The widening drive to provide open data in the public sector has taken a new turn in Burkina Faso. Open data has always been recognized as an enabler of economic development and government transparency. But in October 2014, when a popular uprising ousted Burkina Faso's long-standing leader and established a transitional government, the country's nascent Burkina open data initiative (BODI) took on new life as an enabler of the transition. With support from the ODI and the World Bank, BODI had debuted just four months before the uprising, showcasing about 50 data sets of government information and an app that focused on education. In the months since then, the development of BODI has only accelerated, with more staff, more data sets posted, and new applications launched or planned. Under the transitional government, BODI has expanded with a web page for finding data on government contract awards and a program to help track and manage the country's persistent drought problems. And BODI envisions a polling-place finder and reporting of vote totals as ways to support turnout and transparency for the scheduled October 2015 national elections.


Boston played a crucial role in the development of American photography, including criticism, collecting, and curating, in the second half of the twentieth century. This book accompanies a landmark exhibition at the DeCordova Museum that includes such important American artists as Berenice Abbott, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, Marie Cosindas, Harold Edgerton, Nan Goldin, Jerome Liebling, Nicholas Nixon, Barbara Norfleet, Olivia Parker, Rosamond Purcell, Aaron Siskind, and Minor White.The period from 1955 to 1985 reflects photography's acceptance as an art form, the influence of modernism, and the coalescence of a unique constellation of educational institutions, museums, and technological development in the Boston area that directly influenced artistic options for photography. Minor White's arrival at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 to run the Center for Creative Photography and the Polaroid Corporation's innovative support of photographic art suggest how developments built upon one another to create a regional critical mass in photography.The book contains twenty-five color plates, sixty duotones, and essays by A. D. Coleman, Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, and Kim Sichel.Copublished with the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.Published in conjunction with the exhibition Photography in Boston: 1955-1985, September 16, 2000 - January 21, 2001. For more information please call 781-259-8355.


Color constancy is the recovery of true surface color from observed color, and requires estimating the chromaticity of scene illumination to correct for the bias it induces. In this paper, we show that the per-pixel color statistics of natural scenes—without any spatial or semantic context—can by themselves be a powerful cue for color constancy. Specifically, we describe an illuminant estimation method that is built around a "classifier" for identifying the true chromaticity of a pixel given its luminance (absolute brightness across color channels). During inference, each pixel's observed color restricts its true chromaticity to those values that can be explained by one of a candidate set of illuminants, and applying the classifier over these values yields a distribution over the corresponding illuminants. A global estimate for the scene illuminant is computed through a simple aggregation of these distributions across all pixels. We begin by simply defining the luminance-to-chromaticity classifier by computing empirical histograms over discretized chromaticity and luminance values from a training set of natural images. These histograms reflect a preference for hues corresponding to smooth reflectance functions, and for achromatic colors in brighter pixels. Despite its simplicity, the resulting estimation algorithm outperforms current state-of-the-art color constancy methods. Next, we propose a method to learn the luminance-to-chromaticity classifier "end-to-end". Using stochastic gradient descent, we set chromaticity-luminance likelihoods to minimize errors in the final scene illuminant estimates on a training set. This leads to further improvements in accuracy, most significantly in the tail of the error distribution.


Zero-tolerance discipline policies led to the introduction of police on school campuses and have resulted in a disproportionate number of in-school arrests and referrals of Black middle-school students, subjecting them to the school-to-prison pipeline. Data shows the negative effects of zero tolerance; however, less is known regarding alternative evidence-based strategies such as the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). Grounded in the labeling theoretical framework, this study examined whether JDAI status (pre-JDAI and post-JDAI) could predict arrests and referrals while controlling for race, gender, and age. Secondary data were collected from a juvenile court in northwest Georgia on 1,303 middle-school students. The students who formed this purposive sample for the study were arrested or referred 2 years prior to the implementation of the JDAI School Referral Reduction Program and 2 recent years post-JDAI. Binary logistic regressions were conducted for each of the outcomes of arrests and referrals to ascertain the predictive relationships of JDAI, race, gender, and age. The results found only gender and age to be significant predictors of arrests and referrals. However, additional findings reported Black students were 89.4% of the students arrested or referred to the juvenile court, and 93.2% of those arrests and referrals occurred during the 2-year period preJDAI. This research is significant for stakeholders involved in education and juvenile justice reform who want to positively effect social change through the use of programs and policies that narrow the academic achievement gap and reduce the disproportionate number of Black students' contact with the criminal justice system.


We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. We observe significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of gender gaps in promotions and wages, but the gaps that exist appear to be declining over the period studied. We also observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement. Finally, we show that various measures of national institutions and culture appear to play a role in the differential labor-market outcomes of men and women.


BACKGROUND
Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is one of the most common diseases in society, affecting up to 40% of the population. It has major impact on the quality of life and a high burden on medical expenditure. In this work, herbs used by ancient Iranians to treat GERD have been introduced.

METHODS
Different well-known Persian textbooks and recent electronic databases were searched to explore the treatment of GERD and the pharmacological mechanisms of the identified medicinal plants.

RESULTS
GERD has been known for many centuries, and many herbal remedies for its treatment have been elucidated in traditional medical literature. We found 25 medicinal herbs in Persian medicine books and searched for evidence to support them in the current literature.

CONCLUSION
Although their active components or the mechanism of action were not known by the ancient Persians at that time, their persistent use during different centuries might indicate their effectiveness. Owing to their potential, medicinal herbs are a viable option for the treatment of diseases like GERD even today.


The Australian Special Forces (SF) members have faced considerable adversity with combat deployments to Afghanistan as an elite operational unit of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). There have been 40 combat deaths since 2001 and despite the significant research available on bereavement and violent death, to date there is a gap in the literature to guide the provision of bereavement support for spouses and parents of those SF members killed in action. Contemporary qualitative research into combat related bereavement has found a number of themes which gave meaning to bereavement outcomes found in the non-SF context and recommended that future studies in this field be extended to include SF bereavement. This study used a qualitative transcendental phenomenological design for the study of the bereavement experiences including perceptions of social support of widows and parents of SF members killed in action (KIA) in Afghanistan. In stressing the importance of the lived experiences of participants the purpose was to understand the lived experiences through the use of semi-structured face to face interviews. The journey of this research depicts a two phase study in which the first phase was unsuccessful in the recruitment of bereaved SF spouses and in the second phase the potential bereaved parent participants withdrew before the interview stage. Remaining true to phenomenological inquiry the focus of the researcher returned to the phenomenological paradigm for guidance on the way forward. It was a journey which reflected that in phenomenological inquiry the story should be allowed to tell itself. The resulting extension to this study featured a thematic information analysis of this study. Using the Moustakas (1994) modified van Kaam analysis model, four dominant themes emerged to explain the recruitment challenges of this study. The extracted themes included the SF as a hard to reach population; specific bereavement research challenges; research methods and design and, the ethics review processes. These were used to explain the phenomena of research challenges in the SF context. The outcome of this study is discussed in the context of the themes and guidance for future research in SF combat related bereavement.


A Power to Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, by Bradin Cormack. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp xiii + 406. Hardcover $55. Bradin Cormack' s A Power to Do Justice is an important study of an all too neglected area of jurisprudence, jurisdiction, in the context of its relation to culture - in this case Renaissance English literature. Cormack' s book constitutes a substantial reworking of his dissertation of substantially the same name, with the subsequent addition of new material in chapters 2 and 6. Extant reviews of this book have labeled it as "brilliant" (Carla Spevack) and "big and bold" (Carolyn Sale). Fran Dolan, who wrote a more extended and penetrating review essay addressing this and another book, fashions it "boldly conceived." What these reviews fail to emphasize, however, is the extremely ambitious and admittedly controversial nature of Cormack' s work. Cormack denies categorically the very "idea of a discursive position beyond the law" (2); he asserts that a life "beyond law" is merely a "phantasm" (2). In essence he is claiming that when studying the era, at least from the perspective of the productive study of law and literature - and probably more broadly than this - there is no use in looking beyond "free national or civic identity," because "subjection to one or another jurisdiction was in fact the source of historical rights and privileges" (2). Expanding upon the admittedly provocative position that aesthetics is essentially a "political mode," Cormack further radicalizes this stance by subordinating the political to the legal via the mechanism of jurisdiction (5). Thus, Cormack establishes that all literature is political, and, by his expansion on Ranciere, subsumed within the legal sphere. Cormack distinguishes his work by elevating process over substance and procedure over doctrine. This realignment allows him to engage the "shifting jurisdictional realities" and the "complex but nonopositional relation" of literature and law in early modern England, and to avoid what he considers to be the "tenacious binaries" of much law and literature scholarship (2). Cormack' s language frequently defies paraphrase, so I will use his own words to describe his overall purpose as well as his chapter arguments. Cormack asserts that a "governing thought in this book is that jurisdiction and literature both evade easy analysis because they open the culture in which they function onto more complex orders than those through which they seem to do their work" (12). Cormack "ventures to show how deeply engaged early modern literature was with the technical production of legal order, and to define the ways in which jurisdictional topics provoked a metacritical perspective on the management of legal meaning and literary meaning both" (12). More elusi vely, Cormack remarks that the "various and provisional literary subjectivities indexed in this book, obliquely rather than directly reactive to the state, are not so much subversive of their juridical-political counterparts as continuous with it: at once by-products, vivid supports, and dialectical partners of the political in formation" (42). Cormack, perhaps realizing how difficult at times his book can seem, rhetorically poses the question why someone would "write a book on the legal and literary negotiations of jurisdiction," a question to which he "punningly" replies: In cultural history and political theory alike, jurisdiction has been overlooked as merely a technical matter. …


Abstract Talc is widely distributed over the Earth's surface and is predicted to be formed in various tectonic settings. Talc is a very soft and anisotropic sheet silicate showing very low friction behavior. Therefore, the formation of talc is expected to weaken the strength of talc-bearing rocks and may be associated with the initiation of subduction, and with a decrease in the coupling coefficient resulting in aseismic movements along faults and shear zones within subduction zones. For these reasons, understanding the crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO) of talc is important to quantify the anisotropy and physical properties of the host rock. However, it is difficult to measure a significant number of talc crystal orientations and to evaluate the accuracy of the measurements using electron-backscattered diffraction (EBSD). Therefore, talc CPO has not been reported, and there is uncertainty regarding the estimation of the strength of deformed talc-bearing rocks. Using methods developed for antigorite, we report the first successful EBSD measurements of talc CPO from a talc schist formed due to Simetasomatism of ultramafic rocks by subduction zone fluids. We used a combination of W-SEM and FE-SEM measurements to examine domains of various grain sizes of talc. In addition, we used TEM measurements to evaluate the accuracy of the EBSD measurements and discuss the results of talc CPO analysis. Talc CPO in the present study shows a strong concentration of the pole to the (001) plane normal to the foliation. The strongest concentration of the [100] direction is parallel to the lineation. The talc schist produces similar S-wave splitting and P- and S-wave anisotropy as antigorite schist in deeper domains, thus identifying talc-rich layers in subduction zones may require a combination of geophysical surveys, seismic observations, and anisotropy modeling. The presence of strong talc CPO in rocks comprising the slab–mantle interface boundary may promote spatial expansion of the slip area during earthquakes along the base of the mantle wedge.


The ecosystem services framework has become one of the most important paradigms in forest planning and management as a way to link the multiple provisioning, regulating, and cultural services derived from ecosystems and their benefits to human wellbeing. Recently, there have been multiple efforts in emphasizing the importance of cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, the consideration of CES in management models remains a challenge. In the current context of increased demand for the joint supply of multiple ecosystem services, we aim to evaluate which CES are currently promoted by European landowners, what their the future could be, and which factors support or hinder these processes. Our findings are based on a survey of 1182 forest landowners from 25 European countries. By using a mixed-method approach that combines descriptive, ordination, and cluster analysis with qualitative data, our results reveal that CES are currently of high relevance in European forests and forest owners and managers have a generally positive attitude toward further promotion of CES through forest management. There is a high degree of synergy between CES, which suggests that many of them could be jointly promoted. Our analysis further identifies the existence of four differentiated types of forest owners based on their attitudes and management in relation to CES. These groups also differ in regard to the challenges and barriers they perceive in relation to forest CES. These diverse perspectives among Europe's landowners suggest the need for different strategies that satisfy the diverse context-related social-ecological needs required to further promote CES in European forests.


This article describes the design of a sine wave inverter control unit. We will define the basic principles and requirements to control and maintain a good quality of inverter's output. The solution that can achieve full 8 bit output resolution with 10 bit measurement and regulation time shorter than mains period is proposed. Furthermore, the possibilities and ways of implementing the control unit using the 8 bit microcontrollers are described, so it is possible to gain a complete understanding of this issue.


Aggregation of misfolded proteins and progressive polymerization of otherwise soluble proteins is a common hallmark of a wide range of highly debilitating and increasingly prevalent diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral amyloid angiopathy, type II diabetes and Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases. There is a growing interest in creating imaging agents to detect such aggregates in various imaging modalities, including PET, SPECT and MRI. We present here an overview of recent efforts from the perspective of early diagnosis of amyloid diseases, with a major focus on Aβ detection and metal complexes bearing PiB units.


Humans and wildlife are constantly exposed to ubiquitous environmental chemicals which have the capability to disrupt the endocrine system. These endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are found within everyday items including food cartons, baby-milk formula and can even be inhaled in dust particles. In utero exposure to EDCs has been found to disturb normal fetal hypothalamic, pituitary, gonadal and thyroid function in both genders. In contrast, despite increasing evidence of correlation between EDCs and metabolic diseases, chemical effects on the adrenal gland have received little attention. This study examined ovine fetal adrenal glands available from pregnant domestic sheep (Ovis aries) exposed to a real-life cocktail of EDCs found within human sewage sludge fertiliser (normal agricultural practice). Ewes were exposed for 80 day windows (0-80, 30-110, 60-140), or continually throughout gestation (0-140 days) and fetal adrenals subjected to immunohistochemistry for specific markers (CYP17A1 and AGTR1) or to real time PCR for the target genes (CYP11A1, CYP17A1, 3βHSD, MC2R, AGTR1 and ER1). Adrenal zone thickness stained for AGTR1 and CYP17A1 protein were significantly reduced (p=0.037 and p=0.031 respectively). AGTR1 and CYP17A1 gene expression exhibited a significant treatment by gender interaction (p=0.027 and p=0.032 respectively) in the females from the mid and late gestation treatment groups. ER1 gene expression was also significantly reduced in mid and late treatment goups compared with controls (p=0.042). These data illustrate that in utero exposure to EDCs within sewage sludge dysregulates the developing ovine fetal adrenal gland. It is hypothesised that this fetal adrenal dysregulation may contribute to the increasing incidence of human metabolic disease.


Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Mitigation requires a large-scale
transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper provides an overview of the rapidly
growing literature on the role of macroeconomic and financial policy tools in enabling this
transition. The literature provides a menu of policy tools for mitigation. A key conclusion is
that fiscal tools are first in line and central, but can and may need to be complemented by
financial and monetary policy instruments. Some tools and policies raise unanswered
questions about policy tool assignment and mandates, which we describe. The literature is scarce, however, on the most effective policy mix and the role of mitigation tools and goals
in the overall policy framework.


Abstract We use a combination of satellite techniques (interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), visible-band imagery, and repeat-track laser altimetry) to develop a benchmark map for the Amery Ice Shelf (AIS) grounding zone (GZ), including its islands and ice rises. The break-in-slope, as an indirect estimate of grounding line location, was mapped for the entire AIS. We have also mapped ∼55% of the landward edge and ∼30% of the seaward edge of the ice shelf flexure boundary for the AIS perimeter. Vertical ice motion from Global Positioning System receivers confirms the location of the satellite-derived GZ in two regions. Our map redefines the extent of floating ice in the south-western AIS and identifies several previously unmapped grounded regions, improving our understanding of the stresses supporting the current dynamical state of the ice shelf. Finally, we identify three along-flow channels in the ice shelf basal topography, approximately 10 km apart, 1.5 km wide and 300–500 m deep, near the southern GZ. These channels, which form at the suture zones between ice streams, may represent zones of potential weakness in the ice shelf and may influence sub-ice-shelf ocean circulation.


Back in the 1980s Jean Baudrillard wrote that public space was collapsing due to a double obscenity: "The most intimate operation of your life becomes the potential grazing ground of the media...The entire universe also unfolds unnecessarily on your home screen". He termed this the ecstasy of communication. But today, your everyday life is not just the potential grazing ground of the media, but of anyone with a camera, and the entire universe unfolds not just at home but in the palm of your hand virtually anywhere you travel. Bringing together a transdisciplinary team of leading scholars and artists from North America, Europe and Asia, this volume documents and theorizes this new visibility. It focuses on the proliferation of a range of new visual technologies, examining questions of subjectivity, agency, and surveillance as well as mapping and theorizing new practices of visuality within this new visual assemblage. "New Visualities, New Technologies" addresses the pressing need for the conceptual understanding of new forms of seeing, looking, presenting, and hiding.


Contamination of surface and groundwaters by atrazine is a problem for water utilities in the United States and Europe. Though not removed by traditional liquid-solid separation, it is removed by nanofiltration. Retention of atrazine by a series of dialysis membranes was investigated over a range of solution chemistries with the goal of better understanding how the solution matrix may influence atrazine retention by membranes. Atrazine was significantly retained by membranes with molecular mass cut-offs less than 500 Da in the presence of natural organic matter (NOM), presumably by association with NOM. Atrazine retention was independent of the initial concentration. Solution chemistry was important in determining the extent of atrazine retention. Where NOM aggregation and hence NOM retention increased, atrazine retention decreased, and vice versa. Atrazine retention tended to decrease at higher ionic strengths. This effectwas significantly stronger with divalent calcium than with monovalent sodium. Partitioning coefficients calculated here are much higher than values reported from experiments of atrazine retention by soil organic matter. It is speculated that the most likely mechanism of atrazine retention by NOM is through association of atrazine with interior adsorption sites on the NOM molecule by transitory hydrogen bonding and subsequent physical entrapment.


We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labor markets susceptible to computerization due to specialization in routine task-intensive activities experience significant occupational polarization within manufacturing and non-manufacturing but no net employment decline. Trade impacts rise in the 2000s as imports accelerate, while the effect of technology appears to shift from automation of production activities in manufacturing towards computerization of information-processing tasks in non-manufacturing.


Long Term Monitoring (LTM) networks play critical roles in tracking the migration of contaminants in groundwater, evaluating the efficiency of the existing remediation techniques, and determining further remediation activities on contamination sites. Monitoring of sites with contaminated groundwater is dictated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), and Underground Storage Tank (UST) programs. The initial LTM networks are designed and established after the active remediation processes are identified and adopted on contamination sites, and the LTM network usually is used for up to 30 years after remediation is terminated. During remediation, several hundred of samples may be collected and analyzed at as frequent as quarterly for a typical site to satisfy data sufficiency. In some sites, especially small sites, however, there are usually not adequate amount of data to evaluate whether remediation goals are met or not. The primary concern of LTM is the substantial cost of monitoring at private or/and government sites, given the large number of remediation sites, number of monitoring wells, numerous constituents analyzed at each well, and extensive LTM period required. For example, in 2005, the U.S. Air Force spent 32% (or $24.8 M) of its remediation budget on LTM systems. Furthermore, after the active remediation process is completed, a lot of data collected with the existing sampling network provide redundant information. It is imperative to remove the redundant sampling locations in order to improve the cost.efficiency of LTM networks while keeping the data loss at an acceptable level. The second problem of LTM is that data collected at existing monitoring locations may not accurately reflect the changing site situation. The existing LTM networks were designed according to the preliminary site assessment or initial stages of groundwater remediation, and may not capture the changes in the contaminant plume size and shape and concentrations. At small sites, existing monitoring wells may not provide sufficient data for site remediation status assessment. At certain groundwater remediation sites, more sampling wells need to be added to existing LTM networks to augment the accuracy of plume interpolation and remediation evaluation. The ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO) was the first applied by Li and Chan Hilton (2005, 2007) to LTM network improvement and was demonstrated to be an effective method for LTM network optimization. The ACO-LTM algorithm is based on the ant colony optimization (ACO) paradigm to remove spatial redundancy. This study is an extension of the work of Li and Chan Hilton. The ACO-LTM is modified and applied to 1) reduce LTM sampling costs by removing redundancy of data at sites with numerous sampling locations while minimizing data los and 2) improve the monitoring network by adding sampling points to minimize network estimation variance. This paper focuses on the first objective. Specifically, improved data interpolation methods will be incorporated into the ACO-LTM algorithm to improve the quantification of data loss.


Although the National Highway System provides an efficient network to move people and goods across the country, disruptions in the system can quickly bring the flow to a halt. The freeway-arterial corridors of the highway system are crucial nodes allowing users to enter and exit yet are vulnerable to considerable disruptions in the flow of traffic due to the frequency of closely spaced grade separated roadways and high traffic volumes surrounding interchanges. By analyzing the closure of the interchanges and assessing the subsequent traffic conditions throughout the network using travel demand modeling software, it is possible to determine the effects, adverse or not, of major closures. Such an assessment is purposeful, ensuring the resiliency of the freeway by understanding the resulting congestion to relieving or preventing its occurrence. Through a detailed understanding of the effects, transportation authorizes may be better able to maintain an efficient flow of people and goods. This research analyzes the prevailing traffic conditions along the Interstate-95 corridor in New Castle County, Delaware due to the closure of three separately analyzed freeway-arterial interchanges along I-95: SR 896, SR 1, and US 202. It examines the change in volume, change in speed, and change in volume to capacity ratio on the network from before to after conditions. Each interchange closure produced distinctive network traffic conditions. While SR 896 primarily induces local effects SR 1 and US 202 results in a wider expanse of effects along the I-95 corridor. Significant disruptions in the flow of the network were contained to a few major arterials particularly during morning and afternoon peak periods.


Recent articles by Allan Hutchinson and Jane Stapleton illustrate the emerging orthodoxy in Australian legal thought that judging is, essentially, politics in another form. Hutchinson is openly critical, indeed he is scornful, of Justice Heydon's support for Sir Owen Dixon's commitment to strict legalism as the proper judicial method. For Hutchinson, judging is politics in disguise and calls for strict legalism are either naive or hypocritical. Stapleton is less directly concerned to illustrate the supposed flaws of strict legalism as a method. Instead, she advocates an openly instrumentalist role for the High Court as a way of alleviating Aboriginal disadvantage in Australia. However, implicit in this stance is a position similar to that of Hutchinson – that judging is inevitably and inescapably political. It wil be argued here that both articles are unconvincing. Hutchinson's argument is confused and confusing, self-contradictory, and relies on a puzzling misreading of Charles Dicken's Bleak House. Stapleton's project is simply implausible and at odds with other work of hers which illustrates the problems with the instrumentalist role that she advocates for the Australian judiciary. The paper will conclude by considering why scholars of international repute have made such unconvincing arguments and what this has to tell us about the contemporary debate about judging.


Sensor nodes (SNs) gather data in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which is pieced together at the sink. Most of the energy of SNs is consumed in transmission and reception of the data packets. Reduction in transmission of data packets greatly improves the lifetime of WSNs as it not only reduces energy of transmitting nodes but also of the receiving nodes. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient data gathering protocol (EEDGP) which reduces the transmission of data packets thereby reducing the energy consumption of SNs (SNs). Simulation results show EEDGP significantly increases the life time of WSNs by reducing the transmission of redundant data.


For a number of reasons design and technology has over the past decade played a very central and key role in educational reforms. Notably being at a pivotal point between core and foundation subjects, academic and vocational education and science and arts.

This paper will research, reflect and synthesise other approaches to technology education in a number of other countries including England and Wales, Scotland, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Japan, USA, Canada, Australia plus one developing and one Eastern European country.

Each of the selected countries will be analysed on the following profile along with a schematic over view of the educational system from its early years through to degree level.

Historical perspective
Overview and educational structure
Technology including Information Technology and Vocational Education
Key Points and Future aims


Abstract. In Alpine catchments, snowmelt is often a major contribution to runoff. Therefore, modeling snow processes is important when concerned with flood or drought forecasting, reservoir operation and inland waterway management. In this study, we address the question of how sensitive hydrological models are to the representation of snow cover dynamics and whether the performance of a hydrological model can be enhanced by integrating data from a dedicated external snow monitoring system. As a framework for our tests we have used the hydrological model HBV (Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalansavdelning) in the version HBV-light, which has been applied in many hydrological studies and is also in use for operational purposes. While HBV originally follows a temperature-index approach with time-invariant calibrated degree-day factors to represent snowmelt, in this study the HBV model was modified to use snowmelt time series from an external and spatially distributed snow model as model input. The external snow model integrates three-dimensional sequential assimilation of snow monitoring data with a snowmelt model, which is also based on the temperature-index approach but uses a time-variant degree-day factor. The following three variations of this external snow model were applied: (a) the full model with assimilation of observational snow data from a dense monitoring network, (b) the same snow model but with data assimilation switched off and (c) a downgraded version of the same snow model representing snowmelt with a time-invariant degree-day factor. Model runs were conducted for 20 catchments at different elevations within Switzerland for 15 years. Our results show that at low and mid-elevations the performance of the runoff simulations did not vary considerably with the snow model version chosen. At higher elevations, however, best performance in terms of simulated runoff was obtained when using the snowmelt time series from the snow model, which utilized data assimilation. This was especially true for snow-rich years. These findings suggest that with increasing elevation and the correspondingly increased contribution of snowmelt to runoff, the accurate estimation of snow water equivalent (SWE) and snowmelt rates has gained importance.


Objective:Protein degradation, negative nitrogen balance and compromised structure of essential organs have been associated with resistance and decreased production of anabolic hormones. In turn, increased levels of anabolic hormones are associated with improved survival. The aims of the present study were to determine the pattern of anabolic hormones, resting energy expenditure and cytokines in severely thermally injured pediatric patients and to compare these parameters in female and male patients. Methods:Sixty-five children (1 to 16 years of age) sustaining a severe thermal injury (≥40% TBSA) were included into the study. Patients were further divided into females (n = 22) and males (n = 43). Patient demographics, nutritional support, incidence of sepsis, inhalation injury, and mortality were noted. Resting energy expenditure was measured during hospital course by indirect calorimetry. Blood was drawn 0, 10, 20, and 40 days postburn and serum insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), insulin-like growth factor binding protein-1 and -3 (IGFBP-1, and -3), growth hormone, insulin, and cytokines were measured. Results:There were no significant differences between females and males for demographics, nutritional intake, or concomitant injuries. In both groups, endogenous anabolic agents were drastically decreased by 3- to 5-fold up to 40 days posttrauma. Females had significantly higher levels of IGF-I, IGFBP-3, growth hormone, and insulin when compared with males, P < 0.05. Increased levels of anabolic hormones were associated with decreased stay on the ICU (females 36 ± 22 days versus males 53± 39 days), decreased serum IL-1β and TNF-α as well as resting energy expenditure, P < 0.05. Conclusion:Data indicate that despite adequate nutritional support, severe thermal injury leads to decreased anabolic hormones over a prolonged period of time. Female patients had significantly increased levels of anabolic hormones, which are associated with decreased proinflammatory mediators and hypermetabolism, leading to a significant shorter ICU stay compared with male patients.


Statistical models for data collected over space are widely available and commonly used.
These models however usually assume relationships between observations depend on
Euclidean distance between monitoring sites whose location is determined using two dimensional coordinates, and that relationships are not direction dependent. One example
where these assumptions fail is when data are collected on river networks. In this situation,
the location of monitoring sites along a river network relative to other sites is as
important as the location in two dimensional space since it can be expected that spatial
patterns will depend on the direction of water flow and distance between monitoring
sites measured along the river network. Euclidean distance therefore might no longer
be the most appropriate distance metric to consider. This is further complicated where
it might be necessary to consider both Euclidean distance and distance along the river
network if the observed variable is influenced by the land in which the river network is
embedded.
The Environment Agency (EA), established in 1996, is the government agency responsible
for monitoring and improving the water quality in rivers situated in England (and
Wales until 2013). A key responsibility of the EA is to ensure that efforts are made to
improve and maintain water quality standards in compliance with EU regulations such
as the Water Framework Directive (WFD, European Parliament (2000)) and Nitrates
Directive (European Parliament, 1991). Environmental monitoring is costly and in many
regions of the world funding for environmental monitoring is decreasing (Ferreyra et al.,
2002). It is therefore important to develop statistical methods that can extract as much
information as possible from existing or reduced monitoring networks. One way to do
this is to identify common temporal patterns shared by many monitoring sites so that
redundancy in the monitoring network could be reduced by removing non-informative
sites exhibiting the same temporal patterns. In the case of river water quality, information
about the shape of the river network, such as flow direction and connectivity of
monitoring sites, could be incorporated into statistical techniques to improve statistical
power and provide efficient inference without the increased cost of collecting more
data. Reducing the volume of data required to estimate temporal trends would improve
efficiency and provide cost savings to regulatory agencies.
The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate how information about the spatial structure
of river networks can be used to augment and improve the specfic trends obtained
when using a variety of statistical techniques to estimate temporal trends in water quality
data. Novel studies are designed to investigate the effect of accounting for river
network structure within existing statistical techniques and, where necessary, statistical
methodology is developed to show how this might be achieved. Chapter 1 provides an
introduction to water quality monitoring and a description of several statistical methods
that might be used for this. A discussion of statistical problems commonly encountered
when modelling spatiotemporal data is also included. Following this, Chapter 2 applies
a dimension reduction technique to investigate temporal trends and seasonal patterns
shared among catchment areas in England and Wales. A novel comparison method
is also developed to identify differences in the shape of temporal trends and seasonal
patterns estimated using several different statistical methods, each of which incorporate
spatial information in different ways. None of the statistical methods compared in
Chapter 2 specifically account for features of spatial structure found in river networks:
direction of water flow, relative influence of upstream monitoring sites on downstream
sites, and stream distance. Chapter 3 therefore provides a detailed investigation and
comparison of spatial covariance models that can be used to model spatial relationships
found in river networks to standard spatial covariance models. Further investigation
of the spatial covariance function is presented in Chapter 4 where a simulation study
is used to assess how predictions from statistical models based on river network spatial
covariance functions are affected by reducing the size of the monitoring network.
A study is also developed to compare the predictive performance of statistical models
based on a river network spatial covariance function to models based on spatial covariate
information, but assuming spatial independence of monitoring sites. Chapters 3
and 4 therefore address the aim of assessing the improvement in information extracted
from statistical models after the inclusion of information about river network structure.
Following this, Chapter 5 combines the ideas of Chapters 2, 3 and 4 and proposes a
novel statistical method where estimated common temporal patterns are adjusted for
known spatial structure, identified in Chapters 3 and 4. Adjusting for known structure
in the data means that spatial and temporal patterns independent of the river network
structure can be more clearly identified since they are no longer confounded with known
structure. The final chapter of this thesis provides a summary of the statistical methods investigated and developed within this thesis, identifies some limitations of the work carried out and suggests opportunities for future research. An Appendix provides details of many of the data processing steps required to obtain information about the river network structure
in an appropriate form.


There were 3 influenza pandemics in the 20th century, and there has been 1 so far in the 21st century. Local, national, and international health authorities regularly update their plans for mitigating the next influenza pandemic in light of the latest available evidence on the effectiveness of various control measures in reducing transmission. Here, we review the evidence base on the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical personal protective measures and environmental hygiene measures in nonhealthcare settings and discuss their potential inclusion in pandemic plans. Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. We identified several major knowledge gaps requiring further research, most fundamentally an improved characterization of the modes of person-to-person transmission.


Challenges associated with water scarcity and increasing water demand are leading many cities around the globe to consider water reuse as a step towards water sustainability. Recycled water may be used in a spectrum of applications, from irrigation or industrial use to direct potable reuse, and thus presents a challenge to regulators as not all applications require the same level of treatment. We propose that traditional drinking water standards identifying "safe" water quality are insufficient for recycled water and that using the "human exposome" as a framework to guide development of a risk management strategy offers a holistic means by which to base decisions impacting water quality. A successful and comprehensive plan for water reuse must consider 1) health impacts associated with both acute and chronic exposures, 2) all routes of exposure by which individuals may encounter recycled water, and 3) water quality at the true point of use after storage and transport through pipe networks, rather than at the point of treatment. Based on these principles we explore key chemical differences between recycled and traditional potable water, implications for distribution systems with respect to design and operation, occurrence of chronic contaminants, and the presence of emerging and often underappreciated microbial contaminants. The unique nature of recycled water has the potential to provide rapid regrowth conditions for certain microbial contaminants in these systems, which must be considered to achieve safe water quality at the point of use.


I build a model to show that if some export costs are sunk and shared between alike destinations, the decision of a firm to enter a market is a function of its experience in a similar one. Using a rich firm-level dataset for Argentina I test this prediction and I provide evidence on the role and nature of shared export costs. Product adaptation costs, associated to market similarities in geography and culture, and quality upgrading costs, associated to market similarities in income level, are found to be significant. Finally, I show that the failure to consider firms´ idiosyncratic experience in international markets leads to an underestimation of the difficulty to enter export markets.


A 2-yr winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)―faflow rotation continues to be the most common cropping system in much of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The sustainability of soils in the region depends on our ability to halt or greatly reduce wind and water erosion. An incomplete understanding of how tilled summer fallow preserves seed-zone moisture for timely fall crop establishment has slowed efforts to optimize tillage techniques for creating profitable and erosion-resistant systems. This 2-yr study created a series of soil mulches at two sites representing major soils in the region. It was found that timing and depth of mulch creation had consistent effects at all four site-years. Tillage performed in mid-June to depths of 10 and 15 cm preserved up to 0.01 kg kg ―1 greater water content than no or 5-cm tillage, an amount of water that can make substantial differences in the germination of winter wheat. The later or shallower tillage treatments produced water contents similar to zero tillage below the 15-cm depth. Temperature profiles at 1-cm resolution demonstrated different shapes under different mulch treatments, which may prove useful in making quick mulch performance comparisons in the field. To optimize the timing and depth of summer fallow tillage, it will be necessary to characterize spring water storage plus the potential for end-of-summer water storage for each soil type.


Review and Extension for the O'Brien Fleming Multiple Testing procedure by Hanan Hammouri, MS. Advisor: Dr. Roy Sabo O'Brien and Fleming (1979) proposed a straightforward and useful multiple testing procedure (group sequential testing procedure) for comparing two treatments in clinical trials where subject responses are dichotomous (e.g. success and failure). O'Brien and Fleming stated that their group sequential testing procedure has the same Type I error rate and power as that of a fixed one-stage chi-square test, but gives the opportunity to terminate the trial early when one treatment is clearly performing better than the other. We studied and tested the O'Brien and Fleming procedure specifically by correcting the originally proposed critical values. Furthermore, we updated the O'Brien Fleming Group Sequential Testing procedure to make it more flexible via three extensions. The first extension is combining the O'Brien Fleming Group Sequential Testing procedure with the Optimal allocation, where the idea is to allocate more patients to the better treatment after each interim analysis. The second extension is combining the O'Brien Fleming Group Sequential Testing procedure with the Neyman allocation which aims to minimize the variance of the difference in sample proportions. The last extension is that we can allow for different sample weights for different stages, as opposed to equal allocation for different stages. Simulation studies showed that the O'Brien Fleming Group Sequential Testing procedure is relatively robust to the added features.


Classical novae (CNe) are interacting binary systems whose outbursts are powered by a thermonuclear runaway in accreted material on the surface of a white dwarf (WD). The secondary stars in such systems fill their Roche lobe and material is transferred onto the WD primary star via an accretion disk.Recurrent novae (RNe) show many similarities to CNe, but have had more than one recorded outburst. They play an important role as one of the suspected progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae (SNe) which are used as primary distance indicators in cosmology. Thus, it is important to investigate the nature of their central binary systems to determine the relation between the parameters of the central system and outburst type, and finally ascertain the population of novae that might be available to give rise to the progenitors of Type Ia SNe. The investigation looking for characteristics that may distinguish RNe from CNe systems, the selection of initial targets for detailed study, and results of the investigation are presented in this thesis.The proposal that RNe occupy a region separated from CNe in an outburst amplitude versus speed class diagram was adopted. Since the low amplitude results from the existence of an evolved secondary and/or high mass transfer rate in the quiescent system, RNe candidates should accordingly have low amplitude. The 93 novae with observed V amplitudes given in the literature and 43 novae with photographic amplitudes have been combined and plotted on an outburst amplitude versus rate of decline diagram from which 16 target novae suspected to be RNe candidates were selected for photometric and spectroscopic follow-up.Quiescent photometric magnitudes and spectra were obtained using RATCam on LT, FRODOSpec on LT, and RSS on SALT. Spectral type and luminosity class determined from the near-IR colour-magnitude diagrams were compared to those derived from the spectra. Determination of spectral types was accomplished by identifying specific lines and calculating indices from TiO bands, VO bands, and the Na atomic line for giants (finding 4 stars) and sub-giants/giants (3 stars). A spectral library template was used instead of the indices in cases of main-sequence stars (2 stars).Our investigation also confirmed the positions of AR Cir, V794 Oph and EU Sct where there had been some ambiguity previously. Ultimately, we suggest four prime RNe candidates (2 novae with giant secondaries - V3964 Sgr and EU Sct, and 2 novae with sub-giant secondaries - V794 Oph and V368 Aql) which are currently classified as CNe, to look for more than one outburst in archival plates or large sample sky surveys such as SMEI (see below).By introducing the high cadence full-sky space-based observational archive of the Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) which operated on the Coriolis satellite from 2003-2011, we derived light curves of one Mira (O Cet) as a general example and two novae with known outbursts during 2003-2011 (V2467 Cyg and V1187 Sco). The SMEI light curves potentially reveal more details than those given by ground-based observations. The pre-maximum halt was found in V2467 Cyg as well as oscillations in light curves found earlier than those found in previous studies. The precise date of maximum of each nova was provided.Four bright novae that are potentially RNe candidates (V4074 Sgr, V3964 Sgr, DK Lac and V368 Aql) were searched for second outbursts in the SMEI data, but none were found. Among the nova outbursts detected by SMEI, we found however unprecedented detail in first class data of the Recurrent Nova T Pyx in its 2011 outburst.We investigated the optical light curve of T Pyx during its 2011 outburst through compiling a database of SMEI and American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) observations. The SMEI light curve, covering t=1.5-49 days post-discovery, was divided into four phases based on the idealised nova optical light curve; the initial rise (1.5-3.3 days), the pre-maximum halt (3.3-13.3 days), the final rise (14.7-27.9 days), and the early decline (27.9 days, until the end of SMEI observations on day 49). The SMEI light curve contains a strongly detected period of 1.44+-0.05 days during the pre-maximum halt phase. These oscillations resemble those found in recent TNR models arising from instabilities in the expanding envelope. No spectral variations that mirror the light curve periodicity were found however. The marked dip at t~22-24 days just before light curve maximum at t=27.9 days may represent the same (shorter duration) phenomenon seen in other novae observed by SMEI and present in some TNR model light curves.The spectra of T Pyx from the 2m the Liverpool Telescope and the Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System (SMARTS) 1.5m telescope were obtained from t=0.8-80.7 and 155.1-249.9 days, covering the major phases of development. The nova was observed very early in its rise where a distinct high velocity ejection phase was evident with derived Vej~4000 km/s initially. A marked drop at t=5.7 days, and then a gradual increase occurred in derived Vej to stabilise at ~1500 km/s at the pre-maximum halt. Here we propose two different stages of mass loss, a short-lived phase occurring immediately after outburst and lasting ~6 days followed by a more steadily evolving and higher mass loss phase. The overall spectral development follows that typical of a Classical Nova and comparison with the photometric behaviour reveals consistencies with the simple evolving pseudo-photosphere model of the nova outburst. Comparing optical spectra to X-ray and radio light curves, weak [Fe X] 6375A emission was marginally detected before the X-ray rise and was clearly present during the brightest phase of X-ray emission. If the onset of the X-ray phase and the start of the final decline in the optical are related to the cessation of significant mass loss, then this occurred at t~90-110 days.


Whilst online message boards offer an effective way to communicate issues such as aggression between individuals can still exist. Bullying for example is not confined to face to face (FtF) interactions and is increasingly common online (Bond & Carter, 2012; 2013). Additionally there are specific online behaviours such as trolling and flaming. These behaviours can be found in many online communities though some are more infamous for online hostility. One such community is 4chan.org, an asynchronous multi-board site originally developed for discussion of Japanese anime but has expanded to cover a range of topics (Knuttila, 2011).
Theories regarding such aggressive online behaviours focus on similar factors to FtF behaviour such as anonymity. The SIDE model is often utilised (Lea & Spears, 1991). Communities like 4chan with their high message turnover and ranges of anonymity available to users provide a ready resource to investigate the suitability of such theory for online interactions. The ease of access also makes them a tempting focus of undergraduate dissertations.
However despite these benefits there are both ethical and practical issues attached. This presentation focuses on some preliminary work carried out during an undergraduate project as a case study, and discusses some matters arising.
To investigate the possible effects of anonymity on online aggression a student observed and recorded 30 minutes activity on a 4chan sub-board (Social) every day for a week. The contents of the collected posts were then categorised by user's anonymity level (moderate, heightened, complete) and the level of any expressed hostility/aggression.
Of 3662 posts 998 contained some form of aggression. Though this appeared to be a reasonable sample size 99.8% of the total posts were from completely anonymous users. This raises the issue of the feasibility of statistical comparisons between levels of anonymity when the amount of moderate/heightened users are so low.
Sampling across more of the 4chan boards would allow for more data and perhaps lower levels of anonymity in the sample but there are ethical issues attached. Some boards on 4chan are dedicated to pornographic content, potentially illegal material (torrents) and despite the site's own rules has been known to contain images of child pornography (Rushkoff, 2009). We highlight further issues and suggest ways to address such issues to enable undergraduate research.


Interleukin 1α is a pro-infl ammatory cytokine with an important role in innate immunity, as well as in maintaining normal tissue homeostasis. Interleukin 1α is constitutively expressed in the male gonad and plays key role in the regulation of blood–testis barrier in the seminiferous epithelium. Blood-testis barrier is formed by cell junctions between adjacent Sertoli cells and protects developing antigenic foreign germ cells against the immune system, thus preventing the production of antisperm antibodies. Still, the blood–testis barrier must be transiently opened to allow the entry of spermatocytes into the adluminal compartment of the seminiferous epithelium for further development and spermiation. Th is review summarizes current knowledge about the role of interleukin 1α in the male gonad and highlights new interesting fi ndings that show interleukin 1α as a key cytokine involved in the remodelling of the blood-testis barrier.


The Basque definite article -a is used in more contexts than the articles in neighboring languages. This extensive use is problematic for synchronic analysis; this article will offer a diachronic perspective of the problem. Non-referential noun phrases (mass nouns and plural expressions in particular) in object position will be analyzed, showing that in old Basque they lacked the definite article; the extensive use of -a/-ak in these contexts in modern Basque will be related to the spread into non-referential expressions of the genitive plural declension mark -en , which shares its diachronic origin with the definite article -a.


Until now descriptions of the nature of love have been left to the muse of poets and inspiration of philosophers. Psychologists usually refer to love as an emotion and biologists as a biochemical condition. Proponents of Artificial Intelligence (AI) suggest love can be described by a computer program even with current computer technology if we only knew the correct algorithm. Cognitive psychologists would profess that love reduces to configurational states in neural networks, microtubules or synapses. These aspects are not denied only that they are the wrapping and not the essence of love itself. Now that the physical cosmology of the mind-body interaction (awareness) has been discovered, it is possible to describe the fundamental basis of love. What is the soul, what is life, what is intelligence, and especially what is love and why it takes a whole cosmology to be adequately described are questions that noetic science begins to formally answer. It will take volumes to completely describe the physical cosmology of love; thus in this work we give basic descriptions as a way of introducing what comes in the near future as new noetic technologies become available to explore Self-Organized Living Systems (SOLS). A unique form of meditation to subjectively experience the soul of another person as if one were them is also introduced


To be able to make changes to a business process, it is necessary to understand how the process supports the strategic goals of the business and how changes to the goals may impact the process and vice versa. This paper explains the relations between strategic goals and business processes by adopting a regulation point of view. This point of view holds that the main property of business systems is their constancy. A business achieves constancy by regulating its relationships with other business entities. We model this constancy with maintenance goals which could be seen as a more precise definition of strategic goals. We then link these maintenance goals to achievement goals that correspond to operational goals. We further link these achievement goals with the business processes designed to achieve them.


Management of pear (Pyrus communis L.) trees for low N and high Ca content in the fruit reduced the severity of postharvest fungal decay. Application of N fertilizer 3 weeks before harvest supplied N for tree reserves and for flowers the following spring without increasing fruit N. Calcium chloride sprays during the growing season increased fruit Ca content. Nitrogen and Ca management appear to be additive factors in decay reduction. Fruit density and position in the tree canopy influenced their response to N fertilization. Nitrogen : Ca ratios were lower in fruit from the east quadrant and bottom third of trees and from the distal portion of branches. High fruit density was associated with low N : Ca ratios. Nutritional manipulations appear to be compatible with other methods of postharvest decay control.


Assessing the impacts of avian collisions with wind turbines requires reliable estimates of avian flight intensities and altitudes, to enable accurate estimation of collision rates, avoidance rates and related effects on populations. At sea, obtaining such estimates visually is limited not only by weather conditions but, more importantly, because a high proportion of birds fly at night and at heights above the range of visual observation. We used vertical radar with automated bird-tracking software to overcome these limitations and obtain data on the magnitude, timing and altitude of local bird movements and seasonal migration measured continuously at a Dutch offshore wind farm. An estimated 1.6 million radar echoes representing individual birds or flocks were recorded crossing the wind farm annually at altitudes between 25 and 115 m (the rotor-swept zone). The majority of these fluxes consisted of gull species during the day and migrating passerines at night. We demonstrate daily, monthly and seasonal patterns in fluxes at rotor heights and the influence of wind direction on flight intensity. These data are among the first to show the magnitude and variation of low-altitude flight activity across the North Sea, and are valuable for assessing the consequences of developments such as offshore wind farms for birds.


In the past, only a few incidences of esca diseased grapevines were reported from the Slanghoekand Rawsonville areas of South Africa, with the damage believed to be of little importance so that the diseasehas not been studied in South Africa. In the present study, vines with internal or external symptoms of the esca disease complex were sampled from table, raisin and wine grape cultivars from 37 production areas inthe Western Cape, Northern Cape and Limpopo provinces of that country. Most vines were greater than 10years old, but younger vines (3 and 5 years old) were also found to be infected. External symptoms, includingdieback, tiger striped leaves, berry symptoms (shrivelling, insufficient colouring) and apoplexy, resembledthose found on grapevines in Europe and the USA, although the typical tiger stripe symptom was observedless frequently. The internal stem and trunk symptoms were similar to European symptoms, and includedwhite rot, black and brown wood streaking, brown necrosis within white rot, sectorial brown necrosis andbrown/red/margins next to decay, which often included back lines delimiting white decay. The fungi isolatedmostly from the white rot were basidiomycetes species (30.4%). Black and brown wood streaking was primarily caused by Phaeomoniella chlamydospora (45.4%). Brown necrosis within the white rot was linked to colonization by basidiomycetes (20.4%), Phaeoacremonium aleophilum (15.9%) and Pa. chlamydospora (13.6%). Phaeomoniella chlamydospora (20.8%) and Botryosphaeriaceae species (10.7%) were isolated the most fromthe sectorial brown necrosis and Pa. chlamydospora (29.1%) from the brown/red margins and black lines next to decay. Given the wide distribution of esca complex wood and foliar symptoms in the grape growing regions investigated, this disease should be considered as an important limiting factor in the productive lifespan of vineyards and the quality of produce from grapevine in South Africa.


Cholera toxin (CT) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) increased the synthesis of 3',5'-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) in rabbit intestinal mucosa, which appeared to be responsible for inducing the release of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) from enterochromaffin cells into the intestinal lumen. With isolated intestinal cells, CT induced the synthesis of PGE2 more efficiently from epithelial cells than from lamina propria cells; however, the basal amount of this eicosanoid produced by lamina propria cells was approximately six-fold more than that formed by the epithelial cells. The CT-induced stimulation of arachidonate metabolism appeared to be generalised in nature, as PGF2 alpha and leukotrienes were synthesised in addition to PGE2. Injection of dibutyryl cAMP into the intestinal lumen in vivo markedly reduced both basal levels of PGE2, as well as CT-induced levels of PGE2, released into the luminal fluid. Similarly, when biopsy samples of tissue from rabbit intestinal loops, challenged in vivo with dibutyryl cAMP, were washed and incubated in vitro, the amount of PGE2 synthesis remained below basal levels. In contrast, when biopsy samples of normal small intestinal tissue were exposed in vitro to dibutyryl cAMP, PGE2 synthesis increased. Thus, cAMP appeared to down-regulate the levels of intestinal eicosanoids in vivo, despite its innate capacity to evoke PGE2 synthesis from mucosal tissue in vitro. Thus, the data indicate that CT-induced mediators exhibit interactive effects that alter their cellular concentrations, that in turn could affect the biological responses.


Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its local market, which is justified as necessary for consumer or environmental protection. Importers into the local market, however, challenge the standard as a 'disguised barrier to trade' or 'green protectionism'. The paper develops a two country political economy model to explain such disputes. It is shown how the political process can lead to a 'political failure' which takes the form of either too many or too few product standards and disagreement between politicians in different countries over the optimal policy. In a second step the model is used to evaluate whether two common proposals to settle or avoid such disputes, mutual recognition of standards and harmonization, can improve the political process.


This article uses the history of bovine epizootics in eighteenth-century Venice to make three interrelated claims about the place of early modern Europe in environmental history. First, that the sudden appearance of severe and recurring zoonotic diseases in northern Italy is a symptom of a much larger shift in European agrarian systems and nutritional habits, and that new markets for beef cattle were springing up in Italy and elsewhere in western Europe. Second, that the agrarian revolution of the eighteenth century was in part the result of a heretofore ignored shifting of environmental costs from western Europe to central Europe. By raising large numbers of beef cattle on the Hungarian plain, Italians and other western Europeans were able to access unprecedented supplies of animal protein without sacrificing any arable land. Third, that the emergence of widespread epizootics in eighteenth-century Europe should force environmental historians to reconsider the ways in which we treat early modern European forms of agriculture, pastoralism, and environmental organization as normative. Rapid and devastating environmental change generated by new biological encounters occurred within Europe itself and not only as a result of European expansion into other parts of the globe.


Azadirachtin was isolated from neem seeds, by flash column chromatography, with a purity of > 95%. Yields from Ghanaian seeds were higher than those from Pakistani seeds (0.04% w/w and < 0.0015% w/w respectively). An unsuccessful attempt was made to produce 14C-Labelled azadirachtin for use in systemic movement studies. Qualitative and preliminary quantitative chromatographic analyses of the leaf extracts of tobacco seedlings (Nicotiana clevelandii) whose roots had been immersed in azadirachtin solutions showed systemic movement of the compound from the roots to the aerial parts.

The electrical penetration graph (EPG) method was used to analyse the feeding behaviour of apterous, adult Myzus persicae (Homoptera : Aphididae) on N.clevelandii seedlings, treated systemically with azadirachtin. The percentage of the 9h recording period devoted to non-penetration activities and to stylet pathway patterns, the number of probes inititated and the numbers of sieve tube penetrations all increased with increasing azadirachtin concentration. Azadirachtin treatment significantly reduced the percentage of probes that reached sieve elements and increased non-penetration activity before and after the first period of ingestion from the sieve elements. The percentage of the recording period spent in the EPG pattern associated with sieve tube penetration was significantly reduced by an azadirachtin concentration of 300ppm, and the duration of each individual sieve tube penetration was significantly reduced by an azadirachtin concentration of 100ppm.

A novel quantitative method, based on honeydew production, was used to measure aphid feeding on artificial liqued diets containing various concentrations of azadirachtin. During a 52h period on diets containing azadirachtin at concentrations of 100 and 300ppm, adult apterous M.Persicae produced 4-5 times less honeydew than those feeding on control diets and aphids on diets containing 500 and 1000ppm azadirachtin produced no more honeydew than aphids which were starved for the same period. During this period the rate of nymph production by aphids on all treated diets fell to less than half that of aphids on control diet. When the aphids were subsequently transferred to untreated diets for 44h, a large proportion of the nymphs produced by aphids which had been on diets treated with 100-500ppm azadirachtin were born dead with undeveloped appendages.


Abstract. Dust aerosol plays an important role in the climate system by
affecting the radiative and energy balances. Biases in dust modeling may
result in biases in simulating global energy budget and regional climate. It
is thus very important to understand how well dust is simulated in the
Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models. Here seven
CMIP5 models using interactive dust emission schemes are examined against
satellite-derived dust optical depth (DOD) during 2004–2016. It is found that multi-model mean can largely capture the global spatial
pattern and zonal mean of DOD over land in present-day climatology in MAM and
JJA. Global mean land DOD is underestimated by −25.2 % in MAM to
−6.4 % in DJF. While seasonal cycle, magnitude, and spatial pattern are
generally captured by the multi-model mean over major dust source regions such as
North Africa and the Middle East, these variables are not so well represented
by most of the models in South Africa and Australia. Interannual variations
in DOD are not captured by most of the models or by the multi-model mean.
Models also do not capture the observed connections between DOD and local
controlling factors such as surface wind speed, bareness, and precipitation.
The constraints from surface bareness are largely underestimated while the
influences of surface wind and precipitation are overestimated. Projections of DOD change in the late half of the 21st century under the
Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario in which the multi-model
mean is compared with that projected by a regression model. Despite the
uncertainties associated with both projections, results show some
similarities between the two, e.g., DOD pattern over North Africa in DJF and
JJA, an increase in DOD in the central Arabian Peninsula in all seasons, and
a decrease over northern China from MAM to SON.


Armed groups are becoming increasingly significant international actors. International Relations as a discipline must analyze and integrate these actors if it is to effectively explain international politics. This thesis begins this process through examining the international relations of warlords. Specifically, this thesis asks: how do warlords relate with states and other international actors. The thesis moves away from the greed-grievance debate, instead a Neorealist approach is used to analyze the relations of warlords. The conclusion reached is that warlords relate with states and other international actors in essentially the same way as states - they seek to ensure their survival through the balance of power. Specifically, they relate in terms of internal power cultivation, alliances, and war. The argument for this conclusion begins with a conceptual analysis of warlords, in which it is determined that warlords are non-state actors that use military power and economic exploitation to maintain fiefdoms which are autonomous and independent from the state and society. It is then demonstrated that the traditionally state-centric Neorealist approach can be used to analyze warlords, by arguing that warlords can be seen as empirically sovereign, 'functionally undifferentiated', 'like units', which are motivated by survival, and exist in an anarchic system. Neorealist theory and its notions of self help, internal power cultivation, alliances, security dilemma, and war are examined and it is demonstrated how these concepts describe and explain warbrd international relations. The validity of using the Neorealist approach is tested throughout the thesis in vignette case studies on warlords including the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF), the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and Afghan warlords as well as in two major case studies on Somali warlord relations with the UN and Ethiopia and the Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) relations with Uganda, Sudan, and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).


This paper introduces the concept of 'cultural dimension' as developed in intercultural communication, into the field of intercultural narrative studies. Since cultural dimensions describe and explain social human behavior, the question emerges whether they can also help to study narratorial behavior. If so, cultural dimensions may assist scholars to study the cultural localization of global values in narratives. When conceiving of narrative as the representation of characters acting in situations, one may distinguish two levels of narrative behavior: the level of character behavior, i.e. the represented, and the level of a narrator behaving narratively, i.e. the representation. This paper focuses on the level of the narrative agency. Borrowing some classical concepts from narratology (real authors, implied authors, narrator, narratee, implied audience and real audiences), it examines how narratorial behavior may display cultural, i.e. localized values at various levels. By way of conclusion, this essay suggests how the concept of 'cultural dimension' could assist a study of cross-cultural audience empathy.


Self-assembled fibrous films are expected to be an efficient approach for volatile organic amine (VOA) detection because of their fast response and high sensitivity and facile preparation of portable instruments. Herein, two D–π–A type salicylaldehyde derivatives functionalized naphthalimides (SFN) and tert-butyl carbazole (SFC) were synthesized, and their photophysical properties were investigated systematically. Both compounds display significant aggregation-induced emission behaviors originating from twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) and restricted intramolecular rotation (RIR). Moreover, hydrogen bonding and π–π interactions with the assistance of dipole–dipole interactions enable the formation of self-assembled fibrous films from SFN and SFC, respectively. In particular, nanofibril-based films are introduced to detect VOA vapors with high performance through deprotonation and the Schiff base reaction. The fluorescence intensity of the films is quenched dramatically for SFN and enhanced significantly for SFC after exposure to the VOA vapors. These salicylaldehyde derivatives can be used for the design of efficient fluorescent chemosensors, and their self-assembled fibrous films are promising sensors for VOA detection.


Entrepreneurship education has become an important feature in many programs across higher education—especially in engineering education. A common goal of entrepreneurship education is developing an entrepreneurial mindset in students. Furthermore, a key competency of an entrepreneurial mindset is the ability to empathize with others. Empathy is a cognitive and affective process fostering the capability of understanding and appreciating the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others. Since entrepreneurship is about introducing innovations into a community, having a keen understanding and appreciation of the needs and desires of community members is an important entrepreneurial skill. This article aims to provide a deeper and broader understanding of empathy and its role in entrepreneurship, along with a brief discussion of educational efforts designed to develop an enhanced sense of empathy in students.


The paper examines the challenges that developing countries face in accelerating and sustaining growth. The cases of China and India are examined to illustrate a more general phenomenon which might be called model uncertainty. As a developing economy grows, its market and regulatory institutions change and their capabilities increase. As a result, growth strategies and policies and the role of government shift. Further, as the models of economies in these transitional states are incomplete and because models used to predict policy impacts in advanced economies may not provided accurate predictions in the developing economy case, growth strategies and policies need to be responsive and to evolve as the economy matures. This has lead governments in countries that have sustained high growth to be somewhat pragmatic, to treat the policy directions that emerge from the advanced economy model with circumspection, to be somewhat experimental in seeking to accelerate export diversification, to be sensitive to risks, and as a result to proceed gradually in areas such as the timing and sequencing of opening up on the current and capital accounts. The last is an area in which existing theory provides relatively little specific guidance, but in which there are relatively high risks that decline over time as the market matures.


Wooden structures are increasingly being used in the construction of residential buildings. A common and often published reason to avoid wooden structures is their insufficient fire resistance, which reduces bearing capacity. For this reason, composite sandwich structures began to be designed to eliminate this drawback, as well as others. Recently, however, the trend is for a return to the original, wood-only variant and a search is underway for new technical means of improving the properties of such structures. Many timber structure technologies are known, but structures made from cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels have been used very often in recent years. CLT panels, also known as X-LAM, are currently gaining popularity in Europe. In the case of CLT panels composed of several layers of boards, they can be said to offer a certain advantage in that after the surface layer of a board has burnt and the subsurface layer has dried, oxygen is not drawn to the unburned wood for further combustion and thus the burning process ceases. CLT panels do not need to be specially modified or coated with fire resistant materials, although they are usually lined with gypsum-fibre fire resistant boards due to guidelines set out in the relevant standards. This paper presents a new method for the assessment of load-bearing perimeter walls fabricated from CLT panels without the use of an inner fire-retardant lining to ensure fire resistance at the level required by European standards (i.e. those harmonized for the Czech construction industry). The calculations were verified through laboratory tests which show that better parameters can be achieved during the classification of structures from the fire resistance point of view. The aim of the article is to utilize the results of assessment and testing by an accredited laboratory in order to demonstrate the possibilities of using CLT panels for the construction of multistorey as well as multi-purpose buildings in the Czech Republic.


Today's society is characterised by the production of massive amounts of information— freely transferred—and instant access to knowledge. This current overproduction of data is translated into complex diagrams to enhance the clarity. Nevertheless, it is commonplace in information design practice to find diagrams that are not communicating the intended messages. The act of conceiving the diagram takes place during conceptual design. This can be where misleading analysis and superfluous information organisation actions may lead to ill-conceived conceptual design, and therefore to ill-conceived diagrams, i.e. overloaded, unintelligible and disorganised. Existing tools for conceptual design of diagram creation do not properly meet design practitioners' needs in that they tend to be excessively time-consuming to implement. This indicates a need for the exploration of new design methods focused specifically on the conceptual design stage of the process of designing diagrams.

This practice-led thesis presents one such possible design method, i.e. MapCI Cards, aimed at guiding experienced graphic and information design practitioners in the preparation of complex diagrams. MapCI Cards presents a collection of guidelines that make use of prompts and questions, in order to assist the conceptual design stage of diagram creation. The use of the proposed design method does not guarantee the production of outstanding outputs. The purpose of MapCI Cards is not to create aesthetic design; rather, it is to increase an understanding through guided content analysis and organisation of the information to be conveyed. Lists, draft diagrams, mind-maps and sketches are some of the possible resulting outputs of using the MapCI Cards. In short, the cards assist the development of the conceptual idea of the potential final diagram that will be developed in the prototype design stage.

The first stage of this research investigates how complex diagrams organise information, using the London Underground diagram as a case study. Analytical relational surveys are used to explore diagram creators' decision-making processes. Sets of studies of diagram structures (Walker, 1979a; Tufte, 1983), design processes (Wurman, 1989; Jones, 1992) and information organisation (Wurman, 2001; Shedroff, 2003; Roam, 2008) are examined and combined. After this, the data collected are analysed using qualitative visual methods, and rearranged to develop the content in MapCI Cards. Two pilot workshops are designed as the revising and optimising methods. Then, five self-documentation cases drawn from practising information designers in the UK are conducted to test MapCI Cards within professional practice. The performance of the proposed guided approach to conceptual design is measured through an interpretation model, and key informants' insights are used to delimit its conditions and limitations.


Boards are working harder over time, but they may not be working better. Using a comprehensive sample of board data from 1996 to 2010, we document that a large proportion of board activity is carried out by committees. Pre-SOX, 36% of board activity takes place in committees. This increases to 47% post-SOX. Since board activity levels have risen substantially over time, this means more board activity is carried out in the absence of insiders. This change does not appear to be value-enhancing. Board committees are relatively understudied, but our results suggest that ignoring them leads to a very incomplete picture of board governance.


In the Republic of Serbia, no comprehensive scientific multimethod research has been conducted to identify weaknesses and opportunities for improving the disaster risk management system. Regarding that, in the paper, author presents project description ,,Strengthening Integrated Disaster Risk Management System in Serbia DISARIMES" which shall enable strengthening the disaster risk management system through research, development and innovative solutions implementation in the preparation, mitigation, response, remediation and post-disaster phases. The scientific importance of the projected research is reflected in the creation of assumptions for the advancement of theoretical and empirical knowledge in the scientific field of disaster risk management, bearing in mind that it is a relatively young scientific discipline in Serbia. The results of the project research will make it easier for decision makers in Serbia to understand the shortcomings of the system, but also provide innovative opportunities to improve their functioning in conditions of increasingly frequent and serious disasters. Establishing a scientific and professional society in the field of disaster risk management will create sustainable and necessary conditions for the transfer and improvement of knowledge and experience of importance for raising the level of operability of the system of protection and rescue of the Republic of Serbia in the event of disasters. A key contribution of the research findings will be to create a sustainable knowledge base that will be supported by the relevant amount of information regarding innovative capabilities and solutions identified as necessary to raise social resilience to a much higher level. In order to achieve the set goals, DISARIMES makes it possible, through a large number of SWOT analyses and other multimethod studies, to clearly identify and systematize the objective deficiencies and barriers encountered by the disaster risk management system in Serbia in all its stages before, during and after disasters, to identify and implement the appropriate solutions based on this. The objectives of the project are: to assess and identify strengths (advantages), weaknesses (disadvantages), opportunities (innovation potential) and threats for the disaster risk management system in Serbia; to develop and update RDI (research, development, innovation) Roadmap – knowledge databases with innovative solutions and other relevant information for improvement of the disaster risk management system; to fully deploy the DISARIMES scientific-professional network involving a broad range of the disaster risk management scientists and civil protection professions and organisations; to prepare the ground for the disaster risk management policy innovations. Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 31 December 2019 doi:10.20944/preprints201912.0410.v1 © 2019 by the author(s). Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY license. 2


BMP signaling plays a role in energy homeostasis. It has long been appreciated that bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) regulate patterning and morphological processes in animals as diverse as hydra and human and do so in many different tissues at different developmental stages. BMPs play a role in specifying adipose cell fate in mammals, and Ballard et al. report that one of these cytokines, Gbb (glass bottom boat, the ortholog of mammalian BMP5,6,7,8) regulates lipid metabolism in the fruit fly Drosphila melanogaster. Gbb was so named because gbb loss-of-function mutant larvae are nearly transparent due to decreased opacity of the fat body, an organ that stores fats and sugars. Ballard and colleagues noted that these mutants also showed delayed progression through developmental stages, smaller overall body size, and abnormal lipid accumulation in the fat body, phenotypes that are similar to nutrient-deprived wild-type (WT) larvae and to target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling mutants. Like Tor mutants, gbb larvae contained substantially less lipids and sugars relative to body weight than did WT larvae and showed enhanced uptake of a fluorescently labeled fatty acid (C12) by the gut epithelium, suggesting that the starvation response was activated. Both gbb mRNA and phosphorylated Mad (pMad) were detected in fat body cells in WT but not in gbb mutant larvae. Knocking down gbb in the fat body of WT larvae by tissue-specific RNA interference phenocopied the larval transparency and increased C12 uptake gbb phenotypes, and expression of a transgenically encoded constitutively active version of the Gbb receptor Sax in the fat body of gbb mutants rescued these phenotypes. The amount of nuclear pMad was reduced in nutrient-deprived WT larvae as compared with fed controls, which implies that Gbb signaling responds to metabolic status in addition to regulating it. Although many phenotypes were shared between starved WT larvae and fed gbb mutants, these phenotypes depended on molecularly distinct processes, as illustrated by the observation that different, although partially overlapping, sets of genes were transcriptionally regulated in the two types of larvae. Given that many molecular regulators of nutrient storage and mobilization are conserved between flies and humans, it is thus possible that, in addition to playing a role in patterning adipose tissue, BMPs may also regulate energy homeostasis. S. L. Ballard, J. Jarolimova, K. A. Wharton, Gbb/BMP signaling is required to maintain energy homeostasis in Drosophila. Dev. Biol. 337, 375–385 (2010). [PubMed]


This is a study on the function of the prototyping process in game design. It is based on interviews with 27 game designers in leading positions at companies of various sizes. Prototyping is an important part of game design with which design ideas are explored. One central purpose of prototypes is to serve as a communicational tool. As such it is used to negotiate design problems. Rhetoric has a long tradition of analyzing communication and negotiation. In this paper a number of concepts from rhetoric, (topos, hodos, pistis, partes and to some extent synecdoche) are applied to game prototyping based on data collected as interviews. The results indicate that rhetoric concepts are useful when talking about the prototypes as they grasp the qualities of a prototyping in a good way. By applying the findings using negotiation theory to real practice the game prototyping process would likely become clearer without diminishing its creative qualities. As presented here negotiation theory could serve as a conceptual framework for game prototyping, which the design team can make use of in their design process.


The production of false leads by automated curation of high-throughput proteomic data sets exerts a toll on biological research and advancement. Improvements in speed and mass accuracy of mass spectrometers revolutionized proteomics, with high-throughput proteomics enabling the profiling of complete proteomes and thousands of posttranslational modification sites. The limits of high-throughput proteomics are constantly pushed to new frontiers, and mass spectrometry–based proteomics may eventually permit the analysis of protein expression profiles in less than a day. Increased data acquisition speed has led to a dramatic increase in the total number of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra, such that millions of MS/MS spectra are now acquired in a given set of analyses. Many of these spectra are insufficiently validated; instead, statistical tools are commonly used to estimate false-positive or false-discovery rates for these data sets. Many laboratories may not realize the costs associated with using these widely available, but minimally validated, data sets. The costs associated with use of these data can include missed opportunities for biological insight, the pollution of databases with increasing numbers of false-positive identifications, and time spent by biologists investigating false leads, resulting in a lack of faith in proteomics data. Improved strategies for data validation need to be implemented, along with a change in the culture of high-throughput proteomics, linking proteomics closer to biology.


We study the bunching identification strategy for an elasticity parameter that summarizes agents' response to changes in slope (kink) or intercept (notch) of a schedule of incentives. A notch identifies the elasticity but a kink does not, when the distribution of agents is fully flexible. We propose new non-parametric and semi-parametric identification assumptions on the distribution of agents that are weaker than assumptions currently made in the literature. We revisit the original empirical application of the bunching estimator and find that our weaker identification assumptions result in meaningfully different estimates. We provide the Stata package bunching to implement our procedures.


Abstract. We present a new calculation method for solving inductive electric fields in the ionosphere. The time series of the potential part of the ionospheric electric field, together with the Hall and Pedersen conductances serves as the input to this method. The output is the time series of the induced rotational part of the ionospheric electric field. The calculation method works in the time-domain and can be used with non-uniform, time-dependent conductances. In addition, no particular symmetry requirements are imposed on the input potential electric field. The presented method makes use of special non-local vector basis functions called the Cartesian Elementary Current Systems (CECS). This vector basis offers a convenient way of representing curl-free and divergence-free parts of 2-dimensional vector fields and makes it possible to solve the induction problem using simple linear algebra. The new calculation method is validated by comparing it with previously published results for Alfven wave reflection from a uniformly conducting ionosphere.


Heuristic evaluation is a well known discount evaluation technique in human-computer interaction (HCI) but has not been utilized in information visualization (InfoVis) to the same extent. While several sets of heuristics have been used or proposed for InfoVis, it is not yet known what kind of heuristics are useful for finding general InfoVis problems. We performed a meta-analysis with the goal of exploring the issues of heuristic evaluation for InfoVis. This meta-analysis concentrates on issues pertaining to the selection and organization of heuristics, and the process itself. For this purpose, we used three sets of previously published heuristics to assess a visual decision support system that is used to examine simulation data. The meta-analysis shows that the evaluation process and results have a high dependency on the heuristics and the types of evaluators chosen. We describe issues related to interpretation, redundancy, and conflict in heuristics. We also provide a discussion of generalizability and categorization of these heuristics.


This article revisits the debate about school reform and homeownership-based strategies for neighborhood revitalization. It is based on an analysis of school districts in New York State using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED). Findings indicate that the relationship between schools and housing values varies across urban, suburban, and rural school districts. It is recommended that education reformers and urban planners advocate for states and the federal government to assume a more central role in the promotion of educational equity and the subsequent stabilization of neighborhoods in older core cities.