Communities of Practice. Niches for cooperation between experts-by-experience and professionals in community development Since 2000, problems in the care of people with multiple complex problems have been on the increase. These people can often have problems in multiple domains of life which may reinforce each other in a negative way. Unfortunately, these people, who need care more than others, often do not receive appropriate care. This is due to the compartmentalized way in which care is organized. Caregiving is supply-oriented and not tailored to the needs and abilities of these people. Two studies, "Bridge building" by Kal (2001) and "A theory of presence" by Baart (2001) have helped to put this topic onto the social agenda. However, a method has been developed in mental health care to support people with psychiatric problems in everyday life. Beginning on a small scale in the 1990s, the use of a social support system involves a network of individuals and organizations that supports those with a history of psychiatric issues in their daily lives. The bridge builders (professionals who work towards an inclusive society) and the "experts-by-experience" are at the centre of this social support system. They try to eliminate any mismatches and to align the support needed with the support provided. To prevent the compartmentalization of the care, they seek to cooperate with the organizations involved in the household. Based on the principle of joint responsibility, they manage the care given in consultation with the people concerned. Since 2010, care in the Netherlands has increasingly become community-based. Professionals who were previously based in different institutions for people with mental illness, addiction or a mental disability, now organize themselves regionally. Their work has changed in two ways: firstly, they must now cooperate with professionals from different sectors working in a particular area, and secondly, their work takes place in a setting where communication is horizontal rather than hierarchical. It was in this context that the organization for mental health clients in Eindhoven launched a project to form Communities of Practice (CoPs) in different areas of Eindhoven and its surroundings in 2011. A CoP is a learning group of professionals with different backgrounds who work on the same case, and who improve their competencies by regularly sharing and exchanging knowledge and experience. The main aim of a CoP is to learn from and with each other (social learning). Good relationships form the basis for these learning processes and the development of competencies. The community provides a framework for the learning processes of the participants. Ideally, CoPs should be based on existing voluntary networks since these are informal and self-managing. Such networks can be found in the social support systems of Eindhoven and surroundings, and professionals and experts already have experience of working together in these networks. The contribution of experts-by-experience lends an extra dimension to the CoP. Their approach is known as the "recovery" approach. Recovery is a concept developed by clients in mental health care. According to Wilma Boevink, a prominent member of the recovery movement, "recovery means finding a meaningful life with or without the mental illness." (Boevink, Prinsen, Elfers, Droes, Tiber & Wilrycx, 2009, in Droes & Witsenburg, 2012, p. 57) The motivation for the formation of a CoP is the idea that learning from each other's practices can promote cooperation between professionals and between professionals and experts-by-experience. Cooperation within the CoP also promotes the professional development of the skills needed to work in the community. The programme of CoP meetings involves getting to know each other and each other's work. Meetings in the learning group have a positive effect on cooperation and the most important aspect of the programme is case-based learning. The learning processes in the CoPs have resulted in several innovative notions. The first notion is the perception that the complex situation of the client should form the starting point for support. As such, cooperation between professionals from different sectors is inevitable, because the client's problems are related to different domains of life. The second notion is that the complexity of the client's problems and the question of what is appropriate support can only be understood from the life perspective of those involved. Expertsby- experience serve as an example in this respect. In every case study, they have focused on the way people experience their lives. Regularly, their contribution has led to a new perspective on the situation. Professionals often take an "outsider's perspective": this person has debts or that person has social problems, and so on. The experts-by-experience often challenge the professionals to look at the situation in the way the client experiences it. The third notion is that recovery-oriented care in community-based cooperation requires certain competencies. Professionals, who are used to being based at institutions, have to get used to the increase in their range of control. Three competencies are important: proactive behaviour, cooperative action and reflection. Proactive behaviour involves knowing that you can make the difference in a case. Cooperative action refers to the ability to deal with a range of different ideas on common goals and cooperation. Reflection is necessary not only because of the complexity of the problems and the effectiveness of the action, but also because of the value and meaning of the objectives that the action is intended to bring about. In conclusion, the formation of COPs strengthens the cooperation between professionals from different sectors. The learning groups provided the opportunity to become familiar with a different approach. The recovery-oriented approach proved to be more suitable when providing support for people with complex multiple problems. The professionals in the CoPs who had previously been used to working within institutions became more aware of the increase in their range of control in community-based cooperation and consequently their need to develop the competencies required Communities of Practice. Niches voor de samenwerking tussen ervaringswerkers en professionals bij gebiedsgericht werken Sinds de eeuwwisseling zijn er in Nederland steeds vaker problemen geconstateerd in de zorg aan mensen met meervoudige complexe problematiek. De zorgverlening is verkokerd, aanbodgericht en is niet afgestemd op de behoeften en mogelijkheden van deze mensen (zie Baart, 2001 en Kal, 2001). Met de transitie AWBZ-WMO komt een deel van de professionals uit de geestelijke gezondheidszorg, verslavingszorg en verstandelijk gehandicaptenzorg onder de regie van de gemeente te vallen. Gemeenten maken steeds vaker beleid op gebiedsgericht werken om de problemen in de zorg en de ontwikkeling als gevolg van de transitie te managen. Om de samenwerking tussen professionals en tussen professionals en ervaringswerkers te bevorderen, is in het project "werk voor ervaringsdeskundigen" het initiatief genomen voor het organiseren van "Communities of Practice" (CoP). CoP's zijn leergroepen van professionals die hun competenties willen ontwikkelen, om een gezamenlijk vraagstuk in hun praktijk beter te kunnen hanteren. Een benadering die adequaat is in de ondersteuning van mensen met complexe meervoudige problematiek is de herstelondersteunende zorg. Door de deelname van ervaringswerkers aan de CoP's zijn professionals bekend geraakt met deze benadering. Daarnaast hebben de leerprocessen in de CoP's betrekking gehad op het ontwikkelen van competenties om de toegenomen handelingsruimte bij gebiedsgericht werken te kunnen hanteren.


In a recent paper, Gregory Werden and Luke Froeb present a general discussion of unilateral effects analysis with a particular focus on factors that limit the applicability of the Upward Pressure on Price (UPP) model. In one of our earlier papers, we had provided simple simulations showing that the application of UPP in the broad manner suggested by Farrell and Shapiro could be used to dramatically expand the universe of mergers subject to challenge. Werden and Froeb, in contrast to Farrell and Shapiro, see application of UPP screening as constrained by Bertrand competition, an assumption that implies our simulations over-estimate the potential for the UPP model to increase enforcement. Moreover, they posit that merger simulation is well suited for use in either screening or competitive effects' analysis, a result, which if true, would marginalize the UPP model. We disagree with their observations, noting that the UPP methodology, as described by Farrell and Shapiro, is designed to be agnostic to the underlying competitive process, and potentially applicable in a range of situations in which simulation would be infeasible. As a result, our simulations do not over-estimate the extent to which a broad application of UPP could possibly expand merger enforcement. We also stress the importance of verifying the predictions of any theoretical model (including an UPP analysis generalized to predict actual price effects) with empirical evidence as an important tool to realistically limit the analysis. Successful substantiation would be necessary to allow the analysis to survive a Daubert challenge. Under Daubert, experts must move beyond theory that is generally accepted in their fields and present evidence to the court to show that the theory fits the facts at issue and is reliably predictive.


For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these economics. The expense of printing created an environment where WalMart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn't because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident. Advertisers had little choice other than to have their money used that way, since they didn't really have any other vehicle for display ads.


Computers are failing children. They are taking time away from meaningful interactions with people, and are often providing children with inappropriate experiences. In particular, they are failing to support children collaborating, being creative, using their imagination, and accessing appropriate content. To address these issues, I have created developmentally appropriate technologies that support children collaborating, creating, and learning. To support collaboration, I developed MID (Multiple Input Devices), a Java toolkit that supports advanced events, including those from multiple input devices. I used MID to develop KidPad, a collaborative storytelling tool that supports groups of children in the creation of drawings and stories. To support collaboration in a concrete, developmentally appropriate manner, KidPad uses the local tools user interface metaphor in which I implemented several improvements to make efficient use of screen space and to encourage collaboration. SearchKids is an application that also supports collaboration and gives children the ability to search and browse a multimedia animal library. The International Children's Digital Library uses a similar user interface to enable children to search and browse an international collection of digitized children's books. Both applications offer children access to curated collections, shielding them from inappropriate content while keeping them in control of what to experience. While building these technologies I observed that young children had greater difficulty using input devices. This affected their ability to collaborate, be creative and access valuable content. Motivated by such observations, I conducted a study to gain a better understanding of how young children use mice as compared to adults. The results provide guidelines for the sizing of visual targets in young children's software and insight into how children use mice.


We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures. Furthermore, monetary shocks can account for a significant component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality. Using detailed micro-level data on income and consumption, we document the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality, as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy.


This article explores the case histories of two disabled patients admitted with service dogs to an inpatient psychiatric unit in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These cases illustrate the clinical realities of provisions in this new law that affect inpatient practice. Federal, New York state, and case law that frame the issue are reviewed. The experience of living and working with service dogs in an inpatient milieu required many accommodations and exposed potentially dangerous consequences that were not immediately recognized. The authors examine the clinical and medicolegal issues raised by these cases. Recommendations for proactive planning and a screening questionnaire for decision making are offered to guide administrators and clinicians attempting to balance civil liberties with clinical common sense in making reasonable accommodations for the disabled.


This is a Reykjavik Murder Mystery. A skeleton is found half-buried in a dried out lake. The bones have been weighed down with an old radio transmitter: is this a clue to the victim, and the killer's identity? Detective Erlendur is called in to investigate and discovers that there may be a connection with a group of students who were sent to study in East Germany during the Cold War, and with a young man who walked out of his family home one day, never to return. As the mystery deepens, Erlendur and his team must unravel a story of international espionage, murder and betrayal.


In contrast to the challenges that frustrate the complete genetic delineation of complex common diseases (for example, type 2 diabetes mellitus or coronary disease),1–3 there has been extensive success in the delineation of highly penetrant loci in rarer disorders that conform to Mendelian inheritance.4 Linkage studies in multi-case, multi-generation families have identified more than 1300 of such causal genes. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) represents the first, and hence perhaps best known, example of an inherited cardiac disorder to be understood in this way and its study has epitomised the application of genetics to cardiovascular disease.5 6

A generation before any such genetic advances contributed to the understanding of HCM, Donald Teare's now classic 1958 paper7 emphasised aspects of the disease that not only endure but resonate and inform today's state-of-the-art genetic research. After his training at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and at St George's Hospital, the professor of forensic medicine at the University of London went on to become the third member of the forensic "Three musketeers" of the 1940s,8 who were involved with more than 80 000 postmortems (some of which were causes celebres). The fact that Teare made a number of seminal observations reflects more than the volume of this work; as Michael Davies noted, he identified HCM because of "[his] innate ability to recognise morphological abnormalities and the intellectual curiosity to store hearts and other organs away for future consideration. The concordance of a similar abnormal morphological appearance of the hearts in two subjects from one family dying suddenly at a young age prompted a search for other hearts with a similar appearance in his collection".9

In this review we propose to further update10 and re-evaluate three of Teare's major original observations in light of our current understanding of …


This study investigates the effect of climate change on a groundwater‐influenced ecosystem on a hill slope consisting of two vegetation types, one adapted to wet and one adapted to dry soil conditions. The individual effects of changes in precipitation, temperature, and atmospheric CO2 concentration are compared to the combined effect of these factors. Change in atmospheric conditions is based on the Netherlands. Projected climate change is obtained from an ensemble of nested global and regional climate models (GCMs and RCMs), representing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A2 scenario for 2100. For each GCM‐RCM combination, change factors were determined and transferred to a stochastic weather generator. All projections show higher temperatures and less annual precipitation. Simulations were performed using an ecohydrological model, consisting of a dynamic soil‐plant‐atmosphere‐continuum model that is fully coupled to a variably saturated hydrological model, using the stochastic weather data as input. Model results show that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration results in higher biomasses because of higher water use efficiency and a decrease in evaporation downslope where vegetation growth is light limited. The change in precipitation regime (drier summers, wetter winters) causes a decreased biomass of especially the dry‐adapted species and increased upslope groundwater recharge, resulting in groundwater rise and an upward shift of wet‐adapted vegetation. Temperature rise results in decreased biomass because respiration increases stronger than carbon assimilation, while increased transpiration causes drier soils and a prolonged period of water‐limited growth. The combined effect is dominated by the increase in temperature and change in precipitation regime, causing decreased biomass throughout. Surprisingly, the effect on groundwater level depends on the degree by which precipitation distribution changes within the year, showing a drop at a small change and a rise when change is larger. This study thus shows that climate change effects on hydrology and vegetation are far from straightforward and call for fully coupled ecohydrological models and upslope‐downslope interaction.


Icons of Evolution Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong. Jonathan Wells. Regnery, Washington, DC, 2000. 352 pp. $27.95. ISBN 0-89526-276-2. Addressing the non-specialist, Wells argues that because textbooks sometimes present examples of evolution in incorrect or misleading ways, evolution itself is a fiction. His book is currently being favorably cited by proponents of creation science and "intelligent design" theories.


How do people respond to aggression? Theory differs on whether aggressive behavior deters antagonists or provokes retaliation, and the empirical evidence is mixed. We bridge contradictory findings in the literature by identifying a previously unexamined moderating variable: the extent to which individuals can increase their coercive capability (which we call escalating). We argue that when escalating is costly, aggression deters potential antagonists. In contrast, when escalating is less costly, behaving aggressively fails to deter aggressive partners. We test these predictions in two behavioral experiments that manipulate the cost of escalating and whether interaction partners are aggressive or deferential. We find support for deterrence predictions when escalating is either high or low cost but not when it is medium cost. Taken together, we provide evidence that the cost of escalation plays a key role in decisions about aggression.


Cities are home to 80% of the population in the EU and are responsible for 70% of its greenhouse gas emissions. Urban areas can therefore play a key role in improving energy efficiency and promoting low-carbon development. Cities are important centres of policy innovation and can – among other actions – advance clean energy systems, promote sustainable transport, manage waste and water, and improve energy efficiency in buildings. Cities across Europe are facing similar challenges, and are now attempting to learn from each other and to develop and exchange best practice. The European Commission, under the auspices of DG Energy, has launched the Covenant of Mayors initiative, whose signatories contribute to the policy objectives of the EU Climate Action and Energy Package through a formal commitment to go beyond its targets. In order to accelerate progress, however, these bottom-up initiatives will need to be embedded in and supported by an EU framework that ensures legitimacy and efficiency, builds institutional capacity, develops the necessary tools and meets the financing requirements. This CEPS Task Force Report explores the different opportunities for cities and businesses to accelerate low-carbon development, while looking at the multiple challenges encountered by cities. These include, in particular, the coordination of existing initiatives; the definition of local authorities' legal competencies; access to finance; the consistency of EU and member state regulations to avoid double-regulation and double-counting; and the use of consistent and transparent measuring, reporting and verification tools.


If the subject of influence in Washington interests you, this series of books deserves your respectful attention...it has changed the ways in which American politicians think about the budget. - The Washington Post For the first time in more than four decades, the federal budget has registered two consecutive surpluses, and the need to reduce the deficit is not casting a pall over the policy debate. This new, highly accessible book examines the policy options that are available in this new environment to address the new and recurring challenges that face the nation. The book, which continues the Brookings Institution's highly acclaimed and influential Setting National Priorities series, will serve as a guide for understanding many of the complex issues that will be discussed during the presidential and congressional campaigns of 2000. The book centers around three themes: providing opportunity in the domestic arena, restoring confidence in government, and adapting to the post-Cold War international environment. It tackles such critical issues as Medicare and social security, tax reform, and foreign policy spending, as well as many areas not included in previous editions; namely, education, urban problems, the environment, trade, government renewal and reform, crime and drugs, and families. In addition to the editors, the contributers are Gary Burtless, I. M. Destler, John J. DiIulio Jr., William Gale, Bruce Katz, Donald F. Kettl, Paul C. Light, Thomas E. Mann, Michael O'Hanlon, Paul R. Portney, Diane Ravitch, Isabel V. Sawhill, and James Sly.


Children are exposed to metals via the ingestion of household dust and soil, but contaminated household dust is much less documented than outdoor soil. In France, environmental home surveys are carried out to assess the exposure of young children to bioaccessible lead. In other countries, most surveys of metal in dust are based on "total digestion" using strong acid to extract all the metals present in dust samples. To compare metal contamination in household dust in France with data from other countries, a sequential extraction protocol was developed to assay metal concentrations in the bioaccessible fraction as well as in "quasi-total" digestion. Nine metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Pb, Sb, Sr and V) were chosen for analysis on the basis of their mean contamination level and toxicity. Analyses were performed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP/MS). The "total" digestion was validated for metals using NIST Standard Reference Materials ® SRM 2583 and SRM 2584 for Cr, As, Cd and Pb in dust samples and nine metals in certified reference material CRM SS2 for soil samples. The quasi-total digestion recovery for the SRM dusts and CRM soil samples was more than 72 % for all metals, with a relative standard deviation of less than 14 %, except for Cd. For the first time, the bioaccessible fraction of metals was evaluated in SRM 2583, SRM 2584 and CRM SS2. This new protocol was tested on dust samples (75) and soil samples (4) from 13 French homes, and results are expressed here for the first time in μg/m 2 . The metal bioaccessibility in dust is very variable, ranging from 0 to 100 %. The most bioaccessible metals are Cd, Cu, Mn, Pb and Sr, while As, Cr, Sb and V are the least. This combined determination of metal concentrations in the bioaccessible fraction and quasi-total digestion from dust wipes and soil samples appears to be an appropriate method for assessing human exposure to metals via dust and soil ingestion.


Abstract Mutual fund fees are extraordinarily high in Poland – almost three times higher than in Western Europe and almost five times higher than in the United States. In fact is that from among 183 Polish open-ended stock mutual funds as many as 81 impose a management fee of 4%, which is the highest value in the sample. The question arises whether it is really worth to invest in funds from the more expensive group. Comparing funds charging the highest fees (4%) with the cheaper ones it seems that there is no statistically significant difference between rate of return, risk and efficiency. However, more expensive funds have on average higher costs, are three years older and have almost 70% bigger assets. This may suggest that a well-established market position – not performance – is the trigger for raising their fees. Interestingly, funds with a relatively high minimal initial contribution level (5,000 PLN) have significantly lower management fees with similar costs, total assets value and performance results. Further analysis has also indicated that the costs level (Total Expense Ratio) is higher for older funds, while it is not related to funds' size.


To determine if cleaners affect 'temporary' parasitic corallanid isopods (Argathona macronema) on fish, we used caged fish Hemigymnus meldpterus (Labridae) on 5 patch reefs on Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, and removed all cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus (Labridae) from 3 of the reefs, In a short-term experiment, fish were sampled after 12 or 24 h, at dawn and sunset respectively, and in a long-term experiment they were sampled after 12 d at sunset. Isopod prevalence, abundance and size were measured. In the short-term experiment, on reefs without cleaners the prevalence of A. macronema was higher after 24 h than after 12 h while on reefs with cleaners, prevalence was low at all times, Although the abundance of A, macronema did not vary after 12 and 24 h, when combined over the 24 h, the effect of cleaners was significant with only 2 % of all the A. macronema found on reefs with cleaners. Cleaners had no effect on the size frequency distribution of A. macronema in the short-term experiment, most likely because fish had so few isopods on reef with cleaners. In the longer-term experiment, the effects of cleaners on isopod prevalence and abundance were less clear. Their effect on isopod size was, however, significant with smaller parasites on reefs without cleaners. The reduction of isopod prevalence and abundance by cleaner fish over a period of hours may explain why these A, macronema are rare on wild fish. Our findings support the idea that cleaning is beneficial to clients and has important implications for the control of parasites of fish farmed in cages,


PurposeThe oil and gas industry is a crucial economic sector for both developed and developing economies. Delays in extraction and refining of these resources would adversely affect industrial players, including that of the host countries. Supplier selection is one of the most important decisions taken by managers of this industry that affect their supply chain operations. However, determining suitable suppliers to work with has become a phenomenon faced by these managers and their organizations. Furthermore, identifying relevant, critical and important criteria needed to guide these managers and their organizations for supplier selection decisions has become even more complicated due to various criteria that need to be taken into consideration. With limited works in the current literature of supplier selection in the oil and gas industry having major methodological drawbacks, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated approach for supplier selection in the oil and gas industry.Design/methodology/approachTo address this problem, this paper proposes a new uncertain decision framework. A grey-Delphi approach is first applied to aid in the evaluation and refinement of these various available criteria to obtain the most important and relevant criteria for the oil and gas industry. The grey systems theoretic concept is adopted to address the subjectivity and uncertainty in human judgments. The grey-Shannon entropy approach is used to determine the criteria weights, and finally, the grey-EDAS (evaluation based on distance from average solution) method is utilized for determining the ranking of the suppliers.FindingsTo exemplify the applicability and robustness of the proposed approach, this study uses the oil and gas industry of Iran as a case in point. From the literature review, 21 criteria were established and using the grey-Delphi approach, 16 were finally considered. The four top-ranked criteria, using grey-Shannon entropy, include warranty level and experience time, relationship closeness, supplier's technical level and risks which are considered as the most critical and influential criteria for supplier evaluation in the Iranian oil and gas industry. The ranking of the suppliers is obtained, and the best and worst suppliers are also identified. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the results using the proposed methodology are robust.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed approach would assist supply chain practicing managers, including purchasing managers, procurement managers and supply chain managers in the oil and gas and other industries, to effectively select suitable suppliers for cooperation. It can also be used for other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) applications. Future works on applying other MCDM methods and comparing them with the results of this study can be addressed. Finally, broader and more empirical works are required in the oil and gas industry.Originality/valueThis study is among the first few studies of supplier selection in the oil and gas industry from an emerging economy perspective and sets the stage for future research. The proposed integrated grey-based MCDM approach provides robust results in supplier evaluation and can be used for future domain applications.


When working on urban planning projects there are usually multiple aspects to consider. Often these aspects are contradictory and it is not possible to choose one over the other; instead, they each need to be fulfilled as well as possible. In this situation ideal solutions are not always found because they are either not sought or the problems are regarded as being too complex for human capabilities.To improve this situation we propose complementing traditional design approaches with a design synthesis process based on evolutionary many-criteria optimization methods that can fulfill formalizable design requirements. In addition we show how self-organizing maps can be used to visualize many-dimensional solution spaces in an easily analyzable and comprehensible form.The system is presented using an urban planning scenario for the placement of building volumes.


The adoption of Electronic Banking by commercial enterprise has been in existence since the mid 90s, much greater in number due to lower operating costs associated with it. Electronic banking has been in the form of automatic teller machines and telephone transactions. More recently, it has been transformed by the Internet, a new delivery channel for banking services that benefits both customers and banks. Access is fast, convenient, and available around the clock. Furthermore, customer's application for electronic banking facilities is expanding as the cost savings on transactions over the internet are significant. The chances and threats that the internet symbolizes is no longer news to the present day banking sector. No traditional bank would dare face investment analysts without an Internet strategy. Moreover, business success is not guaranteed by a detailed and thoughtful approach to the internet. The main intention behind the commencement of electronic banking services is to provide the customers with an alternative that is more responsive and with less expensive options. With options just a click away, customers have more control than ever. Their expectations are usability and real-time answers. They also want personal attention and highly customized products and services. This research intends to see how electronic banking has improved the efficiency and effectiveness in the bank, take a look at the security measures on ground and also profer a solution that can eradicate fraud in electronic banking.


Spending on healthcare in the United Kingdom exceeded the average of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development member countries for the first time in 2009, a new report shows. Health spending accounted for 9.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the UK, whereas the OECD average was 9.6%.

The share of the UK's GDP allocated to health rose steadily throughout the whole of the past decade, particularly during the 2008-9 recession. It rose from 8.4% in 2007 to 9.8% in 2009.

The Health at a Glance report, the sixth in a series of annual reports, shows that spending on health is rising worldwide but that not enough is being done to prevent and manage chronic diseases.

It shows that across the 34 OECD countries health spending rose on average by 4% a year over the decade to 2009 and that the proportion of GDP spent on health rose to 9.6%, up 0.8% on the …


In nature, the lateral line of fish is a peculiar and important organ for sensing the surrounding hydrodynamic environment, preying, escaping from predators and schooling. In this paper, by imitating the mechanism of fish lateral canal neuromasts, we developed an artificial lateral line system composed of micro-pressure sensors. Through hydrodynamic simulations, an optimized sensor structure was obtained and the pressure distribution models of the lateral surface were established in uniform flow and turbulent flow. Carrying out the corresponding underwater experiment, the validity of the numerical simulation method is verified by the comparison between the experimental data and the simulation results. In addition, a variety of effective research methods are proposed and validated for the flow velocity estimation and attitude perception in turbulent flow, respectively and the shape recognition of obstacles is realized by the neural network algorithm.


The lower part of the Campanian Castlegate Formation, one of the best known fluvial sheet sands of the Western Interior seaway, combines with an overlying finer grained unit (middle member of the Castlegate Formation) to form an unconformity-bounded, third-order stratigraphic sequence (~3 m.y. duration). This sequence contains a mappable muddy zone along the western Book Cliffs of Utah now mapped as contiguous with the open-marine parts of the succession (Buck Tongue, Sego Sandstone, Anchor Mine Tongue) to the east. The correlation within the middle Castlegate has been refined and the nature of the link between tidally influenced fluvial strata in the west and marine strata in the east has been remapped. Five high-frequency stratigraphic sequences (all within the upper part of the larger third-order sequence), forming a thickness to 160 m, have been mapped in the Price area southeastward into the time-equivalent marine succession near Green River. Individual sequences (probably <0.5 m.y. duration), reflecting transgressive to regressive estuary infilling, have an internal architecture in which fluvial and tidally influenced distributary-channel belts pass up into muddy central-basin sedimentary units, to bayhead-delta deposits, and in some places up to more fluvial channel belts. The key to the mapping of individual sequences is recognition of the muddy, brackish-water interval, developed during maximum transgression of the time-equivalent shoreline. The two most proximal marine-influenced sequences (2 and 3) are probably broadly time-equivalent with the Buck and Anchor Mine Tongues to the east. The analysis here, contrary to recent suggestions, shows that the marine sequences in the eastern Book Cliffs can be traced far into the time-equivalent, western fluvio-estuarine succession.


Atmospheric corrosion, the most common form of metal corrosion, occurs within the interfacial region between a solid, and the surrounding atmosphere. In fact three phases and two interfaces are involved: the gas, a thin liquid layer, a solid, the gas/liquid and the liquid/solid interfaces. In this thesis, the vapor/liquid and liquid/metal interfaces have been studied by the in-situ techniques vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy (VSFS), and infrared reflection/absorption spectroscopy (IRAS). The main focus has been on characterization of the corrosive organic molecules formic acid, acetic acid, and acetaldehyde, at the two interfaces. Additionally, the headgroup of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) has been examined at the air/water interface. VSFS is an inherently surface sensitive laser spectroscopy technique, which provides vibrational spectra solely of the molecules residing at the surface of for example a liquid, despite the vast excess of the same molecules in the bulk. To obtain a comprehensive molecular picture of the organic compounds at the air/liquid interface, studies have been undertaken in several spectral regions, targeting the CH, C=O, C-O, OH, and SO3 stretching vibrations. Furthermore, the surrounding water molecules have been investigated in order to study hydration phenomena. Acetaldehyde has been determined to partly form a gem-diol (CH3CH(OH)2) at the air/water interface, whereas acetic acid forms various hydrogen-bonded species, with hydrated monomers at low concentrations and centrosymmetric cyclic dimers at high concentrations. Formic acid was found to form a different complex at very high concentrations, in addition to the species observed at low concentrations. Performing experiments with different polarizations of the laser beams has enabled the determination of the orientation of the interfacial molecules. The methyl group of acetic acid was concluded to be oriented close to the surface normal throughout the concentration range, whereas the tilt angle of the CH group of formic acid was determined to be ~35°. The SDS studies revealed that the headgroup orientation is constant in a wide range of concentrations, and also in the presence of sodium chloride. IRAS has provided information regarding the composition and kinetics of the corrosion products formed upon exposure of a zinc oxide surface to the organic compounds. The importance of the water adlayer on metal surfaces has been confirmed by the faster kinetics observed at higher relative humidities. Exposure to formic acid resulted in the formation of zinc formate, whereas both acetic acid and acetaldehyde formed zinc acetate upon reaction with the zinc oxide surface. However, the kinetics were faster for acetic acid than acetaldehyde, which was explained in terms of an acetate-induced zinc dissolution process and a more complicated reaction path involved in the acetaldehyde case to form the zinc acetate surface species. Scanning electron microscopy indicated the formation of radially growing reaction products for acetic acid and filiform corrosion for acetaldehyde.


2 Background: Breast cancer outcomes are worse among black than white women, but the role of income and out-of-pocket costs (OOPCs) in these disparities is understudied. The Medicare D program provided medication insurance for older women and also included a low-income subsidy (LIS) which eliminated or reduced OOPCs among women with low assets and limited income (based on federal poverty level). We examined differences in adherence to HT by race/ethnicity among a Medicare D population, hypothesizing that LIS might reduce racial disparities in HT adherence.

METHODS
With data collected from a national sample of women enrolled in Medicare Parts A, B, and D, we identified Medicare Part D enrollees ≥65 years diagnosed with breast cancer who underwent mastectomy or breast conserving surgery in 2006-07 and received either tamoxifen or an AI (anastrozole, letrozole, or exemestane) within one year of surgery. Nonadherence rates (medication possession rate of >0.80) were calculated by race and LIS status for each year after first fill up through December 2011. The association of race with HT adherence was examined in unadjusted Chi-square analyses and in regression models adjusted for age, comorbidity, chemotherapy use, and zip code level- income and education. All models utilized GEE to account for within-patient clustering.

RESULTS
Among a sample of 23,299 women (50.6% age 65-74, 40.9% age 75-84), 27.2% received LIS. LIS (but not AI use) varied substantially by race, so that 20.6% of white women and 69.7% of black women received the subsidy. In the first year of therapy, differences in adherence by race were statistically significant, but small (64.2% for white, 63.2% for black and 66.7% for Hispanic). Adherence dropped during years 2-3 of the study, but reductions were much smaller among LIS recipients. Results were confirmed in adjusted models.

CONCLUSIONS
Enrollment in the Medicare D LIS was high among black and Hispanic breast cancer patients, and disparities in adherence to breast cancer HT among these women were small and remained so over three years. Our study offers important information about the role of medication subsidies and SES in adherence, and suggests their potential to reduce the breast cancer outcomes gap by race.


This paper examines and compares how a range of western or 'westernised' nations regard and approach the economic dimension of death in terms of the costs of laying their members to rest in a customary, ritualised and meaningful manner. Drawing on a Sun Life Direct funded research project conducted in 2012 into welfare provision for funerals, the paper will examine the way in which people who struggle to pay for a funeral are supported in a variety of countries. Countries in the study include Britain, Canada, United States, France, Germany, Greece, Irish Republic, Italy, Spain Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. Presented in terms of Esping-Anderson's conceptualisation of different welfare regime types, the paper considers the nature and role played by social welfare provision in ensuring that dead people are properly cared for, according to their own and/or their survivors' wishes. In so doing, it identifies similarities and differences between countries with regard to the nature and extent of social support for those who are unable to afford the expense of a funeral without incurring significant debt, with a view to generating an international dialogue on the intersection of funeral ritual, culture, policy and finances.


The work presents the study of existing methods for accounting of non-economic parameters and indicators for the evaluation of projects in the world practice. The research method involves the collection and analysis of various aspects of this issue for the period from 1975 to March 2018 based on the Web of Science database. Based on 57 sources conducted research, there were revealed advantages and disadvantages of the existing methods of approaches, a group of non-economic evaluation criteria was identified, a technology for assessing existing approaches and a trend of integrated evaluation of projects were taken into account during the process of accounting for non-economic and economic indicators. The present work proposes a concept of a compromise assessment of projects in solving the set problem, which would combine the advantages of existing approaches and methods of world practice in impact assessment and project appraisal.


Ben Shahn, renowned painter, muralist, and graphic artist, was also a talented photographer who made documentary street photographs in New York City in the early 1930s. This book is the first to focus on his compelling New York images, showing how he used a camera to comment on many social issues of his day. As a political activist Shahn became interested in newspaper photography as source material for some of his paintings and satires. Soon he was engaged in street photography himself, documenting the working-class and immigrant populations and providing a poignant record of unemployment and poverty during the Depression years. The book considers the immediate social history of Shahn's New York photographs and analyses how his leftist politics and his interest in news photographs and film affected his photographic aesthetic. The authors assert the importance of analysing Shahn's paintings and photographs together, explaining why the connections between the two have been ignored until now. The book reproduces not only Shahn's New York photographs but also his related paintings, prints, and drawings, and an appendix presents documents that speak of the pervasive impact of his photographic work. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Arthur Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, from 5 February to 30 April; the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., from 10 June to 27 August; the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, from 14 October to 27 January 2001; and the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago, from 19 April to 17 June 2001.


In this research, I paint a canvas of how international human rights norms have entered American civil society-governmental contests over torture and detainee rights policies after Abu Ghraib and assess the extent to which efforts by select media outlets, human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and congressional leaders have produced a new American engagement with the international human rights framework. The study is empirical (stemming from 11 interviews and content analysis of select media coverage) and focuses on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General and the passage of the McCain Anti-torture Amendment to the 2006 Department of Defense Appropriation Act. My analysis is informed by a constructivist framework that highlights the interplay between norms, and power or interests. Constructivism underscores elements of "shared moral assessment" or evaluation encompassed by international norms and maintains that international norms can produces shifts in actors' constitution of their identities and interests. Although earlier waves of constructivist scholarship focused on processes of persuasion and communication taking place on the international plain, increasingly, scholars are looking at these processes at the domestic level. An intractable commitment to upholding liberal rights has been a central tenet of dominant American identity constructions. In relation to the international human rights regime, this identity construction has been invoked to paint international norms as redundant or irrelevant to the American experience. In U.S. political and legal discourses, the Constitutional rights framework has routinely been portrayed as above and beyond the international rights regime, thus rendering America's commitment to human rights implicit in the sanctity accorded to its constitution. Further, the United States' inherent respect for universal rights is conceived of relationally, or in opposition to others" ineptitude in upholding rights. When extended, these dynamics produce a critical paradox. At the same time that dominant American identity constructions marginalize the international human rights regime, important aspects of American identity and self-image are tied up with an assumption of America adhering to human rights principles. After September 11th, when these formulations converged with emerging national security discourses, a number of troubling trends developed. Depictions of public international law as not real law, as naive, advisory, and irrelevant, or "quaint" and "obsolete" gained currency. Human rights NGOs struggled for funding and media coverage of detainee rights issues. Whether torture was a necessary evil in the "War on Terrorism" became an issue of legitimate debate, with the pro and con positions being placed on par and the pro position gaining momentum. Finally, American policymakers appropriated the moral authority and normative legitimacy of human rights discourses in order to simultaneously justify military interventions and avoid the application of these norms within those interventions. That constitutional protections could not be extended to non-citizens was treated merely as a regrettable but unalterable fact. Then came Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib forced American leaders to reconcile the gulf between their self-image as deploying benign power in the service of rights and freedom, and incontrovertible evidence of American power producing rights violations. Immediately, the pictures produced condemnation of the violations and rhetorical acceptance of the substance and legitimacy of the international norms violated. Most significant for the current analysis, the gripping images mobilized and opened up an important discursive space for domestic actors who sought American human rights compliance. The three primary domestic actors I identify are human rights NGOs, the media, and congressional leaders. …


Background— Impairment in left ventricular systolic function has been described in heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), but its prognostic relevance is not known. We determined whether left ventricular longitudinal strain (LS) is predictive of cardiovascular outcomes in HFpEF beyond clinical and conventional echocardiographic measures. Methods and Results— LS was assessed by 2-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography at baseline in 447 patients with HFpEF enrolled in the Treatment of Preserved Cardiac Function Heart Failure With an Aldosterone Antagonist (TOPCAT) trial. At a median follow-up of 2.6 years (interquartile range, 1.5–3.9 years), 115 patients experienced the primary composite outcome of cardiovascular death, HF hospitalization, or aborted cardiac arrest. Impaired LS, defined as an absolute LS <15.8%, was present in 52% of patients and was predictive of the composite outcome (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.26–3.66; P=0.005), cardiovascular death alone (adjusted hazard ratio, 3.20; 95% confidence interval, 1.44–7.12; P=0.004), and HF hospitalization alone (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 1.16–4.28; P=0.016) after adjustment for clinical and conventional echocardiographic variables. LS was the strongest echocardiographic predictor of the composite outcome. Exploratory analysis in a subset of 131 patients with follow-up LS assessed after 12 to 18 months demonstrated a trend toward improvement in LS associated with spironolactone in patients enrolled in the Americas but not in Russia or Georgia. Conclusions— Impaired left ventricular systolic function is a powerful predictor of HF hospitalization, cardiovascular death, or aborted cardiac arrest in HFpEF independent of clinical predictors. Impaired LS represents a novel imaging biomarker to identify patients with HFpEF at particularly high risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00094302.


Given the existence of distinct communities with different and often contradictory aspirations, multinational states are used to witnessing some rivalry between the majority and the minority groups. This contribution explores the nation-building dynamics in this context, with a particular focus on the majority group's rhetoric. In this regard, the dominant nationalism identifies the status quo and the official symbols of the state as neutral, therefore accusing the nation-building efforts of the minority as partisan and divisive. Nevertheless, we know that both are trying to "nationalise" its citizens and gain support for their own nationalist cause. Drawing on the case of Spain to illustrate these remarks, I argue that the acknowledgement of this reality is the first step to settle a constitutional framework where both nationalisms can flourish and coexist. Nation-building in a Multinational State: Between Majority and Minority Aspirations | 2


Conditor is a software tool which works with textual documents containing historical information. The purpose of this work two-fold: firstly to show the validity of the developed engine to correctly identify and label the entities of the universe of discourse with a labelled-combined XTM-DITA model. Secondly to explain the improvements achieved in the information retrieval process thanks to the use of a object-oriented database (JPOX) as well as its integration into the Lucene-type database search process to not only accomplish more accurate searches, but to also help the future development of a recommender system [21]. We finish with a brief demo in a 3D-graph of the results of the aforementioned search.


A multicast session in a wireless ad hoc network concerns routing messages from a source to a set of destination devices. Transmitting messages consumes energy at the source and intermediate devices of the session. Since a battery is the only energy source in many applications of wireless ad hoc networks, energy efficiency is an important performance measure of multicasting. In this paper, we present and analyze integer programming models for the problem of minimizing the total energy required by multicasting. We start from a straightforward multicommodity flow model, which is strengthened by a more efficient representation of transmission power. Further strengthening is accomplished by lifting the capacity constraints of the model. We then present cut‐based models for the problem, and prove, from a bounding standpoint, the equivalence in strength between these models and their flow‐based counterparts. By expanding the underlying graph, we show that the problem can be transformed into finding a minimum Steiner arborescence. The expanded graph arises also in the separation procedure for solving one of the cut‐based models. In addition to a theoretical analysis of the relation between various models, we perform extensive computational experiments to study the numerical strengths of these models and their efficiency in solving the problem. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2008


Beacon Hill pericline is the most easterly pericline of the Mendip Hills, whose folds and thrusts were formed during the Variscan Orogeny by earth movements directed from the south. The Silurian volcanic rocks making up the core of the pericline are shown to be responsible for the large, linear magnetic anomalies present over eastern Mendip. Magnetic anomalies within the Radstock Coalfield to the north, however, are related to volcanic horizons in the Carboniferous Limestone. A three-dimensional model shows the presence of Silurian rocks beneath the spine of the eastern Mendip Hills. Seismic reflection sections are used to control two-dimensional interpretations of potential field data from Beacon Hill pericline. Although the magnetic anomalies are adequately explained by the seismic model, the gravity anomalies require the presence of an additional low density body beneath the pericline's southern flank. This body is interpreted as a thrust wedge of Old Red Sandstone emplaced in its present position by a previously unrecognized post-Variscan normal fault. The considerable lateral extent of the structure is demonstrated by the trend of the maxima of the horizontal gradient of the gravity anomalies.


Asserting that the "return to Wesley" that is represented in the Quadrilateral is "intellectually wrongheaded," William J. Abraham argues that the Quadrilateral is not, and should not be, United Methodist doctrine. Abraham's lively treatise makes a provocative appeal for a reasoned exploration of the significance of the UMC's doctrinal identity. He reveals how churches have faced incompatible doctrinal proposals within their midst and examines the specific issues facing the United Methodist church as a whole.


The book provides a comparative analysis of the law relating to remedies for breach of contract. It examines different remedies such as specific performance and damages,doing so from the viewpoint of different legal systems, principally the English, American, German, French and Israeli. Each essay is written by a recognised specialist in his or her own field. Topics covered include the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies, the recent reforms of the law relating to breach of contract in Germany, the remedies in the context of a third party beneficiary and the extent to which a claimant can choose the remedy which he or she deems to be the most appropriate. The book also makes use of a range of techniques, particularly economic analysis, when examining the legal rules. The book contains an introductory essay written by the editors and an essay by Professor Friedman, which deals with the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies.


Coleman and Manna (2000) argue that campaign spending boosts the quality of democracy by increasing citizen knowledge about and affect toward candidates. If politically and socially advantaged groups disproportionately capture these knowledge benefits, however, then campaign spending merely perpetuates political inequality. Examining challenger and incumbent spending in 1996, I estimate the distribution of campaign spending benefits and find that these benefits are distributed broadly across advantaged and disadvantaged groups. In this regard, campaign spending is a democratizing force.


I have worked together with three Swedish families with small children, focusing on their intrinsic goals as a way to increase well-being in their everyday life. I have designed ceremonial objects for the families to use to create their own ceremony, as a way to practice togetherness by being more present in the moment. These objects are made in a do-it-yourself manner so that other people can make their own objects from the instructions. By practicing togetherness people can have an entry way for focusing more on what they actually want and need, on a personal level, but it could also cause a ripple effect and support a more sustainable society, both socially and environmentally.


The article focuses on two novels (Brice Matthieussent's 2009Vengeance du traducteurand Jacques Poulin's 2006La Traduction est une histoire d'amour) which present apparently contradictory viewpoints on the role of the translator and translation through their distinctive use of both metaphors and meta-discourse on translation. Matthieussent's novel is a revenge indeed, a postmoderntour de forcewhere the notions of original, translation, source and target texts, author and translator, are blurred to the point of becoming irrelevant, shedding a whole new light on the concepts of faithfulness and creativity, and redefining typographical and cultural spaces. Presented as a translation by its narrator,Vengeance du traducteuris a discussion about translation, a metaphorical and symbolical deconstruction of the author-translator relationship, which creatively and cynically dissects power relations in the translation process, and questions the validity of the notions of author and translator, pointing out their absurdity. Poulin's novel approaches the author-translator relationship more traditionally, portraying a young woman, Marine, the first-person narrator, planning to meet an author she admires, and become his translator. Though she is successful in this, few scenes focus on translation proper; instead the writer and translator must determine the owner of an abandoned kitten, using a cryptic note on its collar. They must find the right words to complete the clue, and also determine what these words truly mean. The cooperative, symbiotic connexion between the two outside their working relationship becomes a metaphor in itself for the process of translation; this in turn focuses a spotlight on the work of translating which is relegated to the background of this novel whose title announces it as central. Through careful dissection of all the novels' elements, we will show how theirmise-en-abîmeof translating determines and undermines the perception and practice of literary translation.


The amount of visual data such as images and videos available over web has increased exponentially over the last few years. In order to efficiently organize and exploit these massive collections, a system, apart from being able to answer simple classification based questions such as whether a specific object is present (or absent) in an image, should also be capable of searching images and videos based on more complex descriptive questions. There is also a considerable amount of structure present in the visual world which, if effectively utilized, can help achieve this goal. To this end, we first present an approach for image ranking and retrieval based on queries consisting of multiple semantic attributes. We further show that there are significant correlations present between these attributes and accounting for them can lead to superior performance. Next, we extend this by proposing an image retrieval framework for descriptive queries composed of object categories, semantic attributes and spatial relationships. The proposed framework also includes a unique multi-view hashing technique, which enables query specification in three different modalities—image, sketch and text.
We also demonstrate the effectiveness of leveraging contextual information to reduce the supervision requirements for learning object and scene recognition models. We present an active learning framework to simultaneously learn appearance and contextual models for scene understanding. Within this framework we introduce new kinds of labeling questions that are designed to collect appearance as well as contextual information and which mimic the way in which humans actively learn about their environment. Furthermore we explicitly model the contextual interactions between the regions within an image and select the question which leads to the maximum reduction in the combined entropy of all the regions in the image (image entropy).


This paper reports on the development and formal verification (proof of semantic preservation) of CompCert, a compiler from Clight (a large subset of the C programming language) to PowerPC assembly code, using the Coq proof assistant both for programming the compiler and for proving its correctness. Such a verified compiler is useful in the context of critical software and its formal verification: the verification of the compiler guarantees that the safety properties proved on the source code hold for the executable compiled code as well.


"From Jim Crow to Civil Rights" engages a theme that has been at the center of American constitutional theory since at least the 1930s: the role of judicial review in a democracy. Klarman situates himself between the heroic vision of the courts in works like Richard Kluger, "Simple Justice" and a negative view of courts in works like Gerald Rosenberg, "Hollow Hope." For Klarman, the courts are neither the hero of the story, generating needed social change, but neither are they the villain, deflecting the movement's energies from political struggles more likely to be successful. Along the way, Klarman strikes a blow at the countermajoritarian difficulty thesis, for Klarman imagines a Court without significant agency. The Court does not shape American society; instead the Court follows the flow of predominant cultural mores, reflecting changes that have their source elsewhere. This review essay focuses on a central theme in Klarman's book: his view of the relationship between law and social context. The essay examines two features of social context that Klarman sees as important: African American migration out of the South, and the impact of global developments - World War II and the Cold War - on the Court. Many African Americans migrated into segregated and soon-to-be-declining Northern cities. Because urban segregation was facilitated in part by law, the experience of migration helps to illuminate the way that social context is in part constructed by law, helping us to see that law does not simply reflect social context, but also shapes it. Klarman views war-related pressures as an important part of the social context affecting the Court; however, these issues drop out when he examines the impact of Court decisions. Because Brown and other landmark civil rights cases aided U.S. efforts to project a positive image of American democracy around the world during the Cold War, the cases had a broader impact, and arguably were more important in aiding democratization, than a purely domestic analysis of the cases would reveal.


Haplotype Inference (HI) is a computational challenge of crucial importance in a range of genetic studies. Pedigrees allow to infer haplotypes from genotypes more accurately than population data, since Mendelian inheritance restricts the set of possible solutions. In this work, we define a new HI problem on pedigrees, called Minimum-Change Haplotype Configuration (MCHC) problem, that allows two types of genetic variation events: recombinations and mutations. Our new formulation extends the Minimum-Recombinant Haplotype Configuration (MRHC) problem, that has been proposed in the literature to overcome the limitations of classic statistical haplotyping methods. Our contribution is twofold. First, we prove that the MCHC problem is APX-hard under several restrictions. Second, we propose an efficient and accurate heuristic algorithm for MCHC based on an L-reduction to a well-known coding problem. Our heuristic can also be used to solve the original MRHC problem and can take advantage of additional knowledge about the input genotypes. Moreover, the L-reduction proves for the first time that MCHC and MRHC are O(nm/log nm)-approximable on general pedigrees, where n is the pedigree size and m is the genotype length. Finally, we present an extensive experimental evaluation and comparison of our heuristic algorithm with several other state-of-the-art methods for HI on pedigrees.


NARCIS, National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System, is a project in the Netherlands to build a portal for research information which combines structured research information with information from OAI repositories (publication and other scientific results), websites, and news pages of research institutes. The main goal of NARCIS is to create a central place for searching all these types of data. The research data in NARCIS have been collected via the administrative processes of the different participating institutes within the work flow process. Different techniques are being used to combine the current research information and the research results. The idea for the project has been developed within the DIO-platform (National Platform Data Infrastructure Research Information) and has been realised with a subsidy of the Dutch programme DARE (Digital Academic REpositories) coordinated by SURF. SURF is the higher education and research partnership organisation for network services and information and communications technology (ICT). Partners in the NARCIS project are The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), and the Information Centre of the Radboud University of Nijmegen (METIS). The implementing of NARCIS took one year.


In League with Extraordinary Gentlemen combines two of composer Peter Graham's life interests - composition and 19th century popular fiction. Each of the concerto's three movements takes its musical inspiration from extraordinary characters who have transcended the original genre and have subsequently found mass audiences through film, television and comic book adaptations.

The first movement follows a traditional sonata form outline with one slight modification. The order of themes in the recapitulation is reversed, mirroring a plot climax in the H.G. Wells novella The Time Machine (where the protagonist, known only as The Time Traveller, puts his machine into reverse bringing the story back full circle).
The Adventure of the Final Problem is the title of a short story published in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is an account of the great detective's final struggle with his long-time adversary Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. The music takes the form of a slowed down landler (a Swiss/Austrian folk dance) and various acoustic and electronic echo effects call to mind the alpine landscape. The final bars pose a question paralleling that of Conan Doyle in the story – have we really seen the last of Sherlock Holmes?
The final movement, The Great Race, follows Phileas Fogg on the last stage of his epic journey "Around the World in Eighty Days" (from the novel by Jules Verne). The moto perpetuo nature of the music gives full rein to the soloist's technical virtuosity. As the work draws to a conclusion, the frantic scramble by Fogg to meet his deadline at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, London, is echoed by the soloist's increasingly demanding ascending figuration, set against the background of Big Ben clock chimes.

In League with Extraordinary Gentlemen was first performed by Steven Mead and the Osaka Municipal Symphonic Band, conductor Kazuhiko Komatsu, in The Symphony Hall Osaka, Japan, on June 6, 2008. The brass band version was premiered by David Thornton and the Black Dyke Band, conductor Nicholas Childs, at the RNCM Concert Hall Manchester on January 30, 2009 for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Afternoon Concert series.


Saint Vicent Ferrer's personality (1350-1419) has been tackled by researchers in different points of view, and this has meant a proliferation of very diverse studies. There isn't much, however, the works which has done analysis relating to popular piety and devotion. In this sense, the different hagiographic sources puts us faced with a saint with a very widespread cult in some areas, for instance, the Crown of Aragon and Castille, but also in other european places. As for the last, we detect an import focus of devotion in Brittany, where the saint arrived to preach after being called by Jean V. He died at Vannes (1419), the political capital of the duchy of Brittany, and he was buried in Saint Pierre's cathedral. Previously to his canonization, his fame as a miracle worker during his life was the reason for his tomb became a real locus sanctus, a place where pilgrims arrived to venerate his relics. These relics had healing and prophylactic properties. Apart from these ones, we have many references of "contact relics" with properties of this kind.


The aim of this project is to study Conformal Field Theories in
d
≥
3 dimensions
and derive the Conformal Bootstrap Equation which may be used to solve theories
with conformal invariance. The identification conformal derives from the property
that the transformation does not affect the angle between two arbitrary curves cross-
ing each other at some point, conformal transformations preserve angles. Mathe-
matically, a conformal transformation comprises of two steps - doing a conformal
isometry, followed by a Weyl rescaling of the metric. The bootstrap approach is an
algebraic recursive procedure, which heavily relies on determining the consequences
of the symmetries and imposing consistency conditions. We started by considering
infinitesimal form of conformal diffeomorphisms for
d
≥
3 spacetime dimensions. We
identified translations, dilatations, rotations, boosts and special conformal transfor-
mations as members of the conformal group and that the algebra is isomorphic to a
pseudo-orthogonal
SO
(
d
+ 1
,
1). A number of fundamental systems have been shown
to obey conformal invariance and we explicitly worked out the case for the massless
scalar field and in a heuristic fashion, for the case of the source-free Maxwell field.
Conformally invariant systems, in particular field theories are described by fields
which transform homogeneously under conformal transformations i.e. which consti-
tute irreducible representations (irreps) of conformal group. Seeking the irreducible
representations of the group, we used the little group method and derived the com-
plete set of transformation rules for Φ(
x
). Next, we saw that the two and three point
functions were determined upto some multiplicative constants by imposing confor-
mal invariance alone, but this success stopped here and it was seen that for four(or
more) points, the functions have an arbitrary dependence on what are known as
anharmonic ratios
or
cross ratios
(which are invariants unchanged by all conformal
transformations).
Next, we establish
state operator correspondence
by using radial quantization and
show that any operator at a point away from the origin is a linear combination of
the primary and its descendants which are together known as a conformal family.
Then, we will show that in a CFT, radial quantization leads us to a useful tool
known as the
Operator Product Expansion
(OPE). And that by using this tool, we
can recursively reduce any n-point function to 2 point functions. And we show that
they are completely determined by conformal invariance upto some constants known
as OPE coefficients. Following that, we identify a consistency condition for filtering
junk CFT data, this is known as
crossing symmetry
or
OPE associativity
. Using this
condition we derived the very powerful
conformal bootstrap equation
. For unitary

theories, we can have even more constraints on the spectrum, for which we derived
the
unitarity bounds
before finishing with an algorithm which tells us how we can use
the bootstrap equation to rule out inconsistent families of spectra.


We consider testing for weak instruments in a model with multiple endogenous variables. Unlike Stock and Yogo (2005), who considered a weak instruments problem where the rank of the matrix of reduced form parameters is near zero, here we consider a weak instruments problem of a near rank reduction of one in the matrix of reduced form parameters. For example, in a two-variable model, we consider weak instrument asymptotics of the form π1=δπ2+c/n where π1 and π2 are the parameters in the two reduced-form equations, c is a vector of constants and n is the sample size. We investigate the use of a conditional first-stage F-statistic along the lines of the proposal by Angrist and Pischke (2009) and show that, unless δ=0, the variance in the denominator of their F-statistic needs to be adjusted in order to get a correct asymptotic distribution when testing the hypothesis H0:π1=δπ2. We show that a corrected conditional F-statistic is equivalent to the Cragg and Donald (1993) minimum eigenvalue rank test statistic, and is informative about the maximum total relative bias of the 2SLS estimator and the Wald tests size distortions. When δ=0 in the two-variable model, or when there are more than two endogenous variables, further information over and above the Cragg–Donald statistic can be obtained about the nature of the weak instrument problem by computing the conditional first-stage F-statistics.


ABSTRACT. This essay explores the proposition that China and Vietnam represent a fourth class route to modern nationhood, in addition to the ethnic (German), civic (French) and plural (American) routes. Nation-states emerging along the class route are characterised by an exclusive membership based on social class rather than just ethnicity, living under the same laws or participation in liberation from foreign rule. The essay compares China's and Vietnam's class-based nationalism with the more inclusive labour movement nationalisms of Norway and Cyprus. Then it explains how the class route differs from the French civic route. In the conclusion, the author concedes that the Chinese and Vietnamese class route is perhaps a detour rather than a route of its own, since it leads to inevitable tension between the divisive history of how the nation was formed and the need of its later leaders to include and represent the same social classes that were originally excluded. These leaders and their national storytellers are forced to undertake a redefinition of the national self as ethnic, civic and/or plural in an attempt to recreate national legitimacy, often in competition with more radically nationalist opposition groups.


The duration and frequency of mobile phone calls, and their relationship with various health effects, have been investigated in our previous cross-sectional study. This 2-year period follow-up study aimed to assess the changes in these variables of same subjects. The study population comprised 532 non-patient adult subjects sampled from the Korean Genome Epidemiology Study. The subjects underwent a medical examination at a hospital in 2012/2013 and revisited the same hospital in 2014/2015 to have the same examination for the characteristics of mobile phone use performed. In addition, to evaluate the effects on health, the Headache Impact Test-6 (HIT-6), Psychosocial Well-being Index-Short Form, Beck Depression Inventory, Korean-Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, Perceived Stress Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and 12-item Short Form Health Survey were analyzed. For all these tests, the higher the score, the greater the effect on health. Variances between scores in all the indices in the baseline and follow-up surveys were calculated, and correlations of each index were analyzed. The average duration per call and HIT-6 score of the subjects decreased significantly compared with those recorded two years ago. The results showed a slight but significant correlation between call duration changes and HIT-6 score changes for female subjects, but not for males. HIT-6 scores in the follow-up survey significantly decreased compared to those in the baseline survey, but long-time call users (subjects whose call duration was ≥5 minutes in both the baseline and follow-up surveys) had no statistically significant reduction in HIT-6 scores. This study suggests that increased call duration is a greater risk factor for increases in headache than any other type of adverse health effect, and that this effect can be chronic.


This evaluation of the non-commercial (Q)SARs for mutagenicity and carcinogenicity consisted of a preliminary survey (Phase I), and then of a more detailed analysis of short listed models (Phase II). In Phase I, the models were collected from the literature, and then assessed according to the OECD principles –based on the information provided by the authors-. Phase I provided the support for short listing a number of promising models, that were analyzed more in depth in Phase II. In Phase II, the information provided by the authors was completed and complemented with a series of analyses aimed at generating an overall profile of each of the short listed models. The models can be divided into two families based on their target: a) congeneric; and b) non-congeneric sets of chemicals. The QSARs for congeneric chemicals include most of the chemical classes top ranking in the EU High Production Volume list, with the notable exception of the halogenated aliphatics. They almost exclusively aim at modeling Salmonella mutagenicity and rodent carcinogenicity, which are crucial toxicological endpoints in the regulatory context. The lack of models for in vivo genotoxicity should be remarked. Overall the short listed models can be interpreted mechanistically, and agree with, and/or support the available scientific knowledge, and most of the models have good statistics. Based on external prediction tests, the QSARs for the potency of congeneric chemicals are 30 to 70 % correct, whereas the models for discriminating between active and inactive chemicals have considerably higher accuracy (63 to 100 %), thus indicating that predicting intervals is more reliable than predicting individual data points. The internal validation procedures (e.g., cross-validation, etc...) did not seem to be a reliable measure of external predictivity. Among the non-local, or global approaches for non-congeneric data sets, four models based on the use of Structural Alerts (SA) were short listed and investigated in more depth. The four sets did not differ to a large extent in their performance. In the "general" databases of chemicals the SAs appear to agree around 65% with rodent carcinogenicity data, and 75% with Salmonella mutagenicity data. The SAs based models do not seem to work equally efficiently in the discrimination between active and inactive chemicals within individual chemical classes. Thus, their main role is that of preliminary, or large-scale screenings. A priority for future research on the SAs is their expansion to include alerts for nongenotoxic carcinogens. A general indication of this study, valid for both congeneric and noncongeneric models, is that there is uncertainty associated with (Q)SARs; the level of uncertainty has to be considered when using (Q)SAR in a regulatory context. However, (Q)SARs are not meant to be black-box machines for predictions, but have a much larger scope including organization and rationalization of data, contribution to highlight mechanisms of action, complementation of other data from different sources (e.g., experiments). Using only non-testing methods, the larger the evidence from QSARs (several different models, if available) and other approaches (e.g. chemical categories, read across) the higher the confidence in the prediction.


ABSTRACT This paper combines clinical-psychological and digital literacy frameworks to shed new light on explanations for excessive Internet use (EIU). The combination of these opposing approaches leads to a more comprehensive explanation of intense use with negative outcomes. A survey with a random sample of 18,709 Internet-using children between 11 and 16 years old was carried out in 25 European countries. The study shows that there are interactional and indirect relationships between psychological and digital literacy variables and EIU. Psychologically vulnerable children with higher levels of digital engagement have the most negative outcomes while the least at risk are non-vulnerable children with high levels of literacy (interactional relationship). In reality, psychologically vulnerable children's risk of negative outcomes is exacerbated by their tendency to spend more time online but countered by their lower literacy levels (contradicting direct and indirect relationships). Among those who are not vulnerable, digital literacy is weakly related to negative outcomes. The implications of these results for future research are that explanations for EIU should incorporate psychological and digital literacy indicators. Practical implications are that clinical psychologists working with EIU should consider digital literacy in developing interventions and that digital inclusion interventions should consider the potential negative impact of increased Internet use on vulnerable young people. This paper's original contribution lies in showing that whether intense Internet use is related to negative outcomes depends on the psychological characteristics of the child.


Network neutrality issues have been vigorously debated worldwide over the past few years. One major aim of network neutrality proponents is to prevent high-speed Internet service providers from charging content providers for priority delivery. Recently, proponents have turned their attention to the regulation of wireless networks, such as those for cellular phones, which provide increasing numbers of consumers access to Internet services. Some application providers have relied on a recent academic paper to support greater regulation of wireless operators. Although the proposals to regulate these networks use the phrase "net neutrality," the regulations they seek to impose on wireless operators have little in common with those being sought for other Internet service providers. In this article, we provide a framework for determining whether certain kinds of regulations should be imposed on the owners of wireless networks. We also consider the benefits and costs of specific proposals for the regulation of these networks. Our principal conclusion is that the costs of most of these proposals are likely to exceed the benefits.


Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which was added to the INA by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), allows the federal government to enter into voluntary partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law. Upon entering these agreements, law enforcement officers are trained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and receive delegated authority to enquire about an individual's immigration status and, if found to be removable, to detain the individual while ICE makes a determination of whether to initiate deportation proceedings. In some instances, this inquiry about immigration status takes place as part of the intake process when a criminal defendant is arrested and placed into a criminal jail. In other instances, task force officers are trained to inquire in the field about immigration status and enforce immigration law against people who have not committed any criminal offense. The key difference between the two models is that task force agents can arrest for immigration violations undocumented individuals who have not committed any criminal offense, whereas in the jail model individuals must be arrested on some other criminal charge before immigration status can be determined. The 287(g) program has raised several concerns regarding its implementation and results. First, the program could lead to racial and ethnic profiling. In particular, given that the majority of undocumented immigrants hail from Latin American countries, it is highly plausible that Hispanics, regardless of immigrant status, might be disproportionally affected by this program. That is, in a jurisdiction that participates in the jail model, an officer might arrest a Hispanic individual for a very minor offence in order to process them through the jail and determine their immigration status, when perhaps without the program they may have only issued a citation. Another concern with the program is that it may lead to tensions between state and local law enforcement and the local community. If the program creates an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust by community members toward state and local law enforcement agents, even law abiding individuals may choose to avoid interaction with law enforcement agents. This can make victims and witnesses hesitant to come forward, for fear that their undocumented status will be uncovered. Such a situation inhibits law enforcement's ability to do its job and can, ironically, make communities less safe. This study explores the effects of implementation of the 287(g) program in Frederick County, Maryland on the arrests of Hispanics. Using data from individual arrest records from the Frederick County Sheriff's Office, which has a 287(g) agreement with ICE, and the Frederick Police Department, which does not, I analyze the changes in arrests between the two agencies before and after the 287(g) program was implemented in 2008. I find that overall, the arrests of Hispanics fell, suggesting that the Hispanic community avoided interaction with law enforcement when the program began. However, I also find that the program led to a significantly higher number of arrests of Hispanics by the Sheriff's Office than would have occurred in its absence, indicating that attention was focused toward the Hispanic community as a result of the program. These results suggest that, if the program is to continue, additional safeguards are needed to prevent abuses and civil rights violations.


?This collection of papers and cases seeks to provide a focussed picture of a programme of research into an area of management activity which had previously been ignored by academia -public sector entrepreneurship. Hence, they not only add significantly to the entrepreneurship literature, but also open up an area of research not hitherto explored.Entrepreneurship itself has been debated from the stand points of economics, psychology, sociology and behaviourial science since its definition by Richard Cantillon in 1734. The entrepreneurship literature base is broad, but centred firmly around the small business, with only occasional forays into the not-for-profit sector and then only where the activity, in all senses but that of creating a shareholder profit, emulates that of the small business. The collection is divided into five main areas: first, a critical appraisal of the collection providing the strategy and methodology of research; next, two papers relating particularly to the initial surveys undertaken in the school and health sectors, These papers are particularly important because, through unadulterated survey, they provide the first indication that the sectors themselves recognise the existence of entrepreneurs within their midst. The next grouping develops the information gained from the surveys and adds to it much richer research case material. Possible externalities in the form of community entrepreneurship are also explored. The next section contains examples of published case studies in each of the public sector areas within the research strategy area. The study culminates in a paper advancing the first published definition of the Public Sector Entrepreneur. The final section includes a paper and conclusion providing an indication of the ongoing research direction and a move towards a more deductive perspective. The collection also provides a description of the changes which have occurred in the public sector relevant to the arguments and analysis within each paper. Similarly, each paper provides a synopsis of the relevant literature to enable the analysis and discussion of the research activity reported.


Background: Nasopharyngeal samples contain higher quantities of bacterial and host nucleic acids relative to viruses; presenting challenges during virus metagenomics sequencing, which underpins agnostic sequencing protocols. We aimed to develop a viral enrichment protocol for unbiased whole-genome sequencing of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) from nasopharyngeal samples using the Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) MinION platform. Methods: We assessed two protocols using RSV positive samples. Protocol 1 involved physical pre-treatment of samples by centrifugal processing before RNA extraction, while Protocol 2 entailed direct RNA extraction without prior enrichment. Concentrates from Protocol 1 and RNA extracts from Protocol 2 were each divided into two fractions; one was DNase treated while the other was not. RNA was then extracted from both concentrate fractions per sample and RNA from both protocols converted to cDNA, which was then amplified using the tagged Endoh primers through Sequence-Independent Single-Primer Amplification (SISPA) approach, a library prepared, and sequencing done. Statistical significance during analysis was tested using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: DNase-treated fractions from both protocols recorded significantly reduced host and bacterial contamination unlike the untreated fractions (in each protocol p<0.01). Additionally, DNase treatment after RNA extraction (Protocol 2) enhanced host and bacterial read reduction compared to when done before (Protocol 1). However, neither protocol yielded whole RSV genomes. Sequenced reads mapped to parts of the nucleoprotein (N gene) and polymerase complex (L gene) from Protocol 1 and 2, respectively. Conclusions: DNase treatment was most effective in reducing host and bacterial contamination, but its effectiveness improved if done after RNA extraction than before. We attribute the incomplete genome segments to amplification biases resulting from the use of short length random sequence (6 bases) in tagged Endoh primers. Increasing the length of the random nucleotides from six hexamers to nine or 12 in future studies may reduce the coverage biases.


The main objective of this paper is to systematically identify potential channels of transmission linking civil war and poverty that may lead to the persistence of cycles of poverty and war. A particular focus of the paper is the notion of individual (and group) agency during civil wars, as well as agency constraints faced by populations affected by violence. Although the outbreak and impact of war is known to depend on several financial and political factors, the onset, duration and magnitude of the impact of civil wars are also closely related to what happens to people during violent conflicts and to what people do in areas of violence to secure livelihoods, economic survival, physical security and their social networks. The nature and extent of these choices depends in turn on how individuals and households relate to changes in social norms and forms of institutional organisation during civil wars. The paper explores the economic channels through which war may simultaneously affect and be affected by the economic status and responses of individuals and their immediate relations in areas of violent conflict to cope with and adapt to changes to livelihoods and economic status during civil wars. This analysis focuses in particular on the important but under-researched role of social and political institutional transformation during civil war on individual and household poverty.


By the end of the nineteenth century, Pittsburgh emerged as a major manufacturing center in the United States. Its rise as a leading producer of steel, glass, and coal was fueled by machine technology and mass immigration, developments that fundamentally changed the industrial workplace. Because Pittsburgh's major industries were almost exclusively male and renowned for their physical demands, the male working body came to symbolize multiple often contradictory narratives about strength and vulnerability, mastery and exploitation. In Bodies of Work , Edward Slavishak explores how Pittsburgh and the working body were symbolically linked in civic celebrations, the research of social scientists, the criticisms of labor reformers, advertisements, and workers' self-representations. Combining labor and cultural history with visual culture studies, he chronicles a heated contest to define Pittsburgh's essential character at the turn of the twentieth century, and he describes how that contest was conducted largely through the production of competing images.

Slavishak focuses on the workers whose bodies came to epitomize Pittsburgh, the men engaged in the arduous physical labor demanded by the city's metals, glass, and coal industries. At the same time, he emphasizes how conceptions of Pittsburgh as quintessentially male limited representations of women in the industrial workplace. The threat of injury or violence loomed large for industrial workers at the turn of the twentieth century, and it recurs throughout Bodies of Work : in the marketing of artificial limbs, statistical assessments of the physical toll of industrial capitalism, clashes between labor and management, the introduction of workplace safety procedures, and the development of a statewide workmen's compensation system.


Fruiting hybrids are reported for the first time between the genera Citrus L. and Citropsis (Engl.) Swing. & M.Kell. Conventional hybridization using the recently described species Citrus wakonai P.I.Forst. & M.W.Sm. and Citropsis gabunensis (Engl.) Swing. & M.Kell. resulted in high rates of fruit set and seed formation. Although seed were only half normal size, over 90% germinated without the need for embryo rescue techniques. Plant losses were high during the first few months but after six months, the 327 surviving hybrids were potted on. These grew vigorously on their own roots and 35 of them flowered within two years of sowing. Plants flowered continuously but all were pollen-sterile and ovaries abscised shortly after petal fall. However, at 25 months, two newly flowering hybrids began setting fruit. The development, identification, morphology, breeding efficiency, and future implications of this unique germplasm are described.


A procedure is developed to test whether conditional variances are constant over time in the context of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models with possible GARCH-in-mean effects. The approach is based on the quasilikelihood function, leaving the true distribution of model disturbances parametrically unspecified. The presence of possible nuisance parameters in the conditional mean is dealt with by using a pivotal bound and Monte Carlo resampling techniques to obtain a level-exact test procedure. Simulation experiments reveal that the permutation-based, quasilikelihood ratio test has very attractive power properties in comparison with omnibus Lagrange multiplier tests. An empirical application of the new procedure finds overwhelming evidence of GARCH effects in Fama-French portfolio returns, even when conditioning on the market risk factor.


This paper discusses design decisions for exporting Modelica thermofluid flow components as Functional Mockup Units. The purpose is to provide guidelines that will allow building energy simulation programs and HVAC equipment manufacturers to effectively use FMUs for modeling of HVAC components and systems. We provide an analysis for direct input-output dependencies of such components and discuss how these dependencies can lead to algebraic loops that are formed when connecting thermofluid flow components. Based on this analysis, we provide recommendations that increase the computing efficiency of such components and systems that are formed by connecting multiple components. We explain what code optimizations are lost when providing thermofluid flow components as FMUs rather than Modelica code. We present an implementation of a package for FMU export of such components, explain the rationale for selecting the connector variables of the FMUs and finally provide computing benchmarks for different design choices. It turns out that selecting temperature rather than specific enthalpy as input and output signals does not lead to a measurable increase in computing time, but selecting nine small FMUs rather than a large FMU increases computing time by 70%.