Records of stable oxygen isotope variations from a variety of proxies have been used in palaeoclimatic research since the 1950's. Several studies have applied stable isotope analysis of lake sediments to reconstruct past climate changes in central and northern Sweden, including a study of Lake Blektjarnen in Jamtland, central Sweden, by Andersson (2010). In this study, sediments from that same lake were sampled for stable isotope analysis of bulk carbonates with the aim to improve the resolution of the isotopic record for the last two millennia. The results indicate a shift from relatively drier to wetter conditions between ~2,300–1,300 cal. years BP, generally wet conditions close to the Medieval Warm Period (~1,000–750 cal. years BP) and generally dry conditions during the Little Ice Age (~550–150 cal. years BP). These results are in agreement with previous palaeoclimatic reconstructions in the region. The isotopic record of Lake Blektjarnen was completed for the last ~2,350 years at a resolution of ~15 years per sample, three times higher than that of the previous study, displaying the advantages of bulk carbonate sampling for stable isotope analysis and providing a high-resolution dataset on humidity changes in central Sweden during the late Holocene.


Quilts have become a cherished symbol of Amish craftsmanship and the beauty of the simple life. Country stores in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and other tourist regions display row after row of handcrafted quilts-a favorite souvenir for tourists and a source of income for the quilters. In luxury homes, office buildings, and museums, the quilts have been preserved and displayed as priceless artifacts. They are even pictured on collectible stamps. Amish Quilts explores how these objects evolved from practical bed linens into contemporary art. In this in-depth study, illustrated with more than 100 stunning color photographs, Janneken Smucker discusses what makes an Amish quilt Amish. She examines the value of quilts to those who have made, bought, sold, exhibited, and preserved them and how that value changes as a quilt travels from Amish hands to marketplace to consumers. A fifth-generation Mennonite quiltmaker herself, Smucker traces the history of Amish quilts from their use in the late nineteenth century to their sale in the lucrative business practices of today. Through her own observations as well as oral histories, newspaper accounts, ephemera, and other archival sources, she seeks to understand how the term "Amish" became a style and what it means to both quiltmakers and consumers. She also looks at how quilts influence fashion and raises issues of authenticity of quilts in the marketplace. Whether considered as art, craft, or commodity, Amish quilts reflect the intersections of consumerism and connoisseurship, religion and commerce, nostalgia and aesthetics. By thoroughly examining all of these aspects, Amish Quilts is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of these beautiful works.


Abstract. Primary Biological Aerosol Particles (PBAPs), including bacteria, spores and pollen, are essential for the spread of organisms and disease in the biosphere, and numerous studies have suggested that they may be important for atmospheric processes, including the formation of clouds and precipitation. The atmospheric abundance and size distribution of PBAPs, however, are largely unknown. At a semi-urban site in Mainz, Germany we used an Ultraviolet Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (UV-APS) to measure Fluorescent Biological Aerosol Particles (FBAPs), which provide an estimate of viable bioaerosol particles and can be regarded as an approximate lower limit for the actual abundance of PBAPs. Fluorescence of non-biological aerosol components are likely to influence the measurement results obtained for fine particles ( Averaged over the four-month measurement period (August–December 2006), the mean number concentration of coarse FBAPs was ~3×10−2 cm−3, corresponding to ~4% of total coarse particle number. The mean mass concentration of FBAPs was ~1μg m−3, corresponding to ~20% of total coarse particle mass. The FBAP number size distributions exhibited alternating patterns with peaks at various diameters. A pronounced peak at ~3 μm was essentially always observed and can be described by the following campaign-average lognormal fit parameters: geometric mean diameter 3.2 μm, geometric standard deviation 1.3, number concentration 1.6×10−2 cm−3. This peak is likely due to fungal spores or agglomerated bacteria, and it exhibited a pronounced diel cycle (24-h) with maximum intensity during early/mid-morning. FBAP peaks around ~1.5 μm, ~5 μm, and ~13 μm were also observed, but less pronounced and less frequent. These may be single bacterial cells, larger fungal spores, and pollen grains, respectively. The observed number concentrations and characteristic sizes of FBAPs are consistent with microscopic, biological and chemical analyses of PBAPs in aerosol filter samples. To our knowledge, however, this is the first exploratory study reporting continuous online measurements of bioaerosol particles over several months and a range of characteristic size distribution patterns with a persistent bioaerosol peak at ~3 μm. The measurement results confirm that PBAPs account for a substantial proportion of coarse aerosol particle number and mass in continental boundary layer air. Moreover, they suggest that the number concentration of viable bioparticles is dominated by fungal spores or agglomerated bacteria with aerodynamic diameters around 3 μm rather than single bacterial cells with diameters around 1 μm.


Termite mounds contribute to the spatial heterogeneity of ecological processes in many savannas, but the underlying patterns and determinants of mound distributions remain poorly understood. Using the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), we mapped the distribution of termite mounds across a rainfall gradient within a river catchment (~ 27 000 ha) of the Kruger National Park, South Africa. We assessed how different factors were associated with the distribution and height of termite mounds at three spatial scales: the entire catchment, among three broad vegetation types, and on individual hillslope crests. Abiotic factors such as the underlying geology and mean annual precipitation shaped mound densities at broad scales, while local hillslope morphology strongly influenced mound distribution at finer scales, emphasising the importance of spatial scale when assessing mound densities. Fire return period had no apparent association with mound densities or height. Mound density averaged 0.46 mounds ha, and exhibited a clustered pattern throughout the landscape, occurring at relatively high densities (up to 2 mounds ha) on crests, which are nutrient-poor elements of the landscape. Mounds exhibited significant over-dispersion (even spacing) at scales below 60 m so that evenly spaced aggregations of termite mounds are embedded within a landscape of varying mound densities. The tallest mounds were found in dry savanna (500 mm yr) and were positively correlated with mound density, suggesting that dry granitic savannas are ideal habitat for mound-building termites. Mound activity status also varied significantly across the rainfall gradient, with a higher proportion of active (live) mounds in the drier sites. The differential spacing of mounds across landscapes provides essential nutrient hotspots in crest locations, potentially sustaining species that would otherwise not persist. The contribution to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that mounds provide is not uniform throughout landscapes, but varies considerably with spatial scale and context.


This article, part of a symposium on the opinion of the Arizona Supreme Court in Logerquist v. McVey, questions that court's rationales for refusing to apply heightened scrutiny to psychiatric testimony about the retrieval of repressed memories. It also challenges the court's use of a "personal observations" exception to the heightened scrutiny standard of Frye v. United States. It proposes that a better solution to problems of scientific and expert evidence would be to adopt a sliding scale that attends to the use to which the evidence is put and the degree to which it has been shown to be valid and accurate for that use. Although the article delves into Arizona cases, these topics of deep and immediate national interest. The issues and arguments roiling in the cases are and will continue to be sources of confusion and controversy across the nation. These cases show that the transition from exclusive reliance on the general-acceptance standard of Frye v. United States to the scientific soundness standard of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals is far from complete. They reveal that the meaning and implications of "applying Daubert" to nonscientific or expert testimony have yet to be fully understood. And the Arizona cases advance an approach that is a variation on what courts in many jurisdictions do when they wish to avoid the confines of Frye or Daubert. Careful analysis of these matters is timely, if not overdue.


We addressed the challenging task of video question answering, which requires machines to answer questions about videos in a natural language form. Previous state-of-the-art methods attempt to apply spatio-temporal attention mechanism on video frame features without explicitly modeling the location and relations among object interaction occurred in videos. However, the relations between object interaction and their location information are very critical for both action recognition and question reasoning. In this work, we propose to represent the contents in the video as a location-aware graph by incorporating the location information of an object into the graph construction. Here, each node is associated with an object represented by its appearance and location features. Based on the constructed graph, we propose to use graph convolution to infer both the category and temporal locations of an action. As the graph is built on objects, our method is able to focus on the foreground action contents for better video question answering. Lastly, we leverage an attention mechanism to combine the output of graph convolution and encoded question features for final answer reasoning. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Specifically, our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods on TGIF-QA, Youtube2Text-QA and MSVD-QA datasets.


Bone is a hard and dense connective tissue that supports and maintains the body structure and functions. Several factors like aging, drugs, hormonal changes, and physical activities lead to several kinds of bone injuries/fracture. To address these problems, autologous bone graft is considered an ideal material. However, limited availability and complications related to its harvesting process like donor site morbidity and pain limit the use of autologous bone graft in bone regeneration. With increasing advances in technology, several bone substitute materials such as synthetics, bioceramics, and polymers are emerging as a substitute of auto- or allog-enous bone for the treatment of bone defect. These bone substitute materials should be biocompatible, bioresorbable, osteoconductive, osteoinductive, and support the ingrowth of new bone. In this chapter, we summarize the currently available bone graft and bone substitute materials including biological and bio-inorganic factors. An overview of the associated advantages, challenges, and future perspectives to clinical implication is also discussed.


While privacy and surveillance affect different populations in disparate ways, they are often treated as monolithic concepts by journalists, privacy advocates, and researchers. Achieving privacy is especially difficult for those who are marginalized in other areas of life. This special issue interrogates what privacy looks like at the margins, investigating a broad spectrum of issues, methodologies, and contexts. Many make an intervention into mainstream theories of privacy and surveillance, showing how examining the experiences of individuals outside the normative white, American, middle-class subject often complicates assumptions about how privacy operates. Others examine the mundane and the banal in order to analyze how power relations play out in everyday life. By incorporating research outside the canon of privacy research, and by advocating for projects that discuss more diverse conceptualizations of "the user" or the subject, we can envision a future for privacy scholarship that incorporates a wider set of harms and needs, and encompasses the concerns of a larger base of citizens.


The synthesis of new biocomposites exhibiting a synergistic effect is a promising step in the healing of acute and chronic wounds. In the present study we have combined four materials: chlorhexidine digluconate as a antimicrobial agent, lidocaine as a painkiller, chymotrypsin as a necrolytic agent, and sol–gel processed alumina as a carrier for the sustained delivery of drugs and as an established wound healer. Composites were synthesized and characterized for surface morphology, crystalline structure and in vitro drug release. In vivo wound healing efficacy was assessed using a full thickness excision wound model in Wistar rats. The main result, was that a marked decrease in scar size was observed because of the wound healing composite, in fact the area of the scar in the test group of rats was 2.4 times smaller than that in the control group. Wound closure analysis revealed that complete epithelialization was observed after 15 ± 1 days using the biocomposite, whereas this took 17 ± 1 days and 19 ± 1 days using the healing solution alone or pure alumina gel, respectively. It was concluded that the synergistic combination of healing drugs, with sol–gel alumina as dressing material, provides a highly attractive biomaterial for the treatment of surface wounds, burns and foot ulcers.


Background: Cognitive deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) are heterogeneous and can be classified into cognitive domains. Quantitative EEG is related to and predictive of cognitive status in PD. In this cross-sectional study, the relationship of cognitive domains and EEG slowing in PD patients without dementia is investigated. Methods: A total of 48 patients with idiopathic PD were neuropsychologically tested. Cognitive domain scores were calculated combining Z-scores of test variables. Slowing of EEG was measured with median EEG frequency. Linear regression was used for correlational analyses and to control for confounding factors. Results: EEG median frequency was significantly correlated to cognitive performance in most domains (episodic long-term memory, rho = 0.54; overall cognitive score, rho = 0.47; fluency, rho = 0.39; attention, rho = 0.37; executive function, rho = 0.34), but not to visuospatial functions and working memory. Conclusion: Global EEG slowing is a marker for overall cognitive impairment in PD and correlates with impairment in the domains attention, executive function, verbal fluency, and episodic long-term memory, but not with working memory and visuospatial functions. These disparate effects warrant further investigations.


A novel explanation of the relativistic self-induced transparency effect during superintense laser interaction with an overdense plasma is proposed. It was studied analytically and verified with direct modeling by particle-in-cell simulations. Based on this treatment, a method of ultrashort high-energy electron bunch generation with durations on a femtosecond time scale is also proposed and studied via numerical simulation.


Aim  To map and characterize anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere before and during the Industrial Revolution, from 1700 to 2000.

Location  Global.

Methods  Anthropogenic biomes (anthromes) were mapped for 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2000 using a rule-based anthrome classification model applied to gridded global data for human population density and land use. Anthropogenic transformation of terrestrial biomes was then characterized by map comparisons at century intervals.

Results  In 1700, nearly half of the terrestrial biosphere was wild, without human settlements or substantial land use. Most of the remainder was in a seminatural state (45%) having only minor use for agriculture and settlements. By 2000, the opposite was true, with the majority of the biosphere in agricultural and settled anthromes, less than 20% seminatural and only a quarter left wild. Anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere during the Industrial Revolution resulted about equally from land-use expansion into wildlands and intensification of land use within seminatural anthromes. Transformation pathways differed strongly between biomes and regions, with some remaining mostly wild but with the majority almost completely transformed into rangelands, croplands and villages. In the process of transforming almost 39% of earth's total ice-free surface into agricultural land and settlements, an additional 37% of global land without such use has become embedded within agricultural and settled anthromes.

Main conclusions  Between 1700 and 2000, the terrestrial biosphere made the critical transition from mostly wild to mostly anthropogenic, passing the 50% mark early in the 20th century. At present, and ever more in the future, the form and process of terrestrial ecosystems in most biomes will be predominantly anthropogenic, the product of land use and other direct human interactions with ecosystems. Ecological research and conservation efforts in all but a few biomes would benefit from a primary focus on the novel remnant, recovering and managed ecosystems embedded within used lands.


Telephone-based videotex systems are slowly changing from systems that permit only information retrieval and limited message sending based on numeric, menu-type access methods to more sophisticated, multi-user, interactive, transactional systems. This is partly due to the concept of adding external computers to the videotex network and partly due to the emergence of more intelligent terminals. In this paper, four major application areas, which have been made possible by these developments but have not yet received the attention they merit, are discussed in some detail: teleplaying, telegambling, telesoftware, and telecomputing. The authors maintain, and try to demonstrate, that these four areas will significantly influence the market-penetration and social impact of videotex systems.


This study examined a sample of plans that states submitted to the U.S. Education Department in 2015, pursuant to requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I, Part A. Plans were aimed at redressing inequities in access to qualified teachers as this problem has emerged in states and districts across the country. A considerable body of research has demonstrated that teachers are inequitably distributed to the disadvantage of low income and historically under-served students.  Based on descriptive and inferential coding of these plans, the study reaches several conclusions. First, the federal planning mandate has served as an impetus for developing state data systems that track teacher distributions.  Second, many of the strategies states are proposing are not directly relevant, targeted, or fully committed in terms of resources and implementation. Third, in states with highly rated plans, the strategies address fundamental, underlying conditions while offering a comprehensive range of targeted strategies to improve recruitment, support, and retention of teachers in schools serving concentrations of low income and under-served students. Progress on this issue is underway with much that remains to be done.


The German government plans to significantly increase the deployment of electric vehicles. What impact would this have on the country's power system and carbon emissions? This question was addressed as part of a European research project analyzing various scenarios up to 2030. One of the key findings of the study is that total annual power consumption of the four to five million electric vehicles (depending on the scenario) would be small. However, recharging the vehicles, particularly in an uncontrolled charging mode, which involves the car being fully recharged as rapidly as possible after being connected to the electricity grid, would result in problematic peak loads in the power system. The type of additional power generation required for electric vehicles also largely depends on the charging mode. For example, a charging mode that minimizes system costs would use a particularly high share of power from hard-coal- and lignite-fired plants, which, in turn, would result in an above-average level of specific carbon emissions of the charging electricity. If the electricity and transport sectors are both considered, it becomes evident that the introduction of electromobility would result in a significant net reduction in carbon emissions only if linked with an additional expansion of renewable energy sources compared to current plans.


This Article begins by surveying the myriad ways that increasing globalization of communication, travel, and trade, and in particular the rise of the Internet, have forced judges and legal scholars to "adapt" traditional rules for legal jurisdiction to the new economic and social environment. For example, if a person posts content online that is legal where posted but illegal in some place where it is viewed, can that person be subject to suit in the far-off location? How should the International Shoe "minimum contacts" test account for online contacts? Is online activity sufficient to make one "present" in a jurisdiction for tax purposes? And on and on. Moreover, beyond the internet context, annual meetings of the world's industrialized countries have become sites for the expression of uncertainty and resentment about the effect of international trade and monetary policy on local labor forces, the environment, and national sovereignty. Similar debates recur in the context of international human rights, where, increasingly, countries are asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction to try those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in international or foreign domestic courts. Though these issues arise in a variety of doctrinal areas and may involve a wide range of different legal and policy concerns, they all touch on the idea of legal jurisdiction, the circumstances under which a juridical body can assert authority to adjudicate or apply its legal norms to a dispute. And, in each of these cases, the question is complicated by the fact that jurisdiction may be asserted in one physical location over activities or parties located in a different physical location. This period of doctrinal flux affords us an important opportunity to think not only about adapting existing jurisdictional rules, but also about the theoretical basis for those rules. After all, conceptions about legal jurisdiction are more than simply ideas about the appropriate boundaries for state regulation or the efficient allocation of governing authority. Rather, jurisdiction is the locus for debates about community definition, sovereignty, and legitimacy. In addition, the idea of legal jurisdiction both reflects and reinforces social conceptions of space, distance, and identity. I therefore draw on work in political science, anthropology, sociology, critical geography, and cultural studies that forces us to question both whether nation-states should be the only relevant jurisdictional entities and whether strict territorial notions of jurisdiction actually fit people's lived experience of boundaries and community definition. Ultimately, I advance a "cosmopolitan pluralist" conception of jurisdiction, which aims to capture a jurisdictional middle ground between strict territorialism on the one hand and expansive universalism on the other. Such a theoretical model allows the legal definition of jurisdiction to become the rhetorical site for discussions of multiple overlapping and shifting understandings of community, and the recognition of judgments to become the terrain on which alternative conceptions of community vie for persuasive power and legitimacy. I conclude by offering examples of how this conception of jurisdiction is increasingly operating in transnational and international legal practice.


Abstract Problem, research strategy, and findings: The impact of density on emerging highly contagious infectious diseases has rarely been studied. In theory, dense areas lead to more face-to-face interaction among residents, which makes them potential hotspots for the rapid spread of pandemics. On the other hand, dense areas may have better access to health care facilities and greater implementation of social distancing policies and practices. The current COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect case study to investigate these relationships. Our study uses structural equation modeling to account for both direct and indirect impacts of density on the COVID-19 infection and mortality rates for 913 U.S. metropolitan counties, controlling for key confounding factors. We find metropolitan population to be one of the most significant predictors of infection rates; larger metropolitan areas have higher infection and higher mortality rates. We also find that after controlling for metropolitan population, county density is not significantly related to the infection rate, possibly due to more adherence to social distancing guidelines. However, counties with higher densities have significantly lower virus-related mortality rates than do counties with lower densities, possibly due to superior health care systems. Takeaway for practice: These findings suggest that connectivity matters more than density in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Large metropolitan areas with a higher number of counties tightly linked together through economic, social, and commuting relationships are the most vulnerable to the pandemic outbreaks. They are more likely to exchange tourists and businesspeople within themselves and with other parts, thus increasing the risk of cross-border infections. Our study concludes with a key recommendation that planners continue to advocate dense development for a host of reasons, including lower death rates due to infectious diseases like COVID-19.


Confidants' non supportive reactions to disclosure in child sexual abuse constitutes an extensive and significant problem and is associated with a variety of negative consequences: (a) Victims do not receive adequate support or intervention and are left vulnerable to further victimization, (b) non-supportive intra-familial confidants are at greater risk of having their children removed, and (c) the justice system is rendered ineffective by the associated lack of police reporting. This study examined the extent of non-supportive disclosure and the factors associated with such reactions in a sample of 856 cases of child sexual abuse (796 girls and 60 boys) reported in the North Durban policing area of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) in the period January 2001 to December 2003. Of the various agents identified as having provided non-supportive reactions, three categories of non-supportive confidants emerged: namely family members, professional persons, and community members in their respective order of significance. Hierarchical cluster analysis of disclosure variables identified two broad homogenous groups (clusters) of cases of non-'supportive disclosure ("Incestuous Abuse Disclosed Within the Family", and "Extra-familial Abuse Disclosed Outside of the Family"). Binary logistic regression analysis indicated that cluster membership was meaningfully predicted by the three measure of consanguinity included in the analysis, but not significantly related to other abuse related variables. Furthermore, in cases of extra-familial abuse, nonsupportive disclosure was significantly more likely when (a) victims were below the age of twelve years, (b) no violence was used by the offender, and (c) the confidant was not related to the victim. The implications of the findings for secondary prevention and for future research are discussed in detail in this article.


Bottom trawl fishing has widespread impacts on benthic habitats and communities. The benthic response to trawling seems to be smaller or absent in areas exposed to high natural disturbance, leading to the hypothesis that natural and trawl disturbance affect benthic communities in a similar way. However, systematic tests of this hypothesis at large spatial scales and with data from sites spanning a large range of natural disturbance do not exist. Here, we examine the effects of trawl and natural (tidal-bed shear stress) disturbance on benthic communities over gradients of commercial bottom trawling effort in 8 areas in the North and Irish Seas. Using a trait-based approach, that classified species by life-history strategies or by characteristics that provide a proxy for their role in community function, we found support for the hypothesis that trawl and natural disturbance affect benthic communities in similar ways. Both sources of disturbance caused declines in long-living, hard-bodied (exoskeleton) and suspension-feeding organisms. Given these similar impacts, there was no detectable trawling effect on communities exposed to high natural disturbance. Conversely, in 3 out of 5 areas with low bed shear stress, responses to trawling were detected and resulted in community compositions comparable with those in areas subject to high natural disturbance, with communities being composed of either small-sized, deposit-feeding animals or mobile scavengers and predators. The findings highlight that knowledge of the interacting effects of trawl and natural disturbance will help to identify areas that are more or less resilient to trawling and support the development of management plans that account for the environmental effects of fishing.


Fourth Amendment doctrine is attentive to a wide range of interests, including security, informational privacy, and dignity. How should courts reconcile these competing concerns when deciding which searches and seizures are "unreasonable"? Current doctrine typically answers this question by pointing to interest aggregation: the various interests at stake are added up, placed on figurative scales, and compared, with the goal of promoting overall social welfare. But interest aggregation is disconnected from many settled doctrinal rules and leads to results that are unfair for individuals. The main alternative is originalism; but historical sources themselves suggest that the Fourth Amendment calls for new moral reasoning.

This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" is best understood, at least in large part, as a requirement that police investigation be fair in the sense of being authorized by principles that no rights holder could reasonably reject. This approach is inspired by "contractualist" moral philosophy and has several advantages. It tracks widely held moral intuitions, comports with the Fourth Amendment's historical meaning, and resonates with underappreciated currents in extant case law. In attending to the perspectives of individuals, contractualism generates rights that are not subject to interest aggregation. At the same time, contractualism suggests a principled way to address new Fourth Amendment questions, consistent with courts' institutional role.

A contractualist approach to Fourth Amendment fairness suggests many ways to refine or reform current doctrine. In terms of refinements, the contractualist approach gives moral content to the notion of "individualized suspicion" by showing when searches and seizures can be justified by a principle of individual responsibility. Contractualism also draws attention to other justifying principles, such as a protection principle, and so explains how and when suspicionless searches and seizures are reasonable. Finally, the contractualist approach identifies areas where current Fourth Amendment doctrine is decidedly unfair and ripe for reform, such as when courts limit rights to avoid diffuse litigation costs, overemphasize "reasonable expectations of privacy," and ignore the unreasonableness of racial discrimination.


Abstract Southern Brazilian rivers and streams have been intensively affected by human activities, especially agriculture and the release of untreated domestic sewage. However, data about the aquatic macroinvertebrates in these streams are scarce and limited to only certain groups. In addition, studies focusing on the structure and spatial distribution of these communities are lacking. This study analyzed the effects of natural and anthropic variables on the community structure of macroinvertebrates along a longitudinal gradient in three microbasins located in a region of landscape transition in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Sampling was conducted in the Vacacaí-Mirim River (August 2008) and in the Ibicuí-Mirim and Tororaipí rivers (August 2009) following an environmental gradient including 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order segments. Local natural factors that were analyzed include water temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, substrate granulometry, and the presence of aquatic vegetation. Anthropic variables that were analyzed include including bank erosion, land use, urbanization, riparian deforestation, and fine sediments input. A total of 42 families and 129 taxa were found, with predominance of environmentally tolerant taxa. Geological context (landscape transition and large hydrographic basins) tended to influence natural environmental factors along the rivers' longitudinal gradients. However, changes in anthropic variables were not affected by these geological differences and therefore did not correlate with patterns of spatial distribution in macroinvertebrate communities. Only 1st order stream segments showed a community composition with high richness of taxa intolerant to anthropic disturbance. Richness as a whole tended to be higher in 3rd to 4th order set of segments, but this trend was a result of local anthropic environmental disturbances. Future inventories conducted in similar landscape transition regions of Brazil, for conservation purposes, must consider stream segments of different orders, microbasins, and major basins in order to obtain data that faithfully reflect the regional diversity. Additionally, it is necessary to consider environmental gradients of land use and anthropic impacts in order to suggest appropriate strategies for conserving the environmental integrity of streams.


Building envelopes can play a crucial role in building improvement efficiency, and the adoption of Phase Change Materials (PCMs), coupled with transparent elements, may: (i) allow a better control of the heat flows from/to the outdoor environment, (ii) increase the exploitation of solar energy at a building scale and (iii) modulate light transmission in order to prevent glare effects. Starting from a literature review, focused on experimental works, this research identifies the main possible integrations of PCMs in transparent/translucent building envelope components (in glazing, in shutters and in multilayer facade system) in order to draw a global picture of the potential and limitations of these technologies. Transparent envelopes with PCMs have been classified from the simplest "zero" technology, which integrates the PCM in a double glass unit (DGU), to more complex solutions—with a different number of glass cavities (triple glazed unit TGU), different positions of the PCM layer (internal/external shutter), and in combination with other materials (TIM, aerogel, prismatic solar reflector, PCM curtain controlled by an electric pump). The results of the analysis have been summarised in a Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis table to underline the strengths and weaknesses of transparent building envelope components with PCMs, and to indicate opportunities and threats for future research and building applications.


This Article analyzes the contemporary program of "corporatization without privatization" in the People's Republic of China (PRC) directed at China's traditional state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through a consideration of long ago precursor enterprise establishments—starting from the last Chinese imperial dynasty's creation of "government promoted/supervised-merchant financed/operated" (guandu shangban) firms in the latter part of the nineteenth century. While analysts are tempted to see PRC corporations with listings on international exchanges that dominate the global economy and capital markets as expressions of "convergence," this Article argues that such firms in fact show deeply embedded aspects of path dependency unique to the Chinese context even prior to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. To that end, this Article identifies commonalities between China's large-scale state (imperial court)-promoted or -operated enterprises after 1870 and the PRC's largest corporations and corporate groups that have grown since the early 1990s—commonalities which touch on the national development ambitions behind such firm establishments, financing, operations, monopoly franchise rights, corporate governance, relationship to law and domestic and transnational legal systems, the interaction between the state and other non-state sectors, and more. Conversely, the Article investigates key differences in the surrounding geopolitical, political, legal, economic, and market environments between the late nineteenth century and today, so as to explain how today's largest Chinese enterprises are, and will be, distinct from their nineteenth century ancestors. This Article does not address the extent to which China's corporatized, publicly held SOEs should be understood as "sovereign" for purposes of evaluating foreign sovereign immunity and the like. Instead, this Article aims to help policy makers, global capital markets participants, and even corporate governance specialists understand more concretely the underlying differences between modern China's apparently convergent corporations, on one side, and corporate enterprises operating and financed in other parts of the world, on the other, and the future trajectory of the PRC and its rising corporate entities as global political and economic actors of abiding power and influence.


Clustering is a fundamental unsupervised learning approach. Many clustering algorithms -- such as $k$-means -- rely on the euclidean distance as a similarity measure, which is often not the most relevant metric for high dimensional data such as images. Learning a lower-dimensional embedding that can better reflect the geometry of the dataset is therefore instrumental for performance. We propose a new approach for this task where the embedding is performed by a differentiable model such as a deep neural network. By rewriting the $k$-means clustering algorithm as an optimal transport task, and adding an entropic regularization, we derive a fully differentiable loss function that can be minimized with respect to both the embedding parameters and the cluster parameters via stochastic gradient descent. We show that this new formulation generalizes a recently proposed state-of-the-art method based on soft-$k$-means by adding constraints on the cluster sizes. Empirical evaluations on image classification benchmarks suggest that compared to state-of-the-art methods, our optimal transport-based approach provide better unsupervised accuracy and does not require a pre-training phase.


This fascinating history explores the dynamic relationship between overseas colonisation and the bodily experience of eating. It reveals the importance of food to the colonial project in Spanish America and reconceptualises the role of European colonial expansion in shaping the emergence of ideas of race during the Age of Discovery. Rebecca Earle shows that anxieties about food were fundamental to Spanish understandings of the new environment they inhabited and their interactions with the native populations of the New World. Settlers wondered whether Europeans could eat New World food, whether Indians could eat European food and what would happen to each if they did. By taking seriously their ideas about food we gain a richer understanding of how settlers understood the physical experience of colonialism and of how they thought about one of the central features of the colonial project. The result is simultaneously a history of food, colonialism and race.


Abstract Multiple sclerosis is a highly heterogeneous disease, and the detection of neuroaxonal damage as well as its quantification is a critical step for patients. Blood-based serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) is currently under close investigation as an easily accessible biomarker of prognosis and treatment response in patients with multiple sclerosis. There is abundant evidence that sNfL levels reflect ongoing inflammatory-driven neuroaxonal damage (e.g. relapses or MRI disease activity) and that sNfL levels predict disease activity over the next few years. In contrast, the association of sNfL with long-term clinical outcomes or its ability to reflect slow, diffuse neurodegenerative damage in multiple sclerosis is less clear. However, early results from real-world cohorts and clinical trials using sNfL as a marker of treatment response in multiple sclerosis are encouraging. Importantly, clinical algorithms should now be developed that incorporate the routine use of sNfL to guide individualized clinical decision-making in people with multiple sclerosis, together with additional fluid biomarkers and clinical and MRI measures. Here, we propose specific clinical scenarios where implementing sNfL measures may be of utility, including, among others: initial diagnosis, first treatment choice, surveillance of subclinical disease activity and guidance of therapy selection.


The thirtieth anniversary of the enactment of the modern Endangered Species Act (ESA) offers an irresistible excuse to suggest changes that are needed to set the statute, and the larger project of environmental protection, on course for greater effectiveness. The 1973 ESA is novel in its approach and reach, in that it reflects both the resource management and pollution control traditions in environmental law. Its evolution indicates broader trends in the legal landscape of environmental law. Making predictions about the future of the ESA is a daunting task. Most predictions made thirty years ago about the statute proved to be wrong. The existence of three inconsistent, but equally plausible stories describing the past thirty years of environmental law history compound the problem, providing little basis upon which to project past trends onto the future.More useful than venturing guesses about the future is describing what changes we need to make in order to fulfill the promise of the ESA. Rather than speculating about the statute's future path, we must carefully plan that path with prescriptions for reform in three major areas: better funding for the ESA program, technology-based limitations to control habitat degradation, and preventative care for biodiversity.


Folate is a water-soluble B vitamin, also known as vitamin B9 or folacin. It is found naturally in a wide variety of foods, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, dairy products, meats, eggs, seafood, and grains. However, only about 50% of the folate naturally present in food is bioavailable. Folate is critical in the metabolism of nucleic acid precursors and several amino acids, as well as in methylation reactions. Folic acid helps our bodies produce and maintain new cells, and it helps prevent DNA changes that may lead to cancer. Folate defi ciency can cause anemia, insomnia, irritability, depression, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovas- cular disease, and more serious health problems. An inadequate folate status during early pregnancy increases the risk of congenital anomalies, such as neural tube defects (NTDs), which are life-threatening and cause life-long disabilities. Therefore, it has been recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service that even before becoming pregnant, women should consume 400 µg of synthetic folic acid daily, whether in the form of foods or supplements, as well as maintain a healthy diet of folate-rich foods to reduce NTD risk.


Video coding standards use motion compensated prediction to reduce temporal redundancies. In general this is performed by computing motion vectors for predefined regions in the image (rectangular blocks), and transmitting these vectors as side-information. The motion transform (MT) provides a new motion compensation technique that does not require the transmission of motion vectors and yet, performs as well as forward motion estimation for many image sequences. In the MT, motion information is obtained in a bottom-up hierarchical fashion using a two-dimensional nonlinear filter bank. In this paper we elaborate on MT implementation details and discuss a new variation of the MT. Results obtained using MTs on typical image sequences are compared to results for the full search block matching algorithm (BMA).


Increased levels of seismicity coinciding with injection of reservoir fluids have prompted interest in methods to distinguish induced from natural seismicity. Discrimination between induced and natural seismicity is especially difficult in areas that have high levels of natural seismicity, such as the geothermal fields at the Salton Sea and Coso, both in California. Both areas show swarm-like sequences that could be related to natural, deep fluid migration as part of the natural hydrothermal system. Therefore, swarms often have spatiotemporal patterns that resemble fluid-induced seismicity, and might possibly share other characteristics. The Coso Geothermal Field and its surroundings is one of the most seismically active areas in California with a large proportion of its activity occurring as seismic swarms. Here we analyze clustered seismicity in and surrounding the currently produced reservoir comparatively for pre-production and co-production periods. We perform a cluster analysis, based on the inter-event distance in a spacetime-energy domain to identify notable earthquake sequences. For each event j, the closest previous event i is identified and their relationship categorized. If this nearest neighbor's distance is below a threshold based on the local minimum of the bimodal distribution of nearest neighbor distances, then the event j is included in the cluster as a child to this parent event i. If it is above the threshold, event j begins a new cluster. This process identifies subsets of events whose nearest neighbor distances and relative timing qualify as a cluster as well as a characterizing the parent-child relationships among events in the cluster. We apply this method to three different catalogs: (1) a two-year microseismic survey of the Coso geothermal area that was acquired before exploration drilling in the area began; (2) the HYS_catalog_2013 that contains 52,000 double-difference relocated events and covers the years 1981 to 2013; and (3) a catalog of 57,000 events with absolute locations from the local network recorded between 2002 and 2007. Using this method we identify 10 clusters of more than 20 events each in the pre-production survey and more than 200 distinct seismicity clusters that each contain at least 20 and up to more than 1000 earthquakes in the more extensive catalogs. The cluster identification method used yields a hierarchy of links between multiple generations of parent and offspring events. We analyze different topological parameters of this hierarchy to better characterize and thus differentiate natural swarms from induced clustered seismicity and also to identify aftershock sequences of notable mainshocks. We find that the branching characteristic given by the average number of child events per parent event is significantly different for clusters below than for clusters around the produced field.


Abstract. Understanding responses by changes in land use and land cover
(LULC) and climate over the past decades on streamflow in the upper Blue
Nile River basin is important for water management and water resource
planning in the Nile basin at large. This study assesses the long-term
trends of rainfall and streamflow and analyses the responses of steamflow to
changes in LULC and climate in the upper Blue Nile River basin. Findings of
the Mann–Kendall (MK) test indicate statistically insignificant increasing
trends for basin-wide annual, monthly, and long
rainy-season rainfall but no
trend for the daily, short rainy-season, and dry season rainfall. The Pettitt test did
not detect any jump point in basin-wide rainfall series, except for daily
time series rainfall. The findings of the MK test for daily, monthly, annual, and
seasonal streamflow showed a statistically significant increasing trend.
Landsat satellite images for 1973, 1985, 1995, and 2010 were used for LULC
change-detection analysis. The LULC change-detection findings indicate
increases in cultivated land and decreases in forest coverage prior to 1995,
but forest area increases after 1995 with the area of cultivated land that decreased. Statistically, forest coverage changed from 17.4 % to 14.4%, by 12.2 %, and by 15.6 %, while cultivated land changed from 62.9 %
to 65.6 %, by 67.5 %, and by 63.9 % from 1973 to 1985, in 1995, and in
2010, respectively. Results of hydrological modelling indicate that mean
annual streamflow increased by 16.9 % between the 1970s and 2000s due to
the combined effects of LULC and climate change. Findings on the effects of LULC
change on only streamflow indicate that surface runoff and base flow are
affected and are attributed to the 5.1 % reduction in forest coverage and
a 4.6 % increase in cultivated land areas. The effects of climate change only
revealed that the increased rainfall intensity and number of extreme
rainfall events from 1971 to 2010 significantly affected the surface runoff
and base flow. Hydrological impacts by climate change are more significant
as compared to the impacts of LULC change for streamflow of the upper Blue
Nile River basin.


"Groundbreaking ...It will be difficult for anyone to better this book ...a work of art, a feast that combines genres skilfully: biography, true-crime, political commentary. It gives us Malcolm X in full gallop". (Wil Haygood, "Washington Post"). "He was a country bumpkin who became a zoot-suited entertainer who became a petty criminal who became a self-taught intellectual ...In his revealing and prodigiously researched new biography, Marable vividly chronicles these many incarnations of Malcolm X, describing the "multiple masks" he donned over the years". (Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"). "Explodes the myths that obscure the real man". (Hugh Muir, "Guardian"). "By the end of the 1960s, Malcolm's disciples had elevated him to what Manning Marable calls "secular sainthood" ...But Marable resists the temptation of hagiography and fills in the gaps left by previous books. He gives us Malcolm in all his self-contradiction and self-doubt". (Yo Zushi, "New Statesman"). "Lucid, hugely researched and surely definitive ...an extraordinary story". (Dominic Sandbrook, "Sunday Times"). "Here at last is the meticulous portrait he deserves". (Andrew Anthony, "Observer").


Computer-based tools are increasingly used in radiologists' training and numerous initiatives are attempting to compile large databases of annotated digital images for training purposes. We want to apply computational intelligence to support individualised learning in mammography, based on a set of annotated cases. We require not just a controlled set of radiological descriptors to be used in the annotation but rather an ontology to support reasoning about the educational content of a case. Previous research in biomedical ontologies has modelled normal anatomy, genetic processes and other clinical concepts. There has, however, been relatively little work on imaging or on modelling educational concepts. In this paper, we describe an ontology for breast radiologist training. The ontology is based on a thorough study of 400 cases, selected and annotated by experienced screening radiologists. In addition to the usual reporting information, annotations also include learning points, indicating their educational significance. We give a detailed description of our ontology, and of how the learning points are interpreted and represented. The novel ontology enables computerbased reasoning, allowing a teaching tool to deliver an individualised training programme.


This study examines whether Canada's military's
interoperability with the United States affects Canadian
sovereignty. The literature dealing with this subject is highly
polarized arguing that such interoperability either significantly
reduces our sovereignty or that it is necessary to maintain it.
Successive Canadian governments, for example, have traditionally
supported the military view that high levels of interoperability
with our allies are needed for operations to proceed safely and
effectively and that this poses no cost to Canadian sovereignty.
The interoperability critics strongly disagree, arguing that
increased interoperability, especially if it is with the United
States, will diminish our foreign policy independence, our ability
to refuse US military adventures, and our domestic sovereignty. In
a limited sense this division in the literature allows one to
comprehend the broad contours of the issue. Otherwise, recent works
are marked by shifting definitions and unclear methodologies. These
shortcomings have led to a reliance on conjecture, with the critics
predicting damaging "future implications" as a result of Canada's
interoperability policies while governments promise outright gains.
As a result, the Canadian public that underwrites the financial
costs of such multi-billion dollar investments as the new F-35
fighter have little to guide them in assessing the widely claimed
interoperability and sovereignty benefits or costs of the purchase.
This thesis set about correcting these shortcomings by examining
Canada's interoperability history, defining the terms, developing
clear hypotheses, and then testing them against recent issues and
events. These included Canada's response to 9/11 and our decisions
to participate, or not, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the war in
Afghanistan. These produced six case studies within which events
were assessed against the hypotheses that test for sovereignty
gains or losses. The subsequent evaluation concluded that Canadian
sovereignty was rarely at risk from Canada's military
interoperability policy and Canada was normally able to enjoy an
independent foreign policy. The only area where there were
successive sovereignty costs was when Canada became overly
dependent on US capabilities. This thesis also argued that the
methodology would be useful in gauging the sovereignty implications
of future cooperative projects.


This critical review deals with the applications of nanocatalysts in Suzuki coupling reactions, a field that has attracted immense interest in the chemical, materials and industrial communities. We intend to present a broad overview of nanocatalysts for Suzuki coupling reactions with an emphasis on their performance, stability and reusability. We begin the review with a discussion on the importance of Suzuki cross-coupling reactions, and we then discuss fundamental aspects of nanocatalysis, such as the effects of catalyst size and shape. Next, we turn to the core focus of this review: the synthesis, advantages and disadvantages of nanocatalysts for Suzuki coupling reactions. We begin with various nanocatalysts that are based on conventional supports, such as high surface silica, carbon nanotubes, polymers, metal oxides and double hydroxides. Thereafter, we reviewed nanocatalysts based on non-conventional supports, such as dendrimers, cyclodextrin and magnetic nanomaterials. Finally, we discuss nanocatalyst systems that are based on non-conventional media, i.e., fluorous media and ionic liquids, for use in Suzuki reactions. At the end of this review, we summarise the significance of nanocatalysts, their impacts on conventional catalysis and perspectives for further developments of Suzuki cross-coupling reactions (131 references).


This paper examines the 1567 change in Ming dynasty prohibition on maritime trade against the backdrop of increasing wokou or Japanese piracy along the coast at that time. While the current interpretation argues that the 1567 policy change was a capitulation to littoral demands by the state, I argue that the adoption of a kaihai (open seas) policy was the outcome of the Jiajing court's incremental approach towards resolution of the wokou crisis and the permitting, albeit limited, of private trade along the coast. In this search for a modus operandi, littoral demands featured less prominently than the court's final acceptance of reality on the coast on its own terms.


It has been previously suggested that abnormal yolk sac characteristics and slow embryonic foetal heart rate = are associated with poor gestational outcome and these parameters can be used to assess foetal viability in first trimester of pregnancies. However there is paucity of evidence in Indian medical literature. The purpose of present study was to examine the role of yolk sac characteristics and early embryonic heart rate (EHR) between 6 to 9 weeks of pregnancies and to study their associations with spontaneous abortions. This prospective observational study included 280 low risk healthy singleton pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in a tertiary medical institution in early gestation. Transvaginal ultrasound was carried out to quantify yolk sac morphometry and using M mode, early embryonic heart rate was measured. 90% (252/280) of subjects satisfied normal yolk sac morphometry according to Nyberg criteria and 99.2% of them (250/252) had ongoing pregnancies. 28 patients had abnormally appearing yolk sac and 34.5% of them (10/28) subsequently aborted. Similarly 99.3% (266/268) who had normal embryonic heart rate (≥100 bpm) had successful outcome. Abnormal heart rate (<100 bpm) was detected in 12 pregnancies and majority of them (10/12, 83.3%) ended up in foetal demise. Yolk sac diameter between 2-5 mm showed sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 93.3%, 83.3% and 92.9% for successful gestational outcome. The respective figures for embryonic heart rate (≥ 100 bpm) were 99.3%, 83.3% and 98.5%. The embryos with good yolk sac parameters and normal heart rate have high potential for survival. The information obtained by first trimester vaginal ultrasound may be used to prognosticate pregnancies that are complicated by previous bad obstetric history.


In South Africa, there has been recognition of the need for increasing research capacity at South African universities and within the national science system. Furthermore there has been a need to address imbalances in the racial and gender profile of researchers. There has been a growth of application-oriented, multidisciplinary research centres at South African universities in response to changing national and international knowledge contexts. Many research centres have a research capacity development component and run postgraduate programmes in collaboration with academic departments. This it was relevant to investigate what types of contexts these centres provide for research capacity development and postgraduate education. In this study, individual research capacity development was examined as a process of identity formation and socialisation through social, organisational and epistemological lenses.


With billions of global users, the successful utilization of social media platforms is becoming an essential task for the nonprofit sector. Organizations that successfully implement strategic social media campaigns experience significant improvements to their organizational capacity. Navigating the implementation of a social media campaign is a challenging process, specifically, maximizing and measuring return on investment. This comprehensive literature review was conducted to gain deeper understanding of the challenges associated with maximizing and measuring return on investment in social media campaigns and to identify emerging best practices for addressing these issues. Existing literature from multiple fields including marketing, business, communications, and nonprofit management was analyzed to develop a step-bystep guide for nonprofit organizations to successfully implement and evaluate strategic social media utilization. This literature review indicates that there is consensus among authors regarding the specific practices necessary to maximize benefits from investing in social media campaigns. While the body of research specific to nonprofit organizations measuring return on investment in social media is relatively small, promising models and tools are emerging for nonprofits to quantify and interpret the results of their investments in meaningful ways.


In this pioneering study of the water infrastructure of Renaissance Rome, urban historian Katherine Rinne offers a new understanding of how technological and scientific developments in aqueduct and fountain architecture helped turn a medieval backwater into the preeminent city of early modern Europe. Supported by the author's extensive topographical research, this book presents a unified vision of the city that links improvements to public and private water systems with political, religious, and social change. Between 1560 and 1630, in a spectacular burst of urban renewal, Rome's religious and civil authorities sponsored the construction of aqueducts, private and public fountains for drinking, washing, and industry, and the magnificent ceremonial fountains that are Rome's glory. Tying together the technological, sociopolitical, and artistic questions that faced the designers during an age of turmoil in which the Catholic Church found its authority threatened and the infrastructure of the city was in a state of decay, Rinne shows how these public works projects transformed Rome in a successful marriage of innovative engineering and strategic urban planning.


Abstract. The southern Mediterranean region frequently experiences critical levels of photochemical pollutants during summertime. In order to account for the contribution of different atmospheric processes during this type of episodes, the WRF-ARW/HERMES/CMAQ modelling system was applied with high resolution (1 km2, 33 sigma vertical layers, 1 h) to assess the different dynamics in a coastal environment and an inland-continental zone: the North-Eastern and Central Iberian Peninsula (NEIP and CIP, respectively). The former is characterized by a very complex terrain, while the latter behaves as a flat area, which clearly affects the pattern of local flows. A representative type of photochemical pollution episode (occurring over 78% of summer days) which occurred during 17–18 June, 2004 is selected as the study period. The CMAQ Integrated Process Rate provides the hourly contributions of atmospheric processes to net O3, NOx and NMVOCs concentrations. The O3 photochemical formation occurs mainly in downwind areas from the main NOx emission sources during midday. At surface level it accounts for 50 to 75 μg m−3 h−1. The urban areas and main roads, as main sources of NOx emissions, act as O3 sinks, quenching up to −200 μg m−3 per hour during the traffic circulation peaks. The O3 concentration gradient generated, larger during daytime, increases the contribution of diffusion processes to ground-level O3 (up to 200 μg m−3 h−1 fluxes, mainly from upper vertical layers). The maximum positive contributions of gas-phase chemistry to O3 occur in the coastal domain at high levels (around 500 to 1500 m a.g.l.), while in the continental domain they take place in the whole atmospheric column under the PBL. The transport of ozone precursors by advective flows determines the location of the maximum O3 surface concentrations. The O3 chemical formation involves the oxidation of less NMVOCs in the NEIP than in the CIP domains, due to differences in chemical sensitivity between these areas. The dry deposition is an important sink in the lowest layer of the model, together with vertical diffusion flows. Finally, the contributions from cloud processes, wet deposition and heterogeneous chemistry are negligible during the whole episode, characterized by a high solar radiation and neither precipitation nor cloudiness. This process analysis provides new quantitative information about the origin of the peaks of O3 and its precursors, aiding the design of abatement strategies in South-Western Europe.


Objectives: To describe the types of report that are cited by protocols and reviews included in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Methods: The citation for each reference included in the Cochrane protocols and reviews published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in issue 1, 1999 of The Cochrane Library were categorized by reference type (e.g., journal article, conference proceeding, book chapter, personal communication, Cochrane review). Results: Of a total of 24,913 citations, 21,694 (87.1%) were references to journal articles. There was a significant difference between the proportion of references to studies that were journal articles (12,348 of 13,472; 91.7%) and the proportion of other references in this category (9,346 of 11,441; 81.7%). Conclusion: The great majority of studies included in Cochrane reviews at the beginning of 1999 had been published as journal articles.


Other People's Myths celebrates the universal art of storytelling, and the rich diversity of stories that people live by. Drawing on Biblical parables, Greek myths, Hindu epics, and the modern mythologies of Woody Allen and soap operas, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty encourages us to feel anew the force of myth and tradition in our lives, and in the lives of other cultures. She shows how the stories of mythology--whether of Greek gods, Chinese sages, or Polish rabbis--enable all cultures to define themselves. She raises critical questions about the way we interpret mythical stories, especially the way different cultures make use of central texts and traditions. And she offers a sophisticated way of looking at the roles myths play in all cultures.


We draw a map of the wireless technology landscape, and place different industrial applications in this context. It is clear that in order to implement wireless communication in safety critical applications more research is needed. We describe one approach aiming at the very low bit error rates of these applications.


In studying benefits and costs of language diversity the use of computer models is rare. There may be various reasons for this situation, e.g. a) the complexity of the interpretation of language diversity, b) the difficulty in operationalizing factors and dimensions of diversity, c) the absence of realistic actor models, that is to say of actors that can communicate in a realistic way and d) the underperformance or restrictedness of existing software programs. They may be only a few of the reasons to abstain from using computers models to analyze, explain and predict language diversity. How valid these arguments may be, it is strange that for weather analyses and forecasts and for tide and streaming conditions many computer models have been developed and are successfully applied. Tides and weather are also complex, many factors and dimensions are also applicable, and software programs and computational power can always be enhanced. The only big difference that we can think about in modeling and comparing natural (tide and weather) and artificial (language and communication) systems is the presence or absence of a realistic model of plausible cognitive actors and the interaction of these actors. It is also possible to defend the line of reasoning that by definition humans systems and their social structures cannot be modeled in software. The existence of cognitive science and social simulation since the 60s of the last century to our opinion shows that the rejection of this kind of modeling is not justified. In our presentation we will propose a pseudo specification of plausible cognitive actors that have a memory, have goals, have communication instruments, i.e., a language, and are able to exhibit social behavior (Helmhout, 2006; Wijermans, 2008).


We show novel techniques of analysing complex dynamics of cellular automata (CA) with chaotic behaviour. CA are well known computational substrates for studying emergent collective behaviour, complexity, randomness and interaction between order and disorder. A number of attempts have been made to classify CA functions on their spatio-temporal dynamics and to predict behaviour of any given function. Examples include mechanical computation, $\lambda$ and $Z$-parameters, mean field theory, differential equations and number conserving features. We propose to classify CA based on their behaviour when they act in a historical mode, i.e. as CA with memory. We demonstrate that cell-state transition rules enriched with memory quickly transform a chaotic system converging to a complex global behaviour from almost any initial condition. Thus just in few steps we can select chaotic rules without exhaustive computational experiments or recurring to additional parameters. We provide analysis of well-known chaotic functions in one-dimensional CA, and decompose dynamics of the automata using majority memory.


This thesis is about teacher-student relationship in higher education. Set against the background of marketization, when the higher education sector is seen as a market, education institutions act like business enterprises, and students are seen as customers, teacher-student relationship is commonly perceived as having transformed itself to resemble a customer-seller relationship. On a conceptual level, this transformation is doing a disservice to the sector, as revealed in the many obvious differences between a customer-seller relationship and that between teachers and students. Academics, in particular, vehemently resist such conceptualizations, blaming such transformations as the main culprit of the prevalence of students' disengagement and incivility in higher education nowadays. While much of what has been said about the negative influence of student consumerism on teacher-student relationship has been anecdotal in nature, this thesis attempts to offer some empirical evidence to fill the gap in the literature. Because of its quantitative nature, this study focused on only one of the many possible dimensions of examining teacher-student relationship, the power relations, measured by the level of teachers' influence on students. Using the Interpersonal Power Interaction Model (IPIM) as the conceptual framework, this thesis assesses the relationship between student consumerism and teacher power by (1) examining the association between the students' consumerist attitude and teachers' hard and soft power bases and (2) establishing the moderation effect of students' consumerist attitude on the relationship between students' personality variables and teachers' soft and hard power bases. The study was conducted in the HKUSPACE Community College, the leading community college of the sector which has been operating on a fully self-financing status since its establishment in 2000. Data was collected by way of a questionnaire survey covering the key variables including students' consumerist attitude, compliance with teachers' power, as well as four personality variables: motivation orientation, desire for control, concern for appropriateness and self-esteem. Statistical analysis of the findings from the research confirmed only some of the hypotheses. In terms of correlation, while students' consumerist attitude was found to be positively associated with soft power base as hypothesized, its correlation with hard power base was also found to be positive, which was contradictory to the hypothesis. In terms of moderation, consumerist attitude was found to moderate only three out of ten relationships between personality factors and teacher power bases. Specifically, students' consumerist attitude was found to moderate the relationship between intrinsic motivation and compliance with both hard and soft power bases, as well as that between concern for appropriateness and soft power base. Results have been analyzed in light of the literature on instructional communication and teaching effectiveness with implications offered to warn educators against the potential abuse of soft power as well as on the proper use of both power bases to exercise positive influence on students. Implications were also drawn on further research in the area of teacher-student relationship in the context of a marketized education sector.


AVO inversion of prestack seismic data, constrained by geologic knowledge and rock-physics modeling, is an essential technology that can greatly reduce interpretation risk during exploration. However, in spite of its great potentials, this technology suffers from a wide range of pitfalls and many uncertainties. In this study, we demonstrate the use of simultaneous AVO inversion in an area of the Norwegian Sea where several proven discoveries with strong AVO anomalies are present, all of which are structural traps. The inversion successfully delineated these discoveries, and a pure blind test of a prospect on a structural high correctly predicted the presence of hydrocarbons. The AVO inversion also gave support for a stratigraphic trap in a graben setting between the prolific structural highs. However, this prospect turned out to be a failure, as the observed AVO anomaly was false. Postdrill analysis showed that a thin, very hard, calcareous event right above the target had created a refraction that interfered with the target horizon below, creating a false AVO class II to III anomaly. The target interval was predominantly a very soft, thick, and immature organic-rich shale, which normally should show a class IV AVO anomaly. Moreover, the low-frequency model used in the inversion was derived from wells on structural highs combined with interval velocities and turned out to not be representative in the graben areas. The key learnings from this study are not to use angle ranges exceeding about 40° during AVO inversion in this area and, in general, to be careful extrapolating the low-frequency model away from well control, even when interval velocities are used, especially in areas with complex geology. More integration between geology and geophysics is necessary during all steps of the AVO inversion to avoid such pitfalls.


l-DOPA–induced dyskinesia is caused by elevated l-DOPA levels and dysregulated l-DOPA metabolism throughout the brain. l-DOPA treatment for Parkinson's disease frequently leads to dyskinesias, the pathophysiology of which is poorly understood. We used MALDI-MSI to map the distribution of l-DOPA and monoaminergic pathways in brains of dyskinetic and nondyskinetic primates. We report elevated levels of l-DOPA, and its metabolite 3-O-methyldopa, in all measured brain regions of dyskinetic animals and increases in dopamine and metabolites in all regions analyzed except the striatum. In dyskinesia, dopamine levels correlated well with l-DOPA levels in extrastriatal regions, such as hippocampus, amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and cortical areas, but not in the striatum. Our results demonstrate that l-DOPA–induced dyskinesia is linked to a dysregulation of l-DOPA metabolism throughout the brain. The inability of extrastriatal brain areas to regulate the formation of dopamine during l-DOPA treatment introduces the potential of dopamine or even l-DOPA itself to modulate neuronal signaling widely across the brain, resulting in unwanted side effects.


The 2005 American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (AISC 2005) will contain significant changes to the shear connector provisions for composite beams. Current specification provisions use shear connector strength models that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. The pending provisions incorporate the data base of test results used to develop the current provisions as well as test results conducted in the interim. The focus of this paper, and indeed the changes to the specification, is on welded headed shear studs. Welded, headed shear studs are by far the most common type of shear connector used in the design of composite members in steel frame construction today. Indeed this has been the case for the last 30 years. Provisions for the design of the shear studs have been a part of the AISC specifications since the 1960s. Yet the subject has been researched and debated extensively for the last 17 years. The primary reason for the continued discussion is that since 1987 the AISC specification equations for shear stud strength have been questioned. Specifically, the equations used to determine the reduction in strength due to the use of cold-formed steel deck have been identified as being unconservative. Papers on the subject have appeared in the literature in the United States, Canada and Europe (Jayas and Hosain, 1988; Robinson, 1988; Mottram and Johnson 1990; Lawson 1992; Lloyd and Wright, 1992; Easterling, et al 1993; Van der Sanden, 1995; Johnson and Yuan, 1998.) The shear stud is one of the fundamental components of any composite member in which it is used. It can therefore be argued that a thorough understanding of the performance characteristics of the shear studs is essential if efficient, reliable design of composite members is to take place. A comprehensive research project conducted at Virginia Tech (VT) has addressed this issue (Easterling, et al 1993; Lyons, et al 1994; Roddenbery, et al 2002.) It has been shown through a combination of elemental (push-out) tests, direct shear tests, composite beam tests and subsequent analytical evaluations of these tests that the current AISC specification provisions (AISC 1999) are not representative of true behavior.


Quantitative measurement of the clamping or tightening force of rods and bolts is important when assessing the structural integrity of various constructions. This paper shows that by using a bi-wave ultrasonic pulse-echo technique, it is possible to determine this tightening force without the need of extensive calibration prior to installing the bolts. We show that the ratio of the time-of-flight (TOF) between the transversal and the longitudinal waves changes linearly with the clamping force and that we only need to know the TOF of the unstrained bolt prior to installment. This is then demonstrated experimentally on a 1.1 m rock bolt, using pulses that propagated 6.6 m. Two different methods for estimation of the TOF ratio are evaluated.


Fisheries around the world have a substantial impact on marine ecosystems through the removal of biomass and modification of habitats, which alters the conditions within food webs. However, our understanding of this impact and consequences for the ecosystems is limited. Despite this limitation and uncertainty, fisheries have been allowed to develop and expand, causing substantial reductions in many fish stocks due to overfishing. The main reason for stock depletion is overcapacity (leading to non-sustainable fishing effort and catches), which has been largely fueled by government subsidies to fisheries. The Baltic Sea is no exception, high fishing pressure combined with unfavorable conditions for the reproduction of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), the historically dominant large predatory fish, resulted in a rapidly decrease of annual landings in the late 1980s, from which cod stocks have not recovered. More recently, landings are dominated by small pelagic species, herring (Clupea harengus), and sprat (Sprattus sprattus), whose high exploitation of the ecosystem can have significant negative consequences for the processes within it. There are several components of fisheries catches that are usually not accounted for and hence not reported, and these are Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) catches. With the hope to contribute to a better understanding of total fisheries impacts and improved management leading to sustainable catch levels, a catch data reconstruction for Swedish fisheries in the Baltic Sea, from 1950-2007, was undertaken. The catch reconstruction estimated IUU catches, including discards, and recreational catches, and added those to a foundation based on the officially reported landings as presented by the International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) on behalf of Swedish government. Data and information on unreported landings were sparse, and much of the estimations had to be based on interpolation between 'anchor points', which in turn were formed using an assumption-based approach previously described in the literature that attempts to maximize the use of all available and suitable data and information. The commonly used standard approach of applying 'zero catch' to situations where no hard data are available was not acceptable here. If a fisheries component was known to exist it had to be estimated for all of Sweden for the entire time period 1950-2007. In order to avoid the potential for substantial over-estimation, a conservative approach was applied throughout. Information was obtained by data and literature searches (including grey and unpublished literature), and interviews with people involved in Swedish fisheries. The total estimated reconstructed Swedish catch in the Baltic Sea for the 1950-2007 period, was 31 % larger than the officially reported landings, and peaked in1998 at 390,000 t. The total estimated IUU catch consisted of 1.09 million t unreported landings, 0.52 million t discards, and 0.63 million t recreational catches.
In recent years, annual unreported catches, discards, and recreational catches of about 17,900 t, 10,700 t, and 7,100 t, respectively, need to be added to reported annual landings of around 154,000 t, to derive the estimated total catch. Discrepancies between reported landings and the total catch of a species can contribute substantial uncertainties to stock assessments, and addressing this bias is one step towards improved assessments. Therefore, better accounting of all catches is required, which in turn does call for more research. Better accounting of catches would be achieved by a 100 % observer coverage of Swedish fisheries, which is a necessity for accurate studies of discards, and 100 % coverage would also minimize
unreported landings. However, improved data and better understanding and stock assessments alone will be pointless as long as politicians continue to ignore scientific advice. So together with better research and data, public insight and transparency has to increase, due to accountability reasons. This is especially important since fisheries policies, with its subsidies, are the main reason and driving force of overexploitation of fish stocks.


Burundi is Rwanda's twin, a small country in Central Africa with a complex history of ethnic tension between its Hutu and Tutsi populations and a deep familiarity with traumatic events, including the mass killing of over 200,000 people. Burundi was trapped in a state of civil war until 2004, after which Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela mediated a lengthy and eventually successful movement toward peace. Burundi's contemporary era has brought new institutions to the country, including a more open constitution, which led to the election of a majority Hutu government in 2005. Still, apart from ethnic tensions, many problems persist, particularly the entrenched poverty of most Burundians, which has led NGOs to call Burundi one of the most deprived countries on earth. Nigel Watt traces the origins of Burundi's political crises and illuminates recent historical events through interviews with leading political figures and survivors of atrocity. A unique and rare portrait, Watt's "biography" demystifies Burundi's little-understood "ethnic" divisions and provides a thorough understanding of this beautiful and cultured land, which has produced a remarkable line of peacemakers, journalists, teachers, and political and religious leaders.


We provide direct experimental evidence which demonstrates that, in the presence of a large spin-orbit coupling, the lifetime, amplitude, group, and phase velocity of the magnons propagating along two opposite (but crystallographically equivalent) directions perpendicular to the magnetization are different. A real time and space representation reveals that magnons with the same energy (eigenfrequency) propagate differently along two opposite directions. Our findings can inspire ideas for designing new spintronic devices.


A new incoherent scatter (IS) diagnostic technique for the actively heated D-region ionosphere is presented. In this approach, an exponential autocorrelation function (ACF) was fitted to the data by using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inversion and the Sodankyla Ion Chemistry model (SIC). The method was applied for a set of combined EISCAT heating and VHF radar experiments carried out in November 2006. A newly designed radar experiment, sippi, based on optimised phase codes and direct sampling of the transmitted and the received IS signal, was used to produce ACF estimates of the target plasma. Systematic features associated with the heating were found by comparing the mean ACFs corresponding to heated and unheated periods. However, the data analysis revealed reasonable electron temperature estimates at the altitudes of the expected maximum effect (70-75 km) only in three cases out of six, corresponding to the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. In two of these cases, the electron temperature was increased by a factor of 5 to 7, which is in a good agreement with the theoretical heating modelling. In the case of the first presented data example, the model overestimates the effect. These are the first successful IS observations of the HF-induced maximum electron temperature enhancements in the D-region ionosphere.


American Judaism: A History, by Jonathan D. Sarna. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. 490 pp. $35.00. In American Judaism, Brandeis University scholar Jonathan Sarna has produced a marvelous survey that masterfully recounts the history of Jewish religious life in America and in the process provides much insight into other aspects of American Jewish history as well. Sarnas book opens with a consideration of the colonial era, when synagogue and community were more or less coterminous, and it follows the saga of American Judaism all the way to the beginning of the twenty-first century, touching in its final sections on such contemporary issues as the impact of feminism and the quest for spirituality among American Jews. The excellence of Sarna's volume has been recognized by the National Jewish Book Awards, which named American Judaism 2004's "Jewish Book of the Year." Sarna's decision to concentrate on religion in exploring the Jewish experience in the United States differentiates his text from similar surveys and gives it a sense of cohesion. A major theme in the book is the creative responsiveness of American Judaism to changing circumstances, and Sarna demonstrates how periods of religious decline have, in the past, always been followed by periods of "awakening" or "renewal." Another of Sarna's themes is the internal diversity that has always characterized American Judaism, and he often turns his attention to arguments within the faith, which he describes as "not so much conclusive as defining" (p. 243). As a study focused on religion, American Judaism highlights the role of rabbis and other religious leaders in American Jewish life. The volume includes many highly informative profiles of individuals, ranging from David Einhorn, an early advocate of radical Reform, to the Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and from Jane Evans, a leader of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, to Shlomo Carlebach, the charismatic "Jewish guru." So too, Sarna frequently compares developments in American Judaism to developments in other faiths. At one point, he describes Reform Judaism's turn toward social justice as "the Jewish equivalent of the Protestant Social Gospel" (p. 151), for instance, and at another point he compares post-World War II Hasidim to the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites. Despite Sarna's focus on the Jewish religion, he takes many opportunities to connect religious matters to other aspects of American Jewish history that are not, strictly speaking, part of the story of Judaism as a faith. So, for example, in sections of the book with titles such as "Judaism and Yiddishkeit" or "Jewishness without Judaism," he examines Jewish identities that were alternatives to those grounded in religion. Moreover, Sarna often sets his discussions of religion matters in context by describing developments in American Jewish history more broadly. Before positing that during World War I "the central communal challenge posed by the thousands of Jews in uniform . . . was a religious one" (p. 212), for instance, he considers several aspects of American Jewry's involvement with the war that had little to do with religion per se. Similarly, even while observing that the characterization of group visits to Israel as missions or pilgrimages "underscores their deep religious significance" (p. 336), he writes about support for the State of Israel mainly as a substitute for religious engagement as a marker of Jewish commitment. Sarna is well known as a master of the bibliography of American Jewish history, and he has put his vast knowledge of the literature in the field to very good use in preparing this volume. In one form or another, the book covers just about all the standard topics normally considered in surveys of American Jewish history, and it does so very well. …


Context: Cloud computing is a prospering technology that most organizations are considering for adoption as a cost effective strategy for managing IT. However, organizations also still consider the technology to be associated with many business risks that are not yet resolved. Such issues include security, privacy as well as legal and regulatory risks. As an initiative to address such risks, organizations can develop and implement SLA to establish common expectations and goals between the cloud provider and customer. Organizations can base on the SLA to measure the achievement of the outsourced service. However, many SLAs tend to focus on cloud computing performance whilst neglecting information security issues. Objective: We identify threats and security attributes applicable in cloud computing. We also select a framework suitable for identifying information security metrics. Moreover, we identify SLA based information security metrics in the cloud in line with the COBIT framework. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify studies focusing on information security threats in the cloud computing. We also used SLR to select frameworks available for identification of security metrics. We used Engineering Village and Scopus online citation databases as primary sources of data for SLR. Studies were selected based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria we defined. A suitable framework was selected based on defined framework selection criteria. Based on the selected framework and conceptual review of the COBIT framework we identified SLA based information security metrics in the cloud. Results: Based on the SLR we identified security threats and attributes in the cloud. The Goal Question Metric (GQM) framework was selected as a framework suitable for identification of security metrics. Following the GQM approach and the COBIT framework we identified ten areas that are essential and related with information security in the cloud computing. In addition, covering the ten essential areas we identified 41 SLA based information security metrics that are relevant for measuring and monitoring security performance of cloud computing services. Conclusions: Cloud computing faces similar threats as traditional computing. Depending on the service and deployment model adopted, addressing security risks in the cloud may become a more challenging and complex undertaking. This situation therefore appeals to the cloud providers the need to execute their key responsibilities of creating not only a cost effective but also a secure cloud computing service. In this study, we assist both cloud provider and customers on the security issues that are to be considered for inclusion in their SLA. We have identified 41 SLA based information security metrics to aid both cloud providers and customers obtain common security performance expectations and goals. We anticipate that adoption of these metrics can help cloud providers in enhancing security in the cloud environment. The metrics will also assist cloud customers in evaluating security performance of the cloud for improvements.


Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is carried out for heat transfer of lead-bismuth eutectic flows in rod bundles. The effect of different parameters, such as turbulence models, on the numerical results is investigated. The effect of meshes on the heat transfer is much smaller when using the [curly epsilon]-type turbulence models than when using the ω-type turbulence models. Based on the results achieved, the Reynolds stress model of Speziale with fine-mesh structures, i.e., y1+ ≤ 15, is recommended for further CFD analysis of heavy liquid-metal (HLM) flows in rod bundles. A strong circumferential nonuniformity of heat transfer is observed in tight rod bundles, especially in square lattices. The secondary flow leads to a reduction in the nonuniformity of heat transfer. Related to the overall average Nusselt number, CFD codes give similar results for both triangular and square rod bundles when the Peclet number and the pitch-to-diameter ratio have the same values in both bundle configurations. Comparison of the CFD results with bundle test data in mercury clearly indicates that the turbulent Prandtl number for HLM flows in rod bundles is smaller than that in circular tubes. It has values close to 1.0 at high Peclet number conditions and increases by decreasing Peclet number.


This study examined naturally-occurring university classroom interactions at Iranian universities and provided an analysis of silence patterns as politeness strategies used by male and female students. Since empirical studies of silence in classroom settings are scarce, this paper aimed to explain such phenomena using participant interviews, classroom observation and detailed discourse analysis of classroom interaction. Silence patterns and their interpretations were scrutinized in these observations and were discussed in relation to specific conceptualization of politeness and devices employed to exercise it. The study found that females seem to be the most silent in the cross-sex classrooms, while the distribution of silence is more nearly equal in the samesex classrooms. Based on the comments from follow-up interviews, reasons for intentional silence as a politeness strategy were categorized into four groups: silence as a facesaving strategy, silence as a 'don't do the FTA' strategy, silence as a power strategy, and silence as an off-record strategy.


Chemical profiles in snowpacks were observed during snow accumulation and melt periods at subalpine sites in the southern interior of British Columbia. During accumulation periods, concentrations of nitrate, sulphate, chloride and sodium were higher than those of bulk snowfall in surface snowpack layers and lower in middle and basal layers. During melt periods, the opposite was true. This process of chemical profile reversals was found to repeat itself through successive cycles of melt and non-melt periods that typically occur at the site during the spring. This recurring cycle of chemical enrichment resulted in two distinct processes of ion elution. A "seasonal" process was observed in which there is an initial ion pulse followed by a slow exponential decline in concentration. An event based process consisting of ion pulses due to leaching of enriched surface layers was superimposed on the seasonal process. Forest cover type was found to exert an influence on snowpack chemistry during accumulation and melt. Significant differences between forest cover types were found among average chemical concentrations in enriched and depleted layers, suggesting that canopy density causes differences in chemical metamorphosis of snowpacks.


We compute small rational models for configuration spaces of points on oriented surfaces, as right modules over the framed little disks operad. We do this by splitting these surfaces in unions of several handles. We first describe rational models for the configuration spaces of these handles as algebras in the category of right modules over the framed little disks operad. We then express the configuration spaces of the surface as an "iterated Hochschild complex" of these algebras with coefficients in the module given by configurations in a sphere with holes. Physically, our results may be interpreted as saying that the partition function of the Poisson-$\sigma$-model on closed surfaces has no quantum corrections, i.e., no terms coming from Feynman diagrams of positive loop order.


The multi-cultural nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth century created much unrest among the many different ethnic groups within the Empire. As each group struggled against the other groups for more rights, dissolution threatened the Empire. The Hapsburg government under Franz Joseph used two different strategies in Austria and Hungary to keep the country united, and these strategies successfully kept the Empire together for half a century.  After the Emperor's death, opposing interests and separatism proved too powerful without Franz Joseph's uniting influence, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.