This article responds to the call for a deeper theoretical and methodological exchange between the disciplines involved in geohumanities research and proposes comic books as an environment for interdisciplinary, geo/cartographical and literary critical research practice. The analysis considers the emerging field of 'comic book geographies' and suggests a further opening to 'comic book cartographies'. Hence, by referring to the 'spatiocentred' approaches emerging in literary theory and criticism, I propose a 'geocritical' and 'cartocentred' reading of comics to explore the 'cartographies of the comic book'. I individuate the peculiar map-like features of comics' spatial grammar to interpret the comic book as both a cartographer and a map. Moreover, taking into account the recent shift in cartographic theory towards an 'emergent cartography', I propose an 'ontogenetic' understanding of comics as maps. Through both their representational and non-representational map-like features, comics are intended 'as always mappings', providing the author/reader with a truly mapping experience. The analysis of the exemplary case study of City of Glass, the graphic novel transposition of Auster's novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, counts as a first attempt to propose a 'cartocentred' reading of the cartographies inserted within and emerging from a comic book. This article suggests that a 'cartocritical' reading of comics could provide comic studies, cultural geography and literary theory with new insights, as well as cartographic theory with an unexplored laboratory to keep on 'rethinking maps' from an 'emergent' perspective.


Water resources in the world are scarce and unevenly distributed. In deserts, the only source of drinking water is groundwater, often saline and of poor quality. In many places, the groundwater levels have dropped dangerously due to overexploitation. Gypsum deposits, that are very common in deserts, are a potential source of drinking water, a fact that is realised by very few people. Gypsum contains 20% of water by weight, and in many arid and desert countries, there are billions of cubic meters of gypsum, representing trillions of litres of clean drinking water. It takes only moderate heating, to temperature around 100°C, to liberate this water and convert the gypsum into bassanite or anhydrite. Such temperatures can be reached by solar power, or alternatively, the heat from flaring oil wells can be used. Anhydrite has a considerably smaller volume than gypsum, so the conversion of shallow underground layers of gypsum into anhydrite creates a subsidence, which can serve as a reservoir for the liberated water. Holland Innovation Team (HIT) is working on this project since 1987, and we have indicated that the macro-engineering concept of dewatering gypsum deposits can solve the water problem in many dry areas in future, for drinking purpose as well as for drip irrigation. We would like to thank Saint-Gobain Gypsum (Cormeilles gypsum mine in Paris) and the SAMIA mine (Nouakchott, Mauritania) for the donation of pure gypsum blocks for testing purposes. We aim for a pilot test at a suitable desert location, in which several modes of heat supply and water capture will be tested. Several possible drilling and capture configurations are described in this paper.


Multi-agent systems are applied to distributed problem-solving applications because of their ability to overcome the limitations that individual agents face when solving complex problems. Large numbers of agents acting as problem-solvers on networks suggest a virtual marketplace. In this marketplace, groups of self-interested agents can interact to solve highly constrained and distributed problems by assuming varying roles and forming "temporary teams". This dissertation presents a decision making mechanism for multi-agent team formation between self-interested agents in a competitive, open and dynamic environment. An agent perceives environmental uncertainties, and models those uncertainties into simplified categories such as risks and benefits. The dissertation further demonstrates how an agent's attitudes shape how risk and rewards are weighted when making decisions among multiple alternatives. Accordingly, agent-borne attitudes toward proactive behavior, risk, reward, and urgency are proposed as the basis of the proposed team formation mechanism. Finally, a learning technique assists an agent in continuously learning what attitudes it needs in order to adapt to dynamic environments and increase its resulting rewards.


De novo Genome Assembly and SNP Marker Development of Pyrenophora semeniperda Marcus Makina Soliai Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, BYU Master of Science Pyrenophora semeniperda (anamorph Drechslera campulata) is a necrotrophic fungal seed pathogen of a variety of grass genra and species, including Bromus tectorum, an exotic grass that has invaded many natural ecosystems of the U.S. Intermountain West. As a natural seed pathogen of B. tectorum, P. semeniperda has potential as a biocontrol agent due to its effectiveness at killing dormant B. tectorum seeds; however, few genetic resources exist for this fungus. Here, the genome assembly of a P. semeniperda isolate using 454 GS-FLX genomic and paired-end pyrosequencing techniques is presented. The total assembly is 32.5 Mb and contains 11,453 gene models greater than 24 amino acids. The assembly contains a variety of predicted genes that are involved in pathogenic pathways typically found in necrotrophic fungi. In addition, 454 sequence reads were used to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms between two isolates of P. semeniperda. In total, 20 SNP markers were developed for the purposes of recombination assesment of 600 individual P. semeniperda isolates representing 36 populations from throughout the U.S. Intermountain West. Although 17 of the fungal populations were fixed at all SNP loci, linkage disequilibrium was determined in the remaining 18 populations. This research demonstrates the effectiveness of the 454 GS-FLX sequencing technology, for de novo assembly and marker development of filamentous fungal genomes. Many features of the assembly match those of other Pyrenophora genomes including P. tritici-repentis and P. teres f. teres, which lend validity to our assembly. These findings present a significant resource for examining and furthering our understanding of P. semeniperda biology.


Recent events in South America, central Europe, Africa, and Russia have again brought to the world's attention the complex interrelationship between states of emergency and the preservation of fundamental human rights. In Human Rights in Crisis, Joan Fitzpatrick offers the first systematic and comprehensive effort to examine the multifaceted system for monitoring human rights abuses under "states of exception." Unlike previous studies, this book does not focus on substantive norms governing crises, but rather on how those norms might best be implemented. Building upon her six-year study for the International Law Association, the author confronts the difficulties in defining a coherent concept of emergency, particularly the various forms of de facto emergencies that have been relatively neglected by international monitors. She also profiles and carefully critiques the numerous international bodies that have monitored human rights abuses during states of exception. These bodies include not only the treaty organs of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Organization of American States but also the political organs of the United Nations (especially the Commission on Human Rights), the International Labor Organization, and the emerging structures of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.


Since the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, the U.S. market prices of soybeans and corn have dropped 21% and 32%, respectively. These commodities are sold on the market at a price below what they cost to produce. If U.S. agricultural policies contribute to this trend, then they do so to the benefit of commodity purchasers, particularly the industrial operations that use the commodities as raw material inputs. Corporate-owned livestock operations are a case in point. This paper focuses on the broiler chicken industry, which, in the United States, is fully industrialized and vertically integrated. We compare the average costs of production for broiler feed components—corn and soybean meal—with market prices, and then use these cost-price margins to estimate the amount broiler companies save by being able to purchase feed at a price below production costs. We find that the broiler industry gained monetary benefits averaging $1.25 billion per year between 1997 and 2005 when, following the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, market prices dropped far below production costs. In contrast, broiler industry gains from low market prices averaged a much smaller $377 million per year between 1986 and 1996. We conclude that the corporate broiler industry is a major winner from changes to U.S. agriculture policy that have allowed feed prices to fall. This finding is not significantly altered when we adjust our calculations to account for the overvaluation of agricultural land, nor does it appear to reverse under future cost/price scenarios. As policymakers turn their attention to the 2007 Farm Bill, they would do well to examine the ways in which agribusiness firms in general, and industrial livestock operations in particular, benefit from policies ostensibly designed to support family farmers. Current U.S. farm policies may be driving industrialization in the livestock production system if they give factory operations the appearance of being more cost efficient than diversified, independent operations that grow their own feed.


Background/Purpose. To investigate the risk factors, visual prognosis and characteristics of exudative retinal detachment in six patients with central retinal vein occlusion. Methods. We retrospectively enrolled six patients in whom a diagnosis of exudative retinal detachment subsequent to central retinal vein occlusion was made during the period 1 July 1996 to 1 July 2001. All patients had undergone complete ophthalmic examinations including slit lamp, indirect ophthalmoscopy, intraocular pressure measurement, fluorescein angiography, and echographic studies and all patients were followed on a monthly basis. Results. The time interval between the occurrence of vein occlusion and exudative retinal detachment ranged from two months to six months in five eyes, and was uncertain in one eye. Exudative retinal detachment involved the inferior retina in five eyes (83%), and was near the posterior pole in one eye (17%). Neovascular glaucoma or rubeosis iridis developed in five eyes (83%). Five patients had a history of hypertension and one had a history of hyperlipidemia. Retinal photocoagulation was performed in each patient. The visual prognosis was very poor in the eyes with neovascular glaucoma (no light perception in two eyes, light perception in one eye), and poor in eyes without neovascular glaucoma (hand motion in one eye, counting fingers in one eye and 20/1000 in eye). Conclusion. Massive exudative retinal detachment is a rare complication of central retinal vein occlusion. We found that there is a high incidence of neovascular glaucoma among patients with this condition.


In the modernist era, water is discussed as a single substance which has multiple uses. I argue that from a normative perspective water should be discussed in the plural term ('waters'), as they constitute a variety of 'things' with a similar chemical composition. Waters are composed of multiple 'needs', which are uses with a normative rationale, and of 'wants', which are desires that should be seen as economic demands. Moreover, waters should also be differentiated by source: natural, recycled or produced. This new language of water has direct policy implications. Needs, differentiated into direct human needs, spiritual needs, environmental needs and community needs, which may be prioritized, should be supplied regardless of cost considerations. 'Wants' and produced water should be priced at the full social cost of supply. Hence, while the rates at which needs are supplied should be determined by affordability, regardless of spatial differentiation in supply cost, the pricing of water supplied for 'wants' will vary over space. Thus water which is supplied through the same pipe to the same house may be subject to different pricing logics. However, there are many nuances to these generalizations, which have still to be fleshed out.


We consider the general problem of recovering a high-dimensional signal from noisy quantized measurements. Quantization, especially coarse quantization such as 1-bit sign measurements, leads to severe information loss and thus a good prior knowledge of the unknown signal is helpful for accurate recovery. Motivated by the power of score-based generative models (SGM, also known as diffusion models) in capturing the rich structure of natural signals beyond simple sparsity, we propose an unsupervised data-driven approach called quantized compressed sensing with SGM (QCS-SGM), where the prior distribution is modeled by a pre-trained SGM. To perform posterior sampling, an annealed pseudo-likelihood score called noise perturbed pseudo-likelihood score is introduced and combined with the prior score of SGM. The proposed QCS-SGM applies to an arbitrary number of quantization bits. Experiments on a variety of baseline datasets demonstrate that the proposed QCS-SGM significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art algorithms by a large margin for both in-distribution and out-of-distribution samples. Moreover, as a posterior sampling method, QCS-SGM can be easily used to obtain confidence intervals or uncertainty estimates of the reconstructed results. The code is available at https://github.com/mengxiangming/QCS-SGM.


ABSTRACT The recently developed hepatitis C virus (HCV) subgenomic replicon system was utilized to evaluate the efficacy of several known antiviral agents. Cell lines that persistently maintained a genotype 1b replicon were selected. The replicon resident in each cell line had acquired adaptive mutations in the NS5A region that increased colony-forming efficiency, and some replicons had acquired NS3 mutations that alone did not enhance colony-forming efficiency but were synergistic with NS5A mutations. A replicon constructed from the infectious clone of the HCV-1 strain (genotype 1a) was not capable of inducing colony formation even after the introduction of adaptive mutations identified in the genotype 1b replicon. Alpha interferon (IFN-α), IFN-γ, and ribavirin exhibited antiviral activity, while double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) and tumor necrosis factor alpha did not. Analysis of transcript levels for a series of genes stimulated by IFN (ISGs) or dsRNA following treatment with IFN-α, IFN-γ, and dsRNA revealed that both IFNs increased ISG transcript levels, but that some aspect of the dsRNA response pathway was defective in Huh7 cells and replicon cell lines in comparison to primary chimpanzee and tamarin hepatocytes. The colony-forming efficiency of the replicon was reduced or eliminated following replication in the presence of ribavirin, implicating the induction of error-prone replication. The potential role of error-prone replication in the synergy observed between IFN-α and ribavirin in attaining sustained viral clearance is discussed. These studies reveal characteristics of Huh7 cells that may contribute to their unique capacity to support HCV RNA synthesis and demonstrate the utility of the replicon system for mechanistic studies on antiviral agents.


A companion volume to "Techniques for Wildlife Habitat Management of Wetlands", this book provides an extensive compilation of techniques for habitat manipulation, which are designed to improve the biodiversity of uplands ecosystems for edge and interior game and nongame wildlife. It offers land managers, ecologists, and conservationists the latest structural and nonstructural methods for natural and cultural habitat improvements on forest lands, woodlots, rangelands, and farmlands. This practical manual includes expert discussions of guilds, minimum viable populations, edge vs. interior habitats, size of reserves and ecological succession, plus helpful guidance on how to alter plant succession for biodiversity by indirect and direct methods. This book should be a valuable tool in helping professionals maintain a healthy ecosystem and to restore or produce ideal populations of wildlife.


Particulate systems have been widely studied because of its various phenomena and tight relationship with industry applications. In this dissertation, two types of computational models have been adopted to study two problems with different particulate systems: granular selforganization inside a cylinder driven by an orbital-shaker and the optimal design of bypass line for an industrial-scale 8‐leg polyolefin loop reactor. In the first study, behavior of both single particle and multiple particles in a rotating cylinder has been modeled by discrete element method (DEM) to understand the mechanism of granular self-organization. Sets of studies have then been performed to study the effect of different parameters. This work may benefit the design and operation of equipment involving such kind of granular systems. Further, it serves as the validation of DEM modelling framework on a complex dynamical system with several degrees of self-organization in granular systems. In the second study, CFD simulations were applied to design optimal bypass line for a polyolefin 8-leg loop reactor. 2D CFD simulations were performed to qualitatively compare the slug dissipation processes of three types of bypass line connections. Then, 3D simulations were used to compare the effect of installation angle on the withdrawal rate of the solid phase into the bypass line. By combining these approaches, an optimal design of bypass line was recommended for the loop reactor considered in this study. This design approach can also be generally applied to design bypass lines for other loop reactor configurations.


We describe a semester-long collaboration between a mathematics class and a biology class. Students worked together to understand and model the trajectory of the pandemic H1N1, pH1N1, outbreak across campus in fall 2009. Each course had about 30 students and was an upper-level elective for majors. Some mathematics students had taken no college-level biology, and some biology students had taken no college-level mathematics. All students had taken at least three quantitative courses, so they had some experience working with data. Our goals were to allow students to work with and model a real data set that affected them personally, to explore how the outbreak spread within our small campus, and for students to share their areas of expertise. This project created opportunities for synthesis and evaluation.


This book provides an excellent insight into the theory and practice of political representation, a concept that is central to the understanding of modern British politics. The book explores the key elements of representation and the inextricable connections between theory and the unique British representative tradition. Using extensive contemporary examples and key theorists, this book will be essential reading for students of British politics.


This paper studies efficiency convergence across provinces in Indonesia over the 1990-2010 period. Through the lens of both classical and distributional convergence frameworks, the dispersion dynamics of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency are contrasted. The results suggest that—on average—there is regional convergence in both measures of efficiency. However, results from the distributional framework indicate the existence of two separate convergence clusters within the pure technical efficiency distribution. Moreover, since scale efficiency is characterized by only one convergence cluster, the two clusters of pure technical efficiency appear to be driving the overall efficiency dynamics of Indonesia.


The anisotropic nature of the UV-induced index change achieved in photosensitive optical fibers is characterized by a direct measurement of the induced birefringence in three different fibers. The birefringence, which grows with UV exposure proportionally to the total induced index change, is measured to be as small as 0.2% and as large as 8% of the total index change, depending on the fiber type and the exposure geometry. Such large values of birefringence are especially notable, since they can lead to substantial resonant effects such as polarization-dependent reflectivity in a fiber Bragg grating. The birefringence is predominantly determined by the polarization of the UV irradiation. We demonstrate an order-of-magnitude reduction of birefringence in an actual fiber phase grating by rotating the UV polarization to lie in the plane of the irradiating beams and the fiber axis.


Group Exhibition at Breese Little Gallery: Dark Frame / Deep Field (Caroline Corbasson, Dan Holdsworth, Philippe Pleasants, Sophy Rickett, Vintage NASA Photographs, We Colonised the Moon)

When NASA circulated the first documentary and scientific photographs taken from space to the public in the 1960s they brought the alien and distant into stark proximity with the mundane. With Earthrise (1968), Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders captured the emotional impact of the Space Race: allowing us to reflect on the beauty, frailty and unicity of our planet Earth and our place within the universe.

Today, as telescopes and spacecraft send back images which are arguably just as powerful in their aesthetic impact as in their scientific content, it is perhaps artists who are best equipped to interpret what these dispatches tell us about humanity's relationship to a cosmos in which we seem ever smaller and less significant. In dark frame / deep field, six contemporary artists explore the limits of our ability to image, map and define the universe, with artworks displayed alongside vintage photographs from NASA that first brought the breath-taking scale of outer space into view.

Two works by Caroline Corbasson span the entire history of telescopic exploration conceptually, referencing Galileo's revolutionary drawings of the Moon from 1609 as well as the 13 billion-light-year compression of 2005's Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Her large-scale Crater (2013) inevitably conjures up early observational sketches of the lunar surface, as well as more recent photographic moonscapes, but is in fact a depiction of a 50,000 year-old impact feature in Arizona. Meanwhile, with a meticulous layering of star maps in Naked Eye (2014), Corbasson seems to transform the flat cartography of the sky into a three-dimensional simulation of the entire universe.

In his Blackout series (2010), Dan Holdsworth presents the Earth itself as an alien object, turning an astronomical eye back towards our own planet. Holdsworth defies perceptions by reversing negative / positive values, morphing the sooty ice of the Icelandic Solheimajokull glacier into a spectral veil set against the inscrutable darkness of the northern sky. Barren and supernatural, the transmuted geology recalls the digital data beamed back by probes that have mapped the terrains of Venus, our solar system's moons and asteroids.

Astronomical photographs record time as well as space: not only do they compress a duration of seconds, minutes or hours into a single exposure, they also capture light that has been travelling towards us for years, decades or millennia. Philippe Pleasants' poetic skyscapes (2010-11) condense the passage of time as marked out by the motion of the Moon, Sun and stars. In his solar and lunar durations the temporal element is spatially anchored in specific English landscapes, but in Trace 3 and 4, the sky's motions are stripped of all earthly references to become an abstract grid of curving lines.

With Objects in the Field (2013) and the Observation series (1991/2013), the result of a collaboration with Dr Roderick Willstrop from the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Sophy Rickett unearths the archaeology of astronomy itself. Rickett's work juxtaposes deep time with history on a human scale by resurrecting astronomical photographs which, although they are only a few decades old, are already technologically obsolete.

Displaying their characteristic playfulness, We Colonised the Moon (Sue Corke and Hagen Betzwieser) reveal the political implication of Neil Armstrong's 'small step', when the Moon irrevocably became a place, rather than a distant light in the sky. In bold, 'pop' colours, the silkscreen prints Frigoris and Tranquillitatis (2012) re-appropriate lunar cartographic data from the US Geological Survey to query humanity's claims on Earth's satellite. Using the 'high-brow' rhetoric of traditional museum display, As Good as a Moonrock (2012) questions conventional methods of classification and the authenticity of lunar exploration.

By juxtaposing early space photographs - whose value at the time was as much about public relations as it was about science - with creative responses from today's more cynical world, dark frame / deep field demonstrates a maturing engagement with the sublime spectacle beyond our world's atmosphere. At the time harbingers of the future, vintage NASA photographs have the graininess and faded colours of holiday snaps of the same period, giving them an aura of nostalgia and optimism. But our frontiers never cease to expand. On 14 July 2015, NASA's New Horizons probe will rendez-vous with Pluto after a ten year voyage, bringing another world into sharp focus for the first time. In the seventeenth century it was the beauty of Galileo's drawings which brought home the full revolutionary import of his discoveries. In the twenty-first century, as technological advances give us access to ever more dizzying and humbling astronomical vistas, art is once more playing a vital role in conveying the meaning and implications of cosmic exploration.

dark frame / deep field is curated by Marek Kukula, astronomer, writer and broadcaster and Melanie Vandenbrouck, curator and art historian.

The exhibition is kindly supported by our exhibition media partner, super/collider, an independent agency which explores science from a creative standpoint.

The show coincides with the arrival of the NASA space probe New Horizons at Pluto on 14 July 2015


Researchers have suggested that educating learners with special needs entails particular cognitive skills and that teachers make differential judgments about students with disabilities (Bartelheim & Evans, 1993; Bay & Bryan, 1991; Blanton, Blanton, & Cross, 1994). In this study, a stimulated recall procedure was used to examine the instructional decision making of 19 expert special educators. Qualitative analysis of the data indicated that a highly detailed and extensive knowledge base about students enabled these teachers to (a) assess their students' academic and emotional states of mind and (b) effectively address the students' needs within the classroom. The authors suggest that what is central to effective special education instruction is the knowledgeable, reflective, and concerned responsiveness of teachers to individual students.


There is a pressing need to develop alternative communications links due to a number of physical phenomena, limiting the bandwidth and energy efficiency of wire-based systems or economic factors such as cost, material-supply reliability and environmental costs. Networks have moved to optical connections to reduce costs, energy use and to supply high data rates. A primary concern is that current optical-detection devices require high optical power to achieve fast data rates with high signal quality. The energy required therefore, quickly becomes a problem. In this thesis, advances in single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are utilised to reduce the amount of light needed and to reduce the overall energy budget. Current high performance receivers often use exotic materials, many of which have severe environmental impact and have cost, supply and political restrictions. These present a problem when it comes to integration; hence silicon technology is used, allowing small, mass-producible, low power receivers. A reconfigurable SPAD-based integrating receiver in standard 130nm imaging CMOS is presented for links with a readout bandwidth of 100MHz. A maximum count rate of 58G photon/s is observed, with a dynamic range of ≈ 79dB, a sensitivity of ≈ −31.7dBm at 100MHz and a BER of ≈ 1x10−9. We investigate the properties of the receiver for optical communications in the visible spectrum, using its added functionality and reconfigurability to experimentally explore non-ideal influences. The all-digital 32x32 SPAD array, achieves a minimum dead time of 5.9ns, and a median dark count rate (DCR) of 2.5kHz per SPAD. High noise devices can be weighted or removed to optimise the SNR. The power requirements, transient response and received data are explored and limiting factors similar to those of photodiode receivers are observed. The thesis concludes that data can be captured well with such a device but more electrical energy is needed at the receiver due to its fundamental operation. Overall, optical power can be reduced, allowing significant savings in either transmitter power or the transmission length, along with the advantages of an integrated digital chip.


The New Zealand pipi, Paphies australis, occurs widely around the coast of New Zealand and belonging to the family Mesodesmatidae. Pipi form a part of the recreational bivalve fishery, and there is also an annual restriction of the total commercial harvest. Previous investigations have examined the biological and ecological aspects of pipi in the wild. However, neither of them studied the nutritional requirements of pipi under hatchery conditions. This thesis discusses the feeding requirements of pipi collected from Waiwera Beach and Onehunga Harbour, during their growing and maturing stages. A series of studies on the cell clearance rates, feeding trials, proximate analysis, and broodstock conditioning of pipi clams were conducted over 15 months (September 2008 until December 2009) at the AUT Aquaculture Laboratory. In the cell clearance rates study, the rates for microalgal diets in descending order were Thalassiosira pseudonana > Isochrysis galbana > Chaetoceros muelleri > Tetraselmis suecica > Pavlova lutheri. It is inferred that pipi are capable of filtering a variety of microalgal species while at the same time being a selective filter feeder. The same microalgal species tested in the aforementioned study were fed to pipi of different size classes (spat, juveniles, and adults) in the feeding trials experiment. Three processed diets (baker"s yeast, wheat flour, and corn flour) also were tested on the pipi clams. This study was carried out to test the effect of different diets on growth and survivality, and body composition of spat, juvenile, and adult pipi. There were positive relationships between the growth performance (length and weight) and dietary lipid content for spat and juveniles. For adult pipi, the carbohydrate content in the diets was positively related to pipi shell growth. However, proximate analyses of adult pipi at the end of the experiment indicated an overall depletion of carbohydrates in the tissues, while proteins and lipids were accumulated. These results suggest that the gonadal development have initiated during the breeding season. Based on the results of the present study, it is suggested that baker"s yeast would be a good substitute of spat and juvenile feeds, and wheat and corn flours would be good substitutes for adult feeds. In the conditioning experiment, broodstock pipi were conditioned with three different diets: exclusively P. lutheri, exclusively corn flour, and a mixed diet composed of P. lutheri and corn flour in 1:1 ration. On days 21 and 28, following the conditioning period, broodstock were induced to spawn by temperature shock treatment. Although both spawning induction trials failed to bring broodstock pipi into spawning condition, maturity was apparent for brooodstock fed the mixed diet of P. lutheri and corn flour, indicating that P.lutheri-corn flour may be a better food source compared to P. lutheri or corn flour alone for pipi broodstock conditioning. CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION


The Experiment on Timing Ranging and Atmospheric Soundings, ExTRAS, was conceived jointly by the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Russian Space Agency, RSA. It is also designated the 'Hydrogen-maser in SpacelMeteor-3M project'. The launch of the satellite is scheduled for early 1997. The package, to be flown on board a Russian meteorological satellite includes ultra-stable frequency and time sources, namely two active and auto-tuned hydrogen masers. Communication between the on-bwrd hydrogen masers and the ground station clocks is effected by means of a microwave link using the modified version for time transfer of the Precise Range And Range-rate Equipment, PRARETIME, technique, and an optical link which uses the Time Transfer by Laser Link, T2L2, method. Both the PRARETIME and T2L2 techniques operate in a twedirectional mode, which makes it possible to carry out accurate transmissions without precise knowledge ofthe satellite and station positions. Due to the exceptional quality of the on-board clocks and to the high performance ofthe communication techniques with the satellite, satellite clock monitoring and ground clocks synchronization are anticipated to be performed with uncertainties below 0.5 ns (I u). Uncertainty budgets and reued comments are presented.


Background: Long-term disabilities often result in loss of autonomy and social interaction. Accordingly, there is a demand for Assistive Technology (AT) devices to enable individuals to live independently for as long as possible. However, many people experience difficulties in obtaining and using AT. This paper presents findings from a narrative literature review undertaken as part of the development of AT training for healthcare professionals, one of the work areas of the ADAPT project (Assistive Devices for Empowering Disabled People through Robotic Technologies), funded by EU INTERREG France (Channel) England. The results of the review informed the design of a survey of healthcare professionals regarding their views and experiences of AT and the development of AT training.

Method: The review sought to understand challenges encountered in the adoption and use of AT as well as how training of healthcare professionals in AT takes place. A narrative approach was adopted as the most appropriate way to synthesise published literature on this topic and describe its current state-of-art. Narrative reviews are considered an important educational tool in continuing professional development. An initial search was conducted via databases in the UK and France, including CINAHL, Academic Search Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, BDSP (Base de donnees en Sante Publique), Documentation EHESP/MSSH (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sante Publique/Maison des Sciences Sociales et Handicap), Cairn, Google Scholar and Pubmed. Inclusion criteria for the review included: covering issues relating to AT provision and training, English or French language, and published from 1990 onwards. Application of these criteria elicited 79 sources, including journal papers (48), reports (11), online sources (11), books (6) and conference papers (3). Sources were thematically analysed to draw out key themes.

Key results: The majority of papers were from USA and Canada (27), then UK (20) and France (19). Others were from Europe (7), Australia (3), country unknown (2), and one joint UK/France publication. The main source of literature was journal papers (48), of which the most common types were practice reports (18), evaluation surveys (10) and qualitative studies (9). The review uncovered a number of key challenges related to the adoption of devices, including: difficulty defining AT across disciplines, lack of knowledge of healthcare professionals and users, obtrusiveness and stigmatisation AT users can experience when using devices, and shortfalls in communication amongst professional groups and between professionals and users. These issues can lead to abandonment of AT devices. Furthermore, substantial barriers to healthcare professionals exist, including inconsistent provision and quality of training, lack of evaluation of training, lack of resources and funding, shortage of qualified professionals to teach, and the increasingly rapid development of the technologies.
Conclusion: Support, training and education for prescribers, distributors, users, and their carers is vital in the adoption and use of AT. Evidence indicates a need for comprehensive education in the AT field, as well as ongoing assessment, updates and evaluation which is embedded in programmes.


This paper discusses how impact-oriented agricultural research for development systems in Africa can be better organized and managed. Specifically, the paper puts forth the argument that achieving the development targets set by African leaders and the international community, for example, through the Millennium Development Goals, will be extremely difficult without a satisfactory re-orientation of the organization and management of African research for development systems. Such a re-orientation involves carefully linking the agricultural research agenda with national development priorities; improving coordination, interaction, interlinkages, partnerships, and networks among system agents—that is, agricultural research institutes, extension systems, higher education institutions, farmer organizations, civil society, and the private sector—and finding innovative financing and resourcing mechanisms to support the numerous components of the system.


Objective The aim was to investigate changes in retinal and choroidal thickness (CT) maps in patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in comparison to controls using enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (OCT). Participants and methods A cross-sectional study was done on a consecutive sample of 32 eyes of 22 patients with RP. Control group included 30 eyes of 15 age-matched healthy participants. Full ophthalmological examination was done for every participant. Enhanced depth imaging OCT was performed measuring retinal and CT at the nine early treatment diabetic retinopathy study (ETDRS) subfields. Results The mean central CT was statistically significantly thinner (269.73±48.48 µm) in the patients' group compared with 291.90±29.33 µm in the control group (P=0.023). On comparing the four choroidal quadrants between the two groups, patients with RP had significantly thinner choroid only in the nasal quadrant (P<0.001). The mean central macular thickness was statistically significantly thinner (226.45±61.35 µm) in the RP group than in controls (247.80±33.74 µm; P=0.009). The four macular quadrants were also significantly thinner in the RP group (P<0.001). Significant positive correlation was found between central macular thickness and central CT (r=0.511, P=0.003) and also at the upper and nasal quadrants (P=0.011 and <0.000, respectively). Conclusion Our study demonstrated that CT is thinned significantly in patients with RP in the central 1 mm and in the nasal quadrant. Evaluation of choroidal vasculature in future studies using OCT angiography may provide further insight into the involvement of choroid in the pathogenesis of RP.


Exposure of gut microbiota to antibiotics can promote antibiotic resistance and development of diseases caused by multi-drug-resistant organisms. Here we present a case of a 54-year-old male patient with a diagnosis of acute cholecystitis with significant biliary duct leakage, admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) due to a septic syndrome after surgery. Fecal microbial population was analyzed by DGGE and Real Time PCR during and after a combined antibiotic therapy and enteral nutritional feeding. Gut microbiota dysbiosis was demonstrated during ICU recovery. After antibiotic therapy discontinuation and the switch to normal diet, microbial gut population gradually increased up to values comparable with those of a healthy subject. Bifidobacterium spp. took longer to re-stabilize, reaching normal value after two weeks. Our case report corroborates the resilient nature of gut microbiota, but points out the long time needed to recover after antibiotic treatment, paving the way to supplementation with key probiotic species.


Failures of international cooperation with regard to protecting the environment, regulating cross-border competition, and preventing terrorism have sometimes lead states to enact unilateral measures with extraterritorial effect. A common trend among international legal scholars defending these measures is to employ the concept of 'global public goods,' understood as desirable, utility-advancing things that tend, for various reasons, to be undersupplied by states acting separately. On this view, unilateral measures are justified on grounds that they address 'harms' to 'interests' that cannot be contained within individual states, or because they advance supposedly universal 'values.' Drawing from the 'republican' legal and political philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as the Roman private law from which Kant derives inspiration, this article argues that states may do anything necessary to provide public goods for their subjects, including exercising jurisdiction over persons extraterritorially. Moreover, they need not demonstrate 'harm' or 'loss,' because global public 'bads' are akin not to damage-based wrongs like negligence, but to wrongs like battery, trespass, and defamation, where harm is irrelevant. The starting premise is that the dignity of 'persons' lies not in the satisfaction of interests, but in freedom from treatment as a 'thing' at the mercy of another. This gives rise to three kinds of fundamentally private legal relations — tortious, contractual, and fiduciary — all unrealizable as of right without a particular configuration of political institutions known as the 'state.' States are themselves persons, and are 'public' fiduciaries having no purpose other than to guarantee subjects their dignity. 'Public goods' are those things must be provided and kept free of private ownership in order for the members of a political community to be free equals. As public fiduciaries, states have both obligations and rights to provide public goods, which must not be frustrated by the arbitrary non-cooperation by other persons, state or nonstate.


We study whether a neural network optimizes to the same, linearly connected minimum under different samples of SGD noise (e.g., random data order and augmentation). We find that standard vision models become stable to SGD noise in this way early in training. From then on, the outcome of optimization is determined to a linearly connected region. We use this technique to study iterative magnitude pruning (IMP), the procedure used by work on the lottery ticket hypothesis to identify subnetworks that could have trained in isolation to full accuracy. We find that these subnetworks only reach full accuracy when they are stable to SGD noise, which either occurs at initialization for small-scale settings (MNIST) or early in training for large-scale settings (ResNet-50 and Inception-v3 on ImageNet).


Body size dependent mating patterns were investigated in an aphidophagous ladybird, Hippodamia variegata (Goeze), which was reared on mustard aphid, Lipaphis erysimi (Kalt.). Both males and females of varying body sizes were used to test the hypothesis that bigger is better. The costs of copulation on the life history traits of the mating partners were determined. Pairs of virgin beetles were allowed to mate once under controlled conditions and the duration of copulation of heavy beetles (504.00 ± 45.93 min) lasted significantly longer for than that of light beetles (270.00 ± 26.67 min). Body size was significantly positively correlated with duration of oviposition, fecundity and egg viability. When light individuals mated with heavy partners, copulation lasted longer between heavy males and light females (483.00 ± 54.73 min) than between light males and heavy females (378.20 ± 83.03 min). These results support the hypothesis that males determine the duration of copulation and that the reproductive success of large males is greater than that of small males. The longevity of heavy males was significantly shorter (37.40 ± 1.50 days) than that of light males (53.10 ± 2.84 days). This difference in the longevity of beetles of different sizes could contribute to the significant variation body size in H. variegata recorded both in the field and stock cultures, where light males outnumber heavy ones. Thus, although large males have a reproductive advantage over small males, other factors, such as reduced longevity, may constrain the evolution of even larger males.


Sub-Saharan Africa is home to some of the most nutritionally insecure people in the world. Poor infrastructure and limited resources compounded with conflict, HIV, and poor access to health services are factors that contribute to the staggering levels of malnutrition and food insecurity on the continent. Despite these enormous challenges, some countries in Africa are making progress towards food and nutrition security and there has never been a better time to work towards improved human development that has nutrition as a goal.


Geometry acquisition of real-world objects by means of 3D scanning or stereo reconstruction constitutes a very important and challenging problem in computer vision. 3D scanners and stereo algorithms usually provide geometry from one viewpoint only, and several of the these scans need to be merged into one consistent representation. Scanner data generally has lower noise levels than stereo methods and the scanning scenario is more controlled. In image-based stereo approaches, the aim is to reconstruct the 3D surface of an object solely from multiple photos of the object. In many cases, the stereo geometry is contaminated with noise and outliers, and exhibits large variations in scale. Approaches that fuse such data into one consistent surface must be resilient to such imperfections.

In this thesis, we take a closer look at geometry reconstruction using both scanner data and the more challenging image-based scene reconstruction approaches. In particular, this work focuses on the uncontrolled setting where the input images are not constrained, may be taken with different camera models, under different lighting and weather conditions, and from vastly different points of view. A typical dataset contains many views that observe the scene from an overview perspective, and relatively few views capture small details of the geometry. What results from these datasets are surface samples of the scene with vastly different resolution. As we will show in this thesis, the multi-resolution, or, "multi-scale" nature of the input is a relevant aspect for surface reconstruction, which has rarely been considered in literature yet. Integrating scale as additional information in the reconstruction process can make a substantial difference in surface quality.

We develop and study two different approaches for surface reconstruction that are able to cope with the challenges resulting from uncontrolled images. The first approach implements surface reconstruction by fusion of depth maps using a multi-scale hierarchical signed distance function. The hierarchical representation allows fusion of multi-resolution depth maps without mixing geometric information at incompatible scales, which preserves detail in high-resolution regions. An incomplete octree is constructed by incrementally adding triangulated depth maps to the hierarchy, which leads to scattered samples of the multi-resolution signed distance function. A continuous representation of the scattered data is defined by constructing a tetrahedral complex, and a final, highly-adaptive surface is extracted by applying the Marching Tetrahedra algorithm.

A second, point-based approach is based on a more abstract, multi-scale implicit function defined as a sum of basis functions. Each input sample contributes a single basis function which is parameterized solely by the sample's attributes, effectively yielding a parameter-free method. Because the scale of each sample controls the size of the basis function, the method automatically adapts to data redundancy for noise reduction and is highly resilient to the quality-degrading effects of low-resolution samples, thus favoring high-resolution surfaces.

Furthermore, we present a robust, image-based reconstruction system for surface modeling: MVE, the Multi-View Environment. The implementation provides all steps involved in the pipeline: Calibration and registration of the input images, dense geometry reconstruction by means of stereo, a surface reconstruction step and post-processing, such as remeshing and texturing. In contrast to other software solutions for image-based reconstruction, MVE handles large, uncontrolled, multi-scale datasets as well as input from more controlled capture scenarios. The reason lies in the particular choice of the multi-view stereo and surface reconstruction algorithms.

The resulting surfaces are represented using a triangular mesh, which is a piecewise linear approximation to the real surface. The individual triangles are often so small that they barely contribute any geometric information and can be ill-shaped, which can cause numerical problems. A surface remeshing approach is introduced which changes the surface discretization such that more favorable triangles are created. It distributes the vertices of the mesh according to a density function, which is derived from the curvature of the geometry. Such a mesh is better suited for further processing and has reduced storage requirements.

We thoroughly compare the developed methods against the state-of-the art and also perform a qualitative evaluation of the two surface reconstruction methods on a wide range of datasets with different properties. The usefulness of the remeshing approach is demonstrated on both scanner and multi-view stereo data.


Sea ice fastened to coasts, icebergs and ice shelves is of crucial importance for climateand
ecosystems. At the same time, it is not represented in climate models and many processes
affecting its energy- and mass balance are currently only poorly understood. Near
Antarctic ice shelves, which fringe about 44 % of the coastline, this landfast sea ice exhibits
unique characteristics that distinguish it from most other sea ice:
1. Ice platelets form and grow in supercooled water masses, which originate from cavities
below the ice shelves. These crystals rise to the surface, where they accumulate beneath
the solid sea-ice cover. Through freezing of interstitial water they are incorporated
into the sea-ice fabric as platelet ice.
2. A thick and highly stratified snow cover accumulates on the fast ice, altering the response
of the surface to remote sensing and affecting sea-ice energy- and mass balance.
Combining a variety of methods from different disciplines, we aim to improve our understanding
of Antarctic sea-ice, its interaction with ice shelves and its role in the climate
system. Here we present our major research questions, introduce our methods and present
some exemplary results.


Objective Evidences from animal models seem to suggest that minimally invasive surgery may enhance cisplatin diffusion when the drug is administered in the context of post-operative hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). The present study evaluates the cisplatin pharmacokinetic profile in a prospective series of women with platinum sensitive recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer treated with open secondary cytoreductive surgery (O-SCS) or minimally-invasive secondary cytoreductive surgery (MI-SCS). Methods Cisplatin levels were assessed at 0, 20, 40, 60, and 120 minutes in: 1) blood samples, 2) peritoneal perfusate, and 3) peritoneal biopsies at the end of HIPEC. Median Cmax has been used to identify women with high and low drug levels. Progression-free survival (PFS) was calculated as the time elapsed between SCS+HIPEC and secondary recurrence or last follow-up visit. Results Nine (45.0%) women received MI-SCS, and 11 (55.0%) O-SCS. At 60 minutes, median cisplatin Cmax in peritoneal tissue was higher in patients treated with MI-SCS compared to O-SCS (Cmax=8.262 µg/mL vs. Cmax=4.057 µg/mL). Furthermore, median cisplatin plasma Cmax was higher in patients treated with MI-SCS compared to O-SCS (Cmax=0.511 vs. Cmax=0.254 µg/mL; p-value=0.012) at 120 minutes. With a median follow-up time of 24 months, women with higher cisplatin peritoneal Cmax showed a longer PFS compared to women with low cisplatin peritoneal levels (2-years PFS=70% vs. 35%; p-value=0.054). Conclusions We demonstrate for the first time that minimally invasive route enhances cisplatin peritoneal tissue uptake during HIPEC, further evaluations are needed to confirm the correlation between peritoneal cisplatin levels after HIPEC and survival. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01539785


The subject of the present thesis is the experimental investigation of nucleate boiling phenomena in microgravity on different length scales. Nucleate boiling is a highly efficient heat transfer mechanism and widely applied in industry. For the design of nucleate boiling processes the availability of precise and reliable calculation tools is mandatory to predict the performance of the process. Moreover, a precise prediction of the process limits, like the critical heat flux is of tremendous importance with regard to safety aspects since exceeding these limits may lead to the destruction of the system. Due to the highly dynamic nature of boiling processes and the large number of involved phenomena that are coupled in a complex way, a closed theoretical description is not yet achieved. The aim of the present thesis is to contribute to the fundamental understanding of nucleate boiling. The core of the experimental setup is a stainless steel heating foil with a thickness of 20 µm. A single, artificial nucleation site is manufactured electrolytically in the centre of the foil's upper side. The heating foil is located in a cuboid boiling cell filled with the working fluid FC-72. The saturation conditions (pressure and temperature) of the boiling cell can be adjusted. The temperature distribution of the heating foil was measured via infrared thermography from the back side with high spatial (30 µm/pixel) and high temporal (1000fps) resolution. Bubble shapes and motion were recorded by a synchronized high speed camera. The experiments were conducted on parabolic flights. One of the reasons was the enhancement of the temporal and spatial resolution because the bubble detach later at a larger diameter in microgravity. Furthermore, effects could be observed that are normally masked by natural convection which vanishes in weightlessness. By using the complete spectrum of gravity levels of the parabolic flight (0g-1.6g) the implementation of gravity in common empirical correlation could be investigated. Before recording a measurement sequence, mostly, a continual boiling process was established at the artificial nucleation site already during normal or hypergravity phases, respectively. Alternatively, fully developed boiling was investigated during some of the experiment runs. The measurement sequence with a duration of 4 s was triggered during microgravity or during the transition into the microgravity phase. The influence of gravity on bubble departure diameter and bubble frequency was studied and compared to common empirical correlations. Even if the implementation of gravity in some of the correlations agrees with the measurements the absolute value of the predicted departure diameter or the bubble frequency largely deviates from the experimental data. A new correlation for the departure diameter was developed based on a force balance between surface tension as attaching and buoyancy as detaching force, similar to the approach in the well known Fritz' correlation. This new correlation is solely based on theoretical assumption and includes no empirical "fitting" factor. Nevertheless, it shows a very good agreement to the experimental results. Additionally, a new correlation for the bubble frequency based on the correlation of Mikic and Rhosenow was proposed. The transient heating foil temperature distribution and the local heat flux to the fluid were investigated. The local heat flux was calculated by applying an unsteady energy balance at each pixel element of the heating foil. A characteristic ring shaped maximum in the heat flux distribution was observed that was caused by strong evaporation in the vicinity of the three phase contact line at the bubble foot. The ring surrounds a region of negligible heat flux. In this region a non-evaporating adsorbed film exists at the wall and only poor convective heat transfer to the vapor inside the bubble takes place. The heat flux outside the ring is governed by convective heat transfer to the liquid and practically not influenced by the observed boiling process. This convective heat flux to the liquid is in the range of the electrical power density of the foil. Additional to the heat flows in these three regions the latent heat flow was included in an evaluation of the various heat transfer paths during a bubble ebullition cycle. The comparison to numerical simulations revealed very good qualitative but also reasonably good quantitative agreement between experimental and numerical results. As an additional stimulus a high voltage electrode was placed in a distance of 5 mm above the heating foil. The washer shaped electrode was charged to up to 10 kV. The objective of this setup was to study the influence of the electric field on the boiling process regarding the evaluation of a possible replacement of buoyancy as the detaching force in weightlessness. After the activation of the electric field in microgravity the attached spherical vapor bubble was elongated, sucked into the electrode's centre and, thereby, detached due to the dielectrophoretic force. A reliable fully developed boiling process could be established in microgravity in the presence of the electric field.


The Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Lithuania that has come into force on January 1, 2003 (hereinafter referred to as CPC of LR) presents a new party to a trial – curator - that temporally and under certain conditions provided by the law performs the functions of legal representative in a civil procedure. Following the request of the opposing party seeking to perform urgent proceedings, the court has a right to temporarily assign by its decree a curator to the party possessing neither legal capacity for civil proceeding nor representative by law, or to the party having no representative body, or to the party whose residence or work place is unknown (Art. 39 of CPC of LR). Curator can also be assigned either when it is needed to hand over procedural documents to the party whose residence or work place is unknown or to the party that has got no representative body (Art. 129 of CPC of LR). There also exists a particular, and therefore provided in a separate article, assignment of a curator on a stage of execution of a judicial decision, when debtor's residence is unknown but there exists some property of the debtor (Art. 601 of CPC of LR). Since the institution of curator in civil process appeared, quite a lot of urgent questions concerning application of this concept into practice have still been unsolved. Even today, while applying legal provisions of civil process law regulating curator's activity, there are still not clear some aspects such as curator's procedural status, permission to act in civil process, succession of his empowerment etc. There is no doubt that these circumstances have negative impact on the system of guarantees of judicial defence as well as depreciate the quality of dispensation of justice. It is noted in the article that CPC of LR does not provide any requirements for the person of curator, i.e. who can be assigned a curator. In the authors' opinion, when choosing a candidacy for a curator, a priority should be given to members of party's family and relatives, because they better know the absent person; that doubtlessly ensures better protection and defence of his interests. Further in the article it is analysed who has a right to propose a candidacy for curator, when it is impossible to assign a curator, and other questions concerning this matter. Authorisation of a curator, differently from that of legal representative, is limited to the particular civil case; curator acts only in civil process, his empowerment cannot be broadened to the sphere of legal relations of representation regulated by material law. The authors analyse what particular empowerment is possessed by a curator in civil process as well as what the succession of such empowerment can be. Much attention in the article is paid to the analysis of peculiarities of application of specific events of curator's assignment in civil process and to solutions of theoretical and practical problems concerned. The main conclusions are presented at the end of the article.


This paper studies the estimation of the volatility parameter in a model where the driving process is a Brownian motion or a more general symmetric stable process that is perturbed by another Lévy process. We distinguish between a parametric case, where the law of the perturbing process is known, and a semiparametric case, where it is not. In the parametric case, we construct estimators which are asymptotically efficient. In the semiparametric case, we can obtain asymptotically efficient estimators by sampling at a sufficiently high frequency, and these estimators are efficient uniformly in the law of the perturbing process.


The increasing complexity of VLSI designs, in recent years, poses serious challenges while ensuring the correctness of large designs for functionality and timing. In this dissertation, we target two related problems in Design Verification and Testing: Unbounded Model Checking and Path Delay Fault Testing, that commonly suffer from extremely large memory requirements. We propose efficient representations and intelligent learning techniques that reason on the problem structure and take advantage of the repeated search space, thereby alleviating the memory required and time taken to solve these problems. In this dissertation, we exploit Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) for Unbounded Model Checking (UMC). In order to perform unbounded model checking, we need the core image / preimage computation engines that perform forward / backward reachability analysis. First, we develop an ATPG engine, with search-space aware learning, that computes "all solutions" for a given target objective and stores it as a decision diagram. We propose efficient decision selection heuristics and derive a suitable cut-set metric to quickly obtain a compact solution set. The solution set that is obtained, with the initial state set as the objective, represents the one-cycle preimage. In order to use the preimage state set as the objective in the subsequent iterations, we propose efficient techniques to convert a decision diagram into clauses/circuit. We propose a node-based conversion scheme that derives the functionality of each node in the decision diagram. The proposed scheme contains the size of the state set and helps to iteratively compute the preimage for many cycles until a fixed point / desired state is reached. Further, we gear the ATPG engine to directly compute the circuit cofactors, rather than individual solutions. The circuit cofactors contain a large number of solutions and hence capture a larger solution space. We also propose efficient learning techniques to prune the cofactor space and accelerate preimage computation. Then, we develop an exclusive image computation procedure that branches on the combinational inputs of the circuit and projects the values on the next state flip-flops as the image. We perform learning on the input solution space and incrementally store the image obtained as a decision diagram. We consistently show, with our experimental results, that our techniques are better than the existing techniques in terms of both performance and capacity. In the case of delay testing, we consider the test generation for path delay fault (PDF) model, which is the most accurate in characterizing the cumulative effect of distributed delays along each path in a circuit. The main bottle-neck in the ATPG for PDFs is the exponential number of paths in a circuit. In this work, we use the circuit information to analyze the common segments shared by different paths in a circuit. Based on the common sensitization constraints, we propose to identify the "untestable core of segments" that cannot be sensitized together. We use these segments to identify the conflict search space for a huge number of untestable path delay faults apriori and prune them on-the-fly during test generation. Experimental results show that a huge number of untestable path delay faults are identified and it helps to accelerate test generation.


Forests, particularly in the tropics, are suffering from deforestation and forest degradations. The estimation of forest area and canopy cover is an essential part of the establishment of a measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) system that is needed for monitoring carbon stocks and the associated greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Information about forest area and canopy cover might be obtained by visual image interpretation as an alternative to expensive fieldwork. The objectives of this study were to evaluate different types of satellite images for forest area and canopy cover estimation though visual image interpretation, and assess the influence of sample sizes on the estimates. Seven sites in Ethiopia with different vegetation systems were subjectively identified, and visual interpretations were carried out in a systematical design. Bootstrapping was applied to evaluate the effects of sample sizes. The results showed that high-resolution satellite images (≤5 m) (PlanetScope and RapidEye) images produced very similar estimates, while coarser resolution imagery (10 m, Sentinel-2) estimates were dependent on forest conditions. Estimates based on Sentinel-2 images varied significantly from the two other types of images in sites with denser forest cover. The estimates from PlanetScope and RapidEye were less sensitive to changes in sample size.


This paper studies an idea we call "(null) self-recognition," which occurs when a player who was certain that they were a particular type privately discovers that they are in fact some other type. To address unresolved questions as to how players update their beliefs regarding their partner's type and higher-order beliefs regarding both players' types after self-recognition, we propose a "sequential reassessment" rule, in which beliefs concerning each player's type are modified up to a given order. As an initial investigation of its equilibrium consequences, we embed sequential reassessment in a simple model of team production, in which players experience self-recognition when game play begins. Our main result, which applies for team projects with uneven task demands, shows how a player's decision to work or shirk can depend solely on whether that player's reassessment of their own type is "deeper" or "shallower" than their reassessment of their partner's type.


Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and writer who has travelled widely in India studying Yoga, had a close friendship with Jung and Hesse at the end of their lives. This book is the outcome of his meetings and correspondence with them. Many letters are reproduced including documents of great importance written to the author by Jung shortly before his death, explaining his ideas about the nature of the world and of his work.


Server consolidation, which allows multiple workloads to run on the same system, has become increasingly important as a way to improve the utilization of computing resources and reduce costs. Consolidation is common in mainframe environments, where technology to support running multiple workloads and even multiple operating systems on the same hardware has been evolving since the late 1960's. This technology is now becoming an important differentiator in the UNIX and Linux server market as well, both at the low end (virtual web hosting) and high end (traditional data center server consolidation).This paper introduces Solaris Zones (zones), a fully realized solution for server consolidation projects in a commercial UNIX operating system. By creating virtualized application execution environments within a single instance of the operating system, the facility strikes a unique balance between competing requirements. On the one hand, a system with multiple workloads needs to run those workloads in isolation, to ensure that applications can neither observe data from other applications nor affect their operation. It must also prevent applications from over-consuming system resources. On the other hand, the system as a whole has to be flexible, manageable, and observable, in order to reduce administrative costs and increase efficiency. By focusing on the support of multiple application environments rather than multiple operating system instances, zones meets isolation requirements without sacrificing manageability.


Transdermal drug delivery systems are involved in the continuous administration of drug molecules from the surface of the skin into the circulatory system. Such systems have proved advantageous for delivery of certain drugs, such as scopolamine, nicotine, nitroglycerine, and estradiol. Compared with oral administration, transdermal drug delivery offers better uniformity of drug concentrations in plasma throughout their duration of use. Scopolamine is the active ingredient in motion sickness medication that targets the nerve fibers in the inner ear. The scopolamine patch is effective for about three days, longer than if administered orally which is effective for only several hours. One of the main restraints of this transdermal system is its absorption through the skin, especially through the stratum corneum, its outermost part. This study examines the rate of diffusion of transdermal scopolamine across the skin and into the systemic circulation. Our objective is to optimize the drug delivery by way of a scopolamine patch by minimizing absorption rates, while maintaining its advantage of a long-term effect. A comparative study of the effects in the presence of penetration enhancers were undertaken to show how steady state is approached at different rates. The model we used does offer certain limitations, as diffusivity values specific to human skin and scopolamine are not readily available.


In general, isolated integrable quantum systems have been found to relax to an apparent equilibrium state in which the expectation values of few-body observables are described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble. However, recent work has shown that relaxation to such a generalized statistical ensemble can be precluded by localization in a quasiperiodic lattice system. Here we undertake complementary single-particle and many-body analyses of noninteracting spinless fermions and hard-core bosons within the Aubry-Andre model to gain insight into this phenomenon. Our investigations span both the localized and delocalized regimes of the quasiperiodic system, as well as the critical point separating the two. Considering first the case of spinless fermions, we study the dynamics of the momentum distribution function and characterize the effects of real-space and momentum-space localization on the relevant single-particle wave functions and correlation functions. We show that although some observables do not relax in the delocalized and localized regimes, the observables that do relax in these regimes do so in a manner consistent with a recently proposed Gaussian equilibration scenario, whereas relaxation at the critical point has a more exotic character. We also construct various statistical ensembles from the many-body eigenstates of the fermionic and bosonic Hamiltonians and study the effect of localization on their properties.


Across rapidly urbanizing South Asia, erstwhile irrigation tanks or "lakes" are being swallowed into towns and cities and being given new meaning as providers of environmental amenities. The campaigns in Bengaluru city in southern India to protect and rejuvenate these lakes have managed to stave off the conversion and also privatization of these lakes, and led to participatory management of a few of them. Most lakes, however, are still degraded. Why this is so and what institutional arrangements might improve the chances of success in lake governance? Drawing upon a combination of secondary material, key informant interviews, and year-long participant observation in governmental efforts at stemming lake degradation in Bengaluru, we seek to deepen current understanding of the values associated with lakes, their bio-social nature, and the roles played by and interactions between key actors and agencies. We argue that a) the societal stakes in lakes extend beyond local users of the lake itself, whether traditional or modern, to users of water downstream and in other parts of Bengaluru; b) there are significant trade-offs between different uses and an inherent asymmetric and broader connectivity resulting from the flow of water and wastewater, and c) therefore the governance of these lakes not only needs participation of local citizens, but also coordination between and democratic control over several other agencies that are involved in managing water and wastewater and in allocating water or regulating its quality. We explore alternative institutional arrangements that might better address this need for an integrated urban lakewater governance.


The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, through the Division for ICT, Science and Technology, and in partnership with donors and other multi stakeholders, has played a significant role at national and regional level in facilitating development and fine-tuning of policies to improve the use of ICT application and promote knowledge access for socioeconomic development in Africa. In addition ECA as an Open Access publisher contributes to a wealth of knowledge detailing on important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa. This has been made available through the ECA Institutional repository currently containing 17,000 metadata records with about 11,000 linked digital files. Furthermore, ECA has established the Access to Scientific Knowledge in Africa initiative (ASKIA), a framework for bringing together scientific and socioeconomic information for the African community over an interactive online portal acting as a one-stop shop to such knowledge and associated information. Different modalities are proposed in achieving the goals of ASKIA taking into consideration the information needs of users, opportunities brought by new technologies and the global trends on knowledge exchange and dissemination. Capacity building to strengthen institutional capacities to capture, manage and disseminate local content is an integral part of the programme.


Scale invariant feature detectors often find stable scales in only a few image pixels. Consequently, methods for feature matching typically choose one of two extreme options: matching a sparse set of scale invariant features, or dense matching using arbitrary scales. In this paper, we turn our attention to the overwhelming majority of pixels, those where stable scales are not found by standard techniques. We ask, is scale-selection necessary for these pixels, when dense, scale-invariant matching is required and if so, how can it be achieved? We make the following contributions: (i) We show that features computed over different scales, even in low-contrast areas, can be different and selecting a single scale, arbitrarily or otherwise, may lead to poor matches when the images have different scales. (ii) We show that representing each pixel as a set of SIFTs, extracted at multiple scales, allows for far better matches than single-scale descriptors, but at a computational price. Finally, (iii) we demonstrate that each such set may be accurately represented by a low-dimensional, linear subspace. A subspace-to-point mapping may further be used to produce a novel descriptor representation, the Scale-Less SIFT (SLS), as an alternative to single-scale descriptors. These claims are verified by quantitative and qualitative tests, demonstrating significant improvements over existing methods. A preliminary version of this work appeared in [1] .


Background Pharmacists have important responsibilities inside a multi-professional renal transplant team. Purpose This work aimed to evaluate the impact of pharmaceutical intervention in the education process and compliance to immunosuppressive therapy. Material and methods This project was approved by the local ethics committee and conducted in a large transplant-specialised hospital. Adult kidney transplant recipients were identified and recruited by a trained pharmacist within two days after the transplant surgery and received standard immunosuppression therapy. After signing the informed consent patients were randomised to receive a planned intervention of the transplant pharmacist (group 1) or to follow the regular orientation offered by nurses only (group 2). The pharmaceutical-planned intervention consisted of detailed education about indications, doses, frequencies, and schedules for administration of immunosuppressive drugs and these actions were performed at day 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28, 60 and 90 days after transplant. A formal evaluation was applied using a standardised scale and a predefined questionnaire to assess compliance and knowledge at days 10, 28 and 90. Results So far, 89 patients were randomised, 43 in group 1 and 46 in group 2. Preliminary results showed a mean age of 46, 62% male and 40% Caucasian. Regarding the education level, 52% and 30% of patients had not achieved the ninth grade in group 1 and 2, respectively. At day 28 and 90, 85% and 82% of patients showed compliance to immunosuppression in group 1 vs. 77% and 60% in group 2, respectively. Regarding the patients' knowledge about the use of immunosuppressive at days 10, 28 and 90, 85%, 88% and 95% of patients in group 1 showed well understanding about immunosuppressive medication vs. 73% (p = 0.049), while 82% and 80%, in group 2 respectively. Conclusion These preliminary results showed that the intervention of the pharmacist trends to improve the compliance and knowledge of immunosuppression therapy. References and/or acknowledgements Acknowledgements Hospital do Rim. No conflict of interest.


Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters, we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events, often at great cost to society. In "The Signal and the Noise", the "New York Times" political forecaster Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the results of every single state in the 2012 US election, reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table, from earthquakes to the economy, he takes us on an enthralling insider's tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting, showing how we can use information in a smarter way amid a noise of data - and make better predictions in our own lives.


SslE, the Secreted and surface-associated lipoprotein from Escherichia coli, has recently been associated to the M60-like extracellular zinc-metalloprotease sub-family which is implicated in glycan recognition and processing. SslE can be divided into two main variants and we recently proposed it as a potential vaccine candidate. By applying a number of in vitro bioassays and comparing wild type, knockout mutant and complemented strains, we have now demonstrated that SslE specifically contributes to degradation of mucin substrates, typically present in the intestine and bladder. Mutation of the zinc metallopeptidase motif of SslE dramatically impaired E. coli mucinase activity, confirming the specificity of the phenotype observed. Moreover, antibodies raised against variant I SslE, cloned from strain IHE3034 (SslEIHE3034), are able to inhibit translocation of E. coli strains expressing different variants through a mucin-based matrix, suggesting that SslE induces cross-reactive functional antibodies that affect the metallopeptidase activity. To test this hypothesis, we used well-established animal models and demonstrated that immunization with SslEIHE3034 significantly reduced gut, kidney and spleen colonization by strains producing variant II SslE and belonging to different pathotypes. Taken together, these data strongly support the importance of SslE in E. coli colonization of mucosal surfaces and reinforce the use of this antigen as a component of a broadly protective vaccine against pathogenic E. coli species.


This book reports empirical studies on 18 different areas of substantive criminal law in which the study results showing ordinary people's judgments of justice are compared to the governing legal doctrine to highlight points of agreement and disagreement. The book also identifies trends and patterns in these agreement and disagreement and discusses the implications for the formulation of criminal law. The chapters include: Chapter 1. Community Views and the Criminal Law (Introduction; An Overview; Why Community Views Should Matter; Research Methods) Chapter 2. Doctrines of Criminalization: What Conduct Should Be Criminal? (Objective Requirements of Attempt (Study 1); Creating a Criminal Risk (Study 2); Objective Requirements of Complicity (Study 3); Omission Liability (Study 4); Chapter Summary) Chapter 3. Doctrines of Justification: When Should It Be Lawful to Engage in Conduct That Normally Would Constitute a Violation? (Use of Deadly Force in Self-Defense (Study 5); Use of Force in Defense of Property (Study 6); Citizens' Law Enforcement Authority (Study 7); Chapter Summary) Chapter 4. Doctrines of Culpability: When Is Violation of a Legal Rule Blameworthy? (Offense Culpability Requirements and Mistake/Accident Defenses (Study 8); Culpability Requirements for Complicity (Study 9); Voluntary Intoxication (Study 10); Individualization of the Objective Standard of Negligence (Study 11); Chapter Summary) Chapter 5. Doctrines of Excuse: When Is a Rule Violation Blameless? (Insanity (Study 12); Immaturity and Involuntary Intoxication (Study 13); Duress and Entrapment Defenses (Study 14); Chapter Summary) Chapter 6. Doctrines of Grading: What Degree of Punishment Is Deserved for a Blameworthy Violation? (The Seriousness of the Offense: Sexual Offenses (Study 15); The Culpability of the Person: Felony Murder (Study 16); The Strength of the Person's Connection with the Prohibited Result: Causation Requirements (Study 17); Punishment for Multiple Offenses (Study 18); Chapter Summary) Chapter 7. Community Views and Criminal Codes Conflict (When Code and Community Agree; When Code and Community Disagree; Liability Requirements Versus Liability Factors and Dichotomous Functions Versus Continuous Functions; Criminal Liability Without Punishment; The Jury as a Resolver of Code-Community Conflicts)


Foreword. Introduction. Part I: Introducing a Different Kind of Classroom. Chapter 1: Heading Online for Your Education. Chapter 2: The Traits and Benefi ts of Online Education. Chapter 3: The Technology and Technological Skills You Need to Succeed. Part II: Preparing to Be a Student. Chapter 4: Discovering What's Available Online. Chapter 5: Doing Your Homework: Evaluating Schools. Chapter 6: Applying to School and Securing the Cash. Chapter 7: Getting Accepted and Prepping for Class. Part III: The Virtual Classroom: Being an A+ Student. Chapter 8: Navigating the Classroom. Chapter 9: Meeting the People in (And around) Your Classroom. Chapter 10: Communicating Clearly Online. Chapter 11: Developing Good Study Habits for Online Courses. Chapter 12: Getting a Handle on Group Dynamics. Chapter 13: Understanding Netiquette and Ethical Behavior. Chapter 14: Finishing and Submitting Your Assignments. Chapter 15: Transitioning after School. Part IV: Special Considerations in Online Education. Chapter 16: Educating Students from Kindergarten through High School. Chapter 17: Connecting with International Students. Chapter 18: Accessibility in Online Education. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 19: Ten Myths about Online Education. Chapter 20: Ten Nationally Recognized Online Schools. Index.


This thesis reports the research investigation on
the behaviour of non-sway frames with SHS columns taking into consideration the influence of semi-rigid flowdrill
connections. The aim of the studies was to investigate the behaviour of the non-sway frames in the elastic and inelastic ranges, the acceptability of the flowdrill connections for low-rise non-sway frames and to develop a simplified semi-rigid design that is suitable for daily design routine. The analytical studies were conducted using an existing finite element program which was modified to work with frames employing tubular columns. The program is able to simulate the response in the elastic and inelastic ranges taking into account the semi-rigid connections, the geometrical and material nonlinearities and the development of spread yield. The program has been validated against the experimental results and can reasonably predict the true frame behaviour. The results of
the parametric studies show several important observations;one of which is the phenomenon of moment shedding. This phenomenon causes the relaxation of
the detrimental moment at the column top end which in turn causes the moment redistribution to the neighbouring members. Eventually, the detrimental column moment diminishes and sometimes acts as restraining moments. As a consequence, at ultimate load, the columns behave in the general form of axially loaded compression members and the beams as simply supported with a certain degree of end restraint. Knowing that restrained beam-columns can be
treated as axially loaded, extensive parametric studies on
different frame configurations were conducted to determine
the ultimate strength of beam-columns. The studies were conducted on low rise multi-storey non-sway frames. The principal parameters varied are the column slenderness, connection types and the magnitude of beam loads. The values of ultimate strength of restrained beam-columns
are compared directly against the strength of pin ended columns as specified by the BS 5950 and EC3 codes. The results show that in many cases, the ultimate strength of restrained beam-columns are in excess to the strength of axially loaded pin ended column as specified by BS 5950 and
EC3. Based on the results of the parametric studies, a simplified design for simple, semi-rigid and rigid frames is developed. The columns are designed as axially loaded
compression members without any consideration of eccentricity or partial fixity moments. The beams for simple construction are designed as simply supported with
pin ends; whereas, the beams for semi-rigid and rigid construction are designed as simply supported with a certain amount of end restraint moment to take into account
the effect of semi-rigid and rigid connections. The design of strength for beams and columns can be
carried out individually and is not dependent on the stiffnesses of the M-0 of the connections, beams and columns. Finally, general conclusions and recommendations
for further work are also included.


Can global governance be democratic? The public debate on this issue largely assumes that the modernist conception of democracy as tied to an identifiable territory and polity cannot be globalized without a world government. Various post-modernist theorists offer a set of alternatives based on a redefinition of democracy, the state, democracy, and law. Individuals with plural selves can govern themselves through participation in multiple networks of public and private actors that together define the state. The results are heady, exciting, and likely to be unintelligible to the vast majority of policymakers, activists, and citizens who seek to achieve specific goals in an age of globalization, information, and politicization. This essay instead develops a typology of more concrete and prosaic accountability problems connected with a rapidly growing form of global governance -- transgovernmental regulatory networks. These "government networks" are networks of national government officials exchanging information, coordinating national policies, and working together to address common problems. After a brief overview of the literature on transgovernmentalism since the 1970s in Part I, Part II sets forth a typology of three different categories of government networks. Part III then seeks to pinpoint the specific accountability concerns associated with each type. Part IV offers one approach to answering some current accountability concerns by adapting the concept of "information agencies" from the European Union to the global level. Part V briefly surveys various reconceptualizations of democracy and distills various elements of these visions that could be useful in strengthening the democratic pedigree of government networks. It concludes with an appeal to add global legislative networks to the pluralist mix of global governance mechanisms.


Using a webinar format to connect to an off-site clinical microbiologist, we presented an interdisciplinary and interactive case study to undergraduate microbiology and anatomy and physiology students. After an introduction to pathophysiology and microbiology, the clinical microbiologist's case study provided students with a unique look at real life problems. Our goal was to have students appreciate the interrelationship between microbiology and physiology, and to apply their knowledge of microbiology and physiology to solve the case study. The webinar format facilitated the delivery of the integrative learning experience to multiple classes and the off-site clinical microbiologist simultaneously. Students and faculty in both anatomy and physiology and microbiology undergraduate lectures and laboratory sessions can benefit from this approach.


Abstract.
 The Australian endemic ant-mimetic seed bug genus Daerlac is revised. This paper provides a redescription of the genus Daerlac and four species: D. apicalis, D. cephalotes, D. nigricans and D. picturatus. Daerlac tricolor is synonomised with D. cephalotes. A taxonomic key to species is provided. Known distributions of D. apicalis, D. nigricans and D. picturatus are each extended beyond previously known ranges. Daerlac species are found predominantly in temperate open forest and woodlands in association with ants and eucalypts. All species are broadly distributed and there is a high degree of overlap in distributions. They are seed predators found on the ground, in leaf litter, under bark or on trunks of eucalypts, and putatively forage on post-dispersed seeds. Cladistic analysis of morphological characters finds that the four species of Daerlac form two well-supported sister-groups (D. apicalis + D. picturatus, and D. cephalotes + D. nigricans). A discussion of the distribution, biology and myrmecomorphy of the genus is provided, and the tribal placement of Daerlac and its relationship to Laryngodus are discussed.


Hidden information on food packaging are carried out with INFRAREDESIGN technology procedure. The procedure implicates merging of two independent visual RGB images, followed by compound separating in process CMYKIR components. Graphic reproduction embodies picture elements - pixels with two independent appearances in two light spectrum. The first range is a visual space that we see with the bare eye and the other range of the near infrared, that is registered instrumentally. One can distinguish two information using Z glasses that selected by the absorption of light at 1000 nm. Printing on a transparent polymer material, carrying a transparent image that is designed as a protective prints with individualized line forms. Dyes are mixed as twins respecting the norm DIN4 Flexographic rare and transparent dyes viscosity 22 s. The two dyes twins have the same spectrogram in the area of 400 to 700 nm, and different spectrogram Z point near infrared spectrum.


Nipple areolar reconstruction (NAC) was introduced since 1940s and evolved as parallel with breast reconstruction since era of breast cancer treatment. It consists of nipple and areolar reconstruction. Ideal reconstruction of the NAC requires symmetry in position, size, shape, texture, and pigmentation and permanent projection. There are many innovative ways to create a nipple and each method has its unique characteristics that apply to certain breast types. NAC reconstruction techniques comprises of composite nipple grafts, local flap, flaps with autologous graft augmentation, flaps with alloplastic augmentation and flaps with allograft augmentation. Areolar reconstruction by using skin grafting and tattooing are the easiest and most common techniques. With the evolution of techniques and technology, perhaps the newer methods of NAC reconstruction can produce promising long-lasting aesthetically acceptable result with minimal morbidity.


From the end of World War II until roughly 1989, global leaders feared that cataclysmic war would break out between the world's two superpower states, the Soviet Union and the United States. Though such a confrontation did not occur, the stalemate between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States—with its simmering fears, proxy battles, and psychological warfare—became known as the Cold War. Psychological expertise played an important role in the Cold War, especially within Western democracies like the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. In these countries, citizens tended to view the Cold War as a "battle for minds": a fight against communist political ideology, totalitarianism, social conformity, and other threats to individual mental freedom. Anglo-American psychology flourished within this intellectual environment by finding new topics and applications for research, new sources of funding, and a new image as essential to the functioning of healthy democracy.
 Historians continue to debate how the Cold War influenced the field of psychology. Overall, the strategic partnership between psychology and the "military-industrial complex" was limited to certain initiatives. In some cases, Anglo-American psychologists who used their expertise to fight the Cold War were led into questionable pursuits, resulting in greater public scrutiny and even scandals for themselves and their profession. Nonetheless, the Cold War had a significant impact on Anglo-American psychology by making the relationship between psychological knowledge and democratic values a continual subject of public concern.


The northern subspecies of the Spotted-tailed Quoll, Dasyurus maculatus gracilis, is confined to rainforests and adjacent habitats in Queensland's Wet Tropics, where it was estimated to number 540 individuals and to be in on-going decline. Using motion-sensor cameras equipped with a flash and set at chicken baits, we surveyed eight rainforest areas from which the subspecies has previously been recorded. Survey areas ranged from Barron Gorge National Park south to Mt Bartle Frere, with cameras set at elevations from 400 to 1,600 m ASL. A total of 740 camera days of effort yielded eleven images of the Spotted-tailed Quoll from four cameras in two areas – the Bellenden Ker Range and Mt Bartle Frere. From these, five individuals are identifiable on the basis of spot patterns. Given the proven record of this technique in detecting the species, our failure to detect quolls at two other high-elevation areas is cause for concern. Twenty-one other species, including the Endangered Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii), were also detected in camera


This article examines the global consequences flowing from contemporary China's distinctive blend of ancient traditions and modern ambitions. Beginning with Deng Xiaoping's revolutionary reforms, this discussion on the evolution of de facto federalism in China focuses on the dynamic interactions between the country's central, provincial and local governments. At each level, enterprising and often corrupt administrators blur the lines between business and government in search of political fame. These "economic warlords" consistently place local interests above central government mandates and advance their careers only through the relentless, unchecked growth which now drives the world economy. This article focuses on the international legal implications of Chinese localism, and how de facto federalism enables a regulatory culture where low-level officials methodically circumvent intellectual property rights, ignore product safety standards, and inflict widespread environmental degradation. After centuries of isolation, an intense desire to open China up to the rest of the world caused the central government to trade substantial control over its provinces for rapid industrialization. Accordingly, Beijing now finds itself increasingly powerless to enforce its own treaties, laws and regulations. The end result, however, is no longer confined to the Mainland as counterfeit and defective goods make their way into foreign markets. This article seeks to provide background into how the unique political, economic and cultural aspects of China's long history continue to guide its enigmatic interaction with the outside world, and how the localized interests of zealous bureaucrats increasingly impact international legal arrangements.