Introduction. Part I: Plant Basics. Chapter 1: Exploring Botany. Chapter 2: Peering at Plant Cells. Chapter 3: Identifying Plant Tissues. Chapter 4: Vegetative Structures: Stems, Roots, and Leaves. Chapter 5: Reproductive Structures: Spores, Seeds, Cones, Flowers, and Fruits. Part II: The Living Plant: Plant Physiology. Chapter 6: Metabolism: How Living Things Get Energy and Matter. Chapter 7: Photosynthesis: Making Sugar from Scratch. Chapter 8: Cellular Respiration: Making Your Cake and Eating It, Too. Chapter 9: Moving Materials Through Plants. Chapter 10: Regulating Plant Growth and Development. Part III: Making More Plants: Plant Reproduction and Genetics. Chapter 11: Greening the Earth: Plant Reproduction. Chapter 12: Passing Plant Characteristics to the Next Generation. Part IV: The Wide, Wonderful World of Plants: Plant Biodiversity. Chapter 13: Changing with the Times: Evolution and Adaptation. Chapter 14: The Tree of Life: Showing the Relationships Between Living Things. Chapter 15: Examining the Forest Floor: Bryophytes and Seedless Vascular Plants. Chapter 16: Their Seeds Are Naked: Gymnosperms. Chapter 17: Say It with Flowers: Angiosperms. Part V: Plants and People. Chapter 18: Making Connections with Plant Ecology. Chapter 19: Altering Plants by Using Biotechnology. Chapter 20: Thriving on Plants in Everyday Life. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 21: Ten Weirdest Plants. Chapter 22: Ten Tips for Improving Your Grade in Botany. Index.


Pack rust or crevice corrosion is a type of localized corrosion. When a metal is in contact with a metal, or even non-metal, the metal starts to corrode, and rust starts to pack in between the surfaces. When significant development of pack rust occurs, it can cause overstressing of bolts and rivets causing them to fail, and it can bend connecting plates and member elements thus reducing their buckling capacity. Thus it is important to mitigate the formation and growth of pack rust in bridges. This study was conducted to determine if pack rust occurs frequently and thereby may pose a problem in the state of Indiana. The study is divided into three primary tasks. The first part of the study involves understanding the parameters involved in the initiation process of crevice corrosion and post-initiation crevice corrosion process. The second part of the study involves reviewing existing mitigation strategies and repair procedures used by state DOTs. The third part of the study involves identifying steel bridges with pack rust in Indiana. Analyses were performed on the data collected from Indiana bridges that have pack rust. This involved finding the components and members of bridges which are most affected by pack rust and finding parameters which influence the formation of pack rust. Pack rust in the steel bridges were identified using the INDOT inspection reports available through BIAS system. The study revealed that good maintenance practices helped in reducing pack rust formation. The study identified locations on steel bridges which have a high probability towards pack rust formation. A mitigating strategy possessing qualities which can show promising results is identified.


Abstract This study examined the effects of the Montessori Method on preschool children's readiness to primary education. The research group is composed of five-six year olds attending SU MEF Ihsan Dogramaci Application Nursery School in 2009-2010 school year in Selcuklu county of Konya. The participants composed of five-six year olds were unbiasedly chosen. A total of 50 children were included in the study, 25 being in the experimental group and 25 being in the control group. In the study, Metropolitan Readiness Test was used to determine preschool school children's school readiness levels, B form of PKBS Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scale was used to determine preschool children's social skills, FTF-K attention gathering skills test for five-year old children was used to determine preschool children's attention gathering skills. The tests were administered to children before and after experimentation, and it was applied to experimental group again six weeks later. Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to analyze the data. The general conclusion of the results obtained is that The Montessori Method makes positive contribution to preschool children's readiness to primary school and is more efficient than current preschool education program. Key Words Preschool Education, the Montessori Method, Readiness to Primary Education. Preschool period is very important in human life and education in this period affects the life of child in the future (Aral, Kandir, & Can Yasar, 2001). Qualified pre-school education is a must for the revelation of child's skills, meeting his basic needs and his gaining of basic habits and their best preparation for (Zembat, 2005). One of the most important objectives of pre-school education is to prepare the child for primary school. Readiness for primary education which is also called school maturity or readiness to school means that the child is ready to meet physical, mental and social requirements of primary education (Guler, 2001). Readiness means the acquisition of prerequisite behaviors for the realization of certain instructional activities (Ulgen, 1997). According to Kocyigit (2009), readiness to school is a concept which can vary from one child to another and can be completed at different ages, balanced maturation of child with significant background in all development areas and child's ability to show all properties required for learning to take place. Although the concept of school readiness is used to mean learning to read, children' general social development and intellectual developments are to be considered as a part of school readiness (Unutkan, 2003). Child's having qualities required from those starting primary education and especially being ready to learn to read is a very complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon. The concept of readiness confined to being ready to learn by various researchers includes various factors in line with the views of any researcher and author (Oktay, 1999). Generally, it is argued that visual maturity, ability to distinguish colors, visual memory, hand-eye coordination, aural discrimination/hearing, social and emotional factors and attention length are important in pres-school classed (Guven, 1991). Various researchers list many factors for readiness, Oktay (1999) points out physical factors, mental factors, and emotional factors, social and environmental factors are attention-grabbing. Studies on this issue indicate that parents and pre-school education institutions hold the greatest responsibility for the child's preparation to primary school. The skills child acquires in pre-school period form the basis for the skills children will acquire later in life. The deficiencies in the development of child in 0-6 year old can hardly be dealt with in periods ahead. In this sense, pre-school education institutions and pre-school education programs followed in these institutions has a great importance for preparing children for primary education (Boz, 2004; Esaspehlivan, 2006; Kocyiðit, 2009; Kotil, 2005; Tuðrul, 1992; Ulku, 2007). …


The size, frequency, and intensity of volcanic eruptions are strongly controlled by the volume and connectivity of magma within the crust. Several geophysical and geochemical studies have produced a comprehensive model of the magmatic system to depths near 7 km beneath Mount St. Helens (Washington State, USA), currently the most active volcano in the Cascade Range. Data limitations have precluded imaging below this depth to observe the entire primary shallow magma reservoir, as well as its connection to deeper zones of magma accumulation in the crust. The inversion of P and S wave traveltime data collected during the active-source component of the iMUSH (Imaging Magma Under St. Helens) project reveals a high P-wave (Vp)/S-wave (Vs) velocity anomaly beneath Mount St. Helens between depths of 4 and 13 km, which we interpret as the primary upper–middle crustal magma reservoir. Beneath and southeast of this shallow reservoir, a low Vp velocity column extends from 15 km depth to the Moho. Deep long-period events near the boundary of this column indicate that this anomaly is associated with the injection of magmatic fluids. Southeast of Mount St. Helens, an upper–middle crustal high Vp/Vs body beneath the Indian Heaven Volcanic Field may also have a magmatic origin. Both of these high Vp/Vs bodies are at the boundaries of the low Vp middle–lower crustal column and both are directly above high Vp middle–lower crustal regions that may represent cumulates associated with recent Quaternary or Paleogene–Neogene Cascade magmatism. Seismicity immediately following the 18 May 1980 eruption terminates near the top of the inferred middle–lower crustal cumulates and directly adjacent to the inferred middle–lower crustal magma reservoir. These spatial relationships suggest that the boundaries of these high-density cumulates play an important role in both vertical and lateral transport of magma through the crust.


Knowledge distillation (KD) aims to train a lightweight classifier suitable to provide accurate inference with constrained resources in multi-label learning. Instead of directly consuming feature-label pairs, the classifier is trained by a teacher, i.e., a high-capacity model whose training may be resource-hungry. The accuracy of the classifier trained this way is usually suboptimal because it is difficult to learn the true data distribution from the teacher. An alternative method is to adversarially train the classifier against a discriminator in a two-player game akin to generative adversarial networks (GAN), which can ensure the classifier to learn the true data distribution at the equilibrium of this game. However, it may take excessively long time for such a two-player game to reach equilibrium due to high-variance gradient updates. To address these limitations, we propose a three-player game named KDGAN consisting of a classifier, a teacher, and a discriminator. The classifier and the teacher learn from each other via distillation losses and are adversarially trained against the discriminator via adversarial losses. By simultaneously optimizing the distillation and adversarial losses, the classifier will learn the true data distribution at the equilibrium. We approximate the discrete distribution learned by the classifier (or the teacher) with a concrete distribution. From the concrete distribution, we generate continuous samples to obtain low-variance gradient updates, which speed up the training. Extensive experiments using real datasets confirm the superiority of KDGAN in both accuracy and training speed.


Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) exert their cellular effects on cells by interacting with specific cellular receptors, the best characterized of which is the receptor for AGE (RAGE). The transductional processes by which RAGE ligation transmits signals to the nuclei of cells is unknown and was investigated. AGE-albumin, a prototypic ligand, activated p21 ras in rat pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells that express RAGE, whereas nonglycated albumin was without effect. MAP kinase activity was enhanced at concentrations of AGE-albumin, which activated p21 ras and NF-κB. Depletion of intracellular glutathione rendered cells more sensitive to AGE-mediated activation of this signaling pathway. In contrast, signaling was blocked by preventing p21 ras from associating with the plasma membrane or mutating Cys118 on p21 ras to Ser. Signaling was receptor-dependent, because it was prevented by blocking access to RAGE with either anti-RAGE IgG or by excess soluble RAGE. These data suggest that RAGE-mediated induction of cellular oxidant stress triggers a cascade of intracellular signals involving p21 ras and MAP kinase, culminating in transcription factor activation. The molecular mechanism that triggers this pathway likely involves oxidant modification and activation of p21 ras .


Twenty-one patients who had had twenty-three Syme amputations at an average age of four years and eleven months were studied to assess their physical and psychological functional status. Physical evaluation was based on a timed fifty-yard (45.7-meter) dash, Cybex testing of quadriceps and hamstring function, and history of sports participation. Psychological function was based on four psychological tests. Quadriceps power correlated closely with athletic function. Excessive genu valgum caused a noticeable abnormality of gait. Migration of the heel pad did not cause problems with gait. Better psychological function correlated with better orthopaedic function. The level of family stress was the predominant factor that influenced test results relative to behavior, self-concept, and intelligence quotient. As a result of this study, we believe that a Syme amputation in a young patient may be compatible with athletic and psychological function closely approaching that of a non-handicapped child of the same age.


[1] The height of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) is an important parameter that relates to the various processes associated with the PBL. In this paper, we use Global Positioning System radio occultation (GPSRO) measurements to derive a global climatology of PBL heights. Utilizing the strength of GPSRO in capturing fine vertical structures, the top of the PBL is defined to be the height at which the vertical gradient of the refractivity or water vapor partial pressure is minimum, corresponding to the height where the refractivity or water vapor pressure changes most rapidly. A "sharpness parameter" is defined that quantifies the applicability of these definitions. The sharpness parameter is largest over the subtropical regions characterized by strong subsidence. When the sharpness parameter is large, the refractivity- and moisture-based heights are shown to converge. We derived global PBL height climatology using three years (Dec. 2006–Nov. 2009) of COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 measurements and compared with values calculated from ECMWF Reanalysis Interim (ERA-Int). We found that the mean PBL heights from GPSRO shared similar spatial and seasonal variations with ERA-Int; however, GPSRO heights were higher by 500 m. The standard deviation was also higher from GPSRO, especially in the tropics. We present detailed comparisons between GPSRO and ERA-Int over the Pacific Ocean and the Sahara desert and examine the PBL height distributions as well as its annual and diurnal variabilities. These results suggest that the underlying causes of the bias between GPSRO and ERA-Int likely vary from region to region.


Epikarst is not only an important component of the hydrogeology of karst and an active site of speleogenesis, it is habitat for a number of species adapted to subterranean life. Water in epikarst, with a residence time of days to months, is a highly heterogeneous habitat, and the animals are primarily sampled from continuously sampling dripping water or collecting from residual drip pools. While the subterranean fauna of cracks and crevices has been known for over 100 years, it is only in the past several decades that epikarst has been recognized as a distinct habitat, with reproducing populations of stygobionts. Dissolved organic carbon in epikarst drip water is a primary and sometimes the only source of organic matter for underlying caves, especially if there are not sinking streams that enter the cave. Typical concentrations of organic carbon are 1 mg L -1 . The fauna of epikarst is dominated by copepods, but other groups, including some terrestrial taxa, are important in some areas. Most of the diversity is β-diversity (between drips and between caves). In Slovenia, an average of nearly 9 stygobiotic copepod species were found per cave. In studies in Romania and Slovenia, a number of factors have been found to be important in determining species distribution, including ceiling thickness, habitat connectivity and habitat size. In addition to eye and pigment loss, epikarst copepod species may show a number of specialization for life in epikarst, including adaptations to avoid displacement by water flow. Several geoscientists and biologists have challenged the uniqueness and importance of epikarst, but on balance the concept is valid and useful. Fruitful future research directions include development of better sampling techniques, studies to explain differences among nearby epikarst communities, phylogeographic studies, and assessing the possible role of copepods as tracers of vadose water. adaptation; cave ecology; Copepoda; stygobionts; subterranean biodiversity


Lithuania represents one of the rare cases in which a state with relatively high standards for maintaining population statistics is experiencing mass emigration. In light of the policy initiatives undertaken by the Lithuanian government to address the issue of emigration, this study aims to improve our understanding of how, in this mass emigration context, emigration events are connected to specific socio-economic characteristics of individuals and variation in local socio-economic conditions. We analyse census and vital registration data covering the whole working-age population of Lithuania during the period 2011-2012. Our findings indicate that when assessing the likelihood of emigration events, individual-level characteristics such as employment status, educational attainment, and prior migration experience are highly relevant. However, the importance of these characteristics differs by gender. We also detect considerable spatial variation in emigration rates across Lithuanian municipalities. Our outcomes provide new insights for the development of cohesive migration policies in Lithuania.


Understanding user behaviors on Web sites enables site owners to make sites more usable, ultimately helping users to achieve their goals more quickly. Accordingly, researchers have devised methods for categorizing user sessions in hopes of revealing user interests. These techniques build user profiles by combining users' navigation paths with other data features, such as page viewing time, hyperlink structure, and page content. Previously, we have presented complex techniques of combining many of these data features to cluster user profiles. In this paper, we introduce a user study and a systematic evaluation of these different data features and their associated weighting schemes. We present the results of our study, including accuracy measures for a number of clustering approaches, and offer recommendations for Web analysts. While further investigation over more sites is needed to definitively settle on a robust scheme, we have characterized this analytic space


Learning guarantees often rely on assumptions of i.i.d. data, which will likely be violated in practice once predictors are deployed to perform real-world tasks. Domain adaptation approaches thus appeared as a useful framework yielding extra flexibility in that distinct train and test data distributions are supported, provided that other assumptions are satisfied such as covariate shift, which expects the conditional distributions over labels to be independent of the underlying data distribution. Several approaches were introduced in order to induce generalization across varying train and test data sources, and those often rely on the general idea of domain-invariance, in such a way that the data-generating distributions are to be disregarded by the prediction model. In this contribution, we tackle the problem of generalizing across data sources by approaching it from the opposite direction: we consider a conditional modeling approach in which predictions, in addition to being dependent on the input data, use information relative to the underlying data-generating distribution. For instance, the model has an explicit mechanism to adapt to changing environments and/or new data sources. We argue that such an approach is more generally applicable than current domain adaptation methods since it does not require extra assumptions such as covariate shift and further yields simpler training algorithms that avoid a common source of training instabilities caused by minimax formulations, often employed in domain-invariant methods.


In the present time, there are large databases with parameters related to the maintenance of different equipment and installations. Given that manual analysis of sensors connected to machines is practically impossible, maintenance decisions from these databases can be difficult if the information automatically updated from these sensors is huge. Those great amounts of information are essentially useless if the knowledge contained inside cannot be extracted. Rough set theory facilitates this work by detecting those parameters that are truly significant for establishing the decision rules of the maintenance. In order to show the power of rough sets this paper contains a real case of a plastic injection installation for the analysis. Practical implications. An effective use of resource allocation in manufacturing processes could be achieved by using certain decision rules to indicate where and when maintenance decisions and tasks should be undertaken. This paper illustrates how the powerful theory of rough sets handles these issues. Therefore, the use of this technique is highly recommended for those industrial processes with a great amount of data and time (or in general, any resource) limitations.


In the present clinical fields, medical doctors mainly use Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) to evaluate spasticity. However, MAS is manual and qualitative method and results depend on doctors. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to quantitatively evaluate spasticity using a neuro-musculo-skeletal model. The proposed model consisted of the muscular activation model, variable viscoelastic model of the muscles, musculoskeletal model, muscle spindle model and alpha motoneuron model. This model could represent spasticity patient's knee pendulum well. A parameter related with sensitivity of the muscle spindle was a factor to evaluate spasticity quantitatively.


Background: Acetaminophen poisoning is becoming an increasingly common social problem in Malaysia. An understanding of consumers' usage pattern of acetaminophen is essential in addressing the issue of accidental acetaminophen poisoning. This study was therefore aimed to evaluate the usage pattern of acetaminophen among the consumers in the state of Penang, Malaysia. Methods: A survey using a questionnaire was carried out in Health Clinic of University Sciences Malaysia (USM), Outpatient Clinic of Advance Medical and Dental Institute, USM, and five selected community pharmacies in the state of Penang from February 2013 to April 2013. A convenient sample of 400 Malaysian consumers was involved in this study. Results: Majority (98.0%) of the consumers had ever taken acetaminophen. The consumers mostly used acetaminophen for headache (75.0%) and fever (72.8%). The 500 mg acetaminophen tablet was more commonly used among the consumers (94.3%) then the 650 mg tablet (44.3%). A total of 1.1% of the consumers had taken more than two tablets of acetaminophen 500 mg tablet per intake. Meanwhile, 24.4% of the consumers had taken two tablets or more of acetaminophen 650 mg tablet per intake. The consumers mostly consumed acetaminophen in a frequency of either 4 hourly (29.5%), 8 hourly (17.3%) or 6 hourly (14.8%). However, 6.3% and 7.0% of the consumers would increase the dosage or frequency of acetaminophen consumption, respectively, when their conditions or symptoms persisted after taking the acetaminophen. Conclusions: The use of acetaminophen is prevalent among the surveyed consumers. The risks of acetaminophen overdose were found among the consumers.


Stress on the environment from a potentially growing energy use is set to rise. Without doubt the energy resources in Arctic regions will be developed. An important goal will be to exploit the resources offered by for instance the Barents Sea as a new European energy province, and to do this in accordance with the principles of sustainable development that have successfully been used e.g. in the North Sea. The special edition of MIC on Arctic DP presents a set of articles that summarize to an extent the activities of the research project "Arctic DP: Safe and green dynamic positioning operations of offshore vessels in an Arctic environment". This project was awarded in 2010 by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) as a competence-building project (KMB project) to NTNU and its partners Kongsberg Maritime, DNV GL, and Statoil. The objective was to target some of the challenges related to safe Arctic offshore operations by dynamic positioning. In this first article of the Arctic DP special edition we discuss the background for and establishment of the project, its planning and execution, and project closure. An overview is given for the scientific and engineering research performed in the project, with an account of what we have considered as Effective stationkeeping in ice by dynamic positioning. The corresponding research activities conducted under this main theme is summarized.


The possibility of offsetting greenhouse gas warming by introducing artificial aerosols into the stratosphere to increase the Earth's albedo has been widely discussed, but little attention has been given to the details of its implementation. It is usually assumed that the aerosols would be sulfuric acid droplets (hydrated sulfur trioxide), like natural volcanic aerosols. Other materials may be more advantageous, but sophisticated "engineered" particles probably cannot be produced in sufficient quantity. I consider a variety of possible injection vehicles. Aircraft are unlikely to have sufficient lift capability to the necessary altitudes, guns are inefficient, and exotic methods like balloons and chimneys face daunting difficulties. Simple rockets are proven and economical, and can deliver material to any desired altitude. Artificial injection begins at a much higher aerosol (or precursor) density than a volcanic plume, raising novel issues of chemical kinetics and particle agglomeration. Detailed experimental and theoretical investigation are required to establish the feasibility of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. An appendix argues that natural, as well as anthropogenic, climate change may pose challenges that could be met by these methods.


Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin was born on 23 August 1919 in Baku (Azerbaijan). His parents, Abram Beniaminovich Rokhlin and Henrietta Emmanuilovna Levenson, came from Jewish families, who lived in the Ukraine and in Byelorussia and then moved to Baku. Rokhlin's mother was the sister of the well-known literary figure and children's writer Kornei Chukovsky; Rokhlin's grandmother, Klara Levenson, was one of the first women doctors in Russia. Rokhlin's mother graduated from a medical school in France and was a doctor in Baku. She died tragically in 1923. His father was a broadly educated man and took an active part in political activity before the revolution (he was a social democrat) and in the early years of the revolution. Later he was involved in administrative work in Baku, in the Ukraine, in Central Asia and in Moscow. Not surprisingly he did not escape the Stalinist repressions: in 1939 he was arrested and on 13.7.1941 was sentenced to be shot. In 1957 his relatives received a certificate of rehabilitation ('the case is closed due to insufficient evidence'); it is clear from this certificate that it was still impossible to obtain reliable information about the last years of his life; in particular even the exact date of his death is not precisely established. Rokhlin's family was exiled to Siberia and remained there. Fortunately Rokhlin, who was at that time a student at the University of Moscow, escaped with comparatively minor unpleasantnesses, and was not expelled from the University.


Summary

1. The Grampians National Park in Victoria is a 'hot spot' for freshwater crayfish diversity, with seven species from six genera occurring in sympatry. Few studies have examined how multiple species of freshwater crayfish co-exist across landscapes consisting of a mosaic of perennial and seasonal habitats. Despite their endemicity and likely key role in freshwaters, the ecology and biology of these crayfish remains unknown.

2. This study determined the distribution and habitat use of five crayfish species (Euastacus bispinosus, Cherax destructor, Geocharax falcata, Gramastacus insolitus and Engaeus lyelli). Seasonal sampling surveys ascertained whether crayfish distribution was related to habitat type, environmental or physicochemical variables, catchment or season.

3. Distribution was directly related to habitat type and the environmental and physicochemical variables that characterised habitats. Engaeus lyelli, G. falcata and G. insolitus occurred predominantly in floodplain wetlands and flooded vegetation habitats, E. bispinosus occurred only in flowing soft-sediment channels and C. destructor was found in all catchments and habitat types studied. Gramastacus insolitus co-occurred with G. falcata at all sites except two, so no distinct habitat separations were apparent for these two species.

4. A high percentage cover of boulders was the best indicator of crayfish absence, and discriminated between habitat types and crayfish species: it was probably a surrogate for a larger range of environmental and physicochemical variables. Catchment and season did not affect crayfish distribution.

5. These crayfish species varied in their degree of habitat specialisation from strongly generalist (C. destructor) to occupying only a specific habitat type (E. bispinosus). Some species appeared specialised for seasonal wetlands (G. insolitus and G. falcata). Overlap in site occupancy also varied: G. insolitus and G. falcata distributions were strongly associated, whereas C. destructor appeared to occur opportunistically across habitats, both alone and co-occurring with all the other species.

6. Management strategies to conserve multiple species of crayfish co-existing within landscapes will need to incorporate a range of perennial and seasonal habitat types to ensure sufficient space is available for species to maintain different occupancy patterns. Given that water resources are under increasing pressure and are strongly regulated within the Grampians National Park, this may present a conservation challenge to water managers in this location.


This essay investigates how Norman Mailer's "true-life" novel The Executioner's Song may also be read as an autobiography. The novel contains strong traces of Mailer's existential philosophy as related to sexuality, non-conformity and death. The essay discusses the nature of the relationship between truth as defined by the author and the function of autobiography to tell the truth about a life. The discussion centres around Mailer's conviction that the novel is a better, i.e. more accurate vehicle for truth than is the autobiography. The essay argues that the truth which Mailer imparts is less the "true" story of Gary Gilmore and more the "true" story of Norman Mailer.


AbstractA 55-year-old bridge showed large cracking in the approach bridge caused by restraint of deformation and support settlement. After repair, it was uncertain at which crack width the traffic loads on the bridge should be further restricted. The shear capacity was calculated by counting on the aggregate interlock capacity of a supposedly fully cracked cross section. An aggregate interlock relationship between shear capacity and crack width based on an unreinforced section was used to find the maximum allowable crack width. Limits for crack widths at which load restrictions should be imposed were found. The large structural capacity of the cracked concrete section shows that the residual bearing resistance based on the aggregate interlock capacity of reinforced concrete slab bridges with existing cracks is higher than expected. This expected capacity could be calculated with the inclined cracking load from the code provisions. The procedure outlined in this paper can thus be used for the shear assessm...


The Critical assessment of protein structure prediction round 9 (CASP9) aimed to evaluate predictions for 129 experimentally determined protein structures. To assess tertiary structure predictions, these target structures were divided into domain‐based evaluation units that were then classified into two assessment categories: template based modeling (TBM) and template free modeling (FM). CASP9 targets were split into domains of structurally compact evolutionary modules. For the targets with more than one defined domain, the decision to split structures into domains for evaluation was based on server performance. Target domains were categorized based on their evolutionary relatedness to existing templates as well as their difficulty levels indicated by server performance. Those target domains with sequence‐related templates and high server prediction performance were classified as TMB, whereas those targets without identifiable templates and low server performance were classified as FM. However, using these generalizations for classification resulted in a blurred boundary between CASP9 assessment categories. Thus, the FM category included those domains without sequence detectable templates (25 target domains) as well as some domains with difficult to detect templates whose predictions were as poor as those without templates (five target domains). Several interesting examples are discussed, including targets with sequence related templates that exhibit unusual structural differences, targets with homologous or analogous structure templates that are not detectable by sequence, and targets with new folds. Proteins 2011; © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


IVANOVA, S., 2011. Dynamical changes in the trace element composition of fresh and lyophilized ewe's milk. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 17: 25-30 The present study aims to investigate the trace element composition of fresh and lyophilized ewe's milk from sheep of the Karakachan breed raised in the region of the Middle Rhodopes. The analysis of trace elements in the native and lyophilized ewe's milk was made after ashing with atomic-absorption photometer AES-ICP "VarianLiberty II". In the course of lactation a decrease of the content of the trace elements boron, barium, chromium, copper, iron, zinc, selenium and iodine and a good availability of manganese was observed in the native and freeze-dried milk.


ABSTRACT In March 2017, I travelled to the frontline between the Ukrainian army and Pro-Russian separatist forces in the Donbass region, East Ukraine, as part of a research project into the return of twentieth century weapons in digital culture across Europe. While embedded in a patrol with soldiers of the Ukraine Volunteer Corps, an organization affiliated with the nationalist Right Sector movement, I ended up in a firefight on the edge of the no man's land. I documented how the soldiers alternatingly operated Soviet-era Kalashnikov assault rifles and contemporary consumer technologies, such as smartphones an action cameras. I will read the simultaneous performance of the soldiers with weapon and consumer technologies from different eras from the perspective of Russell Davies' concept of the post-digital, in relation to selfie practices and microcelebrity performance in networked culture. In this context, I will reflect on Alain Badiou's concept of the soldier as 'heroic figure'. In response to Badiou's claim that the traditional soldier is no longer an effective symbolic trope in a highly technologized culture, I will reflect on the – embodied and digitally networked – soldiers I accompanied as possible heroic figures of the post-digital.


This paper concerns the use of synthetic data for protecting the confidentiality of business data during statistical analysis. Synthetic data sets are traditionally constructed by replacing sensitive values in a confidential data set with draws from statistical models estimated on the confidential data set. Unfortunately, the process of generating effective statistical models can be a difficult and labour-intensive task. Recently, it has been proposed to use easily-implemented methods from machine learning instead of statistical model estimation in the data synthesis task. J. Drechsler and J.P. Reiter (2011) have conducted an evaluation of four such methods, and have found that regression trees could give rise to synthetic data sets which provide reliable analysis results as well as low disclosure risks. Their conclusion was based on simulations using a subset of the 2002 Uganda census public use file. It is an interesting question whether the same conclusion applies to other types of data with different characteristics, for example business data which have quite different characteristics from population census and survey data. In particular, business data generally have few variables that are mostly categorical, and often have highly skewed distributions with outliers.

In this paper we investigate the applicability of regression-tree-based methods for constructing synthetic business data. We give a detailed example comparing exploratory data analysis and linear regression results under two variants of a regression-tree-based synthetic data approach. We also include an evaluation of the analysis results with respect to the results of analysis of the original data. We further investigate the impact of different stopping criteria on performance.

While it is certainly true that any method designed to protect confidentiality introduces error, and may indeed give misleading conclusions, our analysis of the results for synthesisers based on CART models has provided some evidence that this error is not random but is due to the particular characteristics of business data. We conclude that more careful analysis needs to be done in applying these methods and end users certainly need aware of possible discrepancies.


This thesis explores the design, implementation and performance of a new concept for a low-cost, high-resolution, lightweight, compact and highly-portable tactile display. This tactile device is intended to be used in a novel visuo-tactile sensory substitution/supplemen-tation electronic travel aid (ETA) for the blind/visually impaired. Based on the psychophysiology of touch and using Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) as the actuation technology, a mechatronic device was designed and prototyped to stimulate the sense of touch by creating sensations of contact on the fingertips. The prototype consists of an array of 64 elements spaced 2.6 mm apart that vertically actuates SMA based miniature actuators of 1.5 mm diameter to a height range of 1.4 mm with a pull force of 300 mN up to a 1.5 Hz bandwidth. The full display weights 200 g and its compact dimensions (a cube of 8 cm side-length) make it easy for the user to carry. The display is capable of presenting a wide range of tactile binary information on its 8 x 8 matrix. Moreover, both mechanical and electronic drive designs are easily scalable to larger devices while still being price attractive. Human psychophysics experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the tactile information transmitted by the display to sighted people and show feasibility in principle of the system as an assistive technology for the blind/visually impaired.


Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two factors separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying special attention to their covariation, which indicates whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing household-based inequalities. The paper develops a new variance decomposition framework and applies it to data on more than one million children in three low-income East African countries. The empirical results show that although household factors account for a significant share of total test score variation, variation in school quality and positive sorting between households and schools are, together, no less important. The analysis also finds evidence of substantial geographical heterogeneity in schooling quality. The paper concludes that promoting equity in education in East Africa requires policies that go beyond raising average school quality and should attend to the distribution of school quality as well as assortative matching between households and schools.


Adequate models for the realistic calculation of multi-layer spiral strands at bending, are of continuing interest to the scientific community. On the one hand they pose, because of the rather complicated strand mechanics, a challenging problem; on the other, the knowledge of the wire stresses is of importance in various operating conditions of strands, such as strands over pulleys, lateral vibrations of strands, etc. A widely accepted model involves the consideration of secondary tensile wire stresses caused by the friction forces at the inter-layer interfaces of the strand wires. In order to keep the analysis clear, the basic formulas for these stresses are usually deduced by taking into account the curvature of the strand wires in the straight strand. Because this curvature can vary significantly when the strand is bent, it is worth examining the influence on the secondary tensile wire stresses and subsequently on the bending stiffness of the strand. In this paper it is shown, that although these stresses are influenced by the strand curvature, this influence on the bending stiffness of the strand and thus on the calculation of the strand deformation, can in most practical cases be neglected.


Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to apply a multigroup confirmatory analysis to examine the measurement invariance (MI) of the adapted version of the Job Diagnosis Survey (JDS) as a measurement tool that analyses the relationship between the features of teaching methodologies with university students' motivation and satisfaction across data collected on different degrees and academic years. Design/methodology/approach: Confirmatory factor analysis was carried out using a multigroup structural equation model, using the program EQS 6.1 to test the invariance of the adapted version of JDS in a sample constituted by 535 student of a Spanish public university. The assessment of invariance included the levels of configural, metric, scalar, covariance and latent variables invariance. Several goodness-of-fit measures were assessed. Findings: The results show that measurements are equivalent at the configural, metric, covariance and latent factors invariance. Although the hypotheses of scalar invariance is rejected, results suggest that JDS is partial strict invariant and has satisfactory psychometric properties on all samples. Research limitations/implications: The sample is framed in university students aged between 18 and 30 and for a questionnaire on teaching methodology and students' satisfaction in the context of a Spanish university and the generalization to other questionnaire, or population, should be proved with specific data. Furthermore, the sample size is rather small. Originality/value: In the current process of change that is taking place in universities according to the plan developed by the European Space of Higher Education, focused on increasing the student skills, validate instruments as the satisfaction scale of JDS, are necessary to evaluate students' satisfaction with new active methodologies. These findings are useful for researchers since they add the first sample in which the MI of a student's satisfaction survey is tested.


"My husband doesn't have a head for business," complained Ng?c, the owner of a children's clothing stall in B?n Thanh market. "Naturally, it's because he's a man." When the women who sell in Ho Chi Minh City's iconic marketplace speak, their language suggests that activity in the market is shaped by timeless, essential truths: Vietnamese women are naturally adept at buying and selling, while men are not; Vietnamese prefer to do business with family members or through social contacts; stallholders are by nature superstitious; marketplace trading is by definition a small-scale enterprise. Essential Trade looks through the facade of these "timeless truths" and finds active participants in a political economy of appearances: traders' words and actions conform to stereotypes of themselves as poor, weak women in order to clinch sales, manage creditors, and protect themselves from accusations of being greedy, corrupt, or "bourgeois" - even as they quietly slip into southern Vietnam's growing middle class. But Leshkowich argues that we should not dismiss the traders' self-disparaging words simply because of their essentialist logic. In B?n Thanh market, performing certain styles of femininity, kinship relations, social networks, spirituality, and class allowed traders to portray themselves as particular kinds of people who had the capacity to act in volatile political and economic circumstances. When so much seems to be changing, a claim that certain things or people are inherently or naturally a particular way can be both personally meaningful and strategically advantageous. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and life history interviewing conducted over nearly two decades, Essential Trade explores how women cloth and clothing traders like Ng?c have plied their wares through four decades of political and economic transformation: civil war, post-war economic restructuring, socialist cooperativization, and the frenetic competition of market socialism. With close attention to daily activities and life narratives, this ground-breaking work of critical feminist economic anthropology combines theoretical insight, vivid ethnography, and moving personal stories to illuminate how the interaction between gender and class has shaped people's lives and created market socialist political economy. It provides a compelling account of post-war southern Vietnam as seen through the eyes of the dynamic women who have navigated forty years of profound change while building their businesses in the stalls of B?n Thanh market.


This paper introduces and defines the concept of collective entrepreneurship. A review of the defensive single-level rent-seeking objective of traditional agricultural cooperatives is introduced followed by an analysis of recent studies documenting a shift in the objective functions of producers jointly integrating toward more multiple-level rent-seeking entities. This process of shifting from market failure-ameliorating collective action mechanisms toward rent-seeking group action organizations is labeled collective entrepreneurship. The justification for introducing this concept is based on the Olsonian premise that rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests without coercion or selective incentives.


Trophic interactions represent the routes through which energy flows upwards within ecosystems and the understanding of such structuring under varying environmental conditions is still challenging. Here we test the hypothesis that differences in environmental variables act as environmental filters on the composition and trophic structure of local the fish fauna of a subtropical mountain river. We predict that differences in the trophic structure of the fish fauna occur along the river continuum. Main environmental parameters have been measured and fishes were sampled quarterly between August 2013 and May 2014 at six sampling sites in the main channel of the Pelotas River, Upper Uruguay ecoregion. We collected 3848 individuals belonging to 38 species, 4 orders and 11 families. The most (82.1%) consisted of small- and medium-sized individuals. The species were classified into eight trophic guilds: aquatic insectivorous, carnivorous, detritivorous, detritivorous/aquatic insectivorous, herbivorous, iliophagous, omnivorous and piscivorous. In general, herbivorous and piscivorous guilds were the most representative in both number and biomass. Significant differences detected by Permanova were for richness, numerical abundance and biomass between all the sites sampled. Relationships between the environmental variables and the composition of trophic guilds were observed along the longitudinal gradient by RLQ and fourth-corner analyses. The abundance of guilds omnivorous, aquatic insectivorous and herbivorous increases with higher values of chlorophyll- a and vegetation cover, especially characterizing the upstream sites (S1, S2 and S3). On the other hand, the abundance of the iliophagous, detritivorous/insectivorous and piscivorous guilds increases with greater values of width, temperature, inorganic phosphorus and total solids, a fact observed in downstream sites (S4, S5 and S6). Thus, it was possible to identify a clear variation in the trophic structure of the fish fauna along the Pelotas River (upstream-downstream), in which the local variables were efficient in predicting environmental filters that influence the trophic organization. In this scenario, our study follows the longitudinal model and evidences a greater accumulation of energy in food webs in the upstream-downstream direction, which favors the greatest abundance of piscivorous, detritivorous and iliophagous verified in stretches of greater volume and dimensions of river. These results highlight the importance of the local variables and the interrelationships in the lateral connectivity processes along the river continuum.


'Two Thai Tables' Performance Artwork, as part of Asiatopia15/2013, in the Bangkok Art & Cultural Centre, Thailand. 2nd. November 2013.I arrived in Thailand to participate in the 'Asiatopia International Festival of Performance Art 15/2013, with the 'bones' of an idea for creating a performance in the Bangkok Art & Cultural Centre.On arrival in the Studio/Gallery 4 venue, I choose to perform in a work-space behind the main studio/gallery, usually out of public view. I choose this as this site/location suited my initial ideas of approach. I wanted to refer to the workings of an organisation and to that which lies behind the 'scenes' so to speak.I then went to the bowls of the BACC building and selected a white table which had been constructed in the venue for a previous project. This table became the main focus or symbolic aspect of my artwork.I asked Vassan Sickettit - (a participating Thai artist), to assist me in writing the names of the regions of Thailand underneath the table top. I also asked Vassan to write the names of specific Multi-National Companies that have, and do, exploit the resources of Thailand, onto various lengths of wooden baton, which I also sourced in the bowels of the BACC building.I drilled a hole in the centre of the white table and I then placed several objects, i.e. a silver bowl filled with water, a pile of rice, and a small book on Thai artefacts and traditions. A plumb-line was then slung through and below the table, used to emphasise the changing tilts of the table as the performance proceeded. A glass, filled with water, was placed under the table and at the end of the plumb line. The other end of this plumb line was connected to a bunch of white roses clamped between current news papers. The flowers and newspapers were positioned on the floor, between the white table and the pre-existing conference table at the back of the space.Other objects and materials were positioned nearby, including wooden batons, G-clamps, step-ladders, A4 prints depicting the Oil & Gas Industry in Thailand and resulting environmental effects, etc.During the performance by using G-clamps, I attached the wooden batons onto the table legs, one by one, and in increasing lengths. I stapled an image onto each new baton/table leg extension. Slowly and over time the table was raised higher and higher. As the table rose shorter lengths of wood were discarded and replaced by longer pieces of wood onto which new images were stapled. As I detached each piece of wood from the table legs, I pulled the conference table closer to the audience, bit by bit, it came closer from out of the background.Eventually the tall white table became more unstable and difficult to manoeuvre, the whole lifting process becoming risky and delicate. Eventually all the wooden batons were used up and I left the space, with the table standing around three meters tall. This ended the work.The themes, or my concerns, within the work were mainly ecological and socio-political. The raising of the table, which supported the base of life - water and rice, referred to, or symbolised, our dependence on nature and nature as an often overlooked support for human life. The detail within the work came to me while I visited Rice farmers in Nan Province who are trying to preserve indigenous strains of rice production in their area, against the increasing mono-cultural and polluting rice crops, preferred by the more lucrative global market. (This visit was supported by DASTA * in Nan Province and formed part of the broader Asiatopia project.)The new legs made from batons with the names of Multi-national companies involved in exploiting Thai resources, were a direct reference to the increasing destabilisation of the symbolic table. Older companies were written in 'thai' on the shorter leg extensions and the more contemporary companies for the more current activities in Thailand, were written on the longer leg extensions.During my visit in Bangkok their was a lot of political upheaval with local streets blocked and occupied by protesters fighting for democratic rights against a history of political corruption. I decided to make reference to this ongoing struggle and this I symbolised through the use of white flowers trapped within the newspapers, placed on the floor.The conference table, made from veneer and chrome, which was in the background of the space when I arrived, symbolised the contemporary emerging Thai reality. I saw this table as a counterpoint, somewhat false, but slowly encroaching into the visual space.* DASTA - Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism in Nan http://www.dasta.or.th/en/


A method of 3D printing complex or challenging structures by breaking them into parts with connectors, printing each part separately, and then assembling the structure post-printing has been developed. This has advantages such as multicoloured printing, framework optimization and reduction, print time reduction, and can be used to bypass print tray size limits. This method is particularly applicable to extended structures such as coordination polymers, metal-organic frameworks, and hydrogen bonding networks, but examples where it can be used to simplify the printing of small molecules are also shown.


Empty Vessel explores both the positive and normative questions of what the contractually implied obligation of good faith does and should require of contracting parties. The Article attempts to assess and evaluate the ways in which courts are currently employing the good faith doctrine in contract disputes, as part of a larger project whose goal is to re-conceive and reinvigorate the private law doctrine of good faith as one that might assist in effecting the public law norm of equality. Empty Vessel identifies two dominant theoretical approaches to how to define good faith, which I refer to as the fairness (or, Restatement) and the economic (or, foregone-opportunities) approaches. Further, it argues that, to the extent courts have applied and/or referenced the economic and/or fairness models of good faith in their decisions, they have rendered the two approaches operationally and functionally indistinguishable by employing both approaches as analytical proxies for material breach. Empty Vessel is divided into three parts. Part I explains the good faith doctrine, and explores in some depth the theoretical differences between the fairness and economic approaches to good faith. By examining exemplary good faith decisions in the contexts of "vanilla" commercial contracting, commercial lending, contractor cases, and commercial real estate leasing, Part II argues that contemporary courts employ the good faith doctrine not as a truly implied contractual obligation, but as a rhetorical framework for analyzing underlying issues of what constitutes material breach. In conclusion, Empty Vessel argues that the good faith doctrine might be given new life in two different ways: first, vis-a-vis its applicability to bad faith conduct in contract formation and negotiation (presently the obligation applies only to the performance and termination of contract); and, second, with respect to performance and termination, vis-a-vis it's applicability in the employment context. While the scholarship relating to the former is quite rich, that relating to the latter remains relatively unexplored. As a result, I explore in other articles how good faith might be used in the employment context to remedy presently non-cognizable forms of discrimination.


Current methods for training convolutional neural networks depend on large amounts of labeled samples for supervised training. In this paper we present an approach for training a convolutional neural network using only unlabeled data. We train the network to discriminate between a set of surrogate classes. Each surrogate class is formed by applying a variety of transformations to a randomly sampled 'seed' image patch. We find that this simple feature learning algorithm is surprisingly successful when applied to visual object recognition. The feature representation learned by our algorithm achieves classification results matching or outperforming the current state-of-the-art for unsupervised learning on several popular datasets (STL-10, CIFAR-10, Caltech-101).


Ecosystems have a natural resilience to perturbations, where resilience is the magnitude of a disturbance that an ecosystem can resist before changes in structure, function, and services result in a regime shift. The Everglades region of Florida, USA, has been detrimentally impacted by phosphorus (P) enrichment and a regime shift from Cladium (sawgrass) to Typha (cattail) marsh has been described. We examine another facet of the low nutrient Everglades stability regime, open-water sloughs, to determine if eutrophication leads to similar regime shifts. We analyzed surface water P and soil P as controlling variables that, once a critical threshold is surpassed, alter ecosystem state variables. Nonlinear relationships between P and vegetation were observed along a northern Everglades eutrophication gradient. In addition to the Cladium-Typha regime shift, a second independent regime shift, slough-Typha, was identified. Synoptic surveys of 49 sloughs within the boundary between the slough and Typha regime revealed that surface water total phosphorus (TP) and the benthic algal floe layer (BAFL) were the controlling variables, with critical thresholds of 11 ug/L and 412 mg/kg, respectively. The slough regime below these thresholds was characterized by calcareous periphyton (BAFL TP = 298 mg P/kg; BAFL calcium = 149 g Ca/kg). Above the TP thresholds, vegetation composition shifted to open-marsh species with significantly higher BAFL TP (700 mg P/kg) and total organic carbon (TOC) (350 g C/kg). A second BAFL TP threshold occurred at 712 mg P/kg, above which Nymphaea dominated and BAFL TP (1034 mg P/kg) and TOC (417 g C/kg) significantly increased. Nymphaea sloughs transitioned to the Typha regime. The boundary reflects the loss of ecosystem resilience due to eutrophication. Both low-nutrient stability regimes (slough and Cladium) lie precariously close to the P critical threshold but differ in how eutrophication is absorbed and resisted. The slough regime transitions rapidly through a series of ecosystem state changes linked to positive feedback loops that affect P dynamics, whereas the Cladium regime does not. An adaptive management strategy has been implemented to address the surface water TP threshold; however, to ensure successful restoration of the Everglades, the BAFL and soil TP thresholds also need to be considered.


Swedish financial markets, in particular the money market, have developed very rapidly during the 1980s. Concurrently, there has been an equally drastic change in the conduct of monetary policy and a shift away from the previous reliance on regulatory policy instruments. This deregulation of markets and policy is the starting point for this dissertation, which discusses various aspects of the behavior of the money market and how interest rates and other financial variables are affected by monetary policy. A major topic in the dissertation is the question of international interest rate dependence, i.e., the extent to which independent control of domestic monetary variables is possible. This problem, which is important both for monetary policy and for the understanding of the money market in general, is analyzed theoretically using models of international asset pricing. The discussion emphasizes the role of the foreign exchange risk premium in the relation between domestic and foreign interest rates. A detailed study is also made of a currency basket system and its implications for the risk premium and the interest rate dependence. Another important topic is the relation between interest rates on assets with different times to maturity, i.e., the term structure of interest rates. The behavior of the term structure in the Swedish money market is studied with special emphasis on the role of interest rate expectations. Among the problems addressed is also the role of discount window policies, i.e., the conditions under which banks are allowed to borrow reserves from the central bank. The analysis focuses on what these rules imply for the behavior of interest rates and the effects of various policy instruments, and on how discount window policies should be designed to improve monetary control.


This document extends Directory-Based Information Services (DBIS)
described in [draft-bannister-dbis-mapping-00] to support netgroup and
netservice databases. A netgroup database schema SHALL be backwards
compatible with the Network Information Service [NIS] but stored
within [X.500] entries so that they may be resolved with the
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol [RFC4510]. A netgroup database
represents groups of hosts, users and domains. A netservice database
schema is a new extension to netgroups that allows administrators to
describe services or configuration options for a user or system based
upon their netgroup membership. This document describes configuration
maps [draft-bannister-dbis- mapping-00] for netgroup and netservice
databases, and database entries referenced by those maps.


Representing discrete words in a continuous vector space turns out to be useful for natural language applications related to text understanding. Meanwhile, it poses extensive challenges, one of which is due to the polysemous nature of human language. A common solution (a.k.a word sense induction) is to separate each word into multiple senses and create a representation for each sense respectively. However, this approach is usually computationally expensive and prone to data sparsity, since each sense needs to be managed discriminatively. In this work, we propose a new framework for generating context-aware text representations without diving into the sense space. We model the concept space shared among senses, resulting in a framework that is efficient in both computation and storage. Specifically, the framework we propose is one that: i) projects both words and concepts into the same vector space; ii) obtains unambiguous word representations that not only preserve the uniqueness among words, but also reflect their context-appropriate meanings. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework in a number of tasks on text understanding, including word/phrase similarity measurements, paraphrase identification and question-answer relatedness classification.


The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of creating shop window displays focussing on a South African identity in the Durban region. The impetus for the study stemmed from the design of the Constitutional Court which features elements of South African culture. This study challenges the contemporary notion of presenting window displays using primarily Western influences and proposes the use of fashion imagery and cultural identity currently dominating South Africa. The study argues against corporate fashion stereotypes and champions a representation of an eclectic multi-cultural South African society. In this respect key theories of identity, culture, and design were explored. A qualitative methodology was conducted utilising interview and observation approaches to obtain data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve local professionals specialising in the fields of art, design, fashion and architecture to obtain their expert opinions. The data was analysed by clustering information into themes to establish the findings. Interview findings revealed that shop window displays should accommodate local imagery appropriate to the South African context. Observing two local production houses, namely Hirt & Carter and Barrows in Durban provided insights for a backdrop creation for the practical component of the study. The practical comprised of producing retail shop installations and a visual catalogue representing findings drawn from the study. The catalogue was used to illustrate the results of investigating a national image and identity that could be intrinsic to window display creation in South African fashion retail shop fronts.


Most algorithms for learning and pattern discovery in data assume that all the needed data is available on one computer at a single site. This assumption does not hold in situations where a number of independent databases reside on different nodes of a network. These databases cannot be moved to a common shared site due to size, security, privacy, legal, and data-ownership concerns but all of them together constitute the dataset in which patterns must be discovered. These databases, however, may be made accessible for certain types of queries and all such communications for a database may be channeled through an intelligent agent interface. In this paper we show how a decision-tree induction algorithm may be adapted for such situations and implemented in terms of communications among the interface agents.


This study examines the relative importance of the Shariah-Compliant Dow Jones market indexes to capture the dynamic behavior of stock returns at economy and industry levels. The analysis indicates that ethical investment has only an insignificant influence on the performance of stock market returns for both the economy and industry levels. Further, alternative measures of investment performance including the Carhart and Habit Formation models have been used to examine the behavior of the Shariah-Compliant Dow Jones market indexes. The findings suggest a negative market timing ability with both Islamic and conventional indexes. While Islamic indexes are growth focused, conventional indexes are value focused. Further, when investigating the performance of Islamic and conventional Dow Jones indexes during the recent financial crisis, there is evidence supportive of Islamic indexes against conventional ones. For sector groupings, the results indicate that parameter estimates are not consistent, suggesting that Islamic indexes are sector oriented. These results are explained to be a consequence of less diversification in Islamic indexes, leading to higher risk in some sector groupings such as technology and consumption services.


The Symposium on Diversity in the Health Professions in Honor of Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., was convened in March 2001 to provide a forum for health policymakers, health professions educators, education policymakers, researchers, and others to address three significant and contradictory challenges: the continued under-representation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in health professions; the growth of these populations in the United States and subsequent pressure to address their health care needs; and the recent policy, legislative, and legal challenges to affirmative action that may limit access for underrepresented minority students to health professions training. The symposium summary along with a collection of papers presented are to help stimulate further discussion and action toward addressing these challenges. The Right Thing to Do, The Smart Thing to Do: Enhancing Diversity in Health Professions illustrates how the health care industry and health care professions are fighting to retain the public's confidence so that the U.S. health care system can continue to be the world's best.


How do we accurately recover the diverse engagement of readers with texts across time and in widely differing societies across the world? This volume brings together a representative sample of original, evidence based research in the History of Reading. Chapters cover individual readers, reading communities or groups and their engagement with texts in societies ranging from nineteenth-century Poland and Germany, apartheid era South Africa, Antebellum America, colonial Canada, India and New Zealand, and early modern England. Deliberately juxtaposing research on different countries, linguistic communities and historical periods, The History of Reading, Vol. 1: International Perspectives, c.1500-1990 demonstrates the challenges and rewards of undertaking empirical research on reading practices and asks whether readers' responses to texts are always entirely conditioned by their historical, socio-economic, or political circumstances. A wide-ranging critical introduction provides a succinct overview of evidence based approaches to the history of reading, and reminds us that the task of recovering the evidence of readers through history and across the world is still in its infancy.


The energy location of the first crossover point of the secondary electron emission curve of the polymer insulator Lexan (polycarbonate) has been experimentally investigated. The secondary electron emission coefficient (SEEC) is the ratio of the number of secondary electrons leaving the surface to the number of incident primaries. At high and low energies the SEEC is less than one, between the energy extremes the SEEC is greater than one. The energy at which the (SEEC) is first equal to one is called the first crossover point. The Lexan sample is treated as a parallel plate capacitor. The sign of the replacement current to the metalized back of the sample shows whether the SEEC is above or below one, and the incident electron energy is above or below the first crossover point. Successive choices of incident electron energy bracketed the first crossover point for Lexan, at about 44 eV.


European social movements have been central to European history, politics, society and culture, and have had a global reach and impact. Yet they have rarely been taken on their own terms in the English-language literature, considered rather as counterpoints to the US experience. This has been exacerbated by the failure of Anglophone social movement theorists to pay attention to the substantial literatures in languages such as French, German, Spanish or Italian - and by the increasing global dominance of English in the production of news and other forms of media. This book sets out to take the European social movement experience seriously on its own terms, including: the European tradition of social movement theorising - particularly in its attempt to understand movement development from the 1960s onwards the extent to which European movements between 1968 and 1999 became precursors for the contemporary anti-globalisation movement the construction of the anti-capitalist "movement of movements" within the European setting the new anti-austerity protests in Iceland, Greece, Spain (15-M/Indignados), and elsewhere. This book offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective on the key European social movements in the past forty years. It will be of interest for students and scholars of politics and international relations, sociology, history, European studies and social theory.


To the Editor—The seventh edition of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual has introduced the new site-specific factor tumor deposits (TDs) in colorectal cancer staging, recognizing its prognostic value. TDs are "discrete foci of tumor found in the pericolic or perirectal fat or in adjacent mesentery (mesocolic fat) away from the leading edge of the tumor and showing no evidence of residual lymph node tissue but within the lymph drainage area of the primary carcinoma." They "may represent discontinuous spread, venous invasion with extravascular spread (V1/ V2), or a totally replaced lymph node (N1/N2)." "Their number should be recorded in the site-specific Prognostic Markers on the staging form as Tumor Deposit (TD)." It is recommended that "the nodule is recorded in the TD category and as a N1c positive node"; N1c is defined as "tumor deposit(s) in the subserosa, mesentery, or nonperitonealized pericolic or perirectal tissues without regional nodal metastasis." Finally, after a reminder that "a satellite peritumoral nodule in the pericolorectal adipose tissue of a primary carcinoma without histological evidence of residual lymph node in the nodule may represent discontinuous spread, venous invasion with extravascular spread (V1/V2), or a totally replaced lymph node (N1/N2)," a note recommends that "replaced nodes should be counted separately in the N category, whereas discontinuous spread or venous invasion should be classified and counted in the Site-Specific Factor category Tumor Deposits (TD)." N1c forces into the N category the "non N type" of TDs, but this can be accepted for practical purposes. However, some incongruities remain. First, the N state of a case with TDs only would be N1c, whereas a case with TDs and 1 to 3 positive "true" lymph node(s) would paradoxically "regress" to N1a/b. Second, why are totally replaced lymph nodes first recognized as one of the variants of TDs, and then requested to be considered separately in the N category? The identification of replaced lymph nodes depends on arbitrary criteria, formerly the size (TNM fifth edition), and later the shape (TNM sixth and seventh editions). In keeping with the general rule postulated in the chapter concerning "Purposes and Principles of Cancer Staging" ("tumor nodule with smooth contour in regional node area classified as positive node"), totally replaced lymph nodes identified by their smooth contour should be unequivocally excluded from TD variants (recalling the definition of "totally replaced lymph node" in the chapter concerning colorectal cancer); alternatively, they should be considered and counted together with the other TDs. Thus, the seventh edition of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual uses some confounding terms concerning colorectal cancer; the resulting incongruities urge a clarification.


Some muscles have demonstrated a differential recruitment of their motor units in relation to their location and the nature of the motor task performed; this involves functional compartmentalization. There is little evidence that demonstrates the presence of a compartmentalization of the superficial masseter muscle during biting. The aim of this study was to describe the topographic distribution of the activity of the superficial masseter (SM) muscle's motor units using high-density surface electromyography (EMGs) at different bite force levels. Twenty healthy natural dentate participants (men: 4; women: 16; age 20±2 years; mass: 60±12 kg, height: 163±7 cm) were selected from 316 volunteers and included in this study. Using a gnathodynamometer, bites from 20 to 100% maximum voluntary bite force (MVBF) were randomly requested. Using a two-dimensional grid (four columns, six electrodes) located on the dominant SM, EMGs in the anterior, middle-anterior, middle-posterior and posterior portions were simultaneously recorded. In bite ranges from 20 to 60% MVBF, the EMG activity was higher in the anterior than in the posterior portion (p-value = 0.001).The center of mass of the EMG activity was displaced towards the posterior part when bite force increased (p-value = 0.001). The topographic distribution of EMGs was more homogeneous at high levels of MVBF (p-value = 0.001). The results of this study show that the superficial masseter is organized into three functional compartments: an anterior, a middle and a posterior compartment. However, this compartmentalization is only seen at low levels of bite force (20–60% MVBF).


U.S. immigration policy and ICE tactics have been greatly scrutinized over the past year. While many criticisms focus on border policy and the conditions of detention, scholars have also raised concerns over ICE's unfettered discretion to transfer detainees to different detention centers. Not only may ICE transfer detainees anywhere in the country, ICE has gradually expanded this practice. Now, on average, every detainee is transferred at least once each year. ICE, however, is not the sole point of criticism for immigration advocates. Recently, Immigration Judges' decisions have been scrutinized for their lack of consistency. Wide variations in IJ decision making indicates that the judge assigned to a case heavily influences the likelihood of a favorable outcome to ICE. The intersection of these two distinct problems—immigration detainee transfers and inconsistent IJ decisions—effectively allows ICE to forum shop by transferring detainees to detention centers with IJs who are likely to issue rulings favorable to ICE. This amounts to a crisis of justice, as ICE may transform facially neutral proceedings into judicial rubber stamping for the case outcomes ICE desires.


Survivors of psychological trauma are frequently troubled by intrusive recollection of the traumatic event. We describe research showing that attempts to suppress such trauma memories can be associated with paradoxically enhanced remembering of the trauma, enhanced access to other negative personal material, and a lack of specificity in the recollection of the personal past. This suggests that attempted suppression is generally a counterproductive approach to the regulation of traumatic memories in distressed trauma survivors. Working with trauma memories, rather than suppressing them, is more adaptive.


Understanding the influence of solar variability on the Earth's climate requires knowledge of solar variability, solar‐terrestrial interactions, and the mechanisms determining the response of the Earth's climate system. We provide a summary of our current understanding in each of these three areas. Observations and mechanisms for the Sun's variability are described, including solar irradiance variations on both decadal and centennial time scales and their relation to galactic cosmic rays. Corresponding observations of variations of the Earth's climate on associated time scales are described, including variations in ozone, temperatures, winds, clouds, precipitation, and regional modes of variability such as the monsoons and the North Atlantic Oscillation. A discussion of the available solar and climate proxies is provided. Mechanisms proposed to explain these climate observations are described, including the effects of variations in solar irradiance and of charged particles. Finally, the contributions of solar variations to recent observations of global climate change are discussed.


Majority of electronic appliances used today is operated only through dc power supplies and this requires ac-dc conversion. For such ac-dc conversion, the research focuses on single stage multi-level topologies because of their low cost. This paper proposes a new single stage three level ac/dc PFC converters for low power applications such as SMPS, laptop adapters, smart TV power supply systems, etc., With this proposed converter, the input current shaping and output voltage regulation can be achieved with the help of microcontroller based soft switching technique and it does not require any additional switches. Through this soft switching technique, the inverter switches are turned on under zero current and zero voltage in discontinuous conduction mode operation. Due to the flexible dc-link voltage, high power factor can be achieved with regulated dc output. A 300W/110V prototype is designed and developed for the proof of concept, which shows the power factor is in the range of 0.96 to 0.99.


Just as shariʿa (Islamic law) has been demonized globally, so too, paradoxically, have governments sought to appropriate Islamic authority for secular rule. Based on nineteen months of field research in northwest China, this article offers some preliminary thoughts on the ways in which the party-state manipulates shariʿa for purposes of rule. Through the example of the China Islamic Association, an organization constituted under the Chinese Communist Party in 1953, the author argues that the party-state's evolving relationship to Islamic authority demonstrates what he calls the "postsecular." Rather than discursively demarcating (legitimate) secular law from (illegitimate) religious law, the China Islamic Association has, since 2001, a watershed year in the relationship between secular and Islamic authority, sought to expound law from the revealed sources of Islam that are congruent with Chinese socialism and nationalism.


In October 1992, the Peace Accord was signed in Mozambique. Many positive changes have taken place since then. and the countryside in postwar Mozambique is in a state of intense transformation. Nevertheless, the government has been largely silent on the issue of land tenure reform, while some of the recommendations regarding land-policy reform that have been proposed are simplistic, uninformed, and fail to reflect the present political reality in Mozambique. This report shows the need to initiate a comprehensive discussion on land policy reform, natural resource management, and decentralized control over resources. The discussion must address fundamental questions about what types of land rights will exist or, more specifically, what types of property rights will be permitted; who will have the power to distribute land rights; and how and by whom land disputes will be settled. At the heart of these questions lie profound issues relating to the role and nature of the state and other political institutions, the relationships of these institutions with the citizens, and the form and nature of governance in Mozambique. In this report we will raise several concerns with regard to land that we hope will help policymakers in Mozambique define the parameters of this discussion.


Abstract The EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a pest categorisation of the Citrus leprosis viruses for the EU territory and identified five distinct viruses, Citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV‐C), Citrus leprosis virus C2 (CiLV‐C2), Hibiscus green spot virus 2 (HGSV‐2), the Citrus strain of Orchid fleck virus (OFV) and Citrus leprosis virus N sensu novo (CiLV‐N) as causing this severe disease, most significantly in sweet orange and mandarin. These viruses have in common that they do not cause systemic infections in their hosts and that they all are transmitted by Brevipalpus spp. mites (likely but not confirmed for HGSV‐2). Mites represent the most important means of virus spread, while plants for planting of Citrus are only considered of minor significance. These well characterised viruses occur in South and Central America. Leprosis is currently regulated in directive 2000/29 EC and, together with its associated viruses, has never been recorded in the EU. All five viruses have the potential to enter into, establish in and spread within the EU territory, with plants for planting of non‐regulated hosts, fruits of Citrus and hitch‐hiking of viruliferous mites identified as the most significant pathways. Given the severity of the leprosis disease, the introduction and spread of the various viruses would have negative consequences on the EU citrus industry, the magnitude of which is difficult to evaluate given the uncertainties affecting the Brevipalpus spp. vectors (identity, distribution, density, transmission specificity and efficiency). Overall, leprosis and its five associated viruses meet all the criteria evaluated by EFSA to qualify as Union quarantine pests, but do not fulfil those of being present in the EU or of plants for planting being the main spread mechanism to qualify as Union regulated non‐quarantine pests. The main uncertainties affecting this categorisation concern the Brevipalpus spp. mite vectors.


Equations and curves giving cutoff frequency and impedance are presented for rectangular wave guide having a rectangular ridge projecting inward from one or both sides. It is shown that ridge wave guide has a lower cutoff frequency and impedance and greater higher-mode separation than a plain rectangular wave guide of the same width and height. The cutoff frequency equation is fairly accurate for any practical cross section. The impedance equation is strictly accurate only for an extremely thin cross section. Values found by the use of this equation have, however, been found to check experimental values very closely. A number of uses for this type of wave guide are suggested.


Although initially proposed as the deployable alternative to IP multicast, overlay multicast actually offers us great flexibilities on QoS-aware resource allocation for network applications. For example, in overlay multicast streaming, (1) the streaming rate of each client can be diversified to better accommodate network heterogeneity, through various end-to-end streaming adaptation techniques; and (2) one can freely organize the overlay session by rearranging the multicast tree, for the purpose of better resource utilization and fairness among all clients. The goal of this paper, is to find the max-min rate allocation in overlay multicast, which is pareto-optimal in terms of network resource utilization, and max-min fair. We approach this goal in two steps. First, we present a distributed algorithm, which is able to return the max-min rate allocation for any given overlay multicast tree. Second, we study the problem of finding the optimal tree, whose max-min rate allocation is optimal among all trees. After proving its NP-hardness, we propose a heuristic algorithm of overlay multicast tree construction. A variation of the heuristic is also designed to handle the dynamic client join/departure. Both of them have approximation bound of 1/2 to the optimal value. Experimental results show that they achieve high average throughput, almost saturate link utilization, and consistent min-favorability.


Taking its starting points from the difficulties of a politics of production inherent in the very structure of capitalist accumulation as a 'private affair' this texts looks at the lessons to be drawn from the social-democratic experience of a politics for the 'hnmanization of the working life' as it has been implemented in the 1970s and 1980s in Germany. Based on looking back beyond the 'epochal rupture' which has taken place since then, it elaborates the kind of experience the German trade unions have been making in the framework of this reform programme. On this basis, it criticizes prevailing attitudes of simply concluding the unfeasibility of political projects from their 'reformist' mould and argues that the present situation of transition still remains open for a politics of reform, although possibly of a more transitory nature, leaving open future deeper transformations - under the double condition of respecting the contingencies of historical agency, especially with regard to empowering strategies, and of developing a new kind of politics based on a broad alliance concerning the 'quality of work' in a comprehensive understanding, not just wage work, with a focus on empowerment, while at the same time addressing the challenges of ecological and feminist issues.


Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) complex 1 (mTORC1) is a multicomponent, nutrient-sensitive protein that is implicated in a wide range of major human diseases. mTORC1 responds to both growth factors and changes in local amino acid levels. Until recently, the intracellular amino acid-sensing mechanism that regulates mTORC1 had remained unexplored. However, studies in human cells in culture have demonstrated that in response to amino acid stimulation, mTOR (a conserved member of the PI3K superfamily) is shuttled to late endosomal and lysosomal compartments, where it binds the Ragulator-Rag complex and is assembled into active mTORC1. Members of the proton-assisted amino acid transporter (PAT/SLC36) family have been identified as critical components of the amino acid-sensing system that regulates mTORC1 present in endosomal and lysosomal membranes. These discoveries not only highlight several new potential drug targets that could impact selectively on mTORC1 activity in cancer cells, but also provide novel insights into the strategies used by such cells to outcompete their neighbors in growth factor- and nutrient-depleted conditions. In this review, recent mechanistic insights into how mTORC1 activity is controlled by amino acids and the potential for the selective targeting this regulatory input are discussed.


Research on intergroup contact has recently begun to examine how individual differences moderate the reduction of prejudice. We extend this work by examining the moderating role of diversity beliefs, i.e., the strength of individuals' beliefs that society benefits from ethnic diversity. Results of a survey among 255 university students in the United States show that the relationship between contact and reduced prejudice is stronger for individuals holding less favorable diversity beliefs compared to those with more positive diversity beliefs. Likewise, the relationship between contact and perceived importance of contact is stronger for people with less favorable diversity beliefs. Together with previously reported moderator effects, these results suggest that contact especially benefits people who are the most predisposed to being prejudiced.


The variability in the volume transport of the Florida Current at 27°N has been observed from the voltage measured between a point 16 km east of Jupiter Inlet, Florida and Settlement Point, Grand Bahama Island by the use of an abandoned communications cable. The voltage is caused by the separation of electric charges in the ocean that are caused by the Florida Current crossing the Earth's magnetic field (motional induction), by the electric currents induced in the ocean caused by time varying ionospheric and magnetospheric electric currents (geomagnetic induction), and by the voltage bias between the cable-ocean contacts caused by differences in the temperature, salinity and electrochemical state of the contacts. The geomagnetic-induced voltage was removed by the use of shore-based magnetic data and transfer functions. Changes in the voltage bias of the cable-ocean contact at Settlement Point were minimized by the use of a silver-silver-chloride electrode. The comparison of the daily mean motion-induced voltages with 137 daily profiling-derived transports, yields a voltage calibration factor of 24.42 + 0.56 Sv V-1, a correlation squared of 0.94, and a root mean square misfit of 0.77 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3 s-1). The misfit is consistent with an error of 0.9 Sv in the voltage-derived transport estimated from the velocity and temperature profiling data, the electric current effects, and the profiling derived transport error. Hence the voltages accurately monitor the transport variations. The mean voltage-derived transports for the Florida Current at 27°N is 32.3 + 3.2 Sv based on 4862 daily mean values from 1969 to 1990. The annual variation has a range of 4.4 Sv. There is no evidence since 1969 for any long-term trend in the transport but there are numerous shorter term variations as large as 15 Sv lasting from days to months. The mean northward heat flux is 1.30 + 0.13 PW derived from 130 days of profiling the velocity and temperature of the Florida Current and assuming the North Atlantic has a southward, velocity-weighted temperature of 9.4 °C. The variations in heat flux are, essentially, due to the variations in transport because the velocity weighted temperature estimated by the profiling data has a nearly constant value of 19.1 ± 0 .6°C.


Abstract. We studied distribution patterns of vascular plant species and environmental variables for three years along a permanent transect traversing a closed-drainage watershed in the northern Chihuahuan Desert of south-central New Mexico, USA. The transect extended for 2.7 km from a basin floor playa (1310 m elevation, fine-textured soil), across a piedmont slope, and onto the base of a granitic mountain (1410 m elevation, coarse-textured soil). The gradients in elevation and soils across our transect, along with variable seasonal rainfall, downslope redistribution of water and organic matter, and soil texture-related variation in infiltration, water holding capacity, and moisture release characteristics, interact to generate a complex spatial and temporal gradient of available soil water and nitrogen. We grouped plant species into guilds according to growth form and photo synthetic pathway type. These guilds are spatially and temporally differentiated along the transect such that particular groups utilize particular seasonal phases or spatial regions of the gradient. We identified six distinct plant communities along the transect. C4 perennial grasses dominated the mesic/high nitrogen portion of the gradient, which occurred at the highest (upper piedmont grassland, dominated by Bouteloua eriopoda) and lowest (playa, dominated by Panicum obtusum) elevations along the transect. C3 shrubs were dominant in the xeric/low nitrogen portion of the gradient located near the middle of the transect (bajada shrubland, dominated by Larrea tridentata). C3 shrubs also dominated a narrow zone of vegetation located adjacent to the playa (playa fringe, dominated by Prosopisglandulosa). C4 perennial grasses, C3 subshrubs, and C3 and C4 perennial forbs and annuals were co-dominant in the intermediate locations along the gradient, which occurred below (mixed basin slopes) and above (lower piedmont grassland) the bajada shrubland. Life-form distribution patterns at the small scale of our study reflect some of the patterning that occurs at larger scales in response to climate gradients. The distributions of some species and guilds along the transect are apparently modified by competitive interactions.


In this paper, we present the radio and hard X-ray evidence of chromospheric evaporation during an M1.0 flare which occurred on 2004 December 1. The radio emission was observed by the Solar Broadband Radio Dynamic Spectrometer in China, which yielded dynamic spectra of decimetric emission. The hard X-ray emission was observed by RHESSI. In the radio spectra, the burst is characterized by two groups of parallel-drifting structures, some of which change their drifting rates from positive to negative. Based on the standard flare model, we may explain these decimetric bursts in terms of chromospheric evaporation. On the other hand, RHESSI observations show that the hard X-ray emission in the energy range of 10–15 keV tends to rise from two footpoints to the looptop and eventually merges into a single looptop source, which is accepted as evidence of hard X-ray chromospheric evaporation. Such processes happened twice in this event. The drifting radio structures occurred between them, at the same time as the third hard X-ray peak was observed at 25–50 keV.


Both protein kinase C (PKC) activation and increased oxidative stress have been paid attention to as important causative factors for diabetic vascular complications. In this article, we show a PKC-dependent increase in oxidative stress in vascular tissues of diabetes and insulin resistant state. High glucose level and free fatty acids stimulate de novo diacylglycerol (DAG)-PKC pathway and subsequently stimulate reactive oxygen species (ROS) production through a PKC-dependent activation of NAD(P)H oxidase. Increasing evidence has also shown that NAD(P)H oxidase components are upregulated in micro- and macro- vascular tissues of animal models and patients of diabetes and obesity. It is also noted that increased intrinsic angiotensin II production may amplify such a PKC-dependent activation of NAD(P)H oxidase in diabetic vascular tissues. These mechanisms may play an important role in the diabetic vascular complications and the accelerated atherosclerosis associated with diabetes and obesity. In addition, recent reports have shown that NAD(P)H oxidases exist in pancreatic beta-cells and adipocytes, and this oxidase-generated ROS production may play an important role in both the progressive beta-cell dysfunction and the dysregulated adipocytokine production and subsequent obesity-induced metabolic syndrome. These results suggest that an NAD(P)H oxidase activation may be a useful therapeutic target for preventing diabetic vascular complications, progressive beta-cell dysfunction and metabolic syndrome.


High energy consumption has become a critical problem for supercomputer systems. GPU clusters are becoming an increasingly popular architecture for building supercomputers because of its great improvement in performance. In this paper, we first formulate the tasks mapping problem as a mini-mal energy consumption problem with deadline constraint. Its optimizing object is very different from the traditional mapping problem which often aims at minimizing make span or minimizing response time. Then a Waterfall Energy Consumption Model, which abstracts the energy consumption of one GPU cluster system into several levels from high to low, is proposed to achieve an energy efficient tasks mapping for large scale GPU clusters. Based on our Waterfall Model, a new task mapping algorithm is developed which tries to apply different energy saving strategies to keep the system remaining at lower energy levels. Our mapping algorithm adopts the Dynamic Voltage Scaling, Dynamic Resource Scaling and $beta$-migration for GPU sub-task to significantly reduce the energy consumption and achieve a better load balance for GPU clusters. A task generator based on the real task traces is developed and the simulation results show that our mapping algorithm based on the Waterfall Model can reduce nearly 50% energy consumption compared with traditional approaches which can only run at a high energy level. Not only the task deadline can be satisfied, but also the task execution time of our mapping algorithm can be reduced.