the dense, bushy Kochia weed as a food supplemental for feedlot cattle. This SBI project required an analysis of the nutritional properties of the Kochia weed to determine its potential as cattle fodder. The SBI project was completed by an MBA candidate who had an undergraduate agricultural degree. Research for this case was supervised by his former agricultural professors. An inventor had developed a technological process for the desalination of sea water. The problem to be resolved concerned the economic feasibility of utilizing the process in a profitable commercial venture. The SBI team was supervised by faculty from industrial engineering technology and industrial chemistry. The Chamber of Commerce in a small southwestern city created a committee to explore ways to persuade local residents to shop the city's small businesses rather than in a large city some 42 miles away. One solution was to develop a multi-media advertising campaign advocating local shopping. The SBI team, in this case, consisted of four senior advertising students from the Department of Journalism in the College of Arts and Sciences. This paper examines the expanding needs of the business community and how SBI directors may tap resources outside of the business school to meet these new demands. THE CHANGING BUSINESS WORLD In the early 1980s, two business consultants became overnight management gurus with the publication of their book, In Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman, 1982). A popular tome on how and why America's best-run corporations achieved their levels of excellence, the book became a best seller. This was the beginning of corporate merger-mania when bigger was better, and all of the businesses studied for the book were big. Being bigger, though, also required much more in the way of managerial expertise. Peters and Waterman carefully explained how this could be done. In spite of their best advice, the expansion by acquisition trend hurt more businesses than it helped. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, corporations realized being biggest was not always best. There was more to running businesses than just managing human resources. Divestiture has become a mainstay to amend the financial over-commitments of the 1980s. Merger-mania unknowingly contributed to the growth of small businesses in at least three different ways. First, the combining of similar staffs in a merger resulted in excess personnel, forcing some good people out of the corporate world. second, the increased stress produced by the awesome task of managing large and diverse departments swelled by acquisitions convinced many managers and executives to bail out while still remaining sane. Third, the burden-some debt built up during the corporate buying spree eventually exceeded the parent company's ability to remain solvent. Resulting bankruptcies forced many people out in the streets. Many highly skilled and talented business people wanted to remain in business but not at the level just vacated. …


A method is presented for the determination of the contour of disks, typified by those of aircraft gas turbines, to incorporate arbitrary elastic-stress distributions resulting from either centrifugal or combined centrifugal and thermal effects. The specified stress may be radial, tangential, or any combination of the two. Use is made of the finite-difference approach in solving the stress equations, the amount of computation necessary in the evolution of a design being greatly reduced by the judicious selection of point stations by the aid of a design chart. Use of the charts and of a preselected schedule of point stations is also applied to the direct problem of finding the elastic and plastic stress distribution in disks of a given design, thereby effecting a great reduction in the amount of calculation. Illustrative examples are presented to show computational procedures in the determination of a new design and in analyzing an existing design for elastic stress and for stresses resulting from plastic flow.


This chapter provides a comprehensive knowledge about the potential role of tungstenbased composites in fusion reactors and the research work which has been done in this very important area of nuclear materials. The characteristics of tungsten, which make it the most potential candidate for plasma-facing applications, have been presented along with the shortcomings in pure tungsten. The research work that has been done so far in the field of tungsten-based composites to overcome the problems with pure tungsten has been included. The fabrication, characterization, types of reinforcements and the classes of composites have been reviewed. The behavior of tungsten-based composites under various kinds of loads (i.e. mechanical and thermal) and environments (radiations and oxidizing etc.) has been summarized.


BACKGROUND
Choanal atresia is the most common congenital nasal anomaly, with an incidence of 1:5000-1:8000 live births. Atresia can be seen as membraneous, bony or mixed type. When it is bilateral, it is accepted lifethreatening, therefore bilateral atresia necessitates immediate intervention. Diagnosis is confirmed by endoscopic examination and computed tomography. The absolute treatment is surgical, and different approaches have been proposed.

METHODS
Herein, we describe our 15-year experience in the treatment of 58 patients of congenital choanal atresia with transnasal endoscopic approach, and we compare the efficacy of placement of an intranasal stent and applying mitomycin while endoscopic microsurgical repair.

RESULTS
The study included 41 female patients (71%) and 17 male patients (29%) with congenital CA. The mean age was 3 years ranging from 10 days to 16 years. The atretic plate was bilateral in 24 patients (41%) and unilateral in 34 (59%). The most common atresia type was the mixed type with 29 patients (50%). A total of 17 patients (29%) required postoperative revision(s). Postoperative revisions were more frequent among patients with bilateral CA (50%), and with mixed CA (31%). Stenting was used additionally by surgical correction for 10 patients. After stenting, fibrosis and restenosis was seen in 7 patients (79%). Mitomycin C was applied peroperatively in 8 patients. Restenosis after mitomycin application was seen in 4 patients (50%).

CONCLUSIONS
By our experience, endoscopic microsurgical repair of atresia proved to be an effective and safe procedure, results compared with adjuvant treatment modalities like stent or mitomycin C use, was not better. Restenosis was the major problem seen after surgical correction.


This week's articles feature ways to treat asthma, retinopathy, and neuroinflammatory disease. ALLERGY Airway allergy alleviated by hookworm protein A secreted hookworm protein in recombinant form acts on dendritic cells to drive the expansion and mucosal homing of regulatory T cells that protect against airway inflammation in mice, and also dampens human dendritic cell and T cell activation. S. Navarro, D. A. Pickering, I. B. Ferreira, L. Jones, S. Ryan, S. Troy, A. Leech, P. J. Hotez, B. Zhan, T. Laha, R. Prentice, T. Sparwasser, J. Croese, C. R. Engwerda, J. W. Upham, V. Julia, P. R. Giacomin, A. Loukas, Hookworm recombinant protein promotes regulatory T cell responses that suppress experimental asthma. Sci. Transl. Med. 8, 362ra143 (2016). [Abstract] RETINAL DISEASE Old but deadly Senescent cells encourage abnormal blood vessels and retinal disease. M. Oubaha, K. Miloudi, A. Dejda, V. Guber, G. Mawambo, M.-A. Germain, G. Bourdel, N. Popovic, F. A. Rezende, R. J. Kaufman, F. A. Mallette, P. Sapieha, Senescence-associated secretory phenotype contributes to pathological angiogenesis in retinopathy. Sci. Transl. Med. 8, 362ra144 (2016). [Abstract] MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS A repurposed drug for neuroinflammatory disease The approved drug NDP-MSH ameliorates neurodegeneration in mouse models of neuroinflammatory disease. N. Mykicki, A. M. Herrmann, N. Schwab, R. Deenen, T. Sparwasser, A. Limmer, L. Wachsmuth, L. Klotz, K. Köhrer, C. Faber, H. Wiendl, T. A. Luger, S. G. Meuth, K. Loser, Melanocortin-1 receptor activation is neuroprotective in mouse models of neuroinflammatory disease. Sci. Transl. Med. 8, 362ra146 (2016). [Abstract]


Projection methods have been shown to be extremely powerful for signal restoration and other signal and image processing tasks. However, they break down when some system parameters cannot be exactly defined. To mitigate this problem, we propose a new algorithm that is based on the extended parallel projection method combined with fuzzy set theory. The incompleteness of the available information is taken into account by considering the constraint sets and/or the iterates as fuzzy. Then some maximum membership is searched by using parallel projections. The introduction of the fuzzy sets formalism results in a flexible technique that improves substantially the results obtained by conventional methods. The conventional projection method is shown to be a special case of this fuzzy algorithm. Moreover, whereas in the conventional algorithm the projection weights were chosen arbitrarily, in the new algorithm they are related to the degree of uncertainty involved.


The benefits of using games in the language class are numerous (Godwin-Jones, 2005). Playing computer games have become a popular form of relaxation for many learners (Yang, 2001). Can this phenomenon be utilized to support foreign language teaching at the tertiary level? In this research, a group of 15 Malaysian students were asked to solve a puzzle in a Flash game. Their task was simple: exit from a virtual room without a door. The computer/language lab used for this task was the Sanako Lab 300. Each learner had access to a single computer as well as a microphone and a headphone. The class had been divided into three groups of four students each and one group of three. In order to create an information gap task, four different audio instructions were available to each group. Each member of a group was required to communicate with the other three groups in order to complete the task


How to reduce power consumption within individual data centers has attracted major research efforts in the past decade, as their energy bills have contributed significantly to the overall operating costs. In recent years, increasing research efforts have also been devoted to the design of practical power-saving techniques in content delivery networks (CDNs), as they involve thousands of globally distributed data centers with content server clusters. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on existing research works aiming to save power in data centers and content delivery networks that share high degree of commonalities in different aspects. We firstly highlight the necessities of saving power in these two types of networks, followed by the identification of four major power-saving strategies that have been widely exploited in the literature. Furthermore, we present a high-level overview of the literature by categorizing existing approaches with respect to their scopes and research directions. These schemes are later analyzed with respect to their strategies, advantages and limitations. In the end, we summarize several key aspects that are considered to be crucial in effective power-saving schemes. We also highlight a number of our envisaged open research directions in the relevant areas that are of significance and hence require further elaborations.


Osteoporosis is characterised by the loss of bone mass and strength caused by complex interactions among local and systemic regulators of bone cell function. Osteoporosis is classified as a bone mineral density 2.5 or more standard deviations below normal peak bone mass – that is, a T score –2.5. The risk of osteoporosis is greater in women than in men and is most commonly seen in postmenopausal women resulting in fragility fractures, the risk of which increases steeply with age. Current treatments have demonstrated efficacy against vertebral and nonvertebral fractures although safety, tolerability, and cost are important considerations when choosing a therapy.


The French Government has had a paradoxical relationship with globalization. Globalization is perceived as both a threat to react against and a cradle for new policy ideas. French policymakers have a love-hate relationship with the European higher education reforms that started in the 1990s, a mixed sentiment that French singer Serge Gainsbourg spoke of in his popular song, 'Je t'aime moi non plus'. At the outset, most of higher education reforms, such as the Bologna declaration, were framed as a way to build Europe and fight against international competition. Yet, the mode of governance of these reforms mirrored the one recommended by international organizations and led to the precise outcome criticized in globalization, i.e. greater competition. This paper explores the relationship between international, European and domestic discourses and modes of governance. It uses insights from the literature on policy transfer to investigate such relationship and questions the sustainability of such ambivalent discourse. The French government should concentrate on the policy it started developing from 2007 consisting in opening French higher education to globalization. Such global openness requires a change in the academic culture that could be triggered by a reform of academic training.


While comparative law has become a key discipline, its instrumentalist use has turned out to be a powerful weapon: it is the 'pen' by which the identity of and differences in law's geopolitics are continually written and rewritten. Given its attractive functionalist essence, comparative law is gaining increasing international credit as a way of developing newer theories of sovereignty and governance in a framework in which law is conceived of less as a set of rules and more as a symbolic vestimentum of global soft power. The present contribution critically investigates the relationship between distortive views of comparative law's geopolitics and the intimate essence of the doctrine aimed at creating the 'aspatial', unbounded, illimitable (and hence intangible) liberal global order whose governance appears to transcend the idea and form(s) of law through which the 'politicization' and 'juridification' of modernity have been achieved in the last century. In doing so, it also addresses why such an alliance has made it easier to 'discover' and 'sell' the smooth and rectilinear land of the figuratively unspoken and unwritten as the terra incognita that lies over what is created by the constructivist political intervention(s) of the modern nation-state


ABSTRACT The delivery of services and benefits to people supporting older and disabled relatives and friends depends largely on their identification within constructs of 'care-giving' and 'carer'. Those who are married or living with a partner may be particularly resistant to adopting the identity of 'care-giver' or 'care receiver'. This paper investigates the circumstances of couples and their adoption of carer identities, drawing on a study of the financial implications of a partner's death. That study was based on over 750 couples where one partner died, drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, and separate qualitative interviews with people whose partner died in the previous two years. The findings show that carer self-identification was influenced by the partner's health-care needs and service contacts, including welfare benefits receipts. None of the socio-demographic factors considered was statistically linked to whether people described themselves as providing care for their partner, unless there was an underlying association with the partner's health-care needs. The findings underline the problems of using self-reported identities in surveys and estimates of take-up of services and benefits, and the difficulties of delivering entitlements to people who care for their partner at the end-of-life. A challenge for policy makers is how to move beyond formal categories of 'carer' and 'care-giving' to incorporate inter-dependence, emotional commitment and the language of relationships in planning support for frail older people.


In this study, we aimed to explore the potential of a design-driven living lab as an innovative approach to addressing societal challenges. This living lab incorporates design qualities such as exploration, open-ended results, and disruption. This approach was applied in three case studies within the context of dementia, each of which explored the impact of Qwiek.up – a media system that creates an ambient experience in a room through projection and sound. A cluster analysis of the results in the three case studies showed that the system has considerable potential for people with dementia, and possibly also for other groups. In addition, the design-driven approach led to new applications in care, improved functionality, and a broader design space. Our findings show that design-driven living labs can widen the scope of innovation and improve the value proposition of an innovative solution.


The purpose of this study is to identify consumers' retail outlet choice for Roots and Tubers in Trinidad and Tobago between traditional and modern retail outlets, and also to find out what influences consumers' shopping preferences for one or the other retail format. A Probit model, where both demographics and store attributes were used to predict outlet choice was the methodology utilized in the study. The results obtained suggest that the traditional outlets are the preferred place to purchase Roots and Tubers with 71% of the sample selecting these outlets. Of the fifteen independent variables analyzed in the Probit model, four demographic variables – age, employment status, ethnicity and income – and two latent factors of the store attributes labeled "value" and "location" were statistically significant. Of note, older buyers are 12% more likely to choose the traditional outlet while there is a 16% higher probability that persons in the higher income brackets will choose supermarkets as their retail outlet. These results provide an insight into the choice of outlet of shoppers and the strengths and weaknesses of the two retail formats.


The second paper in this three paper session models the impact of a number of foot and mouth disease (FMD) incursion scenarios on production and export revenues of dairy, meat and other products. The guiding principle was big picture, plausible and estimable Key to this was how processors might respond during FMD eradication and how importing countries might respond once New Zealand becomes FMD free again. Government expenditure for FMD eradication and related livestock compensation was estimated for each scenario.


The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT) – America NASA Earth Venture Suborbital Mission set out to improve regional atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) inversions by exploring the intersection of the strong GHG fluxes and vigorous atmospheric transport that occurs within the midlatitudes. Two research aircraft instrumented with remote and in situ sensors to measure GHG mole fractions, associated trace gases, and atmospheric state variables collected 1140.7 flight hours of research data, distributed across 305 individual aircraft sorties, coordinated within 121 research flight days, and spanning five, six-week seasonal flight campaigns in the central and eastern United States. Flights sampled 31 synoptic sequences, including fair weather and frontal conditions, at altitudes ranging from the atmospheric boundary layer to the upper free troposphere. The observations were complemented with global and regional GHG flux and transport model ensembles. We found that midlatitude weather systems contain large spatial gradients in GHG mole fractions, in patterns that were consistent as a function of season and altitude. We attribute these patterns to a combination of regional terrestrial fluxes and inflow from the continental boundaries. These observations, when segregated according to altitude and air mass, provide a variety of quantitative insights into the realism of regional CO2 and CH4 fluxes and atmospheric GHG transport realizations. The ACT-America data set and ensemble modeling methods provide benchmarks for the development of atmospheric inversion systems. As global and regional atmospheric inversions incorporate ACT-America's findings and methods, we anticipate these systems will produce increasingly accurate and precise sub-continental GHG flux estimates.


Unlike traditional embedded systems, nowadays, emerging computing systems are embedded in every aspect of human lives. These deeply-embedded computing systems often perform extremely sensitive tasks, and in some cases, such as health-care IT, these are life-saving. Thus, in addition to the security threats to traditional embedded systems, emerging deeply-embedded computing systems exhibit a larger attack surface, prone to more serious or life-threatening malicious attacks. These call for revisiting traditional security mechanisms not only because of the new facets of threats and more adverse effects of breaches, but also due to the resource limitations of these often-battery-powered and extremely-constrained computing systems. As such, new trends for providing security for deeply embedded systems are emerging; many of which abandoning use of cryptographic computations or making use of lightweight crypto-systems, feasible for these computing platforms. Indeed, there exists paramount potential for applying these emerging security approaches to sensitive applications such as health-care IT for implantable medical devices, big data analytics and machine learning in deeply embedded systems, smart buildings, and smart fabrics.


BACKGROUND
Estimates of who is most at risk from violence by people with mental illness rest mainly on identified patient samples. This study, without such selection bias, examined the targets of violence committed by young adults with as-yet untreated alcohol dependence, marijuana dependence, or schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, to determine the extent to which their victims were co-residents or non-household members.

METHODS
In a total birth cohort of 21-year-olds (n=956), past-year prevalence of alcohol dependence, marijuana dependence and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were diagnosed using standardized DSM-III-R interviews. None of the people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder has been hospitalized in the past year. Past-year violence and victim targets were measured using self-reports.

RESULTS
Compared with controls, cohort members with substance dependence or schizophrenia-spectrum disorders had higher prevalence and frequency rates of assault against co-residents, against non-household members, and also robbery and gang fights. Out of 39, five individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder committed violent street crimes. Persons with substance dependence had similar proportions of violence against co-resident and non-household members, but persons with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders tended to victimize co-residents more than others.

CONCLUSIONS
At the age when they are most likely to contribute to the community's violence burden, young untreated offenders with alcohol or marijuana dependence or with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders assault not only co-residents, but others as well, and commit violent street crimes. Families, schoolteachers and primary care physicians have an important potentially preventive role in early identification and treatment of the disorders.


Osteocalcin (OC) is a small (6 kDa) polypeptide whose expression was thought to be limited to mature osteoblasts. The discovery of OC expression in prostate cancer specimens led us to study the regulation of OC gene in androgen-independent metastatic human prostate PC3 cells. An 800-bp human OC (hOC) promoter-luciferase construct exhibited strong basal and vitamin D-induced activity in OC-positive human prostate and osteosarcoma cell lines. Through deletion analysis of the hOC promoter, the functional hierarchy of the cis-acting elements, OSE1, OSE2, and AP-1/VDRE, was established in PC3 cells (OSE1 > AP-1/VDRE > OSE2). By juxtaposing dimers of these 3 cis-elements, we produced a minimal hOC promoter capable of displaying high tissue specific activity in prostate cancer cells. Our study demonstrated three groups of transcription factors, Runx2, JunD/Fra-2, and Sp1, responsible for the high hOC promoter activity in PC3 cells by binding to the OSE2, AP-1/VDRE, and OSE1 elements, respectively. Among the three groups of transcription factors, the expression levels of Runx2 and Fra-2 are higher in the OC-positive PC3 cells and osteoblasts, compared with the OC-negative LNCaP cells. Interestingly, unlike the mouse OC promoter, the OSE1 site in hOC promoter is regulated by members of Sp1 family instead of the osteoblast-specific factor Osf1. The molecular basis for androgen-independent prostate cancer cells behaving like mature osteoblasts may be explained by the interplay and coordination of these transcription factors under the tight regulation of autocrine and paracrine mediators.


El Paso, Texas is known as one of the dust hotspots in North America. We explore the effect of dust and low wind events on asthma admissions in El Paso, Texas between 2000 and 2005. Conditional logistic regression with a case-crossover design was used to estimate the probability of hospitalization after dust and low wind events while controlling for pollutants with hourly monitor measurements, and weather. The historical functional linear model is used to incorporate the hourly pollutant measures into the regression model with a continuous lag, as an alternative to a distributed lag model based on daily averages. The great advantage of the historical functional linear model was demonstrated, namely, the pollutant past exposure was included without having to choose a (short-term) lag. The nonparametric functional linear model in the conditional logistic regression framework is fit by first preprocessing the data, then applying the COXPH function in the R-package for survival analysis. Based on the theoretical relationship between P-splines and ridge regression we modified COXPH to allow for a penalty in the nonparametric functional linear model, which was a very time saving approach for us. We proposed that the ridge trace be used to guide the choice of the smoothing parameter in nonparametric functional linear model. The results obtained from the simulated examples suggest that the adapted ridge trace plot can be used to choose a suitable smoothing parameter for the P-spline estimator. We found that both the lag 0 storm and lag 2 low wind are significant at the 10% level of significance suggesting that the probability of asthma hospitalization on a given day is increased by occurrence of dust storms on the same day and low wind events on two days prior to the admissions.


Auditory saliency is an important mechanism that helps humans extract relevant information from environments. Audio notifications of mobile devices with high saliency can increase users' receptivity, yet overly high saliency could cause annoyance. Accurately measuring auditory saliency of a notification is critical for evaluating its usability. Previous studies adopted behavioral methods. However, their results may not accurately reflect auditory saliency as humans' perception of auditory saliency often involves complicated cognitive processes. Thus, we propose an electroencephalography (EEG)-based approach that can complement behavioral studies to provide a more nuanced analysis of auditory saliency. We evaluated our method by conducting an EEG experiment that measured the mismatch negativity and P3a of the sounds in realistic scenarios. We also conducted a behavioral experiment to link the EEG-based method with the behavioral method. The results suggested that EEG can provide detailed information about how human perceive auditory saliency and complement the behavioral measures.


Critical friendship is a form of non-hierarchical developmental relationship in which there is no mentor or protégé. In critical friendship, individuals with similar aims and differing experiences and knowledge aid each other in achieving goals by critically observing each other's performance and progress. Bonded with trust, critical friends serve as sworn friends who strive and struggle side by side and share joy and pain throughout their journey. Originating from within the field of higher education, the critical friendship methodology has primarily been used by educators to improve their teaching skills, but has been found to be a powerful resource for librarians. While the literature on critical friendship demonstrates its effectiveness when applied to educators' pedagogical strategies, it has not been studied as a means to promote scholarly advancement in higher education nor for its positive impact on professional development for librarians. Especially for those who are tenure-track librarians, having a tool to aid with publication, service, and academic contribution for tenure and promotion is incredibly useful. This chapter reports on the action research project conducted by us, two junior faculty librarians at an urban university, who have converted the critical friendship methodology to a framework accessible to non-teaching, tenure-track faculty librarians. For two years, we have implemented a practice of critical friendship as a way to assist each other to survive, strive, and succeed during our long journey to tenure while fostering each other's advancement as librarians. The authors have found that a diversity of experience aids in the strength of a critical friendship. The expression of unique cultural understandings, in our case our disparate upbringings in Midwest America and Tokyo, Japan, has aided to strengthening and empowering each critical friend. The chapter will not only discuss the definition, the history, the methodology, the benefits, and challenges of critical friendship, but also will provide a summary, an outline, tools, and advice for librarians seeking a new non-hierarchical model of mentorship.


Despite Li Gonglin's (ca. 1049-1106) deep faith in Buddhism and the large number of recorded and extant Buddhist paintings associated with or ascribed to this great painter, twentieth century scholarship on Li Gonglin has focused primarily on his literatus identity and Confucian art oeuvres. This book departs from this traditional view to establish Li Gonglin's importance in Chinese Buddhist art history through both the local Longmian Chan and the larger Northern Song religious contexts. It offers a fresh understanding of the impact the intermingling of Tiantai, Pure Land, Huayan and Chan philosophies and practices had on Li Gonglin's faith and art. Painting Buddhist subjects to Li Gonglin was an expression of faith.


A paradigmatic developing suburb, Acton, Massachusetts, was zoned in 1955 to produce a community of 45,000 people. In 2010, Acton had about 23,000 people and is unlikely to grow much more. I develop a simple model in the Tiebout (1956) tradition to explain why Boston's suburbs, and by extension, most suburbs, have adopted land-use regulations that are arguably too restrictive. The baseline model is that of a single developer who owns all the land in a community and commits herself to a master plan. Private covenants assure that the community will be fully developed, and competition among community developers creates at least locally optimal densities. This outcome is contrasted with a model in which undeveloped land is owned by many developers, who must coordinate their land-use decisions by way of public zoning. Their initial zoning plan is disciplined by the wariness of prospective homebuyers, who decline to buy homes in towns without zoning. New homeowners, however, realize that developer control of zoning could lead to changes that will result in excessive density. As enough of them arrive, they take over the reins of zoning to avoid overdevelopment. In a stable housing market, I show that a system by which all homeowners pay for community services by property taxes plus exactions or impact fees for later, higher-cost development leads to the same optimal outcome as a private developer. Finally, I argue that an exogenous shift in housing demand, such as that caused by unexpected inflation in the 1970s, and the (perhaps endogenous) adoption of extra-municipal regulations, is apt to cause all zoned communities to adopt additional restrictions. These can be modeled as if the town acquired a monopoly on development rights because other towns simultaneously limit growth. Acton and all of Boston's suburbs and those of other high-productivity metropolitan areas end up with populations that are arguably too small and housing prices that are too high.


We are reporting first case of duodenal atresia occurring in both members of premature low birth weight monochorionic diamniotic twins of same sex. The twins were born at 28 weeks of gestations with no dyspmorphic features and normal chromosomes. One of the twins had type II duodenal atresia in the second part of the duodenum along with meckel's diverticulum which was also excised. The other presented with duodenal web at the junction of second and third part of duodenum. He also underwent an elective left sided inguinal hernia repair at five months of age. They underwent delayed repair at 3rd and 4th weeks of age respectively. Both babies had an uneventful postoperative course.


This book explores from an English law and Institutional perspective the various types of injunctive relief that are available to a party before and during arbitral proceedings. In particular, this book examines the basis of the power of English Courts to grant such injunctions and explains when such injunctions will be granted. It considers any limitations attached to such injunctions and the relationship between section 44 of the Arbitration Act 1996 and section 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981. It also provides an in-depth analysis of case law and the emerging trends in this area of arbitration, as well as the powers of arbitrators under the ICC and LCIA Rules to grant such relief and other remedies that might be available to a party seeking to uphold an arbitration agreement. This book will be a vital reference tool for practitioners, arbitrators and postgraduate students.


This Article was written for a symposium held at the University of Georgia School of Law marking the fiftieth anniversary of New York Times v. Sullivan. It has two primary purposes. First, it examines this landmark First Amendment decision through the lens of the institutional actors that were prominent in the case. Most academic treatments of Sullivan, and of the First Amendment generally, focus substantially on the state and/or public officials. This Article turns its focus elsewhere, to three other key institutions in the case: the press, social movements (in this case, the civil rights movement), and courts -- both the state courts and the Supreme Court itself. That institutional focus helps revive certain aspects of the case that are easily neglected over time; helps make clear why the Supreme Court was willing to act so aggressively in this case, both in constitutionalizing defamation law and in insisting on independent appellate review of the facts; and reminds us that the decision was not just about mistrust of government, but was also about preserving the vital role that non-state actors such as the New York Times or the civil rights movement play in monitoring and checking government and contributing to public discourse and social change. Second, it offers some exploratory thoughts on why, as I think is true, New York Times v. Sullivan has lost some of its luster and canonical status in the intervening years. Sullivan is still obviously a hugely important case, and it has always been subject to criticism. Still, it was once highly and widely celebrated. Now, even among those who are not especially critical of the decision, it is more likely to be met with a shrug than with praise. It is not an object of ongoing political contestation like other landmark cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education; it is simply there. I suggest that Sullivan has undergone a sort of bifurcation that has diminished its canonical status. On the one hand, its broad pronouncements have largely been assimilated into First Amendment doctrine, so that citations to the case are almost more decorative than substantial. On the other, its specific pronouncements concerning defamation law have been submerged in the complex details of defamation law itself, which has returned to the preserve of specialists. To these factors, we can add two others: the direction of First Amendment law itself, with its profusion of fairly schematic anti-discrimination rules; and, relatedly, the general focus in First Amendment doctrine on the government as the central actor, and the relative lack of interest in the specific speakers, institutional or individual, that come before the courts. Taken together, these factors have made New York Times v. Sullivan a case that continues to be cited for general principles, but that fails to capture the attention and imagination of either constitutional law experts or the public as it once did. A focus on the press, the civil rights movement, and the courts as institutional actors in Sullivan helps remind us of the high-stakes nature of the case at the time it was decided, and the past and present importance of certain institutional actors in our social structure.


The 1932 Olympic games took place in Los Angeles in the depths of the Great Depression; that they were held at all falls barely short of miraculous. The United States sent thirty-seven women to compete-seventeen swimmers, seventeen track and field athletes, and three fencers. It was not easy, and far from acceptable, for a woman to be an athlete in 1932. As late as April 1931 the International Olympic Committee seriously considered eliminating women's events. The young Americans did their part to capture the imagination of spectators and reporters. Through the sports press they catapulted the Olympic Games and women's athletics into the nation's consciousness as never before. Doris Pieroth creates vivid portraits of the women, including the great Babe Didrikson, the confident and outspoken track and field star; Tidye Pickett, one of only two African American women who represented the United States despite encountering racial discrimination; and Helene Madison, winner of three gold medals in swimming, who returned triumphantly to Seattle's West Green Lake Beach-as a hotdog vendor (park department rules barred women from teaching swimming). The team truly represented America-a democratic cross-section from New York to California, Washington to Florida, Minnesota to Texas and points in between. Drawn from public pools, schools and playgrounds, municipal and industrial recreation programs, and private clubs alike it reflected the country's entire socio-economic spectrum. Their attainments and triumphs went a long way toward insuring that women's events would continue as an integral part of the Olympic Games-a prospect by no means certain in 1932. Pieroth's account is drawn from interviews with eleven of the women athletes, family members, other Olympians of the era, and witnesses of the 1932 games. She also quotes extensively from contemporary journalists such as Paul Gallico, Westbrook Pegler, and Damon Runyon, whose mixture of condescension, fulsome admiration for the "glamour girl" swimmers, and genuine, if sometimes grudging, admiration for the accomplishments of the athletes provides an intriguing view of the stereotypes these Olympic contestants were challenging. Their Day in the Sun: Women of the 1932 Olympics is the story of those remarkable people-their dedication and their delight in competition. In recounting their Olympic summer and their varied routes to Los Angeles, it adds to the history of sport the identities and details of a specific athletic cohort and their experiences in striving for excellence and acceptance.


"Democracy and the Rule of Law" is based upon a 2000 conference, jointly sponsored by the Law Library of Congress and the New York University School of Law. It features over 40 essays exploring the crucial dynamic between the concepts of democracy and the rule of law. This book is valuable to students and scholars interested in the spread of democracy in many parts of the world. It also shows how different countries with contrasting legal traditions commonly confront major problems under their constitutions. The essays focus on significant comparative and international legal and political issues, including: transnational justice and national sovereignty; natural resources and the environment; the role of women; political status and democracy in multi-ethnic and multi-racial states; law and accountability; and, religion and culture. Eminent U.S. and foreign scholars and dignitaries, including judges, university professors, politicians, and high-ranking government administrators, serve as contributors.


Shapley values provide model agnostic feature attributions for model outcome at a particular instance by simulating feature absence under a global population distribution. The use of a global population can lead to potentially misleading results when local model behaviour is of interest. Hence we consider the formulation of neighbourhood reference distributions that improve the local interpretability of Shapley values. By doing so, we find that the Nadaraya-Watson estimator, a well-studied kernel regressor, can be expressed as a self-normalised importance sampling estimator. Empirically, we observe that Neighbourhood Shapley values identify meaningful sparse feature relevance attributions that provide insight into local model behaviour, complimenting conventional Shapley analysis. They also increase on-manifold explainability and robustness to the construction of adversarial classifiers.


ABSTRACT Although methanogenic archaea use B12 extensively as a methyl carrier for methanogenesis, little is known about B12 metabolism in these prokaryotes or any other archaea. To improve our understanding of how B12 metabolism differs between bacteria and archaea, the gene encoding the ATP:co(I)rrinoid adenosyltransferase in Methanosarcina mazei strain Gö1 (open reading frame MM3138, referred to as cobAMm here) was cloned and used to restore coenzyme B12 synthesis in a Salmonella enterica strain lacking the housekeeping CobA enzyme. cobAMm protein was purified and its initial biochemical analysis performed. In vitro, the activity is enhanced 2.5-fold by the addition of Ca2+ ions, but the activity was not enhanced by Mg2+ and, unlike the S. enterica CobA enzyme, it was >50% inhibited by Mn2+. The CobA Mm enzyme had a Km ATP of 3 μM and a Km HOCbl of 1 μM. Unlike the S. enterica enzyme, CobA Mm used cobalamin (Cbl) as a substrate better than cobinamide (Cbi; a Cbl precursor); the β phosphate of ATP was required for binding to the enzyme. A striking difference between CobA Se and CobA Mm was the use of ADP as a substrate by CobA Mm , suggesting an important role for the γ phosphate of ATP in binding. The results from 31P-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments showed that triphosphate (PPPi) is the reaction by-product; no cleavage of PPPi was observed, and the enzyme was only slightly inhibited by pyrophosphate (PPi). The data suggested substantial variations in ATP binding and probably corrinoid binding between CobA Se and CobA Mm enzymes.


We describe the construction and initial characterization of genomic resources (a set of recombinant DNA libraries, representing in total over 90,000 independent plasmid clones), originating from the genome of a hamster adapted hookworm, Ancylostoma ceylanicum. First, with the improved methodology, we generated sets of SL1 (5'-linker - GGTTAATTACCCAAGTTTGAG), and captured cDNAs from two different hookworm developmental stages: pre-infective L3 and parasitic adults. Second, we constructed a small insert (2-10kb) genomic library. Third, we generated a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome library (30-60kb). To evaluate the quality of our libraries we characterized sequence tags on randomly chosen clones and with first pass screening we generated almost a hundred novel hookworm sequence tags. The sequence tags detected two broad classes of genes: i. conserved nematode genes and ii. putative hookworm-specific proteins. Importantly, some of the identified genes encode proteins of general interest including potential targets for hookworm control. Additionally, we identified a syntenic region in the mitochondrial genome, where the gene order is shared between the free-living nematode C. elegans and A. ceylanicum. Our results validate the use of recombinant DNA resources for comparative genomics of nematodes, including the free-living genetic model organism C. elegans and closely related parasitic species. We discuss the potential and relevance of Ancylostoma ceylanicum data and resources generated by the recombinant DNA approach.


textabstractIn 1974 Blackburn wrote: "The present state of progress in cardiovascular
epidemiology includes the overriding demonstration that there are vast
differences in the frequency of coronary heart disease (CHD) among
populations and that the risk of the diseases varies enormously according to the
burden of individual or population risk characteristics .... The thrust will
surely continue towards quantitative rather than qualitative assessment of
CHD risk and a preventive approach to its management. The practitioner will
no longer regard the multiple mild and moderate risk factors and bad habits as
trivialities, but as powerful combined elements of risk requiring effective
action ... Prevention is still the word; it should now be given its balanced
share of effort which, I hope we can now agree, involves more than just lip
service". These and other statements can be found in a detailed literature
review given in chapter II.
In order to provide more than just "lip service" in 1971 at the Occupational
Health Service for the Port of Rotterdam a standardized screening effort was
undertaken to investigate the prevalence of CVD among dockworkers between
the ages of 55 and 65. The results of the first screening have been published by
Baart in 1973. A second screening in the same group of dockworkers was
carried out between October 1972 and November 1973. In addition the
possibilities of intervention in individuals with abnormal findings were to be
explored. These investigations provide the basis for this thesis.
A total of 503 persons studied at screening I were invited to participate in
screening II. Four hundred and fortyseven of them appeared. The screening
consisted of various items of the medical history obtained by means of a
standardized questionnaire, the determination of height, weight, blood
pressure, a resting· and an exercise-electrocardiogram, a chest roentgenogram
and the determination of serum cholesterol, total lipids, blood sedimentation
rate as well as data on ventilatory functions. The methodology and patient
material is described in chapter III and in various annexes. The follow-up study
provided not only data on the prevalence of risk indicators at two different
times but it also gave the opportunity to evaluate the consistency of the testing
procedures employed during the investigations


Personalized recommendations for new users, also known as the cold-start problem, can be formulated as a contextual bandit problem. Existing contextual bandit algorithms generally rely on features alone to capture user variability. Such methods are inefficient in learning new users' interests. In this paper we propose Latent Contextual Bandits. We consider both the benefit of leveraging a set of learned latent user classes for new users, and how we can learn such latent classes from prior users. We show that our approach achieves a better regret bound than existing algorithms. We also demonstrate the benefit of our approach using a large real world dataset and a preliminary user study.


Importance There is an urgent need to improve lung cancer risk assessment because current screening criteria miss a large proportion of cases. Objective To investigate whether a lung cancer risk prediction model based on a panel of selected circulating protein biomarkers can outperform a traditional risk prediction model and current US screening criteria. Design, Setting, and Participants Prediagnostic samples from 108 ever-smoking patients with lung cancer diagnosed within 1 year after blood collection and samples from 216 smoking-matched controls from the Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET) cohort were used to develop a biomarker risk score based on 4 proteins (cancer antigen 125 [CA125], carcinoembryonic antigen [CEA], cytokeratin-19 fragment [CYFRA 21-1], and the precursor form of surfactant protein B [Pro-SFTPB]). The biomarker score was subsequently validated blindly using absolute risk estimates among 63 ever-smoking patients with lung cancer diagnosed within 1 year after blood collection and 90 matched controls from 2 large European population-based cohorts, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) and the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study (NSHDS). Main Outcomes and Measures Model validity in discriminating between future lung cancer cases and controls. Discrimination estimates were weighted to reflect the background populations of EPIC and NSHDS validation studies (area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve [AUC], sensitivity, and specificity). Results In the validation study of 63 ever-smoking patients with lung cancer and 90 matched controls (mean [SD] age, 57.7 [8.7] years; 68.6% men) from EPIC and NSHDS, an integrated risk prediction model that combined smoking exposure with the biomarker score yielded an AUC of 0.83 (95% CI, 0.76-0.90) compared with 0.73 (95% CI, 0.64-0.82) for a model based on smoking exposure alone (P = .003 for difference in AUC). At an overall specificity of 0.83, based on the US Preventive Services Task Force screening criteria, the sensitivity of the integrated risk prediction (biomarker) model was 0.63 compared with 0.43 for the smoking model. Conversely, at an overall sensitivity of 0.42, based on the US Preventive Services Task Force screening criteria, the integrated risk prediction model yielded a specificity of 0.95 compared with 0.86 for the smoking model. Conclusions and Relevance This study provided a proof of principle in showing that a panel of circulating protein biomarkers may improve lung cancer risk assessment and may be used to define eligibility for computed tomography screening.


This paper develops a model of endogenous growth with overlapping generations to investigate the joint determination of social security, public investment and growth in a small open economy. We argue that a pure pay-as-you-go system provides the taxpayers with the incentives to support growth-oriented policies, which increase the future productivity of labor. We find that outcomes characterized by positive levels of intergenerational redistribution, public investment and long run growth can be sustained as subgame-perfect Nash equilibria of an infinitely repeated intergenerational game, if and only if the marginal productivity of public capital is large enough. Furthermore, we show that transfers either comove with public investment and growth or display a non-monotonic relation, where they initially increase along with public investment and growth and then decrease.


Understanding program behavior is at the foundation of computer architecture and program optimization. Many programs have wildly different behavior on even the very largest of scales (over the complete execution of the program). This realization has ramifications for many architectural and compiler techniques, from thread scheduling, to feedback directed optimizations, to the way programs are simulated. However, in order to take advantage of time-varying behavior, we must first develop the analytical tools necessary to automatically and efficiently analyze program behavior over large sections of execution.Our goal is to develop automatic techniques that are capable of finding and exploiting the Large Scale Behavior of programs (behavior seen over billions of instructions). The first step towards this goal is the development of a hardware independent metric that can concisely summarize the behavior of an arbitrary section of execution in a program. To this end we examine the use of Basic Block Vectors. We quantify the effectiveness of Basic Block Vectors in capturing program behavior across several different architectural metrics, explore the large scale behavior of several programs, and develop a set of algorithms based on clustering capable of analyzing this behavior. We then demonstrate an application of this technology to automatically determine where to simulate for a program to help guide computer architecture research.


Phishing attacks are deceptive types of social engineering techniques that attackers use to imitate genuine websites in order to steal the login credentials and private data of the end-users. The continued success of these attacks is heavily attributed to the prolific adoption of online services and the lack of proper training to foster a security awareness mindset of online users. In addition to the financial and reputational damages caused by data breaches of individual users and businesses, cyber adversaries can further use the leaked data for various malicious purposes. In this work, a modular platform was introduced that facilitates accurate detection and automatic evaluation of websites visited by employees of a company or organization. The basis for this approach is a preceding website analysis, which is essential when hunting for potential threats from proxy logs. The platform contains three modules. Characterization of suspicious websites relies on a set of pre-defined features and a multi-stage threat intelligence technique, the functionality of which has been ascertained in initial tests on real data sets


Research has shown that women, when given the capital and opportunity, make unique, positive contributions to development outcomes ranging from agricultural productivity to poverty reduction. It comes as little surprise, then, that agricultural research, development, and extension systems are generally more successful when scientists, researchers, and extension agents pay attention to gender issues. However, women continue to be underrepresented and underserved, and their contributions remain mostly untapped in national and international agricultural research. Worldwide, gender roles are culturally defined in all aspects of farming, from control of resources to production and marketing, and these definitions constrain and marginalize women. Even within the agricultural research community, most scientists and extension agents are male.Engendering Agricultural Research, Development, and Extension argues that the paradigm for agricultural and food security development needs to move beyond a focus on production and toward a broader view of agricultural and food systems, one that recognizes women's distinct role in ensuring the food security of their households. Incorporating gender issues into agricultural research and paying attention to gender sensitivity when developing extension systems is necessary to meet the needs and preferences of men and women, satisfy the food needs of future populations, and improve the welfare of the poor.


This work addresses a two–class classification problem related to one of the leading
cause of death among women worldwide, namely breast cancer. The two
classes to separate are tumoral masses and normal breast tissue.
The proposed approach does not rely on any feature extraction step aimed at
finding few measurable quantities characterizing masses. On the contrary, the
mammographic regions of interest are passed to the classifier—a Support Vector
Machine (SVM)—in their raw form, for instance as vectors of gray–level values.
In this sense, the approach adopted is a featureless approach, since no feature is
extracted from the region of interest, but its image representation embodies itself
all the features to classify.
In order to find the optimal image representation, several ones are evaluated by
means of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Image representations
explored include pixel–based, wavelet–based, steer–based and ranklet–
based ones. In particular, results demonstrate that the best classification performances
are achieved by the ranklet–based image representation. Due to its good
results, its performances are further explored by applying SVM Recursive Feature
Elimination (SVM–RFE), namely recursively eliminating some of the less
discriminant ranklets coefficients according to the cost function of SVM. Experiments
show good classification performances even after a significant reduction of
the number of ranklet coefficients.
Finally, the ranklet–based and wavelet–based image representations are practically
applied to a real–time working Computer–Aided Detection (CAD) system
developed by our group for tumoral mass detection. The classification performances
achieved by the proposed algorithm are interesting, with a false–positive
rate of 0.5 marks per–image and 77% of cancers marked per–case.


Abstract Separation of nitrogen, the major impurity of natural gas, is necessary for quality improvement of the gas. In this study, purified and some ion-exchanged forms of clinoptilolite were used to separate N2 from natural gas. Competitive adsorption of mixtures of N2, CH4 and C2H6 by Cu2+ (Cu-Cp)-, Zn2+ (Zn-Cp)-, Ni2+ (Ni-Cp)- and Mn2+ (Mn-Cp)-exchanged samples was studied at different pressures and ambient temperature. Among the cations studied, Cu2+ has the lowest selectivity towards N2. Samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, BET N2 adsorption and wet chemical analysis techniques.


Energy management is an emerging problem nowadays and utilization of renewable energy sources is an efficient solution. Solar radiation is an important source for electricity generation. For effective utilization, it is important to know precisely the amount from different sources and at different horizons: minutes, hours, and days. Depending on the horizon, two main classes of methods can be used to forecast the solar radiation: statistical time series forecasting methods for short to midterm horizons and numerical weather prediction methods for medium- to long-term horizons. Although statistical time series forecasting methods are utilized in the literature, there are a limited number of studies that utilize deep artificial neural networks. In this study, we focus on statistical time series forecasting methods for short-term horizons (1 h). The aim of this study is to discover the effect of using multivariate data on solar radiation forecasting using a deep learning approach. In this context, we propose a multivariate forecast model that uses a combination of different meteorological variables, such as temperature, humidity, and nebulosity. In the proposed model, recurrent neural network (RNN) variation, namely a long short-term memory (LSTM) unit is used. With an experimental approach, the effect of each meteorological variable is investigated. By hyperparameter tuning, optimal parameters are found in order to construct the best models that fit the global solar radiation data. We compared the results with those of previous studies and we found that the multivariate approach performed better than the previous univariate models did. In further experiments, the effect of combining the most effective parameters was investigated and, as a result, we observed that temperature and nebulosity are the most effective parameters for predicting future solar radiance.


Studying factors that influence adoption of new products and technologies lies at the heart of marketing. In this paper, we study a manager's decision to adopt automation for a production process. Automation offers efficiency by generating consistent high input at low operating costs. But at the same time, it reduces the interaction among employees and reduces a manager's ability to take advantage of employees' peer monitoring capacity. We study how automating some tasks in a production process influences the effort of the employees working on the same process, and whether and when a manager should choose to automate the production process. Comparing the costs of an automated production system to one that is not, we show that while automation provides significant cost-cutting benefits, it may still result in an overall costlier system because of the increase in the cost of incentivizing the remaining employees. We show that as some tasks in production can be automated and automation becomes gradually more cost-efficient, human teams are less likely to be employed under cooperative contracts which reward an employee for his peer's achievement, but rather under competitive contracts which reward an employee for achievements better than his peer.


The aim of this paper is to outline a methodology to transform depth intervals into geological time intervals. Working in a geochronological system aids in the understanding of the physical properties of rocks and to do very precise correlations between wells. To transform the present coordinates a high resolution tool is necessary : the FMI® (Fullbore Formation MicroImager, Schlumberger). First, well log correlations are established between seven wells at different scales. Relative variations of sedimentation rate are observed locally. Second, FMI® images analysis are used to reveal clear carbonate – clay interbedding which display cycles. Third, to study these cycles, geostatistical tools are used. The variographic analysis of conventional log data shows cycles of one meter. With FMI® data, smaller cyles can be detected. Variogram modelling and factorial kriging analysis suggest that three spatial periods exist. They vary vertically and laterally in wells but cycle ratios are stable and similar to orbital cycle (Milankovitch cycle) ratios. The three periods correspond to eccentricity, obliquity and precession. If orbital cycles are known, depth intervals can be converted into geological time intervals and thus give real sedimentation rates and quantification of hiatus duration.


In tropical climates, postdrilling oxidation of sulfide-rich core can severely degrade drill core, producing low-temperature iron oxyhydroxides, sulfates, and clays. Variable growth of these secondary minerals in exposed drill core, combined with the hydration and degradation of primary hydrothermal minerals, may lead to the production of spurious results in near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopic studies. However, the NIR technique can remain an effective tool in assessing hydrothermal alteration, even in extremely degraded core. We have assessed the usefulness of the NIR technique on degraded core at the Ladolam gold deposit, Papua New Guinea. Here, we seek to determine whether the primary alteration mineralogy had been significantly transformed by postdrilling oxidation over several years of weathering. In doing so, the study tested whether NIR analysis can be an effective tool in the discrimination of primary hydrothermal minerals in degraded core. Our study was made possible using semiquantitative X-ray diffraction (QXRD) analyses of a drill hole in 2004, where samples were collected at 50-m intervals. We subsequently repeated NIR and QXRD analyses on the same drill core in 2012. After nine years of storage, the drill core had degraded considerably, with the growth of jarosite and other sulfates. Despite this, XRD results from 2004 and 2012 show no major differences in the primary alteration mineralogy. Closely spaced NIR analyses were conducted at 1-m intervals to increase the chance of obtaining a spectrum of the primary mineralogy and to exclude secondary oxidation minerals. The drill core, where possible, was broken immediately prior to analysis to obtain a fresh surface. On average, over a 10-m interval, approximately 25% of the NIR spectra did not contain secondary minerals and relict primary alteration minerals could be detected. The remaining spectra were affected by the occurrence of secondary jarosite, gypsum, and/or residual water, but in most cases, the primary alteration mineralogy could be determined. We conclude that NIR analyses remain an effective tool in the construction of geological deposit models when logging degraded historic core, even for sulfide-rich core that has degraded in tropical environments.


The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) community has for many years recognized the potential benefits made by adapting mission planning on-the-fly. Over the years there has been some degree of success in applying adaptive mission planning to very specific problems. Examples of applications include capabilities for a vehicle to search for, and then modify its trajectory to follow, a feature such as a plume or a thermocline, or to modify its trajectory to avoid an obstacle, or to find and follow a feature such as a pipeline. Despite an evident increase in the number of applications, the use of adaptive mission planning is still in its infancy. There is no doubt that adaptive mission planning will play a pivotal role in future AUV persistent presence. So what is delaying this technology from making the leap towards wider industry acceptance? This paper reviews the literature in adaptive mission planning and uses a failure analysis technique to identify key obstacles for the integration of this technique in wider AUV applications. We use our failure analysis to help devise recommendations for mitigating these obstacles. The complexity of the mathematical approaches used by adaptive techniques is one key obstacle. Perhaps of more importance is that the AUV community is increasingly requiring quantitative assessment of risk associated with the use of AUVs. We propose that probability is the appropriate measure for quantifying the risk of adaptive systems and their uncertainty. The work here presented is a collective endeavor of the Engineering Committee on Oceanic Resources Specialist Panel on Underwater Vehicles.


Rank aggregation based on pairwise comparisons over a set of items has a wide range of applications. Although considerable research has been devoted to the development of rank aggregation algorithms, one basic question is how to efficiently collect a large amount of high-quality pairwise comparisons for the ranking purpose. Because of the advent of many crowdsourcing services, a crowd of workers are often hired to conduct pairwise comparisons with a small monetary reward for each pair they compare. Since different workers have different levels of reliability and different pairs have different levels of ambiguity, it is desirable to wisely allocate the limited budget for comparisons among the pairs of items and workers so that the global ranking can be accurately inferred from the comparison results. To this end, we model the active sampling problem in crowdsourced ranking as a Bayesian Markov decision process, which dynamically selects item pairs and workers to improve the ranking accuracy under a budget constraint. We further develop a computationally efficient sampling policy based on knowledge gradient as well as a moment matching technique for posterior approximation. Experimental evaluations on both synthetic and real data show that the proposed policy achieves high ranking accuracy with a lower labeling cost.


KARIMIZADEH, Rahmatollah and Mohtasham MOHAMMADI, 2010. AMMI adjustment for rainfed lentil yield trials in Iran. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 16: 66-73 Genotype x environment interaction plays an important role in identifying genotypes for high and stable yield. Multiplicative methods used the AMMI model and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) are singular value decomposition (SVD) based statistical analyses often applied to yield trial data. The goal of this research was to provide biologically meaningful interpretation of GE interactions and determine stable genotypes by using AMMI and AMMI adjusted. This study was carried out to determine the yield performances of ten lentil genotypes across five environments in Iran for two years in 2003-2004 growing season. The experimental layout was a randomized complete block design with four replications. F GH1 and F GH2 tests calculated for better control of Type-1 error rates. AMMI ANOVA showed that environments, genotypes and GE interactions were highly significant (P<0.01) and they accounted for 89%, 2% and 8.6% of the treatment combinations sum of square respectively. F-test of Gollob used to measure significant of this components at the 0.01 probability level recommended inclusion of the first three interactions PCA axes in the model. F GH1 and F GH2 indicated only first two IPCA axes of AMMI model were significant at the 0.05 probability level and reminded in the model.