Facebook, Google, and other leading technology companies in Silicon Valley have been buying start-up companies at a brisk pace. In many of these transactions, the buyer has little interest in acquiring the startup's projects or assets. Instead, the buyer's primary motivation is to hire some or all of the startup's software engineers. These so-called "acqui-hires�? represent a novel — and increasingly common — tool by which the largest and most successful technology companies in the world satisfy their intense demand for engineering talent. To date, the acqui-hire has attracted no attention in the academic or professional legal literature. With this Article, we aspire to fill this gap. Drawing on interviews with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, buyer representatives, and transactional lawyers, we offer the first formal description of the acqui-hire. In so doing, we seek to enrich the understanding of those already acquainted with the acqui-hire while also providing a comprehensive account of this transaction structure to the uninitiated. We also discuss an existential puzzle: Why do acqui-hires occur? If a large technology company wants to hire a team of software engineers, why does it go to all of the trouble and expense of acquiring the company that currently employs them? Why not simply hire away the individuals that it wants? We argue that the solution to the puzzle lies primarily in the way that social norms and the threat of informal sanctions shape the behavior of members of the Silicon Valley technology community. Although California law generally allows for easy employee mobility, social norms lead many companies to engage in acqui-hires. We buttress this norms-based explanation with insights from prospect theory and tax law to show that the unique structure of acqui-hires reduces their perceived and actual costs, which in turn also promotes these transactions. We then consider the most significant negotiation issue in acquihires: how the buyer's aggregate purchase price will be allocated between the startup's software engineers and its outside investors. Although our interviews suggested that there is currently no established norm for making this allocation, we predict that a moneyback-for-the-investors norm will eventually develop to drive allocation determinations. We then propose several contractual innovations that could be designed to try to augment the investors' share of acqui-hiring proceeds.


Analysis of the earth's longest period normal modes shows that the December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake was much larger (Mw 9.3) than ini- tially inferred from surface-wave data and involved slip on a much longer fault than initially inferred from body-wave data. The seismic moment and relative excitation of the normal modes indicate that the entire aftershock zone ruptured, consistent with the large tsunami amplitudes in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India. An apparent increase in seismic moment with period results from interference between parts of the fault. The earthquake resulted from subduction of the Indian plate beneath the Burma microplate, a sliver plate between the Indian and Sunda plates. Hence, the rate and direction of convergence depends on the motion of the Burma plate, which is not well known. Convergence would be highly oblique if the rate of motion between Burma and Sunda is that inferred from spreading in the Andaman Sea, and less if a slower rate is inferred from the Sagaing fault. The December earthquake was much larger than expected from a previously proposed relation, based on the idea of seismic coupling, in which such earthquakes occur only when young lithosphere subducts rapidly. Moreover, a global reanalysis finds little support for this correlation. Hence, we suspect that much of the apparent differences between subduction zones, such as some trench segments but not others being prone to M w 8.5 events and hence oceanwide tsunamis, may reflect the short earthquake history sampled. This possi- bility is supported by the variability in rupture mode at individual trench segments.


Background Fatigue, a common complaint reported by patients with cancer or in survivorship, has been negatively associated with quality of life, emotional health, and cognitive functions. Acupressure, a traditional Chinese medicine, has been increasingly practiced in clinical and community settings. However, little evidence supports the beneficial effects of acupressure on the reduction of general, physical, and mental fatigue in cancer survivors. Objective The aim of this study was to examine the effect of acupressure on fatigue in cancer survivors and the moderators of the effect of acupressure on cancer-related fatigue relief. Methods Databases, namely, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and ProQuest, were searched from their inception to July 17, 2020. No language and publication period restrictions were applied. Only randomized controlled trials that examined the effects of acupressure on cancer-related fatigue were included. A random-effects model was used for data analyses. Results Fourteen articles involving 776 participants with cancers were included. Acupressure considerably alleviated cancer-related general, physical, and mental fatigue (g = −0.87, −0.87, and −0.37) compared with controls. Increasing female percentage of participants significantly reduced the effects of acupressure on fatigue (B = −0.01, P < .001). The executor and operation approach as well as treatment period during chemotherapy did not moderate the effects of acupressure on fatigue relief. Conclusion Acupressure is effective at alleviating cancer-related fatigue. Implications for Practice Health professionals and patients can use acupressure to alleviate fatigue during and after chemotherapy. Nursing personnel could incorporate acupressure into clinical practice as part of a multimodal approach to alleviating fatigue in cancer survivors.


ABSTRACT Factor XII (FXII) plays a pivotal role in hemostasis, inflammation and complement system. Its deficiency is usually an incidental finding in an otherwise asymptomatic patient who is identified during his/her routine preoperative blood work. This study aimed in evaluating the clinical course of the surgical patients having FXII deficiency. Information regarding demographics, laboratory tests and management of patients was obtained through medical chart and in-house integrated laboratory management system whereas the medical literature was searched through PubMed®. During the study period, two patients were consulted for FXII deficiency prior to the various surgical procedures. Both patients had uneventful surgeries without any thrombotic events while hemorrhage observed in one patient was secondary to obstetric complications. With the limited evidence today, it is concluded that patients having FXII deficiency are not at increased risk of bleeding, thrombosis or infections during surgery, but a personalized approach is needed for planning an appropriate perioperative management.


Ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase signals DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) to cell-cycle arrest via p53 and DNA repair. ATM-defective cells are sensitive to DSB-inducing agents, making ATM an attractive target for anticancer chemo- and radiosensitization. KU59403 is an ATM inhibitor with the potency, selectivity, and solubility for advanced preclinical evaluation. KU59403 was not cytotoxic to human cancer cell lines (SW620, LoVo, HCT116, and MDA-MB-231) per se but significantly increased the cytotoxicity of topoisomerase I and II poisons: camptothecin, etoposide, and doxorubicin. Chemo- and radiosensitization by ATM inhibition was not p53-dependent. Following administration to mice, KU59403 distributed to tissues and concentrations exceeding those required for in vitro activity were maintained for at least 4 hours in tumor xenografts. KU59403 significantly enhanced the antitumor activity of topoisomerase poisons in mice bearing human colon cancer xenografts (SW620 and HCT116) at doses that were nontoxic alone and well-tolerated in combination. Chemosensitization was both dose- and schedule-dependent. KU59403 represents a major advance in ATM inhibitor development, being the first compound to show good tissue distribution and significant chemosensitization in in vivo models of human cancer, without major toxicity. KU59403 provides the first proof-of-principle preclinical data to support the future clinical development of ATM inhibitors. Mol Cancer Ther; 12(6); 959–67. ©2013 AACR.


This paper is a generalization of our previous publications [2,19-20] where some newly developed models of the harmonization theory, together with various practical applications, have been outlined. The goal of the paper under consideration is to describe in depth both the general concepts of the harmonization theory and the fitness of the latter by citing an example from a widely used class of stochastic network projects (PERT-COST models). Harmonization theory is a multi-parametric optimization model in order to maximize the system's utility as a generalized quality measure of the system's functioning. We have implemented all the principles of the developed theory in a PERT-COST project and have outlined all the mechanisms to evaluate the project's utility. A numerical example is presented.


CRESY-I stands for CREativity from a SYstems perspetive, Model I. This is the base model in a series designed to describe a systems approach to creativity in terms of variation, selection and retention (VSR) subprocesses. The general purpose of this model is to simulate the variation subprocess of creativity. It demonstrates the effects, in terms of emerging product domains, of stable creator types acting on the basis of behavioural variability, a theoretical continuum describing how differently (variable) an individual behaves or creates from time to time. An abstract model, CRESY-I was designed for theoretical exploration and hypotheses generation and theory development. It was programmed with NetLogo 4.1.


"Everyone knows 'drunk driving' is a 'serious' offense. And yet, everyone knows lots of 'drunk drivers' who don't get involved in accidents, don't get caught by the police, and manage to compensate adequately for their 'drunken disability.' Everyone also knows of 'drunk drivers' who have been arrested and gotten off easy. Gusfield's book dissects the conventional wisdom about 'drinking-driving' and examines the paradox of a 'serious' offense that is usually treated lightly by the judiciary and rarely carries social stigma."-Mac Marshall, "Social Science and Medicine" "A sophisticated and thoughtful critic. . . . Gusfield argues that the 'myth of the killer drunk' is a creation of the 'public culture of law.' . . . Through its dramatic development and condemnation of the anti-social character of the drinking-driver, the public law strengthens the illusion of moral consensus in American society and celebrates the virtues of a sober and orderly world."-James D. Orcutt, "Sociology and Social Research" "Joseph Gusfield denies neither the role of alcohol in highway accidents nor the need to do something about it. His point is that the research we conduct on drinking-driving and the laws we make to inhibit it tells us more about our moral order than about the effects of drinking-driving itself. Many will object to this conclusion, but none can ignore it. Indeed, the book will put many scientific and legal experts on the defensive as they face Gusfield's massive erudition, pointed analysis and criticism, and powerful argumentation. In The Culture of Public Problems, Gusfield presents the experts, and us, with a masterpiece of sociological reasoning."-Barry Schwartz, "American Journal of Sociology" This book is truly an outstanding achievement. . . . It is sociology of science, sociology of law, sociology of deviance, and sociology of knowledge. Sociologists generally should find the book of great theoretical interest, and it should stimulate personal reflection on their assumptions about science and the kind of consciousness it creates. They will also find that the book is a delight to read."-William B. Bankston, "Social Forces"


Abstract This paper investigates how companies can utilise Twitter social media-derived sentiment as a method of generating short-term corporate value from statements based on initiated blockchain-development. Results indicate that investors were subjected to a very sophisticated form of asymmetric information designed to propel sentiment and market euphoria, that translates into increased access to leverage on the part of speculative firms. Technological-development firms are found to financially behave in a profoundly different fashion to reactionary-driven firms which have no background in ICT technological development, and who experience an estimated increased one-year probability of default of 170 bps. Rating agencies are found to have under-estimated the risk on-boarded by these speculative firms, failing to identify that they should be placed under an increased degree of scrutiny. Unfiltered market sentiment information, regulatory unpreparedness and mis-pricing by trusted market observers has resulted in a situation where investors and lenders have been compromised by direct exposure to an asset class becoming known for law-breaking activity, financial losses and frequent reputational damage.


This latest volume in the acclaimed In Focus series examines the life and work of Alfred Stieglitz, concentrating on the Getty Museum's considerable holdings of the work of this American master. In his studies of his wife, Georgia O'Keefe, in his portraits of the urban scene, and in his pictures of natural form, Stieglitz defined the modern movement on photography. In his periodical Camera Work he championed photography as an art form; in his famous gallery "An American Place," he promoted the work of other American modernists. Fifty reproductions with commentaries by Weston Naef, the Getty's curator of photographs, represent both the range of the Getty's collection and the importance of Stieglitz's contribution. The book also includes an edited colloquium on Stieglitz's life and work. Participants included Emmit Gowin, Sarah Greenough, Charles Hagen, John Szarkowski, and Weston Naef.


We examine ground motions for a sequence of earthquakes in Oklahoma, where assessment of hazard contributions from induced seismicity is of particular interest. We aim to empirically calibrate a model‐driven equation that was derived for central and eastern North America (CENA), so that it will match the observed ground motions of the 2011 Prague, Oklahoma, sequence. We first show that ground motions in Oklahoma decay at a rate similar to the average attenuation observed in the stable continental region of CENA. We then search for any needed adjustments to the CENA source model to match ground motions from the induced seismicity sequence that occurred near Prague in 2011. An interesting feature noted in the ground‐motion analysis is that the stress parameters (Δ σ ) for the Prague mainshock events ( M ≥5) are notably higher than those for aftershocks. Moreover, the stress parameter that characterizes the high‐frequency ground‐motion decays in both time and space relative to the three largest events. The largest events in the Prague sequence have similar source parameters to natural CENA events of the same magnitude and focal depth, but their aftershocks have weaker motions.


Many physical, chemical and biological processes taking place at the land surface are strongly influenced by the amount of water stored within the upper soil layers. Therefore, many scientific disciplines require soil moisture observations for developing, evaluating and improving their models. One of these disciplines is meteorology where soil moisture is important due to its control on the exchange of heat and water between the soil and the lower atmosphere. Soil moisture observations may thus help to improve the forecasts of air temperature, air humidity and precipitation. However, until recently, soil moisture observations had only been available over a limited number of regional soil moisture networks. This has hampered scientific progress as regards the characterisation of land surface processes not just in meteorology but many other scientific disciplines as well. Fortunately, in recent years, satellite soil moisture data have increasingly become available. One of the freely available global soil moisture data sets is derived from the backscatter measurements acquired by the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) that is a C-band active microwave remote sensing instrument flown on board of the Meteorological Operational (METOP) satellite series. ASCAT was designed to observe wind speed and direction over the oceans and was initially not foreseen for monitoring soil moisture over land. Yet, as argued in this review paper, the characteristics of the ASCAT instrument, most importantly its wavelength (5.7 cm), its high radiometric accuracy, and its multiple-viewing capabilities make it an attractive sensor for measuring soil moisture. Moreover, given the operational status of ASCAT, and its promising long-term prospects, many geoscientific applications might benefit from using ASCAT soil moisture data. Nonetheless, the ASCAT soil moisture product is relatively complex, requiring a good understanding of its properties before it can be successfully used in applications. To provide a comprehensive overview of themajor characteristics and caveats of the ASCATsoil moisture product, this paper describes the ASCAT instrument and the soil moisture processor and near-real-time distribution service implemented by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).A review of themost recent validation studies shows that the quality of ASCAT soil moisture product is – with the exception of arid environments –comparable to, and over some regions (e.g. Europe) even better than currently available soil moisture data derived from passive microwave sensors. Further, a review of applications studies shows that the use of the ASCAT soil moisture product is particularly advanced in the fields of numerical weather prediction and hydrologic modelling. But also in other application areas such as yield monitoring, epidemiologic modelling, or societal risks assessment some first progress can be noted. Considering the generally positive evaluation results, it is expected that the ASCAT soil moisture product will increasingly be used by a growing number of rather diverse land applications.


Aquifer remediation is a challenging problem with environmental, social, and economic implications. As a general rule, pumping proceeds until the concentration of the target substance within the pumped water lies below a prespecified value. In this paper we estimate the a priori potential failure of the endpoint of remediation due to a rebound of concentrations driven by back diffusion. In many cases, it has been observed that once pumping ceases, a rebound in the concentration at the well takes place. For this reason, administrative approaches are rather conservative, and pumping is forced to last much longer than initially expected. While a number of physical and chemical processes might account for the presence of rebounding, we focus here on diffusion from low water mobility into high mobility zones. In this work we look specifically at the concentration rebound when pumping is discontinued while accounting for multiple mass transfer processes occurring at different time scales and parametric uncertainty. We aim to develop a risk‐based optimal operation methodology that is capable of estimating the endpoint of remediation based on aquifer parameters characterizing the heterogeneous medium as well as pumping rate and initial size of the polluted area.


The thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled liquids correlate with their elasticity. In particular for covalent networks, the jump of specific heat is small and the liquid is strong near the threshold valence where the network acquires rigidity. By contrast, the jump of specific heat and the fragility are large away from this threshold valence. In a previous work [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, 6307 (2013)], we could explain these behaviors by introducing a model of supercooled liquids in which local rearrangements interact via elasticity. However, in that model the disorder characterizing elasticity was frozen, whereas it is itself a dynamic variable in supercooled liquids. Here we study numerically and theoretically adaptive elastic network models where polydisperse springs can move on a lattice, thus allowing for the geometry of the elastic network to fluctuate and evolve with temperature. We show numerically that our previous results on the relationship between structure and thermodynamics hold in these models. We introduce an approximation where redundant constraints (highly coordinated regions where the frustration is large) are treated as an ideal gas, leading to analytical predictions that are accurate in the range of parameters relevant for real materials. Overall, these results lead to a description of supercooled liquids, in which the distance to the rigidity transition controls the number of directions in phase space that cost energy and the specific heat.


Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 27


The hydrological data used in the design, planning and operational studies of water resource schemes are often limited to historical records, which are usually short, incomplete, sparsely distributed in space, and poorly synchronized. Moreover, a particular sequence of flow observations rarely reoccurs in identical form in a future period. If important characteristics of the historical series such as annual sequences of low and high flows are poorly modeled, design and/or planning shortcomings may then result, because their effects were underestimated. To better grasp drought and flood variability, the Lake Ontario – St. Lawrence River Study used both historical and synthetic hydrological scenarios. A set of stochastic hydrological Net Basin Supplies series for the Great Lakes, and local inflows of the St Lawrence River's major tributaries upstream from Trois-Rivieres sequences was developed, based on the statistical properties of the historical series. The set constitutes a large number of potential hydrological scenarios that could occur due to the observed natural variation in climate. The simulated series were then used, along with the observed 1900-2000 data, to design and evaluate the adequacy of newly proposed Lake Ontario multiobjective management strategies. In addition, four hydrologic scenarios incorporating climate change fields on seven climate variables were developed for the Great Lakes and Ottawa River. Scenarios from General Circulation Model (GCM) output changes, covering the range of climate change variability for the future 30-year period 2040-2069, were used to test the robustness of the management strategies under possible future climates. This paper summarizes the special hydrological characteristics of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence River System, the major modeling hypothesis and retained strategies used to prepare a stochastic generation model, and the preparation of climate change scenarios for a major tributary, the Ottawa River basin. It also illustrates their use in


In a well-known passage of his De architectura (written during thelast decades BC) Vitruvius describes the Roman domus (house) as aself-evident part of the public image of its owner. To Vitruvius, thehouse is not a private sphere, at least not in the sense we like to thinkof our homes today. Instead, Vitruvius emphasizes that the domusserves as the backdrop for at least a part of its owner's public life,and as such its layout and appearance has a bearing on the owner'spublic persona (Vitr. De arch. 6.5.1-3; Granger 1934:36–39). But itwas not just the appearance of the house itself that was important inthis regard: there was a similar relationship between the home-ownerand the possessions that he chose to put on display in his house.During the Late Republican era (133–31 BC), many members ofthe Roman elite set out to acquire art collections to be displayed intheir homes. This paper shows that the decorative luxury possessionsacquired had a power and a capacity of their own. The owner's tasteand personality were established through the acquisition and displayof these collections.To illustrate this point, two motifs are discussed: kalathiskos dancersand pyrrhic dancers (fig. 1). Within the Roman cultural context,these motifs are primarily represented on decorative luxury items.The paper aims to explore the occurrence of the motifs and to explainwhy pyrrhic dancers were depicted less often than kalthiskos dancers(fig. 2), and to relate this circumstance to the agency of decorativeluxury possessions within the Roman cultural context.


Using advanced technologies can help increase the availability of educational offerings; however, the steps taken in this direction must be appropriate for the target population and the specific content taught. As such, understanding factors that lead to health educators' intentions and behavior related to computer-mediated instruction for continuing education is an important step in developing and marketing appropriate computer-mediated instruction programs (Hoffman & Novak, 1994). Using the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1988) this study explored the relationships between health educators' perceived behavioral control, attitudes, and subjective norms related to computer-mediated continuing education programs and their intentions to use, and previous experience with, computer-mediated education.
Employing a cross sectional survey design, data were collected from 504 members of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) (40% response rate) using an online survey instrument. Logistic regression was used to investigate the associations between attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention related to using computer-mediated continuing education programs and a proxy measure representing their computer-mediated continuing education behavior. Perceived behavioral control and attitudes were found to have significant associations with computer-mediated continuing education behavior, with intention partially mediating the association with perceived behavioral control and fully mediating the association with attitudes. When studying a subset of the group composed of respondents with a positive intention toward computer-mediated continuing education programs, respondent characteristics and barriers identified as distinguishing between individuals with positive and negative behaviors included perceived behavioral control, presence of a license or certification, a lack of programs, a lack of relevant topics for programs, and a lack of technical support for programs.
These results suggest that for health education and health promotion professionals to engage in computer-mediated continuing education programs, more programs, especially ones that address topics relevant to their current functioning, need to be created and made readily available. Also, ensuring that appropriate technical support is available to assist participants, and informing potential participants of the availability of this technical assistance, may encourage more health educators and health promotion professionals to follow through on their intentions to participate in computer-mediated programs.


Colorectal cancer is the third most common cause of death worldwide and despite
many advances in recent years resistance to apoptosis induced by chemotherapeutic
drugs, such as 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), remains a serious issue. A better understanding
of how chemotherapeutic drugs induce apoptosis in colon cancer cells will better
inform us on how to develop novel therapeutic strategies to overcome this resistance.
We investigated cell death induced by 5-FU in the colon cancer cell line HCT116, and
found that not only cell death, but also cytochrome-c release was dependent on an
upstream caspase activity. Upon further investigation, we discovered a large (1-2
MDa) apoptosis-inducing complex forming following 5-FU-mediated RNA stress.
This complex could be purified and identified by sucrose gradient density
fractionation and was found to contain the core components caspase-8, FADD and
RIP1 with interaction from Bid. In the absence of caspase-8 and FADD, complex
formation and apoptosis was abolished. This complex forms without involvement of
death receptors such as CD95 or the TRAIL receptors DR4 and DR5 despite a clear
upregulation of DR5 protein levels following 5-FU. Futhermore, knocking down DR5
had no effect on initial caspase-8 cleavage and did not prevent complex formation.
This complex forms upstream of the mitochondria, evidenced by overexpression of
Bcl-2 or knocking down Bax or Bid. In addition we could demonstrate the inducible
interaction between the complex members caspase-8 and FADD as well as FADD
with RIP1 by co-immunoprecipitation, and the inducible interaction of FADD
molecules following 5-FU stimulation.
We also explored the contribution of the 5-FU-induced DR5 upregulation to Tumour
necrosis-factor related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL)-induced apoptosis in
HCT116 cells. TRAIL selectively induces rapid apoptosis in most tumour cell types,
and represents a promising anti-cancer agent. Subtoxic doses of TRAIL-induced
apoptosis could be enhanced by co-treatment with low doses of 5-FU in a caspase dependent manner. Sensitisation to TRAIL involved enhanced DR5 expression and
activation of the caspase cascade. Our results demonstrate that caspase-8 expression is
necessary for this 5-FU-mediated TRAIL sensitivity. Finally, we demonstrated that
low-dose 5-FU pre-treatment sensitises HCT116 cells to Mesenchymal stem cellmediated
delivery of sTRAIL in vitro.


Kidney cancer accounts for about 3.5% of all malignant neoplasms; in 85% of cases the tumor arises from cells of the renal parenchyma, with an incidence of 70% of the clear cells subtype. Surgery, at present, is the treatment of choice for most renal cancers; medical therapy, on the other hand, has only palliative purposes and is used only in the relapsed or metastatic patients. The therapeutic toolbox available in the fight against renal cancer is continuously renewed due to the approval of new drugs. In particular, in the 2000s, antiangiogenic drugs were introduced and showed good efficacy in terms of increased survival in patients with advanced renal carcinoma. Immunotherapy was a treatment strategy for renal cancer in the 1980s, when cytokines such as Interleukin-2 and Interferon were administered. The advent of antiangiogenic drugs had bound immunotherapy to a secondary role until the discovery of immune check-point inhibitors (ICIs), which have been approved in the various lines of treatment, in monotherapy or in combination with other drugs, as they have shown to increase the oncological outcome. In this review we analyze the evolution of immunotherapy for the treatment of kidney tumor from the viewpoint of nephrologists, with a special focus on renal adverse events, pembrolizumab and its recent approval as first line therapy in association with axitinib.


Accurate flood prediction is an important tool for risk management and hydraulic works design on a watershed scale. The objective of this study was to calibrate and validate 24 linear and non-linear regression models, using only upstream data to estimate real-time downstream flooding. Four critical downstream estimation points in the Mataquito and Maule river basins located in central Chile were selected to estimate peak flows using data from one, two, or three upstream stations. More than one thousand paper-based storm hydrographs were manually analyzed for rainfall events that occurred between 1999 and 2006, in order to determine the best models for predicting downstream peak flow. The Peak Flow Index (IQP) (defined as the quotient between upstream and downstream data) and the Transit Times (TT) between upstream and downstream points were also obtained and analyzed for each river basin. The Coefficients of Determination (R2), the Standard Error of the Estimate (SEE), and the Bland-Altman test (ACBA) were used to calibrate and validate the best selected model at each basin. Despite the high variability observed in peak flow data, the developed models were able to accurately estimate downstream peak flows using only upstream flow data.


This article considers two instances of rapidly accelerating linguistic change in Glaswegian vernacular, th -fronting and l-vocalization , both typically associated with the Cockney dialect of London. Both changes have been underway for some time, but took off during the 1990s. In this article we consider a range of factors that are contributing to the rapid proliferation of these forms in the speech of inner-city Glaswegian adolescents. Our multivariate analysis shows very strong effects for linguistic factors, as well as strong positive correlations with social practices relating to local Glaswegian street style, some links with dialect contact with friends and family living in England, and—perhaps surprisingly—also positive correlations with strong psychological engagement with the London-based TV soap drama EastEnders. Our results suggest that the changes are being propelled by several processes: ongoing transmission and at the same time continuing diffusion through dialect contact; the local social meanings carried by these variants for these speakers; and strong engagement with a favorite TV drama. For this community at least, engaging with a favorite TV drama is an additional accelerating factor in rapid linguistic diffusion.


This article presents an analysis of public debate about a pressing political issue on a novel Web arena in a small linguistic community: the debate on Twitter about the implementation of the European Union's Data Retention Directive in Norway. Who participates in this communication, and how can we characterize different forms of use? The analysis is based on data gathered from more than 12,000 tweets over a 16–week period. Findings reveal a heavily skewed distribution of activity among users, favoring a tiny core, which consists of five groups with different patterns of use. Discussing Twitter as an arena for public debate, I argue that, although its impact comes across as minuscule, Twitter does seem to facilitate direct engagement among adversaries. These adversaries do, however, still belong to groups that share characteristics with offline elites.


There is still no clear consensus on the poor responder (PR) definition, however, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) suggested, in 2011, the Bologna criteria, which includes, for a poor ovarian response definition, at least two of the following three characteristics: age > 40 years, the number of oocytes previously recovered equal to or less than three, and low ovarian reserve tests score. It is noticed that, despite the use of different effective ovulation stimulation protocols, clinical pregnancy rates remain low in PR. In recent years, however, many authors, including Casson et al., reported the beneficial of DHEA supplementation on ovarian response in this group. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a precursor of estradiol (E2) and testosterone (T), orig- inates from the reticularis adrenal zone and from ovarian theca cell. In this chapter, we intend to demonstrate the potential benefits of DHEA supplementation in women with poor response in IVF outcomes.


The use of team projects has been shown to be beneficial in higher education. There is also general agreement that team efforts should be assessed and that the grading ought to represent both (1) the quality of the product developed jointly by the team as well as (2) the degree of participation and quality of contribution by each individual student involved in the group process. The latter grading requirement has posed a challenge to faculty so the question addressed in this paper is "How should individual team members in online courses be assessed for the extent and quality of their contributions to the group project?" To answer this question, four common team member evaluation practices were reviewed and compared to seven criteria representing positive attributes of an assessment practice in an online learning environment. Whereas the Peer Assessment practice received the greatest support in the literature in face-to-face courses, this study that considered the perceptions of graduate faculty and students recommended the Faculty Review practice as the default assessment


An information literate person achieves success in his career and life due to his intellectual knowledge and ability in selecting the best information resources available in plenty. Evolution of internet has changed the information history. Plenty of resources reaches infinite number of users but what requires for an individual is the information skill to locate and utilize the best information sources. To qualify in civil service exams in one of the toughest challenge but yet can be achieved if smartly planned. Smart planning can be viewed as what to read, what not to read, what to choose, what not to choose etc., Competition is ever increasing among the candidates but at the same time numerous web resources, coaching centres, senior officers assists their guidance as well. The present study focused on the utilisation of information resources among the civil service aspirants only at Chennai. Utilisation of information resources were analysed at four dimensions namely, information competency, awareness, accessibility and problems. Each dimensions had its own sub-dimensions.


In many cities of the developing world, an active informal waste sector, made up of millions of people, make a living from the recovery and recycling of resources found in waste. They are often the major suppliers of secondary materials to industry and in some places they achieve significant recycling rates. The living and working conditions of informal recyclers are, however, often extremely difficult. Also, informal recycling, notably of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), is characterized by highly pollutant processes, without compliance to environmental, safety and health standards. Calls have been made for the integration of informal sector recycling into mainstream waste management, for the millions of jobs it creates to the urban poor, the potential to improve working conditions and for the need to address unsound environmental practices. Integration requires a level of organizing and a common venue is the establishment of associations or cooperatives of waste pickers. Brazil is known for its initiatives of waste picker integration, and is home to over a thousand organizations of waste pickers, often characterized by the principles of self-management and collective decision-making. In this thesis, waste picker institutions in Brazil are examined through the lens of common-pool resource (CPR) theory, and in particular, Elinor Ostrom's core design principles for the efficacy of groups (E.Ostrom, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2009). It is set against the emerging background of waste as a resource, specifically waste as a common-pool resource. The research adopts a descriptive, multiple-case study approach, in which Ostrom's principles are applied to two institutions of waste pickers with the aims of verifying to which extent they characterize these institutions and if their presence (or absence) is related to their institutional performance. Multiple sources of data were used: primary data through field visits, observations and interviews, and secondary data from the body of literature. Results suggest a strong relationship between the degree to which the principles are present at these institutions and the results they achieve in terms of income level, recycling rates and the mix of services they offer. In light of these findings, the design principles could be used by waste picker institutions to evaluate performance and to highlight modes of improvement. At a theoretical level, findings strengthen the case for generalization of the principles across groups outside the traditionally studied natural CPRs. This study contributes to the conceptualization of waste as resource and, in particular, as a common-pool resource. As such, it is relevant to the understanding of the incentive structure underlying materials recovery from waste and to resource efficiency. It joins the growing body of research on the urban commons.


New guidelines will make it easier for North American women to opt for elective cesarean delivery, but some women's groups and international health organizations disapprove.

Recent studies indicating that a planned cesarean delivery is as safe for the mother as vaginal delivery (see page 813), coupled with an increasing demand for the surgery, prompted the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to publish a "committee opinion" in November 2003. It supports "the permissibility of elective cesarean delivery in a normal pregnancy, after adequate informed consent."

In late spring, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) will release similar recommendations.

The SOCG guidelines won't give blanket permission for doctors to perform elective cesareans, said Acting Executive Director Dr. Vyta Senikas. "This is only for particular situations where it is at the behest of the patient, and doctors require guidance on how to deal with it."

The guidelines were promptly criticized by natural childbirth advocates such as Lemaze International, whose president describes them as a "campaign of misinformation." Barbara Hotel- ling argues that the balance of evidence shows that cesarean sections are far from safe. "Our concern is that women [are] making choices without information."

The Canadian Women's Health Network emphasizes informed choice and accessibility to a full spectrum of options, including birthing support from doulas and midwives. Cesarean sections "should be at the end of the line, not at the top," says chairperson Abby Lippman. "The last thing I want to do is take choice away from women, but I get very nervous when I see choices being constructed by other people."

The more permissive attitude toward elective cesareans also runs counter to international recommendations. The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics guidelines state that "Because hard evidence of net benefit does not exist, performing cesarean sections for non-medical reasons is ethically not justified." Similarly, the World Health Organization states that a cesarean section rate of over 15% indicates "inappropriate usage."

But many countries exceed that rate: Brazil reports rates of 32% and Hong Kong's rate reached 27% in 1999.

Senikas readily acknowledges the disadvantages of the surgery. "Ideally we'd not see cesareans at all," she says. But even after doctors have discussed the risks "we will still be left with the odd patient who will elect for a cesarean section."

In the United States, requests for planned cesarean delivery are becoming more common. A 2003 study showed that "patient choice" cesareans increased by 20% between 1999 and 2001, accounting for 1.87% of all deliveries or about 63 000 nationwide. There are no data on elective cesareans in Canada. Although Senikas does not perceive "an epidemic of requests," she has seen an increase in demand. "Five years ago I'd get a request every year or two; now it's every month or two."

Requests for elective cesarean delivery present obstetricians with a clinical and ethical conundrum. Do considerations such as avoidance of pain, fear of labour, worries about maternal complications and risks to the fetus, or the convenience of the mother, justify the risks of "unnecessary" surgery? How far should patient choice in the birthing process extend?

This is a new twist in the controversy that has surrounded cesarean delivery since the 1980s, when high cesarean rates — nearly twice those of some European countries — prompted North American obstetricians to reevaluate the practice. Canada's rate fell from a high of 20% of live births in 1986 to 15% in 1994, but then rose again to 19.6% by 1997. In the US, the rate of cesarean delivery reached an all-time high of 26.1% in 2002. – Benjamin Singer, CMAJ

Figure. Cesarean section or vaginal birth: Do women have enough information? Photo by: Health Canada


The literature on supply chain and information has grown consistently over the past few years. This scenario reflects that that academics and practitioners have realized that in order for firms to become flexible, adaptable and efficient, they must focus their resources on managing the information throughout the supply chain channel. On the other hand, the competitive global marketplace requires firms to be flexible, for example they need to be able to share the information so that they can deliver materials with rapid cycle, or driving towards operational excellence. Although information sharing among trading partners is consistently mentioned as a key requirement of effectiveness supply chain management, research on information sharing is scarce particularly in Malaysian cases. This lack of research provides little guidance and support for those managers interested in improving their information sharing with the suppliers and customers. The main aim of this paper is to identify what are the factors influencing the effectiveness of operational information sharing. Questionnaires were sent to supply chain managers at E&E firms in several industries in Malaysia. Five independent variables namely, information quality, IT commitment, SCM commitment, organizational size and trust were significantly related to operational information sharing. This finding indicates that it is extremely important to consider the quality of the information and the ability of the recipients to utilize the information based on differences in technologies being used, apart from their commitment on SCM, size of their organizations and trust among the partners. With the critical role that operational information plays in increasing the collaboration among supply chain partners, these factors are believed can facilitate the effectiveness of operational information sharing by supporting the practitioners to build capabilities to compete globally.


Constructing a model for data in R/sup 2/ is a common problem in many scientific fields, including pattern recognition, computer vision, and applied mathematics. Often little is known about the process which generated the data or its statistical properties. For example, in fitting a piecewise linear model, the number of pieces, as well as the knot locations, may be unknown. Hence, the method used to build the statistical model should have few assumptions, yet, still provide a model that is optimal in some sense. Such methods can be designed through the use of genetic algorithms. We examine the use of genetic algorithms to fit piecewise linear functions to data in R/sup 2/. The number of pieces, the location of the knots, and the underlying distribution of the data are assumed to be unknown. We discuss existing methods which attempt to solve this problem and introduce a new method which employs genetic algorithms to optimize the number and location of the pieces. Experimental results are presented which demonstrate the performance of our method and compare it to the performance of several existing methods, We conclude that our method represents a valuable tool for fitting both robust and nonrobust piecewise linear functions.


In Sweden it was decided by the Government and the Parliament that all people who are able to and want to participate in higher education should be able to do so. Higher education can through advances in technology be made available via web-based long-distance education. It's a possibility for those who work while studying, students with children, Swedish citizens who live outside of Sweden, etecetera. But the authors of this study began to wonder how this availability would work for people with special needs in web-based distance education. The overall aim of the Bachelor thesis is to increase awareness on the perspective of accessibility at the higher level of net-based distance learning, how students with hidden disabilities, tutors/teachers and coordinators at college or university experience their knowledge of accessibility. The Bachelor's thesis is performed within the subject of pedagogy and the study has a hermeneutic research approach. In order to gain more knowledge, interviews were carried out with three different groups: coordinators at the college or university, tutors/teachers and students. The results obtained in the study were that Swedish colleges/universities are accessible to all students with or without disabilities, so that they will be able to carry through and get degrees in the various courses and programs on the network based distance education at higher level of study. The authors also found that students and tutors/teachers have a desire for a more open approach to hidden disabilities. In addition, it appeared that there was a desire for greater expertise on accessibility. Partly thorough science, partly by adding additional resources in the classroom.


textabstractWe propose a method to include seasonality in any diffusion model that has a closed-form solution. The resulting diffusion model captures seasonality in a way that naturally matches the original diffusion model's pattern. The method assumes that additional sales at seasonal peaks are drawn from previous or future periods. This implies that the seasonal pattern does not influence the underlying diffusion pattern. The model is compared with alternative approaches through simulations and empirical examples. As alternatives, we consider the standard Generalized Bass Model (GBM) and the basic Bass Model, which ignores seasonality. One of the main findings is that modeling seasonality in a GBM generates good predictions but gives biased estimates. In particular, the market potential parameter is underestimated. Ignoring seasonality in cases where data of the entire diffusion period are available gives unbiased parameter estimates in most relevant scenarios. However, ignoring seasonality leads to biased parameter estimates and predictions when only part of the diffusion period is available. We demonstrate that our model gives correct estimates and predictions even if the full diffusion process is not yet available.


Storing abundant solar energy in synthetic fuels is key to ensure a sustainable energy future by replacing fossil fuels and reducing global warming emissions. Practical implementation of the solar-to-fuel technology is predicated on finding new materials with higher efficiency and lower operation temperature than state-of-the-art materials. We use criteria aimed for designing such efficient solar-tofuel conversion materials in the perovskite system. Based on thermodynamic considerations, the first perovskite solute–solution series, La0.6Sr0.4Cr1 xCoxO3 d, is investigated to gain fundamental understanding on the role of B-site cationic doping in water and CO2 splitting to produce synthetic fuel. Notably, all of the novel material compositions operate in a strongly lowered temperature regime of 800–1200 C compared to state-of-the-art binary oxides in the field. We found an optimum in doping for fuel production performance, namely La0.6Sr0.4Cr0.8Co0.2O3 d, which viably splits both CO2 and H2O. Based on thermogravimetric analysis, we show that the highest performing perovskite splits 25 times more CO2 compared to the current state-of-the-art material, ceria, for two-step thermochemical cycling at 800–1200 C. No adverse formation of carbonates in a CO2 atmosphere or cation segregation was observed in near and long range structural investigations, which highlight the durability and potential of these solid solutions. These new perovskite compositions enable lowering of the standard solar-tofuel reactor temperature by 300 C. The lowered operating temperature has tremendous implications for solar-synthesized fuels in a reactor in terms of lowered heat loss, increased efficiency, and reactor materials.


BACKGROUND
Cardiac surgery for carcinoid heart disease may be associated with acute renal failure (ARF) and multiorgan dysfunction postoperatively. This study was performed to determine the incidence, risk factors, and prognosis of ARF after cardiac surgery for carcinoid heart disease.

METHODS
This is a case-control study of 86 consecutive patients who underwent cardiac surgery for carcinoid heart disease. ARF is defined as hemodialysis requirement or serum creatinine level 50% greater than baseline, resulting in an estimated creatinine clearance less than 40 mL/min (0.67 mL/s). Preoperative, operative, and postoperative characteristics were examined and compared between groups to determine risk factors and prognosis of ARF.

RESULTS
ARF occurred in 22% of cases (19 of 86 patients). Preoperative characteristics and type of procedure did not differ between groups. Operative variables associated with ARF by means of univariate analysis included longer surgical and bypass times, intra-aortic balloon pump use, and perioperative epinephrine requirement. Postoperatively, ARF was associated with epinephrine use, prolonged mechanical ventilation, prolonged intensive care unit admission, and higher Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II scores. Perioperative mortality in the ARF group was 47% versus 4.5% in the control group (odds ratio, 36.1; 95% confidence interval, 8.0 to 261.8).

CONCLUSION
ARF developed in a relatively high proportion of this cohort, but traditional preoperative risks failed to predict post-cardiac surgery ARF. Variables closely related to perioperative hemodynamic compromise were associated with ARF. ARF portends a particularly poor prognosis in this cohort that is explained largely by multiorgan failure syndrome.


In recent years, financial literacy has increasingly captured the attention of the banking and financial industries, policy makers, government agencies, public interest groups, and members of the news media. These interested parties are concerned that consumers lack the basic skills required to make decisions beneficial to their economic welfare. Financial illiteracy can hinder one's ability to achieve long-term goals such as succeeding at higher education, owning a home, and financing retirement. This study investigates the efficacy of having upper-level accounting majors teaching basic financial literacy concepts to freshmen business majors. Specifically, upper-level accounting majors at a small mid-western university developed and conducted financial literacy training workshops for freshmen business majors during the 2007/2008 fall and spring semesters. Both quantitative and qualitative results that flowed from the training workshops are reported. Several positive outcomes accompanied the project. First, the delivery of this training provides a foundation of financial literacy that will hopefully enhance their ability to make financial decisions into the future. Second, the upper-level accounting major mentors enhanced their leadership, project management, teamwork, and public speaking skills while concurrently also expanding their own financial literacy. Each of these skills enumerated constitute vital components in the professional portfolio for individuals seeking a successful career in business as well as personal financial stability. ********** Financial literacy has grown in importance to practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in recent years. As a result of on-going changes in the financial services industry, personal finance has become progressively more complex and the penalties associated with inadequate financial knowledge exceedingly harsh (e.g. subprime mortgage and high fore closure rate). It is abundantly clear that many citizens, not just the disadvantaged, are not obtaining sufficient education and understanding of the basics of financial literacy that are needed to make them productive and successful members of society. And, of major importance to educators, this group appears to include a significant population of college graduates including accounting and business majors. This study describes the results of a financial literacy training workshop conducted by upper-level accounting majors at a small mid-western university. Freshman level business school students were the subjects. Specifically, financial literacy training took place utilizing a structured format of two workshops delivered on consecutive Monday afternoons. Both training sessions were mandatory for all students enrolled in the introduction to business course. The trainings primary focus was on educating young college students on the principal concepts and accompanying importance of proper debt and financial management. Additionally, the upper-level accounting student trainers also gained valuable experience using skills such as leadership, project management, teamwork, public speaking, and community service while concurrently enhancing their own financial literacy. A pre/post test format was used to assess the learning experience and the effectiveness of the training sessions for the subjects. Further, a brief questionnaire was deployed to solicit student feedback on their experience. In conjunction, these two assessment methods serve to provide a foundation for evaluating and improving the training materials for subsequent delivery. Literature Review Financial literacy is defined as "the ability to make informed judgments and to take effective actions regarding the current and future use and management of money" (The U.S. U.S. Department of Treasury, 2008). It encompasses "the ability to understand financial choices, plan for the future, spend wisely and manage and be ready for life events such as job loss or saving for retirement" (Basu, 2005). …


Clinical text provides essential information to estimate the acuity of a patient during hospital stays in addition to structured clinical data. In this study, we explore how clinical text can complement a clinical predictive learning task. We leverage an internal medical natural language processing service to perform named entity extraction and negation detection on clinical notes and compose selected entities into a new text corpus to train document representations. We then propose a multimodal neural network to jointly train time series signals and unstructured clinical text representations to predict the in-hospital mortality risk for ICU patients. Our model outperforms the benchmark by 2% AUC.


This research investigates the key causal linkages in supply chain management—the impact of strategic sourcing and supplier selection on firm performance in the U.S. textile–apparel–retail supply network. A conceptual framework was developed and the empirical survey-based research methodology was used to gather data from the U.S. textile–apparel–retail complex. The data collection resulted in 181 responses, representing a 38.2% response rate. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the research model and test the research hypotheses. The research findings support that strategic sourcing has a significant and positive effect on business performance, and supplier selection has a significant and positive effect on the firm's ability to gain competitive advantages. The research concludes with implications, limitations, and directions for future research.


Amorphous polymer melts, and polymer networks exhibit anisotropic thermal transport when deformed. Moreover, a 'stress-thermal rule', a linear proportionality between the stress tensor and the thermal conductivity tensor, is observed, with a proportionality constant called the 'stress-thermal coefficient' Ct. When this coefficient is made dimensionless by the plateau modulus G0N of the polymer melt, a universal value of approximately 0.05 has been observed for polymers of different chemistries. Such universality is surprising, given that thermal properties are determined by small-scale properties, unlike stress, which has entropic origins. Seeking insight into this observation, we examine independently the contributions to anisotropy in thermal conductivity from both stress and polymer orientation. Using an optical technique, we measure components of the thermal conductivity of polystyrene and polymethylmethacrylate with orientation, but no stress, and of samples that have stress, but no orientation. Consistent with polymer orientation dominating the effect, we find for the former samples that CtG0N ∼ 0.04 ± 0.01, and that the latter samples have a stress-thermal coefficient of opposite sign, and whose magnitude is a factor of 100 smaller. These results are not consistent with the "minimum thermal conductivity" model.


With the recent independence claims in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it is increasingly important to reconsider "parade of sovereignties" that threatened the territorial integrity of Russia in the final decade of the twentieth century. This article critically reevaluates Tatarstan's sovereignty campaign that took place in the 1990s. The justification discourses employed by Tatarstan in its drive for sovereignty in the late perestroika and early post-Soviet eras are analyzed. The republic's campaign is placed within a broader discussion on sovereignty, with the concept being addressed at the sub-state, state, and international scales. It is argued that, although Tatarstan indeed achieved elements of de jure and de facto sovereignty, the republic never really attained sovereignty as it is generally understood. However, although Tatarstan was never sovereign, it did achieve a high degree of territorial autonomy, which permitted the republic an unprecedented amount of independence in political, economic, and cultural spheres.


This paper proposes a new theory of why null-subjects of finite verbs are produced by young children developing a non-null-subject language. We first show that one of the extant theories, Topic-Drop, isn't supported. Modifying ideas proposed in Rizzi (2006), we assume that finite null-subjects arise in the specifier of a root TP, and may be null as the result of phasal computation. But we reject the idea that the selection of a root is an arbitrary, parametric process. Using new work in syntactic theory that relates information structure (namely undistinguished subjects) to root Tense Phrases (Mikkelsen 2010), we argue that children select undistinguished subjects in situations that don't warrant them, resulting in root TP and null-subjects.


This is the second and final phase of our investigation into the reverse-commute challenges facing lowincome inner-city residents in Onondaga County. With lower-wage jobs proliferating outside the city core, our findings confirm that transportation remains one of the greatest obstacles to landing and keeping entry-level work. The current transit system does not meet the needs of low-income workers living in the city or employers based in outlying neighborhoods or the suburbs. Although a majority of manufacturing employers contacted for this study said transportation shortfalls do not affect their ability to hire and retain workers, other stakeholders jobseekers, job developers, service providers, county planners, and transit professionals—insist the problem is real: Jobseekers with few skills and limited access to transportation struggle to find employment while employers in other key sectors, notably hospitality and health services, contend with the consequences in the form of high turnover, tardiness, absences, and vacancies, as noted in our 2008 report, "Catch That Bus..." Inadequacies in the local transit system will affect the county's longer-term economic vitality. Current concerns about air pollution, environmental conservation, energy costs, and strained municipal budgets add to the urgency of addressing the interrelated issues of employment, transportation, economic development, and sprawl. Collaboration among key stakeholders—the County, Centro, employers, private transit operators, service providers, and town boards--is necessary to advance the parties' mutual interests.


More than 95 percent of people sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the federal system are also sentenced to a term of supervised release. Since it was first established in the late 1980s, nearly one million people have been sentenced to federal supervised release. The human and fiscal costs of this widespread imposition are significant. Supervised release substantially restricts an individual's liberty and people on supervised release receive diminished legal and constitutional protections. The fiscal costs of supervised release are also high, particularly when almost one third of people on supervised release will have their supervision revoked and will return to prison.Despite the importance of supervised release, little is known about how and why sentencing judges impose supervised release and what purpose it is supposed to serve in the federal criminal justice system. In most cases, supervised release is not mandatory and yet judges consistently fail to exercise their discretion in this area and impose supervised release in virtually all cases. Based on an empirical study of sentencing decisions in the Eastern District of New York, this article uncovers previously unidentified features of supervised release. It finds that judges widely impose supervised release without any apparent consideration of the purpose served by the sentence. This article argues that supervised release is over-used and proposes a new framework for its imposition to ensure that courts only impose supervised release on people who need it.


We propose combinatorial cascading bandits, a class of partial monitoring problems where at each step a learning agent chooses a tuple of ground items subject to constraints and receives a reward if and only if the weights of all chosen items are one. The weights of the items are binary, stochastic, and drawn independently of each other. The agent observes the index of the first chosen item whose weight is zero. This observation model arises in network routing, for instance, where the learning agent may only observe the first link in the routing path which is down, and blocks the path. We propose a UCB-like algorithm for solving our problems, CombCascade; and prove gap-dependent and gap-free upper bounds on its $n$-step regret. Our proofs build on recent work in stochastic combinatorial semi-bandits but also address two novel challenges of our setting, a non-linear reward function and partial observability. We evaluate CombCascade on two real-world problems and show that it performs well even when our modeling assumptions are violated. We also demonstrate that our setting requires a new learning algorithm.


Authors : Rabih Ghostine, Craig Kapfer, Viswanathan Kannan, Ibrahim Hoteit Abstract : Urban flooding resulting from a sudden release of water due to dam-break or excessive rainfall is a serious threatening environment hazard, which causes loss of human life and large economic losses. Anticipating floods before they occur could minimize human and economic losses through the implementation of appropriate protection, provision, and rescue plans. This work reports on the numerical modelling of flash flood propagation in urban areas after an excessive rainfall event or dam-break. A two-dimensional (2D) depth-averaged shallow water model is used with a refined unstructured grid of triangles for representing the urban area topography. The 2D shallow water equations are solved using a second-order wellbalanced discontinuous Galerkin scheme. Theoretical test case and three flood events are described to demonstrate the potential benefits of the scheme: (i) wetting and drying in a parabolic basin (ii) flash flood over a physical model of the urbanized Toce River valley in Italy; (iii) wave propagation on the Reyran river valley in consequence of the Malpasset dambreak in 1959 (France); and (iv) dam-break flood in October 1982 at the town of Sumacarcel (Spain). The capability of the scheme is also verified against alternative models. Computational results compare well with recorded data and show that the scheme is at least as efficient as comparable second-order finite volume schemes, with notable efficiency speedup due to parallelization.


The provision of wild birds with supplementary food has increased substantially over recent decades. While it is assumed that provisioning birds is beneficial, supplementary feeding can have detrimental 'carry-over' effects on reproductive traits. Due to difficulties in monitoring individual feeding behaviour, assessing how individuals within a population vary in their exploitation of supplementary food resources has been limited. Quantifying individual consumption of supplementary food is necessary to understand the operation of carry-over effects at the individual level. We used Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and automated feeders to estimate individual consumption of supplementary winter food in a large wild population of great tits Parus major and blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus. Using these data, we identified demographic factors that explained individual variation in levels of supplementary food consumption. We also tested for carry-over effects of supplementary food consumption on recruitment, reproductive success and a measure of survival. Individual variation in consumption of supplementary food was explained by differences between species, ages, sexes and years. Individuals were consistent across time in their usage of supplementary resources. We found no strong evidence that the extent of supplementary food consumption directly influenced subsequent fitness parameters. Such effects may instead result from supplementary food influencing population demographics by enhancing the survival and subsequent breeding of less competitive individuals, which reduce average breeding parameters and increase density-dependent competition. Carry-over effects of supplementary feeding are not universal and may depend upon the temporal availability of the food provided. Our study demonstrates how RFID systems can be used to examine individual-level behaviour with minimal effects on fitness.


The collection of metadata for research data is an important aspect in the FAIR principles. The schema.org and Bioschemas initiatives created a vocabulary to embed markup for many different types, including BioChemEntity, ChemicalSubstance, Gene, MolecularEntity, Protein, and others relevant in the Natural and Life Sciences with immediate benefits for findability of data packages. To bridge the gap between the worlds of semantic-web-driven JSON+LD metadata on the one hand, and established but separately developed interface services in libraries, we have designed an architecture for harmonising, federating and harvesting metadata from several resources. Our approach is to serve JSON+LD embedded in an XML container through a central OAI-Provider. Several resources in NFDI4Chem provide such domain-specific metadata. The CKAN-based NFDI4Chem search service can harvest this metadata using an OAI-PMH harvester extension that can extract the XML-encapsulated JSON+LD metadata, and has search capabilities relevant in the chemistry domain. We invite the community to collaborate and reach a critical mass of providers and consumers in the NFDI.


Abstract The goal of this study was to improve the common knowledge on the connections between problem gambling and environmental settings. A cross-sectional design was used to compare two types of electronic gambling machine (EGM) users in terms of gamblers' self-reported behaviours, perceptions, motivations and preferences according to the type of venue they gambled in. Sixty-six volunteers who gambled in a gambling hall containing 335 EGMs were compared to volunteers (n = 143) who gambled in small venues containing either 5 or 10 EGMs. All venues were located in areas with similar socio-economic status. Face-to-face survey-like interviews were conducted on site by trained assistants. Interviews comprised 83 items (fixed response and short open-ended questions). Gamblers' varied according to the type of venue on (a) socio-demographic variables; (b) correlates of gambling problems; (c) self-reported gambling behaviours, perceptions and motivations; and (d) venue characteristics influencing their choice of venue. Small venue gamblers reported more characteristics associated with problem gambling and are about four times more likely to be associated with problem gambling than gambling hall patrons. Decision-makers should consider the venue specific players' profiles outlined in this manuscript, and appreciate their possible use in appropriate responsible gambling measures and prevention/treatment programmes.


Many long-running applications would greatly benefit from being able to recover faulty versions in N-version programs since their exclusion from further use undermines the availability of the system. Developing a recovery feature, however, is a very complex and error-prone task, which the author believes has not received adequate attention. Although many researchers are aware of the importance of version recovery, there are very few schemes which include these features. Even when they do, they rely on ad hoc programming and are not suitable for object-oriented systems. The author believes that developing systematic approaches here is crucial, and formulates a general approach to version recovery in class diversity schemes, which is based on the concept of the abstract version state. The approach extends the recently-developed class diversity scheme and relies on important ideas motivated by community error recovery. The diversity scheme includes two-level error detection which allows error latency to be controlled. To use it, special application-specific methods for each version object have to be designed, which would map the internal state into the abstract state and, at the same time, form a basis for one-level version recovery. The approach is discussed in detail, compared with the existing solutions, and additional benefits of using the abstract version state are shown. The intention is to outline a disciplined way for providing version recovery and thus make it more practical. Two promising approaches which can be used for developing new structuring techniques incorporating the abstract version state concept are discussed.


Hill pasture renovation methods have been restricted in the past to surface oversowing of unaltered, trampled or burnt pastures. Unfortunately the old pasture recovers and may compete vigorously with the establishing new species, slowing pasture improvement. The availability of suitable herbicides has opened up a new opportunity for hill pasture development. Herbicide applied before oversowing can minimise the competition and allow the new species to establish more easily. The benefits include reduced time to attain optimal stocking rates and improved establishment control, but these are offset by higher initial costs. The technical aspects of the herbicide establishment methods are overshadowed by the economic factors which control the profitability of the programme, however successfully applied. As the cash flow patterns differ between the tradrtional renovation and the herbicrdebased techniques, changes in interest rates and prices have differential effects. Real interest rates below 7% make both methods profitable but are more favourable to the herbicide technique at 1987 prices, Also, price increases favour the herbicide method. Among other issues affecting the speed and profitability of development and ultimate gain, management skull is found to be crucial and dominates both establishment methods.


The visual analysis of complex networks is a challenging task in many fields, such as systems biology or social sciences. Often, various domain experts work together to improve the analysis time or the quality of the analysis results. Collaborative visualization tools can facilitate the analysis process in such situations. We propose a new web-based visualization environment which supports distributed, synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. In addition to standard collaboration features like event tracking or synchronizing, our client/server-based system provides a rich set of visualization and interaction techniques for better navigation and overview of the input network. Changes made by specific analysts or even just visited network elements are highlighted on demand by heat maps. They enable us to visualize user behavior data without affecting the original graph visualization, are robust against layout changes, and are user-sensitive in a sense that the current analyst is able to perceive which changes were made by others in asynchronous collaboration. In case of synchronous collaboration, an analyst can see where and what others are currently analyzing in the network visualization. Thus, our approach addresses critical collaborative visualization challenges, for instance, awareness and coordination of user activities or pointing to interesting objects. We evaluated the usability of the heat map approach against two alternatives in a controlled user experiment. In addition, the results of a domain expert review are described in this article.


Quality
of healthcare delivery is a long-standing issue that concerns every individual
member or group in society. The purpose of this paper is to identify problems with
HRD functions in healthcare delivery and to suggest ways to improve and sustain
quality healthcare delivery in Ghana. Using the FOCOS Orthopedic
Hospital as a case study, data were collected using a qualitative
research design. The following HRD functions: Program effectiveness, operating efficiency, service quality, financial stability, long versus short–term
impact, tangible impact, client satisfaction, community support, publicity, employee satisfaction and
commitment to the organization, trust in leadership, and altruism assessed as core
indicators of high performance at the organization level, as well as the
epitome of quality healthcare delivery. The results indicated that these
factors presented different levels of importance to employees of FOCOS. However,
there is universal agreement that the composite of these HRD functions and
contextual performance indicators enhance quality healthcare delivery. FOCOS'
adherence to best practices in healthcare delivery presents a case for future
research to adopt the culture espoused by FOCOS to help bridge gaps in healthcare
delivery in Ghana. Unlike the traditional sectoral reforms that characterize
healthcare delivery in Ghana, this paper proposes a holistic approach to
culture change in healthcare delivery.


Scour is a natural phenomenon caused by erosion due to water flow on the alluvial channel bed and channel wall. In fact, scour happened in the bridge abutment is total scour, that is a combination between local scour, general scour, and constriction scour. This research aims to find the depth of scour near abutment in clear-water scour condition. This research was carried out using recirculation flume. The channel model was a compound channel and using steady-uniform flow. The abutment model was Spill-Through type (ST). The depth of scour near abutment was measured in each 6 hours running at 9 point of position. The research result shows that the maximum scour depth happened at point of separation. The depth of scour is mostly affected by Reynold and Froude number of flow. In general, the scour pattern happened around abutment is the same at every running which can be seen in the scour contour pattern that has half horseshoe shape.


We study learning and information acquisition by a Bayesian agent who is misspecified in the sense that his prior belief assigns probability zero to the true state of the world. In our model, at each instant the agent takes an action and observes the corresponding payoff, which is the sum of the payoff generated by a fixed but unknown function and an additive error term. We provide a complete characterization of asymptotic actions and beliefs when the agent's subjective state space is a doubleton. A simple example with three actions shows that in a misspecified environment a myopic agent's beliefs converge while a sufficiently patient agent's beliefs do not. This shows that examples of myopic agents with non-converging beliefs in the prior literature require all myopically optimal actions to be informative, and illustrates a novel interaction between misspecification and the agent's subjective interest rate.


Scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature targets envisage a major and imminent deployment of technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, of which there has been almost no practical implementation to date. Here we explore the political dimensions and policy implications of expectations for "negative emissions" in the European Union (EU), considering its largely successful leadership role in mitigation action and corresponding low‐carbon technology development and deployment. Carbon dioxide removal and especially Bio‐Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage present significant challenges to the EU's dominant climate policy paradigm and low‐carbon policy experience. Considering this challenge, we assess expectations for widespread implementation of carbon dioxide removal in the EU to be unrealistic, and explore possible pathways for its more limited introduction.


The evidence on the prevalence and growth in at-risk categories of precariousness in the Republic of Ireland is mixed. This paper presents evidence from multiple survey sources on an array of indicators of at-risk forms of precarious employment as set out recently by the European Parliament (Broughton et al 2016). The paper discusses divergence in estimates of some indicators from different data sources. We propose that issues around reliance on survey respondents understanding of their employment contract in data collection likely explains, at least in part, this divergence. The report presents evidence of a decline in the share of 'typical' employment for employees in Ireland i.e. full-time and permanent work. The analysis uncovers strong evidence of growth in the share of several at-risk categories of precarious work, including in part-time work, underemployment, marginal part-time work, part-time temporary contracts and involuntary temporary contracts. We present evidence that a structural change in the Irish labour market has occurred over the past decade or so. The paper provides time-series analysis of indicators related to new employment, the employment of younger workers and transition rates from at-risk categories of precarious employment to full-time, permanent jobs to support this theory. The analysis also shows that deprivation rates and the share of workers that would be unable to meet an unexpected expense were still significantly higher in 2016 than in the years leading up to the financial crisis for all but one category of worker (including for full-time and permanent employees). This version: 30 July 2019 ** The author gratefully acknowledges helpful feedback from a number of reviewers. The usual disclaimer applies. All correspondence to firstname.lastname@example.com


Three montmorillonites SWy-2 (Wyoming, USA), STx-1 (Texas, USA) and SAz-1 (Cheto, Arizona, USA) and a saponite Sap-Ca (California, USA) were activated with different amounts of Al3+ and tetramethylammonium (TMA(+)) cations to obtain materials with a combined Al3+ and TMA(+) content equal to their CECs. The catalytic activity was evaluated by reacting alpha-pinene at 120 degrees C for 1 h to yield camphene, limonene, and other minor products and compared to clays prepared without TMA(+). The total conversion over Sap-Ca, STx-1, SWy-2, and SAz-1 was 90%, 80%, 65%, and 25%, respectively, in samples treated with Al3+ alone. Similar yields were obtained over Al3+/TMA(+)-exchanged forms when the TMA(+) content was less than 20% CEC, but in general the presence of TMA(+) significantly reduced the total conversion. The activity of the Al3+-exchanged clays for this test reaction is attributed to their ability to remain expanded at the temperature of the activation process thus permitting easy access of the reagent. The comparatively low conversion over catalysts derived from SAz-1 was attributed to its high layer charge which restricted access to the active centers in the clay gallery.


This study on the economics of gender differences examines whether the mining industry acts as a blessing or curse for women's well-being and economic status. The analysis focuses on the impact of proximity to mineral deposits and active mines on various measures of women's agency and health in India. Identification leverages the plausibly exogenous spatial variation in the occurrence of mineral deposits across districts. Results indicate that women's outcomes improve in the vicinity of mines with improvements in shared decision-making, reductions in barriers to accessing medical care, and reduced tolerance of physical violence. These benefits are pronounced among younger women, and in the proximity of mines that employ relatively high shares of women. The underlying mechanisms include employment gains for women and improvements in women's health near mines. Their children also experience gains in nutritional status. Men's likelihood of making decisions jointly with partners increases, and men are less likely to justify domestic violence. A key explanation for these results is the sharing of mining royalties with local groups that support investments in women and children. Findings imply that mineral mining can bring substantial benefits to women's well-being, which is critical for sustainable development.


The overall objective of this thesis was to assess the effect of some animal and feed factors on feed intake, behaviour and performance of small ruminants. The experiments were carried out at the Goat and Rabbit Research Centre in Northern Vietnam. The effects of two physical forms of whole sugar cane (WSC) and four different levels of WSC offered with or without concentrate on feed intake, selection and eating behaviour of weaned goat kids and lambs were studied. Both kids and lambs fed with WSC chopped in slices (1-3 cm) had higher daily dry matter intake (DMI) than those fed WSC chopped into 20 cm lengths (208 g versus 173 g/day) and eating time was reduced as chopping length of the WSC decreased. Kids had higher DMI of WSC than lambs (214 g versus 166 g/day) and spent more time eating. The DMI of lambs was highest when WSC was offered at 6% of body weight, while DMI of kids was not significantly changed as the amount of WSC offered was increased. Adding concentrate as a supplement had no effect on the DMI of WSC, only on total DMI. Of the presentation methods tested hanging the foliage from the wall of the pen or tying in the trough resulted in higher intake, while chopping or stripping the leaves gave lower intakes. The highest DMI (637 g/day) was obtained with Jackfruit (JF, Artocarpus heterophyllus), a moderate DMI (247 g/day) of Flemingia (FM, Flemingia macrophylla) and lowest intake (138 g/day) with Acacia (AC, Acacia mangium). The DMI of goats fed mixtures of JF+FM or JF+FM+AC was higher than of those fed mixtures of JF+AC or FM+AC. The DMI of kids fed mixtures of JF+FM or FM+AC was higher with the hanging than with the tying method, while this was the opposite case for the mixtures of JF+AC or JF+FM+AC. Adding bamboo charcoal to the diet increased dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and crude protein (CP) digestibility and nitrogen retention. The highest DM, OM, CP digestibility and N retention were obtained in goats fed 0.5 or 1.0 g charcoal/kg body weight /day. The goats given the diet with bamboo charcoal grew faster than those given the diet without bamboo charcoal. The highest total DMI was obtained by goats fed wilted Acacia, significantly different from fresh and dried Acacia. However, the weight gain of the goats was similar among the three processing methods of Acacia. Keeping goat kids and lambs in five different group sizes of 1 to 5 animals per pen showed that the kids fed the diet consisting of JF had a higher total DMI than lambs fed the same diet, while there was no difference in total DMI between kids and lambs fed a diet consisting of a mixture of foliages from JF+AC. The feed intake linearly increased with increasing number of animals in the pens, but more aggressive behaviour was recorded in pens with higher numbers of animals. The weight gain was higher for the lambs compared to the kids, but was similar for animals in the group size of 1 or 5 animals.


We describe a novel video system constructed from readily available security equipment for recording insect predator behavior in the field. Our system consists of a multi-channel digital video recorder (DVR), active night vision cameras, a deep cycle marine battery, and a weatherproof housing. The major advantages of these systems over previous generations of video equipment include reduced expense, improved deployment times, faster frames per second, and higher video resolution. We tested our systems in a pair of experiments: the first assessed the effects of ground cover on predation of key pests in blueberries, and the second investigated predator activity in corn and perennial prairie systems. We identified ants as the most frequent predators in all three ecosystems, with notable activity from arachnids, crickets, and mollusks. Interactions between coleopterans and prey were surprisingly infrequent in all three agroecosystems. Ants were observed under both day and night conditions, while other predators were primarily nocturnal. Ground covers did not significantly affect predator activity in blue-berries, but there was a numerical reduction in ant activity on woodchips and weed barrier compared to grass and bare ground. The predator complex observed in blueberry video footage differed considerably from pitfall captures at the same site. In corn fields, prey mortality significantly increased with ant activity, and high prey mortality was associated with long interactions that involved large numbers of ant foragers. Digital videography of insect predators is a very useful tool for identifying key taxa responsible for the removal of sentinel prey and documenting their behavior.


The rising prevalence of obesity is a worldwide problem affecting not only the developed world but also developing nations such as South Africa. Excess body fat deposition is caused by an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure and there are many genetic and environmental factors that can influence this balance. The present article will describe these factors and discuss the complex interaction between the environment and the human genome that may underlie the current obesity epidemic.


Our objective was to perform a pilot study to estimate the proportion of published errata linked to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that are worthwhile obtaining when doing a systematic review. medline was searched for records that had both 'randomized-controlled-trial' in the publication type field and 'erratum' in the comments field. One hundred records from four general medical journals were examined independently from two different perspectives. From the information specialist's perspective, 74% of the errata were considered worthwhile obtaining; these were mainly errors in tables or figures. Another 9% described less serious errors, but were worth obtaining if easily available. The other 17% were minor errors. From the perspective of the experienced reviewer/public health consultant, 5% of errata were classified as likely to affect a meta-analysis, and 10% as having significant errors that would affect the interpretation of the RCT, but no effect on a meta-analysis; 85% were not considered important enough to affect either. About 5% of errata to RCTs appeared to matter in terms of changing the final conclusions of a systematic review. However, the majority of errata were considered to be worthwhile obtaining, on the basis that having full and accurate data can reduce confusion and save reviewers time.


This paper addresses the problem of predicting the structure born and airborne sound transmission in aircraft using Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA). Often analytical formulations are used to approximate the SEA parameters. In the present prediction method, a finite element (FE)-informed
 SEA approach is employed. To compute the coupling coefficient, the structure is represented with a repetition of unit cell and an FE model of the unit cell is assigned to evaluate the direct field dynamic stiffness matrix of the SEA subsystems at the connections. An efficient strategy is employed
 to determine the equivalent material properties of the FE model. Thus, a two-dimensional unit cells of different constructions such as composite, sandwich, visco-elastic laminate and ribbed section sections can be used. To evaluate the equivalent properties of multilayers structures, each
 layer is assumed as thick laminate with orthotropic orientation. Moreover, rotational inertia and transversal shearing, membrane and bending deformations are accounted for. First order shear deformation theory is employed. The developed approach handles symmetrical layouts of unlimited number
 of transversal compressible or incompressible layers. The accuracy of this modeling approach is confirmed through comparison to alternate validated theoretical approaches. Representative examples of spacecraft structural response and interior noise predictions for typical load cases are shown
 and the use of SEA models as a tool for guiding construction of complex structures to meet acoustic performance targets and optimize designs are presented. Conclusions about the application and advantages of this approach is presented.


We introduce a light weight approach to support the development of parallel and distributed software systems over the World Wide Web. Our approach considers a highly distributed development process by multiple collaborating agents, it covers architecture design and architecture analysis right to implementation generation and dynamic accommodation of evolutionary change. The foundation of our approach is an architecture description language which supports separation between the independent development of loosely coupled and distributed software components containing multiple parallel control flows from the interconnection and configuration of such components. While the developer is provided with a local light weight front end tool for editing an architecture specification, a set of analysis tools are realized as back end services offered by specialized servers. These tools not only allow to check syntactic and semantic properties but also allow to assess a given architecture w.r.t. quantitative properties like performance.


Abstract Four stereoisomers of p-menthane-3,8-diol, which make up the natural product obtained from Eucalyptus citriodora, were synthesized through stereoselective procedures. Repellency assays showed that all the four were equally active against Anopheles gambiae s.s. Racemic blends and the diastereoisomeric mixture of all the four isomers were also equally repellent. 1-α-terpeneol, with a single hydroxyl function at C-8 and unsaturation at C-8, and menthol, with a single hydroxyl function at C-3, were not repellent. The practical implication of these results is discussed.


We study the problem of finding efficient exploration policies for the case in which an agent is momentarily not concerned with exploiting, and instead tries to compute a policy for later use. We first formally define the Optimal Exploration Problem as one of sequential sampling and show that its solutions correspond to paths of minimum expected length in the space of policies. We derive a model-free, local linear approximation to such solutions and use it to construct efficient exploration policies. We compare our model-free approach to other exploration techniques, including one with the best known PAC bounds, and show that ours is both based on a well-defined optimization problem and empirically efficient.


In this paper, we discuss the use of Targeted Trajectory Distribution Markov Decision Processes (TTD-MDPs)---a variant of MDPs in which the goal is to realize a specified distribution of trajectories through a state space---as a general agent-coordination framework.
 We present several advances to previous work on TTD-MDPs. We improve on the existing algorithm for solving TTD-MDPs by deriving a greedy algorithm that finds a policy that provably minimizes the global KL-divergence from the target distribution. We test the new algorithm by applying TTD-MDPs to drama management, where a system must coordinate the behavior of many agents to ensure that a game follows a coherent storyline, is in keeping with the author's desires, and offers a high degree of replayability.
 Although we show that suboptimal greedy strategies will fail in some cases, we validate previous work that suggests that they can work well in practice. We also show that our new algorithm provides guaranteed accuracy even in those cases, with little additional computational cost. Further, we illustrate how this new approach can be applied online, eliminating the memory-intensive offline sampling necessary in the previous approach.