Light is at the heart of many present-day technologies. Control over the interaction strength between light and matter is pivotal to the success of most such technologies. Such control is typically offered by optical resonators, which store and confine light to increase its interaction strength with matter. Yet, today, the most commonly used resonators suffer from intrinsic drawbacks that limit their implementation on a large scale, particularly in a network for quantum information processing. This thesis studies how hybrid resonators, which support states for light that are composed of multiple underlying states, can overcome the limitations of single resonators and provide new ways to guide and store light. In particular, we consider two types of hybrid resonators - hybrids composed of an optical cavity and a plasmonic antenna, and bound states in the continuum. In the context of antenna-cavity hybrids, we theoretically explore the mechanism of interaction between an antenna and a cavity, and how this influences the ability of the hybrid to store and confine light. Experimentally, we study light scattering and fluorescence in these systems, which we fabricate using a novel fabrication method. We furthermore present an experimental study of a recently discovered optical resonance – a bound states in the continuum. We discuss how this state can arise from hybridization of two resonances, and reveal experimentally a topologically protected polarization vortex associated with this state. Overall, this thesis shows the great potential – and limitations – of hybrid resonators for control over the flow and confinement of light.


The appearance of Dr Vesco's translation and study of Hokusai's Ryakuga haya oshie, together with a full reproduction of the original book, is a matter of great excitement in the field of Japanese Studies.
Hokusai has been known in Europe and North America for some 150 years. In his own country, he came to public attention about 1800, with youthful work produced under the name of Shunrô. He lived to the advanced age of 88, and when he died in 1849, he was one of the best-known artists in Japan. He was soon to be the best-known Japanese artist in the West, a status that he probably still holds. 'Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa' – often referred to simply as 'Hokusai's Great Wave' (from the Thirty-six View of Mt Fuji) – is said to be the most immediately-recognisable piece of graphic design worldwide.
Hokusai was a townsman living in a socially stratified society. He was not a member of the elite, though other famous artists were. He did neither depict elite topics, nor work for elite clients. Rather, Hokusai associated with the 'Floating World' (ukiyo) that is Edo's leisure-time distractions. He also made views of his city, its surroundings, and the wider Japanese countryside, but he was not a great traveller, other than in his mind.
Rather unrecognised is what Dr Vesco now brings to our attention. Hokusai saw his role as promoting the practice of art. Of course, he had his students, but as we see here, Hokusai also published out-reach volumes, aimed at introducing the joys of picture-making to amateurs who were not being formally instructed. The lessons were easy to follow, and also fun, as he reduced people animals and plants to basic shapes and formulae. Starting with the auspicious subject of Tang lions (kara shishi), Hokusai leads us through a range of topics, down to the demotic, such as clothes washing.
Readers today will certainly find a smile crossing their face as they look through the pictures. Thanks to Dr Vesco's careful translations, we can also understand the advice and commentaries supplied in Hokusai's accompanying texts. An additional feature of Dr Vesco's work will be of assistance to more specialist readers, as she has transcribed the original Japanese. This was no simple task, as it is written in abbreviated calligraphy (kuzushiji).
At all levels, readers, art enthusiasts and those who love to create pictures will now have access to Hokusai's most important study aid. We can delve into it, copy from, and chuckle at, just as people did when the volumes first appeared. Western readers might ponder something else: Ryakuga haya oshie appeared in 1812, as European countries were tearing themselves apart.


Risk shocks give rise to a tradeoff for monetary policy between inflation and output stabilization in the canonical New Keynesian model if they are large relative to the distance between the nominal interest rate and its lower bound. The tradeoff-inducing effects operate through expectational responses to the interaction between the perceived volatility of conventional level shocks and the available monetary policy space. At the same time, a given monetary policy stance becomes less effective. Optimal time-consistent monetary policy therefore calls for potentially sharp cuts in interest rates when risk is perceived to be elevated, even if this risk does not materialize in any actual disturbances to the economy. The new normal for monetary policy may be one in which policymakers should both constantly lean against a tendency for inflation expectations to anchor below target—operating the economy above potential in the absence of disturbances—whilst accepting that inflation will settle potentially materially below target, and respond nimbly to changes in public perceptions of economic risk.


Estimation of noise contained within a remote sensing image is often a prerequisite to dealing with the deleterious effects of noise on the signal. Image based methods to estimate noise are attractive to researchers for a range of applications because they are in many cases automatic and do not depend on external data or laboratory measurement. In this paper, the geostatistical method for estimating image noise was applied to Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) imagery. Three CASI wavebands (0.46–0.49 μm (blue), 0.63–0.64 μm (red), 0.70–0.71 μm (near-infrared)) and four land covers (coniferous woodland, grassland, heathland and deciduous woodland) were selected for analysis. Five sub-images were identified per land cover resulting in 20 example cases per waveband. As in previous studies, the analysis showed that noise was related to land cover type. However, the noise estimates were not related to the mean of the signal in any waveband. Rather, the noise estimates were related to the square root of the semivariogram sill, which represents the variability in the underlying signal. These results suggest that the noise estimates produced using the geostatistical method may be inflated where the variance in the image is large. Regression of the noise estimates on the square root of the sill may lead to a stable noise estimate (i.e. the regression intercept), which is not affected by the variability in the image. This provides a refined geostatistical (GS) method that avoids the problems outlined above.


The early development of self‐injurious behaviour in three young boys (aged 17,25, and 30 months at start of study) with Lesch‐Nyhan syndrome was examined by means of parental interviews and by direct observations completed at 3 to 4 monthly intervals over an 18‐month period. Results suggest that the self‐injury began in a different way from that of other young children with autism and/or developmental disabilities in that, from the start, self‐injurious responses were sudden and violent, rather than emerging gradually over time. Drastic measures, such as removal of the teeth or provision of tooth guards, were often taken to prevent further tissue damage. Direct observations showed that the boys'self‐injury occurred at lower rates, but their carers were highly concerned about the behaviour. Sequential analysis of the observational data indicated that on some occasions the children were more likely to self‐injure during periods of low social interaction, suggesting that their self‐injury may have been influenced by environmental factors. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.


In the civil justice system, litigants can file appeals as a means of challenging or modifying trial court verdicts or judgments. In most states, intermediate appellate courts represent the first, and in many cases, final arbiter of review for civil cases decided by bench or jury trial. While prior research on state appellate courts has focused primarily on civil appeals in state courts of last resort, there have been few attempts to examine the appeals process in state intermediate appellate courts. The current research attempts to address this gap by examining a national sample of tort and contract trials concluded in 2005 that were subsequently appealed. Specifically, this paper explores the factors that are related to (1) the rates in which civil trials are appealed to intermediate appellate courts, (2) the likelihood that a civil appeal will be decided on the merits, and (3) the probability of trial court outcomes being reversed at the intermediate appellate court level. The paper provides a roadmap for better understanding the case and litigant level characteristics that drive key decisions in intermediate appellate courts.


The nonlinearity of high-power amplifiers (HPAs) has a crucial effect on the performance of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of MIMO orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) systems in the presence of nonlinear HPAs. Specifically, we propose a constellation-based compensation method for HPA nonlinearity in the case with knowledge of the HPA parameters at the transmitter and receiver, where the constellation and decision regions of the distorted transmitted signal are derived in advance. Furthermore, in the scenario without knowledge of the HPA parameters, a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)-based compensation method for the HPA nonlinearity is proposed, which first estimates the channel-gain matrix by means of the SMC method and then uses the SMC-based algorithm to detect the desired signal. The performance of the MIMO-OSTBC system under study is evaluated in terms of average symbol error probability (SEP), total degradation (TD) and system capacity, in uncorrelated Nakagami-m fading channels. Numerical and simulation results are provided and show the effects on performance of several system parameters, such as the parameters of the HPA model, output back-off (OBO) of nonlinear HPA, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, modulation order of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and number of SMC samples. In particular, it is shown that the constellation-based compensation method can efficiently mitigate the effect of HPA nonlinearity with low complexity and that the SMC-based detection scheme is efficient to compensate for HPA nonlinearity in the case without knowledge of the HPA parameters.


Cancer is among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Current therapy available for cancer treatment is associated with number of side effects. However, plants offer an alternative route for the treatment of cancer. In fact Traditional Knowledge of using herbs and spices for medicinal purposes provide promising new leads that could be utilized for developing new therapies for cancer treatment. The therapeutic properties of spices is due to bioactive components such as alkaloids, terpenes, flavonoids, phenylpropanoids and anthocyanins present in them. Many of these spice derived secondary metabolites have the ability to trigger free radical scavenging pathway at cellular level and thus protect from various metabolic syndromes. Some of the spice based active constituents which are widely known for their chemopreventive action against various malignancies are curcumin and curcuminoids (turmeric), limonene (cardamom), allicin, allyl isothiocyanate (garlic), cinnamic aldehyde, 2-hydroxycinnamaldehyde and eugenol (cinnamon), gingerol, zingiberone, zingiberene (ginger), dipropyle disulfides and quercetin (onion), piperidine piperine, (black pepper), crocetin, crocin and safranal (saffron). These therapeutic agents arrest the activity of cytochrome P450 and isozymes CYP 1A1, cyclooxygenase-2, reducing the activator of transcription-3 (STAT-3) and signal transducer. In addition to this they also down regulate expression of cell cycle protein which in activate caspases killer and suppress Kappa-B activation. Spices also act serve as immunomodulators and regulate inflammatory disorders. The present review highlights the role of common spices in combating cancer.


eIF5A is the only protein known to contain the essential and unique amino acid residue hypusine. eIF5A functions in both translation initiation due to its stimulation of methionyl-puromycin synthesis and translation elongation, being highly required for peptide-bound formation of specific ribosome stalling sequences such as poly-proline. The functional interaction between eIF5A, tRNA, and eEF2 on the surface of the ribosome is further clarified herein. Fluorescence anisotropy assays were performed to determine the affinity of eIF5A to different ribosomal complexes and reveal its interaction exclusively and directly with the 60S ribosomal subunit in a hypusine-dependent manner (Ki60S-eIF5A-Hyp = 16 nM, Ki60S-eIF5A-Lys = 385 nM). A 3-fold increase in eIF5A affinity to the 80S is observed upon charged-tRNAiMet binding, indicating positive cooperativity between P-site tRNA binding and eIF5A binding to the ribosome. Previously identified conditional mutants of yeast eIF5A, eIF5AQ22H/L93F and eIF5AK56A, display a significant decrease in ribosome binding affinity. Binding affinity between ribosome and eIF5A-wild type or mutants eIF5AK56A, but not eIF5AQ22H/L93F, is impaired in the presence of eEF2 by 4-fold, consistent with negative cooperativity between eEF2 and eIF5A binding to the ribosome. Interestingly, high-copy eEF2 is toxic only to eIF5AQ22H/L93F and causes translation elongation defects in this mutant. These results suggest that binding of eEF2 to the ribosome alters its conformation, resulting in a weakened affinity of eIF5A and impairment of this interplay compromises cell growth due to translation elongation defects.


A series of 3 studies explored the hypothesis that the preponderance of spinal meningiomas among postmenopausal women relates to their higher prevalence of spinal osteoporosis: (a) medical records showed that meningiomas in women, unlike other spinal tumors, usually arise in the mid thoracic spine where osteoporotic vertebral fractures predominate; (b) radiographic evidence of osteoporosis was seen commonly with meningiomas but not with other spinal tumors; and (c) age-adjusted multivariate analysis of data from an interview study of 81 women with spinal meningioma and 155 random digit dial controls showed 6 factors related to risk. Four factors were protective: (a) current use (at diagnosis) of estrogen replacement therapy [odds ratio (OR) = 0.2; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.1-0.6]; (b) past use of oral contraceptives (P trend < 0.01); (c) past participation in sports (OR = 0.5; CI = 0.2-0.9); and (d) premenopausal status (OR = 0.2; CI = 0.1-0.7). Risk increased among women who had ever smoked cigarettes (OR = 1.7; CI = 0.9-3.1) or had a history of high dose radiography (> 500 mrad exposure to active marrow/examination; includes upper or lower gastrointestinal series and/or cardiac angiography; OR = 2.9, and CI = 1.6-5.3), although no association was seen with prior radiotherapy. Other results that did not support the hypothesis include findings that cases and controls were similar in mean body weight and in the proportion who had postmenopausal fractures or height loss. In conclusion, these studies lend some support to our hypothesis, but other known meningioma risk factors such as ionizing radiation also appear important.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Accompanied by the change in the traditional medical landscape, advances in wireless technology have led to the development of telehealth or mobile health (mHealth), which offers an unparalleled opportunity for health care providers to continually deliver high-quality care. This revolutionary shift makes the patient the consumer of health care and empowers patients to be the driving force of management of their own health through mobile devices and wearable technology. This article presents an overview of technology as it pertains to clinical practice considerations. Telemedicine is changing the way clinical care is delivered without regard for proximity to the patient, whereas nonclinical telehealth applications affect distance education for consumers or clinicians, meetings, research, continuing medical education, and health care management. Technology has the potential to reduce administrative burdens and improve both efficiency and quality of care delivery in the clinic. Finally, the potential for telehealth approaches as cost-effective ways to improve adherence to treatment is explored. As telehealth advances, health care providers must understand the fundamental framework for applying telehealth strategies to incorporate into successful clinical practice.


The paper provides an explanation for the puzzling decoupling between the rate of growth of financial profits and GDP in the 2000s. Drawing on the insights from Keynes, Minsky, and Hilferding, the paper identifies a peculiar type of profit – capital gain-like revenues that take the form of profits from underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, securitization, and trade in financial assets. These capital gain-like revenues come from the redistribution of monetary assets and lack a counterpart in current GDP. They can be thought of as wealth transfers. Based on an empirical analysis of revenues of U.S. bank holding companies, these capital gain-like revenues are shown to have contributed significantly to the decoupling between the rate of growth of financial profits and GDP. The paper identifies characteristics of these revenues that explain the puzzles around this decoupling – its very possibility, sustainability over long time, and lack of losses sufficient to offset the pre-crisis financial gains. These characteristics of capital gain-like revenues also allow one to reconcile two seemingly incompatible approaches to a rise in financial profits – as transfers (rent) and as an illusion (mirage).


In this study we investigated how visually impaired people perform gestures on touch-screen smartphones. To this end, we recruited 36 visually impaired participants to explore differences and preferences in carrying out a set of gestures, selected according to certain characteristics (e.g., shape, number of fingers or strokes, etc.). For this purpose, we developed a system to collect gestures from several participants interacting with mobile smartphones at the same time. Results confirm previous research regarding the preference of visually impaired users for simple gestures, made with one finger and a single stroke. Moreover, rounded shapes were greatly preferred to angular ones.


Chlorinated organic compounds (COCs) represent a major concern and are widespread distributed in soil and groundwater. Due to their strong hydrophobicity and their density higher than water, these COCs infiltrate through aquifers and form DNAPL pools. A large part of DNAPL can be removed by physical technologies (mainly pumping), but an important part will remain trapped and adsorbed in the aquifer matrix. In situ remediation technologies have been then developed in order to destroy in situ the remaining COCs.
This study aims at characterizing the chemical reductive dechlorination of a mixture of COCs, mainly composed of hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD) and hexachloroethane (HCA). Many studies have shown the great efficiency of bimetallic Pd/Fe particles for the remediation of COCs (Colombo et al., 2015; Kim and Carraway, 2003; Lien and Zhang, 2007). Preliminary studies have been conducted in order to select the most appropriate reactants, which are Pd/Fe microparticles dispersed in a polyacidic hydrophobic matrix (Rodrigues et al., 2015).
First, HCBD and HCA were individually investigated in a monophasic single-component system, i.e. in presence of one dissolved pollutant in deionized water:methanol (99.9:0.1% v/v) solutions. Several analytical parameters were studied: pollutant/reactant ratios, temperatures and presence or absence of surfactants. Similar experiments were performed in a monophasic multi-component system, containing dissolved HCBD and HCA, to characterize the impact of a hydrophobic mixture.
Then, as most part of the pollutant is present as a DNAPL in groundwater, HCBD and HCA were investigated in a polyphasic single-component system, i.e. in presence of one pure pollutant in deionized water. This second approach combines both reduction reactions and transport processes, especially solubilization. The aim is to understand the influence of temperature and the presence of a surfactant in a polyphasic system to define the rate-determining step of the global remediation process. Finally, polyphasic multi-component systems were performed in presence of a mixture of HCBD and HCA, and in presence of a DNAPL taken from a polluted site.
These two approaches allowed the determination of degradation pathways and kinetic laws for the two compounds individually and in mixture.

References
Colombo, A., Dragonetti, C., Magni, M., Roberto, D., 2015. Degradation of Toxic Halogenated Organic Compounds by Iron-Containing Mono-, Bi- and Tri-Metallic Particles in Water. Inorganica Chim. Acta 431, 48–60.
Kim, Y.H., Carraway, E.R., 2003. Reductive Dechlorination of TCE by Zero Valent Bimetals. Environ. Technol. 24, 69–75.
Lien, H.-L., Zhang, W.-X., 2007. Nanoscale Pd/Fe Bimetallic Particles: Catalytic Effects of Palladium on Hydrodechlorination. Appl. Catal. B Environ. 77, 110–116.
Rodrigues, R., Betelu, S., Garnier, F., Colombano, S., Joubert, A., Cazaux, D., Masselot, G., Tzedakis, T., Ignatiadis, I., 2015. SILPHES – Investigation of Chemical Treatments for the Remediation of Recalcitrant Chlorinated Solvents. In: 13th International UFZ-Deltares Conference on Groundwater-Soil-Systems and Water Resource Management.


Quantum confinement is the spatial confinement of electron–hole pairs (excitons) in one or more dimensions within a material, and also electronic energy levels are discrete. It is due to the confinement of the electronic wave function to the physical dimensions of the particles. In this effect can be divided into three ways, 1D confinement (free carrier in a plane), quantum wells; 2D confinement (carriers are free to move down), quantum wire; and 3D confinement (carriers are confined in all directions), which are discussed in detail. In addition the formation mechanism of exciton and quantum confinement behavior of strong, moderate, and weak confinement have been discussed below.


Bayesian model averaging linearly mixes the probabilistic predictions of multiple models, each weighted by its posterior probability. This is the coherent Bayesian way of combining multiple models only under certain restrictive assumptions, which we outline. We explore a general framework for Bayesian model combination (which differs from model averaging) in the context of classification. This framework explicitly models the relationship between each model's output and the unknown true label. The framework does not require that the models be probabilistic (they can even be human assessors), that they share prior information or receive the same training data, or that they be independent in their errors. Finally, the Bayesian combiner does not need to believe any of the models is in fact correct. We test several variants of this classifier combination procedure starting from a classic statistical model proposed by Dawid and Skene (1979) and using MCMC to add more complex but important features to the model. Comparisons on several data sets to simpler methods like majority voting show that the Bayesian methods not only perform well but result in interpretable diagnostics on the data points and the models.


This research seeks to explain the unevenness in development across Indonesian provinces. Existing studies are mostly framed by mainstream growth theory in an attempt to explain the divergence and/or convergence of regional rates of economic growth. Those studies, however, pay insufficient attention to geographically specific socio-political relations in shaping the capacity of regions to grow toward different, and usually diverging, paths of development. In investigating why and how regions differ in their capacity to carry out development, an evolutionary approach is adopted to reveal the place-specific aspects influencing regional growth. This research particularly looks at an important aspect of regional development, i.e., its industry structure. Regional industry structures arguably mirror regions' capabilities in developing new industries, which, in turn, shape its future development paths. Regional change is understood as an industrial branching process, with regions diversifying into industries related to the existing industry structure. While new industries are important for regions seeking to diversify their economic bases, the direction of regional evolution is often assumed to be moving toward more sophisticated industries. In fact, industries that are highly motivated by lower domestic factor costs may cause regions to pursue low-end economic activities. Moreover, while the endogenous process of industrial branching is observed in regions of the countries in the Global North, work on regional development in the countries of the Global South highlights the role of exogenous relations, often in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) in initiating development processes. This thesis thus improves evolutionary work on industrial branching by taking into account the direction of branching, the role of FDI, and the influence of factor costs in the evolution of regional industry in Indonesia. Most importantly, the interaction of those endogenous forces and other factors of production is shaped by specific regional institutions, which are part of the analysis as well.


Background Many patients are reluctant to speak up about breakdowns in care, resulting in missed opportunities to respond to individual patients and improve the system. Effective approaches to encouraging patients to speak up and responding when they do are needed. Objective To identify factors which influence speaking up, and to examine the impact of apology when problems occur. Design Randomised experiment using a vignette-based questionnaire describing 3 care breakdowns (slow response to call bell, rude aide, unanswered questions). The role of the person inquiring about concerns (doctor, nurse, patient care specialist), extent of the prompt (invitation to patient to share concerns) and level of apology were varied. Setting National online survey. Participants 1188 adults aged ≥35 years were sampled from an online panel representative of the entire US population, created and maintained by GfK, an international survey research organisation; 65.5% response rate. Main outcomes and measures Affective responses to care breakdowns, intent to speak up, willingness to recommend the hospital. Results Twice as many participants receiving an in-depth prompt about care breakdowns would (probably/definitely) recommend the hospital compared with those receiving no prompt (18.4% vs 8.8% respectively (p=0.0067)). Almost three times as many participants receiving a full apology would (probably/definitely) recommend the hospital compared with those receiving no apology (34.1% vs 13.6% respectively ((p<0.0001)). Feeling upset was a strong determinant of greater intent to speak up, but a substantial number of upset participants would not 'definitely' speak up. A more extensive prompt did not result in greater likelihood of speaking up. The inquirer's role influenced speaking up for two of the three breakdowns (rudeness and slow response). Conclusions Asking about possible care breakdowns in detail, and offering a full apology when breakdowns are reported substantially increases patients' willingness to recommend the hospital.


The study examines the nature and context of the debate on state-society relations, focusing on the socio-economic and political reforms that have taken place in the governance of the public realm in the past three decades. It analyses the process and impact of the new governance reforms undertaken in Uganda since the early 1990s on the performance of state institutions. It focuses on the implementation of the programme of state reform through decentralisation; putting in perspective the ramifications of the claim that decentralisation brings about effective, efficient, participatory and citizen-focused service delivery in the management of public organisations, including urban authorities. Drawing from the peculiar failures of state institutions in post-colonial Uganda, the study critiques the theoretical and empirical premise of devolution by attempting to link the process of institutional recovery to experimentation with the "new governance models" as applied to the management of the urbanisation process. It interrogates the claim that decentralisation reforms bring about demand-driven service delivery, democratic discourse and greater organisational performance. Anchored in the premises of good governance theorem, the study questions the realities of decentralisation in engendering a new official behaviour, taming rigid bureaucratic practices, engineering a new service culture and espousing a dictum of statecivil society engagement. These goals raise the key argument, that is, whether the quest for realisation of organisational change in the implementation of urban governance reforms in Uganda has been facilitated by the conscious readiness of the state to realise tangible public goods such as popular accountability, improved livelihoods of the ordinary people and the increased capacity of the state to build sustainable management systems. Furthermore, the study discusses and questions the capacity of decentralisation to adequately address the myriad of urban governance challenges that include explosion of the urban population, high poverty levels, scarcity of employment, poor service delivery, deterioration in urban infrastructure, low management capacities and a poor management culture, raising complex political questions surrounding the decision making process that seem to have undercut the possibility of a new governance model to effectively take root. This study concludes that although decentralisation has improved relations between government officials and the ordinary people, there are still many challenges in the management of Kampala city. The challenges encountered in urban service delivery include the failure of state institutions to perfom their functions, lack of pro-poor policies, demotivated local government officials and prevalence of corruption. The interventions of civil society in service delivery have helped the ordinary people to survive. However, civil society organisations have their own limits and weaknesses. The attempts by government to reform the public sector generally have yielded some positive attitudes but have also lacked commitment and resources to realise tangible benefits to the ordinary urban dweller. Finally, while decentralisation created strong hopes of better service delivery, tangible results in the case of Kampala city have been minimal. The study suggests that successful decentralisation requires a dynamic pro-people urban policy, increased avenues of popular participation; cultivation of trust, horizontal power relations and strong accountability mechanisms in the public domain.


Serendipity led the author from Baltimore, New Haven, and Palo Alto to Wilmington, DE. Mentors along the journey taught the power of combining seemingly disparate techniques while striving for biological understanding. Those lessons, and the continuous growth they have engendered, have been a beacon for our microbial genetics effort that has blurred the divide between fundamental and applied inquiry. Interested in American history and genetics, the author went to Baltimore in 1969 to attend Johns Hopkins. Talking about Phil Hartman, the author says his text, Gene Action, is treasured both for its concise presentation of the mechanisms of gene expression and for its prescience to consider secondary consequences of gene action. The author adds that what was important was the scientific result rather than who accomplished it. So believing that we knew a great deal about gene action including pleiotropy, the author was looking for a new horizon and the molecular basis of microbial development seemed attractive. The author says Hartman's chapter, "Secondary Consequences of Gene Mutation," in Gene Action was the guidepost to follow. Inhibition was observed by the desperate measure of placing amino acid crystals on plates, a technique that the author first used in Hartman's genetics lab course in Baltimore. Raising the media supplementation concentrations to approximately 0.5 mg/ml often allows inhibition to be observed.


At any given time, upwards of 12.3 million people are exploited as modern day slaves through the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world: human trafficking. Veiled behind the widely celebrated and sanctified institution of marriage and behind protections of liberty and privacy, one segment of the human trafficking industry continues to be overlooked, tolerated, and often excluded from criminalization: the trafficking of foreign brides. By analyzing two seemingly disparate foreign bride markets – the Chinese market for North Korean brides and the United States market for foreign brides – this Note argues that the foreign bride industry constitutes human trafficking under international law and calls for both immediate legal reforms and the ultimate criminalization and prosecution of foreign bride trafficking. Beginning with an examination of the two leading definitions of human trafficking as advanced by the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and the United States' Trafficking Victims Protection Act, this Note argues that the U.S. definition of trafficking, unlike the international definition, is incomplete because it focuses on "severe forms of trafficking," requiring a level of physical force, fraud, or coercion that fails to recognize the power dynamics and realities of human trafficking. The Note then examines two case studies of foreign bride markets: the North Korean refugee bride market in China and the foreign bride market in the United States, as facilitated by "international marriage broker-traffickers." These seemingly disparate markets highlight the striking commonalities across the foreign bride industry, namely, similarities in the abuse of vulnerability and power as the means of trafficking and similarities in violence and exploitation in marriage as the purposes of foreign bride trafficking. In highlighting these similarities, this Note reveals that U.S. law's longstanding prioritization of physical force as the keystone to crimes of violence against women, coupled with the guise of marriage, create a spectrum of force and fictional consent that protect the virility of bride trafficking by ignoring the power differentials and by obscuring the exploitative purposes that drive the foreign bride industry. In conclusion, this Note advances interim measures and supplementary measures that may be taken in addition to the ultimate prohibition and criminalization of bride-trafficking as trafficking under U.S. and international law.


The extended reach of globalisation in the last few decades has resulted in a significant increase of western influence on countries like Thailand. Western ideologies have been disseminated through various mass media channels, including the printed media. Women's magazines from the West such as the American monthly women's magazine Cosmopolitan have been publishing their Thai version for over ten years. The focus of Cosmopolitan is on the lifestyle of liberated women and sex as its most prominent theme. This is best illustrated by its Love and Lust section, which features advice columns imparting advice on sexual relationships for the benefit of female readers. Although the stories are envisaged as pieces of educational journalism, the original American columns are often sexually explicit, both in verbal and visual terms. This can be problematic from a Thai perspective, as sex-related issues are still viewed locally as sensitive and rarely raised publicly.This research will examine the strategies employed in translating the Love and Lust section of Cosmopolitan into Thai, focusing on shifts of meaning at both the verbal and visual levels. The theoretical framework used in this study draws mainly on the Systemic Functional Linguistics conceptualisation of the text-context relationship (as articulated by Eggins 1994/2004) that accounts for bi-directional correlations between text and its context of situation and context of culture. The model is supplemented with the Systemic Functional extended Social Semiotics conceptualisation of the visual analysis by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/2006). The study will account for the translational choices illustrated in the data and ultimately attempt to identify verbal and visual shifts in the translation of glossy women's magazines.


Student mental health is a concern on university campuses, and animal-assisted interventions are one response. This article presents the immediate and three-month follow-up outcomes of a pilot evaluation study of the St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog program at three Canadian universities. Analyzing a sample of 403 students and 16 handlers/observers at the events and 87 students at follow-up, we found that the therapy dogs offer love and support. Love is understood as having reciprocal love for the dogs and gaining positive feelings from visiting with them. Support is understood as destressing and relaxing by interacting with the dogs. Implications for mental health supports for university students are suggested.


Nonadiabaticity in adsorption on metal surfaces gives rise to a number of measurable effects such as chemicurrents and exoelectron emission. Here we present a quantitative theory of chemicurrents on the basis of ground-state density functional theory (DFT) calculations of the effective electronic potential and the Kohn-Sham band structure. Excitation probabilities are calculated both for electron-hole pairs and for electrons and holes separately from first-order time-dependent perturbation theory. This is accomplished by evaluating the matrix elements (between Kohn-Sham states) of the rate of change of the effective electronic potential between subsequent (static) DFT calculations. Our approach is related to the theory of electronic friction, but allows for direct access to the excitation spectra. The method is applied to adsorption of atomic hydrogen isotopes on the Al(111) surface. The results are compatible with the available experimental data (for noble metal surfaces); in particular, the observed isotope effect in H versus D adsorption is described by the present theory. Moreover, the results are in qualitative agreement with computationally elaborate calculations of the full dynamics within time-dependent density functional theory, with the notable exception of effects due to the spin dynamics. Being a perturbational approach, the method proposed here is simple enough to be applied to a wide class of adsorbates and surfaces, while at the same time allowing us to extract system-specific information.


When constructing and using environmental models, it is typical that many of the inputs to the models will not be known perfectly. In some cases, it will be possible to make observations, or occasionally physics-based uncertainty propagation, to ascertain the uncertainty on these inputs. However, such observations are often either not available or even possible, and another approach to characterising the uncertainty on the inputs must be sought. Even when observations are available, if the analysis is being carried out within a Bayesian framework then prior distributions will have to be specified. One option for gathering or at least estimating this information is to employ expert elicitation. Expert elicitation is well studied within statistics and psychology and involves the assessment of the beliefs of a group of experts about an uncertain quantity, (for example an input / parameter within a model), typically in terms of obtaining a probability distribution. One of the challenges in expert elicitation is to minimise the biases that might enter into the judgements made by the individual experts, and then to come to a consensus decision within the group of experts. Effort is made in the elicitation exercise to prevent biases clouding the judgements through well-devised questioning schemes. It is also important that, when reaching a consensus, the experts are exposed to the knowledge of the others in the group. Within the FP7 UncertWeb project (http://www.uncertweb.org/), there is a requirement to build a Webbased tool for expert elicitation. In this paper, we discuss some of the issues of building a Web-based elicitation system - both the technological aspects and the statistical and scientific issues. In particular, we demonstrate two tools: a Web-based system for the elicitation of continuous random variables and a system designed to elicit uncertainty about categorical random variables in the setting of landcover classification uncertainty. The first of these examples is a generic tool developed to elicit uncertainty about univariate continuous random variables. It is designed to be used within an application context and extends the existing SHELF method, adding a web interface and access to metadata. The tool is developed so that it can be readily integrated with environmental models exposed as web services. The second example was developed for the TREES-3 initiative which monitors tropical landcover change through ground-truthing at confluence points. It allows experts to validate the accuracy of automated landcover classifications using site-specific imagery and local knowledge. Experts may provide uncertainty information at various levels: from a general rating of their confidence in a site validation to a numerical ranking of the possible landcover types within a segment. A key challenge in the web based setting is the design of the user interface and the method of interacting between the problem owner and the problem experts. We show the workflow of the elicitation tool, and show how we can represent the final elicited distributions and confusion matrices using UncertML, ready for integration into uncertainty enabled workflows.We also show how the metadata associated with the elicitation exercise is captured and can be referenced from the elicited result, providing crucial lineage information and thus traceability in the decision making process.


This research examines the complex factors that influence the design of a new cruise liner terminal for Durban. Secondary and primary data collection methods will be used in the research. Secondary data collection forms the majority of the information gathered. This method will focus on precedent and case studies from which conclusions will be drawn and a design brief for the cruise terminal derived. Cruise liners typically spend periods of less than a week in port, during which time passengers will visit local tourist attractions. Durban's cruise season lasts from mid-November till mid-April. The local cruise industry has seen a steady increase in passenger numbers over the years. This has seen the MSC Melody cruise ship being procured to meet the demands of the industry. As a consequence of this increase the current cruise liner terminal, the N-Shed, has been placed under increasing pressure to provide a world class facility and service experience, expectations which it is ill equipped to deliver. Through this study key aspects, specific to the cruise liner terminal design, are investigated. These include passenger movement optimisation, response to local conditions, form development, waterfront regeneration and the concept of the terminal as a gateway to the city of Durban. In developing the architecture of the cruise terminal, the understanding of these factors is vital if the designer is to make a meaningful contribution to society though his building . With the cruise liner terminal being a unique building typology, in the context of Durban, an opportunity arises to reconnect the city with its harbour edge. the port. a point of entry: the design of a NEW CRUISE LINER TERMINAL at the nt. for durban.


»Städte durch ihre literarischen Repräsentationen erfassen: Ein Mix aus Qualitativen und Quantitativen Ansätzen zur Analyse von Kriminalromanen«. Contemporary crime novels often contain detailed literary representations of urban life worlds. These stagings can provide access to city-specific patterns and structures of thought, action and feeling, as well as locally established bodies of knowledge and processes of sense-making. Therefore, their systematic analysis can generate insights into the intrinsic logic of cities. To grasp such patterns on city level a preferably broad empirical basis is needed, but the study of large amounts of literary works poses a methodological challenge. This article presents a mix of methods that permits the analysis of vast quantities of (literary) texts through combining the classical qualitative close reading with elements from computer-aided qualitative content analysis, basic instruments from corpus linguistics and the methodology of distant reading in an iterative research process. It illustrates how to analyze qualitative data also quantitatively and on different levels with regard to social and spatial aspects of the depicted life worlds, thereby showing how novels could be used as data basis for urban sociology and interdisciplinary research questions about the distinc-


This research is kind of descriptive qualitative research with the title "the analysis offood agriculture export commodity in east java". The purpose of this research is to know how the development of contribution influence food agriculture toward food agriculture export commodity in east java. The instrument of this research is analysis export developing, analysis export contributing, and to know the output effect of food agriculture production, exchange rate rupiah to dollar and inflation phase using analysis bifilar regression through experiment F and experiment T that use experiment data panel fixed effect. From the analysis result, it could be simplified that the developing export commodity food agriculture result the increasingly commodity of green bean, cassava, and mango. The biggest contribution of the commodity is rice, corn, and cassava during five year. From the aggression analysis partially stated that output production of food agriculture exchange rate rupiah to dollar, inflation phase, bring the positive effect toward export value of food agriculture in east java.


This paper is an introduction to unit root econometrics as applied in macroeconomics. The paper first discusses univariate time series analysis, emphasizing the following topics: alternative representations of unit root processes, unit root testing procedures, the power of unit root tests, and the interpretation of unit root econometrics in finite samples. A second part of the paper tackles similar issues in a multivariate context where cointegration is now the central concept. The paper reviews representation, testing, and estimation of multivariate time series models with some unit roots. Two important themes of this paper are first, the importance of correctly specifying deterministic components of the series; and second, the usefulness of unit root tests not as methods to uncover some "true relation" but as practical devices that can be used to impose reasonable restrictions on the data and to suggest what asymptotic distribution theory gives the best approximation to the finite-sample distribution of coefficient estimates and test statistics.


The aim of this article was to develop a theoretical framework to aid the current understanding of social change practice. Drawing on concepts from institutional theory, the authors proposed and applied a theoretical framework to investigate social change at the intersection of gender and sexuality inclusion in Australian cricket. Qualitative techniques (interviews and document analyses) were utilized to investigate the trajectory of lesbian inclusion in Australian cricket over time. Starting from the perspective that institutional arrangements can be exclusionary (or biased) toward certain groups in society, this research investigated how the actions of institutional entrepreneurs can create more inclusive institutional arrangements. Theoretical and practical implications for future research are discussed.


Although fuzzy c-means algorithm is one of the most popular methods for image segmentation, it is in essence a technology of searching local optimal solution and sensitive to initial data. For this, self-adapted fuzzy c-means segmentation algorithm based on bacterial chemotaxis is proposed in this paper. In the new algorithm, selfadapted fuzzy c-means algorithm is used to get the initial number of clusters and bacterial chemotaxis algorithm is used for avoiding falling into local optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm used for image segmentation can segment images more effectively and can provide more robust segmentation results.


Abstract. Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) refractivity climatologies for the stratosphere can be obtained from the Abel inversion of monthly average bending-angle profiles. The averaging of large numbers of profiles suppresses random noise and this, in combination with simple exponential extrapolation above an altitude of 80 km, circumvents the need for a "statistical optimization" step in the processing. Using data from the US–Taiwanese COSMIC mission, which provides ~1500–2000 occultations per day, it has been shown that this average-profile inversion (API) technique provides a robust method for generating stratospheric refractivity climatologies. Prior to the launch of COSMIC in mid-2006, the data records rely on data from the CHAMP (CHAllenging Mini-satellite Payload) mission. In order to exploit the full range of available RO data, the usage of CHAMP data is also required. CHAMP only provided ~200 profiles per day, and the measurements were noisier than COSMIC. As a consequence, the main research question in this study was to see if the average bending-angle approach is also applicable to CHAMP data. Different methods for the suppression of random noise – statistical and through data quality prescreening – were tested. The API retrievals were compared with the more conventional approach of averaging individual refractivity profiles, produced with the implementation of statistical optimization used in the EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) Radio Occultation Meteorology Satellite Application Facility (ROM SAF) operational processing. In this study it is demonstrated that the API retrieval technique works well for CHAMP data, enabling the generation of long-term stratospheric RO climate data records from August 2001 and onward. The resulting CHAMP refractivity climatologies are found to be practically identical to the standard retrieval at the DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) below altitudes of 35 km. Between 35 and 50 km, the differences between the two retrieval methods started to increase, showing largest differences at high latitudes and high altitudes. Furthermore, in the winter hemisphere high-latitude region, the biases relative to ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts) were generally smaller for the new approach than for the standard retrieval.


The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of replacing fish oil (FO) with cottonseed oil (CSO), as an alternative plant lipid source in diets for rainbow trout (89.3 ± 1.1 g mean individual weight), on the growth and fatty acid composition of fish. As a control diet, 5 experimental diets were formulated with pure FO and with partial or complete (25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% CSO, respectively) replacement of FO with CSO. The fish were fed 2% of their body weight per day for 60 days at an average water temperature of 10.2 °C. At the end of the feeding trial, the highest growth and the lowest FCR (1.28) were obtained in fish fed the CSO50 diet. The fillet lipid concentrations and fatty acid composition of the fish were significantly affected by the experimental diets. Fish fed the FO and CSO25 diets contained significantly lower lipid levels (6.8% and 6.5%, respectively) than those fed the 3 other diets. The viscerosomatic index (VSI) and hepatosomatic index (HSI) values increased with increasing cottonseed oil percentages in the diets. Fillet fatty acid composition reflected dietary fatty acid composition. The n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) concentration increased with increasing cottonseed oil levels in the diets. In contrast, the n-3 PUFA levels decreased with increasing cottonseed oil levels in the diets. The highest level of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) concentrations were recorded in fish fed the FO diet and the lowest in those fed the CSO100 diet. Based on the results of growth performance and fatty acid composition of the experimental fish in the present study, it can be concluded that the 50% concentration of cottonseed oil performed best among the diets tested in the experiment.


The author reviews the theoretical and empirical literature to examine the traditional perception that the following trade-off exists between economic efficiency and stability in the banking system: a competitive banking system is more efficient and therefore important to growth, but market power is necessary for stability in the banking system. That this trade-off exists is not clear. Market power can have positive implications for efficiency, and the potentially negative implications of competition on stability may be manageable through prudential regulation. Neither extreme (perfect competition nor monopoly) is likely ideal. Rather, it may be optimal to facilitate an environment that promotes competitive behaviour (contestability), thereby minimizing the potential costs of market power while realizing benefits from any residual that remains. It can be very difficult to assess the contestability of a banking market. Recent work suggests that the number of banks and the degree of concentration are not, in themselves, sufficient indicators of contestability. Other factors play a strong role, including regulatory policies that promote competition, a well-developed financial system, the effects of branch networks, and the effect and uptake of technological advancements.


Merck & Co., Inc. pulled Vioxx, a $2.5 billon a year nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, off the shelf in September 2004. The removal followed a study that was published reporting Vioxx increased the risk of cardiovascular events after long-term use. In the years since then, many lawsuits have been filed against Merck. This paper examines the incentive to recall a product and the effects of Merck pulling Vioxx from the shelves. Using the market's expected internal rate of return for Merck, I calculate the expected profits from future Vioxx sales. I then use data on financial effects to show how the market value of Merck reflects their probability of winning legal cases concerning Vioxx.


We report polarization coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (P-CARS) microscopy that allows vibrational imaging with high sensitivity and spectral selectivity. The nonresonant background signals from both Raman scatterers and the solvent are efficiently suppressed in P-CARS microscopy. We demonstrate P-CARS imaging of unstained cells based on the contrast of the protein amide I band.


Using WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have isolated a sample of 258 white dwarfs (WDs) in the Galactic globular cluster M4. Fields at three radial distances from the cluster center were observed, and sizable WD populations were found in all three. The location of these WDs in the color-magnitude diagram, their mean mass of 0.51(±0.03) M☉, and their luminosity function confirm basic tenets of stellar evolution theory and support the results from current WD cooling theory. The WDs are used to extend the cluster main-sequence mass function upward to stars that have already completed their nuclear evolution. The WD/red dwarf binary frequency in M4 is investigated and is found to be at most a few percent of all the main-sequence stars. The most ancient WDs found are ~9 Gyr old, a level that is set solely by the photometric limits of our data. Even though this is less than the age of M4, we discuss how these cooling WDs can eventually be used to check the turnoff ages of globular clusters and hence constrain the age of the universe.


Abiotic and biological factors have been hypothesized as controlling maximum body size of tetrapods and other animals through geological time. We analyse the effects of three abiotic factors—oxygen, temperature and land area—on maximum size of Permian–Jurassic archosauromorphs and therapsids, and Cenozoic mammals, using time series generalized least-squares regression models. We also examine maximum size growth curves for the Permian–Jurassic data by comparing fits of Gompertz and logistic models. When serial correlation is removed, we find no robust correlations, indicating that these environmental factors did not consistently control tetrapod maximum size. Gompertz models—i.e. exponentially decreasing rate of size increase at larger sizes—fit maximum size curves far better than logistic models. This suggests that biological limits such as reduced fecundity and niche space availability become increasingly limiting as larger sizes are reached. Environmental factors analysed may still have imposed an upper limit on tetrapod body size, but any environmentally imposed limit did not vary substantially during the intervals examined despite variation in these environmental factors.


This paper is based on continuous measurements of voltages and currents from three wind farms for a period of 1 year, and the focus is on voltage dips. The purpose is to get an overview of the characteristics and rate of voltage dips, which occur in the wind farms and to study the wind turbine responses to voltage dips. In each of the wind farms there is one measurement point at a single wind turbine and one for measuring the contribution from the whole wind farm. Different wind turbine technologies are used in the three wind farms; fixed speed turbines with directly connected induction generators in wind farm 1 and variable speed turbines with power electronics converters and synchronous generators in wind farms 2 and 3. Voltage dips are evaluated according to the standard EN 50160, by considering the durations and residual voltages of the positive sequence component voltage dips. Some examples of voltage dip events with corresponding responses in active and reactive power are shown and discussed with a view to the different technologies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This study investigated the relationship among several teacher, process, and outcome variables within school-based consultation. A total of 32 consultant-consultee dyads participated in the study until completion of a problem identification interview, a problem analysis interview, and a follow-up session. Four types of data were collected. First, sessions were tape recorded and coded to examine the effect of an "expert" versus a "collaborative" interaction style. Second, teachers completed paper and pencil measures pertaining to (a) attributions of child behavior, (b) preferred service delivery, (c> severity of behavior problem, (d) consultant verbal interactions, (e> treatment acceptability, and (f) teacher satisfaction. Third, direct observation measures of treatment integrity and child behavior change were conducted. Fourth, permanent products reflecting intervention implementation were also examined as a means of determining degree of treatment integrity. The measurement of these variables permitted an examination of the effects of teacher variables (e.g., attributions of causality), intervention variables (i.e., intervention acceptability, intervention complexity), child variables (e.g., behavior problem severity), consultant variables (i.e., expert vs. collaborative style of interaction) on treatment integrity, the outcome variable of primary interest. The relationship between treatment integrity and child behavior change was also of interest. Treatment integrity was operationalized using multiple criteria (i.e., direct observation of immediate consequences, examination of permanent products, teacher recording of target behavior). Overall, the integrity with which the interventions were implemented was low. The results suggested consultee education level was positively related teacher recording of the target behavior. On the other hand, consultee years of experience was negatively related to utilization of the permanent product. Contrary to the literature, consultees receiving an expert or "prescriptive" approach to consultation were observed to implement the immediate consequence more often than consultees receiving a collaborative approach (Gutkin & Curtis, 1990). With regard to intervention plan variables, a positive relationship was found between the complexity of the intervention and the degree to which the consequences were implemented. Observed integrity was also related to the degree of positive behavior change and teacher satisfaction. Results of the Btudy are discussed in terms of implications for school psychologists in consultation research and practice.


The S&P and the Russell indexes often serve as proxies for passive portfolios in the debate over the merits of active versus passive portfolio management. However, the S&P indexes, are, in effect, actively constructed portfolios, since S&P index managers exercise discretion in selecting firms for the indexes from a pool of eligible firms. In contrast, Russell index managers use a passive, nondiscretionary approach and select firms solely based on market capitalization. I assess the relative merits of these approaches by comparing their performance over the last 11 years. I find that the S&P indexes dominate the Russell indexes, particularly in the small-cap sector, where the S&P 600 index consistently outperforms the Russell 2000 index. The results suggest that index investors would benefit by choosing actively constructed index portfolios over passively constructed index portfolios, particularly in the small-cap sector.


Throughout much of its relatively short history, the Internet has been the focus of considerable speculation and theoretical discussion from a field now widely known as cultural studies. What ties a great deal of this scholarship together is a common understanding of the Internet as a site for the production of "cultural texts" and an approach that explores, as Rosemary Coombe puts it, "the relationship between the word and the world" (Coombe 1998:17). It is hardly surprising, then, that much of the critical commentary on the Internet comes out of English departments and communications or media studies programs because, after all, the Internet is indeed largely textual in nature, being made up of email, discussion groups, message services, websites, images, and other forms that lend themselves to symbolic analysis. Yet what troubles me about a great deal of this literature is that it tends to be concerned almost solely with social effects (real or imagined) rather than the various apparatuses (technological as well as social and political) and the people who are actively involved in using the Internet on a daily basis. I find an imbalance between the tendency to theorize the Internet at a general level and not enough close-to-the-ground ethnographic study of the new social spaces the Internet makes possible. Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist who has conducted on-line fieldwork, suggests that many of these studies erase the real world technological and social underpinnings of Internet phenomena: "Much of the social commentary around virtual worlds implicitly reinscribes a split between information (virtuality) and materials (reality), describing ways in which on-line spaces provide a space of 'pure' information that is both amputated from, and inconsequential for, real world physicality" (Ito 1997:88). Furthermore, it is too easy to forget that like the products of mass media, the "cultural texts" produced by the Internet are themselves public representational forms, a part of what might be called "public


"Mr. Wasik's distillation of how Keynes made - and then remade - his fortune is instructive. And the principles that Keynes followed have stood the test of time. As Mr. Wasik adds, 'The object of investing is to ensure prosperity, not to become obsessed with making money.'" (The New York Times). John Maynard Keynes indelibly made his mark on global economics...Few people know, however, that he was also a daring, steel-nerved investor who built a multimillion dollar fortune in the stock market while providing financial counsel to the likes of Winston Churchill and FDR. Now, you can learn from - and imitate - Keynes' success by examining the story of his life and investment strategies, masterfully told by award winning author John F. Wasik. As you follow Keynes from his early years with the Bloomsbury Group, through two world wars and the Great Depression Keynes' theories and practices come to life by way of the historic and personal events that shaped them. Like today's investors, Keynes faced markets roiled by panic, inflation, deflation, widespread unemployment, and war - and he developed a core set of principles to prosper in every climate. With the individual investor in mind, this straightforward guide makes it easy for investors at all levels to implement the action-oriented strategies presented in each of the 10 chapters and start investing like Keynes today by: buying and holding quality stocks; ignoring short-term news; building diversified portfolios; trading contrary to market momentum; and getting the most out of dividend stocks. Using the eloquent insight of a seasoned investment writer, author John F. Wasik digs down into what investments Keynes owned, how he bought and sold them, how his theories guided his investments, and vice versa. He illustrates why Keynes' ideas, insights, and portfolio strategies have withstood the test of time, and how they will continue to produce financial gains for dedicated investors. In a nutshell, Wasik delivers a pragmatic guide to the style of portfolio management practiced by such Keynes followers as Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charles Munger. The smart money gets richer in all types of weather, and so can you by following Keynes' Way to Wealth. Praise for Keynes' Way To Wealth: "Intelligent investing ultimately depends on having an intelligent theory of the economy. This story of Keynes' life as an investor illustrates this beautifully." (Robert Shiller, professor of Economics, Yale University; New York Times columnist; and author of Finance and the Good Society). "The great economist John Maynard Keynes speculated and lost big-time. Out of the ashes, he evolved some great long-term investment strategies that will work for every prudent investor. While picking up tips, you'll also find that this book is a great read." (Jane Bryant Quinn, author of Making the Most of Your Money Now). "I'd always heard Keynes was a talented investor but never knew any of the details. John Wasik's excellent book uncovers that story and reveals Keynes' considerable investing skills. If you enjoy studying great investors, add this book to your list." (Joe Mansueto, founder and CEO, Morningstar, Inc). "With the possible exception of Mark Twain, no one surpasses John Maynard Keynes as a source of pithy financial wisdom and sayings. Keynes' Way to Wealth mines the reasoning and investment experiences behind his quotability, a bounty that will simultaneously edify, entertain, and augment your bottom line." (William J. Bernstein, author and principal, Efficient Frontier Advisors).


The CCA-secure lattice-based post-quantum key encapsulation scheme Saber is a candidate in the NIST's post-quantum cryptography standardization process. In this paper, we study the implementation aspects of Saber in resourceconstrained microcontrollers from the ARM Cortex-M series which are very popular for realizing IoT applications. In this work, we carefully optimize various parts of Saber for speed and memory. We exploit digital signal processing instructions and efficient memory access for a fast implementation of polynomial multiplication. We also use memory efficient Karatsuba and just-in-time strategy for generating the public matrix of the module lattice to reduce the memory footprint. We also show that our optimizations can be combined with each other seamlessly to provide various speed-memory trade-offs. Our speed optimized software takes just 1,147K, 1,444K, and 1,543K clock cycles on a Cortex-M4 platform for key generation, encapsulation and decapsulation respectively. Our memory efficient software takes 4,786K, 6,328K, and 7,509K clock cycles on an ultra resource-constrained Cortex-M0 platform for key generation, encapsulation, and decapsulation respectively while consuming only 6.2 KB of memory at most. These results show that lattice-based key encapsulation schemes are perfectly practical for securing IoT devices from quantum computing attacks.


Leaf litter breakdown, a critical ecosystem level process in streams and other aquatic environments , has been conceptualized using models borrowed from terrestrial systems. We argue that current views of the process in fresh waters need to be conceptually improved. Specifically, we think the idea that breakdown proceeds in three distinct temporal stages (leaching, conditioning, fragmentation) has been over emphasized. Leaching, the massive loss of soluble leaf components within 24 h after immersion, is generally considered to constitute a well-defined first stage. Recent evidence suggests, however, that the initial solute losses are largely an effect of the un natural drying procedures to which experimental leaves are normally subjected. Fresh leaf litter does lose solutes when immersed,but gradually throughout the breakdown process rather than instantly upon wetting. Conditioning, the second breakdown stage, describes the enhancement of leaf palatability for detritivores by microbial colonization, and is thus ultimately targeted towards a group of organisms (which contribute to litter degradation) rather than addressing the breakdown process per se. Furthermore,conditioning implies a key role for detritivorous invertebrates and underrates the established direct degradative activity of microbial decomposers. If, thus, leaching and conditioning are not generally useful operators to describe portions of the litter breakdown process in freshwaters, the traditional concept, which emphasises leaching, conditioning and fragmentation as three sequential stages, loses much of its appeal. Consequently, we propose a new conceptual model, in which the coincidence and interplay of various subprocesses of litter breakdown is more strongly recognized. In this model, we propose to view the process in terms of the products of litter breakdown-as a complement to the usual perspective which focuses on litter mass loss. Six primary breakdown products are considered : bacterial, fungal and shredder biomass; dissolved organic matter; fine-particulate organic matter; and inorganic mineralization products such as CO2, NH+ and PO3-. We present a scheme illustrating the hypothesized formation of these products throughout breakdown. However, to improve understanding of the process, application of the proposed conceptual framework in experimental work is necessary.


Novel free boundary magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium states with spontaneous three-dimensional (3-D) deformations of the plasma–vacuum interface are computed. The structures obtained look like saturated ideal external kink/peeling modes. Large edge pressure gradients yield toroidal mode number n = 1 distortions when the edge bootstrap current is large and higher n corrugations when this current is small. Linear ideal MHD stability analyses confirm the nonlinear saturated ideal kink equilibrium states produced and we can identify the Pfirsch–SchlA¼ter current as the main linear instability driving mechanism when the edge pressure gradient is large. The dominant non-axisymmetric component of this Pfirsch–SchlA¼ter current drives a near resonant helical parallel current density ribbon that aligns with the near vanishing magnetic shear region caused by the edge bootstrap current. This current ribbon is a manifestation of the outer mode previously found on JET (Solano 2010). We claim that the equilibrium corrugations describe structures that are commonly observed in quiescent H-mode tokamak discharges.


Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major global metabolic disorder currently affecting over 450 million people and this number is rising rapidly. Heart failure (HF) is the major cause of death among diabetic patients. The disorder is due to elevated blood glucose level beyond physiological range or hyperglycaemia (HG), which in turn leads to a number of long-term complications, including diabetic cardiomyopathy (DC) over time. Around 80% of all diabetics will eventually die from DC. If left untreated, DC has been shown to be a critical factor in HF, independent of atherosclerosis, hypertension and valvular malfunction. The inability to maintain glucose homeostasis in the myocardium compromises cardiac structure and function in human diabetic subjects and also in animals with experimental diabetes. Daily exercise is known to protect the heart from sudden cardiac death. Exercise training (ET) is a beneficial non-pharmacological intervention for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). ET can induce cardio-protection in normal hearts and also in a partially diseased heart through a range of molecular mechanisms. The cardio-protective effect of ET is associated with the improvement of antioxidant capacity, mitochondrial viability and it can activate physiological cardiac growth, which are all mediated via distinct cellular and molecular mechanisms compared to those in pathological hypertrophy. Beneficial cardiac protection following regular ET in diabetes has been reported in both clinical and experimental animal studies. ET is a cost-effective strategy for prevention and treatment DC. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying DC and HF in diabetes and how regular exercise can reverse the pathology are not fully clear and further research should be carried out.


The study aims to uncover the factors promoting the introduction of the euro by presenting the unique features of independent Slovakian monetary policy and the Slovakian banking system. It examines Slovakian central bank policy in historical context, distinguishing between the period of independent monetary policy and the central bank policy period preceding the introduction of the euro. After outlining the successes and failures of Slovakian monetary policy, the study focuses on the impact of the European Central Bank's monetary policy on real economy processes in Slovakia. It concludes that due to the abundance of liquidity of Slovakian banks arising from high deposit volume (which was maintained even after the crisis), the quantitative easing programme of the European Central Bank can only have a moderate impact on the Slovakian economy. Using the Slovakian economy as an example, it proves that accession to the currency union has failed to change the relative positions of regions (previously held in the national economy).


Introduction Although various lipid and non-lipid analytes measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy have been associated with type 2 diabetes, a structured comparison of the ability of NMR-derived biomarkers and standard lipids to predict individual diabetes risk has not been undertaken in larger studies nor among individuals at high risk of diabetes. Research design and methods Cumulative discriminative utilities of various groups of biomarkers including NMR lipoproteins, related non-lipid biomarkers, standard lipids, and demographic and glycemic traits were compared for short-term (3.2 years) and long-term (15 years) diabetes development in the Diabetes Prevention Program, a multiethnic, placebo-controlled, randomized controlled trial of individuals with pre-diabetes in the USA (N=2590). Logistic regression, Cox proportional hazards model and six different hyperparameter-tuned machine learning algorithms were compared. The Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) was used as the primary measure of discriminative utility. Results Models with baseline NMR analytes and their changes did not improve the discriminative utility of simpler models including standard lipids or demographic and glycemic traits. Across all algorithms, models with baseline 2-hour glucose performed the best (max MCC=0.36). Sophisticated machine learning algorithms performed similarly to logistic regression in this study. Conclusions NMR lipoproteins and related non-lipid biomarkers were associated but did not augment discrimination of diabetes risk beyond traditional diabetes risk factors except for 2-hour glucose. Machine learning algorithms provided no meaningful improvement for discrimination compared with logistic regression, which suggests a lack of influential latent interactions among the analytes assessed in this study. Trial registration number Diabetes Prevention Program: NCT00004992; Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study: NCT00038727.


By splicing and tapering at the fusion point of one-core single-mode fiber and three- or four-core single-mode fiber, an effective bitapered fiber coupling technique is implemented. Based on the beam propagation method, the bitapered coupling characteristics between the one-core fiber and the multicore single-mode fiber are simulated and analyzed. The theoretical prediction is confirmed by the experimental results, and the difference between the simulation and the experimental results is also discussed.


Abstract Let ${{F}_{2n,2}}$ be the free nilpotent Lie group of step two on $2n$ generators, and let $\mathbf{P}$ denote the affine automorphism group of ${{F}_{2n,2}}$ . In this article the theory of continuous wavelet transform on ${{F}_{2n,2}}$ associated with $\mathbf{P}$ is developed, and then a type of radial wavelet is constructed. Secondly, the Radon transform on ${{F}_{2n,2}}$ is studied, and two equivalent characterizations of the range for Radon transform are given. Several kinds of inversion Radon transform formulae are established. One is obtained from the Euclidean Fourier transform; the others are from the group Fourier transform. By using wavelet transforms we deduce an inversion formula of the Radon transform, which does not require the smoothness of functions if the wavelet satisfies the differentiability property. In particular, if $n\,=\,1$ , ${{F}_{2,2}}$ is the 3-dimensional Heisenberg group ${{H}^{1}}$ , the inversion formula of the Radon transform is valid, which is associated with the sub-Laplacian on ${{F}_{2,2}}$ . This result cannot be extended to the case $n\,\ge \,2$ .


Objective To investigate the contribution of the adhesion receptor DNAX accessory molecule-1 (DNAM-1) in the development of dermal fibrosis on gene inactivation and targeted molecular strategies. Methods Human skin expression of DNAM-1 was determined by immunohistochemistry. Mice deficient for DNAM-1 (dnam1−/−) and wild-type controls (dnam1+/+) were injected with bleomycin or NaCl. Infiltrating leucocytes, T cells, B cells and monocytes were quantified and inflammatory cytokines were measured in lesional skin of dnam1−/− and dnam1+/+ mice. The anti-fibrotic potential of a DNAM-1 neutralising monoclonal antibody (mAb) was evaluated in the mouse model of bleomycin-induced dermal fibrosis. Results Overexpression of DNAM-1 was detected in the skin of patients with SSc (systemic sclerosis). Dnam1−/− mice were protected from bleomycin-induced dermal fibrosis with reduction of dermal thickening (75±5%, p=0.03), hydroxyproline content (46±8%, p=0.04) and myofibroblast counts (39±5%, p=0.01). Moreover, the number of T cells was significantly decreased in lesional skin of dnam1−/− mice (69±15%, p=0.0007). Dnam1−/− mice also displayed decreased levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in lesional skin. Consistent with the gene inactivation strategy, treatment of mice with DNAM-1 neutralising mAb prevented dermal fibrosis induced by bleomycin with reduction of dermal thickness (64±6%, p=0.002), hydroxyproline content (61±8%, p=0.004) and myofibroblast counts (83±12%, p=0.002). Conclusions An inactivation gene strategy showed that DNAM-1 exerts profibrotic effects by controlling T cell activation and cytokine release. A molecular targeted strategy confirmed that DNAM-1 neutralising mAb has potent antifibrotic properties, supporting the hypothesis that inhibition of DNAM-1 might be a promising new approach for the treatment of SSc and potentially other related fibrotic diseases.


I. INTRODUCTIONToday's teachers are not only responsible for educating students but are increasingly expected to serve as role models for their students. Unfortunately, ethics and professional responsibility for educators is a topic that is often given limited or no coverage in the required curriculum of teacher preparation programs across the United States. An educational experience that explicitly includes professional ethics is essential to prepare teachers for the challenges they face in the classroom environment where they teach and guide the character development of our nation's youth.The focus of the national political conversation about education recently has been on the proper role, rewards, recognitions, and protections afforded to public classroom teachers. Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Education recently enlarged the debate by making "Effective Teachers and Leaders" the first pillar of reform under the $4 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) competition among states, a program which continues to be the centerpiece of this administration's education agenda. In many states, the issue has become divisive with legislatures and governors' offices taking aim at teacher tenure laws that, in many respects, prevent or hinder reform efforts targeting teachers. What makes for effective teaching and how to recognize and reward teachers determined to be effective and, conversely, to improve and remove teachers determined to be ineffective, promises to be a mainstay in the national conversation about education for the foreseeable future.For all the talk nationally about reforming teacher tenure laws and improving student and educator performance, the authors of this study noticed that very little attention is being paid to teachers' ethical responsibilities and the existing reasons for disciplinary actions against educators. Since public school educators hold important positions requiring a high level of public trust and responsibility in our society by virtue of their work with our nation's youth,' the public expects educators to adhere to high standards of moral and ethical conduct. These standards are typically set forth in state statutes and regulations, and educator discipline is based on violations of these laws. A violation of one of these standards may lead an educator to lose his or her teaching credentials and/or be dismissed from his or her job in a public school.The highest aspirations for teacher behavior are typically embodied in state educator codes of professional responsibility.2 These ethical codes, which may or may not be explicitly part of a state's laws, hold educators accountable for behavior consistent with community values and require educators who are committed to the welfare of their students, the profession, and their colleagues. Legal rules for certification and teacher discipline, on the other hand, may be codified and often represent the lowest level of acceptable behavior for educators.3 The teacher certification and discipline rules delineate the minimum standards individuals must meet to enter the profession. Thus, in their practice, educators must negotiate the tension between their basic legal responsibilities toward their students, schools, and colleagues with the aspirational ethical codes of their state. This tension between law and ethics is discernible in states that have codified their educator code of professional responsibility in their teacher certification statute or regulations. In these states, such as North Carolina and Texas, the codified law specifically requires a higher level of ethical conduct from their educators rather than relying on external professional organizations, such as in Illinois, or the courts, such as in Michigan, to set the boundaries of ethical behavior. Where the professional educator ethical codes are codified, educators can be made aware of expected and acceptable conduct more easily.The existing literature lacks a cross-state analysis of educator discipline and ethical codes. …


International differences in support for human rights are reviewed. The first of two sections reviews variations in the strength of ratification of UN human rights treaties, followed by an examination of the commonalities and relative strengths among the five regional human rights systems. This review indicates that internationally the strongest human rights support is found in Europe and the Americas, with weaker support in Africa, followed by still weaker support in the Arab Union and Southeast Asia. The second section reviews variations in responses to public opinion polls on a number of civil and economic rights. A strong coherence in support for different kinds of rights was found, and between a nation's public support for human rights and the number of UN human rights conventions a nation has ratified. U.S. public support for human rights is compared to international averages. Finally, two suggestions are offered for strengthening support for human rights.


Western Australians have long contemplated the possibility of seceding from the Australian federation. The idea has often been discussed in the state's newspapers and at public meetings, and at one point the idea had so much support that the Western Australian government proposed a secession referendum, which was carried successfully in 1933. Although the secessionist movement of the 1930s was, for reasons that will be explained, ultimately unsuccessful, secessionist feelings continue down to this day. state grievances over ever-increasing centralisation of power in Canberra are long-standing and, if anything, have intensified in recent times. This chapter will discuss current attitudes to federation within Western Australia in the context of that state's initial reluctance and long history of secessionist ferment, and against that background explore the question of secession as a way of shedding light on the conceptual foundations of the Australian federal system. Federation and initial reluctance The origins of the secession debate in Western Australia can be traced to the era leading up to federation, and its initial reluctance to become a member state. In the 1890s, the colony was invited to attend constitutional conventions for the purpose of joining the other colonies of Australia to make up a federation. Throughout those years Western Australian political leaders, such as the redoubtable Premier John Forrest, often expressed serious reservations about joining the new Commonwealth. There were a number of reasons for such hesitancy. First, Western Australia had only become a self-governing colony in 1890 and there was a reluctance to give up an autonomy so very recently attained. Secondly, the colony was geographically isolated and did not share a sense of unity with its eastern counterparts. Indeed, New Zealand is situated geographically closer to the eastern states than Western Australia and was also given an opportunity to join the Commonwealth as an original state, but declined the offer. Thirdly and more importantly, Western Australians were extremely concerned that their economy would be crippled for the benefit of continental neighbours with whom they had little affinity.


ABSTRACT In Jabal Madmar in the Sultanate of Oman, Cretaceous epeiric carbonate platform architectures were characterized by employing a digital outcrop modelling workflow. A framework model for Natih Sequence I (Natih E member) was established, which embeds a meticulously studied platform-top incision and shoal complex. Outcrop-scale clinoforms are recognized in these shoals by hectometre-scale (100 m long) medium to high-angle (1–5°) inclined stratal surfaces comprising texture-based facies transitions. These clinoforms are usually beneath the resolution of seismic data and as such are not easily recognized and correlated between wells. Geologically realistic clinoform models were built using a well-defined stratigraphic model that incorporated inclined surfaces in the model grid and if available, data on lateral facies transitions. Waterflood simulations demonstrated improved sweep efficiency in these models. In contrast, simple models without clinoform heterogeneities resulted in less efficient piston-like patterns of sweep. The study presented in this paper demonstrates an outcome contrary to previous studies, as in this study, barriers to flow are absent. Complex clinoform models must be considered in reservoir modelling workflows to correctly derive static and dynamic rock properties. This is because outcrop-scale clinoforms have a potential impact on reservoir behaviour under secondary and tertiary recovery mechanisms.


Indirect techniques for controlling individuals are advanced, promoted in terms of a moral vocabulary of 'self-care'. One of the challenges for a national culture disaggregating in this way is how to contain, channel, even profit from the fears, resentment and anxiety that accompanies the loss of various prior forms of security. Here I explore, through analysis of a number of texts, the ways in which the representation of drugs is rallied to this purpose—inciting, concentrating and managing the fear surrounding changes to the economic, political, racial and sexual landscape of our time, while refiguring expectations, demarcations and investments in the public and private domains, and how these spheres of action are made to appear.


Electrochromic materials have the ability to change their optical properties, gradually and reversibly, when an electrical potential is applied across them. Thin films of transition metal oxides impart electrochromic functionality to the emerging smart window technology. Together with transparent contacts and a solid or gel-like electrolyte they constitute the building blocks of electrochromic devices. A typical device consists of five layers between two substrates, or alternatively deposited on a single substrate. In the former configuration, each substrate is coated by a transparent conducting layer and subsequently by an electrochromic layer. The two sides of the device are laminated by an ion conductor, preferably a polymer-based one. The electrochromic layers are chosen to be complementary. One of them is cathodic (i.e. it colors under cation/electron insertion) and the other is anodic (coloring under cation/electron extraction).Some of the important performance parameters of an electrochromic device are the optical contrast between transparent and dark states, the charge capacity and the switching speed. Each of these has its roots in the fundamental physical and electrochemical properties of the materials. The optical properties depend on the nature of the electronic transitions and whether the electrons are free or localized. It appears that in many electrochromic materials intervalence transitions between localized states is the most important mechanism. Basically, a good description of the optical properties depends on a good understanding of the electronic band structure. The charge capacity of an electrochromic film depends on the magnitude of the electronic density of states in the reversible potential range. It should be noted that the achievable density of states may be less than the theoretically expected one, since intercalated ions may not be able to penetrate all parts of the material. The switching speed depends on the diffusion coefficient of ions in the electrochromic films, as well as in the electrolyte. The sheet resistance of the transparent conductors is also important in this respect.A number of electrochemical techniques are suitable for studying ionic transport in intercalation materials, such as for example electrochromic films in contact with an electrolyte. Impedance spectroscopy gives the most detailed characterization of the transport processes but measurements are time consuming, and in certain situations more simple techniques such as chronopotentiometry or choronoamperometry may be preferable. Electronic transport may be studied with conventional electrical measurements with the film samdwiched between two metal electrodes.In this contribution we will focus on the determination of the diffusion coefficient and the electronic density of states (DOS) by electrochemical methods, and how to use this knowledge to describe the optical properties. It is shown that the features observed in the "electrochemical density of states" often show good agreement with the theoretically computed DOS. However, the magnitude of the electrochemical DOS is always lower that the theoretical one. It seems that the whole film is not accessible to the ion intercalation process. We also address the question whether the electronic states are extended or localized and how to determine this experimentally. Theories for optical properties are reviewed based on the intervalence transfer concept. In some, but not all, cases the transitions may be identified as polaronic. We also comment on the existence of electrochromism due to free electrons and its possible limitations. Examples are given mainly from our work on WO3, but also results on SnO2, IrO2 and NiO-based films will be discussed.


Calcaneus osteomyelitis is a rare infection in newborns. Invasive procedures, prematurity and low birth wight are some causative factors. The clinical signs may be mild. We report a neonate with calcaneous osteomyelitis which was secondary to a Guthrie test sample. She was admitted to hospital with swelling, redness and increased temperature on her heel. Superficial tissue ultrasound showed fluid collection with heavy content was observed on the posterior of the right foot. Puncture and drainage was performed and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus was isolated from the drainage culture. Extremity magnetic resonance imaging showed tissue defect in right foot, edema-inflammation and contrast enhancement. Intravenous sulbactam-ampicillin and oral amoxicillin and clavulanic acid were given for 6 weeks. In follow-up, clinical symptoms recovered without curettage. In conclusion; calcaneous osteomyelitis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of swelling on heel in neonates who have been applied to invasive procedures as Guthrie test sample.