Japan's attempt to project to the world an image of solid middle-class national identity is challenged by the Burakumin, an outcaste group of indigenous Japanese citizens who have been subjugated for centuries to political, economic, and religious discrimination. In the 1960s the efforts of this group and its supporters led to a 40-year national program of economic aid and educational programs designed to move these people out of poverty and increase life options. These programs, recently terminated, have left the Burakumin and other marginalized groups uncertain of their future. Based on ten years of ethnographic inquiry, Gordon's book explores the views of educators and activists caught in this period of transition after having their lives and careers shaped by the political demands of a liberation movement dedicated to achieving educational equity for the Burakumin and their disadvantaged neighbors. Gordon provides the context of the efforts to achieve the human rights of the Burakumin and the complexity of their identity in a Japanese society struggling with economic and demographic globalization.


Abstract: How do professional men experience alcohol?

It is the intention in this thesis to explore professional men's experiences of alcohol. Twelve professional men aged between forty and fifty who drink at a minimum of one occasion per week were interviewed. Their narratives were then analysed qualitatively using the Grounded Theory approach from a social constructionist perspective.

Six categories emerged from the data including the Core Category: Learning to Maintain the Equilibrium: Experiencing Alcohol through a Process of Maturation. Maintaining the Equilibrium represents the balance between the positive and negative attributes of alcohol, where the individual weighs up the costs and benefits of drinking in the light of experience. Implicit within the core category is the concept of the Tipping Point. Professional men recognise this as representing the significant point where the benefits of alcohol tip over into the costs. Learning is the process that continues throughout the lifespan, and achieving this balance is realised through a process of Maturation. Maturation refers to the process of growing older at the same time as gaining knowledge, insight and wisdom from experience. This core category incorporates the other significant categories. These are as follows: Learning: this represents the on-going process by which individuals learn about alcohol through the early experiences of the family, teenage drinking, past and present drinking occasions; Appraising captures the cognitive processes that individuals employ to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of drinking; Balancing highlights the decision-making process where participants weigh up the costs and benefits of drinking; Regulating encapsulates participants' strategies and personal rules which they employ to regulate their alcohol use; and finally Personal Attributes examines the internal and external assets that individuals possess which both motivate and enable professional men to moderate their drinking.

The current literature on alcohol studies is primarily focussed on problem-drinking and gives little insight into normative drinking. Accordingly, it fails to provide a detailed understanding of professional men's experiences of alcohol and the reinforcing mechanisms which enable professional men to moderate their alcohol use. Therefore, this in-depth qualitative study aims to redress this imbalance.

The findings of this study are discussed in terms of the existing theories on alcohol use and misuse, and can be been to expand on the current research literature on alcohol
and the modifying variables which impact on drinking behaviour.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Internet offers consumers and businesses a global marketplace. But unscrupulous individuals also recognize the potentials of cyberspace. The same scams and frauds that have been conducted by mail and phone can now be found on the World Wide Web and in email, and these cyber scams are growing. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between reputable online sellers and criminals who use the Internet to rob people. One of the most infamous scam is the "Nigerian letter. " Nigerian scam letters or 419s appear in email boxes all over the world. They offer opportunity, adventure, travel, and an abundance of wealth. If you receive an unsolicited email seeking your assistance, for which you will receive a large sum of money, don't believe it. This is almost certainly a version of the Nigerian or 419 scam. You can protect yourself by learning how to recognize the danger signs of such scams. Keywords: Fraud, Nigerian Scam, 419 scam, Internet Fraud, Internet Crime INTRODUCTION The internet permeates our lives in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago. It is now intrinsic to social and commercial interactions and the provision of information in ever expanding areas such as education and business. Unfortunately, the Internet is not free from scams and frauds. Some of the scams and frauds are specifically designed to take advantage of the types of interactions occurring on the Internet (Barron, 2006). Most people with e-mail accounts have seen the messages in their inbox. The subject line reads, "Urgent Business Request," and in the body of the message a seemingly desperate person asks the recipient to help transfer money out of their country and into the U.S. The message, in broken English, is sprinkled with words like "Top secret," "trapped funds," "utterly confidential," and promises a cut of the funds in return. Most people who get these emails know it's a common scam referred to as the "Nigerian e-mail scam," "419 scam." or "Advance Fee Fraud," But others are still falling for the old trick, and it's costing them hundreds and even thousands of dollars. The number of individuals falling for the scam in the U.S. is steadily increasing, with over 55,400 lodging complaints in 2005 or at least receiving an e-mail that appeared to be a scam, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That's almost three times the amount received in 2002, which was just over 21,600 (Carothers, 2006). The year 2005 marked the first time that wire transfers were a predominant way scammers collected money. In 2005 consumers lost $14 million to Internet scams, up from almost $6 million in 2004, according to the National Fraud Information Center (Holmes, 2006). Internet scams have been around since the Internet's creation. But as the information superhighway grows and becomes more complex, so do online scams. NIGERIAN FRAUD SCAM: BACKGROUND In 1588, various Englishmen were persuaded that a wealthy fellow countrymen had been imprisoned by Phillip II of Spain (Zuckoff, 2005). The investor that paid the prisoner's ransom would be amply rewarded financially, as well as getting the prisoner's beautiful and concerned young daughter in marriage. Individuals who accepted the offer paid for one failed rescue attempt after another, with the fictitious prisoner continuing to languish in his non-existent dungeon, always just one more bribe away from being released. This became know as the Spanish Prisoner Scam and is one of the earlier versions of the Nigerian fraud scams. In fact the Spanish Prisoner Scam was the basis of a 1997 movie title "The Spanish Prisoner," written and directed by David Mamet and it tells the story of the elaborate fraud (Mamet, 1999). Nigerian fraud scams (aka "419 scams" after the Nigerian penal code address that addresses this kind of fraud) have been around since the 1970s when money was swindled the old-fashioned way, and con artists had to lick stamps and send letters. …


The relative fitness rule states that parasitoid females should adopt risk-prone reproductive behaviours when expecting low reproductive success. Temperature influences the reproductive success of insects by affecting their basal metabolic rate during development, their egg load at emergence, and their life expectancy as adults. Using an aphid–parasitoid model system, we investigated the influence of developmental and adult temperature on the risk-sensitive decision-making of females. We considered the use of a low-quality host nymphal instar by the aphid parasitoid Aphidius ervi to be a risk-prone behaviour. Immature females were reared at 12, 20 or 28 °C and had access to the four nymphal instars of the potato aphid Macrosiphum euphorbiae for oviposition at one of these temperatures. Host selection behaviour was continuously recorded during exploitation of an aphid patch. We observed that warm-developed females and parasitoids foraging at high temperature attacked low-quality hosts more frequently than females from other treatments. These results support the hypothesis that a decrease in expected parasitoid reproductive success resulted in risk-prone behaviours. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence suggesting that temperature influences host stage selection and risk-sensitive making decision in parasitoids, and the present study is the first to support the relative fitness rule. © 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, ●●, ●●–●●.


Scottish Life and Society: Oral Literature and Performance Culture. A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, vol. 10. Edited by John Beech, Owen Hand, Mark A. MulheiTi, and Jeremy Weston. (Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd., in association with the European Ethnological Research Centre, 2007. Pp. xxii + 616, foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, tables, musical notation, chapter notes, chapter bibliographies, list of abbreviations, glossary, index. $90.00 cloth.)Series editor Alexander Fen ton describes this tenth in the fourteen-volume Compendium of Scottish Ethnology as "a presentation of the research that has been carried out thus far on oral, music, and performance traditions, which can serve as a basis for future work" (xvi). The thirty-two articles attest to the breadth of the multiple, often interweaving strands of traditional performance in Scotland, as well as its linguistic, regional, and social diversity. For the most part, the survey-of-scholarship goal is well met. Recognition of immigrants as contributors to die mix is lacking, however, and directions for "future work" are less clearly developed. A further goal, to "place the object of those studies in a wide Scottish, British, and European context" (3), is only partially achieved, although the Centre's perspective of grounding tradition in history as a necessity for analyzing the present is clearly evident. Most authors approach their reviews of ethnographic research chronologically and discuss the impact of nineteenthcentury economic and societal changes on oral culture. The deep and wide levels of literacy in Scotland are also noted, the interplay of orality and literacy understood as forming the warp and weft of traditions.Part One, Narrative and Verse, begins with a masterful chapter by Fiona MacDonald - an extended bibliographic essay on Lowland and Gaelic narrative collection in the nineteenth century, past trends in folktale research and theory, and twentieth-century collection. John Shaw's chapter on the context and function of storytellers in Scotland draws on the ethnological perspective suggested by Ruth Finnegan (1977) and Hammersley and Atkinson (2007 [1983]). Three short surveys describe narrative in the Northern Isles, among Travellers, and overseas, separating these smaller or more distinctive traditions from the mainstream. Gaelic traditions are the subject of three fine chapters: John Macinnes examines hero tale and panegyric; Donald Meek surveys verse of the township, clearances, emigration, and the evangelical revival; and a short survey of modern legends identifies contemporary narratives that resonate with similar forms in Europe and the United States. The historical perspective returns with Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart's "The Uses of Historical Traditions in Modern Gaelic." Another short chapter surveys storytelling and international folklore, covering some of the same ground as previous chapters but adding a new focus on women's role in tale traditions. One might wish that author Barbara Hillers had devoted her entire chapter to this topic. The section ends with a fine bibliographic essay by Fionnuala ('arson Williams on the scholarship and theoretical approaches of proverb study. …


The study examined resource productivity analysis of small scale root and tuber crop farmers in Niger State, Nigeria. Data used for the study were obtained from primary source using a multi-stage sampling technique with structured questionnaires administered to 150 randomly selected root and tuber crop farmers from the study area. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviations, frequency distribution table and percentages were used to summarize the variables used in the analysis while data envelopment analysis was used to empirically determine the resource productivity in the study area. The DEA result on the overall technical efficiency of the farmers showed that 6% of the sampled root and tuber crop farmers in the study area were operating at frontier and optimum level of production with mean technical efficiency of 1.00. Decomposition of technical efficiency also showed mean efficiency scores of 0.25 and 0.32 for overall technical efficiency and scale efficiency respectively meaning that, on average, the sampled farms were more scale efficient than they are technically efficient. The study further revealed that most of the farms could reduce total expenditures on the farm land, labour, planting material, agrochemical, fertilizer and capital inputs by 8.17%, 5.17%, 29.53%, 23.71%, 0.09% and 10.08%, respectively without reducing their current level of production. The study therefore recommended that root and tuber crop farmers in the study area should form cooperative societies so as to enable them have access to productive inputs that will enable them expand. This will as well increase efficiency of resource utilization. Also, since few farms were robustly efficient, the farmers in the study area, enhanced research, extension delivery and farm advisory services should be put in place for farmers to learn the best farm practices carried out on the robustly efficient farms. This will go a long way to increase the efficiency level of the farmers in the study area.


A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) optical microphone that measures the interference of light resulting from its passage through a diffraction grating and reflection from a vibrating diaphragm is described ( JASA, v. 122, no. 4, 2007). In the present embodiment, both the diffractive optical element and the sensing diaphragm are micromachined on silicon. Additional system components include a semiconductor laser, photodiodes, and required readout electronics. Advantages of this optical detection technique have been demonstrated with both omnidirectional microphones and biologically inspired directional microphones. In efforts to commercialize this technology for hearing aids and other applications, a goal has been set to achieve a microphone contained in a small surface-mount package (occupying 2 × 2 mm × 1 mm volume), with ultralow noise (20 dBA) and a broad frequency response (20 Hz-20 kHz). Such a microphone would be consistent in size with the smallest MEMS microphones available today but would have noise performance characteristics of professional-audio microphones significantly larger in size and more expensive to produce. This paper will present several unique challenges in our effort to develop the first surface-mount packaged optical MEMS microphone. The package must accommodate both optical and acoustical design considerations. Dynamic models used for simulating frequency response and noise spectra of fully packaged microphones are presented and compared with measurements performed on prototypes.


Recently, the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Mato Grasso du Sol have implemented race-conscious affirmative action programs in higher education. These states have established admissions quotas in public universities for Afro-Brazilians or afrodescendentes. As a result, determining "who is Black" has become a complex yet important undertaking in Brazil. Contrary to many scholars' advancements race in Brazil is skin color or physical appearance, whereas in the United States race is based on ancestry, this Article advances the notion that in both American countries one's physical appearance is the primary determinant of Blackness. Furthermore, when U.S. courts have been charged with determining Blackness, racial constructs based on physical appearance - not the rule of hypodescent -- have steered their legal pronouncement of race. This Article first offers a necessary survey of African slavery in Brazil and the United States. This Article demonstrates that despite the contrasts in demography, slave law, and ensuing racial ideology - "racial democracy" in Brazil and "racial purity" in the United States - the enslavement and subordination of Africans and their descendants spawned a common racial hierarchy and assembly of phenotypes designating Blackness and whiteness. Moreover, this Article surveys historical and contemporary racial determination cases which demonstrate the salience of physical appearance in determining race in the United States and debunks the notion that the hypodescent rule is applied to determine "Blackness". These cases additionally illuminate the paradoxical nature of race - specifically Blackness and whiteness - in the Americas; race is contextual, subjective, and malleable yet simultaneously fixed, as physical constructs of Blackness and whiteness have transcended geography, time, ideology, and demography. Ultimately, this exploration of racial determination cases imparts insight and guidance to Brazilian arbiters currently determining who is Afro-Brazilian for affirmative action purposes.


WILLIAM BUSKIST and CAROLINE BURKE Preparing for Graduate Study in Psychology: 101 Questions and Answers Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 120 pages (ISBN: 9781405140522, $19.95 Paperback) Reviewed by STAN FLORESCO In their book, Drs. Buskist and Burke lay out a wellorganized and systematic series of commonly asked questions and answers regarding how undergraduate students should prepare for applying to and succeeding in graduate school in psychology. The book is broken down into a number of chapters organized in a chronological manner, starting with the fundamentals of what graduate school is like and how to choose a specific program. It then proceeds to more specific pieces of information, including the GRE, details on the application and interview process, and finishes with a timeframe on how to organize one's first year of graduate studies. Each of these chapters is formatted as a series of key questions, followed by detailed answers related to the overall theme of the section. Also included in this edition are very useful appendices that include a glossary of terms, a sample vitae, and letters of intent. This was an extremely easy book to read, and I am confident that it would be an invaluable tool for the aspiring graduate student. I would certainly recommend it to any student who asked me about graduate school and the application process. Indeed, some of the information would also benefit junior faculty mentors looking to take on graduate students for the first time, as it gives examples of important questions that one might ask a potential student. A key strength of this work is that it details to the potential student the differences between undergraduate and graduate studies. Many undergraduates are overwhelmed by the radical changes that take place in graduate school life, but the information provided in this book would make the transition between undergraduate and graduate programs much smoother. It places a heavy emphasis on the student being well rounded, highlighting that extracurricular research experience may play an equally important, if not more important, role in getting accepted into a program, compared to GPA and GRE scores. Also included are helpful tidbits such as how much it costs to apply to graduate schools, what kinds of questions to ask during the interview, and what to do if one does not get accepted into the program of his or her choosing. The last chapter, entided "The First Year: Thriving, Surviving and Other Essentials," tackles issues related to how to decide on a graduate mentor, when to choose a thesis committee, switching programs during graduate school, and most intriguingly, how to not "wash out" of the program. This chapter alone would be a useful reference for any mentor to give to an incoming first-year graduate student. Probably the single most useful aspect of the book is in the Appendix, which describes in detail what a student should be doing to maximize the chances of getting into a graduate program in psychology, starting from the first year through to his or her senior year of studies. …


In response to increasing mobility and migration in Europe, the European Directive 2010/64/EU on strengthening the rights to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings has highlighted the importance of quality in legal translation and interpreting. At the same time, the economic situation is putting pressure on public services and translation/interpreting service providers alike, jeopardizing quality standards and fair access to justice. With regard to interpreting, the use of videoconference technology is now being widely considered as a potential solution for gaining cost-effective and timely access to qualified legal interpreters. However, this gives rise to many questions, including: how technological mediation through videoconferencing affects the quality of interpreting; how this is related to the actual videoconference setting and the distribution of participants; and ultimately whether the different forms of video-mediated interpreting are sufficiently reliable for legal communication. It is against this backdrop that the AVIDICUS Project (2008-11), co-funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General Justice, set out to research the quality and viability of video-mediated interpreting in criminal proceedings. This volume, which is based on the final AVIDICUS Symposium in 2011, presents a cross-section of the findings from AVIDICUS and complementary research initiatives, as well as recommendations for judicial services, legal practitioners and police officers, and legal interpreters.


Abstract. Spirurid nematodes (family Physalopteridae) are widespread as adults or as encysted larvae in many species of Australian reptiles. Fifteen species of physalopterine nematodes (subfamily Physalopterinae) in the genera Kreisiella, Abbreviata and Skrjabinoptera infect more than 40 species of reptile in the five families Agamidae, Varanidae, Gekkonidae, Scincidae and Elapidae. Four species of nematode are host-species specific, six are host-family specific to varanid lizards, and three to agamid lizards. Larger species of reptile support a higher prevalence and abundance of nematodes, and often support multiple infections with more than one species, with the potential for interspecific competition. Geographic distribution of nematodes is partially limited by host distribution, and by climatic factors, mainly precipitation and temperature. There are strong positive and negative associations between several pairs of nematodes. Two species of nematode with the most pronounced muscular development at the anterior end, Abbreviata tumidocapitis and Abbreviata glebopalmae, only occur concurrently, and in low numbers, with species of nematode without these morphological features, suggesting differences in feeding in the hosts' stomachs. A combination of host specificity, geographic distribution and habitat, climatic factors and feeding organ morphology are factors that probably reduce the potential for interspecific competition. There is no evidence that concurrent infections affect either prevalence or abundance of nematodes, or cause discernible pathological changes to their hosts.


We propose a quality-of-service (QoS) driven power and rate adaptation scheme for multichannel communications systems over wireless links. In particular, we use multichannel communications to model the conceptual architectures for either diversity or multiplexing systems, which play a fundamental role in physical-layer evolutions of mobile wireless networks. By integrating information theory with the concept of effective capacity, our proposed scheme aims at maximizing the multichannel-systems throughput subject to a given delay-QoS constraint. Under the framework of convex optimization, we develop the optimal adaptation algorithms. Our analyses show that when the QoS constraint becomes loose, the optimal power-control policy converges to the well-known water-filling scheme, where the Shannon (or ergodic) capacity can be achieved. On the other hand, when the QoS constraint gets stringent, the optimal policy converges to the scheme operating at a constant-rate (i.e., the zero-outage capacity), which, by using only a limited number of subchannels, approaches the Shannon capacity. This observation implies that the optimal effective capacity function decreases from the ergodic capacity to the zero-outage capacity as the QoS constraint becomes more stringent. Furthermore, unlike the single-channel communications, which have to trade off the throughput for QoS provisioning, the multichannel communications can achieve both high throughput and stringent QoS at the same.


REA's Essentials provide quick and easy access to critical information in a variety of different fields, ranging from the most basic to the most advanced. As its name implies, these concise, comprehensive study guides summarize the essentials of the field covered. Essentials are helpful when preparing for exams, doing homework and will remain a lasting reference source for students, teachers, and professionals. Chemistry includes stoichiometry, atomic structure and the periodic table, bonding, chemical formulas, chemical reactions, gases, liquids, solids, phase changes, solutions, acids and bases, chemical equilibrium, acid-base equilibrium in aqueous solutions, chemical thermodynamics, and oxidation and reduction.


Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) involves the farming of species from different trophic positions or nutritional levels in the same system. In China, IMTA has been prac- ticed for many decades, with dozens of species farmed in close proximity to each other at the scale of whole coastal bays. Articles in this Theme Section present results from the MoST-China Project on 'Sustainability of Marine Ecosystem Production under Multi-stressors and Adaptive Manage- ment' (2011�2015). This project sought to understand the interactions between biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem function in the IMTA system of Sanggou Bay, China, which produces a total of >240 000 t of seafood each year from >30 species in approximately 100 km 2 of production space. Results include measurements of carbon, nitrogen flow and trophic relationships among cultured species; impacts of IMTA on benthic nutrient fluxes, reduced inorganic sulfur in sediments, distri- bution of dissolved inorganic selenium, and nutrient cycling; distribution and seasonal variation of picoplankton; and a model for kelp growth. Combined, the articles enable a complex understand- ing of the dynamics between IMTA and the environment in one of the most important coastal aquaculture production systems in the world.


In recent years, research in telemanipulation has been concerned primarily with problems related to the control of teleoperators and their man-machine aspects. As the need for extensive teleoperation for the deployment and maintenance of space systems increases, research needs to focus on techniques to improve operator performance and reduce operator fatigue during telemanipulation. This paper describes the development of an approach to teleoperation task supervision that can be used in advanced man-machine interfaces to monitor teleoperation performance and to help operators with task-level feedback. A Segmentation Program has been designed to identify teleoperation task phases, independently of variations in working conditions and in phase duration and sensor values. The program uses neural networks to segment the force data of a peg-in-hole task into the task phase sequence. The network connections were trained with an off-line Hidden Markov Model of the peg-in-hole task providing specific transition times and task phase sequences. Two network architectures have been tested during simulation with real teleoperation data: the first is based on turning temporal sequences into spatial patterns; the second extends the first model by including network output in the input array. We found that the first architecture needed a higher number of iterations to learn the associations, while the latter had a higher convergency speed and recognition rate. The architecture with the best performance was used in the realtime implementation of the segmentation program on a teleoperation system. In experiments of peg-in-hole tasks, the network had a lower recognition rate than in simulation, but it showed unexpected generalization capabilities by correctly segmenting tasks whose phase sequence was significantly different from those sequences in the training data.


We present colour–colour diagrams of detected sources in the Herschel-ATLAS science demonstration field from 100 to 500 μm using both PACS and SPIRE. We fit isothermal modified black bodies to the spectral energy distribution (SED) to extract the dust temperature of sources with counterparts in Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) or SDSS surveys with either a spectroscopic or a photometric redshift. For a subsample of 330 sources detected in at least three FIR bands with a significance greater than 3σ, we find an average dust temperature of (28 ± 8) K. For sources with no known redshift, we populate the colour–colour diagram with a large number of SEDs generated with a broad range of dust temperatures and emissivity parameters, and compare to colours of observed sources to establish the redshift distribution of this sample. For another subsample of 1686 sources with fluxes above 35 mJy at 350 μm and detected at 250 and 500 μm with a significance greater than 3σ, we find an average redshift of 2.2 ± 0.6.


The goal of this paper is to reduce the decoding complexity of space-time block turbo-coded system with low performance degradation. Two block turbo-coded systems with antenna diversity are considered. These include the simple serial concatenation of error control code with space-time block code, and the recently proposed transmit antenna diversity scheme using forward error correction techniques. It is shown that the former performs better when compared to the latter in terms of bit error rate (BER) under the same spectral efficiency (up to 7 dB at the BER of for quasistatic channel with two transmit and two receive antennas). For the former system, a computationally efficient decoding approach is proposed for the soft decoding of space-time block code. Compared to its original maximum likelihood decoding algorithm, it can reduce the computation by up to 70% without any performance degradation. Additionally, for the considered outer code block turbo code, through reduction of test patterns scanned in the Chase algorithm and the alternative computation of its extrinsic information during iterative decoding, extra 0.3 dB to 0.4 dB coding gain is obtained if compared with previous approaches with negligible hardware overhead. The overall decoding complexity is approximately ten times less than that of the near-optimum block turbo decoder with coding gain loss of 0.5 dB at the BER of over AWGN channel.


Drosophila senses diverse kinds of olfactory stimuli in the external environment. These stimuli are often not pure chemicals, but rather mixtures of many odorants. The fly olfactory system, however, needs to extract the requisite information from this complex stimulus. This is done by converting odor representations into meaningful, discrete categories in the perceptual space. The first olfactory relay system in the Drosophila brain is the antennal lobe (AL) which consists of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), projection neurons (PNs) and local interneurons (LNs), and these three populations of neurons interact and process the odor stimuli. To observe any transformations of odor representations in terms of odor classification, linearly varying odor stimuli were presented. This was achieved using binary mixtures such that one odor was "morphed" into another. Three binary mixtures were made from combinations of three distinct odorants ,i.e., 4-methylcyclohexanol (MCH), 3-Octanol (3-Oct) and Pentyl acetate (PA). In the first step, I determined and confirmed that each single odor-evoked distinct odor representations across its different concentrations in the AL, especially in the OSNs. A second requirement was to determine the degree of similarity between the three odors in both OSNs and PNs. From their odor representations, it was found that PA was more similar to 3-Oct compared to MCH in OSNs. Moreover, the similarity between PA and 3-Oct became even stronger in PNs. After determining the prerequisites of using PA, 3-Oct and MCH for binary mixtures, odor-evoked Ca2+ activity patterns for the three different types of binary mixtures were determined in both OSNs and PNs. Each binary odor mixture showed a different kind of odor classification. The MCH/3-Oct binary mixtures showed no odor classification in OSNs, but in PNs two distinct categories were observed. However, the same could not be found in either of the other two odor mixtures. For MCH/PA binary mixtures, no odor classification was found in OSNs. But in PNs, all mixtures having greater than 0% PA got categorized and distinctly separated from the 100% MCH-0% PA. This was referred to as odor dominance of PA. The last odor mixture was of the similar odor pair, 3-Oct/PA, in which all the intermediate mixtures formed one cluster in both OSNs and PNs. This was due to the high degree of similarity already present between the individual odors in OSNs and PNs. The glomeruli in the AL are interconnected by a population of GABAergic LNs and they are known from previous studies to be involved in odor processing. GABA binds to two kinds of receptors: GABAA and GABAB. GABAA receptors are known to be involved in the early phase of the odor processing and they can be pharmacologically blocked by picrotoxin. Therefore, fly brains were subjected to picrotoxin solution and its effects were observed on the three types of odor classification found with the combination of the selected odors. GABAergic inhibition mediated via GABAA receptors was found to be required for the odor classification of binary mixtures of MCH/3-Oct. However, no changes were found due to picrotoxin on MCH/PA and 3-Oct/PA binary mixtures. In conclusion, different kinds of odor classification could be observed for different odors in the AL of the fly. GABAergic inhibition has been found to play a role in mediating odor classification of different stimuli. However, not every odor classification requires GABAergic inhibition, as was observed in the case of MCH/PA binary mixtures, thereby also suggesting an existence of other possible mechanisms for odor classification.


Starting with the assumption that under certain conditions also mandatory solutions for access to privately held data can be necessary, this paper analyses the legal and regulatory instruments for the implementation of such data access solutions. After an analysis of advantages and problems of horizontal versus sectoral access solutions, the main thesis of this paper is that focusing only on data access solutions is often not enough for achieving the desired positive effects on competition and innovation. An analysis of the two examples access to bank account data (PSD2: Second Payment Service Directive) and access to data of the connected car shows that successful data access solutions might require an entire package of additional complementary regulatory solutions (e.g. regarding interoperability, standardisation, and safety and security), and therefore the analysis and regulatory design of entire data governance systems (based upon an economic market failure analysis). In the last part important instruments that can be used within data governance systems are discussed, like, e.g. data trustee solutions.


Background: Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a chronic, rare and sometimes lethal parasitic infection in humans, caused by the larval stage of the fox tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis. This study aimed to investigate the clinical aspects and treatment outcomes of patients with alveolar hydatid disease. Methods: The medical records of patients with alveolar echinococcosis admitted between 1997 and 2012 were reviewed. Diagnosis was confirmed by physical examination, ultrasonography and CT scanning and MRI. Various treatment techniques were used such as complete liver resection in seven (38.89%) patients, biliary bypass in two (11.11%) patients, laparotomy and tumor biopsy in eight (44.44%) patients and long term medical treatment in one (5.56%) patient. After discharge, all patients were followed to determine the effect of treatment, complications, recurrences and survival. Results: A total of 18 patients with mean age of 46.11±15.14 years (range 23-74 years) were studied. The disease was more prevalent in women than men (78.9% vs 4, 21.1%, P=0.021). Fourteen (77.78%) patients live in Chenaran, a town located in Khorasan, Iran). Death occurred in (22.22%) patients after an average period of 45.70±7.50 months after disease onset. 14 remaining patients survived after a mean follow-up duration of 54.60±29.17 months. Conclusion: Diagnosis of alveolar echinococcosis should be considered in endemic area. Early diagnosis and treatment is associated with excellent outcome.


Binary embedding is a nonlinear dimension reduction methodology where high dimensional data are embedded into the Hamming cube while preserving the structure of the original space. Specifically, for an arbitrary N distinct points in S, our goal is to encode each point using mdimensional binary strings such that we can reconstruct their geodesic distance up to δ uniform distortion. Existing binary embedding algorithms either lack theoretical guarantees or suffer from running time O ( mp ) . We make three contributions: (1) we establish a lower bound that shows any binary embedding oblivious to the set of points requires m = Ω( 1 δ logN) bits and a similar lower bound for non-oblivious embeddings into Hamming distance; (2) we propose a novel fast binary embedding algorithm with provably optimal bit complexity m = O ( 1 δ logN ) and near linear running time O(p log p) whenever logN ≪ δ√p, with a slightly worse running time for larger logN ; (3) we also provide an analytic result about embedding a general set of points K ⊆ S with even infinite size. Our theoretical findings are supported through experiments on both synthetic and real data sets.


The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad 1991) is a self-report measure of individual differences in human mating strategies. Low SOI scores signify that a person is sociosexually restricted, or follows a more monogamous mating strategy. High SOI scores indicate that an individual is unrestricted, or has a more promiscuous mating strategy. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), the SOI was translated from English into 25 additional languages and administered to a total sample of 14,059 people across 48 nations. Responses to the SOI were used to address four main issues. First, the psychometric properties of the SOI were examined in cross-cultural perspective. The SOI possessed adequate reliability and validity both within and across a diverse range of modern cultures. Second, theories concerning the systematic distribution of sociosexuality across cultures were evaluated. Both operational sex ratios and reproductively demanding environments related in evolutionary-predicted ways to national levels of sociosexuality. Third, sex differences in sociosexuality were generally large and demonstrated cross-cultural universality across the 48 nations of the ISDP, confirming several evolutionary theories of human mating. Fourth, sex differences in sociosexuality were significantly larger when reproductive environments were demanding but were reduced to more moderate levels in cultures with more political and economic gender equality. Implications for evolutionary and social role theories of human sexuality are discussed.


The reflection of the female body image in connection with the role of women and eating disorders in another culture than the ""Western"" is the main concern of this' article. There is no doubt that there are connections between the body image, the role of women and eating disorders in the so called ""industrialized countries"". It has been stated, however, that the body shape in ""developing countries"" is a plumper one than that in countries of Central Europe and North America. Furthermore it has been found out that, due to a few epidemiologic surveys, the frequency of eating disorders in ""developing countries"" is, far less, than that in some parts of Europe. In this article I want to reconsider these hypotheses: The chief aim of the study was to find out, differences within the sample (- 237 female students of the University of Cape Coast/Ghana) and with other samples e.g. in Canada as far as body image, eating disorders and the role of women (regarding age, origin etc.) are concerned.


The characteristics of an all-sky camera with a concave mirror are analyzed. A differential equation for a concave aspheric mirror with constant angular magnification is derived for the general dependence of the camera image height on the camera field angle. This equation is solved in parametric form for the case of a concave mirror with a constant angular magnification. The explicit equations for the shape of the aspheric mirror are given for some particular values of the angular magnification. Parametric equations of the surface shape for sevenfold angular magnification are developed into a power series that is used to analyze the imaging performance of such a mirror. The performance of the concave aspheric mirror is compared with that of a spherical mirror. The minimal camera-to-mirror distance is determined as a function of the blur allowed and the camera lens aperture. Some characteristics of convex mirrors are also presented for comparison.


Science Literacy requires numeracy as part of its foundation, and much of Numeracy draws on examples and applications from the sciences. They share the goal of creating a society that is mathematics numerate and science literate, and are interrelated. National priorities to strengthen both among all our students are driven by practical considerations of economic competitiveness that increasingly depend on technological innovation. It is also critical to each individual for long-term job opportunities and for informed citizenship. With up to 80% of 21st century jobs requiring mathematics and science skills, a large majority of the 2,900,000 students who graduate from America's high schools every year must become Numerate and Science Literate. Many of these students are not motivated to learn, requiring a change in teaching strategies. Societal will and substantial resources are required to help teachers adopt new approaches that are much more demanding than traditional lectures. Major organizational changes may be needed to strengthen student experience in elementary schools. Advocates of Numeracy and Science Literacy need to work hand in glove to create a citizenry prepared to compete in the 21st century.


Introduction: Depression among cancer patients have a significant and negative impact on quality of life, adherence to therapy and disease returning and also have an important effect on burden of disease. Using structural equation modelling, this study aims at investigating the role of illness perception and social support in predicting depression in patients with intestine cancer. Methods: In a cross sectional study a total of 300 patients with intestinal cancer were selected by convenience sampling. The population of study was the patients of Shahid Beheshti and Kamkar hospitals in city of Qom and Tehran's Imam Khomeini hospital in the year 2015. They were asked to complete the research instruments. Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) and the Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care(BDI-PC) was used for data collection. Using SPSS and LISREL software and methods of exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models data were tested. Results: The results showed that illness perceptions predict 76% and perceived social support predict 50% of variance of depression directly. In addition, illness perception is an important mediator in the relationship between social support and depression and factor of family social support predicts directly 10% and by mediating of illness perception 30% of the variance of depression. Conclusion: The variables of illness perception and social support have an important role in predicting depression in patients with intestine cancer diagnosis and should be noticed during treatment for intestine cancer. JOURNAL OF IRANIAN CLINICAL RESEARCH 2016;2(1): 135142.


Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951. I was earning a Ph.D. in French literature, with a specialty in poetry, when I first read Man Is Not Alone. Enthralled by the intensity of Heschel's prose, I was seduced by lyrical sentences such as this: "Words expire when uttered, and faith is like the silence that draws lovers near, like a breath that shares in the wind" (p. 73). Most significantly, it was the first Jewish book that convincingly evoked for me the presence of God. What I did not find in Hindu philosophy, Buddhism, or even in Martin Buber, I found in Heschel, an entrance to Jewishness that aspired to a concrete experience of the divine. I met Heschel and participated with him in the religious opposition to the Vietnam war, deciding to entrust my personal quest to Judaism. Man Is Not Alone is both poetic and philosophical, expressive, analytic, and mystical. It is Heschel's blueprint for a theological revolution, intended to train readers to receive nothing less than divine revelation. He developed the book from articles he wrote in the 1940s on prayer, faith, and "The Quest for Certainty in Saadia's Philosophy." The book's biographical unity is demonstrated by Heschel's germinal essay, "An Analysis of Piety," first published in 1942 and transported almost verbatim, with only subtitles added, to form the concluding chapter, "The Pious Man." This model of devoutness as a constant awareness of God's presence should inspire readers to lead a holy and righteous life. The book is divided into two parts. Part I, "The Problem of God" (chapters 1-17), appeals to thoughtful, open-minded, and self-critical seekers, introducing the "cognitive emotions" of awe and wonder leading to a state of "radical amazement." Awareness of "the ineffable" prepares the mind for receptivity to transcendence. These opening chapters deploy a sort of philosophical housecleaning, a rigorous questioning of conventional ways of thinking about ultimate meaning. Heschel compels the person to abandon secular preconceptions and even drives the mind into a state of despair. Plunged into anguish, the person can surrender the ego; radical amazement should lead to radical insight. Heschel's philosophical goal was to train readers to achieve "certainty" in the divine reality. Heschel recapitulates this itinerary in chapter 9, "In the Presence of God," which can be read as a prose poem with its own internal commentary. The seeker enters a new phase with "dark apathy," a loss of self that allows the living God to enter human consciousness: "But, then, a moment comes like a thunderbolt, in which a flash of the undisclosed rends our dark apathy asunder. It is full of overpowering brilliance, like a point in which all moments of life are focused or a thought which outweighs all thoughts ever conceived of.... Apathy turns to splendor unawares" (pp. 78-79). Normal, ego-centered thinking is reversed: "We are penetrated by His [God's] insight. We cannot think any more as if He were there and we here. He is both there and here." The mind receives a jolt of God's presence at the initiative of the divine. I call this event mystical illumination; Heschel calls it intuition or insight. Whatever the label, this paradigm shift comprises Heschel's theological revolution: the recentering of human subjectivity from the self to God. (Kant's "Copernican revolution" in philosophy placed the emphasis on the human subject.) In religious awareness, the mind is illumined by a radical "turning" to God-centered thinking. God is the Subject of whom I am the object. Rather than speaking of a mystical encounter with God, he used philosophical terms, a "categorical imperative" analogous to Kant's rationalism. But mystical it is, for the person receives an unmediated incursion from the living God. Heschel trusted that all readers might eventually welcome this modern form of divine revelation and prophetic inspiration. …


Background Modern adult learning theory characterizes self-directed learning as most effective. While studying the effectiveness of an endoscopic sinus surgery simulator (ES3) as a training tool and acknowledging that its successful integration into a training program is dependent on its acceptance and self-driven use by trainees, we sought to determine our study subjects' attitudes toward the simulator. Methods Twenty-six medical students were enrolled and trained in our ES3 study. Each student was asked to complete a 28-item questionnaire on completion of training. This questionnaire contained 10-point Likert scale instruments, yes/no questions, and one open-ended question. Results All but four subjects responded to the questionnaire; 90.9% of the respondents rated the training benefit derived from the simulator's novice mode as 6 or greater on a 10-point scale; the mean was 7.82 (±2.22). The training benefit of the intermediate mode also was scored highly, with a mean score in the 7–9 range for all but one component–-heart rate response to actions performed. Trainees appreciated the simulator's ability to help them adapt to a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional display. They also noted its strengths in elucidating intranasal anatomy. Conclusion Medical students who enrolled in our study, as a group, felt that the ES3 provided them with significant training benefits. Although subjective, these attitudes, coupled with objective data indicating that there is a measurable benefit from use of the ES3, will ensure its full acceptance and use in otolaryngology training programs.


A nonlinear exact solution to the problem of two-dimensional gravity-free incompressible potential flow around an arbitrarily shaped supercavitating hydrofoil near a free surface is obtained. A combination of Newton's method with a functional iterative procedure is used to solve the nonlinear integral and algebraic equations of this problem. Fast and stable convergence results by starting the iteration with a readily chosen initial solution. Some representative numerical computations are made for practical hydrofoils having both generally shaped camber and leading-edge thickness distributions. The force coefficients, pressure distribution and free-streamline shapes of the cavity are calculated for each case with an execution time on an IBM 370-158 of 200–530 s depending upon the initial trial solution.


Obtaining accurate redshifts from mid-infrared (MIR) low-resolution (R ∼ 100) spectroscopy is challenging because the wavelength resolution is too low to detect narrow lines in most cases. Yet, the number of degrees of freedom and diversity of spectral features are too high for regular spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting techniques to be convenient. Here we present a new SED-fitting-based routine for redshift determination that is optimized for MIR low-resolution spectroscopy. Its flexible template scaling increases the sensitivity to slope changes and small-scale features in the spectrum, while a new selection algorithm called maximum combined pseudo-likelihood (MCPL) provides increased accuracy and a lower number of outliers compared to the standard maximum-likelihood (ML) approach. Unlike ML approach, the MCPL approach searches for local (instead of absolute) maxima of a 'pseudo-likelihood' (PL) function, and combines results obtained for all the templates in the library to weed out spurious redshift solutions. The capabilities of the MCPL approach are demonstrated by comparing its redshift estimates to those of the regular ML approach and to the optical spectroscopic redshifts of a sample of 491 Spitzer/Infrared Spectrograph spectra from extragalactic sources at 0 0.02] is 14 per cent for the MCPL approach and 22 per cent for the ML approach. χ2 values for ML solutions are found to correlate with the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra, but not with redshift accuracy. By contrast, the peak value of the normalized combined PL (γ) is found to provide a good indication on the reliability of the MCPL solution for individual sources. The accuracy and reliability of the redshifts depend strongly on the MIR SED. Sources with significant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission obtain much better results compared to sources dominated by active galactic nucleus continua. Nevertheless, for a given γ the frequency of accurate solutions and outliers is largely independent of their SED type. This reliability indicator for MCPL solutions allows to select subsamples with highly reliable redshifts. In particular, a γ > 0.15 threshold retains 79 per cent of the sources with Δ(z)/(1 + z) < 0.005 while reducing the outlier rate to 3.8 per cent.


To study and forecast the solar activity data a quite perspective method of singular spectrum analysis (SSA) is proposed. As known, data of the solar activity are usually presented via the Wolf numbers associated with the effective amount of the sunspots. The advantages and disadvantages of SSA are described by its application to the series of the Wolf numbers. It is shown that the SSA method provides a sufficiently high reliability in the description of the 11-year solar cycle. Moreover, this method is appropriate for revealing more long cycles and forecasting the further solar activity during one and a half of 11-year cycle.


In water treatment, virus removal using ultrafiltration is a major step towards better water quality. In this paper, we study virus filtration efficiency using surrogate virus particles and via statistical surface-response approach. We focus on the effect of particle size (20–100 nm range) as a key factor along with the effects of transmembrane pressure (20–60 kPa range) and feed flowrate (0.3–1.0 L/F;min range) on the filtration virus removal efficiency (LRV). The particle size is shown to impart a great deal of influence on surrogate particle removal. The effect of particle-to-pore-size ratio is reported for comparison of membrane molecular weight cut off (MWCO) performance. It was shown experimentally and through the developed empirical regression model that transmembrane pressure plays a major role in controlling the filtration efficiency along with flowrate. In the studied experimental range, higher LRV values are obtained at lower transmembrane pressure (20 kPa) and at higher feed flowrate (1 L/F;min). Further the effect on LRV of the interaction between transmembrane pressure and particle size seems to be more significant than that of the interaction of flowrate with particle size.


The purposes of this research project were to identify the extent to which online courses are available to high school students in Tennessee, to describe the characteristics of current online programs, to identify barriers to the implementation of online courses in school systems that are not currently offering such programs, and to offer recommendations that could facilitate implementation of these programs. The research went in two directions. A study of past and current online educational programs was completed in order to learn the nature of successful programs across the country. Then, a survey was constructed and sent to appropriate technology personnel in Tennessee schools to evaluate both their current online programs and to determine those needed in the state. There are only two school systems in Tennessee that allow students to earn online credits to be used towards high school graduation. One is a larger school system and the other is a medium sized school system; both are in the eastern region of the state. One survey respondent summed it up by saying: I really think the State Department of Education should step up and provide some direction. Florida has a vanguard program; I'd like to see the same type of program implemented in Tennessee. If individual school districts are left to design their own programs, then there is going to be a lot of duplicated effort, a wide range of implementation strategies, and varying degrees of quality. That's likely to breed confusion and disillusionment.


I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory (sic) of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. —William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Banquet Speech


Abstract In this paper we consider transport in a toroidal system with broken flux surfaces. Flux surfaces with rational field line winding number can degenerate and form magnetic islands. Where neighbouring chains of islands overlap, a region of chaotic field forms. Thus, the generic topology of the magnetic field in a toroidal device consists of an alternation of shells with 'good' surfaces and shells with islands or chaotic field. In a chaotic field, a field line fills up a region of space and thus makes significant radial excursions. Particles following a chaotic field line may experience rapid radial transport. Recent experimental evidence for the existence of alternating layers with high and low thermal transport is presented. The implication for the determination of transport coefficients is discussed. It is shown that a transport analysis that does not resolve the fine structure of the transport coefficient yields results that are almost meaningless.


Introduction Adolescents' motor competence influences their physical, social and emotional development. Parent-reported assessments may not be truly representative of their adolescent's motor difficulties. This study examined the congruency between parent- and self-reported motor competence in 133 parent-adolescent dyads. Method The adolescent-reported Adolescent Motor Competence Questionnaire (AMCQ; ≤83) and the parent-reported Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire 2007 (DCDQ-07; ≤57) cut scores classified 133 (Mage = 14.5 years) adolescents into high and low motor competence. Parents also completed the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham IV (SNAP-IV) for descriptive purposes. Findings A moderate correlation (r = 0.56, P < 0.001) was found between the AMCQ and the DCDQ-07 scores. Overall, 42 low motor competence cases were identified by both measures (AMCQ and DCDQ-07). Parents identified more boys (11) than girls (9) with low motor competence, whereas more female adolescents (22) self-reported low motor competence than boys (18). A high proportion agreement (0.82) was seen, which was principally due to the 91 (68.4% of sample) high motor competence case agreements. Conclusion Parents identified fewer motor difficulties in their adolescent, especially for girls. Self-report motor assessments may be more realistic for adolescents as they are aware of their own capabilities. Such measures are also more likely to identify previously undiagnosed adolescents with low motor competence.


New K–Ar ages and 40Ar–39 Ar age spectra for samples from granitoid rocks and meta-sediments of the Cordillera Real, Bolivia, reveal a complex mid-Tertiary tectono-thermal history for this segment of the Central Andean eastern cordillera. Previous radiometric dating of the Cordillera Real intrusions defined two, areally-distinct, plutonic domains: in the N, Upper Triassic–Lower Jurassic; in the S, Upper Oligocene–Lower Miocene. Our new K–Ar ages, many from deformed intrusions, fall between these two episodes. For the variably foliated Zongo massif, there is a marked discordance between biotite and muscovite K–Ar dates, each decreasing consistently from SW to NE across this 8 km wide plutonic centre. The age gradients are developed within the foliated and unfoliated facies of the Zongo intrusions, but do not continue NE into the Palaeozoic meta-sedimentary rocks, for which K–Ar dates are erratic. 40Ar–39Ar step-heating analyses of muscovites and most biotites from granitoid rocks reveal that the oldest and youngest micas yield plateaux (210 and 39 Ma), whereas those with intermediate ages exhibit disturbed spectra. A plateau date for a biotite from the NE margin of the Zongo massif shows that final cooling through c. 300 °C occurred in the Late Eocene. The new data reveal that a marked thermal discontinuity existed 39 Ma ago at the NE contact of the Zongo intrusion. Additional discordant dates for the Yani and Illampu intrusions, to the NW, indicate that the discontinuity was of regional scale. There is no direct relationship between this tectono-thermal event, which affected at least 2000 km2, and the Upper Palaeozoic foliation of several of the plutons involved, and thus it is cryptic on outcrop and microscopic scales. We propose that the thermal discontinuity resulted from Late Eocene crustal shortening, SW-verging thrust faulting, and attendant cordilleran uplift at the inner (eastern) boundary of the Andean orogen, coincident with the Incaic deformation defined in Peru.


Abstract. This presentation presents a dialectical approach for the analysis and synthesis of geovisual communication systems using the graphic variables of Jacques Bertin as the primary analytical structure. This approach to studying geovisual communication accounts for its dynamics and interaction. It builds primarily on semiotic concepts advanced by Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco that emphasize the interactions between author and reader and the cultural circulation of knowledge. It relies on a Kantian critical epistemology to move beyond an instrumental description of a graphics-based system of communication. The visual system of affordances made and understood with a geovisualization produces situative meaning involving signification and interpretation, which is neither static nor discrete, but transforms what is known and what can be known. These conclusions lead to theoretical insights related to prior discursive concepts of visual communication and raise some questions for future research about the socio-cognitive affordances of cartographic visualization. A practical example shows the empirical approach and initial validation.Visual Variables Structure CommunicationThe seminal contributions of Roland Barthes point to the process of embedding visual meaning regarding sign, signifier, signified, sign and concept as an extension to Saussure's dyadic approach as two semiological systems, which accounts for the importance of Saussure's bar in the communication of meaning. The two systems code the knowledge of communication, accounting for the situatedness of meaning and its discursive making that connects a sign to a cultural context. Umberto Eco goes beyond Pierce's icon, index, and symbol trichotomy of a sign through an ongoing chain of interpretative referrals. This approach starts with an active collaboration between creator and reader. It can involve multiple circumstances, cultural aspects and evolve. Visual variables structure communication in an ongoing process.The signification of a visual variable is analogous to an atom in a communication process. The analysis of the visual variables of a graphic element in a communication systems sense commences with an analysis of these visual variables related to individual elements and complex symbols. Barthes' functions, actions, and narrative offer a valuable framework. A synthesis follows that considers the epistemological aspects of a partial system and what its functions purport to do and what they actually do. The analytically determined relationships can be synthesized into webs of explicit and implicit meanings associated with Barthes' structure. This combination and visual intermingling of graphic representations in a geovisualization broaden then to consider their interactions and associations with creator and reader. The visual encompasses the semiotic communication of meaning. The dialectical and critical consideration of the relations and the structure of the communication leads to an improved comprehension of the affordances manifest in the graphical communication system. It also begins to account for mental aspects of perception.A model of geovisual communication?The theory and methods of this semiotic approach involve considering Bertin's graphical variables as elements of a model that corresponds to the communication system. Further, the structure of the geovisualization can be modeled symbolically to take up the questions how coding and decoding take place and made reliable given the dynamics of communication and the reliance on conventions in most cartography. This presentation closes with a summary of the benefits of a semiotic approach to the analysis and teaching of geovisual communication.


Abstract To expand on the biodiversity study of the eastern Alpine region of North Tyrol, we investigated silica-scaled chrysophyte flora of unexplored high-altitude Alpine sites. We concentrated mostly on lakes that were 1000–2500 m above sea level; some of them were still partly ice covered. Overall, 27 taxa were recorded at 12 sites, despite 21 sites being sampled altogether. In general, the sites were oligotrophic and species poor. Due to a restricted data set, an extensive analysis was not possible. However, altitude and pH were found to be important variables for explaining species distribution. We described the new species Mallomonas pechlaneri from two of the sampled sites. Mallomonas pechlaneri most closely resembles Mallomonas striata var. striata and M. striata var. serrata; these three taxa are clearly distinguished by bristle morphology and scale shape. The bristles of M. pechlaneri terminate in a bifurcated tip consisting of unequal diverging branches. Scale shape was captured my means of landmark-based geometric morphometries (GM) and evaluated using multivariate statistical analyses. GM methods proved to be an efficient tool to be employed in chrysophycean taxonomy.


Received 25.07.2012 Accepted 09.01.2013 Published 08.04.2013 Within the last decades, Kathmandu Valley in Nepal has been characterized by rapid population growth and related urbanization processes, leading to environmental degradation, pollution and supply bottlenecks in the metropolitan area. Effects of climate change are now putting additional stress on the urban system. In our research in Kathmandu, we carried out community and household surveys to analyze community perception on climate change and climate-related disaster preparedness. For this purpose, three categories of communities, 12 in all, were surveyed and interviewed: Squatter settlements, agricultural villages, and traditional villages. All settlements are located close to main rivers and therefore especially exposed to floods and droughts, and in slope position also to landslides. As a main result, we can conclude that people are generally aware of climate change and its potential consequences, such as climate change-related disasters. However, in their daily lives, climate change does not play a significant role and most communities have not taken any adaptation measures so far. Climate change Kathmandu Valley Disaster risk Community perception Preparedness Journal of Natural Resources and Development 2013; 04: 35-57 35


Aim: To investigate whether obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients present different behaviors of mandible movements before and under CPAP therapy. Materials and Methodology: In this retrospective study, patients were selected according to inclusion criteria: both the di- agnostic polysomnography recording showing an OSA with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) greater than 25 (n/h) and the related CPAP therapy control recordings were available, presence of mandible movement and mask pressure signals in the recordings, and tolerance to the applied positive pressure. Statistical analysis on four parameters, namely the apnea- hypopnea index (AHI), the arousal index (ArI), the average of the mandible lowering during sleep (aLOW), and the aver- age amplitude of the oscillations of the mandible movement signal (aAMPL), was performed on two sets of recordings: OSA and CPAP therapy. Results: Thirty-four patients satisfied the inclusion criteria, thus both OSA and CPAP groups included thirty-four record- ings each. Significant difference (p < 0.001) was found in the OSA group compared with the CPAP group when consider- ing either the four parameters or only the two ones related to mandible movements. Conclusions: When an efficient CPAP pressure is applied, the mouth is less open and presents fewer broad sharp closure movements, and oscillating mandible movements are absent or very small.


The transcriptional response of the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 to low-oxygen conditions includes the up-regulation of several clusters of genes related to photosynthesis and electron transport. One of these clusters includes genes for isoforms of the Rieske protein of the cytochrome b6f complex (encoded by petC2) and the D1 subunit of Photosystem II (PS II; encoded by psbA1). Low-oxygen induced psbA genes are found in the genomes of a number of cyanobacteria; however, their function is not understood. The aim of this project was to determine the roles of psbA1 and the genes of the low-oxygen cluster (LOC) in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 under low-oxygen conditions. The LOC genes were co-transcribed in response to fluctuating oxygen levels. None of the genes in the LOC were essential for growth under low-oxygen conditions; however, a psbA1 knockout strain displayed increased respiratory activity and perturbed variable chlorophyll a fluorescence induction. A petC2 knockout strain also displayed altered physiology, suggestive of modulation of quinone exchange by the cytochrome b6f complex. A series of psbA mutant strains were constructed, in which the D1ʹ-encoding psbA1 or the D1-encoding psbA2 were expressed from either the low-oxygen responsive psbA1 promoter or the constitutive psbA2 promoter. These strains were used to characterise the D1ʹor D1-containing PS II reaction centres in both low-oxygen and aerobic conditions, and revealed differences between the chlorophyll a fluorescence characteristics and electron transport capabilities of each type. D1ʹ-containing PS II reaction centre complexes were assembled to lower levels than D1-containing centres, probably due to decreased accumulation of the D1ʹ protein. Centres with D1ʹ were more sensitive to light-induced damage than those with D1, leading to an increased susceptibility to photoinhibition of D1ʹcontaining centres. In addition, a serendipitously discovered point mutation in the chlH gene, encoding part of the Mg-chelatase enzyme of chlorophyll a biosynthesis, was characterised. Introduction of the Gly195Glu substitution resulted in a ~40% decrease in the accumulation of chlorophyll a and altered photosystem stoichiometry. The reduced chlorophyll levels in the G195E background may serve as a tool to investigate the biogenesis and repair of the photosynthetic apparatus.


Phase transformation studies have been carried out on VS2241A, Fe-9.14Ni -0.002C alloy. This alloy was chosen because it was expected that the speed of austenite decomposition would be slow enough to allow continuous cooling transformation and isothermal transformation experiments to be carried out on the same alloy. Upon furnace cooling, massive ferrite was the predominate phase formed. TEM inspection observed low angle sub-boundaries inside ferrite grains. Pre-polished surface examination showed the presence of Widmanstatten ferrite as evident by tent-shaped surface relief. Martensite-austenite (M-A) constituent was also observed under TEM inspection indicating that partition of carbon had occurred during transformation.Quantitative analysis of the dilatation curve showed continuous cooling consisted of two portions. One between 575 +/- 5°C and 558 +/- 3°C corresponding to the formation of grain boundary nucleated massive ferrite while the portion between 558°C to 500°C was thought to correspond to Widmastatten ferrite formation. The observation of an experimental T[0] temperature of 623 +/- 5°C and a theorectical T[0] temperature of 614 +/- 5°C implied that transformation took place below T[0] in the two phase field.Microanalysis using a FEG-STEM system with a windowless LINK X-ray detector was carried out at Liverpool University. This showed that the Ni content across a ferrite grain was constant at 8.8 +/- 0.2wt%Ni and 12.98 +/- 0.43wt%Ni was detected on a grain boundary confirming that the massive transformation was composition invariant, but local partitioning occurred in the interface during transformation.Thermal arrest experiments observed bainitic ferrite and lath martensite transformed at temperatures ~ 486°C and ~ 384°C respectively.Incomplete transformation was observed for all the isothermally transformed structures in the Fe-9Ni alloy below T[0]. It was suggested that this phenomenon would apply to all transformations occurring in the two phase field below the T[0] temperature. Separate but overlapping C-curves in a TTT diagram for Fe-9Ni were proposed to account for the coexistence of massive ferrite and Widmanstatten ferrite at the same temperature. The lath formation of Widmastatten ferrite was interpreted as a product of partial coherent interfaces propagated by means of a ledge mechanism, thermally activated by the trans-interphase diffusion of solute atoms. A thermal arrest at 707 +/- 5°C was observed on air cooling an Fe- 3.5Ni alloy,VS2239A. This corresponded to equi-axed ferrite transformation in the single phase region. In an iced brine quenched Fe-4Cu alloy, massive ferrite and Widmastatten ferrite were observed. A 6° misorientation was calculated between two adjacent ferrite grains seperated by a ragged grain boundary.Charpy impact testing of Fe-9Ni alloy, VS2241A gave a DBTT of -140°C and -100°C for massive ferrite and bainitic ferrite respectively. Massive ferrite showed a higher upper shelf energy on the transition curve.


Aims: To determine the effect of the three main morphological types of cataract on refractive error. Methods: Data were prospectively collected from 77 subjects (age 67 (SD 8) years) with one morphological type of cataract. 34 had cortical, 21 had nuclear, and 21 had posterior subcapsular cataract. 22 subjects with clear lenses (60 (7) years) were recruited as controls. The spherical equivalent and astigmatic vector change between spectacle correction and optimal refraction were calculated. Results: The cortical cataract group showed a significant astigmatic change of 0.71 (0.67) D (mean (1 SD)) compared to the control group (0.24 (0.20) D), with 24% outside the 95% confidence limit (0.63 D). The nuclear cataract group showed a significant myopic shift of −0.38 (0.60) D compared to the control group (+0.02 (0.21) D), with 52% beyond the minus 95% confidence limit (−0.39 D). Conclusion: A quarter of subjects with cortical cataract showed larger changes in astigmatism than subjects with clear lenses. This is probably because of the localised refractive index changes along cortical spoke opacities within the pupillary area. The well known myopic shift of nuclear cataract was also demonstrated.


A detailed characterization of the trapped-proton-induced radiation environment on board Columbus and the International Space Station (ISS) has been carried out using the Geant4 Monte Carlo particle transport toolkit. Dose and dose equivalent rates, as well as penetrating particle spectra are presented. These results are based on detailed Geant4 geometry models of Columbus and ISS, comprising a total of about 1000 geometry volumes. Simulated trapped-proton dose rates are found to be strongly dependent on ISS altitude. Dose rates for different locations inside the Columbus cabin are presented, as well as for different models of the incident trapped-proton flux. Dose rates resulting from incident anisotropic trapped protons are found to be lower than, or equal to, those of omnidirectional models. The anisotropy induced by the asymmetric shielding distribution of Columbus/ISS is also studied. The simulated trapped-proton dose (equivalent) rates, averaged over different locations inside Columbus, are 120 muGy/d (154 muSv/d) and 79 muGy/d (102 muSv/d) for solar minimum and maximum conditions according to AP8 incident proton spectra and an ISS orbit of 380 km. The solar maximum dose rates are found to be of the same order as measurements in other modules in the present ISS.


Increased risk of HPV infection, but no increased r isk of cervical dysplasia: HIV-negative commercial sex workers in Senegal Angela K. Ulrich Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Stephen E. Hawes Department of Epidemiology Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a causative agent in cervical cancer development and commercial sex workers (CSW) are at high risk for e xposure to STDs, including HPV. From October 1994-January 1998, CSW and non-CSW wer e interviewed, cervical swabs were taken for HPV DNA testing, and cervical cytolo gy was conducted. We found that CSW have a higher prevalence of current HPV infecti on with high-risk HPV-16 (OR: 2.56, 95% CI: 1.46-4.46) and HPV-18 (OR:2.08, 95% C I:1.03-4.20) compared to nonCSW. Likewise, CSW had a higher rate of incident HP V-16 DNA detection (HR: 3.01, 95% CI: 1.20-7.54). However, prevalence of low and high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) and (HSIL) were not significantly hi g er in CSW compared to non-CSW (OR: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.32-1.16 and OR: 0.21, 95% CI: 0.07-0.65, respectively) and neither were incident cases of LSIL or HSIL (HR: 0.95, 95% CI: 0.0.51-1.77 and OR: 0.76, 95% CI: 0.30-1.91, respectively). We hypothesize that u nmeasured immune responses in repeatedly exposed women may be responsible for the lack of association between commercial sex work and cervical dysplasia despite the increased risk of infection with high-risk types of HPV.


In this paper, silica-based geopolymer matrix reinforced composites containing approximately 35, 50 or 55 wt.% of carbon (HTS 5631 1600tex 24K, TohoTenax), advanced basalt (BCF13-2520tex KV12 Int, Basaltex) or electrical grade glass (E-glass: E2400P192, Saint-Gobain, Vetrotex) roving fibers respectively were synthesized and fabricated at ambient conditions. The flexural properties of the resulting composites which are high toughness: the shear stress plays here a greater role in compared with other ceramic matrix composites were determined on a universal testing machine under three-point bending mode in accordance with novel size-independent method which based on testing specimens at different scale of sample height (H) to span length (L) ratios; The basic principles of the new size-independent approach are presented as well. Microstructures of composites were analyzed by means of scanning electron microscope (SEM) on perpendicular sections, the images show the adhesion between the fibers and geopolymer matrix are very good, and micro-cracks on both cross-sections and surfaces of geocomposites are determined as inborn defects of inorganic matrix composites.


In the quarter of a century since the release of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainable tourism has emerged as the dominant paradigm in tourism development. However, the debate, discourse, and criticism of this subfield of tourism research continues. To address such concerns the purpose of this paper is to explore trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research over the past 25 years. A 25-year bibliometric analysis was conducted for the four highest ranked journals in the tourism field. Results indicate that the growth in sustainable tourism research has been remarkable, with 492 papers published in these four journals and almost half of these in the last two years of the analysis. The largest proportion of papers published on sustainable tourism was case studies, empirical studies, and critical reviews. This study found that while the theoretical and methodological approaches appear to have matured over time, the subjects and themes in sustainable tourism research, with some exceptions, have remained constant. However, the field is clearly maturing with a move away from definitional and conceptual papers to papers focused on testing and applying theory through empirical research.


Continued warming of the Arctic will likely accelerate terrestrial carbon (C) cycling by increasing both uptake and release of C. Yet, there are still large uncertainties in modelling Arctic terrestrial ecosystems as a source or sink of C. Most modelling studies assessing or projecting the future fate of C exchange with the atmosphere are based on either stand-alone process-based models or coupled climate–C cycle general circulation models, and often disregard biogeophysical feedbacks of land-surface changes to the atmosphere. To understand how biogeophysical feedbacks might impact on both climate and the C budget in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems, we apply the regional Earth system model RCA-GUESS over the CORDEX-Arctic domain. The model is forced with lateral boundary conditions from an EC-Earth CMIP5 climate projection under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario. We perform two simulations, with or without interactive vegetation dynamics respectively, to assess the impacts of biogeophysical feedbacks. Both simulations indicate that Arctic terrestrial ecosystems will continue to sequester C with an increased uptake rate until the 2060–2070s, after which the C budget will return to a weak C sink as increased soil respiration and biomass burning outpaces increased net primary productivity. The additional C sinks arising from biogeophysical feedbacks are approximately 8.5 Gt C, accounting for 22% of the total C sinks, of which 83.5% are located in areas of extant Arctic tundra. Two opposing feedback mechanisms, mediated by albedo and evapotranspiration changes respectively, contribute to this response. The albedo feedback dominates in the winter and spring seasons, amplifying the near-surface warming by up to 1.35 °C in spring, while the evapotranspiration feedback dominates in the summer months, and leads to a cooling of up to 0.81 °C. Such feedbacks stimulate vegetation growth due to an earlier onset of the growing season, leading to compositional changes in woody plants and vegetation redistribution.


Analysis of malaria trends is important for planning of malaria elimination. Therefore, we reviewed the malaria monthly reports and key interventions for malaria elimination in Bago Region of Myanmar between 2007 and 2015. Secondary data analysis revealed the trends in malaria morbidity, mortality, malaria positive rate (MPR), malaria species, annual parasite incidence (API) and annual blood examination rate (ABER). Key interventions included distribution of insecticide-treated net (ITN), long lasting insecticidal net (LLIN) and case detection. Over the 8-year period, malaria morbidity and mortality rates markedly reduced from 8 to 0.3 per 1,000 population and 1.4 to 0.1 per 100,000 population respectively. During 2010-2015, API and MPR correspondingly reduced. Together with the concomitant increase in ABER and townships with API lower than one per 1,000 population, confirmed cases of P. falciparum malaria markedly decreased from 91.1% in 2007 to 55.4% in 2015. Meanwhile, the ITN/LLIN scaling-up activities resulted in an increase in population coverage from 23.5% in 2011 to 69.3% in 2015. Data from the public sector showed declining trends in malaria morbidity and mortality and low API, increasing the chance of malaria elimination. Still, there is a possibility of residual malaria that may trigger a resurgence, and thus, it is worthwhile to promote surveillance systems, especially in private sector health care establishments.


The normalized maximum likelihood model achieves the minimax coding (log-loss) regret for data of xed sample size n. However, it is a batch strategy, i.e., it requires that n be known in advance. Furthermore, it is computationally infeasible for most statistical models, and several computationally feasible alternative strategies have been devised. We characterize the achievability of asymptotic minimaxity by batch strategies (i.e., strategies that depend on n) as well as online strategies (i.e., strategies independent of n). On one hand, we conjecture that for a large class of models, no online strategy can be asymptotically minimax. We prove that this holds under a slightly stronger denition of asymptotic minimaxity. Our numerical experiments support the conjecture about non-achievability by so called last-step minimax algorithms, which are independent of n. On the other hand, we show that in the multinomial model, a Bayes mixture dened by the conjugate Dirichlet prior with a simple dependency on n achieves asymptotic minimaxity for all sequences, thus providing a simpler asymptotic minimax strategy compared to earlier work by Xie and Barron. The numerical results also demonstrate superior nite-sample behavior by a


This paper studies corporate exposure to country risk from the perspective of the cost of equity. Indeed, corporations located into emerging countries are perceived as being riskier; therefore, investors require higher returns which increases the financing costs. Under these circumstances, financial managers face the challenge of quite a tough balance to keep up with: valorizing the growth potential offered by the emerging countries on the condition of implementing powerful financial strategies, capable of protecting the corporation from the macroeconomic volatility. This research develops a practical approach on the way exposure to country risk impacts company's financial balance, with a deep keen on the operational support offered by various methodologies that analysts get use of within the assessment process.


The Baltic Sea is a seasonally ice-covered, marginal sea in central northern Europe. It is an essential waterway connecting highly industrialised countries. Because ship traffic is intermittently hindered by sea ice, the local weather services have been monitoring sea ice conditions for decades. In the present study we revisit a historical monitoring data set, covering the winters 1960/1961 to 1978/1979. This data set, dubbed Data Bank for Baltic Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperatures (BASIS) ice, is based on hand-drawn maps that were collected and then digitised in 1981 in a joint project of the Finnish Institute of Marine Research (today the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)) and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). BASIS ice was designed for storage on punch cards and all ice information is encoded by five digits. This makes the data hard to access. Here we present a post-processed product based on the original five-digit code. Specifically, we convert to standard ice quantities (including information on ice types), which we distribute in the current and free Network Common Data Format (NetCDF). Our post-processed data set will help to assess numerical ice models and provide easy-to-access unique historical reference material for sea ice in the Baltic Sea. In addition we provide statistics showcasing the data quality. The website http://www.baltic-ocean.org hosts the post-processed data and the conversion code. The data are also archived at the Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science, PANGAEA (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.832353)


Personal assistance (PA) has been characterized as a melting pot consisting of, on the one hand, a social rights discourse with its basis among disabled people, and, on the other hand, a consumer directed market discourse increasingly putting its stamp on welfare policy in the Western world. In the realm of welfare politics, these discourses are, in many ways, opposites, but have found common ground in the demand for a more individual and consumer friendly provision of services. Within a shared welfare state model, the application of PA has developed divergently in the Scandinavian countries and relates to the two discourses in different ways. In this article, PA in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is presented and similarities and differences are discussed and analysed. Questions raised include: How can the differences between the countries be understood? What dilemmas within welfare policy do they illustrate? How do the different discourses put their marks on the different PA-models in the Scandinavian countr...


Sun Stuff Comets are thought to be remnants of the Sun's protoplanetary disk; hence, they hold important clues to the processes that originated the solar system. Matzel et al. (p. 483, published online 25 February) present Al-Mg isotope data on a refractory particle recovered from comet Wild 2 by the NASA Stardust mission. The lack of evidence for the extinct radiogenic isotope 26Al implies that this particle crystallized 1.7 million years after the formation of the oldest solar system solids. This observation, in turn, requires that material formed near the Sun was transported to the outer reaches of the solar system and incorporated into comets over a period of at least two million years. Transport of inner solar system material to the Kuiper Belt and incorporation into comets took at least 2 million years. We measured the 26Al-26Mg isotope systematics of a ~5-micrometer refractory particle, Coki, returned from comet 81P/Wild 2 in order to relate the time scales of formation of cometary inclusions to their meteoritic counterparts. The data show no evidence of radiogenic 26Mg and define an upper limit to the abundance of 26Al at the time of particle formation: 26Al/27Al < 1 × 10−5. The absence of 26Al indicates that Coki formed >1.7 million years after the oldest solids in the solar system, calcium- and aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs). The data suggest that high-temperature inner solar system material formed, was subsequently transferred to the Kuiper Belt, and was incorporated into comets several million years after CAI formation.


The health benefits of exercise are greater than the sum of the parts. The overall mortality benefit from physical activity is even greater than would be expected from its efficacy in improving all cardiac risk factors, preventing cancer, chronic disease and disability.1 It is valuable to dissect the mechanisms by which exercise promotes better health outcomes, and in this edition of Heart , Wilson et al 2 elegantly detail the ways in which basic science investigations have advanced our understanding of exercise-dependent cardiovascular modifications. Study of the molecular pathways offers promise of new targets for therapies that may elicit exercise-like benefits for cardiovascular health. Furthermore, in the growing epidemic of chronic disease related to a sedentary lifestyle, it is hoped that increasing the evidence base linking exercise to health may motivate societal change. As enthusiastic pro-exercise scientific clinicians/researchers, we share the optimism of our colleagues and seek to extol the virtues of exercise but we also take the opportunity here to critically appraise some of the limitations in the exercise science translational model.

1. Where are the outcomes? This is perhaps our greatest failing. While our rodents are getting fitter, our community is getting fatter and there is a clear need to improve the translation of our scientific discoveries into more effective public health interventions. Perhaps there is a need to extend our focus to study the psychosocial impediments to exercise or the individual variation explaining why exercise is a joy for some and a chore for others.

2. Exercise is not a binary intervention : The public may be confused by the mixed messages coming from our laboratories. On the one hand, exercise is reported to promote healthy physiological heart growth in adult rodents2 while other investigators have used a slightly …


Abstract Large volcanic edifices constitute enormous loads at the surfaces of planets. The lithosphere, the mechanically strong outer layer of a planet, responds to growing edifice loads by flexing. The shape of this lithospheric flexure and the resulting stress state exert critical influences on the structure of the evolving edifices, which in turn feed back into the flexural response. Flexural subsidence of the lithosphere forms topographical moats surrounding volcanoes that are partially to completely filled by landslide debris, volcaniclastic materials and sediments, or by relatively flat aprons of volcanic flows. Flexure creates a characteristic 'dipole' state of stress that influences subsequent magma ascent paths and chamber dynamics in the lithosphere. Compression in the upper lithosphere can inhibit magma ascent and favour the development of oblate magma chambers or sill complexes. This compression can be transferred into the edifice unless a décollement allows the volcano base to slip over the underlying lithosphere; generally, basal décollements are found to operate via high pore-fluid pressure in a clay sediment-based layer. Volcanoes lacking such a layer, regardless of the thickness of the basal sediments, lack basal décollements and, thus, tend to be limited in size by compressive stresses adverse to magma ascent.


This study reports on variations in seismic activity preceding moderate and large earthquakes in a highly active portion of the India/Eurasia collision zone. The study is based on the catalog of earthquake locations from the Complex Seismic Expedition (CSE) network in the Garm region, Central Asia. The local seismic network was established in the mid-1950s and recorded and located over 85,000 earthquakes from 1955 to 1988. Two main approaches were used to evaluate variations in seismic activity associated with 12 moderate- to large-magnitude ( ML = 5.0 to 6.3) mainshocks that occurred in the study area: (1) a qualitative approach, involving examination of maps, cross sections, space-time plots, and earthquake histograms for the area identified as the rupture area of the mainshock and (2) a quantitative approach based on magnitude-frequency relations estimated for small space-time windows within the seismic network. In addition to temporal variations in seismicity, three long-term gaps were identified: (1) in the western Peter the First Range, near the city of Garm; (2) in the central Peter the First Range; and (3) in the northeastern part of the study area, approximately coinciding with a gap identified by other authors using different approaches. The potential magnitude of future gap-filling events is estimated to be in the range 6.7 to 7.0. Evidence of precursors has been found to varying extent for 9 out of the 12 mainshocks studied. These include quiescence or low activity before the mainshock, foreshock activity before the mainshock, and a sequence of low-activity-high-activity-quiescence before the mainshock. For the quantitative analysis, the level of seismic activity in small space-time windows is quantified by the parameter A 2, defined as the A value at magnitude 2 in the Gutenberg-Richter magnitude-frequency relation log N = A - bM . The A 2 values were calculated for 30 12 × 12-minute spatial cells with a moving time window of five years. From this analysis, only one earthquake, the M = 6.3 Dzhirgital earthquake of 26 October 1984, shows a significant decrease (by a factor of 45%) in activity level A 2. The results of the quantitative analysis also show strong spatial variations: the central portion of the study area, which includes the Peter the First Range fold-thrust belt, shows high, but relatively stable, seismic activity; the Tien Shan basement uplift in the north has a tendency of decreasing activity; and the northeastern part of the study area shows increasing activity. The October 1984 earthquake is located near the transition between the two tendencies.


Incompressible nonlinearly hyperelastic materials are rarely simulated in Finite Element numerical experiments as being perfectly incompressible because of the numerical difficulties associated with globally satisfying this constraint. Most commercial Finite Element packages therefore assume that the material is slightly compressible. It is then further assumed that the corresponding strain-energy function can be decomposed additively into volumetric and deviatoric parts. We show that this decomposition is not physically realistic, especially for anisotropic materials, which are of particular interest for simulating the mechanical response of biological soft tissue. The most striking illustration of the shortcoming is that with this decomposition, an anisotropic cube under hydrostatic tension deforms into another cube instead of a hexahedron with non-parallel faces. Furthermore, commercial numerical codes require the specification of a 'compressibility parameter' (or 'penalty factor'), which arises naturally from the flawed additive decomposition of the strainenergy function. This parameter is often linked to a 'bulk modulus', although this notion makes no sense for anisotropic solids; we show that it is essentially an arbitrary parameter and that infinitesimal changes to it result in significant changes in the predicted stress response. This is illustrated with numerical simulations for biaxial tension experiments of arteries, where the magnitude of the stress response is found to change by several orders of magnitude when infinitesimal changes in 'Poisson's ratio' close to the perfect incompressibility limit of 1/2 are made.