I present evidence that the cross-guarantee authority granted to the FDIC by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 has unexpectedly strengthened the Federal Reserve's source-of-strength doctrine. In particular, I find that a bank affiliated with a multi-bank holding company is significantly safer than either a stand-alone bank or a bank affiliated with a one-bank holding company. Not only does affiliation reduce the probability of future financial distress, but distressed affiliated banks are more likely to receive capital injections and recover more quickly than other banks. Moreover, the effects of affiliation are strengthened for an expanding bank holding company. However, the effects of affiliation are weakened when the parent has less than full ownership of the subsidiary. Most interestingly, my results show that these differences in behavior across affiliation did not exist before 1989, when the cross-guarantee authority was introduced.


In this paper, a new digital deadbeat controller along with a modified adaptive reference signal generator are designed, implemented and applied to a three-phase series-parallel line-interactive uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This kind of UPS system provides input power factor correction, output voltage conditioning with higher efficiency compared with other kinds of UPS. It consists of a series and a parallel converter. The series converter deals with voltage-based distortions while the parallel converter cancels the current-based disturbances. The objective of the controller is to achieve deadbeat dynamic response for the parallel and series converters. The adaptive filter provides the reference signal for the load voltage and source current without any phase shift. The proposed controller adjusts the current of the parallel converter and voltage of the series converter with two and four sampling periods, respectively. Simulation and experimental results are presented, which show the viability of the proposed controller and reference signal generator for this topology.


We measured the rate of hole hopping between dye molecules on titanium dioxide nanocrystals using cyclic voltammetry. Dyes commonly used in the field of dye sensitized solar cells exhibited efficient intermolecular charge transport, showing apparent diffusion coefficient values between 10−8 up to over 10−7 cm2 s−1 at room temperature. From temperature dependent measurements, we observed that hole transport across dye monolayers is a thermally activated process with Arrhenius activation energies between about 170 and 370 meV depending on the dye. Analysis of the data in terms of non-adiabatic Marcus theory of charge transfer enabled the estimation of the reorganization energy (740–1540 meV) and of an effective electronic coupling for the different systems. The measured reorganization energies show reasonable agreement with values obtained from density functional theory based calculations, validating our computational approach. Finally, we interpret the experimental and calculated data with reference to the chemical structure of the dyes and to the packing of the dyes on the surface of the TiO2 and suggest that delocalization of the HOMO and rigidity of the conjugated molecular structure result respectively in lower outer and inner sphere reorganization energies.


Child's Unfinished Masterpiece: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. By Mary Ellen Brown. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 296, acknowledgments, preface, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth.)Ballad studies have been a staple of folklore and literary studies since Frances James Child and his students introduced the subject in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Child's monumental collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as its touchstone - and sometimes its raison d'etre. Numerous articles have been published on Child's collection, as well as on his presumed assumptions, but curiously diese assumptions - and any major study of Child and his work - have had to wait until now for the kind of elucidation Mary Ellen Brown brings to bodi subjects in her latest book.In it, Child receives the same kind of careful and sympathetic treatment Brown has given to those otfier giants of traditional balladry and song, William Motherwell and Robert Burns. Brown's scholarly method is admirable, consisting as it does of careful attention to primary sources (in what she describes as an enterprise of "historical etfinography") , in combination with an intelligent assessment and synthesis of these sources. Drawing on letters, diaries, and even account books for information, she offers a diorough examination of Child's collection in the context of his life and the collaboration it entailed. She has structured the book to deal with her major concerns: Child's life, the nature and history of the ESPB, a description of Child's major transadantic collaborators (or "army of auxiliaries," as she calls them), the completion of the collection after Child's death by his student George Lyman Kittredge, and a "posdude," in which she examines Child's concept of what, for him, constituted a ballad.While presenting her chapter-lengdi biography of Child as a mere sketch, Brown has provided the most comprehensive treatment of his life to date. Breadiing life into her subject chiefly by way of correspondence and diaries, she allows us to see a man loved and respected by teachers, colleagues, friends, students, and family: a multi-faceted human being who exhibited not only painstaking attention to his work but who also lavished tenderness and care on the people in his life - as well as on his beloved roses. No self-absorbed pedant, he was a man with deep-rooted affections, political views (he was an abolitionist) - and a playful, sometimes wry sense of humor. This, in spite of his and his wife's continual healdi problems, four children, lectures, a heavy work load as a professor at Harvard - and, of course, the ballad collection.We also gain a better appreciation for how Child's interest in ballads, which at first shared a rival fascination with Chaucer, grew from English and Scottish Ballads - part of a series, British Poets, for which he edited the volume on Spenser as well. While the ballad volume drew only on already published works, it laid the groundwork for his Child's life's work, leading to correspondence with other ballads scholars - most importandy Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig and amateur Scottish song scholar William Macmath - as well as a host of others from Europe and Nordi America, who provided him with copies of unpublished manuscripts, field transcriptions, printed texts, and advice. …


I. ECONOMIC OUTLOOK The major industrial countries are experiencing uneven recoveries from the global recession that began in 1990. The economic growth disparities were highly pronounced last year. The English-speaking countries that first went into recession - the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia - expanded at growth rates between 2% and 3%. In continental Europe, the major economies - Germany, France, and Italy - experienced negative output growth rates, while Japan's economy stagnated with an almost flat growth rate in output. According to our central forecast, the economic recovery in the United States will substantially slow down, while the recoveries in Europe and Japan will be moderate. Economic growth in the United States is forecast to slip to 2% in 1995 from 2.8% this year. Output in the European Union is expected to expand 1.4% this year and 2.2% in 1995. In Japan, the economic upturn is expected to be sluggish with output increasing by 0.2% this year and 1.8% in 1995. Therefore, the current dysyndronized economic rebound in the industrial countries will end in 1995 when the recent divergences in output growth rates are expected to diminish. In contrast to the sluggish economic outlook for the major industrial countries, developing countries are expected to lead global economic growth. The newly industrializing countries in the Pacific Rim and several Latin America nations are expected to continue to advance at an average growth rate of 5.5% during 1994-95. Consequently, world economic output is projected to increase by 2.8% this year and 3.4% in 1995, following an estimated rate of growth of 2.2% in 1993. The gradual strengthening of world economic activity is expected to be accompanied by a strong recovery in world trade. The volume of world trade is projected to expand by 5.1% in 1994 and by 6.2% in 1995 from a 2.4% growth rate in 1993. At the same time, worldwide inflation rates are projected to accelerate during 1994-95 for the following reasons: * Output gaps in the industrial countries will be narrowed because of the gradual economic recoveries that are underway. * Strong growth in developing countries and acceleration of world trade are expected to result in inflation in international non-oil commodity prices. * Oil prices are projected to slowly accelerate, which will now bring consumer inflation rates up because of the current increases in fuel taxes. Fuel tax increases were introduced in 1993 in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Sweden. Similar taxes are introduced this year in Germany and Italy. * Structural inflation, which results from productivity differentials between manufacturing and services as they both are expected to receive the same wage and non-wage benefit raises, is forecast to be a common contributor to overall inflation in many industrial countries, especially in the United States, Canada, Germany and France. * Rising structural unemployment rates in Europe and Japan will influence political leaders to promote expansionary fiscal policies despite the existence of large deficits. The findings of the second quarter of 1994 International Economic Survey of nearly 500 economic experts of transnational corporations and organizations in 66 countries conducted by the German Ifo-Institute confirm our central scenario for the world economic situation and short-term outlook. The major findings of the survey are as follows: * For the first time since 1990 the business climate in the world economy was judged as satisfactory. * Expectations that the world economy will continue to recover within the next two quarters have been rising. * World trade is expected to accelerate this year particularly in Western Europe, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Argentina and Mexico. * Inflation is not expected to accelerate on the average in all 66 countries during the next three months. …


We present a novel approach for predicting debug information in stripped binaries. Using machine learning, we first train probabilistic models on thousands of non-stripped binaries and then use these models to predict properties of meaningful elements in unseen stripped binaries. Our focus is on recovering symbol names, types and locations, which are critical source-level information wiped off during compilation and stripping. Our learning approach is able to distinguish and extract key elements such as register-allocated and memory-allocated variables usually not evident in the stripped binary. To predict names and types of extracted elements, we use scalable structured prediction algorithms in probabilistic graphical models with an extensive set of features which capture key characteristics of binary code. Based on this approach, we implemented an automated tool, called Debin, which handles ELF binaries on three of the most popular architectures: x86, x64 and ARM. Given a stripped binary, Debin outputs a binary augmented with the predicted debug information. Our experimental results indicate that Debin is practically useful: for x64, it predicts symbol names and types with 68.8% precision and 68.3% recall. We also show that Debin is helpful for the task of inspecting real-world malware -- it revealed suspicious library usage and behaviors such as DNS resolver reader.


Does the Constitution require that U.S. treaties address matters of international concern? For decades, conventional wisdom answered that question negatively; The Restatement (Third) of U.S. Foreign Relations Law dismissed the very existence of an international concern test. In Bond v. United States, however, three Justices – Alito, Thomas, and Scalia – insisted on its existence, pushing the issue into the foreground of foreign relations law. This article analyzes whether the Constitution contains an international concern test and what contours it has. I argue that Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas are correct – and the Restatement (Third) was wrong – on the test's existence. Various modalities of constitutional interpretation – original meaning, historical practice, doctrine, structure, and prudence – offer evidence supporting some version of an international concern test. But I part ways with the Justices on how the test works. They and other proponents have tended to look for static or objective criteria to divide appropriate "international" matters from impermissible "purely domestic" ones. In contrast, I argue that the international concern test is intersubjective. U.S. treaties can only be formed (or ratified, implemented, or applied) where the relevant actors at each stage (e.g., States in forming a treaty, the President and the Senate in ratifying it) share a belief that its subject-matter is international. Absent that understanding, the treaty will not be formed (or ratified, or implemented, or applied). Such views may coincide or divide depending on the context. Thus, the Supreme Court could agree that the Chemical Weapons Convention generally addressed a matter of international concern, even if they also agreed that the prosecution of Ms. Bond did not. Nor are these understandings fixed; issues need not be "purely" domestic (or international) for all time. Some topics such as human rights were once understood by States (and the President and the Senate) to be inappropriate subjects for treaty-making, but are now believed to be an essential aspect of international relations. Other topics such as Native American relations were once subject to extensive treaty treatment, but are now no longer accepted as appropriate subjects for U.S. treaties. This article thus answers one of the longest running questions of U.S. foreign relations law. It confirms the existence of an international concern test, but locates its operation within the treaty process rather than in an externally-imposed laundry list of topics or criteria. In doing so, it provides an explanatory lens for a U.S. treaty practice that many label incoherent and suggests a need for more research on what conditions generate intersubjectivity (or its absence).


The purpose of this work is the definition of a representative sky for the Geneva Lake Region (south-west Switzerland). A representative sky is a theoretical blended sky based on the relative occurrence of a subset of the 15 standard general skies suggested in 2003 by the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) [1]. By employing Tregenza's method [4] and the Swiss Norm 150 911 [5], a reduced set of CIE standard skies (and their relative frequency of occurrence), named the Geneva Lake Region Representative Sky (GLRRS), is proposed. In addition, by means of a GLRRS-based Virtual Sky Dome (VSD) and the lighting software Photopia 3.0, the behaviour of three different kinds of mirror lightducts is simulated for the Geneva Lake Region.


This project seeks to develop heavily automated analysis of digital topographic data to extract archaeological information and to expedite the creation of national-scaled mapping. Drawing on developments in computer vision this has the potential to fundamentally recast the capacity of archaeological prospection and survey to cover large areas and deal with mass data, breaking a dependency on human resource. Without such developments the potential of the vast amount of archaeological information embedded in large topographic and image-based datasets cannot be realised to inform our knowledge and understanding of Scotland's Historic Environment. A heavily automated computational approach and the increasing availability of large datasets put the creation of systematic national-scaled archaeological mapping of Scotland within reach. The purpose of this proof of concept project was to run an assessment of existing developments in a Norwegian case study against digital topographic data for Arran, providing outputs that may be assessed for their applicability at a national scale.


Intensive rice-based cropping systems in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (Eastern India and Bangladesh) have played a pivotal role in increasing food security in that region but sustainability of these cropping systems is under threat. Conservation agriculture (CA) ‒ cropping systems based on minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention and suitable crop rotations ‒ has been proposed to address these challenges but there has been limited research on its effects on crop productivity and soil properties in Bangladesh. This thesis examines the effects of implementing minimum soil disturbance and increased crop residue retention on soil properties and crop performance over three years in two rice-based rotations. Two field trials were conducted during 2010-2013 in contrasting triple-cropping rotations (with crop number in parentheses): 1. Legume-dominated rotation ‒ lentil (1, 4 and 7)-mungbean (2 and 5)-monsoon rice (3 and 6) in an Alluvial soil region; and 2. Cereal-dominated rotation ‒ wheat (1, 4 and 7)-mungbean (2 and 5)-monsoon rice (3 and 6) in the High Barind Tract (HBT) region of north-west Bangladesh. There were three tillage treatments in main plots ‒ strip tillage (ST), bed planting (BP) and conventional tillage (CT). Sub-plots comprised two levels of residue ‒ high residue (HR) and low residue (LR). Puddled transplanted rice was applied in CT and unpuddled transplanted rice in ST and BP. This thesis focuses on soil properties and the growth and yield of the cool-dry season crops in each year, namely lentil on the Alluvial soil and wheat on the HBT soil.

During the first two growing seasons treatment effects on soil properties and crop performance were marginal but became clearly apparent in the third year. In the legume-dominated system, grain yield of lentil was 15 % higher in HR than LR averaged across all tillage types in Year 2. In Year 3, the yield of lentil was higher by 23 % in ST and 18 % in BP compared with CT. In the cereal-dominated system, grain yield was not affected by tillage and residue treatments in Year 1. However, in Year 2, grain yield of wheat was depressed by 39 % in BP due to poor crop establishment. In Year 3, the yield of wheat was greater by 9 % in ST and 7 % in BP than CT; wheat yield of HR was 3 % higher compared to LR.

The soil water content (SWC) increased and bulk density (BD) and penetration resistance (PR) decreased in surface soil (0-5 cm) with ST and at 5-10 cm and 10-15 cm soil depth with BP, compared to CT. The retention of more intact residue left between the plant rows conserved more SWC and lowered the soil BD and PR of surface soil under ST. Implementation of ST and BP with HR treatment gradually improved soil physical properties and alleviated puddling effects that characterise current practices (CT and LR) in rice-based systems. Such improvements are probably due to increases in soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) with ST and BP. Greater root growth under BP was not associated with increased grain yield. However, the overall improvement in soil surface conditions and greater root growth at depth may have allowed extraction of water and nutrients from a larger soil volume in ST resulting in a gradual increase in crop productivity over time.

After 2.5 years in both legume- and cereal-dominated rotations, the SOC concentrations, SOC-stocks and labile C fraction (water soluble carbon ‒ WSC) at 0-7.5 cm soil depth were greater in ST than CT. By contrast, the SOC concentrations and storage, and WSC increased at 7.5-15 cm soil depth in BP compared to CT and ST. Soil C losses through the emission of CO2 were greater in CT than ST and BP. The relative efficacy of tillage in storing SOC was in the order of ST>BP>CT. High residue retention increased SOC concentrations, SOC storage, WSC and CO2 emission from soil. In the cereal-dominated rotation, ST sequestered 0.44-0.20 Mg C/ha annually while CT caused 0.41-0.66 Mg C/ha loss at 0-15 cm soil depth. In contrast to the legume-dominated rotation, neither CT nor ST sequestered SOC but ST reduced the loss by 0.40 Mg C/ha annually compared to CT. Based on the C balance, it is estimated that annual carbon inputs of 3.8 Mg C/ha under ST and 6 Mg C/ha under CT condition in the legume-dominated system, and 1.0 Mg C/ha under ST and 7.7 Mg C/ha under CT condition in the cereal-dominated system, would be required to maintain SOC at the antecedent level.

In the present study, ST and HR treatment increased TN, N-stocks, total soluble nitrogen and potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN) in the surface soil (0-7.5 cm) as compared to CT and LR at the end of Crop 7. In ST and HR, the lower mineral N (NH₄-N and NO₃-N) and larger PMN indicated the greater immobilization or less mineralization of N, or both, and restricted the potential losses of N. Retention of HR resulted in positive N balance while LR caused a negative N balance. Regardless of treatment variation, the soil TN, N-stocks and available N were greater in the cereal-dominated cropping system than in the legume-dominated system, probably due to carry-over of higher N fertilizer rates applied to the cereal crop, and greater above- and below-ground biomass. The changes of soil TN due to residue were only apparent in legume-dominated system. The greater input derived from nitrogenous residue of mungbean and lentil may account for the positive effects of HR in the legume-dominated system.

Application of ST and HR has potential for increasing carbon sequestration and N accumulation while reducing N losses, hence improving soil properties and thereby crop growth and yields, within 2-3 years in rice-based systems of Bangladesh. However, further studies are required over a longer time period to evaluate the performance of unpuddled rice rotated with ST non-rice crops with a range of residue retention levels under different soil, climatic, and socio-economic conditions in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains.


Metals and alloys with low stacking fault energy (SFE) undergo twinning within their grains. Twinning Induced Plasticity (TWIP) steels possess an exceptional combination of tensile strength and ductility, and therefore, they offer enormous potential in applications where impact resistance is critically important, such as the critical components of automotives that experience sudden impact in accidents. Because of their high toughness as well as manganese as the major alloying element (instead of Ni that is the major alloying element in common austenitic stainless steels), the TWIP steels are also a less expensive alternative for the toughness aspect of the common Cr-Ni austenitic stainless steels. However, alloys with attractive mechanical properties when exposed to corrosive environment must also possess the desired resistance to environment assisted cracking (EAC) that can be caused as a result of the synergistic action of tensile stress and corrosion, e.g., stress corrosion cracking (SCC). Previous corrosion studies on twinning induced plasticity (TWIP) steels in the open literature have generally focused on electrochemical corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement. In this research, the stress corrosion cracking susceptibility of an austenitic Fe-Mn-Al-Si TWIP steel was determined at different strain rates in acid, neutral, basic aqueous solutions at different temperatures. SCC was investigated using slow strain rate test (SSRT) and constant load (CL) testing. Roles of strain rate, temperature, pH and electrolyte concentration in SCC of TWIP steel has been investigated. In order to estimate the extent by which the strain rate was changing within the specimens gauge length during the SSRTs, a finite element simulation (using ABAQUS STANDARD 6.9) was employed to calculate the gradient of strain rate developed in the necking area. This research demonstrates the role of the types of twins (annealing twins and mechanical twins) in stress corrosion cracks propagation. This research discusses in particular the role of severe and frequent localized deformation (i.e., twinning) in SCC resistance.


Abstract People with severe gambling problems typically first spend all their available money on gambling and then resort to borrowing, selling personal property and other ways of procuring more money for gambling. Some problem gamblers commit economic crimes. This investigation examined gambling-related embezzlement in the workplace, an aspect of problem gambling that may severely harm the gambler, significant others and the employer. The methods used are the study of newspaper articles and qualitative interviews with 18 informants, including professionals in workplace security and drug-use prevention, therapists specializing in problem gambling treatment, counsellors from mutual support societies, and recovered problem gamblers who had embezzled. Gambling-related embezzlement often progresses in a characteristic sequence shaped by specific processes in which the gambler's thoughts and emotions interact systemically with the monetary losses caused by participating in commercial gambling and the opportunity to embezzle money in the workplace. In this study, criminological theory of white collar crime usefully complemented psychological theories of problem gambling. It is concluded that a processual perspective, in addition to consideration of psychological and environmental factors, is valuable for understanding the progression to severe problem gambling.


Central CO2 chemoreceptive neurons in the caudal solitary complex (cSC) are stimulated by hyperoxia via a free radical mechanism. Hyperoxia has been shown to increase superoxide and nitric oxide in the cSC, but it remains unknown how changes in Pco2 during hyperoxia affect the production of O2-dependent reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) downstream that can lead to increased levels of oxidative and nitrosative stress, cellular excitability, and, potentially, dysfunction. We used real-time fluorescence microscopy in rat brain slices to determine how hyperoxia and hypercapnic acidosis (HA) modulate one another in the production of key RONS, as well as colorimetric assays to measure levels of oxidized and nitrated lipids and proteins. We also examined the effects of CO2 narcosis and hypoxia before euthanasia and brain slice harvesting, as these neurons are CO2 sensitive and hypothesized to employ CO2/H+ mechanisms that exacerbate RONS production and potentially oxidative stress. Our findings show that hyperoxia ± HA increases the production of peroxynitrite and its derivatives, whereas increases in Fenton chemistry are most prominent during hyperoxia + HA. Using CO2 narcosis before euthanasia modulates cellular sensitivity to HA postmortem and enhances the magnitude of the peroxynitrite pathway, but blunts the activity of Fenton chemistry. Overall, hyperoxia and HA do not result in increased production of markers of oxidative and nitrosative stress as expected. We postulate this is due to antioxidant and proteosomal removal of damaged lipids and proteins to maintain cell viability and avoid death during protracted hyperoxia.


Schizophrenia candidate regions 33-51 cM in length on chromosomes 5q, 6q, 10p, and 13q were investigated for genetic linkage with mapped markers with an average spacing of 5.64 cM. We studied 734 informative multiplex pedigrees (824 independent affected sibling pairs [ASPs], or 1,003 ASPs when all possible pairs are counted), which were collected in eight centers. Cases with diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (DSM-IIIR criteria) were considered affected (n=1,937). Data were analyzed with multipoint methods, including nonparametric linkage (NPL), ASP analysis using the possible-triangle method, and logistic-regression analysis of identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing in ASPs with sample as a covariate, in a test for intersample heterogeneity and for linkage with allowance for intersample heterogeneity. The data most supportive for linkage to schizophrenia were from chromosome 6q; logistic-regression analysis of linkage allowing for intersample heterogeneity produced an empirical P value <.0002 with, or P=.0004 without, inclusion of the sample that produced the first positive report in this region; the maximum NPL score in this region was 2.47 (P=.0046), the maximum LOD score (MLS) from ASP analysis was 3.10 (empirical P=.0036), and there was significant evidence for intersample heterogeneity (empirical P=.0038). More-modest support for linkage was observed for chromosome 10p, with logistic-regression analysis of linkage producing an empirical P=. 045 and with significant evidence for intersample heterogeneity (empirical P=.0096).


Eye gaze movements are considered as a salient modality for human computer interaction applications. Recently, cross-ratio (CR) based eye tracking methods have attracted increasing interest because they provide remote gaze estimation using a single uncalibrated camera. However, due to the simplification assumptions in CR-based methods, their performance is lower than the model-based approaches [8]. Several efforts have been made to improve the accuracy by compensating for the assumptions with subject specific calibration. This paper presents a CR-based automatic gaze estimation system that accurately works under natural head movements. A subject-specific calibration method based on regularized least-squares regression (LSR) is introduced for achieving higher accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art calibration methods. Experimental results also show that the proposed calibration method generalizes better when fewer calibration points are used. This enables user friendly applications with minimum calibration effort without sacrificing too much accuracy. In addition, we adaptively fuse the estimation of the point of regard (PoR) from both eyes based on the visibility of eye features. The adaptive fusion scheme reduces accuracy error by around 20% and also increases the estimation coverage under natural head movements.


Bureaucratic Hierarchy and Feudal Hierarchy are two confusing concepts in organization literature, especially in the study of the organizational culture of enterprises in China. This article clarifies the two concepts in the first place. Ralston et al. (2006) and Tsui et al. (2006) suggested that the dominant organizational culture of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was Bureaucratic Hierarchy, consistent with Quinn and Cameron (1983)'s "life cycles - criteria of effectiveness model". However, according to Boisot and Child (1996)'s "Chinese and Western paths to modernization" model, China's SOEs are dominated by Feudal Hierarchy culture. This article proposes that the dominant organizational culture of SOEs remains to be Feudal Hierarchy, and then critically examines the literature to support this proposition. Finally, it points to key obstacles in the codification/modernization process of China.


Background: From a management point of view, there are many different approaches from which to choose to engage staff members in initiatives to improve performance. Objective: The present study evaluated how two different types of improvement strategies facilitate and encourage involvement of different professional groups in healthcare organizations. Methods/Design: Empirical data of two different types of strategies were collected within an improvement project in a County Council in Sweden. The data analysis was carried out through classifying the participants' profession, position, gender, and the organizational administration of which they were a part, in relation to their participation. Setting: An improvement project in a County Council in Sweden. Participants: Designed Improvement Processes consisted of n=105 teams and Intrapreneurship Projects of n=202 projects. Intervention: Two different types of improvement strategies Designed Improvement Processes and Intrapreneurship Projects. Main Outcome Measures: How two different types of improvement strategies facilitate and encourage involvement of different professional groups in healthcare organizations. Results: Nurses were the largest group participating in both improvement initiatives. Physicians were also well represented, although they seemed to prefer the less structured Intrapreneurship Projects approach. Assistant nurses, being the second largest staff group, were poorly represented in both initiatives. This indicates that the benefits and support for one group may push another group aside. Conclusions: Managers need to give prerequisites and incentives for staff who do not participate in improvements to do so. Comparisons of different types of improvement initiatives are an underused research strategy that yields interesting and thoughtful results.


Background/Context For more than four decades, researchers have shown that African American students are overrepresented in lower-track classes, while their White peers tend to be in advanced courses. In the past twenty years, school districts have implemented detracking reforms that stressed self-selection policies as an alternative to separate academic paths, yet quantitative data still show that most African American students are not attending upper-level or advanced classes in racially diverse schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of study This study explores how African American parents come to terms with academic placement, and the mechanisms that impact their child's educational experiences in a racially diverse school while coming from a segregated high-poverty African-American community. Setting Research took place in a racially diverse suburban school and city. The suburban city is a microcosm of the United States, not only because of the racial and economic diversity of its school district, but also because its story encapsulates the plight of many African Americans in relation to the Great Migration, segregation, disinvested neighborhoods, and systemic inequalities. Population/participants/Subjects Participants included 26 African American parents, many of whom attended the same school district and experienced their own lower-track placement. Research Design Ethnographic methods, which include interviews and observations, were used to explore the research questions. African American parents were individually interviewed about their own educational experiences, children's academic placement, family background, interactions with the school system, community issues, and perceptions of the middle school and city. Findings/Results African American students and their parents were a product of intergenera-tional tracking. Parents and their children had experienced lower-track courses. In addition, the exposure of African American students and parents to systemic inequalities in their home and community heavily influenced their academic placement and overall educational experiences. Moreover, tracking in this school was not necessarily about abilities and skills but also about separating African American students and creating a formal semblance of equality that actually reinforced systemic inequalities, a reality captured in the phrase "duplicity of equality."


Make Consulting Your Dream Job-On Your Own Terms When you start your own consulting business, you can be your own boss, set your own hours-and make big profits! But that only happens if you're truly prepared. Are you familiar with the biggest consulting myths? Do you know the 12 success factors for consultants? Have you ever owned your own business before? How to Build a Successful Consulting Practice has all these answers and more-distilled by consulting guru Jack Phillips from years spent researching and reviewing successful firms that are still in business today. This essential volume shows how to: Develop a bulletproof business plan Find and keep clients for life Build your brand with magnetic marketing strategies Write spot-on proposals Use the Internet as a secret weapon Become a charismatic public speaker Avoid financial, legal, and ethical pitfalls Adjust to a new work life


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Challenging market dynamics are forcing banks to assess their exposure and the impact on the P&L. To be able to realistically gauge the magnitude of exposure, an organization will have to move beyond siloed limits and collateral management that exists at an application level. Today, banks do not have an enterprise wide view of the exposure, centrally, owing to their diverse IT and Application landscape. Each system has its own set of workflows for maintaining and managing limits, while collateral management is done in a different system. The larger players have invested in warehouse for risk and finance along with departmental solutions. They have established an effective mechanism of rolling up the information from the silos but the control actions, from a risk management committee cannot be effectively used as there is no plumbing for inheriting the decisions into the transaction systems. Centralized limits and collateral management solution address such challenges by offering exposure information at one place.


The use of simplified models of turbulent flows provides an appealing possibility to study the collision rate of turbulent suspensions, especially in conditions relevant to astrophysics, which require large timescale separations. To check the validity of such approaches, we used a direct numerical simulation (DNS) velocity field, which satisfies the Navier–Stokes equations (although it neglects the effect of the suspended particles on the flow field), and a kinematic simulation (KS) velocity field, which is a random field designed so that its statistics are in accord with the Kolmogorov theory for fully-developed turbulence. In the limit where the effects of particle inertia (characterised by the Stokes number) are negligible, the collision rates from the two approaches agree. As the Stokes number St increases, however, we show that the DNS collision rate exceeds the KS collision rate by orders of magnitude. We propose an explanation for this phenomenon and explore its consequences. We discuss the collision rate R for particles in high Reynolds number flows at large Stokes number, and present evidence that .


Drawing primarily on the construct of psychological buffer, the purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which racism-related stress and ethnic identity are determinants of career aspirations. A total of 163 African American college students from a predominately White Midwestern university participated in the study. A moderation regression analysis was conducted. Results indicate that ethnic identity interacted with racism-related stress (p = .04) to predict career aspirations. In other words, as racism-related stress increases in the context of low identity development, career aspirations decrease. Conversely, as perceived racism increases in the context of high identity development, career aspirations increase. Implications for professionals and future research in the field of career counseling are discussed. Keyword: African American, career aspirations, ethnic identity, racism-related stress Career counseling is defined as "the process of assisting individuals in the development of a life-career with focus on the definition of the worker role and how that role interacts with other life roles" (Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005, p. 224). One goal of career counseling is to help students set goals toward their career aspirations. Career aspirations refer to students finding incentives to set objectives toward and be motivated to meet their occupational goals (Quaglia & Cobb, 1996). To better accomplish this mission, career counselors have begun to consider the sociocultural contexts (i.e., identity and racism) that influence students' career goal-setting processes (Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005). Recendy, researchers have theorized that identity and racism may enhance or detract racial and ethnic minorities from specific occupational goals (e.g., Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005). To further extend the career counseling literature, this study amalgamates career aspirations with two areas of research: racism and identity. Similar to other scholars (e.g., Helms & Piper, 1994), we postulated that racism would have a negative impact on African American college students' career goals. We also assumed that identity would moderate the relationship between racism and career aspirations. Although the extent to which identity buffers against the attacks of racism has received recent attention (Cross & Vandiver, 2001), we found no study that identified ethnic identity as a protective-reactive factor for career aspirations. Therefore, it was predicted that the more African American college students identified with their ethnic identity, the weaker the effect of racism -related stress would be on their career aspirations. Racism: A Career Rarrier on Carper Aspirations Recent developments in the career counseling literature have focused attention on how career barriers influence African American college students' career development (Neblett, Shelton, & Sellers, 2004). Career barriers are defined as "events or conditions, either within the person or in his or her environment, that make career progress difficult" (Swanson & Woitke, 1997, p. 434). In their recent meta-analysis, Fouad and Byars-Winston (2005) examined racial and ethnic differences on career aspirations and barriers. The results of their study showed (a) no significant difference in career hopes among racial and ethnic groups and (b) that racial and ethnic minorities were more likely to be exposed to career barriers. In other words, career barriers such as racism or racial-related stress might preclude racial and ethnic minorities from meeting their occupational goals. However, only recently have scholars considered racism-related stress as a potential career barrier (Neblett et al., 2004). Racism-related stress is defined as "the race-related transactions between individuals or groups and their environment that emerge from the dynamics of racism, and that are perceived to tax or exceed existing individual and collective resources or threaten well-being" (Harrell, 2000, p. …


»Sicherheit und "Gute Policey" im frühneuzeitlichen Europa: Konzepte, Gesetze und Instrumente«. The article demonstrates that the development of "security" as a leading category and main field of state activity in the Early Modern Era was closely interconnected with the concept of "gute Policey" and the increasing body of police ordinances. Within Early Modern administrative law as well as in the theoretical discourses of the administrative sciences, "security" became a crucial objective of the well-ordered police state and thus succeeded "peace" and "unity" as a leading category. In this respect, the growing importance of security indicates the "secularization" of authoritarian regulatory policy. In parallel to this, administrative law was characterized by the differentiation between "internal" and "social" security. Whereas the former focused on exterior security threats, for example mobile marginal groups, the latter manifested itself in scopes such as "poor relief", the "health sector" and measures dealing with risks and hazards including bad harvests, epidemic plagues, fire hazards and natural disasters. The resulting regulatory policy gave rise to the gradual establishment of administrative measures in the area of internal and social security, ranging from surveillance to insurances. However, the addressees of ordinances and the subjects also participated in the production of security via "guter Policey", and in this respect security policy partially adopted popular demands for security and security discourses. Altogether, the Early Modern "gute Policey" could well be interpreted as a prototype of "human security". But on the other hand, "gute Policey" also implied the juridification of security and the implementation of a state-based security policy, which ultimately led to the fundamental separation between internal security and police on the one hand and welfare policy/administration on the other hand, by the beginning of the 19th century.


This paper presents a detailed investigation of the structure and evolution of the Precordillera southern sector (Argentina). We document the development and successive reactivation of regional and discrete structural grain through time, and discuss the existence of a large-scale mechanical anisotropy present in the lithosphere. Our kinematic studies indicate that the Permian orogeny generated a doubly vergent fold-and-thrust belt of transpressive deformation, where strain was partitioned into two different types of deformation domains. The west-vergent western domain was characterized by partitioned transpression with shortening dominating, and a strike-slip–dominated subdomain. The east-vergent eastern domain was characterized by pure contractional deformation. Our model for the Late Permian to Early Triassic evolution of the Precordillera involves a north-northwest–trending weakness zone affected by north-northeast–directed extension, generating an area with transtensional deformation during the Choiyoi volcanism development. Later, during the Triassic generation of the Cuyana rift basin, the northeast stretching direction was orthogonal to the rift trend, indicating pure extensional deformation. We propose a model where the clear parallelism between the distribution of an inferred early Paleozoic suture zone, a north-northwest–trending late Paleozoic belt, and Permian–Triassic rift-related magmatism indicates the reactivation of a north-northwest–trending long-lived lithospheric weakness zone.


We give a simple stopping rule which will stop an unknown, irreducible $n$-state Markov chain at a state whose probability distribution is exactly the stationary distribution of the chain. The expected stopping time of the rule is bounded by a polynomial in the maximum mean hitting time of the chain. Our stopping rule can be made deterministic unless the chain itself has no random transitions.


For supervised learning with tabular data, decision tree ensembles produced via boosting techniques generally dominate real-world applications involving iid training/test sets. However for graph data where the iid assumption is violated due to structured relations between samples, it remains unclear how to best incorporate this structure within existing boosting pipelines. To this end, we propose a generalized framework for iterating boosting with graph propagation steps that share node/sample information across edges connecting related samples. Unlike previous efforts to integrate graph-based models with boosting, our approach is anchored in a principled meta loss function such that provable convergence can be guaranteed under relatively mild assumptions. Across a variety of non-iid graph datasets with tabular node features, our method achieves comparable or superior performance than both tabular and graph neural network models, as well as existing hybrid strategies that combine the two. Beyond producing better predictive performance than recently proposed graph models, our proposed techniques are easy to implement, computationally more efficient, and enjoy stronger theoretical guarantees (which make our results more reproducible).


This chapter reports on a study of Anglophone adults exposed to German for the first time. Production data are examined and compared to the stimuli participants were exposed to. Data provide clear evidence of lexical influences on speech behaviour; L1 words interfere in production and provide a context for sub-lexical contextual effects at the syllabic and foot level, as well as at the segmental level. We discuss vowels and /r/-sounds in particular. Our data are consistent with claims that speech perception involves a dynamic interaction between objective properties of the speech signal, the structure of the L1 lexicon, and the L1 phonetics-phonology interface. Crucially, we show that on first exposure, learners are already sensitive to L2 sounds not part of the L1. This will serve as a basis for learning novel phones, but lexical competition clearly constrains the learning process.


Context: Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is one of the most common conditions limiting athletes. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that dysfunction at the hip may be a contributing factor in PFPS. Data Sources: MEDLINE (1950–September 2010), CINAHL (1982–September 2010), and SPORTDiscus (1830–September 2010) were searched to identify relevant research to this report. Study Selection: Studies were included assessing hip strength, lower extremity kinematics, or both in relation to PFPS were included. Data Extraction: Studies included randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, prospective epidemiology, case-control epidemiology, and cross-sectional descriptive epidemiology in a scientific peer-reviewed journal. Results: PFPS is associated with decreased hip strength, specifically at the abductors and external rotators. There is a correlation between PFPS and faulty hip mechanics (adduction and internal rotation). Conclusions: There is a link between the strength and position of the hip and PFPS. These patients have a common deficit once symptomatic. Hip strengthening and a coordination program may be useful in a conservative treatment plan for PFPS.


Background/Context For more than a decade, large alternative teacher certification programs (ATCP) such as the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) have provided qualified applicants with fast-track or "early entry" routes to paid teaching. While early-entry ATCPs enjoy powerful support in the public and private sectors, critics (e.g., Zeichner, 2010) claim that early-entry ATCPs are aligned with a "new professionalism" which views teaching as a technical undertaking and teachers as easily replaceable implementers of others' prescriptive ideas. Yet little is known about the knowledge, skills, and dispositions these programs seek to develop in teachers during pre-service preparation. Purpose/Focus of Study This study seeks to understand the nature of teacher preparation in early-entry ATCPs and how this reflects both the trends associated with the new professionalism and broader traditions of teacher education. The paper focuses on preparation of pre-service mathematics teachers who began the NYCTF program in the summer of 2007. Research Design Results for this paper are based on a mixed-methods analysis of curriculum and survey data. Curriculum data included course materials, journal entries and daily audio reflections, and exit interviews for nine mathematics teacher candidates who began NYCTF in the summer of 2007. The two authors coded this qualitative data with a high degree of inter-rater reliability. Survey data was collected from 90% of the approximately 300 mathematics candidates who began NYCTF in the summer of 2007. The analysis focused on responses to Likert-scale survey items that inquired about the focus of pre-service coursework. The Mann Whitney test was used to gauge the statistical significance of curricular differences reported by mathematics candidates in different sections of the NYCTF program. Findings/Results We find that only some of the major components of NYCTF summer preparation were well aligned with the expectations of the new professionalism. In particular, the curriculum delivered by NYCTF staff and staff at one of the four university coursework providers seemed to meet these expectations. Whereas, to varying degrees, the curriculum delivered by staff at the three other university partners did not. We also find that pre-service preparation was subject-general and featured little in the way of mathematics-specific teaching methods. Conclusions/Recommendations The results simultaneously support, extend, nuance, and challenge the hypothesis that such early-entry ATCPs such as NYCTF prepare program participants to meet the expectations of the new professionalism. The conclusion includes discussions of both the promise of early-entry ATCPs and how schools of education might respond to the rise of early-entry ATCPs and the trend of the new professionalism.


Policies that shift the costs of higher education from the taxpayer to the university student or graduate are increasingly popular, yet they have not been subjected to a thorough normative analysis. This paper provides a critical survey of the standard arguments that have been used in the public debate on higher education funding. These arguments are found to be wanting. In their place, the paper offers a more systematic approach for dealing with the normative issues raised by the funding of higher education. This approach is drawn from the political theory of John Rawls, whose view seeks to reconcile the values of equality, efficiency, and liberty. I show that, contrary to what we may think at first, an egalitarian approach like Rawls' does not in principle rule out policies that shift the funding burden from taxpayers to students or graduates. Which funding policy that approach selects as most fair will instead depend on the likely impact on the lifetime income prospects of the worst-off group in society, and this is a question which will need to be settled by empirical evidence.


ABSTRACT Statistical information is critical for both government and the general public for monitoring, evaluation, and implementation of employment policies and programmes. This paper revisits the labour market trends between 2012 and 2016 and discusses the importance of job search methods for labour market entry in Ghana. We explored job search methods (Formal and Informal Methods) used by 235 participants from seven regions of Ghana. Results revealed that many of the participants highly relied on informal job search methods to secure jobs across all demographic variables. This has been the case in Ghana when unemployment continues to increase leading to a difficult labour market entry. Our findings, therefore, suggest that in such a restricted labour market, employment success is likely to be determined by 'whom you know'. The results offer practical recommendations for private and public employment consultancies, as well as policymakers to institute impactful intervention programmes for job seekers on the efficient ways of developing and sustaining meaningful social capital/networks to enhance their chances of finding employment.


An electrophoretic deposition (EPD) prototype was developed aiming at the continuous production of carbon nanotube (CNT) deposited carbon fiber fabric. Such multi-scale reinforcement was used to manufacture carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. The overall objective was to improve the mechanical performance and functionalities of CFRP composites. In the current study, the design concept and practical limit of the continuous EPD prototype, as well as the flexural strength and interlaminar shear strength, were the focus. Initial mechanical tests showed that the flexural stiffness and strength of composites with the developed reinforcement were significantly reduced with respect to the composites with pristine reinforcement. However, optical microscopy study revealed that geometrical imperfections, such as waviness and misalignment, had been introduced into the reinforcement fibers and/or bundles when being pulled through the EPD bath, collected on a roll, and dried. These defects are likely to partly or completely shadow any enhancement of the mechanical properties due to the CNT deposit. In order to eliminate the effect of the discovered defects, the pristine reinforcement was subjected to the same EPD treatment, but without the addition of CNT in the EPD bath. When compared with such water-treated reinforcement, the CNT-deposited reinforcement clearly showed a positive effect on the flexural properties and interlaminar shear strength of the composites. It was also discovered that CNTs agglomerate with time under the electric field due to the change of ionic density, which is possibly due to the electrolysis of water (for carboxylated CNT aqueous suspension without surfactant) or the deposition of ionic surfactant along with CNT deposition (for non-functionalized CNT aqueous suspension with surfactant). Currently, this sets time limits for the continuous deposition.


The goal of this thesis is to analyse the differences and similarities in the perceptions of fate and aleatory events in the Antigone, the Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles. Rather than dwelling on the anachronistic question of "determinism versus freewill", the focus will be on the ways in which the characters themselves interpret the things that happen to them in their lifespan, in terms of luck, fate, or things that could have been different had they known better at a given moment of time. The conditions in which they perform the determining actions of their lives will be under scrutiny. Actions that seem to arise from contingency, from the previous moves of other actors, from accidental miscalculation, or even from voluntary offence will be contrasted with those for which there is no visible chain of cause and effect, and that are thus attributed to the desires of the gods or to inborn misfortune. There is, from one play to another, a contrast between authoritative assertions of characters with acknowledged prophetic power (Tiresias in the first two works, Oedipus in the later play) that lead the audience to hope for different things: in the Antigone, it shall be argued, there is more room for the possibility of a timely solution for the conflict, than in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where everything has happened already before the start of the play. In the Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus' new status means that he has understood more about the functioning of reality and the workings of destiny. The ways in which the plot structure itself conveys a view on the workings of fate will also be analysed, from the series of coincidences in the Oedipus Tyrannus to the function of the episodes in the other two plays. Even though the Theban plays are not philosophy treatises, the echoes of contemporary philosophical ideas are a constant in their text. Wherever relevant, a contrast with the Presocratic corpus has been made in an attempt to identify some of the thought patterns reused and adapted by Sophocles for his specific purposes and portrayals of the human position in the vaster cosmos.


Cultural referents not only designate specific realities of a given culture which do not always exist in another but they are also semantic elements which trigger social representations. By conveying values and points of view about different social groups, cultural referents become linguistic instruments to build stereotypes. These thought patterns are shared by the members of a social or cultural community and act as a filter of reality. The aim of this paper is to study the role of cultural referents in the construction of social stereotypes, focusing on the socio-cognitive universe they evoke. To this end, we have analyzed the translations techniques applied in the Spanish, Catalan and English versions of a novel which has been very successful on the French literary scene: Muriel Barbery's L'Elegance du herisson (2006). As show the results of this textual comparison, the explanations, descriptions and additional information observed in target texts do not trigger the same associations as cultural referents do in the source text. Translational approaches are too limited when it comes to achieve linguistic adequacy to different world visions. Therefore, translation must be conceived as an encounter between two cultural systems, in which the translator must build bridges, not so much between two linguistic systems as between the social perceptions and values of two different cultural communities.


BACKGROUND
Virtually all hospitals in the United States report that they engage in efforts to improve quality, such as continuous quality improvement (CQI). Little is known about the costs of these efforts and whether they are associated with improved outcomes or lower patient-care costs.

OBJECTIVES
The principal objective of this study was to provide benchmark data on the costs of efforts to improve quality. The authors also attempted to determine if quality improvement expenditures are correlated with outcomes and/or condition-specific hospital costs.

METHODS
Detailed information on the cost of quality improvement was obtained from hospitals participating in a broad study of CQI activities. These data were correlated with patient outcomes and condition-specific costs. The subjects were medium to large hospitals throughout the United States. Senior managers provided budgetary information on direct costs of quality improvement, and details about meetings associated with quality improvement. They also provided summary medical bills for all patients undergoing total hip replacement and coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The billing information was combined with data provided by the Health Care Finance Administration to estimate condition-specific costs. Patients were directly surveyed to obtain information about satisfaction and outcomes.

RESULTS
There is a wide range of expenditures on quality improvement activities. Meeting costs are a substantial percentage of total costs. Neither total costs nor meeting costs are correlated with condition-specific costs.

DISCUSSION
Hospital managers can be expected to insist on evidence that quality improvement expenditures produce tangible benefits. This article provides benchmark estimates of those benefits and a methodology for further research.


Aims: In patients with urinary hesitancy, the standard time of urinary hesitancy has not been established. Accordingly, we have analyzed the association between urinary hesitancy and various uroflowmetric finding in the present study. Methods: Between April 2009 and September 2009, 163 consecutive male subjects with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) were prospectively enrolled. Individuals with a taking any medications known to affect bladder function were excluded. To measure time to voiding (T2V), 1 ml of water was poured into the uroflowmeter funnel of immediately after the subjects pulled down their undergarments. This step was employed to compensate for the intrinsic disadvantage of the uroflowmeter, which works at the beginning of urination. After urination is completed, subjects were asked whether they experienced any urinary hesitancy at that time. Subjects also completed an IPSS questionnaire. Results: Mean patient age was 60.1 years, and 81 of a total of 163 patients reported experiencing urinary hesitancy. The optimal cut-off value for T2V was found to be 11.5 sec among individuals with voiding volumes greater than 150ml (AUC1⁄4 0.919). A correlation was also found between the score of question #6 on the IPSS questionnaire and the presence of urinary hesitancy during urology clinic visits (r1⁄4 0.26, P< 0.01). Conclusions: In men with LUTS, T2V is an effective uroflometric parameter to demonstrate urinary hesitancy. Accordingly, we contend that 11.5 sec of hesitancy is an optimal cut-off time to distinguish the presence of urinary hesitancy in voided volume of greater than 150ml. Neurourol. Urodynam. 30:578–582, 2011. 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


Title of thesis: AN ANALYSIS OF CHAUM'S VOTER-VERIFIABLE ELECTION SCHEME Julie Ann Staub, Master of Science, 2005 Thesis directed by: Professor Jonathan Katz Department of Applied Mathematics Chaum's Voter-Verifiable election scheme introduces a new direction for electronic voting. The scheme eliminates the need to trust any machinery or authority, and instead relies on mathematical proof to certify the trustworthiness of an election. Audits at every stage of the election create transparency that should restore voter confidence in the election process. We survey and categorize the field of electronic voting, and place Chaum's scheme within this context. We then define a framework of formal requirements of a voting system. We present Chaum's scheme itself, and give an analysis. Based on our technical analysis, we find the scheme to be secure. However, after considering other implementation concerns, we recognize various minor obstacles limiting its widespread adoption in today's elections. Despite this, we believe that the substance of the scheme is promising and maybe an improved, simpler variant might better suit future elections. AN ANALYSIS OF CHAUM'S VOTER-VERIFIABLE ELECTION SCHEME


Negative pressure phenomenon appears in many thermodynamic, geophysical and biophysical processes in the Nature and technological systems. For more than 100 years of the laboratory researches beginning from F. M. Donny's tests, the great values of negative pressure have been achieved. But this phenomenon has not been practically applied, being only a nice lab toy due to the special demands for the purity and homogeneity of the liquids for its appearance. The possibility of creation of direct wave of negative pressure in real heterogeneous liquid systems was confirmed experimentally under the certain kinetic and hydraulic conditions. The negative pressure can be considered as the factor of both useful and destroying energies. The new approach to generation of the negative pressure waves in impure, unclean fluids has allowed the creation of principally new energy saving technologies and installations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of different production processes. It was proved that the negative pressure is one of the main factors causing hard troubles in some technological and natural processes. Received results emphasize the necessity to take into account the role of the negative pressure as an energy factor in evaluation of many transient thermohydrodynamic processes in the Nature and production systems. Keywords—Liquid systems, negative pressure, temperature, wave, metastable state.


BACKGROUND
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common chronic inflammatory skin disease of humans and dogs. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential controllers of immune homeostasis and have been shown to play a key role in human AD, even though frequencies of Tregs in atopic human patients vary greatly. Only two studies have reported Treg numbers in the peripheral blood of dogs with canine AD (CAD).

OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to assess the numbers of circulating Tregs in healthy and atopic dogs, and to determine whether Treg numbers correlate with age, sex, disease severity or pre-treatment.

ANIMALS
Client-owned dogs including 14 healthy dogs and 35 dogs with CAD.

METHODS
Expression of Tregs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells was evaluated by flow cytometry. Tregs were phenotypically identified as T cells triple positive for CD4, CD25 and FoxP3.

RESULTS
The percentage of circulating CD4(+)  CD25(+)  FoxP3(+) Tregs in atopic dogs was increased significantly compared to healthy dogs (mean 2.1% versus 1%, P = 0.002) and correlated with disease severity (Pruritus Scale: r = 0.48, P = 0.003; CADESI-04: r = 0.34, P = 0.044). No significant differences in age or sex were found in either group and pre-treatment had no influence on results for atopic dogs.

CONCLUSIONS
Data suggest that, as in humans, CD4(+)  CD25(+)  FoxP3(+) Tregs may contribute to the pathogenesis of CAD as indicated by an association between Treg frequency and disease severity. Further investigation is required to improve the understanding of the role of Tregs in atopic dogs.


This study explored and described the experience of female African-American nursing faculty seeking employment in higher education in nursing. The lack of diversity in the nursing workforce has been attributed as a major underlying cause of disparity in healthcare in the United States. The importance of increasing the number of minority nursing faculty has been recognized as important for providing quality, culturally competent care. In other words, the shortage of minority nursing faculty, largely AfricanAmerican, continues to present a pervasive problem for the nursing profession and for providing quality patient care. Pervasive problems include limited knowledge of the value systems of people of color; ineffective cross-communications; inadequate skills in treating patients of color more specific to their phenotype; and insufficient understanding of how to impact access for this population. Studies have examined the experiences of African-American nursing faculty in higher education; unequivocally few studies have discussed experiences seeking employment in higher education. This research study used a qualitative approach to conduct face-to-face, semi-structured individual interviews with nine African-American female nursing educators to gain a better understanding of what and how they felt as they sought employment in higher education. Three major themes and seven subthemes emerged from stories of the nine participants in this study. The three major themes were: I) driving forces of motivation, II) challenges and issues, and III) successful versus unsuccessful. The seven subthemes included two under theme I: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation; three under theme II: lack of clarity, lack of job security and lack of diversity and racism; and two under theme III: hiring experience and race/ethnic consideration. Experiences of African-American Nursing Faculty iv


Aim/Purpose Research shows that students encounter difficulties in identifying the structure of argumentation texts and in understanding the main message of the argument. The research examined the effect that learning Logic Programming (LP), while applying logic inference, has on students' understanding of argumentation texts. Background Understanding an argumentation text means exposure to its structure, which requires the ability to identify the argument presented and to distinguish between the argument and its justifications. Argumentation is an important cognitive capacity for handling conflicting information, viewpoints, and opinions. Students' lack of ability to identify the structure of argumentation texts, and to understand its' main message, affects the understanding of texts in general, the writing of texts, and the presentation of oral arguments. Since Logic Programming is based on inference that is similar to the way in which people commonly believe that human inferential thinking is performed, our research approach was to investigate how learning LP in Computer Science affects the understanding of argumentation texts in Linguistics. Methodology The research population included 319 11th-grade students from five high schools, divided into a study group and a control group. Students' understanding was tested using knowledge questionnaires after completing their language studies, before (pre-study) and after (post-study) a year of learning LP. The knowledge questionnaires included argumentation paragraphs where students were asked to give each paragraph a title and to analyze the argument structure. In addition, an attitudes questionnaire was administered at the end of the school year in order to examine the students' attitudes towards the connection between the two disciplines. The research applied a mixed method approach, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. Analogies between Logic Programming and Linguistics 550 Contribution The research and its' findings contribute to the previous body of knowledge with relation to students difficulties in understanding argumentation texts in Linguistics studies. Moreover, it suggests a new approach of using argumentation in the framework of inference as apply in LP to scaffold students' conceptions. The use of an interactive computerized system (like the logic programming language Prolog) can scaffold students in constructing their knowledge, develop their computational thinking skills, and also enables to vary the teaching methods. Findings Findings show that the students' understanding of argumentation texts improved after learning LP. The study group students' achievements were explicitly better compared with the control group students, who did not learn LP, though this was not always reflected with significant statistics. Students' attitudes questionnaire revealed that students did not identify on their own the connections between the two disciplines and so could not explicitly use it to promote their understanding. Recommendations for Practitioners Creative educators, who value challenges, can greatly benefit their students if they collaborate in aim for applying interdisciplinary learning while combining those two disciplines. The research conclusions shows that it is possible to improve students' understanding if teachers explicitly mediate and guide students in drawing analogies. Recommendations for Researchers The analysis tool we developed and apply can be used by educators and researchers to evaluate the understanding of argumentative texts by learners. It can be used in language classes at all levels as well as by educators in other disciplines in which the understanding of the argumentative structure is fundamental. Impact on Society Developing argumentation skills and computational thinking skills. Future Research Vary future possible research can follow the presented approach: examining how LP teachers expose the logical structure of an argumentation paragraph when they write logic programs that describe the inference represented in texts; examining how language teachers coupe with learning and using LP; examines the knowledge and skills of students that experienced a mediate learning process in the two disciplines in parallel.


Since it's inception, the " No Free Lunch theorem " has concerned the application of symmetry results rather than the symmetries themselves. In our view, the conflation of result and application obscures the simplicity, generality, and power of the symmetries involved. This paper separates result from application, focusing on and clarifying the nature of underlying symmetries. The result is a general set-theoretic version of NFL which speaks to symmetries when arbitrary domains and co-domains are involved. Although our framework is deterministic, we note situations where our deterministic set-theoretic results speak nevertheless to stochastic algorithms.


In the setting of competing risks, the marginal survival functions of the latent failure times are nonidentifiable without making further assumptions about the joint distribution, the majority of which are untestable. One exception is the random signs censoring assumption which assumes the main event time is independent of the indicator that the main event preceded the competing event. Few methods exist to formally test this assumption, and none consider a stratified test, which detects whether random signs censoring is met within subgroups of a categorical covariate. We develop a nonparametric stratified test for random signs censoring that is easy to implement. In addition, it is often of interest to model the effects of several covariates in relation to the cause of interest. Thus, as an extension of the stratified test, we also propose a test for conditional random signs censoring, which allows for the random signs censoring assumption to be met after adjusting for categorical and/or continuous covariates. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we show our proposed test statistics have empirical levels close to the nominal level and maintain adequate power even with relatively small sample sizes and random right censoring. Compared to the standard test, both of our proposed tests have nearly equivalent power under random signs censoring and are superior in situations of stratified or conditional random signs censoring, where the standard test fails to detect random signs censoring within subgroups or after adjusting for covariates, respectively. Their ease of implementation and utility are illustrated through an application to liver transplant data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Public Health Significance: Clinicians must make decisions affecting patients' lives using the information available to them. Relying on research results based on models that use unverifiable assumptions can lead to inaccurate conclusions. The methods proposed here offer a solution to allow for more accurate modeling of marginal survival functions with competing risk data. Through use of these new methods, patient outcomes can be improved over time.


On March 16, 2020, 3700 participants who completed the MOBIS study between September 2019 and Janurary 2020 were invited to reinstall the GPS Logger and Travel Diary App 'Catch-My-Day', developed by MotionTag, to record their mobility behaviour during the period of special measures implemented to control the spread of the Corona Virus. The first 4 weeks of mobility data from the original MOBIS Study is taken for each participant as a baseline against which to compare current mobility patterns. These 4 weeks start place anywhere between 1st September and 15th November, depending on the participant. Only trips in Switzerland are currently considered, although data on cross border travel is available.


Swelling clay and rock are a common problem worldwide, and for design purposes it is necessary to quantify the free-swell behaviour of such material. A technique to measure the volumetric free swell of a swelling clay (called the toluene and wax-freezing volumetric free-swell method) is suggested here and consists of two approaches to measuring the volume of a specimen at different moisture contents. Both approaches have certain limitations, but fortunately they complement each other. The author required a volumetric free-swell method which could be performed with practically zero external load on the sample during free swell and where the scatter in the recorded results would be low. An optional requirement was that one should be able to perform the test in a field laboratory with only a few samples and a minimum of equipment. The results should be presented in such a way as to make interpretation and prediction easy.


The Chinese market is appealing, but the Chinese legal system is very complicated. A basic understanding of Chinese law is absolutely crucial for companies investing in this fast-growing and potentially huge market. Since China is moving toward a socialist market economy and is increasingly integrated into the world market, some aspects of China's commercial law are different from, while others are moving into line with, those of mature market economies. This book provides an introduction to the Chinese legal system, focusing on laws and regulations on foreign direct investment and highlights recent government policies and measures undertaken to intensify economics reforms so as to meet various challenges arising from China's accession to the World Trade Organization.


One of the most significant current discussions in development country is poverty, including in Indonesia.  Indonesia is one of the most populous in the worlds with 237.6 million people in 2010, where 76.93 % of povertyareconcentratedin Java(55.33%) andSumatra(21.6%). This paper attempted to create profiling poverty of 151 residences and cities in Sumatera. The poverty characteristics included in the profiling are:levelof education, manpower distribution, expenditures per capita, health, housing facilities, and government's poverty eradication programs. Data resources are from Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS). The data were analyzed by principle component analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Data Analysis.Factor analysis produced as many as 32 variables as the main components, adequate for further analysis as 'key factors' for social economic characteristic profile of residences and cities in Sumatera.  These main components demonstrated the adequate values of KMO, MSA, and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity . Following the result from Factor Analysis to obtain the important factors of poverty, the method of hierarchical cluster analysis was, further, used to classify the profiles of 108 residences and cities in Sumatera. The results of cluster analysis with 5interesting clusters of poverty profile of socio-economic indicators show that Cluster 1 comprises of 7 residences with similar characteristic of level of educationand manpower distribution. Cluster 2 includes 9 residences with similar level of education and expenditures per capita. Cluster 3 consists of 36 residences and 2 cities with similar manpower distribution and expenditures per capita patterns. Cluster 4 comprises of 23 residences and 3 cities showing its own distinct characteristics in their similarity patterns of expenditures per capita and housing facilities. Then, the cluster 5 consists of 2 residences and 27 cities showing the similar patterns in level of education and housing facilities. Keywords: economic social, poverty, factor analysis, cluster analysis.


An ultra-low power wake-up radio receiver using no oscillators is described. The radio utilizes an envelope detector followed by a baseband amplifier and is fabricated in a 130-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process. The receiver is preceded by a passive radio-frequency voltage transformer, also providing 50 Ω antenna matching, fabricated as transmission lines on the FR4 chip carrier. A sensitivity of -47 dBm with 200 kb/s on-off keying modulation is measured at a current consumption of 2.3 μ A from a 1 V supply. No trimming is used. The receiver accepts a -13 dBm continuous wave blocking signal, or modulated blockers 6 dB below the sensitivity limit, with no loss of sensitivity.


The wild boar population has been on a permanent increase over the last decades, causing conflicts with the requirements of modern human society. Existing effort to stabilize wild boar numbers generally fails with one of the causes being the high reproductive potential of wild boar. The aim of this study was to assess the onset of sexual maturity in wild boar males with regard to age, physical frame and environmental conditions on the basis of testicle development and sperm production. This study assessed the dimensions of gonads and the occurrence of sperm in boars caught during common hunts. Environmental conditions were found as an important factor for growth and sexual maturity of wild boar males. The body weight was a more important factor for sperm production than the age of young wild boar males. The weight threshold for sperm production in the testes was 29 kg of live weight, which corresponds to 6 months of age on average. This study has proven that environmental conditions are a significant factor affecting the physical development of male wild boars, more specifically the growth rate of their body frames and the onset of sexual maturity. In a better quality environment boars grow faster and enter puberty at an earlier age. Poor food supply and/or high hunting pressure result in slower body and testicular growth, as well as the production of sperm at a later age (approx. 2-3 months later).


Catechesis is a education that tells the Christians what they should believe. Many Christians know the need, but learning is tedious and teaching is difficult. Serious game in the field of education have both the intention of learning and an element of fun. In this study, I designed a educational serious game for Catechesis and implemented the game. The Heidelberg and Westminster Catechism were content. The key game play was to choose the correct answer by the touch. The effect was confirmed by the test users. The content of later study was planned. I hope this study can be well utilized to Church Educational System.


Today's female refugee and internally displaced population faces the increasing risk of adverse birth outcomes associated with stress related to conflict, flight, and displacement. Programs addressing the specific psychosocial needs of pregnant women in situations of war are scarce, and there is little consensus regarding best practices. Initiatives have recently emerged, including psychosocial groups, safe motherhood training, and social support systems, all which aim to alleviate the psychosocial stress experienced by this cohort. However, there remain existing program gaps, such as the absence of specific quality research, the use of a deficits-based vernacular concentrated on vulnerabilities, no focus on postpartum care, and little development of gender-based violence prevention initiatives addressing pregnancies resulting from rape. It is clear that more needs to be done to provide and support comprehensive quality psychosocial services for this population.


In this paper we consider optimization with relaxation, an ample paradigm to make datadriven designs. This approach was previously considered by the same authors of this work in Garatti and Campi (2019), a study that revealed a deep-seated connection between two concepts: risk (probability of not satisfying a new, out-of-sample, constraint) and complexity (according to a definition introduced in paper Garatti and Campi, 2019). This connection was shown to have profound implications in applications because it implied that the risk can be estimated from the complexity, a quantity that can be measured from the data without any knowledge of the data-generation mechanism. In the present work we establish new results. First, we expand the scope of Garatti and Campi (2019) so as to embrace a more general setup that covers various algorithms in machine learning. Then, we study classical support vector methods – including SVM (Support Vector Machine), SVR (Support Vector Regression) and SVDD (Support Vector Data Description) – and derive new results for the ability of these methods to generalize. All results are valid for any finite size of the data set. When the sample size tends to infinity, we establish the unprecedented result that the risk approaches the ratio between the complexity and the cardinality of the data sample, regardless of the value of the complexity.


Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology are insufficient to specify function. Modeling is essential to elucidate function, but psychophysics is also required. An example is the cognitive and sensorimotor branches of the visual system: anatomy shows direct cross talk between the branches. Psychophysics in normal humans shows links from cognitive to sensorimotor, but the reverse link is excluded by visual illusions affecting the cognitive system but not the sensorimotor system.


This technical notes details the methodology behind the Electric Vehicles on the Grid Simulator. This tool is intended to help individual building energy managers, facility owners, distribution service operators, charging point operators, and fleet operators. This model-based simulator enables users to evaluate the potential electric vehicle (EV) load impacts on the low-voltage distribution grid at specific sites and plan for future capacity upgrades. Additionally, the tool can be used to quantify the effects of different vehicle-grid integration technologies to alleviate the peak capacity stress. The Monte Carlo simulation and linear programming are deployed to predict the EV charging and discharging load profiles and load impacts at specific sites, with the consideration of future EV penetration, EV charging and traveling behaviors, availability of charging facility availability, and site loads. Based on existing studies conducted in the United States, Europe, and China, the default EV charging and traveling behaviors are predefined for a quick assessment. Users are encouraged to modify the model inputs for the specific site to derive more accurate and contextualized results. This tool can also help manage an EV fleet's smart charging and discharging at the low-voltage distribution grid.


We introduce $k$NN-LMs, which extend a pre-trained neural language model (LM) by linearly interpolating it with a $k$-nearest neighbors ($k$NN) model. The nearest neighbors are computed according to distance in the pre-trained LM embedding space, and can be drawn from any text collection, including the original LM training data. Applying this augmentation to a strong Wikitext-103 LM, with neighbors drawn from the original training set, our $k$NN-LM achieves a new state-of-the-art perplexity of 15.79 - a 2.9 point improvement with no additional training. We also show that this approach has implications for efficiently scaling up to larger training sets and allows for effective domain adaptation, by simply varying the nearest neighbor datastore, again without further training. Qualitatively, the model is particularly helpful in predicting rare patterns, such as factual knowledge. Together, these results strongly suggest that learning similarity between sequences of text is easier than predicting the next word, and that nearest neighbor search is an effective approach for language modeling in the long tail.


The relevance of transport costs has increased as liberalization continues to reduce artificial barriers to trade. Countries need to adopt policies to `get closer` to global markets. Can improvements in infrastructure and regulation reduce transport costs? Is it worthwhile to implement policies designed to increase competition in transport markets? Focusing on air transport, which has increased its share in US imports from 24 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2000, this paper quantifies the effects of infrastructure, regulatory quality and liberalization of air cargo markets on transport costs. During the 1990s, the US implemented a series of Open Skies agreements, which have provided a unique opportunity to assess the effect on prices of a change in the competition regime. We find that infrastructure, quality of regulation and competition matter. In our sample, an improvement in airport infrastructure from the 25th to 75th percentiles reduces air transport costs 15 percent. A similar improvement in the quality of regulation reduces air transport costs 14 percent. In addition, Open Skies agreements reduce air transport costs by 8 percent.


Ambergris is a rare substance produced in the intestines of sperm whales. It appears to result from an irritation caused by the beaks of the cephalopods on which they feed. The link between ambergris and whales, if not the mechanism by which ambergris is produced, has been addressed throughout history but, due to contradictory reports and fanciful explanations regarding its origin, only recently has it been widely accepted. Since ancient times ambergris has been used for medicinal purposes and in perfumes, but its supposed exotic properties are an important reason for the European demand for this substance. Accounts about ambergris from places where Europeans sailed since the 15th century are numerous. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were no laws dictating who owned the ambergris found on beaches and many pieces were sold or traded, legally or illegally, from overseas to Europe. However, this product was always obtained in relatively small quantities. More recently, with the advent of industrial whaling dedicated to sperm whaling conducted by several nations in various parts of the world during the 19th and 20th centuries, ambergris acquired an importance of its own and was sold at very high prices. In the Azores, ambergris from hunted sperm whales was documented; the same applies for Madeira and the Portuguese mainland. Being a product typically reported in whaling data and related to the economic exploitation of the sea, it is through the historical sources that its importance is clearly demonstrated.


Consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal are also important components that help contribute to the recall of autobiographical memories. Traditionally, these features have been assessed in public dramatic events in the past such as the Challenger explosion and the 9111 terrorist attack. In opposition to these traditionally studied events, the present study examined the effects of these features on five different private events. An analysis of these different experiences was assessed to determine the role of consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal play on memory recall. These three components were assessed in five different events during different points of the lifetime. Adults diagnosed with a cancer diagnosis (N = 44) were examined and compared to adults who heard about their child's injury (N = 63, Hillman et al., 2010), adults who viewed their child's injury (N = 37 Hillman et al., 2010), adults who experienced a car accident (N = 74, Shaneyfelt, Minor, & Bohannon, 2008), and adults who experienced an injury during their childhood (N = 109, Hillman et al., 2010). All of these events were measures with a two part survey that consisted of a free recall narrative of the event and a detailed series of proved questions which included ratings of vividness, affect, and an estimate of rehearsals. Cancer diagnosis memories yielded the highest memory detail and recounts, but the lowest vividness ratings. This finding sheds light on how the method of information input plays different roles in both memory quality


This article examines the symbolic whiteness associated with pumpkins in the contemporary United States. Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte, a widely circulated essay in McSweeney's on "Decorative Gourd Season," pumpkins in aspirational lifestyle magazines, and the reality television show Punkin Chunkin provide entry points into whiteness–pumpkin connections. Such analysis illuminates how class, gender, place, and especially race are employed in popular media and marketing of food and flavor; it suggests complicated interplay among food, leisure, labor, nostalgia, and race. Pumpkins in popular culture also reveal contemporary racial and class coding of rural versus urban places. Accumulation of critical, relational, and contextual analyses, including things seemingly as innocuous as pumpkins, points the way to a food studies of humanities and geography. When considered vis-à-vis violence and activism that incorporated pumpkins, these analyses point toward the perils of equating pumpkins and whiteness.


The theory of the concave grating has been examined in considerable detail by methods of geometrical optics. The results derived by means of geometrical optics were checked by comparing them with those based on physical optics in special cases. The conditions for image formation and aberrations in the image may be expressed by equations somewhat different from those given by Beutler which are shown to be in error. The astigmatism and other aberrations are treated with respect to finite length of slit illumination, finite grating size and deviations of the optical components from the Rowland plane but still lying on the Rowland cylinder. Within certain limitations, it is shown that the aberrations present in an off-plane Eagle mounting may be corrected by a very small rotation of the slit in a plane perpendicular to the optic axis. The optimum width of the grating, instrumental line half-width, and resolving power of the grating are also discussed. Finally, the Beutler treatment of the concave grating is examined in detail and the important errors are pointed out.


The central themes in Brinig and Garnett's Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America distill as easily as they haunt. Well-understood is that the United States needs to improve the quality of education as well as its equitable distribution across various sub-classes of students. Paradoxically, students most in need of high-quality education services — including minority students, particularly those from low-income households in urban areas — are more likely assigned to under-performing public schools. Historically, the nation's Catholic schools provided urban students, including many minority students from low-income households, with more efficacious yet less expensive educational services than their urban public school counterparts. Brinig and Garnett's book identifies and discusses an especially lethal interaction of an array of key trends: While the need for high-quality, low-cost education services continues its ascent, Catholic school closures accelerate and, in so doing, threaten efforts to help improve the urban education landscape. To make matters even worse, as Brinig and Garnett also argue, the consequences of Catholic school closures extend beyond the education realm and degrade the stability of urban communities. Brinig and Garnett's work on this topic is important as the policy issues remain timely and novel, and they enlist data and empirical methods into their analyses. As a result, Brinig and Garnett's book is not only important for what it says but also how it says it.


Some proposals are made for the use of epoxy coated reinforcement in United Kingdom bridge decks. These proposals are based mainly on an extensive review of North American work. A preliminary cost study is made. It is concluded that epoxy coating of the top steel in addition to current waterproofing practice would provide - at relatively little extra cost - additional assurance that the reinforcement would be adequately protected throughout the life of a bridge. The current design rules do not permit decks with permanently exposed concrete wearing surface without waterproofing. Epoxy coating may afford a means of introducing such decks which have certain advantages. However, it is concluded that further information is required before a positive recommendation to delete waterproofing can be made. (A) (TRRL)


Novel vanillin molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres were synthesized by the method of the reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) precipitation polymerization. In the study, the imprinted polymer was synthesized by using dibenzyltrithiocarbonate (DBTTC) and vanillin as the chain transfer agent and template respectively. Ultraviolet spectrum analysis was used to determine methacrylic acid (MAA) as the functional monomer. The conditions which influence the preparation of the molecularly imprinted polymer prepared by RAFT (RAFT-MIP) such as solvent, crosslinker, and the ratio of monomer, AIBN and DBTTC were systematically investigated. Scanning election microscopy, adsorption experiment and Scatchard analysis were used to evaluate the RAFT-MIP. The morphology and adsorption performance of RAFT-MIP were improved significantly in comparison with molecularly imprinted polymers synthesized by traditional precipitation polymerization (TR-MIP).