Much of the scholarship on the Great War, and especially the Dardanelles/Canakkale campaign, has been viewed through a narrow national prism and focused exclusively on military aspects of the engagement. This new collection of essays offers fresh perspectives from countries on both sides of the trenches of Gallipoli. Examined here are intersections of art and memory, and the role that material culture and museums play in the representation and commemoration of war. The ideas and writing draw on fiction, poetry and diaries, as well as new digital media, which together frame the memory of war. Our ongoing encounter with Gallipoli's much-contested landscape here takes on new hues and reveals untold stories. Beyond Gallipoli takes an innovative approach to the varied and controversial cultural legacies of an event which continues to shape the identity of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey.


Machine learning is increasingly used to inform consequential decisions. Yet, these predictive models have been found to exhibit unexpected defects when trained on real-world observational data, which are plagued with confounders and biases. Thus, it is critical to involve domain experts in an interactive process of developing predictive models; interpretability offers a promising way to facilitate this interaction. We propose a novel approach to interpreting complex, blackbox machine learning models by constructing simple decision trees that summarize their reasoning process. Our algorithm leverages active learning to extract richer and more accurate interpretations than several baselines. Furthermore, we prove that by generating a sufficient amount of data through our active learning strategy, the extracted decision tree converges to the exact decision tree, implying that we provably avoid overfitting. We evaluate our algorithm on a random forest to predict diabetes risk on a real electronic medical record dataset, and show that it produces significantly more accurate interpretations than several baselines. We also conduct a user study demonstrating that humans are able to better reason about our interpretations than state-of-the-art rule lists. We then perform a case study with domain experts (physicians) regarding our diabetes risk prediction model, and describe several insights they derived using our interpretation. Of particular note, the physicians discovered an unexpected causal issue by investigating a subtree in our interpretation; we were able to then verify that this endogeneity indeed existed in our data, underscoring the value of interpretability.


This paper aims to elaborate the increase of political kinship phenomenon in South Sulawesi, especially from the perspective of political legacy of a candidate from particular political family. Utilizing a qualitative research method, the paper reveals that in kinship politics, interest in politics is transferred through political discussions within family, activities in political parties and social organizations. There is also process of transferring networks and family brands that will help a candidate to gain public supports. This paper also reveals that direct elections of local leaders and majority votes of proportional open list election system open more opportunities for political family to increase more power as family members are being elected in political leaderships. However, the quality of candidates tends to decrease as shown by relatively younger candidates with less political experience. The new political parties and the lack of regeneration provide opportunities for the members of political family to gain power in their early age. This paper suggests that the quality of candidate is an important feature of kinship politics which will enrich the previous studies in the characteristics of kinship politics as argued by Hess, Casey, Asako as well as Dal Bo and Querobin.


We investigated the taxonomic status of two sympatric morphospecies of squat lobsters from southern South America (Beagle Channel, Strait of Magellan, and Burdwood Bank), Munida gregaria and Munida subrugosa, by DNA sequence analysis of three mitochondrial (mt)DNA gene fragments [416 bp of 16S rDNA(165), 566 bp of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I(COI) and 418 bp of NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 (ND1)]; and the nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 (883–952 bp). We obtained a total of 79 sequences from 32 individuals. The 16S sequences of all M. gregaria and M. subrugosa were invariant and identical, whereas COI and ND1 showed 12 and 15 variable sites, respectively. These polymorphisms were shared between morphospecies. Interspecific Tamura–Nei distances for COI and ND1 sequences were 0.0024 and 0.0032, respectively, and were not significantly different from intraspecific distances (Kruskal–Wallis tests: P = 0.58 and P = 0.69, for COI and ND1, respectively). Similar to the results obtained from the mtDNA sequences, no relationship was found between the ITS1 maximum parsimony tree topology and the morphologic classification of specimens in M. gregaria and M. subrugosa. We conclude that M. gregaria and M. subrugosa from southern South America may either represent a case of a dimorphic species, or a case of incomplete lineage sorting. The fact that these two morphospecies did not show fixed differences over a total of 1947 bp analysed reinforces the hypothesis of a single dimorphic species. © 2008 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2008, 94, 421–434.


This paper studies the implications of inflation persistence (generated by backward-looking price setters) for monetary policy in a New Keynesian "input-output" model--a model with sticky prices in both intermediate and final goods sectors. Optimal policy under commitment depends on the degree of inflation persistence in both sectors. Under discretion, speed-limit targeting--targeting the change in the output gap--outperforms price-level and inflation targeting in the presence of inflation persistence. If inflation persistence is low in the intermediate goods sector, price-level targeting outperforms inflation targeting despite high inflation persistence in the final goods sector.


This Article examines a disturbing trend in civil litigation: the demise of the jury's historic prerogative to draw inferences from circumstantial evidence. Judges have arrogated to themselves the power to dismiss cases if they find the proffered inferences factually implausible. They have increasingly dismissed cases under the "equal-inference rule" by finding the proffered inferences no more plausible than other available inferences. And they have severely limited the powerful inferences jurors can draw when they conclude that a witness has lied. Commentators have bemoaned the heightened-pleading standard of the 2007 and 2009 U.S. Supreme Court cases, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, but that heightened standard is only one slice of a larger pattern of power reallocation that has diminished the jury's role in evaluating circumstantial evidence. The problem is particularly acute in cases involving defendants' subjective states of mind, where defendants typically have both exclusive control over the direct evidence and a motive to conceal the truth. Instead of testifying live before a diverse group of factfinders, defendants can avoid liability by hiding their demeanor in a paper record submitted only to a judge. This Article proposes a three-tiered solution that would revest juries with inference-drawing power in state-of-mind cases while simultaneously instilling protections against the perceived costs of jury trials. The proposed solution ensures that state-of-mind cases may always proceed to discovery and trial. But it also allows for fee shifting to dissuade plaintiffs and their attorneys from pursuing weak cases and encourages judges to invoke more frequently their existing power to order retrial of cases in which verdicts appear to be incorrect.


Deterrence is once again a topic of discussion and debate among US defense and policy communities. Although the concept has received comparatively little attention since the end of the Cold War, it seems poised to take center stage in America's national security policy during the coming decades. Adversary-specific deterrence strategies will likely become prominent in national and international security decisions for an increasingly multipolar world, with two wars already straining the military, concerns about a recalcitrant and militarized Russia, Iran's continued uranium enrichment activities, North Korea's nascent nuclear arsenal, and top-to-bottom military modernization in China. As part of this renewed interest in deterrence, conventional weapons are playing an important role. The "New Triad," consisting of both nuclear and advanced conventional weapons; proposals for conventionally armed intercontinental ballistic missiles; and, more generally, the concept of Prompt Global Strike all represent a growing belief that advanced conventional capabilities can substitute for some missions previously relegated solely to nuclear weapons. Although there has been considerable debate over these specific initiatives--for example, the effect that putting conventional warheads on ballistic missiles would have on strategic stability-most specialists agree that conventional forces can help reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US security strategy. In fact, in recent years the US military has expanded the concept of "strategic deterrence," a term that once encompassed only intercontinental nuclear weapons, to incorporate both nuclear and conventional forces, as well as diplomatic, economic, and informational tools. (1) The recent emphasis on substituting conventional for nuclear weapons in selected missions is an important step in developing a credible and robust twenty-first century deterrent, but it does not fully consider the unique logic and strategy of conventional deterrence. The current debate focuses primarily on the use of conventional weapons for "deterrence by punishment," the threat to impose unacceptable costs, such as the destruction of an adversary's strategic and high-value targets, in response to unwanted actions. Yet, one of the most important contributions of conventional forces is "deterrence by denial," the threat to deny an adversary the ability to achieve its military and political objectives through aggression. (2) If early strategists were accused of "conventionalization" by treating nuclear weapons merely as more powerful and effective tools of war, the current debate regarding conventional contributions to deterrence may be accused of "nuclearization," in that it treats conventional capabilities merely as a substitute for nuclear weapons. The following assessment has the purpose of expanding the discussion related to the role and utility of conventional forces in US strategies by reexamining the traditional logic of conventional deterrence. That logic focuses primarily on deterrence by denial, in the context of the modern international security environment. It is primarily concerned with the role of US conventional forces in extended deterrence, defined as the threat of force to protect allies and friends, rather than "central" or "homeland" deterrence. (3) This focus on extended deterrence, and especially on the role of deterrence by denial, highlights the importance of protecting territory from attack and invasion. Historically, the desire for control over specific territory has been a frequent motivator of interstate crises and conflict. (4) While interstate conventional wars have significantly declined since the end of the Second World War, the potential for conflict over Taiwan or on the Korean Peninsula, the prospect of future clashes over control of scarce natural resources, and the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia attest to the continued possibility of conflict over specific territory that has important strategic, economic, political, religious, historical, or socio-cultural significance. …


We used GPS data from paratransit vehicles to evaluate the impact of emergency vehicles on urban traffic speeds. The results indicate that speed variance is significantly higher during emergency preemption and the mean speeds of traffic flowing in the same direction as the emergency vehicle and on crossing streets are lower during preemption than during normal conditions. Regression results indicate that traffic on major arterials and traffic in the opposite direction of the emergency vehicle tend to have higher speed during signal preemption. Signal preemption during peak periods and duration of preemption had a significant negative impact on traffic speeds. Also, the transition time has a negative impact on traffic speeds. The authors recommend further research on how to optimize (minimize) the preemption duration as well as transition time. Also, the impact of median type and number of lanes should be evaluated.


Abstract The author looks into the phases of her personal experience in order to present the difficulties as well as the richness of 'living at the border' and of building bridges between different worlds. The prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture, above all in the world of research, obliges those who do not belong to this culture to undergo a form of tension between adaptation to language rules and ways of thinking that are foreign to them, and the need to maintain cultural and personal differences while trying to communicate. The experience of 'contagion' between ideas and ways of representing the world, that was seen within the Environment and School Initiatives Project (ENSI) project and that the author had the opportunity to share with John Elliott, shows the possibilities offered by these encounters. Issues such as those of the complexity and quality of learning have interweaved with those of action research and evaluation, and have crossed and enriched the values and cultures of which we were implicitly and explicitly the bearers. In the final section the author makes an attempt to illustrate the risks of today's globalisation and the tendency to eliminate borders, viewed as obstacles to individual freedom, for a kind of equalisation which, by eliminating the differences, also eliminates the possibility of development and of creativity.


In this thesis we propose using the scientific method to develop a deeper understanding of CPU schedulers; we use this approach to explain and understand the sometimes erratic behavior of CPU schedulers. This approach begins with introducing controlled workloads into commodity operating systems and observing the CPU scheduler's behavior. From these observations we are able infer the underlying CPU scheduling policy and create models that predict scheduling behavior.
We have made two advances in the area of applying scientific analysis to CPU schedulers. The first, CPU Futures, is a combination of predictive scheduling models embedded into the CPU scheduler and user-space controller that steers applications using feedback from these models. We have developed these predictive models for two different Linux schedulers (CFS and O(1)), based on two different scheduling paradigms (timesharing and proportional-share). Using three different case studies, we demonstrate that applications can use our predictive models to reduce interference from low-importance applications by over 70%, reduce web server starvation by an order of magnitude, and enforce scheduling policies that contradict the CPU scheduler's.
Harmony, our second contribution, is a framework and set of experiments for extracting multiprocessor scheduling policy from commodity operating systems. We used this tool to extract and analyze the policies of three Linux schedulers: O(1), CFS, and BFS. These schedulers often implement strikingly different policies. At the high level, the O(1) scheduler carefully selects processes for migration and strongly values processor affinity. In contrast, CFS continuously searches for a better balance and, as a result, selects processes for migration at random. BFS strongly values fairness and often disregards processor affinity.


Agricultural credit markets are dominated by two institutional retail lender groups, the cooperative Farm Credit System (FCS) and commercial banks. Together these two lender groups supply 70 percent of the farm sector's total credit needs. This analysis uses USDA's 2001 and 2002 Agricultural Resource Management Survey to examine whether these two lender groups were serving different segments of the farm credit market. Regulatory, legislative, structural, and competitiveness factors are expected to influence market segmentation. National estimates made using a binomial logit model indicate that the National farm credit market is segmented. When compared to commercial bank lending in 2001 and 2002, the FCS's lending was more focused on full-time commercial farms that were less heavily indebted, more profitable, and had greater debt repayment capacities. The FCS was also more likely to supply credit to young and beginning farmers and to farms located in areas having access to a FCS office, but where few agricultural banks were located.


The recent financial crisis led to sweeping reforms that inspired countless references to the financial reforms of the New Deal. Comparable to the reforms of the New Deal in both scope and scale, the 2,300 - page Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 - the main regulatory reform package introduced in the United States - also shared with New Deal reforms the assumption that the underlying cause of the crisis was misbehavior by securities market participants, exacerbated by lax regulatory oversight. With Wasting a Crisis, Paul G. Mahoney offers persuasive research to show that this now almost universally accepted narrative of market failure - broadly similar across financial crises - is formulated by political actors hoping to deflect blame from prior policy errors. Drawing on a cache of data, from congressional investigations, litigation, regulatory reports, and filings to stock quotes from the 1920s and '30s, Mahoney moves beyond the received wisdom about the financial reforms of the New Deal, showing that lax regulation was not a substantial cause of the financial problems of the Great Depression. As new regulations were formed around this narrative of market failure, not only were the majority largely ineffective, they were also often counter-productive, consolidating market share in the hands of leading financial firms. An overview of twenty-first-century securities reforms from the same analytic perspective, including Dodd-Frank and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, shows a similar pattern and suggests that they too may offer little benefit to investors and some measurable harm.


Between 2006 and 2009, the OECD undertook a series of reviews of national rural development policy. The reviews largely followed a consistent approach and used the OECD's New Rural Paradigm (NRP) as a common metric for assessing various national approaches. Although the reviews cannot be considered a formal evaluation of these rural policies, they do provide: a fairly uniform description of the policies being followed, a critique of the policies, and recommendations on how policies might be modified to make them more consistent with the philosophy of the NRP. In the paper we describe the review process and provide a synthesis of the OECD findings for the nine rural reviews. In all cases there was some evidence that parts of the NRP were being followed, but that significant parts of it were not yet adopted. Because of the diversity of situations, it is not surprising that each nation continues to follow an individual path in developing its rural policy, even though all members of the OECD have formally accepted the NRP as a guide for rural policy.


Although the growth of the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) calls for more diverse exercises of reviewing, most reviews of CSR research present the organising categories on which they build as taken-for-granted. In so doing, they reify a structural-functionalist orientation and a linear view of time while failing to represent accurately alternative post-structural and antistructural CSR paradigms. Building on an analysis of 40 reviews of the CSR field and on insights from the social studies of science, this paper revisits the notion of field re-presentation and highlights the need for building on categories, which embed a richer set of ontological assumptions to represent the CSR field in a manner that could maintain a dose of ontological and epistemological pluralism and diversity. We finally discuss the implications of our analysis to enhance CSR theorybuilding, cross-fertilize insights from distinct CSR paradigms and develop alternative assumptions to investigate empirically CSR phenomena.


Acylated amino acids function as important components of the cellular membrane in some bacteria. Biosynthesis is initiated by the N-acylation of the amino acid and this is followed by subsequent O-acylation of the acylated molecule resulting in the production of the mature diacylated amino acid lipid. In this study we use both genetics and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to characterize the biosynthesis and function of novel diacylated glycine lipid (GL) species in Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. We, and others, have previously reported the identification of a gene, named glsB in this study, that encodes a N-acyltransferase activity responsible for the production of a monoacylated glycine called N-acyl-3-hydroxy-palmitoyl glycine (or commendamide). In all of the Bacteroidales genomes so far sequenced the glsB gene is located immediately downstream from a gene, named glsA, also predicted to encode a protein with acyltransferase activity. We use LC-MS to show that co-expression of glsB and glsA results in the production of GL in Escherichia coli. We constructed a deletion mutant of the glsB gene in B. thetaiotaomicron and we confirm that glsB is required for the production of GL in B. thetaiotaomicron. Moreover, we show that glsB is important for the ability of B. thetaiotaomicron to adapt to stress and colonize the mammalian gut. Therefore, this report is the first to describe the genetic requirements for the biosynthesis of GL, a novel diacylated amino acids species that contributes to fitness in the human gut bacterium, B. thetaiotaomicron.


Remote sensing is of great interest for the study and characterization of the vegetation and of the agricultural crops, in order to monitor them and to develop predictable patterns regarding the evolution of the crops and also for the purpose of the decision making process in real time. This paper aims to perform a qualitative and quantitative analysis between the supervised and unsupervised methods of classification of satellite imagery. In this context, a Rapid Eye satellite image was used at a 5m resolution taken from the www.planet.com platform from May 2016, which underwent complex preprocessing and processing operations to retrieve useful information about to the vegetal cover. The studied area is within the Experimental Didactic Station of BUSAMV Timisoara. Supervised classification was based on the Maximum Likelihood algorithm and the unsupervised was based on the ISO DATA algorithm. The Rapid Eye scene was process with ArcGIS v. 10.5 software.


Comparable to the South African legal system, the Swazi legal system has the characteristics of a dual legal system. Though the common law of Swaziland is Roman-Dutch law, Swazi customary law has a firm hold in the Swazi legal system. With a population in the region of 1.2 million, made up of different religious denominations, religion in Swaziland is an important matter. Although Christianity is the majority religion in Swaziland, there has generally been freedom of religion from an early stage. This was recently confirmed in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland Act 1 of 2005, which came into operation on February 8, 2006. The focus of this presentation is on the fairly new constitutional provisions dealing with freedom of religion in Swaziland. The first part of this contribution consists of a general discussion dealing with the commonalities of and interaction between the South African and Swazi legal systems, as well as certain key elements in the making of the Swazi Constitution. The second part deals with specific constitutional provisions pertaining to religion in general and freedom of religion in particular. The contribution concludes with a few comments on the role the South African constitutional jurisprudence has to play in future Swazi constitutional adjudication.


The 5G networks are envisioned to use mmWave bands to provide gigabit-per-second throughput. To extend the coverage of extreme data rates provided by mmWave technologies, we consider two-hop relaying based on D2D communication in an integrated mmWave/sub-6 GHz 5G network. Compared to single-hop multi-cell networks, two-hop D2D relaying in this network will complicate the network management. Relay selection and beam selection should be considered together as relaying in mmWave bands would use directional beamforming transmissions. MmWave/ sub-6 GHz multi-connectivity has to be managed, and resources have to be allocated across frequencies with disparate propagation conditions. In this article, a hierarchical network control framework is considered to address the relay and beam selection, resource allocation, and interference coordination problems. The sub-6 GHz band is responsible for network control and for providing relatively reliable communications, while the mmWave band provides high-throughput enhancement. Opportunistic relay selection and mmWave analog beamforming are used to limit the signaling overhead. We evaluate mmWave/sub-6 GHz multi-connectivity with and without two-hop relaying in urban outdoor scenarios for different site deployment densities. MmWave/sub-6 GHz multi-connectivity with relaying shows considerable promise for reaching consistent user experience with high end-to-end throughput in a cost-effective network deployment.


Some twenty years ago, the National Library Conference, held at Rome in 1979, called for the creation of a "national library service" (Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale, SBN). The Conference was urged by the Italian Library Association (AIB) as an occasion for reflecting on the lack of coordination between the central government and the regional governments engendered by the 1972 Presidential Decree which decentralised powers regarding libraries. The period which has passed is sufficiently long to draw up a critical balance sheet. In truth, after the enthusiasm and hopes of the initial years, the SBN was periodically the object of, generally negative, balance sheets, and the strong delusion led to the project being blamed for the shortcomings and negative elements which instead belonged to Italy's library services as a whole. The author appraises the project's problems in a constructive spirit. The paper first analyses the aims of the SBN project, the players, automation as a tool of cooperation and the project's decisional structures, and then examines the project's prospects. In some aspects, the SBN should return to its origins, to that nucleus of sound values which in 1979 induced the link between the nascent idea of a "national library service" to Italy's need to equip itself with an information access structure "for the lifelong education of its citizens". In short, it should revert to its initial focus on serving the citizen. The citizen rather than the user. The citizen who has the right to access all information and knowledge; the citizen who does not distinguish libraries according to their governing bodies or size, but who has the right to access the services of a national infrastructure from all corners of Italy. From this perspective, there is perhaps no longer any sense in speaking of the SBN as a national "library" network. The library profession should embrace the concept of "network for the access to knowledge and education", which includes not only the library services, but entails participation by all the players involved in the cognitive processes: libraries, information services of various types, publishers, schools, universities and training organizations. We should be aware that we have to manage a sort of "distributed database of knowledge". From this perspective, the SBN cannot merely be synonymous with library automation. It should be independent from any software package as the citizen has the right to access services of a national infrastructure independent of the library automation system chosen by the local authorities. The entire SBN technical documentation should be made available to allow all interested players, perhaps gradually and within a precise framework of rules, to develop software applications in a regime of competition. The local bodies would thus be able to choose the best quality product at market prices and following a regular call for tenders, with considerable savings as regards maintenance, assistance and management costs. In this context, the development of the software and definition of the services should take place within the framework of the functional standards and specifications defined by the library services. In accordance with this formulation, the national and local services envisaged within the ambit of the SBN should be more precisely defined. We should define the levels of participation in the services, including libraries or library systems interested in copy cataloguing and not only in shared cataloguing, as well as new ways of enriching the national catalogue. Furthermore, the question of the circulation of documents should be resolved, by eliminating the bureaucratic obstacles which have hampered it and adopting the relevant standards so as to allow ILL transactions with other systems.


Mathematical modeling and computer simulations have become an integral part of modern biological research. The strength of theoretical approaches is in the simplification of complex biological systems. We here consider the general problem of receptor–ligand binding in the context of antibody–antigen binding. On the one hand, we establish a quantitative mapping between macroscopic binding rates of a deterministic differential equation model and their microscopic equivalents as obtained from simulating the spatiotemporal binding kinetics by stochastic agent-based models. On the other hand, we investigate the impact of various properties of B cell-derived receptors—such as their dimensionality of motion, morphology, and binding valency—on the receptor–ligand binding kinetics. To this end, we implemented an algorithm that simulates antigen binding by B cell-derived receptors with a Y-shaped morphology that can move in different dimensionalities, i.e., either as membrane-anchored receptors or as soluble receptors. The mapping of the macroscopic and microscopic binding rates allowed us to quantitatively compare different agent-based model variants for the different types of B cell-derived receptors. Our results indicate that the dimensionality of motion governs the binding kinetics and that this predominant impact is quantitatively compensated by the bivalency of these receptors.


High-frequency trading has significant influence on today's capital markets and has received massive attention in the media. This research aims to provide a conceptual understanding of high-frequency capital markets by analysing information and value flows between relevant high-frequency trading market participants. In a first step, market participants including traders, brokers, market platforms, technology providers, information providers, and clearing agencies are introduced. Second, the trading process is described focusing on the three most important phases, namely the information phase, order routing phase, and order matching phase. Furthermore, we review widely adopted high-frequency trading strategies such as market making, arbitrage trading, and pinging. Expert interviews are used to provide practical insights on the perception of high-frequency trading and the necessity for improved regulation. We merge theoretical knowledge and our findings from practice to develop the HFT Value Information Framework visualizing information and value flows between market participants. We discuss the interrelations between market participants in current high-frequency capital markets and describe implications for different stakeholders. Finally, the implications for regulatory bodies are discussed and possible future research opportunities are identified.


This book is a practical and theoretical analysis of public protection and criminal justice. This area has seen immense change in recent years and the book examines the recent legislative, policy and organisational changes and their impact on the various agencies involved, including the police service and the probation service. Public protection has now assumed a position of dominance within the criminal justice agenda. New ways of working have necessitated changes to organisational culture, which in turn has begun to blur traditional criminal justice boundaries. Agencies must now work together by law and the public protection 'family' has extended to include a range of agencies, such as housing and leisure services. This book explores the problematic concept of 'dangerousness' and its application to criminal justice. All recent policy and legislative initiatives are examined within a critical context that questions the need for populist, punitive agendas, for example the creation of MAPPA (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Panels) and changes in relation to the National Probation Service. Recent relevant legislative references are collated in a useful appendix at the back of the book. The book is a practical and useful reference, ideal reading for students and academics working critically in the area who wish to understand how public protection has reached its present status. It is also a useful reference for probation officers, police officers and policy makers.


This review classifies genetic-algorithm environments into application-oriented systems, algorithm-oriented systems, and toolkits. It also presents detailed case studies of leading environments. Following Holland's (1975) original genetic algorithm proposal, many variations of the basic algorithm have been introduced. However. an important and distinctive feature of all GAs is the population-handling technique. The original GA adopted a generational replacement policy, according to which the whole population is replaced in each generation. Conversely, the steady-state policy used by many subsequent GAs selectively replaces the population. After we introduce GA models and their programming, we present a survey of GA programming environments. We have grouped them into three major classes according to their objectives: application-oriented systems hide the details of GAs and help users develop applications for specific domains; algorithm-oriented systems are based on specific GA models; and toolkits are flexible environments for programming a range of GAs and applications. We review the available environments and describe their common features and requirements. As case studies, we select some specific systems for more detailed examination. To conclude, we discuss likely future developments in GA programming environments.<<ETX>>


Abstract The paper argues that the US‐ Caribbean border is not a myth. It is an important security border for the Caribbean states as well as the US and hence merits increased attention. To support this claim, the paper explains and assesses the US‐Caribbean border in four ways. First, the paper uses the dependence theory to analyse the occurrences in the Caribbean region and their impact on this border. Second, the paper argues that the US‐Caribbean border is based on increased cooperation used to curtail border security problems, such as drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Third, the paper examines the US‐Caribbean Third Border Initiative and argues that the Heads of States from the CARICOM region and the US support this arrangement as a mechanism to reduce the US‐Caribbean border problems. Finally, the paper concludes with an assessment of the future of this border through an examination of the benefits, prospects and outlooks of the US‐Caribbean border. The main conclusion of this article is that the US‐ Caribbean border should be utilised not in border restrictive ways but to increase US‐Caribbean border‐related cooperation in confronting security threats in the current post‐September 11th period.


Conversational systems are becoming more and more promising by playing an important role in human-computer communications. A conversational system is supposed to be intelligent to enable human-like interactions. The long-term goal of smart human-computer conversations is challenging and heavily driven by data. Thanks to the prosperity of Web 2.0, a large volume of conversational data become available to establish human-computer conversational systems. Given a human issued message, namely a query, a traditional conversational system would provide a response after proper training of how to respond like humans. In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for neural generative conversations: smarter response with a suggestion is provided given the query. We assume that the new conversation mode which proactively introduces contents as next utterances, keeping user actively engaged. To address the task, we propose a novel integrated model to handle both the response generation and the suggestion generation. From the experimental results, we verify the effectiveness of the new neural generative conversation paradigm.


The promotion of liberalised and deregulated markets by bilateral and multilateral aid donors, and by global institutions such as the WTO, has led to significant attention being paid to competition and regulatory reforms in developing economies. The process of reform involves the transfer and diffusion of market models derived from practice and theory in developed countries. However, in developing countries, regulation needs to do more than simply promote competitiveness and consumer interests: it also needs to ensure that the market nurtures development. By rigorously examining the numerous impacts of regulation, this book will help to fill a significant gap in the literature on economic and social development. The book draws together contributions from leading experts across a range of disciplines including economics, law, politics and governance, public management and business management. The authors begin with an extensive overview of the issues of regulation and competition in developing countries, and carefully illustrate the important themes and concepts involved. Using a variety of country and sector case studies, they move on to focus on the problems of applicability and adaptation that are experienced in the process of transferring best practice policy models from developed to developing countries. The book presents a clear agenda for further empirical research and is notable for its rigorous exploration of the links between theory and practice. Although there is substantial interest in competition and regulation, as yet there has been relatively little investigation of these issues in developing economies. This book redresses the balance and will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, teachers and students interested in development economics and development studies. It will also be of great relevance for practitioners and policymakers working in the fields of competition policy and regulatory reform.


Most critiques of the Supreme Court's June 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush (including Justice Scalia's dissent in the same) have at their core the argument that Justice Kennedy's majority opinion is inconsistent with prior precedent, specifically the Supreme Court's 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. A closer read of Eisentrager, though, reveals a surprisingly unclear opinion by Justice Jackson, that seems to go out of its way to reach various issues on the merits even after suggesting that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by 22 Germans convicted of war crimes by a U.S. military tribunal in China. Put another way, it is hard to understand the scope of the rule that the Eisentrager majority thought it was enunciating, and therefore the extent to which it should have also applied in the Guantanamo cases. This problem is not unique to Eisentrager, though. In the Court's June 2008 decision in Munaf v. Geren, it also brushed aside a post-World War II precedent -- the 1948 decision in Hirota v. MacArthur, again because it was not clear exactly which facts the earlier jurisdiction-precluding decision relied upon. As I explore in this essay -- part of the Tulsa Law Review's annual Supreme Court review -- these decisions are emblematic of a judicial methodology that is no longer in vogue, thanks to the Supreme Court's 1998 decision in Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment. After Steel Co., federal courts can no longer reach issues over which they lack jurisdiction, and so are far more careful to resolve jurisdictional questions at the outset, before moving on (where possible) to the merits. But what effect does Steel Co. have on prior precedent, where the Court's decision leaves unclear how much the merits actually mattered? As I explore in this essay, Steel Co. may itself compel that contemporary courts narrowly construe jurisdiction-precluding rules in cases like Eisentrager and Hirota, on the assumption that those courts would not have analyzed questions the answers to which could not have mattered. Reasonable people may disagree about whether Boumediene and Munaf were rightly decided, but the critical point for present purposes is that both were decided on jurisprudential clean slates.


When parents dispute child custody, courts determine their rights by using a "best interests of the child" analysis. In this context, courts consider a host of factors, including parental sexuality. When considering the suitability of custody for a lesbian or gay parents, most courts employ a nexus test - one that requires a showing of a nexus between parental sexuality and the well-being of the child. A smaller number continue to use a harsher test that disqualifies lesbian and gay parents under a per se rule. This article argues that closer examination reveals that even the apparently more liberal nexus test is rife with opportunities for injection of irrational judicial bias. It therefore proposes a series of measures designed to ensure that lesbian and gay parents and their children are treated fairly by the courts.


A basic feedback control problem is that of obtaining some desired stability property from a system which contains uncertainties due to unknown inputs into the system. Despite such imperfect knowledge in the selected mathematical model, we often seek to devise controllers that will steer the system in a certain required fashion. Various classes of controllers whose design is based on the method of Lyapunov are known for both discrete [4], [10], [15], and continuous [3–9], [11] models described by difference and differential equations, respectively. Recently, a theory for what is known as dynamic systems on time scales has been built which incorporates both continuous and discrete times, namely, time as an arbitrary closed sets of reals, and allows us to handle both
systems simultaneously [1], [2], [12], [13]. This theory permits one to get some insight into and better understanding of the subtle differences between discrete and continuous systems. We shall, in this paper, utilize the framework of the theory of dynamic systems on time scales to investigate the stability properties of conditionally invariant sets which are then applied to discuss controlled systems with uncertain elements. For the notion of conditionally invariant set and its stability properties, see [14]. Our results offer a new approach to the problem in question.


The increasing demand for frozen lobster tails from world markets has brought the Indian spiny lobster
to the lime light. An assessment of the total lobster resources of the country is made. Among half a dozen
species of spiny lobsters reported from the different coastal areas and which are enumerated, Panulirus
homarus is the most important from the commercial point of view. Details of the distribution of the
different species along the coastline are given. Kanyakumari District on the south-west coast is the area
with the maximum production. An estimate of the population of this and nearby areas is made both by
the fishing success method as well as the Petersen method of tag recovery. The two population estimates
are quite in agreement. Based on the population estimates the present rate of exploitation is also calculated.
Species of potential commercial importance obtained in recent exploratory cruises in deeper waters off
Kerala are mentioned.


Primary and secondary W-Bi minerals are minor components of two greisen veins associated with the Palaeocene Mournes Granite Complex in Northern Ireland. The primary mineral, ferberite (wolframite with Fe>Mn), forms 2-3mm crystals associated with well-crystallized quartz in a vein through greisened granite. Associated with the ferberite crystals is a suite of secondary Fe-W-Bi-Mo minerals that formed during late-stage hydrothermal or supergene alteration. These comprise bismutite, russellite, a Bi-bearing, hydrated Fe-W mineral similar to hydrokenoelsmoreite (formerly ferritungstite), and an intergrowth of scheelite with an unknown Ca- and Mo-bearing mineral. This is the first record of these secondary minerals (apart from scheelite) from Ireland. Microprobe analyses and back-scattered electron images reveal a range of mineral compositions and replacement textures that help to explain the mineral forming processes. The occurrences are comparable to W-Bi-Mo mineralisation in SW England and the English Lake District.


Studies that have analyzed the efficiency of developing countries have estimated non-spatial frontier models. We extend this approach by accounting for spatial dependence among African countries. In particular, we estimate a spatial Durbin stochastic production frontier model. We also make novel use of the efficiency scores from our spatial model to suggest a direction for regional integration policy for Africa that policy makers can consider. A previous suggestion to promote regional integration and income growth in Southern Africa has been to use South Africa as a regional integration hub and to encourage other countries in the region to improve economic links with the hub. We continue with this line of enquiry and although we conclude that there are currently no African countries that are ideal candidates to be a regional integration hub, we suggest three other countries that policy makers may consider using as hubs in the future. We therefore suggest that it would be prudent to consider implementing policies to expedite the readiness of these countries to act as integration hubs.


Context. Massive star evolution remains only partly constrained. In particular, the exact role of rotation has been questioned by puzzling properties of OB stars in the Magellanic Clouds.
Aims. Our goal is to study the relation between surface chemical composition and rotational velocity, and to test predictions of evolutionary models including rotation.
Methods. We have performed a spectroscopic analysis of a sample of fifteen Galactic O7-8 giant stars. This sample is homogeneous in terms of mass, metallicity and evolutionary state. It is made of stars with a wide range of projected rotational velocities.
Results. We show that the sample stars are located on the second half of the main sequence, in a relatively narrow mass range (25–40 M⊙). Almost all stars with projected rotational velocities above 100 km s-1 have N/C ratios about ten times the initial value. Below 100 km s-1 a wide range of N/C values is observed. The relation between N/C and surface gravity is well reproduced by various sets of models. Some evolutionary models including rotation are also able to consistently explain slowly rotating, highly enriched stars. This is due to differential rotation which efficiently transports nucleosynthesis products and allows the surface to rotate slower than the core. In addition, angular momentum removal by winds amplifies surface braking on the main sequence. Comparison of the surface composition of O7-8 giant stars with a sample of B stars with initial masses about four times smaller reveal that chemical enrichment scales with initial mass, as expected from theory.
Conclusions. Although evolutionary models that include rotation face difficulties in explaining the chemical properties of O- and B-type stars at low metallicity, some of them can consistently account for the properties of main-sequence Galactic O stars in the mass range 25–40 M⊙.


This short piece describes the failure of the widespread plans to provide public wireless internet access. It identifies three interrelated types of causes for the near-universal failure of these ambitious plans: regulatory, technical, and economic. Essentially, most municipalities opted to use WiFi to provide internet access because residents' computers already supported WiFi and because FCC regulations do not require operating licenses for WiFi. But the regulations around this unlicensed technology restrict its operation. Combining these regulatory restrictions with the physical limitations of signals on WiFi's frequency led to a technology inadequate to blanket a city in wireless internet signals. Finally, the business plans for public WiFi both failed to anticipate how residents would actually use the service and failed to anticipate that the private telecommunications sector would soon provide high-speed wireless internet access using better-suited technologies such as 3G.


A supramolecular motif listed as 'carbon bonded' or 'hydrogen bonded' may have the character of both. We highlight the hybrid character of the non-covalent interaction in a bis-Schiff base of N-allyl isatin by theoretical studies, the solid state structure of which is mainly driven by a non-covalent carbon/hydrogen bonded self-complementary dimeric {⋯C–N–CO/H–C–N–CO}2 synthon.


Abstract Objective: The prevalence of abnormal behavioural responses to a variety of stimuli among individuals with autism has led researchers to examine whether physiological reactivity (PR) is typical in this population. This article reviewed studies assessing PR to sensory, social and emotional, and stressor stimuli in individuals with autism. Methods: Systematic searches of electronic databases identified 57 studies that met our inclusion criteria. Studies were analysed to determine: (a) participant characteristics; (b) physiological measures used; (c) PR to sensory, social and emotional or stressor stimuli; (d) the relation between PR and behavioural or psychological variables and (e) baseline physiological activity. A novel measure of methodological quality suitable for use with non-randomized, non-interventional, psychophysiological studies was also developed and applied. Results: Individuals with autism were found to respond differently than typically developing controls in 78.6%, 66.7% and 71.4% of sensory, social and emotional, and stressor stimulus classes, respectively. However, this extant literature is characterized by variable and inconsistent findings, which do not appear to be accounted for by varying methodological quality, making it difficult to determine what specific factors differentiate individuals with autism who present with atypical PR from those who do not. Conclusions: Despite this uncertainty, individual differences in PR are clearly present in autism, suggesting additional research is needed to determine the variables relating to PR among those with ASD and to examine the possible existence of physiological subtype responders in the population.


Although the definition and measurement techniques for atmospheric "black carbon" ("BC") or "elemental carbon'' ("EC") have long been subjects of scientific controversy, the recent discovery of light-absorbing carbon that is not black ("brown carbon, C brown ") makes it imperative to reassess and redefine the components that make up light-absorbing carbonaceous matter (LAC) in the atmosphere. Evidence for the atmospheric presence of C brown comes from (1) spectral aerosol light absorption measurements near specific combustion sources, (2) observations of spectral properties of water extracts of continental aerosol, (3) laboratory studies indicating the formation of light-absorbing organic matter in the atmosphere, and (4) indirectly from the chemical analogy of aerosol species to colored natural humic substances. We show that brown carbon may severely bias measurements of "BC" and "EC" over vast parts of the troposphere, especially those strongly polluted by biomass burning, where the mass concentration of C brown is high relative to that of soot carbon. Chemical measurements to determine "EC" are biased by the refractory nature of C brown as well as by complex matrix interferences. Optical measurements of "BC" suffer from a number of problems: (1) many of the presently used instruments introduce a substantial bias into the determination of aerosol light absorption, (2) there is no unique conversion factor between light absorption and "EC" or "BC" concentration in ambient aerosols, and (3) the difference in spectral properties between the different types of LAC, as well as the chemical complexity of C brown , lead to several conceptual as well as practical complications. We also suggest that due to the sharply increasing absorption of C brown towards the UV, single-wavelength light absorption measurements may not be adequate for the assessment of absorption of solar radiation in the troposphere. We discuss the possible consequences of these effects for our understanding of tropospheric processes, including their influence on UV-irradiance, atmospheric photochemistry and radiative transfer in clouds.


Identities arise as they mitigate uncertainty through control efforts aimed at other identities; meanings – verbal or not – surface in intermittent switchings of identities among socio-cultural phases known as netdoms (network-domains). Stories are accretions of meanings and form the texture of culture as interpretive context. Further compounds of stories – or forms of discourse – can be mobilized for action (narratives) or frame social time (story-lines and plots). All these forms of discourse support a view of culture as practice and as a basis for social science. While the sociological conundrum of structure and culture is usually solved by proclaiming that these two dimensions of social life are dual and co-constitutive – interdependent yet autonomous – this paper suggests another approach that takes the dynamic of identity and control as a starting point and helps resolve the so-called micro-macro gap.


Mining, though contributing a declining share to the South African economy, is still a significant employer and earner of foreign exchange revenue. It has a troubled past and, for good reason, was one of the first targets of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) at the dawn of South Africa's democratic dispensation. Twenty-three years later, animosity between the state and the mining industry is more pronounced than ever before. This is exemplified by the response of the public and investors to the latest iteration of the Mining Charter. One of the transformative goals that has proved elusive is the delivery of meaningful benefit to near-mine communities. Community trusts have traditionally been used as vehicles for the receipt of mine royalty payments. This has created intractable conflict within and between communities. This latest charter stipulates that a full 8% of a required 30% ownership stake by a black person must be given to communities in the form of community trusts. However, these trusts are now to be administered by a new agency that has yet to be created. The charter provides no detail as to how this agency will be constructed or governed, but it does provide for the means of funding it. Some commentators have already suggested that the proposed channels are illegal. This paper provides a brief overview of the mining sector's contradictory contribution to South Africa's development, which signals the imperative for reform. It then focuses specifically on past attempts to improve community welfare using tribal trusts (given that a large proportion of mining takes place on communal land in the former homelands). These cases provide an example of what is to be avoided in AUTHOR


Abstract. Hyperspectral infrared sounding in a CubeSat will provide a new dimension to the current suite of IR sounders by allowing measurements at multiple times of day and enabling formation flying of IR sounders for new data products such as atmospheric motion vector winds. We focus on technology development during the CubeSat Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (CIRAS) project sponsored by the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) and coincident studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Projects, Planning, and Analysis (OPPA). The CIRAS approach incorporates key instrument technologies, developed at the Microdevices Lab (MDL) at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), including a two-dimensional array of High Operating Temperature Barrier Infrared Detector (HOT-BIRD) material, selected for its high uniformity, low cost, low noise, and higher operating temperatures than traditional materials. The second key technology is a mid-wavelength infrared grating spectrometer designed by Ball Aerospace with a JPL MDL slit and immersion grating to provide hyperspectral infrared imaging in a CubeSat volume. The third key technology is a blackbody calibration target fabricated with MDL's black silicon to have very high emissivity in a flat plate construction. JPL has completed design and breadboard of the mechanical, electronic, and thermal subsystems for the CIRAS payload including a HOT-BIRD focal plane assembly, with filters in a dewar and a breadboard of the electronics and scan mirror assembly. Blue Canyon Technologies, developer of the CIRAS 6U CubeSat, completed the Final Design Review for the spacecraft. NOAA is sponsoring the continued development of the CIRAS Proto-Flight Model (PFM) instrument at JPL using many of the existing subsystems. Completion of the PFM is expected in mid 2021, with launch no earlier than 2022.


To study the cell cycle and regulation by glucose of Bcell proliferation, B-cell-rich pancreatic islets of rat fetuses (22 days gestational age) were maintained in tissue culture at various glucose concentrations. The proliferating islet cells were synchronized with hydroxyurea and their rate of progress through the cell cycle studied by pulse labeling with 3H-thymidine and after exposure to colchicine. The time for a full cell cycle was estimated to 14.9 h and could be subdivided into a G1 phase of a duration of 2.5 h, an S phase of 6.4 h, a G2 phase of 5.5 h, and an M phase of 0.5 h. Although glucose significantly stimulated B-cell proliferation, the progression of cells through the cell cycle was similar at different glucose concentrations. The experiments furthermore suggested that only a limited pool of islet cells was able to proliferate. Glucose seemed to stimulate B-cell proliferation by increasing the number of cells entering the cell cycle. From the cell cycle data it was possible to calculate the rate of formation of new B-cells, which ranged from 4.2%/24 h in 2.7 mM glucose to 10.4%/24 h in 16.7 mM. When the accumulation of mitotic figures during colchicine treatment was used as an alternative method for estimation of newly formed B-cells the cell birth rates were found to be 3.1 and 6.0%/24 h at 2.7 and 16.7 mM glucose, respectively. The notion that only a small fraction of B-cells takes part in proliferation would explain the limited regenerative capacity of this cell type. It remains to be established whether such a limitation is of significance in the development of maturity-onset diabetes.


The Catholic Church in Quebec has oftentimes been regarded as an institution which had, for many years, thwarted the economic and social growth of Quebec. The aim of this thesis, however, is to argue that the Church understood, at least to a certain extend, the need to keep up with the pace of industrialization and urbanization in Quebec. In order to substantiate this hypothesis I will investigate the rise of the consumer society in Quebec, focusing primarily on the sale of religious goods in major Quebec newspapers. I argue that there is a definfite link between these sales and the role of the Catholic Church at the time. I posit that a conclusion can be reached from them which will allow us to better understand the ways in which the Church took its place within the consumer society. The adaptation of the Roman Catholic Church to "modernization" is the subject of my analysis and the advertisements in major Quebec newspapers are the object. By connecting these two it is my intention to unveil a new perspective on the Church: how it used Capitalism and was used by it.


Superstring theory posits that as complicated as nature may seem to the naive observer,
the variety of observed phenomena may be explained by postulating that at the fundamental
scale, matter is composed of lines of energy, namely strings. These oscillating lines
would be elementary and would hence have no substructure. They are expected to be incredibly tiny, their line-like structure would become noticeable at scales close to the string scale (which may lie anywhere from the TeV scale all the way up to the Planck scale) and would appear to be point-like to the macroscopic observer. Internal consistency then also requires the presence of higher dimensional objects, namely D-branes, all of which conspire and combine in such a way so as to give rise to the observable Universe. Advances in cosmology suggest the early universe was much hotter and denser than is the Universe at present, that the Universe has expanded and continues to expand (exponentially in fact) at present. This in turn has led a number of theorists to point out the remarkable possibility that some of these strings or D-branes were also stretched with the expansion. The resulting macroscopic strings, the so-called cosmic strings, would potentially stretch across the entire Universe.
Cosmic strings make their presence manifest by oscillating, scattering off other structures,
by decaying, producing gravitational waves and so on, and this in turn hints at
the available handles that may be used to observe them. Before we can hope to observe
cosmic strings however, the first step is then clearly to understand these properties which
determine their evolution. A number of approximate (classical) descriptions of cosmic
strings have been constructed to date, but approximations break down, especially when
potentially interesting things happen (e.g. close to cusps, i.e. points on the string that
reach the speed of light) and can obscure the physics. Thankfully, one can go beyond
these approximations: all properties of cosmic strings can be concisely and accurately
contained or encoded in a single object, the so-called fundamental cosmic string vertex
operator. In the present thesis I construct precisely this, covariant vertex operators for
general cosmic strings and this is the first such construction.
Cosmic strings, being macroscopic, are likely to exhibit classical behaviour in which
case they would most accurately be described by a string theory analogue of the well
known harmonic oscillator coherent states. By minimally extending the standard definition
of coherent states, so as to include the string theory requirements, I go on to construct
both open and closed covariant coherent state vertex operators. The naive construction
of the latter requires the existence of a lightlike compactification of spacetime. When the
lightlike winding states in the underlying Hilbert space are projected out, the resulting
vertex operators have a classical interpretation and can consistently propagate in noncompact spacetime. Using the DDF map I identify explicitly the corresponding general lightcone gauge classical solutions around which the exact macroscopic quantum states
are fluctuating. We go on to show that both the covariant gauge coherent vertex operators,
the corresponding lightcone gauge coherent states and the classical solutions all share
the same mass and angular momenta, which leads us to conjecture that the covariant and
lightcone gauge states are different manifestations of the same state and share identical interactions. Apart from the coherent state vertices I also present a complete set of covariant mass eigenstate vertex operators and these may also be relevant in cosmic string evolution. Finally, I also present the first amplitude computation with the coherent states, the graviton emission amplitude (including the effects of gravitational backreaction) for a simple class of cosmic string loops. As a byproduct of the above, I find that the fundamental building blocks of arbitrarily massive covariant string states are given by elementary Schur polynomials (equivalently complete Bell polynomials). This construction enables one to address the aforementioned questions concerning the properties of cosmic strings, their cosmological signatures, and may lead to the first observations of such objects in the sky. This in turn would be a remarkable way of verifying Superstring theory as the framework underlying the structure of our Universe.


Previous studies in our laboratory demonstrated that in partially pancreatectomized diabetic rats fed an atherogenic diet containing 5 per cent cholesterol, serum lipid levels rose higher and cardiovascular lesions were more frequent than in nondiabetic rats fed the same diet for three to seven months. This experiment posed the question: Didthe diabetic state per se or the higher levels of cholesterol associated with it account for the greater number of lesions in the diabetic animals? To answer this question, the experiment was repeated, but this time some of the diabetic rats were fed diets with lower amounts of cholesterol than before in order to keep their serum cholesterol levels within the same range as those of the nondiabetic animals (intact or partially pancreatectomized but normoglyceinic) fed the basal atherogenic diet. As before, diabetic rats fed the athero genie diet containing 5 per cent cholesterol developed higher levels of serum cholesterol and more lesions than similarly fed nondiabetics. Other serum lipids were also higher in this group, especially triglycerides and free cholesterol. When serum cholesterol levels in the diabetic animals were not permitted to exceed those in the nondiabetics, the incidence of vascular lesions in the two groups did not differ. The diabetic state per se in this mode, therefore, seemed to play a pathogenic role in atherogenesis by elevating serum lipid levels. Results would indicate that, under theseconditions, at any given level of serum lipid, the diabetic artery is not more susceptible than a nondiabetic artery to this type of atherogenic stimulus.


Bifunctional magnetic nanoparticles with octadecyl and phosphate groups were synthesized by thiol–ene click chemistry and applied for pre-concentration and extraction of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs). Vinyl phosphonic acid functionalized MNPs (Fe3O4@VPA) behaved as clickable sites and reacted with octadecanethiol (C18-SH) by a thiol–ene click reaction. The resultant material (Fe3O4@VPA@C18) was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, FTIR, transmission electron microscopy and magnetic measurements. The results revealed that the particles exhibited spherical morphology and excellent magnetic response signals. The extraction efficiency was studied using four OPPs as test analytes from tea drink samples and their determination using high performance liquid chromatography was evaluated. Various extraction conditions were investigated in detail. Under optimal conditions, using the recommended method the linear range for the analytes was 0.1–300 μg L−1, the detection limits ranged from 0.01–0.05 μg L−1, and the enrichment factors ranged from 420 to 455. This method was then successfully used to determine OPPs from tea drink samples with desirable recovery ranging from 81.7 to 92.8%. Meanwhile, based on the hydrophobicity of the C18 groups and the selectivity of the phosphate groups, the extraction efficiency of Fe3O4@VPA@C18 for OPPs was superior to that of the commercial adsorbent (Fe3O4@SiO2@C18).


A new model of economic growth introduces the knowledge filter between new knowledge and economically useful knowledge. It identifies both new ventures and incumbent firms as the mechanisms that penetrate the knowledge filter. Recent empirical work has shown that new firms are more proficient at penetrating the knowledge filter than are incumbent firms; however, the analysis has only examined expanding economies and has relied on purely cross-sectional regression methodologies. This study explores the role of new and incumbent firms in penetrating the knowledge filter utilizing recent developments in spatial panel estimation techniques to provide a more robust set of findings. The results suggest those new firms are more proficient at penetrating the knowledge filter in declining and growing regions alike.


Seaweeds are an underutilised nutritional resource that could not only compliment the current western diet but potentially bring additional health benefits over and above their nutritional value. There are four groups of seaweed algae; green algae (Chlorophyceae), red algae (Rhodophycae), blue-green algae (Cyanophyceae) and brown algae (Phaeophyceae). Seaweeds are rich in bioactive components including polysaccharides and polyphenols. Polysaccharides content, such as fucoidan, laminarin, as well as alginate is generally high in brown seaweeds which are also a source of polyphenols such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, phlorotannin, stilbenes and lignans. These components have been shown to reduce the activity of digestive enzymes, modulating enzymes such as α-amylase, α-glucosidase, pepsin and lipase. This review discusses the effect of several of these components on the digestive processes within the gastrointestinal tract; focusing on the effect of alginate on pancreatic lipase activity and its potential health benefits. Concluding that there is evidence to suggest alginate has the potential to be used as an obesity treatment, however, further in vivo research is required and an effective delivery method for alginate must be designed.


Metaphysics as a human enterprise is for ever called upon to vindicate its claim to be entitled "knowledge." Sometimes the challenge is issued in the name of irritated common sense. Sometimes metaphysics is relegated into insignificance by a supercilious estheticism. Sometimes metaphysics is excommunicated for daring to trespass on the holy domain of religion. Here its death sentence is pronounced by an all-embracing scepticism, and there by the confident faith in the universal adequacy and exclusive validity of the methods of science. The attacks on metaphysics throughout the ages have been so numerous and so severe that one would expect the victim to have expired long ago. Yet the inextinguishable will-to-live exhibited by metaphysics has been as remarkable a phenomenon as the perennial tenacity of her would-be executioners. And although the bells have been tolled many times for metaphysics, she is still able to announce with Mark Twain that the rumours of her demise have been slightly exaggerated. In the long run, history seems to reveal a singular indocility with respect to the arguments of the enemies of metaphysics, and as Gilson has pointed out, one of the lessons to be derived from the study of the history of philosophy is that metaphysics always buries its undertakers.


Cassava is one of the most important annual crops in Southeast Asia, and faces increasing seed borne pest and disease pressures. Despite this, cassava seed systems have received scant research attention. In a first analysis of Vietnamese and Cambodian cassava seed systems, we characterized existing cassava seed systems in 2016-17 through a farmer survey based approach at both national and community scales, with particular focus on identifying seed system actors, planting material management, exchange mechanisms, geographies, and variety use, and performed a network analysis of detected seed movement at the provincial level. Despite their status as self-organized 'informal' networks, the cassava seed systems used by farmers in Vietnam and Cambodia are complex, connected over multiple scales, and include links between geographically distant sites. Cassava planting material was exchanged through farmer seed systems, in which re-use of farm-saved supply and community-level exchanges dominated. At the national level, use of self-saved seed occurred in 47 and 64% of seed use cases in Cambodia and Vietnam, respectively. Movement within communes was prevalent, with 82 and 78% of seed provided to others being exchanged between family and acquaintances within the commune in Cambodia and Vietnam, respectively. Yet, meaningful proportions of seed flows, mediated mostly by traders, also formed inter-provincial and international exchange networks, with 20% of Cambodia's seed acquisitions imported from abroad, especially neighboring Vietnam and Thailand. Dedicated seed traders and local cassava collection points played important roles in the planting material distribution network at particular sites. Sales of planting material were important means of both acquiring and providing seed in both countries, and commercial sale was more prevalent in high-intensity than in low-intensity production sites. Considerable variability existed in local seed networks, depending on the intensity of production and integration with trader networks. Adapted innovations are needed to upgrade cassava seed systems in the face of emerging pests and diseases, taking into account and building on the strengths of the existing systems; including their social nature and ability to quickly and efficiently distribute planting materials at the regional level.


type="graphical" xml:id="gpol12219-abs-0001"> There is agreement across the various contributions to the special issue that the state of democratic systems has deteriorated – not only in Europe but also in the United States. Of course, attention must be paid to the different contexts, reasons and the degrees to which democracies are experiences a period of unease. There is also agreement as to the necessity of national democracies - and the EU as a supranational political actor - to re-think current practices and to allow for a new democratic ethos that gives greater room for contestation.


When a firm suffers an extreme property and casualty (P&C) loss it frequently finds it difficult to transfer similar P&C risk in the future. This circumstance adds stress to the firm just as it is trying to recover from the effects of the super catastrophic (Super Cat) loss. For example, numerous directors' and officers' (D&O) claims were filed against firms that engaged in fraudulent new economy-related accounting practices. The severity of those claims was such that the insurance industry in general pulled back from assuming further D&O risk from those firms. Financiers skilled in evaluating volatile risk have stepped in to assume such risk, but for significantly higher prices. This article presents an applied method for pricing post-Super Cat or volatile risk with a margin of safety. It also includes guidelines, such as leveraging brokerage/prime-brokerage relationships, which could prove useful in future distressed underwriting deals.


This article discusses arguments that manipulating the Earth's climate may provoke unforeseen, unintended and uncontrollable consequences that threaten human rights. The risks arise from both main types of geoengineering: solar radiation management (SRM) techniques and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). SRM creates particular risks because it is difficult to test on a wide scale and may not be capable of being recalled after deployment. Adequate, enforceable governance structures do not currently exist to assess and regulate the risks of climate engineering, not least whether such technologies can be terminated in the absence of significant emissions reductions. This article is divided into six sections. After the opening introductory section, section 2 discusses the links between climate change and human rights. It briefly outlines the range of rights, including procedural rights, that might be violated by geoengineering. This is followed, in section 3, by an evaluation of the risks of SRM and CDR. The fourth section discusses debates on the ethics of geoengineering. Section 5 critiques hubristic faith in technological solutions. The final section examines the governance of geoengineering and the extent to which international environmental law and human rights law might be used to regulate the research and deployment of geoengineering.


Recently we have been witnessing a didactic evolution in language teaching in Denmark which is quite manifest in the teaching of French. This evolution is the result of adoption of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and a slow step towards a more communicative teaching with clearer goals ensuring a progression and a more pronounced awareness of this progression in acquisition. This evolution is based on research that begins to influence more directly the national teaching programmes. The present article analyses the programmes and the initiatives in primary and secondary school teaching and in teacher education, and treats some problems which remain to be solved (choices of grammatical description and target language, integration of culture in language teaching).


Background: Congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation (CCAM) is a rare disease. Because few cases per center are reported each year, there is still uncertainty concerning pathophysiology, natural history of the disease and the best treatment approach. The aim of this paper is to report the experience of a level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in CCAM cases. Methods: We evaluated all cases diagnosed with CCAM admitted to our hospital between January 2000 and December 2014. Results: Twenty-four neonates with prenatal diagnosis of CCAM were identified. The majority of lesions (75%) had microcystic features. Thirteen newborns were admitted to NICU for observation and evaluation. Half of the prenatally diagnosed lesions were confirmed cases of CCAM. The remaining corresponded to 5 cases (20.8%) of in utero spontaneous regression of the lesion, 5 (20.8%) bronchopulmonary sequestration, 1 (4.2%) bronchial atresia and 1 (4.2%) pleuro-pericardial cyst. Two (8.3%) neonates became symptomatic during the neonatal period and surgery was performed in the first week of life. Ten cases remained asymptomatic. Six of these cases (40%) underwent surgery (thoracotomy in 3 cases and thoracoscopy in 3 cases). Respiratory morbidity was reported in 1 symptomatic case and in 1 asymptomatic case that was managed conservatively. No mortality was reported. Histological examination showed definitive features of CCAM (Stocker classification: type I = 1; type II = 4; type III = 2). Conclusion: Management of CCAM in a NICU does not seem necessary in asymptomatic newborns. Concordance of ante-natal and post-natal findings is very variable. Thoracoscopy is a less invasive surgical procedure in the management of these patients. The outcome is good in most patients.


Using the (1+1)D Majda-McLaughlin-Tabak model as an example, we present an extension of the wave turbulence (WT) theory to systems with strong nonlinearities. We demonstrate that nonlinear wave interactions renormalize the dynamics, leading to (i) a possible destruction of scaling structures in the bare wave systems and a drastic deformation of the resonant manifold even at weak nonlinearities, and (ii) creation of nonlinear resonance quartets in wave systems for which there would be no resonances as predicted by the linear dispersion relation. Finally, we derive an effective WT kinetic equation and show that our prediction of the renormalized Rayleigh-Jeans distribution is in excellent agreement with the simulation of the full wave system in equilibrium.


Abstract Bat mortality has been reported at industrial scale wind facilities across North America, with tree-roosting bats accounting for most fatalities, but no data exist for central Canada. We quantified rates of mortality at a wind energy facility in Manitoba, Canada by conducting standardized carcass searches corrected for searcher efficiency and scavenging from mid-August to mid-September 2007. We found that mortality was consistent with, but qualitatively higher than that at comparable wind facilities in western Canada. Mortality of the species most commonly killed, Silver-haired Bats, was evenly distributed across the wind facility, but mortality of Hoary and Eastern Red Bats was higher at some turbines than others.


INTRODUCTION
Each year, there are more than 480 000 deaths in the United States attributed to smoking. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults are a vulnerable population that smokes at higher rates than heterosexuals.

METHODS
We used data collected from the National Adult Tobacco Survey 2009-2010, a large, nationally representative study using a randomized, national sample of US landline and cellular telephone listings, (N = 118 590). We compared LGBT adults to their heterosexual counterparts with regard to exposure to advertisements promoting smoking cessation, and awareness and use of tobacco treatment services, including quitlines, smoking cessation classes, health professional counseling, nicotine replacement therapy, and medications.

RESULTS
Fewer GBT men, compared to heterosexual men, were aware of the quitline. However, LGBT individuals have similar exposure to tobacco cessation advertising, as well as similar awareness of and use of evidence based cessation methods as compared to heterosexual peers.

CONCLUSIONS
The similarly of awareness and use of cessation support indicates a need for LGBT-specific efforts to reduce smoking disparities. Potential interventions would include: improving awareness of, access to and acceptability of current cessation methods for LGBT patients, developing tailored cessation interventions, and denormalizing smoking in LGBT community spaces.


We describe a simple hyperbaric chamber and optical oxygen probe (optrode), which is based on the dynamic fluorescent quenching of a ruthenium metal complex, that can be used to measure changes in oxygen concentration in either aqueous or gaseous media. Initial experiments illustrate the utility of this robust form of sensor. The optrode showed a typical response time of ≪10 s, a linear temperature response with greater fluorescent quenching at lower temperatures, and was unaffected by pressures as great as 34.4 mPa (340 atm). Yeast cultures measured at 27.8 mPa (275 atm) showed an up to ninefold decrease in respiration rate compared to cells at 1 atm. The oxygen optrode is a simple and rugged device that appears exceptionally well suited for experimentation under conditions in which polarographic electrodes or conventional chemical analysis is difficult, e.g., at high or variable pressures.


Toxoplasma gondii primary infection/reactivation after solid organ transplantation is a serious complication, due to the high mortality rate following disseminated disease. We performed a retrospective study of all cases of T. gondii infections in 436 adult patients who had received an orthotopic cardiac transplant at our Institution from May 1968 to January 2011. Six patients (1.3%) developed T. gondii infection/reactivation in the post-operative period. All infections/reactivations occurred before 1996, when no standardized toxoplasmosis prophylactic regimen or co-trimoxazole prophylaxis was used. Starting with the 112th heart transplant, oral pyrimethamine 75 mg/day was used for seronegative transplant recipients whose donors were seropositive or unknown. Two patients (33.3%) presented with disseminated toxoplasmosis infection, and all patients (100%) had myocarditis. Five patients (83.3%) were seronegative before transplant and one patient did not have pre-transplant serology available. Median time for infection onset was 131 days following transplantation. Three patients (50%) died due to toxoplasmosis infection. After 1996, we did not observe any additional cases of T. gondii infection/reactivation. In conclusion, toxoplasmosis in heart allographs was more frequent among seronegative heart recipients, and oral pyrimethamine was highly effective for the prevention of T. gondii infection in this population.


Integrated Movement Therapy™ is an individual and group therapy approach that combines speech-language pathology, behavioral and mental health counseling, and Yoga. It is taught by master-degreed therapists who are also certified Yoga instructors. Although this approach has been successfully implemented with children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Learning Disabilities, Pervasive Developmental Delay, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Dyspraxia, and other specific motor-based disorders, it has had especially consistent and remarkable results with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Integrated Movement Therapy has six core principles: structure and continuity, social interaction, language stimulation, self-calming, physical stimulation, and direct self-esteem building. The following article will describe Autism Spectrum Disorders in depth and will show how each of the six core principles of Integrated Movement Therapy specifically addresses the characteristics associated with Autism. It will also note specific, documented improvements in all areas addressed based on qualitative ratings scales and parent feedback.


Indigenous peoples have experienced heightened vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic and face disproportionately high COVID-19 mortality. To better address these vulnerabilities, it is critical to adapt COVID-19 programmes to the particular needs of indigenous peoples, as articulated by indigenous voices. It is also vital to link up with responses already ongoing and led by indigenous peoples to mitigate this crisis. This SSHAP brief discusses key considerations for COVID-19 response and recovery, with a particular focus on the Amazon region of South America. The considerations in this brief are drawn from a review of evidence and insights provided by indigenous leaders and researchers from several different continents. The considerations are rooted in key principles for indigenous community engagement, as articulated by indigenous peoples and organisations. This brief may be of interest to health and development policymakers and practitioners working in indigenous communities and territories and can be read in conjunction with the SSHAP background report on 'Indigenous Peoples and COVID-19.'


Airway mucin secretion is necessary for ciliary clearance of inhaled particles and pathogens, but can be detrimental in pathologies such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. Exocytosis in mammals requires a Munc18 scaffolding protein, and airway secretory cells express all three Munc18 isoforms. Using conditional airway epithelial deletant mice, we found that Munc18a has the major role in baseline mucin secretion, Munc18b has the major role in stimulated mucin secretion, and Munc18c does not function in mucin secretion. In an allergic asthma model, Munc18b deletion reduced airway mucus occlusion and airflow resistance. In a cystic fibrosis model, Munc18b deletion reduced airway mucus occlusion and emphysema. Munc18b deficiency in the airway epithelium did not result in any abnormalities of lung structure, particle clearance, inflammation, or bacterial infection. Our results show that regulated secretion in a polarized epithelial cell may involve more than one exocytic machine at the apical plasma membrane, and that the protective roles of mucin secretion can be preserved while therapeutically targeting its pathologic roles.


Morphemes involved in the formation of Somali verbs and nouns are, in most instances, clearly individuated into categories corresponding to their role in word formation. Verbs contain a base, derivational extensions, inflectional affixes, and clitics that attach in a fixed order. Nouns also contain a base and derivational affixes, but little inflectional morphology. Indeed, both parts of speech have similar morphological templates in Somali, but the relationship between the language's morphological domains and prosodic domains has only recently become a subject of detailed inquiry. We add to this ongoing trend by illustrating in this paper that there are close correlations between these domains in the language's verbal and nominal systems that can be elucidated by morphophonological processes; certain processes occur only in a particular prosodic domain, and these process/domain combinations are similar in both the nominal and verbal systems. By establishing diagnostic phenomena attributable to phrase-level domains, this paper fills a gap between recent works focused only on defining prosodic characteristics of Somali words (Downing & Nilsson 2017; Green & Morrison 2016) and the accentual behavior of Somali clauses (Le Gac 2002, 2003a, b).


The differences across cultures in the enforcement of conformity may reflect their specific histories. With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). This research advances knowledge that can foster cross-cultural understanding in a world of increasing global interdependence and has implications for modeling cultural change.


Bayesian Networks: An Introduction provides a self-contained introduction to the theory and applications of Bayesian networks, a topic of interest and importance for statisticians, computer scientists and those involved in modelling complex data sets. The material has been extensively tested in classroom teaching and assumes a basic knowledge of probability, statistics and mathematics. All notions are carefully explained and feature exercises throughout. Features include: An introduction to Dirichlet Distribution, Exponential Families and their applications. A detailed description of learning algorithms and Conditional Gaussian Distributions using Junction Tree methods. A discussion of Pearl's intervention calculus, with an introduction to the notion of see and do conditioning. All concepts are clearly defined and illustrated with examples and exercises. Solutions are provided online. This book will prove a valuable resource for postgraduate students of statistics, computer engineering, mathematics, data mining, artificial intelligence, and biology. Researchers and users of comparable modelling or statistical techniques such as neural networks will also find this book of interest.


In cancer studies with high‐throughput genetic and genomic measurements, integrative analysis provides a way to effectively pool and analyze heterogeneous raw data from multiple independent studies and outperforms "classic" meta‐analysis and single‐dataset analysis. When marker selection is of interest, the genetic basis of multiple datasets can be described using the homogeneity model or the heterogeneity model. In this study, we consider marker selection under the heterogeneity model, which includes the homogeneity model as a special case and can be more flexible. Penalization methods have been developed in the literature for marker selection. This study advances from the published ones by introducing the contrast penalties, which can accommodate the within‐ and across‐dataset structures of covariates/regression coefficients and, by doing so, further improve marker selection performance. Specifically, we develop a penalization method that accommodates the across‐dataset structures by smoothing over regression coefficients. An effective iterative algorithm, which calls an inner coordinate descent iteration, is developed. Simulation shows that the proposed method outperforms the benchmark with more accurate marker identification. The analysis of breast cancer and lung cancer prognosis studies with gene expression measurements shows that the proposed method identifies genes different from those using the benchmark and has better prediction performance.


Jesus' messianic self-understanding has been put into question from Bultmann's day to the present. If he did not think of himself as the Messiah, we would be left with the riddle of a Jesus who never actually said who he claimed to be. However, Jesus' reply to the inquiry of John the Baptist in Mt 11,2-6 par is an important clue to his own understanding of his mission. A careful reconsideration of the criteria for authenticity leads to the conclusion that Jesus claimed to be not simply a prophet announcing the kingdom, but the Messiah who healed and brought good news to the poor, thus doing what in the OT God had promised to do at the end of time. 4Q521 confirms that ancient Judaism expected this kind of miracle to occur at the time of the Messiah.


High-level skills relieve planning algorithms from low-level details. But when the skills are poorly designed for the domain, the resulting plan may be severely suboptimal. Sutton et al. (1999) made an important step towards resolving this problem by introducing a rule that automatically improves a set of skills called options. This rule terminates an option early whenever switching to another option gives a higher value than continuing with the current option. However, they only analyzed the case where the improvement rule is applied once. We show conditions where this rule converges to the optimal set of options. A new interrupting Bellman operator that simultaneously improves the set of options is at the core of our analysis. One problem with the update rule is that it tends to favor lower-level skills. We introduce a regularization term that favors longer duration skills. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach can derive a good set of high-level skills even when the original set of skills cannot solve the problem.


It is usually a grand affair when 'Ms Noelle' makes it to clinic. The 52-year-old mother with a history of hepatitis C cirrhosis, hypertension, uterine fibroids and migraines has been in our care for over a year. Even so, each visit still brings a new crisis. Today, we found out that Ms Noelle, the caretaker of a daughter with bipolar disorder and nine grandchildren, had just been evicted from her home. She had been without any income for months, and her applications for temporary cash assistance and disability were denied. Ms Noelle maintained a remarkable ability to keep her family protected and fed despite all this, but we have watched as she became the ultimate victim: she struggled to remember her medications, their doses and indications, and her cirrhosis was frequently on the verge of decompensation during appointments she was barely able to keep. She was overwhelmed by even the simplest of tasks, such as completing forms or picking up meds from the in-house pharmacy, despite how much she knew she needed to follow through.

We make innumerable health choices daily. Behavioural economics can help us understand these choices, as well as the logical errors to which all patients are vulnerable. For example, patients may downgrade the importance of future health status in relation to current gratification.1 Individuals are also risk averse in decision-making, valuing losses disproportionally relative to gains, which makes them susceptible to make vastly different treatment decisions dependent on how a choice is presented.1 Further, decisions made in certain emotional states may not translate to behaviour change when in different emotional states (eg, committing to a diet while in a calm state, then succumbing to dessert when stressed).2 These relatively small choices and errors may have substantial effects on health behaviours and health outcomes.

Patients …


Despite mixed results regarding the clinical utility of checklists, the anesthesia community is increasingly interested in advancing research around this important topic. Although several checklists have been developed to address routine perioperative care, few checklists in the anesthesia literature specifically target the management of trauma patients. We adapted a recently published "trauma and emergency checklist" for the initial phase of resuscitation and anesthesia of critically ill trauma patients into an applicable perioperative cognitive aid in the form of a pictogram that can be downloaded by the medical community. The Ryder Cognitive Aid Checklist for Trauma Anesthesia is a letter-sized, full-color document consisting of 2 pages and 5 sections. This cognitive aid describes the essential steps to be performed: before patient arrival to the hospital, on patient arrival to the hospital, during the initial assessment and management, during the resuscitation phase, and for postoperative care. A brief online survey is also presented to obtain feedback for improvement of this tool. The variability in utility of cognitive aids may be because of the specific clinical task being performed, the skill level of the individuals using the cognitive aid, overall quality of the cognitive aid, or organizational challenges. Once optimized, future research should be focused at ensuring successful implementation and customization of this tool.