Multi-wavelength fiber lasers operating in the long-wavelength band (L-band)
wavelength region are needed as laser source for applications such as wavelengthdivision-
multiplexed (WDM) communication systems, fiber sensors, spectroscopy and
optical fiber gyroscopes.
Multi-wavelength fiber lasers are emerging as attractive alternative technologies for
wavelength-selectable WDM. They are used as source for direct compatibility with the
fiber-optic transmission medium, excellent amplifying properties of rare-earth doped
fibers, Brillouin gain, rapidly continuing progress in novel fiber gain media, maturity and
robustness of the laser diode pumps used and availability of fiber-based components The multi-wavelength laser applications of interest to this work have distinct performance
requirement. This requirement is the need for wide tunability (the ability to tune the
lasing emission through a wide range of wavelengths).
In this thesis, the design and development of a multi channel continuous wave Brillouid
Erbium L-band fiber laser (BEFL), with novel loop mirror configuration, has been
studied experimentally. The design parameters of multi-wavelength fiber laser (launched
pump powers, single mode optical fiber lengths and Brillouin wavelengths), the multi
wavelength Brillouiderbium linear fiber laser configuration with bi-directional pumping
is demonstrated. Throughout this work different lengths of single mode optical fiber with
various launched pump powers and Brillouin wavelengths have been examined to extract
the optimum output performance of a BEFL. The performance of the BEFL is presented
in terms of threshold pump power, output peak power, tuning range and the number of
Stokes. This development fiber loop configuration exhibits considerably high
performance. Twenty-four of Stokes with 10 nm tuning range and efficient output powers
were obtained.


The role of the First South African Infantry Division in the first Battle of El Alamein. 1-30 July 1942 The First Battle of El Alamein (1-30 July 1942) was the turning-point in the course of the Second World War in North Africa. Under the command of Gen. C.J.E. Auchinleck, the British Eighth Army finally succeeded in halting the advance of Erwin Rommel, the able German general, to the Suez Canal. Through drastically changing the British battle strategy, Auchinleck prepared the way for Gen. B.L. (Monty) Montgomery's later triumph at the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Auchinleck's July success was due in no small manner to the stubborn resistance of the Fifth Indian Division, the First South African Division and the Ninth Australian Division. This prevented Rommel from breaking through the Eighth Army's positions between Ruweisat Ridge and the Mediterranean Sea. These battles also emphasized the leadership Quality of Gen. Dan Pienaar and his fellow South African officers.


In the majority of states using Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) to improve children's school readiness, the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is a core assessment of preschool program quality and is central to QRIS metrics and incentive structures. The present study utilizes nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort to examine relations between the ECERS-R and children's academic, language, and socioemotional functioning at age five years. After using a rich set of controls, we found little evidence that the ECERS-R related to children's development. Further, higher levels of quality failed to improve growth in academic, language, or socioemotional skills and behaviors for children with more exposure to sociodemographic risk. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to recent policy initiatives and strengthening the measurement of quality in early childhood education settings.


Pearl millet is one of the most important cereals grown in drought-prone areas and is the staple grain for million of people in West Africa and India. Breeding for drought-prone environments is constrained by lack of suitable selection indices of drought stress resistance. The present study is conducted to determine the reliability of in vitro screening method for initiating drought breeding programme. This in vitro screening method proves to be an ideal method for screening large set of germplasm with less efforts accurately and cost effective. This experiment was carried out with a collection of twenty one millet genotypes including commercial varieties and advance hybrid cultures tested in completely randomized design. Data were recorded at five different moisture stress levels (-3, -5, -7.5, -10 bars and control) by using polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000 on germination percentage, root length, shoot length, root / shoot ratio and statistically analyzed for significant differences. The genotypes recorded significant differences for all traits in response to various moisture stresses. The genotype TNBH 0538 gave the good germination percentage, root length, shoot length, and root/shoot ratio as compared with commercial cultivars under all five moisture stresses. ICMV221 showed highest resistance against moisture stress, while PT6034 showed lowest resistance. TNBH 0642 also gave the better performance under all four moisture levels for most of the traits at seedling stage. The regression studies indicated, the osmotic stress were the most suitable method for drought tolerance screening owing to their highly significant relationship with declining root length (R = 0.991; P < 0.001) and shoot length (R = 0.998; P < 0.001). Hence, the system used in this study appeared to be a simple, rapid and cost effective method for screening seedling traits response to water stress condition to improve the drought tolerance in pearl millet.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effects of the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) on beneficiary access and satisfaction.

DATA SOURCES
Telephone survey of nondisabled adults in 1998.

STUDY DESIGN
Two groups of adults were surveyed: OHP enrollees and Food Stamp recipients not enrolled in OHP. The Food Stamp sample included both privately insured and uninsured recipients. This allowed us to disentangle the insurance effects of OHP from other effects such as its reliance on managed care and the priority list. OHP and Food Stamp adults were compared along the following measures: usual source of care, utilization of health care services, unmet need, and satisfaction with care.

DATA COLLECTION
The survey was conducted by telephone, using computer-assisted telephone interviewing techniques.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
Much of OHP's impact has been realized by its extension of health insurance coverage to Oregon's low-income residents. The availability of health insurance significantly increased the utilization of many health care services and reduced unmet need for care. OHP was associated within a higher percentage of enrollees having a usual source of care and higher rates of Pap test screening among women compared with Food Stamp recipients. OHP enrollees also reported significantly higher use of dental care and prescription drugs; use we attribute to the expanded benefit package under the priority list. At the same time, OHP enrollees reported a greater unmet need for prescription drugs. Drug treatment for below-the-line conditions was one reason for this unmet need, but often the specific drug simply was not in the plan's formulary. OHP enrollees were as satisfied with their health care as those Food Stamp recipients with private health insurance.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite the negative publicity prior to its implementation, there is no evidence that "rationing" under OHP's priority list has substantially restricted access to needed services. OHP adults appear to enjoy access equal to or better than that of low-income persons with private health insurance and have far greater access than the uninsured.


With glass walls only 75 ft from Lake Michigan, an aquarium addition demanded solid seawall protection. Yes, in a strange twist of logic, the first step in creating a whale habitat for Chicago's Shedd Aquarium was to fill in two acres of Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan will be visible through three levels of windows. Thus, as patrons look up from the man-made pools to a panoramic view of the lake, water will indeed be the dominant environment. This rigid set of aesthetic goals, when combined with the dynamics of a Lake Michigan only 75 ft away, put engineers up against the seawall. The 1,400 ft transition system selected consists of an underwater stone revetment, a 7 ft high steel sheeting wall that rises several feet above normal lake level, an 18 ft wide concrete apron and a 10 ft high concrete seawall.


Neuropsychological research investigating mental grammar and lexicon has largely been based on the processing of regular and irregular inflection. Past tense inflection of regular verbs is assumed to be generated by a syntactic rule (e.g., show-ed), whereas irregular verbs consist of rather unsystematic alternations (e.g., caught) represented as lexical entries. Recent morphological accounts, however, hold that irregular inflection is not entirely rule-free but relies on morphological principles. These subregularities are computed by the syntactic system. We tested this latter hypothesis by examining alternations of irregular German verbs as well as pseudowords using ERPs. Participants read series of irregular verb inflection including present tense, past participle, and past tense forms embedded in minimal syntactic contexts. The critical past tense form was correct (e.g., er sang [he sang]) or incorrect by being either partially consistent (e.g., *er sung [*he sung]) or inconsistent (e.g., *er sing [*he sing]) with the proposed morphological principles. Correspondingly, in a second experimental block, pseudowords (e.g., tang/*tung/*ting) were presented. ERPs for real words revealed a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of a negativity and P600 for both incorrect forms in comparison to the correct equivalents. Most interestingly, the P600 amplitude for the incorrect forms was gradually modulated by the type of anomaly with medium amplitude for consistent past tense forms and largest amplitude for inconsistent past tense forms. ERPs for pseudoword past tense forms showed a similar gradual modulation of N400. The findings support the assumption that irregular verbs are processed by rule-based mechanisms because of subregularities of their past tense inflection.


User interface design is a challenging, multi-disciplinary activity that requires understanding a wide range of concepts and techniques that are often subjective and even conflicting. Imagine how much it would help if there were a single perspective that you could use to simplify these complex issues down to a small set of objective principles. In UI is Communication, Everett McKay explains how to design intuitive user interfaces by focusing on effective human communication. A user interface is ultimately a conversation between users and technology. Well-designed user interfaces use the language of UI to communicate to users efficiently and naturally. They also recognize that there is an emotional human being at the other end of the interaction, so good user interfaces strive to make an emotional connection. Applying what you learn from UI is Communication will remove much of the mystic, subjectiveness, and complexity from user interface design, and help you make better design decisions with confidence. It's the perfect introduction to user interface design.

Approachable, practical communication-based guide to interaction and visual design that you can immediately apply to projects to make solid design decisions quickly and confidently
Includes design makeovers so you can see the concepts in practice with real examples
Communication-based design process ties everything from interaction to visual design together

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Communication Design Principles

Chapter 2: Interaction Design

Chapter 3: Visual Design

Chapter 4: Communicating to People

Chapter 5: A Communication-driven Design Process

Chapter 6: UI Design Case Studies

Conclusion

Glossary


Because species interactions are often context-dependent, abiotic factors such as temperature and biotic factors such as food quality may alter species interactions with potential consequences to ecosystem structure and function. For example, altered predator–prey interactions may influence the dynamics of trophic cascades, affecting net primary production. In a three-year field experiment, we manipulated a plant–grasshopper–spider food chain in mesic tallgrass prairie to investigate the effects of temperature and food quality on grasshopper performance, and to understand the direct and indirect tritrophic interactions that contribute to trophic cascades. Because spiders are active at cooler temperatures than grasshoppers in our system, we hypothesized that predator effects would be strongest in cooled treatments, and weakest in warmed treatments. Grasshopper spider interactions were highly context-dependent and varied significantly with food quality, temperature treatment and year. Spiders most often reduced grasshopper survival in the cooled and ambient temperature treatments, but had little to no effect on grasshopper survival in the warmed treatments, as hypothesized. In some years, plants compensated for grasshopper herbivory and trophic cascades were not observed despite significant effects of predators on grasshopper survival. However, in the year they were observed, trophic cascades only occurred in cooled treatments where predator effects on grasshoppers were strongest. Predicting ecosystem responses to climate change will require an understanding of how temperature influences species interactions. Our results demonstrate that changes in daily temperature regimes can alter predator–prey interactions among arthropods with consequences for ecosystem processes such as primary production and the relative importance of top–down and bottom–up processes.


As platform owners continue to expand their ecosystems, many of them have started to provide consumers with their own complementary applications. These moves position the platform owners as direct competitors to their complementors. This paper surveys empirical studies that examine the direct entry of platform owners into complementors' product spaces. It finds that both the motivation and impact of such entries on complementors are multifaceted. The motivation behind platform owners' direct entry goes beyond value capture, and the impact of platform entry on complementors varies across empirical settings. It identifies several future research directions that can help advance our understanding of the relationships between platform owners and complementors.


The delivery of bronchodilators with a metered-dose inhaler (MDI) and a spacer in mechanically ventilated patients has become widespread practice. However, the various ventilator settings that influence the efficacy of MDI are not well established. Application of an end-inspiratory pause (EIP) during drug delivery has been suggested as one of the factors that might increase the effectiveness of this therapy. To test this, the effect of EIP on the bronchodilation induced by beta2-agonists administered with MDI and a spacer in a group of mechanically ventilated patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was examined. Twelve patients with COPD, mechanically ventilated on volume-controlled mode, were prospectively randomized to receive six puffs of salbutamol (100 microg x puff(-1)) either with or without EIP of 5 s duration. Salbutamol was administered with an MDI adapted to the inspiratory limb of the ventilator circuit using an aerosol cloud-enhancer spacer. After a 6 h wash-out, patients were crossed over to receive salbutamol by the alternative mode of administration. Static and dynamic airway pressures, minimum (Rmin) and maximum (Rmax) airflow resistance, the difference between Rmax and Rmin (deltaR), static end-inspiratory respiratory system compliance (Cst,rs) and cardiac frequency (fc) were measured before and at 15, 30 and 60 min after salbutamol administration. Salbutamol caused a significant decrease in dynamic and static airway pressures, Rmin and Rmax. These changes were not influenced by application of EIP and were evident at 15, 30 and 60 min after salbutamol. With and without EIP, Cst,rs,deltaR and fc did not change after salbutamol. In conclusion, salbutamol delivered with a metered-dose inhaler and a spacer device induced significant bronchodilation in mechanically ventilated patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the magnitude of which was not affected by an end-expiratory pause of 5 s. These results do not support the use of end-inspiratory pause when bronchodilators are administered in adequate doses during controlled mechanical ventilation.


The European Union has already devoted its attention to the reality of early childhood for years and through the European Commission Network on Childcare (ECNC) had developed recommendations and documents that stress the importance of preschool education, seen as a key tool for a good cultural, cognitive, physical and emotional development of children, and at the same time as a necessary condition for guaranteeing equal opportunities among citizens right from the start (Silva, Freschi & Caselli, 2018). The European pillar of social rights' (2017) establishes that all children have the right to education and care in early childhood at sustainable costs and of good quality.With the Legislative Decree n. 65/2017 Italian children's education finds itself re-evaluating the educational and scholastic child path, intended as an essential prerequisite for promoting unitary and harmonious development, aiming to highlight the importance of careful planning of educational and didactic action at nursery. Moreover, today it is right to consider the parent as a partner in the educational and growth planning of the child, right from the nursery school. This can finally open the door to an idea of participatory and co-responsible education between the public of the institution and the private of the family, finalizing the centers for children (0-3 years) to the quality of the educational service designed in an eminently pedagogical perspective.


A process is provided for the in-situ extn. of a fermn. product esp. for products which result from the transformation of an amino acid and which are sol. in the fermn. broth. The sol. product is then removed from aq. phase by extn. into an org. phase where the solvent used is encapsulated so that the product can freely permeate the capsule but the microorganism can not. The process envisions that the fermn. broth be circulated to a sep. extractor for the sepn. In this manner not only may a toxic end product be removed from the fermn., but an extractant that is toxic for the microbial population may be employed. Thus, oleic acid was encapsulated in sodium alginate microcapsules which were sterilized and placed in an external extractor. Saccharomyces bayanus was fermented in the presence of L-phenylalanine to produce 2-phenylethanol. The fermentor contents were circulated into the extractor and after 28 h fermn. the 2-phenylethanol concn. in the org. phase was 17.5 g/L while the concn. in the fermn. was 3 g/l, a level which is not inhibitory to the yeast. [on SciFinder (R)]


OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate the epidemiologic characteristics and secular trends of stair-related injuries among children aged <5 years treated in US emergency departments. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted of data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1999 through 2008 by using sample weights to estimate national numbers and rates of stair-related injuries. RESULTS: An estimated 931 886 children aged <5 years were treated for stair-related injuries from 1999 through 2008, averaging 93 189 injuries per year and 46.5 injuries per 10 000 population annually. The number of injuries per year decreased significantly by 11.6% from 1999 to 2008. The rate of stair-related injuries also decreased significantly from 53.0 to 42.4 per 10 000 population from 1999 to 2008. Soft tissue injuries accounted for 34.6% of cases. Approximately three-fourths (76.3%) of children had injuries to the head and neck region, and 2.7% of patients were hospitalized. Children who were being carried at the time of injury accounted for 24.5% of injuries among children <1 year and were more than 3 times more likely to be hospitalized than children injured by other mechanisms. CONCLUSIONS: Stair-related injuries are on the decline but still represent an important source of injury to young children. Increased prevention efforts are needed, including parental education and improved stairway design, to decrease stair-related injuries among young children.


The thesis examines the issue of the ethics and politics of hospitality in the French contemporary context in relation to the diasporic populations of the descendants of post-war North African immigrants or the 'Beur', using an approach which combines philosophy, sociology and literature.

I argue that the concept of hospitality has been framed by the enduring effects of colonial legacy, the legacy of the 'camp-thinking' mentality marked by bio-cultural
kinship and the ties of blood or 'race' as the basis for belonging to a nation. I maintain that hospitality is exactly the anti-logic of the camp-thinking mentality in
its rejection of closure and overdetermination by keeping the political open to the ethical. Even though a hiatus between the ethics and the politics of hospitality
exists, the two can not exist separately. I argue that this aporia does not mean paralysis, but in fact, it means the primacy of the ethics of hospitality over politics,
and thus, keeps alive the danger of hostility in the making of the politics of hospitality by means of 'political invention' that respects the uniqueness of the Other
and that does not exclude him/her every time a decision is taken.

The language of deconstruction and its political and ethical rejection of nationalisms, borders and centres reflects the experience of those who are marginalised at the peripheries of societies, whom I call the hyphenated peoples or diasporic populations like the Beurs. But at the same time, this language enables them to assert and articulate their own existence, their own politics and identities in a way that opens new possibilities of resistance to violence and exclusion. Jacques Derrida's concepts of marginality, diaspora, translation and democracy-to-come express the experience of minority diasporic groups such as the Beurs in France.

I attempt a close deconstructive reading of the Beur texts in order to trace their translations of the contradictions of French hospitality and the way the Beurs have been 'racialised' as an 'external group' threatening the supposed 'purity' of the French national culture by their physical, cultural and religious 'difference' though they are French citizens with strong affiliations with France. I argue that with their mixed origins and cultural multiplicity, the Beurs resist the authority of the 'constructed' and 'mythical' national purity and cultural determinis1n, since their position at the threshold between communities (the French and the North African immigrant communities) and national camps (the French and the North Africans) allows them to offer a basis for solidarity that transcends ethnic absolutism and national belonging. I argue in my thesis that it is the diasporic populations such as the Beurs in France that can open up hospitality to an attitude beyond nationalistic
determinism and xenophobia.


A variety of optical and electro-optical instruments are used for both diagnostic and therapeutic appli- cations to the human eye. These generally expose ocular structures to either coherent or incoherent optical radiation (ultraviolet, visible, or infrared radiation) under unique conditions. We convert both laser and incoherent exposure guidelines derived for normal exposure conditions to the application of ophthalmic sources. © 2005 Optical Society of America


Changes caused by industrial processes in the world today are factors of change across several environments, including soil, air, and water. Across the planet there are many areas identified as being contaminated. In the state of São PauloBrazil, there are more than 2,000 areas identified as contaminated by various chemicals. In the study and identification process of the impacts of these contaminated areas there are concerns with the populations which are directly exposed: workers of companies or residents. Workers with high levels of exposure or working in the maintenance of gas, water or sewer infrastructures, as well as in civil construction, are never considered. Thousands of workers throughout the world are involved in the described situations by conducting their activities without having information of the risks present in the soil or water, and consequently without the benefit of specific prevention. This study was conducted due to a concern in evaluating the health of workers in sanitation activities in the city of São Paulo, who work in areas identified as contaminated. This is a descriptive study where all contaminated areas were identified from the onset. Later, workers who carried out maintenance services for water and sewer were identified. Based upon the substances identified as contaminated, a medical service procedure was developed and additional tests were conducted. We evaluated 300 workers, who were subjected to laboratory tests and clinical examination after completion of specific procedures. The analyses are described where changes were found in AST, ALT and GGT. To conclude, it is necessary to identify risks arising from contaminated areas, evaluate the health of the workers exposed to these areas, and provide guidance on the risks that may be present in addition to the traditional risks associated with these occupations.


This work analyzes fairness dimensions of the climate regime. A central issue in international law and policy is how countries of the world should allocate the burden of addressing global climate change. With the link between human activities and climate change clearly established, and the first impacts of climate change being felt, there is a renewed sense of urgency in addressing the problem. On the basis of an overview of science and the development of the climate regime to date, this book seeks to identify the elements of a working consensus on fairness principles that could be used to solve the hitherto intractable problem of assigning responsibility for combating climate change. The book demonstrates how an analysis of fairness dimensions of climate change – grounded in practical developments and illustrated with reference to the latest developments – can add value to our understanding of current developments and future options for international climate law and policy.


OBJECTIVES
to investigate the outcome of patients undergoing axillo-axillary bypass grafting for symptomatic subclavian artery stenoses or occlusions.

DESIGN
retrospective case-note review and prospective review of patients available for follow-up.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
sixteen patients had axillo-axillary grafts in a 17-year period. Ten patients were available for review and assessed clinically, by measurement of arm blood pressures, and by duplex scanning of their grafts.

RESULTS
one patient died and three grafts occluded within 30 days of operation. Nine out of 10 grafts scanned were patent, with three further grafts clinically patent at death. Overall secondary patency was 75% at a combined median follow-up of 56 months (range 12-204 months). Recurrent symptoms occurred in two patients, one with an occluded graft and one with a patent graft.

CONCLUSION
axillo-axillary bypass grafts give good long-term symptom-free results.


The malaria eradication campaign that started in Sri Lanka in the late 1940s virtually eliminated malaria transmission on the island. I use the preeradication differences in malaria endemicity within Sri Lanka to identify the effect of malaria eradication on fertility and child survival. Malaria eradication increased the number of live births through increasing age-specific fertility and causing an earlier first birth. The effect of malaria on the transition time to higher-order births is inconclusive. Malaria could directly or indirectly affect survival probabilities of live births. I exploit the particular epidemiology of malaria that causes more severe sequelae during an initial pregnancy. I find differential changes in survival probabilities by birth order that are most likely due to the direct in utero effects of malaria. The increase in population growth after malaria eradication reconciles the contradictory findings in the macroeconomic and microeconomic literatures: the increased productivity and education from malaria eradication will only appear in aggregate measures like GDP per capita after a delay because of the initial increase in the population size.


A simulation is presented of the operation of brackish karst springs with the MODKARST deterministic mathematical model. Through this simulation, major issues regarding the operation mechanisms as well as the sustainable development of the springs are addressed and analyzed. The particular case analyzed is the Almiros brackish karst spring at Heraklion Crete in Greece and the Makaria brackish karst spring in Attica. Of concern are the following aspects: (a) The fractal characteristics of the Almiros karst formation, (b) the sea intrusion mechanism for the Almiros spring and the Makaria spring and (c) the choice of a suitable method for the sustainable development of the Almiros spring. It was found that the seawater intrusion in the Almiros karst-spring reservoir follows a power law, the exponent of which provides the fractal dimension of the system. Regarding sea intrusion, the spring becomes brackish due to the crossing of the tube, which carries the fresh water to the spring, with other tubes, carrying saltwater from the sea. MODKARST simulates the hydrograph along with the variation with time of the chloride concentration and correlates the discharges from the fresh water and the seawater tubes. The outcome is the relative importance of the two potential mechanisms for seawater intrusion, namely the density difference between fresh water and sea water and the venturi effect; it is found that the density difference dominates in the Almiros case while the Venturi effect dominates in the Makaria case. An important conclusion of the analysis is that raising the Almiros-spring water outlet could prevent the seawater intrusion; the location of the elevated outlet and the fresh water loss to the sea are estimated.


The temperature fluctuations generated by viscous dissipation in an isotropic turbulent flow are studied using direct numerical simulation. It is shown that their scaling with Reynolds number is at odds with predictions from recent investigations. The origin of the discrepancy is traced back to the anomalous scaling of the dissipation rate fluctuations. Phenomenological arguments are presented which explain the observed results. The study shows that previously proposed models underpredict the variance of frictional temperature fluctuations by a factor proportional to the square of the Taylor-scale Reynolds number.


From the Publisher:
Enrich the user experience while keeping control of your network
Networking professionals: At last, comprehensive coverage of content switching technology is in your hands! Optimizing Network Performance with Content Switching: Server, Firewall, and Cache Load Balancing, by topic experts Matthew Syme and Philip Goldie, provides sharp insights into this wide-ranging, rapidly changing technology. You'll learn the concepts, the background, and the architectures of content switching, as well as how it works and where and why it should be deployed to maximize the performance of your networks and servers. Fueled by increasing bandwidth and ever-richer content, this technology is fast becoming a standard in enterprise and ISP networks. Inside you'll find:
Full explanations of TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and other network fundamentals
Vendor-independent coverage of the key content switching applications--server load balancing, Web cache redirection, application redirection, firewall load balancing, and more!
Detailed diagrams that illustrate clearly the deployments and topologies for all applications and variations covered in the book
A running fictional case study that translates theory into practice, with all applications demonstrated in example implementations
Advanced topics including TCP/IP flows and sessions, delayed binding, URL parsing, cookie persistence, server health checking, and load balancing metrics

The advanced topics in Optimizing Network Performance with Content Switching are tailored for engineers with layer 2 and layer 3 experience looking for a comprehensive explanation of the inner workings of cswitching. This book is also ideal for managers, application developers, security administrators, sales people, and other professionals who require a firm understanding of the basics of the technology.


Objectives: To examine the characteristics of incident reporting systems in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in relation to type, aetiology, outcome and preventability of incidents. Methods: Systematic review. Search strategy: Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library. Included: relevant systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials, observational studies and qualitative research. Excluded: non-systematic reviews, expert opinions, case reports and letters. Participants: hospital units supplying neonatal intensive care. Intervention: none. Outcome: characteristics of incident reporting systems; type, aetiology, outcome and preventability of incidents. Results: No relevant systematic reviews or randomised controlled trials were found. Eight prospective and two retrospective studies were included. Overall, medication incidents were most frequently reported. Available data in the NICU showed that the total error rate was much higher in studies using voluntary reporting than in a study using mandatory reporting. Multi-institutional reporting identified rare but important errors. A substantial number of incidents were potentially harmful. When a system approach was used, many contributing factors were identified. Information about the impact of system changes on patient safety was scarce. Conclusions: Multi-institutional, voluntary, non-punitive, system based incident reporting is likely to generate valuable information on type, aetiology, outcome and preventability of incidents in the NICU. However, the beneficial effects of incident reporting systems and consecutive system changes on patient safety are difficult to assess from the available evidence and therefore remain to be investigated.


PICO question Which sternotomy closure method (orthopaedic wire or suture) is recommended in large breed dogs undergoing a median sternotomy? Clinical bottom line The literature search revealed no clinical studies on large breed dogs comparing the clinical outcomes following either orthopaedic wire or suture sternotomy closure methods. Post-mortem studies on large breed dogs suggest that sutures are as suitable as orthopaedic wires for sternal closure with regards to their biomechanical properties. There is insufficient clinical evidence to make a recommendation that sutures be used in large breeds of dog.


Abstract As part of Western European development aid policy, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is increasingly promoted in resource-poor countries. This paper engages with CSE promotion in Bangladesh funded by the Dutch Government. It unpacks the 'collaboration' by looking at how a paradox is played out between the universal ideals underlying a broader transnational rights-approach and the intended cultural sensitivity by adapting CSE to the targeted context. Feminist scholarship on the ideological, moral and affective underpinnings of CSE is used to question this model's implied universality and neutrality. The various negotiations, concerns and strategies of NGO-representatives as co-producers of sexuality knowledge in Bangladesh are focused upon. Analysis focuses on how a 'speakable', middle-class-oriented 'proper' sexuality is invented and managed through affect; how cultural insensitivity and secular normativity with respect to CSE are challenged in discussions concerned a rights-versus-health approach; and how a confident and knowledgeable adolescent or young person is imagined through the emancipatory project attributed to sexuality education. Rather than via equal collaboration, it is argued, adolescent sexuality education in these development aid settings is shaped by powerful transnational and local processes of Othering.


In April 2018 Cuadrilla Resources successfully drilled the UK's first
horizontal shale gas well in Lancashire. Whilst there is an abundance
of academic research on the environmental impacts of fracking
(primarily in North America), there is no scholarship that specifically
considers what environmental harms may occur from fracking in a
UK context. This thesis is therefore an important, original contribution
to academic understanding and is presented at a vital time in the
development of fracking in the UK where production of shale gas is
imminent.

In order to assess the potential for environmental harm, 20 semistructured
interviews were conducted with a variety of key-informants
(people possessing important expertise of one or more areas of the
fracking process in the UK). These key-informants came from a
variety of backgrounds and included: 5 Anti-Fracking Campaigners; 3
Academics; 3 Employees from Regulatory Bodies; 2 Geological
Consultants; 1 Journalist; 1 Parish Councillor; 1 District Councillor; 1
Water Consultant; 1 Oil and Gas Professional; 1 Oil and Gas
Consultant; and 1 Gas Company Director. Interview questions were
derived from a literature review that revealed different opportunities
for environmental harm to occur based on a variety of academic and
organisational research. As a result, interview questions centred on
water (specifically; water aquifers, water resources, and wastewater)
and other aspects (seismicity, chemical usage, well integrity and
flaring).

Treadmill of Production and eco-philosophy were used as theoretical
underpinnings of the research. Treadmill of Production provides an
understanding of why fracking has emerged in the UK, concluding
that the demise of North Sea oil and gas is leading to the increased
attractiveness of more extreme energy sources in order to keep the
treadmill running. The harms identified in the results chapters are
forms of ecological withdraws and additions that lead to ecological
disorganisation. Additionally, eco-philosophy provides three different
perspectives from which to view human interactions with shale gas
resources. The conclusion is that fracking clearly represents an
anthropocentric approach to the creation of energy where human
wants and needs are prioritised over the survival demands of
humans, non-human species and the wider ecology.
The thesis is best situated within the discipline of green criminology
due to the fact that fracking is a legal production process in the UK. It
is suggested that green criminology is in a unique position to
evaluate fracking, and that this is not possible in orthodox
criminological discussions that view crimes solely as violations of
criminal laws.

By conducting primary research prior to the development of fracking
in the UK, this research has identified key areas for environmental
harm to occur based on the expertise of a variety of key-informants.
This is the first piece of research of its kind and it is argued that
analysing the potential for environmental harm to occur prior to the
production of shale gas is more beneficial that analysing
environmental degradations after they have already occurred
according to the precautionary principle of environmental law.


The way Twitter and other microblogging networks work is to have users create follow links among one another, and create short messages to their followers. Most of the time, the creation of follow links to other users does not require approval from the latter. Therefore, it is very easy for a user to create such links. On the other hand, the same cannot be said for seeking incoming follow links which is useful in some application scenarios. In this paper, we therefore study the Follow Link Seeking Problem that aims to nd the strategies for a source user to maximize the likelihood of receiving a follow link from a target user. We formulate this problem as a recommendation task and generate a set of strategies from well known follow link patterns. Using the condence scores of follow link patterns, we derive the success probability of each strategy. Finally, we present Friender, a working recommender system for follow link seeking strategies. The system performs localized crawling of the target user, computes the required strategies on the y, and presents the strategies visually.


The author traces the history of the prevailing hypothesis which assumes that the ancestors of the present-day Finns and Estonians migrated into their contemporary north European homeland as recently as two thousand years ago. Instead, he suggests that during the latter part of the Wurm glaciation, more than ten thousand years ago, when northern Europe was still covered by ice, they and the Saami (Suomi) were hunters and fishers who occupied an area between the Danube and the Ukraine. They subsequently followed the retreating ice northwards into the eastern Baltic, as that area became habitable. His theory, which is regarded as controversial, would see FinnoUgrian speakers inhabiting northern Europe before IndoEuropean speaking farmers displaced them in Northern Germany and western Scandinavia. Key Words: Finns, Estonians, Saami (Suomi), Finno-Ugric languages, Indo-European Languages, Basque language, northern Europe, Baltic Sea, Scandinavia, North European plain, Wurm glaciation, Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic. I once defended a hypothesis in an international conference that the Finno-Ugric people must have lived a long time ago both further west and south than indicated by their recent territories. I based my hypothesis, above all, on the picture provided by modern archeology, which shows that when the ice gradually melted after the glacial maximum and people were able to live in more northern regions the main direction of the gradual settlement expansion was from south to north and not from east to west. The most prominent counter-argument was the following: The process described is a process in world history, but our purpose is to discuss a possible east-to-west migration of the Finno-Ugric people from their original homeland to their more recent territories during the relatively recent times. My response was naturally that we are discussing the same thing, but that we date and derive the direction of the Finno-Ugric migration entirely differently, and, furthermore, the history of the Finno-Ugrians is part of the world's history, as is the history of any other people.2 I have often been asked in Finland - as also Kalevi Wiik has been asked - whether my views of the Finno-Ugrian origin reflect Finland's recent membership in the European Union are an attempt to forcefully acquire European roots for the Finns. Of course, the answer has been that the purpose is to make Finns aware of what international research has discovered of their origins. The relationships of the Indo-European and the Finno-Ugric people, cultures, and languages have been the most varied during the past millennia. Hardly a single hypothesis presented so far is capable of explaining the entire history of the IndoEuropeans, nor the millennia of developmental stages taking place in the large territory inhabited by the Finno-Ugrians. The problem of the origin of the Indo-Europeans has been discussed for some 400 years, since the Bonaventura paper, which demonstrated that the German and Persian languages include 22 common words (cognates), was published in 1597.3 Since then possibly three to four hundred different hypotheses of the original Indo-European homeland have been proposed, but none of them has gained a dominant and widely-accepted position. The discussion about the Finno-Ugric people's original homeland and migrations has continued for over a century, but to the present only one hypothesis - that the Finno-Ugrians originate from the Volga Bend or the Urals - has been proposed. When heretical ideas have been presented, the ruling consensus has ignored them. The research has focused on answering four prominent research questions: 1. Where was the original Fino-Ugrian homeland? .2. How did the linguistic relationships of the Finno-Ugrians develop? 3. How did the Finno-Ugrians spread from their area of origin? 4. What linguistic loans have the Finno-Ugrians received from the IndoEuropean and possibly other languages? …


Despite remarkable success in practice, modern machine learning models have been found to be susceptible to adversarial attacks that make human-imperceptible perturbations to the data, but result in serious and potentially dangerous prediction errors. To address this issue, practitioners often use adversarial training to learn models that are robust against such attacks at the cost of higher generalization error on unperturbed test sets. The conventional wisdom is that more training data should shrink the gap between the generalization error of adversarially-trained models and standard models. However, we study the training of robust classifiers for both Gaussian and Bernoulli models under $\ell_\infty$ attacks, and we prove that more data may actually increase this gap. Furthermore, our theoretical results identify if and when additional data will finally begin to shrink the gap. Lastly, we experimentally demonstrate that our results also hold for linear regression models, which may indicate that this phenomenon occurs more broadly.


Lithium-ion batteries using flexible paper-based current collectors have been developed. These current collectors were fabricated from wood microfibers that were coated with carbon nanotubes (CNT) through an electrostatic layer-by-layer nanoassembly process. The carbon nanotube mass loading of the presented (CNT-microfiber paper) current collectors is 10.1 μg/cm$^{2}$. The capacities of the batteries made with the current collectors are 150 mAh/g for lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) half-cell, 158 mAh/g for lithium titanium oxide (LTO) half-cell, and 126 mAh/g for LTO/LCO full-cell. The fabrication approach of the CNT-microfiber paper current collectors, the assembly of the batteries, and the experimental results are presented and discussed.


This book reviews some of the issues emerged during the E-lab Symposium "Entrepreneurship Today" at the University of Bergamo (Italy) that took place in September 2010.
The authors explore the horizons of entrepreneurship research. The concept of entrepreneurship is analyzed from different points of view with a particular focus on issues such as innovation, finance, strategy, family business and entrepreneurship orientation.
These topics are attracting considerable interest, thanks to the wide range of cases, experiences and new phenomenon observed in global competition, which involve both the behaviour of firms and the new frames of the markets they compete in. The purpose is not only to find appropriate interpretative models but also representional frameworks that are effective and thus capable of increasing our knowledge in the field.


This [volume part of a] collection to be published in approximately 60 volumes reproduces the contents of parish registers censuses and other documents concerning the population of Quebec from the beginning of the colonial period up to the present day. The work is a result of a study undertaken by the Program of Research in Historical Demography at the University of Montreal. The data are arranged by geographic area parish and time period and are supplemented by indexes. Information is included on names of individuals mentioned in each baptismal marriage or burial record and if available their sex age marital status presence or absence occupation parents place of residence and origin and other characteristics


An iteration method is employed to obtain the flow of a compressible fluid past a curved surface. The first approximation which leads to the Prandtl-Glauert rule, is based on the assumption that the flow differs but little from a pure translation. The iteration process then consists in improving this first approximation in order that it will apply to a flow differing from pure translatory motion to a greater degree. The method fails when the Mach number of the undisturbed stream reaches unity but permits a transition from subsonic to supersonic conditions without the appearance of a compression shock. The limiting value at which potential flow no longer exits is indicated by the apparent divergence of the power series representing the velocity of the fluid at the surface of the solid boundary.


Vendors who wish to provide software or services to large corporations and governments must often obtain numerous certificates of compliance. Each certificate asserts that the software satisfies a compliance regime, like SOC or the PCI DSS, to protect the privacy and security of sensitive data. The industry standard for obtaining a compliance certificate is an auditor manually auditing source code. This approach is expensive, error-prone, partial, and prone to regressions. We propose continuous compliance to guarantee that the codebase stays compliant on each code change using lightweight verification tools. Continuous compliance increases assurance and reduces costs. Continuous compliance is applicable to any source-code compliance requirement. To illustrate our approach, we built verification tools for five common audit controls related to data security: cryptographically unsafe algorithms must not be used, keys must be at least 256 bits long, credentials must not be hard-coded into program text, HTTPS must always be used instead of HTTP, and cloud data stores must not be world-readable. We evaluated our approach in three ways. (1) We applied our tools to over 5 million lines of open-source software. (2) We compared our tools to other publicly-available tools for detecting misuses of encryption on a previously-published benchmark, finding that only ours are suitable for continuous compliance. (3) We deployed a continuous compliance process at AWS, a large cloud-services company: we integrated verification tools into the compliance process (including auditors accepting their output as evidence) and ran them on over 68 million lines of code. Our tools and the data for the former two evaluations are publicly available.


Six species of phytoplankton, representing 6 major phylogenetic groups (2 oceanic species: a cyanobacteria, Synechococcus sp., and a coccolithophorid, Emiliania huxleyi; and 4 coastal species: a prasinophyte, Tetraselmis sp., the green algae Dunaliella tertiolecta, the diatom Skele- tonema costatum and a dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae) were tested for their ability to reduce iodate to iodide in batch cultures. They all did so to varying degrees. Thus, the reduction of iodate to iodide by phytoplankton may be a general phenomenon in the marine environment. At ambient con- centrations of iodate, the rates of depletion of iodate and appearance of iodide varied between 0.8 and 0.02, and between 0.3 and 0.02 nmol µg chlorophyll a -1 d -1 , respectively. E. huxleyi was the least efficient while A. carterae was the most efficient in the depletion of iodate. However, in the formation of iodide, while E. huxleyi was also the least efficient, Synechococcus sp. were the most efficient. The rates of appearance of iodide were noticeably slower than the corresponding rates of depletion of iodate, suggesting that part of the iodate might have been converted to forms of iodine other than iodide in these cases. The slight mismatch in the rank order of the rates of depletion of iodate and appearance of iodide between the phytoplankton species was traced to this variable and incomplete conversion of iodate to iodide. These rates were increased by up to over an order of magnitude upon enriching the culture medium with 5 and 10 µM of iodate. The depletion of iodate and appearance of iodide occurred in all growth phases. However, the rates might vary with growth phase and the patterns of these variations might be species-specific. Phytoplankton growth was not impeded even under unnaturally high concentrations of iodate implying that there is little interaction between iodine processing and the metabolic activity of cell growth.


Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive behaviors. Impairment for individuals diagnosed with ADHD tends to begin at a young age, affecting many domains in life. One such domain is achieving a college education. College students with ADHD tend to have lower GPAs, take longer to graduate, and have higher dropout rates than individuals not diagnosed with ADHD. Individuals with ADHD may be inadequately prepared for college. College readiness is proposed to comprise of self-determination, academic, and daily living skills, all of which are possible areas of deficit for individuals with ADHD. The current study examined differences in college readiness in undergraduates with and without ADHD. In general, students with ADHD were found to be less prepared for college than those without ADHD; specific areas of unpreparedness were explored. This finding supports the need for early intervention for students with ADHD. Further research is needed on possible interventions to help individuals with ADHD be successful in all domains.


When two surfaces achieve contact, then contact phenomena such as adhesion, friction and wear can occur, which are of great interest in many disciplines, including physics, physical chemistry, material chemistry, and life and health sciences. These phenomena are largely determined by the nature and magnitude of the surface forces such as van der Waals, capillary and hydration forces. Moreover these forces are length-dependent, and therefore when the system scales down, their contribution scales up, dominating the interaction between the surfaces.A goal of my PhD work was to investigate fundamental contact phenomena in terms of the surface forces that regulate their properties. The primary tool applied in this PhD thesis work has been the atomic force microscopy (AFM), which (with all of its sub-techniques) offers the possibility to study such forces with high resolution virtually between all types of materials and intervening media. Therefore, in this work it was possible to study the long ranged interactions presented in air between different industrially relevant materials and how these interactions are shielded when the systems are immersed in an ionic liquid.Also investigated was the influence of microstructure on the tribological properties of metal alloys, where their good tribological properties were related with the vanadium and nitrogen contents for a FeCrVN tool alloy and with the chromium content for a biomedical CoCrMo alloy. Moreover, the effect of the intervening media can significantly affect the surface properties, and when the biomedical CoCrMo alloy was immersed in phosphate buffer saline solution (PBS), repulsive hydration forces decreased the friction coefficient and contact adhesion. On the other hand, with the immersion of the FeCrVN tool alloy in the NaCl solution, small particles displaying low adhesion were generated in specific regions on the surface with low chromium content. These particles are assumed to be related to a prepitting corrosion event in the tool alloy.The mechanical properties of stratum corneum (SC), which is the outermost layer of the skin, were also studied in this work. The SC presents a highly elastic, but stiff surface where the mechanical properties depend on the nanoscale. A novel probe has been designed with a single hair fibre in order to understand how the skin deforms locally in response to the interaction with such a fibre probe. This study revealed that is mostly the lateral scale of the deformation which determines the mechanical properties of the SC.Finally, important achievements in this work are the developments of two new techniques - tribological property mapping and the Hybrid method for torsional spring constant evaluation. Tribological property mapping is an AFM technique that provides friction coefficient and contact adhesion maps with information attributed to the surface microstructure. The Hybrid method is an approach that was originally required to obtain the torsional spring constants for rigid beam shaped cantilevers, which could not be previously determined from their power torsional thermal spectra (conventional method). However, the applicability is shown to be general and this simple method can be used to obtain torsional spring constants for any type of beam shape cantilever.


Ribose‐5‐phosphate isomerase (Rpi; EC 126.96.36.199) is a key activity of the pentose phosphate pathway. Two unrelated types of sequence/structure possess this activity: type A Rpi (present in most organisms) and type B Rpi (RpiB) (in some bacteria and parasitic protozoa). In the present study, we report enzyme kinetics and crystallographic studies of the RpiB from the human pathogen, Trypanosoma cruzi. Structures of the wild‐type and a Cys69Ala mutant enzyme, alone or bound to phosphate, d‐ribose 5‐phosphate, or the inhibitors 4‐phospho‐d‐erythronohydroxamic acid and d‐allose 6‐phosphate, highlight features of the active site, and show that small conformational changes are linked to binding. Kinetic studies confirm that, similar to the RpiB from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the T. cruzi enzyme can isomerize d‐ribose 5‐phosphate effectively, but not the 6‐carbon sugar d‐allose 6‐phosphate; instead, this sugar acts as an inhibitor of both enzymes. The behaviour is distinct from that of the more closely related (to T. cruzi RpiB) Escherichia coli enzyme, which can isomerize both types of sugars. The hypothesis that differences in a phosphate‐binding loop near the active site were linked to the differences in specificity was tested by construction of a mutant T. cruzi enzyme with a sequence in this loop more similar to that of E. coli RpiB; this mutant enzyme gained the ability to act on the 6‐carbon sugar. The combined information allows us to distinguish the two types of specificity patterns in other available sequences. The results obtained in the present study provide insights into the action of RpiB enzymes generally, and also comprise a firm basis for future work in drug design.


We report the discovery of a circumstellar disk around the young A0 star HR 4796 in thermal infrared imaging carried out at the W. M. Keck Observatory. By fitting a model of the emission from a flat dusty disk to an image at λ=20.8 μm, we derive a disk inclination, i=72°+6°-9° from face-on, with the long axis of emission at P.A. 28° ± 6°. The intensity of emission does not decrease with radius, as expected for circumstellar disks, but increases outward from the star, peaking near both ends of the elongated structure. We simulate this appearance by varying the inner radius in our model and find an inner hole in the disk with radius Rin=55 ± 15 AU. This value corresponds to the radial distance of our own Kuiper belt and may suggest a source of dust in the collision of cometesimals. By contrast with the appearance at 20.8 μm, excess emission at λ=12.5 μm is faint and concentrated at the stellar position. Similar emission is also detected at 20.8 μm in residual subtraction of the best-fit model from the image. The intensity and ratio of flux densities at the two wavelengths could be accounted for by a tenuous dust component that is confined within a few AU of the star with mean temperature of a few hundred degrees K, similar to that of zodiacal dust in our own solar system. The morphology of dust emission from HR 4796 (age 10 Myr) suggests that its disk is in a transitional planet-forming stage, between that of massive gaseous protostellar disks and more tenuous debris disks such as the one detected around Vega.


Finless porpoises Neophocaena spp. are under pressure from various anthropogenic impacts due to their coastal habitat. Net fishery bycatch is considered a major risk for the populations around Japan, and mitigation measures are required. We carried out a long-term study to assess the efficiency of acoustic pingers in reducing the encounter rates of narrow-ridged finless porpoises with fishing nets. We used a passive ultrasonic event recorder (A-tag) to obtain acoustic encounter rates of echolocating finless porpoises and compared results for the presence and absence of pinger transmissions in Omura Bay, Japan, over two 8-mo periods (2011 and 2012). Encounter rates were significantly lower during periods when pingers were in operation, but the effect of pingers decreased with time. By the eighth month of the study in each study year, the number of encounters during the ensonified period was greater than that during periods without pingers, suggesting habituation. When pingers were reactivated at the study site after 4 mo of silence, the encounters with the active pingers returned to the lower level observed at the beginning of the experiment. These results reveal that the pingers effectively induce avoidance in porpoises, but that this effectiveness only lasts for a few months, which is likely due to habituation which could be mitigated by alternating periods of several months of silence between periods of active pinger use.


Over the last two decades, the rapid growth of ICT has become one of the most important topics discussed by the scholars in education. This is due to the capability of ICT in providing a dynamic and proactive teaching and learning environment. In line with the current digital era, teachers are required to integrate ICT in their daily teaching and replace their traditional methods with modern tools and facilities. The main focus of this paper is on effectiveness of ICT integration in education. More specifically, this paper aims at identifying the level of computer skills and knowledge of primary school teachers in the teaching and learning process. Moreover, the objective of this paper is to identify the level of ICT integration in teaching and learning process in classroom by primary school teachers. A total of 61 teachers from 10 public primary schools in Klang Valley, Malaysia have been selected randomly to complete this quantitative study's survey questionnaire. The findings illuminate that most of the teachers are normal users, and many teachers more frequently use ICT in the teachers' room for their work rather than using it in their classroom for teaching and learning. Moreover, results show that teachers should always be ready and well-equipped in terms of ICT competencies and positive attitude to provide ICT-based learning opportunities for students to improve their learning quality. Future studies need to consider other aspects of ICT integration specially from the management point of view such as strategic planning and policy making


During the twelfth century in England, there were three viable princes who were their father's eldest sons – yet all three died before the age of thirty, and none lived long enough to fully take the throne. This had important implications for English politics, for the process of Anglo-Norman royal succession, and for what it meant to be a prince. Eustace (c.1130-1153), the central figure in this essay, was the prince of England under his father King Stephen, and was also the count of Boulogne from 1147 until his death in 1153. Curiously enough, he is notably absent from modern scholarship and is only brought up in connection to his father, or other places and events with historical significance. The primary objective of this essay is to begin to consider Eustace's life and his deeds – an objective which is accomplished by the first two sections of this essay. The third section is then dedicated to the comparison of Eustace to the two other English princes of the twelfth century, William Aetheling and Henry the Young King, who similarly met an early end. Based on a model of kingship, these three princes are juxtaposed against one another, and their aptitudes and deeds are assessed and evaluated based largely upon the opinions of the contemporary chroniclers. Eustace, though flawed in the eyes of many of these chroniclers, shines through as the model English prince of the twelfth century. This study on Eustace provides further insights into adjacent topics such as English politics during Stephen's reign, the role of a prince, and also provides a framework for the historical evaluation of princes.


The Solomon Islands election of April 2006 was the first since the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands arrived in mid-2003. In its aftermath, riots in Honiara resulted in the destruction of much of Chinatown, the worst incident of civil disorder since the commencement of the Australian-led operation in July 2003. This article examines the election outcomes, and the preceding, largely neglected, impact of RAMSI on the shifting balance between the incumbent Kemakeza government and the opposition. It looks at how and why Snyder Rini's government emerged victorious on April 18th 2006, and why it collapsed eight days later. In conclusion, the article revisits debates about the causes of the Honiara riots, contesting some of the more far-fetched conspiracy theories and emphasising instead the depth of Solomon Islander reaction against a deeply flawed premiership selection process.


There is a wide range of evidence to support the view that new technologies serve an integral part of teenagers' life. However, in Hungary, it seems that even though the facilities are provided in most of the educational institutions, these are not in regular use due to teachers' lack of competence, the willingness of using them or their constant operational problems. Using a qualitative, small-scale study conducted in semi-structured focus group interviews (N=8) with 15 participants in five Hungarian primary schools, the study primarily aims to uncover how teenagers can relate their foreign language advancement to their use of digital devices in their free time. Furthermore, the paper examines their views on foreign language (FL) instruction supported by ICT at school as well as which digital devices and for what purposes they would preferably use them in FL classes. The study implicitly raises the issue of cultural sustainability and tries to find evidence to what extent mass culture affects the Hungarian language proficiency of students. According to the results, teenagers' attitude towards institutional foreign language learning seems to be quite traditional, as they cannot relate their free time activities spent with digital devices to study purposes at school. Although participants are conscious about the effectiveness of ICT promoting language learning, they think that watching films, instructional videos, or working with projected tasks connected to course books are the major reasons for using digital devices for classroom purposes. Regarding cultural sustainability even within this small-scale study, there is some evidence that English as one of the most influential languages of mass culture can have an impact on the mother tongue language maintenance.


Local participation in biodiversity conservation has come to be heralded as the panacea to the problems of natural resource degradation in developing countries. However, the effectiveness of local participation in biodiversity conservation is not adequately measured in conservation studies. The objective of this paper therefore, is to analyse the contribution of local participation in promoting biodiversity conservation in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. This is a synthesis paper based on previous survey data collected by the author dating back to 1998. Results indicate that the Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme, operational in Botswana since the mid-1990s, is achieving certain biodiversity conservation objectives in some communities involved in the project in the Okavango Delta. The paper concludes that the success is a demonstration that local participation is important in the decision making process if conservation is to be achieved in rich biodiversity areas like the Okavango Delta.


In this study I examine the decisions to sign and later terminate the so called Saudi agreement, a military memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Sweden and Saudi Arabia, understood as a gateway agreement for future arms deals as well as exchange of defense technology knowledge. Comparing statements from the Social Democratic Party (SAP), who held government both in 2005 when the agreement was signed as well as in 2015 when it was terminated unilaterally by Sweden, I examine the ideological preferences of Swedish foreign policy. Could the shift in policy be explained by ideology?


Fintech developments are shaking up mandates within the existing regulatory architecture. It is not uncommon for financial sector agencies to have multiple policy objectives. Most often the policy objectives for these agencies reflect prudential, conduct and financial stability policy objectives. In some cases, financial sector agencies are also allocated responsibility for enhancing competition and innovation. When it comes to fintech, countries differ to some extent in the manner they balance the objectives of promoting the development of fintech and regulating it. Countries see fintech as a means of achieving multiple policy objectives sometimes with lesser or greater degrees of emphasis, such as accelerating development and spurring financial inclusion, while others may support innovation with the objective of promoting competition and efficiency in the provision of financial services. This difference in emphasis may impact institutional structures, including the allocation of staff resources. Conflicts of interest arising from dual roles are sometimes managed through legally established prioritization of objectives or establishment of separate internal reporting lines for supervision and development.


Senate and House committees in October reported legislation for new fast track authority enabling the Administration to negotiate trade agreements with foreign countries and to submit them to Congress for consideration under expedited procedures. Many agricultural and food industry interests are among the export-dependent enterprises that support new fast track authority, arguing that foreign trading partners will not seriously negotiate with an Administration that lacks it. However, some agricultural groups argue that fast track provides them with inadequate opportunities for dealing with their issues, and that it ultimately will lead to new
agreements that benefit foreign more than U.S. producers, at least in some commodity sectors. Neither bill was taken to the floor in 1997 because of insufficient votes for passage in the House. However, the President is expected to seek approval in 1998.


This research critically examines how regulatory bodies in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States are responding to native advertising and influencer marketing, two practices that blur the line between digital media content and advertising. Through an examination of regulatory guidelines, documents, and cases from 2010 to 2020, we demonstrate how regulators adhere to a "narrow" regulatory paradigm that the advertising industry itself helped to establish in the early 1900s. Under this paradigm, the only potential problem caused by advertising is an individual consumer misled into purchasing something they would not otherwise. As such, for native advertising and influencer marketing, regulators recommend clear disclosure as the solution. Our synthesis of critical academic literature, however, reveals the wider social and cultural consequences of native advertising and influencer marketing, including the reputation of journalism and further erosion of the public sphere by commercialism, among other issues.


Chronic Open Angle Glaucoma (COAG) refers to a chronic progressive condition that is characterised by damage to the optic nerve, resulting in peripheral visual loss that can progress to involve the fovea and central vision; subsequently causing blindness. COAG is reported to have a poor level of adherence to treatment due to its asymptomatic nature. In this study, a Glaucoma Expert Patient Programme (GEPP) demonstrated new ways of improving patients' experience and adherence to COAG treatment. The research has employed an Information-Motivation-8ehavioural Skills Model to understand the association between knowledge, motivation and behavioural skills in an attempt to improve adherence amongst recently diagnosed patients. Patient participation was at the heart of every component of the study.

In this research, four Expert Patients were trained and supported to deliver an educational programme (termed the GEPP) to 25 recently diagnosed patients with COAG (Intervention Group) and then a comparison was made to 25 participants (Control Group) that were also recently diagnosed with COAG but did not receive the educational programme. Three pre and post educational programme validated questionnaires were used to measure patients' knowledge, satisfaction and adherence at baseline and then discern changes at 1 month and 6 months follow up to the GEPP intervention. Staff (N = 10), Expert Patient (N = 4), Intervention Group (N=10) and Control Group (N=10) semi-structured interviews were also conducted to obtain deeper insight into their experiences of engaging in the programme. Data analysis indicated IMPROVING AWARENESS was the main theme that emerged supported by three subthemes: knowledge, satisfaction and adherence. This research has taken the Patient-Patient relationship to a higher level. It is viewed that the Expert Patients' experience is crucial and valuable to improving the experience, knowledge and adherence of newly diagnosed patients with COAG.

The GEPP delineated in this study provided insight regarding individuals' life experiences of living with and managing chronic complex glaucoma. Implications for practice relate to the development of tailored educational programmes. This research contributed new knowledge to improving the adherence practices of glaucoma patients. It also demonstrated the value of Expert Patients' experience and their contribution to assisting newly diagnosed patients in self-managing their COAG.


Understanding how assemblies of neurons encode information requires recording large populations of cells in the brain. In recent years, multi-electrode arrays and large silicon probes have been developed to record simultaneously from hundreds or thousands of electrodes packed with a high density. However, these new devices challenge the classical way to do spike sorting. Here we developed a new method to solve these issues, based on a highly automated algorithm to extract spikes from extracellular data, and show that this algorithm reached near optimal performance both in vitro and in vivo. The algorithm is composed of two main steps: 1) a "template-finding" phase to extract the cell templates, i.e. the pattern of activity evoked over many electrodes when one neuron fires an action potential; 2) a "template-matching" phase where the templates were matched to the raw data to find the location of the spikes. The manual intervention by the user was reduced to the minimal, and the time spent on manual curation did not scale with the number of electrodes. We tested our algorithm with large-scale data from in vitro and in vivo recordings, from 32 to 4225 electrodes. We performed simultaneous extracellular and patch recordings to obtain "ground truth" data, i.e. cases where the solution to the sorting problem is at least partially known. The performance of our algorithm was always close to the best expected performance. We thus provide a general solution to sort spikes from large-scale extracellular recordings.


Realizations of atmospheric turbulence, used as input for parabolic equation (PE) calculations, are commonly generated using a two‐dimensional Fourier representation of the spatial fluctuations in refractive index, i.e., the turbulence field. A number of factors affect the nature of the generated turbulence and determine the character of the acoustic propagation. These factors include the turbulence spectrum (e.g., Gaussian, Kolmogorov, or von Karman spectra) and the number of Fourier modes included in the representation. The Green's function PE is used to calculate sound field characteristics in the case of upward refraction above an impedance plane using different turbulence fields.


Information and communication technologies (ICTs) produce public goods for societies. Through ICTs people can be more politically active, construct their social identities, strengthen bonds with significant others, and more. However, businesses provide access to the Internet, produce and sell hardware and software, while maintaining platforms that are used for the generation of these public goods. There is a contradiction inherent in this dynamic as the continued provision of these public goods is contingent upon private entities deeming them profitable. Within the United States, federal policies have not adequately addressed this contradiction. In this paper, I argue that a change in the way ICTs are conceptualized is needed in order to increase interest in protecting the public goods produced by ICTs. To this end, I describe a model in which interconnected ICTs work in layers to produce a single digital environment. People must have access to each layer in this environment in order to benefit from the goods produced. In this environment, there is room for both market spaces that support commerce and non-market spaces that support public goods. I argue that this model can aid citizens and advocacy groups in framing and justifying the need for nurturing non-market spaces.


While most occurrences of low-back pain in athletes are self-limited sprains or strains, persistent, chronic, or recurrent symptoms are frequently associated with degenerative lumbar disc disease or spondylolytic stress lesions. The prevalence of radiographic evidence of disc degeneration is higher in athletes than it is in nonathletes; however, it remains unclear whether this correlates with a higher rate of back pain. Although there is little peer-reviewed clinical information on the subject, it is possible that chronic pain from degenerative disc disease that is recalcitrant after intensive and continuous nonoperative care can be successfully treated with interbody fusion in selected athletes. In general, the prevalence of spondylolysis is not higher in athletes than it is in nonathletes, although participation in sports involving repetitive hyperextension maneuvers, such as gymnastics, wrestling, and diving, appears to be associated with disproportionately higher rates of spondylolysis. Nonoperative treatment of spondylolysis results in successful pain relief in approximately 80% of athletes, independent of radiographic evidence of defect healing. In recalcitrant cases, direct surgical repair of the pars inter-articularis with internal fixation and bone-grafting can yield high rates of pain relief in competitive athletes and allow a high percentage to return to play. Sacral stress fractures occur almost exclusively in individuals participating in high-level running sports, such as track or marathon. Treatment includes a brief period of limited weight-bearing followed by progressive mobilization, physical therapy, and return to sports in one to two months, when the pain has resolved.


A chirped-pulse amplification femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser operating at 1 KHz has been developed. The laser system consisted of a long-cavity femtosecond oscillator, a four-pass grating pulse stretcher, two multi-pass amplifiers and a double-pass grating pulse compressor. Thermal lensing at the amplifiers was reduced by cooling Ti:sapphire crystals using Peltier coolers. Gain narrowing and residual phase errors were compensated for by the use of an acousto-optic pulse shaper. The final laser output had an energy per pulse of 2.0 mJ and a pulse duration of 19.5 fs, reaching 0.1 TW at 1 KHz.


The first comprehensive and most definitive source to date on David Wojnarowicz This engaging and richly illustrated book comprehensively examines the life and art of David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), who came to prominence in New York's East Village art world of the 1980s, actively embracing all media and forging an expansive range of work both fiercely political and highly personal. First displayed in raw storefront galleries, his work achieved national attention at the same moment that the AIDS epidemic was affecting a generation of artists, himself included. In a thoughtful overview essay, David Breslin looks at the breadth of the artist's work as well as Wojnarowicz's broad range of interests and influences, situating the artist in the art-historical canon and pushing beyond the biographical focus that has characterized much of the scholarship on Wojnarowicz to fully assess his paintings, photographs, installations, performances, and writing. A close examination of groups of works by David Kiehl sheds new light on the artist's process and the context in which the works were created. Essays by Julie Ault, Gregg Bordowitz, C. Carr, Marvin Taylor, and National Book Award finalist Hanya Yanagihara investigate the relationship between artistic production and cultural activism during the AIDS crisis, as well as provide a necessary accounting and close evaluation of divergent practices that have frequently been subsumed under broad labels like "East Village," "queer," "postmodern," and "neo-expressionist."


This book introduces various coverage control problems for mobile sensor networks including barrier, sweep and blanket. Unlike many existing algorithms, all of the robotic sensor and actuator motion algorithms developed in the book are fully decentralized or distributed, computationally efficient, easily implementable in engineering practice and based only on information on the closest neighbours of each mobile sensor and actuator and local information about the environment. Moreover, the mobile robotic sensors have no prior information about the environment in which they operation. These various types of coverage problems have never been covered before by a single book in a systematic way. Another topic of this book is the study of mobile robotic sensor and actuator networks. Many modern engineering applications include the use of sensor and actuator networks to provide efficient and effective monitoring and control of industrial and environmental processes. Such mobile sensor and actuator networks are able to achieve improved performance and efficient monitoring together with reduction in power consumption and production cost.


Occupational stressors associated with compromised job satisfaction amongst general practitioners (e.g. time constraints, burdensome patient loads and interruptions in personal life) have been found to adversely affect the quality of primary health care services. A cross-sectional survey of 128 physicians in 22 pri-mary health care centers in Qatar used a self-administered questionnaire on factors associated with job satisfaction. Most physicians reported time pressures attributable to large patient loads that appeared to affect the quality of work and personal life. Younger and female physicians reported frustration at not having time to read about new research and advances. Methods of addressing these problems, such as an appointment system, were favorably received by most physicians. Strategies to reduce occupational stress on most of the physicians may involve allowing them greater control over their work environment and providing time for Continuing Medical Education and postgraduate studies. This, in turn, should lead to improved primary health care.


This article is a methodological manual for those who are interested in chaotic dynamics. An exposition is given on the foundations of the theory of deterministic chaos that originates in classical mechanics systems. Fundamental results obtained in this area are presented, such as elements of the theory of nonlinear resonance and the Kolmogorov–Arnol'd–Moser theory, the Poincaré–Birkhoff fixed-point theorem, and the Mel'nikov method. Particular attention is given to the analysis of the phenomena underlying the self-similarity and nature of chaos: splitting of separatrices and homoclinic and heteroclinic tangles. Important properties of chaotic systems — unpredictability, irreversibility, and decay of temporal correlations — are described. Models of classical statistical mechanics with chaotic properties, which have become popular in recent years — billiards with oscillating boundaries — are considered. It is shown that if a billiard has the property of well-developed chaos, then perturbations of its boundaries result in Fermi acceleration. But in nearly-integrable billiard systems, excitations of the boundaries lead to a new phenomenon in the ensemble of particles, separation of particles in accordance their velocities. If the initial velocity of the particles exceeds a certain critical value characteristic of the given billiard geometry, the particles accelerate; otherwise, they decelerate.


This paper investigates Chinese students' learning experience in the business Faculty of an Australian university. Chinese students are often characterized as "rote learners" or stereotyped as "reduced Other". Areas of concern are limited to addressing the differences in learning styles, language, and sociocultural barriers. However, learning occurs in many forms. There is an absence of discussion about what practices Chinese students use in order to learn. Based on practice-based theory, a longitudinal ethnographic study of the journeys of five students was traced and investigates what practices Chinese students use in the learning and how these students "put things together" in the journey. This paper reports on two of the five students from the larger study. In particular, this article brings attention to the students' everyday life and insights into their doings, sayings, and relatings between people, other beings and material artefacts. Chinese students' learning involves foreground entanglements, co-construction, and relationality of practices from both educational and sociocultural perspectives. This paper provides new insights about Chinese students' learning and encourages academics and institutions to be aware of the impact of their practices and to deepen their understanding of the complexities of Chinese students' learning.


The proposed research aims at assessing the impact of strategic partnership and institutional collaborations among middle level colleges in Kenya. It will consider the recommendations of stakeholders including students and college managers. Data will be collected from colleges known to have engaged in these collaborations either with local universities or with foreign examining bodies. These colleges will include; Nairobi Institute of Business Studies, Wisemen Trainers and Consultants and Compuera College, all.headquartered in Nairobi but with campuses in other parts ofthe country. A survey will be conducted involving a sample of 135 respondents from all the three colleges. Of these, there will be 40 students from each college, 3 managers, one accountant and a registrar from every college. This will provide a representative group of respondents that will give a true picture of the industry. The research will employ a descriptive survey. A stratified random sampling method will be used to select a representative group of respondents from among the students of the three institutions. For managers, accountants and registrars, a non-probability sampling method will be applied. The student respondents will be provided with questionnaires to fill during class time while the rest will fill theirs at their own convenience, however, they will be requested to do it within schedule. Questionnaires will provide the source of primary data. Secondary data will be sought from college manuals, magazines, registrars' handbooks and college websites. The research findings will benefit the college owners, managers, administrators and students in identifying the impact of collaborations and alliances. College managers will be able to plan for growth while students will have an insight of how they might gain from these alliances.


Program synthesis or code generation aims to generate a program that satisfies a problem specification. Recent approaches using large-scale pretrained language models (LMs) have shown promising results, yet they have some critical limitations. In particular, they often follow a standard supervised fine-tuning procedure to train a code generation model only from the pairs of natural-language problem descriptions and ground-truth programs. Such paradigm largely ignores some important but potentially useful signals in the problem specification such as unit tests, which thus often results in poor performance when solving complex unseen coding tasks. To address the limitations, we propose"CodeRL", a new framework for program synthesis tasks through pretrained LMs and deep reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, during training, we treat the code-generating LM as an actor network, and introduce a critic network that is trained to predict the functional correctness of generated programs and provide dense feedback signals to the actor. During inference, we introduce a new generation procedure with a critical sampling strategy that allows a model to automatically regenerate programs based on feedback from example unit tests and critic scores. For the model backbones, we extended the encoder-decoder architecture of CodeT5 with enhanced learning objectives, larger model sizes, and better pretraining data. Our method not only achieves new SOTA results on the challenging APPS benchmark, but also shows strong zero-shot transfer capability with new SOTA results on the simpler MBPP benchmark.


Evolution of a single intense vortex on the ß-plane is studied based on the "elliptical approach" which was introduced by Legras and Dritschel for description of the eddies with uniform vorticity. A vortex is represented by two round patches of uniform vorticity – one inside another. One of them constitutes the vortex core and another – the trap zone. Radiation of the Rossby waves is not considered in this study. Application of the "elliptical approach" permits to generalize the earlier-proposed theory of intense vortex evolution on the ß-plane. Besides the Rossby and Zhukovsky–Kutta forces, it includes the inertia force in the equations describing the vortex motion. It is shown that the deduced system of equations is written down using non-canonical variables; and it can be represented in the generalized Hamiltonian form in case the vortex motion equations are supplemented with the equation of absolute vorticity conservation. Being analyzed, the deduced equations' solutions show that they both provide new interpretation of the vortex self-propagation on the ß-plane and permit to characterize highfrequency oscillations of the vortex center position. Thus the represented theory permits to explain similar oscillations sometimes arising in the numerical experiments.


We measure inequities from the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality and hospitalizations in the United States during the early months of the outbreak. We discuss challenges in measuring health outcomes and health inequality, some of which are specific to COVID-19 and others that complicate attribution during most large health shocks. As in past epidemics, pre-existing biological and social vulnerabilities profoundly influenced the distribution of disease. In addition to the elderly, Hispanic, Black and Native American communities were disproportionately affected by the virus, particularly when assessed using the years of potential life lost metric. For example, Hispanic and Black Americans in 2020 saw 39.5 and 25 percent increases in excess mortality relative to trend, compared to a less than 15 percent increase for Whites; we find losses in potential years of life three to four times larger among Hispanic and Black compared to White Americans. Individual-level data from a commercially insured population show that otherwise similar Black and Hispanic enrollees were hospitalized due to COVID-19 at a higher rate than White enrollees. We provide a conceptual framework and initial empirical analysis which seek to shed light on contributors to pandemic-related health inequality, and suggest areas for future research. Marcella Alsan Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy St. Rubenstein Bldg R403 Cambridge, MA 02138 and NBER email@example.com Amitabh Chandra John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 and NBER email@example.com Kosali I. Simon O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Indiana University 1315 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405-1701 and NBER firstname.lastname@example.com


Abstract Xerostomia, the subjective sensation of dry mouth, is associated with qualitative and quantitative changes of saliva. Poor health, certain medications and radiation therapy constitute major risk factors. To gain further understanding of this condition the present study explored the main concern of xerostomia expressed by afflicted adults. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 participants and analysed according to the grounded theory method. An aggravating misery was identified as the core category, meaning that the main concern of xerostomia is its devastating and debilitating impact on multiple domains of well-being. Professional consultation, search for affirmation and social withdrawal were strategies of management. The findings reveal that xerostomia is not a trivial condition for those suffering. Oral impairment as well as physical and psychosocial consequences of xerostomia has a negative impact on quality of life. There is an obvious need to enhance professional competence to improve the compassion for and the support of individuals afflicted by xerostomia.


The present dissertation focuses on biases in the perception of the economy and the stability of peoples� concepts on the economy. In Chapter 2, in a series of four experiments, the accuracy of economic laypeoples� and experts� estimations of economic growth in the long run, what influences the accuracy of their estimations, and which procedures they use were examined. It was found that, for growth rates higher than 1%, the true values were clearly underestimated. The estimations became slightly better when the task was presented in a financial investment scenario. The effect of underestimation was lower for experts compared to laypeople. There was no effect of incentives on the accuracy of the estimations; however, a positive influence of the need for cognition was observed. Male participants provided more accurate estimations than female participants. The common application of different and inappropriate solution procedures accounted for the underestimations. In Chapter 3, using the framework of the Theory of Lay Epistemics, 156 replies to a newspaper article which contradicted the belief that the introduction of the euro was inflationary were content analyzed. As a consequence of the need for cognitive closure 5 different reactions were expected to occur which promote high Perceived Inflation despite counterpersuasive evidence. As expected, the reactions Two-sided Examples and Two-sided Arguments appeared less frequently, Self-centeredness, Emotionality and Discrediting of Statistics more frequently, when subjects were convinced that the introduction of the euro was inflationary. Three clusters of replies were identified, which differed in their pattern of argumentation. It is suggested that lay beliefs on the economy remain stable over time, even in the light of counterpersuasive evidence from a credible source with a high level of expertise. Chapter 4 examined the confirmation bias in a real-world setting, using the example of a value-added tax increase in Germany at the beginning of 2007. Using a within-subjects desing, two surveys were carried out two months before and after the value-added tax increase, where N = 307 participants had to judge the actual, prospective and past prices for eight products. In the first survey, no significant difference for the expected price increases between the products affected (M = 10.14%, SD = 8.41) and not affected by the tax increase (M = 10.42%, SD = 10.31) was observed. In the second survey, again no significant difference for the preceived price increases between the affected (M = 5.00%, SD = 9.14) and the non affected products (M = 5.49%, SD = 7.06) was observed. The results indicate that the real price development was not considered and argue in favour of a top-down approach of the confirmation bias in a real-world setting, which is mainly based on expectations. In Chapter 5, practical and theoretical implications of the previous findings are discussed.


The objective is to address the problem of uncertainty in the valuation process and to derive recommendations for risk quantification. Simulation-based methods are applied, allowing to create a market value distribution and therefore to transform uncertainty into risk. Using predefined risk measures, valuation risk can explicitly be assessed and major risk drivers can be identified. Furthermore, we examine the spreads between transaction prices and market values so as to identify crises impacting valuation accuracy. This study makes a significant contribution to improving the valuation and thus to professionalize the real estate industry.