Background
Emotional abuse (or psychological maltreatment, as it is more commonly called in the US) is an inadequately researched and poorly understood concept, despite increasing awareness about the harm it can cause to children"s lives. Although it unifies and underpins all types of maltreatment it also occurs alone and when it does, tends to elude detection and intervention. There have to date been no systematic reviews of the literature on the secondary prevention and treatment involving the parents or primary carers of emotionally abused children.
Objective
The objective of the review was to identify studies that evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in the secondary prevention and treatment of child emotional abuse involving the parents or primary carers of children aged 0 – 19 years.
Methods
Studies were included if they involved any intervention which was directed at emotionally abusive parenting and that measured change in (i) emotional unavailability (ii) negative attributions (i.e. that involve the parent attributing negative intentions, beliefs or attitudes toward the child); (iii) developmentally inappropriate interactions; (iv) lack of recognition of children"s boundaries; (v) inconsistency of parenting role; (vi) missocialisation or consistent failure to promote the child"s social adaptation. The primary outcomes evaluated involved proxy measures of a range of parent, family and child outcomes including parental psychopathology, parenting attitudes and practices, family functioning and/or child behaviour and the child"s development and adaptation.
.
A broad search strategy was developed in order to identify as many relevant studies as possible. An electronic search of a wide range of databases was carried about. No study type was excluded. The search was augmented by direct contact with academics and practitioners known in this field. The search included studies written in English, Spanish, French and German. Studies were included if the intervention was described, and the impact on at least one indicator of emotional abuse was assessed. Included
studies were critically appraised by two reviewers using standard criteria. Data were extracted using a standard proforma, and a qualitative synthesis of results was carried out.
Results
The initial search yielded 4248 publications of potential interest. Of these, 175 were obtained for possible inclusion or as background material. A total of 21 studies of 18 interventions, met all the inclusion criteria. A further 43 studies were relevant, but did not meet all of the inclusion criteria. Studies were organised according to the type of emotional abuse targeted: emotionally abusive parenting; parents of infants with faltering growth; missocialisation: parenting interventions with substance-abusing mothers. Twelve included studies had quantitative designs. Of these, 6 comprised randomised controlled trials; 1 comprised a follow-up of a randomised controlled trial; 2 were controlled studies; and 3 had one-group pre- and post-designs. The remaining 9 were case studies.
Included studies involved a wide range of interventions. The 8 studies for parents which address emotionally abusive parenting (rejection, misattribution, parent-child role reversal and anger management) involved evaluations of cognitive-behavioural training (CBT), behavioural training and parent-infant psychotherapy. Two further case studies involved cognitive-behavioural training, mentalisation and family-based therapy. The 9 interventions with parents of infants with faltering growth evaluated CBT, behavioural training, parent infant psychotherapy and interaction guidance; lay home visitors, and a range of therapeutic options based on the diagnostic condition of the parents. The 3 studies of interventions for substance abusing mothers evaluated a relational psychotherapy group for mothers, and a residential treatment for substance abuse with a parenting component. The sample sizes for quantitative studies were small and ranged from 17 to 98 participants. Ten interventions involved mothers alone, while a further 11 included fathers, either at the outset or at a later stage, and in 3 cases extended family members.
Interventions for emotionally abusing parents
The findings from the 8 included studies evaluating CBT, psychotherapy, and behavioural approaches suggest that group-based CBT may be an effective means of intervening with this group of parents, although it cannot currently be recommended with parents experiencing symptoms of severe psychopathology. While one comparative study showed a psychotherapeutic intervention to be more effective than a CBT focused intervention, the outcomes measured in this study (i.e. parent and child representations) favoured the former. Behavioural case work involving the use of problem-solving techniques may also have a role to play with some parents, although further research is still needed.
Interventions to enhance parental sensitivity
The findings from a systematic review of 81 interventions that aimed at enhancing parental sensitivity and / or infant attachment found strong evidence that short term (less than 16 sessions) interventions, with a behavioural focus and aimed exclusively at enhancing maternal sensitivity were also most effective in enhancing infant attachment security. This supports the notion of a causal role of sensitivity in shaping attachment. Interventions that included fathers as well as mothers showed higher effect sizes but results are tentative since they are based on a small number of small scale trials.
Parental behaviours associated with faltering growth
Nine studies evaluated a range of interventions with parents of babies with faltering growth including interaction guidance, home visiting; parent-child psychotherapy, behavioural casework and multi-component interventions. The findings show that interaction guidance and parent-infant psychotherapy may be potentially effective means of working with this group of clients along with behavioural casework, but that further research is needed before these can be recommended.
Missocialisation: Parenting interventions for substance-abusing parents
5 studies (one of which was a 6-month follow-up) evaluated interventions for substance abusing mothers, including a relational psychotherapy group and a residential treatment for substance abusing adults with a parenting component. The findings show that initial gains made in the former were not sustained at 6-months and few benefits from residential intervention.
Conclusions
Emotional abuse is a complex issue resulting in part from learned behaviours, psychopathology and/or unmet emotional needs in the parents, and often compounded by factors in the families" immediate and wider social environment. As such, a "one-approach-fits-all" is unlikely to lead to sustained change.
The evidence base is weak, but suggests that some caregivers respond well to cognitive behavioural therapy. However, the characteristics that define these parents are not clear. There is currently no evidence to support the use of this intervention alone in the treatment of severely emotionally abusive parents. Some of the evidence suggests that a certain form of emotional abuse (for example, highly negative parent affect, which may be expressed as frightened and frightening behaviours in the parent) stemming from unresolved trauma and loss, is less amenable to CBT. There is some evidence that interaction guidance and psychotherapeutic approaches can generate change in parents with more severe psychopathology.
Further research is urgently needed to evaluate the benefits of both psychotherapeutic and cognitive behavioural interventions, including those which take the form of family therapy, with parents at the more severe end of the spectrum, with fathers, and with older children. There is also a need to gain further understanding about which forms of emotional abuse respond best to different treatments.


Geostationary communication satellites are generally regarded as providers of global communication services ignoring a lack of coverage in polar regions and gaps over the oceans. An increasing regulatory and legislative demand on worldwide positioning and communication capabilities, in particular in the maritime sector, calls, however, for a truly global coverage. Therefore, appropriate space-borne augmentation systems are required and presented in this paper. An innovative augmentation concept is proposed which is especially suited for combined communication and navigation applications based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The alternatives considered for an augmentation of geostationary communication satellites are the ORBCOMM satellite system, the ARGOS system, as well as a proprietary satellite system. In addition, a concept for a dedicated communication payload on several GNSS-2 Galileo spacecraft has been considered. For the concept evaluation, a Pugh matrix has been established, supplemented by a Gaussian variance analysis to indicate quantitative confidence levels of the achieved ranking. As a result, a proprietary satellite system has been selected to best serve the needs for global communication and navigation services. The concept selection was part of a thorough systems engineering process, which has been established. While traditional systems engineering is primarily driven by functional needs and stakeholder requirements, the presented approach is particularly based on financial and business engineering principles as additional design drivers. Thus, an optimized approach of system development is accomplished which applies classical systems engineering methods to arrive at a system, which in addition represents a sound business concept. As a result of the systems engineering process, the space segment architecture for the polar augmentation will be presented with a focus on the design of the spacecraft communication payload. Here, special attention has been given to an innovative frequency and modulation scheme which allows interoperability and avoids interference with other communication systems, while maintaining the full positioning accuracy based on GNSS signals. The presented approach is considered as an important step towards enforcing regulatory demands and achieving an improved performance for global communication-navigation applications.


This paper considers the application of compressed sensing to spherical acoustics in order to improve spatial sound field reconstruction. More specifically, we apply compressed sensing techniques to a set of Ambisonic sound signals to obtain a super-resolution plane-wave decomposition of the original sound field. That is to say, we investigate using the plane-wave decomposition to increase the spherical harmonic order of the Ambisonic sound scene. We refer to this as upscaling the Ambisonic sound scene. A focus of the paper is using sub-band analysis to make the plane-wave decomposition more robust. Results show that the sub-band analysis does indeed improve the robustness of the plane-wave decomposition when dominant overlapping sources are present or in noisy or diffuse sound conditions. Upscaling Ambisonic sound scenes allows more loudspeakers to be used for spatial sound field reconstruction, resulting in a larger sweet spot and improved sound quality.


CIRS Briefs are edited transcripts of lectures hosted by CIRS or concise academic articles. They are designed to make contact with a wider readership and extend CIRS activities towards interested members of the public.


This article analyzes evidence of translating and interpreting activities (indiscriminately referred to as yi (譯), which also denotes translators or interpreters in classical Chinese) in first-century China between the Latter Han (25–220 AD) Chinese administration and non-Han Chinese minority tribes along the then Southwestern frontier (modern Yunnan and Sichuan provinces). The importance of this archival record to the historical study of translation and interpreting is two-fold. First, it contains crucial details pertinent to translating and interpreting activities in China in antiquity. Second, it documents concepts of yi synchronically, as perceived by three main participants in the interpreting events: the emperor, the frontier inspector, and the frontier clerk cum interpreter. The presentation of what they actually wrote, said, and did in the first-century interpreting setting in China, with close reference to standard histories, objectively depicts the meanings of yi as perceived by these figures at the time.


Fintech companies have developed a financial product that allows employees to gain access to wages that they have already earned before their scheduled payday. The fee for getting an earned wage advance is usually small, making this product an extremely attractive alternative to payday loans—the go-to resource for lower-income Americans for the past three decades.

This Article is the first legal academic paper to analyze the earned wage advance market, assess the likelihood it will displace payday lending, and reveal some of the dangers lurking beneath the low-cost surface of these transactions. It argues that earned wage access products have the potential to end the thirty year reign of payday lending. But, earned wage advances do not fit neatly into existing legal categories, so policymakers need to establish legal certainty in the market to facilitate growth while at the same time ensuring that the law protects consumers.


Abstract. Besides classical emplacement and accretion related nappe tectonics, the Oligocene to middle Miocene post-collisional evolution of the central European Alps was also characterized by pronounced vertically directed tectonics. These are expressed by backthrusting along the Insubric Line and the subsequent uplift of the External Crystalline Massifs (ECMs). During late Miocene times, the Central Alps experienced lateral growth when deformation propagated into the external parts of both the pro- and retro-side of the orogen. For the North Alpine foreland, pro-wedge propagation of deformation has been kinematically and spatially linked to the uplift and exhumation of the ECMs. In this paper, we investigate the young exhumation history of the North Alpine foreland. Based on low-temperature apatite (U-Th-Sm)/He thermochronometry, we constrain thrusting in the Subalpine Molasse between 12 Ma and 5 Ma, thus occurring coeval to the main deformation phase in the adjacent Jura fold-and-thrust belt (FTB) and late stage exhumation of the ECMs. However, this pattern of tectonic activity is not restricted to areas which are bordered by the ECMs, but is consistent along the entire front of the Central Alps, regardless of its hinterland architecture. The local-scale pattern of strain partitioning and style of deformation is governed by lateral variations in the sedimentary foreland basin architecture. We suggest that the large-scale constant tectonic signal is the response to a shift in tectonic forces caused by a deep-seated geodynamic process. This resulted in a change from dominantly vertical to orogen-scale horizontal tectonics and an associated orogen-perpendicular growth of crustal thickening. We constrain the onset of this major tectonic change to ca. 15 Ma in the Southern Alps and ca. 12 Ma in the North Alpine foreland, where it results in (re-)activation of thrusts in the Subalpine Molasse and folding in the Jura FTB.


The free energy principle states that self-organization occurs through minimization of free energy, which is a measure of potential thermodynamic work. By minimizing free energy, the organism happens to also minimize surprise over its boundary, promoting chances of survival. We discuss the ethical implications of the cognitive goal in detail from an empirical point of view, highlighting the principle of least action as a physical basis of Occam's razor, the universality of the free energy principle, and its explanation of natural selection. We explain that the free energy principle extends to groups of organisms and helps us understand group-scale adaptations and selection in biology. The free energy principle applies to all scales of organization in the organism from single cells to the entire nervous system. When this principle is taken to its logical extremes of modeling groups, populations and ecosystems, we uncover a new, evolutionarily sensible path at explaining puzzling aspects of human motivation and judgement, including ethical decisions. To minimize free energy, populations have to act to maximize gathering of information, while building effective models at mitigating changes to its dynamic structure. The free energy principle thus provides a naturalistic explanation of some of our deepest ethical intuitions, and valuable principles of social behavior. We interpret the cognitive goal that corresponds to the principle as seeking a dynamic, fruitful, yet peaceful activity that sustains the organism. This state of mind is interestingly similar to the Buddhist intuition of mental equanimity; the organism's final goal is to be at peace and harmony with the environment. Another immediately relevant aspect is that assemblies must form to promote symbiotic, synergistic, positive feedback loops, which coincides with the findings of ecologists. Therefore, ethics naturally emerges in self-organizing systems. Assemblies of organisms must ultimately unite in macro-minds to achieve the greatest reduction in free energy, as well as building technological extensions of themselves to improve their capacity to do such, therefore the principle also predicts a post-singularity world-mind composed mostly of artificial intelligence.


Molecular methods play an increasingly important role in diagnostic microbiologic testing, and this trend will continue with the introduction of new technologies and continued improvement in current assay designs. Individual laboratories considering the implementation of such molecular methods for diagnostic testing face unique challenges in achieving optimal laboratory design and operations that may vary greatly depending on the laboratory setting and the molecular methods employed. Efficient laboratory operation and workflow are closely dependent on optimal design of the laboratory space, and in turn, optimal laboratory design is influenced by the various assay methods and instruments used in the laboratory. Chemical fume hoods and cabinets for storage of hazardous chemicals and flammable liquids should also be incorporated in the overall laboratory design. Efficient clinical laboratory operations providing quality testing services are dependent on several key elements. In addition to the use of dedicated work areas and equipment, regular cleaning and decontamination can also be effective in further reducing the likelihood of amplicon contamination. Specific precautions that should be considered prior to implementation of three molecular diagnostic methods–hybridization-based methods, target amplification-based methods, and target amplification-detection and postamplification analysis methods–have been discussed in the chapter.


Objectives. Tumor protein p53 is a transcription factor involved with cellular responses to stressors including limited glucose availability. We hypothesized that modulating p53 levels would affect cellular glucose uptake. Methods and Results. Transfecting cultured primary mouse hepatocytes with p53 siRNA suppressed p53 mRNA expression >90%. Control hepatocytes (transfected with non-targeting siRNA) increased glucose uptake (2.28 ± 1.02-fold vs basal, p 0.009) in response to 100 nM insulin, but p53 siRNA-treated hepatocytes had a blunted response (0.92 ± 0.11-fold vs basal; between group difference p 0.0012). In adipocytes differentiated from the pre-adipocyte line 3T3-L1, knockdown of p53 had no effect on insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. There were no differences in Glut 1 or Glut 2 expression in the plasma membrane fraction or in the levels of phosphorylated AKT in cell lysates between primary hepatocytes transfected with p53 siRNA or control siRNA. Glycemic responses to insulin tolerance, glucose tolerance, and pyruvate tolerance tests did not differ between p53 knockout and wild type mice. Discussion. Thus, inhibition of p53 has pleiotropic effects, inhibiting glucose uptake in the liver but having no effect on adipocytes. Knockout of p53 has no apparent effect on glucose homeostasis in intact lean mice. An explanation for the association between p53 expression and hepatocyte glucose uptake remains to be elucidated.


Background. Gulf War veterans have a number of health complaints. We therefore decided to carry out a systematic review to identify and summarize the findings from studies that have assessed multi-symptom conditions in Gulf War veterans and in an unexposed comparison group. Method. Studies published between January 1990 and May 2004 were identified by searching a large number of electronic databases. Reference lists and websites were also searched and key researchers were contacted. Studies were included if they compared the prevalence of chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, CDC-defined chronic multi-symptom illness, fibromyalgia, or symptoms of either fatigue or numbness and tingling in Gulf War veterans and non-Gulf veterans. A total of 2401 abstracts were independently reviewed by two authors. Results. Twenty-three publications fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Gulf deployment was most strongly associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (OR 3·8, 95% CI 2·2–6·7). Gulf War veterans were also approximately three and a half times more likely than non-Gulf veterans to report multiple chemical sensitivity or chronic multi-symptom illness as defined by CDC. The methodological quality of the studies varied but the later and larger studies were of a high methodological standard with robust sampling strategies, adequate response rates and good adjustment for confounders. Conclusions. The results support the hypothesis that deployment to the Gulf War is associated with greater reporting of multi-symptom conditions.


With the rapid development in high-throughput technologies and the next generation sequencing (NGS) during the past decades, the bottleneck for advances in computational biology and bioinformatics research has shifted from data collection to data analysis. As one of the central goals in precision health, understanding and interpreting high-dimensional biomedical data is of major interest in computational biology and bioinformatics domains. Since significant effort has been committed to harnessing biomedical data for multiple analyses, this thesis is aiming for developing new machine learning approaches to help discover and interpret the complex mechanisms and interactions behind the high dimensional features in biomedical data. Moreover, this thesis also studies the prediction of post-treatment response given histopathologic images with machine learning.Capturing the important features behind the biomedical data can be achieved in many ways such as network and correlation analyses, dimensionality reduction, image processing, etc. In this thesis, we accomplish the computation through co-expression analysis, survival analysis, and matrix decomposition in supervised and unsupervised learning manners. We use co-expression analysis as upfront feature engineering, implement survival regression in deep learning to predict patient survival and discover associated factors. By integrating Cox proportional hazards regression into non-negative matrix factorization algorithm, the latent clusters of human genes are uncovered. Using machine learning and automatic feature extraction workflow, we extract thirty-six image features from histopathologic images, and use them to predict post-treatment response. In addition, a web portal written by R language is built in order to bring convenience to future biomedical studies and analyses.In conclusion, driven by machine learning algorithms, this thesis focuses on the integrative analysis given multimodal biomedical data, especially the supervised cancer patient survival prognosis, the recognition of latent gene clusters, and the application of predicting post-treatment response from histopathologic images. The proposed computational algorithms present its superiority comparing to other state-of-the-art models, provide new insights toward the biomedical and cancer studies in the future.


Many factors which includes biological or environmental, influence variation in the mental status of an individual if he/she is exposed to them. Negative factors are the root cause of mental status at the onset of unrest and this can have specific manifestations. During social unrest, people's entire way of life is torn apart. These problems may exhibit themselves verbally since the body's verbal dispensation is a reliable sign of internal state of affairs. Several research findings show that University students' unrest is a common phenomenon all over the world and that most Universities are focused on the aftermath of students' unrest. However, studies have not been done on identifying verbal indicators of mental status of University students' at the onset of students' unrest and then implementing appropriate preventive measures to forestall University students' unrest. The objective of the study was to identify the main verbal indicators of mental status of University students' at onset of unrest. It was a survey research design which used mixed research method approaches. Data was collected using structured questionnaires. The research population included Security officers, secretaries, of selected public Universities in Kenya. Simple random sampling was used which gave a total sample size of 145 which was obtained from a target population of 177. The quantitative data collected was analyzed using SPSS programme into frequency counts, percentages, means and independent ttest analysis. From the findings, the main verbal indicators of mental status of University students' at the onset of unrest were identified as:the use of the word 'comrade' in speech being the most common, followed by a 'threatful speech', the use of the word 'power' in speech, increased talkativeness in speech, loud speech tone, very fast speech rate and hurtful speech, in that order.


AIMS
This case study identifies the influence and mechanisms that the alcohol industry in Brazil has been able to bring to bear to maintain self-regulation in the marketing of beer and many wines set against a trend of increasing alcohol consumption in Brazil, particularly among young people and women. It identifies the forms of power and strategies used by the alcohol industry in Brazil that may be useful for other countries to consider in seeking to move from self-regulation to state regulation of alcohol marketing.

METHOD
A review was conducted of recent legal documents and court cases, as well as the activities of alcoholic beverage industries.

RESULTS
Because of an exemption, Brazilian law had established that both beer and many wines are not alcoholic beverages for marketing purposes. These beverages are subjected to industry self-regulation codes. Research shows that beer and wine marketing often violates industry codes, with little or no enforcement of penalties for non-compliance. Attempts to include beer and wine in the legal definition of alcohol have been opposed by the alcohol industry, and the courts have delegated responsibility to the legislature. The recent legal activities surrounding alcohol sales during the 2014 World Cup games in Brazil provide evidence of the alcohol industry's influence on the legislative process.

CONCLUSION
The alcohol industry in Brazil plays a significant role in the formulation of public policies on alcohol, especially regarding the regulation of marketing. This power is exercised by strong lobbying of government officials responsible for public policies.


This paper examines six Japanese psychomimes — zuki-zuki, kiri-kiri, shiku-shiku, chiku-chiku, hiri-hiri, and gan-gan — that express subtle differences in states or sensations regarding "pain". It is generally recognized, however, that many languages lack words with the same meanings as these Japanese psychomimes and that their meanings are difficult to capture precisely. The definitions in Japanese-English dictionaries, for example, are not sufficient to explain the exact meanings and there is also the problem that each Japanese expression can correspond to several English verbs. This study applies the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to explicate the meaning of the six Japanese psychomimes. It makes reference to a corpus of naturally-occurring examples compiled from publicly available sources from physicians, patients, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. The analysis indicates that each psychomime conveys a vivid metaphorical meaning. The quality of the pain is suggested by reference to an imagined scenario of something moving inside a part of the body or touching part of the body. This imagined 'something' can be understood as something 'sharp' or as something similar to 'fire' or to 'metal'. The use of psychomimes is an effective and efficient way for expressing and understanding "pain" in Japanese.


We extend a standard taxable income model with its typical functional-form assumptions to account for nonlinear budget sets. We propose a new method to estimate a taxable income elasticity that is more policy relevant than the typically estimated elasticity based on linearized budget sets. Using U.S. data from the NBER tax panel for 1979-1990 and differencing methods, we estimate an elasticity of 0.75 for taxable income and 0.20 for broad income. These estimates are higher than those obtained by specifications based on linearization. Our approach offers a new way to address the problem of endogenous observed marginal tax rates.


IntroductionRational debates about education policy choices are only possible when all those involved use language and evidence correctly. Material fallacies in logic are "mistakes in understanding the meaning or use of terms" (Kreeft, 2010, p. 85). Just as in practical logic, public policy discourse becomes problematic when the terms used are ambiguous, unclear or vague. This commentary analyses one recent case of material fallacy in education policy discourse in order to promote discussion of the responsibilities researchers may have whenever research evidence is used mistakenly.Treasury's briefing to the incoming Minister of Finance after the 2011 election included a controversial assertion about school funding policy:Student achievement can be raised by improving the quality of teaching, which the evidence shows is the largest inschool influence on student outcomes. Increasing student/ teacher ratios, and consolidation of the school network, can free up funding that could be used to support initiatives to enhance the quality of teaching, such as more systemic use of value-add data and a more professionalised workforce. (Treasury, 2011, p. 21)In reply to a Parliamentary question about this briefing, the Minister of Education declined to rule out increases in class size. In short, this was because the "independent observation" of Treasury and the research findings of an influential government adviser, Professor John Hattie, were that schooling policy should instead focus on improving the quality of teaching (House of Representatives, 2012).Government ministers have many portfolio responsibilities and rely largely on officials and advisers to provide accurate policy advice. At first glance, the Minister's reply appeared to draw logically on such advice: student/ teacher ratios do not have a large influence on student outcomes; the quality of teaching does have a large influence on student outcomes; therefore in order to produce a larger effect on student outcomes, school policy and funding should prioritise the quality of teaching over student/ teacher ratios.Closer analysis reveals errors in both argument and evidence. Much of the terminology is ambiguous and inconsistently used by politicians, officials and academic advisers. The propositions are not demonstrably true- indeed, there is evidence to suggest they are false in crucial respects. The conclusion is, at best, uncertain because it does not take into account confounding evidence that larger classes do adversely affect teaching, learning and student achievement, particularly the achievement of already disadvantaged students such as those prioritised by the Ministry of Education (2011) throughout its current school reform agenda.Precisely because material fallacies are written or spoken by persons, these limitations give cause to reflect more broadly on the practices, motivations and subject positionings of the various policy actors (politicians, officials and academics) within the contemporary discourse of schooling reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been observed, for example, that, in the English context, the equivalent discourse seeks to portray the public sector as "ineffective, unresponsive, sloppy, risk-averse and innovation- resistant" yet at the same time it promotes "celebration of public sector 'heroes' of reform and new kinds of public sector 'excellence'" (Ball, 2007, p. 3). Relatedly, Mintrom (2000) has written persuasively, in the American context, of the way in which "policy entrepreneurs" position themselves politically to champion, shape and benefit from school reform discourses.The case discussed in this commentary provides a timely opportunity to ask whether and to what extent New Zealand may too exhibit "a confusing interplay of trust/ distrust" (Ball, 2007, p. 3) in the education policy process. It also encourages a more systematic, disinterested analysis of the quality of evidence and advice, and how these are used tactically by various policy actors to facilitate a reformist ideology of public schooling. …


This study provides designs for a low-cost, easily replicable open-source lab-grade digital scale that can be used as a precision balance. The design is such that it can be manufactured for use in most labs throughout the world with open-source RepRap-class material extrusion-based 3-D printers for the mechanical components and readily available open-source electronics including the Arduino Nano. Several versions of the design were fabricated and tested for precision and accuracy for a range of load cells. The results showed the open-source scale was found to be repeatable within 0.05 g with multiple load cells, with even better precision (0.005 g) depending on load cell range and style. The scale tracks linearly with proprietary lab-grade scales, meeting the performance specified in the load cell data sheets, indicating that it is accurate across the range of the load cell installed. The smallest load cell tested (100 g) offers precision on the order of a commercial digital mass balance. The scale can be produced at significant cost savings compared to scales of comparable range and precision when serial capability is present. The cost savings increase significantly as the range of the scale increases and are particularly well-suited for resource-constrained medical and scientific facilities.


Public concern for the conservation of natural resources and a general awareness of the environmental consequences of waste disposal is reflected in current legislation aimed at reducing waste. Recycling is commonly cited as one of the preferred methods of waste reduction and this book summarizes a recent study of paper recycling in Europe, which investigated the entire production and disposal process using a life-cycle methodology. The results of the study underline the economic and environmental advantages of paper recycling, but more controversially, they also show how, under certain conditions, the renewable character and the high energy content of paper seem to make energy recovery more attractive than recycling.


The dynamics of free electrons in semiconductors play the central role in strong light-matter interaction with intense terahertz radiations. Terahertz pulse can serve as a transient voltage bias to drive high-field phenomena in solids. Various nonlinear effects can be excited by applying different terahertz field strengths and the observed experimental results are found to be extremely sensitive to the incident terahertz spectrum and its temporal profile. These properties suggest a rich variety of possible optoelectronic applications by controlling the carrier dynamics in semiconductors.
In this thesis, we investigate the nonlinear terahertz responses of free charge carriers in semiconductors, such as the n-doped semiconductor In0.53Ga0.47As and graphene, with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy as well as optical pump-terahertz probe spectroscopy. We start by discussing the terahertz responses of monolayer graphene. Then we discuss the significant impact of temporal dynamics in subcycle nonlinear optics. There are several limitations of the conventional Drude model and more importantly, the experimental observations may differ significantly within the well-known THz window. Strong subcycle nonlinear optics can only be achieved by carefully taking into account the time-scale of the variation in the temporal conductivity. Different experimental results are observed using different coherent terahertz sources in the frequency range between 0.1 and 3 THz. To retrieve nonlinear optics in the subcycle regime, we performed nonlinear THz-TDS on a common doped semiconductor material In0.53Ga0.47As, which possesses a much higher carrier density and a high conductivity contrast before and after strong carrier heating induced by intervalley scattering. Our findings suggest an incoherent approach to subcycle control of terahertz high-frequency (or high-harmonic) generation based on intraband carrier scattering effects. These investigations will be important for future terahertz electronics and optoelectronics.


Digital entrepreneurship is presented in popular discourse as a means to empowerment and greater economic participation for under-resourced and socially marginalised people. However, this emancipatory rhetoric relies on a flat ontology that does not sufficiently consider the enabling conditions needed for successful digital enterprise activity. To empirically illustrate this argument, we examine three paired cases of UK women digital entrepreneurs, operating in similar sectors but occupying contrasting social positionalities. The cases are comparatively analysed through an intersectional feminist lens using a critical realist methodological framework. By examining the relationships between digital entrepreneurship, social positionality, and structural and agential enabling conditions, we interrogate the notion of digital entrepreneurship as an emancipatory phenomenon producing liberated workers.


From approximately 1910 to 1947 the architect ir. G.C. Bremer made an important contribution to Dutch architecture. For the greater part of that period, from 1924 to 1946, he was Government Architect. Bremer's oeuvre is quite divergent in character; it does not represent any clearly defined style or specific trend. The buildings executed by him comprise traditionalist elements as well as elements of 'New Realism', depending on what views the commission in question required of him. Indeed, Bremer did not play a part in the architecture debate between the representatives of 'New Building' and the traditionalists. This may well be one of the reasons why his work no longer attracts much attention from architectural historians.
From 1910 onwards Bremer had an architects' firm in Arnhem, together with the architect A.R. Freem. From 1914 to 1915 he was temporarily appointed town architect of Arnhem. In 1916 he took up office with 'Landsgebouwen', the predecessor of the 'Rijksgebouwendienst' (i.e. a service of the Ministry of Housing and Construction). On January 1st 1924 Bremer was appointed Government Architect with the Rijksgebouwendienst, which had then just been established, where he was responsible for all new construction. Until his retirement on January 1st 1946 he remained in office there.
Bremer had a preference for medieval architecture, both its form language and the underlying starting-points appealed to him. His view was that in medieval architecture there had still been room for the craftsman, and that the latter could be put on a par with the architect. Clear references, notably to Romanesque architecture, can also be traced in his buildings, although these often concern idiosyncratic interpretations, such as the frequent use of arches (in windows and portals), the use of natural stone as a building material and the intensive cooperation with artists, who made decorations for the buildings in the form of statues, murals and stained-glass windows.
Some of Bremer's buildings show that his admiration for certain architects resulted in imitation. This is particularly evident with reference to Berlage (not only in his initial period, but continuing up to his last works) and also with reference to Oud and Friedhoff. As the person having final responsibility, Bremer has left his mark on the buildings executed by the Rijksgebouwendienst in the period until 1947. This is visible in several buildings, not built in his name, but nevertheless showing a close affinity with his work, such as the building for the National Giro Bank and the building for the Patent Office plus Post Office on the Willem Witsenplein in The Hague. With the Landsgebouwen/Rijksgebouwendienst Bremer mainly executed buildings for the Post Office Board - including post offices, telephone exchanges and amplifier stations - but also tax-collection offices, government buildings and a court-house. He also provided designs for laboratories and for the Wilhelmina bridge in Maastricht.
It is not easy to define any sort of line in Bremer's oeuvre, to discover a constant or to recognize any order in his multiform designs. It is also difficult to place the various designs in a logical, chronological development. Neither does one design naturally evolve from another. Even within one and the same design he applied different styles. What appears to be characteristic of Bremer's work is the fact that it is homogeneous and heterogeneous at the same time. His conception is homogeneous, his style heterogeneous; the designs of his buildings are to a great extent determined by their purpose and environment. A list of fifty works by ir. G.C. Bremer is included in this article.


Exploration algorithms are relevant to the industrial prac tice of generating test cases from an abstract state machine whose runs defi e the predicted behavior of the software system under test. In this paper we d escribe a new exploration algorithm that allows multiple state grouping funct ions to simultaneously guide the search for states that are interesting or relevant for testing. In some cases, our algorithm allows exploration to be optimized fro m exponential to linear complexity. The paper includes an extended example that illustrates the use of the algorithm with the Spec Explorer tool developed as Mic rosoft Research.


Large trucks are often perceived to restrict the free flow of general traffic and present a safety hazard. In addition, the delay caused by trucks is thought to detrimentally affect the economy, and repetitive heavy loads increase pavement deterioration. Truck lane restrictions attempt to achieve one or more of four purposes: 1) improve highway operations, 2) improve the level of safety, 3) facilitate more even pavement wear, and 4) ensure better operation and safety through construction zones. Three study sites and a control site were selected in the Puget Sound region to test the effectiveness of truck lane restrictions in achieving these purposes. Three types of analyses were performed: 1) an in-depth analysis to determine how the implementation of a lane restriction would impact the operation, safety, and life of the facility and the economic impacts for the region, 2) a site comparison analysis to determine whether the results from the in-depth analysis could confidently be applied to other areas in the region, and 3) a survey analysis to determine the opinions of truckers, motorists, industry, and enforcement officials with respect to lane restrictions.


The evolution of historic sites was influenced not only by socio-political events, but also by the evolution of the technological and economical activities, in connection with the particularities of the environment and climate changes, for a period of time. The methodologies regarding the storage and the transport of the water, necessary for the supplying for the ancient cities and fortresses, established during the pre-roman civilization, were transferred to the greek and roman civilizations and, further, to the ones who inherited their constructions and technologies. In the researches, we have in view the well-known antique cities such as Troy, roman sites on the rhine river, Augusta raurica, roman Byzantine sites on the Danube river, Sucidava, ulpia Oescus and capidava. using the documents and results from the field investigations, the particularities regarding the water conservation and transportation in the ancient Wilusa (Ilion, Troy), and the transfer of water to the romans and the extent of the huge area between the Aegean Sea, Danube river and the rhine river are presented. In the article, we analyse the localization of water resources and the technologies used for water transportation and storage. The pictures taken on the field, maps and models of reconstitution of the existent damaged constructions are also presented. The authors consider the article as only the first step in the analysis of the evolution of the water resources used by the ancient establishments located in the areas mentioned above. The elements of the water supply sources that were taken for consideration will be analysed using 'the environmental engineering science glasses'.


This study examined how two of Rothbart's temperament variables (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981), negative affect and effortful control, along with childhood sexual abuse, (CSA) predict borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms. It was hypothesized that increased negative affect, increased CSA, and their interaction would predict BPD symptoms. It was further hypothesized that this relationship would be mediated by lower levels of effortful control. Questionnaires assessing effortful control, negative affect, CSA, and BPD were administered to 215 female undergraduates. Structural equation modeling supported the first hypothesis, but not the second. The data indicated that the interaction was specific to BPD when compared to avoidant personality disorder. These results provide support for the theory that temperament interacts with the environment to produce BPD.


The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected many aspects of people's daily lives. While many countries are in a reopening stage, some effects of the pandemic on people's behaviors are expected to last much longer, including how they choose between different transport options. Experts predict considerably delayed recovery of the public transport options, as people try to avoid crowded places. In turn, significant increases in traffic congestion are expected, since people are likely to prefer using their own vehicles or taxis as opposed to riskier and more crowded options such as the railway. In this paper, we propose to use financial incentives to set the tradeoff between risk of infection and congestion to achieve safe and efficient transportation networks. To this end, we formulate a network optimization problem to optimize taxi fares. For our framework to be useful in various cities and times of the day without much designer effort, we also propose a data-driven approach to learn human preferences about transport options, which is then used in our taxi fare optimization. Our user studies and simulation experiments show our framework is able to minimize congestion and risk of infection.


The three main navigation paradigms for virtual worlds, i.e., free navigation, automatic tours, and multiuser navigation show important limitations when dealing with guided visits that involve interactive cooperation among several users in 3D virtual worlds over the Internet. In this paper, we present our research into this issue and some important results. We propose a new navigation paradigm denominated guided visit through a virtual world, where the capacity of a user guiding several remote users through the virtual world is enriched with the capacity to dynamically interchange the role of guiding between the connected users. The user that acts as a guide moves freely through the virtual world, and his/her movements are reproduced by the browsers of the other guided users. We also present the architecture and the system we developed that implements this paradigm, as well as its integration in a working realworld application that demonstrates its use.


We study the impact of evaluating the performance of asset managers relative to a benchmark portfolio on firms' investment, merger and IPO decisions. We introduce asset managers into an otherwise standard asset pricing model and show that firms that are part of the benchmark are effectively subsidized by the asset managers. This "benchmark inclusion subsidy" arises because asset managers have incentives to hold some of the equity of firms in the benchmark regardless of the risk characteristics of these firms. Contrary to what is usually taught in corporate finance, we show that the value of an investment project is not governed solely by its own cash-flow risk. Instead, because of the benchmark inclusion subsidy, a firm inside the benchmark would accept some projects that an identical one outside the benchmark would decline. The two types of firms' incentives to undertake mergers or spinoffs also differ and the presence of the subsidy can alter a decision to take a firm public. We show that the higher the cash-flow risk of an investment, the larger the benchmark inclusion subsidy; the subsidy is zero for safe projects. Benchmarking also leads fundamental firm-level cash-flow correlations to rise. We review a host of empirical evidence that is consistent with the implications of the model.


OBJECTIVEThe expanded endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA) has shown promising results in treatment of midline skull base lesions. Several case reports exist on the utilization of the EEA for treatment of aneurysms. However, a comparison of this approach with the classic transcranial orbitozygomatic approach to the basilar apex (BAX) region is missing.The present study summarizes the results of a series of cadaveric surgical simulations for assessment of the EEA to the BAX region for aneurysm clipping and its comparison with the transcranial orbitozygomatic approach as one of the most common approaches used to treat BAX aneurysms.METHODSFifteen cadaveric specimens underwent bilateral orbitozygomatic craniotomies as well as an EEA (first without a pituitary transposition [PT] and then with a PT) to expose the BAX. The following variables were measured, recorded, and compared between the orbitozygomatic approach and the EEA: 1) number of perforating arteries counted on bilateral posterior cerebral arteries (PCAs); 2) exposure and clipping lengths of the PCAs, superior cerebellar arteries (SCAs), and proximal basilar artery; and 3) surgical area of exposure in the BAX region.RESULTSExcept for the proximal basilar artery exposure and clipping, the orbitozygomatic approach provided statistically significantly greater values for vascular exposure and control in the BAX region (i.e., exposure and clipping of ipsilateral and contralateral SCAs and PCAs). The EEA with PT was significantly better in exposing and clipping bilateral PCAs compared to EEA without a PT, but not in terms of other measured variables. The surgical area of exposure and PCA perforator counts were not significantly different between the 3 approaches. The EEA provided better exposure and control if the BAX was located ≥ 4 mm inferior to the dorsum sellae.CONCLUSIONSFor BAX aneurysms located in the retrosellar area, PT is usually required to obtain improved exposure and control for the bilateral PCAs. However, the transcranial approach is generally superior to both endoscopic approaches for accessing the BAX region. Considering the superior exposure of the proximal basilar artery obtained with the EEA, it could be a viable option when surgical treatment is considered for a low-lying BAX or mid-basilar trunk aneurysms (≥ 4 mm inferior to dorsum sellae).


President Donald Trump's habit of hurling invectives at the press is disturbing. It undermines the work of the press and breaks long-standing norms that presidents show respect for the role of the Fourth Estate. But insults alone rarely raise First Amendment issues. Presidents have long used the bully pulpit to respond to or criticize news reports. Even Trump's near daily verbal assaults on reporters and news organizations can be considered part of our country's "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" marketplace of ideas. Presidents have opinions too, and journalists should be able to handle his rants.
Yet there are also times when Trump's lashing out at the press go beyond mere name-calling, and he instead attempts to use the power of his presidency to punish or silence press organizations that displease him. In these instances, Trump is unsheathing an entirely different kind of weapon. When a president crosses the line from insulting the press to turning the wheels of government as a means to retaliate against news organizations for their reporting, the potential First Amendment violations become very real.
The goals of this short Article are modest. It seeks simply to differentiate the various ways Trump has attacked the press, to emphasize that we should not view them all through the same constitutional lens, and to bring attention to the most serious type of offense. Unsurprisingly, it is Trump's attempts to employ the power of the federal government to retaliate against the press that raise the most troubling constitutional concerns.


An evapotranspiration model, based on the FAO Penman-Monteith method, taking into account the surface temperature, has been developed and implemented in the ground temperature model of the CitySim software. A case study was conducted in a district of Geneva, Switzerland, which consists of 704 buildings and 714 ground surfaces, to understand the influence of evapotranspiration on the ground surface temperature and water requirement for the irrigation of these areas at urban scale. The simulations were conducted to investigate the cooling potential of green areas in present and future climate scenarios. To handle the large quantity of inputs needed by CitySim and the large amount of results produced, a PostgreSQL database and QuantumGIS software have been used for this case study.


It is generally acknowledged that legal rules increasingly flow from different (national, European and supranational) sources. It is equally well established that this multiplication of sources deeply disturbs our idea of law as a coherent and unitary system. The aim of this contribution is to explore this increasing complexity for the field of private law. One aspect of this complexity is an undeniable fragmentation of law. This paper (written as the Netherlands report for the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law 2010) pays special attention to how fragmentation of private law is perceived in the Netherlands and which strategies are adopted to remedy the problems it causes. The approach of the Dutch legislature in dealing with this fragmentation is to try to re-establish a coherent system. This is apparent from both the ways in which European directives are implemented and from the Dutch efforts to deal with the increasing complexity of private international law. European directives are implemented as much as possible inside the Dutch Civil Code in order to keep the private law system intact, even though this cannot take away the causes of increasing incoherence. Also the disperse rules on private international law are structured in a new Book of the Civil Code, even though it is no longer in the power of the national legislature to create a coherent system. This strategy of the Dutch legislature is clearly wrong because it is no longer in the power of a national legislature to create a coherent system through legislation. We should therefore seek new strategies to deal with the various legal regimes that exist on a national territory. The paper explores several of these strategies.


Recent advances in variational inference enable the modelling of highly structured joint distributions, but are limited in their capacity to scale to the high-dimensional setting of stochastic neural networks. This limitation motivates a need for scalable parameterizations of the noise generation process, in a manner that adequately captures the dependencies among the various parameters. In this work, we address this need and present the Kronecker Flow, a generalization of the Kronecker product to invertible mappings designed for stochastic neural networks. We apply our method to variational Bayesian neural networks on predictive tasks, PAC-Bayes generalization bound estimation, and approximate Thompson sampling in contextual bandits. In all setups, our methods prove to be competitive with existing methods and better than the baselines.


Accurately estimating a robot's pose relative to a global scene model and precisely tracking the pose in real-time is a fundamental problem for navigation and obstacle avoidance tasks. Due to the computational complexity of localization against a large map and the memory consumed by the model, state-of-the-art approaches are either limited to small workspaces or rely on a server-side system to query the global model while tracking the pose locally. The latter approaches face the problem of smoothly integrating the server's pose estimates into the trajectory computed locally to avoid temporal discontinuities. In this paper, we demonstrate that large-scale, real-time pose estimation and tracking can be performed on mobile platforms with limited resources without the use of an external server. This is achieved by employing map and descriptor compression schemes as well as efficient search algorithms from computer vision. We derive a formulation for integrating the global pose information into a local state estimator that produces much smoother trajectories than current approaches. Through detailed experiments, we evaluate each of our design choices individually and document its impact on the overall system performance, demonstrating that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms for localization at scale.


Understanding relative statures of channels for disseminating knowledge is of practical interest to both generators and consumers of knowledge flows. For generators, stature can influence attractiveness of alternative dissemination routes and deliberations of those who assess generator performance. For knowledge consumers, channel stature may influence knowledge content to which they are exposed. This study introduces a novel approach to conceptualizing and measuring stature of knowledge‐dissemination channels: the power‐impact (PI) technique. It is a flexible technique having 3 complementary variants, giving holistic insights about channel stature by accounting for both attraction of knowledge generators to a distribution channel and degree to which knowledge consumers choose to use a channel's knowledge content. Each PI variant is expressed in terms of multiple parameters, permitting customization of stature evaluation to suit its user's preferences. In the spirit of analytics, each PI variant is driven by objective evidence of actual behaviors. The PI technique is based on 2 building blocks: (a) power that channels have for attracting results of generators' knowledge work, and (b) impact that channel contents' exhibit on prospective recipients. Feasibility and functionality of the PI‐technique design are demonstrated by applying it to solve a problem of journal stature evaluation for the information‐systems discipline.


In Africa the HIV epidemic laid bare the huge need for palliative care and pain control. Families and health workers were faced with looking after the sick in homes and hospitals that were ill prepared and ill equipped to manage chronic symptoms, especially pain. Most clinicians and nurses had little experience or training in palliative care or the use of analgesia. Oral morphine was seldom available, intramuscular pethidine pro re nata (prn) was used, mainly post operatively, and many children suffered silently and stoically. Health workers were demoralised by the inability to relieve suffering.

Local individuals, to their credit, were determined to change this unsatisfactory situation. They provided care and symptom control for these people and most importantly lobbied at every level—internationally, regionally and nationally—for better, stronger analgesics, especially to make oral morphine available.1 To provide adequate analgesia appropriate drugs have to be available, affordable, accessible and properly and rationally used. There needs to be a reliable and easy way to measure the severity of pain so that requirements and efficacy can be adequately assessed.

Opioid availability is covered by the protocols for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and 1972.2 These protocols focus on preventing misuse, but at the expense of medical access. In 2005 the United Nations Economic and Social Council (resolution 2005/25) and the World Health Assembly (resolution WHA 58.22) called on countries and international bodies such as WHO and the International Narcotics Control Board, to remove barriers to the medical use of such analgesics.3 These barriers not only raise legal and policy issues, but also present educational obstacles affecting policy-makers, clinicians, patients and the community at all levels. African countries are among the lowest users of …


A codebook is searched in view of encoding a sound signal. This codebook consists of a set of codevectors each of 40 positions and comprising N non-zero-amplitude pulses assignable to predetermined valid positions. To reduce the search complexity, a depth-first search is used which involves a tree structure with levels ordered from 1 through M. A path-building operation takes place at each level whereby a candidate path from the previous level is extended by choosing a predetermined number of new pulses and selecting valid positions for said new pulses in accordance with a given pulse-order rule and a given selection criterion. A path originated at the first level and extended by the path-building operations of subsequent levels determines the respective positions of the N non-zero-amplitude pulse of a candidate codevector. Use of a signal-based pulse-position likelihood estimate during the first few levels enable initial pulse-screening to start the search on favorable conditions. A selection criterion based on maximizing a ratio is used to assess the progress and to choose the best one among competing candidate codevectors.


We have investigated the inkjet-printing of TiO 2 films for the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In order to realize the uniform printing of TiO 2 films, the co-solvent ink was designed by introducing a drying agent to the ink. This co-solvent ink induces a circulating flow within ink droplets and leads to the uniform lines and films by inkjet. A theoretical model was used to predict the optimal ink-droplet pitches for the inkjet-printing of uniform lines. This model also contributes to the formation of uniform films since they are filled with the inkjet-printed lines. The inkjet-printed TiO 2 films were used as photoelectrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells. The thickness of the inkjet-printed Ti0 2 films was varied to optimize the photovoltaic performance of DSSCs. Since no organic additives were introduced into the TiO 2 inks, the feasibility of reducing the annealing temperature for TiO 2 photoelectrodes was investigated. This study may suggest an opportunity to fabricate DSSCs at low temperature.


Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) aims to transfer domain knowledge from existing well-defined tasks to new ones where labels are unavailable. In the real-world applications, as the domain (task) discrepancies are usually un-controllable, it is significantly motivated to match the feature distributions even if the domain discrepancies are disparate. Additionally, as no label is available in the target domain, how to successfully adapt the classifier from the source to the target domain still remains an open question. In this paper, we propose the Re-weighted Adversarial Adaptation Network (RAAN) to reduce the feature distribution divergence and adapt the classifier when domain discrepancies are disparate. Specifically, to alleviate the need of common supports in matching the feature distribution, we choose to minimize optimal transport (OT) based Earth-Mover (EM) distance and reformulate it to a minimax objective function. Utilizing this, RAAN can be trained in an end-to-end and adversarial manner. To further adapt the classifier, we propose to match the label distribution and embed it into the adversarial training. Finally, after extensive evaluation of our method using UDA datasets of varying difficulty, RAAN achieved the state-of-the-art results and outperformed other methods by a large margin when the domain shifts are disparate.


The current research looked at ways in which the built environment of an ethnic enclave contributes to the definition and redefinition of the ethnic identity of its inhabitants. Assuming a dynamic component of the built environment, the study advanced the idea of the streetscape as an active agent of change in the definition and redefinition of ethnic identity. Throughout a century of existence, Little Italy - New York's most prominent Italian enclave - changed its demographics, appearance and significance; these changes resonated with changes in the ethnic identity of its inhabitants. From its beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century until the present, Little Italy's Mulberry Street has maintained its privileged status as the core of the enclave, but changed its symbolic role radically. Over three generations of Italian immigrants, Mulberry Street changed its role from a space of trade to a space of leisure, from a place of providing to a place of consuming, and from a social arena to a tourist tract. The photographic analysis employed in this study revealed that changes in the streetscape of Mulberry Street connected with changes in the ethnic identity of its inhabitants, from regional Southern Italian to Italian American. Moreover, the photographic evidence demonstrates the active role of the street in the permanent redefinition of the Italian American identity.


This paper focuses on approximate reasoning based on the use of similarity spaces. Similarity spaces and the approximated relations induced by them are a generalization of the rough set-based approximations of Pawlak [17, 18]. Similarity spaces are used to define neighborhoods around individuals and these in turn are used to define approximate sets and relations. In any of the approaches, one would like to embed such relations in an appropriate logic which can be used as a reasoning engine for specific applications with specific constraints. We propose a framework which permits a formal study of the relationship between approximate relations, similarity spaces and three-valued logics. Using ideas from correspondence theory for modal logics and constraints on an accessibility relation, we develop an analogous framework for three-valued logics and constraints on similarity relations. In this manner, we can provide a tool which helps in determining the proper three-valued logical reasoning engine to use for different classes of approximate relations generated via specific types of similarity spaces. Additionally, by choosing a three-valued logic first, the framework determines what constraints would be required on a similarity relation and the approximate relations induced by it. Such information would guide the generation of approximate relations for specific applications.


Three Essays on Environmental Economics Jamie Donghoon Lee Advisors: Dr.Ross McKitrick and Dr.Thanasis Stengos Three chapters are presented in this thesis, each in the field of environmental economics. The first chapter studies voting outcomes when people differ in their private expectations about marginal damages and the policy maker proposes an externality pricing instrument that is either based on a static political compromise or on a state-contingent updating rule (McKitrick, 2010). We examine cases in which voters are honest (they prefer the socially-optimal price based on their expectation of marginal damages) or dishonest (they prefer either a zero tax or a maximum tax on a priori grounds, irrespective of marginal damages) or combinations of these two. We show that when all voters are honest a standard pricing mechanism that aims at minimizing political losses may never obtain majority support, but implementation of the state-contingent pricing rule always obtains majority support. We then examine whether dishonest voters would prefer implementation based on the static rule or the state-contingent rule. The second chapter examines the relationship between the social discount rate (a rate chosen by a social planner) and the pure rate of time preference (a rate chosen by a representative agent). We accomplish this by examining the slope of famous 'Ramey equation' with respect to the pure rate of time preference. In the literature, it is typically assumed the value of the slope to be equal to one, which is equivalent to treating the consumption growth rate to be independent of the pure rate of time preference. Our general equilibrium framework shows that this relationship is rather complex, and depends on the relative signs and sizes of elasticities of consumption and the growth rate of consumption with respect to the pure rate of time preference. We then examine a closed form solution case where we observe their relationship depends on exogenous parameters of the model, such as initial capital stock, technology parameter as well as time index. Finally, we empirical estimate the relationship by using the Time-Varying Semiparametric Smooth Coefficient model using U.S data from 1930-2014. We find that the estimate of the slope of the social discount rate with respect to the pure rate of time preference to be 0.84 for the United States. The social discount rate based on Ramsey equation is critically dependent upon future consumption growth rates and the pure rate of time preference. In practice, however, the pure rate of time preference is not observable, unlike with the consumption growth where past rates are known with certainty and future projections can be formed with some uncertainty. Ironically, numerous papers have incorporated and examined the effects of the consumption uncertainty but treat the pure rate of time preference to be constant and certain in social discount rates. The third chapter investigates the latter issue for various underlying cases in restricted and unrestricted frameworks. Overall, we find that the effects of uncertainty on the certainty-equivalent discount rate are critically dependent on the source of uncertainty and its assumed properties.


In this study, cobalt-doped nickel sulfide nanomaterials are synthesized. The experimental results show that cobalt is successfully doped into the lattice of NiS2. Co-doping causes the hollow sphere sulphides to break down and favors the formation of NixCo1−xS2 nanostructures with high-density active edge sites. The Ni0.75Co0.25S2 sample exhibits a high specific capacitance of 2141.9 F g−1 at a current density of 2 A g−1 due to its fluffy characteristics and edge site-enriched nanostructure. The asymmetric supercapacitor based on Ni0.75Co0.25S2 exhibits a high energy density (54.9 Wh kg−1) and stable cycling durability with 85.1% capacitance retention after 4000 cycles.


Designing marine and maritime systems requires the probabilistic characterization of sea waves in the time-history and spectral domains. These probabilistic models include parameters that can be empirically estimated based on limited data in durations, locations and applicability to particular designs. Characterizing the statistical uncertainties associated with the parameters and the models is an essential step for risk-based design methods. A framework is provided for characterizing and predicting the stochastic sea-state conditions using sampling and statistical methods in order to associate confidence levels with resulting estimates. Sea-state parameters are analyzed using statistical confidence intervals which give a clear insight for the uncertainties involved in the system. Hypothesis testing and goodness-of-fit are performed to demonstrate the statistical features. Moreover, sample size is required for performing statistical analysis. Sample size indicates the number of representative and independent observations. Current practices do not make a distinction between the number of discretization points for numerical computations and the number of sampling points, i.e. sample size needed for statistical analysis. Sample size and interval between samples to obtain independent observations are studied and compared with existing methods. Further, spatial relationship of the sea-state conditions describes the wave energy transferred through the wave movement. Locations of interest with unknown sea-state conditions are estimated using spatial interpolations. Spatial interpolation methods are proposed, discussed, and compared with the reported methods in the literature. This study will enhance the knowledge of sea-state conditions in a quantitative manner. The statistical feature of the proposed framework is essential for designing future marine and maritime systems using probabilistic modeling and risk analysis. Figure 2-1. Representation of a random process x(t) and the ensemble {x(t)}, i.e. each x (k) (t) is a sample of the ensemble. .


A periodical poled (PP) plate looks like a cross-field model of an interdigital transducer (IDT) by Smith. Therefore, a top-electrode/PP-plate/bottom-electrode has a possibility to generate an acoustic wave. Though acoustic wave devices using a PP plate and a pp film on substrate have been reported, their frequency responses were very weak as 0.1 to 3dB. It is considered that because their PP devices have neither electrode fingers of IDTs nor grating electrode reflectors, they do not have any effective reflection to realize a good frequency response, while conventional SAW devices have them. This time, authors have proposed an effective reflector using an edge reflection for the PP substrate device and applied it to a resonator and a resonator filter on a PP Z-plane LiTaO3 plate, which is different from previously reported substrates. As the result, authors have realized the resonator and the resonator filter having good frequency characteristics such as an impedance ratio of 34 dB, and an insertion loss of 2.6 dB and a relative bandwidth of 2.2 %, respectively, for the first time. Index Terms—Periodical Poled Z-LiTaO3, Resonator, Res- onator filter, Edge reflection


In a rapidly changing world, we rely upon experts to assess the promise and risks of new technology. But how do these experts make sense of a highly uncertain future? In Arguments that Count, Rebecca Slayton offers an important new perspective. Drawing on new historical documents and interviews as well as perspectives in science and technology studies, she provides an original account of how scientists came to terms with the unprecedented threat of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). She compares how two different professional communities -- physicists and computer scientists -- constructed arguments about the risks of missile defense, and how these arguments changed over time. Slayton shows that our understanding of technological risks is shaped by disciplinary repertoires -- the codified knowledge and mathematical rules that experts use to frame new challenges. And, significantly, a new repertoire can bring long-neglected risks into clear view.In the 1950s, scientists recognized that high-speed computers would be needed to cope with the unprecedented speed of ICBMs. But the nation's elite science advisors had no way to analyze the risks of computers so used physics to assess what they could: radar and missile performance. Only decades later, after establishing computing as a science, were advisors able to analyze authoritatively the risks associated with complex software -- most notably, the risk of a catastrophic failure. As we continue to confront new threats, including that of cyber attack, Slayton offers valuable insight into how different kinds of expertise can limit or expand our capacity to address novel technological risks.


Automotive turbo compressors generate high frequency noise in the air intake system. This sound generation is of importance for the perceived sound quality of luxury cars and may need to be controlled by the use of silencers. The silencers usually contain resonators with slits, perforates and cavities. The purpose of the present work is to develop acoustic models for these resonators where relevant effects such as the effect of a realistic mean flow on losses and 3D effects are considered. An experimental campaign has been performed where the two-port matrices and transmission loss of sample resonators have been measured without flow and for two different mean flow speeds. Models for two resonators have been developed using 1D linear acoustic theory and a FEM code (COMSOL Multi-physics). For some resonators a separate linear 1D Matlab code has also been developed. Different models, from the literature, for including the effect of mean flow on the acoustic losses at slits and perforates have been implemented in the codes and compared to the experimental data. Correct modeling of acoustic losses for resonators with complicated geometry is important for the simulation and development of new and improved silencers, and the present work contributes to this understanding. The developed models give acceptable agreement with the measured results even with flow but can be improved for 3D FEM if correct CAD data is available. The 1D linear theory can be used for simple geometries and to get a general overview related to the resonance frequencies and damping level.


We report the demonstration of the first air-core photonic-bandgap fiber gyroscope. Because the optical mode in the sensing coil travels largely through air, which has much smaller Kerr, Faraday, and thermal constants than silica, far lower dependencies on power, magnetic field, and temperature fluctuations are predicted. With a 235-m fiber coil, we observe a minimum detectable rotation rate of ~2.7deg/h and a long-term stability of ~2deg/h, which are consistent with the Rayleigh backscattering coefficient of the fiber and comparable to that measured with a conventional fiber


Clustering is a computational technique for the assignment of objects into groups of similar elements. Generally, it is widely used for business data interpretation, natural language analyses, and image processing, just to name a few. Typical bioinformatic applications are: (1) detection of homologous proteins; single and multi domain, (2) prediction of protein complexes in protein-protein interaction networks, (3) identification of overrepresented DNA sequence patterns, and (4) gene co-expression studies.
Traditionally, we distinguish between partitional, overlapping, and hierarchical approaches. Partitional and overlapping approaches follow two different strategies: (1) center-based approaches for the detection of appropriate cluster representatives, such as k-means and (2) methods for the identification of homogeneous clusters, such as Markov Clustering. Hierarchical approaches allow for the construction of a tree structure; single linkage agglomerative clustering may serve as an example here.
Solving the following problems is crucial for a successful cluster analysis: (1) Probably most challenging is the identification of a problem-specific similarity function. (2) Every clustering approach incorporates at least one parameter that influences the size and number of the clusters. Determining such a density parameter strongly depends on the problem and the chosen similarity function. Preferably, one can even prove certain attributes of a clustering result, given a similarity function and the density parameter. (3) Currently, high throughput experiments produce huge amounts of data. Hence, a clustering environment has to be capable of processing hundreds of thousands of data objects. (4) The integration of existing knowledge into a cluster analysis is highly valuable for improving the clustering output. The integration of known assignments may serve as an example here. (5) It is clear that the method needs to be robust against noise and outliers. (6) From an end-user's point of view, integration with standard software, appropriate visualization capabilities, and easy-to-use evaluation methods are highly beneficial.
This thesis introduces Transitivity Clustering (TC) and its accompanying software framework TransClust, a method which addresses all of the aforementioned problems. It is a homogeneous partitioning method based on Weighted Transitive Graph Projection (WTGP), which aims for unraveling hidden transitive substructures in a given similarity graph deduced from a pairwise similarity measure. TC solves the aforementioned problems (2-5). The software implementation TransClust is an easy-to-use standalone and online application that solves the problems mentioned in (1,6). Furthermore, in TC, the density parameter can be chosen intuitively and the underlying weighted transitive graph projection model allows certain criteria of the clustering results to be proven. In addition, the model has been extended in order to allow for the following advanced features: (1) The integration of existing knowledge, for instance, by means of upper and lower bounds, (2) the computation of an hierarchical clustering, and (3) the calculation of overlapping clusterings. These extensions widen the applicability of TC and provide features that distinguish TC from other bioinformatics alternatives.
The flexibility of TC makes it suitable for various real-world applications. In this work, we concentrate on protein sequence clustering and the detection of protein complexes in protein-protein interaction networks, showing that TC outperforms the most-commonly used bioinformatics clustering techniques.
The software implementation of TC, TransClust, is available online at http://transclust.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de as web application, as standalone tool, and as plugin for the standard network analysis tool Cytoscape. It provides results of similar or superior accuracy to those of alternative approaches. It is unique in that it features an easy-to-use clustering environment that contributes to all the important steps in a cluster analysis: (1) the choice and evaluation of a meaningful similarity function, (2) the detection of an appropriate density parameter, (3) the efficient computation of a clustering, and (4) the interpretation and evaluation of the clustering results.


Advancements in mobile technologies and the Internet have changed the habits of TV audiences. As a result, second screen, which can be defined as a form of companion device use to augment TV watching experience, is emerging as a practice. Research shows that a considerable proportion of TV football audiences use second screen when they watch football matches on TV. However, certain details regarding the usage of second screen and how they affect the users' watching experience are unknown. This thesis investigates how most common visualisations of certain match-related information on second screen affect the watching experience of football matches on TV. This research also investigates how the most used and newly emerging interaction gestures for the retrieval of match-related information via second screen influence the watching experience of football matches on TV. Furthermore, this research provides design recommendations for second screen applications in terms of visualisations and interaction gestures. The design recommendations address to ensure an effective and enjoyable presentation of match-related information adapted to the users' needs. In order to achieve this, questions such as how memorable and enjoyable most common types of visualisations are, if there is a trade of between them, and what other relevant factors impact on the viewing experience are considered. To address the questions, first, an initial literature review is conducted to analyse how people have experienced football. This is followed by the analysis of people's behaviour of seeking match-related information on second screen. The findings revealed that match statistics are one of the most sought types of match-related information and smartphones are the most used as second screen. For this reason, the visualisations of match statistics in mobile football apps and websites are evaluated. On top of that, the interaction gestures that were used in those apps and websites were identified. Two types of visualisation and interaction gestures were compared in prototype experiments in terms of their effectiveness, memorability and enjoyment. The findings revealed that different visualisations and interaction gestures had different effects in terms of effectiveness and enjoyment on the watching experience. Specifically, plain number visualisation seems to be less effective and enjoyed than bar charts in general. However, plain numbers seemed to be slightly more memorable than bar charts when the information access through second screen occurred in active gameplay. In addition, tapping for information retrieval on second screen seems be more effective and enjoyable than swiping in general except the performance of recalling verbatim match statistics seems to be slightly better with swiping when second screen activity is performed in non-active gameplay. Therefore, the findings recommend that different purposes need to be considered for the design of the relevant apps and websites in this regard.


Background- Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women with over one million new cases diagnosed annually worldwide. The capacity of the DNA to repair itself (DRC) is a complex biological process involving over 200 proteins. This process involves at least five pathways and is critical in maintaining genomic stability. The objective of this study was to examine the association of DRC and BC risk in terms of consumption of vitamin and calcium supplements by means of a large scale case-control study. Methods.- This was an incident-case case-control study design involving Puerto Rican women. The selection of potential predictors under study was based on previous published research in BC including information on vitamins, calcium, and variables that could provide an estimate of BC risk including age, BMI, family history, gynecological history, hormonal and environmental factors. The host reactivation assay with a luciferase reporter gene was used to measure the DRC in the lymphocytes from all participants. Cases were compared to controls, regarding diet supplement intake, DRC, and other selected covariates. The crude and multiple logistic regression adjusted Odds Ratio (OR) were used as measures of association and the 95% confidence interval of the OR was utilized to asses the precision of this estimate. Results.- A total of 268 breast cancer cases and 457 controls were included in this analysis. Statistically significant associations were found between BC and ageing, low DRC levels, family history of BC, and no breastfeeding. Vitamins and calcium intake were found to be protective reducing 30% and 40% the odds of having BC respectively. Calcium reduced considerably its protective effect becoming negligibly and not statistically significant when DRC was included in the logistic regression model. This suggests that DRC explains this association. In contrast, vitamin9s intake did not show an important change in the association with BC when adjusting for DRC. Calcium and vitamins' intake were strongly associated with higher levels of DRC. Discussion.- Vitamins and calcium intake are protective for breast cancer and are associated with higher DRC levels. Vitamins' intake is an independent protective factor for BC while the protective effect of calcium may be explained by an increased DRC. DRC can be used to monitor the protective effect of calcium in terms of breast cancer risk. This study is supported by grants from the NCI Center to Reduce Health Disparities and NIH-MBRS Program grant #: S06 GM008239-23. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 976.


We think of our American democracy as being a model for the world--and it has been. But today it compares unfavorably in some respects, especially when it comes to the universal franchise. The right to vote is more conditional and less exercised in the United States than in many other mature democracies. As became clear to all in the presidential election of 2000, when the stakes are high, efforts to define voter eligibility and manage the voting and vote-counting process to the advantage of one's own side are part of hard-ball politics. It is that experience that gave rise to this book. Written by an author with wide expertise on Southern and Florida politics and districting, the book begins with a deceptively simple question--why is it so hard to vote in America? It proceeds, in seven chapters, to examine the ways that some people are formally or effectively disenfranchised, and to review how control of the ballot and the voting process is constrained, manipulated, and contested


Future predictions on sequence data (e.g., videos or audios) require the algorithms to capture non-Markovian and compositional properties of high-level semantics. Context-free grammars are natural choices to capture such properties, but traditional grammar parsers (e.g., Earley parser) only take symbolic sentences as inputs. In this paper, we generalize the Earley parser to parse sequence data which is neither segmented nor labeled. This generalized Earley parser integrates a grammar parser with a classifier to find the optimal segmentation and labels, and makes top-down future predictions. Experiments show that our method significantly outperforms other approaches for future human activity prediction.


We study the recovering bandits problem, a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where the expected reward of each arm varies according to some unknown function of the time since the arm was last played. While being a natural extension of the classical bandit problem that arises in many real-world settings, this variation is accompanied by significant difficulties. In particular, methods need to plan ahead and estimate many more quantities than in the classical bandit setting. In this work, we explore the use of Gaussian processes to tackle the estimation and planing problem. We also discuss different regret definitions that let us quantify the performance of the methods. To improve computational efficiency of the methods, we provide an optimistic planning approximation. We complement these discussions with regret bounds and empirical studies.


Stereotypes and prejudices are a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon that can impinge on peoples' wellbeing. Moreover, the power of public stigma can make users of certain products experience discrimination, alienation, and inequality. Such experiences increase the likelihood of individuals rejecting products, services, environments, etc. altogether, often depriving them of e.g. safety, efficiency, and independence. In a worst-case scenario this can lead to a stigmatised condition that triggers further inequality and exclusion.

In an increasingly complex world, it is imperative that those responsible for addressing future needs, challenges, and demands, i.e. the next generation of designers, architects, engineers, etc., are adequately equipped as regards methods and tools for battling existing stereotypes and prejudices related to social growth and development in society. Through this, they will ensure that stigma-free design is a priority when initiating, planning, and executing future projects.

The purpose of this paper is to describe what happens when critical design is used to explore the stigma associated with existing products, services, environments, etc. in the context of interdisciplinary workshops, and to discuss the results so far. Furthermore, the paper examines whether and how this upside-down way of thinking about and performing design is a good contribution to the fields of design, architecture, engineering, etc. as a method of both teaching and learning about equality, diversity, and inclusion.


This paper describes the constructs of pathological self-deception (the inability to detect the negative effect of one's own behaviour) and mystification (an extreme form of self- deception which affects daily life) by way of a brief historical review of the instruments used to evaluate self-deception and desirability. The Self-Deception and Mystification Inventory (IAM-40) is presented for the first time; it is made up of forty items and five factors (insincerity, manipulation, denial mechanisms, an interested perception of reality and mystification). The general objective of this investigation is to validate the Inventory of Self-Deception, including both its general scale and the factors and constructs of self- deception and mystification, in a study of 159 addict patients (clinical population sample) and 124 general population participants. Significant differences are found, as predicted, between both subpopulations, with a greater level of pathology of all studied indicators in the clinical sample. The clinical existence of self-deception and mystification is concluded. The IAM-40 is also proven to be an adequate and useful instrument for diagnostic purposes and for day-to-day clinical management. The critical discussion is based on a proposal for psychotherapeutic and sociotherapeutic ad hoc treatment.


The present paper aims at assessing the linguistic and cultural adaptation and equivalency of the French, Farsi, Arabic and English versions of the NADINE1 Soft Skill Tests, which include four scales: interpersonal skills, organizational skills, personal skills, and entrepreneurial skills. The translation process included forward and backward translations. Three studies took place. In Study 1, both the source (English) and target versions of the tests were administered to 117 bilingual subjects. There were very few differences observed between the two versions of the tests, in all language versions, resulting in only a few items being revised. Study 2 aimed at determining the degree to which the items, the response scale and the instructions are comprehensible and culturally relevant to the target population. Three focus groups were formed, with 9, 9 and 7 participants respectively, who rated all items in terms of clarity and cultural relevance. The review resulted in minor changes in the instructions. In study 3, the Farsi, Arabic and French versions of the tests were administered to 120 migrants/refugees/asylum seekers. We calculated the discriminative power of each item and its contribution to the scale's and subscale's internal reliability coefficient. Moreover, we calculated Tucker's congruence coefficient for each subscale to ensure cross-cultural equivalency. Items with poor discriminative power and items which reduced the reliability coefficients were eliminated. The remaining items had discriminative power between 0.20 and 0.80, while all reliability coefficients were above 0.70 (the vast majority being above 0.80). All Tucker's phi coefficients were above the 0.90 cut-off point, with the exception of the Farsi-French and the Arabic-French comparison of one component. However, Tucker's phi was above 0.80 which shows similarity. Results of all 3 studies support the case of linguistic and cultural equivalence between the different language versions of the tests. Therefore, all test versions are valid and reliable instruments that can be used by career practitioners to assess the level of soft skills of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.


Non-specific Occupational Low Back Pain (NOLBP) is a health condition that generates a high absenteeism and disability. Due to multifactorial causes is difficult to determine accurate diagnosis and prognosis. The clinical prediction of NOLBP is identified as a series of models that integrate a multivariate analysis to determine early diagnosis, course, and occupational impact of this health condition. Objective: to identify predictor factors of NOLBP, and the type of material referred to in the scientific evidence and establish the scopes of the prediction. Materials and method: the title search was conducted in the databases PubMed, Science Direct, and Ebsco Springer, between1985 and 2012. The selected articles were classified through a bibliometric analysis allowing to define the most relevant ones. Results: 101 titles met the established criteria, but only 43 metthe purpose of the review. As for NOLBP prediction, the studies varied in relation to the factors for example: diagnosis, transition of lumbar pain from acute to chronic, absenteeism from work, disability and return to work. Conclusion: clinical prediction is considered as a strategic to determine course and prognostic of NOLBP, and to determine the characteristics that increase the risk of chronicity in workers with this health condition. Likewise, clinical prediction rules are tools that aim to facilitate decision making about the evaluation, diagnosis, prognosis and intervention for low back pain, which should incorporate risk factors of physical, psychological and social.