The aim of this study is to present a socio-historical survey of brain diseases and their treatment in Greek post-Byzantine society. For this purpose, research was carried out using Manuscript No. 218 of the Iviron Monastery of Mount Athos. The analysis of this manuscript produced the following conclusions: a) brain diseases are prominently discussed and described in the manuscript, b) the influence of ancient Greek and Roman medicine on Byzantine and on post-Byzantine medical science and society is manifested in the etiology, symptom-matology and therapeutic means of treating brain diseases, c) social factors were seriously taken into account as an important aspect of therapeutic procedure, d) many therapeutic methods were proved to be socially beneficial, e) brain disorders and diseases appear to be diachronic.


The purpose of this paper is to provide a method to identify customer (sustainability) demands, map these via price equivalents and use the equivalents for green logistics target costing. We use the methodology of Expert Survey and Choice Based Conjoint Analysis to study purchase decisions and determine customers' price readiness for sustainable logistics services. The results are inter alia that the three dimensions of the triple bottom line are already seen as essential decision criteria for the selection of logistics services. By means of Target Costing, supported by a Choice Based Conjoint Analysis, companies are in a position to calculate the financial framework available for investments in more sustainable products. This is illustrated by the use of a fictitious example. The main limitation of our research is that the survey was executed with German participants only. Our paper is the first to equally cover the three sustainability dimensions (economical, ecological and social) for target costing in the area of logistics, especially in the field of freight transport. In addition, it is the first paper to use a conjoint analysis for the determination of the price readiness for sustainable logistics services of costumers and to apply this information to target costing.


For the last ten years, Japanese corporate governance has served as a distant mirror in whose reflection American academics could better see the attributes of their own system. As scholars came to recognize that the institutional characteristics of the American and Japanese systems were politically and historically contingent, other countries' approaches became serious objects of studies, rather than just way stations on the road to convergence. In this paper, I try to return the favor by holding up the Japanese system to an American mirror. In recent years, exogenous changes have shocked each component of the Japanese corporate governance: for example, weakened banks and corporate access to the global capital market have weakened main bank relations and the banks' ability to monitor corporate performance; a decrease in the number of positions to which lifetime employment attaches due to increased global competition threatens to change the incentives of the next generation of employees. When reflected in an American mirror, this wave of economic change highlights a critical uncertainty concerning the Japanese corporate governance system: what are the instruments of adaptive efficiency in a system structured to support commitment and stability?


[1] A fully coupled meteorology-chemistry-aerosol mesoscale model (WRF-Chem) is used to simulate a multiday biomass burning event in the dry season of South America. The effects of biomass burning aerosols on clouds and precipitation are described at both 36 km and 4 km horizontal resolutions. The dominant effect of the aerosols is to reduce the diurnal amplitude of convection by decreasing clouds and precipitation in the afternoon but increasing them at night, with the afternoon decrease greater than the nighttime increase on the daily mean. On average, the decrease of surface precipitation is about 5% (3%) and the amplitude of diurnal cycle is reduced by about 11% (5%) in the 36 km (4 km) simulations. Such a modulation of clouds and precipitation is primarily contributed by the aerosol radiative effect, i.e., their ability to scatter and absorb solar radiation. The aerosol microphysical effect as cloud condensation nuclei tends to act oppositely to the aerosol radiative effect but with a smaller magnitude, especially in the simulations at 36 km horizontal resolution. The 4 km resolution runs exhibit similar behaviors to the 36 km simulations, with a slightly stronger role of the aerosol microphysical effect relative to the aerosol radiative effect. We find another important effect of biomass burning aerosols. When uplifted into the upper troposphere by deep convection, they can significantly warm the upper troposphere through their local radiative heating effect and result in significant moistening in the upper troposphere, potentially affecting the water vapor transport from the troposphere to the stratosphere.


We examine the long-run relationship between remittances and the real exchange rate for less-developed countries. In a key departure from the literature, we employ a panel cointegration approach using an innovative method for the measurement of the multilateral real effective exchange rate and we focus on high-remittance economies. We find a small inelastic, but significant, long-run relationship which confirms a Dutch disease type effect. The short-run relationship is explored using a panel vector error correction model which confirms that short-run causality is unidirectional running from remittances to the exchange rate. Potential asymmetries in this relationship are identified using quantile regression analysis.


Objective - To investigate the career aspirations of undergraduate students in
pharmacy, and gain information about likely career preferences and work
patterns, and wastage from the profession. Method - Third- and fourth-year undergraduate students enrolled in pharmacy at
the University of Tasmania and James Cook University were surveyed.
The anonymous questionnaire sought students' opinions on the level of
satisfaction with their choice of career and university course, factors that would
influence their career and workplace selection once graduated, their likely
career destination and work basis, and the major aspects of pharmacy that
stimulated or deterred them. Results - The survey was completed by 119 students, 66 from the University of
Tasmania and 53 from James Cook University. In general, the pharmacy students
appeared to be satisfied with their choice of university course and career, with
females indicating higher levels of satisfaction. Community pharmacy
predominated as a likely career choice, while only 14% of the sample selected
full-time hospital pharmacy practice. Males were more likely to nominate
community pharmacy ownership as their intended career option than were
females. A mix of community and hospital pharmacy, and consultant pharmacy
practice were both popular choices. Income was considered to be one
important determinant of likely career choice, but it rated lower than helping
the public, good work conditions, intellectual stimulation, and interesting and
challenging work. Males and students intending to be pharmacy owners rated
income as a more important determinant of career/workplace selection than did
other students. The most commonly cited positive features of pharmacy were
helping patients and the public, the opportunity to travel, consultant pharmacy,
and work variety/ flexibility. The most commonly nominated negative features
were the lack of autonomy and respect, paperwork, low pay, monotony, dealing
with difficult customers, and long hours and stress. Conclusion - Pharmacy students appear to be satisfied with their choice of
university course and career. Students are eager to take on new professional
opportunities in the provision of cognitive services. However, hospital pharmacy
is likely to experience major difficulties in attracting new graduates. Tackling
work conditions and enabling flexibility and variety in work are probably key
strategies in attempting to retain young graduates within the profession.
Contemporary pharmacy practice and curricula seem to be better suited to females.


In any firms, human resource (HR) practices are the direct investments on employees' human capital through which firms achieve competitive advantage and employees enhance their human capital. Recognizing the structure of HR practices comprised of distinct patterns would maximize the chances to understand the firms' ways of developing core competencies. This paper analyzes 472 employees' responses who work in Indian manufacturing industries to identify the patterns of human capital enhancing HR practices. Reward strategy, career-oriented training, performance appraisal, recruitment strategy, career management, and performance-oriented training are the patterns or factors derived from the HR practices, and validity of this structure is also proved by confirmatory factor analysis. Furthermore, there are certain associations found between these patterns and characteristics of both employees and firms from regression analyses.


Molecular clocks give "Time to most recent common ancestor" TMRCA of genetic trees. By Watson-Galton17 most lineages terminate, with a few overrepresented singular lineages generated by W. Hamilton's "kin selection"13. Applying current methods to this non-uniform branching produces greatly exaggerated TMRCA. We introduce an inhomogenous stochastic process which detects singular lineages by asymmetries, whose reduction gives true TMRCA. This implies a new method for computing mutation rates. Despite low rates similar to mitosis data, reduction implies younger TMRCA, with smaller errors. We establish accuracy by a comparison across a wide range of time, indeed this is only clock giving consistent results for both short and long term times. In particular we show that the dominant European y-haplotypes R1a1a & R1b1a2, expand from c3700BC, not reaching Anatolia before c3300BC. While this contradicts current clocks which date R1b1a2 to either the Neolithic Near East4 or Paleo-Europe20, our dates support recent genetic analysis of ancient skeletons by Reich23.


Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) has been empirically validated as an efficacious treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Resick, Nishith, Weaver, Astin, & Feuer, 2002; Cloitre, 2009). However, a deficiency of affect regulation skills may act as a barrier to the successful implementation of CPT in some cases, as CPT does not contain a module that directly addresses affectivity. The current study examined the relationship between affectivity and CPT by utilizing neuroimaging methodology to assess brain regions consistent with an affect regulation model of PTSD. Thirty-eight female interpersonal trauma survivors with PTSD received CPT, participating in assessment and scanning sessions at pre-treatment and post-treatment. The results indicated that CPT does indeed address affectivity over the course of treatment, with treatment completers reporting significantly greater positive affectivity (PA) and reduced negative affectivity (NA) post-treatment. Significant differences were also observed between the treatment completion and treatment dropout groups, such that individuals who dropped out of treatment exhibited lower levels of PA at pre-treatment. With regard to brain structure at pre-treatment, PA was found to exhibit a significant positive association with volume of the right medial frontal gyrus. The relationship between brain function and affectivity was also examined in treatment completers at preand post-treatment. The results and implications of this project are discussed. AFFECTIVITY, NEUROBIOLOGY, AND CPT 3


This thesis carries out a detailed study of a nonlinear spectral theory that is useful for modeling and controlling chemical reactors. The motivation for this work originates
from a few reports which have demonstrated in the past that the nonlinear spectral method offers a useful mathematical framework for classifying and quantifying nonlinear
complexities of large degrees of freedom, as well as for qualifying a general nonlinear dynamic behavior. We present and discuss this new theory and show that it extends the
familiar linear systems notion of characteristic modes (eigenmodes), as well as the notions of mathematical quantities known as the eigenvectors, and eigenvalues, into a multi-dimensional nonlinear domain, i. e., applies to model dimensions one, two, three and higher. This approach offers a new insight into nonlinear phenomena, and as such
has a significant theoretical and practical value. In the theory of nonlinear systems the spectral framework provides some useful answers regarding the issues of multivariate
process complexity, stability and control. Similarly, in applications it often leads to a simple relation between a desired process behavior and control parameters. We
demonstrate this by showing how a process operating point, its behavior, and its domain of attraction are determined by nonlinear structures which characterize both a process and its control realization. In addition, we show that by a correctly modeling and regulating process nonlinearities one can obtain a nonlinear control solution that often
outperforms the conventional first-order realizations. That is, there exist important nonlinear structural and dynamic process relations which determine a feasibility of a
control realization. This is demonstrated by studying control behaviors of several highly exothermic continuously stirred tank reactor processes.


According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains. Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation. The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis - the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. "It did not allow them to turn today's imagination into tomorrow's fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes." Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior.


A three-dimensional cell-based mechanical model of coronary artery tunica media is proposed. The model is composed of spherical cells forming a hexagonal close-packed lattice. Tissue anisotropy is taken into account by varying interaction forces with the direction of intercellular connection. Several cell-centre interaction potentials for repulsion and attraction are considered, including the Hertz contact model and its neo-Hookean extension, the Johnson–Kendall–Roberts model of adhesive contact, and a wormlike chain model. The model is validated against data from in vitro uni-axial tension tests performed on dissected strips of tunica media. The wormlike chain potential in combination with the neo-Hookean Hertz contact model produces stress–stretch curves which represent the experimental data very well.


First understand sources of advantage: input costs, product and process design Then ask, will they sustain growth in new markets? Four options: withdraw, compete, co-exist, or cooperate In industry after industry, traditional market leaders are under attack from low-cost competitors. Pet Stuff, Countrywide Mortgage, and Geico serve as examples in the US retail, banking, and insurance industries of low-cost competitors that pose a serious threat, eating into the margins and market shares of their more established rivals. In the US amine industry, traditional carriers have faced low-cost competitors not once but twice, successfully beating them off in the early 1980s only to see a resurgence a decade later. The first attack came after Congress deregulated the airline market in 1978. This encouraged a number of new carriers to enter the business, most of them offering a cut-price, "no frills" service. Though some were successful at first, it became clear within a mallet of years that they were fighting an uphill battle. Low fares alone were not enough. One of the most publicized failures was that of People Express, which expanded rapidly by using its low-fare, no frills x\concept on routes abandoned or little served by the major carriers. It thrived until the major airlines retaliated by using their yield management systems to sell spare capacity at equally low fares Thinking that scale and a hub-and-spoke network were the answers to its problems, People Express tried to expand, but overextended itself and began to incur massive losses. In 1987, it was acquired by Texas International. The demise of People Express and the bankruptcies and acquisitions that swept the airline industry in the second half of the 1980s seemed to herald the death of the low-cost challenge. But these carriers have since reemerged, taking advantage of surplus capacity produced by aggressive fleet expansion in the late 1980s and depressed demand for air travel in the early 1990s. With some airlines driven out of business and others cutting jobs, newcomers were able to pick up bargain aircraft and cheap staff. Valu Jet, which began operating in 1993, bought a number of DC-9s at an average cost of around $2 million each, compared with about $20 million for a comparable, newer model. It also pays its pilots far below the industry average. It boasts the best profit margins in the industry. Some low-cost carriers seem to have found the key to success. Having slashed fares by as much as 70 percent, low-cost airlines now hold 15 percent of total traffic [ILLUSTRATION FOR EXHIBIT 1 OMITTED]. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, a low-cost paragon, was regarded as a niche player in the region just a few years ago. Today, it is the eighth largest carrier in the United States, combining a low-cost system with high customer satisfaction and impressive profit growth at a time when the rest of the industry has suffered severe losses. A brutal battle is still being waged between traditional and low-cost carriers. As in the 1980s, traditional airlines are developing strategic responses to address low-cost competition. Their experiences suggest a five step approach that might prove helpful to any industry facing a similar threat. 1. Understand your competitors' strengths The first step in addressing the challenge of low-cost competitors is to understand what drives their success. In the airline industry, low-cost operators enjoy specific cost advantages that make them a threat to traditional carriers namely lower input costs, cheaper product design, and cheaper process design. All these advantages are targeted at a customer segment that values the resulting service. The combination of some or all of the three, varying by airline, has helped keep costs as much as 20 percent below those of traditional airlines at comparable stage lengths [ILLUSTRATION FOR EXHIBIT 2 OMITTED]. Lower input costs Low-cost airlines exploit lower input costs in as many areas of their operations as possible. …


Debriefings are crucial for learning during simulation-based training (SBT). Although the quality of debriefings is very important for SBT, few studies have examined actual debriefing conversations. Investigating debriefing conversations is important for identifying typical debriefer–learner interaction patterns, obtaining insights into associations between debriefers' communication and learners' reflection and comparing different debriefing approaches. We aim at contributing to the science of debriefings by developing DE-CODE, a valid and reliable coding scheme for assessing debriefers' and learners' communication in debriefings. It is applicable for both direct, on-site observations and video-based coding. Methods The coding scheme was developed both deductively and inductively from literature on team learning and debriefing and observing debriefings during SBT, respectively. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen's kappa. DE-CODE was tested for both live and video-based coding. Results DE-CODE consists of 32 codes for debriefers' communication and 15 codes for learners' communication. For live coding, coders achieved good inter-rater reliabilities with the exception of four codes for debriefers' communication and two codes for learners' communication. For video-based coding, coders achieved substantial inter-rater reliabilities with the exception of five codes for debriefers' communication and three codes for learners' communication. Conclusion DE-CODE is designed as micro-level measurement tool for coding debriefing conversations applicable to any debriefing of SBT in any field (except for the code medical input). It is reliable for direct, on-site observations as well as for video-based coding. DE-CODE is intended to allow for obtaining insights into what works and what does not work during debriefings and contribute to the science of debriefing.


Bragg gratings in optical fibers in multimode propagation are investigated theoretically by using the coupled-mode theory and considering two modes coupling. Bragg gratings in multimode fibers (MMFBGs) show multiple reflection peaks due to the coupling between all bounded modes. The reflection spectra depend on the excitation condition of the bounded modes. A numerical method based on the fourth-order Runge-Kutta formula is developed to solve the coupled equations. The reflection spectra of Bragg gratings with sinusoidal and square refractive index modulations were simulated. The asymmetric change of refractive index in the cross section is also considered here. The spectra characteristics and potential applications of these gratings are discussed.


Americans did not at first cherish the idea of political severance from their mother country. In just a few years, however, they came to desire indepen-dence above all else. What brought about this change of feeling and how did it affect the lives of their citizens? To answer these questions, Edmund S. Morgan looks at three men who may fairly be called the "architects of independence," the first presidents of the United States. Anecdotes from their letters and diaries recapture the sense of close identity many early Americans felt with their country's political struggles. Through this perspective, Morgan examines the growth of independence from its initial declaration and discovers something of its meaning, for three men who responded to its challenge and for the nation that they helped create. "The Meaning of Independence, " first published in 1976, has become one of the standard short works on the first three presidents of the United States--George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. When the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and the Organization of American Historians asked 1,500 historians to name the ten best books about George Washington, this book was one of those selected. In this updated edition, the author provides a new preface to address a few remaining concerns he has pondered in the quarter century since first publication.Tag: A classic work on the founding by the author of the bestselling Benjamin Franklin


This chapter compares three theoretical conceptions of infants' early knowledge of entities and spatial representations. Piaget and neo-piagetian conceptions emphasize the role of motor activity. Nativism postulates the existence of preprogrammed core knowledge comprising the basic rules governing the physical environment. Perceptual theories hypothesize that these rules can be rapidly learned through early perceptual activity. These different views are confronted to three types of data: infants' use of depth cues in two-dimensional displays, the emergence of object permanence, and the conditions for success or failure in tasks that involve searching for objects, with particular attention to the impact of motor impairment. Our main conclusion is that this evidence provides more support for the perceptual view than for other views.


The entire industry is abuzz with the news of the new ISO standard for printing and publishing. The first of its kind, ISO 16759 covers the sector-specific implementation of generic carbon footprint methodologies. According to Laurel Brunner's most recent post in the weekly Verdigris blog, 'print buyers will be able to trust that carbon calculators used for print media carbon footprinting studies work to a common reference'.


Street hawking/vending is an important activity in the informal sector which serves as a source of livelihood to many people in most developing countries across the world. The activities of hawkers mostly in urban centres as they try to eke out a living is always not only beset with challenges but has often raised a lot of concerns from governments, city authorities and other actors. This situation as highlighted is not different from what pertains in Accra-Ghana. Street hawking/vending has been designated as illegal. The activities of hawkers, the problems and challenges that emerge have necessitated a decongestion and relocation of the hawkers to a constructed market; the first of its kind in the country. However, the exercise undertaken by the city authorities has also brought with it challenges and problems and hence implications for all the actors involved.This study sought to examine in the face of urban space regulation, the socio-economic impact of the relocation of street hawkers to the Odawna Pedestrian Market at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle (avenue) in Accra. Specifically, the study tried to unveil: (i) the underlying reasons behind the policies resulting in the relocation of the hawkers by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA); (ii) find out the livelihood impacts of the relocation exercise on the hawkers; (iii) to seek the views of both the AMA authorities, the hawkers and the public on the relocation of the street hawkers. Further, attempts have been made to find out why people hawk or sell on the streets and pavements of the city; who these people are (their profiles) and why the hawkers do not want to relocate to the newly constructed Odawna pedestrian market.The livelihoods framework, structuration theory and place concept are the main theories that have been used in tandem with published data and information to analyse the qualitative data gathered. The qualitative method employed to gather the data consisted of participant and covert observation as well as in-depth interviews of a total of 28 informants of which 23 of them were primary informants and 5 being key informants. Snowball sampling was the main sampling design used for the interviews.The study has revealed that the underlying reasons why people sell on streets and pavements is mainly as a result of unemployment due to limited job opportunities and poverty. It is highlighted that in spite of the fact that many people of varying ages and sex are engaged in hawking, the youth are the most dominant. In the light of challenges, it is shown in this study that these challenges have informed the relocation exercise embarked by the AMA which has in turn affected the hawkers socio-economically and psychologically.In reference to the foregoing, the study concludes that even though the AMA has succeeded in moving a significant number of the hawkers to the constructed market, its main goal of totally getting rid of hawkers from the streets and pavements has been unsuccessful. It is further brought to light that, the activity which is a livelihood to many and present in all the major cities of Africa and in neighbouring West African countries is deeply ingrained in the psyche of the people. In this regard, there is the need to adopt more pragmatic measures and strategies to address the situation. Against this background, several recommendations have been made by the study to help tackle the hawking activity. It is noted however that the sample interviewed does not represent the broad views of the many hawkers in the country and the actors involved in the activity. In cognizance of this, areas have been identified for further research so as to give more insights into the dynamics of street hawking in the country.


SUMMARY The objective of the present paper is to use CLIMEX software to project how climate change might impact the future distribution of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) in Iran. Although the outputs of this software are only based on the response of a species to climate, the CLIMEX results were refined in the present study using two non-climatic parameters: (a) the location of soils containing suitable physicochemical properties and (b) the spatial distribution of soil types having suitable soil taxonomy for dates, as unsuitable soil types impose problems in air permeability, hydraulic conductivity and root development. Here, two different Global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO-Mk3.0 (CS) and MIROC-H (MR), were employed with the A2 emission scenario to model the potential date palm distribution under current and future climates in Iran for the years 2030, 2050, 2070 and 2100. The results showed that only c. 0·30 of the area identified as suitable by CLIMEX will actually be suitable for date palm cultivation: the rest of the area comprises soil types that are not favourable for date palm cultivation. Moreover, the refined outputs indicate that the total area suitable for date palm cultivation will increase to 31·3 million ha by 2100, compared with 4·8 million ha for current date palm cultivation. The present results also indicate that only heat stress will have an impact on date palm distribution in Iran by 2100, with the areas currently impacted by cold stress diminishing by 2100.


Producing hydrogen from natural gas for a mini scale fuel cell is a new challenge for researchers. Therefore, modeling of hydrogen production microreactors should be helpful for designing and developing new microreactors. Experimental sensing of velocity, concentration, temperature and reaction rates in numerous points of the microreactor is impracticable. A microreactor in special geometry was considered for hydrogen production and a CFD model was developed in order to incorporate the mechanism of autothermal reforming. This mechanism includes three main reactions and Langmuir-Hinshelwood type kinetic rates. A three dimensional reformer model was developed to simulate the reactive laminar flow model of this microreactor. Effects of styles of feed entrance, air to fuel ratio and adding water to methane were studied. This model shows that there are hot spots near the entrance of the microreactor where the total oxidation of methane occurs and air distribution along the microreactor is a good solution for hot spot problems. The model shows that air distribution is good for fuel cell application because of high hydrogen production and low CO content in the outlet.


Extreme-weather events frequently drive production fluctuations, price volatility, and hence uncertainty on agricultural commodity markets. Simulation models of global agriculture typically assume normal weather in deterministic scenarios, contain no explicit parameterization of weather elements on the supply side, and confound multitudinous sources of yield fluctuation in exogenous yield shocks. As a part of a wider project on extreme events modelling, in this paper we present the experimental design of a first attempt to explicitly parameterize extreme weather into a partial equilibrium model of global agriculture (Aglink-Cosimo). We outline the main model additions and present preliminary estimates of wheat yield-to-heat elasticities for key regions. We also present the potential wheat market impacts from a counterfactual heat-wave scenario in Australia. Finally, we outline ongoing and future work on multi-scenario analysis in the context of extreme weather and global markets.


This dissertation examines the visual cultures of postwar biomedicine, with a particular focus on how various techniques, conventions, and professional norms have shaped the `look', classification, diagnosis, and understanding of genetic diseases. Many scholars have previously highlighted the `informational' approaches of postwar genetics, which treat the human genome as an expansive data set comprised of three billion DNA nucleotides. Since the 1950s however, clinicians and genetics researchers have largely interacted with the human genome at the microscopically visible level of chromosomes. Mindful of this, my dissertation examines the `observational' approaches of postwar genetics. This is accomplished through a series of case studies, which examine the visual delineation, diagnosis, and genomic localization of a number of disorders. My case studies explore various exemplary attempts to associate particular clinical disorders with specific genetic mutations. This dissertation uses archival resources, oral histories, and the published biomedical literature to examine the many successes of postwar biomedicine, and to highlight the contributions made by a wide rage of biomedical professionals. I find that the visible, tangible human genome, as conceived and depicted at the level of chromosomes, has become an important work object among a diverse array of practitioners. Chromosomal ideograms, I argue, provide an important basis for communication and common practices among this community. While genetic data is becoming increasingly significant to our understanding of human disease, distinguishing the normal from the pathological remains a task that relies on input from the laboratory and the clinic. Thus, the success of postwar genetic medicine must be seen in light of the contributions of biomedical actors from many disciplines, who have agreed to see and communicate about the human genome their object of study in standardized ways. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History and Sociology of Science First Advisor Susan Lindee


Religious extremism seems to be the latest in a succession of catch phrases like "red scare" and "ethnic cleansing" that have permeated political discussions. However, the term seems contradictory because no religious person would undertake violent activity and still be considered religious, just as a person who commits a violent crime would no longer be considered a law-abiding citizen. Indeed, the term is as contradictory as the term "conscientious or sentimental murderer" would be. Perceived religious behavior is primarily political. Empirically speaking, religious affiliations have generally subordinated themselves to perceived patriotic and national causes and that the national or ethnic aspect of a person's identity is prior to his or her religious one. The understanding of extreme violence, therefore, does not depend on the understanding of the fundamentals of a specific religion, but on the understanding of the regional, national, state, ethnic, or local interests a religion serves. The paper will develop the aforementioned assumption in three ways: first, it will elaborate on the origins, nature, and utility of social identity; second, it will look at the origins, nature, and purpose of religious identity as well as at its relation to social identity like ethnicity and nationalism; and third, it will relate both social and religious identity to the political domain and examine the nature of that relationship. To verify and illustrate the relationship between identity, religion, and politics, the paper will rely on the evolution of that relationship in Southeast Europe, examining how the region went from being part of the Roman and Byzantine empires, to the Ottoman millet system, and then to modern nationalism. Southeastern Europe is an ideal political environment for testing any such assumption, because historical realities there have encompassed every conceivable political scenario. Origins of Social Identity This paper begins with the premise that an individual's social identity is multiple and multidimensional corresponding to different levels of social interaction and environmental circumstances. Such a premise implies that an individual could possibly identify with more than one social group and that the degree of intensity of each identity manifestation varies from location to location and from time to time depending on an individual's perception of the origins and purpose of his identity. The premise also implies that an individual's perception of the origins and purpose of social identity is influenced primarily by concerns of that individual's security and safety. Following a Hobbesian approach, an individual will primarily identify with that social arrangement which is perceived to maximize safety and security and minimize threats to both. In this context, social identity is conceived primarily as functional or purposeful. To use one of Plato's classifications of all things, social identity is primarily a means to an end, the end being human security and safety. Because security is an end and identity is primarily a means to that end, identity is multidimensional precisely because security concerns are multidimensional. For example, a person is mainly concerned about physical security against harm, economic security- against deprivation, and spiritual and individual integrity against interference and oppression. Thus, there are multidimensional identity- manifestations in societies as well as people. The multiplicity of security concerns derives from the fact that more than one source provides for the same security, concern, while security concerns are inevitably communicative and metaphysical. By communicative, it is meant that an individual is no only concerned for oneself, but for others as well. By metaphysical, it is meant that an individual is not only concerned for the here and now, but for the previous, the later, and the afterlife. Socrates eloquently phrased this idea in his Apology when he pointed out to the jurors in his trial that "you must look forward to death with confidence, and fix your minds on this one belief, which is certain that nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death, and his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods. …


Many different testing apparatus are used to duplicate in laboratory soil samples the stress state generated in situ by earthquakes. A wide diversity of data has been generated and this paper compares the cyclic behavior of soil predicted by cyclic triaxial, simple shear and torsional shear test apparatus. Comparisons are made for drained and undrained samples with and without initial static shear stresses and for both stress and strain controlled tests. Results show that similar volume change, pore pressure build up and stress ratios to cause liquefaction are measured by the different apparatus. In general, triaxial tests predict the largest liquefaction resistance, simple shear the lowest, and torsional shear somewhere in between.


The green synthesis of Cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO 2 NPs) has been carried out using Nelumbo nucifera flower extract as capping and reducing agent. Optical property is determined using Ultra Violet-Visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis). From the Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), characteristic peak at 506 cm -1 confirms the presence of Ce-O bond. The fluorite-type cubic structure is confirmed by using FT-Raman spectroscopy. The crystalline phases are identified using powder X-Ray Diffractometer (PXRD). The stability and particle size of CeO 2 NPs is interpreted using Dynamic light Scattering (DLS) analysis. The particle size, shape and surface texture is analysed using High Resolution Scanning Electron Microscope (HRSEM) and High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HRTEM) techniques. Selected Area Electron Diffraction (SAED) pattern confirms the identity of crystalline phases with the P-XRD data. Elemental mapping is done by using Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. Thermal behaviour of the CeO 2 NPs is analysed using the Thermo Gravimetric-Differential Thermal Analyser (TG-DTA) technique. The in vitro cytotoxic effect of CeO 2 NPs is tested against HCT 116 human colon cancer cell line using MTT assay. It is recorded that, IC50 of the CeO 2 NPs was 41.60 µg/mL. 62% of cell viability is minimized at 40 µg/mL in 46 h. This result enhances the importance of using greener eco-friendly method for synthesizing CeO 2 NPs with effective anticancer activity.


In this paper a novel optical generation approach for binary-phase-coded, direct-sequence ultra-wideband (UWB) signals is experimentally demonstrated. Our system consists of a laser array, a polarization modulator (PolM), a fiber Bragg grating (FBG), a length of single mode fiber, and a photo detector (PD). The FBG, designed based on the superimposed, chirped grating, is used as the multi-channel frequency discriminator. The input electronic Gaussian pulse is modulated on the optical carrier by the PolM and then converted into UWB monocycle or doublet pulses sequence by the multi-channel frequency discriminator. The PolM is used so that the desired binary phase code pattern could be simply selected by adjusting the polarization state of each laser, rather than tuning the laser wavelengths. The desired UWB shape, monocycle or doublet, could be selected by tuning the FBG. Based on our proposed approach, four-chip, binary-phase-coded, DS-UWB sequences with different pulse shapes and code patterns are experimentally demonstrated. The impact of the fiber dispersion on the generated UWB pulses is also discussed in our paper.


Limited job opportunities, later retirements and longer life spans had combined to create unique mixed-birth generation workplaces in America; three and sometimes four different generations of employees were working together toward the same organization goals and objectives. A popular management trend was to call attention to predicted conflict that might result and then recommend mixed-birth generation management strategies by stereotyping birth generation behaviors in the workplace and prescribing stereotyped approaches for each. In response to a concern with providing yet another opportunity to stereotype people in the workplace, the purpose of this study was to surface a theory that supported a new way of thinking about mixed-birth generation American workplaces through the discovery of stereotype-free workplace behavior patterns. In answer to the research question, "How do organizations create and sustain stereotype-free mixed-birth generation workplaces," this research built theory grounded in the voices, actions and experiences of 18 people from different birth generations who worked with other generations of people in for-profit and non-profit organizations in the United States Midwest. Through Charmaz' (2006) Constructivist Grounded Theory analysis of participant shared experiences, a theory emerged suggesting that a Fostering Work Climate regularly fed by contributing personal and organization culture factors would ultimately demonstrate the characteristics that both created and sustained a stereotype-free mixed-birth generation workplace.


A study of the effect of various amounts of manganese in solid solution on the recovery and recrystallization behavior of an AlMn-alloy, for different annealing conditions after different degrees of deformation (cold rolling) has been carried out. The alloy studied was a 3xxx-type model alloy with 0.5 wt% Fe, 0.15 wt% Si and 1.0 wt% Mn. The studies were a contribution to the MOREAL-project, where the main objective is to quantify and characterize the softening behavior of recyclable aluminium alloys, with small amounts of manganese, iron and silicon, as a basis to validate and further develop the ALSOFT-model. 5 variants of the AlMn-alloy, with respect to strain and homogenization, were prepared and further investigated. Based on electrical conductivity measurements the different amounts of Mn in solid solution, after the different homogenization (hom.) treatments, were estimated to be approximately 0.85 wt% (as cast), 0.55 wt% (hom. nr. 2) and 0.49 wt% (hom. nr. 3). The reductions of Mn in solid solution by hom. nr. 2 and hom. nr. 3 resulted in less concurrent precipitation and consequently a larger effective driving force for recovery and recrystallization. The high amount of Mn in solid solution for the as cast variants resulted in much concurrent precipitation. Concurrent precipitation was found to delay and suppress the recovery and recrystallization processes. At high annealing temperatures, with no (or little) concurrent precipitation occurring, the recrystallised grain structures were found to be homogeneous, fine grained and consisting of equiaxed grains. In these cases the recrystallised textures were found to be approximately random after a strain of 0.7, while they showed cube textures of weak and medium strength after a strain of 3.0. At low annealing temperatures, with concurrent precipitation occurring, the recrystallised grain structures were found to be inhomogeneous and coarse grained, with grains elongated in the rolling direction. In these cases the recrystallised textures were found to consist of P-textures and ND-rotated cube textures of medium and high strength. A high degree of deformation was found to increase the rate and degree of the recovery and recrystallization processes during the isothermal annealing procedures, and to result in fine recrystallised grain structures, consistent with the increased effective driving force for recovery and recrystallization. A high degree of deformation was also found to increase the rate and magnitude of precipitation during the isothermal annealing procedures. Non-isothermal annealing experiments were carried out to investigate if they could result in significantly different grain structures and textures compared to the isothermal annealing experiments. No significantly different results were achieved, only results directly comparable to the results from the isothermal annealing experiments.


Limited angular resolution is one of the main obstacles for practical applications of light fields. Although numerous approaches have been proposed to enhance angular resolution, view selection strategies have not been well explored in this area. In this paper, we study subsampling and reconstruction strategies for light fields. First, different subsampling strategies are studied with a fixed sampling ratio, such as row-wise sampling, column-wise sampling, or their combinations. Second, several strategies are explored to reconstruct intermediate views from four regularly sampled input views. The influence of the angular density of the input is also evaluated. We evaluate these strategies on both real-world and synthetic datasets, and optimal selection strategies are devised from our results. These can be applied in future light field research such as compression, angular super-resolution, and design of camera systems.


This dissertation advances the intelligent group interface (IGI) as a cognitive tool to support teams dealing with acute, ill-defined problems like those experienced by emergency crisis management teams. The IGI uses concepts from team cognition and intelligent user interface (IUI) research and integrates them to create a new type of interface designed specifically for these types of teams. Following a cognitive systems engineering approach, this research (1) designed and implemented three candidate IGI designs based on IUI and team cognition principles; (2) guided the development of a synthetic task environment, NeoCITIES, to explore the efficacy of the IGI designs in an empirical setting; and (3) conducted a user-based experiment that tested the candidate designs in an empirical study of team performance and team mental model formation. The study also served as an initial testbed for the NeoCITIES synthetic task environment. The results of this study revealed that team performance is affected by the presence of an adaptation strategy and the number of times a team is exposed to the task environment. The experimental results also showed that team mental model formation, as measured by team member schema similarity, was affected by adaptation strategy, but not by the number of exposures to which a team was subjected.


The purpose of this study was to use an empirical approach to assess microbial biogeography in freshwater lakes. The targeted, empirical approach was pursued in this work to 1) understand if the census-based methods are under-representing microbes in environmental samples, and 2) to determine if certain microbes are more "transportable" than others, and thus more widespread. Lake samples were collected from 7 clusters of lakes around the world and real-time quantitative PCR was used with 20 microbe-specific primers to assess presence and abundance of each target. The results showed that, for the target microbes, presence in lakes exceeded previous census based estimates that only 15% of microbes are detectable from more than one location. Target microbes were found at an average of 81.7% of sites worldwide, with two present at all lakes. No statistically significant correlation between either the Sorensen Similarity Index or the Bray-Curtis Similarity Index and distance between microbial communities was found in the overall data set. A post hoc analysis did find a statistically significant decrease in the Sorensen Index over distances up to 7500 km. However, the regression coefficient was low (1.40 x 10-5) indicated that this would only reduce the number of species by about 10% over this distance. The results of this work provide support for the "everything is everywhere" hypothesis, suggesting little geographic limitation of microbial distribution. Based on the results, further study with additional targets and an increased number of geographically dispersed lakes is warranted.


TOWARDS DIGITAL LIBRARY SERVICE INTEGRATION by Prateek Shrivastava Digital Library Service Integration (DLSI) aims to provide a systematic approach in integrating the services and collections of National Science and Digital Library. The National Science and Digital Library collections can share the services among themselves in a totally integrated environment. Collections as such will require no change to plug into the DLSI architecture. Collections will keep using the services of NSDL in the similar manner as before. These services will in turn pass few parameters to the services of DLSI. With the help of these parameters, wrappers will fetch the details and priority of the users. These wrappers will be using the services of Search and Discovery module, Metadata Management services, and Access Management services. Users will see a totally integrated environment. They will see their digital library system just as before. In addition to that, they will find some extra link anchors on the document. These links serve to provide the supplemental information or arrange the information in the user preferred way. For this matter, the DLSI maintains basic user's information and preferences. Other contributions include incorporating collaborative filtering for customizing large sets of links, and advance lexical analysis tool to identify the objects of interest in a document. TOWARDS DIGITAL LIBRARY SERVICE INTEGRATION by Prateek Shrivastava A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Computer Science Department of Computer and Information Science


Retail exposure at default (EAD) is one of the weakest areas of risk measurement and modeling in industry practices and in academic literature. The U.S. Basel II Final Rule is not specific about the approach to EAD. In this study, we use borrower and account information from a large national sample of unsecured credit card defaults to capture borrower and lender behavior as borrowers approach default and to measure and model loan equivalent (LEQ), a common approach to EAD estimation. Dynamic snapshots of account credit limits and balances indicate that borrowers are more active than lenders in the "race to default." We find that a little over a dozen borrower, account, and macro factors are significant drivers of EAD. Models incorporating these risk drivers show improved predictive accuracy. Our study offers a useful benchmark to banks' EAD models and fills the void in the literature on retail EAD.


In this work, we first discuss the image halftoning problem. Halftoning is the rendition of
continuous-tone pictures on displays that are capable of producing only two levels. There
are several well-known algorithms for half toning. The dot diffusion method for digital
half toning has the advantage of pixel-level parallelism unlike the error diffusion method,
which is a popular half toning method. The image quality offered by error diffusion is
still regarded as superior to most of the other known methods. We show how the image
quality obtained using the dot diffusion method can be improved by optimization of the
so-called class matrix. By taking the human visual characteristics into account we show
that such optimization consistently results in images comparable to error diffusion, without
sacrificing the pixel-level parallelism. The dot diffusion algorithm will be discussed and
by modifying the algorithm, embedded multiresolution property will be added. Later,
we introduce LUT (Look Up Table) based half toning and tree-structured LUT (TLUT)
halftoning. We demonstrate how error diffusion characteristics can be achieved with this
method. Afterwards, our algorithm will be trained on halftones obtained by Direct Binary
Search (DBS) which is an algorithm with high computational complexity. The complexity
of TLUT halftoning is higher than that of error diffusion but much lower than that of the
DBS algorithm. Thus, halftone image quality between that of error diffusion and DBS will
be achieved depending on the size of tree structure in TLUT algorithm.
We also discuss the inverse halftoning problem. Inverse halftoning is the reconstruction
of a continuous tone image from its halftoned version. We propose two methods for
inverse half toning of dot diffused images. The first one uses Projection Onto Convex Sets
(POCS) and the second one uses wavelets. We then propose a novel and fast method for
inverse halftoning called the Look Up Table (LUT) Method. The LUT for inverse halftoning
is obtained from the histogram gathered from a few sample halftone images and the
corresponding original images. For each pixel, the algorithm looks at the pixel's neighborhood
(template) and depending upon the distribution of pixels in the template, it assigns
a contone value from a precomputed LUT. The method is extremely fast (no filtering is
required) and the image quality achieved is comparable to the best methods known for inverse halftoning. The LUT inverse half toning method does not depend on the specific
properties of the half toning method, and can be applied to any method. An algorithm for
template selection for LUT inverse half toning is introduced. We also extend LUT inverse
halftoning to color halftones.
The next topic is image watermarking and effects of halftoning on watermarked images.
Watermarking is the process of embedding a secret signal into a host signal in order to
verify ownership or authenticity. We discuss the effects of applying inverse half toning before
detection of watermark in half toned images and offer methods to improve watermark
detection from halftoned images.
Finally, we consider the optimal histogram modification with MSE metric and optimal
codebook selection problem. Watermarking with histogram modification is one of the few
watermarking methods which is robust to rotation and scaling. We formulate histogram
modification problem as finding a transformation such that the error between the input and
the output signal is minimized and the output signal has the desired histogram. It turns
out that this problem is equivalent to the integer linear programming problem. Then, we
formulate the problem of finding the optimal code book where the codewords can come from
a finite set. The equivalent problem again turns out to be a linear integer programming
problem and the solution is guaranteed to be globally optimal.


This paper deals with the design and implementation of the power stage of a forced-commutated current-source converter (CSC) for use in industry applications of distribution type static synchronous compensator (D-STATCOM). The power semiconductors are switched at 500 Hz according to the switching patterns generated by selective harmonic elimination method for the elimination of the most significant four low-order harmonics. The possibility of using various power semiconductors in CSC is examined both theoretically and experimentally. The requirement of bipolar voltage-blocking capability is achieved by the use of an asymmetric integrated gate commutated thyristor (IGCT) and a fast-recovery diode instead of a single symmetrical device, which maximizes the converter power rating and makes natural-air cooling realizable. Determination of optimum dc-link reactor in view of the power quality standards and design of optimum turn-on and turn-off snubbers in view of the chosen power semiconductor characteristics are shown to be critical design issues in the paper. Design principles are verified by both laboratory tests and field tests conducted on two different industrial D-STATCOM prototypes. It has been shown that an IGCT-based CSC can be successfully used in industry applications of D-STATCOM systems by designing the power stage according to the proposed principles.


Background The evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is inconclusive. However, many patients with IBS are self referring for acupuncture, therefore it is of interest to know whether acupuncture is effective or not. The aim of this study was to establish variability in the primary outcome measure to enable a sample size to be calculated for a full scale trial, and to explore feasibility and design criteria. Methods A pragmatic randomised controlled trial compared 10 sessions of acupuncture plus usual GP care with usual GP care alone. Thirty patients were recruited from four GP databases in Birmingham, UK, and randomised one-to-two to acupuncture or usual care alone. The primary outcome was the IBS Symptom Severity Score (SSS) at three months (maximum score 500). Analysis was by intention-to-treat, and multiple imputation was used for missing data. Results From the databases, 189 patients with IBS were identified, of whom 30 were eligible and consented to randomisation. At three months, a statistically and clinically significant difference between groups of 138 points (SD 90) in favour of acupuncture was observed on the IBS SSS (95% CI: 66 to 210; P=0.001) using multiple imputation. For a full scale trial, we estimate that a sample size of 108 patients per arm is required, based on a minimum clinically significant change of 50 points, drawn from a primary care population of 140 000. Conclusions We established the feasibility of a full scale trial, successfully recruiting patients and calculating the sample size required. The results of our pilot analysis suggest that more definitive research into acupuncture for IBS is merited. A pragmatic trial design will not be able to distinguish between acupuncture specific effects and placebo effects; however, it is the design of choice to determine cost effectiveness.


There has been an Irish presence within the Caribbean since at least the 1620s and yet the historical and cultural dimensions of this encounter remain relatively under-researched and are often conceived of in reductive terms by crude markers such as redlegs or poor whites. While there are some striking reminders of this hitory throughout the region, this collection explores how the complications and contradictions of Irish Caribbean relations are much richer and deeper than previously recognized. Caribbean Irish Connections makes an important contribution to Irish studies by challenging the dominance of a US diasporic history and a disciplinary focus on cultural continuity and ancestry. Likewise, within Caribbean studies, the Irish presence troubles the orthodox historical models for understanding race and the plantation, race and class structures, as well as questions of ethnic and religious minorities. The contributors emphasize the importance of understanding the transatlantic nexus between Ireland and the Caribbean in terms of the shared historical experiences of dislocation, diaspora and colonization, as well as of direct encounter. This collection pays tribute to the extraordinarily rich tradition of cultural expression that informs both cultures and their imagination of each other.


The good news for patients is that starting in 2014 the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires individual and group health plans to issue policies to all applicants, regardless of health status. Through the ACA's individual mandate, insurance exchanges, and Medicaid expansion, guaranteed issue will provide new coverage for millions of citizens. Having insurance, however, does not always guarantee access to primary care.

Lost in the political rhetoric around health reform and technical glitches in the HealthCare.gov website are a set of critical decisions that many physician practices will have to make in the coming years. These decisions may very well contribute to the ultimate success or failure of the ACA


textabstractThe pancreas is a mixed (exocrine and endocrine) glandular organ that is important for food digestion and glucose homeostasis. Developmental anomalies or disorders that affect normal pancreas homeostasis may cause various life-threatening diseases such as pancreatitis, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and pancreatic cancer.
In the past two decades, an increasing number of studies have begun to unravel the molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating mammalian pancreas organogenesis. The information extracted from these studies should be valuable both, to better understand the etiology of some pancreatic diseases, and to design new therapeutic tools to cure those diseases.
A recent study reported expression of the homeodomain transcription factor Prox1 in the presumptive pancreatic region of mouse embryos1. This finding raised the possibility that, similar to other tissues, proper pancreas development requires the function of Prox1. The studies of my Ph.D thesis sought to uncover the role of Prox1 during mouse pancreas organogenesis.
First, the expression of Prox1 in the developing pancreas was thoroughly characterized and the pancreatic tissues of Prox1-nullizygous embryos were analyzed (Chapter 2). Second, since Prox1-nullizygous embryos die at around embryonic day (E) 14.5, we generated a
(Prox1loxP/loxP
novel mouse model ;Pdx1.Cre) with conditional inactivation of Prox1 in pancreatic progenitors, to investigate whether loss of Prox1 function affects late aspects of pancreas organogenesis (Chapter 3). Third, upon identifying Opn as a novel pancreatic gene, we performed an extensive analysis of its expression in the pancreas of mouse embryos and adults and characterized this organ of Opn-nullizygous mice (Chapter 4).


Photovoltaics (PV) engineering is an emerging field within the schools of engineering. To meet the needs of a new field, learning resources need to be developed for students to utilize in order to effectively engage with the content. The purpose of this work in progress is to discuss an established photovoltaics website (pveducation.org) that is being augmented towards becoming an effective PV education resource. With 3000 hits per day, pveducation.org engages learners in PV across the globe at a post-secondary content level. The authors of the site have recently enlisted educational and cognitive psychologists to enhance the website by infusing facets of educational technology. We intend to describe pveducation.org and provide an overview of the role educational technology has played in enhancing the website through the use of scaffolding and the inclusion of active-interactive tools. We contend that through this process the website can aid in the proliferation of effective learning of PV across the globe, and potentially aid new and well established engineering domains as they begin to embrace elearning technology as learning resources.


ABSTRACT Children under 4 years of age often evaluate belief reports based on reality instead of beliefs. They tend to reject sentences like, "John thinks that giraffes have stripes" on the grounds that giraffes do not have stripes. Previous accounts have proposed that such judgments reflect immature Theory of Mind or immature syntactic/semantic representations. We argue that the difficulty is actually pragmatic. Adults frequently use belief reports to provide information about reality (e.g., "I think the stove is still hot"). Young children have difficulty determining when the main point is reality (the stove situation) vs. mental states (John's ideas about giraffes). We show that if the context emphasizes beliefs, children are more able to evaluate belief reports appropriately (Experiment 1). The pattern of children's truth value judgments demonstrates that they understand the literal meaning of think sentences, despite their pragmatic difficulty grasping the speaker's intention (Experiment 2).


We have previously demonstrated that one member of the alpha-tubulin multigene family, termed T alpha 1 in rats, is regulated as a function of neuronal growth and regeneration. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms responsible for coupling gene expression to morphological differentiation, we have isolated the T alpha 1 gene, have fused 1.1 kb of the 5′ flanking region to a nuclear lacZ reporter gene, and have generated transgenic mice. Analysis of these transgenic mice demonstrated that marker gene expression was specific to the CNS and PNS, with expression in vivo at embryonic day 13.5 being similar to expression of the endogenous gene. Moreover, the induction of transgene expression was correlated temporally with neuronal commitment in developing neural crest-derived peripheral neurons and in the developing retina. Immunocytochemical analysis of mixed primary embryonic brain cultures confirmed that transgene expression was specific to neurons, with the majority of neurons, but not astrocytes or oligodendrocytes, expressing beta-galactosidase. Transgene expression in vivo was maintained in developing neurons until early in postnatal life, subsequent to which its expression decreased coincident with neuronal maturation. The transgene was then reinduced in regenerating facial motoneurons following unilateral axotomy of the facial nerve. Thus, 1.1 kb of 5′ flanking sequence from the T alpha 1 gene contains the sequence elements responsible for specifying gene expression to embryonic neurons and for subsequently regulating gene expression in both developing and mature neurons as a function of morphological growth.


Abstract To effectively monitor winter foraging activity by the cryptic, non-site-faithful Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), we tested the use of small data-logging temperature sensors (iButton Thermachrons®, Maxim/Dallas SemiConductors, Dallas, Tex.) attached to a standard radiocollar on 3 opossums over the winter of 2000–2001. Two replicate sensors were required to clearly show time periods with cooler temperatures, an indication that the animal was outside the den. These foraging bouts were consistent with the available radiotelemetry data. Daily duration of foraging showed a strong negative relationship with ambient temperature, quantitatively documenting for the first time a phenomenon previously known only anecdotally. The iButton Thermachron seems to be an effective, low-cost, and low-effort technology for monitoring foraging activities of any animal that rests and forages in different temperature environments.


To find out where software is headed, experts in academia and industry share their vision of software's future. It is a snapshot in time of where we have been and possibly where we are headed. The subjects discussed are: the desktop; software technology; objects; software agents; software engineering; parallel software; and the curriculum. The results suggest a strong polarization within the software community: a chasm exists between academia and industry. It appears that these two groups share radically different views on where software is headed. The impression is the heavy emphasis on programming languages, operating systems and algorithms by the academic group, in contrast to the clear emphasis on standards and market-leading trends by the industrial group. Academics worry about evolutionary or incremental changes to already poorly designed languages and systems, while industrialists race to keep up with revolutionary changes in everything. Academics are looking for better ideas, industrialists for better tools. To an industrial person, things are moving fast-they are revolutionary. To an academic, things are moving too slowly, and in the wrong direction-they are only evolutionary changes which are slave to an installed base.


Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels are cellular sensors for a wide spectrum of physical and chemical stimuli. They are involved in the formation of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, temperature, and pain sensation. TRP channels also play fundamental roles in cell signaling and allow the host cell to respond to benign or harmful environmental changes. As TRP channel activation is controlled by very diverse processes and, in many cases, exhibits complex polymodal properties, understanding how each TRP channel responds to its unique forms of activation energy is both crucial and challenging. The past two decades witnessed significant advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie TRP channels activation. This review focuses on our current understanding of the molecular determinants for TRP channel activation.


Despite the increasing importance of shareholder voting, regulators have paid little attention to the rights of retail investors who own approximately 30% of publicly traded companies but who vote less than 30% of their shares. A substantial factor contributing to this low turnout is the antiquated mechanism by which retail investors vote. The federal proxy voting rules place primary responsibility for facilitating retail voting in the hands of custodial brokers who have limited incentives to develop workable procedures, and current regulatory restrictions impede market-based innovation that incorporate technological innovations.

One of the most promising such innovations is standing voting instructions (SVI). SVI allows investors to designate their voting preferences in advance of shareholders' meetings and have their shares voted in accordance with those preferences. Although SVI is readily available to institutional investors, the federal proxy rules prevent its use by retail investors, and proposals seeking modifications of these rules have languished before the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) for years. The SEC's primary rationale for failing to act is the concern that SVI will lead to uninformed voting.

This Article addresses and rejects the claim that the risk of uninformed voting justifies the SEC's failure to remove the regulatory obstacles to SVI. Current technology is consistent with the creation of voting platforms that allow retail investors meaningful participation in the voting process while retaining appropriate safeguards to minimize the potential for adverse effects. Ironically, implementation of voting platforms allowing SVI has the potential to make retail investor voting both more efficient and better informed and to increase the legitimacy of corporate democracy.


This thesis comprises three chapters. All chapters have a common theme which at it's base deals with how interactions in social non-market contexts may shape individual and aggregate economic outcomes. Chapter 1 entitled "Whom Should I Observe", studies a model of observational learning in the context of a simple learning problem. Players have heterogeneous prefer ences over outcomes. A player can learn about the underlying outcome distribution by observing one other player. We characterise optimal link formation. The main result is that some players prefer to form a link with a player who experiments with actions that they axe not willing to experiment with themselves. This is interpreted as an informa tional micro-foundation for a preference for diversity. Applications are discussed. Chapter 2 is entitled "Are Gifts-in-Kind Inefficient". It is often argued that gifts- in-kind are inefficient transfers (Waldfogel 1993). We study a model of partnership formation, where players have incomplete information about the desirability of the part nership. Prior to the players simultaneously deciding whether to form the partnership, one player gets a signal of the partner's type and can send gifts, which may be either a gift-in-kind or cash. The model has multiple equilibria. Under certain conditions the efficient equilibrium payoffs involves the transfer of gifts-in-kind. The reason is that gifts-in-kind reveals more to the receiver about the giver's beliefs about the receivers type than do other transfers. An evolutionary argument, in the spirit of Kim and So- bel (1995), is given. In the long run the efficient equilibrium is played with positive probability. Chapter 3 entitled "Revisiting Schelling's Spatial Proximity Model" formalises the model of Schelling (1969, 1971) of interaction in one-dimensional neighbourhoods. We show, via numerical simulations, that the rest points of the adaptive process tends to select neighbourhood configurations which are relatively segregated in the aggregate. We test the robustness of rest points to the introduction of noise in the adaptive process. The long run prediction is that complete segregation occurs. The model is simulated and results show that the wait until the stochastic process reaches the set of segregated states increases rapidly in the size of the population. Variations, with better long run properties, are suggested and analysed. We also analyse a model where residents have a strict preference for integration. Nevertheless the only stochastically stable states are segregated. We test the robustness of this prediction by allowing for heterogeneity in preferences. Interestingly this turns the prediction on it's head: only integrated states are stable. Schelling's original model is robust to this pertubation.


The purpose of this research are: 1) to study the behavior of Nakhon Phanom University students in using information technology to study, 2) to examine the Nakhon Phanom University students' ability and potential for using information technology. The entire reliability value was 0.96 and the discrimination index was between 0.49-0.80. The results disclosed as follows: 1) most students owned laptops (75%), followed by the smartphone (58%), as well as the University students keep up with the newest technology. This is becomes evident when examining the student's length of ownership of the various devices, which is not more than three years. It becomes obvious that students buy new devices all the time and the majority of students use these devices in learning (over 86%). The study also found that teachers use laptops and projectors the most in their classroom (>70%). The communication channel that the university provided such as the online learning system, was not used as much as the social media channel (only 20%). 2) The students essential Software skills for learning were in the middle while social media skills were very high . Therefore, the results showed the majority of students lacked basic knowledge in using introductory information technology that


This dissertation provides an analysis of the Agenda construction of South African Feminism(s). Agenda is a feminist, peer-reviewed SAPSE journal that was launched as a publication in 1987 in South Africa. The Journal provides a forum for a number of issues: the most important being the representation of women's voices towards transforming unequal gender relations; and women's unequal position in society, their visibility, struggles and problems in relation to gender inequalities. The Journal also uses a format that encompasses creative writing and original research that is intended to be accessible to a broad readership. Over the years, the Journal has published broadly on issues ranging from health, violence, sexuality, the media, poverty, labour, HIV/AIDS, rights, sustainable development, citizenship, etc. This dissertation analyses how some of these themes have been addressed by Agenda in terms of editorial content and the subsequent impact these choices have had on creating a uniquely South African Feminism. To determine the 'impact' , the study adopts a content analysis of the Journal, (Neuman, 1997). The content of the Journals, especially during Apartheid (pre-1994) reflects a focus on the lived experiences of South African women. It is hypothesised that Agenda has shifted its focus since Issue 20 (the first Issue of 1994 aptly titled "Politics, Power and Democracy"). The argument in the dissertation demonstrates that with the inclusion of South African women, Agenda has steadily and consistently developed a discourse that is collaborative and participatory, reflecting a hybrid of various earlier strands of Westernoriginating feminisms (such as radical , liberal, Marxist, socialist) . This new discourse could be labelled South African Feminism(s), and such a conclusion is investigated through close analyses of selected themes and issues covered by the Journal copy.


This paper uses a panel of 21,618 people with rare surnames whose wealth is observed at death in England and Wales 1858-2012 to measure the intergeneration elasticity of wealth over five generations. We show, using rare surnames to track families, that wealth is much more persistent over generations than standard one generation estimates would suggest. There is still a significant correlation between the wealth of families five generations apart. We show that this finding can be reconciled with standard estimates of wealth mobility by positing an underlying Markov process of wealth inheritance with an intergenerational elasticity of 0.70-0.75 throughout the years 1858-2012. The enormous social and economic changes of this long period had surprisingly little effect on the strength of inheritance of wealth.


In modern business, educational, and other settings, it is common to provide a digital network that interconnects hardware devices for shared access by the users (e.g., in an office where printers are available for use by all the office workers). In such a context, so-called "soft" failures, where a device silently starts working in degraded mode, may easily go un-noticedfor a long time, resulting in potential productivity loss. It is therefore advantageous to enable system administrators to identify soft failures at an early stage. We propose here a probabilistic method using variational inference on a factorial hidden Markov model to automatically discover soft failures, based on the analysis of simple usage information which is normally logged by the network infrastructure. We propose to mine these logs in order to discover statistically significant deviations in the usage behavior of the overall infrastructure, and we identify such deviations with soft failures, or, in any case, situations of interest to an administrator.


Preservative-treated wood is often used for construction of highway and foot bridges, wetland boardwalks, and other structures in or over water or sensitive environments. In these applications it is important that release of preservative from the wood into the environment is minimized. This publication addresses this concern by describing the various types of pressure-treated wood, reviewing recent research on the environmental impacts of pressure-treated wood, and discussing methods of minimizing potential environmental impacts. Recent research indicates that wood treated with these preservatives does release small amounts of chemical into the environment immediately adjacent to the treated structure, although no adverse biological impacts were observed. Environmental releases from treated wood can be minimized with appropriate treatment practices. These practices include fabricating members before treatment and specifying that the wood be treated using methods that ensure chemical fixation and prevent the formation of surface residues or bleeding. Guidance to specifying such treating practices are offered in this report and in sources such as the Best Management Practices developed by the Western Wood Preservers' Institute. Also, responsible construction practices such as storage of treated wood under cover and containment and collection of construction residue can further reduce the possibility of negative environmental impacts. As with any other construction material, careful specification and responsible use of treated wood will optimize its performance.


I apply recent research on the links between belief, truth and pragmatism based on Williams (1970) statement that "beliefs aim at truth," to the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance, in which agents act contrary to their private beliefs because they believe that other agents believe the contrary. I consider three positions; an epistemic position, a pragmatic position, and a third position coordinating the first two. I apply them to pluralistic ignorance while considering the recent study of Bjerring, Hansend and Pedersen (2014). I conclude that a purely epistemic approach is better for understanding pluralistic ignorance.


Abstract. The following points emerge from the present review of strategies to improve the learning of proper names: (a) Face-name mnemonic techniques based on mental imagery have been shown to be efficient in laboratory settings in both young and older adults. Unfortunately, they are particularly effortful and require capacity for imagination, making them difficult to apply in a real conversational context. (b) Strategies based on spaced retrieval practice have been found to be efficient both in laboratory and more ecological settings, and both in young and older adults. (c) Techniques based on spaced retrieval practice appear to be more efficient than those based on mental imagery. (d) More recent research has proposed new perspectives, such as basing learning strategies on implicit, rather than explicit, memory processes such as hyper-binding. Finally, neuroscience research has started to investigate the possibility of using non-invasive electrical brain stimulation to improve name learning.


Museum texts tell interesting stories, and their role in public education makes them quite important. The exhibition discussed in this paper gives a message that interests, but also concerns me, as a teacher of language, communication and cultural studies. It is a case of one culture telling stories about another, and in such a delicate arena there is much potential to cause offence. The exhibition in question is about peoples of the Pacific, and is in a major European museum of the world's indigenous cultures (BerlinDahlem). I had visited it to see how Australian cultures are represented in image and language and subsequently discussed the representations with students of Australian Studies, translation and text grammar at Potsdam University. The museum texts raise central problems of communication. They are highly academic in style and not at all designed for the genera] visitor with no previous knowledge of the topic. For readers with a great deal of previous knowledge in the area, they raise serious discursive conflicts and involve intercultural issues of racism and misrepresentation.


Toolkits for assisting innovation managers have been a regular and accepted contributor to organisational development programmes for many years. Less readily available are equivalent tools and techniques that can be used to assist academic researchers interested in assessing the extent to which firms have reached different levels of technological capabilities or, even more importantly, by policy-makers themselves. This paper describes a data collection vehicle that aims to contribute to all three spheres – individual organizational development, academic research and policy-making. It is designed to identify a firm's strengths and weaknesses in the development of their technological capabilities and to categorise a firm based upon their awareness of the threats and opportunities posed by technology and the degree to which the firm is prepared and able to change in practice. The tool can, however, also be used to collect data that should be relevant to policy-makers with responsibilities for regional or sectoral industrial development.
The paper looks at some aspects of the innovation policy field in which it is hoped the tool can make a contribution, the approach incorporated into the design of the tool to identify technological capabilities and our categorisation of firms in relationship to this model.


We introduce the concept of Hybrid Diversity - Aware Collective Adaptive Systems (HDA-CAS) and their proposed role in addressing social problems associated with urban living, health, and financial markets. Our concern is for their responsible development and deployment, and to this end, we suggest perspectives on the governance of social machines and a framework from which to design governance regimes for HDA-CAS.


We study the problem of learning communities in the presence of modeling errors and give robust recovery algorithms for the Stochastic Block Model (SBM). This model, which is also known as the Planted Partition Model, is widely used for community detection and graph partitioning in various fields, including machine learning, statistics, and social sciences. Many algorithms exist for learning communities in the Stochastic Block Model, but they do not work well in the presence of errors.
In this paper, we initiate the study of robust algorithms for partial recovery in SBM with modeling errors or noise. We consider graphs generated according to the Stochastic Block Model and then modified by an adversary. We allow two types of adversarial errors, Feige---Kilian or monotone errors, and edge outlier errors. Mossel, Neeman and Sly (STOC 2015) posed an open question about whether an almost exact recovery is possible when the adversary is allowed to add $o(n)$ edges. Our work answers this question affirmatively even in the case of $k>2$ communities.
We then show that our algorithms work not only when the instances come from SBM, but also work when the instances come from any distribution of graphs that is $\epsilon m$ close to SBM in the Kullback---Leibler divergence. This result also works in the presence of adversarial errors. Finally, we present almost tight lower bounds for two communities.


After more than two decades of effort to recover and adapt John Dewey's thought for a reformed liberal politics, the institutional implications of his ideas remain elusive. This essay argues that a distinctive set of modern business practices and an incipient public policy architecture embody key precepts of Dewey's political theory. The practices and architecture have developed independently of Dewey's ideas, but they elaborate the ideas implicitly, and they are illuminated by them.


In this paper we describe a memory-based machine learning system that extracts biomedical events from texts relying on information from contextual and syntactic features. The main characteristics of the system are that it uses information from dependency syntax and that it integrates classifiers that learn event triggers and event participants jointly. The results show that this system is more efficient than a similar memory-based system that used shallow context information and integrated classifiers in a traditional pipeline architecture.


In the Eady model, where the meridional potential vorticity (PV) gradient is zero, perturbation energy growth can be partitioned cleanly into three mechanisms: (i) shear instability, (ii) resonance, and (iii) the Orr mechanism. Shear instability involves two-way interaction between Rossby edge waves on the ground and lid, resonance occurs as interior PV anomalies excite the edge waves, and the Orr mechanism involves only interior PV anomalies. These mechanisms have distinct implications for the structural and temporal linear evolution of perturbations. Here, a new framework is developed in which the same mechanisms can be distinguished for growth on basic states with nonzero interior PV gradients. It is further shown that the evolution from quite general initial conditions can be accurately described (peak error in perturbation total energy typically less than 10%) by a reduced system that involves only three Rossby wave components. Two of these are counterpropagating Rossby waves—that is, generalizations of the Rossby edge waves when the interior PV gradient is nonzero—whereas the other component depends on the structure of the initial condition and its PV is advected passively with the shear flow. In the cases considered, the three-component model outperforms approximate solutions based on truncating a modal or singular vector basis.


In the United States, the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 envisions a significant increase in federal oversight over the nation's health care system. At the same time, however, the legislation requires the states to play key roles in every aspect of the reform agenda (such as expanding Medicaid programs, creating insurance exchanges, and working with providers on delivery system reforms). The complicated intergovernmental partnerships that govern the nation's fragmented and decentralized system are likely to continue, albeit with greater federal oversight and control. But what about intergovernmental relations in the United Kingdom? What impact did the formal devolution of power in 1999 to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have on health policy in those nations, and in the United Kingdom more generally? Has devolution begun a political process in which health policy in the United Kingdom will, over time, become increasingly decentralized and fragmented, or will this "state of unions" retain its long-standing reputation as perhaps the most centralized of the European nations? In this article, we explore the federalist and intergovernmental implications of recent reforms in the United States and the United Kingdom, and we put forward the argument that political fragmentation (long-standing in the United States and just emerging in the United Kingdom) produces new intergovernmental partnerships that, in turn, produce incremental growth in overall government involvement in the health care arena. This is the impact of what can be called catalytic federalism.


N -modular redundancy (NMR) is the simplest and most effective fault-tolerant design method for integrated circuits, where N copies of a circuit are employed and a majority voter produces the voted output. Asynchronous circuits, however, exhibit various characteristics that limit the applicability of NMR. Specifically, the hazard-free property of the output in these circuits must be preserved when hardware providing fault tolerance, such as a majority voter, is added. In this work, we first demonstrate that a typical majority voter design would fail to preserve the hazard-free property of its response. We then propose a hazard-free majority voter design for the triple-modular redundancy fault-tolerance design paradigm, which enters an output-holding state to preserve the output value when transient errors may be sensitised to its inputs. By exploring various conditions to exit from the output-holding state, we describe several extensions of the voter into an NMR one, each yielding a distinct implementation with different tolerance characteristics and area cost. We generalise this extension based on the exit condition and analyse the associated tolerance capability of the extended NMR voter. Finally, the proposed hazard-free voter is simulated using HSPICE, and detailed area cost formulations are derived for the proposed voter designs.


Since the 1980s, visibility has played a key role in debates surrounding Spanish poetry. Novísimo 'very new' poets have highlighted and explored the instability and uncertainty of the gaze, while poetas de la experiencia 'poets of experience' have more readily accepted the visible without questioning it or the mechanisms used to construct it. Poets who entered the literary scene in the mid to late 1990s have also entered this discussion. Antonio Méndez Rubio, the author of twelve poetry collections and numerous critical and theoretical works, is a poet whose work does not fit easily within the categories usually employed to discuss contemporary Spanish poetic production dealing with social reality. Nevertheless, his poetry still seeks to engage the reader and help the reader engage critically with his or her material and discursive surroundings. This essay will show that the problematization of the gaze and the (in)visible in Trasluz 'Throughlight' by Méndez Rubio explores the inherently political nature of what is seen, how we see it, and how we (re)present it in poetry. His stance vis-à-vis these issues indicates a marked departure from the dominant poetic trends that characterized Spanish poetry of the 1980s and 1990s, thereby providing a glimpse into both the present and future of Spanish poetry.


The fatigue behavior of lead zirconate titanate ceramics (PZT) has been studied under electrical and mechanical drives. Piezoelectric fatigue was studied using a mechanical method. Under ac mechanical drive, hard and soft PZTs showed an increase in the longitudinal piezoelectric constant at short times, reaching a maximum at intermediate times. Systematic investigations were performed to characterize the electrical fatigue behavior. A decrease in the magnitude of the remanent polarization was observed, which was relatively high for soft PZT. The dynamics of fatigue have been shown to scale to a hierarchical relaxation process, and this is typical of random field systems.


The Internet represents a unique opportunity for people to interact with each other across time and space, and online communities have existed long before the Internet's solidification in everyday living. There are two inherent challenges that online communities continue to contend with: motivating participation and organizing information. An online community's success or failure rests on the content generated by its users. Specifically, users need to continually participate by contributing new content and organizing existing content for others to be attracted and retained. I propose both participation and organization can be enhanced if users have an explicit awareness of the implicit social network which results from their online interactions. My approach makes this normally "hidden" social network visible and shows users that these intangible relations have an impact on satisfying their information needs and vice versa. That is, users can more readily situate their information needs within social processes, understanding that the value of information they receive and give is influenced and has influence on the mostly incidental relations they have formed with others. First, I describe how to model a social network within an online discussion forum and visualize the subsequent relationships in a way that motivates participation. Second, I show that social networks can also be modeled to generate recommendations of information items and that, through an interactive visualization, users can make direct adjustments to the model in order to improve their personal recommendations. I conclude that these modeling and visualization techniques are beneficial to online communities as their social capital is enhanced by "weaving" users more tightly together.


This disseration provides an answer to the question what influence societal preferences have on US military innovation. For this purpose, it connects theoretical threads from Governmental Political and New Liberalism with the literature on military innovation and democratic peace. Four periods of military transition during which the incentive for military innovation is particularly strong are analysed based on a structured-focused comparison: The Post-World War II (1945-1949), the Korean War period (1959-1953), the Post-Cold War (1990-1998) and the War on Terror period (2001-2007). The findings of this study show that the domestic and international levels of US military policy increasingly follow conflicting logics which reduce the likelihood of innovation. The public majority's interest in innovation as a means to maintain efficient military forces in a changing world remains latent most of the time. In contrast, special interest groups' preferences for the benefitial domestic status quo result in a permanent push towards military stability. Only in cases of perceived failure, the public majority actively engages in military policy and triggers reform through elections.