If they imitate they should imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask which the actor wears is apt to become his face. --Plato, The Republic Blackface minstrel plays were a cultural phenomenon that became one of the most popular forms of entertainment by the Civil War in 1861 As theatrical productions in which white men caricatured blacks for sport and profit by painting their faces black using a burnt cork paste, minstrelsy held obvious racial implications. Principally found in the urban North in the early nineteenth century, these plays were the space for more than just the blackface performers themselves; they were the stage to a collision of culture and race, class and gender that helped create the definition of a new American identity. The study of minstrelsy therefore treads upon the uncomfortable territory of racial conflict. The inherent discomfort of this topic has been ubiquitous in our society for years, a paradigm of which perhaps minstrelsy itself is a root. Developed during a tumultuous time in our nation's history, minstrelsy was elemental in shaping the American perception of black culture, and the burnt cork black on a white face was an ominous foreshadow of the residue of blackness to be left on the newly created white culture. However, we must not be satisfied to merely condemn the inherent evils of minstrelsy and move on, for its legacy is all around us, imbedded in our culture. From TV shows to Hollywood movies, cartoons to comedies sketches, popular music to the jargon and dress of what is known as American culture, minstrelsy fomented a process that still affects our society today. The setting is different--the idyllic plantation exchanged for the mean streets of urban America--but the process of black culture being marketed for white profit is the same. We must revisit these plays and their audience and find how it all began. To find the social origins and psychological motives behind these plays, we must take inventory of their cultural effects, tracing the change back to the source in the nineteenth century United States. The minstrel show began in an environment that was struggling to find identity. The antebellum North was deeply engaged in urbanization, industrialization, minstrel show. The wars abroad were over, but the wars at home were only about to begin, on and off the battlefields of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Antietam. At a time in which the United States was arguably at its weakest, masses of working-class, white Americans of diverse descent flocked to the minstrel stage and helped popularize a new cultural identity. The minstrel depiction of blacks created a perception of black identity based on how the white actors presented it, and the white audience embraced the production with cheers and applause. A difficult, yet irrevocable truth is that blackface minstrelsy's audience was not motivated solely by racial prejudice and slander. There were contradictory impulses at work. Condescending racism combined with potentially positive elements of what was portrayed as black culture to create "cultural theft"--a concept that carries the connotations of envy as opposed to hatred. In his masterpiece on minstrelsy, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (1993), author Eric Lott describes this phenomenon, holding that "the blackface performance ... was based on small but significant crimes against settled ideas of racial demarcation, which indeed appear to be inevitable when white Americans enter the haunted realm of racial fantasy." (2) Although the study of minstrelsy is not uniform, there tends to be two broad views on blackface: the populist and revisionist views. (3) The revisionist view is the more controversial in that it does not align nicely with the immediate negative impression of minstrelsy and requires a certain objective detachment from minstrelsy's inherent inequalities. …


ABSTRACT Chlamydia pneumoniae causes community-acquired pneumonia and is associated with several chronic diseases, including asthma and atherosclerosis. The intracellular growth rate of C. pneumoniae slows dramatically during chronic infection, and such persistence leads to attenuated production of new elementary bodies, appearance of morphologically aberrant reticulate bodies, and altered expression of several chlamydial genes. We used an in vitro system to further characterize persistent C. pneumoniaeinfection, employing both ultrastructural and transcriptional activity measurements. HEp-2 cells were infected with C. pneumoniae (TW-183) at a multiplicity of infection of 3:1, and at 2 h postinfection gamma interferon (IFN-γ) was added to the medium at 0.15 or 0.50 ng/ml. Treated and untreated cultures were harvested at several times postinfection. RNA was isolated and reverse transcribed, and reverse transcription (RT)-PCR analyses targeting primary transcripts from chlamydial rRNA operons as well asdnaA, polA, mutS,minD, ftsK, and ftsW mRNA were done. Some cultures were fixed and stained for electron microscopic analysis, and a real-time PCR assay was used to assess relative chlamydial chromosome accumulation under each culture condition. The latter assays showed that bacterial chromosome copies accumulated severalfold during IFN-γ treatment of infected HEp-2 cells, although less accumulation was observed in cells treated with the higher dose. Electron microscopy demonstrated that high-dose IFN-γ treatment elicited aberrant forms of the bacterium. RT-PCR showed that chlamydial primary rRNA transcripts were present in all IFN-γ-treated and untreated cell cultures, indicating bacterial metabolic activity. Transcripts from dnaA,polA, mutS, and minD, all of which encode products for bacterial chromosome replication and partition, were expressed in IFN-γ-treated and untreated cells. In contrast, ftsK and ftsW, encoding products for bacterial cell division, were expressed in untreated cells, but expression was attenuated in cells treated with low-dose IFN-γ and absent in cells given the high dose of cytokine. Thus, the development of persistence included production of transcripts for DNA replication-related, but not cell division-related, genes. These results provide new insight regarding molecular activities that accompany persistence of C. pneumoniae, as well as suggesting requirements for reactivation from persistent to productive growth.


Large p 5 0 0 pm), suspended particles of organic and inorganic material, often referred to as 'marine snow', are considered important in the vertical transport and biogeochemical transformation of particulate organic carbon in the marine environment. Previous work has indicated that bacterial species inhabiting marine snow particles may differ greatly from those commonly found living free in the surrounding water column. To further characterize marine-snow-attached bacterial populations, we sampled marine snow by SCUBA diving during periods of intense macroaggregate formation in the northern Adriatic Sea in August 1991. Small subunit ribosomal DNA (rDNA) fragments of bacteria were amplified from extracted nucleic acids by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The diversity of the recovered rDNA clones was initially assessed by c o r n p m g restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) of individual clones. Ninety-five bacterial clones examined yielded 90 different KFLP patterns, representing an estimated sampling coverage of only 5.3%. Sequence analysis of 39 randomly chosen clones was used to assess the general phylogenetic affiliation of individual clones. Bacterial phyla represented in the library included affiliates of the Planctomyces, the Gram-positive bacteria, the Cytophaga-Flavobacteria-Bacteroides (CFB) lineage, and the alpha-, gamma-, delta-, and epsilon-subdivisions of the Proteobacteria. The results suggest that bacterial colonization of suspended marine macroaggregates can result in diverse and complex assemblages, with specific phyla, such as the CFB, being commonly associated with marine particles. Futhermore, this particle-attached bacterial assemblage was similar to other bacterial assemblages found in marine sediments and terrestrial soils, with respect to the nature of the associated phylogenetic groups.


Inclusive jet and dijet cross sections have been measured in proton-proton collisions at a centreof-mass energy of 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The cross sections were measured using jets clustered with the anti-kt algorithm with parameters R = 0.4 and R = 0.6. These measurements are based on the 2010 data sample, consisting of a total integrated luminosity of 37 pb−1. Inclusive jet double-differential cross sections are presented as a function of jet transverse momentum, in bins of jet rapidity. Dijet double-differential cross sections are studied as a function of the dijet invariant mass, in bins of half the rapidity separation of the two leading jets. The measurements are performed in the jet rapidity range |y| < 4.4, covering jet transverse momenta from 20 GeV to 1.5 TeV and dijet invariant masses from 70 GeV to 5 TeV. The data are compared to expectations based on next-to-leading order QCD calculations corrected for non-perturbative effects, as well as to next-to-leading order Monte Carlo predictions. In addition to a test of the theory in a new kinematic regime, the data also provide sensitivity to parton distribution functions in a region where they are currently not well-constrained.


Globally, there is an increased recognition of the important role played by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the economic development of a country. Similarly, in Kenya, SMEs are the main engine behind economic growth, contribution to the GDP, employment creation, poverty reduction and industrial development. Garment SMEs are amongst the oldest within the country and are widespread all over the country. Past study shows that Garment SMEs represents 5 percent of all micro enterprises and one third of all manufacturing SMEs in Kenya. The typical firm operates with the owner and one or two employees. They are spread all over the country with 60 percent of all garment SMEs concentrated in the rural areas (McCormick et. al. 2007). Despite various attempts by the Government and other bodies to resolve challenges hindering growth and development of SMEs raising capital to finance operations remains a major constraint of majority of the SMEs, (Naidu et al, 2011), (Ndung'u 2010). This means that for SMEs to achieve their expected roles as drivers of economic growth challenges that hinder their development should be addressed. The General objective of the study was to establish challenges experienced by Small and Medium Garment Enterprises in Umoja location of Embakasi Constituency in financing their business operations. The specific objectives of the study were to establish how Government policies and legal and regulatory framework influence SMEs ability to finance their business operations, to establish how the size of business influence ability of SMEs in financing their business operations, to establish how collateral requirement influence ability of SMEs in financing their business operations, and lastly to establish the attitude of garment SMEs owners in financing their business operations through credit facilities. The study adopted a descriptive research Design targeting a population of 162 enterprises dealing with garment production in Umoja-Embakasi Constituency which are licensed with Nairobi City Council. A sample of 48 enterprises was selected using cluster sampling design for testing. Primary data was collected by use of questionnaire, analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and presented in tables and graphs. Secondary data was obtained from magazines, books, periodicals and internet. Conclusions drawn from the study indicate that collateral requirement together with Government policy on imported garments adversely affect garment SME financing among other factors such as size of business and Financial Institutions attitude towards SMEs. The study established that though Financial institutions regard SMEs as high risk investments their credit rating is good. The study recommends that access to finances by garment SMEs in UmojaEmbakasi constituency be made easier through easily accessible devolved funds and lower interest rates. Financial institutions should reduce their demand for collateral. Government policy needs to target the policy on imported commodities which enjoy low taxes and adversely affects locally manufactured garments with high cost of production. A study should be carried out to investigate the benefits accruing to SMEs which have access to credit facility and garment business owners should be trained on the importance of financing business operation through credit facility.


In this paper, we propose a novel method to treat thin conductive (TC) sheets of arbitrary three-dimensional (3-D) shape and curvature with the electromagnetic (EM) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm without the need to resolve the sheet thickness spatially. We show that the physical properties of TC sheets enable us to do so without introducing additional field components to the conventional Yee scheme. Due to this noninvasive approach, in addition to the preserved stability of the FDTD algorithm, the method can be directly applied to any existing FDTD kernel, such as parallelized or hardware accelerated versions. The method has been developed within the framework of a professional EM FDTD software package and tested on real-world problems.


The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions announced in October 1997 that it intended to set a casualty reduction target for Great Britain for the year 2010, building upon the experience of the previous target for 2000. A method has been developed to investigate the likely number of casualties in 2010 as part of the preparation for the new target, and this report describes the method. The method focuses upon trends in the national casualty data since 1983, supplemented with information about changes in the volume of travel by different types of road user. The casualty trends are related where possible to the road safety measures that were introduced over this period. Casualty forecasts for 2010 are then prepared in two stages: the trends are extrapolated to 2010 to give 'baseline' forecasts, which are then combined with assessments of the effects of new road safety measures that might be introduced between now and 2010. The future number of casualties will also depend upon the volume of travel by the various modes. There are, however, currently no comprehensive forecasts that take into account the Government's strategy for reducing car dependency as set out in its 1998 Integrated Transport White Paper. Casualty forecasts have therefore been made for a variety of transport scenarios. (A)


The authors of this study analysed the increasing use of personalized marketing and consumer concerns regarding the access to personal information. The purpose was to find out how companies could react to these concerns. Several theoretical concepts were explored, such as Personal Data, Personalized Marketing, Privacy Concerns, Privacy Policies, Consumer Trust and Consumer Behaviour. Facebook Inc. was analysed as an example to address the problem. An online survey was conducted on university students and two interviews were performed with representatives from the Data Inspection Board in Sweden. The main findings were that individuals seem to approve of personalized marketing but are concerned about their privacy. Companies should therefore inform their consumers on how personal data is used for personalized marketing and respect their rights and take governmental regulations into consideration.


In the late nineteenth century European scientists increasingly campaigned for the protection of nature. Many of them did so by associating the natural world with explicitly national and local values. The focus of these protectors was on plants, which were literally rooted in local ground. Protection of nature, so these scientists argued, was protection of the Heimat. Alongside national initiatives, the years 1890-1940 also witnessed the rise of an internationally-oriented nature protection movement. Through international conferences this movement started to campaign for the protection of border-crossing animals such as migratory birds, whales, and Africa's big game. The movement and the understanding of nature it constructed were strongly influenced by its social, cultural, and institutional context. The small network of people involved consisted largely of experts associated with natural history museums, zoos, and (later) nature reserves, and was strongly linked to aristocratic and diplomatic circles. Their approach to conservation was shaped by scientific ambition, a masculine hunting ethos, colonialism, and by an openly antisentimental and anti-commercial vision of the world. Today the context of conservation is very different, yet many of the old images of nature persist.


In this note, reverse order laws for $\{1,2,3\}$-inverse of a two-operator product is mainly investigated by making full use of block-operator matrix technique. First, an example is given, which demonstrates there is a gap in the main result in [{\it {X. J. Liu, S. X. Wu, D. S. Cvetkovi$\acute{c}$-Ili$\acute{c}$. New results on reverse order law for $\{1,2,3\}$- and $\{1,2,4\}$-inverses of bounded operators. Mathematics of Computation, 2013, 82(283): 1597-1607}}]. Next, The new necessary and sufficient conditions for $B\{1,2,i\}A\{1,2,i\}\subseteq(AB)\{1,2,i\}(i\in\{3,4\})$ are presented respectively, when all ranges $R(A), \ R(B)$ and $ R(AB)$ are closed. Which will fill up the gap in the above paper. https://doi.org/10.28919/jmcs/3483


It is, of course, the city of this year's "Platea dell'umanita"; part two, one might say, of Harald Szeemann's grand linkage between the then of the twentieth century and the now of the new millennium. I'm here--in another June--to pursue those two thoughtlets of a year ago a little bit further through Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's work The Paradise Institute, shown here under the curatorial direction of Wayne Baerwaldt. Taking my cue from Venice itself, I'm interested in pursuing the linkage of time with that of place: in returning to Venice, I am in a place that connects Cardiff and Collyer across time--eight years, 1993 and 2001--through place, the same site--Canada's ambassador pavilion to the biennale. I want to reconsider Collyer's sculpture Kiosk, shown along with four similar works from the early 1990s in the Canadian pavilion that year by curator Philip Monk. In the process, we add then and now to here and there. As with Yonge Street, Willowdale, Robin Collyer's Kiosk in the pavilion in 1993 was clear about its boundaries. The pavilion itself was conceived around the discrete nature of the visual artwork, its historic definitional status as an implicit commentary on, rather than elision with, affairs in the world. To enter the Canadian pavilion that year was to enter into an assembly of five iconic three-dimensional images, each of which, like Kiosk, acted with respect to one another as words in a sentence. I want to insist on this comparison, because I made the point earlier that, with Collyer, the language within signs has been converted to the language of signs--in this case the palpable form of the sign: Kiosk. Language in this mode as both title and object becomes itself palpable, very much here, and assumes an equivalent dimension to the icon to which it refers, to the "there" of the object-image. It is this contiguous relationship of here to there that connects Younge Street, Willowdale and Kiosk to the viewer within the oscillation I have described as a form of travel. Alice ran hard to find herself in the place she never left, about to embark upon a game whose moves were clearly established while their possibilities remained entirely undetermined. Collyer's pavilion in 1993 presented the viewer with a set play of five "moves," like those sketched out for Alice by the Red Queen. Striking about all of them, Kiosk included, was their quotation of suburban culture and the fabrication of interlocking specific objects whose anonymity produces the realm of possibilities out of which are generated the recognitions that provide the viewer the "carnal delight and spiritual ecstasy" experienced when confronted with Collyer's work. The viewer of Kiosk is free to move from their "here" to Collyer's "there" unimpeded. If The Paradise Institute is overdetermined, in both the technical and popular senses of the term, Collyer's Kiosk is underdetermined, indeterminate and open to moves in a game whose evolution is to be determined by the viewer. Delight and ecstasy thrive in an environment of ambiguity where possibility can be both recognized and invented, where the terms at issue are driven neither by deception nor by imposition. With Kiosk, I know where I am, even in a strange land.


Cashew, Anacardium occidentale is being grown extensively along the East Coast of West Malaysia. It is estimated that 3500 hectares are planted with Cashew plants. The area is covered with sandy bris soil where agriculture has not being able to establish itself. The growing of cashews provide raw materials for the setting up of processing plants, as well as opportunities for more employments. The cultivation of cashew have many problems. For example, the limiting factors affecting the yields are the poor fertility of the bris soil and the presence of mansoon an the East Coast. To make the matter worse, there is a shortage of harvesters at the peak of fruiting seasons. Many preliminary trials had been attempted by various agencies such as CIMA, MARDI and Department of Agriculture and Universities to solve some of the basic problems. In the past, there was a lack of inter-organisational research activities. The trend now is to have joint investigational work between various agencies with the hope of reducing duplication. The paper discusses the major problems of Cashew cultivation and some aspects of research in solving the problems.


Chromones are found to be natural or natural origin. Several studies have been performed on the types of reagents utilized for the cyclization of chalcones to chromene-4-ones. Chromones are recognized as pharmacophores having a number of biological activities such as anticancer, antiviral, antifungal, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antidepressant and antiobesity etc. There are various synthetic methods reported. Therapeutic potential and brief discussion on synthesis of chromones are reviewed.


Hydrologic modelling is central to the solution of many water quantity and quality issues. As the complexity of these issues increases, model complexity increases. The purpose of this research was to determine the effects of model complexity on hydrologic model prediction accuracy. Model complexity can enter through the formulation of the model structure as well as the selection of calibration data and criteria. A complex hydrologic model was developed and then simplified based on structural complexity and the change in accuracy was assessed. The results showed that complex models containing excessive low sensitivity parameters did not significantly improve prediction accuracy. However, a lack of complete representation of the physical processes of the hydrologic cycle did affect prediction accuracy. Anomalies in the calibration data can suggest poor prediction accuracy regardless of actual model prediction capabilities. And calibrating to meet specific design criteria should be avoided to ensure optimal overall prediction accuracy. Guidelines were developed to improve future development and application of hydrologic models.


The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was the first instance of countries adhering to take a collective action against global warming. More than 190 countries came forward and submitted their contributions in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, reflective of their ability and capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as each country set its own targets and actions. For some countries, it meant a significant decline in their emissions by 2030, while others, like China, the United States, and India, decided on a more gradual phasing out extending beyond 2030. This paper estimates the economic impacts of implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement in terms of its implications for welfare, gross domestic product, investments, and trade for major countries and regions. It uses a computable general equilibrium framework to model global, regional, and country impacts. The analysis suggests that the economic impacts will be mostly felt in the European Union if the Paris Agreement is fully implemented. The European Union is likely to suffer a welfare loss of 1.0 to 1.5 percent by 2030. Among non-European countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico will also be affected, with an expected welfare loss of about 1.5 percent. Some of the major emitters, such as China and India, will experience minimal impacts to their welfare, and the United States will experience a welfare loss of only about 0.7 by 2030. The sectoral analysis of production and trade suggests a significant loss to fossil fuel–based sectors, while clean energy sectors can experience significant gains.


Ring-dikes are cylindrical sheet intrusions that develop at a subvolcanic level due to ascent of magma along steep outward-dipping ring fractures. Magma ascent is triggered by central block subsidence, and fully formed ring-dikes are composed of a flat-lying sill-like roof as well as steeply outward-dipping walls on all sides. The Great Eucrite of the Ardnamurchan Paleocene igneous complex, NW Scotland, is a spectacular gabbro intrusion that has been cited as one of the classic examples of a ring-dike for the past 70 yr. We combine field observations, detailed structural measurements of primary magmatic features, and anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility data in a reinvestigation of this intrusive body. Magmatic layering and macroscopic planar crystal arrangements dip inward, and magnetic lineations plunge consistently toward the center of the intrusion, in contrast to what would be expected for a ring-dike. We propose that the Great Eucrite ring-dike is in fact a lopolithic intrusion with an overall funnel-shape geometry. This conclusion brings into question the presence of three individual foci of activity in Ardnamurchan, purported to have shifted throughout the development of the complex. It also has significant implications for the status and structural evolution of other igneous complexes of the British Paleocene igneous province, which contain layered mafic intrusions currently regarded as ring-dikes.


Porting state of the art deep learning algorithms to resource constrained compute platforms (e.g. VR, AR, wearables) is extremely challenging. We propose a fast, compact, and accurate model for convolutional neural networks that enables efficient learning and inference. We introduce LCNN, a lookup-based convolutional neural network that encodes convolutions by few lookups to a dictionary that is trained to cover the space of weights in CNNs. Training LCNN involves jointly learning a dictionary and a small set of linear combinations. The size of the dictionary naturally traces a spectrum of trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy. Our experimental results on ImageNet challenge show that LCNN can offer 3.2x speedup while achieving 55.1% top-1 accuracy using AlexNet architecture. Our fastest LCNN offers 37.6x speed up over AlexNet while maintaining 44.3% top-1 accuracy. LCNN not only offers dramatic speed ups at inference, but it also enables efficient training. In this paper, we show the benefits of LCNN in few-shot learning and few-iteration learning, two crucial aspects of on-device training of deep learning models.


Total above-ground biomass at harvest and ear density are two important traits that characterize wheat genotypes. Two experiments were carried out in two different sites where several genotypes were grown under contrasted irrigation and nitrogen treatments. A high spatial resolution RGB camera was used to capture the residual stems standing straight after the cutting by the combine machine during harvest. It provided a ground spatial resolution better than 0.2 mm. A Faster Regional Convolutional Neural Network (Faster-RCNN) deep-learning model was first trained to identify the stems cross section. Results showed that the identification provided precision and recall close to 95%. Further, the balance between precision and recall allowed getting accurate estimates of the stem density with a relative RMSE close to 7% and robustness across the two experimental sites. The estimated stem density was also compared with the ear density measured in the field with traditional methods. A very high correlation was found with almost no bias, indicating that the stem density could be a good proxy of the ear density. The heritability/repeatability evaluated over 16 genotypes in one of the two experiments was slightly higher (80%) than that of the ear density (78%). The diameter of each stem was computed from the profile of gray values in the extracts of the stem cross section. Results show that the stem diameters follow a gamma distribution over each microplot with an average diameter close to 2.0 mm. Finally, the biovolume computed as the product of the average stem diameter, the stem density, and plant height is closely related to the above-ground biomass at harvest with a relative RMSE of 6%. Possible limitations of the findings and future applications are finally discussed.


We contribute to the studies of monetary policy transmission mechanisms' influence on real sector competitiveness. Monetary policy changes influence credit availability and affordability to enterprises and thus transmits impacts to the real sector competitiveness. Using the Russian market data, we derived several lagged regression and VAR models to estimate the extent of corporate competitiveness dependency on credit extension or shrinking. Our findings comprise the conclusion that monetary policy changes affecting the money supply (M2) having positive impact on the volumes of credit extended to enterprises and on the net change of bank loans debt together denoted as 'credit channel breadth'. Changes of the latter inspire changes of several dimensions of corporate competitiveness – capital expenditure and fixed assets' purchase value, since companies facing the liquidity changes revise their attitude to liquidity and profitability tradeoff.


Thirty-one radiocarbon results are now available from the West Kennet long barrow, and are presented within an interpretive Bayesian statistical framework. Two alternative archaeological interpretations of the sequence are given, each with a separate Bayesian model. In our preferred interpretation, the barrow is seen as a unitary construction (given the lack of dating samples from the old ground surface, ditches or constructional features themselves), with a series of deposits of human remains made in the chambers following construction. Primary deposition in the chambers is followed by further secondary deposition of some human remains, including children, and layers of earth and chalk, the latest identifiable finds in which are Beaker sherds. In the Bayesian model for this sequence, the construction of the monument at West Kennet, as dated from the primary mortuary deposits, occurred in 3670–3635 cal. bc, probably in the middle decades of the thirty-seventh century cal. bc. The last interments of this initial use of the chambers probably occurred in 3640–3610 cal. bc. The difference between these two distributions suggests that this primary mortuary activity probably continued for only 10–30 years. After a hiatus probably lasting for rather more than a century, the infilling of the chambers began in 3620–3240 cal. bc and continued into the second half of the third millennium cal. bc. In an alternative interpretation, we do not assume that all the people dated from the primary mortuary deposits were placed in the monument in a fleshed or partially articulated condition; they could therefore have died before the monument was built, although they must have died before the end of the formation of the mortuary deposit. In the Bayesian model for this interpretation, the monument appears to belong either to the thirty-seventh century cal. bc or the mid-thirty-sixth century cal. bc, and deposition again appears short-lived, but the model is unstable. Results are discussed in relation to the setting and sequence of the local region.


Excerpt] Income distribution is only one indicator of economic well-being useful in gauging improvements in the economic position of the poor; change in income distribution, appropriately conceived and measured, is as good a criterion as any for assessing progress toward the alleviation of poverty. Income is intimately bound up with a family's command over economic resources. Rising modern-sector employment or reduced infant mortality might be suggestive of improvements in the economic position of the poor; gains in real income among low-income groups provide direct evidence that poverty is being alleviated. This chapter answers the following questions: What are the strengths and limitations of alternative income concepts? "Greater equality of income distribution" implies an increase in the incomes of the poor in developing countries relative to the income of the nonpoor. Relative-inequality measures dominate the existing literature on income distribution and economic development. What are the main lessons from these studies? Is it desirable to use relative income measures to assess the welfare of the poor and progress of public policies in meeting objectives of equity? Are indicators based on absolute incomes and poverty possibly more appropriate? Are reliable and accurate data available, on a regular basis, to measure the various indicators? What recommendations, taking into account cost and other considerations, can be made on the reporting of recommended indicators?


Preparing for a biological attack involves analysing and co-ordinating information and events in the scientific, political and social arenas. The information that must be evaluated is, by definition, incomplete. It is not surprising that such interactions have regularly resulted in erroneous conclusions and flawed interventions. This historical survey examines instances where significant errors have occurred. The author describes several examples in each of three broad categories: misapprehensions of the risk of biological attack; misappraisals of an anomalous event as a biological attack; and misadventures in pre-emptive action to protect against a biological attack. The study identifies significant common elements in each of these errors that may be useful in avoiding future mistakes. In evaluating the effects of these errors, the study concludes that such mistakes often increase the dangers that they seek to avoid.


This monograph examines the ways in which late twentieth-century European cinema deals with the neglected subject of civil war. Exploring a range of films about the Spanish, Irish, Former Yugoslavian, and Greek civil wars, this comparative and interdisciplinary study engages with contemporary debates in cultural memory and investigates the ways in which cinematic postmemory is problematic. Many of the films present an idealised past that glosses over the reality of these civil wars, at times producing a nostalgic discourse of loss and longing. Other films engage with the past in a melancholic fashion, while other films deal with the traumatic past in a Bakhtinean carnivalesque way. These cinematic discourses articulate contemporary concerns, especially the loss of ideology and a utopian political horizon in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, a date that marks a significant break in European history and an accompanying paradigm shift in European cultural memory.

Filmmakers examined include Trueba, Cuerda, Loach, Jordan, Kusturica, Dragojevic, and Angelopoulos.


The ability to automatically segment a "simple"object of any size from its background is important for an active agent (e.g. a robot) to interact effectively in the real world. Recently, we proposed an algorithm [14] to segment a "simple"object in a scale invariant manner given a point anywhere inside that object. However, we did not provide a strategy to select a point inside a "simple"object in [14]. In this paper, we propose a new system that automatically selects the points inside different "simple"objects in the scene, carries out the segmentation process for the selected points, and outputs only the regions corresponding to the "simple"objects in the scene. The proposed attention mechanism for the segmentation problem utilizes, for the first time, the concept of border ownership [17].


The increasing importance of marketing services has led services industries to pursue ways of providing better services and improve customer satisfaction in a competitive marketplace. Knowing what can be promoted and what customers consider in choosing the service provider are important factors in a strategic marketing plan. Recognizing core competences with customer expectations and perceptions is undoubtedly the best tool for success. While services marketing has been studied for many services industries, logistics, particularly customs services, is rarely addressed. Exploiting services quality and perception scales, this qualitative study applied content analysis to semi-structured interviews to explore the marketing criteria of customs service providers from a dyadic perspective within businessto-business (B2B) services. Marketing criteria for customs services were categorized as company, personnel, and service-oriented. Three genuine dimensions were created in accordance with their relevance to the service provider company, employees working in the service provider company and the service itself. The results reveal that customs services marketing criteria taken into consideration by customers for service provider choice can be different when compared to other services within a B2B environment. This study contributes to services marketing regarding customs services by comparing the factors of logistics services quality and perception literature.


Mars is the only planet other than Earth in the Solar System that has a preserved nonpolar geological record of glaciation on its surface. Nonpolar ice deposits on Mars have been linked to variations in spin-axis obliquity that cause mobilization of polar ice and redeposition at lower latitudes, forming ice-rich and glacial deposits. Remnant nonpolar glacial deposits are found across the northern mid-latitudes where surface ice is not currently stable, implying that different climatic conditions existed on Mars in the past. Individual glacial deposits are often too small to date reliably using impact crater size-frequency data. We describe a novel approach that allows us to derive new information about when glaciation occurred in broad areas of the northern mid-latitudes. In this region we have classified (1) craters that superpose preexisting glacial deposits and were modified by later accumulation (and therefore formed during an epoch when glaciation was occurring), and (2) craters that are superposed on glacial deposits but are themselves unmodified by ice accumulation (and thus post-date significant glaciation). The sparse population of post-glacial craters reveals that the last period of extensive ice deposition of this type in this latitude band was recent (Late Amazonian). The substantial number of craters formed during the recurring glacial periods implies that northern mid-latitude glaciation was a long-lived recurring process, occurring over a period of at least ∼600 m.y. On the basis of Mars atmospheric general circulation models, these results are consistent with higher obliquity being common in the past, with recurring periods of obliquity exceeding the 25° axial tilt of Mars today. These observations support the statistical prediction of J. Laskar and colleagues that the median obliquity during the Amazonian was ∼35°–40°.


The upcoming exa-scale era requires a parallel program execution model capable of achieving scalability, productivity, energy efficiency, and resiliency. The codelet model is a fine-grained dataflow-inspired execution model which is the focus of several tera-scale and exa-scale studies such as DARPA's UHPC, DOE's X-Stack, and the European TERAFLUX projects. Current codelet implementations aim to making fully use of computation resources by balancing their workload in the multi-core and many-core systems. The performance is improved by this method. However, by making use of the features of the codelet model the memory optimization can be also implemented to improve the performance as well as energy efficiency. In this thesis, we focus on the memory optimization on memory workload balance and locality exploitation in the codelet model. As a case study, various versions of FFT algorithms are implemented on IBM Cyclops-64 – a many-core system to demonstrate that the fine-grain codelet execution model is able to execute the codelets that involve different workload on the memory bandwidth in an appropriate order to reduce memory contention and thus improve performance. The experiment result shows that our fine-grain guided algorithm achieves up to 46% performance improvement comparing to a coarse-grain implementation on Cyclops-64. To automatically exploit locality in codelet execution, we provide three optimal or nearly optimal scheduling algorithms based on static information of codelet graph and locality. They have different trade-offs in algorithmic complexity, locality exploitation, program execution time, and energy efficiency. We test and analyze the three algorithms on various applications on an emulation platform of Cyclops-64. The experiment result shows that our algorithms reduce up to 59.7% of global memory access by using local memory to buffer intermediate data between two adjacent codelets


This collective book provides a review of research concentrated on runaway electron beams and X-rays in an inhomogeneous electric field with different gases at increased pressure. Attention is also given to supershort avalanche electron beam (SAEB) in the optimal conditions. New experimental techniques and equipment, including those with picosecond time resolutions, were required for diagnostics of electrical and optical signals. The book consists of twenty-four chapters, some of which were written jointly by researchers of different teams. Some chapters consider the range of SAEB applications.


Ichnological evidence from the Ravenscar Group (Middle Jurassic) of Yorkshire reveals a distinctive type of swimming track associated with walking tracks of the ichnogenus Deltapodus . The morphology of the prints suggests that both track types were made by the same type of animal. Since Deltapodus is interpreted as having been made by a stegosaur, the associated footprints suggest that stegosaurs could swim. This has significant implications for their palaeobiology and dispersal. The swimming prints are assigned to the ichnotaxon Characichnos isp.


Transformer and feeder load balancing in a distribution system reduces the risk of overloads due to load changes. The possible out of service area following the occurrence of a fault is also reduced. However, keeping in view the life expectancy of the switches, it is desirable that the number of switching operations is kept to a minimum. A new algorithm for load balancing based on fuzzy set decision theory is presented in this paper. The decision regarding switching operations is arrived at by considering transformer and feeder load balancing together. The proposed method is illustrated through an example. >


This study demonstrates that water-stable C60 cluster (nC60) undergoes a photochemical transformation(s) when irradiated with monochromatic UV light at 254 nm. Upon UV exposure, characteristic absorption of nC60 in the visible (ca. 450-550 nm, indicative of a cluster structure) and UV regions (indicative of underivatized molecular C60) gradually disappeared. Concurrently, a new product with absorption centered at 210 nm formed. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses confirmed a complete reduction in aggregation and formation of a soluble product. Negligible loss of total organic carbon (TOC) and drastic retardation in degradation kinetics in the absence of oxygen collectively implied that photochemical transformation was accomplished via oxidative pathway without carbon mineralization. MS (LDI), FTIR, and XPS analyses indicated a 60 carbon cage product, containing various oxygen functional groups such as epoxides and ethers. In addition, this product demonstrated significantly less antibacterial effects on Escherichia coli when compared to the parent nC60. The results of this study suggest that accurate assessment of C60 in environmental life cycles and impact should consider the light-mediated transformation of C60 in the aqueous phase and resulting water-soluble products.


It has been argued that pre-service mathematics teachers (PSMTs) must possess a substantial level of both mathematical content knowledge and mathematical pedagogical knowledge to teach mathematics effectively. Therefore, studies have often evaluated teachers' classroom readiness against these factors. However, to-date, only a few studies have sought PSMTs' perceptions of their own readiness to teach. In this study, we evaluated PSMTs' self-perceptions of readiness to teach secondary mathematics. Specifically, PSMTs' self-perceptions of classroom readiness were explored in terms of mathematical content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and mathematical knowledge for teaching. The study was conducted at an Australian university with campuses in different states, and includes PSMTs in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Our results indicate that the majority of participants feel adequately prepared to teach lower secondary school mathematics. However, further training is required to develop both their content and pedagogical knowledge to confidently teach upper secondary mathematics.


This paper studies how income inequality affects the probability of signing free trade agreements (FTAs) in a political economy framework. The median voter approach to FTA formation within a Heckscher-Ohlin framework predicts that an increase in inequality lowers the desirability of an FTA if the partner country is relatively labor abundant, ceteris paribus, and raises the desirability of such an agreement if the partner country is relatively capital abundant. The lobbying model based on the argument of the free rider problem, however, offers the opposite predictions. This paper proposes a duration analysis for bilateral FTA panel data and finds strong support for the predictions from the median voter model.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to assess physical activity levels and patterns from children participating in the European Youth Heart Study (EYHS). Very limited physical activity data exist that have been collected from representative samples of children and even fewer data collected where physical activity has been measured using objective methods.

METHODS
Subjects were 2185 children aged 9 and 15 yr from Denmark, Portugal, Estonia, and Norway. Physical activity data were obtained using MTI (formerly CSA) accelerometers. The primary outcome variable was established as the child's activity level (accelerometer counts per minute). Children wore the accelerometer for 3 or 4 d, which included at least 1 weekend day.

RESULTS
Boys were more active than girls at age 9 (784 +/- 282 vs 649 +/- 204 counts.min-1) and 15 yr (615 +/- 228 vs 491 +/- 163 counts.min-1). With respect to time engaged in moderate-intensity activity, gender differences were apparent at age 9 (192 +/- 66 vs 160 +/- 54 min.d-1) and age 15 (99 +/- 45 vs 73 +/- 32 min.d-1). At age 9, the great majority of boys and girls achieved current health-related physical activity recommendations (97.4% and 97.6%, respectively). At age 15, fewer children achieved the guidelines and gender differences were apparent (boys 81.9% vs girls 62.0%).

CONCLUSIONS
Accelerometers are a feasible and accurate instrument for use in large epidemiological studies of children's activity. Boys tend to be more active than girls, and there is a marked reduction in activity over the adolescent years. The great majority of younger children achieve current physical activity recommendations, whereas fewer older children do so-especially older girls.


At present, two international initiatives are compiling polar bathymetric data for use in construction of seafloor topography. These are the ocean mapping groups on the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) and the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO). The IBCSO group focuses on the buildup of an updated digital bathymetric database for the entire Southern Ocean with additional data derived from radar satellite imagery, altimetry, magnetic, and gravity. Data sets are provided by a great number of facilities and data centers. Data management and data processing is conducted by use of proprietary Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This approach assures interoperability for data exchange and allows production of cartographic paper products and digital web maps.


Li-ion batteries have entered our everyday life first as power sources for small electronics, and recently for electric vehicles and stationary storage applications. As the requirements on the performance and lifetime of Li-ion batteries increase and diversify, it becomes paramount to properly understand their electrochemical performance at single-electrode level, and their evolution over cycling. This is crucial for both the design of improved electrode materials, better suited for the most recent applications, but also for accurately predicting the performance decay of existing devices. As the component of focus, the positive electrode was chosen, since it limits both power and energy in Li-ion batteries. Specifically, the material investigated was LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 (NMC111), a state-of-the-art, fully commercial electrode, as well as the precursor for Nirich LiNixMnyCo1–x –yO2, towards which research is very active. Starting at Beginning of Life, NMC111 was characterized though a combination of electrochemical techniques at varying temperatures (Constant Current cycling, Cyclic Voltammetry, Galvanostatic Intermittent Titration Technique, and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy), which were compared and discussed in terms of electrode response and suitability. Thermodynamic and dynamic properties were obtained, and supported the design of a semi-empirical model for predicting LIBs voltage characteristics. This knowledge was also used to monitor the evolution of NMC111's performance under high voltage operation, and the possibility of connecting changes in the electrochemical response to specific ageing phenomena: this information could support the creation of physics-based predictive models.


A new method for color image segmentation using fuzzy logic is proposed in this paper. Our aim here is to automatically produce a fuzzy system for color classification and image segmentation with least number of rules and minimum error rate. Particle swarm optimization is a sub class of evolutionary algorithms that has been inspired from social behavior of fishes, bees, birds, etc, that live together in colonies. We use comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (CLPSO) technique to find optimal fuzzy rules and membership functions because it discourages premature convergence. Here each particle of the swarm codes a set of fuzzy rules. During evolution, a population member tries to maximize a fitness criterion which is here high classification rate and small number of rules. Finally, particle with the highest fitness value is selected as the best set of fuzzy rules for image segmentation. Our results, using this method for soccer field image segmentation in Robocop contests shows 89% performance. Less computational load is needed when using this method compared with other methods like ANFIS, because it generates a smaller number of fuzzy rules. Large train dataset and its variety, makes the proposed method invariant to illumination noise.


In this paper we will compare and contrast some of the newer methods with some of the established methods in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The methods re-viewed are Solution-Based Modelling, Business Object Notation and Object Behaviour Analysis. The new methods offer new solutions and ideas to issues such as object identi-fication from scenarios, traceability supporting techniques, criteria for phase completion and method support for reliability. Although all these contributions, we identified some issues, particular design for dynamic binding, that still have to be taken into account in an object-oriented method.


Aging is the main characteristic of our society with a markedly increase of diseases producing people needing high level of care. The leading cause and foremost reason for mortality and morbidity in aging is a group known as Noncommunicable Diseases. The best approach to treat them is to evaluate and control the risk factors. There are shared by all these diseases leading to the existence of some meeting points behind all of them. There should be some key to acquire conditions that modify the cells homeostasis and impaired the cell physiology developing different diseases. Physics try to explain the nature of the phenomena that surround us, at first, at the level of our macroscopic perception. Quantum physics studied the atomic and subatomic particles and revolutionized the reality perception with paradoxical and weird concepts. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle established that it is not possible to determine the two characteristic properties of particles with accuracy; measurement affects the system and change it. Subatomic particles have a wave-particle duality that could be in a coherence statement, also can pass through high-energy barriers. Two subatomic particles are entangled, something happening over here can have an instantaneous effect over there, no matter how far away there are. All these concepts have tried to apply to biology and life sciences, especially when classical physics fails to give an accurate description. Quantum biology is behind photosynthesis, mitochondrial respiration, enzyme activity, the sense of smell, animal migration, heredity's fidelity, and consciousness. We can apply all these concepts to diseases pathogeny. So, we describe quantum phenomena in oxidative stress, calcification, signal transduction, vitamin D production, cancer mutations, and microbiome induced pathology. I want to propose that aging diseases also can be explained by applying quantum physics concepts. It is a new, hard to believe, and an incredible path to be built, but we need to open the treatment options to our patients with new perspectives.


The relationship between information systems (IS) and organisational learning has long been claimed but not sufficiently empirically grounded (Robey et al., 2000). This paper examines this relationship by drawing on a longitudinal study of the Slovenian company Sava during its 1995-2004 transition period when it adapted to and prospered in a free market economy. The company is particularly interesting because of the pivotal role information systems (IS) played in supporting organisational learning during its successful transition from a socialist company operating in a protected market to a privatized company operating in a capitalist global market. By providing insights into the role of various IS in organisational learning and in the company's successful transition, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between IS and organisational learning which is relevant and inspiring to other companies, especially those undergoing radical


High-dynamic range (HDR) imaging is an essential imaging modality for a wide range of applications in uncontrolled environments, including autonomous driving, robotics, and mobile phone cameras. However, existing HDR techniques in commodity devices struggle with dynamic scenes due to multi-shot acquisition and post-processing time, e.g. mobile phone burst photography, making such approaches unsuitable for real-time applications. In this work, we propose a method for snapshot HDR imaging by learning an optical HDR encoding in a single image which maps saturated highlights into neighboring unsaturated areas using a diffractive optical element (DOE). We propose a novel rank-1 parameterization of the proposed DOE which avoids vast trainable parameters and keeps high frequencies' encoding compared with conventional end-to-end design methods. We further propose a reconstruction network tailored to this rank-1 parametrization for recovery of clipped information from the encoded measurements. The proposed end-to-end framework is validated through simulation and real-world experiments and improves the PSNR by more than 7 dB over state-of-the-art end-to-end designs.


The brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia penicillata), or woylie, has undergone a rapid and substantial decline throughout its range in the southwest of Western Australia over a period of approximately five years. As part of an investigation into possible causes of the decline, a morphologically distinct Trypanosoma sp. was discovered by light microscopy in the declining population but was not observed in a captive and stable population within the Karakamia Wildlife Sanctuary. Further investigations employing molecular methods targeting variations in the 18s rRNA gene determined that the trypanosome was novel and was also present within the Karakamia population albeit at a much lower overall prevalence and individual parasitemia levels. Phylogenetic analysis suggests the novel Trypanosoma sp. to be closely related to other trypanosomes isolated from native Australian wildlife species. The potential for a trypanosome species to affect the woylie population, singularly as well as in conjunction with other infectious agents as part of a concomitant infection, is discussed.


Rationale: Mental retardation (MR) is a chronic condition that often has no readily identifiable cause or treatment. Aggression and psychiatric symptoms are prevalent in children with MR. Surgical treatment of aggression and psychiatric symptoms of MR is seldom investigated and studies are limited. Patient concerns: We encountered a 19-year-old female who had MR with aggression and psychiatric symptoms. Diagnoses: She was diagnosed with mild MR with aggressiveness and psychiatric symptoms. Interventions: Because the patient was refractory to conservative treatment, bilateral anterior capsulotomy and amygdaloid neurosurgery were performed for her psychiatric symptoms and aggression. The benefits and side effects of the surgery were analyzed. Outcomes: After surgery, the patient showed significant alleviation of her psychiatric symptoms and aggression with no observed side effects. Lessons: Bilateral anterior capsulotomy in combination with amygdaloid neurosurgery may resolve both psychiatric and aggressive symptoms. Future investigations of control studies with large patient cohorts are needed.


Digital media offer innovative ways of resolving crises of trust. This essay discusses a campaign that aimed to rebuild public trust in banks during the financial crisis. The campaign reflected a strategy (well-known in conflict resolution) that is best described as an online exercise in active listening. The essay discusses the potential of such a campaign and argues that in a crisis where rhetorical agency is impaired due to declining trust, corporations that engage in public listening may communicate acknowledgment and openness to change. However, in order to realize this potential, the public must be entrusted with a meaningful role as contributor to the campaign in the discursive and technical design of the medium of interaction. In the case studied, the campaign texts explicitly invited participation, but implicitly restrained the rhetorical agency of the public. This undermined the initiative's ability to renew the cognitive and emotional grounds for trust.


ABSTRACTIn underground tunnels, friction between the wheels and rails of subway trains creates particles, which are spread by the wind generated when trains pass by. A louver dust collector was attached to the bottom of a T-car of Seoul Subway Line 5 train in an effort to remove PM10 inside tunnels, and obtain data when it was in actual operation. It made several round trips during which differential pressure of the louver dust collector was measured in relation to train speed. By comparing and verifying the differential pressure estimated by simulation and that actually measured, it was possible to estimate average flow of air that went into the louver dust collector. Furthermore, by comparing and verifying the measurement results on collection efficiency of a lab-scale louver dust collector in a wind tunnel, along with the results of numerical analysis, it was possible to estimate the collection efficiency in relation to subway train speed. As a result, it was confirmed that higher running speeds of subway trains increased the flow of air going into the louver dust collector and subsequently decreased the particle size corresponding to 50% collection efficiency. In other words, the cut-off size was estimated to be 9.7 µm at the lowest speed of 5 km h–1, and 4.9 µm at the top speed of 65 km h–1, in normal speed range for the Seoul Subway Line 5 trains.


This paper provides an initial feedback from an intensive, multidisciplinary, and collaborative project implemented in France in higher engineering education through a case study on electric go-kart conception. This kind of project was proposed during 2 successive academic years in collaboration with an industrial partner who is currently a relevant expert in the field. The project consisted in designing, developing, and validating the operation of several electric go-karts within 56 hours of teaching only. Several groups of approximately 10 4th-year university students were involved in this new project-based learning (PBL) approach. This article points out knowledge and skills that the learners had to acquire at the end of the project, and the methods of assessment. In particular, an innovative oral communication based on a theatrical oral session was tested. The various steps in the project development, management, and the interactions with the students, the teachers and the industrial partner are highlighted. Qualitative and quantitative data were extracted from the transcript of grades and the satisfaction surveys. All results demonstrate that the students were encouraged to become active throughout the project. They developed particularly co-operative and collaborative competencies, and critical thinking skills. Although this experience is overwhelmingly positive for the teaching staff, the worse part of the project consisted in developing efficient methods and tools both to organize the project, and evaluate the students' knowledge and skills. As a consequence, a preparatory phase was absolutely necessary to warrant the success of the project.


In the 19th and first part of the 20th century a large part of the terps along the North Seacoast have been quarried as fertilizer for sandy and peaty soils. During this process a lot of well-preserved objects were found and collected. Among these were several thousand imported objects of Roman provenance, mostly fragments of terra sigillata (T.S.) vessels. More than 2200 fragments were collected from over 90 different terps but with remarkable differences in frequency. Twelve terps contained more than 50 fragments of which five had more than 100 T.S. sherds. Till now only a very small part of the material is published. This first article presents a description and determination of these 'old' finds from the province Friesland together with the T.S. from three recent excavations. It will be followed by the research of the T.S from the province Groningen. Described were 2264 fragments: 582 sherd from by mould decorated vessels and 1682 from plain T.S. When divided by period the T.S. fall into three clusters. By far the majority is dated to the second half of the second and first half of the third century. A small group (30 fragments) dates from the first half of the first century and is connected with the roman occupation during this period. Another small group dates from the 4th and 5th century. Former research on T.S. from the excavation at the terp of Ezinge (Groningen) indicated a 'second' use of fragments after the vessel was broken. For that reason the fragments of the Frisian terps were checked for these marks. They were found on almost 80% of the sherds dated in the second and third century, but were not found on T.S. from the early, first century. The size of the sherds is rather small, round 5 cm. It seems possible that the people from the northern region were interested in the material itself and that not tableware was imported, but only (red) sherds. That places the research of forms and types in a different light. If just the fragments were of interest it must be of little importance whether they belong to a cup or a plate. The search of the potters' stamps by Polak gives the possibility to a sharp dating of the stamped fragments. It supports the thesis of Erdrich that there were periods with more and with less contacts with the Roman empire. Especially in turbulent times T.S. could have served as gifts with a political aspect. It is well possible that these gifts consisted of T.S. sherds, rather than of complete vessels.


As the drought in Western states worsens, the agricultural sector is being criticized for failing to adopt technical responses, such as shifting to less water-demanding crops and state-of-the-art irrigation systems, in a timely manner. However, these responses can have the reverse effect: they can increase water consumption. Technological responses alone are insufficient to reduce water consumption if unaccompanied by changes in how the law defines and allocates water rights. This paper proposes a redefinition of water rights to ensure that changes in crops or irrigation techniques are socially efficient. In the West, which uses the doctrine of prior appropriation to allocate water, rights are largely measured based on how much water is diverted from streams. As a consequence, technological responses only redistribute — not reduce — the total amount of water being consumed. Such redistribution is not necessarily systemically efficient. Take, for instance, a farmer who substitutes drip irrigation for furrow irrigation. While intended to reduce water use, drip irrigation results in more water being consumed by crops than traditional furrow irrigation, which returns unused water back to the stream. Farmers are reluctant to reduce diversion, since doing so would risk partially forfeiting their water rights. As a result, drip irrigation sharply reduces the return flow available for downstream users and the environment. Downstream water users may no longer be able to produce crops and the environment may be harmed if consumption upstream increases. This rebound effect from adopting technically efficient systems has not been adequately addressed in water law while it has been accounted for in energy policies. The Supreme Court case Montana v. Wyoming is used to illustrate this point. This article advances a legal framework for ensuring that technical responses to drought accomplish the stated goal of reducing agricultural water use without harming third parties. In particular, it proposes prior consumption as an additional measure of water rights in prior appropriation regimes. Consumption more accurately reflects the true social cost of agricultural water use. This would prevent farmers from taking advantage of technical responses to increase their water use and would protect downstream users and the environment. In addition, water markets would benefit, since water rights would be better defined and the review process of water market transactions would be streamlined. The proposal is consistent with the underlying principles of prior appropriation, and the article explains why such a change would survive a potential takings challenge.


In this paper the modelling, analysis and compensation of current conveyor tracking non-idealities in signalprocessing circuits employing the second-generation current conveyor (CCII) as a transconductance amplifier are generally investigated. The voltageand current-following inaccuracies of the CCII are represented in the forms of absolute and relative errors. Analysis shows that the effects of absolute tracking errors in a non-ideal CCII-based transconductance amplifier can be represented by an ideal CCII transconductance amplifier with an external voltage or current offset source. With this model the circuit output signal shift due to tracking errors can be easily evaluated using any excitation-response circuit analysis method. For the relative error description the effects of CCII following inaccuracies are modelled as a change in the transconductance resistance for the CCII transconductance amplifier. The affected circuit parameters are therefore readily assessed by directly replacing the nominal transconductance resistance in the ideal expressions by the vaned counterpart, and the impact of relative errors can thus be precisely compensated by simply adding a proper resistance in parallel or series with the transconductance resistance. The methods developed for conventional CCIIs with unity gains are also extended to incorporate generalized CCIIs with any specified voltage and current gains.


The direct reduction of volcanic glass by hydrogen has been proposed as a method of extracting oxygen from the lunar soil. Experiments using lunar simulant glasses reacted with flowing hydrogen gas have demonstrated reduction at temperatures from 1000 - 1200°C. For melted samples ferrous iron was reduced to the metal, which formed large crystals at the expense of the glass. Samples held below the melting point rapidly devitrified, and iron was formed from submicrometer crystals of ilmenite and pyroxene. Weight losses of 3.6-4.5%, depending on glass composition, were achieved in 3 hours at 1100°C. A lunar oxygen plant operating at this efficiency and utilizing Apollo 17 orange glass as a feedstock could produce 50 kg of oxygen per ton of soil. The processes of reduction and sintering of lunar soil are synergystic, and could be combined to produce both oxygen and construction material at a moon base.


Influenced by the innovative use of color in Bauhaus art, Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) developed his own abstract-geometric visual language, exploring the relationship between pure form and pure color. Vasarely's experimentation with optical effects in the 1940s and 50s earned him a central role in the evolution of Op Art. By the late 50s and early 60s, he concentrated on the "democratization of art" by no longer producing his works as expensive originals but in large editions of affordable screen prints; this attempt to redefine the position and function of the artist in society was an important first step in the Pop Art movement. Vasarely's boldly colorful and eye-popping paintings are instantly recognizable and remain entirely modern and relevant today.


Migration, and the consequent remittance flows, have wide-ranging implications for Bangladesh, particularly in terms of employment generation, foreign exchange reserves and balance of payments, household expenditure, savings and investment, and in general, for the overall development of the country's economy. However, issues of financial inclusion and social protection of Bangladesh's migrant workers have continued to remain relatively unaddressed over the past years. This paper examines cross-country experiences covering three areas: (a) reduction of cost of sending remittances; (b) deployment of financial instruments to harness savings of migrant workers; and (c) social protection schemes to secure and safeguard the interests of migrant workers. The paper undertakes a review of the regulatory mechanisms, measures and schemes in place in Bangladesh in the aforesaid three areas; and by drawing on global best practices and experiences, comes up with a number of recommendations to address the relevant challenges. The paper recommends how modern technology could help reduce transaction costs and innovative financial instruments could be deployed to harness savings of migrant workers. The paper also proposes a number of measures towards better social protection of migrant workers in both host countries and in Bangladesh.


This study explores innovation modalities at three South African tech hubs: Bandwidth
Barn Khayelitsha and Workshop 17 in Cape Town, and the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Johannesburg. The study finds that tech start-ups'ability to scale is generally enhanced by their participation in the hubs. Furthermore, it is found that scaling by start-ups, and by the tech hubs hosting them, is enhanced when they actively drive the terms of their "entanglement" with exogenous and endogenous factors and external entities—a conceptual framework first developed in an earlier study of university research linkages (Abrahams, 2016). This present study finds that innovation entanglement by the hubs and their start-ups allows them to work through the adversity and states of complexity prevalent in their innovation ecosystems.


I use three simple models to assess the degree to which thickness of the upper element of a coccolith and the height of the connecting stalk influence a coccolithophore's sinking rate, and ability to acquire light. One generates different coccolith profiles by varying how the same amount of mass is distributed among three stacked cylinders, representative of a coccolith. Another examines the sinking velocity of the coccolithophore as a function of the height of the stalk. Stalk height has a significant effect on the sinking velocity, as it can extend the radius of the coccolithophore and increase drag. The third model, looks at how transmission of light through a coccolith affects the irradiance at the cell surface. The thickness of the top element of the coccolith has a small effect on the transmission of light to the cell surface. Calcite is pretty translucent, especially when considering the thickness of the structure is ~50 nanometers thick. These models are then cross tested to see what is the effect of upper coccolith element thickness on sinking rate and what is the effect of stalk height on transmission. Physics-based models are a good first step in exploring the relative importance of different morphological features.


Firms typically present a mixed picture of corporate social performance (CSP), with positive and negative indicators exhibited by the same firm. Thus, stakeholders' judgments of corporate social responsibility (CSR) typically evaluate positives in the context of negatives, and vice versa. Building on social judgment theory, we present two alternative accounts of how stakeholders respond to such complexity, which provide differing implications for the financial effects of CSP: reciprocal dampening and rewarding uniformity. Echoing notable findings on strategic consistency, our US panel study finds that firms that exhibit uniformly positive or uniformly negative indicators in particular dimensions of CSP outperform firms that exhibit a mixed picture of positives and negatives, which supports the notion that stakeholders' judgments of CSR reward uniformity.


We developed the concept of split-'t to deal with the large molecules (in terms of the number of electrons and nuclear charge Z). This naturally leads to partitioning the local energy into components due to each electron shell. The minimization of the variation of the valence shell local energy is used to optimize a simple two parameter CuH wave function. Molecular properties (spectroscopic constants and the dipole moment) are calculated for the optimized and nearly optimized wave functions using the Variational Quantum Monte Carlo method. Our best results are comparable to those from the single and double configuration interaction (SDCI) method.


A linear, sequential time conception based on in-person meetings and pedagogical activities is not enough for those who practice and hope to enhance contemporary education, particularly where online interactions are concerned. In this article, we propose a new model for understanding time in pedagogical contexts. Conceptual parts of the model will be employed as a "cultural technology" to help us relate to evolving phenomena, both physical and virtual. We label these constructs as pointillist , cyclical , and overlapping times. Pointillist time and learning takes place in "dots" of actions that consist of small, discrete moments (e.g., tweeting). Producing, receiving, and sharing ideas in this context are separate points in each actor's timeline. Cyclical time and learning emerges from intensive periods, which are highly visible in online forums. This construct reveals itself through interactions that often exist in multiple online environments. Overlapping time and learning involves various configurations of linear, pointillist, and cyclical layers, which are mainly evident through the simultaneous uses of social communication technologies. Pointillist, cyclical, and overlapping time constructs enable new orientations for conceptualizing time in pedagogy. In this article we also introduce de-, re-, and en- modes of these pedagogies that connect with approaches to meet the needs of learners for individualization, personalization, and cyborgization.


Mastomys natalensis is a rodent of African origin afflicted with a very high incidence of skin tumors (keratoacanthomas and squamous carcinomas), which are associated with a papillomavirus, M. natalensis papillomavirus (MnPV). We have determined the genomic sequence of MnPV, which has a size of 7687 bp. The genomic organization is similar to that of other papillomaviruses, with open reading frames E6, E7, E1, E2, and E4 in the early and L2 and L1 in the late region. Due to an unusually large hinge region, the transcriptional activator E2 has a size of 542 amino acids rather than 400 to 460 amino acids, as in other papillomaviruses. An open reading frame E5 coding for a small hydrophobic membrane protein is missing, as is the case for some cutaneous human papillomaviruses (HPV). This fact, together with the composition of cis-responsive elements in its long control region and phylogenetic evaluation of segments of its E6, E1, and L1 genes, indicates a relationship of MnPV to the cottontail rabbit papillomavirus and several HPV types found in lesions of cutaneous epithelia, in particular to those that are associated with epidermodysplasia verruciformis. MnPV may be a useful model system for tumorigenesis of cutaneous epithelia in humans.


In recent years, cognitive radar (CR) with waveform diversity has exhibited significant performance improvements over the traditional fixed waveform radar and become an area of vigorous research and development. This study presents a dynamic waveform selection algorithm to strive for tracking error minimisation for CR manoeuvering target tracking in clutter. Based on the concepts of resolution cell and measurement extraction cell, the statistical characteristics of radar measurements are discussed without dependence upon the Cramer-Rao lower bound of the measurement errors and the high signal-to-noise ratio assumption. A particle filter combined with probabilistic data association is used as a tracker. To quantify the utility of available waveforms, the predicted tracking mean-square error, because of its dependence on actual future measurements, is approximated efficiently via Gaussian fitting of the prior density of the target state and statistical linearisation of the measurement equation. Monte Carlo simulation results show that the proposed dynamic waveform selection algorithm can improve tracking performance considerably, especially in terms of track loss probability.


There is now enough plastic in the world to wrap the entire planet. Plastic is now so pervasive scientists are saying that it is a new geological marker. And no part of the planet has been more affected by the spread of plastic waste than the ocean. Eventually the things we dispose of will dispose of us. We are suffocating the planet in our toxic waste. The ocean, as vast as it is, has somehow slipped from view-it is used as a dumping ground for all kinds of waste, and it is steadily dying, but no-one seems able to raise a hand to help it. In part this is a problem of sovereignty. All nations claim their piece of the ocean, but none own it outright. And now that it is in trouble we must ask who is responsible for fixing it? Global warming is a problem of rubbish-it is caused by the by-products of what we do in our daily lives. We generally expect others to change so we can stay the same, but what would get us to change everything, including ourselves? In critical theory there are essentially only two answers to this question: we either do what we know we must (Kant's categorical imperative is the sine qua non of this position); or we do what we feel we must (Bennett's vital materialism is in many ways the sine qua non of this position). Adherents to the latter view of things describe it as either embodied or material and they castigate adherents of the categorical view for being either disembodied or immaterial. The limits of the former are that it is idealist and, in being so, implicitly tyrannical because the set of things we must do are not defined or decided upon by ourselves. They are instead imposed from the outside and often without any awareness of or interest in history or indeed culture. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details Buchanan, I. (2018). Ocean or Oubliette?. Tamkang Review: A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 49 (1), 3-16. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/3764 Ocean or Oubliette? 3 Tamkang Review 49.1 (December 2018): 3-16. DOI: 10.6184/TKR201812-1 █ Ocean or Oubliette?


Efficient FPGA SoC Processing Design for a Small UAV Radar Luke Oliver Newmeyer Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, BYU Master of Science Modern radar technology relies heavily on digital signal processing. As radar technology pushes the boundaries of miniaturization, computational systems must be developed to support the processing demand. One particular application for small radar technology is in modern drone systems. Many drone applications are currently inhibited by safety concerns of autonomous vehicles navigating shared airspace. Research in radar based Detect and Avoid (DAA) attempts to address these concerns by using radar to detect nearby aircraft and choosing an alternative flight path. Implementation of radar on small Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV), however, requires a lightweight and power efficient design. Likewise, the radar processing system must also be small and efficient. This thesis presents the design of the processing system for a small Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) phased array radar. The radar and processing is designed to be lightweight and low-power in order to fly onboard a UAV less than 25 kg in weight. The radar algorithms for this design include a parallelized Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), cross correlation, and beamforming. Target detection algorithms are also implemented. All of the computation is performed in real-time on a Xilinx Zynq 7010 System on Chip (SoC) processor utilizing both FPGA and CPU resources. The radar system (excluding antennas) has dimensions of 2.25 x 4 x 1.5 in3, weighs 120 g, and consumes 8 W of power of which the processing system occupies 2.6 W. The processing system performs over 652 million arithmetic operations per second and is capable of performing the full processing in real-time. The radar has also been tested in several scenarios both airborne on small UAVs as well as on the ground. Small UAVs have been detected to ranges of 350 m and larger aircraft up to 800 m. This thesis will describe the radar design architecture, the custom designed radar hardware, the FPGA based processing implementations, and conclude with an evaluation of the system's effectiveness and performance.


Inspired by ideas from umbral calculus and based on the two types of integrals occurring in the defining equations for the gamma and the reciprocal gamma functions, respectively, we develop a multi-variate version of umbral calculus and of the so-called umbral image technique. Besides providing a class of new formulae for generalized hypergeometric functions and an implementation of series manipulations for computing lacunary generating functions, our main application of these techniques is the study of Sobolev-Jacobi polynomials. Motivated by applications to theoretical chemistry, we moreover present a deep link between generalized normal-ordering techniques introduced by Gurappa and Panigrahi, two-variable Hermite polynomials and our integral-based series transforms. Notably, we thus calculate all K-tuple L-shifted lacunary exponential generating functions for a certain family of Sobolev-Jacobi (SJ) polynomials explicitly.


Introduction Whilst the majority of seriously ill people express a wish to die at home (79%), only half of those achieve this. The likelihood of patients remaining at home often depends on availability of able and willing informal carers who take on numerous care tasks, often including the responsibility of assisting patients with oral medications. The role of carers administering subcutaneous injections is not widespread practice in the UK, but has proven to be key in achieving home death in other countries. Aim To determine if carer-administration of as-needed subcutaneous medication for four breakthrough symptoms (pain, nausea, restlessness and noisy breathing) in homebased dying patients is feasible and acceptable in the UK. Methods One hundred adult patients in the last weeks of life who are likely to lose the oral route and have expressed a preference to die at home will be recruited with their carers to an external randomised pilot trial across three UK sites (North Wales, South Wales and Gloucestershire). Carers randomised to the intervention arm will receive a manualised training package adapted from an existing Australian model and delivered by local district nursing teams. Dyads in the control arm will receive usual care. Results The main outcomes of interest will be feasibility, acceptability, recruitment rates, attrition and selection of the most appropriate outcomes measures. Conclusion Findings will inform a definitive Phase III randomised controlled trial. The study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (HTA project 15/10/37). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.


A major aim of decentralised governance is to bring government closer to people and, in the process, deliver services in an equitable and efficient manner, in accordance with the expressed needs of citizens. The fact that government is located within smaller units with better information and a larger number of local representatives can lead to the greater inclusion of marginalised groups in decision-making and in accessing quality services. Viewed from this perspective, decentralisation is usually seen as a positive reform. However, the reform in and of itself is essentially value neutral – not only can it have both positive and negative effects, but its impact is conditioned by the nature of the reform, and the ways in which it is implemented. Decentralisation reforms that are not explicitly designed to include marginalised populations—women, minorities, and the poor—can lead to worsened service delivery and representation outcomes for these groups (Faguet 2014). Its impact in terms of the inclusion of the most vulnerable is dependent on many of the same constraints that affect higher tiers of government – availability of resources, capacity, and very importantly, political will. In other words, inclusive governance is not synonymous with decentralised governance. Decentralisation reforms will only achieve inclusive governance if they explicitly set out to do so.


Tests of risk sharing in the contracting literature often rely on wealth as a proxy for risk aversion. The intuition behind these tests is that since contract choice is monotonic in the coefficients of risk aversion, which are themselves assumed monotonic in wealth, the effect of a change in wealth on contract choice is clearly identified. We show that tests of risk sharing relying on wealth as a proxy for risk aversion are identified only insofar as the econometrician is willing to assume that (a) the principal is risk neutral or her preferences exhibit constant absolute risk aversion (CARA); and (b) the agent is risk neutral.


The Delaware courts responded to the recent wave of corporate scandals, exemplified by Enron and WorldCom, by changing their approach to shareholder derivative litigation. This Article analyzes the Delaware courts' response to these scandals and concludes that the courts have created doctrinal confusion and introduced unpredictability into derivative litigation. This Article also analyzes the future negative consequences for shareholders, corporations, directors, investors, and other litigants. Finally, this Article proposes improvements for derivative litigation that may alleviate the confusion and unpredictability created by the Delaware courts' response to the recent scandals.


Nishiyama Uzo-, educated as an architect between 1930 and 1933, was a key figure in Japanese urban planning. He was a prolific writer who influenced a whole generation of Japanese urban planners and his interpretations of foreign planning and local practice still influence Japanese planning theory and practice today.
Nishiyama's first publications date to the 1930s, and his last ones appeared in the 1990s, spanning a period of enormous political and spatial changes. The three articles translated here, originally published in the 1940s in professional magazines, show how Nishiyama developed his theoretical models based on a social approach to architecture and planning, focusing on land use and land control rather than aesthetic preferences. They provide insight into Nishiyama's early thinking, his analysis of foreign examples, his reflection on large-scale regional and national spatial organization, and his architectural and urban visions, providing a remarkable and fascinating insight into the state of planning in Japan.
These texts call scholarly attention to the writing of a global planning history and invite the reader to engage with a major figure in planning who is largely unknown outside Japan; to reconsider Japanese planning history; and to work towards a truly global planning history. How does Nishiyama compare to the great urban planners of the past in the West, such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, or Werner Hegemann? Many more translations will be necessary to answer this question.


OBJECTIVE: Sapropterin dihydrochloride, the synthetic form of 6R-tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), is an approved drug for the treatment of patients with BH4-responsive phenylketonuria (PKU). The purpose of this study was to assess genotypes and data on the long-term effects of BH4/sapropterin on metabolic control and patient-related outcomes in 6 large European countries. METHODS: A questionnaire was developed to assess phenotype, genotype, blood phenylalanine (Phe) levels, Phe tolerance, quality of life, mood changes, and adherence to diet in PKU patients from 16 medical centers. RESULTS: One hundred forty-seven patients, of whom 41.9% had mild hyperphenylalaninemia, 50.7% mild PKU, and 7.4% classic PKU, were followed up over ≤12 years. A total of 85 different genotypes were reported. With the exception of two splice variants, all of the most common mutations were reported to be associated with substantial residual Phe hydroxylase activity. Median Phe tolerance increased 3.9 times with BH4/sapropterin therapy, compared with dietary treatment, and median Phe blood concentrations were within the therapeutic range in all patients. Compared with diet alone, improvement in quality of life was reported in 49.6% of patients, improvement in adherence to diet was reported in 47% of patients, and improvement in adherence to treatment was reported in 63.3% of patients. No severe adverse events were reported. CONCLUSIONS: Our data document a long-term beneficial effect of orally administered BH4/sapropterin in responsive PKU patients by improving the metabolic control, increasing daily tolerance for dietary Phe intake, and for some, by improving dietary adherence and quality of life. Patient genotypes help in predicting BH4 responsiveness.


Bullying has over the years been examined and explained in individual as well as in contextual terms, and from a wide range of different theories and methods. A growing number of bullying researchers approach bullying as a socially complex phenomenon and from social psychological and sociological perspectives. There is today a tension between theoretical perspectives on bullying, but also a need for investigating the social and contextual aspects of bullying further. In this article, I will argue for the necessity of dialogue between different theoretical perspectives and the inclusive potential of the social-ecological framework to create a meeting point of theories in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of school bullying.


Abstract Flexor tendon sheath infections of the hand must be diagnosed and treated expeditiously to avoid poor clinical outcomes. Knowledge of the sheath's anatomy is essential for diagnosis and to help to guide treatment. The Kanavel cardinal signs are useful for differentiating conditions with similar presentations. Management of all but the earliest cases of pyogenic flexor tenosynovitis consists of intravenous antibiotics and surgical drainage of the sheath with open or closed irrigation. Closed irrigation may be continued postoperatively. Experimental data from an animal study have shown that local administration of antibiotics and/or corticosteroids can help lessen morbidity from the infection; however, additional research is required. Despite aggressive and prompt antibiotic therapy and surgical intervention, even otherwise healthy patients can expect some residual digital stiffness following flexor tendon sheath infection. Patients with medical comorbidities or those who present late with advanced infection can expect poorer outcomes, including severe digital stiffness or amputation.


RuvAB and RuvABC complexes catalyze branch migration and resolution of Holliday junctions (HJs) respectively. In addition to their action in the last steps of homologous recombination, they process HJs made by replication fork reversal, a reaction which occurs at inactivated replication forks by the annealing of blocked leading and lagging strand ends. RuvAB was recently proposed to bind replication forks and directly catalyze their conversion into HJs. We report here the isolation and characterization of two separation-of-function ruvA mutants that resolve HJs, based on their capacity to promote conjugational recombination and recombinational repair of UV and mitomycin C lesions, but have lost the capacity to reverse forks. In vivo and in vitro evidence indicate that the ruvA mutations affect DNA binding and the stimulation of RuvB helicase activity. This work shows that RuvA's actions at forks and at HJs can be genetically separated, and that RuvA mutants compromised for fork reversal remain fully capable of homologous recombination.


We present a discrete analysis of non-reflecting boundary conditions for the discontinuous Galerkin method. The boundary conditions considered in this paper include the recently proposed Perfectly Matched Layer absorbing boundary condition for the linearized Euler equation and two non-reflecting boundary conditions based on the characteristic decomposition of the flux on the boundary. The analyses for the three boundary conditions are carried out in a unifled way. In each case, eigensolutions of the discrete system are obtained and applied to compute the numerical reflection coefficients of a specified out-going wave. The dependencies of the reflections at the boundary on the out-going wave angle and frequency as well as the mesh sizes arc? studied. Comparisons with direct numerical simulation results are also presented.


Abstract Sodic pyroxene is reported from an Ordovician metatrachyte of the Kaczawa Mountains, SW Poland. Its composition ranges from Jd0.98Ae0.02 to Jd0.15Ae0.85. Relict jadeite and phengite (up to 3.75 Si atoms per fomula unit) belong to the peak-pressure assemblage of an early HP-LT event. Later greenschist-facies stages are represented by riebeckite, biotite, chlorite, low-Si potassic white mica and actinolite. P-T pseudosections calculated for the range 200-450°C, 3-13 kbar allow evaluation of the conditions of formation of jadeite in the metatrachyte and derivaton of a P-T path. Considering the position of prograde, peak and retrograde metamorphic assemblages and respective mineral compositions, we can derive the following equilibration stages: 8.5±0.5 kbar, 270±20°C for the pressure maximum, 6.0±1.0 kbar, 310±20°C for the temperature maximum and 3.5±0.5 kbar, 280-20°C as well as <3.5 kbar, <280°C for the retrograde stages. The metamorphic gradient for the peak-pressure is estimated at ~10°C/km, which is typical of a subduction setting involving subducted continental crust, in particular of an exhumation channel within a collision zone of a microplate. Based on earlier structural observations, the ESE-oriented subduction in the NE Bohemian Massif was confined with WNW thrusting and followed by extension and ESE backward normal faulting during Devonian-Early Carboniferous times.