An iBook version is available to read in iTunes Voice/Presence/Absence collects international contributions from academic scholars and practitioners, together with recorded live performances of artists, writers, musicians and poets, creating the space for a discussion on the role of voice in contemporary humanities. Voice/Presence/Absence is conceived as a dialogue: between a variety of interpretive frameworks and definitions of voice; between different objects of study (from contemporary art to post-dramatic theatre, from radio-voices to recorded poetry and audio-books, from pop music to novels, from the voice of trees to the one of birds, etc.) and, most important, between artists, performers and the world of academia.


Two of the most popular architectures for improving regulatory performance and increasing profitability are 1) cascade control and 2) feed forward with feedback trim. Both architectures trade off additional complexity in the form of instrumentation and engineering time for a controller better able to reject the impact of disturbances on the measured process variable. These architectures neither benefit nor detract from set point tracking performance. This paper compares and contrasts the two architectures and links the benefits of improved disturbance rejection with reducing energy costs in addition to improved product quality and reduced equipment wear. A comparative example is presented using data from a jacketed reactor process.


Delineation of capture zones for groundwater source protection is normally performed by using numerical codes which are based on the porous medium flow equation. However, boreholes are often sited in or along permeable dykes or single fracture zones through which aquifers are drained. It is very important to take into account dyke-influenced aquifers. This paper makes use of Linesink to simulate permeable dyke or fractured zones and utilises the pathline distribution to delineate the capture zones. Conditions when the influence of a fractured dyke can be considered negligible are also discussed through comparison with stagnation point in a uniform flow field. The approach may be sufficient to illustrate protection zoning requirements when dyke aquifers are considered.


Four new species of Anatomidae are described: Anatoma herberti n. sp. with strong axial sculpture on the shoulder and base; A. austrolissa n. sp. with almost smooth sculpture except for axial cords in the adumbilical half of the base; A. boucheti n. sp. with sunken protoconch and selenizone that starts after more than one teleoconch I whorl; and A. fl exidentata n. sp. with a highly modifi ed radula, shared only with A. austrolissa, among known anatomid species. Three of the species are only known from the Indian Ocean, while the more deep-water A. austrolissa is known from Reunion Island and New South Wales, Australia. The radula of A. flexidentata and A. austrolissa is strikingly different from that of other Anatomidae and Vetigastropoda in that it has flexible equally-shaped teeth in the central field and filamentous teeth in the marginal fi eld. Similar radular morphologies are known from Calliostomatidae.


Nickel-free, nitrogen alloyed austenitic stainless-steels, with about 19 wt.-% Mn and 0,8 wt. % N, are an interesting alternative to classic CrNi austenitic stainless steels due to their superior mechanical properties (Rm > 900 MPa, A5 > 50 %, Av > 350 J) in the solution annealed condition. The formation of chromium-rich nitrides during suboptimal heat treatment, processing or application leads to an inhomogeneous distribution of alloying elements in the microstructure, which reduces the corrosion resistance. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the sensitization behavior is indispensable for the use of nickel-free, high-nitrogen austenitic stainless steels. The relationship between artificial aging, phase formation and corrosion resistance was investigated on the alloys X8CrMnN18-19 (1.3815) and X8CrMnMoN18-19-2 (1.4456), both alloyed with 0,8 wt.-% Nitrogen, in the present work. The microstructural evolution was studied by LM and SEM while the corrosion resistance was characterized with the electrochemical potentiodynamic reactivation (EPR) and the KorroPad indicator-test. Both alloys showed increased corrosion susceptibility within critical aging parameters. Finally, a sensitization diagram was described successfully for both alloys showing the positive effect of molybdenum.


The dielectric function of PbS quantum dots (Qdots) with diameters of 3.5-5.0 nm in glass matrix is determined from transmission measurements by Maxwell-Garnett effective medium theory combined with iterative Kramers-Kronig analysis. The algorithm used provides real and imaginary part of the dielectric function in the 200-1800 nm spectral range, for both Qdot-doped glasses as well as the PbS Qdots alone. The latter data are compared with the results obtained from colloidal PbS quantum dots and, within the limits of the experimental error, agreement is found.


Between 2007 and 2009, the largest human Q fever epidemic ever described occurred in the Netherlands. The source was traced back to dairy goat farms, where abortion storms caused by Coxiella burnetii had been observed. Intervention measures included vaccination of dairy goats, followed by one-time culling of all pregnant animals from infected dairy goat herds in early 2010. These measures aimed to prevent further shedding of C. burnetii into the environment during the next kidding season, thus minimizing human exposure. Beginning in 2010, the number of human cases sharply decreased, suggesting that the intervention measures, including continued yearly vaccination of all dairy goat herds, were effective. One putative cause of the abortion storms in dairy goat herds was the intensive husbandry systems in which the goats were, and still are, kept. However, as this thesis shows, the abortion storms in Dutch dairy goat herds could not be fully simulated by demographic factors, such as herd size or reproductive patterns. Aspects of the pathogenesis in goats probably play and unknown but essential role in the observed abortion patterns. There are gaps in our current understanding of the drivers of Q fever abortion storms, and this may hamper the prevention of future problems on intensive goat farms and in humans living in their environment in a non-vaccination situation. Transmission via inhalation is considered the main mode of transmission for C. burnetii, but at the time of the Dutch epidemic, only a few published studies had actually demonstrated airborne C. burnetii. A method to detect C. burnetii DNA in airborne dust samples of size fractions that can be inhaled by humans is described in this thesis. With this method, C. burnetii DNA was indeed detected in airborne dust samples collected at three affected dairy goat farms. This finding supports the general assertion that airborne transmission is a likely route of exposure. As this thesis shows, vaccination reduces bacterial shedding by small ruminants. Both prevalence and bacterial load was reduced in the uterine fluid, vaginal mucus and milk of animals from vaccinated herds compared with animals from unvaccinated herds. These effects were most pronounced in animals during their first pregnancy. Results indicate that vaccination may reduce bacterial load in the environment and thus lessen human exposure to C. burnetii. Animals with a positive PCR in uterine fluid can be considered high risk animals, because they may shed massive amounts of bacteria during delivery. In a field setting, sampling of uterine fluid is not possible. To predict which animals are high risk animals, test characteristics of current tests for C. burnetii were evaluated for vaginal mucus (PCR), milk (PCR and ELISA), in recently infected unvaccinated herds. Due to poor test performance, identification and selective removal of high risk animals only (the test and cull strategy) to protect public health seems currently unfeasible. Because emergency vaccination of these animals is also not effective, the hazard of massive bacterial shedding during abortion or parturition can only be prevented by removal of all pregnant animals from recently infected naive (i.e. non vaccinated) herds.


Neuropathic pain (NP) remains a significant clinical problem worldwide. Toll-like rec e ptor  4 (TLR4) expressed on microglia in the spinal cord exert great influence on NP induced hyperalgesia. Impaired γ-aminobutyric acid (GABAergic) neuron activities in the spinal cordare also confirmed to be associated with NP progression. However, the role of TLR4 inducedmicroglial activation on impaired spinal GABAergic neuron activities inneuropathic painconditions remains unclear. Mechanical thr esholds were measured after intrathecal injectionof TLR4 inhibitor (TAK-242) or GABAA receptor agonist (muscimol) in male C57 mice. Microglialactivation, glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65), as well as GABA concentrations incerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were further analyzed. Spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic current(sIPSC) of GABAergic neurons were recorded using electrophysiological test. TLR4 expressionlevel was measured after chronic constriction injury (CCI) surgery and after intrathecaladministration of a TLR4 agonist (lipopolysaccharide, LPS) in naive mice.CCI surgery and TLR4agonist LPS treatment both induced hyperalgesia, while TLR4 inhibitor TAK-242 or GABAAreceptor agonist muscimol increased the mechanical thresholds in both CCI surgery andLPS-treated mice. Furthermore, decreased GAD65 fluorescence, GABA concentrations in CSFand sIPSC in CCI and LPS mice were a lleviated by TAK-242. Moreover, TAK-242 and microg lia  activa tion inhibitor (minocycline) suppressed the enhanced microglial activation in CCI surgeryand LPS-treated mice, and GAD65 fluorescence and GABA concentrations were increased byminocycline intervention. Additionally, TLR4 expression levels were up-regulated followingCCI surgery and intrathecal administration of LPS. TLR4 suppresses spinal GABAergic neuronactivities viamicroglial activation.


A major drawback of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) concerns the lack of temporal accuracy of the measured signal. Although this limitation stems in part from the neuro-vascular nature of the fMRI signal, it also reflects particular methodological decisions in the fMRI data analysis pathway. Here we show that the temporal accuracy of fMRI is affected by the specific way in which whole-brain volumes are created from individually acquired brain slices. Specifically, we show how the current volume creation method leads to whole-brain volumes that contain within-volume temporal distortions and that are available at a low temporal resolution. To address these limitations, we propose a new framework for fMRI data analysis. The new framework creates whole-brain volumes from individual brain slices that are all acquired at the same point in time relative to a presented stimulus. These whole-brain volumes contain no temporal distortions, and are available at a high temporal resolution. Statistical signal extraction occurs on the basis of a novel time point-by-time point approach. We evaluated the temporal characteristics of the extracted signal in the standard and new framework with simulated and real-world fMRI data. The new slice-based data-analytic framework yields greatly improved temporal accuracy of fMRI signals.


The assignment given for this project was to write CTC++ channels for Arty. The CT in CTC++ stands for Communicating Threads. It is a programming construction based on the CSP language developed by Hoare in 1978[1]. This has been ported by Gerald Hilderink to a Java[2], a C and C++ library. The C++ library is called CTC++ and is being used at the Control Engineering group of the University of Twente.
Arty is a mobile robot that was built in 1999 by a group of second year students. At that time CTC++ was being developed, but was not yet usable. Therefore Arty was programmed in a framework called 20-works that is used at the Control Engineering. The higher control loop was agent based[3,4].
To be able to program Arty using CTC++, a CTC++ program should be able to interface to the sensors and actuators of Arty. For this purpose, channels were developed that can read from and write to the sensors and actuators of Arty. The channels that were written are discussed in chapter 2.
Besides the writing of the channels, a program was written that can demonstrate the use of the channels that were written. This program is discussed in chapter 4. To be able to determine the parameters of the PI controllers in this program, a 20-sim model of Arty was made. Chapter 3 elaborates on this.


This paper compares different techniques for estimating the velocity of UHF RFID tags within practical applications. We use COTS RFID equipment complying with ISO18000-6C standards, including the use of frequency hopping, to capture tag identification, phase angle and signal strength data. A Phase-Difference-of-Arrival technique is applied to calculate tag velocity. Different signal estimation techniques, including Kalman filtering and Exponential Smoothing, are used to improve the accuracy of the estimated velocity in noisy conditions. These techniques are evaluated and compared within different scenarios, including cases with a fixed speed, acceleration and deceleration. Shortcomings of the RFID backscatter signal parameters are shown, and the effects of the number of tags present and number of samples taken within one frequency hop cycle are investigated. Finally, the potential to use such techniques within practical applications and required improvements are discussed.


The objective of the Swachh Bharath Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission of the Indian Government is to eliminate open defecation in India through installation of toilets and triggering of behavioural change by 2019. The problem is most daunting in isolated communities with poor WASH infrastructure and local agencies with scarce resources. In India, tribal communities, living near forests and along mountain ranges are among the most isolated, which means that the study of the impact of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene behaviour) and the effectiveness of local agencies responsible for public hygiene in such communities is pertinent for our research query. Thus, this working paper presents the results of a study of 20 villages located in two districts, Nilgiris and Jalpaiguri, in two distinct Indian states - Tamil Nadu and West Bengal respectively. The central research question is: What is the role of WASH infrastructure and capabilities and local agencies in containing the incidence of excreta related diseases in isolated rural Indian communities? A novel multi-level model is developed and estimated and further validated through focus research groups. It confirms that disease incidence is jointly determined by the quantity as well as the quality of WASH. The role of agency seems to matter more at village level rather than at the household level.


Abstract A conceptual design of a lead-bismuth-eutectic (LBE)–cooled actinide burner core with innovative streaming fuel assemblies (FAs) is described. The 1800-MW(thermal) core employs metallic, fertile-free fuel where the transuranics (plutonium plus minor actinides) are dispersed in a zirconium matrix. The core contains 157 streaming FAs that enhance neutron streaming by employing gas-filled, sealed streaming tubes at the FA periphery and center. The large reactivity excess at the beginning of life is compensated for by a system of double-entry control rods. The arrangement of top-entry and bottom-entry control rods in a staggered pattern allows the achievement of a very uniform axial power profile and a small reactivity change from control rod driveline expansion. The reactor can operate with an 18- to 24-month cycle length. Safety is provided through negative reactivity coefficients and tight neutronic coupling. The void coefficient is negative for a partially as well as a fully voided core. The effective delayed neutron fraction is 25% less than that of typical oxide-fueled fast reactors, making the requirements on reactor control performance more demanding. The Doppler coefficient is negative with a magnitude appreciably lower than the typical values of oxide fuels in sodium-cooled reactors, but comparable to the values observed in integral fast reactor (IFR) cores with metallic U-Pu-Zr fuels. The fuel thermal expansion coefficient is also negative, having a magnitude approximately equal to the Doppler coefficient. In terms of the transuranic destruction rate per MW(thermal) per effective full-power year, the design is comparable to accelerator-driven systems (ADSs). Long-lived fission products also can be transmuted, albeit at lower incineration efficiency than in ADSs.


Volition is an important characteristic in the field of training and vocational guidance. Literature on entrepreneurship has focused on this concept to better understand the behavior of the entrepreneur (Achtziger & Gollwitzer, 2008). This study analyzes the personal characteristics involved in the process of transformation of intentions into actions in the field of entrepreneurship. Three categories of people were included in this study, which allowed us to circumvent the methodological problems associated with the implementation of a longitudinal study. Thus, our sample consisted of university and business school students, potential entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs. We conducted a variance analysis after confirming the homogeneity of each group, thus allowing intergroup comparisons. We found that volitional capacities are mobilized in a successive order, one after the other. In addition, this order is determined by the individual's progress on the process of creation.


Objective: To determine the presentation, anatomical distribution, diagnostic method, management and outcome of hollow viscus injury (HVI) from blunt abdominal trauma. Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study including patients with blunt abdominal trauma leading to HVI admitted at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, over a period of 3 years (July 2015 to July 2018). Data were retrieved from patients' medical records. Total 346 patients with HVI due to blunt abdominal trauma, who underwent laparotomy at our institute, were reviewed. Data regarding clinical presentation, anatomical distribution, management and outcome were recorded and analysed. Results: Out of 346 patients 87.1% were men and 12.9% were women. Mean age of patients was 29±14.02 years. The most common site of injury was ileum (46.2%) followed by jejunum (44.5%). There were 10 gastric perforations (2.9%), 4 (1.15%) duodenal, 4 (1.15%) colonic, 4 (1.15%) sigmoidal and 4 (1.15%) rectal injuries. Two caecal injury were also recorded. Road traffic accident was the most common mechanism of injury (57.2%) followed by fall from height (36.4%) and assault (6.4%). Free gas under diaphragm on erect abdomen radiography was seen in 85.5% of cases while preoperative CT Abdomen was done in 11.6% of cases. Treatment consisted of simple closure of the perforation (66.5%), resection and anastomosis (11.0%) and stoma (22.5%). Major complication was anastamotic leak which was recorded in 6.4% cases and 15.6% patients developed burst abdomen. Average hospital stay was 13±6 days. Overall mortality rate was 12.7%. Conclusion: Although early recognition of intestinal injuries from blunt abdominal trauma may be difficult in all cases, it is very important due to its tremendous life threatening potential. Age of the patient, anatomical site and time of presentation are probably main prognostic factors.


Fraud in corporations is a topic that receives significant and growing attention from regulators, auditors, and the public. Increasingly external auditors are being asked to play an important role in helping organizations prevent and detect fraud. Detecting fraud is not an easy task and requires thorough knowledge about the nature of fraud, how it can be committed and concealed. This paper aims at broadening external auditors' knowledge about fraud and why it occurs. It explains Cressey's fraud theory and shows its significance, presents the other fraud models and relates them to Cressey's model, and proposes a new fraud triangle model that external auditors could consider when assessing the risk of fraud. __________________________________________________________________________________________


There is an expression called "grief of climate" that refers to feelings of powerlessness and heaviness related to the environmental problems of today. A feeling that every move we make has bad consequences for nature. This essay is an investigation of how art in general and jewellery art in particular can be a way of discussing and visualizing current environmental problems and the complex relationship between human and nature. I am discussing how artworks dealing with a dark and dystopian picture of the relation can be seen as the memento mori of our time. A reminder of nature perishing as a consequence of our behavior. A reminder ultimately talking about our human mortality, our position of power and whether we are to blame for the situation.Memento mori is a genre within art with a long tradition. Historically the latin phrase meaning 'remember death' has been dealing with the human fear of death and the desire for immortality. Today there is an increasing understanding of our coexistence with nature and our fear of death has in a way broadened to include even nonhuman creatures and nature.My investigation deals with the possibilities of creating an imaginary picture of reality with object related to the body. As jewellery is interpreted in connection with the human body it has a unique ability to tell stories about humans as individuals but also humanity in a broader sense. As a conclusion the tradition of memento mori jewellery has a potential to further develop within a contemporary context and discuss the distorted relationship between human and nature.The work consist of one theoretical and one practical part.


For any writer who wants to become an expert comic-book storyteller, The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics is the definitive, one-stop resource! In this valuable guide, Dennis O'Neil, a living legend in the comics industry, reveals his insider tricks and no-fail techniques for comic storytelling. Readers will discover the various methods of writing scripts (full script vs. plot first), as well as procedures for developing a story structure, building subplots, creating well-rounded characters, and much more. O'Neil also explains the many diverse formats for comic books, including graphic novels, maxi-series, mega-series, and adaptation. Of course, there are also dozens of guidelines for writing proposals to editors that command attention and get results.


Abstract Dunning and Sheard's seminal work, Barbarians, Gentleman and Players, illustrates the importance of adopting a sociological approach to understanding the development of modern sport. Their specific analysis of the role of football in public schools and peer and pupil–master relations offered an important perspective on changing relations between these social groups. Since then, research on physical education (PE) from a figurational viewpoint has focused more on teachers' perspectives and experiences, with fewer articles concerning pupils' thoughts. In this article, we revisit power relations within male PE by drawing upon data from a recent ethnographic study in the North East of England. We locate contemporary perspectives and experiences of bullying along long-term shifts in people's attitudes towards violence and conflict resolution. In particular, we consider how the social processes involved in bullying illustrate the nuanced relationships and behaviours young people must navigate and negotiate within increasingly complex contemporary societies. In competitive single-sex PE environments, we demonstrate how young males are required to exhibit heightened levels of control over their emotional and behavioural expression.


Double pruning of grapevines was evaluated as a cultural management practice for reducing infections by Eutypa lata in spur-pruned vineyards. Double pruning involves two pruning passes through the vineyard. Vines are first prepruned by nonselectively trimming canes to a uniform height, generally 30 to 45 cm above spur positions, then pruned to traditional two-bud spurs in late winter when Eutypa infections are less likely to occur. In large vineyards, double pruning may allow for more final pruning in late winter, potentially reducing the number of infected spurs if Eutypa infections on prepruning wounds do not develop beyond the point where final pruning will occur. To evaluate double pruning, Chardonnay and Merlot grapevines were prepruned monthly from October to February with final pruning in March for three seasons. Eutypa lata spores were inoculated onto wounds at the time of prepruning in two seasons. Examination of inoculated canes after final pruning showed mean lengths of vascular discoloration below prepruning wounds of 0.29 to 4.67 cm in Chardonnay and 0.14 to 3.07 cm in Merlot, with maximum length of discoloration of 14 cm and 12 cm, respectively. Isolations for E. lata were made at various locations along the length of the discolored vascular tissue. Eutypa lata was not recovered from isolations made more than 4 cm below the point of inoculation, indicating that infections of prepruning wounds should all be eliminated during final pruning, as long as prepruning occurs 30 to 45 cm above the final pruning cuts. No impacts on viticultural performance were observed, including yield, pruning weight, and time of budbreak. By allowing for more final pruning to occur in March, double pruning should greatly reduce the number of Eutypa infections that occur each year.


Objective. The events characterizing the very last part of the vasovagal crisis has not been determined. The aim of the study was to analyze the variations in respiratory pattern preceding the vaso-vagal syncope full-blown and the relationship between cardiovascular functions in order to assess the temporal sequence. Methods. Eleven consecutive patients were studied. Heart rate, arterial pressure, respiratory frequency, tidal volume, carbon dioxide, and oxygen saturation in time domain from supine and standing recordings were analyzed. Results. The respiratory activity is different in the time frame preceding syncope, both in VT and breathing rate, and that the increase of the lung ventilation does not influence the baroreflex control during the presyncopal period but may be cause of the baroreflex failure during the full-blown syncope.


The mitogenic action of endothelins (ETs) 1 and 3 was studied on C6 rat glioma cells in serum-free culture conditions. In order to characterize the ET receptor subtype involved in this effect, BQ-123, and ETA receptor selective antagonist was used. Our results confirmed that both ET-1 and ET-3 are mitogenic peptides for C6 cells and demonstrated for the first time that the ETA receptor antagonist BQ-123 inhibits the proliferative effect of both ET-1 and ET-3 in this cellular system, providing evidence of an atypical ET receptor on C6 cells.


Component variability, mismatch, and various noise effects are major contributors to design limitations in most modern IC processes. Mismatch and Noise in Modern IC Processes examines these related effects and how they affect the building block circuits of modern integrated circuits, from the perspective of a circuit designer. Variability usually refers to a large scale variation that can occur on a wafer to wafer and lot to lot basis, and over long distances on a wafer. This phenomenon is well understood and the effects of variability are included in most integrated circuit design with the use of corner or statistical component models. Mismatch, which is the emphasis of section I of the book, is a local level of variability that leaves the characteristics of adjacent transistors unmatched. This is of particular concern in certain analog and memory systems, but also has an effect on digital logic schemes, where uncertainty is introduced into delay times, which can reduce margins and introduce 'race' conditions. Noise is a dynamic effect that causes a local mismatch or variability that can vary during operation of a circuit, and is considered in section II. Noise can be the result of atomic effects in devices or circuit interactions, and both of these are discussed in terms of analog and digital circuitry. Table of Contents: Part I: Mismatch / Introduction / Variability and Mismatch in Digital Systems / Variability and Mismatch in Analog Systems I / Variability and Mismatch in Analog Systems II / Lifetime-Induced Variability / Mismatch in Nonconventional Processes / Mismatch Correction Circuits / Part II: Noise / Component and Digital Circuit Noise / Noise Effects in Digital Systems / Noise Effects in Analog Systems / Circuit Design to Minimize Noise Effects / Noise Considerations in SOI


An experimental investigation of the development of high velocity, impulsively initiated gas jets into liquid was conducted in an effort to understand some of the physical processes that occur for a jet of very light fluid into a dense ambient atmosphere. Four gases, refrigerants 12 and 22, nitrogen, and helium were injected into water at nozzle exit Mach numbers from 1.0 to 2.2. The study showed that a gas jet into water develops in at least three stages: startup, transition, and global steady state. The startup is characterized by bubble growth; the growth rate is well predicted by classical bubble-growth theory. Jet transition is marked by axially directed flow, which penetrates through the startup bubble and which forms a cylindrical protrusion along the axis of symmetry. A combination of strong recirculating flow and liquid entrainment causes the startup bubble to deflate and to lift off and move downstream. In the steady state, instantaneous photographs show small-scale fluctuations of the jet boundary, but time-averaged photographs show the expected conical spreading of the steady jet; the measured spreading angles range from 18-25 degrees. However, the most significant finding of this study is that under some conditions, the gas jet into liquid never reaches the global steady state. Instead, the jet boundary exhibits chugging: large nonlinear oscillations which lead to irregular collapses of the gas column followed by explosive outward bursts of gas. The unsteadiness observed is much more violent than the familiar fluctuations typical of constant-density jets. The length scale of the motion is generally on the order of several jet diameters; the time scale is on the order of the period for bubble collapse. It was found that the amplitude and frequency of chugging are strongly dependent on the ratio of the liquid density to the gas density, the jet Mach number, and the operating pressure ratio. The conditions under which unsteadiness occurs were determined experimentally. In particular, a quantitative measure of jet susceptibility to unsteadiness has been established. Steady jets can be achieved in two ways: by being discharged from deLaval nozzles (increasing the exit Mach number) or by being overpressured. The unsteady behavior is modeled as the collapse of a bubble in liquid; comparisons of collapse times show good agreement. A mechanism for the unsteadiness is discussed. It is proposed that the chugging is the response of the jet boundary to a pressure difference between the jet and surrounding liquid, which arises as the result of the rapid expansion of a light fluid into a dense ambient atmosphere. The flow is shown to be similar to the discharge of a gas from a nozzle into a channel of larger cross section. An upper limit to the pressure difference is determined based on estimates of the minimum base pressure for such channel flows; a lower limit is established for the collapse time. All experimental values are within the bounds. The derived values indicate that the pressure differences between the jet and liquid may be more than 90 percent of the ambient pressure.


Education is a primary way to equip children with the knowledge, skills, and competences necessary to live a life of harmonious relationships with diverse human beings. The escalating violence in the name of religion and ethnicity in Indonesia and other parts of the world is worrying, and one potential long-term solution is to educate school students in tolerance values. In the literature on tolerance education, proposed solutions have been mainly restricted to the analysis of curriculum content and instructional textbooks. This article argues that tolerance education should be approached holistically. This means that research and practices in this area should be directed to looking at the whole school, not just particular parts of the teaching and learning in a school. What is meant by a whole-school approach includes the school's policies and vision, the quality of the curriculum and teaching, leadership and management, culture, student activities, and collaboration with the wider community, which all together contribute to the promotion and nurturance of tolerance within the school community. This article proposes a whole-school approach to education for tolerance in Indonesia, a country with rich ethnic and religious diversity.


Urban planning has played an increasing role in response to threats to health and safety, but this can create problematical conflicts with other planning priorities. The author examines how the UK planning system deals in practice with the safety implications of hazardous installations involving the storage and use of toxic, explosive, and flammable substances. The responses that have been made by local planning authorities to hazard – development conflicts in the vicinity of hazardous installations are evaluated. A distinction is made between those responses focused on development restraint through refusing permission for housing, community facilities, and other sensitive land uses, and those focused on the hazard source. It is argued that these last are becoming increasingly significant despite limitations in the statutory powers available. Through focusing on recent developments and drawing on a wide range of experience, the author adds to the existing research literature on planning and hazardous installations in which the evolution of policy and practice in this area has hitherto been rather sporadically examined. The implications of a recent policy focus on brownfield redevelopment, of new European regulations for hazardous sites, and of wider trends in relationships between industry, regulators, and communities at risk are considered.


For decades Hollywood films have cast the American Indian as the savage, the medicine man and the noble warrior, stereotypes that either demonize or romanticize a people. Ritual and religion rarely receive much better treatment. One of the reasons for this poor representation is that filmmakers are coming from a white perspective. Director Chris Eyre and writer-director Sherman Alexie, both American Indians, have emerged in the last decade to rectify the situation, jointly creating the film Smoke Signals, a buddy road picture that forces the protagonists to rethink Indian identity and the bonds that tie them. Eyre and Alexie examine how their films deal with religion. Recommended Citation Fielding, Julien R. (2016) "Native American Religion and Film: Interviews with Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol7/iss1/5  Download


Irene is a fragile woman born to a German family in Romania, who has recently emigrated from her native country to West Germany. Politically and socially isolated, Irene moves within the orbit of three troubled men, while simultaneously embarking on an inner exploration of exile, homeland, and identity. ""The action in this volume may be slight, but Irene's innermost consciousness--where the political has indeed become the personal--is magnificently portrayed."" --New York Times Book Review ""[A] profound story of dislocation."" --Kirkus Reviews


Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disorder that manifests itself physically, cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally. Despite that AD influences all aspects of life of the sufferer, treatment focuses on the biological and cognitive aspects, fact which is problematic, both theoretically (as cognitive abilities decline, it is thought that the self is gradually lost) and practically (aspects that should be targeted are neglected). The result is that AD is approached differently from other neuropsychiatric disorders and there is no focus on the individual's actual wellbeing. A PersonCentered Approach recognizes and targets all aspects of the person. The model approaches the core of the self and its goal is to promote the holistic wellbeing of the person, leading to a life with quality despite the disorder. The importance of the PCA is made apparent through a case study of an 84year old man with AD. The interaction with the man began with sessions of cognitive reinforcement only, as requested by the caregivers, yet the spherical needs of the person and his low life quality lead to the PCA being applied. The treatment plan became more personalized (atuned to the preferences and mood of the man), more engaging (allowing a sense of agency, including the person in the process and the goal) and elements that allowed the expression of the self (roles, character) were added. After some time, a therapeutic alliance was developed and the man became more stable emotionally and cognitively, learned to manage life with his existing skills, and his subjective wellbeing increased, as reported by the caregivers, the man himself, and as revealed through questionnaires. A PCA in AD allows the person to maintain a sense of self, and a quality of everyday life, because it approaches individuals as persons and not as manifestations of disorders. Abstract Life quality and the self: A person-centered case study of Alzheimer's disease.


We present a number of results related to the fault tolerance of Cartesian product networks. We start by presenting a method for building containers (i.e., sets of node-disjoint paths) between any two nodes of a product network based on given containers for the factor networks. Then, we show that the best achievable fault diameter (i.e., diameter under maximum fault conditions), under reasonable network regularity and connectivity conditions, is equal to the fault-free diameter plus one. The concept of high fault resilience is then defined. We then prove that if each factor network is highly resilient, then their Cartesian product has minimal fault diameter. We derive from these results that Cartesian products of several popular networks are highly resilient and have minimal fault diameter equal to diameter plus one. These results spare future efforts that would be needed to individually determine the fault diameter of such networks as has been the practice with previously studied networks.


We demonstrate improved terahertz (THz) modulation using thermally crystallized germanium telluride (GeTe) thin films. GeTe is a chalcogenide material that exhibits a nonvolatile, amorphous to crystalline phase change at approximately 200 (cid:2) C, as well as six orders of magnitude decreased electrical resistivity. In this study, amorphous GeTe thin films were sputtered on sapphire substrates and then tested using THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). The test samples, heated in-situ while collecting THz-TDS measurements, exhibited a gradual absorbance increase, an abrupt nonvolatile reduction at the transition temperature, followed by another gradual increase in absorbance. The transition temperature was verified by conducting similar thermal tests while monitoring electrical resistivity. THz transmittance modulation data were investigated between 10 and 110 cm (cid:3) 1 (0.3–3.3 THz). A peak modulation of approximately 99% was achieved at 2.3 THz with a 100 nm GeTe film on a sapphire substrate. After isolating the sapphire and the crystalline GeTe ( c-GeTe) absorbance contributions, the results showed THz modulations ranging from 88.5% to 91.5% that were attributed solely to the single layer of transitioned c-GeTe. These results strongly motivate using GeTe or other chalcogenide thin films in THz modulators, filters, and metamaterial applications. V C 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported


This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of Mingle, a secure distributed search system. Each participating host runs a Mingle server, which maintains an inverted index of the local file system. Users initiate peer-to-peer keyword searches by typing keywords to lightweight Mingle clients. Central to Mingle are its access control mechanisms and its insistence on user convenience. For access control, we introduce the idea of access-right mapping, which provides a convenient way for file owners to specify access permissions. Access control is supported through a single sign-on mechanism that allows users to conveniently establish their identity to Mingle servers, such that subsequent authentication occurs automatically, with minimal manual involvement. Preliminary performance evaluation suggests that Mingle is both feasible and scalable.


The behavior of Microphallus turgidus cercariae was examined and compared to microhabitat selection of the second intermediate hosts of the parasite, Palaemonetes spp. grass shrimp. Cercariae were tested for photokinetic and geotactic responses, and a behavioral ethogram was established for cercariae in control and grass shrimp-conditioned brackish water. Photokinesis trials were performed using a half-covered Petri dish, and geotaxis trials used a graduated cylinder. Both photokinesis and geotaxis trials were performed in lighted and unlighted conditions. In 9 of 10 photokinesis experiments, over half of the cercariae swam horizontally under the covered half of a Petri dish in both the lighted and the unlighted trials. However, movement of the cercariae to the covered half of the dish was highest (81.4%) when the parasites were exposed to light. In the geotaxis study, most cercariae were found in the bottom third of a graduated cylinder water column in both the lighted and unlighted trials. The most frequently observed activity of individual cercariae in a lighted Petri dish was swimming on the bottom of the dish. Activity patterns of the cercariae were not affected by shrimp-conditioned water. Movement of the cercariae away from light into dark, active swimming at or near the bottom of the water column, and a lack of response to host odors suggest that the cercariae utilize search patterns that place the parasite in the preferred microhabitat of the principle second intermediate host, the grass shrimp P. pugio.


Learning to Argue in a Connected World: The Arc of Productive Disciplinary Engagement In a High School Academic Social Network Paul Robert-John Teske Dr. Deborah McCutchen, Chair Professor, Educational Psychology College of Education Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Support Calls to virtually break down school walls through connected and blended learning environments are ubiquitous as of late as technologies in service of learning evolve and as schools are under pressure to change. Within the subject area of English Language Arts, there is a dearth of research or information on how to facilitate these new, digitally enhanced methods in high schools in a way that approaches or leads to productive disciplinary engagement (PDE). The current study describes one such scenario in which an academic social network (Remix) was used for the retrieval of curriculum, the storage of student work, and the exchange for both social and academic conversations with an entire freshman class of high school students across three teachers and eight classrooms. The seven-week curriculum focused on learning to read, analyze, and write evidence-based, classical arguments. Experts in argumentation (e.g., lawyers, journalists, grant writers, exEnglish teachers, etc.) interacted with the students three times during the arc of the unit to give targeted feedback to students during their growing understanding of argumentation. To determine the degree to which PDE occurred within the platform, the posts of twentyfive randomly selected students, who had at least one interaction with an expert, were downloaded and coded for Social and Cognitive Presence—two domains of the Community of Inquiry Model. The analysis illustrated that Social Presence acted as connective tissue to academic tasks and that socializing moved to an academic orientation as students collaborated and worked toward a common goal. Cognitive Presence also moved from trigger events which included recognizing and puzzling over contemporary issues to the exploration and integration of ideas as the unit progressed. The discourses associated with academic social networks proved slightly troublesome for students, lending credence that they need more practice in such platforms when posting and responding to academic content. A second investigation was completed to look more specifically at expert feedback in relation to PDE components, argumentation, and curricular activity. Differences between the three feedback interactions proved scientifically significant, thus illustrating experts adjusted their responses to students depending on the task. Experts moved from problematizing student arguments at the trigger stage of topic selection to directing students as to how to fix their arguments during the integration stage of production, thus holding students accountable to disciplinary norms as the unit progressed. Advice for how to utilize a social network and work with outside experts is also covered.


CONTEXT
Previous studies showed improved dynamic-balance (DB) performance after core-stability (CS) exercises in populations with chronic low back pain. Although clinical massage plus exercise is likely to better enhance analgesia than exercise alone, its efficacy on balance remains unclear.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the immediate effects of CS exercises plus myofascial trigger-point (MTrP) therapy in comparison with CS exercises alone on DB performance, pressure-pain threshold (PPT), and cross-sectional area of active MTrPs in patients with clinical instability of the lumbar spine and chronic myofascial pain syndrome.

DESIGN
Randomized, assessor-blind, test-retest.

SETTING
University research laboratory.

PATIENTS
10 physically active adults (5 men, 5 women).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Single-leg DB performance and side-to-side ratios in 2 planes of motion (frontal, sagittal), as well as PPT and cross-sectional area of active MTrPs, were measured using stabilometry, pressure algometry, and real-time ultrasound scanning, respectively.

INTERVENTIONS
The 1st group performed CS exercises alone, whereas the same exercise program was applied in the 2nd group plus cross-fiber friction on active MTrPs (3.5 min/MTrP).

RESULTS
Within-group statistically and clinically significant differences were observed only for group II in PPT. However, group I also exhibited a large effect size with clinically significant changes from baseline on this outcome. Furthermore, patients in group II clinically improved their balance ratios and differed from group I at posttest in sagittal-plane DB performance of the painful side.

CONCLUSION
CS exercises immediately increase the PPT of active MTrPs in physically active adults with clinical instability of the lumbar spine and chronic myofascial pain syndrome. When MTrP therapy is added, side-to-side asymmetries in DB are minimized.


This master's thesis investigates William Shakespeare's development and treatment of the conscience in his plays Richard, Duke of York and Richard III. This study and investigation derive from a point of academic contention with claims made in Sandra Bonetto's essay "Coward Conscience and Bad Conscience in Shakespeare and Nietzsche." This thesis investigates the influence of theological studies, political philosophy, dramatic trends, and post Reformation discourse between the Catholic and Protestant churches which helped shape Shakespeare's perception of the conscience at the time of his writing. This thesis attempts to arrive at conclusions by looking at the works of figures like theologian John Calvin, political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli, playwright Christopher Marlowe, and Protestant martyrologist John Foxe, among others. Though these authors assume critical points in the discussion of conscience, but their work cannot be regarded as conclusive by any means. The discussion of conscience engages incredibly diverse fields of thought and had done so for hundreds of years. In examining Shakespeare's development of the conscience, this thesis also engages with what writers from Nietzsche to Bonetto have, in various terms, identified as Shakepeare's "dialectical impulse." Shakespeare's investigation of the conscience resists easy answers and moralizing. Rather, his drama juxtaposes and amplifies characters and ideas, placing them in dialogue with each other so that the reader or audience member discovers an occasion to enter critically into the dialogue.


With booming economic growth Asia will play increasingly important role in global economic and energy matters. World primary energy consumption is projected to expand at an average annual growth rate of 2.1 percent by 2020. About 70 percent of the increase would be accounted for by non-OECD member economies, two thirds of which are from the Asian region. The increase in demand for oil in Asia will most likely amplify the dependency on shipments from other regions (particularly the Middle East). Ensuring energy security would therefore turn out to be a vital task. In Asia (particularly East Asia), the achievement of the three Es (economic development, energy security, and environmental preservation) could no longer be viewed as a task to be addressed by each economy separately. Instead, it should be approached through regionwide cooperation - a goal of common interest.


"The Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety" which was signed by 120 transnational textile corporations on 13th May 2013 and "Memorandum of Understanding" on the payment of compensations for the workers who had lost their lives or were injured signify a new development with its legally binding aspect. After the fires and collapse of factories in Bangladesh that led to death of hundreds of workers triggered a local labour movement and a transnational solidarity campaign was initiated by Global Unions
and some NGOs. Bangladesh Accord is consequence of the negotiations began after these movements. However, it is possible to witness a tension among the local labour movement and Global Unions on the issues as negotiation process and application of the Accord. Therefore, despite the earning of some serious rights, Bangladeshi labour is understood to be not satisfied by this process and continued its struggle. This article will debate the reasons of the tension within the labour side among the local movement and the Global Unions.


How does crime relate to the quality of life in communities? What role does fear play in influencing crime patterns? What is the effect of crime on a community's school's teachers, and pupils? How does environmental design affect crime? Can household and community mobilization change crime patterns? Examining the ways in which communities both affect crime and are affected by it, this volume seeks to explain the wide variation of crime levels among different communities. As it attempts to redress the bias toward describing crime in terms of individuals, "Communities and Crime" brings concentrated attention to crime at a community level, suggesting ways in which neighborhoods can change their crime patterns.


The problem of learning a policy, a task representation mapping from world states to actions, lies at the heart of many robotic applications. One approach to acquiring a task policy is learning from demonstration, an interactive technique in which a robot learns a policy based on example state to action mappings provided by a human teacher.
This thesis introduces Confidence-Based Autonomy, a mixed-initiative single robot demonstration learning algorithm that enables the robot and teacher to jointly control the learning process and selection of demonstration training data. The robot to identifies the need for and requests demonstrations for specific parts of the state space based on confidence thresholds characterizing the uncertainty of the learned policy. The robot's demonstration requests are complemented by the teacher's ability to provide supplementary corrective demonstrations in error cases. An additional algorithmic component enables choices between multiple equally applicable actions to be represented explicitly within the robot's policy through the creation of option classes.
Based on the single-robot Confidence-Based Autonomy algorithm, this thesis introduces a task and platform independent multi-robot demonstration learning framework for teaching multiple robots. Building upon this framework, we formalize three approaches to teaching emergent collaborative behavior based on different information sharing strategies. We provide detailed evaluations of all algorithms in multiple simulated and robotic domains, and present a case study analysis of the scalability of the presented techniques using up to seven robots.


Dynamic Electroluminescence Imaging (DEI) is a technique used to observe semiconductor devices as they operate. Much like a traditional oscilloscope, the technique delivers waveform information that is useful for assessing the operation of the circuits that comprise a device. It can be thought of as a non-contact "optical oscilloscope probe". The technique has two major advantages over traditional electrical oscilloscope probing. The technique is noninvasive and has a theoretical bandwidth approaching 100 GHz. This means that very fast signals can be observed without unduly loading or otherwise interfering with the circuitry under test. Moreover, the characterization of signals at individual nodes along a signal path allows problems that arise from intervening interconnects and transmission lines to be identified. This paper will show several examples of the radio frequency (RF) measurement capabilities of this technique that have been demonstrated in our laboratory.


Retrieval of bio/geophysical variables from remote sensing imagery is an important research field. Due to the development and availability of different EO satellites, especially the ones with hyperspectral sensors, the combined use of radar and optical images is expected to provide the chance for better, more reliable and continuous retrieval of land parameters and to improve the accuracy of retrieval algorithms due to the combined use of complementary€ observation principles. Synergy of optical and radar data became a challenging task in Remote Sensing. This thesis addresses some of its main aspects. To this aim the thesis has several goals to reach: i) To develop and to evaluate possible strategies for integrating different data types, with the special focus on radar and optical data synergy, and to quantify the added value of their integration. For achieving this goal one of the specific objectives is to develop an algorithm which allows retrieval of land parameters by exclusively using optical, radar and one (or few) different strategies for combining optical and radar images; ii) To study challenges in land parameters retrieval in different environmental conditions. The focus is put on crop fields and on mountain grassland: iii) To provide a detailed description of the target observed from the remote sensor at radar frequencies and to adapt (or to develop) models to simulate the interactions of the radar signal with the area of interest. Based on direct models that predict radar response the retrieval algorithms need to be developed. These inverse methods should be able to use a physical description and the knowledge obtained with the direct models. This thesis focuses on parameter retrieval at the field scale. Since in microwave domain only SAR is able to monitor soil and vegetation proprieties and their variability down to the field scale, SAR data are used in all analyses presented. The special focus is put on soil moisture retrieval. Soil moisture is an Essential Climate Variable which retrieval is very complex and often an ill-posed problem. Estimation of vegetation height and leaf area index is also addressed. The work carried out in this thesis is oriented in developing innovative and improved estimation strategies that can overcome the limitations of the existing methodologies. In particular, the following main novelties are proposed in this dissertation: i) Estimation of soil moisture and vegetation height from hyperspectral imagery with machine learning method, SVR; ii) Soil moisture retrieval in crops by joining SAR discrete radiative transfer model and kernel algorithm. Tor Vergata RTM is used as a direct model to simulate the radar response and to train SVR. The method is evaluated on real radar images; iii) Soil moisture retrieval in Alpine grassland with synergy of optical and SAR images using GPR trained by model simulations. Vegetation parameters in the RTM are extracted from optical images. One temporal dataset is used to calibrate some model parameters and to train GPR, and another to test the algorithm performance; iv)Synergy of multi-sensor observations in soil moisture retrieval in mountain areas with GPR. The retrieval is based on the inference of an experimental model from measured reference samples. For all addressed topics in this thesis, both qualitative and quantitative analysis of results achieved on sensor acquired images verify the good performances and robustness of the proposed techniques.


In this paper we analyze and extend a recently developed "task-swapping procedure" for improving schedules in oversubscribed situations. In such situations, there are tasks which cannot be directly added to the current schedule without introducing capacity conflicts. A schedule is improved if one or more of these tasks can be feasibly included, and the goal of task swapping is to rearrange some portion of the current schedule to make this possible. Key to effective task swapping is an ability to exploit the scheduling flexibility inherent in the constraints associated with various scheduled tasks, and previous work has shown that the use of retraction heuristics that favor tasks with greater rescheduling flexibility can give rise to strong schedule improvement capabilities. We extend this work by developing and evaluating several improvements to the core task swapping procedure. We introduce three pruning techniques and show that each significantly improves computational efficiency while maintaining solution quality. We then investigate the possibility of improving the "end" solutions by stochastically exploring the "neighborhood" around them, and demonstrate that improved solutions are possible given the ability to spend additional time.


BIOINFO Project Management, ISSN: 2249–1732 & E-ISSN: 2249–1740, a broad-based journal was founded on two key tenets: To publish the most exciting researches with respect to the subjects of Project Management. Secondly, to provide a rapid turn-around time possible for reviewing and publishing, and to disseminate the articles freely for research, teaching and reference purposes.


EFFECTS OF SUBSTRATE WARMING ON SESSILE MARINE INVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES IN MONTEREY BAY, CALIFORNIA By Stephen Loiacono Increasing average global sea temperatures are one of the most direct and alarming consequences of climate change, yet it is still unclear how sessile marine communities will respond in the nearand long-term. In addition, it is unclear if warming ocean temperatures will facilitate marine invasions or primarily benefit native species. To simulate the effects of increasing ocean temperatures on sessile communities, heated settlement plates (n=7) were used in an in situ field experiment to investigate how an increase in substrate temperature (2.5°C above ambient) would affect recruitment and community development as compared to unheated control plates (n=9). Experimental treatments were deployed in the municipal harbor of Monterey, California, which was characterized by an assemblage reflecting a mix of native and invasive species (mainly bryozoans, sponges, tunicates, and tube worms). Following three months of community development in the field, heated plates experienced significantly higher rates of initial recruitment, 33% increase in wet weight, increased percent cover of native and invasive species, and an increase of species with both historically southern and northern range limits. This study reinforces the need for in situ experimentation to understand the effects of temperature on the dynamics shaping marine communities. In situ studies are valuable because they incorporate all ambient factors and are therefore a more reliable predictor for defining the consequences of


The 'new institutionalism' had led to increasing emphasis on the 'embed dedness' of organizations in local social systems. In this journal, Sorge (1991) and Whitley (1994) have shown, in particular, how the dominant forms of organization within countries or sectors are shaped by distinct national sys tems. The liability of these institutionalist approaches, however, is a focus on broad comparisons that gives little access to the diversity that is often observ able on the ground. Examining nine Taiwanese computer firms during the 1980s and early 1990s, this paper demonstrates that their strategies followed no singular system logic, displaying instead a wide scope for strategic divers ity. The paper argues that this kind of diversity can be explained not by rejecting institutionalism, but by recognizing the plural systems — business, technology and political — in which the dis-embedded actors of modernity now engage. Such a pluralistic approach has the potential to extend institu tionalist analysis beyond the broadly comparative to the strategies of individual firms.


In the UK and elsewhere the use of the term 'sustainable brownfield regeneration' has resulted from the interweaving of two key policy themes, comprising 'sustainable development' and 'brownfield regeneration'. This paper provides a critical overview of brownfield policy within the context of the emerging sustainable development agenda in the UK, and examines the development industry's role and attitudes towards key aspects of sustainable development and brownfield regeneration. The paper analyses results from a survey of commercial and residential developers carried out in mid‐2004, underpinned by structured interviews with eleven developers in 2004–2005, which form part of a two‐and‐half‐year EPSRC‐funded project. The results suggest that despite the increasing focus on sustainability in government policy, the development industry seems ill at ease with precisely how sustainable development can be implemented in brownfield schemes. These and other findings, relating to sustainability issues (including the impact of climate change on future brownfield development), have important ramifications for brownfield regeneration policy in the UK. In particular, the research highlights the need for better metrics and benchmarks to be developed to measure 'sustainable brownfield regeneration'. There also needs to be greater awareness and understanding of alternative clean‐up technologies to 'dig and dump'.


Conditional random fields (CRFs) provide a flexible and powerful model for sequence labeling problems. However, existing learning algorithms are slow, particularly in problems with large numbers of potential input features and feature combinations. This paper describes a new algorithm for training CRFs via gradient tree boosting. In tree boosting, the CRF potential functions are represented as weighted sums of regression trees, which provide compact representations of feature interactions. So the algorithm does not explicitly consider the potentially large parameter space. As a result, gradient tree boosting scales linearly in the order of the Markov model and in the order of the feature interactions, rather than exponentially as in previous algorithms based on iterative scaling and gradient descent. Gradient tree boosting also makes it possible to use instance weighting (as in C4.5) and surrogate splitting (as in CART) to handle missing values. Experimental studies of the effectiveness of these two methods (as well as standard imputation and indicator feature methods) show that instance weighting is the best method in most cases when feature values are missing at random.


As computers and computer networks become commonplace in the home and in our educational institutions, educators are searching for ways to make them effective tools for instruction. Virtual environments that support learning through exploration and experimentation hold the promise of being such a tool. In this paper, we introduce an intelli gent computer agent whose purpose is to guide children in their discovery of such worlds, and by so doing, to increase both their enjoyment and the effectiveness of that discovery. Our guide is modeled on Merlyn, the befuddled seer and tutor to young King Arthur in T. H. White's The Once and Future King. Merlyn is an autonomous agent that also has an integrated personali ty and emotional model, since he is intended to be a companion rather than a reference. We describe a particular kind of virtual world, the MUD (or Multi-User Dimension), that Merlyn is designed to interact with. We explain how he makes decisions in such a world, and how these places can be annotated with information to help him understand why they are there and how to use them. Merlyn can use these annotations to learn more about the world as the child travels, and this allows him to explain the world to the child, to suggest activities that may interest the child, and to participate with the child – in playing games, for example. We describe two prototype implementations of Merlyn, and describe future additions for a full -featured version. With Merlyn as a companion, a child can be guided into strategically-chosen learning activities while having a friendly, entertaining experience in the virtual environment.


Sweden is often characterized as being a generous country when it comes to allowing immigrants entrance. However, since the national government is dependent on the local level for acceptance of refugees, there is a potential risk that a discrepancy emerges between the number of immigrants accepted at the national level and the number accepted at the local level. In fact, today, a significant number of municipalities hesitates to accept agreements with the government. These municipalities disregard the large flows of refugees that reach Sweden daily and oppose the pressure from Swedish authorities to contribute to the upholding of a continued generous migration policy. To be able to understand the motives of these reluctant municipalities we need to know more about what characterizes them. In this paper, we investigate both the structural and the political patterns of these municipalities and explain how they differ from those that do receive refugees. Drawing from the concepts of immigration control and multilevel governance, we deduce a number of hypotheses about how structural predictors will have an impact on the formation of local policy. Deriving from an extensive new data set of all Swedish municipalities for a handful of years, we outline the characteristics of these cases. Our findings suggest that complete immigration control is not only quantitatively different from a low level of reception, but also qualitatively different. That is, it seems as if some of the mechanisms at work when a municipality refrains from refugee reception altogether are not the same as those resulting in agreements at low levels. Instead, local opinion, expressed as the view towards refugee reception among the established parties, appears to be the factor most consistently showing importance throughout our analyses. One possible interpretation of this might be that while levels of reception, to some extent, are guided by structural prerequisites, such as the economy, the situation in the labour market and the capacity to accommodate refugees, etc., the decision to completely refrain from reception is primarily guided by ideological motives.


IoT systems are becoming an increasingly important component of the civil and industrial infrastructure. With the growth of these IoT ecosystems, their complexity is also growing exponentially. In this paper we explore the problem of testing and evaluating large scale IoT systems at design time. To this end we employ simulated sensors with the physical and geographical characteristics of real sensors. Moreover, we propose Sensyml, a simulation environment that is capable of generating big data from cyber-physical models and real-world data. To the best of our knowledge it is the first approach to use a hybrid integration of real and simulated sensor data, that is also capable of being integrated into existing IoT systems. Sensyml is a cloud based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) system that enables users to test both functionality and scalability of their IoT applications.


In 100 pages, you will learn to create and use widgets using Dashcode. Widgets are simple, typically small applications for a specific purpose, such as a weather report, a calculator, a stock quote, and the like that reside on the Mac Dashboard. Building these before Dashcode was time consuming though not hard; but now, you can whip up a widget fast. Creating Mac Widgets with Dashcode teaches you how. Up to date with Leopard The fast and easy way to learn to build widgets. Youll be building widgets in an hour. Dashcode makes widget development simple. What youll learn Basics of Dashcode development Using templates Using JavaScript for more complex widgets Including user input in your widget Using scripting with your widget Importing data into your widget Who is this book for? Anyone interested in taking a shot at doing widgets. Widgets are easy and are quite popular, so there are a lot of hackers interested in doing it. Widgets can be built for a users specific needs, and you dont need to be a programmer to do it.


Bilirubin, resulting largely from the turnover of hemoglobin, is found in the plasma in two main forms: unconjugated or conjugated with glucuronic acid. Unconjugated bilirubin is transported into hepatocytes. There, it is glucuronidated by UGT1A1 and secreted into the bile canaliculi. We report a genome wide association scan in 4300 Sardinian individuals for total serum bilirubin levels. In addition to the two known loci previously involved in the regulation of bilirubin levels, UGT1A1 (P = 6.2 x 10(-62)) and G6PD (P = 2.5 x 10(-8)), we observed a strong association on chromosome 12 within the SLCO1B3 gene (P = 3.9 x 10(-9)). Our findings were replicated in an independent sample of 1860 Sardinians and in 832 subjects from the Old Order Amish (combined P < 5 x 10(-14)). We also show that SLC01B3 variants contribute to idiopathic mild unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. Thus, SLC01B3 appears to be involved in the regulation of serum bilirubin levels in healthy individuals and in some bilirubin-related disorders that are only partially explained by other known gene variants.


People with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), a muscular dystrophy, often experience severe chronic fatigue. For them, daily life is top sport. One would expect that being active leads to a higher level of fatigue. The opposite is true. Both aerobic exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), including graded exercise therapy, can reduce the severity of chronic fatigue. After 16 weeks of CBT or aerobic exercise, the level of experienced fatigued decreased and the level of physical activity increased significantly. The benefits of both interventions extended to the 12-week follow-up period, probably due to the fact that more than 70% of the participants continued their adjusted level of activity. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements of the upper leg muscles were collected before and after the intervention period. The progression of fatty replacement of muscle tissue was significantly lowered by both interventions. Thus, a physically active lifestyle can be recommended to FSHD patients with severe fatigue to improve and maintain their functional capacities and health.


Purpose: To achieve the highest performance, manufacturers tend to transform their management frameworks and develop growth strategies. Utilizing the value chain concept authors analyzed the elements of value chain in the context of fast moving consumer goods' (FMCG) environment. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study involves outputs of two expert surveys generating the Osterwalder's pattern as well as modelling the omnichannel environment and three basic standpoints – FMCG frameworks. Key success factors and their strength were evaluated. Findings: The results of the study form the methodological basis for improving the efficiency of management of trade companies. The findings indicate a certain similarity of the structure of the standard FMCG implementation systems selected by experts from distributor warehouses with the participation of structured retail and the implementation of standard FMCG through unstructured retail. At the same time, the business model used in the implementation of emotional FMCG with minimal participation of structured retail differs from the two similar options mentioned above in almost all parameters, excluding key activities. Practical implications: Recommendations on the structure of management systems (including the specifics of business models) could be used by manufacturers in the formation of value chains involving the three emerging branches of retail trade in consumer goods. Originality/Value: The structure of value chains based of key success factors on three emerging markets, as well as the features of values chains' management systems were first described.


We examine the determinants of the decision to relocate activities abroad for firms located in OECD countries. We argue that particular firm-specific features play a crucial role for the link between employment protection and relocation. Stricter employment protection laws over time in the current production location discourage firms' relocation abroad. While larger, more productive firms and firms with higher labour intensities have, ceteris paribus, higher propensities to relocate, they also face higher exit barriers if the country from which they consider relocating has strict employment protection laws. Our predictions are supported empirically, using firm level panel data for 28 OECD countries over the period 1997-2007.


Having a credit record and a credit score can be an important determinant of credit access. Yet, surprisingly little is known about people who lack credit records or scores. This paper provides the first documented analysis of the characteristics of consumers without credit records, called "credit invisibles," and of consumers whose records are treated as "unscorable" by a widely used credit-scoring model. Our estimates suggest that 26 million adults, representing about 11 percent of the adult population, lack credit records. An additional 8.3 percent, or 19.6 million adults have credit records that are unscored. The incidence of having a credit record is not evenly distributed. Young, elderly, minority, and lower-income consumers are more likely to be credit invisible or have an unscored record. Additionally, our analysis finds that observable credit performance is not widely available for such consumers, which may hinder the ability of alternative data to expand credit access for these consumers.


Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we estimate a dynamic model of health and employment. We estimate how transitory and persistent health shocks affect employment over time. In a first step, we formulate and estimate a dynamic model of health. The procedure accounts for measurement error and the possibility that people might justify their employment status by reporting bad health. We find that health is well represented by the sum of a transitory white noise process and a persistent AR(1) process. Next, we use the method of simulated moments to estimate the employment response to these shocks. We find that persistent shocks have much bigger effects on employment than transitory shocks, and that these persistent shocks are long lived. For this reason employment is strongly correlated with lagged health, a fact that the usual cross-sectional estimates do not account for. We also show that accounting for the dynamics of health and employment leads to larger estimates of health's effects on employment than what simple OLS estimates of health on employment would imply. We argue that the dynamic effect of health on employment could be generated by a model with human capital accumulation, where negative health shocks slowly reduce the human capital stock, and thus, gradually cause people to exit the labor market.


At the beginning of the 21st century, rural policy remains one of the most important areas of public policy; huge financial and human resources are devoted to the implementation of this policy measures. The aim of the article is to provide holistic evaluation of the goals, means and key achievements of Lithuanian agricultural policy and to identify possible areas and ways of improvement. The diversity of agricultural policy measures applied in Lithuania after the restoration of independence in 1990 and achievements of the policy are analysed on the basis of new approach – the theory of qualitative structures. The study explores how policy measures to accelerate the process of industrialization in Lithuanian agriculture after the privatization of kolkhozes and sovkhozes have encouraged and supported private farms to implement extensive growth, intensification, specialization, risk management, collaboration and innovation production strategies, and what results they have achieved. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.18.1.23128


Objective: To investigate the prognostic significance of ST-segment elevation (STE) in aVR associated with ST-segment depression (STD) in other leads in patients with non-STE acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS).
Background: In NSTE-ACS patients, STD has been extensively associated with severe coronary lesions and poor outcomes. The prognostic role of STE in aVR is uncertain.
Methods: We enrolled 888 consecutive patients with NSTE-ACS. They were divided into two groups according to the presence or not on admission ECG of aVR STE≥ 1mm and STD (defined as high risk ECG pattern). The primary and secondary endpoints were: in-hospital cardiovascular (CV) death and the rate of culprit left main disease (LMD).
Results: Patients with high risk ECG pattern (n=121) disclosed a worse clinical profile compared to patients (n=575) without [median GRACE (Global-Registry-of-Acute-Coronary-Events) risk score =142 vs. 182, respectively]. A total of 75% of patients underwent coronary angiography. The rate of in-hospital CV death was 3.9%. On multivariable analysis patients who had the high risk ECG pattern showed an increased risk of CV death (OR=2.88, 95%CI 1.05-7.88) and culprit LMD (OR=4.67,95%CI 1.86-11.74) compared to patients who had not. The prognostic significance of the high risk ECG pattern was maintained even after adjustment for the GRACE risk score (OR = 2.28, 95%CI:1.06-4.93 and OR = 4.13, 95%CI:2.13-8.01, for primary and secondary endpoint, respectively). Conclusions: STE in aVR associated with STD in other leads predicts in-hospital CV death and culprit LMD. This pattern may add prognostic information in patients with NSTE-ACS on top of recommended scoring system.


This paper analyzes the approximation of human movement which preserves dynamic balance under perturbations using Support Vector Machine (SVM) regression. The quality of approximation was evaluated by two criteria. The first one is deviation of approximated motion from the recorded one, while the other criteria is position of the Zero Moment Point (ZMP), because the dynamic balance has to be maintained. For the human movement, ZMP is constantly within the support area. For the approximated motion applied to humanoid the position of ZMP is calculated. It is possible that the ZMP leaves the support area due to deviation of approximated motion from the recorded one, as well as the deviation of dynamic parameters of humanoid from the real human parameters. Initial motion was recorded from humans and then approximated. Approximated data are applied on humanoid robot model and resulting motion is observed. The resulting motion obtained by SVM regression approximation were compared with cubic spline approximation. The approximated motion and calculated ZMP were then used to train a new SVM. This SVM was then used to generate motion in a humanoid robot based on the desired ZMP position. Comparative analysis of results indicates that there are significant potential applications of SVM regression in humanoid robotics for approximation and generation of motion, as well as for other tasks which require the use of artificial intelligence.


1. Doppler echocardiographic indices of diastolic function and systemic haemodynamics were studied in response to infusions of angiotensin II (1, 2, 5 and 10 ng min-1 kg-1), D-aldosterone (2, 4, 10 and 20 ng min-1 kg-1) and placebo [0.9% (w/v) NaCl] in ten normal male subjects. 2. Dose-related increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure were observed with angiotensin II infusion at rates of 2 ng min-1 kg-1 and above, whereas no changes in blood pressure occurred with D-aldosterone. No changes in aortic stroke distance or heart rate were seen with either angiotensin II or aldosterone infusion. 3. Compared with placebo, angiotensin II infusion produced a dose-related prolongation of the isovolumic relaxation time [mean and 95% confidence intervals 12.0 (8.2-15.8) ms, P < 0.001] at 10 ng min-1 kg-1, and a significant reduction in the ratio between early and late transmitral flow velocity integrals at 2 ng min-1 kg-1, [-0.84 (-1.63 to -0.05), P < 0.05] and 5 ng min-1 kg-1 [-0.76 (-1.47 to -0.05), P < 0.05]. No changes in Doppler echocardiographic indices of diastolic function were observed with D-aldosterone infusion. 4. These data suggest that angiotensin II, even at a sub-pressor concentration, produces an impairment of left ventricular diastolic filling, which occurs independently of its effect on aldosterone release.


Data regarding antioxidant and antifungal properties of yarrow extracts and essential oils can be found on several other studies; however, due to the fact that the composition of the natural products varies from one geographical area to another and with the extraction procedure, the present study contributes to a better characterisation of natural products obtained from A. millefolium L. The extract was obtained from shade dried plant in 1:1 mixture water-ethanol, while the essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation. The products were characterized by modern analytical techniques and in terms of phytochemical assays. The antioxidant and antifungal effects of the products were explored. The analytical characterisation revealed the chemical composition (identifying 41 components in the extract and 82 components in the essential oil). The extract and the essential oil present a very good antioxidant effect (determined by two methods). The natural materials analysed revealed a very important in vitro antifungal activity on the studied fungal lines. The antioxidant and antifungal potential of the Achillea millefolium L. extract could find applications in the formulation of herbal products with improved action, both for human consumption and as tools to control mycotoxigenic fungi.


Using extensive corpus data, this paper investigates whether low-frequency complex prepositions (e.g. by dint of , in conformity with ) can be interpreted as units of language structure even though they cannot have undergone the processes typical of more frequent grammaticalizing constructions. I critically evaluate previous treatments of frequency and discuss alternative modes of interpreting corpus data, e.g. by drawing a distinction between conceptual and absolute frequency as reflections of the cognitive representation of linguistic items. I also suggest that formal properties of grammaticalizing constructions may play an important role and that "grammaticalization by analogy" may account for the establishment of low-frequency units of language. Finally, the paper offers a detailed discussion of the methodological issues involved in using corpus data to study low-frequency phenomena.


Gallium nitride (GaN) is a wide bandgap semiconductor with many important applications in optoelectronics, photonics, and both high power and high temperature operation devices. Understanding the surface deposition mechanisms and energetics for different precursors is essential to improving thin-film crystalline quality and growth process requirements for extended engineering applications. Here, we use ab initio calculations to study the reaction mechanisms of GaN thin film growth on (0001) surface from ammonia (NH_3) and hydrazine (N_2H_4), nitrogen precursors, and trimethylgallium (TMG) and triethylgallium (TEG), gallium precursors. We find that the initial dehydrogenation of N_2H_4 is more facile than that of NH_3, at 1.15 versus 13.61 kcal/mol, respectively, and that neighboring adsorbed surface hydrogens reduce the barriers for further decomposition of NH_2 and NH. We also find that the growth of nitrogen layers is a reaction-limited process rather than diffusion-limited at low adsorbate coverage. On the other hand, the deposition of Ga on a nitrogen rich surface via TMG is limited by the abstraction reaction of the second methyl (CH_3) group in TMG, with a barrier of 42.54 kcal/mol. The mechanisms of adsorption of TMG and TEG are different, whereas TMG dissociatively chemisorbs releasing one methane group, the beta-hydrate elimination (C_2H_4 + H) in TEG is favored through surface interactions (without chemisorption) at a comparable energy barrier to the first CH3 dissociation in TMG. This does not suggest a more favorable thermodynamic route to low-temperature growth, but it does favor TEG for avoiding the explicit abstraction or insertion of C groups during metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) or atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques.


Following the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the United States has activated a highly focused and high profile set of legal, political, and military responses to perceived threats to its security at home and abroad. Legal responses to the 'war on terror' have been extensive and central to this undertaking. It is a well-known truism that courts (both national and international) tend to give considerable deference to states when political or military crises are at hand. Courts usually seek to avoid direct legal confrontation with states, and if required to adjudicate on the validity of legal responses to a perceived threat, demonstrate timidity and caution. The Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision departs significantly from that general pattern. This article focuses its attention on the Court's assessment and subsequent application of international humanitarian law to the issues raised in Hamdan. In doing so, I start from the position that the majority was generally right in its instincts about the relevance of humanitarian law and the appropriateness of using humanitarian law norms to answer the questions posed in Hamdan. Nonetheless, I also suggest that the Court's reasoning, in all the opinions offered, illustrates a certain clumsiness of application and a dearth of analytical rigor, leaving some very important legal matters unresolved. The pervasiveness of humanitarian law to the overall reasoning of the justices is a highly visible aspect of the Hamdan decision. Particularly striking are its more general views on the enforceability of the Geneva Conventions and specifically that of Common Article 3. This Article explores what Hamdan tells us about Common Article 3, particularly where its application comes in the context of a contested war in which a call on the legal status of conflict has political as well as legal consequences. This exploration has two aspects. First, this Article will address whether the Court correctly identified and applied this legal standard. Second, this Article will assess the Court's articulation of the boundaries of a treaty provision which has a history of patchy and inconsistent application. I suggest that one important meta-narrative to this exploration is the idea that the Supreme Court's decision to use Common Article 3 advances an anti-thesis to the rhetoric and policy of the current administration: that there is a gap in the law regulating state interface with other states and non-state entities in the context of the war on terror.


We show that in wave packet tunneling, localization of the transmitted particle amounts to a quantum measurement of the delay it experiences in the barrier. With no external degree of freedom involved, the envelope of the wave packet plays the role of the initial pointer state. Under tunneling conditions such ''self-measurement'' is necessarily weak, and the Hartman effect just reflects the general tendency of weak values to diverge, as postselection in the final state becomes improbable. We also demonstrate that it is a good precision, or a 'not really weak' quantum measurement: no matter how wide the barrier d, it is possible to transmit a wave packet with a width {sigma} small compared to the observed advancement. As is the case with all weak measurements, the probability of transmission rapidly decreases with the ratio {sigma}/d.


Women poets of the nineteenth century remain for the most part marginalized in the study of French Romanticism, despite the historical fact that women turned to poetry in increasing numbers during the July Monarchy. The poetess's enduringly ambiguous situation is reflected in the linguistic instability of the terminology used to designate her. This essay takes as its starting point the linguistic uncertainty surrounding the term "poetesse" in the nineteenth century and compares it to Anne Mellor's definitions of the poetess and the female poet. In a survey of French Romantic poetesses (Desbordes-Valmore, Tastu, Gay, Mercoeur, Segalas), Mellor's distinction between two traditions proves to be untenable, as poetesses straddle the fine line between domesticity and social engagement. Ultimately, Mellor's definition of the poetess in opposition to the female poet does however resonate with French women poets' critical reception: the invention of the poetesse has largely obscured the critical assessment of women poets' social engagement.


Transparency is important for liberal democracies; however, the value of transparency is difficult to articulate. In this article we articulate transparency as an instrumental value for providing what we call ensurance and assurance to liberal democratic citizens. Ensurance refers to the property of liberal democracies which prevents it from sliding into authoritarianism and assurance is the property whereby citizens are assured that ensurance exists. Looking at the rise of bulk data collection and use afforded by information communication technologies, this paper focuses on the way that technologies disrupt relations between the state and its citizens, and suggests Value Sensitive Design as a methodology to protect key aspects of liberal democracies. Bulk data collection makes the achieving of ensurance and assurance more difficult due to two types of opacity which arise as a result of the practice: technical opacity—the difficulty for citizens to understand the technology behind bulk data collection; and, algorithmic opacity—opacity which results from properties inherent to algorithms which guide the collection and processing of bulk data. Design requirements will be suggested to respond to the disruptions caused by ICTs between liberal democracies and their citizens which threaten the necessary value for liberal democracies of representativeness.


Parasites are known to manipulate the behavior of their hosts in ways that increase their probability of transmission. Theoretically, different evolutionary routes can lead to host manipulation, but much research has concentrated on the 'manipulation hypothesis' sensu stricto. Among the arsenal of host compensatory responses, however, some seem to be compatible with the parasite objectives. Another way for parasites to achieve transmission, therefore, would be to trigger specific host compensatory responses. In order to explore the conditions favoring this manipulative strategy, we developed a simulation model in which parasites may affect their hosts' behavior by using two nonmutually exclusive strategies: a manipulation sensu stricto strategy and a strategy based on the exploitation of host compensatory responses. Our model predicts that the exploitation of host compensatory responses can be evolutionary stable when the alteration improves the susceptibility to predation by final hosts without compromising host survival during parasite development. Inversely, when the behavioral modification resulting from a compensatory response conflicts with the host's interest we expect parasites to use both strategies. From this result, we conclude that the strategy based on the exploitation of host compensatory responses should be more common among nontrophically transmitted parasites. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the transmission rate of parasites in a definitive host is highest when each of the two strategies affects different traits, which supports the hypothesis that host manipulation is a multidimensional phenomenon in which each altered trait contributes independently to increase parasite transmission efficiency.


Juniper trees are widely distributed throughout the world and are common sources of allergies when microscopic pollen grains are transported by wind and inhaled. In this study, we investigated the spectral influences of pollen-discharging male juniper cones within a juniper canopy. This was done through a controlled outdoor experiment involving ASD FieldSpec Pro Spectroradiometer measurements over juniper canopies of varying cone densities. Broadband and narrowband spectral reflectance and vegetation index (VI) patterns were evaluated as to their sensitivity and their ability to discriminate the presence of cones. The overall aim of this research was to assess remotely sensed phenological capabilities to detect pollen-bearing juniper trees for public health applications. A general decrease in reflectance values with increasing juniper cone density was found, particularly in the Green (545–565 nm) and NIR (750–1,350 nm) regions. In contrast, reflectances in the shortwave-infrared (SWIR, 2,000 nm to 2,350 nm) region decreased from no cone presence to intermediate amounts (90 g/m2) and then increased from intermediate levels to the highest cone densities (200 g/m2). Reflectance patterns in the Red (620–700 nm) were more complex due to shifting contrast patterns in absorptance between cones and juniper foliage, where juniper foliage is more absorbing than cones only within the intense narrowband region of maximum chlorophyll absorption near 680 nm. Overall, narrowband reflectances were more sensitive to cone density changes than the equivalent MODIS broadbands. In all VIs analyzed, there were significant relationships with cone density levels, particularly with the narrowband versions and the two-band vegetation index (TBVI) based on Green and Red bands, a promising outcome for the use of phenocams in juniper phenology trait studies. These results indicate that spectral indices are sensitive to certain juniper phenologic traits that can potentially be used for juniper cone detection in support of public health applications.