Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) is a method of allowing a consumer to set up a secure wireless network in a user friendly way. However, in December 2011 it was discovered that a brute force attack exists that reduces the WPS key space from 108 to 104+103. This resulted in a proof of concept tool that was able to search all possible combinations of PINs within a few days.This research presents a methodology to test wireless devices to determine their susceptibility to the external registrar PIN authentication design vulnerability. A number of devices were audited, and the Linksys WRT160N v2 router was selected to be examined in detail. The results demonstrate that the router is highly susceptible to having its WPN PIN brute forced. It also details that even with WPS disabled in the router configuration, WPS was still active and the PIN was equally vulnerable.


Here we discuss the design, fabrication, and simulation of ultrathin film n-i-p a-Si:H solar cells incorporating light trapping plasmonic back reflectors which exceed the performance of n-i-p cells on randomly textured Asahi substrates. The periodic patterns are made via an inexpensive and scalable nanoimprint method, and are structured directly into the metallic back contact. Compared to reference cells with randomly textured back contacts and flat back contacts, the patterned cells exhibit higher short-circuit current densities and improved overall efficiencies than either reference case. Angle-resolved photocurrent measurements confirm that the enhanced photocurrents are due to coupling to waveguide modes of the cell. Electromagnetic modeling is shown to agree well with measurements, and used to understand further details of the device.


Industrial control Ethernet networks are more important in connecting with equipments each other of enterprise comprehensive automation and integrating information. With the explosive growth of network techniques, the traditional control networks can no longer satisfy the security demands on network connectivity, data storage and information exchanges. New types of networks emerged in recent years in order to provide solutions for the increasing requirements on networked services. We propose a trust evaluation model for industrial control Ethernet network. Our study shows the importance and necessity of applying theoretical analyses to understand the complex characteristics of trusted industrial control Ethernet networks.


Leptin, insulin, and amylin are the so called adi−
posity signals; they inform the brain about the
amount of fat deposited in the body. Leptin is
produced and secreted directly by the fat cells,
depending on the amount of body fat, whereas
insulin and amylin originate from the pancreas.
All 3 adiposity signals reduce food intake and
increase energy release. Part of their effect is to
increase the action of physiological satiation sig−
nals. If the amount of fat increases, however, lep−
tin resistance often develops. This explains why,
for example, the regulation mechanisms trigge−
red by leptin do not work effectively in obese
people. When used in combination, these hormo−
nes achieve a greater reduction in appetite and
therefore body weight; they thus represent an in−
teresting therapeutic option. Adiposity signals
influence other bodily functions too. Sufficiently
high concentrations of leptin and insulin are es−
sential for successful reproduction. From a teleo−
logical perspective, this seems to make a lot of
sense because reproduction (pregnancy, lacta−
tion) is a process that requires a lot of energy, so
that sufficient energy reserves are beneficial.


In this study, we have been developing a rehabilitation system that combining a motor and sensory function recovery device and a measuring device for a hand sensory. These devices are purposely developed for paralyzed patients. The rehabilitation system was named HSRS (Hand Sensory Rehabilitation system) and it's consists of a training device hand sensory function, a computer to control the device, and an external monitor displays an obtained data from sensors. The training device is able to applycontinuous mechanical stimulation to the hand of a user by grasping the device probe. On the monitor, the self-made Graphical User Interface (GUI) is displayed. An operator instructs the user to match the target value to the measured value in the training. When the user operates the switches, and the device measures the point that contacted with the probe. We did two experiments by using these devices. One is stimulus evaluation experiment. In this experiment, three frequencies (30 [Hz], 60[Hz], 100[Hz]) were given to the human hand and we verified which frequency was most effective. Using a slide caliper and the device to measure sensory function, we evaluated the difference in sensory degree of each healthy subject between before and after using the training device. As a result, we found 60[Hz] is the most effective frequency. In the second experiment, we let a subject follow a target value of GUI. In this experiment, we examined the relation between the sensory function and the motor function and investigated the best evaluation parameter when training the paralyzed patient. As a result, we didn't get difference in the results when comparing in sports experience. However, we got a particularly big difference of the magnitude of the residual during accelerated and deceleration time of the gripping with other items. Moreover, when comparing those who are good and not good sensory in sensory function measurement experiments, there was a tendency that the subjects with not good sensory have the bigger difference with the target value. We confirmed the utility of the measuring devise and the relationship between motor and sensory function.


An essential reference for students and scholars exploring the methods and methodologies of writing research.What does it mean to research writing today? What are the practical and theoretical issues researchers face when approaching writing as they do? What are the gains or limitations of applying particular methods, and what might researchers be overlooking? These questions and more are answered by the writing research field s leading scholars in "Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies."Editors Nickoson and Sheridan gather twenty chapters from leaders in writing research, spanning topics from ethical considerations for researchers, quantitative methods, and activity analysis to interviewing and communitybased and Internet research. While each chapter addresses a different subject, the volume as a whole covers the range of methodologies, technologies, and approaches both old and new that writing researchers use, and examines the ways in which contemporary writing research is understood, practiced, and represented.An essential reference for experienced researchers and an invaluable tool to help novices understand research methods and methodologies, "Writing Studies Research in Practice "includes established methods and knowledge while addressing the contemporary issues, interests, and concerns faced by writing researchers today."


We present neutrino mass bounds using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts measured from Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Data Release 8. The galaxies have photometric redshifts between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65 and cover 10,000 deg2, thus probing a volume of 3 h−3 Gpc3 and enabling tight constraints to be derived on the amount of dark matter in the form of massive neutrinos. A new bound on the sum of neutrino masses ∑mν < 0.27 eV, at the 95% confidence level (CL), is obtained after combining our sample of galaxies, which we call "CMASS," with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) seven-year cosmic microwave background data and the most recent measurement of the Hubble parameter from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This constraint is obtained with a conservative multipole range of 30 < ℓ < 200 in order to minimize nonlinearities, and a free bias parameter in each of the four redshift bins. We study the impact of assuming this linear galaxy bias model using mock catalogs and find that this model causes a small (∼1σ–1.5σ) bias in ΩDMh2. For this reason, we also quote neutrino bounds based on a conservative galaxy bias model containing additional, shot-noise-like free parameters. In this conservative case, the bounds are significantly weakened, e.g., ∑mν < 0.38 eV (95% CL) for WMAP+HST+CMASS (ℓmax = 200). We also study the dependence of the neutrino bound on the multipole range (ℓmax = 150 versus ℓmax = 200) and on which combination of data sets is included as a prior. The addition of supernova and/or baryon acoustic oscillation data does not significantly improve the neutrino mass bound once the HST prior is included. A companion paper describes the construction of the angular power spectra in detail and derives constraints on a general cosmological model, including the dark energy equation of state w and the spatial curvature ΩK, while a second companion paper presents a measurement of the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations from the same data set. All three works are based on the catalog by Ross et al.


Triggered largely by the warming and pollution of oceans, corals are experiencing bleaching and a variety of diseases caused by the spread of bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Identification of bleached/diseased corals enables implementation of measures to halt or retard disease. Benthic cover analysis, a standard metric used in large databases to assess live coral cover, as a standalone measure of reef health is insufficient for identification of coral bleaching/disease. Proposed herein is a solution that couples machine learning with crowd-sourced data – images from government archives, citizen science projects, and personal images collected by tourists – to build a model capable of identifying healthy, bleached, and/or diseased coral. We collected hundreds of images of corals from open source archives, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's records and the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. The image annotation platform Labelbox was used to highlight regions of interest in each of these images and label them as "healthy", "bleached", "black band disease", "dark spot disease", "white syndrome", or "yellow band disease". These annotations were then used to build, train, and validate a Python-based image classification model, adapted from an open-source Mask R-CNN (region-based convolutional neural network) algorithm. Use of the model on a test set of coral images yields over 85% accuracy in distinguishing healthy versus unhealthy coral. This machine learning-based model has the potential to rapidly analyze a large and growing database of images to identify coral bleaching/disease around the world, thereby enabling effective allocation of resources for preservation of our marine ecosystems.


Abstract. We present an electrically actuated tunable optical grating based on dielectric elastomer actuators. A simple fabrication protocol is presented, which integrates the grating with the actuating mechanism both made of soft elastomers, improving the tunability of the grating. The device is designed to be operated in the transmission mode. It exhibits a continuous period tunability of 34.4% at an actuation voltage of 5.5 kV, which is an improvement over reported tunable optical gratings.


We describe the first approach to automatically synthesizing heap-manipulating programs with auxiliary recursive procedures. Such procedures occur routinely in data structure transformations (e.g., flattening a tree into a list) or traversals of composite structures (e.g., n-ary trees). Our approach, dubbed cyclic program synthesis, enhances deductive program synthesis with a novel application of cyclic proofs. Specifically, we observe that the machinery used to form cycles in cyclic proofs can be reused to systematically and efficiently abduce recursive auxiliary procedures. We develop the theory of cyclic program synthesis by extending Synthetic Separation Logic (SSL), a logical framework for deductive synthesis of heap-manipulating programs from Separation Logic specifications. We implement our approach as a tool called Cypress, and showcase it by automatically synthesizing a number of programs manipulating linked data structures using recursive auxiliary procedures and mutual recursion, many of which were beyond the reach of existing program synthesis tools.


A simple method for real‐time early warning of gravity‐driven rupture that considers both the heterogeneity of natural media and characteristics of acoustic emissions attenuation is proposed. The method capitalizes on codetection of elastic waves emanating from microcracks by multiple and spatially separated sensors. Event codetection is considered as surrogate for large event size with more frequent codetected events marking imminence of catastrophic failure. Using a spatially explicit fiber bundle numerical model with spatially correlated mechanical strength and two load redistribution rules, we constructed a range of mechanical failure scenarios and associated failure events (mapped into acoustic emission) in space and time. Analysis considering hypothetical arrays of sensors and consideration of signal attenuation demonstrate the potential of the codetection principles even for insensitive sensors to provide early warning for imminent global failure.


The aim of this study is to explore how young people act and the organisation of school practice, and what possibilities they have of influencing the content and the forms practiced. The study focuses on how the pedagogic practice is organised in two classes in their first year of upper secondary school, one Social Science programme class and one Vehicle programme class. This embraces questions as: How, where, when and for what cause do students act to influence, and then with what result? Are students offered influence, and in that case which students? How does the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice prepare students to act in order to be able to exert influence in the future? These questions have been studied with focus on differences between the programmes with regard to social background and gender.The thesis has its theoretical base in Bernstein's theory of pedagogy and code (1990, 2000), feminist perspectives (Arnot, 2006; Arnot & Dillabough, 2000; Connell, 1987; Gordon, 2006; Gordon, Holland & Lahelma, 2000) as well as theories of structuration (Giddens, 1984).The empirical material of the thesis was ethnographically produced during one school year, through classroom observations, individual interviews with students, teachers and head teachers, and the gathering of school and teaching material. The main results in the analysis are that actions taken to gain influence were rare, that the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice was mainly focused on students as becoming, i. e. it focused students possibilities to be able to influence in the future and not the present. Furthermore, changing of pedagogic content or pedagogic forms was dependent on students' own actions. There was a lack of teacher organisation to promote student influence. Finally, what was evaluated in the pedagogic practice, i.e. factual learning, did not promote student influence.The thesis demonstrates how pedagogic practice was gendered and classed, which had consequences for how students could influence and how students were prepared to influence in the future. Since the Social Science programme mostly attracts students from a middle-class background and the Vehicle programme those with a working-class background, the content in the programmes contributed to reproducing hierarchical social relations. The content for the Vehicle students proved to be simplified, personal and context dependent, whereas the content of the Social Science programme was more advanced, general and context independent, knowledge which, in argumentation for influence, is usually highly valued.In previous research, working class masculinities have often been associated with opposition towards study-oriented subjects. However, the current study indicates that there is an interest in studying Swedish, English and maths. The students argued that it was necessary for future employment, and that the Vehicle industry is now asking for this kind of knowledge.


When an industry standard incorporates a patented invention, the demand for products that comply with the standard has two components. Some of the demand may be for the inherent technical advantages of the invention; the patentee is generally entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. But some of the demand is for the benefits of standardization, such as interoperability, and the patentee is not entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. From this point, the article draws two conclusions. First, the amounts to which a patentee is entitled, either in litigation or in licensing negotiations, should be calculated by determining the portion of demand that is attributable to its invention. In some cases, there will be evidence from which one can make this determination directly; in others, there may be no such direct evidence, but it may still be possible to draw inferences regarding the contributions of the patentee. Second, because the contributions of the standard itself, like interoperability, are economically distinct, the "owner" of a standard-typically a standard-setting organization-should be allowed to negotiate license fees with the patentee of an invention incorporated in the standard.


BACKGROUND
It is not clear whether quantitative analysis of viral DNA in ocular specimens is correlated with disease activities of acute retinal necrosis (ARN).

OBJECTIVES
To monitor viral load in ocular specimens collected from patients with ARN by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

STUDY DESIGN
Ocular samples (aqueous humor and vitreous) were serially collected from three patients with ARN. Viral load in those samples was evaluated by real-time PCR.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
In case 1, large amounts of varicella zoster virus (VZV) DNA (4.8 x 10(6) to 5.5 x 10(6) copies/ml) were detected in aqueous humor during the first 2 weeks after admission. The viral load in vitreous was higher than that in aqueous humor at the time of vitrectomy. As ophthamoscopic findings and visual acuity improved through acyclovir (ACV) treatment, the viral load in aqueous humor decreased dramatically. In case 2, the patient was treated with intravenous ACV at first, but clinical features did not improve. The herpes simplex virus (HSV)-2 viral load in aqueous humor remained stable (2.3 x 10(3) to 2.8 x 10(3) copies/ml) during the first 3 weeks after admission. The amount of HSV-2 DNA in vitreous was again higher than that in aqueous humor. Although neither clinical features nor viral load had changed by ACV, intra-ocular ganciclovir (GCV) injection improved clinical features, and decreased viral load to undetectable levels. In case 3, the patient developed ARN within 1 month after the onset of varicella and demonstrated only mild clinical symptoms. She was treated with ACV administration alone and recovered quickly. In contrast to case 1, the copy number of VZV DNA at the time of admission was low (9 x 10(2) copies/ml), and decreased quickly in response to the treatment. Correlation between viral load in ocular specimens and clinical course of the disease was demonstrated in these patients.


It has become more and more difficult to recruit prospective American Ph.D. students in Agricultural and Applied Economics. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of the problem, to ascertain why with respect to location and other important factors, and hopefully deduce recruiting solutions. Results indicate that the paramount factors in a profile of those willing to pay the price in terms of sacrifice and effort to obtain a Ph.D. encompass willingness to accept a relatively low starting salary with a Ph.D., likely to be a Foreign National, prone to be in a Midwestern university, and willing to relocate globally. Generally, the Ph.D. starting salary would have to increase dramatically to change the minds of graduate students not intending to pursue a Ph.D. including most American graduate students. A change in public policy appears to be the only real solution.


The effect of periodic strain on the beat wavelength between the guided LP(01) and the leaky LP(11) modes is approximated around the LP(11) mode cutoff. An abrupt change of the beat wavelength as a function of optical wavelength signifies the onset of the cutoff region. An order parameter is suggested to characterize the transition of the LP(11) mode from a guided to a cladding mode.


Untrusted third-party vendors and manufacturers have raised security concerns in hardware supply chain. Among all existing solutions, formal verification methods provide powerful solutions in detection malicious behaviors at the pre-silicon stage. However, little work have been done towards built-in hardware runtime verification at the post-silicon stage. In this paper, a runtime formal verification framework is proposed to evaluate the trust of hardware during its execution. This framework combines the symbolic execution and SAT solving methods to validate the user defined properties. The proposed framework has been demonstrated on an FPGA platform using an SoC design with untrusted IPs. The experimentation results show that the proposed approach can provide high-level security assurance for hardware at runtime.


This paper revisits the Fisher hypothesis by estimating fractional integration and cointegration models that are more general than the standard ones based on the classical I(0)/I(1) dichotomy. Two sets of results are obtained under the alternative assumptions of white noise and Bloomfield (1973) autocorrelated errors respectively. The univariate analysis suggests than the differencing parameter is higher than 1 for most series in the former case, whilst the unit root null cannot be rejected for the majority of them in the latter case. The multivariate results imply that there exists a positive relationship, linking nominal interest rates to inflation; however, there is no evidence of the full adjustment of the former to the latter required by the Fisher hypothesis.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of an early childhood, family-centered, school-based intervention on children's kindergarten academic achievement. METHODS: This was a cluster (school) randomized controlled trial with assessments from pre-kindergarten (pre-k) entry through the end of kindergarten. The setting was 10 public elementary schools with 26 pre-k classes in 2 school districts in urban disadvantaged neighborhoods serving a largely black, low-income population. Participants were 1050 black and Latino, low-income children (age 4; 88% of pre-k population) enrolled in 10 schools over 4 years. Universal intervention aimed to promote self-regulation and early learning by strengthening positive behavior support and effective behavior management at home and school, and increasing parent involvement in education. Intervention included after-school group sessions for families of pre-k students (13 2-hour sessions; co-led by pre-k teachers) and professional development for pre-k and kindergarten teachers. The outcome measures were standardized test scores of kindergarten reading, writing, and math achievement by independent evaluators masked to intervention condition (primary outcome); developmental trajectories of teacher-rated academic performance from pre-k through kindergarten (secondary outcome). RESULTS: Relative to children in control schools, children in intervention schools had higher kindergarten achievement test scores (Cohen's d = 0.18, mean difference = 2.64, SE = 0.90, P = .03) and higher teacher-rated academic performance (Cohen's d = 0.25, mean difference = 5.65, SE = 2.34, P = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Early childhood population-level intervention that enhances both home and school environments shows promise to advance academic achievement among minority children from disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods.


Despite the several issues faced in the past, the evolutionary trend of silicon has kept its constant pace. Today an ever increasing number of cores is integrated onto the same die. Unfortunately, the extraordinary performance achievable by the many-core paradigm is limited by several factors. Memory bandwidth limitation, combined with inefficient synchronization mechanisms, can severely overcome the potential computation capabilities. Moreover, the huge HW/SW design space requires accurate and flexible tools to perform architectural explorations and validation of design choices.
In this thesis we focus on the aforementioned aspects: a flexible and accurate Virtual Platform has been developed, targeting a reference many-core architecture. Such tool has been used to perform architectural explorations, focusing on instruction caching architecture and hybrid HW/SW synchronization mechanism. Beside architectural implications, another issue of embedded systems is considered: energy efficiency. Near Threshold Computing is a key research area in the Ultra-Low-Power domain, as it promises a tenfold improvement in energy efficiency compared to super-threshold operation and it mitigates thermal bottlenecks. The physical implications of modern deep sub-micron technology are severely limiting performance and reliability of modern designs. Reliability becomes a major obstacle when operating in NTC, especially memory operation becomes unreliable and can compromise system correctness. In the present work a novel hybrid memory architecture is devised to overcome reliability issues and at the same time improve energy efficiency by means of aggressive voltage scaling when allowed by workload requirements. Variability is another great drawback of near-threshold operation. The greatly increased sensitivity to threshold voltage variations in today a major concern for electronic devices. We introduce a variation-tolerant extension of the baseline many-core architecture. By means of micro-architectural knobs and a lightweight runtime control unit, the baseline architecture becomes dynamically tolerant to variations.


Abstract: Sf television programmes such as Star Trek, which play with real-world scientific practices and knowledge, condition public expectations about the ways in which those sciences are enacted. Yet this can be problematic given that the representation of science in these programmes is often rooted in outmoded understandings. This article, using archaeology and its cognate disciplines of anthropology and religious studies as examples, will illustrate some of the ways in which Star Trek's exploratory science is based on nineteenth-century modes of exhibitionary culture (especially the museum and the world's fair), and how sf television builds on the legacies of the Barthesian myths entangled with those modes of representation. Drawing on both the colonial implications of nineteenth-century literary sf and the object-based teleological lessons of the museum and the world's fair, this investigation of Star Trek demonstrates the relationship between sf television and Victorian scientific thought.


The development of short rotation forestry for bioenergy requires accurate and reliable yield estimates. This paper analyses the current, expected and potential regional productivity of short rotation willow plantations for six countries in Northern Europe. The estimations for present productivity are based on empirical models, using data regarding management, and local productivity based on the regional cereal yields. The estimates of expected yield rely on the current trends of yield increase from commercial willow plantations in the region. The estimates for potential yield are based on climatic restrictions. The results show potential average yields of 9.5, 6.8, 7.9, 9.0, 9.3, and 8.0 odt ha–1 yr–1 for Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden, respectively. The results of the study also show that there is a wide regional variation between the different countries. In Denmark, Finland and Sweden there is a convergence between the future forecasts and the climatic potential yields in the areas of high productivity. The Baltic countries seem to present lower estimates of present productivity, reflecting possible socio-economic restrictions, although they show a high biomass potential. The methods presented in this study can be further developed in other areas where willow cultivation is considered, and can serve as a basis for future economic considerations.


Although regional isostasy generally is associated with continental lithospheric compression and foreland basin formation, local isostatic compensation commonly is assumed in models of extensional basin formation. The assumption of negligible lithospheric strength during rifting often is justified on the basis of: (1) high heat flow and temperatures produced by elevating the lithosphere - asthenosphere boundary and (2) fracturing of the crust and lithosphere by normal faults. By modeling the development of rift basins within the Western rift system of East Africa and their associated free air gravity anomalies, we assess the role of basin-producing normal faults in modifying the flexural strength of extended lithosphere. Heat flow and seismicity data from the East African plateau region indicate that the Western rift system located on the western side of the plateau developed in old, cold continental lithosphere. These relatively narrow (40–70 km wide), but deep, basins are bounded along one side by high-angle border faults that penetrate to lower crustal levels, as indicated by seismicity data. Along the length of the Western rift system, depth to pre-rift basement and rift flank topography vary between basins from 1 to 8 km and from 1 to 2 km respectively, with deeper basins generally correlating with higher flanks. Comparison of model predictions with topography and free air gravity profiles reveals that the basin depth and the flank height in the majority of the Western rift basins studied can be explained simply by small heaves (3–10 km) across the border fault and with significant flexural strength of the lithosphere maintained during extension. Where both observed basin depth and flank height could not be reproduced, basins were located adjacent to eruptive volcanic centers active in Miocene-Recent times. In these areas, basin depth, rift flank elevation, and free air gravity anomaly may be modified by magmatic underplating of the crust. Estimates of effective elastic thickness Te obtained from our forward models vary between 17 and 38 km. These Te estimates are consistent with previous values obtained through the wavenumber domain correlation of Bouguer gravity and topography data. We find that the lithosphere beneath East Africa maintains significant flexural strength in extension despite localized, but intense, fracturing of the crust by normal faults that penetrate to lower crustal levels. Therefore the assumption of local isostasy (Te ∼ 0) appears invalid within the youthful Western rift system.


This paper traces the evolution of the international market for wheat, from an emerging market structure after the repeal of the corn laws to a mature market characterized by efficient arbitrage after the introduction of the transatlantic telegraph and the growth of trade. Efficiency is documented using traditional price gap accounting as well as error correction modelling. Markets which traded directly with each other as well as markets which did not trade with each other were integrated. The traditional bilateral focus in market integration studies has been extended to a multivariate approach, which generates new insights into the pattern of diffusion of price shocks in the international economy. Shocks in the major importing nation, Britain, dominated in the emerging market phase, while shocks in the major exporting economy, the United States, dominated international price movements at the end of the nineteenth century.


This paper explores the role of Fairtrade certification in mediating banana production relations in Urabá, Colombia. While the country has long been incorporated into the world banana economy, the region's fraught history of dispossession, exploitation, and resistance make it a useful site through which to consider its more recent articulation into the Fairtrade banana commodity chain. In some respects, the emergence of Fairtrade in Urabá could be framed as a win–win. Banana growers have enrolled in certified commodity chains as a way to add value, stabilize their position in a volatile global market, and bring additional resources to workers. However, Fairtrade's role in reframing Urabá as a site of ethical banana production has been contingent upon multiple forms of marginalization and devaluation, expressed in their most extreme form through an armed conflict that swept the region during the last two decades of the 20th century. Fieldwork conducted with banana workers and growers in Urabá suggests that Fairtrade programs resonate with the local industry's longer term strategy to promote voluntarism as the appropriate mechanism for alleviating poverty and inequality. In addition, by creating disparities in the material resources and structures of negotiation available to banana workers, Fairtrade has produced new uneven geographies within the regional banana production complex. These developments are particularly problematic given their potential to undermine labor solidarity in the face of an erosion of labor standards in the global banana economy and the reassertion of elite control in the region.


The regional integration of Northeast Asia is far behind other regions.Recent developments on the Korean Peninsula offer the possibility of a trajectory toward integration. Any regionalization would be in Mongolia's national interest.Mongolia's material contribution to regional integration would be limited. However, Mongolia could contribute greatly to the regionalization processes We highlight such process contributions: (1) the provision of neutral ground for dialogue between conflicting parties; (2) hosting peacekeeping and disaster-relief exercises; (3) promoting non-governmental connections; and (4) serving as an example for political and economic transition. If US-DPRK negotiations result in positive steps, Mongolia could contribute expertise in the establishment of a nuclear-weapon free zone.


[Index to Depression special issue][1]

Depression is a devastating disease. It affects not only the directly afflicted but also the people around them, their families, and their closest relations. It indiscriminately hits all strata of society, no matter one's intellectual background, age group, or economic situation. There are many cases of highly successful and widely admired individuals who have been struggling with depression for years. Unfortunately, for reasons we still do not fully understand, this condition has been on the rise over the past decades. Considering its impact on an individual's quality of life and subsequently on the economy and society in general, gaining an understanding of what causes depression and trying to develop effective therapies is of utmost importance. Hence, this year's Neuroscience Special Issue is devoted to different aspects of depression.

![Figure][2]

CREDIT: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

Duman and Aghajanian (p. [68][3]) review evidence from basic and clinical studies that stress and depression cause neuronal atrophy and decreased synaptic connections in cortical and limbic brain regions. Antidepressants can block or reverse these neuronal deficits, although typical antidepressants have limited efficacy; however, novel rapidly acting antidepressants produce a fast induction of synaptogenesis and quickly reverse synaptic deficits caused by chronic stress. Together, these findings support a synaptogenic hypothesis of depression and treatment response.

Newly generated neurons are required for mood control and for the beneficial effects of antidepressants. Understanding adult neurogenesis may therefore provide a road map for the development of new treatments for depression. Introducing the concept of the neurogenic interactome, Eisch and Petrik (p. [72][4]) synthesize recent seminal findings relevant to neurogenesis, with special emphasis on the interchange between stress, depression, and cognition.

Developing a suitable animal model is often an important step for understanding the basic mechanisms underlying a disease. Berton et al. (p. [75][5]) summarize the current models for mood disorders and attempt a prospective analysis of potential tests or tools that might be implemented to improve our repertoire of such models for depression. The problem of animal models is also touched on in an article on why mental illnesses are so hard to treat, part of a Mysteries of the Brain package in the News Focus section, starting on p. [30][6].

However, not all is bleak. There are individuals who overcome difficult situations and show astonishing resilience in the face of adverse circumstances and other forms of acute or chronic traumatic stress. Studying them might provide us with clues about what can go right. Southwick and Charney (p. [79][7]) provide an overview of current ideas about why some people are more protected against stress and depression than others and how this knowledge may help us develop better treatments and successful prevention strategies.

In Science Signaling , Shah describes evidence that hyperpolarization-activated, cyclic nucleotide–gated channels may be therapeutic targets for the treatment of depression, and Anisman and Hayley describe how targeting inflammatory mediators may enhance the efficacy of conventional therapies for depression.

 [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/depression/index.xhtml
 [2]: pending:yes
 [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1222939
 [4]: /lookup/volpage/338/72?iss=6103
 [5]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1222940
 [6]: /lookup/volpage/338/30-a?iss=6103
 [7]: /lookup/volpage/338/79?iss=6103


Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial method of natural gas extraction that uses high pressure water to release natural gas. Although research has been conducted on the environmental impact of fracking, toxicological and geological research concerning naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) has been scarce. Radionuclides are known to bioaccumulate in the environment and can have toxic effects on humans. This study aims to examine the extent of biomagnification of radium-226 from fracking sites to local water (lakes) and agriculture (farmland, livestock pastures). Water samples from areas near fracking sites and homogenized samples of soil and crops will be analyzed by gamma spectroscopy. The data set is expected to be non-normal, therefore, the Mann-Whitney U-test will be used to compare samples between fracking and non-fracking regions. If NORM contamination is significant, it can then be linked to health impacts in humans by assessing carcinogenic risk. If the results show that there are higher levels of Ra-226 in the water near fracking sites and cattle water compared to the control water, as well as progressively higher levels of Ra-226 contamination throughout trophic levels, it can be concluded that fracking poses a potentially radioactive threat to human health. The results of our proposal may indicate tremendous implications on human health as Ra-226 is a chemical that bioaccumulates. Therefore, the results of our study may demonstrate the detrimental impact of radium through fracking.


A number of sometimes controversial recommendations for the management of premature infants with post-haemorrhagic hydrocephalus (PHH) are found in the literature. In addition, neurosurgery and paediatric surgery departments in German hospitals use different methods to treat these patients. The objective of this study was to assess the current situation regarding the management of PHH, which is a first and essential step towards the development of standards of practice.
In the second half of 2009, we sent standardised questionnaires to 139 neurosurgery departments (number of returned questionnaires: 98) and 73 paediatric surgery departments (returned questionnaires: 63) in order to identify the principles of management of PHH. Paediatric patients with PHH are treated in 62 of the neurosurgery departments and in 20 of the paediatric surgery departments.
Forty-three of the 62 neurosurgery departments and 17 of the 20 paediatric surgery departments providing care for paediatric patients with post-haemorrhagic hydrocephalus treat less than 10 children with PHH per year. Reservoir placement is the first step of treatment in 48 neurosurgery departments and in 15 paediatric surgery departments.
The criteria underlying the placement of shunts and the implantation procedure are highly variable. Moreover, the percentage of children who receive initial treatment for PHH and then require a shunt ranges between 98 % and 10 %.
The type of treatment that infants with PHH receive in Germany differs from institution to institution. Clear and consistent guidelines must be established in an interdisciplinary approach in order to improve and better coordinate the management of infants with PHH.


I. INTRODUCTION Economic sanctions have greatly restricted the ability of oil companies, particularly United States oil companies, to invest abroad and compete in the international arena. According to one estimate, about 40% of the world's population is subject to United States sanctions.1 Sanctions against Iran, Libya, and Iraq, in particular, stand as major obstacles as oil companies look to the Middle East for low-cost development in a time of unstable oil prices. The sanctions are intended to deprive these countries of their primary source of hard currency--oil export revenues. During the time that sanctions against Iran, Libya, and Iraq have been in place, there has been some evolution in their content and implementation. Recently, we have witnessed the suspension of UN sanctions against Libya, a UN resolution allowing Iraq to import more spare parts to repair its ailing export infrastructure, and the Clinton Administration's trade liberalization with Iran permitting the import of luxury goods, such as carpets and caviar, and the export of food and medicine. Although further liberalization in U.S. sanctions could occur this year, prospects for any major shift in U.S. policies are marginal due to upcoming presidential and congressional elections. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) is the agency charged with enforcing U.S. sanctions compliance through the issuance and administration of regulations. Ambiguities in the text of the regulations allow OFAC some discretion in implementation and enforcement of sanctions, and such discretion is colored by the directives of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy team. Thus, sanctions are very much the product of the domestic political climate and reaction to international events. As long as prohibitions to trade and investment in the petroleum sector of these countries remain in place, many U.S. oil companies will want to position themselves, today, to take advantage of any future relaxation in sanctions. This paper will address some of the steps that U.S. oil companies might take in order to gain a competitive position and prepare for opportunities when, and if, U.S. law permits investment in these important oil provinces. First, however, it is important to emphasize that the permissibility of any of the activities that will be discussed is very fact-dependent. The advice of legal counsel must be sought in order to determine if such activities would be permissible under current legislation. II. IRAN Late last year, the Clinton Administration lifted the ban on exporting food and medicine to Iran;2 and just last March, in a sign of encouragement for the success of reformers in Iran's recent parliamentary election, the Administration announced that it was lifting the ban on imports of Iranian carpets, caviar, and other foods.3 While there has been no movement in the Administration's position on activities in Iran's petroleum industry, such steps are nonetheless encouraging. Unlike the sanctions imposed against Libya and Iraq, economic sanctions against Iran are unilateral-a product of U.S. law rather than of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. Governing laws with respect to U.S. sanctions are the 1995 and 1997 Presidential Executive Orders4 and the Iranian Transactions Regulations,5 administered by OFAC, as well as the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. Under the Iran sanctions program, U.S. companies are prohibited from all trade, investment, and transactions affecting Iran's ability to develop its petroleum resources.6 Unlike the Libyan and Iraqi programs, U.S. sanctions against Iran do not prohibit travel to Iran by U.S. citizens. Thus, U.S. company representatives may meet Iranian oil officials in Iran and also, with the permission of the Iranian government, make site visits to some of the oil fields and facilities in which Iran is currently seeking investment. …


A slot with applied temperature stratification is considered when mean gravity is directed along its length and weak quasistatic jitter is applied in the spanwise direction, but when there is no component of gravity in the vertical. The behavior of the slot is governed by a number of factors: The sense of the mean gravity with respect to the applied stratification, the spanwise and lengthwise Rayleigh numbers, the Prandtl and Biot numbers, and the spanwise–lengthwise aspect ratio of the slot. A perturbation expansion of the governing equations is performed for weak spanwise jitter. At the first order of perturbation there is a circulation around the slot, producing an advected temperature field with spanwise gradients. At second order there are inflows or outflows in both the spanwise and lengthwise directions, along with a vertical redistribution of fluid. There is also a temperature field with lengthwise gradients, which typically competes with the applied temperature gradient. Equations are derived governing the vertical structure of all these fields and are solved in terms of a set of special basis functions. A parametric study is performed for the solutions. When lengthwise buoyancy forces are absent (the lengthwise Rayleigh number is zero), it is comparatively easy to deduce the required fields. However, finite lengthwise Rayleigh numbers couple the momentum and thermal equations thereby affecting the structure of the fields. Interesting behavior is predicted for small Biot numbers, when convected heat is effectively trapped in the slot: Infinitessimal flows can produce finite advected temperatures. The limits of small Biot number and small lengthwise Rayleigh number are found to be noninterchangeable. At large lengthwise Rayleigh number, boundary layers occur for stable applied stratification and layered cellular structures occur for unstable stratification. For the stable case at moderately small Biot number, the temperature jump across the boundary layer is small compared with the depth independent temperature in the bulk. Then by exploiting the boundary layer nature of the solutions, it becomes simple to predict the bulk fluid temperatures, interfacial heat fluxes and the circulations associated with the buoyant flows. Turning to the unstably stratified case, it is demonstrated that runaways can occur at first order in the spanwise jitter, and these correspond to resonant excitation of three-dimensional, stationary, long wave Rayleigh–Benard modes. It is demonstrated how the Biot number and the spanwise–lengthwise aspect ratio of the slot influence the lengthwise Rayleigh number at which these resonances occur. There is in addition a set of two-dimensional Rayleigh–Benard modes, which can potentially become excited at second order. When the Biot number and the spanwise–lengthwise aspect ratio are not too large, the Rayleigh numbers corresponding to the two sets of modes are nearly coincident. The second-order system will then be strongly forced near resonance, causing it to have a disproportionately large response.


Whole-genome duplications (WGDs), thought to facilitate evolutionary innovations and adaptations, have been uncovered in many phylogenetic lineages. WGDs are frequently inferred from duplicate age distributions, where they manifest themselves as peaks against a small-scale duplication background. However, the interpretation of duplicate age distributions is complicated by the use of K(S), the number of synonymous substitutions per synonymous site, as a proxy for the age of paralogs. Two particular concerns are the stochastic nature of synonymous substitutions leading to increasing uncertainty in K(S) with increasing age since duplication and K(S) saturation caused by the inability of evolutionary models to fully correct for the occurrence of multiple substitutions at the same site. K(S) stochasticity is expected to erode the signal of older WGDs, whereas K(S) saturation may lead to artificial peaks in the distribution. Here, we investigate the consequences of these effects on K(S)-based age distributions and WGD inference by simulating the evolution of duplicated sequences according to predefined real age distributions and re-estimating the corresponding K(S) distributions. We show that, although K(S) estimates can be used for WGD inference far beyond the commonly accepted K(S) threshold of 1, K(S) saturation effects can cause artificial peaks at higher ages. Moreover, K(S) stochasticity and saturation may lead to confounded peaks encompassing multiple WGD events and/or saturation artifacts. We argue that K(S) effects need to be properly accounted for when inferring WGDs from age distributions and that the failure to do so could lead to false inferences.


An Investigation of the Impact of iPad Usage on Elementary Mathematical Skills and Attitudes Chairperson: James Hirstein Currently, many schools are implementing one-to-one initiatives, where the goal is to give every student in a classroom a tablet or laptop computer. However, there is a dearth of research backing up the assumption that they significantly improve student learning. This study explored the effects of these new instructional devices by focusing on two second-grade classrooms implementing a one-to-one iPad program. Specifically, it investigated how iPad usage affects student and teacher attitudes toward mathematics, student mathematics performance in and out of app environments, the instructional purposes for which iPads are used in the classroom, and implementation issues of the technology. This primarily observational study used both quantitative and qualitative methods to capture a picture of an active program to serve as a source for further questions that may be better answered by experimenting with different treatments. Quantitative data was gathered on student performance in two apps, Addimal Adventure and Splash Math 2 Grade, as well on the frequency and type of iPad usage. Qualitative data came from interviews with six students and two teachers near the beginning and end of the four month research period. While students generally reported they enjoyed doing mathematics on the iPad, half preferred paper and pencil. Teachers believed iPads helped students stay engaged in mathematics longer, resulted in more time spent on task, and enabled more differentiated instruction. Students performed better on quizzes for both apps than they had in either app environment. While the scores were positively correlated with varying degrees of strength, no evidence was found that app progress significantly explained student quiz scores. It was also found that iPads were being used in two different modes of instruction: free choice and focused. Based on these results, the education community needs to provide additional support to teachers, including technical and pedagogical trainings, focused apps for various skills, and a feedback channel for teachers to quickly report problems to developers. With an active and engaged support structure, educators can take advantage of the technological abilities of these devices and create a more responsive and differentiated environment of mathematics learning than has previously been feasible.


When selecting the topic I would deal with for the completion of my master, I set as a goal the upgrading and recognition of the profession of the Beautician by offering an upgraded programme of study at Cyprus College. Being a professional beautician and the owner of a Beauty Salon since 1990, as well as a Professor of Aesthetics since 2005, I have had countless experiences in this area. As a professional in the field, I often come across people who received "bad" services "from other colleagues." Unfortunately, I can ascertain that this is true as I participated in many seminars where I met professional beauticians whose educational level was below standard. Even my efforts to employ an assistant at my beauty salon were often disappointing. So, although teaching was one of my childhood dreams which was replaced by Aesthetics as I grew up, the idea of teaching courses related to Aesthetics began to take shape after the experiences I described above. I therefore started my efforts to obtain a diploma in teaching so as to be able to transmit as much information as possible in this field, but at the same time to get to know what was going on in the various colleges in Cyprus. All the above, enabled me and made me want to investigate, and in the process, develop Aesthetic education in my country. The topic I will present in this project is "The Teaching Methods in Aesthetics in Relation to the Labour Market Needs in Cyprus". My aim is to clarify, analyze and develop the weaknesses and limitations that emerge from the various programmes of study in Cyprus through the answers I got from the different groups of people that participated in my research. Having studied and quoted the background theory of the issues that are necessary and essential in education, especially for programmes such as aesthetics, I will present the findings of my research as well as my own ideas and suggestions, so that the theory has a positive reflection on the research questions I posed at the beginning of the project. The presentation and analysis of some statistical data is another element that reflects the need for research in the labour market. The approach used to yield my research findings was the qualitative approach which involved the use of secondary data analysis and focus group interviews. One of the main problems identified is the lack of skills of graduates of two-year programmes of study. Through my proposed three-year programme of study, which ran as a pilot programme for four consecutive years, we get the answers to the research questions I initially set, since innovative methods in Aesthetic education in Cyprus start being implemented. Finally, I would like to emphasize that it is not enough for someone to hold academic qualifications, to have skills, principles and a good character. It is our obligation to respond, through our qualifications of course, to the respective legislation of the state we belong to. It is proved through my research that the delay in the implementation of the Legislation for Beauticians was a suppressive factor in upgrading the profession of the beautician. This legislation was implemented recently, in the summer 2013. So, the programme of study of Cyprus College, gives its graduates the legal opportunity and possibility to get employed immediately at this difficult time that the island is going through.


A completely unsupervised mixture distribution network, namely the self-organising mixture network, is proposed for learning arbitrary density functions. The algorithm minimises the Kullback-Leibler information by means of stochastic approximation methods. The density functions are modelled as mixtures of parametric distributions such as Gaussian and Cauchy. The first layer of the network is similar to the Kohonen's self-organising map (SOM), but with the parameters of the class conditional densities as the learning weights. The winning mechanism is based on maximum posterior probability, and the updating of weights can be limited to a small neighbourhood around the winner. The second layer accumulates the responses of these local nodes, weighted by the learning mixing parameters. The network possesses simple structure and computation, yet yields fast and robust convergence. Experimental results are also presented.


Using radio controlled chokers in cable yarding can improve both productivity and safety during the unhooking phase part of the extraction cycle. However, the additional weight of the radio controlled chokers may also increase the work load of the choker-setters on the slope. A study has been completed in Austria on the Wanderfalke yarder. The factorial study design alternated extraction corridors with and without the use of radio controlled chokers. A standard choker for this system weighs 0.34 kg and cost 11 Euro each, whereas the radio controlled chokers weighs 1.6 kg and cost 9,000 Euros for the set of four chokers. Work-load was measured by continuously monitoring the heart-rate of the workers. Results showed that was a slight productivity gain, but also an increased work-load for the choker-setter. This is reflected in the comments from the yarder crew; the yarder operator thinks it great not having to get down to unhook the turn, the choker-setter is not impressed with the extra weight and work load.


Interpreting the image–language interface in multimodal texts is now well recognized as a crucial aspect of reading comprehension in a number of official school syllabi such as the recently published Australian Curriculum: English (ACE). This article outlines the relevant expected student learning outcomes in this curriculum and draws attention to the need for further research to provide a robust and comprehensive account of the nature of image–language relations to explicate these intended outcomes in a manner that will support multimodal literacy pedagogy. Recent semiotic accounts of image–language interaction are outlined and related to the results of a study showing the relative comprehension difficulty of different kinds of image–language relations. Also discussed in relation to this study are the extent to which the current Australian national assessment program in reading addresses the image–language interface and the nature of the image–language relations included in this assessment program. This research suggests that the current discrepant emphases on the image–language interface in the ACE and the national assessment program could be brought much more into alignment to generate an assessment program that more adequately addresses reading as the integrative negotiation of visual and verbal information. This could provide not only more curriculum responsive national literacy tests but could also improve tests such as the Program for International Student Assessment so that the range of image–language relations included in them more adequately reflects those encountered in school and everyday reading materials.


Many evolutionary game theory papers have obtained their results when the bounded rationality which creates change vanishes. In our first chapter we consider whether such results are actually a good reflection of a population whose bounded rationality is small yet persistent. Our model consists of a two type population with three stable equilibria. Firstly we find that results from the standard vanishing noise approach can be very different from those obtained when noise is small but constant. Secondly when the results differ the small and persistent noise approach selects an equilibrium with a co-existence of conventions. Our second chapter generalises the model of our first chapter to a population of many player types and several stable equilibria. Firstly we produce the characteristics of the long run equilibria under vanishing noise analysis. Secondly we find that the introduction of a small neutral group into a divided society can produce a welfare improving switch in the long run equilibrium towards social co-ordination. Our third chapter combines the model of the second chapter with the message of the first. We show numerically that the long run location of a heterogenous population with extremely low levels of bounded rationality can be completely different to the equilibria selected through vanishing noise analysis. We also show that such an event is not a rare occurrence and find that over a third of populations are misrepresented by stochastic stability. Our final chapter conducts a review of the literature on social threshold models. We give a thorough description of each paper and discuss the main assumptions that drive the key results.


In this letter, a novel multilongitudinal mode fiber-optic vibration sensor is presented. The beat frequency of any two different laser modes is modulated by the vibration signal. The modulated beat frequency signal can be demodulated by a frequency-modulation demodulator. It is demonstrated that the vibration from 60 Hz to 20 KHz can be measured successfully. The sensor has high sensitivity and high signal-to-noise ratio, especially between 500 Hz and 7.4 KHz.


Additive manufacturing (AM) has experienced remarkable growth in the past decade with applications in both rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing for functional end-usable parts. As one of the most promising AM processes, selective laser melting (SLM) can be used to fabricate metal products line by line and layer upon layer within a powder bed system. Such process allows the building of parts with customized shapes, which brings higher design flexibility than traditional casting and wrought manufacturing. In this work, AlSi10Mg powder is chosen as the raw material for producing parts by SLM, since aluminum alloys are widely used in automotive and aerospace industries thanks to an excellent combination of low density and competitive mechanical properties. However, there remain multiple drawbacks which limit further applications of aluminum parts produced by SLM: lack of prediction of solidification microstructure, few studies on fatigue properties, and cost and time caused by the limited production rate. All these issues were studied in this work and summarized as follows: Rapid movement of the melt pool (at a speed around 1 m/s) in SLM of metal powder directly implies rapid solidification. In this research, the length scale of the as-built microstructure of parts built with the alloy AlSi10Mg was measured and compared with the well-known relationship between cell size and cooling rate. Cooling rates during solidification were estimated using the Rosenthal equation. It was found that the solidification structure is the expected cellular combination of silicon with α-aluminum. The dependence of the measured cell spacing on the calculated cooling rate follows the well-established relationship for aluminum alloys. The implication is that cell spacing can be manipulated by changing the heat input. Microscopy of polished sections through particles of the metal powder used to build the parts showed that the particles have a dendritic-eutectic structure; the dendrite arm spacings in metal powder particles of different diameters were measured and also agree with literature correlations, showing the expected increase in secondary dendrite arm spacing with increasing particle diameter. It is well-known that the fatigue behavior of cast aluminum alloy parts is largely determined by the internal defects, particularly pores and inclusions, such as oxides. This study shows that such imperfections are also present in AlSi10Mg parts produced by SLM, and serve as sites for failure initiation. The effect of hatch spacing and building orientation on tensile and fatigue properties was tested. Similar defects were found both on polished cross-sections and on fracture surfaces. The results imply that the oxide-driven pores dominate the fatigue resistance of the samples in this work. The larger oxide particles which are associated with the crack initiation likely form by oxidation of metal vapor during part manufacture. Residual porosity in parts produced by SLM mainly results from lack-of-fusion, entrapped gas, pores left in powder, evaporation of elements, and collapse of key-holes. Lack-of-fusion porosity is caused by the the insufficient overlap of melt pools in powder bed fusion and is particularly detrimental to fatigue performance due to the stress concentration at the sharp edges of the pores. The third part of this work deals with predicting lack-of-fusion porosity quantitatively by a geometrically-based model and designing processing parameters for build rate improvement without introducing porosity. The inputs into the simulation are hatch spacing, layer thickness, melt-pool cross-sectional area, and hatch rotation angle. Comparison with several data sets from the literature shows that the simulations correctly predict process conditions at which lack-of-fusion porosity becomes apparent, as well as the rate at which porosity increases with changes in process conditions such as beam speed, layer thickness, and hatch spacing. Relative to the default processing parameters provided by the manufacturer, the build rate can be improved by adjusting hatch spacing and layer thickness, and increasing the platform temperature. The simulations also show that the volume fraction of lack-of-fusion porosity is independent of hatch rotation angle. A unique combination of zero rotation and half hatch spacing as the beam offset between adjacent layers is proposed for build rate optimization.


Without nation branding, there would be no Singapore. Reputation is precious. Top talent and hot money gravitate only to the most attractive, respected nations. For a country as small and as young as Singapore, its brand is its most valuable asset. Singapore's stunning ascent from Third World to First World in a matter of 30 years was spearheaded by a concerted, closely-coordinated programme of nation branding. Brand Singapore helped to attract the investments, business, trade, tourism and talented human resources that are the lifeblood of a successful nation. Today, the city-state is known internationally as a dynamic, safe, corruption-free place to do business, a Garden City, and increasingly, a vibrant city of culture and the arts. In global surveys of quality of life, Singapore regularly tops the charts. How did Singapore create this country brand, cultivate and guard it, sell it to its "shareholders", and make it known to the world? Drawing on two decades in the nation branding game, Koh Buck Song offers an illuminating inside look at – and candid critique of – a country brand that is as rich in resource as it is potent with promise. Since the first publication of this book in 2011, Singapore has celebrated its golden jubilee of independence, undergone a watershed general election and the death of founding father Lee Kuan Yew, and seen its nation brand rise and fall amid the disruptions of an increasingly divisive world (Brexit, Trump, China, etc). This timely second edition explores the implications of all these factors on Singapore's future.


Being an English-speaking country means that second language learning does not have the same pressing urgency for Australia that it does for many other countries. Even so, the need for skills in other languages for export industries, tourism and intellectual and cultural development has been expressed by official committees of enquiry, industry leaders and educational authorities, such that Australians' traditional second language option, none at all, is being viewed with disquiet.


Activated carbons prepared from hazelnut shells and apricot stones were used as adsorbents for the removal of copper(II) ions from aqueous solution. Adsorption studies were carried out by varying the initial metal ion concentration, the temperature and the pH. The amount of Cu(II) ions adsorbed increased with increasing temperature, pH and initial Cu(II) ion concentration. The equilibrium data were analyzed using the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms. The parameters of the isotherm models were determined for two activated carbons; it was found that the Freundlich model showed a better fit of the adsorption data than the Langmuir model. The physical and chemical properties of hazelnut shell and apricot stone activated carbons were determined for comparative purposes.


This article explores a previously ignored set of defendants — those who choose to rely on a defense of resistance. From Warren Jeffs, the polygamist recently convicted of child rape in Texas, to John Brown, the fiery abolitionist who led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in the hopes of triggering an armed insurrection, these defendants waived their procedural rights and transformed their criminal trials into a commentary on the deficiencies of the law and the system that supports it. Though their belief systems varied, they appear throughout history in moments of social or political crisis and challenge the capacity of the law to encompass their story. While their eventual convictions are not surprising, their reliance on a defense of resistance highlights two compelling but under-explored components of criminal law. First, the procedural rights that compose the right to a defense are more than individual rights; they have a communal value. The defendant may utilize them to challenge the accusation, but the community relies on them as well to legitimate the process and outcome. If a defendant forgoes these protections, the process is curtailed and questions of its legitimacy inevitably follow. Second, these procedural rights have a substantive component. They help to define notions of guilt and appropriate punishment. If a defendant chooses to forgo these rights, they effectively alter what it means to be convicted or to deserve punishment, skewing the meaning of the law itself. In a time when political identity and legitimacy are in play with movements from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, and the Supreme Court's decisions in Apprendi and Crawford place renewed faith in the citizen jury to construct meaning in the law, the question of how the law should respond to competing narratives looms. Resistance defendants serve as a powerful reminder that the system is only as strong its ability to contemplate a counter-narrative, and that the law ultimately draws its meaning from the lives of the governed. If the system is unable to encompass some lives and their stories, it loses some meaning and risks becoming foreign to the citizens themselves. This article examines the causes and consequences of the dilemma posed by the resistance defense, and proposes ways the criminal justice system might adapt and improve in response.


A comprehensive vibration model is developed in this thesis to simulate the dynamical behaviour of a string of CANDU fuel bundles subjected to unsteady flow of coolant inside a pressure tube. The large-scale dynamical system of interest consists of several hundreds of solid and deformable components interacting with the coolant flow, with each other and with the pressure tube through frictional contact at various interfaces. In the first stage of this thesis, the three-node higher-order mixed beam finite elements and the nine-node thick plate finite elements are employed to model the fuel bundles. The equations of motion of the fuel string system are discretised in the time domain using the Newmark integration scheme.
The CANDU fuel string behaviour is highly nonlinear and the total number of potential frictional contact exceeds thousand sets. In the second stage, a numerical scheme for efficiently handling three-dimensional friction and contact is developed. The incremental displacement is used to relate gaps with contact forces and the problem is formulated to be a linear complementarity problem (LCP). The accuracy and robustness of the presented method is tested against several numerical simulations and experimental results available in the literature.
To find the unsteady fluid forces acting on the fuel string two comprehensive computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models that include endcaps and spacer pads are developed. The models are solved using the large eddy simulation (LES) scheme. The coolant unsteady pressure is integrated over fuel rods surfaces and unsteady fluid forces are found and used as the excitation sources for fuel string vibration. The power spectral density (PSD) of unsteady fluid forces are obtained and peak frequencies are identified. A FORTRAN code consisting of approximately 13000 lines is developed and validated at different stages for use in Canadian nuclear industry to simulate the vibrational behaviour of a 12-bundle fuel string and the material loss during reactor normal operations. Free vibration analyses of a CANDU fuel string are also performed and natural frequencies of the system are obtained.


The labouring classes of early modern Venice, the popolani, made up nearly 90 per cent of the city's population. To this point the relevant historiography has focused almost exclusively on their professional and civic role. It is the core contention of this article that the contribution of the popolani to the Venetian economy and society far exceeded their documented professional and civic function. Using as a case study the homogeneous group of the shipbuilders and sailors of Venice and drawing on newly discovered primary sources from the Venetian State Archives, this article shows the distinct contributions of the popolani to the city's economy and society through their charity to those in need.This took the form of sizeable dotal and charitable donations within and beyond the family. In one of the first attempts to explore the philanthropy of the Venetian workforce, this article challenges the existing scholarly view that charity was the sole responsibility of the government and the nobility in early modern Venice. It further shows that marriage was not merely a financial union for the popolani; it was a sanctuary for lasting companionship. Ultimately, the article offers a fresh vista onto the socio-economic role of the popolani in early modern Venice.


"Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But its worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains". (Steve Jobs, "BusinessWeek", May 25, 1998). To Steve Jobs, Simplicity wasn't just a design principle. It was a religion and a weapon. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It's what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011, and guides the way Apple is organized, how it designs products, and how it connects with customers. It's by crushing the forces of complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory. As a creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple's resurrection, helping to create such critical campaigns as 'Think Different' and naming the iMac. "Insanely Simple" is his insider's view of Jobs' world. It reveals the ten elements of Simplicity that have driven Apple's success - which you can use to propel your own organization. Reading "Insanely Simple", you'll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You'll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster.


Entangled photons are distributed over vast distances using a satellite-to-ground link. Space calling Earth, on the quantum line A successful quantum communication network will rely on the ability to distribute entangled photons over large distances between receiver stations. So far, free-space demonstrations have been limited to line-of-sight links across cities or between mountaintops. Scattering and coherence decay have limited the link separations to around 100 km. Yin et al. used the Micius satellite, which was launched last year and is equipped with a specialized quantum optical payload. They successfully demonstrated the satellite-based entanglement distribution to receiver stations separated by more than 1200 km. The results illustrate the possibility of a future global quantum communication network. Science, this issue p. 1140 Long-distance entanglement distribution is essential for both foundational tests of quantum physics and scalable quantum networks. Owing to channel loss, however, the previously achieved distance was limited to ~100 kilometers. Here we demonstrate satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs to two locations separated by 1203 kilometers on Earth, through two satellite-to-ground downlinks with a summed length varying from 1600 to 2400 kilometers. We observed a survival of two-photon entanglement and a violation of Bell inequality by 2.37 ± 0.09 under strict Einstein locality conditions. The obtained effective link efficiency is orders of magnitude higher than that of the direct bidirectional transmission of the two photons through telecommunication fibers.


Revisiting diversification theory, this article examined the impact of investment locations on the relationship between multinational firms' diversification exercise and risk using data on foreign investment activities from 107 listed companies on the Malaysia stock exchange. The study found that diversification exercise is negatively related to risk for firms investing in non-Asian regions. On the contrary, diversification exercise is positively related to risk for firms investing in the Asian region. The results indicated that firms investing in the Asian region do not obtain benefits from diversification because of the increased risk from positively correlated economies within the Asian region. Conversely, non-Asian regions are obtaining benefit from diversification through negatively correlated economies when investing in non-Asian regions.


Internet coordinate-based systems are poised to become an important service to support overlay construction and topology-aware applications. Indeed, through network distance embedding into an appropriate geometric space, such systems allow for accurate network distance estimations with low overhead. However, coordinate systems often rely on good cooperation between nodes for correct coordination and assume that information reported by probed nodes is correct. In this paper, we identify various attacks against coordinate embedding systems and show their effectiveness on two representative positioning systems, namely Vivaldi and NPS. Our study demonstrates that these attacks can seriously disrupt the operations of these systems and therefore the virtual networks and applications relying on them for distance measurements. Through simulations of different potential scenarios where malicious nodes provide biased coordinate information and delay measurement probes, we quantify the effects of attack strategies that aim to (i) introduce disorder in the system, (ii) fool honest nodes to move far away from their correct positions and (iii) isolate particular target nodes in the system through collusion. Our findings confirm the susceptibility of the coordinate systems to such attacks.


Internet attackers control hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of computers, which they can use for a variety of different attacks. Common attacks include spam delivery, phishing, and DDoS. The current research community focus is on defenses for each specific attack type compromised hosts may launch. However, attack-specific approaches almost always have two fundamental drawbacks: they do not address the root problem that attackers control an army of compromised hosts, and they do not provide the right incentives for users to properly secure their machines. As a result, attack-specific defenses may be defeated by new attacks, even those that may be only slightly different from old attacks.

We argue researchers should also focus on attackagnostic defenses whose effectiveness does not depend on the particular attack type. We initiate this line of research by investigating the design space for attack-agnostic defenses, and then detailing two extreme points within the design space: an InternetWatch List and an Internet Reputation System.


A dynamic pedestrian propagation model applicable to congested and multi-directional flows is proposed. Based on the cell transmission model, several important extensions are made to describe the simultaneous and potentially conflicting propagation of multiple pedestrian groups. Their movement across space and time can be individually tracked, such that group-specific travel time distributions can be predicted. Cell potentials allow for en-route path choice that takes into account prevailing traffic conditions. The model is formulated at the aggregate level and thus computationally cheap, which is advantageous for studying large-scale problems. A detailed analysis of several basic flow patterns including counter- and cross flows, as well as two generic scenarios involving a corner- and a bottleneck flow is carried out. Depending on the choice of model parameters, various behavioral patterns ranging from disciplined queueing to impatient jostling can be realistically reproduced. Following a systematic model calibration using real data, an extensive case study involving a Swiss railway station is presented. A comparison with the social force model and pedestrian tracking data shows a good performance of the proposed model with respect to predictions of travel times and pedestrian density fields.


This essay offers a critique of the Kansas Supreme Court's decision in In re Estate of Gardiner, 42 P.3d 120 (Kan. 2002), and similar cases that hold that for purposes of the opposite-sex marriage rule, an individual's sex is determined at birth, is genetically fixed, and cannot be changed through surgery or hormone therapy. The result for transgendered individuals is a legal regime that is hostile to medical care that brings external sex characteristics into line with sexual identity. The result for society is a legal rule that is at odds with scientific opinion. Finally, the result for the opposite-sex marriage rule is that one type of same-sex marriage is replaced by another type of same-sex marriage (e.g., when a genetic male who undergoes sex-change therapy is permitted to marry a genetic female). The essay ends with a plea for a reconciliation of legal doctrine with established scientific and medical opinion, using the neurological criteria for the determination of death as an example of a (mostly) successful example of such a reconciliation.


A basic assumption in the economic literature is the one of diminishing marginal returns to labour. However, theoretical studies on knowledge and labour specialization assume that an increase in the knowledge investment embodied in the human capital of workers raises the marginal product of labour. In this paper, we propose a structural approach to test the hypothesis of non-diminishing returns to labour for a panel data set of R&D investing companies, and we explore how the marginal returns to labour vary with their level of knowledge capital (R&D) intensity. Our econometric analysis provides a number of results. First, we find that more knowledge intensive firms have non-diminishing returns to labour, while less knowledge intensive companies exhibit diminishing returns. Second, independently from the knowledge capital intensity, returns to labour increase with size. Relatively smaller firms have diminishing returns, while larger companies have non-diminishing to increasing returns to labour. However, we show that more knowledge intensive firms can attain the threshold of non-diminishing returns faster than their counterparts.


In today's economy, digital capability is critical for growth and competitiveness. A decade ago, only one tech company was among the top ten global firms by market capitalization. Today, seven are on that list. The tech sector is even more dominant in forward-looking metrics: it accounts for only 15% of the top US firms but 24% of the fastest-growing companies.1 And in the Fortune Future 50, our ranking of the firms best positioned for future growth, tech companies account for 52% of the top 25 Leaders and 76% of the top 25 Challengers.2


There has been a notable revival of interest in the chemistry of vitamins within the past few years. The recent work has led to the isolation of more or less completely crystalline compounds having the properties ascribed to vitamins A, B and D. The evidence now available appears to definitely establish the conclusion that vitamins are not to be classed with enzymes. The physiologically active crystalline products which now for the first time have been isolated make possible intensive studies of the constitution and chemical properties of the several vitamins. Although many years have been required to obtain these elusive compounds in the state of purity now reported, it is probable that their identification will be accomplished in a much shorter time. With the completion of this latter phase of the problem we may confidently look forward to the eventual synthesis of the vitamins and their extensive application to the nutritive needs of man


In the field of nondestructive evaluation, laser generation and detection of the surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are potentially useful for investigating material surfaces. SAW generated by laser line source is carried out on a kind of optical difference detection system based on optical beam deflection technique. The setup is simple and easy to adjust. Furthermore the system has advantages such as high efficiency of photo-electricity conversion, high frequency responding, the ability of ant-intervene and broadband detection etc.. It can be used not only to receive SAW, but also to detect surface-breaking defects in material. The experimental results verify that the SAWs generated by a line source have the advantages of powerful signal and good directivity. SAWs have been excited on sample aluminum with artificial surface-breaking defects. From the experiment, we attain the characters of reflected wave and transmitted wave by SAW interacted with the surface-breaking defects.


ABSTRACT In this study we use ALOS PALSAR satellite data to classify land cover using a decision tree algorithm. We apply polarimetric decomposition methods to coherence and covariance matrices obtained from the data and then use threshold values to classify terrain. We evaluate the influence of speckle filter and decomposition window sizes on the threshold value used in the decision algorithm and on the accuracy of the classification. We also study the sensitivity of the classification to the accuracy of the threshold value. First, we processed a fully polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) L-band image using different sizes of speckle filtration and decomposition window (3 × 3 pixels, 5 × 5, 7 × 7, 9 × 9), and the decomposition methods available in PolSARPro software. We evaluated these methods and chose the most efficient. Then we developed a simple hierarchical classification scheme based on threshold values. In the first step we divided the terrain into smooth and rough areas and then separated these into more detailed subclasses (water and agriculture, and forest and urban) which correspond to smooth and rough areas, respectively. A more detailed analysis separated continuous and discontinuous urban fabric and deciduous and coniferous forests. The maximum overall accuracy of the classification was 86.1% for the four main land cover classes, and 80.4% for the six more detailed classes. The accuracy of the classification dropped by about 10% when non-optimal window sizes were used in image filtration or decomposition.


The three dimensional flow field around delta wings with leading-edge vortex flow can be computed with panel methods. However, secondary flow separation may occur on the leeward surface of the wing. The associated free vortex sheet can be modeled in the potential flow calculation method, if the location of the secondary separation is provided by a boundary layer calculation method.


While editing code, it is common for developers to make multiple related repeated edits that are all instances of a more general program transformation. Since this process can be tedious and error-prone, we study the problem of automatically learning program transformations from past edits, which can then be used to predict future edits. We take a novel view of the problem as a semi-supervised learning problem: apart from the concrete edits that are instances of the general transformation, the learning procedure also exploits access to additional inputs (program subtrees) that are marked as positive or negative depending on whether the transformation applies on those inputs. We present a procedure to solve the semi-supervised transformation learning problem using anti-unification and programming-by-example synthesis technology. To eliminate reliance on access to marked additional inputs, we generalize the semi-supervised learning procedure to a feedback-driven procedure that also generates the marked additional inputs in an iterative loop. We apply these ideas to build and evaluate three applications that use different mechanisms for generating feedback. Compared to existing tools that learn program transformations from edits, our feedback-driven semi-supervised approach is vastly more effective in successfully predicting edits with significantly lesser amounts of past edit data.


Declarative programming allows designers to create procedural content generators by providing descriptions of desired artifacts rather than bespoke algorithms to generate them.  Unfortunately, these systems are notoriously inaccessible, requiring considerable sophistication with formal systems, and detailed understanding of the impact of equivalent formalizations on the system performance. Imaginarium is a declarative PCG system for tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs).  Following Compton's work on casual creators, it trades expressiveness for accessibility.  As with Nelson's Inform 7, its source language is a highly structured subset of English.  A single sentence, such as children are parented by at least one adult can be used to simultaneously introduce the predicates child, adult, and parent, along with a cardinality constraint over the parent relation.  We describe the system, its knowledge representation language, and the issues in their design.  Together, they allow users with minimal STEM background to engage in playful experimentation.


Angiogenesis is a fundamental process during embryogenesis, inflammation and wound healing. The formation of new vessels is coordinated by proteins of the VEGF and the Notch signaling cascades. Dysfunction of the precisely balanced crosstalk between Notch and VEGF signaling entails the formation of a non-functional vascular network. These imbalances play a critical role during progression of many diseases including atherosclerosis and tumor growth. Blocking of Notch signaling, by small molecule inhibitors or DLL4-specific antibodies, perturbs tumor perfusion and inhibits tumor growth in animal models.
This study aimed to gain deeper insight into the complex function of Notch signaling in the endothelium. For this purpose, small soluble Notch ligand and receptor peptides were generated, which consist of the respective interaction domains only. Furthermore, the effects of deleting endothelial Notch signaling in adult mice were investigated.
Application of the designed soluble DLL1, DLL4, and JAG1 ligands, as well as, the soluble NOTCH1 receptor blocked Notch signaling in endothelial and myogenic cells. All soluble ligands consistently exerted pro-angiogenic effects in vitro. The effects of DLL1 and DLL4 were markedly stronger than that of the JAG1 ligand and could also evoke elevated sprouting angiogenesis in the retina of newborn mice. Treatment with the soluble Notch receptor reduced endothelial sprouting in vitro. However, in vivo application of soluble NOTCH1 receptor protein resulted in increased retinal sprouting with elevated numbers of tip cells. Thus, the soluble ligands suppressed Notch receptor activity by acting as competitors for endogenous membrane-bound ligands; whereas the soluble receptor acted as a decoy for the different Notch ligands.
Genetic studies with adult mice after endothelial-specific deletion of Notch signaling were performed. These mice developed cardiomyopathy within a few months; whereas vascular tumors developed after one year. In an ApoE-deficient model of hyperlipidemia, the deletion of endothelial Notch signaling improved the glucose tolerance of mice, but caused development of steatohepatitis. Thus, Notch signaling in the adult vasculature could be identified as a critical regulator of organ homeostasis as well as glucose and fat metabolism.


We present what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first detailed calculation of the reverse trapping force acting on a dielectric sphere when it is illuminated by a strongly focused laser beam. The calculation is carried out within the geometrical optics approximation. The phenomenon of laser trapping was discovered experimentally by Ashkin et al. [ Opt. Lett.11, 288 ( 1986)] and is of great practical interest in view of the possibility it offers for freely manipulating biological particles, such as viruses and bacteria, in a nondestructive manner. We support our calculations by a qualitative experiment that clearly shows the accessibility of the trapping effect in practice. We use, as an experimental improvement, an objective with a central field stop producing a conical dark field. This enhances the relative contribution from high-N.A. illumination and makes it easier to achieve optical trapping.


Historians agree that early modern Spaniards' sexual behavior deviated significantly from norms set forth in royal and canon law. The question of how Spaniards resolved the tensions between their sexual norms as encoded in law and their nonnormative sexual behaviors has yet to be addressed. This essay argues that seventeenth-century Spaniards mitigated such tension by using laws and legal systems to transform deviant behavior into acceptable behavior when it was culturally expedient. Specifically early modern Spaniards used "seduction by promise of marriage" litigation to transform dishonorable women who had committed premarital sexual transgressions into honorable women, victims of a sexual transgression perpetrated against them. Seduction trials mitigated the bloodest consequences of the honor code and tacitly allowed Spanish men and women more leeway in their sexual comportment. Seventeenth-century Spaniards proved themselves aware of the laws possibilities for refashioning behavioral realities. and they exploited them to the hilt.


BACKGROUND
New treatments have improved outcomes for patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), but complete remissions remain uncommon. Venetoclax has a distinct mechanism of action; it targets BCL2, a protein central to the survival of CLL cells.

METHODS
We conducted a phase 1 dose-escalation study of daily oral venetoclax in patients with relapsed or refractory CLL or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) to assess safety, pharmacokinetic profile, and efficacy. In the dose-escalation phase, 56 patients received active treatment in one of eight dose groups that ranged from 150 to 1200 mg per day. In an expansion cohort, 60 additional patients were treated with a weekly stepwise ramp-up in doses as high as 400 mg per day.

RESULTS
The majority of the study patients had received multiple previous treatments, and 89% had poor prognostic clinical or genetic features. Venetoclax was active at all dose levels. Clinical tumor lysis syndrome occurred in 3 of 56 patients in the dose-escalation cohort, with one death. After adjustments to the dose-escalation schedule, clinical tumor lysis syndrome did not occur in any of the 60 patients in the expansion cohort. Other toxic effects included mild diarrhea (in 52% of the patients), upper respiratory tract infection (in 48%), nausea (in 47%), and grade 3 or 4 neutropenia (in 41%). A maximum tolerated dose was not identified. Among the 116 patients who received venetoclax, 92 (79%) had a response. Response rates ranged from 71 to 79% among patients in subgroups with an adverse prognosis, including those with resistance to fludarabine, those with chromosome 17p deletions (deletion 17p CLL), and those with unmutated IGHV. Complete remissions occurred in 20% of the patients, including 5% who had no minimal residual disease on flow cytometry. The 15-month progression-free survival estimate for the 400-mg dose groups was 69%.

CONCLUSIONS
Selective targeting of BCL2 with venetoclax had a manageable safety profile and induced substantial responses in patients with relapsed CLL or SLL, including those with poor prognostic features. (Funded by AbbVie and Genentech; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01328626.).