While the US wages the 'War on Terror' in the Middle East, it is conducting a terror campaign of its own closer to home. Chemical spraying is being used in Colombia as a deterrent and to destroy 'illicit' coca crops. But most people growing coca are poor campesinos with no alternatives to make a living. Whole towns, rivers, livestock and legitimate food crops have been sprayed and livelihoods destroyed by these US-administered fumigation programmes, backed by the Colombian state. Herbicides such as Glyphosate and Cosmo Flux are being used in high concentrations and sprayed from low-flying planes. The effects of heavy exposure to these chemicals on humans is still unknown. As O'Shaughnessy reveals, fumigation doesn't just harm people - farmers' livestock are being killed, and much of the area sprayed is rainforest - a fragile environment rich in diversity that is being poisoned by chemicals. This path-breaking book of investigative journalism lifts the veil on fumigation: why is it really happening, and who benefits? O'Shaughnessy travels to the Putumayo and Bolivar departments of Colombia, where most of the spraying takes place, talking to those affected. He draws a vivid and damning picture of a futile and indiscriminate chemical war, waged largely on the poor.


The avian reovirus protein sigmaA plays a dual role: it is a structural protein forming part of the transcriptionally active core, but it has also been implicated in the resistance of the virus to interferon by strongly binding double-stranded RNA and thus inhibiting the double-stranded RNA-dependent protein kinase. The sigmaA protein has been crystallized from solutions containing ammonium sulfate at pH values around 6. Crystals belonging to space group P1, with unit-cell parameters a = 103.2, b = 129.9, c = 144.0 A, alpha = 93.8, beta = 105.1, gamma = 98.2 degrees were grown and a complete data set has been collected to 2.3 A resolution. The self-rotation function suggests that sigmaA may form symmetric arrangements in the crystals.


The 2019 reference for the interpretation and application of the latest international standards

 Wiley IFRS® Standards 2019 is a revised and comprehensive resource that includes the information needed to interpret and apply the most recent International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS®) as outlined by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

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 The IFRS® standards are ever evolving, therefore it is essential that professionals and students have the information needed to apply the standards correctly in real-world cases. Wiley IFRS® Standards 2019 offers a complete, up-to-date reference that aids in the application of the latest international standards in a manner that is transparent, accountable and efficient. This edition includes IFRS 9 Financial Instruments; IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers; IFRS 16 Leases and amendments issued and effective for annual periods beginning on or after 01 January 2018 and 01 January 2019 as issued by the IASB by 30 June 2018. This edition also includes some introductory guidance for IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts and incorporates the revised Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting 2018.

 This important guide is written by the people passionate about IFRS® at PKF International. PKF International consists of over 400 offices, operating in 150 countries across five regions. PKF International specialises in providing high quality audit, accounting, tax, and business advisory solutions to international and domestic organisations around the globe.

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 PKF International is a member of the Forum of Firms - an organisation dedicated to consistent and high-quality standards of financial reporting and auditing practices worldwide. www.pkf.com.

 PKF International Limited administers a family of legally independent firms and does not accept any responsibility or liability for the actions or inactions of any individual member or correspondent firm or firms. All rights reserved.


We calculate the squeezing spectra for a detuned degenerate four-wave mixing system. In the detuning case sizable squeezing still exists for both the pump and the signal fields. Especially in the limits for which the ratio of the damping rates becomes very small and large, the squeezing for the signal and the pump fields, respectively, is nearly perfect.


A total of 55 skeletal characters (continuous and discrete) were analyzed for species of the L. darwinii group: L. albiceps , L. chacoensis , L. grosseorum , L. irregularis , L. koslowskyi , L. ornatus , L. quilmes , plus L. inacayali ( L . telsen group) and L. scapularis ( L . wiegmannii group). We report polymorphic intraspecific variation that was not previously taken into account and we describe 21 new characters that provide original information across the group. We detected several morphological synapomorphies for the darwinii group and subclades. Meckel's cartilage enclosed by dentary outgrowth on lingual side of lower jaw (synapomorphy of the subgenus Liolaemus sensu stricto , and of the patagonicus group of Phymaturus ) occurs also within the L . darwinii group. The morphology of maxillary teeth with three conspicuous cusps can be a potential synapomorphy of the Eulaemus subgenus. As we show in the present study, the morphology of maxillary teeth can have an adaptive value. Characters that were studied in other groups of lizards were informative for Liolaemus.


This study offers a new interpretation of the poem of the founder of Western philosophy: Parmenides. It shows that there is more in his poem than the description of Being by means of negative adjectives such as ingenerated and immobile. His words ask his audience to question their habits, to modify their goals, to engage in new enterprises and to look with a critical eye at their previous attempts to get knowledge. It operates as a travel guide that leads the audience on a journey that will educate them and help them to gradually become philosophically mature, to become true themselves, which can also be described as the encouragement to become Being.


We evaluated the extent to which depressive disorders, psychiatric distress, and psychosocial stressors are related to three measures of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) illness, both cross-sectionally and during a 6-month period, in a community sample of 124 HIV-positive homosexual men. The dependent variables are immune status measured by CD4 and CD8 cell subsets, number of signs and symptoms commonly associated with HIV infection, and a cumulative index of HIV illness stage. We chose to focus on CD4 cell count because it is the immune marker most closely linked to the clinical consequences of HIV infection. We found no relationships between the independent variables and immune status or illness stage. The HIV-positive men who were depressed or distressed or who reported more life stressors had no greater immunosuppression or more advanced illness stage than did the others, either concurrently or across occasions. We did find a suggestive pattern of association between depressive disorders, distress, and stressors and the number of HIV-related symptoms, which warrants further study.


Dendrimers are a novel class of highly branched polymers with a high degree of uniformity and monodispersity. As a result of the unique properties and characteristics of dendrimers, they have found a wide range of pharmaceutical applications. This study investigated the ability of polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer-based drug delivery systems to enhance the permeability of a drug that is a substrate of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) efflux transporter with low water solubility. This thesis described the syntheses, characterisations and biological evaluations of the dendrimer-based drug delivery system to overcome the cellular barriers.

G3 PAMAM dendrimers were conjugated with lauryl chains via a carbamate bond. Paclitaxel, a low water solubility P-gp substrate and anti-tumour drug, was conjugated to G3 and/or lauryl-G3 PAMAM dendrimer conjugates via a glutaric anhydride linker. Unmodified G3 PAMAM dendrimer and all the dendrimer conjugates (lauryl-G3 and G3-drug conjugates) were labelled with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) for quantitative detection by spectrofluorimetry in permeability studies. These conjugates were characterised using various techniques including thin layer chromatography, 1H and 13C NMR, ESI-MS and dynamic light scattering. Chemical stability studies showed that the tested dendrimer conjugate (FITC-G3L6-glu-pac) was stable at all test pHs (1.2, 7.4, and 8.5) after 48 h of incubation at 37oC. The ester bond of the conjugate was stable under several chemical conditions after 10 days of incubation.

Biological evaluation of the dendrimer conjugates was initially conducted using Caco-2 cells. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release assay showed that conjugation of lauryl chains and paclitaxel molecules on the surface of G3 PAMAM dendrimer significantly (p < 0.05) increased the cytotoxicity in Caco-2 cells. The permeation of G3 PAMAM dendrimer and drug conjugates was investigated by measuring the apparent permeability coefficient (Papp) in both apical to basolateral AB and BA directions across Caco-2 cell monolayers at 37oC. The BA Papp of paclitaxel was found to be significantly (p < 0.05) higher than the AB Papp, indicating active function of P-gp efflux transporter system in the cell model. Covalent conjugation of paclitaxel to G3 PAMAM dendrimer via a glutaric anhydride linker significantly (p < 0.05) increased its AB Papp through Caco-2 cell monolayers. A more pronounced increase of paclitaxel permeation was observed when surface modified G3 PAMAM dendrimers with six lauryl chains were used as the carrier. L6-G3-glu-pac was found with highest permeability across the Caco-2 cell monolayers. The results suggested that G3 PAMAM dendrimer-based drug delivery systems enhance the permeability of paclitaxel and bypass P-gp efflux transporter system in Caco-2 cell monolayers, thereby overcoming the intestinal barrier.

Further biological evaluation was carried out using porcine brain endothelial cells (PBECs) as a blood-brain barrier (BBB) cell model to examine the potential of G3 PAMAM dendrimer as a carrier for paclitaxel (P-gp substrate) to bypass the BBB. Cell culture conditions of PBECs were monitored and examined to establish optimal conditions for cell growth. PBECs were successfully cultured with characteristic elongated spindle-like morphology. Integrity of the cell monolayers was evaluated by measuring the transendothelial electrical resistance (TEER) across the cell monolayers. Successfully cultured cell monolayers that achieved TEER values of higher than 200 Ω.cm2 were used for permeability studies. Elevation of TEER was observed when PBEC monolayers were cultured in the serum-free medium with hydrocortisone and treated with the cAMP/RO-20-1724 solution mixture.

G3 PAMAM dendrimer was found to be relatively non-toxic to PBECs compared to all other conjugates. Conjugation of lauryl chains and paclitaxel molecules on the surface of G3 PAMAM dendrimer significantly (p < 0.05) increased the cytotoxicity in PBECs, as assessed by LDH assay. Permeability studies of paclitaxel across the PBEC monolayers showed a similar transport profile to that of Caco-2 cell. The significant higher BA Papp of paclitaxel compared to the AB Papp indicated active function of P-gp efflux transporter system in the cell model. The AB Papp of L6-G3-glu-pac was found to be approximately 12 fold greater than that of free paclitaxel across the PBEC monolayers, where lauryl chains were acting as permeability enhancer. The cytotoxicity and permeability results using PBECs were found to be in good agreement with the findings when Caco-2 cells were used as the cellular barrier cell model.

From these studies, it can be concluded that G3 PAMAM dendrimers-based drug delivery systems are potential nanocarriers for low solubility and P-gp substrate drug to bypass the P-gp efflux transporter system and overcome cellular barriers.


This study investigated the neural plasticity associated with perceptual learning of a cochlear implant (CI) simulation. Normal-hearing listeners were trained with vocoded and spectrally shifted speech simulating a CI while cortical responses were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A condition in which the vocoded speech was spectrally inverted provided a control for learnability and adaptation. Behavioral measures showed considerable individual variability both in the ability to learn to understand the degraded speech, and in phonological working memory capacity. Neurally, left-lateralized regions in superior temporal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were sensitive to the learnability of the simulations, but only the activity in prefrontal cortex correlated with interindividual variation in intelligibility scores and phonological working memory. A region in left angular gyrus (AG) showed an activation pattern that reflected learning over the course of the experiment, and covariation of activity in AG and IFG was modulated by the learnability of the stimuli. These results suggest that variation in listeners' ability to adjust to vocoded and spectrally shifted speech is partly reflected in differences in the recruitment of higher-level language processes in prefrontal cortex, and that this variability may further depend on functional links between the left inferior frontal gyrus and angular gyrus. Differences in the engagement of left inferior prefrontal cortex, and its covariation with posterior parietal areas, may thus underlie some of the variation in speech perception skills that have been observed in clinical populations of CI users.


Cars Hommes holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Economics in 1991 from the University of Groningen and is Professor of Economic Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. In 1998 he obtained a prestigious Pionier-grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) to start the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance (CeNDEF), an interdisciplinary research group on complex systems applications in economics and finance. He held visiting positions at the University of Wisconsin, Stanford University, and New York University. Hommes is particularly well known from his influential work with William Brock (University of Wisconsin, USA), developing a behavioral theory of heterogeneous expectations and its applications to economics and finance. The CeNDEF group has tested the heterogeneous expectations hypothesis in empirical and in laboratory experiments and CH is one of the pioneers in Experimental Macroeconomics. He has published more than 100 articles in leading journals and book chapters, has been Editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 2002–2012 and currently is member of five editorial boards of international journals. He has obtained several grants from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO), the European Commission and is an Institute of New Economic Thinking grantee. He is the President Elect of the Society of Computational Economics, 2014, the author of the recent book Behavioral Rationality and Heterogeneous Expectations in Complex Economic Systems, Cambridge University Press, 2013 and winner of the Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship 2014 in the Netherlands for his interdisciplinary research.


ISO certification has become a pervasive mechanism adopted by firms to improve their operational performance. In this paper, we examine the operational and organizational factors that increase the likelihood of adopting ISO certification and the impact that ISO certification and ownership structure have upon firm performance. Using a sample of 163 Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1996–2000 we perform a rare events logit model and a regression analysis. Our findings show that firms producing intermediate goods that have implemented just-in-time practices are more likely to adopt ISO certification. Furthermore, we report a strong influence of the ownership structure upon ISO adoption policy, especially when a multinational firm is the largest shareholder. Empirical evidence supports that ISO certification and ownership structure positively impact firm performance. However, our results indicate that the positive impact of ISO certification on performance diminishes in firms where ownership is highly concentrated.


An innovative examination of the forces - both destructive and dynamic - which have shaped twentieth-century South Africa. This book provides a stimulating introduction to the history of South Africa in the twentieth century. It draws on the rich and lively tradition of radical history writing on that country and, to a greater extent than previous accounts, weaves economic and cultural history into the political narrative. Apartheid and industrialization, especially mining, are central theme, as is the rise of nationalism in the Afrikaner and African communities. But the author also emphasizes the neglected significance of rural experiences and local identities in shaping political consciousness. The roles played by such key figure as Smuts, Verwoerd, de Klerk, Plaatje, and Mandela are explored, while recent historiographical trends are reflected in analyses of rural protest, white cultural politics, the vitality of black urban life, and environmental decay. The book assesses the analysis of black reactions to apartheid, the rise of the ANC. The concluding chapter brings this seminal history up-to-date, tackling the issues and events from 1994-1999 - in particular the success of Mandela and the ANC in seeing through the end of apartheid rule. It also looks at the chances of a stable future for the new-found democracy in South Africa.


Researchers in the Division of Nutritional Sciences have worked since the mid-80s to define hunger and measure the extent of it. Using the term "food insecurity" to talk about hunger in this country, they have devised a system for quantifying it. The next step is to identify areas in which food problems exist so that communities can act to solve them. In the mid-1980s, as major U.S. cities were noting increases in homelessness, empty community food pantries, and overwhelmed soup kitchens, the President's Task Force on Food Assistance was unable to substantiate allegations of hunger because they had no way to measure the extent of the problem. Christine Olson, professor of nutritional sciences, and Kathy Radimer, then a graduate student, set out to develop measures of hunger in the United States. Since then Olson has been working to pinpoint the slippery problem of lack of food in this country. This has meant creating terms to talk about the problem, studying groups of people affected by it, and seeking solutions. Poverty is one of the major risk factors responsible for hunger in this country, says Olson, who recently returned from a sabbatical leave spent at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Recent Census Bureau statistics show that about 38.1 million people suffer from poverty in the United States. Yet it is often difficult to convince people that hunger exists. Those most likely to suffer from hunger in the United States are women and children - usually single mothers and the families they support - and the elderly. And while starvation does not occur in the United States on the scale that it does in still-developing countries, hunger does exist. "Women and children are over-represented in the poverty population. They are at highest risk for being poor, and therefore at greatest risk of hunger," says Olson. Olson and other researchers in the Division of Nutritional Sciences have worked since the mid-80s to both define hunger and discover ways to measure it. Rather than call the problem "hunger," which might imply hunger on the scale of less-developed countries, Olson and her colleagues chose the term "food insecurity." Based on Radimer's original research, they define food insecurity as "the inability to acquire or consume an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so." The researchers found that food insecurity takes place on a continuum, progressing from uncertainty and anxiety about food in the household, to affecting what and how the adults in the household eat, to the extreme condition of children going hungry. To quantify food insecurity, they developed a measurement tool that can be applied to various groups. Working with populations of women and children in upstate New York, Olson and her colleagues conducted two studies, one in 1987 and one in 1993. The 1987 study, conducted with Radimer, provided an initial definition of food insecurity and delineated the conceptual framework for the nature of food problems. In that study thirty-two women who had been hungry or near hunger at some time in their lives were interviewed extensively. The researchers found that the women experienced hunger in two ways, which they termed narrow and broad. The narrow concept referred to not having enough food and going without food, often for several days. The broad concept included problems maintaining the household food supply, inadequate diets, and how the women and children felt about their situation. Olson and Radimer also found that the way food insecurity was experienced by the women and children as individuals differed from the way it was experienced on a household level. They found both experiences had four components - quantitative, qualitative, psychological, and social: * The quantitative component of food insecurity for individuals means insufficient intake; for households, it means food depletion, or running out of food. …


Nietzsche reflects on translation at two key points in his published works, GS 83 and BGE 28, and these passages have been frequently anthologized in translation studies readers. He was not otherwise much exercised by questions of translation, though, and when he uses the German word for translation (Übersetzung), the majority of instances are figurative. As an academic classicist Nietzsche himself translated between German, Greek, and Latin, but his command of modern foreign languages was relatively unimpressive, and he viewed language learning as a necessary evil, looking forward to the time when a new lingua franca would obviate the need for language learning or translation at all. Nonetheless Nietzsche was very keen to secure translators for his own works: early French translations in his mentally active lifetime were followed by a flurry of further translations from the 1890s, when English translations also began to appear. After the Second World War Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale's English versions achieved preeminence, but by now the range of English translations is very diverse. The stylistic challenges facing the prospective translator of Nietzsche filled Peter Newmark with apprehension, but the present author adopts a more pragmatic position and concludes by speculating that the translator might represent the best approximation to Nietzsche's ideal reader.


Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology has revolutionised the way 3-dimensional positions are determined on and above the surface of the Earth. Over the last two decades or so, GNSS has evolved into a vital positioning tool for a wide range of applications reliant on spatial data. One such application is the tagging and tracking of animals to better understand animal behaviour and ecology (the study of the relationships that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment). Monitoring animal populations is also necessary for conservation purposes and to limit negative effects on the human population, particularly in an era of human expansion into traditional animal habitats. GNSS technology has allowed significant advances in this field by providing the ability to obtain accurate, regular and frequent estimates of the changing distributions of many rare animal species. However, employing conventional GNSS-based animal tracking methods to study species that spend most of their time in treetops is extremely difficult because the tree canopy regularly causes extended periods of complete GNSS signal loss. This paper proposes an indirect GNSS-based approach for the tracking of tree-dwelling animals. This involves tracking the prey rather than the predator in order to map the animal population in a particular area. Using a case study on drop bears, it is shown that this method can be used to effectively estimate the number of animals present in the area and provide valuable insights into its hunting behaviour.


Patients are being "failed" by the poor regulation of hip prostheses and other medical devices, which is potentially allowing dangerous products onto the European market, the Royal College of Surgeons warns today.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph the college and the British Orthopaedic Association warn that revelations in a joint BMJ and Daily Telegraph investigation about the system are a "stark reminder" of the "urgent need to address the regulatory flaws."

The investigation today discloses that the regulation of European medical products is also being "sub contracted" to Asian firms.1

One of the firms (ITC), based in Seoul, said that it had a 100% success rate and "there was no case . . . which [is] rejected."

Executives at the firm, the official Asian representative of a Czech notified body, said that companies should apply for European market access as it was far easier to gain entry than into other countries, such as the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Asked by undercover journalists why his firm's services should be used, the company executive rubbed his fingers together and said "money…the profit."

Another …


Procedures have been described for the recovery of conodonts from cherts by dissolution in hydrofluoric acid (see Stone, 1987 for a review), but this technique rarely has been applied. Cherts are more widely distributed in southern Scotland than are limestones which have been the focus of most research on conodonts. The HF technique thus opens a new and possibly more widely applicable avenue for conodont research for southern Scotland than the traditional methods. Ordovician conodonts on the surfaces of red cherts were reported from several localities near Peebles by Lamont and Lindström (1957), and the same authors found conodonts in yellow silt-stones interbedded with cherts south of Abington. These localities were visited to obtain samples that we believed to have a high probability of containing conodonts in order to test the HF procedure on Scottish rocks. We found conodonts in red rocks like those reported by Lamont and Lindström at their Noblehouse and Ruddenleys localities. Unfortunately the rocks there are not cherts as they reported, but are red mudstones instead. Such rocks are not amenable to the HF techniques. Microscopic examination of grey cherts collected loose below Ravengill Burn (Grid Reference 26/921199, one of Lamont and Lindstrom's localities) showed that they contained radiolaria, a common fossil in the cherts of Scotland. Small pieces of these cherts, aggregating about 50 g, were placed in dilute (10% by volume) HF. The acid was decanted episodically after periods ranging from 8 hours to 73 hours, and the undissolved material was wet-screened through a . . .


Governments cannot ignore international human rights standards for unauthorized migrant workers forever. This chapter presents a call for comparative work on the issue of the legal regimes affecting unauthorized immigrant workers in order to bring governments into greater awareness and compliance with their obligations to unauthorized immigrant workers. Global illegal migration by laborers seeking economic opportunities is expanding, resulting in an increasing number of migrants in every country who are working in violation of immigration laws. Unauthorized immigrant workers are numerous enough to form a recognizable group in every major world economy, because most receiving countries have immigration laws that make the existence of such a group inevitable. On the one hand, these countries welcome and avail themselves of the physical labor of foreigners. But on the other hand, their laws restrict the number of legally issued visas and other immigration possibilities available for blue-collar workers to migrate legally. Therefore, only an insignificant percentage of the actual number of workers demanded by receiving-country employers are afforded a legal means to enter the country and take on the jobs they seek. In recent years, a spate of new international and regional legal developments has established and extended the human rights of these unauthorized migrant workers. The international community, however, has not embraced the standards on unauthorized migrant workers with enthusiasm. For example, ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families remains very low. This chapter first posits that comparative research could play an important role in developing and improving ratification of norms for the protection of unauthorized immigrant workers. The weak status of international migrant human rights treaties such as the Convention demonstrates two intertwined phenomena: the international human rights community's awareness of the particularly vulnerable condition of unauthorized migrant workers, and most national governments' preference to avoid granting rights to this population. In this situation, the development, publication, and analysis of information on national treatment of unauthorized immigrant workers is urgently needed to support the new standards. Awareness about national policies will further the international norms by: (1) identifying the best practices for replicating and building customary international law; (2) identifying violative practices and situations where new standards would most profitably be disseminated; and (3) placing national laws about unauthorized workers into a human rights framework to create new paradigms and approaches to these laws. Secondly, the chapter argues that comparative research relating to this population is lacking. The extensive literature on comparative labor and employment rights rarely touches on this population. Immigration laws are also subjects of legal surveys and comparative work that, again, generally do not include information specifically relevant to unauthorized migrant workers and their rights qua workers. These efforts should be expanded or supplemented by work that includes issues of particular importance to unauthorized workers and to the receiving and sending governments whose policies affect them. Finally, the chapter proposes principles that should underlie national studies and research. To facilitate comparative projects, the chapter proposes considerations for constructing effective comparisons of this complex policy area, arguing for three underlying principles: (1) as unauthorized immigrants are affected by a range of legal regimes, neither immigration nor labor law alone can address their human rights situation, but all relevant regimes must be addressed, including the special problem of enforcement and providing remedies to a shadow labor force; (2) national studies should not ignore instrumental arguments, for example the positive correlation between enforcement and security issues that preoccupy the polity, but should instead make clear the enforcement effect of providing rights to the workers through dampening of employer demand; and (3) comparative research must be structured to support and further new international standards relating to unauthorized immigrant workers.


Building on early animal studies, 20th-century researchers increasingly explored the fact that early events – ranging from conception to childhood – affect a child's health trajectory in the long-term. By the 21st century, a wide body of research had emerged, incorporating the original 'Fetal Origins Hypothesis' into the 'Developmental Origins of Health and Disease'. Evidence from OECD countries suggests that health inequalities are strongly correlated with many dimensions of socio-economic status, such as educational attainment; and that they tend to increase with age and carry stark intergenerational implications. Different economic theories have been developed to rationalize this evidence, with an overarching comprehensive framework still lacking. Existing models widely rely on human capital theory, which has given rise to separate dynamic models of adult and child health capital, within a production function framework. A large body of empirical evidence has also found support for the developmental origins of inequalities in health. On the one hand, studies exploiting quasi-random exposure to adverse events have shown long-term physical and mental health impacts of exposure to early shocks, including pandemics or maternal illness, famine, malnutrition, stress, vitamin deficiencies, maltreatment, pollution and economic recessions. On the other hand, studies from the 20th century have shown that early interventions of various content and delivery format improve life course health. Further, given that the most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups show the greatest gains, such measures can potentially reduce health inequalities. However, studies of long-term impacts, as well as the mechanisms via which shocks or policies affect health, and the dynamic interaction amongst them, are still lacking. Mapping the complexities of those early event dynamics is an important avenue for future


Until now, ecology of Phyllodactylus angustidigitus and P. gerrhopygus are unknown. In this work, we researched some aspects of P. angustidigitus and P. gerrhopygus niches at National Reserve of Paracas (RNP). We evaluated and compared: distribution, habitat use (spatial niche), activity patterns (temporal niche) and diet (trophic niche), all these aspects in both geckonids species. We estimated resource supply through pitfall traps. Paracas geckonid, P. angustidigitus, has been present in most of the RNP evaluated locations, and it was reported in desert and hills habitats. Southern geckonid, P. gerrhopygus, was reported only in Paracas peninsula and Sta. Cruz, in desert, hills and oasis habitats. Both species were founded in activity at night time. P. angustidigitus and P. gerrhopygus diet consisted in insects. The diet of these species shows a generalist behavior, caused by the trophic niche amplitude, and an opportunistic behavior, explained with similarity between diet composition and environment resource supply. Diet of both species was similar. Additionally the phylogenetic proximity between P. angustidigitus y P. gerrhopygus produces spatial niche similarities (habitat use) and temporal niche similarities (activity patterns) and trophic niche (diet). These important similarities in resources use can be derived in a potential competition of environmental resources between these simpatric geckonids. The information provided in this paper shows the need to design an appropriate strategy to ensure the conservation status of P. angustidigitus.


This study investigated changes in mean and extreme precipitation in the metropolitan area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in an attempt to find the effects of urban areas on precipitation patterns. Precipitation data were obtained from a gridded (8-km spacing) historical climatic dataset for Wisconsin for 1950-2006. The MannKendall test and the Sen's slope test were applied to investigate temporal trends. Monthly wind directions were examined against monthly precipitation patterns. Main findings from the study include the following: (1) Annual precipitation significantly increased in the northern part of the study area during 1950-2006, whereas extreme precipitation showed virtually no trends; (2) The metropolitan area showed a distinctive center of low precipitation in selected months; (3) Extreme precipitation showed a more localized pattern than annual precipitation; and (4) Wind directions reasonably explained the spatial distributions of monthly precipitation with respect to the urban area. The results suggest signals of urban influence on precipitation, which need to be corroborated by more detailed investigation on precipitation characteristics.


The fundamental idea behind global standards collaboration is that standardization needs to work seamlessly across borders and organizations in order to succeed. Of course, seamless standardization requires information exchanges among engineers and entities in countries and regions with different geopolitical viewpoints. Contrary to this spirit are some recent events that tend to impede the movement of technological information related to standards development across borders even when the information is already public or is destined for public release. One wonders: Are we seeing the rise of information mercantilism? Mercantilism was the dominant economic theory practiced by nations in the 17th and 18th Centuries. This theory held sway until Adam Smith, in "The Wealth of Nations," and the economists who followed him, such as David Ricardo, pretty much demolished the edifice of mercantilism as an economic theory. According to mercantilism, nations should control their trade tightly, because when they export either goods or specie (i.e., gold or silver), the recipient nation would be richer by the amount received and the donor nation would be poorer by exactly the same amount. This theory led to such outcomes as the race for colonies among the European nations, as each wanted to internalize trade and avoid relying on their economic competitors for raw materials or manufactured goods. This idea and the trade systems it favored did not stand the test of time as theory or as practice and, as two World Wars demonstrated, had serious negative consequences. Ricardo, in particular, introduced the concept of "comparative advantage," pointing out that, when nations or entities exchanged goods that each produced more efficiently (or at a minimized opportunity cost) than the other, both parties to the trade benefitted [1]. Trade was enriching, rather than impoverishing. Each entity received the goods it needed at a minimum price, while maximizing their own returns. Technical information, as a trade good, is a bit peculiar. It is not produced by natural resource extraction or manufactured in factories (unless you consider universities factories), but conceived in the minds of engineers and scientists. Participants in the creation of new concepts benefit from the ideas of those who have come before, and each exchange of information leaves both parties a little richer for the experience. Even such an original thinker as Isaac Newton acknowledged this when he said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Unfortunately, we are now hearing suggestions that standards-relevant technical information should not be freely traded, sometimes based on a claim that doing so poses a danger to national sovereignty and security. When an engineer in France reads a paper by a scientist in the U.S., and then does some new work that is then published and read by a technologist in China, who in turn makes a contribution to an international standard that builds on the information received, have the U.S., France, and China all experienced an information trade deficit, since they all exported information, or have all gained by the knowledge accumulated by their citizens and turned that into a standard that will result in products that all can buy? Information creation is not a zero-sum game where one party must necessarily lose if another gains. As the work of Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and others point out, humans' fear of loss is more potent than their desire for gain [2]. That reaction is not necessarily logical, however. Some think that barriers to trade will improve a country's economy because displacing foreign goods in the marketplace will create a demand for domestic equivalents, and employment producing those domestic equivalents will therefore increase. The theory of comparative advantage suggests instead that using domestic resources to produce goods that could be made more efficiently elsewhere is a waste of resources and unnecessarily reduces the gross output of the economy. In the case of information exchange, the theory of comparative advantage may hold even more strongly. When available information is limited to that which is produced domestically, the cycle of technological improvement, where one improvement builds on another, will necessarily be slower because fewer engineers and scientists are contributing to it. The best technical standards reflect a diversity of thought that is contributed, reviewed, and tested by a global community of technical experts. The IEEE Standards Association is an organic part of IEEE and is thus dedicated to advancing technology for humanity. We do this by using global collaboration to create open platforms for the exchange of technological information. Unconditional global openness and inclusivity are the pillars of our bottom-up consensus-building ecosystem. All technical information formally submitted to the IEEE Standards Association at any level (working groups, standardization committees, or governance bodies) is ultimately intended to become public. In addition to producing standards, the voluntary disclosure of technical information by users of our platforms allows that information to become globally available and hence contributes to the global public good. These collaborative and global public good aspects of the IEEE standards process are particularly important if we want technology to serve humanity as a whole and not merely to serve as another aspect of the drive for competitive advantage by companies and countries. For this reason, the IEEE Standards Association will continue to honor its principles of unconditional and unrestricted openness and inclusiveness, and it will continue to be receptive to the support provided to these principles by our inclusive and global democracy of technical experts.


Multinational corporations (MNCs) have increasingly been establishing regional headquarters in China. However, no study has systematically examined how MNCs make strategic decisions about where to locate Chinese headquarters (CHQs) in this transition economy. The paper makes the first attempt to investigate the issue by focusing on two questions. First, what are the location-specific factors that determine where MNCs locate their CHQs? Second, how do these factors influence making the decision between Beijing and Shanghai, the two largest cities in China? We integrate existing literature and assess the differential roles of (1) path dependency, (2) institutional support, and (3) proximity to superior information. Data were collected through a large-scale survey of MNC CHQs in mainland China. The empirical analysis supports the three-dimensional framework and the central role of proximity to superior information in the decision-making process. The results advance existing understanding of MNC location decisions in China by revealing the unique interplay between power and market in this transition economy, and between Beijing and Shanghai, the two promising cities toward world city status, in particular.


BACKGROUND: Portable peak flow meters are used in clinical practice for measurement of peak expiratory flow (PEF) at many different altitudes throughout the world. Some PEF meters are affected by gas density. This study was undertaken to establish which type of meter is best for use above sea level and to determine changes in spirometric measurements at altitude. METHODS: The variable orifice mini-Wright peak flow meter was compared with the fixed orifice Micro Medical Microplus turbine microspirometer at sea level and at Everest Base Camp (5300 m). Fifty one members of the 1994 British Mount Everest Medical Expedition were studied (age range, 19-55). RESULTS: Mean forced vital capacity (FVC) fell by 5% and PEF rose by 25.5%. However, PEF recorded with the mini-Wright peak flow meter underestimated PEF by 31%, giving readings 6.6% below sea level values. FVC was lowest in the mornings and did not improve significantly with acclimatisation. Lower PEF values were observed on morning readings and were associated with higher acute mountain sickness scores, although the latter may reflect decreased effort in those with acute mountain sickness. There was no change in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) at altitude when measured with the turbine microspirometer. CONCLUSIONS: The cause of the fall in FVC at 5300 m is unknown but may be attributed to changes in lung blood volume, interstitial lung oedema, or early airways closure. Variable orifice peak flow meters grossly underestimate PEF at altitude and fixed orifice devices are therefore preferable where accurate PEF measurements are required above sea level.


Bones are formed and remodeled by the coordinated actions of three key cell types. Osteoblasts, specialized connective tissue cells, deposit and then mineralize the collagenous bone matrix. Osteoclasts, which are derived from promonocytes, resorb mineralized matrix by excavating characteristic pits on bone surfaces. The third cell type, osteocytes, differentiates from osteoblasts that become trapped in bone matrix, forming a three-dimensional network that is thought to detect deformations due to mechanical loading. This brief review summarizes what is known of the roles played by the G-protein-coupled P2Y receptors in modulating bone cell function. Current indications are that both osteoblasts and osteoclasts express P2Y1, P2Y2, P2Y4, P2Y6, and P2Y12–14 receptors. The UTP/ADP-sensitive P2Y2 receptor, expression of which is highly upregulated in mature, bone-forming osteoblasts, may play a significant role in limiting bone mineralization by inhibiting alkaline phosphatase expression. Extracellular adenosine triphosphate additionally exerts significant physicochemical (i.e., nonreceptor mediated) effects on mineralization via its hydrolysis product, pyrophosphate. The roles, if any, of P2Y receptors in osteocyte function are not well investigated, mainly because of the inaccessibility of these cells within bone. In osteoclasts, available evidence indicates that the P2Y1, P2Y6, and, possibly, P2Y13 receptors could act to promote resorptive function. P2Y receptor-mediated signaling has numerous and complex effects on bone cells; however, many of the key findings to date indicate that a large proportion of these actions may well be negative for bone. WIREs Membr Transp Signal 2012, 1:805–814. doi: 10.1002/wmts.67

For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.


In this study the highest dry matter yields were harvested from triticale (for pure crops) and from triticale+winter pea (for mixed crops). By pure crops the highest values of crude protein content (8.78 and 9.02%) had winter barley and winter vetch, and by mixed crops–winter barley+winter pea, winter barley+winter vetch and triticale+winter pea (11.40, 9.15 and 9.17%, respectively). The content of crude fat in forage had near values for studying pure and mixed crops. For all sowing crops the crude fibre content varied also in comparatively little limits, while the nitrogen–free extract matters for pure crops ranged within widely limits in comparison with mixed crops. The highest crude protein yield from all crops (without the standards) was obtained only by triticale, and it was 40.00% higher than winter barley. All other crops had a lower productivity than other corresponding standards.


After eighty-two colorful and often glorious baseball seasons, the financially-strapped Boston Braves abruptly moved in 1953 to Milwaukee, en route to Atlanta, breaking the hearts of the team's faithful, die-hard fans. During its reign in Boston, the storied franchise, now the longest continuously active club in the history of baseball, had captured ten National League pennants and a world championship, and fielded thirty-eight Hall of Famers, including Kid Nichols, Warren Spahn, King Kelly, Rabbit Maranville, John Evers, Hugh Duffy, Eddle Matthews, and the Wright brothers. In this classic work, first published in 1948 and updated in 1954, famed sports scribe Harold Kaese brings to life the dramatic moments and brilliant players in the baseball legacy of the Braves in Boston. Richly Illustrated with vintage photographs and cartoons, many published here for the first time, the book chronicles both the hapless and spectacular seasons from the Braves' founding in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings in the National Association to their move to Milwaukee. Here one relives the remarkable dynasties in the nineteenth century, the "Miracle Braves" of 1914, and the glory year of 1948, when the rallying cry was "Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain," and the lackluster final seasons in Boston. This edition includes a new index by Jonathan Fine of the Boston Braves Historical Association and a statistical appendix by Richard A. Johnson, editor of Northeastern's Sportstown series. This vivid look back at the Braves' years in Boston will appeal to both historians and baseball enthusiasts. It will also spark cherished memories of New England's still beloved team - the Boston National League club that "left behind an indifferent population, an ugly ball park, and the Red Sox."


Channel-based models of human spatial vision require that the output of spatial filters be pooled across space. This pooling yields global estimates of local feature attributes such as orientation that are useful in situations in which that attribute may be locally variable, as is the case for visual texture. The spatial characteristics of orientation summation are considered in the study. By assessing the effect of orientation variability on observers' ability to estimate the mean orientation of spatially unstructured textures, one can determine both the internal noise on each orientation sample and the number of samples being pooled. By a combination of fixing and covarying the size of textured regions and the number of elements constituting them, one can then assess the effects of the texture's size, density, and numerosity (the number of elements present) on the internal noise and the sampling density. Results indicate that internal noise shows a primary dependence on texture density but that, counterintuitively, subjects rely on a sample size approximately equal to a fixed power of the number of samples present, regardless of their spatial arrangement. Orientation pooling is entirely flexible with respect to the position of input features.


This book is about the Zynq-7000 All Programmable System on Chip, the family of devices from Xilinx that combines an application-grade ARM Cortex-A9 processor with traditional FPGA logic fabric. Catering for both new and experienced readers, it covers fundamental issues in an accessible way, starting with a clear overview of the device architecture, and an introduction to the design tools and processes for developing a Zynq SoC. Later chapters progress to more advanced topics such as embedded systems development, IP block design and operating systems. Maintaining a 'real-world' perspective, the book also compares Zynq with other device alternatives, and considers end-user applications. The Zynq Book is accompanied by a set of practical tutorials hosted on a companion website. These tutorials will guide the reader through first steps with Zynq, following on to a complete, audio-based embedded systems design.


A 3C-2D seismic survey was conducted at Pikes Peak oil field, Saskatchewan during March 2000. It consisted of conventional arrays of geophones, single 3-C geophones and microphones, designed and tested at the University of Calgary. The aim of deploying pressure sensors in the field was to record the ambient noise and the airwave generated by the vibroseis source. The reliability of using pressure data to suppress some of the noise coupled into the geophone records remains the main goal of the undergoing research. However, a deep understanding of the wave phenomena associated with energy conversion at the air-ground interface is necessary. Therefore, a general model is derived for the air-ground transfer function which is frequency dependent. The airwave is primarily produced by the vibrator's baseplate, which is modeled as a circular piston vibrating in an infinite rigid baffle. Analysis of the microphone data in the time, frequency and Gabor domains suggests that the model of the airwave source is a good approximation to the actual physics. The sound radiation pattern of the vibrator's baseplate has a direct effect on the airwave frequency content of the microphone traces. A similar signal analysis of the multicomponent data reveals that the coupling of the airwave is broadband, with stronger energy in the vertical and radial components at frequencies in the range 10-25 Hz. Preliminary analysis suggests that the sound beaming might also affect the frequency content of the coupled airwave. These observations are consistent for five consecutive source points.


The paper aims to study the evolution of urban growth in Lebanon as a developing country with respect to its economic development. Also, the dynamics of this relationship are to be explored and shed some light on the effect, if any, of economic development on Urbanization in Lebanon. Therefore, the study identifies through literature how economic development impacts urbanization. Finally, this paper advances the research on the subject topic in Lebanon beyond the restrictions and limitations of previous literature through empirical results. The study focuses on previous literature regarding the relation of economic development and urbanization. The study uses time-series OLS multi-variate egression anaylsis in the case of Lebanon from the year 1988-2018.GDP per capita, school enrolment and life expectancy were used tocapture the urban population growth, while ores and metals exports, manufacturing value added and agricultural value added were used as conrol variables. The results indicate a positive correlation and at least one co integrating equation between the variables. The results showed that two variables are significant with urban population at regional level supporting the expected hypothesis (GDP and school enrolment) and all other variables did not show any significant relation with urbanization in Lebanon. This study might be of interest providing insights on the relationship between urbanization and economic development specially for further studies in the field of urbanization. The study believes to contribute positively to understanding of urbanization and the creation to an innovative era of economic growth, luxury and improved resource allocation.


Policy and uncertainty are the two aspects of human ecosystems such as agriculture which are the most difficult to capture in models of those systems and which are most important factors in their evolution. Policy may be direct or indirect, and both forms can have strong effects on system behavior. But these effects are not always obvious or clearly interpreted. Policy is generally directed toward specific short-term phenomena, and the momentum and inertia of many parts of agricultural systems are such that it is often impossible to distinguish system-generated from policy-generated change. Likewise, the path of policy implementation through the system as a whole may lead to broader impact and rather different results from those planned by the decision-maker. A multilevel hierarchical view of the human ecosystem shows the natural phenomena of the environent responding to control by farmers and views society as a policy-making system which attempts to guide or control the farmer. This enables the analyst to clarify many of the problems of complexity inherent in analyses of human ecosystems. It provides a common framework for the analysis of economic and ecological (among other) dimensions of the system, and that framework is suitable for technology assessment, policy assessment, and policy design.


A transition binary logistic model with random coeffi- cients is proposed to model the unemployment statues of household members in two seasons of spring and summer. Data correspond to the labor force survey performed by Statistical Center of Iran in 2006. This model is introduced to take into account two kinds of correla- tion in the data; one due to the longitudinal nature of the study, that will be considered using a transition model, and the other due to the assumed correlation between responses of members of the same household which is taken into account by introducing random coeffi- cients into the model. Due to the use of special sampling method in this survey (rotation sampling), some kinds of non-monotone miss- ing pattern occur that are considered in the proposed model using the breakdown of the joint distribution of the response variables. A Bayesian approach is used to estimate model parameters via the Gibbs sampling method and data augmentation. Results of using


Unconditionally secure message authentication is an important part of quantum cryptography (QC). In this correspondence, we analyze security effects of using a key obtained from QC for authentication purposes in later rounds of QC. In particular, the eavesdropper gains partial knowledge on the key in QC that may have an effect on the security of the authentication in the later round. Our initial analysis indicates that this partial knowledge has little effect on the authentication part of the system, in agreement with previous results on the issue. However, when taking the full QC protocol into account, the picture is different. By accessing the quantum channel used in QC, the attacker can change the message to be authenticated. This, together with partial knowledge of the key, does incur a security weakness of the authentication. The underlying reason for this is that the authentication used, which is insensitive to such message changes when the key is unknown, becomes sensitive when used with a partially known key. We suggest a simple solution to this problem, and stress usage of this or an equivalent extra security measure in QC.


Despite calls for improved responses to emerging infectious diseases in wildlife, management is seldom considered until a disease has been detected in affected populations. Reactive approaches may limit the potential for control and increase total response costs. An alternative, proactive management framework can identify immediate actions that reduce future impacts even before a disease is detected, and plan subsequent actions that are conditional on disease emergence. We identify four main obstacles to developing proactive management strategies for the newly discovered salamander pathogen Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). Given that uncertainty is a hallmark of wildlife disease management and that associated decisions are often complicated by multiple competing objectives, we advocate using decision analysis to create and evaluate trade-offs between proactive (pre-emergence) and reactive (post-emergence) management options. Policy makers and natural resource agency personnel can apply principles from decision analysis to improve strategies for countering emerging infectious diseases.


This paper describes the possible karst landforms observed in the Light Toned Deposits (LTDs) located within the Cagli crater, a medium size crater located in northern Sinus Meridiani, an area near the equatorial region of Mars.A morphological and morphometric survey of the LTDs surface morphologies through an integrated analysis of the available Reconnaissance Mars Orbiter (MRO) High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) images highlighted the presence of shallow depressions that display different shapes and sizes.The Martian landforms were interpreted as sinkhole resembling similarly karst landforms that can be observed both in different karst terrains on the Earth and in other regions of Mars.The karst landforms observed highlight the evaporitic origin ofthese materials and suggest both climatic change and the presence ofliquid water, probably due to ice melting, during the late Amazonianperiod.


The prevalence of emails in law practice alone provides a compelling reason for assigning emails in the 1L legal writing course. Law students should learn how to write the types of documents they will be expected to write in law practice. Not surprisingly, over the past several years, email communications have increasingly become part of legal writing curricula. This Article offers another reason why the legal writing curriculum should include emails: writing emails can help students refine their legal analysis skills in a way that writing the traditional, long-form memorandum does not. This Article advocates for assigning email writing as part of the writing process and not purely as a final written product for the sake of giving students experience with a prevalent mode of lawyer communication. Email writing should join free writing and oral presentation as valuable tools for helping students develop analytical skills. Having students write in a medium they are comfortable with will help them feel more liberated and more at ease. They may make creative associations they otherwise would not make. They might also develop a keen awareness of the shortcomings and strengths of their analysis. Email writing can help students engage more closely with their legal analysis and write more effectively. Ultimately, legal writing professors' strategic assignment of emails will enrich students' writing and learning experiences, and provide them with a lifelong writing tool. Part II.A discusses how legal writing teaching developed to emphasize process over product. Part II.B explores the connection between oral argument and legal writing teaching. Part II.C explores the connection between free writing and legal writing teaching. Part III, against the backdrop of reasons for assigning oral argument and free writing, explains the benefits to the legal writing process of assigning email writing. Part IV proposes ways to integrate email writing into the 1L legal writing course to maximize its benefits to the legal writing process.


As an enemy of culture and of the art of museums, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) was also an anarchist, an atheist, anti-military and unpatriotic. He was an explosive force, a rebel who rejected labels and categories, resolute in his quest for freedom from all constraints, and not incidentally one of the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century. Over an extraordinarily productive career from 1942 to 1985, Dubuffet found himself drawn to the art of children and madmen, which he endowed with legitimacy and credibility as "Art Brut." This in turn inclined him towards extreme forms and the expressive scrawls and scribbles of graffiti, and prompted him to begin experimenting with materials such as bitumen, sand and plant fibers, which made him one of the earliest and most prominent Matter artists. As a prolific writer, and sometimes a cruel polemicist, Dubuffet left a storehouse of written work that offers invaluable insight into his vision of art.


An automatic recording spectrophotometer designed to cover the range 10,000 to 2000A is described. With present light sources the instrument will trace absorption curves at high speed from 9800A to 3400A, and can be used somewhat more slowly to cover the spectrum to 2300A. A ten-foot concave grating monochromator with fixed slits is used to provide a spectral band 0.5 to 10A wide, the purity available depending on the light intensity and the speed of recording desired. An 11-stage electron multiplier is used to balance a light beam which has passed through the sample to be measured, against the same beam later reduced by a photometric disk by a recorded amount. An electric "memory" device is used to accomplish this balance, and at the instant of balance a spark is passed through a piece of suitable graph paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder. Twenty absorption measurements can thus be made and recorded per second. The instrument will plot either transmission or density values against wave-lengths on a linear scale, to an accuracy of about 1 percent.


Current methods to predict hydrodynamic loads rely either on oversimplified and semiempirical methods or the use of numerical simulation and analysis techniques such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or Boundary Element Analysis (BEA). These methods are conservative which results in the over-design of these craft so they are heavier and slower than they could otherwise be. Better understanding of load intensities will inform the design process of marine structures and could result in lighter and more efficient designs. This research investigates the possibility of solving these problems employing artificial intelligence (AI) as an alternative to the current methods. Few studies have applied Artificial Intelligence to the design of marine structures. Detailed review of the past and present research shows that AI and in particular Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) can be used as an inverse problem solver when there are no closed form relationships that exist between the input and the output. An inverse approach is defined as the problem where response of the structure is known but the load that caused that response is unknown. In real problems/structures the response to a point load is experienced throughout the structure with different levels of intensities which is the link between the external load and these differential intensities. Determining this relationship will result in a unique solution without the knowledge of material constitutive laws, material properties and structure size or thickness. The aim of this investigation is to develop a real time in-service load measurement tool using an inverse approach. To achieve this, ANN, experimental techniques and FEA analysis are combined to form a hybrid inverse problem solver that can be trained to use structural response, such as strains at various locations, to predict the loads that caused them. The main objective of this research is to investigate the suitability of the proposed methodology for real time in-service load monitoring on large marine structures. The proposed system must be able to measure both steady-state as well as transient load such as equivalent slamming load. The outcome of this investigation was successful prediction of the external loads in terms of their approximate location and load intensities. The only disadvantage of this method is that the solver requires training and can only learn from cases that it has been subjected to. However, once the system is trained it can predict both static and dynamic loads quickly and accurately.


Traditional analyses of popular or everyday culture have been couched in terms of, on the one hand, variants of the Frankfurt School view that it distorts or offers a false consciousness of an underlying reality, whilst on the other, the response from discourse theorists and more traditional forms of social constructionism has been philosophically conventionalist in arguing that discourses, definitions and labelling activities directly construct meaning. The argument of this thesis is that it is possible, via Dummett's reading of Frege, to construct a realist account of meaning or, more strictly, sense, which preserves an element of rationality in everyday cultural reception without thereby effecting a radical relativisation of the notion of what constitutes rational processes and practices. This is achieved via Dummett's Context Principle, through which it is argued that the actual meaning of an utterance is not given directly by the conventional meaning of its constituent terms and phrases, but rather that the object picked out, its reference, depends on the context in which the utterance occurs. Hence the terms and phrases offer no more than a clue, a route to the reference, not the actuality of the reference. Consequently, whilst the sedimented meanings of the elements from which an utterance is composed provide a structuring of meaning, the actual constitution of meaning will depend on the context. The thesis explores the view that meaning or sense has an open-ended, but ontological quality by examining a variety of issues and themes including reflexivity, forms of conventionalism, conceptions of the everyday, perspectives in phenomenological social theory and philosophy, rationality, semiotics, reference, discursivity, spatial and temporal locations of sense. It counterposes the emphasis on the contextual structuring of meaning as an effect of the subject's everyday appropriation of background routines, to passive constructions of subjectivity as offered by the Frankfurt School, and what it sees as overly direct constructions of meaning via classification systems in social constructionist approaches, which again have a reductive effect on the subject's role in the production of meaning.


The endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia is being investigated as a potential control agent in several important vector insect species. Recent studies have shown that Wolbachia can protect the insect host against a wide variety of pathogens, resulting in reduced transmission of parasites and viruses. It has been proposed that compromised vector competence of Wolbachia-infected insects is due to up-regulation of the host innate immune system or metabolic competition. Anopheles mosquitoes, which transmit human malaria parasites, have never been found to harbor Wolbachia in nature. While transient somatic infections can be established in Anopheles, no stable artificially-transinfected Anopheles line has been developed despite numerous attempts. However, cultured Anopheles cells can be stably infected with multiple Wolbachia strains such as wAlbB from Aedes albopictus, wRi from Drosophila simulans and wMelPop from Drosophila melanogaster. Infected cell lines provide an amenable system to investigate Wolbachia-Anopheles interactions in the absence of an infected mosquito strain. We used Affymetrix GeneChip microarrays to investigate the effect of wAlbB and wRi infection on the transcriptome of cultured Anopheles Sua5B cells, and for a subset of genes used quantitative PCR to validate results in somatically-infected Anopheles mosquitoes. Wolbachia infection had a dramatic strain-specific effect on gene expression in this cell line, with almost 700 genes in total regulated representing a diverse array of functional classes. Very strikingly, infection resulted in a significant down-regulation of many immune, stress and detoxification-related transcripts. This is in stark contrast to the induction of immune genes observed in other insect hosts. We also identified genes that may be potentially involved in Wolbachia-induced reproductive and pathogenic phenotypes. Somatically-infected mosquitoes had similar responses to cultured cells. The data show that Wolbachia has a profound and unique effect on Anopheles gene expression in cultured cells, and has important implications for mechanistic understanding of Wolbachia-induced phenotypes and potential novel strategies to control malaria.


Abstract

Neuroactive steroids (rapidly acting steroids that act as allosteric modulators of neurotransmitter receptors such as the A‰£-aminobutyric acidA (GABAA) receptor and the NMDA glutamate receptor) are involved in brain development and have been proposed to be important in the etiology and/or pharmacotherapy of a number of psychiatric and neurologic disorders, but there is limited information available on their association with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This paper reviews the possible involvement of neuroactive steroids (NASs) and some related steroids, including testosterone, androstenedione and estradiol steroids in the etiology of ASD. NASs include progesterone, pregnanolone, pregnenolone, pregnenolone sulfate, allopregnanolone, tetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone (THDOC), dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA sulfate (DHEAS). Studies on the levels of NASs and related steroids in blood, urine, saliva, and amniotic fluid in ASD are also reviewed. The results on plasma levels of NASs in ASD reported in the literature are generally inconclusive, probably because of differences among studies in terms of experimental design and factors such as age, gender, number of subjects, and medication being taken and differences in time of day at which samples are taken and storage conditions of samples. Future studies on levels of NASs in ASD should include careful consideration of the factors mentioned above, the possible advantages of saliva sampling and the use of assay procedures that provide simultaneous analysis of levels of a large number of these steroids.


This paper considers parameter estimation of a hybrid sinusoidal frequency modulated (FM) and polynomial phase signal (PPS) from a finite number of samples. We first show limitations of an existing method, the high-order ambiguity function (HAF), and then propose a new method by adopting the high-order phase function which was originally designed for the pure PPS. The proposed method estimates parameters of interest from peak locations in the time-frequency rate domain, which are less perturbed by the noise than peak values used by the HAF-based method. Numerical evaluation shows the proposed method can handle the hybrid FM-PPS signal with low sinusoidal frequency and improve estimation accuracy in terms of mean squared error for several orders of magnitude.


Recent years have seen new ideologies and political factors being introduced into the Sudanese political landscape. The new war in Darfur has revealed that the traditional North-South conflict is not necessarily a religious war but rather a war that goes beyond religion and ethnicity. Several factors underpin the civil wars in Sudan; principally disputes over religion, identity, inequality, resources, governance, self-determination, autonomy and secession. The attempt is therefore to define the various actors, factors and issues underlying both the North-South conflict and the new war in Darfur, and to analyse and compare the differences and similarities between the two wars. Both the conflicts in Southern Sudan and in Darfur have their origin in the decay of the Sudanese state and in both cases did political marginalisation resulted in political exclusion. Another resemblance between the two wars is the acute identity crisis that resulted from the long history of stratification and discrimination. Both warring groups want to reassert their distinguishing characteristics in the respective conflicts where 'Arab' and 'African' have distinctive meanings and are used as racial, cultural, and political identities. The third similarity between the South and Darfur is the ethnic cleansing tactics and policies the Sudanese government has adopted. The differences between these two wars is that Southern Sudan has developed into a war over national resources while Darfur does not share the same strategic commodities. The second is secession. The South started as a secessionist war while neither of the rebel groups in Darfur have demanded any form of self-determination. Darfur has also seen relatively timely international attention compared to Southern Sudan. Comparing the two conflicts do reveal that neither religion nor race is at the heart of Sudan's wars. Instead, the root of the insurgencies is largely founded upon culturally and regionally imposed economic and political marginalisation coupled with the politicization of ethnic identities. The challenge for Sudan will be to create a new consciousness of common identity and a new meaning of belonging that grants peace, dignity, development and fundamental human rights.


From the Publisher:
DNS & BIND Cookbook presents solutions to the many problems faced by network administrators responsible for a name server. Following O'Reilly's popular problem-and-solution cookbook format, this title is an indispensable companion to DNS & BIND, 4th Edition, the definitive guide to the critical task of name server administration. The cookbook contains dozens of code recipes showing solutions to everyday problems, ranging from simple questions like "How do I get BIND?" to more advanced topics like providing name service for IPv6 addresses. It's full of BIND configuration files that you can adapt to your site's requirements.
With the wide range of recipes in this book you'll be able to:

Check whether a name is registered Register your domain name and name servers Create zone files for your domains Protect your name server from abuse Set up back-up mail servers and virtual email addresses Delegate subdomains and check delegation Use incremental transfer Secure zone transfers Restrict which queries a server will answer Upgrade to BIND 9 from an earlier version Perform logging and troubleshooting Use IPv6 and more

These recipes encompass all the day-to-day tasks you're faced with when managing a name server -- plus many other tasks you'll face as your site grows. Written by Cricket Liu, a noted authority on DNS and coauthor of the bestselling DNS & BIND, 4th Edition and DNS on Windows 2000, DNS & BIND Cookbook belongs in every system or network administrator's library.


The study examined the formation, break-up, and duration of ice phenomena and ice cover on Lake Morskie Oko (1,395.4 metres above sea level (masl)), which is a representative of high mountain lakes in the Tatra Mountains located in the western Carpathian Mountains with a maximum elevation of 2,655 masl in the period 1971–2010. The maximum thickness was analyzed additionally. The lake covers an area of nearly 32 hectares and its greatest depth is 51.8 m. Its water is very clear with transparency reaching 12.5 m in depth. The trend towards a delayed freeze-up reaches 4.1 days per decade (d decade−1) ( p < 0.01) and the ablation of ice on Lake Morskie Oko tends to take place earlier at a rate of 4.5 d decade−1 ( p < 0.05). The time period with ice cover on the lake has been getting shorter at a rate of 10 d decade−1 during the time frame of interest. Results of ice cover research on Lake Morskie Oko are consistent with recent studies which have shown that ice duration on lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the last few decades and they serve as new evidence which confirms a warming of the climate in this section of Europe.


Results from Cal Poly's recent wind tunnel test in the 40by 80-foot test section at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) at NASA Ames Research Center are presented. AMELIA, the Advanced Model for Extreme Lift and Improved Aeroacoustics, is the first full-span cruise efficient short take-off and landing (CESTOL) model incorporating leadingand trailing-edge blowing wing circulation control and over-the-wing mounted turbine propulsion simulators (TPS) to date. Testing of the 10 foot span model proved successful and was the result of a 5-year NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Program Research Announcement. All of the results associated with Cal Poly's effort will be available in an open-source validation database with the goal of advancing the state-of-the-art in prediction capabilities for modeling aircraft with next generation technologies, focusing on NASA's N+2 generation goals. The model's modular design allowed for testing of 4 major configurations. Results from all configurations are presented. Test data shows drastic improvements in performance are obtained when incorporating leading edge blowing. Wing stall can be delayed to more than 25° angle of attack at lift coefficients exceeding six. Without the introduction of leading edge blowing to increase boundary layer momentum and maintain flow attachment around the leading edge, STOL performance suffers. Similar runs for trailing edge-only blowing show a reduction in maximum lift coefficient to three with stall occurring at zero angle of attack. Testing at multiple engine pylon heights allowed for the highly coupled propulsion and flow control system to be characterized.


The objectives for this study were to apply four different approaches for disseminating Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs (CR-BBD) information about effectiveness, safety, and cost to patients for therapeutic classes of medications that they were using and then (1) evaluate the usefulness of the information to participants and (2) document resultant information seeking. For the three approaches that utilized face-to-face contact (Approaches 2 through 4), we also compared them in terms of (1) number of medications reviewed per person, (2) availability of CR-BBD information per person, (3) changes that could be made for each person, and (4) potential/likely cost savings (per person per month). Finally, we described the availability of CR-BBD information for each participant categorized by the 19 therapeutic classes of medications for which there were Best Buy Drugs reports. Data were collected via self-administered surveys, in-person interviews, and telephone interviews. The results showed that almost all of the participants in the information sessions held for this study had at least one medication for which Best Buy Drug information was available with significant savings potential to be gained by using the recommended Best Buy Drug. Potential cost savings through the use of recommended Best Buy Drugs was $89.47 per person per month averaged over all participants (n = 172) and was $157.20 per person per month for those with savings over zero dollars (n = 98). Thirty-two percent of respondents to our evaluation survey reportedly sought more information from a physician and 30 percent sought more information from a pharmacist. We concluded that provision of information about effectiveness, safety, and cost to patients has the potential for achieving significant cost savings. Recommendations regarding (1) the timing of provision, (2) targeting of recipients and (3) traversing impediments are given.


Abstract Throughout the various phases of the ITER project, extensive safety analyses have been performed to ensure that potential hazards to the public, the environment, and personnel are minimized. This work, done before a location for ITER had been chosen, resulted in a very comprehensive assessment of ITER safety in terms of the impact at a "generic site". By making good use of the favourable safety and environmental characteristics of fusion, a very good outcome was achieved. Now that the Cadarache site, in southern France, has been selected for ITER construction, it is necessary to reanalyze the impact of postulated accidental releases of tritium and activated material, taking into account the specific conditions of the site. These include regulatory requirements on dose limits and on assumptions to be made in analyses, as well as local environmental factors such as weather conditions, population demographics, and local food production and consumption patterns. This paper discusses the impact on the ITER safety case of new dispersion and dose calculations for accidental releases, taking into account these site-specific conditions. These indicate that doses arising from the release masses calculated for the most challenging accident scenario in previous generic-site studies will meet the new dose limits by a very large margin.


Build up of scale deposits on the walls of geothermal wells can occur rapidly due to the high dissolved solids content of geothermal fluids. Scale formation is a significant problem for both the well and for surface heat transfer equipment. Geothermal brines contain a wide variety if dissolved salts including carbonates, silicates, sulfates, and metal sulfides. One technology recently proposed for scale removal is the use of an ultrasonic device. In the present effort we apply cavitation in a more direct manner by the use of acoustically enhanced cavitating water jets which can be made to be much more efficient and aggressive than ultrasonic devices. Cavitating and self-resonating jet technologies have been proven to enhance the erosive power of liquid jets in a number of cutting, cleaning, and drilling applications. In this study we investigated two related technologies - one that employs cavitation and one that breaks the jet up into a series of slugs that produce water hammer type pressures upon impact. These technologies enable operation in both submerged and nonsubmerged conditions.


Sensor deployment is a critical issue because it affects the cost and detection capability of a wireless sensor network. In this work, we consider two related deployment problems: sensor placement and sensor dispatch. The former asks how to place the least number of sensors in a field to achieve sensing coverage and network connectivity, and the latter asks how to determine from a set of mobile sensors a subset of sensors to be moved to an area of interest with certain objective functions such that the coverage and connectivity properties are satisfied. This work is targeted toward planned deployment. Our solution to the placement problem allows an arbitrary-shaped sensing field possibly with arbitrary-shaped obstacles and an arbitrary relationship between the communication distance and sensing distance of sensors and, thus, significantly relaxes the limitations of existing results. Our solutions to the dispatch problem include a centralized one and a distributed one. The centralized one is based on adopting the former placement results and converting the problem to the maximum-weight maximum-matching problem with the objective of minimizing the total energy consumption to move sensors or maximizing the average remaining energy of sensors after movement. Designed in a similar way, the distributed one allows sensors to determine their moving directions in an autonomous manner.


Using Labour Force Survey individual-level data recently released by the
Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) where information is for the first time at available at
provincial level, this paper looks at the short-term effects of the L�Aquila earthquake on
labour market outcomes. Our estimates are based on a difference-in-differences (DiD)
strategy that compares residents of L�Aquila with residents of a control area before and
after the earthquake. The empirical results suggest that while the earthquake had no
significant effect on the employment-population ratio, it led to a modest, but significant,
reduction in labour force participation. There is also evidence of significant heterogeneous
effects by gender and level of education.


The Journal of Biosocial Science regularly publishes papers addressing the social and cultural aspects of disease, sickness and well-being. Most of these papers attempt to understand the prevalence and distribution of disease and sickness within and between populations as well as local responses to biomedical interventions and public health policy more generally. They fall broadly within the remit of human ecology; and they embrace a 'factorial' model of disease in which social and cultural factors are deemed to be just one of a number of factors to be considered alongside a range of other factors. These include biological features of the infecting organism; nutritional factors; environmental factors; psychological factors; and genetic factors influencing susceptibility to disease at an individual and population level.


In "Playing Soldiers: Posing Militarism in the Domestic Sphere", Pasternak explores the political life of family photographs and the social rituals attending the practice of family photography in an attempt to broaden and politicise scholarly literature on this subject. Focusing on Israeli society, Pasternak's contribution delves into the micro-politics of family photography practiced specifically by Jewish-Israelis in the context of the Arab-Zionist conflict that developed after the formal establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.
Pasternak presents an unconventional approach to family photography by addressing images selected from collections belong to his own family. This approach epitomises his desire to develop a conceptual framework distinct from conventional art historical approaches. Pasternak argues for the need to study the photographic apparatus beyond the traditional parameters of dominant social taxonomies and their prescribed significances. In doing so, he questions the common understanding of the family photograph as apolitical.

Pasternak's contribution examines portraits of members of his family imaged while serving in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Whereas there is nothing unusual in producing and accumulating family photographs of soldiers, it is a practice, he argues, that reveals the lack of clear boundaries between the state, society, and the nuclear family. In a country such as Israel, where militarism and violent political conflict are part and parcel of the everyday, posing militarism in the domestic sphere appears as necessary. Pasternak introduces sociological and anthropological perspectives on Israeli attitudes to the army and military service in order to enable readers to fully apprehend the values and visions the IDF symbolises in the eyes of the vast majority of Jewish-Israelis. Since the IDF is the one organisation endorsed by both Jewish-Israeli society and the state, he argues that portraits showing members of the family in military uniform operate as declarations of social assimilation and approval. However, while he demonstrates how such family photographs assist in perpetuating and solidifying Israeli social norms, including positive attitudes towards the Israeli army, he also shows how the protocols of the genre of portraiture–not least posing for the camera–can subvert the coherence of their putative message, thereby interfering with cultural constructions of martial identities tacitly endorsed by the state.


The growing importance of e-government and financial development has captured the attention of policy makers who are determined to enhance the per capita income of a country. This study aims to present new findings of the impacts of e-government and financial development on economic growth, using a cross sectional multi-year average dataset of 147 economies across the globe. To the best of the knowledge of authors, this is the first empirical research work which determines relationship between the economic growth and e-government, with particular focus on the role of financial development in shaping this relationship. The possible problem of endogeneity using both the internal and external instruments is also addressed in this study. Empirical findings suggest that growth impact of e-government is positive and significant while the direct growth impact of financial development turns out to be insignificant. However, the positive impact of financial development is explained thorough implementation of e-government as interactive term of financial development and the e-government which turns out to be positive and significant in all regressions. Findings of this study are not sensitive to control additional variables. The study concludes that economies of the world can significantly benefit from financial development if satisfactory quality of e-government can be assured.


ABSTRACT In a context of sustainable development, the management of sediment depends on their potential to induce pollution. The old management techniques used as immersion in the sea by overfflow, dumping or storage is restricted due to regulation which is increasingly rigid in terms of environmental protection. The new trend of all actors in the field of sediment management is moving ineluctably towards an alternative solution as the valorisation of the sediments as. Any valorisation requires a stage of characterisation in order to enhance the knowledge about the material: its various components, its potential to induce pollution and its mechanical behaviour. Our work consists, on the one hand, in carrying out a comparative study of mechanical and physical behaviours, between polluted and unpolluted sediment and on the other hand, to underline the evolution of the behaviour of polluted sediment following a lime treatment. The sediment in question is considered as a raw material as it has not been subject to any process of pre-treatment.


2-amino-4-(4-chloro phenyl)-1,3-thiazole (1) was synthesized by refluxing thiourea with para-chloro phenacyl bromide in absolute methanol. The condensation of amine compound (1)  with phenylisothiocyanate in the presence of pyridine will  produce 1-(4-(4-chlorophenyl)thiazol-2-yl)-3-phenylthiourea(2), which is  upon treatment with 2,4 dinitrophenyl hydrazine by conventional method, afforded 1- ( 4 - ( 4 – chlorophenyl ) thiazol – 2 – yl ) – 3 - phenylhydrazonamide,N' - ( 2 , 4 -dinitrophenyl) ,(3).The characterization of the titled compounds were performed utilizing FTIR spectroscopy, 1HNMR and CHNS elemental analysis, and by measurements of  their  physical properties.  The synthesized compounds had been screened for their, in vitro  preliminary antimicrobial activity against three Gram-positive bacteria: (Staph. aureus, Micrococcus luteus and  Bacillus subtilis) and three Gram-negative bacteria : (Pseud.aeruginosa, E.coli and  Proteus mirabilis) ,and two fungal strains(Candida albicans and Candida glabrata ), using a minimum  inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 100 µg\ml of  test compound, by  well diffusion method.
 The derivatives showed moderate antibacterial activity against Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis & high antifungal activity against Candida glabrata and Candida albicans. Computational study was performed to calculate some of thermodynamic parameters by using density functional theory (DFT)


In the present studies the effects of desipramine on the functional sensitivity of the prejunctional alpha 2-adrenoceptors of the vas deferens were studied in pithed rats; contractions of the tissue were evoked by electrical stimulation (6 Hz) of the spinal sympathetic outflow. Twenty-four hours after a single dose of desipramine (10 mg/kg, intraperitoneally) the inhibitory dose-response curves to either UK 14 304 or desipramine itself did not differ significantly from those seen in control animals, whereas both were displaced significantly to the right after 15 days pretreatment with desipramine. Thus the functional responsiveness of the prejunctional alpha 2-adrenoceptors of the vas deferens was reduced by chronic but not acute pretreatment with desipramine. In acute studies desipramine (0.3-4.3 mg/kg, intravenously) inhibited electrically induced contractions of the vas deferens of pithed rats. In the presence of the selective alpha 2-adrenoceptor antagonist idazoxan (1 mg/kg, intravenously) desipramine potentiated nerve stimulation. Although idazoxan (10-1440 micrograms/kg, intravenously) itself potentiated electrically induced contractions of the vas deferens the potentiation observed was markedly less than that obtained in rats pretreated acutely with desipramine (0.3 mg/kg, intravenously). Acute simultaneous blockade of both prejunctional alpha 2-adrenoceptors and uptake into nerve terminals can produce maximal potentiation of the contraction of the vas deferens to sympathetic nerve stimulation. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that the combination of an uptake inhibitor and a prejunctional alpha 2-adrenoceptor antagonist, by enhancing noradrenergic transmission, may provide an antidepressant therapy with rapid onset of action.


Several contributions have recently assessed the size of fiscal multipliers both in RBC models and New Keynesian models. None of the studies considers a model with frictional labour markets which is a crucial element, particularly at times in which much of the fiscal stimulus has been directed toward labour market measures. We use an open economy model (more specifically, a currency area calibrated to the European Monetary Union) with labour market frictions in the form of labour turnover costs and workers' heterogeneity to measure fiscal multipliers. We compute short and long run multipliers and open economy spillovers for five types of fiscal packages: pure demand stimuli and consumption tax cuts return very small multipliers; income tax cuts and hiring subsidies deliver larger multipliers, as they reduce distortions in sclerotic labour markets; short-time work (German "Kurzarbeit") returns negative short-run multipliers, but stabilises employment. Our model highlights a novel dimension through which multipliers operate, namely the labour demand stimulus which occurs in a model with non-walrasian labour markets.


In this article, the development and changes in Swedish public policy relating to tourism from the 1930s to 2010 is described and interpreted from a political economy perspective. A case study, compiled from mainly secondary sources, is analyzed from a theoretical framework based on regulation theory. The purpose with this study is to increase the understanding of how the macro political economy context has influenced the policy-making in tourism in Sweden, but also to make a contribution to an area which seems to be quite neglected when it comes to research. The changes are analyzed according to the three periods denoted as pre-Fordism (mid-19th century-1930s), Fordism (1930s-1970s) and post-Fordism (1970s to present). It is observed how the general changes between these periods regarding aspects such as regulation and deregulation, and the degree of state involvement, have affected tourism policy making. The tourism policy making has changed from being insignificant, to a high degree of state involvement including planning, control and supervision, to a situation where the market rather than government regulation is considered as state of the art.


The article deals with comparing the programming of production of thin-walled parts using CAM software. Were evaluated by the number of clicks buttons and the amount of time during which the G codes generated. One side parts has been produced by the program generated by CAD applications Creo Parametric 2.0 and the other side part using Autodesk Inventor Professional HSM PRO 2016 was made on CNC vertical machining centre Pinnacle VMC 650 S.