American shareholders lack the ability to consent to political spending by corporations. Indeed, because of gaps between corporate and campaign finance law, U.S. corporations can make political expenditures without giving shareholders any notice of the spending either before or after the fact. This is problematic because the political interests of the managers who spend the corporate money may diverge from the political interests of shareholders who provided the funding. By contrast, British companies must seek permission from shareholders to make political expenditures under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act of 2000 and must report such spending to U.K. shareholders on an annual basis. Shareholders in U.S. companies have been protected by a century's worth of election laws which limited the amount of money that could be spent in federal elections by corporations, unions and banks. Corporations are required to pay for federal political expenditures through corporate political action committees (PAC's). This PAC requirement was struck in Citizens United, a Supreme Court decision dated January 21, 2010. The federal corporate PAC requirement safeguarded the interests of shareholders in particular because most investors are unaware of how, when or why corporations make political expenditures. For example, in states that lack federal-style election rules, corporations may give political donations directly from their corporate treasuries (money in the corporate treasury includes funds from the sale of stocks and products). Corporations can spend money on politics without consent from or notice to shareholders. The shareholder may not know who the corporation supports or may even actively disagree with who the corporation supports. By contrast, if a shareholder chooses to give to a corporate PAC, then the shareholder is fully on notice that the money will be used for a political purpose and there is meaningful consent in the transaction. The laws that require corporations to pay for political expenditures through corporate PAC's are under legal attack in the courts. Most recently, the Supreme Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission-two cases which required corporations to conduct political spending through corporate PAC's. The Supreme Court used Citizens United as an opportunity to expand corporate speech rights. This new development in the law has hurt shareholders by allowing corporate managers to use corporate treasury funds to make political expenditures. A recent study, "Corporate Political Contributions: Investment or Agency?" by Aggarwal, Meschke, and Wang (2009) found that large corporate political expenditures are linked with lower shareholder value and poor corporate management. In other words, managers make political donations because they want to, not because giving will necessarily benefit the corporations they manage. Overruling Austin and part of McConnell will give poor managers even more venues in which to spend shareholders' investments on political expenses. By exploring both campaign finance law and corporate law, this paper, "Political Spending & Shareholders' Rights," will argue that the U.S. should adopt the British approach to corporate political expenditures. In the first instance, U.S. corporations should disclose their political spending directly to shareholders and they should give shareholders the opportunity to consent to political spending. These reforms will improve corporate governance and minimize corporate risk. The need for this reform has become heightened with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. In a world where corporations can spend an unlimited amount corporate treasury funds on federal and state elections, shareholders will need new protections to guard against self-interested political spending by corporate managers.


The development of a large number of Nano and Pico-satellite missions, with spacecrafts of mass lower than 10 kg and 1 kg respectively, started in the beginning of this century due to the availability of low-cost piggyback launch opportunities. Such small satellites are usually built using commercially available electronic components that are not qualified for the space environment. This approach reduces the total cost of the satellite missions but at the expense of design effort which is needed not to compromise the reliability of the designed spacecrafts. One of the foremost design efforts in this regard is the design re-use method which extends the cost reduction to the system level, and helps in simplifying the development cycle for a space mission. The on-board communication subsystem consist of critical set of elements common to every mission, and therefore is not exempt from such a design philosophy. The on-board networks, on-board transceivers, and the protocols are all critical elements for a spacecraft mission and, at the same time, some of the most specialized and complex ones. Innovative data communication systems are therefore desirable for the future space missions. The size of the satellites keeps reducing as the time progresses, therefore the harness mass and complexity inside the satellite becomes a prime challenge. An innovative approach to smart harness is therefore necessary which reduces the wiring harness for intra-satellite communication. This thesis copes with several problems related to spacecraft subsystem development, integration and testing and proposes some solutions that can help in both keeping system development and production cost low while still achieving good performances. Chapter 1 starts with the design goals of the work and introduction to the Modular Architecture of Small Satellites (AraMiS) project. The biggest design goals of space systems of current era are the cost, time and complexity issues. Modularity and cost-sharing between multiple missions will appear as optimal solutions for reducing development costs, while the use of commercial components (COTS) will be presented as a way to simplify procurement and further lower system cost In Chapter 2, the smart harness approach is proposed which reduces the traditional harness complexities inside the small spacecrafts. The chapter focuses on the design of small spacecrafts which are completely modular and flexible. Modularity at mechanical, electrical and testing level will be discussed in this chapter. Chapter 3 addresses the complete life cycle of a subsystem module i.e. from conception to the final design and testing. The module life cycle uses a variety of Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagrams to fulfill different design stages. Chapter 4 proposes different types of spacecraft configurations based on smart harness approaches including physical module based, satellite on demand and reusable design configurations.A design trade-off is also performed for these configurations. Chapter 6 proposes the design technique of physical module based spacecraft configuration which is based on physical plug and play connectors and logical slots for the subsystem modules. A honeycomb based tile is discussed in this chapter which is used for larger and more demanding spacecraft structures. In Chapter 7, the requirement of data communication across different subsystems of the spacecrafts are described. The use cases have been discussed and the implementation rules have been defined in this Chapter. Chapters 8,9 and 10 focus on module design for intra-satellite communication purposes. The modules have been designed for wired as well as wireless data communication. The wired solution is based on on-board data bus module for inter-tile data communication. Wireless solutions included both optical and radio frequency based solutions. The optical module has been designed for optical free space as well as glass fiber based communication purposes. The comparison between theoretical and practical results has been made. The radio frequency based module is based on commercial module and simpliciTI protocol stack. In Chapter 11, the functional testing of modules, tiles and whole satellites is discussed. The testing scheme of functional test board is also highlighted in this chapter


The objective of this paper is to explore the corporate cash holding policy. Our focus is particularly on the relationship between cash holding and leverage. We will investigate this task in a particular context which is the Tunisian economy: Jasmine Revolution. We present evidence of a significant non-monotonic relationship between cash holding and leverage. Initially, a substitution effect between leverage and cash holding is found for a low level of leverage. Then, for a higher level of leverage, firms tend to hedge against the risk of potential financial distress by holding more cash (precautionary effect). Finally by investigating this relation between cash holding and leverage in a particular context of the Tunisian economy: Jasmine Revolution; we have shown that the precautionary effect is more persistent for Tunisian companies after the revolution.


New biostratigraphic data from two stratigraphic sections (Mt. St. Enoc and Mt. Volturino), of the Lagonegro Basin (Southern Apennines, Italy), define the age of the sedimentary events and delineate the sedimentary evolution for the Norian-Rhaetian time interval.The upper part of the Calcari con Selce Fm in the Mt. St. Enoc section is characterized by an alternation of cherty limestones rich in organic matter and thin silicified calcarenites with black cherty layers. The upper part of the Calcari con Selce Fm of the Mt. Volturino section exhibits instead intermediate characters between the Calcari con Selce and Scisti Silicei Fms, with cherty limestones, shales and radiolaritic beds. The biostratigraphic data based on conodonts and radiolarians allowed a good correlation among the Norian-Rhaetian successions throughout the Lagonegro Basin the two sections represent two different environments of the Lagonegro Basin. In fact, radiolarites (Scisti Silicei Fm) are present from the Misikella hernsteini-Parvigondolella andrusovi conodont Zone (late Sevatian) in the Mt. Volturino section while they appeared after the Misikella ultima conodont Zone (uppermost Rhaetian) in the Mt. St. Enoc section. This proves that euxinic carbonate facies and radiolaritic facies were deposited in the same time interval and in the same basin. On the basis of sedimentological analysis and with the support of biostratigraphy, the non-coeval beginning of biosiliceous sedimentation is discussed in order to point out the control factors: different paleobatimetry, upwelling areas or volcanic activity. Our preliminary results show that the Lagonegro Basin during the Norian-Rhaetian interval was probably characterized by an articulated physiography and that volcanism should have had an important role in changing pelagic sedimentation.


Objective Effective treatment for functional disability caused by essential tremor is a significant unmet need faced by many clinicians today. Current literature regarding focal therapy by botulinum toxin type A (BoNT-A) injections uses fixed dosing regimens, which cannot be individualized, provides only limited functional benefit and unacceptable muscle weakness commonly occurs. This 38-week open label study, the longest to-date, demonstrates how kinematic technology addressed all these issues by guiding muscle selection. Method Participants (n = 24) were assessed at weeks 0, 6, 16, 22, 32, and 38 and injected with incobotulinumtoxinA at weeks 0, 16, and 32. Clinical assessments including UPDRS tremor items, Fahn-Tolosa-Marin (FTM) tremor rating scale assessing tremor severity, writing and functional ability, quality of life questionnaire (QUEST) and objective kinematic assessments were completed at every visit. Participants performed two postural and two weight-bearing scripted tasks with motion sensors placed over the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints. These sensors captured angular tremor amplitude (RMS units) and acceleration joint motion that was segmented into directional components: flexion-extension (F/E), pronation-supination and radial-ulnar at the wrist, F/E at the elbow, and F/E and adduction-abduction at the shoulder. Injection parameters were determined using kinematics, followed by the clinician's determination of which muscles would contribute to the specific upper limb tremor biomechanics and dosing per participant. Results Multi-joint biomechanical recordings allowed individualized muscle selection and showed significant improvement in whole-arm function, FTM parts A-C scores, at week 6 which continued throughout the study. By week 38, the total FTM score statistically significantly reduced from 16.2±4.6 at week 0 to 9.5±6.3 (p<0.0005). UPDRS item 21 score rating action tremor was significantly reduced from 2.6±0.5 at week 0 to 1.6±1.1 (p = 0.01) at week 32. Quality of life (QUEST) significantly improved from 40.3±15.8 at week 0 to 31.1±15.3 (p = 0.035) at week 32 and to 27.8±15.3 (p = 0.028) at week 38. Kinematics provided an objective, secondary outcome measure, which showed a significant decrease in tremor amplitude in the wrist and shoulder joints (p<0.05). Eight participants (40%) self-reported mild weakness in injected muscles but had no interference in arm function. Conclusion Kinematic tremor assessments provide the injector unique insight to objectively individualize and personalize injection parameters demonstrating BoNT-A effectively alleviates functional disability caused by essential tremor. Kinematic technology is a promising method for standardizing assessments and for focal upper limb tremor treatment. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02427646


It is the contention of this study that the rate and formation of bone healing can be modelled mathematically and computationally, respectively, based on mechanical stimuli induced by the relative motion between bone fragments. To argue this case, the following hypotheses are tested; 1) the relationship between temporal rate of bone healing, measured in terms of callus stiffening per week, and the percentage of interfragmentary strain, can be described mathematically, and 2) the spatial distribution of callus tissue around a fracture can be modelled computationally based on compressive principal strains experienced by the immature healing tissues caused by interfragmentary motions.
 To test the first hypothesis, a comparative analysis of empirical relationships between rate of healing and level of mechanical stimulus found in the literature was conducted. Based on this, a mathematical phenomenological model was derived. To test the second hypothesis, the finite element method was employed to determine how bone-fixator position, fracture geometry, loading and the consequent strains experienced by the healing tissues, influence callus formation. An algorithm was proposed which iteratively removed lowly strained soft tissue from a large domain at the fracture site, thus producing a more efficient callus formation. The premise of this algorithm was based on the adage that 'form follows function', and a callus will inevitably strive to remodel itself to the point where greatest mechanical efficiency is achieved.
 The results of the comparative literature review and the proposed mathematical model revealed a positive correlation between the rate of callus stiffening and the initially applied interfragmentary strain. The results of computational models showed direct agreement with experimental findings and clinical observations which reinforces the hypothesis that compressive principal strains are the dominant driving force behind callus formation. Furthermore, it was shown that the proximity of a unilateral fixator to the fractured bone has a greater influence over asymmetric callus formation than the physical presence of the fixator itself. Finally, the implications of the proposed strategies show potential in pre-clinical testing of fixation devices and configurations, which was demonstrated using simulated comparisons with clinical case studies of healing bones under unilateral fixation.


We present a simple, highly modularized network architecture for image classification. Our network is constructed by repeating a building block that aggregates a set of transformations with the same topology. Our simple design results in a homogeneous, multi-branch architecture that has only a few hyper-parameters to set. This strategy exposes a new dimension, which we call cardinality (the size of the set of transformations), as an essential factor in addition to the dimensions of depth and width. On the ImageNet-1K dataset, we empirically show that even under the restricted condition of maintaining complexity, increasing cardinality is able to improve classification accuracy. Moreover, increasing cardinality is more effective than going deeper or wider when we increase the capacity. Our models, named ResNeXt, are the foundations of our entry to the ILSVRC 2016 classification task in which we secured 2nd place. We further investigate ResNeXt on an ImageNet-5K set and the COCO detection set, also showing better results than its ResNet counterpart. The code and models are publicly available online.


Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration covers every skill required to effectively install and administer the Oracle Solaris 11.1 operating system in production environments. It features dozens of step-bystep learn by example procedures, demonstrating how to apply complex solutions in real-world data center environments. Author Bill Calkins has administered and taught Oracle Solaris and its predecessors for more than twenty years. He also helped develop the newest Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) and Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) exams, which raise the bar for Solaris certification. This guide covers every new 1Z0-821 exam topic in detail and also covers many 1Z0-822 exam topics. Calkins also reviews the changes that system administrators will face when upgrading to Solaris 11.1 and presents new ways to perform familiar tasks on both SPARC and x86 hardware. Youll learn how to Install the Solaris 11 Operating Environment with Live Media or Text Interactive installers Install, manage, and update software with the Image Packaging System and IPS repositories Understand, customize, and troubleshoot SPARC and x86 boot processes from system power-up to loading the OS (including coverage of ILOM, OpenBoot, and GRUB 2) Administer and create services through the service management facility (SMF) Configure system messaging using SMF notifications, syslog and rsyslog Configure and administer ZFS storage pools, including ZFS on the boot drive, local disks, LUNs, and a SAN Configure and manage ZFS file systems: encryption, redundancy, snapshots, clones, network sharing, monitoring, device replacement, and legacy UFS migration Create, migrate, contain, and administer zones, including solaris10 branded and immutable zones Use RBAC to create custom rights profiles and grant special privileges Manage and monitor system process scheduler (including FSS process schedulers and proc tools) Configure Solaris networking and network services, including Reactive and Fixed Network Configurations, VNICs, and Virtual Networking A companion website (unixed.com/solaris11book.html) includes new 1Z0-821 and 1Z0-822 study strategies and self-assessment exams.


In federal Indian law, the treaty operates as our foundational legal text. Reflecting centuries-old historical political arrangements between Indian nations and the United States, treaties remain vital legal instruments that decide dozens of legal cases each year. Yet, these treaties -- originally drafted in English by the federal government, following negotiations with tribal representatives who usually spoke their own languages -- present a number of ambiguities for contemporary courts. The dominant model of treaty interpretation is one in which judges interpret treaties in a manner they they believe to reflect Indians' understanding of treaty terms and, more generally, to promote the interests of Indian nations. While this liberal approach to treaty interpretation has secured a number of important Indian rights in the courts, it does not necessarily reflect the ways in which Indians actually perceived treaty terms in their own languages and cultures. Deeper investigation of treaty law reveals, however, that Indians have long been interpreting treaties for themselves. From their earliest encounters on the negotiating field to recent advocacy in the courts, Indians have, out of necessity or strategy, articulated what treaty provisions mean to them. Here I identify this much-overlooked practice as "interpretive sovereignty" and define it as the interpretation of treaties through the lens of tribal cultures, and more particularly, through tribal languages. The practice of interpretive sovereignty has particularly great potential today as a tribal language revitalization movement sweeps Indian Country. Interpretive sovereignty may have the power to transform historical understandings of treaties and help tribes forge contemporary legal approaches that reflect tribal norms and values. Beyond federal Indian law, attention to the role of language differences can inspire reflection on the interpretation of other legal texts. For these reasons, this Essay calls for research into the role of tribal languages in treaty interpretation and begins to contemplate some of the challenges associated with such work.


There is increasing interest in using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images in automated target recognition and decision-making tasks. The success of such tasks depends on how well the reconstructed SAR images exhibit certain features of the underlying scene. Based on the observation that typical underlying scenes
usually exhibit sparsity in terms of such features, we develop an image formation method which formulates the SAR imaging problem as a sparse signal representation problem. Sparse signal representation, which has mostly been exploited in real-valued problems, has many capabilities such as superresolution and feature enhancement for various reconstruction and recognition tasks. However, for problems of complex-valued nature, such as SAR, a key challenge is how to choose the dictionary and the representation scheme for effective sparse representation. Since we are usually interested in features of the magnitude of the SAR reflectivity field, our new approach is designed to sparsely represent the magnitude of the complex-valued scattered field. This turns the image reconstruction problem into a joint optimization problem over the representation of magnitude and phase of the underlying field reflectivities. We develop the mathematical framework for this method and propose an iterative solution for the corresponding joint optimization problem. Our experimental results demonstrate the superiority of this method over previous approaches in terms of both producing high quality SAR images as well as exhibiting robustness to uncertain or limited data.


Safe driving or skiing in the "arctic whiteout" depends frequently upon the early detection of crevasses, fissures, ditches, or other sudden changes of elevation in the snow field. It has been believed that there might exist a certain colored glass for snow goggles which would provide a better perception of dangerous spots in snow. However, no definite answer was available as to what color the lenses ought to be.The purpose of this paper is to investigate this problem from the theoretical point of view. It is found that compared with an essentially neutral glass none of the colored glasses ordinarily used in snow goggles improves the ability of the eye to detect sudden changes of elevation in a snow field. Even red glasses of extreme purity—which according to the present theory would be expected to give a maximum of improvement, are not significantly more effective than neutral glasses.


The project within which this paper was co-authored focuses on the domain of e-government and is a deliberate attempt by the involved partners to cultivate and expand local and regional spaces for situated innovation, design and development of public services and ICT use in the public sector. Our starting point is e-government understood as co-construction. The project is currently being funded by the Innovative Actions within ERDF, the European Regional Development unding. The partners of the e-overnment arena are public service providers, ICT providers and researchers from a number of different disciplines. In this paper, we focus on communication networks and accountability. Are communication networks enablers or disablers for e-government services, and how can they be held accountable to their users? To what extent might we need to help each other unpack 'black boxes' and exchange them for 'glass boxes' in communicating with users and across disciplinary boundaries? Using metaphors and models from telecommunications, software engineering, informatics, business administration and human work science, and inspired by the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design, we attempt to establish a common basis to explore the evolving technologies and practices in e-government.


This paper considers the characteristics of the device ZScanner 700, it usage and ability to process data from measurements of the roadway's geometric profile. It refers to the ability of ZScanner 700 to record surface deviations with sufficient accuracy and the possibility of processing obtained digitalized data in GOM inspect software for surface analysis and Global Mapper for watershed simulation. This analysis and simulation is directly related to the MPD measurement performed on roadways. The purpose of the MPD measurement is to detect macroscopic road surface defects to avoid water retention on the road and the origin of hydroplaning effect.


Lawrance explores asylum-seeking as an emergent archival form to highlight how the strategies shaping asylum claiming conceal a potentially rich archive of gender-based violence. Asylum seekers today face ever greater obstacles entering western migration fortresses. Protection from the 1951 Refugee Convention seems, at minimal, constricted. Refugees engage new frameworks of persecution to access protection, but they face heavy scrutiny for credibility. The Nigerian claims examined here illustrate how gender-based violence asylum claimants mimetically emphasize Boko Haram as a vehicle for resistance to endemic bureaucratic suspicion, doubt, and disbelief. By reshaping personal testimonies of gender-based violence to foreground persecution by Boko Haram, a discrete group of Nigerian asylum seekers actuate a mimetic strategy engaging powerful — and problematic — tropes about Africa and Africans. Creative strategies anchor complex asylum narratives and render them exotically familiar to adjudicators.


Synthesis of borohydride is important because of its use as a hydrogen energy source. The objective of this study was to develop a new and simple method for the trace determination of borohydride so that it can be used during the investigation of a new reaction for its synthesis or in some kinetic studies. A differential pulse polarographic method has been developed for this purpose since the results obtained with this method are very reproducible and the instrument used is not expensive. The optimum working condition was found to be as 0.05 M phosphate buffer (pH 9), containing 0.1 M KNO3 electrolyte. It allows trace determination of borohydride in the range of 10-4-10-6 M using the oxidation peak at --0.06 V with high accuracy. The detection limit was 6 \times 10-7 M in phosphate buffer. The nature of the peak was evaluated using direct current polarography and it was found that this peak at --0.06 V was an oxidation peak. There was no serious interference from some cations such as Cr(III), Cr(VI), Fe(III), Cd(II), Pb(II), Zn(II), Ni(II), and Se(IV) and anions such as chloride, bromide, nitrate, and sulfite when 2-14 times of borohydride was present. It was found that only copper (II) had an overlapping peak. This interference of copper was eliminated by the addition of EDTA. Using this procedure, in the presence of 5 \times 10-5 M copper, for 2 \times 10-5 M borohydride the result found was (1.9 \pm 0.2)10-5 M for N = 3 and 90% confidence interval.


The search for solutions to the euro crisis is based on a partial diagnosis that overemphasises the lack of enforcement of existing fiscal rules. Europe's leaders should rather address the euro area's inherent weaknesses revealed by the crisis.At the core of euro-area vulnerability is an impossible trinity of strict no-monetary financing, bank-sovereign interdependence and no co-responsibility for public debt. This Policy Contribution assesses the corresponding three options for reform - a broader European Central Bank (ECB) mandate, the building of a banking federation, and fiscal union with common bonds. None will be easy.The least feasible option is a change to the ECB's mandate; changing market perceptions would require the ECB to credibly commit overwhelming forces, and the ECB is simply not in a position to make such a commitment.The building of a banking federation, meanwhile, involves reforms that are bound to be difficult. Incremental progress is likely, but a breakthrough less so.This leaves fiscal union. It faces major obstacles, but a decision to move in this direction would signal to the markets and ECB a commitment to stronger Economic and Monetary Union. One possibility would be to introduce a limited, experimental scheme through which trust could be rebuilt.This Policy Contribution draws on presentations made at the XXIV Moneda y Credito Symposium, Madrid, 3 November 2011, at the Asia-Europe Economic Forum conference in Seoul, 9 December, and at De Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam on 17 December. I am very grateful to Silvia Merler for excellent research assistance. I thank participants in these seminars and Bruegel colleagues for comments and criticisms.


Sweet potato starch has limited uses in food industry, but modification of its properties may make it more suitable for use especially for starch based food such as bihon type noodle. The objective of this research was to study the effect of heat moisture treated starch from 4 varieties of sweet potato on the quality of its bihon type noodle. Four different varieties of sweet potato i.e. white, yellow, orange and purple tuber were treated with heat moisture treatment (HMT). The HMT was performed by exposing the starch to high temperature (110°C for 3 hours) at a moisture content of 25%. The HMT modified sweet potato starch was then processed into bihon type noodle. As a control, a commercial bihon type noodle made from rice starch was used. Parameters evaluated were the modified starch and bihon properties. The results showed that the modification of starch with HMT could increase the peak viscosity, setback viscosity, final viscosity and gelatinization temperature but lower the value of the breakdown viscosity. The best bihon from the four varieties of sweet potatoes was that made from white sweet potato starch because it has low cooking losses, low fat, but has high color/brightness and is preferred by panelist.


Environmental context The fate and behaviour of pollutants such as pesticides, metals and nanoparticles in natural waters will influence their effects on the environment and human health. Owing to the complexity of natural waters and suspended particulate matter (SPM) that can interact with pollutants, as well as low pollutant concentrations, determination of pollutant fate and transport is non-trivial. Herein, we report a characterisation of the Rhone River chemistry to provide insight into selecting SPM analogues for experimental and modelling approaches. Abstract Selection of realistic suspended particulate matter (SPM) analogues remains vital for realising representative experimental and modelling approaches in predicting the environmental fate of pollutants. Here, we present the characterisation of dissolved-ion and SPM compositions for nine sampling sites over the length of the Rhone River. Dissolved-ion concentrations remained stable, but SPM concentrations varied among sampling sites. Size fractionation and mineralogical characterisation of the SPM revealed that the same minerals (e.g. quartz, calcite, muscovite) constituted every size class from 0.5 to >50µm, as is usually found with allochthonous and large-scale systems. To gain insight into SPM analogue selection, aggregation kinetics of silica, calcite, muscovite, feldspars and clays were monitored in the native filtrate and related to the respective zeta potentials (ζ). An SPM mixture of calcite (49%), muscovite (14%), feldspar (23%) and chlorite (14%) proved the best match for the Rhone SPM, demonstrating that mineral surface chemistry, structure and size are all important in selecting a realistic SPM analogue for a riverine system.


Finally a handbook is available that provides both information and assistance to local school districts during the planning and development process of a school building. Holcomb works to alleviate the difficulties often associated with building programs of this sort by carefully walking the non-expert school planner through the details, phases, and mind-sets necessary to do effective and efficient school plant planning. Contents: Introduction; The Thinking and Needs Assessment Phase; The Planning and Commitment Phase; The Design Phase; The 'Selling' Phase; The Financing Phase; The Construction Phase; The Occupation and In-Service Orientation Phase; The Evaluation Phase; Do We Build New Facilities or Remodel?; Summary.


In this article, a bidirectional relaying (BR) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) termed as BR NOMA-SWIPT is proposed and investigated for the Internet of Things (IoT) relay networks. Here, multiple NOMA users in one group can communicate or exchange information with multiple NOMA users in another group through a common energy harvesting (EH) based relay. The EH based relay exploits the radio frequency (RF) energy supplied by the two NOMA user groups to recharge itself, and then it exchanges the information between them. Specifically, the two groups of NOMA users transmit the information intended for the exchange to the relay node using the uplink NOMA protocol. The relay node first harvests the RF energy through the signals of the two group of NOMA users, and then it carries out the exchange of information between two NOMA user groups by using the downlink NOMA protocol. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing study or research on BR NOMA with SWIPT. Therefore, in this article, we examine in detail, the performance of BR NOMA-SWIPT enabled IoT relay networks. Specifically, we study a popular EH time switching (TS) relaying architecture with BR and NOMA. We also study the effect of both perfect successive interference cancellation (pSIC) and imperfect SIC (ipSIC) on the proposed BR NOMA-SWIPT system. Analytical expressions for the outage probability and ergodic capacity are mathematically derived. The analytical results of our proposed system model are validated by the simulation results, and representative performance comparisons are presented thoroughly, which not only provides practical insights into the effect of different system parameters on the overall network performance, but it also demonstrates that our proposed BR NOMA-SWIPT can attain significant throughput and capacity gains as compared to conventional BR multiple access schemes.


This article seeks to demonstrate how social studies has come to be an all-inclusive subject: it has become supersized. When supported by Web 2.0 technology, social studies enables students to address multifaceted problems that require the deep understanding necessary to arrive at both wise and timely solutions. We discuss how curriculum integration and emerging technology applications can support the supersizing of social studies. Two instructional projects and two instructional tools are presented as examples of how social studies can be supersized through the use of Web 2.0 technologies.


Abstract. Mobile mapping data is widely used in various applications, what makes it especially important for data users to get a statistically verified quality statement on the geometric accuracy of the acquired point clouds or its processed products. The accuracy of point clouds can be divided into an absolute and a relative quality, where the absolute quality describes the position of the point cloud in a world coordinate system such as WGS84 or UTM, whereas the relative accuracy describes the accuracy within the point cloud itself. Furthermore, the quality of processed products such as segmented features depends on the global accuracy of the point cloud but mainly on the quality of the processing steps. Several data sources with different characteristics and quality can be thought of as potential reference data, such as cadastral maps, orthophoto, artificial control objects or terrestrial surveys using a total station. In this work a test field in a selected residential area was acquired as reference data in a terrestrial survey using a total station. In order to reach high accuracy the stationing of the total station was based on a newly made geodetic network with a local accuracy of less than 3 mm. The global position of the network was determined using a long time GNSS survey reaching an accuracy of 8 mm. Based on this geodetic network a 3D test field with facades and street profiles was measured with a total station, each point with a two-dimensional position and altitude. In addition, the surface of poles of street lights, traffic signs and trees was acquired using the scanning mode of the total station. Comparing this reference data to the acquired mobile mapping point clouds of several measurement campaigns a detailed quality statement on the accuracy of the point cloud data is made. Additionally, the advantages and disadvantages of the described reference data source concerning availability, cost, accuracy and applicability are discussed.


According to the explanationist, we can rely on inference to best explanation to justifiably believe familiar skeptical hypotheses are false. On this view, commonsense beliefs about the existence and character of familiar, medium-sized dry goods provides the best explanation of our evidence and so justifies our belief that we're not brains-in-vats. This explanationist approach seems prima facie plausible until we press the explanationist to tell us what the data is that we're trying to explain by appeal to our beliefs about external objects and how we could have access to it.


Zurkhaneh is a firm phenomenon of Iranian-Islamic culture which contains some didactic characteristics of our ancestors' traditions. These characteristics are formed by holistic thinking of our ancestors. This holistic thinking a whole has unified different parts of these characteristics. According to the holistic minds of the Iranian people, all elements of a phenomenon have been seeking to achieve a goal. Architecture and music as, respectively, the objective and the subjective elements which are located at the two ends of the spectrum of Zurkhaneh phenomena are proofs for the claim that Zurkhaneh is formed for training and education of heroic and humane characters. This study aims to find the educational perspective which is common between these objective (architecture) and subjective (music) elements of Zurkhaneh. Based on the findings of this study, the architecture and the music of Zurkhaneh aim to, make people interested in Zukhaneh ideas and, moreover, to place these ideas in their minds. They try to achieve this goal through simplicity and getting close to people's lives, getting away from artificiality and specialized complexities as well as adherence to the principles of simplicity and convenience. In this framework, architectural and musical components are selected such that one can easily create them or keep them in mind. Scrutability, simplicity, and humanism were of the features which realize the aim of the establishers of zurkhaneh phenomenon. All of these features are manifested in zurkhaneh architecture and music. This is a qualitative study which seeks some instances of the two elements of architecture and music by incorporating field and library methods for data collection. Finally, using content analysis and content comparison of the data obtained by information analysis, it explores the correspondence between these two elements.


Clustering high-dimensional datasets is hard because interpoint distances become less informative in high-dimensional spaces. We present a clustering algorithm that performs nonlinear dimensionality reduction and clustering jointly. The data is embedded into a lower-dimensional space by a deep autoencoder. The autoencoder is optimized as part of the clustering process. The resulting network produces clustered data. The presented approach does not rely on prior knowledge of the number of ground-truth clusters. Joint nonlinear dimensionality reduction and clustering are formulated as optimization of a global continuous objective. We thus avoid discrete reconfigurations of the objective that characterize prior clustering algorithms. Experiments on datasets from multiple domains demonstrate that the presented algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art clustering schemes, including recent methods that use deep networks.


A systematic comparison of the principle modern turbulence prediction methods for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for the calculation of high speed flows about slender forebodies at low to moderate angle of attack is presented. This class of flow involves smooth surface turbulent boundary layer separation resulting in steady symmetric leeside vortices, and also the formation of embedded shock waves from the displacement effect of the large vortices in supersonic flow. As such this flow is both complex and highly sensitive to the state of the boundary layers on the body. This study revealed that the method which most consistently provides accurate predictions of the overall forces and moments on the body, the most accurate distribution of surface pressure and can most accurately resolve the flow features, including leeside vortices and embedded shock wave features, is the Solution Adaptive Simulation method. Detached Eddy Simulation and the Reynold Stress Model, which would be expected to provide superior accuracy over the RANS based linear eddy viscosity models, on the whole, failed to provide better predictions. In fact, the k-omega Realizable and k-omega SST turbulence models provided data which was almost as consistently accurate as the Solution Adaptive Simulation method. The standard k-omega turbulence model appears to be completely unsuitable for the computation of this class of high speed flow problem, and this may be associated with the poor initial / default prescription of the value of omega at the far-field boundary.


The Pondoland region of the Eastern Cape province, South Africa is very poorly studied with regard to invertebrate diversity, particularly in the case of arachnids. Accordingly, and in view of proposed infrastructural and mining developments in this ecologically sensitive area of high plant endemism, baseline data are provided on spiders (Araneae) of the vegetation layer (i.e. excluding the ground-dwelling fauna) of the Mkambati Nature Reserve (MNR). Spiders were collected at 26 sites (six forest and 20 grassland sites) in the MNR over an eight-day period, using sweep sampling and active searching of flowers in grassland and tree beating in forests, as part of a broader biodiversity survey. Additional specimens were collected with Malaise and pan traps. A total of 1275 specimens were sampled, representing 132 species (6.6% of the total number recorded in South Africa) in 103 genera and 29 families. Theridiidae and Araneidae were the most diverse spider families in the reserve, represented by 22 species each (16.7% of the total), followed by Thomisidae with 19 species (14.4%) and Salticidae with 18 species (13.6%). Grassland and forest had distinct spider faunas, with only 24.2% of species being recorded from both biomes. The average number of species sampled per site in grassland and forest was 26 species for both habitats, although values for the two biomes are not directly comparable because different sampling methods were used. All 132 species are new records for the reserve, of which 20 were new records for the Eastern Cape and at least eight spider species may be new to science. The spider diversity captured despite temporal and methodological limits indicates that many additional species are likely to occur in the reserve. Conservation implications: If the MNR is not adequately conserved at least five new species, which may be confined to the area, would be at high risk of extinction and 15 other species endemic to the Pondoland and KwaZulu-Natal region would have their risk of extinction increased.


Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon in which genes are monoallelicaly expressed according to their parent-of-origin. Imprinted expression entails marking parental chromosomes so that a specific parental allele is stably repressed or expressed. Differential DNA methylation is essential for marking and regulating imprinted genes and is often found at imprinting control regions (ICRs). These DNA methylation imprints must be maintained throughout early development despite genome-wide epigenetic reprogramming to allow for stable allelic expression in differentiated tissues. Moreover, marking of the alleles must be erased in the germline so that establishment of sex-specific marks can occur during gametogenesis. These processes are critical for normal imprinting, however, the precise mechanisms and factors involved remain largely unknown. Of particular concern, environmental perturbations occurring during times of epigenetic reprogramming have been reported to disrupt imprinting. In this dissertation I investigate both cis and trans mechanisms by which DNA methylation confers imprints and how environmental stresses can disrupt imprinted regulation. I show that decreased CpG content at the endogenous paternal H19 ICR in mouse renders the ICR unable to silence paternal H19, indicating a cis-regulatory role for CpG density in imprinted regulation of H19. I also investigate the role that methyl-CpG-binding domain (MBD) proteins, involved in DNA methylation dependent repression, have in genomic imprinting. Through analysis of Mbd1 and Mbd2 mutant mice, I find that individual MBD proteins are dispensable for normal imprinting. In a collaborative effort to identify factors necessary for resetting of imprints in germ cells, we examine the cooperative function of Ten-eleventranslocation (TET)1 and TET2 in the erasure of imprints, and show that both TET1 and TET2 are required for demethylation at imprinted loci in the germline. Furthermore, as a collaborative effort, we investigate possible deregulation of imprints upon environmental stress through analysis of spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) undergoing aging and cryopreservation. We find that stressed SSCs stably maintain methylation imprints and can produce sperm to be used in intracytoplasmic sperm injection that result in normal offspring. These results provide novel insights into mechanisms involved in normal imprint establishment and maintenance, as well as the stability of these marks despite environmental perturbations. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Marisa S. Bartolomei


How did the sharpest global slowdown in more than six decades happen, and how can recovery be made sustainable? OECD Insights: From Crisis to Recovery traces the causes, course and consequences of the "Great Recession". It explains how a global build up of liquidity, coupled with poor regulation, created a financial crisis that quickly began to make itself felt in the real economy, destroying businesses and raising unemployment to its highest levels in decades. The worst of the crisis now looks to be over, but a swift return to strong growth appears unlikely and employment will take several years to get back to pre-crisis levels. High levels of public and private debt mean cutbacks and saving are likely to become the main priority, meaning the impact of the recession will continue to be felt for years to come.


Contrary to claims that view the life sciences as having similar effects everywhere, I draw on research in the Biopolis of Singapore to examine how an assemblage of global and situated elements engenders conditions that crystallize scientific inquiries and orient social effects in the research milieu. I trace some of the intricate relationships among many things—researchers, governments, capital, populations, mutations, maladies, and emotions in the Asian tropics—that help crystallize an emerging biomedical frontier. I call for a richer notion of biocapital that encompasses the creation of a spectrum of material and nonmaterial benefits. Scientific entrepreneurialism in Singapore, I suggest, cannot be reduced to profit-making but includes larger goals of self-knowledge, expertise, and security. I explore the interacting logics of pluripotency and fungibility that animate scientific practices in the Biopolis: trans-Asian collaborations; Asian genetic databases; state funding and legitimacy; and genetic pride and hope, all components in forming an emerging space and style of biomedical research. "Asia" and "ethnicity" are often invoked in different registers of geography, nationality, technique, population, disease, DNA, and customized medicine, depending on the context of research and presentation. The growing network of contingent associations among a constellation of scientific objects and values, I argue, transmits feelings of corporeal vulnerability and expectations for a new biopolitics of security.


It has been suggested that the 'low-cost' model of air travel generates excessive levels of stress and fatigue amongst flight crew. Pilots were interviewed at a UK-registered low-cost carrier (LCC). Most said they felt stressed and fatigued. Despite its subjectivity the pilots' testimony suggests that stress and fatigue are issues that merit close attention - not least because events like the September 11 th , 2001 terrorist attacks, 2003 Gulf War and coterminous severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak have exacerbated economic pressures within the industry. Flight crews have insights and ideas that may benefit commercial aviation. It is they, and not legislators or civil servants, who deliver the product. It is suggested that a commitment to risk communication (as defined by Irwin and Wynne), which emphasises continuous dialogic risk assessment and the systematic and routinised exploitation of 'user knowledge' may enhance flight safety.


A review of 15 papers reporting 25 independent correlations of perceived beauty with perceived usability showed a remarkably high variability in the reported coefficients. This may be due to methodological inconsistencies. For example, products are often not selected systematically, and statistical tests are rarely performed to test the generality of findings across products. In addition, studies often restrict themselves to simply reporting correlations without further specification of underlying judgmental processes. The present study's main objective is to re-examine the relation between beauty and usability, that is, the implication that "what is beautiful is usable." To rectify previous methodological shortcomings, both products and participants were sampled in the same way and the data aggregated both by averaging over participants to assess the covariance across ratings of products and by averaging over products to assess the covariance across participants. In addition, we adopted an inference perspective to qualify underlying processes to examine the possibility that, under the circumstances pertaining in most studies of this kind where participants have limited experience of using a website or product, the relationship between beauty and usability is mediated by goodness. A mediator analysis of the relationship between beauty, the overall evaluation (i.e., "goodness") and pragmatic quality (as operationalization of usability) suggests that the relationship between beauty and usability has been overplayed as the correlation between pragmatic quality and beauty is wholly mediated by goodness. This pattern of relationships was consistent across four different data sets and different ways of data aggregation. Finally, suggestions are made regarding methodologies that could be used in future studies that build on these results.


The advance of the information age will allow firms to engage in personalized pricing, a form of price discrimination that is profitable for firms, but unambiguously harmful to consumers. Antitrust can protect consumers from personalized pricing—also called perfect price discrimination—by condemning the steps firms must take to prevent resellers from undermining firms' personalized pricing schemes. To personalize prices successfully, a firm must prevent those to whom the firm wishes to charge low prices from reselling the product to those to whom the firm wishes to charge high prices. Otherwise, resellers will compete away any difference in prices. But such steps amount to conduct that harms competitors—here, resellers—and ultimately the consumers who pay the personalized prices that result. A firm that personalizes prices must therefore do the three things that together constitute illegal monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act: harm competition, and consumers, in order profitably to raise prices. The right to refuse to deal with competitors, which would normally exempt this conduct from antitrust scrutiny, does not apply to personalized pricing because an available remedy—an order prohibiting personalized pricing, but not forcing firms to sell to resellers—does not lead to the forced sharing and judicial price administration that the right to refuse to deal is meant to avoid.


Several extensions of the standard model feature new colored states that besides modifying the running of the QCD coupling could even lead to the loss of asymptotic freedom. Such a loss would potentially diminish the Wilsonian fundamental value of the theory. However, the recent discovery of complete asymptotically safe vector-like theories \cite{Litim:2014uca}, i.e. featuring an interacting UV fixed point in all couplings, elevates these theories to a fundamental status and opens the door to alternative UV completions of (parts of) the standard model. If, for example, QCD rather than being asymptotically free becomes asymptotically safe there would be consequences on the early time evolution of the Universe (the QCD plasma would not be free). It is therefore important to test, both directly and indirectly, the strong coupling running at the highest possible energies. I will review here the attempts made in \cite{Becciolini:2014lya} to use pure QCD observables at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to place bounds on new colored states. Such bounds do not depend on the detailed properties of the new hypothetical states but on their effective number and mass. We will see that these direct constraints cannot exclude a potentially safe, rather than free, QCD asymptotic nature. A safe QCD scenario would imply that quarks and gluons are only approximately free at some intermediate energies, otherwise they are always in chains.


Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) affect both atmospheric processes and ecological interactions. Our primary aim was to differentiate between BVOC emissions from above- and belowground plant parts and heath soil outside the growing season. The second aim was to assess emissions from herbivory, mimicked by cutting the plants. Mesocosms from a temperate Deschampsia flexuosa-dominated heath ecosystem and a subarctic mixed heath ecosystem were either left intact, the aboveground vegetation was cut, or all plant parts (including roots) were removed. For 3–5 weeks, BVOC emissions were measured in growth chambers by an enclosure method using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. CO2 exchange, soil microbial biomass, and soil carbon and nitrogen concentrations were also analyzed. Vegetation cutting increased BVOC emissions by more than 20-fold, and the induced compounds were mainly eight-carbon compounds and sesquiterpenes. In the Deschampsia heath, the overall low BVOC emissions originated mainly from soil. In the mixed heath, root, and soil emissions were negligible. Net BVOC emissions from roots and soil of these well-drained heaths do not significantly contribute to ecosystem emissions, at least outside the growing season. If insect outbreaks become more frequent with climate change, ecosystem BVOC emissions will periodically increase due to herbivory.


The animation shows calcium-stimulated exocytosis of synaptic vesicles followed by clathrin-mediated vesicle recycling. Many of the molecular components that are involved in synaptic vesicle priming, docking, fusion, and endocytosis are shown. Although the process in the animation describes synaptic vesicle cycling, similar cellular processes occur for most calcium-coupled secretory and clathrin-mediated endocytotic events. The animation could be used to help illustrate the sequence of events associated with both exocytosis and endocytosis, as well as aid in understanding the processes involved in neurotransmitter release in response to nerve stimulation. [Resource Details]


The goal of this project is to create a laptop charger that does not have a big box converter. This will be better for the user because the big box converter always gets in the way. This will be accomplished by designing a cable that has several smaller components in it. Figure 1 shows a high level block diagram of how this design could look. The cable must still be able to handle all the power requirements of a laptop charger: to convert high voltage AC to the DC charging voltage. It must also be able to vary the current to depending on the battery level. It must also be as efficient as a standard charger.


The inspiration for this paper came rather unexpectedly. In February 2006, I made the long trip to my second home, Italy, in order to witness Torino's Olympic Games. Barely a month later, I found myself in California at the newly-renovated Getty Villa, home to one of the world's great collections of Greco-Roman antiquities. At the Villa I attended a talk about a Roman mosaic depicting a boxing scene from Virgil's Aeneid (Book 5). The tiny tiles showed not only two boxers, but also a wobbly-looking ox. "What is wrong with this ox?" asked the docent. "Why is he there at the match?" The answer, of course, is that he is the prize. And the reason he is wobbly is because the victor has just sacrificed this prize to the gods in thanksgiving. A light went on in my head; I turned to my husband and whispered, "Just like Joey Cheek in Torino." My husband smiled indulgently, but my mind was already racing. I realized that by donating his victory bonus to charity, Cheek had tapped into one of the oldest and most venerable traditions in sport: individual sacrifice for the benefit of the larger community. It derives from the religious function of the ancient Olympic festival and it deserves to be revived in the modern Olympic Movement. Introduction The modern Olympic festival is self-consciously inspired by ancient Greek ideals. It conceives of itself as a revival of the ancient Olympic Games and it embraces their history and mythology insofar as they support its mission of humanism, justice, and peace. One problematic and often overlooked aspect of the Olympic legacy, however, is the religious character of the ancient Games. Whereas common religious belief was foundational to and instrumental in the millennium-long success of the ancient Olympics, the modern challenge of uniting a religiously diverse world community has pushed the religious legacy to the sidelines. Given the evidence that religious hegemony was responsible for the demolition of the ancient Games, although this is not the view of all scholars, modern attempts to dissociate the Olympic Movement from religion are certainly understandable. But in jettisoning the Games' religious heritage, has the Movement thrown out the proverbial baby with its bath water? I believe that it has. Interpreting the religious function of the ancient Games as community service, I argue that the modern Movement's failure to look beyond itself is allowing a commercial paradigm to usurp the Games' higher purpose. In order to effect a true revival, it must redirect its commercial aspirations toward humanitarian goals, thereby reclaiming the ancient religious connection between Olympic sport and community service. The Ancient Heritage Even in today's cynical and commercially-driven world of sport entertainment, Olympic champions are often lauded for their "sacrifice." Commonly, the word evokes the sweat and toil of training combined with the semi-monastic life supposedly led by athletes. In almost any other endeavor, the effort and lifestyle required would be termed "professionalism," or perhaps simply "work." Why in athletics do we call it "sacrifice"? The obvious answer is an ancient one. The ancient Olympic Games, like most sport in Greco-Roman antiquity, were a form of religious sacrifice. Athletic performance at such festivals was considered an offering to the gods, given as a service to the community. Extravagant rewards certainly were showered upon these ancient athletes, (1) but the religious context of the Games reveals that such rewards were motivated by perceived community benefits rather than commercial economy. The primary function of the ancient festival was neither entertainment nor product-promotion, but the garnering of divine favor in hopes of concrete community benefits such as plentiful harvests, release from disease, and victory in war (i.e. food, medicine, and conflict-resolution). Ancient Olympic athletes, in the religious context of the Games, should be seen foremost as community servants. …


With the rapid development of interactive building materials that can react in real time, a
new type of architecture is about to emerge. Buildings that can transform their selves and
change their appearance are gaining popularity and could become the new norm in
architecture. The potential convergence of artificial intelligence and adaptive building
materials offers the possibility of having a lifelike building that is not only interactive but can
also think and become social. A series of experiments are made using different virtual
environments and placing participants in animated, interactive or seemingly intelligent
structures. The justification is based on the wide spread use of virtual reality in architecture
and an established body of literature showing that virtual environments are a useful tool in
assessing how people might react to different experiences.
Results presented indicate that when placed in a simulation of a lifelike building, people are
more productive and feel more comfortable than a regular static one. Placing such a building
in a social virtual environment showed that an interactive building can generate more
visitors and interest than a static counterpart. This demonstrates the validity of animated,
interactive or intelligent buildings and that they are not just a novelty item in the
architectural world.
A multiple measure approach was used and increased confidence in the use of virtual
environments as an indicator of how people might react in similar real life scenarios.


Much of the sexual and reproductive health services and service delivery including family planning target women of child bearing ages (15 - 49 years) and sometimes men. Hardly are there programmes/interventions that specifically target the needs of the elderly women (50 years and above), yet this group has serious sexual and reproductive health needs as many of them are still sexually active. This cross-sectional study obtained the views of a stratified random sample of 169 healthcare providers (doctors, nurses and pharmacists) from four selected sites, Gaborone, Selibe Phikwe, Barolong and Kweneng East health districts in Botswana on how the healthcare system in the selected sites is meeting the SRH/FP needs of the elderly women. The study found out that while overwhelming majority of the healthcare providers feltthat the healthcare system has no programme that specifically target the SRH/FP needs of this significant others and their SRH/FP needs are not being met ,less than 15% indicated that Pap smear screening as well as screening of cervical cancer were on-going. Although there are SRH/FP services available in the healthcare system, the elderly women are minimally accessing these services. Only condom, combined oral contraceptives, progestogen-only pills, treatment of STIs, screening for HIV/AIDS and screening for cervical cancer are accessed and information is also limited to these services. Reasons given by the healthcare providers for the non-accessibility of these services were cultural diversity (80%), people's sexual behavior and perceptions about sex (79%), lack of knowledge about the desired SRH/FP services (76%), religion (73%) and gender issues (62%). The study, advocates as part of policy options to mitigate the obstacles to accessing SRH/FP services, the expansion of counseling programmes, screening and treatment for breast cancer, public awareness campaigns, production and circulation of appropriate educational materials, effective training of healthcare providers and the establishment of separate clinic days for the elderly women' SRH/FP services.


This article provides an historical account of conditions and actions which gave rise to the decision to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards in Australia. This decision is seen as a 'moment' within a much broader movement of history, namely, the emergence of a transnational neoliberal global order comprising networks of multilateral arrangements and strategic alliances, as well as ambiguous but powerful social, political and cultural forces. Those phenomena and their force in the context of accounting standard setting are examined here through a conflation of Castells' work on globalisation with the strong structuration model of Stones. This article demonstrates the potential of the Stones/Castells theoretical nexus to contribute to future accounting research, not only within the narrow realm of rule-making but more broadly in our attempts to understand and critique the manner in which global neoliberal processes have come to impact contemporary experience.


Emotion regulation is a complex and dynamic process that begins in infancy and continues through toddlerhood and childhood with the support of parents, teachers, and other caregivers. Early caregiver-child interactions shape the way children learn to manage their emotions and the range of emotions that they express. The current study seeks to examine how maternal perceptions of preschool children's emotion regulation and emotion lability are associated with mother-child interactions during free play. 30 mother-child dyads were recruited from two New England urban areas: one community sample and one sample recruited from Head Start locations. Dyads engaged in a free play session and mothers completed a set of questionnaires (including the Emotion Regulation Checklist) designed to assess the emotion regulation abilities and emotional lability of their preschool child as perceived by mothers. The results revealed group differences in maternal perceptions of one aspect of emotion regulation, emotion lability. There were a number of significant correlations between observed child outcomes and maternal behaviors during mother-child interactions. Significant group differences indicate that families receiving Head Start services and families with unmarried mothers may relate differently to their children than families not receiving Head Start services and families with married mothers. These results support the notion that families with fewer resources engage in less positive interpersonal exchanges, which may have implications on the emotion lability of preschool children in such families. Interventions that target improved mother-child interactions that foster emotion regulation techniques in the child are needed.


Since the end of the Cold War, the assumption among most political theorists has been that as nations develop economically, they will also become more democratic-especially if a vibrant middle class takes root. This assumption underlies the expansion of the European Union and much of American foreign policy, bolstered by such examples as South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and even to some extent Russia. Where democratization has failed or retreated, aberrant conditions take the blame: Islamism, authoritarian Chinese influence, or perhaps the rise of local autocrats. But what if the failures of democracy are not exceptions? In this thought-provoking study of democratization, Joshua Kurlantzick proposes that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, is not just a series of exceptions. Instead, it reflects a new and disturbing trend: democracy in worldwide decline. The author investigates the state of democracy in a variety of countries, why the middle class has turned against democracy in some cases, and whether the decline in global democratization is reversible.


Background. The survival of children to grow and develop and get good care is needed to achieve a healthy generation. The success of exclusive breastfeeding in infants 0-6 months in Indonesia still does not meet expectations due to a poor knowledge of the importance Exclusive Breastfeeding and their perception of infant formula is better than breast milk. The low achievement of breastfeeding (ASI) exclusively due to several factors, namely low knowledge of the mother of the importance of breastfeeding, the sex of the baby, birth weight or premature birth, culture that does not support, families that do not support, and social change that happening in the community.Objective. This study aimed to examine predictive factors toward the success of exclusive breastfeeding among breastfeeding mothers in Child's Poly DKT Gubeng Pojok Hospital, Surabaya.Methods. The design of this study is a cross-sectional study. The variables studied were age, occupation, level of education, family support, and exclusive breastfeeding success. The results of this study were analyzed using the Stepwise Multiple Regression method with SPSS 21.Result. Family support (β = 0.78, p < .001) were significant predictor of exclusive breastfeeding success and accounted 75.9% in the variance of exclusive breastfeeding success (R2 = .759, F (4, 27) = 9.18, p < .001).Conclusion. The importance of family support in supporting the success of exclusive breastfeeding in infants 0-6 months. For this reason, health workers are expected to improve their approach to families so that they want to provide support to breastfeeding mothers. Keywords: Exclusive breastfeeding, infants 0-6 months, factors affecting, breastfeeding mothers


The scarcity of water encourages scientists to develop new analytical tools to enhance water resource management. Water accounting and distributed hydrological models are examples of such tools. Water accounting needs accurate input data for adequate descriptions of water distribution and water depletion in river basins. Ground-based observatories are decreasing, and not generally accessible. Remote sensing data is a suitable alternative to measure the required input variables. This paper reviews the reliability of remote sensing algorithms to accurately determine the spatial distribution of actual evapotranspiration, rainfall and land use. For our validation we used only those papers that covered study periods of seasonal to annual cycles because the accumulated water balance is the primary concern. Review papers covering shorter periods only (days, weeks) were not included in our review. Our review shows that by using remote sensing, the absolute values of evapotranspiration can be estimated with an overall accuracy of 95% (SD 5 %) and rainfall with an overall absolute accuracy of 82% (SD 15 %). Land use can be identified with an overall accuracy of 85% (SD 7 %). Hence, more scientific work is needed to improve the spatial mapping of rainfall and land use using multiple space-borne sensors. While not always perfect at all spatial and temporal scales, seasonally accumulated actual evapotranspiration maps can be used with confidence in water accounting and hydrological modeling.


The European Directive on common rules for the internal market in electricity (2009/72/EC) requires all member states to 'ensure the implementation of intelligent metering systems' in order to foster a more active involvement of customers in the electricity market. Such intelligent metering systems are able to collect and transmit consumption data in a significantly increased resolution and therefore raise privacy concerns. On the other hand, high-resolution measurement data are an essential basis for achieving the aims of higher overall energy efficiency and a significantly increased proportion of electricity originating from fluctuating renewable sources. While European activities are still in an early stage, Germany has recently amended the national energy law and established specific and comprehensive regulations directed at security and privacy in smart metering environments. The underlying German approach to the regulation of smart grid privacy is examined and critically discussed in the light of the necessary functional provisions within an electricity grid under the regulatory regime of a liberalized market. Alternative approaches from the Netherlands and the UK are presented and compared to the German one. Finally, some implications are derived that might prove valuable for ongoing activities addressing smart grid privacy on the European level.


Purpose – Thispaperaims to investigate, through the lensof theprincipal–agentproblem, the relationship between payment of National Hockey League (NHL) salaries and player performance during the period of 2005-2011 and explore the inherent issues within the NHL player compensation and incentive structure. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts a pragmatic philosophy with deductive reasoning. This paper focuses on the NHL season 2005-2011 and undertake analysis of historical player contracts and performance data of 670 players across 29 clubs to undertake liner regression analysis. Findings – This paper quantiies potential ineficiencies of NHL league contracts and deines the parameters of the principal–agent problem. It is identiies that player performance generally increases with salary, is higher in the irst year of a contract and despite decreasing over the life of the contract, will usually peak again in the inal year of the contract. Research limitations/implications – The research is based around igures from 2005-2011 and secondary statistical data. The study captures quantitative data but does not allow for an exploration of the qualitative perspective to the problem. Practical implications – Entry-level or irst contracts are good for all teams and players because they provide incentive to perform and a reduction of risk to the team should a player not perform to expectations. The same can be said for players at the other end of the spectrum. Although not typically used much, performance bonuses for players over the age of 35 allow clubs to "take a chance" on a player and the player can beneit by reaching attainable bonuses. These indings therefore provide contributions to the practicing managers and coaches of NHL teams who can consider the results to help shape their approach to management of players and the planning of teams and succession planning for talent. Originality/value – The paper presents a comprehensive and current perspective of the principal– agent problem in NHL and extends the work of Purcell (2009) and Gannon (2009) in understanding player performance enhancement.


After a brief discussion on the standard-setting process and on RAND's efficiency-enhancing characteristics, this Article explores antitrust's role in regulating opportunistic behavior arising in standard setting organizations. In doing so, it first provides an overview of the opportunistic conduct — namely, deception during the standard-setting process, and rescission of good-faith RAND commitments. To be sure, both can be defined as patent holdup and thus may result in higher downstream prices. But by focusing on the distinct characteristics underlying each form of conduct, the Article prescribes an active role for antitrust in cases involving deception-based holdup, while also explaining why such oversight is ill-suited for RAND-based holdup. After this, it discusses the legal implications of seeking injunctive relief after agreeing to license standard essential patents on RAND terms. A brief conclusion follows.


The SELFRAC project aimed to study the fractures within the Excavation Damaged Zone (EDZ) around galleries in the Boom clay and Opalinus clay formations and their possible sealing/healing with time. Tests carried out at LMR-EPFL aimed at quantifying on the same sample the increase in permeability induced by a localised crack, and subsequently the potential self-sealing process of this localised crack. The tests were performed in triaxial cells on hollow cylindrical samples and consisted in radial permeability measurements before and after the tensile fracturing of the clayey samples. In both clays, sealing processes are observed. However, the reduction in hydraulic conductivity after fracturing is much slower in Opalinus clay than the one in Boom clay (extremely fast recovering of the virgin clay permeability).


The late Victorian and Edwardian period saw ritual become increasingly important in political life. Towns and cities were involved in conscious efforts to construct and project attractive images of themselves. These images were intended to encourage a sense of civic patriotism. Ceremonies, honorific titles, public events and civic architecture were essays in the invention of tradition. However, historians have applied the concept of the invention of tradition unevenly. Previous research has dwelt on the construction of images. Perceptions of official images and responses to them have been overlooked. This thesis employs a model which recognises images as processes with foundaitons in human relationships. It evaluates images in terms of intentionality, power, context and participation. The participative dimension is of particular importance, because images aimed to instil a sense of civic patriotism which would encourage citizens to make emotional and financial investments in their communities. Liverpool attained the status of a city in 1880. The civic ideology of the city was dominated by images of commerce and by notions of Imperial duty and public service which celebrated commercial virtues. Many aspects of urban life were shaped by civic image. This study does not confine itself to public events and pageantry, instead it explores such spheres as municipal art policy, Liverpool's public health record, the attempts to extend the city boundaries, civic hagiography, the foundation of the University, women and the ideal of citizenship and the influence of football on civic identity to demonstrate the importance of images in the city's social, political and institutional history. The purpose of the thesis is three-fold: to suggest that civic image opens new perspectives on Liverpudlian history, to discover why there were more conscious attempts to construct civic image and to restore participation to the study of civic image by unravelling the connections between image and patriotism.


High-throughput single-cell gene expression experiments can be used to uncover branching dynamics in cell populations undergoing differentiation through use of pseudotime methods. We develop the branching Gaussian process (BGP), a non-parametric model that is able to identify branching dynamics for individual genes and provides an estimate of branching times for each gene with an associated credible region. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on both synthetic data and a published single-cell gene expression hematopoiesis study. The method requires prior information about pseudotime and global cellular branching for each cell but the probabilistic nature of the method means that it is robust to errors in these global branch labels and can be used to discover early branching genes which diverge before the inferred global cell branching. The code is open-source and available at https://github.com/ManchesterBioinference/BranchedGP.


ABSTRACT We investigate the live staging spatial-organisational requirements of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, exploring the extent to which the project sequestrated, territorialised and commodified public space. Relatedly, we examine the role of new legal, regulatory and securitised event conditions in affording an effective and efficient 'Olympic takeover'. We do this by drawing on i) official Rio 2016 planning documents, ii) observations of the live Olympic-city spatial effects, and iii) interviews with key informants. Findings reveal that Rio's specially created Olympic event zones sought to transform visitor flows and circulations across the city, appropriating and regulating public space in-line with a desired tourist aesthetic. Rio's public civic space became reimagined and controlled for commercial exploitation by Olympic sponsors, supporters and suppliers– facilitated by the creation of areas of exclusivity. And yet, we also reveal how the Rio Olympic city simultaneously emerged disorganised, open and fluid in places– a (temporary) break in the (neoliberal) economic logic we have come to expect. We argue that localised conditions affecting Rio afforded closer connectivity between event visitor economies and host communities. While these gains remain marginal and largely symbolic, they demonstrate that with effective planning, the Olympic host city need not only serve corporate interests.


Bisphosphonates, analogues of pyrophosphates, are utilized as efficient drugs against bone resorption in bone disorders like, osteoporosis, Paget's disease, multiple myeloma, cancerinduced hypercalcemia, and bony metastases. They suppress osteoclastic bone resorption by incorporating with hydroxyapatite binding sites on bony surfaces that undergo active resorption with due interference with various biochemical processes in bone-resorbing osteoclasts, impairing the ability of the osteoclasts and enhancing osteoclast apoptosis. The clinical utilization of bisphosphonates has dramatically expanded during the past 3 decades or more especially for osteoporosis to diminish the frequency of skeletal-related events in patients with breast cancer and myeloma. Some preclinical studies had reported that bisphosphonates exhibit direct and indirect anticancer activities in patients with early breast cancer or symptomatic multiple myeloma exhibiting disease-free survival and overall survival benefits. Moreover, some epidemiological and clinically applied studies concluded that current use of bisphosphonates in healthy postmenopausal women to manage osteoporosis was correlated with a 30% reduction in the risk of breast and colon cancers and ladies who use bisphosphonates had about one half the risk of getting endometrial cancer compared with those who did not use them. Recently, it was reported that addition of bisphosphonates to epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) could enhance the antitumor effect of EGFR-TKIs in patients with EGFR-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer and bone metastasis.


Background: There is an increasing trend towards consumption of complementary and alternative herbal products in many parts of the world. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the knowledge and attitudes among pharmacists in West Bank, Palestine towards the use of herbs. Methods: Self-administered questionnaire was designed as the study instrument and distributed among 350 qualified pharmacists working in government and private pharmacies in West Bank, Palestine. Results: The response rate was 82.9% (290/350). The mean age of the pharmacists was 32.9 (SD=6.5) years. The majority of the pharmacist 238 (82.1%) worked in the community pharmacies and their experience in practice ranged from 1 to 26 years. Product package instructions and product representative were the most consulted by the pharmacists (128; 44.2% and 73; 25.2% respectively). General health tonic preparations were the most widely dispensed drugs (142; 48.9%), followed by cough preparations (55; 19.0%) and slimming agents (64; 22.1%). The Majority of pharmacists (195; 67.2%) believed herbal remedies were effective; however, about fifty percent of the pharmacists had concern about their safety. The knowledge of respondents about the indications of herbal medicine was good, but their awareness of interactions, contraindications and adverse effects was inadequate. The majority of Pharmacists (255; 87.9%) believed that herbal product should undergo increased regulation and (215; 74.9%) believed that information available about herbal and natural product isn't adequate.


Chronic or repeated exposure to low concentrations of NO2 may increase the incidence of respiratory infections especially in the most sensitive persons. Air pollution monitoring data obtained in Buenos Aires City reveal that sometimes NO2 Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) is exceeded. We estimate hourly background concentrations (Ch) of NOx (expressed as NO2) using atmospheric dispersion models and obtain a first evaluation of the possible human exposure to NO2 in the city. This study reveals that 30% of the population (900,000 inhabitants) can be exposed to Ch > AQG during 20–30% of the year and 4% of children and 5.1% of those older than 65 years old can be exposed to this condition for more than 36 consecutive hours.


The combination of optical and mid-infrared (MIR) photometry has been extensively used to select red active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Our aim is to explore the obscuration properties of these red AGNs with both X-ray spectroscopy and spectral energy distributions (SEDs). In this study, we re-visit the relation between optical / MIR extinction and X-ray absorption. We use IR selection criteria, specifically the W 1 and W 2 WISE bands, to identify 4798 AGNs in the XMM − XXL area ( ∼ 25deg 2 ). Application of optical / MIR colours ( r − W 2 > 6) reveals 561 red AGNs (14%). Of these, 47 have available X-ray spectra with at least 50 net (background- subtracted) counts per detector. For these sources, we construct SEDs from the optical to the MIR using the CIGALE code. The SED fitting shows that 44 of these latter 47 sources present clear signs of obscuration based on the AGN emission and the estimated inclination angle. Fitting the SED also reveals ten systems ( ∼ 20%) which are dominated by the galaxy. In these cases, the red colours are attributed to the host galaxy rather than AGN absorption. Excluding these ten systems from our sample and applying X-ray spectral fitting analysis shows that up to 76% (28 / 37) of the IR red AGNs present signs of X-ray absorption. Thus, there are nine sources ( ∼ 20% of the sample) that although optically red, are not substantially X-ray absorbed. Approximately 50% of these sources present broad emission lines in their optical spectra. We suggest that the reason for this apparent discrepancy is that the r-W2 criterion is sensitive to smaller amounts of obscuration relative to the X-ray spectroscopy. In conclusion, it appears that the majority of red AGNs present considerable obscuration levels as shown by their SEDs. Their X-ray absorption is moderate with a mean of N H ∼ 10 22 cm − 2 .


The high penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) in distribution networks and the competitive environment of electricity markets impose the use of new approaches in several domains. The network cost allocation, traditionally used in transmission networks, should be adapted and used in the distribution networks considering the specifications of the connected resources. The main goal is to develop a fairer methodology trying to distribute the distribution network use costs to all players which are using the network in each period. In this paper, a model considering different type of costs (fixed, losses, and congestion costs) is proposed comprising the use of a large set of DER, namely distributed generation (DG), demand response (DR) of direct load control type, energy storage systems (ESS), and electric vehicles with capability of discharging energy to the network, which is known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G). The proposed model includes three distinct phases of operation. The first phase of the model consists in an opological distribution factors economic dispatch based on an AC optimal power flow (AC-OPF); in the second phase Kirschen's and Bialek's tracing algorithms are used and compared to evaluate the impact of each resource in the network. Finally, the MW-mile method is used in the third phase of the proposed model. A distribution network of 33 buses with large penetration of DER is used to illustrate the application of the proposed model. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The regioselectivity in the cationic Heck reaction of 4-substituted styrenes was addressed by a Hammett study. In this branching reaction, plots based on the substrate reactivity did not give meaningful data, whereas the product distribution was variable due to differing preferences for further substitution under the reaction conditions and, thus, unsuitable for Hammett plots. Mechanistically meaningful graphs were obtained by combination of the measured initial branching ratio with the approximately constant substrate reactivity. For the α-substitution a clear Hammett relation is observed, whereas β-substitution does not depend on electronic effects. This implies that, for α-substitution, the slow step of the addition is an electrophilic attack by Pd(II) on the double bond, followed by a rapid migratory insertion.


This study is investigating the role of the online tutor in a multicultural environment. The result is a grounded theory which aims to increase the quality of online tutoring at University.

By using the open qualitative approach of the Grounded Theory (GT) methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1994) within a field where little previous research has been undertaken the study sought to sample a wide range of experiences and views. Microscopic analysis centred on semi-structured interviews with both students and tutors of an online Masters programme at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), interviews with e-learning experts from LJMU and other institutions and a focus-group with staff involved in e-learning projects at LJMU. Throughout theoretical sampling, the method of constant comparison and a circular research process, approximately 400 codes and categories were created which formed the basis for the emergent grounded theory. Within GT the process of data collection and analyses are closely connected which each other (Strauss & Corbin, 1998); analysis of initially collected data got constantly compared with following findings on different levels of abstraction until an explanation of the investigated phenomena emerged.

Findings provide insights into perception and explanations of the situation of instructors at University who have to teach in a pure online environment. A theory emerged which details basically 1 central category: quality online teaching in a multicultural environment, 5 categorical aspects: awareness, workload, conditions, experiences, and perceptions as well as well as 4 subcategorical aspects: Institution, subject, stakeholders, and course design. Those categories and their relations to each other outline concepts which may help to better understand the situations of online tutors at University. As an additional outcome of the analysis a set of codes and categories have been created which may help to better manage and support effective online tutoring in an international environment at University by providing tasks, challenges and suggestions for improvement. In addition barriers have been uncovered which may hinder online tutors to realise identified suggestions for improvement. Based on these findings, a guideline for online tutors who have to teach in an international environment has been developed.

Research results offer moreover a profound basis for ongoing discussion and issues worth pursuing in the future by providing guides to action.


Richard Miles' "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilization" charts one of the bloodiest dramas of the Ancient World: the devastating struggle to the death between Carthage and Rome. In an epic series of battles, the mighty empires of Carthage and Rome vied for supremacy of the Mediterranean - before the Carthaginians finally buckled and their great capital city was razed to the ground, burning for six days and nights, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" tells the story of this lost empire - from its origins in Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest sea-power of its age - and brings to life legendary figures such as the military genius Hannibal, who led his troops across the Alps and almost toppled Roman power, but would ultimately lead his people to disaster. "Splendid ...epic and fascinating". (Tom Holland). "An enthralling narrative". ("Economist"). "The Carthaginians finally get their due ...well-paced and compelling...In bringing the real Carthage to the fore, "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" makes a substantial contribution to the field". ("Financial Times"). "Lively and compelling". ("Literary Review"). "Thoughtful and meticulous ...fascinating". ("Guardian"). "A superb achievement". ("Sunday Telegraph"). Richard Miles is Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney and a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. He has written widely on Punic, Roman and Vandal North Africa and has directed archaeological excavations in Carthage and Rome. He is also the author of "Ancient Worlds" and the presenter and writer of the series "Ancient Worlds" for BBC2.


The task of scene graph generation entails identifying object entities and their corresponding interaction predicates in a given image (or video). Due to the combinatorially large solution space, existing approaches to scene graph generation assume certain factorization of the joint distribution to make the estimation feasible (e.g., assuming that objects are conditionally independent of predicate predictions). However, this fixed factorization is not ideal under all scenarios (e.g., for images where an object entailed in interaction is small and not discernible on its own). In this work, we propose a novel framework for scene graph generation that addresses this limitation, as well as introduces dynamic conditioning on the image, using message passing in a Markov Random Field. This is implemented as an iterative refinement procedure wherein each modification is conditioned on the graph generated in the previous iteration. This conditioning across refinement steps allows joint reasoning over entities and relations. This framework is realized via a novel and end-to-end trainable transformer-based architecture. In addition, the proposed framework can improve existing approach performance. Through extensive experiments on Visual Genome and Action Genome benchmark datasets we show improved performance on the scene graph generation.