India and Civilizational Futures is the second volume to emerge from the deliberations of the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics, a group comprised largely of Indian scholars, writers, and intellectuals that was formed in late 2010 with the intent of considering how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indic civilization, and more broadly the Global South, might be deployed to introduce incommensurability and greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. The members and friends of the Collective are animated by various passions: though some are interested in the decolonization of the university and in exploring other sites of learning, and others wish to put into serious question the most familiar categories that have informed humanistic inquiry and social science research, they are united both in their quest to engender an ecological plurality of knowledges and reinitiate metaphysics into the discourses of politics. The contributors to this volume offer perspectives on India's past and intellectual traditions that suggest how we might liberate ourselves from the straightjackets of history, development, normal politics, the nation-state, and what globally passes for 'common sense' in various spheres of life and thought. While some papers engage with a few figures who have been critical in shaping India's intellectual life, such as Kabir, Narayana Guru, Ambedkar, Tagore, and Gandhi, others bring into the limelight equally compelling if somewhat neglected figures such as Rahul Sankrityayan, M.G. Ranade, and T.R.V. Murti. Conceptual chapters on intercommunality, South Asian ideas of hospitality, and mnemocultural modes of learning complete the volume.


Quinolinium compounds have been used as Cl-sensitive fluorescent indicators in cells and cell-free membrane fractions. To improve Cl sensitivity and for conjugation via nucleophilic reaction, the compounds 6-methoxy-N-(n-aminoalkyl)quinolinium bromide hydrochloride (AAQ) with alkyl chain lengths (n) of 2 (AEQ), 3 (APQ), and 4 (ABQ) were synthesized. AAQ was water soluble, fluorescent, and quenched by Cl. The Stern-Volmer constants (KCl) for quenching of protonated AEQ, APQ and ABQ by Cl were 354, 322, and 272 M-1, respectively, higher than KCl for 6-methoxy-N-(3-sulfopropyl)quinolinium (SPQ; 118 M-1). To eliminate pH-dependent fluorescence, 6-methoxy-N-(3-trimethylammoniumpropyl)quinolinium dibromide (TMAPQ) was synthesized (KCl, 310 M-1). To red shift fluorescence excitation and emission spectra, 6-phenyl-N-(3-trimethylammoniumpropyl)quinolinium dibromide (phenyl-TMAPQ) (emission 475 nm) and N-(3-trimethylammoniumpropyl)phenanthridinium dibromide (TMAPP) (excitation 380 nm) were synthesized. AEQ and ABQ were conjugated with neutral dextran activated by cyanogen bromide to give indicator-to-dextran mole ratios of 5 to 20. KCl values at pH 7.4 were 132 (AEQ-dextran) and 237 M-1 (ABQ-dextran). To construct a single molecule with Cl-sensitive and insensitive moieties, the bichromophores 6-methoxy-N-(n- dansylsulfonamidoalkyl)quinolinium with alkyl chains of two and four were synthesized. The new Cl-sensitive indicators were used for measurement of intracellular Cl activity and for the labeling of endocytic vesicles in 3T3 fibroblasts and T84 cells. Our results indicate that N-substitution of quinoline with positively charged moieties gives increased Cl sensitivity, and extension of ring conjugation gives indicators with red-shifted fluorescence spectra.


In this paper I offer critical attention to the notion of atmosphere in relation to music. By exploring the concept through the case study of the Closed Brethren worship services, I argue that atmosphere may provide analytical tools to explore the ineffable in ecclesial practices. Music, just as atmosphere, commonly occupies a realm of ineffability and undermines notions such as inside and outside, subject and object. For this reason I present music as a means of knowing the atmosphere. The first part of this paper points to the limits of an understanding of atmosphere as a constellation of things, as proposed by Gernot Bohme. In contrast to this, Hermann Schmitz conceptualises atmosphere as half-thing which suggests movement. Drawing on this, I propose to methodologically approach atmospheres as movements. Consequently, in the second part of this paper I closely analyse two motions as they cohere in Closed Brethren worship services: first, becoming (Deleuze and Guattari), a movement on the level of the individual worshiper; secondly, territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari), a movement of the atmosphere towards its solidification. Here music as atmosphere is not a system of moral signification but a generative power affording intimate processes of divine encounter, whilst producing affective denominational difference.


Abstract Jeffbenite, ideally Mg3Al2Si3O8, previously known as tetragonal-almandine-pyrope-phase (ʻTAPP'), has been characterized as a new mineral from an inclusion in an alluvial diamond from São Luiz river, Juina district of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Its density is 3.576 g/cm3 and its microhardness is ~7. Jeffbenite is uniaxial (-) with refractive indexes ω = 1.733(5) and ε = 1.721(5). The crystals are in general transparent emerald green. Its approximate chemical formula is (Mg2.62Fe2+0.27)(Al1.86Cr0.16)(Si2.82Al0.18)O12 with very minor amounts of Mn, Na and Ca. Laser ablation ICP-MS showed that jeffbenite has a very low concentration of trace elements. Jeffbenite is tetragonal with space group I4̄2d, cell edges being a = 6.5231(1) and c = 18.1756(3) Å. The main diffraction lines of the powder diagram are [d(in Å), intensity, hkl]: 2.647, 100, 2 0 4; 1.625, 44, 3 2 5; 2.881, 24, 2 1 1; 2.220, 19, 2 0 6; 1.390, 13, 4 2 4; 3.069, 11, 2 0 2; 2.056, 11, 2 2 4; 1.372, 11, 2 0 12. The structural formula of jeffbenite can be written as (M1)(M2)2(M3)2(T1)(T2)2O12 with M1 dominated by Mg, M2 dominated by Al, M3 dominated again by Mg and both T1 and T2 almost fully occupied by Si. The two tetrahedra do not share any oxygen with each other (i.e. jeffbenite is classified as an orthosilicate). Jeffbenite was approved as a new mineral by the IMA Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names with the code IMA 2014-097. Its name is after Jeffrey W. Harris and Ben Harte, two world-leading scientists in diamond research. The petrological importance of jeffbenite is related to its very deep origin, which may allow its use as a pressure marker for detecting super-deep diamonds. Previous experimental work carried out on a Ti-rich jeffbenite establishes that it can be formed at 13 GPa and 1700 K as maximum P-T conditions.


Porphyrias are inherited metabolic disorders characterised by an impairment of heme biosynthesis. Acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) is the most common of the acute porphyrias in Sweden. Acute attacks of AIP are characterised by neuro-psychiatric symptoms, including epileptic seizures. Environmental and acquired factors are related to the induction of symptoms. Acute attacks of AIP are treated with high doses of glucose and/or hematin infusions. The pathogenesis of the neuro-psychiatric symptoms is not known. Reversible white-matter lesions, probably due to vasospasm, have been seen on brain MRI. Similarities between multiple sclerosis (MS) and AIP have previously been described, but to our knowledge no study has investigated whether AIP-gene carriers have white-matter lesions seen on brain MRI or oligoclonal bands (OB) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The percentage of AIP-gene carriers who have experienced epileptic seizures has been calculated at 10-20%, but previous investigations are derived from highly selected clinic-based studies. Studies were therefore undertaken to investigate the prevalence of epileptic seizures, the relationship of seizures to AIP, the type of seizures and the relationship of seizures to other factors such as melatonin. A case report described the disappearance of porphyric attacks after the onset of diabetes mellitus (DM). In our study, we investigated the rate of attacks after the onset of DM. For many years, clinical issues relating to AIP have not been a focal area. We therefore carried out a study to update our knowledge of the clinical course of AIP in order to improve prevention, control and treatment. In our studies of AIP-gene carriers and epileptic seizures, we found that epileptic seizures are less common than has previously been described (3.7%) and they are not very different from what is expected in the general population, but the prevalence of 5.1% of seizures with manifest AIP is higher than in the general population. The seizures may be generalised or partial and the seizure frequency was generally low. The AIP-gene carriers who had had epileptic seizures had a lower melatonin excretion level in their urine compared with genderand aged-matched AIP-gene carriers' relatives without epileptic seizures, which may indicate that melatonin plays a possible anti-convulsive role. In our study of AIP and DM, no subject had an attack of AIP after the onset of DM. White-matter lesions on brain MRI were seen in 25% of the AIP-gene carriers examined outside attacks. One carrier had elevated protein levels in the CSF, but no carrier had cells or OB in the CSF. In our population-based study, 356 DNA-confirmed AIP-gene carriers from northern Sweden participated. Manifest AIP (MAIP) was identified in 42%, 65% of whom were women. Eight mutations were found. Women were more severely stricken by AIP attacks in terms of number and duration, hospital admission and early onset. Men (30%) reported most attacks > 40 years of age. The most commonly reported symptoms during attacks were severe abdominal pain (86%), fatigue (42%), constipation (41%), vomiting (36%), muscle pain (30%), psychiatric symptoms (29%), pareses (20%) and sensory impairment (10%). Chronic AIP symptoms were reported by 18%. Precipitating factors were often reported: menstruation (31%), psychological strain (30%), certain drugs and fasting (20%), infection and alcohol (14%), physical strain (12%) and pregnancy (5%). Smoking was more frequent in MAIP and was associated with the number of AIP attacks. Some 30% of MAIP carriers used drugs that were not considered safe (in 1999), mainly diuretics, calcium antagonists and ACE inhibitors. Twenty per cent of MAIP carriers reported that they were receiving a disability pension due to AIP. Elevated levels of ASAT, bile acids, creatinine, creatinine clearance, U-ALA and U-PBG were often found in MAIP-gene carriers. Hypertension, renal impairment and pain in the legs were associated with MAIP. Hepatoma was strikingly over-represented.To summarise; epileptic seizures are less common than has previously been described, melatonin may have an anti-convulsive effect and DM may have a beneficial effect on MAIP-gene carriers. White-matter lesions are seen on brain MRI. The lesions are unspecific but may relate to the patients' porphyria. AIP is not a harmless disease. A large percentage of the AIP-gene carriers had frequent attacks, severe symptoms, long-lasting fatigue and chronic AIP and women were more severely stricken. Effects on the kidneys, blood pressure and the liver, including HCC, were evident. Measures should be taken to improve the quality of life and prognosis for AIP-gene carriers.


Title of Document: THE ROLE OF HOST-PLANT SPECIES IN THE DIFFERENTIATION OF SYMPATRIC POPULATIONS OF HYMENOPTERAN PARASITOIDS. Raul F. Medina, PhD, 2005 Directed By: Professor, Pedro Barbosa, Department of Entomology The biology and ecology of insect parasitoids is strongly influenced by the hostplant species on which their herbivorous hosts occur. Hymenopteran parasitoids in particular, present a series of characteristics that made them good candidates for phenotypic and genotypic differentiation. Thus, parasitoid adaptation to plant traits may promote significant phenotypic and genotypic differences among sympatric populations of parasitoids associated with different host-plant species. The present study assessed phenotypic and genotypic differentiation in two braconid parasitoids ovipositing on the same host species, the green cloverworm, Plathypena scabra Fabricius (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) feeding on alfalfa and soybean. Developmental time, adult weight, percent parasitism and preference for hostplant odors of the generalist parasitoid Cotesia marginiventris Cresson (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and of the specialist parasitoid Aleiodes nolophanae Ashmead (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) were compared among individuals ovipositing in green cloverworm larvae feeding on alfalfa and soybean. In addition, amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) were used to assess if genotypic differentiation between parasitoids ovipositing on green cloverworm larvae feeding on different host-plant species (i.e., alfalfa or soybean) was present. Phenotypic differentiation in adult mass, adult longevity and percent parasitism between parasitoids ovipositing green cloverworm larvae on alfalfa and on soybean were found. These phenotypic differences between parasitoids associated with different hostplant species were observed in both the generalist and the specialist parasitoids. No evidence of parasitoids showing preferences for the host-plant species from which their host fed was found in the generalist nor in the specialist parasitoid. Contrary to the expectations and predictions from the literature, these parasitoid species did not show evidence of reproductive isolation when associated with different host-plant species (i.e., alfalfa or soybean), as evidenced by the lack of genetic differentiation in AFLP profiles between parasitoids associated with alfalfa and soybean. In order to ensure that the number of wasps and the number of AFLP bands used were enough to provide an accurate assessment of genetic differentiation among wasps ovipositing hosts on different host-plant species, a method for determining the minimum number of individuals and AFLP bands to include to obtain accurate genetic profiles of hypothesized populations was proposed. THE ROLE OF HOST-PLANT SPECIES IN THE DIFFERENTIATION OF SYMPATRIC POPULATIONS OF HYMENOPTERAN PARASITOIDS.


Title of dissertation: TOPICS ON WAGE DIFFERENCES ACROSS LOCAL LABOR MARKETS Marios Michaelides, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Seth Sanders Department of Economics It is well established that average wages differ across local labor markets. Researchers have found that this is partially explained by differences of worker ability, as reflected in observable dimensions of worker skill, such as education and labor market experience. However, the classical human capital explanation only partially explains differences in wages across metropolitan areas. In my dissertation, I consider two variations from this framework to explain why wage differentials across observably homogeneous workers persist. First, I consider the role of unobserved dimensions of worker skill and the level of location amenities. I do this in the context of professional basketball, where worker skill and non-pecuniary employer characteristics are unusually well measured. I find strong evidence in support of the compensating differentials theory in this context. The analysis also demonstrates that when important measures of worker skill are omitted from the specification, the quality of the results is distorted and inference on the validity of the theory is misleading. The work also suggests that certain specifications are sensitive to when we do not control for important portions of worker skills. The partially linear and the classic linear regression models outperform the Box-Cox alternatives in matching the hedonic estimates produced in the "full" specification case. Second, I ask whether firms in a local market can exploit individual mobility costs and offer workers wages that are lower than the competitive rate. I describe a wage renegotiation model in which firms use information on worker mobility and on local labor market competition. The model predicts that workers with positive mobility costs receive lower wages, while the ability of firms to exploit these costs declines in the intensity of local competition. To test this model, I construct measures of individual mobility costs and occupation-specific measures of local labor market competition. I find that individual mobility costs have a negative effect on wages and that this effect gets weaker the more competitive is the local labor market. Finally, the negative effect of mobility costs on wages is significantly lower for workers in highly unionized occupations, where individual wage renegotiation is less likely to occur. TOPICS ON WAGE DIFFERENCES ACROSS LOCAL LABOR MARKETS


There is a fairly common perception among members of the Free and Open Source software (FOSS) developer community that there is no equivalent community of FOSS lawyers. Despite that perception, the FOSS legal community exists and is growing. This note will explore the gap between the perception and the reality, first by briefly surveying the state of the FOSS legal community, and then by exploring the reasons why there is such a disconnect between the lawyers and the community of our clients. Finally, it will suggest some ways in which this nascent community might invest in improving itself.


We use matched employer-employee data from the Chilean Internal Revenue Service to analyze the frequency of formal employment transitions within and between-sectors, the duration of these spells, and their implied wage changes, distinguishing by exit sector and the gender and age of workers. We find a significant degree of aggregate labor mobility between sectors in the Chilean formal labor market, although this average hides significant heterogeneity between workers who change jobs frequently and those with more stable career paths. In addition, conditional on changing jobs, the probability of moving within the same sector is roughly the same as switching sectors. Transitions between formal jobs are associated with wage gains, which appear to be increasing in the length of the transition process. While on average wage gains are larger for workers who move to a new sector, there is significant heterogeneity across sectors. Furthermore, wage costs vary with the age and gender of workers. Our results reveal that, for a large group of workers, transitions between sectors do not seem to entail a significant cost in terms of wages. While this could suggest that the Chilean economy adjusts well to changes in relative prices, it is also consistent with a low accumulation of sector-specific human capital.


In March 1996, the Bundestag introduced a minimum wage law for the German construction business in order to protect native workers from low wage competition by posted workers from other EU countries. This Entsendegesetz (Posted Workers Act) was backed formally by the EU Posted Workers Directive of December 1996. This paper analyzes the economic and political background of the law as well as its impact on the German construction business according to economic theory and provisional empirical evidence from similar protective measures taken in the U.S. The effectiveness of the law is seriously limited by practical and conceptional problems, like resource constraints in control, shifts from legal to illegal employment, or compatibility with basic EU law and principles. Moreover, since the central problems of the German construction business are structural, one cannot expect much of a relief for the labor market of native workers. Since the Entsendegesetz seems therefore only justifiable in the short run in order to smoothen structural adjustment and to avoid political unrest and xenophobia, it should not be extended.


The purpose of this study was to examine the self-reported leadership styles of female Senior Student Affairs Officers at public and private 4-year institutions. This study sought to determine if (a) there is a dominant leadership frame usage among female SSAO's, (b) determine if leadership style varies significantly among females with less than 5 years of experience in the profession as compared to those with 5 or more years of experience in the profession and (c) identify whether multi-frame leadership style usage differs between female SSAOs at public and private 4-year institutions. This study employed a cross-sectional research design through the use of a structured response survey, Bolman and Deal's Leadership Orientation Survey (LOS). The LOS assists individuals in determining the degree to which they utilize each of the four leadership frames. The sample consisted of 347 SSAOs who responded to the Leadership Orientation – Self survey. The findings revealed that leadership frame usage among SSAOs at public and private 4-year institutions had similar response patterns with human resources being the primary frame identified. Findings of this study demonstrating a preference for a human resources approach by the SSAOs is consistent with prior research conducted using Bolman and Deal's leadership frames. The respondents also scored similarly on the four leadership frames indicating no statistical multi-frame leadership dominance. This finding was in contradiction to previous research which utilized Bolman and Deal's frame theory. Finally, SSAOs scored similarly on the LOS regardless of the number of years of experience in the profession.


This thesis presents the analysis of the local properties of Bragg gratings and their application to the improvement of standard designs and advanced structures. The time spent by light inside each grating section is derived in terms of complex-valued quantities, and clear meaning is given to both the real and imaginary parts. Improved physical understanding of propagation and energy distributions inside periodic structures is obtained. Local properties also explain in a more intuitive way well understood features of different gratings, which improves intuition of new complex designs. The analysis of the effect of perturbations is immediate using this approach and has important practical applications. Independent confirmation of the theory is obtained, and experimental measurement of the imaginary part of the local time delay is given. Phase errors affect the grating writing techniques, and the related sensitivity is analysed in detail. The robustness of different designs is discussed with respect to such manufacturing errors. Fine tuning of standard or advanced grating designs by means of suitable error distributions is also proposed, and optimised characteristics either in the reflectivity or in the dispersive response are obtained. This method is integrated with inverse scattering designs to further boost their performances. Improved complex designs are also proposed in case losses affect propagation in the grating. Cladding mode losses are compensated using an iterative layer-peeling algorithm. The design of the first wide-band dispersion-compensating grating realised with a standard single mode fibre is shown. Background losses and UV-induced losses in gratings are also compensated using a modified layer-peeling method. The physical limitations related to grating design in lossy media are explained using the derived understanding of local properties. New advanced designs are also considered that fully exploit the theoretical potentialities and manufacturing capabilities of Bragg gratings. The performance of code-division multiple access systems based on superstructured gratings is improved by combining encoding, bandwidth filtering, and dispersion compensation in the same high reflectivity grating.


In this work, we employ an agent-based integrated assessment model to study the likelihood of transition to green, sustainable growth in presence of climate damages. The model comprises heterogeneous fossil-fuel and renewable plants, capital- and consumption-good firms and a climate box linking greenhouse gasses emission to temperature dynamics and microeconomic climate shocks affecting labour productivity and energy demand of firms. Simulation results show that the economy possesses two statistical equilibria: a carbon-intensive lock-in and a sustainable growth path characterized by better macroeconomic performances. Once climate damages are accounted for, the likelihood of a green transition depends on the damage function employed. In particular, aggregate and quadratic damage functions overlook the impact of climate change on the transition to sustainability; to the contrary, more realistic micro-level damages are found to deeply influence the chances of a transition. Finally, we run a series of policy experiments on carbon (fossil fuel) taxes and green subsidies. We find that the effectiveness of such market-based instruments depends on the different channels climate change affects the economy through, and complementary policies might be required to avoid carbon-intensive lock-ins.


Spatial and temporal patterns of fire history are affected by factors such as topography, vegetation, and climate. It is unclear, however, how these factors influenced fire history patterns in small isolated forests, such as that found on Rincon Peak, a "sky island" mountain range in southern Arizona, USA. We reconstructed the fire history of Rincon Peak to evaluate the influences of broad-scale (i.e., climate) versus local-scale (i.e., topographic) factors on fire occurrence and extent. We evaluated both fire scars and tree demography (natality and mortality) to investigate surface fire and crown fire events. The fire history of a 310 ha study area surrounding the top of Rincon Peak was reconstructed by tree-ring sampling in 21 plots. Between 1648 and 1763, spreading fires on Rincon Peak were controlled primarily by regional climate. Widespread surface fires occurred during drought years, and were generally synchronized with regional fire events known from an extensive network of other fire history studies. After 1763, fire extent was apparently limited by local factors (i.e., fuels) as frequent fires continued to burn, but were limited to the southern part of the study area until a widespread fire occurred in 1819. Landscape fires (i.e., fires that scarred ≥2 plots) were absent from the entire study area between 1819 and 1867 despite continued burning in adjacent mountain ranges. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the 1867 fire was both a surface and a stand-replacing event that killed most trees within a 60 ha patch. Our findings suggest that past climatic variations had important effects on fire regimes and age structures of small, fragmented ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) landscapes like Rincon Peak. Given anticipated climate changes, the rich biodiversity harbored in these steep, isolated landscapes will be critical habitat in the migration of species and should therefore be considered high conservation priority.


This research deals with female labor force participation and its determinants in the Egyptian society using the "Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey" (ELMPS) 2012. More precisely, the paper studies the individual, households and community determinants of the Egyptian woman's decision to enter the labor force. It answered the question on whether these determinants are affecting her decision to be employed or not and to be employed in the public sector or not, once she entered the labor force. Our results show that factors affecting women's labor force participation decision are not the same and may not play the same role for their decision concerning her employment status, once they enter the labor market. Moreover, community context plays an important role in their labor force participation decision, but once an Egyptian woman enters the labor force, community context is not a significant determinant anymore concerning her employment status.


When was the last time you heard a politician use words that rang with truth and meaning? Do your eyes glaze over when you read a letter from your bank or insurance company? Does your mind shut down when your employer starts talking about 'making a commitment going forwards' or speaks of 'enhancing the bottom line'? Every day we are confronted with a debased, depleted sludge: in the media, among corporations, in the public services and cultural institutions, at work, and out of the mouths of our leaders. There is a new public language that has been forced on us that makes no sense to outsiders and confounds even those who use it. It is a dead language, devoid of lyricism, emotion, complexity or nuance. Meanwhile, in step with managerial thinking, opinion polls and an impossibly demanding media, our political leaders employ this new language of cliches, jargon, platitudes and weasel words to hide or twist the truth. Don Watson can take it no longer. In Death Sentence, he takes a blowtorch to the words - and their users - that sterilise the language and kill imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentence is a small book that is as timely as it is profound.


Formulating Boolean queries for systematic review literature search is a challenging task. Commonly, queries are formulated by information specialists using the protocol specified in the review and interactions with the research team. Information specialists have in-depth experience on how to formulate queries in this domain, but may not have in-depth knowledge about the reviews' topics. Query formulation requires a significant amount of time and effort, and is performed interactively; specialists repeatedly formulate queries, attempt to validate their results, and reformulate specific Boolean clauses. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of automatically formulating a Boolean query from the systematic review protocol. We propose a novel five-step approach to automatic query formulation, specific to Boolean queries in this domain, which approximates the process by which information specialists formulate queries. In this process, we use syntax parsing to derive the logical structure of high-level concepts in a query, automatically extract and map concepts to entities in order to perform entity expansion, and finally apply post-processing operations (such as stemming and search filters). Automatic query formulation for systematic review literature search has several benefits: (i) it can provide reviewers with an indication of the types of studies that will be retrieved, without the involvement of an information specialist, (ii) it can provide information specialists with an initial query to begin the formulation process, (iii) it can provide researchers that perform rapid reviews with a method to quickly perform searches.


Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment offers authoritative, jargon-free essays and critical commentaries on accelerating technological progress and the notion of technological singularity. It focuses on conjectures about the intelligence explosion, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many commentators however doubt the scientific rigor of these forecasts, rejecting them as speculative and unfounded. We therefore invited prominent computer scientists, physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists and other thinkers to assess the singularity hypotheses. Their contributions go beyond speculation, providing deep insights into the main issues and a balanced picture of the debate.


HP-UX 11i InternalsChris CooperChris Moore Invaluable information for optimizing HP-UX performance, reliability, and efficiency Find out how to approach system administration, tuning, and troubleshooting from a more informed perspective For every HP-UX sysadmin, programmer, and performance specialistHP Professional BooksHP-UX 11i InternalsHP-UX under the hood: practical insight for optimization and troubleshootingTo maximize the performance, efficiency, and reliability of your HP-UX sysem, you need to know what's going on under the hood. HP-UX 11i Internals goes beyond generic UNIX internals, showing exactly how HP-UX works in PA-RISC environments.HP experts Cooper and Moore systematically illuminate HP-UX kernel data structures and algorithms for memory management, process and thread scheduling, I/O control, files and file systems, resource management, and more. They focus on HP-UX 11i, while also offering valuable insight for those using earlier versions. PA-RISC architecture: register set, virtual memory, key instructions, and procedure calling conventions HP-UX kernel organization: hardware-dependent and independent data structures Process and thread management: proc tables, memory management, scheduling, and the complete process/thread lifecycle System-wide memory resources: allocation and mapping to physical memory HP-UX paging and swapping Files and filesystems: traditional UNIX filesystems, HFS, VFS, and dynamic buffer cache I/O and device management: addressing, DMA, interrupts, device files, I/O configuration, device driver assignments, and I/O request pathways Logical Volume Management (LVM): abstracting physical disks from the disk I/O system HP-UX multiprocessing: challenges, data structures, and interfaces Kernel communication services: semaphores, message queues, shared memory, signals, and the kernel "callout" system Signaling in complex threaded environments System initialization, from vmunix to init: running HP-UX on diverse platformsWhether you administer HP-UX, tune it, troubleshoot it, or write kernel modules for it, you'll find HP-UX 11i Internals indispensable.U.S. $59.99 Canada $90.99PRENTICE HALLUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458www.phptr.comHewlett-Packard(R) Professional BooksA Prentice Hall Titlewww.hp.com/hpbooksISBN: 0-13-032861-8


—We consider the broadcast relay channel (BRC), where a single source transmits to multiple destinations with the help of a relay, in the limit of a large bandwidth. We address the problem of optimal relay positioning and power allocations at source and relay, to maximize the multicast rate from source to all destinations. To solve such a network planning problem, we develop a three-faceted approach based on an underlying information theoretic model, computational geometric aspects, and network optimization tools. Firstly, assuming superposition coding and frequency division between the source and the relay, the information theoretic framework yields a hypergraph model of the wideband BRC, which captures the dependency of achievable rate-tuples on the network topology. As the relay position varies, so does the set of hyperarcs constituting the hypergraph, rendering the combinatorial nature of optimization problem. We show that the convex hull C of all nodes in the 2-D plane can be divided into disjoint regions corresponding to distinct hyperarcs sets. These sets are obtained by superim-posing all k-th order Voronoi tessellation of C. We propose an easy and efficient algorithm to compute all hyperarc sets, and prove they are polynomially bounded. Then, we circumvent the combinatorial nature of the problem by introducing continuous switch functions, that allows adapting the network hypergraph in a continuous manner. Using this switched hypergraph approach, we model the original problem as a continuous yet non-convex network optimization program. Ultimately, availing on the techniques of geometric programming and p -norm surrogate approximation, we derive a good convex approximation. We provide a detailed characterization of the problem for collinearly located destinations, and then give a generalization for arbitrarily located destinations. Finally, we show strong gains for the optimal relay positioning compared to seemingly interesting positions


The authors report, for the first time, a direct comparison between a directional coupler and a multimode interference-based device, in relation to their performance characteristics such as crosstalk, polarization dependence and the effect of fabrication tolerances. The coupling efficiency for a nonidentical coupler, produced inadvertently due to problems with fabrication tolerances, is also demonstrated. The vector finite element (FE) and the least squares boundary residual (LSBR) methods are employed as the numerical tools used in this simulation study.


This article outlines the theological cornerstones of Ulrich Bach, a German theologian in the field of theology and disability. The present text aims at offering a general approach to Ulrich Bach's work for the English-speaking world by considering the christological, soteriological, and ecclesiological themes of his work. Moreover, this article includes some of the central passages of his work in translation.


The quantization of deep neural networks (QDNNs) has been actively studied for deployment in edge devices. Recent studies employ the knowledge distillation (KD) method to improve the performance of quantized networks. In this study, we propose stochastic precision ensemble training for QDNNs (SPEQ). SPEQ is a knowledge distillation training scheme; however, the teacher is formed by sharing the model parameters of the student network. We obtain the soft labels of the teacher by randomly changing the bit precision of the activation stochastically at each layer of the forward-pass computation. The student model is trained with these soft labels to reduce the activation quantization noise. The cosine similarity loss is employed, instead of the KL-divergence, for KD training. As the teacher model changes continuously by random bit-precision assignment, it exploits the effect of stochastic ensemble KD. SPEQ outperforms the existing quantization training methods in various tasks, such as image classification, question-answering, and transfer learning without the need for cumbersome teacher networks.


Introduction: Paroxysmal Extreme Pain Disorder (PEPD) is a rare autosomal dominant disease, caused by mutations in the SCN9A gene, which encodes the NaV1.7 voltage-gated sodium channel alpha subunit. Symptoms generally begin in early infancy with episodes of excruciating, burning and spreading pain in the lower part of the body, typically in the anorectal area, which can last from seconds to hours.

Case description: We describe the case of a 5-year-old male with PEPD and a novel heterozygous mutation c.5825c>T (p. Thr1942ile) in the SCN9A gene. This is a novel mutation that has not previously been reported.

Discussion: According to the available information, the clinical significance of the variant c.5825c>T (p. Thr1942ile) is unknown. However, its presence in the patient and in others affected family members, reinforces its possible pathogenicity and is suggestive of mutation segregation with the disease in this family.

Conclusion: We consider that it is a family case of interest to the pediatrician, for allowing: 1) To be able to intuit it by the clinic early and 2) To be able to confirm it by means of the corresponding genetic study.


Ghrelin is a peptide produced in the gut that stimulates food intake. Action of ghrelin on its receptor, the GHSR, contributes to food motivated behaviours. Studies have found that the GHSR facilitates the activity of mesolimbic DA circuitry, promoting intake of highly palatable sugar or fat rich foods. Understanding what makes such foods attractive and rewarding may allow for behavioural, genetic, or pharmacological therapeutics to mitigate problematic overconsumption. The primary goals of this dissertation were to determine the consequences of interrupted GHSR signaling on food motivated behaviours, including binge-like feeding, and to examine whether GHSR in the VTA are an important neural substrate for the development and maintenance of such behavior. Operant responding for sucrose on a PR schedule of reinforcement, a measure of motivation to obtain a food reward, was diminished when rats lacked functional GHSR. These rats also spent less time in an environment previously paired with sucrose, suggesting a possible reward deficit as a result of loss of GHSR. GHSR null mice also consumed less sucrose in a two-bottle choice test in their home cage, and rescue of GHSR in the VTA was able to restore their preference for sucrose to the level of WT mice, implicating the VTA as a key node for GHSRs influence on preference for sweets. In a limited access model of high-fat binge eating, we found that GHSR KO mice binged less on fat than WT mice. Though, in our subsequent study, we found less robust effects of genotype on binge eating behavior, and rescue of GHSR in the VTA did not influence binge eating of fat. Further, pharmacological antagonism of the GHSR was not sufficient to reduce binge eating of high-fat in mice once established, indicating that the VTA is not the primary site of GHSRs influence on fat bingeing. Further studies examining ghrelin and the GSHR as moderators of food reward behavior are warranted, as it is likely that signaling through the GHSR promotes the associative learning induced by palatable food cues, as well as the motivation to obtain such foods, which may facilitate overconsumption.


Fault scarps and graben features indicative of slope deformation have been observed adjacent to the rear scarps of landslides and on moorland plateaux in the Pennines. The scarps are distinct, up to 2 m high and can be traced for a maximum distance of approximately 400 m. These severely reduce the strength of the rock mass, enable groundwater to be channelled onto the upper valley slopes and may have played an important role in the initiation of first-time slope failures, and in the reactivation of older landslides. These features are similar to those recently described on the interfluves of the South Wales Coalfield valleys, and are consistent with those described as 'block movements' elsewhere in the world. Those in South Wales have been interpreted, by some previous investigators, as being generated during mining subsidence. However, in the Pennines, the slope and plateaux movements occur in the Namurian (Upper Carboniferous) sedimentary sequences where there has been no mining and it is therefore evident that other mechanisms are involved. In both South Wales and the Pennines steep-sided valleys have incised the moorland plateaux which in both cases are capped by strong, well-jointed cap rocks. These have exposed the underlying, much weaker, fissile mudstones which form the middle and lower slopes. These block movements in the Pennines are documented, discussed and compared with those in South Wales.


The neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) gene has been localized to the pericentromeric region of the long arm of chromosome 17. A chronology of events leading to the cloning of the NF1 gene is offered as a summary of modern gene hunting techniques. The gene was identified by its location rather than its function using positional cloning. Linkage analysis, based on DNA polymorphisms, is already available for prenatal and presymptomatic testing. This technique works only in cases when affected family members are available and is useless in spontaneous cases. The complete NF1 gene is huge, has a large number of exons, and is approximately 240,000 base pairs long. Its large size is consistent with the very high spontaneous mutation rate. The NF1 gene is evolutionarily conserved and expressed ubiquitously, not just in neural crest derivatives. Functional and structural homology with GAP (GTP [guanosine triphosphate]ase-activating protein) has been described. The GAP controls (or is controlled by) the ras oncogene. Aberration of ras function, which plays a fundamental role in growth, development, and differentiation, may play a role in the NF1 phenotype. Direct DNA diagnosis of mutations in the NF1 gene in clinical practice is premature. Current data suggest that the NF1 gene product may act as a tumor suppressor.


PART I. There are few reports on the synthesis of 2-aryl-2-nitroacetates, highlighting a need for development in this area. This section describes a high-throughput experimentation (HTE) approach to discover suitable conditions for the coupling of aryl bromides and α-nitroacetates to generate 2-aryl-2-nitroacetates. The best reaction conditions are 2.5 mol % Pd2dba3•CHCl3, 10 mol % t-BuXPhos, 1.2 equiv CsHCO3 in toluene at 75 °C, which afford products in isolated yields of 52–96%. 2-Aryl-2-nitroacetates are central precursors to other small molecules making them valuable building blocks in synthesis. Efficient methods were developed for the conversion of 2-aryl-2-nitroacetates to several product classes that are difficult to make: aryl nitromethanes (76–98% yield), α-keto esters (51–86% yield), and α-aryl α-amino acids (63–85% yield). PART II. Small molecule organocatalytic anion-binding chemistry is in its early stages of development in the organic laboratory, and research in this field is important for its advancement. This section describes synthesis of a new class of anion-binding catalysts focused on a xanthene scaffold. Over twenty potential catalysts were made and include three types: unsymmetrical catalysts, C2-symmetrical catalysts, and bifunctional catalysts. These compounds are better at promoting the Pictet-Spengler-type reaction previously reported by Jacobsen. Because of this fact the cyclization of 3and 2-substituted furans into N-acyliminium ions was investigated. The top catalyst for 2-substituted furans is a bisamide xanthene compound (60% conversion), and the top catalyst for 3-substituted furans is a thiourea-amide xanthene compound (42% conversion, 24% ee). PART III. The discovery of new materials is an exciting and important field of organic synthesis. A tetrachlorinated bisbenzo[a]phenazine was accessed in seven steps and 14% overall yield (99% ee). It has unique chromic properties that justify its application in functional materials. The color-changing transitions and the corresponding solid phases were studied using single crystal x-ray diffraction, powder x-ray diffraction, photo-image processing, and differential scanning calorimetry. These properties arise from two polymorphs and the ability of the phenazine to form weak OH•••Cl interactions. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Chemistry This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1894 First Advisor Marisa C. Kozlowski


The article is devoted to modern trends of legal approaches to the regulation of scientific and technological cooperation of the participating countries of the integration of new regional groupings, for example, member countries of the BRICS. Combining scientific and technological capacities, under the auspices of the inter-state union clearly helps to understand the essence, goals and priorities of one of the leading trends shaping development potential of close inter-country cooperation in the production and foreign trade sectors. This kind of integration cooperation, as well as more rapid, qualitative transition of the economy to an innovative way of development, provides not only the pace of socio-economic development of the Union's member states, but also the political significance of its place in the world. Determine the success of the regional associations in the knowledge-based economy is becoming a component of how nanotechnology. Thus, to the forefront in the development of the Russian nanotechnology industry are questions of legal policy and program regulation in nanotechnology, and the main goals of interaction of Russia with the states - members of the BRICS find themselves in the field of science, technology and innovation, as well as close interaction information. In this regard, the article concludes on the benefits and effects software control nanotechnology industry in comparison with international regulation and national positive law, the main directions of the domestic legal policy, as well as the validity and priority spheres of legal regulation of nanotech activities. In addition, the study of the regional level of regulation in the field of innovation and the nanotechnology industry has allowed in turn to draw some conclusions concerning the influence of the latter in the process of transformation of the source of legal support of modern entrepreneurship, development new types of legal documents and soft law, constituting today the predominant unit in an array of relevant legal provision.


This paper proposes an empirical model designed to operationalize the notion of digitally and loosely coordinated collective action as proposed by the recent theory of connective action. To show how the capacity for coordination of the expressive participation that is characteristic of connective action may be divided into a capacity for motivational coordination and a capacity for resource coordination, respectively. These two dimensions of coordination may enable us to discern how individual motives and collective goals can become aligned through expressive participation in connective action. The paper provides preliminary findings that support the two dimensionality of coordination.


Natural language object retrieval is a highly useful yet challenging task for robots in human-centric environments. Previous work has primarily focused on commands specifying the desired object's type such as "scissors" and/or visual attributes such as "red," thus limiting the robot to only known object classes. We develop a model to retrieve objects based on descriptions of their usage. The model takes in a language command containing a verb, for example "Hand me something to cut," and RGB images of candidate objects and selects the object that best satisfies the task specified by the verb. Our model directly predicts an object's appearance from the object's use specified by a verb phrase. We do not need to explicitly specify an object's class label. Our approach allows us to predict high level concepts like an object's utility based on the language query. Based on contextual information present in the language commands, our model can generalize to unseen object classes and unknown nouns in the commands. Our model correctly selects objects out of sets of five candidates to fulfill natural language commands, and achieves an average accuracy of 62.3% on a held-out test set of unseen ImageNet object classes and 53.0% on unseen object classes and unknown nouns. Our model also achieves an average accuracy of 54.7% on unseen YCB object classes, which have a different image distribution from ImageNet objects. We demonstrate our model on a KUKA LBR iiwa robot arm, enabling the robot to retrieve objects based on natural language descriptions of their usage. We also present a new dataset of 655 verb-object pairs denoting object usage over 50 verbs and 216 object classes.


The indiscriminate use of pesticides in the control of agricultural and public health pests has led to the development of insecticide resistance in many insect pest species, posing a large threat to the continued success of chemical control measures. Resistance towards pesticides can be due to a number of mechanisms, but enhanced detoxification of the insecticide by metabolic enzymes, such as esterases, glutathione-S-transferases (GSTs) or monooxygenases, plays a large role in insecticide resistance. Synergists, such as piperonyl butoxide (PBO) can be used to overcome metabolic insecticide resistance. Synergists are capable of inhibiting enzymes involved in insecticide resistance, thus restoring a level of susceptibility. By virtue of its enzyme inhibitory qualities, PBO is often used to enhance the efficacy of pyrethrum (an organic insecticide). In some countries, however, PBO is no longer certified for organic use and this study explored the use of natural plant oils or extracts as potential organically-certifiable pyrethrum synergists. From a commercial viewpoint, an effective natural synergist could potentially allow development of new pyrethrum formulations into higher value niche markets, such as organic agriculture. Synergised pyrethrum could also offer a new control option against insects resistant to synthetic pesticides in mainstream agriculture.
The efficacy of various natural plant oils and extracts as pyrethrum synergists were examined for synergistic potential towards pyrethrum with several agriculturally significant insect pest species, Helicoverpa armigera, Frankliniella occidentalis, Myzus persicae, Meligethes aeneus and Musca domestica, a serious public health pest, using discriminating dose bioassays. PBO proved to be the most effective pyrethrum synergist in all species tested, however, a number of natural plant oils also showed efficacy. The most promising compounds were dill apiole oil and parsley seed oil, synergising pyrethrum in all the species tested. Dill apiole oil and parsley seed oil contain the methylenedioxyphenol ring structure that is characteristic of PBO.
Enzyme inhibition studies were used to examine the ability of the natural plant oils and extracts to inhibit the enzymes involved in metabolic insecticide resistance (esterases, GSTs and monooxygenases). In general, inhibition of esterases and GSTs was not correlated to synergism of pyrethrum in vivo. However, in H. armigera and M. persicae, with esterase mediated pyrethroid resistance, PBO, dill apiole oil and parsley seed oil inhibited non-specific esterases. In M. aeneus and M. domestica, where resistance to pyrethroids has been linked to monooxygenases, PBO, dill apiole oil and parsley seed oil showed significant inhibition of monooxygenases. However, not all compounds that inhibited esterases or monooxygenases synergised pyrethrum. The lack of correlation between enzyme inhibition and synergism could be due to a number of factors, including the ability of the synergist to penetrate the insect cuticle, speed of distribution of the synergist through the insect, metabolism of the compounds in the insect and affinity for the target site.


When some customers are more profitable to serve than others, one might expect sellers to compete more vigorously for the more profitable customers. One way sellers might do this is to sell goods that are purchased primarily by the most profitable customers using a lower mark-up than on other goods. This allows the firms to give discounts to more profitable customers without offering them to less profitable customers. This paper presents a model in which competing multi-product firms facing customers that purchase different quantities of goods, set prices in this manner. This model suggests a theory of multi-product pricing in which the mark up on any particular product is inversely related to the average profitability of the customer that purchases the good. One interesting implication of this paper is that loss leader pricing might be viewed as a way for firms to compete more vigorously for more profitable customers. Such an explanation offers another characteristic of products that should be used as loss leaders. This explanation provides potentially testable implications about the types of goods that can (or ought to) be used as loss leaders and can explain why grocery stores sell turkeys as loss leaders at Thanksgiving and lower the price of eggs at Easter, but not flowers on Mother's Day, or candy on Valentines Day.


Rapid and ongoing global changes are forcing educators to consider how students can be supported to navigate these events successfully. Reports from the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2018) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2018) highlight the need for developing learner and worker agency and for embedding curricula with projects that develop problem solving skills; enable deep thinking and reflection; and focus on transferable skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values. There is an ever-increasing need for knowledge-based practice in the design industry and the value of design research in addressing cross-disciplinary challenges has been noted by several government agencies.
Within this context, the curricula of first degrees in interior design and exhibition design at the University of Lincoln (UK) were redeveloped in 2017. The decision was made to eliminate the 'contextual studies' stream and to replace it with a stream of modules focused on 'research practice'. While contextual studies consider the temporal understanding of the artefact; research practice is positioned as central to the design process and with greater potential to develop agency. Emphasis is placed on design entrepreneurship and critical practice through the rigorous documentation of, and reflection on, standard design products. This approach culminates in the identification and formulation of an appropriate design research project which is showcased in an exegesis.
This paper will describe and interpret the major informants to the curriculation process in order to evaluate the underpinnings of this decision.
By shifting the focus away from specific content to transferable processes, the curriculum is more flexible with greater opportunities for agency and co-production between staff and students. A focus on the research process, in lieu of the historic development of western aesthetics, is particularly important in postcolonial contexts where this 'history' is so far removed from the student's habitus.


This chapter compares the Soviet and the Western children's books of the 1920s–1930s. The creative output of the Soviet innovative artists and writers was in many respects isomorphic to the production of the modernist left artists and educators in the West. The various kinds of formal experiments in the sphere of visual representation are considered in detail. An important topic that is investigated is the "production book", the genre of children's books about machines and about how things are made. It corresponds with the idea of "here and now" proclaimed by the American educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell. A special emphasis is placed on the demonstration of similarities in the concepts of the New Man (Soviet) and the New Generation (American).


With the recent technological feasibility of electronic commerce over the Internet, much attention has been given to the design of electronic markets for various types of electronically-tradable goods. Such markets, however, will normally need to function in some relationship with markets for other related goods, usually those downstream or upstream in the supply chain. Thus, for example, an electronic market for rubber tires for trucks, will likely need to be strongly influenced by the rubber market as well as by the truck market.In this paper we design protocols for exchange of information between a sequence of markets along a single supply chain. These protocols allow each of these markets to function separately, while the information exchanged guarantees efficient global behavior across the supply chain. Each market form a link in the supply chain operates as a double auction, where the bids on one side of the double auction come from bidders in the corresponding segment of the industry, and the bids on the other side are synthetically generated by the protocol to express the combined information from all other links in the chain. The double auctions in each of the markets can be of several types, and we study several variants of incentive compatible double auctions, comparing them in terms of their efficiency and of the market revenue.


A method for quantitative analysis of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (γ-APS) and N-(N-vinylbenzyl-2-aminoethyl)-3-aminopropyltrimethoxy-silane hydrochloride (cationic vinylbenzyl silane, CVBS) on muscovite mica powder has been developed with the use of diffuse reflectance FT-IR spectroscopy. The adsorption isotherms determined by this method are reported. The results are compared with a previous study of the adsorption of aminosilanes by ESCA, and possible models of the adsorbed layer are discussed.


This new text is a comprehensive guide to investigating and litigating clinical negligence claims, written by two leading practitioners in the field. Aimed particularly at practitioners who are looking to develop their practice in this complex and often emotive area, the book provides a general overview of the law relating to clinical negligence, and focuses on the practical aspects of running a claim. Structured chronologically, the book looks first at the relevant law of negligence and limitation, then at key preliminary matters, including exploring complaints and disciplinary procedures, the possibility of early settlement, risk analysis, limitation, and costs. It goes on to provide detailed guidance on the investigation process as to whether a claim is viable, and to cover every aspect of clinical negligence litigation, from the pre-action protocol and issuing proceedings, to managing witnesses and expert evidence, damages, and trial. Practical, user-friendly guidance is included throughout the text on client care, maintaining effective relationships between solicitors and counsel, case management, and procedure. The book details the particular considerations and difficulties that apply to clinical negligence that distinguish it from other personal injury litigation, such as the development of the law of negligence in the field, the technical complexity of the evidence, and risk analysis. It also describes the external organisations that provide the context to the area, and the business considerations that must be understood if the work is to be undertaken profitably, including guidance on funding (Legal Services Commission, private and Conditional Fee Agreement) and insurance. Specific issues of difficulty, such as the differences between public and private sector defendants, are covered in full, and there are sections on particularly complex topics that can arise in practice such as fatal cases, hospital-acquired infections, and cost of upbringing cases. The text is complemented by a useful precedents section, which is organised in a thematic way to ensure ease of reference. Co-written by a solicitor and a barrister, the book benefits from their differing perspectives and experiences of the litigation process, which ensures that all crucial elements of case preparation and presentation, and the relevant law and practice, is covered in a clear and logical way. Clinical Negligence: A Practitioner's Handbook will be invaluable to junior solicitors and barristers working in the field, practitioners with a working knowledge of personal injury law who are beginning to develop a clinical negligence practice, medical professionals with an interest in medico-legal issues, and relevant legal and voluntary sector organisations.


A fully updated guide to making your landing pages profitableEffective Internet marketing requires that you test and optimize your landing pages to maximize exposure and conversion rate. This second edition of a bestselling guide to landing page optimization includes case studies with before-and-after results as well as new information on web site usability. It covers how to prepare all types of content for testing, how to interpret results, recognize the seven common design mistakes, and much more. Included is a gift card for Google AdWords.Features fully updated information and case studies on landing page optimization Shows how to use Google's Website Optimizer tool, what to test and how to prepare your site for testing, the pros and cons of different test strategies, how to interpret results, and common site design mistakesProvides a step-by-step implementation plan and advice on getting support and resourcesIncludes a Google AdWords gift cardLanding Page Optimization, Second Edition is a comprehensive guide to increasing conversions and improving profits.


Available data on nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen), suspended sediment, and pesticides in the Red River of the North Basin, a study unit under the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, are reviewed. These data were collected by several agencies during 1970-90. Nutrient concentrations in surface water are higher downgradient from agricultural and urban areas than in other areas, but generally do not exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Maximum ContaminantLevels (MCLs). The 10 milligram per liter (mg/L) drinking water MCL for nitrate (as nitrogen) was rarely exceeded. Some of the largest nutrient inputs to the surfacewater system appear to come from the Fargo-Moorhead area. The highest nitrogen concentrations usually were found in the Red River of the North. Nitrogen composition was mostly organic nitrogen with some nitrate. Ammonia nitrogen was negligible except during mid-winter, when concentrations could exceed 1.0 mg/L. Streams draining the corndominated cropland in the southern part of the basin had relatively high nitrogen concentrations compared to parts of the basin where small-grain crops, forests, and wetlands predominate. The Pembina River in the northern part of the basin had a large range in nitrogen concentrations that often exceeded those in the Red River of the North. The highest phosphorus concentrations generally were found in of the Red River of the North, although tributary streams occasionally had peak concentrations that exceeded those in the Red River of the North. Median nitrate concentrations in ground water were less than 1.0 mg/L as nitrogen in all counties in the basin except in OtterTail and Decker Counties in Minnesota. Half of the wells in Otter Tail County had nitrate-nitrogen concentrations exceeding 2.8 mg/L. Shallow, surficial aquifers tended to have the highest nitrate concentrations. Median suspended-sediment concentrations were less than 100 mg/L except in the Red River of the North near the Canadian border at Emerson, Manitoba and the Pembina River. The Pembina River occasionally had high suspended sediment concentrations; about 10 percent of the samples exceeded 2,000 mg/L. For both surface and ground water, available pesticide data were limited in spatial and temporal coverage. The majority of pesticide analyses for the Red River of the North Basin show no concentrations above laboratory reporting limits. Reported concentrations usually were below USEPA MCLs. Only a few analyses of pesticides in ground water had concentrations above laboratory reporting limits. Wells that had reportable levels are mainly in the southern and southeastern part of the basin, where atrazine was the most commonly detected pesticide. A relatively large fraction of stream samples had detectable quantities of 2,4-D, aand y-HCH, and atrazine. These samples covered time spans of as much as 15 years and were from sites downstream from large drainage basins; however, concentrations were well below US EPA MCLs. One county-level study showed higher 2,4-D concentrations at upstream sites than at the outlet from a small basin. This indicates that downstream sites may fail to show impaired water-quality and the fate of pesticides used in the basin. Following the 1972 ban on DDT, concentrations of DDT in fish samples from the Red River of the North quickly decreased. Fish concentrations of DDE and DDD decreased more slowly. Low levels of DDE and DDD were detected in fish 14 years after the DDT ban.


What happens when a qualitative/theoretical scholar of gender/sexuality and cultural studies and a quantitative behavioral scientist step outside the boundaries of our respective disciplines, risking disruptions to our normal procedures and cherished political and theoretical commitments? Our unlikely collaboration allowed each of us to explore and challenge the possibilities, limitations, and consequences of our approaches to the study of gender and finance and, ultimately, to make new knowledge. The occasion for this collaboration is the Arizona Pathways to Life Success (APLUS) study, a longitudinal study of a group of young adults to understand how financial practices develop and the factors that shape those practices. We begin by presenting our respective research agendas and our concerns about "engaging the opposition." We then narrate the sequence of our efforts: to talk and think together, generate analyses and interpretations, and then interrupt ourselves—only to begin again. Ultimately, despite (or perhaps because of) our divergent backgrounds, our final set of findings, which reveals the changeability of participation in gendered constellations of financial attitudes and behaviors over time, challenges dominant scientific and popular understandings of the relation of gender to financial behavior and attitudes, with implications across many domains of research, policy, and educational practice.


The need for IS research to be more impactful and interesting has long been debated with fruitful discussions but disappointing results in narrowing the significant divide between IS Practice and IS Research. While a number of solutions have been explored, the concept of the Practitioner Researcher has only recently gained traction in the domain. With the objective of providing pragmatic guidance into bridging the divide, this research explores the concept of a Practitioner Researcher, from both the academic and practitioner side of the divide. In doing so, an exploratory case study was implemented and included a 24 month journey for 18 practitioners and their 2 academic mentors in becoming Practitioner Researchers. Key outputs from the study include an explicit description of the bridging actions for both the academics and practitioners as well as the shared understanding that is vital in crossing the practice research divide. In addition, it was found that Design Research provided an excellent platform to build a shared understanding between the academic mentors and practitioners in the study. Moreover, the importance of this shared understanding is detailed, as without it the ability to become a Practitioner Researcher is severely limited.


The significance of chemical reaction is
inevitable and there exist many kinds in real life. Recently, the concept of
quartic autocatalytic kind of chemical reaction was appraised (Refs. [10] –
[16]). It is worth remarking that the concept had been wrongly used in a
recently published paper. To avoid confusion, this unpublished paper is
presented for clarification. In the report "entropy
optimization and quartic autocatalysis in MHD chemically reactive stagnation
point flow of Sisko nanomaterial, International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer 127, 829 – 837", the author investigated
cubic autocatalytic kind of chemical reaction between non-Newtonian Sisko fluid
and two molecules of catalyst situated at the surface. However, in three
different places including the title, the author claimed that the reaction is quartic autocatalysis.


A registration of identities is necessary in a wide array of systems, from online forums to smart environments. While pseudonyms are, in most cases, sufficient, mechanisms must be put in place to prevent malicious adversaries from registering great numbers of sybil identities. Preventing such sybil attacks becomes an especially significant challenge when the existence of a trusted party cannot be assumed. Several countermeasures against sybil attacks on decentralized systems have been proposed that are based on leveraging information from the social graph between participating users. While promising, existing solutions typically require knowledge of the complete social graph, which is a privacy issue, or are tailored towards specific applications like distributed hash tables. In this paper, we propose an approach for registering general-purpose pseudonyms in a completely decentralized manner while keeping social relationships private. Joining users collect confirmations from a fraction of already registered users while being aware only of their own neighbors in the social graph. Using the presented SybilHedge algorithm, sybil attackers are limited in the number of confirmations they can collect. We present an evaluation of the algorithm and discuss its practical application.


In our current research we examine the application of visuo-haptic augmented reality setups in medical training. To this end, highly accurate calibration, system stability, and low latency are indispensable prerequisites. These are necessary to maintain user immersion and avoid breaks in presence which potentially diminish the training outcome. In this paper we describe the developed calibration methods for visuo-haptic integration, the hybrid tracking technique for stable alignment of the augmentation, and the distributed framework ensuring low latency and component synchronization. Finally, we outline an early prototype system based on the multimodal augmented reality framework. The latter allows colocated visuo-haptic interaction with real and virtual scene components in a simplified open surgery setting.


This article explores the phenomenon of syncretism in Gallo-Romance varieties from the perspective of the Autonomy of Morphology. Synchronically, syncretism is neither motivated by phonology nor by syntax. It is an obvious deviation from the canonical one-to-one relationship between form and meaning. I assume that syncretism divides into two types: 'stable' (or systematic) and 'spontaneous' (or accidental) syncretism. The distribution pattern of systematic syncretism is found in different conjugational classes and may also influence suppletion. These observations suggest that stable syncretism is not a mere surface phenomenon but that it rather provides insights into the morphological structure of a language. On this deeper level, specific recurrent patterns underlying the distribution of both syncretic and suppletive cells can be identified. These patterns are interpreted as a sign of an autonomous morphological component in grammar.


An increasing number of infants in the United States are born prematurely, with current statistics estimating about 13 percent of all births. Although survival rates and outcomes for premature infants have dramatically improved in recent decades, morbidity and mortality are still significant. Infants born prematurely are at increased risk of growth problems, developmental delays, and complex medical problems. To account for prematurity, growth and development monitoring should be done according to adjusted age (age in months from term due date). Premature infants should gain 20 to 30 g (0.71 to 1.06 oz) per day after discharge from the hospital. Growth parameters may be improved in the short term with the use of enriched preterm formula or breast milk fortifier. Each well-child examination should include developmental surveillance so that early intervention can be initiated if a developmental delay is diagnosed. Routine vaccination should proceed according to chronologic age with minor exceptions, and respiratory syncytial virus immune globulin is indicated in preterm infants who meet the criteria.


This paper contains an examination of the conditions under which the energy sudden (ES) approximation may be expected to be valid. Our approach involves using dimensional analysis to identify (dimensionless) quantities which control energy suddenness and in this fashion three sets of ES criteria emerge. One involves the relative kinetic energy between collision partners and the energy spacing of the internal states of interest; another the strength of the coupling interaction and the same spacing; and a third involves the masses of the colliding molecules and component atoms. We discuss the relationship between these conditions and the justifications given by earlier workers for adopting the ES approximation and then the mass conditions in particular are used as the basis for certain broad statements concerning the applicability of the ES method within nonreactive diatom–diatom and reactive atom–diatom collisions. Finally, a number of avenues for further development of this work are discussed.


The capacity to abuse, or in general affect the enjoyment of human, labour and environmental rights has risen with the increased social and economic power that multinational companies wield in the global economy. At the same time, it appears that it is difficult to regulate the activities of multinational companies in such a way that they conform to international human, labour and environmental rights standards. This has partially to do with the organization of companies into groups of separate legal persons, incorporated in different states, as well as with the complexity of the corporate supply chain. Absent a business and human rights treaty, a more coherent legal and policy approach is required.
Faced with the challenge of how to effectively access the right to remedy in the European Union for human rights abuses committed by EU companies in non-EU states, a diverse research consortium of academic and legal institutions was formed. The consortium, coordinated by the Globernance Institute for Democratic Governance, became the recipient of a 2013 Civil Justice Action Grant from the European Commission Directorate General for Justice. A mandate was thus issued for research, training and dissemination so as to bring visibility to the challenge posed and moreover, to provide some solutions for the removal of barriers to judicial and non-judicial remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states. The project commenced in September 2014 and over the course of two years the consortium conducted research along four specific lines in parallel with various training sessions across EU Member States.
The research conducted focused primarily on judicial remedies, both jurisdictional barriers and applicable law barriers; non-judicial remedies, both to company-based grievance. The results of this research endeavour make up the content of this report whose aim is to provide a scholarly foundation for policy proposals by identifying specific challenges relevant to access to justice in the European Union and to provide recommendations on how to remove legal and practical barriers so as to provide access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states.


We present a type system for the programming language Erlang. The type system supports subtyping and declaration-free recursive types, using subtyping constraints. Our system is similar to one explored by Aiken and Wimmers, though it sacrifices expressive power in favour of simplicity. We cover our techniques for type inference, type simplification, and checking when an inferred type conforms to a user-supplied type signature, and report on early experience with our prototype.


Effect of Ramadan Fasting on Mental Health of Nursing Students in Jiroft Nursing College � N. Shafie MSc [1] , M. Allahtavakoli PhD [2] , F. Rafati MSc [3] , M. Kazemi MSc [4] � Received: 04/08/07 Sent for Revision: 25/09/07 Received Revised Manuscript: 29/11/07 Accepted: 10/12/07 � Background and Objectives: Mental disorders are one of the common worldwide problems and it has been reported that they have an increasing growth in Iran. Many studies have been reported the beneficial somatic and mental effects of Ramadan fasting on human. Material and Methods: This research was a natural experience study which was carried out to determine the effect of Ramadan fasting on mental health of 115 students of Jiroft nursing school. Data were collected by a demographic questionnaire and a 12-item mental health scale. The questioner and scale were completed by students in one week before and after the Ramadan month, respectively. The data of mental health scores were reported as Mean±SEM and analyzed by Paired and group t-test. Results: The results showed that mental health of students were increased after fasting compared with before Ramadan month (p less-than 0 / 000). Furthermore, mental health of male students were more than female students in both before (p less-than 0.001) and after (p less-than 0.01) Ramadan fasting. Conclusion: Based on the results, Ramadan fasting may improve mental health of students. Further investigations such as case-control studies are needed to determine the exact effects of Ramadan fasting on mental health. Key words: Fasting Ramadan, Mental Health, Nursing Students [1] - Academic Member, Jiroft Faculty of Nursing, University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran Corresponding Author, Tel: (0348)2315991, Fax: (0348)2315990 , E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com [2] - Assistant prof., Dept. of Physiology, Medical School, University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan, Iran [3] - Academic Member, Jiroft Faculty of Nursing, University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran [4] - Academic Member, Faculty of Nursing, University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan, Iran


OBJECTIVE
To estimate the prevalence of falls in elderly individuals and to analyze associated factors.

METHODS
Cross-sectional study with 420 elderly subjects (aged 60 years or older) living in the city of Juiz de Fora (Southeastern Brazil) in 2010. A household survey was conducted and the occurrence of falls in the 12 previous months was described. For the analysis of factors associated with the outcome, a theoretical determination model with three hierarchical blocks was built. The variables were adjusted among each other within each block; those with level of significance < 0.20 were included in the Poisson regression model and adjusted to the immediately higher level, with 5% significance level.

RESULTS
The prevalence of falls among the elderly was 32.1% (95%CI: 27.7; 36.9). Among those who experienced falls, 53% had a single fall and 19% had fractures as a consequence. Most of the falls (59%) occurred at the elderly person's home. The occurrence of falls was associated with old age, female sex, need of help for locomotion and self-reported diagnosis of osteoporosis.

CONCLUSIONS
Falls are frequent among the elderly. Knowledge of the factors associated with the occurrence of this event can aid the development of prevention strategies and adequate health services.


Lipoleiomyomas are rare benign tumours of the uterus. These tumours have high content of fatty tissue. Histologically, they show mature smooth muscle and mature adipocytes. These tumours are commonly reported in obese perimenopausal and post-menopausal women. Most tumours are asymptomatic, but can present with symptoms similar to that of leiomyomas. Though can be diagnosed by imaging studies, HPE report confirms the diagnosis. The management of lipoleiomyoma of the uterus is same as that of leiomyomas.


: The properties of aluminium castings are strongly affected by their inclusion content, particularly entrained surface alumina films. These form due to the surface turbulence associated with mould filling, which causes the oxidised surface of a liquid metal to fold-over onto itself and be submerged into the bulk liquid with a thin layer of air entrapped within it. This is known as entrainment action. These flaws have been reported to increase the variability of the fracture strengths of Al alloy castings. This means that shape castings in light alloys can have inconsistent properties, which makes designing structures employing shape castings more difficult. Entrained surface layers can cause premature failure, but also have been associated with other defects, such as hydrogen porosity, shrinkage porosity, intermetallic compounds and hot tearing. Recent research has suggested that the air inside the defect would react with the surrounding melt leading to its consumption, which may enhance the mechanical properties of the casting. In this work, liquid aluminium was poured into three identical ceramic moulds which were immediately placed in a furnace to preserve the molten metal at 800 C, for different periods of time prior to freezing. The Weibull moduli of the plate castings were determined under tensile conditions, and their fracture surfaces examined using SEM. Investigation of the fracture surfaces of the specimens detected many alumina layers at different locations. Many of which were found inside pores, reflecting the role of entrained defects in the formation of porosity. The results also suggested that opposite phenomena may take place during the holding treatment. The consumption of air inside the entrained defects due to reaction with the surrounding molten metal may lead to improvements in mechanical properties, but this may be accompanied by hydrogen passing into the defects, which has a deleterious effect on properties.


One of the paradoxes of disconnection is that social platforms like Facebook frame it as a threat to our prosperity while critics associated with "the techlash" maintain that quite on the contrary it is the only thing that brings back the possibility for good life. Disconnection means different things for different actors and these differences manifest in varying desires and designs. The five papers in this panel draw on empirical research and media and cultural theory to find answers to questions such as what process have led to the desires to disconnect; how does something disconnect; when does it disconnect; what does it disconnect; and whose disconnection it is? Two of the papers map the choice to disconnect in situations where on one hand digital participation has become structurally necessary by the demands of the society and on the other where users are doing outdoor activities and it is connection that requires activity. Three of the papers focus on particular designs of disconnection from Facebook's off-Facebook Activity Tool to UX Design Decks and the Light Phone. As a whole, the panel describes the different ways disconnection is becoming central to our online existence.


Part I discusses the problem of determining the set of intersection points, with corresponding multiplicities, of two algebraic plane curves. We derive an algorithm based on the Euclidean Algorithm for polynomials and show how to use it to find the intersection points of two given curves. We also show that an easy proof of Bézout's Theorem follows. We then discuss how, for curves with rational coefficients, this algorithm can be modified to find the intersection points with coordinates expressed in terms of algebraic extensions of the rational numbers. Part II deals with the problem of determining the (monic) integer transfinite diameter of a given real interval. We show how this problem relates to the problem of determining the structure of the spectrum of normalised leading coefficients of polynomials with integer coefficients and all roots in the given interval. We then find dense regions of this spectrum for a number of intervals and discuss algorithms for finding discrete subsets of the spectrum for the interval [0,1]. This leads to an improvement in the known upper bound for the integer transfinite diameter. Finally, we discuss the connection between the infimum of the spectrum and the monic integer transfinite diameter.


In February 2001 the British government announced its commitment to increase the number of schools run by the churches and other religious groups where there was 'clear local demand from parents and the community'. The decision met with approval in some quarters, but was condemned elsewhere on the grounds that such schools, in a multicultural society, are inevitably divisive. In the course of exploring the response of Jewish primary schools in England to cultural pluralism, this article sheds light on the charge of divisiveness. It describes a study that offers little support to the critics, for it highlights the wide variation in attitudes and practices that characterised the schools with regard to the multicultural dimension of citizenship education.


BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES
Oral mucositis is a common debilitating complication of radiotherapy occurring in about 60 per cent of cancer patients. Considerable buccal toxicity of radiotherapy or chemotherapy in cancer patients to become discouraged and can affect their quality of life. In addition, such toxicity can alter the treatment plan. At present, there is no clinically appropriate prophylaxis efficacious antidote for mucositis. The low level laser (LEL) appears to be a simple, non-traumatic technique for the prevention and treatment of radiation induced mucositis. Therefore the present study was carried out to find out the effect of low-level helium-neon (He-Ne) laser in the prevention and treatment of radiation induced mucositis in head and neck cancer patients.

METHODS
The patients with carcinoma of oral cavity with stages II-IV a being uniformly treated with curative total tumour dose of 66 Gy in 33 fractions over 6 wk were selected for the study. The patients were divided based on computer generated randamosization into laser (study group) and control groups with 25 patients in each group. Both study and control groups were comparable in terms of site of the lesion, stage of the cancer and histology. The study group patients were treated with He-Ne laser (wavelength 632.8 nm and output of 10mW) and control group patients were given oral analgesics, local application of anaesthetics, 0.9 per cent saline and povidine wash during the course of radiotherapy.

RESULTS
All patients tolerated the laser treatment without any adverse effect or reactions. The result showed a significant difference in pain and mucositis (P<0.001) between the two groups. At the end of radiotherapy (after 6 wk) mean pain sure and mucositis grade were significantly lower (P<0.001) in the study group compared to control.

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION
The low-level He-Ne laser therapy during the radiotherapy treatment was found to be effective in preventing and treating the mucositis in head and neck cancer patients. Further studies need to be done on a larger sample to find the mechanism.


This research work focused on the performance of heuristics and metaheuristics for the recently
defined Hostel Space Allocation Problem (HSAP), a new instance of the space allocation
problem (SAP) in higher institutions of learning (HIL). SAP is a combinatorial optimisation
problem that involves the distribution of spaces available amongst a set of deserving entities
(rooms, bed spaces, and office spaces etc.), so that the available spaces are optimally utilized and
complied with the given set of constraints.
HSAP deals with the allocation of bed space in available but limited halls of residence to
competing groups of students such that given requirements and constraints are satisfied as much
as possible. The problem was recently introduced in literature and a preliminary, baseline
solution using Genetic Algorithm (GA) was provided to show the viability of heuristics in
solving the problem rather than recourse to the usual manual processing. Since the administration
of hostel space allocation varies across institutions, countries and continents, the available
instance is defined as obtained from a top institution in Nigeria. This instance identified is the
point of focus for this research study. The main aim of this thesis is to study the strength and
performance of some Local Search (LS) heuristics in solving this problem. In the process
however, some hybrid techniques that combine both population-based and LS heuristics in
providing solutions are derived. This enables one to carry out a comprehensive comparative
study aimed at determining which heuristics and/or combination performs best for the given
problem.
HSAP is a multi-objective and multi-stage problem. Each stage of the allocation has different
requirements and constraints. An attempt is made to provide a formulation of these problems as
an optimisation problem and then provides various inter-related heuristics and meta-heuristics to
solve it at different levels of the allocation process. Specifically, Hill Climbing (HC), Simulated
Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS), Late Acceptance Hill Climbing (LAHC) and GA were
applied to distribute the students at all the three levels of allocation. At each level, a comparison
of the algorithms is presented. In addition, variants of the algorithms were performed from a
multi-objective perspective with promising and better solutions compared to the results obtained
from the manual method used by the administrators in the institutions. Comparisons and analyses
of the results obtained from the above methods were done.
Obtaining datasets for HSAP is a very difficult task as most institutions either do not keep proper
records of past allocations or are not willing to make such records available for research
purposes. The only dataset available which is also used for simulation in this study is the one
recently reported in literature. However, to test the robustness of the algorithms, two new data
sets that follow the pattern of the known dataset obtained from literature are randomly generated.
Results obtained with these…


CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! Essays in Education (EIE) is a professional, peer-reviewed journal intended to promote practitioner and academic dialogue on current and relevant issues across human services professions. The editors of EIE encourage both novice and experienced educators to submit manuscripts that share their thoughts and insights. Visit https://openriver.winona.edu/eie for more information on submitting your manuscript for possible publication.


The Grampian Slide zone comprises a system of shear zones characterized by strain-induced, syn-tectonic muscovitization, growth of porphyroblasts of plagioclase, garnet and muscovite, concordant quartz veinlets, and by later-tectonic sillimanite and late- to post-tectonic kyanite. Traverses across shear zones in the Central Highland division show progressive modification of original gneissic fabrics, demonstrating that metamorphism and gneissification preceded the shearing event. Mylonitization involved bulk mobilization of alkalies (Na, Ca, K) and trace elements (Ba, Rb, Sr, Ni, Cr, Zr), accompanied by decreasing Fe oxidation ratios; and increasing shearing progressively changed the mineral chemistry of reversely zoned plagioclase, zoned garnet and micas. Advanced syn-shearing blastesis produced a suite of lenticular pegmatitic segregation veinlets in the mylonites. A coeval suite of larger, intrusive pegmatites represents more mobile material that has migrated through the shear zones. The pegmatites and the mylonite matrices yield U-Pb monazite ages of c. 806 Ma, corresponding to the Precambrian Knoydartian event in the Moine rocks of the Northern Highlands. The shear zones record compressional(?) transport directed towards the NNE, and in the northern sector of the Central Highlands were reactivated by later (Caledonian?) extensional SE-directed movement. The presence of the c. 806 Ma event in the Grampian Group challenges recent proposals that early deformation across the entire Dalradian Supergroup can be correlated with the c. 590 Ma Tay Nappe.


Culture Dance of East coast usually performed in choosing social gatherings such as weddings, circumcision, New Year celebrations and other festivals and events. Performances shown are a combination of a form of dance, singing and musical instruments unique strain, What's more interesting to talk about cultural dance in the east coast is unique in terms of presentation and the message conveyed and reinforced with Islamic art as well as highly respected as having values that can be an example for everyone.This academic writing is about awareness of cultural dance of east coast using advertising campaign. From this academic writing, the researcher has to study about what the cultural dance of east coast. The researcher also does the literature searching to gain more information about cultural dance. After the researcher will make and finding from the data that researcher get and finally conclusion and recommendations base on the finding. In this academic writing divided into four chapters. The first chapter is about background of research. This chapter is about the overview of the background research based on literature reviews. The second chapter is about objective and research methodology. This section sets forth the research objectives to be attained and with appropriate methodology to be undertaken for research project. For chapter 3 is about analysis and finding. This section provides the discussions based on the original data obtained from research method. The final chapter is about conclusion and recommendation. This section is highlights the conclusion, which is drawn in line with the objectives, and the development of practical recommendations based on the relevant research findings.


The negative impacts of conventional pesticides on health, environment, and organ‐ isms have involved strong development of integrated pest management (IPM) strat‐ egies. The use of insect pheromones becomes an effectively alternative selection in agricultural and forest pest control. Pheromone researches in Vietnam started in the last few decades and in addition to technical factors, recent achievements in the Vietnamese agriculture have an important direct link to the pheromone developments. In this chapter, we review the pheromone researches related to synthesis and field trials of several especial insect pheromones, in which Vietnamese scientists have mainly participated or collaborated with foreign research groups. First, we will discuss an overview of popular insect pheromones in Vietnam, a lot of species of which are also found around the world, as an important reference for scientists who would have especial consideration in this field. Further, synthetic routes of pheromones are summarized with various structures including chiral, racemic, mono- and poly-olefinic pheromones where some schemes have become standard methodologies for synthesis of similar structural compounds. Finally, field evaluations of the pheromones of numerous species are discussed in detail.