Intra-specific variation provides the basis on which evolutionary processes such as genetic drift, natural and sexual selection can act, creating distinct patterns of divergence within and among populations. Intra-specific variation and population divergence form the very beginning of the speciation process, and so determining the relative influence of different evolutionary processes in influencing current patterns of divergence is crucial in clarifying the mechanisms of the speciation process. Although most research focuses on patterns of genetic and morphological divergence, populations may also show divergence in cultural (learnt) behaviours such as song. Divergence in song is particularly intriguing, because it is crucially important in species and mate recognition as well as in sexual selection. In true songbirds (Oscines), songs are acquired from conspecifics though learning and imitation, defining bird song as a cultural trait that is non-genetically transmitted. Because song is learned culturally, inaccurate copying of the tutor song is possible and some level of spatial variation in song is inevitable. This, in turn, can lead to cultural evolution. Cultural and genetic evolution have many parallels and similarities, including the processes of mutation, drift, natural and sexual selection and cultural flow. Geographic variation in song could potentially influence population genetic divergence leading to speciation, by favouring within-dialect mating and natal philopatry, and discouraging between-dialect dispersal. Nevertheless, the notion that divergence in a cultural trait may promote speciation is still highly controversial.

Thus, the goals of this project were to determine the relative importance of different evolutionary forces in promoting geographic variation in song of the Chowchilla, Orthonyx spaldingii (Corvoidea), and to clarify the function and possible evolutionary consequences of such variation. In order to distinguish between the influence of different evolutionary forces, an integrative approach was used that combined patterns of genetic, and morphological variation with patterns of song variation. Therefore, the aims of my PhD were to (1) quantify the extent and pattern of large-scale geographic variation in song, morphology and neutral molecular genetic markers across the Chowchilla's entire range; (2) determine the evolutionary, cultural and social processes influencing both large and smallscale variation in song in order to clarify the functional significance of song variation; and (3) determine whether birds discriminate between local, distant and foreign song dialects to further establish the possible functions as well as evolutionary consequences (i.e. reduced gene flow or reproductive isolation) of geographic variation in song.

The Chowchilla is a rainforest specialist bird endemic to the montane tropical rainforests (the "Wet Tropics") of north-eastern Australia. The Chowchilla is remarkable for its striking, yet previously unstudied large-scale geographic variation in song, which is sung by both males and females alike in territorial encounters. The Wet Tropics rainforests of Northern Australia experienced range contractions and expansions during the Pleistocene climatic fluctuations. As a consequence, many wet tropics endemic taxa are genetically divergent across an old climatic barrier, the Black Mountain Corridor (BMC), which has intermittently separated the northern and southern Wet Tropics. Limited evidence of morphological and molecular genetic divergence across the BMC also exists for the Chowchilla. Evidence of diversification in several character traits (molecular genetic, morphology and song) combined with the well established pattern of habitat expansion and contraction in the wet tropics, means that the Chowchilla provides an ideal and unique model system for comparing the evolutionary forces driving song variation with those thought to influence genetic and morphological divergence.

I recorded Chowchilla songs from 15 locations across the species' range, covering five historically isolated populations (Pleistocene refugia) and two areas of post-Pleistocene recolonisation. I measured six spectral characteristics of 773 songs and used a multivariate approach to test for large-scale song divergence within and among refugia, as well as across the BMC. Songs were also divided into their syllables, and a syllable catalogue was created for the whole population. Pair-wise comparisons of syllable sharing were then used to analyse song similarity at smaller spatial scales. I also collected blood samples and morphological measurements from 54 Chowchillas captured across their range. Morphological measurements were analysed using a Principal Components Analysis to determine the extent of morphological divergence among populations from different refugia, across the BMC, as well as between the sexes. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region sequences from captured birds and museum specimens were analysed to determine the population genetic structure. Finally, I conducted playback experiments to determine whether Chowchillas differentiate between song variants from increasingly distant and isolated populations.

I found that historically isolated populations could be clearly distinguished by their spectrotemporal song characteristics, particularly bandwidth and peak frequency. I also found striking song divergence across the BMC. Northern refugia showed significantly narrower bandwidths and higher peak frequencies than southern refugia. Song characteristics were not influenced by geographic distance, habitat type or body size. Thus, given the known history of population isolation, song characteristics were most likely influenced by vicariant isolation in refugia followed by cultural drift. Chowchillas also showed exceptional small-scale variation in song syllable characteristics. Within historic refugia, song similarity was significantly correlated with distance. It was highest amongst neighbours and decreased sharply at one kilometre. These results are consistent with the idea of post-dispersal song learning, and reveal a strongly territorial function of song dialects.

Patterns of molecular genetic and morphological differentiation mirrored the pattern of large-scale song divergence across the Chowchilla's range. This suggests that historical isolation during Pleistocene glaciation divided the Chowchilla into two distinct molecular lineages (northern and southern) that also have clearly divergent morphology and song characteristics. These findings demonstrate that vicariant isolation and genetic drift are sufficient to produce molecular genetic and phenotypic divergence in a rainforest specialist taxa. I also found significant and consistent sexual dimorphism in size and plumage colour in both northern and southern lineages, despite major size differences between lineages. This suggests that sexual selection as well as genetic drift have been important in shaping current patterns of morphological variation in both lineages. I also found no equivalent variation in bill morphology across the species entire range, suggesting that natural, stabilising selection associated with a specialized feeding niche may maintain bill characteristics in this species, independent of other morphological change.

Finally, playback experiments showed that Chowchillas recognised and approached their species specific song in most playback trials irrespective of its origin. However, Chowchillas discriminated between local and foreign songs. Within lineages, groups sang significantly sooner and more often when hearing a local dialect vs. more distant song dialects. These results also support the territorial function of small-scale song variation. However, song of the alternative lineage elicited an unexpectedly high number of territorial responses. As it is highly likely that this territorial song also serves as a mate choice and advertisement function, recognition of foreign Chowchilla song means that song is unlikely to serve as a pre-mating barrier to gene flow in this species.

In conclusion, these results clearly show that all three evolutionary processes – genetic drift, natural and sexual selection – have concurrently influenced Chowchilla populations, creating contemporary patterns of divergence and variation in song, molecular genetic and morphological character traits,particularly across an old climatic barrier pre-dating the Pleistocene. Nevertheless, despite clear divergence in these traits, northern and southern populations have not diverged sufficiently to create a behavioural, pre-mating barrier to gene flow.


As the role of 401(k) and similar defined-contribution plans continues to expand in our retirement system, plan participants are paying more of the cost of financing their retirement income. This study analyzes the trading costs and fees of the 100 largest domestic equity mutual funds held in defined-contribution pension plans for the years 2004 through 2008. The pricing of the actively managed funds in this sample cost the average plan 0.70 of a percentage point or more in annual returns. By shifting investment options from managed mutual funds to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or commingled trusts, 401(k) plans can align the fees they pay more closely with the expense of the services they use. This realignment can allow an average plan to reduce its administration and management fees between 0.20 and 0.40 percent of assets. In addition, the shift to ETFs and commingled trusts that hold ETFs can reduce average trading costs 0.50 percent of assets or more for participants holding managed equity mutual funds. The fees and trading costs of the domestic equity funds in this sample are not correlated with the performance of the funds. The funds with the greatest expenses tended to divide evenly between those funds that outperformed and those that underperformed the market by the largest margins.


The ENTICE experiment is one of two instruments
that comprise the "Orbiting Astrophysical Spectrometer in Space (OASIS)", which is presently undergoing a NASA "Astrophysics Strategic Mission Concept Study". ENTICE is designed to make high precision measurements of the abundances of individual elements from neon through the actinides and, in addition, will search for possible superheavy nuclei in the galactic cosmic rays. The ENTICE instrument utilizes silicon detectors, aerogel and acrylic
Chercnkov counters, and a scintillating optical fiber
hodoscope to measure the charge and energy of these ultra-heavy nuclei for energies greater than 0.5
GeV/nucleon. It is a large instrnment consisting of
four modules with a total effective geometrical factor
of ~20 m^2sr. Measurements made in space for a period of three years with ENTICE will enable us to determine if cosmic rays include a component of recently synthesized transuranic elements _(94)Pu and _(96)Cm, to measure the age of that component, and to test the model of the OB association origin of galactic cosmic rays. Additionally, these observations will enable us to study how diffusive shock acceleration of cosmic rays operates differently on interstellar grains and gas.


Determining the location of individuals within indoor locations can be useful in various scenarios including security, gaming and ambient assisted living for the elderly. Healthcare services globally are seeking to allow people to stay in their familiar home environments longer due to the multitude of benefits associated with living in non-clinical environments. Technology to determine an individual's movements or lack of movement is key to ensuring that home emergencies are detected and responded to promptly. This paper proposes a device-free wireless-based localisation (DFL) system which would enable the individual to proceed with normal daily activities without the constraint of having to wear a traceable device. The principal behind this is that the human body absorbs/reflects the radio signal being transmitted from a transmitter to one or more receiving stations. The system design procedure facilitates the use of a minimum number of wireless nodes with the aid of a principle component analysis (PCA) based intelligent signal processing technique. Results demonstrate that human detection and tracking are possible to within 1m resolutions with a minimal wireless hardware infrastructure. (6 pages)


Sugarcane is regarded as a luxury accumulator of potassium (K). Soil testing at plough-out of older ratoons prior to establishing grain-legume crops (soybean and peanuts) sometimes highlights low soil reserves of the element. Agronomists have been seeking guidance on fertilization strategies to maximize break-crop grain yields in sugarcane soils that have depleted K levels. A replicated field trial was established to determine the effect of a range of K fertilizer additions on the productivity of a soybean and then a peanut crop in a long fallow from sugarcane. The residual value of the K supplied in the legume phase was also assessed in the subsequent sugarcane crop. Despite the additions of K from 0 to 250 kg K/ha in 50 kg increments there was no productivity response in either legume crop. The subsequent plant-cane crop (Q208) also demonstrated no productivity response to K fertilizer that was applied to the soil prior to the establishment of the soybean crop. Analysis of plant-cane K concentrations showed no difference in K returned to the site as trash. However, there were significant differences in the quantities of K exported off-farm in millable stalk. The lack of fertilizer K responses, despite low soil-test K concentrations at the end of the sugarcane crop cycle, suggest considerable uncertainty in the interpretation of current soil-testing strategies remains. However, it is unsustainable to mine soil nutrients. Growers have two options; either to supply enough K to meet expected legume crop removal or alternatively recognize that if K is over-supplied to the legume phase, then there is the opportunity to 'discount' that in the plant-cane fertilization strategy.


T h e re is widespread agreement that better govern a n c e matters for growth and poverty reduction, but little consensus on how to achieve it. Attempts by the development community to promote better governance in developing countries have had limited success. New research shows how effective public institutions evolve through a political process of bargaining between the state and organised groups in society. They cannot be constructed by simply transferring institutional models from rich to poor countries. The focus should therefore be not so much on capacity building of formal institutions, as on the informal relationships that underpin them. Policymakers should think less about what ought to be happening, and more politically about what is actually happening, what works and why – and build on that.


This study examines the effect of information technology and pressure such as time budget and task complexity on dysfunctional audit behavior. This study tests whether dysfunctional audit behavior affects fraud detection. Data were gathered from 81 auditors in Jakarta and were analyzed using structure equation model (SEM). The results explain that pressure (time budget and complexity task) have some impacts on dysfunctional audit behavior while information technology does not affect dysfunctional audit behavior. These results also indicate that dysfunctional audit behavior has an adverse effect on fraud detection. Jobrelated stress framework explains the conditions that make stress (stressors) will affect to individual psychology, physics, and behavior (strains) and make some result (outcome). Pressure (time budget and complexity task) is the condition that makes both positive and negative effect on individual behavior. Pressure can make individuals behave dysfunctional or motivate them to give their best shot even though their work uses a lot of energy and mind to solve the problems. Raising dysfunctional audit behavior will reduce auditor's ability to identify material misstatement in the financial statement.


In Cosmopolitan Anxieties , Ruth Mandel explores Germany's relation to the more than two million Turkish immigrants and their descendants living within its borders. Based on her two decades of ethnographic research in Berlin, she argues that Germany's reactions to the postwar Turkish diaspora have been charged, inconsistent, and resonant of past problematic encounters with a Jewish "other." Mandel examines the tensions in Germany between race-based ideologies of blood and belonging on the one hand and ambitions of multicultural tolerance and cosmopolitanism on the other. She does so by juxtaposing the experiences of Turkish immigrants, Jews, and "ethnic Germans" in relation to issues including Islam, Germany's Nazi past, and its radically altered position as a unified country in the post–Cold War era.

Mandel explains that within Germany the popular understanding of what it means to be German is often conflated with citizenship, so that a German citizen of Turkish background can never be a "real German." This conflation of blood and citizenship was dramatically illustrated when, during the 1990s, nearly two million "ethnic Germans" from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union arrived in Germany with a legal and social status far superior to that of "Turks" who had lived in the country for decades. Mandel analyzes how representations of Turkish difference are appropriated or rejected by Turks living in Germany; how subsequent generations of Turkish immigrants are exploring new configurations of identity and citizenship through literature, film, hip-hop, and fashion; and how migrants returning to Turkey find themselves fundamentally changed by their experiences in Germany. She maintains that until difference is accepted as unproblematic, there will continue to be serious tension regarding resident foreigners, despite recurrent attempts to realize a more inclusive and "demotic" cosmopolitan vision of Germany.


Game agents such as opponents, non-player characters, and teammates are central to player experiences in many modern games. As the landscape of AI techniques used in the games industry evolves to adopt machine learning (ML) more widely, it is vital that the research community learn from the best practices cultivated within the industry over decades creating agents. However, although commercial game agent creation pipelines are more mature than those based on ML, opportunities for improvement still abound. As a foundation for shared progress identifying research opportunities between researchers and practitioners, we interviewed seventeen game agent creators from AAA studios, indie studios, and industrial research labs about the challenges they experienced with their professional workflows. Our study revealed several open challenges ranging from design to implementation and evaluation. We compare with literature from the research community that address the challenges identified and conclude by highlighting promising directions for future research supporting agent creation in the games industry.


ABSTRACT There has been a lively debate in the media about working conditions in rural South African hospitals, with a particular focus on staffing and quality of care. From a medical perspective, it has been stated that poorly equipped and managed hospitals, inappropriate training and an excessive workload are significant contributors to the problem. This study was conducted to investigate the experiences of medical practitioners in performing their professional duties in rural district hospitals in the Western Cape. Twenty in-depth, free-attitude interviews were conducted. Three major themes became apparent from the data, namely the importance of situational factors, knowledge and skills, and support structures. Two conceptual frameworks emerged from the themes that describe the impact of working conditions on the quality of care, and captured positive and negative factors influencing performance. This study provides evidence that substantial after-hour duties, an excessive workload and a perceived lack of management support impact negatively on doctors' views of working in district hospitals. Unless these are addressed, the problem of retaining medical staff in rural hospitals will continue, and equity of access to health services for rural communities will remain an unfulfilled obligation. Recommendations are made on how these issues can be addressed.


The objective of the current study was to detect the clinical signs of colibacillosis in buffalo calves, isolate E. coli O157:H7, detect its virulence gene eaeA using PCR and estimate its prevalence. The current study sampled 120 buffalo calves aged 1day to 5 months from the AlBasra veterinary Hospital and Private veterinary clinic within the Basra province between October 2017 and July 2018. A total of 100 calves were naturally diarrheic and the other 20 calves served as controls. The clinical sings in the diarrheic subjects included a significant increase in body temperature, heart rates, respiration rates and capillary refill time as compared to control group. Other clinical signs included whitish to yellowish watery diarrhea with tincture of blood, anorexia, weakness, depression, weak suck reflex, dry oral mucous membranes, cold extremities, weak peripheral pulse, dehydration and death. Using phenotypic characterization tools like MacConky agar, EMB agar, biochemical tests and Viteck, 83 out 100 diarrhea samples confirmed E. coli. Using CTSMACT agar, 31 out of 83 E. coli isolates were E. coli O157:H7 positive. The PCR result indicated that 47 out of the 83 isolated E. coli samples were positive for eaeA virulence gene. In conclusion, this study is a debut in the report of E. coli and E. coli O157:H7 isolation and genes identification in buffalo calves in Iraq. Therefore, proper prevention and control measures are requisite to curtail the mortality and morbidity rate caused by Colibacillosis.


By the end of 2009, a very cold breath of austerity was blowing from the European financial and banking system and thoroughly was touching every Member State's economy, but only for some of them perspective of this severe situation is called bankruptcy frequently. By the spring of this year (2010 – author's note), Greece's financial problems set all the Europeans governments on fire and, according on the most worrying news alerts, Germany was terribly angry and eager to treat this country as an undisciplined schoolchild. Many and heavy financial disasters are forecast for other countries as well, and it seems that Spain's, Portugal's or Italy's Mediterranean structure and behaviour would be the reason, since these countries are in pretty identical trouble just like Greece. The ex-communist recently EU Member States, that are united into the so-called platoon of the emergent economies, rapidly detected their own vulnerabilities and their well-known resources leakages. Then, in the old-time verified and practiced tradition of "cuts and poverty under oppression" which communism taught them well, they were abruptly compelled to conform and to adopt dreadful austerity measures. Although among them, Romania is again a special case, taking into account but the heavy burden of the 80's unbelievable sacrifices and privations, which the population endured because of the totalitarian decision of paying its whole debt. The paper reveals and analyses that, despite the actual context and the political circumstances which are totally different, Romania applied an unprecedentedly severe plan of cuts and privations, installing a general and bitter sensation of déjà-vu, instead of living and feeling the European membership status!


Copyright © 2016, MEJDS. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Objective: Having a disabled child may have a negative impact on the mental health of parents, especially mothers. The aim of current study was to compare the quality of life (QOL) and mental health of mothers of disabled children with those of the mothers of normal children. Methods: The population consisted of mothers of disabled children under the auspices of Iranian Welfare Organization in Tabriz-Iran. Stratified sampling was used to select 213 participants, of whom 64 people were the mothers of physically disabled children and 89 people were the mothers of mentally disabled children. The rest (N=60) were the mothers of children with sensory impairment. The control group consisted of 71 mothers of normal children selected from among Welfare Organization staff. The research instruments were General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL). MANOVA procedures were used to analyze the data. Results: The results showed statistically significant differences between the mothers of normal children with the mothers of disabled children in all aspects of public health with the exception of depression (p<0.01). In addition, a statistically significant difference was found between the quality of life of mothers of mentally disabled children with the mothers of children with sensory impairments in social dysfunction (p<0.01). Though the difference in quality of life measures between mothers of normal children with mothers of disabled children were statistically significant (p<0.01), the differences between the mothers of children with various types of disabilities in subscales of the quality of life measure were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Having a disabled child, regardless of the type of disability can affect general health and quality of life


Gas exchange and growth of transplanted and nontransplanted, field-grown Norway maple (Acer platanoides L. Schwedleri') and littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata Mill. 'Greenspire') trees were investigated in an arid climate. In the spring of 1995, three trees of each species were moved with a tree spade to a new location within a field nursery and three nontransplanted trees were selected as controls. Predawn leaf water potential, morning-to-evening stomatal conductance and leaf temperature, leaf-to-air vapor pressure difference, midday stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, and growth data were collected over a 2-year period. After transplanting, weekly predawn leaf water potential indicated that transplanted trees were under greater water stress than were nontransplanted (control) trees. However, predawn leaf water potential of maple trees recovered to control levels 18 weeks after transplanting, while that of transplanted linden trees remained more negative than that of controls. In 1995, stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rates were lower throughout the day for transplanted trees. In 1996, gas exchange rates of transplanted maple trees recovered to near control levels while rates for transplanted linden trees did not. Sensitivity of stomata to leaf-to-air vapor pressure difference varied with species and with transplant treatment. Each year transplanted trees of both species had less apical growth than did control trees. Although gas exchange and apical growth of transplanted trees was reduced following transplanting, recovery of gas exchange to control rates differed with species.


A patent consists of only one right: the right to exclude others from practicing the patented invention. However, one class of patents statutorily lacks the right to exclude direct infringers: surgical method patents are not enforceable against medical practitioners or health care facilities, which are the only realistic potential direct infringers of such patents. Despite this, inventors regularly file for (and receive) surgical method patents. Why would anyone incur the expense (more than $20,000 on average) of acquiring a patent on a surgical method if that patent cannot be used to keep people from using the patent?

The traditional answer is that although the patent statute forecloses enforcement of surgical method patents against doctors, it does allow for contributory liability of such patents by medical device manufacturers. However, this Article provides evidence of completely nonexcludable surgical method patents — patents in which direct infringers are statutorily protected from liability and contributory infringers do not exist. These nonexcludable patents challenge the widely held view that the only reason an inventor would incur the cost of patenting is to acquire the right to exclude.

To explain the existence and appeal of nonexcludable patents, this Article looks to patent-signaling theory and person-hood theory of real property. Essentially, some inventors patent because they want to signal others about some aspect of the invention or the inventor. While other inventors acquire these nonexcludable patents because the invention forms part of the inventor's "public persona."

There are doctrinal payoffs to this theoretical insight as well. For instance, inventors who approach the patent system from a person-hood angle bring with them a completely different set of costs and benefits than those traditionally assumed. To these inventors, the primary benefit of the patent system is the public disclosure that patenting provides. This contradicts almost all extant patent theories, which consider disclosure to be the primary cost that inventors seek to avoid. As such, this Article provides a novel understanding about the motivation to patent, an understanding that is much more concerned with knowledge dissemination and recognition for creation of that knowledge than with exclusive rights.


So far, research on mobile ad hoc networks has been forcused primarily on routing issues. Security, on the other hand, has been given a lower priority. This paper provides an overview of security problems for mobile ad hoc networks, distinguishing the threats on basic mechanisms and on security mechanisms. It then describes our solution to protect the security mechanisms. The original features of this solution include that (i) it is fully decentralized and (ii) all nodes are assigned equivalent roles.


Cenozoic deformation of the Aconcagua fold and thrust belt and Cordillera Frontal, between 33o30´ to 33o45´ S. This paper presents new insights into the tectonic evolution of the Andes Mountains at 33o30´ to 33o45´ South Latitude. This has been achieved studying the structure of the Aconcagua fold and thrust belt and the evolution of the Alto Tunuyan foreland basin. Thrusting and uplift of the fold and thrust belt began during the Early-Middle Miocene by the inversion of ancient rift structures. Deformation migrated progressively eastward, during middle Miocene times, involving the Mesozoic sequences. This generated a low angle eastward-tapering wedge that was subjected to periods of frontal deformation and internal deformation in order to restore its critical angle. The unconformity separating the synorogenic units, the change in paleocurrent directions from west-east to noreast-southwest, and the presence of locally derived conglomerates in the synorogenic deposits, provide evidence for the beginning of the uplift of the Cordillera Frontal at 9 Ma, which continued until 6 Ma. After this uplift, the fold and thrust belt and the foreland basin continued deformating. The Lower Pliocene - Pleistocene volcanic rocks unconformably cover the deformed belt. Therefore, the main deformation event must have occurred before Lower Pliocene.


The continuous transformation of the industrial society into a service and knowledge society is accompanied by profound change of demand: Customer requests will increasingly focus on individual products, shorter delivery times and appropriate prices. To encounter these challenges under the conditions of dynamic global markets and inter-regional competition, the CRC 457 Non-Hierarchical Regional Production-Networks at the Chemnitz University of Technology focuses on SME and investigates ways to implement customer-oriented, temporary networking of smallest, autonomous units (competence cells) in the region of South-West-Saxony. As a partial result of this research we are able to present a model of competence cell based networking distinguishing between three levels of networking, each with its own logic of reproduction (cp. Figure 1): 1) According to a most general concept, networks can be seen as given in any social context. Regarding a specific region, one has to assume that there is a broad array of infra-structural, mental and communicative relations; that as a whole we call the Regional Network. This level can be seen as basic level of competence cell based networking, specific elements (competence cells) of this network can be seen as necessary resources of the following level. 2) The second level of networking we call Competence Network. The first continuous problem of this network is to select competence cells according to relevant parameters that may be defined by customer orders or, in view of new market entry, be generated by the Competence Network itself. The second problem is to arrange these cells along a product specific value chain and, by this means, to create temporary production networks. Concerning both of the problems, the third is to find a non-hierarchical mode of negotiation. 3) On the third level temporary alliances of basically autonomous competence cells can be observed. After executing their order, these Production Networks dissolve and the constituent cells reenter the second or even the first level of networking. Generalising our observation we now assume that every phenomena labelled as regional or industrial network or district should be investigated in view of (these) different levels of networking, especially if we are interested in dealing more efficiently with the problems of network management. Hence, we suggest to first answer the question Which (of these) networks are we to manage? before asking how. Concerning the latter, a synopsis on the discourse on managing networks shows three major approaches: 1) Networks are assumed to be uncontrollable (cp. e.g. Castells 2001), as they are self-organised systems selecting external control impulses only by their own criterias of relevance, so we have either to adapt the logic of the target system (which implies self-adaption) or to take the risk of being totally ignored. With this in mind we can't speak of control in terms of causal logic. 2) Networks are assumed to be cultivable: According to Wenger and Snyder (2000) for example networks are uncontrollable, but - like a gardener - we are able to set adequate general conditions for their growth and continuity. 3) Networks are assumed to be controllable: For authors like Sydow (2000) networks are to be seen as hybrid forms of coordination recombining aspects of market and hierarchy. Thus, recombining the classical means of control will finally lead to the ability to manage networks. It will be to show that each of these approaches focuses on specific aspects of networking, thus, each of them is creating a self-contained concept of networks: Castells refers to networks as a basal nexus of (global) interconnectedness that, like the Regional Network in our case, obviously can't be managed. Wenger and Snyder are interested in network-organisations that (like Competence Networks) also can't be controlled but can be implemented by and embedded in other social systems (cp. Grabher 1993). Sydow finally observes networks of more or less autonomous organisations corresponding to our Production Networks, which are in deed more or less controllable. Not least because of their different theoretical assumptions, all these concepts seemed to be not only incommensurable but incompatible so far. Nonetheless, during our work in CRC 457 we were to manage all these concepts while approaching to one single objective of research. Therefore, we had to ask, how many perspectives on network are we to manage? The answer is: at least three. Integrating these, we generated a holistic life-cycle model of network, which we like to present as starting point for further research in the field network management.


The Article focuses on the recently concluded Bakweri land case against Cameroon in the African Human Rights Commission. The Article uses this litigation as the basis for a re-examination of a host of issues relating to the enforcement of human rights, especially land rights, in postcolonial countries making the slow transition from single-party authoritarian rule to multi-party democratic states. More importantly, it takes a fresh look at the exhaustion of local remedies rule. It asks the relatively simple question: whether an indigenous people seeking to reclaim and assert permanent sovereignty over ancestral lands, forcibly expropriated from them during the period of colonial occupation and subsequently vested in the post-colonial State, should be required to comply with the exhaustion of domestic remedies rule in a country where the rule of law is in its infancy and where the judiciary is neither independent nor impartial.The Article argues that the exhaustion rule should be dispensed with where it is demonstrably clear that local courts are notoriously lacking in independence; there is a consistent and well-established line of precedents adverse to the claimant; and the respondent State does not have an adequate system of judicial protection that complainant can rely on. The Article concludes by advocating for the broadest interpretation possible of the exhaustion rule in order to (a) level the playing field for both parties-the defenseless citizen whose fundamental human rights have been violated and the powerful State responsible for the violation; (b) preserve the right of individual petition now entrenched in all international human rights instruments; and (c) give true meaning to the principle of equality-of-arms upon which all human rights contests are anchored.


Personal Reflections on State Department Intransigence and Conflict Resolution Fifty years of experience dealing with a variety of bureaucracies have led me to conclude that no bureaucracy ever changes voluntarily. When a small shift does occasionally take place, it is usually because of pressure from an outside source or, less frequently, because of leadership from the top of an organization. The field of foreign affairs is no exception to this rule. For 15 years, I have sought to change the way the US Department of State's bureaucracy thinks about and manages international ethnic conflicts. The State Department has failed to acknowledge, institutionally, the positive role that non-governmental organizations, skilled in the art of conflict resolution, can play in this critical and sensitive arena. Tracks That Meet In 1983, toward the end of my 40-year diplomatic career, I was assigned to the newly formed Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, one of the State Department's most innovative structures. I began to explore the role of private citizens in the field of foreign affairs. Some months before, my friend and colleague, Joe Montville of the State Department's Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, had coined the phrase "Track Two" diplomacy, another name for citizen diplomacy. Track One diplomacy, the object of most of my career, is formal, official, government-to-government interaction between designated representatives of sovereign states. Track Two, on the other hand, is nongovernmental, informal, and unofficial. It entails interaction between private citizens or groups of people within a country or from different countries, all outside the formal government power structure. Track Two aims to reduce or resolve conflict by decreasing the anger, tension, and fear between peoples by improving communication and understanding of the other side's point of view. In no way is Track Two a substitute for Track One; instead, it complements and parallels the goals of Track One. I pursued my interest in citizen diplomacy at the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs and organized the first symposium on Track Two diplomacy in February 1985, bringing together a number of eminent Track Two practitioners--all private citizens--to tell their stories. The book overviewing the symposium, called Conflict Resolution: Track Two Diplomacy, was ready for publication a few months later but was not published by the State Department until May 1987. The State Department had a turf problem: certain officials did not want a government publication acknowledging that there is an alternative way to do diplomatic business. This basic stubborn attitude has not institutionally changed since 1985. There have only been a few exceptions to this inertia over the past 15 years. The United States Information Agency (USIA) has, for example, managed to shift its thinking dramatically. In February 1994, I learned that the agency's new director was interested in innovating in the field of conflict resolution. I briefed ten USIA employees about the field in March, and on May 16, 1994, the director approved the creation of a new, agency-wide Conflict Resolution Project Team and asked its members to meet with experts in this field. Unfortunately, the team collapsed in a matter of months, the victim of transfers and budget cuts. However, one arm of USIA, the International Visitors Program, moved enthusiastically into the arena. Over the years, it has brought several hundred leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to the United States to learn about conflict resolution and Track Two diplomacy. But the agency's efforts were not well appreciated. On September 20, 1996, USIA tried to impact the State Department's thinking by hosting a seminar at the State Department on "Public Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: Linking Track One and Track Two Diplomacy." It was a failure--ten people showed up. …


The development of a mental health app, one with significant potential for impacting on and transforming peoples' lives, requires a diligent approach for integrating and delivering clinical expertise which is to be used by a vulnerable user group. The challenges include ensuring adequate involvement of a user group that is not only hard to recruit, but equally complex to engage with in order to ensure ecological validity of the different elements of the user-centred design process. Discussing the design and deployment of an anxiety management app, SAM - Selfhelp for Anxiety Management, we present approaches adopted to address the challenges involved and the impact these had on the final design. The paper concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations, based on our experience of the process.


This research contributes to the dialogue on maternity leave policy in the United States through analysing how pregnant school teachers with access to extended maternity leave decide how long a leave to take. The lived experiences of new mothers are examined through a series of longitudinal interviews with 16 public school teachers conducted at three points over the course of the transition to parenthood (pregnancy through first year). Findings indicate that although financial reasons played a large role in women deciding to return to work more quickly, issues of professional identity and personal happiness were also meaningful. Additionally, holding gendered parenting ideologies and being uncomfortable with available childcare options were important in the decision to take an extended leave.


We develop a model where individuals differ in productivity and in longevity. Benefits from the public pay-as-you-go pension system take the form of a collective annuity, with both a contributive (Bismarckian) component (based on the worker's past earnings) and a flat (Beveridgean) part. Voters choose the size (generosity) of the system and its degree of income redistribution (or type). While individual longevity does not affect preferences for type and size of the program, these are influenced by both the average longevity and by the correlation between longevity and productivity. When the size of the annuity program is chosen by majority voting for a given type, we obtain that the size of the Beveridgean scheme decreases smoothly with increases in average longevity, while the support for a Bismarckian pension abruptly drops to zero once a threshold is crossed. When both size and type are determined by majority voting, we obtain either large and mostly Bismarckian systems or smaller Beveridgean systems, as is empirically observed. Also, a larger correlation between longevity and productivity makes the collective annuity more redistributive, although sometimes at the expense of its size.


As part of this research, FVCOM, a finite-volume coastal ocean numerical hydrodynamic model (Chen, et al., 2003), was implemented into the Great Bay estuary. FVCOM is one of several community models that have been developed for coastal regions, and was selected because it utilizes an unstructured grid to discretize the model domain. The unstructured grid provides the ability to have fine scale resolution near the boundary or coastline and decreased resolution away from the boundary where the flow field is less complicated, resulting in greatly reduced computational expense in less dynamic regions allowing model runs to be completed in much shorter time periods. Grid development also requires that bathymetric data is accurately assigned to grid nodes in such a way that the model itself will be numerically stable. This requires significant development time implementing an appropriate grid mesh (Persson and Strang, 2004) with bathymetry data that has been smoothed to limit inherent numerical noise in the computations. FVCOM was implemented on a grid with finest resolution equaling 30 m, and then tested on a 10 day run with offshore forcing determined analytically by the 8 most energetic semi-diurnal (M2, N2, S2, K2) and diurnal (K1, O1, P1, Q1) tidal constituents at Fort Pt., NH (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/harcon.html?id=8423898), and including fresh water river fluxes from 6 rivers equivalent to 5 times the average daily discharge (Ward and Bub, 2007). The model was further tested utilizing the 100 year tropical storm event estimated from the North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study (NACCS; USACE, 2015), and the highest projected sea level rise scenario for year 2100 estimated by NOAA (http://www.corpsclimate.us/ccaceslcurves.cfm). The numerically stable model indicates that the grid can be used to simulate tidal forcing with maximum projected year storm surge and sea level rise in the Great Bay, and – with further development to include finer (10 m) mesh resolution and inclusion of surface waves and wind forcing – may be able to predict future flooding scenarios based on forecasted storm events and sea level rise.


Community-based  advocacy  organizations  (CBOs)  have  an  increasingly visible and important function in natural and cultural resources management. This phenomenon has obvious implications for managers struggling with budget shortfalls, but also portends new agency responsibilities and perhaps a new image of public lands as being "co-managed." This study examines CBOs associated with  national park units in the Midwestern United States. The driving research questions  include:  (1)  What  are  important  characteristics  of  CBOs? (2) What are their roles in public lands management (3) What has contributed to and constrained their success? Results indicated the organizations' primary functions are fundraising, community outreach, visitor education and volunteering. Significant challenges include fundraising, member recruitment and retention, budget constraints. This information can be used to build effective partnerships between parks and CBOs. For example, managers interested in working with CBOs should consider providing technical assistance or training in fundraising, public relations,  organization  publications, and information resources.


SUMMARY A new data weighting scheme is introduced for satellite geomagnetic survey data. Data weights for individual satellite samples at 20-s spacing are derived from two 'noise' (or unmodelled signal) estimators for the sample. First, the standard deviation along the 20 s of satellite track, centred on each sample, is computed as a measure of local magnetic activity. Second a larger-scale noise estimator is defined in terms of a 'local area vector activity' (LAVA) index for the sample. This is derived from activity measured at the geographically nearest magnetic observatories to the sample point. Weighting of the satellite data by the inverse-sum-of-squares of these noise estimators then leads to a robust model of the field, the 'Model of Earth's Magnetic Environment 2008', or MEME08, to about spherical harmonic degree 60. Our approach allows vector samples of the field to be used at all magnetic latitudes and, for example, results in a lithospheric magnetic field model with low spectral noise, comparable with other recent global models. We also do not require a particularly complex model parametrization, regularization, or prior data correction to remove estimates of unmodelled source fields.


Abstract. In recent years, the Pan-Arctic region has experienced increasingly extreme fire seasons. Fires in the northern high latitudes are driven by current and future climate change, lightning, fuel conditions, and human activity. In this context, conceptualizing and parameterizing current and future Arctic fire regimes will be important for fire and land management as well as understanding current and predicting future fire emissions. The objectives of this review were driven by policy questions identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group and posed to its Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers. This review synthesises current understanding of the changing Arctic and boreal fire regimes, particularly as fire activity and its response to future climate change in the Pan-Arctic has consequences for Arctic Council states aiming to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the north. The conclusions from our synthesis are the following: (1) Current and future Arctic fires, and the adjacent boreal region, are driven by natural (i.e., lightning) and human-caused ignition sources, including fires caused by timber and energy extraction, prescribed burning for landscape management, and tourism activities. Little is published in the scientific literature about cultural burning by Indigenous populations across the Pan-Arctic and questions remain on the source of ignitions above 70° N in Arctic Russia. (2) Climate change is expected to make Arctic fires more likely by increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, increased lightning activity, and drier vegetative and ground fuel conditions. (3) To some extent, shifting agricultural land use, forest-steppe to steppe, tundra-to-taiga, and coniferous-to-deciduous forest transitions in a warmer climate may increase and decrease open biomass burning. However, at the country- and landscape-scales, these relationships are not well established. (4) Current black carbon and PM2.5 emissions from wildfires above 50° N and 65° N are larger than emissions from the anthropogenic sectors of residential combustion, transportation, and flaring, respectively. Wildfire emissions have increased from 2010 to 2020, particularly above 60° N, with 56 % of black carbon emissions above 65° N in 2020 attributed to open biomass burning – indicating how extreme the 2020 wildfire season was and future Arctic wildfire seasons potential. (5) What works in the boreal zones to prevent and fight wildfires may not work in the Arctic. Fire management will need to adapt to a changing climate, economic development, the Indigenous and local communities, and fragile northern ecosystems, including permafrost and peatlands. (6) Factors contributing to the uncertainty of predicting and quantifying future Arctic fire regimes include underestimation of Arctic fires by satellite systems, lack of agreement between Earth observations and official statistics, and still needed refinements of location, conditions, and previous fire return intervals on peat and permafrost landscapes. This review highlights that much research is needed in order to understand the local and regional impacts of the changing Arctic fire regime on emissions and the global climate, ecosystems and Pan-Arctic communities.


During mammalian neural development, a wide variety of neurons and glial cells differentiate from common neural progenitor cells (NPCs). Postnatally, some of these cells transform to adult neural stem/progenitor cells which reside in specialized niches where they continue to produce neurons. The mechanisms controlling NPC fate, however, are not fully understood. Microarray analysis of ribosome-enriched transcripts in NPCs revealed a preferential loading of ribosomes with transcripts im- portant for neuronal differentiation. One preferentially loaded transcript is Ankyrin repeat and KH domain-containing protein 1 (ANKHD1). ANKHD1 is a 270 kDa protein that has been shown to play important roles in progenitor cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival. Moreover, it was found to be deregulated in several cancers, including some leukemias. Due to its apparent role in progenitor cell regu- lation, ANKHD1 may also be an important functional regulator in NPCs. However, no function for ANKHD1 in the mammalian brain has been described so far.
The present project aims at elucidating the role of ANKHD1 in embryonic and adult neural progenitor cells in mice. We show that ANKHD1 is expressed throughout murine embryonic brain development and in adult neural progenitor cells. Expres- sion can be detected as early as E12.5 and is robust during the course of cortical development. Selective knockdown of ANKHD1 via in utero electroporation in the developing neocortex promotes apical and basal progenitor proliferation and inhibits differentiation into neurons. This phenotype could be rescued by simulta- neous overexpression of human ANKHD1. Similar to NPCs during development, knockdown of ANKHD1 in primary neurosphere cultures of adult NPCs promotes their proliferation and inhibits neuronal differentiation. Deregulation of embryonic and adult neural progenitor cells can lead to the development of brain cancers, such as glioblastoma multiforme. Accordingly, deregulation of ANKHD1 in glioma initi- ating cells influences their proliferative capacity. Together, these results substantiate the relevance of ANKHD1 for controlling proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitors.


Aim: Diabetes mellitus is a syndrome related to metabolism having complicated pathogenesis and its morbidity rate is quickly increasing every year. In the present study, the antagonistic effect of betulinic acid chalcone for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) was explored with possible implications in diabetic treatment. Materials and Methods: The adipocyte differentiation following betulinic acid chalcone treatment was evaluated using Oil Red O staining. Reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction was employed for gene expression and Western blot for analysis of differentiation linked protein expression. Results: Betulinic acid chalcone repressed PPARγ-ligand-binding domain level and transcriptional property of retinoid X receptor α-PPARγ in 293T cells. The rosiglitazone suggestively (P < 0.01) augmented grease droplet accumulation in adipocytes in comparison to control adipocytes. The improved grease droplet accumulation by rosiglitazone in adipocytes was suppressed on treatment with betulinic acid chalcone. The surge in grease droplet accumulation by rosiglitazone was lessened completely on treatment with 16-μM betulinic acid chalcone. Treatment of adipocytes with betulinic acid chalcone suppressed rosiglitazone-induced expression of fatty acid synthase (FAS), CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-α (C/EBPα), adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein 2 (aP2), and HMG-CoA genes pointedly. Treatment of adipocytes with betulinic acid chalcone instigated a marked decrease in rosiglitazone-induced expression of aP2, carboxyl terminus of the Hsc70-interacting protein (CHIP), and C/EBPα. The suppressive effect of rosiglitazone on expression of p-Akt/t-Akt, PPARa, p-FoxO1/t-FoxO1, and p-AMP protein kinase (AMPK)/t-AMPK was expressively (P < 0.01) assuaged in the adipocytes by betulinic acid chalcone. Conclusion: The present study established that betulinic acid chalcone suppressed PPARγ activity and adipocyte differentiation. Moreover, the activation of FoxO1/Akt/AMPK was upregulated and FAS/EBPα/aP2/HMG-CoA expression was subdued by betulinic acid chalcone in the adipocytes. Therefore, betulinic acid chalcone may be appraised further for a possible role in the treatment of diabetes.


Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA), particularly HLA-B and class II alleles have been differentially associated with disease outcomes in different populations following infection with the malaria Plasmodium falciparum. However, the effect of HLA-A on malaria infection and/or disease is not fully understood. Recently, HLA-A alleles have been suggested to play a role in the outcome of P. falciparum malaria infection in a Malian study. Herein, we investigated the association between HLA-A alleles and the outcome of malaria infection in children in Ibadan southwest Nigeria. HLA-A genotyping was performed on 393 children samples (DNA) using the sequence-based method. We compared genotype and allele frequencies data obtained from these Nigerian children; 176 with asymptomatic malaria infection (controls), 124 with uncomplicated malaria and 93 children with severe malaria (51 severe malarial anaemia and 42 cerebral malaria). We found a high frequency of HLA-A*36:01 (13.5%) in the entire studied population and also confirmed the high frequency of a previously reported allele of African origin (HLA-A*30:01). After adjusting for age and parasite density, we found a significant association between HLA-A*20:01:01 (OR = 3.19, p < 0.001) and susceptibility to severe malarial anaemia. We also found significant associations between HLA-A* 29:02:01 (OR = 7.26, p = 0.008) and A* 66:02 (Or = 4.19, p = 0.03) and susceptibility to cerebral malaria. Our findings suggest that HLA-A alleles play a role in the outcome of malaria in children in Ibadan. These findings may help elucidate the molecular background of malaria resistance in the study population.


The response to pain involves a non-conscious, reflexive action and a conscious perception. According to Key (2016), consciousness — and thus pain perception — depends on a neuronal correlate that has a "unique neural architecture" as realized in the human cortex. On the basis of the "bioengineering principle that structure determines function," Key (2016) concludes that animal species such as fish, which lack the requisite cortex-like neuroanatomical structure, are unable to feel pain. This commentary argues that the relationship between brain structure and brain function is less straightforward than suggested in Key's target article.


The effects of temperature and food availability on feeding and egg production of the Arctic copepod Calanus hyperboreus were investigated in Disko Bay, western Greenland, from winter to spring 2009. The abundance of females in the near bottom layer and the egg production of C. hyperboreus prior to the spring bloom document that reproduction relies on lipid stores. The maximum in situ egg production (± SE) of 54 ± 8 eggs female −1 d −1 was recorded in mid-February at chlorophyll a concentrations below 0.1 µg l −1 , whereas no egg production was observed in mid-April when the spring bloom developed. After reproduction, the females migrated to the surface layer to exploit the bloom and refill their lipid stores. In 2 laboratory experiments, initiated before and during the spring bloom, mature females were kept with and without food at 5 different temperatures ranging from 0 to 10°C and the fecal pellet and egg production were monitored. Food had a clear effect on fecal pellet production but no effect on egg production, while temperature did not have an effect on egg or fecal pellet production in any of the experiments. Analyses of carbon and lipid content of the females before and after the experiments did not reflect any effect of food or temperature in the pre-bloom experiment, whereas in the bloom experiment a clear positive effect of food was detected in female biochemical profiles. The lack of a temperature response suggests a future warmer ocean could be unfavorable for C. hyperboreus compared to smaller Calanus spp. which are reported to exploit minor temperature elevations for increased egg production.


In Looking for Mexico, a leading historian of visual culture, John Mraz, provides a panoramic view of Mexico's modern visual culture from the U.S. invasion of 1847 to the present. Along the way, he illuminates the powerful role of photographs, films, illustrated magazines, and image-filled history books in the construction of national identity, showing how Mexicans have both made themselves and been made with the webs of significance spun by modern media. Central to Mraz's book is photography, which was distributed widely throughout Mexico in the form of cartes-de-visite, postcards, and illustrated magazines. Mraz analyzes the work of a broad range of photographers, including Guillermo Kahlo, Winfield Scott, Hugo Brehme, Agustin Victor Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Hector Garcia, Pedro Meyer, and the New Photojournalists. He also examines representations of Mexico's past in the country's influential picture histories: popular, large-format, multivolume series replete with thousands of photographs and an assortment of texts. Turning to film, Mraz compares portrayals of the Mexican Revolution by Fernando de Fuentes to the later movies of Emilio Fernandez and Gabriel Figueroa. He considers major stars of Golden Age cinema as gender archetypes for mexicanidad, juxtaposing the charros (hacienda cowboys) embodied by Pedro Infante, Pedro Armendariz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother, Indian, and shrew as played by Sara Garcia, Dolores del Rio, and Maria Felix. Mraz also analyzes the leading comedians of the Mexican screen, representations of the 1968 student revolt, and depictions of Frida Kahlo in films made by Paul Leduc and Julie Taymor. Filled with more than fifty illustrations, Looking for Mexico is an exuberant plunge into Mexico's national identity, its visual culture, and the connections between the two.


A growing literature investigates how firms' innovation input reacts to changes in the business cycle. However, so far there is no evidence whether there is cyclicality in the effects of innovation on firm performance as well. In this paper, we investigate the employment effects of innovations over the business cycle. Our analysis employs a large data set of manufacturing firms from 26 European countries over the period from 1998 to 2010. Using the structural model of Harrison et al. (2014), our empirical analysis reveals four important findings: First, the net effect of product innovation on employment growth is pro-cyclical. It turns out to be positive in all business cycle phases except for the recession. Second, product innovators are more resilient to recessions than non-product innovators. Even during recessions they are able to substitute demand losses from old products by demand gains of new products to a substantial degree. As a result their net employment losses are significantly lower in recessions than those of non-product innovators. Third, we only find resilience for SMEs but not for large firms. Fourth, process and organizational innovations displace labor primarily during upturn and downturn periods.


Heidegger's Being and Time is one of the most influential and important books in the history of philosophy, but it was left unfinished. The parts we have of it, Divisions I and II of Part One, were meant to be merely preparatory for the unwritten Division III, which was to have formed the point of the entire book when it turned to the topic of being itself. In this book, leading Heidegger scholars and philosophers influenced by Heidegger take up the unanswered questions in Heidegger's masterpiece, speculating on what Division III would have said, and why Heidegger never published it. The contributors' task -- to produce a secondary literature on a nonexistent primary work -- seems one out of fiction by Borges or Umberto Eco. Why did Heidegger never complete Being and Time? Did he become dissatisfied with it? Did he judge it too subjectivistic, not historical enough, too individualistic, too existential? Was abandoning it part of Heidegger's " Kehre", his supposed turning from his early work to his later work? Might Division III have offered a bridge between the two phases, if a division exists between them? And what does being mean, after all? The contributors, in search of lost Being and Time, consider these and other topics, shedding new light on Heidegger's thought. ContributorsAlain Badiou, Lee Braver, Daniel Dahlstrom, Charles Guignon, Graham Harman, Karsten Harries, Ted Kisiel, Denis McManus, Eric S. Nelson, Richard Polt, Francois Raffoul, Thomas Sheehan, Iain Thomson, Kate Withy, Julian Young


ABSTRACT We have identified in a skin swab sample from a healthy donor a new virus that we have named human gyrovirus (HGyV) because of its similarity to the chicken anemia virus (CAV), the only previously known member of the Gyrovirus genus. In particular, this virus encodes a homolog of the CAV apoptin, a protein that selectively induces apoptosis in cancer cells. By PCR screening, HGyV was found in 5 of 115 other nonlesional skin specimens but in 0 of 92 bronchoalveolar lavages or nasopharyngeal aspirates and in 0 of 92 fecal samples.


The Government of Uganda has implemented programs and policies to improve the agricultural sector's recent underperformance. Uganda's two main food security crops, bananas and cassava, have been critically affected by two diseases: Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD). The effectiveness of agronomic and cultural practices to control these diseases has been limited, requiring better alternatives. The Ugandan R&D sector in collaboration with international partners have developed genetically engineered innovations that can control both diseases. To examine the potential benefits to consumers and producers from the adoption of genetically engineered banana and cassava with resistance to BXW and CBSD, we use a set of economic impact assessment methods. These include an economic surplus model implemented via IFPRI's DREAMpy framework, a real options model and a limited gender assessment. Results from the economic surplus approach suggest that the adoption of both technologies can benefit Uganda. These results were confirmed for the case of bananas and partially for the case of cassava using the real options and the gender assessment performed. Results from this assessment are predicated on Uganda maintaining an enabling environment that will ensure the deployment and use of both innovations. Looking forward, continuing to improve enabling environment for innovation in Uganda will require addressing current R&D, regulatory, technology deployment and product stewardship processes constraints.


Business enterprises are regarded as engines of economic development in many nations of the world. Many of these enterprises are faced with a myriad of problems especially in their initial stages, key among them, insufficient business and management skills. In this study, enterprises were categorized as micro, small and medium. Entrepreneurial training enables enterprise operators adopt better management practices such as profit retention, good customer relations, timely loan repayments and structured bookkeeping. Researchers have asserted that few programs are assessed and it is on this ground, that the study sought to ascertain the impact of entrepreneurial training on performance of micro, small and medium enterprises focusing on Nakuru County. It specifically investigated the impact of entrepreneurial training on performance of enterprises, nature of entrepreneurial skills provided, deficiencies in training programs and finally gathered suggestions from respondents on how entrepreneurial training could be improved. The study findings will aid government capacity building agencies, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, religious bodies, financial institutions, tertiary colleges, universities and individuals in developing viable capacity enhancement programs for entrepreneurs. The literature review was primarily concerned with three key aspects: nature of entrepreneurial training offered, deficiencies in business training programs and impact of training on performance of enterprises. The study design was descriptive survey and data for this exercise was collected using pre-tested questionnaires. The researcher obtained a sample of fifty enterprise operators previously trained by Kenya Institute of Business Training (KIBT) and Joints Loans Board (JLB) in Nakuru County between the years, 2010 and August, 2012. A sample composed of enterprise operators drawn from three identified stratas within Nakuru County was obtained using stratified random sampling. Data collected, was edited, coded and then analysed using computer application programs notably, Statistical Package for Social Scientists and Microsoft Excel. Findings were presented using tables and bar graphs. Study findings indicated that, there was a general improvement in business and entrepreneurial skills amongst MSMEs after undertaking either KIBT or JLB training. MSMEs appreciated areas like management of working capital, record keeping, and marketing as important ingredients for effective enterprise management. Results obtained showed that there is a correlation between entrepreneurial skills and performance of MSMEs. The researcher recommends that KIBT in conjunction with JLB develop a customized and comprehensive program specifically meant for loan beneficiaries that will incorporate among others, areas such as risk management, business expansion strategies and management of loan delinquency and default. The researchers' total budget amounted to approximately fifty-five thousand, five hundred shillings.


Ashraf Al-Amoudi1,2 and Achilleas Frangakis3 1Center of Advanced European Studies and Research (caesar), Department of Molecular Sensory Systems, Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2, 53175 Bonn, Germany, 2German Center of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2, 53175 Bonn, Germany European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany 3Goethe Universitat - Institut fur Biophysik Max-von-Laue-Str. 1 60438 Frankfurt, Germany Intercellular adhesion junctions are fundamental for the function and development of multi-cellular organisms. They are widely distributed in animal tissues and most abundant in tissues that are subjected to considerable mechanical stress such as heart, skin and muscle. Desmosomes and adherens junctions (AJs) represent major categories of these junctions. The intercellular space of desmosomes and AJs relies on the associations between members of Ca2+- dependent adhesion molecules called cadherins which share high sequence similarity among them.The intracellular region of the junctions form distinct plaque on the cytoplasmic face of the plasma membrane and form complex network of molecular interactions that link the extracellular region of cadherins with the cytoskeleton. Disruption of cadherins or plaques is the hallmark of many blistering and cancer diseases. Recently, the first crystal structure of the full extracellular domains of C-cadherin (a representative of classical cadherins) showed that the cadherin molecules adopt a stable, curved conformation1. In this crystal structure, the neighbouring molecules are oriented in antiparallel and engaged through a mutual exchange of the tryptophan 2 (Trp2) forming a W-like shape. Such Trp2 trans-interactions were supported by mutagenesis data and cell-adhesion assays and are now considered to be physiologically relevant2. Recently, using cryo-electron tomography and quantitative analysis by sub-tomogram averaging, we revealed the molecular organization of desmosomal cadherins and plaque3,4. Our results show two predominant cis- and trans- interactions alternating in a periodic manner similar to the arrangements observed in the linear zipper of the crystal structure of N-cadherins5. In addition, the resulting molecular model explains previous two dimensional images observed with CEMOVIS at various orientations and yields important insights into the assembly of cadherin-based intercellular junction. Our analysis of the desmosomal plaque revealed two-dimensional interconnected quasiperiodic lattice with similar spatial orgnaization of the extracellular region of the desmosome5. We are currently studying the molecular organization of AJs from mouse intestine. Our results indicate highly-organized structure of E-cadherin compatible with the X-ray structure of classical cadherins1. All these results will be presented in the conference. 1. T.J. Boggon, J. Murray, S. Chappuis-Flam ent, E. Wong, B.M. Gumbiner and L. Shapiro, Science. 296 (2002) 1308. 2. S. Troyanovsky, Eur J Cell Biol 84 (2005), 225. 3. A. Al-Amoudi, D. C. Diez, M. Betts, A. S. Frangakis, Nature 450 (2007), 832. 4. A. Al-Amoudi, D. Castano-Diez, D. P. Devos, R.B. Russell, G.T. Johnson, A. S. Frangakis,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 108 (2011), 6480. 5. L. Shapiro, A.M. Fannon, P.D. Kwong, A. Thompson, M.S. Lehmann,G. Grubel, J.F. Legrand, J. Als-Nielsen, D.R. Colman and W.A. Hendrickson, Nature. 374 (1995) 327.


Thanks to their high performance and programmability, the latest graphics cards can now be used for scientific purpose. They are indeed very efficient parallel Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) machines. This new trend is called General Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU [13]). Regarding the stereo problem, variational methods based on deformable models provide dense, smooth and accurate results. Nevertheless, they prove to be slower than usual disparity-based approaches. In this paper, we present a dense stereo algorithm, handling occlusions, using three cameras as inputs and entirely implemented on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Experimental speedups prove that our approach is efficient and perfectly adapted to the GPU, leading to nearly video frame rate reconstruction.


In neonatal hippocampal slices, recurrent spontaneous giant depolarizing potentials (GDPs) provide neuronal synchronized firing and Ca2+ oscillations. To investigate the possible role of GDPs in the synchronization of neuronal activity in intact neonatal limbic structures, we used multiple simultaneous electrophysiological recordings in the recently described preparation of intact neonatal septohippocampal complex in vitro. Combined whole-cell (in single or pairs of cells) and extracellular field recordings (one to five simultaneous recording sites) from the CA3 hippocampal region and various parts of the septum indicated that spontaneous GDPs, which can be initiated anywhere along the longitudinal hippocampal axis, are most often initiated in the septal poles of hippocampus and propagate to medial septum and temporal poles of both hippocampi simultaneously. GDPs were abolished in the medial septum but not in the hippocampus after surgical separation of both structures, suggesting hippocampal origin of GDPs. The preferential septotemporal orientation of GDP propagation observed in the intact hippocampus was associated with a corresponding gradient of GDP frequency in isolated portions of hippocampus. Accordingly, most GDPs propagated in the septotemporal direction in both septal and temporal hippocampal isolated halves, and whereas GDP frequency remained similar in the septal part of hippocampus after its surgical isolation, it progressively decreased in more temporally isolated portions of the hippocampus. Because GDPs provide most of the synaptic drive of neonatal neurons, they may modulate the development of neuronal connections in the immature limbic system.


Transformer based architectures are recently used for the task of answering questions over tables. In order to improve the accuracy on this task, specialized pre-training techniques have been developed and applied on millions of open-domain web tables. In this paper, we propose two novel approaches demonstrating that one can achieve superior performance on table QA task without even using any of these specialized pre-training techniques. The first model, called RCI interaction, leverages a transformer based architecture that independently classifies rows and columns to identify relevant cells. While this model yields extremely high accuracy at finding cell values on recent benchmarks, a second model we propose, called RCI representation, provides a significant efficiency advantage for online QA systems over tables by materializing embeddings for existing tables. Experiments on recent benchmarks prove that the proposed methods can effectively locate cell values on tables (up to ~98% Hit@1 accuracy on WikiSQL lookup questions). Also, the interaction model outperforms the state-of-the-art transformer based approaches, pre-trained on very large table corpora (TAPAS and TaBERT), achieving ~3.4% and ~18.86% additional precision improvement on the standard WikiSQL benchmark.


The social practices and beliefs surrounding kinship, procreation and inheritance are highly varied. Certainly, they do not necessarily reflect the models of biological inheritance identified by genetic science. Such beliefs are not the preserve of 'other' cultures. There is research evidence of complex belief systems among Western populations that are not coterminous with genetic science.

Keywords:

kinship;
descent;
inheritance;
genetics;
cross-cultural


ABSTRACT Purpose: To determine the predictive factors for postoperative urinary incontinence (UI) following holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) during the initial learning period. Patients and Methods: We evaluated 127 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia who underwent HoLEP between January 2011 and December 2013. We recorded clinical variables, including blood loss, serum prostate-specific antigen levels, and the presence or absence of UI. Blood loss was estimated as a decline in postoperative hemoglobin levels. The predictive factors for postoperative UI were determined using a multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results: Postoperative UI occurred in 31 patients (24.4%), but it cured in 29 patients (93.5%) after a mean duration of 12 weeks. Enucleation time >100 min (p=0.043) and blood loss >2.5g/dL (p=0.032) were identified as significant and independent risk factors for postoperative UI. Conclusions: Longer enucleation time and increased blood loss were independent predictors of postoperative UI in patients who underwent HoLEP during the initial learning period. Surgeons in training should take care to perform speedy enucleation maneuver with hemostasis.


Invoking memories and imagery from the Holocaust and other German atrocities during World War II, many contemporary commentators and politicians believe that the international community has an affirmative obligation to deter and incapacitate perpetrators of humanitarian atrocities. Today, the received wisdom is that a legalistic approach, which combines humanitarian interventions with international criminal prosecutions targeting perpetrators, will help realize the post-World War II vision of making atrocities a crime of the past. This Article argues, in contrast, that humanitarian interventions are often likely to create unintended, and sometimes perverse, incentives among both the victims and perpetrators of atrocities. The problem is that when the international community intervenes in the civil wars or insurrections where most humanitarian atrocities take place, its decision is partially endogenous or interdependent with that of the combatants; humanitarian interventions both influence and are influenced by the decisions of the victims and perpetrators of atrocities. Herein lies the paradox: because humanitarian interventions tend to increase the chance that rebel or victim group leaders are going to achieve their preferred political objectives, such leaders might have an incentive to engage in the kinds of provocative actions that make atrocities against their followers more likely in the first place. More specifically, the prospect of humanitarian intervention often increases the level of uncertainty about the distribution of costs and resolve between the combatants. In turn, such uncertainty amplifies the possibility of divergent expectations between the dominant and rebel group regarding the outcome of a civil war. At bottom, the prospect of humanitarian intervention might sometimes increase the risks of genocidal violence. This Article turns to insights from the domestic framework of torts and criminal law to elaborate upon the theoretical framework that motivates this perverse dynamic, provides some contemporary illustrations from civil wars in Africa and the Balkans, and recommends improvements to the current regime to mitigate some of its unintended effects. This Article concludes that the optimal regime of humanitarian intervention would incorporate comparative fault principles that take into account the failure of victim (or rebel) leaders to take adequate precautions against the risks of humanitarian atrocities.


This research study examined the acceptance of the intranet in restaurant franchise systems. The widely accepted Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1986, 1989) was the basis for this study. TAM is an excellent model to predict information technology (IT) usage and is based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Therefore, TAM was adopted in this study of intranet acceptance. Furthermore, this study attempted to see if the earlier results of TAM are still valid. The original model was modified to include one external variable, franchise support. Data were collected from franchise restaurant systems throughout the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Of 3,500 questionnaires distributed to individual users of intranet, 161 contained usable responses. The results of regression analysis confirm that TAM is valid for additional applications such as evaluating the intranet in restaurant franchise systems.


ABSTRACT Fluvial transport is recognized as a common manner by which bone assemblages forming in or near moving water can be taphonomically modified. Here we study an assemblage of 38 cow carcasses, killed during a mass-mortality event and deposited in a fluvial system (the Yellowstone River of eastern Montana), over the course of three years. Seven of the 38 carcasses were observable throughout the study, allowing assessment of patterns of disarticulation and element loss with respect to time and microenvironment. The probability of loss of individual elements corresponds broadly with Voorhies' bone transport experiments, modified to account for disarticulation order. Evidence of scavenger-mediated bone loss is minimal, despite abundant evidence of the presence of scavenging taxa. Individual carcasses show different patterns of element loss, depending on the magnitude of fluvial energy that the carcass was subject to. Carcasses in very high energy regimes lose all elements immediately on disarticulation, whereas carcasses in lower energy regimes show a more typical lag-assemblage profile. Comparison of disarticulation patterns from similar modern and fossil assemblages indicates the Yellowstone cow assemblages define part of a widely expressed spectrum of bone modification in fluvial systems, strongly controlled by the magnitude of transport energy to which bone assemblages are exposed.


This research examined the safety and operational effects of roadway lane width on mid-block segments between signalized intersections as well as on signalized intersection approaches in the urban environments of Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. In the safety analysis, the Poisson and negative binomial regressions with fixed or random parameters were estimated to evaluate the effects of lane width on annual crash frequencies at mid-block segments and intersection approaches. In the operational analysis, linear regressions were used to examine lane width effects on the vehicles' speed at mid-block segments. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to explore the effects of lane width on the vehicles' headways in the queue on the intersection approaches. At the mid-block segments in comparison with 11 ft and 12 ft wide lanes, 10 ft lanes on the higher speed limit (40 mph and 45 mph) roadways had ambiguous impacts on safety, with improvements in some locations and reduction in the others. Lanes 11 ft or 12 ft wide were found to be safer than 10 ft lanes on lower speed limit roadways (roadways located outside of the central business district with a 35 mph speed limit). On intersection approaches, the combination of narrowed left-turn lanes and narrowed through lanes was a safer option based on the evidence uncovered in this research.


Economic liberalism has been articulated in Iceland by, first and foremost, Jon Sigurdsson, the leader of Iceland's 19th century independence struggle, and by the authors of the first three books on economics in Icelandic, Arnljotur Olafsson, Jon Thorlaksson, and Benjamin Eiriksson. They all argued for free trade and market pricing. In mid-20th century, Professor Olafur Bjornsson was, with Eiriksson, a vocal opponent of the strict economic controls then imposed on the Icelandic economy. Visits in 1980s by Friedrich Hayek, James M. Buchanan, and Milton Friedman, and publications of several books setting out the case for voluntary exchange in place of commands from above, advanced economic liberalism in Iceland and helped along the development of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ) for Iceland's fisheries. The present article is mainly the historiography of Icelandic liberalism in the period 1840–1991, leaving the recent decades, including the anti-liberal narrative about them, to a separate treatment to appear in a future issue of the present journal.


Tengholm and Meyer used dual-color evanescent wave microscopy, a technique that permits selective excitation of fluorophores in a resticted region of cell membrane, to investigate the relationship between phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PIP3) production and insertion of glucose transporters into the plasma membrane as a step toward deciphering the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling code.Various growth factors and hormones activate PI3K, which leads to PIP3 production and numerous cellular responses. It is not clear how cells selectively activate the many possible sequelae of PIP3 production so that stimulation of a particular receptor elicits the appropriate response. In adipocytes, insulin, which activates PI3K, triggers insertion of the glucose transporter GLUT4 into the plasma membrane; platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), which also activates PI3K, is less efficient at stimulating GLUT4 insertion. Using GLUT4 labeled with yellow fluorescent protein and a cyan fluorescent protein-labeled construct that bound PIP3, Tengholm and Meyer simultaneously monitored PIP3 production and GLUT4 insertion into the plasma membrane of 3T3L1 adipocytes. Insulin triggered PIP3 production followed by GLUT4 insertion, as did relieving inhibition of a constitutively active PI3K derivative. Observation of a delay between PIP3 production and GLUT4 insertion, which was greater at lower concentrations of PIP3, led the authors to determine a threshold of PIP3 activity beneath which insertion was suppressed, which implied that small persistent signals or brief high-amplitude signals were ineffective in eliciting GLUT4 insertion. The authors proposed a model in which PI3K controlled specific cell functions that depended on effector systems sensitive to specific durations and amplitudes of the PIP3 signal. A. Tengholm, T. Meyer, A PI3-kinase signaling code for insulin-triggered insertion of glucose transporters into the plasma membrane. Curr. Biol. 12, 1871-1876 (2002). [Online Journal]


Over the last several years, patient satisfaction has emerged not only as a measure of how well a hospital is viewed by its patients, but also as an important way to measure treatment outcome and services quality. Satisfied patients demonstrate greater compliance with their medical care than dissatisfied patients do(Bell, Krivich, and Boyd 1997). They spend less time in the hospital and have improved outcomes that can result in cost minimization for the hospitals. Besides, in today's highly competitive healthcare environment, a hospital's performance in several functional areas is measured against other hospitals and hospital systems, which makes patient satisfaction measures more important than ever. Patient Satisfaction is a aggregate function of Marketing System in Hospitals.Measuring Marketing effectiveness and patient satisfaction can help determine the overall effectiveness of care received and the healthcare system where it is delivered. These two aspects have been analysed in the ensuing paper. 300 patients and 80 marketing executives from six hospitals (three public and three private) from twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad participated in this study. They were administered with a structure interview schedule and a questionnaire. Using means, standard deviations, and f-values, the results are presented. In the light of the hypothesis formulated, it was found that the private hospital patients are more satisfied with the quality of services than their counterparts. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.Effectiveness is the degree to which the social system accomplishes its goals. As the concept of effectiveness is applied to the marketing as a domain of management function, its effectiveness is gauged by the extent to which the purpose of marketing function is accomplished in an organization. The second part of the paper analyses the effectiveness of healthcare marketing as perceived by the executives of the hospitals under study. The executives from private hospitals perceived their marketing function more effective than their counterparts, thus rejecting the null hypothesis. Implications for Hospital Management in view of the improvement of patient satisfaction and effectiveness of marketing function have been drawn.


This paper aims to contribute to the gentrification literature through the potentials of assemblage thinking. We focus on gentrification in Istanbul, which represents the characteristics of both the Global South and North, and use assemblages to link together gentrification and the temporal scales of Istanbul's urbanisation as well as geographical scales of gentrification around the world. Approaching gentrification as a continual process of transformation and emergence, we intend to illuminate how assemblages of gentrification in a historical inner-city neighbourhood, Cihangir, can be produced and reproduced in the trajectory of this neighbourhood. In so doing, we reveal and explore the role of the state in seemingly market-led gentrification and draw attention to the generative potentiality in the local resistance to the recent state-led gentrification of Cihangir.


The rate of M≥3 earthquakes associated with hydraulic fracturing (HF) in horizontal wells (HF wells) in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin is estimated for the period from 2009 to 2019. The estimates are based on a statistical discrimination algorithm that uses an objective scoring function deduced from the observed spatiotemporal correlations between wells and earthquakes. A Monte Carlo simulation approach is used to test the efficacy of the scoring function in determining noncoincidental association rates, allowing for correction of the observed association rates for the expected number of false positives. The basin-wide average rate of association of M≥3 earthquakes with HF wells (2009–2019) is ∼0.8% on a per well basis. The susceptibility appears to vary by formation by more than an order of magnitude, ranging from ∼6% for HF wells in the Duvernay Formation to ∼0.07% for HF wells in the Cardium Formation. For some formations, there has been no observed association at the M≥3 level to date, but this does not necessarily imply that such formations are immune to induced seismicity.


It is rather surprising, in view of our knowledge of the specific value of several drugs and compounds in the treatment of amebiasis, that none of them has, as yet, been employed in the prophylaxis of infection with Endamoeba histolytica. While it is true that the drugs that have so far been found efficient in the treatment of amebiasis could not be used as prophylactics in the case of permanent residents in endemic regions, it is also true that several of them could be employed for this purpose in the case of travelers or in individuals residing for a limited period of time in localities where there is danger of contracting this infection.
During the past few years, especially since tourist traffic to Mexico has increased, the writer has been repeatedly consulted by individuals who have become infected with Endamoeba histolytica while touring in that country, and he has become impressed with the importance of preventing such infections, as many of them have been of a severe type and difficult to eliminate.


Cancer is leading cause of death around the world. There are many strategies have been planned to tackle the cancer progression but each has its own merits and demerits. The microRNA`s are controlling 60 percent human genome, have role in progressive timing, organogenesis, hematopoiesis, cell proliferation, apoptosis and possibly tumorgenesis by amplification or deletion of genes. There are many drugs like 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), Celecoxib and genistein were used to modulate the miRNA`s expression but their success rate remained least. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR/ Cas9) is emerging technology used to modulate the expression of miR-17, miR-200c, and miR-141 with 96 percent success rate. This review will provide us information about the potential therapeutic use of CRISPR/Cas9 against defaulted microRNA`s in the long-standing repression and beginning or inhibition of cancer.


Data and databases are a complex, nuanced area within intellectual property law. In the European Union databases have a special legal treatment that provides two levels of protection. A database is protected by copyright in the classical sense when it can be considered an intellectual work with a creative nature. Where databases represent mere collections of data without sufficient creativity to trigger copyright, EU jurisdictions protect the database under sui generis rights when substantial investment has been made in obtaining, verifying, or presenting the database contents according to Directive 96/9/EC. This system creates a substantial discrepancy between the situation of European countries and the rest of the world, and also affects those databases that have been released under open licenses. Not all of the currently available open licenses take account of the legal and practical implications of this discrepancy, and we should examine the consequences and options. The paper aims to provide a high-level analysis on the protection of databases under European law and identify the main legal problems arising from it in an open data scenario. Then it will focus on the solutions tried so far to implement a proper open licensing framework for the database (with an introduction to the licenses offered by Creative Commons and the Open Data Commons project). Finally, some of the most prominent use cases of open licensing for data will be analysed (such as those of geo-data and linked-data), with some observations on the modus operandi of the various promoters of projects.


ABSTRACT Using document analysis, this paper examines the historical emergence of the quantified child, revealing how the collection and use of data has become normalized through legitimizing discourses. First, following in the traditions of Foucault's genealogy and studies examining the sociology of numbers, this paper traces the evolution of data collection in a range of significant education policy documents. Second, a word count analysis was used to further substantiate the claim that data collection and use has been increasingly normalized through legitimizing discourses and routine actions in educational settings. These analyses provide evidence that the need to quantify educational practices has been justified over long periods of time through a variety of documents and that the extent to which data governs educators' thoughts, discourses, and actions has dramatically increased during the past century.


The emission rates of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from individual onsite septic systems used for the management of domestic wastewater were determined in this study. A static flux chamber method was used to determine the emission rates of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide gases from eight septic tanks and two soil dispersal systems. A technique developed for the measurement of gas flow and concentration at clean-out ports was used to determine the mass flow of gases moving through the household drainage and vent system. There was general agreement in the methane emission rates for the flux chamber and vent system methods. Several sources of variability in the emission rates were also identified.

The septic tank was the primary source of methane, whereas the soil dispersal system was the principal source of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions. Methane concentrations from the soil dispersal system were found to be near ambient concentrations, similarly negligible amounts of nitrous oxide were found in the septic tank. All emissions originating in the soil dispersal system were discharged through the building vent as a result of natural, wind-induced flow. The gaseous emission rate data were determined to be geometrically distributed. The geometric mean and standard deviation (sg) of the total atmospheric emission rates for methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide based on samples from the vent system were estimated to be 10.7 (sg = 1.65), 335 (sg = 2.13), and 0.20 (sg = 3.62) g/capita·d, respectively. The corresponding total anthropogenic CO2 equivalence (CO2e) of the GHG emissions to the atmosphere, is about 0.1 tonne CO2e/capita·yr.

This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series .

ISBN: 9781843396161 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780403359 (eBook)