The role of IT Architect is important in the development and successful implementation of Information Technology systems across the world. The people performing the role are critical to the success of the systems. This paper reports on the results of an experiment aimed at developing two key IT architect capabilities within the context of a post graduate Systems Architecture subject. One capability is related to problem solving and while surprisingly student problem solving confidence was impacted other aspects of problem solving important for IT Architects were unchanged. The other capability being researched, future time orientation was also unchanged through intervention. Therefore alternative approaches for improving these capabilities are preferable as factors such as external pressures on the students within the semester outweighed any short term capability improvement.


Herein, we report on the development of a compact proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS) for airborne measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The new instrument resolves isobaric ions with a mass resolving power (m/1m) of ∼ 1000, provides accuratem/zmeasurements (1m< 3 mDa), records full mass spectra at 1 Hz and thus overcomes some of the major analytical deficiencies of quadrupole-MS-based airborne instruments. 1 Hz detection limits for biogenic VOCs (isoprene, α total monoterpenes), aromatic VOCs (benzene, toluene, xylenes) and ketones (acetone, methyl ethyl ketone) range from 0.05 to 0.12 ppbV, making the instrument wellsuited for fast measurements of abundant VOCs in the continental boundary layer. The instrument detects and quantifies VOCs in locally confined plumes (< 1 km), which improves our capability of characterizing emission sources and atmospheric processing within plumes. A deployment during the NASA 2013 DISCOVER-AQ mission generated high verticaland horizontal-resolution in situ data of VOCs and ammonia for the validation of satellite retrievals and chemistry transport models.


This paper presents an emergency control approach for preventing wide spread power interruption using multi-agent system. The proposed control algorithm is based on decentralized architecture of intelligent agents to achieve fast and accurate response when a catastrophic disturbance is identified in the system. By dividing the network into several areas, the voltage instability problem can be localized and countermeasures can be directed to the most affected area by the authorized local agent. This facilitates quick decision making within the system. The effectiveness of the proposed technique has been proved by a simulation of IEEE 57 bus test power system.


Background Despite substantial evidence that the public wants access to Internet-based communication with health care providers, online patient-provider communication remains relatively uncommon, and few studies have examined sociodemographic and health-related factors associated with the use of online communication with health care providers at a population level. Objective The aim of the study was to use nationally representative data to report on the prevalence of and changes in use of online patient-provider communication in 2003 and 2005 and to describe sociodemographic and health-related factors associated with its use. Methods Data for this study are from two iterations of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 2003, HINTS 2005). In both years, respondents were asked whether they had ever used email or the Internet to communicate with a doctor or a doctor's office. Adult Internet users in 2003 (n = 3982) and 2005 (n = 3244) were included in the present study. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify predictors for electronic communication with health care providers. Results In 2003, 7% of Internet users had communicated online with an health care provider; this prevalence significantly increased to 10% in 2005. In multivariate analyses, Internet users with more years of education, who lived in a metro area, who reported poorer health status or who had a personal history of cancer were more likely to have used online patient-provider communication. Conclusions Despite wide diffusion of the Internet, online patient-provider communication remains uncommon but is slowly increasing. Policy-level changes are needed to maximize the availability and effectiveness of online patient-provider communication for health care consumers and health care providers. Internet access remains a significant barrier to online patient-provider communication.


The main task of this research was to evaluate canopy temperature and Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) by assessing genotype variability of maize performance for different water regimes. To that end, three hundred tropical and subtropical maize hybrids with different phenology in terms of date of anthesis were evaluated. The influence of phenology on the change in canopy temperatures and CWSI was not equal during the three dates of measurement. At the end of vegetative growth (82 days after sowing, DAS) and at the blister stage (DAS 97), a high significant difference in temperatures and CWSI (P < 0.001) were obtained between the early- and late-maturity genotypes. During anthesis (DAS 89), phenology had a significant effect (P < 0.01) only for the well-watered genotypes, while under water-stress conditions, no differences were found between early and late genotypes in terms of canopy temperature and CWSI. High significant differences (P < 0.001) in stomatal conductance (gs) between early and late genotypes for different treatments were observed. A relationship (R2 = 0.62) between gs and canopy temperature was obtained. Under a water-stress canopy, temperature was measured at anthesis, which was negatively correlated with grain yield of the early (r = −0.55)- and late (r = −0.46)-maturity genotypes in the water-stressed condition.


Current efforts to build data literacy focus on technology-centered approaches, overlooking creative non-digital opportunities. This case study is an example of how to implement a Popular Education-inspired approach to building participatory and impactful data literacy using a set of visual arts activities with students at an alternative school in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  As a result of the project data literacy among participants increased, and the project initiated a sustained interest within the school community in using data to tell stories and create social change.


This paper proposes a new stereo model which encodes the simple assumption that the scene is composed of a few, smooth surfaces. A key feature of our model is the surface-based representation, where each pixel is assigned to a 3D surface (planes or B-splines). This representation enables several important contributions: Firstly, we formulate a higher-order prior which states that pixels of similar appearance are likely to belong to the same 3D surface. This enables to incorporate the very popular color segmentation constraint in a soft and principled way. Secondly, we use a global MDL prior to penalize the number of surfaces. Thirdly, we are able to incorporate, in a simple way, a prior which favors low curvature surfaces. Fourthly, we improve the asymmetric occlusion model by disallowing pixels of the same surface to occlude each other. Finally, we use the known fusion move approach which enables a powerful optimization of our model, despite the infinite number of possible labelings (surfaces).


The concept of inverse regression has turned out to be quite useful for dimension reduction in regression analysis problems. Using methods like sliced inverse regression (SIR) and directional regression (DR), some high-dimensional nonlinear regression problems can be turned into more tractable low-dimensional problems. Here, the usefulness of inverse regression for identification of nonlinear dynamical systems will be discussed. In particular, it will be shown that the inverse regression methods can be used for identification of systems of the Wiener class, that is, systems consisting of a number of parallel linear subsystems followed by a static multiple-input single-output nonlinearity. For a particular class of input signals, including Gaussian signals, the inverse regression approach makes it possible to estimate the linear subsystems without knowing or estimating the nonlinearity.


The relationship between the statistics of log-amplitude fluctuations and irradiance fluctuations due to atmospheric turbulence is derived. This is used to evaluate the effect of use of a large aperture diameter in reducing the variance of a fluctuating signal. Curves for the reduction factor are presented. From these, an irradiance-fluctuation correlation distance is evaluated. This distance, unlike the correlation distance for log-amplitude fluctuations, is found to be a function of the log-amplitude variance. A particular example of the application of these results to a space-to-ground communications systems performance is worked out.


Semantic transparency deals with the interface between lexical semantics and morphology. It is an important
 linguistic phenomenon in Chinese in the context of prediction of meanings of compounds from their constituents. Given prominence
 of compounding in Chinese morpho-lexical processes, to date there is no semantic transparency dataset available to support
 verifiable and replicable quantitative analysis of semantic transparency in Mandarin Chinese. In addition, the relation between
 semantic transparency and morphological structure has not been systematically examined. This paper reports a crowdsourcing-based
 experiment designed for the construction of a large semantic transparency dataset of Chinese compounds which includes semantic
 transparency ratings of both the compound and each constituent root of the compound. We also present an analysis of the effects of
 morphological structure on semantic transparency using the constructed dataset. Our study found that in a transparent
 modifier-head compound, the head tends to get greater semantic transparency rating than the modifier. Interestingly, no such
 effect is observed in coordinative compounds. This result suggests that compounds of different morphological structures are
 processed differently and that the concept of head plays an important role in the word-formation process of compounding. We
 advocate that crowdsourcing can be a highly instrumental method to collect linguistic judgments and to construct language
 resources in Chinese language studies. In addition, the proposed methodology of comparing constituent transparency and word
 transparency sheds light on the relation between morpho-lexical structure and cognitive processing of lexical meanings.


ALK is a tractable antibody-drug conjugate target in neuroblastoma. No neuroblastomas left behind Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is frequently expressed in neuroblastoma, one of the more common pediatric cancers. Although small-molecule inhibitors of ALK are already in clinical use, the target protein often develops mutations that impede the effectiveness of these drugs. As an alternative to chemical inhibitors, Sano et al. developed an antibody-drug conjugate consisting of an antibody that recognizes ALK and a toxin that kills the ALK-expressing cells. The authors confirmed that ALK is not expressed in normal healthy tissues, indicating that this approach should be safe, and demonstrated the efficacy of the antibody-drug conjugate in mouse models of neuroblastoma with wild-type and mutant ALK. Enthusiasm for the use of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) in cancer therapy has risen over the past few years. The success of this therapeutic approach relies on the identification of cell surface antigens that are widely and selectively expressed on tumor cells. Studies have shown that native ALK protein is expressed on the surface of most neuroblastoma cells, providing an opportunity for development of immune-targeting strategies. Clinically relevant antibodies for this target have not yet been developed. Here, we describe the development of an ALK-ADC, CDX-0125-TEI, which selectively targets both wild-type and mutated ALK-expressing neuroblastomas. CDX-0125-TEI exhibited efficient antigen binding and internalization, and cytotoxicity at picomolar concentrations in cells with different expression of ALK on the cell surface. In vivo studies showed that CDX-0125-TEI is effective against ALK wild-type and mutant patient-derived xenograft models. These data demonstrate that ALK is a bona fide immunotherapeutic target and provide a rationale for clinical development of an ALK-ADC approach for neuroblastomas and other ALK-expressing childhood cancers such as rhabdomyosarcomas.


The article conducts a retrospective epidemiological analysis of long-term and annual dynamics of theincidence of measles of the population of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the period 1993-2015 years.The "average annual rate of decline/increase" and predicted (theoretical) incidence of measles in 2016 arecalculated. The prediction method that was based on finding analytical expressions of the trend todetermine the level of incidence of measles for the next year is used. Analysis of monthly incidence ofmeasles identified winter-spring seasonality. The increasing of incidence was observed from mid Januaryto April. Analysis of cases of the measles on the territory, cases at 2-week intervals in 2015was made.The average lengths of hospital stay of patients.


Ethical views of managers have continued to be of interest to business practitioners and researchers. However, given that historical context of many of these ethical transgressions have been reported amongst large local and international corporations, researchers have focussed their studies on larger organizations. The importance of smaller organizations, more specifically Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the economic and social development of businesses in emerging and growing economies is greater. Researchers in developing countries have been challenged to undertake study of the ethical sensitivity of small business managers. The extant literature suggests that managers in small businesses are able to influence the ethical climate in the organization to a greater extent than those in larger organizations. The current study investigates the ethical views of small business managers in Botswana and compares these to the views held by a comparison group of key personnel in their organizations. Given that the prior research found that managers in small businesses have a high degree of ethical sensitivity when compared to managers in larger corporations and the public, the study hypothesized that managers of SMEs will be more ethically sensitive key personnel in their organizations. A questionnaire was administered on both groups, and the results were statically tested for differences. The study determined that there were no significant differences between the two groups for most of the questions that queried respondents using a set of ethical value statement. The study also determined that respondents felt that there were increased incidences of unethical practices in the country, especially those that involved bribery. The paper concludes by making recommendations for national, industry-focussed studies within SMEs.


Background: Insulinemia and type 2 diabetes (T2D) have been associated with endometrial cancer risk in numerous observational studies. However, the causality of these associations is uncertain. Here we use a Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to assess whether insulinemia and T2D are causally associated with endometrial cancer. Methods: We used single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with T2D (49 variants), fasting glucose (36 variants), fasting insulin (18 variants), early insulin secretion (17 variants), and body mass index (BMI) (32 variants) as instrumental variables in MR analyses. We calculated MR estimates for each risk factor with endometrial cancer using an inverse-variance weighted method with SNP-endometrial cancer associations from 1287 case patients and 8273 control participants. Results: Genetically predicted higher fasting insulin levels were associated with greater risk of endometrial cancer (odds ratio [OR] per standard deviation = 2.34, 95% confidence internal [CI] = 1.06 to 5.14, P = .03). Consistently, genetically predicted higher 30-minute postchallenge insulin levels were also associated with endometrial cancer risk (OR = 1.40, 95% CI = 1.12 to 1.76, P = .003). We observed no associations between genetic risk of type 2 diabetes (OR = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.79 to 1.04, P = .16) or higher fasting glucose (OR = 1.00, 95% CI = 0.67 to 1.50, P = .99) and endometrial cancer. In contrast, endometrial cancer risk was higher in individuals with genetically predicted higher BMI (OR = 3.86, 95% CI = 2.24 to 6.64, P = 1.2x10-6). Conclusion: This study provides evidence to support a causal association of higher insulin levels, independently of BMI, with endometrial cancer risk.


Macquarie Island has experienced a marked shift in its climate since 1970, with increasing precipitation, accompanied by a steady increase
in mean wind speed associated with increased cyclonic activity. These trends are consistent with an increase in the Southern Annular Mode
(SAM) index, albeit with a shift to an anomalous atmospheric trough over the western Pacific Ocean. However, our understanding of the
twentieth-century climate across the entire sub-Arnarctic is limited by very sparse data and the relatively poor quality of global re-analyses
across the Southern Hemisphere. Chapter 10 of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth Assessment Report (AR4)
provides an assessment of global atmospheric trends out to the end of the twenty-first century and provides some clues as to the regional
trends expected across the sub-Antarctic. This paper provides a synopsis of the changes experienced at Macquarie Island, and a look to
future trends, and the need for increased atmospheric research in the mid- to high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.


If economics is about the allocation of resources, then what is the most precious resource in our new information economy? Certainly not information, for we are drowning in it. No, what we are short of is the attention to make sense of that information. With all the verve and erudition that have established his earlier books as classics, Richard A. Lanham, here, traces our epochal move from an economy of things and objects to an economy of attention. According to Lanham, the central commodity in our new age of information is not stuff but style, for style is what competes for our attention amidst the din and deluge of new media. In such a world, intellectual property will become more central to the economy than real property, while the arts and letters will grow to be more crucial than engineering, the physical sciences, and indeed economics as conventionally practiced. For Lanham, the arts and letters are the disciplines that study how human attention is allocated and how cultural capital is created and traded. In an economy of attention, style and substance change places. The new attention economy, therefore, will anoint a new set of moguls in the business world - not the CEOs or fund managers of yesteryear, but new masters of attention with a grounding in the humanities and liberal arts. Lanham's "The Electronic Word" was one of the earliest and most influential books on new electronic culture. "The Economics of Attention" builds on the best insights of that seminal book to map the new frontier that information technologies have created.


The George W. Bush Presidency: A Rhetorical Perspective. Edited by Robert E. Denton, Jr. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. 184 pp. The preface to The George W. Bush Presidency declares that "there are a few academic volumes on the Bush presidency, but they were completed while he was still in office. They tend to be uniformly negative" (p. ix). The book thus recommends itself as a fresh, distanced look at the forty-third president through the prism of rhetoric. Eight chapters constitute this effort. The first, by Joseph M. Valenzano III, is titled, "The Presidency that Almost Wasn't: George W. Bush's First Inaugural." Valenzano's central point is that President Bush fully unveiled his governing ethos and philosophy in his first inaugural address and that the 9/11 attacks did not change his approach. The man who took office "was overtly Christian, valued individual over governmental action, and would emphasize freedom and democracy promotion around the world" (p. 17). According to Valenzano, the attacks simply afforded Bush the political capital to become the president he had already announced himself to be. This is a fair and well-argued point, ultimately functioning as a defense of the man's principled consistency. The second chapter, Ben Voth's "George W. Bush at a Global Gettysburg," redoubles this effort in a 10-speech joyride through the president's invocation of the trope of freedom, which Voth sees as the metaphysical inheritance of the Gettysburg address. This chapter is not a piece of critical-rhetorical reflection but a Lincoln-Bush-inspired rhetorical performance in its own right, complete with an easy dismissal of "the conscience of moral relativism" (p. 24) and a cheap shot at "Obama's rhetorical flourishes in Cairo" (p. 38). A more measured version of the same theme-tracking approach follows in Chapter Three, Robert V. Friedenberg's "George W. Bush's First Year of War Time Rhetoric." The author traces four themes through the first year of the president's speeches: good versus evil, American exceptionalism, swift justice, and national character. Although there is no critical interrogation of these themes, Friedenberg concludes productively, noting that Bush's initial use of epideictic rhetoric to rally a nation into war must ultimately give way to more deliberative reflections on how that war is conducted. The fourth chapter, "War Stories," by Patrick S. Loebs, tracks narrative shifts instead of a common trope or set of themes. Loebs is interested in how President Bush used his 2002-2006 State of the Union addresses to explain the changing nature of the war on terror. Here, we get a more penetrating look at how Bush composed these speeches; it is a study of the adaptation of rhetorical means (symbolic construction of a threat) to political ends (military success). Loebs offers the additional insights that the symbolic construction of an enemy is a constitutive feature of U.S. political discourse, that the changing nature of this construction testifies to the power of the people, and that Bush was among "the great panoply of leaders who view victory as more important than absolute truth" (p. 87). For the conceptual and political stakes raised by these final comments alone, Loebs's chapter is handily the book's most illuminating. Chapter Five, "George W. Bush, the American Press, and the Initial Framing of the War," by Jim Kuypers, Stephen Cooper, and Matthew T. …


The electric solar wind sail (E-Sail) is a new propulsion method for interplanetary travel which was invented in 2006 and is currently under development. The E-Sail uses charged tethers to extract momentum from the solar wind particles to obtain propulsive thrust. According to current estimates, the E-Sail is 2-3 orders of magnitude better than traditional propulsion methods (chemical rockets and ion engines) in terms of produced lifetime-integrated impulse per propulsion system mass. Here we analyze the problem of using the E-Sail for directly deflecting an Earth-threatening asteroid. The problem then culminates into how to attach the E-Sail device to the asteroid. We assess alternative attachment strategies, namely straightforward direct towing with a cable and the gravity tractor method which works for a wider variety of situations. We also consider possible techniques to scale up the E-Sail force beyond the baseline one Newton level to deal with more imminent or larger asteroid or cometary threats. As a baseline case we consider an asteroid of effective diameter of 140 m and mass of 3 million tons, which can be deflected with a baseline 1 N E-Sail within 10 years. With a 5 N E-Sail the deflection could be achieved in 5 years. Once developed, the E-Sail would appear to provide a safe and reasonably low-cost way of deflecting dangerous asteroids and other heavenly bodies in cases where the collision threat becomes known several years in advance.


This study was performed (at the request of the FAA) to measure temperature and pressure conditions observed by standard packages in the FedEx 'Next Day Air' network and the environmental conditions of passenger aircrafts. To measure the single parcel environment, two destinations known to be served by non‐pressurized feeder and pressurized aircrafts in the USA, San Luis Obispo, California, and Twin Falls, Idaho, were used to represent higher altitude paths. Test packages (0.30 × 0.30 × 0.30 m) containing one MadgeTech PRTemp110 recorder were shipped Priority Overnight by FedEx from East Lansing, Michigan. For 6 weeks, two test packages were shipped to each destination. To measure the passenger aircraft environment, test packages (0.14 × 0.11 × 0.06 m) were both carried in the passenger cabin and checked with luggage. Results show temperature ranges, pressure drop rates, and maximum altitudes observed from 52 flights (17 feeder aircrafts) in the FedEx environment and from eight commercial passenger flights. This study compares these results with the ASTM D6653‐01 test procedure with respect to suggested test pressure, pressure change rate, temperature, and test duration. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Recent studies have shown the rapid adoption of digital health software applications worldwide. However, researchers are yet to fully understand users' rationale of eHealth systems. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyze user attitudes to eHealth applications in China and eHealth system in Ukraine, and then provide insights and suggestions to the development of an eHealth application (eZdorovya) for health information services in general. This study includes a survey conducted by Chinese and Ukrainian users, after which thorough data analyses were conducted. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), this research framework explores the influence of socio-technical factors affecting user's adoption of eHealth functionalities. Serial Multiple Mediator Model 6 (SMMM6) and a deep neural network-based approach were used to analyze the eHealth software users' rationale with the sample size of survey 236 end-users from China and 124 end-users from Ukraine. The key findings from the data analysis are: 1) if the software application is covering an important service function and is interesting to use, Chinese users will continue using it, 2) given an eHealth software with important or interesting function, it is inconclusive whether Ukrainian users will switch to use the application, and 3) deep neural network shows highly accurate prediction results and was given applied suggestions for Chinese and Ukrainian providers in the case of improving eHealth systems based on a raw prediction.


It was not often that the word "magic" appeared in scientific literature until the advent of the stem cell. Now, this terminology seems to appear more and more often. If even half of the promises offered in the lay and professional literature come to pass regarding the magical nature of the stem cell, perhaps this hyperbole will be forgiven. The potential for using stem cells to cure or ameliorate a host of genetic, metabolic, and degenerative conditions has been recognized only in the past few years, and this recognition has led to a major redirection of research efforts. In this relatively short time, a mixture of facts and fantasy has propelled the issue into the headlines; the surrounding fervor is fueled not only by the promises of magic, but also by the recognition that research and therapy with stem cells is not merely a scientific issue-it is also a profoundly moral issue. While recognizing that stem cell research is also the subject of much scientific and political debate, this Case Study will focus primarily on the moral aspects. The nub of the moral issue is the source of the stem cells that are needed for research and therapy.


Unaccompanied vocal music is a central part of Western art music, yet it requires excellent skills for singers to achieve proper intonation. In this paper, we analyze intonation deficiencies by introducing an intonation cost measure that can be computed from choir recordings and may help to assess the singers' intonation quality. With our approach, we measure the deviation between the recording's local salient frequency content and an adaptive reference grid based on the equal-tempered scale. The adaptivity introduces invariance of the local intonation measure to global intonation drifts. In our experiments, we compute this measure for several recordings of Anton Bruckner's choir piece Locus Iste. We demonstrate the robustness of the proposed measure by comparing scenarios of different complexity regarding the availability of aligned scores and multi-track recordings, as well as the number of singers per part. Even without using score information, our cost measure shows interesting trends, thus indicating the potential of our method for real-world applications.


The landscape of UK Higher Education has witnessed significant change in recent years, characterised by rapidly increasing numbers, widening participation, and a diminished per capita resource base. Developmental and enhancement agenda have placed greater emphasis on skills for lifelong learning, and the independent learner has thus become a prominent theme. In architecture education these factors are imposing pressures on the traditional studio-based teaching model, one that forms a universal cornerstone of architecture schools. Coincidentally, the same period has seen this model, endorsed by Schon in the 1980s, increasingly challenged. It is argued that the confluence of these factors, presents an opportunity to develop studio-based pedagogy around the notion of the independent learner, renewing studio's relevance and currency. The aim of this thesis was developed from a literature review that was divided into four sections. The first summarised developments within UK higher education, including research into the First Year Experience, and placed architecture education within this context. The second examined the origins of contemporary studio-based teaching, whilst the third discussed the theoretical roots of its pedagogy. The final chapter critiqued teaching and learning practices through comparison with the theoretical intent, revealing a number of contradictory and counter-productive aspects. From this, the position that the development of the truly independent learner in the discipline of architecture requires the formulation of new inclusive pedagogic strategies that explicitly accommodate the individual in the studio-based learning process, and address identified shortcomings in existing studio-based teaching practices, was developed. The methodology adopted an ethnographic approach that gathered data through a longitudinal study of student perceptions, together with interviews with selected academics. Analysis of the findings, whilst replicating many phenomena raised by the literature, also revealed in detail a range of perceptions of learning, and wider student life, giving insight into key challenges. In considering these against the agendum of creating the independent learner, the importance of the peer group as a vehicle for studio-based learning and pastoral support, emerged strongly. A number of recommendations were thus made aimed at reconstructing the role of the tutor in the development of future strategies, as well as harnessing the unrealised potential of the peer group as an agent in embedding independent learning in design studio. The originality of this thesis resides in the fact that it constitutes a holistic study of teaching and learning practices in first year design studio. This is viewed against the background of rapid change in UK Higher Education. Pivotal to the study was the undertaking of a longitudinal survey of student perceptions, presenting a vitally different perspective from, say, that of Schon. From a holistic standpoint, the study creates the theoretical and evidential basis for the future development of key pedagogic strategies relating to design studio. This lays the foundation for the development of learning practices that foster learner independence within the context of design studio.


This course explores the contemporary politics of Korea through academic sources and films. Students will discover how the tumultuous history of modern Korea has contributed to the present political conditions in South and North Korea.


The Reserve Bank's triennial Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) provides a detailed snapshot of how Australian consumers make payments. The 2016 CPS recorded information on around 17 000 day-to-day payments made by over 1 500 participants during a week. The data show that Australian consumers continued to switch from paper-based ways of making payments such as cash and cheques, towards digital payment methods (particularly debit and credit cards). Cards were the most frequently used means of payment in the 2016 survey, overtaking cash for the first time. Contactless 'tap and go' cards are an increasingly popular way of making payments, displacing cash for many lower-value transactions. Despite these trends, cash still accounts for a material share of consumer payments and is intensively used by some segments of the population. Payments using a mobile phone at a card terminal are a relatively new feature of the payments system and this technology was not widely used at the time of the survey. However, consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones to make online and person-to-person payments. Similarly, consumers are using automatic payments, such as direct debits, more frequently.


Human behavior models give insight into people's choices and actions and are tools for predicting performance and improving interface design. Most models focus on a task's cognitive aspects or its physical requirements. This research addresses the divide between cognitive and physical models by combining two models to produce an integrated cognitive-physical human model that enables studying of complex human-machine interactions. The capabilities of the integrated model are evaluated in a task scenario with both cognitive and physical components, i.e., driving while performing a secondary in-vehicle task. When applied in this way, the integrated model is called the Virtual Driver model and can replicate basic driving, in-vehicle tasks, and resource-sharing behaviors, providing a new way to study driver distraction. The model has applicability to interface design and predicting staffing requirements and performance.


This thesis has two purposes. The first is to investigate the motivation for household
migration - in particular, the associations between the different reasons for moving
and the characteristics of owner-occupier movers in Scotland, their houses and the
distances they travel. The second is to investigate the extent to which the migration
decision is a longitudinal one, and from this longitudinal analysis to highlight the
extent of latent migration. Little longitudinal research has previously been carried out
on the migration decision.
The thesis uses two recent, large-scale and under-utilised data sources to investigate
each of these issues. Firstly, the associations with motivations for migration are
investigated using the 'Migration and Housing Choice Survey' (MHCS) which
contains information from 10,010 households. The advantage of this cross-sectional
source lies in its provision of detailed information on motivations at a national level of
coverage. The large-scale, national coverage makes it possible to investigate many
types of migration flow. This advantage is not shared by any other British research
into motivations for migration and only three other data sets elsewhere. Secondly,
the extent to which the decision to n-iigrate is part of an on-going process is
investigated using the 'British Household Panel Survey' (BBPS). This new and
under-exploited source of migration data contains longitudinal information from
10,264 individuals in the first wave and holds approximately this sample size through
each of the following four waves.
This thesis makes four key contributions to knowledge. The first three are based on
the detailed and systematic analysis of the reasons for residential migration behaviour
of owner-occupiersin Scotland,u sing the MHCS. Firstly, the reasonsf or moving, as
suggestedb y previously small-scaler esearch,h ave been confirmed by this large-scale
data set. Secondly, this thesis has extended - and in some cases refuted - the findings
of previous researchb y investigatingt he bivariate associationsb etween each of the
reasons for moving and each possible explanatory variables (these being
characteristicso f migrants, of their home and of the distancest hey move). This has
been investigated using much wider selection of reasons for moving and of
characteristicsth an hasb eenp reviouslyd one. Thirdly, this thesish as shown that lifecycle
stage exerts a considerable amount of influence on the reasons given for
moving, whilst still operating in conjunction with other variables, such as distance
moved and housing features. The MIHCS can, for the first time, enable research into
the connection between the factors influencing migration flows and the factors
influencing motivations for migration.
Fourthly, this thesis has investigated how migration decisions and preference for
migration relate over time, using longitudinal data (the BHPS). This has shown that a
considerable amount of latent mobility is present in Britain, and even more
importantly, has identified the characteristics of the latent migrants and frequent
movers. In addition, this thesis has offered some methodological pointers for future
migration research.
Overall, the use of these two important but under-utilised data sets, the MECS and
the BBPS, have enabled analyses to be undertaken that are unique in the history of
nýgration research.
V


During the last couple of decades penalties alternative to the prison terms have become more and more popular all over the world. Lithuania is undergoing the process of international and regional integration now. It caused changes in the Lithuania's penal system, which is being reformed in order to conform to international standards. Article "Conditional Release in the Law System of Lithuania" analyses the conditional release, a type of penalties alternative to the prison terms and its place in law system of Lithuania. Author of this article discussed factors, which had allowed bearing the idea of the conditional release, development and place of this institute in today's law system. Consideration of arguments is concentrated on trying to show that conditional release is not only a release from punishment but it also deals with the contents of punishment and is an extension of it. There are some economic factors given about advantages of conditional release. This research work also analyses how conditional release influences the criminality and how it impacts the re-integration of convicts. Article shows imperfection of some aspects of conditional release and the possible ways to improve the situation. Within the content of article the experience of Canada and Sweden is described in the field of conditional release. Generalization of research on probation offices, which was carried out by the author of this article is included. 52 Probation officers took part in the research. Insufficient and ineffective regulation of conditional release, lack of financial support for probation offices and imperfect mechanism of conditional release in Lithuania were specified as the main problems. Taking into account the results of this research, the author presents some proposals, which may allow making the system of conditional release more effective. For example, decision on whether or not to grant conditional release should be taken by special independent non-judicial institution, not courts. The theme of the article is interesting and is not completely researched yet.


Structured catalysts based on open-cell metallic foams offer a great potential for process intensification of fast, highly exo-/endothermic and diffusion-controlled catalytic processes. For the development of such structured catalysts, the choice of coating technique used to deposit the active phase on the foam surface is crucial, as the coating technique strongly influences the properties of the coated layer and in turn the activity/selectivity of the obtained structured catalysts. In this regard, the electro-base generation method has been proposed as a promising option that allows to coat foams without pore clogging, a common drawback of conventional wash-coating technique. The thesis aims to improve the electrodeposition and widen its applicability in the preparation of structured catalysts.
In this respect, the first part of this thesis focuses on investigation of the electrochemical processes, taking place during the electrodeposition of Mg-Al hydrotalcite, thereby studying the role of nitrate concentration and reduction. Understanding the reactions involved in the electrodeposition helps to identify the main steps that determine the properties of the coating, and provides possible solutions to improve the method. In fact, by using a new electrochemical set-up, the control on the electrodeposition is achieved in terms of homogeneity and composition of the coating.
In the second part of this thesis, a modified method for the electrodeposition of active phase on metallic foams is proposed and its applicability is demonstrated in the preparation of following catalyst systems for the use in energy and environmental catalytic processes: i) Rh/Mg/Al on FeCrAl or NiCrAl foams for the catalytic partial oxidation of CH4, ii) Pd-CeO2 on FeCrAl foam for CO oxidation, and iii) Rh/Mg/Al, Rh-CeO2, and Co3O4 on FeCrAl foam for catalytic N2O decomposition. The aforementioned catalyst systems exhibit satisfactory performances in the respective test reactions, thus confirming the potential of using electrodeposition in preparing the structured catalysts.


High performance computation with longer battery lifetime is an essential component in our today's digital electronics oriented life. To achieve these goals, field effect transistors based complementary metal oxide semiconductor play the key role. One of the critical requirements of transistor structure and fabrication is efficient contact engineering. To catch up with high performance information processing, transistors are going through continuous scaling process. However, it also imposes new challenges to integrate good contact materials in a small area. This can be counterproductive as smaller area results in higher contact resistance thus reduced performance for the transistor itself. At the same time, discovery of new one or two‐dimensional materials like nanowire, nanotube, or atomic crystal structure materials, introduces new set of challenges and opportunities. In this paper, we are reviewing them in a synchronized fashion: fundamentals of contact engineering, evolution into non‐planar field effect transistors, opportunities and challenges with one and two‐dimensional materials and a new opportunity of contact engineering from device architecture perspective.


Messages in the mass media shed light on how people are thinking about drugs, and they also both reflect and influence policies on drugs. However, that is by no means saying that media messages are a true representation of drug users' and suppliers' own experiences and perceptions. Here lies one of the critical problems of drug policy: the issue of which methods and messages will be most effective in managing the drug market.

Markets, methods and messages are the three central themes of this book, with a focus on Europe. Authors include social scientists from a range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, anthropology and criminology. In reporting on their systematic research on drug use, drug users and drug suppliers, some authors address one of the themes, others a combination. Together, their contributions illustrate the dynamic nature of drug markets, messages about drugs, and methods of investigating the world of drug users and suppliers.


The euro adoption process in the Czech Republic is currently viewed negatively among SMEs. Preparation the transition to the euro will eliminate the risk of destabilization in business sector and in financial markets. The general preparedness level of enterprises is analyzed in the National Euro Changeover Plan, including any specifics for SMEs. Detailed processes will be explained in Manual for the Preparation of Entrepreneurs. The Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Crafts of the Czech Republic should be involved in the preparation of manual. The SME sector will bear a relatively higher burden of costs arising from the euro introduction, as corroborated by experience of Slovak companies. Businesses have major concerns about the conversion of accounting and information systems.


LOCO-I (low complexity lossless compression for images) is a novel lossless compression algorithm for continuous-tone images which combines the simplicity of Huffman coding with the compression potential of context models, thus "enjoying the best of both worlds." The algorithm is based on a simple fixed context model, which approaches the capability of the more complex universal context modeling techniques for capturing high-order dependencies. The model is tuned for efficient performance in conjunction with a collection of (context-conditioned) Huffman codes, which is realized with an adaptive, symbol-wise, Golomb-Rice code. LOCO-I attains, in one pass, and without recourse to the higher complexity arithmetic coders, compression ratios similar or superior to those obtained with state-of-the-art schemes based on arithmetic coding. In fact, LOCO-I is being considered by the ISO committee as a replacement for the current lossless standard in low-complexity applications.


The feedstock characteristics of the conversion platform will influence the optimal harvest and post harvest management practices for switchgrass. However, many of the harvest management practices are tied to plant phenology and will be similar across platforms. Proper harvest and storage of switchgrass will help provide a consistent and high-quality feedstock to the biorefinery. Bioenergy-specific switchgrass strains are high-yielding and in most cases can be harvested and baled with commercially available haying equipment. Many options are available for packaging switchgrass for storage and transportation, but large round bales or large rectangular bales are the most readily available and are in use on farms. Large round bales tend to have less storage losses than large rectangular bales when stored outside, but rectangular bales tend to be easier to handle and load a truck for transport without road width restrictions. Although there is limited large-scale experience with harvesting and storing switchgrass for bioenergy, extensive research, as well as a history of harvesting hay crops for livestock in many agroecoregions, makes harvesting and preserving switchgrass for bioenergy feasible at the landscape scale.


Visible and near-infrared light responsed Sn1−x Bi x S2nanosheets was synthesised via a simple hydrothermal method. Rhodamine B was adopted to evaluate the degradation efficiency of the as-prepared samples. Experimental results showed that the doping content of Bi3+ could obviously affect the degradation efficiency of SnS2. It was first increased and then decreased with increasing the Bi3+ content under the visible light irradiation. When the mole fraction of doping Bi3+ was 5%, the as-prepared Sn0.95Bi0.05S2 with a bandgap of 0.38 eV had the highest degradation efficiency of 95.9% in 120 min. Moreover, the as-prepared composites possessed more effective electron–hole pair separation than that of pure SnS2. In addition, a possible degradation mechanism of the as-prepared Sn0.95Bi0.05S2 was proposed.


This paper focuses on the findings of Phases I and II of an institution-wide project on the effective use of interactive video for teaching and learning in a university in New Zealand. Responding to the emerging growth of video in teaching and learning practice and scholarship, and also to the university's strategic focus on providing blended, flexible learning opportunities, this project explores the ways in which lecturers currently use videos in teaching, their challenges, and their attitudes towards making video as well as students' perceptions of learning through video. This paper discusses what we conceptualise as effective learning moments and conditions and how these can be created and maximised through the effective production and manipulation of relevant, purposeful interactive videos. The overall project combines both research and impact and develops opportunities for lecturers to enhance their competencies in creating interactive videos.


Preparation for heart transplant commonly includes booklets, instructional videos, personalized teaching sessions, and mentorship. This paper explores heart transplant recipients' thoughts on their preparation and support through the transplant process. Twenty-five interviews were audio-/videotaped capturing voice and body language and transcribed verbatim. Coding addressed language, bodily gesture, volume, and tone in keeping with our visual methodology. Recipients reported that only someone who had a transplant truly understands the experience. As participants face illness and life-altering experiences, maintaining a positive attitude and hope is essential to coping well. Healthcare professionals provide ongoing care and reassurance about recipients' medical status. Mentors, family members, and close friends play vital roles in supporting recipients. Participants reported that only heart transplant recipients understood the experience, the hope, and ultimately the suffering associated with living with another persons' heart. Attention needs to be focused not solely on the use of teaching modalities, but also on the development of innovative support networks. This will promote patient and caregiver engagement in self-management. Enhancing clinicians' knowledge of the existential aspects of transplantation will provide them with a nuanced understanding of the patients' experience, which will ultimately enhance their ability to better prepare and support patients and their caregivers.


More than 150 types of chemical modifications have been identified in cellular RNAs (collectively called ''the epitranscriptome''), and such modifications have emerged as important regulators of gene expression. Despite the recent progress in studying RNA modifications, knowledge of the enzymes that install many individual modifications and the cellular functions of these modifications is lacking. Furthermore, an increasing number of diseases are linked to defects in RNA modifications or RNA modification enzymes but the molecular basis of these diseases often remains unknown.
The human genome encodes numerous putative RNA methyltransferases, such as the methyltransferase-like (METTL) proteins and the Nol1/Nop2/SUN domain (NSUN) proteins, however, the molecular targets and functions of several of these enzymes remain unknown. We applied crosslinking and analysis of cDNA (CRAC) to identify the RNA binding sites of METTL16, NSUN6 and NSUN3 in a transcriptome-wide manner and used in vivo and in vitro assays to study their methylation activities. We showed that METTL16 is an N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methyltransferase that targets A43 in the U6 snRNA, which lies within an evolutionarily conserved sequence that base pairs with 5' splice sites in pre-mRNAs, suggesting that this modification contributes to the regulation of pre-mRNA splicing. Furthermore, our results indicated that while NSUN6 introduces m5C72 on some cytoplasmic tRNAs during a late step of their biogenesis, NSUN3 installs m5C34 on the mitochondrial (mt)-tRNAMet. We have also identified ALKBH1 as the dioxygenase responsible for the oxidation of m5C34 to f534 of mt-tRNAMet and shown that these modifications are important for expanding codon recognition by mt-tRNAMet to enable efficient mitochondrial translation.
We studied how these proteins recognize their substrates and showed that the CCA nucleotides at the 3' end of tRNAs are important for recognition by NSUN6. Moreover, we found that the stability of the anticodon stem loop (ASL) is required for recognition by NSUN3, explaining why pathogenic mutations in mt-tRNAMet that disrupt the ASL impair methylation by NSUN3 and lead to disease. We further explored the link between RNA modification enzymes and disease by analysing effects of an aspartate 86 to glycine exchange (D86G) in the nucleolar ribosomal (r)RNA methyltransferase EMG1, which has been observed in patients with Bowen-Conradi syndrome (BCS). We discovered that EMG1D86G is chaperoned by the IMP/7 heterodimer in the cytoplasm and, upon the disassembly of the import complex in the nucleus, EMG1D86G aggregates and is degraded by the proteasome, leading to ribosome biogenesis defects.
Taken together, our studies characterized substrates of novel RNA-modifying enzymes and provided insights into their cellular functions and the link between defects in these enzymes and diseases.


ABSTRACT HIV serostatus disclosure plays an important role in HIV transmission risk reduction and is positively associated with HIV medication adherence and treatment outcomes. However, to date, no study has quantified the role of disclosure across the HIV treatment cascade, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. We used data from a cohort of HIV-infected adults in Northern Tanzania to describe associations between disclosure and engagement and retention in the HIV treatment cascade. Between 2008 and 2009, the Coping with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania (CHAT) study enrolled 260 clients newly diagnosed with HIV and 492 HIV-infected patients in established HIV care in two large HIV care and treatment centers in Northern Tanzania. Participants aged 18 and older completed annual clinical assessments and twice-annual in-person interviews for 3.5 years. Using logistic regression models, we assessed sociodemographic correlates of HIV serostatus disclosure to at least one household member, and associations between this disclosure measure and linkage to care, evaluation for antiretroviral therapy (ART) eligibility, ART coverage, and rates of undetectable HIV RNA levels during the follow-up period. Married individuals and those diagnosed earlier were more likely to have disclosed their HIV infection to at least one household member. During follow-up, HIV serostatus disclosure was associated with higher rates of linkage to care, evaluation for ART eligibility, and ART coverage. No significant association was observed with rates of undetectable viral loads. Marginal effects estimates suggest that a 10 percentage-point lower probability of linkage to care for those who did not disclose their HIV serostatus (86% vs. 96%; p = 0.035) was compounded by an 18 percentage-point lower probability of ever receiving a CD4 count (62% vs. 80%; p = .039), and a 20 percentage-point lower probability of ever receiving ART (55% vs. 75%; p = .029). If causal, these findings suggest an important role for disclosure assistance efforts across the HIV treatment cascade.


Lipids and sodium (23Na) are two essential components of the
human body. They play a role in almost all biological systems. However, an
increase in their levels is associated with metabolic diseases. The elevation
of their contents can cause similar health disorders. Examples of prevalent
disorders that share an increase of musculoskeletal lipids and 23Na
are hypertension and diabetes. However, the relationship between in vivo
lipid and sodium levels in pathophysiology has not been studied enough and
therefore is still unclear. Additionally, the available quantification methods to facilitate such
a study may not be practical. They are either invasive, not sensitive enough,
or require an impractical measurement time.

Therefore, in this work, our aims were to develop practical in
vivo methods to quantify the absolute sodium concentration as well as the
concentration of each lipid component individually, and to study the
correlation between them within the skeletal muscles.

Since lipids and 23Na have different nuclear magnetic
resonance properties, their quantification by magnetic resonance (MR)
techniques face different challenges. Thus, we optimized different MR
spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) techniques for lipids and 23Na.

Our proposed proton MRSI was able to provide eight lipid fat fraction
(FF) maps representing each musculoskeletal lipid component (fatty acid)
detected by our MRSI technique, and demonstrated a superior sensitivity compared to the conventional
MR imaging methods.

For 23Na, our developed 23Na-MRSI was able to
measure and map the absolute 23Na concentration with values agreeing
with those reported previously in biopsy studies, and with a high repeatability
(CV < 6 %) within significantly shorter acquisition time compared to other
available techniques.

 Finally,
the 23Na concentration and the fat fractions of each lipid component
within healthy skeletal muscles were measured and correlated using our
developed MRSI methods. Our findings suggest a positive regional relationship between 23Na
and lipids and negative correlation between 23Na and BMI under
healthy conditions.


We propose two different approaches to achieve electrically pumped lasing in photoniccrystal based membrane-type devices. The first approach concerns a band-edge laser in an optically thick gold-clad photonic-crystal membrane. The second approach consists of a gold-clad ridge waveguide terminated with DBR-mirrors that is evanescently coupled to a passive waveguide. For both devices, a two-dimensional numerical analysis was performed, including gold absorption losses.


Digital devices and computer software have the prospect to help children with intellectual challenges (IC) in learning capabilities, profession growth, and self-consciousness living. However, most tools and existing software applications that these children utilize are prepared without observance of their particular deficiency. We conduct an Arabic ontology-based learning system that presents automatically illustrations to characterize the content of stories for children with IC in the state of Qatar. We utilize different mechanisms in order to produce these illustrations which comprise: Arabic natural language processing, animal domain-based ontology, word-to-word based relationship extraction, automatic online search-engine querying. The substantial purpose of our proposed system is to ameliorate children with IC the educational, comprehension, perception, and reasoning through the generated illustrations.


This case study describes a proposed commercial redevelopment at Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The site, located on the Tunbridge Wells Sand and Wadhurst Clay formations, has been affected by major structural faulting as well as by periglacial conditions during the Quaternary. A key aspect of the project was the development of a geological model to inform the engineering design. This study presents the ground model development process, starting with an appreciation of the macro geological setting, understanding the Quaternary landsystem, to focusing on the data from the intrusive ground investigation. The understanding of the primary sedimentary depositional system is critical to the development of a site geological conceptual model. Sediments from highly variable environments of deposition, such as were present in the Early Cretaceous, will present geotechnical and geohazard challenges to a site's development and this first-principles understanding is important in this process. The link from these fundamental geological principles to engineering design, communicated through the ground model, as demonstrated in this paper, is the requirement of the engineering geological appraisal. Locally complex geology demanded a phased site investigation approach, responding to an evolving design and to construction demands, and to meet defined programme requirements for a second-stage tender, to ultimately de-risk key areas with regard to the dynamic ground and groundwater conditions. Thematic collection: This article is part of the Ground models in engineering geology and hydrogeology collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/Ground-models-in-engineering-geology-and-hydrogeology


In this dissertation, we present and benchmark an approximate dynamic programming algorithm that is capable of designing near-optimal control policies for timedependent, finite-horizon energy storage problems, where wind supply, demand and electricity prices may evolve stochastically. We found that the algorithm was able to design storage policies that are within 0.08% of optimal in deterministic comparisons and within 0.86% in stochastic ones. We then use the algorithm to analyze a dualstorage system with different capacities and losses, and show that the policy properly uses the low-loss device (which is typically much more expensive) for high-frequency variations. We close this chapter by demonstrating the algorithm on a five-device system. We then use the algorithm to analyze the behavior of distributed storage across a model of the PJM electrical grid based on simulations with historical data, and we provide benchmarking for a deterministic version of this multidimensional problem. Finally, we study the integration of high levels of solar power in the presence of varying degrees of distributed storage and report on the effect of increased solar capacity on conventional generation levels, the value of storage at different levels of solar, the curtailment of solar power at high penetration levels, the impact of different levels of solar penetration on the storage control policy and the effect of combining distributed storage and solar power on load-weighted locational marginal prices of electricity.


There is a pressing need to investigate contrasting pedagogical approaches by Universities and Conservatoires and little exploration, to date. The cast of a recent production of Bad Girls the Musical, directed by the authors, combined Edge Hill University undergraduates alongside conservatoire-trained students from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. Our experiences of working collaboratively over an intensive period with students from these divergent training pathways offers an opportunity for a comparative exploration of models of performer training, and perceived sectoral differences. This case study provides the basis for our proposed paper on performer training.

As Higher Education becomes fully integrated in the global neoliberal project, students and staff are increasingly required to demonstrate compliance with controlling discourses, including 'value for money' and 'employability'. Both these tropes are measured against the narrowest and most short-term criteria – initial salary, first graduate destination – none of which favour the real life experiences of students of performing arts. As HE institutions attempt to meet the latest metrics and fulfil the criteria of the most recent acronym (TEF) questions around the approach to performer training, both at Conservatoire and University, re-emerge. Competition for prospective students has intensified, and the decisive factors tend to be quantitative: crude measures of 'value for money' have played out as a concentration on the number of weekly contact hours offered on each course. Conservatoires typically offer 25-35 hours a week contact time, and, in a 'market' frame, this raises the question as to whether universities (often limited by institutional constraints) are able to, or even should, engage in performer training. In a subject area where students legitimately expect to engage in skill development to aid future employability, universities, wary of

litigation, attempt to manage student expectations, by reframing definitions of performer training, so as to protect and increase their share of the student market. This strategy can be advocated for in light of a key finding in the UK Engagement Survey (2016) that independent learning "appears to have a stronger link than taught sessions to all types of skills development",1 so, whether it succeeds or not, there is a clear pedagogical argument for the university's reframing of the conversation.

This paper will explore pressing realities around performer training, focusing on differences in pedagogical approach of universities and conservatoires - actual and perceived - and their impact on students' approaches to performance and employability. As students are increasingly defined (both by institutions and themselves) as consumers-becoming-entrepreneurs we will also investigate how consumer attitudes and hierarchies manifest themselves within rehearsal rooms, and consider observable impacts on skill development and student/tutor relationships.

1 Havergal, C. (2016) Independent study more useful than contact hours, study suggests https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/independent-study-more-useful-contact-hours-study-suggests (accessed 20/4/18)


Evidence shows that participants choose to disengage during emotion regulation (ER) when facing high intensity stimuli, whereas engage when the intensity is low. No study explored ER choice when participants have more than two strategies to regulate their emotions, nor the role of psychopathology on ER choice. This study aimed to replicate and extend the results of Sheppes et al. (2011) and to explore the role of psychosis-proneness in ER strategies choice. In total, 128 non-clinical participants completed two experimental tasks (a replication task and an extension task), choosing an ER strategy in two conditions. Participants favoured disengagement strategies when the emotional intensity was high and engagement strategies when the intensity was low. Psychosis-proneness seems to be associated with difficulties in adapting to the emotional context. These results expand our understanding on ER choices and provide knowledge on flexibility in ER as well as its implication in psychosis-proneness.


A simple method to derive a closed-form expression for the transfer function of linear-phase half-band filters with maximally flat amplitude-response characteristics is presented. The method is based on the binomial series. It results in hierarchical and modular structures with low hardware complexity for low-pass and high-pass filters. For a filter of a given order, the structures provide access to ail maximally flat filters of lower orders. Two types of structures are presented. The first enjoys a set of multiplier coefficients with reduced dynamic range, and the second can be realized free of multiplier coefficients in a modular manner. Extension of the order of the filter can be achieved by cascading additional building blocks for the former structure or by adding an extra layer of modules for the latter structure. The proposed structures and formulas are applicable to maximally flat Hilbert transformers as well.


Sierra Popoluca (SP) is a Mixe-Zoquean language, spoken by about 28,000 individuals in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The objectives of this paper are (1) to explore the structures of dependent verb constructions in SP and the contexts in which they occur and (2) to highlight the stages in which data is gathered and the interplay between text collection, elicitation, and analysis. SP is an ergative, polysynthetic, head-marking language. It has five dependent verb construction types. Early analyses suggested that dependent verbs were non-finite, nominalized forms. Further research indicated that the verbs are components in complex predicates that share inflection for aspect/mood, person, and number. Implicated in the analysis of these constructions are: the prosodic system; the alignment system, which is hierarchically driven with split ergativity; and the number system, also hierarchically driven. The teasing apart of the various grammatical features led to a multi-step process of analyzing and collecting data. By looking at a complex grammatical structure, this paper highlights the interdependency of corpus building, text analysis, and elicitation and the strategies used to negotiate between naturally occurring speech, in which data may be obscured by phonology, and elicited data, which frequently produces periphrastic constructions or alternative utterance types.


Although more and more corporations are including diversity in their business plans, one major group has been left out: people with disabilities. The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act promised an end to discrimination more than a decade ago, but the unemployment rate for people with disabilities - physical and mental, visible and invisible - remains high, and businesses remain uncertain about how to hire, manage, and market to what is by far America's largest minority. In this comprehensive guide to incorporating disability into corporate strategies - from hiring to selling to office architecture - Riley argues that disability and business need one another. In exchange for inclusion and empowerment in the workplace, people with disabilities bring a trillion-dollar consumer market to the bargaining table, revenues untapped by most major companies. Instead of relying on the paternal "it's the right thing to do" attitude, Riley emphasizes the business case for inclusion, pointing the way to higher sales volume and a talent pool of creative thinkers, the "user-experts" who know best how to reach the community. Based on more than 100 interviews with inside sources at Microsoft, IBM, Cingular, Boeing, SunTrust, and other major companies that have already enjoyed success and recognition in the disability field, Riley identifies the best ways to integrate disability into a company's diversity strategy and shows how successful integration has the potential to transform the way a company does business, enhancing profits as well as reputation. This is the first book to explain disability culture to the full spectrum of industry and across all departments; and it is the first to provide corporate leaders with a master strategy for making disability a productive and profitable aspect of their business plans. Riley's central premise - that the two sides are already capable of helping one another, but have not recognized how to make this happen - speaks directly to the needs of each community and proposes a practical agenda that will directly benefit both.


A balance between energy supply and demand is essential for the viability of all cells but is particularly critical in the heart where energy demand is high and continuous. The maintenance of energy homeostasis is dependent on a continual supply of ADP, inorganic phosphate, oxygen and reducing equivalents in the form of NAD(P)H. The importance of sufficient oxygen delivery for maintenance of cardiac energy production is well established; however, the fact that this must be matched to NAD(P)H production is frequently overlooked.

The principal source of NAD(P)H is from the metabolism of blood-borne carbon substrates. Some organs and tissues are able to use only a limited number of substrates for energy production; for example, the brain relies almost exclusively on glucose for oxidative ATP production. In contrast the heart is able to use a wide range of substrates for energy production, including glucose, fatty acids, ketone bodies, lactate and pyruvate. Despite this, the often stated view, which has changed little for many years, continues to be that the predominant fuels for cardiac energy production in vivo are long chain fatty acids and glucose (Neely & Morgan, 1974). In part this perception is sustained by the belief that glucose and fatty acids are the only substrates available in vivo. However, at rest circulating lactate concentrations are approximately 1 mm and during exercise can easily reach to 3–5 mm (Kemppainen et al. 2002). Even higher serum lactate concentrations may be seen after surgery. More than 20 years ago Drake et al. (1980) showed that the uptake of lactate by the heart in vivo is directly proportional to its serum concentration. We and others have shown in the isolated perfused heart, that lactate contributes significantly to acetyl-CoA formation often contributing more than glucose (Chatham et al. 1999).

Despite the evidence that lactate may be an important fuel for myocardial energy metabolism, there is remarkably little information, either in vivo or in vitro, on the interactions between lactate and glucose utilization or lactate and fatty acid oxidation. This represents a significant gap in our knowledge of metabolic regulation in the heart, especially in light of recent interest in manipulation of cardiac metabolism as a potential therapeutic intervention. Evidence is accumulating to suggest that increasing myocardial carbohydrate utilization and decreasing fatty acid metabolism improve the outcome following myocardial ischaemia (Stanley et al. 1997). However, much of the experimental data used to support this mechanism are based on studies where glucose and fatty acids are the only substrates considered. Consequently, it is unclear whether the conclusions from such studies are relevant to in vivo conditions where lactate may be present in significant concentrations.

In this issue of The Journal of Physiology Kemppainen et al. (2002) use positron emission tomography (PET) to quantify cardiac and skeletal muscle glucose uptake and phosphorylation in healthy human subjects at rest and at three different intensities of exercise. As expected they found that increasing exercise in skeletal muscle was associated with increased glucose metabolism. However, in the heart, although glucose uptake was slightly increased at low or moderate exercise levels, at the highest exercise level it was no different from rest. At rest and at the lowest exercise level there was a negative correlation between serum free fatty acid concentration and myocardial glucose uptake in accordance with the classic glucose-fatty acid cycle originally proposed by Randle et al. (1963). However, at moderate and high exercise levels this correlation disappeared; this was associated with a significant increase in serum lactate at these exercise intensities. They concluded that during high intensity exercise, substrates other than glucose, such as lactate, might contribute significantly to cardiac energy production. This conclusion was supported by a negative correlation between serum lactate levels and glucose uptake at moderate exercise intensity.

An important issue that the work by Kemppainen et al. (2002) illustrates is that the regulation of substrate selection by the myocardium is a dynamic process. That is the contribution of different substrates to energy production will change depending on the physiological milieu. Whilst this may seem obvious, it should be put in the context that much of our knowledge of cardiac metabolism is based on the use of a limited range of substrate and hormone concentrations as well as limited mixtures of substrates. The use of only a single concentration of substrates may result in erroneous conclusions regarding the impact of a specific physiological or pathophysiological state on cardiac energy metabolism. For example, we found that cardiac fatty acid oxidation was markedly increased following diabetes, at low fatty acid concentrations compared with the non-diabetic group, but was significantly depressed at high concentrations (Chatham et al. 1999). The use of only a single fatty acid concentration would have resulted in an incomplete understanding on the effects of diabetes on cardiac fatty acid metabolism. This demonstrates the importance of using of a range of substrate concentrations to characterize the metabolic phenotype of the heart.

There are some limitations with the study by Kemppainen et al. (2002) that should be noted. For example, the measurement of 2-[18 F]fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose uptake by PET reflects the uptake and phosphorylation of glucose by the heart, but not necessarily glucose oxidation. Furthermore there are no measurements of lactate metabolism by the heart. The use of 14 C- or 13 C-labelled lactate and glucose would provide a quantitative measure of substrate oxidation. Such methods are routinely used in isolated heart preparations and have also been performed in human subjects (Gertz et al. 1988). However, in humans this requires cardiac catheterization, which is clearly invasive and associated with substantially increased risk compared with PET. Despite these limitations, the study by Kemppainen et al. (2002) is an important reminder that lactate, primarily considered a metabolic waste product and typically ignored as a potential fuel, may be an important substrate for cardiac energy metabolism in vivo.


Lifetime records on 344 purebred Hereford (HE) and 517 multibreed Beef Synthetic #1 (SY1) cows bom from 1966 to 1975 were analysed to provide estimates of genetic parameters for growth traits measured early in life and measures of longevity and lifetime production. The cows were managed under a stringent culling policy where a heifer or cow failing to wean a calf each year was culled. Estimates of direct heritability were higher than maternal heritability for all traits, except weaning weight for which die pattern was reversed Estimates of direct heritability for growth traits (except weaning weight, with low estimates) were moderate to high (0.23 0.68), while those for lifetime production traits were moderate (0.22 0.37). Total heritability for the lifrtimp production traits were low, ranging from 0.04 to 0.17. Estimates of direct and total heritabilities were higher in die multibreed SY1 than the purebred HE breed group for all die traits studied Estimates of genetic correlation between direct and maternal effects were nagative for all traits in both breed groups except for yearling weight of HE cows which was dose to zero.


As a young man, William Butler Yeats was deeply affected by the idea of romantic love, or, as he called it, "the old high way of love." Characteristically, much of his early poetry that which was written prior to 1910, is poetry that belongs to courtship.When Yeats was twenty-three years old, he met and fell in love with the beautiful Irish nationalist, Maud Gonne. Although she repeatedly refused to marry Yeats, Maud would become the object of his passion and his poetry. The emotional power in many of Yeats' early poems is shaped by the one-sidedness of his affair with Maud, but the poems themselves remain hopeful and bitter-sweet, pure in their language and attitudes about love.The forty-one poems collected in" A Poet to his Beloved" represent some of Yeats's most evocative and passionate early love poems. These versed are simple, lyrical, and often dreamy, and they speak knowingly of innocence and beauty, passion and desire, devotion and the fear of rejection.


Fish like many living organisms have specific tolerant range of various environmental parameters, thus fish farming of specific types of fish species requires certain conditions that have to be reached. Moreover, the people that work in the fish farming ponds have to be engaged in all day activities to maintain the living fish habitat. Therefore, monitoring and taking actions to maintain the habitat's sustainable environment for certain fish species inside of fishing ponds over distributed machine to machine communication, which will shorten the time needed for some basic actions, is the main motivation for this paper. In this paper we present an upgrade on a functional Internet of Things (IoT) system for monitoring fish farming ponds. The IoT system consists of various sensors that measure important factors of the water quality like temperature, light intensity or water level, as well as small board computer that processes the data and sends sound and visual notifications to the fish farming manager. The current system lacks the ability to process the data to the end-user via web or mobile platform. Due to remote distance of the fish farming ponds and their location dependence of clean fresh water, one solution of this problem is using expansion module like Wivity modem to enable the end users in real time to monitor and control certain aspects of the fish farming pond IoT system. Wivity modem allows user to communicate to the IoT system via WiFi connection, cellular, LoRaWAN or satellite communication; all in one product. Later on, this module can be integrated with IoT platforms including Japser, Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. For future work, we plan to expand not only the applicable services on different platforms, but also add more control modules and sensors to the existing IoT system for specific fish species.


Landforms are a fast-developing art form that enjoy a wide following today, because of their multiple uses and their enveloping beauty. As formal landscapes that often arise from necessity - recycling a coal site for human use or making new use of excess earth - they are a pleasure to walk over and through. In this collection of his recent work, Charles Jencks explains his particular approach to the landform. Like the prehistoric earthworks of Britain that have been an inspiration, such as Stonehenge, his landforms contain cosmic symbolism, and they draw together sculpture, epigraphy, water, gardens, scrap metal and architecture. They address perennial themes - identity, patterns of nature, death and the power of life - but in a contemporary way, based on the insights of science. So Jencks portrays universal aspects of DNA, the spacetime warp of a black hole, the extraordinary way cells divide and unite and some basic forms of life. Other designs include sharp comments on recent events: a water garden of war in France critiques the 2003 invasion of Iraq using 'waterpults' and 'hose-guns' among other interactive features; a white garden made from birch trees, flying bones and computer graphics deals with some fatal consequences of modernity. Jencks addresses, with wit and irony, some of the strange possibilities that arise with extra-large landforms. Northumberlandia, perhaps the largest human figure ever made, presents the question of which body parts one can walk on safely, which are dangerous and which need to be suppressed. What became perhaps the heaviest work of art in the world, at 20 million tons, was also the opportunity to transform a large open-cast mine into a dynamic landscape of giant mounds and sculpted lakes. As in his The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, to which this book is a sequel, Jencks seeks to define a new landscape iconography based on forms and themes that may be eternal, in the sense that they crystallise nature's laws, some of which have been recently discovered. To see a world in a grain of sand was a poetic quest of William Blake and, in a different sense, to find the universe in a ritual landscape was a goal of prehistoric cultures. Jencks allies these spiritual affinities with the view of science that stresses the common patterns that underlie all parts of the cosmos, thus making them like our home planet, and the universe in a landscape.


The Caliph's Splendor is a revelation: a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture. While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph's Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun's rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne. When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun's court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature. But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun's caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire. Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.


Abstract We examined the genetic structure of 5 Wyoming cougar (Puma concolor) populations surrounding the Wyoming Basin, as well as a population from southwestern Colorado. When using 9 microsatellite DNA loci, observed heterozygosity was similar among populations (HO = 0.49–0.59) and intermediate to that of other large carnivores. Estimates of genetic structure (FST = 0.028, RST = 0.029) and number of migrants per generation (Nm) suggested high gene flow. Nm was lowest between distant populations and highest among adjacent populations. Examination of these data, plus Mantel test results of genetic versus geographic distance (P ≤ 0.01), suggested both isolation by distance and an effect of habitat matrix. Bayesian assignment to population based on individual genotypes showed that cougars in this region were best described as a single panmictic population. Total effective population size for cougars in this region ranged from 1,797 to 4,532 depending on mutation model and analytical method used. Based on measures of gene flow, extinction risk in the near future appears low. We found no support for the existence of metapopulation structure among cougars in this region.


Several revisions of the genus Pleurothallis have been proposed. Luer has proposed that Pleurothallis species in subgenus Scopula be segregated into the genera Colombiana and Ancipitia . Szlachetko and Margonska (2001) proposed the genus Zosterophyllanthos for Pleurothallis subsection Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae . As an alternative, Luer (2005) proposed the genus Acronia by uniting Pleurothallis subsection Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae with subsections Acroniae and Amphygiae . The molecular phylogenetic studies by Pridgeon and Chase (2001), however, suggested that these taxonomic revisions might not be justified. We report here a more detailed phylogenetic analysis of the  genus Pleurothallis, with emphasis on subsection Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae, with data primarily from nuclear ITS sequencing, supplemented with preliminary data from plastid DNA (rpoB2, rpoC1, and ycf1) sequencing. Some initial, tentative conclusions can be drawn. In the strict consensus maximum-parsimony tree of ITS data, many of the clades collapse, leaving a polytomy with a single, highly supported node that tentatively could be used to delimit the genus Pleurothallis. Such a tree would argue for an expanded concept of the genus Pleurothallis, in which the groups Ancipitia, Colombiana, and Acronia/Zosterophyllanthos, if shown to be monophyletic, are relegated to subgenera.


We prove that iterated Whitehead products of length. (n+1) vanish in any value of an n-excisive functor in the sense of Goodwillie. We compare then different notions of homotopy nilpotency, from the Berstein-Ganea definition to the Biedermann-Dwyer one. The latter is strongly related to Goodwillie calculus and we analyze the vanishing of iterated Whitehead products in such objects.


The contributors to this comprehensive book compile and analyse the latest data available on household wealth using, as case studies, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Finland during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. The authors show that in the US, trends are highlighted in terms of wealth holdings, among the low-income population, along with changes in wealth polarization, racial differences in wealth holdings, and the dynamics of portfolio choices. The consensus between the authors is that wealth inequality has generally risen among these OECD countries since the early 1980s, although Germany stands out as an exception. In the case of the US, it is also noted that wealth holdings have generally failed to improve among low-income families and that the racial wealth gap widened during the late 1980s.


This paper presents a directive-based, high-level programming framework for high-performance reconfigurable computing. It takes a standard, portable OpenACC C program as input and generates a hardware configuration file for execution on FPGAs. We implemented this prototype system using our open-source OpenARC compiler, it performs source-to-source translation and optimization of the input OpenACC program into an OpenCL code, which is further compiled into a FPGA program by the backend Altera Offline OpenCL compiler. Internally, the design of OpenARC uses a high-level intermediate representation that separates concerns of program representation from underlying architectures, which facilitates portability of OpenARC. In fact, this design allowed us to create the OpenACC-to-FPGA translation framework with minimal extensions to our existing system. In addition, we show that our proposed FPGA-specific compiler optimizations and novel OpenACC pragma extensions assist the compiler in generating more efficient FPGA hardware configuration files. Our empirical evaluation on an Altera Stratix V FPGA with eight OpenACC benchmarks demonstrate the benefits of our strategy. To demonstrate the portability of OpenARC, we show results for the same benchmarks executing on other heterogeneous platforms, including NVIDIA GPUs, AMD GPUs, and Intel Xeon Phis. This initial evidence helps support the goal of using a directive-based, high-level programming strategy for performance portability across heterogeneous HPC architectures.


The recovery in private business investment globally remains extremely weak more than seven years after the financial crisis. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy debate on the factors behind this weakness by analyzing the role of growth prospects and uncertainty in explaining developments in non-residential private business investment in large advanced economies since the crisis. Augmenting the traditional models of investment with measures of growth expectations for output and uncertainty about global demand improves considerably the ability to explain investment growth. Our results suggest that the main driver behind the weakness in global investment in recent years is primarily a pessimistic outlook on the part of firms regarding the strength of future demand. Lower levels of uncertainty have supported investment growth modestly over 2013–14. Similarly, diminishing credit constraints, lower borrowing costs and relatively stronger corporate profits have also supported the recovery in business investment from 2010 onward. Our findings have two important implications for the global outlook for investment. First, the expected improvements in global growth should support a recovery in investment; however, a slowdown in growth in emerging-market economies or further growth disappointment in advanced economies could restrain this recovery. Second, the ongoing recovery in investment remains vulnerable to uncertainty shocks.


Compiling Bayesian networks has proven an effective approach for inference that can utilize both global and local network structure. In this paper, we define a new method of compiling based on variable elimination (VE) and Algebraic Decision Diagrams (ADDs). The approach is important for the following reasons. First, it exploits local structure much more effectively than previous techniques based on VE. Second, the approach allows any of the many VE variants to compute answers to multiple queries simultaneously. Third, the approach makes a large body of research into more structured representations of factors relevant in many more circumstances than it has been previously. Finally, experimental results demonstrate that VE can exploit local structure as effectively as state-of-the-art algorithms based on conditioning on the networks considered, and can sometimes lead to much faster compilation times.


The patient was a 41-year-old woman experiencing severe lumbago for several years. The physician-in-charge referred her for dental treatment because examination did not reveal any specific abnormality in her lower back. Prior to the treatment, the patient could barely bend forward and backward because of serious back pain. Her body flexibility and lower back pain improved when a gold alloy cast crown was placed near her feet. However, when the crown was covered with aluminum foil, it was again very difficult for her to bend her body forward and backward. These results suggested that her body reacted positively because good electromagnetic waves emitted by the crown were absorbed by the body. The alloy used to make the crown was chosen using the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test. Moreover, the shape, contact strength, and occlusion (biting condition) of the crown were also determined by the Bi-Digital O-Ring Test. After the crown was placed on her upper right first molar, her lumbago completely disappeared and did not recur for >5 years of follow-up. The effectiveness of electromagnetic waves on the condition of the body, as in this case, has not often been acknowledged in modern medicine, and the underlying mechanism remains unclear; therefore, further research is required.


Many taxpayers default into IRA distribution methods that prove disastrous for surviving family members. Taxpayers throughout the United States have accumulated considerable wealth in qualified retirement plans. At retirement, they generally will take lump-sum distributions from their plans and roll them over into individual retirement accounts. Proper planning will ensure continuation of IRA benefits to family members long after the IRA owners and their beneficiaries have died. Many taxpayers default into IRA distribution methods that initially appear worthwhile but later prove disastrous to surviving family members if both IRA owners and their beneficiaries die in their 70s. This article describes available IRA distribution options to help taxpayers and their advisers make appropriate distribution elections. MINIMUM DISTRIBUTION RULES IRA distributions generally are subject to the required minimum distribution rules in Internal Revenue Code section 401(a)(9). On July 27, 1987, the Internal Revenue Service issued comprehensive proposed regulations for IRA minimum distribution requirements and required minimum distribution rules from other retirement arrangements. A taxpayer must begin to receive distributions from an IRA on or before his or her required beginning date April 1 following the calendar year in which he or she reaches age 70 1/2. For example, if George Smith, an IRA owner, was born on February 1, 1923, he will reach 70 1/2 on August 1, 1993, and must begin receiving IRA distributions by April 1, 1994. Smith may take a required minimum distribution for calendar year 1993 either during 1993 or take it no later than April 1, 1994. The calendar year in which Smith becomes 70 1/2 is called his "first distribution calendar year." Smith is permitted to postpone the first calendar year's distribution in whole or in part until the following April 1. Tax planning will dictate whether the deferral option-which is not available for any succeeding distribution calendar years--should be used. Thus, Smith's IRA distribution for 1994 must be made by December 31, 1994. If a taxpayer fails to receive a timely required IRA distribution, he or she is subject to an excise tax of 50% of the distribution shortfall. If Smith, for example, is required to receive a required minimum distribution for calendar year 1994 of $50,000 and only receives $30,000, the excise tax liability for 1994 is 50% of the $20,000 shortfall, or $10,000. The IRS may waive the excise tax if the taxpayer's failure to receive a required minimum distribution was due to reasonable error that the taxpayer takes steps to correct. A reasonable error might occur if a taxpayer retains a pension consultant and receives inappropriate advice. Distributions from other retirement arrangements also are subject to an excise tax. DISTRIBUTION OPTIONS It is important for CPAs to master some of the technical aspects of the 1987 proposed regulations regarding IRA distributions. Appropriate planning may result in substantial savings. Many taxpayers are unaware of the distribution options they can elect to satisfy the required minimum distribution rules. The proposed regulations under section 1.401(a)(9)-1, Q&A E-7 are extensive and may be difficult to explain to a client. However, the IRA owner must make a key decision no later than his or her required beginning date, choosing to elect a fixed number of years for IRA distributions or to elect the life-expectancy recalculation method (the IRA owner's life expectancy expands each year). Most IRA agreements permit the taxpayer to opt in or out of the life-expectancy recalculation method. Once an election is made, it is irrevocable and applies to all subsequent years. The election should be made in writing and given to the IRA custodian no later than the IRA owner's required beginning date. If the IRA owner is permitted to elect either the term-certain or life-expectancy recalculation methods and fails to do so, the recalculation method is the default option unless the IRA agreement provides otherwise. …