The institution of sugarcane farmers is one of mechanisms supporting economic activity in sugarcane agri-business. It has important role for increasing productivity and promoting bargaining position of sugarcane farmers. In fact, however, it is yet to functionate optimally. The research aimed at identifying institutional forms, analyzing inter-institutional interaction of sugarcane farmers, and formulating a model of capacity strengthening of sugarcane farmer's institution. This research used case study approach. The institutional sampling method was performed purposively. Data were collected by using observation, interview, and documentation techniques. Data analysis was carried out using qualitative descriptive method. The results showed that the institution of sugarcane farmers comprises farmers group, sugarcane farmers cooperative, sugarcane farmers association, sugar processing industry, and supporting service institution. The circumstances of sugarcane farmer's' institution is more socio-cultural. It has not been fully directed to promote farmers' access towards technology, capital, and market required for the development of sugarcane agri-business.


Most characterizations of the Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) have focused on its convection and circulation features, ocean interactions, and weather and climate impacts. The water cycle of the MJO has yet to be examined or quantified despite it offering an additional constraint on model representations of the MJO, which are still woefully poor. Recent satellite products now make it possible to characterize the MJO water cycle from observations. These include water vapor profiles, column water vapor, cloud ice profiles, total cloud liquid, rainfall, surface evaporation and column moisture convergence. From these, we quantify the water budget for disturbed and suppressed phases of the MJO. The column‐integrated results indicate that precipitation is nearly balanced with moisture convergence, with variations in surface evaporation being an order of magnitude smaller. However, residuals in the column‐integrated budget are relatively large, indicating the need for improved satellite retrievals and/or the necessity of using model‐based assimilation products.


We describe efficient soliton compression of femtosecond pulses by use of cascade quadratic nonlinearity and normal dispersion in quadratic media. Pulse compression by a factor of ∼3 is achieved in ∼30-mm-long beta-barium borate at a wavelength of 800 nm. We investigate the dependence of compression performance on phase mismatch, input intensity, and propagation length. The compressed pulses are fully characterized by use of the frequency-resolved optical gating method.


Background: Auricular deformities, specifically prominent ears are relatively frequent. Although the physiologic consequences are negligible, the aesthetic and psychological impact on a child's self-image can be substantial. The purpose of our study was to examine the post-operative morbidity of otoplasty, analyse the revision rate and identify, if possible, a gold standard procedure. Methods: Retrospective analysis of the results of 104 operations for correction of prominent ears in 24 months that were performed in one NHS Hospital in London, UK. Complications were recorded and analysed. Cases requiring revision were reviewed further, according to technique, seniority of Surgeon and whether a trainee was supervised or not. Results: Of 104 patients, 57 were male and 47 were female. Age ranged from 4 to 60 years. Peak incidence for the primary operation was identified in the early adolescence for both sexes. Total skeletonisation of the cartilage was used in 26 patients (25%). The anterior scoring technique was used in 76 patients (73%). Cartilage holding sutures were used in 52 patients (50%). Complications were recorded in 32 patients, while 11 patients had more than one complications. There was no significant difference in the complication rate between the most popular methods. (Anterior scoring with or without holding sutures, not including Mustardé type, versus total cartilage skeletonisation technique). Conclusion: The multitude of different approaches indicates that there is not clearly definitive technique for correcting prominent ears. It is preferable that the surgeon is comfortable with multiple techniques (to tailor the correction to each individual patient and deformity).


Now a day's wind power technology is the most popular renewable energy sources compared with the other types. Doubly fed induction generator is the more suitable type of generator for this application due to its superior controlling characteristics. But most of the times it suffers from the low voltage ride through as its stator and rotor are connected to the grid. At the time of voltage dip, a transient current appears on the rotor converter which may damage the rotor side converter. The grid code suggests that these wind power plants should remain connected to the grid under such circumstances and contribute the fault current safely. But it is difficult to satisfy for DFIG connected wind plants. Hence this paper presents a technique to control the rotor current by an analytical method. The results are validated through the simulation in Matlab.


Seabirds are of conservation concern, and as new potential risks to seabirds are arising, the need to provide unbiased estimates of species' distributions is growing. We applied community occupancy models to detection/non-detection data collected from repeated aerial striptransect surveys conducted in 2 large study plots off southern New England, USA; one off the coast of Rhode Island and the other in Nantucket Sound. A total of 17 seabird species were observed at least once in each study plot. We found that detection varied by survey date and effort for most species and the average detection probability across species was less than 0.4. We estimated the influence of water depth, sea surface temperature, and sea surface chl a concentration on species-specific occupancy. Diving species showed large differences between the 2 study plots in their predicted winter distributions, which were largely explained by water depth acting as a stronger predictor of occupancy in Rhode Island than in Nantucket Sound. Conversely, similarities between the 2 study plots in predicted winter distributions of surface-feeding species were explained by sea surface temperature or chlorophyll a concentration acting as predictors of these species' occupancy in both study plots. We predicted the number of species at each site using the observed data in order to detect 'hot-spots' of seabird diversity and use in the 2 study plots. These results provide new information on detection of species, areas of use, and relationships with environmental variables that will be valuable for biologists and planners interested in seabird conservation in the region.


An ideal veneer surface is crucial for good panel properties in plywood manufacturing. The aim of this study was to compare plasma treatments and sanding (mechanical) processes with respect to the surface roughness of veneers. Rotary-cut veneers with a thickness of 2 mm from Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) logs were used as material. After rotary peeling, veneer sheets were dried at 110 °C in a veneer dryer. Veneer sheets were divided into 4 main groups. The surfaces of the control veneer sheets were left untreated. Two different grits of sandpaper, 80 and 180, were used for sanding the surfaces of veneers. Plasma treatment was applied to the last veneer group with 3 different gases (oxygen, nitrogen, and ammonia) and 3 different plasma times (1 min, 5 min, and 15 min). The Mitutoyo Surftest SJ-301 instrument was used to determine surface roughness of samples. Average roughness (Ra), mean peak-to-valley height (Rz), and maximum roughness (Rmax) parameters were measured to evaluate the surface roughness of the samples based on DIN 4768. It was found that the smoothest veneer surfaces were obtained with the sanding processes. Surface roughness values (Rz) of veneer sheets sanded with 180 grit sandpaper were lower than those of veneers sanded with 80 grit sandpaper. Compared with the plasma treatment in terms of surface roughness, plasma-treated veneers had higher Rz values. It was also determined that Rz values were the lowest in the veneers treated with nitrogen plasma. Additionally, the surface roughness values of Scots pine veneers treated with ammonia plasma were a little higher than those of veneer sheets treated with oxygen plasma. The effect of plasma treatment time on surface roughness was not found to be statistically significant.


Background: Spider phobics show an exaggerated fear response when encountering spiders. This fear response is aggravated by negative and irrational beliefs about the feared object. Cognitive reappraisal can target these beliefs, and therefore has a fear regulating effect. The presented study investigated if neurofeedback derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) would facilitate anxiety regulation by cognitive reappraisal, using spider phobia as a model of anxiety disorders. Feedback was provided based on activation in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right insula, as indicators of engagement and regulation success, respectively. Methods: Eighteen female spider phobics participated in a randomized, controlled, single-blinded study. All participants completed a training session in the MRI scanner. Participants assigned to the neurofeedback condition were instructed to shape their regulatory strategy based on the provided feedback. Participants assigned to the control condition were asked to adapt their strategy intuitively. Results: Neurofeedback participants exhibited lower anxiety levels than the control group at the end of the training. In addition, only neurofeedback participants achieved down-regulation of insula activation levels by cognitive reappraisal. Group differences became more pronounced over time, supporting learning as a mechanism behind this effect. Importantly, within the neurofeedback group, achieved changes in insula activation levels during training predicted long-term anxiety reduction. Conclusions: The conducted study provides first evidence that fMRI neurofeedback has a facilitating effect on anxiety regulation in spider phobia.


How do the k-core structures of real-world graphs look like? What are the common patterns and the anomalies? How can we use them for algorithm design and applications? A k-core is the maximal subgraph where all vertices have degree at least k. This concept has been applied to such diverse areas as hierarchical structure analysis, graph visualization, and graph clustering. Here, we explore pervasive patterns that are related to k-cores and emerging in graphs from several diverse domains. Our discoveries are as follows: (1) Mirror Pattern: coreness of vertices (i.e., maximum k such that each vertex belongs to the k-core) is strongly correlated to their degree. (2) Core-Triangle Pattern: degeneracy of a graph (i.e., maximum k such that the k-core exists in the graph) obeys a 3-to-1 power law with respect to the count of triangles. (3) Structured Core Pattern: degeneracy-cores are not cliques but have non-trivial structures such as core-periphery and communities. Our algorithmic contributions show the usefulness of these patterns. (1) Core-A, which measures the deviation from Mirror Pattern, successfully finds anomalies in real-world graphs complementing densest-subgraph based anomaly detection methods. (2) Core-D, a single-pass streaming algorithm based on Core-Triangle Pattern, accurately estimates the degeneracy of billion-scale graphs up to 7× faster than a recent multipass algorithm.(3) Core-S, inspired by Structured Core Pattern, identifies influential spreaders up to 17× faster than top competitors with comparable accuracy.


Recently the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been extended in diverse applications. Within the most predominant configurations are rotary wing vehicles with multiple rotors. These vehicles normally present unstable dynamic behaviour in open loop, and therefore it is necessary to implement appropriate control systems. One of the most important requirements for the design of such control systems is the aerodynamic model of the multi-rotor propulsion system. On the other hand, parametric identification is widely used in the industrial context, such as control of electric machines. In particular for the case of induction motors, the knowledge of the model parameters is essential to tune the controllers properly. Among the most successful identification algorithms in recent applications are those based on neural networks. Within this context, an innovative type of neuronal networks based on adaptive fuzzy spiking neurons (AFSNs) has captured the attention of the community due to its fuzzy neuronal characteristics for unipolar and bipolar signals, such as its fuzzy learning algorithm, a sigmoidal activation function, refractory time, axonal delay, and spikes generation. This article explores for the first time the possibility of using AFSNs for the identification of the multi-rotor UAV propulsion subsystem and the parameters of the electric subsystem of an induction motor. The results show that AFSNs are capable of identifying both systems with a high degree of precision. This opens up the possibility of using AFSNs in both, experimental aerodynamics applications for UAVs and industrial control applications.

Keywords: parameter identification, adaptive fuzzy spiking neurons, UAV, induction motor.


The United States' participation in international courts, and in particular, the potential accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which would have jurisdiction over U.S. nationals and U.S. territory, raises serious constitutional questions. These questions were thoroughly analyzed in the course of the debate about the constitutionality of international courts proposed by Britain in the early 19th century. This episode has never been examined by legal scholars or historians, despite its great relevance to a current legal and policy debates. This Article presents that historical debate over the slave trade courts, and draws lessons for the present legal questions. The permissibility of joining international tribunals spans several major constitutional issues: delegating federal powers to supernational institutions; the limits if any on what can be done through the Treaty Power; and vesting judicial power in non-Article III courts. While these are all famously confused and contentious areas of law, a preponderance of scholarly opinion concludes that the Constitution does not bar joining international courts, the ICC included. However, the jurisprudence and literature on these questions has entirely neglected an important evidence. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, a network of international tribunals to punish slave trading as created. Many European nations joined these "mixed courts." The United States, however, saw the courts as unconstitutional. It refused to join the mixed court system for forty-five years, spanning eleven presidencies. The constitutional objections were formulated by some of the leading statesmen of the early Republic, and even some members of the Founding Generation. They raised several constitutional objections of both structural and individual rights varieties: that the court would not be reviewable by the "Supreme" Court; and, even more importantly, that it would subject U.S. nationals to criminal trials without jury trial and other Bill of Rights protections. These objections were held unanimously in the distinguished Cabinet of James Monroe; shared by Congress; and undisputed by anyone for decades. This suggests that giving an international criminal court jurisdiction over certain offenses within the ICC's charter would be unconstitutional. This does not mean that U.S. participation in international criminal courts would always be unconstitutional. Those interested in seeing the United States participate in such courts will find in the slave trade court episode not a constitutional straitjacket but rather a guide to tailoring their jurisdiction to avoid constitutional constraints. This Article unpacks the constitutional objections stated at the time and shows that some but not all international criminal courts are likely to be unconstitutional, while non-criminal international tribunals are far less problematic. Aside from the precedential significance, the nineteenth century discussion of why joining such a court would be impermissible speaks directly to today's constitutional jurisprudence in modern terms. It provides surprisingly relevant guidance on questions like the permissibility of non-Article III courts; constitutional restraints on the Treaty Power; and the binding effect of judgments of international courts. Additionally, nearly every argument made today about American exceptionalism in international law and the conflict between domestic and international law was rehearsed nearly 200 years ago.


Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras have been widely used in recent years for monitoring and surveillance applications. These cameras provide flexible view selection as well as a wider observation range. This makes them suitable for vision-based traffic monitoring and enforcement systems. To employ PTZ cameras for image measurement applications, one first needs to calibrate the camera to obtain meaningful results. For instance, the accuracy of estimating vehicle speed depends on the accuracy of camera calibration and that of vehicle tracking results. This paper presents a novel calibration method for a PTZ camera overlooking a traffic scene. The proposed approach requires no manual operation to select the positions of special features. It automatically uses a set of parallel lane markings and the lane width to compute the camera parameters, namely, focal length, tilt angle, and pan angle. Image processing procedures have been developed for automatically finding parallel lane markings. Interesting experimental results are presented to validate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed method


This purpose of this study was to analyze the terms illegal alien, illegal immigrant, and undocumented immigrant in order to determine if these legal synonyms exhibit pragmatic differences in actual practice found in American media. Studies have reported that differences in terminology, metaphor, and discourse framing largely serve to dehumanize or empower immigrants for partisan purposes in legal language (Johnson 1996), politics (Mehan 1997), and in the media (Santa Ana, 1999). Given the semantic presumption of criminality with the terms illegal alien and illegal immigrant , it can be argued that undocumented immigrant is used in more positive contexts in the media when compared with the terms illegal alien or illegal immigrant . In order to test this theory, the authors used the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA, 2016) to analyze the frequency, presumption of criminality in context, and different media outlets' use of illegal alien , illegal immigrant , and undocumented immigrant . Results of this study found that the terms illegal immigrant and illegal alien have been used significantly more in American media than the term undocumented immigrant , although that trend appears to be shifting. While there was little difference in the presumption of criminality with illegal immigrant and undocumented immigrant , contexts using illegal alien assumed criminality twice as often as the other terms. Fox News and CNN used terms with illegal much more than any other group, although CNN has largely phased the terms out of use in recent years; NPR used the term undocumented immigrant significantly more than other media.


. We analyze here the polar stratospheric temperatures in an ensemble of three 150-year integrations of the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM), an interactive chemistry-climate model which simulates ozone depletion and recovery, as well as climate change. A key motiva-tion is to understand possible mechanisms for the observed trend in the extent of conditions favourable for polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) formation in the Arctic winter lower stratosphere. We find that in the Antarctic winter lower stratosphere, the low temperature extremes required for PSC formation increase in the model as ozone is depleted, but remain steady through the twenty-first century as the warming from ozone recovery roughly balances the cooling from climate change. Thus, ozone depletion itself plays a major role in the Antarctic trends in low temperature extremes. The temperature the latter half the is weaker and less statistically robust than the observed It is not projected to continue the Ozone depletion in the Arctic is weaker in the CMAM than in observations, which may account weak past trend in low temperature extremes. future, radiative Arctic winter to an increase in dynamically driven downwelling


Edge detection of the image is one of the most fundamental features in image processing as well as in video processing. Edge detection of the image refers to the process of identifying, locating and indicating the discontinuities in image. Edge detection of the medical image is a very useful task for object recognition of human organs. The discontinuities are sharply changed in the pixel intensity. The software implementation for image processing algorithm is slower due to the limited processor speed so, the processor which is used for edge detection requires an advance VLSI technology. In this paper, FPGA based architecture of edge detection using prewitt, Robert, LOG, sobel operator and canny edge detection is discussed.


1. The rate of protein synthesis in quadriceps muscle of healthy subjects estimated from the incorporation of L-[1-13C]leucine given by continuous infusion was 1.1%/day. The estimate of protein synthesis from the incorporation of a flooding amount of labelled leucine was 1.8%/day (SD 0.65). The possibility that the higher rate obtained with the flooding technique arose from stimulation of protein synthesis by the large amount of leucine is unlikely. 2. The same rate of protein synthesis (1.7%/day, SD 0.3) was obtained with a flooding amount (0.05 g/kg) of a different amino acid, L-[1-13C]phenylalanine, as was obtained with leucine. 3. Incorporation of L-[1-13C]phenylalanine was not affected by simultaneous injection of leucine (1.7%/day, SD 0.7) or valine (1.6%/day, SD 0.4). 4. Protein synthesis, assessed in a completely different way from the proportion of polyribosomes isolated from the skeletal muscle, was unaltered by the injection of 0.05 g of L-leucine/kg (44.6%, SD 8.5 versus 43.8%, SD 7.7). 5. Good agreement in estimates of protein synthesis was observed in subjects in whom both legs were measured with both L-[1-13C]leucine (mean difference 0.16%/day) and L-[1-13C]phenylalanine (mean difference 0.2%/day).


This article focuses on measures taken in 2012 and 2013 to reform the EU's institutional framework. These measures, which were largely based on provisions included in the Treaty of Lisbon, have increased the role of the European Parliament and of the national parliaments. Stronger parliamentary involvement and interinstitutional agreements on democratic accountability seem to counter the theory of a lack of democratic legitimacy; legitimacy would appear to be jeopardized more severely by an emerging "social deficit." At the same time, governance has become more complex, as the Community method of decision making was mixed with intergovernmental decision making in crisis management and prevention measures, and as variable membership patterns have evolved. By establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for euro area countries and a facility for providing balance of payments assistance to non-euro area countries, the EU has set up permanent financial crisis management mechanisms. Fiscal governance reforms replicate the precrisis structure, and – as before – success depends on the commitment of Member States to implement reform measures. With more detailed reporting requirements and more ambitious timelines in the European Semester, economic governance has become more extensive. Yet European and Monetary Union (EMU) remains incomplete: By establishing a banking union, the EU Member States have transferred national sovereignty to the supranational level, but the reforms stop short of a fiscal union, for which the Treaty of Lisbon would need to be changed.


ABSTRACT Participation criteria for clinical trials in pulmonary tuberculosis commonly include confirmation of sputum positive for mycobacteria and an indication of drug susceptibility before treatment is initiated. We investigated the suitability of two novel sputum-based nucleic acid amplification methods for patient selection in a recent early bactericidal activity study. Spontaneously expectorated sputum samples of 140 consecutive pulmonary tuberculosis patients were examined with direct fluorescence microscopy, Genotype MTBDRplus assay (MTBDR), Xpert MTB/RIF assay (Xpert), and liquid mycobacterial culture. The methods detected mycobacteria or mycobacterial DNA in 96.8%, 90.5%, 92.9%, and 92.1% of samples, respectively. MTBDR, Xpert, and liquid culture were 100% concordant for detection of resistance to rifampin. Sensitivity and specificity of MTBDR for detection of isoniazid resistance were 83.3% and 100%, respectively. For quantification of mycobacterial sputum load, we found a correlation between Xpert DNA amplification cycle thresholds, time to positivity, and microscopy smear grade. The best correlation was found between Xpert and time to positivity (r = 0.54), which were both correlated with smear microscopy with r values equal to −0.40 and −0.48, respectively. We conclude that MTBDR and Xpert are suitable screening tools for determining rifampin resistance in sputum microscopy smear-positive patients before participation in tuberculosis trials. Xpert should be further explored as a surrogate measurement for sputum mycobacterial load.


Preface The first time I encountered Sibylle Niemoeller was at the 22(nd) Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the German Church Struggle (now named the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches), which met at the University of Washington from February 29 to March 4, 1992. The conference theme was "Religion, Power, and the Politics of Resistance," to acknowledge and honor the centennial birth year of two towering giants of the Church Struggle against Nazism, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Niemoeller. At the opening ceremony, Pastor Niemoeller's widow paid tribute to her husband, who died 6 March 1984. I was impressed by her poise and stature as she delivered a heartfelt talk on the personality of the quintessential leader of the German anti-Nazi Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church). At the end of the session, I thanked her for her fitting remarks and I was struck by her wearing a Star of David. How fascinating, I thought, Pastor Niemoeller's widow wears a Jewish religious medal! Had I known her, I would've asked, l'shem ma? For what reason the Star -- an expression of Christian penance, German guilt, newfound identity? My introduction to the milhomah yahrn (Yiddish, years of World War II) began at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College), where I studied as an undergraduate between 1958 and 1962. There I learned about antisemitism and the Shoah and discovered that the supersessionist message of Christian teachers, leaders, and saints helped prepare the twisted road from Calvary to Auschwitz and the numerous valleys of death between. Had I not read at the Graduate School of Religion at USC Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison (1958) and found out about the White Rose group, I might not have known about good-spirited Christians who refused to submit to Nazi ideology. Subsequently I came across Martin Niemoeller's memoir, Briefe aus der Gefangenschaft Moabit (1975), in which he charged the brethren not to lose hope or direction and to fight the good fight for the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. His letters from Moabit prison and his famous "Confession of Guilt," which originated orally in his postwar American travels and became the concluding words of his many addresses to American audiences, left an indelible affect on me. "First, they came for the socialists. But I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Inspirational words from a Christian German patriot who refused to bend before the Caesar of the Hooked Cross. I participated in the second Remembering for the Future conference, held in Berlin, March 13-17, 1994. My co-authored paper attempted to find the roots for the Auschwitz Convent controversy in unconscious cultural bias and notable absence of dialogue between Christians and Jews.(1) It also showed the dangers of marginal interfaith interchange which knee-jerks to sectarian claims because we fear to know each other's fear and see with each other's sight. Shades of Niemoeller's wise admonition, indeed! During the conference, I visited with Hubert Locke, co-founder with Franklin H. Littell of the Annual Scholars Conference, Niemoeller's cell at Sachsenhausen (where he spent three years in solitary confinement after eight months in Moabit and before four years in Dachau, and where he was liberated in 1945). Here my black Christian friend prostrated and wailed, while I, an American-born Orthodox Jew from Eastern European shtetl heritage, said the Kaddish to honor and remember the sacred soul of this chasid ummot ha-`olam, one of the righteous among the nations. And at that moment I vowed to know more about the Pastor Martin Niemoeller. The vow stayed with me for several months, but I did nothing to fulfill it. …


We present a hybrid visualization technique for compound graphs (i.e. networks with a hierarchical clustering defined on the nodes) that combines the use of adjacency matrices, node‐link and arc diagrams to show the graph, and also combines the use of nested inclusion and icicle diagrams to show the hierarchical clustering. The graph visualized with our technique may have edges that are weighted and/or directed. We first explore the design space of visualizations of compound graphs and present a taxonomy of hybrid visualization techniques. We then present our prototype, which allows clusters (i.e. subtrees) of nodes to be grouped into matrices or split apart using a radial menu. We also demonstrate how our prototype can be used in the software engineering domain, and compare it to the commercial matrix‐based visualization tool Lattix using a qualitative user study.


Sacred natural sites are frequently better protected than many officially protected areas, but an overall understanding of their role in conservation strategies is lacking. Over the last few years, scientists have assembled quantitative data from sacred natural sites, comparing their biodiversity values
with those of the surroundings, officially protected areas and other management approaches such as forest reserves. This chapter draws on information from over a hundred studies throughout Africa and Asia, which provides concrete evidence that many sacred natural sites have great importance to biodiversity conservation, in addition to their spiritual value to one or more faith groups. Sacred natural sites appear to be extremely common in some countries, although much remains to be learned about their global extent, as research reported in the scientific literature tends to be focused on a few countries. Sacred natural sites are often the only remaining patches of natural or semi-natural habitat in cultural landscapes (see Figure 2.1) and can contain rich biodiversity, sometimes exceeding nearby protected areas and forest reserves. However, a number of problems have been identified threatening the role of sacred natural sites in long term conservation strategies. They are often too small to support a full complement of expected species and many sites are suffering from increased anthropogenic pressure, in some cases exceeding the capacity of the ecosystem to maintain its integrity. Sacred natural sites are sometimes heavily modified or even planted; a proportion of these may nonetheless retain a rich complement of biodiversity at local level. Sacred natural sites are often recognized and used by local communities for their secular values, including medicinal plants, non timber forest products and other ecosystem services such as tourism or watershed protection. Unfortunately, many sacred natural sites are now under threat or have already disappeared in recent years. The pattern of loss has not been quantified but it is recognized to be increasing. Integration of sacred natural sites into conservation strategies can be complex but provides an important way of preserving these unique places and the biological and cultural values they represent. Where appropriate from social and conservation perspectives, the conservation of sacred natural sites should be included in national conservation plans.


This empirical analysis focus on the impact of firm characteristics, firms' export experiences and location-specific variables on export decisions in Swedish manufacturing firms. Three choices of export market participation are considered: permanent export, occasional export and no export. The paper also analyzes firms' choice of expanding export activities. The empirical results indicate that firm-level variables such as size, human capital intensity and labor productivity increases the probability of a firm being a permanent exporter rather than an occasional or non-exporter. Moreover, firms located in regions with a high concentration of other firms exporting commodities in the same product group have a higher probability of both permanent and occasional export market participation. The results also show a significant positive effect of firms' export experiences in the previous period on the probability that a firm becomes a permanent exporter in the current period. The analysis of export market expansion suggest that firms with high human capital intensity and experiences from exporting several products to several markets are more likely to introduce a new export product. The probability of expanding to new geographical markets seems to be increasing with firm-level labor productivity and export experiences from multiple markets in previous periods.


This paper performs a comparative analysis of niche brands. Within surfing and snowsport markets, key companies, with distinctive brand names, market specifically to their respective subcultures. Each brand embodies an individuated personality, markets according to unique criteria and evolves through a variety of methods including advertising, event sponsorship, film production and concept stores. This paper investigates the manner in which brand names are apprehended by participants, what difficulties may arise in managing brands and suggest how marketers may cultivate brand image more perceptively since the represented brand personality affects company status in or appeal to these highly discriminating subcultural groups.


Business-to-business marketing is often concerned with the way in which companies manage strategically important relationships with their counterparts: their Key Relationship Programmes (KRPs). These relationships can be managed through the implementation of specific managerial and organisational structures, commonly implemented via Key Account Programmes (on the supplier side) or Key Supplier Programmes (on the customer side). Underlying this managerial process is an implicit assumption that these important relationships bring some form of additional value to one or both parties involved. However, a dyadic view of how this value is created and shared between the parties remains an under-researched area. In this conceptual paper, we use the multi-faceted value construct introduced in Pardo et al. (2006) and posit that the buyer's or seller's value strategies can be best understood as being internally, exchange, or relationship based. This in turn allows us to analyse the value gained as being the outcome of one of nine generic key relationship postures within any dyadic KRP. We focus on an analysis of so-called "managed" relationship postures and identify a number of dyadic activities and competencies that we hypothesise are important in managing such KRPs, and which can form the basis for further empirical research.


Characterization of Cretaceous Chalk Microporosity Related to Depositional Texture: Based Upon Study of the Upper Cretaceous Niobrara Formation, Denver-Julesburg Basin, Colorado and Wyoming Peter D. Pahnke Department of Geological Sciences, BYU Master of Science Prompted by increased interest in understanding microporosity, recent efforts at describing and classifying pore types in mudstones have focused primarily on siliceous, gas producing unconventional reservoirs with little attention being paid to carbonate, mixed oil-andgas producers. The Niobrara Formation in the Denver-Julesburg Basin is a self-sourced resource play producing oil and natural gas from low permeability chalks. Key reservoir lithologies consist of chalk, chalky marl and marl. These lithologies contain flattened chalk fecal pellets which play a significant role in providing porosity. Integration of depositional fabric with pore-type distribution emphasizes the unique textural and depositional nature of chalk and provides a starting point for evaluation of diagenetic porosity modification. Chalk depositional textures comprise two main subdivisions. The first, called rainstone, includes chalks that form largely from settling of planktonic skeletal remains and fecal pellets as marine snow. New terms related to pelagic chalk textures are pelagic mudstone, pelagic wackestone, and pelagic packstone. The second, called allochthonous chalk, consists of chalks formed from syndepositional tectonic disruption of the seafloor, resulting in mass-movement and redeposition of chalk as turbidites and slide sheets. New terms related to allochthonous chalk textures are allomudstone, allofloatstone, and allorudstone. A chalk porosity classification consisting of four major pore types is presented that can be used to quantify Niobrara chalk pores and relate them to depositional texture, porosity networks, diagenetic history, and pore distributions. Interparticle porosity occurs largely between coccoliths and coccolith fragments, and decreases with burial ranging from 27-38% to 5-17%. Intraparticle porosity occurs within chalk pellets, coccospheres, coccolith plates and foraminifera tests, and also decreases with burial. Organic matter pores are intraparticle pores located within organic matter and are related to hydrocarbon generation. Channel pores, where present, can have significant influence on hydrocarbon storage and permeability networks. In the Niobrara, burial diagenesis in the form of mechanical compaction, chemical compaction, and syntaxial cement overgrowths, modifies pore shape and abundance. Porosity distribution is controlled by the abundance of chalk pellets and the mineralogy of the matrix. Permeability is a function of matrix lithology (micrite-rich vs. siltand clay-rich). Understanding chalk depositional and diagenetic processes, and how they relate to porosity formation and pore evolution provide a foundation for more accurately predicting the occurrence and distribution of hydrocarbon source and reservoir rocks within the Niobrara.


Quantitative verification techniques offer an effective means of computing performance and reliability properties for a wide range of systems. In many cases, it is necessary to perform repeated analyses of a system, for example to identify trends in results, determine optimal system parameters or when performing online analysis for adaptive systems. We argue the need for incremental quantitative verification techniques which are able to re-use results from previous verification runs in order to improve efficiency. We report on recently proposed techniques for incremental quantitative verification of Markov decision processes, based on a decomposition of the model into its strongly connected components. We give an overview of the method, describe a number of useful optimisations and show experimental results that illustrate significant gains in run-time performance using the incremental approach.


Two seemingly unrelated crises implicating the law of war and the responsibility to protect civilians have arisen in recent years. In 2013, the United States considered military intervention without United Nations ("U.N.") Security Council preapproval in Syria after discovering that the government had exterminated its own people with chemical agents. In 2014, Russia sent troops into Crimea, a part of Ukraine, to protect ethnic Russians that Russia claimed were in danger after a political coup in the country. In both cases, the military acts contemplated or undertaken were of dubious legality, albeit under different rubrics. This Article aims to show how analysis of the lawfulness of military intervention in Syria and Crimea is illuminated by recognizing that both are subspecies of the same problem and are thus controlled by one customary doctrine of international law governing the grounds for war. By custom, a sovereign state may use force in another unconsenting sovereign state without U.N. Security Council authorization or a self-defence justification to protect civilians facing imminent risk of group extermination — a threshold that was arguably met in Syria but seemingly not in Crimea. The right to use armed force in such instances is further constrained by the proportionality and exhaustion-of-other means requirements that generally apply to the law of war. This customary legal right to use force was traditionally limited to protecting the lives of the intervening state's own civilians for two related reasons. First, the bedrock principle of exclusive sovereignty shielded a target state's treatment of its civilians within its borders. Second, there was a consensus that international law did not permit the use of armed force to enforce the right against death of civilians in another country absent the nexus of nationality to the victims. However, in the past dozen years, both principles have been fatally undermined by the norm of the "responsibility to protect" civilians, which pierces the veil of sovereignty for states that harm or fail to protect their own peoples. Consequently, the present customary international law of war can reasonably be construed as extending the ancient unilateral civilian-protection use-of-force easement to the use of force to protect all civilians facing state-sponsored mass killings, regardless of nationality. The life-saving easement on sovereign territory logically covers only cases where civilians are facing group death — genocide, massacre killings, or lethal use of atomic, biological, or chemical weapons — initiated by the host state which is violating its duty to protect the people within its territory. U.N. Security Council authorization or a self-defence justification is still required for military interventions in response to other mass atrocities such as ethnic cleansing, war crimes, state-initiated individual killings, non-lethal crimes against humanity (for example, systemic torture), or the possession (or non-lethal use) of weapons of mass destruction, and to humanitarian crises where deaths are not caused by the state or its agents. Of course, any intervening state's decision to use armed force to protect its own or foreign civilians in an unconsenting state is ultimately a matter of its own domestic law and policy choice, but international law does not prohibit such a choice in the face of state-initiated mass killings.


Housing bubbles have been discussed and closely linked to current world economics since 2008. This paper takes a case study approach to the situation in Spain in terms of its economy, the housing market and the ongoing economic crisis. Unique aspects of the Spanish culture and historical idiosyncrasies are included for the reader to compare and contrast various international settings and economic machinations. Micro and macro factors are incorporated in order to allow the reader to evaluate the complexity of the ongoing crisis, options and potential alternatives. The unique burden the Spanish housing bubble places on young adults, those most dramatically affected by Spanish unemployment levels, is also broached.


In industry, the current practice concerning geometrical specifications for mechanical parts is to include both dimensions and tolerances. The objective of these specifications is to describe a class of functionally acceptable mechanical parts that are geometrically similar. To ensure that their functionality in respected during, assembly designers have to apply tolerance analysis. A model based on either worst-case or statistical type analysis may be used. This paper explains both types using the Jacobian-Torsor unified model. For statistical tolerance analysis we consider Monte Carlo simulation and for the worst case type we consider arithmetic intervals. Although the numerical example presented is for a three-part assembly, the method used is capable of handling three-dimensional geometry.


In the nervous system, protein phosphorylation is an essential feature of synaptic function. Although protein phosphorylation is known to be important for many synaptic processes and in disease, little is known about global phosphorylation of synaptic proteins. Heterogeneity and low abundance make protein phosphorylation analysis difficult, particularly for mammalian tissue samples. Using a new approach, combining both protein and peptide immobilized metal affinity chromatography and mass spectrometry data acquisition strategies, we have produced the first large scale map of the mouse synapse phosphoproteome. We report over 650 phosphorylation events corresponding to 331 sites (289 have been unambiguously assigned), 92% of which are novel. These represent 79 proteins, half of which are novel phosphoproteins, and include several highly phosphorylated proteins such as MAP1B (33 sites) and Bassoon (30 sites). An additional 149 candidate phosphoproteins were identified by profiling the composition of the protein immobilized metal affinity chromatography enrichment. All major synaptic protein classes were observed, including components of important pre- and postsynaptic complexes as well as low abundance signaling proteins. Bioinformatic and in vitro phosphorylation assays of peptide arrays suggest that a small number of kinases phosphorylate many proteins and that each substrate is phosphorylated by many kinases. These data substantially increase existing knowledge of synapse protein phosphorylation and support a model where the synapse phosphoproteome is functionally organized into a highly interconnected signaling network.


This witty and fascinating study reminds us that there was animation before Disney: about thirty years of creativity and experimentation flourishing in such extraordinary work as Girdie the Dinosaur and Felix the Cat. Before Mickey, the first and only in-depth history of animation from 1898-1928, includes accounts of mechanical ingenuity, marketing and art. Crafton is equally adept at explaining techniques of sketching and camera work, evoking characteristic styles of such pioneering animators as Winsor McCay and Ladislas Starevitch, placing work in its social and economic context, and unraveling the aesthetic impact of specific cartoons. "Before Mickey's scholarship is quite lively and its descriptions are evocative and often funny. The history of animation coexisted with that of live-action film but has never been given as much attention."--Tim Hunter, New York Times


Levels o f child malnourishment in South Asia remained much higher than the good progress in developments indicators would suggest. These contradictory findings known as the Asian Enigma are caused by low female empowerment. The relationship between female empowerment and nutritional outcomes is the focus o f this paper that uses the baseline data o f a survey o f 4,000 households in rural Bangladesh from October to December 2015 for the project Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Project o f the International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI). This data allows to construct the recently developed Abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI), a multi-dimensional and agricultural-specific index based on the concept o f agency, resources, and achievements. The score, its sub-indices o f gender parity and five dimensions o f empowerment, and three indicators including input in productive decisions, group membership, and workload are employed as independent variables. Another and partly contradictory measure to the A-WEAI is represented by the subjective measure o f "feeling empowered". Thus, this study investigates weather female empowerment is associated with an increase in nutritional status measured as dietary diversity o f female, male, and an average household member, and, secondly, as relative gain o f women's nutritional status compared to men. Finally, it is hypothesized that the A-WEAI has greater empirical power than women's perception of self-determination. The stated associations are estimated with multivariate linear regressions with district fixed effects. The results support the positive relationship of female empowerment and nutritional outcomes for female, male, and average household members. Female empowerment measured as the A-WEAI indicator work burden is positively associated with a relative increase o f male dietary diversity compared to female. Therefore, self-determined "feeling o f being empowered" seems to have greater empirical power in explaining nutritional outcomes than the multidimensional A-WEAI and its composite variables. Reasons for the weak performance o f the A-WEAI in this study might be an endogeneity bias due to simultaneity, selection bias due to large number o f inadequate male A-WEAI surveys, and perhaps weaker concept validity as the WEAI for statistical regression analysis. The results imply the necessity to include "felt empowerment" as additional performance indicator for interventions with the objective to increase female empowerment.


In March 2000, Joel Sternfeld began photographing the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway which runs down the West Side of Manhattan. Sometimes a river of grass, sometimes more like Canadian wheat fields, this unique ruin permitted Sternfeld to contemplate nature within the city. Walking the path of this true-time landscape, Sternfeld experienced the seasons as they unfolded in a meandering ribbon within the vertical architecture of New York City, and he created a suite of images marked by quiet grace and formal rigour. In Walking the High Line, as in all of his work, landscape is both a social and cultural indicator. In 2009, the High Line was converted into a public park that will preserve the delights of the High Line for future generations. Sternfelds book is thus a unique record of the High Line at a time when it faced demolition, and this reprint follows several sold-out editions. A major figure in the photography world, Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfelds books published by Steidl include American Prospects (2003), Sweet Earth (2006), Oxbow Archive (2008) and First Pictures (2011).


The history of public relations has followed a traditional path up until the introduction of the Internet and the world wide web. As the internet grew, so did different forms of public relations, specifically social media. Social media includes any and all public relations tactics that are user-created and shared freely. Some of these outlets include Facebook, Twitter, audio and video text, all of which are mostly shared and discussed online. Many people have little to no experience with social media, much less the internet, and because of this they are not able to utilize their public relations strategies to their fullest potential. The key idea of this project is to discuss traditional media, social media, and how the combination of the two results in the optimal strategy for large or small businesses.


The optical constants of a nematic liquid crystal, 4 -n-pentyl-4-cyanobiphenyl 5CB , in the frequency range 0.3–1.4 THz were determined by terahertz THz time-domain spectroscopy. The real parts of the extraordinary refractive index ne and the ordinary refractive index no of 5CB varied from 1.74 to 2.04 and from 1.59 to 1.83, respectively. Liquid-crystal 5CB exhibits a relatively small absorption loss in this frequency range. The birefringence of 5CB was found to be as large as 0.21. The experimental results indicate that liquid-crystal 5CB is potentially useful for device applications in the THz frequency range. © 2003 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 160.3710, 160.4760, 300.6270, 320.7150, 300.6530.


The matriculation, retention, and graduation of students is a critical and ongoing effort in undergraduate engineering education. Implementing measures is vital in increasing student motivation to continue pursuing engineering and is especially important for individuals from low-income and academically talented students. At the University of Illinois at Chicago, our NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Program includes students from all six departments in the College of Engineering and includes multiple implementations such as a summer bridge program, faculty mentoring, and a service-learning project. Here, we define and implement a longitudinal Industry Mentorship (IM) program structure. While the implementation of this program is still ongoing, we present here the basic structure of the IM program, the rationale for the structure, and some preliminary results of implementation.


We propose two novel wavelength-division-multiplexed passive-optical-network (WDM-PON) architectures where subcarriers are employed to transmit downstream data and optical carriers are reused for upstream transmission. Architecture I is designed for the situation where two short distribution fibers are available between the remote node (RN) and each optical network unit (ONU), whereas Architecture II is devised for the case where there is only one distribution fiber between the RN and each ONU. Both architectures use only one interferometric filter located at the RN to simultaneously separate all downlink optical carriers and subcarriers, leading to a considerable cost reduction in the implementation of the WDM-PONs. Separated optical carriers are then reused and injected into reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers as the uplink light sources, which eliminates the necessity of specific wavelength sources at the ONUs. The downstream subcarrier signals are directly detected using baseband receivers. Two multichannel upstream and downstream transmission experiments are carried out at 1.25 Gb/s using the proposed schemes. The impact of optical carrier-to-subcarrier ratio of downlink signal, Rayleigh-backscattering noise, and wavelength mismatch between laser source and filter on system performance is also investigated.


The leitmotives in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen serve a range of compositional and psychological functions including creating musical structure and serving as mnemonic narrative devices for the listener. While there have been traditional musicological studies investigating the use and effect of different leitmotives in Wagner's compositional technique, the question of how they are processed in realtime by listeners with different levels of expertise remains very much unexplored. Work by Deliege (1992), Morimoto (2009), and Albrecht (2013) has investigated how listeners perceive leitmotives in realtime, though these studies employed paradigms exposing subjects to leitmotives before the listening. For realtime processing, both musical characteristics of the leitmotives, as well as prior knowledge and musical experience in general are assumed to be relevant factors. The current study gathered data from a psychological experiment that required subjects (N=100) to listen to a 10 minute excerpt from Siegfried and then to perform a 10 minute memory task which measured both explicit and implicit memory for leitmotives. Subjects were also asked to make judgements about perceived emotional affect conveyed by each leitmotive . After the offline memory test, subjects selfreported their formal musical training, as well as their familiarity with Wagner and the Ring. Subjects also completed an objective knowledge test on the life and works of Wagner. An item response theory (IRT) approach was used to estimate item difficulty parameters characterizing subject's ability to recognize leitmotives. In terms of listener expertise, ability parameters from the IRT model were regressed onto scores of musical training as well as Wagner expertise that was assessed via a selfreport inventory and an objective knowledge test. The objective Wagner knowledge score turned out to be the strongest and a significant predictor of leitmotive recognition in addition to selfreported Wagner familiarity and musical training. In terms of musical parameters, perceived arousal rating of the leitmotives did emerge as a significant predictor of recognition rate. This suggests that the effect of "Wagnerism" is a special form of musical competence that is not related to musical training, yet can affect perception in a significant way. Keywords: Memory, Wagner, Leitmotive, Listener Background, Musicology References Albrecht, H. (2012). Wahrnehmung und Wirkung der Leitmotivik in Richard Wagners Ring des Nibelungen – Eine empirische Studie zur Wiedererkennung ausgewaIˆhlter Leitmotive aus musikpsychologischer und musiksemiotischer Perspektive. Masters Dissertation. DelieI€ge, I. (1992). Recognition of the Wagnerian Leitmotiv. Experimental Study based on an excerpt from "Das Rheingold". Musik Psychologie, 9, 25-54. Morimoto, Y., Kamekawa, T., & Marui, A. (2009). Verbal Effect on Memorisation and Recognition of Wagner's Leitmotives. Proceedings of 7th Triennial Conference of European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, 357-361.


Biosensing with nanoholes is one of the most promising applications of nanoplasmonic devices. The sensor properties, however, are complex due to coupled resonances through propagating and localized surface plasmons. This Full Paper demonstrates experimental and simulation studies on different plasmonic hole systems, namely various patterns of circular holes in gold films. In contrast to most previous work, here, the challenging situation of optically thin films is considered. The refractive-index-sensing properties, such as sensitive locations in the nanostructure and sensitive spectral features, are investigated. The multiple multipole program provides the complete field distribution in the nanostructure for different wavelengths. It is shown that the spectral feature most sensitive to refractive-index changes is the extinction minimum, rather than the maximum. The results are consistent with theory for perfect electrical conductors. The spectral response is investigated for molecular adsorption at different positions inside or outside a hole. Furthermore, the optical properties of nanohole arrays with long-range and short-range order are compared and found to demonstrate remarkable similarities. Our results help to predict the resonance wavelengths of nanoholes with arbitrary patterns, including short-range order. The results presented here are highly important since they extend and challenge several aspects of the current understanding of plasmon resonances in nanohole arrays. These theoretical models, simulation results, and experimental data together help provide the understanding necessary for the development of efficient biomolecular analysis tools based on metallic nanoholes.


Cleft lip and palate (CLP) is the most common congenital deformity of the orofacial. Clefts are thought to be of multifactorial etiology due to genetic and environmental factors. Different dental abnormalities are usually seen in cleft patients, including midface deficiency, collapsed dental arches, malformation of teeth, hypodontia, and supernumerary teeth. Moreover, feeding and speech are major functional dilemmas for those patients. The goal of treatment is to restore esthetics and functional impairments associated with clefts. The nature and the extent of medical and dental problems among CLP patients dictate the need toward multidisciplinary approach where different medical and dental specialists are involved in the treatment. The purpose of this section is to codify and synthesize a literature about management of cleft lip and palate deformity from birth until adulthood so that general concepts, principles, and axioms can be formulated. In this regard, feeding plates, nasoalveolar molding (NAM), lip and palate repair, palatal expansion, alveolar bone grafting, rhinoplasty, orthodontic treatment, and orthognathic surgery will be discussed. Furthermore, the question of proper timing for each therapeutic procedure is scrutinized in this chapter. Suggested clinical tips and changes of treatment modalities are summarized and illustrated as well.


It has been observed that colloidal particles are anomalously repelled from the interface of nanoporous materials and water by up to hundreds of micrometers even if there is no additional external field present. Recently, the physical origin of this anomalous repulsion has turned out to be diffusiophoretic migration triggered by an ion exchange process through the interface. Since the repulsive force is induced by a salt gradient only, the phenomenon can be applied to a microscale water purification platform without the need for any external power sources. In this work, we suggest a micro/nanofluidic device for continuous water purification utilizing long-range diffusiophoretic migration around ion exchangeable surfaces. An ion concentration boundary layer was characterized by the Sherwood number (Sh) which is a key dimensionless number to describe the purification process. Depending on Sh, we have theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that long-range diffusiophoretic exclusion can be used for continuous water purification. Finally, our platform can be used as a highly energy-efficient and portable water treatment option for operations such as purification, disinfection, water softening, etc.


The distribution of soil P among labile and nonlabile forms can be a major determinant of agricultural and natural ecosystem productivity. Determination of soil P pools is typically performed using operationally defined chemical fractionation methods. Most of the current fractionation techniques were developed for predominately mineral soils, thus they provide only limited information on organic P (P 0 ), particularly with respect to stability. We hypothesized that the extent to which P could be extracted from organic soils, after exposure to heat, may be related to environmental recalcitrance. We investigated two thermal methods for characterizing P 0 stability in organic wetland soils, an autoclave-based and a dry heat technique. Soils from two subtropical wetlands were collected to a depth of approximately 1 m. Autoclave-extractable P was determined by subjecting soils to 128°C and 170 kPa for 90 min in an autoclave. A second set of samples was exposed to dry heat at temperatures of 160, 200, 260, 300, 360, and 550°C. The results were compared with data from a conventional chemical P fractionation scheme. Phosphorus that could be extracted using the hot water technique declined with soil depth, representing 10 to 50% of total P in surficial soils, to 5 to 10% at a depth of 60 cm. Microbial biomass P was correlated with hot water extractable P, and represented approximately 50% of the hot water extract. In the dry heat technique, increasing the extraction temperature resulted in significantly greater extraction of P 0 . The 360°C treatment was best able to distinguish between recalcitrant and labile P 0 .


"On Thermonuclear War" was controversial when originally published and remains so today. It is iconoclastic, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and finally it is calm and compellingly reasonable. The book was widely read on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the result was serious revision in both Western and Soviet strategy and doctrine. As a result, both sides were better able to avoid disaster during the Cold War. The strategic concepts still apply: defense, local animosities, and the usual balance-of-power issues are still very much with us. Kahn's stated purpose in writing this book was simply: "avoiding disaster and buying time, without specifying the use of this time." By the late 1950s, with both sides H-bomb-armed, reason and time were in short supply. Kahn, a military analyst at Rand since 1948, understood that a defense based only on thermonuclear armaments was inconceivable, morally questionable, and not credible. The book was the first to make sense of nuclear weapons. Originally created from a series of lectures, it provides insight into how policymakers consider such issues. One may agree with Kahn or disagree with him on specific issues, but he clearly defined the terrain of the argument. He also looks at other weapons of mass destruction such as biological and chemical, and the history of their use. The Cold War is over, but the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and the lessons and principles developed in "On Thermonuclear War" apply as much to today's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as they did to the Soviets.


A system capable of reasoning about CAD data offers the opportunity to substantially improve a design or a construction plan by providing feedback about an engineer's artifact. This paper discusses the following aspects regarding the development of intelligent CAD systems: the intelligence of the CAD system (i.e., its capability to associate meaning with CAD primitives) including the tradeoff between the intelligence of the CAD system and the complexity of the reasoning processes required to reason about CAD data; the types and depths of reasoning that need to be performed by the expert system; and the overall system architecture (i.e., whether expert system capabilities should be added to the CAD system, or vice versa, or both should be kept separate). The paper concludes that an intelligent CAD system can be built with existing technology. However, a paradigm shift from the current line-based CAD systems with a closed architecture used to generate drawings to object-oriented systems with an open architecture used to generate project models is necessary to attain truly integrated intelligent systems.


The purpose of this study is to examine acceptance level information
technology of software audits by internal auditors at the bank of Indonesia. In
Indonesia, the current internal auditor in the banking company or a manufacturing company uses
auditing software that can help facilitating his work. Several previous studies tried to examine the
factors that influence the intention of using information technology, namely the level of acceptance
of information technology in the audit profession by using the model of TAM (technology
acceptance model) with two main constructs, namely the perception of the usefulness of the
information technology (perceived usefulness) and perceptions about ease of use of information
technology (perceived ease of use). In this study the authors try to develop the TAM model by
adding external variables, namely, organizational factors (organizational factors), social factors
(social factors), and individual factors (individual factors) to empirically examine the effect of
each factor on the use of actually (actual use) software audits.
The data use primary data using questionnaires. Samples are taken from
the internal auditor of Bank Indonesia in Jakarta. Questionnaires are distributed
80 questionnaires, the questionnaires are not completed as many as 32, and
samples that can be used as many as 48 questionnaires. Testing is done by using
analytical techniques SEM (Structural Equation Model) and can be done with a
device Partial least square (PLS) 1:10 version
The results are as follows: (1) organizational factors are not significantly
influence on perceived usefulness; (2) organizational factors are not significantly
influence on perceived ease of use; (3) social factors are not significantly
influence on perceived usefulness; (4) social factors are not significantly influence
on perceived ease of use; (5) individual factors on perceived usefulness otherwise
significant; (6) individual factors on perceived ease of use otherwise significant;
(7) perceived ease of use are not significantly influence on perceived usefulness;
(8) perceived usefulness are not significantly influence on Intention to use is; (9)
perceived ease of use significantly influence on Intention to use, (10) Intention to
use on actual use of otherwise significant.
Keyword: organizational factors, social factors, individual factors, perceived
usefulness, perceived ease of use, Intention to use, actual use.


Abstract. To investigate the hygroscopic properties of ultrafine particles during new particle formation events, the hygroscopic growth factors of size-segregated atmospheric particles were measured at an urban site in Sapporo, northern Japan, during the summer of 2011. The hygroscopic growth factor at 85 % relative humidity [g(85%)] of freshly formed nucleation mode particles was 1.11 to 1.28 (average: 1.16 ± 0.06) at a dry particle diameter (Dp) centered on 20 nm, which is equivalent to 1.17 to 1.35 (1.23 ± 0.06) at a dry Dp centered on 100 nm after considering the Kelvin effect. These values are comparable with those of secondary organic aerosols, suggesting that low-volatility organic vapors are important to the burst of nucleation mode particles. The equivalent g(85%) at a dry Dp of 100 nm for nucleated particles that have grown to Aitken mode sizes (1.24 to 1.34; average: 1.30 ± 0.04) were slightly higher than those of newly formed nucleation mode particles, suggesting that the growth of freshly formed nucleation mode particles to the Aitken mode size can be subjected to condensation of not only low-volatility organic vapors, but also water-soluble inorganic species. Based on this result, and previous measurement of radiocarbon in aerosols, we suggest that the burst of nucleation mode particles and their subsequent growth were highly affected by biogenic organic emissions at this measurement site, which is surrounded by deciduous forest. Gradual increases in mode diameter after the burst of nucleation mode particles were observed under southerly wind conditions, with a dominant contribution of intermediately hygroscopic particles. However, sharp increases in mode diameter were observed when the wind direction shifted to northwesterly or northeasterly, with a sharp increase in the highly hygroscopic particle fraction of the Aitken mode particles, indicating that the hygroscopic growth factor of newly formed particles is perturbed by the local winds that deliver different air masses to the measurement site.


The publication is a response to the announcement by the United Nations of the birth of the seven billionth citizen in 2011, and arises from consultation with population specialists, addressing the global impact of population trends, and how this might be researched and articulated through fine art practice. It follows the production of the global video project by Gillett and Harland, The Seven Billionth Citizen, and incorporates imagery from that project. It engages with the following research questions: how might the indirect or oblique approach of a curated, collective contemporary art project to issues of pressing societal concern, inform, direct and lead a more wide-ranging and less inhibited address of those issues by specialists in relevant scientific fields? Might the use of the art project and its conceptual framework as the starting point for scientific discussion of the problems arising from rapid global population growth yield new perspectives on possible solutions for those problems? Might the use of imagery from the art project alter perception of the problems being addressed, by scientific authors and by their readership? In addition to the editorial introduction, the publication will include an essay by Gillett and Harland on the Sublime as a vehicle for contemporary, issue-based engagement, addressing the following research questions: what are the precedents, and what is the current scope for the use of the nineteenth century formula for imaging the Sublime to engage audiences with contemporary issues of pressing societal concern? Can the idea of the Sublime stimulate and support debate and understanding beyond the realm of landscape and aesthetic sensation? Is a contemporary, instrumentalist agenda for creative practice better delivered by a practice that is recognisably rooted in an established, traditional approach? If an understanding of the issues around rapid global population growth can prompt a creative engagement with the Sublime, how might the outcome of that process be best directed to prompt a reverse engagement with those same, originating issues?


This book is a collection of 375 completely solved exercises on differentiable manifolds, Lie groups, fibre bundles, and Riemannian manifolds. The exercises go from elementary computations to rather sophisticated tools. It is the first book consisting of completely solved problems on differentiable manifolds, and therefore will be a complement to the books on theory. A 42-page formulary is included which will be useful as an aide-m moire, especially for teachers and researchers on these topics. The book includes 50 figures. A CD-ROM with Professor Angel Montesinos's application, Superficies, is also included. Audience: The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of mathematics, theoretical physics, and some branches of engineering.


The angular distribution of scattered light in the main lobe of the Fraunhofer diffraction pattern of a particle changes rapidly with its size, but is largely independent of its refractive index. Even when the particle is so small (diameter less than a few wavelengths) that its forward lobe must be calculated from the Mie theory, the relative angular distribution within the central part is found to be given approximately by the Fraunhofer formula with obliquity factor, even for particles smaller than one wavelength, except near a minimum in the particle extinction efficiency factor calculated from the Mie theory. A measurement of the ratio between the scattered intensities at a pair of convenient angles within the lobe can thus give a useful estimate of the size of spherical and nonspherical particles without knowing their refractive index. The sizing error caused by the narrowing of the lobe near an extinction minimum is acceptable for many practical purposes, and can in any case be detected by comparing the size estimates derived from measurements at two different wavelengths. Families of curves for sizing by this simple procedure have been prepared. Sideways scattering instruments have been preferred hitherto because of their easier construction. A realization of their possibilities for sizing unknown particles should, however, stimulate the development of suitable forward scattering instruments.


The Guaymas Basin (Gulf of California; depth, 2,000 m) is a site of hydrothermal activity in which petroliferous material is formed by thermal alteration of deposited planktonic and terrestrial organic matter. We investigated certain components of these naturally occurring hydrocarbons as potential carbon sources for a specific microflora at these deep-sea vent sites. Respiratory conversion of [1-14C]hexadecane and [1(4,5,8)-14C]naphthalene to 14CO2 was observed at 4°C and 25°C, and some was observed at 55°C, but none was observed at 80°C. Bacterial isolates were capable of growing on both substrates as the sole carbon source. All isolates were aerobic and mesophilic with respect to growth on hydrocarbons but also grew at low temperatures (4 to 5°C). These results correlate well with previous geochemical analyses, indicating microbial hydrocarbon degradation, and show that at least some of the thermally produced hydrocarbons at Guaymas Basin are significant carbon sources to vent microbiota.


This paper empirically tests whether Irish and UK petrol and diesel markets are characterised by asymmetric pricing behaviour. The econometric assessment uses threshold autoregressive models and a dataset of monthly refined oil and retail prices covering the period 1997 to mid-2009. A methodological note is included on the importance of the specification of the number of possible regimes. In particular, the possibility of conflicting price pressures arising from short-run dynamics in retail prices and responses to disequilibrium errors needs to be explicitly modelled. For both the Irish and UK liquid fuel markets at national levels, the paper concludes that there is no evidence to support the "rockets and feathers" hypothesis that retail prices rise faster than they fall in response to changes in oil prices. It is still possible that a lack of competition at a more local level may accommodate asymmetric pricing behaviour.


CONTINUITIES AND CHANGE Culture-Nature and the Construction of Childhood - Alan Prout The Child in the Picture - Patricia Holland Managing Monsters - Dan Fleming Videogames and the 'Mediatization' of the Toy Harlequin Meets the SIMS - Jacqueline Reid-Walsh A History of Interactive Narrative Media for Children and Youth From Early Flap Books to Contemporary Multi Media PROBLEMATICS Making Waves - Chas Critcher Panic Discourses about the Media and Children or Young People, Past and Present Children and Media in the Context of the Home and Family - Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark Reality and Fantasy in Media - Maire Messenger Davies Can Children Tell the Difference and How Do We Know? Mobile Emancipation - Rich Ling and Leslie Haddon Children, Youth and the Mobile Phone The Mediated Playground - Dafna Lemish Media in Early Childhood Dividing Delights - Jane Kenway and Elizabeth Bullen Children, Adults and the Search for Sales Horror Films and Youthful Film Cultures - Anne Jerslev Learning Theory, Videogames, and Popular Culture - James Gee CULTURES AND CONTEXTS Children and Media - David Buckingham A Cultural Studies Approach The African Reception of Global Media - Larry Strelitz and Priscilla Boshoff Relations Between Globalization and Localization - Jette Rygaard Young People's Media Culture in Greenland Games and Media - Maria Heller The Acquisition of Social Structure and Social Rules Uses of Media - Stephanie Donald Participant Researchers in Asian Contexts Media and Girls' Issues in China - Bu Wei Media as Strategy for Gender Equality Contextualizing Media Competencies Amongst Young People in Indian Culture - Usha Nayar and Amita Bhide Interface with Globalization Youth, Media and Culture in the Arab World - Marwan Kraidy and Joe Khalil Situated Media Appropriations in Brazil - Norbert Wildermuth Imagination, Empowerment and Exclusion Has Television Become a Connecting Culture? - Letizia Caronia and Andre H. Caron A Cross-Cultural Study PERSPECTIVES Trans-National Media Mixing - Mizuko Ito Cultural Production and Exchange in International Anime Cultures Japanese Young People, Media and Everyday Life - Toshie Takahashi Towards the De-Westernising of Media Studies New Visions of Literacy - Renee Hobbs The Great Debates Continue From Parental Control to Peer Pressure - Dominique Pasquier Cultural Transmission and Conformism The Commodification of Kids' Culture - Janet Wasko Media and Communications Regulation and Child Protection - David Oswell An Overview of the Field Facilitating Political Participation - Peter Dahlgren Young Citizens, Internet and Civic Cultures Children's Communication Rights - Cees Hamelink Beyond Intentions


Abstract : In an effort to reduce costs and time to deploy mission capable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), the Department of Defense (DoD) has transitioned smart devices into the battlefield as portable, handheld UAV ground control stations (GCS) without adequate cybersecurity protection. While a number of threat model approaches have been published, they are outdated and fail to evaluate a complete system. This article develops a holistic threat model that analyzes the cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the communication network, smart device hardware, software applications, as well as the insider threat. Additionally, this article provides a risk-based threat profile of a DoD pilot UAV smart device GCS system. This model will fill the gaps in current threat model approaches, to provide the DoD with a tool to properly assess the threat environment of a UAV smart device GCS, and build layers of security into the system throughout the system development life cycle.


A wireless sensor network is a network consisting of a large number of sensor nodes deployed in a region to fulfil the demanding task of sensing. By merging wireless sensor nodes with mobile robots, the performance of wireless sensor network applications may be improved. Coverage and connectivity are the two parameters of a wireless sensor network. Stochastic node deployment or random node deployment may cause holes in sensing coverage and existing redundant nodes in the area. On the other hand, precise deployment of nodes in large area is very time consuming and even impossible in hazardous environment. One of the solutions to this problem is by using mobile robots with concern on exploration algorithm for mobile robot. In this thesis an autonomous deployment method for wireless sensor nodes is proposed via multi-robot system which robots are considered as nodes carrier. Developing an exploration algorithm based on spanning tree is the main contribution. The exploration algorithm should perform fast localization of sensor nodes in energy efficient manner. Employing a multi-robot system and path planning with spanning tree algorithm is a strategy for speeding up sensor node deployment. An improvement of this technique in deployment of nodes is the use of an obstacle avoidance mechanism without concern on shape and size of obstacle. The deployment task in this thesis is simulated on Player/Stage environment and the results were compared with other algorithms like obstacle-free and power-efficient (OFPE) which is modified to multi-robot (MR-OFPE) for deploying nodes. Using the proposed method, the results demonstrated an improvement in energy efficiency up to 40%, while deploying time is reduced about 28% compared to MR-OFPE. By deploying these nodes, the sensing coverage is enhanced about 8% compared to MR-OFPE. This research shows that a multi-robot system can optimize time and energy in robots while improving the application of a wireless sensor network.


For a multilingual author, deciding in which language to publish an academic paper is a political choice. Not only is it linked to considerations such as career advancement and reaching the widest readership, it also touches on social and ideological questions, such as the preservation of languages, identities, cultures, and patterns of thinking and writing, in the face of English's dominance as the "default academic language" (Bocanegra-Valle 2014). This paper presents an analysis of the language practices of E-JournALL, EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, a web-based, open access, and trilingual journal. Since the journal's founding in 2014, its editorial team has striven to ensure representation of English, Italian, and Spanish in each of its issues. In this article, we reflect on four years of multilingual publishing, asking: 1) What does it mean to ensure representation in E-JournALL of each of its three languages; 2) How do the languages of E-JournALL's authors—and their decisions about publication language—relate to the role played by English in global academic publishing?; and finally, 3) Four years and eight issues in, where does E-JournALL stand as a multilingual journal in an English-dominated academic world? In addition to offering our own reflections as editors, we present the results of analyses of E-JournALL's publication data about authors' native languages, the languages in which they published their papers, and the languages of the publications they cited, which show that despite our efforts, there remains a clear dominance of English. However, the data also suggest a changing, more diverse reality, and they form the basis for some suggestions for fostering multilingualism in academic journals.


In this thesis, we focus on the 3D reconstruction from multiple images. We explore different approaches for reconstruction including photometric methods, i.e. modeling from a changing lighting, and geometric methods, i.e. modeling from a changing viewpoint.
Photometric stereo uses images from different lighting conditions to build 3D model of an object. In this work, we improve photometric stereo from both reconstruction accuracy and data capturing simplicity. In conventional photometric stereo algorithms, surface shape can only be recovered at the resolution of input images, since only one normal direction is computed for each pixel. However, for a rough surface, there often exists sub-pixel level geometry structures. We have studied the relationship between surface reflectance and sub-pixel geometry structures to design a new photometric stereo algorithm that recovers sub-pixel level geometry structures. Our method significantly improves the modeling accuracy. Another limitation in conventional photometric stereo is that, the lighting conditions have to be recorded in data capturing. Otherwise, surface shape can only be recovered up to an unknown General Bas-Relief (GBR) shape ambiguity. In this thesis, we have observed that isotropy/reciprocity induces symmetry structures on Gauss sphere for any isotropic surface. And these symmetry structures are destroyed by a GBR transformation. Hence, we can resolve the unknown GBR shape ambiguity by restoring the broken symmetry for any isotropic surface. With our method, there is no need to record lighting conditions in data capturing for isotropic surface. This makes the data capturing procedure significantly simplified.
Image-based modeling (IBM) uses images from different viewpoints to build 3D model of an object. Previous methods on image-based modeling are very successful at recovering camera poses and a set of 3D points of the object. But these recovered 3D points are typically unstructured. To generate 3D models ready to be used in applications such as movies, games or virtual tours, we organize these unstructured 3D points and build high quality texture mapped models from them. There are two key contributions in our approach. Firstly, we propose to segment 3D points together with 2D images into individual objects by a joint 2D-3D segmentation method. General segmentation of images is a very dicult problem. But since we have both 2D and 3D information which reinforce each other, the segmentation can be performed quite efficiently. Segmentation results provide clearly defined object boundary which is very useful for high quality modeling. Secondly, we proposed to synthesize occluded structure according to object priors learned from visible structures. An inevitable problem in image-based method is occlusion. No or less information is available in occluded regions. Our method can successfully propagate information from visible regions to invisible regions. Our method is tested on image-based modeling of trees. With our approach, we can build highly realistic digital model of trees from their images.


Previous studies have demonstrated that acute systemic inflammation after surgery or
infection is associated with a transient increase in the risk of vascular events. This
suggests that vascular risk is not stable but fluctuates within short periods in response
to inflammatory stimuli. While an association between respiratory tract infection and
vascular events is well-documented, the effects of other acute infections and
inflammatory stimuli are less certain.
The principal aim of this project was to investigate further the role of acute
inflammation and infection in vascular disease, employing the unique opportunities
offered by electronic health record databases. Two large observational studies were
undertaken. First, the self-controlled case series method and Medicaid claims data
from the United States were used to examine the short-term effects of invasive dental
treatment, a novel acute inflammatory model, on the risk of vascular events. Second,
a matched case-control study using primary care data from the United Kingdom
General Practice Research Database investigated the role of acute maternal infection
in the development of pre-eclampsia – a vascular disorder of pregnancy.
The case series analysis of 1152 adults with a vascular event demonstrated a
transiently increased vascular event rate in the four weeks after invasive dental
treatment relative to unexposed time periods. The analysis of 1533 pre-eclampsia
cases and 14236 controls who had completed a pregnancy without pre-eclampsia
revealed an increased risk of pre-eclampsia associated with antibiotic prescriptions
and urinary infection, but not respiratory infection, during pregnancy.
The findings suggest that exposures sufficient to produce an acute inflammatory
response may play an important role in the occurrence of vascular outcomes. Future
research on the effects of other acute inflammatory triggers and the mediating
mechanisms involved should help establish a clearer role for acute inflammation and
infection in vascular disease and inform preventative strategies during periods of
increased vascular risk.


This chapter discusses the development of authoritative collections of brain scans known as "brain atlases", focusing in particular on how such scans are constituted as authoritative visual objects. Three dimensions are identified: first, brain scans are parts of suites of networked technologies rather than stand-alone outputs; second, they are specified by means of a "database logic" that makes particular neurological features visible within a register of possibilities; and third, they serve as interfaces that open up a range of possibilities rather than stand in as fixed representations. By tracing how the very concept of the authoritative image has been transformed, the chapter shows how visual knowing takes shape in research practices and situates it in the digital and networked settings of contemporary science.


ABSTRACT Objectives: To update previous reviews and provide a more detailed overview of the effectiveness, acceptability and conceptual basis of communication training-interventions for carers of people living with dementia. Method: We searched CINAHL Plus, MEDLINE and PsycINFO using a specific search and extraction protocol, and PRISMA guidelines. Two authors conducted searches and extracted studies that reported effectiveness, efficacy or acceptability data regarding a communication training-intervention for carers of people living with dementia. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration guidelines. Quality of qualitative studies was also systematically assessed. Results: Searches identified 450 studies (after de-duplication). Thirty-eight studies were identified for inclusion in the review. Twenty-two studies focused on professional carers; 16 studies focused mainly on family carers. Training-interventions were found to improve communication and knowledge. Overall training-interventions were not found to significantly improve behaviour that challenges and caregiver burden. Acceptability levels were high overall, but satisfaction ratings were found to be higher for family carers than professional carers. Although many interventions were not supported by a clear conceptual framework, person-centred care was the most common framework described. Conclusion: This review indicated that training-interventions were effective in improving carer knowledge and communication skills. Effective interventions involved active participation by carers and were generally skills based (including practicing skills and discussion). However, improvements to quality of life and psychological wellbeing of carers and people living with dementia may require more targeted interventions.


ABSTRACT This study used a global value chain model to determine the effect of currency appreciation and its resultant impact on different sectors, value chains, and world output. Based on the global value chain (GVC) perspective, we derived a formula for the computation of world output adjustment by sectors caused by currency appreciation. Utilizing the WIOD database, we applied the formula to calculate the changes to the value-added by each sector level, given a specified currency appreciation. Our empirical findings revealed that currency appreciation creates an illusion of higher GDP growth when denominated in a foreign currency. However, when denominated in domestic currency, appreciation of the currency put an adverse impact on its own GDP growth. The impact of currency appreciation varies from country to country and their respective sectors. Taking the world as a whole, US dollar exchange rate appreciation drives up global real GDP, while RMB appreciation leaves a negative impact on the global GDP. Furthermore, it is assumed that if a country's aggregate demand exceeds its aggregate output, its currency appreciation tends to expand global GDP. Similarly, if a country produces more than what it consumes, its currency appreciation leads to decline in the global GDP.


This paper proposes a novel scheme for acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) in multi-party, spatialized audio conferencing by exploring the constraints among the adaptive filters for each synthesized remote speaker. The AEC algorithm employs constrained Kalman filtering (CKF-AEC) that takes advantage of the uncorrelated reference signal from each remote channel [1], yet restricts the filter adaptation within the subspace determined by the spatialization functions used to virtualize each remote participant and the number of unique acoustic paths between the loudspeakers and microphone. In addition, the proposed algorithm allows the adaptation for channels without input signals. Experimental results show the proposed algorithm has much higher performance than the scheme proposed in [1] which uses NLMS as the adaptive filter and does not explore the available constraint.


This paper deals with the application of evolutionary computation to telecommunication network design. Design of a two-layer network is considered, where the upper-layer (UL) network uses resources of the lower-layer (LL) network. UL links determine demands for the LL and are implemented using LL paths (admissible paths). Within a fixed LL network topology, given the demands and admissible paths, we aim to find the LL link capacities for implementing the UL links, minimizing the cost of the LL. Robust design issues are also taken into consideration, allowing for failure of a certain part of the LL and postulating that, after some re-allocation in the LL, demands are still realized to an assumed extent. An algorithm based on an evolutionary technique is introduced, with problem-specific genetic operators to improve computing efficiency. A theoretical study of properties of the operators is made and several experiments are performed to tune the parameters of the algorithm. Finally, its performance is compared with other design techniques, including integer programming.


Because of the complexity and the rapid pace of research developments in the field of signal transduction, there are few textbooks devoted to this subject specifically. Blumenthal provides an overview of the text Principles of Molecular Regulation. The review emphasizes the strong points of the text and makes suggestions for improving later editions.


Trace element (Particle-induced X-ray emission) and oxygen isotope (B18O) analyses on West Pailin, Cambodian sapphires and rubies further constrain the geochernical characteristics of this basalt-derived, bimodal (two corundum types) gem deposit. The results confirm a clear distinction between magmatic origin sapphires (Fe 2300-8000ppm, Ti 15-1800ppm, Cr below detection, Ga 160-260ppm; Cr/Ga <0.01; (B18O) 7.0-7.8 ‰) and metamorphic-origin sapphires and rubies (Fe 3300-9130ppm, Ti 60-3600ppm, Cr 160-5300ppm, Ga 28-46ppm; Cr/Ga 3.6-155; (B18O 4.0-4.9 ‰). Comparisons with a similar Australian bimodal corundum deposit from the Barrington Tops, basaltic gem field show some common features, although the West Pailin magmatic suite is more depleted in Fe and noticeably higher in (B18O values. The metamorphic suite is more enriched in Ti and Cr and distinctly lower in its (B18O range than its Barrington Tops counterpart. This allows geographic distinctions to be drawn between these bimodal corundum suites and indicates differences in the geological processes by which corundum crystallised under the two regions.