Community college students are an at-risk group because of their lack of preparation and lack of a firm connection to the institution. Using the literature on student retention that equates a caring and concerned faculty with student satisfaction, the Arts and Humanities department at Atlantic Cape Community College initiated an intense academic advisement outreach to students in the majors of studio arts, humanities, performing arts, and history. Surveys were sent to the general student population as well as the recipients of the initiative. The resulting data revealed a stronger sense of connection to the institution by the Arts and Humanities students than by the general student poulation and a higher rate of retention than exhibited in previous semesters. This research tended to validate earlier studies that equated student satisfaction with retention in the community college setting. ********** This article recounts the efforts by the Arts and Humanities (A&H) department at Atlantic Cape Community College (ACCC) to increase student retention in the spring of 2001 by personalizing academic advisement for the students seeking degrees in studio arts, humanities, history, or performing arts. Discussion of the retention issues concerning the community college is vital since an increasing number of students are using the community college as their entree into the world of higher education (Cohen, 1998). According to Laanan (2001), more than 50% of the students in higher education begin their career at the two-year level, yet only 29.5% of these students actually receive a degree (Tinto, 1987). In many cases, a community college student is an at-risk student (Cohen & Brawer, 1987) facing almost insurmountable barriers to academic success. Potential impediments to degree completion may include being a first-generation college student, having poor academic skills, being burdened by family and work pressures, being a language minority student, and lacking a consistent connection to the college. The most obvious of these hurdles is the lack of adequate preparation for college-level work. A poor high school record (Bean, 1980) or the passage of time and the commensurate erosion of academic skills are indications of overwhelming hindrances to academic success. In addition, most adult students are faced with competing demands on their time (Stewart, Merril, & Saluri, 1985). The pressures of family and employment responsibilities can easily frustrate the returning adult student. Another factor that can inhibit the success of the community college student is that community colleges are designed for the commuting student rather than for participants in a residential life program. Most community college students come to the campus for classes and leave as soon as classes are over. The support group that residential students might form is rarely as developed for the commuting student. When the classes are over, the commuter will typically return to an environment where the support for continued education may be minimal and where a dozen other constituencies may be competing for the student's time and attention (Stewart et al., 1985). For a residential student, leaving college may mean packing up, getting out of a lease, and leaving friends (Stewart et al., 1985), while a community college student can simply stop attending. Retention and Faculty Discussions on community college issues tend to downplay the significance that extracurricular activities play in student satisfaction. One research report (Hagedorn, Maxwell, Rodriguez, Hocevar, & Fillpot, 2000) states that "student clubs and government, concerts and artistic events, and athletics do not figure prominently in the community college students' campus priorities. The classroom is the main point of student contact with the college" (p. 591). The literature is consistent when emphasizing the importance of the faculty in student retention. …


Tenofovir (TFV) disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine (FTC) are used in combination for HIV treatment and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). TFV disoproxil fumarate is a prodrug that undergoes diester hydrolysis to TFV. FTC and TFV are nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors that upon phosphorylation to nucleotide triphosphate analogs competitively inhibit HIV reverse transcriptase. We previously demonstrated that adenylate kinase 2, pyruvate kinase, muscle and pyruvate kinase, liver and red blood cell phosphorylate TFV in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). To identify the kinases that phosphorylate FTC in PBMC, siRNAs targeted toward kinases that phosphorylate compounds structurally similar to FTC were delivered to PBMC, followed by incubation with FTC and the application of a matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry method and ultra high performance liquid chromatography-UV to detect the formation of FTC phosphates. Knockdown of deoxycytidine kinase decreased the formation of FTC-monophosphate, while siRNA targeted toward thymidine kinase 1 decreased the abundance of FTC-diphosphate. Knockdown of either cytidine monophosphate kinase 1 or phosphoglycerate kinase 1 decreased the abundance of FTC-triphosphate. Next-generation sequencing of genomic DNA isolated from 498 HIV-uninfected participants in the HIV Prevention Trials Network 069/AIDS Clinical Trials Group A5305 clinical study, revealed 17 previously unreported genetic variants of TFV or FTC phosphorylating kinases. Of note, four individuals were identified as simultaneous carriers of variants of both TFV and FTC activating kinases. These results identify the specific kinases that activate FTC in PBMC, while also providing further insight into the potential for genetic variation to impact TFV and FTC activation.


In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal is a new history of voluntary flagellation in Europe, from its invention in medieval religious devotion to its use in the modern pornographic imagination. Working with a wide range of religious, literary, and medical texts and images, Niklaus Largier explores the emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices. From early modern pornography to the Marquis de Sade and the fantasies of Swinburne and Joyce, the erotic and devotional imagination drew on the whip.Largier explores how the Reformation and Counter-Reformation problematized the medieval culture of arousal. The stimulating qualities of medieval visual displays, especially flagellant practices, processions, and spectacles, were subjected to a criticism that sought to control the imagination. In modern bourgeois life the practice, effects, and imagery of flagellation became a central site of investigation into concerns and anxieties about exercising emotional self-control and censoring fantasy. Modern references to flagellant practice in the works of Swinburne, Proust, and Joyce testified not only to a "decadent" fascination with "medieval" cultures or "perverse sexuality," but also to a fascination that nineteenth-century censorship, informed by psychopathological discourses, had obliterated. Such evocations of flagellation, Largier explains, were attempts to recover a culture of stimulation and imagination--both erotic and devotional--that transcended the modern boundaries of sexuality.


Against the background of Swedish preschool's historical and traditional functions in Swedish society, this article focuses on some of the choice points and their implications for professional and organisational development in preschool. By combining feminist pragmatism and feminist action research, some analytical points are made regarding the significance of organisational settings and the limitations they can have on the professional practices within the organisational setting. The preschool teachers in this study show that pedagogical change is possible, although it takes time and is not necessarily endorsed by municipal employers. The role of action researchers is described in terms of positions and ethics. The latter is presented as particularly important.


With the advent of Web, text information is being generated across the globe at an unfathomable rate and covering countless topics. This dramatic growth in text information and the increasing number of ways people can utilize it has influenced our daily lives in fundamental and profound ways. The widespread and multi-purposed use of search engines is one example of how transformed our lives have become in relation to text information.
Although the vast majority of people's information needs can be served very successfully by current search engines, there is still a considerable number of queries that even the best search engines perform poorly on. In this dissertation, we propose a method of optimizing a search engine to better handle such "difficult queries", which addresses issues and opportunities at three different stages of an interactive search. Specifically, we propose to improve search quality for difficult queries by: (1) Bridging the vocabulary gap by defining a semantic smoothing language model. A query can be difficult because it does not contain the optimal choice of related terms, or lacks sufficient discriminative terms. In the pre-retrieval stage, using semantic smoothing during query formulation can mitigate the effect of those omissions. (2) Incorporating user negative feedback, i.e., improving a search engine by learning from user feedback in the post-retrieval stage. When a query is so difficult that all the top retrieved results (e.g., top 10) are completely irrelevant, the feedback that a user can provide is solely negative. We propose a generalized optimization framework to learn from feedback on non-relevant documents to prune extensively, but carefully, a large number of non-relevant documents from the top of the ranking list. (3) Balancing priorities when learning from user interaction in order to optimize the whole session. When presenting the search results to the user, there is a tradeoff between promoting those with the highest immediate utility and promoting those with the best potential for collecting feedback information, which can be used to better serve the user over the course of the session (interactive search stage). We frame this tradeoff as a problem of optimizing the diversification of search results, and we propose a machine learning approach that adaptively optimizes each individual user query such that we maximize the overall utility of the entire session.
In summary, this dissertation is expected to advance the state of the art of search engines by providing a suite of novel search algorithms, which use the listed approaches to improve a search engine's ability to handle difficult queries.


The  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to  examine  the  merger  gains  to  the  bidder  firms' shareholders  in  the  U.S.  petroleum  industry,  through  an  event  study,  and  through  a cross‐sectional regression on the event study results. This paper utilizes three different event  windows  of  3,  11  and  21  days,  symmetric  around  the  event  date  in  the  event study. I  find that  the acquirers experience significantly positive abnormal returns around the announcement of  the acquisition or merger. Further,  I  find  that  firms acquiring public targets  experience  significantly  lower  abnormal  returns  than  firms  acquiring  private targets. The above‐mentioned  results do not  seem  to be driven by extreme observations,  they are  robust  to  the  specification of  the beta  coefficients and  they  seem  to hold even  for unclustered data.


Call Admission Control (CAC) is one of the most important parts in Radio Resource Management of the wireless networks and it has a huge impact on the quality of service (QoS).Traditional CAC strategies focus on increasing the radio resource utility by decreasing the service blocking probabilities. In this paper, a new CAC scheme based on game theory is introduced to analyze the conflicts and rewards for different network operators. The game theoretic based CAC scheme contains two parts, utility function computation and a non-cooperative game between two networks to maximize their rewards. The proposed framework is preliminary and its objective is investigate the possibility that networks should be able to autonomously define policies for different parts of a coverage area depending on the priority of users and their requirements. In this approach, the two simulated WiMAX networks compete with each other for traffic units in overlapping coverage area and maximize their rewards. The proposed scheme is illustrated with the help of an example in which most of the traffic units lie close to one network as compared to the other network. Future work will present results of simulation studies for more detailed experiments.


As a part of its collaboration with the Born This Way Foundation, the Berkman Center is publishing a series of papers that synthesize existing peer-reviewed research or equivalent scholarship and provide research-grounded insight to the variety of stakeholders working on issues related to youth empowerment and action towards creating a kinder, braver world. This series, called the The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (Danah Boyd and John Palfrey, editors), is presented by the Born This Way Foundation & the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The first set of papers, which were intended to provide insights to the new foundation, involved topics related to Youth Meanness and Cruelty.This document provides an overview, as of January 2012, of existing state anti-bullying laws, pending state and federal anti-bullying legislation, and other relevant federal and state laws. It is meant to inform the discussion of legal policy issues around bullying, in particular at the Symposium on Youth Meanness and Cruelty being held at Harvard Law School on February 29, 2012 as part of the Kinder & Braver World Project.This document, including the Tables in Appendix 1, was created by analyzing the anti-bullying laws of the 48 states with such laws, as well as reviewing pending legislation and related laws. The document and tables break out provisions of the state statutes that the authors consider important to engender positive cross-disciplinary discussion at the Symposium. The language in the state statutes is incredibly varied and complex, and this area of the law is constantly evolving. Many additional areas of inquiry are sure to arise at the Symposium and beyond. Thus, this document is a working draft.


Fraudulent practices are fundamental issues that need to be well managed in any organisation. The need for organisations to portray a good image to stakeholders is well documented and cannot be exaggerated. Organisations that allocate some resources towards fraud control reap enormous benefits through increased returns and good reputation. The aim of this study was to investigate how the fraudulent practices affect the image of Transglobe Produce Export (TPE) Limited (Ltd). The study is largely based on extensive literature review and field surveys conducted among employees and clients of the organisation and the researcher's own personal experience as an employee of the organisation.
The methodology used was based on quantitative research using questionnaires and random sampling. The critical findings from the literature were that fraud exists in almost all organisations perpetrated by both employees and non-employees. Some of the causes of fraud include inadequate operating systems and procedures, no proper segmentation of duties among employees, and there is no clear indication of code of conduct and work ethics. The study also highlighted some of the effects of fraud such as clients' dissatisfaction on services offered by the organisation, poor reputation. The findings make an invaluable contribution to the research to arrive at solutions to the challenges TPE Ltd face on fraud and corporate image. The findings provide insight for further research in investigating ways of addressing the effects of fraud on corporate image.


Worldwide children's access to after-school learning activities is highly depen-dent on family backgrounds. Concern over the implications of such activities for child development and educational inequality has led to a global rise of public provision of after-school learning support. However little is known about inter-actions of public after-school activities and household investments in children's learning. This paper contributes to the literature on the e?ects of public inputs on household inputs and student achievement in after-school settings. We build a model that integrates public and private inputs to produce student achievement through two competing mechanisms – diminishing returns to total inputs and complementarity between public and private inputs. When diminishing returns dominate complementarity, the model predicts the substitution away of private inputs due to increases in public inputs for all households, although the extent of crowding-out is smaller and therefore the test score gains are larger for children from disadvantaged family backgrounds facing higher costs of private inputs. We implement a randomized controlled after-school tutoring experiment in rural China where many children are left-behind by both parents and cared for by grandparents. During the program, tutees living with parents reported large and significant reductions in the amount of tutoring received at home, whereas tutees living apart from both parents reported much smaller, and often insignificant, re-ductions. We find that tutees' math scores improved significantly, and more for children living without parents, although there is no evidence for improvement in tutees' endline reading scores.Length: 50 pages


Competence in fundamental movement skills is essential to enable children to be physically active. We investigated the effect of an integrated fundamental movement skill with a strength training intervention on children's fundamental movement skills. Seventy-two (53% female) 10- to 11-year-old children from three primary schools assented to take part in this study (87% compliance). Schools were randomly allocated to a control (no intervention; n = 21), fundamental movement skill (FMS) (n = 18) or FMS and strength (FMS+; n = 20) group. Interventions were delivered twice weekly for four weeks, in addition to normal physical education. FMS competence was measured through the Canadian agility and movement skills assessment (CAMSA) (product-process) and through countermovement jump (CMJ) and 40-m sprint tests (product). Improvements were observed in the CAMSA in both FMS (4.6, 95% confidence intervals 2.9 to 6.4 Arbitrary Units (AUs), second-generation p-value (pδ) = 0.03) and FMS+ (3.9, 2.1 to 5.3 AU, pδ = 0.28) with no difference beyond our minimum threshold of 3 AU observed between these intervention groups (pδ = 1). Clear improvements in CMJ were observed in FMS+ relative to the control (25, 18 to 32%, pδ = 0) and FMS groups (15, 6.1 to 24%, pδ = 0). These preliminary data suggest combined FMS and strength training warrants further investigation as a tool to develop fundamental movement skills in children.


In August 1979 the first of a small number of refugees from Vietnam
arrived in Dublin. They came to Ireland via camps in Hong Kong and Malaysia
with harrowing tales of escape and of long periods of travel across the South
China Sea. These were the so-called 'Boat People', whose plight was captured
in newspaper headlines from the late 1970s onwards. Those who came to
Ireland—some 212 persons in the first instance—were invited to do so by the
Irish Government. Religious and non-governmental organisations carried out
much of the resettlement work, however. The majority of the refugees were
dispersed to a variety of locations throughout Ireland, from Tralee and Portlaoise
to Cork City. In the early 1980s most re-migrated to Dublin.
This is the story of the Vietnamese-Irish, of takeaway businesses,
achievement in education, family, diaspora and identity. Much of this story is
told in the words and through the eyes of the people themselves. What emerges
is an ethnographic portrait of a minority confronting its own identity in a fastchanging
Irish society. This thesis is an exploration of Vietnamese-Irish identity.
In order to explore identity for this small, yet heterogeneous and widely
dispersed minority, my emphasis has been on a number of 'sites', such as
education, work and homes. Theoretically, I explore spatial dimensions of
identity in detail, as well as arguing against current approaches to migration and
minority life in Ireland.


Instead of adopting an entirely new school finance system to replace an inequitable system threatened by lawsuits, the Arkansas legislature has chosen to repair Act 34 of 1983. Two major changes enacted in 1993 (recalculation of state aid for districts experiencing growth and a change in a district's real property charges when calculating state aid) seem doomed to failure. The major reason why Act 34 does not equalize may be its use of artificial numbers to calculate local wealth. Rather than abandon these fictional figures, the legislature seems determined to juggle them. Because the millage charge on real property adopted in 1983 was much too low, the cap was eventually raised to match the state average millage figure. Even so, the difference between the current charge and the average millage is some 4.84 mills, requiring an increase of $152.5 million to equalize them. Also, outdated numbers for personal and utility property have been used to calculate current wealth. A short-range effort to stop penalizing districts for growth produced a confusing funding formula that penalizes stable or declining districts. These and other factors add up to increasing inequity for students and taxpayers. It is hoped that the new finance commission will design a better system. (MLH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** ARKANSAS' SLIDE FROM EQUITY


Legislation to change Korean society along Confucian lines began at the founding of the Chos n dynasty in 1392 and had apparently achieved its purpose by the mid seventeenth century. Until this important new study, however, the nature of Kory society, the stresses induced by the new legislation, and society's resistance to the Neo-Confucian changes imposed by the Chos n elite have remained largely unexplored. To explain which aspects of life in Kory came under attack and why, Martina Deuchler draws on social anthropology to examine ancestor worship, mourning, inheritance, marriage, the position of women, and the formation of descent groups. To examine how Neo-Confucian ideology could become an effective instrument for altering basic aspects of Kory life, she traces shifts in political and social power as well as the cumulative effect of changes over time. What emerges is a subtle analysis of Chos n Korean social and ideological history.


Background: Only a few randomized dietary intervention studies that investigated the effects of lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (VD) in clinically healthy omnivorous subjects are available. Methods: We randomly assigned to overweight omnivores with a low-to-moderate cardiovascular risk profile a low-calorie VD compared with a low-calorie Mediterranean diet (MD), each lasting 3 months, with a crossover design. The primary outcome was the difference in body weight, body mass index, and fat mass changes between the 2 groups. Secondary outcomes were differences in circulating cardiovascular disease risk parameters changes between the 2 groups. Results: One hundred eighteen subjects (mean age: 51.1 years, females: 78%) were enrolled. The total participation rate at the end of the study was 84.7%. No differences between the 2 diets in body weight were observed, as reported by similar and significant reductions obtained by both VD (−1.88 kg) and MD (−1.77 kg). Similar results were observed for body mass index and fat mass. In contrast, significant differences between the 2 interventions were obtained for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, and vitamin B12 levels. The difference between the VD and MD groups, in terms of end-of-diet values, was recorded at 9.10 mg/dL for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (P=0.01), 12.70 mg/dL for triglycerides (P<0.01), and 32.32 pg/mL for vitamin B12 (P<0.01). Finally, no significant difference was found between VD and MD interventions in oxidative stress markers and inflammatory cytokines, except for interleukin-17, which improved only in the MD group. Forty-six participants during the VD period and 35 during the MD period reached the target values for ≥1 cardiovascular risk factor. Conclusions: Both VD and MD were effective in reducing body weight, body mass index, and fat mass, with no significant differences between them. However, VD was more effective in reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, whereas MD led to a greater reduction in triglyceride levels. Clinical Trial Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT02641834.


The notion of capacity development is very much in vogue as an integral element of environmental management in developing countries. We contend that current capacity development for the environment (CDE) efforts are limited in focus, emphasizing mainly implementation while paying insufficient attention to problem recognition and analysis as well as designing and assessing potential management strategies. At the same time, CDE programs and practitioners tend to assume that improving the environment in developing countries (or globally) requires building capacity in these countries, and not in their industrialized counterparts. This view overlooks the role of Northern consumption patterns with significant global footprints and Northern policies (such as agricultural subsidies) that drive unsustainable practices around the world. We suggest that turning the lens around and building capacity to examine and re-shape relevant Northern policies and institutions might correct this lacuna. Such a broadened scope can be expected to increase the effectiveness of CDE efforts and programs.


ABSTRACTWe observed the size distributions of mass concentration, ionic composition, and trace metal concentration in aerosols collected at an urban site in Kumamoto Prefecture (KM) and a rural site at Cape Hedo in Okinawa Prefecture (HD) between 2012 and 2015. To evaluate the contribution of transboundary nitrate and locally emitted nitrate in the aerosols at Kumamoto, we distinguished between days of transboundary air pollution from East Asia and days of local air pollution on the basis of a threshold for Pb concentration and the ratio Pb (in 0.5 < projected area diameter (Dp) < 1.0 µm)/Cu (in 2.5 < Dp < 10 µm). Fine nitrate (particulate NH4NO3) did not arrive at HD from the Asian continent even under long-range transport conditions. Fine nitrate emitted in Kumamoto and its vicinity also was not transported to HD, even in an air mass that passed over KM and reached HD within one day. Almost all fine nitrate was converted to coarse nitrate during transport by dissociation of fine nitrate and adsorption of HNO3 on larger aerosol particles. Transboundary nitrate existed largely in the particle size range of 0.5 < Dp < 10 µm, and the contribution of transboundary nitrate in the particle size range of 0.1 < Dp < 0.5 µm was about 20% even under long-range transport conditions. The contribution of transboundary nitrate in particles with Dp < 2.5 µm at KM was approximately 50%, 50%, and 80% in spring, autumn, and winter, respectively.


Data clipping is crucial in reducing noise in quantization operations and improving the achievable accuracy of quantization-aware training (QAT). Current practices rely on heuristics to set clipping threshold scalars and cannot be shown to be optimal. We propose Optimally Clipped Tensors And Vectors (OCTAV), a recursive algorithm to determine MSE-optimal clipping scalars. Derived from the fast Newton-Raphson method, OCTAV finds optimal clipping scalars on the fly, for every tensor, at every iteration of the QAT routine. Thus, the QAT algorithm is formulated with provably minimum quantization noise at each step. In addition, we reveal limitations in common gradient estimation techniques in QAT and propose magnitude-aware differentiation as a remedy to further improve accuracy. Experi-mentally, OCTAV-enabled QAT achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on multiple tasks. These include training-from-scratch and retraining ResNets and MobileNets on ImageNet, and Squad fine-tuning using BERT models, where OCTAV-enabled QAT consistently preserves accuracy at low precision (4-to-6-bits). Our results require no modifications to the baseline training recipe, except for the inser-tion of quantization operations where appropriate.


Household energy consumption has been a major contributor to the increase in global energy demand and carbon emission, and the household sector has also become one of the most crucial factors shaping the management of developments towards sustainability. However, there is still a knowledge gap regarding the household energy consumption in China. Due to the vast territory and the differences among regional conditions, it is critical to conduct a systemic review to illustrate the overall situation as well as the detailed mechanisms of the household energy consumption in China. By employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, two key features of the household energy consumption in China are presented; one is regarding the total amount and the structure of the household energy consumption, and the second is the significant urban-rural gap. The driving forces are investigated from the perspective of external determinants and internal determinants, which consist of seven key factors; finally, the transition roadmap towards the sustainable energy system for the household level are presented based on the text analysis from the four key policy documents. Weaknesses in the current research on the energy geography of household level also exist, such as the lack of single factor research and the lack of integration and comprehensive analysis. Therefore, future studies need to strengthen the research of regional household energy consumption structure, spatial-temporal process, and its motivation mechanism, and sustainable development of energy, so as to explore space-social structure of household energy consumption and spatial-temporal interaction.


Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is a drought tolerant crop able to adapt to hot and dry weather. It has excellent chemical and physical properties, which make it a grain of good quality for processing different types of products. This research is an impact assessment study that estimated the potential impacts of new uses of sorghum by using an equilibrium displacement model. The data used was drawn from interviews developed in July 2011.Using total quantity production, prices, prices elasticities and cost shares 8 potential market scenarios were simulated. Results between countries were similar. Thus, the analysis was applied for both countries. Producers gain when the sorghum flour demand is shifted between $6,000 and $ 30,000. When the feed demand curve shifted the producer benefit was between $3 million and $ 13 million. In the scenario where the sorghum grain curve shifted and the demand curve for feed and sorghum flour, producer net benefit is between $300,000 to $2.5 million. Interpreting these results suggest that increasing yield and promoting sorghum as a substitute of maize for feed and sorghum as a substitute of wheat for sorghum flour can benefit producers while helping them to increase yield.


On 6 February 2018, a ML 6.2 earthquake struck the east coast of Taiwan and caused more than 200 casualties in the Hualien area. The mainshock initiated at a shallow depth of 6.3 km and was accompanied by numbers of foreshocks and aftershocks. Coseismic ruptures widely occurred along the Milun Fault with various deformational structures and caused a variety of damage. Extensive field survey and drone-based images reveal the distribution of offsets and the characteristics of the surface ruptures. The major surface ruptures were mostly synthetic and antithetic Riedel shears interlinked by push-up moletracks or tensional fissures. The strike of the principal displacement zone evolved from northeast to northwest and defined a 7.5-km-long NS fault trace concave to the east. The vertical offset reached its maximum of 50 cm on the north segment and became insignificant toward south. Both on-fault single measurements and cumulative sinistral offsets estimated across the rupture zones showed the pattern of southward declining with the maximum offset of 77 cm in the north. The width of the damage zone increased from 1 20 m to maximum 270 m in the south where the overstepping segments occurred. The development of step-overs is significant in the south, especially in the downtown area where slip is distributed across a transpressional area. Overall, the distinct features of the coseismic ruptures reflect the complex near-surface geology along the Milun Fault and offer new insights for future hazard assessments of the Hualien area. Article history: Received 17 July 2018 Revised 29 November 2018 Accepted 9 December 2018


Increasing use of distributed generation, the introduction of Electric Vehicles and smart technologies and changing patterns of energy demand have all changed the way in which the distribution network for electricity is used, both in Europe and worldwide. These changes raise the question not only of how distribution systems should be used, but also how costs should be met. In particular, there are concerns about whether costs of 'traditional' networks will be stranded, and, if so, who will bear the costs.

The Clean Energy Package, proposed by the European Commission in 2016, emphasises the importance of competitive prices, efficiency and non-discrimination. It focuses on cost as a basis for tariffs, which should also allow consumers to feed in their own generation, and to pay the appropriate share of distribution system costs. The Package also acknowledges the importance of social objectives by individual Member States, while reiterating prohibition of specific cross-subsidies.

Within this cost-related framework this report outlines some concepts of fairness, emphasising that this criterion does not deliver a unique template, but depends both on how some costs are allocated and on different interpretations of fairness. We review some existing tariff structures, and simulate the effects of some structures through 'notional' households, allowing some households to selfgenerate. When consumers respond very differently to tariff signals, those who are unwilling or unable to respond to changing tariffs may find themselves bearing a greater burden of the system's costs, which raises particular issues around fairness.


Internal models allow us to simulate and predict the consequences of interacting with the objects in our environment. Applying such models in intelligent robots and machines is a key challenge in increasing their autonomy, robustness and responsiveness. One obstacle in allowing this is the need to maintain multiple internal models, corresponding to the multitude of objects in our surroundings, without interference between them. We propose evolving neural networks as a way to generate multiple internal models, and study the role of neural modularity in doing so. Intuitively, modularity should help reduce interference between internal models. In a task requiring neural networks to control multiple different objects, we demonstrate that neuroevolution can produce multiple internal inverse models. Results indicate that modularity may play a role – but the evolved neural networks reveal an unexpected modular decomposition: Rather than separating models of different objects, networks frequently divide into modu...


Food flow data provide unique insights into the debates surrounding the sustainability of land based production and consumption at multiple scales. Trade flows disguise the spatial correspondence of production and consumption and make their connection to land difficult. Two key components of this spatial disjuncture are land use displacement and economic regional decoupling. By displacing the environmental impact associated with food production from one region to another, environmental trajectories can falsely appear to be sustainable at a particular site or scale. When regional coupling is strong, peripheral areas where land based production occurs are strongly linked and proximate to consumption centers, and the environmental impact of production activities is visible. When food flows occur over longer distances, regional coupling weakens, and environmental impact is frequently overlooked. In this study, we present an analysis of a locally collected food flow dataset containing agricultural and livestock products transported to and from counties in Quintana Roo (QRoo). QRoo is an extensively forested border state in southeast Mexico, which was fully colonized by the state and non-native settlers only in the last century and now is home to some of the major tourist destinations. To approximate land displacement and regional decoupling, we decompose flows to and from QRoo by (1) direction; (2) product types and; (3) scale. Results indicate that QRoo is predominantly a consumer state: incoming flows outnumber outgoing flows by a factor of six, while exports are few, specialized, and with varied geographic reach (Yucatan, south and central Mexico, USA). Imports come predominantly from central Mexico. Local production in QRoo accounts for a small portion of its total consumption. In combining both subsets of agricultural and livestock products, we found that in most years, land consumption requirements were above 100% of the available land not under conservation in QRoo, suggesting unsustainable rates of land consumption in a ´business as usual´ scenario. We found evidence of economic regional decoupling at the state level.


Networking and power management of wireless energy conscious sensor networks is an important area of current research and considering the competitive constraints on the global energy market it will even gain importance. We investigate in the present work a network of MicaZ sensor motes using the Zigbee protocol for communication, and provide a model using Timed Safety Automata. The TA model will comprise a full functional scenario set-up consisting of a network controller, network routers, and sensor devices collecting information. Along with the model sending and receiving mechanisms included, a realistic need-specific investigation is feasible. Our analysis' focus is on estimating energy consumption by model checking in different scenarios within a fixed but variable topology using the Uppaal[7] tool. Special interest is devoted to the energy use in marginal situations that rarely occur and are consequently not fully covered by simulation.


This document specifies EAP-IKEv2, an EAP method that is based on the
Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) protocol. EAP-IKEv2 provides mutual
authentication and session key establishment between an EAP peer and
an EAP server. It supports authentication techniques that are based on
passwords, high-entropy shared keys, and public key certificates.
These techniques can be combined in a number of ways. EAP-IKEv2
further provides support for cryptographic ciphersuite negotiation,
hash function agility, identity confidentiality (in certain modes of
operation), fragmentation, and an optional "fast reconnect" mode. EAP-
IKEv2 has sucessfully passed Designated Expert Review as mandated by
RFC 3748.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to examine immediate-release methylphenidate effectiveness during the 10-month open-label continuation phase of the Preschoolers with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Treatment Study (PATS).

METHODS
One hundred and forty preschoolers with ADHD, who had improved with acute immediate-release methylphenidate (IR-MPH) treatment, entered a 10-month, open-label medication maintenance at six sites. Assessments included the Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S), CGI-Improvement (CGI-I), Children's Global Assessment Scale (C-GAS), Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham Questionnaire (SNAP), Scale Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD-Symptoms and Normal Behaviors (SWAN), Social Competence Scale, Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), and Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF).

RESULTS
For the 95 children who completed the 10-month treatment, improvement occurred on the CGI-S (p = 0.02), CGI-I (p < 0.01), C-GAS (p = 0.001), and SSRS (p = 0.01). SNAP and SWAN scores remained stable. Forty five children discontinued: 7 for adverse effects, 7 for behavior worsening, 7 for switching to long-acting stimulants, 3 for inadequate benefit, and 21 for other reasons. The mean MPH dose increased from 14.04 mg/day +/- SD 7.57 (0.71 +/- 0.38 mg/kg per day) at month 1 to 19.98 mg/day +/- 9.56 (0.92 +/- 0.40 mg/kg per day) at month 10.

CONCLUSIONS
With careful monitoring and gradual medication dose increase, most preschoolers with ADHD maintained improvement during long-term IR-MPH treatment. There was substantial variability in effective and tolerated dosing.


While offshoring is well covered in literature, its organizational aspect and long-term development are not known. This chapter seeks to remedy this. Reviewing longitudinal offshoring studies discloses diverging findings. A range of activities has been offshored. The framework for organizing capabilities includes functions, tools, management/ leadership and boundary spanners. A four-phase linear model of long-term offshoring is proposed, encompassing transfer, resource searches, transformation and development. Four case studies of offshoring organization were made: one longitudinal process is described. Their development paths differ, they do not go beyond transformation; two revert to backshoring; three do captive arrangements. Two employ project organization. They do not follow a modern pattern of linear progression.


The term na¨ıve evaluation refers to evaluating queries over incomplete databases as if nulls were usual data values, i.e., to using the standard database query evaluation engine. Since the semantics of query answering over incomplete databases is that of certain answers, we would like to know when na¨ıve evaluation computes them: i.e., when certain answers can be found without inventing new specialized algorithms. For relational databases it is well known that unions of conjunctive queries possess this desirable property, and results on preservation of formulae under homomorphisms tell us that within relational calculus, this class cannot be extended under the open-world assumption. Our goal here is twofold. First, we develop a general framework that allows us to determine, for a given semantics of incompleteness, classes of queries for which na¨ıve evaluation computes certain answers. Second, we apply this approach to a variety of semantics, showing that for many classes of queries beyond unions of conjunctive queries, na¨ıve evaluation makes perfect sense under assumptions different from open-world. Our key observations are: (1) na¨ıve evaluation is equivalent to monotonicity of queries with respect to a semantics-induced ordering, and (2) for most reasonable semantics, such monotonicity is captured by preservation under various types of homomorphisms. Using these results we find classes of queries for which na¨ıve evaluation works, e.g., positive first-order formulae for the closed-world semantics. Even more, we introduce a general relation-based framework for defining semantics of incompleteness, show how it can be used to capture many known semantics and to introduce new ones, and describe classes of first-order queries for which na¨ıve evaluation works under such semantics.


This 2021 clinical practice guideline update provides recommendations for preventing anticipatory chemotherapy‐induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) in pediatric patients. Recommendations are based on systematic reviews that identified (1) if a history of acute or delayed CINV is a risk factor for anticipatory CINV, and (2) interventions for anticipatory CINV prevention and treatment. A strong recommendation to optimize acute and delayed CINV control in order to prevent anticipatory CINV is made. Conditional recommendations are made for hypnosis, systematic desensitization, relaxation techniques, and lorazepam for the secondary prevention of anticipatory CINV. No recommendation for the treatment of anticipatory CINV can be made.


Commencing with a historical account of how special needs education has informed the inclusivity debate, the authors consider the knotty problem of what is meant by inclusivity. An examination of the characteristics of inclusivity is then undertaken, and a functional school‐based inclusivity framework – a three‐faceted model – is proposed. The model commences with a philosophical underpinning designed to generate a number of emphases to be determined by the school. Once agreed upon, these are then operationalised for classroom practices. It is contended that the model is a defensible way of facilitating the development of an inclusivity ethos within the school milieu. Finally, impediments hampering the implementation are identified and discussed.


This paper analyses how the online community in Singapore protested against the hanging of a Vietnamese drug trafficker in December 2005. Singapore has upheld capital punishment in the island state despite pressure from local and global civil society organisations and diplomatic channels. This paper traces how the online medium was used by the public to protest against capital punishment in the quasi–authoritarian state. The virtual community protested against the hanging by maintaining a rigorous discursive protest on the Internet. These sustained discourses became enmeshed with those of the offline media in Singapore. This confluence of the online and offline media discourses is important in building a two–tier public sphere in Singapore. The first–tier public sphere is one dominated by the government-controlled media and the ruling party while the second–tier public sphere is a space where civil society organisations and social movements express viewpoints marginalised in the offline society. The confluence of these two tiers has a material significance for the political landscape of Singapore. This paper explores this phenomenon through the case study of online protests against capital punishment in Singapore.


In some respects the Brexit referendum itself was a violation of human rights, argues Adrian Low. Three substantial groups were denied the opportunity to vote when inclusion of any two of those groups would almost certainly have reversed the result. Rational democratic decision-making was negated by a campaign of exaggeration and lies and unnecessary last-minute poll predictions encouraged complacency in the turnout for Remain.


A street identification or live show-up provides an eyewitness with an opportunity to identify a suspect shortly after a crime. In England, the majority of suspects identified are subsequently included in a video line-up for the same witness to view. In Study 1, robbery squad data from three English police forces recorded 696 crimes, the identification procedures employed and prosecution decisions. A street identification was the most frequent identification procedure, being attempted in 22.7% of investigations, followed by mugshot albums (11.2%) and video line-ups (3.4%). In Study 2, data of 59 crimes were collected in which suspects, identified in a street identification, were subsequently filmed for a video line-up. Across both studies, most (84%) suspects identified in the street were subsequently identified in a video line-up, indicative of a commitment effect, in which a witness conforms to their first identification decision. All suspects identified in two procedures were eventually cautioned or charged to appear in court. The ground truth of suspect guilt in these field data cannot be determined. However, suggestions are made for reducing the likelihood of a mistaken identification of an innocent suspect caught up in an investigation; all possible steps should be taken to reduce the inherent suggestiveness of the street identification procedure.


Little is understood about the complex process of synovial joint formation in early limb development. It has been shown that versican is highly expressed in the extracellular matrix of these joints (Snow et al. 2005; Shepard et al. 2007) and the knockdown of versican leads to malformation of the interzone tissues that form the articular cartilage and synovial cavity (Nagchowdhuri et al. 2012). It is also thought that these effects impact gene expression in cells that are involved in the developing joint. Versican is chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan. It has four functional-modules: the N-terminal domain the C-terminal domain and GAG-[alpha] and GAG-[beta] chondroitin sulfate attachment regions. The N-terminal domain is also known as the G1 domain and the C-terminal domain is also known as the G3 domain (Kimata et al. 1986 and Zimmerman et al. 1989). In previous studies versican protein expression has been reduced and the G1 domain has been over-expressed to observe how these changes in the developing joint tissue effect gene expression. This study is a validation of microarray data specifically focusing on hyaluronan and Wnt pathway genes as they pertain to the misexpression of versican. RT-PCR and real-time PCR were used in this study to validate expression of the genes chosen. Through the use of these techniques the degree of expression has been quantified and compared to the fold changes observed with the microarray data. Overall G1 versican mediated gene expression in the developing joint with regard to hyaluronan and Wnt pathway transcript regulation were in agreement with results obtained by RNA array.


The recently developed long-run risks asset pricing model shows that concerns about long-run expected growth and time-varying uncertainty (i.e., volatility) about future economic prospects drive asset prices. These two channels of economic risks can account for the risk premia and asset price fluctuations. In addition, the model can empirically account for the cross-sectional differences in asset returns. Hence, the long-run risks model provides a coherent and systematic framework for analyzing financial markets.


Compared with serpentine floras of Southeast Asia, the serpentine vegetation of Sri Lanka is impoverished in regard to serpentine endemics and nickel hyperaccumulators. All species so far documented from the serpentine outcrops of Sri Lanka also have non-serpentine populations; it is unclear whether the serpentine populations are physiologically distinct and deserve ecotypic recognition. We conducted a preliminary study to examine whether serpentine and non-serpentine populations of Fimbristylis ovata represent locally adapted ecotypes by investigating their growth and potential for nickel uptake and tolerance under greenhouse conditions. Although both populations of F. ovata showed a similar growth pattern in serpentine soil during short-term exposure (21 days), the non-serpentine population was unable to survive in serpentine soil under long-term exposure (4 months). Both populations were able to uptake nickel from serpentine soil during short-term exposure (21 days). The serpentine population, however, translocated significantly more nickel from its roots to shoots (translocation factor 0.43) than the non-serpentine population (translocation factor 0.29). Our preliminary investigations suggest that the serpentine and non-serpentine populations of F. ovata may be locally adapted to their respective soils. However, additional studies are required to determine whether the populations deserve ecotypic recognition.


This special issue aimed at incarceration of new insights, dimensions, visionaries and accomplishments achievable for security. Security is a foremost concern in scalable computing. With the progression in ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), secure solutions are the need, as the number and kinds of attacks too are progressive. Keeping this in mind, the papers selected for this issue talks about all our visualizations from the same.

In todays Internet-connected world, the advance cyber-attacks are being launched on the critical infrastructure. It has shifted the pursuit of financial profit and political gains, which lead to cyber warfare on various scales.The first paper points that malware is one of the most alarming security threats being faced by the Internet today. They have the capability to circumvent the earlier developed methods of detection and mitigation which clearly shows the need of shifting from traditional cyber security to cyber threat intelligence. Authors have proposed the design of a framework for generating malware threat intelligence which has the capability to detect, analyze, and predict the malware threats and can act as an Early Warning System (EWS).

The second paper talks about the current status of sentiment analysis and opinion mining focusing on the problem of sarcasm identification and detection. The article discusses the present scenario and the problem faced by the community due to the usage of sarcasm. Authors have tried a technique based on the deep convolution neural networks where they are using a single layer convolution before the classification task and claim to have higher accuracy in the classification of sarcasm as compared to existing methods.

The third paper talks about Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that are widely used in various fields such as health monitoring, medical line, intrusion detection, and are often placed in open environment, thus vulnerable to different attacks. Various techniques were introduced to deal with security related issues of WSNs; among them trust management has been proved as an effective measure. A new protocol called Energy Efficient and Trust Aware framework for secure routing in LEACH (EETA-LEACH) has been proposed. A trust management system for WSNs has been presented to monitor the sensor nodes behaviors and evaluate their trust values based upon remaining energy, packet delivery ratio and distance. This approach is a combination of trust-based routing module and trust management module that works together to select trusted Cluster Head (CH). Simulation results have proved that proposed algorithm consumes less energy and improves packet delivery ratio.

Almost all the important services are available in the application market of Android. Unfortunately, at the same time, the prosperity of these applications also attracts abusers and malicious attackers to perform different types of attacks. The fourth paper is an exploration and all-inclusive study about various approaches to perform Android applications analysis. This gives improved identification of the problem, accessible elucidation space and possible research scope to evaluate Android devices against the possible attacks.

The fifth paper focused on the dynamics of worm propagation in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Authors proposed a modified Susceptible-Infectious-Quarantined-Recovered-Susceptible (SIQRS) model based on epidemic theory and demonstrated the effect of quarantined state on worm propagation. This paper also describes the Stability of the worm free equilibrium and Endemic equilibrium, as well as, studies the effect of communication radius and node density.


This paper addresses the possibility of capacity withholding by energy producers, who seek to increase the market price and their own profits. The energy market is simulated as an iterative game, where each state game corresponds to an hourly energy auction with uniform pricing mechanism. The producers are modeled as agents that interact with their environment through reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. Each producer submits step-wise offer curves, which include the quantity-price pairs, to independent system operator (ISO) under incomplete information. An experimental change is employed in the producer's profit maximization model that causes the iterative algorithm converge to a withholding bidding value. The producer can withhold the energy of his own generating unit in a continuous range of its available capacity. The RL relation is developed to prevent from becoming invalid in certain situations. The results on a small test system demonstrate the emergence of the capacity withholding by the producers and its effect on the market price.


The study was carried out to determine some of the factors that were responsible for post harvest losses of maize in Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State. Data for the study were collected with the aid of a well structured questionnaire from a sample of one hundred (100) respondents which was drawn from five (5) purposively selected villages in the study area. The data collected were analyzed using frequency distribution, percentage and regression analysis. The findings revealed that 69% of the maize farmers were male while 76% of them were married. The results further showed that 85% of the farmers were literate, 69% of them acquired their farmlands from communal sources and by inheritance. Also, 75% of the farmers obtained maize seeds from either the ADP or their cooperative societies. The results of the study indicated that 51% of the farmers in the study area had access to and obtained extension messages from extension agents. The major problems faced by the farmers in the study area were inadequate finance, insect pest attack, high cost of transportation and price instability, among others. The results of the regression analysis showed that gender, source of information and type of storage facilities were some of the determinants of postharvest losses in the study area. Efforts to reduce postharvest losses in maize should therefore be directed at providing appropriate information on postharvest handling of maize and to facilitate access to appropriate storage facilities for maize. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA


Excerpt] GM Hydra-matic is a dangerous plant. Formerly known as the "Willow Run (Michigan) Bomber Plant" because it produced B-24 bombers during World War II, the plant today builds transmissions for GM vehicles and overseas customers such as Bentley, Jaguar, Rolls Royce and Isuzu. In manufacturing transmissions, the plant uses thousands of coolants, lubricants, degreasers and solvents. Those chemicals, workers suspect, are the causes of GM Hydramatic's high rate of cancer, particularly brain cancer. This is the story of how a group of workers represented by UAW Local 735 formed a union Cancer Watch Group (CWG) at GM Hydra-matic to address a problem that the company and outside researchers were not showing sufficient urgency about. It's a story of rank-and-file health-and-safety organizing that relies on the workers themselves to research the links between cancer and the substances they work with.


Given the promise of 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, some innovative consumer goods companies have started to experiment with such a technology for on-demand production. However, the potential impact of 3D printing on retail and supply chain operations is not well understood. In this paper, we consider two adoption cases of 3D printing in a dual-channel (i.e., online and in-store) retail setting, and evaluate its impact on a firm's product offering, prices for the two channels, as well as inventory decisions. Our analysis uncovers the following effects of 3D printing. First, 3D printing at the factory has the substitution effect of technological innovation for online demands, as 3D printing replaces the traditional mode of production. Such technology substitution not only leads to increased product variety offered online, which allows the firm to charge a price premium for online customers, but also induces the firm to offer a smaller product variety and a reduced price in-store. Second, when 3D printing is used in-store as well, in additional to the substitution effect, the firm also achieves a structural effect due to the fundamental change in the supply chain structure. Since the in-store demand is served in a build to order fashion, the firm achieves postponement benefits in inventory management. Moreover, using 3D printing in-store will require a new supplier-retailer relationship. We find that cost-sharing contracts can coordinate the supply chains where 3D printing is used in-store and the supplier controls the raw material inventory.


To write of the many accomplishments of Shirley S. Abrahamson as a legal scholar, jurist, and chief justice in a short essay is to look at a masterpiece through a microscope. Each squint reveals a splash of the depth and substance of this remarkable woman, but only by stepping back can we appreciate the profound impact of her work. With brilliance, unwavering dedication, and a caring heart, Shirley Abrahamson accomplishes the impossible every day. In covering her own words in sweat, she inspires hard work and dedication in people who labor in every facet of the justice system. The leadership that she demonstrates as chief justice is colored by the same courage, optimism, concern for the individual, and deep sense of fairness that characterize her opinions. Her legal scholarship has brought her international acclaim, leadership positions in national organizations, fourteen honorary doctor of law degrees, and lecture requests from around the world. She is a prolific legal writer and has contributed to numerous law reviews and journals. My task here, however, is not to list her substantial contribution to American jurisprudence. Rather, I want to share my personal sense of Shirley Abrahamson as a leader with the grace, modesty, and generosity to inspire others not just to follow, but to join her in leading. Shirley Abrahamson's vision for a justice system that is open, understandable, and accessible is rooted in her earliest experiences. The daughter of shopkeepers--immigrants from Poland who learned to speak English on the streets of New York--Chief Justice Abrahamson developed a profound appreciation for the value of education and for the power of the law as a tool for change. She graduated first in her class from Indiana University Law School. Traditionally, the top graduate could expect a bevy of offers from law firms, but Shirley Abrahamson was no typical graduate. She was a woman and she was Jewish. Job opportunities were, therefore, few and far between. Her first employer found her suited for indexing state constitutions. After moving to Madison, Wisconsin with her husband, Shirley Abrahamson found a law firm that was willing to hire her. She quickly distinguished herself as a successful lawyer in private practice. While with the law firm, she also taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School and was one of the first two women to join the faculty. In 1976, she became the first woman appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She has subsequently been reelected in three statewide, contested races. For seventeen years, she was the only woman on the court. It was not until 1993 that the Wisconsin Supreme Court welcomed a second female justice, Janine Geske. I was elected to the court in 1995. What I have come to learn over these past nine years on the court is that leadership matters. Shirley Abrahamson is a uniquely gifted leader. Serving as chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1996, she has shaped the contours of Wisconsin's approach to the administration of justice. The hallmarks of her administration are openness and accessibility. No longer are the supreme court's appointments to boards, committees, and commissions reserved for only those who know a justice. Instead the process is open. It is inclusive rather than exclusive. An appointment selection committee that sifts and winnows the applications made from around the state now replaces the old network. Emphasis is placed on having members of the public serve along with lawyers and judges. The committee makes recommendations to the supreme court for qualified appointments that represent diverse populations, backgrounds, and geographic areas of the state. Not only has the process of administration changed, but, at the urging of Chief Justice Abrahamson, the forum where the supreme court conducts its administrative business has also changed. Under her leadership, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was the first in the nation to open its administrative conferences to the public. …


Category management is a retail practice wherein the products of a retail establishment are divided up into different categories and then managed as if each were a free-standing business. The most popular approach to category management involves outsourcing decisions to a single manufacturer in the category (a.k.a., the "category captain"). Category management and category captain arrangements can benefit competition and consumers where they help to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of retail decision making. However, given their potential to adversely affect competition and consumers, category captain arrangements have attracted the attention of public policy makers, antitrust enforcement authorities, and marketing and legal scholars. At least two types of competition-related concerns are identified for category captain arrangements. One concern is that a category captain will use its role to coordinate competitor behavior resulting in anticompetitive collusion. A second concern is that a captain will use its role to disadvantage competitors leading to anticompetitive exclusion. This monograph focuses on anticompetitive exclusion. Despite expressed concerns for anticompetitive exclusion involving category captain arrangements research offers surprisingly few insights into the issue. The application of antitrust law to category management also continues to remain relatively undeveloped leaving practitioners with little guidance on what is permissible. Given this state of affairs continued effort is required to better understand the nature and competitive consequences of category management and category captain arrangements. The goal of this monograph is to offer this understanding. Chapter 1 offers an extended introduction to the topic. Chapter 2 describes and elaborates on the nature and practice of category management. Chapter 3 then describes the approach to category management found in category captain arrangements. The key sources of competitive concern for category captain arrangements are identified and elaborated upon in Chapter 4. With the antitrust importance of understanding the power of an organization to harm competition, emphasis and discussion is given to the nature and sources of power and influence held by category captains in Chapter 5. This is followed by Chapter 6 which identifies, organizes and describes the types of exclusionary conduct and practices that may be found in category captain arrangements. Managerial safeguards against competitive exclusion involving category captains are then identified, organized and described in Chapter 7. The effects for competition and consumers that can result from competitive exclusion involving category captains are described in Chapter 8. The findings of empirical research on competitive exclusion in category captain arrangements are then described in Chapter 9. A brief conclusion to the monograph is provided in Chapter 10. The monograph is comprehensively annotated with citations in order to serve as a resource for interested readers.


It is well-known that politics is in a state of great crisis. Wars, an uncontrollable global market, a toughening in the forms of representative democracy. This state of things is condemned by many, at least in Italy, where we speak of degradation, decadence, etc. Many sustain that there exist alternative political practices, but the theatre of the parties, in spite of already not controlling the changing reality, takes up all the visible space, and covers up the movements that fight to modify things, those of peace, the environment, work, women, etc. There is truth there but I am interested in another approach, adjacent to that of the frontal and general discourses on the crisis of politics, this latter in the end a formula that ends up as an excuse. In the decadence of the politics and the degradation of Italian society there is beginning to come through –I believe– a repressed and unresolved masculine question. That has as an ultimate consequence that the interpretative paradigms of reality that continue to be used, no longer work. The point is that masculine society in its whole has not taken on an awareness of the end of the fathers nor of the necessity to measure itself with the political subjectivity of women, although some men have and perhaps it is the beginning of a change. Today there are many symptoms of the loss of meaning of what it means to be a man, from the most evident and coarse to the most sophisticated. The uncontrolled narcissism of the politicians and intellectuals seems to me the most evident, and I am not only thinking about Italy. France has Sarkozy. There is not an awareness of the fact that the inefficiency of politics should be attributed to the breaking down of masculine genealogy and of its language, and to its incapacity to measure itself with the other one and its political knowledge.


Experts explore the influence of trace metals on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases.Many parts of the world in which common infectious diseases are endemic also have the highest prevalence of trace metal deficiencies or rising rates of trace metal pollution. Infectious diseases can increase human susceptibility to adverse effects of metal exposure (at suboptimal or toxic levels), and metal excess or deficiency can increase the incidence or severity of infectious diseases. The co-clustering of major infectious diseases with trace metal deficiency or toxicity has created a complex web of interactions with serious but poorly understood health repercussions, yet has been largely overlooked in animal and human studies. This book focuses on the distribution, trafficking, fate, and effects of trace metals in biological systems. Its goal is to enhance our understanding of the relationships between homeostatic mechanisms of trace metals and the pathogenesis of infectious diseases. Drawing on expertise from a range of fields, the book offers a comprehensive review of current knowledge on vertebrate metal-withholding mechanisms and the strategies employed by different microbes to avoid starvation (or poisoning). Chapters summarize current, state-of-the-art techniques for investigating pathogen-metal interactions and highlight open question to guide future research. The book makes clear that improving knowledge in this area will be instrumental to the development of novel therapeutic measures against infectious diseases. ContributorsM. Leigh Ackland, Vahid Fa Andisi, Angele L. Arrieta, Michael A. Bachman, J. Sabine Becker, Robert E. Black, Julia Bornhorst, Sascha Brunke, Joseph A. Caruso, Jennifer S. Cavet, Anson C. K. Chan, Christopher H. Contag, Heran Darwin, George V. Dedoussis, Rodney R. Dietert, Victor J. DiRita, Carol A. Fierke, Tamara Garcia-Barrera, David P. Giedroc, Peter-Leon Hagedoorn, James A. Imlay, Marek J. Kobylarz, Joseph Lemire, Wenwen Liu, Slade A. Loutet, Wolfgang Maret, Andreas Matusch, Trevor F. Moraes, Michael E. P. Murphy, Maribel Navarro, Jerome O. Nriagu, Ana-Maria Oros-Peusquens, Elisabeth G. Pacyna, Jozef M. Pacyna, Robert D. Perry, John M. Pettifor, Stephanie Pfaffen, Dieter Rehder, Lothar Rink, Anthony B. Schryvers, Ellen K. Silbergeld, Eric P. Skaar, Miguel C. P. Soares, Kyrre Sundseth, Dennis J. Thiele, Richard B. Thompson, Meghan M. Verstraete, Gonzalo Visbal, Fudi Wang, Mian Wang, Thomas J. Webster, Jeffrey N. Weiser, Gunter Weiss, Inga Wessels, Bin Ye, Judith T. Zelikoff, Lihong Zhang


The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand) is an invasive forest pest in eastern North America that has caused significant decline and mortality in populations of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carr.) and Carolina hemlock (T. caroliniana Engelm.). The breeding of adelgid-resistant genotypes for reforestation activities is still in the early development phases, and most resistance screening programs have depended on labor-intensive direct artificial infestation techniques for introducing adelgids to target seedlings. We investigated the timing and effectiveness of a potentially less labor-intense suspended branch infestation technique compared to two levels of a direct infestation method. Results indicated that peak crawler emergence from adelgid infested hemlock branches occurred within a 10 to 14 day period and that crawler emergence was higher from non-hydrated compared to hydrated branches. Greater infestation pressure was achieved when using progrediens crawlers compared to sistens crawlers. In 2013, when the infestation attempts were most successful, the suspended branch technique induced the same or higher adelgid densities on target seedlings as the direct infestation techniques. Assuming an initial investment in infrastructure, the suspended branch approach could be a more time and cost effective method for inducing adelgid infestations for resistance screening of large numbers of candidate trees.


The controversy about language instructors' accent (i.e., the manner of pronunciation) has mainly targeted the perceptions and attitudes of learners of English as a foreign and second language (ESL/EFL). Some studies have consistently shown a tendency for learners to favour a native- speaking accent or being able to speak like a native speaker (Butler, 2007; Derwing, 2003). However less is known about this topic in Romance language learning. The current study analyzed the attitudes and preferences learners of two Romance languages reported on how their instructors pronounced the target languages. The study also examined students' attitudes toward their instructors' accent on their own pronunciation and comprehension of the second language (L2). The participants were 20 third-year learners of Spanish as a foreign language; and 20 third-year learners of French as a second language at a post-secondary institution in Canada. The data were collected through an attitudinal questionnaire (quantitative data) and a semi-structured interview (qualitative data). It was predicted that students would prefer an instructor with a native accent over an instructor with a non-native accent because of a facilitative effect on their pronunciation and comprehension of the L2. Results showed that both clusters of language learners (Spanish and French) favoured an instructor with a native accent and also showed the belief that the instructors' native accent has a positive effect on their L2 pronunciation, but not on their L2 comprehension. Qualitative results suggested what strengths and limitations students believe each type of instructor's accent offers for the language classroom. Furthermore, suggestions for the L2 classroom were proposed.


From a single bell thousands of years ago to a modern carillon of up to seven octaves, bell sounds and bell music have fascinated, informed, regulated, and entertained the people within their sphere. The talk will concentrate on the Western traditions of marking the hours, signaling, banishing evil spirits, enriching market place activity, and filling the air with the distinctive and sometimes complicated sounds of a carillon concert. Slides and recordings will illustrate the instruments and the music.


Assessing the potential effects of a world biofuel boom on a non-oil producing economy like Senegal and on its households is relevant when it comes for policymakers to make a trade-off between fossil energy and biofuel. In this paper, we run a simulation, based on a dynamic, general-equilibrium model for the period 2006-2020, to capture the effects of the boom of biofuel in the world market on growth and poverty in Senegal. Our results suggest that, due to decreasing prices, imports increase for crude oil, tradable services and non food industries. Valued-added of biodiesel and bioethanol decreases while it increases for most the sectors, in particular those which are more energy intensive. Poverty is quite constant for the first sub-period but it declines thereafter. The households living in urban areas experienced a more deep decrease in their poverty headcount than the one of rural areas.


Background and purpose: Excessive amount of heavy metals in industrial wastewater is a seriously crucial issue and requires efficient methods to be introduced and dealt with. Meanwhile, steel making plants as productive units in every country release large amounts of fluid into surface and underground sources. Typically, this wastewater contains heavy metals in minor amounts, while this amount could cause severe damages to the living organisms. Materials and methods: In this study, removing iron, manganese, zinc and total dissolved solid in a typical wastewater resulted from steel making plant was considered using reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes. At first, different pH values and operating pressures were applied to the wastewater. Then, these parameters were evaluated for a wastewater only containing iron to compare the interaction of other elements in iron removal. Results: The results indicated that RO and NF membranes could successfully treat industrial wastewater containing several heavy metals with high concentrations of Fe, Zn and Mn, especially at optimum pH and pressure. Moreover, the interaction of other heavy metals and components in the influent decreased the efficiency of RO but improved the NF efficiency to remove iron. To have a better image, a formula was proposed for each method to represent the influence of the parameters on removal rates. Finally, cost estimation for both procedures showed that RO was not economically-technically efficient in comparison with NF. Conclusion: NF showed an acceptable performance with high water flow which made it more suitable for industries. At the end, the relative cost analysis showed that even if the initial price of NF is high, the energy consumption and total cost of RO will be higher.


We study the effects of preschool attendance on children's school progression and cognitive skills in Kenya and Tanzania. Our analysis uses novel data from large-scale household surveys of children's literacy and numeracy skills, which also collect retrospective information on preschool attendance. Against the backdrop of a large expansion of pre-primary education, our regressions identify the impacts from within-household differences, controlling for a variety of child-specific covariates. In both countries, children who go to preschool tend to enroll in primary school late, and thus fall behind in terms of grades completed at early ages. However, once in school, they progress through grades faster and at ages 13-16 have completed about one and a half more months of schooling than their same-aged peers who did not attend preschool. They also score around 0.10 standard deviations higher on standardized cognitive tests, showing that there are important longer-term benefits from preschool in Kenya and Tanzania.


On February 3, 2015, the FDA granted accelerated approval to palbociclib (IBRANCE, Pfizer Inc.), an inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4 and CDK6), for use in combination with letrozole for the treatment of postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor (ER)–positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer as initial endocrine-based therapy for their metastatic disease. The approval is based on a randomized, multicenter, open-label phase I/II trial (PALOMA-1) in 165 patients randomized to palbociclib (125 mg orally daily for 21 consecutive days, followed by 7 days off treatment) plus letrozole (2.5 mg orally daily) or letrozole alone. The phase II portion of the trial was divided into two cohorts: cohort 1 enrolled 66 biomarker-unselected patients and cohort 2 enrolled 99 biomarker-positive patients. The major efficacy outcome measure was investigator-assessed progression-free survival (PFS). A large magnitude of improvement in PFS was observed in patients receiving palbociclib plus letrozole compared with patients receiving letrozole alone (HR, 0.488; 95% confidence interval, 0.319–0.748). Multiple sensitivity analyses were supportive of clinical benefit. The most common adverse reaction in patients receiving palbociclib plus letrozole was neutropenia. This article summarizes the FDA thought process and data supporting accelerated approval based on PALOMA-1 that may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the ongoing and fully accrued confirmatory trial PALOMA-2. Clin Cancer Res; 21(21); 4760–6. ©2015 AACR.


Globalization has fed significant economic gains across the world. The gains lead some policymakers in developing countries to believe in the potential of 'catch up'—where they leverage the gains of an open world economy to foster rapid progress and compete with more developed nations. This belief is particularly evident in countries like Rwanda, where policymakers aspire to turn the country into 'Africa's Singapore'. This paper asks if such aspiration is realistic: Do developing countries really gain enough from globalization to catch up to more developed countries? The paper examines the world economy as a league in which countries compete for winnings (manifest in higher income and production). Wealthier countries are in the top tiers of this league and poorer countries are in the lower tiers. The paper asks if gains from the last generation of growth have been distributed in such a way to foster 'catch up' by lower tier countries, and if we see these countries 'catching up' by moving into higher tiers. This analysis of the world economy is compared with a study of English football, where over 90 clubs play in an multi-tier league system. Prominent examples of 'catch up' in this system include Leicester City's rise from the third tier in 2008 to become first tier champion in 2015. The paper asks if such 'catch up' is common in English football, given the way winnings are distributed, and if 'catch up' is more common in this context than in the world economy more generally.


The current debate on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a matter of considerable significance for East-West relations and international security, is examined by thirteen authors selected from the international community for their expertise. In the introduction, the three editors from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute highlight the complexities of the problems involved and identify possible solutions. Ambassadors Gerard Smith and Vladimir Semenov, the two negotiators of the 1972 Treaty, give their views, and subsequent papers address the significance of the current US and Soviet interpretations of such issues as space-based defences. The 'grey areas' in the Treaty are highlighted, and the much neglected implications for the international community in general and the small nuclear powers and alliances in particular are presented.


Background and Aims. Advances in the diagnosis and treatment of multiple myeloma (MM), place increasing demands on accurate stratification of patients as the starting point for optimal individualized therapy. The present study focused on assessing the association between HLC levels and the HLC-r to parameters of MM activity, prognosis and tumor mass volume.The objective was to assess the correlation of immunoglobulin (Ig), heavy/light chain (HLC) pairs (IgG-κ and-λ, IgA-κ and -λ HLC) and the ratio of monoclonal involved-HLC (i-HLC) to polyclonal uninvolved (u-HLC) Ig concentrations assessed by the HevyliteTM method with the free light chain κ/λ ratio (FLC-r), selected prognostic laboratory parameters i.e. Hb, platelets, albumin, β2-microglobulin (β2-M), Ca, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), creatinine and the Durie-Salmon (D-S) and International Staging System (ISS), stages (1–3) for MM. Methods. HevyliteTM assays were done on the sera of 132 MM patients at the time of diagnosis (IgG 94, IgA 38). HLC-r was calculated in the case of i-HLC-κ from the i-HLC-κ/u-HLC-λ ratio and for i-HLC-λ from the i-HLC-λ/u-HLC-κ ratio. D-S and ISS stages were evenly distributed. Results. Md IgG-κ HLC-r was 64.8 (2.7–2222) and of IgG-λ HLC-r 49.6 (0.7-465.1), in the case of IgA-κ, Md HLC-r was 408.9 (3.4-3966) and for IgA-λ HLC-r the Md was 180.0 (0.1-3110). Normal levels of HLC pairs and HLC-r did not always rule out the diagnosis of MM. HLC-r correlated with FLC-r in IgG (r = 0.244, P = 0.018), but not in the IgA type. For IgG, HLC-r values were significantly different in patients with abnormal vs normal levels of Hb (P < 0.0001), albumin (P < 0.043), β2-M (P < 0.0001) and creatinine (P = 0.034) but not thrombocyte count, Ca or LDH. For the IgA isotype, we found a significant difference in HLC-r values only for thrombocyte count (P = 0.026) and β2-M (P = 0.016) but not for Hb, albumin, Ca, LDH or creatinine. For the IgG isotype there was a significant relationship of HLC-r index to stages 1-3 (P = 0.038) and substage A vs B (P = 0.048) according to D-S, and with high significance to stages 1-3 according to ISS (P = 0.005) and between stages 1 vs 3 (P = 0.001). For the IgA isotype, we found significant differences in HLC-r only between stages 1-3 (P = 0.025) according to D-S but not in the case of ISS. There were no significant correlations between i-HLC Ig levels and D-S or ISS stages in both IgG-κ and λ and IgA-κ and λ. Exceptions were significant differences for stages 1 vs 3 (P = 0.012) and 2 vs 3 (P = 0.017) for the IgG-λ isotype. There were no correlations of the HLC-r and u-HLC levels for either D-S or ISS stratifications in all HLC isotypes. Conclusion. We found a significant positive contribution of HLC-r using the i-HLC/u-HLC ratio even in the case of i-HLC-λ i.e. i-HLC-λ/u-HLC-κ. Variable results for the relationship of important laboratory parameters and D-S and ISS stratifications (stage 1-3) to HLC-r values in IgG and IgA isotypes make separate interpretation of the HevyliteTM method results necessary in clinical practice.


VirusesViruses are locked into an adaptive arms race with the host immune system: the immune system adapts to recognize the virus, the virus adapts to evade the immune system, the cycle repeats. But in the case of HIV, it seems, sometimes it's good to be recognized.

A mathematical model captures many of the complexities of HIV's relationship with the human immune system, revealing that sometimes the benefits of detection by TH cells can outweigh the costs of detection by cytotoxic T cells (CTLs).

The cellular branch of the immune system comprises T cells that recognize specific short peptides (epitopes) clipped from viral proteins and displayed on the surface of infected cells. Like antibodies, the receptors borne by T cells are "adaptive", that is, they can vary and be selected for if they detect something useful (like viruses). As ever with the immune system, things are of course somewhat more complicated—there are several major types of T cells that do different jobs. The ones that concern us here are the T helper cells (TH cells), which need to be activated by epitopes displayed on the surface of "professional antigen-presenting cells", and can then collaborate with another type of T cell—the cytotoxic T cells (CTLs)—to destroy infected cells.

This means that there's a strong incentive for the corresponding epitopes of the viral proteins to mutate, allowing the virus to escape T cell surveillance and survive for longer in the host body. As a result, most viral genomes tend to vary substantially in the regions that encode T cell epitopes. But HIV stands out as an exception to this tendency—their T cell epitopes seem to vary less than the rest of the genome. Why?

Several theories have been advanced to explain this counterintuitive result, but a new study by Rafael Sanjuan, Jose Alcami, and colleagues in PLOS Biology provides evidence for a tantalizing and potentially important new explanation. It revolves around another peculiarity of HIV—the fact that it infects the very cells that are responsible for the cellular immune response—the T cells themselves.

The authors carefully scrutinized a wide range of HIV genome sequences to look for patterns of variation. For comparison, they also checked sequences of the more conventional hepatitis C virus (HCV). HCV doesn't infect T cells, and its T cell epitopes vary in an attempt to fly under the T cell radar. HIV does infect T cells, and its T cell epitopes are puzzlingly unchanging. After ruling out a number of alternative explanations, the authors set up a mathematical model to test a hunch.

The hunch is that HIV may not always want to go unnoticed. It's known that HIV replicates more efficiently in TH cells that have been activated, and this presents the virus with a bit of a dilemma—it certainly doesn't pay to be recognized by CTLs, the hired assassins of the immune system. But there's also a possible benefit in triggering the activation of the TH cells that they've infected. Where does the balance lie? Is it conceivable that there are some conditions where it's better for HIV epitopes to be recognized than to be ignored?

In answer, the authors model the complex network of interactions between TH cells, CTLs, antigen-presenting cells and viruses (see image). They set up two different versions of the model—one with a virus that infects non-immune cells (like HCV infecting hepatocytes), and one with a virus that infects T cells (like HIV). The results are quite striking—in the case of HCV, evasion always pays off. But in the case of HIV, the dependence on TH activation seems to sometimes favor viral epitopes that are strongly recognized by cellular immune system.

Using their combination of sequence data analysis and mathematical modeling, the authors propose that recognition of HIV epitopes by TH cells can be beneficial for the long-term survival of the virus within the body. Conditions identified in the model suggest that this recognition exerts its influence during the process of "trans-infection", a feature of the chronic stage of HIV-related disease whereby TH cells become infected during their activation in the lymph nodes. Another key variable is how many TH cells are activated in the body by pathogens other than HIV. If this "background activation" is strong, HIV obtains no payoffs from being recognized. Studying the sequence data confirms that in the capsid genes (Gag) it is TH epitopes, rather than CTL epitopes, that are constrained and that epitopes stay the same within patient viral populations rather than between patients, again implicating chronic internal transmission between cells.

The authors' hypothesis highlights the intriguing effects of opposing selective forces on HIV genome sequence, but they also point out that there is a potentially important practical implication of their findings. If their model is correct, then HIV vaccines based on TH epitopes might prove counterproductive, playing into the hands of the virus. Instead, vaccines should target only CTL-specific viral epitopes.

Sanjuan R, Nebot MR, Peris JB, Alcami J (2013) Immune Activation Promotes Evolutionary Conservation of T-Cell Epitopes in HIV-1. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001523


Abstract. Low-Z particle electron probe X-ray microanalysis (low-Z particle EPMA) shows powerful advantages for the characterization of ambient particulate matter in environmental and geological applications. By the application of the low-Z particle EPMA single particle analysis, an overall examination of 1800 coarse and fine particles (aerodynamic diameters: 2.5–10 μm and 1.0–2.5 μm, respectively) in six samples collected on 28 April–1 May 2006 in the marine boundary layer (MBL) of the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea was conducted. Three samples (D1, D2, and D3) were collected along the Bohai Bay, Bohai Straits, and Yellow Sea near Korea during an Asian dust storm event while the other three samples (N3, N2, and N1) were collected on non-Asian dust (NAD) days. Based on X-ray spectral and secondary electron image data, 15 different types of particles were identified, in which soil-derived particles were encountered with the largest frequency, followed by (C, N, O)-rich droplets (likely the mixture of organic matter and NH4NO3), particles of marine origin, and carbonaceous, Fe-rich, fly ash, and (C, N, O, S)-rich droplet particles. Results show that during the Asian dust storm event relative abundances of the (C, N, O)-rich droplets and the nitrate-containing secondary soil-derived particles were markedly increased (on average by a factor of 4.5 and 2, respectively in PM2.5−10 fraction and by a factor of 1.9 and 1.5, respectively in PM1.0−2.5 fraction) in the MBL of the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea, implying that Asian dust aerosols in springtime are an important carrier of gaseous inorganic nitrogen species, especially NOx (or HNO3) and NH3.


Customize and extend Moodle using its robust plug-in systems Develop your own blocks, activities, filters, and organize your content with secure code Thoroughly covers key libraries of Moodle and best practices to use them Explore the Moodle architectural concepts, how it is structured, and how it works Detailed examples and screenshots for easy learning In Detail Moodle gives you the power to create and customize feature-rich plug-ins. If you can write Moodle plug-ins, you can make it do just about anything. From making the site easier to administer, to new features, to completely changing the way it looks; plug-ins are the method Moodle offers to customize and extend its functionality. This book will show you how to build all sorts of Moodle plug-ins: admin plug-ins, Blocks, Activities, Grading components, Reports, Fliters that change the way your site works and looks. You will develop standard Moodle plug-ins such as Activities, Filters, and Blocks by creating functioning code that you can execute in your own Moodle installation. Writing modular plug-ins for Moodle will be a large focus of this book. This book will take you inside Moodle and provide you with the ability to develop code the "Moodle way". This book will expose you to all of the core code functions in Moodle, in a progressive, understandable way. You will learn what libraries are available, what the API calls are, how it is structured and how it can be expanded beyond the plug-in system. You will begin by getting an understanding of the basic architecture that Moodle uses to operate in. Next you will build your first plug-in; a block. You will carry on building other Moodle plug-ins, gaining knowledge of the "Moodle way" of coding, before plunging deeper into the API and inner libraries. Lastly, you will learn how to integrate Moodle with other systems using a variety of methods. When you have completed, you will have a solid understanding of Moodle programming and knowledge of how to extend its functionality in whatever way you want. A practical guide to creating feature-rich extensions for your website using Moodle plug-ins What you will learn from this book Add activities and grading components to keep a track of students' progress automatically Create Moodle Filters to process and filter the contents of the database Customize the look and feel of your Moodle site using powerful plug-ins Customize Moodle reports to assess the performance of a student easily Allow integration with third-party systems such as HR and student information systems to access any data directly Automate notifications for any updates in the courses Customize forms to be filled by students using `formlib' library Extend Moodle beyond its boundaries using web services and explore the features of SOAP-based and XMM-RPC-based web services Approach The author's experience as a Moodle developer enables him to combine a simple, descriptive how-to approach with enthusiastic insights into the rich potential of customizing Moodle according to your needs. The chapters gradually build up your skills and by the end of the book you will be confident enough to customize Moodle on your own. Who this book is written for This book is written for technologists who are interested in expanding Moodle's functions through programming, either for their own organizations or to contribute to the open source project. You should be familiar with Moodle's basic technologies: PHP, MySQL ,and HTML/CSS.


This paper reports research in progress into a study of information flow and teamwork in Incident Management Teams (IMTs) in Australia. The research project, funded by the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre, aims to work with stakeholders to improve teamwork effectiveness and subsequent organizational (and cross-organizational) learning in response to major fire and emergency incidents. The research design includes interviews with experienced personnel, and observations of real-time incidents and training simulations. Data is currently being analysed for technologies in use, quantity and quality of interactions between IMT functions; the nature of activity and the kinds of problems encountered in IMT work as well as the ways in which artefacts are used to develop shared understanding, including the impact of the introduction of new technologies. The presentation aims to contribute to an understanding of what enables and constrains effective teamwork and information flow within major fire-related incidents in Australia. Outcomes include suggested configurations for incident control centres; identification of points of vulnerability in information flow between functions and strategies that may be useful for input into IMT training to enhance safety and effectiveness in the future.