Objectives: This open-label trial was performed to assess the immune markers in a cohort of children with refractory epilepsy in order to identify diagnostic and therapeutic markers and to also investigate the effect of an immunologically active supplement derived from mushroom, a standardized extract of cultured Lentinula edodes mycelia (ECLM), on the clinical status and on the immunological markers in the subjects.Methods: Eighteen pediatric patients diagnosed with refractory epilepsy in which antiepileptic therapy was not effective were enrolled. All subjects were also treated with anticonvulsant medications for their seizures. Patients were administered 0.6 g/day (< 3 years old) or 1.2 g/day (> 3 years old) of ECLM (fine-granule equivalent) orally for one month. Immunological markers were assessed at baseline and after one month. Video electroencephalogram (EEG) was taken twice, once before the trials and once at the end of ECLM treatment. Seizure frequency and behavioral symptoms were measured by a questionnaire survey of the parents. A two-month follow-up was also performed for surveillance of secondary infections.Results: The subjects treated with ECLM showed significant elevation of several immune parameters including immunoglobulin G (IgG), CD3, CD4, and CD20 lymphocytes, and phagocytic index. Six of the 18 children on stable anticonvulsant drugs had fewer seizures reported during the ECLM treatment. The ECLM-treated patients also had less sharp and spike activity in the EEG measurement. At the two-month follow-up, the ECLM-treated subjects had developed fewer infections and viral syndromes compared to their condition before the trial. The children's family reported other subjective behavioral improvements, leading to improved quality of life (QOL). Conclusion: ECLM administration to the pediatric patients with refractory epilepsy contributed to improvement of epileptic manifestation and decrease of epileptic seizure, possibly by suppressing the reactivation of herpes virus, as well as improvement of QOL. In addition, it was demonstrated that ECLM is a safe supplement for infants and children. Keywords: ECLM, epilepsy, children, pediatric, mushroom


As majority Muslim societies with significant minorities and dominant militaries, Indonesia and Egypt experienced strikingly similar political trajectories between the early 1950s and the late 1990s. Yet, their respective democratic transitions have seen vastly different outcomes: while Indonesia solidified its democracy by extracting the military from politics, Egypt's democratic experiment ended after only two years with the return of the armed forces to the apex of government. This article highlights the reasons for this divergence. Contrary to existing scholarship that exclusively focuses on different geographical or economic circumstances, this contribution emphasises dissimilarities in the patterns of authoritarian rule, military organisation, intra-civilian conflict and international support. Conceptually, the discussion locates the Indonesian and Egyptian cases within the broader debate on civilian control in post-authoritarian states, arguing that this discourse needs to pay more attention to the creation of intra-civilian agreements on fundamental issues of governance as the best strategy to establish strong democratic oversight over the armed forces.


Electronic health record (EHR) system facilitates integrating patients' medical information and improves service productivity. However, user access to patient data in a privacy-preserving manner is still challenging problem. Many studies concerned with security and privacy in EHR systems. Rezaeibagha and Mu [1] have proposed a hybrid architecture for privacy-preserving accessing patient records in a cloud system. In their scheme, encrypted EHRs are stored in multiple clouds to provide scalability and privacy. In addition, they considered a role-based access control (RBAC) such that for any user, an EHR access policy must be determined. They also encrypt the EHRs by the public keys of all users. So, for a large amount of EHRs, this scheme is not efficient. Furthermore, using RBAC for access policy makes the policy changing difficult. In their scheme, users cannot search on encrypted EHRs based on diseases and some physicians must participate in the data retrieval by a requester physician. In this paper, we address these problems by considering a ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) which is conceptually closer to the traditional access control methods such as RBAC. Our secure scheme can retrieve encrypted EHR based on a specific disease. Furthermore, the proposed scheme guarantees the user access control and the anonymity of the user or data owner during data retrieval. Moreover, our scheme is resistant against collusion between unauthorized retrievers to access the data. The analysis shows that our scheme is secure and efficient for cloud-based EHRs.


In attempting to define a "poetics of paradox" from a traditional Chinese standpoint, James Liu explores through a comparative approach linguistic, textual, and interpretive problems of relevance to Western literary criticism. Liu's study evolves from a paradoxical view--originating from early Confucian and Daoist philosophical texts--that the less is "said" in poetry, the more is "meant." Such a view implied the existence of paradox in the very use of language and led traditional Chinese hermeneutics to a study of "metaparadox"--the use of language to explicate texts the meaning of which transcends language itself.As Liu illustrates elements of traditional Chinese hermeneutics with examples of poetic and critical works, he makes comparisons with the works of such Western literary figures as Shakespeare, Mallarme, Pound, Ionesco, Derrida, and Shepard. The comparisons bring to light a crucial difference in conceptualization of language: Chinese critics, especially those influenced by Daoism and Buddhism, seem to have held a deitic view of language (language points to things), whereas Western critics seem to have thought of language as primarily mimetic (language represents things). Liu examines the consequences of these views, showing how both offer insights into the "meaning" of text and to what extent both have led to a "metaparadox of interpretation."Originally published in 1988.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


In a world increasingly dominated by AI applications, an understudied aspect is the carbon and social footprint of these power-hungry algorithms that require copious computation and a trove of data for training and prediction. While profitable in the short-term, these practices are unsustainable and socially extractive from both a data-use and energy-use perspective. This work proposes an ESG-inspired framework combining socio-technical measures to build eco-socially responsible AI systems. The framework has four pillars: compute-efficient machine learning, federated learning, data sovereignty, and a LEEDesque certificate. Compute-efficient machine learning is the use of compressed network architectures that show marginal decreases in accuracy. Federated learning augments the first pillar's impact through the use of techniques that distribute computational loads across idle capacity on devices. This is paired with the third pillar of data sovereignty to ensure the privacy of user data via techniques like use-based privacy and differential privacy. The final pillar ties all these factors together and certifies products and services in a standardized manner on their environmental and social impacts, allowing consumers to align their purchase with their values.


In the wake of a memorable winter season in the United States that included both record cold and snow in the Northeast and historic warmth and drought in the West, American views regarding the existence of global warming have rebounded to the seven-year NSEE average, with 63% of Americans believing there is evidence of climate change. However, there are notable differences among Americans who think global warming is occurring and those who do not in terms of their perceptions of the weather that they experienced during the winter of 2015. In essence views on the existence of global warming appear related to individuals' evaluations of the weather their area experienced last winter, with those expressing doubt in global warming more likely than their counterparts to identify the last winter season as colder than average. These are among the key findings of the latest version of the National Surveys on Energy and Environment (NSEE).


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INTRODUCTION For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets,,, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. [Matt. 24:24] How Should a Diverse and Democratic Society Deal with Issues of Religion? In the past fifteen years much has been written about both the fundamentalist evangelical Christian movement and the conservative element of the Republican Party. More recently there has been a focus on the efforts of leaders of the two factions to merge their respective movements, name George W. Bush their leader and emblaze their "Christian" imprint on all three branches of government. Once these goals are accomplished their stated intent is to make inroads internationally. (1) This paper will examine the strategy for merging the two factions, Bush's emergence as leader and, most importantly, the influence an underestimated movement of ideas has had as a catalyst for an historic shift in American religion and politics. For the first time in American history a sitting president has openly acknowledged that his personal faith beliefs significantly influence his policies and politics. Perhaps of greatest significance is the power the president's endorsement adds to fundamental evangelical Christian ideas, and their widespread rate of acceptance in the Republican Party. Political scientists have presented a detailed accounting of how the conservative element of the Republican Party and the fundamentalist evangelical Christian movements evolved, how they have advanced their respective agendas and how George Bush was selected as the deified "Prince" to lead the theocracy called Dominionism. (2) What merits exploration is why the electorate has rallied to support Dominionism and George Bush as its anointed leader. By all indication, few Americans understand the depth and breadth of the melding of Christian Fundamentalism and Conservative Republicanism. In order to comprehend the impact Dominionism is having on U.S. domestic and foreign policy, it is necessary to examine what the movement is, how and why it developed along with its inherent dangers. Dominionism is a form of divine-right theory that pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the people of God as the only means through which the world can be rescued. (3) It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control' a 'chosen vessel' so to speak, to bring Restoration of All Things. (4) S. R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries, calls this delusion "Messianic leadership"--that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah. (5) Dominionism seeks to reverse the liberalization of society through the last century and the long-standing separation of church and state dictated by the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. (6) Our founding fathers wisely left this notion behind and chose to establish a secular state, clearly setting forth its basis and philosophy of religious toleration and lack of established religion, the dominionists despair that, without a common religious authority and due to the creeping influences of liberalism and humanism, society is somehow in decay. (7) In the early 1980s leading televangelists Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, et. al., began using the media to rally Christian followers to accept a new political religion, initially with the intent of amassing a following and infiltrating the Republican Party at all levels. (8) This political religion originally called Political Reconstructionism has also become known as Dominionism. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism "seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of Biblical law. …


In this paper, we propose a general framework for sparse semi-supervised learning, which concerns using a small portion of unlabeled data and a few labeled data to represent target functions and thus has the merit of accelerating function evaluations when predicting the output of a new example. This framework makes use of Fenchel-Legendre conjugates to rewrite a convex insensitive loss involving a regularization with unlabeled data, and is applicable to a family of semi-supervised learning methods such as multi-view co-regularized least squares and single-view Laplacian support vector machines (SVMs). As an instantiation of this framework, we propose sparse multi-view SVMs which use a squared e-insensitive loss. The resultant optimization is an inf-sup problem and the optimal solutions have arguably saddle-point properties. We present a globally optimal iterative algorithm to optimize the problem. We give the margin bound on the generalization error of the sparse multi-view SVMs, and derive the empirical Rademacher complexity for the induced function class. Experiments on artificial and real-world data show their effectiveness. We further give a sequential training approach to show their possibility and potential for uses in large-scale problems and provide encouraging experimental results indicating the efficacy of the margin bound and empirical Rademacher complexity on characterizing the roles of unlabeled data for semi-supervised learning.


As a result of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19), U.S. federal, state, and local governmental officials have struggled to coordinate consistent, coherent messaging for citizens to social-distance. The pandemic presents an important context for examining alternative communication frames employed by governments. This study presents results from an artefactual survey experiment in which public-health information regarding COVID-19 was transmitted to a panel of U.S. adult respondents via alternative issue frames and messengers. The findings highlight the importance of delivering consistent messages to the public. Public-health frames positively influence citizen preferences for avoiding unnecessary travel. Conversely, economic frames appear to have the opposite effect, increasing the preference to make unnecessary trips to shop. However, federal messengers appear to strengthen the framing effect relative to expert messengers.


This paper proposes a new knowledge-acquisition metatool, KRIACO, a Web-based, Knowledge Representation Independent, Adaptive, Customizable, Ontology-based Knowledge Acquisition Metatool, which aims to overcome sorts of shortcomings of current knowledge acquisition metatools. To achieve its goal, KRIACO will adopt OKBC as an underlying knowledge representation model to overcome the restriction caused by a specific knowledge representation system. It will use an ontologydriven tool specification approach to specify the domain and the task models; an interface ontology and a declarative interface model to drive the interface design and customization process; adaptive approach to provide flexible, adaptive user interfaces. This paper discusses these approaches in detail and presents the framework of KRIACO.


This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Molder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness – perception and the awareness of one's own mental states – in the interpretivist framework. (Series A)


The underrepresentation of women at the top of hierarchies is often explained by gender differences in preferences. We find support for this claim by analyzing a large dataset from an online card game community, a stylized yet natural setting characterized by self-selection into an uncertain, competitive and male-dominated environment. We observe gender differences in playing behavior consistent with women being more averse towards risk and competition. Moreover, we demonstrate how "shying away" makes female players less successful: despite no gender gap in playing skills, women accumulate lower scores than men due to their relative avoidance of risky and competitive situations.


Target: Wellbeing (TWB) aims to help people across the North West live healthier and happier lives. TWB is delivered through a portfolio of community based programmes and projects, and has been funded by the National Lottery for the period October 2007 to March 2012 through the Big Lottery Fund, with funding linked to health outcomes.
This evaluation update of the TWB portfolio provides reach analysis and evidence of behaviour change from the ten local programmes between January 2009 and August 2010, and provides an update to last year's Target: Wellbeing Evaluation – Annual Report February 2010.
The analysis relates to the area based community projects within the TWB portfolio and covers the TWB participants and their evidence of behaviour change. Reach analysis is produced via the registration database with behaviour change evidence from analysis of welcome and exit questionnaires. Forty-four projects have contributed responses to this evaluation, about half of the total number, and sixty-six have used the participant database, contributing to the reach analysis.


We report what we believe is the first realization of odd dark beams of finite length under controllable initial conditions. We obtain mixed edge–screw phase dislocations by reproducing binary computer-generated holograms. Two effective ways to control the steering of the beams are analyzed experimentally and compared with numerical simulations.


Abstract This article will examine the ways in which costuming plays a pivotal and disruptive role in A Bigger Splash. Through Tilda Swinton's virtually mute performance as recovering rock star Marianne Lane, the intersections between clothing, the body, and performance construct a visual language dominated by desire, touch, conflict, turmoil, and disguise. With costumes designed by Raf Simons at Dior, in collaboration with Giulia Piersanti, an aesthetic of stylish resort wear is showcased to a niche audience. Although A Bigger Splash attempts to position itself as a European version of the American "smart film," I will argue that it is a "Euro-pudding": a well-intentioned European coproduction with transnational scope, that aspires to art film status, but is devoid of broader social or political resonance. Through the casting of Swinton, ambivalence is commodified and used to promote luxury designer fashion to an aspirational audience rich in cultural capital, that wishes to distance itself from mainstream celebrity culture and Hollywood blockbusters.


The population pharmacokinetics of theophylline were studied in 55 patients with stable chronic airway obstruction. Two hundred and seventy six theophylline serum concentrations after intravenous short infusion were analyzed using a nonlinear mixed-effect model. The influence of hepatic dysfunction, smoking habit, age and the measurement of arterial blood gases (oxygen tension: PaO2, carbon dioxide tension: PaCO2, blood pH) and clinical laboratory tests (serum albumin concentration, haematocrit) on the pharmacokinetic parameters of theophylline was examined by the likelihood ratio test. Assessment of each factor was made by a forward selection method. In the final regression model, the total body clearance (CL, l/h/kg) was related to the value of PaCO2 as well as to the presence of hepatic dysfunction, and the volume of distribution (Vd, l/kg) was related with the PaCO2 value as expressed in the following equations: CL = exp(-3.78 - 0.525.HF + 0.0233.PaCO2) and Vd = exp(-1.12 + 0.00934.PaCO2), where HF is a categorical variable with a value of unity if a patient has hepatic dysfunction otherwise zero. The interactions among blood gas measurements were observed and the CL and Vd of theophylline would be inversely correlated with PaO2 or pH, if we selected PaO2 or blood pH to be a more important factor than PaCO2. The inter-individual variabilities in CL and Vd were 38.5% and 12.5%, respectively, and the residual variability in theophylline serum concentrations was 10.6% as a coefficient of variation. This final model and the population parameters of theophylline will be useful for individualization of a drug dosage regimen by means of the Bayesian method.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


A fundamental fact in the analysis of randomized algorithms is that when n balls are hashed into n bins independently and uniformly at random, with high probability each bin contains at most O(log n / log(log n)) balls. In various applications, however, the assumption that a truly random hash function is available is not always valid, and explicit functions are required. In this paper we study the size of families (or, equivalently, the description length of their functions) that guarantee a maximal load of O(log n / log(log n)) with high probability, as well as the evaluation time of their functions. Whereas such functions must be described using Omega(log n) bits, the best upper bound was formerly O(log^2 n / log(log n)) bits, which is attained by O(log n / log(log n))-wise independent functions. Traditional constructions of the latter offer an evaluation time of O(log n / log(log n)), which according to Siegel's lower bound [FOCS '89] can be reduced only at the cost of significantly increasing the description length. We construct two families that guarantee a maximal load of O(log n / log(log n)) with high probability. Our constructions are based on two different approaches, and exhibit different trade-offs between the description length and the evaluation time. The first construction shows that O(log n / log(log n))-wise independence can in fact be replaced by & quot; gradually increasing independence & quot;, resulting in functions that are described using O(log n log(log n)) bits and evaluated in time O(log n log(log n)). The second construction is based on derandomization techniques for space-bounded computations combined with a tailored construction of a pseudorandom generator, resulting in functions that are described using O(log^(3/2) n) bits and evaluated in time O(sqrt(log n)). The latter can be compared to Siegel's lower bound stating that O(log n / log(log n))-wise independent functions that are evaluated in time O(sqrt(log n)) must be described using Omega(2^(sqrt(log n))) bits.


Caching dynamic pages at a server site is beneficial in reducing server resource demands and it also helps dynamic page caching at proxy sites. Previous work has used fine-grain dependence graphs among individual dynamic pages and underlying data sets to enforce result consistency. This paper proposes a complementary solution for applications that require coarse-grain cache management. The key idea is to partition dynamic pages into classes based on URL patterns so that an application can specify page identification and data dependence, and invoke invalidation for a class of dynamic pages. To make this scheme time-efficient with small space requirement, lazy invalidation is used to minimize slow disk accesses when IDs of dynamic pages are stored in memory with a digest format. Selective precomputing is further proposed to refresh stale pages and smoothen load peaks. A data structure is developed for efficient URL class searching during lazy or eager invalidation. This paper also presents design and implementation of a caching system called Cachuma which integrates the above techniques, runs in tandem with standard Web servers, and allows Web sites to add dynamic page caching capability with minimal changes. The experimental results show that the proposed techniques are effective in supporting coarse-grain cache management and reducing server response times for tested applications.


The Golden Ball is a multi-population meta-heuristic based on soccer concepts. It was first designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems. Until now, it has been tested with different kind of problems, but its efficiency has only been compared with some classical algorithms, such as different kind of Genetic Algorithms and Distributed Genetic Algorithms. In this work, the performance of the Golden Ball is compared with the ones obtained by two famous and widely used techniques: an Evolutionary Simulated Annealing and a Tabu Search. These both meta-heuristics are two of the most used ones along the history for solving optimization problems. In this first study, the comparison is performed for the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem.


Muscle Cars began in the garages and dealerships of a Detroit subculture bent on making the hottest high-performance cars on the street. "American Muscle Supercars" tells the story of the cream of these tuners and builders and the Supercars they unleashed on the American scene. From Michigan's Royal Pontiac dealership, and the souped-up Royal Pontiac Bobcats they built and sold to drag racers, the new Boss 302 Mustang built by Steve Saleen, this gorgeously illustrated book chronicles the outsize contribution of the tuner/ builder to American automotive history.


ABSTRACT Background and Objectives: The present study tries to gain more insight in workaholism by investigating its antecedents and consequences using the job demands-resources model. Design: We hypothesized that job demands would be positively related to workaholism, particularly when job resources are low. In addition, we hypothesized that workaholism would be positively related to negative outcomes in three important life domains: health, family, and work. Methods: The research involved 617 Italian workers (employees and self-employed). To test the hypotheses we applied structural equation modeling (SEM) and moderated structural equation modeling (MSEM) using Mplus 6. Results: The results of SEM showed a good model where workload, cognitive demands, emotional demands, and customer-related social stressors were positively related to workaholism and work–family conflict (WFC) (partial mediation). Additionally, workaholism was indirectly related to exhaustion and intentions to change jobs through WFC. Moreover, MSEM analyses confirmed that job resources (job security and opportunities for development) buffered the relationship between job demands and workaholism. Particularly, the interaction effects were statistically significant in five out of eight combinations. Conclusions: These findings suggest that workaholism is a function of a suboptimal work environment and predicts unfavorable employee outcomes. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.


In spite of many years of effort, we are still not able to articulate and deliver IT value accurately. Unfortunately, "silver bullet thinking" still predominates (i.e., plug in technology and deliver bottom line impact) in organizations today. IT value is a multi-layered concept, far more complex than it first appears. To examine this complex concept and how it is understood in IT organizations, the authors convened a focus group of practicing IT managers from a number of different industries. This paper, using the inputs from the focus group, explores how organizations are attempting to determine and develop effective IT value propositions. It describes the three components of this proposition: identification of potential value, effective conversion, and realizing value. The paper then derives a number of principles of delivering IT value. We conclude that there is no single agreed-on notion of business value. Therefore, it is important to make sure that both business and IT managers work to a common value goal whether traditional cost reduction, process efficiencies, new business capabilities, improved communication, or any other objectives. We also suggest that technology is being used as a catalyst to drive many different types of organizational transformation and strategy. Therefore, IT value can no longer be viewed in isolation from the other parts of business, namely people and information.


"Rosabelle Believe" was a film short using animation (5 minutes, 23 seconds) that was first screened publicly at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002

"Rosabelle Believe" is a film about seeing and believing. Its point of departures are the illusion of movement which characterised early film and the illusionism of the famous escapologist Harry Houdini. Early film was initially thought of as being the province of magic and early footage of Houdini doubled the magical component of illusion as both form and content. The film begins with an Edison cylinder recording of Houdini's voice that constitutes a secret coded message between Houdini and his wife Rosabelle which could be used after his death to imply his escape from the grave.

Research for the film took a number of forms including a study of the extensive Houdiana materials including Ruth Brandon's The Life And Many Deaths Of Harry Houdini. An interview took place with Mick Hanzlik who is a 'master locksmith' and Houdini expert, visits to the Magic Circle were arranged and the original Houdini cylinder wax recording was located and permission to use it cleared.

The animated film was based on the premise that Houdini could escape whatever the imprisoned circumstances and keep his reputation and his word to Rosabelle. Using archive footage reworked with new animated artwork "Rosabelle Believe" builds the illusion of escape into illusionic filmmaking techniques which recall early cinema.

Following its screening at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2002, it has been shown at upward of 15 festival in galleries/cinemas/theatres including Neuer Standort (Vienna, 25/11/04), The Minna Gallery (San Francisco, 27/09/04), the Axion Theatre (Houston, 17/09/04) and most recently at Central Cinema (Seattle, 18/11/07). It was also part of the programme for the 2003 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

A film still appears on:

http://www.independentexposure.com/title/1170/Rosabell_Believe.html


The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region has been afflicted by Uighur political activism and ethnic violence for the past few decades. Interethnic relations between the Uighurs and Han Chinese have been extremely tense. Why is Xinjiang so vulnerable to interethnic violence? Why are intergroup dynamics between the Uighurs and Han Chinese so volatile? This paper examines Uighur–Han Chinese relations in contemporary Xinjiang and probes conditions that facilitate interethnic violence. Utilizing Fredrik Barth's approach to ethnicity that emphasizes boundaries, this paper examines in detail how the rigid interethnic boundary between the Uighurs and Han Chinese has been constructed and strengthened in Xinjiang. Perceived differences have generated mutual distrust and discrimination between the two groups that make intergroup communication and understanding difficult and therefore very limited. In situations such as that in Xinjiang, where a rigid intergroup boundary is in place and civic engagements across groups are lacking, intergroup conflict is extremely hard to avoid.


The hydrolysis of urea by the widely distributed enzyme urease is special in that it is one of the few biologically occurring reactions that can generate carbonate ions without an associated production of protons. When this hydrolysis occurs in a calcium-rich environment, calcite (calcium carbonate) precipitates from solution forming a solid-crystalline material. The binding strength of the precipitated crystals is highly dependent on the rate of carbonate formation and under suitable conditions it is possible to control the reaction to generate hard binding calcite cement (or Biocement). The objective of this thesis was to develop an industrially suitable cost-effective microbial process for the production of urease active cells and investigate the potential for urease active cells to act as a catalyst for the production of Biocement.

The biocementation capability of two suitable strains was compared. Sporosarcina pasteurii (formally Bacillus pasteurii) produced significantly higher levels of urease activity compared to Proteus vulgaris, however the level of urease activity was variable with respect to biomass suggesting that the enzyme was not constitutive as indicated by the literature, but subject to regulation. The environmental and physiological conditions for maximum urease activity in S. pasteurii were investigated and it was found that the potential urease capacity of the organism was very high (29 mM urea.min-1.OD-1) and sufficient for biocementation without additional processing (e.g. concentration, cell lysis). The regulation mechanism for S. pasteurii urease was not fully elucidated in this study, however it was shown that low specific urease activity was not due to depletion of urea nor due to the high concentrations of the main reaction product, ammonium. pH conditions were shown to have a regulatory effect on urease but it was evident that another co-regulating mechanism existed. Despite not fully exploiting the urease capability of S. pasteurii, sufficient urease activity to allow direct application of the enzyme without additional processing could still be achieved and the organism was considered suitable for biocementation.

Urease was the most expensive component of the cementation process and cost-efficient production was desired, thus an economic growth procedure was developed for large-scale cultivation of S. pasteurii. The organism is a moderate alkaliphile (growth optimum pH 9.25) and it was shown that sufficient activity for biocementation could be cultivated in non-sterile conditions with a minimum of upstream and downstream processing. The cultivation medium was economised and expensive components were replace with a food-grade protein source and acetate, which lowered production costs by 95%. A high level of urease activity (21 mM urea hydrolysed.min-1) was produced in the new medium at a low cost ($0.20 (AUD) per L).

The performance of urease in whole S. pasteurii cells was evaluated under biocementation conditions (i.e. presence of high concentrations of urea, Ca2+, NH4 +/NH3, NO3 - and Cl- ions). It was established that the rate of urea hydrolysis was not constant during cementation, but largely controlled by the external concentrations of urea and calcium, which constantly changed during cementation due to precipitation of solid calcium carbonate from the system. A simple model was generated that predicted the change in urea hydrolysis rate over the course of cementation. It was shown that whole cell S. pasteurii urease was tolerant to concentrations of up to 3 M urea and 2 M calcium, and the rate of urea hydrolysis was unaffected up to by 3 M ammonium. This allowed the controlled precipitation of up to 1.5 M CaCO3 within one treatment, and indicated that the enzyme was very stable inspite of extreme chemical conditions.

A cost-efficient cementation procedure for the production of high cementation strength was developed. Several biocementation trials were conducted into order to optimise the imparted cementation strength by determining the effect of urea hydrolysis rate on the development of strength. It was shown that high cementation strength was produced at low urea hydrolysis rates and that the development of cementation strength was not linear over the course of the reaction but mostly occurred in the first few hours of the reaction. In addition, the whole cell bacterial enzyme had capacity to be immobilised in the cementation material and re-used to subsequent applications, offering a significant cost-saving to the process.

An industry-sponsored trial was undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of Biocement for increasing in-situ strength and stiffness of two different sandy soils; (a) Koolschijn sand and (b) 90% Koolschijn sand mixed with 10% peat (Holland Veen). After biocementation treatment, Koolschijn sand indicated a shear strength of 1.8 MPa and a stiffness of 250 MPa, which represents an 8-fold and 3-fold respective improvement in strength compared to unconsolidated sand. Significantly lower strength improvements were observed in sand mixed with peat.

In combination, trials of producing bacteria under economically acceptable conditions and cementation trials support the possibility of on-site production and in-situ application of large field applications.


We consider the transmission of variable bit rate (VBR) video over a network offering a guaranteed service such as ATM VBR or the guaranteed service of the IETF. The guaranteed service requires that the flow accepted by the network has to be conforming with a traffic envelope /spl sigma/. In this context, the output of the video encoder is constrained by the traffic envelope defined at the network entry point, the playback delay budget and the decoding buffer size. In previous works, the constraints are satisfied either by smoothing a fixed coder output, or by modifying the encoding parameters. In this paper we take a combined approach. This shows us to find a joint source rate selection/smoothing solution which minimizes the total average distortion while satisfying constraints on the traffic envelope, playback delay and decoding buffer size. Our solution is based on a Viterbi-like algorithm. Our approach is. Made possible by the representation of the optimally smoothed output as the time inverse of a shaper output. Experimental results exhibit significant improvements in terms of total average distortion compared to the smoothing of a fixed coder output, under equivalent traffic parameters and decoding constraints.


Introduction Poetry is entwined with the lives of children from infancy--lullabies and nursery rhymes at birth; street rhymes, incantations, and the traditional forms of poetry at school-age. Drawn to limericks, nursery and street rhymes, children have used poetry for play and language expression--roll the sounds in their mouths and jauntily spit them out. School age experiences with poetry turn to recitation and memorization of poetry. These experiences are focused on poetry as a genre, the structure of poetry, or the study of traditional Western poets where exposure to the emotional and observational experiences of others is the lesson's center. Adults distort the poet's work into a meaningless, detached bundle of words by using structured models to write poetry (haiku, rhyming schemes, acrostics, etc.) and forced memorization of "classic" poems to chant poetry, The introduction of slam performance of poetry into children's lives can salvage a relationship with poetry. Brief History of Children's Poetry There was no poetry written expressly for children before 1804 (Darton 1982, 182). Early verse that was considered suitable for the younger audience was just that, verse. The Puritan period provided verse to save the soul; the Georgian, to create good character (Segel 1986, 167). Didactic or moralistic, the verse provided to children's ears was not really about their world. It was not written for them, but to satisfy the ideas that adults held about what children should be interested in. Real childhood experiences were simplified or codified to represent the moral values of the time period. In the early nineteenth century, poetry and poets emerged that provided a better relationship to real childhood experiences. William Blake's Songs of Innocence was child oriented. The Misses Taylor wrote for children as did Mary and Charles Lamb. However, critical opinion does not regard these as superlative poetry for children (Darton 1982, 251); rather these poets continue the tradition of providing what they think children should experience, not what children actually experience. Darton (1982) states, "ninety per cent of all verse written for children before the last quarter of the nineteenth century was poetry-substitute, manufactured in good faith, but in a deliberate purposeful way. It was not perceived that children were their own spontaneous poets--the makers of their own world of imagination." The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continued to provide the same types of poetry to children's ears. A few collections truly reflected childhood gaiety and experience. Lewis Carroll, Laura Richards, Edward Lear, A.A. Milne and R.L. Stevenson explored childhood pleasures and fears in their poetry. The post World War II era adult attitude about childhood shifted to a child-centered concentration. Recognizing the power of the market for child-focused materials, publishers provided true children's poetry. Poets such as Shel Silverstein, David McCord, Eloise Greenfield, and Jack Prelutsky (to mention only my favorites, there are many, many more) provided anthologies that grace the shelves of libraries and are included in personal collections. As children's poets of other cultures and ethnicities (1) gained a foothold in the school library, there are now many anthologies of quality readily available. The emotions of poetry now reflect diverse group experiences. The drudgery of poetry was no more! Adults can now provide poetry to attract, engage, and embellish the life of a child. Why Poetry? The content of poetry is emotion--emotion expressed in strong compact language. The connection with the world is the goal of poetry and poetry can diminish borders of prejudice, isolation, stereotypes, and Robert Frost calls poetry "a performance of words" (Lukens 1986). McVeigh-Schulz & Ellis (1997, xi) calls attention to the "poem as container for feelings". Articulated with just a few well-chosen words, poetry is the story of experience. …


The Education Reform Act 1988 (HMSO , 1988) introduced for the first time a compulsory National Curriculum into schools in England and Wales. Technology was one subject in this compulsory curriculum; its inclusion was controversial and (for some) unpopular, generating a debate about the subject ' s nature and educational value. This study reflects upon that debate by: reviewing the opinions of educationalists on National Curriculum technology reviewing surveys of pupil attitudes to previous school technology courses investigating pupil attitudes to the 'new ' subject of National Curriculum technology , and discussing whether the general aims set out by the subject's creators have been achieved.


This paper examines the relationships between the Gini coefficient, trade-openness, foreign aid and foreign direct investment flows. Panel data estimates show that trade openness can be effective for changing income inequality, but its effectiveness depends on the stage of development. Simulation results show that the Gini and openness can be negatively or positively correlated — it depends on the capital intensity and on the degree of openness. Overall, the results suggest that trade and financial openness can be effective policies for reducing inequality in low income countries, if they significantly increase the marginal productivity of labour through capital intensive methods of production.


[1] In this paper we report on a laboratory study, the Spray Production and Dynamics Experiment (SPANDEX), conducted at the University of New South Wales Water Research Laboratory in Australia. The goals of SPANDEX were to illuminate physical aspects of spume droplet production and dispersion; verify theoretical simplifications used to estimate the source function from ambient droplet concentration measurements; and examine the relationship between the implied source strength and forcing parameters such as wind speed, surface turbulent stress, and wave properties. Observations of droplet profiles give reasonable confirmation of the basic power law profile relationship that is commonly used to relate droplet concentrations to the surface source strength. This essentially confirms that, even in a wind tunnel, there is a near balance between droplet production and removal by gravitational settling. The observations also indicate considerable droplet mass may be present for sizes larger than 1.5 mm diameter. Phase Doppler Anemometry observations revealed significant mean horizontal and vertical slip velocities that were larger closer to the surface. The magnitude seems too large to be an acceleration time scale effect. Scaling of the droplet production surface source strength proved to be difficult. The wind speed forcing varied only 23% and the stress increased a factor of 2.2. Yet, the source strength increased by about a factor of 7. We related this to an estimate of surface wave energy flux through calculations of the standard deviation of small-scale water surface disturbance, a wave-stress parameterization, and numerical wave model simulations. This energy index only increased by a factor of 2.3 with the wind forcing. Nonetheless, a graph of spray mass surface flux versus surface disturbance energy is quasi-linear with a substantial threshold.


The skills and knowledge acquisition, and personal growth, of students through their degree courses is often likened to a journey, but defining this, and creating meaningful, quality interventions based on staff and student perceptions of it, is no simple matter. Such research as is available tends to focus on Further Education and routes into study rather than the skills attained once at university. Students' perceptions of their journey, its quality, and the scaffolding and support they receive during it is crucial to their experience, as well as their employability on graduation. It is also vital to the university in terms of the NSS and TEF ratings. Student experience and satisfaction, as well as being an important metric in its own right, is critical to maximising attainment and reducing attrition. Likewise, satisfaction with library services is a significant component of the NSS. As librarians become increasingly teaching focused (see Austin and Bhandol 2013; Julien and Genuis 2011; Goetsch 2008; Hardy and Corrall 2007), they have the potential to make a positive contribution to their institution's TEF outcome, and arguably to their own satisfaction as educators and information professionals.

Following a project carried out by University of Worcester Library Services to explore the views of academic staff around the "learner journey", this research considered the same question but focused now on the student voice. Five undergraduate students from levels 4 to 6 participated, representing five of the university's seven academic institutes. The learner journey was defined here as not just the student's academic pathway; that is, the modules they take and the assessments they must pass to complete them, but the overarching skills they acquire along the way, and indeed beyond their undergraduate course into employment or further study. It encompasses the skillset they build as they navigate the course and the applicability (or otherwise) of this to the workplace or continued education at postgraduate level. (Devine, 2018). Via focus groups and a focused interview, student perceptions of their learner journey were explored, and, drawing on the principles of grounded theory, five principal themes identified. These were: transition to, and preparedness for, university, progression, personal responsibility and engagement, employability, and communication. The final project is being utilised within University of Worcester Library Services and was submitted as the author's MSc dissertation, for which it won the Douglas Anderson Award from Robert Gordon University.

In this presentation, the findings of the study will be discussed both as they pertain to Worcester and to the wider academic library and information literacy contexts. It will be argued that whilst the findings were encouraging for our current IL teaching practice, there is more that can and should be done. Students need clarity as to the extent of the library service's remit. More class time needs to be allocated to scaffolded, embedded information literacy provision and librarians must work in partnership with academic colleagues to ensure this is timely and aligned to module learning outcomes and assessment criteria.


With the recent development of commercial Cloud offers, Cloud solutions are today the obvious solution for many computing use-cases. However, high performance scientific computing is still among the few domains where Cloud still raises more issues than it solves. Notably, combining the workflow representation of complex scientific applications with the dynamic allocation of resources in a Cloud environment is still a major challenge. In the meantime, users with monolithic applications are facing challenges when trying to move from classical HPC hardware to elastic platforms. In this paper, we present the structure of an autonomous workflow manager dedicated to IaaS-based Clouds (Infrastructure as a Service) with DaaS storage services (Data as a Service). The solution proposed in this paper fully handles the execution of multiple workflows on a dynamically allocated shared platform. As a proof of concept we validate our solution through a biologic application with the WASABI workflow.


Improvement of the spatial resolution of the TCV Thomson scattering system has permitted measurements of the pedestal height and gradient of electron density and temperature profiles near the plasma boundary during ELMy H-mode. Measured profiles were fitted by a modified TANH function and characterized by pedestal height, width and gradient scale length. Taking advantage of an extended quasi-stationary phase with reproducible edge localized modes (ELMs), random sampling was used to reconstruct the time evolution during a typical ELM cycle. The measurements clearly reveal the influence of the ELM event on the edge profiles and have permitted quantification of the associated energy and particle losses. The experimental data, collected from a series of reproducible shots have provided the basis for an MHD stability analysis using the KINX code. The results confirm the type-III identification of the ELMs observed in ohmically heated H-mode plasmas in TCV.


We investigated interindividual variation and intra-individual phenotypic flexibility in basal metabolic rate (BMR), total evaporative water loss (TEWL), body temperature (Tb), the minimum dry heat transfer coefficient (h), and organ and muscle size of five species of larks geographically distributed along an aridity gradient. We exposed all species to constant environments of 15°C or 35°C, and examined to what extent interspecific differences in physiology can be attributed to acclimation. We tested the hypothesis that birds from deserts display larger intra-individual phenotypic flexibility and smaller interindividual variation than species from mesic areas.

Larks from arid areas had lower BMR, TEWL, and h, but did not have internal organ sizes different from birds from mesic habitats. BMR of 15°C-acclimated birds was 18.0%, 29.1%, 12.2%, 25.3%, and 4.7% higher than of 35°C-acclimated Hoopoe Larks, Dunn's Larks, Spike-heeled Larks, Skylarks, and Woodlarks, respectively. TEWL of 15°C-acclimated Hoopoe Larks exceeded values for 35°C-acclimated individuals by 23% but did not differ between 15°C- and 35°C-acclimated individuals in the other species. The dry heat transfer coefficient was increased in 15°C-acclimated individuals of Skylarks and Dunn's Larks, but not in the other species. Body temperature was on average 0.4°C ± 0.15°C (mean ± 1 sem) lower in 15°C-acclimated individuals of all species. Increased food intake in 15°C-acclimated birds stimulated enlargement of intestine (26.9–38.6%), kidneys (9.8–24.4%), liver (16.5–27.2%), and stomach (22.0–31.6%). The pectoral muscle increased in 15°C-acclimated Spike-heeled Larks and Skylarks, remained unchanged in Hoopoe Larks, and decreased in 15°C-acclimated Woodlarks and Dunn's Larks. We conclude that the degree of intra-individual flexibility varied between physiological traits and among species, but that acclimation does not account for interspecific differences in BMR, TEWL, and h in larks. We found no general support for the hypothesis that species from desert environments display larger intra-individual phenotypic flexibility than those from mesic areas.

The coefficient of variation of larks acclimated to their natural environment was smaller in species from arid areas than in species from mesic areas for mass-corrected BMR and surface-specific h, but not for mass-corrected TEWL. The high repeatabilities of BMR, TEWL, and h in several species indicated a within-individual consistency on which natural selection could operate.


growth in the field of Information Technology (IT) has been very fast in last few decades and the various applications depending on IT are also changing very drastically. One of the very popular IT applications is online teaching and learning. The main focus of this article is to survey the various online e- learning architectures and then make a comparison among them. Based on the analytical, comparative studies of these various architectures, we are able to provide certain suggestions about the limitations that were observed. Further on, we emphasize some of the research challenges and design issues that have been followed in order to make fruitful improvement in the intelligent online e-learning architecture system to provide the cultural aspects of online classrooms.


This thesis writing aims to dissect the process of artistic discovery, as applied to the arts and design, as a technique and tool to repair wellbeing. The goal of the typical abstract is intended to simply state the research problem, the processes used, and the most significant findings. Explanations, along with opinions, are generally frowned upon, so one would imagine finding that an artist disguised her written story of self-reflection in the format of a thesis would raise, or furrow, many sets of surprised or critical eye brows. The artist writing this body of research had that same reaction, in different forms, more than once. So, in keeping with the expectation that a brief summary should be all that is required of this abstract, this thesis is divided into the following: a defense of the reflective, naturalistic writing approach in keeping with the search for self-discovery, research and theories of others that have strived to understand the self, reflection on the process of using painting as a means of self-discovery, depiction of a garden not yet quite yet built, and mindfully considered analysis that the process of self-reflection to repair one's wellbeing means to unravel years of anxiously tangled threads that, when unwound, leads the traveler, classically, back to where it all began: an artist's statement for an exhibition of work.


Presynaptic, cocaine- and antidepressant-sensitive norepinephrine (NE) transporters (NETs) dictate levels of extracellular NE after vesicular release. Recent studies suggest that G protein-coupled receptors linked to protein kinase C (PKC) down-regulate cell surface NET protein levels and diminish NE uptake capacity. We identified distinct phosphatidylinositol 3-OH kinase (PI3K)-linked pathways supporting basal and insulin-triggered NE transport in the human noradrenergic neuroblastoma, SK-N-SH. Acute (0-60 min) insulin treatments produced a time- and concentration-dependent stimulation of NE transport, resolved in kinetic studies as an enhancement of NE transport capacity (Vmax) without an alteration in NE Km. Basal and insulin-modulated NET activities were reduced by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor genistein and the PI3K inhibitors wortmannin and LY-294002, but not by the PKC inhibitor staurosporine. PI3K activation was found to support phosphorylation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK). However, basal and insulin-stimulated NET activities were differentiated by their reliance on p38 MAPK activation. Thus, the p38 MAPK inhibitor SB203580 and SB202190 abolished insulin activation of NE transport yet failed to impact basal NET activity. Moreover, p38 MAPK activation and insulin activation of NETs were found to be sensitive to external Ca2+ depletion, blockade of voltage-sensitive Ca2+ channels, and inhibition of protein phosphatase 2A. Effects of tyrosine kinase and PI3K inhibitors on basal NET uptake appear to arise from a loss of cell surface NET protein, whereas the p38 MAPK-dependent enhancement of NE transport occurs without a detectable enhancement of surface NET. Our findings establish two distinct pathways for regulation of NE uptake involving PI3K, one linked to transporter trafficking and a second linked to Ca2+-dependent, p38 MAPK phosphorylation that promotes activation of cell surface NETs.


Ever since the introduction of the "Safety Culture" concept in INSAG's report following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, it quickly became a subject of interest among numerous academics. It rapidly gained popularity within numerous industries, with a primary focus on high-reliability organizations and high-risk industries. The aviation industry was one of the first pioneers, which have quickly adopted this concept into the core of their business model, as a widespread impact arising from the safety issues in aviation industry was recognized to be highly severe. A high number of previous researchers have addressed the concept of safety culture within a number of diverse industries, including banking, finance, and healthcare. However, a safety culture assessment based on information available from annual reports has never been performed in the past. Therefore, this paper explores the Safety Culture in European Commercial Aviation industry based on annual reports of 5 largest European airlines in the period from 2014 to 2016. A content analysis will be carried out using the NVivo11 to analyse the annual reports, and the acquired data will be examined for better assessment of the Safety Culture in European aviation industry.


The value of linguistic diversity is addressed directly in Article 22 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, other provisions of that Charter may also be relevant (and even more so than Article 22) for the effective protection of the linguistic rights and preferences of individuals across Europe. This chapter focuses in particular on the significance of Article 21 of the Charter which prohibits discrimination (by the European Union itself and by its Member States when they implement EU policies) on a number of grounds, including language. The concrete meaning of linguistic equality (and linguistic discrimination) is explored in a number of specific contexts of European law and policy. This analysis is preceded by a discussion of the language component of the right to good administration, which is included as a separate right in the Charter.


OBJECT
An approach toward the treatment of intracranial gliomas was developed in a rat experimental model. The authors investigated the ability of "professional" antigen-presenting cells (dendritic cells) to enhance host antitumor immune responses when injected as a vaccine into tumor-bearing animals.

METHODS
Dendritic cells, the most potent antigen-presenting cells in the body, were isolated from rat bone marrow precursors stimulated in vitro with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin-4. Cultured cell populations were confirmed to be functional antigen-presenting cells on the basis of expressed major histocompatibility molecules, as analyzed by fluorescence-activated cell sorter cytofluorography. These dendritic cells were then pulsed (cocultured) ex vivo with acid-eluted tumor antigens from 9L glioma cells. Thirty-eight adult female Fischer 344 rats harboring 7-day-old intracranial 9L tumors were treated with three weekly subcutaneous injections of either control media (10 animals), unpulsed dendritic cells (six animals), dendritic cells pulsed with peptides extracted from normal rat astrocytes (10 animals), or 9L tumor antigen-pulsed dendritic cells (12 animals). The animals were followed for survival. At necropsy, the rat brains were removed and examined histologically, and spleens were harvested for cell-mediated cytotoxicity assays. The results indicate that tumor peptide-pulsed dendritic cell therapy led to prolonged survival in rats with established intracranial 9L tumors implanted 7 days prior to the initiation of vaccine therapy in vivo. Immunohistochemical analyses were used to document a significantly increased perilesional and intratumoral infiltration of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells in the groups treated with tumor antigen-pulsed dendritic cells compared with the control groups. In addition, the results of in vitro cytotoxicity assays suggest that vaccination with these peptide-pulsed dendritic cells can induce specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes against 9L tumor cells.

CONCLUSIONS
Based on these results, dendritic antigen-presenting cells pulsed with acid-eluted peptides derived from autologous tumors represent a promising approach to the immunotherapy of established intracranial gliomas. which may serve as a basis for designing clinical trials in patients with brain tumors.


The international framework governing foreign bribery has been in a state of flux during the preceding decade. For the first time since the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, countries besides the United States are enforcing statutes prohibiting foreign bribery. Practitioners and academics have not yet analyzed foreign implementing legislation and enforcement levels nor the United States' changing enforcement strategy that has occurred simultaneously with the rise in foreign enforcement. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission's use of disgorgement damages has received scant attention despite the fact that it has begun to eclipse the importance of the SEC's express fining authority. While disgorgement of ill-gotten gains has clear attractions from both retribution and deterrence perspectives, it raises new questions in the Foreigh Corrupt Practices Act context. In addition, as an increasing number of foreign statutes authorize disgorgement of profits in cases of foreign bribery and leverage the extraterritorial application of those laws, foreign enforcement raises serious questions regarding the propriety of disgorgement damages and suggests the necessity for foreign enforcement agencies to work together if multinational firms are to receive fair treatment when facing foreign bribery charges. Ultimately, the SEC's use of disgorgement damages has yet to cause firms unjustifiable multiple exposure for the same conduct, but as each SEC settlement seemingly sets a new benchmark for the size of disgorgement, multinational firms, corporate counsel, international regulators, and Congress should closely monitor the shifting enforcement climate with an eye toward fostering predictability, uniformity, and fairness for firms operating on a transnational scale.


While periodic checkpointing has been an important mechanism for tolerating faults in high performance computing HPC systems, it is cost-prohibitive as the HPC system approaches exascale. Applying compression techniques is one common way to mitigate such burdens by reducing the data size, but they are often found to be less effective for scientific datasets. Traditional lossless compression techniques that look for repeated patterns are ineffective for scientific data in which high-precision data is used and hence common patterns are rare to find. In this paper, we present a comparison of several lossless and lossy data compression algorithms and discuss their methodology under the exascale environment. As data volume increases, we discover an increasing trend of new domain-driven algorithms that exploit the inherent characteristics exhibited in many scientific dataset, such as relatively small changes in data values from one simulation iteration to the next or among neighboring data. In particular, significant data reduction has been observed in lossy compression. This paper also discusses how the errors introduced by lossy compressions are controlled and the tradeoffs with the compression ratio.


We consider the current challenges and opportunities in applications of Robotics to financial services and to insurance in particular. Combinations of Robot Process Automation (RPA) with digitization have been considered by the industry, with important benefits in cost reduction and efficiency. We highlight the general benefits of RPA and the related implementation challenges in detail. We discuss more advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, arguing that such applications depend on the general advancements of AI, where human level interaction is not yet available. We discuss the great potential for AI applications in the near future and consider some initial examples. We also briefly discuss the hard problems of AI in relation to intelligence and consciousness in the introductory part, and briefly look at the implications AI and robots could have for human society and employment.


The Safe and Effective Nurse and the Safe and Effective Mental Health Nurse are year 3 semester 1 modules delivered to the BSc(Hons) Nursing (Adult and Mental Health) pre-registration students (n=210). This presentation will outline how a problem based learning (PBL) approach is used within this skills based module to develop student's knowledge and skills in risk management. A combination of simulation and applied drama techniques is used. Students are allocated to right different scenarios designed around real life clinical problems that occur in the workplace. In their PBL groups, students apply decision-making and leadership skills to manage the risks presented din the scenario. Video recordings of the scenarios are uploaded to Sharestream within Blackboard Learn. Both PBL groups and the actors (students acting as patients and/or family members) play back the videos, reflecting on the overall management of risk. The experience improves confidence in risk assessment and management and helps the nursing students gain insights into the user experience. This presentation examines the rationale, processes and experiences of staff and students and how this approach can enhance employability in future registered nurses.


This book presents a comprehensive overview of the various aspects for the development of smart cities from a European perspective. It presents both theoretical concepts as well as empirical studies and cases of smart city programs and their capacity to create value for citizens. The contributions in this book are a result of an increasing interest for this topic, supported by both national governments and international institutions. The book offers a large panorama of the most important aspects of smart cities evolution and implementation. It compares European best practices and analyzes how smart projects and programs in cities could help to improve the quality of life in the urban space and to promote cultural and economic development.


In the experience of neutron scattering, the structure factor is a value that can be almost directly measured (through the differential inelastic neutron scattering cross section). Thus it can be interesting to have a calculation which could give a theoretical point of view, even if the system used in the calculation cannot be as complex as in the real case. Although this calculation (of a simplified system) could be a bad representation of the real system, it is already a point of comparison which yields finally to a better understanding. The present work has the aim to provide a useful matlab code for the computation of the structure factor of small magnetic cluster in "spin-only" scattering. A concrete exemple and the result for a special configuration will be also given.


Throughout the globe, forestry faces predictable trends associated with the transition from reliance on natural forests to ones created through human stewardship. Laid over the ordinary economics of this transition are increases in the values of the environmental services that forests provide. The three general approaches to forest management--natural forest management, plantation forest management, and preserve management--are evaluated in this economic context. The USDA Forest Service has interesting opportunities to apply each approach, but doing so will require profound organizational changes.


The transition from benthos to plankton requires multiple adaptations, yet so far it remains unclear how these are acquired in the course of the transition. To investigate this process, we analyzed the genetic diversity and distribution patterns of a group of foraminifera of the genus Bolivina with a tychopelagic mode of life (same species occurring both in benthos and plankton). We assembled a global sequence data set for this group from single-cell DNA extractions and occurrences in metabarcodes from pelagic environmental samples. The pelagic sequences all cluster within a single monophyletic clade within Bolivina. This clade harbors three distinct genetic lineages, which are associated with incipient morphological differentiation. All lineages occur in the plankton and benthos, but only one lineage exhibits no limit to offshore dispersal and has been shown to grow in the plankton. These observations indicate that the emergence of buoyancy regulation within the clade preceded the evolution of pelagic feeding and that the evolution of both traits was not channeled into a full transition into the plankton. We infer that in foraminifera, colonization of the planktonic niche may occur by sequential cooptation of independently acquired traits, with holoplanktonic species being recruited from tychopelagic ancestors


This study focused on the contributions of social networking in accessing resource for irrigation farming among farming households in north central Nigeria. Systematic random sampling was used to select 194 respondents from Oke-oyi and shonga (Kwara State) and Ejiba (Kogi State). Data were obtained using structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlations. The findings indicated that market information with the mean score of 2.75, was the most important contribution of social networking in accessing resource for irrigation farming while lack of input with mean score of 2.27 was the highest ranked constraint faced by the farmers using irrigation for crop production. The result of correlation analysis revealed that there was no significant relationship between the contributions of social networking in accessing resources for irrigation and the constraints faced by the farmers using irrigation for crop production. Based on this results, it is therefore recommended that there should be creation of awareness on various opportunities that are available for irrigation farmers participating in social networking.


The emergence of the World Wide Web has made it possible for individuals with appropriate computer and telecommunications equipment to interact as never before. An explosion of next-generation information systems are flooding the commercial market. This cyberspace convergence of data, computers, networks, and multimedia presents exciting challenges to interface designers. However, this "new technology frontier" has also created enormous roadblocks and barriers for people with disabilities. This panel will discuss specific issues, suggest potential solutions and solicit contributions required to design an accessible Web interface that includes people with disabilities.


Phthalate esters (PEs) are plasticizers used in many plastic products, food packaging materials, and medical bags. The widespread use of PEs has led to ubiquitous environmental contamination and human-exposure. Several epidemiological studies have indicated that exposure to PEs, especially during the prenatal period, induces adverse effects, including developmental and behavioral abnormalities, suggesting that PEs are endocrine-disrupters. Although the endocrine-disrupting effect of PEs is thought to be estrogen receptor (ER)-mediated, the ER-binding affinity of PEs is quite low, indicating that other mechanisms should be considered. In this review, we demonstrate that alkyl chain length and hydroxylation of PEs have a significant impact on binding to ERs and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors. In addition, we discuss recent results from our laboratory that suggest additional risks may arise from environmental and metabolic processing of PEs through microbial transformation, microsomal metabolism, and sunlight exposure.


Hybrid life cycle analysis methodology offers a convenient way to combine traditional life cycle inventories and input output tables to construct inventory data that has both good detail and completeness. This combination easily leads to double counting. i.e the accounting of the same production process in both LCA process and input-output requirements matrix. This paper present some aspects of double counting in hybrid inventories. An algorithm for identifying double counting and four methods to adjust for this are developed. The first two have a low complexity of implementation but limitations to their applicability when performing a detailed assessment. The last two have a somewhat higher complexity in implementation but provide correct results for all types of structural inventory analysis. By the application of one of these, the quality of a hybrid life cycle inventory can be increased at a low effort.


Since about 2005 relations between Greece and China have gained unprecedented momentum. At first glance, the timing and the reasons behind such a boost in bilateral relations between countries so distant and unequal in size are not entirely obvious. This essay examines how the strategic priorities of Greece and China met and describes the turning point that offered the opportunity. Emphasis is given to collaboration in the maritime sector, which is a strong asset of both countries. The essay also studies the strategic implications of such cooperation for the broader region of the eastern Mediterranean and the prospects it presents for Euro-Atlantic strategic priorities.


There are plenty of factors that change the clinical impacts of drugs. Some of them are genetic, physiological and drug-drug interactions. However, drug-drug interaction is the preliminary factor because of the drugs' relationship with CYP family, especially with CYP3A4. The objective of this study is to discuss the effect of CYP3A4 dependent drug interactions about cardiovascular drugs. In this paper, a literature search was performed using PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library to analyze the pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions associated with CYP3A4 isoenzyme.

As a result, we showed the importance of drug-drug interaction related to CYP3A4 isoenzyme that has an affect on drugs used in cardiovascular diseases. In conclusion, although we found lots of drug-drug interactions related to CYP3A4 isoenzyme on cardiovascular drugs, future studies should be done for exact information about this topic.


A fergusonite sample from the Berere region in Madagascar was studied in detail with a wide range of analytical methods, including optical and scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy techniques, electron probe microanalysis and mapping, powder X-ray diffraction, and Raman, photoluminescence and infrared spectroscopy. The specimen contains high concentrations of actinide elements (U up to 6.9 wt%, Th up to 3.0 wt% as oxides) and, as a consequence, it is highly radiation-damaged. The sample has experienced intense, low- T chemical alteration through fluid-driven replacement reactions. The altered areas have sharp boundaries to their neighbouring host and are mainly located adjacent to large fractures. High-resolution element distribution maps show the complexity of the compositional changes. Altered areas are generally enriched in Si and Ca, and depleted in Y; however, most elements show variable trends and heterogeneous distribution patterns pointing to a non-uniform, presumably multi-step alteration history. Most remarkably, the actinides U and Th were comparably immobile; their concentrations having remained almost constant, being only mildly affected by the alteration reaction. This appears to support the potential suitability of the fergusonite-group minerals as host phases for the long-term immobilisation of nuclear waste.


Abstract. Since the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite first began probing the Earth's atmosphere on 13 June 2006, several research groups dedicated to investigating the atmosphere's optical properties have conducted measurement campaigns to validate the CALIPSO data products. Recently, in order to address the lack of CALIPSO validation studies in the Southern Hemisphere, and especially the South American continent, the Lasers Environmental Applications Research Group at Brazil's Nuclear and Energy Research Institute (IPEN) initiated efforts to assess CALIPSO's aerosol lidar ratio estimates using the AERONET sun photometers installed at five different locations in Brazil. In this study we develop a validation methodology to evaluate the accuracy of the modeled values of the lidar ratios used by the CALIPSO extinction algorithms. We recognize that the quality of any comparisons between satellite and ground-based measurements depends on the degree to which the instruments are collocated, and that even selecting the best spatial and temporal matches does not provide an unequivocal guarantee that both instruments are measuring the same air mass. The validation methodology presented in this study therefore applies backward and forward air mass trajectories in order to obtain the best possible match between the air masses sampled by the satellite and the ground-based instruments, and thus reduces the uncertainties associated with aerosol air mass variations. Quantitative comparisons of lidar ratios determined from the combination of AERONET optical depth measurements and CALIOP integrated attenuated backscatter measurements show good agreement with the model values assigned by the CALIOP algorithm. These comparisons yield a mean percentage difference of −1.5% ± 24%. This result confirms the accuracy in the lidar ratio estimates provided by the CALIOP algorithms over Brazil to within an uncertainty range of no more than 30%.


Abstract The evolution of an initially localized disturbance in polymeric channel flow is investigated, with the FENE-P model used to characterize the viscoelastic behaviour of the flow. In the linear growth regime, the flow response is stabilized by viscoelasticity, and the maximum attainable disturbance-energy amplification is reduced with increasing polymer concentration. The reduction in the energy growth rate is attributed to the polymer work, which plays a dual role. First, a spanwise polymer-work term develops, and is explained by the tilting action of the wall-normal vorticity on the mean streamwise conformation tensor. This resistive term weakens the spanwise velocity perturbation thus reducing the energy of the localized disturbance. The second action of the polymer is analogous, with a wall-normal polymer work term that weakens the vertical velocity perturbation. Its indirect effect on energy growth is substantial since it reduces the production of Reynolds shear stress and in turn of the streamwise velocity perturbation, or streaks. During the early stages of nonlinear growth, the dominant effect of the polymer is to suppress the large-scale streaky structures which are strongly amplified in Newtonian flows. As a result, the process of transition to turbulence is prolonged and, after transition, a drag-reduced turbulent state is attained.


This study is an evaluation of the author's use of the Three Step
Consultative Model of service delivery within an Educational Psychology
Service (EPS) in the East Midlands. The first step of the model involves
selective assessment and! or observation. The second step entails
providing usually the teacher with initial feedback. The third step involves
having a consultation (Wagner, 2000) with the teacher to develop agreed
actions! to develop thinking about the child's needs. This study focused on
evaluating a unique model, as it incorporated a consultation step (Wagner,
2000) as part of standard professional practice. The use of this model is
mainly offered when a teacher requires support to clarify a child's special
educational needs (SEN) and! or to more effectively meet the child's
needs.
The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Three
Step Consultative Model in supporting teachers' active involvement in
order to be able to better manage the needs of children. Data were
collected using semi-structured interviews. Much of the data was analysed
(by hand) using a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
A small number of responses required basic quantitative analysis and the
outcomes of this are presented as averages and percentages (in tables,
graphs and pie charts).
The findings are grounded in the views of teachers who experienced each
step of the Three Step Consultative Model. The author made a decision to
use Pidgeon and Henwood's (1996) term of focused concepts as well as
Glaser and Strauss' (1967) term of middle range theories and combined
them to coin the emerging concepts as 'middle range theoretical
concepts'. (See section 3.14.1, Grounded theory analysis, Chapter Three
- Methodology.) The fourth middle range concept to have emerged, that
captures the essence of the main outcomes was "supporting teachers'
active involvement" The outcomes of the research suggest that combining
ii
steps one, two and three by using the Three Step Consultative Model is an
effective way of supporting teachers to change their practice. Step three is
a particularly important element, so much so, that an extra follow-up step
(e.g. step four), similar to the third step would serve the function of
continuing to support teachers' active involvement to make changes to
their practice in order to be able to better manage the needs of children.
Wagner's model of consultation (Wagner, 2000), consultation based on
Roger's principles (Rogers, 1959) and the behaviourall eco-behavioural
models of consultation together help to explain how teachers are able to
change their practice, in order to be able to better manage the needs of
children. So, the Three Step Consultative Model seems to need multiple
aspects of existing models to provide middle range theoretical concepts
consistent with the reactions of the teachers evidenced in this study.
The implications of the findings for the author's EPS, schools and the local
authority (LA) are discussed.


Starting from macroscopic and microscopic facts of cerebellar histology, we propose a new functional interpretation that may elucidate the role of the cerebellum in movement control. The idea is that the cerebellum is a large collection of individual lines (Eccles's "beams": Eccles et al. 1967a) that respond specifically to certain sequences of events in the input and in turn produce sequences of signals in the output. We believe that the sequence-in/sequence-out mode of operation is as typical for the cerebellar cortex as the transformation of sets into sets of active neurons is typical for the cerebral cortex, and that both the histological differences between the two and their reciprocal functional interactions become understandable in the light of this dichotomy. The response of Purkinje cells to sequences of stimuli in the mossy fiber system was shown experimentally by Heck on surviving slices of rat and guinea pig cerebellum. Sequential activation of a row of eleven stimulating electrodes in the granular layer, imitating a "movement" of the stimuli along the folium, produces a powerful volley in the parallel fibers that strongly excites Purkinje cells, as evidenced by intracellular recording. The volley, or "tidal wave," has maximal amplitude when the stimulus moves toward the recording site at the speed of conduction in parallel fibers, and much smaller amplitudes for lower or higher "velocities." The succession of stimuli has no effect when they "move" in the opposite direction. Synchronous activation of the stimulus electrodes also had hardly any effect. We believe that the sequences of mossy fiber activation that normally produce this effect in the intact cerebellum are a combination of motor planning relayed to the cerebellum by the cerebral cortex, and information about ongoing movement, reaching the cerebellum from the spinal cord. The output elicited by the specific sequence to which a "beam" is tuned may well be a succession of well timed inhibitory volleys "sculpting" the motor sequences so as to adapt them to the complicated requirements of the physics of a multijointed system.


Abstract The sedimentological, architectural, and stratigraphic database from one investigated shelf-margin clinothem complex in the Eocene Central Basin of Spitsbergen suggests that dominating process regimes and facies products may change several times during a sea-level cycle, even though the basin-wide processes are constant. Continuous mountainside exposures were investigated by a combination of "walking-out" of stratigraphic surfaces and geometrical elements, closely spaced detailed vertical sections, and tracing on helicopter photo mosaics. The clinothem complex represents a regressive to transgressive shoreline complex and consists of five clinothem sets, recognized by specific stacking patterns and sedimentary facies. The regressive part preserves wave- and river-dominated deltaic deposits in a progradational to aggradational stacking pattern. The delta clinothems consist of tide-influenced distributary channels, wave- and hyperpycnal-flow-dominated mouth bars that on the shelf sourced turbidite-filled slope channels, and slope lobes. The transgressive part of the clinothem complex preserves strongly tide-dominated estuarine deposits underlain by tidal ravinement surfaces that cut down into deposits of wave-dominated deltas. This change in facies product on the inner shelf from wave to tidal at the regressive to transgressive turnaround, was however not a basin-wide process change, inasmuch as the distributary channels also reflect tidal influence. This suggests that tidal currents were present only in areas protected from waves and amplified by the lateral confinement of the estuary. There was a process-regime change on the middle to outer shelf, from wave-dominated highstand and falling-stage delta complex to river-dominated (and wave-influenced) early-lowstand delta complex. The delta complex prograded across the shelf during highstand, and during falling stage the relative sea-level fall forced the deltas out to shelf edge. The early-lowstand delta mouth bars are volumetrically dominated by hyperpycnites, indicating dominance of riverine processes. The proportion of the hyperpycnal-flow deposits decreased during the late lowstand, and the delta complex became wave-dominated anew. The process-regime change from wave dominance to fluvial dominance and back to wave dominance is interpreted to have occurred due to the seaward, and then landward, shift of the feeding river system, whereas the tidal effects were dependent on shelter from waves and on the shoreline configuration.


Compound palmar ganglion, or chronic flexor tenosynovitis, most commonly of tuberculousorigin, is a rare extrapulmonary manifestation of tuberculosis (TB). The flexor synovialsheath is not a common site for TB but, once involved, causes rapid involvement of all flexortendons. We discuss the case of a 70-year-old farmer who presented to us with pain and progressive swelling of the palmar aspect of the wrist. On clinical examination, swelling both above and below the proximal wrist crease was found, with positive cross-fluctuation. Onultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging, features suggestive of compound palmarganglion were present. The patient underwent surgical resection (extensive tenosynovectomy)and chemotherapy. Post-operative histopatholgical findings correlated with the radiological features.


Over the last 40 years considerable public investments have been made in large flood control storage reservoirs throughout the U.S. and internationally. These projects were typically designed to control floods in excess of the 100-year event. Although there have been only a few decades of operating experience for these projects, there is now sufficient evidence to show that the actual flood benefits achieved can be considerably smaller than promised in their design. The operating performance of Folsom Dam on the American River above Sacramento is illustrative. In the February, 1986 flood-variously estimated to be between the 40- and 70-year event-the reservoir was completely filled forcing releases higher than the designated floodway capacity and use of surcharge storage space. Possible catastrophe to Sacramento was averted by the early cessation of rainfall. This paper describes two different assessments of this event, both of which have profound implications for flood control policy in the U.S. One carried out by the Corps of Engineers significantly downgrades the capability of Folsom, thereby justifying the need for a new flood control reservoir upstream at Auburn. The second, carried out by author, focusses on the role of Folsom as part of a larger flood management system emphasizing the importance of efficient flood control operation.


Liquid democracy is a collective decision making paradigm which lies between direct and representative democracy. One main feature of liquid democracy is that voters can delegate their votes in a transitive manner so that: A delegates to B and B delegates to C leads to A delegates to C. Unfortunately, because voters' preferences over delegates may be conflicting, this process may not converge. There may not even exist a stable state (also called equilibrium). In this paper, we investigate the stability of the delegation process in liquid democracy when voters have restricted types of preference on the agent representing them (e.g., single-peaked preferences). We show that various natural structures of preference guarantee the existence of an equilibrium and we obtain both tractability and hardness results for the problem of computing several equilibria with some desirable properties.


This guide provides help for students studying English Literature. Inside, you'll find lists of resources that are available through the Sheridan Library, or on the web, as well as research tips to help you out.


The central concern in this book is the relationship between language and group identity, a relationship that is thrown into greatest relief in 'minority' settings. Since much of the current interest in minority languages revolves around issues of identity politics, language rights and the plight of 'endangered' languages, one aim of the book is to summarise and analyse these and other pivotal themes. Furthermore, since the uniqueness of every language-contact situation does not rest upon unique elements or features – but, rather, upon the particular weightings and combinations of features that recur across settings – the second aim here is to provide a general descriptive framework within which a wide range of contact settings may be more easily understood. The book thus begins with a discussion of such matters as language decline, maintenance and revival, the dynamics of minority languages, and the ecology of language. It then offers a typological framework that draws and expands upon previous categorising efforts. Finally, the book presents four case studies that are both intrinsically interesting and – more importantly – provide specific illustrations of the generalities discussed earlier.


Important part of the environmetal pollution consists of waste water and water pollution. The water polluted by anthropogenical, industrial, and agricultural originated sources are defined as waste waters which are the main pollution sources for reservoirs, rivers, lakes, and seas. In this work, waste waters of leather, textile, automotive side, and metal plating industries were used to determine the levels of Cu, Zn, Cr, Pb and Ni by using Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. As a result, highest mean levels of copper in supernatants of plating and textile industries were observed as 377,18 ng ml-1, respectively 103 ng ml-1 lead and 963,6 ng ml-1 nickel in plating industry, 1068,2 ng ml-1 zinc and 14557,1 ng ml-1 chromium in plating and leather industries were determined.


The views of leading researchers on the emerging topic of post-mortem digital legacy and posthumous interaction are explored in this book which combines the technical, cultural and legal aspects associated with this new branch of HCI. The technical aspects of emerging technologies, both for the web and mobile platforms, are analysed and useful information is provided for system development, requirements engineering, and data management and storage. The authors address the cultural aspects of virtual identity, ethical problems, cross-culture differences regarding memories and death, bereavement, taboos and beliefs, and the visual/verbal representations of death. The legal aspects covered include regulation, property, privacy and conflicts between international and local jurisdictions. The coverage of Digital Legacy and Interaction: Post-Mortem Issues is relevant to the development of systems that consider the influence of death, bereavement and mortality on Human Computer Interaction. The interdisciplinary approach that guides this book is intended to foster enriching and innovative discussions amongst HCI scholars and professionals. Cristiano Maciel and Vincius Carvalho Pereira are researchers at LAVI (Laboratory of Interactive Virtual Environments) and professors at UFMT (Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil).


How to transfer cash to people has received relatively little attention in evaluations of cash transfer programmes, and most programmes are still experimenting with a range of approaches. Yet, the choice of payment system affects the costs and barriers faced by those receiving cash as well as the costs and risks of successful programme implementation. This article proposes a theoretical framework for evaluating payment systems and then applies it to three different payment systems being used in cash transfer programmes in Kenya: payment to recipients' mobile phones that can be redeemed at various phone agents; payment through 'smartcards' that can be redeemed at various banking agents using fingerprint technology for identification; and payment through post offices. Both qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented to assess challenges in implementing the three systems, difficulties recipients face in using them, and the effects these systems have on the impact of cash transfer programmes.


Abstract There are no published studies on the diet of Mogollon voles (Microtus mogollonensis) although this species occurs throughout the Southwest in montane forestlands. Mogollon voles are believed to be herbivorous, selecting the vegetative portion of grass as their dominant food source. Herbivores frequently select more easily digested C3 plants over C4 plants; we thus expected Mogollon voles would feed primarily on C3 plants. We collected hair samples from Mogollon voles captured in northern Arizona between 1967 and 2003 and plant samples from some capture sites. Then we compared stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios to investigate dietary preferences for C3 or C4 plants. Mean isotope ratios for C3 plants we sampled were −26.84‰ (s = 0.17) for δ13C and −0.02‰ (s = 0.32) for δ15N. For C4 plants, mean isotope ratios for δ13C and δ15N were −15.04 ‰ (s = 0.38) and −0.74‰ (s = 0.55), respectively. Mogollon voles were largely herbivorous based on δ15N (mean and standard error: 3.77 ± 0.17‰) and used C3 plants more than C4 based on δ13C C (−24.21 ± 0.14‰). Activities that lead to changes in plant species composition or reduction in C3 plants in montane grasslands and forests (e.g., excessive ungulate grazing) may reduce habitat quality for Mogollon voles.


We describe the design and operation of a 1550-nm diode pumped Er,Yb:glass laser with >130 mW of output power and a free running linewidth of /spl sim/22 kHz. Due to the low frequency relaxation oscillation, near shot limited relative intensity noise performance is obtained throughout the radio frequency (RF) range of interest for cable television and dense wavelength division multiplexed (CATV/DWDM) applications. For long-haul spans an intracavity lithium niobate phase modulator allows for chirping of the linewidth to bandwidths and at rates sufficient to defeat stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). For certain applications, the high output power can eliminate the need for an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA).