Web services provide a platform neutral and programming language independent technology that supports interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Clients and other systems interact with Web services using a standardised XML messaging system, such as the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialisation in conjunction with other related Web standards. Nevertheless, the idea of applications from different parties communicating together raises a security threat. The challenge of Web services security is to understand and consider the risks of securing a Web-based service depending on the existing security techniques and simultaneously follow evolving standards in order to fill the gap in Web services security. However, the performance of the security mechanisms is fraught with concerns due to additional security contents in SOAP messages, the higher number of message exchanges to establish trust, as well as the extra CPU time to process these additions. As the interaction between service providers and requesters occurs via XML-based SOAP messages, securing Web services tends to make these messages longer than they would be otherwise and consequently requires interpretation by XML parsers on both sides, which reduces the performance of Web services. The work described in this thesis can be broadly divided into three parts, the first of which is studying and comparing the performance of various security profiles applied on a Web service tested with different initial message sizes. The second part proposes a multi-criteria decision making framework to aid Web services developers and architects in selecting the best suited security profile that satisfies the different requirements of a given application during the development process in a systematic, manageable, and effective way. The proposed framework, based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach, incorporates not only the security requirements, but also the performance considerations as well as the configuration constraints of these security profiles. The framework is then validated and evaluated using a scenario-driven approach to demonstrate situations where the decision making framework is used to make informed decisions to rank various security profiles in order to select the most suitable one for each scenario. Finally, the last part of this thesis develops a novel steganography method to be used for SOAP messages within Web services environments. This method is based on changing the order of XML elements according to a secret message. This method has a high imperceptibility; it leaves almost no trail because it uses the communication protocol as a cover medium, and keeps the structure and size of the SOAP message intact. The method is empirically validated using a feasible scenario so as to indicate its utility and value.


Social dynamics is concerned primarily with interactions among individuals and the resulting group behaviors, modeling the temporal evolution of social systems via the interactions of individuals within these systems. In particular, the availability of large-scale data from social networks and sensor networks offers an unprecedented opportunity to predict state-changing events at the individual level. Examples of such events include disease transmission, opinion transition in elections, and rumor propagation. Unlike previous research focusing on the collective effects of social systems, this study makes efficient inferences at the individual level. In order to cope with dynamic interactions among a large number of individuals, we introduce the stochastic kinetic model to capture adaptive transition probabilities and propose an efficient variational inference algorithm the complexity of which grows linearly — rather than exponentially— with the number of individuals. To validate this method, we have performed epidemic-dynamics experiments on wireless sensor network data collected from more than ten thousand people over three years. The proposed algorithm was used to track disease transmission and predict the probability of infection for each individual. Our results demonstrate that this method is more efficient than sampling while nonetheless achieving high accuracy.


PURPOSE
Exposure of premature human infants to hyperoxia results in the obliteration of developing retina capillaries, leading to a vision-threatening retinopathy termed retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). The authors hypothesized that this process may be mediated in part by endothelial nitric oxide (NO)-derived oxidants such as peroxynitrite and tested this hypothesis in a mouse model of ROP.

METHODS
Normal mice, mice treated with the nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitor N:(G)-nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA), and knockout mice carrying a homozygous targeted disruption of the gene for endothelial NOS (eNOS) were studied in an experimental model of ROP. Retinas were compared for extent of capillary obliteration in hyperoxia, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression, nitrotyrosine formation, and vitreous neovascularization.

RESULTS
Oxygen-induced retinal vaso-obliteration was significantly reduced by L-NNA treatment (43% decrease from controls). The eNOS-deficient mice showed a similar reduction in vaso-obliteration (46% decrease from controls), and vitreous neovascularization was also substantially reduced (threefold decrease). Retinal nitrotyrosine formation, a measure of in situ peroxynitrite modification of proteins, was significantly elevated in normal mice during hyperoxia, in a spatial and temporal pattern consistent with a role in oxygen-induced vaso-obliteration. This was not seen in eNOS-deficient mice. VEGF expression was similar in both groups of mice, although suppression in hyperoxia was slightly blunted in eNOS-deficient mice.

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest a role for NO and peroxynitrite in the pathogenesis of ROP. Therapies aimed at modulation of eNOS activity may have therapeutic potential for preventing ROP.


Here in its newly updated edition is the easy way to write business letters that are clear, concise, interesting, grammatical, and productive. Sample letters apply to sales, public relations, job-hunting, claims and adjustments, business-to-business correspondence, and much more. New in this edition are tips for effective use of fax machines and computer-related media for business correspondence. The author points out ways of avoiding typical pitfalls in business writing, with tips on correct word choice, proper formatting, punctuation, and the basics of constructing clear, grammatical sentences.


Employee support provides enormous benefits to help sustain a competitive advantage, respond to changes more quickly than competitors, and position the organization ahead of others. Awareness of this fact triggers organizations to prepare new motivational programs and practices. Employee involvement and rewards are among the many ways to achieve employee job satisfaction and motivational needs. Employee involvement entails giving employees an opportunity to influence decisions and actions regarding their jobs. Furthermore, rewards have the potential to prompt employees to act in line with organizational goals. This study aims to examine the relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction based on the mediation effect of rewarding. Four hundred employees from the financial sector responded to a questionnaire. The relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction was tested using hierarchical linear regression analysis. Results revealed that rewarding does mediate the relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction. Organizations that give priority to employee needs and motivational processes should take both employee involvement and rewarding into consideration.


How do marginalized communities across the globe use the medieval past to combat racism, educate the public, and create a just world? Jonathan Hsy advances urgent academic and public conversations about race and appropriations of the medieval past in popular culture and the arts.
 Examining poetry, fiction, journalism, and performances, Hsy shows how cultural icons such as Frederick Douglass, Wong Chin Foo, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Sui Sin Far reinvented medieval traditions to promote social change. Contemporary Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial artists embrace diverse pasts to build better futures.
 "Makes the crucial move of tying medievalism studies readings to social and racial justice work explicitly … innovative and greatly needed in the field." Seeta Chaganti, author of Strange Footing
 "A major accomplishment that belongs on the shelves of every person who believes in antiracism." Geraldine Heng, author of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages


We present an open-source software package, NIC-CAGE (Novel Implementation of Constrained Calculations for Automated Generation of Excitations), for predicting quantum optimal control fields in photo-excited chemical systems. Our approach utilizes newly derived analytic gradients for maximizing the transition probability (based on a norm-conserving Crank-Nicolson propagation scheme) for driving a system from a known initial quantum state to another desired state. The NIC-CAGE code is written in the MATLAB and Python programming environments to aid in its readability and general accessibility to both users and practitioners. Throughout this work, we provide several examples and outputs on a variety of different potentials, propagation times, and user-defined parameters to demonstrate the robustness of the NIC-CAGE software package. As such, the use of this predictive tool by both experimentalists and theorists could lead to further advances in both understanding and controlling the dynamics of photo-excited systems.


Viewed from an evolutionary standpoint, emotions can be understood as situation-specific patterns of energy consumption related to behaviors that have been selected by evolution for their survival value, such as environmental exploration, flight or fight, and socialization. In the present article, the energy linked with emotions is investigated by a strictly energy-based simulation of the evolution of simple autonomous agents provided with random cognitive and motor capacities and operating among food and predators. Emotions are translated into evolving patterns of energy consumption related to situation-specific behaviors. As a result, a variety of behaviors resembling emotions ("fear" of predators, attraction to food, competition and/or collaboration with other agents, and so on) emerge, each with a specific pattern of energy consumption. There is little difference between emotion-like behaviors on individual and collective levels. The fact that these patterns evolve under a strictly energetic selection regime indicates the interesting role and adaptive advantage of emotions as situation-specific energy savers. Although gained through an approach characterized by a highly reduced complexity, these findings support a quantitative understanding of emotions that may improve the existing qualitative approaches and could have far-reaching implications for further research on and conceptualization of emotions and their interactions with cognition.


This article develops an approach to ethical globalization based on a feminist, political ethic of care; this is achieved, in part, through a comparison with, and critique of, Thomas Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights. In his book, Pogge makes the valid and important argument that the global economic order is currently organized such that developed countries have a huge advantage in terms of power and expertise, and that decisions are reached purely and exclusively through self-interest. Pogge uses an institutional rights framework to argue that direct responsibility for global poverty and inequality lies with the citizens of developed countries, since suffering and death are caused by global economic arrangements designed and imposed by our governments. While this argument is certainly compelling, I have argued that it tells us little about the actual effects of globalization on the real people of the South—including women, children and the elderly. As a result, it can offer little in the way of real alternatives or policy prescriptions. As a moral orientation, a care ethic relies on a relational moral ontology, and leads us to consider different values in terms of human flourishing. Moreover, it pushes us to consider the normative implications of aspects of the global political economy which are usually not 'seen' at all, including the global distribution of care work and the corresponding patterns of gender and racial inequality, the underprovision of care and resources for caring work in both the developed and developing world, and the ways in which unpaid or low-paid caring work helps to sustain a cycle of exploitation and inequality on a global scale.


Lecture title: Your Eye, My Eye, and the Eye of the Aye-Aye: Evolution of Human Vision from 65 Million Years Ago to the Present.

How did humans come to have the best eyesight of any living mammal? Look through the eyes of primate ancestors with Dr. Chris Kirk, UT-Austin professor of anthropology. Dr. Kirk explains how his research related to the evolution of primate sensory systems helps us understand human visual adaptations in the larger context of primate evolution.

More info about Dr. Kirk's discovery of fossilized primates in west Texas can be found in an article from The University of Texas.


AIM
The aim of this study was to identify the main biological, psychological and sociological problems and potential solutions for patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia by use of Group Problem-Solving Therapy.

BACKGROUND
Group Problem-Solving Therapy is a technique for identifying and solving problems, increasing assertiveness, self-esteem and eliminating negative thoughts.

DESIGN
Qualitative phenomenological interpretive design: Group Problem-Solving Therapy sessions conducted with patients suffering fibromyalgia were studied; participants recruited via the Rheumatology Department at a general hospital and associations in Catalonia, Spain with sessions conducted in nearby university setting.

METHODS
The study included 44 people diagnosed with fibromyalgia (43 female, 1 male) from 6 Group Problem-Solving Therapy sessions. Data collected from March-June 2013. A total of 24 sessions were audio recorded, all with prior informed consent. Data were transcribed and then analysed in accordance with established methods of inductive thematic analysis, via a process of reduction to manage and classify data.

FINDINGS
Five themes were identified: (1) Current problems are often related to historical trauma; (2) There are no "one size fits all" solutions; (3) Fibromyalgia is life-changing; (4) Fibromyalgia is widely misunderstood; (5) Statistically Significant impacts on physical, psychological and social are described.

CONCLUSION
The majority of patients' problems were associated with their previous history and the onset of fibromyalgia; which may be related to trauma in adolescence, early adulthood or later. The solutions provided during the groups appeared to be accepted by the participants. These findings can improve the self-management of fibromyalgia patients by helping to enhance adaptive behaviours and incorporating the female gender approach.


Present day nanowire solar cells have reached an efficiency of 17.8%. Nanophotonic engineering by nanowire tapering allows for high solar light absorption. In combination with sufficiently high carrier selectivity at the contacts, the short-circuit current (Jsc) has presently reached 29.3 mA/cm2, reasonably close to the 34.6 mA/cm2 theoretical limit for InP. Although further optimization of the current is important, an equally challenging condition to approach the Shockley Queisser (S-Q) limit is to increase the open-circuit voltage (Voc) towards the radiative limit. The key requirement to reach the radiative limit is to increase the external radiative efficiency at open-circuit conditions towards unity. It is the main purpose of this review to highlight recent progress in nanophotonic engineering to further enhance the open circuit voltage of a nanowire solar cell. In addition to material optimization for increasing the internal photoluminescence efficiency, the light extraction efficiency is a major design criterion for enhancing the external radiative efficiency and thus the Voc. Since the semiconductor substrate is a sink for internally generated photoluminescence, it is equally important to eliminate the loss of emitted light into the substrate. Even at the S-Q limit, the Voc is still substantially decreased by a photon entropy loss due to the conversion of a parallel beam of photons from the sun into an isotropic emission pattern, in which each individual photon is emitted into a random direction. The 46.7% ultimate solar cell limit for direct solar irradiation can only be approached, once the cell is capable to focus all emitted photoluminescence back to the sun. We will show that nanophotonic engineering provides a pathway to approach the ultimate limit.


In this dissertation we present a theoretical study of electron transport through domain walls, with a particular focus on conductance properties, in order to understand various transport measurements that have been carried out recently on ferromagnetic nanowires. The starting point for our work is a ballistic treatment of transport through the domain wall. In this case conduction electrons are generally only weakly reflected by the domain wall, and the principal effect is a mixing of transmitted electron spins between up and down states. For small spinsplitting of conductance electrons the latter can be characterized by an appropriate adiabaticity parameter. We then incorporate the effect of spindependent scattering in the regions adjacent to the domain wall through a circuit model based on a generalization of the two-resistor theory of Valet and Fert. Within this model we find that the domain wall gives rise to an enhancement of resistance similar to the giant magnetoresistance effect found in ferromagnetic multilayer systems. The effect is largest in the limit of an abrupt wall, for which there is complete mistracking of spin, and decreases with increasing wall width due to the reduction of spin mistracking. For reasonable physical parameter values we find order-of-magnitude agreement with recent experiments. Going beyond the assumption of ballistic transport, we then consider the more realistic case of a domain wall subject to impurity scattering. A scattering matrix formalism is used to calculate conductance through a disordered region with either uniform magnetization or a domain wall. By combining either amplitudes or probabilities we are able to study both coherent and incoherent transport properties. The coherent case corresponds to elastic scattering by static defects, which is dominant at low temperatures, while the incoherent case provides a phenomenological description of the inelastic scattering present in real physical systems at room temperature. It is found that scattering from impurities increases the amount of spin mistracking of electrons travelling through a domain wall. This leads, in the incoherent case, to a reduction of conductance through the domain wall as compared to a uniformly magnetized region. In the coherent case, on the other hand, a reduction of weak localization and spin-reversing reflection amplitudes combine to give a positive contribution to domain wall conductance, which can lead to an overall enhancement of conductance due to the domain wall in the diffusive regime. A reduction of universal conductance fluctuations is found in a coherent disordered domain wall, which can be attributed to a decorrelation between spin-mixing and spin-conserving scattering amplitudes. To treat the total effect of a disordered domain wall on the conductance of a nanowire, we extend the scattering matrix approach to incorporate the regions adjacent to the domain wall, thus providing a microscopic equivalent of the circuit model studied for a ballistic wall. It is found that scattering in the adjacent regions leads to an increase in domain wall magnetoconductance as compared to the effect found by including only the scattering inside the wall. This increase is most dramatic in the limit of narrow walls, but is also significant in the limit of wide walls. Finally, we apply our model to calculate the spin-transfer torque exerted by a spin-polarized current on a domain wall. Within the circuit model we find expressions for the spin-transfer torque and corresponding domain wall velocity, ignoring pinning effects.


Recent advances in persistent memory (PM) enable fast, byte-addressable main memory that maintains its state across power cycling events. To survive power outages and prevent inconsistent application state, current approaches introduce persistent logs and require expensive cache flushes. Thus, these solutions cause a performance penalty of up to 10x for write operations on PM. With respect to wear-out effects, and a significantly lower write performance compared to read operations, we identify this as a major flaw that impacts performance and lifetime of PM. In addition, most PM technologies are susceptible to soft-errors that cause corrupted data, which implies a high risk of a permanently inconsistent system state. In this paper, we present DNV Memory, a library for persistent memory management. For securing allocated data against power outages, multi-bit faults that bypass hardware protection and even usage violations, DNV Memory introduces reliable transactions. Additionally, it reduces writes to PM by offloading logging operations to volatile memory, while maintaining durability on demand by an early detection of upcoming power failures. We compare DNV Memory to pmemobj, a persistent object-store, and show that our system only causes a moderate overhead. In fact, our benchmark results indicate that DNV Memory is even faster than pmemobj for transactions of moderate size.


Hamilton and Pitt (2011, p. 598) describe how literacy has been used by the UK government as 'one of the key indicators of social exclusion' and as such it would seem a reasonable assumption that adult education should aim to foster an inclusive society. Using a definition of social inclusion based on 'enabling people or communities to fully participate in society' (Charity Commission, 2001, p. 2) this paper explores the extent to which adult literacy education is aimed at increasing the social inclusion of its learners. It examines the relationship between adult literacy and social inclusion as it is currently perceived in current UK policy, in international literacy surveys and by adult literacy teachers and their learners.
UK policy on adult literacy education over a number of decades has already been the subject of considerable analysis, with strong discourses of employability, economic prosperity and functionalism identified within policy documents relating to the earlier Skills for Life initiative and Functional Skills qualifications (Taylor, 2008; Burgess and Hamilton, 2011). A 'human resource' model of literacy (Hamilton, 2012, p.169) has been recognised, for example, which views literacy 'as a commodity to be exchanged within the global market place' and links it firmly with economic success and prosperity. Concerns for standardisation and measurement have also been highlighted in analyses of literacy education policy. More recently, analysis of current policy for literacy education in England and Wales and its lack of specific provision for adult learners has identified a much stronger focus on younger learners and the unemployed, and presents notions of literacy that are focused to an even greater extent on the need to achieve qualifications in order to find and sustain employment (Allatt, 2016). While acknowledging that employability and economic prosperity may be important factors in social inclusion, the paper identifies a tension between the narrow focus of policy on employability and functionalism and the perceptions of adult literacy teachers and their learners, whose views encompass a broader range of factors relating to literacy education and social inclusion, including community participation and social life, avoiding isolation, involvement in digital environments and the ability of individuals to make informed choices about their futures.
The paper draws on data from Critical Discourse Analysis of UK policy documents, interviews with literacy teachers and discussions with adult literacy learners. Notions of adult literacy presented by international surveys are also considered. The paper argues that a greater sense of adult literacy education being about social inclusion, along with a broader notion of inclusion itself, emerges from the views of practitioners and their learners than in the policy documents, which appear to have a much narrower focus on literacy education as a means of younger learners gaining and maintaining employment.


We demonstrate electrical properties of rare earth (RE)-doped HfO2 and ZrO2 for application as higher permittivity (k) dielectrics in logic and memory devices. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show that Dy, Er, and Gd doping stabilizes the higher-k tetragonal phase rather than the lower-k monoclinic phase. This preferred tetragonal phase results in a k~30. Initial electrical results show ~3 nm higher-k enables an equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 0.93 nm. Alternatively, ~7nm higher-k reduces leakage currents 1000x relative to HfO2 achieving <10-8 A/cm2 at an EOT of 2 nm. Capacitance-voltage (C-V) data show increasing amounts of RE dopants shift flatband voltage (Vft) in the negative direction vs. pure HfO2.


Muriel Rukeyser held a visionary belief in the human capacity to create social change through language. She earned an international reputation as a powerful voice against enforced silences of all kind, against the violence of war, poverty, and racism. Her eloquent poetry of witness - of the Scottsboro Nine, the Spanish Civil War, the poisoning of the Gauley Bridge laborers - split the darkness covering a shameful world. In addition to the complete texts of her twelve previously published books, this volume also features new poems discovered by the editors; Rukeyser's translations, including the first English translations of Octavio Paz's work; early work by Rukeyser not previously published in book form; and the controversial book-length poem "Wake Island". An introduction by the editors traces Rukeyser's life and literary reputation and complements discerning annotations and textual notes to the poems.


This paper examined the role of perceived social norms in relation to people's attitudes and behavioral intentions, specifically in regards to the false consensus effect (FCE). People are prone to numerous biases in judgments about peers' beliefs, including overestimating support for their own position (i.e., false consensus). These misperceptions can then shape people's beliefs and guide their behavior. This series of studies assessed the influence of this type of misperception on attitudes and behavioral intentions regarding controversial social issues. Study 1 demonstrated that people displayed false consensus for current social issues. Alterations in wording and order of presentation did not affect the findings. Study 2 showed that this bias subsequently predicts behavioral intentions in a modified test of the theory of reasoned action. Study 3 reduced the false consensus effect by exposing participants to information supporting both sides of social issues. Recommendations for interventions that effectively change and promote beneficial social norms are discussed.


: Tracking of marine animals has increased exponentially in the past decade, and the resulting data could lead to an in-depth understanding of the causes and consequences of movement in the ocean. However, most common marine tracking systems are associated with large measurement errors. Accounting for these errors requires the use of hierarchical models, which are often difficult to fit to data. Using 3 case studies, we demonstrate that Template Model Builder (TMB), a new R package, is an accurate, efficient and flexible framework for modelling movement data. First, to demonstrate that TMB is as accurate but 30 times faster than bsam, a popular R package used to apply state-space models to Argos data, we modelled polar bear Ursus maritimus Argos data and compared the locations estimated by the models to GPS locations of these same bears. Second, to demonstrate how TMB's gain in efficiency and frequentist framework facilitate model comparison, we developed models with different error structures and compared them to find the most effective model for light-based geolocations of rhinoceros auklets Cerorhinca monocerata . Finally, to maximize efficiency through TMB's use of the Laplace approximation of the marginal likelihood, we modelled behavioural changes with continuous rather than discrete states. This new model directly accounts for the irregular sampling intervals characteristic of Fast-loc-GPS data of grey seals Halichoerus grypus . Using real and simulated data, we show that TMB is a fast and powerful tool for modelling marine movement data. We discuss how TMB's potential reaches beyond marine movement studies.


Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)) – Stellenbosch University, 2008.%%%%Conventional immunity tests are both time consuming and costly. There is
thus a reasonable interest in relatively quick, but accurate and cost
effective, in-house pre-compliance test techniques within an engineering
design-house. This thesis provides information on the equivalence between
in-house and conventional immunity test techniques.
Three techniques were evaluated, namely: 1. E-field radiation with a log
periodic antenna (conventional test technique); 2 E-field radiation with an inhouse
designed and constructed modified TEM cell (in-house test
technique); 3. Current injection using a complete off the shelf EMCO current
probe device (in-house test technique).
After the transfer data of the EMCO probe was verified, the modified TEM
cell design, construction and equivalent measurement tests were
performed. These tests revealed that within the respective bandwidth of
interest, the devices produced results that are equivalent to each other
within 0.9dB. Hence equivalence between in-house and conventional test
techniques is possible.


The indications for GEA grafting may expand due to increased coronary bypass demand and superior patency. The utilization of the right GEA as an alternative conduit may become a future trend for complex CABG patient populations. Nurses must document more cases and conduct more research to guide future nursing actions.


The third way is commonly held to mean a compromise between 'old' Labour and the New Right: social justice via free market mechanisms and practices. However, before this use of the term, now Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was using the term to describe a compromise between different factions of the Left. This article explores this interpretation of the third way by examining the context - an analysis of the Independent Labour Party's living wage proposal of the 1920s - in which Brown used the term and the implications that it has for understanding New Labour's approach to making work pay


Inspired by compressive sensing principles, we propose novel error control coding techniques for
communication systems. The information bits are encoded in the support and the non-zero entries of a
sparse signal. By selecting a dictionary matrix with suitable dimensions, the codeword for transmission
is obtained by multiplying the dictionary matrix with the sparse signal. Specifically, the codewords are
obtained from the sparse linear combinations of the columns of the dictionary matrix. At the decoder, we
employ variations of greedy sparse signal recovery algorithms. Using Gold code sequences and mutually
unbiased bases from quantum information theory as dictionary matrices, we study the block error rate
(BLER) performance of the proposed scheme in the AWGN channel. Our results show that the proposed
scheme has a comparable and competitive performance with respect to the several widely used linear
codes, for very small to moderate block lengths. In addition, our coding scheme extends straightforwardly
to multi-user scenarios such as multiple access channel, broadcast channel, and interference channel.
In these multi-user channels, if the users are grouped such that they have similar channel gains and
noise levels, the overall BLER performance of our proposed scheme will coincide with an equivalent
single-user scenario.


We provide an alternative proof for a known result stating that Ω(k) queries are needed to test k-sparse linear Boolean functions. Similar to the approach of Blais and Kane (2012), we reduce the proof to the analysis of Hamming weights of vectors in a ne subspaces of the Boolean hypercube. However, we derive our proof from a general result by Linial and Samorodnitsky (2002) that upper bounds the number of vectors with the same Hamming weight in every large a ne subspace of the Boolean hypercube. Our line of argument is reminiscent of a technique that is common in communication complexity, and it allows us to derive the lower bound from Linial and Samorodnitsky's result quite easily. We publish this proof as a self-contained excerpt from a broader work (2014), since it might be of independent interest. In the other work we also extend the result to an Ω(s) lower bound for testing s-sparse polynomials of degree d, for any d ∈ N.


Seasonal haul-out patterns and diet of individually marked leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) were investigated at Bird Island, South Georgia during the 1983–96 winters. A total of 2956 leopard seal sightings were made, and 121 seals were tagged during the study, mainly between 1993 and 1996. Photographs of scars and pelage patterns were also used to identify a subset of these individuals across years, which provided no evidence of tag loss between or within years. Leopard seals were observed between April and November; the mean time between the first and last sightings in each year was 208 d (s d ± 48). Between 1993–96, eight seals were resident around the island for more than 100 d, and the longest recorded residence was 130 d. The proportion of tagged seals resighted was 0.35 and 0.17 in 1995 and 1996 respectively. Based on estimates of body length, <5% of the seals were juveniles (0–1 years) and >70% were not sexually mature. There was considerable inter-annual variation in abundance, with a maximum of 502 sightings during 1994, compared with a minimum of 21 during 1986 and 1989. Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) were the main prey item (58% of kills observed and 53% of scats). Other items included penguins (28% of kills observed and 20% of scats) and fish (24% of scats). Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) and seabirds other than penguins were also present in the diet in small quantities.


Employment Preparation Programmes (EPPs) are not part of the Special Education Integrated Programme (SEIP) curriculum in Malaysia, and no specific operational guidance is provided to schools regarding them. EPPs are, however, currently performed in a non-uniform way in some schools. This study concerns the early establishment of EPPs in the SEIP in Malaysia. Within the context of the study it is important to note that the partnership programme between schools and outside collaborators is not yet fully established in all secondary schools in Malaysia as stipulated in the Malaysian Education Blueprint (2013-2025). This study aims to explore the implementation of EPPs; delineate the hindrances for special educators, teachers and heads of departments; and, identify the areas of improvement needed to establish vocational educational programmes as early as possible to assist special needs learners towards an independent life through employability. In order to achieve these aims a qualitative study using case study design has been carried out. Semi-structured interviews of Special Education Teachers and Department Heads were undertaken as the main method to elicit data from a purposive sample of fifteen EPP participants. Data was also collected about special needs learners' activities and other relevant emerging themes using an observational method in a real-life setting that included two observations in each EPP at each of the five schools, making 20 observation sessions in total. Relevant documents including official documents from Ministry of Education, modules outlines were also collected from the respective schools and subsequently subject to documentary analysis. To enhance the trustworthiness of the findings, data was triangulated and analysed in light of the Malaysian Education Blueprint along with other previous literature. Findings indicated that leadership and management; academic background knowledge and mastering vocational skills; the social and physical environment; and, collaboration and coordination play an important role in harnessing the potential of special needs learners. The contribution to knowledge of this study is the formation of a framework to clarify the issues impeding effective the implementation of Employment Preparation Programme, and the establishment of key priorities within that implementation effort. Overall, it is argued that this study exemplifies how important it is that the implementation of EPP needs to become an integral part of schools as organisations. Key words: Employment Preparation Programmes, Special Education Integrated Programme, Special educators, Special needs learners.


Since the 1970s Dara Birnbaum has been studying and making art about mass media. Her videos and installations often focus on the way we look at political events and how we are influenced and manipulated by images, television, and the media in general. In pieces such as Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman,A" Birnbaum studied the language of television to explode the stereotypes of a comic book heroine. Her Translation of FaustA" trilogy re-imagines Wagner's heroine, Marguerite, through video images and visual motifs. In the installation Hostage,A" Birnbaum uses news footage and found objects to tell the horrific story of the abduction and murder of a German businessman by a militant faction. This book combines photographs of these and other works with fascinating dialogues between Birnbaum and the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist as well as numerous insightful critical essays. Including never-before-released images from the artist's personal archives and bringing together early and recent works, this book is the most comprehensive resource available on this important figure in contemporary art.


Abstract Bottom sediments from thirteen transects sampled mainly at depth contours of 30, 100, and 200 m along the western continental margin of India, falling in two offshore sectors from Dwaraka to Goa and Cape Comorin to Goa, were analyzed for calcium carbonate, major elements in silicate fraction, trace and rare earth elements in the bulk fraction, and carbon and nitrogen isotopes in organic matter to understand the provenance of sediments, weathering patterns in the source areas, and nature of organic matter. Major elements such as Si, Ti, Mg, and discrimination plots involving alkalies and silica have shown a distinct north–south provinciality, with the source signatures pointing at Deccan basalt for sediments in the north (from Dwaraka to Goa) and gneisses and granulites of South India in the south. Shale-normalized REE patterns and REE content suggest additional local sources mainly in the southwest coast of India. Degree of alteration determined using Chemical Index of Alteration (CIA), Plagioclase Index of Alteration (PIA), and A-CN-K plots have suggested that the sediments are moderately weathered despite the intense orographic rainfall in the source area. Variability in degree of chemical weathering is seen with the change in provenance. In general, the sediments north of Goa with a provenance of Deccan basalts show a higher chemical weathering index. Corg/N molar ratios are mostly between 10 and 12 (minimum and maximum being 6.9 and 14 respectively), which are closer to values for marine organic matter. This is corroborated by marine δ13C values (−18.2 to −21.6‰). While they broadly fall within the marine values, heavier values are seen in northern transects off Porbandar and Dwaraka, where the sediments have a provenance different from those in the south. This could be due to a higher contribution from C4-type vegetation in the north, consistent with heavier δ13C values in terrestrial plants in source regions. Heavier δ15N values are observed for the northern transects (north of Ratnagiri), which is supported by the intense denitrification in the northern Arabian Sea.


The current international monetary system (IMS) is fragile because the dollar standard is rapidly deteriorating. The dual role the dollar as the dominant international money and national money cannot be easily reconciled because the US monetary authorities face a conflict between pursuing domestic objectives of employment and inflation and maintaining the international public good of a stable money. To strengthen the IMS, China has advocated the revitalization of the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). But SDRs are neither money nor a claim on any international institution; are issued exogenously without any consideration to countries' financing needs; and can activate international monies only though bilateral transactions. The historical record of SDRs as international reserves is altogether unimpressive. We propose instead the creation of a supernational bank money (SBM) within the institutional setting of a clearing union. This union would be a full-fledged agreement by participating central banks on specific rules of the game, such as size and duration of overdrafts, designation of countries that would have to bear the burden of external adjustment, and coordination of monetary policies objectives and at expense of the maintenance of the international public good. We also discuss structural changes that would make SDRs converge to SBMs.


This paper uses confidential supervisory information for a large random sample of checking accounts at a small number of large banks to examine the costs associated with checking account ownership and the determinants of involuntary account closure. We find that average monthly checking account fees incurred by our sample are around $9, but these fees are very unevenly distributed across account holders. Accounts that were opted in to the standard overdraft coverage of debit-card or ATM transactions tended to have much higher account fees than accounts that were not opted in. Much of the variation in account fees reflects fees associated with having insufficient funds to cover transactions (NSF-related fees). Multivariate tests confirm that account balances and transaction activity explain much of the variation in fees. Controlling for account-related factors, we also find differences in fees that are associated with census-tract characteristics. Our tests indicate that higher account fees or a lack of account activity are important factors associated with a higher likelihood of involuntary account closure. New accounts also have a very high closure risk. However, we again find associations between census-tract characteristics and the likelihood of involuntary account closure. The tract characteristics that are associated with higher account fees or involuntary account closure are similar to the demographic characteristics of households that tend to be unbanked or underbanked. Hence, our findings can help to explain why some households turn to nonbank sources of transaction or liquidity-credit services.


We provide an in-depth treatment of the various mechanisms by which an incident light beam can produce an intensity- or flux-dependent change in the refractive index and absorption coefficient of different materials. Whenever possible, the mechanisms are initially traced to single-atom and -molecule effects in order to provide physical understanding. Representative values are given for the various mechanisms. Nine different mechanisms are discussed, starting with the Kerr effect due to atoms and/or molecules with discrete states, including organic materials such as molecules and conjugated polymers. Simplified two and/or three-level models provide useful information, and these are summarized. The nonlinear optics of semiconductors is reviewed for both bulk and quantum-confined semiconductors, focusing on the most common types II–VI and III–V. Also discussed in some detail are the different nonlinear mechanisms that occur in liquid crystals and photorefractive media. Additional nonlinear material systems and mechanisms such as glasses, molecular reorientation of single molecules, the electrostrictive effect, the nuclear effect (vibrational contributions), cascading, and the ever-present thermal effects are quantified, and representative tables of values are given.


IMPORTANCE
Readmissions are costly for Medicare and are associated with poor patient outcomes.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether two domains relevant to acute occupational therapy practice-self-care status and social factors-were associated with readmissions for Medicare patients in the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP).

DESIGN
Cross-sectional, retrospective study.

SETTING
Single academic medical center.

PARTICIPANTS
Medicare inpatients with a diagnosis included in the HRRP (N = 17,618). Outcomes and Measures: Three logistic regression models were estimated to examine the associations among (1) self-care status and 30-day readmission, (2) social support and 30-day readmission, and (3) housing situation and 30-day readmission. Subgroup analyses were conducted for the individual HRRP diagnoses.

RESULTS
No associations were found between acute self-care status, social support, or housing situation and 30-day readmission when all HRRP diagnoses were examined together. However, higher levels of independence with self-care were significantly associated with reduced odds of readmission for patients with pneumonia.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The findings for patients with pneumonia are consistent with those of other studies done in the acute care setting. Deficiencies in acute occupational therapy documentation may have affected the findings for the other HRRP diagnoses. What This Article Adds: This study is the first to examine the association between acute self-care status (as documented by acute care occupational therapy practitioners) and readmission.


— The first Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrora- diometer (MODIS) instrument is planned for launch by NASA in 1998. This instrument will provide a new and improved capability for terrestrial satellite remote sensing aimed at meeting the needs of global change research. The MODIS standard products will provide new and improved tools for moderate resolution land surface monitoring. These higher order data products have been designed to remove the burden of certain common types of data processing from the user community and meet the more general needs of global-to-regional monitoring, modeling, and assessment. The near-daily coverage of moderate resolution data from MODIS, coupled with the planned increase in high-resolution sampling from Landsat 7, will provide a powerful combination of observations. The full potential of MODIS will be realized once a stable and well-calibrated time-series of multispectral data has been established. In this paper the proposed MODIS standard products for land applications are described along with the current plans for data quality assessment and product validation.


Socio-economically disadvantaged and ethnic minorities are affected by a disproportionately high exposure to environmental pollution. Yet, it is unclear if selective migration causes this disproportionate exposure experienced by low-income and minority households. The study uses longitudinal data from the German SocioEconomic Panel to investigate the process of selective migration and its connection to the perceived exposure to air pollution in Germany. Consistent with the selective migration argument, movers experience a decrease in exposure according to their income, whiles stationary households do not experience a reductive effect due to income. Furthermore, the moving returns differ by minority status. While native German households experience less exposure to pollution when moving to a new place of residence, minority households do not. Additional analyses show that this minority effect cannot be explained by socio-economic differences, but completely vanishes in the second immigrant generation.


BACKGROUND
Laparoscopic-assisted colectomy (LAC) has gained acceptance for the treatment of colon cancer. However, long-term outcomes of LAC have not been examined at the national level outside of experienced centers.

OBJECTIVE
To compare use and outcomes of LAC and open colectomy (OC).

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
National Cancer Data Base.

PATIENTS
Patients who underwent LAC (n = 11 038) and OC (n = 231 381) for nonmetastatic colon cancer (1998-2002).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Regression methods were used to assess use and outcomes of LAC compared with OC.

RESULTS
Laparoscopic-assisted colectomy use increased from 3.8% in 1998 to 5.2% in 2002 (P < .001). Patients were significantly more likely to undergo LAC if they were younger than 75 years, had private insurance, lived in higher-income areas, had stage I cancer, had descending and/or sigmoid cancers, or were treated at National Cancer Institute-designated hospitals. Compared with those undergoing OC, patents undergoing LAC had 12 or more nodes examined less frequently (P < .001), similar perioperative mortality and recurrence rates, and higher 5-year survival rates (64.1% vs 58.5%, P < .001). After adjusting for patient, tumor, treatment, and hospital factors, 5-year survival was significantly better after LAC compared with OC for stage I and II but not for stage III cancer. Highest-volume centers had comparable short- and long-term LAC outcomes compared with lowest-volume hospitals, except highest-volume centers had significantly higher lymph node counts (median, 12 vs 8 nodes; P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS
Laparoscopic-assisted colectomy and OC outcomes are generally comparable in the population. However, survival was better after an LAC than after an OC in select patients.


In real-world urban logistics operations, changes to the routes and tasks occur in response to dynamic events. To ensure customers' demands are met, planners need to make these changes quickly (sometimes instantaneously). This paper proposes the formulation of a dynamic vehicle routing problem with time windows and both known and stochastic customers as a route-based Markov Decision Process. We propose a solution approach that combines Deep Reinforcement Learning (specifically neural networks-based Temporal-Difference learning with experience replay) to approximate the value function and a routing heuristic based on Simulated Annealing, called DRLSA. Our approach enables optimized re-routing decision to be generated almost instantaneously. Furthermore, to exploit the structure of this problem, we propose a state representation based on the total cost of the remaining routes of the vehicles. We show that the cost of the remaining routes of vehicles can serve as proxy to the sequence of the routes and time window requirements. DRLSA is evaluated against the commonly used Approximate Value Iteration (AVI) and Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA). Our experiment results show that DRLSA can achieve on average, 10% improvement over myopic, outperforming AVI and MSA even with small training episodes on problems with degree of dynamism above 0.5.


We recently proposed that the star-forming potential of dense molecular clouds in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ, i.e. the central few 100 pc) of the Milky Way is intimately linked to their orbital dynamics, potentially giving rise to an absolute-time sequence of star-forming clouds. In this paper, we present an orbital model for the gas stream(s) observed in the CMZ. The model is obtained by integrating orbits in the empirically constrained gravitational potential and represents a good fit (χ2red=2.0) to the observed position–velocity distribution of dense (n > several 103 cm-3) gas, reproducing all of its key properties. The orbit is also consistent with observational constraints not included in the fitting process, such as the 3D space velocities of Sgr B2 and the Arches and Quintuplet clusters. It differs from previous, parametric models in several respects: (1) the orbit is open rather than closed due to the extended mass distribution in the CMZ, (2) its orbital velocity (100–200 km s-1) is twice as high as in previous models, and (3) Sgr A* coincides with the focus of the (eccentric) orbit rather than being offset. Our orbital solution supports the recently proposed scenario in which the dust ridge between G0.253+0.016 ('the Brick') and Sgr B2 represents an absolute-time sequence of star-forming clouds, of which the condensation was triggered by the tidal compression during their most recent pericentre passage. We position the clouds on a common timeline and find that their pericentre passages occurred 0.30–0.74 Myr ago. Given their short free-fall times (tff ∼ 0.34 Myr), the quiescent cloud G0.253+0.016 and the vigorously star-forming complex Sgr B2 are separated by a single free-fall time of evolution, implying that star formation proceeds rapidly once collapse has been initiated. We provide the complete orbital solution, as well as several quantitative predictions of our model (e.g. proper motions and the positions of star formation 'hotspots'). The paper is concluded with a discussion of the assumptions and possible caveats, as well as the position of the model in the Galactic context, highlighting its relation to large-scale gas accretion, the dynamics of the bar, the x2 orbital family, and the origin of the Arches and Quintuplet clusters.


This paper provides a descriptive account of the growing landscape of school choice in Canada through a comparative analysis of funding and student enrolment in the public, independent and home-based education sectors in each province. Given that the provinces have responsibility for K-12 education, the mixture of public, independent and home school education varies rather widely by province, as does the level of funding and regulation.  Delivery and funding of public education in Canada has long prioritized limited linguistic and religious pluralism, providing various options for English or French, and Catholic or Protestant alternatives to qualified parents. More recently growing numbers of parents have been seeking more options for their children's education. This has fueled slow but steady growth in independent schools and home schooling.


The heterogeneous wireless networking environment determined by the latest developments in wireless access technologies promises a high level of communication resources for mobile
computational devices. Although the communication resources provided, especially referring to bandwidth, enable multimedia streaming to mobile users, maintaining a high user perceived quality is still a challenging task. The main factors which affect quality in multimedia streaming over wireless networks are mainly the error-prone nature of the wireless channels and the user mobility. These factors determine a high level of dynamics of wireless communication resources, namely variations in throughput and packet loss as well as network availability and delays in delivering the data packets. Under these conditions maintaining a high level of quality, as perceived by the user, requires a quality oriented mobility management scheme. Consequently we propose the Smooth Adaptive Soft-Handover Algorithm, a novel quality oriented handover management scheme which unlike other similar solutions, smoothly transfer the data traffic from one network to another using multiple simultaneous connections. To estimate the capacity of each connection the novel Quality of Multimedia Streaming (QMS) metric is proposed. The QMS metric aims at offering maximum flexibility and efficiency allowing the applications to fine tune the behavior of the handover algorithm. The current simulation-based performance evaluation clearly shows the better
performance of the proposed Smooth Adaptive Soft-Handover Algorithm as compared with other handover solutions. The evaluation was performed in various scenarios including
multiple mobile hosts performing handover simultaneously, wireless networks with variable overlapping areas, and various network congestion levels.


Holarctic mires are systems of great ecological value and limited alpine distribution. Their southernmost European boundary borders the Mediterranean region. Understanding how environmental factors influence the plant community distribution and its response to disturbances, especially in the water regime, is a key step for their management and conservation. Here, we report our study of the main ecological gradients that determine the distribution of different plant community types in the Trescuro mire system and their response to variations in the environmental conditions such as summer drought. We set up 30 sampling points across the vegetation mosaic where pH, electrical conductivity, water table depth, and ion concentration were recorded during the 2014 and 2015 summers. The results revealed that variation in the water table level is what most drives the vegetation distribution at the local scale, followed by the ion concentration. Soligenous communities, which are highly dependent on water run‐off, were the most affected by the drought event in 2015. Because these communities are generally situated in the marginal parts of mire systems, summer drought periods may facilitate invasion by trees into the areas they occupy, which may eventually lead to a reduction of mire area. This study contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of these unique and complex systems through elucidating the relationship between the vegetation and climatic variations.


The effect of dietary methionine deficiency was studied in broiler chicks. Graded levels of methionine: 0.25, 0.32, 0.39 and 0.46% in semipurified, soybean meal-corn starch diets were used as treatments. Food intake, body weights and body components were determined. Results show that a moderate methionine deficiency (0.32 and 0.39%) had no effect on growth and energy metabolism expressed as metabolizable energy, productive energy, heat production and tissue gains. Increased food intake in these two groups was reflected not as increased weight gain, but as greater quantities of tissue fat. The experimental group with severe methionine deficiency (0.25%) showed depressed body weight gain, food intake and efficiency of food utilization, with some increase in heat production. Therefore, in general, two types of nutritional responses occurred in broilers, based upon the severity of the methionine deficiency.


In the present study, 78 mapped simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers representing 11 linkage groups of adzuki bean were evaluated for transferability to  mungbean and related Vigna spp . 41 markers amplified characteristic bands in at least one Vigna species. The transferability percentage across the genotypes ranged from 60.97 to 92.6% with 87.8% in Vigna radiata and Vigna mungo , 62.2% in Vigna unguiculata, 91.8% in Vigna umbellata , 78% in Vigna mungo var. sylvestris and 80% in Vigna trilobata, respectively. Five major clusters were observed using unweighted pair group method with an arithmetic mean (UPGMA) with each cluster representing a particular Vigna species. We have successfully utilized adzuki bean SSRs in amplifying microsatellite sequences in Vigna species and inferring phylogenetic relationships by correlating the rate of transfer among them. The polymorphic SSR markers identified in this study would be useful in the analysis of genetic diversity, gene mapping and other aspects of genetic studies in mungbean and related species. Key words : Adzuki bean, simple sequence repeat (SSR), inter-genomic marker transferability, genetic diversity, mungbean, Vigna spp.


In the wake of the 1867 Rising –a failed attempt to establish an Irish Republic by force –a ship named the Erin's Hope delivered to Ireland a number of Irish-American officers whose objective was to continue the fight. They were arrested immediately, and despite their protestations, charged as British subjects with treason-felony against the Queen. This paper illuminates their plight, the manner in which they attempted to reframe their predicament, and how the UK and the US responded legislatively to such troublesome mobility during a period when Ireland was governed in a draconian fashion and Irish nationalism was stronger amongst the Diaspora overseas. This case study is considered as historical evidence not only of how such concepts as subjecthood, citizenship, expatriation and naturalization were reconfigured in an era of increased mobility, but also of how Irishness came to be determined by descent, the latter of which is a legacy of colonialism in need of redress in the postcolonial present.


Abstract.
 Moroccodiscus smithi represents a new cyclocystoid genus and species based on moldic specimens from the Middle Ordovician Taddrist Formation (Darriwilian) of SE Morocco. This represents the earliest articulated member of the Cyclocystoidea and is the first complete cyclocystoid described from the Ordovician of Gondwana, as well as the first cyclocystoid ever recorded from Africa. The anatomy and morphology of this new species were studied using a combination of conventional paleontological methods and nondestructive X-ray computed tomography. Because Moroccodiscus differs from other cyclocystoids, in particular by lacking cupules attached to the marginal ossicles, it is assigned to the new family Moroccodiscidae. This new taxon illustrates the relatively poorly known early diversification of these enigmatic extinct echinoderms and sheds light on the mode of life of cyclocystoids, including injuries to plate circlets during early ontogeny and folding of these disk-like specimens at the time of death. The overall thecal shape was very similar in cyclocystoids and many domal edrioasteroids, probably because they were both sessile or attached, benthic, suspension feeders. However, many oral surface, ambulacral, and marginal ring features had become very different, indicating that these two groups had either converged because of similar life modes or were only distantly related sister groups.


This thesis provides a powerful general-purpose proof technique for the verification of systems, whether finite or infinite. It extends the idea of finite local model-checking, which was introduced by Stirling and Walker: rather than traversing the entire state space of a model, as is done for model-checking in the sense of Emerson, Clarke et al. (checking whether a (finite) model satisfies a formula), local model-checking asks whether a particular state satisfies a formula, and only explores the nearby states far enough to answer that question. The technique used was a tableau method, constructing a tableau according to the formula and the local structure of the model. This tableau technique is here generalized to the infinite case by considering sets of states, rather than single states; because the logic used, the propositional modal mu-calculus, separates simple modal and boolean connectives from powerful fix-point operators (which make the logic more expressive than many other temporal logics), it is possible to give a relatively straightforward set of rules for constructing a tableau. Much of the subtlety is removed from the tableau itself, and put into a relation on the state space defined by the tableau-the success of the tableau then depends on the well-foundedness of this relation. This development occupies the second and third chapters: the second considers the modal mu-calculus, and explains its power, while the third develops the tableau technique itself The generalized tableau technique is exhibited on Petri nets, and various standard notions from net theory are shown to play a part in the use of the technique on nets-in particular, the invariant calculus has a major role. The requirement for a finite presentation of tableaux for infinite systems raises the question of the expressive power of the mu-calculus. This is studied in some detail, and it is shown that on reasonably powerful models of computation, such as Petri nets, the mu-calculus can express properties that are not merely undecidable, but not even arithmetical. The concluding chapter discusses some of the many questions still to be answered, such as the incorporation of formal reasoning within the tableau system, and the power required of such reasoning.


Sea ice is a major constraint of fishery performance in the Southern Ocean seasonal sea ice
zone. We use sea ice concentration data from 2002-2017 that cover the wider Weddell Sea to
establish statistical models of (i) accessibility, i.e. the probability that a particular area is
navigable by fishery vessels at a given time, and of (ii) repeated accessibility, i.e. the probability
that a particular area is navigable by fishery vessels at a given time and again within the
following two years, as requested by CCAMLR research fishery regulations. Our findings
indicate that under the actual sea ice conditions almost 50% of the entire WSMPA Planning
Area is not suitable for fishery vessels at any time of the year, while there are high spatiotemporal
variability in repeated accessibility in particular areas such as along the ice shelf of
the eastern and south-eastern Weddell Sea. We consider our models to constitute valuable, riskreducing
planning tools in the further development of fishery research as well as of ship-bound
tourism in the wider Weddell Sea area.


There seems to be a clear consensus that graphical interfaces provide an opportunity to integrate data from complex process in a way that can greatly enhance the problem solving ability of human operators in the future. However, this consensus is maske by a proliferation of terms to express this position in the basic and applied research literatures (e.g., "integrality," "configurality," "proximity-compatibility," "visual momentum," "direct manipulation," and "ecological interface"). While the subtle nuances that distinguish among these terms are of academic interest, designers have greater concern for the general principles that might be gleaned from across the subtle distinctions. Base on a thorough review of the basic and applied literature (Bennett & Flach, In press), we argue that there is one basic characteristic of graphical representations that is critical for supporting problem solving. A good graphical display is one whose geometric (space/time) constraints reflect the functional constraints in the proess being represented. In this presentation, we will demonstrate what we mean by a "functional constraint" in a process and a "geometric constraint" in a display. We will demonstrate alternative mappings from "functional constraints" to "geometric constraints." We will also discuss the implications of these mappings for the type of processing (cognitive versus perceptual) required of the human operator.


The automation of hiring decisions is a well-studied topic in crowdsourcing. Existing hiring algorithms make a common assumption--that each worker has a level of task competence that is static and does not vary over time. In this work, we explore the question of how to hire workers who can learn over time. Using a medical time series classification task as a case study, we conducted experiments to show that workers' performance does improve with experience and that it is possible to model and predict their learning rate. Furthermore, we propose a dynamic hiring mechanism that accounts for workers' learning potential. Through both simulation and real-world crowdsourcing data, we show that our hiring procedure can lead to high-accuracy outcomes at lower cost compared to other mechanisms.


This dissertation engages an academic discourse around the Capability Approach, and how human agency and functioning is understood in North Central Nigeria. The goal is to contribute a top-down theoretical and bottom-up communitarian human development model that is complementary, and that understands how human agency and functioning is interpreted in North Central Nigeria and its application in Development Studies. This argument is built on the thesis that what people value determines their development. I explore the conversation on the applicability of Sen and Nussbaum's conceptualization of the Capability Approach. Both Sen and Nussbaum correct an earlier focus and emphasis on a quantitative measure of human development by making a case to measure 'what people value' using the instrumentality of democracy. I argue that Sen and Nussbaum's Capability Approach is incomplete/top-down requiring bottom-up practical relational approaches to concretize it. I accomplish this by bringing in Alkire and Denuelin's recommendations on the need to prioritize and show applicability of capabilities in policy using empirical data from the field.

I demonstrate that a Capability Approach focusing on what people value requires a bottom-up methodological approach in two ways. First, I demonstrate that the incompleteness of the Capability Approach is its inability to recognize the role of institutions, history and cultural realities. I argue that institutions as rules of the game and patterns of social interaction constitute the core of democratization processes but are not adequately situated. Secondly, I demonstrate that a Capability Approach that is 'fully human' has to contend with, and give the right measure of analysis to 'being' and 'doing' using empirical field data. As a response, I present primary data to show how the people define development, understand Being through self-consciousness based on belonging as value. I contend that this informs their interpretation of human agency and function. In concluding, the dissertation argues for complementarity in application of top-down functional theoretical approaches with bottom-up practical relational models.


Conduction in the central motor pathways of the brain and spinal cord was studied in 12 patients with motor neuron disease. Six healthy volunteers served as controls. Transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the cortex, cervical cord, thoracic cord and conus medullaris was used to determine motor latencies to the biceps brachii, thenar eminence and tibialis anterior muscles. Prominent, and often asymmetrical, slowing of central motor conduction was demonstrated in seven of the 12 patients; these findings were most marked in the spinal cord and in most cases correlated with clinical features of corticospinal involvement. In general it was more difficult to excite motor pathways in the central nervous system in the patients with motor neuron disease than in control subjects. Evidence of subclinical involvement of central motor pathways was found in five patients. The central lesion in motor neuron disease may thus contribute more significantly to the clinical deficit than has been realised, since the clinical signs of the upper motor neuron lesion are often masked by the more obvious lower motor neuron features.


The aggregate motion of a flock of birds, a herd of land animals, or a school of fish is a beautiful and familiar part of the natural world. But this type of complex motion is rarely seen in computer animation. This paper explores an approach based on simulation as an alternative to scripting the paths of each bird individually. The simulated flock is an elaboration of a particle system, with the simulated birds being the particles. The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is created by a distributed behavioral model much like that at work in a natural flock; the birds choose their own course. Each simulated bird is implemented as an independent actor that navigates according to its local perception of the dynamic environment, the laws of simulated physics that rule its motion, and a set of behaviors programmed into it by the "animator." The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is the result of the dense interaction of the relatively simple behaviors of the individual simulated birds.


Field experiments were conducted on a sandy soil during spring of 2009 and autumn of 2010 in southern Tunisia for evaluating the effects of two drip irrigation methods and three irrigation regimes on soil moisture and salinity, yield and water use efficiency of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.). The surface drip (SDI) and subsurface drip (SSDI) irrigation methods were used. Irrigation regimes consisted in replacement of cumulated ETc when readily available water is depleted with levels of 100% (FI100), 60% (DI60) and 30% (DI30). FI100 was considered as full irrigation while DI60 and DI30 were considered as deficit irrigation regimes. Well water with an ECi of 7.0 dS/m was used for irrigation. Findings are globally consistent between the two experiments. Results show that soil moisture content and salinity were significantly affected by irrigation treatments and methods. Higher soil moisture content and lower soil salinity were maintained with SSDI than SDI for all irrigation treatments. For both irrigation methods, higher salinity and lower moisture content in the root zone are observed under DI60 and DI30 treatments compared to FI100. Potato yields were highest over two cropping periods for the SSDI method although no significant differences were observed with the SDI. Irrigation regimes resulted in significant difference in both irrigation methods on yield and its components. Yields were highest under FI100. Compared to FI100, considerable reductions in potato yields were observed under DI60 and DI30 deficit treatments resulting from a reduction in tubers number/m² and average tuber weight and size. Water use efficiency (WUE) was found to vary significantly among irrigation methods and treatments and varied between 5.9 and 20.5 kg/m3. WUE of SSDI method had generally higher values than SDI. The lowest WUE values were observed for the FI100 treatment, while the highest values were obtained under DI30 treatment for both methods. SSDI method provides significant advantage on yield and WUE and reduces the soil salinity compared to the SDI in potato production under experimental conditions. The SSDI and FI100 irrigation techniques seem to optimize the use of saline water in potato production and to control soil salinity. Under situations of water shortage, adopting deficit irrigation treatment (DI60) could be an alternative for irrigation scheduling of spring and autumn potato under the arid conditions of southern Tunisia.


Gradual depletion of the ozone layer and consequently, increased ultraviolet
(UV) radiation on the Earth's surface induces DNA-lesions inside the genome,
thereby causing mutations. Three kinds of photoproducts are mainly formed,
namely: cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPD), pyrimidine-(6-4)-pyrimidone
dimer [(6-4)PP] and the Dewar valence isomer of (6-4)PP lesion. The formation of
these photolesions is a major cause of cell death (aging) and fatal disease like
skin cancer.
A part of this research was performed to investigate the formation and
characterization of DNA-lesions under UVC radiation. Small, fluorescent labeled
oligonucleotide hairpins (DNA, RNA and mixed DNA-RNA) were employed to
this purpose. The amount of damage was quantified using HPLC. Here, a new
method was developed, using ion-exchange SAX-column which works at
pH = 13, to measure the lesion formation in a direct way. In order to know which
lesions are formed, the irradiated hairpins were enzymatically digested. The
lesions were separated by HPLC followed by their characterization using MS/MS
fragmentation analysis.
Investigation was performed to understand the impact of the neighboring
nucleobases on the photo-reactivity of a dTpdT-dinucleotide. For this, hairpins
were prepared in various sequential contexts. Analysis of these irradiated
hairpins revealed the surprising result that the reactivity is strongly reduced
when a dTpdT dinucleotide is locked between two neighboring 2'-
deoxyguanosines, strongly implying that genomic DNA will be
inhomogeneously damaged and hence mutated under UVC radiation.

In order to account for the effect of oligonucleotide conformations (A versus B)
on the photolesions formation, DNA, RNA and mixed DNA-RNA hairpins were
irradiated. The most surprising observation is that the oligonucleotide hairpins,
possessing more A-like conformations were found to be very much resistant to
UVC degradation. RNA hairpins containing UpU dinucleotides were found to be
fully protected from being damaged. A short, dTpdT-containing DNA stretch,
embedded in an A-like RNA environment, was also found to be highly stable
under UVC light.
In the second part of this study, investigation was performed to assay the
activities of CPD-photolyase enzyme isolated from different organisms. A
synthetic cis-syn thymidine dimer with an open backbone was incorporated into
DNA. CPD-photolyases were found to recognize and split this CPDlesion,
via a cycloreversion process, into two 2'-deoxythymidine
monomers.

In order to profile the activities of photolyases and also to study photolyase
activity inside living cell, a sensitive DNA-probe, known as molecular beacon
was synthesized. The hairpin probe, which features a loop and stem
structure contains the model CPD-lesion in its loop region. The molecular beacon
(MB 1) in its closed form, is non-fluorescent due to efficient energy transfer
(FRET) from the 5'-FAM to 3'-Dabsyl.

The MB 1 was designed to undergo strand break on reaction with photolyase in
presence of light, thus separating the FAM and the Dabsyl and causing the
fluorescence of FAM to be restored. The activities of the photolyase
can be studied by monitoring the fluorescence change. Activities of CPDphotolyase
isolated from A. nidulans and A. thaliana were studied using this MBprobe.
The sensitivity of this probe was tested with wild-type cell-extract from A.
thaliana. The fishing-out of photolyase activity from this wild-type extract was
possible. Effort was made to investigate the repair process within a living cell,
using laser scanning fluorescence microscopy. The insertion of this artificial,
chemically modified DNA-substrate in the cell nucleus was achieved.


There is an age long interest that the strategic management literature requires a better understanding of how the structure and strategy of an organisation influence its corporate performance. This standing interest increases the number of studies on structure-strategy-performance trilogy, but yet the outcomes are inconclusive. This paper examines how organisational structure and strategies influence organisation's corporate performance, and investigate whether organisational structure has a moderating impact on the association between organisational performance and strategy. This is achieved by undertaking a Metaanalysis of literature on strategic management and explores the elements of organisational structure with respect to strategies and corporate performance. Based on the identified dimensions in literature, a questionnaire survey approach was adopted to obtain quantitative data from large construction organisations in South Africa. The data were analysed using correlation and regression analysis. The results revealed that organisational structure has an explanatory effect on the relationship between strategy and organisational corporate performance. The study provides a better understanding of the relationship between organisational structure, strategies and performance. It will also contribute to current discuss on the strategic planning practices in the global construction environment.


This paper analyses the e¤ects of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Free Trade Agreement (TFTA) on the South African economy using a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. Simulation results show that South Africa's economy gains from the implementation of the trade agreement with GDP rising by more than 1 per cent relative to the baseline. This win in overall economic activity occurs on the back of a term of trade increase and a surge in regional trade, which allows for higher levels of both exports and imports. The boost to exports stimulates local industries, whilst relatively cheaper imports lead to welfare gains for local consumers. Increased trade and industry activity causes higher demand for endowments, including skilled and unskilled labour, capital and land, pushing up wages and capital rentals.


Coarse woody debris (CWD) plays an important role in many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem processes. In recent years, a number of new methods have been proposed to sample CWD. Of these methods, perpendicular distance sampling (PDS) is one of the most efficient methods for estimating CWD volume in terms of both estimator variance and field effort. This study extends the results for PDS to the estimation of the surface area of CWD. The PDS estimator is also compared to two line intersect sampling (LIS) estimators, where one of the LIS estimators requires the measurement of surface area on each log and the other estimates surface area using a single measurement of log circumference at the point of intersection between the log and the line. The first estimator approximates the true surface area by assuming either a conic or parabolic stem form and requires measurements of the end diameters of each log, which is more time consuming than a single measurement. The performance of the three estimators was compared using a computer simulation. The results of the simulation indicate that, given the same number of pieces of CWD sampled at each point, equal variances can be achieved with PDS using sample sizes that range from about 10% to in excess of 100% the size of a comparable LIS estimator. When the LIS estimators were compared, the estimator that required the measurement of surface area was only about 3%-6% more efficient than the alternative estimator, but the bias associated with assuming a conic or parabolic stem form ranged from roughly 5% to 15%. We conclude that PDS will generally outperform either of the LIS estimators. Another important conclusion is that the LIS estimator based on a measured surface area is likely to have a higher mean squared error than an LIS estimator that employs a single measurement of circumference. Thus, LIS sampling strategies that require the least amount of field work will often have the smallest mean square error.


Community engagement has been acknowledged as a core function of higher education, along with research and teaching which helps in promoting economic, environmental and socio-cultural development of communities. This article explores the barriers obstructing community engagement activities in Nigerian higher education. Kwara State University, Malete, being an institution with the philosophy of community development is an interesting case in this study. Using in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews, nine professors of the university were asked to reflect on how they develop academic career through community engagement activities. From data analysis, even though there is documentary evidence on the remarkable successes been achieved and reported with regard to community engagement activities and outreaches by the professors which help to sustain professional identities and, in turn, career development. Four factors were found as a barrier obstructing the professors' participation in community engagement activities and outreaches. These were, (a) Educational gap between professors and community members, (b) lack of funds to execute community development projects, (c) time constraint due to multiple engagements, and (d) resistant to change by community members. This study discussion and recommendations are timely, as it concludes with a number of crucial issues that future on community engagement in Nigerian higher education need to address.


Estrogen imprinting is used to describe a phenomenon in which early developmental exposure to endocrine disruptors increases breast cancer risk later in adult life. We propose that long-lived, self-regenerating stem and progenitor cells are more susceptible to the exposure injury than terminally differentiated epithelial cells in the breast duct. Mammospheres, containing enriched breast progenitors, were used as an exposure system to simulate this imprinting phenomenon in vitro. Using MeDIP-chip, a methylation microarray screening method, we found that 0.5% (120 loci) of human CpG islands were hypermethylated in epithelial cells derived from estrogen-exposed progenitors compared with the non-estrogen-exposed control cells. This epigenetic event may lead to progressive silencing of tumor suppressor genes, including RUNX3, in these epithelial cells, which also occurred in primary breast tumors. Furthermore, normal tissue in close proximity to the tumor site also displayed RUNX3 hypermethylation, suggesting that this aberrant event occurs in early breast carcinogenesis. The high prevalence of estrogen-induced epigenetic changes in primary tumors and the surrounding histologically normal tissues provides the first empirical link between estrogen injury of breast stem/progenitor cells and carcinogenesis. This finding also offers a mechanistic explanation as to why a tumor suppressor gene, such as RUNX3, can be heritably silenced by epigenetic mechanisms in breast cancer.


University and college libraries often seek ways to demonstrate their impact for the academic community. This article reports the results from a two-year study that analyzed library use as demonstrated through checkouts and off-campus access to full-text resources against grade point averages (GPAs) of undergraduates and graduates at a large Midwestern library. The study found that undergraduates with a GPA above the mean university GPA used the library more than those with a GPA below the mean. There was a correlation between greater use of the library and increases in GPA between the two years—that is, as one grew, so did the other. The study also showed that students who checked out materials in one year returned for additional checkouts.


As a result of several successful applications in computer vision and image processing, sparse representation (SR) has attracted significant attention in multi-sensor image fusion. Unlike the traditional multiscale transforms (MSTs) that presume the basis functions, SR learns an over-complete dictionary from a set of training images for image fusion, and it achieves more stable and meaningful representations of the source images. By doing so, the SR-based fusion methods generally outperform the traditional MST-based image fusion methods in both subjective and objective tests. In addition, they are less susceptible to mis-registration among the source images, thus facilitating the practical applications. This survey paper proposes a systematic review of the SR-based multi-sensor image fusion literature, highlighting the pros and cons of each category of approaches. Specifically, we start by performing a theoretical investigation of the entire system from three key algorithmic aspects, (1) sparse representation models; (2) dictionary learning methods; and (3) activity levels and fusion rules. Subsequently, we show how the existing works address these scientific problems and design the appropriate fusion rules for each application, such as multi-focus image fusion and multi-modality (e.g., infrared and visible) image fusion. At last, we carry out some experiments to evaluate the impact of these three algorithmic components on the fusion performance when dealing with different applications. This article is expected to serve as a tutorial and source of reference for researchers preparing to enter the field or who desire to employ the sparse representation theory in other fields.


Background to the study
Ethical regulation in general and ethics review more specifically are perceived as challenging for researchers and have been subject to critique from both qualitative and quantitative research paradigms. Existing critique clusters around the following themes:
Bureaucracy and its impact on research. Authors here suggest that there are unacceptable delays in receiving decisions on ethics in review or that the requirements of review are excessive, unachievable and constitute a barrier to research. (Dingwall, 2006; Hammersley, 2010; Stewart et al (2008).
Dominance of quantitative research paradigms. There is perceived lack of understanding of qualitative research and quantitative 'bias' (Burrr and Reynolds (2010); Murphy and Dingwall, 2007; Hammersley, 2009, 2010). Alongside critics of the system, particularly in the social sciences, other commentators have identified the potential educative value of engaging with review systems (Wiles,2012; Guillemin and Gillam, 2004; Israel and Hay, 2006) despite acknowledging some of the (historic) limitations in relation to qualitative research paradigms.
Centrality of the informed consent requirement. This has been problematised from a range of perspectives which view it as unachievable in some methodologies, as necessary but problematic, or as an overly bureaucratic requirement which makes it informed but not necessarily genuine (O'Neill, 2003). The shortcomings of procedural consent in medicine and biomedical contexts and which also relate to consent in research ethics have been highlighted by philosophers (O'Neill 2003; Kittay, 2007; Manson and O'Neil, 2007) while sociologists have commented on the potential privileging of consent over other ethical considerations and described informed consent as an 'ethical panacea' (Corrigan, 2003). Furthermore, the importance of context in consent (Greenhough, 2007) and the need for it to be seen as an ongoing process rather than a 'on-off' event (Corrigan, 2016) has also been highlighted.
Procedure and principles. Concerns with the overly-procedural nature of review in general is criticism of the principlist approaches which inform the review process. Hammersley (2015) claims that judgements are derived in a 'quasi- logical way from given principles' (p445).

Gaps in existing research The literature review evidenced the paucity of discussion about and inquiry into how reviewers in RECs are involved in the review process. Existing accounts of review and the role of consent have not explored how reviewers' activities are carried out, where procedures and principles are enacted and where judgements about research take place. Exceptions are Hedgecoe (2008; 2009; 2012) in the United Kingdom and Laura Stark on Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) (2012 and 2013) in the United States.
Conclusion Much is claimed about the barriers and limitations which the review of ethics presents to researchers, however, there is little evidence which starts from the standpoint of committee members and explores how the work of review is accomplished in the everyday contexts in which decisions are made. Sheehan (2013) has responded to criticisms of the functioning of RECs as over-generalised and therefore inaccurate. He argues that critique requires evidence and this is not always apparent in the arguments for changes in the current system of ethics review. This research provides detailed investigation into RECs to discover how their work is achieved.
The focus of the study was NHSRECs which are 'flagged' to review studies which involved participants who may lack capacity to consent. This meant that reviewers had undertaken additional training on the Mental Capacity Act 2005.


History The ideology behind cooperative learning has been evolving and catching on in different fields since the 1920's. Social psychological research on cooperation dates back to the 1920's, but research on specific applications of cooperative learning to the classroom did not begin until the 1970's (Slavin 2). At that time, four independent groups of researchers began to develop and research cooperative learning methods in classroom settings (Slavin 3). At present, researchers all over the world are studying practical application of cooperative learning principles, and many cooperative learning methods are available (Slavin 3). If present methodologies and objectives are broken down and examined, a new theory may be unfolded that will accommodate and enhance other areas of the developing child. Methods One major approach that is accepted as an effective method of cooperative learning is the Student Teams and Achievement Divisions (STAD) format created by R. Slavin. Mary Harem and Dennis Adams describe Slavin's approach in their book, The Collaborative Dimensions of Learning. His theory has five components: 1. Class Presentation Each week new material is first presented by the teacher to the whole class in a lecture, discussion, or video technology format. 2. Teams Students are assigned to four or five member learning teams. Each team represents a cross section of the class, made up of high, average, and low-achieving students, girls and boys, students of differing ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds. Team members work together to study worksheets the teacher has made, which consist of problems and information to be mastered. 3. Quizzes After the team practices, each student takes a quiz on the material they have been studying. The quizzes assess individual achievement on the material presented and practiced in class. Group members may not help individuals on the quizzes. 4. Individual Improvement Scores A scoring system allows students to earn points for their team based on individual improvement over past performance. 5. Team Recognition Teams are recognized for high individual performance and high team scores. Social recognition such as weekly class newsletters, bulletin boards displays, or weekly class radio announcements are used as rewards for individuals and teams (Slavin, 1987). The objectives of this model advocate present ideologies that combine subject matter learning to real-life situations. For today's populations of students, academic knowledge must also connect multicultural studies with self-sufficiency and the critical skills necessary for dealing with an environment where change is the one constant (Hamms and Adams 12). This particular model's format emphasizes the learning of social skills through the studying of relevant subject matter. Teachers need enough training and practice on essential elements of cooperation to become educational engineers who can take their existing lessons, curricula and courses and structure them cooperatively (Johnson and Johnson 63). A well organized plan has been laid out for elementary instructors to follow by three individuals, Lawrence Lyman, Harvey C. Foyle, and Tara S. Azwell. Their method of implementing cooperative learning effectively is divided into eleven steps. Step 1: Choose your content. Step 2: Assign heterogeneous groups. Step 3: Teach group roles. Step 4: Assign the task. Step 5: Move into groups. Step 6: Give directions. Step 7: Monitor groups. Step 8: Provide closure. Step 9: Evaluate the process and/or product. Step 10: Maintain classroom management. Step 11: Plan for analysis, review, and modification. (Lyman, Foyle, Azwell 29036). Again, this theory subscribes to the norm ideology that dominates the literature of cooperative learning, heterogeneous groups teach life skills that are sometimes more relevant than content material. …


North-West Transportation Co. Ltd. v. Beatty (1887), 12 App. Cas. 589 (P.C.) is well known throughout the Commonwealth as a foundational decision regarding the ability of corporate directors to contract with their own corporation, and in particular their ability to vote as shareholders for the approval of such conflict-affected contracts. The background to the case reveals a young nation in which enormous numbers of immigrants were seeking to start new lives on the western prairies. Before the trans-Canada railroad was completed in 1885, and long before a full road network was in place, shipping lines on the Great Lakes provided the only feasible way to reach the continental interior (the "North-West"). The dispute in Beatty was about a contract by which one of the directors of a company, who was also its majority shareholder, sold a steamship to the company over the objections of minority shareholders. In giving its advice, the Privy Council arguably misunderstood the nature of the corporate entity involved in the case, and produced a solution that has puzzled and divided commentators and legislators ever since. This paper traces the story of the Beattys and their influence in late-19th century Canada, and examines how the dispute arose and how it was resolved by four levels of courts. It goes on to assess the decision against the principles of corporate and fiduciary law, and to show how Canadian legislators have reacted against the Privy Council's decision with the result that in modern Canadian law, shareholder approval is often necessary for certain corporate decisions, but it is never sufficient to insulate such decisions from judicial review.