Homosexuality: The viewpoints of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NRCA) in 2007 These two churches, through their broadest assembly namely the General Synod and the General Church Assembly respectively, show remarkable similarities in their approach to Scripture on the matter of homosexuality, the position of gay people in church life and the time frame in which they took decisions on these matters. The point of departure for both is marriage as something only for one husband and one wife. This is explicitly complemented by the NRCA with a limitation of sexual intercourse to marriage, which rules out the possibility of homosexuality. In the DRC the same principle is tradition, thus basicly coming to the same conclusion as the NCRA. The reason for these similarities is not that the two assemblies openly copied each other, but the fact that they both are reformed churches in Southern Africa serving, mainly, Afrikaners. Perhaps these similarities supply another reason for the present increase in cooperation between the two churches.


The Uruguay Round Agreement made significant changes to the governance of international trade. Trade rules and dispute settlement mechanisms were altered and a series of specific agreements provided for liberalisation across economic sectors. The Agreement on Agriculture, arguably the most difficult and contentious to negotiate, permitted the continued use of trade-distorting instruments, both domestically and at the border. Rule-enforcement in agriculture therefore relies crucially on the clarity of the rules. This paper provides an in-depth study of a unique and critical case for understanding the new rules: the EC sugar regime. This policy was challenged unsuccessfully under the pre-Uruguay Round rules, but successfully under the new rules. This case is particularly valuable in allowing us to isolate the effect of the Uruguay Round on agricultural trade disputes: the policy under challenge was essentially unchanged and the legal actions addressed the same concern – excessive export subsidisation. Drawing on primary and secondary materials and interviews with key policy actors, sugar is used to illustrate how those involved in the multilateral process learned from particular rule weaknesses revealed in earlier cases, revising those rules in the Uruguay Round in such a way that dispute panels can more readily and objectively determine rule breaches.


Globally, greater than 30 million individuals are afflicted with disorders of the nervous system accompanied by tens of thousands of new cases annually with limited, if any, treatment options. Erythropoietin (EPO) offers an exciting and novel therapeutic strategy to address both acute and chronic neurodegenerative disorders. EPO governs a number of critical protective and regenerative mechanisms that can impact apoptotic and autophagic programmed cell death pathways through protein kinase B (Akt), sirtuins, mammalian forkhead transcription factors, and wingless signaling. Translation of the cytoprotective pathways of EPO into clinically effective treatments for some neurodegenerative disorders has been promising, but additional work is necessary. In particular, development of new treatments with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents such as EPO brings several important challenges that involve detrimental vascular outcomes and tumorigenesis. Future work that can effectively and safely harness the complexity of the signaling pathways of EPO will be vital for the fruitful treatment of disorders of the nervous system.


Two crawling medusae, Staurocladia oahuensis (Edmondson, 1930) and S. bilateralis (Edmondson, 1930) were found to be abundant in intertidal rock pools in Kominato from late summer until early winter. The two species were found to rarely share the same individual alga, and sometimes showed exclusive occupancy of pools at higher intertidal levels. The abundance of the two species of medusae fluctuated widely over time with both species showing similar population structures during their period of occurrence. The asexual reproduction of the medusae was considered to be a cause of the distributional pattern and the fluctuation in abundance. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the rate of asexual reproduction under different conditions. At 12°C neither species performed asexual reproduction, while at 17°C and higher temperatures both species reproduced asexually at a high rate. The number of each population was found to nearly double in about a week. The coexistence of the two species of medusae in tidepools is discussed in relation to the habitat characteristics. S. oahuensis and S. bilateralis were not known previously from Japan; this constitutes a new record of both species from Japanese waters. We also found both species in several other warm water locations in Japan.


The legal definition of terrorism has very high importance. This is so both because it determines which actions count as acts of terrorism, and hence who is regarded as a terrorist, but also because the definition of terrorism triggers a range of controversial extensions of police and prosecutorial powers. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the central dilemmas that must be confronted to develop an adequate definition of terrorism. These include the questions of whether acts count as acts of terrorism only if they have a particular political purpose, what acts are sufficiently harmful to count as acts of terrorism, whether acts of terrorism are distinguished by the identity of those targeted, whether acts of terrorism are distinguished by the methods that terrorists use, and the importance of the identity of the terrorists themselves. It examines a range of legal definitions across jurisdictions in the light of the framework developed. It is argued that there is no prospect for a fully adequate definition of terrorism: the definition will inevitably be over-inclusive. A number of reasons explain this, but the central one is that courts lack the expertise to distinguish adequately legitimate political resistance from terrorism. Tensions that this problem has created in the case law are explored, not only in the criminal law, but also in the civil law. We then briefly examine the extent to which the discretion of officials can ameliorate this problem, highlighting the weakness of this solution. Overall, we conclude, disappointingly, that the standards that we ought to find in other areas of criminal justice cannot be met in the area of terrorism.


Among the many types of transition-metal-catalysed C–C bond forming reactions, olefin metathesis is without a doubt one of the most thriving fields in modern organic synthetic chemistry. This is due to a wide range of transformations that are possible by olefin metathesis with commercially available and user friendly catalysts. Until recently, the formation of tetrasubstituted double bonds via olefin metathesis is considered as a very challenging topic. Although much attention has already been given in the last two decades to improve this transformation by the modification of catalysts, optimising the conditions, substrate modification and so on, however, none are universally attractive so far. So the field is still quite open and looking for a simple and general solution that suits all challenging substrates. In this context, this review is an attempt to provide a broad but digestible overview of tetrasubstituted C–C double bond formation via olefin metathesis, with an emphasis on the recent developments achieved in this area. These developments are actually signifying the great potential for further advancement of this exhilarating research field.


In the G1 phase there are two types of DNA damage responses, the p53-dependent and the p53-independ-ent pathways. The p53-dependent responses inhibit CDKs through the up-regulation of genes encoding CKIs mediated by the p53 protein, whereas the p53-independent mechanisms inhibit CDKs through the inhibitory T14Y15 phosphorylation of Cdk2. Failure of DNA damage checkpoints in G1 leads to mutagen-ic replication of damaged templates and other replication defects.


Sentiment classification aims to automatically predict sentiment polarity (e.g., positive or negative) of user generated sentiment data (e.g., reviews, blogs). In real applications, these user generated sentiment data can span so many different domains that it is difficult to manually label training data for all of them. Hence, this paper studies the problem of domain adaptation for sentiment classification where a system trained using labeled reviews from a source domain is deployed to classify sentiments of reviews in a different target domain. In this paper, we propose to link heterogeneous input features with pivots via joint non-negative matrix factorization. This is achieved by learning the domain-specific information from different domains into unified topics, with the help of pivots across all domains. We conduct experiments on a benchmark composed of reviews of 4 types of Amazon products. Experimental results show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the baseline method, and achieves an accuracy which is competitive with the state-of-the-art methods for sentiment classification adaptation.


A single iridium anomaly (40 times background concentration), correlated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, is present within an interval of unconsolidated glauconitic silty sands in a marine clastic sequence on Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Dinocysts provide the basis for biostratigraphic identification of a 20-30 cm K-T transitional interval; calcareous microfossils have not been preserved in the glauconitic beds. Dinocysts also record an earliest Danian transgressive event 10 cm above the transition interval. The Ir spike is near the base of the dinocyst transition interval and 30 cm below the flooding horizon. The Seymour Island site, located at a high latitude (63°S) at the end of the Cretaceous, provides no compelling evidence for mass extinction at the K-T boundary.


Preface Introduction (J F Nijs). Single Crystalline Silicon and its Alloys: Heavy doping effects in Silicon (P/Van Mieghem and R P Mertens): Introduction The physics of heavy doping effects Brief review of heavy doping effects Theories and models Influence of HDE on Silicon devices Summary References. Defects in crystalline silicon (C Claeys and J Vanhellemont): Introduction Structure of lattice defects Electronic properties of defects Device processing related defects Metallic contamination and gettering Impact on device properties References.Molecular beam epitaxy of silicon, silicon alloys and metals (E Kasper and C M Falco: introduction Electron beam evaporators and metals MBE Silicon Molecular beam epitaxy (Si-MBE) Applications of Silicon MBE References. Low thermal budget chemical vapour deposition techniques for Si and SiGe (M R Caymax and W Y Leong): Introduction Prerequisites for low-temperature growth Growth systems Kinetics of CVD growth of Si and SiGe in SiH^O 4/GeH^O4 systems Doping of low temperature Si and Si^O1-xGe^Ox layers Selective epitaxial growth (SEG) of Si and SiGe ^IIn-situ and ^Iex-situ characterisation References. Materials properties of (strained) SiGe layers (J Poortmans, S C Jain, J Nijs and R Van Overstraeten): Introduction: Structure and stability The Si-strained SiGe band alignments The indirect bandgap of strained Si^O1-xGe^Ox Transport properties and effective density of states in strained Si^O1-xGe^Ox layers References. SiGe heterojunction bipolar applications (J Poortmans, S C Jain and J Nijs): Introduction DC-behaviour of the double heterojunction bipolar transistor Frequency and circuit performance of HBT's with strained Si^O1-xGe^Ox-base Incorporation of strained Si^O1-xGe^Ox-layers in advanced bipolar technologies Conclusions References. Field-effect transistors, infrared detectors, and resonant tunneling devices in silicon/silicon-germanium and ^D*d-doped silicon (M Willander): Introduction Field-effect transistors Infrared detectors Resonant tunneling devices Summary References. Crystalline silicon-carbide and its applications (T Sugii): Introduction Physical properties Crystalline SiC growth Device application Summary References. Part Two: Polycrystalline silicon. Large grain polysilicon substrates for solar cells (S Martinuzzi and S Pizzini) Introduction Growth of polycrystalline (multicrystalline) silicon The role of oxygen, carbon and point defects in polycrystalline silicon Electrical properties of multicrystalline silicon wafers Conclusion References. Properties analysis and modelling of polysilicon TFTs (P Migliorato and M Quinn): Introduction Structural properties and density of states Effect of the DOS on the I-V characteristis Current-voltage characteristics Capacitance voltage characteristics Electric field at the drain and "kink" effect Conclusions Appendix References. Application and technology of polysilicon thin film transistors for liquid crystal displays (C Baert) Introduction Application of polysilicon thin film transistors Technology of polysilicon thin films Polysilicon TFT device structure Summary References. The use of polycrystalline silicon and its alloys in VLSI applications (M Y Ghannam): Introduction Deposition and structural properties of polysilicon Technological properties of LPCVD polysilicon films Electrical properties of polysilicon VLSI applications of polysilicon Other applications of polysilicon Semi-insulating polycrystalline silicon (SIPOS) Polycrystalline silicon/germanium alloys Biographical details. Keyword index.


While policymakers are guided by PISA and PIRLS data, librarians recognise that these large scale international surveys frame reading more as a measurable result than a lived experience and a social as well as a solitary process. Librarians and teachers understand that motivation and engagement matter. Their views are more in line with the OECD's 'expanded definition of reading literacy which recognises motivational and behavioural characteristics alongside cognitive characteristics' (OECD, 2016).

School librarians often know young people well as readers – they know far more about them than their current reading level or assigned targets, and are aware of individual readers' interests and inclinations, the frequency with which they read and their sense of self as readers. Through countless conversations in extracurricular reading groups, in lessons, in corridors and while book borrowing, librarians find out about their readers which enables them to make tailored text recommendations and reader to reader connections. Research indicates that close relationships between students and school librarians are common, as Joan Swann and I also found in our study of the Carnegie Kate Greenaway Award Shadowing Scheme [T1] . In the multiple case studies in schools across the country, the young people (KS2-4) we met were clear: they felt connected to their librarians, liked them, respected them and saw this as reciprocal.

But, I wonder, how well do librarians know the teaching staff as readers?


This paper examines how participants in multiactivity situations are able to resume an ongoing activity that becomes temporarily suspended in favour of a locally emergent, competing line of action. Detailed analyses of video data from English and Finnish everyday interactions show that resumptions are not achieved unproblematically at the first suitable transition-relevant slot but involve a gradual, stepwise process of multimodal negotiations, where participants first collaboratively establish favourable conditions for resumption. It is argued that these negotiations represent a local instance of multiactivity in practice, i.e. where organising multiactivity becomes a demonstrable concern for the participants. The gradualness of resumptions provides participants with an interactional resource that can be exploited to flexibly manage activity transitions in complex multiactivity situations.


There is a long-standing economic research literature on the impact of technological innovation and automation in general on employment and economic growth. Traditional economic models trade off a negative displacement or substitution effect against a positive complementarity effect on employment. Economic history since the industrial revolution as strongly supports the view that the net effect on employment and incomes is positive though recent evidence points to a declining labour share in total income. There are concerns that with artificial intelligence (AI) "this time may be different". The state-of-the-art task-based model creates an environment where humans and machines compete for the completion of tasks. It emphasizes the labour substitution effects of automation. This has been tested on robots data, with mixed results. However, the economic characteristics of rival robots are not comparable with non-rival and scalable AI algorithms that may constitute a general purpose technology and may accelerate the pace of innovation in itself. These characteristics give a hint that this time might indeed be different. However, there is as yet very little empirical evidence that relates AI or Machine Learning (ML) to employment and incomes. General growth models can only present a wide range of highly diverging and hypothetical scenarios, from growth implosion to an optimistic future with growth acceleration. Even extreme scenarios of displacement of men by machines offer hope for an overall wealthier economic future. The literature is clearer on the negative implications that automation may have for income equality. Redistributive policies to counteract this trend will have to incorporate behavioural responses to such policies. We conclude that that there are some elements that suggest that the nature of AI/ML is different from previous technological change but there is no empirical evidence yet to underpin this view.


One of the fundamental problems in neurology and neuroinformatics is whether the neural signals in human nerves systems are digital or analogue. This paper presents a novel neural signaling theory of Spike Frequency Modulation (SFM), which explains the nature of neural signals and their transformation in the nervous systems of the brain. Mathematical models of the unified signals of neural spikes across the sensory, associate and motor neurons are formally described. The time-divided mechanism for neural signal transmission and the space-divided mechanism for neural semantic representation in human nervous systems are rigorously explained. A set of experimental simulations demonstrates the SFM theory and the cognitive mechanisms of the neural pathways and networks. The SFM theory reveals the neurological and cognitive foundations of both natural and artificial neural networks for brain-inspired systems and engineering applications.


Nanoparticles (NPs) can modulate protein aggregation and fibril formation in the context of amyloid diseases. Understanding the mechanism of this action remains a critical next step in developing nanomedicines for the treatment or prevention of Parkinson's disease. α-Synuclein (α-Syn) can undergo interactions of different strength with nanoparticles, and these interactions can be prevented by the presence of a protein corona (PC) acquired during the exposure of NPs to serum proteins. Here, we develop a method to attach the PC irreversibly to the NPs, which enables us to study in detail the interaction of α-Syn and polyethylenimine-coated carboxyl-modified polystyrene NPs (PsNPs-PEI) and the role of the dynamics of the interactions. Analysis of the kinetics of fibril formation reveals that the NPs surface promotes the primary nucleation step of amyloid fibril formation without significantly affecting the elongation and fragmentation steps or the final equilibrium. Furthermore, the results show that even though α-Syn can access the surface of NPs that are precoated with a PC, due to the dynamic nature of the PC proteins, the PC nevertheless reduces the acceleratoring effect of the NPs. This effect is likely to be caused by reducing the overall amount of weakly interacting α-Syn molecules on the NP surface and the access of further α-Syn required for fibril elongation. Our experimental approach provides microscopic insight into how serum proteins can modulate the complex interplay between NPs and amyloid proteins.


A method of using ellipsometry or polarization analysis of light in total internal reflection of a surface to determine the number density of gold nanoparticles on a smooth substrate has been developed. The method can be modified to enable determination of densities of sparse distributions of nanoparticles in general, and is expected to be especially useful for measuring gold-nanoparticle-labeled biomolecules on microarrays. The method is based on theoretical calculations of the ellipsometric responses of gold nanoparticles. Elements of the calculations include the following: For simplicity, the gold nanoparticles are assumed to be spherical and to have the same radius. The distribution of gold nanoparticles is assumed to be a sub-monolayer (that is, sparser than a monolayer). The optical response of the sub-monolayer is modeled by use of a thin-island-film theory, according to which the polarizabilities parallel and perpendicular to the substrate are functions of the wavelength of light, the dielectric functions (permittivities expressed as complex functions of frequency or wavelength) of the gold and the suspending medium (in this case, the suspending medium is air), the fraction of the substrate area covered by the nanoparticles, and the radius of the nanoparticles. For the purpose of the thin-island-film theory, the dielectric function of the gold nanoparticles is modeled as the known dielectric function of bulk gold plus a correction term that is necessitated by the fact that the mean free path length for electrons in gold decreases with decreasing radius, in such a manner as to cause the imaginary part of the dielectric function to increase with decreasing radius (see figure). The correction term is a function of the nanoparticle radius, the wavelength of light, the mean free path and the Fermi speed of electrons in bulk gold, the plasma frequency of gold, and the speed of light in a vacuum. These models are used to calculate ellipsometric responses for various concentrations of gold nanoparticles having an assumed radius. The modeled data indicates distinct spectral features for both the real and the imaginary part of the dielectric function. An ellipsometric measurement would determine this distinct feature and thus can be used to measure nanoparticle concentration. By "ellipsometric responses" is meant the intensities of light measured in various polarization states as functions of the angle of incidence and the polarization states of the incident light. These calculated ellipsometric responses are used as calibration curves: Data from subsequent ellipsometric measurements on real specimens are compared with the calibration curves. The concentration of the nanoparticles on a specimen is assumed to be that of the calibration curve that most closely matches the data pertaining to that specimen.


In 1858 papers were presented on evolution at the Linnean Society in London by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. The following year Darwin's magnum opus was published—On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. With the plethora of publications in recent years on molecular genetics and related matters it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the enormous impact Darwin's work had at the time. Of course, writers on the subject have given much attention to the British Association for Advancement of Science meeting in Oxford the following year with the notorious clash between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce. But the arguments were rehearsed in different guises over many of the following years. Even today commentaries on the subject by Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones in this country and Steven J Gould in the United States still attract a great deal of understandable attention from both scientists and non-scientists. But perhaps it is not always fully realized and appreciated that at the time nothing was known of the genetic mechanisms by which species could evolve. Though Gregor Mendel's seminal papers on inheritance and the segregation of hereditary factors were presented in 1865 and published the following year his ideas, essential to any in-depth understanding of the origin of species and evolution, remained virtually unknown until 1900. Even then, those who realized their importance in the scheme of things, such as William Bateson, were sometimes misunderstood or disregarded.

In his scholarly study, Forsdyke details the thinking among philosophers and scientists around the time of Darwin's publication who attempted to explain the most serious difficulties with Darwin's theory—namely, how could small initial variations lacking any apparent value to the individual (so-called 'non-adaptive') lead to the establishment of a new species without being swamped by intercrossing with its neighbours? Having outlined this and related problems, the author singles out for special mention George Romanes (1848-1894). Born in Kingston, Canada (where Forsdyke now lives), in early childhood Romanes accompanied his parents to England and later studied physiology at Cambridge and University College, London. He engaged in research on echinoderms and medusae, for example, and became a close friend of Darwin. Forsdyke here concentrates his attention on Romanes' theory of 'physiological selection' which he expounded in 1886, also at the Linnean Society. He proposed that physiological selection, by preventing intercrossing, enables natural selection to promote diversity and thereby evolution, and that sterility of the offspring of crosses between species (such as occurs in the mule, resulting from crossing a horse and donkey) was the natural result of 'some physiological change having exclusive, reference to the sexual system...' a concept which in Forsdyke's view anticipated modern developments in genetics.

Incidentally the portraits of all three of the main characters in this story (Darwin, Huxley and Romanes) were painted by the Victorian artist John Collier (1850-1934) who married Huxley's two daughters in succession after the first had died. The portraits are reproduced here but not in colour unfortunately.

This is a scholarly and very well referenced work. It will certainly appeal to all those with an interest in the thinking of Victorian philosophers and scientists as they struggled to understand how new species could arise and evolve.


The assessment of a development stage of a country, as well as the determination of existing tendencies, is a sophisticated process, which has attracted the attention of economists for ages. Nevertheless, nowadays, the uniform methodology for the evaluation of a development stage of a country does not exist. World economists have identified plenty of factors that have more or less a significant impact on the economic situation of a country. However, the combination of the mentioned factors depends on the aim of the research. This paper presents the methodology for the evaluation of the development stage of a country in relation to the EU economic and political processes.


The use of convalescent plasma (CP) transfusions for patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has gained great interest during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. This review aims at summarizing the literature on the potential mechanisms of action of COVID-19 CP (CCP) and the rationale for use. A narrative review of the literature was conducted using PubMed, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Database through October 2020. The rationale of CCP deployment was based on historical use in other outbreaks and pandemics and the emergent need at the time of lack of proven therapies and vaccines. There are many proposed mechanisms of action including direct neutralization and suppression of viremia, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, modification of the inflammatory response, restoration of the coagulation factors, immunomodulation of the hypercoagulable state and the potential role of ABO naturally occurring iso-agglutinins. Many donor, product, and patient factors can impact the response to CCP, such as antibody titer in the CCP product, CCP dose, frequency of administration, the severity of underlying illness, and the timing of administration from time of disease onset. Based on current evidence, CCP appears to be safe. However, it remains unknown whether it impacts the improvement of clinical symptoms, time to death, and all-cause mortality. In conclusion, the use of CCP offers quick access as an empirical therapy when specific therapies are not available or under development. Ongoing clinical trials are expected to add to the breadth of knowledge on the safety and efficacy of CCP use in patients with COVID-19.Copyright © 2021 AME Publishing Company.


RF ablation is an important technique in cancer treatment. It has been proposed that the effective area treated via RF ablation can be increased by increasing the local electrical conductivity. This is achieved by injection of NaCl solution into the tissue. For an accurate and effective RF ablation treatment using this new method, it is necessary to measure the local electrical conductivity, which varies spatially due to diffusion of sodium chloride. In this paper, we propose a micro probe to measure the local tissue electrical conductivity. The probe consists of two in-plane miniature electrodes separated by a small gap. When the electrodes are in contact with the tissue, the electrical resistance across them can be used to calculate the electrical conductivity. The probe is fabricated by standard photolithography techniques. The substrate material is polyimide and the electrodes are made of gold. A four-electrode probe is used to calibrate the new electrical conductivity micro probe using different concentrations of saline water. The resistance measurements are carried out using an impedance analyzer on different frequencies. The frequency of choice for RF ablation of tumors is 500k Hz and is the one selected for calibration and testing. The micro-probe calibration is then verified by measuring electrical conductivity of a phantom and comparing it with the result measured by the four-electrode probe. Finally, some in vivo tests are performed and the results are compared with literate data.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Detailed measurements of the conical intensity pattern aragonite have been carried out with an incident Gaussian beam (TEM00) of a helium neon laser. Quantitative agreement with theoretical calculations is found. It is shown that the integrated intensities on either side of the Poggendorff dark circle are not equal, unless the far-field condition for Fraunhofer diffraction is satisfied.


Since Graham v. Connor, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1989 opinion establishing the Fourth Amendment standard for assessing whether a police officer's use of force was unconstitutionally excessive, the law has slowly developed through a body of narrow and fact-specific precedents that guide judges' excessive force and qualified immunity analyses. Recently, the Ninth Circuit — the source of many of the most influential excessive force opinions — decided three contentious cases regarding when an officer's use of a taser is unconstitutional. On one view, these cases raise novel questions about how to apply the Fourth Amendment standard for nontraditional and technologically advanced uses of force. In this Comment, however, I argue that these cases predominantly present issues that pervade all excessive force jurisprudence and illuminate judicial trends and tendencies disadvantaging plaintiffs while advantaging defendant officers. In light of this understanding, my proposal is not for new rules or standards in taser cases. Rather, I suggest that courts, first, faithfully apply Graham's standard of balancing the nature and quality of the Fourth Amendment intrusion against the government's interest in the officer's use of force and, second, employ a reality-based approach in deciding whether the officer is entitled to qualified immunity. For courts to do this, excessive force jurisprudence must evolve to match the development of police weapons technology. That evolution includes fully understanding and considering the distinctive effects and risks posed by tasers and presuming that a reasonable police officer would have done the same.


High-resolution structures of oligomers formed by the β-amyloid peptide Aβ are needed to understand the molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease and develop therapies. This paper presents the X-ray crystallographic structures of oligomers formed by a 20-residue peptide segment derived from Aβ. The development of a peptide in which Aβ17–36 is stabilized as a β-hairpin is described, and the X-ray crystallographic structures of oligomers it forms are reported. Two covalent constraints act in tandem to stabilize the Aβ17–36 peptide in a hairpin conformation: a δ-linked ornithine turn connecting positions 17 and 36 to create a macrocycle and an intramolecular disulfide linkage between positions 24 and 29. An N-methyl group at position 33 blocks uncontrolled aggregation. The peptide readily crystallizes as a folded β-hairpin, which assembles hierarchically in the crystal lattice. Three β-hairpin monomers assemble to form a triangular trimer, four trimers assemble in a tetrahedral arrangement to form a dodecamer, and five dodecamers pack together to form an annular pore. This hierarchical assembly provides a model, in which full-length Aβ transitions from an unfolded monomer to a folded β-hairpin, which assembles to form oligomers that further pack to form an annular pore. This model may provide a better understanding of the molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease at atomic resolution.


Described as "the most comprehensive book on digital audio to date", it is widely acclaimed as an industry "bible". Covering the very latest developments in digital audio technology, it provides an thorough introduction to the theory as well as acting as an authoritative and comprehensive professional reference source. Everything you need is here from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an award-winning style with clear explanations from first principles. New material covered includes internet audio, PC audio technology, DVD, MPEG audio compression, digital audio broadcasting and audio networks. Whether you are in the field of audio engineering, sound recording, music technology, broadcasting and communications media or audio design and installation, this book has it all. Written by a leading international audio specialist, who conducts professional seminars and workshops around the world, the book has been road tested for many years by professional seminar attendees and students to ensure their needs are taken into account, and all the right information is covered. This new edition now includes: Internet audio PC Audio technology DVD MPEG Audio compression Digital Audio Broadcasting Audio networks Digital audio professionals will find everything they need here, from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an awardwinning style with clear explanations from first principles. John Watkinson is an international consultant in audio, video and data recording. He is a Fellow of the AES, a member of the British Computer Society and a chartered information systems practitioner. He presents lectures, seminars, conference papers and training courses worldwide. He is the author of many other Focal Press books, including: the Kraszna-Krausz award winning MPEG-2; The Art of Digital Audio; An Introduction to Digital Video; The Art of Sound Reproduction; An Introduction to Digital Audio; TV Fundamentals and Audio for Television. He is also co-author, with Francis Rumsey, of The Digital Interface Handbook, and contributor to the Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, 3rd edition.... Download ebook, read file pdf Art of Digital Audio


Introduction: Septic shock is still a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the intensive care unit (ICU), resulting in the death of more than 30% in the first 28 days of treatment. Mortality reaches 20-49% when accompanied by shock. Transplant recipients who receive immunosuppressive drugs are at high risk of septic shock due to nosocomial infections. Case Report: A 32-year-old man, who had a history of kidney transplantation, was admitted to the ICU due to shock and respiratory failure. The patient had undergone cystoscopy evaluation, ante grade pyelography, cystography, and renal allograft nephrostomy replacement a day before ICU admission. The patient was diagnosed with septic shock due to urosepsis, hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), and acute kidney injury (AKI) post renal transplantation. Prospective observational descriptive analysis was performed on the patient. The patient was intubated, given fluid resuscitation with crystalloid (ringer lactate) more than 20 ml/kg/hour with no response. Norepinephrine 1 mcg/kg/min and dobutamine 5 mcg/kg/min were given to reach mean arterial pressure (MAP)>65 mmHg. Due to unstable hemodynamics, continue renal replacement therapy (CRRT) was performed to remove inflammation mediator, which caused cytokine storm. Continuous venous-venous hemodiafiltration (CVVHDF) with dose 30-40 ml/kg/hour was run for 5 days. On day 5 the patient was stable with the minimal dose of vasopressor. The patient was extubated by day 8 and discharged from ICU 10 days later. The urine output was >0.5 ml/kg/hour and creatinine levels tend to decrease. Conclusion: Early CRRT could prevent organ failure and further complications caused by septic shock by removing inflammation mediators.


With the need of informationization and modernization of colleges, more and more colleges choose to move towards the direction of digital library management. As a transmission center of information in colleges, library plays a vital role in the dissemination of knowledge and spiritual civilization. The level of library construction is closely related to the quality of teaching in colleges. In the 1990s, with the increasing enrollment, more and more students enter into the university, increasingly updated information and technology rushed to society, it becomes more urgent for students desire to understand new knowledge and technology, while solving this urgent need can not be solved depending on the classroom teaching. The library's old management methods can not adapt to the development of the times, in order to better solve this contradiction, we found that carry out optimization and the upgrade to the management of the library, moving to its automated management, then better meet the needs of colleges and students demand.


As water scarcity and pollution of sources become increasingly severe and widespread, competition over this resource intensifies. Unlike much of the rest of the world, thermoelectric plants in the US are the biggest users of water due to heavy reliance on once-through cooling technology. This cooling technology withdraws large amounts of water and discharges it back almost in its entirety but at higher temperatures. These water withdrawals are increasingly subjected to legislation intended to reduce the effects of thermal pollution. We utilize an interregional input-output model for quantifying the money costs and the shifts in the distribution of power production by state and by technology when withdrawals and discharges of fresh water are restricted. This model allows for the choice among alternative power generation technologies with different cost structures within each state. We analyze a Baseline scenario for 2010 and alternative scenarios that impose constraints on water withdrawals and inter-state power transmission. Based on an annual analysis, we conclude that this region can satisfy its electric power requirements while fully complying with legislated water restrictions at moderate cost by compensating the curtailment of output from some plants by otherwise unutilized capacities of other plants in the region. When we revisit the analysis using a monthly time step, however, sharp seasonal variations exhibit a strong impact on economic costs. In the summer months, intra-state transmission does not suffice, and regional demand cannot be met in the absence of substantial inter-state transmission.


Ignoring Ethics with Style: Writing Sentences for 'Non U.S. Persons'" argues for the importance of understanding the ethical dimensions of sentence writing. To illustrate I cite the stylistic features of a recent public exchange about the legality of government surveillance between Director of Intelligence James Clapper and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. I also discuss my own experience teaching writing to college students in order to reflect on need for a new generation of writers to recognize the relationship between clarity and ethics.


Poverty has been shown to negatively influence child health and development along a number of dimensions. For example, poverty-net of a variety of potentially confounding factors-is associated with increased neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates, greater risk of injuries resulting from accidents or physical abuse/neglect, higher risk for asthma, and lower developmental scores in a range of tests at multiple ages. Despite the extensive literature available that addresses the relationship between poverty and child health and development, as yet there is no consensus on how poverty should be operationalized to reflect its dynamic nature. Perhaps more important is the lack of agreement on the set of controls that should be included in the modeling of this relationship in order to determine the "true" or net effect of poverty, independent of its cofactors. In this paper, we suggest a general model that should be adhered to when investigating the effects of poverty on children. We propose a standard set of controls and various measures of poverty that should be incorporated in any study, when possible.


The functionality provided by IPv6's Type 0 Routing Header can be
exploited in order to achieve traffic amplification over a remote path
for the purposes of generating denial-of-service traffic. This
document updates the IPv6 specification to deprecate the use of IPv6
Type 0 Routing Headers, in light of this security concern. [STANDARDS-
TRACK]


permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are cited. Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography welcomes the submission of papers covering any aspect of structural biology, with a particular emphasis on the structures of biological macromolecules and the methods used to determine them. Reports on new protein structures are particularly encouraged, as are structure–function papers that could include crystallographic binding studies, or structural analysis of mutants or other modified forms of a known protein structure. The key criterion is that such papers should present new insights into biology, chemistry or structure. Papers on crystallographic methods should be oriented towards biological crystallography, and may include new approaches to any aspect of structure determination or analysis. Papers on the crys-tallization of biological molecules will be accepted providing that these focus on new methods or other features that are of general importance or applicability.


The concept of reproducibility is one of the foundations of scientific practice and the bedrock by which scientific validity can be established. However, the extent to which reproducibility is being achieved in the sciences is currently under question. Several studies have shown that much peer-reviewed scientific literature is not reproducible. One crucial contributor to the obstruction of reproducibility is the lack of transparency of original data and methods. Reproducibility, the ability of scientific results and conclusions to be independently replicated by independent parties, potentially using different tools and approaches, can only be achieved if data and methods are fully disclosed.


This Ph.D. thesis contains four independent essays. The essays are summarized as follows.Essay I: Status quos and the prosociality of intuitive decision makingThis study investigates how the prosociality of intuitive choices depends on the presence of a status quo. I present the results of a dictator game experiment with a non-student sample. The dictator game is a choice between a selfish option and a fair and efficient option, and has either no status quo, a selfish status quo or a fair status quo. Intuitive choices are elicited in two ways, by an exogenous variation in time pressure and by measuring response times. I find that time pressure decreases the share of fair choices in decisions without a status quo, but has no effect in the presence of a status quo. Fair and selfish choices have equal response times in a decision without a status quo, whereas the status quo option is always chosen faster, i.e. fast choices are fair under a fair status quo and selfish under a selfish status quo. This suggests that the decision context critically affects whether intuitive choices are prosocial or selfish.Essay II: Risk preferences and the demand for redistributionIf individuals view redistributive policy as an insurance against future negative economic shocks, then the demand for redistribution increases in individual risk aversion. We provide a direct test of the correlation between the demand for redistribution and individual risk aversion in a customized survey and find that they are strongly and robustly positively correlated: more risk averse people demand more redistribution. We also replicate the results from previous literature and, on the one hand, find that the demand for redistribution is positively correlated with altruism, the belief that individual economic success is the result of luck rather than effort, a working-class parental background and downward mobility experience and expectations. On the other hand, preferences for redistribution are negatively correlated with income, a conservative political ideology and upward mobility experience and expectations. The magnitude of the correlation between risk aversion and the demand for redistribution is comparable to the magnitude of these previously identified, and here replicated, correlates. Essay III: Omission effects in trolley problems with economic outcomesThis paper tests how ethical views and hypothetical choices in a trolley problem with economic outcomes depend on whether an outcome is the result of an action or an omission. In a vignette experiment, subjects read about a spectator that harms one person in order to save five others from harm either by taking an action or by omission, whereas the outcomes are either death or loss of property. The results show that the distinction between harmful actions and harmful omissions is significantly smaller in the economic domain, suggesting that omission effects in trolley problems are domain-specific. A comparison of moral views about harmful actions across outcome domains shows that this difference is driven by subjects being more outcome-focused when property rather than lives are at stake. Essay IV: Is there an omission effect in prosocial behavior?We investigate whether individuals are more prone to act selfishly if they can passively allow for an outcome to be implemented (omission) rather than having to make an active choice (commission). In most settings, active and passive choice alternatives differ in terms of factors such as the presence of a suggested option, costs of taking an action, and awareness. We isolate the omission effect from confounding factors in two experiments, and find no evidence that the distinction between active and passive choices has an independent effect on the propensity to implement selfish outcomes. This suggests that increased selfishness through omission, as observed in various economic choice situations, is driven by other factors than a preference for selfish omissions.


BACKGROUND
Of all depressive disorders, 20% has a persistent course. For persistent depressive patients, electroconvulsive therapy (ect) is recommended for this patient population, since it is the most potent treatment for depression. The Dutch depression guideline advises the use of ect for persistent depressive disorder at approximately 12 months after inadequate efficacy of psychotherapy and/or pharmacological treatment. AIM: To quantify the use of electroconvulsive therapy in persistent depressive patients in the Netherlands. METHOD: Quantitative research using the Dutch registration system (diagnosis-treatment-combination; dbc) information system (dis) of the Dutch Healthcare Authority (nza). RESULTS: Of the patients within the dbc system (in 2014) with the main diagnosis of unipolar depression, 23,597 (26%) were registered for more than two years and could be classified as having a persistent depressive episode. Of these latter patients, only 278 (1.2%) received ect. CONCLUSION: In the Netherlands, only 1.2% of patients with a persistent depression received ect, whereas this treatment could have been considered for 26% of this group. The low application rate might be caused by professionals' inadequate knowledge about ect and the premature use of the handicap model.


"The dramatic rise and volatility of food prices over the last year have shaken the global food system. Governments and the international development community generally have responded to various aspects of the food crisis, but questions remain about whether the right actions are being pursued, how best to respond, and what the future holds. The three essays here by Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme, and Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, respond to these critical questions. They point to the dangers and pitfalls of misguided policies, but also to the very real opportunities for responding in a way that prevents future crises and assures food security now and in the long term." from Text


The effect of environmental conditions upon the growth, production and development of river phytoplankton was investigated for the feeder rivers to the Humber Estuary. The study was part of the Land Ocean Interaction Study LOIS) and focused upon the Rivers Trent and Yorkshire Ouse. The influence of physical, chemical and biological factors upon phytoplankton development were measured through routine fieldwork and laboratory analyses. During fieldwork measurements were collected which complemented measurements collected by LOIS colleagues. Data collected in this study included phytoplankton species composition, density and biomass and is situ rates of growth and production. In situ rates of loss through grazing and respiration were also measured. Laboratory investigations concentrated upon the effects of Ught and temperature upon dominant phytoplankton species and were developed to complement fieldwork. The project focused around four main aims. These were basically to assess the size and composition of phytoplankton maxima in the Trent and Ouse, measure in situ rates of growth and production, estimate losses from grazing and to develop models, using the data collected to assess the effect of environmental conditions upon phytoplankton development and autochthonous carbon in the Humber Estuary. The results showed that phytoplankton dynamics in the Trent and Ouse were controlled primarily by discharge, light and temperature. During spring, when conditions were favourable for growth, rapid phytoplankton growth and maximum rates of production were observed. However, spring floods often interrupted die large phytoplankton populations which developed. Other factors such as grazing and sedimentation were also considered as potentially important in the loss of phytoplankton. The turbid nature of the rivers resulted in a fine balance between photosynflietic gain and respirational loss. This temporal change in environmental conditions resulted in a temporal waxing and waning of the phytoplankton. This in turn had an impact upon the seasonality of the flux of autochthonous carbon to the Humber Estuary. Laboratory investigations and development of a photosynthetic model confirmed the importance of light and temperature upon phytoplankton development in these rivers. In terms of phytoplankton growth and production and the flux of autochthonous carbon, the Trent and Ouse were found to be typical of many other European rivers. The study highlighted the importance of the Trent as a source of autochthonous carbon to the Humber Estuary.


Previous studies have suggested that the left and right hands have different specialties for motor control that can be represented as two agents in the brain. This study examined how coordinated movements are performed during bimanual reaching tasks to highlight differences in the characteristics of the hands. We examined motor movement accuracy, reaction time, and movement time in right-handed subjects performing a three-dimensional motor control task (visually guided reaching). In the no-visual-feedback condition, right-hand movement had lower accuracy and a shorter reaction time than did left-hand movement, whereas bimanual movement had the longest reaction time, but the best accuracy. This suggests that the two hands have different internal models and specialties: closed-loop control for the right hand and open-loop control for the left hand. Consequently, during bimanual movements, both models might be used, creating better control and planning (or prediction), but requiring more computation time compared to the use of one hand only.


This thesis describes synthetic approaches for improving the efficiency of transport of small molecules and DNA analogues past the blood brain barrier towards the development of a treatment for motor neurone disease. Chapter one introduces motor neurone disease (MND) and describes potential causes of the disease. A mutation to the antioxidant enzyme, copper zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD1), is known to be associated with familial cases of motor neurone disease, potentially through an oxidative stress and/or a toxic gain of function mechanism. The susceptibility of selective motor neurones to MND could be due to altered AMPA receptor subunit expression. Treatment options include small molecule antioxidants, and antisense agents to block unwanted gene production. Previous work in our laboratory has seen the design, synthesis and evaluation of PNAs aimed to down-regulate an AMPA receptor subunit and the mutated SOD1 enzyme. While promising, the results indicate that the therapeutic potency of PNAs would be enhanced by improved delivery through the blood brain barrier. Chapter two focuses on analogues of vitamin E, a known antioxidant. Natural vitamin E is very lipid soluble and does not cross the BBB, therefore more hydrophilic analogues are required for the treatment of motor neurone disease. The use of silver carbonate as a promoter to form β-orientated glycosyl esters was explored for the production of 6 glycosylated vitamin E derivatives. Various syntheses of glycosyl ester vitamin E derivatives were explored. One method involved the synthesis of and application to the vitamin E carboxylic acid derivative 24. For example, glucosyl ester vitamin E derivative 25 was produced from the silver carbonate glycosylation of 24 in high yield. An alternative, and more appropriate synthetic strategy involved the use of benzyl protecting groups. This required the preparation of the benzyl bromide sugar 34 in situ from the benzyl 4-pentenyl sugar 33. Glucosyl ester vitamin E derivative 35 was produced from the silver carbonate glycosylation of 24. Chapter three examines the synthesis of PNA monomers linked to glucose and galactose as a means to improve the bioavailability of PNA oligomers. Two sites on the PNA structure were explored for modification – the so-called site X and Y. Examples of site X include glycosylation of L-serine with glucose and galactose to produce the glycosylated building blocks 39 and 40. For site Y, three strategies were explored. First, aromatic linking groups were used to produce "rigid-linked" glycosylated monomers, 71 and 72. Incorporation of a flexible linker was achieved using succinic anhydride, producing 75 and 76. However, this pathway was low yielding and complications in removing the C-terminus protecting group were experienced. The third strategy involved the installation of an alkyl-linking group, leading to 85 in good yield. Chapter four consists of three smaller sections, connected by a common theme of peptide nucleic acids (PNA). The first section details the synthesis, purification and characterisation of a library of PNA oligomers that incorporate glycosylated building blocks 39, 40, 71 and 72. The second section describes the use of the quartz crystal microbalance to investigate the interaction of a selection of PNA conjugates with a synthetic lipid bilayer. It was found that all glycosylated PNAs display transmembrane insertion. The third section focuses on the thermodynamic properties of the glycosylated PNA oligomers when binding complementary DNA. Two techniques were used: i) a UV-visible spectroscopic method investigating a thermal melt process between a PNA strand and its complementary DNA sequence; and ii) isothermal titration calorimetry to measure conjugation of the PNAs to complementary DNA. All thermodynamic parameters calculated indicate that binding is not hindered, and in some cases improved, by the attached glycosylated building blocks.


Models of melting accompanying mantle upwelling predict far more melt than is observed at nonvolcanic margins. The discrepancy may be explained if the paradigm of a uniform asthenosphere is incorrect. Work on the velocity structure of the continents has shown that the convecting sublithospheric mantle may have a potential temperature as low as 1200 °C, ∼100 °C cooler than that beneath the oceans. The continental geotherm derived from studies on xenoliths brought up by kimberlites is also compatible with a cool sublithospheric mantle except where perturbed by mantle plumes. Upwelling of such cool mantle during rifting leads to little melt production, even for rapid extension rates, explaining the formation of amagmatic margins away from mantle plumes. However, the transition to seafloor spreading and the development of normal-thickness oceanic crust requires the invasion of the amagmatic rift by hotter oceanic asthenosphere and/or plume material. This influx may cause a transient thermal uplift, recorded as a breakup unconformity. Conversely, at volcanic margins, the onset of seafloor spreading is accompanied by the escape of the hot plume puddle along the mid-ocean ridge system away from the volcanic margin, leading to a pulse of rapid subsidence.


Hardware-based mechanisms for software isolation are becoming increasingly popular, but implementing these mechanisms correctly has proved difficult, undermining the root of security. This work introduces an effective way to formally verify important properties of such hardware security mechanisms. In our approach, hardware is developed using a lightweight security-typed hardware description language (HDL) that performs static information flow analysis. We show the practicality of our approach by implementing and verifying a simplified but realistic multi-core prototype of the ARM TrustZone architecture. To make the security-typed HDL expressive enough to verify a realistic processor, we develop new type system features. Our experiments suggest that information flow analysis is efficient, and programmer effort is modest. We also show that information flow constraints are an effective way to detect hardware vulnerabilities, including several found in commercial processors.


Capacity of wireless communication systems can be increased enormously using an array of antenna in transmitter and receiver. In such systems called MIMO, detection of transmitted symbols is based on the perfect channel knowledge in the receiver. If the channel information estimated erroneously in the receiver, the performance of the signal detectors will be degraded and therefore the symbol error rate will be increased. In this paper we proposed a robust detection method to improve the performance of maximum likelihood (ML) detection algorithm in MIMO systems when the channel information estimated erroneously in the receiver. In our method, the ML algorithm is modified analytically to make it robust against channel estimation error with no computational complexity added to the detector.


The future super flavour factory SuperKEKB with its detector system Belle II offers precision physics measurements to test the Standard Model or probe undiscovered phenomena. The physics goals of Belle II require a very precise detection of the decay point, or vertex, of B mesons from their low momentum
decay products. A novel, two layer vertex detector composed of very thin, high resolution silicon pixel detectors based on Depleted Field Effect Transistors (DEPFET) is in production for Belle II. A realistic and experimentally validated simulation for DEPFET pixel detectors is a crucial tool to optimize the
resolution of the vertex detector well before construction. In this thesis, a detailed detector simulation for the response of thin DEPFET pixel detectors to charged particles is presented. The detector simulation provides a description of the straggling of particles in silicon, the drift, diffusion and collection of the
signal and the response of the read-out electronics. The model yields a precise prediction of the spatial resolution of the detector, given design parameters such as the pixel size, the sensor thickness and the electronics noise. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the results of measurements of the response of DEPFET detector prototypes to a beam of charged particles in test beam lines at CERN and DESY. New methods for the calibration, tracking and alignment of the EUDET/AIDA beam telescope are presented, that allow a quantitative determination of the signal distribution, hit efficiency and spatial
resolution. Comparison of the results with the predictions of the response model yields good agreement. The validated model predicts a spatial resolution of ~10 micron for 50 micron thick DEPFET sensors for Belle II, satisfying the vertex detector requirements.


TIGRFAMs is a collection of protein family definitions built to aid in high-throughput annotation of specific protein functions. Each family is based on a hidden Markov model (HMM), where both cutoff scores and membership in the seed alignment are chosen so that the HMMs can classify numerous proteins according to their specific molecular functions. Most TIGRFAMs models describe 'equivalog' families, where both orthology and lateral gene transfer may be part of the evolutionary history, but where a single molecular function has been conserved. The Genome Properties system contains a queriable set of metabolic reconstructions, genome metrics and extractions of information from the scientific literature. Its genome-by-genome assertions of whether or not specific structures, pathways or systems are present provide high-level conceptual descriptions of genomic content. These assertions enable comparative genomics, provide a meaningful biological context to aid in manual annotation, support assignments of Gene Ontology (GO) biological process terms and help validate HMM-based predictions of protein function. The Genome Properties system is particularly useful as a generator of phylogenetic profiles, through which new protein family functions may be discovered. The TIGRFAMs and Genome Properties systems can be accessed at and .


By examining the problem of places of refuge for ships in distress and proposed solutions under international, national and regional law, Places of Refuge for Ships in Distress by Anthony Morrison highlights the need for further solutions and presents alternative solutions.


Novelty detection requires models of normality to be learnt from training data known to be normal. The first model considered in this paper is a static model trained to detect novel events associated with changes in the vibration spectra recorded from a jet engine. We describe how the distribution of energy across the harmonics of a rotating shaft can be learnt by a support vector machine model of normality. The second model is a dynamic model partially learnt from data using an expectation–maximization-based method. This model uses a Kalman filter to fuse performance data in order to characterize normal engine behaviour. Deviations from normal operation are detected using the normalized innovations squared from the Kalman filter.


This thesis aims to highlight the presence of a large and varied production of contemporary
Italian travel writing and to analyse the reasons for its 'invisibility' in the Italian literary
system and critical tradition. Through the use of a comparative approach to genre and of
current theories developed in the area of Translation Studies, the thesis will outline the
different status attributed to travel writing in the Anglo-American and the Italian literary
systems. Such a comparative approach allows the study to escape the narrow confines of a
perspective based on the idea of national literature and to adopt a wider view, which, in
turn, highlights the presence of phenomena otherwise easily overlooked or discarded as
insignificant.
The peculiar characteristics of travel writing, a genre mostly based on the
representation of the Other for a home audience, are also analysed in order to point out their
affinity with translation practices and, ultimately, to underline the 'double translation'
implied by translated travel writing.
The case studies which make up the remaining part of the thesis are intended to
illustrate different aspects of the genre of travel writing; to provide scope for an analysis of
its boundaries and connections with other genres (ranging from ethnography to
autobiography, from journalism to fiction, from the essay to the novel); and to illustrate the
way in which generic expectations influence both the selection of texts for translation and
the strategies adopted when translating and marketing them for a new audience.
The writings of twentieth-century Italian explorers to Tibet, and their translations
into English, constitute a significant case of adaptation of foreign texts to the needs and
expectations of a British audience (and to the British interests in the geographical area
concerned).
The works of Oriana Fallaci and their different reception in Italy with respect to the
UK and the USA illustrate the way in which personal biography and generic choices can
intersect, determining both the popular image and the critical success of an author and of
her work.
Calvino's choice to sublimate the genre of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le
citta invisibili is treated as an example of the way in which a text which is meant to provide
an escape from a low-status genre can become an icon of that same genre once it is
translated and read in a different cultural context.
Finally, the case of Claudio Magris's Danubio and of its English-language
translation provides evidence of the complex network of literary references which marks the
reception of a text in different cultures, and of the way in which generic affiliation can both
promote the recognition of a 'marginal' text and constrain its more idiosyncratic (and
original) characteristics.


Communication in retail is a vital process for consumers to understand the message intended by retailers. Based upon this argument, the research aim is to explore how retailers can communicate better message using visual elements. In Malaysia retail industry, some shopping malls started to face deficit and failing numbers of mall tenants due to the inability to attract consumers because of unappealing shopping environments. The government's aim is to make Malaysia as famous shopping destinations and it should be utilized by all parties especially retailers, marketers and designers to attract more customers. This study uses social semiotic as the basis to examine signs utilized within window displays configurations and its effect on influence consumer's shopping decision. Analysis of data was based on semiotic analysis as their suitability on analyze visual and aids the audience to read the imbued meaning. Interviews with consumers were conducted at Suria KLCC and Pavilion KL shopping mall to find out consumer's opinions about window display designs. The results revealed that window displays in Kuala Lumpur major shopping malls applied signs effectively to create meaningful message for consumers to understand the product through pragmatic meaning, emotive meaning and functional meaning. This study also provides insights for retailers about types of window display presentation techniques that influenced consumer's shopping decision making. This study provides information why window display should be considered as important visual medium based on the findings found how window display shapes consumer's desire identity and shopping decision. Understanding the language on visual will help to reduce subjective decision making and thus improve meaning transfer between designer and consumer. It will improve level of communication skills in terms of visual literacy among society.


The present experiments investigate how young language learners begin to acquire form-based categories and the relationships between them. We investigated this question by exposing 12-month-olds to auditory structure of the form aX and bY (infants had to learn that a-elements grouped with Xs and not Ys). Infants were then tested on strings from their training language versus strings from the other language using a preferential-listening procedure. Importantly, the X and Y elements were new at test, requiring infants to generalize to novel pairings. We also manipulated the probability of encountering grammatical structures of the training language by mixing strings from two artificial languages according to 83/17 and 67/33 percentage ratios in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 shows that 12-month-olds are capable of forming categories of X- and Y-elements based on a shared feature and, furthermore, form associations between particular a- and b-elements and these categories. Experiment 2 shows that learning was sustained even when 17% of instances from another language were present during training. However, infants failed to generalize when exposed to a larger percentage of strings from another language. The findings demonstrate that the first step of form-based category abstraction (the ability to generalize based on marker-feature pairings) is in place by 12 months of age.


Abstract The food enzyme glucan 1,4‐α‐maltohydrolase (4‐α‐d‐glucan α‐maltohydrolase; 22.214.171.124) is produced with the genetically modified Bacillus licheniformis strain NZYM‐CY by Novozymes A/S. The genetic modifications did not give rise to safety concerns. The production strain has been shown to qualify for Qualified Presumption of Safety (QPS) status. The food enzyme is free from viable cells of the production organism and its DNA. The food enzyme is intended to be used in three food manufacturing processes, namely baking and brewing processes and starch processing for glucose syrup production and other starch hydrolysates. Since residual amounts of total organic solids (TOS) are removed by the purification steps applied during the production of glucose syrups, dietary exposure was calculated only for the baking and brewing processes. Dietary exposure was estimated to be up to 0.45 mg TOS/kg body weight (bw) per day in European populations. Given the QPS status of the production strain and the lack of hazards resulting from the food enzyme manufacturing process, toxicological studies were not considered necessary. Similarity of the amino acid sequence to those of known allergens was searched and four matches were found. The Panel considered that, under the intended conditions of use, the risk of allergic sensitisation and elicitation reactions upon dietary exposure to this food enzyme cannot be excluded, but the likelihood of such reactions to occur is considered to be low. Based on the data provided, the QPS status of the production strain and the absence of issues arising from the production process, the Panel concluded that the food enzyme glucan 1,4‐α‐maltohydrolase produced with the genetically modified B. licheniformis strain NZYM‐CY does not give rise to safety concerns under the intended conditions of use.


Abstract. Estuarine regions are generally considered a major source of atmospheric
CO2, as a result of the high organic carbon (OC) mineralization rates in
their water column and sediments. Despite this, the intensity of anaerobic
respiration processes in the sediments tempered by the reoxidation of
reduced metabolites near the sediment–water interface controls the flux of
benthic alkalinity. This alkalinity may partially buffer metabolic CO2
generated by benthic OC respiration in sediments. Thus, sediments with high
anaerobic respiration rates could contribute less to local acidification
than previously thought. In this study, a benthic chamber was deployed in
the Rhône River prodelta and the adjacent continental shelf (Gulf of
Lion, northwestern Mediterranean) in late summer to assess the fluxes of total
alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) from the sediment.
Concurrently, in situ O2 and pH micro-profiles, voltammetric profiles and pore
water composition were measured in surface sediments to identify the main
biogeochemical processes controlling the net production of alkalinity in
these sediments. Benthic TA and DIC fluxes to the water column, ranging
between 14 and 74 and 18 and 78 mmol m−2 d−1, respectively, were up to 8 times higher than dissolved oxygen uptake (DOU) rates (10.4±0.9 mmol m−2 d−1) close to the river mouth, but their
intensity decreased offshore, as a result of the decline in OC inputs. In
the zone close to the river mouth, pore water redox species indicated that
TA and DIC were mainly produced by microbial sulfate and iron reduction.
Despite the complete removal of sulfate from pore waters, dissolved sulfide
concentrations were low and significant concentrations of FeS were found,
indicating the precipitation and burial of iron sulfide minerals with an
estimated burial flux of 12.5 mmol m−2 d−1 near the river mouth.
By preventing reduced iron and sulfide reoxidation, the precipitation and
burial of iron sulfide increases the alkalinity release from the sediments
during the spring and summer months. Under these conditions, the sediment
provides a net source of alkalinity to the bottom waters which mitigates the
effect of the benthic DIC flux on the carbonate chemistry of coastal waters
and weakens the partial pressure of CO2 increase in the bottom waters
that would occur if only DIC was produced.


Commitment protocols are modularized specifications of interactions understood in terms of commitments. Purchase is a classic example of a protocol. Although a typical protocol would capture the essence of the interactions desired, in practice, it should be adapted depending on the circumstances or context and the agents' preferences based on that context. For example, when applying purchase in different contexts, it may help to allow sending reminders for payments or returning goods to obtain a refund. We contextualize a protocol by adapting it via different transformations. Our contributions are the following: (1) a protocol is transformed by composing its specification with a transformer specification; (2) contextualization is characterized operationally by relating the original and transformed protocols; and (3) contextualization is related to protocol compliance.


Signaling pathways control the fate of the cell. For example, they promote cell survival or commit the cell to death (apoptosis) in response to cell injury or developmental stimuli, decisions, which are vital for the proper development and functioning of metazoan. Tight control of such pathways is essential; dysregulation of apoptosis can disrupt the delicate balance between cell proliferation and cell death ending up in pathological processes, including cancer, autoimmunity diseases, inflammatory diseases, or degenerative disorders. We have used a structural genomic approach to study the structure and function of key proteins involved in apoptosis and lipid signaling: the antiapoptotic Bcl-2 family member Bfl-1 in complex with a Bim peptide, the BIR domains of the Inhibitor of Apoptosis (IAP) family members, cIAP2 and NAIP and the a lipid kinase YegS. The structural analysis of the apoptosis regulatory proteins has revealed important information on the structural determinants for recognition of interacting proteins, which can now assist in the development of therapeutic drugs for human diseases. The structural and complementing biochemical studies of the lipid kinase YegS have reveled the first detailed information on a lipid kinase and explained important aspects of its structure-function relationship. Finally, one subject of this work aim to solve what is arguably the most challenging problem in structural projects – to obtain a high production level of proteins suitable for structural studies. We have developed a highthroughput protein solubility screening, the colony filtration (CoFi) blot, which allows soluble clones to be identified from large libraries of protein variants and now constitute a powerful tool for solving difficult protein production problems.


Preface. Introduction. TECHNICAL OVERVIEW. Research Activities and Progress on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells at USTC ( Guangyao Meng, Ranran Peng, Changrong Xia, and Xingqin Liu ). CELL AND STACK DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE. Development of Micro Tubular SOFCs and Stacks for Low 21 Temperature Operation under 550-C ( Toshio Suzuki, Toshiaki Yarnaguchi, Yoshinobu Fujishiro, Masanobu Awano, and Yoshihiro Funahashi ). The Properties and Performance of Micro-Tubular (Less than 1 mm OD) Anode Supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cells ( N. Sarnrnes, J.Pusz, A. Smirnova, A. Moharnrnadi, F. Serincan, Z. Xiaoyu, M. Awano, T. Suzuki, T. Yarnaguchi, Y. Fujishiro, and Y. Funahashi ). Performance of the Gen 3.1 Liquid Tin Anode SOFC on Direct JP-8 Fuel ( M.T. Koslowske, W.A. McPhee, L.S. Baternan, M.J. Slaney, J. Bentley and T.T. Tao ). Effect of Interconnect Creep on Long-Term Performance of SOFC of One Cell Stacks ( W.N. Liu, X. Sun, and M.A. Khaleel ). Effects of Compositions and Microstructures of Thin Anode Layer on the Performance of Honeycomb SOFCs Accumulated with Multi Micro Channel Cells ( Toshiaki Yarnaguchi, Sota Shirnizu, Toshio Suzuki, Yoshinobu Fujishiro, and Masanobu Awano ). FABRICATION. Formation of Gas Sealing and Current Collecting Layers for Honeycomb-Type SOFCs ( Sota Shirnizu, Toshiaki Yarnaguchi, Yoshinobu Fujishiro, and Masanobu Awano ). CHARACTERIZATION AND TESTING. Evaluating Redox Stability of Ni-YSZ Supported SOFCs Based on Simple Layer Models ( Trine Klernenser and Bent F. Sarensen ). Degradation Phenomena in SOFCs with Metallic Interconnects ( Norbert H. Menzler, Frank Tietz, Martin Brarn, lzaak C. Vinke, and L.G.J. (Bert) de Haart ). Pressure and Gas Concentration Effects on Voltage vs. Current Characteristics of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and Electrolyzer ( V. Hugo Schmidt and Laura M. Lediaev ). In-Situ Temperature-Dependent X-Ray Diffraction Study of Ba(Zro.8.xCexY0.2)03C-, eramics ( C.-S. Tu, R. R. Chien, S.-C. Lee, C.-L. Tsai, V. H. Schmidt, A. Keith, S. A. Hall, and N. P. Santorsola ). Evaluation of the Residual Stress Profiles of Practical Size Lanthanum Gallate-Based Cells in Radial Direction ( Hiroyuki Yoshida, Mitsunobu Kawano, Koji Hashino, Toru Inagaki, Hiroshi Deguchi, Yoshiyuki Kubota, and Kei Hosoi ). ELECTRODES. Effect of Spray Parameters on the Microstructure of La,-,Sr,MnO, Cathode Prepared by Spray Pyrolysis ( Hoda Arnani Harnedani, Klaus-Herrnann Dahrnen, Dongsheng Li, and Harnid Garrnestani ). Examination of Chromium's Effects on a LSMNSZ Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Cathode ( T.A. Cruse, M. Krumpelt, B.J. Ingrarn, S. Wang, and P.A. Salvador ). Evolution of Ni-YSZ Microstructure and Its Relation to Steam Reforming Activity and YSZ Phase Stability ( D. L. King, J.J. Strohm, P. Singh ). Synthesis and Characterization of Ni Impregnated Porous YSZ Anodes for SOFCs ( C. Anand Singh.and Venkatesan V. Krishnan ). The Reduction of NiO-YSZ Anode Precursor and Its Effect on the Microstructure and Elastic Properties at Ambient and Elevated Temperatures ( Thangamani Nithyanantham, Saraswathi Nambiappan Thangavel, Sornnath Biswas, and Sukumar Bandopadhyay ). Microstructure Analysis on Network-Structure Formation of SOFC Anode from NiO-SDC Composite Particles Prepared by Spray Pyrolysis Technique ( Hiroyuki Yoshida, Mitsunobu Kawano, Koji Hashino, Toru Inagaki, Seiichi Suda, Koichi Kawahara, Hiroshi Ijichi, and Hideyuki Nagahara ). Functionally Graded Composite Electrodes for Advanced Anode- Supported, Intermediate-Temperature SOFC ( Juan L. Sepulveda, Raouf 0. Loutfy, Sekyung Chang, Peiwen Li, and Ananth Kotwal ). ELECTROLYTES. High Efficiency Lanthanide Doped Ceria-Zirconia Layered Electrolyte for SOFC ( Juan L. Sepulveda, Sekyung Chang, and Raouf 0. Loutfy ). Oxygen Ion Conductance in Epitaxially Grown Thin Film Electrolytes ( S. Thevuthasan, Z. Yu, S. Kuchibhatla, L.V. Saraf, 0. A. Marina, V. Shutthanandan, P. Nachimuthu, and C. M. Wang ). INTERCONNECTS. Development of New Type Current Collector for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell ( Tsuneji Kameda, Kentaro Matsunaga, Masato Yoshino, Takayuki Fukasawa, Norikazu Osada, Masahiko Yamada, and Yoshiyasu ltoh ). Electrical Conductivity and Oxidation Studies of Ceramiclntermetallic Materials for SOFC Interconnect Application ( Yukun Pang, Hua Xie, and Rasit Koc ). SEALS. Improvement in Interface Resistance of Conductive Gas-Tight Sealing Materials for Stacking Micro-SOFC ( Seiichi Suda, Koichi Kawahara, Kaori Jono, and Masahiko Matsumiya ) ELECTROLYZER. Carbon Dioxide Electrolysis for Production of Synthesis Gas in Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cells ( Sune Dalgaard Ebbesen and Mogens Mogensen ). Author Index.


15.010 is the Sloan School's core subject in microeconomics, with sections for non-Sloan students labeled 15.011. Our objective is to give you a working knowledge of the analytical tools that bear most directly on the economic decisions firms must regularly make. We will emphasize market structure and industrial performance, including the strategic interaction of firms. We will examine the behavior of individual markets -- and the producers and consumers that sell and buy in those markets -- in some detail, focusing on cost analysis, the determinants of market demand, pricing strategy, market power, and the implications of government regulatory policies. We will also examine the implications of economics on other business practices, such as incentive plans, auctions, and transfer pricing.


OBJECTIVE--To elucidate the mechanism of the bleeding tendency observed in patients with aortic valve stenosis. DESIGN--A prospective study of high and low shear platelet function tests in vitro in normal controls compared with that in patients with severe aortic valve stenosis with a mean (SD) systolic gradient by Doppler of 75 (18) mm Hg before and at least 4 months after aortic valve replacement. SETTING--District general hospital. RESULTS--The patients showed reduced retention in the high shear platelet function tests. (a) Platelet retention in the filter test was 53.6 (12.6)% in patients with aortic valve stenosis and 84.8 (9.6)% in the controls (P < 0.001). (b) Retention in the glass bead column test was 49.8 (19.2) in the patients and 87.4 (8.7) in the controls (P < 0.001). (c) The standard bleeding time was longer in the patients (P < 0.06). Results of the high shear tests (a, b, and c) after aortic valve replacement were within the normal range. The platelet count was low but within the normal range before surgery and increased postoperatively (P < 0.01). There were no differences in the results of standard clotting tests, plasma and intraplatelet von Willebrand's factor, or in 15 platelet aggregation tests using five agonists between patients with aortic valve stenosis and controls. CONCLUSIONS--The high shear haemodynamics of aortic valve stenosis modify platelet function in vivo predisposing to a bleeding tendency. This abnormality of platelet function is detectable only in vitro using high shear tests. The abnormal function is reversed by aortic valve replacement. High shear forces in vitro activate and then inactivate platelets. By the same mechanisms aortic valve stenosis seems to lead to high shear damage in vivo, resulting in a clinically important bleeding tendency in some patients.


Barrett's oesophagus and oesophageal cancer represent two of the most important and challenging oesophageal disease processes globally, combining increasing incidences with high morbidity treatments, often with poor clinical outcomes. A major contributory factor is that disease susceptibility, progression and response to therapy are largely unpredictable, due to inherent biological complexity and variability. At present, just staging groups are used routinely as thresholds for guiding the use of therapies such as ablation, resection, and oncological therapies. However, these represent blunt tools that do not necessarily reflect patients' experiences, or appropriately select from the range of treatments available. The aim of this thesis was to explore the potential of genomic, imaging, and pathological biomarkers in guiding more tailored and personalised therapy.

The first half of this thesis explores the role of genomic markers. The first results chapter describes the identification of new loci and gene pathways associated with susceptibility to Barrett's oesophagus, dysplasia and oesophageal adenocarcinoma, by further replication and analysis of a genome-wide association study. In addition, all reported genomic markers of these endpoints were identified and criticised by systematic review, and synthesised by meta-analysis. Validation of these was then attempted, and lessons for markers and future research drawn.

The second results chapter describes a similar appraisal and synthesis of genomic markers of oesophageal cancer prognosis, response to therapy, and stage.

The third describes the first next generation sequencing study performed in oesophageal adenocarcinoma (and indeed any gastrointestinal cancer as far as the author is aware), before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Using whole exome sequencing a new model of genomic tumour response was developed, and the implications for biomarkers explored.

The second half of this thesis follows a large cohort of patients with oesophageal cancer, from nearly 1000 undergoing staging, to more than 300 undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy, restaging and resection. In the fourth results chapter, the first application of decision theory to cancer staging identified the potential for routine imaging data to personalise and optimise oesophageal cancer staging.

In the following chapter, positron emission tomography-computed tomography was found to be more sensitive for identifying disease progression during neoadjuvant chemotherapy than computed tomography alone. Two factors were identified that could stratify risk of progression to incurable disease, including that encountered at surgery. These included 18F-FDG avid nodes, with new concepts of metabolic nodal stage and response developed in conjunction with predictive models.

Thereafter, a number of conventional and experimental metrics of metabolic tumour response were compared and refined as predictors of pathological response. Existing metrics of metabolic tumour response were found to be suboptimal, and these new concepts and classifications of metabolic nodal stage and response were found to have independent utility for clinical practice. Again, predictive models were generated.

Finally, the prognostic utilities of these markers were explored. Metabolic tumour response was found to be an imperfect surrogate of pathological response. However, metabolic nodal response demonstrated independent utility in identifying patients at high risk of early recurrence and death, both when used before surgery and afterwards. Indeed, a number of analyses demonstrated the additive utility of considering the primary tumour and nodal metastases as separate entities. Finally, prognostic models were generated, and a simple risk score was generated, using the four independent prognostic markers identified to stratify prognosis.


Abstract Recent experiments on the DIII-D tokamak have examined the effect of particle transport on the electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) profile using measurements of the magnetic field pitch angles by motional Stark effect polarimetry. While previous ECCD studies on DIII-D did not observe any clear effects of transport, these new experiments at high ECCD power, low density, and radiation temperatures above 20 keV clearly demonstrate that the ECCD profile can be reduced and broadened compared to the Fokker-Planck code CQL3D predictions assuming no radial transport. A diffusion coefficient of [approximate]0.4 m2 /s is required in CQL3D to reproduce the experimental ECCD profile at high relative power densities, while smaller diffusion coefficients are needed at low relative power densities. This level of transport is comparable to the effective particle transport rate needed to maintain the density profile but an order of magnitude less than the electron thermal diffusivity. While radial transport of the current-carrying electrons is potentially detrimental for applications that rely on strong localization of the noninductive current, this effect should be negligible on ITER owing to its large size and low relative power density.


In 1704 the Indo-Persian Sufi and poet Mirzā ʿAbdul Qādir ʿBīdil' completed an autobiography entitled The Four Elements ( Chahār ʿunṣur ). Into the fourth "Element" of this text he set an account of a portrait of himself painted around 1677 by Anūp Chhatr, a painter famous for his portraits in the imperial Mughal ateliers of the time. Initially refusing his painter-acquaintance permission to paint him, Bīdil finally yields and is astonished at how the resulting portrait duplicates him like a mirror. After marveling at it for a decade, he falls ill. His friends visit him in his sickbed and one of them, leafing through his anthology of texts, comes upon the painting. He exclaims at how faded it is. Bīdil himself can barely make it out on the page. When he recovers his health, he opens the anthology to examine the faded portrait and is astonished and shocked, as his friends are, to see that it has recovered its brilliant colors. He tears the painting up. This essay reads this ekphrastic account of self-transformation as an autobiographical and iconoclastic interpretation, playing on philosophical, literary and painterly traditions of visuality, in particular Ibn ʿArabi's (d. 1240, Andalusia) theory of the imagination. Among the questions that will be pursued are: what understandings of self and self-transformation did Bīdil renew by this interpretation? How is this episode a focusing of concerns that pervade all of The Four Elements ? What kind of reader and reading practices did this autobiography assume? And, finally, does an understanding of Bīdil's iconoclastic self-transformation—turning on this episode—prepare us to better understand his works in other genres?


Relying on large pretrained language models such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) for encoding and adding a simple prediction layer has led to impressive performance in many clinical natural language processing (NLP) tasks. In this work, we present a novel extension to the Transformer architecture, by incorporating signature transform with the self-attention model. This architecture is added between embedding and prediction layers. Experiments on a new Swedish prescription data show the proposed architecture to be superior in two of the three information extraction tasks, comparing to baseline models. Finally, we evaluate two different embedding approaches between applying Multilingual BERT and translating the Swedish text to English then encode with a BERT model pretrained on clinical notes.


Changing process of environmental decision-making have stimulated a large array of conceptual and methodological research in environmental science. This report deals with two large areas. Firstly, criteria for good environmental decision-making are established and associated with corresponding criteria for for good scientific assessments to support it. It is found that the process of decision-making and decision analysis should use the best available information about the biophysical characteristics, their changes and their socio-economic implications, the social context and values involved in the environmental problem including cumulative and cross-scale effects. Both types of processes need to consider uncertainties by adopting analytical frameworks and decision-making processes capable of accommodating new information and course corrections. They also need to take into account equity, efficiency, and vulnerability concerns, pursue accountability and strive for effectiveness.

Secondly, a set of analytical frameworks is assessed according to selected features that are relevant in choosing among them for implementing environmental assessments. It is concluded that the diverse and sophisticated analytical frameworks, tools, and models to support environmental decision-making draw on various disciplines in social sciences and attain various degrees of formalization from mathematical models to discourse-based social processes. The ability to address specific aspects of the decision problem (efficiency and equity concerns, problem scale, uncertainties) varies accordingly.

The continuing challenge for environmental decision-making remains to select the relevant ingredients and to choose the analytical framework that provides the most relevant and useful information for the decision-making process. More systematic assessments of the relevant ingredients and of the capabilities of applicable tools are needed to further improve environmental assessments and thereby environmental management.


With increasing popularity of unmanned aircraft, continuous monitoring of their systems, software, and health status is becoming more and more important to ensure safe, correct, and efficient operation and fulfillment of missions. The paper presents integration of prognosis models and prognostic information with the R2U2 (REALIZABLE, RESPONSIVE, and UNOBTRUSIVE Unit) monitoring and diagnosis framework. This integration makes available statistically reliable health information predictions of the future at a much earlier time to enable autonomous decision making. The prognostic information can be used in the R2U2 model to improve diagnostic accuracy and enable decisions to be made at the present time to deal with events in the future. This will be an advancement over the current state of the art, where temporal logic observers can only do such valuation at the end of the time interval. Usefulness and effectiveness of this integrated diagnostics and prognostics framework was demonstrated using simulation experiments with the NASA Dragon Eye electric unmanned aircraft.


The diet composition of the Atlantic lizardfish Synodus saurus , caught on sandy bottoms of the north-western coast of Sicily (southern Tyrrhenian Sea) is described. The stomachs of 224 specimens (from 73 to 280 mm TL) were collected between June 2005 and May 2006. The analysis of stomach contents showed that this species is almost exclusively piscivorous. Unlike other benthic predators of the study area, it mainly feeds on pelagic school-forming fish, such as Clupeidae, Engraulidae and Myctophidae and juveniles of Sparidae and Centracanthidae, and benthic prey play a secondary role. The diet of S. saurus is related to the seasonal availability of resources, depending on the occurrence of juveniles of several species and on the migration of pelagic fishes in the study area. There were no significant changes in prey items between predator length groups, but a positive, significant linear relationship between prey size and predator size was recorded.


This paper proposes a framework for enabling the reliability-differentiated services in a residential distribution network with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). A reliability-differentiated pricing mechanism is developed to satisfy the different reliability requirements of the customers while encouraging the customers to consume electricity in such a way that the reliability of the overall distribution system can be enhanced. A dynamic spinning reserve pricing scheme is developed to stimulate PHEVs to participate in spinning reserve by providing economic benefits when the state of the distribution system becomes risky. Based on the formulated reliability-differentiated system, a hierarchical game approach is proposed in this paper to coordinate the charging process of PHEVs in a decentralized fashion. At the upper level of the hierarchical game, an evolutionary game is formulated to optimize the management of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capacity of each PHEV. Under the V2G strategies obtained from the evolutionary game, a noncooperative game is formulated at the lower level to coordinate the charging sequences of PHEVs. Various simulation studies are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical game approach. The simulation results show that the hierarchical game approach is effective in enhancing both reliability of the distribution system and economic profits of the PHEVs.