Hahn and Hird provide the first comprehensive analysis of the costs and benefits offederal economic and social regulation. They assess several alternative methods of measuring the effects of regulatory policies, noting the advantages and drawbacks of each. They find that previous estimates of the costs of economic regulation probably overstated the true costs by failing to distinguish between transfer payments and net changes in economic efficiency. Their study separates transfers from efficiency costs for each estimate and updates the figures for sixteen industries and seven areas of social regulation. Overall, they find that the efficiency cost due to economic regulation is large and that the benefit from social regulation is positive but small. Their study also finds a huge variation in estimates of the costs and benefits ofparticular regulatory policies, particularly in the transportation sector and in environmental protection. This variation indicates that most estimates may be merely "guesstimates. " Nevertheless, Hahn and Hird argue that since the current political climate has increased the pressure on Congress to add regulatory burdens, the need to introduce such information into policy making has never been greater.


For a long time secular architecture stagnated. This was to change with the end of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, when Vienna experienced a thorough-going construction boom. In contrast to the flowering of ecclesiastical and monastic architecture, few new secular buildings were erected during the seventeenth century. After the completion of the Amalienburg in the Hofburg complex at the beginning of the seventeenth century no other notable palatial structures were built in Vienna for almost fifty years. Not until after the Thirty Years' War did secular building construction slowly start to revive. Starting in 1660, Emperor Leopold I had the two separate sections of the Hofburg, the medieval, thirteenth-century fortress and the Amalienburg, linked by an imposing wing which in its uniform axial layout represents a typical example of early Baroque architecture. After the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 a new artistic epoch dawned in Austria. The Turks had been so roundly defeated that they no longer represented a threat. Vienna experienced a huge economic and artistic upswing, and its status as imperial capital began to make itself noticeable in architecture and the fine arts. The wide-ranging devastation wreaked by the Turkish forces also represented an opportunity for extensive modernization – an unprecedented building boom followed. Now summer houses and garden palaces could be built outside the protection of the city walls, no longer at risk from the destruction of armed conflict. In Vienna a large number of mainly Italian architects were active, including Domenico Martinelli, who designed two palaces for the Liechtenstein family, one in the city and a garden palace situated in the extramural suburb of Rossau. Subsequently Austrian architects also managed to obtain their share of commissions and were to prove highly influential.


The way people buy has gone through a massive revolution in recent years: thanks to blogs, review sites and chat rooms, we no longer have to rely on what a company says about its products and services - we can read what our fellow consumers think about what they've bought, and make our own decisions bearing those views in minds. The result? Empowered customers who know exactly what they want and who can now explore many ways to get it. Many companies, however, just won't accept that things have changed and haven't adjusted their marketing efforts to match. In Crowd Surfing, David Brain and Martin Thomas explain what marketers, advertisers and brand specialists need to do to communicate with today's savvier consumers. They include case studies of successes and failures from the business world and beyond, and interview leaders such as Michael Dell and Sebastian Coe to help illustrate their points.


This cross-cultural study investigates the differences in the perceptions of the appropriateness in advice giving in English between American English native speakers (AEL1) and Jordanian learners of English as a foreign language (JEFL). Data were collected using an adopted version of a Multiple Choice Questionnaire (MCQ) by Hinkel (1997). The questionnaire consists of eight situations that required advice giving or opting out to a peer acquaintance (equal status) and an instructor (higher status). Each situation was accompanied by three MC selections in random order: direct advice, hedge advice, and indirect comments. The fourth selection was an explicit choice for opting out that remained constant for all selections. Results revealed that both groups have the same perception of the social distance in the situations involving peer acquaintance and instructor. They, however, differed in the types of advice they showed as the appropriate choice. JEFL participants considered direct advice or hedge advice as appropriate option to be used with peer acquaintance and with instructors where in American culture the AEL1 participants found these strategies as least likely appropriate. The paper suggests EFL programs that promote awareness for JEFL on various appropriate conversational strategies in English. The results are expected to be useful information in cross-cultural comparison studies and other related areas.


Competition law was almost unheard of in the first hundred years after the Sherman Act was passed. However, the number of jurisdictions with a competition law increased dramatically in the last 20 years. One of the countries that joined the rank is Malaysia when it passed Competition Act 2010 and Competition Commission Act 2010. Competition Act 2010 represents an attempt to reduce the hitherto European competition jurisprudence to a concise piece of legislation supported by other guidelines. This paper will attempt to examine the two pieces of legislation, and explore various issues, both normative and practical. It will also look at some development that has taken place since the law came into force in January 2012, some cases, and initiatives of the Commission.


Dissolved organic matter (DOM) transport is a key biogeochemical linkage across the terrestrial‐aquatic interface in headwater catchments, and quantifying the biological and hydrological controls on DOM composition provides insight into DOM cycling at the catchment scale. We evaluated the mobility of DOM components during snowmelt in a montane, semiarid catchment. DOM composition was evaluated on a near‐daily basis within the soil and the stream during snowmelt, and was compared to groundwater samples using a site‐specific parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) model derived from soil extracts. The fluorescent component loadings in the interstitial soil water and in the groundwater were significantly different and did not temporally change during snowmelt. In the stream, a transition occurred during snowmelt from fluorescent DOM with higher contributions of amino acid‐like components indicative of groundwater to higher humic‐like contributions indicative of soil water. Furthermore, we identified a humic‐like fluorescent component in the soil water and the stream that is typically only observed in extracted water soluble organic matter from soil which may suggest hillslope to stream connectivity over very short time scales. Qualitative interpretations of changes in stream fluorescent DOM were supported by two end‐member mixing analyses of conservative tracers. After normalizing fluorescent DOM loadings for dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration, we found that the peak in DOC concentration in the stream was driven by the nonfluorescent fraction of DOM. This study demonstrated how PARAFAC analysis can be used to refine our conceptual models of runoff generation sources, as well as provide a more detailed understanding of stream chemistry dynamics.


Background Data for trends in contraceptive use and need are necessary to guide programme and policy decisions and to monitor progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5, which calls for universal access to contraceptive services. We therefore aimed to estimate trends in contraceptive use and unmet need in developing countries in 2003, 2008, and 2012 .


The United States is bankrupt, flat broke. Thanks to accounting that would make Enron blush, America's insolvency goes far beyond what our leaders are disclosing. The United States is a fiscal basket case, in worse shape than the notoriously bailed-out countries of Greece, Ireland, and others. How did this happen? In The Clash of Generations, experts Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns document our six-decade, off-balance-sheet, unsustainable financing scheme. They explain how we have balanced our longer lives on the backs of our (relatively few) children. At the same time, we've been on a consumption spree, saving and investing less than nothing. And that's not to mention the evisceration of the middle class and a financial system that has proven it can't be trusted. Kotlikoff and Burns outline grassroots strategies for saving ourselves—and especially our children--from what could be a truly catastrophic financial collapse. Kotlikoff and Burns sounded the alarm in their widely acclaimed The Coming Generational Storm, but politicians didn't listen. Now the need for action is even more urgent. It's up to us to demand radical reform of our tax system, our healthcare system, and our Social Security system, and to insist on better paths to investment return than those provided by Wall Street (mis)managers. Kotlikoff and Burns's "Purple Plans" (so called because they will appeal to both Republicans and Democrats) have been endorsed by a who's who of economists and offer a new way forward; and their revolutionary investment strategy for individuals replaces the idea of financial capital with "life decision capital." Of course, we won't be doing all this just for ourselves. We need to fix America's fiscal mess before our kids inherit it.


An algorithm called ICM-TM to reduce the effect of Gaussian noise in grayscale images is proposed. It is based on the operation of the well- known Intersection Cortical Model (ICM), a kind of Pulse-Coupled Artificial Neural Network. A Time Matrix (TM) provides information about the iteration when the neuron fires for first time. Each neuron corresponds to a pixel. A selective filtering criteria that combines the median and average operators using the neuron´s activation time is established. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated experimentally with varying degrees of Gaussian noise. Simulation results show that the effectiveness of the method is superior to the median filter, Gaussian filter, Sigma filter, Wiener filter and to the Pulse-Coupled Neural Networks with the Null Interconnections (PCNNNI). Results are mainly provided by the parameter Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).


In this paper the choice of risky debt maturity structure is analyzed in a sequential game framework. The focus is on the set of viable equilibria when there are not transaction costs associated with the choice of debt maturity structure. It is shown that when changes in firm value are independent over time, both short- and long-term debt pooling are Nash sequential equilibrium outcomes. However, only the short-term debt pooling outcome satisfies the universal divinity refinements. Relaxing the assumption of independent changes in firm value, it is demonstrated that a separating equilibrium in which higher-quality firms issue short-term debt and low-quality firms issue long-term debt may exist. Furthermore, conditions exist under which long-term debt pooling is the universally divine outcome.


Real-world deployments of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) require secure communication. Recently, WSNs and traditional IP networks are more tightly integrated using IPv6 and 6LoWPAN. Available IPv6 protocol stacks can use IPsec to secure data exchange. Thus, it is desirable to extend 6LoWPAN such that IPsec communication with IPv6 nodes is possible. It is beneficial to use IPsec because the existing end-points on the Internet do not need to be modified to communicate securely with the WSN. We propose a 6LoWPAN extension for IPsec. Our extension supports both IPsec's Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulation Security Payload (ESP). Thus, communication endpoints are able to authenticate, encrypt, and check the integrity of messages using standardized and established IPv6 mechanisms.


This paper presents a closed-loop calibration approach using impedance control. The process is managed by a data communication architecture based on open-source tools and designed for adaptability. The calibration procedure uses precision spheres and a kinematic coupling standard machine tool components, which are suitable for harsh industrial environments. As such, the required equipment is low cost (approximately group-separator = , 2000 [$]USD), robust, and is quick to set up, especially when compared to traditional calibration devices. As demonstrated through an experimental study and validated with a laser tracker, the absolute accuracy of the KUKA LBR iiwa robot was improved to a maximum error of 0 . 990 , representing a 58.4% improvement when compared to the nominal model. Further testing showed that a traditional calibration using a laser tracker only improved the maximum error by 58 μ m over the impedance control approach.


In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. "Dr. Rev. Michael Costanzo asked me to write an article for Verbum 2012. I know Father Costanzo as my family is a member of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Penfield where Father Costanzo often helps out. I thought I would write a little about my experience at St. John Fisher College for the Alumni Corner. It has been over 30 years since I first walked onto the St. John Fisher College campus in the fall of 1979 as an incoming freshman, but it doesn't seem that long ago. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life as I entered college, but was excited about beginning college. It wasn't easy for me choosing a college when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was from Rochester and I chose Fisher because I decided to stay local, Fisher had a very good reputation in many different academic disciplines, and I liked the fact that, at Fisher, religion would be a part of the academic life. At that time, Fisher was mainly a commuter school with over 60% of the students commuting. There wasn't much dorm space at that time. A main reason I commuted was to save money. To this day I regret that decision as I didn't get the full experience of college life by living on campus. I came for my classes and immediately left after my last class each day to head to a part-time job or to return home." This alumni corner is available in Verbum: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/verbum/vol9/iss2/14


This study investigates first-generation and non-first-generation engineering undergraduates' math/science identities, subject-related interests, and career plans. First-generation students are an understudied, but growing population. Understanding how these self-beliefs and background factors affect students' engineering choice can help widen pathways into engineering which continues to be defined as "pale and male." Additionally, identity has predictive value for practical outcomes like engineering choice in college. The data for this study comes from the nationally representative Sustainability and Gender in Engineering (SaGE) survey completed by 6,772 college students who enrolled in first-year English courses at 2- and 4-year colleges across the U.S. Data were analyzed using t-test and chi-square tests for linear and dichotomous outcomes respectively. Our results show differences in first-generation students' identities, interests, performance/ competence beliefs, and family support for science. These differences can serve as a stepping stone towards understanding the trajectories of first-generation college students in engineering. By understanding underrepresented students' identities, performance, and backgrounds, specific strategies can be developed to support these students in our engineering programs.


We consider the training of structured neural networks where the regularizer can be non-smooth and possibly non-convex. While popular machine learning libraries have resorted to stochastic (adaptive) subgradient approaches, the use of proximal gradient methods in the stochastic setting has been little explored and warrants further study, in particular regarding the incorporation of adaptivity. Towards this goal, we present a general framework of stochastic proximal gradient descent methods that allows for arbitrary positive preconditioners and lower semi-continuous regularizers. We derive two important instances of our framework: (i) the first proximal version of A DAM , one of the most popular adaptive SGD algorithm, and (ii) a revised version of P ROX Q UANT [1] for quantization-specific regularizers, which improves upon the original approach by incorporating the effect of preconditioners in the proximal mapping computations. We provide convergence guarantees for our framework and show that adaptive gradient methods can have faster convergence in terms of constant than vanilla SGD for sparse data. Lastly, we demonstrate the superiority of stochastic proximal methods compared to subgradient-based approaches via extensive experiments. Interestingly, our results indicate that the benefit of proximal approaches over sub-gradient counterparts is more pronounced for non-convex regularizers than for convex ones.


The Burmese arc is a peculiar plate boundary where there exists an eastward subducted Indian slab, but the current tectonics of the region are predominantly governed by a northward strike‐slip motion of the Indian plate past the Burmese plate, as evidenced by seismic and Global Positioning System data. The shallower portion of the dipping Indian slab is characterized mostly by earthquakes with strike‐slip type focal mechanisms with roughly northwest‐ and northeast‐trending fault planes, although there is no clear evidence for the choice of rupture planes. In the present study, we use teleseismic broadband waveforms to model the rupture propagation of an M w 6.7 strike‐slip earthquake of 3 January 2016 that occurred in the Indian city of Imphal, and infer the fault‐plane orientation. The result indicates a right‐lateral strike‐slip motion along a N21°W plane, which is confirmed by both waveform fitting and distribution of aftershocks. Interestingly, this earthquake occurred at the intersection of three major faults in this region—the Churachandpur Mao fault bounding the India and Burma plates, the Dauki fault south of the Shillong plateau, and the Kopili fault separating the Shillong plateau from the Brahmaputra valley. This raises various possibilities for interpreting this event. However, based on the finite‐fault inversion, we infer that this earthquake occurred on the Kopili fault running northwest–southeast from Bhutan Himalaya down to the Burmese arc, and manifested as a right‐lateral strike‐slip motion in response to the northward motion of the Indian plate and a counterclockwise rotation of the Brahmaputra valley. We further interpret that the overall deformation in the Burmese arc region is accommodated by northward slivering of the eastward subducted Indian lithospheric slab along a series of northwest‐ to north–south‐trending right‐lateral strike‐slip faults from west to east as the Indian plate moves northward past the Burma and Sunda blocks.


Catholicism, like most world religions, is patriarchal, and its official hierarchies and sacred works too often neglect the lived experiences of women. Looking beyond these texts, Juliana Flinn reveals how women practice, interpret, and shape their own Catholicism on Pollap Atoll, part of Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia. She focuses in particular on how the Pollapese shaping of Mary places value on indigenous notions of mothering that connote strength, active participation in food production, and the ability to provide for one's family. Flinn begins with an overview of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Pollap and an introduction to Mary, who is celebrated by islanders not as a biologized mother but as a productive one, resulting in an image of strength rather than meekness: for Pollapese women Mary is a vanquisher of Satan, a provider for her children, and a producer of critical resources, namely taro. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception validates and celebrates local notions of motherhood in ways that highlight productive activities. The role of women as producers in the community is extolled, but the event also provides and sanctions new opportunities for women, allowing them to speak publicly, exhibit creativity, and influence the behavior of others. A chapter devoted to the imagery of Mary and its connections to Pollapese notions of motherhood is followed by a conclusion that examines the implications of these for women's ongoing productive roles, especially in comparison with Western notions and contexts in which women have been removed or excluded from production. "Mary, the Devil, and Taro" contributes significantly to the study of women's religion and the appropriation of Christianity in local contexts. It will be welcomed by not only anthropologists and other scholars concerned with religion in the Pacific, but also those who study change in gender roles and Marian devotions in cross-cultural perspectives.


The purpose of the mini workshop proposed during the PCF4 is to present the CEE-COL experience of developing and launching the Green Teacher Course as well as discuss the process of digitizing the GT course in to an on-line course for use internationally. Participants who are teacher educators or educational administrators concerned about incorporating environment education in the school curriculum will be invited to the mini workshop.

Green Teacher is a one-year 'Diploma in Environmental Education' for teachers and educators developed and designed by CEE India in partnership with the COL, Canada. Offered through the distance mode, this course is the first of its kind in India. The course is designed with the objective to enable teacher-learners to effectively take up environmental concerns and issues in the classroom, and engage their students in practical, action-oriented Environmental Education (EE) activities and projects. Thus Green teacher is a continuing learning opportunity in EE for practicing teachers.

The goal of the Green Teacher curriculum is to empower educators with knowledge, ideas and skills which can help in greening their teachings. Specifically, the four Course Modules aim to enable learners (practicing teachers):

To strengthen their understanding of Ecology and provide them with ideas for transacting ecology concepts in interactive ways.

To appreciate the complexities of environment-development issues by equipping them with the ability to view a problem from a variety of perspectives and selecting a plausible solution in a given context.

To explore the 'practice' of communicating the contents in a variety of ways that could enrich and enhance the traditional/tried and tested textbook and chalk and talk methods

To explore a range of resources and opportunities available for conducting EE in schools and to enable them acquire an ability to see and make use of opportunities available within the school system—text books, local visits, nature camps, using available media, etc.

Given that training in EE has a greater focus on 'skills the process of curriculum development and design for the Green Teacher distance education programme was a challenging task for the course team. The Green Course attempts at two sets of overall objectives—one dealing with knowledge component, and the other one dealing primarily with skill building for effective transaction of EE.


Alternative splicing (AS) allows generation of cell type–specific mRNA transcripts and contributes to hallmarks of cancer. Genome‐wide analysis for AS in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), however, is limited. We sought to obtain a comprehensive AS landscape in HCC and define tumor‐associated variants. Single‐molecule real‐time long‐read RNA sequencing was performed on patient‐derived HCC cells, and presence of splice junctions was defined by SpliceMap‐LSC‐IDP algorithm. We obtained an all‐inclusive map of annotated AS variants and further discovered 362 alternative spliced variants that are not previously reported in any database (neither RefSeq nor GENCODE). They were mostly derived from intron retention and early termination codon with an in‐frame open reading frame in 81.5%. We corroborated many of these predicted unannotated and annotated variants to be tumor specific in an independent cohort of primary HCC tumors and matching nontumoral liver. Using the combined Sanger sequencing and TaqMan junction assays, unique and common expressions of spliced variants including enzyme regulators (ARHGEF2, SERPINH1), chromatin modifiers (DEK, CDK9, RBBP7), RNA‐binding proteins (SRSF3, RBM27, MATR3, YBX1), and receptors (ADRM1, CD44v8‐10, vitamin D receptor, ROR1) were determined in HCC tumors. We further focused functional investigations on ARHGEF2 variants (v1 and v3) that arise from the common amplified site chr.1q22 of HCC. Their biological significance underscores two major cancer hallmarks, namely cancer stemness and epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition–mediated cell invasion and migration, although v3 is consistently more potent than v1. Conclusion: Alternative isoforms and tumor‐specific isoforms that arise from aberrant splicing are common during the liver tumorigenesis. Our results highlight insights gained from the analysis of AS in HCC.


There are around 16,000 species of bee. Only seven of these are responsible for creating the world's sweetest treat - honey. Combining Ilona's gorgeous photography and E. Readicker-Henderson's engaging text, "A Short History of the Honey Bee" follows the journey from flower to hive to honey throughout history. "A Short History of the Honey Bee" starts with the story of the honey bee - why it is named Apis mellifera, how it has evolved from a solitary creature to one that travels in groups, why it stings, and how pollination really works. Readicker-Henderson then moves on to the honey, detailing its history from a wild food foraged for on cliffs to the many varieties available for purchase today. But it is the everyday importance of the bee that remains the central message. Forty percent of the world's food supply - including apples, tomatoes, and strawberries - is dependent on pollination by honeybees. Colony collapse, when the worker bees suddenly disappear and leave behind the queen and the hive, is an ecological and agricultural crisis. For this reason alone we need to be more aware of the significance of bees.


Intratumor macrophages were found to be functionally malleable and can support, or be inhospitable to, tumors. Vaccine-induced cytokine-producing CD8 T cells modified intratumoral macrophage subsets, and both T cells and macrophages were indispensable for tumor regressions. Abundant macrophage infiltration of solid cancers commonly correlates with poor prognosis. Tumor-promoting functions of macrophages include angiogenesis, metastasis formation, and suppression of Th1-type immune responses. Here, we show that successful treatment of cervical carcinoma in mouse models with synthetic long peptide (SLP) vaccines induced influx of cytokine-producing CD8 T cells that strongly altered the numbers and phenotype of intratumoral macrophages. On the basis of the expression of CD11b, CD11c, F4/80, Ly6C, Ly6G, and MHC II, we identified four myeloid subpopulations that increased in numbers from 2.0-fold to 8.7-fold in regressing tumors. These changes of the intratumoral myeloid composition coincided with macrophage recruitment by chemokines, including CCL2 and CCL5, and were completely dependent on a vaccine-induced influx of tumor-specific CD8 T cells. CD4 T cells were dispensable. Incubation of tumor cells with T cell–derived IFNγ and TNFα recapitulated the chemokine profile observed in vivo, confirming the capacity of antitumor CD8 T cells to mediate macrophage infiltration of tumors. Strikingly, complete regressions of large established tumors depended on the tumor-infiltrating macrophages that were induced by this immunotherapy, because a small-molecule drug inhibitor targeting CSF-1R diminished the number of intratumoral macrophages and abrogated the complete remissions. Survival rates after therapeutic SLP vaccination deteriorated in the presence of CSF-1R blockers. Together, these results show that therapeutic peptide vaccination could induce cytokine-producing T cells with strong macrophage-skewing capacity necessary for tumor shrinkage, and suggest that the development of macrophage-polarizing, rather than macrophage-depleting, agents is warranted. Cancer Immunol Res; 3(9); 1042–51. ©2015 AACR.


This study aimed to systematically review and describe the evidence on chlamydia and gonorrhoea reinfection among men, and to evaluate the need for retesting recommendations in men. PubMed and STI conference abstract books from January 1995 to October 2006 were searched to identify studies on chlamydia and gonorrhoea reinfection among men using chlamydia and gonorrhoea nucleic acid amplification tests or gonorrhoea culture. Studies were categorised as using either active or passive follow-up methods. The proportions of chlamydial and gonococcal reinfection among men were calculated for each study and summary medians were reported. Repeat chlamydia infection among men had a median reinfection probability of 11.3%. Repeat gonorrhoea infection among men had a median reinfection probability of 7.0%. Studies with active follow-up had moderate rates of chlamydia and gonorrhoea reinfection among men, with respective medians of 10.9% and 7.0%. Studies with passive follow-up had higher proportions of both chlamydia and gonorrhoea reinfections among men, with respective medians of 17.4% and 8.5%. Proportions of chlamydia and gonorrhoea reinfection among men were comparable with those among women. Reinfection among men was strongly associated with previous history of sexually transmitted diseases and younger age, and inconsistently associated with risky sexual behaviour. Substantial repeat chlamydia and gonorrhoea infection rates were found in men comparable with those in women. Retesting recommendations in men are appropriate, given the high rate of reinfection. To optimise retesting guidelines, further research to determine effective retesting methods and establish factors associated with reinfection among men is suggested.


Stereoscopic display techniques are based on the principle of displaying two views, with a slightly different perspective, in such a way that the left eye views only by the left eye, and the right eye views only by the right eye. However, one of the major challenges in optical devices is crosstalk between the two channels. Crosstalk is due to the optical devices not completely blocking the wrong-side image, so the left eye sees a little bit of the right image and the right eye sees a little bit of the left image. This results in eyestrain and headaches. A pair of interference filters worn as an optical device can solve the problem. The device consists of a pair of multiband bandpass filters that are conjugated. The term "conjugated" describes the passband regions of one filter not overlapping with those of the other, but the regions are interdigitated. Along with the glasses, a 3D display produces colors composed of primary colors (basis for producing colors) having the spectral bands the same as the passbands of the filters. More specifically, the primary colors producing one viewpoint will be made up of the passbands of one filter, and those of the other viewpoint will be made up of the passbands of the conjugated filter. Thus, the primary colors of one filter would be seen by the eye that has the matching multiband filter. The inherent characteristic of the interference filter will allow little or no transmission of the wrong side of the stereoscopic images.


Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently demonstrated the capability to synthesize compelling real-world images, such as room interiors, album covers, manga, faces, birds, and flowers. While existing models can synthesize images based on global constraints such as a class label or caption, they do not provide control over pose or object location. We propose a new model, the Generative Adversarial What-Where Network (GAWWN), that synthesizes images given instructions describing what content to draw in which location. We show high-quality 128 x 128 image synthesis on the Caltech-UCSD Birds dataset, conditioned on both informal text descriptions and also object location. Our system exposes control over both the bounding box around the bird and its constituent parts. By modeling the conditional distributions over part locations, our system also enables conditioning on arbitrary subsets of parts (e.g. only the beak and tail), yielding an efficient interface for picking part locations.


Background Individual-based biophysical larval models, initialized and parameterized by observations, enable numerical investigations of various factors regulating survival of young fish until they recruit into the adult population. Exponentially decreasing numbers in Northeast Arctic cod and Norwegian Spring Spawning herring early changes emphasizes the importance of early life history, when ichthyoplankton exhibit pelagic free drift. However, while most studies are concerned with past recruitment variability it is also important to establish real-time predictions of ichthyoplankton distributions due to the increasing human activity in fish habitats and the need for distribution predictions that could potentially improve field coverage of ichthyoplankton. Methodology/Principal Findings A system has been developed for operational simulation of ichthyoplankton distributions. We have coupled a two-day ocean forecasts from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute with an individual-based ichthyoplankton model for Northeast Arctic cod and Norwegian Spring Spawning herring producing daily updated maps of ichthyoplankton distributions. Recent years observed spawning distribution and intensity have been used as input to the model system. The system has been running in an operational mode since 2008. Surveys are expensive and distributions of early stages are therefore only covered once or twice a year. Comparison between model and observations are therefore limited in time. However, the observed and simulated distributions of juvenile fish tend to agree well during early fall. Area-overlap between modeled and observed juveniles September 1st range from 61 to 73%, and 61 to 71% when weighted by concentrations. Conclusions/Significance The model system may be used to evaluate the design of ongoing surveys, to quantify the overlap with harmful substances in the ocean after accidental spills, as well as management planning of particular risky operations at sea. The modeled distributions are already utilized during research surveys to estimate coverage success of sampled biota and immediately after spills from ships at sea.


Agriculture remain as one of the important sectors in the Malaysian's economy. Through the national agricultural policy, special incentives are provided to ensure continuous growth and development of the agriculture sector. Efficient resourse utilization, social and institutional development are among the objectives of Malaysians Agricultural Policy. Problems relating to the efficient utilization and conservation of agricultural lands and the environment have long been recognised. Appropriate measures have been adopted to minimise the problems. Modern technologies together with strong emphasis on education and research may provide avenues for greater efficiency in the utilization of resources. Formal and non-formal education are regularly conducted to upgrade the knowledge as well as to satisfy the trained manpower needs. Research programs at specialized research institutions and universities provide both short and long term solutions to these problems as well as providing avenues into the new frontiers.


Voluntary control of information processing is crucial to allocate resources and prioritize the processes that are most important under a given situation; the algorithms underlying such control, however, are often not clear. We investigated possible algorithms of control for the performance of the majority function, in which participants searched for and identified one of two alternative categories (left or right pointing arrows) as composing the majority in each stimulus set. We manipulated the amount (set size of 1, 3, and 5) and content (ratio of left and right pointing arrows within a set) of the inputs to test competing hypotheses regarding mental operations for information processing. Using a novel measure based on computational load, we found that reaction time was best predicted by a grouping search algorithm as compared to alternative algorithms (i.e., exhaustive or self-terminating search). The grouping search algorithm involves sampling and resampling of the inputs before a decision is reached. These findings highlight the importance of investigating the implications of voluntary control via algorithms of mental operations.


Knowledge Management is a vast and diverse topic that must be addressed by all modern industrial companies, from the smallest SMEs to the most complex organizations. Knowledge is a critical and strategic asset and the key to competitiveness in the modern manufacturing environment, as it facilitates capacities essential for achieving the required responsiveness, flexibility, agility and innovation. Nevertheless, knowledge itself is difficult to explicate and capture, and often can be recognized only in the improvements it brings to products, technologies and enterprise organizations. Four years ago, members of the CIRP community submitted a proposal to the 6th EU Framework Programme to establish a Network of Excellence (NoE). The European Community accepted this proposal, and thus the Virtual Research Laboratory - Knowledge Community in Production (VRL-KCiP) network was launched. The network set out to create a Knowledge Community in Production that would provide support and knowledge to EU industry. This goal was achieved thanks to (a) the ongoing cooperation and collaboration among the network partners, who represent leading universities worldwide, and (b) additional strong member partnerships with laboratories outside of Europe (Japan, Australia, South Africa, USA, and others). The main efforts of the VRL-KCiP NoE were aimed at aiding European manufacturing industry in defining and structuring its strategic knowledge in order to meet worldwide strategic challenges. These challenges, detailed below, have remained constant over the four years of the network s activities: Manufacturing must become knowledge intensive, given the demand for high-tech products (e.g. electronics, medicines). Given the relatively high labor costs in Europe compared to those in developing countries, manufacturing processes in Europe require high levels of expertise to realize required productivity. As a result of these challenges, over the past 30 years knowledge management (KM) has become a major issue in Europe, in academia as well as in industry. Indeed, firms have recognized that cultivating the "knowledge resource" is essential for management as well as for operations. The aim of this book is to help readers understand the complex topic of knowledge. Moreover, it underlines why knowledge is one of the most important strategic issues in achieving future manufacturing competitiveness. The book is a collection of 34 complementary contributions written by researchers from multinational locations and multidisciplinary perspectives. This book is unique in that it is based on the collective experience of these researchers and represents the status and current issues in the study and implementation of Knowledge Management today. The book describes fundamental concepts in knowledge and knowledge management and provides several case studies in the fields of design and manufacturing. In particular, the book presents several very original examples of knowledge management and knowledge sharing in the context of European manufa cturing. Actual experiences and feedbacks are presented with respect to knowledge engineering approaches for design, manufacturing, and more generally for enterprise engineering. Moreover, methods and tools for knowledge integration within the extended enterprise and the value chain are described, and the role of knowledge management and documents in supporting radical innovation projects is also highlighted. The book discusses ontology, which constitutes the basis for formalizing and mapping knowledge from different points of view. Concrete examples are described and elaborated, mainly with respect to product, process and resource description and management along the lifecycle of mechanical systems.


Ecological and evolutionary dynamics depend upon variation in birth and death rates. Consequently characterizing birth and death rates, and identifying factors that explain variation in these rates, should be the foundation of population and evolutionary ecology. Given the central role of birth and death, it is perhaps surprising that relatively few population biologists apply the most recent demographic approaches to their research. This may be because demography is seen as little more than accounting, and therefore dull, or because stochastic demography is seen as mathematically challenging. It is our belief that ecologists and evolutionary biologists have much to gain through increased mastery of stochastic demography. Its applications could push forward our understanding of eco-evolutionary dynamics in stochastic environments, and the outcome could further the unification of ecology and evolution. In this essay we briefly explain why mastering demographic approaches should be a desirable objective for...


Social participation can be examined using the Cyberball paradigm, a virtual ball-tossing game. Reducing the involvement of the participant is supposed to activate a neural alarm system, and to threaten fundamental social needs. Our previous findings indicate that the latter process can be linked to an enhancement of the centro-parietal P3 amplitude, signaling a modulation of the subjective expectancy of involvement. A preceding more frontal ERP component, the P2, does not depend of the probability of involvement, but reflects the appraisal of social reward. In this experiment, we examined whether overinclusion of participants enhances the satisfaction of social needs, reduces the P3 amplitude correspondingly, and affects central reward processing. In the control condition, participants (n = 40) were included (two co-player, ball possession 33%), and overincluded (ball possession 46%) in the experimental condition. In a counterbalanced design, we also controlled for the order of conditions. As predicted, overinclusion increased the satisfaction of social needs, with exception of "self esteem", and reduced the P3 amplitude. As for the frontal P2, overinclusion only enhanced the amplitudes if the less frequent involvement (condition: inclusion) was experienced previously. The behavioral and P3 data suggest that the feelings of social belonging, meaningful existence, and control are related to the subjective expectancy of social involvement, and can be described in terms of a linear continuum ranging from exclusion to overinclusion. In contrast, appraisal of social rewards does not depend on the probability of involvement.


Morphological changes in apoptotic cells provide essential markers for defining and detection of apoptosis as a fundamental mechanism of cell death. Among these changes, the nuclear fragmentation and condensation have been regarded as the important markers but quantitative characterization of these changes is yet to be achieved. We have acquired confocal image stacks of 206 viable and apoptotic MCF-7 cells stained by three fluorescent dyes. Three-dimensional (3D) parameters were extracted to quantify and compare their differences in morphology. To analyze nuclear fragmentation, a new method has been developed to determine clustering of nuclear voxels in the reconstructed cells due to fluorescence intensity changes in nuclei of apoptotic cells. The results of these studies reveal that the 3D morphological changes in cytoplasm and nuclear membranes in apoptotic cells provide sensitive targets for label-free detection and staging of apoptosis. Furthermore, the clustering analysis and morphological data on nuclear fragmentation are highly useful for derivation of optical cell models and simulation of diffraction images to investigate light scattering by early apoptotic cells, which can lead to future development of label-free and rapid methods of apoptosis assay based on cell morphology.


So called hinge functions play an important role in many applications, e.g., deep learning, support vector machines, regression, classification and others. A thorough theory, which explains why some of these applications are so successful for their respective purpose, is still missing. This paper aims at filling a knowledge gap by answering the question of how much information can be conveyed across a neural node, e.g., which uses the hinge loss function on weighted agglomerated information from precedent nodes. We hope that insight from artificial neural networks may also have implications for understanding biological information processing. As key results in this paper, an elegant representation of mutual information is derived and, furthermore, some structural properties of a channel, that consists of a certain input signal which is overlaid by additive noise and is filtered by a hinge function, are investigated. Determining the capacity of this channel in an explicit form, although an important fundamental problem, seems to be extremely difficult and unsolved as of today. Thus, necessary and sufficient conditions for an optimal input signal along with upper bounds on the capacity are deduced. Furthermore, we conjecture that exponentially distributed input signals are asymptotically capacity-achieving in the high SNR regime.


Awareness of cultural concepts is an important component of nursing education and cultural immersion experiences are invaluable in fostering understanding of them. These types of experiences take students out of their comfort zone and challenge them both personally and professionally. For several years, students on all levels have been participating in a 10-day trip to Kenya led by nursing faculty.  Undergraduate students who go on the trip receive clinical credit for their community health course and are required to journal daily about their experiences while on the trip and write a reflection paper for the course when they return. The content of these papers was analyzed for common themes to determine what students learned from the trip and to see if it was worthwhile to allow students to do their clinical capstone experience in Kenya, that would be part of the schools new curriculum. Four main themes emerged from the student reflection papers. They were: "Making a difference", "Not knowing what to expect", "Feeling like a real nurse" and "Renewing my Identity". The Kenya experience has fostered student growth in various ways and our school of nursing will continue to support this learning experience by encouraging senior students to complete their clinical capstones in Kenya.


One day, Max and Clara meet Zack, who is making a pirate movie on the beach. But Zach is worried because he can't find Captain Crab's pirate costume! "Can we help you find it?" ask the children. They look in the castle, the jungle and the pirate ship. They see a monkey wearing a pirate's boot, a parrot wearing a pirate's hat, and a dolphin wearing a pirate's mustache! How funny!


Chordoma is a rare primary bone malignancy of notochord origin, representing 1-4% of malignant bone tumors., Typically, chordomas follow a slow progressive course with aggressive local extension, multiple recurrences, and metastases. Of particular interest to this case, cutaneous metastasis is exceedingly rare. Diagnosis of this entity can be a challenge due to the rarity of chordoma, as well as the infrequent presentation of distant cutaneous metastasis and non-specific clinical skin findings. We report a case of a 61-year-old male with a history of sacral chordoma treated by wide local excision 8 years prior to presentation developed a nodule on his scalp for 6 weeks. Physical examination revealed a 1 cm rubbery, pink, shiny dome-shaped nodule on his left occipital scalp. Hematoxylin and eosin sections revealed a lobular dermal proliferation of small ovoid cells and larger physaliferous cells with hyperchromatic, displaced nuclei and finely vacuolated "soap-bubble" cytoplasm in a myxoid stroma. Immunohistochemistry of tumor cells showed positivity for both S-100 protein and pancytokeratin (AE1/AE3), while smooth muscle actin (SMA), P63, and CK7 were negative. Additionally, tumor cells stained positive for brachyury. The medical history, clinical presentation, histopathological appearance and immunohistochemical profile are consistent with cutaneous metastasis from sacral chordoma, known as chordoma cutis. This case illustrates the integral role of dermatopathology in the diagnosis of a rare and critical condition.


Cardiovascular risk factors contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease from early life. It is thus crucial to implement preventive strategies addressing the burden of cardiovascular disease as early as possible. A multidisciplinary approach to the risk estimation and prevention of vascular events should be adopted at each level of health care, starting from the setting of perinatology. Recent decades have been marked with major advances in this field, with the emergence of a variety of new inflammatory and immune-mediated markers of heightened cardiovascular risk in particular. The current book reflects some of the emerging concepts in cardiovascular pathophysiology and the shifting paradigm of cardiovascular risk estimation. It comprehensively covers primary and secondary preventive measures targeted at different age and gender groups. Attention is paid to inflammatory and metabolic markers of vascular damage and to the assessment of vascular function by noninvasive standardized ultrasound techniques. This is a must-read book for all health professionals and researchers tackling the issue of cardiovascular burden at individual and community level. It can also serve as a didactic source for postgraduate medical students.


Abstract
Focus and rationale
This paper reports on a research project which aimed to investigate university student perceptions of the impact of audio/video feedback on foreign language learning. The project was funded by the university's Learning and Teaching Development directorate in order to provide innovative evidence-informed practice addressing the university's Principles of Feedback.
Research aims
The project examined whether students had any preference between written, audio and video feedback, and whether their response varied according to the type of assignment (written or oral). Finally, it explored the extent to which students act on such feedback in order to enhance their future learning.
Theoretical / conceptual foundation
As previous studies have focussed on the relative merits of different tools and methods from the teacher's point of view, and because the use of the lecturer-on-camera method was innovative, our interest lay in the students' perceptions of the impact of these methods on their learning.
Context of the study
The project was conducted at a small university in the North of England where Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) are available for study both at degree level and as part of the Institution-Wide Language Programme. Most MFL modules are assessed by means of an e-portfolio of formative and summative work. It is therefore important to provide feedback which the students can act on to improve their final performance.
Methodology and methods
A survey was created and sent to all students (n=130) who had received audio or video feedback in the current semester (January-May, 2013-14). 37 responses were received and analysed by the lead academic and a research assistant. The unit of analysis was the individual students, as our interest lay in their perception of the feedback rather than in any comparison of their performance as a group.
The limitations of the project were the relatively low number of students taking part and the lack of tracked evidence to substantiate whether the feedback had a beneficial effect on their performance. However, it was for this reason that a qualitative rather than quantitative project was undertaken.
Description of results
The findings showed that while few of the students saw any benefit in video feedback showing the lecturer on camera, some still valued written feedback for its ease of access and comprehension, and many valued audio/screencast feedback. When asked to comment on the impact on their learning, again the majority of positive comments concerned audio/screencast feedback. Students note that it renders corrections easier and more memorable. It also encourages an active response to the feedback, as students report making notes while they listen. An unexpected spin off of the project was that it led to discussions with the Student Support team, who saw real potential in the provision of audio feedback for students with dyslexia or other learning difficulties.
Conclusions
The project findings corroborated our perception that audio/screencast feedback is welcomed by students and that the audio/video medium can enhance their engagement with the feedback.
Relevance of contribution for research and practice
The positive outcome of the study has since resulted in extended use of such tools in the department. One possible next step would be to explore links between students' learning needs or styles and their response to different types of feedback. Our findings resonate with those of previous researchers such as Brick & Holmes (2008) and Wilkinson (2013), who call for further research to substantiate the benefits of audio feedback for enhanced accessibility and inclusivity.
Keywords Audio feedback, screencast, video feedback, language teaching, inclusivity


The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland emitted a cloud of ash into the atmosphere during April and May 2010. Over the UK the ash cloud was observed by the FAAM BAe-146 Atmospheric Research Aircraft which was equipped with in-situ probes measuring the concentration of volcanic ash carried by particles of varying sizes. The UK Met Office Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) has been used to simulate the evolution of the ash cloud emitted by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano during the period 4–18 May 2010. In the NAME simulations the processes controlling the evolution of the concentration and particle size distribution include sedimentation and deposition of particles, horizontal dispersion and vertical wind shear. For travel times between 24 and 72 h, a 1/t relationship describes the evolution of the concentration at the centre of the ash cloud and the particle size distribution remains fairly constant. Although NAME does not represent the effects of microphysical processes, it can capture the observed decrease in concentration with travel time in this period. This suggests that, for this eruption, microphysical processes play a small role in determining the evolution of the distal ash cloud. Quantitative comparison with observations shows that NAME can simulate the observed column-integrated mass if around 4% of the total emitted mass is assumed to be transported as far as the UK by small particles (< 30 μm diameter). NAME can also simulate the observed particle size distribution if a distal particle size distribution that contains a large fraction of < 10 μm diameter particles is used, consistent with the idea that phraetomagmatic volcanoes, such as Eyjafjallajokull, emit very fine particles.


Nonlocal quantum fluids emerge as dark-matter models and tools for quantum simulations and technologies. However, strongly nonlinear regimes, like those involving multi-dimensional self-localized solitary waves (nonlocal solitons), are marginally explored for what concerns quantum features. We study the dynamics of 3D+1 solitons in the second-quantized nonlocal nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation. We theoretically investigate the quantum diffusion of the soliton center of mass and other parameters, varying the interaction length. 3D+1 simulations of the Ito partial differential equations arising from the positive P-representation of the density matrix validate the theoretical analysis. The numerical results unveil the onset of non-Gaussian statistics of the soliton, which may signal quantum-gravitational effects and be a resource for quantum computing. The non-Gaussianity arises from the interplay of the quantum diffusion of the soliton parameters and the stable invariant propagation. The fluctuations and the non-Gaussianity are universal effects expected for any nonlocality and dimensionality.


We have evaluated the mapping of polarizable material using a Cole-Cole model to fit second-order effects in concentric-loop airborne electromagnetic system responses. At Lewis Ponds in New South Wales, an inverted ground dipole-dipole array data has accurately imaged in 3D disseminated sulfide extending above and around ore grade massive sulfides. The polarizable zone is present in the near-surface, where, from modeling, airborne systems may have sensitivity to the small inductive induced polarization effects. Although the inverted chargeability measured from galvanic current injection into the ground was spatially coincident with the mineralized target, the estimated chargeabilities from induced polarization effects in an airborne versatile time-domain electromagnetic survey were substantially displaced to the east. The airborne induced polarization response may be associated with finer grained mineralization in the hanging wall of the sulfide deposits, or have a quite different source, such as clays associated with faulting.


Merger mania is at an all-time peak. Yet up to 80 percent of mergers fail because of culture clashes, mismanagement, and the chaos that ensues. Taking this failure rate into account, merger experts Thomas M. Grubb and Robert B. Lamb have written the first book that arms managers with strategies to exploit the many growth and profit opportunities created when competitors are coping with merger chaos. Grubb and Lamb show why firms miss huge financial opportunities when they stay passive while their competitors struggle in merger chaos. They present a fast-paced primer for action when your corporate rivals merge, based on six strategies: Attack your competitors when they are distracted by their mergers' turmoil and confusion. Create a "magnet strategy" to attract and hire your merging competitors' best people while their companiesare in a state of merger shock. Use the threat to your firm's survival caused by giantcompetitors' mergers in order to jump-start your own internal change. Use multiple alliances, networks, licensing, franchising, or joint ventures -- instead of mergers -- to fuel explosive growth. Plan and execute your firm's fast-track mergers and acquisitions. Create a composite strategy by using two or more of the above strategies simultaneously to maximize your growth and profitability. The authors analyze winning strategies at AOL, General Electric, Dell, Ford, Cisco Systems, and Vodaphone as well as failures at Coca Cola, Boeing, Union Pacific, Compaq, and Sunbeam. The result is "must" reading for operating managers at all levels, investment bankers, and mergers and acquisition specialists.


The recent proliferation of easy to use electronic components and toolkits has introduced a large number of novices to designing and building electronic projects. Nevertheless, debugging circuits remains a difficult and time-consuming task. This paper presents a novel debugging tool for electronic design projects, the Toastboard, that aims to reduce debugging time by improving upon the standard paradigm of point-wise circuit measurements. Ubiquitous instrumentation allows for immediate visualization of an entire breadboard's state, meaning users can diagnose problems based on a wealth of data instead of having to form a single hypothesis and plan before taking a measurement. Basic connectivity information is displayed visually on the circuit itself and quantitative data is displayed on the accompanying web interface. Software-based testing functions further lower the expertise threshold for efficient debugging by diagnosing classes of circuit errors automatically. In an informal study, participants found the detailed, pervasive, and context-rich data from our tool helpful and potentially time-saving.


Quantization is a promising technique to reduce the model size, memory footprint, and massive computation operations of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for embedded devices with limited resources. Although extreme low-bit quantization has achieved impressive success on convolutional neural networks, it still suffers from huge accuracy degradation on RNNs with the same low-bit precision. In this paper, we first investigate the accuracy degradation on RNN models under different quantization schemes, and the distribution of tensor values in the full precision model. Our observation reveals that due to the difference between the distributions of weights and activations, different quantization methods are suitable for different parts of models. Based on our observation, we propose HitNet, a hybrid ternary recurrent neural network, which bridges the accuracy gap between the full precision model and the quantized model. In HitNet, we develop a hybrid quantization method to quantize weights and activations. Moreover, we introduce a sloping factor motivated by prior work on Boltzmann machine to activation functions, further closing the accuracy gap between the full precision model and the quantized model. Overall, our HitNet can quantize RNN models into ternary values, {-1, 0, 1}, outperforming the state-of-the-art quantization methods on RNN models significantly. We test it on typical RNN models, such as Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), on which the results outperform previous work significantly. For example, we improve the perplexity per word (PPW) of a ternary LSTM on Penn Tree Bank (PTB) corpus from 126 (the state-of-the-art result to the best of our knowledge) to 110.3 with a full precision model in 97.2, and a ternary GRU from 142 to 113.5 with a full precision model in 102.7.


Spinal cord involvement in the form of acute transverse myelitis is an uncommon manifestation of dengue virus infection. Only few cases have been reported so far in the literature. Here we are reporting a 32 year old man who developed features of acute transverse myelitis six days after the onset of dengue fever. His magnetic resonance imaging of spinal cord showed segmental T2 hyper intensity from D4 to D6 levels involving predominantly the central component. He was treated with intravenous methyl prednisolone, Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IV IG) and physiotherapy. He improved substantially after four months & after seven months he recovered completely. He is able to walk normally & do his activities of daily living independently. Though neurological manifestations are reported in dengue fever, involvement of spinal cord in the form of transverse myelitis is extremely rare. Isolated reports are the tip of the iceberg. Its incidence may rise in the near future demanding increased awareness among health care providers.


We are remarkably adept at inferring the consequences of our actions, yet the neuronal mechanisms that allow us to plan a sequence of novel choices remain unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how the human brain plans the shortest path to a goal in novel mazes with one (shallow maze) or two (deep maze) choice points. We observed two distinct anterior prefrontal responses to demanding choices at the second choice point: one in rostrodorsal medial prefrontal cortex (rd-mPFC)/superior frontal gyrus (SFG) that was also sensitive to (deactivated by) demanding initial choices and another in lateral frontopolar cortex (lFPC), which was only engaged by demanding choices at the second choice point. Furthermore, we identified hippocampal responses during planning that correlated with subsequent choice accuracy and response time, particularly in mazes affording sequential choices. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses showed that coupling between the hippocampus and rd-mPFC increases during sequential (deep versus shallow) planning and is higher before correct versus incorrect choices. In short, using a naturalistic spatial planning paradigm, we reveal how the human brain represents sequential choices during planning without extensive training. Our data highlight a network centred on the cortical midline and hippocampus that allows us to make prospective choices while maintaining initial choices during planning in novel environments.


Boarding Salafiah Biharu Bahri 'Asali Fadlaailir Rahmah is visited by many tourists from home and abroad. They came to witness and enjoy the beauty of the architectural ornaments of this cottage. Some states are speculative and a priori because they feel admiration and emotion of beauty. The ornamentation of this architecture in a way through the transfiguration of the function that is coating the basic building materials with a variety of motifs ornament, from the colors that are symmetrical so that it becomes beautiful. Through transfiguration structural function, a way to change the basic building, into a form better and beautiful. Understanding of this beauty through aesthetic philosophy that is about the values of beauty. The beauty of the ornaments on this architecture can be viewed form (structure) the beautiful and diverse as calligraphy, geometric patterns are modified by natural images of plants, inanimate objects of architectural motifs. This beauty can be seen from the point of a variety of color and symmetrical, with the apparent harmony between the motifs color combinations that can be enjoyed by everyone. These ornaments contain profound meaning in relation to Islamic ideology. Keywords: transfiguration, coating, abstract, and beauty.


The impact of fishing on benthic species and habitats has been well documented, but effects on the way the ecosystem functions are less well understood. The roles performed by benthic species contribute to ecological functioning, and changes in the types of species present may have implications for the whole ecosystem. Biological traits analysis, which uses a wide range of biological characteristics, is employed to investigate the effects of fishing on the variety of roles performed by benthic taxa. Eighteen biological traits were chosen to represent aspects of the morphology, life history, feeding, and habitat use of benthic infauna from the western North Sea. Differences in relative frequency of the traits were assessed in relation to changes in fishing pressure over a 30-year period. The communities were dominated by organisms exhibiting opportunistic traits. These traits responded positively to an initial increase in fishing effort and then remained relatively stable for the remainder of the study. Traits predicted to be associated with vulnerability to fishing impacts, such as long life spans, large oocytes, and shelled body designs, decreased in proportion in response to elevated fishing effort. Those organisms with high regeneration potential and asexual reproduction also responded negatively. Traits related to feeding modes of various taxa and their interactions with the benthic habitat remained relatively stable throughout the study. We conclude that fishing has altered the biological trait composition of this benthic community in both predictable and unexpected ways over the last 3 decades. Some aspects of functioning may have been affected, while others, including those related to trophic relationships and habitat usage, have been preserved in spite of changes in taxon composition. It is not yet clear what the larger-scale implications of these trait changes may be to ecosystem functioning, fisheries management, or, indeed, the management of anthropogenic activities in the sea. What is clear is that studies of the biological trait compositions of other marine ecosystem components are now required.


Saudi Managed Care Pharmacy (SMCP) is one the initiative's project at King of Saudi Arabia. It is application part of Saudi Vision 2030 and could be transformation model of pharmacy practice at Ministry of Health. The project spent several years for meeting and discussions until completed idea born on the ground. Task forces committee from consultant pharmacist and headed by the author had several meeting, discussions, and comparisons with some Gulf and international development countries. The authors used modified American Pharmaceutical Association (APHA) and American College of Clinical Pharmacy Ambulatory Care business model to formulate the project. The system will save millions of dollars and do several hundreds of pharmacy jobs. The Vision, Mission, Value and goals of the program, Saudi Managed Care Pharmacy strength, weakness, opportunities, and threat (SWOT) Analysis, the requirement of SMCP, the requirement of SMCP, and Overcome the limitations in full text below. In addition to some suggested Policy and Procedures items for Managed Care Pharmacy and pharmacy practice and clinical pharmacy program for Managed Care Pharmacy. The system is potential pharmacy practice in the coming future and change overall pharmacy career in Saudi Arabia. Key words: Managed Care Pharmacy, Community Pharmacy, Health Insurance, Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia.


Poincare made the first attempt in 1896 on applying variational calculus to the three-body problem and observed that collision orbits do not necessarily have higher values of action than classical solutions. Little progress had been made on resolving this difficulty until a recent breakthrough by Chenciner and Montgomery. Afterward, variational methods were successfully applied to the JV-body problem to construct new classes of solutions. In order to avoid collisions, the problem is confined to symmetric path spaces and all new planar solutions were constructed under the assumption that some masses are equal. A question for the variational approach on planar problems naturally arises: Are minimizing methods useful only when some masses are identical? This article addresses this question for the three-body problem. For various choices of masses, it is proved that there exist infinitely many solutions with a certain topological type, called retrograde orbits, that minimize the action functional on certain path spaces. Cases covered in our work include triple stars in retrograde motions, double stars with one outer planet, and some double stars with one planet orbiting around one primary mass. Our results largely complement the classical results by the Poincare continuation method and Conley's geometric approach.


The Nystrom method is an efficient technique to generate low-rank matrix approximations and is used in several large-scale learning applications. A key aspect of this method is the distribution according to which columns are sampled from the original matrix. In this work, we present an analysis of different sampling techniques for the Nystrom method. Our analysis includes both empirical and theoretical components. We first present novel experiments with several real world datasets, comparing the performance of the Nystrom method when used with uniform versus non-uniform sampling distributions. Our results suggest that uniform sampling without replacement, in addition to being more efficient both in time and space, produces more effective approximations. This motivates the theoretical part of our analysis which gives the first performance bounds for the Nystrom method precisely when used with uniform sampling without replacement.


Nanotechnology is enabling the development of miniature devices able to perform simple tasks at the nanoscale. The interconnection of such nano-devices with traditional wireless networks and ultimately the Internet enables a new networking paradigm known as the Internet of Nano-Things (IoNT). Despite their promising applications, nano-devices have constrained power, energy, and computation capabilities along with very limited memory on board, which may only be able to hold one packet at once and, thus, requires packets to be delivered before certain hard deadlines. Toward this goal, a fully-distributed computation-light provably-correct scheduling/MAC protocol is introduced for bufferless nano-devices, which can maximize the network throughput, while achieving perpetual operation. More specifically, the proposed scheduling algorithm allows every nano-device to make optimal transmission decisions locally based on its incoming traffic rate, virtual debts, and channel sensing results. It is proven that the proposed algorithm is timely throughput optimal in the sense that it can guarantee reliable data delivery before deadlines as long as the incoming traffic rates are within the derived maximum network capacity region. This feature not only can lead to high network throughput for the IoNT, but also guarantees that the memory of each device is empty before the next packet arrives, thus addressing the fundamental challenge imposed by the extremely limited memory of nano-devices. In addition, the optimal deadline is derived, which guarantees that all the nano-devices can achieve perpetual communications by jointly considering the energy consumption of communications over the terahertz channel and energy harvesting based on piezoelectric nano-generators.


Learning minimum volume sets of an underlying nominal distribution is a very effective approach to anomaly detection. Several approaches to learning minimum volume sets have been proposed in the literature, including the K-point nearest neighbor graph (K-kNNG) algorithm based on the geometric entropy minimization (GEM) principle [4]. The K-kNNG detector, while possessing several desirable characteristics, suffers from high computation complexity, and in [4] a simpler heuristic approximation, the leave-one-out kNNG (L1O-kNNG) was proposed. In this paper, we propose a novel bipartite k-nearest neighbor graph (BP-kNNG) anomaly detection scheme for estimating minimum volume sets. Our bipartite estimator retains all the desirable theoretical properties of the K-kNNG, while being computationally simpler than the K-kNNG and the surrogate L1O-kNNG detectors. We show that BP-kNNG is asymptotically consistent in recovering the p-value of each test point. Experimental results are given that illustrate the superior performance of BP-kNNG as compared to the L1O-kNNG and other state of the art anomaly detection schemes.


Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins (DARPins) are synthetic ligand-binding proteins with potential to be the next generation antibodies. DARPins have the advantages of being thermodynamically stable and are able to be manipulated in size, valency, pharmacokinetic performance and effector function. The potential of DARPins for targeting clinically relevant tumour antigens is explored in this thesis. The tumour marker used is carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a human glycoprotein overexpressed in a number of adenocarcinomas and proven as a target in antibody-directed therapies. It was hypothesised that in vitro selection of binders to recombinant protein domains that are specific only to CEA would yield molecules with tumour targeting potential. Recombinant and protein engineering approaches were used to test this hypothesis.

First, the feasibility of producing pure recombinant domains of CEA was examined. The two N-terminal domains of CEA (N-A1), which contain a clinically relevant epitope recognised by the scFv MFE-23, were expressed in yeast. A combination of Endo H carbohydrate digestion with lectin and affinity chromatographies was used to obtain pure, homogeneous, soluble N-A1 and show that glycosylation is needed to maintain conformational stability. Kinetic analysis of the interaction with MFE-23 by surface plasmon resonance confirmed that the conformation of N-A1 resembled that of human CEA.

A site-specifically biotinylated form of N-A1 was then exploited for selection of binders from a DARPin library, using ribosome display. Six rounds of selection were sufficient to achieve enrichment of specific binders. A carboxyterminal tag was engineered on the lead DARPin to allow site-specific dimerisation and radioiodination. The addition of the peptide did not affect the stability of the DARPin and the resulting covalent dimer showed improved dissociation rates and superior permanence time on N-A1. It could also be rapid and efficiently 125I-labelled whilst preserving immunoreactivity. In addition, the anti-N-A1 DARPin lead specifically bound to CEA in human adenocarcinoma sections. These results support the hypothesis and suggest a clear targeting potential for anti-CEA DARPins.


Oxfam's Community-based Disaster Risk Management and Livelihoods (CBDRML) Programme sought to reduce the loss of life and livelihoods and promote resilience in disaster-prone communities in Pakistan. When in 2010 the country suffered the worst floods in its history, the CBDRML Programme was already in place, operated by partner organizations in four districts. In December 2011 Oxfam undertook an effectiveness review  of the work carried out under this programme by Oxfam's partners in Muzaffargarh and Rajanpur districts in Punjab Province. The review found strong evidence that participating households were much better prepared to manage flood-related risk than those outside the programme, and so lost significantly fewer assets during the 2010 floods. This report is based on in-depth research undertaken to explain this and other results of the earlier evaluation , with a view to understanding why the CBDRML Programme had the impacts that it did, and so which approaches are most likely to be effective in building community resilience and empowerment. This research report is the first of a series of follow-up studies designed to build upon Oxfam's Effectiveness Reviews , using a mixed methods approach to draw out programme insights and demonstrate the value of in-depth evaluation.


Security of mobile communications comes with the cost of computational overhead. Reducing the overhead in security computations is critical to ensure the overall performance of a mobile network. In this paper, we present the notion of online/offline signcryption, where most of computations are carried out offline and the online part of our scheme does not require any exponent computations and therefore is very efficient. Our scheme allows any third party to verify the encryption without compromising confidentiality. We also show that our scheme is secure against existential forgery under chosen message attacks and adaptively chosen ciphertext attacks under the notion of indistinguishability of ciphertext.


Minimally invasive medical procedures require flexible endoscopes that are thinner than existing devices while delivering high resolution images. The scanning fiber endoscope (SFE) described meets these requirements. Prototype SFEs with a 2 mm diameter distal tip envelope and better than 10 micron resolution have been developed.


Context: Epilepsy is one of the most common chronic neurologic conditions in children, and it is associated with increased risk for poor health-related quality of life. Quality of life is affected by seizure frequency, maternal education, type of epilepsy, and type of anti epileptic in Indian children with epilepsy. Cognition, emotional functions and concentration are most commonly affected due to epilepsy. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore the current status of Quality of Life (QOL) in epileptic children by using QOLCE-55 questionnaire. Materials and Methods: A prospective observational study was carried in our hospital in which 104 children aged 4-13 years with epilepsy were recruited from the inpatient and outpatient services of the department of pediatrics, of a tertiary care teaching hospital in South India. QOLCE questionnaire was completed by parents and epileptic children. The collected data was analyzed by using graph pad prism 7.0 version. Results: The mean overall QOL score was 46.82 ± 10.90. Overall QOL was affected by type of epilepsy, seizure frequency, type of antiepileptic drug and maternal education. Cognitive functions was found to be affected more severely with the lowest mean score of 37.99 ± 18.35, physical functions were not affected much with mean score of 61.10 ± 13.44. We also observed that patients who are receiving Sodium valproate and Iminostilbene like Carbamazepine and Oxcarbamazepine having better QOL than the Phenytoin and Clobazam. Conclusion: Children with epilepsy have a comparatively weaken quality of life and focusing exclusively on control of seizures. In our study we evaluated that most of the patients are having cognitive impairment and decreased social functions. So the patients should be monitored regularly and treated appropriately. We also observed that patients with Sodium valproate and Carbamazepine are having better quality of life.


Born a princess Sayyida on the African spice island of Zanzibar, Emily Ruete was brought up in a harem in the Sultan's palace, naturalized as a German through marriage, and then manipulated by both Germans and British in their efforts to gain control over the island. Her engrossing memoirs, set against a backdrop of political intrigue in the great age of European colonialism, offer a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century Arab and African life, not only in the palace, but in the city and plantations as well. They also explore relationships within her family and to the Arab and black communities, children's education, and the role of women in a polygamous society.


Protein domain movements are of critical importance for understanding macromolecular
function, but little is understood about how they are controlled, their energetics, and how
to characterize them into meaningful descriptions for the purpose of understanding their
relation to function. Here we have developed new methods for this purpose based on changes
in residue contacts between domains. The main tool used is the "Dynamic Contact Graph"
which in one static graph depicts changes in contacts between residues from the domains.
The power of this method is twofold: first the graphs allow one to use the algorithms of graph
theory in the analysis of domain movements, and second they provide a visual metaphor
for the movements they depict. Using this method it was possible to classify 1822 domain
movements from the "Non-Redundant Database of Protein Domain Movements" into sixteen
different classes by decomposing the graphs for each individual protein into four elemental
graphs which represent the four types of elemental contact change. For each individual
domain movement the output of this process provides the numbers of occurrences of each
type of elemental contact change. These were used as input for logistic regression to create a
predictor of hinge and shear using assignments for these two mechanisms at the "Database
of Macromolecular Movements". This predictor was applied to the 1822 domain movements
to give a tenfold increase in the number of examples classified as hinge and shear. Using this
dataset it was shown that contrary to common interpretation there is no difference between
hinge and shear domain movements. The new data is presented online with new websites
which give visual depictions of the protein domain movements.


To assess the central effect of hypertonic NaCl on the release of vasopressin (AVP) and methionine enkephalin-like substances into the blood and cerebrospinal fluid, and on blood pressure, ventriculocisternal perfusion (0.25 ml/min, 60 min) was performed in anesthetized dogs with artificial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), either isotonic (300 mosmol/kg) or hypertonic (600 and 1200 mosmol/kg). The effect of central administration of a V1-AVP antagonist on the central osmotic challenge was also studied. In dogs, given 600 mosmol/kg, CSF osmolality increased with a concomitant rise in mean arterial pressure and plasma AVP concentrations. Plasma osmolality, heart rate, CSF AVP and plasma and CSF methionine enkephalin-like substances showed no significant change. In dogs, given 1200 mosmol/kg, the CSF osmolality increase was accompanied by a rise in mean arterial pressure, heart rate, plasma AVP and CSF AVP. Plasma osmolality and plasma and CSF methionine-enkephalin-like substances did not change significantly. A V1-AVP antagonist given centrally attenuated the rise in mean arterial pressure induced by osmotic challenge. In dogs, given 300 mosmol/kg, no parameters changed significantly except for a gradual fall in heart rate. These results suggest that central osmotic stimulation by hypertonic NaCl increases blood pressure, heart rate and the release of AVP, but not methionine enkephalin-like substances, into the blood and CSF, and a V1-blocker given centrally attenuates the pressor response.


The ongoing debate among U.S. legal scholars and policy makers about the structure of the networked information society has two odd features. First, the emerging regime of information rights and privileges is publicly justified in terms of economic and political liberty, but as a practical matter, it allows individuals less and less control over information flows to, from, and about themselves. In particular, the commercial, legal, and technical infrastructures that define the individual experience of the network are converging around relatively strong default protection for intellectual property rights in information - most notably copyright and trade secrecy - and relatively weak protection for individual privacy. Second, despite their practical convergence, legal and policy discussions about control of cultural information and control of personal information have remained largely separate.This book argues that the two phenomena are linked, and signal deep inadequacies in the conventional ways of thinking about information rights and architectures. For the most part, U.S. legal and policy scholarship about the networked information society shares a set of first-order commitments - to individual autonomy, to an abstract and disembodied vision of the self, and to the possibility of rational value-neutrality - that derive from the tradition of liberal political theory within which legal academics are primarily trained. In each of three areas that the book will explore - copyright in cultural creations, privacy interests against surveillance, and the design of the architectures and artifacts that mediate access to networked information resources - a common pattern emerges: legal scholarship posits simplistic models of individual behavior derived from the first-order liberal commitments and then evaluates emerging legal and technical regimes that govern information flow according to the models. Theoretical frameworks organized around the core liberal individualist themes of expressive and market liberty predominate, regardless of their fit with the phenomena under investigation.This approach has not served either theory or policy well. The models of individual behavior upon which it relies are too narrow both descriptively and normatively to yield useful insights into the relationships between copyright, creativity and culture; between surveillance, privacy, and subjectivity; and between network architecture and social ordering. Moving beyond the bounds of liberal political theory is essential if we are to understand the cultural work that regimes of information rights do and to appreciate the ways in which formally separate regimes of information rights intersect. This book seeks to remedy legal scholarship's theoretical deficit and, in the process, to develop a unified framework for conceptualizing the social and cultural effects of legal and technical regimes that govern information access and use. It asks the sorts of questions with which law traditionally has concerned itself - what regime of information rights is just, and why - but it foregrounds a set of considerations that legal thinking about those issues has tended to marginalize. It considers how people encounter, use, and experience information, and how those practices inform the development of culture and identity. In particular, it explores the ways in which social practices of information use are mediated by context: by cultures, bodies, places, artifacts, discourses, and social networks. From that vantage point, it considers the ways in which the processes of cultural development and self-formation adapt to laws, practices, and technologies designed to impose commodification and transparency within the information environment. It then develops a set of structural principles that should inform the legal and technical construction of the emerging networked information society.


This paper investigates the stability and the continuity behavior of the spectral factorization and of the Wiener filter in the bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) stability norm. It shows that if the minimum of the given spectra becomes not smaller than half its norm, there exist uniform upper bounds on the stability norm of the spectral factor and Wiener filter. If on the other hand, the minimum becomes smaller than a quarter of its norm, no such upper bounds can exist. In the second part, it is shown that every BIBO-stable spectral density is a continuity point of the spectral factorization. From this, it is derived that the Wiener filter always depends continuously on the data in the BIBO-norm. These results are compared with energy stable systems. It turns out that every continuous spectrum is a discontinuous point for the spectral factorization in the energy norm. It follows that the Wiener filter depends not continuous on the data in this norm.


Caribbean countries sees little advantage in enforcing copyright laws. This article searches for a solution to this copyright enforcement controversy. Part I of this Note provides background information on copyright law and examines the legal, political, and socioeconomic conditions existing in both the United States and in the Caribbean countries. It also discusses the effect of these conditions on substantive copyright laws and on the particular copyright interests and objectives of both parties. Part II reviews different approaches to international copyright protection. Part III discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and concludes that, for resolution, the controversy requires a new approach, tailored to the needs of both the United States and the Caribbean. This Note concludes that a regional trade-based agreement between the U.S. and the Caribbean countries would protect U.S. intellectual property in the region, while accommodating the unique circumstances and interests of the Caribbean countries. THE SEARCH FOR A SOLUTION TO THE U.S.-CARIBBEAN COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT CONTROVERSY


The study presented in this document examined school-based mental health practitioners' views regarding the use of self-disclosure (the sharing of personal information or thoughts with their clients) in their current practice. This study also collected schoolbased mental health practitioners' opinions concerning their graduate-level training and other preparation related to the use of self-disclosure. Research questions investigated whether school-based mental health practitioners engaged in self-disclosure, whether participants viewed self-disclosure to be ethical, and if participants had utilized selfdisclosure, did they believe their graduate-level training adequately prepared them to do so. Sixty-five school-based mental health practitioners, self-identifying as school psychologists, school counselors, and school workers, responded to the 25-question survey pertaining to the topic (plus nine demographic questions). The results demonstrate that participants do indeed engage in self-disclosure. Participants reported that they employed self-disclosure in order to accomplish specific goals. Questions regarding participants' perceptions about the quality of the preparation their graduate-level training provided to employ self-disclosure yielded diverse results. Considering the variability of participants' views about the preparation their graduate-level training provided for the use of self-disclosure, and the proportion of participants who acknowledged utilizing selfdisclosure in practice, graduate programs should formalize training about self-disclosure for future school-based mental health practitioners. Standardized training in the use of self-disclosure as a clinical technique will help to ensure that future professionals selfdisclose within ethical parameters. The results of this study lend support for continued research into the use of self-disclosure by school-based mental health practitioners.


Respiratory papillomatosis is a potentially life-threatening condition that is caused by a human papillomavirus infection of the respiratory epithelium. 1,2 Patients whose condition is diagnosed at a younger age are at high risk for recurrent aggressive disease. 3 The primary management approach focuses on the removal of the papillomas by surgical debulking, although persistence of the human papillomavirus genome with subsequent recurrence of disease are the typical outcome. In a minority of patients, surgical management must be supplemented with adjuvant medical therapy, with interferon being the best studied and most commonly used. Other adjuvant treatments include photodynamic therapy, indole-3-carbinol, mumps immunization, ribavirin, and cidofovir. 4 Large controlled trials are lacking for all such treatments other than interferon, making it extremely difficult to assess clinical benefit and risk in a systematic fashion at the current time. As with surgical management, viral persistence occurs after treatment with these adjuvant modalities, further contributing to the challenge of treating patients who have this potentially devastating disease. Because epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is expressed in laryngeal papillomas, we elected to try an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor in a patient with end-stage disease in whom other therapies had failed.


In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves-what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature? -JOHN STUART MILL, On Liberty


The now widely available and highly popular among non-expert users, particularly in the context of UAV photogrammetry, Structurefrom-Motion (SfM) pipelines have also further renewed the interest in the issue of automatic camera calibration. The well-documented requirements for robust self-calibration cannot be always met, e.g. due to restrictions in time and cost, absence of ground control and image tilt, terrain morphology, unsuitable flight configuration etc.; hence, camera pre-calibration is frequently recommended. In this context, users often resort to flexible, user-friendly tools for camera calibration based on 2D coded patterns (primarily ordinary chessboards). Yet, the physical size of such patterns poses obvious limitations. This paper discusses the alternative of extending the size of the calibration object by using multiple unordered coplanar chessboards, which might accommodate much larger imaging distances. This is done initially by a detailed simulation to show that – in terms of geometry – this could be a viable alternative to single patterns. A first algorithmic implementation is then laid out, and results from real multi-pattern configurations, both ordered and unordered, are successfully compared. However, aspects of the proposed approach need to be further studied for its reliable practical employment. * Corresponding author