The massive health impacts of air pollution have gradually put it firmly in the media spotlight, and almost everything we hear about air quality these days seems to be alarmist or resigned. Moving beyond doom-mongering to solve a major portion of the problem will demand solutions that are reliable, long-lasting and deliver guaranteed results – just like the approaches used to tackle other types of hard-to-deal-with pollution such as in water, hazardous waste and ground pollution. The same applies to indoor air pollution, which is another major public health challenge because we spend over 80% of our time in enclosed spaces. This attitude reflects the idea of the exposome, which guides public policies seeking to cut people's day-to-day exposure at every stage of their lives. It is also a response to strong pressure from society, which prefers to think of protection in terms of individuals.For Veolia, guaranteeing air quality in a building means addressing the issue through three complementary approaches. First, it requires polluting phenomena to be diagnosed and described, identifying the nature of this constant and invisible form of pollution, and assessing its level. This is what we do through our AIR Control service. Then the pollution has to be treated by deploying techniques appropriate to the type of remediation required, as a function of the building type. This is our AIR Performance service. Lastly, and bearing in mind the impacts of air quality on individual behavior, associating the various stakeholders is essential to obtaining lasting results. This is our AIR Human service. Schools, office buildings, hospitals and health care facilities, shopping malls, hotels, etc. – all are concerned and all need to provide good quality air to their users and occupants. New solutions are now available that rely on optimization of air treatment units developed for operating rooms and clean rooms, as well as on new continuous measurement technologies made possible by microsensors. Two levers are needed to support widespread rollout of these solutions: research and development to achieve commercial release of ever more innovative techniques that combine air quality with optimized energy use as a cost-effective package; and stronger regulation to introduce a performance obligation that will guarantee air of good quality, a process already seen in decisions recently enacted by some countries.


Density is an important physical property and its measurement has wide application in a vast number of industries including; oil and gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, brewing, food & beverage production and mining. Density is often required to be accurately measured either as a standalone property or in combination with other flow properties for the purpose of quality assessment, process control, and custody transfer. Given the increasing importance of density measurement, extensive research has been conducted over recent years to develop newer and more accurate density measurement sensors and to improve the accuracy of existing sensors.

This thesis describes the design and development of a novel, non-invasive, non-radioactive Vibrating Density Measurement System (VDMS) capable of measuring fluid density in both single phase and multiphase flows. The device is also capable of measuring mean in-situ phase volume fractions in two-phase flows. The VDMS comprises three sub-units; (i) a measurement unit which includes a straight length of sensing pipe with corrugated bellows at both ends, an actuator and relevant sensors; (ii) a signal conditioning and processing unit; and (iii) a data acquisition unit.

The thesis also reports the development of a novel mathematical density prediction model which is used in conjunction with the VDMS. It then goes on to report the results of static bench test experiments that were conducted on the VDMS using a bespoke test rig. These tests were performed (i) to obtain the mass of the sensing pipe, its stiffness constant and damping constant; (ii) to investigate the frequency response characteristics of the VDMS; (iii) to obtain the VDMS constant; (iv) to investigate the sensing pipe displacement pattern; (v) to investigate the capability of the VDMS to give accurate density measurements of static fluids and (vi) to define the optimal VDMS operating conditions. Computation of density was achieved using the VDMS, the density prediction model and a novel signal processing technique. This signal processing technique used the Discrete Fourier Transforms (DFTs) of the measured force, used to mechanically excite the sensing pipe at its centre, and the measured displacement at the sensing pipe centre.

Next, the thesis reports a novel computer based control system that was developed to ensure that the VDMS automatically operated at its optimal operating conditions, so that errors in the density measurement were minimised. The control system was also capable of providing online computation of the flow mixture density.

Results are reported of several experiments conducted by the author on the VDMS to measure the fluid density in a range of "water only" flows, "solids-in-water" flows and "air-in-water" flows. These flows were all vertically upward and were established in the working section of a multiphase flow loop. These multiphase flow experiments were subsequently extended to compute the mean in-situ phase volume fraction of the solids phase in "solids-water" flows and the gas phase in "air-water" flows. For the "water only" and "solids-water" flow experiments, the mean error in the predicted density was consistently within 0.5% of the reference density and the standard deviation of the error was less than 1%. For "air-in-water" flows the predicted density was within 1% of the reference density for flows where the air volume fraction in the mixture was less than 10%.

The mean in-situ volume fractions, measured by the VDMS, of the dispersed solids in "solids-in-water" flows and of the dispersed air in "air-in-water" flows were within 10% of the reference measurements for the vast majority of measurements taken.

Finally, the thesis describes a modified mathematical model, used with the VDMS, for predicting mixture density in "air-in-water" flows. This modified model is extended to make use of the predicted coupling stiffness between the VDMS sensing pipe and the multiphase mixture. The modified model gave density measurements with a higher order of accuracy than the earlier model which did not consider the effect of the flow compressibility on the coupling between the sensing pipe and the pipe contents.


The currently adopted practice for uncertainty quantification of thermal-hydraulics code predictions is done through statistical sampling where the code is evaluated multiple times using different values of input parameters that are randomly generated according to their distributions. However, the distributions describing the uncertainties of many important input parameters are often not known a priori and their estimation often rely solely on expert judgment. Furthermore, many of these parameters are not physically observable and often are used within the code as tuning parameters to fit the prediction to a specific dataset during code development and/or assessment phases. In this work, a Bayesian calibration framework is adopted to quantify the uncertainty of model parameters on the basis of experimental data. Within the framework, prior beliefs about the parameters are assumed and then updated by the available experimental data resulting in posterior distributions of the parameters. The new distributions represent the uncertainty of the calibrated parameters as informed by the available data. Four complications often arise in applying the framework to complex computational models. The first is to derive pertinent error information from multivariate time-dependent output. The large number of observations in time-dependent ouput can result in a computationally intractable problem if each of the highly correlated observations is to be considered individually. The second is to acknowledge that the models are only approximations of reality and thus subject to biases, often referred to as model discrepancy or epistemic uncertainty, while experiment data are also affected by measurement errors. The third is to ensure convergence of the calibration process despite non-linearity and interactions in the sensitivity of the output to the uncertain parameters. Fourth is the increased computation requirement to evaluate the code several thousands of times with different sampled parameters values. The first complication has already been addressed in a previous work through principal component analysis, while the Bayesian calibration approach presented in this work addresses the three other issues. The proposed Bayesian calibration employs a metamodel based on Gaussian Process regression to efficiently emulate the actual code runs, and a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to draw the samples from the resulting complex posterior distribution. To take into account model discrepancy/epistemic uncertainty and measurement errors, the formulation of the likelihood function that determines the posterior parameters distribution includes terms for biases and experiment data uncertainty. The method is demonstrated and verified for the calibration of a multi-parameter reflood model in the thermal-hydraulics system code TRACE. The calibration is based on experimental data from the reflooding experiment conducted in the FEBA separate effect test (SET) facility. The resulting calibration method is demonstrated to be very fast, accurate and converging for several (5) parameters. The results obtained from Bayesian calibration also helped identifying correlations between parameters. Finally, the updated (posterior) model parameter uncertainties is verified to result in narrower temperature prediction uncertainties while still consistent with the experimental data and the modelled bias term.


We address the problem of aggregating an ensemble of predictors with known loss bounds in a semi-supervised binary classification setting, to minimize prediction loss incurred on the unlabeled data. We find the minimax optimal predictions for a very general class of loss functions including all convex and many non-convex losses, extending a recent analysis of the problem for misclassification error. The result is a family of semi-supervised ensemble aggregation algorithms which are as efficient as linear learning by convex optimization, but are minimax optimal without any relaxations. Their decision rules take a form familiar in decision theory -- applying sigmoid functions to a notion of ensemble margin -- without the assumptions typically made in margin-based learning.


Infants who develop food allergy display hyperresponsive innate immunity at birth that promotes nonclassical TH2 differentiation. Fighting food allergy For people with food allergies, a slice of pizza or a peanut butter sandwich can be deadly. Yet despite the increasing prevalence of food allergy, little is known as to the immunological causes. Now, Zhang et al. report that infants who later developed food allergy had altered immunity at birth. Cord blood from these infants had more monocytes compared with CD4+ T cells and decreased numbers of regulatory T cells. Moreover, the monocytes from food-allergic infants secreted more inflammatory cytokines than those from healthy infants. These cytokines suppressed interleukin-2 (IL-2) expression by CD4+ T cells and skewed differentiation of these cells to a nonclassical T helper 2 (TH2) phenotype. Anti-inflammatory strategies should therefore be considered in preventing food allergy in these individuals. Food allergy is a major health burden in early childhood. Infants who develop food allergy display a proinflammatory immune profile in cord blood, but how this is related to interleukin-4 (IL-4)/T helper 2 (TH2)–type immunity characteristic of allergy is unknown. In a general population-derived birth cohort, we found that in infants who developed food allergy, cord blood displayed a higher monocyte to CD4+ T cell ratio and a lower proportion of natural regulatory T cell (nTreg) in relation to duration of labor. CD14+ monocytes of food-allergic infants secreted higher amounts of inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor–α) in response to lipopolysaccharide. In the presence of the mucosal cytokine transforming growth factor–β, these inflammatory cytokines suppressed IL-2 expression by CD4+ T cells. In the absence of IL-2, inflammatory cytokines decreased the number of activated nTreg and diverted the differentiation of both nTreg and naïve CD4+ T cells toward an IL-4–expressing nonclassical TH2 phenotype. These findings provide a mechanistic explanation for susceptibility to food allergy in infants and suggest anti-inflammatory approaches to its prevention.


The current study examined the association of callous-unemotional (CU) traits with group offending (i.e., committing a crime with others; gang involvement) and with the role that the offender may play in a group offense (e.g., being the leader). This analysis was conducted in an ethnically and racially diverse sample (N = 1,216) of justice-involved adolescents (ages 13 to 17) from 3 different sites. CU traits were associated with a greater likelihood of the adolescent offending in groups and being in a gang. Importantly, both associations remained significant after controlling for the adolescent's age, level of intelligence, race and ethnicity, and level of impulse control. The association of CU traits with gang membership also remained significant after controlling for the adolescent's history of delinquent behavior. Further, CU traits were associated with several measures of taking a leadership role in group crimes. CU traits were also associated with greater levels of planning in the group offense for which the adolescent was arrested, although this was moderated by the adolescent's race and was not found in Black youth. These results highlight the importance of CU traits for understanding the group process involved in delinquent acts committed by adolescents. They also underscore the importance of enhancing the effectiveness of treatments for these traits in order to reduce juvenile delinquency.


Since the 1970s, courtyard gardens with diverse scales and design configurations have been introduced in the planning of Malaysian public hospitals to enhance users' experiences. However, these have never been systematically evaluated to understand of how they perform and what improvements can be made to them to increase their responsiveness to users' needs and inform the practice of both hospital designers and managers. This paper presents the results of fieldwork conducted in a large central courtyard in a Malaysian public hospital. Interview surveys and field measurements were conducted to provide a new understanding of users' perceptions of the various physical and environmental attributes and their satisfaction levels with them.
Keywords: Hospital courtyard garden; perceptions; experiences; level of satisfaction.
eISSN 2514-751X © 2019. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/aje-bs.v4i13.348


Introduction Replacement of damaged tissue is nowadays an aim of tissue engineering. This technique involves the use of porous or fibrous structures – the so-called scaffolds – that support the colonization with the desired cell type and which are degraded after fulfilling their temporary supporting function. Basic requirements for the prevailing materials used in this field are nontoxicity, low immunogenicity and cell-adhesiveness. Furthermore blood-contacting devices should exhibit low thrombogenicity. The biopolymer silk, mainly consisiting of the protein silk fibroin, matches some of these criteria but bare silk does not facilitate cellular adhesion and growth and unfortunately the material is prone to platelet attachment. In our approach, the chemical surface immobilization of a cell adhesive peptide of silk samples reduces thrombocyte adhesion to a large extent while simultaneously promotes specific adhesion and colonization by endothelial cells (ECs). The specific interaction of the modification was further demonstrated by fibroblast cell culture. Materials & Methods The EC specific adhesive peptide Arg-Glu-Asp-Val (REDV) derived from the extra cellular matrix protein fibronectin was used in our experiments. The peptide was chemically immobilized onto silk fabric scaffold by using hexamethylene diisocyanate (HMDI) as an activator for the substrate. Subsequent hydrolysis of pending isocyanate moieties yielded in primary amino functionalities. REDV was subsequently conjugated directly using a short chain amino-reactive crosslinker or via a bifunctional polyethylene glycol (PEG) spacer. Additionally, silk was modified with amino-functional PEG only. Modified as well as untreated specimens were subjected to cell culture using ECs and fibroblasts. In addition samples were challenged with platelet rich plasma in order to evaluate thrombocyte adhesion. Potential changes in material bulk properties and morphology were checked by scanning electron microscopy, gel permeation chromatography and mechanical testing. Results & Discussion Coverage of silk fabric with ECs was greatly promoted through REDV-modification by a factor of 17 (directly coupled peptide) and a factor of 20 (PEG-mediated coupling) respectively after 2 weeks growth in comparison to cell colonization of untreated material. Substrate modification also inhibited initial (24 h) fibroblast adhesion. Thrombocyte attachment was strongly reduced 5-fold as a result of PEG-modification, independent of an additionally conjugated peptide. Mechanical (tensile testing) as well as morphological properties (SEM) were not significantly altered by the chemical treatment. The initial activation of silk showed no detectable influence on the composition (GPC). Conclusion Taken together, the feasibility of improving the biological performance of silk, an established biomaterial, was shown. We where able to show that the chemical modification left the basic material properties largely unaffected. These findings may contribute to novel tissue engineering approaches that facilitate the endothelialization of cardiovascular implants such as vascular grafts and heart valves. Figure 1: Covalent immobilization of the REDV peptide – either directly coupled or PEG-mediated – renders silk an excellent substrate for endothelialization. In addition the presence of PEG alone inhibits the attachment of platelets to a large extend.


Biometry of Iberian Dippers Cinclus cinclus has typically been addressed from a geographic perspective, often considering small local populations. In this work, we explored environmental correlates of among-population phenotypic variation in Dipper morphology throughout Iberia. We tested for effect of river slope, altitude, temperature and precipitation (summarized using Principal Component Analyses, PCA) on absolute and relative (controlling for tarsus length) wing length and tarsus length. We used data of 222 Dippers captured from 35 rivers in eight breeding areas in N and S Iberia. All biometric variables were larger for older birds and males, though tarsus length was not affected by age. Wing length was longer in S Iberia, even when controlling for tarsus length, All biometric variables co-varied negatively with one of the PCA components of abiotic factors, owing to large-scale environment differences between N and S Iberia (zone). The abiotic factors predicted mean tarsus length of birds within zones, with tarsus increasing with increasing river slope and decreasing temperatures and precipitation. Furthermore, Dippers from S Iberia were not larger but had longer absolute and relative wings than those from N Iberia. Altogether, these findings imply that the morphological diversification of Iberian Dippers is affected by the environment and that body size-wing length allometric relationship differs between N and S Iberia.


An improved heat balance nodal model is proposed to predict the inner wall temperature profiles and calculate the stratified air-conditioning load in large spaces. The model aims to weaken the correlation between load calculation methods and indoor airflow patterns, and to ensure the synchronization of each heat transfer process, so as to be closer to actual situations. The scale-model experiments were conducted in an enthalpy different laboratory in University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST) in Shanghai, China. This paper took the air distribution of nozzle air supply system as an example to calculate the inner wall temperatures and the stratified air-conditioning load by the nodal model and verified by the scale-model experiments. The results showed the maximum deviations of the experimental and theoretical values for the inner wall temperatures, the heat transfer load from the nonair-conditioned (NAC) area and the stratified air-conditioning load were all within 5%. The effects of the air temperature in the NAC area on the heat transfer load from the NAC area and the stratified air-conditioning load were analyzed, and the load nomogram was produced. It was found the heat transfer load from the NAC area accounted for 10–30% of the stratified air-conditioning load. The load nomogram compared two methods for determining the air temperature in the NAC area and gave the recommended one. The findings in this paper can be used to further develop load calculation models for non-uniform thermal environments.


A qualitative study was conducted to identify perceptions of high-risk pregnant Aboriginal women during pregnancy . Five women were interviewed by the researcher who is also Aboriginal . Each woman was a client of the Healthy Mother Healthy Baby pregnancy outreach program in Saskatoon, and was considered to be at high-risk for poor pregnancy outcomes . Interviews were conducted utilizing a phenomenologically-based model of research, from which emerged themes or commonalities of thought between each woman during this time of their lives . The themes were discussed with Aboriginal women elders who worked with Aboriginal families in Saskatoon, for further insight and discussion of the findings . The themes were collated under one general theme called `hopes and dreams.' Each theme included the interest of these women to `want to' move ahead with their lives in the area of improving their relationships with their offspring, their partners, and within themselves . Though each women talked about these areas as being important, all except one did not manifest them in their lives . The implications for the delivery of health care services include the need for health care workers to gain further understanding of the positive motivational factors of high-risk pregnant Aboriginal women that work towards achieving long-term positive behavioural changes, and thus reduce the risks of poor pregnancy outcomes . Other recommendations from this research for health promotion programs include the development of a partnership with the urban Aboriginal community in delivering culturally-based services and teachings to complement the educative and supportive model of program delivery .


Vigilantes have arisen at many times in different regions of the world, taking the law into their own hands as defenders, often by force, of their view of the good life against those they see to be its enemies. They have a strong attraction for some commentators and they rouse equally strong hostility in others. For yet others, who attempt to take a broader view, they are a source of deep ambivalence. Academic interest in the phenomenon has grown strongly over recent years, and this has contributed significantly to an increase in knowledge of its distribution beyond the bounds of western Europe, the United States, and particularly in many parts of Africa. Although vigilantes are most commonly male, increased evidence of women's vigilantism has also come to light in recent years.
 Vigilantism is difficult to define in rigorous terms, partly because of general problems of comparative study, but there are also special reasons in this case. Vigilantism is not so much a thing in itself as a fundamentally relational phenomenon which only makes sense in relation to the formal institutions of the state. It is in several ways a frontier phenomenon, occupying an awkward borderland between law and illegality. Many of its manifestations are short-lived and unstable, nor is it always what it claims to be. For these reasons, definitions of vigilantism are best treated as an "ideal type," which real cases may be expected to approximate to or depart from. This approach provides the possibility of comparing different cases of vigilantism and also allows one to explore the differences and similarities between it and other "dwellers in the twilight zone," such as social bandits, mafias, guerrillas, and resistance movements.


A sedentary life style is a factor of risk for the development of overweight and childhood obesity, conditions associated with dyslipidemia, arterial hypertension and insulin resistance, among other disorders. The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional status and the association with the profile of physical activity in Municipal Schools in Corumbá – MS. A cross-sectional study was carried out in a sample of 403 pupils, aged 7-10 years, in which children with Body Mass Index (BMI) values > 85th and < 95th and > 95th percentile were classified in risk of overweight and overweight, respectively. The index of physical activity was determined by a specific questionnaire for the study, to obtain data about duration (minutes), intensity (metabolic equivalent) and energy expenditure (kcalories) of both active and sedentary physical activities. A prevalence of 6.2% e 6.5% to risk of overweight and overweight, respectively, was verified, with higher prevalence in girls than in boys. Most physical activities performed by children were light (< 3 METs) and moderated (3 a 6 METs); no vigorous (> 6 METs) physical activity was recorded. The older the children, the lesser the time spent in active physical activities. Normal-weight children are more active, practice more intense physical activities and spend less time watching television and playing video-games than overweight children. The data emphasize the importance of promoting changes in the life-style through the introduction of healthy habits, since infancy, and their maintenance for the whole life. Active children favor an active healthy adult population too, which can contribute, consequently, for a reduction in the incidence of morbidity and mortality at adulthood.


In alignment with sustainable goals outlined by Saudi Vision 2030, the research paper aimed to investigate the views on employability skills in higher education by exploring the perceptions of Saudi students and education leaders. The study's qualitative design caters to the exploration of the practical significance of employability skills and attributes of Saudi graduates as a function allowing to address unemployment and strengthen the economy. The researchers analyzed two sets of qualitative data collected from a sample of Saudi students (n=49) and a sample of education leaders (n=6) with the help of Likert-scale questionnaires and open-ended questionnaires, respectively. Corroborated with the scholarly evidence, the explorative analysis of the data showed the practical significance of employability skills of Saudi graduates for achieving the country's economic goals through the means of sustainable employability. Overall, the results are consistent with the current scholarship on the topic suggesting that all stakeholders should partake in the development of initiatives and programs that hone transversal employability skills. In the context of Saudi Arabia, the ongoing unemployment crisis necessitates the introduction of a national policy that would formulate a collaborative agreement between the three main stakeholders - employment-seekers, employers, and higher education institutions.


A high Q-factor photonic microwave filter showing tuning and reshaping capabilities and based on stimulated Brillouin scattering is demonstrated. The filter bandpass can be continuously tuned, changing the microwave oscillator used to generate the pump power, and the filter shape can be modified by modulating the microwave tone. A single bandpass over the microwave spectrum can be obtained by using single-sideband suppressed carrier modulation. Experimental results demonstrate the wide tuning range of the filter, its reshaping capability, and Q factor of 670.


The thesis is entitled "Aircraft Maintenance Engineering: Developing an Aircraft Maintenance Programme using Reliability Centred Maintenance/ MSG3 Analysis Taking into Consideration ETOPS and Low Utilisation", It brings together and explains an area that the author feels is not well documented or published today in the world of aviation maintenance management, yet it is fundamental on the continued airworthiness of an aircraft, it can be considered as the building block for maintaining the inherent reliability and airworthiness of the design. It is the author's experience that too many times operators have attempted to carry out the function of maintenance engineering with out full understanding of the reasons and implication of their actions, thus ending up with an ineffective and non applicable collection of maintenance activities that can only add to the expense of the technical operation and even at times contribute to the possibility of occurrences. The thesis also goes on to develop new decision tree diagrams based upon Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) / Maintenance Steering Group 3 (MSG3) analysis for the use in developing the Maintenance and Reliability Programme and incorporating new aspects of aircraft operation.


This fascinating, fully illustrated volume is the definitive guide to every aspect of the workhouse and of the poor relief system in which it played a pivotal part. Compiled by Peter Higginbotham, one of Britain's best-known experts on the subject, this A-Z cornucopia covers everything from the 1725 publication - an account of several work-houses to the South African Zulu admitted to Fulham Road Workhouse in 1880. With hundreds of fascinating anecdotes, plus priceless information for researchers including workhouse locations throughout the British Isles, useful websites and archive repository details, maps, plans, original workhouse publications and an extensive bibliography, it will delight family historians and general readers alike. Where was my local workhouse? What records did they keep? What is gruel and is it really what inmates lived on? How did you get out of a workhouse? What famous people were once workhouse inmates? Are there any workhouse buildings I can visit? If these are the kinds of questions you've ever wanted to know the answer to, then this is the book for you.


This year's signaling breakthroughs emphasize the importance of looking beyond linear signaling pathways. Nominations for this year's signaling breakthroughs spanned physiology, therapeutics and drug development, neuroscience, and plant signaling. Among the most exciting advances in mammalian biology were therapeutic applications of research that are overturning the conventional boundaries of signaling pathways, unexpected mechanisms to prolong life and prevent aging, new insights into schizophrenia and memory, development of a transgenic primate model, and the discovery that the cells in the lungs can "taste" noxious substances. In plant signaling, the nominations converged on the identification of the elusive receptor for the plant stress hormone abscisic acid. Finally, methodological advances were also noted with new techniques in synthetic biology enabling the precise spatiotemporal control of signaling events and increasingly facile methods for creation and analysis of proteomic data yielding tremendous increases in raw data and insights into cellular regulation.


Abstract Statistics on the wine market in countries where it is not traditionally produced or consumed are estimates using simple methods. In northeast Asia those statistics are exaggerated for a combination of several reasons. One is a labelling issue: imported bulk wine is able to be added to domestically produced wine without the front label having to declare the bottle may contain foreign product. Similar freedom applies to wine made from imported grape juice concentrate. A second (particularly in China) is a double-counting issue: domestic wine produced in one region of the country may be blended with wine produced in and packaged for final sale from another region, with both regions claiming it as their contribution to national wine output. A third possibility is a smuggling issue: some wine re-exports and imports are unrecorded. These possibilities of the wine market being exaggerated are significant for firms seeking to export to and sell in such countries, especially in the fast-growing ones of northeast Asia. This article shows the extent to which estimates for the region could change for such indicators as per capita wine consumption, wine self-sufficiency, and the region's share of global wine consumption, when alternative assumptions are made in response to these issues. (JEL classifications: F14, L66, Q13, Y10)


A method for the prediction of software maintainability during software architecture design is presented. The method takes: the requirement specification; the design of the architecture; expertise from software engineers; and, possibly, historical data as input and generates a prediction of the average effort for a maintenance task. Scenarios are used by the method to concretize the maintainability requirements and to analyze the architecture for the prediction of the maintainability. The method is formulated based on extensive experience in software architecture design and detailed design and exemplified using the design of software architecture for a haemo dialysis machine. Experiments for evaluation and validation of the method are ongoing and future work.


This paper seeks to uncover A. Mustofa Bisri as a literary writer who "departs from Islamic boarding school" which conveys intellectual religiosity through poetry. The concept of thinking used in this paper by exposing poetry as text, the world of Islamic boarding school as a con- text, and the interrelations both in poetry and religious Islamic intellectu- als as contextualization. First, the intensity of the written poetry is based on the intellectualreligiosity in theIslamicboarding school, so it is reli- giously timeless, and beyond the limitations of language usage. Aspects of events, aspects of experience, and aspects of the view of life (weltan- schauung) unite in the particular language and culture. Secondly, the prin- ciple that the idiocencracy of religious poetry based on Islamic values in the form of a poetical language is important to mark one's poet as the context of the poetical of A. Mustofa Bisri. It should be interpreted not only as a symptom of poetical language that breaks away from the mean- ing of poetry (the religious experience expressed and simultaneously dis- played in poetry), but also the dynamics interrelated between poets, po- ems, and cultural backgrounds that surround them. Third, the religious experience manifested in the language of poetry is the deepestform of religious intellectual abstraction, i.e., divined and cherished love. This condition is shaped by the crystallization of knowledge as an action in the deepest dimension of one's humanity to voice inner perceptions. By loving God, people will love God's creation, man and the universe, as he loves himself. By loving each other and the universe as God's creation, a lover will treat himself as a person of faith and do good deeds, and remind each other to hold fast to the truth, and remind each other to be patient. The concept cannot be separated from the perspective of al-Qur'an and al-Hadith.


Large and complete sections through glacial landforms formed in subaqueous environments are rare, impeding our knowledge of their internal composition and the processes responsible for their formation. Following the last deglaciation of the Icelandic Ice Sheet (IIS), a marine-terminating outlet glacier advanced out of the fjord of Borgarfjorður resulting in large-scale glaciotectonic deformation of glaciomarine sediments. Due to isostatic uplift and erosion, these glaciotectonic formations are now extensively exposed in the region and provide an opportunity to study a glaciotectonised marine sequence on land. The aim of this study is to investigate the inter-relationship between ice-marginal deformation and deposition in a glaciomarine setting, increase the understanding of glaciotectonic processes at the margins of marine-terminating glaciers, and elucidate past glacier dynamics and the regional glacial history.The main focus of the sedimentological and structural work was on the coastal cliffs of Belgsholt, Melabakkar-Asbakkar and Skipanes. The sediments and glaciotectonic structures were analysed on a range of scales using sedimentological and structural field methods, high resolution LiDAR scans and micromorphological thin sections. Shells of marine molluscs were sampled for radiocarbon dating and interpreted in the context of the stratigraphy and glaciotectonics to constrain the timeline of the regional glacial history.The study revealed a series of glaciotectonic moraines in the Melabakkar-Asbakkar and Belgsholt coastal cliffs. The southernmost moraine is the largest and structurally most complex and is interpreted to indicate the maximum extent of the Borgarfjorður glacier. Other moraines in the series record repeated re-advances of the glacier during its active northward retreat. The moraines were mainly formed by large-scale thrusting and folding of glaciomarine sediments and subsequent deposition of ice-marginal sand and gravel. During the active retreat, glaciomarine sediments accumulated in front of the glacier providing source material for the formation of subsequent moraines.Detailed analysis of micro- and macroscale structures developed within decollements show that the detachment and transport of unlithified and unfrozen sediment blocks was enabled by overpressurisation of subglacial/ice marginal porewater. This implies that hydrogeology played a key role in the construction of the moraines.The advances and subsequent active retreat of the Borgarfjorður glacier occurred between c. 13.0 and 11.7 cal. ka BP indicating that it coincided with widespread glacier advances in Iceland and in the North Atlantic region during the Younger Dryas (c. 12.7-11.5 cal. ka BP). In the Early Holocene, after c. 11.3 cal. ka BP, the glacier re-expanded to a position around 5 km inside the Younger Dryas ice limit, indicating more extensive glaciation in the region than previously thought.The results of this thesis highlight the diversity of sedimentological and glaciotectonic processes involved in the construction of large glaciotectonic moraines at the margins of marine-terminating glaciers, and indicate that such glaciers were more dynamic during the deglaciation than previously thought. (Less)


Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology. Covering all genres - from fiction, poetry and drama to diaries, letters, essays and speeches - the anthology maps the development of one of the great literatures in English in all its energy and variety. This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore. For the first time, Aboriginal writings are interleaved with other English-language writings throughout - from Bennelong's 1796 letter to the contemporary flowering of Indigenous fiction and poetry - setting up an exchange that reveals Australian history in stark new ways. From vivid settler accounts to haunting gothic tales, from raw protest to feisty urban satire and playful literary experiment, from passionate love poetry to moving memoir, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature reflects the creative eloquence of a society.


Introduction: Thermal pattern analysis is thought to be a health outcome for vertebral subluxation-centered practice. The theory is based on the notion that a healthy nervous system is one that is dynamic enough to allow for adequate adaptive responses to environmental challenges, and that when interference to this adaptation occurs, malfunction at some level occurs. This malfunction, although not necessarily perceptible, should be nonetheless measurable. Traditional pattern analysis consists of data obtained from different days. Some doctors however might wish to determine in a shorter time frame whether the patient is in a subluxation pattern. This study uses thermal readings taken 5 minutes apart and attempts to determine if their pattern or lack of is related to the health outcome of health perception. Methods: Fifty-one student volunteers were scanned twice, 5 minutes apart, using a digital thermographic instrument (TyTron C-3000) on either one, two or three visits. The participants were then divided into groups according to the number of visits they achieved. The instrument produces three lines or channels: one each for the left and right sides of the spine, and a middle or delta channel, representing the difference between the two sides. A thermal pattern calculator (TPC) was used to provide a percent of similarity or pattern between the thermal scans. Participants completed the SF-12 health survey following the second scan on each visit. The survey provides composite scores for physical and mental health perceptions. The TPC percents were compared to corresponding SF-12 composite scores to see if a relationship existed between these two health outcomes. Results: For participants' first visit, the left channel TPC percent showed a moderate, significant, and inverse correlation with physical health perception (r = -0.417, p = 0.002). Also for this group, there was a significant decrease (p = 0.04) in physical health perception with participants having a left channel TPC percent greater than 79.5. For participants achieving three visits, their first visit showed a moderate, significant, and inverse correlation between the left channel TPC percent and physical health perception (r = -0.400, p = 0.01). This Group's third visit showed a moderate, significant, and inverse correlation between the right channel TPC percent and physical health perception (r = -0.510, p = 0.002). The Group's second visit showed a small, significant, and direct correlation between right channel TPC percents and physical health perception and this finding is not consistent with pattern theory. The Group's third visit also showed a significant decrease in physical health perception in right channel TPC percents greater than 79.7 (p = 0.03). These findings, except for the Group's second visit, are consistent with pattern analysis theory. Conclusion: The majority of significant findings (five out of six) are consistent with pattern theory. The first and third visits showed significant findings consistent with pattern analysis theory. In particular, participants having a left channel TPC percent of 79.5 percent or greater, or a right channel TPC percent of 79.7 or greater, experienced decreased physical health perception. These findings may serve as the beginning of establishing protocols for obtaining thermal readings as well as guidelines for their interpretation.


My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. This book traces his thought process as he journeys from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to crafting a defense strategy in the Carter Administration to offset the Soviets' numeric superiority in conventional forces, to presiding over the dismantling of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons in the Clinton Administration, and to his creation in 2007, with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, of the Nuclear Security Project to articulate their vision of a world free from nuclear weapons and to lay out the urgent steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers.


The new law school at the University of California, Irvine is attempting to implement an innovative vision of top-tier legal education that focuses upon preparing students for the practice of law, and which emphasizes skills-based and experiential training. As part of that effort the school has restructured the traditional first-year law school curriculum so that several of the courses each focus on particular analytical methods, specifically common law analysis, statutory analysis, procedural analysis, constitutional analysis, and international legal analysis, rather than on a particular subject matter such as contracts, torts, etc. While there are some advantages to this new approach, I discuss in this brief article my concerns regarding whether this approach will be as effective in teaching first-year students basic contract law as would be a more traditional approach that attempts to simultaneously expose students to both the common law and statutory aspects of the subject in a more integrated and holistic fashion.


Aim To compare efficacy of 'split hours part-time patching' and 'continuous hours part-time patching' for the treatment of anisometropic amblyopia. Methods We designed a prospective, interventional, non-randomised, comparative pilot study involving children between 4 and 11 years of age with anisometropic amblyopia who were treated with either continuous wear (Group A) or split hours part-time patching (Group B) as per parents wish, after appropriate discussion with the parents. Children were followed-up for the improvement in visual acuity and the compliance at each follow-up visit. Results 44 and 24 children were recruited in Group A and Group B, respectively (mean±SD baseline BCVA of the amblyopic eye: 0.99±0.32 and 0.95±0.23 logMAR, respectively). BCVA (adjusted for baseline BCVA and age) at 3 months in Group A (0.59±0.24) was comparable (p=0.08) with that in Group B (0.71±0.24). This was same even at 6 months (0.51±0.25 in Group A and 0.59±0.25 in Group B, p=0.25). The improvement in BCVA at 3 months was also comparable (p=0.06) in Group A (0.39±0.23) and Group B (0.26±0.23). The improvement in BCVA at 6 months was also comparable (p=0.14) in Group A (0.47±0.26) and Group B (0.37±0.26). Conclusions Both patching regimens lead to significant and comparable improvement in BCVA in anisometropic amblyopia up to 6 months of follow-up.


This thesis aims to examine the impact of internationalising corporations of peripheral nationstates on their strategic rivalries. Although corporations from an increasing number of peripheral countries have internationalised their operations in the last fifteen years, the implications of this process for their interstate relations and -in particular- their relations with their strategic rivals, have yet to be systematically addressed. The thesis's hypothesis is that in the context of such corporate internationalisation for a state in the semi-periphery, the large-scale acquisition by a domestic firm of a foreign enterprise, reconfigures conceptions of economic nationalism. This is especially the case where the enterprise acquired is located in a state with which there is a longterm and significant foreign policy rivalry. The interests and strategies of key domestic socioeconomic actors are reconfigured within the new nationalism, with incentives to support and sustain such corporate internationalization. This thesis will review the scholarship on New Economic Nationalism which provides the most suitable analytical perspective to evaluate the impact of corporate internationalisation on strategic rivalries. It will also identify the corporate internationalisation process and those of its features that are particular to peripheral countries. It will also examine the challenges posed to its hypothesis by the scholarly debates which liberal institutionalism, realism and Europeanization, have generated. The thesis's hypothesis will be tested through the country case of Greece, and its strategic rivalry with Turkey. The thesis will examine the wider role of Greek corporations prior to their internationalisation in Southeastern Europe, and at the height of Greece's strategic rivalry with Turkey. It will then access the prominence that Greek corporations achieved due to their internationalisation and the conflation, by Greek policy makers and governing parties, of the corporate internationalisation process with national prestige and prowess. By scrutinising a particular FDI transaction, the acquisition of a major Turkish bank by Greece's leading bank, the thesis will evaluate whether corporate internationalisation, by redefining economic nationalism, can indeed have an significant impact on Greece's strategic rivalry with Turkey.


Abstract In 1939, U.S. Vogue magazine dedicated its February issue to the promotion of the New York World's Fair, which would open in April 1939, giving significant editorial space to the subject of industrial design for the first time. The issue's leading fashion editorial feature, "Fashions of the Future," invited nine industrial designers to dress the "woman of tomorrow." The feature served as a promotional vehicle for the World's Fair and for the industrial designers who worked on it. Through a close examination of the issue's visual and textual content, this article explores the relationship between industrial design, fashion, consumption, and gender at a formative moment in the professionalization of design in the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. It argues that fashion media served a discursive function in the elevation of the industrial designer's professional status, presenting a case for further consideration of the relationship between fashion and industrial design in the history of the design profession.


Maximum-likelihood estimation techniques are presented for the problem of forming object estimates from turbulence-degraded images when the point-spread functions are unknown. The inability of unconstrained maximum-likelihood methods to form meaningful estimates is acknowledged, and iterative algorithms are derived for estimating the object by using both a penalized maximum-likelihood method and a physically meaningful parameterization of the point-spread functions by phase errors distributed over an aperture.


Performance is a critical challenge in mobile image processing. Given a reference imaging pipeline, or even human-adjusted pairs of images, we seek to reproduce the enhancements and enable real-time evaluation. For this, we introduce a new neural network architecture inspired by bilateral grid processing and local affine color transforms. Using pairs of input/output images, we train a convolutional neural network to predict the coefficients of a locally-affine model in bilateral space. Our architecture learns to make local, global, and content-dependent decisions to approximate the desired image transformation. At runtime, the neural network consumes a low-resolution version of the input image, produces a set of affine transformations in bilateral space, upsamples those transformations in an edge-preserving fashion using a new slicing node, and then applies those upsampled transformations to the full-resolution image. Our algorithm processes high-resolution images on a smartphone in milliseconds, provides a real-time viewfinder at 1080p resolution, and matches the quality of state-of-the-art approximation techniques on a large class of image operators. Unlike previous work, our model is trained off-line from data and therefore does not require access to the original operator at runtime. This allows our model to learn complex, scene-dependent transformations for which no reference implementation is available, such as the photographic edits of a human retoucher.


Explora supports Discovery in Databases by large scale search for interesting instances of statistical patterns. Due to the variety of patterns and the immense combinatorial possibilities in studying relations between variables in subsets of data, at least two implementation problems arise. First, the user must be saved from getting overwhelmed with a deluge of findings. This can be achieved by some basic organization principles included into search. One principle is, to organize search hierarchically and to study first the strongest hypotheses (that mostly means the most general ones). Weaker hypotheses are then eliminated from further search. But even in moderately sized data, that approach alone usually does not prevent from large sets of findings. Therefore, in a second evaluation phase, a refinement strategy selects the most interesting verified statements and treats also the overlapping problem (due to correlations between independent variables). Further, the user can focus a discovery task by a more detailed specification of the analysis problem to be treated.

Second, it is important for discovery systems, to manage the efficiency problem. Each hypothesis evaluated when processing the large search space refers to subsets of cases stored in a database. These subsets correspond to combinations of variables and their (taxonomical) values. In principal, each subset needs random accesses to a lot of cases which takes much computation time.

We describe solutions implemented in the discovery system Explora to deal with these two problems. In an appendix, results of a discovery session in Explora are presented, and the necessity to insert more statistical strategies into a "higher" discovery level is discussed. On this level, instances of patterns verified during basic search are selected, refined, and combined to achieve a higher quality of presented findings including more interpretation potentiality.


We report on an experimental long-haul transmission of a 28 Gbaud PS-QPSK signal in WDM scenarios. This report presents, to the authors' knowledge, a novel implementation of an optical coherent receiver for the polarization-switched quadrature phase shift keying (PS-QPSK) modulation format, with minor variations on the standard coherent PDM-QPSK receiver. We compare the performance of PS-QPSK with that of PDM-QPSK, over a WDM system based on 100 Gb/s PDM-QPSK and standard single mode fiber (SSMF), and we demonstrate its interest for software-defined optical transceivers operating over dispersion managed and non-managed transmission links.


1. Patients with mild hypertension who habitually smoked cigarettes and consumed caffeine were examined after abstaining from caffeine and cigarettes overnight. Their mean blood pressure (147/89 mmHg) was substantially lower than values recorded in the clinic (164/102 mmHg) and remained so when they continued to abstain (149/94 mmHg at 2 h). 2. Smoking two cigarettes (3.4 mg of nicotine) elevated blood pressure by 10/8 mmHg but for only 15 min. 3. Drinking coffee (200 mg of caffeine) elevated blood pressure by up to 10/7 mmHg between 1 and 2 h. 4. Combined coffee and cigarette smoking caused a sustained rise in blood pressure from 5 to 120 min to levels similar to those measured in the clinic (162/102 mmHg at 2 h). The interaction of coffee and cigarettes on blood pressure, but not on pulse rate, was significant. 5. Caffeine ingestion with or without smoking may be important in the genesis of mild hypertension.


The aim of this article is to contextualise universities historically within capitalism and to analyse academic labour and the deployment of digital media theoretically and critically. It argues that the post-war expansion of the university can be considered as medium and outcome of informational capitalism and as a dialectical development of social achievement and advanced commodification. The article strives to identify the class position of academic workers, introduces the distinction between academic work and labour, discusses the connection between academic, information and cultural work, and suggests a broad definition of university labour. It presents a theoretical model of working conditions that helps to systematically analyse the academic labour process and to provide an overview of working conditions at universities. The paper furthermore argues for the need to consider the development of education technologies as a dialectics of continuity and discontinuity, discusses the changing nature of the forces and relations of production, and the impact on the working conditions of academics in the digital university. Based on Erik Olin Wright's inclusive approach of social transformation, the article concludes with the need to bring together anarchist, social democratic and revolutionary strategies for establishing a socialist university in a commons-based information society.


Background Adequate dual antiplatelet (AP) therapy is imperative when performing neurovascular stenting procedures. Currently, no consensus for the ideal AP regimen exists. Thus the present study aimed to gain a better understanding of real world practice AP patterns by surveying neurointerventional surgeons. Methods Survey links were emailed to 296 neurointerventional surgeons practicing in the USA, asking 51 questions including demographics, stent specific use, AP pre and post-medication, types of APs, point of care (POC) assessment, complications, and outcomes. Data were collected and analyzed using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap). Results 74 participants responded; 56.8% were from academic centers. Participants treated an average of 5.5 aneurysms per month. They placed an average of 1.6 intracranial stents and 1.4 cervical stents per month. Mean number of pipeline embolization devices (PEDs) placed per year was 15.2. Heterogeneity existed regarding AP regimens; the most frequent included acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) 325 mg+Plavix 75 mg daily (for 7 days prior) and ASA 325 mg+Plavix 75 mg daily (for 5 days prior) for routine placement of intracranial and cervical stents, respectively. For emergency placement, ASA 325 mg+Plavix 600 mg (at time of surgery) was the most frequently used. 46.8% routinely used POC testing, most frequently VerifyNow (Accumetrics, San Diego, California, USA); the most common threshold determining a non-responder was <30% inhibition. 85.7% used POC for PED placement. Management changes based on POC testing were diverse. Conclusions The results highlight the heterogeneity of current practices regarding AP medication regimens during neurovascular stenting. Given its importance, evidence based protocols are imperative. Minimal literature exists focusing on neurovasculature, and therefore understanding current practice patterns represents a first step toward generating these protocols.


The quest for job satisfaction within the workplace has created much interest among
the largest of corporations; however, the concept of job satisfaction eludes most.
Organisations cannot expect job satisfaction to be experienced by workers naturally,
but if they strategically implement interventions, the environment created could result
in positive satisfaction levels. Human nature drives individuals to desire more, and it is
critically important for companies to manage this desire in order to increase or sustain
their profitability. Whilst it can be said at the outset that money is the primary motivator
for employee satisfaction, it is not the only motivator that influences the drive of an
individual.
This study aimed to establish what can be done to improve job satisfaction in a SMME
manufacturing company. Steelline manufacturing company is a SMME manufacturer
and is located in Phoenix Industrial Park, Durban. For the purposes of this study
judgement sampling was used. The participants in the case study were chosen from
Steelline manufacturing company in KwaZulu-Natal. Seventy-one subjects completed
an online questionnaire which represented a response rate of 94%. The data collected
was analysed using case study analysis.
This study found that, apart from monetary gain, career development and
communication also influence job satisfaction within Steelline. In keeping with the
literature, money was found to be the strongest extrinsic motivator whilst a sense of
accomplishment was found to be a strong intrinsic motivating factor. The findings of
this study have important implications for the way in which Steelline manage
employees in terms of satisfaction. It may not always be financially feasible for
Steelline to employ, retain or promote staff who are primarily driven by financial
rewards. Accordingly, Steelline can strategically manage this challenge by basing their
employment on intrinsic factors of job satisfaction. A recommendation that would come
out of this study is that Steelline should implement a monthly monetary-based stretch
production target. Furthermore, Steelline should recognise employees in their
succession planning within the workplace which would positively influence employees
intrinsically. This would be mutually beneficial to both the company and employees as
it would encourage employee motivation and would ensure retention of skill and
experience.


E-learning and video technologies provide new tools to learn the laws and phenomena of experimental sciences. This novel approach complements the theoretical classes not having practical sessions. The on-line Physics laboratory is our first project. It consists in video-mediated experiments on the elastic force and harmonic oscillations. The online video experiments allow the students to investigate the elastic phenomena by extracting, collecting and elaborating experimental data. The aim is to give to the students a practical example on how a real physics experiment is conducted. High-resolution videos permit to record a physical phenomenon in a digital form and the video elaboration allows to collect the data. This kind of experiments are "real": videos become a real scientific instrument of measure. Finally, to reproduce the collaborative environment of a laboratory, we organize an online collaborative experience, by a peer assessment of a work-task done by the students at the end of their work. At the same time, we intend to analyse the learning process of the student through their behaviour and their perception in using the online tools of the platform and during the peer assessment experience. This is to identify the optimal tools and the most effective e-learning for the on-line laboratories. Our results are quantified by the data extracted from the Moodle platform, by analysing the reports of the students, and by a survey done on the collaborative activities.


This paper undertakes the first comprehensive analysis of the role that Australian guardianship laws play in regulating restrictive practices for people with intellectual and cognitive impairment. It identifies and critiques the five possible legal bases for authorising such decisions in the guardianship system before concluding that the law should be reformed to place decision-making about this issue on a clear, certain and consistent basis. This should be achieved by legislative reform and should not have to rely on tribunal decision-making. The paper also questions whether the guardianship system is an appropriate vehicle for regulating restrictive practices. Historically, restrictive practices were not part of decision-making regimes for adults with impaired capacity but it appears that it is now widely assumed to be a logical home for such practices. If that is to be the case, the guardianship system must maintain its clear focus on adults with intellectual and cognitive impairments and that the rights, interests and welfare of this cohort are paramount in decision-making about restrictive practices.


"I am scared most to death every battle we have, but I don't think you need be afraid of my sneaking away unhurt." Thus wrote Adjutant Charles Harvey Brewster of the 10th Massachusetts to his sister Mattie in 1864, in one of over 200 letters he would pen during his four years of service. Born and raised in Northampton, Massachusetts, Brewster was a 27-year-old store clerk when he enlisted in Company C of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteers in April 1861. During the next three and a half years he fought in many of the major battles of the Virginia campaigns - Fair Oaks, the Seven Days, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, the "Bloody Angle" at Spotsylvania - rising through the ranks to become second lieutenant and later adjutant of his regiment. His letters, most of which were written to his mother and two sisters, record not only the horrors he witnessed on the battlefield, but also his own inner struggle with his own values, convictions and sense of manhood. In a thoughtful and illuminating introductory essay, David W. Blight explores the evolution of Brewster's understanding of the terrible conflict in which he was engaged. Blight shows how Brewster's attitudes toward race and slavery gradually changed, in part as a result of his contact with escaped slaves and his experience recruiting black troops. He also examines the shift in Brewster's conception of courage, as the realities of war collided with the romantic ideals he had previously embraced. This literate collection of 137 letters chronicles the experiences of an ordinary Union soldier caught up in extraordinary events. At times naive and sentimental, at times mature and realistic, Brewster's correspondence not only provides insight into the meaning of the Civil War for the average Yankee, but also testifies to the persistent power of war to attract and repel the human imagination.


The general question of how best to access and leverage resources that reside outside the boundaries of the focal firm has become increasingly important for companies during the last decennia, and scholars across management disciplines have responded with increasing research efforts. However, managers still seldom base their decisions on scientific evidence. Research on managing external resources is carried out in disciplinary silos and it is extremely difficult for managers to make sense of the vast amount of scientific studies. The success story of medicine as the first domain to widely adopt evidence-based practices has been an exemplar for other disciplines such as management to address the prevailing research-practice gap. Through a systematic review and synthesis of 601 articles in six academic journals representing three management disciplines we develop design propositions for supporting evidence-based management of external resources in firms. Our analysis reveals external resource management (ERM) research to be concentrated on six distinct, yet interrelated, themes. We adopt the CIMO-logic (Context, Intervention, Mechanism, Outcomes) for developing the set of design propositions within each of the research themes. A key scientific contribution is our identification of future research opportunities and directions to advance science in the field of ERM.


Sustainability is introduced as the key to address contradictions between tourism policy development on one hand and environmental protection on the other. However, in the literature exists confusion on what sustainable tourism is all about, sustainable tourism policy has relatively little influence on the broad tourism market operation and research shows that tourism stakeholders have a confused understanding of the sustainable tourism concept. Furthermore, although tourism policy planning has followed a significant turn to participatory approaches towards the development of sustainable tourism, literature neglects a range of educational methods and strategies that already exist which could support effective education responses in order that tourism stakeholders can make informed environmental decisions about sustainable tourism development. This paper suggests that environmental education is the path in order that tourism stakeholders and local community obtain a stronger understanding of the complex issue of sustainable tourism and are empowered to engage in effective ecological action.


Background: In most developing countries, open defecation is the 'way of life'. This practice is considered as the most serious health and environmental hazard. Prime Minister of India launched the "Swachh Bharat Mission" to accelerate the efforts for achieving universal sanitation coverage and to put focus on sanitation. Objective: To find the knowledge, attitude and practices of sanitary latrines usage in rural area, Tamil Nadu. Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted among rural population in Kuthambakkam village, Tamil Nadu. There were a total of 1175 households in Kuthambakkam village. These households were serially numbered and of these a sample of 275 households were selected for the study using simple random sampling technique by lottery method. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information regarding the background characteristics, their knowledge, attitude and practices towards sanitary latrines usage. Descriptive statistics were calculated for background variables, the prevalence of sanitary latrines usage and open air defecation. Association between factors responsible for open air defecation was found by using chi square test. Results: The prevalence of usage of household sanitary latrine and community latrines was 62.5% and 4.3% respectively. The prevalence of open air defecation among the study participants was 33.1%.Significant association was found between low standard of living and open air defecation practice. Conclusions: To solve the problem of underutilization of sanitary latrines, planning and conducting Information Education Communication activities is very essential. Effective political and administrative support is needed to scale up the sanitation program.


Speech can vary in meaning and implication. It can become something more than a vehicle for the communication of propositional knowledge. Speakers can manipulate language to evoke the emotions of recipients, hence becoming "damaging speech" that evokes negative emotions. What is said or written can have devastating effects on an individual and the society at large. The purpose of the study was to identify and discuss hate speech as a linguistic strategy used by parliamentarians in the creation of sociopolitical dominance. Sample texts were studied using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Data was collected from The Hansard using a guiding card to identify utterances that had the potential of being classified as hate speech. This was analysed. The research found that politically elected leaders use the immunity that they enjoy to manipulate language to create dominance.


The aim of this study was to estimate the influence of selected environmental parameters on the fish larval distribution and abundance between October 2012 and September 2013 in the Mangrove estuarine area of Marudu bay, Sabah, Malaysia. Fish larvae samples were collected monthly using plankton net of 350 m of mesh size with a mouth opening of 40.5 cm in diameter through 20 min surface tows. Five different stations were chosen in this study. In total 3,879 larvae, belonging to 20 families were recorded, with a mean abundance of 118 larvae per 100 m 3 . Among 20 families, top four families such as Sillaginidae (44%), Engraulidae (14%), Mugilidae (12%) and Sparidae (10%) occurred consistently around the year in the study areas. Sillaginidae was the most abundant larval fish families. In situ environmental parameters such as water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), salinity, pH and conductivity were recorded during the sampling times. Significant variations were found in the environmental parameters among the five stations except DO and pH (p < 0.05). It is revealed that mainly four families (centriscidae, Engraulidae, Mugilidae, and Sillaginidae) were significantly influenced by the abiotic factors. Of the environmental parameters recorded, salinity appeared to be the main factor affecting the distribution and abundance of Mugilidae families. Overall, regression analysis test indicated a weak overall correlation between larval assemblage and environmental parameters in the estuary of Marudu Bay.


Aluminum and copper tubes filled with explosive were tested during this study of high strain rate effects, as an adjunct to helical flux-compression generator research at the University of Missouri-Rolla, directly affecting the understanding of flux cutoff and high strain-rate changes in generator armatures. Longitudinal cracks characteristically developed in the outer surface of armatures at a smaller expansion ratio than predicted. These cracks occurred within two diameters of the detonator end of the armature but did not extend when the tubing expanded under explosive pressurization. Such cracks appear to cause magnetic flux cutoff, and flux losses seriously affect energy conversion efficiency. Energy, timing, and structural analyzes showed that detonation pressurization was not the cause of fracturing. A two-dimensional Lagrangian finite-difference numerical model was used to analyze the effect of detonation waves on the armature, and demonstrated that the cracking resulted from the stress field caused by the waves. Compressive detonation waves cause both compressive and tensile regions in armatures. This complex stress field causes low-cycle metal fatigue, affecting how the tube fractures when it is impulsively loaded by high-pressure detonation gases. Isolation of shock wave effects during operation is demonstrated in the paper, allowing for more efficient generators in practice.


Classic Collaborative Filtering (CF) algorithms rely on the assumption that data are static and we usually disregard the temporal effects in natural user‐generated data. These temporal effects include user preference drifts and shifts, seasonal effects, inclusion of new users, and items entering the system—and old ones leaving—user and item activity rate fluctuations and other similar time‐related phenomena. These phenomena continuously change the underlying relations between users and items that recommendation algorithms essentially try to capture. In the past few years, a new generation of CF algorithms has emerged, using the time dimension as a key factor to improve recommendation models. In this overview, we present a comprehensive analysis of these algorithms and identify important challenges to be faced in the near future. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2015, 5:195–215. doi: 10.1002/widm.1160


Enhancement of the biocontrol activities of Trichoderma harzianum Rifai
against two soilborne pathogens, Sclerotium rolfsii and Ganoderma boninense
through protoplast fusion was attempted. Mycelial cultures from three
indigenous isolates from the rhizospheres of groundnut (IMI 378843), chilli
(IMI 378844) and oil palm (IMI 378841) were used for the protoplast isolation
and fusion studies. The result showed that the optimum release of viable
protoplasts was obtained when mycelial cultures at the exponential stage was
incubated for 4 h in Novozym 234 (Sigma) as the lytic enzyme at
concentration of 7 mg/ml dissolved in 0.7 M NaCI and 0.6 M sorbitol.
Pretreatment of mycelium v.ith 0.01 M 2-mercaptoethanol gave no Significant
difference on protoplast yield of the three isolates studied. The protoplast
yield was within the range of 10⁶-10⁸ protoplasts/ml and the average size of
the protoplasts was 2.5-10.0 µm.
Chemically induced fusion, using polyethylene glycol (pEG), among
the three isolates yielded a total of 12 fusants. germinated 18 h after incubation in liquid Protoplast Regeneration Medium
(PRM). When plated on solid PRM, the fusants regenerated into single
colonies between 24-48 h after incubation. Of the 12 fusants obtained, five
fusants showed non-parental type in isozyme analysis. They were further
evaluated based on the cultural and morphological analysis, biomass growth,
antagonistic activities against S. Tolfsii and G. boninense, tolerance to
commonly used fungicides, and the ability to produce two extracellular lytic
enzymes, B-l,3-glucanase and chitinase.


Hyperuniform systems, which include crystals, quasicrystals and special disordered systems, have attracted considerable recent attention, but rigorous analyses of the hyperuniformity of quasicrystals have been lacking because the support of the spectral intensity is dense and discontinuous. We employ the integrated spectral intensity, $Z(k)$, to quantitatively characterize the hyperuniformity of quasicrystalline point sets generated by projection methods. The scaling of $Z(k)$ as $k$ tends to zero is computed for one-dimensional quasicrystals and shown to be consistent with independent calculations of the variance, $\sigma^2(R)$, in the number of points contained in an interval of length $2R$. We find that one-dimensional quasicrystals produced by projection from a two-dimensional lattice onto a line of slope $1/\tau$ fall into distinct classes determined by the width of the projection window. For a countable dense set of widths, $Z(k) \sim k^4$; for all others, $Z(k)\sim k^2$. This distinction suggests that measures of hyperuniformity define new classes of quasicrystals in higher dimensions as well.


The heartwoods of tree species containing tropolone compounds in their extractive components are classed among the more durable woods. Two new tropolones, namely, α-thujaplicinol and pygmaein from the heartwood of Cupressus pygmaea, were also found to exhibit strong fungitoxic properties active against a number of wood-destroying fungi. The hydroxyl group appears to be the functional grouping which is largely responsible for the fungicidal action exhibited by this type of compound.


Online optimization is central to display advertising, where we must sequentially allocate ad impressions to maximize the total welfare among advertisers, while respecting various advertiser-specified long-term constraints (e.g., total amount of the ad's budget that is consumed at the end of the campaign). In this paper, we present the online dual decomposition (ODD) framework for large-scale, online, distributed ad allocation, which combines dual decomposition and online convex optimization. ODD allows us to account for the distributed and the online nature of the ad allocation problem and is extensible to a variety of ad allocation problems arising in real-world display advertising systems. Moreover, ODD does not require assumptions about auction dynamics, stochastic or adversarial feedback, or any other characteristics of the ad marketplace. We further provide guarantees for the online solution as measured by bounds on cumulative regret. The regret analysis accounts for the impact of having to estimate constraints in an online setting before they are observed and for the dependence on the smoothness with which constraints and constraint violations are generated. We provide an extensive set of results from a large-scale production advertising system at Amazon to validate the framework and compare its behavior to various ad allocation algorithms.


Background: In Iranian women, the use of hookah is the most common method of tobacco smoking. This study aimed to find the role of psycho-social needs and gaps as a possible risk factor for hookah smoking initiation in women. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted during 2012–2013 in Tehran, Iran. Thirty-six women participated in the study. They were current or former users of hookah. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews and was analyzed through content analysis. Results: Four main categories were identified from the data. This study focused on the category: Psycho-social needs and gaps. This category has five sub-categories which explain why women begin to smoke hookah including curiosity; desire for non-feminine, forbidden, and negative activities; need for amusement and recreation; for others: To show off; attract attention; satisfy and join others and protection. Conclusions: From this study, a variety of factors which contribute to the initiation of hookah smoking among women have been identified. Keeping young girls and women away from seemingly happy gatherings of hookah smokers; Providing appropriate recreational facilities for young women and training families on how to help their children in the event of a crisis-like intention to take up smoking behavior, can be some effective ways for reducing hookah smoking initiation among women.


The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenology (van Manen, 1990) was to gain insight into the meaning and lived experience of nurse practitioners (NP) with at least one year of work experience regarding their initial transition from new graduate to hospital-based practitioner. This study provided information regarding NP hospital-based transition experience that had not been revealed in the nursing literature. The meaning of transitioning into hospital-based practice was discovered through analysis of nurse practitioner letters and interviews in this phenomenological study. Six themes emerged from this research including: Going from expert RN to novice NP; system integration; "Don't Give Up"; Learning "On the Fly"; They Don't Understand my NP Role; and Succeeding Through Collaboration.   Master's prepared, board-certified NPs in North Carolina (NC) with between one and three years of NP practice experience in a hospital setting comprised the population of interest for this study. Twelve participants were purposefully sampled from nine hospitals in NC. Individual, voice-recorded, in-depth, open-ended telephone interviews were conducted with each participant.   The majority of the participants indicated a timeframe that ranged from six to 18 months regarding how long it took them to feel more comfortable in their NP role, the lack of comfort was most intense during the first nine months of practice. Participants confronted multiple obstacles and challenges as new NPs. These challenges included navigating and negotiating a new health care provider role; becoming integrated into a hospital system in what was a new role for them and sometimes for the system; learning how to function effectively as a NP while simultaneously working to re-establish themselves as proficient clinicians with a newly expanded practice scope; building key relationships; and educating physicians, hospital leaders, clinical staff, patients, and families about the NP role.   This new knowledge demonstrates that although the transition to hospital-based practice for the new NP graduate is individually unique, there are important dimensions of the experience which are universal and should be considered by new NPs, employing hospitals and staff, physicians, and educators. This information can be used to help ensure an ideal transition occurs for the new hospital-based NP.


[1] We show that drainage basin morphology correlates with climate. Computational analysis of the 46 basins extracted from the western slopes of the Andes reveals the existence of four different basin morphologic classes. This purely geomorphic partition correlates with division of the same basins on the grounds of climate types. Basins are compared using circularity functions as their formal representations. Self-organizing maps and dendrograms are employed to provide basin classification. One class of basin morphologies corresponds to sites in the arid Atacama Desert, and the other class corresponds to sites in the Atacama exhibiting groundwater sapping landforms. Using the same technique, we study a larger sample of 94 basins that, in addition to the Andean basins, includes other terrestrial basins and 26 basins from Martian sites that show prominent valley networks. The classification of this larger set shows that morphologies of Martian and terrestrial basins bifurcate at the root of the dendrogram, forming two separate domains of basin morphologies. The similarity map reveals that, of all the terrestrial basins, the Atacama Desert basins are morphologically closest to the Martian basins. Extrapolating the terrestrial morphology-climate linkage to Mars points to formation of valley networks in a hyperarid climatic environment. We submit that the Atacama Desert provides the best possible terrestrial morphologic analog to valley network sites on Mars. We discuss climatic and hydrologic particularities of the Atacama Desert and hypothesize that a similar environment existed on early Mars.


Abstract This research investigated the relationships between anxiety sensitivity and perceived parenting styles of adolescents and the predictive role of perceived parenting styles on anxiety sensitivity. The study group was composed by 545 (255 females; 290 males) students studying in different high schools in Mugla. The data were collected using the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-R, and Parental Attitudes Scale. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation analysis was employed to search for relationships between anxiety sensitivity and parenting styles; multiple hierarchical regression analysis was also used for explaining anxiety sensitivity. The findings showed that the democratic, protective-demanding, and authoritarian parenting styles were found to be significantly correlated to anxiety sensitivity and democratic, protective-demanding, and authoritarian parenting styles important predictors of anxiety sensitivity. Key Words Anxiety Sensitivity, Parenting Styles, Adolescents. Human beings change and develop continuously throughout their life. One of the periods that these changes occur is the adolescence period. Many emotional problems, difficulties seen in adolescence are closely linked to the quality of the relationship as an infant with the first caregiver (Bowlby, 1969). In adolescence various biological, cognitive, emotional, and social changes take place, affecting the parent-child relationship (Lerner et al., 1996). Therefore, it seems necessary to clarify which factors influence parenting styles in this particular period of life (Duzgun, 1995). It is widely assumed that the nature and quality of the interactions between parents and adolescents can contribute to young people's well-being (Bandura, 1997). Anxiety disorders have been associated with a variety of maladaptive cognitive styles (Andrews et al., 2003). For example, anxiety has been associated with increased attention to potentially threatening stimuli and a tendency to interpret neutral stimuli as threatening; lower perceived controllability of situations (Chorpita & Barlow, 1998; Cifter, 1985; Dag, 1999; Erturk, 1994; Gectan, 2003; Ozusta, 1993; Ulutag, 1999) and increased fear and avoidance of anxiety related symptoms (Kaya, 2001; Reiss, 1991; Reiss & McNally, 1985). These reliable findings have led to some of the most widely accepted theories of anxiety development and maintenance. Anxiety sensitivity is fear of internal anxiety symptoms arising from the belief that the symptoms have harmful physical, psychological, and/or social consequences. Anxiety sensitivity refers to the extent of beliefs that anxiety symptoms or arousal can have harmful consequences (Starcevic & Berle, 2006). There is growing evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Anxiety sensitivity is elevated in panic disorder as well as other anxiety disorders (Gorman, Kent, Sullivan, & Coplan, 2000). It is thought to contribute to the maintenance and severity of anxiety symptoms (Asmundson, 2001). Anxiety sensitivity plays an important role in shaping the risk of developing various types of fears and anxiety disorders (Taylor, 1999). Given the importance of anxiety sensitivity for understanding these emotional problems, it is important to gain a better understanding of the nature and etiology of anxiety sensitivity (Taylor, 1995). In addition to genetic factors, and specific types of learning experiences, interpersonal factors may also play a role in the development of elevated anxiety sensitivity (Taylor, Jang, Stewart, & Stein, 2008; Taylor, Koch, Woody, & McLean, 1996). Assuming parenting styles play a central role in the development of anxiety disorders, it becomes important to understand how overprotective parenting exacerbates or spurs the development of anxiety symptoms (Adler, 1963; Baldwin, McIntyre, & Hardaway, 2007; Cagdag & Secer, 2004; Erkan, 2002; Navaro, 1989; Yavuzer, 2005). The theories of Chorpita and Barlow (1998), and Rapee (2001) provide insight into potential explanations for this relationship. …


Seven local landraces of common and durum wheat (Triticum aestivum L. and T. durum L.) from the arid and semi-arid areas of the Sultanate of Oman were examined for specific leaf and stem structural features for water conservation. On the basis of shoot fresh and dry weights (g plant−1), degree of tolerance to drought and salt stresses in these wheat landraces/cultivars can be ranked as S-24 > J-305 > Sarraya > Senain > Cooley > MH-97 > Missani>Hamira > Shwairaa. Modifications related to water conservation were found to be high degree of sclerification, succulence in leaf and stem, low resistance to water conductance in vascular tissue, and pubescence on leaf surface. The salt and drought tolerant cultivar S-24 showed high proportion of chlorenchyma and intensive sclerification in stem structure, and well-developed bulliform cells and dense pubescence on the leaves. These modified features were poorly developed in lesser stress tolerant Omani wheat landraces like Hamira and Shwairaa. Accession Senain also showed stem succulence (solid stem), an important xeromorphic feature. Structural modifications in landrace Missani were found to be increased sclerification in vascular tissue and high number of metaxylem vessels and high proportion of parenchyma in stem, and highly developed bulliform cells in leaf. Overall, the promising anatomical traits in highly stress tolerant landraces/cultivars were chlorenchyma in stem, rigorous sclerification in parenchyma and around vascular tissue, stem and leaf succulence, and enhanced ratio of major conducting tissue.


A hemoconcentrator is installed as a part of cardiopulmonary bypass to concentrate the blood by removing excess water and unnecessary electrolytes from the blood diluted with myocardial protection uid. The hemoconcentrator must remove water from diluted blood ef ciently and quickly and remove proin ammatory cytokines and other unwanted molecules, without losing useful proteins such as albumin. Especially, the pore diameter and diameter distribution of the innermost surface greatly affect the pure water permeability and sieving coef cient of the solutes. In this study, the pore structure of the inner surface of the membrane was observed, and pore measurement of hollow ber hemoconcentrator membranes was attempted using a scanning probe microscope (SPM). The samples studied were commercially available hemoconcentrator membranes PUREMA A and B (JMS Co. Ltd., Japan) having asymmetric structures. A SPM was used using the dynamic force microscopy (DFM), cyclic contact mode. The deep and tortuous pore structure on the inner surface of the hemoconcentrator membrane was observed for the rst time using DFM. The pores had an elliptical shape, elongated in the longitudinal direction. When the elliptical area on the inner surface of the hemoconcentrator membrane was larger, pure water permeability was higher, showing a correlation between the elliptical area and membrane functions. The mean major pore diameters and minor pore diameters as well as the equivalent pore diameter calculated from the tortuous capillary pore model were consistent. Using DFM, the three-dimensional tortuous capillary pores at the inner surface of a hollow ber hemoconcentrator membrane could be studied, and pore diameter and distribution could be measured by image analysis. The results were supported by the tortuous capillary pore model. In the future, we need to clearly show the further superior innovations or creative/ ingenious techniques related to this study. Further the state of new ndings which contribute to development of a new hemoconcentrator and other semipermeable membranes will help to increase the value of this paper. This study is one of the key studies to achieve the targeted function for the transport phenomena through semipermeable membranes including hemoconcentrator.


ABSTRACT The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has announced plans to analyze the activities of nonprofit organizations. This analysis is in response to documented incidents of unethical behavior and fiscal mismanagement. As a result, the nonprofit sector has been inundated with calls for greater accountability and ethics among management and employees. The purpose of this paper is to initiate discussion within the public sector concerning the documented cases of fiscal mismanagement. Incidents of potential corporate malfeasance have raised concern over the applicability of governance reforms within the nonprofit sector, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This paper also discusses how certain provisions of the Act may restore confidence in the nonprofit sector as well as improve corporate governance. Awareness of alternative strategies to restore confidence and improve corporate governance within the nonprofit sector is timely for both researchers and management. INTRODUCTION According to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFC), contributions to U. S . nonprofit organizations in 2003 totaled more than $240.7 billion and are estimated to be 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product (AAFC, 2004). Bradley and colleagues in the May 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review argue that there is concern that nonprofit organizations do not use charitable dollars as efficiently as possible to advance their charitable mission (Bradley, Jansen, & Silverman, 2003). This potential lack of efficient flow of funds contributes to the need to examine accountability within nonprofit governance. An examination of nonprofit governance is relevant and timely due to the recent calls by Federal and state regulators to analyze the activities of nonprofit organizations within the United States. The Senate Finance Committee has raised questions concerning improved corporate governance and accountability within the nonprofit sector. According to Senator Chuck Grassley, it is important for charities to "keep their trust with the American people" (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 2004), and many of the problems within nonprofit organizations are based upon poor governance or "failure to abide to best practices". Senator Grassley further argues that the Committee must concentrate on "more general reforms to address recurrent problems in the nonprofit sector" (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 2004). The Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits and corporations serving to strengthen nonprofit initiatives, commissioned the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector to investigate strategies to improve the oversight and governance of charitable organizations. The Panel was created in order to provide guidance on increased accountability, governance, and ethical conduct within the industry. The Panel calls on nonprofit organizations to implement measures to improve their governance and financial disclosure methods. Calls for greater accountability within the nonprofit sector have occurred in response to several documented cases of fiscal mismanagement. One of the more prominent cases of fiscal mismanagement emerged amid disclosure of the William Aramony scandal within the United Way (KoIb, 1999). More recently, Oral Suer, former chief executive of the United Way of the National Capital Area, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for his role in a financial scandal involving the charity (Markon, 2004). Gibelman and Gelman (2001) document numerous scandals within the nonprofit sector reported in the press during the period 1992 through 2000. The United Way, Red Cross and New Era Philanthropy are several of the more highly publicized nonprofit scandals involving fiscal mismanagement in the United States. As a result of financial corruption within nonprofit organizations, calls for greater accountability and ethics among boards of directors, members of management, and employees have increased. This paper discusses the existence of fiscal mismanagement within the nonprofit sector and the empirical research addressing ethical behavior in the nonprofit sector. …


A simple rapid stability-indicating RP-HPLC assay method was developed and validated for quantitative determination of lidocaine hydrochloride in bulk and ampoule dosage form. Lidocaine hydrochloride (drug and drug product) was subjected to acid and alkali hydrolysis, oxidation by hydrogen peroxide and photo-degradation. Experimental factorial design has been used during forced degradation to determine significant factors responsible for degradation and to optimize degradation conditions reaching maximum degradation. 23 Full factorial design has also been used to optimize chromatographic conditions. The chromatographic conditions obtained from factorial design involve the use of phosphate buffer (pH 6.0) and acetonitril (55:45, v/v) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.7 mL/min. Inertsil ODS-3(250 mm x 4.6 mm, 5μm) column was used as stationary phase and the detection was performed at 220 nm using PDA detector. The method was successfully applied to the determination of Lidocaine hydrochloride in ampoule dosage form, and the percent recovery +/- standard deviation (SD) was 98.95 ± 0.33. The method was validated as per ICH guidelines. The method was found to be simple and rapid with less trial and error experiments by making use of factorial design