Summary.
The crisis in Mali has brought the Sahel to
the centre of international attention. This
fragile region not only suffers from longstanding
development challenges, but also from an acute
security vacuum that has triggered military
intervention. Many questions have arisen as a
consequence of the crisis. Has the European
Union the ability to cope with such a complex and
dynamically evolving security environment? How
have divergent views on the political roadmap to
be adopted, and the lack of resources at the African
level, impacted the crisis response? Can the different
players involved agree on what are the most
pertinent needs and challenges to be addressed? Are
they ready for long-term engagement? Can regional
organisations effectively collaborate and are they
able to successfully integrate different agendas?
Following a conference organised by the Institute
for European Studies, the Egmont Institute and the
Observatoire de l'Afrique on these questions this
Policy Brief builds on the findings of the conference
and provides an analytical overview of the regional
crisis by focusing on the main challenges facing the
Sahel, the local and regional dynamics at play and
the military and security response.


Chaos! Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics -- with assistance from Oni Press, Top Shelf Productions, and others present a collection of stories and illustrations from an incredibly diverse array of talented writers and artists. The New Yorker's Eric Drooker contributes a cover showing a cityscape that is simultaneously ancient and modern, mournful and hopeful, with an artist at the center, empowered to interpret a tragic landscape. Among Volume 1's contributors are writer/artist William Stout, who shares the true story of a Yugoslavian citizen's love of Americans; Stan Sakai, vividly recalling his last visit to New York City; and Paul Chadwick, who offers his interpretation of the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93, whose sacrifice kept September 11 from being an even more tragic day. Cartoonists Tony Millionaire, Sam Henderson, Mike Diana, Scott Morse, Mark Crilley, Roger Langridge, Chris Eliopoulos, and Mark Martin are among those offering differing takes on a range of subjects spanning from terrorism and heroism to survival and the challenges of parenting. Other stories include an illustrated essay by Dean Motter; a Walt Whitman-penned meditation on death illustrated by Quique Alcatena; Darko Macan's "An Expert Opinion" on breaking the cycle of violence; and "T.V. Exec Visits Ground Zero" by TV Funhouse creator Robert Smigel and his Ex-Presidents collaborator, artist Michael Kupperman. Playboy Magazine's Istvan Banyai plus Carlos Meglia, Renee French, Alex Maleev, Peter Kuper, Tommy Lee Edwards, and others offer haunting, inspiring illustrations that distill the emotions provoked by the tragic events of September 11.


Abstract Introduction. The systemic vulnerability that teachers experience is influenced from pressures arising from ecological environments originally described by Bronfenbrenner (1979). The pressure on teachers has its peculiarities in countries with a totalitarian past and without it. Regardless of cultural context, pressure effects many teachers' ability to be comfortable with the demands of their daily tasks, and their willingness to feel proud of their profession. Therefore, identifying factors of systemic vulnerability of teachers in different contexts and levels of social environment is relevant. The aim of the study is to evaluate publications that reveal systemic factors of schoolteachers' vulnerability with the help of Scoping review. Methodology. Initially, 4,810 publications from four databases (Scopus, ERIC EBSCO, PsycINFO, and Web of Science) were involved. At the stage of full texts' analysis 22 articles were considered. The research presents a wide range of geographical regions, which indicates the degree of generalization in conclusions about the sources of systemic pressure on teachers in different countries. Results. In this article, for the first time, the factors of systemic vulnerability of teachers at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of social environment are highlighted. Societal and cultural expectations are the biggest sources of pressure on the macro-level. Pressures on the macro-level may affect the micro-level, that is, for the psychological well-being of teachers, since they themselves are a part of the cultural and societal systems. This can contribute to "self-imposed" pressure by teachers that has not been the focus of research until now. Parents and the school environment are the biggest sources of pressure on teachers at the meso-level. Much of the conflict between parents and teachers is stimulated by opposing views of what a 'good education' means. Government overregulation of work conditions, requirement to maintain responsibilities other than teaching, pressure from administrators, insufficient levels of wages and resources of the education system, heavy school workload, insufficiently developed curriculum are sources of systemic pressure on teachers. Lack of public control over school administration' decision-making and lack of autonomy of educational institutions correlates with political and governmental pressures. Burdensome governmental pressure whether due to reform, policy change, or cultural expectations related to political past forms the social representation of the teacher as having a low professional status, as well as social ideas about mismatch between teacher actions and the expectations of society. The great consensus of research on the sources of systemic vulnerability extends to the countries of Eastern Europe and China that were associated with totalitarianism, as well as to the countries of Western Europe with a strong democratic tradition. Since pay is a determinant of social status, the substantially lower salaries of teachers in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe may be a driving factor behind the prevailing negative perception of their status among Eastern European teachers. The lack of clear differences between factors that cause vulnerability of teachers beyond pay may be explained by the international decline of the status of the teaching profession. The limitations of this study are the lack of publications on systemic pressure on teachers at the micro-level and on pressure relief factors. Social consequences and practical significance. The policies to mitigate systemic vulnerability will need to be highly contextualized. Research questions that reveal meso- and macro-level factors can be used for re-Scoping Review, as they point to teachers' systemic vulnerability. Future work. Future research should focus on ways that parent teacher relationships can be strengthened to a point of healthy co-addiction


Background: This study prospectively examines weight gain in breast cancer survivors compared with cancer-free women from a familial risk cohort. Methods: Absolute and percent weight change over 4 years was compared among 303 breast cancer survivors and 307 cancer-free women matched on age and menopausal status, from the same familial risk cohort. Linear and logistic regression was used to estimate the association between survivor status and weight gain. Results: Overall, breast cancer survivors gained significantly more weight [β = 3.06 pounds; 95% confidence intervals (CI), 0.94–5.17] than cancer-free women. Significant weight gain was observed in survivors diagnosed less than 5 years prior to baseline (β = 3.81 pounds; 95% CI, 1.22–6.29) and women with estrogen receptor (ER)-negative tumors (β = 7.26 pounds; 95% CI, 2.23–12.30). Furthermore, survivors treated with chemotherapy were 2.1 times more likely to gain at least 11 pounds during follow-up compared with cancer-free women (OR, 2.10; 95% CI, 1.21–3.63). Weight gain was even greater among survivors who took statins while undergoing chemotherapy treatment (Pinteraction = 0.01). Conclusion: This is the first study to demonstrate that weight gain is an important issue in breast cancer survivors with a familial risk. In the first five years posttreatment, breast cancer survivors gain weight at a faster rate than cancer-free women, particularly after chemotherapy and statin use but not after hormone therapy alone. Impact: Our findings provide support for the development of weight gain interventions for young breast cancer survivors with a familial risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(8); 1262–9. ©2015 AACR.


Tax revenue is the primary source of income for the government, yet corporations regularly engage in tax avoidance. Corporate managers and advisers commonly claim that the corporate form requires that they undertake this behavior because the nature of that form mandates it. Direct and indirect references are made to the classic case of Dodge v. Ford, as providing an edict that corporations must engage in unrelenting profit maximization that requires them to undertake aggressive tax avoidance.

As explored in my co-authored piece with Professor Karie Davis-Nozemack, Corporate Tax Avoidance and Honoring the Fiduciary Duties Owed to the Corporation and Its Stockholders, the "Dodge Mandate," as it may be termed, is far from absolute. In Dodge, the court held, "A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end." When put that way, rather than being an absolute edict to maximize profits, the Dodge Mandate is at most a requirement that corporate managers seek profit. In addition, although the Dodge Mandate can be derived from fiduciary duties that managers owe within the firm, the business judgment rule provides those managers wide latitude in how they seek profit.

The essential nature of the corporate form is the better place to begin in understanding when and to what extent engaging in tax avoidance is mandated. This approach has not been taken previously in the existing literature. The debate over the essential nature of the corporate form is expansive and has coalesced into three prevailing theories of the firm, i.e., concession theory, real entity theory, and aggregate theory. The problem is that while each of these theories explains how the corporation exists, each fails to explain why the corporation exists. I have developed a competing theory, which I term "collaboration theory," that better explains the essential nature of the corporate form.

By understanding the corporation as a collaboration between the government and the individuals organizing, operation, and owning the corporation, the impermissibility of aggressive corporate tax avoidance becomes apparent. Collaborators in business ventures owe each other a duty of good faith, and the contractual nature of the corporation carries with it a duty of a good faith as well. As a result, the notion becomes fanciful that depriving the government of revenue through aggressive corporate tax avoidance strategies is required or even acceptable.


Large scale visual understanding is challenging, as it requires a model to handle the widely-spread and imbalanced distribution of 〈subject, relation, object〉 triples. In real-world scenarios with large numbers of objects and relations, some are seen very commonly while others are barely seen. We develop a new relationship detection model that embeds objects and relations into two vector spaces where both discriminative capability and semantic affinity are preserved. We learn a visual and a semantic module that map features from the two modalities into a shared space, where matched pairs of features have to discriminate against those unmatched, but also maintain close distances to semantically similar ones. Benefiting from that, our model can achieve superior performance even when the visual entity categories scale up to more than 80,000, with extremely skewed class distribution. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model on a large and imbalanced benchmark based of Visual Genome that comprises 53,000+ objects and 29,000+ relations, a scale at which no previous work has been evaluated at. We show superiority of our model over competitive baselines on the original Visual Genome dataset with 80,000+ categories. We also show state-of-the-art performance on the VRD dataset and the scene graph dataset which is a subset of Visual Genome with 200 categories.


Abstract The Bitlis complex, SE Anatolia, constitutes a crystalline complex derived from the north of the Arabian Plate, accreted to the South Armenian block. Metamorphic studies in the cover sequences of the Bitlis complex allow constraining the thermal evolution of the massif by metamorphic index minerals. A regionally distributed low temperature-high pressure (LT-HP) metamorphic evolution is documented by glaucophane, relics of carpholite in chloritoid-bearing schists and pseudomorphs after aragonite in marbles. The metamorphic age of these HP assemblages is constrained by Ar isotope dating as 74±2 Ma. This indicates that (i) the Bitlis complex represents a terrane detached from the Arabian indenter that was subducted and stacked to form a nappe complex during the closure of the Neo-Tethys and (ii) that during Late Cretaceous to Cenozoic evolution the Bitlis complex never underwent temperatures over 450 °C. The consequences of the metamorphic evolution of the Bitlis complex (a cold continental block within a hot environment) for the Eastern Anatolian plateau are complied in a crustal section.


The last several years have seen multicore architectures become ascendant in the computing world. As a result, it is no longer sufficient to rely on increasing single-threaded performance to improve application performance; instead, programmers must turn to parallelization to realize the performance gains of multicore architectures. While much research over the past three decades have focused on parallelizing regular programs which operate over arrays and matrices, much less effort has been focused on irregular programs which operate over pointer-based data structures such as trees and graphs. In fact, it is not even clear that a significant amount of parallelism even exists in these applications.
We identify a common type of parallelism that arises in irregular programs that operate over worklists of various kinds, which we call amorphous data-parallelism. Due to the data-dependent nature of these applications, static compiler analysis does not suffice to uncover any parallelism. Instead, successful parallelization requires speculative, or optimistic, parallelization. However, existing speculation techniques, such as thread-level speculation, are too low-level to recognize and extract useful parallelism from these applications.
We present the Galois system for optimistic parallelization which uses high-level abstractions to express amorphous data-parallelism in irregular programs, and uses semantic properties of data structures to automatically parallelize such programs. These abstractions allow programs with amorphous data-parallelism to be written in a sequential manner, relying on run-time support to extract parallelism.
We then develop abstractions which allow programmers to succinctly capture locality properties of irregular data structures. We show how these abstractions can be used to improve locality, improve speculation performance and reduce speculation overhead. We also present a novel parallel scheduling framework which allows programmers to leverage algorithm semantics to intelligently schedule concurrent computation, improving performance.
We demonstrate the utility of the Galois approach, as well as the extensions that we propose, across a wide range of irregular applications demonstrating amorphous data-parallelism. We find that the Galois approach can be used to extract significant parallelism with low programmer overhead.


The calculation and management of funding risk for a portfolio of OTC derivatives is anything but trivial. In the first part of this paper (FVA Demystified), we discussed the ideas underlying FVA. We saw that it is an adjustment made to the price of a portfolio of derivatives to account for the future funding cost an institution might face. We also saw that it is very important to differentiate between the Price of a derivative (the amount of money we would get if we sell the derivative) and the Value to Me (the Price minus my cost of manufacturing the derivative). In this paper, we are going to investigate the practicalities of FVA. We will see how FVA can be calculated and managed. If we have a proper CVA system, calculating FVA is not too difficult, subject to a few reasonable assumptions. This can be achieved because a good CVA Monte Carlo simulation already calculates many of the inputs needed to compute FVA. Also, we will explain the role of FVA desks in current large organisations, as well as how FVA can be risk-managed and hedged. Finally, we propose a management set up for CVA and FVA, and understand why a number of institutions have decided to join both desks.


Scholars of John Maynard Keynes' life and contributions to economics have tended to approach his involvement in the early 20th century eugenics movement by either:
(1) historicizing it as a regrettable political curiosity with only minor connections to his larger system of economic thought or,
(2) positing an evolutionary turn in Keynes' thinking that led him to abandon his earlier neo-Malthusian principles in the late 1920s.
In this paper, we reexamine the role that eugenicist beliefs played in the formation of Keynesian macroeconomic theory, particularly as it concerned the problem of unemployment. Turning to a historical analysis of Keynes' writings and accompanying archival material, we present evidence of a continuity of eugenicist themes that links his early work on population control to his embrace of state-organized economic design at the mature phase of his career. Taken in sum, eugenics adds a complicated moral dimension to the genesis of Keynesian thought, though one that we also note is highly consistent with the technocratic inclinations of progressive era policymaking.


In 1995 the regional council of the Lazio region passed Decree N.1650 which regulates the maintenance of dialysis equipment and sets limiting values for microbiological and chemical parameters used to assess the quality of water used for dialysis fluids. As regards the microbiological parameters, limiting values were set for total bacterial count and endotoxins. However, in recent literature, serious health effects following dialysis have been described; these suggest the advisability of including testing for more specific microorganisms and of testing greater samples of dialysis water. In this study, conducted over 2 years, in addition to normal microbiological parameters, dialysis fluids were tested for the presence of bacteria of the Pseudomonas species. Results show that samples which met the standards for dialysis water set by legislation were actually found to be contaminated by Pseudomonas species.


Anatoli Kuprianov and William Lupoletti employ the VAR technique to forecast the regional economy in "The Economic Outlook for Fifth District States in 1984." The authors document the experiences of the economies of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia over the past 25 years. After summarizing the differences between conventional and VAR forecasting models, they present forecasts of each state for 1984 produced by a five-variable VAR model. These forecasts suggest that the recovery of 1983 should continue through 1984 for most Fifth District states.


Previous studies of human listeners' ability to identify speakers by voice have revealed a reliable language-familiarity effect: Listeners are better at identifying voices when they can understand the language being spoken. It has been claimed that talker identification is facilitated in a familiar language because of functional integration between the cognitive systems underlying speech and voice perception. However, prior studies have not provided specific evidence demonstrating neural integration between these two systems. Using dichotic listening as a means to assess the role of each hemisphere in talker identification, we show that listeners' right-, but not left-, ear (lefthemisphere) performance better predicts overall accuracy in their native than non-native language. By demonstrating functional integration of speech perception regions (classical left-hemisphere language areas) in a talker identification task, we provide evidence for a neurologic basis underlying the language-familiarity effect.


White UA, Maier J, Zhao P, Richard AJ, Stephens JM. The modulation of adiponectin by STAT5-activating hormones. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 310: E129–E136, 2016. First published November 25, 2015; doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00068.2015.—Adiponectin is a hormone secreted from adipocytes that plays an important role in insulin sensitivity and protects against metabolic syndrome. Growth hormone (GH) and prolactin (PRL) are potent STAT5 activators that regulate the expression of several genes in adipocytes. Studies have shown that the secretion of adiponectin from adipose tissue is decreased by treatment with PRL and GH. In this study, we demonstrate that 3T3-L1 adipocytes treated with GH or PRL exhibit a reduction in adiponectin protein levels. Furthermore, we identified three putative STAT5 binding sites in the murine adiponectin promoter and show that only one of these, located at 3,809, binds nuclear protein in a GHor PRL-dependent manner. Mutation of the STAT5 binding site reduced PRL-dependent protein binding, and supershift analysis revealed that STAT5A and -5B, but not STAT1 and -3, bind to this site in response to PRL. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (IP) analysis demonstrated that only STAT5A, and not STAT1 and -3, bind to the murine adiponectin promoter in a GH-dependent manner in vivo. Adiponectin promoter/reporter constructs were responsive to GH, and chromatin IP analysis reveals that STAT5 binds the adiponectin promoter in vivo following GH stimulation. Overall, these data strongly suggest that STAT5 activators regulate adiponectin transcription through the binding of STAT5 to the 3,809 site that leads to decreased adiponectin expression and secretion. These mechanistic observations are highly consistent with studies in mice and humans that have high GH or PRL levels that are accompanied by lower circulating levels of adiponectin.


W hen Kate graduated from Lincoln High School, she had a budding interest in science. Taking college-level advanced placement courses in biology and chemistry during her senior year had been challenging, but a combination of enthusiastic teachers and supportive classmates brought her unanticipated satisfaction—she was learning how nature worked and had made a good start at analyzing it as a scientist would.

It took only 1 year of science classes at a large research university to turn Kate into a business major. Her general chemistry textbook was similar in content to the one she'd used in high school. But the class was so enormous that she only knew the professor as a speck in the distance. The laboratory section was taught by a teaching assistant who was struggling to learn English, but that didn't matter much because the acid/base titration was the same experiment that Kate had done in high school. Moreover, the pressure to memorize equations and work on assigned problems dampened Kate's enthusiasm for grappling with the underlying concepts.

![Figure][1]

CREDIT: BOB HANDELMAN/GETTY IMAGES

So why should a research scientist reading this account care about what happened to Kate? After all, hasn't it always been this way? There is a laissezfaire attitude among some that although university science classes are tough, those who are really "cut out for it" will survive to populate the next generation of scientists. But we should care, and there are two reasons why.

First, the pipeline issue; illustrated here with reference to the United States, but a problem in many other countries as well. The number of Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering granted by U.S. universities increased by 45% from 1974 to 2004, somewhat more than the 37% growth in the country's population. But the doctoral degrees granted to U.S. citizens increased by only 11%, making non-U.S. citizens, most holding temporary visas, largely responsible for our keeping pace with the country's need for scientists. Clearly, something is turning Kate and her classmates away from careers in science.

Second, the future of the world is at stake! That's not melodrama. Never have exciting new developments in science been more tightly connected to real dilemmas in public policy. If the electorate distrusts science and doesn't understand how scientists explore and interrogate the natural world, how will they vote on issues ranging from stem cell research and global climate change to the teaching of intelligent design in our schools? In addition to full-time scientists, we need educated citizens who can think critically about the science and technology choices so prominent in contemporary political life.

Science and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) are committed, each in their own ways, to revitalizing science education. Therefore, we are pleased to collaborate and bring the readers of Science innovative educational ideas in each month of 2006.[*][2] We want to showcase new approaches to teaching that work even in large lecture classes, or bring other disciplines, such as physics and computer sciences, together with biology into a single course. Learning is not a spectator sport, and through active involvement in the material, students will understand and retain concepts much better. We want to explore how to connect research and teaching for the benefit of both student and professor. We want to help faculty do what they would all love to do: teach better with less struggle. Above all, we hope to increase general interest in, and knowledge about, science; no matter what path our students embark on.

Why Science ? Because it's widely read by scientists around the world, many of whom share a primary commitment to research and a conviction that the successor generation of scientists must be nurtured. If they agree with us that science and the teaching of science are inseparable, they are an audience we must reach.

We researchers pride ourselves on thinking scientifically in our laboratories. We gather data, formulate hypotheses, and suspect our own conclusions enough to test them rigorously. And we always want to apply the best technology available to our problems. When scientists step out of the lab into the classroom, they can apply these same principles: finding out what their students already know, reworking their methods to enhance understanding, and applying technology to support those efforts. This scientific approach to teaching science is what we will highlight in the upcoming issues of Science .

 [1]: pending:yes
 [2]: #fn-1


Background: Dyspraxia, also included under the term Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), is a condition characterised by an impairment in motor skills function which impacts negatively on other aspects of daily living such as athletic capability, handwriting, self-esteem and social interaction. However, no effective therapy currently exists to address all of these issues within this group. The aim of the present study therefore was to investigate whether a complementary therapy, called Fascia Bowen therapy, would improve neuromuscular function and psychological wellbeing in males aged 8-11 (at Primary School) diagnosed with this condition. Methods: A group of 10 participants meeting the criteria of 15th centile or below in motor skills functioning, received a Fascia Bowen therapy treatment session from a qualified Fascia Bowen practitioner each week for 6 weeks. All participants' motor skills function were assessed by an occupational therapist before and after the end of the intervention using the Motor Skills Assessment Battery for Children test (MABC-2). Additionally, parents, teachers and participants completed questionnaires measuring self-esteem, social skills, social interaction, behaviour and scholastic function before and after the intervention. Results: The participants showed significant improvement in neuromuscular function over time using the MABC-2. However, no significant changes were shown in the other measures of functioning. Although parents did provide some anecdotal reports about positive changes in real life, these were not reflected in the measures. The results suggest that while improvements were shown as significant in the motor domain, which was the focus of the therapy, the results did not translate to other domains of life over time. 13 Conclusions: Further research is necessary to test the efficacy of the treatment's effects using a larger sample, a control group and a longer intervention timescale. A six week intervention period may not be sufficient to show significant changes in self-esteem, social skills, social interaction, behaviour and scholastic functions which have deep-rooted constructs developed over many years. These may therefore take a long time to change. 14


St. Louis Fed President James Bullard discussed several aspects of the current macroeconomic situation during a presentation in Nashville, Tenn. He noted that recent data indicate that real GDP growth remains consistent with the low-growth regime of recent years. On inflation, he said that recent inflation outcomes have been unexpectedly low, below the Fed?s inflation target of 2 percent. Bullard also examined headline inflation?s connection to global commodity prices and whether the low U.S. unemployment rate means that inflation is about to increase substantially. In summary, Bullard said, ?the current level of the policy rate is likely to remain appropriate over the near term.?


The late Permian Zechstein evaporites in the northern Netherlands were exceptionally well imaged in ![Formula][1] of prestack depth migration 3D seismic data. Seismic reflections of a 30–150-m-thick Zechstein 3 anhydrite-carbonate stringer, which was encased in thick layers of rock salt, provided an unparalleled, basin-scale view of the 3D internal structure of a giant salt basin. Seismic data were used to map the regional variation of the intrasalt stringer to analyze its role in deformation styles and salt flow as well as its interaction with the sub- and suprasalt sediments. From our interpretation of the stringer, the salt layers, and the encasing sediments, three regional structural stringer styles can be defined and were analyzed in the context of regional salt kinematics. Our results revealed that the current stringer initially formed a continuous sheet of anhydrite and carbonate, embedded in salt of varying thickness. After the onset of syndepositional gravitational gliding of some of the salt masses and passive salt diapirism triggered by differential loading in the Triassic in other areas, salt flow caused rupture and folding of the stringer on a wide range of scales. The thickness and deformation degree of the individual salt layers controlled the development of regionally distinctive styles of intrasalt structures. Although deformation of the salt and the embedded stringer stopped early on morphologic highs, the basinal areas experienced phases of later activation or reactivation of salt structures and sedimentary basins. This was especially the case during the Late Cretaceous to Early Tertiary plate tectonic reorganization in the Central European plate, causing three-dimensionally complex intrasalt structures observable today.

 [1]: /embed/mml-math-1.gif


This paper describes a scalable and transferable cloud-based virtual reality pedagogical ecosystem that provides students with the basics of wind turbines and associated wind farm design. The module uses mathematical models derived from the experimental WKA-60 turbine to incorporate realistic wind-turbine behavior. Students are able to design a virtual wind-farm for optimal energy generation by modifying individual wind turbine parameters such as the blade length, count, and angle as well as the spacing of the wind turbines in the wind farm. Live graphs showing how the design parameters affect total power output from the virtual wind farm provide instant feedback to the students. An adaptive methodology that assesses the application of students' independent thought processes, along with design and operational skills in creating the wind farms is implemented. We provide a detailed description of technical approach that was adopted to create this system. The ecosystem uses the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud technology in the backend and Unity 3D gaming engine for the front-end rendering. The server-side software runs on Node.js and frameworks such as Express. As educational VR systems continue to develop, we anticipate that cloud based implementations will be utilized for an increasing number of educational needs and that the ecosystem and technical approach presented in this paper may serve as a guide for future educational VR research.


Behavioral antitrust – the application to antitrust analysis of empirical evidence of robust behavioral deviations from strict rationality – is increasingly popular and hotly debated by legal scholars and the enforcement agencies alike. This Article shows, however, that both proponents and opponents of behavioral antitrust frequently and fundamentally misconstrue its methodology, treating concrete empirical phenomena as if they were broad hypothetical assumptions. Because of this fundamental methodological error, scholars often make three classes of mistakes in behavioral antitrust analyses: First, they fail to appreciate the variability and heterogeneity of behavioral phenomena; second, they disregard the concrete ways in which markets, firms, and other institutions both facilitate and inhibit rational behavior by antitrust actors; and, third, they erroneously equate all deviations from standard rationality with harm to competition. After establishing the central role of rationality assumptions in present-day antitrust and reviewing illustrative behavioral analyses across the field – from horizontal and vertical restraints, through monopolization, to merger enforcement practices – the Article examines the three classes of mistakes, their manifestation, and their consequences in antitrust scholarship. It concludes by offering two sets of essential lessons that the behavioral approach already can offer to make antitrust law and policy more realistic and effective in protecting competition: One concerning the value of case-specific evidence in antitrust adjudication and enforcement, the other showing how antitrust law can and should account for systematic and predictable boundedly rational behavior that is neither constant nor uniform.


This dissertation identifies a question which is undervalued,
underexplored, and under-asked within the complex of laws that apply
to fashion and in legal scholarship exploring fashion: how are fashion
design objects cultural property? It answers this question by looking to
modern and contemporary Italian fashion design objects as a case study,
primarily because the history of Italian fashion, the current activities of
Italian fashion brands, and Italian cultural property law provide ready
examples and tools through which to answer the question. Bypassing
the more common question of whether fashion is art, the dissertation
asks how fashion design objects might be of historic, artistic, or other
cultural interest for the public under the law such that they may be
preserved and valorized like other cultural properties.
The first chapter gives a history of Italian fashion, spotlighting relevant
key historical moments and constant tensions through Italian fashion
history, including the complex nature of Italian fashion as both local
and global, the relationship between traditional Italian craftsmanship
and Italian brands and designers, the inspirational links between Italian
cultural heritage and Italian fashion, and the almost inseparable links
between intangible design and tangible properties. The second chapter
examines the dilemmas surrounding the definition of cultural property
under Italian cultural property law both throughout history and today –
a boundless cultural interest, mechanisms of time, and an emphasis on
things. This chapter also explores the relationship between Italian
cultural property law and copyright in light of cultural property law's
rules on reproductions and its regulation of decoro. The links between
intangibility and tangibility in the legal definition of cultural property
under Italian cultural property law and the work of legal scholars which
explains cultural property law with reference to text provide the
groundwork for an exploration in the third chapter of how certain texts,
despite usually being identified as intangible and therefore outside the
proverbial cultural property "box", may be tangible and therefore
cultural property. Such an exploration is fruitful for how fashion design
objects are cultural property since fashion design is often conceived of
as intangible like text and may also incorporate text. The third chapter
gives examples of text on a spectrum of intangibility and tangibility,
with corresponding examples of fashion design. It crafts a standard for
when and how fashion design objects might be cultural property or not.
In addition to facilitating a test for when fashion design objects may be
cultural property under cultural property law, this spectrum also
provides an opportunity for new comparisons between cultural
property and intellectual property, and more specifically between cultural property and copyright and their corresponding legal regimes.
This comparison is explored in chapter four, which recaps the spectrum
of cultural property in terms of tangible text, visible images, intangible
text or intangible images, and testaments having the value of
civilization. The chapter examines conceptual separability in U.S.
copyright law in particular with reference to this spectrum and the
recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, to show
how conceptual separability seems, for the category of designs of useful
articles eligible for inclusion in the category of pictorial, graphic, and
sculptural works, to be about identifying a possible public cultural
interest in intangible parts of tangible objects, in fashion designs which
are like visible images. In this sense, the dissertation envisions closer
ties between copyright law and cultural property law and sees
copyright as an at times ex ante cultural property regime. Chapter five
explores how the history of certain historic preservation laws in the
United States might allow for a future inclusion of fashion design
objects as part of historic property and acknowledges that certain parts
of Art Law and other sui generis norms may protect fashion design
objects as cultural property.
The dissertation suggests that while some fashion design objects can be
currently included as cultural property under cultural property law,
others cannot. Copyright may play a key role in the protection of
fashion design objects as cultural property, both when these fashion
design objects can and cannot be classified as cultural property under
the law. These links suggest that protecting fashion design objects as
cultural property and allowing this protection to inform the nature of
fashion designs as copyrightable subject matter might result in a thin
just as much as a thick copyright. Beyond cultural heritage law is an
emerging field for the protection of fashion design objects as cultural
property which will require considerations of how other legal regimes
overlap with cultural property law as applied to fashion design objects,
and the duties and obligations that members of the fashion industry
have in protecting their fashion products as cultural property so as not
to risk losing the cultural significance of fashion design objects for the
future.


Summary
1.
Blocks of five building materials commonly used in rural homes in Venezuela were sprayed with DDT suspension, emulsion, or solution at 1 gm. per sq. m. (approximately 100 mg. per sq. ft.). Tests of residual effect were made at intervals with wild-caught mosquitoes.
2.
A test employing a 4-hour period of exposure was not sufficiently sensitive to demonstrate differences in effectiveness of the various surfaces and sprays. It showed, however, that with all types of spray the most consistent mosquito kills were obtained on encalado (a whitewashed surface), and that the residual effect of the DDT was more lasting on this material than on the other substances tested. Of the mosquitoes applied to an escalado surface 10 months after spraying, 100 per cent were killed. On the other surfaces good kills (72 to 100 per cent) were obtained 9 months after spraying.
3.
Tests with a 15-minute period of exposure showed that suspension of DDT wettable powder gave far more effective residuals on the solid materials than were produced by emulsion or solution of DDT. Solution was also inferior in the case of the thatching materials; emulsion gave a better residual on these than on the solid surfaces, but was in general inferior to suspension.
4.
Of the five types of surface on which effective residuals were produced by DDT suspension, encalado was the one on which the residuals gave good kills for the longest period of time (94 per cent mortality at 4.5 months). The two thatching materials showed good residual effect at 3 and 4 months respectively. On adobe and bahareque the residual effect was good at 1 month and poor at 3 months.
5.
In view of the meager information relative to the length of exposure of mosquitoes to sprayed surfaces under natural conditions, it is suggested that in order to obtain a high percentage of kills of mosquitoes entering rural Vene zuelan houses, it would be necessary to spray with a suspension of DDT wettable powder (1 gm. per sq. m.) every 3 months during the season of malaria transmission.


In late 2014, two grand juries returned controversial no bill decisions in police killings, one in Ferguson, Missouri, and one in New York City. These outcomes have renewed calls for grand jury reform, and whatever one thinks of these particular processes and outcomes, such reform is long overdue. One logical source of reform to better respect privacy in records, which would have incidental benefits beyond this privacy focus, would be the newly enacted American Bar Association Standards for Criminal Justice on Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records (LEATPR). But LEATPR exempts from its requirements access to records via a grand jury subpoena, and, perhaps more surprisingly, potentially exempts access via a "functionally equivalent prosecutorial subpoena." The impetus for this exemption was a concern that applying LEATPR's requirements to the grand jury, or even to its functional equivalent, is unnecessary and might radically undermine longstanding systems of criminal investigation in perhaps unforeseeable ways. This Article addresses whether this exception can be justified by reviewing each of the four main regulatory mechanisms of LEATPR and examining whether grand jury procedures provide an adequate substitute. In finding that they do not, this Article indicates how to improve the grand jury process. These improvements would of course not resolve the very difficult and multifaceted social ills reflected in the controversy over recent grand jury decisions, but they could begin to restore the legitimacy of this once-revered but now-maligned institution.


Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a heterogeneous group of diseases related to sarcomere gene mutations exhibiting heterogeneous phenotypes with an autosomal dominant mendelian pattern of inheritance. The disorder is characterized by diverse phenotypic expressions and variable natural progression, which may range from dyspnea and/or syncope to sudden cardiac death. It is found across all racial groups and is associated with left ventricular hypertrophy in the absence of another systemic or cardiac disease. The management of HCM is based on a thorough understanding of the underlying morphology, pathophysiology, and clinical course. Imaging findings of HCM mirror the variable expressivity and penetrance heterogeneity, with the added advantage of diagnosis even in cases where a specific mutation may not yet be found. The diagnostic information obtained from imaging varies depending on the specific stage of HCM-phenotype manifestation, including the prehypertrophic, hypertrophic, and later stages of adverse remodeling into the burned-out phase of overt heart failure. However, subtle or obvious, these imaging findings become critical components in diagnosis, management, and follow-up of HCM patients. Although diagnosis of HCM traditionally relies on clinical assessment and transthoracic echocardiography, recent studies have demonstrated increased utility of multidetector computed tomography (CT) and particularly cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in diagnosis, phenotype differentiation, therapeutic planning, and prognostication. In this article, we provide an overview of the genetics, pathophysiology, and clinical manifestations of HCM, with the spectrum of imaging findings at MR imaging and CT and their contribution in diagnosis, risk stratification, and therapy.


This essay argues that the widespread but not widely recognised adaptation of Frankenstein in contemporary dance music problematises the 'technological' constitution of modern copyright law as an instrument wielded by corporations to exert increasing control over cultural production. The argument first surveys recent accounts of intellectual property law's responses to sound recording technologies, then historicises the modern discourse of technology, which subtends such responses, as a fetish of industrial capitalism conditioned by Frankenstein. The increasing ubiquity of cinematic Frankenstein adaptations in the latter two decades of the twentieth century outlines the popular cultural milieu in which Detroit techno developed its futuristic aesthetic, and which provided subsequent dance music producers with samples that contributed to techno's popularisation. These cultural and economic contexts intersect in an exemplary case study: the copyright infringement dispute in 1999 and 2000 between Detroit's Underground Resistance (UR) techno label and the transnational majors Sony and BMG.


Abstract The Tambien Group of northern Ethiopia (Tigre), with probable correlatives in Eritrea, is a 2–3-km-thick siliciclastic–carbonate succession that was deposited in an intra-oceanic arc platform setting within the southern Arabian–Nubian Shield (ANS) area (southern extension of the Nakfa Terrane) of the Mozambique Ocean. Its deposition occurred prior to ocean closure between converging fragments of East and West Gondwana and concomitant structural emergence of the East African Orogen (EAO). The Tambien Group is well exposed and best studied in the Mai Kenetal and Negash synclinoria, where litho- and chemostratigraphy (including δ13Ccarb, 87Sr/86Sr) provide the basis for a composite reference section. Two glaciogenic intervals have been suggested from exposures within the Didikama and Matheos Formation in the Negash Synclinorium. No reliable palaeomagnetic data exist to constrain the palaeolatitude of Tambien Group deposition and the southern ANS, but palaeogeographic reconstructions and evaporite pseudomorphs in lower carbonate units (Didikama Formation) imply low to intermediate latitudes (<45°). Integration of available geochronological information (regional magmatism and detrital zircon) suggests c. 775–660 Ma as a plausible window constraining deposition of the prospective glacial intervals. The Tambien Group appears to preserve a coherent chemostratigraphic framework that can be effectively subdivided according to shifts in δ13Ccarb polarity [polarity intervals A (+), B (–), C (+), D (–)]. Slates underlying and interstratified with polarity interval A carbonate preserve evidence of extreme chemical weathering that lessened prior to deposition of polarity interval B carbonate. Tambien Group carbonate units have sedimentological characteristics consistent with both shallow and deeper marine depositional settings. The lower prospective glacial interval lacks diagnostic sedimentological evidence of synglacial deposition, but is overlain by negative δ13C carbonate (polarity interval B) with sedimentological characteristics consistent with well-documented cap-carbonate successions. The upper prospective glacial interval in the Negash Synclinorium (Matheos Diamictite) best exhibits characteristics consistent with glaciogenic deposition (matrix-supported polymictic clasts, possible dropstones, possible bullet-nosed and striated clasts). In contrast to pericratonic rift margin settings that are common for Cryogenian glaciogenic deposits, palaeogeographic reconstructions for the 775–660 Ma timeframe place northern Ethiopia within an intra-oceanic setting that was likely far removed from cratonic hinterlands. More work on Tambien Group sedimentology, geochronology and palaeogeography is required to better evaluate the extent and timing of glacial conditions associated with the prospective glaciogenic intervals. Supplementary material: Supplementary Table 21.1 of Tambien Group geochronological age constraints is available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18462.


Given global heterogeneity in climate-induced agricultural variability, Tanzania has the potential to substantially increase its maize exports to other countries. If global maize production is lower than usual due to supply shocks in major exporting regions, Tanzania may be able to export more maize at higher prices, even if it also experiences below-trend productivity. Diverse destinations for exports can allow for enhanced trading opportunities when negative supply shocks affect the partners' usual import sources. Future climate predictions suggest that some of Tanzania's trading partners will experience severe dry conditions that may reduce agricultural production in years when Tanzania is only mildly affected. Tanzania could thus export grain to countries as climate change increases the likelihood of severe precipitation deficits in other countries while simultaneously decreasing the likelihood of severe precipitation deficits in Tanzania. Trade restrictions, like export bans, prevent Tanzania from taking advantage of these opportunities, foregoing significant economic benefits.


The article analyses the existing gap between the formal dimension of evidence-based medicine (EBM), as constituted by protocols, procedures, and guidelines, and actual professional practices in relation to a specific issue: the admission of patients to an intensive care unit (ICU). The results of a case study, carried out in the ICU of a hospital in the north of Italy between 2006 and 2007 are reported. The study was performed using ethnographic methods: participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and semi-structured interviews. Empirical data have been analysed using a grounded theory approach. The results show how three dimensions (macrosocial, organisational-interactional, and individual) become intertwined with the operational guidelines that have been drafted on the basis of international evidence. The standardisation process that the guidelines presuppose results in the adoption of a variety of different local styles with respect to the approach that individual doctors take in relation to the admission of a patient to an ICU. These styles can range from strict adherence to the international criteria to a greater compliance with medical–legal, organisational, and individual needs. Furthermore, the results of the study demonstrate how relational knowledge , as a form of situated knowledge , can allow the personnel involved to activate local resources (organisational, professional, and personal) in order to incorporate the formal prescriptions of EBM in professional practice. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1502261


Various aspects of traumatic pasts of the Portuguese colonial experience, the colonial wars, and the Portuguese leaving Africa after the independence of Portugal's former colonies in 1975 have been addressed in writings since 1980s. But, it is only very recently that the Portuguese generation born in Africa in the 1960s, as white colonisers, and then forced to leave their country in their teens have transformed their childhood memories and experiences of the colonial "collapse" into artistic expression. In her book, written in memoir form, Caderno de Memorias Coloniais, Isabela Figueiredo (2010) uses her childhood memories of the social landscapes of Mozambique and family relations to radically denounce racism, sexism and an unequal society. From a gender and postcolonial viewpoint, this paper will analyse Figueiredo's memoirs as an expression of transcultural memory, defined as a cultural exchange remembered across nations and cultures, and as an individual memory representative of a collective experience. Following, in particular, how the text inscribes and represents symbolic and physical violence against native women incorporated in the colonial ideology of Lusotropicalism, I will argue, that Figueiredo's text highlights how this ideology not only inscribed itself in African women's bodies, but also entered into the little white colonial girl, described in the text. As a representation of transcultural memories, the text also shows the importance of the colonial experience and Africa, in the postcolonial Portuguese cultural and social identity of today.


ABSTRACT This paper explores the nature and quality of relationships between social work students and their practice educators and discusses how practice educators navigate their multifaceted and complex role in the context of practice learning in England. The data was drawn from individual interviews with 13 practice educators and two focus groups with first year MA social work students. The findings indicate that challenges associated with social differences, in engaging students in learning, and in initiating critical dialogue affect the nature and quality of practice learning relationships. Practice educators need to develop skills, knowledge and confidence to manage the complexities and different demands of their role. It is also important for practice educators to invest time to develop and sustain meaningful relationships with students, and to create a safe space for critical dialogue to take place. A trusting relationship is fundamental if students and practice educators are to raise and explore difficult issues.


In this paper we present a number of methods (manual, semi-automatic and automatic) for tracking individual targets in high density crowd scenes where thousand of people are gathered. The necessary data about the motion of individuals and a lot of other physical information can be extracted from consecutive image sequences in different ways, including optical flow and block motion estimation. One of the famous methods for tracking moving objects is the block matching method. This way to estimate subject motion requires the specification of a comparison window which determines the scale of the estimate.In this work we present a real-time method for pedestrian recognition and tracking in sequences of high resolution images obtained by a stationary (high definition) camera located in different places on the Haram mosque in Mecca. The objective is to estimate pedestrian velocities as a function of the local density.The resulting data of tracking moving pedestrians based on video sequences are presented in the following section. Through the evaluated system the spatio-temporal coordinates of each pedestrian during the Tawaf ritual are established. The pilgrim velocities as function of the local densities in the Mataf area (Haram Mosque Mecca) are illustrated and very precisely documented. Tracking in such places where pedestrian density reaches 7 to 8 Persons/m$^2$ is extremely challenging due to the small numberof pixels on the target, appearance ambiguity resulting from the dense packing, and severe inter-object occlusions. The tracking method which is outlined in this paper overcomes these challenges by using a virtual camera which is matched in position, rotation and focal length to the original camera in such a way that the features of the 3D-model match the feature position of the filmed mosque. In this model an individual feature has to be identified by eye, where contrast is a criterion. We do know that the pilgrims walk on a plane, and after matching the camera we also have the height of the plane in 3D-space from our 3D-model. A point object is placed at the position of a selected pedestrian. During the animation we set multiple animation-keys (approximately every 25 to 50 frames which equals 1 to 2 seconds) for the position, such that the position of the point and the pedestrian overlay nearly at every time.By combining all these variables with the available appearance information, we are able to track individual targets in high density crowds.


Engineering design serves as the capstone experience of most undergraduate engineering programs. One of the key elements of the engineering design process is the compilation of results obtained into a technical report that can be shared and distributed to interested stakeholders including industry, faculty members and other relevant parties. In an effort to expand the tools available for assessment of engineering design technical reports, this study performed an initial validation of a previously developed Technical Writing rubric. The rubric was evaluated for its reliability to measure the intended construct, inter-rater reliability and external validity in comparison to an existing generalized written communication rubric. It was found that the rubric was reliable with Cronbach's alpha for all dimensions between 0.817 and 0.976. The interrater reliability for the overall instrument was also found to be excellent at 0.85. Finally, it was observed that there were no statistically significant differences observed between the measurements obtained on the Technical Writing rubric in comparison to the more generalized Written Communication Value rubric. This demonstrates that although specific to engineering design environments the Technical Writing rubric was able to measure key constructs associated with written communication practice. This rubric can now serve as one additional tool for assessment of communication skills within engineering capstone design experiences. Keywords—engineering design, written communication, assessment, entrepreneurship


Thursday, January 28, 2010: Policies to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency have been gaining momentum throughout the world, often justified by environmental and energy security concerns. This presentation first talks about energy efficiency options, then delves into the economic motivation for energy efficiency and renewable energy policies by articulating the classes of relevant behavioral failures and market failures. Such behavioral and market failures may vary intertemporally or atemporally; the temporal structure and the extent of the failures are the critical considerations in the development of energy policies. The talk discusses key policy instruments and assess the extent to which they are well-suited to correct for failures with different structures. http://eetd.lbl.gov/dls/lecture-01-28...


Dr. Natalie Rogers has developed a process called the Creative Connection RM that interweaves all the expressive arts -- movement, sound, drawing, painting, writing, and guided imagery -- to tap into the deep wellspring of creativity within each of us. The aim is to reclaim ourselves and then help others reclaim themselves as actively playful, spirited, and conscious individuals. Rogers emphasizes the importance of psychological safety and freedom while using the creative arts. This reflects her extensive work with her father, Carl Rogers, and a deep belief in his person-centered approach to counseling.Photos and art help demystify this process, and various exercises range from the simple to the complex. Natalie's practical suggestions aid counselors who want to add expressive arts to their regular sessions.


Contrary to the belief that the region has found its way to an efficient macroeconomic policy, this paper argues that macroeconomic failures have been partly responsible for its disappointing economic and social performance in recent decades. Producers of gdp have had to cope with extremely unstable demand, exchange rates and access to financing, which have discouraged productivity and investment. Financial capital flows have been a determinant of this macroeconomic instability. This paper examines their intrinsically procyclical behaviour and concludes that an environment friendly to production development requires countercyclical regulation of financial flows. It describes how regulation of aggregate demand needs to be reconciled with the evolution of potential gdp, the real exchange rate with the current account, and financial flows with a far-reaching reform of the capital market reforms, away from "financierism" and towards "productivism".


Melting glaciers and ice sheets are perhaps the most visible signs of a warming climate. Glaciers are retreating on every continent, ice sheets are shedding icebergs into a warming ocean at an accelerating rate, and the atmosphere melts more ice as temperatures rise. Despite these lines of evidence, and a growing scientific and public attention to melting ice; we are still not able to present robust numbers of future sea level rise. While the overall picture is one of retreat and meltdown, complex patterns arise when we zoom in within a certain region. The geologic record testaments both collapse and periods of growth, and provides important clues to future mass loss. However, these records show that variable responses were present within regions exposed to the same climate forcing. This is also found in Greenland and Antarctica today, where observations reveal that neighbouring glaciers respond differently to the same climate warming. Caution is therefore needed when explaining the responses of these glaciers. The instrumental record helps us to improve process understanding, yet is unable to assess changes over time scales longer than a few decades. The geologic record provides a longer perspective, but is not able to resolve short-lived variations. This time scale issue is critical because we need to understand both the short-term and longterm response to improve understanding of glacier and ice sheet dynamics and their sensitivity to climate change. In this thesis, we use a suite of numerical model tools combined with geological data to assess how external forcing triggers and drives shortand long-term change. Equally important, we study how site-specific factors such as topography can prevent, delay, dampen, amplify, and override the ambient forcing. We assess theoretical cases as well as past and present glaciers in Norway and Greenland, with the goal to answer the overarching question: how do glaciers and ice sheets respond to climate change? We move from the sensitivity of a Norwegian ice cap to Holocene climate change in Paper I, via the impact of fjord geometry on grounding line stability in Paper II, to the abrupt retreat of the nearby Hardangerfjorden glacier during the Younger Dryas cold period in Paper III. We continue with the most active glacier in Greenland in Paper IV, and finish with a comprehensive study of the triggers and drivers of the deglaciation of the Norwegian fjords in Paper V. For marine-terminating glaciers, we find that grounding line dynamics and iceocean interactions are fundamental over time scales up to a century or two. Beyond this time frame, changes to the surface mass balance are likely to drive widespread, multi-centennial to millennial scale deglaciation. Based on the results presented in this thesis, we also suggest that topography is a factor that cannot be ignored. Once triggered, the response to climate change is to a large degree controlled by the underlying bed topography of ice caps (Paper I), and by the fjord bathymetry and width of marine-terminating glaciers (Papers II–V).


Introduction. Part I: Brushing Up on Important Organic Chemistry I Concepts. Chapter 1: Organic Chemistry II: Here We Go Again! Chapter 2: Remembering How We Do It: Mechanisms. Chapter 3: Alcohols and Ethers: Not Just for Drinking and Sleeping. Chapter 4: Conjugated Unsaturated Systems. Chapter 5: "Seeing" Molecules: Spectroscopy Revisited. Part II: Discovering Aromatic (And Not So Aromatic) Compounds. Chapter 6: Introducing Aromatics. Chapter 7: Aromatic Substitution Part I: Attack of the Electrophiles. Chapter 8: Aromatic Substitution Part II: Attack of the Nucleophiles and Other Reactions. Part III: Carbonyls: Good Alcohols Gone Bad. Chapter 9: Comprehending Carbonyls. Chapter 10: Aldehydes and Ketones. Chapter 11: Enols and Enolates. Chapter 12: Carboxylic Acids and Their Derivatives. Part IV: Advanced Topics (Every Student's Nightmare). Chapter 13: Amines and Friends. Chapter 14: Metals Muscling In: Organometallics. Chapter 15: More Reactions of Carbonyl Compounds. Chapter 16: Living Large: Biomolecules. Part V: Pulling It All Together. Chapter 17: Overview of Synthesis Strategies. Chapter 18: Roadmaps and Predicting Products. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 19: Ten Surefi re Ways to Fail Organic Chemistry II. Chapter 20: More than Ten Ways to Increase Your Score on an Organic Chemistry Exam. Appendix: Named Reactions. Index.


We tackle the problem of reducing tail latencies in distributed key-value stores, such as the popular Cassandra database. We focus on workloads of multiget requests, which batch together access to several data elements and parallelize read operations across the data store machines. We first analyze a production trace of a real system and quantify the skew due to multiget sizes, key popularity, and other factors. We then proceed to identify opportunities for reduction of tail latencies by recognizing the composition of aggregate requests and by carefully scheduling bottleneck operations that can otherwise create excessive queues. We design and implement a system called Rein, which reduces latency via inter-multiget scheduling using low overhead techniques. We extensively evaluate Rein via experiments in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and simulations. Our scheduling algorithms reduce the median, 95th, and 99th percentile latencies by factors of 1.5, 1.5, and 1.9, respectively.


The debate over a Civic Square for Hobart has been alive ever since Governor
Macquarie instructed Surveyor Meehan to lay out the grid of streets in 1811.
Part of Macquarie's grand plan was the creation of a large public space at the
foot of Elizabeth Street on the Sullivans Cove side of Macquarie Street. This he
named Georges Square in honour of the King. It was to serve variously as
muster area for the convicts, parade ground for the troops and centre of the town
around which all important public buildings were planned. Although the
Macquarie Plan was never really fulfilled that square is present in part today as
Franklin Square yet the debate over a civic square continues , having reached its
height in the 1980s when designs were submitted for a maritime flavoured public
space and commercial development. These plans were also never to get much
further than the drawing board. So why has the issue of a civic square remained
so difficult to resolve and so controversial?
This study contends that most ideas for such a square have been devoid of any
considerations of the social and cultural context that is needed to have them
accepted by the local people and all too often have been of a physical style or
typology which is not characteristic of Hobart and therefore not easily
assimilated into the city fabric.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, the rapid social changes brought about
by technology raise the question of the role and worth of civic spaces in the
contemporary city. The relevance of such public spaces must be determined before
any proposals take physical shape. At the same time recent theories of urban
design have rediscovered the importance and characteristics of public space,
determining that space is the primary element of the city not buildings and that
the buildings are used to create the spaces. Through a process of examining the historical development of public space in
Hobart, and the roles and characteristics of spaces in history and their relevance today, the study concludes that far from public space being irrelevant in today's
city, it is increasingly needed to act as 'social glue'.
However, in accordance with the need to apply meaning to the physical space,
an analysis of the city covering amongst other things functional zones,
movement patterns, landforms, climate and ambience, and cultural institutions
and associations is carried out. From this analysis a key space emerges as that
which offers the opportunity to extend the public realm while linking existing
spaces, improving the problematic City to Cove link, providing a much needed
adjunct to a major civic building and offering a new site for an isolated civic
function which has historical links with the site.
The space is created through repairing the city fabric by a planned intervention
on the site at the back of the Hobart Town Hall and the Elizabeth Street edge of
Franklin Square, and then reworking the section of Elizabeth Street as a series of
connected spaces. The proposal suggests a new wing to the Town Hall abutting
the Carnegie Building and running along Davey Street which would be an ideal
new home for a public library function.
The essence of the study is not to search for a physical site where a grand space
can be created, but to recognise that Hobart has a number of smaller spaces
which serve a variety of functions and a huge informal waterfront area which
can be used for occasional events. What is required appears to be an intimate
space which serves a multitude of functions related to city government and
·information exchange, and which links the existing spaces and major sections of
the city together. The recommendations cover not only the basic characteristics of the key physical
space but also management and detailed design considerations which are an
integral part of making the space a 'place' which will be 'owned' by the public
and used to enhance the social life of the city and its sense of cityhood.
The opportunity exists to complete the new Civic Square to coincide with the
bicentenary of the founding of Hobart on this site in February 2004.


Previous investigators have proposed that gelatinase, a metalloproteinase found in neutrophils, is stored in a novel secretory compartment distinct from the two major granule populations, azurophilic and specific. To locate this proteinase in human neutrophils we reacted the cells for peroxidase and then applied monospecific polyclonal antibodies to human neutrophil gelatinase to immunolabel ultrathin frozen sections using an immunogold technique. Gelatinase was localized in a population of peroxidase-negative granules. Double-labeling experiments using antibodies against lactoferrin, a marker for specific granules, and gelatinase demonstrated colocalization of the two antigens in 80% of the specific granules. However, some granules immunostained with only the lactoferrin or gelatinase antibody. Similar techniques were used to examine precursor cells from bone marrow. In myelocytes both gelatinase and lactoferrin were present in large developing specific granules; however, some mature specific granules contained only lactoferrin. Thus, it is possible that lactoferrin synthesis begins earlier than gelatinase synthesis and that overlapping synthesis and segregation occurs during the myelocyte stage. These findings suggest that the main storage compartment of gelatinase is within the peroxidase-negative specific granules.


This thesis describes chemical synthesis of carbohydrates and glycopeptides useful in studies of biologically interesting systems. The following topics are addressed: [Papers I-IV and supporting information]: [I] The non-reducing end di- and trisaccharide structures of an erythrocyte glycolipid responsible for the rare NOR polyagglutination were chemically synthesized. The syntheses were based on a α-D-Galp-(1→4)-β-D-GalpNAc-(1→) structural element found only recently in Nature, and derivatives thereof have not been synthesized before. Both the synthesized oligosaccharides specifically inhibited human anti-NOR antibodies, with the trisaccharide being 300 times more active than the disaccharide. [II] Derivatives of lactose with the galactose ring substituents replaced by 2´, 3´, 4´ and 6´ deoxy and 3´ acylamino functions were prepared. The lactosyl derivatives were tested as acceptors for the Neisseria menigitidis N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase catalyzed β-(1→3) glycosylation reaction, using UDP-GlcNAc as donor. The 6´-deoxy compound showed nearly a threefold increase in activity compared with the reference substance phenyl β-lactoside, whereas the 2´ and 4´-deoxy derivatives were less active. The 3´-deoxy and 3´-acylamino derivatives will be used in studies of the inhibitory capacity. [III] In order to develop the non-viral Bioplex vector system for non-viral gene delivery to hepatocytes, biotinylated ligands were synthesised to study the structure-function relationship of specific binding and uptake to the asialoglycoprotein receptor ASGPr. Cluster glycosides containing two, three and six β-D-GalpNAc residues were synthesized and tested for binding and uptake to liver cells. The derivative displaying six GalNAc units showed the highest uptake efficacy. However, the number of GalNAc units above three seems only to have a minor contribution to the overall affinity, while using longer spacer between the GalNAc ligands markedly influenced the uptake efficacy. [IV] An analgetically active glycopeptide from the cone snail Conus geographus, contulakin G, has recently been analyzed and synthesized. Contulakin-G has been found to be a neurotensin agonist and have entered pre-clinical trials for short-term management of post-operative pain. The glycan part of contulakin-G has been found to be important for the biological in vivo activity. In order to further investigate the importance of the glycan part, three analogues of contulakin-G have been synthesized, were the α/β conformation of the anomeric centers as well as the glycosidic bond pattern of the disaccharide have been altered. In addition to the contulakin G analogues, a heavily posttranslational modified glycopeptide from Conus textile, tx5a, has been synthesized.


Seven cases of workers selected among 150 who had undergone psychiatric treatment at the Workers' Health Reference Centers in Santo Amaro and André Gabois from 1994 to 1997 were presented for a detailed analysis characterizing work situations and discussing definition of the diagnosis and causal connections with work. The qualitative case study provides a thematic analysis of the patient history and files. Work situations are characterized by: unhealthy working conditions, problems related to work organization, inadequate human resources management, and urban violence. Symptoms included: fear, anxiety, depression, nervousness, tension, fatigue, malaise, loss of appetite, sleep disorders, and psychosomatic disorders (gastritis, hypertension); in addition, workers were unable to forget about work while off the job. Diagnosis varied. Three cases involved post-traumatic syndrome. Two cases involved organic psychosis linked to accidents or exposure to neurotoxic chemical products. Cases also included neurotic syndromes of fatigue, depression, and paranoia, as well as adaptation and reaction to acute stress. In all of the cases it was possible to relate the clinical picture to the work situation.


The existing organisational structure of the city produces economic prosperity but also growing ecological and social entropy, thus generating many kinds of waste. The 'regenerative city' is here proposed as the new paradigm to boost city wealth. The main determinants of city wealth are considered in relation to their contribution to the comprehensive landscape of the city. Circular processes and synergies are considered as key elements to regenerate the city's wealth in its physical space. The paper addresses the multidimensional notion of city wealth. The role of institutional capital is examined for stimulating circular and synergistic processes in city organisation. Urban planning is proposed as a fundamental tool for reducing the widespread entropy and for implementing a new circular economic model in the territory/space and thus for increasing city wealth. A new economy and financial base can be supported through creative urban planning. Innovative planning, geared towards developing a prosperous city requires new and shared choices, based on appropriate evaluation processes.


Session 2

This talk discusses a mix of concepts, problems and techniques at the crossroads of signal processing, machine learning and music. I will start by introducing content-based music information retrieval (MIR) as an important and challenging data science problem. Then, I will discuss recent work done at my lab on a variety of MIR problems such as automatic chord recognition, music structure analysis, cover song identification and instrument recognition. In the process of doing so, I'll review the impact of feature design for specific MIR tasks, suggest that existing feature extraction methods in audio can be re-conceptualized as deep, multi-layer and trainable systems combining affine transforms and subsampling operations, and show a few examples where deep learning matches or outperforms the current state of the art in music and sound classification. Finally, I'll discuss open challenges and opportunities in the field.


Abstract We describe research on the impact of health insurance on healthcare spending ("moral hazard"), and use this context to illustrate the value of and important complementarities between different empirical approaches. One common approach is to emphasize a credible research design; we review results from two randomized experiments, as well as some quasi-experimental studies. This work has produced compelling evidence that moral hazard in health insurance exists—that is, individuals, on average, consume less healthcare when they are required to pay more for it out of pocket—as well as qualitative evidence about its nature. These studies alone, however, provide little guidance for forecasting healthcare spending under contracts not directly observed in the data. Therefore, a second and complementary approach is to develop an economic model that can be used out of sample. We note that modeling choices can be consequential: different economic models may fit the reduced form but deliver different counterfactual predictions. An additional role of the more descriptive analyses is therefore to provide guidance regarding model choice.


In his useful and entertaining book How Not to Write, William Safire tells us where the verb "to bowdlerize" comes from:Dr. Thomas Bowdler, eager to make Shakespeare "fit for the perusal of our virtuous females," cut out what he considered the naughty and profane words. In his sanitized version, Lady Macbeth's "Out, damn'd spot!" was changed to "Out, crimson spot!", which earned the censor a place in the dictionaries in the verb to bowdlerize.Safire is referring to The Family Shakspeare, a 10-volume collection of cleaned-up versions of Shakespeare's works brought out in London in 1818 by Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), whose work was an extension of the earlier efforts of his sister and fellow-expurgator Henrietta (1750-1830). But alas, Safire is not quoting from The Family Shakspeare, although apparently he thinks he is. Instead, in the course of describing how Bowdler doctored Shakespeare, Safire has doctored Bowdler. Bowdler's name and -ism have long been epithets to be wielded by the cosmopolitan and the libertarian against the puritan and the censor. The story of how Bowdler became a victim of bowdlerism - or perhaps more properly "anti-bowdlerism" - at the hands of Safire (and many other scholars and word experts) raises difficult questions about when even the most trusted authorities can be trusted to report facts rather than rumors and prejudices.


New high spatial resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) zircon dating from the Dire Dawa Precambrian basement yields crystallization ages at c. 790 Ma and 600 – 560 Ma. Two of the youngest samples are pervasively deformed, indicating that orogenesis continued until c. 560 Ma. SIMS δ18Ozrn shows bimodality, with the oldest sample (c. 790 Ma) and inherited zircons of that age in the younger samples having values of 7.8 – 9.6‰, whereas the Ediacaran samples have δ18Ozrn values of 4.9 – 7.2‰. These δ18Ozrn ratios are higher than mantle values and indicate a supracrustal input to the source of the Dire Dawa granitoids. All samples have unradiogenic εNd(t) values of −10.3 to −5.8 and Nd model ages of 1.72 – 1.42 Ga. These attributes suggest that the Dire Dawa granitoids were mostly derived from reworking of long-lived crustal sources. The occurrence of c. 580 – 550 Ma orogenesis in both the Dire Dawa basement and the juvenile Western Ethiopian Shield and the confinement of c. 630 Ma metamorphism to only the latter indicate that these two lithospheric blocks of contrasting isotopic compositions amalgamated at c. 580 – 550 Ma. This suggests that the Mozambique Ocean, which separated these two lithospheric blocks, was completely consumed during the late Ediacaran to early Cambrian.


We consider the cross section in Fourier space, conjugate to the outgoing hadron's transverse momentum, where convolutions of transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions and fragmentation functions become simple products. Individual asymmetric terms in the cross section can be projected out by means of a generalized set of weights involving Bessel functions. Advantages of employing these Bessel weights are that they suppress (divergent) contributions from high transverse momentum and that soft factors cancel in (Bessel-) weighted asymmetries. Also, the resulting compact expressions immediately connect to previous work on evolution equations for transverse momentum dependent parton distribution and fragmentation functions and to quantities accessible in lattice QCD. Bessel-weighted asymmetries are thus model independent observables that augment the description and our understanding of correlations of spin and momentum in nucleon structure.


Surgical excisions of skin neoplasms mainly cause defects in the eyelid region. The objectives of eyelid reconstruction are based on the restoration of this anatomical unit's functionality to maintain eye protection and recovery from a normal appearance due to the critical importance of the periocular region in facial aesthetics. Repair of eyelid defects begins with a careful evaluation of the anatomical components that have been resected and need to be reconstructed; the extent and location of the defect will guide the reconstruction. Large defects compromising the entire body thickness are a challenge for plastic surgeons. Thousands of surgical techniques have been described for the reconstruction of total thickness eyelid defects; we present in this article the description of a case of dynamic eyelid reconstruction with an association of a frontal flap with temporal muscle transposition after resection of a recurrent infiltrative basal cell carcinoma. ■ ABSTRACT


We study the problem of fair division when the resources contain both divisible and indivisible goods. Classic fairness notions such as envy-freeness (EF) and envy-freeness up to one good (EF1) cannot be directly applied to the mixed goods setting. In this work, we propose a new fairness notion envy-freeness for mixed goods (EFM), which is a direct generalization of both EF and EF1 to the mixed goods setting. We prove that an EFM allocation always exists for any number of agents. We also propose efficient algorithms to compute an EFM allocation for two agents and for n agents with piecewise linear valuations over the divisible goods. Finally, we relax the envy-free requirement, instead asking for ϵ-envy-freeness for mixed goods (ϵ-EFM), and present an algorithm that finds an ϵ-EFM allocation in time polynomial in the number of agents, the number of indivisible goods, and 1/ϵ.


This thesis is intended to deal with questions related to the processing of naturally occurring texts, also known as natural language processing (NLP). The subject will be approached from a software engineering perspective, and the problem description will be formulated thereafter. The thesis is roughly divided into two major parts. The first part contains a literature study covering fundamental concepts and algorithms. We discuss both serial and parallel architectures, and conclude that different scenarios call for different architectures. The second part is an empirical evaluation of an NLP framework or toolkit chosen amongst a few, conducted in order to elucidate the theoretical part of the thesis. We argue that component based development in a portable language could increase the reusability in the NLP community, where reuse is currently low. The recent emergence of the discovered initiatives and the great potential of many applications in this area reveal a bright future for NLP.


Our ability to think creatively is one of the factors that generates excitement in our lives as it introduces novelty and opens up new possibilities to our awareness which in turn lead to developments in a variety of fields from science and technology to art and culture. While research on the influence of biologically-based variables on creativity has a long history, the advent of modern techniques for investigating brain structure and function in the past two decades have resulted in an exponential increase in the number of neuroscientific studies that have explored creativity. The field of creative neurocognition is a rapidly growing area of research that can appear chaotic and inaccessible because of the heterogeneity associated with the creativity construct and the many approaches through which it can be examined. There are also significant methodological and conceptual problems that are specific to the neuroscientific study of creativity that pose considerable limitations on our capacity to make true advances in understanding the brain basis of creativity. This article explores three key issues that need to be addressed so that barriers in the way of relevant progress being made within the field can be avoided. Are creativity neuroimaging paradigms optimal enough? What makes creative cognition different from normative cognition? Do we need to distinguish between types of creativity?


Abstract. Tsunami seldom strike the European Atlantic shores. The great Lisbon Earthquake of 1 November 1755 is the main destructive tsunamigenic event recorded. Since the mid-1990's, many simulations of propagation of tsunami waves from variants of the possible seismic source have been conducted. Estimates of run-up in Morocco are seldom included in publications, maybe for want of reliable historical data to control the simulations. This paper revisits some early accounts, transmitted as translations to European Chanceries, Scientific Societies and Newspapers. A critical analysis of the documents leads us to conclude that the Lisbon earthquake was overestimated because of amalgamation with a later Rifian earthquake. Then, the overestimation of the tsunami through worst interpretation of the scant data available appeared only reasonable, while the moderate measurements or interpretations were not given their due attention. In Morocco the amplitude of the tsunami (i.e. height at shoreline minus expected tide level) may not have exceed the measurement given by Godin (1755) for Cadiz, 2.5 m above the calculated astronomical tide, a crest-to-trough amplitude of 5 m at most. This age-old overestimation of both the earthquake and tsunami is detrimental to the evaluation of the risk for coastal people and activities.


Purpose: Introduction of Plant tissue culture (PTC) concept to the Ayurveda realm. Method: 1. Analysis of principles the plant tissue culture based on the literature review and real wet lab images of tissue culture 2. Analysis of ayurvedic principles which are relevant in the context 3. Logical concept development. Result: Plant tissue culture is based on the natural ability of plant cells to grow in to fullfledged organism, called as totipotency. Plant cell can exhibit totipotency only when it is placed in a suitable micro condition where it is supplied with all essential nutrients such as minerals, water, light source, carbon source and air. Two branches of tissue culture a. micropropagation b. in vitro adventitious root development (Sivakumar 2006), are relevant for ayurvedic industry in purview of increasing demand for good quality raw materials and decreasing wild sources of medicinal plants. Ayurvedic concept of Anukta dravya grahana (Reddy 2008; Kusuma and Joshi 2010) describes the need for understanding the properties of an undocumented drug or medicinal plant experimentally before considering it as an ayurvedic drug. Ayurvedic system dravya guna vijnana is for understanding and classification of medicinal plants based on their seven fold properties (Valiathan 2003). The concept of 'Abhava prathinidhi dravya' (Padma et al. 2010) explains the situations where original drugs are substituted with substances of similar qualities, which were prescribed in case of several unavailable or rare drugs. The efficacy of medicinal plants or plant part produced through tissue culture has to be determined even though those are botanically and genetically the same. Rasanirdharana method (Dhyani 2008) can be combined efficiently with phytochemical screening for this purpose. Conclusion: Plant materials produced through PTC can be ideologically acceptable for ayurvedic industry when principles of plant tissue culture is analysed in detail in the light of certain ayurvedic principles.


Polyethercarbonate polyols from carbon dioxide (CO2) are starting to be synthesized on industrial scale. These polyols can be further processed into polyurethanes enabling CO2 to be utilized in large amounts. Utilization of CO2 as alternative carbon feedstock for polyols is motivated from the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil resource depletion. This article presents a life cycle assessment for production of CO2-based polyethercarbonate polyols in a real industrial pilot plant. The considered cradle-to-gate system boundaries include polyol production and all upstream processes such as provision of energy and feedstocks. In particular, provision of CO2 from a lignite power plant equipped with a pilot plant for CO2 capture is considered. Production of polyols with 20 wt% CO2 in the polymer chains causes GHG emissions of 2.65–2.86 kg CO2-eq kg−1 and thus, does not act as GHG sink. However, compared to production of conventional polyether polyols, production of polyols with 20 wt% CO2 allows for GHG reductions of 11–19%. Relating GHG emission reductions to the amount of CO2 incorporated, up to three kg CO2-eq emissions can be avoided per kg CO2 utilized. The use of fossil resources can be reduced by 13–16%. The impacts reductions increase with further increasing the CO2 content in the polyols. All other investigated environmental impacts such as eutrophication, ionizing radiation, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation, photochemical oxidant formation, and terrestrial acidification are also lowered. Therefore, synthesis of polyethercarbonate polyols from CO2 is clearly favorable compared to conventional polyether polyols from an environmental point of view.


The biochemical composition of the chaetognath Parasagitta elegans from the hyperbenthic zone of Conception Bay, Newfoundland, was determined from April 1997 to June 1998. Lipid and carbohydrate levels (% dry weight) were relatively high in the spring and summer and low in the fall and winter. Conversely, the relative protein level was low in the spring and summer and high in the fall and winter. Carbon level was generally high in the spring and summer of 1997 but low from fall to the following spring, whereas inorganic ash level showed the opposite seasonal trend. Lipid and carbohydrate levels and the C/N ratio were positively correlated with chaetognath maturity stage, while protein levels were negatively correlated with chaetognath maturity. These results indicate that P. elegans were lipid- and carbohydrate-rich while maturing during spring and summer, and that immature individuals were protein-rich while achieving somatic growth during fall and winter. This increase in the levels of lipid and carbohydrate occurred when mature copepods increased in the spring and summer rather than when total abundance of copepods increased in the fall. Thus, it appears that food quality rather than quantity affects the biochemical levels and reproductive cycle of P. elegans. In addition, the maximum abundance of adult copepods occurred 3 wk after the peak of the spring bloom, and the maximum relative abundance of mature P. elegans occurred 3 wk later. This suggests that there is tight coupling of energy transfer from primary producers to carnivorous hyperbenthic chaetognaths following the spring phytoplankton bloom in Newfoundland coastal waters. Therefore, seasonal variation in the biochemical composition of P. elegans in the hyperbenthic zone of Conception Bay is closely related to its reproductive cycle and to food quality. Furthermore, it is clear that the chaetognath reproductive cycle is synchronized with the massive energy input from the annual spring phytoplankton bloom.


Objective. The latest European guidelines for the management of hemorrhagic shock suggest the use of vasopressors (norepinephrine) in order to restore an adequate mean arterial pressure when fluid resuscitation therapy fails to restore blood pressure. The administration of arginine vasopressin (AVP), or its analogue terlipressin, has been proposed as an alternative treatment in the early stages of hypovolemic shock. Design. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled animal trials. Participants. A total of 433 animals from 15 studies were included. Interventions. The ability of AVP and terlipressin to reduce mortality when compared with fluid resuscitation therapy, other vasopressors (norepinephrine or epinephrine), or placebo was investigated. Measurements and Main Results. Pooled estimates showed that AVP and terlipressin consistently and significantly improve survival in hemorrhagic shock (mortality: 26/174 (15%) in the AVP group versus 164/259 (63%) in the control arms; OR = 0.09; 95% CI 0.05 to 0.15; P for effect < 0.001; P for heterogeneity = 0.30; I 2 = 14%). Conclusions. Results suggest that AVP and terlipressin improve survival in the early phases of animal models of hemorrhagic shock. Vasopressin seems to be more effective than all other treatments, including other vasopressor drugs. These results need to be confirmed by human clinical trials.


We study the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model by the method of the boundary effective action. The truncation of this action to the bending mode π consistently describes physics in a wide range of regimes both at the classical and at the quantum level. The Vainshtein effect, which restores agreement with precise tests of general relativity, follows straightforwardly. We give a simple and general proof of stability, i.e. absence of ghosts in the fluctuations, valid for most of the relevant cases, like for instance the spherical source in asymptotically flat space. However we confirm that around certain interesting self-accelerating cosmological solutions there is a ghost. We consider the issue of quantum corrections. Around flat space π becomes strongly coupled below a macroscopic length of 1000 km, thus impairing the predictivity of the model. Indeed the tower of higher dimensional operators which is expected by a generic UV completion of the model limits predictivity at even larger length scales. We outline a non-generic but consistent choice of counterterms for which this disaster does not happen and for which the model remains calculable and successful in all the astrophysical situations of interest. By this choice, the extrinsic curvature Kµ� acts roughly like a dilaton field controlling the strength of the interaction and the cut-off scale at each space-time point. At the surface of Earth the cutoff is ∼ 1 cm but it is unlikely that the associated quantum effects be observable in table top experiments.


We present the password reset MitM (PRMitM) attack and show how it can be used to take over user accounts. The PRMitM attack exploits the similarity of the registration and password reset processes to launch a man in the middle (MitM) attack at the application level. The attacker initiates a password reset process with a website and forwards every challenge to the victim who either wishes to register in the attacking site or to access a particular resource on it. The attack has several variants, including exploitation of a password reset process that relies on the victim's mobile phone, using either SMS or phone call. We evaluated the PRMitM attacks on Google and Facebook users in several experiments, and found that their password reset process is vulnerable to the PRMitM attack. Other websites and some popular mobile applications are vulnerable as well. Although solutions seem trivial in some cases, our experiments show that the straightforward solutions are not as effective as expected. We designed and evaluated two secure password reset processes and evaluated them on users of Google and Facebook. Our results indicate a significant improvement in the security. Since millions of accounts are currently vulnerable to the PRMitM attack, we also present a list of recommendations for implementing and auditing the password reset process.