Neighbourhoods play a unique role in India's urbanity. They not only showcase residences but also give character to the cities. Occupation has been an essential representative in defining this character and identity of different areas of the city. These communities narrate individual experiences, as well as accommodate numerous congregational activities, ranging from professional ventures to religious gatherings. One such community is located in the Chitar Oli region of Nagpur, Maharashtra. The nomenclature of the neighbourhood is derivative of the occupation of its residents – Chitaris, or sculptors, and the lanes – or Oli. Members of the sculpturing community banded together to occupy this neighbourhood, thereby increasing the accessibility and marketability of their products. The most noteworthy aspect of this society is their involvement in the development and maintenance of their locale. The author examines the relationship between the community lifestyle and sustainability, and its evolution. Sustainability impact or is defined as a function of population, affluence, and technology. These factors are invariably linked to the degree of interconnectedness within the population. The global trend of the nuclear family style gaining traction in urban communities has undoubtedly made its way to Chitar Oli. The dispersion of families has led to an increase in numbers of households, thus increasing consumption and expenditure. Residents no longer see themselves as the stakeholders of community well-being. The paper aims to illustrate the experimentations which the author carried out with the intention of establishing the qualitative link between the changing behavioral patterns of human societies and their sustainability impact


Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) equipment is a radar imaging system that can be used to create high-resolution images of a scene by utilizing the movement of a flying platform. Knowledge of the platform's trajectory is essential to get good and focused images. An emerging application field is real-time SAR imaging using small and cheap platforms where estimation errors in navigation systems imply unfocused images. This contribution investigates a joint estimation of the trajectory and SAR image. Starting with a nominal trajectory, we successively improve the image by optimizing a focus measure and updating the trajectory accordingly. The method is illustrated using simulations using typical navigation performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle. One real data set is used to show feasibility, where the result indicates that, in particular, the azimuth position error is decreased as the image focus is iteratively improved.


Bucket testing, also known as A/B testing, is a practice that is widely used by on-line sites with large audiences: in a simple version of the methodology, one evaluates a new feature on the site by exposing it to a very small fraction of the total user population and measuring its effect on this exposed group. For traditional uses of this technique, uniform independent sampling of the population is often enough to produce an exposed group that can serve as a statistical proxy for the full population.
 In on-line social network applications, however, one often wishes to perform a more complex test: evaluating a new social feature that will only produce an effect if a user and some number of his or her friends are exposed to it. In this case, independent uniform draws from the population will be unlikely to produce groups that contains users together with their friends, and so the construction of the sample must take the network structure into account. This leads quickly to challenging combinatorial problems, since there is an inherent tension between producing enough correlation to select users and their friends, but also enough uniformity and independence that the selected group is a reasonable sample of the full population.
 Here we develop an algorithmic framework for bucket testing in a network that addresses these challenges. First we describe a novel walk-based sampling method for producing samples of nodes that are internally well-connected but also approximately uniform over the population. Then we show how a collection of multiple independent subgraphs constructed this way can yield reasonable samples for testing. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms through computational experiments on large portions of the Facebook network.


Abstract Background/purpose: There is a growing desire for health professions educators to generate high-quality education research; yet, few of them encounter the training to do so. In response, health professions faculties have increasingly been devoting resources to provide members with the skills necessary for education research. The form and impact of these efforts have not been reviewed, though such a synthesis could be useful for practice. The objectives of this systematic review were to (1) identify interventions aimed at building capacity for education research among health professions clinical educators and (2) review the outcomes of these interventions. Methodology: We developed a systematic review protocol based on our pilot scoping search. This protocol underwent peer review and was prospectively registered with the Best Evidence Medical Education Collaboration. Based on this protocol, we conducted a comprehensive search of health professions' databases and related grey literature. Systematic methods were applied: two independent reviewers completed title screening and full text review for inclusion, data extraction, and methodological quality assessment. Studies were included if they reported outcomes for interventions designed to increase capacity for health professions clinical educators to conduct education research. We conducted a qualitative synthesis of the evidence which included detailed reporting of intervention characteristics and outcomes. Results: Our search returned 14, 149 results, 241 of which were retained after title and abstract screening, and 30 of which met inclusion criteria after full text review. Seven groups of interventions were identified, the most frequent being teaching scholars programs (n = 10), health professions education fellowships (n = 3) or master's programs (n = 4). The most commonly measured outcome was change related to enhanced scholarly outputs (grants, papers, abstracts, and presentations) post-intervention. Unfortunately, most of the included studies lacked detailed description of the intervention and were of low to moderate quality with post-test only design. Discussion/conclusions: This review demonstrates that various interventions can have a positive impact on the ability of health professions clinical educators to conduct education research. We note several key elements of the interventions including: (1) protected time, (2) mentorship and/or collaboration, (3) departmental and institutional commitment and leadership, and (4) financial support. Through our analysis we describe the complexities around evaluating clinical educators' health professions research activities and the interventions used to promote education research. While improved study quality would allow more detailed understanding and evaluation of these key features, we are able to provide recommendations for potential strategies for improving participation in and quality of health professions education research based on this analysis.


The search for life on Mars has been one of the more intriguing pursuits of NASA and astrobiologists over the last fifteen years. With the help of NASA"s Martian landers and orbiters, discoveries about the red planet have narrowed the range of possible known organisms that could survive on its surface or beneath its icy crust. The discoveries of water ice, methane, and perchlorate on Mars have excited astrobiologists and prompted experimentation on Earth to help determine whether life could exist on Mars. Methanogens seem an ideal candidate to be the organism responsible for biological production of methane on Mars, and many experiments have shown their potential to grow in different Mars-like conditions. In this experiment, four different species of methanogens were grown under the effects of the oxidizing agent perchlorate. Perchlorate in Martian soil was a discovery made by the Phoenix Lander and hints at the possibility that aqueous brine could exist in the Martian subsurface. It was hypothesized that increasing concentrations of perchlorate would lead to decreasing levels of methane production in each species of methanogen. In all four levels of perchlorate concentration (0, 1%, 5%, and 10%), all methanogens produced methane. However, the control and 1% groups showed significantly more metabolic activity than the higher concentration groups. This supported the initial hypothesis, but cannot conclusively determine the inability for methanogens to grow with perchlorate under the Martian crust.


Abstract The amorphous aluminosilicate allophane was synthesized by rapid mixing of inorganic solutions with high initial concentrations (10 – 100 mmol/l) followed by hydrothermal treatment. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed homogeneous products having a hollow spherical amorphous structure with a particle diameter of 3–5 nm. The amorphous products had a high BET specific surface area (490–552 m2/g) in comparison with natural allophane and had a narrow pore-size distribution (2–5 nm in diameter). The results of water vapour adsorption isotherm studies showed a gradual increase over the range of relative water vapour pressure of 0.6–0.9 and reached a maximum of ~85 wt.%. The synthetic allophane shows promise as an adsorbent material because of its high adsorption-desorption capacity and its unique structure.


ABSTRACT This article analyzes the labor relations the US government and American oil companies introduced in Libya between the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the rise of Muammar Qaddafi's regime in 1969. It argues that labor policies played a crucial role in American Cold War efforts to place Libya in the Western bloc and assure access to its oil resources. Like in other contexts, the American government relied on anti-Communist trade unions, in particular the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), to oppose radical forms of labor organizing. Bini examines the ways in which Libyan oil workers resisted the forms of segregation and discrimination introduced in oil camps and company towns, by demanding the right to redefine labor relations through trade unions, and establishing ties with other trade unions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. This article shows that despite American efforts to repress Libyan trade unions, in the second half of the 1960s oil workers were a crucial force in redefining international oil politics. During the Six Day War of 1967, they constituted one of the main forces behind Libya's support of oil nationalism and set the stage for the emergence of Qaddafi's regime in 1969.


As will be seen from a quick perusal of the References to this article, there are over 50 Australian publications on academic acceleration. While preparing a review of the literature for a research study on academic acceleration, the authors noticed two things: first, that the Australian studies on academic acceleration, and Australian literature discussing academic acceleration, cited literature mainly from, if not restricted to, North America; and, second, that the literature, including the Australian literature, on academic acceleration tended to overlook or completely ignore the findings from Australian research in this area. A first step in addressing this perceived problem is to make the Australian research on academic acceleration more accessible, to Australian researchers as well as to researchers from other countries. This annotated bibliography on academic acceleration in Australia is published with this purpose in mind. The authors would welcome reference citations of any research articles that have been overlooked in this bibliography.


The fatigue damage of FRP-concrete interface is a major problem in strengthened structures subjected to fatigue loading. The available FRP-concrete interface models published in the literature usually deal with fracture mechanism approach, which is unsuitable for high cycle fatigue damage. In this study, a constitutive micro model is developed for FRP-concrete interface for high cycle fatigue and incorporated into a three dimensional finite-element program. Numerical analysis of a double lap joint is carried out, and the results show that the proposed model is reasonably accurate.


Listening to music while studying has become a usual practice in the student population. While one group of students claim it would enhance their curricular efficiency, on the other hand, some researchers deny such assumptions. The overall objective of the study was to explore the effect of music on the curricular activity of the student and whether this trend is to rule out it is beneficial to the students in their academic performances. Present study involved 200 Malaysian students representing three major ethnicities. Among them, 120 students prefer to listen to music while studying and remaining 80 were not. The study comprised of two ways of survey namely questionnaire based and experiment based. Data obtained from the responses of participants compiled in the form of graphs and charts 47% believes that music helps them to concentrate while studying. 29% claims that music would keep their mind calm, and 17% stated that it would prevent sleepiness. 78 out of 80 students said that listening to music while studying distract their concentration. Experimental data revealed higher incidence (75%) of correct answers while listening to soft music than other fast track or instrumental music. The positive finding as obtained from the study is relevant to justify the current trend of listening to music while studying as it may not pose any adverse effects on the concentration of student. In fact, it might also improve the performance of the student in their academic perspectives.


A novel concurrent, independent mixed-methods research design was adopted to explore elite association football coaches' stress and mental ill-/well-being experiences over the course of an entire season. Elite coaches (N = 18) completed measures of perceived stressor severity, coping effectiveness, and mental ill-/well-being, with a sample (n = 8) also participating in semistructured interviews, across four time points. Linear mixed-model and retroductive analyses revealed (a) lower mental well-being at the beginning of the season due to negative appraisals/responses to stressors and ineffective coping attempts, (b) higher emotional exhaustion and depersonalization at the end of the season, (c) stressors high in severity led to decreased mental well-being (unless coaches coped effectively) and increased symptoms associated with burnout, and (d) ineffective coping attempts led to increased emotional exhaustion. These findings offer novel insight into the specific components of elite football coaches' stress experiences influencing their mental ill-/well-being over time.


This work offers the first in‐depth study of the global characteristics of wave perturbations in temperature profiles at 20–140 km altitudes derived from the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) onboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. The peak amplitudes of waves seen in temperature profiles exceed 20% of the mean background, especially on the nightside, which is larger than those in Earth's mesosphere and thermosphere. The wave perturbations generate an instability layer around 70–100 km on the nightside, which potentially causes wave‐breaking and turbulences. Our results highlighted a seasonal variation in the latitudinal distribution of nightside perturbations. Amplitudes of wave perturbations were found to be large in the northern low‐latitude region and the southern polar region during the first half of the year (Ls = 0–180°). An increase of waves in the spectral density was found in southern low‐latitude regions in the latter half of the year (Ls = 180–360°). Vertical wavenumber spectral density in the Martian middle atmosphere shows a power‐law dependence with a logarithmic spectral slope of −3, similar to the features seen in the Earth's atmosphere. The derived spectral power density suggests the longer waves growing with height while the effective dissipation of shorter waves occurs. The strong CO2 15‐micron band cooling can effectively dissipate shorter waves. In contrast, the spectral power density at longer waves suggests an amplitude growth with height of unsaturated waves up to the lower thermosphere.


Stress hormones in Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis canadensis ), produced in response to environmental changes, road development, or high population density, may impact their immune systems to a threshold level that predisposes them to periodic, large-scale mortality. We compared the stress response to a novel environmental situation and repeated handling between bighorn sheep born and raised in captivity (CR) and bighorn sheep born in the wild (WC) and brought into captivity. We measured plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, and fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM). Three weeks after each group's arrival we used a one-time drop-net event to elicit an acute stress response, and we collected blood samples from each sheep over 35 minutes, as well as one fecal sample. We collected blood and fecal samples from both groups on 7 other occasions over the subsequent 6 months. We also collected fecal samples from the pen at approximately 24-hour intervals for 3 days following every handling event to monitor the stress response to handling. We found that CR sheep had a stronger autonomic nervous system response than WC sheep, as measured by epinephrine and norepinephrine levels, but we found a very similar hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) response, measured by cortisol levels, to the acute stress event of a drop-net restraint. We also found that once the WC sheep had acclimated, as indicated by the return to the initial baseline FGM levels within 12 weeks, the CR and WC groups' HPA responses to sampling events were not significantly different from one another. Fecal samples can provide a noninvasive mechanism for managers to monitor baseline FGM for a given herd. Using long-term monitoring of FGM rather than values from a single point in time may allow managers to correlate these levels to outside influences on the herd and better understand the impacts of management changes, population density, or increased human developments on the health of the sheep population.


There are many concepts for buildings with integrated renewable energy systems that have received increased attention during the last few years. However, these concepts only strive to streamline building-level renewable energy solutions. In order to improve the flexibility of decentralized energy generation, individual buildings and energy systems should be able to interact with each other. The positive energy district (PED) concept highlights the importance of active interaction between energy generation systems, energy consumers and energy storage within a district. This paper strives to inform the public, decision makers and fellow researchers about the aspects that should be accounted for when planning and implementing different types of PEDs in different regions throughout the European Union. The renewable energy environment varies between different EU regions, in terms of the available renewable energy sources, energy storage potential, population, energy consumption behaviour, costs and regulations, which affect the design and operation of PEDs, and hence, no PED is like the other. This paper provides clear definitions for different types of PEDs, a survey of the renewable energy market circumstances in the EU and a detailed analysis of factors that play an essential role in the PED planning process.


ABSTRACT The eighteenth century is traditionally seen as an interlude between two vigorous movements of church reform. This article explores the problems and attitudes which underlay the absence of major structural reform of the Church in this period. To do so, it examines the failure of attempts, especially those of the 1740s and 1750s, to create an anglican episcopate in the American colonies. The leaders of the Church of England were agreed that the need for American bishops was pressing, on both pastoral and administrative grounds, and the 1740s and 1750s witnessed two proposals for their creation which were supported by virtually the whole bench of bishops. Both failed. The whig ministry resolutely opposed these initiatives, largely out of fear that any debate of church reform would revive the political divisions of Queen Anne's reign. The bishops, moreover, were prepared to submit to this ministerial veto, despite their belief in the necessity of reform, not through political subservience, but because they too feared renewed controversy about religion and the Church, believing that such controversy would revive both anti-clerical attacks from without and bitter divisions within.


Introduction: Epigenetics involves the study of heritable changes in the regulation of gene activity and expression that are not dependent on gene sequence. Main mechanisms of epigenetic modifications are DNA methylation, Histone modification and Nucleosome positioning. Several studies have shown that these modifications are related to cancer initiation, progression or tumor metastasis. In contrast to genetic mutations, most epigenetic modifications may be reversible and preventable. Therefore, the resetting of aberrant epigenetic states in neoplastic cells is an expanding therapeutic approach to treat or prevent cancer. Methods and Materials: The current study is a kind of review study in which the crucial data have been collected; in addition, keywords have been used systematically to search for related articles in reputable site. Results: It is now clear that the disorders of epigenetic mechanisms can affect and compound with oncogenic mutation and cause to promote tumor growth. So, the management of aberrant epigenetic states as a way to target the formation and progression of cancer is a logical and effective therapeutic approach. An understanding of the link between epigenetic deregulation and cancer is applicable to prognosis as well as treatment. Discussion and Conclusion: It seems that many aspects of epigenetics are still unknown; moreover, various studies are ongoing to explore other epigenetic mechanisms, their relationship with each other as well as the development, and progression of various diseases


This paper describes the framework for a branch of augmented cognition research performed at the Adaptive Multimodal Laboratory at the University of Hawaii and a spec application involving the identification of a computer user based on the forces applied to a computer mouse (i.e., click signature) during a task. Data was collected from six people during a pilot study. Two methods used to identify users were a back propagation neural network and discriminant analysis. Results indicate that the discriminant analysis was slightly better at identifying users than the neural network, but its primary advantage was that it required less data preparation. Continuous identification of the user is possible with either method. Successful, identification of the user is a useful first step to proceed to the next stage of the research framework, which is to identify the user's cognitive state for implementation in an augmented cognition system.


Abstract As digital sketching continues to emerge as an alternative to paper-based techniques, a qualitative, triangulated longitudinal study of nine-months duration was undertaken to explore the capabilities of the tablet Personal Computer (PC) to support portable sketching during industrial/product design activity. The methodology involved the unrestricted use of tablet PCs by 16 final year undergraduate industrial/product design students for an entire academic year, with data collection through a sketching exercise (participant and expert questionnaires), design exercise (questionnaire), focus group (coding and clustering) and final questionnaire. The conclusions indicate that the tablet PC represents a significant development in the support of sketching capability by increasing confidence which can have a positive impact on the generation of design ideas.


Concussion, which is defined as "a complex pathophysiological process affecting the brain, induced by traumatic biomechanical forces",1,2 is a poorly characterised clinical syndrome. Prospectively validated features include loss of consciousness, amnesia, headache, blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, and attention deficit,3 although none of these phenomena is mandatory. There has been a recent increase in both awareness of and interest in sports related concussion.1,2,4,5

Trauma has also been associated with migraine. Matthews6 identified footballer's migraine in which soccer players suffered migraine headaches after heading the ball. Typically the head injury was minor and was not associated with loss of consciousness, although confusion and impaired consciousness was more likely to be reported in children.7,8

The congruence of symptoms in migraine and concussion may lead to confusion in diagnosing the adolescent who has suffered a head injury, reportedly leading to a possible over-diagnosis of concussion and under-recognition of trauma induced migraine.9 The overlap between migraine and concussion may also reflect an increased propensity in migraineurs for concussion.

This study was designed as an exploratory analysis to investigate an observed clinical association between migraine and concussion.

The Canadian Community Health Survey is a cross sectional survey that collects information on health status, healthcare utilisation, and health determinants for the Canadian population. A stratified cluster sample design is used to obtain information on Canadians aged 12 years or older living in private dwellings in the 10 provinces and the three territories, exclusive of persons living on First Nations Reserves or Crown Lands, residents of institutions, full time members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and residents of certain remote regions. Information is collected every two years.10,11

Our analysis was based on the public use microdata set of the Canadian Community Health Survey, Cycle 1.1 …


Following our previous presentations on developments in the TaCEM project (Technology and Creativity in Electroacoustic Music) at EMS conferences (in Lisbon and Berlin), this year we present a Case Study based on Francis Dhomont's work Phonurgie (1998). Funded by the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a duration of 30 months (2012-2015), TaCEM is investigating the relationship between technological innovation and musical creativity asking, for example, if and how new technological developments afford new ways of creating and shaping music.

Amongst a set of eight Case Studies from the electroacoustic repertoire, Phonurgie presents specific and important challenges for our project. Whereas in studying works by Barry Truax (Riverrun, 1986/2004) and Trevor Wishart (Imago, 2002) we have focused on music that was created using software the composers had themselves designed, Francis Dhomont operates in a very different way. He does not create his own software nor does he use a single system but adventures through a range of available resources, using hardware and software as best suits his creative purpose. This makes tracing the evolution of the music and the means by which a work was created more complex, and in many cases the process is less well documented. Nonetheless, technology is central to the creation of Dhomont's works: without it his music could not exist in the form it does. It is therefore important that such work is included within TaCEM and reflected in our overall study of the various ways in which technology has led to new musical expression.

There is a further complication in the study of Phonurgie. One of the key resources Dhomont used for making this work was GRM's Syter. Although widely used by important composers of the field, leading to a significant variety of works through the 1980s and 1990s, this system no longer exists in a fully accessible form. Even if some aspects of its functionality can still be found in GRM tools, Syter's distinctive user interface is not available any more and this is a significant part of Dhomont's technical resource for this work, providing a unique way of working with sounds and processes, and of shaping transformations. Users can explore the potential offered by one given sound source and real-time processer (`instrument'), by manipulating one or two-dimensional sliders (`reglettes') associated to some of the parameters of the chosen transformation. They are also able to define a number of presets and then place these as 'balls' (`boules') on a grid on the screen. It is then possible to metamorphose between the presets by moving the cursor between these balls, tracing transformational paths between a number of parameter values on the screen. A key part of our investigation therefore has been to emulate Syter - not only its unique transformational processes but also its graphics-based interface, and in doing so to learn how this may have influenced the composer's musical thinking in Phonurgie. This emulation will be demonstrated and the creative implications of Dhomont's use of this tool discussed.

As in our other Case Studies, our research is also informed by research into the technical context of the work, interviews with the composer and the access the composer has kindly given us to his archives and records. Our presentation will document these resources and present an account of the composer's own reflections on Phonurgie and the process by which it was made, supported by examples of our filmed interviews with him. This approach is especially important with the investigation of a work that has not followed a closely prescribed technical path, but drawn on a variety of technical means, following musical imperatives that do not always correspond to a systematic technical progression. These materials help in the development of an understanding of both the technical and creative process as well as informing our understanding of the underlying poietic intentions. For instance, the composer's archives enabled us to trace recorded sequences in which he explored short fragments (from his own sound experimentations, field recordings, or excerpts from works by Guillaume de Machaut and Pierre Schaeffer) along with specific and documented processes of Syter, leading to sound reservoirs from which he could select some of the materials heard in Phonurgie. A striking aspect of Dhomont's general compositional method is the constitution, by recording or experimenting with technological tools, of large stocks of sound materials that are not exclusively used in the ongoing composition, but can also be reconsidered and further transformed in later works, sometimes over the very long term. This is confirmed by listening to the composer's repertoire, in which many musical materials appear recurrently, with different degrees of variation, constituting milestones over his large corpus. In regards to such a poietic approach and resulting aesthetics, Phonurgie is particularly relevant as the last piece of the Cycle du son, a tribute to musique concrete and its actors, also including Objets retrouves (1996), Novars (1989), and AvatArsSon (1998).

A further element of our research into each Case Study has involved analysis of the finished work, investigating the music itself and how the materials created in the studio are formed into a coherent and engaging composition. Whereas the other strands of our research involve learning about a work by re-creating it, re-building its components from the ground up, in this strand we take the finished composition and interrogate it as a completed musical work. Using our analytical software TIAALS (Tools for Interactive Aural Analysis), we explore the way the creative objectives shaped the sonic components and their interrelation. We will present our interpretation of the structure of the work and how this relates to the palette of source materials used in Phonurgie and range of transformational processes employed.

Finally, we will reflect on the investigative process we have employed in this and the seven other Case Studies in the TaCEM project and the significance of this approach, bringing together technical, poietic and analytical components in the study of electroacoustic music. We will assess the extent to which an approach which foregrounds the aural and the interactive as essential to the investigation of electroacoustic music enhances understanding of the repertoire.


Folk economics is the intuitive economics of untrained persons. It is concerned with distribution, and does not allow for or understand incentives. Folk economic notions evolved in our ancestors in circumstances where there was little in the way of specialization, division of labor, capital investment, or economic growth. It can explain the beliefs of naive individuals regarding matters such as international trade, labor economics, law and economics, and industrial organization. It is important that voters understand economic principles. Economists would do a better job of persuading others and of teaching if we paid explicit attention to folk economics. Because untrained individuals do not fully understand gains from trade, training in economics is likely to improve welfare by increasing the number of trading opportunities. There is evidence that this is in fact true.


The radiant external environment may be described by two hemispheres, above and below the horizontal plane, which are discretised into patches of known solid angle. Occlusions to these patches may be combined and represented as some patch fraction for which the radiant characteristics are defined by the dominant occlusion. By solving for radiant exchanges between each surface in a scene and its associated (un)occluded patches, we have a simplified radiosity algorithm (SRA). This paper describes the application of t his SRA to solve for predictions of (i) solar radiation, (ii) interiordaylight and (iii) longwave radiation. Comparisons with a ray tracing program show that accurate results are achieved at a computational cost several orders of magnitude lower.


Contrary to popular headlines of reform deadlock in Germany, substantial economic reforms have taken place in the past few years. First, we analyze the impact of these reforms on the institutional features of the Modell Deutschland. Second, we ask why the red-green government abandoned the original agenda that favored the core constituency of the coalition government and adopted the unpopular Agenda 2010. For an answer to these questions we turn to theories of hegemony for an explanation of the broader context in which the events have un folded. Within this context, we will explore the actors behavior from a Machiavellian perspective. Our main thesis is that when the left is on the defensive because of a lack of mobilization capabilities, a left-of-center coalition government will feel under pressure to veer to the middle.


Iceland's Barðarbunga volcano, buried under the giant Vatnajokull glacier, has been holding scientists in suspense over the last 2 weeks, producing frequent seismic rumbles but no signs yet of an actual eruption. But scientists at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) in Reykjavik are now seasoned by back-to-back eruptions at Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 and Grimsvotn in 2011 that produced large ash clouds and caused costly air traffic snarls. IMO is leading a European Union–funded effort called FUTUREVOLC to build a comprehensive database of local volcanic data and develop new tools—including new seismic stations, water chemistry samplers, and ground- and airplane-based ash detectors. Meanwhile, Barðarbunga continues to rumble, and scientists are standing by.


A ca.30 m thick tephra-sediment sequence from the north-eastern Basin of Mexico (Pachuca subbasin, central Mexico) is investigated for stratigraphy and multi-element geochemistry to understand the tephrochronology, provenance and conditions of chemical weathering during Late Quaternary. Chemical compositions of tephra layers are compared with products from surrounding volcanic structures (ApanTezontepece, Acoculco, Huichapan, Sierra de las Cruces and Tlaloc) in order to identify their sources. Basalt to basaltic-andesite tephra layers (Tr 1, Tr 6 and Tr 7) show similar composition with rocks from Apan-Tezontepec monogenetic volcanic field aged between 1.50 and 0.47 Ma. Felsic tephra layers have composition comparable to Acoculco volcanic sequence. The dacitic ash (Tr 2) and rhyolitic ash and pumice fall deposits (Tr 3, Tr 4, Tr 5 and Tr 8) might be representatives of different Plinian eruptive events at Acoculco caldera and possibly occurred during 0.24 Ma. Ternary diagrams (A-CN-K, A-C-N and A-CNK-FM) and trace element concentrations suggest that some of the sediment layers are formed from the chemical weathering of the underlying tephra and the rest of the inter-bedded sediments are derived from the erosion of rocks exposed at the Pachuca volcanic range. Indices of chemical weathering such as CIA and PIA indicate varying degrees of chemical alteration for these sediments possibly related to fluctuating humidity and duration of exposure to different weathering agents during their transportation from the hinterland to the sub-basin.


Despite manufacturing sub-components to a high precision, large overconstrained assemblies are often impossible to assemble to tolerance limits when variations are present. This necessitates expensive and time consuming variation management processes at assembly, such as shimming. Existing research has not established a methodology to model the variation propagation mechanisms that results in this assembly variation. This paper presents such a methodology, which has the ability to quantify the assembly variation of overconstrained assemblies at the planning stage, providing useful data for determining the most appropriate combination of fabrication and assembly processes to use for a given case. The methodology is validated using an aerospace wing spar assembly, and a sensitivity study completed to rank the key variation drivers in the overconstrained assembly.


As society becomes more information saturated, Extension must evaluate its educational programming and delivery methods used to facilitate adult learning. Extension professionals must have a comprehensive understanding of how adults learn. Accordingly, we conducted a needs assessment as a basis for providing professional development trainings focused on teaching adults. Our objective was to identify Extension professionals' professional development needs related to designing and facilitating programming based on andragogy. We developed a survey instrument that addressed andragogy-related topics and administered it to Extension professionals. The results indicated that professional development centered on andragogy was needed by and relevant to the study participants. We describe the study and resulting professional development training and provide associated recommendations that are applicable across Extension.


Purpose—is to investigate a shift sequence-based approach efficiency then problem consisting of a high number of shifts. Research objectives: • Solve health care workers rostering problem using a shift sequence based method. • Measure its efficiency then number of shifts increases. Design/methodology/approach—Usually rostering problems are highly constrained. Constraints are classified to soft and hard constraints. Soft and hard constraints of the problem are additionally classified to: sequence constraints, schedule constraints and roster constraints. Sequence constraints are considered when constructing shift sequences. Schedule constraints are considered when constructing a schedule. Roster constraints are applied, then constructing overall solution, i.e. combining all schedules. Shift sequence based approach consists of two stages: • Shift sequences construction, • The construction of schedules. In the shift sequences construction stage, the shift sequences are constructed for each set of health care workers of different skill, considering sequence constraints. Shifts sequences are ranked by their penalties for easier retrieval in later stage. In schedules construction stage, schedules for each health care worker are constructed iteratively, using the shift sequences produced in stage 1. Shift sequence based method is an adaptive iterative method where health care workers who received the highest schedule penalties in the last iteration are scheduled first at the current iteration. During the roster construction, and after a schedule has been generated for the current health care worker, an improvement method based on an efficient greedy local search is carried out on the partial roster. It simply swaps any pair of shifts between two health care workers in the (partial) roster, as long as the swaps satisfy hard constraints and decrease the roster penalty. Findings—Using shift sequence method for solving health care workers rostering problem is inefficient, because of large amount of shifts sequences (feasible shifts sequences are approximately 260 thousands). In order to speed up roster construction process shifts are grouped to four groups: morning shifts, day shifts, night shifts and duty shifts. There are only 64 feasible shifts sequences, in this case. After roster construction shift groups are replaced with the one of shift belonging to that group of shifts. When all shifts are added to roster, computation of workload for each schedule is performed. If computed workload is equal to the one defined in working contract, then this schedule is complete, else begin shifts revision process. During revision process those schedules are considered which do not meet work contract requirements. If computed workload is larger than the one defined in working contract, each shift is replaced with the shift, if it's possible, with lesser duration time. If computed workload is lesser than the one defined in working contract, each shift is replaced with the shift, if it's possible, with larger duration time. This process continues while schedule does not meet workload requirement defined in working contract or no further improvement can be made. Research limitations/implications—Problem dimension: 27 health care workers, 15 shifts, over 20 soft constraints, rostering period—one calendar month. Practical implications – modifications made to shift sequence based approach allows to construct a roster for one of the major Lithuania's hospitals personnel in shorter time. Originality/Value—modification of shift sequence based approach is proposed. Research type: research paper.


Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is said to be any strain of Staphylococcus aureus that has evolved, through the process of natural selection, resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics, which include the penicillin (methicillin, dicloxacillin, naficillin, oxacillin, etc.) and the cephalosporins. Colonization of anterior nares of HIV positive patients with MRSA is a risk factor for a wide range of invasive infections. This study was intended to determine the prevalence of MRSA using PBP2' Latex agglutination test and the assessment of the percentage prevalence of some risk factors associated with Staphylococcus aureus nasal colonization of HIV positive patients. However, PBP2' Latex Agglutination Test showed that 32 (39.02%) isolates of Staphylococcus aureus were positive for PBP2'. Also, 56 (25.81%) singles, 158 (72.81%) married and 3 (1.38%) divorced HIV positive adults in this study and 3 (1.38%) singles, 32 (14.75%) married HIV positive adults were MRSA carriers. Obviously, this result trend was attributed to several factors including overcrowded settlements, personal and public hygiene, poverty and illiteracy. Therefore, patients with HIV infection should practice the best forms of personal and public hygiene and avoid hand sneezing to help control the rising incidence of MRSA.


""Emerson's prose is his triumph, both as eloquence and as insight. After Shakespeare, it matches anything else in the language."" -Harold BloomHere are Ralph Waldo Emerson's classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance," the embattled realizations of "Circles" and "Experience," and the groundbreaking achievement of "Nature." Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he calls "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Also gathered here are his wide-ranging discourses on history, art, politics, friendship, love, and much more. For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes. The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from "Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures," volume number 15 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by three companion volumes, gathering Emerson's poems, translations, and selections from his journals.


One of the main contributions of Modern Money Theory (MMT) has been to explain why monetarily sovereign governments have a very flexible policy space that is unconstrained by hard financial limits. Not only can they issue their own currency to pay public debt denominated in their own currency, but they can also easily bypass any self-imposed constraint on budgetary operations. Through a detailed analysis of the institutions and practices surrounding the fiscal and monetary operations of the treasury and central bank of the United States, the eurozone, and Australia, MMT has provided institutional and theoretical insights into the inner workings of economies with monetarily sovereign and nonsovereign governments. The paper shows that the previous theoretical conclusions of MMT can be illustrated by providing further evidence of the interconnectedness of the treasury and the central bank in the United States.


Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy provides a noninvasive means to measure optical and physiological properties of tissues. To expand on these measurements, we have developed a handheld diffuse reflectance spectral imaging (DRSi) system capable of acquiring wide field hyperspectral images of tissue. The image acquisition time was approximately 50 seconds for a 50x50 pixel image. A transport model was used to fit each spectra for reduced scattering coefficient, hemoglobin concentration and melanin concentration resulting in optical property maps. The system was validated across biologically relevant levels of reduced scattering (5.14% error) and absorption (8.34% error) using tissue simulating phantoms. DRSi optical property maps of a pigmented skin lesion were acquired in vivo. These trends in optical properties were consistent with previous observations using point probe devices.


When warring parties sign an agreement relief and the sense of hope often masks the reality of the challenge of implementation of the agreed peace. Reaching an agreement means little if implementation of the said agreement proves to be problematic (Richmond and Newman 2006). While implementation is rarely effortless, the lessons drawn from the challenges faced and overcome furnish concerned policy makers, civil society, politicians and academics with a shared understanding of how an agreed peace can be delivered. Nonetheless, as a subdivision of the broad field of conflict resolution which focuses more readily on mediation and management, implementation of peace agreements has been more readily practiced than analysed. With the immediacy of having to respond on the ground to a new set of security and political considerations in the birth of an agreement often it is the case that little attention is given to analysing and documenting the hazards of implementation and the cases of good practice. Unfortunately this hinders what can be shared across the communities and societies engaged in implementing peace. Commissioned by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council in March 2012, this research conducted a "review on international peace agreements and lessons that have been learned from other post-conflict societies on how these agreements have been implemented." The research proceeds by providing a critical overview of existing literature and policy documents to draw lessons from the four case studies under investigation. Following this the research draws conclusions which consider the challenges for implementation as well as analysing what Northern Ireland can learn from these case studies and contribute to the wider understanding of how peace can be implemented.


IMPORTANCE
Identifying predictors of mortality from diabetes mellitus (DM) and heart disease can help shape treatment strategies. Presence of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) might be such a predictor.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether the presence of AGA is associated with an elevated rate of mortality from DM and heart disease in both sexes after adjustment for potential confounders.

DESIGN
A population-based prospective cohort study.

SETTING
Community-based integrated screening in Taiwan.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 7252 subjects aged 30 to 95 years participated in the baseline AGA survey using the Norwood and Ludwig classifications between April and June 2005. Baseline information on metabolic syndrome (MetS) and other possible risk factors was also collected. We then followed this cohort over time to ascertain death and cause of death until December 2010. INTERVENTIONS OR EXPOSURES: Application of Norwood and Ludwig ALA classifications to study population.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Deaths from DM and heart disease.

RESULTS
Among the 7126 subjects (2429 men and 4697 women) who provided complete data, there were 70 deaths from DM and heart disease during the 57-month follow-up period. Subjects with moderate to severe AGA vs normal or mild AGA had a significantly higher risk of mortality from DM (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 2.97; 95% CI, 1.26-7.01) (P = .01) and heart disease (adjusted HR, 2.28; 95% CI, 1.00-5.23) (P = .05) after adjusting for age, family history of DM or heart disease, and MetS.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
AGA is an independent predictor of mortality from DM and heart disease in both sexes. This finding may have significant implications for the identification of risk factors for DM and heart disease in patients with moderate or severe AGA, regardless of whether MetS is present.


Each day hospitals strive to provide optimal care for physically traumatized patients. While the word "trauma" is often associated with the physical injuries of patients in an emergency room or an intensive care unit, the meaning may be significantly different to the one who has been traumatized. At a glance, a patient who enters the hospital as a victim of sexual assault or a motor vehicle accident (MV A) may appear to have sustained only a severe physically traumatic event. If one looks closer and uses other senses such as hearing, touch, and personal, intimate eye-to-eye communication, then one would discover that the injuries penetrate much deeper. Nurses play an essential role in healing not only bodily trauma, but also emotional and cognitive trauma. This research seeks to convey the emotional and mental state of traumatized patients and to discover what the nurse can do to help heal the whole person, not just the physical wounds of their patients.


O n p. [1669][1] of this issue of Science appears the in-print version of a paper published online in Science Express on 12 February 2004. That report, "Evidence of a Pluripotent Human Embryonic Stem Cell Line Derived from a Cloned Blastocyst," was a collaboration led by Woo Suk Hwang and a team of more than a dozen collaborators. The work was done at Seoul National University in South Korea. When the results were announced at a press briefing at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle, well over a hundred reporters and over 20 television cameras were on hand, and the subsequent coverage in the media has been intense.

This is an opportune moment for review: The 3-week interval has provided a good gestation time for reactions. These reactions, some hasty and others thoughtful, form an interesting study of how new scientific findings may become incorporated into a policy framework that is developing under intense political pressure. To begin with the science itself, what the researchers did is to inject enucleated ova, derived from financially uncompensated women who volunteered, with somatic cell nuclei taken from the same donor. Blastocysts were produced by this procedure, and from one of them a stem cell line was produced and propagated through 70 divisions. The pluripotency of these cells was established in ways that left little doubt that they were true embryonic stem cells, although the investigators concede that their experiments have not quite eliminated the possibility of a parthenogenetic origin.

![Figure][2]

CREDIT: TERRY E. SMITH

On the science front, praise has been forthcoming from most researchers who work with stem cells. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Rudolf Jaenisch called the work "elegant" but emphasized, as did others, that applications to transplantation medicine are still far away. Other intriguing possibilities await future research. For example, the investigators could not yet say whether success is affected if the somatic cell nucleus is taken from a person other than the egg donor. We also now know that oocytes can be produced from mouse stem cell lines. If that could be done with human stem cells, wouldn't it mitigate concerns about using women as "egg factories"?

The Korean experiment illustrates some important international differences with respect to the legal status of this kind of research. It could have been performed in Israel, Sweden, or the United Kingdom, but not in the United States using federal funds or in Germany. The future status of such research in the United States is clouded by statutory uncertainty. Bills passed or under consideration would not only prohibit reproductive cloning but would criminalize somatic cell nuclear transfer experiments of this kind. In the United States, some states outlaw reproductive cloning but allow therapeutic cloning; indeed, a proposed ballot initiative in California would raise $3 billion to support research that cannot now be done with federal funds. The potential benefits are significant: Stanford's Irving Weissman notes that a somatic cell nucleus carrying a genetic defect could be transferred into an ovum in order to create stem cell lines that could tell us much about the disease. The Korean technical achievement is good news in that respect; the bad news, Weissman points out, is that we can't use it here.

Plainly, these findings may affect the U.S. ethical debate. Leon Kass, the chairman of the President's Council of Bioethics, sees them as a downward step on a slippery moral slope: "tomorrow," he predicts, "cloned blastocysts for baby-making." After the recent purge of two pro-stem cell members, Kass has his commission under control. But science is, after all, an international activity. The Korean success reminds us that stem cell research, along with its therapeutic promise, is under way in countries with various cultural and religious traditions. Our domestic moral terrain is not readily exportable: U.S. politicians can't make the rules for everyone, and they don't have a special claim to the ethical high ground.

And of course, political decisions in the United States may carry real penalties for its own scientific enterprise. Harvard's Doug Melton, a leader in stem cell biology whose institution has just made a major commitment to it, says it this way: "Look, life is short. I don't want spend the rest of mine reading about exciting advances in my field that can only be achieved in another country."

 [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1094515
 [2]: pending:yes


Learn more about nine-banded armadillos!
The Wildlife of Florida Factsheet series was created to provide the public with a quick, accurate introduction to Florida's wildlife, including both native and invasive species. Authors Simon Fitzwilliam and Raoul Boughton hope this 2-page quick guide and others in the series published by the UF/IFAS Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation will inspire readers to investigate wildlife in their own backyards and communities and understand the amazing biodiversity of wildlife in the state of Florida. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw456


Server replication is an approach often used to improve service access efficiency and availability for a large number of clients. This paper adopts a simple service model and investigates a set of efficient algorithms for server selection in an anycast group under the condition of imprecise network delay. The algorithms use ticket-based probing approach to search the path with short delay and probe the server load at the same time and try to optimize the server and path delay at the same time. The simulation results demonstrate that our algorithms are efficient in terms of server response time for sever selection compared with several other server selection algorithms.


Abstract. The Calabrian Arc (CA) subduction complex is located at the toe of the Eurasian Plate in the Ionian Sea, where sediments resting on the lower plate have been scraped off and piled up in the accretionary wedge due to the African/Eurasian plate convergence and back arc extension. The CA has been struck repeatedly by destructive historical earthquakes, but knowledge of active faults and source parameters is relatively poor, particularly for seismogenic structures extending offshore. We analysed the fine structure of major tectonic features likely to have been sources of past earthquakes: (i) the NNW–SSE trending Malta STEP (Slab Transfer Edge Propagator) fault system, representing a lateral tear of the subduction system; (ii) the out-of-sequence thrusts (splay faults) at the rear of the salt-bearing Messinian accretionary wedge; and (iii) the Messina Straits fault system, part of the wide deformation zone separating the western and eastern lobes of the accretionary wedge. Our findings have implications for seismic hazard in southern Italy, as we compile an inventory of first order active faults that may have produced past seismic events such as the 1908, 1693 and 1169 earthquakes. These faults are likely to be source regions for future large magnitude events as they are long, deep and bound sectors of the margin characterized by different deformation and coupling rates on the plate interface.


A reset of a distributed system is safe if it does not complete ``prematurely,'''' i.e., without having reset some process in the system. Safe resets are possible in the presence of certain faults, such as process fail-stops and repairs, but are not always possible in the presence of more general faults, such as arbitrary transients. In this paper, we design a bounded-memory distributed-reset program that possesses two tolerances: (1) in the presence of fail-stops and repairs, it always executes resets safely, and (2) in the presence of a finite number of transient faults, it eventually executes resets safely. Designing this multitolerance in the reset program introduces the novel concern of designing a safety detector that is itself multitolerant. A broad application of our multitolerant safety detector is to make any total program likewise multitolerant.


In this paper we analyze the robustness of stochastic variants of the greedy algorithm for submodular maximization. Our main result shows that for maximizing a monotone submodular function under a cardinality constraint, iteratively selecting an element whose marginal contribution is approximately maximal in expectation is a sufficient condition to obtain the optimal approximation guarantee with exponentially high probability, assuming the cardinality is sufficiently large. One consequence of our result is that the linear-time STOCHASTIC-GREEDY algorithm recently proposed in (Mirzasoleiman et al., 2015) achieves the optimal running time while maintaining an optimal approximation guarantee. We also show that high probability guarantees cannot be obtained for stochastic greedy algorithms under matroid constraints, and prove an approximation guarantee which holds in expectation. In contrast to the guarantees of the greedy algorithm, we show that the approximation ratio of stochastic local search is arbitrarily bad, with high probability, as well as in expectation.


This paper analyzes the economic effects of environmental taxes on chemical fertilizer in producing rice. A charge of 10 percent tax on nitrogen fertilizer leads to a reduction in fertilizer use of 1.5 percent without changing rice yield, but the farm income is reduced by 0.6 percent. The tax rate of 100 percent leads to a reduction of 14.6 percent in fertilizer use, a 0.4 percent reduction in rice yield, and a 3.6 percent reduction in farm income. A significant feature of eco-taxes imposed on chemical fertilizers is their revenue potential, which could contribute to increasing government budgets for finance pollution control programs, such as education and R&D. This study provides an insight into the application of market-based instrument to achieve sustainable agricultural development.


How much information can be transferred over a wireless network and what is the optimal strategy for the operation of such network? This thesis tries to answer some of these questions from an information theoretic approach. A model of wireless network is formulated to capture the main features of the wireless medium as well as topology of the network. The performance metrics are throughput and transport capacity. The throughput is the summation of all reliable communication rates for all source-destination pairs in the network. The transport capacity is a sum rate where each rate is weighted by the distance over which it is transported. Based on the network model, we study the scaling laws for the performance measures as the number of users in the network grows. First, we analyze the performance of multihop wireless network under different criteria for successful reception of packets at the receiver. Then, we consider the problem of information transfer without arbitrary assumptions on the operation of the network. We observe that there is a dichotomy between the cases of relatively high signal attenuation and low attenuation. Moreover, a fundamental relationship between the performance metrics and the total transmitted power of users is discovered. As a result, the optimality of multihop is demonstrated for some scenarios in high attenuation regime, and better strategies than multihop are proposed for the operation in the low attenuation regime. Then, we study the performance of a special class of networks, random networks, where the traffic is uniformly distributed inside the networks. For this special class, the upperbounds on the throughput are presented for both low and high attenuation cases. To achieve the presented upperbounds, a hierarchical cooperation scheme is analyzed and optimized by choosing the number of hierarchical stages and the corresponding cluster sizes that maximize the total throughput. In addition, to apply the hierarchical cooperation scheme to random networks, a clustering algorithm is developed, which divides the whole network into quadrilateral clusters, each with exactly the number of nodes required.


Background/Context Much research is being done on Turkish immigrants and their children in Germany and the Netherlands, but almost always from a national perspective. To compare the situation, for example, regarding educational outcomes across the two countries has proved to be very difficult because of different sets, selection criteria, and time periods for statistical data on immigrant populations. However, those data, which are actually available and comparable to at least some degree, already show how strongly the differences in educational attainment and labor market integration of Turkish immigrants depend on structural and systemic differences in the ways that education is organized in Germany and the Netherlands. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The article analyzes available data on young Turkish immigrants and native-born second generations and their educational success in the two countries with the major Turkish populations in Western Europe. It aims to direct the focus away from group background characteristics, which are actually quite similar, to the influence of institutional arrangements and the way that the educational system facilitates (or not) the educational integration of Turkish youth. Research Design The article is based on publicly collected and available data on the Turkish populations in Germany and the Netherlands. This mainly refers to the Dutch SPVA surveys and the German micro-census and Integration Survey. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings show that more than group characteristics, systemic and institutional factors can have a decisive role in promoting or hampering the educational and labor market integration of young immigrants and the native-born second generation. The greater openness of the Dutch school system to provide "long routes" and "second chances" shows its effect in significantly higher shares of Turks in higher education. On the other side, the dual system of vocational training in Germany seems to be better suited for labor market integration, especially because apprenticeships are more practice oriented and do count as work experience for later application procedures. The Dutch system also offers better opportunities for girls than does the German system. Yet, the polarization effect between "high achievement" and "failure" of only partial integration success is greater in the Netherlands, whereas the overall advancement is slower, but also less polarizing, in Germany. In this sense, each country could learn something from its neighbor regarding those aspects of the institutional and systemic setting that apparently fail to do the job well enough.


The design features of, and first observations from, a new elastic backscatter lidar system at a wavelength of 1543 nm are presented. The transmitter utilizes stimulated Raman scattering in high-pressure methane to convert fundamental Nd:YAG radiation by means of the 1st Stokes shift. The wavelength-converting gas cell features multipass operation and internal fans. Unlike previous lidar developments that used Raman scattering in methane, the pump beam is not focused in the present configuration. This feature prevents optical breakdown of the gas inside the cell. Additionally, the gas cell is injection seeded by a diode to improve conversion efficiency and beam quality. The receiver uses a 40.6-cm-diameter telescope and a 200-microm InGaAs avalanche photodiode. The system is capable of operating in a dual-wavelength mode (1064 and 1543 nm simultaneously) for comparison or in a completely eye-safe mode. The system is capable of transmitting an energy of more than 200 mJ/pulse at 10 Hz. Aerosol backscatter data from vertical and horizontal pointing periods are shown.


To identify the inhuman (the absurd, nihilism, resentment, evil), to establish the human (rebellion, love), to lay the foundations for a philosophy without God, this was the philosophical and literary undertaking of Albert Camus. To propose an as yet unknown wisdom, one that is at the same time individual, collective and cosmic, against all that would deny the human being, that would mutilate him and that would tend to crush him, this guides his entire oeuvre. A tragic lucidity that does not exclude the demands of humanity.


The increased interest in protocols that provide a total order on message delivery has led to several different definitions of total order. In this paper we investigate these different definitions and propose a hierarchy that helps to better understand the implications of the different possibilities in terms of guarantees and communication cost. We identify two definitions: weak total order and strong total order, which are at the extremes of the proposed hierarchy, and incorporate them into a consistent design. Finally, we propose high-level algorithms based on a virtually synchronous communication environment that implement the given definitions.


I. INTRODUCTION Is electricity deregulation worth pursuing? Or has the failed California "experiment" illustrated that the concept is so inherently flawed that all such efforts should be abandoned? In this article, we examine these questions within the context of some of the lessons learned from the California electricity crisis.2 We offer these lessons on a preliminary basis because, as of the time of this writing, much of the critical information about the California crisis still remains unknown. A myriad of regulatory agencies and private attorneys are embroiled in both criminal and civil investigations; most of these investigations are subject to confidentiality orders, rendering the current public information merely the tip of the iceberg.3 More broadly, new revelations continue to emerge as we write this about the nature of the alleged market manipulations, the full extent of the possible costs involved, and the regulatory processes that may have led to the crisis. With this strong caveat issued, we offer Table One as the foundation upon which we shall build this article. This table summarizes eleven possible lessons from the crisis that may be useful to the major stakeholders in this debate. The stakeholders range from regulatory lawyers, scholars, and policymakers to business leaders, utility executives, and power producers. Table One: Lessons from the California Electricity Crisis 1. Don't Deregulate Into A Power Plant Shortage 2. Employ A Suite of Mechanisms to Address Supply-Demand Imbalances 3. Don't Deregulate Into a Congested Transmission Grid 4. Market Monitoring and Enforcement Matters! Don't Balkanize the Market. 5. Rent-seeking Special Interests Will Attempt to "Capture" the Design, Implementation, Monitoring, and Enforcement Processes 6. A Deregulated Market Paradoxically Will Require the Application of Greater Regulatory Resources 7. A Fully Deregulated Market Will Undersupply Demand Side Management (DSM) 8. A Fully Deregulated Market Will Lead to an Over-Reliance on Natural Gas 9. The Natural Gas and Electricity Markets Must Be Viewed as a System - There Can Be No Free Market in Electricity if the Gas Pipelines are Monopolized 10. The Regulatory Authority (e.g., FERC in the U.S.) must be both a Competent and Fair Broker 11. Establish Swift and Sure Punishments for Rule Violations - Consider both Compensatory and Punitive Damages as Well as Criminal Penalties In each of the sections of this article, we analyze these lessons from the perspective of California's legal, regulatory, and economic history. The article concludes with some reflections on the meaning of these lessons for the broader deregulation movement. II. DON'T DEREGULATE INTO A POWER PLANT SHORTAGE To state the obvious, in a perfectly competitive, deregulated wholesale electricity generating market, a shortage will lead to both significantly higher prices and the possibility of supply disruptions, including rolling blackouts. To state the perhaps more subtle, in an imperfectly competitive electricity generating market, the presence of real physical shortages may increase incentives for market participants to artificially withhold capacity, which exacerbates the shortage condition and thereby sustains higher prices over a longer period of time than might otherwise exist in a perfectly competitive market. These situations are depicted in Figure One, which illustrates typical supply and demand curves in a market characterized by short run capacity constraints and possible artificial withholding of power from the market. The supply curve, S1, represents the marginal cost curve of the industry. This curve slopes upward, reflecting the fact that different market participants will have different marginal costs of production which reflect factors such as the vintage and efficiency of a given plant and its fuel source, e. …


As a step towards understanding the higher‐level phylogeny and evolutionary affinities of quadrifid noctuoid moths, we have undertaken the first large‐scale molecular phylogenetic analysis of the moth family Erebidae, including almost all subfamilies, as well as most tribes and subtribes. DNA sequence data for one mitochondrial gene (COI) and seven nuclear genes (EF‐1α, wingless, RpS5, IDH, MDH, GAPDH and CAD) were analysed for a total of 237 taxa, principally type genera of higher taxa. Data matrices (6407 bp in total) were analysed by parsimony with equal weighting and model‐based evolutionary methods (maximum likelihood), which revealed a well‐resolved skeleton phylogenetic hypothesis with 18 major lineages, which we treat here as subfamilies of Erebidae. We thus present a new phylogeny for Erebidae consisting of 18 moderate to strongly supported subfamilies: Scoliopteryginae, Rivulinae, Anobinae, Hypeninae, Lymantriinae, Pangraptinae, Herminiinae, Aganainae, Arctiinae, Calpinae, Hypocalinae, Eulepidotinae, Toxocampinae, Tinoliinae, Scolecocampinae, Hypenodinae, Boletobiinae and Erebinae. Where possible, each monophyletic lineage is diagnosed by autapomorphic morphological character states, and within each subfamily, monophyletic tribes and subtribes can be circumscribed, most of which can also be diagnosed by morphological apomorphies. All additional taxa sampled fell within one of the four previously recognized quadrifid families (mostly into Erebidae), which are now found to include two unusual monobasic taxa from New Guinea: Cocytiinae (now in Erebidae: Erebinae) and Eucocytiinae (now in Noctuidae: Pantheinae).


about secularism and non-religion. We know more about the emergence and social context of non-religion, including who leaves religious institutions and why (Gervais and Norenzayan 2012; Hout and Fischer 2002, 2014; Keysar 2014; Sherkat 2014; Vargas 2012; Voas and Chaves 2016; Zuckerman 2011), the historical context of non-religion in the United States (e.g. Porterfield 2012; Schmidt 2016), and how non-religious individuals understand themselves and come together to forge identities and communities (Baker and Smith 2015; Blankholm 2014; Cimino and Smith 2014; García and Blankholm 2016; Guenther et al. 2013; Kettell 2013, 2014; LeDrew 2013, 2015; Manning 2015; Smith 2011, 2013; Stewart 2016; Sumerau and Cragun 2016). Much of this work does not consider non-religion an isolated case, but rather in relation to other religious groups and authorities in society (Lee 2015; Quack 2014). Taking this relational approach, we quickly come to two conclusions that at first appear contradictory in the case of non-religion in the United States. First, non-religion can be marginalized. A growing body of work highlights both prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward non-religious individuals (Cragun et al. 2012; Edgell et al. 2006; 2016; Gervais et al. 2011; Hammer et al. 2012; Swan and Heesacker 2012; Volokh 2006; Wallace et al. 2014). Second, non-religion is concurrent with a high degree of social advantage. Non-religious Americans tend to be more white, male, and well-educated, and are therefore able to exercise a certain degree of agency in choosing to leave religious institutions or to embrace a particular vision of secular modernity (Baker and Smith 2015; LeDrew 2015; Sherkat 2014). In reality, this apparent contradiction highlights the importance of understanding non-religion from an intersectional perspective. The social status of non-religion, like any other ideological standpoint, is not simply defined by either privilege or marginalization. Instead non-religion is a compelling empirical case to illustrate the principles of intersectionality at work, or, as Crenshaw (1991: 1245) writes, "the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed" (cf. Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013). For example, current scholarship focuses on the "gender gap" in religious involvement (Carroll 2004; Voas, McAndrew, and Storm 2013). An intersectional approach might consider how norms of religiosity are differentially enforced across genders, and in turn how they foster different gendered experiences with non-religion and strategies for expressing non-religion (e.g. Baker and Smith 2015). If non-religious identities are stigmatized, the privileged may be freer to embrace them because they can better weather the consequences of stigmatized choices (Edgell, Frost, and Stewart, in press). The research presented in this special issue represents a set of innovative, early forays into an intersectional approach to non-religion. We are excited about these authors' contributions to the field because they tackle both cutting edge theoretical work and basic social facts that speak to a number of recent trends on non-religion in particular and in the social sciences more broadly. For example, many of the authors in this issue consider the intersections between race, gender, sexuality, and non-religion, particularly through the lens of transgender individuals' experiences. This conversation is especially important as other research considers the racialized aspects of non-religion (Kahn and Lloyd 2016; LeDrew 2015) and the implications of trans* experiences for social scientific examinations of identity and inequality (e.g. see Brubaker 2016; Miller and Grollman 2015; Murib 2015, among others). While previous work compares the experiences of non-religious individuals to other identitybased political movements, especially the LBGT movement (Anspach, Coe, and Thurlow 2007), the articles in this issue from Mathers and Kolysh also push us to think about the empirical ways that non-religion might intersect with respondents' religious and racial backgrounds, queer and trans* experiences, and even geographic space to produce social standpoints that challenge movements based on stable and coherent shared identities (Gamson 1995; Stewart 2016; Wilcox 2009). These articles also advance the field by returning to basic investigations with a critical eye and a willingness to question consensus in the literature on religious identities. Work by Cragun and Sumerau demonstrates notable similarities in the way that religious and non-religious respondents evaluate certain minority groups and in their rates of chronic health conditions. While much of the work in our field has studied non-religious individuals on their own terms, and rightfully so, these pieces demonstrate how an intersectional approach also requires thinking about the ways that non-religion does not distinguish particular social standpoints, but actually falls in line with Stewart, E. et al 2017 Intersectionality and Power: Notes from the Editors. Secularism and Nonreligion, 6: 6, pp. 1–3, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.86


This research studies two computational techniques that improve the practical performance of existing implementations of interior point methods for linear programming. Both are based on the concept of symmetric neighbourhood as the driving tool for the analysis of the good performance of some practical algorithms. The symmetric neighbourhood adds explicit upper bounds on the complementarity pairs, besides the lower bound already present in the common N−∞ neighbourhood. This allows the algorithm to keep under control the spread among complementarity pairs and reduce it with the barrier parameter μ. We show that a long-step feasible algorithm based on this neighbourhood is globally convergent and converges in O(nL) iterations. The use of the symmetric neighbourhood and the recent theoretical understanding of the behaviour of Mehrotra's corrector direction motivate the introduction of a weighting mechanism that can be applied to any corrector direction, whether originating from Mehrotra's predictor–corrector algorithm or as part of the multiple centrality correctors technique. Such modification in the way a correction is applied aims to ensure that any computed search direction can positively contribute to a successful iteration by increasing the overall stepsize, thus avoiding the case that a corrector is rejected. The usefulness of the weighting strategy is documented through complete numerical experiments on various sets of publicly available test problems. The implementation within the hopdm interior point code shows remarkable time savings for large-scale linear programming problems. The second technique develops an efficient way of constructing a starting point for structured large-scale stochastic linear programs. We generate a computationally viable warm-start point by solving to low accuracy a stochastic problem of much smaller dimension. The reduced problem is the deterministic equivalent program corresponding to an event tree composed of a restricted number of scenarios. The solution to the reduced problem is then expanded to the size of the problem instance, and used to initialise the interior point algorithm. We present theoretical conditions that the warm-start iterate has to satisfy in order to be successful. We implemented this technique in both the hopdm and the oops frameworks, and its performance is verified through a series of tests on problem instances coming from various stochastic programming sources.


High-dose interferon-alpha remains the first-line treatment in the adjuvant therapy of metastatic melanoma. More recently, high-dose pegylated interferon-alpha-2b has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Actually, an adjuvant therapy alternative to high-dose interferon-alpha is represented by ipilimumab. Moreover, combination therapy of IFN-alpha or ipilimumab with tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been proved in patients with specific mutations. It is mandatory to understand what the best adjuvant treatment is for resected metastatic melanoma patients, particularly at stage III-N1, in terms of overall survival rather than recurrence-free survival. The ECOG 1609 clinical trial compared high-dose interferon-alpha and ipilimumab alone or combined with tyrosine kinase inhibitors for the treatment of early metastatic melanoma. In the past, ECOG 1684, 1690 and 1694 trials showed improvement in recurrence-free survival more than overall survival for high-risk melanoma patients (stage IIB-III) treated with high-dose interferon-alpha, whereas more recently the EORTC 18991 trial reported successful therapeutic results in terms of recurrence-free survival rather than overall survival for stage III-N1 melanoma patients treated with high-dose pegylated interferon-alpha-2b. Toxicity was more acceptable within one year of treatment. Randomized trials have demonstrated that ipilimumab as second-line therapy is able to increase dose-dependent overall survival rates in advanced melanoma patients despite severe but reversible immune-related adverse events. Old tyrosine kinase inhibitors have been used in combination with interferon for the treatment of advanced melanoma patients with moderate benefits and increased toxicity, but new selective drugs seem to be more efficacious. Early metastatic melanoma patients (stage III-N1) should be the principal subset to be treated with the most suitable adjuvant therapy to achieve the best overall survival. New schedules have to be tested with high-dose interferon-alpha and ipilimumab alone or combined with tyrosine kinase inhibitors while waiting for results from ECOG 1609.


Art Criticism and Art Education Wolff, T., & Geahigan, G. (1997). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 352 pages, ISBN 0-252-02314-5. An early impetus for art educators to move to a discipline-based perspective was Bruner's (1960) proposal that educators look to methods employed by experts in related academic fields. This redistribution of authority from curriculum specialists to disciplinary experts affected both the form and the content of curriculum materials and texts. Projects initiated by the Getty often met this challenge by pairing discipline practitioners, artists, critics, historians, and philosophers, who provided the aura of disciplinary expertise, with art educators, who worked to translate disciplinary forms into pedagogical practice. One result of this pairing of discipline expert with art educator is Art Criticism and Education, the fifth book in the five-volume series, Disciplines in Art Education: Contexts of Understanding, edited by Ralph A. Smith and sponsored by the Getty Center for Education in the Arts. This book is a rich and wonderful addition to art education's conversation about the role of art criticism in curriculum. Its wonderfulness, however, is not found in the pairing of a discipline expert with a curriculum specialist nor in the authority of the discipline expert, Theodore F. Wolff, art critic for the Christian Science Monitor. The merits of this text proceed from the eloquent writing and perceptive ideas of a curriculum specialist, George Geahigan, professor of art education at Purdue University. Reflective readers should consider not only Geahigan's substantive insights concerning critical inquiry as classroom practice but also the limitations of an educational agenda that concedes authority to discipline experts rather than curriculum specialists. Geahigan reclaims authority for the curriculum expert with the assistance of his contextualist perspective and pragmatic philosophy. Pragmatists are not univocal but they arguably present the most useful philosophical context for understanding American values. The cool and analytical C. S. Peirce can be contrasted with the social activism of Cornel West, and the speculative Richard Rorty. The pragmatist who most wholeheartedly embraced the arts was John Dewey and so it is right that Geahigan, American, art educator and contextualist, chooses Dewey as his philosophical mentor. Interpretation is the key to contextualist criticism so it is understandable that Geahigan interprets both Dewey and art criticism in ways that correspond to this historical moment. At different times, other art educators have interpreted Dewey and art criticism through their own historical perspectives. Dewey's ideas provided the basis for Ecker's (1963/1966) discussion of the similarities between the problem solving in studio art and scientific inquiry. The conflation of art criticism, curriculum, and inquiry related to the sciences has a respectable history in education which parallels the development of discipline-based art education (DBAE). Science as epistemological model was directly connected to Bruner's ideas. With one eye on objectivist practices drawn from the sciences and another on the rhetorical style of art critics, art educators such as Feldman (1973) and Barrett (1994) identified art criticism with a critical process that relies upon description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment. These educators share Peirce's (1955/1878) reasoned opinion that to relieve our doubts we should turn to methods identified with the sciences, even our doubts about the meaning and value of artworks. Geahigan does not reject this tradition but rather suggests that it precludes a consideration of the many ways that students actually enter into critical dialogues with the world. Educational conversations such as the ones surrounding DBAE tend to develop their own momentum. They develop into forms unforeseen at their inception. …


This paper describes the process of developing graphical metaphors and diagrammatic
representations for the Human Development Index – HDI– and its components: the HDI
Tree (UNDP, 2011). In 1990, the United Nations Development Programme introduced the
Human Development Index as a measure of development that combines indicators of life
expectancy, educational attainment and income. The project was commissioned to Cesar A.
Hidalgo (2010) by the Human Development Report office and developed in collaboration
with three senior students at Northeastern University. The objective was to explore ways to
simplify and communicate the Human Development Index using visual rather than numerical
representations. Here, we describe the design process, discuss the concepts behind the metaphor,
and analyze two selected visualizations. We conclude by examining how the Development Tree
can be used in visual narratives for educational and outreach purposes.


This book is comprised of one study and three field evaluations of civic tech initiatives in developing countries. The study reviews evidence on the use of twenty-three information and communication technology (ICT) platforms designed to amplify citizen voices to improve service delivery. Focusing on empirical studies of initiatives in the global south, the authors highlight both citizen uptake (yelp) and the degree to which public service providers respond to expressions of citizen voice (teeth). The first evaluation looks at U-report in Uganda, a mobile platform that runs weekly large-scale polls with young Ugandans on a number of issues, ranging from safety to access to education to inflation to early marriage. The following evaluation takes a closer look at MajiVoice, an initiative that allows Kenyan citizens to report, through multiple channels, complaints with regard to water services. The third evaluation examines the case of Rio Grande do Sul's participatory budgeting - the world's largest participatory budgeting system - which allows citizens to participate either online or offline in defining the state's yearly spending priorities. While the comparative study has a clear focus on the dimension of government responsiveness, the evaluations examine civic technology initiatives using five distinct dimensions, or lenses. The choice of these lenses is the result of an effort bringing together researchers and practitioners to develop an evaluation framework suitable to civic technology initiatives.


Computer-graphics engineers and vision scientists want to generate images that reproduce realistic depth-dependent blur. Current rendering algorithms take into account scene geometry, aperture size, and focal distance, and they produce photorealistic imagery as with a high-quality camera. But to create immersive experiences, rendering algorithms should aim instead for perceptual realism. In so doing, they should take into account the significant optical aberrations of the human eye. We developed a method that, by incorporating some of those aberrations, yields displayed images that produce retinal images much closer to the ones that occur in natural viewing. In particular, we create displayed images taking the eye's chromatic aberration into account. This produces different chromatic effects in the retinal image for objects farther or nearer than current focus. We call the method ChromaBlur. We conducted two experiments that illustrate the benefits of ChromaBlur. One showed that accommodation (eye focusing) is driven quite effectively when ChromaBlur is used and that accommodation is not driven at all when conventional methods are used. The second showed that perceived depth and realism are greater with imagery created by ChromaBlur than in imagery created conventionally. ChromaBlur can be coupled with focus-adjustable lenses and gaze tracking to reproduce the natural relationship between accommodation and blur in HMDs and other immersive devices. It may thereby minimize the adverse effects of vergence-accommodation conflicts.


We study the melting of domain walls in the ferromagnetic phase of the transverse Ising chain, created by flipping the order-parameter spins along one-half of the chain. If the initial state is excited by a local operator in terms of Jordan-Wigner fermions, the resulting longitudinal magnetization profiles have a universal character. Namely, after proper rescalings, the profiles in the noncritical Ising chain become identical to those obtained for a critical free-fermion chain starting from a step-like initial state. The relation holds exactly in the entire ferromagnetic phase of the Ising chain and can even be extended to the zero-field XY model by a duality argument. In contrast, for domain-wall excitations that are highly non-local in the fermionic variables, the universality of the magnetization profiles is lost. Nevertheless, for both cases we observe that the entanglement entropy asymptotically saturates at the ground-state value, suggesting a simple form of the steady state.


Abstract. The possible minimal range of reduction in snow surface albedo due to dry deposition of black carbon (BC) in the pre-monsoon period (March–May) was estimated as a lower bound together with the estimation of its accuracy, based on atmospheric observations at the Nepal Climate Observatory – Pyramid (NCO-P) sited at 5079 m a.s.l. in the Himalayan region. A total BC deposition rate was estimated as 2.89 μg m−2 day−1 providing a total deposition of 266 μg m−2 for March–May at the site, based on a calculation with a minimal deposition velocity of 1.0×10−4 m s−1 with atmospheric data of equivalent BC concentration. Main BC size at NCO-P site was determined as 103.1–669.8 nm by correlation analyses between equivalent BC concentration and particulate size distributions in the atmosphere. The BC deposition from the size distribution data was also estimated. It was found that 8.7% of the estimated dry deposition corresponds to the estimated BC deposition from equivalent BC concentration data. If all the BC is deposited uniformly on the top 2-cm pure snow, the corresponding BC concentration is 26.0–68.2 μg kg−1, assuming snow density variations of 195–512 kg m−3 of Yala Glacier close to NCO-P site. Such a concentration of BC in snow could result in 2.0–5.2% albedo reductions. By assuming these albedo reductions continue throughout the year, and then applying simple numerical experiments with a glacier mass balance model, we estimated reductions would lead to runoff increases of 70–204 mm of water. This runoff is the equivalent of 11.6–33.9% of the annual discharge of a typical Tibetan glacier. Our estimates of BC concentration in snow surface for pre-monsoon season is comparable to those at similar altitudes in the Himalayan region, where glaciers and perpetual snow regions begin, in the vicinity of NCO-P. Our estimates from only BC are likely to represent a lower bound for snow albedo reductions, because we used a fixed slower deposition velocity. In addition, we excluded the effects of atmospheric wind and turbulence, snow aging, dust deposition, and snow albedo feedbacks. This preliminary study represents the first investigation of BC deposition and related albedo on snow, using atmospheric aerosol data observed at the southern slope in the Himalayas.


Today, no Marxist thinker after the classical epoch is so universally respected in the West as Antonio Gramsci. Nor is any term so freely or diversely invoked on the Left as that of hegemony, to which he gave currency. Gramsci's reputation, still local and marginal outside his native Italy in the early sixties, has a decade later become a world-wide fame. The homage due to his enterprise in prison is now---thirty years after the first publication of his notebooks----finally and fully being paid. Lack of knowledge, or paucity of discussion, have ceased to be obstacles to the diffusion of his thought. In principle every revolutionary socialist, not only in the West----if especially in the West----can henceforward benefit from Gramsci's patrimony. Yet at the same time, the spread of Gramsci's renown has not to date been accompanied by any corresponding depth of enquiry into his work. The very range of the appeals now made to his authority, from the most contrasted sectors of the Left, suggests the limits of close study or comprehension of his ideas. The price of so ecumenical an admiration is necessarily ambiguity: multiple and incompatible interpretations of the themes of the Prison Notebooks.


At the end of the twentieth century, theories and approaches were introduced in the field of translation. Amongst these theories were dynamic theory by Nida and Taber (1967), semantic and communication theory by Newmark (1981), scopos theory by Vermeer and Reis (1981), and literature theory by Larson (1984). Basidly, all of these theories have been more focused on the product of translation. There was also a new theory of translation that was proposed in the field of human communication. Actually, this theory had rejected the old concept of communication that was based on the system of coding-transmission-decoding. In other words, based on this new theory, the process of communication must involve the process of the human mind. Later on, this process would make a decision on communication . This theory was named the Relevance Theory (TR) that was developed by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995). After that, TR was developed by Gutt in the field of translation. This article will discuss the application of TR in the Arabic-Malay translation. How the concept of two meanings operated and which one is the real meaning will be answered by TR.