Barnard's star is among the most studied stars given its proximity to the Sun. It is often considered the radial velocity (RV) standard for fully convective stars due to its RV stability and equatorial decl. Recently, an Msini=3.3M⊕ super-Earth planet candidate with a 233 day orbital period was announced by Ribas et al. New observations from the near-infrared Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF) Doppler spectrometer do not show this planetary signal. We ran a suite of experiments on both the original data and a combined original + HPF data set. These experiments include model comparisons, periodogram analyses, and sampling sensitivity, all of which show the signal at the proposed period of 233 days is transitory in nature. The power in the signal is largely contained within 211 RVs that were taken within a 1000 day span of observing. Our preferred model of the system is one that features stellar activity without a planet. We propose that the candidate planetary signal is an alias of the 145 day rotation period. This result highlights the challenge of analyzing long-term, quasi-periodic activity signals over multiyear and multi-instrument observing campaigns.


Since the time of the French Revolution, when a gold standard saved the nation from hyperinflation, France has wanted gold to be the linchpin of international monetary arrangements. And, indeed, from the earliest use of bills and coins as money until August 1971, money was, in principle at least, a claim on gold. At Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where in July 1944 730 delegates from 44 countries met to create the post-war international financial order, the French argued that gold -- which John Maynard Keynes had described two decades earlier as a "barbarous relic" -- was the key to international monetary stability. The French attachment to gold was rooted at least as much in politics as in economics, in particular in France's efforts to take international economic power away from the United States and lodge it in a stronger and more powerful France. On Sunday, August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon announced that the United Sates was no longer willing to exchange dollars for gold. In a few short sentences, the president had dismantled the existing international monetary system and abrogated the agreements of Bretton Woods, which had required each country to maintain its currency's exchange rate within a specified value of gold. No one knew exactly what this would mean for the international monetary system, but the French were especially unhappy. France soon became the principal antagonist to the United States in the transformation of the international monetary system from fixed to floating exchange rates. This paper, to be published as a chapter in Naomi Lamoreaux and Ian Shapiro, eds., The Bretton Woods Agreement together with Scholarly Commentaries and Essential Historical Documents (forthcoming, Yale University Press), traces France's efforts to maintain a central role for gold in international monetary arrangements until 1976 when the IMF Articles were amended to reflect the new reality of floating exchange rates.


Two episodes of meltwater influx from glacial Lake Agassiz are recorded as prominent sedimentologic, isotopic, magnetic, and faunal signatures in southern Lake Michigan profundal sediments. As a tributary to the main path of eastward Lake Agassiz flow, southern Lake Michigan recorded only the largest, catastrophic discharges. The distinctive Wilmette Bed, a massive gray mud that interrupts laminated red glaciolacustrine clays, marks the first episode, which occurred near the beginning of the Younger Dryas cooling event. The associated discharge may have played a role in the inception or severity of the Younger Dryas event. An oxygen isotope excursion in biogenic carbonate and changes in ostracode assemblages mark the second episode, which appears to have had at least two pulses, dated by accelerator mass spectrometer 14C ages on biogenic carbonate at about 8.9 and 8.6 ka. The second episode occurred during the early Holocene peak in global meltwater discharge and apparently had little wide- spread climatic or oceanographic effect. The contrast between the effects associated with these two episodes of meltwater discharge emphasizes the complexity of the ice sheet-ocean-climate system.


Background: In educational research on children's academic performance, few topics have received more attention than the consequences of school segregation and the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies. However, virtually no research has investigated whether self-fulfilling prophecies account for the impact of school composition on academic achievement. Purpose & Research Objectives: This study aims to integrate research on the effects of school segregation with that on self-fulfilling prophecies by examining the mediating role of teacher expectancies regarding the impact of school composition on pupils' math achievement. First, we investigate whether teachers' teachability expectations are related to the socioeconomic and ethnic composition of the school. Second, we investigate whether and how the effects of school composition can be explained by self-fulfilling prophecies. Because it is theorized that teacher expectancies might have an impact on pupils' academic achievement through pupils' perceptions of control over their achievement, we investigate the role of pupils' sense of academic futility. Sample & Research Design: Quantitative data from a survey of 2,845 pupils and 706 teachers in 68 Flemish (Belgian) primary schools and qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews with 26 teachers in five schools are analyzed. A complementary mixed-method design is used: Findings from the quantitative data are strengthened and illustrated with qualitative data. Results: The multilevel analysis shows that teachers' teachability expectations are lower in schools with a high share of nonnative and working-class pupils and that these teachability expectations have an indirect impact on pupils' achievement through pupils' feelings of academic futility. The qualitative analysis reveals that the low teacher expectations in these schools are largely triggered by alleged linguistic deficiencies and problematic language use of the pupils and that school staff persistently communicate their preference for Dutch monolingualism to pupils. Recommendations: The results of this study indicate that socioeconomic desegregation may not be needed if it is possible to reform schools with a larger share of working-class pupils. Schools that produce more favorable teachability expectations are recommended. In particular, teachers' attitudes and beliefs regarding pupils' linguistic backgrounds might be the focus of educational reforms.


While measured Bidirectional Texture Functions (BTF) enable impressive realism in material appearance, they offer little control, which limits their use for content creation. In this work, we interactively manipulate BTFs and create new BTFs from flat textures. We present an out-of-core approach to manage the size of BTFs and introduce new editing operations that modify the appearance of a material. These tools achieve their full potential when selectively applied to subsets of the BTF through the use of new selection operators. We further analyze the use of our editing operators for the modification of important visual characteristics such as highlights, roughness, and fuzziness. Results compare favorably to the direct alteration of micro-geometry and reflectances of synthetic reference data.


Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology has emerged as a new distributed computing paradigm. P2P technology attempts to "harness the powers of the edges of the Internet" by making efficient and effective use of peers (users) at the "edge" of the Internet, by direct interaction between peers of the system. P2P architecture has witnessed lots of interest and research in the latest years because of the popularity of file-sharing applications based on it. Content distribution is an essential P2P application on the Internet that has received significant research consideration. Content distribution applications usually permits peer computers to work in a coordinated manner as a distributed storage system by sharing, searching, and retrieving digital content. A exploration of existing P2P systems and infrastructure technologies in terms of their distributed object location and routing protocols, their solution to data replication, migration and caching, their sustain for encryption, anonymity, identity and authentication, deniability, access control, accountability and reputation, and their utilization of resource trading and management schemes. In this work a review of the P2P concept is given together with presentation of various definitions of P2P computing drawn up by independent research institutes, as an attempt to study the filed covered by the P2P technology in which several distributed computing concepts have lately been tagged as P2P. A brief historical summary of P2P is provided as an attempt to summarize the story of P2P technology. A classification of P2P systems was necessary. There are mainly two core types of P2P network architectures. In the first type, pure, there is no central control or server managing the network (e.g. no central router) and the peers act as equals, fusing the roles of clients and server, whereas the second type, hybrid, has one or several entities, making this type of P2P networks have a single point of failure and bottlenecks problems. The use of Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) to construct huge scalable P2P-systems, has verified to be a valuable building block in the development of scalable overlay networks, called DHT overlay networks. The DHT overlay networks, with its own resource location and routing mechanism, aim to reduce the routing cost, i.e. the number of hops needed to get a message from any source to any destination in the overlay, and to decrease the degree, that is, the number of neighbors which a node have to know about. In this report, the most prominent DHT overlay network protocols were investigated: Chord, Freenet, Tapestry and Content Addressable Networks (CAN), all having logarithmic bound on hop count (routing cost) and degree, or argue that logarithmic bounds can be realized with high likelihood. Five general P2P application areas, based on developments within P2P, are identified and presented. The progress within P2P has until now highlighted five general application areas, namely, collaboration, distributed computing, internet service support, distributed database and content distribution. Additional potential P2P applications may include; distributed file systems, multicasting applications, search engines, agent based systems, awareness systems, and mirror systems (clusters). The focus of this work was on P2P content distribution systems ranging from quite simple and uncomplicated direct file sharing applications, to more advanced and sophisticated systems that build a distributed storage medium for efficiently and securely publishing, management, searching, indexing, manipulating, and accessing content. The main non-functional features of P2P content distribution systems and infrastructures were identified, which consist of requirements for security, anonymity, fairness, improved scalability and better performance, in addition to resource management and organization capabilities. Two general categories of systems have been recognized in this manner: the unstructured and the structured systems (structured DHT-based systems). Latest research advances and developments in both structured and unstructured P2P systems, consider them both as complementary and suitable solutions. Investigations and studies on other features and characteristics of peer P2P content distribution systems have taken benefits of expertise and solutions from various scientific areas, such as, research on the application of reputation systems in P2P settings, the semantic management of information, in addition to the utilization of cryptographic mechanisms for the preservation of data, both stored and in passage through the network. As P2P technologies are still growing and evolving, there are a large number of open research areas, direction and opportunity, including, (1) The design and development of novel distributed object location and routing and DHT data structures (2) The investigation of more efficient security, anonymity and censorship resistance solutions. (3) The semantic organizing of information in P2P networks, (4) The design of incentive mechanisms and reputation approaches that will motivate the cooperative behavior among the users (5) The junction of P2P and Grid systems by combining the advantages of the established field of distributed technology with the qualities of new P2P architectures. Further research and future work on P2P may also include development of a common API for DHT overlays, development of application-level P2P benchmarks, degree and hop count tradeoffs, locality-aware DHT overlay networks, how to balance the load on all nodes in the network, full-text keyword search facility on DHT overlays, and data synchronizing and how to provide ACID properties for transactions. The use of DHTs to create scalable, fault-tolerant location and routing overlay networks and content distribution systems seems to be a step in the right direction. However, the P2P community still has a long way to go before P2P becomes a scalable, fault-tolerant, and secure infrastructure.


This two-volume, interdisciplinary work is a unified presentation of a broad range of state-of-the-art topics in the rapidly growing field of mathematical modeling in the biological sciences. Highlighted throughout both works are mathematical and computational approaches to examine central problems in the life sciences, ranging from the organizational principles of individual cells to the dynamics of large populations. Volume I covers a number of areas, including: * Cellular Biophysics * Regulatory Networks * Developmental Biology * Biomedical Applications * Data Analysis and Model Validation Volume II examines a diverse range of subjects, including: * Epidemiology * Evolution and Ecology * Immunology * Neural Systems and the Brain * Innovative Mathematical Methods and Education Both volumes will be excellent reference texts for a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, and advanced students in this rapidly growing field at the intersection of applied mathematics, experimental biology and medicine, computational biology, biochemistry, computer science, and physics.


This publication offers nature lovers and visitors to tropical Asia an intriguing insight into the natural history of some of the continent's least known and most threatened species. It also reports on the conservation efforts on the ground that are ongoing to preserve these precious forest landscapes and address the threats of the future.


A collection of pithy and inspiring sayings from America's favorite businessman that reveal his secrets of success. Like the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett's worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In "The Tao of Warren Buffett, " Mary Buffett -- author of three books on Warren Buffett's investment methods -- joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett's smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy. Warren Buffett's investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren's practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor -- large or small -- and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett's own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work. As Warren says: "You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will." "With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year." "No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant." "Our method is very simple. We just try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do." "The Tao of Warren Buffett" inspires, amuses, sharpens the mind, and offers priceless investment savvy that anyone can take to the bank. This irresistibly browsable and entertaining book is destined to become a classic.


Current scholarship by legal commentators and political scientists recognizes that the weapons of American empire have involved non-militaristic activities as much as militaristic ones. Such non-militaristic activities include the hegemonic influence of trade agreements, the imposition of legal and procedural norms, and the dissemination of ideological and cultural predispositions through corporations and diverse medias. In this paper, we examine an under-explored area on the "soft" belly of the American leviathan, focusing specifically on how property and intellectual property law have operated on physical and ideological frontiers to comprehend, participate in, and legitimate the expansion of American empire. We offer new accounts of two historical instances of empire-building: the acquisition and seizure of property from Native Americans in the early- and mid-19th century, and the expropriation of intellectual property rights to plant genetic resources from indigenous communities in the global South in the late 20th century. These two stories, taken together, offer unique insights into both the process and the substance of law's operation on the frontier of empire. They illuminate how the authority of law has fused with private power and legal legitimacy to enable the nation to expand swiftly, energetically, and powerfully. These insights, in turn, lead toward the more general conclusion that the rhetoric of property has functioned to subjugate peoples and places, cultures and natures, to an imperial regime.


We numerically simulate seismic wave propagation from the 1999 Mw 7.4 earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, using a 3D finite difference method based on published finite-source models obtained by waveform inversions. This earthquake has been reported, based on observations at the near-fault station SKR, as an example of supershear rupture propagation toward the east. Although the modeled ground motion does show a characteristic Mach wave from the fault plane, it is difficult to identify any particular effects in terms of peak ground velocity (PGV), an important parameter in earthquake engineering. This is because the fault's spatial heterogeneity is strong enough to mask the properties of supershear rupture, which has been reported through several numerical simulations mostly based on homogeneous fault conditions. This article demonstrates the importance of studying ground motions for known earthquakes through numerical simulations based on finite-fault source models.


OBJECTIVE
In this correlational study of adults receiving occupational therapy who sustained a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), the relationship between basic visual functions (including acuity, visual field deficits, oculomotor skills, and visual attention or scanning) and higher level visual-perceptual processing skills (e.g., visual closure and figure-ground discrimination) was investigated.

METHOD
Thirty adults who sustained CVA and 20 adults without a history of CVA were given a basic visual function screening and the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test (MVPT). Scores on the vision screening and the MVPT were correlated statistically.

RESULTS
A Pearson product-moment correlation analysis produced a correlation of r = .75 between vision screening scores and scores from the MVPT.

CONCLUSION
These results suggest that a positive relation exists between basic visual functions and visual-perceptual processing skills. Further, the results suggest that evaluation of visual-perceptual processing skills must begin with assessment of basic visual functions so that the influence of these basic visual functions on performance in more complex tests can be taken into consideration.


A laboratory-scale reactor study was conducted to evaluate the potential for biomass input to stabilize nitrification at low temperatures and allow shorter solids retention times. Recovery and enrichment of nitrifying microorganisms in a second-sludge side-stream reactor treating anaerobic digester supernatant in batch and continuously-fed configurations was evaluated. Complete oxidation of ammonia to nitrate was observed in all main-stream reactors, as expected, during the initial phase of the experiment conducted at room temperature. However, as temperature was reduced to 10°C nitrite accumulation was experienced in all reactors. Incomplete ammonia oxidation has also been experienced to a lesser extent. However, it appears that input of biomass from a batch-fed side-stream reactor to a batch-fed main-stream reactor is more beneficial to nitrification stability than input from a continuously-fed side-stream. The side-stream reactors have experienced upsets brought on by operator error resulting in nitrite accumulation likely due to reduced oxygen tension. A potential mechanism involves accumulation of free hydroxylamine.


Introduction: Within many diagnosis related group (DRG) systems, there is recognition that a single cost weight per DRG is not suitable, and that cost weights should take into account extremely lengthy hospital stays. Long lengths of stay are considered to be due to factors largely beyond the control of the hospital, and a single weight per DRG would potentially place hospitals under financial risk. Within Canada's acute-care, inpatient grouping methodology Case Mix Groups (CMG+) long-stay episodes represent approximately 4.5% of all discharges. Within a CMG (analogous to DRG), the cost weight assigned to long-stay cases consists of the typical cost weight, plus a per diem for each day the case stays beyond the CMG mean. Within a CMG, the volume of long-stay records may be low, and the episode cost data highly variable. This results in per diem estimates of low precision. In this paper, we compare two methods for calculating long-stay per diems. We employ Bayesian methods for sparse data, and compare the results to those of the current frequentist approach. Methods: CMG+ uses a two-step, likelihood-based approach to estimate long-stay per diems. In the first step, per diems are estimated using a weighted, least-squares regression model fitted separately to each CMG. Only typical cases are used (i.e., deaths, signouts, transfers and long-stay cases are excluded). The dependent variable in this regression is the cost of the case, while the independent variable is the length of stay. This model provides an estimate of the fixed cost as well as an estimate of the per diem for typical cases. In the second step, a weighted, least-squares regression model is fitted to the long-stay cases. The dependent variable in this regression is the ratio of the actual cost of the case to the predicted cost, where the predicted cost incorporates the typical per diems from the first step. The independent variables are case mix effects. This model provides adjustments to the typical per diems, resulting in per diems for long-stay cases. There is a strong motivation for proposing a Bayesian alternative. First, the current long-stay per diem estimates are susceptible to cost outliers. Second, we have very good information to inform prior distributions based on aggregating information for long-stay episodes across CMG. In our Bayesian alternative, a weighted, least-squares regression model will first estimate the fixed and per diem values across all CMG. In the second step, these estimates will act as prior distributions for the weighted, leastsquares regression models that estimate the typical per diem for each CMG. We will evaluate whether the Bayesian models are sensitive to the values of the prior probability distributions. Results: We will compare the long-stay per diems, calculated using the current frequentist approach, with those calculated using our Bayesian approach. We will evaluate the magnitude and direction of changes in the per diems, changes in explanatory power of the resulting cost weights, and changes in weighted cases by hospital and stratum of hospitals. Conclusion: Hospitals with a disproportionate share of longstay cases have the most at stake when per diem values are inaccurate. For CMG with large differences, underlying causes will be pursued. We will discuss whether the computing effort associated with implementing Bayesian methods is worthwhile in terms of improvement in the accuracy and precision of per diem estimates.


In this paper I would like to explore some issues surrounding ontological reduction, as advocated by the friends of physicalism, and its relation to conceptual reduction, which the said persons generally seem to eschew. It is my intention, and my hope, that the remarks contained herein will shed some new light on those scientific and philosophical programmes that include ontological reduction1 as one of their foundational assumptions. More specifically, I want to hint at certain general methodological and ethical implications of the research projects (both in the natural sciences and in the philosophy of mind) that aspire to explain the nature of complex phenomena within a physicalist setting, and offer their brief analysis. Furthermore, I am going to argue against the feasibility of an all-reaching physicalist framework for accomplishing the above-mentioned task by attempting to show that a certain set of concepts bridges the ostensible gap between ontological and conceptual reduction; these concepts, which I shall call "irreducibly holistic", appear to me to be unamenable to a physicalist treatment in which the metaphysical and semantic components are supposed to be clearly separable. Within the ambit of irreducible holism, as I shall argue, ontological and conceptual reduction are inextricably bound together, hence if the latter is impossible, then so is the former; and since I take irreducibly holistic concepts to be insusceptible to conceptual reduction2, physicalism with respect to them (and thus physicalism per se) turns out to be untenable.


The net impact of development interventions can depend on the availability of close substitutes to the intervention. We analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti-poverty program in South India which provides "ultra-poor" households with inputs to create a new, sustainable livelihood. We find no statistically significant evidence of lasting net impact on consumption, income or asset accumulation. Instead, income from the new livelihood substituted for earnings from wage labor. A very similar intervention made a large difference elsewhere in South Asia, however, where wage labor alternatives were less compelling. The analysis highlights the roles of substitution bias and dropout bias in shaping evaluation results and delimiting external validity.


Maize has high productivity and produces huge vegetative and generative phytomass, but this crop is very sensitive to agroecological (mainly to climatic, partly to pedological conditions) and agrotechnical circumstances. In Hungary, maize is grown on 1.1–1.2 million hectares, the national average yields vary between 4–7 t ha-1 depending on the year and the intensity of production technology. The longterm experiment was set up in 2015–2016 on chernozem soil in the Hajdúság (eastern Hungary). The maize research was set up on chernozem soil at the Látókép MÉK (Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management) research area of the University of Debrecen. We examined the following commonly used hybrids of Hungary: SY ARIOSO (FAO 300), P9074 (FAO 310), P9486 (FAO 360), SY Octavius (FAO 400), GK Kenéz (FAO 410), DKC 4943 (FAO 410). The experiment was set up in three different plant densities. These were 60, 76, 90 thousand plant ha-1. The experiment was set up with three different sowing dates, early, average and late sowing. The yield was measured using a special plot harvester (Sampo Rosenlew 2010), measuring the weight of the harvested plot and also taking a sample from it. As a next step, we calculated the yield (t ha-1) of each plot at 14% of moisture content to compare them to each other. We evaluated the obtained data using Microsoft Excel 2015.


BACKGROUND
Müllerian inhibiting substance, produced constitutively by the prepubertal testes, promotes involution of the müllerian ducts during normal male sexual differentiation. In children with virilization and nonpalpable gonads, only those with testicular tissue should have detectable serum concentrations of müllerian inhibiting substance.

METHODS
We measured serum mullerian inhibiting substance in 65 children with virilization at birth and nonpalpable gonads (age at diagnosis, 2 days to 11 years) and serum testosterone in 54 of them either after the administration of human chorionic gonadotropin or during the physiologic rise in testosterone that occurs in normal infants.

RESULTS
The mean (+/-SD) serum mullerian inhibiting substance concentration in the 17 children with no testicular tissue was 0.7+/-0.5 ng per milliliter, as compared with 37.5+/-39.6 ng per milliliter in the 48 children with testes (P<0.001). In the latter group, the mean values in the 14 children with abnormal testes and the 34 with normal testes were 11.5+/-11.8 and 48.2+/-42.1 ng per milliliter, respectively (P< 0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of the serum müllerian inhibiting substance assay for detecting the absence of testicular tissue were 92 percent and 98 percent, respectively, as compared with 69 percent and 83 percent for the measurement of serum testosterone. Furthermore, measurement of serum mullerian inhibiting substance was more sensitive than serum testosterone measurement for the identification of children with abnormal testes (67 percent vs. 25 percent), whereas the specificity of the two tests was similar.

CONCLUSIONS
Measurements of serum mullerian inhibiting substance can be used to determine testicular status in prepubertal children with nonpalpable gonads, thus differentiating anorchia from undescended testes in boys with bilateral cryptorchidism and serving as a measure of testicular integrity in children with intersexual anomalies.


ABSTRACT This historical review traces the origins of the current national seismic system in the United States, a cooperative effort that unifies national, regional, and local‐scale seismic monitoring within the structure of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS). The review covers (1) the history and technological evolution of U.S. seismic networks leading up to the 1990s, (2) factors that made the 1960s and 1970s a watershed period for national attention to seismology, earthquake hazards, and seismic monitoring, (3) genesis of the vision of a national seismic system during 1980–1983, (4) obstacles and breakthroughs during 1984–1989, (5) consensus building and convergence during 1990–1992, and finally (6) the two‐step realization of a national system during 1993–2000. Particular importance is placed on developments during the period between 1980 and 1993 that culminated in the adoption of a charter for the Council of the National Seismic System (CNSS)—the foundation for the later ANSS. Central to this story is how many individuals worked together toward a common goal of a more rational and sustainable approach to national earthquake monitoring in the United States. The review ends with the emergence of ANSS during 1999 and 2000 and its statutory authorization by Congress in November 2000.


We implement an entanglement distribution network based on wavelength-multiplexing and optical switching for quantum communication applications. Using a high-brightness source based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion in periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguides, we generate polarisation entangled photon pairs with a broad spectrum covering the telecom wavelengths around 1550 nm. The photon pairs have entanglement fidelities up to 99%, and are distributed via passive wavelength multiplexing in a static multi-user network. We furthermore demonstrate a possible network application in a scenario with a single centralised source dynamically allocating two-party entanglement to any pair of users by means of optical switches. The whole system, from the pump laser up to the receivers, is fibre and waveguide based, resulting in maximal stability, minimal losses and the advantage of readily integrable telecom components in the 1550 nm range.


Sound Sentiments seeks to open a new path in the philosophy of emotion. The focus of most recent work on the philosophy of emotion has been on the nature of emotion, with some attention also to the relation of emotion to ethics. This book explores the idea that emotions admit of valuation, of degrees of adequacy. We cannot just decide what to think, or to desire, or to feel, as we can decide to act, and these attitudes are integral to emotions. Nonetheless, emotions can have normative characteristics that resemble virtues. Philosophers are familiar with the notion that emotions are valuational. But how well they serve that function determines the value they themselves have. The book opens with an account of the theory of emotion, reflecting recent work on that, and considers the way in which emotions are valuational (with reference to the contributions of writers such as de Sousa, Gibbard, and McDowell). The worth of an emotional experience depends on the quality of the valuation it itself achieves. Most of the book is then devoted to a set of interconnected themes. Some of these concern properties that emotions can have which can variously enhance or detract from them: profundity, social leverage, narcissism, and sentimentality. Others are attitudes with characteristic emotional loadings, and sometimes motivations, that raise similar questions: cynicism, ambivalence, and sophistication. David Pugmire's general approach is indirect and negative: to analyse emotional foibles, which tend to elude us as we succumb to them, and thereby to point to what soundness in emotion would be. He also elicits connections amongst these aspects of the emotional life. The most pervasive is the dimension of profundity, which opens the discussion: each of the subsequent problems amounts to a way in which emotion can be shallow and slight and so amount to less than it seems; and accordingly, each identifies a form of integrity in the emotions.


The objective of this paper is to help both public and private sectors make better decisions in defensive resource allocation through public and private partnerships PPPs. In this paper, efficient PPPs are studied with regard to disaster preparedness using a decentralized model sequential game where the public sector is the first mover and a centralized model. This paper identifies the best public investment policies by evaluating the effectiveness of incentive provisions based on the various private strategic responses. This paper also provides insights into understanding a how to construct optimal public and private partnerships and b whether, when, and to what extent public and private investments in disaster preparedness could form better PPPs. We study the conditions of the private and public sectors' allocation strategies when they are strategic complements or substitutes. We find that the private sector that has a higher target valuation or lives in more risky areas invests more and has higher potential to partner with the public sector. We also compare the decentralized model results with the results of the centralized model to study the efficiency of the PPPs and find that the results are similar when the target valuation or the probability of disasters is small.


The plane-strain fracture toughness, KIC, defined by ASTM E 399, is assumed to represent a size insensitive lower bound value. The interpretation is due to the original work by George Irwin. In this work the consistency of the ASTM KIC plane-strain fracture toughness standard (ASTM E 399) is examined by reassessing the original data used to develop the standard, based on present knowledge about fracture micromechanisms. Originally, the standard was based on continuum mechanics assumptions, which have later been found inadequate to describe the real physical fracture process. The materials used for the development of ASTM E 399 were generally aluminum and titanium alloys or extra high strength steels. The materials had in common that their fracture micro-mechanism was ductile fracture, i.e., the materials showed a rising tearing resistance curve. Therefore, the fracture toughness did not show the expected decreasing trend with increasing specimen size, but generally the opposite trend. The specimen thickness was assumed to be the limiting dimension, even though much of the experimental data indicated that the specimen ligament size, not the thickness, controlled the fracture toughness value.


Gastrointestinal complications are common after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. These complications are ranged from nausea and vomiting to mesenteric ischemia and liver failure. It seems that nausea, vomiting, and constipation are related to magnesium deficiency. This study was designed to examine the effect of oral magnesium supplementation on the incidence of gastrointestinal complications in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. In a single blinded randomized clinical trial, 102 patients who were undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery were randomly allocated into two groups, 52 patients in the intervention and 50 patients in control group. Patients in the experimental group received 800 milligram magnesium oxide (2 tablets each of them containing 240 mg elemental magnesium) daily from the admission to discharge from hospital. The incidence of post-operative nausea and vomiting, constipation, and atrial fibrillation was compared between the groups. Our results showed that postoperative hypomagnesemia is present in 41.20 and 70.80 percent of the patients in the intervention and control group patients, respectively. The overall incidence of constipation was 62%. Patients who received magnesium supplementation experienced less atrial fibrillation, nausea, vomiting, and constipation. Our data showed that oral magnesium supplementation could reduce the postoperative complications. Despite the better status in the intervention group, the hypomagnesemia was present in many of intervention group patients. It seems that supplementation with higher doses is needed.


In this Article, Professor Seana Shiffrin identifies and explores a tension between the Supreme Court's recognition of First Amendment protection for incendiary speech and the Court's argument for rejecting the claim to a right to assisted suicide. Constitutionally, speakers may not be held liable for the illegal actions they inspire in audience members, unless the very high Brandenburg standard is met. By contrast, it is constitutional to prevent those who would seek assisted suicide from doing so, on the ground that a culture in which some elect suicide will encourage a higher incidence of involuntary deaths. Here, those who would voluntarily seek to exercise an important liberty interest are restricted in light of the projected illegal action of others. Shiffrin argues that this same tension is replicated in the contrast between the Court's approach to incendiary speech and its approach to the regulation of secondary effects. Shiffrin contends that this tension holds special interest because the asymmetry it represents privileges intended harm over merely foreseen or foreseeable harm, inverting the traditional priority associated with the doctrine of double effect. Shiffrin argues that, surprisingly, this inversion may be defensible in legal contexts, even if it is not sustainable in interpersonal moral theory. In fact, the inversion can result from the use of double-effect-style reasoning at the level of rule formation. Although this inversion may seem counterintuitive, the justifications for the legal protections for freedom of speech and for self-determination may provide a plausible explanation. We may understand the doctrinal difference by examining the structure of the values at which each regulation is aimed. The value of freedom of speech can only be realized if speakers are insulated from responsibility for the persuasive impact of their speech; by contrast, the liberty interest valued in the context of assisted suicide does not encompass the side effects of that action. This justification may also have implications for the future interpretation of the secondary effects doctrine.


Restricted B cell signaling in the areas responsible for immune memory cell production promotes affinity maturation. The key elements for long-lived antibody-mediated immunity—memory B cells and plasmablasts—are generated in germinal centers, where B cells expressing high-affinity antigen receptors are selected for survival and proliferation in a process called affinity maturation. Unexpectedly, Khalil et al. (see the Perspective by Bannard and Cyster) found that, in contrast to naïve B cells and B cells outside the germinal center, proximal signaling events are impaired downstream of the antigen receptor in mouse germinal center B cells. A. M. Khalil, J. C. Cambier, M. J. Shlomchik, B cell receptor signal transduction in the GC is short-circuited by high phosphatase activity. Science 336, 1178–1181 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text] O. M. Bannard, J. G. Cyster, When less signaling is more. Science 336, 1120–1121 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Abstract All else being equal, creating a miserable person makes the world worse, and creating an ecstatic person makes it better. Such claims are easily justified if it can be better, or worse, for a person to exist than not to exist. But that seems to require that things can be better, or worse, for a person even in a world in which she does not exist. Ingmar Persson defends this seemingly paradoxical claim in his latest book, Inclusive Ethics. He argues that persons that never exist are merely possible beings for whom non-existence is worse than existence with a good life. We argue that Persson's argument, as stated in his book, has false premises and is invalid. We reconstruct the argument to make it valid, but the premises remain highly problematic. Finally, we argue, one can make sense of our procreative obligations without letting merely possible beings into the moral club.


Simulation environments are an important tool for the evaluation of new concepts in networking. The study of mobile ad hoc networks depends on understanding protocols from simulations, before these protocols are implemented in a real-world setting. To produce a real-world environment within which an ad hoc network can be formed among a set of nodes, there is a need for the development of realistic, generic and comprehensive mobility, and signal propagation models. In this paper, we propose the design of a mobility and signal propagation model that can be used in simulations to produce realistic network scenarios. Our model allows the placement of obstacles that restrict movement and signal propagation. Movement paths are constructed as Voronoi tessellations with the corner points of these obstacles as Voronoi sites. Our mobility model also introduces a signal propagation model that emulates properties of fading in the presence of obstacles. As a result, we have developed a complete environment in which network protocols can be studied on the basis of numerous performance metrics. Through simulation, we show that the proposed mobility model has a significant impact on network performance, especially when compared with other mobility models. In addition, we also observe that the performance of ad hoc network protocols is effected when different mobility scenarios are utilized.


Abstract Meridianiite, MgSO4·11H2O, was recently discovered on the surface of a frozen pond in central British Columbia, Canada. Meridianiite is stable below 2 °C. Above 2 °C, it melts incongruently to a slurry of epsomite (MgSO4·7H2O) and water. Magnesium sulfate minerals are thought to exist in the soils at Gusev crater and elsewhere on the Martian surface. These minerals can form by precipitation from a saturated solution or through evaporation of a brine solution at or below the surface. Meridianiite, instead of epsomite, is the expected magnesium sulfate phase in equilibrium with saturated brines below 2 °C on or below the Martian surface. It is expected to be the magnesium sulfate mineral in equilibrium with ice in the Martian polar ice caps. Meridianiite, if exposed to low humidity conditions in equatorial regions of Mars, would ultimately dehydrate to a fine dust of kieserite (MgSO4·H2O) that could be dispersed by wind across the Martian surface. The name, meridianiite, was chosen to reflect the locality on Mars where the MER rover Opportunity observed crystal molds in sedimentary rock that are thought to be caused by minerals that have since dehydrated or dissolved.


The impact of crime on economic activity has been widely studied. The economic analysis of crime on payment instrument, however, is still lacking. In this paper, we analyze the impact of crime on the use of cash and card payment with an original database of a representative sample of French consumers. We provide empirical evidence that violent and financial crimes have opposite effects on cash withdrawn and cash payment: On the one side, violent crime increases the amount of cash withdrawn and increases the probability of a cash payment. On the other side, financial crime decreases the amount of cash withdrawn and increases the probability of a credit or debit card payment. The probability of mugging is higher when withdrawing cash and automated teller machines (ATMs) deliver only notes. The increase in the amount of cash withdrawn comes from the reduction of the number of cash withdrawals together with the non-linearity of cash withdrawals at ATMs. The increase in the proportion of card owners when financial crime is high is a result of adverse selection: a financial fraudster is more aware of the insurance provided with payment cards, and therefore he places a greater value on having a payment card.


The global expansion in the Internet access and the rise of digital media are compatible with students' characteristics as generations-Z who mainly engage in nature through mobile applications. Because of the characteristics of today's students and the growth of digital media and information, there is a need for critical media literacy (CML) instructions and the use of digital-based and student-centered learning approaches such as online discussion forums (ODFs). Through an exploratory study, we aim to understand better students' perceptions of ODF for their CML learning within EFL classes, factors affecting students' active participation in ODF, and teachers' roles in ODF while facilitating students' CML learning in an EFL context and enhancing students' engagement and performance in ODF. 250 EFL students from Indonesian secondary schools took part in this study. The participating students were studying English with CML embedded into the lessons. The research showed significant conclusions about factors that need to consider while having ODF in CML learning within the EFL context and the roles of teachers in ODF. We have also provided some practical and feasible suggestions from which practitioners in the area might benefit.


The 2020-2021 academic year was a trying year for teachers. We use a nationally representative sample of teachers from the RAND American Teacher Panel to document that teachers' stated consideration of leaving the profession increased during the pandemic. We also study factors associated with teachers' consideration of leaving the profession and high levels of job burnout during the pandemic. Approaching retirement age (being 55 or older), having to change instruction modes, health concerns, and high levels of job burnout all appear to be important predictors of the probability of considering leaving or retiring from teaching. Hybrid teaching increased consideration of leaving the profession because of COVID. Health concerns and switching instruction modes are all associated with higher levels of concern about job burnout. Interestingly, those approaching retirement ages do not present higher levels of concern about job burnout than younger teachers. Although increased consideration of leaving and concern about burnout do not yet appear to have materialized into higher attrition rates so far, higher levels of job dissatisfaction could affect teacher effectiveness and could harm student academic progress.


The music mainstreaminess of a user reflects how strong a user's listening preferences correspond to those of the larger population. Considering that music mainstream may be defined from different perspectives and on various levels, e.g., geographical (charts of a country), genre ("Indie charts"), or distribution channel (radio charts vs. download charts), we study how the user's music mainstreaminess influences the quality of music recommendations. The paper's contribution is three-fold. First, we propose 11 novel mainstreaminess measures characterizing music listeners, considering both a global and a country-specific basis. To this end, we model preference profiles (as a vector over artists) for users, countries, and globally, incorporating artist frequency, listener frequency, and a newly proposed TF-IDF-inspired weighting function, which we call artist frequency--inverse listener frequency (AF-ILF). The resulting preference profile for each user u is then related to the respective country-specific and global preference profile using fraction-based approaches, symmetrized Kullback-Leibler divergence, and Kendall's τ rank correlation, in order to quantify u's mainstreaminess. Second, we demonstrate country-specific peculiarities of these mainstreaminess definitions. Third, we show that incorporating the proposed global and country-specific mainstreaminess measures into the music recommendation process can notably improve accuracy of rating prediction.


This paper presents generalizations of Bayes likelihood-ratio updating rule which facilitate an asynchronous propagation of the impacts of new beliefs and/or new evidence in hierarchically organized inference structures with multi-hypotheses variables. The computational scheme proposed specifies a set of belief parameters, communication messages and updating rules which guarantee that the diffusion of updated beliefs is accomplished in a single pass and complies with the tenets of Bayes calculus.


Predictive control has attracted much attention from both industry and academia alike due to its intuitive time domain formulation and since it easily affords adaption. The time domain formulation enables the user to build in prior knowledge of the operating constraints and thus the process can be controlled more efficiently, and the adaptive mechanism provides tighter control for systems whose behaviour changes with time. This thesis presents a fusion of technologies for dealing with the more practical aspects of obtaining suitable models for predictive control, especially in the adaptive sense. An accurate model of the process to be controlled is vital to the success of a predictive control scheme, and most the of work to date has assumed that this model is of fixed order, a restriction which can lead to poor controller performance associated with under/overparameterisation of the estimated model. To overcome this restriction a strategy which estimates both the parameters and the order of a linear model of the time-varying plant online is suggested. This Multiple Model Least-Squares technique is based on the recent work of Niu and co-workers who have ingeniously extended Bierman's method of UD updating so that, with only a small change to the existing UD update code, a wealth of additional information can be obtained directly from the U and D matrices including estimates of all the lower order models and their loss functions. The algorithm is derived using Clarke's Lagrange multiplier approach leading to a neater derivation and possibly a more direct understanding of Niu's Augmented UD Identification algorithm. An efficient and robust forgetting mechanism is then developed by analysing the properties of the continuous-time differential equations corresponding to existing parameter tracking methods. The resulting Multiple Model Recursive Least-Squares estimator is also ported to the δ-domain in order to obtain models for predictive controllers that employ fast sampling. The MMRLS estimator is then used in an adaptive multiple model based predictive controller for a coupled tanks system to compare performance with the fixed model order case.


With the miniaturisation of a solid down to nanometre scale, the mechanical and optical properties of such nanomaterials are different from those of their corresponding bulk materials. A systematic understanding of the atomic origin of the unusual behaviour of mechanical and optical properties of a nanosolid is presented here towards the predictions for design and controllable growth of nanostructured materials. The Local Bond Average (LBA) approximation and Bond-Order-Length-Strength (BOLS) correlation mechanism in size, temperature and pressure domain have been developed, which enables the tunability of various measurable properties, such as elastic constants, and optical phonon frequency shift. Agreement between predictions and observations reveals that the shortened and strengthened surface bonds are responsible for the observed size dependent change of material properties, while the temperature induced bond expansion and weakening are the physical origin for the temperature dependent change of measurable material properties.


This paper investigates the development of syllable structure in creoles. Most importantly, an analysis of vowel epenthesis in Sranan, both synchronic and diachronic, will be provided, and it will be shown that the present vowel harmony system evolved gradually from a default vowel system. The results are formalized in an optimality-theoretic analysis, and we argue that the epenthesis system is largely substrate-motivated, by comparing constraint rankings. Syllable structure constraints in other creole languages will also be discussed, and it will be shown that less radical creoles have syllable structure systems of intermediate complexity, similar to interlanguage systems. An optimality-theoretic approach to language acquisition as constraint reranking is employed to explain how such intermediate systems develop.


This thesis examines the impact of the internet on the practice of music journalism focussing specifically on how the advent of online music journalism has had an effect on the authority of the popular music critic. While the practice of popular music journalism has received a fair amount of scholarly attention, research on the subject has not kept pace with the advances in media technology. Currently, there are few studies on popular music journalism that take into consideration how the practice has changed and been affected by the mainstream adoption of the internet. This thesis thus contributes towards filling this void in academic literature on online journalism, music journalism and popular culture. In order to answer its research question, the thesis looks into the functions that have, in the past, defined the role of a music critic, and establishes the authority of the popular music critic through the prototypes of Lester Bangs, Stephen Wells, and Robert Christgau, before going on to analyse and contrast the features of online music journalism with those of print journalism. These analyses are supplemented with examples of different kinds of online journalism - leading the thesis to draw out the three major traits specific to online music journalism that serve as a threat to the traditional authority of the popular music critic.


The paper extends previous research on earnings persistence by (i) studying earnings persistence and market responses pertaining to earnings inclusive and exclusive of extraordinary items (EI), and (ii) establishing the dominating influence exerted by the existence of EI. Using data related to 75 Canadian firms listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, we found, prior to the change introduced in CICA Section 3480 restricting the classification of EI, that the stock market responded more readily to earnings exclusive of EI than to the all inclusive earnings. Adjusting earnings surprises for the degree of earnings persistence, in order to capture different market responses, is relevant only when there is no extraordinary event. The presence of EI, and whether it is an extraordinary gain or loss, has unpredictable and dramatic influence on the stock market. The change in CICA Section 3480, and similar developments elsewhere internationally, has the effect of eliminating EI and forcing the convergence of the all inclusive earnings and ordinary income streams. Based on the results obtained in this study, we argue that such a move is unwise, and may have reduced the informativeness of financial reporting.


This Article suggests a pat h to develop a principled conceptualization for copyright of limitations and exceptions at the international level. The paper argues that, normatively, copyright has always sought to reflect a balance between protection and access. It demonstrates that this balance was present to the minds of the negotiators of the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and may have been somewhat overlooked in revisions of the Convention. It was ultimately replaced by a three-step test designed to restrict the ability of individual legislators to create limitations and exceptions. The article also considers the conflicts between copyright and rights such as the right to privacy, human rights principles of free expression and cultural diversity, the right to information, the right to education, and the nascent right to development, all of which imply striking a balance in intellectual property protection. The article begins with a historical look at the public interest foundations of the Berne Convention and its revisions until 1971. The article then proceeds to a conceptualization of limitations and exceptions in order to show the policy linkages of each type of exception and proposes a set of principles for limitations and exceptions. The article also examines the meaning and impact of the three-step test because it would be pointless, not theoretically, but from a policy perspective, to ignore the application of the test in suggesting international principles for limitations and exceptions.


Suspensions of Staphylococcus aureus MF-31 injured by heat treatment at 54 C for 15 min produced coagulase during recovery in Trypticase Soy Broth. Coagulase also was produced by injured cells during recovery in a medium that did not support growth. Coagulase synthesis during recovery was independent of the molar strength of the buffer in which the cells were injured, the age of the cells, and the degree of injury. Return of salt tolerance and coagulase production required glucose, amino acids, and phosphate in the recovery medium. Vitamins stimulated coagulase production, but did not affect recovery. Although coagulase production was not necessary for repair of thermal injury to S. aureus MF-31, its detection was interpreted as an indicator of protein synthesis.


The effectiveness of carboxylic acid as initiator for the anionic ring-opening polymerization of ethylene oxide was investigated with a strong phosphazene base (t-BuP4) used as promoter. Kinetic study showed an induction period, i.e., transformation of carboxylic acid to hydroxyl ester, followed by slow chain growth together with simultaneous and fast end-group transesterification, which led to poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) consisting of monoester (monohydroxyl), diester, and dihydroxyl species. An appropriate t-BuP4/acid ratio was proven to be essential to achieve better control over the polymerization and low dispersity of PEO. This work provides important information and enriches the toolbox for macromolecular and biomolecular engineering with protic initiating sites.


Offshore outsourcing of information technology services is a recent global trend. Organizations may not have considered the impact of outsourcing on their learning capabilities for future competitive competencies. The impact on learning may depend on the national cultures of the client organization and of the offshore outsourcing vendor. A conceptual model of cultural occlusions to organizational learning in IT outsourcing relationships is developed in this paper. Suggested solutions include employing boundary spanners to mitigate of any unfavourable impacts. The cultural occlusions model may inform IT practitioners in an offshore outsourcing relationship, and the IT industry strategy of developing countries offering offshore outsourcing services.


The adjustment of parameterized gravity waves associated with model convection and finer vertical resolution has made possible the generation of the quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) in two Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) models, GISS Middle Atmosphere Global Climate Model III and a climate/middle atmosphere version of Model E2. Both extend from the surface to 0.002 hPa, with 2° × 2.5° resolution and 102 layers. Many realistic features of the QBO are simulated, including magnitude and variability of its period and amplitude. The period itself is affected by the magnitude of parameterized convective gravity wave momentum fluxes and interactive ozone (which also affects the QBO amplitude and variability), among other forcings. Although varying sea surface temperatures affect the parameterized momentum fluxes, neither aspect is responsible for the modeled variation in QBO period. Both the parameterized and resolved waves act to produce the respective easterly and westerly wind descent, although their effect is offset in altitude at each level. The modeled and observed QBO influences on tracers in the stratosphere, such as ozone, methane, and water vapor are also discussed. Due to the link between the gravity wave parameterization and the models' convection, and the dependence on the ozone field, the models may also be used to investigate how the QBO may vary with climate change.


The asymptotic robustness of estimators as a function of a rarity parameter, in the context of rare-event simulation, is often qualified by properties such as bounded relative error (BRE) and logarithmic efficiency (LE), also called asymptotic optimality. However, these properties do not suffice to ensure that moments of order higher than one are well estimated. For example, they do not guarantee that the variance of the empirical variance remains under control as a function of the rarity parameter. We study generalizations of the BRE and LE properties that take care of this limitation. They are named bounded relative moment of order k (BRM-k) and logarithmic efficiency of order k (LE-k), where k ≥ 1 is an arbitrary real number. We also introduce and examine a stronger notion called vanishing relative centered moment of order k, and exhibit examples where it holds. These properties are of interest for various estimators, including the empirical mean and the empirical variance. We develop (sufficient) Lyapunov-type conditions for these properties in a setting where state-dependent importance sampling (IS) is used to estimate first-passage time probabilities. We show how these conditions can guide us in the design of good IS schemes, that enjoy convenient asymptotic robustness properties, in the context of random walks with light-tailed and heavy-tailed increments. As another illustration, we study the hierarchy between these robustness properties (and a few others) for a model of highly reliable Markovian system (HRMS) where the goal is to estimate the failure probability of the system. In this setting, for a popular class of IS schemes, we show that BRM-k and LE-k are equivalent and that these properties become strictly stronger when k increases. We also obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for BRM-k in terms of quantities that can be readily computed from the parameters of the model.


The kinetics of dolomite dissolution have been experimentally investigated under subsurface conditions characteristic of the Rotliegend gas fields in the NE of The Netherlands. Experiments were performed in closed, stirred, batch reactors at far from equilibrium conditions, with dolomite powders of different grain sizes. The experiments were repeated for all grain sizes at 25°C and an experiment was also conducted in deionized water. The rates were derived from the measured concentrations of Mg2+ or Ca2+ released from dolomite dissolution and were normalized by the surface area of the minerals at each time interval. Regression of the rates with the pH resulted in the kinetic rate constants of: log k1 = −8.16 ± 0.06 at 25°C and log k2 = −7.61 ± 0.05 at 100°C (300 – 350 μm), log k3 = −7.88 ± 0.20 at 25°C, log k4 = −7.45 at 100°C (75 – 100 μm), log k5 = −6.62 ± 0.50 at 25°C and log k6 = −5.96 ± 1 at 100°C (20 – 25 μm). The results obtained in this study indicate that in an acidic regime the dissolution of dolomite in brine is a factor of 2 faster than in deionized water. It was also shown that the dissolution rates, when normalized by surface area, increase with decreasing grain size.


The soil system harbors important ecosystem functions. Understanding the factors influencing the functioning of soil systems is crucial to react adequately on changes induced by alteration in plant species compositions and climate change. Soil food webs deliver important information on energy flux in soil and can help to understand global carbon and nitrogen fluxes. To date, the effect of tree species identity and diversity as well as the effect of species-specific root- and litter-mediated effects have not been investigated on the compartmentalization of basal resources, i.e., bacteria and fungi, and on the way carbon and nitrogen is channeled through the soil system. There is also lack of information on how human induced climate change influences processes in soil. Although soil stores at least twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and plants together, the response of the belowground system to interactively acting global change agents has not been investigated so far. Carbon stocks in soil are likely to be influenced by the response of the belowground system to global change agents thereby potentially reinforcing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by accelerating the loss of soil carbon.
In Chapter 2, the effect of tree identity and diversity was investigated on the structure of soil nematodes. The results suggest that tree species identity is more important than tree species diversity in structuring nematode communities and associated soil processes. Ash increased the density of bacterial-feeding nematodes and reduced the number of fungal feeders, indicating distinct changes in regulatory forces of soil food webs. Beech detrimentally affected bacterial feeders but favored fungal feeders probably via pH-mediated increase in the fungal-to-bacterial ratio. The effect of lime was less pronounced but tended to be generally negative. The results indicate that both leaf litter and roots influence the nematode community, with the effects being driven not solely by resource quality but additionally by availability, i.e., seasonal shifts in dominant belowground resources. In sum the structure of soil food webs varies markedly with tree species pointing to the importance of variations in plant resources, i.e., leaf litter quality and root exudates, as strong bottom-up regulating factors of microbial communities and energy channels of decomposer systems.
In Chapter 3, we used 13C and 15N labeled ash litter to trace the flux of carbon and nitrogen through soil influenced by beech and ash seedlings. We found that beech decreased soil pH by root exudation thereby increasing fungal biomass and decreasing carbon use efficiency of bacteria. Higher bacterial respiration induced carbon loss from soil and prevented litter-derived carbon and nitrogen to reach higher trophic levels. In contrast, ash had no effect on microbial or soil parameters although its root biomass exceeded that of beech markedly. Ash was, however, very efficient in using litter-derived nitrogen from soil. The results suggest that beech and ash differentially impact soil processes with beech affecting the belowground system predominantly via roots whereas ash predominantly via litter.
In Chapter 4, the effects of increased atmospheric CO2, elevated nitrogen and reduced precipitation were investigated on the composition and diversity of belowground animal communities. Elevated CO2 increased microbial biomass by increased rhizodeposition leading to increased densities of ciliates, collembolans and gamasid mites. Reduced precipitation was of minor importance as the soil community in the sandy soils of the study site is probably adapted to drought conditions. Nitrogen addition negatively affected predatory and herbivorous nematodes, and overall nematode diversity. CO2 and nitrogen interactively affected nematode communities resulting in taxonomically and functionally altered, potentially simplified, soil communities.
In Chapter 5, we used functional guilds of nematodes to inspect changes in soil processes induced by increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, elevated nitrogen levels and reduced precipitation. We found that the decomposer community switched from a bacterial dominated to a more fungal dominated system at elevated N indicating strong changes in the microbial community and the functioning of belowground food webs. Nitrogen fertilization also reduced top-down forces and simplified soil food webs exposed to additional N input. Further, bacterial-feeding nematodes were not able to profit from increased microbial biomass suggesting that quality rather than quantity of food resources controls nematode densities. Reduced densities of root-feeding Longidoridae likely reflected increased belowground plant defense at high CO2 and N levels. Changes in decomposition processes shifting towards fungal domination at elevated N levels indicating an increase in recalcitrant and resistant compounds contributing to C sequestration thereby attenuating the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
In Chapter 6, NanoSIMS is introduced as a technique to measure the isotopic signature of single nematodes. I developed embedding techniques of nematodes for measurements in high vacuum and present first results but also restrictions. Further, different fields of application for tracing elements in food webs are presented.


The story of Ashley, a nine-year-old from Seattle, has caused a good deal of controversy since it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 3, 2007. (1) Ashley was born with a condition called static encephalopathy, a severe brain impairment that leaves her unable to walk, talk, eat, sit up, or roll over. According to her doctors, Ashley has reached, and will remain at, the developmental level of a three-month-old. (2) In 2004, Ashley's parents and the doctors at Seattle's Children's Hospital devised what they called the "Ashley Treatment," which included high-dose estrogen therapy to stunt Ashley's growth, the removal of her uterus via hysterectomy to prevent menstrual discomfort, and the removal of her breast buds to limit the growth of her breasts. Ashley's parents argue that the Ashley Treatment was intended "to improve our daughter's quality of life and not to convenience her caregivers." (3) They also "decided to share our thoughts and experience ... to help families who might bring similar benefits to their bedridden 'Pillow Angels,'" which means that this treatment has public policy implications. In the case of incompetent children like Ashley, parents are the custodians of the child's interests and are required to make decisions that protect or promote those interests. Doctors should also offer treatments that are in Ashley's best interests. It would be wrong to offer a treatment that was against the interests of the child but in the parents' (or others') interests. The central questions in medical ethics in relation to this case are: Were these treatments in Ashley's best interests? Do they treat her as a person with dignity and respect, and were they likely to make her life go better? Ashley's parents argue that they sought the Ashley treatment in order to alleviate Ashley's "discomfort and boredom." Their contention that stunting Ashley's growth was done for sake of improving "our daughter's quality of life and not to convenience her caregivers" is controversial. According to her parents, keeping Ashley small--at around seventy-five pounds and four feet, five inches tall--means that Ashley can be moved considerably more often, held in their arms, be taken "on trips more frequently," "have more exposure to activities and social gatherings," and "continue to fit in and be bathed in a standard size bathtub." All this serves Ashley's health and well-being because, so the parents argue, "the increase in Ashley's movement results in better blood circulation, GI functioning (including digestion, passing gas), stretching, and motion of her joints," which means that Ashley will be less prone to infections. Undoubtedly, the parents are right that Ashley will benefit in the manner they have proposed if they can do all these things for her. The claim about the value of small size in a particular social circumstance is certainly not unique. Dwarves have given the same argument as a justification for preferring to have short children. They have argued that parenting dwarves is desirable for them because of their own size and because they have made modifications to their homes and their surroundings to take into account their short stature. (4) As a general point, it is entirely conceivable that in some natural, social, or psychological circumstances, having a normal body may be a disadvantage. In H.G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind," Nunez, a mountaineer in the Andes, falls and comes upon the Country of the Blind. Nunez has normal vision, but in this society of blind people, he is disadvantaged, and he eventually consents to have his eyes removed. Similarly, in a world of loud noise, being able to hear could be a disadvantage. In the case of apotemnophilia--a body dysmorphic disorder in which the patient feels incomplete possessing all tour limbs--doctors justify amputation by reasoning that the patient's psychology demands it. In Ashley's case, having a normal-sized body could be a disadvantage. …


Information systems security is a critical issue for all organisations with a significant dependence upon information technology. However, it is a requirement that is often difficult to address, particularly within small organisations, as a result of a lack of resources and expertise. This paper identifies the need for security awareness and describes the prototype implementation of a software tool that enables individuals to pursue self‐paced security training. The tool provides an environment that permits the user to simulate the introduction of security into a number of pre‐defined case study scenarios. This enables staff to become familiar with the types of countermeasures available, the situations in which they are appropriate and any constraints that they may impose. This would be particularly valuable in small organisations where specialist knowledge is often scarce and issues need to be addressed by existing staff.


Background: An advance statement in psychiatric care is a statement of a person's preferences for treatment, should he or she lose capacity to make treatment decisions in the future. The underlying principle for implementing these instruments is the promotion of patients' self-determination and autonomy.;Objective: To evaluate whether use of advance statements by patients with severe mental illness leads to lower rates of compulsory readmission to hospital.;Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting Two inner city psychiatric hospitals in North London.;Participants: One hundred and fifty six in-patients about to be discharged from compulsory treatment under the Mental Health Act were recruited. To be included, participants had to be 18 years old and over, with mental capacity, able to read and write English and on section 2, 3 or 4 of the Mental Health Act.;Intervention: The preference for care group and the control group both received standard psychiatric care plus a number of standardised questionnaires at baseline and a year after discharge from section. In addition to that the preference for care group received the psychiatric advance statement at baseline.;Outcome measures: The main outcome measure was the rate of compulsory re-admission. Other outcome measures involved: the patients' self-efficacy and satisfaction with psychiatric services, their mental health status assessment, their views about the usefulness of the advance statements, assessment of the content of the statement and the views of mental health professionals in relation to the usefulness of the statement.;Results: Fifteen patients (19%) in the intervention group and 16 (21%) in the control group were readmitted compulsorily within 1 year of discharge. There was no difference in the numbers of compulsory readmissions, numbers of patients readmitted voluntarily, self-efficacy or satisfaction with psychiatric services. Patients with severe and enduring mental health problems were capable of drawing up advance statements with their views in relation to signs of lapses and relapses, and their preferences and refusals on certain aspects of their treatment and needs whilst hospitalised. Patients did not use the advance statements as an opportunity to refuse all subsequent treatment. Although 40% of patients did not find the advance statements useful, this may have occurred because the professionals involved in their care did not refer to or take account of them. Most mental health professionals who returned questionnaires did not find the advance statements useful in the management of the patients.;Conclusion: Users' advance statements for psychiatric care had little observable impact on the outcome of care at twelve months. Even if rates of compulsory treatment were not affected, one cannot rule out possible beneficial effects such as improvement of therapeutic alliance and communication with mental health professionals. Thus, the impact of advance statements on other aspects of care requires further study.


Access to finance remains a challenge for some micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Peru, particularly informal enterprises with no borrowing history in the formal financial system. Lenders lack the tools to reach these borrowers with sufficient scale and control over risk due in part to the shortcomings of current screening technologies. For this paper, the authors carried out a pilot test of an innovative psychometric tool aimed at evaluating credit risk for business owners seeking a loan from Financiera Confianza, the fourth largest Empresa Financiera in Peru. Applicant responses were compared to self-reported sales, subsequent loan repayment performance, and credit bureau data to determine if psychometric-based credit scoring models could reduce the constraints on MSME finance. The authors created a scorecard based on that information using data from other countries and evaluated its effectiveness on this sample. It achieved a Gini coefficient of between 20 and 40 percent. Those MSMEs rejected by a psychometrically enhanced application scorecard with this Gini coefficient have a probability of defaulting that is up to four times greater than those accepted by the scorecard. Along with other policies to reduce information asymmetry in MSME lending, such a tool could help relieve constraints on MSME finance in Peru.


Purpose: Patients presenting with nodal Merkel cell carcinoma without an identifiable (unknown) primary lesion (MCC-UP) are nearly twice as likely to survive compared with similarly staged patients with known primary lesions (MCC-KP). The basis of this previously reported finding is unclear. Experimental Design: Survival analyses and markers of immunity were evaluated in 123 patients with advanced MCC. Whole-exome sequence data were analyzed from 16 tumors. Results: As in prior studies, patients with nodal MCC-UP had strikingly improved MCC-specific survival as compared with MCC-KP patients (HR, 0.297; P < 0.001). Surprisingly, patients presenting with distant metastatic MCC-UP also had significantly improved survival (HR, 0.296; P = 0.038). None of the 72 patients with MCC-UP were immunosuppressed as compared to 12 of the 51 (24%) patients with MCC-KP (P < 0.001). Merkel polyomavirus oncoprotein antibody median titer was higher in MCC-UP patients (26,229) than MCC-KP patients (3,492; P < 0.001). In addition, the median number of nonsynonymous exome mutations in MCC-UP tumors (688 mutations) was markedly higher than MCC-KP tumors (10 mutations, P = 0.016). Conclusions: This is the first study to our knowledge to explore potential underlying immune-mediated mechanisms of MCC-UP presentation. In this cohort, MCC-UP patients were never immune suppressed, had higher oncoprotein antibody titers, and higher tumor mutational burdens. In addition, we show that nodal tumors identified in MCC-UP patients did indeed arise from primary skin lesions as they contained abundant UV-signature mutations. These findings suggest that stronger underlying immunity against MCC contributes to primary lesion elimination and improved survival. Clin Cancer Res; 24(4); 963–71. ©2017 AACR.


Inhibitors of protein synthesis reset the biological clocks of many organisms. This has been interpreted to mean either that the synthesis per se of proteins is a step in the oscillatory feedback loop or merely that certain unstable protein(s) are required at certain times of the cycle to complete the feedback loop. We report here that Neurospora strains bearing the clock mutation frq-7 are relatively insensitive to the resetting action of the protein-synthesis-inhibitor cycloheximide. Protein synthesis itself in this mutant is inhibited by the drug to the same extent as in wild type. Since the clock of frq-7 continues to run relatively unimpeded even in the virtual absence of protein synthesis, it is unlikely that synthesis per se can be a part of the feedback cycle. Rather, we suggest that for normal operation of the Neurospora clock, certain protein(s) with a high turnover rate are required daily and, thus, must be resynthesized each day (at least) during discrete times in the cycle. The frq-7 mutation simultaneously alters several distinct clock characteristics--period length, temperature compensation, and resetting by cycloheximide. A model is presented to unify these observations.


Melodic similarity is a central concept in many sub-disciplines of musicology, as well as for many computer based applications that deal with the classifications and retrieval of melodic material. This paper describes a research paradigm for finding an 'optimal' similarity measure out of a multitude of different approaches and algorithmic variants. The repertory used in this study are short melodies from popular (pop) songs and the empirical data for validation stem from two extensive listener experiments with expert listeners (musicology students). The different approaches to melodic similarity measurement are first discussed and mathematically systematized. Detailed description of the listener experiments are given and the results are discussed. Strengths and weaknesses of the several tested similarity measures are outlined and an 'optimal' similarity measure for this specific melodic repertory is proposed. Music Query: Methods, Models, and User Studies Computing in Musicology, 13 (2003)


Backgrounds: Integrated antenatal care as one of key program in screening maternal and child health services isstarted antenatal to puerperium phase and it is essential to protect complications during both antenatal and postnatalphases. Access to antenatal care (fi rst ANC to fourth ANC) has became providers key strategies in order to decreasemissed opportunities of pregnant women that it can be implicated toward services quality and caused by increasing MMRand IMR in Blitar City. The purpose of this study was to analize of policy implementation for Integrated Antenatal Careservices at Sananwetan, Kepanjen kidul, and Sukorejo Public Health Centers. Methods: A qualitative study with purposivedesign. Method for policy analysis used "a health policy triangle framework" (Walt & Gilson, 1994). Results: Lack of therole of policy actors in fi elds to bridge among integrated antenatal care services program, midwives, lab analyst andprovider. Integrated Antenatal care Services are concerned with physical examinations conducted by Midwives and areconcerned with laboratorium test both routine and medical indications conducted by laboratory analyst. Lack of technicaltraining for midwives and lab analyst. Conclusion: Inter Sectoral partnership for policy actors in implementing integratedantenatal care of Health Centers were lack and ranning partially. Lack of availability of laboratory facilities and USG toexam pregnant womens. Local Government Regulation regarding general services retributions are concerned routine lab and medical indications examinations is not yet for the poor peoples. Recommendation: The masive role of policy actorsin Blitar City through inter sectoral partnership involving policy review, monitoring, and evaluation of integrated antenatalcare for health centers are sustainable. Budgetting in APBD and other sources to enhance laboratorium facilities andUSG at three Health Centers based on types of laboratory and medical devices. Integrated antenatal care strengtheningthrough technicals training are especially midwives and laborium analysts in developing midwives in obstetrics and medicalexamination competencies. We need a limited revision of regulation clauses. It is clauses of routine lab examination andmedical indications free for every poor womens that conduct lab examinations.


The article deals with the economic situation and state economic policy in Lithuania before and during the crisis. The pre-crisis period, i.e. 2004-2007, was characterised by rapid growth of the economies of Lithuania and other Baltic countries, which was unprecedented in post-war Europe. The growth of Lithuania's economy was interrupted by global economic and financial crises of 2008. Before and at the time of the crisis, the macroeconomic situation of Lithuania is analysed by using the statistical data of the Lithuanian Department of Statistics. It discusses the main factors that influenced the economic situation of the country and the means of governmental economic policy during the period under consideration. The article also presents the anti-crisis policy of the other Baltic countries. A comparative analysis of the macroeconomic situation in the Baltic countries is performed. The analysis showed that economic processes were similar without essential differences in all Baltic countries, with the exception of the spheres of public finances, where Estonia had an obvious advantage, compared to Lithuania and Latvia.


Little is known about the optical significance of light absorbing particulate organic compounds (i.e., brown carbon, BrC), including the importance relative to black carbon (BC) and influence on direct radiative forcing by aerosols. The vertical profile of BrC affects its radiative forcing, yet the distribution of BrC in the free troposphere is largely unknown. In this study, BrC absorption was directly measured in solvent extracts of particulate filters obtained from aircraft sampling over the continental USA. Excluding biomass burning plumes, BrC was observed throughout the tropospheric column (<13 km), and its prevalence increased relative to BC with increasing altitude, indicating contributions from secondary sources. Closure analysis showed good agreement between light absorption from BC plus BrC relative to measured total aerosol absorption. A radiative transfer model indicated that BrC absorption reduced top of atmosphere aerosol forcing by ~20%, suggesting that it is an important component of direct aerosol radiative forcing.


The configuration and runtime management of distributed systems is often complex due to the presence of a large number of configuration options and dependencies between interacting sub-systems. Inexperienced users usually choose default configurations because they are not aware of the possible configurations and/or their effect on the systems' operation. In doing so, they are unable to take advantage of the potentially wide range of system capabilities. Furthermore, managing inter-dependent sub-systems frequently involves performing a set of actions to get the overall system to the desired final state. In this paper, we propose a new approach for configuring and managing distributed systems based on AI planning. We use a goal-driven, tag-based user interaction paradigm to shield users from the complexities of configuring and managing systems. The key idea behind our approach is to package different configuration options and system management actions into reusable modules that can be automatically composed into workflows based on the user's goals. It also allows capturing the inter-dependencies between different configuration options, management actions and system states. We evaluate our approach in a case study involving three inter-dependent sub-systems. Our initial experiences indicate that this planning-based approach holds great promise in simplifying configuration and management tasks.


Abstract. Large trees are important and unique organisms in forests, providing ecosystem services including carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and long-term storage. Some reports have raised concerns about the global decline of large trees. Based on observations from two regions in Finland and three regions in the United States we report that trends of large trees during recent decades have been surprisingly variable among regions. In southern Finland, the growing stock volume of trees larger than 30 cm at breast height increased nearly five-fold during the second half of the 20th century, yet more recently ceased to expand. In the United States, large hardwood trees have become increasingly common in the Northeast since the 1950s, while large softwood trees declined until the mid 1990s as a consequence of harvests in the Pacific region, and then rebounded when harvesting there was reduced. We conclude that in the regions studied, the history of land use and forest management governs changes of the diameter-class distributions of tree populations. Large trees have significant benefits; for example, they can constitute a large proportion of the carbon stock and affect greatly the carbon density of forests. Large trees usually have deeper roots and long lifetimes. They affect forest structure and function and provide habitats for other species. An accumulating stock of large trees in existing forests may have negligible direct biophysical effects on climate through transpiration or forest albedo. Understanding changes in the demography of tree populations makes a contribution to estimating the past impact and future potential of forests in the global carbon budget and to assessing other ecosystem services of forests.


A sustainable provision of energy is one of the greatest challenges to mankind. Energy generated from sustainable sources has to be transported and stored in an efficient and ecologically friendly way. Hydrogen is an important energy carrier in current sustainable energy scenarios. Such scenarios are only realistic, however, if hydrogen can be stored in a light, compact, fast and reliable way, and under moderate conditions. Using materials that absorb hydrogen is one route that can lead to these goals. The present thesis is devoted to a first-principles study of the hydrogen storage properties of a number of promising bulk, nano and molecular materials. In the first part of the thesis, storage materials are considered that store hydrogen in atomic form. The focus is on the bulk properties of magnesium-dihydride (MgH2) and its alloys with lightweight transition metals (TM) and aluminium or silicon. We find that TM-alloying initiates a phase transition that results in a significant enhancement of the usually slow (de)hydrogenation kinetics. For the most promising candidates, the Mg-Ti hydrides, we have established that this phase transition occurs both in ordered structures, as well as in random alloy hydrides. Adding aluminium or silicon to Mg-Ti greatly improves the thermodynamic properties by stabilizing the alloys and destabilizing their hydrides, which makes these materials more suitable for practical hydrogen storage applications. In the second part of this thesis, materials are considered that store hydrogen in molecular form, which leads to fast kinetics. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) doped with alkali or alkaline earth metals have been suggested as hydrogen storage media. We find, however, that such doping has a detrimental effect on the structure of a MOF. As an alternative, we studied polylithiated carbon and oxygen molecules as building blocks for hydrogen storage materials and find that these molecules show promising hydrogen storage properties both in the gas and in the condensed phases. Finally, we show that planar boron sheets decorated with alkali metals have very promising hydrogen storage properties.


Assertions that the use of chimpanzees to investigate human diseases is valid scientifically are frequently based on a reported 98–99% genetic similarity between the species. Critical analyses of the relevance of chimpanzee studies to human biology, however, indicate that this genetic similarity does not result in sufficient physiological similarity for the chimpanzee to constitute a good model for research, and furthermore, that chimpanzee data do not translate well to progress in clinical practice for humans. Leading examples include the minimal citations of chimpanzee research that is relevant to human medicine, the highly different pathology of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C virus infection in the two species, the lack of correlation in the efficacy of vaccines and treatments between chimpanzees and humans, and the fact that chimpanzees are not useful for research on human cancer. The major molecular differences underlying these inter-species phenotypic disparities have been revealed by comparative genomics and molecular biology — there are key differences in all aspects of gene expression and protein function, from chromosome and chromatin structure to post-translational modification. The collective effects of these differences are striking, extensive and widespread, and they show that the superficial similarity between human and chimpanzee genetic sequences is of little consequence for biomedical research. The extrapolation of biomedical data from the chimpanzee to the human is therefore highly unreliable, and the use of the chimpanzee must be considered of little value, particularly given the breadth and potential of alternative methods of enquiry that are currently available to science.


The role of population density for economic activity was neglected in most part of economic theory. This paper is a review and extension of the previous works of the author in this field. So far, densities did not become common economic variables in economic analysis, and two countries with different densities of population and infrastructure but similar in macroeconomic parameters are treated as similar. One of the presented models is about an influence of population density on infrastructure development, and later on country potential for economic growth (Yegorov 2005a). Self-organization of production activity in space is elaboration of the ideas of von Thunen. When a city emerges as a center of industrial activity, it deforms the space, and agricultural land rent becomes a function of distance due to transport cost to bring the good to the market. Population density plays an important role in harvesting societies, i.e. those that depend on agriculture and natural resources. Too high population density decreases the natural endowment per capita, but eases the development of infrastructure, leading to existence of an optimal population density for economic growth (Yegorov, 2009). The trade-off between scale economies and transport costs leads to an optimal area served by a local monopolist. In the world with low population density competition might not even emerge because even monopolist can become bankrupt due to low demand density, especially in the environment of high transport costs. Such situation took place on the most part of Russian territory after liberalization that also lead to an increase in relative transport costs. Population density also can play role for an optimal size of a country. While there are many other reasons (mostly historical), spatial structure is also important. Land area of a country is considered as some capital bringing rent from natural resource extraction. The length of a border requires protection efforts and thus is a first type of cost. Commuting with the capital is another type of cost, and here the population density also matters. All these 3 factors enter with different power, and optimization with respect to linear scale give different results (Yegorov, 2005b). Literature 1. Yegorov Y. (2005a) Role of Density and Field in Spatial Economics. ? In: Yee Lawrence (Ed). ?Contemporary Issues in Urban and Regional Economics?. Nova Science Publishers, 2005, N.Y., p.55-78. 2. Yegorov Y. (2005b) Dynamically Sustainable Economic Equilibria as Self-Organized Atomic Structures (2005b) ? In: M.Salzano, A.Kirman, Eds., ?Economics: Complex Windows?, Springer-Verlag Italia, 2005, p.187-199 3. Yegorov Y. (2009) Socio-economic influences of population density. - Chinese Business Review, vol.8, No. 7, p.1-12.