The freeze-up and break-up records of almost ninety lakes, and ice thickness of about thirty lakes, were analysed in order to identify long-term changes in the ice regime in Finland. The longest time series of break-up and freeze-up of ice in lakes are available from the early 19th century, while the earliest ice thickness measurements started in the 1910s. The analysis showed that there is a significant change towards earlier ice break-up in Finland except in the very north from the late 19th century to the present time. There is also a significant trend towards later freeze-up and thus also towards a shorter ice cover duration for the longest time series. However, for most lakes, for which data are not available prior to 1900, there are no significant trends. The ice thickness seems to have increased over the last 40 years, although there are significant trends only in half of the investigated lakes and significant decrease in the maximum ice thickness was found in four lakes in southern Finland. The increased ice thickness is most likely due to heavy snow on the ice and production of snow ice.


Causal relationship between physical activity and prevention of several diseases has been known for some time. Recently, attempts to quantify dose-response relationship between physical activity and health show that automatic tracking and quantification of the exercise efforts not only help in motivating people but improve health conditions as well. However, no commercial devices are available for weight training and calisthenics. This work tries to overcome this limit, exploiting machine learning technique (particularly Linear Discriminant Analysis, LDA) for analyzing data coming from wearable inertial measurement units, (IMUs) and classifying/counting such exercises. Computational requirements are compatible with embedded implementation and reported results confirm the feasibility of the proposed approach, offering an average accuracy in the detection of exercises on the order of 85%.


Beyond Narrative Coherence" reconsiders the way we understand and work with narratives. Even though narrators tend to strive for coherence, they also add complexity, challenge canonical scripts, and survey lives by telling highly perplexing and contradictory stories. Many narratives remain incomplete, ambiguous, and contradictory. Obvious coherence cannot be the sole moral standard, the only perspective of reading, or the criterion for selecting and discarding research material. "Beyond Narrative Coherence" addresses the limits and aspects of narrative (dis)cohering by offering a rich theoretical and historical background to the debate. Limits of narrative coherence are discussed from the perspective of three fields of life that often threaten the coherence of narrative: illness, arts, and traumatic political experience. The authors of the book cover a wide range of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, arts studies, political science and philosophy.


From a sustainable development perspective, the newly developed automatic controllers for building services are very promising in that they increase energy efficiency and reduce commissioning and maintenance costs. But a major problem has appeared as the automatic building control systems have been implemented: the user rejection of this kind of system is quite high. This is mainly due to a lack of user considerations in the controllers. An integrated blind, electric lighting and heating control system that adapts to user wishes on a long-term basis has been developed in this work to deal with this issue. The adaptation of the control system to user wishes was achieved by means of Genetic Algorithms. They have been seen to be the most appropriate optimization method for this task. They ensure a 100% convergence whereas standard search methods such as Gauss-Newton and Nelder-Mead converge in less than 25% of the time and Simulated Annealing method converges in about 75% of the time. In addition, simulations with a consistent virtual user have shown that the user adaptive controller is capable of anticipation. Nine months of experimental tests were carried out in 14 office rooms of the LESO building with a total of 23 users concerned. Three controllers were compared: a manual control system, an automatic controller without user adaptation and an automatic controller with user adaptation. Tests were conducted in a similar fashion as clinical randomized trials are carried out: control systems are randomly attributed to rooms and users do not know which system they have (single-blind study). Results show that the automatic control rejection percentage is greatly reduced with the user adaptive system. Indeed, after four weeks with an automatic control, 25% of the users with the non-adaptive system reject the automatic control, whereas only 5% of the users with the user adaptive system reject it. These percentages depend neither on age or gender of the user, nor on the number of occupants in a room. Moreover, the energy savings due to automatic control (26% compared to a manual system) are not reduced by the user adaptation. These large energy savings are mainly due to the predictive feature of the heating controller and to the efficient control of electric lighting. In addition, indoor comfort is slightly improved by the automatic controllers for both thermal and visual aspects. The indoor comfort is even slightly more improved by the user adaptive control compared to the non-adaptive one. The user adaptation has not converged properly in the mechanical workshop, a space used by several persons and also considered in the experiments. It has been concluded that user adaptive systems are probably not appropriate for places with irregular users, such as workshops, libraries, corridors and all public spaces.


THE END OF COMPELLED CONTRIBUTIONS FOR SUBSIDIZED ADVERTISING?: United States v. United Foods, 533 U.S. 405 (2001). I. INTRODUCTION Until the Supreme Court's opinion in Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., (1) commercial speech was not treated as a distinct category within First Amendment free speech jurisprudence. (2) That commercial speech should be granted lesser protection is a murky concept, supported by a tenuous balancing act between public and private interests. The marketing of goods produced in regulated industries is a prime breeding ground for this clash of public interests (the government's regulation) and private interests (freedom of speech and action). When the federal or state government thus compels contributions for subsidized industry-wide advertising, the result is complaints of forced commercial speech in contravention of the First Amendment. (3) Seemingly, this issue was laid to rest in Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliot, Inc., (4) in which a divided Supreme Court held that compelled contributions of this sort do not violate the Constitution? Last year, however, only four years after Glickman, in United States v. United Foods, (6) the Court held that in an otherwise unregulated industry, compelled contributions for subsidized advertising are unconstitutional. (7) Despite this apparent departure, rather than overturn their decision in Glickman, the Court chose to distinguish Glickman and cabin its earlier holding. (8) As a result, instead of clarifying or broadening the scope of protection for commercial speech under the First Amendment, United Foods further clouds the waters of constitutional law. II. A BRIEF REVIEW OF GLICKMAN Four years ago, in a case factually similar to United Foods, the Supreme Court decided that no First Amendment issues were raised in Glickman v. Wileman Bros. & Elliot, Inc. (9) Glickman involved a First Amendment challenge to compelled contributions for generic advertising by California fruit growers. (10) Writing for the Court, Justice Stevens determined that "criticisms of generic advertising provide no basis for concluding that factually accurate advertising constitutes an abridgement of anybody's right to speak freely." (11) Because of the close connection between the legal questions addressed in Glickman and United Foods, it will be useful to review the Glickman Court's arguments. Justice Stevens posited the legal question in Glickman as "whether being compelled to fund this [collectivized] advertising raises a First Amendment issue for us to resolve, or rather is simply a question of economic policy for Congress and the Executive to resolve." (12) Already, this formulation of the question indicated the Court's conclusion that in certain contexts commercial speech receives no consideration under the First Amendment. With this mentality, it was easy for Justice Stevens to restrict the precedential value of the Court's earlier commercial speech cases to their specific fact patterns. Granting the government's regulatory scheme a presumption of validity, Justice Stevens argued: First, the marketing orders impose no restraint on the freedom of any producer to communicate any message to any audience. Second, they do not compel any person to engage in any actual or symbolic speech. Third, they do not compel the producers to endorse or to finance any political or ideological views. (13) Justice Stevens used these distinctions to distinguish Glickman from the Court's previous First Amendment decisions. (14) In particular, the Court considered the precedent set in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, (15) a political speech case in which the Court invalidated a union requirement that teachers subsidize speech with which they disagreed. (16) Referring again to the generic nature of the collectivized advertising implicated in Glickman, however, Justice Stevens concluded that "[n]either the fact that respondents may prefer to foster that message independently in order to promote and distinguish their own products, nor the fact that they think more or less money should be spent fostering it, makes this case comparable to those in which an objection rested on political or ideological disagreement with the content of the message. …


Fiscal incentive is closely related with the extra-budgetary revenues. Based on our definition of 'fiscal incentive', we explore the impacts of fiscal incentives under decentralisation on responsiveness of public good provision to real local needs. There are also some problems in fiscal decentralisation in China : first, with a huge basis of extra-budgetary revenue, the size of local government would be expanded, resulting in a heavier burden on the shoulder of local citizens and peasants; second, there exist some decreasing return to scale in local extra-budgetary expenditure; thirdly, 'urbanisation' (measured as the ratio of rural population to the total population) is negatively correlated with the local extra-budgetary expenditure on urban maintenance, indicating that in China, the process of industrialisation and urban construction are not consistent.


Adjacent-segment degeneration is a known consequence of spinal fusion. Factors associated with this, and its effect on results, have not been well identified. This study sought to determine factors associated with adjacent-segment degeneration and the effect this degeneration has on results after lumbar fusion and instrumentation. Forty-nine patients were retrospectively reviewed after lumbar fusion with instrumentation and analyzed for adjacent-segment degeneration. Adjacent-segment degeneration occurred in 17 (35%) patients and was associated with increasing patient age, the use of interbody fusion, and a worsening of clinical results with time. In older patients with stenosis, it was associated with previous surgery. This should be considered when choosing operative techniques in treating lumbar pathologic conditions, especially in older patients.


When the integrated differential absorption lidar (DIAL) technique is used to perform concentration measurements over long distances, the alignment between on and off laser beams becomes important. Here, through analysis of alignment error and of the corresponding differential geometric form factor, the effect of misalignment between off and on lines on performance of integrated concentration measurements by a coaxial DIAL system is considered.


The legal and social landscape of "revenge porn" has changed dramatically in the last few years. Before 2013, only three states criminalized the unauthorized disclosure of sexually explicit images of adults and few people had ever heard the term "revenge porn." By August 2016, 34 states and Washington D.C. had criminalized the conduct, federal criminal legislation on the issue had been introduced in Congress, Google, Facebook, and Twitter had banned nonconsensual pornography from their platforms, and the term "revenge porn" had been added to the Merriam Webster dictionary. I have had the privilege of playing a role in many of these developments. In 2013, I argued that nonconsensual pornography required a federal criminal response and drafted a model statute to this effect. That statute served as the template for what eventually became the federal Intimate Privacy Protection Act of 2016, as well as for numerous state laws criminalizing nonconsensual pornography. As the Legislative and Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, I have worked with tech industry leaders, legislators, attorneys, victims, and advocates to develop policies and solutions to combat this abuse. This article is an account from the front lines of the legislative, technological, and social reform regarding this evolving problem.


Technology can support speedy communication, collaboration and access to information across great distances and as such is a great enabler in work-based learning. Many learning technologies are based on formalised pedagogical models of collaboration & information structuring. However, in the work place, rich and varied learning interactions are based on both formal and informal work practices [1]. This paper presents a series of ethnographic studies within several healthcare settings that pinpoint the clashes between educational and clinical work-based learning models. The use of clinical learning technologies was reviewed within two hospitals. Over 134 clincians (nurses, junior doctors, consultants, surgeons, Allied Health Professionals (AHPs; e.g. occupational therapists), managers and IT department members) were observed and interviewed over a 3 year period. Barriers to learning were amplified by inappropriate design, implementation and support for clinical learning technologies. Interaction patterns between clinicians and the technology are detailed to dispel some of the myths about work-based learning. These descriptions also reveal informal collaborative work practices that evolve to circumvent inappropriate learning technologies. Further evaluations highlight how a 'communities of practice' pedagogical approach to learning technology design, implementation and ongoing learning support can resolve these conflicts.


Emphysema is a progressive, debilitating disease characterised by irreversible destruction of lung tissue. The gas trapping within the destroyed alveoli, and resultant hyperinflation, render conventional medical treatment generally of limited benefit, especially in the advanced stages of the disease. Utilisation of bronchoscopic techniques for achieving lung volume reduction has advanced over the past years. Amongst these, lung volume reduction using coils (LVRC) is a promising option. The LVRC are made from preformed Nitinol wire with shape memory. They are bronchoscopically delivered into the desired sub-segmental bronchus and recover to a pre-determined shape upon deployment. Published data so far, with endpoints being safety and feasibility, are promising. The procedure itself seems to be technically feasible and results in significant improvements in pulmonary function, exercise capacity, and quality of life sustained during the follow-up period, and with an overall acceptable safety profile. Current ongoing studies further investigate the feasibility, safety, and efficiency of LVRC. Future research is necessary in order to elucidate whether the patient selection criteria and methodology currently used are amenable to improvements, and to establish the duration of benefit and its cost-effectiveness when compared to optimal medical treatment, before applying this treatment into routine clinical practice.


Finding accurate reduced descriptions for large, complex, dynamically evolving networks is a crucial enabler to their simulation, analysis, and ultimately design. Here, we propose and illustrate a systematic and powerful approach to obtaining good collective coarse-grained observables—variables successfully summarizing the detailed state of such networks. Finding such variables can naturally lead to successful reduced dynamic models for the networks. The main premise enabling our approach is the assumption that the behavior of a node in the network depends (after a short initial transient) on the node identity: a set of descriptors that quantify the node properties, whether intrinsic (e.g., parameters in the node evolution equations) or structural (imparted to the node by its connectivity in the particular network structure). The approach creates a natural link with modeling and "computational enabling technology" developed in the context of Uncertainty Quantification. In our case, however, we will not focus on ensembles of different realizations of a problem, each with parameters randomly selected from a distribution. We will instead study many coupled heterogeneous units, each characterized by randomly assigned (heterogeneous) parameter value(s). One could then coin the term Heterogeneity Quantification for this approach, which we illustrate through a model dynamic network consisting of coupled oscillators with one intrinsic heterogeneity (oscillator individual frequency) and one structural heterogeneity (oscillator degree in the undirected network). The computational implementation of the approach, its shortcomings and possible extensions are also discussed.


This report presents the results of experimental investigations of natural convection flows and associated heat transfer processes produced by small fires in rooms with a single door or window opening. Calculation procedures have been developed to model the major aspects of these flows. Two distinct sets of experiments were undertaken. First, in a roughly 1/4 scale facility, a slightly dense solution of brine was allowed to flow into a tank of fresh water. The resulting density difference produced a flow which simulated a very small fire in a room with adiabatic walls. Second, in an approximately 1/2 scale test room, a nearly stoichioinetric mixture of air and natural gas was burned at floor level to model moderate strength fires. In this latter facility, we directly measured the heat conducted through the walls, in addition to determining the gas temperature and composition throughout the room. These two facilities complemented each other. The former offered good flow visualization and allowed us to observe the basic flow phenomena in the absence of heat transfer effects. On the other hand, the latter, which involved relatively larger fires, was a more realistic simulation of an actual room fire, and allowed us to calculate the convective heat transfer to the ceiling and walls. In addition, the stronger sources present in these 1/2 scale tests produced significant secondary flows. These secondary flows along with heat transfer effects act to modify the gas temperature or density profiles within the room from those observed in the 1/4 scale experiments. Several calculation procedures have been developed, based on the far field properties of plumes when the density differences are small (the Boussinesq approximation). The simple point source plume solution is used along with hydraulic analysis of flow through an orifice to estimate the temperatures of the hot ceiling layer gas and of the cooler floor zone fluid, as well as the height of the interface between them. A finite source plume model is combined with conservation equations across the interface to compute the evolution of the plume above the interface. This calculation then provides the starting point for an integral analysis of the flow and heat transfer in the turbulent ceiling jet. The computed results both for the average floor and ceiling zone gas temperatures, and for the connective heat transfer in the ceiling jet agreed reasonably well with our experimental data. This agreement suggests that our computational procedures can be applied to answer practical questions, such as whether the connective heat flux from a given fire in a real room would be sufficient to trigger sprinklers or other detection systems in a given amount of time.


In the REBT theory of psychopathology major depression is associated with the endorsement of irrational beliefs. The present pilot study aims to extend the investigation of the major assumptions of the theory, by using a measure of IB (ABS2) that has good discriminant validity, allows the discrete evaluation of irrationality, rationality, demandingness, selfdowning, frustration tolerance and awfulizing, and has been validated for the Romanian population. Subjects with major depression, subclinical dysphoria and controls were compared with regards to IBs. Results confirm that clinical depression is indeed accompanied by irrationality. Also, some IBs have been found to be associated with subclinical depressive symptoms.


For its time, the study and practice of medicine in Ancient Egypt was revolutionary. Primitive by today's standards, physicians in Egypt nonetheless showed great initiative and impressive knowledge of the human body and its inner workings, as well as the treatment of illness and disease. Surgical intervention was never recommended, and the main treatment modalities provided by the "swnw" (pronounced sounou, physicians) that did exist would be deemed bizarre by today's standards. Gynecological disorders such as uterine prolapse were treated with medications rather than by manipulation. It was thought that if the patient stood over a burning fire of ingredients, her uterus would be magically forced back into its normal position. Excessive bleeding, or menorrhagia, was treated by remedies designed 'to draw out the blood of the woman' – the rationale being that if you were to draw the blood out, the bleeding would stop. Of particular concern to the Egyptians was the ability to predict whether or not a woman was capable of becoming pregnant. One method described that the likelihood of becoming pregnant was proportional to the number of times the woman vomited while sitting on a floor covered in beer mash. Another instructed the woman to place an onion bulb in her vagina overnight – if the odor of the onion could be smelled on the woman's breath by morning, then she was considered fertile. Once pregnant, numerous methods were then employed to predict the sex of the newborn. Key words: Obstetrics, Gynecology, Menorrhagia


Since September 11th, 2001 The United States Arms has deployed a significantly larger percentage of National Guard and Reserve (NG/R) forces to combat zones in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The United States Office of Veterans Affairs has reported increased suicide rates and suicide risk for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for Soldiers deployed in support of these conflicts in particular. Few studies have assessed the relationship between military component (Active Duty (AD) vs. NG/R), and PTSD prevalence and risk factors but many of studies that exist have reported higher rates in NG/R Soldiers as compared to AD Soldiers. I sought to identify risk factors that make NG/R Soldiers more vulnerable to PTSD in a sample of 11 Army NG/R and AD OEF/OIF veterans. PTSD Prevalence rates were similar between components, but several predictive factors were significantly correlated with PTSD for NG/R veterans. In my thesis I identify and discuss the possible implications for these specific vulnerabilities. iii


Common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L) is a major staple food in
Burundi; thus increasing its production and marketing has the potential
for raising incomes of the farming households. In the country, bean
outputs have been declining for decades, yet demand for the crop in
East Africa has surged considerably. This study was conducted in
Burundi to assess the determinants of quantity produced and marketed by
smallholder farmers. A total of 380 farmers obtained through a
multistage sampling technique, constituted the study sample.
Constraints to production and supply of beans to markets include lack
of productive assets, lack of improved varieties and inadequate use of
fertilisers. Results with regard to these constraints indicate that a
unit increase in the value of productive assets is likely to lead to
about 10 percent increase in production of beans; while changing to
improved bean varieties may increase production by 22%. In addition, a
kilogram increase in fertiliser use is likely to raise bean quantities
produced by about 10%. Constraints that affect quantities of beans
marketed by farmers include levels of production and losses due to
transport problems. Thus, an increase in quantity produced will lead to
an almost 30% increase in marketed quantities, while reduction in
transport losses will lead to an increase in marketed quantities by
about 12%. However, an increase in quantity of beans stored for food
will lead a reduction in marketed beans by about 19%, implying that
storage of beans may not be targeted at the market but for food
security purposes. Efforts that promote collective action among farmers
while encouraging increasing the proportion of land under beans are
likely to enhance bean production and consequently marketable surplus.


Education is a strong predictor for economic performance. Therefore, educational inequality particularly in opportunity could make significant contribution to earning disparities. Following Ferreira and Gignoux (2014) parametric method, we construct aggregate indices of inequality of educational opportunities for fourteen Indonesian provinces in the years 1997, 2000 and 2007. Our particular and original contribution is to define individual indices of the power of circumstances which measure the strength of the influence that the accumulation of factors outside individual responsibility has in the short and in the long run on individual educational achievements and on earnings. We found that-along the period considered- there has been a declining trend in inequality of educational opportunities but not in all the provinces. Our findings also suggest that parental educational background is the most significant factor for school survival and that the effect that circumstances exert on future individual educational achievements and on early earnings perspectives tend to persist over time, but only to a very small extent. Moreover, our causal model which relates educational budget policy to equality of opportunity shows a negative impact of educational budget for the youngest cohorts, questioning therefore the effectiveness of the allocation of resources to primary and intermediate schools.


Objectives To identify children at risk for in-hospital mortality following tracheotomy. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting 25 746 876 US hospitalisations for children within the Kids' Inpatient Database 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006. Participants 18 806 hospitalisations of children ages 0–18 years undergoing tracheotomy, identified from ICD-9-CM tracheotomy procedure codes. Main outcome measure Mortality during the initial hospitalisation when tracheotomy was performed in relation to patient demographic and clinical characteristics (neuromuscular impairment (NI), chronic lung disease, upper airway anomaly, prematurity, congenital heart disease, upper airway infection and trauma) identified with ICD-9-CM codes. Results Between 1997 and 2006, mortality following tracheotomy ranged from 7.7% to 8.5%. In each year, higher mortality was observed in children undergoing tracheotomy who were aged <1 year compared with children aged 1–4 years (mortality range: 10.2–13.1% vs 1.1–4.2%); in children with congenital heart disease, compared with children without congenital heart disease (13.1–18.7% vs 6.2–7.1%) and in children with prematurity, compared with children who were not premature (13.0–19.4% vs 6.8–7.3%). Lower mortality was observed in children with an upper airway anomaly compared with children without an upper airway anomaly (1.5–5.1% vs 9.1–10.3%). In 2006, the highest mortality (40.0%) was observed in premature children with NI and congenital heart disease, who did not have an upper airway anomaly. Conclusions Congenital heart disease, prematurity, the absence of an upper airway anomaly and age <1 year were characteristics associated with higher mortality in children following tracheotomy. These findings may assist provider communication with children and families regarding early prognosis following tracheotomy.


A 32 year old woman gravida 3 para 2 was admitted in her 33 rd week of pregnancy for management of uterine prolapse in pregnancy. Her first child was age of 3 years and was born by forceps assisted vaginal delivery, weighting 3,8 kg. She had no history of uterine prolapse prior to the current pregnancy. In the 12 th week of gestation, she noticed a protrusion from her vagina. She had no other symptoms. She was able to reduce the protrusion regularly. In the 33 rd week of gestation, she presented with uterine contractions. The os of the prolapsed cervix was closed and elongated. Her contractions were successfully inhibited with calcic inhibitors. At 37 weeks of gestation, a viable male infant weighting 2,6 kg was delivered vaginally following rupture of membranes. She progressed well in labour. The placenta was delivered spontaneously. a vaginal ring pessary was inserted two days later to control the prolapse during the period of involution. After 6 months, she had no longer uterine prolapse.


Having collected many specimens of the genus Unio
inhabiting the northern rivers of Tasmania, during the last
seventeen years, more especially those found in various parts
of the South Esk Eiver, I have often been much impressed
with the extreme variability of form and colour exhibited by
different individuals. This is more particularly remarkable
if specimens marking different stages of growth are compared
with each other. Includes illustrations.


Within the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), LHC bounds suggest that scalar superpartner masses are far above the electroweak scale. Given a high superpartner mass, nonthermal dark matter is a viable alternative to WIMP dark matter generated via freezeout. In the presence of moduli fields, nonthermal dark matter production is associated with a long matter-dominated phase, modifying the spectral index and primordial tensor amplitude relative to those in a thermalized primordial universe. Nonthermal dark matter can have a higher self-interaction cross section than its thermal counterpart, enhancing astrophysical bounds on its annihilation signals. We constrain the contributions to the neutralino mass from the bino, wino and Higgsino using existing astrophysical bounds and direct detection experiments for models with nonthermal neutralino dark matter. Using these constraints we quantify the expected change to inflationary observables resulting from the nonthermal phase.


This paper describes the experiences and results of the first GPS MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), including a worldwide laboratory involving thousands of participants.

MOOCs have the potential to revolutionize education in the same way that the Internet has forever changed other industries. A MOOC is a free online course, typically with thousands of participants from all over the world. In this talk we describe the first GPS MOOC. This MOOC "GPS: An Introduction to Satellite Navigation" was created by the authors for Stanford University, and is hosted by Coursera. The course ran for the first time in the last quarter of 2014, and will run again in 2015, starting shortly after the ION GNSS+ conference. Participation in 2014 was astonishing: we had over 31,000 registrants from 192 different countries (for comparison: the UN has 193 member states). Of these registrants approximately six-thousand participated regularly in the class; three-thousand completed the whole course; and seventeen hundred participated in the handson labs.

This MOOC was the first to make use of smartphones to create a worldwide laboratory for experiments conducted by the students. Since each smartphone contains a GNSS receiver, students could get hands-on experience, while at the same time collecting data on an unprecedented scale. The main idea of the laboratory was pedagogical: to teach the students about GNSS, and so the labs were conceived to be relatively simple. But the sheer scale of the class was such that we obtained very interesting results which we will present in this paper for the first time.

The first lab studied GNSS accuracy, as experienced by smartphone users, both in the open and in urban environments. Open-sky GNSS accuracy with smartphones has often been claimed to be "about 5 meters", in fact this was the answer to an in-course quiz question in one of the lectures. In this lab, with over one thousand participants in one hundred countries, the measured mean accuracy, remarkably, came to 4.9 meters. Even more interesting, the accuracy in urban areas showed a remarkable correlation with building height. So well correlated, in fact, that we are moved to propose a "Law of Urban Multipath" that predicts GNSS position accuracy based on building height. We will explain this result in the paper, and show the data distributions supporting it.

In the second lab, the students performed mission planning to predict when a particular satellite would pass (close to) overhead on one particular day. They then had to go outside at that time, and see if the GNSS receiver observed the satellite where it was expected. They recorded the time, their location, and where in the sky the satellite was observed. They then submitted this data online. Each student becoming part of a worldwide relay. As the data came in, they could tell who saw the satellite before them, and who would see it next. This was a memorable experience for everyone, linking people from a hundred different countries with no regard for borders or boundaries of any kind

In the third lab we returned to quantitative analysis of GNSS. Students, after learning about GNSS Front End analysis, compared the measured C/No in their phones to the expected value for a nominal design. Thus they characterized the RF performance of the GNSS in many of the world's most popular smartphones. Following this, they repeated the experiment in their homes, thus characterizing the signal loss through the different types of buildings. We collected this data and will present the results for the first time in this paper.

We believe that this is the first time that experimental data like this has been collected on this scale. The results are interesting in their own right, while also a vision for what might be achieved with a worldwide team of highly motivated volunteers who will together collect data in more environments in a day than most of us will visit in a lifetime. Based on the success of this first MOOC, we are modifying the labs for the 2015 edition to collect more detailed data that will shed further light on the operation of GNSS worldwide. In the paper we will discuss the plans for future labs, and we welcome input from the ION community for ideas about what may be measureable, and what we can yet discover about our GNSS ecosystem.


Communities living on the margins of society, such as the homeless, are overlooked in the process of building a vision for peace in the City of Tshwane. This article, therefore, seeks to explore the issue of a vision for peace from the perspective of the homeless in the City of Tshwane. Isaiah 65:17–25 was used as a hermeneutic key, within a community engaged action research framework, to stimulate reflection and application in the context of homelessness where meaningful peace is non-existent. Emerging voices of ordinary readers (participants)of the text, as represented by the homeless in the City of Tshwane (CoT), suggest institutions (of education, business, government, churches as well as other individuals) need to work together in synergy towards the realisation of this peace in the city. In relation to peace in the CoT, this research has unearthed some insights from a local homeless community which could contribute towards the development of an integrated praxis needed for transformative urban missiology. The recommendations derived from the research are: the homeless people must be partisans to such a holistic and integrated vision for peace and should be seen as active responsible citizens of the city willing to undertake actions that are in support of this vision.


Abstract. Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) is a complex mixture of water and organic molecules. Its composition is determined by the presence of semi-volatile or non-volatile compounds, their saturation vapor pressure and activity coefficient. The activity coefficient is a non-ideality effect and is a complex function of SOA composition. In a previous publication, the detailed chemical mechanism (DCM) for α-pinene oxidation and subsequent aerosol formation BOREAM was presented. In this work, we investigate with this DCM the impact of non-ideality by simulating smog chamber experiments for α-pinene degradation and aerosol formation and taking the activity coefficient into account of all molecules in the aerosol phase. Several versions of the UNIFAC method are tested for this purpose, and missing parameters for e.g. hydroperoxides and nitrates are inferred from fittings to activity coefficient data generated using the SPARC model. Alternative approaches to deal with these missing parameters are also tested, as well as an activity coefficient calculation method based on Hansen solubility parameters (HSP). It turns out that for most experiments, non-ideality has only a limited impact on the interaction between the organic molecules, and therefore on SOA yields and composition, when water uptake is ignored. The reason is that often, the activity coefficient is on average close to 1 and, specifically for high-VOC experiments, partitioning is not very sensitive on the activity coefficient because the equilibrium is shifted strongly towards condensation. Still, for ozonolysis experiments with low amounts of volatile organic carbon (low-VOC), the UNIFAC parameterization of Raatikainen et al. leads to significantly higher SOA yields (by up to a factor 1.6) compared to the ideal case and to other parameterizations. Water uptake is model dependent, in the order: ideal > UNIFAC-Raatikainen > UNIFAC-Peng > UNIFAC-Hansen ≈ UNIFAC-Magnussen ≈ UNIFAC-Ming. In the absence of salt dissolution, phase splitting from pure SOA is unlikely.


Blocking actin polymerization prevents YAP and TAZ activation and resistance to BRAF inhibitors in melanoma. Inhibitors against the kinase BRAF are initially effective against BRAFV600E mutant melanoma. Resistance inevitably develops, in part, because the cancer cells induce tumor-associated fibroblasts to produce stiff extracellular matrix that triggers adaptive signaling in the tumor cells (see also Zanconato and Piccolo). YAP and TAZ (collectively YAP/TAZ) are transcriptional regulators that become activated in response to changes in the cytoskeleton, which would occur upon stiffening of the extracellular matrix. Kim et al. found that inhibiting changes in the cytoskeleton of the tumor cells and thus preventing activation of YAP/TAZ may overcome drug resistance in BRAF-mutant melanoma. Prolonged exposure of cultured melanoma cells to the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib induced drug resistance that was associated with a change in shape, increased actin polymerization, and nuclear localization and induction of the transcriptional activity of YAP/TAZ. Microarray analysis revealed that the expression of cell cycle–related genes in drug-resistant cells was YAP/TAZ-dependent. Expressing a constitutively active YAP conferred vemurafenib resistance to drug-sensitive melanoma cells, whereas silencing YAP resensitized drug-resistant cells. Indeed, knockdown of YAP and TAZ reduced cell proliferation even in the absence of vemurafenib in resistant cells. Cytochalasin D or blebbistatin, which inhibit actin polymerization or actomyosin contractility, respectively, caused YAP/TAZ to relocalize to the cytoplasm and decreased the viability of vemurafenib-resistant cells. An RNA interference–based screen indicated that TESK1, a kinase that inactivates the actin-severing protein cofilin (and thereby inhibits actin remodeling), is an enzymatic target that could be inhibited to restore vemurafenib sensitivity in melanoma. Together the findings indicate that actin remodeling in response to BRAF inhibition activates YAP/TAZ and the subsequent expression of genes promoting cell proliferation. Thus, inhibiting actin remodeling might improve therapeutic outcome for BRAF inhibitor–resistant melanoma patients. M. H. Kim, J. Kim, H. Hong, S.‐H. Lee, J.‐K. Lee, E. Jung, J. Kim, Actin remodeling confers BRAF inhibitor resistance to melanoma cells through YAP/TAZ activation. EMBO J. 35, 462–478 (2016). [PubMed] F. Zanconato, S. Piccolo, Eradicating tumor drug resistance at its YAP‐biomechanical roots. EMBO J. 35, 459–461 (2016). [PubMed]


This article presents six theses on targeted killing as a form of political violence. These explore the power relations, lawfare, scopic regimes, forms of spatial management and symbolic communications which suggest that the practice of targeted killing arises from the failures of the Western global counter-insurgency campaign to achieve its aims. Therefore, rather than demonstrating omniscience and omnipotence, targeted killing is indicative of the Western position of weakness in the wars of 'the colonial present'.


High technology development and innovation transfer process is one of the backgrounds for economic development and modernization. The state and regional (local) administrative bodies are concerned in this field, because they go by the assumption that science and technology fuel economic growth. But they misconstrue the transformation of an innovative success to a market success process. The state and regional programs support explanations of the innovation process that are relatively simple and linear. But the relationship of science to technology and technology to economic growth is complex, interactive and iterative. To explain them the system approach is needed. Too often government programs address the initial transfer of technology that leads to new products, but they do not address the process improvements that are needed by firms for them to maintain a competitive status. The economic impact and development are the end purpose of state and regional innovation transfer support initiatives. But state technology transfer efforts should be viewed more in terms of a response to concerns over the competitiveness crisis. The primary objective of local (regional) economic development policies, including technology–based policies, is to provide jobs. It is obviously that entirely initiatives of state or private forces don't suffice to make the technology transfer process effective. But the participation of the state and local administration bodies in innovation transfer is essential. The discussion whether the state is loosing its role in the regional development and innovation transfer process area or not has no answers. There are some fields where the state has more competence, and some problems that must be solved by regions themselves. The most effect can be getting participatory by state, local or regional administration and business organizations or local communities.


Texas is experiencing tremendous growth, which puts pressure on resources including water and electricity supplies. Texas leads the nation in renewable energy production and is experiencing tremendous growth in the solar energy sector, with the Solar Energy Industries Association reporting that Texas is on track to become the fastest growing utility-scale solar market in the United States within the next five years. In this market, a new photovoltaic (PV) technology, floating solar, is gaining attention. Floating solar PV systems use the same types of PV panels as land-based systems, but the panels are either floating in the water (tethered to the land or substrate) or are suspended over a water body. Floating solar panels typically produce more energy than similarly-sized terrestrial systems (because of the cooling effect and reflectivity of the water). The shading provided by the solar panels can also significantly reduce evaporation and can improve water quality by inhibiting the growth of some types of algae and inhibiting bromide converting to bromate. In a climate where much of the state is arid or semi-arid and the entire state is subject to drought, a technology such as floating solar can be part of the solution. Texas reservoirs, water and wastewater treatment facilities, power plant cooling ponds, and irrigation ponds all have the opportunity to realize multiple benefits from floating solar that could not be achieved with a standard ground-mounted PV installation.
Citation: Gamarra C, Ronk JJ. 2019. Floating solar: an emerging opportunity at the energy-water nexus. Texas Water Journal. 10(1):32-45. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v10i1.7050.


Abstract. In this study we present an assessment of the retrieval capability of the Airborne Research Interferometer Evaluation System (ARIES): an airborne remote-sensing Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) operated on the UK Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurement (FAAM) aircraft. Simulated maximum a posteriori retrievals of partial column trace gas concentrations, and thermodynamic vertical profiles throughout the troposphere and planetary boundary layer have been performed here for simulated infrared spectra representative of the ARIES system operating in the nadir-viewing geometry. We also describe the operational and technical aspects of the pre-processing necessary for routine retrieval from the FAAM platform and the selection and construction of a priori information. As exemplars of the capability of the ARIES retrieval system, simulated retrievals of temperature, water vapour (H2O), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and methane (CH4), and their corresponding sources of error and potential vertical sensitivity, are discussed for ARIES scenes across typical global environments. The maximum Degrees of Freedom for Signal (DOFS) for the retrievals, assuming a flight altitude of 7 km, were 3.99, 2.97, 0.85, 0.96, and 1.45 for temperature, H2O, CO, O3, and CH4, respectively, for the a priori constraints specified. Retrievals of temperature display significant vertical sensitivity (DOFS in the range 2.6 to 4.0 across the altitude range) as well as excellent simulated accuracy, with the vertical sensitivity for H2O also extending to lower altitudes (DOFS ranging from 1.6 to 3.0). It was found that the maximum sensitivity for CO, O3, and CH4 was approximately 1–2 km below the simulated altitudes in all scenarios. Comparisons of retrieved and simulated-truth partial atmospheric columns are used to assess the capability of the ARIES measurement system. Maximum mean biases (and bias standard deviations) in partial columns (i.e. below aircraft total columns) were found to be +0.06 (±0.02 at 1σ)%, +3.95 (±3.11)%, +3.74 (±2.97)%, −8.26 (±4.64)%, and +3.01 (±2.61)% for temperature, H2O, CO, O3, and CH4, respectively, illustrating that the retrieval system performs well compared to an optimal scheme. The maximum total a posteriori retrieval errors across the partial columns were also calculated, and were found to be 0.20, 22.57, 18.22, 17.61, and 16.42% for temperature, H2O, CO, O3, and CH4, respectively.


This article draws on Thackeray's appropriation of the apparatus of theatrical culture in order to examine the complex negotiation of public performance and private life engendered by the practices of dandyism in the period. In Pendennis , the figure of the dandy appears inherently artificial in its reliance upon spectacle and display, yet it also enables self-creation and the maintenance of privacy. Different types of the dandy are isolated in the novel as forms of masculine performance to be variously emulated or rejected in the formation of individual identity. While Thackeray is often considered to be sceptical of dandyism, his sustained employment of dandiacal personas in this novel suggests that his view of such performative practices was more ambivalent. Costume here offers the allure of display to both fictional characters and actual readers, while retaining a potentially impenetrable barrier between self and society. In a society that seems at once to foster a culture of surveillance and spectacle, and to retreat from such theatrical practice as inauthentic and artificial, such close attention to dress may be considered as simultaneously suspiciously vulgar or effeminate, and cautious or protective. In the novel examined here, Thackeray charts the development of his hero with an emphasis on the role of costume in the experience of masculine identity. In doing so, this article suggests, the text engages in an exploration of performance as privacy.


The overall objective of this research is to monitor occupants in indoor settings using their footstep-induced floor vibration. Some of the current sensing approaches for occupant monitoring include vision-based, radio-frequency-based, pressure-based, and mobile-based sensing. However, maintenance and installment requirements, such as dense deployment and requiring the occupants to carry a device, limit their application. To overcome these limitations, we have introduced vibration-based sensing as a sparse and non-intrusive alternative for occupant monitoring which does not require carrying a device. The intuition behind this sensing approach is that occupant footsteps cause floor vibration waves which travel through the structure and reach our sensors. These vibrations can be used for extracting information about the occupants (e.g., location and presence). However, because these vibration waves travel through the structure, they are also affected by the structural characteristics which result in various research challenges for occupant monitoring. In this dissertation, I have focused on three research contributions which are based on structure-related challenges. First, we present a floor-vibration-based occupant detection approach which enables detection across different structures through "model transfer". The structural effects on the signals results in footstep models being different in different structures which consequently adds to the labeled data and calibration requirements. To address this challenge, we characterize the effect of the structure on the footstep-induced floor vibration responses to develop a physics-driven model transfer approach that enables step-level occupant detection across structures. Specifically, our model transfer approach projects the data into a feature space in which the structural effects are minimized. By minimizing the structure effect in this projected feature space, the footstep models mainly represent the differences in the excitation types and therefore are transferable across structures. In other words, in this projected space, a footstep model trained in a source structure in which labeled data is available can be used for target structures in which no labeled data is available. By only requiring labelled data from a few source structures, this approach significantly reduces the labeled data and calibration requirements. We analytically show that the structural effects are correlated to the Maximum-Mean-Discrepancy (MMD) distance between the source and target marginal data distributions. Therefore, to reduce the structural effect, we minimize the MMD between the distributions in the source and target structures. We evaluated the robustness of our approach through field experiments in three types of structures. Our evaluation consists of training a footstep model in a set of structures and testing it in a different structure. As the performance metric, we have utilized F1 score which is the harmonic mean of the precision and recall rate and has been commonly used for evaluating classification algorithms. Across the three structures, the evaluation results show footstep detection F1-score of up to 99 percent for our approach, corresponding to 29X improvement compared to a baseline approach which does not transfer the model. Second, we characterize dispersive wave propagation to localize occupants using their footstep-induced floor vibrations and without extensive calibration. To localize the footsteps, we utilize the Time Differences of Arrival (TDoA) and the propagation velocity of the footstep-induced vibration waves. To this end, the main challenges are: 1) the vibration wave propagation in the floor is of dispersive nature (i.e., different frequency components travel at different velocities) and 2) due to floor heterogeneity, these wave propagation velocities vary in different structures as well as in different locations in a structure. These challenges result in signal distortions which in turn reduce the TDoA and propagation velocity estimation accuracy and lead to large localization inaccuracies or calibration requirements. We present a "decomposition-based dispersion mitigation technique" which extracts specific components (which have similar propagation characteristics) for localization. Further, we introduce an "adaptive multilateration approach" that employs heuristics to constrain the search space and robustly locate the footsteps when the propagation velocity is unknown. We evaluated our approach using field experiments in 3 different types of buildings (both commercial and residential) with human participants. The results show an average localization error of 0.34 meters, which corresponds to a 6X reduction in error compared to a baseline method (which will be defined in the thesis). Furthermore, our approach resulted in standard deviation of as low as 0.18 meters, which corresponds to a 8.7X improvement in precision compared to the baseline approach. Third, we model the obstruction effect on the footstep-induced floor vibration waves to enable robust occupant localization in obstructive indoor settings. obstructions such as walls and furniture add mass to the structure which affect the structural characteristics, the wave propagation velocity, and in turn, reduce the localization performance. To address this challenge, we localize footsteps by considering different velocities between the footsteps and sensors depending on the existence and mass of obstruction on the wave path. Specifically, we 1) detect and estimate the mass of the obstruction by characterizing the wave attenuation rate, and 2) use this estimated mass to find the propagation velocities for localization by modeling the velocity-mass relationship through the lamb wave characteristics. Finally, we leverage these propagation velocities to locate the footsteps (and the occupants) using our non-isotropic multialteration approach. In field experiments, we achieved average localization error of 0.61 meters, which is 1) the same as the average localization error when there is no obstruction and 2) 1.6X improvement compared to a baseline approach which does not consider the effect of the obstruction.


We show that no existing continuous-time, binary value-domain model for digital circuits is able to correctly capture glitch propagation. Prominent examples of such models are based on pure delay channels (P), inertial delay channels (I), or the elaborate Delay Degradation Model (DDM) channels proposed by Bellido-Diaz et al. We accomplish our goal by considering the border between solvability and non-solvability of a simple problem called short-pulse filtration (SPF), which is closely related to arbitration and synchronization. On one hand, we prove that SPF is solvable in bounded time in any such model that provides channels with non constant delay, like I and DDM. This is in opposition to the impossibility of solving bounded SPF in real (physical) circuit models. On the other hand, for binary circuit models with constant-delay channels, we prove that SPF cannot be solved even in unbounded time; again in opposition to physical circuit models. Consequently, indeed none of the binary value-domain models proposed so far (and that we are aware of) faithfully captures glitch propagation of real circuits. We finally show that these modeling mismatches do not hold for the weaker eventual SPF problem.


Digital mammography is one of the most suitable methods for early detection of breast cancer. It uses digital mammograms to find suspicious areas containing benign and malignant microcalcifications. However, it is very difficult to distinguish benign and malignant microcalcifications. This is reflected in the high percentage of unnecessary biopsies that are performed and many deaths caused by late detection or misdiagnosis. A computer based feature selection and classification system can provide a second opinion to the radiologists in assessment of microcalcifications. The research proposes and investigates a neural-genetic algorithm for feature selection in conjunction with neural and statistical classifiers to classify microcalcification patterns in digital mammograms. The obtained results show that the proposed approach is able to find an appropriate feature subset and neural classifier achieves better results than two statistical models.


All but buried for most of the twentieth century, the concept of altruism has re-emerged in this last quarter as a focus of intense scholarly inquiry and general public interest. In the wake of increased consciousness of the human potential for destructiveness, both scholars and the general public are seeking interventions which will not only inhibit the process, but may in fact chart a new creative path toward a global community. Largely initiated by a group of pioneering social psychologists, early questions on altruism centered on its motivation and development primarily in the context of contrived laboratory experiments. Although publications on the topic have been considerable over the last several years, and now represent the work of representatives from many disciplines of inquiry, this volume is distinguished from others in several ways. Embracing the Other emerged primarily as a response to recent research on an extraordinary manifestation of real-life altruism, namely to recent studies of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during World War II. It is the work of a multi-disciplinary and international group of scholars, including philosophers, social psychologists, historians, sociologists, and educators, challenging several prevailing conceptual definitions and motivational sources of altruism. The book combines both new empirical and historical research as well as theoretical and philosophical approaches and includes a lengthy section addressing the practical implications of current thinking on altruism for society at large. The result is a multi-textured work, addressing critical issues in varied disciplines, while centered on shared themes.


Supreme Court rhetoric about the role of contracts and contract law in arbitration jurisprudence differs sharply from the reality of its applications. In the name of contracts, the Court administers a self-declared national policy favoring arbitration, a policy directly benefiting the judicial branch of government. This often puts the Court's preferences ahead of those of contracting parties while declaring its mission as solely to enforce contracts in accordance with contract law. The Court thus cloaks in the rhetoric of volition a policy in tension with constitutionally-pedigreed access to justice and venerable principles of federalism. This Article documents the rhetoric-reality gap and explores why it exists and why it matters. The rhetoric-reality gap is attributable in part to a dilemma the Court created for itself: its national policy favoring arbitration is constitutionally-suspect unless people assent, yet letting people make what contracts they wish would prevent implementing the national policy. The jurisprudence diminishes the Court's legitimacy, tempts defiance, creates doctrinal incoherence, and poses other costs. This Article calls for reconciling these conflicting positions rather than sustaining the status quo: the Court should either give up its national policy favoring arbitration and truly respect freedom of contract or come clean about its national policy's real implications and acknowledge its narrow conception of contract and contract law.


Abstract. In this study the impact of a substantially reduced Arctic sea-ice cover on the lower and middle stratosphere is investigated. For this purpose two simulations with fixed boundary conditions (the so-called time-slice mode) were performed with a Chemistry-Climate Model. A reference time-slice with boundary conditions representing the year 2000 is compared to a second sensitivity simulation in which the boundary conditions are identical apart from the polar sea-ice cover, which is set to represent the years 2089–2099. Three features of Arctic air temperature response have been identified which are discussed in detail. Firstly, tropospheric mean polar temperatures increase up to 7 K during winter. This warming is primarily driven by changes in outgoing long-wave radiation. The tropospheric response (e.g. geopotential height anomaly) is in reasonable agreement with similar studies dealing with Arctic sea-ice decrease and the consequences on the troposphere. Secondly, temperatures decrease significantly in the summer stratosphere caused by a decline in outgoing short-wave radiation, accompanied by a slight increase of ozone mixing ratios. Thirdly, there are short periods of statistical significant temperature anomalies in the winter stratosphere probably driven by modified planetary wave activity, but generally there is no clear stratospheric response. The Arctic Oscillation (AO)-index, which is related to the troposphere–stratosphere coupling favours a more neutral state during winter. The only clear stratospheric response can be shown during November. Significant changes in Arctic temperature, meridional eddy heat fluxes and the Arctic Oscillation (AO)-index are detected. In this study the overall stratospheric response to the prescribed sea-ice anomaly is small compared to the tropospheric changes.


This paper describes an approach to teaching a software design methodology used at The Wang Institute of Graduate Studies. The approach is general enough to be used with any of the currently popular design methodologies. Students are first taught the principles underlying the methodology, and the standards used with it. This phase is done in a series of lectures. In the second phase, students are presented with a real design problem, and asked to solve it using the methodology. They are monitored in this process by an expert in the methodology whose job is to assure that the students adhere to the methodology, but who makes no design decisions.


ABSTRACT What are the conditions that determine the electoral success of parties that champion deprived ethnic groups? What is the impact of within-group inequality on this outcome? Existing arguments focus on the role of institutions or the relationship between ethnicity and other social cleavages. This paper contributes to the second approach by studying the impact of within-group as well as between-group inequality on ethnic voting. We use elections to state legislatures within India to control for institutional and historical factors that may influence ethnic voting. Using data from the National Sample Survey, we calculate inequality in consumption expenditure. We show that high within-group economic inequality among deprived ethnic groups hinders the electoral success of parties that champion these groups, whereas high between-group economic inequality has the opposite effect. Our findings also identify a potential causal mechanism (preference heterogeneity) that might link within-group inequality to ethnic voting.


D. functional (DFT) studies and hybrid QM/MM-DFT calcns. demonstrate the importance of p-p stacking interactions in detg. the structural features of two exemplary d8 palladium complexes, PdBr(p-NCC6H4)({S}-MeO-Biphep), 1, and PdBr(C6F5)({S}-MeO-Biphep), 2. Despite the superficial similarity of the two compds., the former shows marked distortions from square planar geometry, while the latter exhibits an almost ideal structure. Attractive p-p stacking interactions between two pairs of P-Ph rings and the arene backbone of the MeO-Biphep are the main origin of the distortion in complex 1. The planar structure of complex 2 is preferred as a consequence of an addnl. stacking interaction between one P-Ph ring and the pentafluorophenyl s-ligand. The artificial introduction of an analogous stacking interaction in complex 1 reestablishes an ideal square planar geometry, thus demonstrating that switching on/off specific p-p interactions distinctly alters the coordination geometry. These results reveal a previously unrecognized role for p-p stacking interactions in the stabilization of structural features in transition metal compds. This suggests p-p stacking interactions as a potential new design principle in tailoring coordination compds. [on SciFinder (R)]


The aim of this paper is to investigate the existence and nature of seasonality (deterministic or stochastic) in tanker freight markets and measure and compare it across sub-sectors and under different market conditions (expansionary and contractionary) for the period January 1978 to December 1996. The existence of stochastic seasonality is rejected for all freight series while results on deterministic seasonality indicate increases in rates in November and December and decreases in rates from January to April. Seasonality is found to be varying across markets depending on vessel size and market condition. Seasonality comparisons under different market conditions, an issue investigated for the first time in the econometrics literature using Markov Switching models, reveal that seasonal rate movements are more pronounced when the market is recovering compared to smaller changes when the market is falling. This is well in line with the low and high elasticity of supply expected in expansionary and contractionary periods of shipping markets. The results have implications for tactical shipping operations such as budget planning, timing of dry-docking, vessel speed adjustments and repositioning. As expected, the out-of-sample forecasting performance of these Markov Regime Switching models is lacking somewhat, a result which is thought to be a consequence of having to predict 'states' simultaneously with mean values.


ABSTRACT Arctic regions are generally nutrient limited, receiving an extensive part of their bio-available nitrogen from the deposition of atmospheric reactive nitrogen. Reactive nitrogen oxides, as nitric acid (HNO3) and nitrate aerosols (p-NO3), can either be washed out from the atmosphere by precipitation or dry deposited, dissolving to nitrate ( ). During winter, is accumulated in the snowpack and released as a pulse during spring melt. Quantification of deposition is essential to assess impacts on Arctic terrestrial ecology and for ice core interpretations. However, the individual importance of wet and dry deposition is poorly quantified in the high Arctic regions where in-situ measurements are demanding. In this study, three different methods are employed to quantify dry deposition around the atmospheric and ecosystem monitoring site, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, for the winter season (September 2009 to May 2010): (1) A snow tray sampling approach indicates a dry deposition of –10.27±3.84 mg m−2 (± S.E.); (2) A glacial sampling approach yielded somewhat higher values –30.68±12.00 mg m−2; and (3) Dry deposition was also modelled for HNO3 and p-NO3 using atmospheric concentrations and stability observations, resulting in a total combined nitrate dry deposition of –10.76±1.26 mg m−2. The model indicates that deposition primarily occurs via HNO3 with only a minor contribution by p-NO3. Modelled median deposition velocities largely explain this difference: 0.63 cm s−1 for HNO3 while p-NO3 was 0.0025 and 0.16 cm s−1 for particle sizes 0.7 and 7 µm, respectively. Overall, the three methods are within two standard errors agreement, attributing an average 14% (total range of 2–44%) of the total nitrate deposition to dry deposition. Dry deposition events were identified in association with elevated atmospheric concentrations, corroborating recent studies that identified episodes of rapid pollution transport and deposition to the Arctic.


An organizational diagnosis provides analysts with information on which to base and plan an appropriate intervention to improve an organization's functioning. In many instances, the data collected are from a sample of an organization's population. However, the information collected must be considered representative of the whole organization. In this article, we discuss the importance of response rate in organizational surveys and non-response bias in achieving the necessary representativeness. We describe an action research project in which we involved members of a high-tech organization. Our data were collected through interviews and an anonymous web survey representing 42 percent of the organization's population. We describe how we employed action groups to determine the content representativeness of our data. This step was deemed necessary before initiating the action planning step. We propose a guideline for action researchers to apply during organizational diagnoses requiring respondent anonymity.


Over the past decades the Netherlands has developed into a culture of control in which criminals and immigrants are mainly seen as 'dangerous others'. Tying in with this emergence of the culture of control is the development of a more preventive criminal justice system. By means of expanding preventive powers the criminal justice system is more and more aimed at detecting risky (groups of) persons as soon as possible. This so-called actuarial justice is accompanied by a great deal of discretionary power on the hands of those who have to enforce the law, bearing the risk that such powers may be carried out (in part) on the basis of generalisations relating to race, ethnicity, religion or nationality instead of on the basis of individual behaviour and/or objective evidence. The leading assumption in this article is that recent social, political and legal developments have increased the possibility for ethnic profiling in the Netherlands. Being a country of immigration, mostly immigrants tend to fall victim to these practices. Illustrated by the stop and search powers that have been introduced at municipal level in 2002 and in 2006 in the context of counterterrorism, the authors not only aim to provide insight into the complexity of actuarial justice in relation to ethnic profiling in the Netherlands but also aim to fuel the scientific debate on empirically researching ethnic profiling.


The loss and degradation of natural habitats is a primary cause of biodiversity decline. The increasing impacts of climate and land use change affect water availability, ultimately decreasing agricultural production. Areas devoted to irrigation have been increased to compensate this reduction, causing habitat and biodiversity losses, especially in regions undergoing severe water stress. These effects might intensify under global change, probably contributing to a decrease in habitat quality. We selected four European river basins across a gradient of water scarcity and irrigation agriculture. The habitat quality in the basins was assessed as a function of habitat suitability and threats under current and future global change scenarios of irrigation. Results revealed that the most threatened regions under future scenarios of global change were among those suffering of water scarcity and with bigger areas devoted to irrigation. Loss of habitat quality reached 10% in terrestrial and 25% in aquatic ecosystems under climate change scenarios involving drier conditions. The aquatic habitats were the most degraded in all scenarios, since they were affected by threats from both the terrestrial and the aquatic parts of the basin. By identifying in advance the regions most vulnerable to habitat and biodiversity loss, our approach can assist decision makers in deciding the conservation actions to be prioritized for mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change, particularly front the development of irrigation plans.


Transitions have traditionally been characterised as forms of change. These may either be inner changes (new beliefs or developmental growth) or the physical move from one place to another (see Erikson, 1975), such as the move from primary to secondary school. This theoretical paper will argue that transition can be best understood using a sociocultural framework, which links human thought and action to social and cultural situatedness (Zittoun, 2006). Using ideas underpinned by Vygotsky (1978) we will present three frameworks for addressing sociocultural transitions: (i) the notion of consequential transitions (Beach, 1999); (ii) symbolic transitions and identity rupture (Zittoun, 2006); and (iii) Communities of Practice transitions (Wenger, 1998). We will borrow examples from research on educational transitions from primary and secondary school contexts through to Higher Education in order to demonstrate that transitions are about a change in self-identity born out of uncertainty in the social and cultural worlds of the individual. Implications for educational practitioners involved in supporting young people undergoing transitions will be discussed.


Objectives Due to the ageing of the European population, the burden of non-acute dying on society is expected to increase. The aim of this study is to estimate the number of persons dying of cancer and chronic disease in Europe, including regional differences. Methods Death certificates of deceased persons in the European Union (EU)-27 countries in 2007 (some countries 2006 or 2004) were analysed and primary death causes were listed. These data were prepared for the general population and for the population of 65 years and older. Crude death rates (CDRs) were calculated for both groups and for all included countries. Results Of 480 million deceased European people, 202 million died of cancer and chronic disease in 2007 (42%). The CDR of the EU-27 countries was 409 (95% CI 370 to 451) for cancer and other chronic diseases per 100 000 inhabitants in 2007. For the 65+ population, the CDR for the EU-27 was 1783 (95% CI 1701 to 1868) for cancer and chronic disease. Large differences across countries appeared. An inverse relationship was shown for country-specific CDRs for cancer and chronic disease versus CDRs for other death causes (R=−0.41; p=0.04). Conclusions Dying of cancer and chronic diseases involves a considerable burden on the European society. Future research should relate this information to the prevalence of symptoms and the use of palliative care services. European policy makers should take into account regional variations in developing long- and short-term palliative care strategies.


Background: diabetes is one of the leading causes of death, and has a huge economic impact on the burden of society. Lifestyle interventions such as diet, physical activity and weight reducing are proven to be effective in the prevention of diabetes. To encourage policy actions, data on the costeffectiveness of such strategies of prevention programmes are needed.
Methods: a systematic review of the literature on the cost-effectiveness of prevention strategies focusing on lifestyle interventions for diabetes type 2 patients. A weighted version of Drummond checklist was used to further assess the quality of the included studies.
Results: six studies met the inclusion criteria and were therefore considered in this paper. Intensive lifestyle intervention to prevent diabetes type 2 is cost-effective in comparison to other interventions. All studies were judged of medium-to-high quality.
Conclusions: policy makers should consider the adoption of a prevention strategy focusing on intensive lifestyle changes because they are proven to be either cost-saving or cost-effective.


Ecosystems play a vital role in achieving development goals and provide services of high value. Riparian ecosystems provide multiple ecosystem services that are vital to biotic, abiotic, and economic health of a region. An assessment of their economic value is important for conservation policy. This study uses a multi-attribute method to quantify relative values of riparian attributes. The conjoint analysis incorporates three riparian ecosystem management scenarios and was implemented through an online survey. A logistic regression is used to estimate marginal willingness to pay for changes in attribute levels. Economic variables were dominant in influencing riparian values compared to biophysical attributes. Recreation, tax incentives, jobs, and respondent income are statistically significant in influencing preferences to protect riparian ecosystems but riparian zone width, water clarity and species richness were not. The values of the recreation attribute, job creation from riparian protection were found significant. A tax rebate for households would be needed to gain support for a greater riparian ecosystem protection.


Nowadays, many companies are moving from domestic markets to international markets because the competition in domestic markets has significantly increased due to globalization. However, the most concerning issue for multinational companies before entering a foreign market is the decision of entry mode because the entry mode strategy can have a huge impact on the success of the companies in a new market. In addition, the entry mode decision of the companies can be influenced by a number of factors such as firm size, international experience of firm, cultural distance, market barriers, and country risks. Thus, before choosing the entry mode strategy, the companies have to analyze those influential factors because those factors can affect the companies' performance. This study has examined the factors that influenced the entry mode decision of Starbucks when the company entered China in order to know the factors that affected the Starbucks' entry mode choice and what entry mode strategy did Starbucks use in China. Additionally, the data that was used to analyze in this study has been collected through a qualitative method by using books, literature, journals, and internet resources. Lastly, this study has found several influential factors which were divided into external and internal factors. Starbucks' entry mode choice was affected by both factors. However, the external factors were more influential than the internal factors.


type="main"> This study examines the potential role that information about trends in causes of death could have in improving projections of mortality in low-mortality countries. The article first summarizes overall trends in mortality by cause since the middle of the twentieth century. Special attention is given to the crucial impact of the smoking epidemic on mortality and on cause-of-death patterns. The article then discusses the implications for projections and reaches two conclusions. First, mortality projections can be improved by taking into account the distorting effects of smoking. Mortality attributable to smoking has risen in the past but has now leveled off or declined, thus boosting improvements in life expectancy. Second, making cause-specific projections is not likely to be helpful. Trends in specific medical causes of death have exhibited discontinuities in the past, and future trends are therefore difficult to predict.


App-based for-hire transport services make mobility more efficient by better matching supply and demand. They offer passengers a high degree of predictability and ease of use, and drivers with highly flexible work opportunities. Yet the popularity of app-based services has eroded the market share of traditional taxi operators, causing significant friction that is manifesting itself in court cases and even physical violence. How to regulate these new services is therefore high on the agenda of governments around the world. This study, commissioned by the Portuguese Institute for Mobility and Transport, reviews legislation and regulatory frameworks for taxi and for-hire transport services in Portugal and six other countries in order to foster an evidence-based discussion of the issue.This report is part of the International Transport Forum's Case-Specific Policy Analysis series. These are topical studies on specific issues carried out by the ITF in agreement with local institutions.


The article analyses whether the prison system in Estonia when incarcerating former terrorists will be able to fulfil the objectives behind its execution of imprisonment. The main concern was that potential for resocialising an individual who does not feel or even want to be a member of the society in which he is incarcerated may not exist unless the integration process accounts for not only the aspects of (legal) culture that are familiar and known in the society where the person is incarcerated but also those that are essential for the prisoner's sense of belonging. To understand what helps to reintegrate former terrorists and draw them back from violent extremism, one must grasp which aspects of (legal) culture might have influenced their radical ideology. To address this, the author uses the specific legal-cultural model provided by Professor Jorn Oyrehagen Sunde for ascertaining those bearings. The conclusion is that integrating a prisoner who holds a radical ideology rooted in the major world religion Islam into Estonian society involves an integration interlace between two different cultures and, furthermore, that the ultimate success of the reintegration programmes largely depends on the 'after-care' measures. Hence, even if there is a possibility of providing adequate teacher training and the experts agree that the person is highly reintegrated when leaving prison, the question remains of whether Estonia has the financial resources to ensure all the measures required for the former terrorist to lead a law-abiding life outside prison.


For artificial general intelligence (AGI) it would be efficient if multiple users trained the same giant neural network, permitting parameter reuse, without catastrophic forgetting. PathNet is a first step in this direction. It is a neural network algorithm that uses agents embedded in the neural network whose task is to discover which parts of the network to re-use for new tasks. Agents are pathways (views) through the network which determine the subset of parameters that are used and updated by the forwards and backwards passes of the backpropogation algorithm. During learning, a tournament selection genetic algorithm is used to select pathways through the neural network for replication and mutation. Pathway fitness is the performance of that pathway measured according to a cost function. We demonstrate successful transfer learning; fixing the parameters along a path learned on task A and re-evolving a new population of paths for task B, allows task B to be learned faster than it could be learned from scratch or after fine-tuning. Paths evolved on task B re-use parts of the optimal path evolved on task A. Positive transfer was demonstrated for binary MNIST, CIFAR, and SVHN supervised learning classification tasks, and a set of Atari and Labyrinth reinforcement learning tasks, suggesting PathNets have general applicability for neural network training. Finally, PathNet also significantly improves the robustness to hyperparameter choices of a parallel asynchronous reinforcement learning algorithm (A3C).


Connectivity conservation is essential for managing healthy ecosystems, conserving biodiversity and adapting to climate change across all biomes and spatial scales. Well-connected ecosystems support a diversity of ecological functions such as migration, hydrology, nutrient cycling, pollination, seed dispersal, food security, climate resilience and disease resistance. These Guidelines are based on the best available science and practice for maintaining, enhancing and restoring ecological connectivity among and between protected areas, other effective areas based conservation measures (OECMs) and other intact ecosystems. For the first time, this publication introduces a common definition and recommends formal recognition of ecological corridors to serve as critical building blocks of ecological networks in conjunction with protected areas and OECMs. Furthermore, these Guidelines also include 25 case studies that demonstrate current approaches to conserving ecological connectivity and ecological networks for different ecosystems and species, and at different spatial and temporal scales.


Fracture toughness tests were conducted on a polymeric material used in medical implants. The fracture behavior was ductile so that the toughness was measured using a J-R curve and JIc. The object of the test program was to compare the fracture toughness properties for different material treatments. The focus of this paper is to describe the procedure used to test the materials. Small specimens of the compact geometry are tested. Many parts of the procedure were similar to the standard test method used for metallic materials, but three issues that required a different approach were the focus of this work: the introduction of an initial defect, the testing rate, and the measurement of crack extension. The crack was introduced with a pressed razor blade cut, the loading rate was maintained constant at a rate of 0.06 in./s (0.15 mm/s) and the method of normalization was used to measure crack extension. The results showed that the razor cut procedure for introducing the initial defect gave comparable toughness results to a specimen that was precracked in fatigue. The loading rate must be maintained over a closer range than the one used for metal testing. Metal testing allows a loading rate range of two orders of magnitude, whereas rate-influenced differences in toughness were observed for these polymer materials over this range. The methods of crack extension measurement used in the standard for metallic materials do not work for polymers. The method of normalization can give comparable results to that of the multiple specimen method used as the basic method for measuring JIc. The procedures studied in this work could form the basis for developing a standard fracture toughness test for polymeric materials.


The A-polynomial encodes hyperbolic geometric information on knots and related manifolds. Historically, it has been difficult to compute, and particularly difficult to determine A-polynomials of infinite families of knots. Here, we show how to compute A-polynomials by starting with a triangulation of a manifold, similar to Champanerkar, then using symplectic properties of the Neumann-Zagier matrix encoding the gluings to change the basis of the computation. The result is a simplicifation of the defining equations. Our methods are a refined version of Dimofte's symplectic reduction, and we conjecture that the result is equivalent to equations arising from the enhanced Ptolemy variety of Zickert, which would connect these different approaches to the A-polynomial.
We apply this method to families of manifolds obtained by Dehn filling, and show that the defining equations of their A-polynomials are Ptolemy equations which, up to signs, are equations between cluster variables in the cluster algebra of the cusp torus. Thus the change in A-polynomial under Dehn filling is given by an explicit twisted cluster algebra. We compute the equations for Dehn fillings of the Whitehead link.


We compare wave-front measurements using double-exposure digital holography and a Shack-Hartmann sensor. A voltage-driven liquid-crystal wedge modulates the optical wave front and provides a refractive-index gradient typical of interesting transparent materials. Measurement accuracy and reliability are similar for both methods. In our opinion, digital holographic interferometry has several advantages for both laboratory and field environments. When compared with Shack-Hartmann methods, these advantages include hardware simplicity and robustness, relative insensitivity to sample dynamic range, and less computational demanding and more straightforward data evaluation algorithms. We believe that digital holography provides the methodology of choice for field studies of transparent materials such as microgravity protein crystal growth experiments.


This paper explores the discourse-structuring functions of initial adverbial adjuncts in English and Norwegian news and fiction. Such discourse functions have to do with discourse linking and information management. The corpus study reveals frequency differences in the use of initial adjuncts across the languages, which are to some extent connected with an overall greater frequency of adjuncts in Norwegian. While initial adjuncts in fiction often signal cohesive relations, those in news are more typically due to backgrounding of less important information or to framing/scene-setting for the clause message. Norwegian initial adjuncts are even less likely than English ones to convey new information; on the other hand, initial position is to a lesser extent associated with contrastive focus in Norwegian. This, together with the higher frequency of initial adjuncts in Norwegian, suggests that initial placement of adjuncts carries a lower degree of markedness in Norwegian than in English.


Power-line communications are employed in home networking to provide easy and high-throughput connectivity. IEEE 1901, the MAC protocol for power-line networks, employs a CSMA/CA protocol similar to that of 802.11, but is substantially more complex, which probably explains why little is known about its performance. One of the key differences between the two protocols is that whereas 802.11 only reacts upon collisions, 1901 also reacts upon several consecutive transmissions and thus can potentially achieve better performance by avoiding unnecessary collisions. In this paper, we propose a model for the 1901 MAC. Our analysis reveals that the default configuration of 1901 does not fully exploit its potential and that its performance degrades with the number of stations. We derive analytically the optimal configuration parameters for 1901; this drastically improves throughput and achieves optimal performance without requiring the knowledge of the number of stations in the network. In contrast, to provide a similar performance, 802.11 requires knowing the number of contending stations, which is unfeasible for realistic traffic patterns. Our solution can be readily implemented by vendors, as it only consists in modifying existing MAC parameters. We corroborate our results with testbed measurements, unveiling a significant signaling overhead in 1901 implementations.


Acoustic imaging sonars have been used for a variety of tasks intended to increase the autonomous capabilities of underwater vehicles. Among the most critical tasks of any autonomous vehicle are localization and mapping, which are the focus of this work. The difficulties presented by the imaging sonar sensor have led many previous attempts at localization and mapping with the imaging sonar to makerestrictive assumptions, such as a planar seafloor environment or planar sensor motion. Lifting such restrictions is an important step toward achieving general-purpose autonomous localization and mapping in real-world environments. In this dissertation, I take inspiration from related problems in the field of computer vision and demonstrate that imaging sonar localization and mapping may be modeled and solved using similar methods. To achieve accurate large-scale localization, I present degeneracy-aware acoustic bundle adjustment, a feature-based algorithm inspired by optical bundle adjustment. To achieve 3-D mapping of underwater surfaces, I propose several distinct algorithms. First, I present a method akin toshape-from-shading that uses a generative sensor model to infer a dense pointcloud from each image and fuses multiple such observations into a global model. Second, I describe a volumetric albedo framework for general-purpose sonar reconstruction, which derives from the related problem of non-line-of-sight reconstruction. This method performs inference over the elevation aperture and generates best results with a rich variety of viewpoints. Lastly, I present the theory of Fermat paths for sonar reconstruction, which utilizes the 2-D Fermat flow equation to reconstruct aparticular set of object surface points with short baseline motion.


: In his influential discussion of the aim of belief, David Owens argues that any talk of such an 'aim' is at best metaphorical. In order for the 'aim' of belief to be a genuine aim, it must be weighable against other aims in deliberation, but Owens claims that this is impossible. In previous work, I have pointed out that if we look at a broader range of deliberative contexts involving belief, it becomes clear that the putative aim of belief is capable of being weighed against other aims. Recently, however, Ema Sullivan-Bissett and Paul Noordhof have objected to this response on the grounds that it employs an undefended conception of the aim of belief not shared by Owens, and that it equivocates between importantly different contexts of doxastic deliberation. In this note, I argue that both of these objections fail.


A total of seventeen isolates of Aspergillus flavus from maize were collected from different agro-ecological zones of Tamil Nadu, India. The isolates were tested for their ability to produce aflatoxin B 1 (AFB 1 ) in vitro by indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The amount of AFB 1 produced by the isolates of A. flavus ranged from 1.9 to 206.6 ng/ml. Among the various isolates of A. flavus, the isolate AFM46 produced the highest amount of AFB 1 . DNA was extracted from A. flavus isolates and their molecular variability was investigated by using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of the PCR-amplified internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of ribosomal DNA. PCR amplification with ITS1 and ITS4 primers resulted in the ampli- fication of a product of approximately 600 bp. Digestion of the PCR products with the restriction enzymes EcoRI, HaeIII and TaqI produced fragments of different sizes. Analysis of the genetic coefficient matrix derived from the scores of RFLP profiles showed that minimum and maximum per cent similarities among the tested A. flavus strains ranged from 0 to 88%. Cluster analysis using the un- weighted pair-group method with arithmetic average (UPGMA) clearly separated the isolates into five groups (group I-V) confirming the genetic diversity among the A. flavus isolates from maize.


Inhalation exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) particles may increase health risks, but only to the extent that the particles deposit in the respiratory tract. We describe a technique to predict regional lung deposition of environmental tobacco smoke particles. Interpretation of particle size distribution measurements after cigarette combustion by a smoking machine in a test room yields an effective emissions profile. An aerosol dynamics model is used to predict indoor particle concentrations resulting from a specified combination of smoking frequency and building factors. By utilizing a lung deposition model, the rate of ETS mass accumulation in human lungs is then determined as a function of particle size and lung airway generation. Considering emissions of sidestream smoke only, residential exposures of nonsmokers to ETS are predicted to cause rates of total respiratory tract particle deposition in the range of 0.4–0.7 μg / day per kg of body weight for light smoking in a well-ventilated resi...