Many parts of the former homeland areas of South Africa are believed to be experiencing environmental scarcity, and are increasingly vulnerable to resource over-exploitation. Frequently, these areas are adjacent to formally protected areas and present unique challenges in integrating biodiversity conservation and sustaining livelihoods, especially for resource-dependent rural communities. Although studies have been undertaken on the use of various plants by Tsonga communities, and the economic value of specific taxa, no investigation on the relative importance value that considers both wild flora and fauna, together with landscapes, has been carried out previously in the former Gazankulu homeland. We used a weighted ranking exercise for nine focus groups within three rural villages bordering the Kruger National Park, which are largely dependent on wild resources, to assess the relative importance of landscape units and species-level biodiversity. Landscape units, particularly forest/bush and river/stream, were found to be extensively used in meeting community needs, across a range of resource use categories including maintaining socio-cultural norms. Moreover, landscape units vary among villages and age/gender regarding how they contribute to sustaining livelihoods. In total, 162 taxa were identified, with two taxa (Sclerocarya birrea subsp. caffra; Ficus spp.) exploited in up to seven use categories. Sclerocarya birrea, Combretum imberbe and Colophospermum mopane were the most highly valued species among those surveyed, contributing 22% to the overall value of wild flora and fauna in the area. Of those identified, 28 faunal (60%) and 10 floral (8.7%) taxa are listed in either IUCN, national or provincial protected species schedules. Based on combined Local Users Value scores, over 20% of all biodiversity value for local communities comes from protected tree species. Similarly, faunal taxa with enhanced protection constitute almost 12% of all local biodiversity value. In developing strategies for resource conservation, it is necessary to recognize this widespread use of the natural environment and the wild products, including those under formal protection, exploited by local people.


Abstract Context: Asenapine maleate (ASPM) is an antipsychotic drug for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Extensive metabolism makes the oral route inconvenient for ASPM. Objective: The objective of this study is to increase ASPM bioavailability via transdermal route by improving the skin permeation using combined strategy of chemical and nano-carrier (transfersomal) based approaches. Materials and methods: Transfersomes were prepared by the thin film hydration method using soy-phosphatidylcholine (SPC) and sodium deoxycholate (SDC). Transfersomes were characterized for particle size, polydispersity index (PDI), zeta potential (ZP), entrapment efficiency, surface morphology, and in vitro skin permeation studies. Various chemical enhancers were screened for skin permeation enhancement of ASPM. Optimized transfersomes were incorporated into a gel base containing suitable chemical enhancer for efficient transdermal delivery. In vivo pharmacokinetic study was performed in rats to assess bioavailability by transdermal route against oral administration. Results and discussion: Optimized transfersomes with drug:SPC:SDC weight ratio of 5:75:10 were spherical with an average size of 126.0 nm, PDI of 0.232, ZP of −43.7 mV, and entrapment efficiency of 54.96%. Ethanol (20% v/v) showed greater skin permeation enhancement. The cumulative amount of ASPM permeated after 24 h (Q24) by individual effect of ethanol and transfersome, and in combination was found to be 160.0, 132.9, and 309.3 μg, respectively, indicating beneficial synergistic effect of combined approach. In vivo pharmacokinetic study revealed significant (p < 0.05) increase in bioavailability upon transdermal application compared with oral route. Conclusion: Dual strategy of permeation enhancement was successful in increasing the transdermal permeation and bioavailability of ASPM.


Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) are Gram-negative commensal bacteria that reside in the nasopharynx. NTHi can also cause multiple upper and lower respiratory tract diseases that include sinusitis, conjunctivitis, bronchitis, and otitis media. In numerous bacterial species the ferric uptake regulator (Fur) acts as a global regulator of iron homeostasis by negatively regulating the expression of iron uptake systems. However in NTHi strain 86-028NP and numerous other bacterial species there are multiple instances where Fur positively affects gene expression. It is known that many instances of positive regulation by Fur occur indirectly through a small RNA intermediate. However, no examples of small RNAs have been described in NTHi. Therefore we used RNA-Seq analysis to analyze the transcriptome of NTHi strain 86-028NPrpsL and an isogenic 86-028NPrpsLΔfur strain to identify Fur-regulated intergenic transcripts. From this analysis we identified HrrF, the first small RNA described in any Haemophilus species. Orthologues of this small RNA exist only among other Pasteurellaceae. Our analysis showed that HrrF is maximally expressed when iron levels are low. Additionally, Fur was shown to bind upstream of the hrrF promoter. RNA-Seq analysis was used to identify targets of HrrF which include genes whose products are involved in molybdate uptake, deoxyribonucleotide synthesis, and amino acid biosynthesis. The stability of HrrF is not dependent on the RNA chaperone Hfq. This study is the first step in an effort to investigate the role small RNAs play in altering gene expression in response to iron limitation in NTHi.


Tracing development of the dendritic cell lineage Dendritic cells (DCs) are important components of the immune system that form from the bone marrow into two major cell lineages: plasmacytoid DCs and conventional DCs. See et al. applied single-cell RNA sequencing and cytometry by time-of-flight to characterize the developmental pathways of these cells. They identified blood DC precursors that shared surface markers with plasmacytoid DCs but that were functionally distinct. This unsuspected level of complexity in pre-DC populations reveals additional cell types and refines understanding of known cell types. Science, this issue p. eaag3009 In human blood, the immunological dendritic cell lineage contains many predendritic cell populations. INTRODUCTION Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen-presenting cells that orchestrate immune responses. The human DC population comprises multiple subsets, including plasmacytoid DC (pDC) and two functionally specialized lineages of conventional DC (cDC1 and cDC2), whose origins and differentiation pathways remain incompletely defined. RATIONALE As DC are essential regulators of the immune response in health and disease, potential intervention strategies aiming at manipulation of these cells will require in-depth insights of their origins, the mechanisms that govern their homeostasis, and their functional properties. Here, we employed two unbiased high-dimensional technologies to characterize the human DC lineage from bone marrow to blood. RESULTS We isolated the DC-containing population (Lineage−HLA−DR+CD135+ cells) from human blood and defined the transcriptomes of 710 individual cells using massively parallel single-cell mRNA sequencing. By combining complementary bioinformatic approaches, we identified a small cluster of cells within this population as putative DC precursors (pre-DC). We then confirmed this finding using cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF) to simultaneously measure the expression of a panel of 38 different proteins at the single-cell level on Lineage−HLA−DR+ cells and found that pre-DC possessed a CD123+CD33+CD45RA+ phenotype. We confirmed the precursor potential of pre-DC by establishing their potential to differentiate in vitro into cDC1 and cDC2, but not pDC, in the known proportions found in vivo. Interestingly, pre-DC also express classical pDC markers, including CD123, CD303, and CD304. Thus, any previous studies using these markers to identify or isolate pDC will have inadvertently included CD123+CD33+ pre-DC. We provide here new markers that can be used to identify unambiguously pre-DC from pDC, including CD33, CX3CR1, CD2, CD5, and CD327. When CD123+CD33+ pre-DC and CD123+CD33− pDC were isolated separately, we observed that pre-DC have unique functional properties that were previously attributed to pDC. Although pDC remain bona fide interferon-α–producing cells, their reported interleukin-12 (IL-12) production and CD4 T cell allostimulatory capacity can likely be attributed to "contaminating" pre-DC. We then asked whether the pre-DC population contained both uncommitted and committed pre-cDC1 and pre-cDC2 precursors, as recently shown in mice. Using microfluidic single-cell mRNA sequencing (scmRNAseq), we showed that the human pre-DC population contains cells exhibiting transcriptomic priming toward cDC1 and cDC2 lineages. Flow cytometry and in vitro DC differentiation experiments further identified CD123+CADM1−CD1c− putative uncommitted pre-DC, alongside CADM1+CD1c− pre-cDC1 and CADM1−CD1c+ pre-cDC2. Finally, we found that pre-DC subsets expressed T cell costimulatory molecules and induced comparable proliferation and polarization of naïve CD4 T cells as adult DC. However, exposure to the Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) ligand CpG triggered IL-12p40 and tumor necrosis factor–α production by early pre-DC, pre-cDC1, and pre-cDC2, in contrast to differentiated cDC1 and cDC2, which do not express TLR9. CONCLUSION Using unsupervised scmRNAseq and CyTOF analyses, we have unraveled the complexity of the human DC lineage at the single-cell level, revealing a continuous process of differentiation that starts in the bone marrow (BM) with common DC progenitors (CDP), diverges at the point of emergence of pre-DC and pDC potential, and culminates in maturation of both lineages in the blood and spleen. The pre-DC compartment contains functionally and phenotypically distinct lineage-committed subpopulations, including one early uncommitted CD123+ pre-DC subset and two CD45RA+CD123lo lineage-committed subsets. The discovery of multiple committed pre-DC populations with unique capabilities opens promising new avenues for the therapeutic exploitation of DC subset-specific targeting. Human DC emerge from BM CDP, diverge at the point of emergence of pre-DC and pDC potential, and culminate in maturation of both lineages in the blood. The pre-DC compartment further differentiates into functionally and phenotypically distinct lineage-committed subpopulations, including one early uncommitted CD123+ pre-DC subset (early pre-DC), which give rise to both cDC1 and cDC2 through corresponding CD45RA+CD123lo pre-cDC1 and pre-cDC2 lineage-committed subsets, respectively. Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen-presenting cells that orchestrate immune responses. The human DC population comprises two main functionally specialized lineages, whose origins and differentiation pathways remain incompletely defined. Here, we combine two high-dimensional technologies—single-cell messenger RNA sequencing (scmRNAseq) and cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF)—to identify human blood CD123+CD33+CD45RA+ DC precursors (pre-DC). Pre-DC share surface markers with plasmacytoid DC (pDC) but have distinct functional properties that were previously attributed to pDC. Tracing the differentiation of DC from the bone marrow to the peripheral blood revealed that the pre-DC compartment contains distinct lineage-committed subpopulations, including one early uncommitted CD123high pre-DC subset and two CD45RA+CD123low lineage-committed subsets exhibiting functional differences. The discovery of multiple committed pre-DC populations opens promising new avenues for the therapeutic exploitation of DC subset-specific targeting.


Monitoring Ecological Impacts provides the tools needed by professional ecologists, other scientists, engineers, planners and managers to design assessment programs that can reliably monitor, detect and allow management of human impacts on the natural environment. The procedures described are well-grounded in inferential logic, and statistical models needed to analyse complex data are given. Step-by-step guidelines and flow diagrams provide the reader with clear and usable protocols, which can be applied in any region of the world and to a wide range of human impacts. In addition, real examples are used to show how the theory can be put into practice. Although the context of this book is flowing water environments, especially rivers and streams, the advice for designing assessment programs can be applied to any ecosystem.


This article aims to analyze the relationship between the law and the media in a context of judicialization of social relations. After analyzing the implications of this issue, the article affirms that a general theory of the media and law fails to properly explain the problem, since existing analyses are based on a relationship among individuals' attitudes towards official law. A better understanding of the topic requires an analysis of the type of program and the presence of concepts concerning fairness as differentiated from those expounded by operators of the law. The article concludes that this is the most appropriate way to verify popular concepts of justice appearing in a variety show.


Background Accurate knowledge of the body build of top sports level volleyball player's is an important information as it is the basis for designation of model body build parameters, body proportions, and build type for a given playing position. Objective The main objectives of this study are to define angle values of physiological curvature and segmental spine mobility of the women's volleyball national team members. Design In order to obtain a complete picture of the female players' profile, to-date studies would need to be extended by knowledge on spondylometric characteristics of women playing volleyball professionally. Setting Studies of somatic and spondylometric characteristics were performed using the tensometric electrogoniometry system. Percentile ranks of somatic and spondylometric characteristics of the female player subject were devised. Participants The material includes 12 female players of Polish women's volleyball national team aged 20–27. The control group comprised female players from clubs competing in the Polish Women's Volleyball League. Main outcome measurements Although volleyball is considered a no-contact sports discipline, the player's body – including the spine – is exposed to loads related to performing various elements of the game. In particular, major loads with vertical direction are related to the player's jumping to attack or block, and may be the cause of deformations. Spondylometric characteristics of the female player subjects are slightly different from those of athletes in other sports disciplines where jumping ability is the leading feature. Results In the elite of Polish female volleyball players lumbar lordosis is dominant (33% above normal values), then cervical lordosis, while thoracic kyphosis is significantly flattened. Range of segmental spine mobility in most cases is lower than the adopted normal values. Significant forward flexion movement limitation in the thoracic section was observed. No functional symmetrisation of the subjects was observed.


Based on the studies on downlink resource allocation in p oint to m ulti-point (PMP) mode in the 802.16e systems, an efficient downlink resource allocation algorithm with low complexity is proposed to maxim ize the system throughput, which takes the advantage of frequency-selective fading property in orthogonal frequency division multiple (OFDM) networks. The proposed algorithm not only provides the traffic rate as high as possible, but also satisfies the minimum reserved traffic rate for non-real-time services. The simulation shows that the proposed algorithm performs better in terms of assuring individual QoS and offering fairness among users at the cost of slight degradation in throughput.


The relationship between oxidative stress and some exercise components of resistance exercise (e.g. intensity, exercise volume) has not been clearly defined. Additionally, the oxidative stress markers may respond differently in various conditions. This study aims to determine the effects of progressive intensity of resistance exercise (RE) on oxidative stress and antioxidants in trained and untrained men, and also to investigate the possible threshold intensity required to evoke oxidative stress. RE trained (N=8) and untrained (N=8) men performed the leg extension RE at progressive intensities standardized for total volume: 1x17 reps at 50% of one-repetition maximum (1RM); 1x14 reps at 60% of 1RM; 1x12 reps at 70% of 1RM; 2x5 reps at 80% of 1RM; and 3x3 reps at 90% of 1RM. Blood samples were drawn before (PRE) and immediately after each intensity, and after 30 minutes, 60 minutes and 24 hours following the RE. Lipid-hydroperoxide (LHP) significantly increased during the test and then decreased during the recovery in both groups (p<0.05); the POST-24 h LHP level was lower than PRE-LHP. Protein carbonyl (PCO) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) significantly increased (p<0.05); however, 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) and glutathione (GSH) were not affected by the RE (p > 0.05). The results indicated that there was no significant training status x intensity interaction for examined variables (p > 0.05). Standardized volume of RE increased oxidative stress responses. Our study suggests that lower intensity (50%) is enough to increase LHP, whereas higher intensity (more than 80%) is required to evoke protein oxidation.


Summary The importance of listening to young people is enshrined in legislative and policy frameworks and is integral to the children's rights agenda. However, social work has often struggled to give a voice to vulnerable young people, especially when their views conflict with adult perspectives. This project pioneers the use of digital storytelling using a co-productive approach to address an ongoing deficit in the way accommodated young people express their views at key decision making forums. A four-day residential retreat was used as the venue for co-constructing a digital story and collecting data about young people's experiences of the process. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes emerging from participants' accounts of their experiences. Findings The findings suggest that child care meetings should be re-conceptualized as a process in which young people undertake the role of educator, rather than their current positioning as passive information giver. The shift from a passive provider of information to educator is theorised by linking the concepts of scaffolding and Zone of Proximal Development to co-production. Applications This study expands current conceptualisations of co-production as an approach to digital storytelling that holds transformative potential for genuine inclusion of children's voices in decision-making forums. Whilst the study focused on accommodated young people, the findings are relevant to other service user groups. New technology presents exciting opportunities for practitioners and policy makers to involve those most excluded in society, and at a time when key decisions are made about their lives.


Abstractâ?? iOS is the Apple mobile operating system, for Apple mobile devices. Initially developed for iPhone, and later for iPod Touch, iPad, AppleTV. The Metropolitan University has a Web application titled eStudent, which enables students by Web to get information about their marks for all subjects, their financies, exam scheduling, professors and assistents, and send exam registration and feedback about teaching, etc. This paper explains the development of the mobile application eStudent on the iOS platform. This application enables students whenever they want, by using their iPhone mobile phone, to get access to the information from the eStudent Web application, and to present it on their iPhone User Interface (UI). This paper explains in details software requirements analysis, system architecture, system modelling, and UI of the eStudent iOS mobile application.


ABSTRACT Purpose The 2018 American Urological Association guidelines on the Evaluation and Management of Testosterone Deficiency recommended that 300 ng/dL be used as the threshold for prescribing testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). However, it is not uncommon for men to present with signs and symptoms of testosterone deficiency, despite having testosterone levels greater than 300 ng/dL. There exists scant literature regarding the use of hCG monotherapy for the treatment of hypogonadism in men not interested in fertility. We sought to evaluate serum testosterone response and duration of therapy of hCG monotherapy for men with symptoms of hypogonadism, but total testosterone levels > 300 ng/dL. Materials and Methods We performed a multi-institutional retrospective case series of men receiving hCG monotherapy for symptomatic hypogonadism. We evaluated patient age, treatment indication, hCG dosage, past medical history, physical exam findings and serum testosterone and gonadotropins before and after therapy. Descriptive analysis was performed and Mann Whitney U Test was utilized for statistical analysis. Results Of the 20 men included in the study, treatment indications included low libido (45%), lack of energy (50%), and erectile dysfunction (45%). Mean testosterone improved by 49.9% from a baseline of 362 ng/dL (SD 158) to 519.8 ng/dL (SD 265.6), (p=0.006). Median duration of therapy was 8 months (SD 5 months). Fifty percent of patients reported symptom improvement. Conclusions Treatment of hypogonadal symptoms with hCG for men who have a baseline testosterone level > 300 ng/dL appears to be safe and efficacious with no adverse events.


Patient-specific computational study of aortic disease provides a powerful means for diagnosis and pre-operative planning. However, creating patient-specific computational models can be time-consuming due to the fact that anatomical geometries extracted from clinical imaging data are often incomplete and noisy. This paper presents an approach for constructing statistical shape models (SSMs) for aortic surfaces with the eventual goal of mapping the mean aorta geometries to raw surface data obtained from the clinical images for each new patient so that patient-specific models can be automatically constructed.The input aortic models in this study come in the form of triangle meshes generated from CT scans on 6 patients. Statistical models with modes that characterize the variation pattern are found after optimizing the group-wise correspondence across the aorta training set. We use the direct reparametrization approach to efficiently manipulate shape correspondence. We use B-spline based differentiable shape representation for the training set and use the adjoint method for deriving analytical gradients in a gradient based approach for manipulating the shape correspondence to minimize the description length of the resulting SSM. Our numerical result shows that the evaluation measures of the optimized statistical model have been significantly enhanced.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


The advantages of canopy seed retention (serotiny) for plants inhabiting fire-prone ecosystems are well documented. However, very few species are completely serotinous and non-fire induced opening of serotinous fruits is commonly observed (weak serotiny). Two non-mutually exclusive causes are envisaged to contribute to this process: mechanical changes in serotinous fruits mediated by climatic conditions (e.g. drought) or the costs of maintenance for the plant of these long-lasting structures. However, their relative contribution to the spontaneous opening of serotinous fruits remains elusive as well as the consequences for the build-up of the canopy seed bank and inter-individual differences in serotiny.

In this study we monitored the dynamics of cone production and cone opening in the weakly serotinous Pinus halepensis for five years (2004–2008), including two severe drought episodes (2005, 2006). Drought decreased the production of conelets, increased the abortion of immature cones, reduced the seed quality in the cohorts of cones produced during these years, and increased the opening of serotinous cones. During the first drought episode, a higher proportion of serotinous cones opened in those pines bearing a larger crop of younger cones. This suggests that not only passive changes induced by drought but also competition among cones for resources (e.g. water) might be involved in this process.

The opening of serotinous cones in pines bearing more cones made inter-individual differences in the size of the canopy cone bank to narrow or even to reverse from 2004 to 2008. These results may help to understand the decrease in serotiny when pines grow and accumulate more cones and the large inter-individual variability in the degree of serotiny observed in P. halepensis forests. In addition, the negative effects of drought episodes for the size of the canopy cone bank and the seeds contained can be an unexplored cause of post-fire regeneration constraint.


A method is provided for reconstruction of the shape of perfectly conducting objects in a homogeneous space starting from knowledge of the scattered far field under the incidence of TE-polarized plane waves. The Kirchhoff model of scattering permits linearization of the inverse problem, which is further simplified by adopting an asymptotic approximation. Thus the problem is tackled with an approach based on singular-value decomposition already developed for the TM case.


In this paper I describe an approach to automated knowledge acquisition in which users specify desired system behavior by constructing justifications of examples. Justifications are explanations of why example behaviors are appropriate in given situations. I analyze the problem of acquiring justifications, showing how current knowledge acquisition techniques are best suited for asking what-questions while justifications are naturally viewed as answers to why-questions. I sketch a new approach for acquiring justifications that transforms why-questions into what-questions, borrowing the sources of power of existing techniques. In this approach, users construct justifications by selecting facts that specify what is relevant in a situation from a space of facts provided by the elicitation tool. Justifications are then used to create operational mappings from situations to intended outcomes. I show how the approach is applied to two different knowledge acquisition problems: the acquisition of diagnostic strategy and the acquisition of design rationale. I conclude by identifying common characteristics of the two applications and discuss how their design distributes the cognitive load between human and machine. *To appear in IEEE Expert, April 1991. Based on a lecture presented at the First Japanese Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop, Kyoto, Japan, October 26, 1990.


Bellomo, C. 2018. TGFβ and LXR signaling in hepatocellular carcinoma. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1406. 65 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0175-4. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most prevalent cancer types in the Western world and in the Asia-pacific regions, with its incidence expected to rise up to 22 million cases till 2020. Hepatocellular carcinoma etiology is mainly due to hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) infections, and to a lesser extent it is determined by the development of alcohol-driven cirrhosis and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Furthermore, HCC is characterized by a high mortality rate, with poor prognostic expectance and limited therapeutic options currently available in the clinics. Transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) is a pleiotropic cytokine with a janus-role in HCC and in other malignancies. TGFβ can in fact elicit either tumor-suppressive and tumorpromoting effects depending on tumor stage, microenvironmental and immunological cues. In HCC specifically, TGFβ determines cytostasis and cellular senescence during the first stages of tumor development, while it enhances HCC malignancy and progression in the later stages due to increased invasiveness, acquired resistance to cytostatic actions and tumor immunotolerance. Liver X receptors (LXRα/NR1H3 and LXRβ/NR1H2) are transcription factors of the nuclear hormone receptor family, which play an important role in oxysterol metabolism and reversecholesterol transport to the liver. Their involvement in malignancies has been studied so far to a limited extend, with evidence of both tumor-suppressive -via cytostatic mechanismsand tumorimmunotolerance activities. Moreover, the potential crosstalk of LXR and TGFβ pathways has not been yet unraveled in the context of hepatocellular carcinoma. We have described (Paper I) a high-content imaging platform for the screening of small molecules able to revert the TGFβ-induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) in human keratinocytes. This screening allowed us to identify LXR agonists as epithelial plasticity modulators in established terminally differentiated and mouse embryonic fibroblast, as well as in epithelial and mesenchymal HCC cell lines. We have identified (Paper II) the transcription factor SNAI1 (Snail) as the mediator of the crosstalk between TGFβ and LXRα pathways in epithelial and mesenchymal HCC cell models. LXRα activation diminishes the transcriptional induction of SNAI1 by TGFβ, thus antagonizing the induction of mesenchymal features and the production of reactive oxygen species by TGFβ. However, we have unraveled that LXRα and TGFβ signaling still positively interact in increasing cytostasis in HCC, in order to preserve liver epithelial features. We have described (Paper III) that LXRα activation counteracts the transcriptional induction of α smooth muscle actin (αSMA), a major hallmark of fibroblast activation, elicited by TGFβ in patient-derived primary liver fibroblasts. In conclusion, we herein report that the signaling crosstalk between TGFβ and LXRα pathways results in antagonistic effects either on parenchymal and fibroblast cell lines representative of the HCC disease, suggesting the potential future application of LXR agonists as clinical therapeutic options.


In cellular distributed antenna systems, cooperation among base stations or remote antenna units to exploit multiple-input multiple-output gains could mitigate interference as well as provide more spatial diversity, which could significantly improve overall spectrum efficiency. However, most existing cooperation schemes require perfect synchronization, which is difficult and even impossible in practical distributed multi-user systems. When synchronization is not perfect, cooperative communication performance severely degrades. Orthogonal channel assignment among collaborating stations with rateless network coding allows synchronization to be performed independently, and provides a coding scheme with close-to-capacity performance. In this article we discuss how to construct cooperative communication schemes based on rateless network coding in distributed MIMO systems. Specifically, we propose two cooperation strategies: single-source cooperation based on rateless coding and multisource cooperation based on rateless network coding. The proposed cooperative strategies are applicable to both uplink cooperation among users and downlink cooperation among BSs or RAUs in cellular DASs, providing a parameter-flexible, encoding-simple, and bandwidth-efficient cooperative solution.


We present a visual exploration system supporting protein analysis when using gel-free data acquisition methods. The data to be analyzed is obtained by coupling liquid chromatography (LC) with mass spectrometry (MS). LC-MS data have the properties of being nonequidistantly distributed in the time dimension (measured by LC) and being scattered in the mass-to-charge ratio dimension (measured by MS). We describe a hierarchical data representation and visualization method for large LC-MS data. Based on this visualization, we have developed a tool that supports various data analysis steps. Our visual tool provides a global understanding of the data, intuitive detection and classification of experimental errors, and extensions to LC-MS/MS, LC/LC-MS, and LC/LC-MS/MS data analysis. Due to the presence of randomly occurring rare isotopes within the same protein molecule, several intensity peaks may be detected that all refer to the same peptide. We have developed methods to unite such intensity peaks. This deisotoping step is visually documented by our system, such that misclassification can be detected intuitively. For differential protein expression analysis, we compute and visualize the differences in protein amounts between experiments. In order to compute the differential expression, the experimental data need to be registered. For registration, we perform a nonrigid warping step based on landmarks. The landmarks can be assigned automatically using protein identification methods. We evaluate our methods by comparing protein analysis with and without our interactive visualization-based exploration tool.


Manipulation of biological cells by acoustic radiation forces is often motivated by its improved biocompatibility relative to alternative available methods. On the other hand, it is well known that acoustic exposure is capable of causing damage to tissue or cells, primarily due to heating or cavitation effects. Therefore, it is important to define safety guidelines for the design and operation of the utilized devices. This tutorial discusses the biocompatibility of devices designed for acoustic manipulation of mammalian cells, and different methods for quantifying the cell viability in such devices.


The history of theGrIS (Greenland Ice Sheet), particularly in warm climates of the pre-Quaternary, is poorly known. IRD
(ice-rafted debris) records suggest that the ice sheet has existed, at least transiently, since theMiocene and potentially since as long ago as
the Eocene. As melting of the GrIS is a key uncertainty in future predictions of climate and sea-level, understanding its behaviour and role
within the climate system during pastwarm periods could provide important constraints. The Pliocene has been identified as a key period
for understanding warmer than modern climates. Detailed micropalaeontological analyses of the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (3.264 -
3.025 Ma) have produced a series of SST (sea-surface temperature) reconstructions (PRISM2-AVE, PRISM2-MAX, PRISM2-MIN and
PRISM3).Use of these different SSTswithin theHadley CentreGCM(GeneralCirculationModel) and BASISM (BritishAntarctic Survey
Ice Sheet Model), consistently show large reductions of Pliocene Greenland ice volumes compared to modern. The changes in climate
introduced by the use of different SST reconstructions do change the predicted ice volumes, mainly through precipitation
feedbacks. However, the models show a relatively low sensitivity of modelled Greenland ice volumes to different mid-Piacenzian SST
reconstructions, with the largest SST induced changes being 20% of Pliocene ice volume or less than a metre of sea-level rise.


Abstract The history of pirate, illegal television stations in Poland is presented here against the broader background of systemic transformations (both political and legal). According to the author of the article, it was an inevitable phenomenon, closely linked to the creation of the foundations of a democratic, lawful state with free-market economy. They were a factor which enforced acceleration of political change, legislative works and affected the change of the programming offer. Although pirate television stations were a short-lived phenomenon, they had huge impact on the later development of electronic media in Poland.


ABSTRACT In the last decade, budget support (BS) has become one of the most popular and controversial aid modalities. The tensions between the EU and member states regarding the use of this modality set in motion interesting policy influencing dynamics. We reconstruct these processes looking at two turning-points (the inception and the subsequent reform of the BS policy) and compare over time the positions, capacities and policies of three EU member states with varying positions towards BS: Germany, the UK and Belgium. We find no evidence that the EU has been able to download its BS policies. Instead we find some evidence of limited delegation to the EU level, and strong indications of member states uploading policy preferences to the EU level. We further argue that domestic politics in member states matters more than EU aid policy prescriptions, and that the EU's policy space is crucially influenced by its own and member states capacities and autonomy to build political alliances around policy preferences.


Closing U.S. borders to refugees will not likely enhance domestic security. The United Nations (U.N.) and some Western democracies suggest that a policy of integrating refugees may more effectively promote the security interests of both refugees and the countries in which they resettle. Refugee integration is a multifaceted process requiring accommodation on behalf of individual refugees and host societies. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) requires states admitting resettled refugees to facilitate their integration. Contrary to this mandate, the U.S. government has not strived to integrate the refugees it has agreed to resettle within its borders. Instead, federal policy emphasizes rapid and minimal economic self-sufficiency for refugees, consistent with other government policies that privatize social welfare for the poor. When compared to a theoretical model of refugee integration, this article concludes that U.S. resettlement efforts fall short of an integration process. To the contrary, the U.S. strategy of prioritizing immediate participation in the work force undermines the successful incorporation of refugees into American society. This failure stands to impair the security interests of both refugees and host communities.

Community efforts can help fill the gap between the inadequate U.S. resettlement program and the UNHCR's integration mandate. The author has presented workshops on U.S. law to educate local refugees about their legal rights and responsibilities. These workshops – described in this article – reflect one way in which host communities can foster integration, even in the absence of a national integration policy. Such a local effort can promote mutual understanding and safety.


In 1913, Edward Meyrick removed several genera from his compound family Yponomeutidae and united them in a new group, "Glyphipterygidae". After 1954, this name has been used generally, often in the emended spelling "Glyphipterigidae". The family name was not new but used by Meyrick in an entirely different sense. Former authors (Zeller, 1839; Stainton, 1854; Frey, 1856, etc.) indicated with the name "Glyphipterygidae" only one of the two main groups of Meyrick's enlarged concept, viz., the "Glyphipteryginae" or the "Glyphipterygidae sensu stricto".
In spite of its existence during quite a long time, Meyrick's family " Glyphiteryginae" proved to be an unsatisfactory combination. In later years, especially recently, its highly heterogeneous character became more and more apparent and its slow but steady demolition started: one after another genus was transferred to different, often remote, families. This is not surprising, because Meyrick used for the combination of his group only superficial characters, viz., wing venation, external anatomy and even superficial resemblance. Modern lepidopterists, armed with the data on internal anatomy, especially those of the genital characters, attacked the group vigorously.
During a revisionary study of the group for a volume of the series "Microlepidoptera Palaearctica", the present author was also confronted with the necessity of still further changes and of a revision of most of his earlier statements concerning this group.
The present paper represents the results of one of these major changes, viz., the removal of tortricoid elements from Meyrick's "Glyphipterygidae" and their transfer to the tribe Hilarographini Diakonoff, 1977, of the subfamily Chlidanotinae Diakonoff, 1960, of the family Tortricidae Latreille [1802-1803].
This is also the first record of the peculiar chiefly tropical subfamily Chlidanotinae in the Palaearctic and Nearctic regions.


This document describes an approach to reinforcement learning, called situational reinforcement learning (SRL). The main goal of the approach is to reduce the computational cost of learning behaviour in comparison to conventional reinforcement learning. One of the main goals of the research described in this document is to evaluate the implication of situational reinforcement learning on the computational cost of learning behaviour and on the optimality of the learned behaviour. The reduction in computational cost is mainly facilitated by decomposing the environment into smaller environments ? called situations ? and only learn behaviour ? called a policy ? for each situation. A global policy is then created by
combining all learned situational policies. Each situation is based upon states that have an equal heuristic preference value. The learned behaviour of a situation will most likely direct the agent to a reachable, more favourable situation. The global policy that is created from combining the situational policies will therefore focus on continually reaching more favourable situations. The research not only evaluates the use of situational reinforcement learning as a stand-alone approach to artificial intelligence (AI) learning, but also applies the approach as an addition to conventional reinforcement learning. The method that uses SRL as a stand-alone approach will be referenced to as the Combined method and the method that uses it as an addition to conventional methods will be referenced to as the Enhanced method. Evaluation of the Combined method shows that the method achieves significant computational cost reductions. Unfortunately, this reduction does not come without a price and the evaluation shows that careful consideration of the heuristic function is required in order to reduce the optimality loss. The evaluation of the Enhanced method shows that on
everage, when using the modified policy iteration algorithm to learn policies, the computational cost of learning a global policy is greater than when the conventional method is solely used. I believe that the significant reduction in computational cost resulting from the use of SRL is a good incentive to perform further research on this approach.


June 19, 2000 -Each summer, new cases of tick-borne illnesses like Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, and ehrlichiosis surge in the United States. Hot zones for tick trouble include the Northeastern and Southeastern states, as well as parts of the Midwest, Texas, and California. Almost anywhere ticks lurk, however, you could find yourself in trouble. Luckily, a few simple tips from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can help you and your family avoid tick trouble this summer and still enjoy the great outdoors.


Creep deformation and failure in high temperature structures is a serious problem for industry and is becoming even more so under the current increasing pressures of power, economics and sustainability. Laboratory creep tests can be used in the description of creep damage behaviour; however, it's usually expensive and time-consuming. Thus, the computer-based finite element (FE) technique is considered here for both time and economic efficiency. This project aims to develop an in-house FE software for creep damage analysis. A novel in-house FE software High Temperature Structural Integrity (HITSI) was developed through the use of Continuum Damage Mechanics (CDM) and finite element method (FEM) in conjunction with an advanced engineering computer programming language (Fortran 2003) based on an objected oriented programming (OOP) approach. This research provides four main contributions. First, a critical review of the current state of obtaining the computational capability for creep damage analysis. This critical review presents the advantages through the use of in-house software in analysing creep damage behaviour and the state-of-the-art research advancements and technologies need to be involved in developing in-house software. Second, the proposed OOP approach in design and development of in-house FE software for creep damage analysis. Third, the prototyping and implementation of a practical in-house FE software HITSI for analysing creep damage behaviour. The general flow diagram and development strategy of HITSI were proposed. Fourth, the benchmark test of HITSI via the numerical investigation of creep damage behaviour of a Cr-Mo-V steam pipe weldment case. The efficiency of the integration algorithms (Euler and Runge-Kutta) and normalized Kachanov-Rabotnov creep damage constitutive equation was investigated and commented. Generally, this project provides a novel in-house software prototype that allow the scientist to simulate the behaviour of creep damage in particular to analysis the evolution of creep damage in welds


This paper exploits dictated delays in local police hiring by a centralized national authority to break the simultaneity between police and crime. In Italy police officers can only be hired through lengthy national public contests which the Parliament, the President, and the Court of Auditors need to approve. Typically it takes three years before the requested police officers are recruited and become operational. We show that this endogeneity vanishes once, controlling for countrywide year effects, we use positive changes in the number of police officers. The availability of data on two police forces, specialized in fighting different crimes, provides convincing counterfactual evidence on the robustness of our results. Despite the inefficient hiring system, regular Italian police forces seem to be as efficient in fighting crimes as the US ones, with two notable exceptions: auto thefts and burglaries.


Abstract. This study has two objectives: (1) it characterizes contrails at very low temperatures and (2) it discusses convective cirrus in which the contrails occurred. (1) Long-lived contrails and cirrus from overshooting convection are investigated above the tropical tropopause at low temperatures down to −88 °C from measurements with the Russian high-altitude research aircraft M-55 Geophysica , as well as related observations during the SCOUT-O3 field experiment near Darwin, Australia, in 2005. A contrail was observed to persist below ice saturation at low temperatures and low turbulence in the stratosphere for nearly 1 h. The contrail occurred downwind of the decaying convective system Hector of 16 November 2005. The upper part of the contrail formed at 19 km altitude in the tropical lower stratosphere at ∼ 60 % relative humidity over ice at −82 °C. The ∼ 1 h lifetime is explained by engine water emissions, slightly enhanced humidity from Hector, low temperature, low turbulence, and possibly nitric acid hydrate formation. The long persistence suggests large contrail coverage in case of a potential future increase of air traffic in the lower stratosphere. (2) Cirrus observed above the strongly convective Hector cloud on 30 November 2005 was previously interpreted as cirrus from overshooting convection. Here we show that parts of the cirrus were caused by contrails or are mixtures of convective and contrail cirrus. The in situ data together with data from an upward-looking lidar on the German research aircraft Falcon , the CPOL radar near Darwin, and NOAA-AVHRR satellites provide a sufficiently complete picture to distinguish between contrail and convective cirrus parts. Plume positions are estimated based on measured or analyzed wind and parameterized wake vortex descent. Most of the non-volatile aerosol measured over Hector is traceable to aircraft emissions. Exhaust emission indices are derived from a self-match experiment of the Geophysica in the polar stratosphere in 2010. The number of ice particles in the contrails is less than 1 % of the number of non-volatile aerosol particles, possibly because of sublimation losses and undetected very small ice particles. The radar data show that the ice water content in convective overshoots is far higher than measured along the flight path. These findings add insight into overshooting convection and are of relevance with respect to hydration of the lower stratosphere.


What is business for? Day one of a business course will tell you: it is to maximise shareholder profit. This single idea pervades all our thinking and teaching about business around the world but it is fundamentally wrong, Colin Mayer argues. It has had disastrous and damaging consequences for our economies, environment, politics, and societies.
In this urgent call for reform, Prosperity challenges the fundamentals of business thinking. It sets out a comprehensive new agenda for establishing the corporation as a unique and powerful force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense - for customers and communities, today and in the future.

First Professor and former Dean of the Said Business School in Oxford, Mayer is a leading figure in the global discussion about the purpose and role of the corporation. In Prosperity, he presents a radical and carefully considered prescription for corporations, their ownership, governance, finance, and regulation. Drawing together insights from business, law, economics, science, philosophy, and history, he shows how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few.

Prosperity tells us not only how to create and run successful businesses but also how policy can get us there and fix our broken system.


This working paper empirically and theoretically analyzes the exchange rate's role in Mexico's development for the period 2004–19. We test the hypothesis of the re(emergence) of the balance sheet effect due to an increase in external debt in the nonfinancial corporate sector; higher foreign debt would affect private investment after episodes of real currency depreciation, in the spirit of the literature put forward by Gertler, Gilchrist, and Natalucci (2007) and Céspedes, Chang, and Velasco (2004). We build a stock-flow consistent (SFC) model, following the OPENFLEX model proposed in Godley and Lavoie (2006), to explore the balance sheet implications from a theoretical perspective. We simulate the 2014 fall in the Mexican peso generated by the drop in oil prices to replicate stylized facts for Mexico for the period under investigation. The scenario analysis points to a hysteresis effect of the real exchange rate (RER) depreciation on investment flows. That is, firms' investment ratio does not completely recover from negative shocks in the currency.


The behavior of the least-secure user can influence security and privacy outcomes for everyone else. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that influence the security and privacy of a broad variety of people. Prior work has suggested that users with differing socioeconomic status (SES) may behave differently; however, no research has examined how SES, advice sources, and resources relate to the security and privacy incidents users report. To address this question, we analyze a 3,000 respondent, census-representative telephone survey. We find that, contrary to prior assumptions, people with lower educational attainment report equal or fewer incidents as more educated people, and that users' experiences are significantly correlated with their advice sources, regardless of SES or resources.


ABSTRACT: This article considers, from the standpoint of an economic approach to law, the regimens for the allocation of costs in international arbitration. The author analyses the manner in which such regimens encourage parties to negotiate or mediate on realistic bases, before or during the arbitration proceedings. The American and the English methods of cost distribution are studied from an economic perspective of law and the use of game theory, in order to observe the extent to which they succeed in effectively give rise to incentives for settlement. Finally, we set out some considerations as to the establishment, by arbitral institutions or by the parties themselves, of more efficient and balanced rules as to the distribution of costs, including provision for the impact on costs of an offer to settle.


Perovskites AMO3−δ are ideal for thermochemical air separation due to their oxygen nonstoichiometry δ, which can be varied by changing the temperature and oxygen partial pressure. We show in this work how materials can be selected for chemical looping air separation from thermodynamic considerations and present thermogravimetric experiments carried out on (Ca,Sr) ferrites and manganites, and doped variants, all synthesized via a citric acid auto-combustion method. SrFe0.95Cu0.05O3−δ and Ca0.8Sr0.2MnO3−δ show the best gravimetric oxygen storage capacity of all tested materials at T < 1200 °C. The redox reactions are completed in <1 min in air and are highly reversible. A significant re-oxidation reaction of reduced samples was observed at temperatures as low as 250 °C at an oxygen partial pressure of 0.16 bar. We studied phase formation via XRD and lattice expansion during reduction via in situ XRD experiments. The objective is to validate the potential and boundary conditions of such materials to pave the way for competitive air separation based on thermochemical cycling.


This article examines the past, present and future of promissory estoppel. After surveying the development of the doctrine over the last century, Professor Knapp describes and responds to some contemporary commentary on the subject. He argues that while most of the recent authors have been generally friendly to promissory estoppel, the thrust of recent criticism has been to reduce the role that the theory can or should play in contract law. The article then examines why courts sometimes apply promissory estoppel where reliance seems to be absent, and other times deny reliance-based recovery even though reliance is demonstrably present. Finally, Professor Knapp turns his attention to the question of why we need promissory estoppel. Examining a series of hypothetical cases involving various contract doctrines, he concludes that promissory estoppel and the general notion of reliance protection have played and should continue to play a major role in helping courts to reach just and equitable results in contract disputes.


Smart information systems (Big Data and artificial intelligence) are used by governments to improve mobility, reduce over-crowdedness in hotspots, and provide more effective management of crowds. I looked at how Amsterdam municipality is using smart information systems (SIS) in their DrukteRadar Project to identify, report, and tackle issues surrounding crowdedness levels in the city.
SIS are becoming popular amongst governmental officials to automate activities more effectively. SIS provide the opportunity to improve mobility, increase economic growth, reduce energy outputs, improve management decisions, respond to disasters quicker, and improve citizens' quality of life. They offer governments the possibility of improving services, while reducing costs. The use and implementation of SIS is becoming widespread and governments are observing the benefits posed by SIS, particularly in relation to urban management.
80% of Europe's population will live in cities by 2020 and governments face a huge strain on resources and infrastructure. The use of SIS is being pioneered to help governments meet these needs and to provide a sustainable future for urban citizens. Ethical issues in this context can include that data may not be accurate, faithful or representative of a city and its citizens, which may cause bias, prejudice and harm to a population, by leading to unfair service provision. ICT companies' involvement in governmental SIS projects may also lead to technological lock-in and dependency on corporations. Instantaneous and ubiquitous retrieval and analysis of data may infringe upon citizens' privacy and may lead vulnerabilities of malicious hacking, stolen data and a city's security.
To uncover if these issues correlate with the experience of those working in the field, I interviewed the Project Owner of Amsterdam's DrukteRadar project (translated as crowdedness project). This project implements SIS to anticipate and prevent overcrowding in Amsterdam, and was created in response to growing pressures on the city's amenities. The DrukteRadar Project collates a wide array of datasets to predict crowd levels and potential problem hotspots, visualised through a digital dashboard. The project aims to improve municipality management, provide help to tourists planning their trips, and assisting citizens' navigation through the city.
Through my discussions with the Project Owner of the DrukteRadar, I uncovered two additional issues not found in the literature: access to SIS and data ownership. The DrukteRadar team is concerned about access to SIS to promote fairness, equality, and provision of services amongst citizens. It aims to make its dashboard user-friendly and available to as many people as possible to promote inclusion. Data ownership is a concern for the project – who owns the data and what can be done with it. The DrukteRadar Project ensures they have data sovereignty, so that they do not become technologically locked-in to relationships with private organisations.
The Project Owner was aware that inaccurate of data may lead to discriminatory recommendations and harmful consequences. The DrukteRadar Project tries to minimise their algorithmic inaccuracy through extensive monitoring; secure technical infrastructure; and stakeholder review sessions. Another interesting finding was identifying how projects ensure privacy protection of its citizens. The DrukteRadar ensures that data is not traceable to individuals and the use of datasets follow privacy-by-design principles. The project also has strong security protocols, cyber-security measures, anonymization techniques, and repeated vulnerability tests. Overall, my report was able to evaluate how ethical issues found within the SIS literature correlate to those identified, and tackled, in practice. as well as highlighting the two additional concerns not explicitly mentioned in the literature.


It's Queen Titania's and King Oberon's 1000th jubilee, and the seven Party Fairies are in charge of making the celebratory party extra-special! However, naughty Jack Frost has decided to sabotage the celebrations by hosting his own party, and in order to make his bigger and better than the kings and queen's he has sent his naughty goblins to steal each of the seven Party Fairies' magical party bags...if he succeeds the Fairyland celebrations will be ruined! Can Kirsty and Rachel help Grace the Glitter Fairy to rescue her party bag so that the king and queen's party can be full of magical sparkles and glitter?


The RoboCup Rescue competitions have been initiated in 2000. To celebrate 16 years of research and development in this socially relevant initiative this article gives an overview of the experience gained during these competitions. This article provides an overview the state-of-the-art and the lessons learned from the RoboCup Rescue competitions.


Using novel data on patents, trade of equipment goods, and foreign direct investments and insights from the economic literature, the paper seeks to lay out the state of knowledge on the role of innovation and the diffusion of technologies in the greening of global value chains as well as some of the main policy issues. A special emphasis is put on developing countries -- distinguishing emerging economies and least-developed countries -- and on climate-mitigation technologies. Emerging economies are already reasonably well integrated in the global economy. As a consequence, technologies flow in through the imports of capital goods and local investments by multinational enterprises owning technologies. Pushing further technology transfer requires strengthening intellectual property rights, lowering barriers to trade and investments and improving technological absorptive capacities. In contrast, their role in innovation is limited. Standard tools of innovation policy - public research and development, public support to private research and development, better access to finance - should develop. But studies also suggest that governments should introduce more stringent environmental policies with proper enforcement at home to go beyond the adoption of foreign technologies. The situation of least-developed countries is very different: they do not import green technologies and low barriers to trade and foreign direct investment or strict intellectual property rights are unlikely to trigger technology transfer. In these countries, the focus should be on building technological capacities.


A microwave photonic in-phase and quadrature detector is conceived and practically demonstrated. The detector has the ability to become electronically reconfigured to operate at any frequency over a wide range. This makes it an excellent candidate for frequency agile radars and other electronic warfare systems based on frequency hopping. The detector exhibits a very low amplitude and phase imbalance, which removes the need for any imbalance compensation technique. The system is designed based on the transversal filtering concept and reconfigurability is achieved via wavelength control in a dispersive fiber. The system operation was demonstrated over a frequency range of 3.5-35 GHz, with a maximum of -32 dB amplitude imbalance.


This thesis is comprised of three separate manuscripts, detailing recent work into the detection of Tsunamis in coastal waters using High Frequency (HF) coastal radar systems. The overarching focus of the three manuscripts is the development and performance analysis of a tsunami detection technique from using synthetic radar data and synthetic, simulated tsunamis, to using recorded raw radar data combined with synthetic tsunamis, and the comparison of this work against another published method. The proposed detection algorithm tests for fluctuations in correlations of HF measurements of the sea surface, and has been named the "Time Correlation Algorithm" or TCA. The first two manuscripts are published journal papers, with the third currently being edited for submittal. Tsunami detection by High Frequency Radar beyond the continental shelf II: Extension of time correlation algorithm and validation on realistic case studies The first manuscript covers work based on a realistic case study, a simulated radar signal and two simulated tsunamis are used in order to validate the operation of the TCA modeled on an existing radar system in Tofino Canada and realistic tsunami threats to the area. The TCA is defined as correlations between radar cells connected along an intersecting wave ray, shifted in time by the long wave propagation time along the ray, c equal to √ gh. The correlation is taken over a long time window, on the order of 10-15 minutes, in order to capture a meaningful portion of the tsunami wave, and average out the correlation values of smaller period waves. The correlation in the radar signal between cells is expected to be a near uniform value of one when no tsunami is present, this is due to the general lock of other naturally occurring oceanic waves or patterns with the same period of tsunamis. The first synthetic tsunami was modeled on a Mw 9.1 far-field source based in the Semidi Subduction Zone (SSZ). It was demonstrated that the TCA is able to detect extremely small currents, less than 10 cm/s, in the presence of strong, random background currents, up to 35 cm/s. The second was a near field submarine mass failure (SMF) tsunami located just off of the coast of the modeled radar station. Tsunami detection by High Frequency Radar in British Columbia: performance assessment of the Time-Correlation Algorithm for synthetic and real events Manuscript two continues the development of the TCA, by replacing the simulated radar signal with recorded radar data from the WERA station in Tofino CA which the simulated signal was based on, and expanding to a third tsunami source. The new tsunami source is a potential meteo-tsunami which occurred on October 14, 2016, and provides an opportunity or detection of a real tsunami event (albeit in an offline a posteriori analysis). When applied to the raw data it was found that the radar signal itself exhibited a high level of self correlation, thought to be an artifact from the signal processing software; namely range-gating and beam forming. A new slightly modified TCA was therefore developed which contrasts the average correllation along a portion of a wave ray against the correlation of the same portion, taken one hour prior. This modified version of the TCA demonstrated detection of the simulated SSZ tsunami and SMF tsunami using the recorded radar signal from several different days, representative of using varying oceanic and meteorological conditions to test the robustness of the algorithm. An initial detection threshold for the method was also determined, and using a few days of data the method for determining a more robust confidence in detection was demonstrated. The major conclusions are the function of the TCA on real data, and with a variety of different, realistic threats to the area. Tsunami Detection by High Frequency Radar: Comparison of Time Correlation Algorithm and Q-Factor Algorithm The final manuscript compares the TCA with another published detection method, the "Q-Factor" algorithm. The Q-Factor uses the measurements recorded by coastal radar stations in the from of traditionally radially inverted currents. These currents are derived from the Doppler spectra of the backscattered radar signal. By using an empirically derived pattern recognition algorithm, the Q-Factor tests for fluctuations in surface currents across bathymetry bands indicative of a tsunami. In this manuscript the raw radar data and simulated tsunami sources used to test the TCA are again used to provide a direct comparison of the two. Additionally several aspects from the TCA are borrowed to generate a modified Q-Factor and test whether a hybridization of the two methods results in any performance improvements. Its concluded that the TCA operates more reliably over a variety of meteorological, oceanic, and operating conditions, although a more thorough analysis (especially of signal quality) must be completed before true conclusions can be drawn. The Q-Factor is also unable to detect the SMF, demonstrating an important limitation of the system, something that must be taken into account with local threats when considering an algorithm to be used in a specific area.


The Research Library at Los Alamos National Laboratory spearheads open access, data management and sharing, and researcher impact initiatives across the Lab. From dialog in response to the Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) February 2013 Memo, "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research" to committee formation to implementation plans, the Research Library engages researchers and seeks solutions. Communicating science in terms of scholarship, data and impact involves the creation of Lab policy, author tools and new services. Clear workflow and broad education initiatives are critical to successful implementation, as well as strategic partnerships with authors, leadership and external collaborators. National mandates and policies influence Laboratory practice. Los Alamos policies must reflect the funding requirements of the United States Department of Energy and a range of other funders. Research Library staff performed an external environmental scan of funder requirements and institutional open access policies, and then adapted text for Lab needs. Input from the Legal and Policy offices together with author input influenced final wording. The policy, which also addresses data management and sharing, is now part of a broader procedure document. New tools and services were created to facilitate policy and workflow. A publicly available institutional repository was launched that both addressed federal mandates and highlighted Los Alamos' institutional vitality. Impact tools and services such as ORCiD and Kudos have been adopted, and Research Library staff work with authors to understand impact and select the most relevant discipline-specific options. Data initiatives flow across the Lab, with the work of the Data Working Group and a visit from Purdue University librarians influencing current and future directions. An overarching goal of Research Library staff is to make it easier for researchers to do the right thing. This goal is reflected in our approach to education, outreach and workflow. This paper discusses strategies, initiatives and the road ahead for communicating science at Los Alamos National Laboratory.


On December 31, 1999, while the rest of the world will be celebrating the arrival of the new millennium, Panama's attention will be focused on noon and the return of the Panama Canal to its control. But as American troops gradually evacuate the area in preparation for the final handover, both the United States and Panama seem to be reconsidering the issue. Despite expressed misgivings about the withdrawal, the handover that will mark the beginning of a new era for Panama is probably for the best. According to the original treaties, US sovereignty over the Canal area was to be "in perpetuity." Indeed, the United States controlled the Canal since its completion in 1914 as a nonprofit, international utility until the 1960s, when anti-American riots in Panama forced Washington to start negotiating its withdrawal. In 1977, treaties between Panama General Omar Torrijos and United States President Jimmy Carter established a gradual transfer of sovereignty from the United States to Panama over the former Canal Zone and the operation of the Canal itself. This included the handover of all ten US military bases along the canal and the withdrawal of the 7,000 troops which were stationed there at the time. In 1979, the Canal Zone was considered Panamanian territory again; that same year, the administration of the Canal was assumed by a commission whose board consisted of four Panamanians and five Americans. Today, the administrator as well as the majority of the Board, the managers, and the commission's workforce are Panamanian. The US military presence is already decreasing. By the end of 1997, only 4,000 American soldiers remained there. Panamanian ex-President Nicolas Ardito Barletta, head of the Inter-Oceanic Regional Authority (ARI), is responsible for the assimilation of the former Canal Zone into Panama. With the gradual withdrawal of US forces, Panama has taken control of the area of Balboa, adjacent to Panama City. This control has several advantages, such as a low density of construction, a beautiful setting, and space for middle-class housing. Also, Panama has registered many ships under its flag and has already established a duty-free zone at Colon, which is the Atlantic port. Nevertheless, it seems that the handover may not be irreversible, as members of both parties have expressed their will for the Americans to prolong their stay. Recent polls indicate that about 70 percent of Panamanians, including Panama's current president, Ernesto Perez Balladares, would favor the extended deployment of US forces. In the United States, voices as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have expressed an interest in negotiating a further stay of the troops, as have US Secretary of Defense William Cohen and GeneralWesley Clark, Commander of the US Southern Command. Reconsideration is grounded in the continuing importance of the Canal. As far as commerce is concerned, four percent of all world trade and 14 percent of US trade passes through it, while the waterway yields US$500 million in revenues per year. The canal may not be as strategically important as it once had been, but it remains the best route for moving warships between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Both sides have valid reasons to want the troops to stay, but Panama's change of viewpoint since the 1960s can be attributed to economic reasons. The local spending by those who are associated with the US military troops in Panama is estimated to be around five percent of the country's GDP, which would be lost with the final withdrawal. In addition, approximately 16,000 jobs would be lost. Overall, the US contribution to the economy of Panama dropped from US$161 billion in 1995, to an estimated US$58 billion in 1998, and will drop to nothing in 2000. In addition, maintaining the military bases along the Canal is very costly, and it is not certain that Panama can carry this economic burden in the future. The United States, in turn, has a variety of vested interests in the Canal Zone, both economic and political. …


This study argues that the Australian Bush - the native landscape - is still considered as an opponent to European-Australian characters in literature, despite its central place in identifying Australia. Indeed, that opposition becomes the key aspect of the portrayal of an Australian identity. In particular, it examines how European-Australians narratives, not yet comfortable with the challenges of the Australian Bush, therefore present this tense relationship as character-forming and identity-defining.


Introducing trust and reputation into multi-agent systems can significantly improve the quality and efficiency of the systems. The computational trust and reputation also creates an environment of survival of the fittest to help agents recognize and eliminate malevolent agents in the virtual society. The thesis redefines the computational trust and analyzes its features from different aspects. A systematic model called Neural Trust Model for Multi-agent Systems is proposed to support trust learning, trust estimating, reputation generation, and reputation propagation. In this model, the thesis innovates the traditional Self Organizing Map (SOM) and creates a SOM based Trust Learning (STL) algorithm and SOM based Trust Estimation (STE algorithm. The STL algorithm solves the problem of learning trust from agents' past interactions and the STE solve the problem of estimating the
trustworthiness with the help of the previous patterns. The thesis also proposes a multi-agent reputation mechanism for generating and propagating the reputations. The mechanism exploits the patterns learned from STL algorithm and generates the reputation of the specific agent. Three propagation methods are also designed as part of the mechanism to guide path selection of the reputation. For evaluation, the thesis designs and implements a test bed to evaluate the model in a simulated electronic commerce scenario. The proposed model is compared with a traditional arithmetic based trust model and it is also compared to itself in situations where there is no reputation mechanism. The results state that the model can significantly improve the quality and efficacy of the test bed based scenario. Some design considerations and rationale behind the algorithms are also discussed based on the results.


Imidazole molecules were frequently incorporated into porous materials to improve their proton conductivity. To investigate how different arrangements of imidazoles in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) affect the overall proton conduction, we designed and prepared a MOF-based model system. It includes an Fe-MOF as the blank, an imidazole@Fe-MOF (Im@Fe-MOF) with physically adsorbed imidazole, and an imidazole-Fe-MOF (Im-Fe-MOF), which contains chemically coordinated imidazole molecules. The parent Fe-MOF, synthesized from the exchange of carboxylates in the preformed [Fe3(μ3-O)](carboxylate)6 clusters and multitopic carboxylate ligands, serves as a control. The Im@Fe-MOF was prepared by encapsulating free imidazole molecules into the pores of the Fe-MOF, whereas the Im-Fe-MOF was obtained in situ, in which imidazole ligands coordinate to the metal nodes of the framework. Proton-conductivity analyses revealed that the proton conductivity of Im-Fe-MOF was approximately two orders of magnitude greater than those of Fe-MOF and Im@Fe-MOF at room temperature. The high proton conductivity of 1.21 × 10-2 S cm-1 at 60 °C for Im-Fe-MOF ranks among the highest performing MOFs ever reported. The results of the density functional theory calculations suggest that coordinated imidazole molecules in Im-Fe-MOF provide a greater concentration of protons for proton transportation than do coordinated water molecules in Fe-MOF alone. Besides, Im-Fe-MOF exhibits steadier performance than Im@Fe-MOF does after being washed with water. Our investigation using the above ideal crystalline model system demonstrates that compared to disorderly arranged imidazole molecules in pores, the immobilized imidazole molecules by coordination bonds in the framework are more prone to form proton-conduction pathways and thus perform better and steadier in water-mediated proton conduction.


BACKGROUND
Both the opioid antagonist, naltrexone, and GABAA/benzodiazepine-site negative modulator, Ro 15-4513, decrease ethanol self-administration in rodents and nonhuman primates. However, the selectivity of these drugs for decreasing ethanol self-administration relative to reducing responding maintained by other reinforcers in primates is not clear. The present study used a multiple schedule self-administration procedure in cynomolgus monkeys to examine the selectivity of naltrexone and Ro 15-4513 for reducing ethanol self-administration relative to an orange flavored sugar-free sweetened solution (Sugar-free Tang).

METHODS
Six adult cynomolgus monkeys were trained to self-administer 4% (w/v) ethanol and 4% or 6% (w/v) Tang under a multiple schedule of liquid access. The effect of acute administration of naltrexone (0.1, 0.3, 1, 3 mg/kg) was examined. The effect of 15 days of chronic, 1 mg/kg naltrexone on ethanol and Tang self-administration was then examined in four monkeys. Acute administration of Ro 15-4513 (0.01, 0.03, 0.1, 0.3 mg/kg) as well as 15 days of chronic administration of 0.1 mg/kg Ro 15-4513 was also examined in four monkeys.

RESULTS
Ethanol and Tang were self-administered at similar volumes and patterns under baseline conditions. Acute naltrexone administration significantly decreased total session ethanol and Tang intake as well as the number and volume of ethanol and Tang drinks. Chronic naltrexone also significantly decreased ethanol and Tang intake. Ethanol, but not Tang, drink volume was significantly decreased by chronic 1 mg/kg naltrexone pretreatment. The number of ethanol and Tang drinks and drink duration were not significantly decreased by chronic naltrexone. Acute Ro 15-4513 pretreatment significantly decreased ethanol and Tang intake, mean drinks and median drink duration. Chronic 0.1 mg/kg Ro 15-4513 pretreatment significantly decreased total ethanol intake only during the first week of pretreatment, but it significantly decreased Tang intake for all 3 pretreatment weeks.

CONCLUSIONS
Similar to rodent studies, acute and chronic naltrexone and Ro 15-4513 reduced ethanol and Tang intake in cynomolgus monkeys. However, unlike rodent studies, neither drug showed selectivity for reducing ethanol intake compared with a comparison reinforcer. These differences highlight the need for testing putative ethanol abuse treatment drugs under diverse conditions and multiple species before undertaking human clinical trials.


The two biotechnologically important Ascomycetes, Pichia membranifaciens and Debaryomyces hansenii, were tested (in active and inactive form), in the present study for efficient bioreduction of trivalent aurum to gold nanoparticles. Strong surface plasmon resonance was observed, between 530 and 540 nm, from the gold nanoparticles recovered from the test Ascomycetes. The characterization of the gold nanoparticles thus formed was performed by HR-TEM, FE-SEM, FTIR spectroscopy. Comparing the active and inactive form of the two Ascomycetes, the inactive form showed better productivity and recovery of gold nanoparticles. It was also found that P. membranifaciens is more productive in terms of time, quality and quantity, than D. hansenii. The nanoparticles were relatively monomorphic in P. membranifaciens than in D. hansenii. The present study also presents a promising outlook towards the effective recycling of the bioactive wastes.


Our society is overwhelmed with an ever growing amount of information. Effective management of this information requires novel ways to filter and select the most relevant pieces of information. Some of this information can be associated with the source or sources expressing it. Sources and their relation to what they express affect information and whether we perceive it as relevant, biased or truthful. In news texts in particular, it is common practice to report third-party statements and opinions. Recognizing relations of attribution is therefore a necessary step toward detecting statements and opinions of specific sources and selecting and evaluating information on the basis of its source. The automatic identification of Attribution Relations has applications in numerous research areas. Quotation and opinion extraction, discourse and factuality have all partly addressed the annotation and identification of Attribution Relations. However, disjoint efforts have provided a partial and partly inaccurate picture of attribution. Moreover, these research efforts have generated small or incomplete resources, thus limiting the applicability of machine learning approaches. Existing approaches to extract Attribution Relations have focused on rule-based models, which are limited both in coverage and precision. This thesis presents a computational approach to attribution that recasts attribution extraction as the identification of the attributed text, its source and the lexical cue linking them in a relation. Drawing on preliminary data-driven investigation, I present a comprehensive lexicalised approach to attribution and further refine and test a previously defined annotation scheme. The scheme has been used to create a corpus annotated with Attribution Relations, with the goal of contributing a large and complete resource than can lay the foundations for future attribution studies. Based on this resource, I developed a system for the automatic extraction of attribution relations that surpasses traditional syntactic pattern-based approaches. The system is a pipeline of classification and sequence labelling models that identify and link each of the components of an attribution relation. The results show concrete opportunities for attribution-based applications.


This book reports the results of an extensive study of slips of the tongue produced by foreign language (L2) learners at different levels of proficiency. Thus, it provides new data which can be used to test current monolingual models of speech production and to further the development of bilingual speech production models. Moreover, it offers a new approach to the study of second language acquisition. The book contains a detailed survey of the findings of L1 slip research, including studies of slips produced by child L1 learners. It systematically compares these findings to those of the current L2 study and relates them to recent monolingual and bilingual models of speech production and to several cognitive models of second language acquisition. Special features of the book are its emphasis on methodological problems and the inclusion of the complete L2 corpus of 2000 slips of the tongue. It is expected that the book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the areas of speech production and second language acquisition, and particularly to those who would like to test their own hypotheses using the L2 data.Summary of the contents of the book. The book provides an overview of the key findings in L1 slip research. It relates L1 findings to monolingual speech production models. It gives a detailed survey of studies of slips produced by children. It presents an up-to-date review of bilingual speech production models. It discusses recent cognitive models of second language acquisition. It gives a detailed description of an extensive research project on slips of the tongue produced by Dutch learners of English. The L2 slip corpus is tape-recorded. It discusses methodological problems in L1 slip research. It systematically compares the L1 findings to those of the L2 slip project. It relates the findings to monolingual and bilingual models of speech production and to cognitive models of second language acquisition. It makes the data available in the appendix.


Studies indicate that more students are opposing the use of invasive procedures on animals. When students are forced to use animals in ways that they view as harmful, painful, stressful or lethal to the animals, several reactions may occur. Such students may suffer psychological trauma as the result of seeing themselves or others engaged in behaviour that they find ethically objectionable. Their cognitive abilities may become impaired, resulting in less learning. They may withdraw and lose interest in science when not given the option to conscientiously object. Students — even those who believe they are willing participants — can become desensitised and may develop a utilitarian view of animals, thereby diminishing their capacity for compassion and ethical decision-making. Qualified, compassionate people — especially women — often decide to end their career in science rather than compromise their values. This loss contributes to the gender gap in science and to individuals feeling disappointed and derailed in their career aspirations. The psychological consequences to individuals combined with social, environmental, educational and scientific consequences present a compelling argument for the 100% replacement of the harmful use of animals in education.


The quality of newly originated subprime mortgages had been visibly deteriorating for some time before the window for such loans was shut in 2007. Nevertheless, a bankruptcy court's directed ex post examination of New Century Financial, one of the largest originators of subprime mortgages, discovered no change, over time, in how that firm went about its business. This paper employs the court examiner's findings in a critical review of the procedures used by various agents involved in the origination and securitisation of subprime mortgages. A contribution of this paper is its elaboration of the choices and incentives faced by the various types of institutions involved in those linked processes of origination and securitisation. It highlights the limited roles played by the originators of subprime loans in screening borrowers and in bearing losses on defective loans that had been sold to securitisers of pooled loan packages (ie, mortgage-backed securities). It also illustrates the willingness of the management of those institutions that became key players in that market to put their reputations with fixed-income investor clients in jeopardy. What is perplexing is that such risk exposures were accepted by investing firms that had the wherewithal and knowledge to appreciate the overall paucity of due diligence in the loan origination processes. This observation, in turn, points to the conclusion that the subprime episode is a case in which reputational capital, a presumptively effective motivator of market discipline, was not an effective incentive device.


The first use of the term political correctness can be traced to the period between 1895-1921 when Lenin was trying to achieve two goals: first, to secure ascendancy over his revolutionary peers; and second, after 1917, to consolidate the party's control over the new Soviet state. This article explores the Leninist origins of political correctness and its evolution since 1917. The author analyses the exceptional importance of "correctness" in the Maoist variant and, subsequently, through Maoism, its influence on the New Left and the contemporary manifestation of political correctness which emerged as a public issue in the West at the end of the 1980s. Key Words: Althusser, BBC, Berger, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), class enemy, Confucius, crimestop, cultural revolution, democratic centralism, Derrida, feminism, Foucault, Galbraith, Gramsci, Great Leap Forward, Grossman, Horst Wessel, ideologically correct, istina, Kautsky, Khrushchev, laogai, Lei-Feng movement, Lenin, Liu Shao-Chi, Mao, Marcuse, Milosz, multiculturalism, New Left, Orwell, pariinost', Pasternak, Pavlik Morozov, perekovka, Platonov, Plekhanov, political correctness, pravda, pravit"host', Rectification, Red Guards, revisionism, shinian haojie, si xiang gai zao, Sino-Soviet schism, socialist realism, Solzhenitsyn, soznanie, struggle session, thought reform, fifa, Tolstaya, unity-criticism-unity, Weaver, Wu, yii-lu Introduction The suddenness with which political correctness entered the public domain in the period between 1989-1991, and the ensuing arguments about the legitimacy of Western culture which lasted until well into the mid 1990s, implies that the concept of political correctness is a very recent phenomenon, the origins of which are to be found in certain intellectual trends of the late twentieth-century. Richard Burt, for example, in an essay published in Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, argues that the term political correctness was first introduced by the New Left in the 1960s (Jones, 2001, 1901). Certainly, thinkers of the New Left developed the concept, but long before Marcuse and Derrida, and a host of other New Left and postmodernist writers were required reading on the campus, we find political correctness established as an ideological criterion of Marxism-Leninism. Official Soviet sources clearly show that the term was in use as early as 1921 (Resheniya, 1967, 205). If one takes into account the role of Lenin as the architect of the Soviet Union, and his massive influence in shaping Soviet ideology, then a reasonable assumption is that it is to Lenin to whom we must turn in order to find the conceptual origins of political correctness and the term itself. Soviet sources support this assumption. A review of a diverse and large body of Soviet and Western literature, written and published throughout the twentieth century, which was conducted in preparation for this article, repeatedly identifies the theme of correctness - ideological, political or theoretical - as a concern of exceptional importance for Marxist-Leninism and Maoism. The range of sources is impressive: Lenin's own writings before and after the start of the twentieth century; some early resolutions of Communist Party congresses; the insights of writers and philosophers, for example, Joseph Berger, George Orwell, Czeslaw Milosz, Stefan Amsterdamski, Leszek Kolakowski, Balint Vazsonyi2, Arthur Koestler and Alain Besangon; the writings of Mao, and other official Chinese sources; victims of Soviet psychiatric abuse; Chinese and Soviet dissidents; scholarly studies, both Soviet and Western, of Soviet propaganda, agitation and media 3; and the works of some of Russia's greatest writers, most notably, Andrey Platonov, Boris Pasternak, Vasiliy Grossman and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Soviet and Chinese manifestations of political correctness are worlds of paranoid suspicion, endless show trials, false confessions and struggle sessions. They are worlds where the workings of the rational mind are viewed with suspicion, even hatred. …


While there has been some research on the parliamentary enclosure of upland waste in England and Wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this topic still receives little attention in some recent accounts of parliamentary enclosure. Many aspects of the processes involved, and their impact on the landscape, are also poorly understood. Much research has proceeded either at a very general level or on the basis of detailed individual case studies. This paper adopts an intermediate scale, focusing on the old county of Westmorland to examine the geographical and chronological patterns of enclosure before looking more closely at some of the problems involved in creating a new landscape.


In a capitalist system, an annual report that includes financial statement is assumed to provide sound information concerning a given company. The annual report offers a background to a company, its financial position, operational results, and its performance. According to radical economics, a financial statement serves the interests of capitalists (Belkaoui, 1984). Annual reports are also value free and are not concerned with issues such as justice or ethics. Indeed, current trends in accounting have raised some questions concerning the paradigm of traditional accounting theory and especially its bias its bias concerning capitalist interests. The emergence of Employee Reporting, Value Added Accounting, Socio‐Economic Accounting, and Environmental Accounting, to name just a few, is evidences of the shortcomings of the capitalistic accounting system in establishing both just and fair principles among company stakeholders. This has therefore led to a demand for a new approach towards accounting disclosure including among others things: a clear account of how a company treats its employees, society, the environment, and the beliefs of employee's. Even tough the standard formulated by AAOIFI (1998) based on capitalistic accounting, are still in a theoretical stage of development they can be used as a starting point that may help lead to an improved set of disclosure criteria that can be used by an Islamic bank or organization. This paper will discuss the empirical evidence derived from one such Islamic organization. Bank Muamalat Indonesia, has compiled information using capitalistic accounting standards so as to clarify its financial position and results of operations to stakeholders. It is hypothesized though, that the current disclosure system employed gives no indication of justness or fairness and so is incompatible with Islamic value. The paper argues Muslim researcher sold aim to move from utilizing capitalistic practice primarily concerned with the disclosure of financial indicators and towards a system that also consider justice, fairness, and ethical practices.


Previous researchers have empirically investigated the existence or otherwise of credit rationing of small businesses in both developed and developing economies. Particularly lacking are the study on the evidence of credit rationing on the individual entrepreneurs as founders and/or owner-managers of these small businesses. To fill this gap, this study examines two sets of data from the entrepreneurs of small businesses and the credit managers of commercial banks in Ghana. This study aimed at investigating the extent to which the entrepreneurs of small businesses were able to access bank credit they required for working capital and long-term investment projects. The performance and success of the entrepreneur is largely dependent on the entrepreneur's level of human and social capital. Entrepreneurs with a higher level of education, prior work experience and social networking are considered to possess a higher competitive advantage over inexperience entrepreneurs in terms of information search, opportunity identification, exploitation and pursuance of resources including finance. This thesis contributes significantly to the development of this accession. The overall results lend support to the argument that the habitual entrepreneur is more likely to have access to external finance at the start of a new venture compared to the novice entrepreneur. Secondly, the habitual (experienced) entrepreneurs for reasons of higher levels of human and social capital are less likely to be credit rationed compared to the novice (inexperienced) entrepreneurs. Thirdly, experienced entrepreneurs located further away from their banks are less likely to be credit rationed compared to novice entrepreneur. This study has several implications for commercial bank managers (practitioners) and policy makers in Ghana in particular and in general for all developing countries.


New planning principles are required to meet the changing needs of the users of the library of the future. The digital revolution has changed the appearance of today's libraries entirely. The majority of today's information resources are of a non-physical nature and accessing information is more varied and complex. The traditional role as asset keeper is one of many tasks today. The recently completed examples of Dresden and Gottingen State- and University Library, the Seattle Public Library and the Idea Stores in London, all of them highly popular and frequented, show current trends in library design. What do they offer their visitors? access to information guidance (information skills) possibility for communication working environment inspiring atmosphere Their design is based on the following main principles: Access to the library and its medias should be obvious and easy for everybody. There should be multifarious space for formal and informal communication between customers and staff. The interior should offer an attractive and comfortable environment for both customers and staff. The library building should adequately represent its institutional philosophy and aims. Its building design, structure and appliances should give consideration to sustainability.