How do voters make decisions in low-information contests? Although some research has looked at low-information voter decision making, scant research has focused on data from actual ballots cast in low-information elections. We focus on three 2008 Pierce County (Washington) Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV) elections. Using individual-level ballot image data, we evaluate the structure of individual rankings for specific contests to determine whether partisan cues underlying partisan rankings are correlated with choices made in nonpartisan races. This is the first time that individual-level data from real elections have been used to evaluate the role of partisan cues in nonpartisan races. We find that, in partisan contests, voters make avid use of partisan cues in constructing their preference rankings, rank-ordering candidates based on the correspondence between voters' own partisan preferences and candidates' reported partisan affiliation. However, in nonpartisan contests where candidates have no explicit partisan affiliation, voters rely on cues other than partisanship to develop complete candidate rankings.


This study analyzes the annual alcohol consumption on prices, taxes, and other economic and demographic characteristics from 50 states and the District of Columbia for 1985-2002 to study the U.S. alcohol demand behavior on beer, spirits, and wine. Young and Bielinska-Kwapisz (2003) found that the data prices contain measurement error, so using the state and federal taxes as the instrumental variables could mitigate the problem. There is the improvement in estimation to use the set of all taxes instead of each individual tax. Therefore, we use the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) model, proposed by Bank, Blundell, and Lewbel (1997), employing the alcohol prices or the tax instrumental variables on both pooled and clustered datasets to compare with the classical linear models. The statistical inference is based on the bootstrap variance-covariance matrix. After correct the heteroskedasticity and multicollinearity issues, the existing linear regressions models are GLS, GMM-IV, FE, RE, FE-IV, and RE-IV models. The analysis of elasticities reveals that the QUAIDS model is perform better than all linear regressions in term of explanation on consumer behavior. We use local constant and local linear estimators with the Gaussian kernel and the optimal cross-validation bandwidth to study the effects of prices and income on alcohol consumption. We also find the increasing trends of consumptions in all types of alcohol for each state. The empirical results indicate that the gross substitution effects among them could imply policy necessity on the simultaneous alcohol excise taxes imposed. In term of estimation, the instrumental tax variables could improve the QUAIDS model on reflecting the different responsiveness of price and income for light, medium and heavy consumption levels.


This paper deals with the use of additive manufacturing from Ti-6Al-4V metal powder in the field of individual implants. Additive technologies such as Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM) enable the manufacturers to design the implants precisely with respect to actual anatomy of each patient. In this paper, two major properties of the printed parts are studied. In the first part, monotonic mechanical properties of the material in as-built and heat treated condition are evaluated. In the second part of the work, shape accuracy is evaluated on the model of individual cranial implant. For this study, the cranial implant was once built as a fully dense part and once using lightweight structure. Both parts were submitted to optical 3D scanning to evaluate the nominal deflections from CAD model. Uniaxial tests show full usability of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V parts. Basic material constants are comparable to those evaluated on conventional bulk material. Apart from shortening the build time, lightweight structures also significantly reduce deflections of the model.


Three experiments were conducted to explore the effects of gasified biochar on contrasting temperate soil types in East Anglia, an agricultural area in eastern England, with a focus on the influence of soil properties.
In a laboratory experiment comparing eight dissimilar soil types, adding up to 2.5% biochar improved field capacity by up to 42% (15% on average) and available water capacity by up to 48% (22% on average), but silty soils were less responsive. BD was reduced by up to 19% (10% on average).
In a three-season outdoor pot trial with spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), four soil types were treated with biochar (at 0%, 0.1%, 0.5% & 2.5%). Biochar affected crop yield and soil properties, mainly positively, especially pH, CEC, base cations, field capacity, saturated hydraulic conductivity and some micronutrients. Positive yield responses appeared to be predominantly due to the influence of biochar on soil hydrology, increasing water-holding capacity on sandy soils in dry weather, while improving infiltration during excessively wet weather on a silty clay loam.
In a trial on three contrasting soils in one field, cropped with winter barley (Hordeum vulgare), biochar (at 0, 50 t ha–1 & 100 t ha–1) had a range of predominantly positive effects. There were no significant increases in crop yield in this well managed agroecosystem, but variables which responded significantly included pH, some nutrients in the soil and in the crop, and grain moisture content. There was also evidence that biochar improved grain quality by reducing grain protein content on sandy soils, and increasing it on loam, keeping it within the tolerable limits of the malting barley industry in both cases. Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) within the barley grain (Zn, Cu, As, Ni, Cd and Cr) were not raised to levels critical to food safety.
The overarching conclusion is that soil type, as defined by its physical, chemical and biological characteristics, is highly influential with respect to a range of effects that BC has on soil properties and crop responses, and that such characteristics need not only to be factored into future BC research, but should be the focus of studies aimed at identifying critical threshold values.


Recently, a number of authors have shown that by using dynamic trading strategies and/or investing in options, a portfolio's Sharpe ratio can be increased even when the portfolio manager has no "skill." The increased Sharpe ratio results from creating a return distribution that is significantly different from normal and typically has significant negative skewness. The author presents a generalized approach to calculating the Sharpe ratio of an asset or a portfolio when the return distribution is not necessarily normal. The procedure adjusts the entire distribution of the asset's return so that it will match the return distribution of a benchmark (e.g., S&P 500). The Sharpe ratio of the adjusted return can then be directly compared to that of the benchmark. The author applies the procedure to simulated data and the historical data on hedge fund indices.


Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council on the Family ("Pontifical Council"), speaks directly to the legal community with an important and timely message. In his article, "The Nature of Marriage and Its Various Aspects," Cardinal Trujillo calls for the development of an anthropology on sexuality, marriage, and the family based on natural law, which would include an analysis regarding the nature of the family, its link to the human person, and the proper role of the state. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the Holy See's perspective on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) with the aspiration of promoting further study and development of an authentic perspective of international human rights and the family. While looking at human rights through an anthropological lens, the article will explore how the UDHR remains an important touchstone for international dialogue.


Volume 19 of "Advances in International Marketing" is quite unique. It features essays in marketing and international business, written by doctoral alumni of Michigan State University. Based on the 2008 symposium held at Michigan State University (MSU), the authors offer personal reflections of the contributions their mentors, peers, and the larger academic community have made to their professional development. These deliberations serve to illustrate how individual research streams, whose foundations were established during the doctoral program, took off and became primary areas of specialization for individual alumni. The collective contribution of MSU doctoral alumni to the fields of international business and innovation/new products is truly remarkable. Such high visibility of MSU alumni in the international business literature undoubtedly is a major reason why MSU continues to receive high marks and rankings in academic circles.


For nearly half a century, the international wheat breeding system has delivered improved high yielding varieties of wheat that created (along with rice) the Green Revolution and underpinned strong growth in wheat productivity in irrigated and rainfed, developed and underdeveloped, regions. Future priorities for breeding and complementary sciences will still include yield but will also diversify in response to changing market demands and growing environments, particulary in developing countries. It is argued that in the coming decades research on wheat quality characteristics will become increasingly important to plant breeders, whose work will be supported by the development of markers and advanced tools from molecular biology. Breeders will have to contend with increased heat stress and variability stemming from climate change, which is expected to create regional winners, as the northern high latitudes grow warmer and moister, and losers, as the sub-tropics and tropics increasingly suffer from heat stress and drought. Yield response of improved varieties in farmers' fields depends to a very great degree on sustainable systems management, which also is essential to reverse the ongoing degradation of agricultural resources. Finally, the importance of expanding the systems lens from farmers to policy makers, and of linking farmers, commerce, science, and policy is illustrated for the rice-wheat farming systems of South Asia.


The main factor in the success of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods is that they can be implemented with little efforts in a large variety of settings. Many softwares have been developped such as BUGS and JAGS, that helped to popularize Bayesian methods. These softwares allow the user to define his statistical model in a so-called BUGS language, then runs MCMC algorithms as a black box.

Although sequential Monte Carlo methods have become a very popular class of numerical methods over the last 20 years, there is no such "black box software" for this class of methods. The BiiPS software, which stands for Bayesian Inference with Interacting Particle Systems, aims at bridging this gap. From a graphical model defined in BUGS language, it automatically implements sequential Monte Carlo algorithms and provides summaries of the posterior distributions. In this poster, we will highlight some of the features of the BiiPS software and an illustration of its application to a stochastic volatility model.


This paper investigates whether the educational choices that young people make after the completion of their GCSEs (at age 16) are influenced by their peers. More specifically, it takes advantage of the variation in peer groups that arises when students move from primary to secondary school in order to isolate the impact of secondary school peers on the choice of educational trajectory. These trajectories are broadly classified as academic, vocational, a combination of the two, or no education at all. In order to overcome the common problems associated with the identification of peer effects, the ability of the primary school peers of secondary school peers, who are not going to the same secondary school, is used as an instrument for secondary school peer group quality. These 'peers of peers' did not go to the same primary or secondary school as the individual of interest and so cannot have had any direct impact on them. Our results show that higher ability peers reduce the likelihood that an individual will choose a vocational course at age 16 after controlling for the individual's own ability. We also find a very strong effect of household income on education choices, showing that the more deprived a student's background is, the more likely they are to opt for a vocational trajectory over an academic one.


Weakly-supervised object detection (WOD) is a challenging problems in computer vision. The key problem is to simultaneously infer the exact object locations in the training images and train the object detectors, given only the training images with weak image-level labels. Intuitively, by simulating the selective attention mechanism of human visual system, saliency detection technique can select attractive objects in scenes and thus is a potential way to provide useful priors for WOD. However, the way to adopt saliency detection in WOD is not trivial since the detected saliency region might be possibly highly ambiguous in complex cases. To this end, this paper first comprehensively analyzes the challenges in applying saliency detection to WOD. Then, we make one of the earliest efforts to bridge saliency detection to WOD via the self-paced curriculum learning, which can guide the learning procedure to gradually achieve faithful knowledge of multi-class objects from easy to hard. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can successfully bridge saliency detection and WOD tasks and achieve the state-of-the-art object detection results under the weak supervision.


Through the lens of transnational feminist theory, this study examines the UN Women HeForShe campaign as a global solidarity movement for gender equality. Using a transnational feminist framework and critical discourses analysis methodology, the study analyzed the official campaign website homepage and more than 100 tweets on the day of and month following the public launch of the campaign on September 20, 2014. This study explored the campaign's launch to its online audience, particularly on social media. In particular, it examined the HeForShe campaign discourse with attention to three primary areas: systemic problems of hegemonic masculinity, universal values and Western perceptions about gender politics. The study found that the campaign challenged hegemonic masculinity through constructions of solidarity. However, the campaign largely reproduced male dominance through depictions of stereotypical male characteristics and the traditional man vs. woman gender binary system. As an effort on behalf of the United Nations, the campaign also employed a universal human rights framework to legitimize its gender equality goals, which in turn reinforced a westernized message despite the global nature of the campaign. As a result, this thesis is useful for scholarship on social media, particularly in social justice activist settings, and the role of discourse in shaping audience perceptions about issues of inequality.


The main emphasis in the Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) guidelines are in the areas of good quality chest compressions, ensuring normoventilation, removal of atropine from the cardiac arrest algorithm, removal of the use of the endotracheal route for drug administration, and renewed focus on the care provided after return of spontaneous circulation. In addition, the need for monitoring of quality of the various care procedures is emphasised. While the various ACLS procedures are being carried out, there is a need to minimise interruptions to chest compressions for maintenance of coronary perfusion pressures. In addition, the resuscitation team needs to continually look out for reversible causes of the cardiac arrest.


Sponsored by the Technical Committee on Structural Design of the Technical Administrative Committee on Analysis and Computation of the Technical Activities Division of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. This report documents the dramatic new developments in the field of structural optimization over the last two decades. Changes in both computational techniques and applications can be seen by developments in computational methods and solution algorithms, the role of optimization during the various stages of structural design, and the stochastic nature of design in relation to structural optimization. Topics include: methods for discrete variable structural optimization; decomposition methods in structural optimization; state of the art on the use of genetic algorithms in design of steel structures; conceptual design optimization of engineering structures; topology and geometry optimization of trusses and frames; evolutionary structural optimization; design and optimization of semi-rigid framed structures; optimized performance-based design for buildings; multi-objective optimum design of seismic-resistant structures; and reliability- and cost-oriented optimal bridge maintenance planning. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography of journal papers on structural optimization published between 1987 and 1999.


that has intrigued researchers for years. Numerous tools and techniques have been developed to determine bottleneck and available bandwidths but none of these methods provide a simple solution that is accurate, efficient, and flexible. Such a solution is simply not practical for IPv4 networks. Fortunately, the next generation Internet Protocol, IP version 6, has the functionality necessary to implement feedback mechanisms to assist in accurate bandwidth estimations. In this paper we present a method to accurately and efficiently determine the network bandwidth in IPv6 networks through the use of a proposed timestamp option for the IPv6 hop-by-hop extension header.


The javan green peafowl ( Pavo muticus muticus ) is a endangered bird species. They have big pressure to the population and the habitat. The fact that the birds are still exist on their local distribution. Behavior ecology of javan green peafowl is dealing with activities, mechanism and strategies of the birds in relation to their environment. The aimed of the study is to obtain data and information of ecological adaptation strategies through the behavior activities, mechanism and strategies of javan green peafowl in-relation to their habitat types. Ad libitum sampling method was used on continuous recording every peafowl activities in relation with duration, frequencies mechanism and strategy were influenced by habitat type's condition. Chi-squre test was used for statistical analysis to know different behavior has influenced by habitat types. The result shown that the javan green peafowl habitat typse has significant influenced on duration of the activities but not at the activities pattern. The walking during the feeding. select shading places or luxuriant trees close to feeding site, choosing tall trees or emergent trees close to open area as roost site, open area also road as display or dancing area, open area which grow shrubs as nesting site are javan green peafowl ecological behavior strategies. The mechanism and strategies of javan green peafowl behavior ecology are related to avoid from disturbance and to adapt their habitat type's conditions.


Gramsci and Tocqueville in America AS INTELLECTUAL HISTORIANS have often had occasion to observe, there are times in a nation's history when certain ideas are just "in the air." Admittedly, this point seems to fizzle when applied to our particular historical moment. On the surface of American politics, as many have had cause to mention, it appears that the main trends predicted over a decade ago in Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?" have come to pass -- that ideological (if not partisan) strife has been muted; that there is a general consensus about the most important questions of the day (capitalism, not socialism; democracy, not authoritarianism); and that the contemporary controversies that do exist, while occasionally momentous, are essentially mundane, concerned with practical problem-solving (whether it is better to count ballots by hand or by machine) rather than with great principles. And yet, I would argue, all that is true only on the surface. For simultaneously in the United States of the past few decades, recurring philosophical concepts have not only remained "in the air," but have proved influential, at times decisive, in cultural and legal and moral arguments about the most important questions facing the nation. Indeed: Prosaic appearances to the contrary, beneath the surface of American politics an intense ideological struggle is being waged between two competing worldviews. I will call these "Gramscian" and "Tocquevillian" after the intellectuals who authored the warring ideas -- the twentieth-century Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, and, of course, the nineteenth-century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville. The stakes in the battle between the intellectual heirs of these two men are no less than what kind of country the United States will be in decades to come. Refining class warfare WE'LL BEGIN WITH an overview of the thought of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), a Marxist intellectual and politician. Despite his enormous influence on today's politics, he remains far less well-known to most Americans than does Tocqueville. Gramsci's main legacy arises through his departures from orthodox Marxism. Like Marx, he argued that all societies in human history have been divided into two basic groups: the privileged and the marginalized, the oppressor and the oppressed, the dominant and the subordinate. Gramsci expanded Marx's ranks of the "oppressed" into categories that still endure. As he wrote in his famous Prison Notebooks, "The marginalized groups of history include not only the economically oppressed, but also women, racial minorities and many 'criminals.'" What Marx and his orthodox followers described as "the people," Gramsci describes as an "ensemble" of subordinate groups and classes in every society that has ever existed until now. This collection of oppressed and marginalized groups -- "the people" -- lack unity and, often, even consciousness of their own oppression. To reverse the correlation of power from the privileged to the "marginalized," then, was Gramsci's declared goal. Power, in Gramsci's observation, is exercised by privileged groups or classes in two ways: through domination, force, or coercion; and through something called "hegemony," which means the ideological supremacy of a system of values that supports the class or group interests of the predominant classes or groups. Subordinate groups, he argued, are influenced to internalize the value systems and world views of the privileged groups and, thus, to consent to their own marginalization. Far from being content with a mere uprising, therefore, Gramsci believed that it was necessary first to delegitimize the dominant belief systems of the predominant groups and to create a counter-hegemony" (i.e., a new system of values for the subordinate groups) before the marginalized could be empowered. Moreover, because hegemonic values permeate all spheres of civil society -- schools, churches, the media, voluntary associations -- civil society itself, he argued, is the great battleground in the struggle for hegemony, the "war of position. …


There is a limited amount of information available on the mechanical and functional response of the nervous system to loading. While deformation of cerebral, spinal, or peripheral nerve tissue can have particularly severe consequences, most research in this area has concentrated on either demonstrating in-vivo functional changes and disclosing the effected anatomical pathways, or describing material deformations of the composite structure. Although such studies have successfully produced repeatable traumas, they have not addressed the mechanisms of these mechanically induced injuries. Therefore, a single cell model is required in order to gain further understanding of this complex phenomena. An isolated squid giant axon was subjected to controlled uniaxial loading and its mechanical and physiological responses were monitored with an instrument specifically designed for these experiments. These results determined that the mechanical properties of the isolated axon are similar to those of other soft tissues, and include features such as a nonlinear load-deflection curve and a hysteresis loop upon unloading. The mechanical response was modeled with the quasi-linear viscoelastic theory (Fung, 1972). The physiological response of the axon to quasi-static loading was a small reversible hyperpolarization; however, as the rate of loading was increased, the axon depolarized and the magnitude and the time needed to recover to the original resting potential increased in a nonlinear fashion. At elongations greater than twenty percent an irreversible injury occurs and the membrane potential does not completely recover to baseline.


The Urban Millennium, as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA, 2007)1 terms this century's anticipated mass urbanisation, is well upon us. Yet what is this millennial thing that we enter into or that, more precisely, is settling upon us? The sheer volume of discourses seeking to account for the urban likely point to deeper cultural anxieties about the worth, utility, and even the sense of cities. Worse, the plethora of claims on the evolving value of urban place potentially operate as cover for something far more disconcerting – what Jean-Luc Nancy, recognising a lapse in world-naming and centring (as found in the perenial papal address Urbi et orbi), has referred to as a building "glomicity", a planetary urbanism without urbanity or civility (2007: 37). For Saskia Sassen, cities contribute to a "savage sorting" subsisting with the hyper-financialisation and reduction of the social and public realms worldwide (2014: 4). As such we might wonder at the sheer brutality (nevermind banality) of the commodification unfolding with the network vectors of the urban phenomenon. Further, if we follow Arjun Appadurai and James Holston (2003), cities – with their sorting out of the trustworthy from the suspicious, the haves from the have-nots and the positing of new economic and cultural elites - are at one level antithetical to national territoriality, and at another, are incubators precisely where the tumult of citizenship is worked out against a backdrop of highly contested, sometimes violently contested, identity claims.
Henri Lefebvre (2003), rejecting appeals to 'the city' itself as a meaningful measure of post-industrial sociality, has asserted, as early as the 1960s, the irreversable presencing of a global, "urban phenomenon", one problematically fitting out the world according to the socioeconomic and sociopolitical fields of global capitalism. Such a phenomenon, for Lefebvre, testifies to a plethora of far from synchronous logics – of "things (objects) [,…] of play (or sports)", of capital etc. – to the point that "there are faults, voids, and lacunae everywhere" (2003: 86). Consequently, any analysis of the operational levels of the urban phenomenon and its object and spatial fields, reveal a remainder irreducable to the logistics attempting to take hold of it. If for Lefebvre something like a "differential space" - of heterogenous aggregation or accumulation (2003: 125) - defines the urban, and one only operates within it as if in a "blind field", a quest to know the urban phenomenon comes up against a "virtual object" of uncertain ontological basis. If for Lefebvre, in the previous century a metaphilosophy of the urban was demanded (2003: 64-65) , what contra-philosophy might be aposite for this urban millennium? With this in mind, we invite you to contribute your own projects and thoughts on an urban metaphilosophy in the forthcoming issue of Interstices, Journal of Architecture and Related Arts titled "The Urban Thing".
For Bruno Latour (reading Martin Heidegger), the etymology of the word 'thing' reveals beneath our now routine association of it with mute objects and brute materiality, a cluster of older associations centred on public assembly and political convening. Taking things themselves to be indicative of complex assemblies, Latour calls for a substitution of a Realpolitik - itself underwritten by a human/nonhuman division - by a Dingpolitik, a new attendance on the articulatory, conjoining agency of things themselves. What might a Dingpolitik of the urban that resists or is richer in intimacy than commodity culture offer? What ontological frameworks might counter older logics of expulsion? Might the new object ontologies centred on the autonomy of things offer renewed vantage - Karen Barad's "material-discursive practices" (2007: 146), Graham Harman's (2005) "object orientated philosophy" or Katherine Hayles' (2013) speculative aesthetics for instance? Are there as yet unrecognised complexities harboured by our culture of ubiquitous things as suggested in Bill Brown's "thing theory" (2004)? Or might today's exclusionary logic directed to peoples and biosphere draw on Giorgio Agamben's (2007) thinking through of the cultic drive underwriting capitalist profanation? Do Tonino Griffero's (2014) atmospheric "quasi-objects" or Latour's "phantom public" provide better expositional tools for apprehending the urban phenomenon today? Indeed, what do we get at all by thinking about phenomena and things themselves as 'urban things'?
Please submit full papers for the Interstices 16 journal issue to Dr Susan Hedges (email@example.com) by 19 June 2015.
Interstices accepts both academic and practice-oriented, fully written as well as visual, contributions that engage with the issue theme. For the double blind refereed section of the journal, we welcome submission of 5000 word papers and visual submissions with an accompanying text of approximately 500 words. For the non-refereed section, we welcome papers up to 2500 words and project reports and reviews of up to 1000 words. Visit our website to view the Guidelines for Submissions for details about the reviewing process, copyright issues and formatting: http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/. We look forward to your contribution!
Issue Editors: Andrew Douglas & Hannah Hopewell
References:
Agamben, G. (2007). Profanations (J. Fort, Trans.). New York, NY: Zone Books.
Appadurai, A. & Holston, J. (2003). Cities and citizenship. In N. Brenner, B. Jessop. M. Jones, G. MacLeod (Eds.), State/space: A reader (pp. 296-308). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum Physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC & London, England: Duke University Press.
Brown, B. (2004). Thing theory. In Brown, B. (Ed.), Things (pp. 1-22). Chicago, Ill & London, England: The University of Chicago Press.
Griffero, T. (2014). Atmospheres: Aesthetics of emotional space (S. De Sanctis, Trans.). Farnham, England & Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press.
Harman, G. (2005). Guerrilla metaphysics: Phenomenology and the carpentry of things. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing.
Hayles, N. K. (2014). Speculative aesthetics and object orientated inquiry (OOI). Speculations: A journal of speculative realism, 158-179.
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or how to make things public. In, Making things public – atmospheres of democracy, exhibition catalogue, March-August 2005, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karslruhe.
Lefebvre, H. (2003). The urban revolution (R. Bononno, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN & London, England: University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2007). Urbis et Orbi (F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew, Trans.). In The Creation of the world or Globalization (pp. 31-56). New York, NY: Suny Press.
Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard University Press.


The increasing popularity of cloud computing has led to the increased use of virtualization technologies and underlying features. Many virtualization and cloud platforms are being used independently or in conjunction with another environment to offer cloud services. Most of these cloud services are being offered and shared across multiple customers. Multiple customers on the same cloud enable features like multi-tenancy and resource sharing. However, this also raises a few concerns on the identity of the cloud users and confidentiality of the data and its privacy. Many researchers are still working on multi tenancy, data protection and identity management in the field of cloud computing. Hence, this paper presents a Single Sign-On(SSO) solution for a data center that addresses the issues of multi-tenancy and cloud security for IaaS and SaaS applications. The research is carried out with the goal to develop a pluggable middleware for cloud authentication. The middleware should be able to provide SSO using a custom built identity management system called `Membership'. It is possible to integrate cloud services on the service level or the database level. Hence, this paper further discusses the research and testing executed to ensure optimal approach on how Single Sign-On, IDS system `Membership' and cloud services can be integrated to mitigate security risks with the multi-tenant cloud. As a proof of concept, this paper develops a fully functional cloud, offering IaaS and SaaS solutions served over a Single Sign-On.


This dissertation adopts an innovative tripartite approach in recording and reaching an
adequate understanding of a hitherto untheorised and under-investigated rock art complex
situated in Northern Greece. Post-structuralism and phenomenology form the theoretical ground
on which this study is founded. It phenomenologically explores a set of experiences not
restricted to vision but related to a multi-sensory, bodily engagement with the art and the land in
which it exists. It also examines the structuring of the motifs in relation to their location in the
landscape in order to identify possible patterns indicative of the social actions that generated
them and of which they are the material traces. The parameters of this art are then placed and
assessed against what is known about the cultural background of the makers from historical
sources. This study demonstrates that the conceptual and the experiential are inextricably
linked, and thus structuralism and phenomenology are not mutually exclusive as has been often
thought. The third aspect of my approach, namely the use of historical literature, allows
assessment of the way that structures of meaning might relate to a specific cultural context. The
overall aim of this thesis is to evaluate the role that the decoration of rocks may have played in
the social construction of landscapes and the constitution of the social self.


Trichomonas vaginalis is a protozoan parasite of humans that is able to synthesize cysteine de novo using cysteine synthase but does not produce glutathione. In this study, high pressure liquid chromatography analysis confirmed that cysteine is the major intracellular redox buffer by showing that T. vaginalis contains high levels of cysteine (∼600 μm) comprising more than 70% of the total thiols detected. To investigate possible mechanisms for the regulation of cysteine levels in T. vaginalis, we have characterized enzymes of the mercaptopyruvate pathway. This consists of an aspartate aminotransferase (TvAspAT1), which transaminates cysteine to form 3-mercaptopyruvate (3-MP), and mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase (TvMST), which transfers the sulfur of 3-MP to a nucleophilic acceptor, generating pyruvate. TvMST has high activity with 3-MP as a sulfur donor and can use several thiol compounds as sulfur acceptor substrates. Our analysis indicated that TvMST has a kcat/Km for reduced thioredoxin of 6.2 × 107 m−1 s−1, more than 100-fold higher than that observed for β-mercaptoethanol and cysteine, suggesting that thioredoxin is a preferred substrate for TvMST. Thiol trapping and mass spectrometry provided direct evidence for the formation of thioredoxin persulfide as a product of this reaction. The thioredoxin persulfide could serve a biological function such as the transfer of the persulfide to a target protein or the sequestered release of sulfide for biosynthesis. Changes in MST activity of T. vaginalis in response to variation in the supply of exogenous cysteine are suggestive of a role for the mercaptopyruvate pathway in the removal of excess intracellular cysteine, redox homeostasis, and antioxidant defense.


This paper studies how an accountant's method of aggregating information in a financial report is affected by differences in the reliability and relevance of components of the report. We study a firm that hires an accountant to produce a report that reveals information to investors regarding the returns to the firm's past investments. In constructing the report, the accountant must combine information elicited from the firm's manager with other information directly observable to the accountant. The manager's information is assumed to be directly observable only by the manager and to be of superior quality to the other information available to the accountant. Reliability-relevance trade-offs arise because as the accountant places more weight on the manager's report, potentially more useful information gets included in the report, at the cost of encouraging the manager to distort his or her information to a greater extent. Capital market participants anticipate this behavior and price the firm accordingly. We show how the market's price response to the release of the firm's aggregate report, the efficiency of the firm's investment decisions, and the manager's incentives to manipulate the soft information under his or her control are all affected by-and affect-the aggregation procedure the accountant adopts. In addition, we identify a broad range of circumstances under which aggregated reports are strictly more efficient than disaggregated reports because aggregation tempers the manager's misreporting incentives. We also demonstrate that, as any given component of the aggregated accounting report becomes softer, the equilibrium level of the firm's investment diminishes and the market places greater weight on the remaining components of the report. Copyright University of Chicago on behalf of the Institute of Professional Accounting, 2004.


Background: Mediastinal lymphadenopathy (MLAP) is observed in various conditions of malignant or benign diseases. The two common diseases leading to MLAP are mediastinal lymphomas and sarcoidosis. The aim of study is to describe distinctive lymph node involvement patterns with sarcoidosis and lymphoma defined by PET-CT. Materials and Methods: 82 patients (45 women and 37 men) with a median age of 53.5 (21-88) years who had PET-CT for differential diagnose for MLAP were evaluated retrospectively. 31 (37.8%) patients diagnosed sarcoidosis, and 51 (62.2%) lymphoma that had histologically proven by various surgical procedures. Results: There were no statistical difference between gender, age and average SUV max of groups (p = 0.068, p = 0.846, p = 0.338). 26 of 31 patient (83.9%) of sarcoidosis group had abnormal findings compared the lymphoma group (51.0%) which showed statistically significant difference (p = 0.003). Meanwhile there were no statistical difference between hilar lymph nodes and liver involvement among the groups (p = 0.239 and p = 0.917), cervical, axillary, abdominal lymph nodes and spleen involvement was significantly higher in the lymphoma group (p = 0.008, p < 0.001, p < 0.001 and p = 0.001). Bone marrow (BM) involvement were also significantly higher in lymphoma group (p < 0.001). Conclusions: There are no specific MLAP findings to differentiate sarcoidosis from lymphomas by PET-CT. It is more likely that the pathological conclusion will be consistent with lymphoma rather than sarcoidosis, in case of involvement of cervical, abdominal and axillary lymph nodes, spleen and BM involvement; however abnormal pulmonary parenchymal findings are in the favor of the diagnosis of sarcoidosis.


Invert-emulsion systems, which have been used since the 1950's, consist of a continuous oil phase and an aqueous internal phase. The aqueous internal phase typically consists of a calcium chloride brine solution. In this paper it was found that a polyglycerol additive led to consistent trends of increased rates of penetration (ROP), reduced stick-slip, and improved wellbore stability. This paper verifies that the novel polyglycerol acts as a water-activity control agent and functions better than a calcium chloride invert-emulsion drilling fluid. This water activity control agent is a proprietary blend of polyglycerols with low alkalinity and is completely soluble in water and brines. This innovative additive minimizes wellbore shale hydration by optimizing the water phase's activity. The additive strengthens the wellbore and inhibits fluid interactions with formation clays. The additive also reduces the coefficient of friction, which increases ROP and reduces torque and drag in high-angle wellbores. Reducing axial and rotational stick-slip allows for prolonged bit and tool life, resulting in more time on bottom drilling and less time tripping. The cumulative performance improvements reduce total well costs. This paper discusses an on-going, seven-year, field application in the Rocky Mountains of this novel invert-emulsion drilling fluid system. Results improved over time and led to optimized operational efficiencies.


Disruptions and delays in railway traffic networks due to different types of disturbances is a frequent problem in many countries. When disruptions occur, the train traffic dispatchers may need to re-schedule the traffic and this is often a very demanding and complicated task. To support the train traffic dispatchers, we propose to use a parallelized multi-strategy based greedy algorithm. This paper presents three different parallelization approaches: (i) Single Strategy with a Partitioned List (i.e. the parallel processes originate from different starting points), (ii) Multiple Strategies with a Non-Partitioned List, and (iii) Multiple Strategies with a Partitioned List. We present an evaluation for a busy part of the Swedish railway network based on performance metrics such as the sum of all train delays at their final destinations and the number of delayed trains. The results show that parallelization helps to improve the solution quality. The parallel approach (iii) that combines all re-scheduling strategies with a partitioned list performs best among the three parallel approaches when minimizing the total final delay. The main conclusion is that the multi-strategy based parallel approach significantly improves the solution for 11 out of 20 disturbance scenarios, as compared to the sequential re-scheduling algorithm. The approach also provides an increased stability since it always delivers a feasible solution in short time.


PURPOSE
To report the characteristics of confocal blue reflectance imaging in type 2 idiopathic macular telangiectasia (type 2 IMT).

METHODS
In a prospective observational cross-sectional study, both eyes of 33 patients with type 2 IMT were examined by means of fundus biomicroscopy, fundus photography, fluorescein angiography, and optical coherence tomography (OCT). Confocal blue reflectance (CBR) imaging was performed using a confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope (HRA2; Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany). To compare the results derived from different imaging modalities, an analysis was performed using image analysis software (Heidelberg Eye Explorer; Heidelberg Engineering).

RESULTS
CBR imaging revealed a parafoveal area of increased reflectance that was slightly larger than the area of hyperfluorescence in late-phase fluorescein angiography. The area usually encompassed an oval parafoveal area, but sectors could be spared. A parafoveal area of increased CBR was detected in 98% of eyes that showed angiographic evidence for type 2 IMT.

CONCLUSIONS
CBR imaging is a new, noninvasive, and sensitive method that may contribute to differentiate type 2 IMT from other diseases. Abnormalities of macular pigment distribution and Müller cell pathology may contribute to the phenomenon of increased CBR and thus the pathophysiology of type 2 IMT.


Biotechnological processes represent a challenge in the control field, due to their high nonlinearity. In particular, continuous alcoholic fermentation from Zymomonas mobilis (Z.m) presents a significant challenge. This bioprocess has high ethanol performance, but it exhibits an oscillatory behavior in process variables due to the influence of inhibition dynamics (rate of ethanol concentration) over biomass, substrate, and product concentrations. In this work a new solution for control of biotechnological variables in the fermentation process is proposed, based on numerical methods and linear algebra. In addition, an improvement to a previously reported state estimator, based on particle filtering techniques, is used in the control loop. The feasibility estimator and its performance are demonstrated in the proposed control loop. This methodology makes it possible to develop a controller design through the use of dynamic analysis with a tested biomass estimator in Z.m and without the use of complex calculations.


Firms aggressively seek a competitive advantage over rivals. A voluminous body of strategy scholarship has identified numerous sources of competitive advantage. Yet, the notion that law may be a source of competitive advantage remains largely unexplored. This is surprising given the significant time and resources managers dedicate to legal issues. This article examines whether legal resources can generate a sustainable competitive advantage for firms. This article also identifies firm attributes and managerial attitudes that might encourage legally strategic thinking. This article concludes that law can be a source of a sustainable competitive advantage and numerous variables exist worthy of future study.


Electronic commerce (EC) involves business transactions, marketing efforts, information gathering, and other functional activities with respect to information technology (IT) both within and without an organization. It provides various opportunities to a firm to adopt different business sourcing models and allows new opportunities to configure organizational structure for both private and public companies within the New Economy. Critical factors for EC success dictate that the firm must re-evaluate its business sourcing model from with complexity theory and the New Economy, thereby emphasizing the need for the firm to effectively coordinate its EC initiatives and consider all sourcing opportunities in this nonlinear, decentralized, alliance-focused, and CRM-based environment. This research will build from 1) an understanding of EC, to 2) the complex systems of EC in the New Economy, to 3) the sourcing mode used in the EC business model.


Exercise-induced endothelial shear stress (ESS) has been proposed as a molecular mechanism that regulates the expression of genes involved in the protection against atherosclerosis. However, research on this topic has not considered the pulsatile nature of blood flow for in vivo ESS estimations. PURPOSE: to analyze the effect of pulsatile exercise-induced ESS on endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), superoxide dismutase (SOD), vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) mRNA expression of human carotid artery endothelial cells. METHODS: A reverse translational approach was employed for this study. First, an in vivo assessment, a total of 24 apparently healthy young subjects (14 females and 10 males) were recruited to perform two exercise tests on a cycle ergometer. The first test was a maximal incremental test which established the workloads for the next session, according to lactate levels. The second one, performed at least 48 hours after the first exercise test, was a steady-state test at lactate levels of <2 mmol/L for 5 minutes. Left common carotid artery diameters and velocities were recorded through Doppler ultrasound. Microhematocrit measurement was used to determine blood density (ρ) and viscosity (μ). ESS was calculated by Womersley's approximation, ESS = μ * 2K * Velocity/Diameter, where K is a function of Womersley's parameter (α). Thereafter, in an in vitro experiment, commercially available human carotid artery endothelial cells were cultured on 6 slides until 95-100% confluence and were randomly assigned to no ESS exposure or were exposed to anterograde pulsatile flow (OsciFlow®) in a flow chamber (Streamer®) for 35 minutes, simulating exercise-induced ESS from the previous assessments. Finally, eNOS, SOD, VCAM-1, and ICAM-1 mRNA expression were compared between both groups, using GAPDH as the housekeeping gene. RESULTS: Exercise-induced ESS for lactate <2 mmol was on average 56.32 (14.82) dynes/cm2. A significant increment on eNOS mRNA expression (P<0.05) and a significant reduction on SOD mRNA expression (P<0.05) were observed on those cells exposed to exercise-induced ESS compared to the group without ESS exposure. No significant differences were detected on mRNA expression of VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 between both groups. CONCLUSION: Pulsatile ESS generated during 35 minutes of low-intensity cycling might favor the upregulation of eNOS and the downregulation of SOD which in turn could provide a molecular explanation of the beneficial effects of exercise on atherosclerosis.


A methodology is described to analyze and interpret the temporal variation; of temperature and current measured in lakes or on the continental shelf by generally available standard and robusi equipment, a single thermistor chain, and current meters. It is assumed that variations are mainly produced by internal wave modes propagating in the mean flow and mean stratification. The analysis provides estimates of the propagation characteristics, energy density, and directional flux of the internal waves, as well as the temporal and vertical distribution of Richardson number, Ri, on scales that may be smaller than those separating the measuring instruments. The method is tested with measurements made in Lake Geneva, and provides realistic quantitative estimates of the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy per unit mass, ϵ, and of the vertical diffusivity, Kv, which are useful in establishing the processes leading to diapycnal mixing.


An increase of the deceleration in high-speed and high-density train operations degrades riding comfort and frequently causes wheel skids. This requires an introduction of the control technology to upgrade the control performance of brake systems on railway vehicles. We are now studying control methods for a mechanical brake that uses friction and pneumatic pressure, including nonlinear elements as the basis of a brake force. Furthermore, the system itself has certain "dead time," which is not negligible and makes control difficult. One of our targets is to develop a brake control device that can control the deceleration in accordance with a decelerating pattern that optimizes the riding comfort of trains and prevents wheel skids. In this paper, a design method of the controller for the deceleration tracking control and the system compensating the dead time are proposed. Finally, the effects of them are confirmed through computer simulations and experimental results on a dynamo test stand.


The scattering phenomenon from an arbitrary-shaped end of a asymmetrical slab waveguide for the cases of TE and TM guided modes is simulated by means of boundary integral equations that are called guided-mode extracted integral equations. The integral equations that we derive can be solved by the conventional boundary-element method. Numerical results are presented for problems of three-layer asymmetrical waveguides with tilted ends. The reflection coefficient, reflected and scattered powers, and radiation patterns are calculated numerically for the cases of incident TE and TM guided modes.


Poor project cost performance is one of the vital issues challenging successful construction project delivery particularly in developing countries such as Nigeria. This issue is endemic particularly in Low-cost housing (LcH) projects with adverse effects on delivery, affordability of the target beneficiaries and housing situations in Nigeria. Past studies highlight the relationship between project cost management systems (CMS) and cost performances. However, extensive studies exploring the CMS for LcH project delivery in Nigeria are rare. Apparently, no contemporary attempts are made to proffer appropriate and well-developed systematic solutions indicating possible continuing trends of poor cost management and performances in LcH project delivery. Given this discovery, this research seeks to develop a cost management system model (CMSM) for LcH project delivery in Nigeria.
Empirical investigations explore the concepts of LcH project delivery, project cost management system (CMS) and implementation success factors (IMSF). The research leans towards an interpretivism perspective. It adopts a case study strategy and employs a sequential mixed method procedure for data collection and analysis at different phases of the research. A mix of focus group, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires facilitated data collection and thematic- content analysis and statistical analysis (percentages, relative agreement index, Kruskal-Wallis, and exploratory factor analysis) for data analysis. Research findings reveal that popular CMS employed by the Project Management Teams (PMT) are incapable of delivering effective LcH project cost performances following three key constraints: difficulty to effectively set target cost, plan and perform real-time project cost monitoring and control, creating rooms for variations and overruns. These limitations were traceable to inappropriate use of cost management techniques, process approach alongside 18 implementation barriers. Integrating Target costing, Earn value analysis, a cost- design-control process approach and consideration of three key IMSF namely effective team qualities, effective information and management actions and stable operational environment were identified measures to improve current CMS efficacy.
The research findings were used to develop the CMSM and its operational guide employing three modelling techniques: conventional process modelling, interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and the interpretive ranking process (IRP). These modelling techniques enhanced the design and understanding of the contextual relationships between the techniques, process, and IMSF in the CMS. The IRP and ISM used in this study are novel contributions to construction research, particularly in the area of LcH project cost management. The validation of the CMSM shows its capability to facilitate improved project cost management towards effective cost performances of LcH projects. The CMSM will assist the PMT to set effectively, plan, monitor, and control costs in LcH project delivery in Nigeria.


First paragraphs : Hallsworth and Wong ask the question, "Does encouraging urban gardening in private and/or community lots meaningfully improve [Vancouver's] food system?" (2013, p. 3). They believe the answer is no, but community gardens and urban agriculture do impact a city's food system. Are they the only solution? No. In our world of recessions and fiscal cliffs, so much seems to revolve solely on economics while other significant benefits are often discredited or diminished. Community gar-dens are important aspects of an urban landscape for its people and environment, but also do impact the economics, on the individual and community levels as well. Even though most plots are relatively small, a community gardener is able to produce a significant amount of produce. During World War II, "20 million victory gardeners produced 44 percent of the fresh vegetables in the United States" (WhyHunger, 2011, "Vegetables for Victory," para. 2). More recently, "studies have estimated that a community garden can yield around USD500 to USD2,000 worth of produce per family a year" (PolicyLink, n.d., "Why Use It?" bullet "Save families money..."). And not only do community gardeners grow healthy produce, but they eat it. A study in Denver found that compared to non¬gardeners or home gardeners, community gardeners ate significantly more fruits and vegetables (Litt, Soobader, Turbin, Hale, Buchenau, & Marshall, 2011). While the food grown in community gardens is not enough to sustain one, it does affect the gardener's food budget and is healthy produce that otherwise may not have been accessible to him or her. "A study of all food stores in three low-income zip codes in Detroit found that only 19 percent, or fewer than one in five stores, carried a minimal 'healthy food basket' [of] products based on the food pyramid" (Pothukuchi, 2003, p. 5). Additionally, for many immigrants, this might be the only way to have access to crops they have a tradition of eating. ....


Attaining near-normoglycaemia in patients with diabetes is essential if diabetes-related complications are to be minimised. Attempts to optimise glycaemic control are often limited by the infrequent nature of current home blood glucose monitoring systems and fear of hypoglycaemia. We evaluated the potential benefit of the GlucoWatch® Biographer, a non-invasive glucose monitoring device designed to give a frequent measure of blood glucose and provide early warning of hypoglycaemia or hyperglycaemia, in five subjects with type 1 diabetes over a three week period.

Subjects found the device easy to use, obtaining 762 usable readings out of a possible 1168 (65%) although all experienced some degree of skin irritation. They felt that the device facilitated continuous blood glucose monitoring and thought that high and low glucose alarms were helpful. Subjects experienced between one and six hypoglycaemia alarms per day, usually 20 to 60 min before the appearance of clinical symptoms, and between zero and four hyperglycaemia alarms per day. The degree to which the device can improve glycaemic control remains to be evaluated. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This study provides a unified growth theory to correctly predict the initially negative and subsequently positive relationship between child mortality and net reproduction observed in industrialized countries over the course of their demographic transitions. The model captures the intricate interplay between technological progress, mortality, fertility and economic growth in the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. It identifies a number of structural breaks over the course of development, suggesting a high degree of complexity regarding the relationships between various economic and demographic variables.


Everyone experienced in international arbitration knows how important it is to ensure that the respondent is properly notified of the arbitration. No mistakes can be afforded at this crucial stage of the proceedings. Should the notification fail, the arbitral award cannot, and should not, be enforced. If the notification is inadequate, and the respondent fails to take part in the arbitral proceedings (so-called ex parte proceedings), there will unquestionably be difficulties in enforcing the arbitral award if the respondent chooses not to comply with it.
It is very rarely that Swedish courts deny recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. However, in a recent case from the Swedish Supreme Court, enforcement of an award was denied in Sweden due to lack of proper notification. The case clearly illustrates how critical and important proper notification is in cross-border disputes. Moreover, the case raises questions about the arbitral institutions' responsibility and practices in this regard.


Normal host cells are protected from the destructive action of complement by cell surface complement regulatory proteins. In humans, decay-accelerating factor (DAF) and membrane cofactor protein (MCP) play such a biologic role by inhibiting C3 and C5 convertases. DAF and MCP accomplish this task by specific mechanisms designated decay- accelerating activity and factor I cofactor activity, respectively. In other species, including mice, structural and/or functional homologues of these proteins are not yet well characterized. Previous studies have shown that the mouse protein Crry/p65 has certain characteristics of self-protecting complement regulatory proteins. For example, Crry/p65 is expressed on a wide variety of murine cells, and when expressed on human K562 erythroleukemic cells, it prevents deposition of mouse C3 fragments on the cell surface during activation of either the classical or alternative complement pathway. We have now studied factor I cofactor and decay-accelerating activities of Crry/p65. Recombinant Crry/p65 demonstrates cofactor activity for factor I-mediated cleavage of both mouse C3b and C4b. Surprisingly, Crry/p65 also exhibits decay- accelerating activity for the classical pathway C3 convertase strongly and for the alternative pathway C3 convertase weakly. Therefore, mouse Crry/p65 uses the specific mechanisms of both human MCP and DAF. Although Crry/p65, like MCP and DAF, contains tandem short consensus repeats (SCR) characteristic of C3/C4 binding proteins, Crry/p65 is not considered to be a genetic homologue of either MCP or DAF. Thus, Crry/p65 is an example of evolutionary conservation of two specific activities in a single unique protein in one species that are dispersed to individual proteins in another. We propose that the repeating SCR motif in this family has allowed this unusual process of evolution to occur, perhaps driven by the use of MCP and DAF as receptors by human pathogens such as the measles virus.


Combining a guide for the Museum visitor with scholarly discussions of all objects on display, this catalogue provides background on the society, history, technology, and commerce of the Etruscan and Faliscan cultures from the ninth through the first centuries B.C. Several groups of material illustrate social, historical, and technological phenomena currently at the forefront of scholarly debate and study, such as the crucial period of the turnover from Iron Age hut villages to the fully urbanized princely Etruscan cities, the development and extent of ancient literacy, and the position of women and children in ancient societies. Many special objects seldom found or generally inaccessible in the United States include Faliscan tomb groups, Etruscan inscriptions, helmets, and trade goods. The catalogue presents and analyzes objects of warfare, weaving, animals, religious beliefs, architectural and terracotta roofing ornaments, Etruscan bronze-working for utensils, weapons, and artwork, and fine, generic portraiture. It discusses the symbolic meaning of such objects deposited in tombs as a chariot buried with a Faliscan lady at Narce, a senator's folding stool buried in a later tomb at Chiusi, and a pair of horse bits with the teeth of a chariot team still adhering to them where the teeth fell when sacrificed for a funeral in the fifth-century necropolis at Tarquinia-much later than the horse sacrifice was previously known in Etruria.


A technique for enhanced generation of selected high harmonics in a gas medium, in a high ionization limit, is proposed in this paper. An aperiodically corrugated hollow-core fiber is employed to modulate the intensity of the fundamental laser pulse along the direction of propagation, resulting in multiple quasi-phase-matched high harmonic emissions at the cutoff region. Simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is applied for optimizing the aperiodic hollow-core fiber. Our simulation shows that the yield of selected harmonics is increased equally by up to 2 orders of magnitude compared with no modulation and this permits flexible control of the quasi-phase-matched emission of selected harmonics by appropriate corrugation.


In arguments made about the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea there is not always a clear distinction between attempts to determine what Zeno was originally trying to argue and how Zeno's arguments have influenced, or been used in, modern mathematics.

In this Dissertation it is argued that if one is interested in determining the original purpose of Zeno's arguments, then it is not helpful to either express the paradoxes as modern mathematical problems or pose modern mathematical solutions to them. Doing either of these things will adversely effect the way in which Zeno's paradoxes can be interpreted. To the extent that Zeno's paradoxes are discussed in modern mathematics they are usually used merely as analogies, where the question of what Zeno was originally trying to argue is largely irrelevant. This is not to say that modern mathematical argument about Zeno should not be discussed, simply that they are a different set of arguments. If one is trying to determine Zeno's original argument then one should focus instead on analysing the arguments made against Zeno by other ancient thinkers. Ancient thinkers are likely to have had a far better understanding of Zeno's original argument simply because they are historically closer to him.

This dissertation discusses two articles in which this issue arises. In neither article is it claimed that Zeno's paradoxes were simple statements of mathematical fallacy. However, both authors insist on comparing the arguments which Zeno and his ancient opponent appear to make, with modern mathematical arguments. This obscures certain ways of interpreting Zeno's paradoxes. An interpretation of Zeno's argument, which is likely to be overlooked if a modern approach to Zeno is taken, will be discussed in this dissertation.

A mathematical approach to Zeno can obscure the possibility that Zeno might have been more interested in the question of how it is possible that an extension can have the infinite number of extended parts which it appears to have. A mathematical approach to Zeno tends to focus more on infinite summation and infinite amounts in a purely abstract and non-physical sense.


In Germany the majority of people in need of care are living at home with the help of their family and/or professional carers. Admission into a nursing is seen as the last step. Caregiving in nursing homes is required if caregiving at home is not possible due to the absence of an informal carer or cannot be provided to the required degree, in particular if the recipient suffers from mental illnesses or if around-the-clock-care and advice is required. Residents in nursing homes are therefore on average older than people living at home, the share of females is higher and the level of dependency is also higher. Underlying diseases have a significant influence on nursing home admissions, in particular dementia, Parkinson`s disease, stroke and malignant tumours.


Which are the factors that favor societal radicalization? Few studies in international and national radicalization research have been directly interested in investigating the societal level and discussing the impact of radicalized groups, milieus and strata on society and its potential radicalization. This article provides on overview of current research and discusses factors favoring the radicalization of societies. The latter arises when the legitimacy of the political system is called into question and a society witnesses a departure from prevailing social norms in political dealings, especially if the use of political violence is no longer rejected. All in all, radicalized individuals, groups, milieus or strata can hold the potential for radicalizing societies. Increasing and incremental socio-political changes can lead to decreasing social cohesion. In view of this possibility, the authors call for strengthening social resilience and civilizing the public debate.


Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) leads the field of psychotherapy in the evidence-based study and treatment of many psychological disorders. However, CBT has been less prominently applied to the study and prevention of suicidal behaviors. This volume is a compilation of theory, research, and intervention practices focused on cognition and suicide. It brings together for the first time many of the world's leading authorities, who seek to answer such questions as, "How is the thinking of suicidal individuals different from nonsuicidal individuals?" "What cognitive vulnerabilities place an individual at risk for developing suicidal ideation and behavior when stressed?" And, "how does what we know of the thinking of suicidal people translate into cognitive-behavioral treatment strategies?" Each contributor discusses a particular theoretical and/or research framework, often with specific guidelines for clinical intervention tailored to specific cognitive vulnerabilities exhibited by suicidal patients. All of the major CBT theoretical systems are represented, including Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis's Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy, and Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Specific empirically-derived cognitive features are also addressed, such as deficient problem-solving skills, perfectionism, negative body image, and overgeneral autobiographical memory. Implications for understanding and intervening with suicidal individuals are profound - suicidal thought processes are viewed here as causal (as opposed to merely correlated) factors in suicidality. Such thoughts, perhaps for the first time, begin to be viewed, not only as part of the problem, but as part of a potential solution.


The (E3) ubiquitin ligase, GRAIL (gene related to anergy in lymphocytes), is associated with CD4+ T cell anergy, a state of T cell nonresponsiveness to antigen. MacKenzie et al. found that amounts of GRAIL mRNA and protein were greater in mouse CD4+CD25+ Tregs than in CD4+CD25– naïve cells. Transfer of naïve CD4+ T cells from TCR-DO11.10/Rag2–/– (DO11) mice to BALB/c mice, followed by injection of the mice with OVA peptide, induced tolerized CD4+CD25+ cells detected with the DO11-specific antibody KJ1.26. This is a routinely used method for studying tolerance, because the donor cells express a T cell receptor (TCR) that responds only to OVA peptide, and the donor mice cannot produce any mature T cells because of the lack of the Rag2 gene (recombinase activating gene 2). KJ1.26+CD25+ cells had larger amounts of GRAIL mRNA and Foxp3 mRNA and protein than did the KJ1.26+CD25– subset, as measured by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and flow cytometry. A retroviral system was used to generate cell lines producing large amounts of GRAIL (DO11 GRAIL) or GFP (DO11 GFP). Co-culture of naïve CD4+CD25– T cells with antigen-presenting cells, OVA peptide, and DO GFP cells resulted in proliferation of naïve cells. However, when DO11 GRAIL cells were used instead of DO11 GFP cells, proliferation of naïve CD4+CD25– T cells was suppressed. DO11 GRAIL cells produced more transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), a cytokine associated with Treg function, than did DO11 cells. DO11 GRAIL cells also had larger amounts of the surface Treg markers, CD25, GITR, and CTLA4. Surprisingly, DO11 GRAIL cells did not produce the cytokine, IL-10, or the transcription factor, Foxp3, both of which are associated with Treg function. However, this study demonstrates the presence of GRAIL in CD4+CD25+ Tregs and suggests a role for GRAIL in suppressor function. D. A. MacKenzie, J. Schartner, J. Lin, A. Timmel, M. Jennens-Clough, C. G. Fathman, C. M. Seroogy, GRAIL is up-regulated in CD4+CD25+ T regulatory cells and is sufficient for conversion of T cells to a regulatory phenotype. J. Biol. Chem. 282, 9696-9702 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


In juvenile age time management has significant impact on the personal development abilities not only in current period, but throughout the life. Goal of the work is to establish the reasonability of Master's degree students' development and correctness of distribution of their time proceeding from scheduled goals on the basis of Master's degree students' time budget analysis. According to individual priorities the personal development depends on reasonably formed balance between physical, spiritual, vocational, social, mental, emotional development and in no circumstances on absolute disregard of one or another factor. At consequent life stages an even development of the individual has an impact on his (her) physical, mental health and working capacity. 523 Master's degree students of Georgian State University in the capital and regions were subjects of research. Study of 48% of time budget of active students of biggest Georgian university actually gives us detailed picture of state-of-the-art. To what extent do students perceive this stage of their personal development? Time management characteristics directly or indirectly show us, to what extent student are able to control their own development and balance the life. Do they comprehend short-term, long-term goals and plans, or not? How do they distribute their time at work, during study, when resting, doing sports, sleeping, when satisfying their cultural and spiritual requirements or accomplishing short-term or long-term plans? How much time do they lose senselessly during a day, what is their nutrition regime and sleeping schedule? Conclusions and future forecasts obtained on the basis of research contain important and relevant information and recommendations not only for individuals of specific groups, but also in general, on functioning of systems regulating various spheres, especially education and labor.


"I remember sitting in Mr. Grillo's high school English class one Friday afternoon in 1966 when the subject of that weekend's NCAA basketball tournament arose." "As basketball fanatics, my friends and I argued the merits of the Final Four participants. No one mentioned Texas Western except to disparage the stunning racial makeup of their starting five." "Five blacks! It was one thing for an inner-city high school to start five blacks, but for a college team at the Final Four, it was unprecedented." ""All you have to do is get ahead, " said one of my friends. "They give up when they're behind."" ""Kentucky is too smart, " said another. "I'll bet all Texas Western can do is run-and-gun."" "The sad part was I believed it too." "So when Kentucky was upset by Texas Western, with their tenacious defense, disciplined play, and marvelously named players like Big Daddy Lattin and Willie Cager, we were all stunned. My beliefs were shaken as severely as they would be in religion class that same junior year. Maybe I was wrong about the capabilities of black basketball players. About Catholicism. About a lot of things." So begins Frank Fitzpatrick's stunning account of the 1966 NCAA championship game. Late on the night of March 19, 1966, in the University of Maryland's Cole Field House, five unassuming black men from Texas Western stepped onto the court to face five white men from the University of Kentucky. On the surface, this was just another basketball game. But there were hidden forces at work. Kentucky's legendary coach, Adolph Rupp, had resisted the pleadings of his president to recruit his first black player in thirty-six years. Meanwhile, Texas Westernadministrators were concerned that coach Don Haskins was playing too many blacks. Almost everyone believed the game's result was a foregone conclusion: There was no way Texas Western's unheralded blacks could beat Rupp's mighty Kentucky Wildcats, featuring All-America Pat Riley. Yet Texas Western did win and American sports embarked on a new era. That 1966 NCAA title game -- played at a turbulent moment in civil rights history -- marked the first major sporting championship in which an all-black starting team had played, let alone defeated, a white one. Not since Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947 had such a cultural watershed occurred in American sports. Sociologically and historically it was the most significant game ever in college athletics. In "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, " veteran sportswriter Frank Fitzpatrick examines the game, the history that preceded it, and the sweeping changes that followed in its wake. In profiling the coaches, the players, and the administrators, he details the impact of that championship game and paints a nuanced portrait of the events that belied the easy black-and-white characterization. Through his close look at this rare moment when sports led rather than followed the forces for social change, Fitzpatrick takes readers on an unparalleled journey that brings the riveting story of this landmark season to life.


An understanding of the factors that drive inter-population variability in home-range size is essential for managing the impacts of invasive species with broad global distributions, such as the feral domestic cat (Felis catus). The assumption that home-range sizes scale negatively with landscape productivity is fundamental to many spatial behaviour models, and inter-site variation in landscape productivity has often been invoked to explain the vast differences in feral cat home-range sizes among different regions. However, the validity of this explanation has not been tested or described. We used regression models to examine the ability of remotely sensed landscape productivity data, average body weight and population density to explain differences in the size of feral cat home ranges estimated across a diverse collection of sites across the globe. As expected for a solitary polygynous carnivore, female cats occupied smaller home ranges in highly productive sites, and range sizes of male cats scaled positively with those of females. However, the relationship between range size and productivity broke down at highly seasonal sites. Home-range size also scaled negatively with population density, but there was no clear relationship with average body weight. The relationships we describe should be useful for predicting home-range sizes and for designing effective feral cat control and monitoring programmes in many situations. More generally, these results confirm the importance of landscape productivity in shaping the spatial distribution of solitary carnivores, but the nature of the relationship is more complicated than is often appreciated.


One of the most important features of fuzzy set theory is its potential for the modeling of natural language expressions. Most works done on this topic focus on some parts of natural language, mostly those that correspond to the so-called "evaluating linguistic expressions". We build constraints for the mathematical substitutes of these expressions to mark characteristic limits on an ordered scale. In the current work we form families of constraints which originate from one function. By introducing a parameter in the initial membership function we can model the rest of family functions, whose shapes depend only on a number of functions and the length of a reference set. This procedure fits perfectly for being a segment of computer programs, where the loops providing us with many functions need only the initializations of two data values.


Since the beginning of the last century, the localization of brain function is presented by Brodmann areas, or maps that are a result of anatomic organization. They are used in order to give a global idea of cortical structures for given sensory cognitive functions. In the last decades, the analysis of brain oscillations gained high importance for the correlation of brain functions. Moreover, the use of the spectral connectivity provides information on dynamic connectivity between various structures. Beside this, according to (Luria, 1966), brain responses have dynamic features and structural localization is almost impossible. According to these uses, brain functions are very difficult to localize and need joint analysis of oscillation and event related coherences. In the present report, a model called "CLAIR" is described to extend and possibly to replace the concept of the Brodmann areas. To design a perfect functioning CLAIR model requires years; however, the beginning step is provided in the present report.


ABSTRACT We provide an in-depth analysis of language functions in early-treated adults with phenylketonuria (AwPKUs, N = 15–33), as compared to age- and education-matched controls (N = 24–32; N varying across tasks), through: a. narrative production (the Cinderella story), b. language pragmatics comprehension (humour, metaphors, inferred meaning), c. prosody discrimination d. lexical inhibitory control and planning (Blocked Cyclic Naming; Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Burgess & Shallice, 1997). AwPKUs exhibited intact basic language processing (lexical retrieval, phonology/articulation, sentence construction). Instead, deficits emerged in planning and reasoning abilities. Compared to controls, AwPKUs were: less informative in narrative production (lower rate of Correct Information Units); slower in metaphorical understanding and inferred meaning; less accurate in focused lexical-search (Hayling test). These results suggest that i) executive deficits in PKU cannot be explained by an accumulation of lower-order deficits and/or general speed impairments, ii) executive functions engage dedicated neurophysiological resources, rather than simply being an emergent property of lower-level systems.


The author wonders whether English is becoming as universal as is often claimed? Demand for English and American language centers has increased around the world, and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is now administered regularly in many metropolises. To ensure that their students are competitive, economically affluent countries have invested lots of money in the latest audio-visual technology while also recruiting the most competent teachers of English as a second or foreign language. South Korea has stood out in contracting American and British teachers to provide interaction-with-native-speaker experience to its students via satellite while European countries have benefited greatly from student exchange programs that enable their students to improve their competence by immersion in native socio-economic ecologies. Equally noteworthy are financial and emotional sacrifices endured by many, chiefly Korean, families whose mothers/wives and school-age children live in Anglophone countries so that the children can develop native competence in English. The relevant parents assume that as the world-wide market value of English continues to rise, every young person anywhere will need it, at least as a lingua franca, and the more fluent ones will have a competitive edge over their peers. Pop culture will undoubtedly have contributed its share to this rise of its market value.


The aim of this research is to investigate techniques or methodologies that will allow networked applications to adapt to network conditions between end nodes in order to
maintain a reasonable Quality of Service and to design, develop and test techniques for achieving such adaptability through the use of a novel content scheduling and delivery
scheme. In order to achieve this adaptation, information regarding network conditions, both static and dynamic, has to be first gathered. Since various parties have already
conducted substantial research in this area, the task was to review those network measurement techniques and adopt a suitable one for use in the subsequent research.
Hence the research is concerned more on how to realize these techniques in practical terms and make those network parameters accessible to applications that are going to
adapt based on them. A network measurement service utilizing a standard measurement tool was proposed, developed, tested and subsequently used throughout
the project. In this way the research project implementation has help in trying to understand the impact of network measurement on the overall performance of the
system and what network metrics are essential in order to help the application make better adaptation decision.
The project proceeded further to develop and show case an adaptable network application using a novel scheme in which content was restructured and its delivery rescheduled taking account of the available bandwidth, the content structure, size and order of importance and user specified deadlines, which made use of the network measurement service. In so doing, the project sought to show how and when adaptation can be applied and its potential benefits or otherwise as compared to conventional applications based on best effort systems. The project has proved that by
adapting according to the abovementioned scheme in the event of poor network performance, user specified deadlines can be satisfied by reducing the load with contents of high importance being delivered first while contents of less importance being delivered during idle time or user's reading time or ignored if the deadline could not be met. In most cases content of high importance are delivered faster in the adaptable system as compared to the conventional best effort system.


Treason is an ancient crime, but it fell into disuse in most Western democratic states after World War II. Now it is making a comeback with prosecutions or threatened prosecutions against a new type of enemy - accused terrorists - in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. In the postwar period, commentators wrongly argued that treason would no longer be prosecuted because it is anti-liberal, too difficult to prove, unnecessary because modern democracies are stable and secure, and premised on an extinct sense of loyalty to the state. This Article begins by debunking these claims and explaining treason's recent reappearance. First, democratic states have altered their treason laws, without explicit amendment, to make them akin to other criminal laws. Second, technology has made treason both easier to detect and easier to prove. Third, although the states discussed in this Article are generally stable and secure, states are likely to employ treason prosecutions when they perceive an existential threat (even if one does not actually exist). Finally, the betrayal inherent in treason retains both its power to injure and its power to offend, giving treason as much indignant punch as it has ever had. Treason's return is thus explainable, but is it a cause for concern? Treason prosecutions may have several potential benefits including reinforcing societal identity and unity, deterring future treason's, providing retribution against the traitor, and clarifying the procedural system under which terrorism should be addressed. But they may also pose dangers, including unduly aggrandizing the threat from terrorism, signaling weakness of the government that chooses to prosecute treason, biasing the criminal case against the defendant, and posing a difficult question about whether treason necessarily deserves the death penalty. Based on a weighing of these factors, this Article concludes by arguing that treason prosecutions are not cause for concern when they are confined to instances in which - like the U.S., British, and Israeli cases discussed in this Article - the threat posed by the terrorist group the traitor supports is akin to that posed by an enemy state.


Robert Alexander Gonzalez. Designing Pan-America: U.S. Architectural Visions for the Western Hemisphere . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011, 280 pp., 204 color and b/w illus. $65, ISBN 9780292723252

The notion of a unified, politically integrated, Western hemisphere, removed from the corruptions and agitations of the Old World, has haunted the American imagination since the early nineteenth century. Simultaneously an idealistic dream, a diplomatic tool, an ideological vehicle, and an economic engine, the Pan-American idea has, along with many other constructs, endured cyclical phases and weathered stale interpretations, waxing and waning along with the policy needs of its dominant enforcer, the United States. Occasionally a subject for historians of politics, international relations, and cultural diplomacy, it has served historians of art and architecture only rarely.

Robert Alexander Gonzalez addresses this deficit by exploring what this protean notion has meant for architects and designers over the last 125 years. In four long chapters he moves through a quartet of case studies to invoke an array of practitioners, promoters, politicians, and businessmen, some of them almost entirely forgotten today, who sought to objectify Pan-Americanism for a larger public. The course of this odyssey uncovers a set of evolving visual conventions and familiar cliches, alongside some heterodox challenges that, all together, say something about the continuing contradictions hovering around this intercontinental "contract."

Gonzalez begins by considering what he calls "The Birth of Pan-American Architecture" at several of those …


'Let the healing waters flow, ' was the crux of Archbishop Tutu's text when he
officially handed over the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Report to President
Mandela in 1998. This message, by a man chosen to lead a commission that
would attempt to unravel the mirky history of a country polarized by
apartheid, continues to be a hrefrain in the politics of South Africa. In an
attempt to offer some form of closure on a turbulent past, the unfinished
business of understanding the truth about institutionalised oppression was
one of the fundamental challenges of the commission. Many lives were lost
by those resisting the apartheid system, and some lost in protecting the
system. In most instances the circumstances surrounding the loss of lives
were the result of gross human rights violations. As a way of making meaning
about the apartheid past so that what happened would never repeat itself
again, the commission was established to help South Africans on a path
toward national reconciliation.


The paper compares the recent economic crisis in Cyprus with the much larger and still on-going crisis in Greece, traces the causes behind their differences and assesses each country's future economic prospects. Cyprus entered its crisis with less onerous macroeconomic imbalances, yet with less robust financial and real estate sectors. Cyprus delayed signing its MoU with the lenders but subsequently delivered quickly on the program requirements, front-loading the fiscal policy restrictions. Greece reduced its fiscal deficits, yet, after its economy stabilized and began recovering in 2014, it suddenly adopted in 2015 a very naive and backward-looking confrontational strategy with its lenders, which brought a second recession. Today, at the end of 2016, Cyprus has managed to keep its international comparative advantages and has the luxury to focus on its long-term growth strategy, having lost only 5% of its pre-crisis income. Greece, after having lost over 22% percent of its pre-crisis income, has not yet escaped its crisis, is still burdened by economic stagnation, an unsustainable public debt and unusually high tax rates that constrain growth. The two countries share common risks today: A very weak financial sector with unusually high no-performing loans, and an unusually low ratio of investment to GDP.


Baking quality is one of most important traits in qualitative improvement of bread wheat. Gluten prolamins determine wheat flour quality for different technological processes such as bread making. Among the gluten proteins, High Molecular Glutenin (HMW) group and specially, x-type and y-type subunits of d allele in 1D locus are very valuable in baking quality. In this study, amino acid sequences of x-type subunits [2.1, 2.2, 2.2*, 5] and y-type subunits [10, 12] related to 1D locus were searched and compared together using Genedoc software. After alignment of amino acid sequences of y-type subunits and x-type subunits, it was characterized that deletion, insertion (duplication) and point mutations in these subunits are involved in biological function of proteins. Finally, polymorph ISSR primers in repetitive domains were designed on similarities and differences in x and y types subunits. After performing PCR and DPAGE, it was found that these primers show good banding polymorphisms in elite mutant lines, standard commercial cultivars and F2 populations from crosses and are ideal for DNA polymorphisms detection in glutenin subunits of 1D locus.

  Key words: Alignment, DPAGE, glutenin subunits, ISSR, baking quality and wheat.


Scholars often interpret balance of power theory to imply that great powers almost always balance against the leading power in the system, and they conclude that the absence of a counterbalancing coalition against the historically unprecedented power of the United States after the end of the Cold War is a puzzle for balance of power theory. They are wrong on both counts. Balance of power theory is not universally applicable. Its core propositions about balancing strategies and the absence of sustained hegemonies apply to the European system and perhaps to some other autonomous continental systems but not to the global maritime system. Sea powers are more interested in access to markets than in territorial aggrandizement against other great powers. Consequently, patterns of coalition formation have been different in the European system and in the global maritime system during the last five centuries. An empirical analysis demonstrates that counterhegemonic balancing is frequent in Europe but much less frequent in the global system. Higher concentrations of power in the global system lead to fewer and smaller rather than more frequent and larger balancing coalitions, as well as to more frequent and larger alliances with the leading sea power than against it.


When TV celebrity Dinah Shore sang "See the USA in your Chevrolet," 1950s America took her to heart. Every summer, parents piled the kids in the back seat, threw the luggage in the trunk, and took to the open highway. Chronicling this innately American ritual, Susan Rugh presents a cultural history of the American middle-class family vacation from 1945 to 1973, tracing its evolution from the establishment of this summer tradition to its decline.The first in-depth look at post - World War II family travel, Rugh's study recounts how postwar prosperity and mass consumption - abetted by paid vacation leave, car ownership, and the new interstate highway system - forged the ritual of the family road trip and how that ritual became entwined with what it meant to be an American. With each car a safe haven from the Cold War, vacations became a means of strengthening family bonds and educating children in parental values, national heritage, and citizenship.Rugh's history looks closely at specific types of trips, from adventures in the Wild West to camping vacations in national parks to summers at Catskill resorts. It also highlights changing patterns of family life, such as the relationship between work and play, the increase in the number of working women, and the generation gap of the sixties.Distinctively, Rugh also plumbs NAACP archives and travel guides marketed specifically to blacks to examine the racial boundaries of road trips in light of segregated public accommodations that forced many black families to sleep in cars - a humiliation that helped spark the civil rights struggle. In addition, she explains how the experience of family camping predisposed baby boomers toward a strong environmental consciousness.Until the 1970s recession ended three decades of prosperity and the traditional nuclear family began to splinter, these family vacations were securely woven into the fabric of American life. Rugh's book allows readers to relive those wondrous wanderings across the American landscape and to better understand how they helped define an essential aspect of American culture. Notwithstanding the rueful memories of discomforts and squabbles in a crowded car, those were magical times for many of the nation's families.


Sentiment analysis is the task of determining the attitude (positive or negative) of documents. While the polarity of words in the documents is informative for this task, polarity of some words cannot be determined without domain knowledge. Detecting word polarity thus poses a challenge for multiple-domain sentiment analysis. Previous approaches tackle this problem with transfer learning techniques, but they cannot handle multiple source domains and multiple target domains. This paper proposes a novel Bayesian probabilistic model to handle multiple source and multiple target domains. In this model, each word is associated with three factors: Domain label, domain dependence/independence and word polarity. We derive an efficient algorithm using Gibbs sampling for inferring the parameters of the model, from both labeled and unlabeled texts. Using real data, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in a document polarity classification task compared with a method not considering the differences between domains. Moreover our method can also tell whether each word's polarity is domain-dependent or domain-independent. This feature allows us to construct a word polarity dictionary for each domain.