Academics, law makers, and the general public have long believed that secret liens are problematic. In real property, these are liens that are not recorded in the real property filing system. Secret liens become especially problematic when they are enforced, despite their secrecy, against subsequent purchasers of the property. If the purchaser does not satisfy the lien by paying the underlying debt, the lien holder can foreclose on the property. One of the main purposes of having real property recording statutes was to avoid surprise liens (secret liens afforded priority over subsequent purchasers) and ensure that real estate purchasers and investors are fully informed. Yet surprise liens continue to exist and are, in fact, increasingly accepted by lawmakers. This Article examines two prototypical surprise liens – federal estate tax liens and mechanics' liens – and proposes that these are indicative of a trend wherein modern lawmakers are increasingly tolerant of surprise liens. This Article then examines potential justifications for this deviation from the longstanding preference against these types of liens. First, some argue that property filing systems are economically inefficient. Second, some argue that creditors and purchasers do not actually check property filing systems. Finally, the Article identifies and addresses the possibility that law makers justify surprise liens based upon the identity of the lienor. After examining these arguments, this Article concludes that the first two justifications are convincingly countered by existing economic theory and circumstances and that creditors and buyers do, in fact, rely on real property records. This leaves lienor identity as the true driver behind the rising acceptance of surprise liens. This justification, identified herein, is ultimately based upon the perceived social economic benefits arising from granting these favored classes the right to surprise liens. A careful examination of the full economic consequences of surprise liens, however, demonstrates that this justification is not sufficient and ultimately self-defeating. Granting special rights to certain classes of lienors imposes higher individual costs than is commonly believed and also creates significant costs that likely counter any social economic benefits actually created. Additionally, surprise liens (even if economically justified) defeat basic conceptions of fairness inherent in the American system of jurisprudence and arising out of basic concepts of due process and social ethics. This Article therefore concludes that these liens should be removed through a strengthening of recording concepts at both a state and federal level.


How do we 'read' when we read in the environment of the digital media? How do we approach and engage with entirely ordinary, usual 'objects' such as those shown in the screen-shots below? What 'tools' can help us understand the changes in "reading" which have taken place over the last two or three decades, changes which have made such objects entirely common, and, for very many people, especially 'the young', unremarkable, common-place, normal? What practices and habits of reading do they produce? And what effects might we expect these to have, in all kinds of different ways, and, prominent among these, on 'learning'?


Abstract New physical processes specific for microdosimetry simulation are under development in the Geant4 Low Energy Electromagnetic package. The first set of models implemented for this purpose cover the interactions of electrons, protons and light ions in liquid water; they address a physics domain relevant to the simulation of radiation effects in biological systems, where water represents an important component. The design developed for effectively handling particle interactions down to a low energy scale and the physics models implemented in the first public release of the software are described. Abstract— New physical processes specific for microdosimetry simulation are under development in the Geant4 Low Energy Electromagnetic package. The first set of models implemented for this purpose cover the interactions of electrons, protons and light ions in liquid water; they address a physics domain relevant to the simulation of radiation effects in biological systems, where water rep- resents an important component. The design developed for effectively handling particle interactions down to a low energy scale and the physics models implemented in the first public release of the software are described.


A generic method for the providing of prediction intervals of wind power generation is described. Prediction intervals complement the more common wind power point forecasts, by giving a range of potential outcomes for a given probability, their so-called nominal coverage rate. Ideally they inform of the situation-specific uncertainty of point forecasts. In order to avoid a restrictive assumption on the shape of forecast error distributions, focus is given to an empirical and nonparametric approach named adapted resampling. This approach employs a fuzzy inference model that permits to integrate expertise on the characteristics of prediction errors for providing conditional interval forecasts. By simultaneously generating prediction intervals with various nominal coverage rates, one obtains full predictive distributions of wind generation. Adapted resampling is applied here to the case of an onshore Danish wind farm, for which three point forecasting methods are considered as input. The probabilistic forecasts generated are evaluated based on their reliability and sharpness, while compared to forecasts based on quantile regression and the climatology benchmark. The operational application of adapted resampling to the case of a large number of wind farms in Europe and Australia among others is finally discussed.


The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in stay-at-home policies and other social distancing behaviors in the United States in spring of 2020. This paper examines the impact that these actions had on emissions and expected health effects through reduced personal vehicle travel and electricity consumption. Using daily cell phone mobility data for each U.S. county, we find that vehicle travel dropped about 40% by mid-April across the nation. States that imposed stay-at-home policies before March 28 decreased travel slightly more than other states, but travel in all states decreased significantly. Using data on hourly electricity consumption by electricity region (e.g., balancing authority), we find that electricity consumption fell about 6% on average by mid-April with substantial heterogeneity. Given these decreases in travel and electricity use, we estimate the county-level expected improvements in air quality, and, therefore, expected declines in mortality. Overall, we estimate that, for a month of social distancing, the expected premature deaths due to air pollution from personal vehicle travel and electricity consumption declined by approximately 360 deaths, or about 25% of the baseline 1500 deaths. In addition, we estimate that CO2 emissions from these sources fell by 46 million metric tons (a reduction of approximately 19%) over the same time frame.


Background: Failure in reaching the predetermined goals of education can be considered as one of the most important problems of educational systems. Today, it is believed that active teaching methods are more effective than lecturing which lead to effective teaching. Participation of students in education is one of the major factors of active learning. The purpose of the present study is to determine student satisfaction with active participation (through seminar giving) in the case of teaching the topic of poisonings. Methods: This analytical descriptive study was conducted on all stage students of Birjand University of Medical Sciences who had selected the course of familiarity with poisoning and forensic medicine. The technical part of this topic was taught by students through seminar. For the evaluation of the satisfaction of students a questionnaire was used. Data was analyzed by SPSS 16; Pearson Correlation Test, and Independent T-test and meaningful level was considered as p≤0.05. Results: forty students participated in this study. The mean of satisfaction score of students with active teaching method through seminar was 31.47 (out of maximum 50).The mean of satisfaction score in each one of the fields was meaningfully related with the total average students. The mean score of females in the field of internal interest and motivation was meaningfully more than males. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that students were satisfied with the participation in the process of teaching .Factors such as total average of students and their gender had affected their score which must be taken in to consideration in curriculum planning.


I. INTRODUCTION II. NEITHER FACT, POLICY, NOR PRECEDENT SUPPORT THE CLASSIFICATION OF BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS AS ANYTHING BUT A BASIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE A. The Slippery Slope B. Longstanding Policies Requiring the Separation of Common Carrier Telecommunications from Information Services Should Apply Equally to Next Generation Technology C. Is Today's Broadband Internet Access an Information Service or Simply Basic Transmission? III. TECHNOLOGY-BASED CLAIMS THAT BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS IS AN INFORMATION SERVICE A. "Bundled" Information Services B. Domain Name Services C. Technology Transitions Are an Ongoing Part of Telecommunications Industry Progress 1 D. Neither Its Eventual Destination (on the Public Internet) nor Its Bandwidth (Speed) Set Broadband Internet Access Apart from Other Last-Mile Telecommunications Services E. Regulating the Underlying Transmission in Internet Access Services is Not, and Would Not Amount to or Result in, the Regulation of Content or Application Providers IV. ECONOMIC REALITIES REQUIRE REGULATORY SUPPORT FOR NONDISCRIMINATORY ACCESS BY COMPETITORS TO BROADBAND TRANSMISSION USED FOR INTERNET ACCESS. ] A. Regardless of the Technology in the Upstream Network, Access Facilities Remain a Bottleneck B. Reevaluation of FCC Competition Analysis Needs to Extend to Broadband Access C. Reconciling Recent FCC Decisions with Existing Policies on Broadband Internet Access V. CONCLUSION: NET NEUTRALITY CAN BEST BE ACHIEVED BY THE FULL RESTORATION OF NONDISCRIMINATORY ACCESS TO BROADBAND LAST-MILE FACILITIES I. INTRODUCTION When the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently shut down the FCC's attempt to impose "net neutrality" principles on the Internet access provider Comcast, (1) the FCC was forced to confront the fact that a decade's worth of steps on the slippery slope of broadband access deregulation had led the FCC to an unforeseen and ultimately untenable destination, where it was unable to enforce the fundamental principles of common carrier regulation necessary to ensure that all Internet content and application providers--including those not affiliated with the owners of Internet access facilities--were ensured reasonable and nondiscriminatory use of those facilities. The FCC had arrived at its current dilemma through an unfortunate combination of (1) unverified predictive judgments associating deregulation with investment; (2) fanciful notions about a gold rush of competitive entry into the consumer broadband market; (3) the abandonment of the decades-old "bright line" between common carrier transmission functions and competitive services that any provider could furnish using that basic transmission (i.e., telecommunications); and (4) the elimination of unbundling requirements for services over broadband facilities. The FCC needs now to revisit--and revise--the factual, legal, and policy judgments that have brought it to the current situation. The Chairman of the FCC has proposed that the regulatory oversight the FCC considers necessary for net neutrality can be restored by reclassifying Interact access as "telecommunications services," (2) but under his proposed "Third Way," the FCC would apply and enforce "only a handful of provisions of Title II...." (3) This Article explains why dedicated Internet access is a telecommunications service and, as such, why reclassification to Title II must be pursued to correct its earlier--and incorrect--treatment as an "information service." More importantly, it explains why reclassification alone will not be sufficient to assure a competitive and open Internet, and why an approach that restores competitor access to common carrier broadband facilities for purposes of offering Internet access to their own retail customers remains the best strategy for achieving this goal. …


We examined population growth rate, reproduction and phosphatase activity in digestive tracts of individual Brachionus calyciflorus fed by P-replete (molar C:P = 107) or P-depleted (C:P = 920) algal food supplied at three carbon (C) concentrations (1, 2, and 4 mg C L −1 ). Rotifer growth rate was significantly influenced by P content, whereas the effect of algal C concentration was not significant. Both algal P content and C concentration had a significant effect on the egg ratio. The individual amount of chlorophyll a (chl-a) was considered as a proxy for the ingested algal food occurring in the rotifer's gut and phosphatase activity in the gut likely reflected variable individual assimilation of P under different food treatments. The amount of both chl-a and phosphatase activity in the rotifers fed by P-replete algae significantly increased with an increase in C concentration in the food suspension. In contrast, the amount of chl-a significantly decreased with an increase in food concentration, and phosphatase activity did not change significantly over different food quantity in the rotifers fed by P-depleted algae. Thus, the hypothesis that P-deficient rotifers use preabsorptive regulation by changing activity of the digestive enzymes is not supported by the data.


Abstract The longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) forests are important ecosystems in the southeastern USA because of their ecological and economic value. Since European settlement, longleaf pine ecosystems have dramatically declined in extent, to the degree that they are now listed as endangered ecosystems. Its sporadic seed production, which limits the frequency of natural regeneration, is identified as a significant factor in this decline. Previous studies did not characterize the complexity in cone production. Here a method of multiscale entropy is used to analyze long-term data for cone production in longleaf pine forests at six sites across its native range. Our results indicate that there exists a regime shift for cone production at each site. The corresponding time scales of the regime shift are generally 1–9, 10–12, 13–16, and 17–24 yr. Overall patterns for the complexity of cone production with the change of time scale are similar among sites, with exception of the Red Hills (FL). There are high correlations between entropy of cone production and entropy of annual mean air temperature and annual total precipitation at all sites. These results provide new insight into the complexity of cone production of longleaf pine forests with significant management implications.


The Adventures ofMetaMan: The Superhero as a Representation ofModem Western Masculinity (1940-2010) is a practice-based research project. The aim of this research project is to develop interactive works of art that interrogate superhero narratives and representations of male identity, with the potential to relate to the experiences of relevant users in educational environments. At the current stage of the project, young men aged 11-14 in the English school system are a possible target audience. The work of art takes the form of interactive software written in Adobe Flash, with additional visuals created by myself in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe lllustrator and through traditional pen-and-ink drawings. The conceptualisation, development and execution of both software and content took place over a three-year period. While numerous literary and artistic references were employed in order to actualise this work, the software's visuals and words were entirely self-created. The work's original contribution to knowledge is found in the project's form. In combining the platform of digital media with the artistic styles and narrative themes of the superhero genre of comic books, the project explores the subjects of heroes and masculinity and has the potential to help its target audience to understand that the definition of masculinity is always in a state of flux. As evidenced by the historical texts, studies of visual culture, gender, and media representations of heroes and men that were referenced to develop the software, different types of men, ranging from the civil rights activist of the 1960s to the macho action movie star of the 1990s and significant representations of masculinity between these decades have been regarded as hero figures at different points in time. The conc~pt of masculinity is fluid and reliant upon a variety of factors such as current events, cultural trends, politics, economics and popular culture and this is reflected in the evolution of the superhero in Western mass media. The MetaMan project showcases the impact that heroes and role models have and the way that art can echo culture and society. It can provide a fully interactive experience that places modern masculinity into the context of the user's life and circumstances, adapting to each user. The software is accompanied by a written component detailing the reasons for its form and potential audience, the artistic process necessary to create it, an account of a pilot scheme conducted with 120 male students aged 11-14 in the English school system and the further applications and plans for the future stages of the MetaMan project.


While Zimbabwe's first two post-independence elections in 1980 and 1985 were generally considered to be a credible expression of the will of the people, subsequent elections in that country were largely contested, with allegations of rigging, gerrymandering, vote-buying and coercion, among several other irregularities. With a media landscape that is largely dominated by state ownership and control, the total reporting on elections in Zimbabwe has always been openly biased in favour of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party, resulting in a huge loss of credibility for both the electoral system and the state-owned media themselves. However, the advent of new communications technologies, such as the Internet and mobile phones, has ushered in a new era of political communication where citizens actively participate both in the election campaign and the monitoring processes. This paper looks at the contribution of the innovations in political communication that have come with these new media, focusing particularly on the uses of mobile phones (in particular the SMS or short message service) during Zimbabwe's contested 2008 election. More specifically, it explores the ways in which ordinary Zimbabweans appropriated the SMS as a tool for monitoring that election. Further, it discusses the implications of these new technologies for the conduct of elections in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the African continent, and for democracy in general. What is clear is that these new forms of communication are fast eroding the monopoly of incumbent politicians over the communications landscape, undercutting the liberation discourse that has had a stranglehold on election processes, and signalling the possibility of more open political spaces where divergent views can coexist.


One challenge facing the development of high-performance cathodes for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) is the fast degradation rate of cathodes due to poisoning by contaminants commonly encountered in ambient air such as CO2. Here we report a double perovskite PrBa0.8Ca0.2Co2O5+δ (PBCC) cathode with excellent ORR activity and remarkable CO2 tolerance under realistic operation conditions. When tested in a symmetrical cell in air with ∼1 vol% CO2 at 750 °C, the PBCC electrode shows an area specific resistance of ∼0.024 Ω cm2, which increases to 0.028 Ω cm2 after 1000 h operation. The degradation rate is ∼1/24 of that of the state-of-the-art La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3 (LSCF) cathode under the same conditions. Impedance spectroscopy and in situ surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy analyses indicate that the surface of the PBCC electrode is much more active for oxygen exchange and more robust against CO2 than that of LSCF, as confirmed by density functional theory calculations. The fast ORR kinetics and excellent durability of PBCC in air with CO2 highlight the potential of PBCC as a highly promising material for devices involving oxygen electrochemistry such as solid oxide fuel cells, electrolysis cells, or gas separation membranes.


In the 2005-2025 National Long Term Development Plan (RPJP) which was proclaimed by the government, there is an Indonesian animation development plan. This development plan is the third stage of national development development. Where the most important business climate that is cold is related to the screening of animated films, as well as the distribution and presentation models of material that favor local animation films with the aim of providing incentives for local animation producers or studios to produce animated films. Even so, in fact, until now (the end of 2019) the screenings of animation on Indonesian television are still dominated by foreign animation. Likewise, the portion of foreign animation shows is far more than the portion of domestic animated shows. The Indonesian animation development plan that is associated with the target market in the form of broadcasting local animation on television media is only limited to discourse. This discourse is interesting to analyze to understand the plan / agenda with its implementation in the field. This study uses the theory of discourse analysis proposed by Foucault. The results of the study show that the Indonesian animation development plan with various programs that have been taken by the government in building the growth of the animation industry shows positive results. Nonetheless, in terms of the distribution of local animation, especially according to the targeted market, the display of local animation on television media still has not shown maximum results. Animation shows on Indonesian television are still dominated by portions of foreign animation shows.


1. A survey of the incidence of abnormal hemoglobins in different racial groups distributed over the island of Puerto Rico was performed. The relation of the rate of destruction of red cells to the presence of abnormal hemoglobin patterns in the affected population was also studied.

2. The abnormal hemoglobins were classified by the difference in paper electrophoretic mobility. Fetal hemoglobin was measured by its resistance to alkaline denaturation. The red cell life span was determined by measuring the survival of erythrocytes labelled with radioactive sodium chromate.

3. A total of 2,089 inhabitants were studied. There were 1,487 white subjects and 602 Negroes. Forty-two individuals were found to harbor abnormal hemoglobins. All but one were Negroes or Negroid of African descent, and their relative numbers agreed closely with the geographical distribution of ethnic groups in the island. Abnormal hemoglobins were found in 2.01 per cent of the entire series of 2,089 persons, but in those considered Negroes or Negroids the incidence of abnormal hemoglobins was 6.8 per cent.

Of the 42 persons showing abnormal hemoglobins, thirty-four or 81 per cent, had hemoglobin S; only two of these had sickle cell anemia. The incidence of the sickle cell trait among the Puerto Rican Negro population was 5.2 per cent; and the incidence of hemoglobin S disease among those harboring the trait was 5.9 per cent.

Eight, or 19 per cent of the abnormal cases had hemoglobin C; only one of these had hemoglobin C disease with clinical hemolytic anemia. The incidence of the hemoglobin C trait among the Puerto Rican Negro population is 1.3 per cent; and the incidence of hemoglobin C disease among those harboring the trait may reach 12.5 per cent.

4. All 42 cases harboring abnormal hemoglobins showed very small quantities of fetal or alkali-resistant hemoglobin ranging from 0.45 per cent to 3.25 per cent, averaging 1.12 per cent.

5. The "apparent" half-life of the red blood cells was found to be 10 days in sickle cell anemia, 7 days in SC disease, 20.6 days in cases of hemoglobin SA, 18.5 days in one case of hemoglobin C disease and 21.5 days in 2 cases of the combination CA. The normal "apparent" half-life in our laboratory is 24.5 days.


The multivariate asset management assessment topography (MAMAT) was developed to quantify, and represent graphically, development, adoption, and performance of a business' asset management (AM) systems, as described by standards such as PAS 55. The MAMAT provides a way to visualise clearly the strengths and weaknesses of a business' asset management system. Building on MAMAT, a model describing the relationship between the commitment of resources and the corresponding improvement in the MAMAT assessment outcome is proposed. The goal is to develop an optimisation model that will maximise financial benefits by improving the MAMAT assessment score achieved by a business, while minimising the investment required to attain this improvement. This is achieved by determining the optimal allocation of resources to the different subcategories of the MAMAT assessment framework. The multi-objective cross-entropy method (MOO CEM) is used to find the Pareto set of solutions for this problem. In order to showcase the intended industry application and use of the optimisation model, a hypothetical case study is executed and described in this paper. From this application, it was found that the MOO CEM finds useful solutions that can support the implementation of standards such as PAS 55 by prioritising and assigning resources to implementation activities.


This thesis provides an overview of lifestyle as a medical explanatory concept,
explicating contemporary medical understandings of lifestyle and situating these within
a wider social and historical framework. It argues that ideas about lifestyle have a long
history in medical thought but that what is meant by lifestyle and how this is seen as
relating states of sickness and health has shifted according to audience and time period.
This thesis also addresses the sociological critique of a lifestyle approach to health and
disease. It argues that this critique has focused on medical understandings of lifestyle
only as an epidemiological and public health concept. This has resulted in a neglect of
wider medical understandings and the constructions of individual doctors. This
lacunae in sociological knowledge is addressed through empirical investigation of
wider medical understandings of lifestyle within the framework of an interpretive
qualitative study of medical texts, in-depth interviews with doctors from a variety of
different medical specialities, observation of doctor/patient consultations and
participant observation during medical consultations.
The results of this analysis demonstrate that while the sociological critique of a lifestyle
approach to health, and disease does reflect many features of the wider medical
understandings of lifestyle found in this project, that there is no single unified medical
conception of lifestyle. Instead lifestyle is a shifting medical concept that is interpreted
and applied differently between different medical fields, and between different medical
doctors. Furthermore, as an explanatory concept, lifestyle has several features which
make it an unusual and extremely useful medical concept. These features include
flexibility, the ability to explain health and not just disease, the capacity to utilise lay
understandings and offering the capacity for the self management of risk.


Author Nicole Kalms

Much of feminist architectural scholarship focuses on the enormous task of instating women's experience of space into spatial praxis. Hypersexual City: The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism suggests this attention to women's invisibility in sociocultural space has overlooked the complex ways in which women already occupy space, albeit mostly as an image or object to be consumed, even purchased.

It examines the occupation of urban space through the mediated representation of women's hypersexualized bodies. A complex transaction proliferates in the commercial urban space of cities; this book seeks to address the cause and consequence of the increasing dominance of gendered representation.

It uses architectural case studies and analysis to make visible the sexual politics of architecture and urbanism and, in doing so, reveal the ways that heterosexist culture shapes the spaces, behaviour and relationships formed in neoliberal cities. Hypersexual City announces how examining urbanism that operates through, and is framed by, sexual culture can demonstrate that architecture does not merely find itself adrift in the hypersexualized landscape of contemporary cities, but is actively producing and contributing to the sexual regulation of urban life.


The geometry and orientation of faults are examined using several field examples of small-scale (< lm displacement) fault systems. For isotropic rocks under triaxial compression, faults normally develop in conjugate sets about the maximum compressive stress (σ1), with dihedral angles usually of about 50°, as predicted by the Coulomb theory of failure. In layered rocks, the geometry of faults varies with the orientation of layering with respect to the stress field. Where σ1, is approximately normal to layering or anisotropy, conjugate faults also develop symmetrically about σ1. Where rocks have interbedded layers with different mechanical behaviours, however, faults tend to initiate orthogonal to the more brittle layers (i.e. originate as extension fractures sub-parallel to σ1), but oblique to the less brittle layers. As the fault steps through the layering, pull-aparts are developed which may reduce the dihedral angle. Where σ1 is oblique (c. 25–75°) to anisotropy, one set of faults is developed at a high angle to layering, with another at a low angle, usually showing a ramp-flat geometry. Large dihedral angles (up to 90°) may result and σ1, does not bisect this angle. Where σ1 is approximately parallel to layering, two cases can be recognized. Where σ3 is approximately normal to layering, faults with layer-parallel flats and contractional ramps develop. Where σ2 is approximately normal to layering, conjugate faults develop which are symmetrical about σ1, the geometry resembling that in isotropic rocks. These observations are in agreement with rock deformation experiments which show the strong effect of anisotropy on fault orientation, but the observations incorporate the effects of layering of materials with different deformation characteristics.


Epidemiological evidence suggests that about 25% of cancer occurs due to chronic inflammation, thus it is clear that cancer and inflammation are related [1]. Piroxicam is the one of the drug that is used in the treatment of both cancer and inflammation, but it is having some side effects like constipation, blurring of vision, skin rashes etc., Coumarin is having both anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activity [2,3], so the purpose of this study is to screen the best target among Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) and Cyclin-dependent Kinase-2 (CDK2). Docking analysis was carried out using Argus lab 4.0.1. From the study it was found that EGFR showed better result compare to CDK2. Also methyl substitution at 8th position and chlorine substitution at 5th position of coumarin showed better activity than standard drug piroxicam and phytoconstituents isofraxidin and scopoletin.


The ℓ0/ℓ1-regularized least-squares approach is used to deal with linear inverse problems under sparsity constraints, which arise in mathematical and engineering fields. In particular, multiagent models have recently emerged in this context to describe diverse kinds of networked systems, ranging from medical databases to wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we study methods for solving ℓ0/ℓ1-regularized leastsquares problems in such multiagent systems. We propose a novel class of distributed protocols based on iterative thresholding and input driven consensus techniques, which are well-suited to work in-network when the communication to a central processing unit is not allowed. Estimation is performed by the agents themselves, which typically consist of devices with limited computational capabilities. This motivates us to develop low-complexity and low-memory algorithms that are feasible in real applications. Our main result is a rigorous proof of the convergence of these methods in regular networks. We introduce a suitable distributed, regularized, least-squares functional, and we prove that our algorithms reach their minima using results from dynamical systems theory. Furthermore, we propose numerical comparisons with the alternating direction method of multipliers and the distributed subgradient methods, in terms of performance, complexity, and memory usage. We conclude that our techniques are preferable for their good memory-accuracy tradeoff.


Solvent-assisted linker exchange (SALE) is performed on the Zr-based metal–organic framework (MOF), UiO-66, to exchange benzene-1,4-dicarboxylate with benzene-1,4-dihydroxamate linkers. Characterization of the material before and after SALE is performed using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), nitrogen adsorption, diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The stability of the parent and daughter material is evaluated at pH 1 and 12 and the structural integrity evaluated by PXRD, mass balance and porosity measurements.


The complexities, diversity, and nuances of schools today require the shared leadership of the best and brightest that education has to offer. All across the country, school districts are embarking on the challenging journey toward higher and better standards and performance found in the adoption of the Common Core State Standards. This dissertation describes the early CCSS implementation efforts of the middle schools in a Midwest suburban district. In particular, it examines the instructional leadership that was shared among the administrators and literacy coaches who led the adoption and implementation of the new Standards. The research was conducted during their first year of the CCSS implementation plan and was based on a year-long series of interviews with district level administrators, building level administrators, and the three middle school coaches who all shared responsibility for developing and executing the plan. The author of the study was a middle school coach at the time and describes the positive and negative impact of being a participant-researcher. The findings support the extant research that illustrates the complexities of instructional leadership: while all the participants had a good understanding of their own instructional leadership responsibilities, their enactment of these was carried out in varying degrees due to the culture of the district, their confidence in the subject matter, as well as the time that the participants were able to commit to the new learning required by the Common Core State Standards.


4 This white paper builds a new financial theory of euro area sovereign bond markets under stress. The theory explains the abnormal bond pricing and increasing spreads during the recent market turmoil. We find that the strong disconnect of bond spreads from the respective bonds' underlying fundamental values in 2010 was triggered by an increase in asymmetric information and weak reputation of government policies. Both factors cause a normal bond market to switch into a crisis mode. Finally, those markets are prone to self-fulfilling bubbles in which the economic effects are amplified by herding behaviour arising from animal spirits. Altogether, this produces contagious effects and multiple equilibria. Thus, we argue that government bond markets in a monetary union are more fragile and vulnerable to liquidity and solvency crises. Consequently, the systemic mispricing of sovereign debt creates more macroeconomic instability and bubbles in the euro area than in a single country. In other words, financial markets are partly blind to national default risks in a currency union. Therefore, the current European institutional framework puts the wrong incentives in place and needs structural changes soon. To tackle the root causes we suggest more market incentives via consistent rules, pre-emptive austerity measures in good economic times, and a resolution scheme for heavily indebted countries. In summary, our paper enhances the bond market theory and provides new insights into the recent bond market turmoil in Europe.


The harbour seal Phoca vitulina and the grey seal Halichoerus grypus have been inhabitants of the Wadden Sea since millennia. Prehistoric findings indicate the presence of both species around 5000 BC. This changed dramatically in the mid Middle-Ages as around 1500 AC, the grey seal disappeared from the Wadden Sea as a consequence of persecution. With growing hunting pressure, especially in the 20th century and concurrent habitat destruction and pollution, the harbour seals reached all time low numbers in the 1970's. Banning the hunt in countries around the southern North Sea, limiting pollution and protection from disturbance allowed the harbour seals to slowly recover and the grey seals to return to the Wadden Sea. In this thesis the population trends and inherent dynamics of the recovery for both species is described. Also the movements of individual animals are studied to explain possible mechanisms.


A fast fashion system combines quick response production capabilities with enhanced product design capabilities to both design "hot" products that capture the latest consumer trends and exploit minimal production lead times to match supply with uncertain demand. We develop a model of such a system and compare its performance to three alternative systems: quick-response-only systems, enhanced-design-only systems, and traditional systems (which lack both enhanced design and quick response capabilities). In particular, we focus on the impact of each of the four systems on "strategic" or forward-looking consumer purchasing behavior, i.e., the intentional delay in purchasing an item at the full price to obtain it during an end-of-season clearance. We find that enhanced design helps to mitigate strategic behavior by offering consumers a product they value more, making them less willing to risk waiting for a clearance sale and possibly experiencing a stockout. Quick response mitigates strategic behavior through a different mechanism: by better matching supply to demand, it reduces the chance of a clearance sale. Most importantly, we find that although it is possible for quick response and enhanced design to be either complements or substitutes, the complementarity effect tends to dominate. Hence, when both quick response and enhanced design are combined in a fast fashion system, the firm typically enjoys a greater incremental increase in profit than the sum of the increases resulting from employing either system in isolation. Furthermore, complementarity is strongest when customers are very strategic. We conclude that fast fashion systems can be of significant value, particularly when consumers exhibit strategic behavior.

This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.


Sanitizing human excreta with nutrient recovery is a crucial issue especially for peri-urban and rural areas of developing countries. In addition to human excreta, the sanitary concerns of livestock excreta are recently growing due to control the domestic-animal-related diseases such as bird flu. In order to address those problems, this study examines the vacuum truck-collection system combined with urine-faeces diversion for peri-urban and rural areas. In the system, the diverted faeces and livestock excreta are fermented, and urine is directly used and/or phosphorus in urine is recovered by struvite formation. Firstly, each treatment and recovery is examined from the technological aspects. Secondly, the methane and struvite production in the system is calculated. As a result, the fermentation was considered to proceeds easily compared to traditional mixed excreta fermentations, and nutrient in urine could be easily recovered in the system. In addition, the system produces methane of 1,107 Nm3-CH4 per day, struvite of 51.9 ton-P2O5 per year for a population of 100,000 with 5,000 pigs and 20,000 chickens.


Fungal infection of the nails is an increasingly recognized disease in infants and children. However, it can be difficult to distinguish clinically from other nail dystrophies. In addition, many mistakenly believe that onychomycosis does not occur in childhood. Under-recognition of this infectious disorder therefore occurs. Although many consider "nail fungus" a trivial cosmetic concern, it can lead to discomfort, risk of secondary infection, and a more significant health threat in immunocompromised or diabetic individuals. It should always be considered in the differential diagnosis of nail plate disorders in children as it is one of the more common causes. Here we review the latest data on prevalence of the disease, reasons for its relatively low incidence compared with adults, and important predisposing factors. It is important to confirm the clinical diagnosis of onychomycosis in children, and affected individuals should be examined for concomitant tinea pedis. As familial disease often occurs, it is important to check parents and siblings as well for onychomycosis and tinea pedis. Treatment of onychomycosis is challenging, and recurrence appears to be more common in children than in adults. Prolonged systemic antifungal therapy is commonly required. However, pediatric practitioners and parents alike hesitate when asked to treat young children with a systemic drug that requires laboratory monitoring and can have systemic toxicities. Due to their thinner, faster-growing nails, children are theoretically more likely to respond to topical monotherapy than adults, and therefore good candidates for topical antifungal therapy. The clinical data on the use of topical antifungals in pediatric onychomycosis is scarce. We review data that exist from case reports and small clinical trials. New topical antifungals are now available that afford better nail penetration and additional delivery routes to the site of infection. Pediatric trials are now on-going, and should clarify the usefulness of these agents in children.


This collection of original essays represents some of the most exciting ways in which historians are beginning to paint the 1960s onto the larger canvas of American history. While the first literature about this turbulent period was written largely by participants, many of the contributors to this volume are young scholars who came of age intellectually in the 1970s and 1980s and thus write from fresh perspectives. The essayists ask fundamental questions about how much America really changed in the 1960s and why certain changes took place. In separate chapters, they explore how the great issues of the decade--the war in Vietnam, race relations, youth culture, the status of women, the public role of private enterprise--were shaped by evolutions in the nature of cultural authority and political legitimacy. They argue that the whirlwind of events and problems we call the Sixties can only be understood in the context of the larger history of post-World War II America. Contents "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Abroad," by Robert M. Collins "The American State and the Vietnam War: A Genealogy of Power," by Mary Sheila McMahon "And That's the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News," by Chester J. Pach, Jr. "Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution of Political Legitimacy," by David R. Colburn and George E. Pozzetta "Nothing Distant about It: Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism," by Alice Echols "The New American Revolution: The Movement and Business," by Terry H. Anderson "Who'll Stop the Rain?: Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises," by George Lipsitz "Sexual Revolution(s)," by Beth Bailey "The Politics of Civility," by Kenneth Cmiel "The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution," by David Farber


Addition of fine limestone provides an excellent means to reduce the amount of clinker in cement. It is now well accepted that limestone partially reacts in cementitious systems with C3A to produce hemi- and monocarboaluminate phases and as a consequence more sulfate is available to form ettringite and the total volume of hydrates increases. The mechanism by which limestone affects the hydration is crucial in understanding its influence on the properties of cementitious materials. Laboratory and Commercial Cements with two different types of clinker, low and high C3A with different gypsum and limestone addition, were investigated. Hydrated pastes and mortars were investigated in terms of kinetics, phases assemblage, microstructure development, porosity, mechanical properties and durability (sulfate attack and sorptivity). An improvement in sample preparation for XRD measurement was made, which allows preferential orientation to be avoid and improves Rietveld Analysis quantification. The elastic modulus was found to correlate well with compressive strength and could be used as a nondestructive method to measure compressive strength. Monocarboaluminate formation was found to increase with increasing C3A. For high C3A cement it is visible at 2 days of hydration and at 720 days 4.5% of monocarboaluminate is measured in the system. For Low C3A cement it is visible at 7 days of hydration and at 720 days 1.6% of monocarboaluminate is measured in the system. Mc is formed only after all gypsum, which is more reactive than limestone is consumed to produce ettringite. No monosulfate is observed in the limestone systems. The optimum gypsum, was found to have as much effect at early ages on the hydration as 10% of limestone addition. Consequently variations in the gypsum level were investigated but it was difficult to quantify differences between samples with increasing gypsum addition. Studies of behavior in sulfate solution indicated that C3A is the dominant factor. Limestone addition produces slight changes in the form of degradation but do not fundamentally change whether deterioration takes place or not.


Evolutionary robotics (ER) have successfully built robot controllers presenting a reactive behavior. However, the evolution of cognitive controllers is still a challenge. We hypothesize here that a fitness function which rewards the fulfillment of a task requiring cognitive abilities does not necessarily reward the stepping stones that lead to cognitive controllers. In other words, our hypothesis is that evolving cognitive abilities is a deceptive problem, and that the selective pressures driving the evolutionary search are of critical importance. This paper presents some experiments to confirm this hypothesis and addresses this selective pressure problem by introducing a new helper-objective that rewards controllers with a memory. This is potentially useful for the design of controllers in which an internal representation of some data is required to solve a task. It does not assume how the memory is stored in the controller, therefore reducing the bias towards a particular solution. The new objective is tested in a multi-objective scheme on a T-maze ER task — a task involving both navigation and working memory. The efficiency of the helperobjective is studied, as well as its effects on the overall performance and generalization ability of the controller.


Bringing about school improvement has become a national focus for education. There has
been little research into school improvement from the perspective of intervention, yet it
has become an urgent issue due to the commitment to address under-performance in
schools. This research provides insights into the use of research findings about school
improvement and effectiveness in working with schools; and insights about how best to
support schools in promoting a culture and ways of working in which development can
be secured. It uses the development of two projects, in the first phase gaining insights
from intervention with eight schools, and in the second phase gaining a closer look at the
impact of interventions in two schools at the different levels of headteacher, deputy,
subject leader, class teacher and children. The sample draws on schools from different
contexts. In the first phase, schools were considered where intervention was welcomed,
and the second phase included schools with more embedded difficulties and where
intervention had not been sought.
The interaction between the impact of intervention at school, classroom and pupil level is
explored, drawing out the inter-relationship between the elements of intervention in
promoting improvement. The research drew upon a phenomenological perspective to
consider the perceptions of those involved in terms of the interventions; methods of data
collection were developed which drew upon both qualitative and quantitative processes,
including narrative analysis.
A model for intervention is offered alongside the identification of the activities and skills
of interveners working to promote school improvement. Aspects of change are identified
in relation to the technical, cultural and micro-political development. A new identification
of the phases of development is given, and aligned to the inter-related aspects of the
change process. Turbulence and uncertainty had to be managed constructively as schools
moved to the awareness that the skills of rigorous self-evaluation were a key lever for
their improvement. Identification of the intervention which supports aspects of change
and is phased for different stages of improvement is a recommended way forward.


We compute trajectories of dust grains starting from a homogeneous surface activity-profile on a irregularly shaped cometary nucleus. Despite the initially homogeneous dust distribution a collimation in jet-like structures becomes visible. The fine structure is caused by concave topographical features with similar bundles of normal vectors. The model incorporates accurately determined gravitational forces, rotation of the nucleus, and gas-dust interaction. Jet-like dust structures are obtained for a wide range of gas-dust interactions. For the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we derive the global dust distribution around the nucleus and find several areas of agreement between the homogeneous dust emission model and the Rosetta observation of dust jets, including velocity-dependent bending of trajectories.


Objectives. An epidemiological study, addressed to identify the pathogens isolated from blood, and their antibiotic susceptibility patterns, was conducted. Methods. 12 laboratories, homogeneously distributed in a Northern area of Italy, were required to collected all consecutive non-duplicated strains isolated from blood during February 2008 to February 2009 and sent them to the reference laboratory. Results. A total of 1092 microorganisms were collected, including 653 gram-positive, 385 gram-negative and 54 fungi. Escherichia coli 234, Staphylococcus epidermidis 205, S. aureus 142, S. hominis 87, Enterococcus faecalis 47, S. haemolyticus 33, Klebsiella pneumoniae 33, Pseudomonas aeruginosa 32, Candida albicans 28, Enterobacter cloacae 21 were the prevalent microrganisms found. Samples were collected mainly from medicine (255 strains), intensive care units (154), surgery (99), infectious diseases (93), paediatrics (62) and nephrology (62). Antibiotic resistance (in %) in staphylococci was 65.7 (methicillin), 33.5 (gentamicin), 61.8 (azithromycin), 59.6 (erythromycin), 45.2 (ciprofloxacin) 14.8 (chloramphenicol), 2.0 (teicoplanin), and 24.1 (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) no vancomycin-resistant strain was found. Enterococci showed resistance to vancomycin (10.8), ampicillin (34.4), gentamycin (42.9), ciprofloxacin (42.2) teicoplanin (7.6), erythromycin (54.7) and chloramphenicol (17.5). Enterobacteriaceae exhibited resistance to ciprofloxacin(27.0), ampicillin (74.1), ceftazidime (15.8), cefoxitin (14.7), cefepime (13.3), ceftriaxone (15.0), both imipenem and amikacin (0.95), piperacillin-tazobactam (5.1) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (32.7). Non fermenting gram negative strains were found resistant to ciprofloxacin (27.3), ceftazidime (9.5), cefepime (14.6), ceftriaxone (81.6), both imipenem and amikacin (18.6), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (65.2), and piperacillin-tazobactam (7.5). Conclusions.These data show a prevalent incidence of gram-positive (59.7 %) in comparison to gram-negative (35.3%) bacteria isolated from blood.A high percentage of methicillin-resistant staphylococci as well as ceftazidime-resistance among Enterobacteriaceae is also observed suggesting that this phenomenon requires periodically surveillance.


The Switch That Doesn't In mammals, a class of neurons in the brain normally switches from excitatory to inhibitory functions at birth. Tyzio et al. (p. 675; see the Perspective by Zimmerman and Connors) studied how these neurons function in rat and mouse models of autism. The results show that oxytocin normally accelerates the switch in function, but in these two animal models, the switch fails. The dysfunction could be replicated in normal animals using an oxytocin receptor antagonist. Maternal administration of bumetanide before delivery reduces the autistic phenotype in rodent models of autism. [Also see Perspective by Zimmerman and Connors] We report that the oxytocin-mediated neuroprotective γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) excitatory-inhibitory shift during delivery is abolished in the valproate and fragile X rodent models of autism. During delivery and subsequently, hippocampal neurons in these models have elevated intracellular chloride levels, increased excitatory GABA, enhanced glutamatergic activity, and elevated gamma oscillations. Maternal pretreatment with bumetanide restored in offspring control electrophysiological and behavioral phenotypes. Conversely, blocking oxytocin signaling in naïve mothers produced offspring having electrophysiological and behavioral autistic-like features. Our results suggest a chronic deficient chloride regulation in these rodent models of autism and stress the importance of oxytocin-mediated GABAergic inhibition during the delivery process. Our data validate the amelioration observed with bumetanide and oxytocin and point to common pathways in a drug-induced and a genetic rodent model of autism.


Abstract. YouthMappers is a global network of student chapters actively engaged in collaborative mapping efforts, such as OpenStreetMap mapathons. Many questions have been raised about the impact of mapathons on open map data and on the participating mappers. For example, how can the social gathering and event format encourage productivity and quality, while also contributing to community building? Because YouthMappers chapters regularly host mapathons, there are frequent opportunities to investigate the impact of mapathons. In this paper, three universities involved in the YouthMappers network, located in Europe, North America and Africa, describe how mapathons are conducted at their respective universities. Incorporating mapathons into the curriculum encourages students to contribute much-needed open geospatial data for humanitarian projects. At the same time, students get practical experience in data capturing with open source tools and awareness is raised of humanitarian challenges in other parts of the world, thus nurturing socially engaged citizens for the future. The experiences at the three universities are diverse and richly contextual to the specific character of the campus and its students. These differences underscore the challenge of a common means to formally assess the impact of such events in general. Based on this exploratory research, three themes for assessing the impact of mapathons are proposed: the volume and quality of open geographic data produced during mapathons; the social and personal growth of the students attending the mapathons; and the changes in university programs and curricula introduced as a result of the mapathons.


In the spring of 1984, the author decided to study the regulation of heme biosynthetic enzymes and thereby contribute in a peripheral way to the B12 project. This review presents a personal view of the pathway for heme biosynthesis and its regulation in the enteric bacteria Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli. The chapter emphasizes the genetic aspects with some historical perspective. It discusses what is known about regulation of the heme pathway in these bacteria. The HemA protein is quite unstable in cells growing normally, but it is stabilized by more than 10-fold specifically under conditions of heme limitation. The chapter suggests three simple models for HemA regulation. In the first model, the ATP concentration in vivo is postulated to decrease during heme-limited growth to a point that ATP becomes limiting for energy-dependent proteolysis. Second, when the Lon and ClpAP proteases act on HemA, the Km for ATP might be higher than for other substrates. Finally, the third model supposes that the protease-sensitive conformation is stabilized by formation of a disulfide bond, which is favored when the cell has excess oxidation capacity.


This book depicts the results of a research project in northern China, where an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers from Italy, Germany and China has applied a broad range of methodology in order to answer basic and applied research questions and derive comprehensive recommendations for sustainable water management and wetland restoration. The project primarily focused on ecosystem services, e.g. the purification of water and biomass production. In particular, the ecosystem function and use of reed (Phragmites australis) and the perception as well as the value of water as a resource for Central Asia's multicultural societies was analysed.


Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players' satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. "quality discourse", "e-learning discourse" and "culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse", by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to "fit" in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.


Hundreds of Northwest Semitic inscribed seals combine on a single artifact image and script. Both the pictures and the inscriptions are instrumental for our understanding of the cultural and religious history of Syria and Palestine. But while the seals' inscriptions have been the focus of studies since the 19th century, their figurative decoration has only rarely been approached in a systematic way.
The present volume contains revised versions of papers read at a symposium held at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) on April 17-20, 1991. Designed as a stimulus for further research in a much neglected area, it offers methodological discussions relating to the classification of seals into ethnic or national corpora, and studies on some specific iconographical motifs such as the winged disk or Mesopotamian-inspired scenes of worship. Five articles discuss the iconographical repertoires of Phoenician, Aramaean, Ammonite, Moabite, and Hebrew inscribed seals. A final contribution offers preliminary conclusions, issues for future glyptic and religio-historical research, and an inquiry into the apparent contradiction between decorated Hebrew seals on the one hand, and ancient Israel's supposed aniconism and the biblical image ban on the other.


Direct‐acting antivirals (DAAs) have transformed traditional treatment options for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. DAA combinations have been shown to be highly effective in reducing the burden of chronic HCV infection in clinical trials and have been recommended by the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) treatment guidelines. This review examines the results of second‐generation DAA combinations in real‐life clinical practice in patients with genotypes 1‐3 and in those co‐infected with HIV (real‐world data in genotypes 4‐6 are rare). Second generation DAAs (sofosbuvir plus daclatasvir, sofosbuvir/ledipasvir, ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir plus dasabuvir, sofosbuvir plus velpatasvir, glecaprevir plus pibrentasvir, grazoprevir plus elbasvir) have very high SVR rates and good safety profiles, higher resistance barriers and are more convenient. Real‐world data in all 3 genotypes generally support the EASL guidelines and high overall sustained virological response rates are reported with recommended regimens. However, real‐world data are only available for sofosbuvir plus daclatasvir, sofosbuvir/ledipasvir, ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir plus dasabuvir. Furthermore, because of the existing level of evidence, it is difficult to define optimal regimens based on real‐world data (ie, treatment duration, when to include ribavirin and options for patients with cirrhosis). The real‐life challenges of managing HIV‐coinfected patients are also discussed showing the additional burden of avoiding drug–drug interactions between DAAs and antiretrovirals.


In 1970 Robert Smithson (1938-1973), one of the most innovative and provocative artists of the twentieth century, created the landmark earthwork Spiral Jetty at Rozel Point on Utah's Great Salt Lake. This dramatic and highly influential work forms a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide and stretches out counterclockwise into the lake's translucent red water. Composed of black basalt rocks and earth, the sculpture comprises the materials of its location: mud, salt crystals, rocks, water. The contributors to this comprehensive publication consider the sculpture in relation to its eponymous companions - a text work and a film. These essays situate this renowned series of works alongside Smithson's critical writings, proposals, drawings, sources, and models. Amply illustrated with archival and new photographs of the Jetty and many comparative illustrations, this book makes evident why Smithson's art and writings have had such a powerful impact on art and art theory for over thirty years.


Although the process of vascular development has been well documented, little is understood about lymphatic vasculature formation, despite its importance in normal and pathologic conditions.The dysfunction or abnormal growth of lymphatic vessels is associated with lymphedema and cancer metastasis. The recent discovery of lymphangiogenic growth factors vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-C and VEGF-D and of their receptor,VEGFR-3, on lymphatic endothelial cells has started to provide an understanding of the molecular mechanisms of lymphangiogenesis. In addition, other genes that participate in the specification of lymphatic endothelial cells and the modulation of lymphatic vascular development have been identified. The capacity to induce or inhibit lymphangiogenesis by the manipulation of such molecules offers new opportunities to understand the function of the lymphatic system and to develop novel treatments for lymphatic disorders.This review describes the main players in lymphangiogenesis that have been identified so far and the attempts to shed some light on the mysteries surrounding this process.


The main aim of this research project was to understand the effect of internal state on brain activity associated with different food and odour properties. To this end, the brain activation in response to differential taste and odour stimuli when either being hungry or satiated, and additionally, the process of satiation was studied. Intensity of a taste can influence the satiation process. We investigated the effect of intensity differences on brain activation, by using two basic tastes, sucrose and NaCl as taste stimuli and varied the molarity of the solutions. Both stimuli were rated at the same intensity per concentration. However, the pleasantness of the highest concentration of NaCl was perceived as more aversive. When increasing the concentration of both tastes, we observed that the middle insula activation increased. Amygdala and anterior insula activation were only associated with an increased concentration of NaCl, probably due to the unpleasantness of the stimulus and the physiological function of NaCl. Also the effect of consumption on taste activation was investigated. When consuming a juice the pleasantness of that juice decreased compared to juices not consumed. Using these differences in pleasantness changes as a covariant, we investigated the food specific wanting effect on brain responses. When consuming a sweet or savoury beverage, striatal activation decreased. Taste activation of brain reward areas changed following food consumption. There were no differences in brain activation changes between sweet and savoury juice. When tasting a juice the anterior cingulate response predicted subsequent ad libitum juice intake, independent of the quality of the taste, when the anterior cingulate response was increased, subject drunk less of the associated juice. The effect of consumption on brain responses to food and non-food odours, when perceived retro- or orthonasal, was also studied. Odours sensed orthonasally provide information about objects in the external world, such as the availability of bread, whereas odours sensed retronasally provide information about foods and drinks being consumed. We observed that when an odour is associated with food or non-food, the route of delivery and internal state affect the brain differentially. Insula response is increased for food odours when hungry dependent on the route, this does not occur when full. Last, we investigated the effect of stomach filling on brain activation and the effect on hormone changes. By varying the administration of chocolate milk, by intra-gastrically administrating chocolate milk or ingestion true the mouth. In the process of satiation, amygdala, hypothalamus and hippocampus activation were associated with gastric infusion, independent of the nutrient content of the load. Oral stimulation evoked greater activation in several food intake related brain areas then when infused directly into the stomach, whereas, CCK and insulin concentrations increased more after gastric infusion. In line with the idea that oral stimulation is necessary for optimal absorption and digestion, gastric infusion induced greater hormone responses than oral administration. In conclusion, the internal state affects the physiological need of a stimulus, and thereby influences the brain responses. Sensory stimulation is important for satiation and optimal digestion.


The sustainable development of rivers requires a knowledge on the three-dimensional mean flow field and the turbulence in complex morphologies. In a future, the computational capacity will be sufficient to simulate numerically the fine details of the flow. Our physical knowledge, however, is at present insufficient: the overwhelming majority of experimental research concerns straight-uniform flow and even complex numerical models are based on straight-uniform-flow knowledge. A sound understanding of the relevant physical processes will always be essential in complicated problems such as the river management, which concern a variety of different fields, and this irrespective of the available computational capacity. This PhD investigates, mainly experimentally, the mean-flow field and the turbulence in open-channel bends; this situation is considered as a generic case for complex highly three-dimensional flow. The experimental investigation is rendered feasible by the availability of a powerful Acoustic Doppler Velocity Profiler (ADVP), developed in our laboratory. The principal objectives of this PhD are: To provide a high-quality data base on three-dimensional open-channel flow, including all three mean velocity components and all six Reynolds stresses on a fine grid. To document interesting features of the flow field and the turbulence, such as the multi-cellular pattern of secondary circulation, the curvature influence on the turbulence, etc. To gain insight in the relevant physical mechanisms and processes underlying these features. To apply the acquired knowledge in an engineering sense, mainly by evaluating, improving and developing numerical simulation techniques. First, a limited series of experiments was conducted in a small laboratory flume, with the aim of testing the feasibility of the project. Subsequently, extended series of experiments have been designed in a large and optimized laboratory flume. The small-flume experiments yielded results beyond all expectations and form the core of this dissertation. The large-flume experiment are intended to confirm those results and to investigate newly emerged questions. Only few large-flume results are included in this dissertation; more large-flume results will be reported in literature in the future. The structure of this dissertation follows the above-mentioned objectives. In PART I "Instrumentation and experimental set-up", the experimental set-up, the ADVP and the measuring strategy are presented. Furthermore, a method is proposed to improve acoustic turbulence measurements. PART II "Experimental observations" provides high-quality data on the mean flow and the turbulence and documents the most interesting features: The downstream velocity increases in outward direction and its vertical profiles are flatter (increased/decreased velocities in the lower/upper part of the flow depth) than in straight flow. A relatively small and weak outer-bank cell of secondary circulation exists besides the classical center-region cell (helical motion). The turbulence activity is reduced in the outer half of the cross-section in the investigated bend, as compared to a straight-uniform flow. Linear models that are commonly used to account for the effect of the secondary circulation in depth-integrated flow models are inaccurate for moderately to strongly curved flows. PART III "Fundamental research" investigates the physical mechanisms and processes underlying these observations, mainly by making term-by-term evaluations of the relevant flow equations (momentum, vorticity, turbulent kinetic energy) and by considering the instantaneous flow behavior. The distribution of the downstream velocity is dominated by both cells of secondary circulation, whereby the outer-bank cell has a protective effect on the stability of the outer bank by keeping the core of maximum velocity at distance. The center-region cell is mainly generated by the vertical gradient of the centrifugal force, : the non-uniform outward centrifugal force and the nearly-uniform inward pressure gradient, due to the super-elevation of the water surface, are on the average in equilibrium; their local non-equilibrium, however, gives rise to the centerregion cell. There exists a strong negative feedback between the vertical profile of the downstream velocity, vs, and the center-region cell: the center-region cell flattens the vs-profiles, which on its turn leads to a reduction of and a weakening of the center-region cell. Linear models that are commonly used to account for the effect of the secondary circulation in depth-integrated flow models perform poorly because they neglect this feedback. Similar outer-bank cells exist in straight turbulent flow as well as in curved laminar flow. In straight turbulent flow, they are induced by the anisotropy of turbulence whereas they come into existence in curved laminar flow when the curvature exceeds a critical value: the vs-profiles flatten to such an extent that the gradient of the centrifugal force changes sign near the water surface, < 0, provocating the generation of the outer-bank cell. In curved turbulent flow, both mechanisms have a comparable contribution to the generation of the outer-bank cell and strengthen each other, whence the outer-bank cell is stronger in a curved turbulent flow than in a curved laminar or a straight turbulent flow. The restitution of kinetic energy from the turbulence to the mean flow plays an important role in the generation of the outer-bank cell, and the deficiency of standard k-e turbulence closures to accurately simulate them is due to their inherent incapability to account for such kinetic-energy restitution. The turbulence structure is fundamentally different than in a straight-uniform flow: for the same amount of turbulent kinetic energy, there is less shear in a curved flow. This change in turbulence structure is responsible for the observed reduced turbulence activity. An analysis of the instantaneous flow behavior suggests that the turbulence fluctuations can be decomposed into two fundamentally different parts: a wave-like oscillation of the pattern of circulation cells embedded in background turbulence. PART IV "Applied research" tries to apply the acquired knowledge in an engineering sense. It proposes a non-linear model to account for the effect of the secondary circulation in depth-integrated flow models, that simulates the negative feedback between the downstream velocity profile and the center-region cell. Contrary to the commonly used linear models, this non-linear model agrees well with experimental data for strongly curved flow from both the small and the large-flume experiments. The model depends on the curvature ratio, the friction factor and the spanwise distribution of the downstream velocity, which can all be incorporated in a newly defined bend parameter, that allows an objective definition of weak, moderate and strong curvature. The linear model is found as the asymptotic solution for vanishing curvature. An evaluation for natural rivers has shown that differences between the linear model and the non-linear model are relevant. Moreover, outer-bank cells have been successfully simulated by means of a non-linear k-e turbulence closure. As mentioned before, the small-flume experiments yielded results beyond all expectations. As a side-effect, the analysis of the large-flume experiments could not be accomplished within this dissertation and the work that is presently in progress is briefly described in PART V "Work in progress". Finally, PART VI summarizes the main conclusions of this dissertation.


We consider a half-duplex wireless relay network with hybrid-automatic retransmission request (HARQ) and Rayleigh fading channels. In this paper, we analyze the average throughput and outage probability of the multirelay delay-limited (DL) HARQ system with an opportunistic relaying scheme in decode-and-forward (DF) mode, in which the best relay is selected to transmit the source's regenerated signal. A simple and distributed relay selection strategy is considered for multirelay HARQ channels. Then, we utilize the nonorthogonal cooperative transmission between the source and selected relay for retransmission of source data toward the destination, if needed, using space-time codes. We analyze the performance of the system. We first derive the cumulative density function (cdf) and probability density function (pdf) of the selected relay HARQ channels. Then, the cdf and pdf are used to determine the exact outage probability in the lth round of HARQ. The outage probability is required to compute the throughput-delay performance of this half-duplex opportunistic relaying protocol. The packet delay constraint is represented by L, which is the maximum number of HARQ rounds. An outage is declared if the packet is unsuccessful after L HARQ rounds. Furthermore, simple closed-form upper bounds on outage probability are derived. Based on the derived upper bound expressions, it is shown that the proposed schemes achieve the full spatial diversity order of N + 1, where N is the number of potential relays. Our analytical results are confirmed by simulation results. In addition, simulation shows that our proposed scheme can achieve higher average throughput, compared with direct transmission and conventional two-phase relay networks.


Previous empirical tests of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) in mature and
emerging capital markets focused on the premise that there is a positive linear
relationship between portfolio betas and portfolio returns. The CAPM predicts that
the expected return for any asset is a positive function of only three variables namely,
beta (the covariance of asset return and market return), the risk free rate and the
expected market return.
Earlier findings by Black, Jensen and Scholes (1972) and Fama and MacBeth (1973)
in the US stock markets generally found a weak but positive relationship between
portfolio returns and beta over the entire sample periods. However, this assertion was
seriously challenged by the findings of Banz (1981) and Fama and French (1992)
which evidence indicated the absence of a systematic relationship between beta and
portfolio returns. Further evidence indicated that other variables such as size of the
finn and the ratio of the book value of a finn's common equity to its market value seemed to do better than beta in explaining the cross-sectional variations in average
asset returns. Pettengill, Sundaram and Mathur (1995) offered a new interpretation of
systematic relationship and introduced a new methodology to test the CAPM, which
assumes a conditional relationship between portfolio returns and beta depending on
whether the excess market return is positive or negative.
The main objective of the study is to examine this conditional relationship between
beta and returns as proposed by Pettengill, Sundaram and Mathur (1995) to
Malaysian stock returns. To study this relationship, monthly data for a period of 15
years between January 1985 and December 1999 were used. The study also looked at
the impact of non-synchronous trading problem on the KLSE. In addition, the study
also examined the impact of portfolio size on the systematic and conditional as well
as unconditional relationships between beta and portfolio returns.
The results indicated that there was a very weak evidence of a significant risk
premium on beta when the unconditional relationship between beta and portfolio
returns was considered. When the sample was split into periods whether the excess
market return is positive or negative, there was a significant relationship between
portfolio returns and beta. The evidence also indicated that the size of portfolio had a
positive linear relationship with' the value of the cross-sectional coefficient under
conditional relationship. However, the results did not support any positive reward for
holding market risk during the sample period.


In the context of parameter estimation and model selection, it is only quite recently that a direct link between the Fisher information and information-theoretic quantities has been exhibited. We give an interpretation of this link within the standard framework of information theory. We show that in the context of population coding, the mutual information between the activity of a large array of neurons and a stimulus to which the neurons are tuned is naturally related to the Fisher information. In the light of this result, we consider the optimization of the tuning curves parameters in the case of neurons responding to a stimulus represented by an angular variable.


Simple oximes undergo electro reduction with the uptake of four electrons per molecule to form primary amines. The four oximes taken up for study the benzophenone oxime (that carries two phenyl group), salicylaldoxime (that carries a hydroxyl phenyl group and a hydrogen atom), betafurfuraldoxime (that carries a hydrogen atom and a furan nucleus) and cyclohexanone oxime (that carries an alicyclic ring).
The electro reduction of the four oximes were carried out at graphite, mercury and deposited nickel black cathodes in (a) aqueous ethanolic hydrochloric acid solution and in (b) aqueous ethanolic ammonium sulphate solution, kept at the pH around 7-8 by the addition of ammonia.
Aqueous ethanol hydrochloric acid medium: Benzophenone oxime is highly reducible in this medium at all cathodes. The cyclic voltammograms on these cathodes show a well-defined reduction peak thus supporting the preparative scale results.
Salicylaldoxime is also reducible at these three cathodes. Well-defined reduction peak seen in the cyclic voltammograms support this. But its efficiency of reduction is less than that of benzophenone oxime. This is obviously due to the fact that salicylaldoxime carries a (hydroxy) phenyl group and a –H atom, whereas benzophenone oxime has two negative groups – phenyl groups. Beta-furfuraldoxime is reducible at these cathodes in this medium. This is confirmed only from the cyclic voltammetric and polarographic data.
The behavior of cyclohexanone oxime is quite different from other three oximes. The striking contrast observed in this oxime may be attributable to its alicyclic nature. The resuction efficiency of this oxime is relatively poor on graphite, mercury and nickel black cathodes and this may be principally due to low reactivity of the oxime and to the hydrolysis that the oxime experiences in the acid medium. The cyclic voltammogram of this oxime on graphite shows no reduction peak at all; and this resembles the base electrolyte, whereas the cyclic voltammograms of benzophenone oxime, salicylaldoxime and beta-furfuraldoxime show well-defined single reduction peak under identical experimental conditions, lending credence to the conclusion that cyclohexanone oxime is insensitive to graphite cathode in this medium.
The nature of electrode process involved in the reduction of these oximes at mercury, graphite and nickel black were investigated by applying Nicholson-Shain criteria selectively to the cyclic voltammograms of these oximes (obtained at HMDE, graphite and nickel black cathodes) in aqueous ethanol hydrochloric acid. The reduction of the aromatic oximes at mercury and graphite cathodes appears to be a simple diffusion controlled irreversible charge transfer process. This electrode process is quite conspicuous by absence of chemical reaction following charge transfer. Cyclic voltammograms obtained with multi-cyclus confirm this. The behavior of the oxime at nickel black cathode needs special mention. This is an electrocatalytic type of electrode for which no equations were proposed by Nicholson and Shain. At this cathode, the electrode process is under diffusion control for all the four oximes and it should be emphasized that its behavior resembles a homogeneous catalytic reaction for which Nicholson-Shain criteria are available. It may be a fortutious coincidence and further study is required to confirm this.
The reduction efficiency of cyclohexanone oxime at graphite cathode in this medium is very poor, compared to other oximes. Its cyclic voltammogram obtained at graphite cathode, corroborates this. Though the shape resembles the supporting electrolyte, addition of electro-active substance fails to produce even marginal increase in current. This implies that cyclohexanone oxime may be insensitive to graphite cathode in aqueous ethanolic ammonium sulphate medium too.
In the case of mercury cathode also, the reduction behavior of cyclohexanone oxime is quite different from other three oximes. High reduction efficiency of these three oximes observed at mercury cathode is principally due to the chemical activity of ammonium amalgam formed in situ. Cyclohexanone oxime, an alicyclic oxime, appears to be less sensitive to amalgam reduction than aromatic oximes. The cyclic voltammetric data also extend support to this conclusion. The cyclic voltammogram of the oxime at HMDE cathode resembles the base electrolyte and unlike other oximes, the addition of electro-active material fails to produce even marginal increase in current.


BYOL (Bring Your Own Lime), a novel laboratory experiment, is introduced in this paper. Students are encouraged to bring affordable household and grocery store chemicals into the classroom. The Bring Your Own Chemical (BYOC) concept demonstrates to students that food and household products are chemicals too. Citruses are often used to highlight the link between everyday life and chemistry. Due to the large amount of citric acid that limes contain, they can be squeezed and their juice used for experimentation. The aim of the experiment is to determine the first stepwise dissociation constant of citric acid in grocery store limes. The BYOL: Bring Your Own Lime laboratory experiment achieves several goals: it makes chemistry relatable, boosts both content knowledge (preparative chemistry, spectrophotometry and conductivity measurements) and soft skills, is not time-consuming (requires 75 min if the provided calibration curve is used), and is an enjoyable experience.


Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks persist in patients despite the use of conventional treatments. This might be due to chronic inflammation as reflected in epidemiological studies associating circulating low-grade inflammatory markers with CVD recurrent events. Here, we explored this potential link by assessing plasma dual-specificity phosphatase 1 (DUSP1) levels and comparing them to high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) levels and their associations to conventional CVD risk factors in confirmed CVD patients. Methods Human adults with reported CVD (n = 207) and controls (n = 70) living in Kuwait were used in this study. Anthropometric and classical biochemical parameters were determined. Plasma levels of DUSP1, oxLDL, and hsCRP were measured using human enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Results DUSP1 and hsCRP plasma levels and their least square means were higher in CVD cases, while oxLDL plasma levels were lower (p < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that DUSP1 and hsCRP are independently associated with CVD in the studied population, as reflected by 2-fold and 1.5-fold increased risks with increased levels of DUSP1 and hsCRP, respectively. In our study, DUSP1 levels were found to be associated with CVD despite statin treatment and diabetes status (p < 0.05), whereas hsCRP mainly correlated with obesity markers. Conclusions Circulating DUSP1 might be a predictor of chronic subclinical inflammation and residual risk in CVD patients, whereas our data suggest that the association between hsCRP and CVD is largely accounted for adiposity risk factors.


The general theme of this thesis is that economic integration in the case of developing countries ought to be conceived as a strategy for economic development, rather than as a tariff issue. Considering that developing countries are still in the process of realising their economic potential, they can benefit from the dynamic effects of integration. It is argued that economic integration among such countries is marked with uncertainty. Its success hinges to a large extent on the ability of the integrating countries to adopt an "allocative" approach which simultaneously avoids the occurrence of crises in the distribution of benefits and costs of integration and ensures the coordination of investment and production programmes to take advantage of the enlarged market. The "allocative" approach aims initially at partial integration, as it concentrates on the sector or industry where integration can be most effective. After some gains are realised, integration could be extended gradually to include other sectors. This framework is discussed in the context of the Arab Middle East countries, and an approach and a strategy for industrial integration among these countries are suggested. The study comprises two parts. In Part I, an attempt is made to develop a theoretical framework for the study of economic integration among developing countries. It starts by examining in Chapter One the theory of economic integration and its relevance to developing countries, and then in Chapter Two develops an operational methodology for identifying and measuring integration effects of regional projects. Chapter Three reviews the alternative approaches to regional industrial integration experienced by various groupings in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with a view to appraise the "package deal" approach as an innovative solution to the problem of distribution of benefits and costs, and its desirability for a regional grouping such as the Arab Middle East countries«In Part II, the case for integration among the Arab Middle East countries (to include the Arab countries in Asia together with Egypt and the Sudan) is examined, with an attempt to devise a strategy for an integrated industrial development among these countries* As a starting point, Chapter Pour gives a critical account of the attempts at regional economic cooperation and integration in the Arab Middle East region, and the emerging role of capital surpluses accruing to the oil countries in promoting the idea of integration. Chapter Five discusses the economic framework of the countries under consideration, in order to assess the role of economic integration as a desirable alternative to national development. Chapter Six discusses the developing industrial growth patterns in the above countries, and relates integration to future industrial growth. Chapter Seven explores some of the possibilities for integration among the Arab Middle East countries in specific industries in a number of industrial sectors whose economic viability can be enhanced by the pooling of scarce resources, skills, and markets. This will be followed in Chapter Eight by a methodological study for the assessment of the integration potential in one of these industries which is fertilizers. Chapter Nine focuses on the elements which are deemed central in the framing of a strategy for an integrated industrial development based on the "package deal" approach in the region. Finally, Chapter Ten presents a concluding summary of the study.


Mixed-precision quantization can potentially achieve the optimal tradeoff between performance and compression rate of deep neural networks, and thus, have been widely investigated. However, it lacks a systematic method to determine the exact quantization scheme. Previous methods either examine only a small manually-designed search space or utilize a cumbersome neural architecture search to explore the vast search space. These approaches cannot lead to an optimal quantization scheme efficiently. This work proposes bit-level sparsity quantization (BSQ) to tackle the mixed-precision quantization from a new angle of inducing bit-level sparsity. We consider each bit of quantized weights as an independent trainable variable and introduce a differentiable bit-sparsity regularizer. BSQ can induce all-zero bits across a group of weight elements and realize the dynamic precision reduction, leading to a mixed-precision quantization scheme of the original model. Our method enables the exploration of the full mixed-precision space with a single gradient-based optimization process, with only one hyperparameter to tradeoff the performance and compression. BSQ achieves both higher accuracy and higher bit reduction on various model architectures on the CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets comparing to previous methods.


The aim of this paper is to analyse the way housing crisis influences the residential mobility of transnational elites in the Geneva metropolitan area. On the one hand, it is based on a quantitative research mandated by local political authorities and on the other, on the ongoing research, fieldwork and questions on which my PhD is based. The first section presents the specificities of the Geneva transborder metropolization process and the dynamics of fragmentation that the housing crisis generates. The second section exposes some preliminary results of the transnational elites' residential mobility through the method of virtual ethnography. The last section analyses the role of public policies regarding the integration of newcomers. It appears that because of the housing crisis it is required to mobilize social networks in order to find a satisfying accommodation. Transnational elites, who are less rooted locally, don't neglect their preference for a residence in the city centre of Geneva, according to urban lifestyles and thus develop virtual strategies of socialization in order to get integrated to the city. The public policies support the use of virtual networks and thus reinforce fragmentation between both the "international" and the "local" Geneva.


Given the increase in scale and complexity of robotics, robot application development is challenging in the real world. It may be expensive, unsafe, or impractical to collect data, or test systems, in reality. Simulation provides an answer to these challenges. In simulation, data collection is relatively inexpensive, scenes can be procedurally generated, and state information is trivially available. Despite these benefits, the use of simulators is often limited to the early stages of application development. In this work, we take steps to close the gap between simulation and reality, for Lidar simulation. We adopt the perspective that the eventual purpose of a simulator is a tool for robot application development. Our framework for sensor simulation consists of three components. The first is sensor modeling, which describes how a sensor interacts with a scene. The second is scene generation, needed to construct simulated worlds corresponding to reality. The third is simulator evaluation, based on comparing real and simulated data. We formalize the intuition that application performance must be similar in simulation and reality, using an application-level loss. Our framework is broadly applicable to simulating sensors other than Lidars. We instantiate our framework for two domains. The first domain is planar Lidar simulation in indoor scenes. We construct a high-fidelity simulator using a parametric sensor model. We show how application development paths for our simulator are closer to reality, compared to a baseline. We also pose sensor modeling as a case of distribution regression, which leads to a novel application of a nonparametric method that adapts to trends in sensor data. The second domain is Lidar simulation in o-road scenes. Our approach is to build a library of terrain primitives, derived from real Lidar observations. These are shown to generalize, resulting in an expressive simulator for complex o-road scenes. For this domain as well, we quantitatively demonstrate that our simulator is better for application development, compared to a baseline. Our work suggests a generic approach to building useful simulators. We view them as predictive models, and perform thorough tests on real data. We evaluate them with an application-level loss, which supports their greater use in the development cycle.