An increasing number of pipelines and associated protective materials in the North Sea are reaching the end of their operational life and require decommissioning. Identifying the optimal decommissioning option from an environmental perspective requires an understanding of ecological interactions; currently there is little knowledge as to species associations with pipelines and associated protective materials. This study utilises industry ROV footage from the North Sea to quantify these interactions. A total of 58 taxa were identified, including 41 benthic taxa and 17 fish taxa. Taxa were grouped into seven groups for analysis including four groups for benthic epifauna: grazers, suspension/filter feeders, decapods, and colonial/encrusting taxa. Fish were organised into three groups: pollock, other fish, and other gadoids. Using zero-inflated generalised linear mixed models, we show that abundances of benthic epifauna and fish vary between types of protective structure (e.g., concrete mattresses, rock dump), depth, levels of fishing effort and proximity to oil and gas platforms. Six taxa groups exhibited higher abundances on concrete mattresses than bare pipelines with benthic epifaunal decapods showing the highest difference at 3.04 (1.83, 4.84, 95% CrI) times higher on mattresses compared to bare pipelines. Six groups were higher in abundance within the 500 m fisheries exclusion zone around platforms, compared to outside of the zone, with other gadoids showing the highest difference at 1.83 times (1.09, 2.89, 95% CrI) times higher inside zones. Five groups decreased in abundance with an increase in fishing effort, with the biggest effect observed on grazers which decreased in abundance by 28% (14 – 40, 95% CrI) per 50 h of fishing. We show that pipelines and protective materials are operating as artificial reefs, and our results suggest that removal of infrastructure could result in the loss of habitat and species.


The student experience extends beyond the curriculum. Engagement with student sports teams can enrich aspects of university life while also developing graduate attributes. However, there have also been reports of discriminatory behaviour and poor use of language in university sports teams. Abertay University's sports team members were surveyed regarding their knowledge of, and attitudes toward, protected characteristics in advance of awareness-raising interventions that included students working with a group with protected characteristics in the community. The survey was then re-administered. The results of the survey revealed that Abertay University sports team members responded significantly differently to their Scottish peers in the general population on questions about whether equal opportunities for women, for BME groups, and for gay men and lesbian women had gone too far. They also had significantly different responses to questions regarding positive action to enable employment for BME groups, for gay men and lesbian women and for those who had experienced depression.


Abstract. The Measurements of Urban, Marine and Biogenic Air (MUMBA) campaign took place in Wollongong, New South Wales (a small coastal city approximately 80 km south of Sydney, Australia) from 21 December 2012 to 15 February 2013. Like many Australian cities, Wollongong is surrounded by dense eucalyptus forest, so the urban airshed is heavily influenced by biogenic emissions. Instruments were deployed during MUMBA to measure the gaseous and aerosol composition of the atmosphere with the aim of providing a detailed characterisation of the complex environment of the ocean–forest–urban interface that could be used to test the skill of atmospheric models. The gases measured included ozone, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and many of the most abundant volatile organic compounds. The aerosol characterisation included total particle counts above 3 nm, total cloud condensation nuclei counts, mass concentration, number concentration size distribution, aerosol chemical analyses and elemental analysis. The campaign captured varied meteorological conditions, including two extreme heat events, providing a potentially valuable test for models of future air quality in a warmer climate. There was also an episode when the site sampled clean marine air for many hours, providing a useful additional measure of the background concentrations of these trace gases within this poorly sampled region of the globe. In this paper we describe the campaign, the meteorology and the resulting observations of atmospheric composition in general terms in order to equip the reader with a sufficient understanding of the Wollongong regional influences to use the MUMBA datasets as a case study for testing a chemical transport model. The data are available from PANGAEA ( http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.871982 ).


In this paper, we introduce a graph matching method that can account for constraints of arbitrary order, with arbitrary potential functions. Unlike previous decomposition approaches that rely on the graph structures, we introduce a decomposition of the matching constraints. Graph matching is then reformulated as a non-convex non-separable optimization problem that can be split into smaller and much-easier-to-solve subproblems, by means of the alternating direction method of multipliers. The proposed framework is modular, scalable, and can be instantiated into different variants. Two instantiations are studied exploring pairwise and higher-order constraints. Experimental results on widely adopted benchmarks involving synthetic and real examples demonstrate that the proposed solutions outperform existing pairwise graph matching methods, and competitive with the state of the art in higher-order settings.


Quantum self-testing addresses the following question: is it possible to verify the existence of a multipartite state even when one's measurement devices are completely untrusted? This problem has seen abundant activity in the last few years, particularly with the advent of parallel self-testing (i.e., testing several copies of a state at once), which has applications not only to quantum cryptography but also quantum computing. In this work we give the first error-tolerant parallel self-test in a three-party (rather than two-party) scenario, by showing that an arbitrary number of copies of the GHZ state can be self-tested. In order to handle the additional complexity of a three-party setting, we use a diagrammatic proof based on categorical quantum mechanics, rather than a typical symbolic proof. The diagrammatic approach allows for manipulations of the complicated tensor networks that arise in the proof, and gives a demonstration of the importance of picture-languages in quantum information.


Inflation expectations are extracted from the Consumer Survey, which is conducted by the European Commission for the European Union. Using the probability method to quantify the qualitative answers different distribution functions and scaling parameters are assumed to cope with the properties of the data properly. The forecasting ability of respective series is assessed also compared to the balance statistic. Furthermore the time horizon of the survey participants while answering the questionnaire is analyzed, because the empirical results show that it might not coincide with the time horizon implied by the formulation of the question.


Create and unleash the power of neural networks by implementing C# and .Net code
Key Features
Get a strong foundation of neural networks with access to various machine learning and deep learning libraries

Real-world case studies illustrating various neural network techniques and architectures used by practitioners

Cutting-edge coverage of Deep Networks, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, autoencoders and many more

Book Description
Neural networks have made a surprise comeback in the last few years and have brought tremendous innovation in the world of artificial intelligence.

The goal of this book is to provide C# programmers with practical guidance in solving complex computational challenges using neural networks and C# libraries such as CNTK, and TensorFlowSharp. This book will take you on a step-by-step practical journey, covering everything from the mathematical and theoretical aspects of neural networks, to building your own deep neural networks into your applications with the C# and .NET frameworks.

This book begins by giving you a quick refresher of neural networks. You will learn how to build a neural network from scratch using packages such as Encog, Aforge, and Accord. You will learn about various concepts and techniques, such as deep networks, perceptrons, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, and autoencoders. You will learn ways to add intelligent features to your .NET apps, such as facial and motion detection, object detection and labeling, language understanding, knowledge, and intelligent search.

Throughout this book, you will be working on interesting demonstrations that will make it easier to implement complex neural networks in your enterprise applications.
What you will learn
Understand perceptrons and how to implement them in C#

Learn how to train and visualize a neural network using cognitive services

Perform image recognition for detecting and labeling objects using C# and TensorFlowSharp

Detect specific image characteristics such as a face using Accord.Net

Demonstrate particle swarm optimization using a simple XOR problem and Encog

Train convolutional neural networks using ConvNetSharp

Find optimal parameters for your neural network functions using numeric and heuristic optimization techniques.

Who this book is for
This book is for Machine Learning Engineers, Data Scientists, Deep Learning Aspirants and Data Analysts who are now looking to move into advanced machine learning and deep learning with C#. Prior knowledge of machine learning and working experience with C# programming is required to take most out of this book


Micro-level evidence indicates that firms which substituted bank loans with bond issues during the Great Recession did not experience a large contraction in their total borrowing, but they have been hoarding more cash and investing less than firms that did not substitute. This suggests that firms' balance sheet adjustment played a key role in the transmission of aggregate shocks. To evaluate the importance of this mechanism in the propagation of the Great Recession, I build a quantitative general equilibrium model of firm dynamics that jointly endogenizes the composition of borrowing on the liability-side, and the portfolio allocation between savings and investment on the asset-side. Bond issuances have lower intermediation costs than bank debt, but the latter can be restructured when firms are in financial distress. In response to a contraction in bank credit supply, firms substitute bank loans with bond issues and thus become more exposed to the risk of financial distress. This strengthens firms' precautionary incentive to increase cash holdings at the expense of investment, as they optimally trade-off growth against self-insurance via cash holdings. Model simulations suggest that this "precautionary savings" channel can account for 40 percent of the decline in aggregate investment in the first two years of the Great Recession, and more than one-half of the decline in the following five years.


CONSTANCE T. FISCHER (Ed.) Qualitative Research Methods for Psychologists: Introduction through Empirical Studies Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006, 512 pages (ISBN 0-12-088470-4, US$89.95 Hardcover) Reviewed by ANITA UNRUH This book is intended as an introductory textbook for psychology students and psychologists who have been trained in traditional psychological research methods with the goal of providing an orientation to qualitative research frameworks and how they are applied to the many research questions that might be considered by psychologists. The book begins with a useful introductory chapter by the editor that provides a historical overview of the emergence of psychology as a science concerned primarily with determining causal relationships. The editor then examines the origins of qualitative research and the contributions it can make as a post-modern epistemological perspective that is concerned with the meaning of psychological phenomena and the interrelationships of outcomes and circumstances of these phenomena. This discussion is followed by a review of practical matters pertaining to undertaking a qualitative thesis (or study). Some of this section includes standard advice for graduate students but a number of issues that are often particularly complex for qualitative researchers are considered by the editor (how much personal interest in the topic should be acknowledged by the researcher, the process of qualitative data collection and analysis, writing and publishing qualitative research, and, attending to ethical issues in qualitative research). This introduction is very helpful in setting qualitative methodologies within psychology both as a therapeutic profession, and as a scientific discipline, with a qualitative overview for the novice reader. There are 13 chapters in the body of the book and they are gathered into three parts. The five chapters in Clinical Practices make linkages between psychotherapy and the qualitative methods or analytical approaches of discourse analysis, grounded theory, and phenomenology. The five chapters in Affective and Cognitive Processes discuss feminist collaborative research, phenomenology, and dialogical approaches as applied to affective and cognitive issues. They include discussions about qualitative research concerned with sexual abuse, anger, joy, forgiveness, and thought processes. The three chapters in Life Situations examine intuitive inquiry, experiential method, and focus groups as qualitative methods to address, respectively, embodiment of contemporary female mystics, being a stranger in a foreign land, and HIV/AIDS interventions in Botswana. The authors of these chapters are respected qualitative researchers in psychology. Most come from the United States but several are from Canada or the United Kingdom. All of the chapters are written in the first person, in a narrative style. They tell a story about an author's approach to a particular psychological issue using qualitative method or analysis. The focus is primarily on method, processes, and analytical strategies though usually there is also some discussion about research findings particularly in chapters that are more focused on data analysis. The book ends with a Question and Responses chapter by the editor that covers many of the questions novice qualitative researchers often have about qualitative research. The last section is a detailed Glossary of terms that are significant in understanding qualitative research. Both of these sections clarify many of the questions that are often raised by graduate students and beginning qualitative researchers particularly if their background is in quantitative research methods. …


The relationships between atmospheric circulation patterns and daily Iberian rainfall are here explored at high spatial resolution (0.2°) using the Jenkinson and Collison automated classification scheme with 26 Weather Types (WTs). The WTs were computed by means of the daily EMULATE Mean Sea Level Pressure dataset (EMSLP) while the high resolution precipitation database corresponds to the recent Iberia02 daily gridded precipitation dataset over the 1950-2003 period. Six monthly indexes relating the WTs and precipitation were analyzed: their Frequency, the Mean Precipitation, the Percentage Contribution, the Area of Influence, the Precipitation Intensity and Efficiency. Except for the Frequency of the WTs, all other indexes were evaluated studying their spatial distribution over the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on a WT and a month at time. A small number of WTs (7) was found to capture a high percentage (~70%) of monthly Iberian precipitation. The Westerly WT is the most influent one, followed by the Cyclonic, the Northwesterly and the Southwesterly WTs. Westerly flows, however, do not affect the Mediterranean fringe or the Cantabrian coast, which are dominated by the Easterly and Northerly WTs, respectively. Rainfall along the Mediterranean coastline and the Ebro basin depends on a variety of WTs, but their effects are confined to narrow areas and short temporal intervals, suggesting that local factors such as convective processes, orography and the proximity to a warm water body could play a major role in precipitation processes. We show that the use of daily gridded precipitation dataset holds the advantage of measuring the daily rainfall amount due to each WT directly instead to relying on the predicted values of the regression model as done in previous works.


Many books and scholarly articles have been devoted to the study of the United States entry into World War I. President Woodrow Wilson went before Congress on April 2, 1917, to ask for a declaration of war. The main reasons cited in the scholarly literature for this shift from neutrality to warfare are the Zimmermann Telegram incident and the German practice of unrestricted submarine warfare. While these factors are important, what is missing is an emphasis on the March 1917 Russian Revolution, which ended tsarist control in favor of a provisional democratic government. This event occurred just days before Wilson had decided to join the war. This thesis argues that not enough attention has been given to Russia's shift from a monarchy to a democracy and its effect on Wilson's decision to enter the war. To support this thesis, the author examines a representative sample of scholarly literature focusing on Wilson and World War I. This search reveals that scholars have tended to minimize the Russian Revolution in March as a factor in Wilson's decision to go to war. Then the author directly supports the Russian Revolution motivation as important in Wilson's decision-making by studying primary documents, including the writings of foreign ambassadors, of members of the Wilson cabinet, and of Woodrow Wilson himself.


Abstract Secondary host plant colonization by aphids involves alate and apterous morphs to spread in the population at a large scale by flying or, at a finer one, by walking. Macrosiphum euphorbiae Thomas (Hemiptera: Aphididae) and Myzus persicae Sulzer (Hemiptera: Aphididae) are two polyphagous aphids that cause serious losses on many crops, particularly on potato, Solanum tuberosum L. (Solanales: Solanaceae). When settlement of virginoparous alate aphids occurs, apterous individuals are produced and spread within the potato field. As these two potato colonizers originate from different areas and show different body length, this study compared probing behaviors of virginoparous alate and apterous M. persicae and M. euphorbiae on one of their secondary host plants, Solanum tuberosum. Non—choice bioassays and electrical penetration graph (EPG) recordings were performed. Most M. euphorbiae of the two morphs rapidly accepted potato plants and exhibited long duration of probing, phloem sap salivation, and ingestion phases. In contrast, at the end of the experiment, most alates of M. persicae left the potato leaflet after brief gustative probes. Moreover, EPG experiments showed that the main difference between both morphs of the two species concerned the xylem ingestion parameter. Differences between species were also reported, such as an increased total duration of probing in both morphs and enhanced phloem ingestion duration in apterous M. euphorbiae. All the differences highlighted in this study are discussed according to the variations observed in aphid body size and to their historical association with Solanum species.


Retained surgical foreign bodies (RSFB) constitute a theoretically preventable surgical morbidity. Despite numerous case reports and clinical series, very few studies exist that adequately address the issue of RSFB. Moreover, published reports lack the ability to detect clinically important differences among the proposed risk factors for RSFB. This meta-analysis examines existing data for previously unrecognized risk factors for RSFB. Methods. Eighteen potentially relevant studies were considered for this meta-analysis. Two retrospective, case-control studies of RSFB- related risk factors contained suitable group comparisons between patients with and without RSFB, thus qualifying for further statistical analysis. Comprehensive Meta Analysis 2.0 (BioStat, Inc., Englewood, NJ) software was used to analyze the following proposed risk factors for RSFB: (a) patient age and gender; (b) body-mass index; (c) surgical count not performed; (d) incorrect surgical count; (e) duration of operation; (f) estimated blood loss >500 mL or transfusion requirement in the operating room; (g) emergent nature of surgical operation; (h) operation after hours (5 pm); (i) unplanned change in surgical procedure; (j) more than one major procedure performed; (k) change in operating room nursing staff; and (l) involvement of multiple surgical teams. Results. Frequent changes in nursing staff and operation after hours were not significantly associated with RSFB in either study but reached near-significance in our meta-analysis. Of note, six variables found to be independently associated with RSFB in only one of the two studies were determined to be significantly associated with RSFB in this meta-analysis. In addition, duration of operation, while not statistically significant in either of the two studies, was found to be significantly associated with the occurrence of RSFB by meta-analysis. Six remaining variables were confirmed not to be significantly associated with RSFB. Conclusions. This analysis demonstrated that seven of 13 previously studied variables are significantly associated with the incidence of RSFB. These findings provide a meaningful foundation for future patient safety initiatives and clinical studies of RSFB occurrence and prevention. Further, large prospective studies evaluating effects of specific changes at the institutional level (i.e., universal surgical counts, radiographic verification of the absence of RSFB, radio- frequency labeling of surgical instruments and sponges) on the incidence of RSFB should be undertaken using variables derived from the current analysis.


The countries and territories of the Pacific Islands face many challenges in building the three main pillars of food security: availability, access and appropriate use of nutritious food. These challenges arise from factors including rapid population growth and urbanization, shortages of arable land for farming and the availability of cheap, low-quality foods. As a result, many are now highly dependent on imported food, and the incidence of non-communicable diseases in the region is among the highest in the world. This report summarizes: 1) the projected effects of climate change on agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific region; 2) adaptations and supporting policies needed to reduce risks to food production; 3) gaps in knowledge that must be filled in order to implement the adaptations effectively; 4) recommendations to fill these knowledge gaps.


S cience is an international enterprise that embraces the importance of sharing information as one of its core values because the building of new knowledge onto old knowledge drives scientific advances. At the same time, the scientific community recognizes the importance of protecting U.S. national security interests from foreign espionage. How then are we to react to news reports of the possible theft of classified information from our nation's weapons laboratories and to the ensuing calls in Congress for increased restrictions on foreign visitors to national laboratories? Concern about possible new restrictions on foreign scientists has led the National Academies to issue a statement (available at [www.national-academies.org/topnews/][1]) and to initiate a fast-track study, with a workshop in August 1999 that will examine how best to ensure the dual objectives of international communication among scientists and protection of classified information.

Inappropriate restrictions could harm U.S. interests by impeding the nation's scientific progress, weakening its role as a key player in the international scientific community, and endangering international cooperative activities in areas that bolster national security, such as nuclear safety, weapons proliferation, and environmental cleanup.

An ability to maintain strong international ties has been critical to the strength of U.S. science. For example, one-quarter of the 1900 U.S. members of the National Academy of Sciences were born in another country. Of the students who received their Ph.D.'s in science at U.S. universities in 1997, 33 percent were foreign born. Our nation's well-being continues to depend on the many intellectual contributions of individuals who have come from other countries.

Although the national laboratories of the Department of Energy (DOE) are engaged in classified military work, they also carry out a large amount of unclassified scientific and engineering research. Many of the foreign scientists who visit them are invited because they bring important new knowledge. A wide range of scientific expertise is essential for maintaining the intellectual vitality and quality of these laboratories and for sustaining their capacity to attract and retain promising young talent.

Several studies by the National Academies have articulated the importance of increasing openness to promote the security systems necessary for controlling chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. The 1997 National Academy of Sciences report Controlling Dangerous Pathogens emphasizes that appropriately structured U.S.-Russian scientific cooperation, featuring direct lab-to-lab contact, is needed to increase the certainty that work on biological weapons is not continued in Russia. Likewise, the 1999 National Research Council report Protecting Nuclear Weapons Material in Russia concludes that "continued DOE involvement in strengthening material protection, control, and accountability in Russia should be a high-priority national security imperative for the United States for at least a decade."

International scientific exchanges can also be a key to finding peaceful resolutions to very difficult issues. Last February, for example, scientists from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, the United States, and Canada issued an important joint report on managing the dwindling water resources in the Middle East (available at [www.nap.edu/html/waterfuture][2]). Although regional water management is in large part a political issue, wise decisions will depend on application of the best scientific and engineering knowledge.

In the post-Cold War era, the U.S. scientific and engineering communities have increasingly been called on to play diplomatic roles in establishing international partnerships. They have facilitated progress in such areas as counterproliferation, demilitarization, environmental cleanup, nuclear safety, and counterterrorism, while helping to divert foreign military manpower toward civilian goals. These interactions, which are clearly in the nation's best interests, require openness and free communication among scientists. Maintaining these interactions and simultaneously protecting our nation's classified information are critical for our long-term security.

 [1]: http://www.national-academies.org/topnews/
 [2]: http://www.nap.edu/html/waterfuture


SUMMARY One of the most salient features of Bacillus subtilis and related bacilli is their natural capacity to secrete a variety of proteins into their environment, frequently to high concentrations. This has led to the commercial exploitation of bacilli as major "cell factories" for secreted enzymes. The recent sequencing of the genome of B. subtilis has provided major new impulse for analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying protein secretion by this organism. Most importantly, the genome sequence has allowed predictions about the composition of the secretome, which includes both the pathways for protein transport and the secreted proteins. The present survey of the secretome describes four distinct pathways for protein export from the cytoplasm and approximately 300 proteins with the potential to be exported. By far the largest number of exported proteins are predicted to follow the major "Sec" pathway for protein secretion. In contrast, the twin-arginine translocation "Tat" pathway, a type IV prepilin-like export pathway for competence development, and ATP-binding cassette transporters can be regarded as "special-purpose" pathways, through which only a few proteins are transported. The properties of distinct classes of amino-terminal signal peptides, directing proteins into the various protein transport pathways, as well as the major components of each pathway are discussed. The predictions and comparisons in this review pinpoint important differences as well as similarities between protein transport systems in B. subtilis and other well-studied organisms, such as Escherichia coli and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Thus, they may serve as a lead for future research and applications.


This essay is a response to a paper by Janna Sandmeyer which received the Ralph Roughton award. Sandemeyer examines Jule Miller's 1985 article, "How Kohut actually worked," in which Miller describes Kohut's supervision of his work with a patient struggling with issues of homosexuality. I expand on Sandmeyer's comments on the heteronormativity and homophobia in Miller´s case description and make observations about the quality of the supervisory relationship between Miller and Kohut. I argue that this treatment was in reality reparative therapy and should be named as such. I posit a parallel to the conversion therapist David Matheson, who recently came out as gay, and suggest that if I am right, Miller and Kohut deserve our compassion. But to grieve and move beyond our crimes of the past, we also need to hold them, and our whole field, accountable. While acknowledging and admiring Sandmeyer´s important contributions to the exploration of heteronormativity and homophobia, I submit that the first step to empowerment and forgiveness is to call a reparative therapy what it was.


In structured prediction, a predictor optimizes an objective function over a combinatorial search space, such as the set of all image segmentations, or the set of all part-of-speech taggings. Unfortunately, finding the optimal structured labeling—sometimes referred to as maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference—is, in general, NP-hard [12], due to the combinatorial structure of the problem. Many inference approximations have been proposed, some of which are based on linear programming (LP) relaxations [e.g., 5, 1, 15, 16, 4, 13], which "relax" the combinatorial search space to a convex polytope with a polynomial number of constraints. These LP relaxations can be solved efficiently, but may result in fractional solutions, i.e., non-integral labelings. The approximation quality of an LP relaxation is traditionally measured by a quantity known as the integrality gap, defined as the difference in the objective values obtained at the optima of the relaxed and exact problems. When the integrality gap is zero, the solution is said to be tight.


The purpose of this article is to assess the status of collective labour rights in the EU legal order, in the shadow of the current economic crisis. In sharp contrast to the key position granted to collective social rightsin the New Deal programs which contributed to bring the US out of the Great Depression, today the EU appears to be less and less protective of workers' collective rights. Following the infamous Laval and Viking judgments, recent developments at EU level have undermined any legal certainty regarding trade unions' rights. Such an uncertainty results in a "chilling effect" upon collective action, as the recent British Airlines dispute has shown. Against this judge-made framework the analysis is developed around two main themes. On the one hand, we set forth and criticise the interpretation both of trade unions as such and of their rights delivered by the CJEU, taking into account the recent judgments dealing with the right to collective bargaining. On the other, we analyse the evolutions of the relationship between fundamental social rights and economic freedoms. In particular, the assessment of the Commission's proposal for a Regulation on the right to take collective action in the context of economic freedoms comes as an interim conclusion on the topic. The study proceeds to approach the issue in the light of the accession of the EU to the ECHR, with regard to the ECtHR recent jurisprudence which appears as more respectful of the right to bargain collectively and the right to strike


The first demonstration of quasi-phase-matching during high-order harmonic generation (HHG) of laser radiation in multi-jet plasmas produced on the silver and chromium targets under the conditions of two-colour pump (804 and 402 nm) is presented. We analyse the enhancement of the groups of odd and even harmonics along the plateau range and compare the harmonic yields using a different number of plasma jets. The comparison of extended line plasma and multi-jet plasma shows the advanced properties of the latter formation for the efficient HHG using the two-colour pump. The 25× and 13× enhancement factors of quasi-phase-matched harmonics were obtained in the cases of the two-colour and single-colour pumps of multi-jet plasmas.


'January 22nd - Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold - which he has hitherto ignored - is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.' It's not easy being a Provincial Lady in Devonshire in the 1920s, juggling a grumpy husband, mischievous children and a host of domestic dilemmas - from rice mould to a petulant cook. But this Provincial Lady will not be defeated; not by wayward flower bulbs, not by unexpected houseguests, not even by the Blitz. She will continue to preside over the W.I., endure rain-drenched family picnics and succeed as a published author, all the while tending to her strawberries. The Diary of a Provincial Lady is a brilliantly observed comic novel, as funny and fresh today as when it was first written. Widely regarded as one of the funniest English authors and an heir to Jane Austen, E.M. Delafield was born in Sussex in 1890. She took the name Delafield to distinguish herself from her mother (De la Pasture), also a novelist, and wrote over 30 books which could be 'as laugh-out-loud funny as PG Wodehouse' before her death in 1943.


Management and recovery of endangered sawfishes are challenged by the un certainty of species determination. Frequently, dried rostra (saws) are the only material available to represent an historical occurrence, yet traditional methods of species identification of datadeficient rostra (rostral tooth counts) are unreliable. We evaluated the utility of morphometric characters for the identification of specimens from 2 private collections totaling 41 rostra and representing 4 species: Anoxypristis cuspidata, Pristis pectinata, P. pristis, and P. zijsron. Rostra were acquired as available and the sample is likely representative of sawfishes globally. Data on 9 morphometric and meristic variables were collected, 5 of which were evaluated using principal component analysis (PCA). PCA of the mensural data accounted for 87% of the variance with the first 2 principal components. Principal component 1 (PCI) was explained by 4 variables and PCII by a single variable. This indicated that all 5 variables were taxonomically important. Spatial relationships of points were consistent with putative identifications based on available data. Knifetooth sawfish (A. cuspidata), smalltooth sawfishes (P. pectinata and P. zijsron), and largetooth sawfishes (P. pristis) formed 3 distinct clusters with minimal overlap along PCI. P. pectinata and P. zijsron were separated from each other along PCII, as were the P. microdon (nom. dub.) (Indian and Pacific) and P. perotteti (nom. dub.) (Atlantic) populations of P. pristis. The results demonstrate the utility of analyzing private collections of historically traded rostra. Cumulatively, such collections represent a global fauna sampled over many decades with potential for characterizing phenotypic variation in sawfish at interspecific and intraspecific levels on a greater geographic and temporal scale than targeted modern sampling of specific populations. Further, PCA provides an objective way of classifying data-deficient rostra to species, greatly increasing the research value of these specimens.


The development of suitable tracers with optimized characteristics is a crucial factor to bring the powerful and high-innovative technology of Magnetic Particle Imaging further towards clinics. Successful engineering of new magnetic particles for this imaging method requires a deeper understanding of structure-performance relationships. Even though many international research groups work in the field of tracer development for the MPI technology, until now no economic and reproducible synthesis method was found to produce high-performance tracer materials with optimal characteristics. In the present work recent achievements in the continuous synthesis of single-core iron oxide nanoparticles with tunable characteristics employing a micromixer set-up are reported.


Plant secondary metabolites are often acutely toxic to animals, but the influence of this property on interactions with herbivores has been debated vigorously. In this paper we apply a compartmental model, developed to investigate the movement of insecticides through the bodies of animals, to quantify the effect of natural plant toxins. A simulation based on the model is also used to examine the degree of tolerance necessary for a herbivore to avoid illness. Comparison with studies from insecticide science suggests that the required level of tolerance is high enough to impose major ecological limitations on herbivory at naturally occurring concentrations. Various adaptive mechanisms could be employed to overcome this inhibitory effect, and the model allows a precise analysis of their relative importance in a given species. More generally, elasticity analysis shows that these mechanisms differ considerably in efficiency, with desensitisation at the molecular site of action cited as particularly cost effective. However, such efficient mechanisms are often toxin-specific, and more likely to evolve in herbivores which display a high degree of host-plant constancy. It should therefore be less costly to achieve tolerance in oligophagous herbivores than polyphagous ones. Reduced concentrations of secondary metabolites in cultivated species could curtail their effectiveness dramatically and universally.


CIE 191:2010 recommends a mesopic photometry system that defines the luminous efficiency function for peripheral visual tasks, which vary depending on the adaptation state of observers. For implementation of the system, an adaptation field to determine the adaptation state needs to be defined. To address this issue, vision experiments have been conducted to measure surrounding luminance effects on the adaptation state at a peripheral task point. The results reveal that the adaptation state depends mainly on the local luminance at the task point but there is also a small effect of the surrounding luminance. The results suggest that the surrounding luminance effect is larger than the veiling luminance predicted with existing foveal models; nevertheless, it is not significant for the mesopic luminance on uniform luminance distributions.


In a seminal work at EUROCRYPT '96, Coppersmith showed how to find all small roots of a univariate polynomial congruence in polynomial time: this has found many applications in public-key cryptanalysis and in a few security proofs. However, the running time of the algorithm is a high-degree polynomial, which limits experiments: the bottleneck is an LLL reduction of a high-dimensional matrix with extra-large coefficients. We present in this paper a polynomial speedup over Coppersmith's algorithm. Our improvement is based on a special property of the matrices used by Coppersmith's algorithm, which allows us to speed up the LLL reduction by rounding. The exact speedup depends on the LLL algorithm used: for instance, the speedup is quadratic in the bit-size of the small-root bound if one uses the Nguyen-Stehle L algorithm.


The powerful technical capabilities of smartphones offer unprecedented opportunities for collecting dietary information. We have developed an enhanced smartphone application called MyEnergyBalance, which permits imaged-based self-monitoring of all foods consumed, and links to a convenient and user-friendly web-based dietary assessment tool. The primary objective of this pilot study was to determine if the MyEnergyBalance app (with use of images) in combination of the associated website improves dietary recall compared to diet analysis on the MyEnergyBalance website alone. We also generated preliminary data on the usability of the MyEnergyBalance iPhone app and website. This pilot study was a crossover study design of healthy, college students. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Both groups consumed their normal diet for the first day with one group recording their food intake with image functions of the MyEnergyBalance app, while the other group did not use the app. On the second day, all participants logged into the MyEnergyBalance website to record their food intake from the previous day; one group using the images from the app to assist in recalling what they ate, while the other group recalled what they ate from memory. The diet analysis results were compared to those obtained using the ASA24 website. The groups were then crossed over to the opposite vs no-image assisted recalls. Ten participants (seven females and three males) aged 20 to 22 years completed this study. The average BMI of all participants was 23.12 kg/m2 (ranging from 18.95 to 32.28 kg/m2). There was no statistically significant differences in the estimates of the energy intake between the MyEnergyBalance app and website compared to ASA24. The SUS mean score for the MyEnergyBalance app and website was 86 and 69.5, respectively. A strong, negative correlation was found between the system usability scale scores and the absolute differences in energy intake of the MyEnergyBalance app and ASA24. Although we were not able to demonstrate a significant benefit of the images from the iPhone app at improving food recall (perhaps due to the small study sample size), we were able to demonstrate a high usability score for the iPhone app, average usability score for the website, and a significant correlation between subjects' usability scores and relative accuracy of the subjects' food recall using the images from the iPhone app. A future study with a larger sample size will hopefully provide more information on the efficacy of image-based food recalls.


The Japanese-American Nisei warriors of the 100th/ 442d earned 9,486 purple hearts and numbered 680 of their comrades in arms as killed in action. Their individual decorations for bravery include a Congressional Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 588 Silver Stars, and 5,200 Bronze Stars. Their unit recognitions include 87 Division Commendations, 36 Army Commendations, and a truly remarkable seven Presidential Unit Citations. Dubbed "the little men of iron, " their valorous service made the 100th/442d the most highly decorated unit in American military history. Who were these men? Why did they fight so hard? First and foremost, they were Americans, no different from the millions of other GIs who served in World War II. Still, there were differences, differences that at the beginning of the war made them feared, their loyalty suspect. Over 100,000 Japanese Americans, 70,000 of whom were native-born American citizens, were summarily rounded up and transported to ten concentration camps scattered around the United States. When they were allowed to volunteer, male Japanese-American internees stepped forward in droves, going for broke individually in order regain the honor that had been stolen by an ignorant and fearful country.


An important branch of computer vision is image segmentation. Image segmentation aims at extracting meaningful objects lying in images either by dividing images into contiguous semantic regions, or by extracting one or more specific objects in images such as medical structures. The image segmentation task is in general very difficult to achieve since natural images are diverse, complex and the way we perceive them vary according to individuals. For more than a decade, a promising mathematical framework, based on variational models and partial differential equations, have been investigated to solve the image segmentation problem. This new approach benefits from well-established mathematical theories that allow people to analyze, understand and extend segmentation methods. Moreover, this framework is defined in a continuous setting which makes the proposed models independent with respect to the grid of digital images. This thesis proposes four new image segmentation models based on variational models and the active contours method. The active contours or snakes model is more and more used in image segmentation because it relies on solid mathematical properties and its numerical implementation uses the efficient level set method to track evolving contours. The first model defined in this dissertation proposes to determine global minimizers of the active contour/snake model. Despite of great theoretic properties, the active contours model suffers from the existence of local minima which makes the initial guess critical to get satisfactory results. We propose to couple the geodesic/geometric active contours model with the total variation functional and the Mumford-Shah functional to determine global minimizers of the snake model. It is interesting to notice that the merging of two well-known and "opposite" models of geodesic/geometric active contours, based on the detection of edges, and active contours without edges provides a global minimum to the image segmentation algorithm. The second model introduces a method that combines at the same time deterministic and statistical concepts. We define a non-parametric and non-supervised image classification model based on information theory and the shape gradient method. We show that this new segmentation model generalizes, in a conceptual way, many existing models based on active contours, statistical and information theoretic concepts such as mutual information. The third model defined in this thesis is a variational model that extracts in images objects of interest which geometric shape is given by the principal components analysis. The main interest of the proposed model is to combine the three families of active contours, based on the detection of edges, the segmentation of homogeneous regions and the integration of geometric shape prior, in order to use simultaneously the advantages of each family. Finally, the last model presents a generalization of the active contours model in scale spaces in order to extract structures at different scales of observation. The mathematical framework which allows us to define an evolution equation for active contours in scale spaces comes from string theory. This theory introduces a mathematical setting to process a manifold such as an active contour embedded in higher dimensional Riemannian spaces such as scale spaces. We thus define the energy functional and the evolution equation of the multiscale active contours model which can evolve in the most well-known scale spaces such as the linear or the curvature scale space.


An intensive stream sampling and predictive model evaluation program was conducted in the Tasmanian southern forests to evaluate the suitability of the AUSRIVAS stream bioassessment system for sustainable forest monitoring and assessment under the Montreal Indicators program. AUSRIVAS (the Australian River Assessment Scheme) was recommended as Montreal Indicator 4.1f to assess the proportion of streams in forest areas with significant variance of biological diversity from the historic range of variability. AUSRIVAS does this by allowing a formal comparison of benthic macroinvertebrate community composition at stream sites with the composition predicted from relationships between environmental variables and composition in a set of least impacted, reference streams from the same region. AUSRIVAS produces a bioassessment score, O/E, the proportion of macroinvertebrate taxa expected at a site which actually occur there. AUSRIVAS macroinvertebrate bioassessment is established as a major stream assessment tool in a range of Australian national and state environmental regulatory and reporting frameworks. It's suitability for forest stream bioassessment in Australia required evaluation due to concerns over the level of taxonomic resolution, the spatial scale and low local reference site density of existing state-wide models, possible differences in sensitivity of models based on lab vs live sorted data, and the potential for confounding in existing state AUSRIVAS models due to the inclusion of reference sites already exposed to land clearing impacts. These issues were the focus of this project.

Forest streams in the southern forests area, southern Tasmania were sampled in the catchments of the Weld, Picton, Huon, Arve, Kermandie and Esperance Rivers. Over 60 sites were classed as reference sites and sampled between one and five occasions between spring 1999 and spring 2001. Macroinvertebrate and environmental data from these sites were used to develop a number of AUSRIVAS models with combinations of family vs genus/species level identification, live vs lab sorting, presence/absence vs rank abundance data. Models were developed at three nested spatial scales - the Warra LTER (16 km2), the Southern Forests region (325 km2) and Tasmania (ca 40000 km2). The Tasmania-wide models were re-developed from existing Tasmanian macroinvertebrate data sets collected under the National River Health Program. All macroinvertebrate sampling was conducted with the same AUSRIVAS kick sampling protocol.

A series of test sites were also sampled for assessments with these models, including streams downstream of logging coupes and road crossings, and associated unimpacted controls. Two 'impact gradients' were developed from these data and used to comparatively evaluate the performance of all 12 AUSRIVAS models developed for this project. All models performed equally well at detecting changes associated with a taxon loss impact gradient. There were significant differences in performance between models in detecting changes associated with a 'logging impact gradient'.

Model performance was assessed on the basis of sensitivity (ability to detect a site falling outside the range for reference sites) and reliability (consistency and lack of noise in the response to the gradient). Model performance fell in the order genus/species > family; regional (LTER and Southern Forests) > state-wide (Tasmania); live-pick > lab-sort; rank abundance > presence/absence. The greatest improvement in model performance was gained by using regional vs state models and using live pick instead of lab sort processing. This latter difference was due to the inherent bias of live pick sorting toward taxa that are more sensitive to impacts from changes in habitat and water quality. The most reliable and sensitive models were the regional southern forest models based on the live-pick protocol, and either presence/absence or rank abundance data. These models were able to detect a change in community composition resulting from logging, with O/E values falling below the model A band boundaries, when 17% of the expected taxa were lost.

The ability of the AUSRIVAS kick-sampling method of channel riffle habitat to detect patterns in macroinvertebrate community composition that reflect 'true' patterns in assemblage composition across all habitats in a stream was also tested. Data from kick samples was compared with data collected from quantitative sampling of all mesohabitats in 10 streams of differing sizes. The 'true' pattern of family and species richness between streams was reproduced well by kick sampling. Multivariate patterns of community composition were also effectively reproduced, surprisingly at both family and species level. While kick sampling does not produce the same data and hence exactly the same inter-sample relationships, it does appear to reproduce true pattern of stream macroinvertebrate diversity and community composition across a range of forest stream types. AUSRIVAS sampling appears to be suitable for assessing broad patterns of species and family association in steep, predominantly rocky forest streams and is a suitable surrogate for sampling the entire stream assemblage.

Overall, we conclude that AUSRIVAS macroinvertebrate bioassessment is suitable for stream assessment in sustainable forest management (SFM) under the new Australian Forestry Standard, with only minor modification and initial investment. AUSRIVAS models for SFM applications will need to be developed regionally, with an initial sampling of reference sites, preferably with combined season (autumn plus spring) data, and at genus/species level (for at least the Plecoptera, Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera, Coleoptera, and preferably the Crustaceae and Mollusca as well). The choice of live-pick vs lab-sort models will depend on the purpose of the sampling program, and be influenced by the predominant protocol in each state. However, 'early warning' and greater sensitivity appear to be provided by live-picking. This objective may also be achieved using lab-sort data if models are based on species from sensitive families only. Use of AUSRIVAS should comply with normal monitoring program design considerations.


The dominant privacy framework of the information age relies on notions of "notice and consent." That is, service providers will disclose, often through privacy policies, their data collection practices, and users can then consent to their terms. However, it is unlikely that most users comprehend these disclosures, which is due in no small part to ambiguous, deceptive, and misleading statements. By comparing actual collection and sharing practices to disclosures in privacy policies, we demonstrate the scope of the problem.

Through analysis of 68,051 apps from the Google Play Store, their corresponding privacy policies, and observed data transmissions, we investigated the potential misrepresentations of apps in the Designed For Families (DFF) program, inconsistencies
in disclosures regarding third-party data sharing, as well as contradictory disclosures about secure data transmissions. We find that of the 8,030 DFF apps (i.e., apps directed at children), 9.1% claim that their apps are not directed at children, while 30.6% claim to have no knowledge that the received data comes from children. In addition, we observe that 10.5% of 68,051 apps share personal identifiers with third-party service providers, yet do not declare any in their privacy policies, and only 22.2% of the apps explicitly name third parties. This ultimately makes it not only difficult, but in most cases impossible, for users to establish where their personal data is being processed. Furthermore, we find that 9,424 apps do not use TLS when transmitting personal identifiers, yet 28.4% of these apps claim to take measures to secure data transfer. Ultimately, these divergences between disclosures and actual app behaviors illustrate the ridiculousness of the notice and consent framework.


This is the final part of a three-part study of the stability of vertically oriented double-diffusive interfaces having an imposed vertical stable temperature gradient. In this study, flow is forced within a fluid of infinite extent by a prescribed excess of compositionally buoyant material within a circular cylindrical interface. Compositional diffusivity is ignored while thermal diffusivity and viscosity are finite. The instability of the interface is determined by quantifying the exponential growth rate of a harmonic deflection of infinitesimal amplitude. Attention is focused on the zonal wavenumber of the fastest growing mode. The interface is found to be unstable for some wavenumber for all values of the Prandtl number and interface radius. The zonal wavenumber of the fastest growing mode increases roughly linearly with interface radius, except for small values of the Prandtl number (<0.065). For small and moderate values of the radius, the preferred mode is either axisymmetric or has zonal wavenumber of 1, representing a helical instability. The growth rate of the fastest-growing mode is largest for interfaces having radii of from 2 to 3 salt-finger lengths.


PURPOSE: The objectives of this dissertation are: (1) Identify what type of dispute resolution systems are being used in the workplace (focus on Irish workplaces) (2) Identify levels of satisfaction using three metrics: Efficiency, equity and voice (3) Identify differences-if any- between the dispute systems in unionised and non unionised workplaces. Traditional dispute systems can be described as a system whereby "traditionally, and most frequently, employees peruse employment related claims against employers through litigation either at the state or federal level" (Mahoney and Klass, 2007). In contrast to these traditional dispute systems non-unionised workplaces began to resolve disputes using non adversarial systems. These became known as alternative dispute resolution (ADR) systems. ADR systems are less structured than the traditional systems and, according to Mahoney and Klass (2007), can be implemented when "non union employers are free to unilaterally design their ADR system. Given this flexibility, these systems and their implementation often vary widely across-and even within-organisations (Mahoney and Klass, 2007).
METHOD: To carry out my quantitative research I will survey various organisations by way of confidential questionnaire (see appendix A). Furthermore, to add a qualitative method of research, I will investigate dispute resolution systems in the workplace, by means of case studies. For this research I have conducted two case studies, one in a unionised workplace, and the second in a non-unionised workplace.
SCOPE: During the course of my research I have reviewed the most up to date literature on dispute resolution systems by leaders in the field. Including: Budd & Colvin's 2008 paper: Improved metrics for workplace dispute resolution procedures: efficiency, equity and voice. This paper develops a metric for comparing and developing dispute resolution systems focusing on (1) Efficiency (2) Equity and (3) Voice, as standards. Efficiency is the effective, profit maximizing use of scarce resources and it captures concerns with productivity competitiveness and economic prosperity. Equity entails fairness in both the distribution of economic rewards and the administration of employment policies. Voice is the ability of employees to have meaningful input into workplace decisions both individually and collectively.
RESULTS: I have analysed the results in three ways. First the total population surveyed. Second the unionised workplaces surveyed. And third the non-unionised workplaces surveyed. I then compared and contrasted all results the results against each other. In addition to this I have analysed two case studies one from a unionised workplace and another from a non-unionised workplace. I also compared and contrasted these results against each other.
CONCLUSION: In comparison to union procedures, non union grievance procedures tend to score higher o efficiency and lower on equity and voice. The favouring of efficiency is seen most strongly in open-door policies that provide little protection of equity or voice (Budd and Colvin, 2008).


The current study focuses on the social construction of definitions of quality in the field of the television drama series in Israel. By doing that, this work challenges Pierre Bourdieu's claim that since artifacts of 'popular culture' industries are not regarded as 'autonomous', according to the autonomy-of-art ideology, they cannot be consecrated as works of art. Bourdieu's thesis was challenged before, but the television field has not yet been extensively studied from this point of view. My study of the broad empirical corpus, including television reviews and interviews with acclaimed Israeli television creators, reveals that artistic quality and commercial appeal show less tension than Bourdieu had suggested. Furthermore, my findings indicate that the autonomy-of-art ideology can be reconfigured to accommodate commercial (e.g. capitalist) considerations. Within this reconfiguration, the 'quality' television series can be redefined to include elements of 'autonomous' art, such as authenticity, innovation and the input of 'genius' creators, alongside such capitalist requirements as profitability.


The Certificate (CERT) parameter is a container for digital
certificates. It is used for carrying these certificates in Host
Identity Protocol (HIP) control packets. This document specifies the
certificate parameter and the error signaling in case of a failed
verification. Additionally, this document specifies the
representations of Host Identity Tags (HITs) in X.509 version 3 (v3).
The concrete use cases of certificates, including how certificates are
obtained and requested and which actions are taken upon successful or
failed verification, are specific to the scenario in which the
certificates are used. Hence, the definition of these scenario-
specific aspects is left to the documents that use the CERT parameter.
This document updates RFC 7401 and obsoletes RFC 6253.


Examining magical realist texts including Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (1991), and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2006), this paper discusses how magical realism examines the extremities of trauma and fear, proposing that magical realist narratives afford a unique ability to represent trauma in a way that is not open to the stylistics of literary realism. Blending the real or believable with the fantastically outrageous, magical realist narratives typically destabilise and disorder privileged centres of 'truth' and 'reality', demonstrating the constructedness of knowledge and history. Accordingly, magical realist strategies are frequently used in interventionist or counter narratives that refuse to adhere to privileged versions of truth or history and insist upon a multiplicity of experience. The majority of magical realist scholarship explores how the genre undermines hegemonic perspectives of history to clear a space for marginal representations of the past. However, as this paper argues, magical realist narratives also provide a unique space for writing about experiences of extremity. Examining the role of fantasy in representations of violence and trauma, this paper proposes that rupturing a realist narrative with the magical or un-real accommodates representations of extremity by conveying the 'felt' experience of trauma.


The Czech economy has been hit by the economic recession in recent years. Relatively strong economic growth and then economic downturn also had a significant impact on the labour market. The development of the unemployment rates – total, for women and men, however, showed significant differences between regions and districts of the Czech Republic. The article examines whether the differences in the unemployment rates in the regions and districts of the Czech Republic deepened or not during the economic crisis. The widening gap between regions can be a sign of decreasing flexibility of the Czech labour market. The article first briefly describes the recent economic development of the Czech economy. The end of the article is devoted to the comparison of the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic with other Member States of the European Union.


Vehicle-to-roadside (V2R) communications enable vehicular networks to support a wide range of applications for enhancing the efficiency of road transportation. While existing work focused on non-cooperative techniques for V2R communications between vehicles and roadside units (RSUs), this paper investigates novel cooperative strategies among the RSUs in a vehicular network. We propose a scheme whereby, through cooperation, the RSUs in a vehicular network can coordinate the classes of data being transmitted through V2R communication links to the vehicles. This scheme improves the diversity of the information circulating in the network while exploiting the underlying content-sharing vehicle-to-vehicle communication network. We model the problem as a coalition formation game with transferable utility and we propose an algorithm for forming coalitions among the RSUs. For coalition formation, each RSU can take an individual decision to join or leave a coalition, depending on its utility which accounts for the generated revenues and the costs for coalition coordination. We show that the RSUs can self-organize into a Nash-stable partition and adapt this partition to environmental changes. Simulation results show that, depending on different scenarios, coalition formation presents a performance improvement, in terms of the average payoff per RSU, ranging between 20.5% and 33.2%, relative to the non-cooperative case.


Surface plasmon-like (SPL) modes are the electromagnetic surface eigenmodes supported by the structured perfectly conducting surfaces. The standard eigenvalue-solving method is adopted to solve these SPL modes. The field patterns of the SPL modes in the square holes for in-plane wavevectors k(x) = 2pi / 2d and k(x) = 2pi /d are TE(10)-like and TE(11), respectively. However, the field patterns can no longer be identified as any particular waveguide mode for other in-plane wavevectors. The dispersion relations of the SPL modes are obtained numerically. The change in mode character with wavevector prevents the dispersion relation from being derived by assuming only the fundamental mode in the holes. On a thin perfect conductor perforated with structures, the SPL mode splits into a high-frequency anti-symmetric mode and a low-frequency symmetric mode, which is caused by the mutual interaction of the electromagnetic evanescent fields on both sides.


Abstract This paper presents a systematic stratigraphic description of the architecture of the early Pliocene Titiokura Formation (emended) in the Te Waka and Maungaharuru Ranges of western Hawke's Bay, and presents a facies, sequence stratigraphic, and paleoenvironmental analysis of the sedimentary succession. The Titiokura Formation is of early Pliocene (Opoitian‐Waipipian) age, and unconformably overlies Mokonui Formation, which is a regressive late Miocene and early Pliocene (Kapitean to early Opoitian) succession. In the Te Waka Range and the southern parts of the Maungaharuru Range, the Titiokura Formation comprises a single limestone sheet 20–50 m thick, with calcareous sandstone parts. In the vicinity of Taraponui Trig, and to the northeast, the results of 1:50 000 mapping show that the limestone gradually partitions into five members, which thicken markedly to the northeast to total thicknesses of c. 730 m, and concomitantly become dominated by siliciclastic sandstone. The members (all new) from lower to upper are: Naumai Member, Te Rangi Member, Taraponui Member, Bellbird Bush Member, and Opouahi Member. The lower four members are inferred to each comprise an obliquity‐controlled 41 000 yr 6th order sequence, and the Opouahi Member at least two such sequences. The sequences typically have the following architectural elements from bottom to top: disconformable sequence boundary that formed as a transgressive surface of erosion; thin transgressive systems tracts (TSTs) with onlap and backlap shellbeds, or alternatively, a single compound shellbed; downlap surface; and very thick (70–200 m) highstand (HST) and regressive systems tracts (RST) composed of fine sandstone. The sequences in the Opouahi Member have cryptic TSTs, sandy siltstone to silty sandstone HSTs, and cross‐bedded, differentially cemented, fine sandstone RSTs; a separate variant is an 11 m thick bioclastic limestone (grainstone and packstone) at the top of the member that crops out in the vicinity of Lake Opouahi. Lithostratigraphic correlations along the crest of the ranges suggest that the Titiokura Formation, and its correlatives to the south around Puketitiri, represent a shoreline‐to‐shelf linked depositional system. Carbonate production was focused around a rocky seascape as the system onlapped basement in the south, with dispersal and deposition of the comminuted carbonate on an inner shelf to the north, which was devoid of siliciclastic sediment input. The rates of both subsidence and siliciclastic sediment flux increased rapidly to the northeast of the carbonate "platform", with active progradation and offlap of the depositional system into more axial parts of Hawke's Bay Basin.


Gloria Anzaldua's narrative and theoretical innovations, particularly her concept of mestiza consciousness, have influenced critical thinking about colonialism, gender, history, language, religion, sexuality, spirituality, and subjectivity. Yet Anzaldua's theory of spiritual mestizaje has not been extensively studied until now. Taking up that task, Theresa Delgadillo reveals spiritual mestizaje as central to the queer feminist Chicana theorist's life and thought, and as a critical framework for interpreting contemporary Chicana literary and visual narratives. First mentioned by Anzaldua in her pioneering book Borderlands/La Frontera , spiritual mestizaje is a transformative process of excavating bodily memory to develop a radical, sustained critique of oppression and renew one's relation to the sacred. Delgadillo analyzes the role of spiritual mestizaje in Anzaldua's work and in relation to other forms of spirituality and theories of oppression. Illuminating the ways that contemporary Chicana narratives visualize, imagine, and enact Anzaldua's theory and method of spiritual mestizaje, Delgadillo interprets novels, memoir, and documentaries. Her critical reading of literary and visual technologies demonstrates how Chicanas challenge normative categories of gender, sexuality, nation, and race by depicting alternative visions of spirituality.


A study was conducted using data from the assessment of 1681 small manufacturing enterprises wishing to establish supplier relationships with a major mass merchandiser. The firm assessment process was examined to determine which management practices seemed to distinguish between those ventures which were successful (forwarded for mass merchandiser consideration) and those which were not successful. Successful ventures tended to perform all management practices better than non-successful ventures, and all firms reported performing accounting and financial practices better than marketing, production, and technology practices. Introduction For small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) wishing to enter the mass merchandising market, sound management practices are critical because the competition is often global in nature. For example, Wal-Mart, the world's largest discount retailer, operates in markets such as Argentina, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany and Mexico, and it has joint venture agreements in China. Kmart, Wal-Mart's perennial rival, has focused more on U.S. operations, though it does have locations in the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam (http://www.multex.com). Mass merchandising firms are not a purely American phenomenon. Wal-Mart and Kmart have competition from such firms as Coles Myer Ltd., Grupo Elektra, and PriceSmart. Coles Myer Ltd. operates throughout Australia and New Zealand in much the same way that the two American giants operate in the U.S. Grupo Elektra operates in Mexico, Peru, Honduras and other Latin American countries with a similar format, although several of its subsidiaries are more targeted to specific socio-economic clientele groups. PriceSmart follows a concept similar to membership warehouse clubs in the United States. It operates throughout Latin America, but also has locations in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Philippines (http://www.multex.com). Mass merchandising is a growing global retail concept, and manufacturers supplying products to the home companies involved in this market must meet a different set of competitive standards than those that exist for regional and local retail outlets. This study examines those manufacturer management practices that are critical for success in the mass retail arena. Management Practices of Small Manufacturers Because all business functions fall under the discretion of management to some degree (Bruno, Leidecker, & Harder, 1987), the term management practices refers to financial management, accounting, marketing, production operations, and strategy. While these management practices are not perfect predictors of firm performance, they provide a starting point for understanding SME success. This section reviews some of the empirical studies that identify successful management practices in the manufacturing industry. Financial and accounting practices have been the focus of a few manufacturing studies. For 74 SMEs in Australia, Gadenne (1998) found that financial management and the use of professional advisors were important business practices. Successful firms were more likely than unsuccessful firms to seek out the cheapest financing and rely on external advice (e.g., accountants). Gadenne (1998) also noted that adequate financial resources provided by the owner or from profits was a success factor, and Tan and Tay (1994) reported that financial aid from the government was significantly related to business success in Singapore. In Canada, a study of SMEs found that knowledge of cash flow management was a characteristic of successful manufacturers (Chaganti & Chaganti, 1983). Marketing techniques and strategies have been empirically linked to better performance. Pelham (2000) found that market orientation was positively related to the performance of small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. Market-oriented firms were quick to respond to negative customer feedback, competitor activities, and customer preference changes. …


Abstract The financial services industry has been experiencing the recent emergence of new technology innovations and process disruptions. The industry overall, and many fintech start-ups are looking for new pathways to successful business models, the creation of enhanced customer experience, and approaches that result in services transformation. Industry and academic observers believe this to be more of a revolution than a set of less influential changes, with financial services as a whole due for major improvements in efficiency, customer centricity, and informedness. The long-standing dominance of leading firms that are not able to figure out how to effectively hook up with the "Fintech Revolution" is at stake. We present a new fintech innovation mapping approach that enables the assessment of the extent to which there are changes and transformations in four areas of financial services. We discuss: operations management in financial services and the changes occurring; technology innovations that have begun to leverage the execution and stakeholder value associated with payments, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and cross-border payments; multiple innovations that have affected lending and deposit services, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, and social media use; issues with respect to investments, financial markets, trading, risk management, robo-advisory and services influenced by blockchain and fintech innovations.


Context-Based Machine TranslationTM (CBMT) is a new paradigm for corpus-based translation that requires no parallel text. Instead, CBMT relies on a lightweight translation model utilizing a fullform bilingual dictionary and a sophisticated decoder using long-range context via long n-grams and cascaded overlapping. The translation process is enhanced via in-language substitution of tokens and phrases, both for source and target, when top candidates cannot be confirmed or resolved in decoding. Substitution utilizes a synonym and near-synonym generator implemented as a corpus-based unsupervised learning process. Decoding requires a very large target-language-only corpus, and while substitution in target can be performed using that same corpus, substitution in source requires a separate (and smaller) source monolingual corpus. Spanish-to-English CBMT was tested on Spanish newswire text, achieving a BLEU score of 0.6462 in June 2006, the highest BLEU reported for any language pair. Further testing also shows that quality increases above the reported score as the target corpus size increases and as dictionary coverage of source words and phrases becomes more complete.


Pipelines that cross mountainous areas are susceptible to ground movement loading from landslides. In-line inspection using inertial mapping tools provides an excellent method of evaluating the current pipeline integrity. A single inspection only gives an indication of the pipeline integrity at a single point in time. Multiple inspections over a period of time can be used to estimate positional change and the nature of the loading process. An essential element of pipeline integrity management in geohazard areas is the ability to determine future performance so that intervention methods are correctly designed and scheduled and resources are efficiently administered. This requires the reliable prediction of the future development of pipeline integrity based on trends in the mapping data from multiple inspections.The approach developed by the authors to predict the future integrity of pipelines affected by ground movements is set out in this paper. It involves inertial mapping data from multiple inspections and calculates future strains in the pipeline using finite element analysis. Unlike methods based on interpreting inspection data alone, the finite element model includes the effects of soil-pipe interaction and axial pipeline stress together with the operational loads to provide a more complete assessment of pipeline integrity. The method is illustrated through the use of a case study.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


Objective – The main objective was to determine whether information literacy (IL) learning objects (LOs) impact student IL competency, specifically in a foundational first year English composition course. The primary research question was: What is the effectiveness of IL LOs compared to face-to-face instruction in terms of students' skill acquisition?

Methods – The methods involved testing student IL competency through a multiple-choice test given pre- and post-IL intervention. Effectiveness was measured by assessing whether IL competency improves after exposure to one of two interventions: online IL LOs or face-to-face librarian-led workshop. Over two semesters, equal sections of the course were tested for each of these interventions. For the IL LOs group, students first completed a pre-test, then they worked independently through three online IL LOs. The three IL LOs were videos comprised of animation, screen casting, and video capture on these topics: Finding Articles at Seneca Libraries (hereafter referred to as Finding Articles), Finding Articles on Current Issues, and Popular and Scholarly Sources. The students were then given the same test again. For the face-to-face group, the pre- and post-tests were also required for the same number of sections. This study was conducted under institutional ethics approval.

Results – Descriptive analysis revealed student test scores increased for both interventions, IL LOs and face-to-face. Test scores increased, on average, between 14 to 37%. In comparing post-tests, results revealed a statistically significant difference only with the first topic, Finding Articles. In this case, the IL LOs (video) group outperformed the face-to-face group by at least 10%. No significance, in terms of performance from pre- and post-test scores, was found for the other two topics.

Conclusion – Both IL LO and face-to-face library led workshop interventions had a positive impact on students' IL skill acquisition as evidenced by an overall increase in average test scores. One IL LO on Finding Articles significantly outperformed the face-to-face class equivalent. Further study is needed to track individual student performance.


Large local optical activity in fractal aggregates of silver nanoparticles has been observed by means of photon scanning tunneling microscopy. The effect occurs because resonant plasmon modes in random fractals can have handedness in spatial distribution of their amplitudes. In agreement with experimental observations, numerical simulations show dramatic difference in dipole-moment distributions for right- and left-circularly polarized incident light when the cluster size is comparable with or larger than the wavelength. Variations in the local parameter describing the circular intensity difference of scattered light show that fractal aggregates are characterized by broad and random distributions of chiral plasmon modes.


We are fortunate that real crises are few and far between in Canadian politics. We have a fundamentally stable system of government, and most political leaders both understand and play by the rules most of the time. As a result, it is something of a shock when a real crisis erupts and fundamental differences unfold over basic constitutional rules. Canada's parliamentary system has been under increasing strain for several years, but matters came to a head in late 2008. While Governor General Michaelle Jean's controversial decision to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper's request to prorogue Parlia- ment was the high point of this crisis, there is so much more about this episode that needs to be understood. And it is crucial for us to really understand this affair because the ramifications of the 2008 crisis are profound and enduring. One reason the events erupted so quickly into a crisis is that they dealt with the unwritten rules of the constitution, which are seldom discussed in depth even at the best of times and, as a re- sult, are subject to misinterpretation and mis- representation in times of conflict. The tension was compounded by the unprecedented nature of much of what transpired. Without clear and easy parallels to similar crises in the past, the public and their advisors in the media were left confused as to what was or was not the proper course of action. Nevertheless, there were clear constitutional principles at play that would have been able to give better direction to the Gover- nor General and the Prime Minister if they had been heeded.


Regulating subsidies in international trade is crucial to the efficient and equitable allocation of resources and ultimately to global welfare. Much of the serious instability that persists in today's interdependent world may be traced to government interventions that dilute or defy such regulation. In this in-depth analysis of subsidies and State aids, Gustavo Luengo details the regulatory elements that reveal how governments undertake the granting of support to their national industries. Although in theory such support is aimed at two overriding economic objectives - the elimination of harmful distortions, and the correction of market failures - he shows that in practice it is political contexts that determine the principles and objectives of the regulation of subsidies. The analysis focuses on two mature regulatory systems, those of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the European Communities (EC). The author describes both legal frameworks, and then proceeds to examine the differences and conflicts between the two systems, along with their reasons, consequences, and possible solutions. Significant aspects of the regulation of subsidies that emerge from the analysis include the following: the role of 'countervailing measures'; the EC notion of 'State aid' as developed by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice; procedures for controlling subsidies under both systems and the consequences of granting subsidies in violation of applicable rules; the elements of 'financial contribution' and 'benefit' under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM); actionable and non-actionable subsidies; agricultural subsidies in both systems; and, the role of WTO dispute settlement procedures. Both for its clear and comprehensive overview of the regulation of subsidies and State aids and for its insightful recommendations, this book will be welcomed as a major contribution to the field of international economic law. Practitioners, policymakers, officials, and academics will all find it enormously valuable for its analytic depth and its direct applicability to the need to develop fair and enforceable regulation of subsidies and State aids.


This thesis investigates how Islam, culture, and gender intersect in Malay
women's construction of their entrepreneurial identities. Interest in this research
study grew out of my own experiences of working as an entrepreneur in Malaysia
in 1996. Entrepreneurship has long been internationally recognised as an engine
for economic growth and development, and this is equally the case in Malaysia.
Yet research and theorising of entrepreneurial experiences remain largely rooted
in traditional functionalist perspectives which tend to be androcentric, white, and
Western in bias. These perspectives and have also limited the range of ways in
which women's experiences of entrepreneurship have been defined and
understood.
This study built upon culture as a root metaphor perspective, an aspect of social
constructionist theorising as a methodological framework to underpin the study.
Based on the interview data, the construction of women entrepreneurs' identity is
complex because of the interweaving of religion, culture, and gender which
simultaneously enable and constrain at multiple social levels and categories. The
women demonstrated various forms of entrepreneurial identity which are
simultaneously Islamic, culture-driven - through their Malayness - and feminine
while also embracing entrepreneurial values. Rather than supporting a view that
women entrepreneurs should be moulded in particular ways to be efficient and
successful, these Malay women participants exhibited inherently rooted
entrepreneurial values. Moreover, gender plays an important role that reveals the
notion of intersectionality between gender and multiple influences that shape how
entrepreneurs think about their own identities in an entrepreneurial setting. This
study also suggests that as well as being an economic phenomenon,
entrepreneurship can also be read as a cultural one, hence culture as a root
metaphor, in that entrepreneurship is culturally produced and reproduced in social
practices. This study adds to understanding of the intersectionality of religion,
ethnicity, and gender within the entrepreneurial context.


Iron (VI) ferrate, (FeO\d4²\u-), has been reported to have the potential to act as a coagulant and also a disinfectant in treating wastewater. This study investigates the effectiveness of potassium ferrate as both a coagulant and disinfectant for treating secondary effluent by means of a pilot-plant study. The units of the pilot plant included a flash-mix reactor, a flocculation unit, a sedimentation tank, and a filter. Parameters evaluated included suspended solids, orthophosphate, ammonia, BOD\d5, total bacteria, and coliform reduction. In the study, iron (VI) ferrate was found to be effective in reducing the above mentioned wastewater parameters in the system. With a ferrate concentration of 10mg/L as FeO\d4²\u-, from typical secondary effluent values, reductions of the following order were observed: the suspended solids in the effluent of the sedimentations unit were reduced by 85%, ortho-phosphate by 53%, ammonia by 60%, BOD\d5 by 86%, total bacteria by 91%, fecal coliform by 99.99%, and total coliform by 99.98%.


This paper presents MoonRay, a high performance production rendering architecture using Monte Carlo path tracing developed at DreamWorks Animation. MoonRay is the first production path tracer, to our knowledge, designed to fully leverage Single Instruction/Multiple Data (SIMD) vector units throughout. To achieve high SIMD efficiency, we employ Embree for tracing rays and vectorize the remaining compute intensive components of the renderer: the integrator, the shading system and shaders, and the texturing engine. Queuing is used to help keep all vector lanes full and improve data coherency. We use the ISPC programming language [Intel 2011; Pharr and Mark 2012] to achieve improved performance across SSE, AVX/AVX2 and AVX512 instruction sets. Our system includes two functionally equivalent uni-directional CPU path tracing implementations: a C++ scalar depth-first version and an ISPC vectorized breadth-first wavefront version. Using side by side performance comparisons on complex production scenes and assets we show our vectorized architecture, running on AVX2, delivers between a 1.3× to 2.3× speed-up in overall render time, and up to 3×, 6×, and 4×, speed-ups within the integration, shading, and texturing components, respectively.


Ultracompact directional couplers (DCs) based on dielectric-loaded surface plasmon-polariton waveguides (DLSPPWs) are analyzed using the effective index method (EIM), with the coupling, both in the parallel interaction region and in- and out-coupling regions, being taken into account. Near-field characterization of fabricated DCs performed with a scanning near-field optical microscope verifies the applicability of the EIM in the analysis and design of DLSPPW-based wavelength-selective DCs. The design approach applicable to a large variety of integrated optical waveguides is developed, enabling the realization of DCs in which optical signals at two different wavelengths are coupled into two separate output channels. The developed approach ensures minimization of the crosstalk and overall DC length via simultaneous adjustment of the waveguide separation and length of the interaction region. As an example, the design of a DLSPPW-based DC for complete separation of telecommunication signals at the wavelengths lambda = 1400 nm and lambda = 1600 nm between two output channels separated by 6 mum is worked out, resulting in the total device length of 52.3 mum. In addition, the design of an ultracompact DLSPPW-based DC waveguide crossing that ensures a very low crosstalk over a large wavelength band in the telecommunication range is considered.


The aim of this thesis is to help missionaries and those who train them better understand the differences of conscience orientations between peoples and cultures, and the implications of these differences for cross-cultural Christian ministry. After an introduction, an interdisciplinary literature survey in the second chapter presents material from Scripture, theology, philosophy, psychology, cultural anthropology and missiology, in order to arrive at a working definition of the conscience and an appreciation of the importance of shame and guilt in the functioning of the conscience. In a third chapter on Scripture, shame and guilt are investigated through selected word and concept studies, and through exegetical studies. The fourth and fifth chapters deal with the theoretical and practical implications of conscience orientation for cross-cultural Christian ministry. The sixth chapter evaluates the importance of understanding shame and guilt for cross-cultural Christian ministry and indicates areas of further research. In view of the fallen state of man, the author proposes a soteriological definition of the conscience. The research shows that every definition of conscience must include shame and guilt. Even if the term ,,conscience" does not appear, the conscience is engaged when shame or guilt are present. In the first psychoanalytic model, the differential definition of shame and guilt is either a shortcoming in relation to an ideal or a transgression of a standard. According to the second cognitive model, it is either a global or a specific attribution of failure. These two models are helpful, but have their limitations. The interdisciplinary approach to the conscience has proved fruitful . The study of Scripture has shown that the Bible is not only a guilt-oriented message. God's goal in his redemptive history with man is a balanced shame and guilt-oriented conscience. Shame before God is as appropriate and as frequent as guilt before God. One of the major messages of the Bible is that God is and has to be our significant other. Further research shows that conscience orientation influences both personality and culture. Hypothetical extremes of shame and guilt-oriented personalities and cultures are presented. It is shown that personalities and cultures are always a mixture of both shame and guilt orientation. Theology as a part of culture is also a function of conscience orientation. This concerns all the disciplines: systematic and practical theology, ethics, and exegesis. The conscience orientations of missionary and target people influence all domains of cross-cultural


Typhoid fever continues to be a major public health problem in the developing world. Antibiotic therapy has been the main stay of treating typhoid fever for decades .The emergence of multi drug resistant typhoid strains in the last 3 decades has been a major problem in tackling this scourge. Children constitute almost half of the total number of cases of multi drug resistant typhoid fever and are more vulnerable to its complications. In the absence of proper sanitation, vaccination is the only viable preventive option to control this disease. The first typhoid vaccine was introduced more than a century ago. It was a killed whole cell vaccine, found to be effective, but it fell into disrepute because of adverse effects and discarded. Developments in typhoid vaccine subsequently brought forth the Ty 21a oral typhoid vaccine and then the Vi capsular polysaccharide vaccine. These two vaccines showed limited efficacy with a better safety profile but were not effective in children less than 5 years of age. Development of conjugate polysaccharide typhoid vaccines has been the latest achievement. These and other oral typhoid vaccines under development are the typhoid vaccines of the future.


The research explores the impact of various forms of time pressure on the outcomes of negotiation processes in territorial conflicts in the post-Cold War period. Deadlines are used increasingly often by mediators to spur deadlocked negotiation processes, under the assumption that fixed time limits tend to favour pragmatism. Yet, little attention is typically paid to the durability of agreements concluded in these conditions; moreover, research in experimental psychology suggests that time pressure may impact negatively on individual and collective decision-making by reducing each side's ability to deal with complex issues, complex inter-group dynamics and inter-cultural relations. The comparative section of the research assesses the impact of natural and artificial deadlines on negotiation outcomes through a fuzzy-set comparison of 68 episodes of negotiation in territorial conflicts between 1990 and 2005. The results reveal that high levels of time pressure can be associated with both 'broad' and 'limited' agreements, but that low levels of time pressure or its absence are consistently associated with more durable ones. Other exploratory models also confirm the findings of experimental psychology and show that 'complex' negotiations are more likely to result in durable agreements when they take place under no or low time pressure. These results are explored and discussed in detail in two pairs of case studies: the Bougainville and Casamance peace processes, and the Dayton and Camp David proximity talks. These cases confirm the intuitions of the comparative section; they provide evidence of the negative impact of time pressure on the cognitive processes of the actors involved and highlight, in particular, how in certain conditions the absence or low levels of time pressure can impact on the durability of agreements by making possible effective intra-rebel agreements before official negotiations, and that time pressure works in proximity talks only when applied to solving circumscribed deadlocks.


This work investigates three aspects: (a) a network vulnerability as the non-uniform vulnerable-host distribution, (b) threats, i.e., intelligent worms that exploit such a vulnerability, and (c) defense, i.e., challenges for fighting the threats. We first study five data sets and observe consistent clustered vulnerable-host distributions. We then present a new metric, referred to as the non-uniformity factor, which quantifies the unevenness of a vulnerable-host distribution. This metric is essentially the Renyi information entropy and better characterizes the non-uniformity of a distribution than the Shannon entropy. We then analytically and empirically measure the infection rate and the propagation speed of network-aware worms. We show that a representative network-aware worm can increase the spreading speed by exactly or nearly a non-uniformity factor when compared to a random-scanning worm at the early stage of worm propagation. This implies that when a worm exploits an uneven vulnerable-host distribution as a network-wide vulnerability, the Internet can be infected much more rapidly. Furthermore, we analyze the effectiveness of defense strategies on the spread of network-aware worms. Our results demonstrate that counteracting network-aware worms is a significant challenge for the strategies that include host-based defense and IPv6.