Today slavery is illegal in every part of the world. It has been recognised as a crime against humanity and a violation of fundamental human rights. Nonetheless, the exploitation, marginalisation and degradation of human beings for material profit continue to flourish in 21st-century society. Sophisticated criminal networks and transnational illicit operations, coupled with weak governance and a high demand for slave labour, has allowed modern slavery to evolve and thrive underground, where vulnerable individuals are exploited for a multitude of purposes. Due to the complex nature of modern slavery, not only is a comprehensive approach needed to address its commonalities, but particular attention needs to also focus on the complexities and challenges unique to specific forms of exploitation. Further, due its transnational nature its regulation requires the involvement and co-operation of various actors in the international community. In particular, one area that has been subject to increasing concern is the role of corporate entities in joining the fight against slavery, by ensuring that their operations and supply chain networks are not tainted with exploitative labour and riddled with human rights abuses. The international community has recognised that while corporate entities have the capacity to promote positive effects such as economic development, job opportunities, and technological innovations, that their operations can also adversely affect vulnerable individuals and communities. Thus, through the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and various human rights initiatives, businesses have been facing pressure to use their global resources, and power to acknowledge their influence and impact on significant global issues such as human rights, modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking. Separately, as States are the prime guarantors of international human rights, they have an obligation to establish and enforce effective measures to regulate modern slavery, including the conduct of those who violate human rights and engage in the exploitation of people. Concerning unethical business practices, States then have a responsibility to establish corporate liability for complicity in modern slavery and related issues. Against the backdrop of global contemporary forms of slavery, this thesis aims to understand the extent of corporate obligation to respect internationally recognised human rights in the regulation of modern slavery, and challenge the perceived role of firms in combatting slavery in their operations. Moreover, this study considers the role of the State in enforcing CSR in line with its international obligation to protect human rights and combat modern slavery by preventing and prohibiting the crime, protecting the victims and prosecuting the offenders. This thesis will then conclude with an exploration of domestic level operations in the United Kingdom and evaluate what key approaches mean in the support of victims, the prosecution of offenders, and the responsibility of UK businesses.


ABSTRACT R&D collaborations and the role of proximity. Regional Studies. This paper explores the impact of proximity measures on knowledge exchange measured by granted research and development (R&D) collaboration projects in German NUTS-3 regions. The results are obtained from a spatial interaction model including eigenvector spatial filters. Not only geographical but also other forms of proximity (technological, organizational and institutional) have a significant influence on the emergence of collaborations. Furthermore, the results suggest interdependences between proximity measures. Nevertheless, the analysis does not show that other forms of proximity may compensate for missing geographical proximity. The results indicate that (subsidized) collaborative innovation activities tend to cluster.


Cell-cell contacts are fundamental to multicellular organisms and are subject to exquisite levels of control. Human RPTPμ is a type IIB receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase that both forms an adhesive contact itself and is involved in regulating adhesion by dephosphorylating components of cadherin-catenin complexes. Here we describe a 3.1 angstrom crystal structure of the RPTPμ ectodomain that forms a homophilic trans (antiparallel) dimer with an extended and rigid architecture, matching the dimensions of adherens junctions. Cell surface expression of deletion constructs induces intercellular spacings that correlate with the ectodomain length. These data suggest that the RPTPμ ectodomain acts as a distance gauge and plays a key regulatory function, locking the phosphatase to its appropriate functional location.


In the last decade, many distributed stream processing engines (SPEs) were developed to perform continuous queries on massive online data. The central design principle of these engines is to handle queries that potentially run forever on data streams with a query-at-a-time model, i.e., each query is optimized and executed separately. In many real applications, streams are not only processed with long-running queries, but also thousands of short-running ad-hoc queries. To support this efficiently, it is essential to share resources and computation for stream ad-hoc queries in a multi-user environment. The goal of this paper is to bridge the gap between stream processing and ad-hoc queries in SPEs by sharing computation and resources. We define three main requirements for ad-hoc shared stream processing: (1) Integration: Ad-hoc query processing should be a composable layer which can extend stream operators, such as join, aggregation, and window operators; (2) Consistency: Ad-hoc query creation and deletion must be performed in a consistent manner and ensure exactly-once semantics and correctness; (3) Performance: In contrast to state-of-the-art SPEs, ad-hoc SPE should not only maximize data throughput but also query throughout via incremental computation and resource sharing. Based on these requirements, we have developed AStream, an ad-hoc, shared computation stream processing framework. To the best of our knowledge, AStream is the first system that supports distributed ad-hoc stream processing. AStream is built on top of Apache Flink. Our experiments show that AStream shows comparable results to Flink for single query deployments and outperforms it in orders of magnitude with multiple queries.


For almost 30 years, industrialised, emerging and developing countries negotiate on a substantive patent law harmonisation under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Although a common approach or at least some vague outlines of common ground seem beyond reach, all participants regularly agree on a continuation of the discussion process. Despite an incessant wheeling and dealing among delegates and WIPO officials, the only effect is that discussions still keep going on. In our paper, we draw on a synthesis of both neo-mercantilist and liberal institutionalist insights in order to explain the vibrant stalemate of substantive patent law harmonisation talks. We argue that WIPO's involvement in the negotiation process offers an incentive structure for states to continue negotiations even when a successful conclusion appears rather improbable or downright undesirable. WIPO officials do not necessarily oppose the alternative deployment of their resources and services, because national negotiators' tactics at least partially coincide with their own interests. The paper concludes with a summary of the major results and a discussion on their potential empirical and theoretical relevance for further studies.


1,4,5,8-tetrakis(perfluoropyridin-4-yloxy)naphthalene (tetra-PPN) was synthesized via a one-pot pseudo-five-component reaction of pentafluoropyridine and 5,8-dihydroxy-1,4-tetralindione under basic conditions in DMF. The asymmetric unit contains one half-mol ecule of tetra-PPN and data reveals that half of the molecule being related to the other via inversion symmetry. A detailed analysis of the intermolecular interactions of the compound has been performed using Hirshfeld surfaces. The optimized geometrical parameters and calculated spectroscopic features obtained by quantum chemical calculations using density functional (DFT) methods. In addition, to support the experimental results, the 19F NMR values are obtained using B3LYP method. The obtained results are compared with experimental values show a very good agreement with the experimental data.


Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917-1934 illuminates the flowering of Ukrainian literature in the 1920s and the subsequent purge of Soviet Ukrainian writers during the following Stalinist decade. Upon its original publication in 1956, George S. N. Luckyj's book won the praise of American and English critics, but was violently attacked by Soviet critics who labeled it a "slander on the Soviet Union." In the current political environment of glasnost, the book's findings have been acknowledged and supported by Soviet scholars. Moreover, this new critical corroboration has enabled the author to discover that the 1930s purge was more brutal than was previously estimated. The new edition reissues Luckyj's critical work in light of current political developments and reflects the revision of previous findings. Luckyj originally drew on published Soviet sources and the important unpublished papers of a Soviet Ukrainian writer who defected to the West to describe how the brief literary revival in the Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s was abruptly halted by Communist Party controls. The present volume features a new preface, an additional chapter covering recent Soviet attitudes toward the literature of the 1920s and 1930s, and an updated bibliography.


The paper aims at developing a 'planning grid' to address sustainable social housing interventions. The purpose lies in acquiring integrated competences to support, develop and monitor residential proposals, from the pre-feasibility up to the on-going phase, covering multi-dimensional impacts on housing costs, investment sustainability, energetic performances as well as on the quality-of-life level induced in the neighborhood surroundings.The methodological approach is based on the analysis of 30 tools currently widespread in the international building sector to assess environmental and energetic performances. Among them an in-depth analysis extrapolated 7 main certification protocols (LEED, ITACA, CASAClima, BREEAM, LiderA', Audis, SB100) and selected 132 indicators (out of the total 448), specifically pertaining to social housing.The selected indicators, useful to measure the environmental and energetic performances beyond the minimum mandatory levels requested by the Italian building sector, have been grouped together into new classes and sub-classes. Furthermore, each sub-class has then been analysed according to the macro-categories defined by the CEN TC 350 standard in order to integrate and uniform the check-list of requirements, purposes and goals coming from the different protocols. The synthetic 'planning grid' obtained, covering the whole life-cycle of a social housing intervention, considers, at the same time, the economic, social and environmental impacts on the building and its context, housing costs, life quality and the users' awareness of the housing resources consumption.The study represents a first attempt in the Italian context to organise a grid of fundamental minimum requirements to develop sustainable social housing initiatives. The set of 7 classes of indicators is out of doubt a strategic 'planning grid' useful to guide public and private decision making in defining design and management priorities, also within the field of public announcements.


PDMS surfaces have been modified to confer both resistance to non-specific protein adsorption and clot lyzing properties. The properties and chemical compositions of the surfaces have been investigated using water contact angle measurements, ATR FT-IR spectroscopy, and XPS. The ability of the PEG component to suppress non-specific protein adsorption was assessed by measurement of radiolabeled fibrinogen uptake from buffer. The adsorption of plasminogen from human plasma to the various surfaces was studied. In vitro experiments demonstrated that lysine-immobilized surfaces with free epsilon-amino groups were able to dissolve fibrin clots, following exposure to plasma and tissue plasminogen activator. [Figure: see text].


Humans and animals consistently forego, or "discount" future rewards in favor of more proximal, but less valuable, options. This behavior is often thought of in terms of a failure of "self-control", a lack of inhibition when considering the possibility of immediate gratification. However, rather than overweighting the near-term reward, the same behavior can result from failing to properly consider the far-off reward. The capacity to plan for future gains is a core construct in Reinforcement Learning (RL), known as "model-based" planning. Both discounting and model-based planning have been shown to track everyday behaviors from diet to exercise habits to drug abuse. Here, we show that these two capacities are related via a common mechanism – people who are more likely to deliberate about future reward in an intertemporal choice task, as indicated by the time they spend considering the choice, are also more likely to make multi-step plans for reward in a sequential reinforcement learning task. In contrast, the degree to which people's intertemporal choices were driven by a more automatic bias did not correspond to their planning tendency, and neither did the more standard measure of discounting behavior. These results suggest that the standard behavioral economic measure of discounting is more fruitfully understood by decomposing it into constituent parts, and that only one of these parts corresponds to the sort of multi-step thinking needed to make plans for the future.


The possibility of constructing a personal AI raises many ethical and religious questions that have been dealt with seriously only by imaginative works of fiction; they have largely been ignored by technical experts and by philosophical and theological ethicists. Arguing that a personal AI is possible in principle, and that its accomplishments could be adjudicated by the Turing Test, the article suggests some of the moral issues involved in AI experimentation by comparing them to issues in medical experimentation. Finally, the article asks questions about the capacities and possibilities of such an artifact for making moral decisions. It is suggested that much a priori ethical thinking is necessary and that, that such a project cannot only stimulate our moral imaginations, but can also tell us much about our moral thinking and pedagogy, whether or not it is ever accomplished in fact.


This article was written to commemorate Professor Piotr Winczorek, who passed away on 9 February 2015. He was associated with the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw for over 50 years. However, the article focuses on three dimensions of Professor's academic activity: those of a researcher, teacher and friend. Piotr Winczorek's scientific interests evolved. Initially, he studied the functioning of political parties, especially in Poland during the communist regime. In this context, he tried to study various forms of social and political pluralism. In the 1980s, Piotr Winczorek concentrated on the issues of legal theory, developing his own approach to legal realism. After 1989, Professor focused on issues of public law, especially on axiological assumptions and the practice of constitutionalism, particularly the primacy of the constitution in the legal order, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and equality before the law. Piotr Winczorek was also an extraordinary teacher. He conducted classes with students, initiated new subjects and new curricula. He wrote several textbooks and coursebooks for students, including the textbook Introduction to Jurisprudence, which had 14 editions published over the past 30 years. Professor was also known for his many articles and commentaries on constitutional issues. For his younger colleagues, Piotr Winczorek was a true friend. He would invite them on a daily basis to cooperate, do joint research, and publish together. He also showed great civil courage in defending us against bureaucratic or political attacks. His honesty and wisdom is still remembered well beyond the walls of the University of Warsaw.


The move to online learning has a huge groundswell of approval and support across all sectors of education and it is likely that this level of interest which has been growing steadily will continue to grow even further in the immediate future. There are a number of clear reasons that can be seen to sit behind the popularity of this form of technology-based education. Some of the more common factors and influences driving the uptake of online delivery include:

Flexibility: In many institutions, administrators are seeing advantage in the flexibility that online learning settings create for course delivery. The technologies provide a capacity to tailor courses to the needs of learners and to provide support for program delivery to new markets;

Economy: Many people are of the firm opinion that online delivery provides opportunities for cost savings over conventional delivery forms due to its ability to be scaled for mass delivery; and

Enhanced learning: Some people see online delivery as a means to provide enhanced learning opportunities for students and as a means to help students become self-sufficient and capable self-learners.

While it is true that in some cases online learning will support the delivery of more flexible programs and that in some cases, the technology can provide for economies of scale, this book is aimed to help those people who believe that online learning provides a means to enhance learning quality. The purpose of the book is to provide practical ideas and guidance in the development of effective online learning settings.

The use of online technologies in education can take many forms and assume many different roles in educational settings. Harmon and Jones (1999) describe five levels of Web use in schools, colleges, and corporate training: (a) informational, (b) supplemental, (c) essential, (d) communal, and (e) immersive. Each level represents the relative amount of online-related course content and the level of reliance on the course Web site to deliver instruction. In other settings, use of the Web and online materials usually extends from instances where online learning supplements the teaching setting, through instances where it is used in ways which are essential to learning (mandated parts of the environment) to more contemporary forms where the totality of the learning is though online access. In this book we are mainly concerned with the latter, the use of online learning as the principal form of course delivery. Naturally much of what we discuss has implications for any form of online and Web-supported setting.


We review the definition of hypergroups by Sunder, and we associate a hypergroup to a type III subfactor $N\subset M$ of finite index, whose canonical endomorphism $\gamma\in\mathrm{End}(M)$ is multiplicity-free. It is realized by positive maps of $M$ that have $N$ as fixed points. If the depth is $>2$, this hypergroup is different from the hypergroup associated with the fusion algebra of $M$-$M$ bimodules that was Sunder's original motivation to introduce hypergroups.
We explain how the present hypergroup, associated with a suitable subfactor, controls the composition of transparent boundary conditions between two isomorphic quantum field theories, and that this generalizes to a hypergroupoid of boundary conditions between different quantum field theories sharing a common subtheory.


In the Małopolska District two underground routes located in old mine workings have been opened to the public. They were developed in the Forecarpathian Basin, in the salt mines in Wieliczka and Bochnia. The salt deposits are hosted in Tertiary Miocene formations accompanied by anhydrites, gypsum and clays. From the south, these formations are surrounded by the sandstones and shales (flysch), which belong to the Carpathian Foredeep. In both the salt mines in the tourists visit the old mine workings, mainly in the form of spacious chambers and galleries. In those mines the visitors experience a small boat trip across the underground sweet lakes. In Bochnia's salt mine visitors are also carried by the historical underground railway along 1km distance. Those salt mines are very popular underground health resorts. People ill of breathing system can spend there some time for inhalation.


Sevoflurane (Sev) is one of the most widely used pediatric anesthetics. The major concern of neonatal repeated application of Sev is its potential long‐term impairment of cognition and learning/memory, for which there still lacks effective treatment. At the cellular level, Sev exerts toxic effects in multiple aspects, making it difficult for effective interference. Melatonin is a pineal hormone regulated by and feedbacks to biological rhythm at physiological condition. Recent studies have revealed significant neuroprotective effects of exogenous melatonin or its agonists under various pathological conditions. Whether melatonin could prevent the long‐term toxicity of Sev remains elusive. Here, we report that neonatal repeated Sev exposure up‐regulated MT1 receptor in hippocampal neurons and oligodendrocytes. Pretreatment with melatonin significantly alleviated Sev‐induced synaptic deficiency, dysmyelination, and long‐term learning impairment. Both MT1‐shRNA and MT1 knockout effectively blocked the protective effects of melatonin on synaptic development, myelination, and behavior performance. Interestingly, long‐lasting suppression of Wnt signaling, instead of cAMP/PKA signaling, was observed in hippocampal neurons and oligodendrocytes after neonatal Sev exposure. Pharmacologically activating Wnt signaling rescued both the long‐term synaptic deficits and dysmyelination induced by Sev. Further analysis showed that MT1 receptor co‐expressed well with β‐catenin and Axin2 and bound to β‐catenin by its C‐terminal. Melatonin pretreatment effectively rescued Sev‐induced Wnt suppression. Wnt signaling inhibitor XAV939 significantly compromised the protective effects of melatonin. Taken together, our data demonstrated a beneficial effect of melatonin pretreatment on the long‐term synaptic impairment and dysmyelination induced by neonatal Sev exposure, and a novel MT1 receptor‐mediated interaction between melatonin and canonical Wnt signaling, indicating that melatonin may be clinically applied for improving the safety of pediatric Sev anesthesia.


Scientific visualization today usually involves scientists from multiple disciplines trying to tackle complex simulation problems or dealing with large datasets. These scientists are likely geographically distributed, so there is a cost in both finance and time, when they are required to collaborate or meet face-to-face. The complex problems and larger datasets require high performance computing facilities which are not always available from these scientists' desktops.

The objective of this research is to address these two issues. We aim to create a novel visualization framework which supports collaborative working amongst different users and utilizes high performance computational resources in a Grid environment.

The system is named as NoCoV, short for Notification-service-based Collaborative Visualization system. The system involves a number of visualization notification services which can be jointly provided by different developers and deployed on different Grid networks. A visualization notification service can subscribe to other services and receive notification messages delivered from them. By using this subscription/notification communication pattern, users can link suitable visualization services together through a centralized controller service to create customized visualization pipelines according to their different requirements. Collaborative working is supported in both creating and steering of visualization pipelines. Visualization information is recorded as XML-based descriptions and published as notification topics on a controller service. By subscribing to this controller service, collaboration can be achieved by sharing the visualization information amongst different participants. The NoCoV system accommodates users with different background knowledge and supports collaboration between them. Visualization services are jointly provided by different visualization service developers. Visualization experts can compose pipelines with the services created by service developers using their visualization expertise. Application scientists can use pipelines created by visualization experts and can set steering parameters according to their specialized knowledge.

A NoCoV prototype is implemented as proof of concept. The prototype has four visualization services and one controller service which are implemented as WSRF notification services deployed on GT4 containers. The prototype also provides a pipeline editor client GUI for visualization experts to create visualization pipelines and a parameter control client for application scientists to steer these pipelines.

The performance of the NoCoV prototype is evaluated by a test involving a pipeline distributed across different Grid networks. The limitations of the NoCoV system and the future work are also discussed at the end of this thesis.

The overall vision of the NoCoV system is to produce the next generation of visualization system, which has a worldwide repository of visualization services deployed on different Grid networks and supports collaboration amongst users on a global scale.


Article history: Received October 14, 2012 Received in revised format 24 December 2012 Accepted 5 January 2013 Available online January 18 2013 An empirical study to investigate the effects of thinking styles on emotional intelligence among employees of agriculture industry in east Azerbaijan province. The proposed study uses a standard thinking style questionnaire originally developed by Sternberg and Wagner (1992) [Sternberg, R. J., & Wagner, R. K. (1992). Thinking styles inventory. Unpublished test, Yale University]. There are 716 employees working for this agriculture-based unit and the study uses random sampling technique and chooses 255 employees for this study. Cronbach alpha has been used to verify the overall questionnaire and different tests such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Pearson correlation test are used to examine different hypotheses of this survey. The results indicate there is positive and meaningful relationship between thinking style and emotional intelligence. We can also confirm that four thinking style's components including functions, levels, scope and learning have meaningful impact on emotional intelligence when the level of significance is five or even one percent. However, forms did not have any meaningful impact on emotional intelligence. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


With almost 870 million people estimated to suffer from chronic hunger worldwide, undernourishment represents a major problem that severely affects people in developing countries. In addition to undernourishment, micronutrient deficiency alone can be a cause of serious illness and death. Large portions of the world population rely on a single, starch-rich crop as their primary energy source and these staple crops are generally not rich sources of micronutrients. As a result, physical and mental health problems related to micronutrient deficiencies are estimated to affect around two billion people worldwide. The situation is expected to get worse in parallel with the expanding world population. Improving the nutritional quality of staple crops seems to be an effective and straightforward solution to the problem. Conventional breeding has long been employed for this purpose but success has been limited to the existing diversity in the gene pool. However, biotechnology enables addition or improvement of any nutrient, even those that are scarce or totally absent in a crop species. In addition, biotechnology introduces speed to the biofortification process compared to conventional breeding. Genetic engineering was successfully employed to improve a wide variety of nutritional traits over the last decade. In the present review, progress toward engineering various types of major and minor constituents for the improvement of plant nutritional quality is discussed.


Surface velocities of grounded ice are an important input parameter for mass flux calculations and ice-sheet modelling. As on-site measurements in remote areas are sparse, satellite-based measurements have to be used to obtain area-wide surface velocities. For this purpose synthetic aperture radar data from various sensors are routinely employed. Depending on the availability of adequate SAR image pairs, the surface velocity is derived by radar interferometry, speckle or feature tracking. The accuracy of the applied methods heavily depends on external input parameters (e.g. elevation model) and the processing history. In this case study we aim to put error margins on the evaluated surface velocities by comparing the data with available on-site GPS measurement. The study focuses on the hinterland of the German overwintering station Neumayer III (Antarctica) and complements pre-site surveys for a future deep drill site. We analyse the dependency of external elevation models for the interferometric approach by comparing surface velocities based on Antarctic-wide elevation models (from satellite altimetry and photoclinometry), with surface velocities based on local elevation models (from differential SAR interferometry). The interferometric approach is restricted to the availability of coherent SAR image pairs and does not cover the floating ice shelves. We fill these gaps with data from lower-resolved speckle and feature tracking.The main goal is to point out the inaccuracy/accuracy of surface velocity fields. As a geophysical product a map of surface velocities next to the German overwintering station Neumayer III is presented. In combination with ice-thickness measurements in the area the mass flux and its uncertainties are estimated. In the future we aim to use these velocities for the derivation of stress and strain rates in complex flow regimes, such as triple points on the nearby ice domes. These areas are of particular interest for ice coring, ice sheet modelling, radio-echo sounding and seismic studies.


Ageing cohort studies around the world face common methodological challenges of data collection, measurement and analysis, which become increasingly problematic as participants grow older. While these challenges are common to all longitudinal studies, ageing cohort studies in particular highlight complex methodological issues due to the nature of the population. The National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) funded a series of workshops during 2012 that brought together experts and researchers in longitudinal and ageing cohort studies to discuss some of these methodological challenges. The series was divided into workshops around the challenges of data collection, measurement and analysis in ageing cohort studies. The workshops and international conference brought together over 150 researchers working primarily in the social and medical sciences. Within the social sciences, social statistics and sociology were the main disciplines represented; while within the medical sciences, epidemiology and gerontology were the main disciplines. Principal investigators and researchers from a number of ageing cohort studies attended the events, including the 1946, 1958, 1970 British Birth Cohort studies, English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), Whitehall II study, the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies, the Gas and Electricity Workers cohort study (GAZEL) and the Lothian birth cohort. There were presentations from early career researchers at all the events. These workshops were successful in generating discussions about the methodological contributions from different disciplines on the challenges related to data collection and analysis for ageing cohort studies. The seminar series was responsive to suggestions from attendees, for example, the theme of workshop 2 emerged from discussions at workshop 1. The themes of the conference and related training workshops emerged from the evaluations from previous workshops. Evaluations for each event were very positive, with a strong appreciation for the training workshops. Attendees were very appreciative of the provision of STATA .do files for complex analyses and they indicated a strong preference for more training events on the topics of missing data and life course analysis.

This report summarises some of the work underlying the workshops and highlights some of the innovative solutions researchers have adopted to overcome these challenges. These include using mixed modes of data collection to deal with respondent burden, using the Life Grid history method to deal with recall bias for proxy respondents, using auxiliary variables to adjust for 'missing not at random' mechanisms, and using a range of missing data analysis methods and simulation studies to assess the performance of a different analytical strategies to deal with missing data.


The "Coase theorem," in one respect, is a triumph of social science scholarship. Web searches using "Coase theorem" as key words typically yield over 100,000 hits. Economists, legal scholars, environmentalists, and political scientists have written volumes on the theorem. Few ideas written by economists in the 20th century have been as widely debated. And the debating continues, 47 years after the publication of "The Problem of Social Cost" (Coase 1960), the essay recognized as the source of the ideas in question. There is only one problem: Ronald Coase maintains that the theorem that bears his name conveys an idea that is antithetical to the message that he intended. My view is that virtually all of the criticism of the Coase theorem fails to appreciate the actual message that Coase intended with "Social Cost" and is, therefore, essentially irrelevant. Tragically, because we have focused on what he was not saying, we have not grasped what he was saying. Consequently we have been neither sufficiently appreciative nor sufficiently critical of his actual message. Coase on the Problem of Social Cost With the publication of The Firm, the Market and the Law (Coase 1988), a collection of essays which republished "The Problem of Social Cost" and "The Nature of the Finn" and which also included insightful reflections on the legacies of those articles, Coase (1988) broke his protracted silence on the way in which his work had been interpreted by economists, legal scholars, and other social scientists. He contends, "My point of view has not in general commanded assent, nor has my argument, for the most part, been understood." He attributes this lack of understanding to the fact that "most economists have a different way of looking at economic problems and do not share my conception of the nature of our subject" (Coase 1988: 1). Among his specific points of departure from the mainstream, he holds the view that economists' preoccupation with studying the logic of optimal choice has caused them to neglect the study of the institutional setting in which choice takes place and that this has eroded the substance of economic research, that human action cannot be adequately characterized as a constrained optimization problem, and that modern economic theory ignores the role of transaction costs (Coase 1988: 3-7). Perhaps the most revealing statement that Coase (1988: 13) makes about the theorem that bears his name is the following: "The Problem of Social Cost" ... has been widely discussed in the economics literature. But its influence on economic analysis has been less beneficial than I had hoped. The discussion has largely been devoted to sections III and IV of the article and even here the discussion has concentrated on the so-called "Coase theorem," neglecting other aspects of the analysis. In sections III and IV, I examined what would happen in a world in which transaction costs were assumed to be zero. My aim in doing so was not to describe what life would be like in such a world but to provide a simple setting in which to develop the analysis and, what was even more important, to make clear the fundamental role which transaction costs do, and should, play in the fashioning of the institutions which make up the economic system. Coase goes on to explain that a world without transaction costs is a peculiar world in which, among other things, firms would not exist (Coase 1988: 14-15). In fact, economic institutions, according to Coase, do not matter in a world without transaction costs. Many critics of Coase have focused their attack on his apparent neglect of the existence of transaction costs in the real world. But this criticism is misplaced. Coase's discussion of the peculiar unreal world with no transaction costs was intended to draw out the strange implications of perfect competition, which he viewed as the central perspective in modern economic analysis. …


Etoricoxib (ETO) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which is widely used in symptomatic relief of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. One of the major problems of this drug is its low solubility in biological fluids, which results into poor bioavailability after oral administration. Therefore, solid dispersion of ETO with newer carriers i. e., croscarmellose sodium (CCS) and crospovidone (CP) were prepared using CCS and CP in three ratios (1 : 1, 1 : 2 and 1 : 3) employing physical mixing method and solvent evaporation method. The drug release profile for pure drug as such and its solid dispersions was determined. ETO was released at much higher rate from its solid dispersions as compared to that of pure drug. Faster dissolution rate was observed in drug : CCS (1 : 3 ) prepared by co-evaporation method. The increase in dissolution rate of drug may be due to increase of wettability, hydrophilic nature of carrier and also due to reduction in drug crystallinity, which is supported by DSC thermograms.


Curious tracks on playas, obviously made by moving stones, have been interpreted as caused by wind blowing stones over wet level clay. The stones weigh from ounces to several hundred pounds. Among hundreds of tracks on Racetrack Playa, Inyo County, California, certain ones exhibit near parallelism which implies unit movement; precise measurements and plots confirm this. Certain bends and cusps in these irregular tracks are comparable in all tracks of the same "signature". A transparency plot of analogous points (one for each track in same signature group), when moved along plotted tracks, matches repeatedly at other analogous points. Rotation precluded true parallelism of tracks and identity of lengths and shapes. Distance of unit movement exceeded 300 feet, and maximum spread of stones in unit is 480 feet. Unit movement over so great a span scarcely allows any reasonable conclusion as to cause other than wind-blown ice floes dragging protruding stones. Ice ramparts and other evidence indicate longshore shearing motion, feasible for ice floes but impossible for ice shove by thermal expansion. The writer finds no evidence that stones, freely wind blown, have made tracks. Though not disproved, this idea meets serious objections in many other small object tracks than those surveyed and is unfeasible for tracks inscribed by 300 pound stones.


This Article discusses a comprehensive review of biomass energy sources, environment and sustainable development. This includes all the biomass energy technologies, energy efficiency systems, energy conservation scenarios, energy savings and other mitigation measures necessary to reduce emissions. The current literature is reviewed regarding the ecological, social, cultural and economic impacts of biomass technology. This article gives an overview of present and future use of biomass as an industrial feedstock for production of fuels, chemicals and other materials. However, to be truly competitive in an open market situation, higher value products are required. Results suggest that biomass technology must be encouraged, promoted, invested, implemented, and demonstrated, but especially in remote rural areas.


Proposing the thesis that, for Benjamin Britten, text-setting analysis is analogous to
song analysis; this dissertation cautions that non-engagement in text-setting is to
approach song as if it were instrumental music; likewise, to consider inadequately the
wide-ranging musical implications of music-text relations is to limit the interpretive
possibilities of song. This research approaches the analysis of song through an
engagement with songs composed by Britten in the 1930s from texts by W. H. Auden.
Blending insights from literary and linguistic studies with rhythmic analysis, this
necessarily interdisciplinary research places song analysis in cultural context; text
(poetic and musical) requires social context. Setting out with this rationale and these
aims, this dissertation offers new perspectives for song interpretation, song
classification and the social function of song.
Poetic analysis is presented as central to an understanding of Britten's song text
setting. The mimetic possibility of song to present word and mood painting receives
widespread support. This dissertation goes beyond this often considered diminutive
fundamental capacity of song to represent text, and recognises a more complete
representation of poetic form, the effect of individual words and word units and poetic
meaning, in song. Musical language is repeatedly and consistently shown to highlight,
to reinforce, to accentuate, to stress, to correlate and align with text; essentially song
complements or contests verbal language. These musical equivalences are shown to be
derivative of text but also become independent of text in song. Text setting is proposed
not as one possible component of song analysis; rather text setting is the ultimate
consolidating focus of song interpretation.


Co-evolving time series appears in a multitude of applications such as environmental monitoring, financial analysis, and smart transportation. This paper aims to address the following challenges, including (C1) how to incorporate explicit relationship networks of the time series; (C2) how to model the implicit relationship of the temporal dynamics. We propose a novel model called Network of Tensor Time Series (NeT3), which is comprised of two modules, including Tensor Graph Convolutional Network (TGCN) and Tensor Recurrent Neural Network (TRNN). TGCN tackles the first challenge by generalizing Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) for flat graphs to tensor graphs, which captures the synergy between multiple graphs associated with the tensors. TRNN leverages tensor decomposition to model the implicit relationships among co-evolving time series. The experimental results on five real-world datasets demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.


The paper focused on forest policy as a critical issue relating to implementation of sustainable forest management. The study was conducted in Kwara State which happen to be a Gateway between the Northern and Southern parts of Nigeria. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study. Primary data were collected through the administration of structured questionnaires and individual interview of the forestry administrative officers in the State Forest Department (SFD), this include the State headquarter, Zonal and Area Officers. It was discovered that the state has no forest policy of its own. All the forestry activities were carried out under the Auspices of the National Forest Policy, which was enunciated in the 60s and based on the annual allowable cut (AAC), and Sustained Yield (SY) principle. The State was faced with crippling financial resources for the forestry department to perform its functions. Incidence of encroachment, lack of support from government and inadequate inventory of the resource base are serious indicators of poor forest policy implementation in the State. Recommendation was made that the existing forest policies should be reviewed for the adequate and appropriate implementation of sustainable forest management strategy.


OBJECTIVE
Red light phototherapy is known to stimulate cell proliferation in wound healing. This study investigated whether low-level light therapy (LLLT) would promote tumor growth when pre-existing malignancy is present.

BACKGROUND DATA
LLLT has been increasingly used for numerous conditions, but its use in cancer patients, including the treatment of lymphedema or various unrelated comorbidities, has been withheld by practitioners because of the fear that LLLT might result in initiation or promotion of metastatic lesions or new primary tumors. There has been little scientific study of oncologic outcomes after use of LLLT in cancer patients.

METHODS
A standard SKH mouse nonmelanoma UV-induced skin cancer model was used after visible squamous cell carcinomas were present, to study the effects of LLLT on tumor growth. The red light group (n=8) received automated full body 670 nm LLLT delivered twice a day at 5 J/cm(2) using an LED source. The control group (n=8) was handled similarly, but did not receive LLLT. Measurements on 330 tumors were conducted for 37 consecutive days, while the animals received daily LLLT.

RESULTS
Daily tumor measurements demonstrated no measurable effect of LLLT on tumor growth.

CONCLUSIONS
This experiment suggests that LLLT at these parameters may be safe even when malignant lesions are present. Further studies on the effects of photoirradiation on neoplasms are warranted.


Pakistan stands on the front line of the war against terror. Yet this long-time ally of the West, whose links with the US have caused enormous friction within the country, is in deepening crisis. As President Pervez Musharraf struggles to cling to power through states of emergency, press curbs and imprisonment of his opponents, a range of forces threaten to destroy him and tip the country into a full-blown civil war. Drawing on extensive first-hand research and personal knowledge, Tariq Ali investigates both the causes and the consequences of Pakistan's rapid spiral into political chaos. Shedding new light on controversial questions (did the US greenlight the execution of President Zufikar Ali Bhutto in 1979? Is NATO negotiating to grant the Taliban a role in Afghanistan? Are those now jockeying for power any less corrupt than Musharraf's current cronies?) he examines the various disparate elements and each of the key individuals whose conflicts are tearing Pakistan apart.


Description: Soil Science Simplified, Fifth Edition is a significant update and revision of the classic introductory soils text. The new edition includes greater coverage of non-agricultural uses of soils ranging from municipal to engineering uses, as well as an expanded discussion of environmental uses of soils and soil conservation. In addition, the chapters covering the basic scientific aspects of soil from its physical, chemical and biological properties to basic formation will be thorougly revised and updated. Soil Science Simplified will serve as a valuable introduction to soil science that addresses many new developments to this ever-changing field while maintaining the elements that have made it a user-friendly introductory text for more than 25 years. This text will be essential reading for anyone studying soil science as well as professionals working with this valuable resource.


For more than three decades, alkylating agents have been the most widely used class of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of glial brain tumors. Today, concomitant and adjuvant temozolomide is the standard of care for newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Temozolomide alone or in combination with radiotherapy is being explored in ongoing trials in newly diagnosed patients with low-grade and anaplastic glioma. Rechallenge with alternative dosing schedules of temozolomide is a valid treatment option in recurrent, temozolomide-pretreated patients with glioblastoma, and nitrosourea compounds are alternative treatment options in this setting, in addition to novel, mostly antiangiogenic agents, notably bevacizumab. Moreover, nitrosoureas have become the gold standard comparator arm for the evaluation of novel treatments in recurrent glioblastoma.


Extracted from text ... Editorial Editorial
The most emotionally gratifying and enriching moments in
my young professional life have been those in which I was
able to permeate and connect with the patient as a person,
and be able to strike an understanding with the patient of
what disturbed his/her functional equilibrium. Further steps
down this path the patient begins to yield forth contributions
towards the solution of the mystery that has vexed him/her
to a point of dysfunction. My task as a clinician then
becomes that of tapping into the fund of knowledge
bestowed upon me by training, modified by experience
(personally ..


In July 2009, Connecticut Public Act 09-229 established an agricultural sustainability account to provide financial assistance to Connecticut milk producers during times when the federal milk pay price falls below a minimum sustainable monthly cost of production. This legislation mandates that the Commissioner of Agriculture make payments to Connecticut dairy farmers on a quarterly basis. To determine whether payments are necessary to comply with the legislation, Public Act 09-229 defines the minimum sustainable monthly cost of production as eighty-two percent of the monthly average cost of production for a New England state, as calculated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Services (ERS).


The clinical importance of cerebral autoregulation has resulted in a significant body of literature that attempts both to model the underlying physiological processes and to estimate the mathematical relationships between clinically measurable variables. The primary measurement variable used thus far has been Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity (CBFV). However, this has important drawbacks as a measure of cerebral autoregulation. We have thus investigated a new measurement variable: Tissue Oxygenation Index, which is measured using Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy. We show, using a model, that this provides another measure of cerebral autoregulation and illustrate its performance with a clinical example. It is hoped that this will lead to a greater understanding of the nature of cerebral autoregulatory processes on a global level.


No single item of clothing has had greater influence on Western images of Middle Eastern and North African women than the veil. The fascination of Western writers, artists, and photographers with the veil reflects the voyeuristic nature of our interest in what is strange and "other."Veil, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the Institute of International Visual Arts in London, explores the representation of the veil in contemporary visual arts. Providing a context for the commissioned essays are a number of classical historical texts crossing religions, cultures, genders, and ages -- from Greek myths to articles published in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Some of the contemporary artists and scholars write autobiographically about the meaning of the veil in their lives. Others take a more political approach, discussing, for example, how the events of September 11 changed the use and reception of veil imagery throughout the world. Still others take a historical approach, examining how nineteenth-century technological developments in travel and photography led to photographic depictions of both the veiled and unveiled body in relation to landscape. A number of essays look at the art historical precedents for the current interest in artwork addressing the veil, while others examine how codes of modesty and gender segregation have affected the making and viewing of films in postrevolutionary Iran.The essays are by Jananne Al-Ani, David A. Bailey, Alison Donnell, Ghazel, Salah Hassan, Reina Lewis, Hamid Naficy, Zineb Sedira, and Gilane Tawadros. The artists represented include Faisal Abdu'Allah, Kourosh Adim, Ghada Amer, Jananne Al-Ani, Farah Bajull, Samta Benyahia, Gae'!n de Cle !mbault, Marc Garanger, Shadafarin Ghadirian, Group AES, Emily Jacir, Ramesh Kalkur, Shirin Neshat, Harold Offeh, Gillo Pontecorvo, Zineb Sedira, Mitra Tabrizian, and Elin Strand.


Geological effects of the destructive May 31, 1970, Perú earthquake (Ms = 7.7) extended over roughly 65,000 km2 of west-central Perú. Earthquake-triggered slope failures of all types that occurred throughout the mountainous parts of the region extensively damaged transportation routes and irrigation canals and temporarily dammed some rivers and lakes. The geologically most important and spectacular of these, a cataclysmic debris avalanche from between 5,500 and 6,400 m altitude on the north peak of Huascarán Mountain, buried the city of Yungay and part of Ranrahirca (elevation about 2,500 m) with a loss of more than about 18,000 lives. The debris avalanche involved 50-100 million m3 of rock, ice, snow, and soil that traveled 14.5 km from the source to Yungay at an average velocity of between 280 and 335 km/hr. Exceptionally rapid movement of the avalanche is indicated by eyewitness accounts, by topographic irregularities as high as 140 m that were overridden, and locally by boulders weighing several tons that were hurled as much as 1,000 m beyond its margins. A pulse of muddy water from the debris avalanche that swept down the Río Santa 160 km to the sea inundated farms and small settlements, buried highway and railroad routes, and destroyed the diversion dam and access bridge to a major hydroelectric plant.
 The extensive destruction to communities and an additional estimated 20,000 casualties resulted primarily from failure of adobe and masonry structures which had little shear resistance to lateral forces imposed by seismic shaking. The degree of damage to buildings and to transportation routes was aggravated in some areas of saturated unconsolidated deposits by differential compaction, downslope slumping or sliding, lateral spreading of liquefied sediments toward free faces, and possibly amplification of seismic vibrations.
 The absence of surface tectonic displacements or of a significant tsunami and the spatial distribution of the main shock and aftershocks suggest that the earthquake originated by movement on a fault, or faults, beneath the continental shelf at depths between 45 and 65 km.


In this paper we deal from an algorithmic perspective with different questions regarding properly edge-colored (or PEC) paths, trails and closed trails. Given a c-edge-colored graph G(c), we show how to polynomially determine, if any, a PEC closed trail subgraph whose number of visits at each vertex is specified before hand. As a consequence, we solve a number of interesting related problems. For instance, given subset S of vertices in G(c), we show how to maximize in polynomial time the number of S-restricted vertex (resp., edge) disjoint PEC paths (resp., trails) in G(c) with endpoints in S. Further, if G(c) contains no PEC closed trails, we show that the problem of finding a PEC s-t trail visiting a given subset of vertices can be solved in polynomial time and prove that it becomes NP-complete if we are restricted to graphs with no PEC cycles. We also deal with graphs G(c) containing no (almost) PEC cycles or closed trails through s or t. We prove that finding 2 PEC s-t paths (resp., trails) with length at most L > 0 is NP-complete in the strong sense even for graphs with maximum degree equal to 3 and present an approximation algorithm for computing k vertex (resp., edge) disjoint PEC s-t paths (resp., trails) so that the maximum path (resp., trail) length is no more than k times the PEC path (resp., trail) length in an optimal solution. Further, we prove that finding 2 vertex disjoint s-t paths with exactly one PEC s-t path is NP-complete. This result is interesting since as proved in Abouelaoualim et. al.(2008), the determination of two or more vertex disjoint PEC s-t paths can be done in polynomial time. Finally, if G(c) is an arbitrary c-edge-colored graph with maximum vertex degree equal to four, we prove that finding two monochromatic vertex disjoint s-t paths with different colors is NP-complete. We also propose some related problems.


The fourth thrilling installment in the bestselling Under Suspicion series from #1 New York Times bestselling author and Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark and American crime novelist Alafair Burke. Television producer Laurie Moran puts everything on the line to help a woman she thinks was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Casey Carter was convicted of murdering her fiance, famed philanthropist Hunter Raleigh III, fifteen years ago. But Casey has always claimed she was innocent. Although she was charged and served out her sentence in prison, she is still living under suspicion. She hears whispers at the grocery store. She can't get a job. Even her own mother treats her like she's guilty. Her story attracts the attention of Laurie Moran and the Under Suspicion news team. It is Casey's last chance to finally clear her name and Laurie pledges to exonerate her.

With Alex Buckley taking a break from the show and cooling his potential romance with Laurie, Under Suspicion introduces a new on-air host named Ryan Nichols. Nichols is a young legal whiz with a Harvard Law degree, Supreme Court clerkship, experience as a federal prosecutor, and regular stints on the cable news circuit. He's got a big reputation and the attitude to match it. Ryan has no problems with steering and stealing the show and even tries to stop Laurie from taking on Casey's case because he's so certain she's guilty.

An ego-maniacal new co-host, a relentless gossip columnist who seems to have all the dirt (and a surprising informant), and Casey's longstanding bad reputation: Laurie must face this and more to do what she believes is right - to once and for all prove Casey's innocence, that is if she's innocent.

The Sleeping Beauty Killer will keep you guessing until the very end.


This volume reports on the results of logistics research initiated and coordinated by IIASA within the former New Logistics Technologies (NLT) Activity of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Project. The focus of the research is on long-term changes in the logistics structures, performance, and strategies on the macro-economic level and their cross-country comparative assessment.

The data for this book were collected from 1987-1989. The individual reports should not be considered to be exhaustive treatments. The reports from the Eastern countries reflect the situation at the eve of the dramatic changes in these countries which started in late 1989. Accordingly, some of the conclusions and recommendations in these reports may be biased. However, they contain unique data and analyses which together with the reports from the Western countries and the background material (case studies, statistical data, extended versions of the reports, etc.) serve as a good base for more in-depth studies.

The book may serve a wide audience: international organizations, policy makers (ministers of transport, industry, trade, regional planners), business circles (multinational companies, joint venture companies, managers involved in or dependent on logistics), and the research community.


While there is substantial literature about the socio-cultural characteristics and values associated with recreational and commercial fisheries in the U.S., studies directed at those who 'fish for food'—those who depend on consuming their catch to various degrees—are relatively sparse. Using qualitative data collected through 80 semi-structured interviews with fishers in the summer and fall of 2018 in Carteret County, North Carolina, this study aims to better understand the group of recreational fishers who consume their catch by describing social and cultural dimensions and values associated with fishing for food, examining the role of infrastructure in facilitating access to benefits associated with this activity, and considering how knowledge of existing licensing regulations surrounding subsistence license waivers affect this fishing community. Interviews conducted at free public fishing structures in the region revealed that fishers derive a variety of values and benefits from fishing at these sites, including access to recreation, nutrition, a social community, and mental health benefits, which were found to be negatively impacted by Hurricane Florence in September 2018. We also found an informal economy of sharing catch on- and off-site that extends the reach and benefits facilitated by public infrastructure to people beyond those using it directly. Overall, we call for conceptualizations of 'fishing for food' that include aspects that go beyond traditional definitions of 'subsistence' or 'recreational' fishing such as food security, access, and less obvious social and cultural motivations behind the activity. These findings are a compelling rationalization for the creation and maintenance of formal and informal fishing places locally and, by extension, in other coastal areas, given the array of benefits provided by access to these types of locations.


This thesis aimed: 1. to examine the accuracy of classic and specific bioimpedance vector analysis (BIVA) in body composition assessment of athletes, focusing the analysis on absolute values of body mass [fat mass (FM), fat-free mass (FFM), total body water (TBW), extracellular water (ECW), intracellular water (ICW)] and on values independent from body dimensions (%FM, ICW/ECW); 2. to explore the suitability of BIVA in evaluation long-term body fluid changes, over a competitive season in athletes; 3. to determine the time course of bioimpedance values after a period of controlled exercise and when a cold shower with a standardized duration and water temperature was applied; 4. to determine the effects of dehydration on neuromuscular functionality and time trial (TT) performance during a cycling exercise in athletes. Specific BIVA turns out to be more accurate for the analysis of %FM in athletes, while it does not correctly evaluate TBW, for which classic BIVA appears to be a suitable approach. The vector changes measured with BIVA convincingly mirror fluids loss or gain over a season. Additionally, peripheral vectors lying on the left or right side of the minor axis of the BIVA tolerance ellipses indicate more or less ICW/ECW, respectively. BIVA might be a valuable tool in identifying dehydration and fluid shifts after physical exercise. A 10-minute cold shower enables the stabilization of bioimpedance analysis measurements within 20 minutes after 30 minutes running exercise, which might facilitate the assessment of hydration change after exercise. Otherwise, without shower the time until reaching stable bioimpedance values is prolonged to 40 min. After exercise induced dehydration, the bioimpedance vector significantly lengthens along the major axis of the tolerance ellipse, in conformity with body weight loss. Neuromuscular function, assessed by surface electromyography on the thigh muscles, shows a lower muscle activation in TT performance in dehydration conditions.


With the ever-increasing economic challenges facing education in Lesotho and indeed the world at large, there is a need for innovative solutions to support academic programmes without compromising quality. The use of computer simulations and video demonstrations is increasingly finding use globally in order to respond to economic challenges and purportedly to improve understanding of abstract phenomena. This manuscript presents the views of the chemistry teachers and students registered at the National  University of Lesotho (NUL) towards the development of a Virtual Laboratory (VL) where the experiments in the secondary school chemistry syllabus, will be video-recorded and distributed to schools. The results demonstrated a need for VL since only 4 % of the respondents indicated having performed more than 10 experiments with reasons ranging from poorly equipped laboratories (66 %) to no laboratories (6 %) for fewer to no experiments having been performed. This venture is generally accepted (96 % of 166 respondents) with only a minority stating it can never replace physical laboratory. Distribution of the VL would require innovative means since internet accessibility seems a challenge for most schools with accessibility of only 35 %. KEYWORDS : Lesotho, secondary school chemistry, experiments, poorly equipped laboratories, virtual laboratory.


In 1956, Lord Ismay, Secretary General of NATO, formulated a task to "keep Russians out of Europe." Today, such exclusion continues to be the main strategy of NATO countries. Many people who follow the state of affairs in post-Soviet countries may believe that residents' perceptions of NATO are polarized, with Georgia and Ukraine--two countries where Western leaders came to power through "velvet revolutions"--on one side, and Russia and Belarus on the other. It is not a secret that Russia has reacted negatively to NATO missile defense plans in Eastern Europe, as well as to the idea of admitting the Ukraine and Georgia to the NATO alliance. Gallup World Polls conducted in 2008 and 2009 revealed that the situation is somewhat different. Gallup asked the following question in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, which includes 10 CIS countries, associate CIS member country Turkmenistan, and former CIS member Georgia: "Do you associate NATO with the protection of your country, with a threat to your country, or do you see it as neither protection nor threat?" Attitudes Toward NATO in the CIS Region Among all countries surveyed, Georgia, on average, has the highest percentage of residents (54 percent) who associate NATO with the protection of their country. Georgians' views of NATO are nearly the mirror opposite of the views of Russians and Belarusians, among whom roughly one-half associate NATO with a threat to their countries. These differences largely reflect the overall weakening of Russian-Georgian relations that has occurred as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili pursued NATO membership and closer ties with the West. Relations, of course, reached their breaking point in the 2008 Russia-Georgia War. Notably, Georgians' opinions about NATO in 2009 are relatively unchanged from what they were in the months before the war and the country's subsequent withdrawal from the CIS. Ukrainians' perceptions of NATO, on the other hand, align far more closely with Russians' and Belarusians' opinions than they do with Georgians' views. More than half of Ukraine's population lives in the eastern and southern regions, where residents are traditionally oriented toward Russia. This orientation, in addition to their dissatisfaction with Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko's pro-NATO efforts, helps explain the sizable 41 percent of residents who perceive NATO as a threat to their country. Ukrainians' views, like Georgians', remained relatively the same between 2008 and 2009. As with Ukraine and Georgia, views about NATO across the rest of the CIS region are largely defined in terms of a country's relations with Russia and its citizens' sociocultural ties. Historically, Tajikistan has been oriented both toward its neighboring countries that share the Persian language (Iran and Afghanistan) and toward Russia, on which it depends for security and labor migration. The wars in Iran and Afghanistan, as well as Russia's constant hidden or open opposition to the United States, may influence Tajikistanis' views of NATO--and hence the organization's relatively low average protection rating of 9 percent. It is interesting to note, however, that the percentage of Tajikistanis who associate NATO with protection rose significantly between 2008 and 2009--from 5 percent to 18 percent--and potentially reflects their increased level of approval of the new US leadership (30 percent in 2008 versus 42 percent in 2009). In Azerbaijan, a move toward modernization and integration into the world economy helps explain the relatively high 36 percent of residents who associate NATO with the protection of their country and the 9 percent who perceive it as a threat. Baku is moving toward closer ties with Turkey, an important and strong NATO member with which Azerbaijan has cultural and linguistic connections. Furthermore, Azerbaijan's economy is growing quickly because of energy projects that are in opposition to Moscow's interests--for example, the Baku-Jeykhan oil pipeline. …


Polymeric materials filled with inorganic microparticles can be described as polymeric microparticle composites. These materials combine the various mechanical, physical and chemical properties of different phases. Waste microparticles can also be used as filler. Inclusion of these waste microparticles can optimize the required mechanical properties and decrease the price. This paper describes the possibilities of using recycled waste rubber powder in polymer composite systems. The aim of the experiment was to quantify the mechanical properties of epoxy resin (Glue Epox Rapid – with increased speed of hardening) and polyurethane (Sika Power – resin based on polyol) filled with recycled EPDM rubber powder (29 μm) gained from a Czech company and to describe the changes in the mechanical qualities with a changeable amount of microparticles. Composites were prepared with a different filler concentration of resins (5–35 volume percent). Cohesive and adhesive characteristics were chosen for the quantification of the system. Adhesive strength to the steel adherent was tested by means of lap-shear tensile strength. Cohesive strength was tested by means of tensile strength. Hardness was measured by the Shore D method. The described use of waste material is inexpensive and offers the possibility of recycling material. The application of waste EPDM powder in the area of resins is a benfitial way of material usage which should be preferred.


Even though extensive research has examined the role of nutrition on milk fat composition, there is less information on the impact of forages on milk fatty acid (FA) composition. In the current study, the effect of replacing grass silage (GS) with maize silage (MS) as part of a total mixed ration on animal performance and milk FA composition was examined using eight multiparous mid-lactation cows in a replicated 4 × 4 Latin square with 28-day experimental periods. Four treatments comprised the stepwise replacement of GS with MS (0, 160, 334 and 500 g/kg dry matter (DM)) in diets containing a 54 : 46 forage : concentrate ratio on a DM basis. Replacing GS with MS increased (P < 0.001) the DM intake, milk yield and milk protein content. Incremental replacement of GS with MS in the diet enhanced linearly (P < 0.001) the proportions of 6:0-14:0, decreased (P < 0.01) the 16:0 concentrations, but had no effect on the total milk fat saturated fatty acid content. Inclusion of MS altered the distribution of trans-18:1 isomers and enhanced (P < 0.05) total trans monounsaturated fatty acid and total conjugated linoleic acid content. Milk total n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content decreased with higher amounts of MS in the diet and n-6 PUFA concentration increased, leading to an elevated n-6 : n-3 PUFA ratio. Despite some beneficial changes associated with the replacement of GS with MS, the overall effects on milk FA composition would not be expected to substantially improve long-term human health. However, the role of forages on milk fat composition must also be balanced against the increases in total milk and protein yield on diets containing higher proportions of MS.


In their review, Esteban-Vasallo et al. (2012) discussed the use of human placenta to evaluate biomarkers of exposure to heavy metals. They correctly concluded that the use of placental tissue specimens to assess heavy metal exposure is actually underused. Surprisingly, they did not mention the well-documented relationship between mercury released from mercury-containing dental amalgam fillings and mercury disposition in placental tissues (Clarkson and Magos 2006; Gundacker and Hengstschlager 2012; Richardson et al. 2011).

Studies have suggested an association between mercury levels in placental tissues and the observed mercury dental amalgams in women (Ask et al. 2002; Palkovicova et al. 2008; Richardson et al. 2011). Elevated placental mercury levels have been reported in dental workers who, throughout pregnancy, were exposed to mercury vapor (Hg0) released during preparation of mercury amalgam in dental offices (Guzzi and Pigatto 2007; Wannag and Skjaerasen 1975). As noted by Drasch et al. (1994), the mother-to-fetus transfer of mercury Hg0 from amalgams has been reported in human autopsy samples, and elevated levels of total mercury have been observed in the brain, liver, and kidney of human fetuses; these levels have been linked to the number of maternal amalgam-restored surfaces.

Transplacental exposure to heavy metals may affect child growth and cause neurodevelopmental delays. Thus, further efforts should be made to measure and quantify maternal exposure to heavy metals in placenta to estimate environmental prenatal exposure.


Using the techniques of microelectromechanical systems, we are developing chip-scale atomic sensors based on laser excitation of alkali atoms. Recently, we demonstrated a magnetometer physics package based on coherent population trapping that had a sensitivity of 50 pT/Hzfrac12 at 10 Hz, had a volume of 12 mm3, and used 195 mW of power as presented by Schwindt et al. (2004). To improve the sensitivity and reduce the power consumption of the magnetometer, we are evaluating other methods of interrogating the atoms for use in microfabricated devices. One of these methods uses frequency modulated nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (FM NMOR). We demonstrate that an FM NMOR magnetometer can be made to self-oscillate, offering simple construction and low power consumption


This paper considers a moral hazard model with (i) a risk-neutral agent and (ii) agent limited liability. Prior to interacting with the principal, the agent designs the production technology, which is a specification of the agent's cost of generating each output distribution with support in [0, 1]. After observing the production technology, the principal offers a payment scheme and then the agent chooses a distribution over outputs. First, we show that there is an optimal design involving only binary distributions on {0, 1}; that is, the cost of any other distribution is prohibitively high. Then, we characterize the equilibrium technology defined on the binary distributions and show that the equilibrium payoff of both the principal and the agent is 1/e. A notable feature of the equilibrium is that the principal is indifferent between offering the equilibrium bonus rewarding output one and anything less than that. Finally, the analysis of the model is shown to generalize to the case where the agent is risk averse.


This Guide provides an overview on the essential types of lasers and their key properties as well as an introduction into the most important physical and technological aspects of lasers. Apart from describing the basic principles (such as stimulated emission and the properties of optical resonators), this Guide discusses the numerous important properties of laser crystals, the impact of thermal effects on laser performance, methods of wavelength tuning and pulse generation, and laser noise. Practitioners will also gain valuable insight from remarks on laser safety and obtain new ideas about how to make the laser development process more efficient.


While the impact of norms on post-conflict statebuilding operations has been well-explored in the literature, the ways in which the same normative frameworks affect the exit practices of such operations has so far remained unaddressed. To fill this gap, this paper examines the impact of the liberal-democratic norms governing statebuilding operations on the timing and process of exit of post-conflict international transitional administrations. To that end, it first examines the concept of exit, arguing that exit is best considered as a process rather than an event. The second section outlines the normative framework that has shaped postconflict statebuilding activities since the end of the cold war, and proposes three ways in which norms can affect exit: first, that norms act as blueprints for statebuilding and can thereby shape benchmarks for exit; second, that norms create "zones of permissibility" that explicitly commit statebuilders to a transitional presence and make exit central to the legitimacy of statebuilding operations; and third, that local actors strategically use norms, in particular those of self-determination and the taboo of permanent control of a territory, to push for an early exit of statebuilding operations. The third section explores both the scope and limitations of the three functions of norms with regard to exit in the context of a brief case study of UNMIK's exit from Kosovo. The article concludes with some observations about the impact of the findings for exit strategies of international actors from statebuilding operations.


Object recognition performance that rivals human ability is one of the primary goals of computer vision research. While recognition may take many forms, key tasks include detection, estimating object pose, and segmenting the object from the background. This thesis explores the use of holistic shape matching for recognition using bottom-up image structures such as image segments and contours for all of these tasks. Holistic shape matching utilizes global information about object shape for matching, rather than local image features which often contain too little information to match reliably to the object model. By examining different tasks related to object recognition, we demonstrate the value of holistic shape matching in a broad range of problems, including perceptual grouping, human pose estimation, and object recognition.
First, we introduce a method for perceptual grouping of contours in an image into larger groups that uses holistic shape matching to estimate the motion of image contours to a second, related image and group them according to similarties in motion. Holistic shape matching provides scoring for different motion hypotheses, and the final grouping is achieved using a min-cut graph cut to infer the cluster assignment for each contour.
Secondly, we describe a method for human pose estimation using image segments that incrementally merges segments into hypotheses for increasingly larger regions of the human body. These hypotheses are verified by matching against a set of shape exemplars using a shape matching method that is articulation-invariant and incorporates holistic shape information.
Lastly, we present a two-step method for automatically learning an object detector for an object category from positive and negative images annotated with bounding boxes. In the first step, the object shape is learned from bottom-up image contours extracted in the positive images by searching for "lucky" contours that can explain large portions of the shape of positive examples. Given the learned shape, the second step trains a discriminative object detector that matches the shape against contours, emphasizing shape features that provide good detection performance. We compare against baselines and previous work that do not use holistic evaluation of shape features to demonstrate its value.


Visual object recognition allows fish to locate prey, avoid predators, recognize individuals, choose mates, and navigate. Previous studies have examined shape discrimination in goldfish, but without controlling multiple dimensions of the stimuli to closely examine which features are salient for fish. The goal of this study was to explore features that goldfish (Carassius auratus) may use to discriminate between 2D geometric and complex shapes (e.g., length, width, area, diameter, symmetry). We assessed shape perception in fish using a two-alternative forced choice task. Five stimulus pairs were presented to goldfish: (1) a solid circle and rectangle matched for area; (2) a solid circle and rectangle matched for length; (3) a solid circle and square matched for length and width; (4) an unfilled circle and four-blade fan matched for diameter, area, and symmetry; and (5) two concentric unfilled circles and six-blade fan matched for diameter, area, and symmetry. Fish were tested using the 'correction method' in Experiment 1 and the 'non-correction method' in Experiment 2. Goldfish visually discriminated between the geometric shapes (stimulus pairs 1-3), but failed to discriminate between complex shapes (stimulus pair 5). Only the fish in Experiment 1 learned to discriminate between the complex shapes in stimulus pair 4. This study provided preliminary evidence for shape discrimination in goldfish when stimulus features are controlled. However, further work is needed to determine whether goldfish use a single feature that changes from stimulus pair to stimulus pair, a combination of features, or holistic processing to discriminate among shape stimuli.


The goal of our research is to support the sharing of stories with digital photographs. Some map sites are now collecting stories associated with peoples' relationships to places. Users are mapping collections of places including intangible emotional associations of places along with photographs, videos. Though this framework of mapping stories is important for accelerating individual creation and transmission of map content, it is not expressive enough to communicate stories narratively. For example, especially when the number of the mapped collections of places is large, it is not easy for viewers to read the map, and it is not easy for creators to express stories as series of events in the real world. That is because one narrative story in a form of a sequence of text narrations, a sequence of photographs, a movie, and an audio like podcasting, etc. is mapped to just one point. As a result, it's up to the viewers which point on the map to read, and in what order. The common framework is rather suitable for mapping and expressing fragments or snapshots of a whole story, and not suitable for expressing a whole story narratively by using a whole area of a map as the setting of the story. We therefore propose a new framework for mapping personal photo collections and constructing them as stories such as route guidances, sightseeing guidances, historical topics, fieldwork records, personal diaries, and so on. We named this framework as spatial slideshow. A spatial slideshow is a fusion of personal photo mapping and photo storytelling. Each story of a spatial slideshow is made of a sequence of mapped photographs, and presented as synchronized animations of a map and an enhanced photo slideshow. The main technical suggestion of this paper is a method for creating a three-dimensional animation of photo image which has a visual effect of moving from photo to photo. We have developed a personal photo album software and released it on the Web, which works as an editor and a browser of spatial slideshows. We assume the proposed framework has a significance of helping with grassroots development of spatial content driven by visual communications about places or events in the real world.


We consider a statistical framework in which recurrent networks of spiking neurons learn to generate spatio-temporal spike patterns. Given biologically realistic stochastic neuronal dynamics we derive a tractable learning rule for the synaptic weights towards hidden and visible neurons that leads to optimal recall of the training sequences. We show that learning synaptic weights towards hidden neurons significantly improves the storing capacity of the network. Furthermore, we derive an approximate online learning rule and show that our learning rule is consistent with Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity in that if a presynaptic spike shortly precedes a postynaptic spike, potentiation is induced and otherwise depression is elicited.


Some Austronesian languages make a grammatical distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, with further distinctions in alienable possession. While the rise of the alienable–inalienable contrast may be due to contact with Papuan languages, the development of the contrasts within alienable possession is internal to Austronesian. Similar complex systems of possessive constructions are found in some languages spoken in other parts of the world. In one subgroup of Austronesian the contrasts within alienable possession have been lost and only the alienable–inalienable distinction persists. The paper reviews the claim of Papuan–Austronesian contact, and argues that grammatical contrasts in alienable possession are cognitively/functionally motivated and that there are no such motivating factors in inalienable possession.


The Holy See enjoys rights under international law that few, if any, nonState actors (excluding intergovernmental organizations) enjoy: it has joined various intergovernmental organizations, it is a party to a substantial number of bilateral and multilateral treaties, it sends and receives diplomatic representatives, is said to enjoy immunity from jurisdiction, and has been granted permanent observer status at the United Nations. However, unlike the Vatican City State, the Holy See is not to be characterized as a State, given that it has a global spiritual remit and that it can act internationally without a territorial base. Instead, it is a sui generis non-State international legal person which borrows its personality from its 'spiritual sovereignty' as the center of the Catholic Church.


Large teams of mobile robots have an unprecedented potential to assist humans in a number of roles ranging from humanitarian efforts to e-commerce order fulfillment. Utilizing a team of robots provides an inherent parallelism in computation and task completion while providing redundancy to isolated robot failures. Whether a mission requires all robots to stay close to each other in a formation, navigate to a preselected set of goal locations, or to actively try to spread out to gain as much information as possible, the team must be able to successfully navigate the robots to desired locations. While there is a rich literature on motion planning for teams of robots, the problem is sufficiently challenging that in general all methods trade off one of the following properties: completeness, computational scalability, safety, or optimality. This dissertation proposes robot interchangeability as an additional trade-off consideration. Specifically, the work presented here leverages the total interchangeability of robots and develops a series of novel, complete, computationally tractable algorithms to control a team of robots and avoid collisions while retaining a notion of optimality. This dissertation begins by presenting a robust decentralized formation control algorithm for control of robots operating in tight proximity to one another. Next, a series of complete, computationally tractable multiple robot planning algorithms are presented. These planners preserve optimality, completeness, and computationally tractability by leveraging robot interchangeability. Finally, a polynomial time approximation algorithm is proposed that routes teams of robots to visit a large number of specified locations while bounding the suboptimality of total mission completion time. Each algorithm is verified in simulation and when applicable, on a team of dynamic aerial robots. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics First Advisor Vijay Kumar Second Advisor Nathan Michael This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1478


This thesis sets out to investigate aspects of the development of phonological awareness in relation to word reading in children aged between 5- and 7-years. The principal aim has been to establish how, for these children, phonological awareness relates to other cognitive factors that might jointly support the development of early reading skills. Data derives from children in their first three years of formal education (aged 5- to 7-years) and a group of partially-hearing children aged 7-years.

The children's performance in a measure of categorical speech have been compared with their levels of implicit phonological awareness. The results do not indicate that phonological awareness is significantly associated with children's ability to categorise speech sounds.

Following this investigations have been conducted to determine the extent to which implicit phonological awareness is affected by working memory and lexical knowledge. It emerges that memory is implicated in the phonological awareness tasks, but is not a developmental antecedent. The phonological similarity effect is also studied and not found to relate to age or reading ability in hearing or partially-hearing children. Aspects of the working memory model are discussed in relation to children's performance in tests of word recognition and phonological awareness.

In the penultimate chapter children's lexical knowledge (vocabulary) is found to interact with their performance in the measure of memory span. It appears that the development of the awareness of initial phonemes may be facilitated by having limited memory processing space. Overall it was found that lexical knowledge was predictive of phonological awareness. This conclusion was supported by a finding that the partially-hearing children had poorer lexical knowledge than younger hearing children with levels of phonological awareness similar to the partially-hearing children.

The findings in that chapter also indicate that phonological awareness and lexical knowledge may make separable contributions to word reading. In the final chapter structural equation modelling of 'Reading' is undertaken in order to establish how phonological awareness, memory span and lexical knowledge together relate to word reading. The findings there confirm the covariance of phonological awareness, memory span and lexical knowledge, but also suggest that, in contrast to other research findings, these factors may not always be clearly related to word reading.

The study has also elicited some information about the likely difficulties of partially hearing children who were here not found to have good levels of phonological awareness or lexical knowledge. In the final chapter it is suggested that further work should be undertaken to study partially-hearing children to establish how reading develops in the absence of age-appropriate levels of phonological awareness and lexical knowledge.


This study sought to find the effects of two teaching strategies—the use of lesson outline and the activation of prior knowledge—on note taking and test scores. The relationship between notes and test scores was also determined. Three intact classes of freshmen high school boys were assigned to three note taking environments prior to attending a videotaped lecture class. They were randomly assigned to prior knowledge environment, lesson outline environment, and the control environment. A posttest was administered immediately after the lecture and the students' notes were collected and rated. The same test was administered to the students a week later, after they have reviewed their notes. Results indicated that prior knowledge and lesson outline do not necessarily induce any specific note taking strategy. Note taking and review of notes are related to better test scores. Correlation tests showed that high test scores are associated with more notes.


This paper investigates the potential relevance to health care reform of the Nobel Prize-winning research of Elinor Ostrom on community-based management of natural resource commons. Two related interpretations of the concept of a "health commons" are considered, the first (a micro-commons) consisting of specific programs of quality improvement or health promotion, and the second encompassing the entire system of physical, financial, human, and social resources relevant to the delivery of health care in a region. The proliferation of micro-commons has deepened the fragmentation of health care delivery systems, and rising costs of health care threaten the long-term sustainability of this mode of delivery. Cross-stakeholder collaborations can serve as "stewards" of either of these health commons, under conditions analogous to the Design Principles identified by Ostrom. Examples from the case of Grand Junction, Colorado, are used to illustrate the relevance of these principles to shared stewardship of a regional health commons. The paper concludes with a set of questions that can help assess a community's ability to more effectively manage their own system of health care delivery.


BACKGROUND
Most analyses of age-related changes in fertility cannot separate effects due to reduced frequency of sexual intercourse from effects directly related to ageing. Information on intercourse collected daily through each menstrual cycle provides the data for estimating day-specific probabilities of pregnancy for specific days relative to ovulation, and these estimates allow unconfounded analysis of ageing effects.

METHODS
A total of 782 healthy couples using natural family planning methods contributed prospective data on 5860 menstrual cycles. Day of ovulation was based on basal body temperature measurements. Estimates of day-specific probabilities of pregnancy and the length of the fertile window were compared across age groups.

RESULTS
Nearly all pregnancies occurred within a 6 day fertile window. There was no evidence for a shorter fertile window in older men or women. On average, the day-specific probabilities of pregnancy declined with age for women from the late 20s onward, with probabilities of pregnancy twice as high for women aged 19-26 years compared with women aged 35-39 years. Controlling for age of the woman, fertility was significantly reduced for men aged >35 years.

CONCLUSIONS
Women's fertility begins to decline in the late 20s with substantial decreases by the late 30s. Fertility for men is less affected by age, but shows significant decline by the late 30s.


Abstract Silvestri interviews McCloskey about her forthcoming book, 'Beyond Behaviorism, Positivism, and Neo-Institutionalism in Economics', critical of recent economics, especially of neo-institutionalism. Neo-institutionalism uses the ugly character 'Herr Max U' as its central idea: the elevation of Prudence to the only virtue. Institutions are mainly intermediate, not ultimate, causes in society. Ethics, rhetoric, identity, ideology, and ideas matter. McCloskey's turn to defending liberalism is in the background of her critique of behaviorism, positivism, and neo-institutionalism as anti-liberal, reducing the analysis of people to a model of childish slaves. Liberalism is the theory of non-slave adults. Of the big ideas of the past few centuries, only liberalism treats people with suitable dignity, and permits them to have a go, and make others rich. Neo-institutionalism shares the two sins of modern Samuelsonian economics: a devotion of mere existence proofs; and a deviation to arbitrary tests of statistical 'significance'. And in its tale of a rise of 'capitalism', it shares the errors of amateur economic history. The better word for the modern economic world of the Great Enrichment – fully 3,000% increases in real income per person – is 'innovism'. Neo-institutionalism, as the method of historical economics, must be replaced by 'Humanomics'.


I study the relation between internal governance and creditor governance. A deterioration in creditor governance may increase the agency costs of debt and managerial opportunism at the expense of shareholders. I exploit the introduction of credit default swaps (CDS) as a negative shock to creditor governance. I provide evidence consistent with shareholders pushing for a substitution effect between internal governance and creditor governance. Following CDS introduction, CDS firms reduce managerial risk-taking incentives relative to other firms. At the same time, after the start of CDS trading, CDS firms increase managerial wealth-performance sensitivity, board independence, and CEO turnover performance-sensitivity relative to other firms.


We have used a femtosecond-resolved spectroscopic technique based on the Stark effect (electromodulated differential absorption) in order to investigate free charge generation and charge drift in solar cell devices of neat conjugated polymer pBTTT and in its 1:1 (by weight) blend with PCBM. In the latter, the fullerene molecules intercalate between the polymer side-chains, yielding a co-crystal phase. Our results show that free charge generation in both materials is ultrafast and strongly dependent on the applied reverse bias. Charge drift to the electrodes (under strong reverse bias) occurs with comparable dynamics on the 1.2 ns time scale for neat pBTTT and the blend, and is probably dominated by hole transport within/between polymer chains.