Background In the absence of vaccines or drugs, insecticides are the mainstay of Aedes-borne disease control. Their utility is challenged by the slow deployment of resources, poor community compliance and inadequate household coverage. Novel application methods are required. Methodology and principal findings A 10% w/w metofluthrin "emanator" that passively disseminates insecticide from an impregnated net was evaluated in a randomized trial of 200 houses in Mexico. The devices were introduced at a rate of 1 per room and replaced at 3-week intervals. During each of 7 consecutive deployment cycles, indoor resting mosquitoes were sampled using aspirator collections. Assessments of mosquito landing behaviours were made in a subset of houses. Pre-treatment, there were no differences in Aedes aegypti indices between houses recruited to the control and treatment arms. Immediately after metofluthrin deployment, the entomological indices between the trial arms diverged. Averaged across the trial, there were significant reductions in Abundance Rate Ratios for total Ae. aegypti, female abundance and females that contained blood meals (2.5, 2.4 and 2.3-times fewer mosquitoes respectively; P<0.001). Average efficacy was 60.2% for total adults, 58.3% for females, and 57.2% for blood-fed females. The emanators also reduced mosquito landings by 90% from 12.5 to 1.2 per 10-minute sampling period (P<0.05). Homozygous forms of the pyrethroid resistant kdr alleles V410L, V1016L and F1534C were common in the target mosquito population; found in 39%, 24% and 95% of mosquitoes collected during the trial. Conclusions/Significance This is the first randomized control trial to evaluate the entomological impact of any volatile pyrethroid on urban Ae. aegypti. It demonstrates that volatile pyrethroids can have a sustained impact on Ae. aegypti population densities and human-vector contact indoors. These effects occur despite the presence of pyrethroid-resistant alleles in the target population. Formulations like these may have considerable utility for public health vector control responses.


This chapter discusses several types of numerical models for metallurgical evolution. First, some basic notions of microstructure representations and microstructure state variables, some features of hardening and recovery and some features of recrystallization are recalled. Then, constitutive models coupled with state variables are introduced and examples of applications are given. Mean field methods are also presented and applied to necklace structures produced in discontinuous dynamic recrystallization. Finally, future trends are described, with an emphasis on digital material models and how they will provide powerful models of recrystallization on the microscopic scale. © 2012 Woodhead Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.


Abl interactor 1 (Abi1) plays a critical function in actin cytoskeleton dynamics through participation in the WAVE2 complex. To gain a better understanding of the specific role of Abi1, we generated a conditional Abi1-KO mouse model and MEFs lacking Abi1 expression. Abi1-KO cells displayed defective regulation of the actin cytoskeleton, and this dysregulation was ascribed to altered activity of the WAVE2 complex. Changes in motility of Abi1-KO cells were manifested by a decreased migration rate and distance but increased directional persistence. Although these phenotypes did not correlate with peripheral ruffling, which was unaffected, Abi1-KO cells exhibited decreased dorsal ruffling. Western blotting analysis of Abi1-KO cell lysates indicated reduced levels of the WAVE complex components WAVE1 and WAVE2, Nap1, and Sra-1/PIR121. Although relative Abi2 levels were more than doubled in Abi1-KO cells, the absolute Abi2 expression in these cells amounted only to a fifth of Abi1 levels in the control cell line. This finding suggests that the presence of Abi1 is critical for the integrity and stability of WAVE complex and that Abi2 levels are not sufficiently increased to compensate fully for the loss of Abi1 in KO cells and to restore the integrity and function of the WAVE complex. The essential function of Abi1 in WAVE complexes and their regulation might explain the observed embryonic lethality of Abi1-deficient embryos, which survived until approximately embryonic day 11.5 and displayed malformations in the developing heart and brain. Cells lacking Abi1 and the conditional Abi1-KO mouse will serve as critical models for defining Abi1 function.


This article presents the methodology for calculation of the optimum size of a Photovoltaic (PV) system. Long-term data of PV radiation were used to calculate the average power generated by a PV generator for every hour of a typical day in a month. A load of a typical house in the south of Algeria (desert area) was used as a load demand of the system. For a given load and a mixed multiple criteria were used for programming problem, the types and sizes of PV modules generators was calculated based on the minimum cost of system. We investigated the Genetic Algorithm (GA) for optimally sizing a PV power system. We define that the objective function is the total cost where it is the sum of the initial cost, the operation cost and the maintenance cost. We determine an optimal configuration of PV generating systems where the total cost is more optimal using GA. A computer program has been developed to size system components to match the load of the site in the most cost. A cost of electricity, an overall system cost is also calculated for each configuration. The study was performed using a graphical user interface programmed in MATLAB.


Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are extremely vulnerable to a variety of misbehaviors because of their basic features, including lack of communication infrastructure, short transmission range, and dynamic network topology. To detect and mitigate those misbehaviors, many trust management schemes have been proposed for MANETs. Most rely on pre-defined weights to determine how each apparent misbehavior contributes to an overall measure of trustworthiness. The extremely dynamic nature of MANETs makes it difficult, however, to determine a set of weights that are appropriate for all contexts. We describe an automated trust management scheme for MANETs that uses machine learning to classify nodes as malicious. Our scheme is far more resilient to the context changes common in MANETs, such as those due to malicious nodes altering their misbehavior patterns over time or rapid changes in environmental factors, such as the motion speed and transmission range. We compare our scheme to existing approaches and present evaluation results obtained from simulation studies.


Life on Earth ultimately depends on the oceans. 'No blue, no green' as world-renowned ocean scientist Sylvia Earle puts it.

Climate change is damaging this nursery of life, radically altering the capacity of the seas to sustain and renew life. How can we re-imagine our relationship with the wonder world of water? Is it possible to nurture our love of the sea in a new way that begins to transform our interaction with the oceans, moving us from exploitation toward cooperation?

More radically, can we risk reclaiming our inheritance, moving from our western story of ocean as 'object' to ocean as communicative, sacred presence? Can we hear what Indigenous peoples are offering to teach? Reflecting on their experiences in the coastal New South Wales town of Tathra, Graeme Garrett and Jan Morgan invite the reader into the heart of a journey of engagement with philosophers (especially phenomenologists), poets, theologians, and scientists.

On the Edge: A-Way with the Ocean is an invitation to listen to the cry of Earth, and to return to the threshold of wonder.


The solo exhibitions 'Face Yourself' (2008) and 'Garden Ruin' (2009) present Bob Matthews' artworks in response to his broad research into the historical and inventive approaches to ecology and nurture, sociological debate and art production in the context of living communes. The London exhibition presented artworks related directly to research into Northern European communes while the exhibition in San Francisco combined ideas drawn from settlements in the US. Together both exhibitions reflected research into four independent communes; The Center for Experimental Culture Design (ZEGG), near Berlin, 'Black Bear Ranch', California, 'Okotop', Dusseldorf and Freetown Christiania, Denmark. Matthews' research methods included extended visits to these sites, working directly with the communities and their archives.

The project draws from Matthews' larger research interests into the model of the utopian commune, emergent mainly in the United States and Northern Europe during the 1960's and their current form and status. By exhibiting work over two exhibition sites, Matthews established a link between geographically diverse communities, generating a series of artwork that examines the outcomes and artifacts constructed within self-contained utopian communities.


Abstract. The aims of this study were to assess the predictive role of coping-related variables (CRV) on cardiac vagal activity (derived from heart rate variability), and to investigate the influence of CRV (and cardiac vagal activity) on prone rifle shooting performance under low pressure (LP) and high pressure (HP) conditions. Participants ( n = 38) competed in a shooting task under LP and HP. Cardiac vagal activity measurements were taken at baseline, task, and recovery for 5 min, alongside ratings of stress via a visual analogue scale. Upon task conclusion, self-report measures of motivation, stress appraisal, attention, perceived pressure, and trait CRV questionnaires (Decision-Specific Reinvestment Scale [DSRS], Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale [MSRS], and Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire [TEIQue]) were completed. Results indicated that task cardiac vagal activity was predicted by resting cardiac vagal activity and self-control in HP and LP. Post-task cardiac vagal activity was predicted by resting cardiac vagal activity in both conditions with the addition of a trait and state CRV in HP. Cardiac vagal reactivity, the change from resting to task, was predicted by resting cardiac vagal activity and self-control in LP and HP. Cardiac vagal recovery, the change from task to post-task, was predicted by a trait CRV in HP. Shooting performance was predicted by experience and cardiac vagal activity in LP and cardiac vagal activity and a trait in HP. Findings suggest both CRV and cardiac vagal activity influence cardiac vagal activity throughout a pressure task. Additionally, shooting performance directly influences cardiac vagal recovery.


Visual Computing for Medicine, Second Edition, offers cutting-edge visualization techniques and their applications in medical diagnosis, education, and treatment. The book includes algorithms, applications, and ideas on achieving reliability of results and clinical evaluation of the techniques covered. Preim and Botha illustrate visualization techniques from research, but also cover the information required to solve practical clinical problems. They base the book on several years of combined teaching and research experience. This new edition includes six new chapters on treatment planning, guidance and training; an updated appendix on software support for visual computing for medicine; and a new global structure that better classifies and explains the major lines of work in the field.


Presented here are three fast algorithms solving problems concerning trees or graphs.
We give a linear-time algorithm for finding a balanced decomposition of a k-ary tree where k is a constant not related to the input size. A different linear-time algorithm for finding a balanced decomposition of a binary tree was discovered previously by Guibas, Leven, Hershberger, Sharir, and Tarjan (26).
We also consider the problem of finding a minimum-cost maximum flow in a series-parallel network. The algorithm presented here runs in $O(m$ log $m$) time on an m-edge series-parallel network and requires $O(m$ log log $m$) space. This is an improvement over the algorithm presented by Bein, Brucker, and Tamir (6), which runs in $O(m$ log $m\ +\ mn)$ time, where $n$ is the number of vertices. In an effort to improve the space requirement we also present an algorithm which uses $O(m)$ space but runs in $O(m$ log $m$ log log $m$) time.
Finally, we consider the problem of finding all replacement edges for a minimum spanning tree of a planar graph. We present an algorithm for solving this problem which runs in linear time. This algorithm also performs sensitivity analysis for the minimum spanning tree, shortest path, and network flow problems.
The first two algorithms presented rely on the use of balanced binary trees for efficient representation of data. We give an overview of the relevant red-black tree and finger tree techniques in introductory chapter.


The Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) is a domain-independent framework for developing intelligent tutoring systems. While GIFT has primarily focused on individual learning, one of the ultimate goals of GIFT is to be used for team tutoring. As part of implementing team tutoring in GIFT there have been practical, authoring, and technological challenges. In this paper we discuss the goals of team tutoring in GIFT, progress that has been made, and the challenges that still remain in creating assessment and intervention during team tutoring. We also discuss the specific goals of this workshop.


One of the joys of the general neurology clinic is its variety and uncertainty. Your first patient might have a tremor, your next is sleeping poorly because of funny feelings in his feet, and the third has developed a clumsy hand. This all seems a world away from the life of the anaesthetist, whose patients will pretty much always end up asleep shortly after they meet. So what can neurologists learn from anaesthetists? Well, a big advantage of doing the same thing again and again is that you think hard about what it is you do, cutting it into its essential steps and allowing careful consideration of how best to teach it and learn it; Mark Stacey welcomes us to his world on page 439. You might discover, like your editors, that all your life you have been tying your shoelaces ineffectively (his reference 10; recommended viewing). While his approach is not applicable to all of neurology—indeed one colleague commented that avoiding this is exactly why he went into neurology—undoubtedly there are areas in practice where it can help; David Nicholl discusses some of these in his accompanying editorial on page 424. The rest of this edition keeps us firmly grounded in the general neurology clinic and ward. Jane Alty and colleagues explore how we might best use paper and pen tasks to diagnose tremor (see page 456), with a focus on writing and drawing Archimedean spirals. Subhashie Wijemanne and William Ondo provide a very practical review of restless legs syndrome and highlight the problem of 'augmentation' (see page 444). As a rule, we shy away from eponyms in Practical Neurology, or at least we think we do, but they turn up quite often. Lou Wiblin and Joe Guadagno explore the 'Useless hand of Oppenheim' (see page 464), arguing that the term gives a useful way to think about the deafferented hand that occurs with posterior column demyelination. Marios Hadjivassiliou and colleagues explain the genetics of Gordon Holmes syndrome (progressive ataxia with cognitive deterioration and hypogonadism) (see page 476), and Gavin Reynolds and colleagues remind us that ophthalmological review can aid the diagnosis of Susac's syndrome (see page 472). The eponyms keep creeping in. One recurring theme in neurology is that we cannot rely on patients having 'classical' or 'textbook' presentations or responding straightforwardly to standard treatments. Thus, we particularly appreciate reviews that are case based and written from considerable experience. Neurological complications of tuberculosis are fortunately rare but when they do occur, the diagnosis and management can be challenging; Apeksha Shah and colleagues share their extensive experience in a practical case-based review (see page 429). Last year, we published a (free to download) review of apraxia, which was based on the traditional model; we suspect this resonated with most clinical neurologists' approach to the issue. However, ideas evolve and Nick Miller provides a commentary on this and explores newer ways to think about apraxia (see page 426). It is always shocking when someone with epilepsy dies suddenly and unexpectedly. Unlike other parts of neurology that have often close links to palliative care, such as in motor neurone disease, the epilepsy service is not set up for bereavement and everyone finds it hard to know how best to handle a tragic situation. Lina Nashef and John Paul Leach use their experiences to discuss their thoughts on how to approach and interact with the family of a patient who has died from SUDEP (see page 489). Tapas Banerjee sends a letter from Calcutta (see page 493), we have a double Book Club report (same book, two Clubs, page 499), and A Fo Ben provides another sideways look at the literature in Carphology (see page 500). So, lots to help you as you start your day in the clinic and on the ward—with a boost in confidence from knowing that your shoe laces will stay safely tied....


This article reports on the nature of workplace bullying experienced by teachers in South African schools and the biopsychosocial health effects that may arise from such victimisation. Voluntary victimised teachers who wanted to share their experiences were sampled using a lifestyle magazine and online articles. Twenty-seven teachers participated in the study. Data was collected through telephonic semi-structured phenomenological interviews and personal documents. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was further used to analyse and interpret qualitative data. Findings indicated that bullying is mostly perpetrated by principals, who often use colleagues as accomplices, and that the bullying mostly tends to be psychological in nature. Participants reported experiencing various physical, psychological and social health problems after being victimised. It was further recognised that health problems do not occur in isolation, but if contextualised, may form part of a list of psychiatric conditions, such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and in isolated cases, panic attacks. Victimised teachers' health may have a significant impact on the teaching-learning process, acting as a barrier to learning, which may consequently have a negative impact on the organisational culture and the South African emerging economy. Keywords : biopsychosocial health effects; biopsychosocial model; colleague-witnesses; depression; phenomenology; posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); principals, schools; teachers; workplace bullying


This article analyses the slippery notions of the normal and normality in select works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and argues that homosexuality became a 'boundary object' between the normal and the abnormal in their works. Constructing homosexuality as 'normal enough' provided these two key thinkers of the fin de siècle with an opportunity to challenge societal and medical norms: Krafft-Ebing did this through mapping perversions; Freud, by challenging perceived norms about sexual development more broadly. The article submits that the scientific logic presented in Krafft-Ebing's seminal case study compilation Psychopathia Sexualis and Freud's early theoretical writings and cases, including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), was itself haunted by notions of norms and the normal that were not always easy to resolve, and sometimes involved a certain amount of inspired conjecture on the part of both thinkers in order to develop and validate their differing tripartite models of normality. Krafft-Ebing imagined homosexuality as a variation of the normal by generalizing a gay male experience. He also recorded the obstreperous cases of homosexual women based largely inside the clinic but by and large ignored this evidence. Freud inextricably bound homosexuality to normality (and vice versa) by redefining homosexuals as a group to include individuals with unconscious same-sex desire. Doing so allowed him to conceptualize the fear of homosexuality as crucial in the formation of neurosis and psychosis, and at the same time put him at odds with relevant early identity politics.


It is well known that abrupt changes in flow direction may lead to flow separation from boundaries. While many smaller or confined meandering rivers have bends sharp enough for flow separation, the problem has surprisingly been ignored in the meandering literature. It is nevertheless essential for understanding and predicting meandering dynamics is small streams in renaturalisation projects. We measured flow structure in experimental sharp bends in the Total Environment Simulator at Hull University over fixed and mobile beds. We found some flow structures similar to those in less sharp bends, but significant differences as well such as lack of relation between flow separation and Froude number. The mobile bed responded dramatically to the sharp bend flow with deep outer-bend pools and high bars up to the water surface.


Abstract. Analytical models are presented for currents along vertical magnetic field lines due to slow bulk electron motion in plasmas subject to a gravitational force. It is demonstrated that a general feature of this problem is a singularity in the plasma pressure force that develops at some finite altitude when a plasma that is initially in static equilibrium is set into slow motion. Classical fluid models thus do not allow general steady-state solutions for field-aligned currents. General solutions have to be non-stationary, varying on time scales of many periods of a plasma equivalent to the Brunt–Vaisala frequency. Except for very special choices of parameters, a steady-state solution exists only in an average sense. The conditions at large altitudes turn out to be extremely sensitive to even small changes in parameters at low altitudes. Low frequency fluctuations detected at large altitudes in the polar regions need not be caused by local low frequency instabilities, but merely reflect small fluctuations in conditions at low altitudes.


Historically, religious frameworks—particularly conceptions of evil—have been tied to attitudes about criminal behavior and its corresponding punishment, yet views of transcendent evil have not been explored in the empirical literature on religion and punitive ideology. We examine whether and how different aspects of religiosity shape punitive attitudes, using a national sample of Americans. For both general punitiveness and views of capital punishment, belief in the existence and power of transcendent religious evil (e.g. Satan and hell) is strongly associated with greater punitiveness, while higher levels of religious practice (service attendance, prayer, and reading sacred scriptures) reduces punitiveness. The effects of other aspects of religiosity on punitiveness such as self-identified fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and images of God are rendered spurious by accounting for perceptions of evil. We discuss these findings in light of cultural and comparative approaches to penology, arguing for the inclusion of conceptions of the "transgressive" sacred in studies of, and theories about, penal populism.


Distributed PRocessing in Mobile Environments (DPRiME) is a framework for processing large data sets across an ad-hoc network. Developed to address the shortcomings of Google's MapReduce outside of a fully-connected network, DPRiME separates nodes on the network into a master and workers; the master distributes sections of the data to available one-hop workers to process in parallel. Upon returning results to its master, a worker is assigned an unfinished task. Five data mining classifiers were implemented to process the data: decision trees, k-means, k-nearest neighbor, Naïve Bayes, and artificial neural networks. Ensembles were used so the classification tasks could be performed in parallel. This framework is well-suited for many tasks because it handles communications, node movement, node failure, packet loss, data partitioning, and result collection automatically. Therefore, DPRiME allows users with little knowledge of networking or distributed systems to harness the processing power of an entire network of single- and multi-hop nodes.


The paper takes a strong position that the absence of a clearly demarcated nomination stage in the procedure for selecting children with the gifted potential in Nigeria is a serious drawback in the technical adequacy of the identification scheme in use. Justifying the need for an empirically validated nomination procedure for the identification of gifted children in Nigeria, an attempt is made to descriptionbe the procedure followed for developing and trying two versions of an Outstanding Students Nomination Inventory (for peers and teachers). Summary of data collated as empirical evidence of the validity and reliability of the instrument is then recommended for further national field testing and including in the instruments used for selecting gifted children in Nigeria.


One of the possible sources of hadronic cosmic rays (CRs) are newborn pulsars. If this is indeed the case, they should feature diffusive gamma-ray halos produced by interactions of CRs with interstellar gas. In this paper we try to identify extended gamma-ray emission around young pulsars, making use of the 7-year Fermi-LAT data. For this purpose we select and analyze a set of eight pulsars that are most likely to possess detectable gamma-ray halos. We find extended emission that might be interpreted as a gamma-ray halo only in the case of PSR J0007 + 7303. Its luminosity accords with the total energy of injected cosmic rays similar to 10(50) erg, although other interpretations of this source are possible. Irrespectively of the nature of this source, we put bounds on the luminosity of gamma-ray halos which suggest that pulsars' contribution to the overall energy budget of galactic CRs is subdominant in the GeV-TeV range.


The Hatton-Rockall plateau in the northeast Atlantic Ocean has long been the subject of interest for fishers, prospectors, conservationists, managers, planners, and politicians. As a feature that straddles national and international waters, it is subject to a multitude of competing and confounding regulations, making the development of a holistic management plan for sustainable use fraught with difficulty. Here, the various stakeholders in the area are collated, together with the rules they have created or must abide by with respect to biodiversity assets, maritime resources, and governance frameworks. Blue Growth envisages optimal use of sea areas, including potential for additional commercial activities. Current research and stakeholder engagement efforts to achieve this integration are described, and the contribution of the EU-funded ATLAS project is analyzed. In particular, more precise, ground-truthed information has the potential to inform systematic conservation planning, providing the basis for sustainable development and improving adaptive management. By scrutinizing and exposing all the elements in this example of a spatially managed area we show how the expectations of each stakeholder can be better managed.


Serious academic study of the Beatles' lyrics lags behind that undertaken with respect to their music. While the latter, when undertaken by professional musicologists, characteristically involves a close technical examination, the former is all too often limited to no more than a single descriptive phrase or sentence. But then, where analysis proceeds further than this, it generally takes the form of an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the creation of the lyric, rather than an examination of the lyric. This reveals the extent to which commentators have fallen victim to 'the intentional fallacy,' that is the mistake of to trying to judge a work of art by focusing on the intent or purpose of the artist who created it. Only if this fallacy is recognised and firmly rejected is it possible for progress is to be made in the study of the Beatles' lyrics.


This article charts the response of social work educators in addressing HIV–AIDS. Based at the University of the West Indies in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the faculty within the Social Work Unit developed a model of teaching, research and practice that was innovative and transcended cultural, geographical and professional boundaries. The model has contributed a lasting legacy of knowledge and culturally relevant practices to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of social workers working with people living with HIV–AIDS (PLWHIV). Inherent in the propositions that underpinned the model was a belief in the role of education in alleviating psychosocial and other impacts of social problems. This article describes this unique initiative and discusses its relevance to current social work practice and the implications for contemporary social work education. The authors argue that while social work draws on a common body of knowledge, an established set of professional skills and a universal code of values, these central tenets of the profession should not be regarded as concrete and fixed but must be figured and reconfigured as needed to address emerging contemporary problems and their specific sociocultural manifestations.


This paper proposes two schemes to generate the two-atom Knill–Laflamme–Milburn states with a strong coupling cavity-fiber system and the cavity-assisted single-photon input-output process, respectively. The significant logical operations for the generation are constructed accurately. The resonant interactions between atoms and photons in the two schemes imply a relatively short operation time, and the probabilities of successful generation are near to unity under the current experimental conditions.


This study proposes a new approach to video-based traffic surveillance using a fuzzy hybrid information inference mechanism (FHIIM). The three major contributions of the proposed approach are background updating, vehicle detection with block-based segmentation, and vehicle tracking with error compensation. During background updating, small-range updating is adopted to overcome environmental changes under congested conditions. During vehicle detection, the proposed approach detects the vehicle candidates from the foreground image, and it resolves problems such as headlight effects. The tracking technique is employed to track vehicles in consecutive frames. First, the method detects edge features in congested scenes. Next, FHIIM is employed to determine the tracked vehicles. Finally, a method that compensates for error cases under congested conditions is applied to refine the tracking qualities. In our experiments, we tested scenarios both inside and outside the tunnel with three lanes. The results showed that the proposed system exhibits good performance under congested conditions.


Background
Asthma is the most common chronic medical condition in children and a common reason for hospitalisation. Observational studies
have suggested that swimming, in particular, is an ideal form of physical activity to improve fitness and decrease the burden of disease
in asthma.
Objectives
To determine the effectiveness and safety of swimming training as an intervention for asthma in children and adolescents aged 18 years
and under.
Search methods
We searched theCochrane AirwaysGroup's Specialised Register of trials (CENTRAL),MEDLINE , EMBASE, CINAHL, inNovember
2011, and repeated the search of CENTRAL in July 2012. We also handsearched ongoing Clinical Trials Registers.
Selection criteria
We included all randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs of children and adolescents comparing swimming training with
usual care, a non-physical activity, or physical activity other than swimming.
Data collection and analysis
We used standard methods specified in the CochraneHandbook for Systematic reviews of Interventions.Two review authors used a standard
template to independently assess trials for inclusion and extract data on study characteristics, risk of bias elements and outcomes. We
contacted trial authors to request data if not published fully. When required, we calculated correlation coefficients from studies with
full outcome data to impute standard deviation of changes from baseline.
Main results
Eight studies involving 262 participants were included in the review. Participants had stable asthma, with severity ranging from mild
to severe. All studies were randomised trials, three studies had high withdrawal rates. Participants were between five to 18 years of
age, and in seven studies swimming training varied from 30 to 90 minutes, two to three times a week, over six to 12 weeks. The
programme in one study gave 30 minutes training six times per week. The comparison was usual care in seven studies and golf in one
study. Chlorination status of swimming pool was unknown for four studies. Two studies used non-chlorinated pools, one study used
an indoor chlorinated pool and one study used a chlorinated but well-ventilated pool.
No statistically significant effects were seen in studies comparing swimming training with usual care or another physical activity for
the primary outcomes; quality of life, asthma control, asthma exacerbations or use of corticosteroids for asthma. Swimming training
had a clinically meaningful effect on exercise capacity compared with usual care, measured as maximal oxygen consumption during
a maximum effort exercise test (VO2 max) (two studies, n = 32), with a mean increase of 9.67 mL/kg/min; 95% confidence interval
(CI) 5.84 to 13.51. A difference of equivalent magnitude was found when other measures of exercise capacity were also pooled (four
studies, n = 74), giving a standardised mean difference (SMD) 1.34; 95% CI 0.82 to 1.86. Swimming training was associated with
small increases in resting lung function parameters of varying statistical significance; mean difference (MD) for FEV1%predicted 8.07;
95% CI 3.59 to 12.54. In sensitivity analyses, by risk of attrition bias or use of imputed standard deviations, there were no important
changes on effect sizes. Unknown chlorination status of pools limited subgroup analyses.
Based on limited data, there were no adverse effects on asthma control or occurrence of exacerbations.
Authors' conclusions
This review indicates that swimming training is well-tolerated in children and adolescents with stable asthma, and increases lung
function (moderate strength evidence) and cardio-pulmonary fitness (high strength evidence). There was no evidence that swimming
training caused adverse effects on asthma control in young people 18 years and under with stable asthma of any severity. However
whether swimming is better than other forms of physical activity cannot be determined from this review. Further


The lasting integrity of the bond between bone cement and bone defines the long-term stability of cemented acetabular replacements. Although several studies have been carried out on bone-cement interface at continuum level, micromechanics of the interface has been studied only recently for tensile and shear loading cases. Furthermore, the mechanical and microstructural behaviour of this interface is complex due to the variation in morphology and properties that can arise from a range of factors. In this work in vitro studies of the bone-cement interfacial behaviour under selected loading conditions were carried out using a range of experimental techniques.

Damage development in cemented acetabular reconstructs was studied under a combined physiological loading block representative of routine activities in a saline environment. A custom-made environmental chamber was developed to allow testing of acetabular reconstructs in a wet condition for the first time and damage was monitored and detected by scanning at selected loading intervals using micro-focus computed tomography (μCT). Preliminary results showed that, as in dry cases, debonding at the bone-cement interface defined the failure of the cement fixation. However, the combination of mechanical loading and saline environment seems to affect the damage initiation site, drastically reducing the survival lives of the reconstructs.

Interfacial behaviour of the bone-cement interface was studied under tensile, shear and mixed-mode loading conditions. Bone-cement coupons were first mechanically tested and then μCT imaged. The influence of the loading angle, the extent of the cement penetration and the failure mechanisms with regard to the loading mode on the interfacial behaviour were examined. Both mechanical testing and post failure morphologies seem to suggest an effect of the loading angle on the failure mechanism of the interface. The micromechanical performance of bone-cement interface under compression was also examined. The samples were tested in step-wise compression using a custom-made micromechanical loading stage within the μCT chamber, and the damage evolution with load was monitored. Results showed that load transfer in bone-cement interface occurred mainly in the bone-cement contact region, resulting in progressively developed deformation due to trabeculae bending and buckling.

Compressive and fatigue behaviour of bovine cancellous bone and selected open-cell metallic foams were studied also, and their suitability as bone analogous materials for cemented biomechanical testing was investigated. Whilst the morphological parameters of the foams and the bone appear to be closer, the mechanical properties vary significantly between the foams and the bone. However, despite the apparent differences in their respective properties, the general deformation behaviour is similar across the bone and the foams. Multi-step fatigue tests were carried out to study the deformation behaviour under increasing compressive cyclic stresses. Optical and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterise the microstructure of foams and bone prior to and post mechanical testing. The results showed that residual strain accumulation is the predominant driving force leading to failure of foams and bones. Although foams and bone fail by the same mechanism of cyclic creep, the deformation behaviour at the transient region of each step was different for both materials. Preliminary results of foam-cement interface performance under mixed-mode loading conditions are also presented.


Merger and acquisition ('M&A') activity in India is booming. In particular, the percentage of cross-border transactions has risen significantly. The past decade has witnessed the phenomenal growth of the Indian software industry and is responsible for putting India back on the world economic map. Mergers and acquisitions are necessary for the survival of the Indian industry if they wish to become global players and have a worldwide presence. It is evident that the appetite of Indian companies for making global acquisitions has grown bigger with time. Vodafone's acquisition of a controlling interest in Hutchison Essar and Tata Steel's acquisition of the European steelmaker, Corus headlined a frenzy of acquisitions of foreign companies by Indian corporate enterprises in the past year. This paper provides with an overview of the cross-border mergers and acquisitions in India in Part I. Procedural aspects as to the applicable laws have been provided in Part II. The overseas direct investment which has been playing a part for the cross border deals have been discussed at length thereafter in Part III. Further, the reforms recommended by the Irani Report have been summed up in Part IV. Part V deals with the mode of acquisition and finally in Part VI the paper has been concluded discussing the various transactional issues required for finalizing an acquisition.


A central task in many applications is reasoning about processes that change over continuous time. Continuous-Time Bayesian Networks is a general compact representation language for multi-component continuous-time processes. However, exact inference in such processes is exponential in the number of components, and thus infeasible for most models of interest. Here we develop a novel Gibbs sampling procedure for multi-component processes. This procedure iteratively samples a trajectory for one of the components given the remaining ones. We show how to perform exact sampling that adapts to the natural time scale of the sampled process. Moreover, we show that this sampling procedure naturally exploits the structure of the network to reduce the computational cost of each step. This procedure is the first that can provide asymptotically unbiased approximation in such processes.


This thesis investigates the ideas of Henry Williamson through his writings, particularly in the two novel sequences, The Flax of Dream and A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. An analysis of his ideas illuminates the interaction between the political, social and religious notions which mirror his support for fascism during the inter-war period and loyalty to Oswald Mosley after 1945. The thesis explores the context and nature of Williamson's ideas about life, while attempting to explain his support for fascism, as well as the degree and manner in which this was expressed through his writing. There is no intention to provide a biography of his actual life experience. The thesis is based on Williamson's published work, combined with the mass of correspondence conducted with friends over a period of fifty years.
This study establishes that Williamson's writing, though supportive of Mosley's brand of fascism and including a form of 'historical revisionism', is generally right-wing and nationalist rather than overtly fascist. The dominant themes in his writing - purity, energy, 'realism' and a hatred of decadence - suggest connections with the fascist metaphysic. Formative experiences as a child, youth and soldier, combined with his reading of not only Richard Jefferies but also D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, provided the base for his ideas. He reshaped strands within the European Romantic and Idealist traditions, in effect superimposing these on an avowed hatred of self, and personal despair.
 Three factors make this thesis a significant contribution to knowledge. Firstly, no detailed analysis of Williamson's ideas has been undertaken to date. Secondly, the ready availability of Williamson's novels and role in contemporary culture renders it important to establish the nature and political implications of the ideas contained in his writing. Thirdly, his attitude towards fascism facilitates our comprehension of the appeal of fascism during both the inter-war and post-1945 periods.


Numerous conflicting factors impact the tourism decision process especially as it relates to dark tourism, that is, tourism that focuses on mortality. This research examines the relationships among constraints and motivational factors that affect tourists' decision to visit the Memorial of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre in China. Seven dimensions of constraints were revealed with the most important factor being an interest in other leisure activities. Of the three motivational factors discovered, the obligation the respondents feel to visit the site was discovered to be the most important. The major contribution of this research is its analysis of the relationship between motivations and constraints and the discovery that there are both positive and negative relationships between constraint and motivation factors. The most important finding may be that an increase in curiosity motivation may result in a decrease in disinterest constraints but an increase in the strength of the constraint of Chinese cultural perspectives on death and taboos. The findings suggest that the most effective marketing might not focus too much on the development of curiosity but on other motives, such as obligation and education.


This historical review uncovers the institutionalisation and diffusion of the SWOT analysis by assessing academic literature, seminar materials, proprietary research reports and interviews with experts from the virus theory perspective. We suggest that reviews of the SWOT analysis using the management fashion theory perspective are inadequate in explaining the diffusion and rejection of ideas born in practice. The virus theory perspective starts at an organizational level and reveals that predominantly practitioners were instrumental in spreading the ideas like participatory planning and distinguishing between short term and long range planning in order to resolve the planning paradox in provisional planning. Due to mutations in practice by consulting firms, the 2x2 matrix of SWOT became a cognitive artefact on its own. Theoretical roots of the original SWOT analysis stem from psychology and behavioural sciences. It is questionable if current strategy textbooks reflect these theoretical backgrounds.


Introduction: The true incidence of urethral involvement in patients with genital lichen sclerosus (LS) is unknown. We review the epidemiology and discuss the pathogenesis of LS and urethral stricture diseases. Materials and Methods: During the period 1991–2002, of 925 patients who underwent urethroplasty for anterior urethral stricture, 130 patients (14%) received the diagnosis of LS. In all patients with LS the histology was re-examined to confirm the clinical diagnosis. Retrograde and voiding urethrography was used to establish urethral involvement in the disease. Results: In 106 patients (82%) the histology provided the classical features of LS, and 24 patients (18%) showed some histological variations. In 49 patients (37%) the LS involved the pendolous urethra (meatus-navicularis-penile), and in 53 cases (41%) a panurethral stricture was evident. Conclusions: LS urethral involvement appears to be a much more common and extensive disease than previously reported, and requires particular care in its early diagnosis.


The fact that anthropologists 'construct' the field in which they conduct their ethnographic research has long been recognised, but less considered are the ways in which the field can 'construct' both the anthropologist and fieldwork practices. In many ways, this process is a natural corollary of the fact that researchers must always adapt and sensitise themselves to the realities of their field locations, and more importantly, the inherently dialogical nature of ethnographic research. At the same time, this 'construction' can potentially have more singular ramifications, particularly when fieldwork is carried out in situations characterised by chronic violence. In such circumstances, the ethnographic process almost inevitably exposes the anthropologist to violence, but can also become intrinsically imbued with violence, to the extent that it can make sense to talk of the 'violence' of ethnography. This article illustrates this idea through a consideration of the author's doctoral fieldwork experiences in Managua, Nicaragua, including his ritual initiation into an urban youth gang, and considers some of the ethical and practical ramifications of this experience.


Property rights cannot work if they are not clear, and scholars generally assume that the best way to attain this goal is to define property rights by relatively rigid rules. However, recent evidence suggests that the intuitive view may be mistaken. The subprime crisis shows that clear rules do not produce clear titles if owners do not follow those rules. And during the twentieth century property law moved dramatically away from rigid rules toward flexible standards. Standards turn out to be crucial to property law, as well as increasingly important in property doctrine. Empirical evidence and historical experience alike demonstrate that rules cannot be applied without being supplemented by standards to determine the scope of those rules. Conversely, standards achieve predictability through core exemplars, precedent, and presumptions. Thus rules and standards are less distinct from each other than one might imagine. Standards perform crucial functions for property law. They perform systemic functions to shape the infrastructure and the outer contours of the property system by (1) setting minimum standards compatible with the norms of a free and democratic society, (2) protecting the justified expectations of consumers, and (3) responding to externalities and systemic effects of the exercise of property rights. Standards also determine the scope of property rights by (4) distinguishing cases; (5) resolving conflicting norms; (6) excusing mistakes; (7) escaping the "dead hand" of the past; and (8) deterring the "bad man" from abusing property rights.


Agile development methods have been proposed as a natural fit for mobile app development contexts. Despite many studies addressing the adoption of agile methods for traditional web and desktop applications, there is a lack of studies of how mobile app development teams can adopt agile methods and the challenges they are facing. Our study explores this area to better understand how some representative industrial teams approach agile mobile app development, and the challenges they are facing. We conducted a qualitative study involving four different mobile app development companies. Our research method is based on multiple-case study design. From our findings, we argue that not all agile development principals are necessarily applicable within the mobile app development context. Furthermore, mobile app development teams face additional challenges when adopting agile methods such as development automation tools and on-line app store restrictions to mention a few. To our best knowledge, this is the first study that explores industrial teams from the perspective of agile development. Our results provide in-depth guidance to practitioners and highlights areas of research that require further investigation.


Signaling by the Notch receptor is one important pathway that inhibits differentiation in order to maintain a pool of multipotent precursor cells. Activation of the Notch receptor results in cleavage of the Notch intracellular domain, which has well-characterized functions as a transcriptional regulator. Sriuranpong et al. studied small cell lung carcinoma cell lines overexpressing various components of the Notch signaling pathway to elucidate a posttranslational regulatory mechanism in addition to Notch's transcriptional regulatory pathway. Overexpression of an active Notch intracellular domain (ICD) inhibited the expression of human acheate-scute homolog1 (hASH1) through a mechanism dependent on the Hairy-enhancer of Split transcriptional repressor (HES1). In addition, the overexpressed Notch ICD decreased the half-life of hASH and increased the turnover of hASH1 through a ubiquitin-dependent and proteasome-dependent degradation process. hASH1 is transcriptional regulator that dimerizes with another basic helix-loop-helix protein to transactivate genes with E box-containing promoters. Coexpression of the hASH1 partner E12 enhanced hASH1 stability and protected hASH1 from increased degradation stimulated by the overexpressed Notch ICD. Thus, Notch may act through two pathways: (i) as a transcription factor to regulate gene expression at the level of transcription and (ii) as a stimulator of protein turnover through a mechanism involving the proteasome-mediated destruction of Notch-targeted substrates. V. Sriuranpong, M. W. Borges, C. L. Strock, E. K. Nakakura, D. N. Watkins, C. M. Blaumueller, B. D. Nelkin, D. W. Ball, Notch signaling induces rapid degradation of achaete-scute homolog 1. Mol. Cell. Biol. 22, 3129-3139 (2002). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. More than 90 S. pneumoniae serotypes are distinguished based on the structure of their primary targets to the human immune system, the capsular polysaccharides (CPSs). The CPS of the prevalent serotype 4 (ST4) is composed of tetrasaccharide repeating units and is included in existing pneumococcal vaccines. Still, the structural antigenic determinants that are essential for protective immunity, including the role of the rare and labile cyclic trans-(2,3) pyruvate ketal modification, remain largely unknown. Molecular insights will support the design of synthetic subunit oligosaccharide vaccines. Here, we identified the key antigenic determinants of ST4 CPS with the help of pyruvated and nonpyruvated synthetic repeating unit glycans. Glycan arrays revealed oligosaccharide antigens recognized by antibodies in the human reference serum. Selected depyruvated ST4 oligosaccharides were used to formulate neoglycoconjugates and immunologically evaluated in mice. These oligosaccharides were highly immunogenic, but the resulting antiglycan antibodies showed only limited binding to the natural CPS present on the bacterial surface. Glycan array and surface plasmon resonance analysis of murine polyclonal serum antibodies as well as monoclonal antibodies revealed that terminal sugars are important in directing the immune responses. The pyruvate modification on the oligosaccharide is needed for cross-reactivity with the native CPS. These findings are an important step toward the design of oligosaccharide-based vaccines against S. pneumoniae ST4.


When performed on a model, a set of operations (e.g., queries or model transformations) rarely uses all the information present in the model. Unintended underuse of a model can indicate various problems: the model may contain more detail than necessary or the operations may be immature or erroneous. Analyzing the footprints of the operations - i.e., the part of a model actually used by an operation - is a simple technique to diagnose and analyze such problems. However, precisely calculating the footprint of an operation is expensive, because it requires analyzing the operation's execution trace. In this paper, we present an automated technique to estimate the footprint of an operation without executing it. We evaluate our approach by applying it to 75 models and five operations. Our technique provides software engineers with an efficient, yet precise, evaluation of the usage of their models.


This paper describes a method to estimate tyre parameters for traction control applications based on control of individual wheel drives. The tyre parameters that are estimated are the rolling radius in driven mode (i.e. the rolling radius when the input torque to the wheel is zero) and the tyre longitudinal elasticity factor. The rolling radius in driven mode and the tyre longitudinal elasticity factor depend on several factors, among them the normal load. An important property of the method is that no transfer of load occurs during the estimation phase since the actual velocity of the vehicle is kept constant. Results from tests with ArtiTRAX, a 240 kg electric vehicle that carries 80 kg extra weight in three different front axle and rear axle distributions, are presented.


Over the past two decades, the NHS has seen wave after wave of destabilising change. British doctors have had to confront an internal market system (in 1991); general practice fund-holding (1992); abolition of regional health authorities and the creation of nine health offices (1996); abolition of fund-holding (1996); a target plan for improving care and cutting waiting times (2000); the introduction of hospital league tables (2001); primary care trusts taking on the planning and commissioning of health care (2002); a hundred-odd health authorities replaced by 28 strategic health bodies (2002); the introduction of foundation trusts (2004); payment by health results (2005); primary care trusts cut from 302 to 152 and strategic health authorities from 28 to 10 (2006); and the abolition of hospital league tables (2006).


This paper looks at resource nationalism and political instability as potential causes of disruption to global oil supplies. It points to depletion preferences and strategies as one form of resource nationalism. In most cases, resource nationalism appears to be motivated by rent maximization. Hence, we see the adoption of more restrictive policies when prices rise. Conversely, when oil prices are low, increasing export volumes becomes more important. Restrictions on exports are common, especially for natural gas, which is sometimes reserved for national consumption. Export taxes are a tool used by some countries to extract revenue from oil producers. Domestic prices of gas and petroleum products are frequently much lower than international prices, also in some sense reducing availability for export. Political instability has a much more elusive impact on oil and gas exports, and historical experience points to contradictory potential outcomes. This paper concludes that political instability and resource nationalism are rarely associated with acute supply crises or shortfalls. Their effect is rather gradual and normally compensated by action in other parts of the system.


This essay interrogates key aspects of the Pequot War and its aftermath, when bodies became contested sites of cultural control that pivotally reshaped colonial New England. The rhetoric and justifications of an offensive English war against the Pequots relied on the image of contested manhood in warfare, household, and husbandry; after the defeat of the Pequots, male Pequot bodies continued to be treated as hostile and threatening. Pequot women and children also became subjects of English cultural ideologies. Viewed as nonthreatening and domestic, they were enslaved, but within the boundaries of English plantations. This treatment revealed English gender ideologies: whereas Pequot men could not be governed and might well rematerialize as a military force, Pequot women and children would prove naturally submissive and servile to English authority. Thus is the extent of English cultural blindness to Pequot autonomy and identity revealed. The treatment of Pequot women as universally submissive starkly contrasted with the subjection of English captives to Native American female authority throughout southeastern New England tribes. Pequot women proved resilient and resistant to their enslavement. This study contributes to recent provocative work that has drawn attention to the body as an important site of scholarly examination and suggests that by drawing on overarching themes of governance and its modes of operation, we might see connections between events heretofore assumed to be unrelated.


Obesity studies using humans are confounded by variables that are difficult to control and are restricted by ethical considerations. Given that they display many of the common attributes of obese humans, animal models of obesity have become invaluable tools for studying the etiology and related pathologies of the obese condition. Obese animals have been often reported to exhibit marked reductions in skeletal muscle size, but currently available data on the contractile function of skeletal muscles in rodent models of obesity are scarce and often conflicting. Therefore, the overall aim of this study was to further knowledge and understanding of the functional status of skeletal muscle in ob/ob mouse, a commonly used model of obesity, by employing a combination of biochemical and physiological methods and whole muscle and single fibre approaches. The animals were used at an age where there is no evidence of hyperglycemia or hypertension, thereby allowing the study of obesity without the often concurrent syndromes of diabetes and hypertension. The muscles examined included two hind limb muscles [extensor digitorum longus (EDL) – predominately locomotor; soleus (SOL) – predominately postural) and one trunk muscle [sternomastoid (SM) – involved in head/neck motion and respiratory assistance]. The data generated in the series of studies comprising this work is summarised as follows: 1. The EDL, SM and SOL muscles of ob/ob mice and controls were examined with respect to size [mass, muscle mass-to-body mass ratio, cross-sectional area (CSA)], fibre CSA, protein content, myosin heavy chain (MHC) content, MHC isoform composition and fibre type composition. Compared with the controls, all three muscles from ob/ob mice were smaller in size, with EDL and SM being the most affected. The CSA values for fibres from the predominant fibre types in EDL and SM muscles (IIB and IIB+IID) were smaller than those for fibres from control muscles, and the fibre size differences were consistent with the differences in muscle size. No differences between EDL, SM and SOL muscles from ob/ob and lean mice were found with respect to total protein content and MHC content (both normalised to muscle mass). Electrophoretic analyses of MHC isoform composition in whole muscle homogenates and single muscle fibres showed a shift towards slower MHC isoforms and a greater proportion of hybrid fibres in all three muscles of ob/ob mice, which suggest that skeletal muscles of ob/ob mice may follow a different pattern of development or undergo an obesity-related structural remodeling which does not involve changes in protein content (Chapter 3). 2. Isometric contractile characteristics [twitch and tetanic force-generating capacity and kinetics; force-frequency relationship] of EDL, SM and SOL muscles from ob/ob and lean mice were explored using an isolated whole muscle preparation. The following statistically significant differences were observed for muscles from ob/ob mice when compared to muscles from lean mice: (i) lower force-generating capacity (Po/body mass) for EDL, SM and SOL muscles; (ii) slower kinetics of the twitch response (W50 value) for EDL and SOL muscles; (iii) lower rate of force development of the tetanic response for EDL muscle; (iv) slower relaxation kinetics of the tetanic response for EDL and SOL muscles; (v) a leftward shift in the force-frequency relationship for EDL and SOL muscles. (Chapter 4). 3. The possibility that skeletal muscles of ob/ob mice displayed slower relaxation kinetics because of functional alterations in the contractile apparatus and/or SR function was explored using a single fibre approach. In these experiments, the following parameters were probed in mechanically skinned type IIB fibres (the predominant fibre type in both muscle groups) from EDL muscles of ob/ob and lean mice: (i) Ca2+ sensitivity (pCa50; pCa10; Hill coefficient: where pCa = -log10[Ca2+]); (ii) endogenous SR Ca2+ content; (iii) SR Ca2+ leak rate; (iv) maximal SR Ca2+ loading capacity at two different [Ca2+] (an indicator of slow/fast SR properties); and, (v) maximal SR Ca2+ loading at pCa 7.3, normalised to maximum Ca2+-activated force (an indicator of the density of SR Ca2+ pumps in the fibre). The data showed similarities in all the parameters except (v), suggesting that EDL type IIB fibres from ob/ob mice possess a lower density of the SR Ca2+ pumps per fibre volume. A lower density of SR Ca2+ pumps would reduce the ability of the SR to sequester Ca2+ and return [Ca2+]i back to resting levels following a contractile response, thereby slowing relaxation. (Chapter 5). 4. The fatigability characteristics [fatigue resistance; recovery of peak tetanic force at 5 min and 60 min after cessation of fatiguing exercise; loss in the ability to generate force at stimulation frequencies of 5 to 90 (or 110) Hz, at 60 min after cessation of fatiguing exercise] of EDL, SM and SOL muscles from ob/ob and lean mice were explored using isolated whole muscle preparations and a fatiguing protocol that elicited a state of low frequency fatigue in all three muscles. As fatigability of the muscle is determined, in part, by the rate of energy supply relative to the rate of energy consumption, ob/ob and lean mice were also compared with respect to myofibrillar ATPase activity (determined in EDL type IIB fibres – the predominant fibre type) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) isoenzyme profile (determined in EDL, SM and SOL muscle homogenates). Musclespecific decreases in fatigability were observed in muscles from ob/ob mice, with: (i) EDL displaying greater fatigue resistance; (ii) EDL exhibiting greater recovery of peak tetanic force at 5 min post-fatiguing exercise; (iii) EDL and SOL displaying greater recovery of force at 60 min post-fatiguing exercise; and (iv) EDL and SOL exhibiting a lower loss in the ability to generate force at low stimulation frequencies (greater than or equal to 30 Hz). The decreased fatigability of EDL muscles from ob/ob mice could not be related to lower myofibrillar ATPase activity in type IIB fibres. No simple relationship could be established between the fatigability characteristics of EDL, SM and SOL muscles of ob/ob mice and their LDH isoenzyme profile. This is because the LDH isoenzyme data showed a shift towards a more aerobic-oxidative phenotype for all three muscles of ob/ob mice, including SM which showed no changes in fatigability characteristics. (Chapter 6). The data collected on EDL, SM and SOL muscles from lean mice revealed a number of notable inter-muscle differences in these animals: (i) SOL contains a larger proportion of hybrid fibres than EDL and SM (Chapter 3); (ii) SM has a lower force-generating capacity, as indicated by (peak tetanic force)/(estimated physiological cross-sectional area), than EDL and SOL (Chapter 4); (iii) SM displays faster contractile kinetics than EDL and produces a different force-frequency curve (Chapter 4); and (iv) compared with SOL muscle, EDL and SM display a markedly greater loss of ability to develop force when stimulated at higher stimulation frequencies (greather than or equal to 50 Hz) at 60 min recovery from fatiguing exercise (Chapter 6). As EDL and SM muscles contain similar fibre type composition, their differences in contractile characteristics must be related to other factors, such as (but not limited to) differences in anatomical location and physiological function.


The 10 April 1947, Manix, California, earthquake ( M L = 6.2) is the largest earthquake to have occurred in the Mojave block in historic time. Left-lateral movement was observed along the Manix fault (strike of N70°E) following the earthquake; however, the large aftershocks of the sequence, as located by Richter and Nordquist (1951), align themselves along a trend of N30°W. This led Richter (1958) to conclude that rupture during the main shock was along the trend of the aftershocks and that the surface faulting was a secondary feature. In this study, relocation of the larger aftershocks of the sequence verifies the previously observed trend of N30°W, suggesting the aftershocks occurred along a fault conjugate to the Manix fault. Body waveform modeling of the main shock indicates that it was composed of two subevents. The location of the second subevent with respect to the first subevent suggests unilateral rupture to the southwest along the Manix fault, although the focal mechanisms of both events are consistent with either faulting along the Manix fault or a conjugate fault. Both subevents occurred at relatively shallow depths (5 to 7 km). A study of other recent earthquakes of M L ≧ 3.0 within the Mojave block indicates that the majority of earthquakes in the region occur at shallow depths (<7 km), although the heat flow in the area is 10 to 20 mW/m2 lower than in surrounding regions where deeper seismicity is present.


The paper examines the extent to which sub-national public officials are efficient in delivering basic education services and argues that technical inefficiencies, especially in the management of public funds for education, could potentially contribute to poor education service delivery in South Africa. A conceptual framework is proposed to show the underlying mechanisms by which these technical inefficiencies can adversely affect education outcomes. The analysis is based on two micro-level surveys that were applied at 175 public primary schools and 13 district education offices (DEOs) in two provinces in South Africa: the North-West Province and Gauteng. The analysis reveals that South Africa has a well-planned decentralised structure to administer education. However, districts have significant human resource constraints. Capacity is often lacking and record-keeping, particularly of financial information, is very poor. Lack of technical efficiency has resulted in misappropriation of funds (leakage) and extensive delays in remitting funds to schools. The paper concludes that these inefficiencies potentially affect education outcomes and therefore should be given due consideration when designing and implementing education policy reforms.


Multi-scale, multi-physics, computational models are a promising tool to provide detailed insights to understand the process–structure–property–performance relationships in additive manufacturing (AM) processes. To take advantage of the strengths of both physics-based and data-driven models, we propose a novel, hybrid modeling framework for laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process. Our unbiased model-integration method combines physics-based, simulation data, and measurement data for approaching a more accurate prediction of melt-pool width. Both a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model and experiments utilizing optical images are used to generate a combined dataset of melt-pool widths. From this aggregated data set, a hybrid model is developed using data-driven modeling techniques, including polynomial regression and Kriging methods. The performance of the hybrid model is evaluated by computing the average relative error and comparing it with the results of the simulations and surrogate models constructed from the original CFD model and experimental measurements. It is found that the proposed hybrid model performs better in terms of prediction accuracy and computational time. Future work includes a conceptual introduction to the use of an AM ontology to support improved model and data selection when constructing hybrid models. This study can be viewed as a significant step toward the use of hybrid models as predictive models with improved accuracy and without the sacrifice of speed.


Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction introduces the reader to the teachings of the Buddha and to the workings of Buddhism in daily life. Damien Keown looks at the distinctive features of Buddhism, examining who the Buddha was and what his teachings were. By considering how Buddhist thought has developed over the centuries, Keown considers how contemporary dilemmas can be faced from a Buddhist perspective. In this new edition Keown provides new perspectives on Buddhist thought, including up-to-date material about the evolution of Buddhism throughout Asia, the material culture of Buddhism and its importance, new teachings on the ethics of war and peace, and changes to ethnicity, class, and gender.


Numerical experiments of oil bioremediation of tidally influenced beach were simulated using the model BIOMARUN. Nutrient and dissolved oxygen were assumed present in a solution applied on the exposed beach face, and the concentration of these amendments was tracked throughout the beach for up to 6 months. It was found that, in comparison to natural attenuation, bioremediation increased the removal efficiency by 76% and 65% for alkanes and aromatics, respectively. Increasing the nutrient concentration in the applied solution did not always enhance biodegradation as oxygen became limiting even when the beach was originally oxygen-rich. Therefore, replenishment of oxygen to oil-contaminated zone was also essential. Stimulation of oil biodegradation was more evident in the upper and midintertidal zone of the beach, and less in the lower intertidal zone. This was due to reduced nutrient and oxygen replenishment, as very little of the amendment solution reached that zone. It was found that under continual application, most of the oil biodegraded within 2 months, while it persisted for 6 months under natural conditions. While the difference in duration suggests minimal long-term effects, there are situations where the beach would need to be cleaned for major ecological functions, such as temporary nesting or feeding for migratory birds. Biochemical retention time map (BRTM) showed that the duration of solution application was dependent upon the stimulated oil biodegradation rate. By contrast, the application rate of the amendment solution was dependent upon the subsurface extent of the oil-contaminated zone. Delivery of nutrient and oxygen into coastal beach involved complex interaction among amendment solution, groundwater, and seawater. Therefore, approaches that ignore the hydrodynamics due to tide are unlikely to provide the optimal solutions for shoreline bioremediation.


We present long‐term and short‐term forecasts for magnitude 5.8 and larger earthquakes. We discuss a method for optimizing both procedures and testing their forecasting effectiveness using the likelihood function. Our forecasts are expressed as the rate density (that is, the probability per unit area and time) anywhere on the Earth. Our forecasts are for scientific testing only; they are not to be construed as earthquake predictions or warnings, and they carry no official endorsement. For our long‐term forecast we assume that the rate density is proportional to a smoothed version of past seismicity (using the Harvard CMT catalogue). This is in some ways antithetical to the seismic gap model, which assumes that recent earthquakes deter future ones. The estimated rate density depends linearly on the magnitude of past earthquakes and approximately on a negative power of the epicentral distance out to a few hundred kilometres. We assume no explicit time dependence, although the estimated rate density will vary slightly from day to day as earthquakes enter the catalogue. The forecast applies to the ensemble of earthquakes during the test period. It is not meant to predict any single earthquake, and no single earthquake or lack of one is adequate to evaluate such a hypothesis. We assume that 1 per cent of all earthquakes are surprises, assumed uniformly likely to occur in those areas with no earthquakes since 1977. We have made specific forecasts for the calendar year 1999 for the Northwest Pacific and Southwest Pacific regions, and we plan to expand the forecast to the whole Earth. We test the forecast against the earthquake catalogue using a likelihood test and present the results. Our short‐term forecast, updated daily, makes explicit use of statistical models describing earthquake clustering. Like the long‐term forecast, the short‐term version is expressed as a rate density in location, magnitude and time. However, the short‐term forecasts will change significantly from day to day in response to recent earthquakes. The forecast applies to main shocks, aftershocks, aftershocks of aftershocks, and main shocks preceded by foreshocks. However, there is no need to label each event, and the method is completely automatic. According to the model, nearly 10 per cent of moderately sized earthquakes will be followed by larger ones within a few weeks.


There is a growing trend to involve citizens in city development to make urban areas more sustainable and livable. The urban living labs approach offers a way to foster new collaborative, trans-disciplinary ways of thinking in urban planning and development, and provides a real-world testing ground for urban innovation and transformation. This handbook aims to bring open innovation and co-creation to urban policy makers and change agents in Europe and beyond, by offering an introduction into the basic concepts and principles of urban living labs. In addition, this handbook provides examples of good practices and guidance on the design, operation and evaluation of urban livings labs.


Literary Fiction as Knowledge and Bildung – Theoretical Foundations In higher education, especially in professional education pro- grams, there is today a growing interest in adding literary fi ction to the curricula. Philosophers and educationalists dis- cussing contemporary forms of liberal education and Bildung also argue that narrative art is essential to the faculties of self-examination and understanding the life and realities of the other and as such important in the education of the future world citizens. This article brings to the fore and combines certain literary and esthetical theories thus presenting a coherent theoretical foundation to the use of literary fi ction, especially novels, as a form of knowledge. It also gives a practi- cal example of how to take advantage of the potentials of lite- rary fi ction as form of knowledge in higher education aiming towards Bildung in the current sense of the word.


We apply multiple testing procedures to the validation of estimated default probabilities in credit rating systems. The goal is to identify rating classes for which the probability of default is estimated inaccurately, while still maintaining a predefined level of committing type I errors as measured by the familywise error rate (FWER) and the false discovery rate (FDR). For FWER, we also consider procedures that take possible discreteness of the data resp. test statistics into account. The performance of these methods is illustrated in a simulation setting and for empirical default data.


This thesis is built upon two core arguments. The first is the notion that the demographic transition should be narrated through the perspective of ageing rather than population growth and the second is that ageing on a macroeconomic level represents a strong driver of international capital flows. These two arguments are used to discuss the standard prediction in a life cycle framework that ageing leads to dissaving in the aggregate and thus how old economies should tend towards running current account deficits. Using Japan and Germany as the subjects of analysis, this thesis develops the idea that rapidly ageing societies are not, in the main, characterized by dissaving but rather by the fight against it. Finally, a small empirical exercise acts as a perspectivation on the results to suggest why ageing might lead to a reliance on exports and foreign asset income to achieve growth and what this means in a global context.


Much of poverty alleviation theory and practice fails to sufficiently consider the following crucial factor: the religious dimension. This paper elaborates this thesis by focusing on the African context and the valuable resources African religious communities and movements can provide in the struggle against poverty. One particularly influential streak of present-time African religiousness serves as a case study: the so-called 'Prosperity Gospel' as part of Pentecostal Christianity. The author first argues for the continuing formative influence of religion on African conceptions of self, other, and world. Secondly, she provides a critical assessment of the impact of Pentecostalism and the 'Prosperity Gospel' on poverty alleviation. In comparison with secular ngos, Pentecostal churches emerge as the more effective agents of change. A third part situates the insights gained into a wider perspective, seeking ways to integrate the religious factor into a more holistic conception of and engagement against poverty


Objective To determine whether an education programme targeted at schoolchildren could lower salt intake in children and their families. Design Cluster randomised controlled trial, with schools randomly assigned to either the intervention or control group. Setting 28 primary schools in urban Changzhi, northern China. Participants 279 children in grade 5 of primary school, with mean age of 10.1; 553 adult family members (mean age 43.8). Intervention Children in the intervention group were educated on the harmful effects of salt and how to reduce salt intake within the schools' usual health education lessons. Children then delivered the salt reduction message to their families. The intervention lasted for one school term (about 3.5 months). Main outcome measures The primary outcome was the difference between the groups in the change in salt intake (as measured by 24 hour urinary sodium excretion) from baseline to the end of the trial. The secondary outcome was the difference between the two groups in the change in blood pressure. Results At baseline, the mean salt intake in children was 7.3 (SE 0.3) g/day in the intervention group and 6.8 (SE 0.3) g/day in the control group. In adult family members the salt intakes were 12.6 (SE 0.4) and 11.3 (SE 0.4) g/day, respectively. During the study there was a reduction in salt intake in the intervention group, whereas in the control group salt intake increased. The mean effect on salt intake for intervention versus control group was −1.9 g/day (95% confidence interval −2.6 to −1.3 g/day; P<0.001) in children and −2.9 g/day (−3.7 to −2.2 g/day; P<0.001) in adults. The mean effect on systolic blood pressure was −0.8 mm Hg (−3.0 to 1.5 mm Hg; P=0.51) in children and −2.3 mm Hg (−4.5 to −0.04 mm Hg; P<0.05) in adults. Conclusions An education programme delivered to primary school children as part of the usual curriculum is effective in lowering salt intake in children and their families. This offers a novel and important approach to reducing salt intake in a population in which most of the salt in the diet is added by consumers. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01821144.


The adoption of data parallel primitives to increase multicore utilization presents an opportunity for aggressive compiler optimization. We examine computations over the tree abstract datatype (ADT) in particular. For better utilization than approaches like flattening, we argue that transformations should specialize for common data and computation regularities. For example, we demonstrate a novel pattern that exploits regularity in node labeling as a SIMD parallelism opportunity, which we call SIMTask parallelism. For better applicability, we argue for better linguistic support of irregularity. For example, we show how the future primitive might be used to tolerate occasional data dependencies in an otherwise associative computation. We validate our approach on two tree computations: RepMin, popular in the functional programming community, and intrinsic widths, a stage of webpage layout in a prototype web browser. We show speedups over traditional versions of these computations of 124X and 10X, respectively.


Nowadays, deep neural networks (DNNs) have become the main instrument for machine learning tasks within a wide range of domains, including vision, NLP, and speech. Meanwhile, in an important case of heterogenous tabular data, the advantage of DNNs over shallow counterparts remains questionable. In particular, there is no sufficient evidence that deep learning machinery allows constructing methods that outperform gradient boosting decision trees (GBDT), which are often the top choice for tabular problems. In this paper, we introduce Neural Oblivious Decision Ensembles (NODE), a new deep learning architecture, designed to work with any tabular data. In a nutshell, the proposed NODE architecture generalizes ensembles of oblivious decision trees, but benefits from both end-to-end gradient-based optimization and the power of multi-layer hierarchical representation learning. With an extensive experimental comparison to the leading GBDT packages on a large number of tabular datasets, we demonstrate the advantage of the proposed NODE architecture, which outperforms the competitors on most of the tasks. We open-source the PyTorch implementation of NODE and believe that it will become a universal framework for machine learning on tabular data.


Fisheries management requires knowledge on the population dynamics of exploited stocks. To that end, the present study used a mark–recapture approach to characterise the population demographics of roundjaw bonefish Albula glossodonta (Forsskal) and their interaction with a data-limited fishery on Anaa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia. Over the course of the study, 2,509 bonefish were tagged and
12.3% were recaptured. The L ∞ of bonefish was estimated at 71 cm fork length (FL) with a K of 0.17, based on changes in FL between capture events. Artisanal fish traps located in the migratory corridors of the atoll accounted for 94% of recaptures and these movements occurred during the waning moon. Fishing mortality increased as bonefish reach sexual maturity, recruiting to the trap fishery at age 4 with the onset
of spawning behaviour. Bonefish abundance between ages 3 and 5 was estimated to be 29,079 individuals. This case study demonstrated the utility of mark–recapture in filling knowledge gaps that impede the management of data-limited fisheries. Ultimately, these results supported the creation of an Educational Managed Marine Area and the resurgence of rahui (seasonal closure) to manage this fishery.


Abstract Two new species of Lichenothelia, both from Iran, are described. Lichenothelia iranica is characterized by a black thallus with often finely lobate, slightly effigurate, not areolate margins, eight non-amyloid spores per ascus and 1–3-septate ascospores with 1–2 longitudinal or oblique septa. Lichenothelia ilamensis is distinguished by a black areolate, fissured, slightly effigurate or rarely lobulate thallus. The areoles are confluent and aggregated in the centre, becoming dispersed towards the margin, and the asci contain (4–)6(–8) non-amyloid, 1-septate spores.


The direct conversion of methane into methanol is considered as one of the holy grails in hydrocarbon chemistry and recently it was found that small pore zeolites, such as Cu-SSZ-13, Cu-SSZ-16 and Cu-SSZ-39, are active for this process. Here, we propose a reaction mechanism based on spectroscopic evidence for the methane-to-methanol reaction over Cu-SSZ-13 (Si/Al = 20). Using in situ FT-IR and operando UV-vis-NIR DRS, performed on a series of different Cu–ion-exchanged SSZ-13 zeolites, both a mono-nuclear site or a dimeric copper active site are consistent with the observations of this study. These proposed active site(s) are characterized by a νOH at ∼3654 cm−1 and a charge transfer (CT) transition at ∼29 000 cm−1. We have further evidence to complete the full catalytic cycle to methanol, including the formation of the reaction intermediate Cu(CH3)(H2O), which is characterized by overtone transitions, i.e., a 2νCH at ∼4200 cm−1 and a 2νOH at ∼5248 cm−1. We found that increasing the pre-oxidation temperature from 450 °C to 550 °C resulted in a 15% increase in methanol production, as well as a concomitant increase of the 29 000 cm−1 CT transition. Furthermore, Cu-exchanged SSZ-13 zeolites, which perform well in the NH3-SCR reaction at 200 °C (the low temperature regime), also show a high activity in the methane-to-methanol reaction and vice versa, leading us to believe that this material has a similar if not the same active site for both the catalytic reduction of NO and the stepwise reaction towards methanol.


The aim of the present study was to investigate the criminal career, focusing on factors of importance for quitting an ongoing severe criminal career. First a pilot study was performed on 15 young male criminals, for which an interview guide concerning life situation and background characteristics was applied and revised for further developing into a questionnaire (Study I). Further 100 male recidivists, aged 30-38 yrs and incarcerated in prisons in the region of Stockholm, Sweden, were studied. The subjects filled in a self-administered questionnaire on background factors, e.g., debut in crime and addiction, upbringing, values, and quality of social networks (Study II). The subjects were then interviewed according to the revised interview guide regarding life situation, e.g., criminality, addiction, quality of social networks, lodging situation, economic status, work and leisure-time (Study III). Self-reported personality traits were investigated using KSP, EPQ-I and SSS inventories (Study IV). Inclusion criteria were that the subject had at least three prior convictions to prison and at least a total of one year of prison served. At a follow-up three years after release from prison, registered criminal activity was assessed and subjects were grouped according to recidivism level. The subjects free of convictions displayed higher quality in upbringing conditions, relationships, and lodging situation; they also differed in self-reported evaluation of addiction and criminal life-style. Furthermore, they showed a later debut in addiction, and were less likely to live with addicted partners. Concerning personality, results indicated that individuals with higher extraversion and cognitive-psychic anxiety were less likely to be reconvicted, while individuals with higher irritability and sensation seeking traits were more likely to become reconvicted during the follow-up period. The results are discussed in terms of an interactional model of the crime quitting process


In this paper, two hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) based models were introduced for rainfall–runoff modeling. In the first model, a genetic fuzzy system (GFS) was developed and evolved for the prediction of watersheds9 runoff one time step ahead. In the second model, the wavelet-GFS (WGFS) model, wavelet transform was also used as a data pre-processing method prior to GFS modeling and in this way the main time series of two variables (rainfall and runoff) were decomposed into some multi-frequency time series by the wavelet transform. Then, the GFS was trained using the transformed time series, and finally the runoff discharge was predicted one time step ahead. In addition, to specify the capability and reliability of the proposed WGFS model, multi-step ahead runoff forecasting was also implemented for the watersheds. The obtained results through the application of the models for rainfall–runoff modeling of two distinct watersheds, located in Azerbaijan, Iran showed that the runoff could be better forecasted through the proposed WGFS model than other AI-based models in terms of determination coefficient and root mean squared error criteria in both training and verifying steps.


This study investigates the genetic diversity and ethnohistory of Svaneti and its neighboring highland Georgian and breakaway regions in order to better understand the complex population history of the South Caucasus. The objectives of this project are to (1) document the biological diversity in contemporary settlements in the region of Svaneti; (2) compare patterns of gene diversity with Svaneti's western and eastern neighbors, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, respectively; and (3) determine whether gene frequencies in Svaneti are evently distributed across geographic space by characterizing any village-level structuring. We will contextualize the findings within broader studies that address major regional population settlement events during the Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Metal Ages, as well as the putative 'Alan migration' in the 4th century AD. To accomplish these goals, biological samples were collected from participants in Svaneti for genetic analysis, providing a more thorough coverage of village districts in Svaneti than has been achieved in previous studies. In addition, local-level ethnohistorical interviews were conducted in an effort to distinguish patterns of diversity resulting from long-term inhabitation versus those arising from recent immigration into the region. These DNA samples were characterized for mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome variation, and the resulting data analyzed with statistical and phylogenetic methods to define the biological affinities of highland Georgian populations, and reconstruct the migration and settlement history of the region. Data from published and unpublished sources on the genetic diversity of the greater Near East and Caucasus, specifically Abkhaz and Ossete populations, were used for phylogeographic and statistical comparison. The results revealed reduced Y-chromosome haplogroup diversity in Svans, with a predominance of G2a, although their paternal lineages occurred at frequencies comparable to those of neighboring highland populations. By contrast, mtDNA haplogroup diversity in Svans was both very high and reasonably similar in terms of frequency to other regional populations, with W6 and X2 occurring at unusually high frequencies. Interestingly, there was no geographic patterning of Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA diversity within Svaneti at the village level. Nevertheless, strong Y-chromosome affinities with eastern and western populations (i.e., Ossete and Abkhaz, respectively) living adjacent to the Svans indicated a common gene pool for these three ethno-linguistic groups in spite of linguistic differences at the language family level, and minimal contribution to the Ossete gene pool from Indo-European-speaking Alans. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Anthropology First Advisor Theodore G. Schurr


The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology; biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality. Yet the concept of function is notoriously obscure (with problematic issues regarding the normative and the descriptive nature of functions, for example) and demands philosophical clarification. So too the relationship between biological organisms and technical artifacts: although entities of one kind are often described in terms of the other--as in the machine analogy for biological organism or the evolutionary account of technological development--the parallels between the two break down at certain points. This volume takes on both issues and examines the relationship between organisms and artifacts from the perspective of functionality. Believing that the concept of function is the root of an accurate understanding of biological organisms, technical artifacts, and the relation between the two, the contributors take an integrative approach, offering philosophical analyses that embrace both biological and technical fields of function ascription. They aim at a better understanding not only of the concept of function but also of the similarities and differences between organisms and artifacts as they relate to functionality. Their ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological comparisons will clarify problems that are central to the philosophies of both biology and technology.ContributorsPaul Sheldon Davies, Maarten Franssen, Wybo Houkes, Yoshinobu Kitamura, Peter Kroes, Ulrich Krohs, Tim Lewens, Andrew Light, Francoise Longy, Peter McLaughlin, Riichiro Mizoguchi, Mark Perlman, Beth Preston, Giacomo Romano, Marzia Soavi, Pieter E. Vermaas


This article examines private equity firms as an example of partnership-type, or uncorporate, structures in the governance of large firms. Other examples include publicly traded partnerships, real estate investment trusts, hedge funds and venture capital funds. These firms can be seen as an alternative to the corporate form in dealing with the central problem of aligning managers' and owners' interests. In the standard corporate form, shareholders monitor powerful managers by voting on directors and corporate transactions, suing for breach of fiduciary duty and selling control. These mechanisms deal with managerial agency costs by relying on other agents, including auditors, class action lawyers, judges, independent directors and shareholder intermediaries such as mutual and pension funds. Uncorporations substitute other devices for corporate-type monitoring, including more closely tying managers' economic well-being to the firm's fortunes and greater assurance of distributions to owners. Continued concerns with managerial agency costs, the inadequacy of regulatory responses such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, changing costs and benefits of public ownership, leverage and capital lock-in all contribute to the rise of uncorporate structures in large firms. Political considerations may, however, constrain these developments.


This article introduces a new approach to pricing sovereign risk based on sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads. We estimate a dynamic market-based measure of sovereign risk and use it to decompose sovereign CDS spreads into expected losses from default and the market risk premia required by investors as compensation for default risk. Using a dynamic panel data model, we find that country-specific fundamentals primarily drive sovereign risk while global investors9 risk aversion drives time variation in the risk premia. Consistent with this, we also find that the sovereign risk premia is more highly correlated than sovereign risk itself within emerging market regions. These results help us to explain the remarkable narrowing of emerging market spreads between 2002 and 2006 and to understand the pricing mechanism and channel of contagion for emerging debt markets.


This survey based research illustrates science education in the early childhood setting, specifically across Lake Washington, Seattle and Bellevue Public School Districts, with a lens on programs serving children with special needs. Taking current best practice into consideration, this research compares the amount of time that teachers currently spend teaching their students science across these settings, with recommendations urging educators to expose their students to the scientific inquiry process early and often. Additionally, the results of this survey align with findings regarding teacher self-efficacy in the area of science, demonstrating that educators who have a science background and/or have received professional development opportunities in the area of science, are likely to teach science more often and lead higher quality lessons. The survey results also demonstrate that the provision of curriculum and training opportunities are indicative of a community that supports science education, and therefore predictive of the amount and quality of science education that students in an early childhood setting receive.