Agitated by the increasing number of school age children not attending primary school in Nigeria, this study set out to investigate the factors that inhibit parents in sending their children to school. A random sample of 2000 parents, whose school-age children do not attend primary school, was drawn from the north, south, east and west of Nigeria. A 14-item four-point scale questionnaire that had a reliability coefficient of 0.63 was used for the collection of data. It was found that the significant factors that discouraged parents from sending their children to school were poverty, value for money, and fear of prevailing unemployment for school leavers and misconceptions about female education. It was recommended, among other things, that the government should pursue a genuine programme of poverty alleviation and economic empowerment of parents so that they would be able to send their children to school. The need to intensify the campaign against sex discrimination in educational opportunities was also recommended. It was further recommended that efforts should be made by the government to diversify and stimulate the nation's economy to create employment opportunities for school leavers. ********** Current efforts at educational development in African countries have focused, among other things, on the expansion and liberalisation of educational opportunities for increased school attendance. This is in apprehension of the increasing number of illiterate persons in Africa. For example, it has been reported that the school age children (6-12 years of age) who were not attending school: made up 14.1% in Ghana; 24.2% in Nigeria; 16.4% in Niger; 14.9 in Congo; 13.8% in Kenya and 7.7% in Botswana (African Education Consortium, 2003). The above figures are obviously staggering and intimidating when viewed against the national populations. Thus, 24.2% of school age children (about 23 million) who were not attending school in Nigeria is an indication that the problem of school attendance is massive. It is important to note that the foregoing reports were demographic. The investigation did not seek to find out why the conditions of school attendance were so. These reports have however generated interest in issues and conditions related to school attendance in these African countries. The following demographic reports show that there has been no significant improvement in school attendance in Nigeria since Evis and Okon made a similar report in 1993. According to this report, four out of every 10 children of school age were not registered in school. Instead, they were found mainly in busy urban streets hawking different items for money or were found going to the farm with their parents. The investigation further revealed that the youngsters preferred going into commercial and business activities as the surest and quickest means of becoming rich instead of going to school. Garrick and Celia (2000) had earlier reported that African countries, south of Sahara face almost the same educational crises, largely because of their common colonial experience and inability to grapple with the problem of poverty. Another study carried out by Browns and Ali (2000) on the rate of dropout in Nigerian primary and secondary schools revealed some startling results. It was found that though dropout existed at both levels, it was more serious at the secondary school level. While the primary schools sampled lost six pupils yearly on the average, the secondary schools sampled lost eleven students yearly on the average as a result of dropout. However, it would appear that irregular school attendance and dropout is a global scene. There is no system in which all children and youth are in school till completion. Be that as it may, this problem appears to be more acute in Nigeria. According to Hargrove (1987) and Woods (1994), irregular school attendance and dropping out are a complex social problem for which there is no simple solution. …


This thesis is a study of Surland's Emulsification Method, and is intended to demonstrate the effect of change in emulsification rate curve with different types of fountain solution whose surface tension was varied. The surface tension of a fountain solution can be changed by the addition of isopropyl alcohol. Two inks were modified to produce the same tack reading but a different emulsification capacity. Using the Surland method the two inks and two fountain solutions generate four different emulsification rate curves and these four curves are tested for their effect on printed quality. The printing performance of an ink is judged by the ease with which an ink can obtain ink-water balance as well as the degree of freedom from printing problems such as "catching up"and plate scumming. The printed sheets are sampled and the data is analyzed statis tically using solid ink density and dot gain as response variables. The RIT Symmetrical Scale was included in the printing form design to faci litate solid ink density measurement and dot gain calculation. Solid ink density and dot gain variations are calculated within each printing run. The addition of isopropul alcohol to a dampening solution not only reduces its surface tension and increase its wettability but it also suppresses an ink's continuous emulsification tendency. Ink and water balance is easily controlled when a printing ink is able to reach a state of equilibrim with dampening solution. On the basis of observation during the on press printing run it was found that a high percentage of isopropyl alcohol in a dampening solution can dissolve the blue toner from the black ink and requires an increase of ink feed to obtain the desired optical density. This study indicates the tendency of plate "catching up" can be associated with emulsification rate curves. The Pb type of emulsification rate curve can be so modified that press run will encounter fewer problems. Density variation within a press run is then more easily controlled. Abstract approved: Chester J. Daniels ,thesis advisor ------------------------------Senior Technologist, title and departmentapproved: Chester J. Daniels ,thesis advisor ------------------------------Senior Technologist, title and department CHAPTER


There is special interest in the patterns of fuel use among low-income rural communities and their transition from one form of energy use pattern to another. Understanding energy transitions will help in developing energy policies for the poor and promoting new energy markets that will improve their household budgets. Energy suppliers, such as utilities, would be better able to work in low-income communities for their mutual benefit. Households could benefit from more convenient and healthier forms of energy. This paper develops a simple micro-economic framework describing aspects of energy supply and use in low-income settings. We assume that consumer utility is the driver of transitions, subject to fuel-appliance availability and budget constraints. We explore the hypothesis that reductions in "market failure" often help to encourage energy transitions.


In this paper, we consider random words ω1ω2ω3⋯ωn of length n, where the letters ωi ∈ℕ are independently generated with a geometric probability such that Pωi=k=pqk-1 where p+q=1 . We have a descent at position i whenever ωi+1 < ωi. The size of such a descent is ωi-ωi+1 and the descent variation is the sum of all the descent sizes for that word. We study various types of random words over the infinite alphabet ℕ, where the letters have geometric probabilities, and find the probability generating functions for descent variation of such words.


Traffic information is required to perform optical-layer traffic engineering (TE). However, as the number of nodes in optical networks increases, the overhead for collecting the traffic volume information becomes large. In this paper, we develop a method that reduces the overhead for collecting traffic volume information by selecting a subset of nodes and by only collecting the traffic volume information from the selected nodes. Then, we estimate the traffic volume using the information gathered from the selected nodes. According to the simulation results, we clarify that our method can accurately identify the congested links in real ISP topologies, where the number of traffic demands passing through some links is large; however, the estimation errors of our method become large when the number of traffic demands passing each link is small. Furthermore, optical-layer TE can sufficiently mitigate congestion by using the traffic volume estimated by our method from the information on 50% of all nodes in the case of the Japan topology and 30% of all nodes in the case of the AT&T topology.


This paper presents a novel numerical procedure based on the combination of an edge-based smoothed finite element (ES-FEM) with a phantom-node method for 2D linear elastic fracture mechanics. In the standard phantom-node method, the cracks are formulated by adding phantom nodes, and the cracked element is replaced by two new superimposed elements. This approach is quite simple to implement into existing explicit finite element programs. The shape functions associated with discontinuous elements are similar to those of the standard finite elements, which leads to certain simplification with implementing in the existing codes. The phantom-node method allows modeling discontinuities at an arbitrary location in the mesh. The ES-FEM model owns a close-to-exact stiffness that is much softer than lower-order finite element methods (FEM). Taking advantage of both the ES-FEM and the phantom-node method, we introduce an edge-based strain smoothing technique for the phantom-node method. Numerical results show that the proposed method achieves high accuracy compared with the extended finite element method (XFEM) and other reference solutions.


The application of micro- and nanofabrication processes to the development of hybrid synthetic and biological systems may enable the production of new devices such as controllable transporters, gears, levers, micropumps, or microgenerators powered by biological molecular motors. However, engineering these hybrid devices requires fabrication processes that are compatible with biological materials such as kinesin motor proteins and microtubules. In this paper, the effects of micro- and nanofabrication processing chemicals and resists on the functionality of casein, kinesin, and microtubule proteins are systematically examined to address the important missing link of the biocompatibility of micro- and nanofabrication processes needed to realize hybrid system fabrication. It is found that both casein, which is used to prevent motor denaturation on surfaces, and kinesin motors are surprisingly tolerant of most of the processing chemicals examined. Microtubules, however, are much more sensitive. Exposure to the processing chemicals leads to depolymerization, which is partially attributed to the pH of the solutions examined. When the chemicals were diluted in aqueous buffers, a subset of them no longer depolymerized microtubules and in their diluted forms still worked as resist removers. This approach broadens the application of micro- and nanofabrication processes to hybrid synthetic and biological system fabrication.


Specific antimicrobial antibodies present in the sera of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have been proven to be valuable serological biomarkers for diagnosis/prognosis of the disease. Herein we describe the use of a whole Escherichia coli proteome microarray as a novel high throughput proteomics approach to screen and identify new serological biomarkers for IBD. Each protein array, which contains 4,256 E. coli K12 proteins, was screened using individual serum from healthy controls (n = 39) and clinically well characterized patients with IBD (66 Crohn disease (CD) and 29 ulcerative colitis (UC)). Proteins that could be recognized by serum antibodies were visualized and quantified using Cy3-labeled goat anti-human antibodies. Surprisingly significance analysis of microarrays identified a total of 417 E. coli proteins that were differentially recognized by serum antibodies between healthy controls and CD or UC. Among those, 169 proteins were identified as highly immunogenic in healthy controls, 186 proteins were identified as highly immunogenic in CD, and only 19 were identified as highly immunogenic in UC. Using a supervised learning algorithm (k-top scoring pairs), we identified two sets of serum antibodies that were novel biomarkers for specifically distinguishing CD from healthy controls (accuracy, 86 ± 4%; p < 0.01) and CD from UC (accuracy, 80 ± 2%; p < 0.01), respectively. The Set 1 antibodies recognized three pairs of E. coli proteins: Era versus YbaN, YhgN versus FocA, and GabT versus YcdG, and the Set 2 antibodies recognized YidX versus FrvX. The specificity and sensitivity of Set 1 antibodies were 81 ± 5 and 89 ± 3%, respectively, whereas those of Set 2 antibodies were 84 ± 1 and 70 ± 6%, respectively. Serum antibodies identified for distinguishing healthy controls versus UC were only marginal because their accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity were 66 ± 5, 69 ± 5, and 61 ± 7%, respectively (p < 0.04). Taken together, we identified novel sets of serological biomarkers for diagnosis of CD versus healthy control and CD versus UC.


INTRODUCTION: Bronchial asthma (BA) and allergic rhinitis (AR) are immunoglobulin (Ig) E-mediated hypersensitivity phenomena. The objective of the study is to assess the association between total serum IgE level and skin prick test (SPT) in Indian patients who presented with different nasobronchial allergy symptoms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was an observational prospective study conducted in the Allergy and Asthma Clinic, Motihari, Bihar. A total of 183 patients diagnosed as BA and AR undergo SPT against different allergens between January 2017 and July 2018. Serum total IgE was measured in all patients. All statistical analyses were performed using statistical software SPSS version 20 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: The study patients included 95 males and 88 females (total 183) with a mean age of 27.15 ± 12.64 years. SPT was positive in 99 out of 183 (54.09%) study patients. BA and AR were associated with skin sensitization in 30.60% and 15.30% of patients, respectively, while 54.09% of patients were associated with both AR and asthma. Forty-four out of 99 (44.44%) patients were sensitized to single allergen, while 40.40% and 15.15% of patients were sensitized to 2–5 allergens and >5 allergens, respectively. Except 11 patients, all the study patients had high total IgE level (>150 IU/ml). More than half of the study patients (51.36%) were associated with more than 1000 serum total IgE level. Total IgE level was not affected with the number of allergen sensitization. SPT-positive patients had higher IgE value than SPT-negative patients but statistically not significant (P > 0.05), and there was also poor correlation between SPT result and serum total IgE level (r = 0.102). CONCLUSION: SPT should be performed in all clinical allergic patients irrespective of serum total IgE level.


The knowledge of the lightning-induced nitrogen oxides (LNO x ) source is important for understanding and predicting the nitrogen oxides and ozone distributions in the troposphere and their trends, the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere, and the lifetime of trace gases destroyed by reactions with OH. This knowledge is further required for the assessment of other important NO x sources, in particular from aviation emissions, the stratosphere, and from surface sources, and for understanding the possible feedback between climate changes and lightning. This paper reviews more than 3 decades of research. The review includes laboratory studies as well as surface, airborne and satellite-based observations of lightning and of NO x and related species in the atmosphere. Relevant data available from measurements in regions with strong LNO x influence are identified, including recent observations at midlatitudes and over tropical continents where most lightning occurs. Various methods to model LNO x at cloud scales or globally are described. Previous estimates are re-evaluated using the global annual mean flash frequency of 44±5 s −1 reported from OTD satellite data. From the review, mainly of airborne measurements near thunderstorms and cloud-resolving models, we conclude that a "typical" thunderstorm flash produces 15 (2–40)×10 25 NO molecules per flash, equivalent to 250 mol NO x or 3.5 kg of N mass per flash with uncertainty factor from 0.13 to 2.7. Mainly as a result of global model studies for various LNO x parameterisations tested with related observations, the best estimate of the annual global LNO x nitrogen mass source and its uncertainty range is (5±3) Tg a −1 in this study. In spite of a smaller global flash rate, the best estimate is essentially the same as in some earlier reviews, implying larger flash-specific NO x emissions. The paper estimates the LNO x accuracy required for various applications and lays out strategies for improving estimates in the future. An accuracy of about 1 Tg a −1 or 20%, as necessary in particular for understanding tropical tropospheric chemistry, is still a challenging goal.


Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Psychology and Public Health, College of
Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Victoria.


The structural controls on the seismic sequence stratigraphy of the lower Cretaceous succession in the Terra Nova oil field, Grand Banks of Newfoundland, is studied using a digital 3-D seismic database and wireline log data from 11 offshore wells. Three seismic sequences (Units A, B, and C) were mapped in the Terra Nova area, roughly corresponding to the Eastern Shoals, Avalon, and Ben Nevis formations, respectively. Each sequence is bounded by distinct unconformities. The development of these sequences and their boundaries was controlled by an interplay of sediment input, changes in sea level, tectonism, accommodation space, and climate. However, tectonism (i.e., fault-block subsidence and rotation) is interpreted to be the principal cause for the sedimentary patterns and development of the major unconformities in the Terra Nova field; global eustatic sea-level variations had only a minor influence on unconformity generation. -- The N-S-trending fault system in the Terra Nova field was active during the Tithonian to mid-Valanginian, as evidenced by fault growth within the Hibernia and Rankin formations. The E-W-trending fault system was previously interpreted to have been formed during mid-Aptian to Albian extensional phases; however, growth-strata patterns within the Eastern Shoals Formation suggest instead that the E-W-trending fault system in the Terra Nova field was initiated by at least the late Barremian and was active until late Albian. Also, the N-S-trending fault system in the Terra Nova field was reactivated at this time. This fault system terminates upward against the Albian unconformity, so that by late Albian the active rifting in the Terra Nova field is interpreted to have ceased. -- A "pop-up" feature immediately west of the Voyager Fault in the Terra Nova field has been previously interpreted to have formed by transpressional stresses induced by oblique-slip movement. However, geometries similar to those presented in the model of Jackson and Vendeville (1992 and 1994) suggest that a large salt diapir may lie in the footwall of the Voyager Fault. Therefore, an alternative interpretation is proposed for this "pop-up" feature, as a localized contractional feature related to diapirism. -- The lower Cretaceous succession in the Terra Nova field does not contain hydrocarbons, but forms reservoirs in other oil fields such as Hibernia and White Rose. It is proposed that the reservoir facies represented by the Ben Nevis and Avalon formations in the Terra Nova field were charged with hydrocarbons at some point but were subsequently breached, allowing oil to escape from the traps. This scenario is consistent with published fluid-inclusion studies.


Abstract Running downhill, in comparison to running on the flat, appears to involve an exaggerated stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) due to greater impact loads and higher vertical velocity on landing, whilst also incurring a lower metabolic cost. Therefore, downhill running could facilitate higher volumes of training at higher speeds whilst performing an exaggerated SSC, potentially inducing favourable adaptations in running mechanics and running economy (RE). This investigation assessed the efficacy of a supplementary 8-week programme of downhill running as a means of enhancing RE in well-trained distance runners. Nineteen athletes completed supplementary downhill (−5% gradient; n = 10) or flat (n = 9) run training twice a week for 8 weeks within their habitual training. Participants trained at a standardised intensity based on the velocity of lactate turnpoint (vLTP), with training volume increased incrementally between weeks. Changes in energy cost of running (EC) and vLTP were assessed on both flat and downhill gradients, in addition to maximal oxygen uptake (⩒O2max). No changes in EC were observed during flat running following downhill (1.22 ± 0.09 vs 1.20 ± 0.07 Kcal kg−1 km−1, P = .41) or flat run training (1.21 ± 0.13 vs 1.19 ± 0.12 Kcal kg−1 km−1). Moreover, no changes in EC during downhill running were observed in either condition (P > .23). vLTP increased following both downhill (16.5 ± 0.7 vs 16.9 ± 0.6 km h−1 , P = .05) and flat run training (16.9 ± 0.7 vs 17.2 ± 1.0 km h−1, P = .05), though no differences in responses were observed between groups (P = .53). Therefore, a short programme of supplementary downhill run training does not appear to enhance RE in already well-trained individuals.


This paper draws on framing theory and narrative theory as two influential theoretical approaches to the analysis of discourse and communication. It looks into the discourse processes and ethics of framing particular media stories and constructing particular narratives about Islam and Muslims in the official website of the Middle East Forum (MEF), a well-established neoconservative American think tank which specializes in the Middle East. The study examines a representative sample of articles from the website and proposes a model of editorial media discourse analysis based on a problem-solution framing paradigm and a narrative ethical evaluation platform. Findings uncover that the problemsolution frame, which is built on a problem-culprit-cause-solution base and which represents the frame's cognitive structure is systematically utilized. Four types of framing (religious, political, cultural, and military), two forms (verbal and semiotic), and two functions (persecution and isolation) have been detected, constructing persecutive narratives of Muslims as the villains and of Islam as antiWestern, anti-Semitic, and incompatible with modernity. The ethical evaluation shows that these belligerent narratives violate basic standards of ethics and dialogue.


The purpose of this research is to provide a comprehensive analysis of a salient jihadist philosopher by the name of Sayyid Qutb. Qutb is arguably among the most influential ideologues o f modern-day Islamic militancy; yet, there is very little research examining his works. Through in-depth analysis of the historical, social, and political contexts surrounding Qutb and Islamic militancy, this research will examine selected works of Qutb to determine the frequency of his use of militant language and how his usage of militant language relates to his overall ideology; place Qutb's writings into historical, social, and political contexts while at the same time examining if, and how, they are influencing militants today; and, identify the importance o f understanding the beliefs conveyed by Qutb for the purpose of informing counterterrorism policy


Background and Objectives: Poor breast milk production is the most frequent cause of breastfeeding failure in preterm babies. The aim of our study is to evaluate the effect of herbal tea mixture containing stinging nettle (Natal, Hipp) on breast milk production and serum prolactin levels of mothers, and weight gain of preterm babies. Materials and Methods: We enrolled mothers and their babies who were less than 37 gestational week and less than 2000 g, fed with orogastric tube without any contraindication of enteral feeding in neonatal intensive care unit between November 2010 and June 2011. The mothers of treatment group (n = 32) were consuming commercially available herbal mixture tea for 1 week. The mothers control group (n = 21) received only the same advice on supportive measures as group I. Mothers in the placebo group (n = 32) were given fruit tea for 1 week. The daily breast milk production of mothers and weight gain of preterm babies were recorded. Also, serum prolactin levels of the mothers were measured. Results: Increase of the milk production from the first to the seventh day was more prominent in mothers using herbal tea mixture. Increased rate in the amount of milk was 80% in the treatment, 34.3% in the placebo and 30% in the control group (P = 0.000). There was no statistically significant difference in weight gain of babies between the two groups, due to formula feeding in case of insufficient breast milk. Serum prolactin levels of the mothers at the beginning and on the seventh day showed no significant difference. Conclusions: In mothers with premature babies and who are treated in neonatal intensive care unit, consumption of galactogogue herbal tea will increase lactation and prevent lack of human milk without any adverse effect.


Across the world, recent decades have witnessed large scale and rapid urbanization. Centralized wastewater treatment is typically considered the most desirable solution to meet domestic wastewater treatment needs in growing urban centers. These rely on extensive—and often expensive—infrastructure and treatment solutions that require expert engineering management to ensure effective operation. It is argued that the urban sustainability challenge of inadequate sanitation, deteriorating water quality, and rising water stress are best met through poly-centric and integrated approaches that include nature-based solutions, community-scale and community-managed systems. Today's objectives are to create climate-resilient, enduring, self-governing systems—as well as systems that close the loop, encouraging resource re-use and recycling. This policy review informs on wastewater discharge (and related) standards for sewage treatment plants within the context of present-day India. With its booming urban population, highly visible and impactful pollution, water quality and insecurity challenges, India provides huge opportunities for creative approaches to urban sanitation—but to fully exploit these opportunities will require new policy and regulatory thinking. The current regulatory developments are undergoing frequent changes with observed inconsistencies over the last years leading to a growing confusion in the sector. Examined questions include: How clear are policy objectives and regulations? What are reasons for observed inconsistencies in current pollution control regulations and what are their implications? How well-aligned are standards and regulation with these objectives? How forward-looking? Are solutions sufficiently responsive to the urban sustainability challenge? In particular, this review considers whether regulatory approaches disadvantage decentralized and innovative approaches that could offer resilient, community-based systems—even within the megacities of the twenty-first century. This study further draws on examples from other emerging economies—and contextualizes these examples with the situation in Western Europe, where a single set of targets has let to diverse solutions. Standards and regulations need to be reimagined for this evolving urban context which might require it to become more nuanced, more holistic, more dynamic, more transparent, more participative, and more contextual. Enforcement mechanisms will need to incorporate phased/graded approaches to compliance—to suit various contexts that could include water reuse for different application areas.


The Matsitama supracrustal belt (MSB) of northeastern Botswana occurs at the southwestern extremity of the Zimbabwe Craton. It comprises four composite lithostratigraphic associations which are dominated by shallow-water clastic and chemical metasediments. Mafic metavolcanics and hypabyssal intrusive are subordinate and are mainly restricted to one association. Ultramafic metavolcanic schists, serpentinized peridotites, and intermediate lithologies are minor components. However, acid volcanics are absent and the belt is thus lithologically anomalous with respect to the majority of the greenstone belts in the Zimbabwe Craton. The whole supracrustal assemblage has been metamorphosed at greenschist facies, locally attaining low amphibolite grade. It is associated with an originally intrusive tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite orthogneiss suite (the Jankie gneisses) which locally contains intercalated amphibolite facies paragneiss horizons and is intruded by K-feldspar-rich equigranular to megacrystic granitoids. The MSB metabasites are tholeiitic and show many geochemical affinities with modern mid-ocean ridge and island arc basalts. However, they exhibit a minor negative Nb anomaly, and large-ion lithophile and slight light rare-earth element enrichment, suggestive of a crustal contamination component, such that in some respects they resemble a continental tholeiite suite. Minor geochemical differences, mainly among the (mobile) large-ion lithophile elements, indicate that the metavolcanic and metadolerite suites are possibly not simply petrogenetically related; otherwise their geochemical signatures are very similar. The ultramafic schists are interpreted as basaltic komatiites which appear not to be related petrogenetically to the metabasites. The MSB probably formed in a back-arc basin during extensional attenuation and rifting of Archaean continental crust at the margin of the Zimbabwe Craton.


The authors of Race and Place: Equity Issues in Urban America argue the existence of a significant link between race and urban geography. They contend that white racism and domination, rather than a lack of individual motivation or ability, created the concentrated populations of socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities that characterize today's American urban landscape. This Book Review explores in detail one cause and enabler of inequity that the authors cursorily implicate: the entertainment media's capacity to manipulate societal norms. Mter discussing the powerful role of television media to shape and influence perceptions and behavior, this Review examines the current paucity of Asian-American portrayals in news and entertainment television, and the stereotyped, harmful, and inaccurate nature of those portrayals that do exist. This Book Review concludes that television's widespread influence can reduce social inequity and should be exploited, and proposes a system of tax incentives designed to compel, rather than dictate, positive change.


Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common clinical syndrome with a broad aetiological profile. It complicates about 5% of hospital admissions and 30% of admissions to intensive care units (ICU). During last 20 years has been a significant change in the spectrum of severe AKI such that it is no longer mostly a single organ phenomenon but rather a complex multisystem clinical problem. Despite great advances in renal replacement technique (RRT), mortality from AKI, when part of MOF, remains over 50%. The changing nature of AKI requires a new approach using the new advanced technology. Clinicians can provide therapies tailored to time constraints (intermittent, continuous, or extended intermittent), haemodynamic, and metabolic requirements and aimed at molecules of variable molecular weight. Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is technically the simplest form of RRT and is still commonly used worldwide. The problems include difficulty in maintaining dialysate flow, peritoneal infection, leakage, protein losses, and restricted ability to clear fluid and uraemic wastes. PD is the preferred treatment modality for AKI in pediatric practice. Patients that are hemodynamically stable can be managed with intermittent hemodialysis (IHD), whereby relatively short (3 to 4 h) dialysis sessions may be performed every day or every other day. Patients who are haemodynamically unstable are best managed using continuous renal replacement therapies (CRRT), which allow for continuous fine-tuning of intravascular volume, easier correction of hypervolemia, better solute removal, more accurately correction of metabolic acidosis, and offers possibilities for unlimited energy support. Recently, "hybrid" or sustained low-efficiency dialysis (SLED) was introduced as a method which combines the advantages of IHD with those of CRRT. In this technique, classic dialysis hardware is used at low blood and dialysate flow rates, for prolonged period of time (6 to 12 h/day). SLED offers more haemodynamic stability, better correstion of hypervolaemia, and more adequate solue removal, compared with IHD. In conclusion, AKI in the ICU is increasingly a component of sepsis and MSOF, and the development of rational strategies for initiation, dosing, and effective delivery of RRT in this setting is among the greatest challenges facing nephrologists and intensivists today.


Background: The effects of different opioids on postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) and pain have not been conclusively determined. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of fentanyl, remifentanil or fentanyl plus morphine on the incidence of PONV and pain in women subjected to cesarean section under general anesthesia. Methods: The study was a randomized clinical trial recruiting 96 parturients with American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status I and II. They scheduled for cesarean section under general anesthesia using sodium thiopental, succynylcholine, and isoflurane O2/N2O 50/50 mixture. After clamping the umbilical cord, the patients were given fentanyl (2 µg/kg/h), remifentanil (0.05 µg/kg/h), or fentanyl (2 µg/kg) pulse morphine (0.1 mg/kg) intravenously. Visual analog scale for pain and nausea, frequency of PONV, meperidine and metoclopramide consumption were evaluated at recovery, and 4, 8, 12 and 24 hours after the surgery. Results: There was no significant difference between the three groups in terms of frequency of nausea, vomiting, and mean nausea and pain scores at any time points. None of the patients required the administration of metoclopramide. However, the mean VAS for pain in remifentanil-treated group was insignificantly more than that in fentanyl- or fentanyl plus morphine-treated group at recovery or 4 hours after the surgery. The mean mepridine consumption in remifentanil-treated group was significantly (P=0.001) more than that in fentanyl- or fentanyl plus morphine-treated group in 24 hours after the surgery respectively. There was no significant difference in hemodynamic parameters of the three groups in all measurements after the surgery. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that early postoperative analgesia was better with fentanyl, and postoperative meperidine consumption was significantly less with fentanyl than with remifentanil or combined fentayl and morphine.


Based on the conjugate gradient method, we propose a modified iterative method (MCG) for impulse noise removal based on the famous two-phase scheme. The noise candidates are firstly identified by the adaptive median filter, and then the MCG method recovers these noise candidates by minimizing an edge-preserving regularization function. A nice property of the MCG method is that the global convergence can be established without assuming that the objective function satisfies strong convexity under the Armijo-type line search. Numerical experiments show that the MCG method is effective to remove the impulse noise.


This volume is an enlarged version of the Spanish edition and seeks, as its predecessor, to identify a new architectural will and a new social and cultural panorama. It aims to contribute to forming a vision that is global - but not necessarily absolute - of what is already showing itself to be a new architectural action, related to that coined as "advanced culture", present in various art disciplines, thought and technology. It talks about an architecture inscribed in the information society and influenced by the new technologies, the new economy, care of the environment and interest in the individual. The diversity of the authors and the special contributions should be seen as an initial decision aimed at promoting the intersecting and collaboration of visions and proposals along these lines.


A granulite from the Sondalo femic complex, Italian Central Alps, contains prismatine, the boron-rich member of the kornerupine group. This is the first report of prismatine in the Alps. The granulite consists of albite-rich plagioclase + cordierite + sillimanite + rutile + hercynite + corundum + quartz and is interpreted as a restite formed after partial melting of amphibolite-facies tourmaline-bearing metasediments at about 900°C and 0.8 GPa. Prismatine grains, which form a coarse aggregate with tourmaline, biotite and albitic plagioclase, have inclusions of sapphirine, hercynite and corundum. Secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) analyses on prismatine gives B 2 O 3 = 2.30–2.89 wt.%, Li 2 O = 0.067–0.125 wt.%, BeO = 0.005–0.007 wt. %, F = 0.32–0.49 wt. % and H 2 O = 0.90–1.02 wt.%. The cell parameters a and c and V of the Sondalo prismatine fit with the B 2 O 3 co-variation reported in literature. We propose a mechanism of prismatine formation involving the breakdown of tourmaline during the anatexis of the amphibolite-facies metasediments and the development of prismatine as a refractory phase. No intervention of a metaso-matic boron-rich fluid is required. The possible tourmaline breakdown process is the reaction 7.82 tourmaline + 1.03 biotite + 2.41 sapphirine + 3.22 quartz = 8.00 prismatine + 5.93 melt + 1 B 2 O 3 .


This chapter provides a review on the state of art of the use of the visible near-infrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy technique to determine mineral nutrients, organic compounds, and other physical and chemical characteristics in samples from agricultural systems— such as plant tissues, soils, fruits, cocomposted sewage sludge and wastes, cereals, and forage and silage. Currently, all this information is needed to be able to carry out the appropriate fertilization of crops, to handle agricultural soils, determine the organoleptic characteristics of fruit and vegetable products, discover the characteristics of the various substrates obtained in composting processes, and characterize byproducts from the industrial sector. All this needs a large number of samples that must be analyzed; this is a time-consuming work, leading to high economic costs and, obviously, having a negative environmental impact owing to the production of noxious chemicals during the analyses. Therefore, the development of a fast, environmentally friendly, and cheaper method of analysis like vis-NIR is highly desirable. Our intention here is to introduce the main fundamentals of infrared reflectance spectroscopy, and to show that procedures like calibration and validation of data from vis-NIR spectra must be performed, and describe the parameters most commonly measured in the agricultural sector.


Even when not directly visible, flicker from light sources at frequencies exceeding 100 Hz can influence perception through stroboscopic effects. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the impacts of flicker varying in frequency and modulation depth on visual performance, comfort and preference. In one experiment, subjects performed a numerical verification task under flickering illumination from 100 to 1000 Hz and from 25% to 100% flicker. Error rates were lower under higher frequency and lower flicker modulation and visual comfort was slightly higher. In the second experiment, subjects preferred higher frequency and lower modulation than 100 Hz, 100% flicker. In the third experiment, subjects equated perceived quality from illumination with higher frequency or lower modulation flicker when the illuminance was reduced by about half, relative to 100 Hz, 100% flicker. The results were consistent with a recently published model of the perception of stroboscopic effects.


Changes in the number of cyclones and cyclone trajectories in Central and Northern Europe during 1948-2000 are analysed using a database of cyclones. Two hypotheses are advanced. Firstly, the number of cyclones reaching Northern Europe has increased, causing a transition to a more maritime climate. Secondly, the trajectories of cyclones have moved northward, causing the advection of warm and moist air to Northern Europe and decreasing precipitation in Central Europe. These advances were confirmed by data analysis. A linear trend and its statistical significance (P < 0.05) for the frequency of cyclones in the Atlantic-European sector (30°W-45°E, 35-75°N) were calculated. Circles with radii of 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 km with centre coordinates 60°N and 22.5°E were generated. All the cyclones whose centres were located within these circles were counted. Also two meridians - 5°E and 20°E - were selected and all the cyclones were counted whose centres crossed the meridians from west to east in the interval of 45 - 75°N. Changes in the frequency of long-term cyclones were analysed. The number of cyclones reaching Northern Europe has increased in the period 1948-2000. The number of cyclones over the Baltic Sea has increased, especially in the winter. In Central Europe, the number of cyclones has decreased, especially in the warm half-year. The number of long cyclones has increased over the Baltic Sea, especially in the cold half-year.


The plant Alstonia scholaris has been used in different system of traditional medication for the treatment of diseases and ailments of human beings. It is reported to contain various alkaloids, flavonoids and phenolic acids. It has been reported as antimicrobial, antiamoebic, antidiarrhoeal, antiplasmodial, hepatoprotective, immunomodulatory, anti-cancer, antiasthmatic, free radical scavenging, antioxidant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcer, anti-fertility and wound healing activities. There are also reports available for the traditional use of this plant for its cardiotonic, anti-diabetic and anti-arthritic properties. Many isolated constituents from Alstonia scholaris lack the reports of pharmacological activities, which support its further pharmacological studies. It is considered as one of the best Indian medicinal Herb. An attempt has been made to highlight the medicinal bark through the pharmacognostic studies. Priminary identification of phytoconstituents was performed.


The development of mobile Augmented Reality application became increasingly popular over the last few years. However, many of the existing solutions build on the reuse of available standard metaphors for visualization and interaction without considering the manifold contextual factors of their use. Within this workshop we want to discuss theoretical design approaches and practical tools which should help developers to make more informed choices when exploring the design space of Augmented Reality interfaces in mobile contexts.


This paper describes how past pipeline incidents can be used to test whether the consequences of major hazard events as predicted by computer model are realistic.Most materials transported by cross-country pipeline are flammable in nature, e.g. crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas. The hazardous consequences of a loss of containment may be modelled by a variety of computer models. One of the key inputs is how the failure may be modelled, in terms of the initial source terms and how the released material behaves subsequently. Modelling appropriate behaviour of the release is incumbent on the modeller / engineer, as well as accurately interpreting the output from the computer model.There have been a number of high profile pipeline incidents in recent years that have had a devastating effect on the local community. Although one recognises the distressing effects of such incidents, these also provide an opportunity to test the consequences predicted by computer models. One of the key questions is whether it is likely that the adverse effects of an incident are overpredicted by the modelling inputs / technique and therefore whether the outputs from the model present a conservative thermal radiation dose.This paper presents such a benchmarking exercise, which has been carried out to assess the degree of realism provided by computer modelling and the way in which the modelling is carried out. This exercise was conducted following a number of pipeline risk assessments where it was predicted that in some cases, hundreds of fatalities may occur following rupture of a pipeline transporting natural gas. It was felt that there may be a level of over-conservatism in the modelling, particularly as many incidents that have occurred have not resulted in the predicted level of fatal injuries.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


Abstract Previous understanding of the relationships among genera of bats in the family Molossidae was based largely on phenetic analyses of morphological data. Relationships among the genera of this family have not been tested with molecular data and, thus, the objective of this study was to construct a phylogeny of representative members of free-tailed bats using DNA sequence data from 1 mitochondrial locus (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide dehydrogenase subunit 1 [ND1]) and 3 nuclear loci (dentin matrix protein 1 exon 6 [DMP1], beta fibrinogen intron 7 [&bgr;FIB], and recombination activating gene 2 [RAG2]) for members of the subfamily Molossinae and outgroups from the families Vespertilionidae and Natalidae. Data for each gene were analyzed separately using maximum-likelihood and Bayesian methods and also analyzed in a single combined analysis of a total of 3,216 base pairs. Divergence times were estimated from the combined data set using BEAST analysis. Few intergeneric relationships were significantly supported by mitochondrial data; however, monophyly of most genera was supported. Nuclear results supported a Chaerephon–Mops clade; a New World clade consisting of Eumops, Molossus, Promops, Molossops (including Neoplatymops), Cynomops, and Nyctinomops; and a basal divergence for Cheiromeles. Divergence analysis suggested a Paleocene origin for the family and a split between molossids in the Old World and New World around 29 million years ago. Generally, relationships recovered in our analyses reflected biogeographic proximity of species and did not support the hypotheses of relationship proposed by morphological data.


An exciting insight of recent networking research has been that path-aware networking architectures are able to fundamentally solve many of the security issues of today's Internet, while increasing overall efficiency and giving control over path selection to end hosts. In this paper, we consider three important issues related to this new networking paradigm: First, network operators still need to be able to impose their own policies to rule out uneconomical paths and to enforce these decisions on the data plane. Second, end hosts should be able to verify that their forwarding decisions are actually followed by the network. Finally, both intermediate routers and recipients should be able to authenticate the source of packets. These properties have been considered by previous work, but there is no existing system that achieves both strong security guarantees and high efficiency. We propose EPIC, a family of data-plane protocols that provide increasingly strong security properties, addressing all three described requirements. The EPIC protocols have significantly lower communication overhead than comparable systems: for realistic path lengths, the overhead is 3–5 times smaller compared to the state-of-the-art systems OPT and ICING. Our prototype implementation is able to saturate a 40 Gbps link even on commodity hardware due to the use of only few highly efficient symmetric cryptographic operations in the forwarding process. Thus, by ensuring that every packet is checked at every hop, we make an important step towards an efficient and secure future Internet.


The aim of this thesis is to study the evolution, structure, administration, effects and future prospects of the petroleum industry in Malaysia in the context of the changing ideas and concepts that are influencing the petroleum industry at present. The discovery of petroleum deposits in the offshore areas of Malaysia in the early 1970's promises to act as a catalyst to future development. The production of crude petroleum has increased significantly and has emerged as one of the leading activities in Malaysia today. We are proposing to examine several areas in the development of the petroleum industry - petroleum reserves and production, refinery capacity, crude oil pricing, product supplies and prices, government legislation and petroleum revenue contributions to the economy. It has been predicted that petroleum reserves are limited at present and would be depleted sometime in the beginning of I990's. With the increasing demand for local crude in refineries, the problem might become worse. By the end of 1970's, it is predicted that there is a necessity to expand local refinery capacity to cope with the growth in demand for petroleum products. Ever since the 1973 'Oil Crisis' and subsequent developments, the structure of the product prices in this country has changed with the increase in crude prices. This has led to 'under-recoveries' to oil companies, pi'oduct shortages and hoarding. This has also led the Government to involve more and more intervention in the industry especially with the establishment of Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), the National Oil Company, We conclude the thesis by emphasising the necessity of instituting a prograimed development (conservation) of our petroleum resources and local participation in investments in the upstream phase of the industry. The conservation measure would ensure sufficient supplies of crude petroleum for our future needs, A reasonable time-production function would enable PETRONAS to involve in exploration, refining and distribution functions and ensure reasonable price and adequate supply of petroleum products in the future. This is also reasonable in view of the problems involved in the recycling of "surplus" oil money accrued to the Government as a result of a rapid depletion of our oil resources.


Background and Purpose— Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is positively associated with ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke risk factors. However, understanding the relation between HGF and stroke is in its infancy. Therefore, we sought to examine the association of circulating HGF with incident stroke using data from the MESA (Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis). We hypothesized that circulating HGF would be positively associated with an increased risk of stroke. Methods— Participants aged 45 to 84 years (n=6711) had HGF measured between 2000 and 2002 and were followed for incident stroke through 2013 (n=233). Cox proportional hazards regression was used to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for incident stroke. A secondary analysis stratified results by adjudicated stroke type (n=183 ischemic; n=39 hemorrhagic; n=11 other). Results— After adjustment for potential confounding variables, risk of stroke was 17% higher with each standard deviation increase in HGF (hazard ratio, 1.17; 95% confidence interval, 1.03–1.34). This association was mainly driven by ischemic stroke and did not change on exclusion of cardioembolic strokes, although the number of excluded cases was small. The few hemorrhagic and other types of stroke were not associated with HGF. Conclusions— Circulating HGF was positively associated with the incidence of stroke in a diverse, population-based cohort of men and women from the United States. Our findings support the hypothesis that circulating HGF is a marker of endothelial damage and suggest that HGF may have utility as a prognostic marker of stroke risk.


The regulation of a highly competitive and rapidly changing banking system presents daunting challenges. Competition typically increases efficiency, yet, is traditionally considered a threat to stability. Recent research, however, argues that competition and stability could (sometimes) also go hand in hand. This chapter discuses direct and indirect barriers to competition stemming from stability-oriented regulation. Despite the potential beneficial effects of competition, regulators should only cautiously liberalize their banking sectors. Liberalization, and the period of transformation that it implies, can induce opportunistic behavior suggesting the need for precaution. Moreover, competition might lower the effectiveness of existing regulatory tools. I also consider the efficiency and effectiveness of current regulatory practices in light of the recent consolidation in the banking industry.


The thesis discusses the development of my artistic research in relation to the critique of the ocularcentric Western philosophical tradition developed by twentieth century French thought, as referred to by Martin Jay and Amelia Jones. The work reviews the positions of both authors with respect to the relationship between Lacan's Mirror Stage and Gaze and Merleau-Ponty's Chiasm or Intertwining, within two areas of investigation: the self and strategies for its engagement with the external world. The research was conducted by adopting an evolutionary approach, which allowed me to test hypotheses through artistic experimentation. The structure of the thesis encompasses these two theoretical discussions in relation to my artistic practice, fully presented in the enclosed cd-rom.

The first discussion, in Part I and II analyses the Mirror Stage and the emerging of the self, its psychological implications and manifestations in the history of art, with particular emphasis on self-portraiture, the performative self, Body Art and my own production.

In Part III, the concept of Chiasm/Intertwining - developed from the notions of visuality and Gaze - is discussed in relation to inter-subjectivity in Body Art. The issue of the interaction between artist/audience and environment is also investigated in my most recent artworks, which question the primacy of vision over the other senses.

I believe my original contribution to be both in the content of the artworks and the methodology adopted, rather than at theoretical level. By adopting a set strategy in the creation of my work, I challenged the static artist-audience relationship implicit in the one-way perception of representations based on central-focus perspective. My hypothesis, which encompasses a two-way artist-audience interaction, was first tested in the body of work I produced in 1999. The theoretical argument of chiasmatic intertwining I subsequently developed, allowed me to place my practice within the antiocularcentric discourse and confirmed the direction undertaken in the practice to be satisfactory. The validity of my initial hypothesis was further confirmed by the participation of the audience in aspects of the art making process of the recent videolive installations.


This is the second of a two-volume work covering the electrical principles syllabuses of all of the major examining bodies including the City & Guilds of London Institute's electrical craft courses. It is also suitable for a wide range of other courses, including the first three years of the BTEC electrical series. Great care has been taken to ensure that the text fully covers the content of the syllabuses concerned, both as published and as interpreted by the examiners in the past. The book is well illustrated with almost 200 line diagrams and photographs. Theories are explained with the help of almost 100 worked examples, an important aid to understanding the practical applications, and there are more than 300 graded exercises for which numerical answers are provided as well as nearly 250 multiple choice questions with solutions. These features make the book ideal as a class text as well as being particularly suitable for private study. A complete list of symbols, abbreviations and units is included, along with eight tables of relevant data and introduction to SI units, this system being used throughout. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the formulas introduced in it. The book will also be useful to practicing technicians wishing to extend their grasp of electrical principles to meet the rapidly expanding requirements of the industry.


Oxygen insufficiency (hypoxia) is a common feature of human cancer and associated with tumor aggressiveness and poor clinical outcome. Furthermore, hypoxic tumors are more resistant to ionizing radiation and chemotherapy contributing to their unfavorable prognosis. The oxygen sensing pathway is controlled by the transcription factor: hypoxia inducible factor or HIF. HIFs control the expression of genetic cascades involved in the adaptation to the hypoxic microenvironment resulting in increased glucose transport and metabolism, and induced vascularization and motility to secure tumor cell survival under low oxygen. Resolving the molecular networks engaged by HIF proteins could offer new opportunities for targeted treatment of hypoxic tumors. One of these, COMMD1 was identified by us as a HIF interacting protein whose loss of function in mice is critical for the normal HIF responses. In vitro studies demonstrated that reduced COMMD1 expression caused increased HIF-1alpha protein stability and HIF-1 activity. COMMD1 interacts directly with HIF-1alpha and promotes ubiquitin-independent degradation by competition with the chaperone HSP90. Since silencing of COMMD1 dramatically increases HIF-1 activity together even under normal oxygen tension makes COMMD1 a candidate tumor suppressor that when mutated could lead to uncontrolled HIF activity. This hypothesis is currently being investigated. The use of engineered therapeutic antibodies as drugs is currently increasing. Especially single-domain antibodies are promising. The family of Camelidae encode, in addition to their normal IgG repertoire, single domains variable heavy chain antibodies (VHH). Due to their molecular nature these antibodies can be cloned and used for phage display. We selected and engineered two anti-HIF-1 VHH into hetero-bivalent antibodies that could be used in a number of immunological applications. Furthermore, when conditional expression of these VHH in mammalian cells we could inhibit HIF-1 activity. In addition, employing selections of VHH on whole hypoxic cells we identified alpha3beta1 (VLA-3) integrin by use of reverse proteomics as upregulated under hypoxia. It would be worthwhile to explore if this VHH may be employed for imaging selectively hypoxic tumors. Clostridium is an obligate anaerobe bacterium that colonizes and propagates in hypoxic regions of solid cancers and causes partial destruction of the cancer by bacteriolysis. We proposed the use of Clostridium strains as a vehicle for targeted antibody therapy specific for hypoxic tumors. For the first time we demonstrate that VHH encoding plasmids can be transduced and expressed in these Clostridium. This is the first step towards Clostridium directed antibody therapy or CDAT that hold promise as a carrier of anti-cancer therapeutics targeting the most resistant regions in human solid cancer.


Organizational silence is defined as the lack of effective interactions among staff and it stands opposite to the concept of organizational voice. In the present research, the purpose is to measure the silence behavior among the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) staff before and after the implementation of a comprehensive suggestion system. A suggestion system is an internal structure easily accessed by all the staff to state their suggestions in a pre-structured format. The roots of silence behavior are studied based on a deep literature review to find out possible solutions to improve organizational voice. To conduct the research, a self-structured questionnaire has been developed and distributed among all the staff. A quasi-experimental methodology has been adopted to compare pretest and post-test results of silence status before and after implementing the suggestion system. The results show that the silence behavior has been meaningfully reduced. This is based on a simple t-test performed by SPSS software, where there is a meaningful difference between the silence status of pre-test and post-test. In other words, a suggestion system could be a communication opportunity to encourage staff to provide suggestions and to cooperate for promoting the organization, which will finally reduce the organization silence. A major gap within the studies of Iranian scholars about organizational silence is the failure to introduce effective solutions to reduce it. However, this research is innovative in the sense that it fills the mentioned gap. This research shows that large scale organizations like RIPI need to consider methods like suggestion systems to break bureaucratic obstacles so that their staff can easily find open routes to share their ideas and suggestions in a prestructured format. This cooperating will lead to mutual benefits for both parts, since suggestions could be used to enhance organizational structure and performance and the staff could also witness their impact on organizational improvements.


Context. Very low-mass (VLM) stars and brown dwarfs (BDs) present a different rotational behaviour from their solar mass counter-parts. Aims. We investigate the rotational evolution of young VLM stars and BDs using Monte Carlo simulations under the hypothesis of disk locking and stellar angular momentum conservation. Methods. We built a set of objects with masses ranging from 0.01 Mo to 0.4 Mo and considered models with single- and double- peaked initial period distributions with and without disk locking. An object is considered to be diskless when its mass accretion rate is below a given threshold. Results. Models with initial single-peaked period distributions reproduce the observations well given that BDs rotate faster than VLM stars. We observe a correlation between rotational period and mass when we relax the disk locking hypothesis, but with a shallower slope compared to some observational results. The angular momentum evolution of diskless stars is flatter than it is for stars with a disk which occurs because the moment of inertia of objects less massive than 0.2 Mo remains pratically constant for a time scale that increases with decreasing stellar mass. Conclusions. Comparing our results with the available observational data we see that disk locking is not as important in the low-mass regime and that the rotational behaviour of VLM stars and BDs is different from what is seen in their solar mass counterparts.


This paper examines the potential consequences of imposing a 'stability pact' on the fiscal convergence criteria for monetary union. Various versions of the stability pact are possible. We examine the consequences of reducing the target deficit ratio to 1% and of refundable fines for those who exceed the 3% limit, specified in the Maastricht Treaty. We also consider the possibility of targeting structural, rather than actual, deficits. We find tax increases are necessary, and would have to be permanent, if the proposed deficit reductions are to be sustained below the 3% limit. We also find that changes in the policy mix are necessary – a loosening in the real value of money relative to fiscal policy (but not necessarily in absolute terms) – to avoid liquidity shortages or a debt explosion. Finally, and by far the most important result, is a sharp rise in real interest rates. In the longer term, this destroys investment, employment and output capacity. That is a more serious cost than short-term losses in output itself.


The country studies in this volume analyze the link between globalization and working conditions in Cambodia, El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, and Madagascar. These countries vary significantly in population, economic circumstances, region, history, and institutions. All have experienced liberalization and globalization in the last 20 years. The heterogeneity of these countries provides the basis for a useful comparison of the effects of globalization on working conditions. As suggested in the framework, each country study has three main components: a description of the country's experience with globalization, a qualitative part that analyzes country-specific aspects of working conditions, and an analysis of changes in interindustry wage differentials (IIWDs) that can be compared across countries. In general, globalization has been characterized by export-driven foreign direct investment (FDI) concentrated in relatively few sectors. Export-driven FDI in the apparel sector plays a prominent role in each country, although to varying degrees. In Cambodia, apparel made up 82 percent of all merchandise exports in 2003. Nearly two-thirds of that total was destined for the U.S. market. Virtually all factories in the Cambodian garment sector are foreign owned. Honduras rose from being the 34th largest supplier of apparel to the United states (U.S.) market in 1990 to fourth place in 2003. In 2003, two-thirds of all Honduran exports to the U.S. were garments and more than 82 percent of all Honduran workers worked in foreign-owned factories. A similar pattern emerges for El Salvador. For Madagascar, apparel exports from the Zone Franche were the primary force behind the country's remarkable export growth and its transition from exporting primary products to exporting manufactured products between 1990 and 2005. By 2001, Madagascar had become the second most important clothing exporter in Sub-Saharan Africa as measured by total export value.


We combine information about the evolutionary history and distributional patterns of the genus Saintpaulia H. Wendl. (Gesneriaceae; 'African violets') to elucidate the factors and processes behind the accumulation of species in tropical montane areas of high biodiversity concentration. We find that high levels of biodiversity in the Eastern Arc Mountains are the result of pre-Quaternary speciation processes and environmental stability. Our results support the hypothesis that climatically stable mountaintops may have acted as climatic refugia for lowland lineages during the Pleistocene by preventing extinctions. In addition, we found evidence for the existence of lowland micro-refugia during the Pleistocene, which may explain the high species diversity of East African coastal forests. We discuss the conservation implications of the results in the context of future climate change.


The form of the primordial power spectrum (PPS) of cosmological scalar (matter density) perturbations is not yet constrained satisfactorily in spite of the tremendous amount of information from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. While a smooth power-law-like form of the PPS is consistent with the CMB data, some PPS with small non-smooth features at large scales can also fit the CMB temperature and polarization data with similar statistical evidence. Future CMB surveys cannot help distinguish all such models due to the cosmic variance at large angular scales. In this paper, we study how well we can differentiate between such featured forms of the PPS not otherwise distinguishable using CMB data. We ran 15 $N$-body DESI-like simulations of these models to explore this approach. Showing that statistics such as the halo mass function and the two-point correlation function are not able to distinguish these models in a DESI-like survey, we advocate to avoid reducing the dimensionality of the problem from 3 to 2 by demonstrating that the use of a simple three-dimensional count-in-cell density field can be much more effective for the purpose of model distinction.


There is a pressing need to integrate biophysical and human dimensions science to better inform holistic ecosystem management supporting the transition from single species or single-sector management to multi-sector ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management should focus upon ecosystem services, since they reflect societal goals, values, desires, and benefits. The inclusion of ecosystem services into holistic management strategies improves management by better capturing the diversity of positive and negative human-natural interactions and making explicit the benefits to society. To facilitate this inclusion, we propose a conceptual model that merges the broadly applied Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response (DPSIR) conceptual model with ecosystem services yielding a Driver, Pressure, State, Ecosystem service, and Response (EBM-DPSER) conceptual model. The impact module in traditional DPSIR models focuses attention upon negative anthropomorphic impacts on the ecosystem; by replacing impacts with ecosystem services the EBM-DPSER model incorporates not only negative, but also positive changes in the ecosystem. Responses occur as a result of changes in ecosystem services and include inter alia management actions directed at proactively altering human population or individual behavior and infrastructure to meet societal goals. The EBM-DPSER conceptual model was applied to the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas marine ecosystem as a case study to illustrate how it can inform management decisions. This case study captures our system-level understanding and results in a more holistic representation of ecosystem and human society interactions, thus improving our ability to identify trade-offs. The EBM-DPSER model should be a useful operational tool for implementing EBM, in that it fully integrates our knowledge of all ecosystem components while focusing management attention upon those aspects of the ecosystem most important to human society and does so within a framework already familiar to resource managers.


This article focuses on the EU's and the US's relationship with Brazil, India and China (BIC) in the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). The comparison of EU and US approaches yields the interplay between hierarchical (coercive) and horizontal (network-based) strategies used by both sides to advance a maximalist IP agenda vis-à-vis the BIC. We furthermore find the EU taking inspiration (i.e. 'learning') from the US in the process of strengthening its external IP policy. Switching the angle to the 'demand-side' of emerging countries, China comes out as the most accommodative among the BIC in terms of aligning its IP (especially patent) legislation and enforcement practices with standards promoted by the EU and the US. India and Brazil, on the other hand, have shown more signs of contestation, not only in domestic implementation but also in terms of opposing and seeking alternatives to EU- and US-induced global IP norms. Variation between the BIC is explained, inter alia, by domestic concerns related to innovation in China, the role of the (generics) pharmaceutical industry in India, and the persistence of developmentalist ideas in parts of the Brazilian public administration.


Feature clustering is a powerful method to reduce the dimensionality of feature vectors for text classification. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy similarity-based self-constructing algorithm for feature clustering. The words in the feature vector of a document set are grouped into clusters, based on similarity test. Words that are similar to each other are grouped into the same cluster. Each cluster is characterized by a membership function with statistical mean and deviation. When all the words have been fed in, a desired number of clusters are formed automatically. We then have one extracted feature for each cluster. The extracted feature, corresponding to a cluster, is a weighted combination of the words contained in the cluster. By this algorithm, the derived membership functions match closely with and describe properly the real distribution of the training data. Besides, the user need not specify the number of extracted features in advance, and trial-and-error for determining the appropriate number of extracted features can then be avoided. Experimental results show that our method can run faster and obtain better extracted features than other methods.


Numerous fossil vertebrate trackways in the Coconino Sandstone of northern Arizona exhibit several features that imply that these trackways were not made in subaerial conditions. Some trackways begin or end abruptly on undisturbed bedding planes, and in other trackways the individual prints are oriented in a different direction from that of the trackway. These features indicate buoyancy of the animals in water. The animals were swimming in the water part of the time and at other times walking on the substrate, and they were sometimes orienting upslope on the surface of the underwater dunes, while being drifted sideways by lateral currents. Observations on salamander locomotion in a sedimentation tank with flowing water support this model.


Small streams are polluted with nutrients when crude or partially treated wastewater flows from settlements. The aim of the study was to determine the efficiency of small streams to self-purify themselves of nutrients during the season of low-flow regime. The study was carried out in five regulated streams with catchments of up to 30 km 2 in the Central Lithuanian lowland. The retention of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) compounds was studied up to 5.2 km downstream from the settlements. Owing to the pollution load from settlements, the concentrations of total N increased from 2.0–3.0 above the settlements to 6.75 ± 2.07 mg L −1 below; the concentrations of total P increased from 0.03–0.07 to 0.56 ± 0.30 mg L −1 , with the stream9s ecological state deteriorating to 'poor' and 'bad'. For the calculation of total N retention, with respect to the pollution load and the distance from the settlement, an empirical equation was derived. Calculations show that with a pollution load of 2.0 g N m −3 at 5.0 km distance, around 90% of total N can be retained. However, when the load is threefold greater, at the same distance only 65% of total N is retained. As a result of self-purification processes only about 50% of total P may be retained.


Abstract. This study investigated workability, water absorption, and drying shrinkage performances of the synergy of iron filing (IF) with silica fume (SF) in the ordinary Portland (OPC) cement paste. IF varied from 0 to 15wt. % while SF was kept constant at 10wt % of the binder. The finding revealed that at low water/binder (w/b) ratio of 0.25, the synergistic effects of the combination of IF and SF reduced the workability and shrinkage of the paste exponentially but increased water absorption. Besides, an increase in absorption was due to nonabsorbent nature of IF and proliferation of interfacial transition zones (ITZ) within the matrix while addition of SF caused the increase in pore tortuosity through secondary pozzolanic reaction accompanied by its microfilling effects. Moreover, bond characterization showed that drying shrinkage reduction was due to IF retention of evaporable water within the matrix, and the removal of hydroxyl precipitated together with an improved polymerized units of silicate. Scanning electron micrograph indicated the improvement in the microstructural density due to the formation of CASH or CSH and restriction of internal strain deformation due to the formation of Fe-infused product (CAFSH). The least shrinkage value was observed at the IF substitution level of 15% with the SF of 10%. Therefore, synergistic effects of SF and IF could enhance production of more durable concrete more especially in the hot weather climate.


The Mars Exploration Rovers Mars '03 mission is one of NASA's most ambitious science missions to date. The rovers will be launched in the summer of 2003 with each rover carrying instruments to conduct remote and in-situ observation to elucidate the planet's past climate, water activity, and habitability. Science is the primary driver of MER and, as a consequence, making best use of the scientific instruments, within the available resources, is a crucial aspect of the mission. To address this critically, the MER project has selected MAPGEN (Mixed-Initiative Activity Plan GENerator) as an activity planning tool. MAPGEN combines two exiting systems, each with a strong heritage: APGEN the Activity Planning tool from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Europs Planning/Scheduling system from NASA Ames Research Center. This paper discusses the issues arising from combining these tools in the context of this mission.


Tidal lagoons are presented as an environmentally friendly alternative to tidal barrages. This does not mean that their environmental impacts can be overlooked. A UK government review recommended a pilot scheme lagoon go ahead, with careful environmental monitoring. Despite recent government rejection of a lagoon scheme, it is still more important than ever to consider environmental solution options for any future lagoon developments. There are no operating lagoons in the world and so their environmental impacts are not fully understood. However, there is a vast quantity of literature available from other industries addressing similar impacts in the coastal, ocean and river environments. This systematic review follows the PRISMA and CEE guidance. Using this methodology the available literature covering relevant solution options from other industries that could be applied to future lagoon developments was quanti fi ed. This presents an investigation into solution options only, giving a quantitative analysis of what resources are available, how this compares to industry understanding, where the expertise lies globally, what impacts are being addressed and how applicable the solutions are for lagoon application. This paper analyses the extent and relevance of this available research on solutions as a resource for the nascent lagoon industry. Over half of the solutions found in this review require only small shifts in development for them to be realistic solution options for the lagoon industry in the future. This review opens the door on a vast and valuable resource and justi fi es the need for further investigation into solutions for the lagoon industry.


This paper presents three kinds of new C2 Akima curves: (1) which preserves the global shape of the C1 Akima curve, (2) which preserves directions of Akima's tangents and (3) which is closest to the C1 Akima curve from the point of the method of least squares. These curves are useful in the field of smooth curve fitting, computer graphics and computer aided geometric design, because these generate less oscillating global shape and can have straight line sections incorporated in themselves. These are also locally controllable and generated span - by - span. The new curves are based on the quartic S- splines with all the knots of multiplicity 2, which are obtained by degree - elevation in each span of the cubic interpolating B- splines. The relevant additional control points are determined on the basis of the local estimation scheme of tangents by Akima. For practical use, properties of these curves are analyzed in detail theoretically and experimentally.


Many pathogens evade the host immune response or adapt to their environment by expressing surface proteins that undergo rapid switching. In the case of Plasmodium falciparum, products of a multigene family known as var are expressed on the surface of infected red cells, where they undergo clonal antigenic variation and contribute to malaria pathogenesis by mediating adhesion to a variety of host endothelial receptors and to uninfected red blood cells by forming rosettes. Herein we show that a second gene family, rif, which is associated with var at subtelomeric sites in the genome, encodes clonally variant proteins (rifins) that are expressed on the infected red cell surface. Their high copy number, sequence variability, and red cell surface location indicate an important role for rifins in malaria host-parasite interaction.


Aim of this work is to present a model of an intelligent short term demand side management system (DSM) based on a distributed measurement and management data system. The system is designed to improve the profitability of modern self-production energy plants reducing the power consumption and maintaining the same comfort level for users. The DSM problem is modeled as an auction based multi-agent system. The proposed system is composed of a sensor network and a central processing unit. Each network node is handled by an agent and it is able to regulate the power consumption of a single environment (in this work a room of a public building). Each agent reacts to a new critical condition entering in competition with the others to gain the access at a shared limited resource. The competition is regulated by an auction based system. As the first experimental results are showing, the proposed system can be the consumer's key to maximize the profitability of the self-production energy plants.


Clouds do not work in isolation but interact with other clouds and with a variety of systems either developed by the same provider or by external entities with the purpose to interact with them; forming then an ecosystem. A software ecosystem is a collection of software systems that have been developed to coexist and evolve together. The stakeholders of such a system need a variety of models to give them a perspective of the possibilities of the system, to evaluate specific quality attributes, and to extend the system. A powerful representation when building or using software ecosystems is the use of architectural models, which describe the structural aspects of such a system. These models have value for security and compliance, are useful to build new systems, can be used to define service contracts, find where quality factors can be monitored, and to plan further expansion. We have described a cloud ecosystem in the form of a pattern diagram where its components are patterns and reference architectures. A pattern is an encapsulated solution to a recurrent problem. We have recently expanded these models to cover fog systems and containers. Fog Computing is a highly-virtualized platform that provides compute, storage, and networking services between end devices and Cloud Computing Data Centers; a Software Container provides an execution environment for applications sharing a host operating system, binaries, and libraries with other containers. We intend to use this architecture to answer a variety of questions about the security of this system as well as a reference to design interacting combinations of heterogeneous components. We defined a metamodel to relate security concepts which is being expanded.


Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) in the Appalachian mountain range is threatened by the introduced hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae). Potential impacts on riparian systems are great because of eastern hemlock's role as a foundation species that influences site soil, vegetation, and stream characteristics. We installed permanent research sites at 49 locations in riparian areas, from Maine to Alabama, to survey eastern hemlock health, measure stand dynamics, and predict near-term forest composition without eastern hemlock. This report summarizes the initial stand measurements from summer of 2008. We found hemlock woolly adelgid present at 25 of 49 stands from Massachusetts to Georgia, and all of these stands had some degree of hemlock decline. New England states, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Alabama had good hemlock health and no sign of hemlock woolly adelgid. Eighteen of the 49 sites had no nonhemlock conifer species in the overstory, and 30 of 49 sites had less than 5 m 2 ha 1 of nonhemlock conifers. Without eastern hemlock, 25 of the stands would have more than 90% hardwood in the overstory, many of which are in the mid-Atlantic and southern states at sites dominated by shrubs in the understory such as Rhododendron maximum. Competition from shrubs may hinder stand regeneration after disturbance by hemlock woolly adelgid. On the basis of the abundance of hardwood species and lack of conifer species present in the overstory at many infested hemlock-dominated stands, these sites may conver tt o hardwood-dominated stands, which will affect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem dynamics.


Developments of information technologies that bring significant advantages to social life and business process bring with it physical and mental problems. Addiction, which is considered as a disease nowadays, is a mental disorder and can be seen in people as a result of overuse of technological devices. Especially mobile phones that people can carry with them at any time increase the risk of addiction. Mobile addiction, which negatively impacts the physical health, work concentration, and productivity of employees in companies, causes the job loss. Determining mobile addiction degree of employees which is neglected in the literature is an important issue for firms. In this study, mobile addiction levels of workers in Burdur, Isparta and Antalya provinces in TR61 region were analyzed by principal components and regression methods. Data were collected by the survey method by using Mobile Addiction Scale. The study found that the mobile addiction ratio among employees is 6% and the mobile addiction tendency is 31.75%. The study shows that mobile addiction is higher in women and in public sector and mobile addiction is not related to gender, age and income level differences.


This paper proposes a new parallel co-channel interference cancellation technique which utilizes orthogonal convolutional codes. Co-channel interference (CCI) limits the performance of a spread spectrum multiple access communication link. Several CCI cancellation techniques have been proposed to remove this interference. Of particular interest are techniques which do not require the receiver to have knowledge of the cross-correlation between user sequences. These techniques reconstruct the CCI based on the initial decisions regarding the signals from the other users. However, these techniques leave residual interference after cancellation caused by errors in these initial decisions. To improve the initial decisions and reduce the residual interference, our proposed scheme utilizes the error correcting capability of orthogonal convolutional codes. This paper evaluates the performance of this scheme. We show that, given a processing gain of 128 for up to about 40 users, the performance of the proposed CCI canceller approaches the performance of a system without multi-user interference. We also show that the proposed CCI canceller offers an improvement in capacity by a factor of 1.5/spl sim/3 over that of a conventional canceller.


A central focus of high-quality family-planning care is the interaction between clients and the providers who serve them. In the ideal client-provider interaction, the provider treats all clients respectfully, responds to their reproductive needs and intentions, helps in the selection of the most appropriate family planning method, and offers sufficient information to use the method safely and effectively. To improve the quality of the client-provider interaction, Population Council staff developed a "Balanced Counseling Strategy," a type of algorithm or decision tree, to be used in combination with several job aids, or visual memory aids. The Balanced Counseling Strategy structures the client-provider interaction to focus on the client's needs and support the client's choice of an appropriate method, and leads to improvements in the client-provider interaction when providers use the strategy along with job aids. This brief describes the Balanced Counseling Strategy as an ongoing approach to improving quality of care. It outlines the origin and rationale for developing the strategy and details its subsequent adaptation for use in other contexts.


This paper explores the extent to which the peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing of music is a form of communication protected from the restrictions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (U.K.) (CDPA) by the guarantee of free expression enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and incorporated into domestic law through the Human Rights Act 1998 (U.K.) (HRA). The paper first examines the protection offered to freedom of expression through the existing copyright scheme. It is asserted that due to a lack of context-sensitivity, mechanisms such as the idea-expression dichotomy must not be relied upon to deny the existence of prima facie breaches of Article 10(1) of the ECHR. Rather, such breaches must be acknowledged and justified (if possible) as being "necessary in a democratic society" under Article 10(2) of the ECHR. Next, the extent to which p2p music file-sharing represents an infringement under the terms of the CDPA (exclusive of any effect of the ECHR) is examined. It is concluded that such sharing does amount to an infringement under the Act and is not subject to any of the enumerated defences. The final part of the paper explores the extent to which the statutory restriction on file-sharing of music may be permitted under Article 10 of the ECHR. It is suggested that, for a number of reasons, the CDPA's restriction on free expression may not be "necessary in a democratic society" under Article 10(2) of the ECHR. As a result, should this statutory restriction be impugned in a U.K. courtroom in the context of p2p music file-sharing, such a court may be under an obligation to exculpate infringing parties under the "public interest" defence or to make a declaration of incompatibility under the HRA.


This paper investigates the relationship between state intervention and trade policy in selected OECD countries over recent decades. It starts from the general hypothesis that big governments promote trade liberalization, whereas small ones limit it. It does so on the basis of the assumption that the pre-existing internal compensation can be employed as a functional equivalent of trade restrictions in protecting the social segments, such as low-skilled workers, most damaged by trade exposure. Moreover, since the political processes underlying the nexus between interventionism and trade restrictions need a quite long period of time to modify and to exert their effects on public policy, such a nexus is examined from a long-term perspective. In this regard, two issues are addressed. The first concerns the hypothesis and the consequent testing, via a battery of error-correction models, of the existence of a long-term equilibrium relationship. Specifically, if government intervention is employed before and as a substitute for trade policy, one should expect that they flow together over time to maintain a certain protective balance. Consequently, any deviation of internal protection would be corrected over time as the protectionism returns to its long-run equilibrium relationship with government intervention. The second issue regards an increasing weakening of the negative nexus between interventionism and trade policy associated with the structural decrease in low-skilled workers. Error correction models for separate time periods and yearly repeated cross-section regressions have made it possible to evidence this progressive weakening.


The official U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a Laspeyres index. An alternative form of the index known as the geometric mean (GeoMeans) index is scheduled to be published in 1997. In this paper, rental housing data have been studied with regard to rent levels, to the average weights attributed to these levels and to the average rate of rental price change at these levels. These weights are quantity-based. A twopartition model is constructed, with "low" rents compared with "higher" rents. Simulations are run comparing Laspeyres and GeoMeans index results. The differences between the two indexes are plotted against the rate of price change in the "low" rent sector. In the simulations, all the other factors are treated as fixed. A smooth (quadratic) curve results, and the GeoMeans indexes are shown to score consistently higher than the Laspeyres indexes.


1. Introduction It is a myth that texts, like Finns are silent -- but like Finns they don't tell their secrets to everyone. Among the tasks of the forensic linguist are: to discover what texts are actually saying, to teach texts to express themselves better, to interpret their meaning or highlight their significance for Courts of Law and to identify the voices of their author(s). It is now some thirty years since Jan Svartvik published The Evans Statements: A case for forensic linguistics (Svartvik 1968). In his short monograph Svartvik demonstrated that the incriminating parts of a set of four linked statements, purportedly dictated by Timothy Evans to police officers, had a grammatical style measurably different from that of the uncontested parts of the statements. This marked the birth of a new discipline; initially, growth was slow. In unexpected places there appeared isolated articles in which the author, often a distinguished linguist, analysed a disputed confession or commented on the likely authenticity of purported verbatim records of interaction or showed why an accused could not be the person whose voice was recorded on an incriminating tape-recording or identified and evaluated inconsistencies in the language which had been attributed to non-native speakers (Levi 1994a). In these early days there was, however, no attempt to establish a discipline nor even a methodology -- the work was usually undertaken as an intellectual challenge and almost always required the creation, rather than simply the application, of a method of analysis. In the past ten years, by contrast, there has been a rapid growth in the frequency with which Courts in a number of countries have called on the expertise of linguists; in consequence, methodology is developing rapidly and a growing number of linguists are acting as expert: witnesses, some even on a full time basis (see Levi 1994b; Eades 1994). Forensic linguistics has come of age and, like other mature areas of applied linguistics, is now beginning to raise new and exciting research questions for descriptive linguistics. 2. What do forensic linguists do? Forensic linguists in the main set out to provide answers to three questions: what does a given text "say", what does it mean and who is its author? In answering these questions they draw on knowledge and techniques derived from one or more of the sub-areas of descriptive linguistics: phonetics and phonology; lexis, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; discourse and text analysis; computational and corpus linguistics. 2.1. What does a text say? Tape-recordings of interviews, telephone calls and conversations, often of less than satisfactory quality, now constitue important evidence in a large number of criminal trials. The first thing the Court needs to know in such cases is what was actually said -- what was the locution -- before there can be any discussion of the illocutionary value. The forensic phonetician can play a crucial role by enhancing the tape quality and then decoding crucial indistinct words and phrases. For instance, as everyone knows, there can be surprisingly little difference auditorily, in fast conversational speech, between opposite polarity pairs like can and can't even when the sound quality is good -- when a recording is of poor quality the co-operative lay listener or transcriber, trying to make sense of jumbled sounds, may "hear" one thing, where the expert, with a trained ear and the help of sophisticated equipment, will perceive something entirely different. Just one example will suffice: a suspect accused of murder with a strong West Indian accent and some dialect features, was transcribed as saying, in an interview with police officers, that "he got on a train" and then "shot a man to kill"; the forensic phonetician was able to demonstrate that the accused actually said the innocuous and contextually much more plausible "showed a man ticket"! …


The mode competition in a dual-wavelength quarter-wave coupled-cavity semiconductor laser is analyzed using Langevin noise-driven rate equations. The laser can achieve simultaneous emission of two optical modes as a doublet with the same threshold, while the frequency difference of the two lasing wavelengths can be tuned by the injection currents. The analytical expressions for the spectral positions of the doublet and the threshold gain are derived, and a numerical model based on Langevin noise-driven rate equations is established for the mode competition process with enhanced physical insight.