Using household survey data, this paper estimates the mortality impact of improved water and sanitation access in order to evaluate the potential contribution of water and sanitation investment toward achieving the child mortality targets defined in Millennium Development Goal 4. The authors find that the average mortality reduction achievable by investment in water and sanitation infrastructure is 25 deaths per 1,000 children born across countries, a difference that accounts for about 40 percent of the gap between current child mortality rates and the 2015 target set in the Millennium Development Goals. According to the estimates, full household coverage with water and sanitation infrastructure could lead to a total reduction of 2.2 million child deaths per year in the developing world. Combining this analysis with cost data for water and sanitation infrastructure, the authors estimate that the average cost per life-year saved ranges between 65 and 80 percent of developing countries' annual gross domestic product per capita. The results suggest that investment in water and sanitation is a highly cost-effective policy option, even when only the mortality benefits are taken into consideration. Taking into account the additional expected benefits, such as reduced morbidity, time spending, and environmental hazards, would further increase the benefit-cost ratio.


This paper addresses the problem of compact representation of a 3D scene, captured by distributed omnidirectional cameras. As the images from the sensors are likely to be correlated in most practical scenarios, we build a distributed algorithm based on coding with side information. A reference image is processed with a wavelet transform and progressively encoded. The Wyner-Ziv images undergo a multiresolution representation, and the generated bitplanes are channel encoded with LDPC codes. The central decoder eventually reconstructs the Wyner-Ziv images given by the syndrome bits from the channel codes using the reference omnidirectional image. It also iteratively implements motion estimation on the 2-sphere in order to improve the side information. Experimental results demonstrate that distributed coding improves the rate-distortion performance for coding a set of omnidirectional images when compared to independent coding solutions. The proposed method can further be extended to the decoding of multiple Wyner-Ziv images using one single reference omnidirectional image. Hence, it achieves a reduced overall coding rate compared to disparity-based schemes. In addition, it does not require explicit knowledge of the camera parameters nor precise calibration, which is certainly interesting in camera networks.


In this study, biodiesel production from a typical Egyptian waste cooking oil (WCO) with high acid value content (18 mg KOH/g oil) has been analysed by studying the main factors affecting biodiesel and glycerol yields. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) via Central Composite Design (CCD) has been used to analyse the effect of four independent variables, i.e. methanol to oil (M:O) molar ratio, temperature, pressure and time on the reaction responses. A quadratic model for each response has been concluded representing the interrelationships between reaction variables and reaction responses. In addition, the predicted models' adequacy has been evaluated through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) method. Numerical optimisation technique has been applied to conclude the optimum reaction conditions for maximum production of biodiesel resulting in 98% and 2.05% for biodiesel and glycerol yields at M:O molar ratio, temperature, pressure and time of 25:1, 265oC, 110 bar and 20 minutes, respectively. Experimental validation has been analysed for the predicted optimum conditions resulting in 98.82% biodiesel yield with 0.83% relative error.


BACKGROUND
Between 9% and 23% of patients undergoing otherwise uncomplicated carotid endarterectomy (CEA) develop subtle cognitive decline 1 month postoperatively. The APOE-epsilon4 allele has been associated with worse outcome following stroke.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the ability of APOE-epsilon4 to predict post-CEA neurocognitive dysfunction.

METHODS
Seventy-five patients with CEA undergoing elective CEA were prospectively recruited in this nested cohort study and demographic variables were recorded. Patients were evaluated before and 1 month after surgery with a standard battery of five neuropsychological tests. APOE genotyping was performed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis in all patients. Neuropsychological deficits were identified by comparing changes (before to 1 month post-operation) in individual performance on the test battery. Logistic regression was performed for APOE-epsilon4 and previously identified risk factors.

RESULTS
Twelve of 75 (16%) CEA patients possessed the APOE-epsilon4 allele. Eight of 75 (11%) patients experienced neurocognitive dysfunction on postoperative day 30. One month post-CEA, APOE-epsilon4-positive patients were more likely to be cognitively injured (42%) than APOE-epsilon4-negative patients (5%) (p = 0.002). In multivariate analysis, the presence of the APOE-epsilon4 allele increased the risk of neurocognitive dysfunction at 1 month 62-fold (62.28, 3.15 to 1229, p = 0.007). Diabetes (51.42, 1.94 to 1363, p = 0.02), and obesity (24.43, 1.41 to 422.9, p = 0.03) also predisposed to injury.

CONCLUSION
The APOE-epsilon4 allele is a robust independent predictor of neurocognitive decline 1 month following CEA.


The Subject LibGuide for GradDip IT in Education (GDITE) students, offering expert librarian tips and recommendations to help you get the best out of Wintec Library as you study.


In recent years, several scholars have revisited the question of moral rights protections for creators of copyright works in the United States. Their scholarship has focused on defining a moral rights agenda that comports with American constitutional values, as well as being practically suited to current copyright business practices. Much of this scholarship has prioritized a right of attribution over other moral rights, such as the right of integrity. This Article evaluates some of these recent moral rights models in light of a sample of comments made by American supernatural fiction authors about their works. The Author questions whether the moral rights models advocated in modern discourse effectively fill the gaps between authors' stated interests and the protections currently available under copyright law. The Author also questions the extent to which authors' rights should be elevated above others' rights to enjoy and adapt their works.


Discussants: PETER BOSSAERTS, California Institute of Technology JOHN COCHRANE, University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business EUGENE FAMA, University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business WILL GOETZMANN, Yale University, School of Management ROBERT S. HARRIS, Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia JOHN HEATON, Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management ROGER IBBOTSON, Yale University, School of Management MICHAEL J. MAUBOUSSIN, Chief U.S. Investment Strategist - Credit Suisse First Boston and Adjunct Professor - Finance and Economics - Columbia Business School ANDRE F. PEROLD, Harvard University, Harvard Business School JAY RITTER, University of Florida, Warrington College of Business ROBERT WHITELAW, New York University, Stern School of Business Organized by: PETER TUFANO, Harvard Business School While it is sometimes difficult to teach ideas that we would all agree to be correct, it is infinitely more difficult--and more rewarding--to teach material where the "correct answer" is still very debatable. For these subjects, one challenge as an educator is to know the "state of play" in the academic community about the issue. Another challenge is deciding whether to take one point of view, or whether to try to teach the students more than one point of view. While students will press for THE right answer, if they can understand why reasonable people reach different answers, this can move a class from fixating on one rote answer to a deeper contemplation of the subtleties of the various arguments. This new section of FEN-Educator will attempt to spotlight research areas where there is considerable disagreement in the profession. Our inaugural piece is a discussion of the equity risk premium--the long run return of stocks over riskless bonds--which is the source of much confusion in MBA classrooms and in practice. Ivo Welch has agreed to write a brief summary of the issues surrounding the market risk premium and to assemble a selected bibliography on the topic. We then invited a range of researchers, educators and practitioners to comment on how they treat this topic in the classroom. We would like to thank Ivo and the discussants for their willingness to innovate. In the spirit of innovation, we have set up a discussion board where readers can post their own observations on teaching the market risk premium and continue the conversation begun by Ivo and the discussants. (((This board can be found at http://www.???))) This section was obviously not intended to be the definitive answer on the market risk premium, nor a large scale survey of the numbers we use in class (which can be found in Ivo's forthcoming Journal of Business piece.) Rather it is a modest attempt to move discussions from the halls of our offices (where we ask one another, "What are you going to tell them tomorrow about the risk premium?") to a more public venue, and in so doing, assist finance professors. Please let us know what you think of this concept, how it can be improved, and what other topics you might find interesting.


Geckos are nature's elite climbers. Their remarkable climbing feats have been attributed to specialized feet with hairy toes that uncurl and peel in milliseconds. Here, we report that the secret to the gecko's arboreal acrobatics includes an active tail. We examine the tail's role during rapid climbing, aerial descent, and gliding. We show that a gecko's tail functions as an emergency fifth leg to prevent falling during rapid climbing. A response initiated by slipping causes the tail tip to push against the vertical surface, thereby preventing pitch-back of the head and upper body. When pitch-back cannot be prevented, geckos avoid falling by placing their tail in a posture similar to a bicycle's kickstand. Should a gecko fall with its back to the ground, a swing of its tail induces the most rapid, zero-angular momentum air-righting response yet measured. Once righted to a sprawled gliding posture, circular tail movements control yaw and pitch as the gecko descends. Our results suggest that large, active tails can function as effective control appendages. These results have provided biological inspiration for the design of an active tail on a climbing robot, and we anticipate their use in small, unmanned gliding vehicles and multisegment spacecraft.


Fishery managers face two problems that are endemic to all renewable resource management: how much of the resource should be extracted, and how should resource users be managed to ensure efficiency and fairness. The predominant fishery management approach addresses these problems through fish stock assessment and resource economics. However, my review of the literature and analysis of the situation in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve show that both methodologies face serious difficulties: they deal inadequately with uncertainties about the causes of observed behaviour and the likely effects of different policies; they are too focused on readily measurable objectives; and they do not address the effects of the institutional context on management. In Chapter 3, I examine previous applications of Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with a view to see if they can be applied to fishery management. My analysis shows that until now MCDA has been used to address only the first two sets of fishery management problems: systematically incorporating uncertainty and multiple objectives into policy development. I also argue that existing proposals for the use of Decision Analysis can be classified as variations of one version of MCDA, namely Multiple Stakeholder Decision Analysis (MSDA). The main problems that remain to be resolved relate to the interaction between experts, stakeholders, and managers when there are conflicting interpretations of evidence, and situations of high institutional inertia. In Chapter 4, I examine these problems within the context of ecological management experience and New Institutional Economics. I argue that for complex problems, such as those in the Danube Delta, management that aims to attain narrowly defined optimal fishing yields through command and control measures is unfeasable and undesirable. A more promising approach would seek to strengthen resilience, promote organisational variety, and increase the leverage of stakeholders over those who provide services for them. When one seeks to achieve such a transformation of management, I argue that the intervention needs to take into account the specific institutional circumstances of the client. In Chapter 5, I show how management procedures, problem perception, and strategy development are influenced by organisational structure and the hierarchical position of managers. That is why decision analysis interventions must address both technical as well as institutional needs of clients. In Chapter 6, I discuss Decision Conferencing, an alternative MCDA approach, and argue that it is more suitable for dealing with management problems such as those of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Decision Conferences can provide a structure for expert, manager, and stakeholder interaction and can lead to the transformation of social realities. In Chapters 7 and 8, I review the context and concrete environmental and institutional problems that led to the first Decision Conference on an environmental management problem. I report the processes of the Decision Conference, the agreements reached, and anlyse both the short and medium term effects of the intervention. On the basis of that evidence I make claims about the general utility of the approach. The thesis concludes with proposals to improve Decision Conferencing through a framework that provides guidance for context specific process management and helps to ensure that a requisite variety of viewpoints are incorporated into management strategy development.


This study is of the coverage provided by the BBC Home and European Services of the
Final Solution from the beginning of 1942 until VE-Day. In other words, from the
beginning of industrialised murder of Jews in western, central and eastern Europe to the
German surrender. It does not cover, except in the introductory chapter, the earlier stages
of what became known as the Holocaust. Neither does it examine what happened once the
war and the Final Solution had ended. Issues related to the impact of Final Solution and the
ability of the BBC to react to it, such as antisemitism and the level of third-party influence
over the BBC, are also examined. This is a history of both the British response to the Final
Solution and the way in which one of the most important institutions of twentieth century
Britain, the BBC, coped with the single most important story it has ever covered.
It is found that there was a large amount of coverage by both the Home and
European services. Taking the Home Service first, coverage was heavy at times when the
British and Polish governments found themselves able to confirm the information coming
out of Europe. The Home Service insisted throughout that it limit its coverage to news
bulletins, for fear of increasing antisemitism within Britain. This, and much of the general
reluctance to emphasis news of the specifically anti-Jewish nature of the Final Solution,
grew out the belief that it was both wrong and counter-productive to assign any special
significance to the plight of the Jews. The European Service was more flexible and
broadcast a great deal of coverage. However its main overseers, the Political Warfare
Executive, had a substantial say in what emerged. The political context of information
about the Final Solution often made them reluctant to sanction broadcasting about it. Not
all that could have been broadcast was.


Abstract Objective Many patients have medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS); some of them attribute their health complaints to dental amalgam fillings. The aim of this study was to assess the validity and responsiveness of General Health Complaints index (GHC-index) for measuring the symptom load in MUPS patients compared to the widely used symptom outcome measure, Giessen Subjective Complaints List (GBB-24). Methods Three outcome measures – GHC-index, GBB-24, and Munich Amalgam Scale (MAS) – were administered at baseline and 12 months after removal of all dental amalgam restorations. The validity and responsiveness of these symptom measures were tested against external anchors: bodily distress syndrome (BDS), SF-36 vitality, and visual analogue scale (VAS). We tested both convergent and known group validities. We also examined the predictive validity and responsiveness to changes for each instrument. Results All the main outcome measures showed evidence of convergent and known group validities. The GHC-index, GBB-24 and MAS were all able to detect the anticipated differences in BDS and Energy. But the GBB-24 was more efficient in discriminating the BDS compared with the GHC-index (relative efficiency: RE = 0.69; 95% CI: 0.41–0.96) and MAS (RE = 0.59; 95% CI: 0.32–0.86). Each main outcome variable revealed good predictive validity for vitality (standardized coefficient: b ≈ 0.71 and R 2 ≈ 0.50). Moderate to high sensitivity to change over time was demonstrated, with GHC-index performing better. Conclusion The GHC-index is a valid and responsive instrument for assessing symptom load in MUPS patients attributing their health complaints to amalgam fillings and undergoing amalgam removal.


Portable shell scripting is the future of modern Linux, OS X, and Unix command--line access. Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional teaches shell scripting by using the common core of most shells and expands those principles to all of scripting. You will learn about portable scripting and how to use the same syntax and design principles for all shells. You'll discover about the interaction between shells and other scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and everything you learn will be shown in context for Linux, OS X, bash, and AppleScript. What you'll learn This book will prime you on not just shell scripting, but also the modern context of portable shell scripting. You will learn * The core Linux/OS X shell constructs from a portability point of view * How to write scripts that write other scripts, and how to write macros and debug them * How to write and design shell script portably from the ground up * How to use programmable utilities and their inherent portability to your advantage, while pinpointing potential traps * Pulling everything together, how to engineer scripts that play well with Python and Ruby, and even run on embedded systems Who this book is for This book is for system administrators, programmers, and testers working across Linux, OS X, and the Unix command line. Table of Contents * Introduction to Shell Scripting * Patterns and Regular Expressions * Basic Shell Scripting * Core Shell Features Explained * Shells Within Shells * Invocation and Execution * Shell Language Portability * Utility Portability * Bringing It All Together * Shell Script Design * Mixing and Matching


Objectives Syncope is a cause of significant morbidity in sick sinus syndrome (SSS) which may not be resolved with permanent pacemaker therapy. We aimed to determine the incidence, predictors and prognostic implication of syncope in paced patients with SSS. Methods We studied 1415 patients (mean age 72.9 years, SD 11.1) with SSS who were randomised in the DANPACE study to either rate-responsive single chamber pacing (n=707) or rate-responsive dual chamber pacing (n=708). Main outcome measures were patient-reported syncope after pacemaker implantation and mortality. Results Mean follow-up was 5.4 years (SD 2.6). A total of 247 (17.5%) patients experienced syncope after pacemaker implantation (135 (19%) from the rate-responsive single chamber pacing group, and 112 (15.8%) from the rate-responsive dual chamber pacing group. Predictors of syncope post pacemaker implantation included: age 0–39 years (HR 2.9, 95% CI 1.4 to 6.3, p=0.01; reference range 60–79 years), age ≥80 years (HR 1.4, 95% CI 1.0 to 1.8, p=0.03), syncope prior to pacemaker implant (HR 1.8, 95% CI 1.4 to 2.3, p<0.001), previous myocardial infarction (HR 1.5, 95% CI 1.1 to 2.1, p=0.03), heart failure (HR 1.4, 95% CI 1.0 to 1.9, p=0.046), and high Charlson comorbidity index (HR 1.6, 95% CI 1.1 to 2.2, p=0.01). Patients who experienced syncope post pacemaker implant had higher mortality compared with patients who did not (adjusted HR 1.6, 95% CI 1.3 to 2.1, p<0.001). Conclusions Syncope in paced patients with SSS is common, and is associated with higher mortality. The predictors identified in this study suggest a multifactorial aetiology of syncope.


Understanding social media requires us to engage with the individual and collective meanings that diverse stakeholders and participants give to platforms. It also requires us to analyse how social media companies try to make profits, how and which labour creates this profit, who creates social media ideologies, and the conditions under which such ideologies emerge. In short, understanding social media means coming to grips with the relationship between culture and the economy. In this thorough study, Christian Fuchs, one of the leading analysts of the Internet and social media, delves deeply into the subject by applying the approach of cultural materialism to social media, offering readers theoretical concepts, contemporary examples, and proposed opportunities for political intervention.

Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media is the ultimate resource for anyone who wants to understand culture and the economy in an era populated by social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google in the West and Weibo, Renren, and Baidu in the East. Updating the analysis of thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Karl Marx, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and Dallas W. Smythe for the 21st century, Fuchs presents a version of Marxist cultural theory and cultural materialism that allows us to critically understand social media's influence on culture and the economy.


(1) Effects of the addition of inorganic nutrients to Breckland grass heath were investigated in the presence and absence of rabbits. Five treatments (no addition, + N, + NK, + NP, and + NPK) were arranged in two identical latin squares, one grazed and the other ungrazed. Salts were added on eleven occasions over 3.5 years. (2) The density of Hieracium pilosella rosettes was recorded each spring from 1975 to 1979. The corresponding density of flowering and stoloniferous rosettes was recorded each summer. At the end of the experiment, the above-ground standing crop of each species and the litter was determined. (3) The untreated quadrats showed little change. Populations in quadrats that received nutrients declined over the 3 years; the severity of treatment in inducing decline could be ranked: + N < NK < + NP < + NPK. Rabbit grazing ameliorated the effects of nutrient addition and was almost able to offset the effect of nitrogen alone. (4) The proportion of rosettes initiating capitula and stolons was greatly increased by nutrient addition; this was maintained for all four summers under grazing. In the ungrazed plot flowering was stimulated only in the first summer, before the response of competitor species diminished the vigour of H. pilosella. (5) Nutrient addition resulted in large accumulations in the biomass of Festuca ovina, Koeleria macrantha and litter in the ungrazed plot. Most other species were affected adversely. Rabbit grazing prevented biomass accumulation, but the changes in species representation were similar if less marked. Only Astragalus danicus appeared to be unaffected by nutrient addition when grazed. (6) The major influence of inorganic nutrients on populations of Hieracium pilosella was indirect, through stimulation of the growth of its competitors, Festuca ovina and Koeleria macrantha. However, the concomitant direct stimulation of flowering increased the turnover of rosettes and accelerated the population decline. It also supports the proposition that the negatively density-dependent flower initiation response is mediated by the availability of nutrients and therefore competition for them.


A concept of generalized discrepancy, which involves pseudodifferential operators to give a criterion of equidistributed pointsets, is developed on the sphere. A simply structured formula in terms of elementary functions is established for the computation of the generalized discrepancy. With the help of this formula five kinds of point systems on the sphere, namely lattices in polar coordinates, transformed two-dimensional sequences, rotations on the sphere, triangulations, and "sum of three squares sequence," are investigated. Quantitative tests are done, and the results are compared with one another. Our calculations exhibit different orders of convergence of the generalized discrepancy for different types of point systems.


A new type of scalable MFC was developed based on using alternating graphite fiber brush array anode modules and dual cathode modules in order to simplify construction, operation, and maintenance of the electrodes. The modular MFC design was tested with a single (two-sided) cathode module with a specific surface area of 29 m2 m−3 based on a total liquid volume (1.4 L; 20 m2 m−3 using the total reactor volume of 2 L), and two brush anode modules. Three different types of spacers were used in the cathode module to provide structural stability, and enhance air flow relative to previous cassette (combined anode–cathode) designs: a low-profile wire spacer; a rigid polycarbonate column spacer; and a flexible plastic mesh spacer. The best performance was obtained using the wire spacer that produced a maximum power density of 1100 ± 10 mW m−2 of cathode (32 ± 0.3 W m−3 based on liquid volume) with an acetate-amended wastewater (COD = 1010 ± 30 mg L−1), compared to 1010 ± 10 mW m−2 for the column and 650 ± 20 mW m−2 for the mesh spacers. Anode potentials were unaffected by the different types of spacers. Raw domestic wastewater produced a maximum of 400 ± 8 mW m−2 under fed batch conditions (wire-spacers), which is one of the highest power densities for this fuel. Over time the maximum power was reduced to 300 ± 10 mW m−2 and 275 ± 7 mW m−2 for the two anode compartments, with only slightly less power of 250 ± 20 mW m−2 obtained under continuous flow conditions. In fixed-resistance tests, the average COD removal was 57 ± 5% at a hydraulic retention time of 8 h. These results show that this modular MFC design can both simplify reactor construction and enable relatively high power generation from even relatively dilute wastewater.


The reciprocity theorem of Helmholtz is extended to the clear turbulent atmosphere. Two impulse responses (Green's functions) are defined to characterize optical propagation in opposite directions between two parallel planar apertures separated by the turbulent atmosphere. It is shown that these impulse responses satisfy the same reciprocity condition as the free-space impulse responses do. This result underlies recent studies of adaptive communication systems for the turbulent channel.


Leaf elongation rate (LER) of tall rescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) leaves is associated with tillering rate and forage yield. We performed two experiments. Objectives of Exp. I were to determine if differences in LER among genotypes were due to differential growth during the photoperiod and dark period, and of Exp. II to determine the relationship between leaf water potential and LER. Plants were grown in a controlled environment chamber with a 14-hour photoperiod and a constant temperature of 21 or 23 C measured at the leaf intercalary meristem. Potentiometers were used to measure leaf elongation of genotypes selected for high yield per tiller (HYT, rapid LER) and low yield per tiller (LYT, slow LER). In Exp. II, stomatal diffusive resistance, leaf water potential, and LER of these genotypes were measured. Mean LER for the HYT genotype (0.9 mm hour⁻¹) throughout two 48-hour periods was greater than that for the LYT genotype (0.6 mm hour⁻¹). Mean LER of both genotypes was significantly higher during the dark periods than during the photoperiods, averaging respectively 1.1 and 0.7 mm hour⁻¹ for the HYT genotype, and 0.7 and 0.5 mm hour⁻¹ for the LYT genotype. The 67% increase in LER during the dark period over that during the photoperiod for the HYT genotype was significantly greater than the 33% increase for the LYT genotype. Brief, but substantial increases and decreases in LER coincided with the time the lights went off and on. This response was associated closely with times of increases and decreases in stomatal diffusive resistance, and subsequent changes in leaf water potential. Leaf water potential was higher for the HYT than for the LYT genotype and was associated with LER of both genotypes. In Exp. I, LER averaged 1.3 and 0.8 mm hour⁻¹ for the HYT and LYT genotypes, respectively, during a 41-hour dark period. These rates were similar to those maintained during the normal 10-hour dark periods, and we concluded that daily photosynthate production was not needed to maintain high LER in the dark. Thus, the difference in LER between genotypes was due, in part, to a genotype by leaf water potential interaction which allowed the HYT genotype to more effectively utilize the dark period.


The present study has been undertaken with Manipur as the focus area of the research work with the objectives to examine the cost of cultivation and return analysis of transplanted paddy of tribe and non-tribe sample respondents and to analyze the cost and return of jhum paddy of tribal sample households. Chandel District and Chandel sub-division had been purposively selected for this research work. 200 samples (150 tribal households and 50 non-tribal households) have been selected at random from four sample villages. After the selection of villages, a list of households with their operational holdings is prepared for the four villages from the secondary data obtained from the Sub-division Office. All the households are classified into four groups, viz., nonagriculturists, Group I (no operational holdings); marginal, Group II (less than 1 hectare of operational holdings); small, Group III (1.01-2 hectares of operational holdings); and large, Group IV (2.01 hectares and above of operational holdings).The reference period of the study is the agricultural year 2006-07. In the study, Cost concepts have been extensively used. The cost of cultivation of transplanted paddy for tribal sample households is found to be highest in Group IV (Rs.12,198); followed by Group III (Rs.11,837); and lowest in Group II (Rs.11,637). Irrespective of groups, human labour accounted for a major portion of the total cost. It is also found that in case of transplanted paddy the gross return increases with the increase in operational holdings for both tribal and non-tribal sample households, which ranges from Rs.18,000 for Group II to Rs.19,200 for Group IV for tribal sample households; and from Rs.27,200 (Group II) to Rs.30,400 (Group IV) for nontribal sample households. The total cost of cultivation of 0.25 hectares of paddy under Jhum cultivation is found to be Rs.8027 in the sample area. And Cost A1 is found to be about Rs.2827. The gross return from cultivating 0.25 hectares of Jhum paddy is worked out to be Rs.8100. The surplus over Cost A1 is about Rs.5272, but there is very little surplus over Cost D. The Return – cost ratio at Cost A1 is 2.86 but the same at Cost D is 1.01, which is almost equal to unity.


BACKGROUND
Pulmonary artery endothelial cell (PAEC) inflammation is a critical event in the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). However, the pathogenesis of PAEC inflammation remains unclear.

METHODS
Purified recombinant human inhibitor of κB kinase subunit β (IKKβ) protein, human PAECs and monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertensive rats were employed in the study. Site-directed mutagenesis, gene knockdown or overexpression were conducted to manipulate the expression or activity of a target protein.

RESULTS
We showed that hydrogen sulfide (H2S) inhibited IKKβ activation in the cell model of human PAEC inflammation induced by monocrotaline pyrrole-stimulation or knockdown of cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE), an H2S generating enzyme. Mechanistically, H2S was proved to inhibit IKKβ activity directly via sulfhydrating IKKβ at cysteinyl residue 179 (C179) in purified recombinant IKKβ protein in vitro, whereas thiol reductant dithiothreitol (DTT) reversed H2S-induced IKKβ inactivation. Furthermore, to demonstrate the significance of IKKβ sulfhydration by H2S in the development of PAEC inflammation, we mutated C179 to serine (C179S) in IKKβ. In purified IKKβ protein, C179S mutation of IKKβ abolished H2S-induced IKKβ sulfhydration and the subsequent IKKβ inactivation. In human PAECs, C179S mutation of IKKβ blocked H2S-inhibited IKKβ activation and PAEC inflammatory response. In pulmonary hypertensive rats, C179S mutation of IKKβ abolished the inhibitory effect of H2S on IKKβ activation and pulmonary vascular inflammation and remodeling.

CONCLUSION
Collectively, our in vivo and in vitro findings demonstrated, for the first time, that endogenous H2S directly inactivated IKKβ via sulfhydrating IKKβ at Cys179 to inhibit nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway activation and thereby control PAEC inflammation in PAH.


Background: Nutritional support plays an essential role for recovery in infants who undergo gastrointestinal surgery. The current standard type of intravenous lipid emulsion (IVLE) used as parenteral nutrition is the mixture of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) and long chain triglyceride (LCT) rich in ω-6. Studies showed that ω-6 is associated with higher level of proinflammatory cytokines, leading to increased mortality rate, morbidity rate, and postoperative recovery time. The latest generation of emulsion is a mixture of MCT, LCT, olive oil (OO), and fish oil (FO) which may optimize the ω6/ω3 ratio. This study aimed to compare the effect of MCT/LCT/OO/FO IVLE to standard IVLE on IL-1β, IL-8 and serum fatty acids in infants who had undergone gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: A single-blind, randomised controlled, pretest-posttest design study was done in twelve subjects that were classified into two groups. Group 1 received standard IVLE, group 2 received MCT/LCT/OO/FO IVLE. The type of standard and MCT/LCT/OO/FO IVLE used in this study were Lipofundin 20% and SMOFlipid 20%, respectively, both administered for three consecutive days in 1-4 gram/kilogram/day. IL-1β and IL-8 were examined using ELISA while fatty acids was analyzed using gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS for Mac 23. Results: No statistical difference was found in age, gender, birth weight and diagnosis between both groups. Leukocyte was significantly lower in MCT/LCT/OO/FO group 3 days after surgery (p=0.025). CRP was lower in MCT/LCT/OO/FO group 3 days after surgery (p=0.01) and in changes within 3 days (p=0.016). There were no differences in IL-1β, IL-8 and ω-3 but ω-6 was higher in standard IVFE group on third day after surgery (p=0,048) Conclusion: MCT/LCT/OO/FO IVLE can significantly lower leukocyte, CRP and ω-6 levels and is comparable with standard IVLE on IL-1β, IL-8 and ω-3 levels in infants who had undergone gastrointestinal surgery.


This paper develops a quantitative life-cycle model to study the increase in married women's labor force participation (LFP). We calibrate the model to match key life-cycle statistics for the 1935 cohort and use it to assess the changed environment faced by the 1955 cohort. We find that a higher divorce probability and changes in wage structure are each able to explain a large proportion of the LFP increase. Higher divorce risk increases LFP not because the latter contributes to higher marital assets or greater labor market experience, however. Instead, it is the result of conflicting spousal preferences towards the adjustment of marital consumption in the face of increased divorce risk.


Although it is well‐known to most historical linguists that the comparative method could in principle be used to predict hitherto unobserved words in genetically related languages, the task of word prediction is rarely discussed in the linguistic literature. Here, we introduce 'reflex retrodiction' as a new task for historical linguistics and report on an ongoing experiment in which we use a computer‐assisted workflow to retrodict reflexes for so far unobserved words in eight varieties of Western Kho‐Bwa (a subgroup of Sino‐Tibetan). Since, at the time of writing this report, the experiment is still ongoing, we do not report concrete results, but instead provide an estimate of our expectations by testing the performance of the computational part of our workflow on existing language data. Our results suggest that reflex retrodiction has the potential of becoming a useful tool for historically oriented fieldwork.


To what extent do online discussion spaces expose participants to political talk and to cross-cutting political views in particular? Drawing on a representative national sample of over 1000 Americans reporting participation in chat rooms or message boards, we examine the types of online discussion spaces that create opportunities for cross-cutting political exchanges. Our findings suggest that the potential for deliberation occurs primarily in online groups where politics comes up only incidentally, but is not the central purpose of the discussion space. We discuss the implications of our findings for the contributions of the Internet to cross-cutting political discourse.


A substantial body of existing research suggests that asset price volatility is harmful to market liquidity. This paper explores a contrarian view that, by creating opportunities for profit making, exchange rate volatility can be beneficial to trading activity. Utilising granular data from the Thai foreign exchange (FX) market from January 2010 to March 2016, we find that the volatility of the US dollar-Thai baht exchange rate has significant positive effects on trading volume in the spot market, except at very high levels of volatility. We also observe significant heterogeneity in such effects across different types of market participant. In particular, FX volatility has positive effects on the FX trading activity of foreign and interbank players, but it negatively affects that of local players. These results are robust when we control for potential confounding variables, such as information arrivals, that can generate a positive but non-causal co-movement between volatility and volume.


There is an unusual history of collective bargaining and deputy sheriffs in the state of Florida. While police officers have been allowed to unionize and collectively bargain since 1968, it has only been since 2003 that deputy sheriffs have been given that right. (Please note that despite the similarities in job duties, deputy sheriffs were not considered to be public employees for the purposes of collective bargaining.)


The work examines upper-ocean response to time-varying winds within the Ekman paradigm. Here, in contrast to the earlier works we assume the eddy viscosity to be both time and depth dependent. For self-similar depth and time dependence of eddy viscosity and arbitrary time dependence of wind we find an exact general solution to the Navier–Stokes equations which describes the dynamics of the Ekman boundary layer in terms of the Green's function. Two basic scenarios (a periodic wind and an increase of wind ending up with a plateau) are examined in detail. We show that accounting for the time dependence of eddy viscosity is straightforward and that it substantially changes the ocean response, compared to the predictions of the models with constant-in-time viscosity. We also examine the Stokes–Ekman equations taking into account the Stokes drift created by surface waves with an arbitrary spectrum and derive the general solution for the case of a linearly varying with depth eddy viscosity. Stability of transient Ekman currents to small-scale perturbations has never been examined. We find that the Ekman currents evolving from rest quickly become unstable, which breaks down the assumed horizontal uniformity. These instabilities proved to be sensitive to the model of eddy viscosity, they have small (${\sim}10^{2}~\text{m}$) spatial scales and can be very fast compared to the inertial period, which suggests spikes of dramatically enhanced mixing localized in the vicinity of the water surface. This picture is incompatible with the Ekman paradigm and thus prompts radical revision of the Ekman-type models.


Since Egypt's legislature adopted a modern Arbitration Law (Law No. 27 of 1994), which is largely inspired by the UNCITRAL Model Law, the general view in Egypt on this subject matter marked an important transformation, particularly with respect to the courts' attitude towards the expansion of international commercial arbitration. The once open hostility has been replaced by an emergence in recent years of a new, opposite trend, which prevails among most state courts and which can be summarized in three trends: a) courts are becoming clearly more favorable in recognizing the validity and effects of arbitration agreements related to international business transactions; b) courts are assisting arbitral tribunals operating locally in discharging their tasks; and c) courts are facilitating the enforcement proceedings of arbitral awards, whether rendered in Egypt or abroad.


Recent studies have demonstrated that marine bony fish (teleosts) precipitate inorganic calcium
carbonate in their gut as a by-product of osmoregulation, subsequently excreting it into the open
water column as loosely aggregated millimetre-scale pellet. These studies have primarily focused
on physiological aspects of this process and the fate of resulting carbonates in pelagic settings,
which is likely to be dissolution at depth. However, the implications of such carbonate production
in shallow tropical and sub-tropical carbonate provinces has also begun to be considered, and it is
thought that fish may contribute significant quantities of morphologically distinctive mud-grade
high-Mg calcite in certain habitat settings. However, most studies of carbonate mud in modern subtropical
settings do not report particles that are obviously fish-derived, and questions concerning
fish-derived carbonate characteristics and post-excretion stability thus arise.
The present work therefore provides more detailed characterisation of the carbonate products of an
expanded range of Caribbean fish species and determines their short-term preservation potential in
a sub-tropical carbonate province (the Bahamas). Following collection of carbonates from 22 fish
species (all starved), precipitates were characterised using scanning electron microscopy and a suite
of complimentary chemical analysis techniques. The form in which these carbonates are likely to
be incorporated into surface sediments was investigated by disaggregating pellets and
characterising the liberated particles by performing detailed image-based grain size analyses, with
additional experiments demonstrating the likely rate and extent of pellet disaggregation by placing
them in agitated seawater. Finally, short-term preservation potential was determined in a series of
experiments whereby excreted precipitates were exposed to surface seawater and shallow subsurface
porewater conditions for several months.
Results indicate that, at the point of excretion, fish-derived carbonates are morphologically and
mineralogically more varied than previously thought, although most morphotypes (e.g., ellipsoids,
dumbbells, spheres, rhombohedra) are seemingly unique in shallow sub-tropical marine settings.
ii
High-Mg calcite, typically containing 20–35 mol% MgCO3, is the dominant product of about half
the species investigated, but Mg calcite with lower MgCO3 contents (in the range 2–20 mol%) is
also common, as is aragonite, which can represent up to 27 wt% of carbonates excreted by some
species. In addition, amorphous magnesium carbonate (AMC) and magnesium-rich amorphous
calcium carbonate (ACC), both of which are strongly hydrated, represent the dominant
precipitation products of some species, with a hydrated crystalline phase (monohydrocalcite)
occasionally accompanying the latter. A non-carbonate phase, brucite, is nearly ubiquitous as a
volumetrically minor phase. Where analysed, all of these phases are further found to differ from
other carbonate sediments in the Bahamas with regard to their stable carbon and oxygen isotope
compositions; a consequence of the important role of metabolic HCO3
- in the precipitation process.
Detailed grain size analyses indicate that most morphotypes are released from pellets upon
disaggregation as individual mud-grade particles that retain their distinctive forms. However,
extreme agitation can result in polycrystalline forms releasing their fibre-like components; these
particles being less distinctive than their parent forms. In contrast, some particles are intergrown
and do not disaggregate beyond particle clusters that are up to fine sand sized. Moreover, excreted
pellets do not necessarily always disaggregate, with moderate agitation in seawater resulting in a
significant proportion of carbonate being retained as intact pellets, albeit smaller (typically fine
sand sized) and more well-rounded than initial pellets (typically fine to coarse sand sized). In
quiescent settings pellet diminution is less extensive, and it is thus hypothesised that a significant
proportion of fish-derived carbonates excreted in the Bahamas is preserved as sand-grade pellets.
Despite the highly distinctive nature of fish-derived carbonates, particles that can be attributed to
production by fish nevertheless remain elusive in studies of Bahamian surface sediments. It is thus
necessary to invoke post-excretion processes of dissolution and/or recrystallisation to explain the
apparent disparity between production rates and occurrence as sedimentary particles. Indeed, it is
demonstrated here that AMC, brucite, and large quantities of ACC undergo complete dissolution in
seawater within a few days of excretion, with the remaining ACC apparently crystallising to form
fine sand-grade (50–200 μm diameter) polycrystalline calcite spheres over similar timescales.
iii
Monohydrocalcite, also undergoes complete dissolution or alteration (to calcite) during 3 month
exposures to artificial seawater, and is predicted to alter in a similar manner in natural settings.
Conversely, anhydrous crystalline phases remain largely unchanged after porewater and seawater
exposures lasting several months, although two important post-excretion processes are observed.
Firstly, high-Mg calcite ellipsoids appear to undergo partial dissolution (with preferential loss of
MgCO3) and possible recrystallisation, and, based on these observations, it is predicted that longer
exposure times will result in changes being pervasive, possibly obscuring the piscine origin of
initial crystals. Secondly, carbonate pellets containing minor amounts of aragonite at the point of
excretion appear, in some cases, to stimulate post-excretion growth of abundant aragonite needles
that are morphologically similar to aragonite needles that dominate Bahamian carbonate muds. It is
further apparent that these processes are inhibited in uncleaned samples, possibly due to surface
adsorption of organic compounds, but the evidence after 3 month exposures indicates that
inhibiting factors might eventually be overcome.
Based on these results and modelling of carbonate excretion across shallow platform areas of the
entire Bahamian archipelago, it is predicted that about 18 % of excreted carbonates will dissolve
after excretion, while a further 53 % may alter beyond recognition within a very short period
(perhaps on the order of years). Moreover, characterisation of carbonates produced by three species
of normally feeding fish indicates they produce only amorphous carbonates, despite producing
crystalline phases when starved. This difference, attributed to the inhibition of CaCO3
crystallisation by dietary phosphate, indicates that loss of fish-derived carbonate to dissolution
might be considerably higher than 18 % under normal natural circumstances.
The sedimentary significance of fish-derived carbonates thus remains enigmatic, but results
presented herein indicate that they follow very different preservation pathways depending on their
excreted form, and that they may make previously unrecognised contributions to: i) the carbonate
sand fraction (as peloids); and ii) aragonite needle muds (as crystals grown post-excretion).


Background Injury data and reports provide valuable information for both public and private organizations to guide programming, policy, and prevention, but in the increasingly complex and dangerous industry of US agriculture, the injury surveillance needed to produce this data is lacking. To address the gap, AgInjuryNews was established in 2015. The system includes fatal and nonfatal injury cases derived from publicly available reports, including occupational and nonoccupational injuries, occurring in the agricultural, forestry, and fishing (AFF) industry. Objective The study aimed to develop a stakeholder-engaged redesign of the interactive, up-to-date, and publicly available dataset of US AFF injury and fatality reports. Methods Instructor-led heuristic evaluations within a 15-student undergraduate course, data from 8 student participants of laboratory-based usability testing and 2016 and 2017 AgInjuryNews-registered user surveys, coupled with input from the National Steering Committee informed the development priorities for 2018. An interdisciplinary team employed an agile methodology of 2-week sprints developing in ASP.NET and Structured Query Language to deliver an intuitive frontend and a flexible, yet structured, backend, including a case report input form for capturing more than 50 data points on each injury report. Results AgInjuryNews produced 17,714 page views from 43 countries in 2018 captured via Google Analytics, whereas 623 injury reports were coded and loaded, totaling more than 31,000 data points. Newly designed features include customizable email alerts, an interactive map, and expanded search and filter options. User groups such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America have endorsed the system within their networks. News media have cited or referenced the system in national outlets such as the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. Conclusions The new system's features, functions, and improved data granularity have sparked innovative lines of research and increased collaborative interest domestically and abroad. It is anticipated that this nontraditional sentinel surveillance system and its dataset will continue to serve many purposes for public and private agricultural safety and health stakeholders in the years to come.


The potential of smallholder irrigated agriculture to enhance food security and alleviate rural poverty has led the South African Government to prioritise and invest significantly in irrigation establishment, rehabilitation and revitalisation. The question addressed in this study pertains to the extent to which smallholder irrigation has been able to reduce poverty in the rural communities to justify this investment. Using a sample of 251 farmers, this study found that factors such as land size, perceived soil fertility, household size, and access to support services were significant predictors of irrigation participation. The results from the treatment effect model indicated that access to irrigation plays a positive role in the welfare of rural households, with irrigators spending about ZAR2 000 per adult equivalent on consumption more than the non-irrigators. The study, therefore, concluded that government investments in smallholder irrigation for poverty reduction are justified. The other factors that influenced household consumption were off-farm income, land size, livestock size, education level, family size and access to support services and infrastructure. The study recommends that investments in smallholder irrigation continue for poverty reduction, and that priority should also be on finding other feasible rural micro-projects and development initiatives to complement smallholder irrigation and significantly reduce rural poverty. Keywords: smallholder irrigation, poverty, food security, treatment effect model, Foster Greer Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures


The POMDP is a powerful framework for reasoning under outcome and information uncertainty, but constructing an accurate POMDP model is difficult. Bayes-Adaptive Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (BA-POMDPs) extend POMDPs to allow the model to be learned during execution. BA-POMDPs are a Bayesian RL approach that, in principle, allows for an optimal trade-off between exploitation and exploration. Unfortunately, BA-POMDPs are currently impractical to solve for any non-trivial domain. In this paper, we extend the Monte-Carlo Tree Search method POMCP to BA-POMDPs and show that the resulting method, which we call BA-POMCP, is able to tackle problems that previous solution methods have been unable to solve. Additionally, we introduce several techniques that exploit the BA-POMDP structure to improve the efficiency of BA-POMCP along with proof of their convergence.


A new method for restoring images degraded by atmospheric turbulence where the resulting point spread function varies across the field of view is discussed. Such cases occur in horizontal imaging by telescope close to the ground, especially during daytime when convective turbulence is worst. Each image frame of a captured movie sequence is exposed for a time short enough to freeze the effects of the turbulence, resulting in a random wobble and blurring of the image that is position and time dependent. Registration of each frame to a reference image is achieved either by a moving region-of-interest correlation or by a gradient-based optical flow method. In this paper, we discuss a new method, replacing correlation by a moving region-of-interest Wiener filter that came from experiments visualising turbulence in jet plumes. The resulting shift information is used to dewarp each frame of the sequence before averaging to provide a result corrected for motion-blur. Further deblurring is carried out by a variety of deconvolution techniques. The shift or blur information can also be used to visualise the intervening atmospheric turbulence.


Due to the consequences of globa l warming and significant greenhouse gas emissions, several ideas have been studied to reduce these emissions or to suggest solut ions for pollutant remov al. The most promising ideas are reduced consumption, waste recovery and waste treatment by biological systems. In this latter category, studies have demonstrated that the use of microalgae is a very promising solution for the biofixation of carbon dioxide. In fact, these micro-organisms are able to offset high levels of CO2 thanks to photosynthesis. Microalgae are also used in various fields (food industry, fertilizers, biofuel, etc.). To obtain a n optimal C O2 sequestration us ing micr oal gae, their cul tivatio n has to be c arried ou t in a f avorable e nvironment, corresponding to optimal operating conditions (temperature, nutrients, pH, light, etc.). Therefore, microalgae are grown in an enclosure, i.e. photobioreactors, which notably operate in continuous mode. This type of closed reactor notably enables us to reduce culture contamination, to improve CO2 transfer and to better control the cultivation system. This last point involves the regulation of concentrations (biomass, substrate or by-product) in addition to conventional regulations (pH, temperature).To do this, we have to establish a model of the system and to identify its parameters; to put in place estimators in order to rebuild variables that are not measured online (software sensor); and finally to implement a control law, in order to maintain the system in optimal conditions despite modeling errors and environmental disturbances that can have an influence on the system (pH variations, temperature, light, biofilm appearance, etc.).


Introduction Some years ago, thanks to a grant designed to encourage Smith faculty members to bring the remarkable holdings of the Sophia Smith Collection, one of the country's best women's history archives, into their classes, I found myself reading the letters of Sophia Peabody and her sisters Elizabeth and Mary. My purpose at the time was to try to get to know, through the resources of the Collection, the kind of people who would have been or become Hawthorne's readers. As the reader will infer, I began this enterprise in the most obvious possible way, by looking for materials that might be linked to Hawthorne himself, or to the literary culture of his time. What I discovered in these file folders full of cross-hatched manuscript letters and (miraculously) some very accurate typescripts struck me as both a treasure and a revelation, and I have looked for years for a way of doing something with them. This cache of materials is, of course, well known to scholars who work on the Peabody sisters, and Megan Marshall makes adroit use of this collection in her magisterial The Peabody Sisters, but my hope has been to offer to readers something like the experience I had when I first encountered Sophia Peabody's writing during my accidental sojourn in the archives. This special edition of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review seemed to provide a perfect occasion to share with other readers my earlier experience of "overhearing" Sophia, and to invite them to begin their reading of this special issue about Sophia Hawthorne with the sound, so to speak, of her own voice. The collection itself consists of letters between Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody and two close friends, the sisters and Salem neighbors Maria and Rebecca Chase. The Chases were a large, lively Quaker family--and Sophia's letters are full of greetings to various Chase siblings and cousins. Maria, the oldest sister (born in 1798), was the recipient of the great majority of the letters; Rebecca, twelve years younger, would marry Nathaniel Kinsman, a merchant engaged in the China trade, in 1835, and later travel with him to Macau. The letters were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection by Rebecca Kinsman Monroe, Smith class of 1895, Maria Chase's great-niece. For the "miniature edition" I present here, I have chosen two of Sophia's letters from Boston (one from 1827, one from 1829), and three of her letters from Cuba (1834), where Mary Peabody had found work as a governess, a job she took in the hope that the change in climate might cure Sophia's chronic migraines. I have provided thematic titles for both parts of the edition, emphasizing in the case of the Boston letters Sophia's eager participation in that city's intense culture of self-creation in the era of the "Newness" (the local term for transcendentalist cultural ferment), and in the Cuban letters her celebration--no less a form of self-making--of the sensory experience her tropical sojourn offered. Apart from this thematic organization, my method as the minor editor of this miniature edition has mainly been to stay out of the way. In my head-notes and annotations, I have tried to help the reader with the large cast of characters that populate Sophia's social and intellectual worlds; indeed, the range of cultural figures and books referred to in the letters (especially those from Boston) in itself provides vivid testimony to the stunning richness of Sophia's daily experience and of the historical moment she permits us to witness. In my presentation of the text of the letters themselves, I have stayed as close as I could to the originals, leaving Sophia's sometimes idiosyncratic spelling uncorrected and dispensing altogether with the many iterations of "[sic]" that would otherwise interrupt the flow of her words; readers will need to trust me when I say that these letters have been carefully proofread. Though I have sworn myself to interpretive reticence, let me nevertheless offer a few comments on what I take to be the value of these letters. …


1. INTRODUCTION As the knowledge economy evolves, the increasing use of Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds in business and the general population means that Information Systems (IS) Education must keep pace with current developments and anticipate future developments. The eager adoption of Web 2.0 has brought a range of innovations into mainstream use, such as user generated content, content sharing, socialising, community building, being interactive and collaborative. While we acknowledge that debate exists regarding the definition of Web 2.0, including whether it is anything more than just a marketing term, we use the term Web 2.0 to refer to the trend towards interactivity and interconnectivity in the World Wide Web (O'Reilly 2006; Web 2.0 2009). 1.1 Virtual Worlds: Immersion and Presence Just as Web 2.0 evolved from the original World Wide Web, Virtual Worlds extend many aspects of Web 2.0 into a 3D Web-based environment. As a technology that is distinct from other Web-based applications, one appealing definition of Virtual Worlds is as "online environments that have game-like immersion and social media functionality without game-like goals or rules. At the heart is a sense of presence with others at the same time and in the same place" (Constable 2008). In this context, Witmer and Singer (1998) define presence as "the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another" (p. 225) and immersion as the perception of being "enveloped by, included in, and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and experiences" (p. 227). Fenn et al. (2008) regard public Virtual Worlds as an emerging technology that will become increasingly influential over the next two to five years. To date, perhaps the most common uses for Virtual Worlds have been as socialising and networking forums for individuals (Sarner, 2008), as marketing or training platforms for businesses (Abrams, 2007; Second Life Business Communicators Wiki, 2008), and as educational and research environments for academics (Harris, Lowendahl, and Zastrocky, 2007). However, there are powerful pedagogical utilities of Virtual Worlds that are not yet fully evolved or utilised and are thus worthy of consideration. 1.2 Constructionist Pedagogy in Virtual Worlds Some of the more important and often challenging aspects of teaching are to help students cultivate intrinsic motivation, critical thinking skills, autonomous learning skills, and knowledge/skill transfer between learning domains and applications (Krause, Bochner, and Duchesne, 2003; Woolfolk, 2006). One way to address these challenges, and a current trend in education, is Papert's constructionist method of teaching, which is related to Piaget's constructivist learning theory, and Vygotsky's socio-constructivist theory (Ackermann, 2004). These developmental learning theories consider knowledge creation and skill acquisition as active and interrelated processes (Woolfolk, 2006). Papert's constructionist (Harel and Papert, 1991) educational method places students as active participants in the learning process with teachers as facilitators, and emphasises the utility of a socially demonstrable learning process in which students' learning is enhanced when the outcomes are publicly viewable and are shared/communicated with others (Ackermann, 2004). In order to implement this approach, several guidelines are recommended (Driscoll, 2000): (a) the learning context must be personally relevant to the lives and future prospects of the individual students; (b) the learning should be explorative; (c) the student should be given a chance to both participate in groups and demonstrate his or her knowledge individually; and (d) the instructor should guide and facilitate learning without spoon feeding students. 1.3 Relevance to Industry and the Interests of Younger Generations Correspondingly, Virtual Worlds provide a unique environment and set of tools which Generation Y students find relevant and appealing due to their status as digital natives. …


The name Tasmania, still more its former version, Van Diemen's
Land, is inextricably linked in the public mind with convictism and
the era of transportation. The worst aspects of convictism, naturally
enough, are the ones which have for many years captured the
attention of writers of works such as Marcus Clarke's "For the Term
of his Natural Life"', the obvious example. The excessive severity, by
today's standards, of the original sentences, the horrors of the
passage out, the brutality exercised frequently in the name of
discipline, the total helplessness of victims of unjust treatment, the
sheer animality of the degradation to which some were reduced and
which to others was habitual, the violence of one convict to another,
all tend to fix the 'horror' image in the public mind to the extent
that even today it is a rich source of sensational ideas for the
popular writer and the tourist industry.
In contrast, last century, the 'They'd-never-had-it-so-good'
school of thought, concerned with maintaining the punitive function
of the system and uneasily suspicious that convicts came to Van
Diemen's Land as to the promised land and flourished mightily, were
bolstered in their beliefs by tales reaching England of cases like that
of Henry Savery, clerk and journalist, and of countless others living
like gentlemen in exile. More recent studies which contrast social
conditions in British cities of the time, especially London, with life in
the colonies, imply with more justification and more moderately, that
in most cases the intended sufferer was in fact better off as a
convict or ex-convict transportee than at home.
Witnesses before the Select Committees of the House of
Commons last century set up to examine the system supplied ample
evidence to support both extreme views. In any case their
conclusions tended to reflect, or at least be coloured by, the moral
attitudes of their members. A totally accurate picture was unlikely to
emerge from those sources.
The innumerable modern studies of the system - as a whole or
in part - most prominently A G L Shaw's "Convicts and the Colonies"
and L L Robson's "Convict Settlers of Australia", emphasise the
enormous complexity of the system in Van Diemen's Land and the
variety of convict experience under both the assignment and
probation systems. For an unfortunate many, the system was indeed a
hell on earth, whether in government gangs or with private masters;
on the other hand, for others material success came to a spectacular
degree. There was as well a more muted kind of success - to survive
the servitude, earn enough to live on, establish a family and a place
in the colony, even if unable to return `home', to bear, however
lightly, the criminal 'brand' for the rest of one's life - this too was
the convict experience. This was the experience of Robert Logan.
Obviously there is no such person as the typical convict. It is
possible however to examine the histories of individual convicts in
sufficient detail to be able to say, "Well, for this man, it was like
this." This study is only indirectly concerned with the theoretical aspects of secondary punishment and its purposes, punitive and
reformatory. It follows Robert Logan on his road to respectability, a
road surprisingly close to the path followed by the colony of Van
Diemen's Land itself.


Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths. Many early stage lung cancer patients have a resectable tumor, however, their cardiopulmonary function needs to be properly evaluated before they are deemed operative candidates. Pulmonary function is assessed via spirometry and diffusion capacity. If these are below a certain threshold, cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is recommended. CPET is expensive, labor intensive, and sometimes ineffective since the patient is unable to fully participate due to comorbidities, such as limited mobility. In addition, CPET is done using a set of physical activities that may or may not be relevant to the patient's typical activities. This paper presents steps towards developing a solution to address this gap. Specifically, we present OOCOO, a mobile mask system designed to measure oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in respiration, as well as activity levels. Unlike state of practice, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and activity data can be continuously measured over a long period of time in the patient's environment of choice. The mask is capable of wireless data transfer to commodity smartphones. We have carried out initial work on development of an Android application to capture, analyze, and share the data with authorized entities.


:-Friction stir welding efficiently bonded two exceptional magnesium (Mg) plates, one with less aluminum (AZ31/AZ91) content as well as the opposite more aluminum (AZ91/AZ31) (FSW). The impact of procedure elements on warm crack improvement was tested. At most efficient procedure situations at one-of-a-kind parameters (AZ-ninety one/AZ-ninety one and AZ-31/AZ-31 comparable aggregate) with one-of-a-kind rpm like (1600,1400,1200) and one-of-a-kind feed charge like (25,50,75) mm/min feed under this sound weld 1400 rpm with 25 mm/min feed,), a valid metallurgical joint with great grains and dispersed (Mg17Al12) phase inside the nugget zone become achieved and parallel(AZ-31/AZ-ninety one multiple mixtures). A growing fashion in hardness measures has also revealed extended aluminum dissolution in the nugget region. The AZ31 Mg alloy aspect (advancing) had a distinct touch between the nugget sector and the Thermo mechanical affected quarter (TMAZ), but no longer the AZ91 Mg alloy side (withdrawing). it is viable to draw conclusions based on the findings. FSW can be used to sign up for assorted metals, including difficult-to-method metals like Mg alloys, and warm cracking may cause completely prevented by deciding on suitable system parameters to gain a sound joint. The impact of manner optimizing values for the joining of AZ91/AZ31 Mg alloy plates at some point of friction stir welding (FSP) became investigated on this observation. A hit joint was installed at a device circular motion of 1100 RPM also device journey space of 25 millimeter/min. The aggregate for holder along with tool rotational and travel speeds has had a large impact on the fabric waft tactics in the nugget region. The microstructural analyses revealed that the joint improvement changed in most cases as a result of the mechanical blending of the additives. The nugget sector changed discovered to be terrible, and there has been a sharp interface on the joint. Microhardness assessments throughout the weld joint addining indicated a lack of entire metallurgical bonding. The presence of magnesium and aluminum turned into revealed by way of X-ray diffraction material examination on weld area. From this result of the early observations, it may be concluded that FSP may be used to combine AZ91 Mg alloy and Az31 alloy; despite the fact that complex demanding situations in fabric blending require additional exploration.


East Kangaroo Island is a low, mostly calcarenite-covered granitic island in the Furneaux Group which was observed in 1828 to have been
fertile and well-wooded by Allocasuarina verticillata. Over 160 years of grazing and a succession of drought years have contributed to the
decline of the native vegetation in biomass, ground cover and native species diversity. In the summer of 1999/2000, bare ground comprised
80% of the island, and the sparse vegetation mostly consisted of heavily browsed exotic grasses and herbs. The meagre flora of 91 taxa
comprises 45% introduced species. The increased exposure from lack of vegetative cover has assisted the salt-wind-tolerant Austrostipa
stipoides to spread inland, particularly from the west coast. An evaluation of the biomass puts the island within the range of that recorded
for semi-arid deserts. Stock were removed in early 2000, and methods to restore the vegetation are proposed.


Studies of the time development of empirical networks usually investigate late stages where lasting connections have already stabilized. Empirical data on early network history are rare but needed for a better understanding of how social network topology develops in real life. Studying students who are beginning their studies at a university with no or few prior connections to each other offers a unique opportunity to investigate the formation and early development of link patterns and community structure in social networks. During a nine week introductory physics course, first year physics students were asked to identify those with whom they communicated about problem solving in physics during the preceding week. We use these students' self reports to produce time dependent student interaction networks. We investigate these networks to elucidate possible effects of different student attributes in early network formation. Changes in the weekly number of links show that while roughly half of all links change from week to week, students also reestablish a growing number of links as they progress through their first weeks of study. Using the Infomap community detection algorithm, we show that the networks exhibit community structure, and we use non-network student attributes, such as gender and end-of-course grade to characterize communities during their formation. Specifically, we develop a segregation measure and show that students structure themselves according to gender and pre-organized sections (in which students engage in problem solving and laboratory work), but not according to end-of-coure grade. Alluvial diagrams of consecutive weeks' communities show that while student movement between groups are erratic in the beginnning of their studies, they stabilize somewhat towards the end of the course. Taken together, the analyses imply that student interaction networks stabilize quickly and that students establish collaborations based on who is immediately available to them and on observable personal characteristics.


Low fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with poor outcomes after renal transplantation. Insufficient fruit and vegetable consumption is reported in the majority of renal transplant recipients (RTR). The aim of this study was to identify barriers and facilitators of fruit and vegetable consumption after renal transplantation and explore if certain barriers and facilitators were transplant-related. After purposive sampling, RTR (n = 19), their family members (n = 15) and healthcare professionals (n = 5) from a Dutch transplant center participated in seven focus group discussions (three each for RTR and family members, one with healthcare professionals). Transcripts were analyzed using social cognitive theory as conceptual framework and content analysis was used for identification of themes. Transplant-related barriers and facilitators were described separately. In categorizing barriers and facilitators, four transplant-related themes were identified: transition in diet (accompanied by, e.g., fear or difficulties with new routine), physical health (e.g., recovery of uremic symptoms), medication (e.g., cravings by prednisolone) and competing priorities after transplantation (e.g., social participation activities). Among the generic personal and environmental barriers and facilitators, food literacy and social support were most relevant. In conclusion, transplant-related and generic barriers and facilitators were identified for fruit and vegetable consumption in RTR. The barriers that accompany the dietary transition after renal transplantation may contribute to the generally poorer fruit and vegetable consumption of RTR. These findings can be used for the development of additional nutritional counseling strategies in renal transplant care.


Cloud users store their data in the cloud environment which is privileged by the service provider. Cloud users can access their cloud storage. Here we propose a flexible distributed storage integrity auditing mechanism, utilizing the homomorphic token and distributed erasure-coded data. The proposed design allows users to audit the cloud storage with very lightweight communication and computation cost.  The proposed scheme is highly efficient and resilient against Byzantine failure, malicious data modification attack, and even server colluding attacks.


When the protocol of a complex Multi-Agent System (MAS) needs to
 be developed, the top-down approach emphasises to start
 with abstract descriptions that should be refined incrementally
 until we achieve the detail level necessary to implement it.
 Unfortunately, there exist a semantic gap in interaction protocol
 methodologies because most of them first, identify which tasks has
 to be performed, and then use low level description such as
 sequences of messages to detail them. In this paper, we propose an approach to bridge this gap proposing a set of techniques that are integrated in a methodology called MaCMAS (Methodology for Analysing Complex Multiagent Systems). We model MAS protocols using several
 abstract views of the tasks to be performed, and provide a
 systematic method to reach message sequences descriptions from
 task descriptions. These tasks are represented by means of
 interactions that shall be refined systematically into
 lower-level interactions with the techniques proposed in this
 paper (simpler interactions are easier to describe and implement
 using message passing.) Unfortunately, deadlocks may appear due to
 protocol design mistakes or due to the refinement process that we
 present. Thus, we also propose an algorithm to ensure that
 protocols are deadlock free.


Nanowire materials have gained great interest as promising candidates for high-performance logic devices to sustain the progress in device scaling. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the role of contacts on the device performance accompanied by an appropriate physical model in nanodevices, although effects of the contacts will prevail as the channel scales. In this study, we investigate the effect of annealing using a femtosecond-laser focused at the contact region between the source-drain electrodes and the nanowire. On the basis of the direct comparison of device characteristics before and after annealing, a contact model is introduced, which could be generally applicable to nanowire transistors with overlap between gate region and source-drain regions. Low-frequency noise measurements in the devices reveal that the Id2 normalized noise spectrum and Hooge's constant are reduced following laser annealing.


A double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study was conducted to evaluate the safety and efficacy of treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease using monosialoganglioside GM-1, a neurotrophic factor. Of 46 patients enrolled, 42 completed all study requirements. Nineteen patients received 100 mg of GM-1 by daily intramuscular injection for 12 weeks. Twenty-three patients received placebo. Case evaluations were done at baseline, week 12, and week 24 and included both cognitive and psychosocial scales. Study results suggested that the treatment was safe, yet offered no overall symptomatic benefit to patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease. Whether or not GM-1 therapy may offer protective benefit by slowing or arresting the progression of the disease remains unclear, since the results of the cognitive evaluations suggested that neither the GM-1 group nor the placebo group declined significantly during the 24-week study.


This essay reflects on the study of coffee production in Angola, following research in business and missionary archives in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. After observing that African coffee farmers were consumers of foreign goods as much as they were producers for the global market, the essay makes a case for tying histories of consumption into histories of labor and production. It suggests there were long-term continuities as well as changes in African consumption patterns. Finally, it underlines the importance of studying the history of labor and consumption in Africa outside the traditional framework of colonial history, focusing instead on the global dimensions of commodity production.


Brain lesion and anatomy segmentation in magnetic resonance images are fundamental tasks in neuroimaging research and clinical practice. Given enough training data, convolutional neuronal networks (CNN) proved to outperform all existent techniques in both tasks independently. However, to date, little work has been done regarding simultaneous learning of brain lesion and anatomy segmentation from disjoint datasets. In this work we focus on training a single CNN model to predict brain tissue and lesion segmentations using heterogeneous datasets labeled independently, according to only one of these tasks (a common scenario when using publicly available datasets). We show that label contradiction issues can arise in this case, and propose a novel adaptive cross entropy (ACE) loss function that makes such training possible. We provide quantitative evaluation in two different scenarios, benchmarking the proposed method in comparison with a multinetwork approach. Our experiments suggest ACE loss enables training of single models when standard cross entropy and Dice loss functions tend to fail. Moreover, we show that it is possible to achieve competitive results when comparing with multiple networks trained for independent tasks.


Unless you sit on your Institution's Library Advisory Committee, a professional society's publications committee, or a journal editorial board, you may have paid only passing attention to the debate over public access to scientific research, which has been swirling through these communities ever since science journals started publishing online 15 years ago. That is about to change. Last week, the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee's Roundtable on Scholarly Publishing (on which we served along with 10 others) released a report* arguing that journal articles derived from federal research funding should be made publicly available as quickly as practicable—generally in a year or less after publication—and in ways that will improve scholarship by maximizing the scope for interoperability across articles, among disciplines, and internationally. Currently, there is no consistency regarding which version of an article is freely available. In contrast, the roundtable's report recommends that access policies aim toward making the "Version of Record" (the final version of an article in its published form) publicly available. And the report also asserts that any successful scheme for public access must provide methods for permanent public access.


A survey of the cockle Anadara antiquata's population was performed on the intertidal zone of Chumbe, a small island located off of Zanzibar, Tanzania. Cockle abundance and size were measured along transects laid parallel to shore at four sites, two sites on the west side and two on the east. The marine and intertidal environments on the western side of the island are protected under Chumbe Island Coral Park (CHICOP), a privately managed Marine Protected Area (MPA). However, small-scale artisanal fisheries including cockle collection by women still occur on the unprotected east side. This study will attempt to evaluate the effect of the no-take MPA on cockle populations and their interactions with associated biota. Results will indicate whether the MPA on the western side has had an effect on cockle abundance, size and distribution since extraction ceased in 1994. Additionally, the study will provide insight on the flora, fauna and sediment types that tend to be associated with A. antiquata in these two environments.


An improved analytical model is presented for the design of nth-order cascaded Raman fiber lasers (CRFLs) by considering the variation of Raman fiber effective core area with Stokes wavelength. Using this model, we determine the approximate optimal Raman fiber length and output-coupler (OC) reflectivity which make pump-to-Stokes conversion efficiency maximum. The output performance for a fifth-order Ge-doped CRFL calculated by our model is compared with the published experimental data, and good agreements between them have been found. Our calculated results show that losses, including gray losses of fiber Bragg gratings and splicing losses of fibers, have a significant effect on CRFLs characteristics, and the conversion efficiency is insensitive to the variation of Raman fiber length or reflectivity of OC near the optimal value.


In an exploratory quasi-experimental study, 138 students recruited during a university orientation week were exposed to social engineering directives in the form of fake emails, or phishing, over several months in 2017. The study assessed the risks of cybercrime for students by observing their responses. Three types of scam emails were distributed that varied in the degree of individualisation: generic, tailored, and targeted or 'spear'. The study explored the influence of scam type, cybercrime awareness, gender, IT competence and perceived internet safety on susceptibility to email scams.

Although tailored and individually crafted email scams were more likely to induce engagement than generic scams, differences were not significant. Analysis of the variables showed that international students and first year students were deceived by significantly more scams than domestic students and later year students.


Animals across vertebrate taxa form social communities and often exist as fission–fusion groups. Central place foragers (CPF) may form groups from which they will predictably disperse to forage, either individually or in smaller groups, before returning to fuse with the larger group. However, the function and stability of social associations in predatory fish acting as CPFs is unknown, as individuals do not need to return to a shelter yet show fidelity to core areas. Using dynamic social networks generated from acoustic tracking data, we document spatially structured sociality in CPF grey reef sharks at a Pacific Ocean atoll. We show that sharks form stable social groups over multiyear periods, with some dyadic associations consistent for up to 4 years. Groups primarily formed during the day, increasing in size throughout the morning before sharks dispersed from the reef at night. Our simulations suggest that multiple individuals sharing a central place and using social information while foraging (i.e. local enhancement) will outperform non-CPF social foragers. We show multiyear social stability in sharks and suggest that social foraging with information transfer could provide a generalizable mechanism for the emergence of sociality with group central place foraging.


Collective interactions are recurrent in microbes, though paradoxical with respect to natural selection: individual traits that support sociality are costly, hence prone to exploitation by noncarriers. Among the many related theoretical models, most overlook the physical process of group formation, relying on static and idealized formulations. In a 1st part, I design a general formal framework describing the evolutionary dynamics of a social trait that enhances individual propensity to interact as well as aggregates cohesion. I show that, under some conditions on the group size distributions experienced by the social and asocial types, socials may get positively assorted with no recognition ability, but merely as a mechanical consequence of them being more aggregation-prone, suggesting a weaker requirement (differential attachment) for their success than usually assumed (preferential attachment). In a 2nd part, I substantiate this proof of principle implementing a biologically relevant computational model for aggregation, where individuals exert interaction forces on each other whose intensities depend on their type. I show that the emergence and maintenance of sociality is compatible with such group formation processes, and specify under which conditions on the microscopic parameters of motion and ecological parameters. This work suggests a parsimonious, elementary scenario for the evolution of sociality in groups of arbitrary sizes bereft of high-level cognitive abilities and interaction with kins. It might shed light both on the evolutionary determinants of social structure in species such as dictyostelids and myxobacteria, and on the possible origins of multicellularity.


Research indicates that the success of inclusive education lies within the provision of adequate support for learners who experience barriers to learning in mainstream schools as well as in the changing roles of teachers and support services staff. In South Africa, the provincial Western Cape Education Department (WCED) responded to the implementation of inclusive education by introducing a learning support model that was designed to systemically deal with barriers to learning in some primary schools in the province. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the learning support model that was introduced in some primary schools in the Western Cape with specific reference to schools within the West Coast/Winelands district. The evaluation was located in a comprehensive mixed methods research design, which focused on the evaluation of both process and outcomes of the learning support model. The evaluation was done sequentially in three phases: Phase one consisted of a comprehensive literature review. Phase two focused on both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (through questionnaires containing both closedand open-ended questions). The focus in Phase three was on follow up semi-structured focus group interviews. The participants were drawn from all primary schools situated within the boundaries of the West Coast/Winelands district and where the services of a learning support teacher (full-time or itinerant) were available. While learning support teachers were selected through purposive sampling, mainstream teachers were systematically selected. The four primary schools and learning support teachers that participated in the focus group interviews were systematically selected. Findings indicate that the current learning support model used in the West Coast/Winelands area does not provide effective learning support to all learners experiencing barriers to learning in mainstream primary schools. Constraints that contribute to this situation can be identified on all levels of the education system including the macro and micro systems. By mapping the findings from the data against the literature review, the researcher recommends that the provision of learning support should be addressed systemically from within a whole-school approach, taking into account local contextual factors impacting on the school. In conclusion a model for the improvement of learning support service delivery within a wholeschool approach is provided.


A new technique is proposed for the recovery of optical phase from intensity information. The method is based on the decomposition of the transport-of-intensity equation into a series of Zernike polynomials. An explicit matrix formula is derived, expressing the Zernike coefficients of the phase as functions of the Zernike coefficients of the wave-front curvature inside the aperture and the Fourier coefficients of the wave-front boundary slopes. Analytical expressions are given, as well as a numerical example of the corresponding phase retrieval matrix. This work lays the basis for an effective algorithm for fast and accurate phase retrieval.


[1] Arctic sea ice cover has decreased dramatically over the last three decades. Global climate models under-predicted this decline, most likely a result of the misrepresentation of one or more processes that influence sea ice. The cloud feedback is the primary source of uncertainty in model simulations, especially in the polar regions. A better understanding of the interaction between sea ice and clouds, and specifically the impact of decreased sea ice on cloud cover, will provide valuable insight into the Arctic climate system and may ultimately help in improving climate model parameterizations. In this study, an equilibrium feedback assessment is employed to quantify the relationship between changes in sea ice and clouds, using satellite-derived sea ice concentration and cloud cover over the period 2000–2010. Results show that a 1% decrease in sea ice concentration leads to a 0.36–0.47% increase in cloud cover, suggesting that a further decline in sea ice cover will result in an even cloudier Arctic. Citation: Liu, Y., J. R. Key, Z. Liu, and X. Wang, and S. J. Vavrus (2012), A cloudier Arctic expected with diminishing sea ice, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L05705, doi:10.1029/2012GL051251.


The flux of gas across the air-sea interface is determined by the product of the interfacial concentration difference driving the exchange and a rate constant, often termed the transfer velocity. The concentration-difference term is generally obtained by direct measurement, whereas more indirect approaches are required to estimate the transfer velocity and its variation as a function of controlling parameters such as wind and sea state. Radioactive tracers have proved particularly useful in the estimation of air-sea transfer velocities and, recently, stable purposeful tracers have also started to be used. In this paper the use of the following tracers to determine transfer velocities at the sea surface is discussed: natural and bomb-produced 14C, dissolved oxygen, 222Rn and sulphur hexafluoride. Other topics covered include the relation between transfer velocity and wind speed as deduced from tracer and wind-tunnel studies, and the discrepancy between transfer velocities determined by using tracers and from eddy correlation measurements in the atmosphere.


The study examined the Impact of Peer-Mediated Learning on achievement and motivation in computer science among senior secondary school students in Minna metropolis, Niger state. The study adopted a randomized pre-test, post-test control group design. Two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select four (4) Private Secondary Schools from Minna, Metropolis. Eighty (80) Students were drawn from the four Secondary Schools as sample size through stratified random sampling technique. Validated Test Instrument; Basic Computer Skills Acquisition Test (BCSAT) and Questionnaire: Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) vetted by experts from Computer Science and Educational Technology Departments were used for data collection. The BCSAT was made up of 20 items multiple-choice objective test questions to test students' cognitive knowledge and 5 practical questions, each comprising steps that tested students' computer practical skills while MSLQ, a Likert scale with 31 items was used to determine the motivational beliefs of students taught computer skills. ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis H test was used for data analysis and was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of students taught using Peer-Mediated Learning (PML) than those taught using conventional method. The study further revealed that students' motivation towards PML were significantly positive when compared to the students taught using conventional method. Based on these findings, the researchers recommended that Secondary Schools should adopt PML for effective teaching and learning of computer skills related concepts in Computer Science.


ABSTRACT Why do women become extremists? To what extent might they have self-agency? This paper examines the motivations and processes of female radicalization into the so-called Islamic State (IS) by drawing on a case study of Indonesian IS sympathizers, including the three migrant workers-turned-female suicide bombers whose radicalization was facilitated by social media. It argues that far from being coerced, most women join IS of their own free will. Prompted by a mix of personal crisis and socioeconomic and political grievances, the women embark on a religious seeking, exploring the various Islamic options available to them. Ideational congruence might spark the initial interest in IS, but it is generally emotional factors such as a feeling of acceptance and empowerment that make them stay. Contrary to common assumptions, women's subordination in jihadist organizations is not absolute; it can be negotiated after joining. Most women try to conform to jihadist strict gender rules, but some, often with the support of male allies, try to bend the norms, including on female combat roles. The findings suggest that counter-terrorism agencies should abandon the binary view that women are either just brainwashing victims or terrorist provocateurs, and try to understand the gendered nuances of radicalization in order to formulate suitable preventive measures.