On March 24, 2012, the New York-based electronic network e-flux posted an announcement to some forty-five thousand readers. It stated that from March I until April 29, the Montreal center for contemporary photography, Dazibao, would be showing a two-part exhibition by David Tomas titled "Live rightly, die, die ..." At the top of the posting is the date of the announcement along with the e-flux logo. Below a perforated line, the name of the gallery is placed in bold. Below this is an image: a 1929 photograph of a sailor holding a severed human head. To the right of the image are the exhibition details, and below that, another perforated line is followed by a detailed description listing the names of the artists whose works are shown. Among the prominent figures are Bas Jan Ader, Francis Alys, Lothar Baumgarten, Mareel Broodthaers. Chris Burden, Andre Cadere, Guy Debord, Jan Dibbets, Leon Golub Richard Hamilton, Allan Kaprow, George Maciunas, Irving Penn, and Robert Smithson. Also listed are some lesser-known artists: Pavel Braila. Stanley Brouwn, Tim Clark, Jamelie Hassan, Bouchra Khalili, Vincent Meessen. Willem de Rooij, and some odd inclusions: Documenta H, e-flux, and NASA. The mention of e-flux in this list gives the first indication that the announcement itself figures as one of the artifacts presented in the exhibition. The description explains further: Over the past 20 years there has been a notable increase in the transnational circulation of cultural information through multiple forms of artistic activity. This activity has emerged in tandem with neoliberal models of global trade and the creation of interlocked systems of economic and cultural exchange. This circulation and its possible relationships with economic and culture [sic] patterns of globalization raise fundamental questions about the models upon which these activities are founded and status of the information once it has been presented in new cultural locations. Are artists now engaged in a new professionalized from of artistic tourism and amateur ethnography? And what is the relationship between tourism, information gathering and reception, and the exotic in contemporary art? According to the announcement, the exhibition was modeled on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. The novella provided an "eccentric frame or historical reference" for the exhibition's presentation of unknown places, opaque languages, and singular encounters. Included among these is a series of e-flux news bulletins, a nineteenth-century photograph of an eighteenth-century photograph of a Chinese Lingchi execution. The statement itself is attributed to Tomas, the gallery logo is presented, and below another perforated line the e-flux logo is displayed again with the suggestion to follow e-flux through Facebook or Twitter. In the following, I provide a brief account of one of the most eccentric and challenging exhibitions ever shown in Montreal. The exhibition mobilizes the theories and motifs of Tomas's work both as a visual artist term he avoids and as an anthropologist who specializes in the study of media histories as spaces of intercultural contact. It updates and refines his performed installations from the early 1980s in light of recent sociopolitical developments, and explores how artists call adopt a critical stance in relation to the art world and produce meaning from a socio-anthropological viewpoint. This "monumental" exhibition can also be approached in terms of what Tomas has defined as "post-photographic" practice. Insular as his work is described in exact detail in his writings, it is for the most part accessible to anyone interested. Yet, due to its complexity and unusual form--both as writing and as installation work--it tends to go unnoticed. This essay concerning "Live rightly, die, die ..." will therefore outline the terms of post-photography, present select aspects of Tomas's elaboration of his exhibition and its association with a global artistic-touristic complex, provide an account of my encounter with the exhibition and its documents, and conclude with a suggestion of how this e-flux announcement details the features of a contemporary neocolonialist subject. …


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The proprotein convertase site-1 protease (S1P) converts latent ER-membrane bound transcription factors SREBPs and ATF6 to their active forms. SREBPs are involved in cholesterol and fatty acid homeostasis whereas ATF6 is involved in unfolded protein response pathways (UPR). Cartilage-specific ablation of S1P in mice (S1Pcko) results in abnormal cartilage devoid of type II collagen protein (Col II). S1Pcko mice also lack endochondral bone development. To analyze S1Pcko cartilage we performed double-labeled immunofluorescence studies for matrix proteins that demonstrated that type IIB procollagen is trapped inside the ER in S1Pcko chondrocytes. This retention is specific to type IIB procollagen; other cartilage proteins such as type IIA procollagen, cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) and aggrecan are not affected. The S1Pcko cartilage thus exhibits COMP-, aggrecan-, and type IIA procollagen-derived matrices but is characterized by the absence of a type IIB procollagen-derived matrix. To understand the molecular reason behind S1Pcko phenotypes we performed genome-wide transcriptional profiling of cartilage isolated from S1Pcko and wild type littermates. While the UPR pathways are unaffected, the SREBPs-directed cholesterol and fatty acid pathways are significantly down-regulated in S1Pcko chondrocytes, with maximal down-regulation of the stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (Scd1) gene. However, mouse models that lack Scd1 or exhibit reduction in lipid homeostasis do not suffer from the ER retention of Col II or lack endochondral bone. These studies indicate an indispensable role for S1P in type IIB procollagen trafficking from the ER. This role appears not to be related to lipid pathways or other current known functions of S1P and is likely dependent on additional, yet unknown, S1P substrates in chondrocytes.


Given data from diverse sets of distinct distributions, domain generalization aims to learn models that generalize to unseen distributions. A common approach is designing a data-driven surrogate penalty to capture generalization and minimize the empirical risk jointly with the penalty. We argue that a significant failure mode of this recipe is an excess risk due to an erroneous penalty or hardness in joint optimization. We present an approach that eliminates this problem. Instead of jointly minimizing empirical risk with the penalty, we minimize the penalty under the constraint of optimality of the empirical risk. This change guarantees that the domain generalization penalty cannot impair optimization of the empirical risk, i.e., in-distribution performance. To solve the proposed optimization problem, we demonstrate an exciting connection to rate-distortion theory and utilize its tools to design an efficient method. Our approach can be applied to any penalty-based domain generalization method, and we demonstrate its effectiveness by applying it to three examplar methods from the literature, showing significant improvements.


The cultural and political demand for nonprofit financial accountability has grown rapidly in recent decades. At the same time, donations and gifts continue, apparently, to decline as a proportion of overall revenue received. To remain viable in this environment, many nonprofit groups are changing their operating models and organizational structures, the better to attract contracts, grants, and fee-for-service revenue. An underappreciated consequence of the convergence of these accountability and viability challenges is an anti-consultative or anti-collaborative imperative. With increasing frequency, scholars, attorneys, and consultants are advising nonprofit groups that seek to comply with nonprofit laws and to enhance their financial performance, to turn away from the popular cultural traditions and from the legal norms that have, by and large, encouraged collaboration and consultation in the normal course of internal decision making and governance. This advice often entails the adoption of strategies for streamlining nonprofit governance along for-profit business principles, in order to augment corporate efficiency, and management development, in the name, ultimately, of service to the nonprofit mission. Until now, law has largely accommodated and encouraged transplanted business models with new statutory proscriptions, administrative guidelines, and with liberal common law interpretations of the older statutes which demote consultative values. It may be time for courts and legislatures to start to impose limits on the wholesale adoption of for-profit management and governance models in nonprofit organization.


Using fate mapping techniques, we have analyzed development of cells of the dorsal marginal region in wild-type and mutant zebrafish. We define a domain in the early gastrula that is located just at the margin and centered on the dorsal midline, in which most cells generate clones that develop exclusively as notochord. The borders of the notochord domain are sharp at the level of single cells, and coincide almost exactly with the border of the expression domain of the homeobox gene floating head (flh; zebrafish homologue of Xnot), a gene essential for notochord development. In flh mutants, cells in the notochord domain generate clones of muscle cells. In contrast, notochord domain cells form mesenchyme in embryos mutant for no tail (ntl; zebrafish homologue of Brachyury). A minority of cells in the notochord domain in wild-type embryos develop as unrestricted mesoderm, invariably located in the tail, suggesting that early gastrula expression of flh does not restrict cellular potential to the notochord fate. The unrestricted tail mesodermal fate is also expressed by the forerunner cells, a cluster of cells located outside the blastoderm, adjacent to the notochord domain. We show that cells can leave the dorsal blastoderm to join the forerunners, suggesting that relocation between fate map domains might respecify notochord domain cells to the tail mesodermal fate. An intermediate fate of the forerunners is to form the epithelial lining of Kupffer's vesicle, a transient structure of the teleost tailbud. The forerunners appear to generate the entire structure of Kupffer's vesicle, which also develops in most flh mutants. Although forerunner cells are present in ntl mutants, Kupffer's vesicle never appears, which is correlated with the later severe disruption of tail development.


Smart home systems are expected to become key research area for ubiquitous and embedded system computing in coming years. In this thesis, a new scheme in smart home systems technology using embedded system for providing intelligent control of home appliances is proposed. An embedded system act as protocol glue that incorporates wired and wireless option such as Short Message Service (SMS) router with wireless local area network (WI-FI) for intelligent automation and higher speed of home appliances connectivity. The system is implemented in 2 tier models. First-tier model consist of incorporated design of SMS Router and Wireless Access Point. Wireless local area network (WI-FI) is selected as mechanism due to its transmission range within 100m which suits the smart home requirement for automation and control, justifies the Personal Area Network (PAN) for mobile device connectivity. Second tier model consist of remote application server systems, which cater a conceptual model between embedded hardware and software integration of appliances in smart home. This interface model will be between in house networks and external communication environment, whereas embedded system acts as storage media and server for information interchange between systems especially with mobile devices within a smart home. Embedded system sits at the core of the home network, acts as residential gateway and enables bi-directional communication and data transfer channel among networked appliances in the home and across the Internet. On the other hand, client-side application provides a user-friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI) to enhance the usability of the system. The proposed embedded system has been implemented and verified that the system can be a core device for smart home environment functionality.


Mitochondria are vitally important cellular organelles that are instrumental to many cellular functions such as energy conversion, iron-sulfur cluster synthesis and -oxidation of fatty acids. Although, the vast majority of mitochondrial proteins are encoded by the nuclear DNA and transported into mitochondria post-translationally, mitochondria also contain their own DNA, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is essential for mitochondrial function. Mammalian mtDNA encodes 2 rRNAs and 22 tRNAs that are required to translate the 11 protein-coding mRNAs encoded by mtDNA. The encoded proteins are essential components of the oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS) and therefore pathogenic mtDNA mutations can lead to drastic energy deficiency disorders with typically pleiotropic symptoms including progressive neurodegeneration, muscle weakness, epilepsy, stroke and different type of myopathies.
 Despite extensive research, the genotype-phenotype correlations and tissue specificity of mitochondrial disorders remain still an enigma. Comprehensive molecular understanding of these diseases has been hindered by the limited number of animal models available for research. Because mtDNA cannot be efficiently modified with molecular-biology techniques, the main strategy to generate these animal models has been a to introduce mutations found in cell lines into mouse ES cells. In this thesis, two genetic approaches are presented to introduce endogenous mutations to mtDNA. These strategies utilized both natural sources of mtDNA mutations, namely replication errors and oxidative damage to mtDNA. In the first approach, proofreading-deficient DNA polymerase  is utilized to mutate mtDNA and in the second approach, mitochondrial DNA repair is impaired to increase the prevalence of oxidative stress driven mutations. The repair is impaired by abolishing the mitochondrial localization of two base-excision repair glycosylases, OGG1 and MUTYH.
 In the first approach, maternal lineages carrying limited number of mtDNA mutations were generated by breeding the heterozygous proofreading deficient female mice (mtDNA mutator mice) for one generation. Next, the induced pathogenic mtDNA mutations were identified via a new strategy, by screening the colonic crypts of the founder mice for respiratory chain dysfunction. The mtDNA mutations can rapidly clonally expand in colonic crypts to reach heteroplasmy levels high enough to induce OXPHOS dysfunction, which allows a straight-forward and early detection of mouse lineages that carry pathogenic mtDNA mutations. With this approach, a founder mouse was identified that carried a C5024T mutation in mitochondrial tRNAALA gene. These tRNAALA mice display typical molecular phenotypes seen in classical mitochondrial diseases, i.e. decreased stability of the mutated tRNAALA transcript, impaired mitochondrial translation and presence of respiratory chain deficient cells. In summary, the results show that heterozygous mtDNA mutator mice in combination with colonic-crypt screening for pathogenic mutations, is a successful approach to generate mouse models for mitochondrial research.
Surprisingly, the second mutagenic approach, using dysfunctional base-excision repair (BER) in mitochondria, did not result into an increase in mtDNA mutation load even when the mice were aged. As DNA repair is suggested to be especially important in the germ line and the BER deficient mice were therefore bred for five consecutive generation as a homozygote maternal line. However, no increase mtDNA mutation load was detected also in these mice. To increase prevalence of oxidative stress in these animals they were bred with tissue specific superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) knockout mice. The heart Sod2 knockout mice show a clear increase in superoxide levels demonstrated by loss of aconitase activity and a plethora of changes in mitochondrial function. However, no increase in mtDNA or mtRNA mutation load was detected in the repair deficient heart Sod2 knockout mice. These results demonstrate that firstly BER deficiency is not a feasible approach to introduce mutations to mtDNA and secondly that the importance of oxidative stress as a contributor to mtDNA mutation load should be re-evaluated. Instead, in both ageing research and mitochondrial disease models, we should focus on replication errors as the source of mtDNA mutations.


Responding to the changing landscape of higher education (HE) requires the development and implementation of flexible and imaginative approaches to continually inspire, engage and support academics and professional services staff in delivering high quality student-centred learning experiences. At Bournemouth University (BU), the cross-university Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) was created to promote, support and co-ordinate pedagogic initiatives and embed the explicit valuing of teaching and learning into all aspects of university life. It represents a collaborative, inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary model with multiple stakeholder voices. Operationalised through the secondment of academics two days a week, and taking a thematic approach, Theme Leaders 'bid' for the secondment, and drive forward an agreed agenda. The BU 'Fusion' corporate strategy promotes clear links between Pedagogy, Professional Practice and Research, complemented by the current CEL themes of: Employability; Innovation in Technology Enhanced Learning and Innovative Pedagogies; Assessment and Feedback. We believe that the sustainability and creativity required to deliver this agenda are promoted through the building of strong networks, the sharing of challenges and the collaborative development of solutions, however, as academics moving into the realms of learning development, our roles and identities are constantly being challenged, contested, and reframed by the responses of peers, students and our wider disciplinary roots. This paper offers a model for mapping and managing change and optimising these and other 'disruptive' practices within HE institutional settings, and considers the flexible and blended academic identities that facilitate this approach.


The time-integrated radiant energy from laser-produced and laser-heated breakdown plasmas was spectroscopically examined. The spectra consisted of a strong continuum with several lines. Band spectra characteristic of molecular species could not be detected in pure diatomic gases. The lines were very broad especially in the same spatial region as that from which the continuum was emitted. Line spectra emitted from outside this region were predominantly from un-ionized atoms. The spectral lines from singly ionized atoms were emitted in a volume only slightly larger than that for the continuum. Photomultiplier–interference-filter measurements of the afterglow indicated that in nitrogen the atom lines last five times as long as do the ion lines. When the peak laser power exceeded 600 MW the spectrum of doubly ionized nitrogen atoms was detected. The absence of molecular spectra and the threshold for the appearance of doubly ionized nitrogen indicate that the plasma may be in a state of total equilibrium at a high temperature.


Spondyloarthropathies (or Spondyloarthritides; SpAs) are a group of heterogeneous but genetically related inflammatory disorders in which ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is considered the prototypic form. Among the genes associated with AS, HLA-B27 allele has the strongest association although the cause is still not clear. Rats transgenic for the human HLA-B27 gene (B27 rats) develop a systemic inflammation mirroring the human SpA symptoms and thus provide a useful model to study the contribution of this MHC class I molecule in the disease development. Of particular interest was the observation of absence of arthritis in B27 rats grown in germ-free conditions and a recent theory suggests that microbial dysbiosis and gut inflammation might play a key role in initiating the HLA-B27-associated diseases. Studies in our laboratory have previously demonstrated that HLA-B27 expression alters the development of the myeloid compartment within the bone marrow (BM) in B27 rat and causes loss of a specific dendritic cell (DC) population involved in self-tolerance mechanisms within the gut. The aim of this thesis was to further analyse the myeloid compartment in B27 rats with a particular focus on the osteoclast progenitors and the bone phenotype and to link this to the gut inflammation. In addition, translational studies analysed peripheral monocyte/pre-osteoclasts in AS patients and teased apart the role of cytokines in in vitro human osteoclast differentiation.
To understand the dynamics of the myeloid/monocyte compartment within the B27-associated inflammation, monocytes within the bloodstream and BM of B27 rats were characterised via flow cytometry and their ability to differentiate into osteoclast was assessed in vitro. Moreover, an antibiotic regime was used to reduce the B27 ileitis and to evaluate whether this could affect the migration, the phenotype, and the osteoclastogenic potential of B27 monocytes.
B27 animals display a systemic and central increase of "inflammatory" CD43low MOs, which are the main contributors to osteoclastogenesis in vitro. Antibiotic treatment reduced ileitis and also reverted the B27 monocyte phenotype. This was also associated with the reduction of the previous described TNFα-enhancement of osteoclast differentiation from B27 BM precursors. These evidences support the idea that in genetically susceptible individuals inflammation in the gut might influence the myeloid compartment within the BM; in other terms, pre-emptively educate precursor cells to acquire specific phenotype end functions after being recruited into the tissue. This might explain the enhanced differentiation of osteoclast from B27 BM progenitors and thus the HLA-B27-associated bone loss. The data shown in this thesis suggest a link between the immunity within the gut and BM haematopoiesis. This provides an attractive and novel research prospective that could help not only to increase the understanding of the HLA-B27-associated aetiopathogenesis but also to unravel the cellular crosstalk that allows the mucosal immunity to program central cell differentiation.
Human translational studies on monocyte subsets, cytokines and cytokine network in AS osteoclastogenesis evidenced altered osteoclast differentiation in the presence of IL-22 although no differences in the phenotype and functions of circulating CD14+ monocytes were observed. In addition, studies on the role of TNFα and TNFRs showed a dual role of this inflammatory cytokine in the human OC differentiation. In particular, the activation of TNFR1 in monocytes in early osteoclastogenesis inhibits OC differentiation while TNFα-biasing for TNFR2 on osteoclast precursors mediates the osteoclastogenic effect. Whether similar mechanisms are involved in the TNFα-mediated joint destruction in human rheumatic diseases needs further investigations. This could contribute to the development of novel and more specific anti-TNFα agents for the treatment of bone erosion. In conclusion, taken together my studies support the idea of a crosstalk between the periphery and the central system during the inflammatory response and provide new insights to the mechanisms behind the enhancement of osteoclastogenesis in B27-associated disorders.


The spotted skink, Niveoscincus ocellatus is a widely distributed small to
medium size skink (3-12 g) which occurs throughout eastern and central
Tasmania in a variety of climatic regimes. This thesis provides the first
major ecological study of this species and describes in detail the life
history and reproductive characteristics of two populations living at the
climatic extremes of the species' distribution: a site on the Central Plateau
represented the cold extreme and a site at Orford on the east coast
represented the warm extreme.
Niveoscincus ocellatus is a viviparous species that reproduces annually
across its range. It shows an asynchronous gonadal cycle, with maximum
male gonadal development in late summer and mating from April to
June and August to September. Vitellogenesis occurs predominantly in
autumn and continues through winter with ovulation in spring
(September to October). Parturition occurs in January in the temperate
Orford population, and in February in the subalpine Central Plateau
population. In addition to minor variations in the timing of
reproductive events between years at each site, N. ocellatus shows a
degree of flexibility in the timing of reproductive events between sites.
Ovulation and parturition occur approximately one month later at the
Central Plateau, but there is little difference in the length of the gestation
period between sites. An ability to show flexibility in the timing of
reproductive events is undoubtedly responsible, in part, for the
widespread distribution of Niveoscincus ocellatus in a range of climatic
conditions.
Niveoscincus ocellatus displays considerable geographic variation in life
history traits. Maturity is delayed at the Central Plateau (3 years) compared to Orford (2 years). As a result, indiv~duals from the Central
Plateau mature at a large size and have a larger maximum size.
Associated with their larger size and delayed maturity, Central Plateau
females produce larger (mass and number of young) clutches than those
from Orford. There is no trade-off between clutch size and size of
offspring between populations, and females from the Central Plateau
produce more (size adjusted) and larger offspring than females from
Orforct.
Through a series of experiments I show that life history traits of
N. ocellatus are phenotypically plastic, and that observed differences in
life history traits between sites, and annually within sites, may be
explained, at least in part, by phenotypic responses to environmental
variables. For example, growth rate of juveniles is positively correlated to
basking opportunities in the laboratory and to thermal conditions in field
enclosures, but is not influenced by any underlying genetic differences
between populations. Offspring growth rate and phenotype are also
influenced by other proximate factors, including the basking behaviour
of their mothers prior to parturition in the laboratory. Phenotypically
plastic responses allow a flexible approach to life history and
reproductive strategies and are of adaptive significance to species such as
N. ocellatus that occupy a wide geographic and/ or climatic range.


To study the formation potential of trihalomethanens (THMs) due to anthropogenic sources and effect of various precursors on the potential of THM formation, surface raw water samples were collected from Ganga Barrage Water Treatment Plant, Kanpur (India) from January to June 2009. The concentration of THMs and THMFP (Trihalomethane formation potential) at different chlorine dosages were below the WHO GV. THMFP values in May and June were found to be three times higher than those in January. Chloroform levels were found higher than DBCM (dibromochloromethane), DCBM (dichlorobromomethane) and BF (bromoform) in all the seasons. The seasonal variation of chloroform concentrations reported the level lower than WHO GV. THM formation rate was found to be very fast in first 24 h compared to that of exceeding reaction time. The higher the reaction time leads to the higher THM concentrations which was very prominent at higher chlorine dosages. Values of THMFP increased as TOC (total organic carbon) increased from Jan to Jun with exception of February. On temperature increase, THMFP values showed increase.


Disagreement percolation connects a Gibbs lattice gas and iid site percolation such that non-percolation implies uniqueness of the Gibbs measure. This work generalises disagreement percolation to the hard-sphere model and the Boolean model. Non-percolation of the Boolean model implies the uniqueness of the Gibbs measure and exponential decay of pair correlations and finite volume errors. Hence, lower bounds on the critical intensity for percolation of the Boolean model imply lower bounds on the critical activity for a (potential) phase transition. These lower bounds improve upon known bounds obtained by cluster expansion techniques. The proof uses a novel dependent thinning from a Poisson point process to the hard-sphere model, with the thinning probability related to a derivative of the free energy.


This article challenges the predominant narrative of the rise of modern environmentalism that supports much of the historiography on environmental ideas and movements. Through a study of the effects of the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967, we show that everyday life is a vital mediator of environmental catastrophes and has played a crucial role in rendering ambiguous popular attitudes toward the impact of disasters on the natural world. Using oral interview evidence, neglected by much environmental history, we trace the connections between the experience of the disaster and the contradictory ways in which this experience was or, more commonly, was not translated into environmentalist sensibility. We study the ways in which everyday concerns about economic insecurity created antagonistic understandings of the disaster that both magnified its unfortunate impact and complicated its subsequent meaning. We argue that attitudes toward the spill and its effects on nature were often contradictory. On the one hand, there was a powerful association with the suffering of wildlife affected by the spill. Yet, simultaneously, many of those interviewed rejected explicit environmental activism or drew only weak lines of connection between green ideas and their own experience of environmental disaster. We suggest that everyday environmental discourse should be seen as more geographically specific, ambiguous, and self-aware than that which is traditionally associated with the conservation movement, and that oral history can be a vital tool in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the complex social nature of modern environmentalism.


New diffractive imaging techniques using coherent x-ray beams have made possible nanometer-scale resolution imaging by replacing the optics in a microscope with an iterative phase retrieval algorithm. However, to date very high resolution imaging (< 40 nm) was limited to large-scale synchrotron facilities. Here, we present a significant advance in image resolution and capabilities for desktop soft x-ray microscopes that will enable widespread applications in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Using 13 nm high harmonic beams, we demonstrate a record 22 nm spatial resolution for any tabletop x-ray microscope. Finally, we show that unique information about the sample can be obtained by extracting 3-D information at very high numerical apertures.


Child development refers to the sequence of physical, language, thought and emotional changes that occur in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood. During this process a child progresses from dependency on their parents/guardians to increasing independence. Child development is strongly influenced by genetic factors (genes passed on from their parents) and events during prenatal life. It is also influenced by environmental facts and the child's learning capacity.


Semi-supervised learning is a branch of machine learning techniques that aims to make fully use of both labeled and unlabeled instances to improve the prediction performance. The size of modern real world datasets is ever-growing so that acquiring label information for them is extraordinarily difficult and costly. Therefore, deep semi-supervised learning is becoming more and more popular. Most of the existing deep semi-supervised learning methods are built under the generative model based scheme, where the data distribution is approximated via input data reconstruction. However, this scheme does not naturally work on discrete data, e.g., text; in addition, learning a good data representation is sometimes directly opposed to the goal of learning a high performance prediction model. To address the issues of this type of methods, we reformulate the semi-supervised learning as a model-based reinforcement learning problem and propose an adversarial networks based framework. The proposed framework contains two networks: a predictor network for target estimation and a judge network for evaluation. The judge network iteratively generates proper reward to guide the training of predictor network, and the predictor network is trained via policy gradient. Based on the aforementioned framework, we propose a recurrent neural network based model for semi-supervised text classification. We conduct comprehensive experimental analysis on several real world benchmark text datasets, and the results from our evaluations show that our method outperforms other competing state-of-the-art methods.


The analysis of seismograms from 32 aftershocks recorded by 98 seismic stations installed after the Northridge earthquake in the San Fernando Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains, and Santa Monica, California, indicates that the enhanced damage in Santa Monica is explained in the main by focusing due to a lens structure at a depth of several kilometers beneath the surface and having a finite lateral extent. The diagnosis was made from the observation of late-arriving S phases with large amplitudes, localized in the zones of large damage. The azimuths and angles of incidence of the seismic rays that give rise to the greatest focusing effects correspond to radiation that would have emerged from the lower part of the rupture surface of the mainshock. Thus the focusing and, hence, the large damage in Santa Monica were highly dependent on the location of the Northridge event, and an earthquake of similar size, located as little as one source dimension away, would not be likely to repeat this pattern. We show from coda wave analysis that the influence of surface geology as well as site effects on damage in Santa Monica is significantly smaller than are the focusing effects.


Epulopiscium fishelsoni n. g., n. sp., is described from the gut of Acanthurus nigrofuscus, an herbivorous surgeonfish (Acanthuridae: Teleostei) from the Red Sea, Israel. The symbiont is placed in the kingdom Protoctista (or Protista) but more specific taxonomic assignment is impossible at this time. The organism is of an elongate oval shape, round in cross-section, and highly mobile, with the ability to reverse direction rapidly. It lacks a mouth or other external structures, with the exception of fine surface filaments of an undetermined nature. Internally, there is a complex of folded membranes or tubules and a nucleus. No other organelles are evident. Reproduction is characterized by doubling of nuclei within the parental cell and emergence of daughter cells from a perforation in the parental cortex. Symbionts appear to exhibit circadian cycles of growth, reproductive activity, and movement within the gut. Although the organism greatly reduces local gut pH when present in large numbers, we know nothing of interactions between host and symbiont.


Protein synthesis takes place predominantly in the cytoplasm, meaning that proteins that are needed in the nuclear compartment, such as those that control gene transcription, have to be transported from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. Analysis of the regulation of nuclear import, which is central to cell responses to signalling pathways, and stress responses such as viral infection, requires dynamic experimental systems able to provide quantitative kinetic information. This article describes an in vitro reconstituted system as well as quantitative live cell imaging approaches, including the technique of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, that enable the rate and extent of nuclear import to be quantitatively determined, and assist mechanistic studies with respect to the nuclear transporters and targeting signals involved. This is critical to a full understanding of the importance of nuclear trafficking in biological systems.

Key Concepts:

The regulation of nuclear transport is critical to transcriptional control in response to cellular and developmental signals, viral infection, etc.

Using quantitative confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) can enable small changes in nuclear localisation to be identified.

Systems to reconstitute nuclear transport in vitro can enable the delineation of nuclear transport mechanisms.

The technique of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching can be used to determine nuclear transport kinetics in the living cell.

Quantitative techniques to examine nuclear transport allow for sequences and mechanisms underpinning regulated nucleocytoplasmic protein transport to be dissected.

Keywords:

nuclear transport;
nuclear envelope;
transcription factors;
in vitro reconstituted system;
fluorescence recovery after photobleaching


Evolution strategies (ES) are a family of black-box optimization algorithms able to train deep neural networks roughly as well as Q-learning and policy gradient methods on challenging deep reinforcement learning (RL) problems, but are much faster (e.g. hours vs. days) because they parallelize better. However, many RL problems require directed exploration because they have reward functions that are sparse or deceptive (i.e. contain local optima), and it is unknown how to encourage such exploration with ES. Here we show that algorithms that have been invented to promote directed exploration in small-scale evolved neural networks via populations of exploring agents, specifically novelty search (NS) and quality diversity (QD) algorithms, can be hybridized with ES to improve its performance on sparse or deceptive deep RL tasks, while retaining scalability. Our experiments confirm that the resultant new algorithms, NS-ES and two QD algorithms, NSR-ES and NSRA-ES, avoid local optima encountered by ES to achieve higher performance on Atari and simulated robots learning to walk around a deceptive trap. This paper thus introduces a family of fast, scalable algorithms for reinforcement learning that are capable of directed exploration. It also adds this new family of exploration algorithms to the RL toolbox and raises the interesting possibility that analogous algorithms with multiple simultaneous paths of exploration might also combine well with existing RL algorithms outside ES.


Harold Rosenberg, Advisor Despite the prevalence of pornography use, and recent conceptualization of excessive, problematic use as an addiction, I could find no published scale to measure craving for pornography. Therefore, I conducted three studies employing young male pornography users to develop and evaluate such a questionnaire. In Study 1, I had participants rate their agreement with 20 potential craving items after reading a control script or a script designed to induce craving to watch pornography. I dropped eight items because of low endorsement and found that the craving script did not yield higher mean scores across the remaining 12 items. In Study 2, I revised both the questionnaire and cue exposure stimuli, and then evaluated several psychometric properties of the modified questionnaire. Item loadings from a principal components analysis, a high internal consistency reliability coefficient, and a moderate mean inter-item correlation supported interpreting the 12 revised items as a single scale. Correlations of craving scores with selected sexual history and personality variables provided support for criterion validity and discriminant validity, respectively. The enhanced imagery script did not impact reported craving; however, more frequent users of pornography reported higher craving than less frequent users regardless of script condition. In Study 3, craving scores demonstrated good one-week test-retest reliability and predicted the number of times participants used pornography during the following week. The questionnaire could be applied in clinical and research settings to plan and evaluate treatment and to assess the prevalence of craving among recreational and problematic users of pornography. Excessive Appetite for Pornography iii


Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand the brand identity management process from the employees' perspective. Specifically, it explores how the different dimensions of brand identity management influence employees' attitudinal and behavioural responses. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical study was carried out to test the proposed model. The sample consisted of 297 employees in the UK financial services sector. Hypothesis testing was conducted using partial least square regression. Findings: Results indicate that effective brand identity management can increase employees' identification with their organisations. Specifically, the most influential dimension is the employee-client focus. Results also show that organisational identification is a key variable to explain job satisfaction, word-of-mouth and brand citizenship behaviour. Research limitations/implications: This study focusses on the UK financial sector. To explore the generalisability of results, replication studies among other sectors and countries would be useful. The cross-sectional nature of the study also limits its causal inference. Practical implications: This study shows the importance of brand identity management to foster positive employee attitudes and actions that go beyond their job responsibilities. The model developed may help organisations analyse the impact of managerial actions, monitoring the potential effects of changes in brand identity management amongst employees. Originality/value: Although numerous conceptual frameworks highlight the importance of brand identity management, empirical studies in this area are scarce. The current work extends previous research by empirically analysing the effects of the dimensions of brand identity management from the employees' perspective.


The ancient Gulf of Latmos is an iconic example of a dynamic landscape and humankind's historical relationship with it. Using extensive new primary data and original models for calibrating radiocarbon dates in transitional lagoon environments, we demonstrate that Lake Bafa (or Bafa Gölü, in Turkish) formed at a much earlier date than previously thought. In questioning the logical process by which previous dates were achieved, we re‐examine the relationship between sedimentological data, archaeology and written history. We reassert the need to establish independently dated environmental data sets as the foundation of regional studies as distinct from archaeological and historical interpretive processes. We conclude that Lake Bafa slowly transitioned to become an isolated lagoon sometime between the end of the second millennium B.C. and end of the first millennium B.C.; becoming a fully closed brackish lake during the second millennium A.D. This marks a major shift in our understanding of the nature of human occupation and activity here during the last four millennia but also in the way we date ancient lagoons and integrate historical and environmental data in general.


Zi char (a Hokkien term, literally translated "cook fry") is widely recognised in Singapore to refer to a variety of dishes that one can order from any Chinese cooked food (zi char) stall in coffee shops across the island. Dishes range from one-dish rice or noodle meals to fish and seafood and meat and vegetable dishes to go with piping hot white rice. Zi char dishes are very much a part of the Singaporean lifestyle, and zi char stalls that dish out the most flavoursome dishes will attract an endless flow of diners. In continuing their efforts to inspire others to have fun whipping up their own meals, the MeatMen share 30 popular zi char dishes including crab bee hoon, san lou hor fun, cereal prawns, har cheong gai and sambal kangkong in this second cookbook. All dishes are prepared in their usual effortless style that requires no fancy tools, equipment or special skills, and come with the promise that anyone with a passion for good food and cooking can be a zi char expert at home!


Three-dimensional geometric data offer an excellent domain for studying representation learning and generative modeling. In this paper, we look at geometric data represented as point clouds. We introduce a deep AutoEncoder (AE) network with state-of-the-art reconstruction quality and generalization ability. The learned representations outperform existing methods on 3D recognition tasks and enable shape editing via simple algebraic manipulations, such as semantic part editing, shape analogies and shape interpolation, as well as shape completion. We perform a thorough study of different generative models including GANs operating on the raw point clouds, significantly improved GANs trained in the fixed latent space of our AEs, and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). To quantitatively evaluate generative models we introduce measures of sample fidelity and diversity based on matchings between sets of point clouds. Interestingly, our evaluation of generalization, fidelity and diversity reveals that GMMs trained in the latent space of our AEs yield the best results overall.


Significance According to most linguists, the syntactic structure of sentences involves a tree-like hierarchy of nested phrases, as in the sentence [happy linguists] [draw [a diagram]]. Here, we searched for the neural implementation of this hypothetical construct. Epileptic patients volunteered to perform a language task while implanted with intracranial electrodes for clinical purposes. While patients read sentences one word at a time, neural activation in left-hemisphere language areas increased with each successive word but decreased suddenly whenever words could be merged into a phrase. This may be the neural footprint of "merge," a fundamental tree-building operation that has been hypothesized to allow for the recursive properties of human language. Although sentences unfold sequentially, one word at a time, most linguistic theories propose that their underlying syntactic structure involves a tree of nested phrases rather than a linear sequence of words. Whether and how the brain builds such structures, however, remains largely unknown. Here, we used human intracranial recordings and visual word-by-word presentation of sentences and word lists to investigate how left-hemispheric brain activity varies during the formation of phrase structures. In a broad set of language-related areas, comprising multiple superior temporal and inferior frontal sites, high-gamma power increased with each successive word in a sentence but decreased suddenly whenever words could be merged into a phrase. Regression analyses showed that each additional word or multiword phrase contributed a similar amount of additional brain activity, providing evidence for a merge operation that applies equally to linguistic objects of arbitrary complexity. More superficial models of language, based solely on sequential transition probability over lexical and syntactic categories, only captured activity in the posterior middle temporal gyrus. Formal model comparison indicated that the model of multiword phrase construction provided a better fit than probability-based models at most sites in superior temporal and inferior frontal cortices. Activity in those regions was consistent with a neural implementation of a bottom-up or left-corner parser of the incoming language stream. Our results provide initial intracranial evidence for the neurophysiological reality of the merge operation postulated by linguists and suggest that the brain compresses syntactically well-formed sequences of words into a hierarchy of nested phrases.


The question of how we can define salience, what properties it includes and how we can quantify it have been discussed widely over the past thirty years but we still have more questions than answers about this phenomenon, e. g. not only how salience arises, but also how we can define it. However, despite the lack of a clear definition, salience is often taken into account as an explanatory factor in language change. The scientific discourse on salience has in most cases revolved around phonetic features, while hardly any variables on other linguistic levels have been investigated in terms of their salience. Hence, one goal of this paper is to argue for an expanded view of salience in the sociolinguistic context. This article investigates the variation and change of two groups of variables in Carlisle, an urban speech community in the north west of England. I analyse the variable ( th ) and in particular the replacement of /θ/ with [f] which is widely known as th -fronting. The use of three discourse markers is also examined. Both groups of features will then be discussed in the light of sociolinguistic salience.


BE-HOLDE THE FIRST ACTE OF THIS TRAGEDY": GENERIC SYMBIOSIS AND CROSS-POLLINATION IN JACOBEAN DRAMA AND THE EARLY MODERN PROSE NOVELLA Karen Zyck Galbraith Marquette University, 2012 The role of the early modern novella in the formation of Jacobean drama has been consistently understated in literary criticism. Source study and independent criticism of Elizabethan prose fiction, the two most common areas in which these novellas are discussed, are as quick to reference these works as they are to dismiss them. Using a primarily intertextual lens, it is the purpose of this dissertation to expose the rich relationship between early modern English, Italian, and Spanish novellas and their Jacobean dramatic counterparts. Specifically, my dissertation seeks to examine the deep thematic influences of the early modern novella on Jacobean drama, influences that go well beyond plot source contribution, focusing not strictly on the one-to-one relationship of novella X to play Y but on the interrelationships between the development of specific themes in both the novellas and the plays. By looking at the early modern novella and Jacobean drama in conjunction with one another, rather than in separate studies, as has been done previously, or in works of source criticism, where the novellas and plays have been looked at together but to different ends, this dissertation provides a clearer picture of exactly how these disparate but related genres speak to one another. The argument is built around three salient themes that seem to arise consistently within and crossing over between these two genres — interiority versus theatricality/performativity, passion versus reason, and marriage versus the single state — and is arranged, by chapters, around these specific themes. By dealing with a group of novellas and plays, rather than a single novella-play relationship, this dissertation seeks to reveal patterns within the larger interaction of the early modern prose novella and Jacobean drama, patterns which can only be located by looking at several different novella-drama relationships. These patterns reveal, in turn, a richness of interconnectivity that I believe single authoror text-focused intertextual research cannot reach. Ultimately, by arguing for the novellas' significant contributions to Jacobean dramatic works beyond the superficial levels of "textual borrowing" and "plot source material," this dissertation reveals the "complexity and sophistication" of the early modern novella in its own right.


A high electrical and thermal conductivity coupled with low costs make copper (Cu) an enticing alternative to aluminum for the fabrication of interconnects in packaging applications. To tap into the benefits of the ever-reducing size of transistors, it is required to increase the input/output pin count on electronic chips, and thus, minimize the size of chip to board interconnects. Laser sintering of Cu nanoparticle (NP) inks can serve as a promising process for developing these micron sized, 3D interconnect structures. However, the exact processing windows for Cu NP sintering are not well known. Therefore, this paper presents an extensive experimental investigation of the sintering processing window with different lasers including femtosecond (fs), nanosecond (ns), and continuous-wave (CW) lasers. The dependence of the processing window on Cu layer thicknesses and laser exposure durations has also been investigated. A simplified model to estimate optimum laser sintering windows for Cu NPs using pulsed lasers is presented and the predicted estimates are compared against the experimental results. Given the simplicity of the model, it is shown to provide good estimates for fluence required for the onset of sintering and the processing window for good sintering of Cu NPs. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4038455]


Texts about the nocturnal journey of the Prophet Muhammad (Mi'raj) abound in the Muslim world and outside. International attention has never been afforded to any version of text in any language of the Indonesian archipelago. One old version of the text from the area, the Malay Hikayat Mir'aj Nabi Muhammad is presented here in Malay and English translation. The introductory chapters place the text in a wider context in Indonesian literatures while the manuscript of the text (Cod.Or. Leiden 1713) is described in detail. The text and translation purport to enhance interest in this important text in the Muslim world as seen from the Malay/Indonesian perspective.


Compressed sensing (CS) suggests that a signal, sparse in some basis, can be recovered from a small number of random projections. In this paper, we apply the CS theory on sparse background-subtracted silhouettes and show the usefulness of such an approach in various multi-view estimation problems. The sparsity of the silhouette images corresponds to sparsity of object parameters (location, volume etc.) in the scene. We use random projections (compressed measurements) of the silhouette images for directly recovering object parameters in the scene coordinates. To keep the computational requirements of this recovery procedure reasonable, we tessellate the scene into a bunch of non-overlapping lines and perform estimation on each of these lines. Our method is scalable in the number of cameras and utilizes very few measurements for transmission among cameras. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach for multi-view tracking and 3-D voxel reconstruction problems.


The assessment procedures for agronomic model performance are often arbitrary and unhelpful. An omnibus analysis, the concordance correlation coefficient (r c ), is widely used in many other sciences. This work illustrates model assessment with two r c measures accompanied with a mean-difference (MD) plot and a distribution comparison. Each r c is an adjusted value of the usual Pearson correlation coefficient, r, assuming the exact relationship observations = predictions. The adjustments use a scale shift, u, and a location shift, v. Both of these measures also can indicate the similarity of the two variables' distributions; however, a formal test, the Kolmorgov-Smirnov D statistic, is used to statistically compare the distributions. Daily evapotranspiration data (ET 0 ) from a published study are compared with estimates from two possible weather observation based models. Although the first model has slightly lower r than the second (0.980 vs. 0.982), its predictions reasonably agree with observations by having comparatively small location and scale shifts [(u = 0.025, v = 1.10, D = 0.12 (p ≤ 0.86)] and, consequently, a higher r c (0.975 vs. 0.946). Results for the second model are comparatively unacceptable having larger scale and location shifts (u = 0.215, v = 1.19, D = 0.28 [p ≤ 0.04]) with the bias ≠ 0 (p ≤ 0.05) as clearly shown in the associated MD plot. Researchers should consider using r c with an MD plot and distribution comparison in their model assessment toolkit because, together, they can provide a simple and sound probability based omnibus test as well as add useful insight.


Y-family DNA-polymerases have larger active sites that can accommodate bulky DNA adducts allowing them to bypass these lesions during replication. One member, polymerase eta (pol eta), is specialized for the bypass of UV-induced thymidine-thymidine dimers, correctly inserting two adenines. Loss of pol eta function is the molecular basis for xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) variant where the accumulation of mutations results in a dramatic increase in UV-induced skin cancers. Less is known about the role of pol eta in the bypass of other DNA adducts. A commonly encountered DNA adduct is that caused by benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE), the ultimate carcinogenic metabolite of the environmental chemical benzo[a]pyrene. Here, treatment of pol eta-deficient fibroblasts from humans and mice with BPDE resulted in a significant decrease in Hprt gene mutations. These studies in mammalian cells support a number of in vitro reports that purified pol eta has error-prone activity on plasmids with site-directed BPDE adducts. Sequencing the Hprt gene from this work shows that the majority of mutations are G>T transversions. These data suggest that pol eta has error-prone activity when bypassing BPDE-adducts. Understanding the basis of environmental carcinogen-derived mutations may enable prevention strategies to reduce such mutations with the intent to reduce the number of environmentally relevant cancers.


Environmental predictability is predicted to shape the evolution of life histories. Two key types of environmental predictability, seasonality and environmental colour, may influence life-history evolution independently but formal considerations of both and how they relate to life history are exceedingly rare. Here, in a global biogeographical analysis of over 800 marine invertebrates, we explore the relationships between both forms of environmental predictability and three fundamental life-history traits: location of larval development (aplanktonic vs. planktonic), larval developmental mode (feeding vs. non-feeding) and offspring size. We found that both dispersal potential and offspring size related to environmental predictability, but the relationships depended on both the environmental factor as well as the type of predictability. Environments that were more seasonal in food availability had a higher prevalence of species with a planktonic larval stage. Future studies should consider both types of environmental predictability as each can strongly affect life-history evolution.


Bacterial wilt, caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, is a major constraint to tomato production in the tropics and subtropics. Most bacterial wilt-resistant tomato cultivars have not shown consistently high resistance levels over locations. The objective of this study was to determine whether combining resistance derived from different sources would result in F1 progenies with resistance greater than that of the parents. Five bacterial wilt-resistant tomato lines or accessions (CL5915, L285, CRA84, H7997, and GA219), each derived from different resistance sources, and a susceptible processing tomato line (UC204A) were crossed in all combinations without reciprocals. Parents, F1 progenies, and F2 progenies were evaluated in greenhouses at three locations (Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia) for percent survival 6 weeks after drench inoculation with virulent local strains of R. solanacearum. Percent survival means over locations were 17.4 to 83.0 for parents and F1 progeny and 16.2 to 75.0 for parents and F2 progeny. The percent survival means over locations of L285 × H7997 were highest among crosses in the F1 (83.0) and F2 (75.0) generations but were not significantly greater than that of H7997. Highly significant mean squares were found in the F1 and F2 progenies for general combining ability (GCA) and GCA × locations. Positive GCA effects over locations were detected for H7997, CRA84, and L285, indicating that progeny with those lines as parents showed bacterial wilt resistance that was greater than the average of all crosses. Only H7997, however, had positive GCA effects estimates at each location for each generation, and its GCA effects estimates over locations were significantly greater than those of the other parents in the F1 and F2 progenies. Among this set of parents, H7997 is the best source to develop bacterial wilt-resistant progeny. We did not observe statistically significant increases in resistance by combining different resistance sources. However, the presence of large GCA variances suggests that hybridization of parents that have high GCA for bacterial wilt resistance, such as H7997, CRA84, or L285, followed by selection in segregating populations might yield inbred progeny with resistance greater than that of the parents.


The Schatten-p norm (0 < p < 1) has been widely used to replace the nuclear norm for better approximating the rank function. However, existing methods are either 1) not scalable for large scale problems due to relying on singular value decomposition (SVD) in every iteration, or 2) specific to some p values, e.g., 1/2, and 2/3. In this paper, we show that for any p, p1, and p2 > 0 satisfying 1/p = 1/p1 + 1/p2, there is an equivalence between the Schatten-p norm of one matrix and the Schatten-p1 and the Schatten-p2 norms of its two factor matrices. We further extend the equivalence to multiple factor matrices and show that all the factor norms can be convex and smooth for any p > 0. In contrast, the original Schatten-p norm for 0 < p < 1 is non-convex and non-smooth. As an example we conduct experiments on matrix completion. To utilize the convexity of the factor matrix norms, we adopt the accelerated proximal alternating linearized minimization algorithm and establish its sequence convergence. Experiments on both synthetic and real datasets exhibit its superior performance over the state-of-the-art methods. Its speed is also highly competitive.


This is an invaluable collection of sample entertainment contracts accompanied by legalese-free discussions of their key concepts and terms. The 3rd Edition of this popular handbook is revised and expanded (adding 18 new contracts) making it the ultimate entertainment-law guide for all independent filmmakers, who, armed with it, can save themselves thousands of dollars in legal fees. Contracts for the Film and Television Industry contains 80 contracts covering: Basic provisions of entertainment contracts; Depiction and copyright releases; Literary submissions and sales; Artist employment; Collaborations; Music; Financing; Production; Distribution and exhibition; Merchandising; Retainers; and much more, including a glossary of relevant terms.


BACKGROUND
Broad adoption of interventions that prove effective in randomized clinical trials or comparative effectiveness research may depend to a great extent on their costs and cost-effectiveness (CE). Many studies of behavioral health interventions for oral health promotion and disease prevention lack robust economic assessments of costs and CE.

OBJECTIVE
To describe methodologies employed to assess intervention costs, potential savings, net costs, CE, and the financial sustainability of behavioral health interventions to promote oral health.

METHODS
We provide an overview of terminology and strategies for conducting economic evaluations of behavioral interventions to improve oral health based on the recommendations of the Panel of Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. To illustrate these approaches, we summarize methodologies and findings from a limited number of published studies. The strategies include methods for assessing intervention costs, potential savings, net costs, CE, and financial sustainability from various perspectives (e.g., health-care provider, health system, health payer, employer, society). Statistical methods for estimating short-term and long-term economic outcomes and for examining the sensitivity of economic outcomes to cost parameters are described.

DISCUSSION
Through the use of established protocols for evaluating costs and savings, it is possible to assess and compare intervention costs, net costs, CE, and financial sustainability. The addition of economic outcomes to outcomes reflecting effectiveness, appropriateness, acceptability, and organizational sustainability strengthens evaluations of oral health interventions and increases the potential that those found to be successful in research settings will be disseminated more broadly.


Indonesia's crisis recovery program has failed badly in relation to the two key objectives of development economics policy making: efficiency and equity. The economy went into severe recession within a few months of the IMF appearing on the scene, and six years later output was little higher than before the crisis. The collapse of the banking system and the associated government bailout of depositors has imposed a loss on the public of at least 40% of GDP. This paper describes that collapse and the government's policy response to it, under advice from the IMF. It goes on to propose an alternative scheme that might have been followed—and that could be followed in future banking crises. Its twin objectives are to maintain the integrity of the payments system and to avoid inequitable wealth transfers that result from government bailouts of banks and their depositors.


This article examines the role of the alien as the ultimate outsider and considers the challenges it poses to feminist theory. I argue that these challenges are based on the need to continue developing an ethics of relationality in which neither love nor relationality itself is deemed to be the answer; on rethinking agency and ontology in terms of becoming and the limitations of becoming; on a critique of representationalism which limits us to figuring the alien in rather than as feminist theory and thereby invokes the archetypal story in which alien and human, monster and human switch sides; and finally on reconsidering modes of communication that resonate with their theme and emphasise the performativity, conceptual risk taking and creativity that might enable feminist theory itself to become alien again.


Explore the contemporary culture and traditional customs of Singapore and Malaysia in a volume that belongs on shelves in every high school and public library.
 Culture and Customs of Singapore and Malaysia examines all aspects of contemporary life in these two geographically close and historically and culturally connected nations, starting with the people fighting to maintain a balance between the new and the traditional.
 The book shows how religion has evolved through time in the two nations and examines how literature and traditional crafts thrive today. It highlights the performing arts and entertainment, noting how Western culture has influenced and shaped new customs. Housing and architecture, both modern and traditional, are discussed, along with cuisine and fashion. Students can use the book to analyze gender roles and family life. They can also read about the ways in which festivals are celebrated and can compare and contrast leisure activities of Singapore and Malaysia with their own. The volume concludes with a look to the future of these two evolving countries, both moving toward modernity, but still holding on to the traditions of the past.


Extracted from text ... 85
Mercantile Law | Handelsreg
Equal owners of the first respondent, Ritzshelf 1004 CC, carrying on a
restaurant trading under the name Passage to India ? breakdown of
working relationship ? application for an order of liquidation of the second
respondent (s 68(d) of the Close Corporation Act 69 of 1984) ? counterapplication
by second respondent (ss 36 and 49 of the Close Corporation
Act 69 of 1984) ? Winding up and deadlock ? Kanakia v Ritzshelf 1004 CC
t/a Passage to India and Another 2003 (2) SA 39
The applicant (an experienced restaurateur) and the second respondent (a dentist)
formed the first respondent in 2000. The restaurant commenced ..


Intermicrovillar areas and apical vesicles characterized by an extensive clathrin coat can be identified in some epithelial cell types. We describe a 280-kD protein, characteristic of these areas in the proximal tubule brush border and epithelial cells of the visceral yolk sac. When injected to 9-d pregnant rats, mAbs to the 280-kD protein regularly induced fetal resorption and/or malformations. Antibodies to a 330-kD protein that is also coated-pit-restricted had no effect. Our observations point to a key function for p280 and suggest that immunity to specific constituents of the receptor-mediated endocytotic system may be involved in the induction of fetal abnormalities.


This paper presents preliminary results of an ongoing study of e-government implementation in Lebanon. Following suggestions by various scholars that students of e-government employ theory to strengthen our knowledge about ICT for development, we apply a neoinstitutional theoretical lens to understand the role of international donor agencies that led the Lebanese public authorities, since 2000, to invest in e-services despite the country's serious economic difficulties and heavy debt. We situate the implementation of an e-government infrastructure in the context of external pressures that Lebanese public administrators confronted. This analysis is based on the triangulation of evidence from semi-structured interviews with senior officials in government agencies who led the implementation effort, official government documents, and newspaper reports on the progress of this project. We find that the response by Lebanese public officials can be explained by the three isomorphic processes of coercion, mimesis, and transmission of norms. This case study suggests that implementing e-administration by developing countries is not necessarily motivated by a search for efficiency; under certain conditions, adoption results from external institutional pressures. Nonetheless, this implementation needs to be understood as only a very small part of a larger story of the history and politics of Lebanon which contributed to what has been called the "still born" implementation of e-government in Lebanon.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of black pepper fruit hot water extract (BPE) on rat ileum contractility and the mechanism(s) of its action. The extract was prepared by adding black pepper powder to boiling distilled water followed by evaporated the solvent. Ileum was dissected from male adult rat (Wistar) and in Tyrode solution the tissue contractions were recorded by an isotonic transducer under 1 g tension. The cumulative concentrations of the BPE (0.0625-1 mg mL(-1)) reduced the ileum contractions induced by KCl (60 mM) or carbachol (10 microM) concentration dependently (p<0.001). In Ca2+-free Tyrode solution with high potassium (60 mM), BPE, (0.0625-1 mg mL(-1)) attenuated the contractions induced by cumulative concentrations of CaCl2 (0.225-2.7 mM) concentration dependently (ANOVA, p<0.05). The incubation of the tissue preparation (20 or 30 min) with L-NAME (100 microM), naloxone (1 microM) or propranolol (1 microM) did not reduce the extract antispasmodic effect on KCl-induced ileum contraction. The extract spasmolytic effect was attenuated neither by glibenclamide (10 microM) nor by tetraethylammonium (1 mM). Present results suggest that the spasmolytic effect of the extract on rat ileum was possibly mediated via Ca2+ influx.


In this Letter we propose a fast off-axis hologram autofocusing (AF) approach that is based on the redundant data elimination by the critical resampling of the contained complex field. Implementation of the proposed methodology enables the real-time AF with up to 12× speed-up factors in comparison to the classical approach. The method is further extended for single-shot physical autofocus of the fluorescence imaging channel of multimodal imaging instruments capable of off-axis hologram acquisition.


Background: There is a recent concern about the global climatic change that is expected to have broad health impacts. The health effects of extreme weather events include a spectrum of wide variety of impacts. According to a study in Northern India, tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis peaked between April and June, and it reached a nadir between October and December. However, no seasonality was reported from South India. Aims: This study is aimed to assess the seasonality of TB in rural West Bengal and to develop a univariate time series model. Settings and Design: Retrospective record-based study was carried out at Amdanga tuberculosis unit (TU), North 24-parganas, West Bengal. Materials and Methods: A total of 1507 new TB cases were registered in the TB register of the TU during January-2008 to December-2011 period were taken for this study. Statistical Analysis: Seasonal adjusted factor (SAF), autocorrelation function (ACF), partial autocorrelation function (PACF), and seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) methods were applied by using the SPSS 16.0 version. Results: ACF and PACF at lag 12 shows significant pick suggesting seasonal component of the TB series. SAF showed peak seasonal variation from March to June and nadir from October to December in additive model. Univariate model by expert-modeler in the SPSS showed SARIMA ((0,0,0)(1,2,0) 12 could best predict the model with 54.3% variability. Conclusion: A seasonal pattern of TB was observed. This information would be usefulfor administration and managers to take extra care to arrange and provide extra facilities during the peak seasons.


As a country with the largest number of muslim population in the world, Islamic micro finance institutions have a large potential to playa greater role in the country's aspiration to poverty reduction. However, the determinants of theestablishment of Islamic Micro Finance Institutions, particularly in Indonesia, has not been extensively studied. This paper attempts to explore the determinants of the establishment ofBaitul Maal wa Tamwil (BMT), one of the main Islamic microfinance institutions in Indonesia. A probit model of BMT establishment is estimated using an Indonesian village-level data. The result suggests that the extent of economic activities particularly in agriculture sector, and high accessibility to market are strong determinants of BMT establishmentin Indonesian villages. It is also found that villages that experienced recent calamities particularly drought are more likely to have BMT established. This may indicate the role of BMT as a provider of financial service in the midst of hardship. Religion is among the strongest determinant of BMT establishment. Villages with Islam as the dominant religion is more likely of having BMT established. However, this effect is strong only in rural areas.In urban areas, this effect is weak.


In the last three decades of the 19th century small groups composed of primarily skilled, male workers in Petersburg factories developed and refined a specific form of worker identity, that of the worker-intelligent. This identity was the product of a combination of an ideal conceptualisation of proletarian man derived from readings of western socialist literature and ideas introduced into the workers' environment by members of the radical intelligenty alongside their material experience of work in the rapidly developing industries of the capital. Seeking to appropriate the 'intelligence' of their radical intelligentsia mentors to create 'Russian Bebels', from the early 1870s small groups of workers aspired to develop their own worker organisations to give voice to the specific needs, demands and assumed aspirations of the emerging working-class within an autocratic society that maintained the fiction that a specific industrial working-class did not exist.

Whilst workers enthusiastically welcomed the intelligentsia as bearers of the knowledge essential to construct their own specific identity, the process of identity creation frequently led to power struggles with the intelligentsia over the latter's role and control of knowledge. It is in the often contested relationships between workers and intelligentsia that vital clues emerge as to how workers perceived themselves and others within the worker-class. Within this contested arena the radical worker-intelligenty frequently articulated their independence from the intelligentsia who they frequently regarded as a temporary ally, essential to satisfy their initial thirst for knowledge and to fulfil certain technical tasks, but who eventually should be subordinate to the workers' movement that workers alone were capable of leading. Although workers eagerly embraced the revolutionary ideals received from the intelligenty, these were processed and reconstructed in terms of a worker-hegemony in the revolutionary process, taking entirely literally the dictum that 'the liberation of the workers must be a cause for the workers themselves.' This represented the essence of the worker-intelligenty belief system and, when taken in conjunction with their conviction that the mass of workers remained 'backward,' incapable of effecting their own liberation, produced a strongly held belief that it was incumbent on enlightened workers to act as advocates of the whole class, irrespective of the degree to which the mass of workers conformed to their vision of the ideal revolutionary worker.

These early Petersburg workers' organisations are of historical importance as from their inception they articulated a specific 'worker' ideology opposed to both the political regime and emerging Russian industrial capitalism, an opposition that would subsequently be
transformed in Soviet Russia into an historical narrative that presented them as a vanguard for the working-class and the precursors of the Soviet 'new man.' In the process of fusing of the mind of the intelligenty within the body of a worker, the first generations of worker- intelligenty consistently sought to demonstrate in practice their own revolutionary primacy. Painfully aware of the disparity between their ideal proletarian man and the reality of the
'backwardness' of the mass of their fellow workers, the early worker-intelligenty developed and nurtured their own particular institution - the workers' circle, kruzhok, an institution which simultaneously reinforced their own sense of identity and worth whilst providing a space in which they could receive their necessary enlightenment from the radical intelligentsia. Rather than viewing workers as passive objects, the Petersburg worker-intelligenty was instrumental in its own creation, throughout the period under discussion acting as a revolutionary subject in its own right, to a significant extent determining the nature and content of study involving the intelligenty, establishing clear organisational frameworks to govern relationships with intelligenty groups, and, critically, seeking opportune moments to enter the public sphere and declare their presence as workers, revealing themselves as a social force to be recognised.

In the historiography of the revolutionary working-class in Russia these worker-led organisations have been largely ignored or subsumed under the rubric of the name of a leading member of the radical intelligenty associated with workers' circles, as for example in the so-called Brusnev organisation. For a long period Soviet and western historians privileged the role of the radical intelligentsia, reflecting competing ideological biases that in the case of the Soviet interpretation viewed workers as a dependent category requiring enlightenment from an external Marxist party, whilst much western research focused on ideological debates amongst intelligenty 'leaders' and/or incipient reformist and non- revolutionary tendencies amongst worker activists. Although in more recent time a number of historians have explored the autonomous nature of worker activism in 1905 and 1917, whilst others have explored the cultural attitudes and beliefs of workers, the first specifically worker-led organisations created by worker-intelligenty have been largely ignored. What remains missing is a study that addresses the actual historical practice of the worker-intelligenty during its formative years and how it sought to give form to its self- realisation and express its received knowledge as the advanced representative of its class. The discourse of class not only gave life to the worker-intelligenty but critically guided its first at times uncertain footsteps towards fulfilling what it had come to believe was its 'historic' role.


With the emergence of on-chip networks, router buffer power has become a primary concern. Elastic buffer (EB) flow control utilizes existing pipeline flip-flops in the channels to implement distributed FIFOs, eliminating the need for input buffers at the routers. EB routers have been shown to be more efficient than virtual channel routers, as they do not require input buffers or complex logic for managing virtual channels and tracking credits. Wormhole routers are more comparable in terms of complexity because they also lack virtual channels. This paper compares EB and wormhole routers and explores novel hybrid designs to more closely examine the effect of design simplicity and input buffer cost. Our results show that EB routers have up to 25 percent smaller cycle time compared to wormhole and hybrid routers. Moreover, EB flow control requires 10 percent less energy to transfer a single bit through a router and offers three percent more throughput per unit energy as well as 62 percent more throughput per unit area. The main contributor to these results is the cost and delay overhead of the input buffer.


In this evaluation we used Messick's construct validity as a conceptual framework for an empirical study assessing the validity of use, utility, and impact of office discipline referral (ODR) measures for data-based decision making about student behavior in schools. The Messick approach provided a rubric for testing the fit of our theory of use of ODR measures with empirical data on reported and actual use. It also facilitated our demonstration of Messick's principle that validation is both a developmental and an ongoing collaborative process among developers of educational and psychological measures, researchers interested in theories underlying such measures, and educators who use these measures in professional practice. We used a single-group, nonexperimental evaluation design to survey users of ODR measures from the standardized School Wide Information System in 22 elementary and 10 middle schools; respondents included school staff involved exclusively with data entry and staff actively involved in data-based decision making. Results were highly consistent across 2 independent data sources—electronic database records of actual access of summaries of ODR measures and self-report survey responses regarding frequencies and types of uses of ODR measures for decision making. Results indicated that ODR measures are regularly used for a variety of types of data-based decision making and are regarded as both efficient and effective for those purposes. We discuss implications of our SWIS ODR validity evaluation results within the context of the Messick framework.


Context: The systems comprising a system of systems (SoS) are inde- pendently acquired, operated, and managed. Frequently, the architecture documentation of these existing systems addresses only a stand-alone perspective, and must be augmented to address concerns that arise in the integrated SoS. Objective: We evaluated an architecture documentation viewpoint to address the concerns of a SoS architect about a constituent system, to support SoS design and analysis involving that constituent system. Method: We performed an expert review of documentation produced by applying the viewpoint to a system, using the active review method. Results: The expert panel was able to used a view constructed using the baseline version of the viewpoint to answer questions related to all SoS architect concerns about a constituent system, except for questions concerning the interaction of the constituent system with the platform and network infrastructure. Conclusions: We found that the expert panel was unable to answer certain questions because the baseline version of the viewpoint had a gap in coverage related to relationship of software units of execution (e.g., processes or services) to computers and networks. The viewpoint was revised to add a Deployment Model to address these concerns, and is included in an appendix.


I provide a synthesis of the papers in the Special Issue, The Conservation and Restoration of Old Growth in Frequent-fire Forests of the American West. These papers—the product of an Old Growth Writing Workshop, held at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona on 18-19 April 2006— represent the ideas of 25 workshop participants who argue for a new attitude toward managing old growth in the frequent-fire forests of the American West. Unlike the lush, old-growth rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, the dry, frequent-fire forests of the western United States evolved with surface fires that disturbed the system with such regularity that young trees were almost always killed. When saplings did survive, they grew beyond the harm of frequent surface fires and, ultimately, attained the characteristics that define old growth in these systems. This system worked well, producing old-growth trees in abundance, until the onset of Euro-American settlement in the mid- to late-19 th century. The arrival of these settlers put in motion an interplay of unprecedented social, political, economic, and ecological forces (e.g., removal of Native Americans and their fire-based land management systems, overgrazing of the understory, aggressive logging, establishment of federal land management agencies, implementation of a federal fire suppression policy). These activities have culminated in 1) overly dense forested ecosystems that are now on the verge of collapse because of catastrophic fires (i.e., crown fire at the landscape level; the Rodeo-Chediski Fire) and insect outbreaks, 2) the emergence of conservation-minded environmental legislation and policy, and 3) greater levels of interaction between citizens, federal agencies, and fire-prone landscapes. Recognizing the tenuous ecological situation of these forests, restoration ecologists, foresters, and others have developed ways to return historic ecological processes and lower tree densities to these forests. However, their efforts are not without challenges, including working with communities and citizens, serving as a bridge between entrenched bureaucracies (i.e., federal agencies and environmental groups), balancing both ecological and economic interests, and producing new applied technologies and science-based policy to advance conservation and restoration efforts aimed at preserving and developing old growth within a healthy forest environment.


Recombinant adeno-associated viral (rAAV) vectors have proven excellent tools for the treatment of many genetic diseases and other complex diseases. However, the illegitimate encapsidation of DNA contaminants within viral particles constitutes a major safety concern for rAAV-based therapies. Moreover, the development of rAAV vectors for early-phase clinical trials has revealed the limited accuracy of the analytical tools used to characterize these new and complex drugs. Although most published data concerning residual DNA in rAAV preparations have been generated by quantitative PCR, we have developed a novel single-strand virus sequencing (SSV-Seq) method for quantification of DNA contaminants in AAV vectors produced in mammalian cells by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Here, we describe the adaptation of SSV-Seq for the accurate identification and quantification of DNA species in rAAV stocks produced in insect cells. We found that baculoviral DNA was the most abundant contaminant, representing less than 2.1% of NGS reads regardless of serotype (2, 8, or rh10). Sf9 producer cell DNA was detected at low frequency (≤0.03%) in rAAV lots. Advanced computational analyses revealed that (1) baculoviral sequences close to the inverted terminal repeats preferentially underwent illegitimate encapsidation, and (2) single-nucleotide variants were absent from the rAAV genome. The high-throughput sequencing protocol described here enables effective DNA quality control of rAAV vectors produced in insect cells, and is adapted to conform with regulatory agency safety requirements.


A sensitive and simple method for real-time detection of inorganic pyrophosphatase (PPase) (EC 22.214.171.124) activity has been developed. The method is based on PPase-induced activation of the firefly luciferase activity in the presence of inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi). PPi inhibits the luciferase activity, but in the presence of PPase the luciferase activity is restored and the luminescence output increases. The assay yields linear responses between 8 and 500 mU. The detection limit was found to be 8 mU PPase. The method was used to detect the hydrolytic activity of PPases from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli, and Bacillus stearothermophilus. As substrate for the luciferase, adenosine 5'-phosphosulfate can replace ATP, which is an advantage for detection of PPase activity in crude extracts containing ATP-hydrolyzing activities. The method can be used for kinetic and inhibition studies as well as for detection of PPase activity during different purification procedures.


Image schemas have been a fundamental construct in cognitive linguistics, providing grounds for psychological, philosophical, as well as linguistic research. Given the focus in cognitive linguistics on embodied experience as a fundamental basis for language structure and meaning, the employment of image schemas in the analysis of gesture with speech is a logical extension. However, given their level of abstraction, to what degree do image schemas provide a useful explanatory tool for researching the concrete, physically embodied details of gestures? This article considers the answer to this question and then turns to a more recent theoretical development that complements the picture by encompassing a different realm of cognitive and linguistic phenomena. This research, on 'mimetic schemas', is shown to have great potential for thinking about some known phenomena of gesture in a new way. Schema research on these different levels thus provides a useful means to analyze behavior in another modality involved in spoken language use, namely the visual.


Background: Numerous epidemiologic studies and experimental data support potential anti-tumor effects of green tea and its main component, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), in breast cancer. However, there is limited data on the effects of tea catechins on breast cancer in human intervention trials. The purpose of this study is to evaluate tumor proteomic changes after short-term pre-surgical administration of an oral green tea extract, Polyphenon E (Poly E), in women with operable breast cancer using reverse phase protein array (RPPA). Methods: This is a phase II single-arm open-label trial of oral Poly E 800 mg daily for 2-4 weeks in women with histologically-confirmed breast cancer on core biopsy who were scheduled for surgical resection. Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumor tissue from the diagnostic core biopsy (pre-treatment) and surgical resection (post-treatment) were analyzed for expression of the Ki-67 proliferation index, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2 by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Protein was extracted for RPPA analysis of 161 proteins, including components of the PI3K/AKT and MAPK pathways. Women were matched by age, breast cancer stage, ER/PR/HER2 status, and time interval between breast biopsy and surgery to untreated historical controls. Paired t-test was used to calculate changes in protein markers before and after Poly E treatment and 2-sample t-test to compare biomarker changes in the treatment and no treatment groups. All statistical analyses were 2-sided and performed using SAS version 9.1. Results: From Feb 2008 to Sept 2009, 25 women were enrolled and 21 were evaluable. Median age: 50 years (range, 33-71); White/Hispanic/Black (%): 44/48/7; Stage 0/I/II/III (%): 11/48/30/11; hormone receptor +/- (%): 85/15. Mean duration on Poly E was 20 days (range, 13-36). We demonstrated significant correlations between RPPA and IHC for Ki-67 (0.46, P<0.0001), ER (0.45, P=0.0017), PR (0.46, P=0.0014), and a trend for HER2 (0.28, P=0.0923). Poly E treatment did not cause a significant decrease in Ki-67 compared to untreated controls (mean absolute change, -0.5% vs. +2.6%, P=0.83). In the Poly E-treated group, the RPPA results showed significant modulation of apoptosis and PI3K/AKT pathway proteins (P<0.05). After Bonferroni correction to adjust for multiple comparisons (P<0.00031), 11 markers remained statistically significant comparing change from baseline with Poly E treatment: up-regulation of MEK1, JNK2, and p38-MAPK; down-regulation of CDK4, HER2-pY1248, MAPK-pT202-Y204, MIG-6, mTOR-pS2448, PRAS40-pT246, Src-pY416, and Scr-pY527. Compared to untreated controls, the Poly E group had significant changes from baseline in 10 proteins: up-regulation of IRS1, p38-MAPK, Notch1, and YAP; down-regulation of ERCC1, MIG-6, p90RSK-pT359-S363, PRAS40-pT246, Smad3, and Src-pY416 (P<0.05). Conclusions: Short-term administration of Poly E did not significantly decrease proliferation in breast tumor tissue; however, our RPPA data suggests that Poly E may act on alternative signaling pathways. The changes we observed in CDK4, HER2, Src, MAPK, and JNK expression are consistent with preclinical studies of EGCG. This is one of the first human intervention trials to demonstrate the biologic effects of Poly E on growth factor signaling pathways in breast cancer. Citation Format: Kimberly A. Ho, Davida Kornreich, James A. Cardelli, Jerry McLarty, Dawn L. Hershman, Matthew Maurer, Kevin Kalinsky, Bret Taback, Hanina Hibshoosh, Tao Su, Susan F. Refice, Katherine D. Crew. Evaluating tissue biomarker effects of an oral green tea extract, polyphenon E, using reverse phase protein array in women with operable breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research; 2012 Oct 16-19; Anaheim, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Prev Res 2012;5(11 Suppl):Abstract nr A73.


This paper explores how labor market conditions drive gender differences in the human capital decisions of men and women, focusing on how their schooling decisions respond to an exogenous change in cognitive ability. Using data from Mexico, I begin by documenting that in utero exposure to air pollution leads to lower cognitive ability in adulthood for both men and women. I then explore how male and female schooling decisions respond differentially to this cognitive shock: for women only, pollution exposure leads to reduced educational attainment and income. I show that two labor market features are fully responsible for this gender difference: (1) women sort into white-collar occupations at higher rates, and (2) schooling and ability are more complementary in white-collar than blue-collar occupations.


Market participants, academicians, and governmental officials debated how the United States government should structure multiple securities exchanges for several years before Congress mandated the establishment of the National Market System in the 1975 Amendments to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. During the intervening twenty-five years, recurring issues concerning the transparency, fragmentation, and fairness of the National Market System have remained unresolved. Recently, the globalization of securities markets and the development of Internet technology that permits cost-effective transnational securities trades and markets have exacerbated these issues. In fact, Internet technology makes the development of an integrated global securities market not only feasible, but optimal. This essay reviews the SEC's approach to the National Market System with an emphasis on developments since the advent of the Cyber-age. The review shows that, despite technological developments that have propelled markets towards globalization, the SEC has taken a distinctly territorial approach in creating a safe harbor from registration for foreign stock exchanges that utilize the Internet. At present, the SEC is considering the conditions under which such a foreign exchange must register. This essay argues that the SEC should focus more on the systems architecture of foreign securities exchanges and less on its present territorial approach. While maintaining the National Market System and the existing safe harbor, this essay argues that market participants should apply for, and the SEC should consider, granting registration to an Internet-based securities market. The SEC should not base this grant of registration upon the geographic locus of the exchange, or of its members or issuers. Rather, the SEC should grant the registration upon a showing that the exchange's systems architecture furthers the objectives of the federal securities laws. The proposed integrated global securities market ("IGSM") would serve as a SRO/exchange that would accept listings from an issuer as long as the issuer meets the disclosure requirements of its home jurisdiction. An issuer listed on the IGSM could not be traded on another exchange, unless that exchange participated in the price/time priority order book of the IGSM. This condition would resolve many of the difficulties that have plagued the National Market System. The IGSM proposal takes account of considerations of regulatory competition because: (1) the price of an issuer's shares traded on the IGSM would reflect the issuer's home country standard of disclosure; (2) the IGSM would compete for listings against other exchanges with higher or lower mandatory levels of disclosure, including those in the National Market System; and (3) the IGSM prevents the listing of an issuer from a strict regulatory regime being traded on an exchange from a lax regulatory regime, i.e., regulatory free-riding.