Effective activation of a recipient oocyte and its compatibility with the nuclear donor are critical to the successful nuclear reprogramming during nuclear transfer. We designed a series of experiments using various activation methods to determine the optimum activation efficiency of bovine oocytes. We then performed nuclear transfer (NT) of embryonic and somatic cells into cytoplasts presumably at G1/S phase (with prior activation) or at metaphase II (MII, without prior activation). Oocytes at 24 hr of maturation in vitro were activated with various combinations of calcium ionophore A23187 (A187) (5 μM, 5 min), electric pulse (EP), ethanol (7%, 7 min), cycloheximide (CHX) (10 μg/ml, 6 hr), and then cultured in cytochalasin D (CD) for a total of 18 hr. Through a series of experiments (Exp. 1–4), an improved activation protocol (A187/EP/CHX/CD) was identified and used for comparison of NT efficiency of embryonic versus somatic donor cells (Exp. 5). When embryonic cells from morula and blastocysts (BL) were used as nuclear donors, a significantly higher rate of blastocyst development from cloned embryos was obtained with G1/S phase cytoplasts than with MII‐phase cytoplasts (36 vs. 11%, P < 0.05). In contrast, when skin fibroblasts were used as donor cells, the use of an MII cytoplast (vs. G1/S phase) was imperative for blastocyst development (30 vs. 6%, P < 0.05). Differential staining showed that parthenogenetic, embryonic, and somatic cloned BL contained 26, 29, and 33% presumptive inner cell mass (ICM) cells, respectively, which is similar to that of frozen‐thawed in vivo embryos at a comparable developmental stage (23%). These data indicate that embryonic and somatic nuclei require different recipient cytoplast environment for remodeling/ reprogramming, and this is likely due to the different cell cycle stage and profiles of molecular differentiation of the transferred donor nuclei Mol. Reprod. Dev. 63: 183–191, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Tropical cloud forests are
 characterized by high epiphyte diversity and abundance with a
 crucial driver for this being the frequent occurrence of fog
 that constitutes an additional water source for epiphytic
 vegetation. The ecological value of fog in these ecosystems
 is widely recognized and although tropical cloud forests in
 montane regions are known to be biodiverse and abundant in
 epiphytes, recent work indicates similar levels of both
 diversity and abundance in tropical lowland systems. An
 important question is whether fog plays a similar role in
 lowland systems as it does in montane areas, particularly
 since the physical mechanisms for fog formation in the
 tropical lowland are not well understood. The major aim of
 the present study was to provide an in-depth investigation of
 the fog phenomenon in French Guiana, including the
 spatio-temporal fog dynamics, and with this, to enhance the
 understanding of the impact of fog on epiphytic vegetation in
 tropical lowland forests. The main hypotheses suggest the
 frequent occurrence of radiation fog in valley forests
 throughout French Guiana, supported by nocturnal katabatic
 flows, and the formation of the epiphyte-rich "tropical
 lowland cloud forest" (LCF) as a new vegetation unit, which
 is restricted to areas frequently affected by fog. Testing
 these hypotheses required a specific experimental setup, an
 interdisciplinary approach and the development of a novel fog
 detection scheme. The first hypothesis concerning the
 frequent spatio-temporal occurrence of valley fog could be
 verified by the statistical assessments of the meteorological
 data derived in the field and the results of the
 satellite-based fog-detection scheme. The identified
 meteorological processes confirm the hypothesised mechanism
 of radiation fog formation and demonstrated that katabatic
 flows play a role. Therefore, nocturnal cold air drainage,
 typical in complex terrains of the midlatitudes, should also
 be regarded as a trigger of fog formation in the tropical
 lowland. The integrative assessment of canopy microclimate
 and epiphyte parameters verifies the second hypothesis. It
 was demonstrated that epiphyte diversity, abundance and
 biomass are significantly higher in valley forest as a
 consequence of a more favourable canopy microclimate due to
 frequent fog episodes. These findings provide strong evidence
 for the existence of the hitherto neglected tropical lowland
 cloud forest as a novel forest type. Thus, the results
 indicate that LCF and LRF should no longer be viewed as a
 single formation. Epiphyte diversity and distribution in LCF
 and LRF may represent useful characteristics for
 discriminating these forests. Further, the results indicate
 that the region of frequent occurrence of radiation fog in
 French Guiana can be…


Cast aluminum alloys are promising materials that can simplify the manufacturing process of automobile body structures. However, the low ductility of cast aluminum poses significant challenges to existing riveting technologies. In the present work, dissimilar AA6061-T6 aluminum alloy and Al-Si7Mg cast aluminum were joined by self-piercing riveting (SPR) and friction self-piercing riveting (F-SPR) processes to reveal the effect of friction heat on rivetability of low-ductility cast aluminum alloys. The joint macro-morphology, microstructure, peak tooling force, microhardness distribution, tensile-shear, and cross-tension performance of the two processes were comparatively studied. Results indicated that the in-situ softening effect of friction heat in the F-SPR process could effectively improve the ductility of cast aluminum, avoid cracking, and reduce the tooling force by 53%, compared to the SPR process. The severe plastic deformation and friction heat induced by rivet rotation results in refined equiaxed grains of aluminum near the rivets and solid-state bonding between aluminum sheets in the rivet cavity. The F-SPR joints are superior to SPR joints in both tensile-shear and cross-tension performance due to the avoidance of cracking, increase of mechanical interlocking, and solid-state bonding of interfaces. Significantly, when Al-Si7Mg is placed on the lower layer, the peak tensile-shear and cross-tension loads of the F-SPR joints are 7.2% and 45.5% higher than those of the corresponding SPR joints, respectively.


Over recent decades outlet glaciers of the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE), West Antarctica, have accelerated, thinned, and retreated, and are now contributing approximately 10% to global sea level rise. All the ASE glaciers flow into ice shelves, and it is the thinning of these since the 1970s, and their ungrounding from "pinning points" that is widely held to be responsible for triggering the glaciers' decline. These changes have been linked to the inflow of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CPDW) onto the ASE's continental shelf. CPDW delivery is highly variable and is closely related to the regional atmospheric circulation. The ASE is south of the Amundsen Sea Low (ASL), which has a large variability and which has deepened in recent decades. The ASL is influenced by the phase of the Southern Annular Mode, along with tropical climate variability. It is not currently possible to simulate such complex atmosphere‐ocean‐ice interactions in models, hampering prediction of future change. The current retreat could mark the beginning of an unstable phase of the ASE glaciers that, if continued, will result in collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, but numerical ice sheet models currently lack the predictive power to answer this question. It is equally possible that the recent retreat will be short‐lived and that the ASE will find a new stable state. Progress is hindered by incomplete knowledge of bed topography in the vicinity of the grounding line. Furthermore, a number of key processes are still missing or poorly represented in models of ice‐flow.


This paper investigates the assignment of audio mixing operations to a geographically distributed set of servers to provide an immersive audio communication environment for massively multiplayer online games. The immersive audio communication service enables each avatar to hear a realistic audio mix of the conversations in its audible range. There are three primary delivery architectures for this service, namely, peer-to-peer, central server and distributed servers. We focus on the distributed server architecture, which partitions the virtual world into regions or locales and then assigns the computation associated with the creation of audio scenes for all avatars in each locale to a server. Our aim is to find the optimal way to partition the virtual world into locales and then choose the locale servers in such a way that reduces the total delay perceived by all avatars. We have produced a mathematical formulation for the optimal partitioning and server assignment and developed a heuristics approach based on a graph algorithm. We have developed a simulation environment that creates both the physical world (geographic distribution of participants and the Internet topology model) and the virtual world (distribution of avatars based on different avatar aggregation behaviors). We have solved the problem exactly as well as using the heuristics algorithm for a range of simulated virtual and physical worlds. In many cases, the heuristics results were within 5% of the optimal. Our algorithms and simulation study will be of benefit to future immersive audio communication service providers in the design of a cost effective delivery architecture for this service.


The purpose of the experiment was to evaluate infective Trichostrongylus colubriformis larvae vertical migration in two forage grass species. Experimental modules formed by eight plots, established with Brachiaria decumbens cv. Australian and Panicum maximum cv. Aruana, were used in the study, totaling four plots for each grass species. Each plot was divided into six 30 x 30 cm subplots. Larval migration was evaluated in the four seasons of the year, in different plant strata (0-7, 7-14, 14-21, 21-28 and above 28 cm). Four feces deposits were made, one in each season of the year, in the middle of 30-cm tall forage. The feces were collected from the forage ten days after each feces deposit in the experimental subplots. Grass height was measured in each of the strata immediately before the collections. The forage of the different strata was cut from an area measuring 10-cm in radius. The feces were collected manually from the subplots. There was a grass species and grass stratum interaction in the deposit made in autumn (P<0.05). During that season, most of the larvae were recovered from the Brachiaria grass base; meanwhile, at the forage apex, the biggest average was registered in the aruana grass. Infective larvae (L3) recovery was similar among the different strata during spring. In springtime, the biggest L3 recovery occurred at the 21-28 cm stratum from both forage species. No L3 was recovered from any of the No L3 was recovered from any of the grass strata during winter and summer. Study results show that migration of T. colubriformis larvae was more influenced by weather conditions than by forage species.


I study how the general and specific details of a micro founded monetary framework affect the determination of policy when the government has limited commitment. The conduct of policy depends on the interaction between the incentive to smooth distortions intertemporally and a time-consistency problem. In equilibrium, fiscal and monetary policies are distortionary, but long-run policy is not afflicted by time-consistency problems. Policy variables in specific applications of the general framework react similarly to variations in fundamentals. Nevertheless, resolving certain environment frictions affect long-run policy significantly. The response of government policy to aggregate shocks is qualitatively similar across the studied model variants. However, there are significant quantitative differences in the response of government policy to productivity shocks, mainly due to the idiosyncratic behavior of the money demand. Environments with no trading frictions display the best fit to post-war U.S. data.


Cardiac involvement in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is evident in nearly a third of all patients, with up to 40% succumbing to heart disease. Whereas DMD is caused by a lack of functional dystrophin, Becker Muscular Dystrophy (BMD) is characterized by expression of an internally truncated, functional dystrophin protein. Nearly 90% of BMD patients over the age of 40 have evidence of cardiac involvement in the disease process. The most widely used animal model, the mdx mouse, has similar skeletal pathology to DMD patients, however, the cardiac pathology is more representative of BMD patients (i.e. late onset of cardiac involvement). Advances in gene therapy have demonstrated both in vivo and in vitro delivery of constructs to skeletal muscles leading to expression of a functional dystrophin protein. Cardiac delivery of gene medicines has proved more difficult and unrewarding. We have been able to demonstrate antisense-induced exon skipping in cardiac cell cultures derived young mdx mice. Multi-exonic skipping and novel delivery methods have improved in vitro results, however in vivo experiments still lack definitive success. Besides the morphologic and functional differences between skeletal and cardiac muscle, a potential reason for the lack of success maybe the absence of pathology in the younger animals, leading to decreased uptake of gene therapy in vivo. We are pursuing several lines of research to further enhance levels of exon skipping in cardiac cells in vitro and in vivo.


We consider the problem of online linear regression on arbitrary deterministic sequences when the ambient dimension d can be much larger than the number of time rounds T. We introduce the notion of sparsity regret bound, which is a deterministic online counterpart of recent risk bounds derived in the stochastic setting under a sparsity scenario. We prove such regret bounds for an online-learning algorithm called SeqSEW and based on exponential weighting and data-driven truncation. In a second part we apply a parameter-free version of this algorithm to the stochastic setting (regression model with random design). This yields risk bounds of the same flavor as in Dalalyan and Tsybakov (2011) but which solve two questions left open therein. In particular our risk bounds are adaptive (up to a logarithmic factor) to the unknown variance of the noise if the latter is Gaussian. We also address the regression model with fixed design.


Asynchronous-parallel algorithms have the potential to vastly speed up algorithms by eliminating costly synchronization. However, our understanding to these algorithms is limited because the current convergence of asynchronous (block) coordinate descent algorithms are based on somewhat unrealistic assumptions. In particular, the age of the shared optimization variables being used to update a block is assumed to be independent of the block being updated. Also, it is assumed that the updates are applied to randomly chosen blocks. In this paper, we argue that these assumptions either fail to hold or will imply less efficient implementations. We then prove the convergence of asynchronous-parallel block coordinate descent under more realistic assumptions, in particular, always without the independence assumption. The analysis permits both the deterministic (essentially) cyclic and random rules for block choices. Because a bound on the asynchronous delays may or may not be available, we establish convergence for both bounded delays and unbounded delays. The analysis also covers nonconvex, weakly convex, and strongly convex functions. We construct Lyapunov functions that directly model both objective progress and delays, so delays are not treated errors or noise. A continuous-time ODE is provided to explain the construction at a high level.


R. M. C. Eagar writes: Vasey has defined statistically, by cluster analysis, two groups (subspecies) of Anhaconaut which correspond to already named groups in the Trueman & Weir (1946) system of nomenclature (A. phillipsii and A. tenuis), and has added to the system a third statistically defined subspecies (A. calveri). This is a new achievement. If cluster analysis can be further extended to groups of other non-marine bivalve genera, then the work could pave the way for the ultimate establishment of a trinomial system of nomenclature, as he claims. This is a logical step in classification, however unwelcome it may seem to those who try to identify small, incompletely known and sometimes poorly preserved samples. The trinomial system was considered, but rejected by Trueman & Weir (1946), partly because data then available proved too incomplete in much of the Upper Carboniferous record, and particularly because the second or specific term could not be tablished on any but an arbitrary basis for the division of biospecies. Cluster analysis, based on measurements, appears to offer an objective basis for the division of subspecies and, one can hope, for species. It now therefore seems necessary to look for examples of British assemblages and communities of non-marine bivalves which have been collected, or can be collected, in quantity sufficient to provide ample data for a pioneer study to test fully the application of cluster analysis. Of the six generation characterizing Westphalian A and B (Fig. 6, bottom), Carbonicola and


The advance of droplet-based microfluidics has enabled compartmentalization and controlled manipulation of monodispersed emulsions with high yield and incorporation efficiency. It has become a highly exotic platform in synthesizing functional material due to the presence of two immiscible liquids and the interface between them. With its intrinsic feature in high degree of product control, advanced emulsion-based synthesis of functional material is constituted as a template for effective water remediation and resource recovery. This chapter aims to provide an overview of recent advances in microfluidic technology for environmental remediation. More specifically, the facility of microemulsion-based functional materials for water remediation is reviewed. Moreover, the removal and recovery of pollutants, such as heavy metal, dye, pharmaceuticals, etc., from aquatic environment by the applications of adsorption on functional micro/nanomaterials are unfolded with respect to its potential for wastewater purification.


Due to their small surfaces, wearable devices make existing techniques for touch input very challenging. This paper proposes deformation input on a tiny and soft surface as an input modality for wearable computing devices. We introduce DeformWear, tiny wearable devices that leverage single-point deformation input on various body locations. Despite the small input surface, DeformWear enables expressive and precise input using high-resolution pressure, shear, and pinch deformations. We present a first set of interaction techniques for tiny deformation-sensitive wearable devices. They enable fluid interaction in a large input space by combining multiple dimensions of deformation. We demonstrate their use in seven application examples, showing DeformWear as a standalone input device and as a companion device for smartwatches, head-mounted displays, or headphones. Results from a user study demonstrate that these tiny devices allow for precise and expressive interactions on many body locations, in standing and walking conditions.


Abstract. Vision-aided inertial navigation is a navigation method which combines inertial navigation with computer vision techniques. It can provide a six degrees of freedom navigation solution from passive measurements without external referencing (e.g. GPS). Thus, it can operate in unknown environments without any prior knowledge. Such a system, called IPS (Integrated Positioning System) is developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). For optical navigation applications, a reliable and efficient feature detector is a crucial component. With the publication of AGAST, a new feature detector has been presented, which is faster than other feature detectors. To apply AGAST to optical navigation applications, we propose several methods to improve its performance. Based on a new non-maximum suppression algorithm, automatic threshold adaption algorithm in combination with an image split method, the optimized AGAST provides higher reliability and efficiency than the original implementation using the Kanade Lucas Tomasi (KLT) feature detector. Finally, we compare the performance of the optimized AGAST with the KLT feature detector in the context of IPS. The presented approach is tested using real data from typical indoor scenes, evaluated on the accuracy of the navigation solution. The comparison demonstrates a significant performance improvement achieved by the optimized AGAST.


This essay argues for bringing the methodology of post-colonial studies to bear on mainstream Canadian popular culture, towards a rethinking of Canada's ideological affinities with nations traditionally considered as Canada's 'Others,' the United Kingdom and the United States, through the mobilizations of popular culture for militarized nation-building. This argument identifies Germany's role in popular Canadian literature as a recurring national 'Other' against which Canadian nationalism develops, sensitized to the discourse of national security. Representations of Germany as a chronotope of distant war and natural evil recur among some of the most internationally famous works of Canadian literature. Those read here include Anne of Green Gables, 'In Flanders Fields,' Never Cry Wolf, The Handmaid's Tale, the oeuvre of Leonard Cohen, and Neuromancer. The essay concludes with thoughts on the ironies and implications of transnational stereotype and state policy in the popular uses of literature.


The sovereign debt problems in European countries have increased the interest in fiscal watchdogs. This paper discusses the world's oldest fiscal watchdog, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). CPB was founded directly after World War II. It has built a reputation of independence and quality, while it has also achieved a solid position in Dutch policy making. CPB provides (i) the macroeconomic forecast underlying the annual budget, (ii) a midterm review of the state of public finance at the start of each election cycle, (iii) cost-benefit analyses of all kind of policy proposals (from education to physical infrastructure), and (iv) an assessment of the economic impact of the platforms of political parties before the election. Four lessons can be drawn from 65 years of Dutch experience. Firstly, a reputation of quality and independence is crucial for the success of a watchdog. Building such a reputation takes time. Secondly, the scope of activities should not be limited to fiscal policy only. The broad scope of CPB's analyses has contributed to shared public understanding of relevant trade-offs and policy options. Thirdly, the effectiveness of CPB depends crucially on a clear demarcation of the distinctive roles of CPB and political parties. Welfare theory provides little guidance in drawing this demarcation line. Fourthly, being part of the government has the advantage of getting inside information and being effective in the daily policy making process, but the disadvantage that the actual or perceived independence is more difficult to maintain.


Background: Cigarette smoking is thought to be a major driver of the global tuberculosis epidemic. However, limited evidence exists to support a causal relationship between smoking and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. Cigarette smoking and Mtb infection are highly prevalent among persons who inject drugs, and smoking cessation interventions might help reduce tuberculosis risk in this population. Objectives: This dissertation research sought to expand the current knowledge of the relationship between cigarette smoking and Mtb infection and to describe patterns of cigarette smoking and quit attempts among persons who inject drugs. Methods: Data from longitudinal studies of persons who inject drugs in Tijuana, Mexico, were used to conduct the following studies: 1) a longitudinal analysis of the association between self-reported number of cigarettes smoked per day and incident Mtb infection; 2) a cross-sectional study to describe the association between salivary cotinine levels and Mtb infection; and 3) a cross-sectional study to describe cigarette smoking patterns and quit attempts that lasted [greater than] 1 day during the past six months. QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT) was used to determine Mtb infection. Results: For Study 1, Poisson regression analysis of 129 participants who were QFT negative at baseline found no evidence of an association between self- reported number of cigarettes smoked per day and QFT conversion after controlling for age, gender, education, and alcohol. For 208 participants in Study 2, using multivariable logbinomial regression models adjusted for sex and education, cotinine levels were not associated with QFT positivity when included as smoking categories, but were independently associated with QFT positivity when included as an ordinal variable (prevalence ratio = 1.09 per + 1 cotinine level; 95% confidence interval = 1.01 - 1.17). Study 3 found that 124 (20.6%) of the 601 current cigarette smokers had made a recent quit attempt. Conclusion: A dose-response relationship was observed between smoking intensity and Mtb infection when cigarette smoke exposure was measured using salivary cotinine but not when using self-report. One out of five participants reported recently making attempts to quit smoking. Cigarette smoking cessation interventions should be implemented for persons who inject drugs and other populations at high risk for tuberculosis.


We present a general simulation framework for assessing the performance of nanoscale devices that combines several powerful and widely used open-source codes, and based on minimal but chemically accurate tight-binding Hamiltonians obtained from density-functional theory calculations and using maximally localized Wannier functions to represent the electronic state. Transport properties are then computed within the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. We illustrate the capabilities of this framework applying it to a transistor with generic gate geometries, i.e., a double-gate nanoscale field-effect transistor where the channel is formed by graphene nanoribbons terminated with hydrogen, fluorine, and OH groups.


The rate of secretion of corticosterone from the left adrenal of rats receiving a constant input of ACTH was determined for different flows of blood through the adrenal during the 2- to 3-hr interval following hypophysectomy. Two hours after hypophysectomy the secretion of corticosterone was low in all groups regardless of flow. An input of 0.26 mU ACTH/min caused a steady increase in secretion for 30–40 min before a steady-state rate was attained. The average steady-state rate of secretion was 1.1, 2.4, 3.5, 6.2, 7.2, 6.2, and 6.2 µg/5 min for flows of 0.005, 0.012, 0.023, 0.034, 0.039, 0.051, and 0.058 ml/min, respectively. Under the conditions of these experiments where the input of ACTH was 0.26 mU/min the secretion of corticosterone increased significantly with time of input of ACTH and with flow of blood through the adrenal.


Once again, the fruit fly has proven an invaluable tool for revealing information about the immune responses involving the transcription factor nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), as Beutler and Moresco emphasize. Goto et al. performed a genome-wide RNA interference (RNAi) screen in cultured Drosophila S2 cells for genes required for NF-κB-dependent gene expression and found the gene CG8580, which they renamed Akirin (for the Japanese akiraka ni suru, meaning "making things clear"). The authors determined that Drosophila has a single Akirin gene, which is essential for viability, and there are two in mammals (Akirin1, which is not essential for viability in mice, and Akirin2, which is). Transfection experiments with tagged versions of the proteins indicated that Akirins are localized to the nucleus, and the nuclear localization signal is the only recognizable motif in these proteins. S2 cells in which Akirin was knocked down showed defective activation of gene expression in response to stimuli that activate the Imd pathway, which mediates immune response to Gram-negative bacteria through the activation of the NF-κB homolog Relish. In contrast, the response to signaling through the Toll pathway, which mediates the response to Gram-positive bacteria through the activation of the NF-κB homolog Dif was not affected. Epistasis experiments placed Akirin at the level of Relish in the Imd pathway. In flies, knockdown of Akirin led to decreased survival after Gram-negative bacterial infection. Analysis of Akirin1 or Akirin2 knockout mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs) suggested that Akirin2 was the homolog involved in NF-κB signaling downstream of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) or the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor. Furthermore, the human Akirin2 protein rescued S2 cells from defective Imd signaling caused by knockdown of endogenous Akirin. MEFs deficient for Akirin2 showed impaired expression of a subset of NF-κB-regulated genes, yet stimulation of NF-κB DNA binding and degradation of the inhibitor protein IκBα was not impaired. These results suggest that in mice, as in the fly, Akirin2 acts at the same level as NF-κB, and it will be interesting to see whether these two proteins form a complex, as has been recently reported for ribosomal protein S3 and NF-κB (see related resource). A. Goto, K. Matsushita, V. Gesellchen, L. El Chamy, D. Kuttenkeuler, O. Takeuchi, J. A. Hoffmann, S. Akira, M. Boutros, J.-M. Reichhart, Akirins are highly conserved nuclear proteins required for NF-κB-dependent gene expression in drosophila and mice. Nat. Immunol. 9, 97-104 (2008). [PubMed] B. Beutler, E. M. Y. Moresco, Akirins versus infection. Nat. Immunol. 9, 7-9 (2008). [PubMed]


On April 1, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in student loan debt without further Congressional action. This paper collects the leading arguments for and against the position that the Biden Administration can forgive this student loan debt as an administrative action and without additional congressional authorization. The paper first surveys the history of federal student loan forgiveness programs in the United States. The paper then considers whether statutes on the books—in particular, the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Federal Claims Collection Act of 1966—grant the executive branch the authority to effect widespread student loan forgiveness. The paper considers how the Department of Education might use administrative action to forgive loans and assesses the pros and cons of the Department proceeding without notice and comment rulemaking. Finally, the paper evaluates the Biden Administration's prospects in court, including whether any parties would have standing to challenge administrative student loan forgiveness and which forms of administrative action are likeliest to survive judicial review.


One possible management option for growers in dealing with decreases in rice (Oryza saliva L.) production caused by salinity is to compensate yield reduction by increasing seeding density. Our objectives were to Investigate the effects of salinity and seeding density on grain yield and yield components, and analyze the relationships of the yield components to final grain yields at different seeding densities under salinity. Plants were grown in the greenhouse in sand irrigated with nutrient solutions. The treatments included seeding densities of 400, 600, and 720 seeds m -2 and salt levels of 1.0, 3.9, and 6.5 dS m -1 . Salinity effects were highly significant on grain yield, plant stand, seed weight per plant, seed weight per panicle, and spikelets per panicle, but not significant on panicle density, kernel weight, and shoot weight per plant at seeding densities tested. Grain yield was not significantly increased with an increase of seeding density. Plant stand and panicle density were significantly increased, while seed weight per plant, fertility, and harvest index were significantly decreased with increases of seeding densities. The density-dependent seed weight per plant under salinity was explained by the competition within and among plants at high-density populations affected by salinity. Seed weight per panicle accounted for 62% of total variation and contributed more than panicle density to the grain yield under salinity. It was concluded that yield loss under moderate salinities may not be compensated for by increasing seeding density above normal density levels.


Stereotype threat has been demonstrated to reduce the performance of stereotyped individuals in the threatened domain (Steele & Aronson, 1995). This study attempted to replicate the finding that stereotype threat instruction can erase the performance deficit women experience in math performance (Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005) and to further evaluate the arousal hypothesis of stereotype threat (e.g. Ben-Zeev, Fein & Inzlicht, 2005). The study provided no evidence of stereotype threat F(2, 91) = 1.60, p = .208, partial [h.sup.2] = .034. Stereotype threat may be less likely to affect performance at a small, liberal arts institution where the learning environment is both nurturing and personal. ********** Stereotype threat occurs when members of a negatively stereotyped group are put in a situation where their performance on a given task could confirm the stereotype (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The pressure caused by this knowledge can hinder performance on the task and make confirmation of the stereotype more likely. For example, African-American participants performed worse when a task was described as being diagnostic of intellectual ability, than when it was simply described as an instrument for studying problem solving (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Researchers have also examined stereotype threat in other stereotyped groups and tasks, such as women and math (e.g. BenZeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005; O'Brien & Crandall, 2003; Spencer, Steele & Quinn, 1999), and Black and White athletic performance (Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999). Research clearly indicates that the effects of stereotype threat can vary based upon individual differences in coping. Some participants engage in self-handicapping such as withdrawing effort (Steele & Aronson, 1995) or engaging in less practice under stereotype threat conditions (Stone, 2002) to provide an alternative explanation for poorer performance. Others may react to the situation with denial, and thus prevent the threat from affecting their performance (von Hippel, et al., 2005). Coping sense of humor can also guard against the negative effects of stereotype threat (Ford, Ferguson, Brooks, & Hagadone, 2004). Studies conducted on the effects of stereotypes threat on women's math performance have identified additional parameters for the phenomenon to occur: GRE and SAT items are often used to measure performance because the male advantage in math performance is typically only found in problem solving tasks and does not appear until after the high school years (Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990) and stereotype threat decreases performance only if the task is sufficiently difficult to challenge the individual (O'Brien & Crandall, 2003; Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999). For women completing math tests, the presence of a female role model who demonstrates strong mathematical ability can improve women's performance on a difficult mathematical test (Marx & Roman, 2002). Similarly, when female participants read about successful female role models, they did better on quantitative GRE sample items (McIntyre, Paulson, & Lord, 2003). In addition, when the experimenter told the experimental group of female participants that women made better participants in psychology experiments, they did better than females in the control group. Inzlicht and Ben-Zeev (2000) found women performed better when they were tested in same-sex groups of three than when they were tested with two men (experiment 1) and that when women were tested in same-sex groups of three, their performance did not differ from that of males (experiment 2). Aronson, Lustina, and Good (1999) suggest the stereotype threat effect is greatest for people who value the domain being tested. Subsequently, some researchers have limited their samples to students who met an SAT Math cutoff (e.g. Inzlicht, Aronson, Good, & McKay, 2006; Spencer et al., 1999), indicated they valued math ability on a questionnaire (e. …


This article examines recent trends in the New Zealand corporate sector by analysing data from various sources. The corporate sector has enjoyed increased pro?tability over the past few years on the back of strong economic growth. While the absolute level of debt has also been rising in the past few years, the overall balance sheet position has improved. The recent strong investment growth appears to have been funded out of retained earnings or equity raisings rather than via debt. This has allowed businesses to strengthen their balance sheets while investing for future growth at the same time. Margins started to come under pressure towards the end of 2004. Looking forward, rising input and labour costs, and higher cost for some capital items may lower pro?tability over the coming year. At this stage, it appears that businesses in the non-tradables sector are more likely to pass on increased costs on to customers. Businesses in the tradables sector have more limited pricing power.


Recent data on the azimuthal and transverse momentum dependence of high-pT>10 GeV pion nuclear modification factors in nuclear collisions at RHIC/BNL and LHC/CERN are analyzed in terms of a wide class of jet-energy loss models and a variety of transverse expanding collective flow backgrounds. RHIC data at 200 AGeV are found to be surprisingly consistent with rather different dE/dx models when coupled to recent 2+1D minimally viscous QGP flow field predictions. However, extrapolations to LHC, with parameters fixed at RHIC, favor running coupling QCD based energy-loss models over fixed coupling QCD, conformal AdS holography, or Tc-dominated jet-energy loss models that tend to overpredict jet quenching at the LHC.


AT the turn of the twenty-first century, while the Internet boom was generating incredible wealth in developed countries, Argentina experienced one of the worst economic and fiscal crises in its history. Between 2001 and 2002, output fell 20 percent over three years, inflation reignited, the government defaulted on its debt, the banking system was largely paralyzed, and the Argentine peso reached lows of 3.90 pesos per U.S. dollar. In the context of other regional economic troubles, such as the Asian crisis of 1997-1998, the Brazilian devaluation in early 1999 and the steady appreciation of the dollar from 1998 to 2001, the overvaluation of the Argentine peso led to a structural crisis. Although there are recurring themes in the analyses of the events leading up to the crisis, blame cannot be assigned to any one individual or entity. The government of Argentina is ultimately responsible for its own fiscal policies, including, among others, the privatization of public utilities. In retrospect, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that "the crisis . . . . was the result of economic forces that were difficult to reverse in the context of Argentina's existing vulnerabilities," including unmanageable public debt, the fixed currency board, and structural weaknesses that had built up during the 1990s. By 2001, the IMF concluded almost no strategy would have succeeded absent sovereign debt restructuring of Argentina's public debt burden. The IMF is not blameless either, having made mistakes both before and during the crisis. Although it expressed reservations at various times, the IMF backed Argentina throughout the 1990s, and in 1998, the IMF went so far as to say that Argentina's economic policy was 'the best in the world,' despite its deep depression. During the crisis, the IMF delayed its support, heightening foreign investors' perception of risk. The international financial community also shares some of the blame. The favorable financial expectations promoted by institutions like the IMF created a tremendous flow of foreign capital into Argentina; its subsequent flight was one of the biggest contributing factors to the crisis. The United States was particularly indifferent to the crisis. The administration of President George W. Bush imposed high tariffs on Argentine exports and refused to adjust the tariffs during the crisis yet at the same time provided tremendous support to the government of Turkey, which was in a similar crisis but was strategically more important for the United States' own economic and political interests. The crisis broke with the flight of private investment, which fell by more than $3.6 billion in the last two days of November 2001. On January 3, 2002, President Eduardo Duhalde, the fifth president in three weeks, confirmed a moratorium on Argentina's debts and announced he would negotiate with private creditors. Three days later, the government enacted the Public Emergency and Exchange Regime Reform Act (Reform Act), declaring a state of public emergency and delegating social, economic, administrative, and financial and exchange powers to the Executive. The Reform Act provided for the renegotiation of government contracts and established a commission to monitor the actions taken by the executive in accordance with the Act. The Reform Act resulted in a flood of requests for arbitration at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. These requests were filed by foreign corporations seeking to recover for breach of contract under their respective country's bilateral investment treaty with Argentina. As of December 8, 2006, there were thirty-four cases currently pending against Argentina in ICSID. Eight have been resolved. Argentina invoked the controversial defense of necessity in two cases brought by United States corporations; one arbitral panel accepted the defense, and one did not. This article analyzes the cases to determine which panel was correct within the context of established customary law and state practice regarding the necessity defense or necessity doctrine.


Not since the demise of the fabled state of Atlantis has the world witnessed the actual physical disappearance of a state. However, climate change induced sea level rise now threatens to redraw the physical geographical map of the world, radically altering coastlines and creating new ocean areas. The extreme vulnerability of low-lying coastal areas and islands to sea encroachment is now notorious with the most serious threat being to the continued viability and actual existence of island states such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldive Islands. While the possibility of 'disappearing' states has been recognized since the late 1980s, the issue is usually addressed in the context of 'climate' or 'environmental refugees'. This paper examines the issue of sea level rise and disappearing states in light of traditional international law principles relating to statehood, the law of the sea and entitlement to and jurisdiction over maritime spaces. This paper argues in favour of an international strategy to freeze existing baselines and maritime zones to promote achievement of the Law of the Sea Convention objectives of peace, stability, certainty, fairness, and efficiency in oceans governance and as a means of ensuring providing disappearing states with continued access to and benefit from their marine resources. The paper introduces the concept of the 'deterritorialised state' and argues for its application as the basis for continuing recognition of the sovereignty of disappeared states over their pre-existing maritime zones and the resources therein.


Introduction 1. The Jim Crow Era 2. World War II 3. Brown v. Board of Education 4. Brown II and Subsequent Desegretaion Developments 5. Brown's Direct Effects 6. Brown's Indirect Effects 7. Brown's Backlash 8. Why Massive Resistance? 9. Brown, Violence, and Civil Rights Legislation Conclusion Notes on Sources Select Bibliography


The discernment of Psalm 26 as a cultic psalm has prevented noticing vital connections with wisdom literature. These connections with Proverbs and other known wisdom psalms provide clues for the composition of Psalm 26 to be set in the post-exilic period. The way in which wisdom literature is used conveys the religious ethos and daily life of a community. The fact that the wisdom character of Psalm 26 has been overlooked can be viewed as one of the main reasons why Psalm 26 has been interpreted solely in a cultic setting. The sapiential influence of this psalm has been confused to only reflect the cultic aspects. The psalmist wants to live a life according to wisdom as he seeks the rewards of being close to Yahweh.


This research looks at the emergence of queer and trans people of colour
(QTPOC) activist groups in the UK, considering the tensions around
inclusion and belonging across lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer
(LGBTQ) and of colour communities for these individuals. The research
sought to explore what QTPOC activism means in the UK context, how it
operates and for what purpose; the ways QTPOC activisms support the
negotiation and affirmation of marginalised sexual, gender, racial identities
and/or help navigate racism, queerphobia and transphobia; and in what
ways personal involvement with QTPOC activisms impact subjectivity. The
research was grounded in a critical psychology approach, firmly situating
QTPOC within wider social, political and historical contexts to understand
how subjectivities were formed and shaped. Drawing on postcolonial and
black feminist theory, the research emphasised coloniality and the
postcolonial context of the UK as well as utilising an intersectional lens to
explore the intersections of race, gender and sexuality at the macro and
micro levels. Inspired by Johnson's (2015) psychosocial manifesto, the
research also focused on ontology and the feeling, embodied experience of
being-in-the-world. Knitting together postcolonial, black feminist and queer
theory alongside critical psychology a novel phenomenological interpretative
framework was developed which attended to both the wider contexts and
the everyday lived experience of being a queer and trans person of colour
involved in QTPOC activism. Utilising interventions into phenomenology by
Fanon (1986) and Ahmed (2006) a queerly raced hermeneutic
phenomenological analysis was developed. This was used to analyse the
data from focus group and photo elicitation interviews with participants from
three different QTPOC groups across the UK. The research highlighted
QTPOC experiences of exclusion from mainstream LGBTQ communities
and of non-belonging as a racialized, gendered, sexualized Other within the
postcolonial British context. Participants shared the difficulties of finding the
language to understand their own lived experiences within a society
orientated around and towards white (hetero)normativity. QTPOC activist
groups were experienced as spaces of belonging; in which to disidentify
from white heteronormativity; of affirmation; and in which one could begin to
decolonise gender and sexuality. The difficulties of activist organising were
also considered; the privileging of paranoid reading and how to manage
conflict and abuse, the possibilities of reparative reading (Sedgwick, 2003)
and how to relate to histories of politically Black struggle. This is the first
research of its kind to explore QTPOC activism in the UK. It will be of
interest to critical psychology, psychosocial and gender and sexuality
scholars to explore intersectionality and coloniality and the postcolonial
further. The development of an original and creative phenomenological
interpretative framework will be of interest to researchers exploring the lived
experiences of those racialized, and of minoritized gender and sexuality. It
provides recommendations for further research and interventions into
practice for counsellors, third sector organisations and activists.


Rather than taking the ontological fundamentality of an ideal microphysics as a starting point, this article sketches an approach to the problem of levels that swaps assumptions about ontology for assumptions about inquiry. These assumptions can be implemented formally via computational modeling techniques that will be described below. It is argued that these models offer a way to save some of our prominent commonsense intuitions concerning levels. This strategy offers a way of exploring the individuation of higher level properties in a systematic and formally constrained manner.


Cloud water sedimentation and drizzle in a stratocumulus-topped boundary layer are the focus of an intercomparison of large-eddy simulations. The context is an idealized case study of nocturnal stratocumulus under a dry inversion, with embedded pockets of heavily drizzling open cellular convection. Results from 11 groups are used. Two models resolve the size distributions of cloud particles, and the others parameterize cloud water sedimentation and drizzle. For the ensemble of simulations with drizzle and cloud water sedimentation, the mean liquid water path (LWP) is remarkably steady and consistent with the measurements, the mean entrainment rate is at the low end of the measured range, and the ensemble-average maximum vertical wind variance is roughly half that measured. On average, precipitation at the surface and at cloud base is smaller, and the rate of precipitation evaporation greater, than measured. Including drizzle in the simulations reduces convective intensity, increases boundary layer stratification, and decreases LWP for nearly all models. Including cloud water sedimentation substantially decreases entrainment, decreases convective intensity, and increases LWP for most models. In nearly all cases, LWP responds more strongly to cloud water sedimentation than to drizzle. The omission of cloud water sedimentation in simulations is strongly discouraged, regardless of whether or not precipitation is present below cloud base.


We present a 23 yr stalagmite record (1977-2000) of oxygen isotope variation, associated with 11 tropical cyclones (TCs), from Actun Tunichil Muknal cave in central Belize. High-resolution microsampling yielded a record of monthly to weekly temporal resolution that contains abrupt decreases (negative excursions) in calcite δ 18 O values that correspond with recent TC rain events nearby. A logistic discriminant model reliably identifi ed TC proxy signals using the measurable parameters δ 18 O and δ 13 C values, and single point changes in δ 18 O value. The logistic model cor- rectly identifi ed 80% of excursions as TC events and incorrectly classifi ed only 1 of nearly 1200 nonstorm sampling points. In addition to enabling high-resolution TC frequency reconstruction, this geologic proxy also provides information about the intensity of individual TCs. A multiple regression predicted TC intensity (R 2 = 0.465, p = 0.034) using sampling frequency and excursion amplitude. Consistent with previous low-resolution studies, we found that the decadal average δ 18 O value was lower during the 1990s when several TCs produced rainfall in the area, but higher during the 1980s when only one TC struck. Longer, accurately dated, high-resolution speleo- them stable isotope records may be a useful new tool for paleotempestology, to clarify associa- tions between highly variable TC activity and the dynamic range of Quaternary climate.


Background. Recent federal policies aimed to ensure that all children have equitable access to healthy school nutrition environments. However, historically, disparities have persisted in the quality of school nutrition environments across geographic and socioeconomic groups. There is limited literature addressing if and how recent efforts to reform the school nutrition environment have influenced such disparities. The main objective of this study was to explore stakeholders' insights on how school nutrition reform intersected with issues of inequity. Method. Qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) offers a unique method to examine existing data with a related but distinct inquiry. This QSA analyzed three primary studies, including stakeholder interviews and focus group data with school professionals and students (total 60 transcripts). Two trained analysts iteratively coded all transcripts in Atlas.ti Version 7 and followed principles of constant comparative analysis. Measures to enhance "trustworthiness" were built into the primary studies and the QSA. Results. Broadly, stakeholders' complex insights about the school food environments' ability to compensate for healthy dietary options and "whole child" education that were perceived to be lacking in home environments. Despite the majority of respondents' positive perceptions of reforms, they also noted the challenges of addressing disparities due to family home environments and complex socioeconomic conditions. Overall, respondents reported that school food reform and nutrition education had the potential for long-term impacts on students' health, including the potential to improve disparities through enhanced academic achievement for disadvantaged populations. Discussion and Conclusion. QSA allowed for inquiry into frontline stakeholders' understandings of how school nutrition reform may affect health inequities. Qualitative methods allowed for the examination of complex motivations and perspectives involved in policy implementation. Understanding frontline stakeholders' perspectives is key to advance school nutrition reform in a sustainable manner, especially in light of the federal local school wellness policy final rule.


The focus of this dissertation is the development of control system design algorithms for autonomous operation of an aircraft in the Martian atmosphere. This research will show theoretical modeling and computational simulation of robust control and gain scheduling for a prototype Mars aircraft. A few hundred meters above the surface of Mars, the air density is less than 1% of the density of the Earth's atmosphere at sea level. However, at about 33 km (110,000 ft) above the Earth, the air density is similar to that near the surface of Mars. Marsflyer II was designed to investigate these flight regimes: 33 km above the Earth and the actual Mars environment. The fuselage for the preliminary design was cylindrical with a length of 2.59 m (8.49 ft), the wing span was 3.98 m (13.09 ft). The total weight of the demonstrator aircraft was around 4.54 kg (10.02 lb). Aircraft design tools have been developed based on successful aircraft for the Earth`s atmosphere. However, above Mars an airborne robotic explorer would encounter low Reynolds Number flow phenomena combined with high Mach numbers, a region that is unknown for normal Earth aerodynamic applications. These flows are more complex than those occurring at high Reynolds numbers. The performance of airfoils at low Reynolds numbers is poorly understood and generally results in unfavorable aerodynamic characteristics. Design and simulation tools for the low Reynolds number Martian environment could be used to develop Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). In this study, a robust control method is used to analyze a prototype Mars aircraft. The purpose of this aircraft is to demonstrate stability, control, and performance within a simulated Mars environment. Due to uncertainty regarding the actual Martian environment, flexibility in the operation of the aircraft`s control system is important for successful performance. The stability and control derivatives of Marsflyer II were obtained by using the Advanced Aircraft Analysis (AAA) and Athena Vortex Lattice (AVL) programs. The uncertainty based on the stability and control derivatives of Marsflyer II was defined by running these programs. In addition, the comparisons of different trim conditions ascertain the need for gain scheduling about a linear controller system. An controller and H-infinity controller were applied to the design candidate aircraft controller systems. Simulations of the controller show that the H-infinity controller was more robust than the controller. The gain scheduled method was utilized for Marsflyer II inside a flight envelope using a linearized model from two selected trim points. The gain scheduling of Marsflyer II with both no gust and various gusts was achieved between these trim points. The controller derived from each trim point shows stable motion at the same trim condition. Both simulations of high altitude flight in the Earth`s atmosphere and the corresponding low altitude flight in the Martian atmosphere were completed using the robust controller for Marsflyer II. This research incorporates gain…


We have recently shown that levels of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), the enzyme that metabolizes the endocannabinoid anandamide, are lower in the brains of adult cannabis users (CUs) (34 ± 11 years of age), tested during early abstinence. Here, we examine replication of the lower FAAH levels in a separate, younger cohort (23 ± 5 years of age). Eighteen healthy volunteers (HVs) and fourteen CUs underwent a positron emission tomography scan using the FAAH radioligand [11C]CURB. Regional [11C]CURB binding was calculated using an irreversible two‐tissue compartment model with a metabolite‐corrected arterial plasma input function. The FAAH C385A genetic polymorphism (rs324420) was included as a covariate. All CUs underwent a urine screen to confirm recent cannabis use and had serum cannabinoids measured. One CU screened negative for cannabinoids via serum and was removed from analysis. All HVs reported less than five lifetime cannabis exposures more than a month prior to study initiation. There was a significant effect of group (F1,26 = 4.31; P = .048) when two A/A (rs324420) HVs were removed from analysis to match the genotype of the CU group (n = 16 HVs, n = 13 CUs). Overall, [11C]CURB λk3 was 12% lower in CU compared with HV. Exploratory correlations showed that lower brain [11C]CURB binding was related to greater use of cannabis throughout the past year. We confirmed our previous report and extended these findings by detecting lower [11C]CURB binding in a younger cohort with less cumulative cannabis exposure.


An attempt has be n made in the following pages to study, from original documents and other sources, the subject of Anglo-Sikh Relations from the death of Ranjit Singh to the annexation of the Punjab. The subject has always commanded the attention of the student of British Inadian history, and it is hoped that this thesis will form a contribution to the existing knowledge on it. No existing book on the period has exclusively approached these ten years of Punjab history in their relation to the British Government. In attempting to do this, the writer hopes he has succeeded in exposing to a closer and more detailed view the politics of the Lahore darbar on the one hand and the development of the British frontier policy on the other. The nature of the subject precluded any detailed description of the private character of the holders of power at Lahore, such as many writers on the subject have given. The writer does not consider that they explain the activities of the darbar. On the other hand, no opportunity has been lost to illustrate the political character of the leaders, with whom the British had to deal, and an Understanding of which is vital to a proper study of the subject. Since the subject could not be approached without a study of the political position existing in 1839, the author has attempted to examine minutely the tree ties of 1809 and 1833 between the British Government and the Sikhs. An examination of the latter explains, in one form or another, the course of Anglo-Sikh relations up to the end of the Afghan campaign, end of the former throws fresh light on the Sikh Cis-Sutlej possessions and the preliminaries of the First Sikh War. Another point, which hrs merited special treatment, is the position of the Dogras at Lahore, end it is hoped that this thesis will present, in its proper bearing, the Dogra policy leading to the establishment of an independent Dogra kingdom in Kashmir. The defensive preparations made by the British Government before the First War end the working of Lord Hardinge's policy from 1846-48 have been examined in detail. The letter leads to the conclusion that Hardinge's scheme was politic and well-intentioned, but, in the circumstances, doomed to failure. The causes of the Second Sikh War arose out of this policy, end Lord Delhousie's decision to annex the Punjab, though not effected with the full previous resent of the home authorities, was unanimously approved, and since then, has been justified by the advance made by the Punjab. It is unnecessary to add that the details of military history, being out of the compare of this subject, have not been pursued.


Due to concerns of possible shoaling problems, an extensive field survey program was carried out at the site of the proposed Cerrejon coal port on the Caribbean coast of northeast Colombia. The program yielded considerable data on winds, waves, currents, and sediment factors. Techniques for the primary measurement of sedimentation-related tendency included dredged test pits, scour crosses, and suspended sediment samplers. The port plan includes dredging a 4.6 kilometer long channel varying from 12 to 21 meters in depth. In order to assess the magnitude of maintenance dredging and related problems, a method was developed for incorporating the sediment response measurements into predictions of the areal and seasonal distributions of bed load and suspended sediment deposition. Offshore test pits were monitored for rate of filling and character of the material being deposited. Suspended sediment samplers were similarly observed and also provided data on concentration versus depth. The procedure which was developed for analysis and interpretation of the data included extrapolation of suspended sediment data to the seabed, investigation of correlations between wind activity and deposition rates, application of test pit data to a channel of larger dimensions, and testing of hypotheses regarding transport mechanisms. The procedure concluded that average annual shoaling would be approximately 300,000 m and predicted areal and seasonal variation of deposition rates.


This handbook is part of a series called Fast Facts, Indispensible Guides to Clinical Practice, which focuses on providing pocketbook synopses of diseases. Previously published Fast Facts topics have included "Osteoporosis" and "Soft Tissue Rheumatology." The authors of this text are experts in their field and provide an overview of rheumatoid arthritis. The resulting reference is a concise yet comprehensive review of RA. There are 10 chapters, including sections on Aetiology, Clinical Features, and Investigation. However the authors have elected for their first chapter to concentrate on normal joint anatomy, which suitably provides the reader with some fundamental tools to approach the chapter on Pathogenesis. There is up to date information on treatment, including a sec-tion on Management with Biological Response Modifiers. Despite the acknowledged purpose of being a quick reference text, the reader will be pleasantly surprised to find a chapter devoted to assessment of rheumatic disease activity. Well organized tables, figures, and pictures complement the easy to read text. Each chapter aptly concludes with a summary of the pertinent points as well as key references for those who wish to do further detail.This is a well organized and thorough review that is appropriately directed to medical students and residents as well as family practitioners.


The Silent Cinema Reader is a comprehensive resource of key writings on early cinema, addressing filmmaking practice, film form, style and content, and the ways in which silent films were exhibited and understood by their audiences, from the beginnings of film in the late nineteenth century to the coming of sound in the late 1920s. The Reader covers international developments in film aesthetics, the growth of the American film industry and its relationship with foreign competitors at home and abroad, and the broader cultural, social and political contexts of film production and consumption in the United States as well as Britain, France, Russia and Germany. The Reader includes in-depth case studies of major directors and stars of the silent era, including Cecil B. DeMille, Eisenstein, D. W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. Articles are grouped into thematic sections, each with an introduction by the editors, which focus on: * Film projection and variety shows * Storytelling and the nickelodeon * Cinema and reform * Feature films and cinema programmes * Classical Hollywood cinema * European national cinemas


Validation of homoeopathic medicines is about validating effectiveness in individual cases. Homoeopathic practitioners base their expectation that a medicine will work on the experience that specific symptoms of the patient indicate specific medicines. The prevalence of such symptoms is higher in a population responding well to a specific medicine than in the remainder of the population. This principle has a solid mathematical foundation in Bayes' theorem, identifies homoeopathic symptoms as prognostic factors, and offers an interesting perspective of individualized research. This kind of research depends on recording symptoms and results of treatment. An important challenge in this research is establishing causality between medicine and improved health. Prognostic factor research could become one of the main pillars of Homoeopathy's scientific identity.


We extend our earlier studies of buffer requirements of TCP over ABR in two directions. First, we study the performance of TCP over ABR in an ATM backbone. On the backbone, the TCP queues are at the edge router and not inside the ATM network. The router requires buffer equal to the sum of the receiver window sizes of the participating TCP connections. Second, we introduce various patterns of VBR background traffic. The VBR background introduces variance in the ABR capacity and the TCP traffic introduces variance in the ABR demand. Some simple switch schemes are unable to keep up with the combined effect of highly varying demands and highly varying ABR capacity. We present our experiences with refining the ERICA+ switch scheme to handle these conditions.


The potential source of CVC colonisation was assessed. Isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) recovered from the skin and CVC components of 3 cardiothoracic surgery patients were characterised by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). The genetic heterogeneity of CoNS isolated from the skin was demonstrated and specific genotypes implicated in catheter colonisation. In addition, phenotypic and genotypic typing techniques were assessed for their ability to characterise strains of CoNS recovered from 33 patients who developed catheter-related bloodstream infection (CR-BSI) on a bone marrow transplant (BMT) unit and Siaphylococcus aureus recovered from 6 cardiothoracic surgery patients with surgical site infection (SSI) following median sternotomy. This epidemiological investigation revealed that common strains of CoNS and 51 aureus where not associated with infection in patients with CR-BSI or sternal SSI during the study period. Furthermore, there was no correlation between phenotypic and genotypic characterisation results. The variable expression of phenotypic traits within strains of staphylococci was evident whilst PFGE and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) were highly discriminatory for the molecular characterisation of S. aureus and CoNS. This was highlighted in 8 stem cell transplant (SCT) patients whereby it was demonstrated that routine identification and characterisation of CoNS by phenotypic techniques may not be adequate for the diagnosis of CR-BSI by current guidelines. The potential of the lipid S ELISA to facilitate the diagnosis of CR-BSI in 38 haematology/SCT patients and sternal SSI in 57 cardiothoracic surgery patients was also assessed. The ELISA proved to be a sensitive test for the rapid serodiagnosis of infection due to staphylococci in immunocompetent patients. The acridine orange leucocyte cytospin test (AOLC) was also evaluated for the rapid diagnosis of CR-BSI in 16 haematology/SCT patients with Hickman CVC in situ. Although the sensitivity of the test was low, it may provide a useful adjunct to conventional methods for the in situ sampling of catheters to predict and diagnose CR-BSI, preventing the unnecessary removal of CVC.


Food expenditures in China are changing as households experience income growth. At higher income levels, consumers tend to diversify their food purchases to include more poultry, fish, dairy, fruit, and beverages, while purchases of rice, flour, and pork remain about the same. This trend took hold soon after China's economy began expanding rapidly during the 1980s. A more recent trend is the increasing propensity of Chinese consumers to purchase higher quality as well as greater quantities of food. Modern food markets have given Chinese consumers an expanded array of food choices—different cuts of meat, tropical fruit, organic vegetables, milk with special additives, instant noodles—and consumers are spending more for each unit of food purchased. Analysis of Chinese household surveys shows that, as household income rises, per capita expenditures on meat grow faster than per capita quantity purchased. This trend happens if consumers buy premium-priced items: better cuts of meat; branded, packaged, or processed items; or meats that attain rigorous safety certifications. Similarly, highincome households in China tend to buy smaller volumes of rice, flour, and other grain products than do low-income households, but spend more on premium-priced items like imported jasmine rice, branded domestic rice, processed rice and wheat products, and western-style breads. The demand for "quality" is an important component of food expenditure growth for nearly all food categories studied using data from the Chinese household survey for 2002-03. That demand has driven China's rapid growth in supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants—outlets that offer greater convenience and quality in food purchases. The emerging Chinese demand for premium foods has been a boon for U.S. farm products. For example, U.S. apples and oranges have established a significant high-end niche in China. U.S. exports of fruit and fruit products to China grew to $106.5 million in 2006, more than triple the value in 2002, despite selling at prices three to four times higher than those of domestic fruit. The increase in discretionary food spending also has triggered many investments by U.S. food manufacturers, retailers, and foodservice chains in China.


The American Geophysical Union's Thriving Earth Exchange advances humanitarian geophysics by helping scientists, communities, and sponsors connect and launch projects that use earth and space science to help address practical priorities, one community at a time. Scientists are any learning, practicing, or retired professional from industry or academia; communities are geographic, cultural, ethnic, or professional groups coalesced around shared priorities; and sponsors are funders or advocates who would like to enable and learn from projects. Using crowd-sourcing and social-networking tools, the Thriving Earth Exchange will catalyze community science so that community leaders, scientists, and sponsors work as partners to generate and apply scientific insight. The exchange will help project leaders to explore ideas, form partnerships, design projects, and connect with the human, technological, and capital resources they need to carry out those projects. Because the exchange supports and links a diverse set of interactions, project leaders can go all the way from exploring broad connections between science and community priorities to launching specific, actionable, science-based projects. All this occurs in an open environment that invites broad participation, facilitates reuse of innovative solutions, and builds trust between scientists and nonscientists.


We examine the long-term consequences of teacher discretion in grading of high-stakes tests. Bunching in Swedish math test score distributions reveal that teachers inflate students who have "a bad test day," but do not to discriminate based on immigrant status or gender. By developing a new estimator, we show that receiving a higher grade leads to far-reaching educational and earnings benefits. Because grades do not directly raise human capital, these results emphasize that grades can signal to students and teachers within the educational system, and suggest important dynamic complementarities between students' effort and their perception of their own ability.


The neural network (NN) is a technique using an artificial intelligent concept in predicting outcomes by using various input variables. Tacrolimus pharmacokinetics has wide inter- and intra-subject variability and it is often difficult to predict its blood concentrations by dose alone. The objectives of this study are to select the clinically significant variables and to predict the blood concentration of tacrolimus in liver transplant patients by NN combined with genetic algorithm (GA). A total of thirty-two adult liver transplant patients from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics were selected and the patients' data were retrospectively collected. These patient were randomly assigned into two groups: either the training group (n = 10), or testing group (n = 22). A back propagation (BP) NN was developed which contained two hidden layers. A dynamic BP NN based on the time series concept was trained by using the current and previous data sets to predict the trough levels of tacrolimus. The mean of the NN prediction for tacrolimus blood levels was not significantly different from the observed value by a paired t-test comparison (12.05+/-2.67 ng/ml vs. 12.14+/-2.64 ng/ml, p = 0.80). The average difference of the testing sets between the observed and predicted levels was 1.74 ng/ml with a range from 0.08 to 5.26 ng/ml which is clinically acceptable range. Thirty-seven out of 44 data sets (84%) in the testing group were within 3.0 ng/ml of the observed values. This study demonstrated that tacrolimus blood concentrations are precisely predictable in liver transplant patients using patients variables by NN.


The Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Bluefin tuna tastes delicious. Naturally, the Japanese sashimi market fights over this high value fish. Unfortunately, this moneymaking resource has been overfished since the 1970s due to its' wide geographical spread and high sea open access characteristic, which means over 25 countries sought to capture it. This cumulated in near extinction of the species in the mid-2000s. The organisation in charge of managing the stock, the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), established a fifteen-year species recovery plan starting in 2006-2007. The plan includes fishing seasons, gear restrictions, quantity control and strict monitoring of vessels. Ten years into the programme, this project sets out to assess the state of the stock. Quantitative indicators will enable assessing the health of the stock, and qualitative methods will evaluate the managerial success of the recovery programme, in terms of member compliance and caution adopted with regard to the stock. Results of the research show the stock is en-route to recovery. Population indicators are recovering faster than expected. Recommendations, such as educational courses on stock sustainability for fishermen or knowledge-access incentives to comply, will hopefully reach the ICCAT to adapt the programme for the remaining five years.


Interest in learning at work has captured the attention of many people around the world, often taking centre stage in policy debates about improving economic performance, prosperity and well-being. This book is about the learning that goes on in workplaces ? ranging from offices, factories and shops to gyms, health centres and universities ? and how it can be improved. Such learning includes everyday work activity, on-the-job instruction and off-the-job training events. Improving Working as Learning is the first book to analyze systematically learning at work in different settings by developing and applying a new analytical framework. The Working as Learning Framework connects the particularities of work tasks with the way jobs are organized and the wider pressures and constraints organizations face for survival, growth and development. The authors convincingly demonstrate that the framework offers a sophisticated understanding of how improving the work environment ? both within the workplace and beyond ? can enhance and sustain improvements in learning at work. Each chapter presents evidence ? taken from both private and public sectors ? to illustrate how the Working as Learning Framework provides a means by which employers, researchers and policy-makers can: Improve the conditions for nurturing and sustaining learning at work Build appropriate workforce development plans within given constraints Recognize that the creation and use of knowledge is widely distributed Mobilize existing workplace resources to support learning Enhance and extend our understanding of how workplace learning is shaped by relationships at, and beyond, the workplace This topical book will appeal to an international readership of undergraduate and postgraduate students, vocational teachers and trainers, human resource professionals, policy-makers, and researchers


A closure for shocks involving the mixing of the fluids in two‐layer stratified flows is proposed. The closure maximizes the rate of mixing, treating the dynamical hydraulic equations and entropy conditions as constraints. This closure may also be viewed as yielding an upper bound on the mixing rate by internal shocks. It is shown that the maximal mixing rate is accomplished by a shock moving at the fastest allowable speed against the upstream flow. Depending on whether the active constraint limiting this speed is the Lax entropy condition or the positive dissipation of energy, we distinguish precisely between internal hydraulic jumps and bores. Maximizing entrainment is shown to be equivalent to maximizing a suitable entropy associated to mixing. By using the latter, one can describe the flow globally by an optimization procedure, without treating the shocks separately. A general mathematical framework is formulated that can be applied whenever an insufficient number of conservation laws is supplemented by a maximization principle.


Liquefied wood-based polyurethane wood coatings of an aesthetically acceptable light colour were prepared and characterised. Liquefied black poplar wood was obtained by solvolysis in a polyethylene glycol/glycerol mixture, and it was bleached with hydrogen peroxide. The bleaching treatment converted liquefied wood from a dark brown to a yellowish product. Polyurethane films were prepared by the curing of liquefied wood with polymeric diphenylmethane diisocyanate or trimethylolpropane toluene diisocyanate prepolymer (TMP/TDI) isocyanate-type hardeners. It was found that the selected properties of the films prepared from the bleached liquefied wood were, in general, equivalent to those prepared from unbleached liquefied wood. The mechanical properties of the films obtained with the TMP/TDI curing agent were acceptable for wood coating applications. The initial poor resistance of the films to water and ethanol was substantially improved by the addition of n-octyltriethoxysilane to the liquefied wood prior to the preparation of the polyurethane coatings; the hardness of the films also increased.


It is our great pleasure to cordially invite you to participate in the International Conference on Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR 2023 Innsbruck), which will be held from Sunday through Thursday, 20–24 August 2023, at the Congress Innsbruck, Austria. The NIR symposium series is known as the world's leading biannual conference on this fast-growing technology which usually attracts well over 500 participants. The program will span from fundamentals of spectroscopy, over methodological and technological advances to the integration of the wide range of applications. The symposium will feature workshops, tutorials, plenary, keynote and research lectures from leading and upcoming scientists in the field. Lectures and poster presentations will be selected from submitted abstracts to make sure that participants find ample opportunities to share and discuss their latest findings with the audience in a stimulating atmosphere. As an integral part of NIR2023 Innsbruck, a representative exhibition of the leading vendors in the field will be organized to round up the concept of the symposium and to complement the program. The year 2023 will be the first time that the NIR symposium series will come to Austria and Innsbruck, the capital city of the county of Tyrol, in the heart of the Alps. It is world famous for its location; it is a hot spot for science, tradition, culture and sports. After the pandemic, we can't wait to meet in person once again. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to Innsbruck, Austria. "Good Vibrations, Smooth Contours!" is our motto symbolizing the location and the emulation of science, stimulating atmosphere and personal contacts. Very much looking forward to welcoming you in Innsbruck, we remain with best regards. Christian W. Huck – chairperson


This reexamination of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War gives particular attention to the question: If the emperor could not stop Japan from going to war with the Allied Powers in 1941, why was he able to play a crucial role in ending the war in 1945? Drawing on previously unavailable primary sources, Noriko Kawamura traces Hirohito's actions from the late 1920s to the end of the war, analyzing the role Hirohito played in Japan's expansion. Emperor Hirohito emerges as a conflicted man who struggled throughout the war to deal with the undefined powers bestowed upon him as a monarch, often juggling the contradictory positions and irreconcilable differences advocated by his subordinates. Kawamura shows that he was by no means a pacifist, but neither did he favor the reckless wars advocated by Japan's military leaders.


Perovskite solar cells offer remarkable performance, but further advances will require deeper understanding and control of the materials and processing. Here, we fabricate the first single crystal nanorods of intermediate phase (MAI-PbI2-DMSO), allowing us to directly observe the phase evolution while annealing in situ in a high-vacuum transmission electron microscope, which lets up separate thermal effects from other environmental conditions such as oxygen and moisture. We attain the first full determination of the crystal structures and orientations of the intermediate phase, evolving perovskite, precipitating PbI2, and e-beam induced PbI2 during phase conversion and decomposition. Surprisingly, the perovskite decomposition to PbI2 is reversible upon cooling, critical for long-term device endurance due to the formation of MAI-rich MAPbI3 and PbI2 upon heating. Quantitative measurements with a thermodynamic model suggest the decomposition is entropically driven. The single crystal MAPbI3 nanorods obtained via thermal cycling exhibit excellent mobility and trap density, with full reversibility up to 100 °C (above the maximum temperature for solar cell operation) under high vacuum, offering unique potential for high-performance flexible solar cells.


Fixing a prestretched dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) on a flexible frame allows transformation of the intrinsic in-plane area expansion of DEAs into complex three-dimensional (3D) structures whose shape is determined by a configuration that minimizes the elastic energy of the actuator and the bending energy of the frame. These stuctures can then unfold upon the application of a voltage. This article presents an analytical modelling of the dielectric elastomer minimal energy structure in the case of a simple rectangular geometry and studies the influence of the main design parameters on the actuator's behaviour. The initial shape of DEMES, as well as the actuation range, depends on the elastic strain energy stored in the elastomeric membrane. This energy depends on two independent parameters: the volume of the membrane and its initial deformation. There exist therefore different combinations of membrane volume and prestretch, which lead to the same initial shape, such as a highly prestretched thin membrane, or a slightly prestretched thick membrane. Although they have the same initial shape, these different membrane states lead to different behaviour once the actuation voltage is applied. Our model allows one to predict which choice of parameters leads to the largest actuation range, while specifying the impact of the different membrane conditions on the spring constant of the device. We also explore the effects of non-ideal material behaviour, such as stress relaxation, on device performance.


Many network monitoring tasks identify subsets of traffic that stand out, e.g., topk flows for a particular statistic. We can efficiently determine these "heavy-hitter" flows on individual network elements, but network operators often want to identify interesting traffic on a network-wide basis. Determining the heavy hitters on a network-wide basis necessarily introduces a trade-off between the communication required to perform this distributed computation and the accuracy of the results. To perform distributed heavy-hitter detection in real time with high accuracy and low overhead, we extend the Continuous Distributed Monitoring (CDM) model to account for the realities of modern networks and devise practical solutions that detect heavy hitters with high accuracy and low communication overhead. We present two novel algorithms that automatically tune the set of monitoring switches in response to traffic dynamics. We implement our system using the P4 language, and evaluate it using real-world packet traces. We demonstrate that our solutions can accurately detect network-wide heavy hitters with up to 70% savings in communication overhead compared to existing approaches.


This Note argues that the proposed amendment to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act dubbed "Aaron's Law," created in the wake of the prosecution and subsequent suicide of hacktivist Aaron Swartz, should not be enacted as it is overly reactionary legislation which would have unfortunate and unjust repercussions in the realm of civil litigation. This Note first describes the circumstances under which Mr. Swartz found himself prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, namely his intrusion into, and downloading massive amounts of data from, large internet databases like PACER and JSTOR. This Note also explores the disputed interpretation of the CFAA phrase "exceeds authorized access" by the Circuit Courts of Appeal and according to the maxims of statutory interpretation, the particular phrase which Aaron's Law seeks to amend. Then this Note examines Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, a case utilizing the existing language of the CFAA. Amending the language as proposed by Aaron's Law would potentially remove a civil remedy in Robbins. This Note concludes that prosecutorial discretion should be used in cases like Aaron Swartz's, so as to allow the CFAA to function as intended by Congress and to provide the Robbins plaintiffs, and similarly situated individuals, a meaningful remedy.


− This work investigates a bandwidth tracking algorithm in a version of a distributed heterogeneous data dissemination system called the Agile Information Control Environment (AICE). Military networking environments have to provide uniform flow of prioritized information with QoS guarantees across heterogeneous overloaded networks. AICE-like systems accomplish this by assigning worth to individual communication requests and allocating network resources in a way to optimize the overall worth of the system. To implement an efficient optimization process, the probability of setup or rejection of communication requests has to be derived without any knowledge of the actual topologies of the underlying networks. In this paper, a bandwidth tracking algorithm is therefore introduced that is able to predict the setup/rejection of a communication request with a high accuracy of up to 95% in preemptive networking environments by tracking the average spare bandwidth of end-to-end communication channels. The tracking algorithm uses elements of exponential adjustment coupled with a binary search. This enables the tracker to quickly learn about changes in the topology of the underlying networks or changes in the load on the networks. The tracker is compared to a gradient bandwidth prediction algorithm recently proposed for the Network Weather Service (NWS) that provides network performance forecasts in metacomputing environments. It is shown that the tracker is able to achieve an accuracy that is up to 40% higher than that of the NWS algorithm.


The problem of grounding VQA tasks has seen an increased attention in the research community recently, with most attempts usually focusing on solving this task by using pretrained object detectors. However, pre-trained object detectors require bounding box annotations for detecting relevant objects in the vocabulary, which may not always be feasible for real-life large-scale applications. In this paper, we focus on a more relaxed setting: the grounding of relevant visual entities in a weakly supervised manner by training on the VQA task alone. To address this problem, we propose a visual capsule module with a query-based selection mechanism of capsule features, that allows the model to focus on relevant regions based on the textual cues about visual information in the question. We show that integrating the proposed capsule module in existing VQA systems significantly improves their performance on the weakly supervised grounding task. Overall, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on two state-of-the-art VQA systems, stacked NMN and MAC, on the CLEVR-Answers benchmark, our new evaluation set based on CLEVR scenes with groundtruth bounding boxes for objects that are relevant for the correct answer, as well as on GQA, a real world VQA dataset with compositional questions. We show that the systems with the proposed capsule module consistently outperform the respective baseline systems in terms of answer grounding, while achieving comparable performance on VQA task.1


The present development state in DC distributed power systems (DPS) is comprehensively reviewed in this tutorial. Basic distributed structures and their characteristics are described. The system level design considerations are discussed. The profile of current technologies is drawn. Finally, the issues and challenges in this research area are identified. These issues include not only improving efficiency, but also increased concerns regarding the cost and complexity of power supplying systems.


From the Publisher:
Easy, browser-based Linux/UNIX administration with Webmin--step by step

Webmin gives you an easy, browser-based solution for virtually any day-to-day Linux/UNIX administration task. Now, there's a definitive Webmin guide for every beginning-to-intermediate sysadmin. Written by Webmin's primary developer, Managing Linux Systems with Webmin delivers authoritative, step-by-step coverage of the latest version of Webmin, from basic installation to centrally managing multiple servers. Coverage includes:

How Webmin works--and how to install and secure it
Using Webmin to configure basic system services, including filesystems, users/groups, and printing
Configuring Apache, Sendmail, Squid, Samba, MySQL, PostgreSQL, FTP services, and more
Cluster modules: configuring multiple systems from one master server
Webmin modules: configuring Webmin itself
Full API documentation and instructions for writing your own Webmin modules and themes

Jamie Cameron walks you through more than 50 essential Webmin tasks--offering all the background you need, step-by-step instructions, extensive screen captures, and listings of the underlying configuration files that are being modified. Whether you're new to Linux/UNIX system administration or you simply want an alternative to the command line, Managing Linux Systems with Webmin will be an indispensable resource.


Interview with Rula Walid Bibi, Palestinian-born immigrant to Plano, Texas, for the DFW Metroplex Immigrants Oral History Project. The interview includes Bibi's personal experience with discrimination of Palestinians in the Middle East, childhood in Kuwait City, education at the University of Kuwait and Midwestern State University, family experiences during the First Gulf War and circumstances surrounding her immigration to Texas in 1990, thoughts on religion, experiences as a single mother as well as experiences of living in Wichita Falls, Dallas, Richardson, Garland, and Plano. Bibi talks about her first impressions of the U.S., her career in medical technologies, her marriage to an American man and his conversion to Islam, her involvement with political organizations, and thoughts on American education and foreign policy.


The context in which self-study research is conducted is sometimes complex, affecting the manner in which related data is gathered and interpreted. This article comprises collaboration between three students and two supervisors. It shares methodological choices made by graduate students and supervisors of a rural university at which, self-study research was introduced in 2010. As individuals, and as a collective, we reflect on the reasons and decisions for adopting certain research approaches towards self-study: the ways in which such decisions are negotiated in conceptualising, conducting, transcribing, and supervising graduate research. While self-reflexive data-collection approaches (mainly journal writing and storytelling) guide our research, the manner in which data is analysed and presented to the wider university community is influenced by expectations and by the context of the university. We, therefore, use innovative approaches differing from self-study research, speaking more to the challenges and expectations of a rural context. We further reflect on the implications such choices have for our research and the work produced - where knowledge shifts are executed, methodologies are re-defined and social change is desired.


Context: Cloud Computing has advanced in recent years. It is catching people's attention as a commodious resource of computational power. Slowly, Cloud is bringing new possibilities for a scientific community to build High Performance Computing platforms. Despite the wide benefits the Cloud offers, the question on everyone's mind is "Whether the Cloud is a feasible platform for HPC applications". This thesis evaluates the performance of the Amazon Cloud using a sorting benchmark. Objectives: 1. To investigate all the previous work on HPC that has been ported to the Cloud environment in various fields. Also, the problems and challenges are assessed relevant to HPC associated with the Cloud. 2. A study is done on how to implement parallel Quicksort efficiently to obtain good Speedup. 3. A parallel Quicksort is developed and its performance is measured using 'Speedup' by deploying in the Cloud. Methods: Two different research methods were used to carry out the research. They are Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a Quantitative methodology. Research papers from academic databases namely IEEE Xplore, Inspec, ACM Digital Library and Springerlink were chosen for conducting SLR. Results: From the systematic review undertaken, 12 HPC applications, 9 problems and 5 challenges in the Cloud were identified. Efficient way to implement the parallel Quicksort on the Cloud has been identified. From the experiment results, a low Speedup is obtained in a Cloud environment. Conclusions: Many HPC applications which were deployed in the Cloud so far were identified along with problems and challenges. Message Passing interface (MPI) is chosen as the efficient method to develop and implement the parallel Quicksort in the Cloud. From the experiment results, we believe that the Cloud is not a suitable platform for HPC applications.


The downward trend in Arctic sea ice extent is one of the most dramatic signals of climate change during recent decades. Comprehensive climate models have struggled to reproduce this trend, typically simulating a slower rate of sea ice retreat than has been observed. However, this bias has been widely noted to have decreased in models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) compared with the previous generation of models (CMIP3). Here simulations are examined from both CMIP3 and CMIP5. It is found that simulated historical sea ice trends are influenced by volcanic forcing, which was included in all of the CMIP5 models but in only about half of the CMIP3 models. The volcanic forcing causes temporary simulated cooling in the 1980s and 1990s, which contributes to raising the simulated 1979–2013 global-mean surface temperature trends to values substantially larger than observed. It is shown that this warming bias is accompanied by an enhanced rate of Arctic sea ice retreat and hence a simulated sea ice trend that is closer to the observed value, which is consistent with previous findings of an approximately linear relationship between sea ice extent and global-mean surface temperature. Both generations of climatemodels are found to simulateArctic sea ice that is substantially less sensitive to globalwarming than has been observed. The results imply that much of the difference in Arctic sea ice trends between CMIP3 and CMIP5 occurred because of the inclusion of volcanic forcing, rather than improved sea ice physics or model resolution.