Weiler commented in 1992 that the EC may not speak with one voice but increasingly speaks like a choir. The objective of this paper is to examine some of the ways that choir is developing, specifically, the circumstances under which Member States confer the exercise of their national competencies on the European Commission in the negotiation of international agreements. The decision of Member States to allow the Commission to negotiate on their behalf does not imply any legal transfer of competencies; it is done merely for the purpose of obtaining greater bargaining power in international trade negotiations. The conferral of competencies allows the European Community (EC) to act with a single voice in its external trade relations in those areas where, according to the Treaties of the European Communities, there is shared competence between the Member States and the EC. These areas include services, intellectual property rights and investment. The necessary condition for exercise of shared competence is an agreement that is both a Community and national agreement, which inevitably creates a rather confusing situation. As there is no article in the Treaties of the EC that provides guidance for the transfer of these competencies, there is a significant legal vacuum on issues of mixed competencies in the European Union (EU). In the framework of the EU, there is Community competence, national competence and mixed competence. Through Article 133 of the EC Treaty, the EC has been given exclusive competence to create common commercial policy in the field of external trade relations. However, this competence is not exclusive to the EC in such areas as services, investment and intellectual property rights, where Member States share competence with the EC, so-called mixed competence. In practice, Member States cede their negotiating role to the EC negotiator, and the European Commission negotiates. The Commission, therefore, attends negotiations on behalf of the EC and its Member States vis-a-vis a third party without prejudice to legal competence. The primary difficulty is that as long as the external competence has not become exclusively EC competence, Member States, even acting collectively, remain free to enter into multilateral treaty relations. Member States prefer not to allow Community competence and, instead, preserve their national competence. This approach, which became apparent in the Court's Opinion 2/91 on the ILO, weakens the constitutional position of the Community in the field of external relations and creates problems for Europe's trading partners. The tensions created by the mixture of competencies between the EC and Member States are also an obstacle to the achievement of Community interests as a whole. Shared competence between the EC and its Member States implies the fragmentation of unity in the international representation of the Community and translates into less power for the EC in the international arena. Allan Rosas argues that only when the fifteen Member States speak with one voice can they aspire to be a powerful voice, and thus collaborate with the United States on equal terms. In the Single European Act of 1986, the (then 12) Member States declared that they were aware of the responsibility incumbent upon Europe to aim at speaking ever increasingly with one voice... However, the Edinburgh European Council of December 1992 stated that the EU involves independent and sovereign States. Ever present is the notion of European identity that is not yet strong enough to enable the subordination of fifteen national foreign policies to the common good in all areas of international relations. This paper looks at the weaknesses and strengths of how mixed competence functions within the EC. Section I provides an introduction to the transfer of competence to the EC in areas where legally, it should be shared with the Member States. Section II is a historical overview of the development of shared competence. Section III describes the legal interpretations of the European Court of Justice and the French Conseil Constitutionnel on mixed competence. Section IV looks at Europe's attempt to reconcile the need to present itself as a bloc with preservation of national sovereignty. Finally, the conclusion describes the current thinking on the direction the EC should take on this issue and looks at what the EU needs institutionally to prepare for the future. The EC has become an important actor on the international scene, and since the 1970s, its external relations have been growing both in number of agreements signed and in domains of participation. The European Communities have participated in an important number of multilateral conventions within the framework of international or regional organizations, and are increasingly present in world affairs. In the context of multilateral relations, they have a growing role. It is important to take a balanced look at the functioning of the EU as a supranational organization to have a better understanding of its role in the future.


Many will remember the 1988 Canadian Ethnology Society's meetings in Saskatoon. Immigrants and Refugees in Canada owes many of its chapters to papers presented there. Its 25 chapters are spread across three vital areas of ethnic research, namely, ethnicity of immigrant groups, the refugee experience of relocation and the immigrant and refugee experience in Quebec. Part 1, "Cultural Dimensions of Ethnicity among Immigrant Groups in Canada," deals with both theoretical and substantive issues. Sharma's introduction provides one of the most succinct overviews of ethnic research in Canada, drawing on the contributions of various disciplines and anthropology in particular. Anderson summons the reader to consider a dynamic model of ethnicity, namely, the response of minorities to "dominant social control mechanisms." The usual emphasis on cultural vitality and institutional completeness is too static a view, according to him. Anderson's search for new research dimensions is laudable, although it may be a matter of disappointment to him (and to us) that gaps and biases beyond the control of researchers will continue to frustrate many researchers. Vital statistic bureaus do not record ethnic background of marrieds, and research-fund gatekeepers are still more likely to reject applications for qualitative research on aged widows than the more quantifiable sort of research on the non-aged. Anderson pinpoints both the traditions and weaknesses of nine academic fields that have an interest in doing ethnic research, and urges us to move to a higher theoretical plane of greater value to current issues and policies. The articles by Parin Dossa and George Kurian, on old Ismailis and South Asian youth, respectively, make it possible for us to see the relative position of the old and the young among new Canadians. The old try to sustain meaning in their life by drawing on the whole community, while the young see more meaning in drawing away from the community that emphasized arranged marriages. A less satisfactory article by Samuel and Jansson on immigration levels and the economic and demographic environment misses an important point in their analysis of dependency ratios. Surely, the economic relationship between those under 65 and those over 65 years of age expresses a cultural ethos. How does the prevailing gentler attitudes of immigrants towards those over 65 enter into their equation? Surely, even the term "dependency ratio" is a statistical artifact, not one that denotes cultural and social variables. Ather Akbari's all-too-short article on the question of whether immigrants contribute more to the public treasury than they receive offers empirical evidence that immigrants make a positive contribution to the overall economy. Part 2, "Cross-Cultural Adjustment: The Refugee Experience of Relocation," takes a more practical bent, focussing on refugee settlement policy, application and practice. Groups under consideration are Vietnamese refugees and Southeast Asian women. Articles on E.S.L. tutoring and cross-cultural misunderstandings between refugees and social-service agencies explore the practical applications of refugee work. Ervin's introduction sets the tone in this section and aims to bring a practical application of anthropology. Donald D. Taylor's discussion of Vietnamese refugee adaptation offers a strikingly different image from Linda Fuchs' study of Southeast Asian refugee women in the same city. Taylor's article underscores the positive dimensions of resettlement, while Fuchs hones in on less-than-satisfactory levels of happiness among refugees. …


ABSTRACT The provision of environments that support and afford play is fundamental for young children's experiences, learning and development. Play environments of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions are therefore of great importance for the opportunities provided children to create and engage in a wide range of play. This study examines the association between Norwegian ECEC institutions' indoor environment (spaces and materials) and children's engagement in different types of play. Children (3–6 years, N = 86) were observed in two-minute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 943 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second-by-second to register the type of play occurring, the space in which it occurred and the materials children used. The results show that the indoor environment in the participating ECEC institutions afforded predictable play types in what could be called confined spaces designed and furnished for certain kinds of play activities. The authors discuss how this helps practitioners maintain predictability and control of children's play, while on the other hand, it restricts children's play and freedom to bring their own initiatives, ideas and creativity into the play in unpredictable ways.


A high-accuracy solution of the diffraction problem has become necessary for the treatment of certain special questions of statistical physics. This article reports the creation of a computer program that serves as an instrumental method of calculating the parameters of diffraction phenomena when complex optical systems are being theoretically investigated. The program solves the diffraction problem by a rigorous method based on Maxwell"s equations under specified boundary conditions. An arbitrary for instance, diffuse configuration of the initial light field is allowed. Reflective gratings with a linear or crossed sinusoidal profile of the surface micro relief are considered as the diffraction optical elements. The characteristics of the self-consistent total light field can be calculated when several diffraction elements are present in the system.


Online social networks, such as Facebook, disclose an unprecedented volume of personal information amplifying the occasions for social comparisons, which can be a cause of frustration. We test the hypothesis that the use of social networking sites (SNS) increases social comparisons as proxied by people's dissatisfaction with their income and we compare the effect of SNS in Western and Eastern European countries. After controlling for the possibility of reverse causality, our results suggest that SNS users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others. In Western countries, this leads individuals to a lower satisfaction with their economic conditions. The opposite holds in Eastern countries, where upward comparisons seemingly strengthen the hope that an improvement in individuals' economic conditions will occur (so called "tunnel effect"). We conclude that SNS can be a strong engine of frustration for their users depending on the institutional and economic circumstances.


A variety of washroom appliances are available which claim to be water efficient. However there are a number of "human" factors, which may adversely affect the water savings actually achieved when the appliances are installed. These were investigated as part of Thames Water's "Watercycle" project at the Millennium Dome, where a range of water efficient devices, such as infra-red controlled taps, waterless urinals and dual-flush toilets, were installed in the washrooms and compared to standard appliances. As well as monitoring actual metered water usage, to help understand how users interacted with the range of appliances, the work also involved a survey conducted by interview and an observational study of water using behaviour in the washrooms. The results highlighted significant differences between males and females, for example females were more likely to wash their hands following toilet use. With respect to "novel" dual flush toilets and waterless urinals, both fairly unusual in the UK, they were well received by users. In contrast, the infra-red controlled taps were found difficult to use and least likely to be accepted for use in the home. Relevant signage and labelling was found to have a positive effect on conservation and user


The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine perspectives of experienced university
faculty and cooperating teachers in general music education. The co-authors' four guiding
research questions were: (a) What are the ideal components of preservice general music teacher
preparation; (b) What do cooperating teachers and university supervisors expect of preservice
music teachers; (c) How may preservice general music teacher preparation be improved; and
(d) What are the possible roadblocks and solutions for improving preservice music teacher
preparation? For this case study, 11 university faculty and 19 cooperating teachers completed a
researcher-designed, open-ended survey (N = 30). Using a downward coding process to identify
diversity within the data, followed by upward coding to determine synthesis within the data,
three themes emerged: enabling conditions, inhibiting conditions, and curriculum
reorganization. Research questions (a) and (b) matched with enabling conditions,when present,
and inhibiting conditions,when absent. Curricular reorganization responses matched with
question (c),while inhibiting conditions and elements of curricular reorganization matched with
question (d). The co-authors discuss implications of their findings for music teacher education
and make recommendations for further research to extend this exploratory study


"Agriculture plays a crucial role in the economy of sub-Saharan Africa. A feature of particular significance about the region is that the majority of households are heavily dependent on agriculture as their major source of livelihood. Smallholder agriculture is the principal producer of staple foods and cash crops, accounting for very large shares of national production and marketed output. For the respective countries, therefore, the performance of smallholder agriculture has crucial implications for the overall economic development process including the alleviation of rural poverty. The demands created by steadily increasing populations, and the pressing need to increase agricultural productivity means that these countries must continuously adopt methods to intensify agricultural production." Authors' Abstract


Urban growth and its associated expansion of built-up areas are expected to continue through to the twenty second century and at a faster pace in developing countries. This has the potential to increase thermal discomfort and heat-related distress. There is thus a need to monitor growth patterns, especially in resource constrained countries such as Africa, where few studies have so far been conducted. In view of this, this study compares urban growth and temperature response patterns in Freetown and Bo town in Sierra Leone. Multispectral Landsat images obtained in 1998, 2000, 2007, and 2015 are used to quantify growth and land surface temperature responses. The contribution index (CI) is used to explain how changes per land use and land cover class (LULC) contributed to average city surface temperatures. The population size of Freetown was about eight times greater than in Bo town. Landsat data mapped urban growth patterns with a high accuracy (Overall Accuracy > 80%) for both cities. Significant changes in LULC were noted in Freetown, characterized by a 114 km2 decrease in agriculture area, 23 km2 increase in dense vegetation, and 77 km2 increase in built-up area. Between 1998 and 2015, built-up area increased by 16 km2, while dense vegetation area decreased by 14 km2 in Bo town. Average surface temperature increased from 23.7 to 25.5 °C in Freetown and from 24.9 to 28.2 °C in Bo town during the same period. Despite the larger population size and greater built-up extent, as well as expansion rate, Freetown was 2 °C cooler than Bo town in all periods. The low temperatures are attributed to proximity to sea and the very large proportion of vegetation surrounding the city. Even close to the sea and abundant vegetation, the built-up area had an elevated temperature compared to the surroundings. The findings are important for formulating heat mitigation strategies for both inland and coastal cities in developing countries.


Many models of natural language understanding make inference decisions as they process a text, but few models can correct their interpretation when later text reveals that earlier inference decisions are wrong. This paper describes how ATLAST, a markerpassing model of text understanding, addresses this problem. The keys to ATLAST's error recovery capability are a means for remembering the choices it could have made but did not, and a means for initiating the re-evaluation of those previously rejected choices at the appropriate times. This paper also discusses some of the arguments for and against the psychological validity of a theory of inference retention in human text understanding.


The main result of this paper is a coefficient formula that sharpens and generalizes Alon and Tarsi's Combinatorial Nullstellensatz. On its own, it is a result about polynomials, providing some information about the polynomial map $P|_{\mathfrak{X}_1\times\cdots\times\mathfrak{X}_n}$ when only incomplete information about the polynomial $P(X_1,\dots,X_n)$ is given. In a very general working frame, the grid points $x\in \mathfrak{X}_1\times\cdots\times\mathfrak{X}_n$ which do not vanish under an algebraic solution – a certain describing polynomial $P(X_1,\dots,X_n)$ – correspond to the explicit solutions of a problem. As a consequence of the coefficient formula, we prove that the existence of an algebraic solution is equivalent to the existence of a nontrivial solution to a problem. By a problem, we mean everything that "owns" both, a set ${\cal S}$, which may be called the set of solutions ; and a subset ${\cal S}_{\rm triv}\subseteq{\cal S}$, the set of trivial solutions . We give several examples of how to find algebraic solutions, and how to apply our coefficient formula. These examples are mainly from graph theory and combinatorial number theory, but we also prove several versions of Chevalley and Warning's Theorem, including a generalization of Olson's Theorem, as examples and useful corollaries. We obtain a permanent formula by applying our coefficient formula to the matrix polynomial, which is a generalization of the graph polynomial. This formula is an integrative generalization and sharpening of: 1. Ryser's permanent formula. 2. Alon's Permanent Lemma. 3. Alon and Tarsi's Theorem about orientations and colorings of graphs. Furthermore, in combination with the Vigneron-Ellingham-Goddyn property of planar $n$-regular graphs, the formula contains as very special cases: 4. Scheim's formula for the number of edge $n$-colorings of such graphs. 5. Ellingham and Goddyn's partial answer to the list coloring conjecture.


Growth factor signaling is implicated in the regulation of lens cell proliferation and differentiation during development. Activation of growth factor receptor tyrosine kinases is known to activate Ras proteins, small GTP-binding proteins that function as part of the signal transduction machinery. In the present study, we examined which classical Ras genes are expressed in lens cells during normal development and whether expression of an activated version of Ras is sufficient to induce either lens cell proliferation or fiber cell differentiation in transgenic mice. In situ hybridization showed H-Ras, K-Ras and N-Ras are ubiquitously expressed in all cells of the embryonic (E13.5) eye, with N-Ras showing the highest level of expression. The expression level of N-Ras decreases during later stages of embryonic development, and is nearly undetected in postnatal day 21 lenses. To generate transgenic mice, a constitutively active H-Ras mutant was linked to a chimeric regulatory element containing the mouse alphaA-crystallin promoter fused to the chick delta1-crystallin lens enhancer element. In the lenses of the transgenic mice, the transgene was expressed in both lens epithelial and fiber cells. Expression of activated Ras was sufficient to stimulate lens cell proliferation but not differentiation, implying that alternative or additional signal transduction pathways are required to induce fiber cell differentiation.


Forum selection provisions are commonly found in the material contracts of publicly traded corporations. But they are exceedingly rare in the organic documents of the same publicly traded entities. Why?This article documents that, as of June 30, 2011, only 133, or 1.49 percent, of publicly traded entities had forum selection provisions in their charters or bylaws. The vast majority of these provisions, 117 (88.0 percent), were adopted after Delaware Chancery's March 15, 2010, decision in Revlon observing that corporations could avoid forum disputes by adopting forum selection provisions in corporate charters. Of the forum selection provisions adopted by corporations, 58.6 percent appear in corporate charters and 41.4 percent appear in bylaws adopted without prior shareholder consent. More than 91 percent of these provisions follow the form introduced by Netsuite in conjunction with its 2006 IPO, and approximately 16.06 percent of all IPOs declared effective since Revlon are of corporations whose charters contain forum selection provisions. Corporations headquartered in California are over-represented in the population of corporations that have adopted these provisions.The historic scarcity of forum selection provisions in the organic documents of publicly traded entities is consistent with the observation that, prior to the early part of this century, intra-corporate litigation was almost always brought in the state of incorporation. In such an environment, the selection of a state of incorporation acted as a de facto forum selection clause, and these clauses could reasonably have been viewed as surplusage. But as plaintiff counsel began to litigate intra-corporate claims with vastly greater frequency in courts away from the state of incorporation, a demand emerged for a contractual provision that could restore the pre-existing jurisdictional equilibrium in which each state's courts specialized in the interpretation of that state's corporate law. Viewed from this perspective, the intra-corporate forum selection clause is not an innovation that seeks to disrupt traditional litigation processes: it is, instead, better viewed as an effort to restore an equilibrium that had prevailed for decades and that reflected the natural expectation of corporations and shareholders alike that courts would "stay in their lane" as they specialized in the interpretation of their own state's corporation laws.


Wireless communication was one of the major success stories of the last decades. Today, different wireless standards such as wireless local area networks (WLAN) are omnipresent. In some sense, from a distributed computing viewpoint wireless networks are quite simple, as they cannot form arbitrary network topologies. Simplistic models of wireless networks include geometric graph models such as the so-called unit disk graph. Modern models are more robust: The network graph is restricted, e.g., the total number of neighbors of a node which are not adjacent is likely to be small. This observation is hard to capture with purely geometric models, and motivates more advanced network connectivity models such as bounded growth or bounded independence. However, on the other hand, wireless communication is also more difficult than standard message passing, as for instance nodes are not able to transmit a different message to each neighbor at the same time. And if two neighbors are transmitting at the same time, they interfere, and a node may not be able to decipher anything. In this chapter we deal with the distributed computing principles of wireless communication: We make the simplifying assumption that all n nodes are in the communication range of each other, i.e., the network graph is a clique. Nodes share a synchronous time, in each time slot a node can decide to either transmit or receive (or sleep). However, two or more nodes transmitting in the same time slot will cause interference. Transmitting nodes are never aware if there is interference because they cannot simultaneously transmit and receive. The basic communication protocol in wireless networks is the medium access control (MAC) protocol. Unfortunately it is difficult to claim that one MAC protocol is better than another, because it all depends on the parameters, such as the network topology, the channel characteristics, or the traffic pattern. When it comes to the principles of wireless protocols, we usually want to achieve much simpler goals. One basic and important question is the following: How long does it take until one node can transmit successfully, without interference? This question is often called the wireless leader election problem (Chapter 2), with the node transmitting alone being the leader.


The recent availability of airborne LiDAR data covering the most populated areas of
Tasmania's coastal zone has stimulated considerable interest in its potential for a
range of applications including land use planning, ecosystem research, coastal
development policy and building codes, emergency response planning, and
communications, particularly given the heightened awareness of impending climate
change and sea level rise impacts on the coastal zone. Acquired for the Climate
Futures for Tasmania project, the data provides high accuracy, high resolution
elevation measurement not previously available in broad-scale terrestrial elevation
data. A stated vertical accuracy of ± 25 cm makes the data better suited to detailed
assessments and decision making than alternative large area digital terrain datasets.

However, the levels of accuracy stated in LiDAR data specifications usually apply to
best-case vertical accuracy assessments for open, level terrain. Interference from
above-ground features such as vegetation is known to reduce the reliability of LiDAR
elevation measurements. In particular, low-lying, dense vegetation cover poses
significant challenges for automated and semi-automated vegetation filters and
elevation correction algorithms. Existing approaches to the separation of ground from above-ground LiDAR returns have not been universally successful due to the
constraints of sensor system hardware capabilities, ineffective data filtering
techniques, and the inability of laser pulses to fully penetrate closed canopy
vegetation. The Climate Futures for Tasmania data provides evidence of the
misclassification of laser returns due to sensor system and data processing
limitations.

The broad aims of this study were to apply ground truthing to quantify the influence of low saltmarsh vegetation on the quality of Climate Futures for Tasmania data, to
investigate a method for separating ground and low vegetation returns to improve
ground elevation estimation, and to construct digital elevation, canopy surface and
canopy height models using separated ground and vegetation returns.

Results from the study concluded that the classified point data and digital elevation
model provided to the Climate Futures for Tasmania project contained statistically
significant elevation errors for the areas tested. For vegetated terrain, strong linear relationships between surveyed and LiDAR elevations were not evident. The
approach adopted to separate ground and vegetation returns was not effective in
significantly improving the accuracy of digital elevation modelling over the saltmarsh
platform. While vegetation-related elevation error was significant for each vegetation
group assessed, no significant difference was detected between groups. The
variability of vegetation height and structure within the marsh, combined with
uncertainty in the geolocation of the LiDAR footprint, were identified as primary
impediments to a more reliable assessment of vegetation influences on LiDAR
accuracy. Upward bias in LiDAR ground elevation coupled with a reduction in
vegetation height measurement due to laser infiltration of the upper canopy resulted
in a significant underestimation of vegetation height.


Abstract Consumers and institutional kitchens, as well as traders, have shown increasing interest towards local food. This is particularly due to the transparency and traceability characteristic of a short supply chain and social aspects related to food origins. The trend has been increasingly common during the past decade in Europe and North America, and it is strongly evident in the case area of this study in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. In general, ease of access to food is highly important for consumers and crucial for institutional kitchens, in addition to quality aspects and price. However, regardless of proximity, poor accessibility is one of the key issues preventing the further growth of local food markets. Due to scale economics in food value chain, food transport is presently organised mainly by centralised, large-scale logistics companies directed via hubs serving millions of consumers. Accordingly, production volumes required to enter large-scale markets are often unattainable for disjointed small-scale local food producers. In this study, geographic information system (GIS)-based accessibility analyses are applied for analysing potential for integral networking of local food production and transport companies. Berry production was selected as a case study because it has a relatively strong role in Northern Ostrobothnia, while its logistics are notably underdeveloped. Spatial data of primary production volumes consists of register records of farm-specific cultivation areas and average yields in Northern Ostrobothnia and Finland. Accessibility computations are based on the digital model of the Finnish road network, Digiroad. Two surveys were also implemented to farmers and food processing companies to seek views on food processing, sales, logistics and procurements regarding local food. Data from the surveys was used in accessibility analysis, which enables exploration of opportunities for establishing 'local food' clusters integrating small producers into a more effective and competitive network. Information about favourable conditions for cooperative networks in the local food sector may help in establishing companies and their growth. Again, successful networking may increase scale economies in local production in transport, processing and marketing.


The extraordinary swings in the scope and content of the policy agenda during the first Clinton administration revealed a fundamental partisan divide over the social role of the federal government. This book argues that the recent conflicts over social policy represent key elements in strategies that parties designed in an attempt to consolidate their hold over the federal government. Long frustrated by divided government, each party exceeded its electoral mandate in hopes of enacting major policy reforms aimed to shift politics in their direction for the foreseeable future. The book traces the overreaching and limited legislative success that characterized the first Clinton administration's approach to three distinctive features of politics and policymaking: the polarization of political elites; the predominance of advertising campaigns and intense interest group politics as political parties have ceased to mobilize ordinary people; and the unprecedented role that budgetary concerns now play in social policymaking. Although neither party managed to enact its major transforming agenda, Congress did pass new policies--most notably welfare reform--that together with a host of other changes in the states and the private sector altered the landscape for social policy. The poor have been the biggest losers as Democrats and Republicans have fought to win the middle class over to their vision of the future. The authors first analyze the institutions and tools of policymaking, including Congress, the political use of public opinion polling, and the politics of the deficit. They then consider policies designed to win over the middle class, including health care policy, employer-provided social benefits, wages and jobs, and crime policy. Last, they address policies targeted at the disadvantaged, including welfare, affirmative action, and urban policy. In addition to the editor, the contributors include John Ferejohn, Lawrence R. Jacobs, Robert Y. Shapiro, Paul Pierson, Mark A. Peterson, Cathie Jo Martin, Ann Lin, R. Kent Weaver, Linda Williams, and John Mollenkopf. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation


Graph theory based methods are powerful means for representing structural systems so that their geometry and topology can be understood clearly. The combination of graph theory based methods and some metaheuristics can offer effective solutions for complex engineering optimization problems. This paper presents a Charged System Search (CSS) algorithm for the free shape optimizations of thin-walled steel sections, represented by some popular graph theory based methods. The objective is to find shapes of minimum mass and/or maximum strength for thin-walled steel sections that satisfy design constraints, which results in a general formulation for a bi-objective combinatorial optimization problem. A numerical example involving the shape optimization of thin-walled open and closed steel sections is presented to demonstrate the robustness of the method.


ABSTRACT Despite the increasing digitalisation of special collections, Australian university libraries continue to house tangible original works contributing to collective state, national and global heritage. The protection of special collections relates to the international aspirations provided by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 Priority 3. Currently over five hundred separately grouped university library special collections are recorded in Australia. Globally, there is limited research into university librarian comprehension of how to plan for the protection of special collections. A survey targeted the 35 Australian university libraries identified for inclusion in the study, via the Council for Australian University Librarians (CAUL) database. Eleven (31%) responses qualified for analysis. Of the respondents, the findings include 92% hold tangible special collections as part of their university library collection; 90% do not have a specific plan for the protection of special collections and 90% have experienced a disaster event at some point in their library career. The research concludes that special collections held by Australian universities are at risk and that the role of the university librarian is undervalued in the global efforts to protect cultural and historical heritage in the event of a disaster.


A new ice core (TALDICE) drilled at Talos Dome (East Antarctica, Ross Sea sector) preserves a ca. 250 ka long record of palaeoclimate and atmospheric history. We investigate dust variability and provenance at the site during glacial periods and the Holocene through the Sr–Nd isotopic composition of ice core dust and potential source areas (PSA). We provide new isotopic data on dust sources from Victoria Land such as regoliths, glacial drifts, aeolian sands and beach deposits. Some of these sources are located at high altitude and are known to have been ice free throughout the Pleistocene. The major features of the TALDICE dust record are very similar to those from central East Antarctica. During glacial times, South America was the dominant dust supplier for Talos Dome as well as for the entire East Antarctic plateau. Conversely, during the Holocene the principal input of mineral dust at Talos Dome probably derives from proximal sources which are the ice‐free areas of northern Victoria Land, located at similar altitude with respect to the drilling site. Atmospheric mobilisation of dust from these neighbouring areas and transport inland to Talos Dome can be ultimately associated with advection of maritime air masses from the Pacific/Ross Sea region. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This IIASA Working Paper has seven essentially simple and straightforward aims:

(1) To suggest the essential unity of purpose among alternative strategies which attempt to investigate the Decision-Making Procedure.$

(2) To offer a framework (the decision 2-space) in which the antecedents, the processing formulas and the consequences of any decision may be seen, critiqued and acted upon.

(3) To argue the advantages of an initial 3-pronged excursion this framework; in order to test the comparative effectiveness of these three potential investigation strategies.

(4) To explicate how the Direct Scaling technique of S.S. Stenus would approach the Decision Process (and to argue its merits).

(5) To argue that the Pandora's Box of problems which seemingly face the decision maker is an illusion: 3 (and perhaps only 2) parameters are sufficient to describe the "value" -- past, present, and future -- which society places on features of the environment, of energy production and of those social values themselves.

(6) To suggest a procedure for generating "events" actual or hypothetical whose consequences and impacts can be examined, scaled along several criteria, and the equivalency of the criteria exactly specified. Progress toward this inter-criterion equivalency is really the heart of this working paper.

(7) To offer one experimental route by which these issues might be examined in the context of a study addressing "Public Support for a Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant in the GDR."

For some of these aims, several pages are required to propose, define and rationalize the purpose. For others, often a single diagram, table or paragraph suffices to set the framework for the idea. Implementation is left to the group or person closest to the source of data.

The Paper is intended to be searching and exploratory in tone, rather than rigorous or proof-specific.


Coastal wetlands provide habitat for large numbers and many species of waterbirds. Man-made salinas are a particu lar habitat type often found in such wetlands. This study is an initiative to understand the differences in bird communities between a salina (including evaporation ponds and prebasin) and a saltmarsh. Bird counts and nest surveys took place in the wetlands of Angelochori, Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1991, when the salina was inactive, and in 1997, 2000-01 when it was active. Counts in evaporation ponds were richer in species, abundance and nests compared to the prebasin and the saltmarsh. These three wetland types supported different bird communities. Similarities among bird communities depended on the inundation of the salina with seawater. Evaporation ponds in their inactive period presented low similarity with the communities of the prebasin and the saltmarsh; in the active period this was observed only for the saltmarsh. Species showing clear selection for the evaporation ponds were Charadrius alexandrinus, Calidris alpina, Calidris minuta, Recurvirostra avosetta, Sterna hirundo, Sternula albifrons, Sterna sandvicensis and Haematopus ostralegus ', the prebasin was preferred by Phoenicopterus roseus and Anas platyrhynchos, and the saltmarsh by Anas querquedula, Anas clypeata, Plegadis falcinellus, Tringa totanus, Tringa glareola, Tringa stagnatilis and Himantopus himantopus.


Questions

Humans are altering land use and impacting grazing intensities worldwide in alpine and sub-alpine grasslands, and functional diversity (FD) is a useful tool for predicting changes in these grassland communities and for improving biodiversity conservation. We asked: (1) how does functional richness (FRic) differ between the five predominant grassland types in Andorra (2) of these five grassland types, which plant communities are subject to high habitat filtering and which are driven primarily by competitive interactions; (3) are certain grassland communities more prone to degradation than others; and (4) how do grazing intensity and elevation influence variations in FD indices?

Locations

Five types of sub-alpine and alpine grassland communities dominated by Festuca airoides, F. eskia, F. gautieri, F. paniculata and Nardus stricta in Andorra, at various elevations and with differing grazing intensities within a grassland type.

Methods

We used multiple functional diversity indices and structural equation modelling (SEM) to determine how grazing intensity, elevation, species richness and productivity affect functional diversity in 222 vegetation transects.

Results

Both plant diversity and functional richness were higher at higher grazing intensities, with the highest values found in the F. gautieri and F. paniculata grasslands and lowest in the Nardus stricta, F. airoides and F. eskia grasslands. Habitat filtering was observed in F. airoides grasslands. There was a general tendency for higher competitive interactions among plants at higher elevations and/or when species diversity increased. None of the five grassland communities considered appears disturbed, and all present similar functional attributes between dominant species.

Conclusions

Our results highlight the fact that grazing is an integral part of Andorran mountain grasslands, acting as a structural component and providing higher functional richness in the most grazed communities.


Using survey data on interpersonal influence behavior from a large sample of managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) at Forbes 500 companies, we examine how ingratiatory behavior directed at individuals who control access to board positions can provide an alternative pathway to the boardroom for managers who lack the social and educational credentials associated with the power elite. Findings show that top managers who engage in ingratiatory behavior toward their CEO, with ingratiation comprising flattery, opinion conformity, and favor-rendering, will be more likely to receive board appointments at other firms where their CEO serves as director and at boards to which the CEO is indirectly connected in the board interlock network. Further results suggest that interpersonal influence behavior substitutes to some degree for the advantages of an elite background or demographic majority status. Our findings help explain why norms of director deference to CEOs have persisted despite increased diversity in the corporate elite and have implications for research on corporate governance, social networks in the corporate elite, and for the sociological question of whether demographic minorities and individuals who lack privileged backgrounds have equal access to positions of leadership in large U.S. companies. Our study ultimately suggests that such individuals face a rather subtle and perhaps unexpected form of social discrimination, in that they must engage in a higher level of interpersonal influence behavior in order to have the same chance of obtaining a board appointment.


Both the degree to which the left-hemisphere is specialized for language and the relative ability of the right-hemisphere to subserve language function are underspecified. The present study sought to identify whether the right-frontal fMRI activation seen in a number of case studies in patients with left-sided brain lesions exists as a group-level trend in patients with left-frontal tumors. It also sought to examine the possible compensatory nature of this activation. Thus, a retrospective analysis of 197 brain tumor patients who had undergone pre-surgical fMRI language mapping was conducted. Patients with left-frontal tumors were found to be more likely to show rightor co-dominant fMRI activation during language mapping tasks compared to patients who had tumors elsewhere in the brain. Further, patients with left-frontal tumors who were identified as rightor co-dominant for language were found to possess more intact language function as measured by the Boston


Strains of Escherichia coli from sporadic cases of diarrhoea and belonging to serotypes O44:H18, O55:H7, O111ab:H21, O111ab:H25 or O126:H27 were examined for virulence properties. With the exception of O111ab:H25 these are considered to be classical enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) serotypes. The strains had been isolated in Britain from the faeces of children less than 3 years old. Of the serotypes examined, 7 of 13 O44:H18 strains, all of 10 O111ab:H21 strains and 13 of 21 O126:H27 strains belonged to the enteroaggregative class of E. coli (EAggEC) that attached to HEp-2 cells in the characteristic aggregative pattern and hybridised with the EAggEC probe. They also caused mannose-resistant haemagglutination of rat erythrocytes, a property which may be a useful marker for their identification. Strains of O44:H18 with similar properties were also isolated from three small outbreaks in Britain, one of which involved elderly patients. EAggEC have not been considered previously as aetiological agents of diarrhoea in developed countries and have rarely been reported as belonging to EPEC serotypes. All 15 O55:H7 strains and seven of eight O111ab:H25 strains were also considered to be potentially diarrhoeagenic as they gave localised attachment (LA) to HEp-2 cells that resulted in a positive fluorescence actin-staining test. This test is considered to correlate with the attaching-and-effacing virulence mechanisms of EPEC in vivo.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


FlatCam is a thin form-factor lensless camera that consists of a coded mask placed on top of a bare, conventional sensor array. Unlike a traditional, lens-based camera, where an image of the scene is directly recorded on the sensor pixels, each pixel in FlatCam records a linear combination of light from multiple scene elements. A computational algorithm is then used to demultiplex the recorded measurements and reconstruct an image of the scene. FlatCam is an instance of a coded aperture imaging system; however, unlike the vast majority of related work, we place the coded mask extremely close to the image sensor that enables thin and flat form-factor imaging devices. We employ a separable mask to ensure that both calibration and image reconstruction are scalable in terms of memory requirements and computational complexity. We demonstrate the potential of the FlatCam design using two prototypes: one at visible wavelengths and one at infrared wavelengths.


Two models frequently used to simulate the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere have been compared. This is necessary because only a well-tested and well-calibrated simulation model can be a good representation of the reality of the dispersion of pollutants. The models evaluated (HYSPLIT_4 with its four variants and MEDIA) were run using as input parameters the same meteorological dataset (for 23-26 October 1994) from the French model ARPEGE. The following statistical criteria were compared: the space and time evolution of the pollutant cloud; the variation of statistical parameters in time and space; and the differences between the simulated and measured values of concentration in time for six different stations. The results emphasise the characteristics of the two models and their abilities in the framework of the air quality monitoring.


Objectives To examine the prevalence of electronic(e)-cigarette use, prevalence of e-cigarette and tobacco use by age, and associations of e-cigarette use with sociodemographic characteristics, tobacco and cannabis use among young people in Wales. Design Data from two nationally-representative cross-sectional surveys undertaken in 2013–2014. Logistic regression analyses, adjusting for school-level clustering, examined sociodemographic characteristics of e-cigarette use, and associations between e-cigarette use and smoking. Setting Primary and secondary schools in Wales. Participants Primary-school children aged 10–11 (n=1601) and secondary-school students aged 11–16 (n=9055). Results Primary-school children were more likely to have used e-cigarettes (5.8%) than tobacco (1.6%). Ever use of e-cigarettes remained more prevalent than ever use of tobacco until age 14–15. Overall, 12.3% of secondary-school students (aged 11–16) reported ever using e-cigarettes, with no differences according to gender, ethnicity or family affluence. The percentage of 'never smokers' reporting having used e-cigarettes was 5.3% at age 10–11 to 8.0% at age 15–16. The proportion of children who had ever used an e-cigarette and reported currently smoking increased from 6.9% among 10–11 year olds to 39.2% in 15–16 year olds. Only 1.5% (n=125) of 11–16 year-olds, including 0.3% of never smokers, reported regular e-cigarette use (use at least once a month). Current weekly smokers were 100 times more likely than non-smokers to report regular e-cigarette use (relative risk ratio (RRR=121.15; 95% CI 57.56 to 254.97). Regular e-cigarette use was also more likely among those who had smoked cannabis (RRR 53.03; 95% CI 38.87 to 80.65). Conclusions Many young people (including never-smokers) have tried e-cigarettes. However, regular use is less common, and is associated with tobacco cigarette use. Longitudinal research is needed to understand age-related trajectories of e-cigarette use and to understand the temporal nature of relationships between e-cigarette and tobacco use.


The U.S. Supreme Court's recent pleadings decisions—Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal—have injected considerable chaos into the system of civil litigation. The decisions impose an uncertain "plausibility" requirement and appear to endorse an increased power of district courts to dismiss complaints—a power that may be employed in an unprincipled, normatively problematic manner. The current pleading issues resemble similar issues that have arisen with summary judgment and judgment as a matter of law. This Article argues that there has been a significant failure at both the doctrinal and theoretical levels to relate these three procedural devices to the evidentiary proof process in particular and the system of civil litigation as a whole. It introduces a theory of "procedural accuracy" that explains, clarifies, and provides content to the standards for each device, explains how the theory fits, and explains important aspects of the doctrine for each device. Finally, and most importantly, I defend the theory and its standards as normatively desirable in light of procedural values that underlie the system of civil litigation as a whole.


Political humour is employed to define the boundaries between opposing political groups and to express discontent against politicians and political acts. The sociopolitical context of its production and circulation not only influences its form, content, functions, and targets, but also determines whether it will be accepted, banned, or manipulated to serve the political agendas of certain groups. Hence, political humour becomes a ritual site where political identities are constantly constructed and (re)negotiated. Drawing on studies coming from different sociocultural communities, the authors underline the variety of humorous genres and communicative functions related to political humour, while they point out that humour research needs to look beyond the metapragmatic stereotype often surrounding the use of humour in politics.


Enormous changes are taking place regarding how people learn. The introduction of new technologies and in particular the resulting possibilities for our virtual presence in virtual spaces, highlights some comparatively neglected aspects of learning. This book seeks to redress the balance by presenting a collection of papers, which view learners as embodied actors in both real and virtual spaces. The authors look at the relationship between space, identity and learning and how it is changing as we move into the `information age'.


Existing research suggests that adoption or development of various wildfire management strategies may differ across communities. However, there have been few attempts to design diverse strategies for local populations to better "live with fire." This article extends an existing approach by articulating how characteristic patterns of local social context might be used to generate a range of fire adaptation "pathways" that can be applied variably across communities. Each 'pathway' would specify a distinct combination of actions, potential policies and incentives that best reflect the social dynamics, ecological stressors, and accepted institutional functions that people in diverse communities are likely to enact. We synthesize existing research to propose broad considerations that would form the basis for diverse pathways. We then use existing research and the aforementioned considerations to propose specific components of pathways for two example community 'archetypes.' We contend that advancement of the conceptual tools introduced in this article can aid communities in the development of flexible, scenario-based approaches for addressing wildfire adaptation in different situations. Processes outlined in the article also serve as a unifying way to document, test, and advance flexible approaches professionals can use to work with local populations in the co-develop-ment of wildfire management strategies.


For decades, particle physicists have been using open access archives of preprints, i.e. research papers shared before the submission to peer reviewed journals. With the shift to digital archives, this model has proved to be attractive to other disciplines: but can it be exported? In particle physics, archives do not only represent the medium of choice for the circulation of scientific knowledge, but they are central places to build a sense of belonging and to define one's role within the community. Abstract


Objective: The purpose of this study is to codify the operational planning of the public sport (sport for all) and championship in Islamic Azad University. Methodology: There has been used the analytical model SWOT to analyze the findings and to determine the suitable strategy and the network analysis process (ANP) to prioritize the strategies. Also, there have been used the interviews, library, and field studies, previous researches and the comments of the strategic council members included the faculty members and the sports officials of the university in order to gather data and then three questionnaires made by the researcher have been used.
Results: In first questionnaire, the effective internal and external factors have been identified. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the experts and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha test (0.86). There has been determined the intensity factor and the coefficient of the importance of each item by second questionnaire and strategic sessions. At these stages, due to particularity of the statistical population, the questionnaires have been completed by 20 persons from the faculty members and the sports officials of the university. According to the findings and results of the calculated weight of the super matrix and the opinions of the members of the strategic council, there have been suggested the operational planning including the codification of the regulations and guidelines for public sport tours and championship tours and identification and development and guidance of the sports students in the public classes of the physical education and sports to attend in internal and external competitions.


ABSTRACT The targets of the Paris Agreement make it necessary to redirect finance flows towards sustainable, low-carbon infrastructures and technologies. Currently, the potential of institutional investors to help finance this transition is widely discussed. Thus, this paper takes a closer look at influence factors for green investment decisions of large European insurance companies. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the importance of policy, market and civil society signals is evaluated. In summary, respondents favor measures that promote green investment, such as feed-in tariffs or adjustments of capital charges for green assets, over ones that make carbon-intensive investments less attractive, such as the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies or a carbon price. While investors currently see a low impact of the carbon price, they rank a substantial reform as an important signal for the future. Respondents also emphasize that policy signals have to be coherent and credible to coordinate expectations.


Summary Constructing a model in a hierarchical fashion is a natural approach to managing model complexity, and offers additional opportunities such as the potential to re-use model components. The SBML Level 3 Version 1 Core specification does not directly provide a mechanism for defining hierarchical models, but it does provide a mechanism for SBML packages to extend the Core specification and add additional syntactical constructs. The SBML Hierarchical Model Composition package for SBML Level 3 adds the necessary features to SBML to support hierarchical modeling. The package enables a modeler to include submodels within an enclosing SBML model, delete unneeded or redundant elements of that submodel, replace elements of that submodel with element of the containing model, and replace elements of the containing model with elements of the submodel. In addition, the package defines an optional "port" construct, allowing a model to be defined with suggested interfaces between hierarchical components; modelers can chose to use these interfaces, but they are not required to do so and can still interact directly with model elements if they so chose. Finally, the SBML Hierarchical Model Composition package is defined in such a way that a hierarchical model can be "flattened" to an equivalent, non-hierarchical version that uses only plain SBML constructs, thus enabling software tools that do not yet support hierarchy to nevertheless work with SBML hierarchical models.


Many distinguished scholars published the primary corpus of their work before the advent of online journals, which makes it more challenging to access. Upon being approached by a distinguished Emeritus Professor seeking advice about getting his work posted online, librarians at the University of Minnesota worked to gain copyright permissions to scan and upload older works to the University's Digital Conservancy (UDC). This project then uniquely took the process one step further, using the sharing option of RefWorks to make these works accessible to the widest possible audience while concurrently offering the sophisticated functionality of a citation manager. With open access repositories gaining acceptance as an authoritative long-term venue for making resources available online, including older content that can be digitized, the methods developed in this pilot project could easily be followed by others, thus greatly increasing access to older literature from distinguished scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


The theoretical perspectives that inform educational policies are typically developed by lawmakers. However, the implementation of these legislative measures are seldom developed in conjunction with practicing educators. Thus, new paradigms are rooted on theoretically salient procedures as well as real-word applicability. This gap has created a significant number of educational practitioners that harbor conflicting theoretical perspectives regarding teaching and learning the curriculum as prescribed. However, many educators refrain from expressing their disagreement with existing policies. This research intends to highlight the presence of these conflicting perspectives as well as the underlying reasons prompting these disparaged notions. Through examination of existing literature, this study outlines the numerous educational theories that formulate the foundations of educational practice to create the theoretical framework used to analyze the data collected. A Likert-based survey was used to gather personal impressions from 415 in-service teachers in the U. S. of pre-kindergarten through 12th grade to determine the current theoretical perspectives shaping the curriculum. A majority of the respondents reported discord as it pertains to current policies and standards of practice.


This study focuses on the adsorption and preconcentration of various metals by silica gel surfaces modified with aminopolycarboxylic acids namely ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid or diethylenetriamine-pentaacetic acid. The adsorption performance of the studied materials was determined in mixed metal solutions and the adsorption isotherm studies were conducted for cobalt, nickel, cadmium, and lead. The results were modeled using various theoretical isotherm equations, which suggested that two different adsorption sites were involved in metal removal although lead showed clearly different adsorption behavior attributed to its lowest hydration tendency. Efficient regeneration of the adsorbents and preconcentration of metals was conducted with nitric acid. Results indicated that the metals under study could be analyzed rather accurately after preconcentration from both pure, saline and ground water samples.


More direct inclusion of informal caregivers (i.e., family, friends) in patients' care will make care more patient- and family-centered and has the potential to improve overall quality of care for patients. We need to understand what potentially comprises "inclusive care" so that we can define what "inclusive care" is and develop targets for care quality metrics. We conducted a critical literature review to identify key components of "caregiver inclusion." Focusing on extant literature from 2005 to 2017, 35 papers met inclusion criteria. Directed content analysis with constant comparison was used to identify major themes related to a concept of "inclusive care." Our analysis indicates that "inclusive care" entails five components: clear definition of caregiver role, system level policies for inclusion, explicit involvement of caregiver, provider assessment of caregiver capability, and mutuality in caregiver–provider communication. We discuss the evidence behind these five components using the Donabedian health care quality conceptual model.


We need to reconsider ways of thinking about queerness based on the experiences of pervasive invisibility in order to comprehend the experiences of today's and tomorrow's kids, growing up in a culture that acknowledges queerness and does so by attempting to integrate it into the commercialized array of cultural products, niche-marketed demo slices and voting blocks. Much LGBT [pre-queer] theorizing presupposed invisibility and rare stereotypic representations as a limiting and distorting condition of growing up. What do we say now about growing up with reasonably common news and entertainment presence and with the opportunities for exploration and contact offered by the Internet? One way is to deny the meaningfulness of identity and theorize the problem away. But most kids are still experiencing isolation and vulnerability in enemy territory, and for them these admittedly problematic media images are far from trivial psychic/cultural resources.


The ability of Chelidonium majus L. alkaloids derivative Ukrain to induce an anaphylactic sensitization was tested on mice and guinea pigs. The levels of IgE antibody in the mouse sera, and IgG1a, IgG1b as well as IgE antibody levels in guinea pig sera, were evaluated by passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) tests. Ukrain alone or adsorbed on aluminium hydroxide gel (alum) introduced into BALB/c mice in several subcutaneous injections was unable to stimulate measurable anti-Ukrain IgE antibody response. Moreover, Ukrain introduced together with ovalbumin (OA) into mice in the course of immunization with OA induced lower anti-OA antibody response as compared to the response induced by OA alone. Ukrain adsorbed on alum and injected subcutaneously into guinea pigs did not induce measurable IgG1a, IgG1b and IgE antibody response. The present results suggest that the immunomodulating preparation Ukrain could be therapeutically safe at least as far its inability to induce anaphylaxis is concerned.


Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma (MPM), the asbestos-induced neoplasm originating in the mesothelial lining of the lung cavities represents significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for clinicians in Australia. Very seldom diagnosed prior to the advent of widespread asbestos mining in the early to midtwentieth century, it has sharply risen in incidence over the last five decades. According to the most recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data, there were 666 cases of malignant mesothelioma diagnosed in Australia in 2009 and around 90% of them originated in the pleura.


The purposes of this study are to show the importance of the sod house in the settlement of the High Plains Region of Western Kansas and how the early settlers adapted themselves to a changed environment and used the materials at hand to supply their everyday needs. Some of the events concerning the settlement of the country exist , mostly, in the memories of the old settlers. Among these are the construction of the sod buildings, and the purposes for which they were used. It is important that the knowledge of this form of architecture should be written down while men who helped in the construction are still living. The sod house was so common, that in the literature of the period, al though a sod house might be mentioned, in general it was not considered necessary to describe the building or tell how it was constructed . The early settlers, who remember how the old sod house was built, are becoming very scarce. Today, in the far western sections of the state, there now lives a younger group of men who helped to build, what might be called, a modern version of the old soddie. These were built in the present century, using much more lumber than was generally used in the early sod buildings.


Mobile agent systems have received important attention in the last years as a new programming paradigm for widely distributed and heterogeneous systems. In this article, a multi-paradigm approach for the development of intelligent mobile agents is presented. It integrates both object-oriented and logic paradigms. The rationale for this approach comes from the fact that although the object-oriented programming paradigm has relevant features for mobile agent development it presents deficiencies dealing with agents mental attitudes. These deficiencies are solved by the use of logic programming.


This article introduces this special issue on the assessment of mindfulness and other related constructs. The need for refinements in self-report methods and the development of more objective performance-based methods for mindfulness is widely recognized. The six articles in this special issue move the field in these directions. Three of the articles expand the understanding of self-report instruments; the other three describe promising laboratory-based tasks. The articles here show that the assessment of mindfulness and related variables is an active and productive area, with interesting new findings emerging at a high rate. (PsycINFO Database Record


This article explores the gendering of leadership for sustainability. It first reviews the world of corporate social responsibility, illustrating how men's voices predominate in shaping discourses and practices. It is appropriate that men with access to power speak out advocating change for sustainability and yet, if this is all that happens, we risk replicating business as usual. To extend the analysis and seek more women's voices and more images associating gender, leadership and sustainability, the article reviews five novels by women authors addressing environmental issues. This exploration changes the landscape of sense-making, directing attention first to broader society rather than to organizations as the base for constructing notions of sustainability. Taking this approach, themes of social justice, equality, everyday practice, ways of knowing, embodiment and the crafts of fitting in (to nature and society) move to the foreground. These provide cues for an alternatively gendered view of leadership for sustainability.


How can a just peace be built in sites of genocide, massive civil war, dictatorship, terrorism, and poverty? In Strategies of Peace, the first volume in the Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding series, fifteen leading scholars propose an imaginative and provocative approach to peacebuilding. Today the dominant thinking is the "liberal peace," which stresses cease fires, elections, and short run peace operations carried out by international institutions, western states, and local political elites. But the liberal peace is not enough, the authors argue. A just and sustainable peace requires a far more holistic vision that links together activities, actors, and institutions at all levels. By exploring innovative models for building lasting peace-a United Nations counter-terrorism policy that also promotes good governance; coordination of the international prosecution of war criminals with local efforts to settle civil wars; increasing the involvement of religious leaders, who have a unique ability to elicit peace settlements; and many others-the authors advance a bold new vision for peacebuilding.


Eleventh Hour: The Politics of Policy Initiatives in Presidential Transitions. By David M. Shafie. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013. 244 pp. For those in the cottage industry of presidential transition studies, we wait patiently for years, anticipating a new case to devour. Deprived of a transition to examine in 2012, scholars should savor David Shafie's new book, Eleventh Hour: The Politics of Policy Initiatives in Presidential Transitions. Shafie takes on the oft-discussed but understudied activities of outgoing presidents. Specifically, he presents a series of environmental policy case studies related to late, "midnight," or "eleventh hour" rulemaking drawn from transitions in 1980-81 up to 2008-09. Shafie's writing is clear, and the book extends what we know about this important dimension of the presidency. The authority to make late decisions has long been an option for presidents, but only in the last 30 years has the practice emerged as a favored tactic for Republicans, Democrats, one-term, and two-term presidents, alike. Shafie attributes this to two familiar factors: institutionalization of domestic policy by President Richard Nixon and centralization of policy making under President Ronald Reagan. As opposed to last-minute executive orders or appointments, late rulemaking is an attractive policy strategy because rules are harder to undo by Congress and the incoming administration. It is also a preferred strategy of interest group allies of the president who appreciate the lack of public scrutiny and media attention afforded during the transition period. Despite their popularity, "midnight" regulations are routinely criticized, including by those who later use the strategy such as incoming Vice President George H. W. Bush. Bush chastised President Jimmy Carter's rulemaking during the 1980 transition. President Bush's (41) perspective is an intriguing one, as he is a participant in one role or another in all five of the transitions studied in the book. Once a critic, Bush later used the strategy during his outgoing transition in 1992-93, as did his son in 2008-09 The strengths of Shafie's book lie in these historical details and the narrative that emerges of environmental policy making since the 1970s. For example, we learn about land management policy in the Department of the Interior and in the Environmental Protection Agency through the lens of regulatory actions in the first and last few days of each administration. Policy change that was unthinkable, or at least politically untenable, for the first three and a half years in office is quickly enacted to open public lands for resource extraction or increase oil pipeline inspections, as the outgoing president celebrates a final Christmas in the White House. …


The Lamy amphibian quarry, located in central New Mexico in the Upper Triassic Garita Creek Formation of the Chinle Group, is a paucispecific assemblage dominated by the remains of large metoposaurid amphibians assigned to Buettneria perfecta. The quarry has long been considered to have been produced by drastic drought conditions. However, an examination of the original field data as well as specimens from the quarry reveal that the Lamy quarry is, in fact, a hydrodynamically sorted semi-attritional accumulation. Particularly relevant taphonomic features of the quarry are the finegrained
sediments that lack mudcracks and fine laminations that occur with the fossil material, as well as a strong preferred orientation to the material, hydrodyamic sorting and imbrication of fossils, lack of articulation, dominance of adult animals, lack of scavenging and no apparent weathering of the bone surfaces. It is probable that given the size distribution of the skulls, the Lamy amphibians died in a catastrophic mortality event elsewhere and were subsequently transported.


The spawning season, size and age at first sexual maturity, and fecundity of the commercially important lizardfish (Saurida undosquamis) were studied on the basis of 602 specimens from Iskenderun Bay in the eastern Mediterranean. Lizardfishes had ripe gonads all around the year. The monthly gonadosomatic index values and the frequency of ripe gonads indicated that the spawning of this species occurred mainly in two seasons (May-July and September-November). Males attained first sexual maturity at a total length of about 16 cm and females at about 16.5 cm. Fecundity-length relationships estimated between 1999 and 2000 were log F = 0.422 + 3.293 log L (r = 0.76), log F = 0.132 + 3.490 log L (r = 0.86), respectively. In 1999 and 2000, fecundity-age relationships were estimated as log F = 4.379 +1.164 log A (r = 0.80), log F = 4.501 + 0.925 log A (r = 0.82), respectively. No annual variation in fecundity was apparent for the study period.


Singapore, a small island city-state with some 700 km 2 in land area and a population of 4.5 million, is always looking for innovative ways to find new water sources to meet its growing need for water. Rain falling in the urban fringe catchments is not harvested; these areas experience bouts of heavy rain but dry up during the dry season and, as such, the conventional approach of constructing large dams for storage to support large water treatment plants is not economically viable. This paper explores the viability of a newly developed variable salinity water desalination treatment plant to harvest water from estuarine catchments. The plant is able to treat estuarine waters which vary gradually from low salinity river water into high salinity seawater. When the river water has high salinity or dries up, treatment is maintained with the plant operating in seawater desalination mode instead of remaining idle, thus affording high plant utilisation. The treated water is of high grade with energy consumption half that of seawater desalination plants. The average unit production and capital cost of such variable salinity desalination plants is significantly lower than that of seawater desalination plants.


A number of cytokines and costimulatory molecules involved in immune activation have recently been identified including IL-12, a heterodimeric cytokine that supports the development of cell-mediated immunity, and B7-1, a costimulatory molecule involved in the activation of T lymphocytes. We explored the use of these immunomodulants as molecularly defined adjuvants in the function of recombinant anticancer vaccines using a murine model adenocarcinoma, CT26, transduced with a model Ag, beta-galactosidase (beta-gal). Although IL-12 given alone to mice bearing tumors established for 3 days did not have consistent antitumor activity, a profound therapeutic effect was observed when IL-12 administration was combined with a recombinant vaccinia virus (rVV) encoding beta-gal called VJS6. On the basis of the reported synergistic effects of IL-12 and the costimulatory molecule B7-1 (CD80) in vitro, we immunized mice with a double recombinant vaccinia encoding both the model tumor Ag and the costimulatory molecule B7-1, designated B7-1 beta-gal rVV. The adjuvant administration of IL-12 after immunization with this virus significantly enhanced survival in tumor-bearing animals. T cell subset depletions demonstrated that the in vivo activity of IL-12 was largely independent of CD4+ T lymphocytes, whereas the in vivo activity of a B7-1 rVV required both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells to elicit maximal therapeutic effect. To our knowledge, this is the first description of B7-1 and IL-12 cooperation in vivo and represents a novel strategy to enhance the efficacy of recombinant anticancer vaccines.


One characteristic of a civilized society is the ability and propensity of its members to refrain from acting in a way that disrupts the harmony of the group. While this is not intelligence as measured by IQ, it is a form of social intelligence that will aid those having it in their ability to propagate. This characteristic is not unique to human societies but rather is true of most social species. This report deals with one aspect of brain chemistry that may underlie this social intelligence, defined as the ability of a species to inhibit its thoughts as well as its behaviors. Selective pressure has unrelenting consequences on the mechanisms of brain function, and perhaps the first mechanism to be affected is the chemistry of the brain. Changes in brain chemistry and function can be explored by an investigation of species selected to represent the phylogenetic sequence leading to mankind. In an examination of nine species selected on this basis, we have found that one consequence of selective pressure is an increase in the potential for cortical inhibition. We suggest this may be a major component of the evolution of human intelligence. Key words: intelligence, thalamus, inhibition, comparative psychology, evolution, mammals, receptor binding, GABA, muscimol binding, amniotic vertebrates. By treating relative brain size as a measure of intelligence, it is possible to develop a coherent story about the probable history of intelligence as a biological phenomenon. Like other biological processes, intelligence must have evolved under the influence of natural selection. That is, a well known prime result of evolutionary pressure has been the selection for human intelligence. The intelligence of humans has been shown to be correlated with an increase in size of the neocortex (eg., Ariens Kappers 1929; Diamond and Hall 1969). In this investigation we have extended this axiom one step further. Not only do humans have a larger cortex but we have found that humans also come equipped with an increased capability of inhibiting this expanded cortex. To begin this investigation we began with the assumption that a look at our ancestral heritage gives us insight as to what the future may bring. In turn, an even broader spectrum of evolutionary analysis can lead to a similar insight and perhaps predictions about the path along which natural selection is taking us. That is, what lies ahead in the evolution of mankind is only a subpart of what has been happening to primates as they are a subpart of what has been happening to mammals and so on. By an examination of diverse species chosen to represent a phylogenetic series leading to man, this report shows one step in the consequences of selective pressure on the mechanisms of brain function. Our conclusion is that this step, an increase in the potential for inhibition of the cortex, is probably a major component of the evolution of human intelligence. To draw this conclusion we must first examine the results of selective pressure on brain development. Secondary and tertiary synaptic levels in brain structure are relatively immune to changes in a species ecological niche. Natural selection first acts upon those parts of the brain most easily changed so they can revert with changing circumstances. For example, a species driven into a nocturnal habitat is subject to adaptive pressure on its visual system to adapt. The first noticeable gross anatomical changes are the receptors in the eyeball (Polyak 1957). Prior to these anatomical changes are changes in the chemistry of the brain. These are the most easily changed and therefore the first to be effected by selective pressure. Yet the chemistry of the brain demonstrates a remarkable robustness throughout phylogeny. In this study we have looked at the constancy of an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain over a wide range of species. Particular attention has been paid to a part of the brain, the dorsal thalamus, through which all sensory information is channeled before it reaches the cortex. …


Traffic safety is one of major challenges facing most communities worldwide. To improve traffic safety, regulating traffic movement through markings, signs, channelization, and others is essential. Traffic signs are used either to regulate road user movements by highlighting priorities or to inform road users about traffic regulations and traffic conditions. In general, traffic signs are essential element in road operation. Thus, understanding these signs by road users is of prime importance for efficient and safe traffic operations. This study investigates the comprehensiveness of traffic signs by drivers and the impact of driver characteristics gender, nationality, age, language, and educational level. Clarifying the correlation between the understanding of traffic signs and driver characteristics will yield to recommendations and help in identifying proper countermeasures to enhance the communities' knowledge of traffic signs and consequently improve traffic safety level. The study used an electronic survey as a research instrument for data collection. The results have shown significant impact of some of human characteristics on their ability to recognize the metal-plate and electronic traffic signals.


In 2001, Portugal decriminalized the acquisition, possession, and use of small quantities of all psychoactive drugs. The significance of this legislation has been misunderstood. Decriminalization did not trigger dramatic changes in drug‐related behavior because, as an analysis of Portugal's predecriminalization laws and practices reveals, the reforms were more modest than suggested by the media attention they received. Portugal illustrates the shortcomings of before‐and‐after analysis because, as is often the case, the de jure legal change largely codified de facto practices. In the years before the law's passage, less than 1 percent of those incarcerated for a drug offense had been convicted of use. Surprisingly, the change in law regarding use appears associated with a marked reduction in drug trafficker sanctioning. While the number of arrests for trafficking changed little, the number of individuals convicted and imprisoned for trafficking since 2001 has fallen nearly 50 percent.


Objective: INCLEN Diagnostic Tool for Autism Spectrum Disorder (INDT-ASD) is an indigenously developed tool for the assessment of Indian children with ASD. This tool has been developed by the INCLEN group in India, and it is used by mental health professionals and pediatricians. This work was to demonstrate its clinical utility for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and sensitize them to this new tool. Materials and Methods: Forty children between 2 and 10 years of age, with the referral diagnosis of ASD and social communication disorder (SCD) from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, were enrolled for the study. Diagnosis was reviewed and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale was administered on all children. The children were grouped as (i) children with ASD and (ii) children with SCD, i.e., "no ASD." The INDT-ASD was then administered by an SLP, who was blind to group membership. Results: Thirty-nine out of forty children were correctly diagnosed by the INDT-ASD, showing high diagnostic accuracy of the tool. In addition to this, it is quick to administer, has very elaborate guidelines to observe different behaviors, a good scoring algorithm, and it is freely available in many regional languages. Conclusion: INDT-ASD is a simple and effective tool that can also be used regularly by SLPs and other professionals for the diagnosis of Indian children with ASD.


The critical damage mechanism on many GB passenger train wheels is Rolling Contact Fatigue (RCF) cracking in the rim. Evidence from field observations suggests that RCF damage occurs much more quickly as the wheelsets near the end of their life. Wheel manufacturing processes induce a compressive hoop stress in the wheel rim; variations in residual stress through the life of a wheel may influence the observed RCF damage rates.
This paper describes experiments to measure residual stresses in new and used wheel rims to identify whether this could be a significant factor, and compares the findings from neutron diffraction and ultrasonic birefringence methods. The scope goes beyond previous applications of neutron diffraction to railway wheels and identifies key considerations for future testing.
Assuming that the as-manufactured stress distribution was similar for all three wheels tested, it is found that the stresses are redistributed within the wheel rim during its life as material is removed and plastic flow occurs. However, the hoop stress near the running surface remains compressive and may not have a large influence on the RCF damage rates.


Title of Document: SPIRITUALS AND GOSPEL MUSIC PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: A DUAL CURRICULUM THAT BRIDGES THE CULTURAL DIVIDE Robert Lee Jefferson, DMA, 2010 Directed By: Chair, Linda Mabbs, School of Music This study explores methods in which the teaching of Gospel Music and Spirituals can be used as a conduit to bridge ethnic, cultural, and racial divides that are often found in American society. After working with various cultural and racial groups within religious and secular circles, the researcher has observed that individual cultures can have very distinct and opposite approaches to learning music, even in the United States, which some consider to be a cultural "melting pot." More specifically, there are cultures that embrace the written or visual learning tradition, while others lean more heavily toward the aural or oral learning tradition. As a result, the perceived differences deriving from these two opposite learning traditions can often create both unconscious and conscious divisions among various cultural and ethnic groups. However, using teaching techniques and performance practices related to both Gospel Music and Spirituals (which use different although related learning approaches), one can create an opportunity to bridge the gap between the aural and visual learning traditions and can create an environment ripe for intra-cultural and cross-cultural communication. This dissertation studied two separate groups of individuals; one group from the visual cultural learning tradition and one group from the aural cultural learning tradition. Both groups were taught music through the process of either an aural or visual process (or in some cases, by a combination of both), and their behavioral responses were observed during rehearsals. The results of these observations are used to create an outline for curricular approaches to teaching groups from opposing learning traditions, utilizing the opportunity that this presents not only to bridge the divide which often exists between individuals from different learning traditions, but also to offer a way to address ethnic and cultural divides. SPIRITUALS AND GOSPEL MUSIC PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: A DUAL CURRICULUM THAT BRIDGES THE CULTURAL DIVIDE


Soil structure controls important physical and biological processes in soil–plant–microbial systems. Those processes are dominated by the geometry of soil pore structure, and a correct model of this geometry is critical for understanding them. Soil tomography has been shown to provide rich three‐dimensional digital information on soil pore geometry. Recently, mathematical morphological techniques have been proposed as powerful tools to analyze and quantify the geometrical features of porous media. Minkowski functionals and morphological functions built over Minkowski functionals provide computationally efficient means to measure four fundamental geometrical features of three‐dimensional geometrical objects, that is, volume, boundary surface, mean boundary surface curvature, and connectivity. We used the threshold and the dilation and erosion of three‐dimensional images to generate morphological functions and explore the evolution of Minkowski functionals as the threshold and as the degree of dilation and erosion changes. We analyzed the three‐dimensional geometry of soil pore space with X‐ray computed tomography (CT) of intact soil columns from a Spanish Mediterranean vineyard by using two different management practices (conventional tillage versus permanent cover crop of resident vegetation). Our results suggested that morphological functions built over Minkowski functionals provide promising tools to characterize soil macropore structure and that the evolution of morphological features with dilation and erosion is more informative as an indicator of structure than moving threshold for both soil managements studied.


Security architectures such as Intel SGX need protection against rollback attacks, where the adversary violates the integrity of a protected application state by replaying old persistently stored data or by starting multiple application instances. Successful rollback attacks have serious consequences on applications such as financial services. In this paper, we propose a new approach for rollback protection on SGX. The intuition behind our approach is simple. A single platform cannot efficiently prevent rollback, but in many practical scenarios, multiple processors can be enrolled to assist each other. We design and implement a rollback protection system called ROTE that realizes integrity protection as a distributed system. We construct a model that captures adversarial ability to schedule enclave execution and show that our solution achieves a strong security property: the only way to violate integrity is to reset all participating platforms to their initial state. We implement ROTE and demonstrate that distributed rollback protection can provide significantly better performance than previously known solutions based on local non-volatile memory.


Recently, critics have attacked federal law enforcement policies that encourage corporate targets to disclose sensitive information protected by the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, arguing that the policies are coercive, fundamentally unfair, and destined to chill the free flow of information to corporate counsel. The most readily apparent collateral consequence of these policies, however, has been corporations' loss of privilege protection in subsequent litigation. Good corporate citizens that have chosen to cooperate with the government in this manner have been punished with broad findings of waiver and the dissemination of protected information to companies' civil adversaries. To protect companies from this punitive result and to encourage cooperation with law enforcement, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence drafted and published proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 502(c) to allow "selective waiver" of the attorney-client privilege and workproduct protection to federal entities without a waiver as to any other party. On the verge of obtaining this protection, corporate counsel performed a surprising about-face and argued against the proposal, complaining that it would exacerbate the existing "culture of waiver" in federal investigations. In the face of vocal opposition, the Advisory Committee declined to recommend a selective waiver rule, leaving it to Congress to decide the fate of selective waiver legislation. This Article opines that selective waiver legislation would represent a valuable palliative measure that would serve corporate clients and their stakeholders, as well as the public interest, in effective corporate oversight. It examines the federal policies that create corporate waivers, concluding that waivers reflect a legitimate prosecutorial technique that is indispensable in light of the mounting expense and complexity of corporate investigations in the twenty-first century. The Article also demonstrates that judicial rejection of selective waiver ignores the evolution of privilege


Abstract A doctor who lapses and injures her patient, and a driver who lapses and causes an accident, are liable under negligence law for the harm done. But lapse is not necessarily negligence, since reasonable people lapse from time to time. We show that tort liability for "reasonable" lapses distorts doctors', drivers', and manufacturers' incentives to take care. Furthermore, such liability provides potential injurers with incentives to substitute activities which are less prone to lapses with activities which are more prone to lapses, even if such substitution is inefficient. We propose several solutions to the inefficiencies that result from liability for lapses, and argue that under certain circumstances injurers should be entitled to invoke a "lapse defense."


Introduction to Abstract Algebra provides insight into the methods of abstract algebra. This book provides information pertinent to the fundamental concepts of abstract algebra. Organized into five chapters, this book begins with an overview of the study of natural numbers that are used historically for the purpose of counting the objects in different assemblages. This text then examines the concepts of set and elements of a set. Other chapters contain an intuitive survey of the different kinds of real numbers, with the inclusion of many very important results on integers. This book presents as well a brief survey of algebraic systems from the trivial sets to the more highly structures groups, with emphasis on the elementary properties of groups. The final chapter deals with the simple development of complex numbers. This book is intended to be suitable for students in abstract algebra.


This is an attempt to determine the primaries corresponding to the fundamental sensations of the Young-Helmholtz theory. Unlike previous attempts by various authors, this determination is based solely on color-mixture data pertaining to the trichromatic observer. It is shown that the primaries can be derived from the color-mixture data of the average trichromate with reasonably small uncertainty, if only the one hypothesis is made that each of the three response functions has a certain simple geometrical character, resembling the standard luminosity function. This hypothesis is suggested by the purely physico-chemical character of the retinal processes. An analysis of the situation shows that in order to explain the behavior of color blind observers by the response functions thus obtained it is necessary to assume that "inner" dichromatism—such as deuteranopia—consists not in the absence of one of the fundamental responses, but in the failure of the mental organ to distinguish qualitatively between two of the fundamental responses. A satisfactory quantitative account is given of all the known forms of dichromatism.A colorimetric system based on the "natural" or Young primaries compares favorably with the conventional I.C.I. system.


There is an implicit assumption in cited literature on precision agriculture (PA) that spreading of fertiliser is performed perfectly in the field leading to uniform application, this is not true. Variation can be large and often the actual performance of spreading equipment used has never been measured or verified. In various countries around the world there are quality assurance (QA) systems designed to achieve a prescribed level of performance. Even within these QA schemes limited testing is undertaken and always under perfect or near perfect conditions. The test methods are designed to establish an acceptable bout width which meets an acceptable evenness of spread if driven accurately. The test does not take into account wind conditions (except for requiring less than 15kmhr-1 for testing), humidity, slope, terrain or the instrumentation to maintain the desired bout width. This paper examines the effect of the farm environment and the physical characteristics of fertilisers on the spread patterns of fertilisers in the field. Fertilisers with heterogeneous particle size distributions proved to have more robust spread patterns under field conditions than those with homogeneous particle size distributions.


We present ozone and carbon monoxide measurements taken in Darwin, Australia, during the wet season of 2005/2006, to examine whether the composition of the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL) reflects that of the local boundary layer or is influenced more by advection from distant sources. We find that the latter predominates in the upper TTL, and is also the major influence in the lower TTL, except during an active monsoon phase. The day-to-day variability of ozone in the TTL is far greater than that in the lower troposphere, and correlates closely with air mass origin deduced from trajectory calculations based on standard ECMWF wind analyses. Although clear evidence of recent local uplift was found in carbon monoxide tracer measurements recorded inside convective anvils, no such signal was found out-of-cloud in the background TTL, where the measured variability correlated well with air mass origin deduced from back-trajectories. This study suggests that the composition of the TTL is ultimately determined by vertical mixing in certain "hot spot" regions of the tropics, with advection from these regions dominating the composition elsewhere.