Since 1990s, the investigations of aerospace communication segment have not only been concerned with satellites, but increasingly with lower altitude repeaters flying in the stratosphere. They are the so-called high-altitude plat- forms (HAPs) with important advantages with respect to satel- lites in terms of reduced cost of implementation, deployment, and launch. However, HAPs are characterized by a reduced coverage, as compared with satellites. Nevertheless, in recent literature, HAPs are not regarded as competitors of the satellite technology. On the contrary, the emphasis is on the effective and seamless integration among heterogeneous aerospace segments (GEO, LEO, and HAP) and aerospace segments with terrestrial wireless networks in order to globally extend the broadband wireless connectivity. This paper is focused on the role of HAPs in providing global connectivity in future commu- nication systems and services. Potentialities, enabling tech- nologies, and challenges are presented from the perspective of the integrated terrestrial/HAPs/satellite communications infrastructure.


This paper studies the interaction between the economic cycle and the credit market in Chile. The results are obtained with identification of shocks using a structural VAR model that replicates the empirical standard transmission mechanism of monetary policy that has been found in other studies on the Chilean economy. However, our evidence indicates new results. The periods of economic expansion triggers in the long run, first, increases in nonperforming loans, and then credit reductions. Besides, credit market shocks that measure the risk in the sector, non-performing loans (NPL), generate significant aggregate fluctuations in the economy. Similarly, periods of economic contraction, especially characterized by high interest rates, are followed in the medium-term by falling in the non-performing loans and then by credit booms. Finally exogenous shocks of NPLs produce marginal increases in inflation.


This study explores students' sense of belonging through the accounts of nineteen undergraduate students studying at an inner city post-1992 university. Participants' accounts were obtained through semi-structured interviews conducted at three key points during their first year of study. The resulting analysis is influenced by Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, capital and knowledge of the rules of the game, which are used to explore the impact of student dispositions on their experiences and perceptions of belonging.

The study shows that university can be a particularly challenging place for students from non-traditional backgrounds and it questions the view that belonging is about individual student commitment to institutional values. Belonging is conceptualised in a more nuanced multi-dimensional manner reflecting institutional habitus such as a 'one size fits all' approach to both induction and social provision.

The study argues that the onus is on the university to overcome inherent inequalities making belonging easier by encouraging student voice; providing care through help, support and guidance; examining the benefits of small group teaching and paying particular attention to the needs of clearing students. Further, strategies built on unproblematised views of elearning and the independent learner need to be reviewed as participants, especially nontraditional students, articulated both as evidence that the university did not validate them as individuals.


Fatima Bhutto's stunning debut novel The Shadow of the Crescent Moon begins and ends one rain swept. Friday morning in Mir Ali, a small town in Pakistan's Tribal Areas close to the Afghan border. Three brothers meet for breakfast. Soon after, the eldest, recently returned from America, hails a taxi to the local mosque. The second, a doctor, goes to check in at his hospital. His troubled wife does not join the family that morning. No one knows where Mina goes these days. And the youngest, the idealist, leaves for town on a motorbike. Seated behind him is a beautiful, fragile girl whose life and thoughts are overwhelmed by the war that has enveloped the place of her birth. Three hours later their day will end in devastating circumstances. The Shadow of the Crescent Moon chronicles the lives of five young people trying to live and love in a world on fire. Individuals are pushed to make terrible choices. And, as the events of this single morning unfold, one woman is at the centre of it all. "A first novel of uncommon poise and acuity, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon is set in an old and protracted war for land and dignity. But its swift and suspenseful narrative describes a fiercely contemporary battle in the human heart: between the seductive fantasy of personal freedom and the tenacious claims of family, community and history". (Pankaj Mishra). Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, grew up in Damascus, and lives in Karachi. This is her first novel.


Low Voltage (LV) distribution networks with high penetration levels of photovoltaics have to tackle various challenges such as overvoltages, voltage fluctuations, reverse power flows, and non-coincident demand and local generation. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) can help to ease these issues, if sized properly. This paper proposes a two-step methodology for sizing centralised ESS in LV networks. In the first step, a reoccurring daily pattern is detected using symbolic aggregated approximation (SAX) from the data measured at a German grid. Afterwards, high- and low-frequency components of the power signal are separated using a low-pass filter and then used for sizing different types of ESS. The effect of data resolution on the sizing outcomes is also investigated. The performance of the method was investigated using the full data set. It is concluded that ESS with the characteristics derived using this methodology can effectively be used for peak shaving, power smoothing and load balancing.


As with other major developed cities, the sub-tropical and fastest growing Australian capital city of Brisbane has adopted policies designed to increase residential densities and meet the liveability and sustainability goal of decreasing car dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. This goal hinges on a pedestrian friendly environment and walkable proximity to satisfy everyday needs. While older people are particularly attracted to sub-tropical urban environments, there has been little empirical evidence linking liveability satisfaction and perceived and actual use of older people's urban neighbourhood. Using qualitative (diaries and in-depth interviews) and quantitative (Global Positioning Systems and Geographical Information Systems mapping) liveability research data this paper explores whether high density supports liveability and is sustainable for older people living in a sub-tropical urban environment. This paper links satisfaction and perceived use of the sub-tropical urban Brisbane environment with actual mapped characteristics and use. Linking the two methods (both quantitative and qualitative) is important in obtaining a greater understanding of human behaviour and the lived world of older urban Australians and in providing a wider picture of sub-tropical urban neighbourhoods for a significant population group within those neighbourhoods. What emerges from the research is an uneven standard of design, provision of amenities and maintenance of the public realm which negatively impacts on local neighbourhood participation by older urban Australians. By highlighting these issues this research furthers the understanding of design factors which make the sub-tropical urban neighbourhood more liveable and sustainable for older people and will inform actionable and implementable policies, programs and designs.


We describe the implementation of a biochemical model of isoprene emission that depends on the electron requirement for isoprene synthesis into the Farquhar-Ball-Berry leaf model of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance that is embedded within a global chemistry-climate simulation framework. The isoprene production is calculated as a function of electron transport-limited photosynthesis, intercellular and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, and canopy temperature. The vegetation biophysics module computes the photosynthetic uptake of carbon dioxide coupled with the transpiration of water vapor and the isoprene emission rate at the 30 min physical integration time step of the global chemistry-climate model. In the model, the rate of carbon assimilation provides the dominant control on isoprene emission variability over canopy temperature. A control simulation representative of the present-day climatic state that uses 8 plant functional types (PFTs), prescribed phenology and generic PFT-specific isoprene emission potentials (fraction of electrons available for isoprene synthesis) reproduces 50% of the variability across different ecosystems and seasons in a global database of 28 measured campaign-average fluxes. Compared to time-varying isoprene flux measurements at 9 select sites, the model authentically captures the observed variability in the 30 min average diurnal cycle (R-2 = 64-96 %) and simulates the flux magnitude to within a factor of 2. The control run yields a global isoprene source strength of 451 TgC yr(-1) that increases by 30% in the artificial absence of plant water stress and by 55% for potential natural vegetation.


The arrival and popularity of multi-core processors has sparked a renewed interest in the development of parallel programs. Similarly, the availability of low-cost microprocessors and sensors has generated a great interest in embedded real-time programs. This book provides students and programmers whose backgrounds are in traditional sequential programming with the opportunity to expand their capabilities into parallel, embedded, real-time and distributed computing. It also addresses the theoretical foundation of real-time scheduling analysis, focusing on theory that is useful for actual applications. Written by award-winning educators at a level suitable for undergraduates and beginning graduate students, this book is the first truly entry-level textbook in the subject. Complete examples allow readers to understand the context in which a new concept is used, and enable them to build and run the examples, make changes, and observe the results.


How we listen to music and respond to its media and contexts has changed significantly since the invention of sound recording. Today's musicians have countless opportunities to listen to others' interpretations given the vast availability of past and contemporary repertories through the global reach of recordings. This study investigated the extent to which the growing archive of recordings provides a valuable resource for performers' creativity. Although musical performance is a particularly porous domain for influence through either deliberate or spontaneous assimilation of expressive variation from other aural sources, little empirical research exists on influence in performance and specifically on the influence of recordings. Qualitative data were obtained via an online questionnaire to identify how and in what ways the use and influence of recordings have changed over the course of classical performers' training or professional careers. Respondents' (N = 130) comments were analysed using a thematic inductive approach. The emerging themes reveal an overall increased level of use of recordings now relative to the past, a largely positive contribution of recordings in shaping musical development, including the role of recordings in self-regulated learning, a largely positive attitude to the influence of others' interpretations, a means of developing expressions of self-identity in relation to others and a route to acquiring a more critical and discerning mode of listening to recordings. Implications for music education are discussed in terms of how listening to recordings, in both formal and informal learning contexts, could support advanced musicians' learning through trial and error, enhance creative insight, strengthen self-efficacy, foster metacognitive skills and nurture individuality.


In the feminist discourse about women's relationship with food developed in the 1970s and 1980s, eating disorders are perceived as a complex reaction to traditional models of female identity. In the writings of Kim Chernin, Marilyn Lawrence, Morag MacSween and Susie Orbach, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and other atypical relationships with food and body emerge as an unidiomatic language adopted by women to communicate what words cannot express. Paradoxically, eating disorders become instruments of selfempowerment: on the one hand, unconventional eaters develop abnormal attitudes towards their bodies, but on the other hand, by employing such metaphorical language, they find a way to question the social constrictions and cultural contradictions of women's position in patriarchal culture. Italian women writers have portrayed openly anorexic, bulimic and compulsive eaters in the characters of their novels and autobiographies since the late 1980s. From Clara Sereni's pioneering Casalinghitudine (1987) to Michela Marzano's controversial Volevo essere una farfalla (2011), the fictional depiction of eating disorders in Italian literature has increased epidemically in the last few decades, mirroring the rapid spread of these syndromes. However, as I suggest in my thesis, since the late nineteenth century, when anorexia was officially diagnosed by the medical discourse, Italian women writers such as Neera (1848-1918), Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), Wanda Bontà (1902-1986), Paola Masino (1908-1989), Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) and others have presented in their fiction a variety of female characters who experience a troubled relationship with their body and with food. In each case, this is coupled with the portrayal of the rebellious feelings that the characters experience towards women's preestablished social roles. In Neera's Teresa (1886) and L'indomani (1889), in Aleramo's Una donna (1906), in Bontà's Signorinette (1938), Masino's Nascita e morte della massaia (1945) and in Ginzburg's "La madre" (1948) and Le voci della sera (1961), as well as other narrative works, the authors do not use the medical terminology of eating disorders in order to illustrate their protagonists' eating problems, but they often depict behaviours which recall anorexic and bulimic attitudes, as described by the scientific discourse on these pathologies. The anorexic symptoms displayed by the characters become therefore their unspoken protest against the socio-cultural constrictions imposed on Italian women. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, I frame my analysis of modern and contemporary Italian women's fiction within the feminist perspectives on anorexia, bulimia and binge eating developed in the 1970s and 1980s. By doing so, I attempt to decode a controversial female experience and the language Italian women writers used to express it before it became officially acknowledged as a pathology that reflects women's anxiety about their identity. Long before feminist scholars identified the strong link between social context and eating disorders in the closing decades of the twentieth century, these writers depict women using the languages of food and the body as one of the possible means of rebelling against patriarchal repression.


Climate change, financial shocks, and fluctuations in international trade are some of the reasons why resilience isincreasingly invoked in discussions about land-use policy. However, resilience assessments come with the challenge of operationalization,upscaling their conclusions while considering the context-specific nature of land-use dynamics and the common lack of long-termdata. We revisit the approach of system archetypes for identifying resilience surrogates and apply it to land-use systems using sevencase studies spread across Latin America. The approach relies on expert knowledge and literature-based characterizations of keyprocesses and patterns of land-use change synthesized in a data template. These narrative accounts are then used to guide developmentof causal networks, from which potential surrogates for resilience are identified. This initial test of the method shows that deforestation,international trade, technological improvements, and conservation initiatives are key drivers of land-use change, and that ruralmigration, leasing and land pricing, conflicts in property rights, and international spillovers are common causal pathways that underlieland-use transitions. Our study demonstrates how archetypes can help to differentiate what is generic from context dependant. Theyhelp identify common causal pathways and leverage points across cases to further elucidate how policies work and where, as well aswhat policy lessons might transfer across heterogeneous settings.


General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer were the two men chiefly responsible for the building of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, code name "The Manhattan Project." As the ranking military officer in charge of marshalling men and material for what was to be the most ambitious, expensive engineering feat in history, it was General Groves who hired Oppenheimer (with knowledge of his left-wing past), planned facilities that would extract the necessary enriched uranium, and saw to it that nothing interfered with the accelerated research and swift assembly of the weapon.This is his story of the political, logistical, and personal problems of this enormous undertaking which involved foreign governments, sensitive issues of press censorship, the construction of huge plants at Hanford and Oak Ridge, and a race to build the bomb before the Nazis got wind of it. The role of groves in the Manhattan Project has always been controversial. In his new introduction the noted physicist Edward Teller, who was there at Los Alamos, candidly assesses the general's contributions--and Oppenheimer's--while reflecting on the awesome legacy of their work.


Abstract We propose a way to incorporate NTBs for the four workhorse models of the modern trade literature in computable general equilibrium models (CGEs). CGE models feature intermediate linkages and thus allow us to study global value chains (GVCs). We show that the Ethier-Krugman monopolistic competition model, the Melitz firm heterogeneity model and the Eaton and Kortum model can be defined as an Armington model with generalized marginal costs, generalized trade costs and a demand externality. As already known in the literature in both the Ethier-Krugman model and the Melitz model generalized marginal costs are a function of the amount of factor input bundles. In the Melitz model generalized marginal costs are also a function of the price of the factor input bundles. Lower factor prices raise the number of firms that can enter the market profitably (extensive margin), reducing generalized marginal costs of a representative firm. For the same reason the Melitz model features a demand externality: in a larger market more firms can enter. We implement the different models in a CGE setting with multiple sectors, intermediate linkages, non-homothetic preferences and detailed data on trade costs. We find the largest welfare effects from trade cost reductions in the Melitz model. We also employ the Melitz model to mimic changes in Non tariff Barriers (NTBs) with a fixed cost-character by analysing the effect of changes in fixed trade costs. While we work here with a model calibrated to the GTAP database, the methods developed can also be applied to CGE models based on the WIOD database.


This paper investigates the incentive effects of automobile insurance, compulsory insurance laws, and no‐fault liability laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. We analyze a panel of 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia for 1970–98, a period in which many states adopted compulsory insurance regulations and/or no‐fault laws. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find evidence that automobile insurance has moral hazard costs, leading to an increase in traffic fatalities. We also find that reductions in accident liability produced by no‐fault liability laws have led to an increase in traffic fatalities (estimated to be on the order of 6 percent). Overall, our results indicate that, whatever other benefits they might produce, increases in the incidence of automobile insurance and moves to no‐fault liability systems have significant negative effects on traffic fatalities.


This teaching case study focuses on SKF, a leading supplier of products, services and solutions. It consists of an overview of the company and then a narrative concentrating on the sudden loss of a large customer relationship. Moreover, it explores how central individuals devise various strategies to recover the relationship. The purpose is to stimulate a discussion concerning alternative ways for handling such relationship losses. The case is especially suited as a starting point for discussions of different marketing strategies and customer relationship tactics. Teaching notes are provided with discussion questions and possible answers.


Science, technology, and innovation play crucial roles in the society. Studies on science-technology relationships primarily serve for innovation, competitiveness, and policy. Nevertheless, science-technology relationships in the evolution have been disputed in studies from academic and practical circles, especially from the philosophy of technology. This project aims to investigate science-technology relationships in Sino-Western philosophies of technology, and the hints for innovation, competitiveness, and policy. This paper launches and argues on a theoretical framework for science-technology relationships: (i) technology emerges earlier than science; (ii) science and technology are different but closely connected; (iii) science and technology engage in dynamic interaction; (iv) science-technology interaction takes various forms in its complex progress of nonlinearity and diversification; and (v) science-technology integration is presentational. This study applies a systems-theoretic approach to the interdependent policy issues relating to science, technology, innovation, and competitiveness. This article examines how endogenous and exogenous developments of science and technology in China and the West based on science-technology relationships have influenced science and technology innovations, national competitiveness, and science and technology policies. The results reveal cognitive progress and cultural diversity. National competitiveness is preferentially strengthened in real productivities by technological invention and innovation, assisted by scientific research and innovation. This study recommends shifting the centers of science policy and technology policy from exogenous developments to endogenous developments. This article proposes proper reforms from exogenous growth to endogenous growth in science and technology innovations, national competitiveness, and science and technology policies for policy making.


Banana (Musa spp.) is one of the most significant horticultural crops due to its economic and social value to communities across the globe. A major constraint to the worldwide cultivation of banana is the disease Fusarium wilt or Panama disease, which is caused by the soilborne fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc). Currently, the molecular mechanisms underpinning the pathogenicity of Foc remain largely unknown. In this study, we sought to investigate the genetic mechanisms regulating pathogenicity in Foc. In initial studies, we identified the distribution and sequence diversity of a class of fungal effector genes termed the secreted in xylem (SIX) genes in a collection of isolates representing the various genetic lineages of Foc. This work demonstrated that the repertoire of SIX genes within a Foc lineage is highly conserved however isolates of Foc from genetically distinct lineages carried unique ranges of SIX genes. A systematic analysis of the SIX gene homologues identified in Foc also supports the hypothesis that this class of fungal effectors has been horizontally acquired in the lineages of Foc. Currently, it is hypothesised that small, secreted proteins, such as the SIX proteins, confer the host- and cultivar-specific pathogenicity of the lineages of Foc. We further investigated this hypothesis by attempting to alter the cultivar-specific pathogenicity of Foc by modifying the complement of SIX genes through genetic transformation. Ongoing studies are being performed to investigate the genomic organisation and evolution of Foc and the localisation of the SIX genes in the genome of Foc using long-read sequencing technology. This work has particular significance for understanding how Fusarium oxysporum has evolved and adapted to a crop system as well as investigating the molecular interaction between pathogens and their hosts.


Physician behavior is a key target of government regulation intended to improve the efficiency, quality, and accessibility of health care. Yet according to physicians' "bad law" claims, the legal effort to promote patient health and well-being has actually caused significant harm. These "bad law" claims - that malpractice litigation prompts defensive medicine, that patients' rights policies prompt doctors to provide futile care, that controlled substance laws cause physicians to undertreat patients in pain - have diminished in significance due to the deconstruction of professionalism. Claims are often discarded as the cries of "bad apple" doctors or in the interest of creating a more egalitarian or consumer-oriented model of medicine. This article argues that physicians' "bad law" claims should be taken seriously. The way physicians react to legal requirements can negatively impact the effectiveness of the law and the quality of patient care. Thus physician behavior must be included as an important factor in the effort to evaluate and improve the performance of the law. Taking seriously physicians' "bad law" claims is a first step to understanding how physicians react to legal risks and consequently, how well laws perform.This article begins by addressing the dynamic relationship between the health law reform agenda and the medical profession. Part II considers categories of physicians' "bad law" claims, recognizing that some may be dishonest or misinformed but arguing that many claims have credence as legitimate responses to extralegal shadow systems or truly harmful legal standards. Part III assesses common responses to physicians' "bad law" claims. Providing specific examples, the article argues that current responses - e.g. educating doctors on the law; immunity statutes; safe harbor provisions - are inadequate because they fail to account for the realities of the medical professional or the nature of the lawFinally, Part IV makes two recommendations for taking physicians "bad law" claims seriously and thereby effectively evaluating and improving the reform effort. First, it advocates evaluating the law through its population-based effects on physician behavior. Second, it recommends tailored monitoring and investigative processes that allow formal legal standards rather than policy decisions to govern the regulatory process.


Population genetic structures illustrate evolutionary trajectories of organisms adapting to differential environmental conditions. Verticillium stem striping disease on oilseed rape was mainly observed in continental Europe, but has recently emerged in the United Kingdom. The disease is caused by the hybrid fungal species Verticillium longisporum that originates from at least three separate hybridization events, yet hybrids between Verticillium progenitor species A1 and D1 are mainly responsible for Verticillium stem striping. We reveal a hitherto un-described dichotomy within V. longisporum lineage A1/D1 that correlates with the geographic distribution of the isolates with an 'A1/D1 West' and an 'A1/D1 East' cluster. Genome comparison between representatives of the A1/D1 West and East clusters excluded population distinctiveness through separate hybridization events. Remarkably, the A1/D1 West population that is genetically more diverse than the entire A1/D1 East cluster caused the sudden emergence of Verticillium stem striping in the UK, whereas in continental Europe Verticillium stem striping is predominantly caused by the more genetically uniform A1/D1 East population. The observed genetic diversity of the A1/D1 West population argues against a recent introduction of the pathogen into the UK, but rather suggests that the pathogen previously established in the UK and remained latent or unnoticed as oilseed rape pathogen until recently.


Dammann gratings are binary-phase Fourier holograms that are used to generate an array of point sources. Using symmetry and separability arguments, we extend Dammann's method for generating one-dimensional symmetric arrays to general two-dimensional responses. Computer-generated holograms are used to verify the modified design method.


Madagascar is considered as one of world's highest priority in biodiversity conservation. This is linked not only with the high degree of diversity and endemism but also the ongoing threats of the natural communities. However, efforts have been underway at different levels in Madagascar with the new vision Madagascar Naturally and the proposed five year plan Madagascar Action Plan (MAP), to protect and valorise the unique and rich biological diversity, in collaboration with all stakeholders, including the International communities. The new Protected Areas System of Madagascar represent an important benchmark in an overall plan for conservation and sustainable development, first unveiled by Excellency President Marc Ravalomanana at the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa in 2003. The President committed to increase the total size of protected areas to 10 % of the country's territory, from 1.7 million hectares to 6 million hectares, in a five-year period to ensure the conservation of these unique biodiversity. One of the key aims of the new Protected Areas System of Madagascar is to strengthen the integration of Conservation and Development for sustainable management of resources. In addition, the involvement and empowerment of stakeholders, including local communities, traditional leaders, private sectors, government or non government organizations, play an important role in this new system of protected areas. The Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests, has targeted about one million hectares of protected areas to be classified each year, to reach this objective of six millions hectares over five years. The first one million hectares of this system of protected areas has been classified in 2005, and the classification of the next one million hectares for 2006 is going to the right direction. In addition to the declaration of the President of Madagascar in Durban, recently during the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in September 2005, the President of Madagascar has also announced to allocate 8 % of the cancelled external debt of Madagascar, to support biodiversity conservation and environmental management, for sustainable financing of all efforts in Madagascar Conserving the natural communities is critical not only to biodiversity, but also to the people who rely on the resources for their livelihoods. Conservation does not mean full protection, and exclude human being. We all need to understand that conservation includes sustainable management, protection and preservation. The importance of zoning would play an important role in this undertaking. One would need to consider a zoned area that could be harvested with control, another one for ecotourism, another zone for protection and so on. To live in a safe and healthy environment does not only mean protecting species in their natural habitat, but also enhancing the life quality of each citizen. Therefore it is very important that we all work together to achieve this goal and that conservation efforts go hand in hand with development. I welcome this new journal MADAGASCAR CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT as it deals largely and exclusively with Conservation and/or Development in Madagascar. Biodiversity Conservation would not go alone without Development and vice versa. I encourage Malagasy researchers, students, decision makers to contribute to this journal as this new journal aims to provide a forum for exchange of information and experiences, about all aspects of conservation and development work in Madagascar. It will also play an important role as an early warning for interested people to threats to nature and culture as they arise. Therefore, this new journal arrives at the right time, as it will provide a kit for both, conservation and development practitioners in Madagascar. I wish a long life to the MADAGASCAR CONSERVATION & DEVELOPMENT new journal, and warm congratulations to its Editorial Board. Sincerely Yours, Joelisoa Ratsirarson, Ph.D.


This thesis explores the meaning and experience of local and transnational kin connections for Pakistani Muslims living in Teesside, United Kingdom. The thesis contributes to knowledge about 'the practice of kinship' in a transnational context. The attempt to combine an investigation of transnationalism with a study of how kin relations are conducted in the present day is one of the strengths of the work. The ethnography is based on eighteen months of fieldwork carried out among British Pakistani Muslims. It explores the domestic nature of transnationalism in kin connections that forms the experiential basis of global and local relationships. The research was undertaken with the cooperation of first, second and third-generation British Pakistanis living in the north east of England. Various ethnographic qualitative methods were used to collect data, including semi- structured interviews, life histories, participant observation and focus group discussions. demonstrates the complex interplay of gender, age, origin, kin connection and life-course events in creating variation in individuals' engagement with the transnational. I argue that during their migratory experiences many first and second-generation Pakistanis display new forms of' habits of meaning' or 'habitus' to cope with differences exposed in their transnational travels. The thesis is written from the perspective of local actors: people who identify themselves as Pakistani, British Pakistani and have a Pakistani-origin. Although the thesis attempts to foreground their perspectives and narratives, it is also infused with my open interpretation and analyses, which I attempt to distinguish from local 'emic' ones. I am much less interested in this thesis in generalising claims about British Pakistani migrants, than in local practices of British Pakistanis in Teesside. For British Pakistanis, transnational practices involve not only a particular post-colonial history, but also unique understandings of the meanings of biradari (extended family), marriage and family life and the everyday practices in which the recipients of such global processes must live. The migration of Pakistanis into the United Kingdom however, has introduced volatile relationships between kin as new configurations of space, consumption and social reproduction are negotiated. A striking aspect of the lives of those whom I interviewed was the fact that most of them were in the process of acquiring new patterns of commodity consumption and desire. Narratives from parents and grandparents contain a 're-consciousness' of property relations revealing new ideas and practices about the importance of siblings and children in the new migratory context. Moreover, they form new self-definitions of fellow British Pakistanis and relatives living in Pakistan. It is these complex transnational reconfigurations (transnationalism, subjectivity, the meaning of 'home' and relatedness) that comprise the main subject of the present thesis. However, this thesis spans several areas of anthropological interest: the practice of kinship and relatedness. South Asian migration, transnationalism, diaspora, intergenerational conflicts, nurturing practices, ethnicity and studies of ethnic minorities in Britain.


Thermal camouflage is used to confront with infrared (IR) imaging by concealed or misled heat signature of the targets. Most previous conductive thermal camouflage only achieves the equivalent temperature profiles outside the illusion device, and the targets may still be observable from the z-plane imaging. The two-dimensional (2D) illusion thermotics was proposed to add the split thermal illusions inside the illusion device, which advances the thermal camouflage performance. But a drawback remains that the thermal illusions are not separated from the heat source, which only creates distorted heat signatures rather than camouflages the heat source. In this study, we develop the three-dimensional (3D) illusion thermotics with separated thermal illusions to remove the drawback for perfect thermal camouflage performance. Finite-element simulations validate that although the real heat source is located at the bottom center, both symmetric and asymmetric thermal illusions can be generated on the top surface, misleading the number, size, and position information of the real heat source from the z-plane IR imaging and achieving perfect thermal camouflage performance. The 3D illusion thermotics may open avenue for more thermal functionalities with enhanced flexibility at the cost of enhanced complexity.


The resultative construction has been one of the focuses in exploring the interfaces between semantics and syntax. In the generativist tradition, constructions are regarded as the surface structures that are generated by a set of phrasal rules. In cognitive linguistics, especially the approach of construction grammar, constructions are viewed as the fixed pairings of forms and meanings that are regarded as symbolic like lexical items. This article argues that constructions are schemas determined by certain rules, and a set of subconstructions may be produced by a base construction. The article shows that the transitivity of the resultative construction is governed by the semantic relationship between the verb and the resultative phrase, which in turn determines concrete syntactic configurations. Grammar constructions consisting of two or more elements are essentially different from those atomic lexical items, a point distinguishing my analysis from construction grammar. Without the assumption of any underlying structures, unlike the generativist model, this article uncovers the surface rules that determine concrete constructions.


A body of recent work suggests commonly–used VAR models of output, inflation, and interest rates may be prone to instabilities. In the face of such instabilities, a variety of estimation or forecasting methods might be used to improve the accuracy of forecasts from a VAR. These methods include using different approaches to lag selection, different observation windows for estimation, (over-) differencing, intercept correction, stochastically time–varying parameters, break dating, discounted least squares, Bayesian shrinkage, and detrending of inflation and interest rates. Although each individual method could be useful, the uncertainty inherent in any single representation of instability could mean that combining forecasts from the entire range of VAR estimates will further improve forecast accuracy. Focusing on models of U.S. output, prices, and interest rates, this paper examines the effectiveness of combination in improving VAR forecasts made with real–time data. The combinations include simple averages, medians, trimmed means, and a number of weighted combinations, based on: BatesGranger regressions, factor model estimates, regressions involving forecast quartiles, Bayesian model averaging, and predictive least squares–based weighting. Our goal is to identify those approaches that, in real time, yield the most accurate forecasts of these variables. We use forecasts from simple univariate time series models as benchmarks. JEL Nos.: C53, E37, C32


Dr Erik Thunnissen: First of all, there has to be a proper diagnosis. In the end for the surgeon and the oncology team, and also if there is a tumor, we need to see its resection margin, if the resection margins are free or not. In the case of lobectomy, there is a huge specimen, and it usually collapses, and so it influences the architecture of the lung, because the width of the lung is about like this. We receive it with about one third of the original width. Then the handling needs to be oriented in the same way as it was in the patient to understand the position. During the whole procedure, the 3-dimensional location in relation to the patient needs to be maintained. So we make pictures, in the unfixed (fresh) situation from two sides, so we can have reasonable images.


The collapse of Suharto's New Order is a starting point of the quest of religious identity for Indonesian Muslims. A lot of radical groups are founded under the umbrella of liberty and democracy. However, many of them have destroyed the structure of democracy and multicultural society. Conflicts of Maluku (and Poso) in 1999-2003 are the best local context of how religious groups (muslims and christians) fighted severely in the name of God. The conflict is also a good case to understand the weakening of state and the involvements of military (para-military) forces in instigating the conflicts, which impacted to thousands people killed, and destroyed the ethnic and religious harmony in the region. This paper will analyse the conflicts of Maluku and compare it to other religious conflicts in Poso, Central Sulawesi and ethnic conflicts in West Kalimantan, Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. I argue the growth of local nationalism and unstability of States in Southeast Asian regions brings the rise of civil society and paramilitary forces, which challenges the entities of harmony, peace and multiculturalism in the region.


Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are polypeptides that induce ectopic bone formation in standard rat in vivo assay systems. Previous studies have demonstrated the clinical utility of these proteins in spinal fusion, fracture healing, and prosthetic joint stabilization. Gene therapy is also a theoretically attractive technique to express BMPs clinically, since long-term, regulatable gene expression and systemic delivery with tissue-specific expression may be possible in future. This study was performed to determine whether an adenoviral vector containing the BMP-2 gene can be used to express BMP-2 in vitro and promote endochondral bone formation in vivo. In vitro, U87 MG cells transduced per cell with 20 MOI of an adenoviral construct containing the BMP-2 gene under the control of the universal CMV promoter (Ad-BMP-2) showed positive antibody staining for the BMP-2 protein at posttransfection day 2. The synthesis and secretion of active BMP-2 into the conditioned medium of Ad-BMP-2-transduced 293 cells were confirmed by Western blot analysis and the induction of alkaline phosphatase activity in a W-20 stromal cell assay. In vivo, Sprague-Dawley rats and athymic nude rats were injected with Ad-BMP-2 in the thigh musculature and were sacrificed on day 3, 6, 9, 12, 16, 21, 60, and 110 for histological analysis. The Sprague-Dawley rats showed evidence of acute inflammation, without ectopic bone formation, at the injection sites. In the athymic nude rats, BMP-2 gene therapy induced mesenchymal stem cell chemotaxis and proliferation, with subsequent differentiation to chondrocytes. The chondrocytes secreted a cartilaginous matrix, which then mineralized and was replaced by mature bone. This study demonstrates that a BMP-2 adenoviral vector can be utilized to produce BMP-2 by striated muscle cells in athymic nude rats, leading to endochondral bone formation. However, in immunocompetent animals the endochondral response is attenuated, secondary to the massive immune response elicited by the first-generation adenoviral construct.


AC induction machines (IM) are the most popular motors in many manufacturing processes and industrial applications. They are widely applied in petrochemical, military, aerospace and nuclear plants and mining industry. Broken rotor bar (BRB) is one of the most frequent AC IM faults. Accurate and timely diagnosis of BRB can help to lower maintenance costs and prevent unscheduled downtimes. BRB faults will cause rotor resistance change and then affect stator supply current directly. Therefore, it is an effective way to detect BRB fault by analysing instantaneous electrical signature (IES). However, most of the analysis results achieved by the common methods are time consuming and cannot process geometric information for BRB fault diagnosis with high accuracy. Mathematical morphology (MM) has attracted considerable attention due to its advantages of extracting the geometric structure of the modulation feature with less computation. In this paper, a novel fault detector is developed for BRB fault detection using MM based motor IES analysis. A novel morphological gradient is improved to analyse the motor current signal for fault related modulation components enhancement. And then the max value in the low frequency range of the MM filtered signal is extracted as a fault detector for BRB diagnosis. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by experimental study. The test motors are setup with different broken bar level and operating under different loads. The analysis results prove the efficiency and performance of the proposed method on the BRB faults diagnosis for IMs.


Antoine de Saint-Exupery first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission. More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power. The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the apparition of a little, well, prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls. "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket." And so begins their dialogue, which stretches the narrator's imagination in all sorts of surprising, childlike directions.


Welcome to the third issue of volume 44 of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ 44(3) 2020).
Transparency is a prerequisite for valid analysis of data. Full disclosure of all aspects of the creation process is necessary for the evaluation of a data collection. The Roper Center has collaborated, assembled and developed standards, and performed scoring of datasets to facilitate the evaluation of data.  It is easy to say that all aspects of data collection are important, but with more knowledge about the process of data curation PhD students become aware of how it is important for their research. The CESSDA Metadata Office is a tool supporting the realization of high transparency and successful research data management. This is an extremely short overview of the three submissions found in this issue, below a little more information, and finally enjoy the articles.

The first paper in this issue is first for a reason. 'Standards and Scoring to Increase Transparency for Archived Public Opinion Data' by Kathleen J. Weldon won first prize among the papers submitted for the IASSIST 2019 conference. You do remember IASSIST conferences, I hope. Annual conferences have been regular as clockwork, but due to COVID-19 the 2020 conference in Göteborg, Sweden, is postponed to April 7–9, 2021.  See more at https://www.iassist2021.org/.

Kathleen J. Weldon is the Director of Data Operations and Communications at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Cornell University – the world's largest archive of public opinion survey data. New standards for archiving data at Roper Center are described in the paper in the context of their historical development. What is now termed 'transparency' was an early commitment by George Gallup to 'full disclosure of methods, sponsorship, and data'. After some years, standards were adopted by professional organizations. At the Roper Center, submissions have long been evaluated in order to preserve 'the best of its time' polling. However, with new technologies new survey methods were used without a consensus of best practices. This led to the development of standards by the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). The new standards are the basis for Roper Center developing a system for scoring transparency. It is the author's hope and expectation that the future will bring an increase in the preservation of well-documented polling datasets.

Many PhD students produce data collections or compile and use archival data for their thesis. At Purdue University, a School of Information Studies course was developed for PhD students covering topics such as identifying an archival data set, creating metadata and documentation, selecting an appropriate long-term storage location, and planning for the deposit process. The paper 'Capturing their "first" dataset: A graduate course to walk PhD students through the curation of their dissertation data' describes the background, the development, and the content and structure of the course, and concludes with assessments and the insights gained for the library. Naturally some practical issues evolved through the pilot course; specifically, the broad spectrum of disciplines in PhD projects demands much customization of the course curricula. The authors Megan Sapp Nelson and Ningning Nicole Kong are respectively professor and associate professor of Library Science at Purdue University Libraries. The course was established by request from PhD advisors, who found that datasets were valuable outputs not being captured in the thesis deposit process. This course also meets the demand for data management skills in the job market.

GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany and the UK Data Archive are leading the CESSDA Metadata Office project. The Metadata Office covers several areas such as metadata models, schemas, profiles, controlled vocabularies, and thesauri. The paper 'The matter of meta in research data management: Introducing the CESSDA Metadata Office Project' reports on the project. CESSDA stands for Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, and with the many European languages it follows that language issues are the focus. The project builds upon DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) and also includes collaboration with the DDI Alliance on translations of DDI vocabularies through the use of ISO language tags in metadata and controlled vocabularies; this is exemplified in some screen shots. The paper also presents the information covered in the CESSDA Metadata Model and some examples of the characteristics of elements of the model. The authors are all participants in the project; André Förster and Kerrin Borschewski as consecutive heads of the project at GESIS, Sharon Bolton as head of the project at UK Data Service, and Taina Jääskeläinen at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive.

Submissions of papers for the IASSIST Quarterly are always very welcome. We welcome input from IASSIST conferences or other conferences and workshops, from local presentations or papers especially written for the IQ. When you are preparing such a presentation, give a thought to turning your one-time presentation into a lasting contribution. Doing that after the event also gives you the opportunity of improving your work after feedback. We encourage you to login or create an author login to https://www.iassistquarterly.com (our Open Journal System application). We permit authors 'deep links' into the IQ as well as deposition of the paper in your local repository. Chairing a conference session with the purpose of aggregating and integrating papers for a special issue IQ is also much appreciated as the information reaches many more people than the limited number of session participants and will be readily available on the IASSIST Quarterly website at https://www.iassistquarterly.com.  Authors are very welcome to take a look at the instructions and layout:
https://www.iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/about/submissions
Authors can also contact me directly via e-mail: email@example.com. Should you be interested in compiling a special issue for the IQ as guest editor(s) I will also be delighted to hear from you.
Karsten Boye Rasmussen - September 2020


OBJECTIVE
To assess data regarding clinical features, clinicopathologic and blood gas variables, and outcome from horse and mule foals with confirmed neonatal isoerythrolysis (NI).

DESIGN
Retrospective case series.

ANIMALS
17 horse and 1 mule foals.

PROCEDURE
Medical records of foals (< 14 days old) with NI were reviewed. Information collected included signalment; clinical examination findings; results of hematologic, serum and plasma biochemical, and venous blood gas analyses and urinalysis; treatments; and outcome.

RESULTS
Data from 17 horse foals and 1 mule foal with NI (mean age, 71 hours) were evaluated. Many foals had high serum indirect and direct bilirubin concentrations and sorbitol dehydrogenase activity. Whole blood immunoglobulin concentrations were < 400 mg/dL in 4 of 15 foals. Fresh whole blood transfusions were administered to 10 of 18 foals. Among the blood factors implicated in 11 foals, one (Dg) had not previously been associated with NI. Of 10 foals that received blood transfusions, 7 had significant improvements in Hct and hemoglobin concentration and 2 had significant improvements in central venous oxygen tension. Fifteen foals survived to discharge.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Data suggest that blood factor Dg may be associated with NI in foals. Liver disease may be concurrent with NI in foals, and NI can develop in foals with inadequate passive transfer of colostral antibodies. Whole blood transfusions were successful at increasing oxygen-carrying capacity and improving peripheral tissue oxygenation in NI-affected foals. With appropriate treatment, the prognosis for foals with NI is good.


Machine translation should be semanticalty-accurate, linguistically-principled, user-interactive, and extensible to multiple languages and domains. This paper presents the universal parser architecture that strives to meet these objectives. In essence, linguistic knowledge bases (syntactic, semantic, lexical, pragmatic), encoded in theoretically-motivated formalisms such as lexical-functional grammars, are unified and precompiled into fast run-time grammars for parsing and generation. Thus, the universal parser provides principled run-time integration of syntax and semantics, while preserving the generality of domain-independent syntactic grammars, and language-independent domain knowledge bases; the optimized cross product is generated automatically in the precornpllation phase. Initial results for bi-directional English-Japanese translation show considerable promise both in terms of demonstrating the theoretical feasibillty of the approach and in terms of subsequent practical utility.


Homing endonucleases are rare-cutting enzymes that cleave DNA at a site near their own location, preferentially in alleles lacking the homing endonuclease gene (HEG). By cleaving HEG-less alleles the homing endonuclease can mediate the transfer of its own gene to the cleaved site via a process called homing, involving double strand break repair. Via homing, HEGs are efficiently transferred into new genomes when horizontal exchange of DNA occurs between organisms.Group I introns are intervening sequences that can catalyse their own excision from the unprocessed transcript without the need of any proteins. They are widespread, occurring both in eukaryotes and prokaryotes and in their viruses. Many group I introns encode a HEG within them that confers mobility also to the intron and mediates the combined transfer of the intron/HEG to intronless alleles via homing.Bacteriophage T4 contains three such group I introns and at least 12 freestanding HEGs in its genome. The majority of phages besides T4 do not contain any introns, and freestanding HEGs are also scarcely represented among other phages.In the first paper we looked into why group I introns are so rare in phages related to T4 in spite of the fact that they can spread between phages via homing. We have identified the first phage besides T4 that contains all three T-even introns and also shown that homing of at least one of the introns has occurred recently between some of the phages in Nature. We also show that intron homing can be highly efficient between related phages if two phages infect the same bacterium but that there also exists counteracting mechanisms that can restrict the spread of introns between phages. In the second paper we have looked at how the presence of introns can affect gene expression in the phage. We find that the efficiency of splicing can be affected by variation of translation of the upstream exon for all three introns in T4. Furthermore, we find that splicing is also compromised upon infection of stationary-phase bacteria. This is the first time that the efficiency of self-splicing of group I introns has been coupled to environmental conditions and the potential effect of this on phage viability is discussed.In the third paper we have characterised two novel freestanding homing endonucleases that in some T-even-like phages replace two of the putative HEGs in T4. We also present a new theory on why it is a selective advantage for freestanding, phage homing endonucleases to cleave both HEG-containing and HEG-less genomes.


Everybody tells you that you must have a website and you must have a blog but nobody tells you how or why. In this book you will learn the key steps to creating your blog but, more importantly, what you can use one for and how it will become an important part of your creative work. BBC writer William Gallagher shows you how to write a blog that people will read and then how to keep on writing new entries. See how to write fast blogs and more considered ones. How to make a blog that works for you because it works for your readers.


The study investigated the effect of personality traits (wave 1), change in personality traits over a one-year time period (from wave 1 to wave 2), and life events over the past year (wave 2 reports) on three components of female university students' (N = 280; mean age 20.2 years) subsequent (wave 2) subjective well-being, i.e. emotional (EWB), psychological (PWB), and social (SoWB). We applied the Big Five Inventory to evaluate personality, the Scale of Significant Life Events in Emerging Adulthood to assess the number of life events and student-perceived influence of these events on their lives, and the Mental Health Continuum – Short Form to measure EWB, PWB, and SoWB. Each of the Big Five traits played a significant and somewhat different role in predicting subsequent levels of the components of well-being, over and beyond background variables. Baseline levels of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and positive life events were associated with both EWB and PWB. Whereas an increase in Extraversion and a decrease in Neuroticism predicted EWB, an increase in Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness contributed to PWB. Baseline levels of Extraversion and an increase in Agreeableness were also predictive of SoWB. In support to the validity of the three-component model of well-being, the findings suggest the Big Five as a significant force in shaping different aspects of female students' well-being differentially, whereas the important but not extremely adverse or favourable life events within the past year show little influence above the effects of personality.


We search for a third generation vector leptoquark (VLQ3) that decays to a b quark and tau lepton using the CDF II detector and 320 pb(-1) of integrated luminosity from the Fermilab Tevatron. Observing a number of events in agreement with standard model expectations, we obtain, assuming Yang-Mills (minimal) couplings, the most stringent upper limit on the VLQ3 pair production cross section of 344 fb (493 fb) and lower limit on the VLQ3 mass of 317 GeV/c(2) (251 GeV/c(2)) at 95% C.L.


Study Design. Prospective longitudinal study, mean follow-up period; 11.7 ± 0.8 years was conducted from 1995 to 2007. Objective. To clarify normal aging process of cervical spine and correlation between progression of disc degeneration and development of clinical symptoms. Summary of Background Data. Aging of the cervical spine can inevitably occur in anyone. Long-term longitudinal studies following the same individuals are necessary to elucidate the accurate aging processes of the cervical spine. Methods. Two hundred twenty-three subjects of 497 original cohorts (123 men, 100 women, mean age: 39.0 ± 15.0, follow-up rate: 44.9%). Subjects, who underwent MRI 10 years ago, underwent another MRI, neurologic examination, and questionnaire survey regarding symptoms related to cervical spine and life style. Following 5 MR findings representing intervertebral disc degeneration were evaluated: (1) decrease in signal intensity of disc, (2) anterior compression of dura and spinal cord, (3) posterior disc protrusion (PDP), (4) disc space narrowing (DSN), and (5) foraminal stenosis (FS). Results. Progression of degenerative findings was observed in 189 subjects (81.1%). Progression of decrease in signal intensity of disc was observed in 59.6%, anterior compression of dura and spinal cord in 61.4%, PDP in 70.0%, DSN in 26.9%, and FS in 9.0%. Logistic regression analysis revealed that incidence of progression of PDP, DSN, FS was higher in elderly subjects. There were no correlations between any degenerative MR findings and sex, smoking, alcohol, sport, or body mass index. Neck pain, shoulder stiffness, and numbness in upper extremities were recognized in 9.9%, 30.0%, and 4.0% of subjects, and 1 or more clinical symptoms have developed in 34.1% during 10 years. Conclusion. Progression of degeneration of cervical spine on MRI was frequently observed during 10-year period, with development of symptoms in 34% of subjects. No factor related to progression of degeneration of cervical spine was identified except for age.


The purpose of this report was to present information in regard to school buildings insurance in Kansas. This study was planned to acquaint administrators, school board members, teachers, and interested parties with possible school buildings insurance programs available. In Kansas a board of education is legally changed with the supervision and care of school property. In many small school districts, a single fire might destroy the school plant and the community might thereby be without financial means for rebuilding. Thus, there are four reasons why boards of education should carry insurance on school property. These are: (1) to protect the community's investment, (2) to provide periodic inspections of the buildings and the contents, (3) to guarantee funds for the educational program, and (4) to relate school property protection to student and school employee protection by removing hazards which endanger their life and safety. A school building insurance program consists of several types of coverage. Some of these are fire, windstorm, vandalism, explosion, boiler, glass, theft and larceny. To maintain a school building insurance program, adequate records must be kept up to date as well as detailed and current inventory of buildings and equipment. An insurance program must be reviewed continually in a school system to keep the insurance plan current. The Public Institutional Property Plan of school building insurance in many instances is the most economical and covers the most probable losses to school buildings. This time of insurance is recommended by the Insurance Commission of Kansas for schools who can qualify under the minimum premium clause and other limitations specified in the plan.


This paper examines the application of a GIS based planning support system, What If? TM, to evaluate alternative growth policies for sustainable urban growth in a rapidly growing city of Iran. The paper describes the study area, Dorood city, and the What If? Model. It then explains the procedures that were used to obtain the required data and to run the model to Dorood city. The paper concludes by considering the results and implications, which the study has for urban growth management of the city to preserve farmland and accommodate growth in the city.


Supporting pilots with a decision support tool (DST) during high-workload scenarios is a promising and potentially very helpful application for AI in aviation. Nevertheless, design requirements and opportunities for trustworthy DSTs within the aviation domain have not been explored much in the scientific literature. To address this gap, we explore the decision-making process of pilots with respect to user requirements for the use case of diversions. We do so via two prototypes, each representing a role the AI could have in a DST: A) Unobtrusively hinting at data points the pilot should be aware of. B) Actively suggesting and ranking diversion options based on criteria the pilot has previously defined. Our work-in-progress feedback study reveals four preliminary main findings: 1) Pilots demand guaranteed trustworthiness of such a system and refuse trust calibration in the moment of emergency. 2) We may need to look beyond trust calibration for isolated decision points and rather design for the process leading to the decision. 3) An unobtrusive, augmenting AI seems to be preferred over an AI proposing and ranking diversion options at decision time. 4) Shifting the design goal toward supporting situation awareness rather than the decision itself may be a promising approach to increase trust and reliance.


Probabilistic planners are very flexible tools that can provide good solutions for difficult tasks. However, they rely on a model of the domain, which may be costly to either hand code or automatically learn for complex tasks. We propose a new learning approach that (a) requires only a set of state transitions to learn the model; (b) can cope with uncertainty in the effects; (c) uses a relational representation to generalize over different objects; and (d) in addition to action effects, it can also learn exogenous effects that are not related to any action, e.g., moving objects, endogenous growth and natural development. The proposed learning approach combines a multi-valued variant of inductive logic programming for the generation of candidate models, with an optimization method to select the best set of planning operators to model a problem. Finally, experimental validation is provided that shows improvements over previous work.


This study proposes a new method to evaluate the composition of regional arrangements focused on increasing intraregional trade and economic integration. In contrast to previous studies that take the country composition of these arrangements as given, our method uses a network clustering algorithm adapted from the machine-learning literature to identify, in a data-driven way, those groups of neighboring countries that are most integrated with each other. Using the obtained landscape of regional integration clusters (RICs) as a benchmark, we then apply our method to critically assess the composition of real-world customs unions (CUs). Our results indicate a considerable variation across CUs in terms of their distance to the RICs emerging from the clustering algorithm. This suggests that some CUs are relatively more driven by "natural" economic forces, as opposed to political considerations. Our results also point to several testable hypotheses related to the geopolitical configuration of CUs.


Using a self-regulatory process, individuals act upon their cognitive and emotional representations of health threats to actively manage their health. Leventhal's common-sense model describes cognitive representations of illness that include perceptions about the identity, timeline, consequences, control and cause of illness. Research has shown that individuals' illness perceptions predict health behaviours and functional outcomes, particularly when perceptions are specific. Psychometric assessments of illness perceptions need to have the ability to detect specific and idiosyncratic perceptions and emotions; methods include rating scales and patients' drawings of their illness. Recent randomised trials have demonstrated that interventions can change illness perceptions and improve health outcomes in patient groups, including those with normal test-results, and that family members also benefit from such interventions. These innovations inform clinical applications for improving patient health.


Understanding how humans and machines recognize novel visual concepts from few examples remains a fundamental challenge. Humans are remarkably able to grasp a new concept and make meaningful generalization from just few examples. By contrast, state-ofthe-art machine learning techniques and visual recognition systems typically require thousands of training examples and often break down if the training sample set is too small. This dissertation aims to endow visual recognition systems with low-shot learning ability, so that they learn consistently well on data of different sample sizes. Our key insight is that the visual world is well structured and highly predictable not only in data and feature spaces but also in task and model spaces. Such structures and regularities enable the systems to learn how to learn new recognition tasks rapidly by reusing previous experiences. This philosophy of learning to learn, or meta-learning, is one of the underlying tenets towards versatile agents that can continually learn a wide variety of tasks throughout their lifetimes. In this spirit, we address key technical challenges and explore complementary perspectives. We begin by learning from extremely limited data (e.g., one-shot learning). We cast the problem as supervised knowledge distillation and explore structures within model pairs. We introduce a meta-network that operates on the space of model parameters and encodes a generic transformation from "student" models learned from few samples to "teacher" models learned from large enough sample sets. By learning a series of transformations as more training data is gradually added, we further capture a notion of model dynamics to facilitate long-tail recognition with categories of different sample sizes. Moreover, by viewing the meta-network as an effective model adaptation strategy, we combine it with learning a generic model initialization and extend the use in few-shot human motion prediction tasks. To further decouple a recognition model from ties to a specific set of categories, we introduce self-supervision using meta-data. We expose the model to a large amount of unlabeled real-world images through an unsupervised meta-training phase. By learning diverse sets of low-density separators across auxiliary pseudo-classes, we capture a more generic, richer description of the visual world. Since they are informative across different categories, we alternatively use the low-density separators to constitute an "off-the-shelf" library as external memory, enabling generation of new models on-the-fly for a variety of tasks, including object detection, hypothesis transfer learning, domain adaptation, and image retrieval. By doing so, we have essentially leveraged structures within a large collection of models. We then move on to learning from a medium sized number of examples and explore structures within an evolving model when learning from continuously changing data streams and tasks. We rethink the dominant knowledge transfer paradigm that fine-tunes a fixedsize pre-trained model on new labeled target data. Inspired by developmental learning, we progressively grow a convolutional neural network with increased model capacity, which significantly outperforms classic fine-tuning approaches. Furthermore, we address unsupervised fine-tuning by transferring knowledge from a discriminative to a generative model on unlabeled target data. We thus make progress towards a lifelong learning process. From a different perspective, humans can imagine what novel objects look like from different views. Incorporating this ability to hallucinate novel instances of new concepts and leveraging joint structures in both data and task spaces might help recognition systems perform better low-shot learning. We then combine a meta-learner with a "hallucinator" that produces additional training examples, and optimize both models jointly, leading to significant performance gains. Finally, combining these approaches, we suggest a broader picture of learning to learn predictive structures through exploration and exploitation.


One of the main characteristics of modern day economic activity is the increasing number of companies with employees, producible goods and services provided that are constantly crossing national borders. The internationalization of activity of organizations over the past 15 years is concurrent with the globalization of management processes. Companies with fewer than 20 employees are becoming increasingly active in this process and their influence on the economic and social results of nations are at a constant growth. In this respect, it can justifiably be said that an organization's successful practice is mostly predicated by their managers' preparation to get involved in the processes of the times, when one of the main aspects of their activity becomes the ability to involve human resources in the changes that time has wrought and to effectively organize the activity of their employees. This is of prime significance to Lithuanian organizations, because studies conducted in the field of human resources illustrate that most organization leaders have insufficient competence to involve their personnel in change while also actively integrating in the processes of current times themselves. Remarks made by European Union (EU) experts that Lithuania should pay more attention to investment to immaterial assets, remain relevant to this day. The first section of the article outlines the viewpoint of Lithuanian and foreign management professionals on management theories and characteristics of practice in an environment of new challenges, and the portrait of a manager in the world of the present. K Adams (1996) notes that managers operating in an international environment have little to do with manager activity solely based on the national characteristics of their country. It is acknowledged in the article that globalization of management necessitates pursuit of reconciliation of internal and external environments and demands for constant changes within its organizations. Accordingly, managers have to initiate change and pursue managing the destiny of the organization itself, i.e. be "proactive". In addition, managers are responsible for maintaining the balance of "collective" and "personal" domains; therefore their activity should be based on "reactivity". The author of the article consents with a remark made by J.M. Kouzes and B. Z. Posner (2003), that optimal results cannot be reached by maintaining the standing situation, therefore, the main condition for the survival of organizations in the environment of management globalization and increasing competition becomes not so much the decision whether to accept or reject change, but the decision how to participate in change as well as when and how to implement reforms in one's organization. The author presents his vision on the variables that influence the world of a modern manager by summarizing the manager's universe of the recent decades and by utilizing Harvard Professor M. Porter's (1990) theoretical "Diamond" model on competitive advantages. The second section of the article covers the topicalities of current day management practice. The stereotype of the chrestomathic organization manager that formed in the West (which poorly evaluates the situational world of a manager, therefore insufficiently considers circumstances, under which, managers differently plan, organize and motivate) has taken deep roots in Lithuanian management study programs. However, by focusing most attention on developing their business, managers pay little attention to the competence of their employees and improving their skills. It is noted in the article, that the viewpoint of an organization as a living system is not progressing enough in Lithuania. This section presents results of empirical research conducted by the author, which confirm the statements made by various professionals that many managers in Lithuania are still not sufficiently oriented towards the rapidly changing world of the manager due to gaps in knowledge of management theory. In the third section of the article identifies the causes for the situation at hand - the poor quality of management studies, because most viewpoints presented in textbooks still invoke the concept of a simple and unchanging manager's world; textbook information is not tied with practice and the main focus during classes falls on dictation, which results in chaotic teaching. This section presents the author's viewpoint on studies of management in the circumstances of change, with their main quality being the ability to motivate students to cultivate personal skills - to get initial experience in independent interest on the theoretical provisions of management; to get to know one's personal qualities; to prepare for participation in change and to become aware of other of one's merits and demerits. It is acknowledged in the article that effective teaching of management is impossible if students do not accept the study methodology proposed by the lecturer and the latter fails to compose a common team with students. Conclusions of the conducted research are presented at the end of the article.


Knives are among the weapons most frequently involved in criminal cases. They represent the most encountered category of weapons in Swiss homicide cases (completed and attempted homicides considered) and are also frequently employed in assault cases, notably bodily injuries. Whenever a knife is involved in a stabbing event, DNA and fingerprints may be sought. When garments are damaged, fibres can also be investigated. Fibres from the victim's garments might transfer onto the blade of the knife used in the assault and can thus provide useful information to determine whether a particular weapon could have be used to stab the victim. This study simulates vertical stabbings into garments with the use of a special holding device. Different types of knives and blades straight or serrated were used as weapons. Two garments presenting different shedding capacities and garment structures were also considered for the simulations. The distribution of fibres transferred onto the blade (number and position) was recorded for each simulation performed. Sequences of stabbings into the two garments were also carried out to assess whether the order of the stabs could be determined. Several parameters were considered, notably the distribution of fibres transferred onto the blade. The transfer of fibres inside the stab damage ballistic soap was used in this study and on the area near the second damage was also investigated. This study provides new insight into the interpretation of fibres transferred onto knives after a single stab or a sequence of stabbings and into determining the stabbing sequence. Finally, the study brings some guidelines for the search and recovery of fibres on the crime scene and on the blades of knives.


"http://www.osa-jon.org/features/OAN_2005.html". Feature Issue on Optical
 Access Networks (OAN). We review the progress in optical wireless communication
 networks for first- and last-mile broadband access. The link budget is discussed.
 Modulation and coding are studied to deal with the atmospheric turbulence channel.
 Topics related to efficient topology design, survivable routing, and dynamic
 reconfiguration algorithms are discussed. It is shown that optical wireless
 communication networks have great potential to provide enough bandwidth for
 first-mile broadband applications. However, major challenges need to be overcome in
 pointing and acquisition, coding, and network design to make optical wireless
 networks more popular with customers.


The anticipated January 2011 independence referendum in Southern Sudan with its possibility of inaugurating a new state in Africa has engaged and excited local, regional and international attention in recent time. It is not surprising that most commentators and direct stakeholders have tended to focus more on the immediate mundane issues of whether or not the referendum should be held as scheduled; whether or not President Omar Bashir's government is likely to honour the outcome of the referendum; who gets what in the post-referendum asset-sharing; and issues of boundary demarcation. These are all important issues that, without doubt, could easily spell a return to armed conflict if they are handled incorrectly. It is rather surprising, however, that there has been little or no discussion on the underlying political economy of Sudan as a fragile rentier state and how this could affect the state if it is partitioned, especially the future of the long-embattled south that, for understandable reasons, seems enthusiastically set on the course of sovereign statehood. This paper analyses the conflict between Sudan's north and south within the framework of rentier state theory, and makes proposals for addressing some of the key problems surrounding the forthcoming independence referendum and possible statehood of the south. The paper argues that fragile rentier states such as Sudan are structurally susceptible to fragmentary conflicts. The observed tendency towards structural fissure and implosive fragmentation is a virus that could threaten the security and stability of Southern Sudan if the dysfunctional political economy of rent that infests the larger Sudanese state is not constructively redressed.


Background: Skeletal muscle fiber formation requires myoblast cell-cell membrane contact and fusion. Results: A versican-rich pericellular matrix surrounding myoblasts is proteolytically cleared by ADAMTS versicanases facilitating myoblast contact and fusion. Conclusion: Versican processing by ADAMTS versicanases contribute to muscle fiber formation. Significance: Targeting versican remodeling could enhance the regenerative capacity of muscle by improving muscle fiber fusion during regeneration. Skeletal muscle development and regeneration requires the fusion of myoblasts into multinucleated myotubes. Because the enzymatic proteolysis of a hyaluronan and versican-rich matrix by ADAMTS versicanases is required for developmental morphogenesis, we hypothesized that the clearance of versican may facilitate the fusion of myoblasts during myogenesis. Here, we used transgenic mice and an in vitro model of myoblast fusion, C2C12 cells, to determine a potential role for ADAMTS versicanases. Versican processing was observed during in vivo myogenesis at the time when myoblasts were fusing to form multinucleated myotubes. Relevant ADAMTS genes, chief among them Adamts5 and Adamts15, were expressed both in developing embryonic muscle and differentiating C2C12 cells. Reducing the levels of Adamts5 mRNA in vitro impaired myoblast fusion, which could be rescued with catalytically active but not the inactive forms of ADAMTS5 or ADAMTS15. The addition of inactive ADAMTS5, ADAMTS15, or full-length V1 versican effectively impaired myoblast fusion. Finally, the expansion of a hyaluronan and versican-rich matrix was observed upon reducing the levels of Adamts5 mRNA in myoblasts. These data indicate that these ADAMTS proteinases contribute to the formation of multinucleated myotubes such as is necessary for both skeletal muscle development and during regeneration, by remodeling a versican-rich pericellular matrix of myoblasts. Our study identifies a possible pathway to target for the improvement of myogenesis in a plethora of diseases including cancer cachexia, sarcopenia, and muscular dystrophy.


Genetic research has become an indispensable instrument for medical research, and the subjects involved have both divergent and convergent interests.The possibility of having more detailed genetic information undoubtedly offers benefits for the health of the subject, but could also pose risks and make the subject vulnerable to discrimination.The scientific community has viewed very favorably the public health utility of family history, in which data from a family whose members suffer from chronic pathologies is collected and filed, in order to develop a sort of "stratification of family risk."Even though in the last decade the scientific and juridical literature has contributed greatly to the topic of biobanks, the perplexities that continue to surround this theme give the idea that current ethical protocols on research are inadequate.Researchers, citizens, International stakeholders, mass media, Public Health and Governments play a key role in genetic research. It is obvious that the methods used for genetic research do not present intrinsic risks; they are much less dangerous than other activities of diagnosis and research. Before authorizing a research project, it is important to reflect on the responsibility and transparency of the studies to be conducted, and on the impact they may have on the interests of public health.We believe that the highest priority need is to develop a common language on the theme, as is the case in the sphere of clinical experimentation where rules of good clinical practice, albeit at times conflicting, have led to uniform convergences in the scientific world on the points to be actuated.


Understanding the key corrosion mechanisms in a light water reactor primary water environment is critical to developing and exploiting improved zirconium alloy fuel cladding. In this paper, we report recent research highlights from a new collaborative research programme involving 3 U.K. universities and 5 partners from the nuclear industry. A major part of our strategy is to use the most advanced analytical tools to characterise the oxide and metal/oxide interface microstructure, residual stresses, as well as the transport properties of the oxide. These techniques include three-dimensional atom probe (3DAP), advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM), synchrotron X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and in situ electro-impedance spectroscopy. Synchrotron X-ray studies have enabled the characterisation of stresses, tetragonal phase fraction, and texture in the oxide as well as the stresses in the metal substrate. It was found that in the thick oxide (here, Optimized-ZIRLO, a trademark of the Westinghouse Electric Company, tested at 415°C in steam) a significant stress profile can be observed, which cannot be explained by metal substrate creep alone but that local delamination of the oxide layers due to crack formation must also play an important role. It was also found that the oxide stresses in the monoclinic and tetragonal phases grown on Zircaloy-4 (autoclave testing at 360°C) first relax during the pre-transition stage. Just before transition, the compressive stress in the monoclinic phase suddenly rises, which is interpreted as indirect evidence of significant tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation taking place at this stage. TEM studies of pre- and post-transition oxides grown on ZIRLO, a trademark of the Westinghouse Electric Company, have used Fresnel contrast imaging to identify nano-sized pores along the columnar grain boundaries that form a network interconnected once the material goes through transition. The development of porosity during transition was further confirmed by in situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) studies. 3DAP analysis was used to identify a ZrO sub-oxide layer at the metal/oxide interface and to establish its three-dimensional morphology. It was possible to demonstrate that this sub-oxide structure develops with time and changes dramatically around transition. This observation was further confirmed by in situ EIS studies, which also suggest thinning of the sub-oxide/barrier layer around transition. Finally, 3DAP analysis was used to characterise segregation of alloying elements near the metal/oxide interface and to establish that the corroding metal near the interface (in this case ZIRLO) after 100 days at 360°C displays a substantially different chemistry and microstructure compared to the base alloy with Fe segregating to the Zr/ZrO interface.


In this article the authors define a reference time called t 0, in longevity/value space, as the longevity that drives a life settlement contract to a zero value. They develop the t 0 metric to show how the "longevity gap" collapses and expands as actual longevity of the pool of insured deviates from the forecasted longevity upon which the pricing of the life settlement contracts is based. The "longevity gap" or "gap" measures the value of the asset component of a life settlement contract (the death benefits), relative to the value of the liability component (the required premium payments). The longevity gap metric can be used by investors and creditors to measure the solvency of individual life settlement contracts or portfolios of life settlement contracts. Because the value of the asset side of a life settlement contract expands and declines at a different rate than the liability side when longevity changes, t 0 becomes a threshold that investors can use to gauge and compare the longevity risk embedded in life settlement contracts that are being offered. The authors show that policies valued by simply discounting the stream of cash flows of life settlement contracts based on an expected longevity of the underlying population of insured can be misleading. Knowing at what longevity of the insured the policy will hit t 0 offers valuable information.


In this article, I expand upon a happy coincidence (for scholars) in reconciling the overlap between contract and fraud. Both the recent book by Ian Ayres and Gregory Klass and the opinion by the Delaware Court of Chancery in Abry Partners Acquisition V, L.P. v. F & W Acquisition, LLC addressed the matter of lies within contractual promises, whether as to the promisor's intention to perform or as to the state of the business being sold. Each treatment, however, in focusing on fraudulent affirmative representations, falls short of (1) recognizing the fundamental aspect of deceptive promising in a complex deal, namely the half-truth, (2) articulating an appropriate doctrinal principle to address it, or (3) capturing the social and linguistic context that makes the deceptive half-truth so insidious. The archetypal facts in Abry frame the issue. When the parties to a business acquisition agreement purport to limit the buyer's reliance to those representations and warranties set forth in the agreement, just what obligations of truth-telling have the parties contractually released? We need to grapple with the interrelationship of law, language, mutual understanding, and trust. The language of the law (and the contract) is a blunt instrument by which to map the subtle fine lines of a complex agreement. I contend that there is a kind of special arrogance in the illusion onto which lawyers hold - that the uncertainties and contingencies of the world are in their power to be controlled, and to the winner of the battle of words go the spoils. The correct doctrinal result is to presume in the transactional speech acts (including the contract), as we do in everyday life, a default of truth-telling. This permits the parties to contract freely around the rule, but it requires narrow construction of the exceptions and disclaimers.


Boron (B) is an essential plant micronutrient that plays a major role in cell wall structure and function by providing cross-linking of the rhamnogalacturonan II pectin component of the cell wall. Under normal pH conditions, B is found principally as boric acid. Although boric acid permeates lipid bilayers, it exhibits limited systemic mobility within most plant species, and this can contribute to B deficiency under low boric acid conditions. However, since boric acid is toxic at high concentrations, the maintenance of its cellular concentration also is critical. Consequently, boric acid uptake and homeostasis need to be tightly regulated. Among the membrane channels that facilitate boric acid uptake are the type II nodulin intrinsic protein (NIP) subfamily of aquaporin-like proteins. Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) possesses three NIP II genes (NIP5;1, NIP6;1, and NIP7;1) that show distinct tissue expression profiles (predominantly expressed in roots, stem nodes, and developing flowers, respectively). Routray et al. (pp. 1269–1283) show that purified and reconstituted NIP7;1 is a boric acid facilitator. By using native promoter-reporter fusions, the authors show that NIP7;1 is predominantly expressed in anthers of young flowers during a narrow developmental window, with protein accumulation solely within tapetum cells where it is localized to the plasma membrane. The tapetum is essential for supplying materials to the pollen microspore cell wall. The authors report that under limiting boric acid conditions, loss-of-function T-DNA mutants (nip7;1-1 and nip7;1-2) show reduced fertility, including shorter siliques and an increase in aborted seeds, compared with the wild type. Under these conditions, nip7;1 mutant pollen grains show morphological defects, increased aggregation, defective exine cell wall formation, reduced germination frequency, and decreased viability. Thus, it appears that NIP7;1 serves as a gated boric acid channel in developing anthers where it aids in the uptake of boric acid by tapetal cells.


In Rana Mitter's tense, moving and hugely important book, the war between China and Japan - one of the most important struggles of the Second World War - at last gets the masterly history it deserves. Different countries give different opening dates for the period of the Second World War, but perhaps the most compelling is 1937, when the 'Marco Polo Bridge Incident' plunged China and Japan into a conflict of extraordinary duration and ferocity - a war which would result in many millions of deaths and completely reshape East Asia in ways which we continue to confront today. With great vividness and narrative drive Rana Mitter's new book draws on a huge range of new sources to recreate this terrible conflict. He writes both about the major leaders (Chiang Kaishek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei) and about the ordinary people swept up by terrible times. Mitter puts at the heart of our understanding of the Second World War that it was Japan's failure to defeat China which was the key dynamic for what happened in Asia. Reviews: "Rana Mitter's history of the Sino-Japanese War is not only a very important book, it also has a wonderful clarity of thought and prose which make it a pleasure to read". (Antony Beevor). "The best study of China's war with Japan written in any language ...comprehensive, thoroughly based on research, and totally non-partisan. Above all, the book presents a moving account of the Chinese people's incredible suffering...A must read for anyone interested in the origins of China's contribution to the making of today's world". (Akira Iriye). About the author: Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College. He is the author of A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World. He is a regular presenter of Night Waves on Radio 3.


A method of determining mutually applicable supply functions, using the simplex method of linear programming, for products required in some kind of fixed proportion is outlined. The technique involves estimating the horizontal segments of a step supply function, i.e. the marginal cost function, rather than the usual method of estimating the vertical segments. The technique is demonstrated using a hypothetical milk farm.


The objective of this thesis project was to prepare a detailed yet reasonably compact history of the three early printing houses in Finland within a context of general Finnish and Scandinavian history. An extensive study of the literature was needed to accomplish the set goals. The literature included books on both early printing in Finland and on its general history. The necessary field studies consisted of visits to museums, university libraries, archives and churches. These offered the opportunity to study old manuscripts and the early printed products. Some experts were also interviewed. As a result of this research, a compact and well-illustrated history of the early printing houses and their printers was compiled, including discussions of the driving forces behind the print ing houses and contemporary economic, religious and social influences. A selection of typi cal and interesting illustrations of the printed products is also included. The early printing houses in Finland between 1642 and 1713 produced a considerable number of books and other printed products under stormy conditions. The printers did skilled work, both in typographic and quality senses, despite scanty equipment and constant interrup tions. It is impossible to compile a complete account of the printers, printing houses and books because of several destructive factors during the past three centuries. Fires, humidity and wars took their toll on many interesting examples of early Finnish printing. However, the archives and university libraries of Sweden offer another chance to study those examples of early Finnish and Swedish printing which have survived over the centuries in that country. These archives have been studied closely, but can still offer an indispensable opportunity to put together a more complete picture of the early Finnish printing.