We introduce a novel method for classification and mapping of landforms based on the idea that the Earth's surface can be described by the two complementary measures: relief-independent, local spatial pattern and the magnitude of the relief itself. The first of these two measures is sufficient to classify and map the landforms. At the core of the method is the concept of geomorphon (geomorphologic phonotype). A geomorphon is a relief-invariant, orientation-invariant, and size-flexible abstracted elementary unit of terrain. It is expressed in terms of local ternary pattern that encapsulates morphology of surface around the point of interest. Geomorphons enable terrain analysis without resorting to differential geometry. A collection of 498 different geomorphons constitutes a comprehensive and exhaustive set of all possible morphological terrain types. This set includes both standard elements of the landscape, as well as unfamiliar forms rarely found on natural terrestrial surfaces. Geomorphons are both terrain attributes and landform types. This reduces the task of landform mapping to the identification of geomorphons by their labels across the site of interest. We describe the fundamental ideas behind the geomorphon concept. We also give an example of how a map of a standard landform types can be constructed using geomorphons.


—With the rise of new paradigms like the Internet of Things, where thousands of devices and services of different providers are to be connected to complex processes, service- oriented approaches come to the fore. However, current solutions still lack of comprehensive methodologies how to dynamically manage and combine services to fulfil the given goals. In this paper we present a semantic-based service management methodology that enables the semantic description of services and provides an automatic service discovery and composition solution at design- and runtime. Furthermore, we present development tools that support the usage of semantic web technologies and we describe an execution environment where the approach is embedded. We conclude with an evaluation scenario from an e-mobility research project.


The diffraction of light by deep rectangular-groove transmission phase gratings is treated by solving Maxwell's equations numerically. Results are given for the light diffracted into the zero order by gratings with grating constants d in the range λ < d < 5λ, aspect ratio b (= linewidth/d), 0 < b < 1, and grating depths a < 5λ, assuming a refractive index n0 = 1.5. Such gratings are used in practice as a dye-free replacement for color filters. They offer a new way of storing pictorial information in small format for read out in conventional projectors.


Identifying inaccurate data has long been regarded as a significant and difficult problem in AI. In this paper, we present a new method for identifying inaccurate data on the basis of qualitative correlations among related data. First, we introduce the definitions of related data and qualitative correlations among related data. Then we put forward a new concept called support coefficient function (SCF). SCF can be used to extract, represent, and calculate qualitative correlations among related data within a dataset. We propose an approach to determining dynamic shift intervals of inaccurate data, and an approach to calculating possibility of identifying inaccurate data, respectively. Both of the approaches are based on SCF. Finally we present an algorithm for identifying inaccurate data by using qualitative correlations among related data as confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence. We have developed a practical system for interpreting infrared spectra by applying the method, and have fully tested the system against several hundred real spectra. The experimental results show that the method is significantly better than the conventional methods used in many similar systems.


ALG-2 is a 22-kDa calcium-binding protein necessary for cell death induced by different stimuli in 3DO T-cell hybridoma. 3DO cell clones depleted of ALG-2 protein exhibit normal caspases activation, suggesting that ALG-2 function is required downstream or is independent of caspase proteases activity for apoptosis to occur. Using the yeast two-hybrid screening system, we have isolated and characterized the mouse cDNA encoding for ALG-2 interacting protein 1 (AIP1), a novel protein that interacts with ALG-2. ALG-2 and AIP1 colocalize in the cytosol and the presence of calcium is an indispensable requisite for their association. Sequence alignment shows that AIP1 is highly similar to BRO1, a yeast protein related to components of the Pkc1p-MAP kinase cascade. Overexpression of a truncated form of AIP1 protects two different cell types from death induced by trophic factors withdrawal; thus, our data indicate that AIP1 cooperates with ALG-2 in executing the calcium-dependent requirements along the cell death pathway.


Abstract
 This chapter includes differential characters to distinguish the family Torymidae (Chalcidoidea), hypothesized phylogenetic relationships with other families, and general biological attributes of the family. Previous cataloguing efforts of the Iranian fauna for the family are summarized, as well as the information included in the checklist of species for the family. This summary information includes the number of species recorded from Iran, any newly recorded species, a comparison of the Iranian fauna with those of adjacent countries, and major host attributes of the family in Iran. For each species record, reference is included to catalogues that previously reported presence of the species in Iran, including Noyes (2019), distribution in Iran by province and extra-limital distribution by country. In addition to currently recognized countries, previously recognized political units are also included such as Yugoslavia and USSR, as well as some non-political regions such as Caucasus and Transcaucasus (a geographical region in the vicinity of the southern Caucasus Mountains on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia that roughly corresponds to present-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). Also included for each species record are host records and plant associates in Iran, when known, and additional comments as necessary.


The objective of this thesis is to understand more about the role of inertia in the Earth's dynamo. Studies of 2.5D and 3D dynamo models have reported finding dynamo action increasingly difficult to maintain as the strength of inertia measured by the Rossby number, Ro, is increased, (see for example, Fearn and Morrison (2001) or Christensen et al (1999)).

Fearn and Rahman (2004b) considered a non-linear mean-field a2-type dynamo model and investigated the effect inertia has on solutions. In their axisymmetric model, the effects of a non-axisymmetric flow are introduced to the problem via the so-called a-effect, which generates poloidal magnetic field through twisting the toroidal field lines. In the a2-type model, this effect also generates toroidal field from poloidal field. Fearn and Rahman (2004b) found that, as the strength of the inertia, Ro was increased, dynamo action was enabled to occur more easily. The non-axisymmetric generation process (i.e. the a-effect) is unaffected by Ro. In the 2.5D/3D models the dynamo process is driven through internal convection. Increasing the strength of inertia, as considered by Fearn and Morrison (2001) and Christensen et al (1999), reveals that dynamo action shuts off if Ro becomes too large. In the 2.5D/3D models, inertia affects convection as well as the dynamo equilibration process. Due to the complexity of the 2.5D/3D models, varying a single parameter e.g. Rossby number, influences the overall dynamo process in a number of different ways making it difficult to understand the different physical mechanisms acting to equilibrate the dynamo. This led to our present studies of non-linear aw and a2w-type dynamo models. These models are intermediate to the a2-type model and the 2.5D/3D models as we include a buoyancy driving, but instead of it being dynamically determined as in the hydrodynamic model, we choose to prescribe it, in an effort to further disentangle the complex processes in the dynamo mechanism and the role inertia plays.


This book describes the classical axiomatic theories of decision under uncertainty, as well as critiques thereof and alternative theories. It focuses on the meaning of probability, discussing some definitions and surveying their scope of applicability. The behavioral definition of subjective probability serves as a way to present the classical theories, culminating in Savage's theorem. The limitations of this result as a definition of probability lead to two directions - first, similar behavioral definitions of more general theories, such as non-additive probabilities and multiple priors, and second, cognitive derivations based on case-based techniques.


The fertilizer management is one of the greatest challenges of agriculture in the 21st century. The growing demand for food, along with the similar amount of arable land, creates the necessity of increasing the crop yields in a given area. Due to the fact that the production and use of mineral fertilizers often influence the environment in a negative way, for many years more attention has been paid to natural and organic fertilizers. Their advantage is the transfer of not only organic matter but also nutrients to the soil. In connection with the structural changes in agriculture, the production of natural fertilizers, especially manure decreases, but at the same time, the production of other organic fertilizers, e.g. composts or biochar increases. The aim of the work was to present the possibility of using biochar in the production of organic fertilizers. Moreover, the project concept for obtaining an organic fertilizer containing biochar and its application in the processes of biological transformation of waste was presented.

http://www.jeeng.net/pdf-93869-31447?filename=The Use of Biochar for.pdf


—It is essential to process real-time data service requests such as stock quotes and trade transactions in a timely manner using fresh data, which represent the current real world phenomena such as the stock market status. Users may simply leave when the database service delay is excessive. Also, temporally inconsistent data may give an outdated view of the real world status. However, supporting the desired timeliness and freshness is challenging due to dynamic workloads. To address the problem, we present new approaches for (i) database backlog estimation, (ii) fine-grained closed-loop admission control based on the backlog model, and (iii) incoming load smoothing. Our backlog estimation and control theoretic approaches aim to support the desired service delay bound without degrading the data freshness critical for real-time data services. Specifically, we design, implement, and evaluate two feedback controllers based on linear control theory and fuzzy logic control theory to meet the desired service delay. Workload smoothing, under overload, helps the database admit and process more transactions in a timely fashion by probabilistically reducing the burstiness of incoming data service requests. In terms of the data service delay and throughput, our closed-loop admission control and probabilistic load smoothing schemes considerably outperform several baselines in the experiments undertaken in a stock trading database testbed.


Protein misfolding and aggregation cause a large number of neurodegenerative diseases in humans due to (i) gain of function as observed in Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Prion's disease or (ii) loss of function as observed in cystic fibrosis and α1-antitrypsin deficiency. These misfolded proteins could either lead to the formation of harmful amyloids that become toxic for the cells or to be recognized and prematurely degraded by the protein quality control system. An increasing number of studies has indicated that some low-molecular-weight compounds named as chemical chaperones can reverse the mislocalization and/or aggregation of proteins associated with human conformational diseases. These small molecules are thought to non-selectively stabilize proteins and facilitate their folding. In this review, we summarize the probable mechanisms of protein conformational diseases in humans and the use of chemical chaperones and inhibitors as potential therapeutic agents against these diseases. Furthermore, recent advanced experimental and theoretical approaches underlying the detailed mechanisms of protein conformational changes and current structure-based drug designs towards protein conformational diseases are also discussed. It is believed that a better understanding of the mechanisms of conformational changes as well as the biological functions of these proteins will lead to the development and design of potential interfering compounds against amyloid formation associated with protein conformational diseases.


The present text has the objective of presenting theoretical considerations regarding two types of strategy of research: phenomenology and ethnography. Based on a hermeneutic approach, the two conceptual propositions are presented, the first being dealt with in the sociological context, and the second presented as an anthropological basis. Their similar uses in an organizational context - as well as their differences – are highligthed according to the theoretical contributions of authors belonging to the qualitative universe of organizational research. The text reveals, by the presentations of reported theoretical assumptions, the relevance of the interpretative perspective for the conduction of research that has the organization as object of study, in the pursuit of the identification of ways of constructing the social reality that is the result of the analysis of meanings and experiences lived by the participants, highlighting the importance of the bond between researcher and the research object The theoretical discussion regarding the two perspectives allows to observe the competence of the phenomenological and ethnographic research practice within the field of organizational studies, showing their methodological possibilities to identify dynamics that relate to the experience of life, favoring the analysis of the human being as a phenomenon of interpretation. Key words: Hermeneutic. Phenomenology. Ethnography.


Abstract In this paper the author attempts an analysis of the current financial/economic crisis that is wider ranging and more fundamental than he has been able to find. He discusses alternatives to the financial bailouts and shows how the crisis could have been dealt with more efficiently and at little cost to taxpayers. Finally, the author discusses fundamental reforms that would reduce the volatility of financial markets and increase their efficiency. He reviews some social science literature that views the current crisis as an episode in the secular decline of the United States and more generally of the Western Democracies. The timidity of current reforms, which is striking when compared to those that followed the excesses of the Gilded Age and the Great Depression, can be understood in this framework. The author concludes that the industrialized world is now dominated by a 'financial-political complex' that maximizes speculative profits in good times and socializes losses in times of crisis.


The modification of basic sensor platforms, incorporating specially designed materials, enhances the capacity for the development of new and improved biosensors. Novel transduction strategies employ surface modification technologies as a key element in the detection of biologically important molecules. These modifications can be chemical, electrochemical or physical. Surface modification of polymer substrates for blochip applications, thin-film deposition of biocompatible surfaces for implants and electropolymerisation of electrodes for immunoassay development are the basis of much of the research described in this thesis. A number of immunosensing methods were investigated for the generahon of improved biosensors for the detection of small haptens, proteins and whole cells. These Included fluorescence, chemiluminescence and impedance-based detection systems. Microtitre plates, polymer chps, fluorescence-enhancement chips and screen-printed electrodes were all examined. The specific targets chosen were Internalin B@dB), an mnvasion-associated proteln of Listerla monocytogenes, parvovirus B19, the first human parvovirus and warfarin, the ninth most prescribed drug in the world.

A panel of antibodies and antibody fragments directed against InlB (previously produced) was used for the development of fluorescence and impedance-based assays. A recombinant form of the InlB protein was cloned, expressed ~n E.coli and purified by immobilised metal affinity chromatography (IMAC). An epitope mapping study of InlB was also performed, whereby the recombinant protein was portioned into three fragments to estabhsh the relative location of antibody-bindmg epitopes on its structure. The Listeria monocytogenes-derived proteins, peptides and anhbodies were characterised using plate-based methods and subsequently used for the development of immunoassays using novel fluorescent labels and an impedimettic sensor. The recomb~nant InlB-derived peptides were also cloned Into the PAC 4 vector for in vrvo biotinylation, expressed in E. coli and purif~ed using a monomeric streptavidin affinity column. The m vrvo hiotinylated fragments were characterised using SDS-PAGE, Western blotting, lmmunoassay and BiacoreTM (Chapter 3).

Quantum dots and phosphorescent porphyrins were used as labels in the generation of solidphase immunoassays. Fluorescence-based munoassays using functionalised dye-doped nanoparticles were also developed. These doped particles were conjugated to specific antibodies and proteins using various surface mohfication techniques. The optimisation of solid-phase fluorescence-based immunoassays, incorporating labelled antibody-nanoparticle conjugates, for the detection of hIgG was investigated. A number of plate-based assay formats for the detection of parvovirus B19 was also investigated, in conjunction with an industrial partner; Biotnn International Ltd. Enzyme, chemiluminescence and fluorescencebased detection strategies were employed. A series of immobilisation studies was performed to study biomolecule attachment onto cone platforms for detection. (Chapter 4)

Platform technologies using carbon screen-printed electrodes and ultra-thin polymer coatings for antibody-based biosensors were also examined. Antibodies directed against InlB were depos~tedo nto electrodes within conducting polyaniline (PANI) films to produce conductive affl~nty matrices with clearly defined binding characteristics. The binding of specific anhbodies to their target molecules was monitored via electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) , as the films function as labelfree reversible immuno-biosensors, when interrogated with a pulsed potential waveform (Chapter 5).

Finally, the thin-film deposition of biocompatible surfaces for implants was also studied. The adhesion of thin-films to 316L stainless steel substrates was investigated. These films were prepared by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of hexamethyldisiloxane W S O ) and oxygen mixtures. The film properties were found to be dependent on the Oxygen/HMDSO flow ratio and RF (radio frequency) power. Biocompatibility studies were camed out using rat aortic smooth muscle (RASM) cells. Cell proliferation, viability and toxicity were assessed using commercial kits and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed on substrates post incubation in culture to monitor the biocompatibility effects of the films (Appendix).


In 2014, in Foglia v. Renal Ventures Management LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit evaluated the pleading requirements needed to satisfy Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, within the context of False Claims Act complaints. The Third Circuit concurred with the First, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits and determined that it is necessary to provide only reliable indicia that leads to a strong inference of a scheme to submit false claims. This is in opposition to the holdings of some Circuits, which have required complaints to allege specific times, places, contents of acts, and identity of actors. This Comment argues the Third Circuit applied the correct standard because the requirement of advanced specificity at the initial pleading stage presents an unreasonable hurdle to whistleblowers seeking discovery.


Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was explored as a means to distinguish newly diagnosed of acute lymphoblastic leukemia from disease free bone marrow samples. Characteristic bands alterations were identified in both healthy and diseased samples arising from cellular protein, lipid and DNA. There were specific changes that affected the secondary structure of proteins that appeared in the FTIR spectra and confirmed with the second derivative analysis. The overall protein structure in the control sample consists primarily of α-helix, whereas in ALL sample it has a relatively high proportion of anti-parallel β-sheet protein constituents presumably due to leukemia. Different absorbance's ratios for specific bands were calculated and plotted versus the patient samples. There are significant fluctuations in the ratios under investigation which can be attributed to the changes in the biomolecular structure between normal and leukemia samples. Our results indicate that the absorbance of amide A and B are in the range 3,340-3,000, the lipid/protein ratio and the phosphate/amide II ratio are all yielding statistically significant differences parameters, that it can be used as a biomarker in differentiating acute leukemia from leukemia free bone marrow.


The Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis has made considerable progress but is experiencing challenges in meeting targets in some countries. Recent World Health Organization guidelines have recommended two rounds of triple-drug therapy with ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine (DEC), and albendazole (IDA), in areas where mass drug administration (MDA) results with two drugs (DEC and albendazole) have been suboptimal, as is the case in Samoa. In August 2018, Samoa was the first country in the world to implement countrywide triple-drug MDA. This paper aims to describe Samoa's experience with program coverage and adverse events (AEs) in the first round of triple-drug MDA. We conducted a large cross-sectional community survey to assess MDA awareness, reach, compliance, coverage and AEs in September/October 2018, 7–11 weeks after the first round of triple-drug MDA. In our sample of 4420 people aged ≥2 years (2.2% of the population), age-adjusted estimates indicated that 89.0% of the eligible population were offered MDA, 83.9% of the eligible population took MDA (program coverage), and 80.2% of the total population took MDA (epidemiological coverage). Overall, 83.8% (2986/3563) reported that they did not feel unwell at all after taking MDA. Mild AEs (feeling unwell but able to do normal everyday things) were reported by 13.3% (476/3563) and moderate or severe AEs (feeling unwell and being unable to do normal everyday activities such as going to work or school) by 2.9% (103/3563) of participants. This study following the 2018 triple-drug MDA in Samoa demonstrated a high reported program awareness and reach of 90.8% and 89.0%, respectively. Age-adjusted program coverage of 83.9% of the total population showed that MDA was well accepted and well tolerated by the community.


Historical scholarship on the banishment of subjectivity from experimental psychology led me to explore a current theoretical enterprise in literary and cultural studies that goes by the name "affect theory." This approach, tied to contemporary neuroscience research, at once joins the effort to banish subjectivity from human experience and introduces the apparently compelling merits of a certain kind of potentiality. The potentiality revealed by affect theory lies deep in the human brain, hidden below the level of conscious intentionality. Affect theory draws on a long history in the human sciences going back to the late nineteenth century. Therefore, in this paper I take a fresh look at the early history of experimental psychology from the vantage point of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898. I intend this early anthropological approach to subjectivity to serve as a thought-provoking counterpoint to the later banishment of subjectivity from the methods used in experimental psychology and from the models proposed in affect theory.


Introduction: Cerebral ischemia , occurs when a blood clot has occluded a brain artery , is the third leading cause of mortality in the Western world . The present study was aimed to investigate the effects of Trichostatin A ( TSA ) , a histone deacetylase inhibitor , on cognitive deficits and serum Bcl - 2 level in an animal model of hypoxia - ischemia rat model ( HI ). Materials and Methods: Thirty male Sprague dawley rats were randomly divided into the healthy control , HI + Saline and HI + TSA groups . The rats were suffered from the right common carotid artery ligation and 8 % oxygen for 5 min to produce HI model . Two days after induction of ischemia , HI + TSA group received intraperitoneally TSA for 5 days. The Y maze test was used to assess the working memory . The ELISA test was performed to measure the serum Bcl - 2 level . Results: The results showed amelioration of working memory in HI+TSA group compared to HI+Saline rats. In addition, a significant difference in the serum level of Bcl- 2 was observed between HI+TSA and HI+Saline groups. Conclusion: The data suggested TSA as a potential treatment for amelioration of cognitive deficits after brain ischemia.


1. A simulation model of the dynamics of rice tungro virus disease (RTVD) was developed to assess the potential of disease management options in different cropping systems. The model simulated the position and infectivity status of the green leafhopper vectors, and the corresponding RTVD infection pattern in a square grid of 324 rice hills, during the first 60 days of crop growth after transplanting. 2. Based on published information, assumptions were made about rates of virus transmission, vector population dynamics and probability of vector dispersal. Results from a programme of field experiments in the Philippines provided a basis for model testing. 3. Simulation analysis was used to examine the feasibility of roguing (replacing those plants which show symptoms with healthy plants) as a means of preventing further disease spread. A genetic algorithm was used to evaluate the sensitivity of model output to parameter changes. 4. Particular parameter combinations were found to be associated with effective roguing. In general, with high or moderate disease pressure, simulated roguing was relatively ineffective even when done frequently and efficiently. With low disease pressure, roguing had a significant effect, but was of little value in such circumstances.


The limited computational and storage capabilities of the devices interconnected in Internet of Things (IoT) make them to host only a sub-set of the the collected data. Every device, i.e., an IoT node, should keep only the necessary data locally, thus, it can be able to process them and provide responses in limited time. Nodes can act as a team and cooperate to store the data close to the processing of tasks defined in the form of queries. In this paper, we propose a model for deciding the allocation of data in a set of IoT nodes. Every node decides if the observed data are correlated with the available datasets or they are outliers. We propose an ensemble scheme for multidimensional outliers detection that results, in real time, the final decision. When data are accepted to be locally stored, nodes select their peers where data will be replicated. This way, we keep the data in multiple locations in the network aiming to reduce latency in the provision of responses and support a fault tolerant mechanism. The replication decision is based on the correlation of the incoming data with the present datasets. We analytically describe our model and evaluate it through extensive simulations presenting its pros and cons.


Until recently the spectacular developments in nanotechnology have been with little regard to their potential effect on human health and the environment. There are no specific regulations on nanoparticles except existing regulations covering the same material in bulk form. Difficulties abound in devising such regulations, beyond self-imposed regulations by responsible companies, because of the likelihood of different properties exhibited by any one type of nanoparticle, which are tuneable by changing their size, shape and surface characteristics. Green chemistry metrics need to be incorporated into nanotechnologies at the source. This review scopes this issue in the context of potential health effects of nanoparticles, along with medical applications of nanoparticles including imaging, drug delivery, disinfection, and tissue repair. Nanoparticles can enter the human body through the lungs, the intestinal tract, and to a lesser extent the skin, and are likely to be a health issue, although the extent of effects on health are inconclusive. Nanoparticles can be modified to cross the brain blood barrier for medical applications, but this suggests other synthetic nanoparticles may unintentionally cross this barrier.


In this dissertation I explore discourse around the environmental risks of nanotechnology, and through this study of nanotechnology make the case that the dominance in risk discourse of regulatory science is limiting policy debate on environmental risks, and that specific initiatives should be undertaken to broaden debate not just on nanotechnology, but generally on the risks of new technologies. I argue that the treatment of environmental risk in public policy debates has failed for industrial chemicals, is failing for nanotechnology, and most certainly will fail for synthetic biology and other new technologies unless we change how we describe the impacts to people and other living things from the development and deployment of technology. However, I also contend that the nanotechnology case provides reason for optimism that risk can be given different, and better, treatment in environmental policy debates. I propose specific policy initiatives to advance a richer discourse around the environmental implications of emerging technologies. Evidence of enriched environmental policy debates would be a decentering of language concerning risk by developing within discourse language and practice directed toward enriching the human and environmental condition.


Introduction to Modeling and Simulation with MATLAB and Python is intended for students and professionals in science, social science, and engineering that wish to learn the principles of computer modeling, as well as basic programming skills. The book content focuses on meeting a set of basic modeling and simulation competencies that were developed as part of several National Science Foundation grants. Even though computer science students are much more expert programmers, they are not often given the opportunity to see how those skills are being applied to solve complex science and engineering problems and may also not be aware of the libraries used by scientists to create those models.
The book interleaves chapters on modeling concepts and related exercises with programming concepts and exercises. The authors start with an introduction to modeling and its importance to current practices in the sciences and engineering. They introduce each of the programming environments and the syntax used to represent variables and compute mathematical equations and functions. As students gain more programming expertise, the authors return to modeling concepts, providing starting code for a variety of exercises where students add additional code to solve the problem and provide an analysis of the outcomes. In this way, the book builds both modeling and programming expertise with a "just-in-time" approach so that by the end of the book, students can take on relatively simple modeling example on their own.
Each chapter is supplemented with references to additional reading, tutorials, and exercises that guide students to additional help and allows them to practice both their programming and analytical modeling skills. In addition, each of the programming related chapters is divided into two parts – one for MATLAB and one for Python. In these chapters, the authors also refer to additional online tutorials that students can use if they are having difficulty with any of the topics.
The book culminates with a set of final project exercise suggestions that incorporate both the modeling and programming skills provided in the rest of the volume. Those projects could be undertaken by individuals or small groups of students.
The companion website at http://www.intromodeling.com provides updates to instructions when there are substantial changes in software versions, as well as electronic copies of exercises and the related code. The website also offers a space where people can suggest additional projects they are willing to share as well as comments on the existing projects and exercises throughout the book. Solutions and lecture notes will also be available for qualifying instructors.


We investigate the capacity and mutual information of a broadband fading channel consisting of a finite number of time-varying paths. We show that the capacity of the channel in the wideband limit is the same as that of a wideband Gaussian channel with the same average received power. However, the input signals needed to achieve the capacity must be "peaky" in time or frequency. In particular, we show that if white-like signals are used instead (as is common in spread-spectrum systems), the mutual information is inversely proportional to the number of resolvable paths L/spl tilde/ with energy spread out, and in fact approaches 0 as the number of paths gets large. This is true even when the paths are assumed to be tracked perfectly at the receiver. A critical parameter L/spl tilde//sub crit/ is defined in terms of system parameters to delineate the threshold on L over which such overspreading phenomenon occurs.


Abstract. Changes in fire activity over the last 8000 years are simulated with a global fire model driven by changes in climate and vegetation cover. The changes were separated into those caused through variations in fuel availability, fuel moisture or wind speed, which react differently to changes in climate. Disentangling these controlling factors helps in understanding the overall climate control on fire activity over the Holocene. Globally the burned area is simulated to increase by 2.5% between 8000 and 200 cal yr BP, with larger regional changes compensating nearly evening out on a global scale. Despite the absence of anthropogenic fire ignitions, the simulated trends in fire activity agree reasonably well with continental-scale reconstructions from charcoal records, with the exception of Europe. For some regions the change in fire activity is predominantly controlled through changes in fuel availability (Australia monsoon, Central America tropics/subtropics). For other regions changes in fuel moisture are more important for the overall trend in fire activity (North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Asia monsoon). In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, changes in fuel moisture alone lead to an increase in fire activity between 8000 and 200 cal yr BP, while changes in fuel availability lead to a decrease. Overall, the fuel moisture control is dominating the simulated fire activity for Sub-Saharan Africa. The simulations clearly demonstrate that both changes in fuel availability and changes in fuel moisture are important drivers for the fire activity over the Holocene. Fuel availability and fuel moisture do, however, have different climate controls. As such, observed changes in fire activity cannot be related to single climate parameters such as precipitation or temperature alone. Fire models, as applied in this study, in combination with observational records can help in understanding the climate control on fire activity, which is essential to project future fire activity.


KRAS mutant lung cancer cells are sensitive to inhibition of the nuclear exporter XPO1. Mutations in the gene encoding KRAS, a small GTPase that mediates growth factor receptor signaling, are implicated in colorectal, lung, and pancreatic cancers, yet KRAS has proven an unsuccessful pharmacological target. Kim et al. cataloged KRAS mutations in more than 100 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)–derived cell lines and performed whole-genome mRNA expression analysis to identify potential synthetic-lethal genetic interactions with mutant KRAS. The authors then screened for short inhibitory RNAs (siRNAs) that reduced the viability of a KRAS mutant colorectal cancer cell line and found that siRNAs targeting genes encoding components of the nuclear export machinery, including XPO1, were the most effective. Targeting XPO1 in more than 50 KRAS mutant cell lines reduced their viability. The clinically available XPO1 inhibitor KPT-330 increased apoptosis in KRAS mutant cells. Tumor volumes in three mouse models of KRAS mutant–driven cancers were markedly reduced by KPT-330 compared with those in untreated mice. Inhibition of XPO1 in cultured cells led to nuclear accumulation of the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) inhibitory protein IκBα. Knockdown of the gene encoding IκBα rendered the KRAS mutant cells resistant to the XPO1 inhibitor, suggesting that KRAS mutant cells rely on the continual nuclear export of IκBα to enable NF-κB–dependent signaling and cell survival. A small number of NSCLC cell lines that were relatively resistant to XPO1 inhibitors had mutations in FSTL5. FSTL5 is implicated as a tumor suppressor protein in hepatocellular carcinoma, a cancer that is often associated with the transcriptional regulator YAP1. Deletion of FSTL5 in cell lines led to increased YAP1 abundance, and sequencing analysis and immunostaining of KRAS mutant lung adenocarcinoma specimens showed a positive correlation between the occurrence of FSTL5 mutations and the abundance of YAP1. Finally, chemical or genetic targeting of YAP1 rendered KPT-330–resistant cell lines sensitive to this XPO1 inhibitor. Together, these data suggest that XPO1 is a druggable target in KRAS mutant lung cancers, but that patients should also be screened for other mutations, such as in FSTL5, that may affect efficacy. J. Kim, E. McMillan, H. S. Kim, N. Venkateswaran, G. Makkar, J. Rodriguez-Canales, P. Villalobos, J. E. Neggers, S. Mendiratta, S. Wei, Y. Landesman, W. Senapedis, E. Baloglu, C.-W. B. Chow, R. E. Frink, B. Gao, M. Roth, J. D. Minna, D. Daelemans, I. I. Wistuba, B. A. Posner, P. P. Scaglioni, M. A. White, XPO1-dependent nuclear export is a druggable vulnerability in KRAS-mutant lung cancer. Nature 538, 114–117 (2016). [PubMed]


Understanding airflow behaviour over three-dimensional foredune terrain allows detailed examination of the aeolian transport environment between beaches and dunes. A spatial array of twenty four ultrasonic anemometers was deployed in 2010 over a beach and foredune system at Magilligan, Northern Ireland to capture airflow data under a range of incident offshore directions. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling was also conducted using input data from anemometer field measurements, running over a surface mesh generated from LiDAR and DGPS surveys. Aeolian sediment transport measurements were also undertaken using high resolution (20Hz) load cell traps.

Results demonstrate the heterogeneity of surface (sub-metre) airflow speed and direction when emerging from the foredune crest position. Distinctive airflow steering and reverse flow directions were noted as being dependent on incident wind direction at the crest with maximum reversal under near perpendicular offshore winds. As the incident winds veer around to a more oblique offshore direction they adapt a steered rather than reversed flow behaviour.

A zonation pattern of surface shear stress was apparent across the foredune toe and back beach area and contained flow that was above threshold for aeolian sediment entrainment. Measurement of sediment flux also showed transport events under these steered and reversed flow scenarios. Localised undulations in the foredune crest topography are likely to have played a significant role in dictating the heterogeneous patterns of surface flow and shear stress. These findngs show that reversed flow behaviour can induce significant aeolian flux and therefore demonstrates its importance in aeolian sediment budgets for leeside coasts (offshore winds dominant) where there are particular foredune configurations present.


The relationship between the individual and the state is more often than previously mediated by public e-services. An emergent phenomenon in this respect is the various forms of devices supporting choice of education that are provided through portals. The question dealt with in this article is: How do portals containing different devices support choice in educational markets? Two portals run by national public authorities in Sweden concerned with educational issues have been chosen as material for the analysis. A first conclusion is that the devices integrate a sequence of advanced calculations, which aim to contribute to a choice of education. Secondly, we can distinguish between a mechanical and a pedagogical character of integration. A third conclusion is that the devices connect the objectives of government authorities with choices in educational markets and are therefore part of public policy implementation. Finally, it is argued that the seemingly simple procedures for calculation might affect people's entire lives, a fact which adds an ethical dimension to the design of this kind of public e-services.


The sociological literature, although rich on the topic of racial/ethnic hierarchy, often overlooks its spatially varying nature relative to group tensions and inequality. In this article, we address this gap by drawing on and analyzing four historically important U.S. urban cases (i.e., Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City) that reflect both compositional diversity and significant variation in racial/ethnic group sizes. Our analyses, which draw on U.S. Census microdata and content–coded newspaper reports (1910–1930), demonstrate considerable consistency in racial/ethnic labor market hierarchies, yet divergences in levels of labor market inequality. Specifically, our aggregate analyses and cross–city comparisons of sectoral representations and occupational returns reveal the importance of place–specific processes—processes consistent with what spatially sensitive queuing perspectives suggest about the bolstering of minority prospects in contexts where subordinated groups come to numerically dominate. As suggested by competition/threat perspectives, however, such gains from queuing are undermined at least to some extent by city–specific racial/ethnic antagonisms, industry–level segregation, and group closure. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for various streams of research on group inequality, labor market hierarchies, and spatial understandings of how they unfold across urban spaces.


Abstract Objective: To assess the validity and repeatability of a simple index designed to rank participants according to their energy expenditure estimated by self-report, by comparison with objectively measured energy expenditure assessed by heart-rate monitoring with individual calibration. Design: Energy expenditure was assessed over one year by four separate episodes of 4-day heart-rate monitoring, a method previously validated against whole-body calorimetry and doubly labelled water. Cardio-respiratory fitness was assessed by four repeated measures of sub-maximum oxygen uptake. At the end of the 12-month period, participants completed a physical activity questionnaire that assessed past-year activity. A simple four-level physical activity index was derived by combining occupational physical activity together with time participating in cycling and other physical exercise (such as keep fit, aerobics, swimming and jogging). Subjects: One hundred and seventy-three randomly selected men and women aged 40 to 65 years. Results: The repeatability of the physical activity index was high (weighted kappa = 0.6, P < 0.0001). There were positive associations between the physical activity index from the questionnaire and the objective measures of the ratio of daytime energy expenditure to resting metabolic rate (P = 0.003) and cardio-respiratory fitness (P = 0.001). As an indirect test of validity, there was a positive association between the physical activity index and the ratio of energy intake, assessed by 7-day food diaries, to predicted basal metabolic rate. Conclusions: The summary index of physical activity derived from the questions used in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study suggest it is useful for ranking participants in terms of their physical activity in large epidemiological studies. The index is simple and easy to comprehend, which may make it suitable for situations that require a concise, global index of activity.


Billions of dollars have been spent on law and development (or "rule of law") projects around the world in the past two decades, focusing on judicial reform, legal training, constitution and code writing, legal transplantation, anti-corruption efforts, and more. In recent overviews, many participants and observers have deemed this effort largely a failure. This essay focuses on surrounding social factors as the primary explanation for this failure. It begins by arguing that "law and development" is a misleading category and should not be seen as a "field." The essay then examines three themes: legal development, law and capitalism, and the progressive law and development package. The ideas underlying each are elaborated, showing how surrounding social factors interact with each. The essay then argues that law and development projects are often run in a fashion that is flawed from the outset owing to a lack of familiarity with circumstances on the ground. It shows how Western law and development theorists from the right and the left have exported to developing contexts ideas taken from home that have potentially harmful consequences in different settings. The essay concludes that, while efforts to develop the rule of law are essential and must continue, law cannot carry the hopes of economic development or the progressive package. Functional alternatives to law should be supported or created when state legal institutions persistently fail.


It is well known that options can make planning more efficient, among their many benefits. Thus far, algorithms for autonomously discovering a set of useful options were heuristic. Naturally, a principled way of finding a set of useful options may be more promising and insightful. In this paper we suggest a mathematical characterization of good sets of options using tools from information theory. This characterization enables us to find conditions for a set of options to be optimal and an algorithm that outputs a useful set of options and illustrate the proposed algorithm in simulation.


Markets for agricultural and food products are characterized by high information asymmetries since producers, processors and retailers are in most cases much better informed about the quality of their products than consumers (Henson/Traill 1993). Often consumers are only at (prohibitively) high costs or not at all able to control important quality criterions such as food safety, nutritional value or region of origin. Such credence attributes can result in market failure due to a lack of credible information in the market (Akerlof 1970). As a result, attempts to protect consumers against food hazards, product adulteration and deception have gained much relevance in food supply chains (Deimel et al. 2008). Besides the more or less voluntary private certification schemes that have been established, large parts of the agrifood sector are already mandatorily regulated, especially in Europe. Therefore, in recent years, food law has been undergoing major changes in the European Union (EU) (Theuvsen/Hollmann-Hespos 2007; Haertel: 2007). General Food Law Regulation (EC) 178/2002 and the so-called EU hygiene package (Regulations (EC) 852/2004, 853/2004 and 854/2004) have strongly contributed to a much more intensive regulation of food production. The farm to fork approach laid down in Regulation (EC) 178/2002 has resulted in the obligation to secure "traceability of food […] at all stages of production, processing and distribution" (Art. 18).


Cool Places explores the contrasting experiences of contemporary youth. The chapters draw on techno music and ecstasy in Germany, clubbing in London, global backpacking and gangs in Santa Cruz as well as expereinces at home, on the streets and seeking employment. The contributors use these examples to explore representation and resistance and geographical concepts of scale and place in young people's lives within social, cultural and feminist studies to focus upon the complexities of youth cultures and their spatial representations and interactions. Contributors: Shane Blackman, Sophie Bowlby, Myrna Margulies Breitbart, Deborah Chambers, Luke Deforges, Claire Dwyer, Keith Hetherington, Cindi Katz, Heinz-Herman Kruger, Marion Leonard, Sally Lloyd Evans, Tim Lucas, Sara McNamee,Ben Malbon, Doreen Massey, Robina Mohammad, David Oswell, David Parker, Birgit Richard, Susan Ruddick, Tracey Skelton, Fiona Smith, Kevin Stevenson, Gill Valentine and Paul Watt


In recent years, Economic Model Predictive Control (empc) has received considerable attention of many research groups. The present tutorial survey summarizes state-of-the-art approaches in empc. In this context empc is to be understood as receding-horizon optimal control with a stage cost that does not simply penalize the distance to a desired equilibrium but encodes more sophisticated economic objectives. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of empc stability results: with and without terminal constraints, with and without dissipativtiy assumptions, with averaged constraints, formulations with multiple objectives and generalized terminal constraints as well as Lyapunov-based approaches. Moreover, we compare different performance criteria for some of the considered approaches and comment on the connections to recent research on dissipativity of optimal control problems. We consider a discrete-time setting and point towards continuous-time variants. We illustrate the different empc schemes with several examples.


Abstract Both fire and conifer encroachment can markedly alter big sagebrush communities and thus habitat quality and quantity for wildlife. We investigated how conifer encroachment and spring prescribed burning affected forage and cover resources for a sagebrush specialist, the pygmy rabbit. We studied these dynamics at spring prescribed burns in southwestern Montana and eastern Idaho during the summer of 2011. Within each spring prescribed burn, we established plots that described the habitat conditions for pygmy rabbits (forage plant biomass and habitat components that influence predation risk) in areas that were burned, adjacent areas of conifer encroachment, and areas that were neither burned nor encroached. We analyzed the data for significant differences in habitat conditions between the paired reference and encroachment plots and modeled when the burned areas would approximate the conditions on the paired reference plots. Biomass of forage plants and habitat components that reduce predation risk differed between undisturbed reference plots and areas that were either burned or encroached with > 30% conifer canopy. Our models estimated that 13–27 yr were required for a spring prescribed burn to provide levels of cover and forage resources similar to sagebrush steppe reference plots. We documented that vegetation composition was associated with the plot designations (burn, reference, or conifer encroachment), but not with other abiotic factors, such as soil texture, aspect, or study site; this suggested that the documented differences in habitat were related to the treatments, rather than being site-specific characteristics. The information from this study can contribute to habitat management plans for high-elevation mountain big sagebrush sites where conifer encroachment is altering habitat for sagebrush-dependent wildlife species.


ABSTRACT Soybean is becoming an important cash crop in northern Ghana. Yet the yields are low due to use of low yielding varieties and limited use of inputs. Greenhouse and field experiments were carried out to evaluate the effects of two phosphorus (P) sources and Rhizobium inoculation on growth, nodulation, P uptake, and yield of three soybean genotypes on Ferric Lixisols of the Guinea savanna zone of Ghana. The P sources were triple superphosphate (TSP) and Morocco phosphate rock (MPR), while the genotypes were TGx 1448-2E, TGx 1904-6F, and TGx 1955-4F. The greenhouse experiment was conducted at the University of Ghana, Legon in a completely randomized design. The field experiment which was carried out in the Upper East region of Ghana was laid out in a split-split plot design with four replicates. In both the greenhouse and field experiments, application of TSP at 30 kg P ha−1 resulted in significantly higher growth and P uptake in shoot compared with MPR and control. Soybean genotypes showed significant differences in growth, nutrient uptake, and grain yield in both the greenhouse and the field experiments. Rhizobium inoculation increased nodule number and dry weight but did not increase grain yield. The genotype TGx 1955-4F appears to show greater potential for increasing productivity of soybean in low P soils in northern Ghana.


The Ku Klux Klan reached its heyday in the mid-1920s, claiming millions of members. In this paper, we analyze the 1920s Klan, those who joined it, and the social and political impact that it had. We utilize a wide range of newly discovered data sources including information from Klan membership roles, applications, robe-order forms, an internal audit of the Klan by Ernst and Ernst, and a census that the Klan conducted after an internal scandal. Combining these sources with data from the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Censuses, we find that individuals who joined the Klan were better educated and more likely to hold professional jobs than the typical American. Surprisingly, we find few tangible social or political impacts of the Klan. There is little evidence that the Klan had an effect on black or foreign born residential mobility, or on lynching patterns. Historians have argued that the Klan was successful in getting candidates they favored elected. Statistical analysis, however, suggests that any direct impact of the Klan was likely to be small. Furthermore, those who were elected had little discernible effect on legislation passed. Rather than a terrorist organization, the 1920s Klan is best described as a social organization built through a wildly successful pyramid scheme fueled by an army of highly-incentivized sales agents selling hatred, religious intolerance, and fraternity in a time and place where there was tremendous demand.


Abstract Molecular dynamics simulation is performed to compute densities and solubility parameters of polymers. TEAM force field is validated on monomers and then employed for predictions for polymers built with different chain lengths. The calculated densities converge when the polymer chain lengths are >10 repeat units. With the consideration of polymer crystallinity, the predictions agree well with experimental data. The solubility parameters calculated from the cohesive energy densities exhibit systematical and progressive underestimates as the chain lengths increase, indicating the energy contribution from polymer chain conformation changes from bulk state to solution must be included in order to calculate the solubility parameters correctly. A model using the radiuses of gyration to represent the conformation changes is proposed to correct the systematical error.


The author describes how and why the world's best "business value investors" have long incorporated environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into their investment decision‐making. As the main source of value in companies has increasingly shifted from tangible to intangible assets, many followers of Graham & Dodd have delivered exceptional investment results by taking an "earnings‐power" approach to identifying high-quality businesses — businesses with enduring competitive advantages that are sustained through significant ongoing investment in their core capabilities and, increasingly, their important non‐investor "stakeholders." While the ESG framework may be relatively new, it can be thought of as providing a lens through which to view the age‐old issue of "quality." Graham & Dodd's 1934 classic guide to investing, Security Analysis, and Phil Fisher's 1958 bestseller, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, both identify a number of areas of analysis that would today be characterized as ESG. Regardless of whether they use the labels "E," "S," and "G," investors who make judgments about earnings power and sustainable competitive advantage are routinely incorporating ESG considerations into their decision‐making. The challenge of assessing a company's sustainable competitive advantage requires analysis based on concepts such as customer franchise value, as well as intangibles like brands and intellectual property. For corporate managers communicating ESG priorities, and for investors analyzing ESG issues, the key is to focus on their relevance to the business. In this sense, corporate reporting on sustainability issues should be viewed as analogous to and an integral part of financial reporting, with a management focus on materiality and relevance (while avoiding a "promotional" approach) that is critical to credibility.


Colonization of bare patches is a key process during community development given that pioneers usually have positive and negative effects on the forthcoming species. A variety of biotic and abiotic factors influence the process of colonization of bare patches. In salt marshes, however, the emphasis has been on abiotic factors and plant-plant interactions, while comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of plant-animal interactions in the successful colonization by pioneer plants. Thus, the goal of the present study was to evaluate whether bioturbation and herbivory by the bur- rowing crab Neohelice (Chasmagnathus) granulata affected the number of seedlings of the pioneer plant Sarcocornia perennis in SW Atlantic salt marshes. To evaluate this, we conducted an experiment using exclosures deployed at different times (post-dispersal and post-germination). The results showed that post-germination exclosures had 62% fewer seedlings than post-dispersal exclosures but 8 times more than plots always accessible to crabs. We also used glass beads to experimentally eval- uate the potential effect of crab bioturbation on seed availability, and we used 1 yr old transplants to evaluate whether herbivory could explain post-germination mortality. Crab bioturbation reduced the number of glass beads on the surface by 56%, and transplants were highly consumed when crabs were present. These results suggest that seed burial by bioturbation exerts a pre-germination control while herbivory exerts a post-germination control. The results also highlight the importance of con- sidering biotic factors when analyzing the success of marsh plants colonizing bare surfaces.


This paper outlines a model archetype that can be used to assess the effects of future policy making and the future transition towards electric vehicles on the automotive sector, while taking into account insights from innovation, transition literature and the multilevel perspective. In order to show the flexibility of the model structure and tackle the gap on how the automotive industry normally responds on those factors, the approach is then used together with historical data to generate insights on how industry has responded to pressures in the regime in the past. For that a case study approach is taken when a timelines for the automotive regime and landscape are presented and then put in relation to a timeline of BMW's activities. While the study is in an early stage, still it is shown how first quantitative parameters can be identified. The article concludes with an outline of future work.


Bacteria from the same species can differ widely in their gene content. In E. coli, the set of genes shared by all strains, known as the core genome, represents about half the number of genes present in any strain. While recent advances in bacterial genomics have enabled to unravel genes required for fitness in various experimental conditions at the genome scale, most studies have focused on model strains. As a result, the impact of this genetic diversity on core processes of the bacterial cell largely remains to be investigated. Here, we developed a new CRISPR interference platform for high-throughput gene repression that is compatible with most E. coli isolates and closely-related species. We applied it to assess the importance of ∼3,400 nearly ubiquitous genes in 3 growth media in 18 representative E. coli strains spanning most common phylogroups and lifestyles of the species. Our screens highlighted extensive variations in gene essentiality between strains and conditions. Unlike variations in gene expression level, variations in gene essentiality do not recapitulate the strains' phylogeny. Investigation of the genetic determinants for these variations highlighted the importance of epistatic interactions with mobile genetic elements. In particular, we showed how mobile genetic elements can trigger the essentiality of core genes that are usually nonessential. This study provides new insights into the evolvability of gene essentiality and argues for the importance of studying various isolates from the same species in bacterial genomics.


Axion-like particles are a broad class of dark matter candidates which are expected to behave as a coherent, classical field with a weak coupling to photons. Research into the detectability of these particles with laser interferometers has recently revealed a number of promising experimental designs. Inspired by these ideas, we propose the Axion Detection with Birefringent Cavities (ADBC) experiment, a new axion interferometry concept using a cavity that exhibits birefringence between its two, linearly polarized laser eigenmodes. This experimental concept overcomes several limitations of the designs currently in the literature, and can be practically realized in the form of a simple bowtie cavity with tunable mirror angles. Our design thereby increases the sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling over a wide range of axion masses.


This chapter presents an account of the role of the Romanian Diaspora in the current political life of the country. The Diaspora is mostly apathetic and uninvolved in Romanian politics despite the positive effect on voter turnout of recently increasing the number of voting stations in regions in the world inhabited by Romanians. The overall number of citizens living abroad that turned out to vote in the 2009 presidential elections was low, probably not exceeding nine percent. Yet, Diaspora voting in recent years has had a partisan impact, favoring the Democratic-Liberal and Liberal parties. This impact was particularly beneficial, if not determining, for President Traian Basescu in his campaign for reelection in 2009. Basescu systematically garnered a higher share of Diaspora support in countries that are more democratic, enjoy more economic freedom, and are less corrupt.


Charge trapping at the channel interface is a fundamental issue that adversely affects the reliability of metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) devices. This effect represents a new source of statistical variability as these devices enter the nano-scale era. Recently, charge trapping has been identified as the dominant phenomenon leading to both random telegraph noise (RTN) and bias temperature instabilities (BTI). Thus, understanding the interplay between reliability and statistical variability in scaled transistors is essential to the implementation of a 'reliability-aware' complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuit design. In order to investigate statistical reliability issues, a methodology based on a simulation flow has been developed in this thesis that allows a comprehensive and multi-scale study of charge-trapping phenomena and their impact on transistor and circuit performance. The proposed methodology is accomplished by using the Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) technology computer-aided design (TCAD)-based design tool chain co-optimization (DTCO) tool chain. The 70 nm bulk IMEC MOSFET and the 22 nm Intel fin-shape field effect transistor (FinFET) have been selected as targeted devices.

The simulation flow starts by calibrating the device TCAD simulation decks against experimental measurements. This initial phase allows the identification of the physical structure and the doping distributions in the vertical and lateral directions based on the modulation in the inversion layer's depth as well as the modulation of short channel effects. The calibration is further refined by taking into account statistical variability to match the statistical distributions of the transistors' figures of merit obtained by measurements. The TCAD simulation investigation of RTN and BTI phenomena is then carried out in the presence of several sources of statistical variability. The study extends further to circuit simulation level by extracting compact models from the statistical TCAD simulation results. These compact models are collected in libraries, which are then utilised to investigate the impact of the BTI phenomenon, and its interaction with statistical variability, in a six transistor-static random access memory (6T-SRAM) cell. At the circuit level figures of merit, such as the static noise margin (SNM), and their statistical distributions are evaluated. The focus of this thesis is to highlight the importance of accounting for the interaction between statistical variability and statistical reliability in the simulation of advanced CMOS devices and circuits, in order to maintain predictivity and obtain a quantitative agreement with a measured data. The main findings of this thesis can be summarised by the following points:

Based on the analysis of the results, the dispersions of VT and ΔVT indicate that a change in device technology must be considered, from the planar MOSFET platform to a new device architecture such as FinFET or SOI. This result is due to the interplay between a single trap charge and statistical variability, which has a significant impact on device operation and intrinsic parameters as transistor dimensions shrink further.
The ageing process of transistors can be captured by using the trapped charge density at the interface and observing the VT shift. Moreover, using statistical analysis one can highlight the extreme transistors and their probable effect on the circuit or system operation.
The influence of the passgate (PG) transistor in a 6T-SRAM cell gives a different trend of the mean static noise margin (


Various methods for simulating microstructure fibers have incorporated symmetry for improved efficiency and discrimination of nearly degenerate modes. A revision of the previously used symmetry-class implementations is proposed, with a more efficient partition of the degenerate classes. Advantages demonstrated using a multipole calculation should apply to finite-element and other simulation methods.


This article demonstrates that Ricardian Equivalence does not necessarily hold in models with altruistic transfers once one takes into account the strategic behavior of recipients as well as donors. To influence the final allocation of consumption in altruistic settings, potential recipients can threaten to refuse as well as accept transfers. We apply the Extended Nash Bargaining Solution to the problem of an altruistic parent and a possibly altruistic child. The parent and child first choose a threat point noncooperatively; this threat point then influences the final allocation of consumption through the standard Nash Bargaining Solution, While the potential recipient can refuse transfers from the potential donor, he cannot refuse transfers from the government. When the government redistributes between the parent and child, it changes their endowments and the equilibrium threats, and thus the final allocation of consumption. The feature of the cooperative model presented here that leads to the failure of Ricardian Equivalence may be characteristic of a wider class of cooperative and noncooperative altruism models. This feature is that noninterior strategic postures underlie interior transfer behavior and that these non- interior strategic postures are altered by government redistribution.


a new intelligent photovoltaic (PV) panel structure to extract the maximum power in mismatch irradiance is proposed. In conventional structures, difference of irradiance between series panels can cause the deviation of maximum power point. In this condition tracking MPP becomes difficult and reduces efficiency. Improvements in power electronics and its effects in PV industrial technology, developed many new PV structure in recent years. This paper proposes a new intelligent structure with module integrated converter for increasing energy capture in the PV series string. The advantage of new structure is that the MPP region extends from single panel MPP to a much wider range, causing the panels to operate independent of each other in mismatch condition. To study and show advantage of intelligent structure, a real simple model is selected and verified. For operating in MPP region, P&O algorithm is selected. Despite conventional structures, voltage is not appropriately varied for P&O algorithm used in intelligent structure and system experiences instability. To solve this instability problem, resistance is proposed as variable.MATLAB/Simulink is used for simulation and demonstration of expression. The results of this work have shown that using intelligent structure improves the energy harvesting up to 14 percent, and resistance is the best variable in tracking speed and accuracy.


Statistical methods of inference typically require the likelihood function to be computable
in a reasonable amount of time. The class of "likelihood-free" methods termed Approximate
Bayesian Computation (ABC) is able to eliminate this requirement, replacing the evaluation
of the likelihood with simulation from it. Likelihood-free methods have gained in efficiency
and popularity in the past few years, following their integration with Markov Chain Monte
Carlo (MCMC) and Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) in order to better explore the parameter
space. They have been applied primarily to the estimation of the parameters of a given
model, but can also be used to compare models.
Here we present novel likelihood-free approaches to model comparison, based upon the
independent estimation of the evidence of each model under study. Key advantages of these
approaches over previous techniques are that they allow the exploitation of MCMC or SMC
algorithms for exploring the parameter space, and that they do not require a sampler able to
mix between models. We validate the proposed methods using a simple exponential family
problem before providing a realistic problem from population genetics: the comparison of
different growth models based upon observations of human Y chromosome data from the
terminal generation.


This article tracks the evolution of "eyewitnessing" as a journalistic key word. It argues that three dimensions have helped establish eyewitnessing as a way to understand journalism—the eyewitness as report, eyewitness as role, and eyewitness as technology. These dimensions have functioned as different carriers of meaning about journalism over time, establishing a seemingly consensual understanding of journalism and journalistic practice while strengthening journalism's claim to authority in questionable circumstances.


This paper presents an approach, based on universal kriging, for automatic mapping of monitoring data. The performance of the mapping approach is tested on two datasets containing daily mean gamma dose rates in Germany reported by means of the national automatic monitoring network (IMIS). In the second dataset an accidental release of radioactivity in the environment was simulated in the South-Western corner of the monitored area. The approach has a tendency to smooth the actual data values, and therefore it underestimates extreme values, as seen in the second dataset. However, it is capable of identifying a release of radioactivity provided that the number of sampling locations is sufficiently high. Consequently, we believe that a combination of applying the presented mapping approach and the physical knowledge of the transport processes of radioactivity should be used to predict the extreme values.


Successful Michael addition under mild reaction conditions resulted in the grafting of 2-methyl aziridine onto acrylated epoxidized soybean oil, and the aziridine content was titrated as 0.00413 mol g−1. Multiaziridine-containing acrylated epoxidized soybean oil (AESO-AZ) was then subjected to rapid room-temperature polymerization with succinic acid, citric acid, and an isosorbide-based diacid, respectively. The polyacids were added to AESO-AZ at stoichiometric ratios. The resulting polymeric materials were cast into films in order to investigate their thermo-mechanical properties. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and tensile stress–strain tests were performed. The glass transition temperatures (Tg) of the samples suggested that increased functionality of the carboxylic acid groups in the polyacids may have effectively increased Tg, while the rigid rings in isosorbide did not have significant impact on Tg. This work illustrates the feasibility of synthesizing bio-based multiaziridine-containing compounds that can be used as the monomer for rapid polymerization with bio-based polyacids at ambient temperature.


: In this paper, we analyze the security of programming languages and their execution environments (compilers and interpreters) with respect to Spectre attacks. The analysis shows that only 16 out of 42 execution environments have mitigations against at least one Spectre variant, i.e. , 26 have no mitigations against any Spectre variant. Using our novel tool Speconnector, we develop Spectre proof-of-concept attacks in 8 programming languages and on code generated by 11 execution environments that were previously not known to be affected. Our results highlight some programming languages that are used to implement security-critical code, but remain entirely unprotected, even three years after the discovery of Spectre.


A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australia's second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.


We will call the dimension outside the causal reality "Total Simultaneity". We argue that the essential tool to experience reality is our consciousness which is entangled with Total Consciousness in Total Simultaneity which contains all possible universes gathered as availabilities. Matter and space-time, in this perception, are an emergent illusion created by Total Consciousness in Total Simultaneity. Each theory we can think about such as the the Big Bang is only one of an infinity of availabilities in TS that could become an emergent reality. To represent the emerging causal reality only as a dualistic digital entity consisting of only "yes" or "no" is to neglect all the grey-tones in between these extremities.


This report provides a synoptic analysis of the legal and governance frameworks that relate to the use and management of mangrove forests globally. It highlights the range of challenges typically encountered in the governance and tenure dimensions of mangrove forest management. This assessment forms part of a broader study that includes national-level assessments in Indonesia and Tanzania. It was carried out under the USAID-funded Tenure and Global Climate Change Program. The report provides information on the challenges for mangrove rehabilitation and restoration, legal frameworks for the governance of mangroves, mangrove governance and tenure in practice, and lessons in mangrove governance for policy and practice. Primary findings from this assessment show that authority over mangrove forest management is overwhelmingly vested in state institutions and that mangrove protection is a central objective. Given the ambiguous role of mangroves situated between the land and sea, the configuration of state authority for mangrove management is quite complex. In some countries, there is fragmentation of responsibilities across two or more agencies such as forests, fisheries, environment, and wildlife. This contributes to a high level of segmentation and jurisdictional ambiguity. Frameworks and mechanisms for enabling multi-sectoral coordination across agencies and governance levels are uncommon, and where they exist, they are difficult to put into practice.


The role of "political reasons" in agency decision making has tremendous importance for administrative law. The conventional wisdom posits that an agency's policy decisions should be justified based on their substantive merits, rather than the preferences of public officials or other political considerations. Yet, the Supreme Court is closely divided on this issue, and prominent commentators have relied on the political control model of administrative law to argue that political reasons should play an enhanced role in agency decision making and that the judiciary should give agencies credit for justifying their policy choices on political grounds. This Article argues that those scholarly proposals are fundamentally misguided because political control theories of administrative law are based on untenable conceptions of democracy and implausible empirical assumptions. It claims that deliberative theories of administrative legitimacy provide a superior alternative, and points out that deliberative democratic theorists have not provided a clear account of the proper role of political preferences in agency decision making. After providing such an account, the Article sets forth a concrete proposal for reforming administrative law that would improve the transparency of the administrative process and allow agencies to incorporate political considerations into their decision making, consistent with the basic principles of deliberative democratic theory. The Article also identifies several reasons to be wary of any reform proposal that would embrace a greater role for political reasons in agency decision making, and concludes that the best way of promoting agency legitimacy and deliberative democracy may be to retain the existing version of hard-look judicial review.


Pseudo-Arabic is a form of ornament, derived from Arabic script, which appears in both Islamic and Christian contexts from the 10th century onwards. The city of Bari in south-east Italy, and its hinterland, boasts a number of examples of this motif. This article explores how pseudo-Arabic was employed in Bari and how the circulation of luxury objects in the medieval Mediterranean contributed to the dissemination of the motif. Bari's most prominent church, the Basilica of San Nicola, contains a particularly inventive example of pseudo-Arabic in its apse mosaic, which can be dated to the decades following the First Crusade. This article explores the idea that booty from the crusade may have provided the inspiration for the pseudo-Arabic pavement.


Defeasible logic is a non-monotonic formalism that deals with incomplete and conflicting information, whereas modal logic deals with the concepts of necessity and possibility. These types of logics play a significant role in the emerging Semantic Web, which enriches the available Web information with meaning, leading to better cooperation between end-users and applications. Defeasible and modal logics, in general, and, particularly, deontic logic provide means for modeling agent communities, where each agent is characterized by its cognitive profile and normative system, as well as policies, which define privacy requirements, access permissions, and individual rights. Toward this direction, this article discusses the extension of DR-DEVICE, a Semantic Web-aware defeasible reasoner, with a mechanism for expressing modal logic operators, while testing the implementation via deontic logic operators, concerned with obligations, permissions, and related concepts. The motivation behind this work is to develop a practical defeasible reasoner for the Semantic Web that takes advantage of the expressive power offered by modal logics, accompanied by the flexibility to define diverse agent behaviours. A further incentive is to study the various motivational notions of deontic logic and discuss the cognitive state of agents, as well as the interactions among them.


This paper explores how to understand and use knowledge of cell ageing in automotive conditions. The key problems and considerations of ageing are considered, followed by an explanation of their causes. This is then used to discuss the tools and understanding required for including this in context of electrified vehicles design and control. What is shown is that ageing is complex, and the dominant underlying causes depend on cell design and usage throughout lifetime. To characterize this, testing, simulation and control approaches must combine, with methods for each of these discussed and evaluated. With future industry trends to higher energy density chemistries, longer pack usage and second life applications, sufficient degradation tools will become even more important in future.


Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.


While government provides the structure of public leadership, governance is the art of public leadership. This timely book examines current trends in metropolitan governance issues. It analyzes specific cases from thirteen major metropolitan regions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all woven together by an overall framework established in the first three chapters. The distinguished contributors address such governance issues as city-county consolidation, local-federal coordination, annexation and special districting, and private contracting, with special attention to lessons learned from both successes and failures. As urban governance innovations have clearly outpaced urban government structures in recent years, the topics covered here are especially relevant.


We consider time-of-use pricing as a technique for matching supply and demand of temporal resources with the goal of maximizing social welfare. Relevant examples include energy, computing resources on a cloud computing platform, and charging stations for electric vehicles, among many others. A client/job in this setting has a window of time during which he needs service, and a particular value for obtaining it. We assume a stochastic model for demand, where each job materializes with some probability via an independent Bernoulli trial. Given a per-time-unit pricing of resources, any realized job will first try to get served by the cheapest available resource in its window and, failing that, will try to find service at the next cheapest available resource, and so on. Thus, the natural stochastic fluctuations in demand have the potential to lead to cascading overload events. Our main result shows that setting prices so as to optimally handle the expected demand works well: with high probability, when the actual demand is instantiated, the system is stable and the expected value of the jobs served is very close to that of the optimal offline algorithm.


Climate change and variability have significant influences on hydrological cycles and the availability of water in the Horn of Africa. Projections of six General Circulation Models (GCMs) in association with high (A2) and low (B1) emission scenarios were adopted in this study from the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) for the period 2020 2039 to assess the impacts of climate changes on the Gilgel Abbay and Gumara watershed hydrology, the upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia. The GCMs selected were screened in accordance with baseline climate statistics of study areas. A weather generator was employed to generate daily temperature and precipitation to drive the General Water Loading Function (GWLF) hydrological model for simulating runoffs. Projected changes in temperature differences and precipitation ratios relative to the baseline were analyzed to explain the variations in evapotranspiration and the influences on runoff. Despite the fact that the projected magnitude varies among GCMs, increasing runoff in both wet and dry seasons was observed for both watersheds, attributable mainly to the increase in precipitation projected by most GCMs. In contrast to the great increases in runoff, variations in evapotranspiration are less significant. The projected runoff in both watersheds implies increased potential for promoting agricultural irrigation in the dry season. Furthermore, it would allow greater inflow to Lake Tana, the largest contributor to the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. Therefore, concerned local, state, and federal government organizations shall be prepared to harness opportunities from the projected increase in runoff.


We aim at the problem named One-Shot Unsupervised Domain Adaptation. Unlike traditional Unsupervised Domain Adaptation, it assumes that only one unlabeled target sample can be available when learning to adapt. This setting is realistic but more challenging, in which conventional adaptation approaches are prone to failure due to the scarce of unlabeled target data. To this end, we propose a novel Adversarial Style Mining approach, which combines the style transfer module and task-specific module into an adversarial manner. Specifically, the style transfer module iteratively searches for harder stylized images around the one-shot target sample according to the current learning state, leading the task model to explore the potential styles that are difficult to solve in the almost unseen target domain, thus boosting the adaptation performance in a data-scarce scenario. The adversarial learning framework makes the style transfer module and task-specific module benefit each other during the competition. Extensive experiments on both cross-domain classification and segmentation benchmarks verify that ASM achieves state-of-the-art adaptation performance under the challenging one-shot setting.


Background and Purpose— Imaging is an important aspect of decisions regarding treatment for acute stroke. New imaging techniques using MRI and CT enable estimation of tissue viability. This information may be useful to select patients for acute stroke therapies. Summary of Report— Several clinical trials identified patients with penumbra based on MRI or CT imaging. The results indicate patients with penumbra by imaging improve with reperfusion, but it is not yet clear that thrombolysis is beneficial when patients are selected on this basis. New quantitative techniques for assessing perfusion and diffusion may improve these results. Conclusion— Identifying reversible patterns on MRI or CT perfusion imaging may ultimately yield better results than the mismatch concept that is currently under active investigation.


Social connections are fundamental to human wellbeing. This paper examines the social networks of young married women in rural Odisha, India. This is a group for whom highly-gendered norms around marriage, mobility and work are likely to shape opportunities to form and maintain meaningful ties with other women. We track the social networks of 2,170 mothers over four years, and find a high degree of isolation. Wealthier women and women from more-advantaged castes and tribes have smaller social networks than their less-advantaged peers. These gradients are primarily driven by the fact that more-advantaged women are less likely to know other women within the same socioeconomic group than are less-advantaged women. There exists strong homophily by socioeconomic status (SES) that is symmetric across socioeconomic groups. Mediation analysis shows that SES differences in social isolation are strongly associated with ownership of toilets and labor force participation. Further research should investigate the formation and role of female networks.


Understanding the evolution of molecular electronic structures is the key to explore and control photochemical reactions and photobiological processes. Subjected to strong laser fields, electronic holes are formed upon ionization and evolve in the attosecond timescale. It is crucial to probe the electronic dynamics in real time with attosecond-temporal and atomic-spatial precision. Here, we present molecular attosecond interferometry that enables the in situ manipulation of holes in carbon dioxide molecules via the interferometry of the phase-locked electrons (propagating in opposite directions) of a laser-triggered rotational wave packet. The joint measurement on high-harmonic and terahertz spectroscopy (HATS) provides a unique tool for understanding electron dynamics from picoseconds to attoseconds. The optimum phases of two-color pulses for controlling the electron wave packet are precisely determined owing to the robust reference provided with the terahertz pulse generation. It is noteworthy that the contribution of HOMO-1 and HOMO-2 increases reflecting the deformation of the hole as the harmonic order increases. Our method can be applied to study hole dynamics of complex molecules and electron correlations during the strong-field process. The threefold control through molecular alignment, laser polarization, and the two-color pulse phase delay allows the precise manipulation of the transient hole paving the way for new advances in attochemistry.


Australian local government faces severe financial distress. Several solutions have been suggested to this problem. However, the potential of local economic development to strengthen local government sustainability has been neglected in the Australian context. Given both the immense diversity characteristic of Australian local government, as well as the complexities inherent in local economic development, mainstream theoretical approaches do not provide a satisfactory conceptual basis upon which to consider the potential contribution of local economic development to local government sustainability. This paper seeks to address this conceptual shortfall by presenting an approach to the complexities and paradoxes in local economic development in the Australian institutional context by developing an augmented and modified series of metaphors adapted from Bingham and Mier (1993).


Tort Law is not harmonised at a European level. Substantive and procedural regulations vary substantially across EU Member States in most of the facets and dimensions of damages actions. These differences derive, amongst other causes, from different legal traditions. However, significant efforts are being made in order to find common ground for the approximation or even harmonisation of these laws across the EU - building on the Principles of European Tort Law and other projects, such as the European Code of Civil Procedure. However, harmonisation of Tort Law and the corresponding Civil Procedure regulations is still open to debate and the process is envisaged to take a significant delay before any formal legal instruments are approved. Such regulatory diversity is inevitably reflected in the field of antitrust private enforcement-based on claims for harm inflicted as a result of the anticompetitive behaviour, which the European Commission is trying to encourage and promote as a key element of the modernisation process of the EC antitrust rules undertaken in 2003. In this regard, a Green Paper on damages actions for breach of the EC antitrust rules was published in December 2005 with the purpose of opening up a reform process that could facilitate private damages actions across the EU. Most remarkably, the Green Paper put forward most of the divergences in national Tort Law and Civil Procedure regulations that jeopardize the effectiveness of a privately enforced competition system. These differences in national regulations contrast with the nearly-full de facto harmonisation existing in antitrust law and its public enforcement. Consequently, the Commission proposed harmonisation alternatives that imply deep reforms in national Tort Law and Civil Procedure regulations. Those proposals are to be developed and further analysed in a forthcoming White Paper - foreseen to be adopted around the turn of the year 2007. At this stage, and before the Commission puts forward new harmonisation proposals, this paper analyses its need and adequacy and wonders whether the efforts of the Commission for the harmonisation of antitrust damages actions constitutes a backdoor harmonisation of fundamental aspects of Tort Law and Civil Procedure with much broader implications and effects in fields of Law other than antitrust.


Abstract Objectives Alcohol is a psychoactive substance with dependence-producing properties. Alcohol's harmful use causes large burden diseases like social and economic burden in societies. Binge drinking is one of the commonest forms of alcohol misuse and has been on an increase among many young women, who find alcohol a source of pleasure and enjoyment when they have timeout with friends and peers. Since binge drinking involves consumption of alcohol on an irregular basis, it may not be viewed as a hazardous form of alcohol use by many drinkers. The present study is aimed at estimating the proportion of female binge drinkers in the population of female social drinkers in Kalingalinga township of Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. We hypothesised that the proportion of binge drinking in the population of female social drinkers is significantly high. Methods Through snowball sampling, 100 questionnaires (i.e., Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-AUDIT) were successfully distributed to and collected from the female social drinkers aged 20–39 years between August and September, 2016. A two-fold process was followed in identifying the binge drinkers; screening for hazardous alcohol drinkers by identifying those that scored 8 points or above in the first place, and thereafter, identifying binge drinking characteristics from the hazardous drinkers by following scores from the first three questions on the AUDIT. Results The results reviewed that 54 of the 100 participants had some form of hazardous alcohol use and 30 of the 54 hazardous drinkers possessed some binge drinking characteristics. The proportion of female binge drinkers in a population of female alcohol drinkers was estimated to be 0.556 (56.6%), while in the general population, it was estimated to be 0.094. This implies that 9.4% of women aged 20–39 years of Kalingalinga in Lusaka engage in alcohol binge drinking, consuming on average 7–9 drinks on occasion almost on a weekly basis. Further, if 56% of all female alcohol drinkers aged 20–39 years seem to engage in some form of alcohol binge drinking, it means that that binge drinking is the highest form of alcohol misuse among these female drinkers. Conclusion The results of the present study suggest that there is more alcohol binge drinking among the female social drinkers of Kalingalinga in Lusaka, with an estimated proportion of 0.556 (55.6%) among the female alcohol drinkers and 0.094 (9.4%) in the general population of females aged between 20–39 years. The implication is that alcohol binge drinking seems to be the highest form of alcohol misuse among female drinkers in Kalingalinga.