The primary purpose of this research is to investigate the information requirements that need to be available on merchants' websites. This information is important to facilitate the establishment of initial trust from potential consumers towards the owners of electronic commerce (EC) websites. This study is important due to the nature of EC itself where EC is a non face-to-face business
arrangement. EC is still yet to be widely accepted and trusted by consumers.

This thesis is intended to develop an information framework for creating trust from consumers to merchants referred to as a Merchant Trust Information Framework. This framework can help both parties involved in establishing trust during EC transactions. Merchants can use this framework to decide what information needs to be present on their websites in order to help consumers establish trust while consumers can use this information framework to evaluate the trustworthiness of merchants before they decide to continue with their EC transactions. In addition, a prototype was created to test the proposed information framework in a real EC setting.

The proposed information framework consists of information regarding existence, affiliation, policy and fulfillment. The result of the study confirmed the importance and need for this information in the information framework. However,
the creation of merchant trust does not only depend on the information framework being suggested but it also depends on other factors such as the technology used in the websites, the design of the websites as well as other external factors and previous online transactions between consumers and merchants.

To make this process more usable, a prototype system for information extraction and retrieval was developed to help customers find the related information for the merchant trust framework. This information is directly extracted from merchants' websites when available in textual format. Further refinement of the system should turn it into a personal shopping assistant to help consumers find important information about merchant trust creation in an online shopping environment.


This paper describes a system for full-duplex communication between a time-shared computer and its terminals. The system consists of a communications computer directly connected to the time-shared system, a number of small remote computers to which the terminals are attached, and connecting medium speed telephone lines. It can service a large number of terminals of various types. The overall system design is presented along with the algorithms used to solve three specific problems: local echoing, error detection and correction on the telephone lines, and multiplexing of character output.


The output of handwritten word recognizers tends to be very noisy due to factors such as variable handwriting styles, distortions in the image data, etc. In order to compensate for this behaviour, several choices of the word recognizer are initially considered but eventually reduced to a single choice based on constraints posed by the particular domain. In the case of handwritten sentence/phrase recognition, linguistic constraints may be applied in order to improve the results of the word recognizer. Linguistic constraints can be applied as (i) a purely post-processing operation or (ii) in a feedback loop to the word recognizer. This paper discusses two statistical methods of applying syntactic constraints to the output of a handwritten word recognizer on input consisting of sentences/phrases. Both methods are based on syntactic categories (tags) associated with words. The first is a purely statistical method, the second is a hybrid method which combines higherlevel syntactic information (hypertags) with statistical information regarding transitions between hypertags. We show the utility of both these approaches in the problem of handwritten sentence/phrase recognition.


This short note is a validation of a previous work which found no correlation between changes in atmospheric CO2 and fossil fuel emissions at an annual time scale. In this work, this result is tested for robustness with respect to sample period selection within a range of data availability. A resampling procedure similar to bootstrap is used. Resampling ensures that the failure to find a correlation is not an artifact of the sample period chosen. The results validate the robustness of the previous finding and imply that here is no evidence that atmospheric CO2 is responsive to fossil fuel emissions at an annual time scale net of long term trends. This result is robust. It holds for all possible combination of years in the study period 1958-2015.


Background: A combination of frontal bending, lateral bending, and torsion in the loaded trunk has been suggested to be a mechanism leading to overuse injuries of the back in Alpine ski racing. However, there is limited knowledge about the effect of course setting on the aforementioned back-loading patterns. Purpose: To investigate the effect of increased gate offset on the skier's overall trunk kinematics and the occurring ground-reaction forces and to compare these variables between the competition disciplines giant slalom (GS) and slalom (SL). Study Design: Controlled laboratory study. Methods: Ten top-level athletes were divided into GS and SL groups. Both groups performed a total of 240 GS and 240 SL turns at 2 different course settings. The overall trunk movement components (frontal bending, lateral bending, and torsion angle) were measured using 2 inertial measurement units fixed on the sacrum and sternum. Total ground-reaction forces were measured by pressure insoles. Results: In SL, ground-reaction force peaks were significantly lower when the gate offset was increased, while in GS, no differences between course settings were observed. During the turn phase in which the highest spinal disc loading is expected to occur, the back-loading patterns in both GS and SL included a combination of frontal bending, lateral bending, and torsion in the loaded trunk. SL was characterized by shorter turns, lower frontal and lateral bending angles after gate passage, and a trend toward greater total ground-reaction force peaks compared with GS. Conclusion: Course setting is a reasonable measure to reduce the skier's overall back loading in SL but not in GS. The distinct differences observed between GS and SL should be taken into account when defining discipline-specific prevention measures for back overuse injuries. Clinical Relevance: To reduce the magnitude of the overall back loading, in SL, minimal gate offsets should be avoided. Prevention measures in GS might particularly need to control and/or reduce the magnitude of frontal and lateral bending in the loaded trunk, whereas prevention measures in SL might especially need to mitigate the short and high total ground-reaction force peaks.


This paper describes the production of "green" microfibrillated cellulose-reinforced polylactide cellular biocomposites using a wet mixing technique combined with supercritical carbon dioxide foaming. The effect of composition on the morphology, density and compression modulus of foams was investigated for different processing parameters, along with the use of a chain extender to modify the melt elasticity. Foams with mean densities ranging from 0.18 to 0.32 g/cm3 were obtained for the neat polylactide and polylactide/5 wt% microfibrillated cellulose, respectively, and there was a corresponding increase in compressive modulus from 25 to 47 MPa. The addition of the chain extender is argued to compensate the molar mass loss induced by the different processing steps, promoting more uniform foam structures and allowing a density reduction of up to 75%.


The sintering behavior of cubic boron nitride (c-BN) composites and c-BN / ceramic whisker composites under conditions in which the c-BN is thermodynamically metastable were studied by HIPing, and by ultrahigh pressure hot isostatic pressing (UHPHIPing), and by ultrahigh pressure hot pressing (UHPHPing). The c-BN fine particles (particle size: 0.5-2μm) coated with TiN by a physical vapor deposition (PVD) method, was used. A high-purity alumina (α-Al2O3) powder produced by the ammonium-aluminum carbonate thermal decomposition process were used as bonding materials with a very small amount of magnesia and titania, and 0, 30 and 40vol% SiC whiskers were also added. The obtained c-BN composites including relatively large amount of c-BN, or c-BN and SiC whiskers, were fully compacted without forming h-BN. Some of them showed very high hardness that ranked with c-BN cutting tools.


In 2000, I was asked to prepare a report on The Economics of Standardization for the British government, summarising what was known about the field at that time (Swann, 2000). Ten years later, I was asked to update this (Swann, 2010). This short think piece follows on from those earlier reports. It considers this, purely hypothetical question: if I were to produce another update, what new topics might it cover? A full update would need to consider a long list, but here I focus on just four issues.1) You cannot understand all aspects of the economics of standards if you are too specialised in a limited area of economics. For those working on the economics of innovation, which is my field, standards mostly appear to encourage trade. But for those working on the economics of agriculture or the economics of development, the picture is rather different. We examine two contrasting examples which illustrate why these differences arise.2) Many empirical studies of the effects of standards on trade treat the relationship as something of a black box, and to understand what is going on, we need to open up that box. We give a brief summary of some of the connections to be found in the box. It appears that the number and complexity of linkages has evolved over time, and will probably continue to evolve in future.3) If the standards development organisation (hereafter, SDO) is to develop a full understanding of the economics of standardization, and all the ways in which standards can enhance economic performance, it must involve a wide variety of players. These should include representatives from some the developing countries who can be losers from the process of standardization, and also representatives from various sectors of the economy that have, to date, been absent from the standards table. There is, of course, a substantial gap between the capabilities of some of these new players and the established players in the standards community. Nevertheless, we shall argue that involvement of these new players is good for the standards community as a whole.4) As the variety of players increases, however, the SDO will have to face a problem that is perhaps, at present, just below the surface. Some of the challenges facing the SDOs can be seen as questions of social choice. Given the different preferences of different participants, how can the SDO reach a compromise that is acceptable to all? Arrow's celebrated impossibility theorem tells us that this is not a trivial question. Roughly speaking, the problems of social choice become more significant as the diversity of participant preferences increases.. It seems likely, in particular, that these problems may be more common in the context of mega-regions (TPP and TTIP) and the WTO, than in (say) CEN and CENELEC.


Due to its rapid spread, the World Health Organization characterized coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Coronaviruses cause a variety of respiratory diseases, ranging from the mild common cold to the lethal Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. At the end of 2019, COVID-19 made its way onto the global stage due to its rapid human-to-human transmission and its ability to cause death secondary to respiratory failure. Symptoms of lower respiratory illness, including cough and shortness of breath, along with fever, should raise suspicion of COVID-19 infection in those who have recently traveled to high-risk areas or have had close contact with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19. Other symptoms include gastrointestinal distress and cardiac involvement. Polymerase chain reaction testing of respiratory specimens and computed tomographic scans of the chest can be used to confirm the disease. Preventing exposure to the disease through handwashing, surface disinfection, and avoiding contact with those who are sick is the best way to prevent transmission of the disease. Many countries and local governments have implemented stayat-home orders to decrease the rapid spread of COVID-19. Management of the disease involves symptom control, as there is currently no available treatment, but many clinical trials are underway. Global health efforts have concentrated on quick and aggressive actions to slow the transmission of the disease and identify cases as quickly as possible but with varying degrees of success.


While computational studies of stress patterns as phonotactics have yielded restrictive characterizations  of stress (Rogers et al., 2013) with provably correct learning procedures (Heinz, 2009), an outstanding  question is the nature of stress assignment as a  function which assigns stress to an underlying bare string  of syllables. This paper fills this gap by locating stress patterns with respect to the  subsequential class  of functions (Mohri, 1997), which are argued to be important for phonology in that the vast majority of  phonological functions fall within the subsequential boundary (Heinz & Lai, 2013; Chandlee, 2014), with the  notable exception of tone and vowel harmony (Jardine, 2016; McCollum et al., under review).  The main result is that—while most, if not all quantity insensitive (QI) stress systems are subsequential functions—the same does not hold for quantity sensitive  (QS) systems. Counter-intuitively, so-called default-to-opposite  QS patterns are subsequential, but default-to-same QS patterns are provably not. It also supports the claim of Jardine (2016) that certain tonal patterns are non-sequential because their suprasegmental nature allows for more a more powerful computation. As stress assignment is also suprasegmental, the existence of non-sequential stress functions adds evidence for this conclusion.


Much of our lives are spent in unconstrained rest states, yet cognitive brain processes are primarily investigated experimentally using task-constrained states. It may be possible to utilize the insights gained from experimental control of task processes as reference points for investigating unconstrained rest. To facilitate comparison of rest and task functional MRI (fMRI) data we focused on activation amplitude patterns, commonly used for task but not rest analyses. During rest, we identified spontaneous changes in temporally extended whole-brain activation pattern states. This revealed a hierarchical organization of rest states. The top consisted of two competing states consistent with previously identified "task-positive" and "task-negative" activation patterns. These states were composed of a variety of more specific states that repeated over time and across individuals. In contrast to the classic view that rest consists of only task-negative states, task-positive states were present over 40% of the time while individuals "rested." This suggests individuals conduct extensive task-oriented mental activity during rest. Consistent with this interpretation, classifier decoding of rest brain states based on thousands of task fMRI studies identified a variety of matched active tasks. Further, an analysis of task data revealed a similar hierarchical structure of brain states. Together these results suggest brain activation dynamics form a general hierarchy across both task and rest, with a small number of dominant general states reflecting basic modes of brain function along with a variety of specific states likely reflecting the rich variety of cognitive states experienced in everyday life.


This essay is based around two sentences from Nadeem Alslam's 2004 novel Maps for Lost Lovers. From this base comes an exploration of what aesthetics could mean for cultural studies, and what sorts of practices it could foster. The essay argues for the pertinence this may have for the study of food culture, while also taking up the project of 'critical regionalism' and 'gastropoetics' as a way of moving from the tightly figured frame of a fragment from a novel, to the histories, geographies and affects that impact on it.


Super star clusters" are the most massive extreme in the continuum of young star clusters. In this thesis, I examine the properties of such super star clusters in a sample of starburst galaxies with space and ground-based observations and in the optical, mid-infrared, and radio regimes. Using optical photometry, I estimate the ages and masses, as well as construct luminosity functions for the super star cluster systems. Additional H observations allow me to place tighter constraints on the burst ages and trace very recent star formation. The super star clusters detected in these galaxies typically have estimated ages Myr, masses of M , and luminosity functions consistent with other super star cluster systems with a slope of ( ). Next I discuss an even earlier stage of massive star cluster evolution, when super star clusters are still embedded in their birth material. I overview the discovery of "ultra dense H II regions" (UDH IIs) with radio and mid-infrared observations. From the radio observations, I calculate the electron densities, radii, and number of ionizing photons (and therefore number of embedded massive stars). The mid-infrared observations confirm the presence of hot dust cocoons surrounding these objects. These embedded clusters account for at least % of the midto far-infrared flux of He 2-10. I also discuss the impact of UDH IIs on the radio to far-infrared flux ratio. Finally, I present a sample of 35 embedded star formation regions (ranging from the size of small OB-associations to super star clusters) serendipitously detected in nearby galaxies. This sample of objects begins to fill in the continuum of cluster masses between individual UCH II regions and the embedded massive clusters.


Coastal zones are among the world's most densely populated and economically important areas, but these factors put pressure on the often limited available freshwater resources. Global change will undoubtedly increase this pressure through the combined effects of increased population, economic development, rising sea levels, increased evapotranspiration, over-extraction and the salinization of coastal aquifers, decreasing river discharges, and accelerating land subsidence. Saline groundwater exfiltration is a common problem in the coastal zone of the Netherlands, but the hydrological processes and physiographic factors that affect this are not fully understood. The research presented in this book aims to identify the processes and physiographic factors controlling the spatial variability and temporal dynamics of the exfiltration of saline groundwater to surface water, and hence the contribution of saline groundwater to surface water salinity. Topics covered include a paleo-hydrogeological model simulation of the Holocene evolution of groundwater salinity as a result of paleo-geographic changes; surface water salinity dynamics in a densely-drained lowland catchment; hydrograph separation in an agricultural catchment; observations of heads, flow, solute concentration and temperature to constrain a detailed, variable-density groundwater flow and transport model; and a model to simulate the salinity dynamics of exfiltrating groundwater to support operational water management of freshwater resources in coastal lowlands. The book further outlines the implications of these findings for freshwater management in the Netherlands. The book demonstrates that the salinity of groundwater exfiltrating in polders in the Netherlands, and hence surface water salinity, varies on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.


Drawing on research from around the world, this atlas gives shape and meaning to statistics, making it an indispensable resource for understanding global inequalities and an inspiration for social and political action. Inequality underlies many of the challenges facing the world today, and "The Atlas of Global Inequalities" considers the issue in all its dimensions. Organized in thematic parts, it maps not only the global distribution of income and wealth, but also inequalities in social and political rights and freedoms. It describes how inadequate health services, unsafe water, and barriers to education hinder people's ability to live their lives to the full; assesses poor transport, energy, and digital communication infrastructures and their effect on economic development; and, highlights the dangers of unclean and unhealthy indoor and outdoor environments. Through world, regional, and country maps, and innovative and intriguing graphics, the authors unravel the complexity of inequality, revealing differences between countries as well as illustrating inequalities within them. Topics include: the discrimination suffered by children with a disability; the impact of inefficient and dangerous household fuels on the daily lives and long-term health of those who rely on them; the unequal opportunities available to women; and, the reasons for families' descent into, and reemergence from, poverty.


The emblematic Austral Collection, a pioneer in pocket books, is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2012, after having progressed from being a collection to a proper publishing company within the Planeta Group. Planeta acquired Austral when it took over the Espasa publishing company in the decade of the nineties. The goal of this article is to analyze Austral's significance, evolution and development since its creation in 1937 up to date, within the framework of the history of its publication, considering both the contents and the design. The methodology used has been that of studying the bibliography on the subject and in particular the collection itself in all of its models. A data base has been prepared with authors' names, titles and publication dates, for which it was necessary to consult several collections in public and private libraries in order to review all the volumes. Research was also carried out on all the variations found in the collection and six different models were found. The conclusion is that the Austral Collection can be considered a paradigm of pocket books and a leading promotional agent for culture in Latin America; a project which would be very difficult to repeat


Many different types of cells develop increased adenylyl cyclase activity (sensitization) on prior treatment with drugs such as opiates that acutely inhibit the enzyme. We found that human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 m2 cells, which express the inhibitory m2 muscarinic cholinergic receptor, exhibit a large increase in forskolin-stimulated cAMP synthesis when the cells are preincubated with the muscarinic agonist carbachol for > or = 5 min and forskolin stimulation is performed in the presence of the muscarinic antagonist atropine. To determine whether a specific isoform of adenylyl cyclase is susceptible to the adaptation induced by prior activation of inhibitory receptors, cells were transfected with expression vectors encoding adenylyl cyclase types I, II, and VI, representing three major groups of the adenylyl cyclase family. Preincubation of the cells with carbachol for 30 min resulted in a significant increase in prostaglandin E1-stimulated cAMP accumulation in cells expressing type VI, but not type I or type II, adenylyl cyclase. A similar selective increase in activity from type VI adenylyl cyclase was observed for prior treatment with the D2 dopamine agonist quinpirole and stimulation of cAMP synthesis with human chorionic gonadotropin in cells transfected with expression vectors coding for the cognate receptors. We next investigated whether beta gamma subunits play a role in the sensitization of type VI adenylyl cyclase activity; using expression of alpha tau to inhibit beta gamma-mediated effects, we found that the quinpirole-induced sensitization of type VI adenylyl cyclase was abolished. However, beta gamma subunits do not seem to directly activate type VI adenylyl cyclase, in contrast with their ability to directly activate the type II enzyme. Therefore, beta gamma subunits liberated after activation of inhibitory receptors seem to indirectly cause an increase in activity of type VI adenylyl cyclase. Indirect activation of the type VI enzyme by beta gamma subunits is a novel mechanism contributing to the sensitization of adenylyl cyclase.


The Earth's climate varies through geological time as a result of external, orbital processes, as well as the positions of continents, growth of mountains and the opening and closure of oceanic gateways. Climate modelling suggests that the intensity of the Asian monsoon should correlate, at least in part, with the uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya, as well as the evolution of gateways and the retreat of shallow seas in Central Asia. Long-term reconstructions of both mountain building and monsoon activity are key to testing the proposed links. This collection of papers presents a series of new studies documenting the variations of the Asian monsoon on orbital and tectonic timescales, together with the impact this has had on environmental conditions. The issue of which proxies are best suited to measuring monsoons is addressed, as is the effect that the monsoon has had on erosion and the formation of the stratigraphic record both on and offshore.


ABSTRACT The Permian Khuff-C reservoir in Saudi Arabia is known for its lateral and vertical heterogeneity caused mainly by dolomitization. Detailed petrographic analysis of 600 thin sections, from six cored wells, revealed three main replacive dolomite fabrics: (1) fabric-preserving mimetic (FPM), (2) fabric-preserving nonmimetic (FPNM), and (3) fabric-destructive (FD) dolomites. Crystal sizes are mostly less than or equal to 20 μm for FPM dolomite, less than or equal to 50 μm for FPNM dolomite, and less than or equal to 100 μm for FD dolomite. The FPM dolomite decreases in abundance, and FPNM dolomite increases in abundance, with increasing grain content of the facies. The δ 18 O values of dolostones (although considered an obsolete term, dolostone is used here to mean rock containing ≥80% dolomite) indicate early dolomitization at low temperatures in Permian seawater or evaporated seawater, with landward facies (mudstone and wackestone) generally dolomitized by more evaporated waters and seaward grainy facies generally dolomitized by less evaporated, more normal marine seawaters. Stratigraphic variations in the dolostones' δ 18 O values track with facies variations through fourth-order depositional sequences and indicate that different stratigraphic bodies of dolomite formed from seawaters with different degrees of evaporation. The δ 13 C values of the dolostones exhibit temporal trends inherited from the precursor limestones. Variations in the lateral and vertical abundance of dolomite and dolomite fabrics, in the propensity for each facies to be dolomitized, and in the dolomites' oxygen isotopic values all suggest that multiple dolomitization events occurred in the Khuff-C reservoir as depositional cycles accumulated, with some dolostones overprinted by younger events. Average porosities of grain-rich dolostones are greater than those of mud-rich dolostones, indicating that depositional facies preordained porosity distribution within the dolostones. However, the more evaporated the dolomitizing fluid, the more likely dolomitization resulted in lower porosity regardless of facies.


This ICTD Research in Brief is a two-page summary of ICTD Working paper 81 by Olav Lundstol. This series is aimed at policy makers, tax administrators, fellow researchers and anyone else who is big on interest and short on time. The international system for taxation of the profits of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is deeply dysfunctional. The recent attempts at reform have only patched up the system, and alternative approaches should be considered (Picciotto 2017). In the meantime, developing countries sorely need practical guidance, especially on the methods for allocation of profits.These are known as transfer pricing rules.


Dynamic monitoring of plant cover and soil erosion often uses remote sensing data, especially for estimating the plant cover rate (vegetation coverage) by vegetation index. However, the latter is influenced by atmospheric effects and methods for correcting them are still imperfect and disputed. This research supposed and practiced an indirect, fast, and operational method to conduct atmospheric correction of images for getting comparable vegetation index values in different times. It tries to find a variable free from atmospheric effects, e.g., the mean vegetation coverage value of the whole study area, as a basis to reduce atmospheric correction parameters by establishing mathematical models and conducting simulation calculations. Using these parameters, the images can be atmospherically corrected. And then, the vegetation index and corresponding vegetation coverage values for all pixels, the vegetation coverage maps and coverage grade maps for different years were calculated, i.e., the plant cover monitoring was realized. Using the vegetation coverage grade maps and the ground slope grade map from a DEM to generate soil erosion grade maps for different years, the soil erosion monitoring was also realized. The results show that in the study area the vegetation coverage was the lowest in 1976, much better in 1989, but a bit worse again in 2001. Towards the soil erosion, it had been mitigated continuously from 1976 to 1989 and then to 2001. It is interesting that a little decrease of vegetation coverage from 1989 to 2001 did not lead to increase of soil erosion. The reason is that the decrease of vegetation coverage was chiefly caused by urbanization and thus mainly occurred in very gentle terrains, where soil erosion was naturally slight. The results clearly indicate the details of plant cover and soil erosion change in 25 years and also offer a scientific foundation for plant and soil conservation.


SUMMARY Innovation Platforms (IPs) are seen as a promising vehicle to foster a paradigm shift in agricultural research for development (AR4D). By facilitating interaction, negotiation and collective action between farmers, researchers and other stakeholders, IPs can contribute to more integrated, systemic innovation that is essential for achieving agricultural development impacts. However, successful implementation of IPs requires institutional change within AR4D establishments. The objective of this paper is to reflect on the implementation and institutionalisation of IPs in present AR4D programmes. We use experiences from sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate how the adoption and adaptation of IPs creates both opportunities and challenges that influence platform performance and impact. Niche-regime theory is used to understand challenges, and anticipate on how to deal with them. A key concern is whether IPs in AR4D challenge or reinforce existing technology-oriented agricultural innovation paradigms. For example, stakeholder representation, facilitation and institutional embedding determine to a large extent whether the IP can strengthen systemic capacity to innovate that can lead to real paradigm change, or are merely 'old wine in new bottles' and a continuation of 'business as usual'. Institutional embedding of IPs and – more broadly – the transition from technology-oriented to system-oriented AR4D approaches requires structural changes in organisational mandates, incentives, procedures and funding, as well as investments in exchange of experiences, learning and capacity development.


The goal of this paper is to explain recent dynamics of housing prices in Spain. Two phenomena have been observed simultaneously: a signi cant decline in interest and mortgage rates and explosion of Spanish housing prices. Between 1998 and 2002 Spanish housing prices were growing well above in ation level, practically doubling during this period. The decline in interest rate should normally lead to a decline in housing prices, but in Spanish case it has correlated with growth of housing prices. The paper tries to explain the observed phenomenon with the decline of mortgage rate in the environment of local monopolies in housing construction. Contrary to US mortgage markets, which follow long-term rather than short-term interest rate path, Spanish banks o er mortgages at EURIBOR rate plus a small margin. This leads to a signi cant growth in mortgage accessibility for less wealthy agents, but in monopolistic environment is translated into rise of housing price for new construction. The prices of used housing also follow this path. Additional growth e ect comes from an increased demand for housing as nancial asset. There exists an evidence about signi cant purchases of second houses, partly for investment or speculative reasons. The paper constructs a theoretical model of housing prices taking into account all described phenomena.


This paper introduces a new device model and a new interaction technique model to deal with plasticity issues for Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). We aim to provide developers with solutions to use and create interaction techniques that will fit to the needed tasks of a 3D application and to the input and output devices available. The device model introduces a new description of inputs and outputs devices that includes capabilities, limitations and representations in the real world. We also propose a new way to develop interaction techniques with an approach based on PAC and ARCH models. These techniques are implemented independently of the concrete devices used thanks to the proposed device model. Moreover, our approach aims to facilitate the portability of interaction techniques over different target OS and 3D framework.


The authors consider the strategic trade fragmentation by informed traders in an automated and transparent equity trading environment. Employing unique transactional data for a sample of stocks traded on the Australian Stock Exchange, they find significant evidence of trade fragmentation involving medium- and small-size trades. They also show that informed investors trade differently depending on the availability of liquidity. When liquidity is available, informed investors tend to trade in larger trade sizes. On the other hand, when there is little available liquidity, informed investors fragment their trades into smaller size units in order to camouflage their transactions.


"What are we to make of those cultural figures, many with significant international reputations, who tried to find accommodation with the Nazi regime?" Jonathan Petropoulos asks in this exploration of some of the most acute moral questions of the Third Reich. In his nuanced analysis of prominent German artists, architects, composers, film directors, painters, and writers who rejected exile, choosing instead to stay during Germany's darkest period, Petropoulos shows how individuals variously dealt with the regime's public opposition to modern art. His findings explode the myth that all modern artists were anti-Nazi and all Nazis anti-modernist. Artists Under Hitler closely examines cases of artists who failed in their attempts to find accommodation with the Nazi regime (Walter Gropius, Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Barlach, Emil Nolde) as well as others whose desire for official acceptance was realized (Richard Strauss, Gustaf Grundgens, Leni Riefenstahl, Arno Breker, Albert Speer). Collectively these ten figures illuminate the complex cultural history of Nazi Germany, while individually they provide haunting portraits of people facing excruciating choices and grave moral questions.


Importance
Single-center studies have shown that patients report better skin cancer-specific quality of life (QOL) after Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS), but it is unclear whether this improved QOL applies to patients after MMS and complex reconstruction in cosmetically sensitive areas.

Objective
To evaluate patient QOL after MMS and interpolation flap reconstruction for patients with nasal skin cancers.

Design, Setting and Participants
This multicenter prospective survey study used the Skin Cancer Index (SCI), a validated, 15-question QOL questionnaire administered at 4 time points: before MMS, 1 week after flap placement, 4 weeks after flap takedown, and 16 weeks after flap takedown. Patients age 18 years or older with a nasal skin cancer who presented for MMS and were anticipated to undergo 2-stage interpolated flap repair by a Mohs surgeon were recruited from August 9, 2018, to February 2, 2020, at 8 outpatient MMS locations across the United States, including both academic centers and private practices.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Mean difference in overall SCI score before MMS vs 16 weeks after flap takedown.

Results
A total of 169 patients (92 men [54.4%]; mean [SD] age, 67.7 [11.4] years) were enrolled, with 147 patients (75 men [51.0%]; mean [SD] age, 67.8 [11.7] years) completing SCI surveys both before MMS and 16 weeks after flap takedown. Total SCI scores improved significantly 16 weeks after flap takedown compared with pre-MMS scores, increasing by a mean of 13% (increase of 7.11 points; 95% CI, 5.48-8.76; P < .001). All 3 SCI subscale scores (emotion, appearance, and social) improved significantly (emotion subscale, increase of 3.27 points; 95% CI, 2.35-4.18; P < .001; appearance subscale, increase of 1.65 points; 95% CI, 1.12-2.18; P < .001; and social subscale, increase of 2.10 points; 95% CI, 1.55-2.84; P < .001) 16 weeks after flap takedown compared with pre-MMS.

Conclusions and Relevance
Removal of a nasal skin cancer and repair of the resulting defect can be distressing for patients. However, this cohort study suggests that physicians referring patients for MMS can be reassured that their patient's QOL will improve on average after surgery, even when a complex reconstruction is required.


In this report, we have used the radioligand [125I]2-iodo-7,8-dibromo-dibenzo-p-dioxin to describe the kinetics of ligand binding to the Ah receptor prepared from C57BL/6J mouse liver. The higher specific activity of this radioligand (2176 Ci/mmol), compared with the usual tritiated ligand [1,6-3H]2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-p-dioxin (58 Ci/mmol) permitted the study of ligand-receptor interactions at much lower component concentrations. For this radioiodinated ligand, Scatchard analysis of saturation binding curves, determined at six different protein concentrations, indicated that the apparent equilibrium dissociation constant, KD, was directly related to the dilution of the receptor preparation; for example, at 1160 micrograms of protein/ml, KD = 1.6 x 10(-10) M; at 36 micrograms of protein/ml, KD = 1.2 x 10(-11) M. Extrapolation of this function to infinite receptor dilution yielded KD = 6 x 10(-12) M. The addition of 70 micrograms/ml of bovine serum albumin to a receptor preparation of 30 micrograms of protein/ml produced a 10-fold decrease in the slope of the Scatchard plot (i.e., 10-fold increase in the apparent KD). Conversely, enrichment of the receptor by high performance liquid chromatography led to an increased slope and thus decreased estimate of KD. The association rate constant (k1), calculated from the integrated second-order rate equation, was 2.8 x 10(10) M-1 hr-1 and, from the initial velocity equation, had a value of 5.25 x 10(10) M-1 hr-1. The dissociation rate constant was biphasic, consisting of a predominant fast component with a rate constant of 0.36 hr-1 (k-1) and a slower component with a rate constant of 4.2-9.4 x 10(-3) hr-1 (k-2). Higher protein concentrations produced a decrease in estimates of k1 but not k-1 or k-2. The KD determined from the ratio of the kinetic rate constant, k-1/k1 = 6.9 x 10(-12) M, is in excellent agreement with that derived from the results of equilibrium binding experiments extrapolated to infinite dilution, KD = 6 x 10(-12) M. The decrease in KD, observed in equilibrium binding studies upon dilution of the receptor preparation, is best explained by a more accurate classification of "free" radioligand at lower protein concentrations. Finally, ligand binding to the Ah receptor is best described by a two-step process, the formation of an initial complex, characterized by rapid ligand dissociation, which undergoes transformation to a second distinct complex displaying a much slower ligand dissociation rate.


"Picture Yourself Networking Your Home or Small Office" uses photos and diagrams, complemented by extensive and easy-to-follow text, to help any reader network his or her home or small office using wired or wireless technology. With the full-color, visual, tutorial style of the Picture Yourself series, youll learn how to select and set up Internet connections, servers and workstations, firewall security, and protective software to minimize risks from malicious code. In addition, youll discover how networking technology can be used to automate your home, boost security of the physical premises, talk to others via IP phone connections, provide entertainment, and more. Each step of the process is covered, including selecting equipment, parts, and tools; wiring and installing the network; and installing and setting up required software.


Background Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is increasingly being integrated into conventional medical care for cancer, used to counter the side effects of conventional cancer treatment, and offered as an alternative to conventional cancer care. Our aim is to gain a broader understanding of trends in CAM interventions for cancer and crowdfunding campaigns for these interventions. Methods GoFundMe campaigns fundraising for CAM were retrieved through a database of crowdfunding campaign data. Search terms were drawn from two National Institutes of Health lists of CAM cancer interventions and a previous study. Campaigns were excluded that did not match these or related search terms or were initiated outside of June 4th, 2018 to June 4th, 2019. Results 1,396 campaigns were identified from the US (n = 1,037, 73.9%), Canada (n = 165, 11.8%), and the UK (n = 107, 7.7%). Most common cancer types were breast (n = 344, 24.6%), colorectal (n = 131, 9.4%), and brain (n = 98, 7.0%). CAM interventions sought included supplements (n = 422, 30.2%), better nutrition (n = 293, 21.0%), high dose vitamin C (n = 276, 19.8%), naturopathy (n = 226, 16.2%), and cannabis products (n = 211, 15.1%). Mexico (n = 198, 41.9%), and the US (n = 169, 35.7%) were the most common treatment destinations. Conclusions These findings confirm active and ongoing interest in using crowdfunding platforms to finance CAM cancer interventions. They confirm previous findings that CAM users with cancer tend to have late stage cancers, cancers with high mortality rates, and specific diseases such as breast cancer. These findings can inform targeted responses where facilities engage in misleading marketing practices and the efficacy of interventions is unproven.


Broad-acre subdivisions on the fringe of cities constitute a relatively novel and rapidly increasing form of urban development known as exurbia. Despite the potentially significant effects exurban development can have on nature, no study has documented its effects on the distinct faunal communities of Australia. Within two exurban regions of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, birds were sampled within discrete exurban habitats, exurban forest, modified forest, gardens, and paddocks, and corresponding wildland forests. Flightless mammals were surveyed by spotlight in the same environments. Landowners gave their opinions on a variety of nature-related issues. Their ownership of domestic mesopredators, participation in activities that might affect wildlife, and observations of wildlife were also recorded. Wildland bird species assemblages persisted within exurbia where the native canopy remained, but were displaced by synanthropes in gardens, and were strongly disadvantaged in paddocks. An aggressive small-bird-excluding edge species, the noisy miner, responded more strongly to historic rural clearance boundaries than to forest perforation and modification. In its absence, avian habitat specialists were not affected by the proximity or density of houses. Paddocks had more heterogeneous bird assemblages than expected. Overall, the native exurban avifauna was richer than the avifauna of both adjacent suburbs and control areas of native vegetation. Exurban landowners were comprised of four discrete attitudinal groups. Two of the groups were nature lovers, one was utilitarian, and the other was fearful of aspects of nature beyond their control, particularly unruly trees. The group with the strongest fear of trees had the highest level of tree cover on their property.
Attitudinal group was also associated with the distribution of some garden types, but not with landscape characteristics. Exurbanite attitudinal type had very little influence on the frequency or distribution of wild mammals observed by spotlight, but nature lovers were more likely to report observations of some species. Independent of attitudinal groups, the most detrimental landowner activity was pet ownership. Any detrimental effects of exurban domestic cat populations were unapparent due to the non-uniform distribution of cat owners and the presence of feral cats. Properties with dogs, however, were distributed more uniformly, and were avoided spatially and temporally by several species of mammal, including species that dog owners had not observed as prey. Within an isolated peninsula exurban region, the spatial avoidance of exurbia resulted in low numbers of those mammal species with large home range requirements. One species of bandicoot, however, was more common where houses were relatively dense. Overall, two very fecund mammal species, including a threatened native bandicoot, were more abundant in exurbia than in wildlands. For mammal conservation, houses may best be clustered in areas where access to wildland remnants is limited. This will slightly diminish the mammalian species diversity where residents live, but may be preferable to dispersed housing developments, which support greater species diversity than clustered developments, but will also distribute the effects of domestic mesopredators over a greater proportion of the landscape. Heterogeneous exurban landscapes are not necessarily detrimental for avifaunal conservation, as long as they include areas of undisturbed native vegetation, either in remnants or on exurban properties.


Reading is one of the most important skills among all the other language skills. It helps the learner to achieve a lot of information and serves as a primary source of input, and consolidates their previous knowledge. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of regulative metacognition strategies on EFL learners' reading comprehension. A null hypothesis was proposed to answer the questions of this study: - There is no statistically significant relationship between regulative reading strategies and reading comprehension. To test this hypothesis, a sample of 126 pre- Intermediate students from an English Institution were chosen, which reduced to 77 by conducting a placement test as a proficiency test. Then they were randomly divided into two groups. The control group took placebo (usual performance) and experimental group took the treatment (regulative metacognition strategies). Before starting the study a pretest was conducted. After the treatment they administered a posttest to evaluate the significance of the treatment. Then the Independent t- test was utilized, to analyze and evaluate the data from these two tests. Results revealed from this evaluation indicated that in post-test there is a significant difference between two groups, implying that regulative metacognition strategies had a positive effect on reading comprehension.


Leading scholars examine recent evidence from theoretical and empirical research on tax compliance and tax evasion, and provide an in-depth analysis of underlying methods. Strategies to fight tax evasion are evaluated and the motivations behind it are explored, as are the impact and size of the shadow economy in Europe. As well as promoting a better understanding of the issues, this book intends to stimulate further debate and, in so doing, broaden the exchange of ideas and concepts.


Non-negative blind source separation (BSS) has raised interest in various fields of research, as testified by the wide literature on the topic of non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). In this context, it is fundamental that the sources to be estimated present some diversity in order to be efficiently retrieved. Sparsity is known to enhance such contrast between the sources while producing very robust approaches, especially to noise. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm in order to tackle the blind separation of non-negative sparse sources from noisy measurements. We first show that sparsity and non-negativity constraints have to be carefully applied on the sought-after solution. In fact, improperly constrained solutions are unlikely to be stable and are therefore sub-optimal. The proposed algorithm, named nGMCA (non-negative Generalized Morphological Component Analysis), makes use of proximal calculus techniques to provide properly constrained solutions. The performance of nGMCA compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms is demonstrated by numerical experiments encompassing a wide variety of settings, with negligible parameter tuning. In particular, nGMCA is shown to provide robustness to noise and performs well on synthetic mixtures of real NMR spectra.


Abstract. We recently discovered a new groundwater age tracer, Halon-1301, which can be used to date groundwater recharged after the 1970s. In a previous study, we showed that Halon-1301 reliably inferred groundwater age at the majority of groundwater sites studied. At those sites, ages inferred from Halon-1301 agreed with those inferred from SF6 and tritium, two reliable widely applied groundwater age tracers. A few samples, however, showed reduced concentrations of Halon-1301, preventing meaningful age interpretation from its concentration. These reduced concentrations were likely a result of degradation or retardation of Halon-1301 in the aquifer. However, we could not provide full evidence for this due to the limited number of groundwater samples analysed (18 in total). In this study, we assess the potential of Halon-1301 as a groundwater age tracer for a larger dataset of groundwater samples under specific groundwater conditions, including highly anoxic young groundwater which can significantly degrade Halon-1301, to gain more information on the magnitude of occurrence and the causes of reduced Halon-1301 concentrations. In this study, we analysed 302 groundwater samples for Halon-1301, SF6, tritium and the CFCs CFC-11, CFC-12 and CFC-113. Comparison of age information inferred from the concentrations of these tracers allows assessment of the performance of Halon-1301 compared to other well established and widely used age tracers. The samples are taken from different groundwater environments in New Zealand and include anoxic and oxic waters with mean residence times ranging from The majority of assessed samples have reduced or elevated concentrations of CFCs, which makes it impossible to infer a reliable age using the CFCs for these samples. Halon-1301, however, reliably infers ages for CFC-contaminated waters. Three other groundwater samples were found to have elevated SF6 concentrations (contaminated). Again, at these SF6-contaminated sites, ages inferred from Halon-1301 agree with ages inferred from tritium. A few samples (14 sites) exhibit reduced concentrations of Halon-1301, which result in elevated inferred Halon-1301 ages in comparison to those inferred from SF6, tritium and/or CFC-113. Assessment of the groundwater environment at these sites gives further insight into the potential causes of Halon-1301 reduction in groundwater. Overall, Halon-1301 gives age information that matches ages inferred from SF6 and/or tritium for the majority (97 %) of the assessed groundwater sites. These findings suggest that Halon-1301 is a reasonably reliable groundwater age tracer, and is in particular significantly more reliable than the CFCs, which may have contamination and degradation problems. Halon-1301 thus has potential to become a useful groundwater age tracer where SF6 and the CFCs are compromised, and where additional independent tracers are needed to constrain complex mixing models.


It is common to see various Chinese translations of a single English word/phrase in practice. Etymological tracing attempts to diachronically study the origin and its historical successive changes in both form and meaning of a given word/phrase, the purpose of which is acquisition of a comprehensive understanding of its core information. Sememe analysis is atomization of semantic components and deep semantic structure of both source language and target language to examine the semantic proximity and possible affinity between the two. This paper takes "stakeholder" and its Chinese translations as a case in point, for which there occurred a diplomatic and linguistic stir between the U. S. and China. By studying its origin, semantic evolution and dictionary definitions, and conducting a contrastive sememe analysis upon its various Chinese versions against the original word, this paper expounds the operationality of the qualitative method of etymological tracing and the quantitative one of sememe analysis and concludes that both etymological tracing and sememe analysis are viable approaches to tackling similar issues as seen in the case of "stakeholder".


Abstract : The enormous success of franchising as an expansion instrument has resulted in a franchising boom over the past few decades. In response to the success of franchising as a business expansion method and the subsequent complaints by unsuccessful or defrauded franchisees, legislation was enacted at the federal and state level to attempt to prevent franchisor abuses. The 1992 Iowa Franchise Law has been called the most controversial and restrictive piece of franchise legislation in recent memory. The purpose of this research project was to determine the impacts of the 1992 Iowa Franchise Law and its 1995 Amendments on restaurant franchisor expansion strategy, litigation with franchisees, and operational changes. The study sought information from US restaurant franchisors who may have been impacted by the law. The research instrument consisted of a self-administered questionnaire, which was sent to 203 restaurant franchisors. A total of 36 companies responded and participated in the study. The results indicated that the law had an impact on expansion strategy of those who responded, specifically in the area of granting new franchised units. The results are representative of smaller businesses with less than 500 units.


Longevity is increasing and the population of older adults is growing. The biology of aging is conducive to cardiovascular disease (CVD), such that prevalence of coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease, arrhythmia and other disorders are increasing as more adults survive into old age. Furthermore, CVD in older adults is distinctive, with management issues predictably complicated by multimorbidity, polypharmacy, frailty and other complexities of care that increase management risks (e.g., bleeding, falls, and rehospitalization) and uncertainty of outcomes. In this review, state-of-the-art advances in heart failure, acute coronary syndromes, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, atrial fibrillation, amyloidosis, and CVD prevention are discussed. Conceptual benefits of treatments are considered in relation to the challenges and ambiguities inherent in their application to older patients.


Context Traditional storage systems are proving to be inefficient to handle the growing storage need of a modern IT organization. The need for a cost effective and scalable storage framework has led to the development of a Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution. SDS can be defined as an enterprise class distributed storage solution that uses standard hardware, with all the important storage and management functions performed by an intelligent software. Configuring and maintenance of these storage clusters require converting an SDS from any unknown state to a predefined, known state. This configuration of the SDS is best done with minimal human intervention, to ensure minimal errors and save the man hours spent in the configuration process. Objectives A tool for automatic configuration of a SDS storage cluster has been designed and implemented. The tool has later been used to study the man hours saved in the configuration of the SDS cluster. The study also involves a cost-benefit analysis to estimate the break-even point for such a tool to motivate the automation of a SDS cluster configuration process. Methodology In this study, experts from the field of Software Defined Storage have been interviewed to identify interesting and most common states of a SDS cluster. Later a tool was build such that it communicates with the underlying SDS storage cluster to configure it into one of the identified final states. This tool built was later used to conduct experiments wherein the amount of man hours saved by automating the process of cluster configuration was calculated. Results The tool built was validated through results obtained from the experiments which show that the work time involved in the process of cluster configuration is reduced by 90% 96% (based on the complexity of the cluster configuration). Also, the lead times of the configuration process are similar when configuring simple states but is greatly reduced by automation when performing complex configurations. Conclusions Similar to any other software automation, the process of automating the configuration of a distributed storage cluster has proven to be beneficial. Automating the process of cluster configuration saves time, reduces human errors induced in the configuration process and improves repeatability of the configuration process. Through the cost-benefit analysis of the complete process, the use of the tool beyond 20 days is deemed profitable for the organization.


Abstract: A major taxonomic problem around the genus Megalobulimus Miller,1878, the largest land snails in the Neotropics, is plasticity of conchological characters. Here we re-describe Megalobulimus leucostoma (Sowerby, 1835) and describe two new species of Megalobulimus from Southern Peru, Megalobulimus tayacajus sp.nov. and Megalobulimus inambarisense sp.nov. These descriptions are based on both conchological and soft anatomical characters. Megalobulimus leucostoma is characterized by the presence of a retractor muscle with two insertions to the buccal mass, two small bulges on pre-rectal valve, and a geographical distribution appears limited to Cusco. Megalobulimus tayacajus sp.nov. is characterized by the presence of a retractor muscle that divides near the buccal mass, two lobed bulges on pre-rectal valve, and to date, has been found only in Huancavelica. Megalobulimus inambarisense sp.nov. is characterized by the presence of a retractor muscle with one insertion to the buccal mass, two big bulges on pre-rectal valve, and a distribution appears limited to Puno. The digestive system appears to serve as useful characters to discriminate these species and, when combined with shell and reproductive characters, may help to understand better the evolution and ecology of these snails.


We present a methodology for automatic synthesis of power management controllers for System-on-Chip designs by using an extended version of the Unified Power Format (UPF). Our methodology takes an SoC design and a UPF-based power design, and automatically generates a power management controller in Verilog/VHDL that implements the power state machine specified in UPF. It performs a priority-based scheduling for all power state machine actions, connects each power management signal to the corresponding logic wire in the UPF design and integrates the controller into the System-on-Chip using a configurable bus interface. We implemented the proposed approach as a plugin for Synopsys Design Compiler to close the gap in today's power management flows and evaluated it by a RISC-V System-on-Chip.


The CAT was developed to facilitate the assessment of CALD clientele in the mental health clinical context. Its development involved an evaluation of the resource available to guide clinicians in their work with CALD clientele and of the extent to which a specific assessment tool would be considered valuable. In addition to the literature review, an extensive consultation process with a wide range of clinicians from various disciplines was undertaken to ascertain this information. The final version of the tool, specifically developed for the mental health context, comprises a booklet with guidelines about understanding the CALD patient's worldview of their illness and the cultural influences that a practitioner might inadvertently bring to the client-practitioner interaction. The booklet is accompanied by a palm-sized card containing a set of questions designed to tap into the patient's explanatory model of their illness. Since its launch and release, ongoing feedback from clinicians about this Tool has been positive due to its brevity and simple language. Arising from a national review, the Tool has been improved with reprints planned for mid 2003.


Twenty-four soil samples were collected from the Vestfold Hills and Mirror
Peninsula in the Antarctic. Fifty-two hyphal actinomycetes were isolated
from six of the 24 soils, using micromanipulation. Five of the six
actinomycete bearing soils were from sites associated with moss or lichen
but no other correlation between the presence of viable actinomycetes and
soils characteristics was determined.
Fatty acid and isoprenoid quinone profiles indicated that each of the 52
isolates could be accommodated within the genus Streptomyces. Phenotypic
characters, fatty acid profiles, and 16S-23Sr RNA intrageneric spacer patterns
were compared among all isolates. As a result of these comparisons the 52
isolates were placed into five groups, each group being comprised of strains
of a single species. Representative strains were chosen from each of the
five groups for further study. Partial 16S rRNA sequence comparison and
DNA:DNA hybridization studies indicated that each of the five
representative strains was a separate species. These studies also showed
that two of the representative strains were known species, Streptomyces
analatus (DSMZ strain 40361) and Streptomyces vinaceus (DSMZ strain
40257). Two other representative strains were not identified as known
species, but extensive DNA:DNA hybridization studies are needed to
determine their taxonomy accurately within the currently accepted
definition of a species. One of the representative strains was identified as a
new species. The diversity of actinomycetes in Antarctic soils is relatively low compared
to that in temperate soils. However, the distribution of Antarctic
actinomycete strains and their location near moss and lichen beds suggested
that these strains were able to survive in the Antarctic and to grow there for
at least part of the Antarctic year.
An attempt was made to differentiate between the five representative
strains using Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis (ARDRA).
However, the ARDRA technique was only effective if differences in 16S
rRNA sequences were known so that appropriate enzymes could be selected.
Differentiating between strains on the basis of 16S-23Sr RNA intrageneric
spacer patterns was a faster and more accurate way of grouping closely
related isolates. Antibiotic compounds were produced by two of the Antarctic strains,
indicating the potential of the Antarctic microbiota for biotechnological
exploitation.


Abstract Background: This article reports on a study that explored the impact of diarrhoea in babies on the quality of life of low-income households. Diarrhoeal diseases continue to be an important cause of illness and death worldwide. One major cause of infantile diarrhoea is the rotavirus, an airborne virus to which almost all children in both the developing and developed world will be exposed to at least once. The study, as well as the clinical trials and cost studies, was commissioned by GlaxoSmithKline to assist in the decision-making processes regarding whether and how to implement a newly developed vaccine against rotavirus through national immunisation programmes. The objective of the study was to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of severe diarrhoea in babies on the quality of life of a selected group of low-income households. Methods: The study was qualitative, explorative and descriptive in nature. A recently developed quality of life (QoL) assessment instrument, based on a comprehensive list of fundamental needs developed by development expert Manfred Max-Neef, was used to assess the impact of diarrhoea in babies on households. The QoL instrument includes 125 open questions related to basic necessities and activities, localisation, relationships and consciousness of household members. In addition, group and individual interviews were held. Twenty-nine households with children younger than two years of age who had experienced diarrhoea in the previous two months were selected. By means of a number of medical questions related to the duration of the diarrhoea and related symptoms, babies with severe diarrhoea were purposively sampled. After analysis of the data, these babies were classified as follows: 20 had severe diarrhoea, six had moderate diarrhoea and three were diagnosed as having had mild diarrhoea. Two babies were previously admitted to the hospital. Of the 29 households surveyed, 22 households were interviewed using the QoL assessment instrument, and seven households were interviewed by means of group and individual interviews. Ethical approval for the research was obtained from the ethics committee of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria. Results: Poor housing conditions exacerbated the effect of diarrhoea in infants on the primary caregiver as well as the other household members. Household members complained about the sound of the babies crying and almost half of the mothers reported that they felt stressed or ashamed about the quality of air in their dwellings. One mother said that the smell was so bad that she could not eat her food because it caused her to vomit. The lack of basic necessities, for example the shortage of water in a number of households, intensified the struggle to cope with the diarrhoea. It was found that the burden of care fell mainly on the mothers of the babies with diarrhoea. The pressure experienced by some mothers seems to be related to the way they experience their identity. Mothers indicated that they felt responsible for tasks in and around the household, including the duty of caring for their children. This places a physical and emotional burden on the primary caregiver. Diarrhoea was the cause of tension and conflict in a number of households, not only because of inflated financial costs related to efforts to cope with the illness, but also because of differing views among household members regarding the most suitable treatment Western or traditional medicine. Mothers identified different causes of the diarrhoea, including teething, heat, wrong food and 'the problem of the fontanelle'. It became evident that some mothers believed that a sunken fontanelle was the cause of diarrhoea, and this was believed to be best treated by traditional healing methods. Conclusion: A vaccine against rotavirus diarrhoea could benefit the households in this research by: • Reducing the emotional burden of care on the mother;• Reducing the physical burden of care on the mother, and• Reducing the financial burden that childhood diarrhoea imposes on households. Note of caution: The findings show how rotavirus vaccines could be an adjunct to the primary prevention approach for diarrhoea diseases in children. A vaccine will not substitute for all the other important requirements for a respectable quality of life, such as love, care, education, healthy nutrition, a regular safe water supply, and good sanitation. It is also important to interpret the findings in conjunction with other rotavirus vaccine clinical trials and cost-benefit studies.


Debates over the best way to identify human rights violations, assess compliance with treaty obligations, and measure human rights progress over time have preoccupied scholars and practitioners for many years. These debates have been especially pressing in the field of economic, social, and cultural rights, where the need for new methodologies has been felt most urgently. Quantitative data has been forwarded as a central tool in the drive for better methods of assessment, monitoring, and advocacy. Among quantitative tools, human rights indicators have been identified as especially powerful. Rights indicators are understood to have a variety of advantages: they render complex data simple and easy to understand; they can be designed to demonstrate compliance with obligations, fulfillment of rights, and government efforts toward these goals; and they are capable of capturing progress over time and across countries. This Article closely examines the use of indicators by U.N. bodies charged with monitoring State compliance with human rights treaties. The Article places these efforts to create human rights indicators in conversation with scholarship on audit and standardization from the social sciences. We conclude that while there are very real drawbacks involved in the indicators project, debates about indicators may provide advocates with new opportunities to use the language of science and objectivity as a powerful tool to hold governments to account. However, because human rights compliance indicators threaten to close space for democratic accountability and purport to turn an exercise of judgment into one of technical measurement, advocates of human rights would do well to remain vigilant to effects of the elisions at work in the indicators project. The conundrum of democratic accountability and the failure to clearly locate responsibility for judgment in international human rights assessment exercises are not products of the tools chosen to carry out those exercises, but are instead structural problems, foundational to international human rights law as it exists today. Thus, some of the core problems we argue are inherent in the indicators project would still be present even if quantitative indicators were banished from human rights assessment projects. Nonetheless, the use of quantitative indicators tends to disguise those problems as technical ones of measurement and data availability. The Article unfolds as follows: in Section I, we explore some of the conditions leading to the increasing reliance on indicators for monitoring the fulfillment and/or enjoyment of international human rights, especially economic and social rights. Using the example of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, we consider the way in which that treaty's monitoring committee has shifted from attempting to create and directly apply indicators in the measurement of compliance with treaty obligations to calling on States to identify and implement their own indicators. In Section II, we discuss several of the problems integral to the use of indicators in human rights contexts and what those difficulties have in common with the wider turn to auditing practices in management and control contexts. In Section III, we examine the ongoing efforts of the human rights treaty bodies and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to create international indicators applicable to all States, and we assess that effort in light of the problems discussed in Section II, as well as considering issues of authority and judgment in human rights law. Section IV considers human rights indicators as a technology of global governance, warning that-if not carefully designed to do otherwise-human rights compliance indicators have a tendency to close off spaces for participation and democratic contestation.


The induced magnetic uniaxial anisotropy of Ni-Fe alloy films has been shown to be related to the crystal structure of the film. By use of electron diffraction, the crystal structure or vacuum-deposited films was determined over the composition range 5% to 85% Ni, with substrate temperature during deposition at various temperatures in the range 25° to 500° C. The phase diagram determined in this way has boundaries which are in fair agreement with the equilibrium boundaries for bulk material above 400°C. The (α+ ɤ) mixture phase disappears below 100°C. The measurement of uniaxial anisotropy field for 25% Ni-Fe alloy films deposited at temperatures in the range -80°C to 375°C has been carried out. Comparison of the crystal structure phase diagram with the present data and those published by Wilts indicates that the
anisotropy is strongly sensitive to crystal structure. Others have proposed pair ordering as an important source of anisotropy because of an apparent peak in the anisotropy energy at about 50% Ni composition. The present work shows no such peak, and leads to the conclusion that
pair ordering cannot be a dominant contributor. Width of the 180° domain wall in 76% Ni-Fe alloy films as a function of film thickness up to 1800 A was measured using the defocused mode of Lorentz microscopy. For the thinner films, the measured wall widths are in good agreement with earlier data obtained by Fuchs. For films thicker than 800 A, the wall width increases with film thickness to about 9000 A at 1800 A film thickness. Similar measurements for polycrystalline Co films with thickness from 200 to 1500 A have been made. The wall width increases from 3000 A at 400 A film thickness to about 6000 A at 1500 A film thickness. The wall widths for Ni-Fe and Co films are much greater than predicted by present theories. The validity of the classical determination of wall width is discussed,
and the comparison of the present data with theoretical results is given. Finally, an experimental study of ripple by Lorentz microscopy in Ni-Fe alloy films has been carried out. The following should be noted: (1) the only practical way to determine experimentally a meaningful wavelength is to find a well-defined ripple periodicity by
visual inspection of a photomicrograph. (2) The average wavelength is of the order of 1µ. This value is in reasonable agreement with the main wavelength predicted by the theories developed by others. The dependence of wavelength on substrate deposition temperature, alloy
composition and the external magnetic field has been also studied and the results are compared with theoretical predictions. (3) The experimental fact that the ripple structure could not be observed in completely epitaxial films gives confirmation that the ripple results from the randomness of crystallite orientation. Furthermore, the experimental observation that the ripple disappeared in the range 71 and 75% Ni supports the theory that the ripple amplitude is directly
dependent on the crystalline anisotropy. An attempt to experimentally determine the order of magnitude of the ripple angle was carried out. The measured angle was about 0.02 rad. The discrepancy between the experimental data and the theoretical prediction is serious. The accurate experimental determination of ripple angle is an unsolved problem.


Until recently, the American South has often been treated in isolation by historians and literature scholars. In these essays five scholars of southern history and literature evaluate elements of contemporary - and future - southern experience, including place, community, culture, class, gender, and racial roles. Fred Hobson observes in his introductory essay that the U.S. South must be seen in relation to a larger world - the Caribbean and Central and South America, as well as European countries with a similar grounding in hardship and defeat. Moreover, the South can no longer be viewed in black-and-white terms - especially if the subject is race. Joel Williamson's essay challenges fellow historians to broaden their purview by getting acquainted with Gone with the Wind, Elvis Presley, and other phenomena of southern culture(s). Linda Wagner-Martin discusses the innovative ways that contemporary southern writers such as Charles Frazier take on traditional southern concerns and shows us how "place becomes space" for Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, and other southern-born writers whose works are often set outside the geographical South. Thadious Davis looks at the "youngsters" of southern poetry, fiction, and drama, revealing how their work reflects a racially and ethnically mixed, digitized, and otherwise reconfigured South. In the writings of Shay Youngblood, Randall Kenan, Donna Tartt, Mona Lisa Salloy, and others, one can see the collapsing of distinctions between the literary and the popular, and a greater comfort with social fluidity and mobility. The concluding essay by Edward Ayers, set in 2076, offers a witty glimpse of things-perhaps-to-come. Through a series of short dispatches from a sixteen-year-old narrator of Scottish-Ghanian-Honduran-Korean-Cherokee descent, Ayers transports us to the Consolidated South that counts Incarceration Incorporated among its largest employers. As these writings signal new depths and directions in southern historical and literary studies, they compose a witty and erudite album of snapshots, revealing a region on the verge of big changes.


The merging of multimedia based applications with mobile communications in areas such as telemedicine, military, business, and entertainment implies that wireless
communication systems have to provide high-speed broadband multiple-access solution to meet the demand. One approach to achieve the required solution is by combining Space Time Coding (STC) and Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access
(CDMA). The uncovering of the limits and capacity of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system has placed STC, applied on MIMO system, as the answer for high-speed
wireless communications. While Multi-Carrier COMA, with its ability to combat frequency selective channel experienced by broadband Signals, has been adopted as the enabling technology behind 3G communication systems and widely
considered for the future 4G systems. This work focuses on the combination of a variant of STC, namely Space Time Block Codes (STBC) with the frequency domain spreading variant of Multi-Carrier CDMA, namely MC-CDMA. The thesis proposes
the enhancement of STBC MC-COMA through two new designs. Firstly, a Pilot Aided STBC MC-CDMA scheme based on overloaded Minimum Total Squared Correlation (TSC) signature set was introduced for the first time. Since overloaded signatures were utilized as the spreading codes, a number of sub-channels in STBC MC-COMA were not used for data transmission. These sub-channels were exploited for comb-type pilot signaling. To maintain low system complexity, for the pilot sub-channels Least Square Estimation (LS) method was employed, and for interpolating the characteristics of the data sub-channels linear interpolator was applied. The validity of the scheme was confirmed by comparing its performance with that of the Walsh-Hadamard based STBC MC-COMA with block-type pilot. The result showed that although the spreading codes of interest are not fully orthogonal codes, for a low number of users, e.g. less than 7 users in a system with a capacity of 32, the system under investigation performed better than its Walsh-Hadamard based
counterpart with the same capacity. This will be valuable for Wireless Personal Area Network (PAN) where the number of users is typically low. Secondly, a multiuser detector (MUD) using Genetic Algorithm (GA) was devised specifically for the STBC MC-CDMA. Basically, optimum detection for CDMA based systems using conventional MUD has a high computational complexity. For K number of users for instance, the computational complexity grows exponentially with K. The problem presents even more impact for the more complicated CDMA derivation such as STBC MC-CDMA that requires more processing time. Although suboptimum
detection methods with less complexity are available, they are less powerful than MUD. To achieve the optimality of MUD while avoiding the computational complexity, GA is included in the detector design. Furthermore, the STBC MC-CDMA
system was simulated over a frequency selective rayleigh fading channel with the receiver employing the GA assisted MUO. The result showed that the system under investigation performed better than STBC MC-COMA using Equal Gain Combining (EGC). For instance, at the BER value of 0.01, the required level of Eb/Nâ'€ for 2x2 STBC MC-CDMA using GA assisted MUO was dropped by 3 dB compared to the 2x2 scheme using EGC.


This article details why the Federal Trade Commission should resurrect one of the key authorities it abandoned in the 1980s: Section 5(m)(1)(B) of the FTC Act, the Penalty Offense Authority. The Penalty Offense Authority is a unique tool in commercial regulation. Typically, first-time offenses involving unfair or deceptive practices do not lead to civil penalties. However, if the Commission formally condemns these practices in a cease-and-desist order, they can become what we call "Penalty Offenses." Other parties that commit these offenses with knowledge that they have been condemned by the Commission face financial penalties that can add up to a multiple of their illegal profits, rather than a fraction.

Using this authority, the Commission can substantially increase deterrence and reduce litigation risk by noticing whole industries of Penalty Offenses, exposing violators to significant civil penalties, while helping to ensure fairness for honest firms. This would dramatically improve the FTC's effectiveness relative to our current approach, which relies almost entirely on another authority, Section 13(b). Section 13(b) does not allow the Commission to seek penalties against wrongdoers, and it is now under threat in the Supreme Court.

We demonstrate in this article that in a number of key areas, including urgent concerns like online disinformation, the Commission can deploy the Penalty Offense Authority immediately. This can increase deterrence, since firms will pay a significant price for engaging in unfair or deceptive practices previously condemned by the Commission. We also outline how the Commission can deploy this authority to combat emerging harms, including illegal targeted marketing and deceptive data harvesting.

We close with a call for a broader rethinking of the Commission's approach to combatting corporate misconduct. By inventorying its existing tools and deploying them strategically, the Commission can begin to turn the page on its checkered record and regain the public's confidence.


Previous results [E. Cabib, A. Sburlati, B. Bowers & S. J. Silverman (1989) Journal of Cell Biology 108, 1665-1672] strongly suggested that the lysis observed in daughter cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae defective in chitin synthase 1 (Chs1) was caused by a chitinase that partially degrades the chitin septum in the process of cell separation. Consequently, it was proposed that in wild-type cells, Chs1 acts as a repair enzyme by replenishing chitin during cytokinesis. The chitinase requirement for lysis has been confirmed in two different ways: (a) demethylallosamidin, a more powerful chitinase inhibitor than the previously used allosamidin, is also a much better protector against lysis and (b) disruption of the chitinase gene in chs1 cells eliminates lysis. Reintroduction of a normal chitinase gene, by transformation of those cells with a suitable plasmid, restores lysis. The percentage of lysed cells in strains lacking Chs1 was not increased by elevating the chitinase level with high-copy-number plasmids carrying the hydrolase gene. Furthermore, the degree of lysis varied in different chs1 strains; lysis was abolished in chs1 mutants containing the scs1 suppressor. These results indicate that, in addition to chitinase, lysis requires other gene products that may become limiting.


This paper considers on-off random access channels where users transmit either a one or a zero to a base station. Such channels represent an abstraction of control channels used for scheduling requests in third-generation cellular systems and uplinks in wireless sensor networks deployed for target detection. This paper introduces a novel convex-optimization-based scheme for multiuser detection (MUD) in asynchronous on-off random access channels that does not require knowledge of the delays or the instantaneous received signal-to-noise ratios of the individual users at the base station. For any fixed number of temporal signal space dimensions N and maximum delay τ in the system, the proposed scheme can accommodate M ≲ exp(O(N1/3)) total users and k ≲ N/ logM active users in the system—a significant improvement over the k ≤ M ≲ N scaling suggested by the use of classical matched-filtering-based approaches to MUD employing orthogonal signaling. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the proposed scheme differs from that of a similar oracle-based scheme with perfect knowledge of the user delays by at most a factor of log(N+τ). Finally, the results presented in here are non-asymptotic, in contrast to related previous work for synchronous channels that only guarantees that the probability of MUD error at the base station goes to zero asymptotically in M.


Introduction For much of the previous century, it was rare for individuals outside of the library and information science field to view information work within a context of social justice, democratization or human rights despite the long standing public awareness that journalism, another information field, holds a key place in these areas. However, there has been a shift in this first decade of the 21st century. Individuals and organizations across the globe not normally associated with the library and information science world are recognizing the need for access to information if local and global social inequalities are to be redressed. As a result, librarians and information workers in both industrialized and less-industrialized nations have new opportunities for increasing the significance of information work for achieving fundamental human rights. Similarly, the Open Access (OA) Movement has been praised by proponents as a way to reverse the unsustainability of traditional scholarly publishing economic models and to aid in the equalization of the flow of information between industrialized and less industrialized nations. The OA Movement is thus also seen as a means of helping achieve fundamental human rights as presented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). When examining the place of information in the human rights framework, most focus on Article 19 of the UDHR and the corresponding Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which codifies it: Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice. (United Nations General Assembly, 1966a, article 19) While the relationships between Article 19, access to information, and human rights are fairly obvious, there is another piece of the human rights framework that is equally important with relation to information work yet it receives much less attention. Article 27 of the UDHR is codified in Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) where it states: 1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone: (a) To take part in cultural life; (b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications; (c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. (United Nations General Assembly, 1966b, article 15) In this paper, I report on an exploratory study that used data gathered during a forty day period to compare the OA journal usage of researchers in African countries with that of researchers in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Indexing and abstracting of African scholarly journals is also a key necessity if a more even flow of information from Southern to Northern countries is to be achieved and if the journals themselves are to be truly accessible to other scholars. Therefore, the study also examines the accessibility of indexing and abstracting coverage of African scholarly OA journals and compares the data with that of non- OA journals from the continent. I examine the relationship between current African OA usage and content production and the cultural rights expressed in Article 27 of the UDHR. The data suggests that, in contrast to LAC countries, African researchers are being less active consumers and more passive contributors to the OA model. OA is thus not yet contributing significantly to the reversal of North to South information flows in the African context nor is it yet making a significant impact on achieving the rights guaranteed in Articles 19 and 27 of the UDHR. The results also indicate that African OA publications are more accessible in the abstracting and indexing services than non-OA African publications, so an increased shift from non-OA to OA publications in African scholarly publishing may contribute to improving information flow reversal in the future. …


Description: Climbers, such as lianas and vines, are important constituents of tropical forests and perhaps the single most important physiognomic characteristic differentiating tropical from temperate forests, occurring on nearly 50% of forest trees in Central and South America. Despite their widespread nutritional and medicinal use, lianas remain poorly understood ecologically. Tendrillate Climbers offers comprehensive coverage of all of the tendrillate lianas of Costa Rica and most of the tendrillate lianas of Central America. This unique reference provides Excellent keys to families and separate keys to genera and species State–of–the–art nomenclature and lists of synonymy when other scientific names have been published or used informally Each species illustrated by the author s hand–drawn line art An invaluable addition to our understanding of tropical forests, the book offers new information as well as information brought together from dispersed publications and unpublished lists and reports. In these times of habitat fragmentation and species loss, this data is a significant contribution to the biological research that is thriving in Central America, especially Costa Rica. Tendrillate Climbers fills a major gap in the botanical literature. Its high level of scholarship and comprehensive coverage will astonish the tropical botanists, forestry scientists, ecologists, biologists, and horticulturalists who will want it as a reference for their continued work on this neglected group of plants.


A therothrombosis is a leading cause of death worldwide. The REduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) Registry aims to evaluate the long-term risk of atherothrombotic events in a global at-risk population, to assess the importance of cross-risk and to define predictors of atherothrombotic events. Over 69,000 people in 44 countries were recruited, of which 618 were in the UK. The majority (91%) of patients recruited in the UK had symptomatic disease (coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease or peripheral arterial disease) of which 14% had disease in more than one vascular bed. Classic cardiovascular risk factors were seen to be active and their management was found to be inadequate, albeit better in those with symptomatic disease than in those with risk factors only. UK data were in general typical of those found in the whole of the Western European sample.


Research into text-based chat environments for foreign language learning has shown that discussions online have a significantly different character from those in the classroom. In this paper, we begin with a brief design history of one of these environments: IRC Français. Our experience both illustrates the challenges involved in moving these chat environments from the language lab to the Internet and offers insight into some of the causes of these changes in conversation. The initial challenges we encountered ranged from ethical difficulties in doing research in Internet-based chat environments to bootstrapping a synchronous community. After exploring these challenges, we present a study taking a closer look at the interactions online and in the classroom over the course of a semester. During this semester, classroom interaction was largely teacher-oriented, despite the best efforts of the teachers involved. Even though teachers initiated online conversations in the same way, however, online interaction was student-driven and significantly more interactive. These observations lend credibility to the language ego permeability theory and its emphasis on inhibition. Quantitative findings of this study mirror a number of other studies. Qualitative findings suggest that important features of the medium lead students to feel more comfortable in the online environment. In particular, the "almost realtime" nature of this medium seems to offer a blend of benefits that arise in both face-to-face conversation and asynchronous interaction. In doing so, however, some new challenges are introduced. We conclude with some suggestions for new research directions into both these challenges and more general issues in second language acquisition in online environments.


The nature of IS use and its impacts in everyday life settings are not yet well understood. Drawing on quality of life theory and evidence from the IS acceptance and IS impacts research, this study conceptualizes the relationship between IS use and quality of life as a process that involves vertical and horizontal spillover effects. We empirically investigate this relationship in the context of basic IT use among socio-economically disadvantaged individuals. The research participants received their initial basic IT skill training from community technology centers. The context of our study is the Thai community technology centers supported by Microsoft Unlimited Potential grants. The results strongly support that there are vertical spillover and horizontal spillover mechanisms that relate IS use to domain-specific quality of life and overall quality of life. Implications for research and practice are discussed.