Blends of biodiesel and petrodiesel are being used increasingly worldwide. Due to several factors, inaccurate blending of these two mixtures can occur. To test the accuracy of biodiesel blending, we developed and validated a radiocarbon-based method and then analyzed a variety of retail biodiesel blends. Error propagation analysis demonstrated that this method calculates absolute blend content with +/- 1% accuracy, even when real-world variability in the component biodiesel and petrodiesel sources is taken into account. We independently confirmed this accuracy using known endmembers and prepared mixtures. This is the only published method that directly quantifies the carbon of recent biological origin in biodiesel blends. Consequently, it robustly handles realistic chemical variability in biological source materials and provides unequivocal apportionment of renewable versus nonrenewable carbon in a sample fuel blend. Analysis of retail biodiesel blends acquired in 2006 in the United States revealed that inaccurate blending happens frequently. Only one out of ten retail samples passed the specifications that the United States Department of Defense requires for blends that are 20% biodiesel (v/v; referred to as B20).


An agent-based model (ABM) is developed in Netlogo as a tool for evaluating the impacts of socio-economic factors on the temporal diffusion of PV-based communal grids in a rural developing community. ABMs model individual entities within a complex system and the rules that govern the interactions of the entities within the system, to capture the overall effect of such interactions. The results show that introduction of a subsidy of $0.15/kWh would result in an increase of 249% in communal grid connections. The results also show that increasing the sensing radius from 1 km to 2 km would result in an increase of 118% in communal grid connections. Introduction of favourable government policies in the form of subsidies, coupled with increasing social acceptance, would therefore lead to increased PV installations and correspondingly to increased communal grid connections.


The effect of temperature on CDOM fluorescence was investigated in dystrophic freshwaters of Wisconsin and in aqueous standards. Laboratory experiments with two commercial in situ fluorometers showed that CDOM fluorescence intensity decreased as ambient water temperature increased. A temperature compensation equation was derived to standardize CDOM fluorescence measurements to a specific reference temperature. The form of the equation is: CDOMr = CDOMm/[1 + ρ(Tm − Tr)], where T is temperature (°C), ρ is the temperature‐specific coefficient of fluorescence (°C−1), and the subscripts r and m stand for the reference and measured values. (We note that an analogous function is used widely to calculate temperature‐specific conductance from the measured conductivity of natural waters.) For the two sensors we tested, the temperature‐specific fluorescence coefficients (ρ) were − 0.015 ± 0.001 and − 0.008 ± 0.0008 for Wisconsin bog waters at 20°C. When applied to field data, temperature compensation removed the effect of multi‐day trends in water temperature, and it also damped the diel CDOM cycle. We conclude that temperature compensation is a necessary and important aspect of CDOM monitoring using in situ fluorescence sensors.


Stressful stimuli can disrupt the physiological homeostasis. Acute and chronic stressors influence brain function
and it is known to be the key factor for the genesis of various psychological disorders. The present study was
designed to elucidate the influence of acute and chronic stress on different brain tissues of wistar albino rats. The
animals were divided into two major groups as non stressed group (n =10) and stressed group (n =10). The
stressed groups were divided into acute (one day) stress groups and chronic (30 days) groups. The animals of the
stressed groups were subjected to acute and chronic types of swimming stress and immobilization stress. Lipid
peroxidation was estimated in cerebral cortex, hypothalamus and cerebellum. Acute swimming stress and chronic
immobilization stress significantly (P<0.001) increased the lipid peroxidation level in the cerebral cortex and
hypothalamus. Whereas, acute immobilization stress and chronic swimming stress increased (P<0.001) the
cerebellar lipid peroxidation. The observed regional specific alterations in lipid peroxidation levels show that the
nature of the stressors are probably capable of generating a different degree of cellular imbalance in between prooxidants
and antioxidants which may provide some approach on variety of neurological and psychological
processes as well as their treatment.


Osteomalacia is a bone disease, characterized by the inability of newly formed bone matrix to undergo mineralization. The most common symptoms are generalized bone pain and widespread body pain, while some patients are asymptomatic. Restless leg syndrome (RLS) is a sensory-motor neurological disease. The main symptoms are abnormal sensations in the legs and dysesthesia. Symptoms worsen at night and affect sleep quality. We present a case of a woman with a progressive hip and feet pain. Many biochemical, clinical, and radiological tests were performed for diagnosis. All were found to be normal. The patient was diagnosed as having RLS. 0.25 mg pramipexole was given for treatment. Patient symptoms patient escalated over six months. The patient was reassessed after six months. Vitamin D levels had not been previously examined. We found low vitamin D and calcium levels, as well as pseudofractures in radiography. The diagnosis was changed to osteomalacia. Vitamin D and calcium treatment were started. Symptoms began to regress from the first week of treatment.


In this topical collection, Professor Abdullah Saeed brings together seminal articles encompassing key issues in the debates surrounding Islam and human rights. Topics covered in this comprehensive two-volume set include approaches to international human rights, freedom of expression, the right to equality under Islamic law and Islamic human rights schemes. The editor has also included a number of case studies which, along with an original introduction, greatly enhance the depth of the collection. This authoritative and timely book will be of great interest to both academics and practitioners and will serve as an excellent reference tool for anyone with an interest in Islam and human rights.


Cultural geographers Nigel Thrift and Stephen Pile have asked, "how is it possible to make sense of our selves, if the boundaries that tell us who 'we' are are incoherent, or fragmented, or fuzzy[?]" (1995: 179). One promising answer to this question has been to deconstruct the otherwise stable sense of identity that has marked the body in discourses of culture and transnational geography. The emerging interdisciplinary field of haptics (referring to the study of the sense of touch) offers a new way of investigating the boundaries that mark the body in the contexts of culture and literature, specifically exploring who is touched, who touches, when touch begins, and when it ends, in order to creatively examine boundaries of culture, which although fragmented, shifting, topographically uneven, offer unique and productive ways of re-conceptualizing transnational identity. Tracing the expanding the field of haptics to the discourses of diaspora and cultural studies, this paper will discuss haptic aesthetics in the shifting terrain of cultural studies and diasporic theory, for what this emerging field suggests about the incoherent nature of cultural boundaries and alternative possibilities for transnational community formation.


Fishermen who compete for a resource in an open access setting generally do not share information amongst each other about where stocks are located. On the other hand, in fisheries where there are established property rights or fishing cooperatives, fishermen tend to share information with each other. Recent work in developing spatial models of fishermen behavior has generally ignored the effect that sharing information about where stocks are located can have. We develop a behavioral model of search amongst spatial resource harvesters that allows for varying degrees of information sharing. We demonstrate that informational cascades may lead to extremely inefficient spatial search by fishermen that do not share information and that this inefficiency may be persistent over time. We define a new parameter, information-dependent catchability, which captures the degree to which information sharing improves the efficiency of spatial search. We argue that institutions change the incentives to share information; information-dependent catchability will differ within a fishery depending on the specific management institutions adopted. This leads to theoretical predictions which depart from standard models but account for a wider range of field observations. In particular, we derive the conditions under which closing access to a fishery would have such a drastic impact on the incentives to share information (and hence, the efficiency of search) that total effort in the fishery will be unaffected by restricting access. We derive the equivalent conditions for steady state harvest and stock levels. Furthermore, we make an important distinction between Property Rights Rents and Information Sharing Rents (economic rents that can be attributed solely to changes in information-sharing). The shiroebi shrimp fishery in Shinminato, Japan provides an ideal natural experiment to test the impact of information sharing. Field observations from this fishery strongly accord with the predictions of the model presented in this paper.


Verifying the regular properties of programs has been a significant challenge. This paper tackles this challenge by presenting symbolic regular verification (SRV) that offers significant speedups over the state-of-the-art. SRV is based on dynamic symbolic execution (DSE) and enabled by novel techniques for mitigating path explosion: (1) a regular property-oriented path slicing algorithm, and (2) a synergistic combination of property-oriented path slicing and guiding. Slicing prunes redundant paths, while guiding boosts the search for counterexamples. We have implemented SRV for Java and evaluated it on 15 real-world open-source Java programs (totaling 259K lines of code). Our evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of SRV. Compared with the state-of-the-art — pure DSE, pure guiding, and pure path slicing — SRV achieves average speedups of more than 8.4X, 8.6X, and 7X, respectively, making symbolic regular property verification significantly more practical.


Climate change is one of the drivers of change in the Ganges River Basin, together with population growth, economic development and water management practices. These changing circumstances have a significant impact on key social and economic sectors of the basin, largely through changes in water quantity, quality and timing of availability. This paper evaluates the impact of water on changing circumstances in three sectors of the Ganges Basin – agriculture, ecosystems and energy. Given the inherent interconnectedness of these core sectors and the cross-cutting impact of changing circumstances on water resources, we argue that adaptation should not be viewed as a separate initiative, but rather as a goal and perspective incorporated into every level of planning and decision making. Adaptation to changing circumstances will need to be closely linked to water resource management and will require significant collaboration across the sectors.


INTRODUCTION Laboratory experiments in geomorphology and sedimentology provide compelling visualizations and insight into processes that shape the landscape and generate stratigraphy. Taking water and sediment as the basic ingredients, experiments produce physical analogues to mountain, valley, river, delta, and submarine environments, offering rich information on the linkages between modern processes and the sedimentary record of Earth history (Paola et al., 2009). However, contemporary experiments produce large volumes of dark data in ad hoc formats (i.e., data that are not in digital format or not accessible from the internet). These data are therefore impractical to other Earth scientists who could reuse them and accelerate the pace of discovery. Because crossdisciplinary communication and collaboration are becoming critical for providing rich new research opportunities (e.g. Montanez and Issacson, 2013), we must find a community-scale solution for improving data preservation and re-use. We describe a new effort to determine and address needs and promote consensus responses of scientists and educators in the Sedimentary Experiment community. The initiative will coordinate community discussion and activity to help facilitate best practices in experimental methods and in the storage, archiving, and dissemination of experimental data. This will result in a more informed, capable, and efficient scientific enterprise. This article summarizes the motivation, current activities, implications, and avenues for broad participation of the group that is spearheading this effort, the Sediment Experimentalists Network (SEN).


Significant achievements have been made for automated allocation of cloud resources. However, the performance of applications may be poor in peak load periods, unless their cloud resources are dynamically adjusted. Moreover, although cloud resources dedicated to different applications are virtually isolated, performance fluctuations do occur because of resource sharing, and software or hardware failures (e.g. unstable virtual machines, power outages, etc.). In this paper, we propose a decentralized economic approach for dynamically adapting the cloud resources of various applications, so as to statistically meet their SLA performance and availability goals in the presence of varying loads or failures. According to our approach, the dynamic economic fitness of a Web service determines whether it is replicated or migrated to another server, or deleted. The economic fitness of a Web service depends on its individual performance constraints, its load, and the utilization of the resources where it resides. Cascading performance objectives are dynamically calculated for individual tasks in the application workflow according to the user requirements. By fully implementing our framework, we experimentally proved that our adaptive approach statistically meets the performance objectives under peak load periods or failures, as opposed to static resource settings.


This article examines the enfranchisement of noncitizens and seeks to explain governments' decisions about whether to include or exclude them from the vote. By focusing on the incentives behind incumbents' decisions, the article argues that partisanship, inequality, and immigration are the factors driving the (dis)enfranchisement of noncitizens. The theory leads to a number of testable hypotheses that are then subjected to regression analyses using an original dataset of 33 democracies in the period 1960-2010. The results indicate that while franchise reforms to include noncitizens are more likely to be passed by left-wing governments, noncitizen voting rights are highest at intermediate levels of immigration. The findings are relevant for an emerging literature of quantitative studies of immigrant rights, as well as for the literature on franchise extensions along lines of class and gender.


The scanning-transmission imaging mode in the SEM allows for the threedimensional tomographic reconstruction of a specimen, starting from a set of projection images. Compressed sensing was used to solve the undetermined problem of structure reconstruction and was proven capable of overcoming the limitations arising from the sampling scheme. Reconstructions of cobalt particles within a carbon nanotube and collagen fibrils in a dermal tissue are presented, demonstrating the potential of this technique in the set of 3-D electron microscopy methods for both physical and biological science.


ABSTRACT The cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response to wild-type simian virus 40 large tumor antigen (Tag) in C57BL/6 (H2b ) mice is directed against three H2-Db -restricted epitopes, I, II/III, and V, and oneH2-Kb -restricted epitope, IV. Epitopes I, II/III, and IV are immunodominant, while epitope V is immunorecessive. We investigated whether this hierarchical response was established in vivo or was due to differential expansion in vitro by using direct enumeration of CD8+ T lymphocytes with Tag epitope/major histocompatibility complex class I tetramers and intracellular gamma interferon staining. The results demonstrate that epitope IV-specific CD8+ T cells dominated the Tag-specific response in vivo following immunization with full-length Tag while CD8+ T cells specific for epitopes I and II/III were detected at less than one-third of this level. The immunorecessive nature of epitope V was apparent in vivo, since epitope V-specific CD8+ T cells were undetectable following immunization with full-length Tag. In contrast, high levels of epitope V-specific CD8+ T lymphocytes were recruited in vivo following immunization and boosting with a Tag variant in which epitopes I, II/III, and IV had been inactivated. In addition, analysis of the T-cell receptor β (TCRβ) repertoire of Tag epitope-specific CD8+ cells revealed that multiple TCRβ variable regions were utilized for each epitope except Tag epitope II/III, which was limited to TCRβ10 usage. These results indicate that the hierarchy of Tag epitope-specific CD8+T-cell responses is established in vivo.


We present a case study of an application for supporting home health care practitioners in their work. Groups of practitioners have been interviewed as well as representatives for the sales organization. Below the application is presented as well as work practices before and after the introduction of the system and perceived benefits of the system.


The notion of desire in Renaissance English love and religious poetry resonates with references to Canticles, or the Song of Songs, a biblical lyric that celebrates the erotic relationship between a man and a woman who are identified traditionally as Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Canticles also has an extensive tradition of spiritual allegory, in which the man is read as Christ and the woman as a representative of humanity; Sponsus and Sponsa perform a betrothal sequence that echoes the anxiety of the Fall in the separation of the lovers and adumbrates their apocalyptic re-union in the consummation of the wedding feast of Revelation. This allegory of erotic desire between divinity and humanity in Canticles' . rhetoric inscribes human relationships with spiritual pleasures that are analogous to carnal pleasures: the site of the body as one of pleasure renders the anxiety of apocalyptic anticipation as a stage for the progress of the soulthat is, the body is the setting for the scene of apprehension that opens it to the pleasurable engagement of divine entrance. Correspondingly, the soul's present engagement with the incarnated divine figure of Christ heightens the erotic interactions between men and women, providing a way to extend the pleasures of physical engagement both within and beyond the boundaries of the body and the present moment. This thesis emphasizes the erotic pleasures of the body and the eroticized pleasures of the soul as the effects of social and spiritual anxiety. Current literary criticism of the English Renaissance tends to focus on anxiety as a dysfunctional psychological effect of corporeality, but I contend that the conception of the psyche, or soul, in this period is far more versatile than current approaches tend to allow. The introductory chapter discusses the historical context of Canticles' exegesis and the four-level model of scriptural interpretation that was still in use during the Renaissance, though with a significantly revised emphasis on tropology, the application of spiritual readings to everyday conduct. This chapter also presents the main issues of investigation in the thesis: scriptural rhetoric, poetic voice, gender as a crucial metaphor of voice, and the interaction between narrative and lyric genres. The following five chapters consider the operation of Canticles' rhetoric in a variety of secular and religious works, including the sonnet sequences of Spenser, Sidney, and Wroth, the religious poetry of Herbert and Crashaw, and the emblem books of Wither and Quarles. Lissa Beauchamp, PhD Thesis, Department of English, McMaster University IV


The e↵ect of titanium additions on the interface and mechanical properties of infiltrated Cu8wt%Al-Al2O3 composites containing 57±2 vol% ceramic are investigated, exploring two di↵erent Al2O3 particle types and four di↵erent Ti concentrations (0, 0.2 ,1, 2 wt%Ti). Addition of 0.2wt%Ti leads to the development of a thin (5-10 nm) layer enriched in Ti at the interface between Cu alloy and Al2O3 particles; this Ti concentration produces the best mechanical properties. With higher Ti-contents Ti3(Cu,Al)3O appears; this decreases both the interface and composite strength. Composites reinforced with vapour-grown polygonal alumina particles show superior mechanical properties compared to those reinforced by angular comminuted alumina particles, as has been previously documented for aluminium-based matrices. Micromechanical analysis shows that damage accumulation is more extensive, as is matrix hardening by dislocation emission during composite cooldown, in the present Cu8wt%Al matrix composites compared with similarly reinforced and processed Al-matrix composites.


The Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs Design Authority is in the design stage of the Waste Solidification Building (WSB) for the treatment and solidification of the radioactive liquid waste streams generated by the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF) and Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). The waste streams will be mixed with a cementitious dry mix in a 55-gallon waste container. Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has been performing the testing and evaluations to support technical decisions for the WSB. Engineering Modeling & Simulation Group was requested to evaluate the thermal performance of the 55-gallon drum containing hydration heat source associated with the current baseline cement waste form. A transient axi-symmetric heat transfer model for the drum partially filled with waste form cement has been developed and heat transfer calculations performed for the baseline design configurations. For this case, 65 percent of the drum volume was assumed to be filled with the waste form, which has transient hydration heat source, as one of the baseline conditions. A series of modeling calculations has been performed using a computational heat transfer approach. The baseline modeling results show that the time to reach the maximum temperature of the 65 percent filled drum ismore » about 32 hours when a 43 C initial cement temperature is assumed to be cooled by natural convection with 27 C external air. In addition, the results computed by the present model were compared with analytical solutions. The modeling results will be benchmarked against the prototypic test results. The verified model will be used for the evaluation of the thermal performance for the WSB drum.« less


This thesis examines cinematic representations of the L.A.P.D. within the context of discourses of law enforcement in Los Angeles and contends that these feature films constitute a significant strand within such discourse. This contention, which is based upon the various identifiable ways in which the films engage with contemporary issues, acknowledges that the nature of such engagement is constrained by the need to produce a commercially viable fictional entertainment. In four main chronological segments, I argue that it is also influenced by the increasing ethnic and gendered diversity of film-makers, by their growing freedom to screen even the most sensitive issues and by the changing racial and spatial politics of Los Angeles.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the major studios were prepared to illustrate some disputed matters, such as wire-tapping, but represented L.A.P.D. officers as white paragons of virtue and ignored their fractious relationships with minority communities. In the aftermath of the Watts riot of 1965, racial tensions were more difficult to ignore and, under a more liberal censorship regime, film-makers―led by two independent African American directors―began to depict instances of police racism and brutality. Between the major L.A.P.D. anti-gang initiative of 1988 and the Rodney King beating of 1991, two films were released which tackled the inter-related issues of gang violence and the controversial nature of the police response. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, each found itself at the centre of local discourses of law enforcement. Then, in the wake of the King beating, Los Angeles and its police force endured the 1992 riots, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the Rampart scandal. These highly publicised events, which gave the L.A.P.D. a world-wide reputation for racism, brutality and corruption, also informed several movies in which the misdeeds of filmic policemen outstripped even the worst excesses of their real-life counterparts.


Summary Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae are causative agents of Nosemosis in the honey bee Apis mellifera, although N. ceranae may cause a more virulent disease. Selection of colonies with high tolerance to N. ceranae could be important for reducing problems caused by this pathogen. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the existence of honey bee colonies with different degrees of N. ceranae infection and test if this difference could be related to the immune response or vitellogenin expression. Healthy honey bee colonies were relocated to a plantation of Eucalyptusgrandisto favour natural infection of N. ceranae. Fifteen and thirty days after relocation, the proportion of infected bees and the number of N. ceranae spores per field were quantified. The colonies with higher and lower levels of infection (HL and LL, respectively) were selected. Newly emerged bees from both colonies were artificially infected with N. ceranaeand seven days after infection the expression of immune related genes and vitellogenin was evaluated by real time PCR. No significant differences were observed in expression of abaecin, hymenoptaecin, defensin, glucose dehydrogenase or lysozyme mRNA levels between infected bees from HL and LL colonies or between control bees from both colonies. Vitellogenin expression was higher in bees from the LL colony than in bees from the HL colony, when infected or control bees were compared between them. This protein possesses pleiotropic effects and is a central element in the life-history of honey bees. For that reason, its differential expression could be associated with resistance to N. ceranae.


The Economics of Banking describes and explains trends and operations in banking within an accessible microeconomic framework. It incorporates theory with the practical aspects of banking so as to set banking within the economics paradigm. A primary section on trends within banking leads on to chapters on the microeconomics of banking, market structure and regulation. The overall objective is to provide a mathematically accessible microeconomic context that will help students understand and analyze trends and operations in banking.


How does armed conflict affect social cohesion, that is, the social fabric of societies? This question is central if we want to understand better why some countries experience repeated cycles of violence. It is also a crucial question for the design of peacebuilding interventions. In recent years, considerable scientific work has been put into studying the social legacies of armed conflict. This literature review brings these academic studies together in a novel way. In this discussion paper we conduct an extensive review of the empirical academic literature on how armed conflict affects social cohesion. We take a holistic perspective and analyse each of the three constituent elements of social cohesion - trust, cooperation and identity - in detail and along both a vertical (state-society relations) and a horizontal (interpersonal and intergroup relations) dimension. Regarding conflict, the focus lies on intrastate conflict and civil war, but the review also includes the few studies that focus on armed conflict between states or groups (interstate and non-state conflict). Overall, this review brings together insights from 39 published, peer-reviewed, empirical studies, most of which analyse the effects of conflict based on comprehensive survey data or behavioural experiments. Strengths and shortcomings are discussed and future avenues for research are identified. Contrary to the initial optimism of the potentially positive legacies of armed conflict expressed by some scholars, our main finding holds that the literature by now mainly points towards such conflict harming social cohesion. Most clearly, there is quite a large body of literature showing that social trust is negatively affected by experience of violence. Research on political trust and social identities is still nascent but currently also points towards negative effects. The literature on cooperation is more mixed with studies finding both support for an increase or a decrease in cooperative behaviour. However, several (and particularly newer) studies demonstrate that an increase in cooperation can often be explained by prosocial behaviour towards the in-group but not the out-group, calling into question whether this should be interpreted positively for social cohesion overall. Political participation does, however, seem to be one aspect of social cohesion in which effects of the "post-traumatic growth" mechanism can indeed be traced in several contexts.


Two brief, 15-minute measures of creative ability have become available quite recently. The Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) objectively measures creative ability in terms of the creativity of answers over 3 tasks. The Abedi Test of Creativity (ATC) subjectively measures creative ability by means of a self-rating questionnaire. Our first study examined the predictive validity of both methods by correlating prospective marketing employees' ATTA and ATC scores with the expert-judged creativity of a marketing campaign that they were asked to design. The objective ATTA test scores correlated substantially with creative performance, unlike the subjective ATC self-rating method that was much less predictively valid. A second study with current employees of a marketing agency demonstrated discriminant validity for the ATTA by revealing that ATTA scores and supervisor ratings of creative ability correlated highly for longer-term employees, but poorly for new recruits. Based on the results of these 2 studies, we propose an even shorter-scored version of the ATTA for use in business settings.


We report on the generation of continuous-wave, intra-cavity frequency-doubled, multi-mode laser radiation in an Yb:LuAG thin-disk laser. Output powers of up to 1 kW at a wavelength of 515 nm were achieved at an unprecedented optical efficiency of 51.6% with respect to the pumping power of the thin-disk laser. The wavelength stabilization and spectral narrowing as well as the polarization selection, which is necessary for a stable and efficient second-harmonic generation, was achieved by the integration of a diffraction grating into the dielectric end mirror of the cavity, which exhibits a diffraction efficiency of 99.8%. At a frequency-doubled output power of 820 W the peak-to-valley power fluctuations measured during 100 minutes of laser operation amounted to only 8.2 W (1.0%). The beam parameter product of the frequency-doubled output was 3.4 mm·mrad (M2 ≈ 20), which is suitable for standard beam delivery using fibers with a core diameter of 100 µm and a NA of 0.2.


Background: It remains unknown how variations in body mass index (BMI) influence outcomes after primary hip arthroscopic surgery with capsular plication for femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). Purpose: To evaluate the effect that abnormal BMI (namely, overweight, obese, morbidly obese, and underweight) versus normal weight has on patient-reported clinical outcomes more than 2 years postoperatively from primary hip arthroscopic surgery with capsular plication by a single surgeon. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: A clinical repository containing patients undergoing primary hip arthroscopic surgery for FAI between January 1, 2012, and January 1, 2014, with a minimum 2-year follow-up was queried. Outcome measures included the Hip Outcome Score (HOS)–Activities of Daily Living (ADL), HOS-Sports, modified Harris Hip Score (mHHS), visual analog scale (VAS) for pain; satisfaction, and Patient Acceptable Symptomatic State (PASS) for the HOS-ADL; scores were collected preoperatively and at 3 months, 1 year, and minimum 2 years postoperatively. Included patients were segregated by preoperative BMI into the following categories: underweight (<18.5 kg/m2), normal (18.5-24.9 kg/m2), overweight (25.0-29.9 kg/m2), obese (30.0-34.9 kg/m2), and morbidly obese (≥35.0 kg/m2). A multivariate logistic regression model controlling for patient demographics and disease severity was used to identify independent associations between BMI categories and outcomes. A Bonferroni adjustment lowered the threshold for significance to P < .01. Results: There were 409 hips in 381 patients appropriate for study inclusion: 7 underweight, 197 normal BMI, 130 overweight, 31 obese, and 16 morbidly obese. The mean age was 33.1 ± 12.1 years, with 232 (61%) female patients. At 2 years postoperatively, significant differences in the trend among HOS-ADL, HOS-Sports, and mHHS scores were evident, with normal BMI patients, followed by underweight patients, demonstrating greater scores than their overweight, obese, and morbidly obese counterparts. Obese patients demonstrated lower satisfaction scores than normal BMI patients. Overweight, obese, and morbidly obese patients had lower improvements in VAS pain scores compared with normal BMI patients. Increasing BMI (not subdivided into the 5 BMI categories) was associated with a higher infection risk (mean BMI for infections: 32.3 ± 9.8 kg/m2 vs mean BMI for noninfections: 25.2 ± 4.8 kg/m2; P = .0035). However, with multivariate analysis, no significant differences in patient clinical outcomes between the BMI categories met the threshold for significance. Among obese patients (BMI ≥30.0 kg/m2), no specific risk factors were found to be significantly associated with decreases in the change in VAS, HOS-ADL, HOS-Sports, mHHS, satisfaction, or PASS for the HOS-ADL scores. However, because of the small cohort sizes at the extremes of the BMI categories, this analysis may have been underpowered to identify a significant difference in underweight or morbidly obese patients. Conclusion: In the current cohort, there were multiple potential confounding variables, and while some clinical differences were observed initially (higher HOS-ADL, HOS-Sports, and mHHS scores for normal BMI patients than overweight and obese patients at 2 years postoperatively; lower satisfaction scores for obese patients than normal BMI patients; and lower improvement in VAS pain scores for overweight, obese, and morbidly obese patients when compared with normal BMI patients), after multivariate analysis, no associations were observed between BMI and clinical outcomes after hip arthroscopic surgery with capsular plication for FAI.


One issue that tends to be forgotten when dealing with the creation of multimedia learning objects such as screencasts is the time taken to create them. Available resources, especially time, are often very limited. An analysis of the relationship between the resources invested to create these objects and their effect on teaching can be very useful. We look at three different cases of producing learning resources, based on interviews, and extract basic preliminary conclusions as to the importance of time for determining whether screencasts should be produced and how.


Accommodating Intraocular Lenses (IOLs), multifocal IOLs (MIOLs) and toric IOLs are designed to provide a greater level of spectacle independency post cataract surgery. All of these IOLs are reliant on the accurate calculation of intraocular lens power determined through reliable ocular biometry. A standardised defocus area metric and reading performance index metric were devised for the evaluation of the range of focus and the reading ability of subjects implanted with presbyopic correcting IOLs. The range of clear vision after implantation of an MIOL is extended by a second focal point; however, this results in the prevalence of dysphotopsia. A bespoke halometer was designed and validated to assess this photopic phenomenon. There is a lack of standardisation in the methods used for determining IOL orientation and thus rotation. A repeatable, objective method was developed to allow the accurate assessment of IOL rotation, which was used to determine the rotational and positional stability of a closed loop haptic IOL. A new commercially available biometry device was validated for use with subjects prior to cataract surgery. The optical low coherence reflectometry instrument proved to be a valid method for assessing ocular biometry and covered a wider range of ocular parameters in comparison with previous instruments. The advantages of MIOLs were shown to include an extended range of clear vision translating into greater reading ability. However, an increased prevalence of dysphotopsia was shown with a bespoke halometer, which was dependent on the MIOL optic design. Implantation of a single optic accommodating IOL did not improve reading ability but achieved high subjective ratings of near vision. The closed-loop haptic IOL displayed excellent rotational stability in the late period but relatively poor rotational stability in the early period post implantation. The orientation error was compounded by the high frequency of positional misalignment leading to an extensive overall misalignment of the IOL. This thesis demonstrates the functionality of new IOL lens designs and the importance of standardised testing methods, thus providing a greater understanding of the consequences of implanting these IOLs. Consequently, the findings of the thesis will influence future designs of IOLs and testing methods.


Objectives To report the prevalence of aortic valve prosthesis–patient mismatch (PPM) in an adult population with congenital heart disease (CHD) and its impact on exercise capacity. Adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) with a history of aortic valve replacement may outgrow their prosthesis later in life. However, the prevalence and clinical consequences of aortic PPM in ACHD are presently unknown. Methods From the national Dutch Congenital Corvitia (CONCOR) registry, we identified 207 ACHD with an aortic valve prosthesis for this cross-sectional cohort study. Severe PPM was defined as an indexed effective orifice area ≤0.65 cm2/m2 and moderate PPM as an indexed orifice area ≤0.85 cm2/m2 measured using echocardiography. Exercise capacity was reported as percentage of predicted exercise capacity (PPEC). Results Of the 207 patients, 68% was male, 71% had a mechanical prosthesis and mean age at inclusion was 43.9 years ±11.4. The prevalence of PPM was 42%, comprising 23% severe PPM and 19% moderate PPM. Prevalence of PPM was higher in patients with mechanical prostheses (p<0.001). PPM was associated with poorer exercise capacity (mean PPEC 84% vs 92%; p=0.048, mean difference =−8.3%, p=0.047). Mean follow-up was 2.6±1.1 years during which New York Heart Association (NYHA) class remained stable in most patients. PPM showed no significant effect on death or hospitalisation during follow-up (p=0.218). Conclusions In this study we report a high prevalence (42%) of PPM in ACHD with an aortic valve prosthesis and an independent association of PPM with diminished exercise capacity.


In highly decentralized countries the subnational dimension of economic developments acquires particular relevance, given the existence of potential spillover effects across jurisdictions or the existence of asymmetric impacts of national-wide macroeconomic shocks. At the same time, though, the analysis of sub-national macroeconomic and public finance short-term developments tend to be restricted in many countries due to data limitations. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the available data for monitoring macroeconomic and public finance developments at the regional level in Spain, and to present some examples of its practical use in real time. After a thoroughly review of the publicly available information, we identify two key informational gaps in this area of conjunctural analysis, namely: (i) the lack of homogeneous and official quarterly measures of aggregate regional economic activity (in particular, real GDP), and (ii) the limited sample size of time series pertaining to government budgetary developments at the regional level.


Mixed sand and gravel beaches are an important means of sea defence. The majority
of beaches in the south coast of the UK are of the mixed type and beach
replenishment is generally needed in order to maintain the effectiveness of these
beaches against storm wave attacks. Despite vigorous research efforts in recent years,
coastal engineers still do not have a reliable method to estimate the sediment budget
in their designs. In addition, there is also a lack of understanding of the impacts of
beach maintenance activities, such as recycling and re-profiling, on the performance
of the beach and on the economics in maintaining the beach system. This thesis is
mainly focused on establishing the relationships between sediment transport of a
mixed beach and the wave climate, and between the beach performance and beach
maintenance activities. The thesis also aims to establish essential considerations
coastal engineers need to give when planning beach maintenance operations.


Irradiation is an efficient method to increase the microbiological safety and to maintain the nutrients such as iron in the meat. The best absorption form, heme iron, should be preserved in order to increase the nutritional quality of stored meat. The diet can alter the nutrients contents and form in the meat. The iron is provided from the diet and it is an essential element for the metabolic processes such as oxygen transport, oxidative metabolism, and cellular growth. Meat lamb samples treated with different diets (it controls, TAC1, TAC2 and sorghum) were wrapped to vacuous, and irradiated in the doses 0, 2 and 4 kGy and stored at 4 °C during 15 days. The values of total iron and heme iron were measured at 0 and 15 days of storage. The storage reduced the content of total iron (18.36 for 14.28 mg.100 g-1) and heme iron (13.78 for 10.52 mg.100 g-1). The diets affected the levels of total and heme iron of the meat, and the sorghum diet was the one that presented the larger content. The dose of 2 kGy was the one that affected the iron the most independently of the storage time. It was verified that the amounts of total and heme iron varied according to the storage time, irradiation doses, and lamb diets.


Price transmission in agricultural fresh produce markets is a subject of considerable interest to policymakers given that improved market performance for agricultural commodities promotes market development and maximization of social welfare. In northern South Africa, where tomato production dominates the country, studies exist on the general production, marketing, and consumption of fresh produce. However, the literature lacks an analytical component that is pertinent to the mechanism of price transmission and vertical linkages among successive marketing stages of tomato. This study employs the Houck approach and Error Correction modeling technique in an attempt to examine price transmission in South Africa's tomato markets. The results indicate a symmetric adjustment to price signals between farm and wholesale levels and an asymmetric adjustment between farm and retail levels. Even so, there is scope for ameliorating the effectiveness and efficiency of fresh produce markets in South Africa.


Communication networks have become a fundamental part of many critical infrastructures, playing an important role in information delivery in various failure scenarios triggered e.g., by forces of nature (including earthquakes, tornados, fires, etc.), technology-related disasters (for instance due to power blackout), or malicious human activities. A number of recovery schemes have been defined in the context of network resilience (with the primary focus on communication possibility in failure scenarios including access to a particular host, or information exchange between a certain pair of end nodes). However, because end-users are becoming more and more interested in information itself (regardless of its physical location in the network), it is appropriate to complement the well-defined framework of network resilience with one that addresses information resilience, and to introduce definitions of relevant disciplines and measures, as proposed in this paper.


for benign esophageal stricture for pa− tients in whom surgery is not feasible [1]. Repeated bougienage by the patients themselves, "self−dilation," has been proven safe and effective [2]. The major complication of bougienage is esophageal perforation, although the incidence is only 0.04 %±0.2 % [3]. Case. A 74−year−old man, diagnosed as achalasia 7 years ago, underwent routine Maloney esophageal bougienation (tung− sten filled and mercury free; Rusch, Lim− erick, Pennsylvania, USA) (l" Fig. 1) at our outpatient department at regular in− tervals. Unfortunately, the patient mis− swallowed the dilator because of care− lessness on 4 December 2006. Chest radiography was done immediately, and revealed a foreign body in the lower esophagus and stomach (l" Fig. 2). An at− tempt to remove the device with an endo− scopic extractor was made (l" Fig. 3), and rigid esophagoscopy under general anes− thesia was also performed the next morn− ing but in vain. After consultation with a gastrointestinal surgeon, open gastro− nomic surgery was done, and the dilator was finally removed. The patient achieved uneventful recovery and was discharged 6 days later. Discussion. Bougie dilatation is the most widely used modality for inoperable pa− A rare but life−threatening complication of self− bougienage: iatrogenic esophageal foreign body


This paper presents KReator, a versatile integrated development environment for probabilistic inductive logic programming currently under development. The area of probabilistic inductive logic programming (or statistical relational learning) aims at applying probabilistic methods of inference and learning in relational or first-order representations of knowledge. In the past ten years the community brought forth a lot of proposals to deal with problems in that area which mostly extend existing propositional probabilistic methods like Bayes Nets and Markov Networks on relational settings. Only few developers provide prototypical implementations of their approaches and the existing applications are often difficult to install and to use. Furthermore, due to different languages and frameworks used for the development of different systems the task of comparing various approaches becomes hard and tedious. KReator aims at providing a common and simple interface for representing, reasoning, and learning with different relational probabilistic approaches. It is a general integrated development environment which enables the integration of various frameworks within the area of probabilistic inductive logic programming and statistical relational learning. Currently, KReator implements Bayesian logic programs, Markov logic networks, and relational maximum entropy under grounding semantics. More approaches will be implemented in the near future or can be implemented by researchers themselves as KReator is open-source and available under public license. In this paper, we provide some background on probabilistic inductive logic programming and statistical relational learning and illustrate the usage of KReator on several examples using the three approaches currently implemented in KReator. Furthermore, we give an overview on its system architecture.


Mobile collaborative environments, being naturally loosely-coupled, call for optimistic replication solutions in order to attain the requirement of decentralized highly available access to data. However, such connectivity assumptions are also a decisive hindrance to the ability of optimistic replication protocols to rapidly guarantee consistency among the set of loosely-coupled replicas. This paper proposes the extension of conventional optimistic replication protocols to exploit the presence of extraneous nodes surrounding the group of replica nodes in an increasingly ubiquitous computational universe. In particular, we show that using such extra nodes as temporary carriers of lightweight consistency meta-data may significantly improve the efficiency of a replicated system; notably, it reduces commitment delay and conflicts, and allows more network-efficient propagation of updates. We support such a statement with experimental results obtained from a simulated environment.


Abstract. In most sediment transport models, a threshold variable dictates the shear stress at which non-negligible bedload transport begins. Previous work has demonstrated that nondimensional transport thresholds (τc*) vary with many factors related not only to grain size and shape, but also with characteristics of the local bed surface and sediment transport rate (qs). I propose a new model in which qs-dependent τc*, notated as τc(qs)*, evolves as a power-law function of net erosion or deposition. In the model, net entrainment is assumed to progressively remove more mobile particles while leaving behind more stable grains, gradually increasing τc(qs)* and reducing transport rates. Net deposition tends to fill in topographic lows, progressively leading to less stable distributions of surface grains, decreasing τc(qs)* and increasing transport rates. Model parameters are calibrated based on laboratory flume experiments that explore transport disequilibrium. The τc(qs)* equation is then incorporated into a simple morphodynamic model. The evolution of τc(qs)* is a negative feedback on morphologic change, while also allowing reaches to equilibrate to sediment supply at different slopes. Finally, τc(qs)* is interpreted to be an important but nonunique state variable for morphodynamics, in a manner consistent with state variables such as temperature in thermodynamics.


Component -based on Software Development is the most effective way to Software reuse in the process of Software Development Based on reusable Component, Component library management system plays an important role. In component library management system, the model of component classification and retrieval mechanism is one of the most basic core functions, and the effective retrieval mechanism can greatly decrease the cost of reuse, therefore, how to a large number of reusable components in the component library effectively retrieve became a component-based software development method to research the hot issues. This paper studies the component retrieval methods, and feasibility of artificial intelligence algorithm in the component retrieval are analyzed, and then according to the problem of component retrieval based on tabu search algorithm, designed the specific neighborhood structure and whole taboo processing method, and describes in detail the implementation process of the algorithm, the last of the algorithm is based on the simulation, the retrieval results, and it is the result of using traditional methods analyzed, prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.


For multiuser MIMO system, zero forcing beamforming (ZFB) can be adopted to exploit the multiuser spatial multiplexing gain and diversity gain in downlink by spatial multiuser scheduling. On the other hand, multiuser joint subcarrier allocation can obtain multiuser diversity gain in frequency domain. In this paper, a novel joint spatial and frequency proportional fairness (SFPF) scheduler is proposed to achieve the spatial-frequency multiuser diversity gain for multiuser MIMO OFDMA based LTE TDD system while guarantees the multiuser fairness. To approach the multiuser capacity, multiuser ZFB (Mu-ZFB) is adopted for spatial multiplexing of multiuser on the same subcarrier. To simplify the antenna selection of Mu-ZFB, three simplified multiuser antenna selection algorithms are proposed, optimal, random and suboptimal antenna selection and their performance is evaluated in a single cell scenario. The optimal algorithm can achieve the best performance but has the highest complexity. The random algorithm has the worst performance but the lowest complexity. The performance comparison in a multi-cell scenario shows that three algorithms of SFPF can obtain a similar system throughput when guarantee the user fairness. While the suboptimal algorithm is a tradeoff between the performance and the complexity.


The Guimaras oil spill was a massive oil spill at the Guimaras Strait, the Philippines. It was dubbed as the worst oil spill ever in the Philippines. The oil tanker M/T Solar 1, carrying more than two million liters of bunker fuel, sank on August 11, 2006 at the Guimaras Strait off the coast of the Guimaras and Negros Occidental provinces, causing some 500,000 liters of oil to pour into the strait. It has been said that the recent oil spill has adversely affected marine sanctuaries and mangrove reserves in three out of five municipalities in Guimaras Island and reached the shores of Iloilo and Negros Occidental. The oil spill occurred in the Visayas Sea which is considered a rich fishing ground that supplies most of the fisheries demand for the entire country. This study was therefore conducted to determine what life is among the Guimaras fisher folks after the oil spill in 2006. Interviews were conducted to generate the data needed in this investigation. Results showed that 'life was not the same before and after the oil spill. Fish catch and sea shells became few and children are now afraid to bathe in the waters for fear of the oil spill's effects. Development of milkfish fish cage, handicrafts, and food preservation were top most livelihood activities resorted to by the fisher folks after the oil spill. Budget inclusion, research and other trainings were part of the LGU and International interventions that were done after the oil spill.


The aim of the research was to study fire safety within Kariobangi Light Industries, Nairobi County, Kenya. This industrial cluster is characterized by poor infrastructure and numerous concrete buildings which house small to medium scale enterprise industries in go downs on the ground floor and low-income residential apartments on the floors above. Specifically, the research sought to assess fire safety awareness among the business community operating within the industrial cluster. Purposive sampling was used to select the industries licensed to operate therein in the year 2014. The Bivariate Pearson correlation analysis shows that there is a significant positive correlation between fire safety awareness among the business community and their implementation of the same (p = .000). The linear regression analysis results showed that fire safety awareness impacts significantly on the implementation of fire safety (p = .000). It can therefore, be concluded that fire safety awareness among the business community is vital in the improvement of fire safety standards within the industrial cluster. The study recommends that the Nairobi Fire Services and (or) the Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health Services should implement fire safety awareness programs to benefit the business community.


The research described in this thesis focuses on cancer patients' intentions, needs and preferences with regard to receiving unsolicited genetic information obtained by tumor DNA analysis. We combine qualitative research and quantitative research methods with a normative ethical reflection on the introduction of DNA sequencing into daily practice in clinical oncology. In precision medicine, somatic and germline DNA sequencing are essential to make genome-guided treatment decisions in cancer patients. However, it can also uncover unsolicited findings (UFs) in germline DNA that could have a substantial impact on the lives of patients and their relatives. It is therefore critical to understand cancer patients' preferences concerning UFs derived from sequencing. Cancer patients may be particularly vulnerable (physical and emotional) at the moment they have to make decisions concerning NGS and possible unsolicited findings. Understanding what a cancer patient could experience during the process of disclosing unsolicited findings from NGS will help oncologists in daily practice to accompany patients in making informed decisions In one of our qualitative studies, four interrelated themes were recognized when cancer patients were asked about their preferences, intentions, and needs concerning the return of unsolicited findings generated during a NGS procedure: cancer patients' need to control their lives (theme 1), associated family dynamics (theme 2), and dealing with both the cognitive complexity (theme 3) and emotional complexity (theme 4) of receiving the findings. These insights with regard to the four themes contribute to a better understanding of what cancer patients consider important, and what motivates and influences them when they make decisions on the disclosure of unsolicited findings. This thesis also shows that education and counseling are vital to enable cancer patients to make informed decisions. Even for highly educated people, this topic is rather difficult to understand. Thus, to make an informed, autonomous decision with regard to the return of unsolicited findings, understandable, personalized and accessible information (written or digital) and educational material must be available to empower cancer patients and their family members. Our quantitative study showed that the vast majority of cancer patients desires to receive all UFs of genome testing, although a substantial minority does not wish to receive non-actionable findings. Importantly, the interest in learning about four different categories of UFs (actionable, non-actionable, reproductive significance, unknown significance) is equally high among curative and advanced-stage patients. However, there is also a substantial group of patients who do not want to be informed. Presenting categories of genetic test results was found to be a useful tool in enabling cancer patients to make a well-informed decision about receiving unsolicited findings from NGS A binning approach to UFs allows patients to accept actionable findings and at the same time to refuse non-actionable or uncertain findings. Binning helps a considerable minority of patients who do not wish to know everything. Especially women would benefit from differentiating between categories of UFs along these lines.


[1] The exchange of atmospheric plus oceanic mass between ocean basins is investigated using a global barotropic ocean model. We find two particular cases of exchange between two basins. At periods of 4–6 days, the exchange is between the Atlantic and Pacific basins, and represents a known oscillation forced by atmospheric pressure. This mode represents a failure of the inverse-barometer relationship due to the large scale and high frequency of atmospheric forcing, and the presence of continents. Significant exchange between Atlantic and Pacific also occurs at longer periods. The second case is most prominent at periods longer than 30 days (strongest at periods longer than 100 days), and represents a mass exchange between the Southern Ocean and the Pacific. The Southern Ocean part of this exchange is clearly related to the Southern Mode of fluctuations in Antarctic circumpolar transport, forced by Southern Ocean wind stress. The reason for the exchange being with the Pacific rather than other basins is explored, and is found to be related to the balance of wind stress by form stress in Drake Passage: exchange with the Atlantic and Indian oceans becomes dominant if Drake Passage topography is removed. While recognizing the limitations of a barotropic model, we contend that it is necessary to understand the barotropic adjustment process in order to make sense of longer timescale processes. Accordingly, we end with speculation on the possible importance of the barotropic results for global sea level and tropical dynamics.


The proposal of this essay is to discuss the challenges of representing in a formalist computational process the knowledge which the journalist uses to articulate news values for the purpose of selecting and imposing hierarchy on news. It discusses how to make bridges to emulate this knowledge obtained in an empirical form with the bases of computational science, in the area of storage, recovery and linked to data in a database, which must show the way human brains treat information obtained through their sensorial system. Systemizing and automating part of the journalistic process in a database contributes to eliminating distortions, faults and to applying, in an efficient manner, techniques for Data Mining and/or Texts which, by definition, permit the discovery of nontrivial relations.


For those concerned about climate change, the Trump administration's energy policy is alarming. It aims to unravel every corner of the Obama administration's climate legacy, consistent with an overall sweep of deregulation. Substantively, the Trump policy also departs starkly from the approach of the last decade, embracing traditional energy sources—fossil fuels and nuclear power—above all else. The Trump administration's moves on energy beg the question: What limits, if any, does this policy approach face? This chapter begins to answer that question. Employing the lens of arbitrary and capricious, or "hard look," review from administrative law, the chapter outlines principles that may constrain the Trump administration going forward—as well as areas where the administration has room to move.

Our contributions are threefold. First, we detail the pentagonal principles that define the Trump energy policy (yes, there is a policy). Second, we establish that this policy is highly political in nature, in that it both predates Trump's time in office and is connected to very specific projects and rules (even if that focus is short- rather than long-term). Third, we summarize the administration's efforts to date and then explain the ways in which hard look review is likely (or unlikely) to throw up barriers to those actions.


Duncan, R.P. (1989). An evaluation of errors in tree age estimates based on increment cores in kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides). New Zealand Natural Sciences 16: 31-37. Twelve kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) discs were used to assess the likely errors associated with estimating tree age from growth ring counts in increment cores. Two major sources of error were examined: (1) Failure of the increment core to pass through the tree's chronological centre. A geometric model is developed for estimating the distance to the chronological centre in cores where the arcs of the inner rings are visible. The mean percentage error from 84 cores that passed within 50 mm of the chronological centre was ± 35% corresponding to a mean absolute error of ± 21 years. The majority of this error is due to growth rate differences between the missing radius and the measured part of the core. (2) Missing rings. The average age underestimate from 48 cores due to missing rings was 13%. A significant correlation between radius length and age under estimate (r = 0.81) suggests that sampling along the longest radii will reduce this error. The average age underestimate due to missing rings from cores located along the longest radii of the twelve samples was 3%.


Positive law is two-dimensional: it has a justice (or ideal) dimension (and requisite) and a factual (or real) dimension (and requisite). Both are essential. Hence positive law lapses when either of the two is absent. In terms of the factual requisite, law remains in place as actual norms of law (unlike mere norm-formulations), provided that a minimum degree of effectiveness is maintained; that is to say, only as long as the subjects of the law consistently and voluntarily act in accordance with such norm/s, and provided further that deviant conduct is remedied by effective coercive measures. "Norm/s" that lose the factual dimension lapse into mere norm-formulations and no longer qualify as positive law. Thus viewed, a realistic grasp of the content of law is co-dependent on actual conduct, regardless of what the norm-formulations purport positive law to entail, because the norm-formulations may have lost track of the actual state of the law. Grasping the actual content of law, including constitutional law, therefore requires not only analysing the norm-formulations of the formally recognised sources of the law, but more specifically social and political observation which may reveal the following: (1) actual behaviour that closely corresponds with a legal norm-formulation, in which case the formulations reliably happen to reflect (and by implication to describe) the actual state of law; or (2) conduct that regularly deviates from the norm-formulations (usus) by the deviators who deem themselves legally bound to act as they are acting (opinio iuris), in which case new (substituting) law has in fact come into being, without such substituting law being reflected in a new (amended) norm-formulation; or (3) large-scale but inconsistent and irregular deviant conduct where the deviators do not consider themselves legally bound to act in the various deviant ways, combined with haphazard enforcement, thus allowing deviators to get away with their transgressions. Unlike the first scenario, the purported norm (law) as reflected in the norm-formulations is in part unsettled but unlike as in the second scenario, no new norm (law) has come into being. A legal lacuna opens up - that is, an area not regulated by existing legal norms. Viewed from the perspective of the factual dimension, law, including constitutional law, is much more susceptible to the volatility of unpredictable changes and instability than what the doctrine of the rule of law and constitutional supremacy purport it to be. The doctrine holds law (and the constitution) to be formulation driven, and therefore formal-static in nature, in that the law remains essentially static until the norm-formulations (the text) are amended in terms of the prescribed amendment procedures prescribed by the constitution. Consequently, the prevalent doctrine of the rule of law and constitutional supremacy fail to account for the factual dimension which causes it (the doctrine) to obscure the inner workings of the factual dimension of law, and therefore acts as a hindrance to understanding the nature and content of (positive) law, including the constitution.


This article describes and reflects on the processes of designing two devices, Timecard and Fenestra, that both aim to propose new ideas for creating technologies that support rituals of honoring deceased loved ones. The discussion provides insight into how their respective designs were crafted to provide a range of interactions and to interweave with domestic practices, artifacts, and spaces; the article also describes the projects' similar strategies to supporting relationships with the deceased. Reflections then are offered about the design of future technologies aimed at supporting the processes both of adapting to the loss of loved ones and of honoring their continued evolving place in the lives of the living after they are gone.


This article contains information about marketing to countries behind the Iron Curtain. Drawing on his international marketing research experience, the author indicates that many Western businessmen have tried to build trade relations with Eastbloc countries and have failed. Firms have offered merchandise they knew was needed in the Communist countries, but were unable to sell it despite its being of excellent quality, fairly priced, and adapted to the needs of these countries. The author explains why these firms were not able to sell their products and offers suggestions for successful selling to the East.


Holography allows for both the recording and reproduction of wavefields of light, and is thereby able to fully capture the three-dimensional structure of objects. The appearance of the object will change according to the position and orientation of the viewer, providing an immersive experience as if objects are actually present. Moreover, holograms have many applications in metrology such as microscopy and interferometry. Because holograms represent interference patterns, they possess significantly different signal properties from natural photography and video; this will make conventional image encoders perform sub-optimally on holograms. Therefore, new data compression techniques have to be evaluated for this type of data. One important requirement for comparing and evaluating various codecs is to have reference holograms which are publicly available. For this purpose, we have set up an open public database containing a set of computer-generated holograms. Furthermore, we evaluate the performances of two JPEG 2000-based coders, which were modified to better cope with holographic data.


In 2005 and 2007, two high profile crimes were reported in the New Zealand media. The first case involved the murder of a young Chinese student, Wan Biao, whose dismembered body was discovered in a suitcase. The second case involved domestic violence in which a Chinese man murdered his wife and fled the scene with their young daughter - who the press later dubbed 'Pumpkin' when she was found abandoned in Melbourne, Australia. The authors discuss how news and current affairs programmes decontextualise 'Asian' stories to portray a clear divide between the 'New Zealand' public and the separate 'Asian other'. Asians are portrayed as a homogenous group and the media fails to distinguish between Asians as victims of crimes as a separate category to Asians as perpetrators of crimes. This may have consequences for the New Zealand Asian communities and the wider New Zealand society as a whole.


Oxidative stress is caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) that may cause structural damage to biomolecules, DNA, lipids, carbohydrates and proteins, as well as other cellular components. Evidence indicates that oxidation products are also deleterious to biological systems. Spermatozoa are particularly susceptible the oxidative stress, mainly due to the reduced cytoplasm and the high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids in its membrane. The mechanisms by which sperm acquire antioxidant capacity are still not completely elucidated. The aim was to study the resistance of sperm derived from different epididymal compartments (caudae and head) to the different ROS and to the lipid peroxidation product malondialdehyde (MDA). Epididymal sperm samples from 4 testicles were collected from the head and caudae epididymides. Sperm samples were then incubated (1 h, 37°C) with 4 ROS inducer mechanisms: xanthine/xanthine oxidase (produces superoxide anion), hydrogen peroxide (4 mM), ascorbate and ferrous sulfate (4 mM; produces hydroxyl radical), and MDA. Samples were analyzed for 3-3′ diaminobenzidine stain, as an index of mitochondrial activity; the eosin nigrosin stain, as an index of membrane integrity; the simple stain (fast green/Bengal rose), as an index of acrosome integrity; and the measurement of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), an index of lipid peroxidation. Statistical analysis was performed using the SAS System for Windows (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA; least significant differences test and Pearson correlation). Results showed that immature sperm (head epididymides) were significantly more susceptible to the MDA and to the hydroxyl radical in all studied variables, especially acrosomes, membranes, and mitochondrial potential. Semen derived from the caudae epididymides was more susceptible to the hydrogen peroxide and to the MDA, especially regarding mitochondrial potential. In semen from the epididymal head, a positive correlation was found between TBARS and sperm showing no mitochondrial potential (r = 0.66, P = 0.01). On the other hand, negative correlations were found between TBARS and sperm with damaged acrosome and membrane (r = -0.63, P = 0.01 and r = -0.58, P = 0.02, respectively) in samples collected from the caudae epididymides. The present results suggest that sperm susceptibility to the attack of ROS is different throughout maturation. Although immature sperm are more susceptible to the hydroxyl radical, mature sperm are more susceptible to the hydrogen peroxide. Furthermore, MDA, a product of lipid peroxidation, is also deleterious to the sperm, indicating that once oxidative stress starts, further damage may be caused by their products. The authors thankNutricell for the media used in the experiment andFAPESP for financial support (process #06/05736-1).


Proladin, a hormone indispensable for milk secretion, has been shown to enhance the development and growth of mammary tumors in rodents; however, its importance in human breast cancer is uncertain. Serum prolactin levels are known to fluduate considerably under normal conditions, and lack of precision in the hormone measurements may have contributed to the largely negative findings in humans to date. The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability of prolactin measurements in women using stored serum from an ongoing prospedive study of breast cancer. Separate groups of postmenopausal and premenopausal women who donated multiple blood samples at approximately 1 -year intervals were studied. The reliability of a single log proladin determination, as measured by the intraclass correlation coefficient, was 0.76 for the postmenopausal women (95% confidence interval, 0.66-0.85) and 0.48 for the premenopausal women (95% confidence interval, 0.31-0.62). These findings suggest that a single measurement is sufficient to characterize the serum prolactin level of postmenopausal women for epidemiological research. For premenopausal women, however, multiple samples are desirable. Controlling for phase of the menstrual cycle does not appear to substantially improve the reliability of premenopausal measurements.


The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker appears to be a two-headed monster and a conceptual monstrosity. In Booker, dual 5-4 majorities issued dueling opinions in which the Supreme Court first held that the operation of the federal guidelines as mandatory sentencing rules violated the Sixth Amendment jury trial right, but then crafted a remedy that rendered the guidelines advisory and thus greatly enhanced the sentencing power of judges. Read independently, each majority opinion in Booker seems conceptually muddled; read together, the two Booker rulings seem almost conceptually nonsensical. Yet, viewed from a functional perspective, the Booker decision makes more conceptual sense than it may at first appear. Though a deeply fractured Supreme Court has not been able to work together to forge a clear sentencing jurisprudence, some sound sentencing concepts can be identified within both majority opinions in Booker. Booker comes into sharper conceptual focus when located within broader stories about sentencing reform and constitutional jurisprudence. Reflecting on sentencing history and recent reforms, this article suggests a simple idea that helps unlock the conceptual mystery presented by Booker: sentencing is a distinct enterprise in the criminal justice system - and thus should permit a distinct constitutional structure - if and only when sentencing decision-makers are exercising reasoned judgment. Building on this concept, this Article explains how the two parts of the Booker opinion can be conceptually harmonized around the idea that broad judicial power at sentencing can be justified if and only when judges are exercising reasoned judgment. In other words, Booker's conceptual core - what we might call the Tao of Booker - is best understood not in terms of vindicating the role of juries and the meaning of the Sixth Amendment's jury trial right, but rather in terms of vindicating the role of judges and the meaning of sentencing as a distinct criminal justice enterprise defined and defensible in terms of the exercise of reasoned judgment. Conceptualizing Booker as a decision vindicating the role of judges exercising reasoned judgment at sentencing has important implications for the Supreme Court's still developing Sixth Amendment jurisprudence and for how lower courts should approach federal guideline sentencing after Booker.


The United States is in the midst of a remark- able demographic transi- tion. Largely as a result of immigration, it is becom- ing increasingly diverse. At the same time, it is aging rapidly. These trends will dramatically transform the nation by the year 2030, when we will look, speak, and feel differently. The arrival of foreign individuals from across the globe is a crucial component of these changes. In the absence of dramatic and effective immigration reform, we can expect the United States to face continued immigration- legal and undocumented- for many decades. What does this mean for a nation that is also aging? What are the connections between demographic changes, continued immigration, and increased diversity? Heretofore, the fields of gerontology and geriatrics have generally ignored discussions of immigration and, with rare exceptions, have made few sustained intellectual and theoretical contributions to our understanding of the nexus of aging and immigration. Although immigra- tion reforms proposed in 2007 targeted older immigrants in calling for caps on the admission of aging parents, advocates for older adults were virtually silent in the debate. Issues of immi- gration are inherently visceral, complex, and divisive. Whether the issue is affirmative action, bilingual education, dri- ver's licenses for undocu- mented immigrants, or the sudden influx of young, non-English- speakers into rural com- munities of older, white, English-speaking residents, the debates are often emotional. With few exceptions, age-based advocacy groups and professional societies on aging have avoided becoming entangled in these divisive issues by sidestepping the opportunities for research and policy analysis on immigration. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the enormous literature on immigration has neglected aging, most likely because immigration scholars have understandably been preoccupied with the needs of working-age immigrants and their children. This issue of Generations proceeds on the assumption that demographic realities now require that the fields of gerontology and geriatrics, as well as individual practitioners, researchers, and policy analysts, delve into these twin phenomena to explore the intersection of aging and immigration. With growing numbers of older people living in communities with growing numbers of immigrants, it is imperative to begin the conversations that can lead to constructive programmatic interventions, proactive policy prescriptions, and a movement toward coalitions that are more intergenerational, interracial, and interethnic. Moving toward these lofty goals is not easy. Moving forward forces a more in-depth and determined investigation of the myriad and complex factors, myths and realities, associated with immigration, diversity, and race, as well as the robust array of aging-related issues and concerns. For those of us interested in aging, finding our feet in the immigration debate is complicated by the lack of consensus, not only in the general public, but among researchers. The empirical support on various points of debate is strong. For instance, immigrants assimilate in American society, not only becoming competent in English but often speaking no other language by the second or third generation. Yet, there exist enclaves of immigrants who can spend their entire lives in the U.S. speaking only their native language. The impact of immigrants on the wages of U.S.-born workers is still a matter of scholarly dispute, with data supporting both views. Sorting through conflicting claims, some strategically presented for political purposes, is a challenge. Thus, this issue of Generations mobilizes experts in the issues of immigration and aging to set the record straight on what is known. A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK As an introduction to what follows, we offer a conceptual framework to clarify how various elements of aging and immigration are linked. As Figure ? shows, we view the nexus of aging and immigration as posing a dynamic challenge to the U. …


Sr2CuWO6 is a double perovskite proposed to be at the border between two- and three-dimensional magnetism, with a square lattice of S = 1/2 Cu2+ ions. We have used inelastic neutron scattering to investigate the spin wave excitations of the system, to find out how they evolve as a function of temperature, as well as to obtain information about the magnetic exchange interactions. We observed well defined dispersive spin wave modes at 6 K, which partially survive above the magnetic ordering temperature T-N = 24 K. Linear spin wave theory is used to determine the exchange interactions revealing them to be highly two dimensional in nature. Density functional theory calculations are presented supporting this experimental finding, which is in contrast to a previous ab initio study of the magnetic interactions. Our analysis confirms that not the nearest neighbor, but the next nearest neighbor interactions in the tetragonal ab plane are the strongest. Low incident energy measurements reveal the opening of a 0.6(1) meV gap below T-N, which suggests the presence of a very weak single ion anisotropy term in the form of an easy axis along (a) over cap.


The report compiles the results from the TMU-project. The focus is on fire-fighting performance, capability and organization in underground constructions. The emphasis was on large-scale testing with authentic fire conditions and fire-fighting equipment, development of tools for prediction of hazardous conditions and capabilities of fire-fighting during different conditions, organizational management and tactics, education and development of recommendations. The project was divided into different work packages and these are presented in this final summary report. The test fires performed in the project created severe conditions for fire-fighters who moved in smoke for over 180 m before fighting fully developed fires in a range of 18 to 33 MW. The fires consisted of wood pallets placed in a semi-open steel container, simulating a train wagon fire. The walking speed and connection time for hoses and connections were registered and documented by infra-red cameras. The most important results from these tests is that the time taken to approach the fire depends on parameters as type of equipment, preparation, possibilities for use of infra-red (IR) cameras and the capacity of the extinguishing media. The heat radiation from the fire was found to be important to overcome in order to get close enough to fight the fire. Recommendations and tactics for fighting fires in underground constructions are given.


Accurate and simple to administer field methods that currently exist tend to underestimate values when used to determine percent body fat (%BF) in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). This group of people is more prone to obesity and cardiovascular disease (CVD) as well as other secondary conditions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of three methods of measuring body composition as compared to total body dualenergy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. These three methods included air displacement plethysmography (Bod Pod), hydrostatic weighing (HW) and seven site skinfold (SKF) measurement as recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Ten male college students, in the Department of Kinesiology and/or members of the collegiate wheelchair basketball team, participated in the study. Five of the participants were disabled athletes with SCI and five participants were physically active, non-disabled students who served as controls. Of the ten participants, six completed all four of the body composition measures. Both forced vital capacity (FVC), via a flow volume test, and residual volume (RV), via nitrogen washout, were obtained for use in estimating %BF as determined by underwater weighing. The %BF values obtained from the HW using the Siri and Brozek equations had the highest correlation to the DEXA (r=.916). The results of the %BF as measured by the Bod Pod also showed a high correlation (r=.867). Although the SKF method showed a high correlation with the DEXA, (r=.798), it is evident that, with more participants, this method would severely under-predict %BF in the disabled group. In addition, the predicted DEXA from HWSM had a significant relationship (DEXA = 1.342* HWSM -4.795, R 2 = .938, SEE = 3.108). These findings suggest that HW and Bod Pod are accurate methods of estimating %BF in both disabled and non-disabled individuals as compared to DEXA.


We used an iterative design process to develop a privacy label that presents to consumers the ways organizations collect, use, and share personal information. Many surveys have shown that consumers are concerned about online privacy, yet current mechanisms to present website privacy policies have not been successful. This research addresses the present gap in the communication and understanding of privacy policies, by creating an information design that improves the visual presentation and comprehensibility of privacy policies. Drawing from nutrition, warning, and energy labeling, as well as from the effort towards creating a standardized banking privacy notification, we present our process for constructing and refining a label tuned to privacy. This paper describes our design methodology; findings from two focus groups; and accuracy, timing, and likeability results from a laboratory study with 24 participants. Our study results demonstrate that compared to existing natural language privacy policies, the proposed privacy label allows participants to find information more quickly and accurately, and provides a more enjoyable information seeking experience.


Offline imitation learning (IL) is a powerful method to solve decision-making problems from expert demonstrations without reward labels. Existing offline IL methods suffer from severe performance degeneration under limited expert data. Including a learned dynamics model can potentially improve the state-action space coverage of expert data, however, it also faces challenging issues like model approximation/generalization errors and suboptimality of rollout data. In this paper, we propose the Discriminator-guided Model-based offline Imitation Learning (DMIL) framework, which introduces a discriminator to simultaneously distinguish the dynamics correctness and suboptimality of model rollout data against real expert demonstrations. DMIL adopts a novel cooperative-yet-adversarial learning strategy, which uses the discriminator to guide and couple the learning process of the policy and dynamics model, resulting in improved model performance and robustness. Our framework can also be extended to the case when demonstrations contain a large proportion of suboptimal data. Experimental results show that DMIL and its extension achieve superior performance and robustness compared to state-of-the-art offline IL methods under small datasets.


This paper describes an alignment-based model for interpreting natural language instructions in context. We approach instruction following as a search over plans, scoring sequences of actions conditioned on structured observations of text and the environment. By explicitly modeling both the low-level compositional structure of individual actions and the high-level structure of full plans, we are able to learn both grounded representations of sentence meaning and pragmatic constraints on interpretation. To demonstrate the model's flexibility, we apply it to a diverse set of benchmark tasks. On every task, we outperform strong task-specific baselines, and achieve several new state-of-the-art results.


The soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) produces insecticidal Cry toxins, which bind to a cadherin-family receptor expressed in the mid-gut epithelium of various insects, thereby triggering cell death. Zhang et al., who previously showed that cell death in response to Cry1AB involved a magnesium-dependent cytotoxic event, used cultured High Five cells (derived from cabbage looper ovarian cells) stably transfected with the BT-R1 receptor (S5 cells) to investigate the underlying mechanisms. Time-lapse microscopy revealed that S5 cells treated with Cry1AB first showed membrane blebbing and ruffling (within 20 minutes of toxin exposure) and then underwent cell swelling and lysis (within 40 minutes). Although 30 mM raffinose (used as an osmotic protectant) prevented cell swelling, it did not prevent cell death; magnesium chelation with EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) prevented blebbing, swelling, and cell death. Pharmacological analysis indicated that toxin-induced death did not depend on endocytosis, caspases, serine proteases, or cathepsin. Cry1AB stimulated a magnesium- and BT-R1-dependent increase in intracellular adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cAMP), and a cell-permeable inhibitor of Gαs reduced Cry1AB toxicity, as did 2′,5′-dideoxy-3′-ADP. Moreover, pharmacological inhibition of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) blocked Cry1AB-dependent morphological changes and cell death. Forskolin and the cAMP analog pCPT-cAMP both enhanced the toxic effects of Cry1AB, although neither was toxic when given alone. The authors conclude that Cry1AB binding to BT-R1 stimulates a cell death pathway that depends upon activation of a pathway involving adenylyl cyclase and PKA. X. Zhang, M. Candas, N. B. Griko, R. Taussig, L. A. Bulla Jr., A mechanism of cell death involving an adenylyl cyclase/PKA signaling pathway is induced by the Cry1Ab toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 9897-9902 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Modern military historians struggle to explain medieval strategic behaviour. One key reason, the article argues, is their strong belief in the existence of timeless strategic standards. By analysing the example of the 1415 Agincourt campaign, the article proposes a new approach to understanding late medieval strategy. By reconstructing the normative framework that underpinned strategic practice, the critical importance emerges of an unusual set of conventions which regulated strategy and which allowed for a degree of risk-taking that the traditional and current historiography cannot otherwise explain.


The question raised in the title is an important one to the microfinance sector, especially since the Microcredit Summit held in Washington, DC, in 1997. In order to gain more transparency on the depth of poverty outreach, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) supported research at IFPRI during 1999 and 2000 to design and test a simple, low-cost operational tool to measure the poverty level of MFI clients relative to nonclients. This policy brief informs about the results from recent case studies on the poverty outreach of four selected microfinance institutions. The case studies were conducted for four MFIs world-wide: MFI A (Central America), MFI B (East Africa), MFI C (Southern Africa), and MFI D (South Asia).


We propose a novel digital signal processing (DSP) algorithm for photodiode characterization probed by three wavelengths. The DSP algorithm has low computational complexity. The required number of measurements increases logarithmically with the number of spectral points. For the first time to our knowledge, the phase response of photodiode is characterized up to 20 GHz.


Mountain forests are subject to high rates of physical erosion which can export particulate nitrogen from ecosystems. However, the impact of geomorphic processes on nitrogen budgets remains poorly constrained. We have used the elemental and isotopic composition of soil and plant organic matter to investigate nitrogen cycling in the mountain forest of Taiwan, from 24 sites with distinct geomorphic (topographic slope) and climatic (precipitation, temperature) characteristics. The organic carbon to nitrogen ratio of soil organic matter decreased with soil 14C age, providing constraint on average rates of nitrogen loss using a mass balance model. Model predictions suggest that present day estimates of nitrogen deposition exceed contemporary and historic nitrogen losses. We found ∼ 6 ‰ variability in the stable isotopic composition ( δ15N) of soil and plants which was not related to soil14C age or climatic conditions. Instead, δ15N was significantly, negatively correlated with topographic slope. Using the mass balance model, we demonstrate that the correlation can be explained by an increase in nitrogen loss by non-fractioning pathways on steeper slopes, where physical erosion most effectively removes particulate nitrogen. Published data from forests on steep slopes are consistent with the correlation. Based on our dataset and these observations, we hypothesise that variable physical erosion rates can significantly influence soilδ15N, and suggest particulate nitrogen export is a major, yet underappreciated, loss term in the nitrogen budget of mountain forests.


Rapidly changing and unpredictable internal and external environments effecting successful business activities are progressively influenced by satisfaction of needs and expectations of workers and security of cooperation between business companies and workers, harmony, and coordination of interest. One of the main factors motivating workers is material remuneration corresponding to their needs and expectations. On that basis, the  objective of  the paper is to evaluate the gap between the desired remuneration satisfying the needs and expectations of workers (considered as fair by workers) and the currently received remuneration in business companies. It would be expedient for business companies to involve employees in the process of formation of the system of remuneration for work, create possibilities for them to express their opinion about the needs and expectations that should be reflected in the elements of wage.


ABSTRACT In this paper we analyse if specific R&D cooperation partners are related to an increase in the probability of innovation failures in terms discontinuing innovation projects. We distinguish between seven different R&D cooperation partner types, and we discriminate between product innovation failures and process innovation failures. Using German Community Innovation Survey data we find that, firstly, each type of R&D cooperation partner has a different effect on innovation failures. Secondly, we show that product innovation failures and process innovation failures are not affected in equal measure by the same type of R&D cooperation partner. Our results suggest that while R&D cooperation with public research institutes is significantly and negatively related to the probability to cancel a process innovation project, the coefficient is positive but insignificant for product innovation failures. Firms conducting partnerships with suppliers, however, run the risk of both product and process innovation failures. In turn, cooperation with competitors is positively correlated only to process innovation failures.