Purpose: This study aimed to explore the relationship between employer-employee relations and employee engagement in a tertiary institution in Edo State.
Research methodology: Semi-structured interviews were conducted on a cross-section of management staff, heads of department, and units in the University. A descriptive method was adopted for data analysis.
Results: The results of this study revealed that employee engagement is a by-product of employer-employee relations and the quality of the relationship is one of the most critical factors that drive engagement and satisfaction of employees.
Limitations: The challenge was the inadequate number of respondents interviewed due to time constraint.
Contribution: The study provided insight into the so called "soft aspect" of an organization and the way people relate with one another, and advocated the need for employers, managers, and supervisors in organizations to recognize the emotional composite of an employee, and the creation of a healthy relationship that would meet the employee' emotional needs.
Keywords: Effective employer-employee relations, Engagement, Psychological needs, Productivity


While the Transformer architecture has become the de-facto standard for natural language processing tasks, its applications to computer vision remain limited. In vision, attention is either applied in conjunction with convolutional networks, or used to replace certain components of convolutional networks while keeping their overall structure in place. We show that this reliance on CNNs is not necessary and a pure transformer applied directly to sequences of image patches can perform very well on image classification tasks. When pre-trained on large amounts of data and transferred to multiple mid-sized or small image recognition benchmarks (ImageNet, CIFAR-100, VTAB, etc.), Vision Transformer (ViT) attains excellent results compared to state-of-the-art convolutional networks while requiring substantially fewer computational resources to train.


Background: In eukaryotic cells DNA structure checkpoints organize the cellular responses of DNA repair and transient cell cycle arrest and thereby ensure genomic stability. To investigate the exact role of crb2+ in the DNA damage checkpoint response, a genetic screen was carried out in order to identify suppressors of the conditional MMS sensitivity of a crb2‐1 mutant. Here we report the isolation of rhp51+ as a multicopy suppressor.


Objectives: To determine baseline characteristics of an occupational cohort of women in Mwanza City, Tanzania, and factors associated with reattendance at 3 months, in preparation for a microbicide trial. Study Design: One thousand five hundred seventy-three women aged 16–54 years working in food outlets and recreational facilities were enrolled, interviewed, and examined at community-based reproductive health clinics, provided specimens for HIV/STI and pregnancy testing, and attended 3 monthly clinical follow-up. Results: Baseline prevalence of HIV was 25.5%; pregnancy 9.7%; herpes simplex virus type-2 74.6%; active syphilis 10.2%, bacterial vaginosis 52.6%; gonorrhea 5.5%; chlamydia 5.9%; and trichomoniasis 12.3%. Reattendance at 3 months was 74.1% and was higher in older women, less mobile women, and in those who received an HIV-negative result at enrollment. Conclusions: Baseline characteristics of this occupational group suggest their suitability for microbicide trials. A screening round, locally appropriate informed consent procedures, and effective community tracing may help reduce losses to follow-up in such settings.


This study is about foreign exchange reserves of Bangladesh. The main purpose of this study is to the influence of exchange rates on foreign exchange reserves to the Bangladesh context. Both the primary and secondary data has been used in this study. The primary data has been collected through a structured questionnaire from 50 respondents. The secondary data, namely Bangladesh foreign exchange reserves (FER), Bangladesh current account balance (CAB), Bangladesh capital and financial account balance (CFAB), and BDT/USD exchange rates (ER). This study covers yearly data from July 01, 1996 to June 30, 2005 and quarterly data from July 01, 2005 to June 30, 2012. Findings of this study shows that out of the selected 16 factors affecting foreign exchange reserves, exchange rates occupy the first position, weighted average score (WAS) being 4.56. Foreign exchange reserves (FER) and current account balance (CAB) have increased by 502.9087% and 1451.218%, whereas capital and financial account (CFAB) has decreased by -649.024% on June 30, 2012 compared to June 30, 1997. The influence of other factors held constant, as ER changes by 285.6894 units due to one unit change in FER, on average in the same direction which represents that ER has positive effect on the FER and this relationship is statistically significant. 62.1526 percent of the variation in FER is explained by ER. The outcomes of Breusch-Godfrey test (LM test), ARCH test, and the Normality test are that there is a serial correlation among residuals, the variance of residuals is not constant, and the residuals are not normally distributed.


The article analyzes problems of solar energy rise in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab World possesses huge resources of oil and natural gas and gained great significance as a world producer and exporter of energy. The MENA region home market is also a big con-sumer of oil and gas. The study stresses the fact, that industrial processing of mass amounts of crude inside the region has already created serious constraints in development of the area. The further steps to overwhelm the aggravations may be positive if secured through minimizing serious threats, concentrating around problems of climate warming and green


The objective of this study is to examine the trajectory of internalizing problems across middle childhood among a population sample of Australian children, and to understand the timing of explanatory factors related to children's development of internalizing problems, by using multiple-indicator latent growth curve modeling. Participants were children, parents, and teachers in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) Kindergarten (K) cohort (n = 3,153). Mothers reported on children's internalizing problems at 3 time points (6–7, 8–9, and 10–11 years). Explanatory factors included gender, emotional regulation skills, externalizing problems, peer relationships, parenting behaviors, socioeconomic status, and maternal mental health reported by mothers and teachers at 2 time points (4–5 years and 6–7 years). Growth modeling identified an increasing trajectory of internalizing problems over time. Initial levels were predicted by concurrent (6–7 years) emotional dysregulation, externalizing problems, angry parenting, and maternal mental health problems, as well as earlier (4–5 years) peer problems and maternal mental health. Escalation in internalizing problems was predicted by externalizing problems, peer problems, maternal mental health at 4–5 years, and emotional dysregulation and peer problems at 6–7 years. Girls had both higher initial levels and faster escalation of internalizing problems than boys. The findings provide ecological and developmental evidence and insights for effective intervention. Identifying and addressing early problems with peers may be particularly important to avoid the risk of escalating internalizing problems. Professional development sessions for educators to promote and support children's emotional regulation and peer interaction skills are likely to have a positive impact on children's well-being.


Background: Epigenetic modifications are key factors modulating the expression of genes involved in the synthesis of phytochemicals. The knowledge of plant epigenetic and genetic variations can contribute to enhance the production of bioactive compounds. These issues have been little explored thus far in Rorippa nasturtium var. aquaticum L. (watercress), an edible and medicinal plant. The aim of the current study was to determine and compare the phenolic composition and epigenetic and genetic variations between wild and cultivated watercress. Results: Significant differences were found in the quantitative phenolic composition between wild and cultivated watercress. The eight primer combinations used in the methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) method revealed different epigenetic status for each watercress type, the cultivated one being the most epigenetically variable. The genetic variability revealed by the EcoRI/MspI amplification profile and also by eight inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers was different between the two types of watercress. The results of the Mantel test showed that the correlation between genetic and epigenetic variations has diminished in the cultivated type. Cluster analyses showed that the epigenetic and genetic characterizations clearly discriminated between wild and cultivated watercress. Conclusions: Relevant chemical, epigenetic, and genetic differences have emerged between wild and cultivated watercress. These differences can contribute to fingerprint and develop quality control tools for the integral and safety use and the commercialization of watercress. The richness of epialleles could support the development of tools to manipulate the watercress epigenome to develop high bioproduct-producing cultivars.


Recently, Word2Vec tool has attracted a lot of interest for its promising performances in a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, a critical issue is that the dense word representations learned in Word2Vec are lacking of interpretability. It is natural to ask if one could improve their interpretability while keeping their performances. Inspired by the success of sparse models in enhancing interpretability, we propose to introduce sparse constraint into Word2Vec. Specifically, we take the Continuous Bag of Words (CBOW) model as an example in our study and add the ll regularizer into its learning objective. One challenge of optimization lies in that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) cannot directly produce sparse solutions with l1 regularizer in online training. To solve this problem, we employ the Regularized Dual Averaging (RDA) method, an online optimization algorithm for regularized stochastic learning. In this way, the learning process is very efficient and our model can scale up to very large corpus to derive sparse word representations. The proposed model is evaluated on both expressive power and interpretability. The results show that, compared with the original CBOW model, the proposed model can obtain state-of-the-art results with better interpretability using less than 10% non-zero elements.


Evaluation of the soil rhizosphere has been limited by the lack of robust assessments that can explore the vast complex structure and diversity of soil microbial communities. Our objective was to combine fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and pyrosequencing techniques to evaluate soil microbial community structure and diversity. In addition, we evaluated biogeochemical functionality of the microbial communities via enzymatic activities of nutrient cycling. Samples were taken from a silt loam at 0–10 and 10–20 cm in an organic farm under lettuce (Lactuca sativa), potato (Solanum tuberosum), onion (Allium cepa L), broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis) and Tall fescue pasture grass (Festuca arundinacea). Several FAMEs (a15:0, i15:0, i15:1, i16:0, a17:0, i17:0, 10Me17:0, cy17:0, 16:1ω5c and 18:1ω9c) varied among the crop rhizospheres. FAME profiles of the soil microbial community under pasture showed a higher fungal:bacterial ratio compared to the soil under lettuce, potato, onion, and broccoli. Soil under potato showed higher sum of fungal FAME indicators compared to broccoli, onion and lettuce. Microbial biomass C and enzyme activities associated with pasture and potato were higher than the other rhizospheres. The lowest soil microbial biomass C and enzyme activities were found under onion. Pyrosequencing revealed significant differences regarding the maximum operational taxonomic units (OTU) at 3% dissimilarity level (roughly corresponding to the bacterial species level) at 0–10 cm (581.7–770.0) compared to 10–20 cm (563.3–727.7) soil depths. The lowest OTUs detected at 0–10 cm were under broccoli (581.7); whereas the lowest OTUs found at 10–20 cm were under potato (563.3). The predominant phyla (85%) in this soil at both depths were Bacteroidetes (i.e., Flavobacteria, Sphingobacteria), and Proteobacteria. Flavobacteriaceae and Xanthomonadaceae were predominant under broccoli. Rhizobiaceae, Hyphomicrobiaceae, and Acidobacteriaceae were more abundant under pasture compared to the cultivated soils under broccoli, potato, onion and lettuce. This study found significant differences in microbial community structure and diversity, and enzyme activities of nutrient cycling in this organic farming system under different rhizospheres, which can have implications in soil health and metabolic functioning, and the yield and nutritional value of each crop.


This report covers the period 1 July, 1968 to 30 June, 1969. It is pleasant to report that, once again, the number of birds ringed is higher than ever before. As was hinted in last year's report (Backhurst, 1969b) some experienced ringers joined the scheme towards the end of 1968 while another came out early in 1969. The full list of birds ringed is given in Table I; the birds which are palearctic migrants are printed in bold type, others which are included in the palearctic fauna but which are also ethiopian are not so distinguished. The nomenclature used follows White (1960,1961,1962,1963,1965), a departure from previous reports but one that is considered desirable since White's lists reflect modern ideas more accurately than do the north-eastern parts of Mackworth-Praed & Grant's Handbook; moreover White's lists are to be the basis of the forthcoming AFRING list of birds (C. C. H. Elliott, pers. comm.). The number of recoveries, Table 2, shows a satisfying increase. Birds ringed in previous seasons and retrapped at or near their original ringing sites are listed in Table 3.


It is known that Bitcoin enables to achieve fairness in secure computation by imposing a monetary penalty on adversarial parties. This functionality is called secure computation with penalties . Bentov and Kumaresan (Crypto 2014) showed that it could be realized with O ( n ) rounds and O ( n ) broadcasts for any function, where n is the number of parties. Kumaresan and Bentov (CCS 2014) posed an open question: "Is it possible to design secure computation with penalties that needs only O (1) rounds and O ( n ) broadcasts?" In this work, we introduce secure computation with non-equivalent penalties , and design a protocol achieving this functionality with O (1) rounds and O ( n ) broadcasts only. The new functionality is the same as secure computation with penalties except that every honest party receives more than a predetermined amount of compensation while the previous one requires that every honest party receives the same amount of compensation. In particular, both are the same if all parties behave honestly. Thus, our result gives a partial answer to the open problem with a slight and natural modification of functionality.


The spaceborne thermal monitoring of the great eruption of Pu'u dasiaOpsilao-Kupaianaha in Hawaii (1987 to present) was attempted, integrating high-resolution SWIR-TIR and low- resolution MIR-TIR observations. Data acquired by multispectral payloads ASTER and MODIS onboard spacecraft Terra, and MODIS onboard Aqua, were processed behind real time by the use of computing routines "MyVOL" and "MyMOD" based on assessed theory and designed for real-time operations. The process was tested against the 2000-2005 eruptive history, both in geometry and volume dynamics of the lava flow. Here, instant lava effusion rates obtained from approximately 1800 cloud-free (over a total > 3000) day-/nighttime MODIS scenes and 12 cloud-free (over a total of 30) nighttime ASTER scenes are compared with each other and with volcanological ground truth composed of gas (SO2)- and electromagnetic potential (very low frequency)-derived eruption rates. Remote-sensed eruption rates are consistent with ground truth from approximately 1 m3/s up to the peak effusion rates of 1.2-1.3 million m3/day observed in 2005.


The phasing out of the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel vehicles by a given date is one of a number of potentially disruptive policies that have been announced over the past five years. While the UK has opted for a target year of 2040 other jurisdictions have announced more challenging target dates (2025: Norway, Paris; 2030: Germany; 2032: Scotland) and scope (petrol and diesel, diesel only, non-electric).

There is lack of robust analysis that examines the various targets and phase outs in terms of the key trade-offs in improving carbon emissions, air quality, and public health at various scales. There are also important issues around public acceptability, including how people buy cars and vans, how cars and vans need to be sold, accessed and utilised in order to accelerate turnover in the fleet. These need further investigation through the lens of 'disruption'.

This paper investigates a number of alternative futures around the proposed ban on conventional fossil fuelled vehicles in the UK. By doing so it explores how such a strategy/ban can be achieved while maximising 'co benefits'; what the impacts might be if the Government were more ambitious; how much 'disruption' is needed; and what the implications of different consumer acceptability scenarios are.

We used established modelling techniques and prospective scenario analysis to explore existing and alternative disruptive strategies with the view to achieve near 'zero emissions' and much improved air quality from light duty vehicles by 2050. The results suggest that the existing, relatively unambitious 2040 ban on internal combustion engine cars and vans can be achieved by essentially doing what we are doing anyway (continuous change) whereas more ambitious bans (e.g. 2030, and including hybrids) would require some 'disruptive' change within the existing socio-technical system. We conclude by discussing and mapping the policy options in terms of disruption for government, industry and consumers.


The wireless communication system used by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle has special requirements. Two separate data streams are used, one for telemetry and control of the vehicle, and one for payload. The first stream is of relatively low data rate, but must be very robust. The second stream requires high data rate, but a best effort approach is acceptable. Real-time remote control usage mandates low response time (turn around latency) of the system, which demands small frames and frequent direction changes over the half duplex channel. These two different requirements must be accounted for in the design of the modulation system. In this paper our solution based on the joint application of a chirp spread spectrum modulation with a correlator based demodulator for the telemetry and control data stream and a high data rate orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation for the payload is presented. The OFDM communication occupies the same bandwidth as the spread spectrum modulation, but - unlike the Chirp signal - utilizes its full bandwidth. By using a correlation detector for all timing recovery tasks and keeping the same timing for the OFDM part of the frame, all control loops normally needed for this task (symbol synchronization PLL, COSTAS loop) can be eliminated. This results in the whole signal processing path being a finite impulse response system which aids us in a highly pipelineable design implementation and makes it possible to create a high speed implementation with a low-end field programmable gate array (FPGA) circuit.


Robert Greenleaf's principles of servant leadership are relevant to the helping professions, including empowerment and development of others, service to others, and open and participatory leadership. The study of servant leadership was infused into an undergraduate senior capstone experience (an internship) for emerging helping professionals (social work and child and family studies majors). Students read and discussed Greenleaf's work and applied it to their internship experiences through weekly written reflections. Analysis of student reflections revealed an internalization of servant leadership principles and an understanding of their application within a professional context. Field supervisor evaluations of students indicated professional development consistent with servant leadership ideals. Analysis of servant leadership self-evaluations by students recorded at the beginning and end of the capstone experience revealed increases in empowering and developing others and serving others. These findings support the value of servant leadership education in the training of future leaders within the helping professions.


Arabia-Eurasia collision was caused by non-orthogonal transpressional closure of Tethys. Deformation partitioned into a broad belt of folds and thrusts, a large, seismically active, orogen-parallel right-lateral strike-slip fault (the Main Recent Fault), and an array of NNWSSE right-lateral strike-slip and oblique-slip faults, recognised from new field data in SE Turkey and NE Iraq (Kurdistan). These faults are difficult to recognise and quantify in outcrop and in seismic data. However, they are generally long-lived, can segment large anticlines, and can have a highly detrimental effect on trap integrity.


In this essay, I explore examples of what I call graphic trauma and the processof drawing as a form of working through the experience and event of sexual violence. I contend that comics and graphic narratives are a medium well-suited for rendering trauma, and the trauma of sexual violence in particular, as I show in an analysis of Una's graphic narrative Becoming Unbecoming and Chanel Miller's animated short film I Am With You. I argue that for both artists, drawing becomes a form of consciousness-raising, a collaborative feminist practice of memory
work that attempts to create conditions – formal, therapeutic, and political – for women to say #MeToo and "we." In my readings of Una's and Miller's draw-ing as working through sexual violence, I also demonstrate close verbal/visual description as a practice of care that keeps the testimony moving, drawing out the feminist practice of memory work in time and space and across modalities. A brief coda at the end of the essay offers an image of a hybrid figure from Miller's graphic iconography and a concept and practice she calls "the third element." I argue that this third element functions as a formal provocation for counter- modalities that change the story of sexual assault, creating a portal to resistance and healing.


Health anxiety is a multidimensional construct referring to worry about health, reassurance seeking, hypervigilance to bodily sensations, and beliefs that health concerns are not taken seriously by others. Research suggests health anxiety can be triggered by a diagnosis of a health condition such as breast cancer. Social factors are postulated to be involved in the occurrence and maintenance of health anxiety, but little empirical evidence is available in this area. The present study tested the role of perceived adequacy of social support and unsupportive social interactions in health anxiety relative to general anxiety, depression, and demographic/cancer-related variables. Canadian women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer within the last 10 years (N 131) completed a web-based survey. Social factors contributed to significant variance in health anxiety and its 4 dimensions, even after taking other variables into account. The results underscore the importance of social support to health anxiety and highlight a need to assess social factors when assessing and treating health anxiety in this population.


This study aimed to amplify Black women faculty's recommendations for broadening participation of the next generation of Black girls and women as they matriculate from primary school into advanced graduate degrees (P-20) in computing education (CE). As tenure-track faculty, these transformative women have attained the highest degree (i.e., Ph.D.) in postsecondary CE in the United States (US). To govern the knowledge validation process, I utilized Afrocentric feminist epistemology undergirded by critical race theory and Black feminist thought. Upon conducting thematic analysis, I identified four emergent themes to broaden participation of Black girls and women in computing: 1) improve access, quality, and early exposure to CE, 2) create equitable and equal spaces for Black girls and women, 3) confront unconscious biases of teachers and faculty, and 4) provide mentoring opportunities. As an emerging Black woman scholar, with a bachelor's degree in computer science and 15 years of industry experience, I had a "unique angle of vision" to interpret and inform this study's findings. This study builds upon limited knowledge about interventions needed to support Black girls and women in US P-20 computing education.


Historically, most courts have sustained employer-imposed, gender-based dress codes. Two well-established exceptions to the rule exist for dress codes that either (1) objectify or sexualize women or (2) allow for flexibility of standards for male employees' appearance but require stricter rules for women. A third, still-evolving exception has recently developed regarding challenges to dress codes by transgender litigants. Despite this recent progress, however, the classical gender-based dress code -- requiring women to conform to feminine stereotypes and men to conform to masculine stereotypes -- has, up to the present, been sustained by a majority of the courts time and again. The Author discusses two cases that offer insights as to why dress codes generally survive challenges, while also portending strategies for reversing this longstanding trend.


Lightweight dual-functional materials with high EMI shielding performance and thermal conductivity are of great importance in modern cutting-edge applications, such as mobile electronics, automotive, aerospace, and military. Unfortunately, a clear material solution has not emerged yet. Herein, we demonstrate a simple and effective way to fabricate lightweight metal-based polymer composites with dual-functional ability of excellent EMI shielding effectiveness and thermal conductivity using expandable polymer bead-templated Cu hollow beads. The low-density Cu hollow beads (ρ ∼ 0.44 g cm-3) were fabricated through electroless plating of Cu on the expanded polymer beads with ultralow density (ρ ∼ 0.02 g cm-3). The resulting composites that formed a continuous 3D Cu network with a very small Cu content (∼9.8 vol%) exhibited excellent EMI shielding (110.7 dB at 7 GHz) and thermal conductivity (7.0 W m-1 K-1) with isotropic features. Moreover, the densities of the composites are tunable from 1.28 to 0.59 g cm-3 in accordance with the purpose of their applications. To the best of our knowledge, the resulting composites are the best lightweight dual-functional materials with exceptionally high EMI SE and thermal conductivity performance among synthetic polymer composites.


Abstract Objectives: The objectives of this study were to assess nursing staff knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI); to assess the knowledge of maternity obstetric unit (MOU) managers regarding BFHI principles and their attitude towards BFHI implementation; and to describe the barriers and constraints to the implementation of BFHI principles. Study design: Cross-sectional descriptive survey. Setting: The study was done in eight non-BFHI-accredited primary care maternity obstetric units in Cape Town. Subjects: The subjects were eight MOU managers and a random sample of 45 nursing staff. Outcomes measures: Knowledge, attitude and practices regarding BFHI and barriers to BFHI implementation were assessed by an intervieweradministered questionnaire. Results: The study demonstrated acceptable awareness and knowledge of the recommended BFHI principles. A total of 56.6% of the staff could define rooming-in, 47.2% could define the components of the BFHI, and 52.8% could name three baby-friendly care practices and routines. Eighty-nine per cent of the nursing staff were able to demonstrate correct positioning of the baby for breastfeeding, and 91.1% could demonstrate the correct attachment of the baby to the breast. Only 8.9% of the nursing staff were able to adequately demonstrate the correct hand milk-expressing technique, 35.6% knew about the correct management of painful nipples and 22.2% knew how to manage engorgement. Only 40% could adequately describe the safe preparation of infant formula. The enrolled nursing assistants (ENA) were significantly less knowledgeable than the other cadres of nurses. The majority of the nurses had a positive attitude toward BFHI principles and practices.


The only book available in the area of forward-time population genetics simulationsapplicable to both biomedical and evolutionary studiesThe rapid increase of the power of personal computers has led to the use of serious forward-time simulation programs in genetic studies. Forward-Time Population Genetics Simulations presents both new and commonly used methods, and introduces simuPOP, a powerful and flexible new program that can be used to simulate arbitrary evolutionary processes with unique features like customized chromosome types, arbitrary nonrandom mating schemes, virtual subpopulations, information fields, and Python operators.The book begins with an overview of important concepts and models, then goes on to show how simuPOP can simulate a number of standard population genetics modelswith the goal of demonstrating the impact of genetic factors such as mutation, selection, and recombination on standard Wright-Fisher models. The rest of the book is devoted to applications of forward-time simulations in various research topics.Forward-Time Population Genetics Simulations includes: An overview of currently available forward-time simulation methods, their advantages, and shortcomings An overview and evaluation of currently available software A simuPOP tutorial Applications in population genetics Applications in genetic epidemiology, statistical genetics, and mapping complex human diseasesThe only book of its kind in the field today, Forward-Time Population Genetics Simulations will appeal to researchers and students of population and statistical genetics.


In this paper, we address the problem of traffic grooming in wavelength-division multiplexing rings with all-to-all and its generalization to many-to-many service by using network coding. We consider minimizing the number of line terminating equipment on two types of unidirectional rings, namely, single-hub and unhubbed rings, as our objective. In single-hub rings, we investigate the minimum cost provisioning of uniform all-to-all traffic in two cases: where network coding is used to linearly combine data, and where it is not used and data are transmitted without coding. We generalize the service mode to many-to-many and evaluate the cost of provisioning. In unhubbed ring, we propose a multihub approach to obtain the minimum cost provisioning in the case of all-to-all and many-to-many traffic. In each type of ring topology, two network scenarios are considered: first, the distinct communication groups in the ring are node-disjoint, and second, the different groups may have common member nodes. From our numerical results, we find that under many-to-many traffic pattern for both scenarios, network coding can reduce the network cost by 10%-20% in single-hub rings and 1%-5% in unhubbed rings in both network scenarios.


A mail survey of the US secondary wood products industry was conducted to assess the current species used and the market potential for the use of "non-traditional" species. Seven market segments within the secondary wood products industry were surveyed including the cabinet, flooring, millwork, office furniture, dimension and component, window and door, and household furniture market segments. Information from three hundred and fifty-seven was analyzed for this research. The results indicate that the secondary wood products industry is using a majority of "traditional" species to manufacture their products. For the industry as a whole, oak was the most popular species, which included the use of both red and white oak. Red oak average board footage use was calculated to be 1.3 million per year in the secondary industry. "Traditional" species for the component manufacturing segment were determined to be red oak, white oak, hard maple, cherry, ash, and soft maple. These species are being produced because of consumer demand. The component segment sells most of its products to the household furniture and cabinet market segment. Both of these markets are driven by fashion trends and what consumers view as "in-style." The component segment will be able to produce more "non-traditional" wood products when their customers (i.e., the six other market segments that were surveyed) begin to make finished goods with these species. Analysis showed that significant differences did exist between "non-traditional" species using companies and "traditional" companies on their ratings of component and component supplier attributes. Consistent supply was one attribute that was rated higher by many segments' "non-traditional" species users. The issue of supply will need to be addressed before many of these companies will be willing to use more "non-traditional" species. Within the overall secondary industry there was a significant difference between the importance that "traditional" species users placed on consistent supply and the importance that "non-traditional" species users placed on this attribute. "Non-traditional" species users were more concerned with having a consistent supply of their raw material and component products. For "non-traditional" species to be successful within the secondary wood products industry, a proven supply line must first be established. There is a potential to use "non-traditional" species in all of the markets that were surveyed. The millwork segment displays the most potential. This market segment already uses a wide variety of wood species, which shows there is no dominate species that is desired. The office furniture market segment also displays potential for "nontraditional" species. This segment desires a low priced raw material and "nontraditional" species can fulfill that need.


The increase in the number of cores in processors has been an important trend over the past decade. In order to be able to efficiently use such architectures, modern software must be scalable: performance should increase proportionally to the number of allotted cores. While some software is inherently parallel, with threads seldom having to coordinate, a large fraction of software systems are based on shared state, to which access must be coordinated. This shared state generally comes in the form of a concurrent data structure. It is thus essential for these concurrent data structures to be correct, fast and scalable, regardless of the scenario (i.e.,different workloads, processors, memory units, programming abstractions). Nevertheless, few or no generic approaches exist that result in concurrent data structures which scale in a large spectrum of environments. This dissertation introduces a set of generic methods that allows to build - irrespective of the deployment environment - fast and scalable concurrent data structures. We start by identifying a set of sufficient conditions for concurrent search data structures to scale and perform well regardless of the workloads and processors they are running on.We introduce "asynchronized concurrency", a paradigm consisting of four complementary programming patterns, which calls for the design of concurrent search data structures to resemble that of their sequential counterparts. Next, we show that there is virtually no practical situation in which one should seek a "theoretically wait-free" algorithm at the expense of a state-of-the-art blocking algorithm in the case of search data structures: blocking algorithms are simple, fast, and can be made "practically wait-free". We then focus on the memory unit, and provide a method yielding fast concurrent data structures even when the memory is non-volatile, and structures must be recoverable in case of a transient failure. We start by introducing a generic technique that allows us to avoid doing expensive writes to non-volatile memory by using a fast software cache. We also study memory management, and propose a solution tailored to concurrent data structures that uses coarse-grained memory management in order to avoid logging. Moreover, we argue for the use of lock-free algorithms in this non-volatile context, and show how by optimizing them we can avoid expensive logging operations. Together, the techniques we propose enable us to avoid any form of logging in the common case, thus significantly improving concurrent data structure performance when using non-volatile RAM. Finally, we go beyond basic interfaces, and look at scalable partitioned data structures implemented through a transactional interface. We present multiversion timestamp locking (MVTL),a new genre of multiversion concurrency control algorithms for serializable transactions. The key idea behind MVTL is simple and novel: lock individual time points instead of locking objects or versions. We provide several MVTL-based algorithms, that address limitations of current concurrency-control schemes. In short, by spanning workloads, processors, storage abstractions, and system sizes, this dissertation takes a step towards concurrent data structures that are universally scalable.


The construction of drilling and production facilities for gas lift production and injection wells on artificial Islands provides a significant exposure to risk due to SIMOPS. Specifically, simultaneous drilling operations results in rig skidding operations over/near to live well cellars and production line trenches. This increases the risk of venting significant lift gas volumes to atmosphere in a manned area through dropped objects or other failures. The authors describe a Lift Gas Safety System (LGSS) to be implemented that will prevent venting lift gas during both a dropped object and other unplanned incidents leading to loss of integrity (e.g. ESD). The system also provides benefits through improved annular pressure monitoring (APM) and confining barriers within the wellhead. Outlined is the implementation process by which the system was selected and which subsequently led to optimization of surface facilities from the well cellars through to the production manifold. Figure 1 : Drilling and Production Operations Schematic in an Island Scenario


Haptic feedback has been used to faithfully restitute the haptic sense lacking during telemanipulation, but also for providing auxiliary information via the haptic channel to restore functional perception of missing or damaged senses, e.g. sensory substitution for the visually impaired. Yet, despite the growing number of applications that would benefit from haptic feedback, its penetration rate remains low. We have identified three under-researched features of haptic feedback that we believe are necessary to break the bottleneck: multimodality, thermal feedback and wearability. Indeed, while haptic perception results from the integration of multiple somatosensory inputs, the interactions between haptic modalities have rarely been investigated. Thermal feedback is an ideal candidate to explore these interactions as skin temperature is known to modulate the sensitivity of skin receptors. Finally, although haptic perception is distributed over the entire body, most multimodal haptic devices are still bulky and rigid, thus limiting their usage to specific body parts and applications. As the integration of multiple feedback modalities into a flexible display is complex, the benefits of these three features need to be demonstrated. This motivated the developments presented in this thesis. First, we miniaturized and integrated thermal feedback in multisensory platforms to investigate its role in conveying non-sensory information and modulating tactile perception. The first study showed that users are able to distinguish the temperature difference between two adjacent thermal stimuli presented under the fingertip by a high-density thermal display, highlighting the potential of miniaturized displays to deliver thermally-encoded information through small skin areas. A second study showed that modifying the skin temperature yielded changes in the precision of stiffness judgments up to 22.3%, suggesting that thermal feedback can be used to modulate the perception of complex haptic percepts. Moving towards complete wearability, we introduced a wearable multimodal display that matches the skin curvature to deliver thermo-tactile cues optimally, as supported by the high users' identification rates of simulated materials. Subsequently, we developed a portable hydraulic actuation that generates multimodal tactile feedback in remote 3D-printed flexible displays, paving the way to truly versatile wearable multimodal displays. Finally, a tactile suit remapping tactile and proprioceptive sensations from the virtual legs of an avatar onto the upper limbs of paraplegic patients is developed. We show that the patients were able to perceive the position of the virtual legs based on tactile feedback alone, that the use of tactile feedback in synchrony with the avatar's walk changed the perception of the boundaries of their body, and that the modulation of the tactile stimulation induced a robust sensation of walking on different floors. These results demonstrate the potential of wearable tactile displays to create perceptual orthoses. In this work, we have developed the tools to deliver a multimodal tactile stimulation using wearable thermo-tactile displays and have shown how their unique features can impact fields such as surgical and rehabilitation robotics. These findings encourage the future development of wearable multimodal tactile displays taking advantage of the synergies between haptic modalities to improve teleoperation and sensory rehabilitation.


Today, death penalty opponents mostly claim life without parole (LWOP) as their genuinely popular substitute punishment for the worst of the worst. These abolitionists embrace LWOP as cheaper, equally just, and equally effective - a punishment that eliminates the state's exercise of an inhumane power to kill helpless human beings who pose no immediate threat. Furthermore, they insist, LWOP allows the criminal justice system to reverse sentencing mistakes. Some even characterize it as a punishment worse than death. Thousands of hours in several states, interviewing and observing more than a hundred convicted killers, along with dozens of correctional officers who confine them - from wardens down to line officers - have taught me, however, that LWOP does not substitute for, and suggest that LWOP should not supplement, the death penalty. In those states that reject the death penalty, LWOP may seem the only appropriate punishment for the worst crimes and criminals. However, although conflicted and unsure, on balance I argue here that as presently conceived and practiced, life without parole - more and more the punishment against which all else is measured - ultimately has no place in any criminal justice system worth its name. The current climate regarding punishment, reflected in the mission statements and professional practices of Departments of Corrections, buttressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham, only contributes to the failure of LWOP as a substitute or supplement to death. A different concept and practice of punishment - call it permanent punitive segregation (PPS) - could supply a morally acceptable substitute to many retributive death penalty supporters while satisfying those abolitionists who recognize that the worst of the worst of the worst do deserve to be punished severely - and forever.


Abstract Despite initial intentions to better align transatlantic regulation and associated practices in the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), this was not possible for rules concerning genetically modified organisms and data privacy. By 2016 both matters effectively fell off the TTIP negotiating agenda. This paper identifies the factors responsible, specifically the critical role played by independent regulatory agencies and associated bureaucratic politics, transnational coalitions of private sector organizations, and non-government organizations and contingency. These factors are not exclusive to the two salient regulations considered here, with the implication that the identification of cross-border spillovers is at best a necessary condition for the successful negotiation of binding trade rules on behind-the-border government policies.


Preterm delivery is strongly associated with neonatal mortality and morbidity. In some European countries, cervical examinations are used routinely during pregnancy to identify women at risk of preterm delivery. We sought to evaluate the efficacy and secondary effects of these routine cervical examinations. We did a randomised controlled trial in seven European countries, comparing two policies--namely, an attempt to do a cervical examination at every prenatal visit (2803 women) and avoidance of cervical examination if possible (2799). The median number of cervical examinations was 6 in the experimental group and 1 in the controls. There were 6.7% preterm (< 37 weeks) deliveries in the experimental group and 6.4% in the control group (risk ratio 1.05 [95% confidence interval 0.85-1.29]; non-significant). The low birthweight rate was 6.6% in the experimental group and 7.7% in the controls (non-significant). Premature rupture of membranes was not significantly more frequent in the experimental group (27.1% vs 26.5%). Our findings do not support the routine use of cervical examinations during pregnancy.


There has been considerable recent research in relation to the effects of environmental noise on one's health and wellbeing. However, there is limited research within a New Zealand context and with recent concerns about aviation and wind turbine noise making this especially important. The current research is a pilot study that attempted to investigate the relationship between aviation noise and noise sensitivity on annoyance and self reported quality of life. The findings from this study indicate that noise sensitivity significantly predicted for the quality of life domains of physical health, psychological well-being, environment and social relationships. In relation to the link between noise sensitivity and annoyance, the findings indicate that noise sensitivity significantly predicts for annoyance with habitation negatively predicting for general annoyance. In relation to aviation annoyance, length of stay was found to be the only predictor with longer length of stay found to negatively predict for annoyance towards aviation noise.


For values of [ital r] greater than the coherence length [xi], the axially symmetric Ginzburg-Landau equations are solved for a flux vortex carrying a longitudinal current. The field is not force free, and it is shown that there are no regular solutions to the force-free field equations that decay exponentially with increasing penetration into a superconductor. It is also shown, in this approximation, that in the case of a vortex carrying a nonzero longitudinal current, the Ginzburg-Landau equations are equivalent to the radial pressure-balance equilibrium relation in ideal magnetohydrodynamics. The techniques developed in this field to address stability issues can then be used to answer questions related to vortex stability.


The late Carl F. Klinck's recently published memoir was entitled Giving Canada a Literary History in order to make the rather remarkable point that, when Klinck began graduate work in 1929, the large and complex industry that has grown out of the study of Canadian literature was practically non - existent.(f.1) Today, a memoir purporting to survey the construction of Canadian theatre history from a similar summit of consolidated professionalism would be a little premature, but only just a little - an astonishing notion when one considers that Canadian theatre studies lagged behind the "Canlit" movement by about four decades. Of course, as with pre - Klinck Canadian literary studies, it is not difficult to find various isolated forays into the field of Canadian theatre studies, but it was really not until the late 1960s, when the University of Toronto established the first graduate academic program in drama and a number of studies borne of the centenary self - consciousness boom made their appearance, that the discipline began to gather coherence and to establish professional standards.Yet, despite the brevity of the history of Canadian theatre studies, it now appears that the discipline has reached a kind of plateau, the evidence of which may be found in the publications surveyed here. To varying degrees, each is conscious of a crucial need to evaluate accomplishments thus far and to establish directions for the future. However, if there is a consensus that Canadian theatre scholarship has encountered a crossroads, there is a profound ambivalence about what is to be done next. The question is not simply which path Canadian theatre studies as a whole should take - that seems to be the minimum dilemma requisite for the health of any discipline - but a much more profound ambivalence between, on the one hand, the very notion that there are paths to be taken and, on the other, the sense that such metaphors betray an ideological agenda in which pseudo - Darwinian rationalizations are employed for the erection or consolidation of specific cultural hegemonies.Moreover, the schism appears to be less a division between two separate groups than a rift running through the minds of individual scholars, which suggests that the dilemma is somehow endemic to the subject itself. From that point of view, it is wise to keep in mind certain forces in the two major areas that sandwich Canadian theatre studies: the recent theoretical trends in the humanities departments - usually English - out of which theatre studies grew and to which they are, in most universities, still indentured; and the changing faces of the Canadian theatre itself.Evidence of what has been accomplished thus far is provided by the Bibliography of Theatre History in Canada edited by John Ball and Richard Plant. This is the most massive and important publication to have appeared in the discipline since The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature (1989). It completely overhauls Ball and Plant's earlier bibliography, which covered the period from 1583 to 1975 (with a supplement reaching to 1976). Although the new work only reaches to 1984, at 10,800 entries it is more than triple the size of the first edition. About a third of these entries are items left out of the earlier book, many of them obscure references that could only have been discovered serendipitously in the intervening years of scholarship: a couple of pages about Halifax in a rare biography of an American theatre manager, a few references to theatre in a retired major's history of Vancouver, an article on subsidies in a Quebec political journal from the 1960s, and so on. That still leaves a third of the book for more recent entries, meaning that the eight years after the end - date of the first edition added 50 percent of the quantity produced in the previous 400 years, an escalation of activity that would seem to have continued in the nine years yet to be documented.Of course the Bibliography is still not fully comprehensive. …


Across history, the condition has been called soldier's heart, shell shock, or combat fatigue. It is now increasingly common as our service men and women return from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other ongoing combat zones. Since 1990, Veterans' centers here have treated more than 1.6 million affected men and women, including an estimated 100,000 from the Gulf War and an untallied total from the Iraq front and fighting in Afghanistan. The number also includes some 35,000 World War II veterans, because PTSD does not fade easily. Regardless of the months, years, and even decades that have passed, the traumatic events can flash back as seemingly real as they were when they occurred.In Haunted by Combat Paulson and Krippner range across history and into current experiences and treatments for this haunting disorder. They take us into the minds of PTSD-affected veterans, as they struggle against the traumatic events lingering in their minds, sometimes exploding into violent behavior. The authors explain how and why PTSD develops-and how we can help service members take the steps to heal today.


According to the literature and our practice, most of the cognitive stimulation based on technological tools are designed for individual, « face to face »use and are a transposition of regular neuropsychological tests and rehabilitation exercises (Tarraga et al. 2006). A different approach is proposed to fulfil the needs for entertainment; such as reminding memories with the help of souvenirs of the patients own life. (Damianakis et al. 2010) could show it was possible, first with the help of a research assistant, then with that of the family or even by personal use, to stimulate remembrance through old souvenirs presented on a digital medium.The difficulty is the high cost in term of manpower to get the relevant information from the family. Other teams have proposed solutions that would limit that preliminary work : using data from the social media (Cosley et al. 2009) and/or wearing a camera to save daily activities (Lee and Key, 2007) et (Sellen et al. 2007). In any case, those tools are based upon individual customization and so limiting the number of patients who could attend a same session. Could use general tools developed for entertainment in nursing-home as a cognitive stimulation alternative? In a preliminary study we have observed the adoption of the Memoire-red™ tool by the facilitator and the interaction with and between the residents during a regular entertainment session with cognitively impaired residents in a nursing-home. This session was part of a structured animation program where the residents regularly take part.


Control mechanisms for optimisation in large distributed systems cannot be constructed based on traditional methods of control because they are typically characterised by distributed information and costly and/or noisy communication. Furthermore, noisy observations and dynamism are also inherent to these systems, so their control mechanisms need to be flexible, agile and robust in the face of these characteristics. In such settings, a good control mechanism should satisfy the following four design requirements: (i) it should produce high quality solutions, (ii) it should be robustness and flexibility in the face of additions, removals and failures of components, (iii) it should operate by making limited use of communication, and (iv) its operation should be computational feasible. Against this background, in order to satisfy these requirements, in this thesis we adopt a design approach based on dividing control over the system across a team of self–interested agents. Such multi–agent systems (MAS) are naturally distributed (matching the application domains in question), and by pursing their own private goals, the agents can collectively implement robust, flexible and scalable control mechanisms. In more detail, the design approach we adopt is (i) to use games with pure strategy Nash equilibria as a framework or template for constructing the agents' utility functions, such that good solutions to the optimisation problem arise at the pure strategy Nash equilibria of the game, and (ii) to derive distributed techniques for solving the games for their Nash equilibria. The specific problems we tackle can be grouped into four main topics. First, we investigate a class of local algorithms for distributed constraint optimisation problems (DCOPs). We introduce a unifying analytical framework for studying such algorithms, and develop a parameterisation of the algorithm design space, which represents a mapping from the algorithms' components to their performance according to each of our design requirements. Second, we develop a game–theoretic control mechanism for distributed dynamic task allocation and scheduling problems. The model in question is an expansion of DCOPs to encompass dynamic problems, and the control mechanism we derive builds on the insights from our first topic to address our four design requirements. Third, we elaborate a general class of problems including DCOPs with noisy rewards and state observations, which are realistic traits of great concern in real–world problems, and derive control mechanisms for these environments. These control mechanism allow the agents to either learn their reward functions or decide when to make observations of the world's state and/or communicate their beliefs over the state of the world, in such a manner that they perform well according to our design requirements. Fourth, we derive an optimal algorithm for computing and optimising over pure strategy Nash equilibria in games with sparse interaction structure. By exploiting the structure present in many multi-agent interactions, this distributed algorithm can efficiently compute equilibria that optimise various criteria, thus reducing the computational burden on any one agent and operating using less communication than an equivalent centralised algorithms. For each of these topics, the control mechanisms that we derive are developed such that they perform well according to all four f our design requirements. In sum, by making the above contributions to these specific topics, we demonstrate that the general approach of using games with pure strategy Nash equilibria as a template for designing MAS produces good control mechanisms for large distributed systems.


Mobile data usage has been on the rise in relation to the streaming media such as video conferencing and online multimedia gaming. As a result, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) has earned a rapid rise in popularity during the past few years. The aim of this master's thesis is to analyze the quality of service (QoS) performance and its effects when video is streamed over a GBR (Guaranteed bit rate) and non-GBR bearers over LTE. Using OPNET (Optimized Network Engineering Tool), the performance can be simulated having Downlink (DL) and Uplink (UL) scenarios for video conferencing including web traffic. Further we also measured the performance of packet End-to-End (E2E) delay, packet loss and packet delay variation (PDV). This thesis work is an empirical work, which can be followed up by further research propositions.


The article analyses patterns and country-specific determinants of agri-food trade of Bulgaria and Romania with the European Union. As literature focusing on agricultural aspects of the topic is limited, the paper seeks to contribute to the literature by providing up to date results and suggestions as well as by identifying the determinants of horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade of the Bulgaria and Romania after EU accession. Results suggest that intra-industry agri-food trade is mainly of vertical nature, referring to trade of different quality products. Results verify that determinants of horizontal and vertical IIT are similar and suggest that economic size and FDI are positively, while factor endowments and distance are negatively related to both sides of IIT. Results are mainly in line with the majority of empirical literature in the field.


In this work, we present the rational synthesis of a novel, highly selective etchant, N-(4-methoxybenzyl)-(pyren-1-yl)amine, enabling the facile and direct fabrication of free-standing 3D structures within an arsenic−sulfide all-inorganic photoresist, patterned via 3D direct laser writing. The chemical and physical underpinnings of this novel wet etchant are described in detail. Our novel molecule enables the fabrication of intricate, shrinkage-free 3D structures with minimum feature sizes of 180 nm in only one etching step. Because of the high transparency of arsenic−sulfide glass in the telecommunication window, structures fabricated along these lines could be well-suited as final structural elements for 3D optical structures and devices in the sub-micrometer scale. The results presented here enable their facile realization, thus making this material a desirable alternative to traditional photopolymers.


OF THE DISSERTATION Improving Radiation Therapy Through Motion Tracking by Hanlin Wan Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering Washington University in St. Louis, 2016 Parag Parikh, Chair Radiation therapy is a widely-used cancer treatment method in which lethal doses of ionizing radiation are delivered to cancerous cells. Given the high dose requirements and the risk of associated complications, it is essential that radiation be targeted to cancerous cells while minimizing the dose to surrounding tissue. While current technology allows for accurate targeting of radiation dose, there is one major hurdle: Respiratory motion causes movement of up to a few centimeters of tumors in the abdomen and thorax, rendering even the most accurate radiation delivery machine highly inaccurate. Imaging devices integrated with the treatment machines allow us to visualize the moving tumors, either indirectly through x-ray imaging of nearby implanted fiducial markers, or directly through magnetic resonance imaging. The research presented here investigates two new methods of tracking the tumor motion on these modalities.


BACKGROUND
Abnormal Dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) renal scintigraphy performed six months after an acute pyelonephritis (AP) is generally interpreted as scarring.

AIM
To perform a follow up of childhood patients showing scintigraphic renal lesions during the acute phase of pyelonephritis (within 7 days from the beginning of fever).

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A scintigraphic control was carried out at 5-7 months and, in case of persistent lesions, an additional late scintigraphy at 10-13 months. All patients were followed clinically for one year and those with a relapse of urinary tract infection were excluded from the study.

RESULTS
Eighty five patients with a median age of 8 months were included. Among these, the first scintigraphic control was normal in 59 (69%) and abnormal in 26 patients (31%). In five of these 26 patients (5/26:19%-5/85: 6%), a considerable regression of the lesions was obvious on the early control, and normalized completely on the late control. When expressing the results in kidney units, 107 showed lesions during the acute phase of infection; 69% was normal at the early control. Thirty three showed lesions persisting at the early control (31%) and 7 out of these 33 (21%) became normal on the late control (7/107: 7%). In total, 25% of the children included in the study (24% of the kidney units) remained with renal sequelae one year after the initial episode of AP.

CONCLUSIONS
The persistence of scintigraphic lesions six months after an episode of AP, does not necessarily correspond to permanent scars, since normalization can sometimes be observed on late controls.


Dental biofilm formation is not only a precursor to tooth decay, but also induces more serious systematic health problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Understanding the conditions promoting colonization and subsequent biofilm development involving complex bacteria coaggregation is particularly important. In this paper, we report a high-throughput microfluidic 'artificial teeth' device offering controls of multiple microenvironmental factors (e.g. nutrients, growth factors, dissolved gases, and seeded cell populations) for quantitative characteristics of long-term dental bacteria growth and biofilm development. This 'artificial teeth' device contains multiple (up to 128) incubation chambers to perform parallel cultivation and analyses (e.g. biofilm thickness, viable-dead cell ratio, and spatial distribution of multiple bacterial species) of bacteria samples under a matrix of different combinations of microenvironmental factors, further revealing possible developmental mechanisms of dental biofilms. Specifically, we applied the 'artificial teeth' to investigate the growth of two key dental bacteria, Streptococci species and Fusobacterium nucleatum, in the biofilm under different dissolved gas conditions and sucrose concentrations. Together, this high-throughput microfluidic platform can provide extended applications for general biofilm research, including screening of the biofilm properties developing under combinations of specified growth parameters such as seeding bacteria populations, growth medium compositions, medium flow rates and dissolved gas levels.


Over the past decade, a growing number of critiques have been levelled at institutional LGBT initiatives in Tel-Aviv, characterising them as homonational and pinkwashing. Gay tourism to Tel-Aviv is one of the central initiatives under attack. Supported by national ministries and by local organisations, Tel-Aviv became a popular destination for a 'gay vacation'. This paper explores the dynamic formation of the political economy of gay tourism to Tel-Aviv, underscoring the impact queer tourism has on Israeli LGBT politics and specifically on urban LGBT politics in Tel-Aviv. Particularly, this paper critically discusses neoliberal urban politics of LGBT value and valuation and its break from rights politics. I claim that the processes responsible for the increase in gay tourism to Tel-Aviv engendered confusion between rights achievements and recognition anchored in other kinds of national and municipal support (mainly allocations), encouraging fragmentation within the Israeli LGBT community. This process reproduced capitalist logics in urban spaces and constructed LGBT individuals as valued products based on their promotion of the urban space to other gay tourists, producing Tel-Aviv as a gay heaven and as a homonational hub. If the state works on the national level to create 'pure' homonationalism, the kind of homonationalism created on the urban level is an economic homonationalism: where the neoliberal agenda influences decision-making rather than questions of national belonging. Meaning that the effects of homonormativity are (becoming, once again) more significant within homonationalist political configurations.


Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) is a well-known technique to reduce the power and/or energy consumption of various applications. While most processors provide chip-level DVFS, where the frequency and voltage of the cores in a chip can only be changed all together; core-level DVFS, where each core can be controlled independently, requires core-level voltage regulators in hardware and only is supported in production in Haswell generation among Intel processors. The finer grained control that per-core DVFS provides can lead to higher energy efficiency compared to chip-level DVFS especially for the unsynchronized, unstructured parallel applications when carefully applied. Ability to do per-core DVFS opens up new doors for different optimizations within runtime systems. We implement an intelligent energy efficient runtime module which uses a fine-grained function level per-core DVFS approach. Our module finds the energy-optimal frequency for each phase/function/kernel of the application over the first few iterations and applies the optimal frequency for each function. We test our implementation on Haswell processors and show that our algorithm enables 4% to 35% energy reduction over chip-level DVFS with as much as performance.


Global food trade, especially in the processed form like ready-to-eat items, tends to increase with an increase in global income with more demand emanating from the developed world. However, to trade with the developed world, national standards need to be elevated to international standards. It would also save the trade-image of the country. Under a multilateral trading system with a progressive reduction in tariffs, Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) appear overwhelming. The issue here is that although India's fishery sector enjoys a comparative advantage, blessed as it has been with its natural factor endowment, the food safety standards and other requirements imposed by the importing countries are major impediments to its growth. International trade in the fisheries sector is dominated by A, B and C classification of NTMs including SPS, TBT and Pre-Shipment inspections. In bilateral trade relations, it is reflected in the across-the-border rejection of consignments. This calls for a scrutiny of the underlying causes hampering the compliance challenge. Using the inventory method of frequency indexing and a gravity exercise for quantifying trade effects, this study brings forth the trade restrictive nature of NTMs


Aims Glypican-3 (GPC3) is a membrane-bound heparan sulphate proteoglycan. Glypicans are predominantly expressed during development in cell- and tissue-specific manners and act as co-receptors for many heparin-binding growth factors, playing important roles in cell growth and differentiation. GPC3 expression has been linked to several visceral malignancies, but its role in sarcomas is unexplored. Rhabdomyosarcomas (RMS), the most common paediatric soft tissue sarcomas (STS), are aggressive tumours that frequently show histological overlap with other STS. Immunohistochemistry was performed on tissue microarrays to study GPC3 expression in paediatric RMS and a variety of the more common spindle cell and pleomorphic adult sarcomas. Methods 642 tumour samples encompassing alveolar and embryonal RMS and adult STS (fibrosarcoma, synovial sarcoma, leiomyosarcoma and undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma) were stained with anti- GPC3, and percentage expression in tumour cells was scored on a scale of 0 to +3. Results GPC3 immunostaining was positive (+1 to +3 expression) in 34.7% (74/213) of RMS samples (15/60 alveolar, 54/143 embryonal, 5 RMS not otherwise specified), but negative or negligible in all other sarcoma samples. Conclusions This is the first study of GPC3 in a large series of sarcomas, and highlights expression of GPC3 in RMS but not other STS. As glypicans are rarely expressed in mature tissue, GPC3 may be a therapeutic target in RMS, and as the protein can be shed from the cell surface, it may have future application as a biomarker for this disease.


In this article I explore the experiences of three dance artists living and working in Palestine through the concept of "embodied agency." Based on fieldwork in Palestine and a decade of professional engagement as a dancer and choreographer with the Palestinian dancing community, I examine how the body—through the practice of dance—creates movement in the artists' lives. Th e article highlights how embodied and expressive spaces of dance expand the artists' possibilities and room for maneuver. I argue that in the context of protracted occupation, like Palestine, where individuals have little possibility to impact their situation, zooming into the body can be a powerful way to identify spaces where it is possible to have influence on oneself and others.


Often, computer-based education is associated with distance learning in contrast to face-to-face education. The differences between the two educational solutions tend to fade away, influenced by the new forms and educational solutions that are born with technological developments. Although the use of software elements in the study of electronic circuits has been introduced for some time, most applications are limited to providing useful information, formulas or making virtual simulated electrical circuit in ideal conditions. The concept of interfacing elements from classical electronics by making electronic circuits on a breadboard using real components with virtual tools creates a new learning environment with many advantages. A virtual learning environment is a specially designed information space that facilitates the learning process in a traditional way that includes a set of teaching tools designed to improve the learner's educational experience. Learning to use a tool like Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite from National Instruments eliminates the need for bulky equipment in the lab and also allows for the design of customized tools that can be used and reused for specific projects regarding biomedical instrumentation. The active role of the teacher is manifested, in this case, in a different way from the lessons done without computer support. Its presence is discreet, but important; it is the one that sets the time and methods of applying the method as an alternative to classical methods. What is characteristic and very important for these learning environments virtual refers to the active, creative role of learners.


The immune system contains a distinct group of antigen presenting cells, called dendritic cells (DCs), that are specialized to capture antigens and initiate T cell immunity. The complex processes involved are critically balanced by soluble factors, such as cytokines, produced by DCs itself or released by neighboring cells. The goal of this study was to examine how differentiation, maturation and function of DCs are modulated by two particular cytokines, namely IL-15 and IL-21, which possess regulatory activities on immune responses. Here it is shown that IL-15 has stimulatory effects on DC activation and on T cell priming. Thus IL-15 evoke highly mature DCs whereas in contrast IL-21 mediates inhibitory effects resulting in phenotypic and functional immature DCs with decreased T cell stimulatory capacities in vitro and in vivo.To understand by which means DC activation is modulated by IL-15 and consequently which T cell subsets are influenced by this cytokine, several in vivo models were investigated. On the one hand we used genetic deficient mice for IL-15 (IL-15-/-) and its high affinity receptor (IL-15Ra-/-) and on the other hand we treated wild type mice with an IL-15 antagonist, a soluble IL-15Ra, to block the activity of the cytokine without affecting DC differentiation. The studies revealed that IL-15 and IL-21, modulate DC function. DC-derived IL-15 is essential for the initiation of Th1 type immune responses. Despite sharing a common receptor subunit, IL-15 and IL-21 exhibit completely opposite effects on DC biology. The dichotomous effects of IL-15 and IL-21 on DC mediated T cell activation shed new light on the understanding of immune modulatory mechanisms. Thus, the application of agonists or antagonists of these cytokines can be conceived as therapeutical tools to control immune responses


Epidermoid, dermoid and teratoid cysts are nonodontogenic benign lesions
derived from the germinative epithelium, appearing any where of the
body. In the oral cavity, these are uncommon and account for less than
0.01% of all the oral cysts. These cysts often remain asymptomatic for
years however can become acutely symptomatic.


The ageing of population has now been recognised as a global phenomenon. Since the issues are multifaceted ageing has become a subject of interest among multidisciplinary people. Perhaps one of the common key concerns among individuals and family members in societies today is to meet the increasing demand for elderly health care for many countries. As the socioeconomic, demographic and cultural context of individuals" vary from one setting to another, the intergenerational support as well as the cost of care responsibility also vary across the globe. In particular, issues related to elderly health care financing and supports are emerging steadily and perhaps one of the dominant topics in social gerontology. The aim of the study has been to examine the effects of age, gender and employment on the perception of people with regard to their cost of care in later life. The data for the study come from the HSBC global ageing study, popularly known as "The Future of Retirement". The initial field surveys were completed in two successive years 2004 and 2005 in which approximately 22,329 individuals were interviewed who are aged 18 years and over across twenty countries and territories covering four major regions of the world. A cross-sectional survey design was employed in which respondents were selected randomly. Each respondent was asked a battery of questions on their socioeconomic and demographic situations, their retirement and pensions, health, wellbeing and quality of life, and voluntary contribution and intergenerational support. Among others two questions were asked directly on the responsibility of financial cost of care in retirement and they are "who should bear" as well as "who will bear" most of the financial costs of caring in retirement. These questions were then explored as to how the response varied with respect to age, gender and employment status of respondents. It has been revealed that age, gender and employment status play significant role in determining people"s perception towards the bearing of cost of care in retirement. There has been a significant gap between the attitudes of "should" and "will" bearing the cost of care. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief discussion on policy implications.


With a human population of 230 million and a huge potential for marine and fisheries resources development, Indonesia promotes aquaculture as a major sector to accelerate economic growth for rural communities. There are recent initiatives to improve the country's legal framework to mitigate the adverse impacts of aquaculture and make the aquaculture more sustainable. The Directorate General of Aquaculture under the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) has the mandate to develop the aquaculture sector of Indonesia. Aquaculture has an important role in the development of its national economy and play a key role in rural development. As aquaculture production expands, there is also a growing concern over the impacts on sustainability of aquaculture and resource enhancement as well as food quality and safety requirements of fish products. For this reason, there is a need to improve aquaculture technology and its management system in Indonesia to address the need for eco-friendly production process and food safety concerns while maintaining the sustainability of the country's aquaculture sector. The Indonesian Fisheries Act No. 31 (2004) Amendment No. 45 (2009) mentioned that, among others, the Indonesian fisheries management strategies should include the creation job opportunities, improvement of the welfare of fishers and their communities, and ensuring the sustainability of the country's fishery resources and aquatic environment. The most critical factors to achieve sustainable aquaculture in Indonesia are the availability of good quality seed, good practice in grow-out systems, healthy aquaculture environment, fish health management, good-quality products, strategic marketing, and improving marketing and stock enhancement. In addition, it is also a concern that the products from aquaculture should meet the quality standard and product safety. This paper presents a review of Indonesian aquaculture in relation to sustainable practices and management schemes to preserve the aquaculture environment, food safety requirements for aquaculture products, food security and to enhance the biodiversity of fishery resources. A policy that was recently established is the development of the marine and fisheries sector based on the principles of the Blue Economy program of the Indonesian government.


'Big Brothers' is an international, philanthropic fraternal organisation dedicated, in its own words, 'to match boys seven to seventeen from lone-parent female families with mature male role models over eighteen … toward contributing to the healthy development of these children'. A primary objective of this 90 year-old institution is thus to instil a masculine culture and nurture a masculine identity in male children by providing an adult male presence, 3-4 hours a week, in the lives of boys without a male role model. This article asks, which kinds of masculine identities are promoted as acceptable and why? Drawing upon the geographies of feminism, masculinity, and advertising, the article presents a socio-semiotic analysis of the format, content and signs employed by 'Big Brothers' of Canada and the USA in their recruitment campaigns. Using printed promotional material spanning the institute's history, as well as an interview with the Marketing Director of a recent Big Brother recruitment campaign, the slogans, icons, and gender-myths used to represent males and same-sex friendships in the symbolic spaces of their advertisements are critiqued. Results exemplify the instability of the 'masculine gaze' and suggest that the discourse of patriarchal masculinity situates the Big Brothers institute itself in an 'uneasy' place, one where the masculine gender-myths may be collapsing but are nevertheless evoked to ensure volunteers and society at large that a 'legitimate' form of homosocial masculinity prevails, one that does not transgress 'out of bounds' and into the 'homosexual'.


A research project of reconstructing historical gold mosaics deals with reconstructing weatherproof gold and silver mosaics according to historical models.

The gold mosaics examinded originate mainly from germany from 1880 to 1920 and are composed of three parts. They consist of a matching support glass, the gold or silver layer and a cover glass. By examining the morphology and layer thicknesses with the ESEM, and using chemical analysis with the EDX, the relationship of glass composition and damage patterns was established. The glass analysis provided quantitative composition data and made it possible to determine its chemical stability. It supplied the basis for calculating glass characteristics and was referred to when casting suitable historical mosaic glass. The analysis of the qualitative composition of the gold and silver layers also served as a model for reconstruction. After testing selected reconstructed gold mosaics in the climate chamber, the ESEM was used for capturing leaching and other process data and the glass composition was optimized accordingly. Over 100 predominantly historical gold mosaics were analyzed and the results entered into a database which can now be consulted for comparative investigations to determine both origin and date.


HAVE YOU INVESTED IN ONE ORE MORE VACATION RENTAL PROPERTIES, BUT ARE NOT SURE HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BUSINESS? Relax. You have just found a better way to run your business. With A QuickBooks Guide for Vacation Rentals by Owner, you will learn how to drastically improve your daily accounting and management routine, and it is a lot easier than trying to search the internet or find a consultant who may or may not have experience with vacation rentals. A QuickBooks Guide for Vacation Rentals by Owner helps you every step of the way. You will be able to quickly run reports showing how much guests owe you and how much you owe contractors and vendors. As a QuickBooks property management advisor, author, Gita Faust, takes the guesswork out of entering and maintaining your financials by providing concise, easy-to-follow guidelines. You will achieve the results you want with minimal time and effortand much less stress! With this manual, you will learn how to: Adopt our customized QuickBooks file Get clarity on common QuickBooks myths Reconcile income and deposits to maximize profit Own and manage unlimited number of properties Record purchase and sale of the short term rentals Record and track refinancing, mortgage and escrow Manage payments, deposits, invoices, and multiple guest folios Manage cleaning, repairs, customer service tasks, and transfers Take advantage of an ideal system for tracking online bookings Track equity, worth, cash flow, and price value for multiple properties Follow step-by-step instructions to build YOUR ideal business Assess over 100 customized reports for your short term rentals Save Your Short-Term Rental Business Time and Money with These QuickBooks Best Practices. Vacation Rentals by Owners have specific needs for QuickBooks. This book offers techniques written for Landlords, CPA, Accountant, Bookkeepers, QuickBooks Consultant and your business to handle their accounting and management needs right the first time. Claim your QuickBooks file with customization to save time and money at FastTracConsulting.com/contact-us/ GITA FAUST is a landlord herself and the principal owner of Fast Trac Consulting, an accounting firm based in the Northeast region of the United States. A Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor since 1999, Gita brings her realistic vision of accounting, years of research, and repeated client satisfaction to the system she presents in this manual. A QuickBooks Guide for Vacation Rentals by Owner is one more in her valuable series, Manage Properties with QuickBooks, written for real estate investors, property managers, and accounting professionals.


The detrimental health effects of particulate air pollution have been well established
through environmental health research worldwide. Fine or 'respirable' particulate
matter derived from combustion sources has been linked to both acute and chronic
respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, and premature death in the most susceptible
of a population. The Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania has a significant winter air
pollution problem. Launceston is the largest population centre in the valley (population
approx. 67,000) and despite its size this small city has regularly recorded the highest
levels of particulate pollution levels of any city in Australia. This is due largely to
complex geographic and climatic processes that support cold air drainage and the
formation of night-time temperature inversions in the valley over winter months.
Under these conditions ground temperature drops and air pollution becomes trapped at
ground level under a layer of dense cold air. Fine particulate matter from domestic
wood heating contributes to around 88% of particulate load in Launceston compared to
65% in other Australian cities. Concern has therefore been raised for the respiratory
health of Tamar Valley residents in recent years. Previous studies have assumed
homogeneity of pollution exposure, and disease risk, across the landscape. This
assumption is unrealistic, as recent research indicates that both the distribution of
disease and the dispersal of particulate air pollution exhibit considerable spatial
variation.
This is the first study to look in detail at the spatial relationships between particulate
air pollution and respiratory disease distribution in the Tamar Valley. Disease clustering
was investigated and various environmental processes were explored in detail to
explain the spatial disparity of disease distribution. Patterns of respiratory disease
occurrence in the Tamar Valley were investigated through spatial analysis of 15 years
(1992-2006) of de-identified hospital admissions records. Issues of confidentiality and
geoprivacy in spatial public health studies were discussed in detail. Spatial distributions
of Asthma, Bronchiolitis, Bronchitis and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
were explored individually and in combined form. Data were explored for annual
variations in disease distribution. This revealed that, while disease incidence generally
declined over the study period, this decline was most noticeable around George Town
in the north of the valley. Further analysis revealed little spatial variation in seasonal
spatial patterns of disease occurrence across the valley, though disease cases
generally were more numerous in winter. COPD incidence was found to be highly
clustered in a small number of address locations thought to correspond to nursing
homes and aged care facilities across the valley. It was therefore believed that COPD was more closely correlated with the locations of these facilities than with any
geographic or climatic processes. Three techniques for the detection of disease clusters
were applied (kernel density function, Getis Ord Gi* statistic and Kulldorff's spatial
scan statistic). Areas around George Town and the North Esk valley east of Launceston
consistently showed elevated disease levels. However, considerable variation in the
reporting of 'significant' clusters was noted between methods, and also with the same
method at different spatial scales. Issues of statistical inference were therefore
discussed.
Several 'exposure surfaces' were created to approximate the winter dispersion of
particulate air pollution in Launceston. Modelled air pollution concentrations were
derived from TAPM (The Air Pollution Model), a prognostic air pollution dispersion
model currently in use in Tasmania for environmental monitoring purposes. A digital
elevation model was also classified into terrain features that are known to accumulate
high levels of particulate pollution through the process of cold air drainage (i.e. lowlying
channels and river flats). Spatial relationships between disease incidence and
these air pollution 'proxies' were then explored in detail. Weak relationships were
found between disease incidence and terrain features representing small channel and
valleys. A 'significant' relationship was found between disease incidence and the valley
floor, though issues of statistical inference were again discussed in this context. Spatial
non-stationarity was detected in all relationships, indicating that global statistics
inadequately define these relationships. A strong inverse relationship was found
between modelled air pollution concentrations and disease incidence, indicating that
disease rates were generally higher in areas outside the modelled air pollution plume
derived by TAPM. TAPM concentrations were also found to closely mirror the underlying
population distribution. The inability of TAPM to adequately predict pollution levels in
areas outside major population centres, and various issues of socioeconomic
confounding were discussed as possible explanations for this finding.
Results generally revealed considerable variation in the spatial relationships between
disease incidence and air pollution proxies used in this study. These results argue
strongly for the spatial analysis of air pollution relationships to health outcomes, and
the continued refinement of methods. None of these findings could have resulted from
a purely temporal (non-spatial) investigation.


The process of internationalisation of higher education can be seen as
fluctuating between two main discourses: economic competition and academic
internationalisation (Bolsman & Miller 2008). Within the former type of discourse,
internationalisation is constructed as a means to generate income, in
competition with other institutions, through the provision of research and
teaching services of a high quality to as many 'clients' as possible. From the
point of view of academic internationalism, internationalisation is represented
as a joint enterprise by institutions from different countries for the advancement
of human knowledge and intercultural understanding. In this paper we
aim to explore the views of the teaching staff of two bilingual universities in
Spain in connection with the process of internationalisation of their institution,
placing a special emphasis on its impact on language policy. The sample for
this study was made up of 173 university teaching staff who completed a questionnaire
in which they were asked to express their views on issues such as
internationalisation at higher education institutions, academic mobility and
their attitudes towards multilingualism. The participants belonged to two officially
bilingual universities in Spain, namely the University of Lleida (UdL) and
the University of the Basque Country (UBC). Variables such as the sociolinguistic
context, gender, mother tongue and age were considered when scrutinising
the participants' answers with a view to drawing a picture of internationalisation
which included opinions on academic mobility and multilingualism from
the teaching staff's perspective.


Purpose Competence-based education in health and social care has been promoted through the Tuning Process in Europe. This papers reports on the process of developing a Palliative Care Competence Framework for health and social care professionals working in the Republic of Ireland. Method A Palliative Care Competence Framework Steering Group, comprising a range of health and social care professionals, was established to oversee and drive the development of the framework, through identification of core competences and related indicators and supporting the work of 10 working groups to develop discipline specific competences. Results The Palliative Care Competence Framework identifies six domains of competence with core indicators which all health and social care professionals should be able to demonstrate on completion of initial academic programme for professional registration or in the context of their current job. Discipline-specific competences supplement the core competences and describe additional skill-specific competences acquired during training in that discipline. Discipline-specific competences are organised in three ascending levels of expertise of palliative care practice. Conclusions The framework describes universal core competences in palliative care while also detailing individual competences for each health and social care discipline. It is envisioned that the framework will inform academic curricula and professional development programmes, and so will enhance the care of people with life-limiting illness, fostering greater interprofessional and interorganisational collaboration in palliative care provision.


AIMS
To describe an implementation program for an evidence-based practice (EBP) model in a new Chilean hospital and analyze the program evaluation results.

BACKGROUND
EBP is key to professional nursing for improving healthcare safety and quality.

METHODS
First, a literature review was performed to develop an institutional EBP model. Second, internal and external analyses contributed to assessing facilitators for and barriers to implementation. Third, a multi-stage implementation plan was conducted. Fourth, process and outcome indicators were evaluated.

RESULTS
The model considered the basic elements of EBP and outlined different decision-making levels in clinical practice. Several facilitators for implementation were identified. Each implementation stage included activities addressing EBP knowledge, attitude, and skills. Outcome indicators showed significant improvement regarding knowledge (p = 0.038). Providers with formal EBP training, compared to providers without training, showed a significant difference of 8.6% (0.6 points) in the average CPBE-19 score in knowledge, attitude, and application in the last evaluation (p < 0.01).

CONCLUSION
Having an EBP program with ongoing implementation strategies improves knowledge over time, and formal training enhances positive results.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT
Nurse managers can build an institutional research culture to improve quality of care using an EBP program that fits organizational needs.


Websites can record individual users' activities and display them in a variety of ways. There is a tradeoff between detail and abstraction in visualization, especially when the amount of content increases and becomes more difficult to process. We conducted an experiment on Mechanical Turk varying the quality, detail, and visual presentation of information about an individual's past work to see how these design features affected perceptions of the worker. We found that providing detail in the display through text increased processing time and led to less positive evaluations. Visually abstract displays required less processing time but decreased confidence in evaluation. This suggests that different design parameters may engender differing psychological processes that influence reactions towards an unknown person.


While raising a typically developing child can involve several challenges for parents, this process may be even more complex for families in which there is a child with a developmental disability (DD). This qualitative study utilized a family systems framework to explore the
experiences of nine families with regards to examining the effect of parental differential treatment on the quality of sibling relationships when one sibling has a DD, and the other sibling does not. Questionnaires and in-depth, semi-structured interviews (45-60 minutes) that consisted
of open-ended questions were used. These methods were designed using a variety of question types to gain insight about parental differential treatment and sibling relationship regarding their interactions and the type of social play in which they engaged. The data were analyzed using In Vivo and Axial coding to ensure that concepts emerging from the interview data set captured the key elements of what the interviewee described. Overall, both parents and the typically developing child report that having a sibling with a DD is related to both positive and negative features of the sibling relationship. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that when present, PDT may be linked with less loving and fullfilling sibling relationships from the perspective of all participants. The findings support the importance of implementing, introducing, and teaching methods to parents so that they can take an active role in fostering a positive relationship
between their children.


The station locations are mapped and the observed apparent resistivity in ohm-meters is tabulated for each location over the frequency range of 7.5 to 18,600 cycles/sec. (WHK)