Abstract The defect-free akdalaite model (fhyd6) for six-line ferrihydrite (6Fh) derived from a pair distribution function (PDF) analysis of high-energy X-ray scattering (HEXS) data was revised (model ferrifh) by Michel et al (2010) using data from a sample produced by heating two-line ferrihydrite (2Fh) at 175 °C for 8 h in the presence of citrate. We show here that the scattering pattern for this sample is similar if not the same as that for hydromaghemite, which in turn is a mixture of maghemite (γ-Fe2O3), hematite and 6Fh. As in the case of fhyd6, the PDF of ferrifh was regressed using the structure of the weakly hydrated phase akdalaite [Al10O14(OH)2] after substituting Fe for Al as a starting model. We show that the ferrifh model is implausible for the following reasons. (1) It is derived from a sample, ferrifh, that appears to be hydromaghemite, not pure 6Fh. (2) It has 20% tetrahedral Fe, a coordination that had been eliminated previously using XANES, Mössbauer, and EELS spectroscopies. (3) 75% of the Fe octahedra have shared edge lengths considerably longer than the shortest unshared edges in violation of Pauling's distortion rule. (4) Three tetrahedral Fe-O bonds are longer than three octahedral Fe-O bonds, inducing significant polyhedral distortions. And (5) the calculated composition [Fe10O14(OH)2⋅1.2H2O] disagrees with literature data on weight loss from dehydration for 6Fh. We present an alternative interpretation of the histogram of Fe-Fe distances up to 3.7 Å obtained from the PDF of the fhyd6 ferrihydrite as a mixture of local structures of goethite/akaganeite (α/β- FeOOH) and feroxyhite/hematite (δ-FeOOH/α-Fe2O3). Within this interpretation Fe only occupies octahedra that are bonded to each other by faces, edges, or double-corners. This polyhedral connectivity is confirmed experimentally by analysis of the EXAFS spectra of six-line ferrihydrites measured at room and liquid helium temperature. The Fe-Fe pairs from EXAFS data are described reasonably well by a mixture of approximately 70% feroxyhite (containing some nanohematite) and 30% akaganeite, without resorting to other phases. This set of evidence indicates that HEXS data are consistent with the Drits model for ferrihydrite (Drits et al. 1993a).


Abstract Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its receptor tyrosine kinase B (TrkB) may influence brain reserve, the ability of the brain to tolerate pathological changes without significant decline in function. Here, we explore whether a specifically vulnerable population of human neurons shows a compensatory response to the neuropathological changes of Alzheimer disease (AD) and whether that response depends on an upregulation of the BDNF pathway. We observed increased neuronal TrkB expression associated with early-stage AD pathology (Braak and Braak stages I–II) in hippocampal CA1 region samples from cognitively intact Framingham Heart Study subjects (n = 5) when compared with cognitively intact individuals with no neurofibrillary tangles (n = 4). Because BDNF/TrkB signaling affects memory formation and retention through modification of the actin cytoskeleton, we examined the expression of actin capping protein &bgr;2 (Capzb2), a marker of actin cytoskeleton reorganization. Capzb2 expression was also significantly increased in CA1 hippocampal neurons of cognitively intact subjects with early-stage AD pathology. Our data suggest that increased expression of TrkB and Capzb2 accompanies adequate brain reserve in the initial stages of AD pathology. In subsequent stages of AD, the higher levels of TrkB and Capzb2 expression achieved may not be sufficient to prevent cognitive decline.


We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the empirical study of labor supply. We discuss the implications for tax policy analysis, and we show that a failure to account for avoidance responses may lead to huge errors when predicting how tax reform affects labor supply tax revenue, and the welfare cost of taxation. In conclusion we argue that our model may explain a number of otherwise hard to understand dimensions of tax payer response.


Background Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has become a major global problem. There is an urgent need to measure the knowledge of the disease among health science students who can play an active role in pandemic control. The research was conducted to examine COVID-19 knowledge among medical and dental students in a Nepalese medical college, compare the knowledge to other studies in the literature and identify educational needs of students who may be involved in treating COVID-19 patients. Methods The cross-sectional study was performed during the third week of June among first to final year medical and dental students. As the country was in lockdown, a structured online questionnaire was used. The responses obtained were entered into IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows and the normality of the data checked using one-sample Kolmogorov Smirnov test. The demographic parameters were tabulated, and total score compared among different subgroups of participants. The frequency of different measures mentioned by respondents were also noted. Results More than half of the participants were females (59.6%). Nearly half 282 (49.8%) belonged to age group 21–23 years. The majority 415 (73.5%) were undergraduate medical and 150 (26.5%) were undergraduate dental students. The largest number of respondents, 140 (24.9%), were from the second year of study and 344 (60.9%) were from urban areas. The median total score was 20 and the interquartile range 4. The maximum possible score was 29. The scores among students belonging to different years of study were significantly different (p=0.006). Total scores were not significantly different among other subgroups. Conclusions The knowledge of the participants was good. Deficiencies in knowledge were noted in certain areas and these should be addressed through an educational intervention. One of the challenges is the rapid evolution of our knowledge about this condition, which may require regular refresher sessions. Similar studies can be undertaken in other medical colleges in the country and in nursing and pharmacy colleges.


The Hermite Normal Form is a canonical matrix analogue of Reduced Echelon Form, but involving matrices over more general rings. In this work we formalise an algorithm to compute the Hermite Normal Form of a matrix by means of elementary row operations, taking advantage of the Echelon Form AFP entry. We have proven the correctness of such an algorithm and refined it to immutable arrays. Furthermore, we have also formalised the uniqueness of the Hermite Normal Form of a matrix. Code can be exported and some examples of execution involving Z -matrices and K [ x ] -matrices are presented as well.


This Briefing Note discusses how much scope there is to raise revenue from the very rich by increasing income tax rates and assesses in detail the amount of revenue that is likely to be raised by the government's proposed reforms. It extends analysis presented in the 2009 IFS Green Budget and updates some calculations in a submission to the Mirrlees Review. It also discusses information recently released by HM Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs concerning their methodology for calculating how much revenue these reforms will raise. The Briefing Note shows that there is considerable uncertainty over the revenue that could be raised from the very rich by increasing income tax rates, both because we cannot be certain about the distribution of incomes above £100,000 and because we cannot be certain how those affected will respond to the tax increase. It goes on to discuss under what conditions the measures in PBR 2008 could yield as much revenue as the Treasury is forecasting.


Boosting is a popular ensemble algorithm that generates more powerful learners by linearly combining base models from a simpler hypothesis class. In this work, we investigate the problem of adapting batch gradient boosting for minimizing convex loss functions to online setting where the loss at each iteration is i.i.d sampled from an unknown distribution. To generalize from batch to online, we first introduce the definition of online weak learning edge with which for strongly convex and smooth loss functions, we present an algorithm, Streaming Gradient Boosting (SGB) with exponential shrinkage guarantees in the number of weak learners. We further present an adaptation of SGB to optimize non-smooth loss functions, for which we derive a O(ln N/N) convergence rate. We also show that our analysis can extend to adversarial online learning setting under a stronger assumption that the online weak learning edge will hold in adversarial setting. We finally demonstrate experimental results showing that in practice our algorithms can achieve competitive results as classic gradient boosting while using less computation.


This Article proposes a federal wind siting policy modeled on the cooperative federalism framework of the TCA's Siting Policy. Part I describes some advantages of wind energy, focusing specifically on the environmental, economic, and social benefits. This Part also discusses several technical obstacles to wind energy development, including the need to supplement wind energy with conventional energy sources and the lack of adequate transmission infrastructure. Part II assesses the current regulatory regime for the siting of wind turbines, reviewing general practices across the United States at both the state and local levels. Although a number of states have been active in providing wind siting guidance to local governments or preempting local control for large-scale wind energy facilities, a majority leave primary siting responsibility in the hands of local zoning boards. Part II then evaluates some of the most commonly raised local objections to wind siting, including concerns over aesthetics, wildlife, noise, safety, and property values. Part III presents an overview of the federal policies that impact the development of wind energy. Although numerous federal grants and tax incentives promote wind energy development, federal policies in this arena are largely uncoordinated and inefficient. Moreover, projects supported by federal dollars and regulatory policies may be unreasonably delayed or entirely prohibited by the local permitting process. Part IV proposes a federal regulatory regime for the siting of wind turbines, modeled on the TCA's Siting Policy. Specifically, this Part argues that a national wind siting regime that leaves primary siting authority in the hands of local zoning officials but places procedural and substantive constraints on the decision-making process would provide the regulatory uniformity necessary for this capital-intensive industry to fully develop, without sacrificing the benefits of local tailoring or experimentation. The Article, thus, concludes that such a national wind siting policy strikes an appropriate balance between local concerns regarding wind turbine siting and the national interest in developing wind as a renewable domestic energy source.


Introduction During Federal Fiscal Year 1994, over 20,000 persons with disabilities in the State of Texas were successfully rehabilitated using the 497 counselors of the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. Ninety-five percent (95%) of these were placed into the competitive labor market, with 76% of all served classified as being severely disabled. Client satisfaction surveys revealed that 90% of the persons receiving services were either satisfied or very satisfied with services provided. From these data, one could draw the conclusion that the federal/state Vocational Rehabilitation Program in Texas is healthy, alive, and well. But VR clients were complaining about delays in services, being placed in low-paying jobs, having their cases closed in employment status without meaningful services being provided, and bureaucratic nightmares while receiving services. Counselors providing vocational rehabilitation services were also complaining about shortages of case service funds, excessive numbers of clients, too many forms to complete, too many approvals needed, a lack of trust by management, too many codes with which to deal, and too much paperwork. Vendors of VR agencies were also asking to become more involved with the agency so that they could better plan for their role in providing services. In assessing the need to change, the Texas Rehabilitation Commission realized that the process in which a person with a disability was served was not greatly changed since the inception of the Texas General Vocational Rehabilitation Program in 1929. It was not uncommon for clients to wait up to 6 to 8 weeks to have an appointment with a vocational rehabilitation counselor. In Texas, only 10% of the eligible population with disabilities currently receive services. Consumers of services were, of course, not satisfied with these conditions. Accordingly, an executive decision was made in August 1993 to develop a new streamlined process for serving persons with disabilities and on January 1, 1994, Reengineering the Rehabilitation Process was launched within the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. About the Organization The Texas Rehabilitation Commission is one of over 200 agencies in Texas state government, ranking eleventh in size with an annual budget of $240 million and some 2,500 full-time employees. The Commission administers two major programs, the General Vocational Rehabilitation Program and the Disability Determination Services Program (DDS). The latter is 100% funded by the Social Security Administration. in Fiscal Year 1994, the Commission provided services to over 80,000 persons with disabilities in the Vocational Rehabilitation Program and to over 220,000 in the DDS Program. The Commission employs 497 vocational rehabilitation counselors who serve persons with disabilities in 147 offices across the state. Appointment of Reengineering Task Force The first step in the reengineering process was to appoint a task force for the initiative. Subscribing to the theory that persons performing the jobs are the most knowledgeable about the tasks to be performed, the Reengineering Task Force consisted of six vocational rehabilitation counselors, three rehabilitation services technicians (secretaries to VR counselors), and two area managers. Central Office staff representing Planning and Financial Services, Management Audit, Information Technology, and Program Development were also assigned. To ensure input from the consumer population, a client being served in the Vocational Rehabilitation Program was included on the task force and was paid a consultant's fee to attend each meeting. A project manager was included to develop time lines and to schedule the activities to be completed within an 18-month time frame. Reengineering Model In an effort to draw upon the experiences of others who had previously been involved in reengineering organizations, the Reengineering Task Force subscribed to the theories expressed by Hammer and Champy (1993). …


We analyze a proprietary dataset of trades by a single asset manager, comparing their price impact with that of the trades of the rest of the market. In the context of a linear propagator model we find no significant difference between the two, suggesting that both the magnitude and time dependence of impact are universal in anonymous, electronic markets. This result is important as optimal execution policies often rely on propagators calibrated on anonymous data. We also find evidence that in the wake of a trade the order flow of other market participants first adds further copy-cat trades enhancing price impact on very short time scales. The induced order flow then quickly inverts, thereby contributing to impact decay.


Nowadays, a lot of research focuses on accelerating FeII/FeIII redox cycles to increase the pseudo first-order rates of the Fenton reaction. Here, Prussian blue/titanium dioxide nanocomposites (PB/TiO2 NPs) were designed as heterogeneous photo-Fenton catalysts to increase the FeII recovery in degrading organic contaminants in water for the first time. The PB/TiO2 NPs were characterized by various analytical techniques to obtain the optimum ratio of PB and TiO2 for efficient degradation of organics. The performance of the catalysts was tested by following the removal of rhodamine B dye, salicylic acid, m-cresol, and isophorone under various conditions (pH, ratios of PB and TiO2, H2O2, and temperature). Formation of the intermediates of iron (FeII/FeIII) in the studied system using Mossbauer spectroscopy was explored for the first time and presents important insights into the relevant catalytic phenomena. The generation of ˙OH radicals in the reaction system was identified using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques. Results demonstrated that the developed PB/TiO2 NPs were stable and could degrade organic contaminants in water efficiently.


This article describes a high performance liquid chromatography method for determination of valsartan in rabbit plasma. The method was statistically optimized, developed and validated as per United States of Food and Drug Administration guidelines. The solvent deproteination technique was opted for the extraction of valsartan from rabbit plasma. Full factorial design was used for the optimization of an extraction method. The main effect of deproteinating agent, volume of deproteinating agent, speed of centrifugation and time of centrifugation was found to be significant at P<0.0001 on all the responses. After deproteinization, the drug was analyzed on a C18 column using 20 mM ammonium formate:acetonitrile (58:42 v/v) as the mobile phase with a flow rate of 0.9 ml/min. The standard calibration curve was constructed in the concentration range of 75 ng/ml to 4.0 µg/ml and linearity was found to be 0.9989. Losartan was used as the internal standard. The retention time of valsartan and the internal standard was found to be 11.394 min and 6.343 min, respectively. No interference peak was perceived. From the accuracy results, the relative error was found between 0.99 and 13.01% and relative standard deviation was between 1.43 and 12.19%. The % relative standard deviation of intraday and interday precision was found to be less than 15%. Limit of detection and limit of quantitation were found to be 22.00 and 66.67 ng/ml, respectively. From pharmacokinetic applications, the peak plasma concentration (Cmax) of valsartan oral suspension was found to be 1092.67±39.62 ng/ml at 0.67±1.24 h. The half-life and area under the curve were found to be 19.92±10.28 h and 8393.35±131.14 h ng/ml, respectively. The high performance liquid chromatography method was successfully demonstrated as rapid and sensitive which can be used an alternative for the analysis of valsartan in plasma samples.


The Pliocene-Pleistocene stages defined for the Mediterranean region are generally used as the standard chronostratigraphic units for the upper Neogene and Quaternary. The recently developed calcareous plankton bio-chronology based on results from Ocean Drilling Program Leg 107 and numerous outcrop sections provides the necessary time control for evaluating the ages and stratigraphic relationships for the various Pliocene-Pleistocene stages and their associated stratotypes. Our results indicate that the currently accepted stratotypes do not provide a continuous stratigraphic representation for all of Pliocene-early Pleistocene time. On the basis of these findings, we propose a revised chronostratigraphic scheme for this time period. A tripartite subdivision is proposed for the Pliocene Series. The Zanclean Stage is retained for the lower Pliocene, representing the interval from the Miocene/Pliocene boundary (ca. 4.93 Ma) to ca. 3.5 Ma. The middle Pliocene is represented by the Piacenzian Stage, and it incorporates strata deposited from ca. 3.5 to 2.5 Ma. None of the currently used Pliocene stages fully represents the upper Pliocene (ca. 2.5 to 1.6 Ma). As a result, late Pliocene time lacks an adequately defined chronostratigraphic unit. The Selinuntian Stage appears to be the most appropriate stage for the lower Pleistocene (ca. 1.6 to 0.8 Ma). It can be divided into three stratigraphically continuous substages (Santernian, Emilian, and Sicilian). The Calabrian Stage, which is commonly used to designate the lowest part of the Pleistocene, should be abandoned because its stratotype does not include a record of the first 500,000 yr of Pleistocene time.


In this talk, we will clarify roles of visualization techniques which are mandatory to employ a scientific method in policy-making. Currently, many countries are investing heavily in policy-making process development through the ICT for this purpose. In the policy cycle, there are many opportunities in which a scientific method can be effectively applied especially in the agenda setting. In the phase, it is important to visualize a cognitive structure in a citizen. We focus on the evaluation grid method to figure out the citizen's requirement. Once we construct the cognitive structure represented by a graph in which nodes and arcs are represented as constructs and relationships between them, respectively, we can develop a predictive cognitive model which will be useful in the agenda setting. For this purpose we employ multivariate visualization techniques which can figure out meaningful relationships in the cognitive model.


Hyper-Raman spectra for pyridine and pyridine on the surface of a tetrahedral 20 silver atom cluster are calculated using static hyperpolarizability derivatives obtained from time dependent density functional theory. The stability of the results with respect to choice of exchange-correlation functional and basis set is verified by comparison with experiment and with Raman spectra calculated for the same systems using the same methods. Calculated Raman spectra were found to match well with experiment and previous theoretical calculations. The calculated normal and surface enhanced hyper-Raman spectra closely match experimental results. The chemical enhancement factors for hyper-Raman are generally larger than for Raman (10(2)-10(4) versus 10(1)-10(2)). Integrated hyper-Raman chemical enhancement factors are presented for a set of substituted pyridines. A two-state model is developed to predict these chemical enhancement factors and this was found to work well for the majority of the molecules considered, providing a rationalization for the difference between hyper-Raman and Raman enhancement factors.


Two types of filtering failure are the well known filter divergence where errors may exceed the size of the corresponding true chaotic attractor and the much more severe catastrophic filter divergence where solutions diverge to machine infinity in finite time. In this paper, we demon- strate that these failures occur in filtering the L-96 model, a nonlinear chaotic dissipative dynamical system with the absorbing ball property and quasi-Gaussian unimodal statistics. In particular, catas- trophic filter divergence occurs in suitable parameter regimes for an ensemble Kalman filter when the noisy turbulent true solution signal is partially observed at sparse regular spatial locations. With the above documentation, the main theme of this paper is to show that we can suppress the catastrophic filter divergence with a judicious model error strategy, that is, through a suitable linear stochastic model. This result confirms that the Gaussian assumption in the Kalman filter formulation, which is violated by most ensemble Kalman filters through the nonlinearity in the model, is a necessary condition to avoid catastrophic filter divergence. In a suitable range of chaotic regimes, adding model errors is not the best strategy when the true model is known. However, we find that there are several parameter regimes where the filtering performance in the presence of model errors with the stochastic model supersedes the performance in the perfect model simulation of the best ensemble Kalman filter considered here. Secondly, we also show that the advantage of the reduced Fourier domain filtering strategy (A. Majda and M. Grote, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 1124-1129, 2007), (E. Castronovo, J. Harlim and A. Majda, J. Comput. Phys., 227(7), 3678-3714, 2008), (J. Harlim and A. Majda, J. Comput. Phys., 227(10), 5304-5341, 2008) is not simply through its numerical efficiency, but significant filtering accuracy is also gained through ignoring the correlation between the appropriate Fourier coefficients when the sparse observations are available in regular space locations.


The geographical distributions of species associated with European temperate broadleaf forests have been significantly influenced by glacial–interglacial cycles. During glacial periods, these species persisted in Mediterranean and extra-Mediterranean refugia and later, during interglacial periods, expanded northwards. The widespread saproxylic beetle Bolitophagus reticulatus depends closely on European temperate broadleaf forests. It usually develops in the tinder fungus Fomes fomentarius, a major decomposer of broadleaf-wood. We sampled B. reticulatus in sporocarps from European beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Oriental beech (Fagus orientalis) across Europe and the Caucasus region. We analysed mitochondrial gene sequences (cox1, cox2, cob) and 17 microsatellites to reconstruct the geographical distribution of glacial refugia and postglacial recolonization pathways. We found only marginal genetic differentiation of B. reticulatus, except for a significant split between populations of the Caucasus region and Europe. This indicates the existence of past refugia south of the Great Caucasus, and a contact zone with European populations in the Crimean region. Further potential refugia might have been located at the foothills of the Pyrenees and in the Balkan region. Our genetic data suggest a phalanx-wise recolonization of Europe, a reflection of the high mobility of B. reticulatus.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to offer an analysis of how two UN Conferences of Parties, COP15 in Copenhagen 2009 and COP21 in Paris 2015, were covered and debated in Swedish newspapers. Two national and two regional newspapers were selected for the study, and a qualitative frame analysis was conducted on 309 articles. A typology of frames applicable to science-related policy and climate change debates was used and its relevance for global climate summit context was discussed. Having territory in the Arctic region, indigenous populations affected by climate change measures, and political and public sensitivity to environmental issues, the climate debate has particular significance in the Swedish case. Findings indicate a trust in the role of national and supra-national governance to address climate change problems, but also that newspapers in Sweden maintained a focus on the global aspects of the two meetings, rather than framing them as surrogate battlefields for domestic politics.


It has been suggested that plants which are good colonizers will generally have either an ability to self-fertilize or a generalist pollination system. This prediction is based on the idea that these reproductive traits should confer resistance to Allee effects in founder populations and was tested using Gomphocarpus physocarpus (Asclepiadoideae; Apocynaceae), a species native to South Africa that is invasive in other parts of the world. We found no significant relationships between the size of G. physocarpus populations and various measures of pollination success (pollen deposition, pollen removal, and pollen transfer efficiency) and fruit set. A breeding system experiment showed that plants in a South African population are genetically self-incompatible and thus obligate outcrossers. Out-crossing is further enhanced by mechanical reconfiguration of removed pollinaria before the pollinia can be deposited. Self- pollination is reduced when such reconfiguration exceeds the average duration of pollinator visits to a plant. Observations suggest that a wide variety of wasp species in the genera Belonogaster and Polistes (Vespidae) are the primary pollinators. We conclude that efficient pollination of plants in small founding populations, resulting from their generalist wasp-pollination system, contributes in part to the colonizing success of G. physocarpus. The presence of similar wasps in other parts of the world has evidently facilitated the expansion of the range of this milkweed.


This report covers the Immunotherapy sessions of the 2016 Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) Oncology Days meeting, which was held on 15th–17th June 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Immunotherapy is a potential cancer treatment that uses an individual's immune system to fight the tumour. In recent years significant advances have been made in this field in the treatment of several advanced cancers. Cancer immunotherapies include monoclonal antibodies that are designed to attack a very specific part of the cancer cell and immune checkpoint inhibitors which are molecules that stimulate or block the inhibition of the immune system. Other cancer immunotherapies include vaccines and T cell infusions. This report will summarise some of the research that is going on in this field and will give us an update on where we are at present.


Discrete and continuous modes of manual control are fundamentally different: buttons select or change state, while handles persistently modulate an analog parameter. User interfaces for many electronically aided tasks afford only one of these modes when both are needed. We describe an integration of two kinds of physical interfaces (tagged objects and force feedback) that enables seamless execution of such multimodal tasks while applying the benefits of physicality; and demonstrate application scenarios with conceptual and engineering prototypes. Our emphasis is on sharing insights gained in a design case study, including expert user reactions.


In this work, we present our experience when developing the Matching Framework (MaF), a framework for matching ontologies that allows users to configure their own ontology matching algorithms and it allows developers to perform research on new complex algorithms. MaF provides numerical results instead of logic results provided by other kinds of algorithms. The framework can be configured by selecting the simple algorithms which will be used from a set of 136 basic algorithms, indicat- ing exactly how many and how these algorithms will be composed and selecting the thresholds for retrieving the most promising mappings. Output results are provided in a standard format so that they can be used in many existing tools (evaluators, media- tors, viewers, and so on) which follow this standard. The main goal of our work is not to better the existing solutions for ontology matching, but to help research new ways of combining algorithms in order to meet specific needs. In fact, the system can test more than 6 · 136! possible combinations of algorithms, but the graphical interface is designed to simplify the matching process.


In this dissertation, liquidity, price volatility and integration are investigated in European natural gas markets. Liquidity in the one-month-ahead forward market is examined using tick-by-tick data and measures from financial markets. A time-varying multivariate approach is adopted to assess correlations between trading activity, volatility and liquidity. Results support the extension of the financial market microstructure theory to physical markets and contribute towards understanding dynamics and driving forces of liquidity in energy markets. They confirm that order flow aspects asset prices and that a correlation exists between price volatility and liquidity. The main drivers of natural gas price volatility are identified using BEKK models, which are particularly suitable because they allow for volatility spillovers within markets. Asymmetries and changes in the fundamental drivers of demand, supply and inventory are considered, and expectations of the theory of storage are assessed. Results support fundamental values as main drivers of price volatility in natural gas markets and indicate greater integration between natural gas and electricity markets. Finally, the process towards the integration of European natural gas markets is investigated in the one-month-ahead and day-ahead forward markets. Cointegration procedures are adopted, which are robust to outliers, seasonalities, leptokurtosis and GARCH effects in the energy price time series. Results show that barriers to trade remain, which prevent full integration, mostly in day-ahead markets, and may impact competitiveness. Long-run relationships between crude oil and natural gas prices are also investigated and are not supported by data, thus highlighting increased reliance of hub pricing mechanisms to the fundamental drivers. In all, there are indications of greater exposure of hub prices to short-term dynamics in the natural gas and power sectors, which are affected by capacity allocation management and have implications for the overall efficiency of European energy sector.


Although mechanical alterations to pelvic floor ligaments, such as the cardinal and uterosacral ligaments, are one contributing factor to the development and progression of pelvic floor disorders, very little research has examined their mechanical properties. In this study, the first biaxial elastic and viscoelastic tests were performed on uterosacral and cardinal ligament complexes harvested from adult female swine. Biaxial elastic testing revealed that the ligaments undergo large strains and are anisotropic. The direction normal to the upper vagina was typically stiffer than the transverse direction. Stress relaxation tests showed that the relaxation was the same in both directions, and that more relaxation occurred when the tissue was stretched to lower initial strains. In order to describe the experimental findings, a threedimensional constitutive model based on the Pipkin-Rogers integral series was formulated and the parameters of such model were determined by fitting the model to the experimental data. In formulating the model, it was assumed that the tissues consist of a ground substance with two embedded families of fibers oriented in two directions and that the ligaments are incompressible. The model accounts for finite strains, anisotropy, and strain-dependent stress relaxation behavior. This study provides information about the mechanical behavior of female pelvic floor ligaments, which should be considered in the development of new treatment methods for pelvic floor disorders.


What, another paper on the new economy? When financial markets are raking through the debris of $8 trillion in lost equity value, and ".com" is a reviled four-symbol word, a paper on the impact of the new economy on productivity would seem as welcome as an analysis of the role of whales in the lighting revolution. In fact, the new economy (or, more precisely, information technologies) continues to raise important puzzles about productivity growth. Variations in productivity growth have proved to be one of the most durable puzzles in macroeconomics. After a period of rapid growth following World War II, productivity stagnated in the early 1970s. There was no shortage of explanations offered, including rising energy prices, high and unpredictable inflation, rising tax rates, growing government, burdensome environmental and health regulation, declining research and development, deteriorating labor skills, depleted possibilities for invention, and societal laziness. Yet these explanations seemed increasingly inadequate as inflation fell, tax rates were cut, regulatory burdens stabilized, government's share of output fell, research and development and patents granted grew sharply, real energy prices fell back to pre-1973 levels, and a burst of invention in the new economy and other sectors fueled an investment boom in the 1990s. The productivity slowdown puzzle of the 1980s evolved into the Solow paradox of the early 1990s: computers were everywhere except in the


Localisation is one of the key elements in navigation. Especially due to the development in automated driving, precise and reliable localisation becomes essential. In this paper, we report on different cooperation approaches in visual localisation with two vehicles driving in a convoy formation. Each vehicle is equipped with a multi-sensor platform consisting of front-facing stereo cameras and a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver. In the first approach, the GNSS signals are used as excentric observations for the projection centres of the cameras in a bundle adjustment, whereas the second approach uses markers on the front vehicle as dynamic ground control points (GCPs). As the platforms are moving and data acquisition is not synchronised, we use time dependent platform poses. These time dependent poses are represented by trajectories consisting of multiple 6 Degree of Freedom (DoF) anchor points between which linear interpolation takes place. In order to investigate the developed approach experimentally, in particular the potential of dynamic GCPs, we captured data using two platforms driving on a public road at normal speed. As a baseline, we determine the localisation parameters of one platform using only data of that platform. We then compute a solution based on image and GNSS data from both platforms. In a third scenario, the front platform is used as a dynamic GCP which can be related to the trailing platform by markers observed in the images acquired by the latter. We show that both cooperative approaches lead to significant improvements in the precision of the poses of the anchor points after bundle adjustment compared to the baseline. The improvement achieved due to the inclusion of dynamic GCPs is somewhat smaller than the one due to relating the platforms by tie points. Finally, we show that for an individual vehicle, the use of dynamic GCPs can compensate for the lack of GNSS data.


IN APRIL OF 1935, the Eastman-Kodak company released what would become the most widely recognized color film stock in the world. At the time, Kodachrome was marketed with the burgeoning mass of amateur photographers in mind, a group who would benefit especially from Kodachrome's flexibility and use in what were already popular roll-film cameras. These included the Leica, a German-made "minicamera" that became an enormously successful part of the amateur photo business, even during the early years of the Depression (and notwithstanding its cost). (1) These cameras also played a role in the development in the middle 1930s of the picture magazines, most notably Look and Life, publications that, as cultural historians have amply demonstrated, played a key role in the development of a genuinely national identity and a commensurate emphasis on seeing. (2) As the Kodak corporation knew, and practitioners of the new stock soon learned, Kodachrome also produced the greatest resolution and duration of any color film that had appeared before it--and practically since. This remained true about Kodachrome until 1990, when Fuji introduced its Process e-6 Fujichrome, the first color film stock considered to have a sharper resolution and finer grain than Kodachrome. In fact, Kodachrome's color-retention was so fine that the company kept this fact a secret into the 1970s for concern that consumers would not buy the other versions of color film that Kodak also developed in the thirties, such as Ektachrome and Kodacolor. (3) Following its presentation to a mass market, Kodachrome also quickly became the color stock of choice among professional photographers and journalists. Els Rijper has gathered some of the most (literally) indelible of these images from the historical period bracketing World War II in his book, Kodachrome. More immediately, however, Kodachrome also became widely used by advertisers who wished, understandably, to exploit the stock's deep saturation and capacities for retinal agitation (and attendant potential for erotic cathexis) on their target buyers. In the same year that Kodachrome appeared, William Faulkner published his nocturnal, and thus not especially colorful or saturated novel, Pylon. He had set aside writing Absalom, Absalom! (1936) in this period because, Faulkner claimed, he needed to clarify his thinking about this longer, if not also more ambitious work. Ambitious in its scale and length, as well as in its efforts--new to Faulkner at this point in his career--to engage directly the origins and legacies of Southern history. Prior to these works, Faulkner had published Sartoris, his first Yoknapatawpha novel that, like others set in his fictional county, was concerned with the history of Southern families like the Sartorises. Yet the book that became Flags in the Dust does not train the same critical and questioning eye on the role in Southern history of race and slavery as do Faulkner's later and major works such as Absalom, Go Down, Moses (1942), or, before them, Light in August (1932), Faulkner's first novel specifically about race. Like those published just before it, Sanctuary (1931), As I Lay Dying (1930), and The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August treated a time period that was roughly contemporaneous to the period of its composition. These facts about the production of Faulkner's major fiction are familiar to nearly all of his readers. What may be less well known, however, is the consonance they have with the introduction of the first widely disseminated color transparency film. Important to this trajectory is the move to what becomes Faulkner's overtly sociohistorical fiction, the difference between what critics have often recognized as Faulkner's formalist-aestheticist modernism in his earlier novels and his more historical fiction in works from the middle 1930s. Part of this development included a shift in representational practice on Faulkner's part, one that moved from a highly colorful pattern of description in novels like The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, and that preceded Kodachrome, to a method that resembled the formal and chromatic properties of an arguably more historical photographic mode. …


This paper addresses the problem of reliability growth characterization and analysis. It is intended to show how reliability trend analyses can help the project manager in controlling the progress of the development activities and in appreciating the efficiency of the test programs. Reliability trend change may result from various reasons, some of them are desirable and expected (such as reliability growth due to fault removal) and some of them are undesirable (such as slowing down Of the testing effectiveness). Identification in time of the latter allows the project manager to take the appropriate decisions very quickly in order to avoid problems which may manifest later. The notions of reliability growth over a given interval and local reliability trend change are introduced through the subadditive property, allowing: better definition and understanding of the reliability growth phenomena; the already existing trend tests are then revisited using these concepts. Emphasis is put on the way trend tests can be used to help the management of the testing and validation process and on practical results that can be derived from their use; it is shown that, for several circumstances, trend analyses give information of prime importance to the developer. >


The paper presents algorithms for numerical finite element analysis of vibrations of structures under a moving inertial load. Some problems of dynamics of the structure are complex to be solved by the finite element method applied to spatial variables and by the Newmark method used for time domain. Peculiar features of analytical solutions of differential equations describing vibrations caused by a moving point mass must effect also their numerical solutions. Large gradients of solutions, jumps or discontinuities of solutions is difficult to obtain by the numerical discrete methods. These methods require approximations and introduce errors, which are difficult to be estimated. In this paper we discuss numerical solutions which allow us to obtain accurate results in a full range of velocity of the inertial load.


The book's content is focused on rigorous and advanced quantitative methods for the pricing and hedging of counterparty credit and funding risk. The new general theory that is required for this methodology is developed from scratch, leading to a consistent and comprehensive framework for counterparty credit and funding risk, inclusive of collateral, netting rules, possible debit valuation adjustments, re-hypothecation and closeout rules. The book however also looks at quite practical problems, linking particular models to particular 'concrete' financial situations across asset classes, including interest rates, FX, commodities, equity, credit itself, and the emerging asset class of longevity.

 The authors also aim to help quantitative analysts, traders, and anyone else needing to frame and price counterparty credit and funding risk, to develop a 'feel' for applying sophisticated mathematics and stochastic calculus to solve practical problems.

 The main models are illustrated from theoretical formulation to final implementation with calibration to market data, always keeping in mind the concrete questions being dealt with. The authors stress that each model is suited to different situations and products, pointing out that there does not exist a single model which is uniformly better than all the others, although the problems originated by counterparty credit and funding risk point in the direction of global valuation.

 Finally, proposals for restructuring counterparty credit risk, ranging from contingent credit default swaps to margin lending, are considered.


Abstract : The properties of thin, cerium activated, yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG:Ce), scintillating fiber-shaped crystals were investigated for particle tracking and calorimetric applications such as Compton imaging of Special Nuclear Material from remote platforms at standoff ranges. Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are relatively new, efficient, single photon sensitive, solid-state photodiode arrays which are well suited for the readout of scintillating fibers. Using SiPMs, the scintillation decay time profiles of six 400 micrometers YAG:Ce fiber crystals were measured under alpha and gamma irradiation. Interestingly, the observed decay times in the thin fibers were substantially slower than values for bulk single crystal YAG:Ce reported in open scientific literature; possible explanations are explored. Both laser induced photoluminescence and alpha scintillation measurements were conducted to estimate the effective attenuation length of the YAG:Ce fibers. Using the measured attenuation lengths, position-of-interaction measurements were conducted to determine the achievable position resolution in YAG:Ce fibers using dual fiber end SiPM readouts. The measured results are compared to theoretical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, improvements to the detector concept, including a formula to determine the best SiPM model based on device parameters and the Birks' figure of merit of the scintillating material, are presented.


OBJECTIVES
Acute respiratory failure is a common reason for admission to PICUs. Short- and long-term effects on pulmonary health in previously healthy children after acute respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation are unknown. The aim was to determine if clinical course or characteristics of mechanical ventilation predict persistent respiratory morbidity at follow-up.

DESIGN
Prospective cohort study with follow-up questionnaires at 6 and 12 months.

SETTING
Ten U.S. PICUs.

PATIENTS
Two-hundred fifty-five children were included in analysis after exclusion for underlying chronic disease or incomplete data. One-hundred fifty-eight and 130 children had follow-up data at 6 and 12 months, respectively.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Pulmonary dysfunction at discharge a priori defined as one of: mechanical ventilation, supplemental oxygen, bronchodilators or steroids at 28 days or discharge. Persistent respiratory morbidity a priori defined as a respiratory PedsQL, a pediatric quality of life measure, greater than or equal to 5 or asthma diagnosis, bronchodilator or inhaled steroids, or unscheduled clinical evaluation for respiratory symptoms. Multivariate backward stepwise regression using Akaike information criterion minimization determined independent predictors of these outcomes. Pulmonary dysfunction at discharge was present in 34% of patients. Positive bacterial respiratory culture predicted pulmonary dysfunction at discharge (odds ratio, 4.38; 95% CI, 1.66-11.56). At 6- and 12-month follow-up 42% and 44% of responders, respectively, had persistent respiratory morbidity. Pulmonary dysfunction at discharge was associated with persistent respiratory morbidity at 6 months, and persistent respiratory morbidity at 6 months was strongly predictive of 12-month persistent respiratory morbidity (odds ratio, 18.58; 95% CI, 6.68-52.67). Positive bacterial respiratory culture remained predictive of persistent respiratory morbidity in patients at both follow-up points.

CONCLUSIONS
Persistent respiratory morbidity develops in up to potentially 44% of previously healthy children less than or equal to 24 months old at follow-up after acute respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to suggest a prevalence of persistent respiratory morbidity and the association between positive bacterial respiratory culture and pulmonary morbidity in a population of only previously healthy children with acute respiratory failure.


Copyright © 2018 Korean Continence Society This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This issue of the International Neurourology Journal presented a special issue on the causes and treatments of neurological diseases considered as incurable diseases in modern medicine and science. It would be better if more articles could be included in the issue, however, the updated underlying mechanisms and suggestable treatments of major neurological diseases were supplied. Hussaini and Jang [1] reviewed the role of astrocyte, which has recently gained attention, in the onset of neurological diseases, while Lee et al. [2] presented and discussed presynaptic dysfunction as a cause of Parkinson disease. In addition, BubR1 insufficiency was suggested as the cause of affective behavior and memory impairments [3]. Treatment modalities for neurological diseases include stem cells, drugs, or alternative and complementary treatments such as exercise. Lim et al. [4] used human turbinate-derived mesenchymal stem cells for the brain stroke. Among the diverse actions of dexmedetomidine, the possibility of treatment for depression by sleep deprivation was studied [5]. The effect of treadmill running on Purkinje cell loss in Parkinson disease [6] and the mechanism of treadmill exercise to overcome short-term memory impairments in cerebral palsy were also suggested [7]. As can be seen in the poster topic "Knowing Brain Healing Brain," of an academic society, many studies are being done to overcome brain diseases. Management of neurological diseases is important because it affects the quality of life and survival of patients, furthermore, neurological diseases also cause secondary peripheral diseases including urological diseases. For this reason, the International Neurourology Journal published a special issue for neurological diseases to achieve a fundamental approach for urologic diseases. I would like to thank the authors for contributing valuable articles and hope that this chance will provide a new perspective in the urology field.


ABSTRACT It's increasingly acknowledged that firms cannot be competitive if their IT strategies are not implemented methodically. A number of proposals have been made to prioritize strategic IT plan executions and determine the most appropriate models and architectures. While IT governance primarily focuses on day-to-day IT operations, enterprise architecture primarily focuses on designing the future state of architecture in support of business. Despite still being a major concern for business and IT executives, there is little published research that bridges both and therefore attempts to give methodological support from a holistic perspective. Additionally it seems that governance needs to be investigated in terms of implementing IT strategies on different levels of abstraction. This article therefore proposes a framework to analyze institutions and guide IT-strategy implementation in order to analyze, monitor and control the desired results. Due to the underlying theories and applied interviews the model is potentially generalizable.


Katz and Vaikuntanathan recently improved smooth projective hash functions in order to build oneround password-authenticated key exchange protocols (PAKE). To achieve security in the UC framework they allowed the simulator to extract the hashing key, which required simulation-sound non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that are unfortunately inefficient. We improve the way the latter extractability is obtained by introducing the notion of trapdoor smooth projective hash function (TSPHF). A TSPHF is an SPHF with a trapdoor, which may not allow to recover the complete hashing key, but which still allows to compute the hash value, which is enough for an application to PAKE with UC-security against static corruptions. We additionally show that TSPHFs yield zero-knowledge proofs in two flows, with straight-line extractability. Besides those quite interesting applications of TSPHF, we also show how to generically build them on languages of ciphertexts, using any ElGamal-like encryption. Our concrete instantiations lead to efficient one-round UC-secure PAKE, extractable zero-knowledge arguments, and verifiable encryption of Waters signatures. In the case of the PAKE, our construction is the most efficient one-round UC-secure PAKE to date.


Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (accelerated transplant atherosclerosis) is considered by most to involve a chronic allogeneic immune response to one or more constituents in the coronary vascular wall. Recent evidence suggests that there is an association between cytomegalovirus infection and the development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV). To determine whether CMV directly infects and/or potentially influences immunogenicity of vascular tissue, human umbilical vein (HU-VECs) or human aortic (HAECs) endothelial cells and human aortic smooth muscle cells (HASMCs) were isolated, cultured, and infected with CMV strain AD 169. Infection was detected using an immunoperoxidase-labeled monoclonal antibody to CMV immediate-early antigen (L-14). The presence and relative quantity of MHC class I and II antigens were determined flow cytometrically using monoclonal antibodies to monomorphic class I and class II HLA determinants. Gamma interferon was used as a positive control stimulant for the upregulation of MHC determinants. Both pooled HUVECs as well as 2 cell lines of HAECs served as targets for CMV infection though less than 10% of the cells were infected despite inocula of 10 pfu/cell. Infection of the pooled HUVECs resulted in no significant changes in the cell surface density of either MHC class I or II determinants. In contrast, HASMCs were excellent targets for CMV infection with virtually 100% of cells infected. CMV infection of 2 distinct HASMC cultures resulted in an increase of 254 +/- 158 relative fluorescence units (RFUs) in MHC class I antigen expression, as assessed by fluorescence intensity, in a variable portion of the HASMCs. A second population of cells exhibited a decrease of 73 +/- 16 RFUs in MHC class I antigen expression. No significant change in MHC class II antigen expression was noted. These results demonstrate that while HUVECs and HAECs are targets of CMV infection, human aortic smooth muscle cells can more readily be infected by CMV. Furthermore, CMV can regulate smooth muscle cell MHC class I expression, hence potentially altering immunogenicity. A pathophysiologic link between cardiac allograft vasculopathy and CMV disease can therefore be hypothesized.


The study was conducted to identify the species of skinks and to determine their distribution and abundance with special reference to elevation along Cantubias Ridge of Mt. Pangasugan. A preliminary survey was done in the two study areas to establish sites that represent the different altitude ranges from 40 to 500 m asl). Three 10 m x 20 m quadrats were laid equidistant from one another in each elevation range. Sampling and collection of specimens were done at different times of the day (9:00 A.M., 12:00 noon, and 3:00 P.M.). Basic biometric measurements were taken from the caught specimens to aid in identification. Seven species of lizards from the family Scincidae belonging to 4 genera were identified. It was observed that more species and individuals were present in the lower elevations than at higher elevations. Temperature and light intensity decreased as the elevation increased. More number of species and individuals were encountered at higher temperature and light intensity than at lower temperature and light intensity. Sphenomorphus jagori was the most abundant and most widely distributed species while S. variegatus was least abundant and restricted only to 301-400 m asl elevation range.


The silk fibres spun by insects and spiders have intrigued scientists for many years. Their mechanical performance is remarkable when one considers that the fibres are spun under ambient conditions from aqueous protein solutions without requiring many of the harsh processing conditions used in the production of man-made fibres. Yet, despite this interest, very little is known about the initial structure of the precursor proteins prior to spinning. One reason for this lies in the difficulty of handling the native proteins without accidental aggregation. Therefore in this thesis a novel sample preparation protocol for native silk is developed and small angle scattering (SAS) techniques are combined with circular dichroism (CD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to examine the structure and morphology of the proteins with different mechanical properties and thus biological function in nature. This work highlights the importance of studying native, functional proteins, at close to in vivo conditions, since clear differences in the structure and interaction of native and reconstituted silks can be attributed to the additional processing which reconstituted silks have undergone in order to be solubilised. Indeed native silk proteins are found to be more inherently non-interacting at quite high protein concentrations than reconstituted silk. Upon dilution, inter-chain interactions can be observed by SAS and CD as the protein is driven from its equilibrium conformation. This interaction and the shear-induced assembly of these proteins are also followed by AFM. Interestingly, native silk proteins from spider and silkworms retain a semiflexible conformation in solution. Indeed by comparing the silks from the major and minor ampullate, flagelliform and cylindriform glands of Nephila edulis with the cocoon silk of Bombyx mori silkworms, important insights are gained into how their flexibility suggests similarities in the local environment of the protein chains thereby dictating the hierarchical structure of silk fibres.


In recent years, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget has asserted a remarkable degree of authority over administrative agencies' rulemaking processes. One of the ways in which OIRA has exercised power over agencies has been to foist upon them its own views about the requirements of the statutes under which the agencies operate. The most notable trend in this area has been OIRA's insistence on converting technology-based environmental laws into cost-benefit laws. In OIRA's hands, for example, the Clean Water Act is being transformed from a technology-based regime into a cost-benefit regime. I will argue that this transformation is illegal. Given the plain language of the statute, it would be illegal even if the Environmental Protection Agency - the agency charged with implementing the Act - had chosen this course. But EPA did not choose this course; OIRA did. OIRA's role in transforming EPA's understanding of the Act deprives EPA of any argument for deference under Chevron. OIRA is not charged with implementing the Clean Water Act; it is not an expert in the relevant fields; and its subterranean role in interpreting the Act undermines the accountability-based case for Chevron deference.


Everyone knows what modern architecture looks like, but few understand how this revolutionary new form of building emerged little more than a century ago or what its aesthetic, social, even spiritual aspirations were. Through his illuminating studies of the leading men and women who forever changed our built environment, veteran architecture critic Martin Filler offers fresh insights into this unprecedented cultural transformation. From Louis Sullivan, father of the skyscraper, to Frank Gehry, magician of post-millennial museum, Filler emphasizes how their force of personality has had a decisive effect on everything from how we inhabit our homes to how we shape our cities. Why was the sudden shift in architectural fashion that wrecked the career of the Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh not enough to destroy the indomitable spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, who rose from adversity to become America's greatest architect? Why was Philip Johnson, "dean of American architecture" during the 1980s, so haunted by the superior talent of his less-fortunate contemporary Louis Kahn that he could barely utter his name even at the peak of his own success? How did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum "Less is more" give way to Robert Venturi's "Less is a bore"? Surveying such current urban design sagas as the reconstruction of Ground Zero and the reunification of Berlin, Filler also trains his sharp eye on some of the biggest names in architecture today, puncturing more than one overinflated reputation while identifying the true masters who are now building for the ages.


The purpose of national libraries is to provide full access to the information society for everybody, including people with disabilities. This paper describes the role of national libraries in the provision of library services to the disabled. It investigates the current national library services for patrons with disabilities and their service quality through a mailed questionnaire to 49 national libraries worldwide. However, some libraries chose not to participate in this research for several intervening factors. The findings depict the lack of adequate library services and programmes for the disabled. Furthermore, this study attempts to identify the reasons that national libraries are not fully accessible and encourages their greater inclusion in the planning and delivery of their services.


Partial breast irradiation (PBI) by either brachytherapy or external beam (EB) therapy is frequently used for the treatment of certain populations of breast cancer patients. The claim that brachytherapy is better than EB for PBI is the Proposition debated here. Advantages claimed for brachytherapy for PBI include: • brachytherapy is associated with smaller treatment volumes, lower integral doses, and smaller doses/fraction to normal tissues • dosimetric parameters which affect toxicity have been thoroughly investigated for brachytherapy • brachytherapy is supported by over ten years of study with excellent local control and minimal toxicity • with brachytherapy, evidence-based treatment planning guidelines have been published. Advantages claimed for EB therapy include: • all clinics have linacs, whereas not all have an HDR unit or LDR facilities • brachytherapy requires specific skills and training that not all radiation oncologists have • brachytherapy is an invasive procedure • a brachytherapy program requires greater effort and staff to commission and maintain • brachytherapy is performed BID, which is inconvenient to patients • not all patients are appropriate for brachytherapy treatment Arguing FOR the Proposition is Dorin Todor, Ph.D. Dr. Todor obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA followed by a one-year Research Fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Since then he has worked at the Virginia Commonwealth University where he is currently an Associate Professor. His major research interests include real-time 3D HDR source position detection and tracking, and dual fusion imaging for intraoperative planning, execution and evaluation of brachytherapy implants. Arguing against the Proposition is Stewart Becker, Ph.D. Dr. Becker obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison after which he moved to the Department of Radiation Oncology, New York University Medical Center, where he is currently Senior Physicist and Assistant Professor. His major research interests include image-guided radiotherapy, and whole and accelerated partial breast radiotherapy. Learning Objectives 1. To understand why brachytherapy might be better than external beam therapy for partial breast irradiation 2. To understand why external beam therapy might be better than brachytherapy for partial breast irradiation 3. To know how brachytherapy and external beam therapy differ when applied to partial breast irradiation.


This is a study of three contemporary, Mexican, lesbian themed novels published between 1989 and 2001. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore the creation of a lesbian community by the authors in these novels by close textual analysis of the methods the authors use in order to explore the creation of Mexican lesbian identity and community. The lesbian community as an imagined concept is explored using Benedict Anderson's theory of the nation as an imagined community as a model. Whilst the literary and publishing world is traditionally male dominated, the use of female, lesbian authorship and the repeated use of the act of writing within the novel is revealed to be subversive in breaking traditional gendered boundaries within Mexican literature. The lesbian community is seen to be given increased visibility as a result both of the dissemination of printed text and by activist and academic organisation on a national scale. Notions of passing and coming out are seen to be developed within the three novels and the thesis analyses the use of these themes in creating an imagined lesbian community. The use of passing and public secrecy, where an individual's sexual identity is simultaneously publically known but not acknowledged, is shown to be essential in the creation of a lesbian community within the novels. In addition, the thesis explores the manner in which the authors subvert traditional Mexican feminine roles and figures in order to include lesbian representations within mainstream Mexican cultural identifiers. Through literary, cultural and historical references the authors subvert traditional notions of the duality of sexuality and gendered stereotypes in order to create an imagined lesbian community which is fluid and which provides a queer voice to what is still largely a silenced minority.


This paper discusses various methods of increasing the efficiency of controllable thermal cleavage of insulating materials (oxide glasses, quartz, sapphire, etc.) by means of the radiation of CO2 lasers: noncontact production of microdefects for setting up a microcrack in the material being processed, control of the motion of a laser microcrack to make it possible to increase both the speed and thickness of the high-accuracy cutting of an insulating material by laser thermal cleavage, and thermal cleavage in mutually intersecting directions to obtain miniature items. © 2004 Optical Society of America


About the book: Music is a powerful means of communication. It provides a means by which people can share emotions, intentions, and meanings even though their spoken languages may be mutually incomprehensible. It can also provide a vital lifeline to human interaction for those whose special needs make other means of communication difficult. Music can exert powerful physical effects, can produce deep and profound emotions within us, and can be used to generate infinitely subtle variations of expressiveness by skilled composers and performers. This new addition to the music psychology list brings together leading researchers from a variety of academic and applied backgrounds. It examines how music can be used to communicate and the biological, cognitive, social, and cultural processes which underlie such communication. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary look at all aspects of communication, from the symbolic aspects of musical notation, to the use of music in advertising, the book is the first of its kind. It will be valuable for all those involved in music psychology, music education, and communication studies.


The architectures of system-on-chip (SoC) platforms found in high-end consumer devices are getting more and more complex as designers strive to deliver increasingly compute-intensive applications on near-constant energy budgets. Workloads running on these platforms require the exploitation of heterogeneous parallelism and increasingly irregular memory hierarchies. The conventional approach to programming such hardware is very lowlevel but this yields software which is intimately and inseparably tied to the details of the platform it was originally designed for, limiting the software's portability, and, ultimately, the architectural choices available to designers of future platform generations. The key insight of this paper is that many of the problems experienced in mapping applications onto SoC platforms come not from deciding how to map a program onto the hardware but from the need to restructure the program and the number of interdependencies introduced in the process of implementing those decisions. We tackle this complexity with a set of language extensions which allows the programmer to introduce pipeline parallelism into sequential programs, manage distributed memories, and express the desired mapping of tasks to resources. The compiler takes care of the complex, error-prone details required to implement that mapping. We demonstrate the effectiveness of SoC-C and its compiler with a "software defined radio" example (the PHY layer of a Digital Video Broadcast receiver) achieving a 3.4x speedup on 4 cores.


The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the decision-making process of teachers, Kindergarten through twelfth grade, who left the urban setting in metropolitan Detroit. The theories that guided this study were Rotter's locus of control and Condorcet's decision theory as they investigated the experiences leading to teachers' decisions to leave the urban setting within metropolitan Detroit. Four research questions were included (a) How do select teachers describe the decision-making process they underwent before leaving urban education in metropolitan Detroit? (b) How do participants describe their experiences prior to their decision to leave urban education in metropolitan Detroit? (c) What factors do participants identify as contributing to their decisions to leave the urban education setting in metropolitan Detroit? (d) What do participants think about their decision since leaving urban education in metropolitan Detroit? Purposeful sampling was used to gain 10 teachers for this study. The participants taught in predominantly urban schools in metropolitan Detroit and left the field since 2009, the year three major car companies restructured and Detroit's economy took a turn for the worse. A triangulation method of (a) a focus group, (b) interviews and (c) member-checks were used. Data was coded and analyzed for themes. Results indicated three primary reasons for teachers' decisions to leave the urban setting within metropolitan Detroit (a) professional, (b) cultural and (c) political.


Painted facades are protected by paints that contain biocides as a protection against degradation. These facades are leached of biocides by rainfall, albeit at low concentrations. Nevertheless, at the city scale the leachable surface area of building facades is significant, and thus there is potential for biocides to enter receiving waters. A city-scale estimation method was developed based on two main steps. In the first step, a series of laboratory experiments on a single facade was used to calibrate and validate a 1D, two-region phenomenological model of biocide leaching. The same data set was analyzed independently by another research group who found empirically that biocide leachate breakthrough curves were well represented by a sum of two exponentials. Interestingly, the two-region model was found analytically to reproduce this functional form as a special case. The second step in the method was to upscale the single facade model. Here, GIS-based estimates of facade length and area were deduced using cadastral data. Paint application rates were modeled as a stochastic process based on manufacturers' recommendations. The methodology was applied in an example application for Lausanne, Switzerland, a city of about 200,000 inhabitants. The ratio of biocide transferred from facades to the environment was estimated at about 30% of annual mass applied.


Combining Zn(NO3)2·6H2O with a series of dicarboxylic acids in the presence of the N,N′-ditopic ligand di(4-pyridyl)-1H-pyrazole (Hdpp) results in a series of mixed-linker metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) that have been crystallographically characterised. The reaction with 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid (H2bdc) gives [Zn2(bdc)2(Hdpp)2]·2DMF 1, which shows Zn2(μ-carboxylate)2(carboxylate)2 secondary building units (SBUs) linked by bdc ligands into sheets, and these are pillared by the Hdpp linkers into a doubly-interpenetrated three-dimensional network. The reaction with 1,4-naphthalene dicarboxylic acid (H2ndc-1,4) gives two products: [Zn2(1,4-ndc)2(Hdpp)]·4DMF 2a forms a three-dimensional network in which sheets, formed from Zn2(carboxylate)4 'paddle-wheel' SBUs being linked by 1,4-ndc, are connected together by Hdpp pillars, whereas [Zn(1,4-ndc)(Hdpp)]·DMF 2b forms a fourfold interpenetrated structure based on diamondoid networks with single zinc centres as nodes. The reaction with 1,3-benzenedicarboxylic acid (H2mbdc) produces [Zn(mbdc)(Hdpp)]·DMF 3, which forms a two-dimensional network with (4,4) topology in which ZnO2N2 nodes are interlinked by mbdc and Hdpp linkers. The reaction with 5-methyl-1,3-benzenedicarboxylic acid (H2mbdc-Me) also forms a two-dimensional network structure, [Zn2(mbdc-Me)2(Hdpp)2]·DMF 4, albeit wherein dicarboxylates bridge between zinc-dicarboxylate tapes, themselves formed by interlinking of Zn2(μ-carboxylate)2(carboxylate)2 SBUs similar to those in 1. Finally, the reaction with 2,6-naphthalene dicarboxylic acid (H2ndc-2,6) yields two crystalline species, both having the formula [Zn2(2,6-ndc)2(Hdpp)]·DMF 5a/5b and possessing infinite zinc-carboxylate chain motifs interlinked by both naphthalene rings and Hdpp linkers into a three-dimensional framework. In compounds 1, 2b, 3 and 4, the pyrazole NH groups are involved in hydrogen bonding that serves to link either interpenetrated networks or neighbouring sheets together. However, in 2a and 5a/5b the NH groups project into the pores of the framework enabling interactions with guest molecules.


Abstract. Over the past decade hyper spectral (HS) image analysis has turned into one of the most powerful and growing technologies in the field of remote sensing. While HS images cover large area at fine spectral resolution, their spatial resolutions are often too coarse for the use in various applications. Hence improving their resolution has a high payoff. This paper presents a novel approach for super-resolution (SR) of HS images using compressive sensing (CS). Besides ill-posedness of SR problem, the main challenge in HS super-resolution is to preserve spectral contents among all bands while increasing their spatial resolutions. In this work, we first obtain an initial estimate of the super-resolution on a reduced dimension HS data. The HS observations of different wavelengths are represented as linear combination of smaller number of basis image planes (BIPs) using principal component analysis (PCA). The novelty of our approach lies in using CS based approach to super-resolve the most informative PCA transformed image representing highest spectral variance (i.e. the first principal component). Our approach uses low and high spatial resolution dictionaries of patches generated by random sampling of raw patches of PCA transformed images that are generated using the training images having similar statistical properties. Using the sparsity constraint, low resolution test patch is represented as a sparse linear combination of relevant dictionary elements adaptively, that leads to initial estimate of super-resolved PCA image having maximum spectral variability. Since SR is an ill-posed problem, we obtain the final solution using a regularization framework considering the sparse coefficients obtained by the CS approach and the autoregressive (AR) parameters obtained from the initial estimate. The remaining PCA images are up-scaled using regularization, considering the same AR parameters which were obtained from super-resolved PCA image having maximum spectral variability. Experiments are conducted on real HS images collected by Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS). Visual inspections and quantitative comparison confirm that our method enhances spatial information without introducing significant spectral distortion.


We use bilayer devices with a series of three fullerene acceptors differing in order and intermolecular coupling to systematically explore the influence of electron delocalization in the acceptor phase on the dissociation efficiency of charge transfer states. Structural information from GIWAXS measurements is combined with the results of optical and electrical characterization as well as theoretical modeling. Our results indicate that an increase in CT-dissociation efficiency is directly coupled to an enhancement in electron delocalization that is particularly prominent for C60 which forms crystalline domains. Therefore, our results substantiate the concept of delocalization of electrons taking a positive role in the charge separation process, and of acceptor crystallinity being crucial in this respect.


Digital photogrammetric products from the integration of imagery and lidar datasets are a reality nowadays. When the imagery and lidar surveys are performed together and the camera is connected to the lidar system, a direct georeferencing can be applied to compute the exterior orientation parameters of the images. Direct georeferencing of the images requires accurate interior orientation parameters to perform photogrammetric application. Camera calibration is a procedure applied to compute the interior orientation parameters (IOPs). Calibration researches have established that to obtain accurate IOPs, the calibration must be performed with same or equal condition that the photogrammetric survey is done. This paper shows the methodology and experiments results from in situ self-calibration using a simultaneous images block and lidar dataset. The calibration results are analyzed and discussed. To perform this research a test field was fixed in an urban area. A set of signalized points was implanted on the test field to use as the check points or control points. The photogrammetric images and lidar dataset of the test field were taken simultaneously. Four strips of flight were used to obtain a cross layout. The strips were taken with opposite directions of flight (W-E, E-W, N-S and S-N). The Kodak DSC Pro SLR/c digital camera was connected to the lidar system. The coordinates of the exposition station were computed from the lidar trajectory. Different layouts of vertical control points were used in the calibration experiments. The experiments use vertical coordinates from precise differential GPS survey or computed by an interpolation procedure using the lidar dataset. The positions of the exposition stations are used as control points in the calibration procedure to eliminate the linear dependency of the group of interior and exterior orientation parameters. This linear dependency happens, in the calibration procedure, when the vertical images and flat test field are used. The mathematic correlation of the interior and exterior orientation parameters are analyzed and discussed. The accuracies of the calibration experiments are, as well, analyzed and discussed.


Thermogenesis, the production of heat energy, in brown adipose tissue is a significant component of the homeostatic repertoire to maintain body temperature during the challenge of low environmental temperature in many species from mouse to man and plays a key role in elevating body temperature during the febrile response to infection. The sympathetic neural outflow determining brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis is regulated by neural networks in the CNS which increase BAT sympathetic nerve activity in response to cutaneous and deep body thermoreceptor signals. Many behavioral states, including wakefulness, immunologic responses, and stress, are characterized by elevations in core body temperature to which central command-driven BAT activation makes a significant contribution. Since energy consumption during BAT thermogenesis involves oxidation of lipid and glucose fuel molecules, the CNS network driving cold-defensive and behavioral state-related BAT activation is strongly influenced by signals reflecting the short- and long-term availability of the fuel molecules essential for BAT metabolism and, in turn, the regulation of BAT thermogenesis in response to metabolic signals can contribute to energy balance, regulation of body adipose stores and glucose utilization. This review summarizes our understanding of the functional organization and neurochemical influences within the CNS networks that modulate the level of BAT sympathetic nerve activity to produce the thermoregulatory and metabolic alterations in BAT thermogenesis and BAT energy expenditure that contribute to overall energy homeostasis and the autonomic support of behavior.


This current study considers a large sample of LAC firms and analyzes in more detail how their strategies follow distinct patterns in different sectors. In doing so, we shed new light on how firms in the region have come to establish themselves in the Chinese market and draw policy recommendations for supporting private sector initiatives to penetrate the Chinese market. This report takes one step further in trying to fill a gap in our understanding of a potentially important avenue for achieving a more balanced LAC-China economic relationship. It proceeds as follows. Part I gives a brief macro overview of LAC-China trade and investment. The following section analyzes the presence of Latin American firms in China using an original dataset of 98 firms from the region and presents a typology of internationalization strategies employed. To conclude, Part III offers policy recommendations for supporting the private sector's efforts to enter the Chinese market, and area of increasing interest among LAC governments.


This Article offers an alternate reading of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down the Texas sodomy statute that criminalized private, consensual, and adult same-sex intercourse. While most scholars discuss Lawrence as a substantive due process case and struggle to find meaning in the ambiguity of the decision's language, I propose that Lawrence is better read as an Eighth Amendment case. This Article argues that the majority opinion analyzed the constitutionality of the Texas sodomy law as it would analyze the cruelty and unusualness of a criminal law in an Eighth Amendment evolving standards of decency case. The Lawrence Court not only used objective indicators to find a U.S. consensus against sodomy laws but was also cognizant of foreign nations that refused to criminalize sodomy. Additionally, I suggest that the Eighth Amendment and the evolving standards of decency were on the minds of the Justices when deciding Lawrence, and at a minimum, the case was decided in the amendment's shadow. The Justices were exposed to an evolving standards of decency analysis in both written briefs and oral arguments, and the majority opinion used language evocative of emergence and evolution. I discuss the importance of this alternative reading of Lawrence and begin a conversation on the possibilities of extending an evolving standard of decency analysis to issues other than sodomy and areas beyond criminal law.


Abstract What is analyzed is the way of dealing with conscientious objection in three German states. In this context, the reaction by state institutions to those ethnic-religious orientations and individual values as supported by opponents of war. For those people who refused generally binding orientations, values, and identifications the norms which were enforced by state institutions in the respective societies resulted in different consequences. The effects of state acting on those concerned allow conclusions on the structures of political rule as well as on the way in which the respective institutions worked.


The main goal of this thesis is to use the diffusion models to improve our
understanding of SPP markets, with special focus on (a) identifying the main
determinants of the diffusion of solar photovoltaic panels worldwide,
particularly the role played so far by public incentives, (b) characterising the
scale and temporal profiles of the major domestic shocks in SPP markets which
mostly occurred after 2007, (c) discussing the resulting perspectives, and the
involved role of public policies, for the future development of the market.
Chapter 1 is introductory and preparatory for subsequent ones and pinpoints
that (a) the presence of shocks is an intrinsic and often dominating feature of
energy markets, thereby motivating the use of tools as the GBM, (b) only a few
countries have developed long-term energy plans towards which to manage
consistently their short-medium term policies, (c) the concept of energy
framework was useful to indicated a number of commonalities among
countries.
The main findings of Chapter 2 were the following: i) essentially everywhere
the effectiveness of media communication proved negligible, ii) the early phase
where the growth of the market was completely sustained by internal
communication only, iii) major changes in the market adoption curves have
occurred in the form of massive positive shocks which took place between 2006
and 2016 possibly following incentive measures in the various states, iv)
inspection of the parameter estimates describing the temporal pattern of the
shocks showed a lack of temporal persistence of the effects of incentive as well
as a sharp trade-off between intensity and persistence of the actions.
The results of Chapter 3 show that the SPP residential market in UK suffers not
only the structural difficulties of this sector, but also the possible perception of
relative penalisation suffered by late cohorts of adopters compared to the past
cohorts who benefited higher rates of FIT. In the commercial and utility sectors
the imitation rate is higher which might be explained by the fact that firms
make more rational decisions based on economic factors rather than being led
by perceptions.


Part 1 Zarathustra's discourses: of the three metamorphoses of the chairs of virtue of the afterworldsmen of the despisers of the body of joys and passions of the pale criminal of reading and writing of the tree on the mountainside of the preachers of death of war and warriors of the new idol of the flies of the market-place of chastity of the friend of the thousand and one goals of love of one's neighbour of the way of the creator of old and young women of the Adder's bite of marriage and children of voluntary death of the bestowing virtue. Part 2: the child with the mirror on the blissful islands of the compassionate of the priests of the virtuous of the rabble of the tarantulas of the famous philosophers of the night song the dance song the funeral song of self-overcoming of the sublime men of the land of culture of immaculate perception of scholars of poets of great events the prophet of redemption of manly prudence the stillest hour. Part 3: the wanderer of the vision and the riddle of involuntary bliss before sunrise of the virtue that makes small on the mount of olives of passing by of the apostates the home-coming of the three evil things of the spirit of gravity of old and new law-tables the convalescent of the great longing the second dance song the seven seals (or - the song of Yes and Amen). Part 4: the honey offering the cry of distress conversation with the kings the leech the sorcerer retired from service the ugliest man the voluntary beggar the shadow at noontide the greeting the last supper of the higher man the song of melancholy of science among the daughters of the desert the awakening the ass festival the intoxicated song the sign.


A total of 8,973 male building construction workers 41 to 61 years of age in greater Stockholm were asked to participate in a psychosocial questionnaire study. A two-year follow-up study of myocardial infarctions was subsequently performed with official hospital and death registers as the sources of data. Furthermore, specific death rates in the studied sample were compared with those in the male 40- to 65-year-old population in greater Stockholm. Building construction workers had a higher incidence of "violent" death than the 40- to 65-year-old male population of greater Stockholm. Otherwise the studied workers did not differ significantly from the population with regard to causes of death. Concrete workers 51 to 61 years of age had a significantly higher incidence of myocardial infarction than other building construction workers Of the same age. Concrete workers as a group were also demonstrated to differ significantly from other workers in the study with regard to many psychosocial characteristics such as childhood circumstances, education, living conditions, smoking habits, alcohol habits and financial conditions. However, the association between concrete work and myocardial infarction was demonstrated to exist even when a number of socioeconomic and psychosocial factors were held constant. Possible explanations for the association between the work situation and the incidence of myocardial infarction among the 52- to 61-year-old concrete workers are discussed.


Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and platelet-derived endothelial cell growth factor (PD-ECGF) are known to be angiogenic growth factors in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we have investigated the relationship between VEGF expression and PD-ECGF expression in human breast cancer tissues using immunocytochemical methods. Of 152 primary breast cancers, 84 (55.3%) and 71 (46.7%) were positive for VEGF and PD-ECGF, respectively. Fifty-three (63. 1%) of 84 VEGF-positive tumors had a PD-ECGF-positive phenotype, whereas only 18 (26.5%) of 68 VEGF-negative tumors had a PD-ECGF-positive phenotype. There was a significant correlation between the VEGF expression and PD-ECGF expression (P < 0.01). As a single factor, VEGF expression and PD-ECGF expression were significantly associated with an increase in the microvessel density assessed by the immunocytochemical analysis using antifactor VIII-related antigen mAb. Interestingly, in addition, of 53 tumors with more than 100 microvessel counts/1 mm2, 40 (75.5%) had both VEGF- and PD-ECGF-positive phenotypes. It was found that VEGF and PD-ECGF were frequently coexpressed in highly vascularized tumors with high microvessel counts. It is suggested that VEGF and PD-ECGF might cooperatively function in the neovascularization of human breast cancer.


Abstract Greywacke sandstone and argillite beds comprising Rakaia Terrane (Torlesse Complex) in mid Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand, are widely regarded as Late Triassic (Norian) in age based on the occurrence of Torlessia trace fossils, Monotis, and other taxa. This paleontological age assignment is tested using published 40Ar/39Ar mica and U‐Pb zircon ages for these rocks and published and new zircon fission track (FT) ages. The youngest U‐Pb zircon ages in the Rakaia Terrane rocks in mid Canterbury are Norian, whereas 10–20% of the 40Ar/ 39Ar muscovite ages are younger than Norian. Numerical modelling of these mica ages shows that they cannot have originated from partial thermal overprinting in the Torlesse prism if the thermal maximum was short‐lived and early in the prism history (210–190 Ma), as commonly inferred for these rocks. The young component of mica ages could, however, be explained by extended residence (200–100 Ma) at 265–290°C in the prism. Early Jurassic (c. 189 Ma) zircon FT ages for sandstone beds from Arthur's Pass, the Rakaia valley, and the Hermitage (Mt Cook) are interpreted not to have experienced maximum temperatures above 210°C, and therefore cannot have been reduced as a result of partial annealing in the Torlesse prism. This is based on identification of a fossil Cretaceous, zircon FT, partial annealing zone in low‐grade schists to the west, and the characteristics of the age data. The Early Jurassic zircon FT ages and the young component of 40Ar/39Ar mica ages are regarded therefore as detrital ages reflecting cooling in the source area, and constrain the maximum depositional age of parts of the Rakaia Terrane in mid Canterbury. The zircon FT data also show the initiation (c. 100 Ma) of marked and widespread Late Cretaceous cooling of Rakaia Terrane throughout Canterbury, which is attributed to uplift and erosion of inboard parts of the Torlesse prism due to continuing subduction accretion at its toe. The critical wedge concept is proposed as a new framework for investigating the development of the Torlesse Complex. The Rakaia Terrane may have formed the core of an accretionary wedge imbricated against the New Zealand margin during the Middle or Late Jurassic. Late Jurassic nonmarine sediments (e.g., Clent Hills Formation) accumulated upon the inner parts of the prism as it enlarged, emerged, and continued to be imbricated. Exhumation of Otago Schist from c. 135 Ma may mark the development of a balance (steady state) between sediments entering the prism at the toe and material exiting at the inboard margin. The enlargement of the area of exhumation to all of Canterbury from c. 100 Ma may reflect a dynamic response to widening of the prism through the accretion of Cretaceous sediments. The model of a dynamic critical wedge may help to explain the various expressions of the Rangitata Orogeny.


"Rings" is an account of exploration and scientific discovery. This story of all three known sets of planetary rings emphasizes the events of the past five years, during which scientists have learned more about this fascinating and beautiful astronomical phenomenon than was ever known before. They have found ring systems encircling Uranus and Jupiter and thousands of dazzling and often mysterious ringlets within the three traditionally accepted rings of Saturn."Rings" opens with Elliot's first-person account of the discovery of the Uranus rings, including excerpts from a tape that was running as the crew aboard the airborne observatory slowly realized that they were seeing something real that had never been seen before. Subsequent chapters provide a quick history of our understanding of rings through the early part of this century, describe the development of occultation methods for exploring relatively small-scale planetary phenomena, tackle the theoretical question of how narrow rings can exist in stable form, follow the spacecraft discoveries of Jupiter's system and the wonders of Saturn, briefly summarize current ring theory, and look to the future of ring research, including the Voyager 2 encounter with Uranus in 1986.The authors are well qualified to tell this story. James Elliot played the leading role in discovering the Uranian rings in 1977, the first planetary ring system to be found since Galileo observed Saturn's rings in 1610. Richard Kerr covered the Jovian and Saturnian discoveries for "Science" magazine. In their work they have both been struck by the fact that the progress of science often follows serendipitous rather than strictly logical paths, and their book offers a good antidote to the usual textbook narratives of scientific work.Copies of the tape that recorded the discovery of the Uranian rings are available from The MIT Press.


Concrete-filled hollow sections are normally used as columns in multi-storey buildings and also in similar structures. Such columns may be filled with plain concrete with no need for any reinforcement. This type of column has been the subject of a great deal of theoretical and experimental investigations, and its design is covered by the British Standard BS5400. The paper gives a summary of the Standard as applied to this particular type of column, and also the results of some recent investigations in the behaviour of concrete-filled rectangular hollow section columns. A comparison between the British Standards BS5400 and BS5950 for the design of composite and steel columns is also included underlining the beneficial effect of using a concrete infill.