Models of unsupervised, correlation-based (Hebbian) synaptic plasticity are typically unstable: either all synapses grow until each reaches the maximum allowed strength, or all synapses decay to zero strength. A common method of avoiding these outcomes is to use a constraint that conserves or limits the total synaptic strength over a cell. We study the dynamic effects of such constraints. Two methods of enforcing a constraint are distinguished, multiplicative and subtractive. For otherwise linear learning rules, multiplicative enforcement of a constraint results in dynamics that converge to the principal eigenvector of the operator determining unconstrained synaptic development. Subtractive enforcement, in contrast, typically leads to a final state in which almost all synaptic strengths reach either the maximum or minimum allowed value. This final state is often dominated by weight configurations other than the principal eigenvector of the unconstrained operator. Multiplicative enforcement yields a graded receptive field in which most mutually correlated inputs are represented, whereas subtractive enforcement yields a receptive field that is sharpened to a subset of maximally correlated inputs. If two equivalent input populations (e.g., two eyes) innervate a common target, multiplicative enforcement prevents their segregation (ocular dominance segregation) when the two populations are weakly correlated; whereas subtractive enforcement allows segregation under these circumstances. These results may be used to understand constraints both over output cells and over input cells. A variety of rules that can implement constrained dynamics are discussed.


We have investigated the cellular responses to hydrostatic pressure by using the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model system. Exposure to sublethal levels of hydrostatic pressure resulted in G2 cell cycle delay. This delay resulted from Cdc2 tyrosine-15 (Y-15) phosphorylation, and it was abrogated by simultaneous disruption of the Cdc2 kinase regulators Cdc25 and Wee1. However, cell cycle delay was independent of the DNA damage, cytokinesis, and cell size checkpoints, suggesting a novel mechanism of Cdc2-Y15 phosphorylation in response to hydrostatic pressure. Spc1/Sty1 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase, a conserved member of the eukaryotic stress-activated p38, mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase family, was rapidly activated after pressure stress, and it was required for cell cycle recovery under these conditions, in part through promoting polo kinase (Plo1) phosphorylation on serine 402. Moreover, the Spc1 MAP kinase pathway played a key role in maintaining cell viability under hydrostatic pressure stress through the bZip transcription factor, Atf1. Further analysis revealed that prestressing cells with heat increased barotolerance, suggesting adaptational cross-talk between these stress responses. These findings provide new insight into eukaryotic homeostasis after exposure to pressure stress.


CD69 expression on eosinophils is observed in asthma and has been proposed as a marker of eosinophil activation. The role of allergens in the in vivo regulation of CD69 expression on eosinophils, however, remains incompletely understood. It was therefore investigated whether CD69 expression on eosinophils can be induced by allergen provocation in vivo. Ten allergic asthmatics were studied by segmental allergen provocation. Two segments of the right and left lung were challenged with allergen or saline. CD69 expression was determined by flow cytometry and concentrations of interleukins were analysed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. Expression of CD69 on BAL eosinophils in the segments lavaged 10 min following saline instillation (28.3+/-8.8 specific mean fluorescence (SMF)) was not significantly different to segments lavaged 10 min after allergen (80.2+/-21.8 SMF) and segments lavaged 18 h after saline challenge (87.2+/-23.3 SMF). However, CD69 expression on eosinophils increased significantly 18 h after allergen challenge (128.6+/-21.9 SMF, p<0.03) which was accompanied by elevated granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) concentrations (114.9+/-42.9 pg x mL(-1), p<0.05). CD69 expression on eosinophils and GM-CSF concentrations correlated 18 h following allergen provocation (r = 0.7, p<0.025). These results suggest that in allergic asthma there is an allergen dependent, endobronchial upregulation of eosinophil activation as assessed by CD69 expression on eosinophils.


Background: The fruits of Barringtonia racemosa and Hibiscus sabdariffa have been used in the treatment of abscess, ulcer, cough, asthma, and diarrhea as traditional remedy. Objective: This study aims to evaluate cytotoxic effect of B. racemosa and H. sabdariffa methanol fruit extracts toward human breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7) and its antioxidant activities. Materials and Methods: Total antioxidant activities of extracts were assayed using 2,2′-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH) and β-carotene bleaching assay. Content of phytochemicals, total flavonoid content (TFC), and total phenolic content (TPC) were determined using aluminum chloride colorimetric method and Folin-Ciocalteu′s reagent, respectively. Cytotoxic activity in vitro was investigated through 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Results: B. racemosa extract exhibited high antioxidant activities compared to H. sabdariffa methanol fruit extracts in DPPH radical scavenging assay (inhibitory concentration [IC 50 ] 15.26 ± 1.25 μg/mL) and ί-carotene bleaching assay (I% 98.13 ± 1.83%). B. racemosa also showed higher TPC (14.70 ± 1.05 mg gallic acid equivalents [GAE]/g) and TFC (130 ± 1.18 mg quercetin equivalents [QE]/g) compared to H. sabdariffa (3.80 ± 2.13 mg GAE/g and 40.75 ± 1.15 mg QE/g, respectively). In MTT assay, B. racemosa extract also showed a higher cytotoxic activity (IC 50 57.61 ± 2.24 μg/mL) compared to H. sabdariffa. Conclusion: The present study indicated that phenolic and flavonoid compounds known for oxidizing activities indicated an important role among the contents of these plants extract. B. racemosa methanol extract have shown potent cytotoxic activity toward MCF-7. Following these promising results, further fractionation of the plant extract is underway to identify important phytochemical bioactives for the development of potential nutraceutical and pharmaceutical use.


Thermal characteristics, such as diffusivity and temperature induced change in the fiber mode index of rotation sensing fiber coil are critical factors which determine the time varying, thermo-optically induced bias drift of interferometric fiber-optic gyroscopes (IFOGs). In this study, temperature dependence of the transient effect is analyzed in terms of the thermal characteristics of the fiber coil at three different temperatures. By applying an analytic model to the measured bias in the experiments, comprehensive thermal factors of the fiber coil could be extracted effectively. The validity of the model was confirmed by the fact that the extracted values are reasonable results in comparison with well known properties of the materials of the fiber coil. Temperature induced changes in the critical factors were confirmed to be essential in compensating the transient effect over a wide temperature range.


Social media platforms present unique possibilities for companies to interact with their customers and take up a key role in building relationships. A substantial body of research has demonstrated the impact of social media regarding, for example, brand awareness and corporate reputation. However, little is known concerning the financial Return on Investment from social media engagement and specific strategies to leverage it. To this end, the study draws on relationship marketing theory to develop and operationalise a research model, which understands objective firm performance in terms of sales as a result of relationship antecedents (i.e., corporate investment and dyadic similarity) mediated through the customer-perceived relationship strength. To test the assumed research model, we collect and analyse a dataset of over 1.5 million Twitter messages revolving around ten car manufacturers and measure the impact on new car registration volumes. The results of this study suggest that companies can increase their sales volume through greater relationship investment (i.e., by providing interest group-specific information) and by adopting a social media strategy that promotes the users' relationship satisfaction (i.e., raises the share of voice within user messages).


Contemporary empirical evidence shows that trade tariff cuts have a negative impact on customs revenue in low-income countries. This article documents the historical experience of the US and Canada from 1870 to 1996, which shows that customs revenue declined in these two countries with falling trade tariffs. Such a decline should therefore have been anticipated while advocating trade liberalisation in low-income countries, and trade reform hyphenated with fiscal reform, so as to identify compensating revenue ex ante. A recent cross-country study by Baunsgaard and Keen covering the period 1975–2006 fails to find complete replacement from other revenue sources in low-income countries even in the long run, let alone concurrently. This is an issue affecting countries all across the size spectrum, and is of immediate importance in the context of the slow progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Another problem, limited to large federal countries in the developing world, is that trade taxes are levied exclusively by the national government, so that compensating revenue from a source not similarly restricted to that level has the potential to destabilise the balance of power within the federation.

Policy Implications

•
The Millennium Development Goals call for fiscal revenue with which to finance the public expenditure required.

•
Policy advice to the developing world advocating trade liberalisation has neglected the revenue impact of trade tariff cuts. This article documents the historically negative impact of trade tariff cuts on customs revenue in the US and Canada, on the basis of which the fiscal impact in the developing world should have been anticipated, and compensating revenue identified ex ante.

•
VAT, which is identified as the optimal replacement source for lost trade tariff revenue, may not be optimal from a political economy perspective in some fiscal federations.

•
Recent cross-country evidence, showing that the revenue loss from reduced trade tariffs persists in the long run, highlights the difficulty of finding complete replacement from other revenue sources, and shows that the policy homework for achievement of the MDGs remains sadly unaddressed.


The 8th International Workshop on Digital Watermarking (IWDW 2009) was hosted by the University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK, during August 24– 26, 2009. As with previous workshops, IWDW 2009 aimed to provide a balanced program covering the latest state-of-the-art theoretical and practical developments in digital watermarking, steganography and steganalysis, and the emerging area of image forensics. The selection of the program was a challenging task for the Technical Programme Committee members and reviewers, who ensured the highest quality and reputation of the workshop. From around 50 submissions received from authors in 14 countries, the committee selected 26 regular papers (22 oral and 4 poster presentations). In addition to the contributed papers, the workshop featured three keynote lectures on watermarking, cryptography and forensics kindly delivered by internationally renowned experts, Ingemar Cox, Fred Piper and Ed Delp, respectively. The regular papers and keynote lectures can be found in this proceedings volume. First of all, we would like to thank all the authors, speakers, reviewers and participants for their significant contributions to the success of IWDW 2009. Our sincere gratitude goes to all the Technical Programme Committee, International Publicity Liaison and Local Committee Members for their enthusiasm, hard work and effort in the organization of this workshop. We greatly appreciate the generous support from all of our sponsors, particularly Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptography (KIISC), MarkAny, DataMark Technologies, IET, Cyber Security KTN, and the University of Surrey. Finally, we hope that you will enjoy reading this volume and that it will provide inspiration and opportunities for your future research.


BACKGROUND
Studies have shown a positive association between trans fatty acids (TFA) intake and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), primarily accounted for by industrially produced TFA. Some of these studies indicate an inverse association between ruminant TFA (R-TFA) intake and CHD implying that R-TFA intake is innocuous or even protective against CHD. The aim of this study was to describe the association between R-TFA intake and risk of CHD evaluating both the absolute and the energy-adjusted intake.

METHODS
The study was an 18-year follow-up study of 3686 Danes, aged 30-71 years, at baseline without previous CHD.

RESULTS
There were no overall associations between absolute or energy-adjusted R-TFA intakes and risk of CHD. However, among women, indications of inverse associations between R-TFA intake and risk of CHD were found: hazard ratio (HR) per 0.5 g increase in absolute R-TFA intake = 0.84 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.70, 1.01] and HR per 0.5 g increase in energy-adjusted R-TFA intake = 0.77 (95% CI: 0.55, 1.09). No associations between absolute or energy-adjusted R-TFA intakes and CHD were found among men.

CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that R-TFA intake is not associated with a higher risk of CHD. Whether R-TFA intake is even protective against CHD among women cannot be concluded from this study.


This article deals with the historical relationship between the number of siblings in a family or household and height, a proxy for biological living standards. Ideally, this relationship is better assessed when we have evidence on the exact number of siblings in a family from its constitution onwards. However, this generally requires applying family reconstitution techniques, which, unfortunately, is not always possible. In this latter case, scholars must generally settle for considering only particular benchmark years using population censuses, from which family and household structures are derived. These data are then linked to the height data for the young males of the family or household. Height data are generally obtained from military records. In this matching process, several decisions have to be taken, which, in turn, are determined by source availability and the number of available observations. Using data from late 19th-century Catalonia, we explore whether the methodology used in matching population censuses and military records as described above might affect the relationship between sibship size and biological living standards and, if so, to what extent. We conclude that, while contextual factors cannot be neglected, the methodological decisions made in the initial steps of research also play a role in assessing this relationship.


This report is aimed at those with interests in the procurement, design and construction of new dwellings
both now and in the coming years as the Government's increasingly stringent targets for low and zero
carbon housing approach. It conveys the results of a research project, carried out between 2001 and
2008, that was designed to evaluate the extent to which low carbon housing standards can be achieved
in the context of a large commercial housing development. The research was led by Leeds Metropolitan
University in collaboration with University College London and was based on the Stamford Brook
development in Altrincham, Cheshire. The project partners were the National Trust, Redrow and Taylor
Wimpey and some 60 percent of the planned 700 dwelling development has been completed up to June
2008. As the UK house building industry and its suppliers grapple with the challenges of achieving zero
carbon housing by 2016, the lessons arising from this project are timely and of considerable value.
Stamford Brook has demonstrated that designing masonry dwellings to achieve an enhanced energy
standard is feasible and that a number of innovative approaches, particularly in the area of airtightness,
can be successful. The dwellings, as built, exceed the Building Regulations requirements in force at the
time but tests on the completed dwellings and longer term monitoring of performance has shown that,
overall, energy consumption and carbon emissions, under standard occupancy, are around 20 to 25
percent higher than design predictions. In the case of heat loss, the discrepancy can be much higher.
The report contains much evidence of considerable potential but points out that realising the design
potential requires a fundamental reappraisal of processes within the industry from design and
construction to the relationship with its supply chain and the development of the workforce. The
researchers conclude that, even when builders try hard, current mainstream technical and organisational
practices together with industry cultures present barriers to consistent delivery of low and zero carbon
performance. They suggest that the underlying reasons for this are deeply embedded at all levels of the
house building industry. They point out also that without fundamental change in processes and cultures,
technological innovations, whether they be based on traditional construction or modern methods are
unlikely to reach their full potential.
The report sets out a series of wide ranging implications for new housing in the UK, which are given in
Chapter 14 and concludes by firmly declaring that cooperation between government, developers, supply
chains, educators and researchers will be crucial to improvement. The recommendations in this report are
already being put into practice by the researchers at Leeds Metropolitan University and University College
London in their teaching and in further research projects. The implications of the work have been
discussed across the industry at a series of workshops undertaken in 2008 as part of the LowCarb4Real
project (see http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/as/cebe/projects/lowcarb4real/index.htm). In addition, the learning
is having an impact on the work of the developers (Redrow and Taylor Wimpey) who, with remarkable
foresight and enthusiasm, hosted the project. This report seeks to make the findings more widely
available and is offered for consideration by everyone who has a part to play in making low and zero
carbon housing a reality.


The precision of alignment attainable with a single slit, a double slit and cross wires, placed respectively at the three points to be aligned, can be about at least 0.17 in., provided use is made of pointings on transition colors in the interference pattern. Practical uses of this method are described, including technical measurements and laboratory experiments of very high precision. Among the last is a spherometer for large radii, that is also an absolute flatness tester with a precision of about λ/100. The method can be expanded to other types of measurement, when instead of a double slit a grating of coarse structure is substituted. Alignment in two directions simultaneously can also be achieved by a modification of the diffracting screen.


Simultaneous Spectroscopic Determination of Ion Temperature, Electron Density, and Magnetic Field for the ZaP-HD Experiment Lorcan Padraig Joseph McGonigle Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, UW Master of Science For over a decade, the ZaP Flow Z-Pinch experiment has demonstrated a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch, a linear plasma configuration with longitudinal current flow and azimuthal magnetic field confinement. A recent upgrade to the ZaP experiment, named ZaP-HD, looks to investigate the scaling relation that could plot its course towards a viable fusion reactor. This thesis documents the simultaneous measurement of the key magnetohydrodynamic parameters of ion temperature, electron density, and magnetic field on the ZaP-HD experiment. Temperature, electron density, and magnetic field each contribute a unique line-altering mechanism to the line radiation emitted from the ZaP-HD plasma. Through a least-squares fit in both the natural and Fourier domain to the emission spectrum of a C IV line at 581.2 nm known a priori to have the form of a Voigt profile, each of the desired parameters can be resolved for sufficiently small noise levels. Noise levels, defined as the ratio of the standard deviation of the noise in a dark region of the spectrum to the peak signal amplitude, at or below around 1% provide measurements corroborated by other diagnostics on the ZaP-HD experiment.


Electronic music seems to be a problem for music publishers. Providing a tape for a performance is not in itself so difficult, but how do you preserve such tapes? What do you do if the musician asks for an '8-track ADAT'? What do you do when s omebody comes back with an old 2-inch tape and tells you that there are dropouts in it? And what happens when a well-known work is requested which you, as publisher, appear not even to have in stock?


Road Infrastructure Safety Assessment (RISA) is a tool that enables Road Controlling Authorities (RCA) to undertake a Safety Assessment of their Rural Sealed Road Networks to understand the infrastructure risk to road users and therefore enable them to better focus their safety and maintenance funds. RISA was developed by NZTA led by Dr Ian Appleton between 2002 and 2006 and was fully operational between 2007 and 2011. RISA assesses field data collected by the RISA Team using a macro to identify areas for improvement that the local district / council road safety and operational engineers should focus on in order to reduce the risk to road users on their rural roads. The RISA macro was further refined to enable the RCAs to understand the risk reductions that could be gained undertaking various improvements by indicating the changed risk if certain works are undertaken on various road groupings. A case study using two NZ District Councils will be presented to assess the crash reduction potential of RISA. This research examines crash data on rural roads in the respective District Councils. The research will consider the five years of crash data preceding the RISA Team's visit and the available crash data after the RISA Team's visit up to the end of March 2013. The results may indicate the likely effectiveness of RISA as a road safety tool to assist rural district council road safety engineers to best manage their rural roading network within their limited budgets and whether to progress a wider study.


How does missing data affect our ability to learn signal structures? It has been shown that learning signal structure in terms of principal components is dependent on the ratio of sample size and dimensionality and that a critical number of observations is needed before learning starts (Biehl and Mietzner, 1993). Here we generalize this analysis to include missing data. Probabilistic principal component analysis is regularly used for estimating signal structures in datasets with missing data. Our analytic result suggests that the effect of missing data is to effectively reduce signal-to-noise ratio rather than - as generally believed - to reduce sample size. The theory predicts a phase transition in the learning curves and this is indeed found both in simulation data and in real datasets.


This paper argues that regional public goods in developing countries are under-funded despite their potentially high rates of return compared to traditional country-focused investments. Regional public goods only receive about 2.0-3.5 percent out of total ODA annually according to the definition used in this paper. The rate of return to regional investments is likely to be high, especially in Africa, where investments in regional infrastructure and institutional integration would reduce the high costs imposed by the region's many small economies and many borders. There are several reasons for the under-funding of regional public goods. First, to produce regional infrastructure and manage multi-country institutions requires coordination among two or more developing country governments. The recent donor emphasis on countries' "ownership" of their own priorities is more supportive of national programs. Second, bilateral donors prefer country-based transfers given their potential for providing geo-strategic and political benefits, and the multilateral banks have limited scope for lending for regional programs since their principal instrument is a loan to a single-country government that must guarantee its repayment. Countries could coordinate their borrowing, but that would require reaching agreement on attribution of the associated benefits to allow appropriate allocation of the burden of financing among two or more governments. Combined, these problems of coordination, (lack of) ownership, and attribution make financing of regional programs costlier for donors to arrange, and riskier in terms of their sustainability and benefits. In Africa the under-funding of regional public goods is primarily a political and institutional challenge to be met by the countries in this region. But the donor community ought to consider the opportunity cost – for development progress itself, in Africa and elsewhere – of its relative neglect, and explore changes in the aid architecture that would encourage more attention to regional goods.


CONTEXT
The compound 4,7-dimethoxy-5-(2-propen-1-yl)-1,3-benzodioxole (apiole) has been isolated from several different plant species, including Petroselinum sativum. Our recent study found that apiole is a chemical derivative of 4,7-dimethoxy-5-methyl-l,3-benzodioxole (SY-1), which has been isolated from dried Antrodia camphorata (AC ) fruiting bodies, a traditional Chinese medicine with antitumor properties.

AIMS
Our previous in vitro study demonstrated that apiole inhibits the growth of human colon (COLO 205) cancer cells through the arrest of the cell cycle in G0/G1 phase. The in vivo antitumor effects of apiole were evaluated in this study.

SETTING AND DESIGN
Apiole was administered to mice at 1-30 mg/kg body weight through intraperitoneal (I.P.) injection three times per week (defined as a dosage of 1×-30×).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The in vivo antitumor effects of apiole were evaluated in mice with xenografts of COLO 205 cells.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
All of the data are reported as the means ± S.E. Comparisons were performed with a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by a Fisher's least significant difference test. Significance was defined as P < 0.05.

RESULTS
Apiole (> 1×) markedly decreased the growth of COLO 205 human colon cancer cell tumor xenografts in an athymic nude mouse model system through the up-regulation of cell cycle regulators, such as p53, p21/Cip1, and p27/Kip1. The apiole-induced increase in G0/G1 phase cell cycle regulators was also associated with a significant decrease in the expression of cyclins D1 and D3. Surprisingly, statistically significantly higher tumor volumes were observed in mice that received 5× apiole compared with 30× apiole-treated mice (P < 0.05). No gross signs of toxicity were observed (e.g., body weight changes, general appearance, or individual organ effects) in any group.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results show, for the first time, the promising antitumor effects of apiole against colon tumors in an in vivo xenograft model.


Calls to rethink our ethical and political responsibilities with nonhuman others abound recent work in cultural geography. Such work unpacks the more-than-human agencies reshaping and rematerialising our bodies and subjective knowledges. This article uncovers the coproduction of human knowledges and urban spaces by examining the problematic migration of the Australian White Ibis into Australian urban localities. We put forth a storied approach to human-ibis relations, capturing the multiple and situated experiences materialising our urban relations with the species. Drawing on ibis ethology, media narratives, personal and interviewee stories, we explore how ibis take part in the co-constitution of urban spaces and identities. In particular, we examine how the ibis as a pest narrative is mobilised and reproduced in public and media discourses that shape the species identity and influence modes of relating. Both the publics and our own personal intra-actions with ibis shed light on conceptions of nonhuman belonging, death and human desires for living-with. This article forwards a cosmopolitical approach to provoke a reconceptualisation of our ethical and political responsibility with urban ibis. We question the narrative of ibis-as-pest to forward ideas of living-with that provokes new modes of relating, uncomfortable for either party. Within these precarious relations, possibilities open for nonhierarchical modes of cohabitation, challenging our political and ethical responsibilities in living-with uncomfortable others.


In the heat of battle you have a choice: Death or Glory ...Libya, 1942 - Rommel's Africa Korps is sweeping across the desert. Ragged Allied forces are being torn apart in brutal fire-fights on the scorched sands. A desperate message to the Prime Minister is entrusted to First Officer Madeleine Rose, WRNS. Her codename: Runefish. When GHQ hears that Runefish's plane is lost behind enemy lines, they send for battle-hardened Sergeant Tom Caine. Caine is a first class soldier who nearly always does what he's told. He will lead a squad of specialist commandos into the heart of enemy territory and either rescue or execute Runefish. If he refuses to take this near-suicide mission he faces court martial. Now the outcome of the war depends on his following orders. Death or glory beckon...


Although virtual reality (VR) technology has been available since the 1970's, it is becoming increasingly sophisticated and cost effective. Architecture, education, medicine, electronic commerce, collaboration, and data visualization are some of areas where VR is beginning to be applied. Much of the reported research on VR is technological rather than social, leaving only a limited understanding of its behavioral and organizational impacts and its potential for novel situations. Immersion, interactivity, and presence are intriguing concepts that emerged as important to VR research, but are yet ill-defined. In this paper we argue that the information system research community offers a unique and valuable perspective on VR research, and that this capability represents a logical extension of the work in several IS research domains. Multimethodological approaches using both positivist and emergent perspectives are needed. A research framework that can be used to begin this work is described.


Elucidating atmospheric oxidation mechanisms and the reaction kinetics of atmospheric compounds is of great importance and necessary for atmospheric modeling and the understanding of the formation of atmospheric organic aerosols. While the hydrolysis of aldehydes has been detected in the presence of sulfuric acid, the reaction mechanism and kinetics remain unclear. Herein, we use electronic structure methods with CCSD(T)/CBS accuracy and canonical variational transition state theory combined with small-curvature tunneling to study the reaction mechanism and kinetics of the hydrolysis of CH3CHO. The calculated results show that the hydrolysis of CH3CHO needs to overcome an energy barrier of 37.21 kcal mol-1, while the energy barrier is decreased to -9.79 kcal mol-1 with a sulfuric acid catalyst. In addition, the calculated kinetic results show that the H2SO4H2O + CH3CHO reaction is faster than H2SO4 + CH3CHOH2O. Additionally, the H2SO4H2O + CH3CHO reaction can play an important role in the sink of CH3CHO below 260 K occurring during the night period when OH, H2SO4, and H2O concentrations are 104, 108, and 1017 molecules cm-3, respectively, because it can compete well with the CH3CHO + OH reaction. There are wide implications in atmospheric chemistry from these findings because of the potential importance of the catalytic effect of H2SO4 on the hydrolysis of CH3CHO in the atmosphere and in the formation of secondary organic aerosols.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


Fault-tolerant protocols, asynchronous and synchronous alike, make stationary fault assumptions: only a fraction f of the total n nodes may fail. Whilst a synchronous protocol is expected to have a bounded execution time, an asynchronous one may execute for an arbitrary amount of time, possibly sufficient for f+1 nodes to fail. This can compromise the safety of the protocol and ultimately the safety of the system. Recent papers propose asynchronous protocols that can tolerate any number of faults over the lifetime of the system, provided that at most f nodes become faulty during a given interval. This is achieved through the so-called proactive recovery, which consists of periodically rejuvenating the system. Proactive recovery in asynchronous systems, though a major breakthrough, has some limitations which had not been identified before. In this paper, we introduce a system model expressive enough to represent these problems which remained in oblivion with the classical models. We introduce the predicate exhaustion-safe, meaning freedom from exhaustion-failures. Based on it, we predict the extent to which fault/intrusion-tolerant distributed systems (synchronous and asynchronous) can be made to work correctly. Namely, our model predicts the impossibility of guaranteeing correct behavior of asynchronous proactive recovery systems as exist today. To prove our point, we give an example of how these problems impact an existing fault/intrusion-tolerant distributed system, the CODEX system, and having identified the problem, we suggest one (certainly not the only) way to tackle it.


The globalization of industry and commerce creates an imperative to understand how business leaders from different parts of the world make decisions. A recent study used the Decision Styles Inventory to compare the decision making of American business leaders with those of counterparts from Asia's two largest economies – Japan and the People's Republic of China. American, Chinese and Japanese business leaders were each found to have a distinctive decision making style that reflects differing needs for achievement, affiliation, and power. The results have implications for further research and international business practice.


We are pleased to announce the paper entitled "Comparing methods for assessing reliability uncertainty based on pass/fail data collected over time," authored by Jeff I. Abes, Michael S. Hamada, and Charles R. Hills, published in Quality Engineering, 30:694–700, 2018, has won the 2018–2019 ASQ RRD Best Reliability Paper Award. One of the ASQ Reliability & Risk Division's missions is to encourage the publication of reliability papers that are both technically sound and easy to be understood by reliability professionals. In this paper, the authors compare three statistical methods—logistic regression, Weibull failure time analysis and the RADAR method proposed by Vander Wiel et al.—for analyzing pass/fail data collected over time and use them to assess reliability of weapon systems. It is shown that these three methods may provide quite different uncertainty bounds on reliability. Quality Engineering is a technical journal of ASQ published by Taylor & Francis. It is directed to professionals in all engineering and management fields interested in quality improvement and reliability. For additional information of ASQ RRD Best Reliability Paper Award, please contact Dr Rong Pan at firstname.lastname@example.com.


Bibliographic citations or "references" are an important component of all scientific manuscripts. The authors are responsible for their accuracy and they should follow the format and style requested by the journal where they are submitting their paper. Revista Medica de Chile adheres to the "Uniform Requirements" established by the Vancouver Group of Medical Editors. Equally important is a correct choice of references, including those original articles strictly connected to the content of the manuscript. The number of citations usually vary according to the specific character of the study: research article, or case reports, review article, etc. Common mistakes are due to an excessive number of repetitive or irrelevant citations, or the omission of important articles sometimes not found in bibliographic indexes, or an erroneous claim of priority in reporting an observation. Finally, in developing countries the authors should include previous reports appeared in their own local journals, therefore improving their opportunities of achieving international visibility


Introduction. Logistics composite modeling. Methodology for integrated manufacturing planning and control systems design. Analysis and management approaches for complex production systems. Loading and scheduling a hybrid multiproduct plant via a rule-based planning system. Production control in flexible flowshops: an example from textile manufacturing. The design and operation of flexible manufacturing shops. Constraint logic and its applications in production: an implementation using the Galileo4 language and system. Scheduling methodology: optimization and compu-search approaches I. Compu-search methodologies II: scheduling using genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks. Production scheduling using FACTOR. Author index. Subject index.


Part 1 A bunch of nobodies: legacy of the big stores, vanishing crowds. Part 2 Sanitizing the city: alliances - the Pittsburgh model highway detours the urban renewal takeover tracking the money demolition by the acre the cover-up casualty count. Part 3 Blueprint for indifference: designed for isolation nobody knows the rubble I've seen the freeway revolt losing urban renewal persuasive protests progress but no applause. Part 4 Would the shopping mall play downtown?: sanctuaries for shopping competing with easy street a tonic for tired cities? roadblocks the gatekeepers searching for new locations. Part 5 Pasadena - no bed of roses: inventing a transplant sweetheart deals pledging future taxes protective maneouvres sharing troubles. Part 6 Entrepreneurial cities and maverick developers: a landmark in Boston James Rouse - mixing pleasure with business a public market in Seattle John Clise - the coalition-builder proving St Paul's competence George Latimer - the Mayor's glue a porno district in San Diego Ernest Hahn - endurance and flexibility Gerald Trimble - the public sector developer. Part 7 Deal making: testing the waters deals to match projects development by consensus City Hall deal makers coping with crisis negotiable designs the relationship is the deal. Part 8 Getting and spending: paying without pain the federal pipeline - good to the last drop digging into local resources safe money for risky projects dovetailing dollars into joint ventures. Part 9 Open for business: Faneuil Hall - marketing the unusual Pike Place - preserving the past town square - making the setting special Horton plaza - designing fantasies. Part 10 Popular success and critical dismay: fear of commerce artificial environments highbrows and lowbrows. Part 11 Privatizing the city: running risks - Burbank, St Paul, Detroit setup for scandal how public is a mall? security at a price the chaining of Main Street. Part 12 Marketplace contributions: uses of commercialism taming Times Square and Bryant Park School for Management the hiding hand selling Columbus Circle. Part 13 Downtown malls and the city agenda: corporate territory 250 Empire State buildings lodgings and lobbies conventioneers the gentry come to town stagecraft big league ambitions logic in the patchwork. Part 14 An unfinished renaissance: indicting City Hall manufacturing myths - New Yrok and Pittsburgh is development unfair? where is the opposition? bargaining for downtown jobs - Baltimore and Boston slowing the pace the mall business do cities learn?.


reconfigurability and greater survivability. Despite the potential advantages, there is some reluctance to implement these designs because of a lack of practical experience with them. This paper aims to give a better understanding of the performance of a zonal distribution system, and its response to fault conditions, by using detailed simulations of the power hardware and its control system. In this AC zonal system, we employ a wireless data communications scheme to interconnect a distributed array of fault detectors and controllers. The utilization of wireless technology in AC zonal power systems aids in reducing cabling and weight of the system. The proposed system can be used in various applications where power continuity is a high priority, for example in high-technology manufacturing plants or office buildings, but it is especially beneficial for use in isolated systems such as onboard ships or aircraft, where the initial construction costs and maintenance costs may be reduced compared with conventional systems. This work particularly studies how a wireless communication strategy affected the performance and responsiveness of an AC zonal power system. We used the Virtual Test Bed (VTB) as the environment for these studies.


BACKGROUND
Raising a child is probably the most challenging responsibility faced by a new parent. The first year is the basis of the child's development and is significant for growth and development. Knowledge and understanding of parents' experiences are especially important for child health nurses, whose role is to support parents in their parenthood.

AIM
The aim of this review was to describe mothers' and fathers' experiences of parenthood during the child's first year.

METHOD
A literature search covering 1992-2002 was carried out using the terms parenthood, parenting, first year, infancy and experience. Of the 88 articles retrieved, 33 articles (both qualitative and quantitative) met the inclusion criteria and corresponded to the aim of this review. The data were analysed by thematic content analysis.

FINDINGS
Being a parent during the child's first year was experienced as overwhelming. The findings were described from two perspectives, namely mothers' and fathers' perspectives, since all the included studies considered mothers' and fathers' experiences separately. The following categories were identified concerning mothers: being satisfied and confident as a mother, being primarily responsible for the child is overwhelming and causes strain, struggling with the limited time available for oneself, and being fatigued and drained. The following categories were found for fathers: being confident as a father and as a partner, living up to the new demands causes strain, being prevented from achieving closeness to the child is hurtful, and being the protector and the provider of the family. The unifying theme for these categories was 'living in a new and overwhelming world'.

CONCLUSION
There is a need for nurse interventions aimed at minimizing parents' experiences of strain. A suggested intervention is to find a method whereby child health nurses' support would lead to parents becoming empowered in their parenthood.


This roundtable attempts to address issues of access, design, and application that have been undervalued in scholarly work. In "Teaching Writing in a Digital Age: Addressing Issues of Access," Brittany B. Cottrill looks at how issues of access are more complicated than just possession; instead, access includes multiple levels of support. Vanessa Cozza's "Reflecting on Teaching Experiences in the Lab: Challenges with Classroom Design" focuses on her experiences in computer-equipped classrooms at two different institutions. Her analysis serves as an example of how classroom dynamics affect a student-centered pedagogy and collaborative learning environment. While traditional environments lack the tools students need to compose, technological classrooms often eliminate comfortable discussion environments. Katherine Fredlund's "Teaching in a Laptop Classroom: Merging Traditional with Technological" addresses how a laptop classroom eliminates both these issues but also creates new problems for the instructor to deal with. Bret Bowers' "Disrupting Determinism: Classroom Design as a Technology" looks at how classroom design functions as a technology. His analysis will provide examples of the problems of classroom design and how the classroom design serves to limit and/or determine classroom pedagogy and ideology. Finally, Bowers offers possibilities for subverting the dominant ideology present within classroom spaces. Ultimately, these four articles come together as a means to discuss various challenges that instructors face but that are often overlooked.


If you need to parse or process text data in Linux or Unix, this useful book explains how to use flex and bison to solve your problems quickly. flex & bison is the long-awaited sequel to the classic O'Reilly book, lex & yacc. In the nearly two decades since the original book was published, the flex and bison utilities have proven to be more reliable and more powerful than the original Unix tools. flex & bison covers the same core functionality vital to Linux and Unix program development, along with several important new topics. You'll find revised tutorials for novices and references for advanced users, as well as an explanation of each utility's basic usage and simple, standalone applications you can create with them. With flex & bison, you'll discover the wide range of uses these flexible tools offer. Address syntax crunching that regular expressions tools can't handle Build compilers and interpreters, and handle a wide range of text processing functions Interpret code, configuration files, or any other structured format Learn key programming techniques, including abstract syntax trees and symbol tables Implement a full SQL grammar-with complete sample code Use new features such as pure (reentrant) lexers and parsers, powerful GLR parsers, and interfaces to C++


Ultrasound irradiation was found to be effective in treatment of refractory pollutants. The present communication reports ultrasound treatment of Congo Red (CR). The CR degradation by ultrasonic waves (50 kHz) was investigated at 25?C. After sonication for 60 min, the CR concentration gradually decreased from 100 mg/L to 27.7 mg/L. pH of the sonicated CR solution decreased from 6.8 to 4.2. Oxygen uptake rate demonstrated higher uptake of oxygen by microbia in the case of the sonicated sample. There is 68% chemical oxygen demand removal efficiency after ultrasound treatment. The combination of ultrasound and biodegradation in treatment of CR is studied here.


The light emission produced near the surface of fused silica following laser-induced breakdown on the exit surface was spatially and spectrally resolved. This signal is in part generated by ejected particles while traveling outside the hot ionized region. The thermal emission produced by the particles can be separated from the plasma emission near the surface and its spectral characteristics provide information on the temperature of the particles after ejection from the surface. Assuming the emission is thermal in origin, data suggest an initial average temperature on the order of at least 0.5 eV.


A new high-resolution paleointensity record for North America has been constructed using Holocene sediments from Lake Pepin, Minnesota. Lake Pepin sediments yield the same Holocene paleosecular variation curve as nearby Lake St. Croix and satisfy all of the criteria recommended for paleointensity studies. Absolute paleointensity data for North America recorded by Holocene volcanic and archeomagnetic samples provide an independent record of geomagnetic field paleointensity against which the relative intensity records from Lake Pepin and Lake St. Croix can be compared. Since the absolute field paleointensity is known a priori, the effects of the magnetic recording assemblage can be isolated. Anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) is the best choice among normalization parameters for the Lake Pepin sediments as the natural remanent magnetization (NRM) normalized by ARM shows no coherence with magnetic grain size proxies and yields a record of relative paleointensity peaks and troughs whose amplitudes are very similar to those in the archeomagnetic (ARCMAG) and Lake St. Croix data sets. Features with a wavelength of 1000 years are correlative between the three paleointensity records. NRM normalized by saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) and by susceptibility (χ) shows grain-size dependences that cause errors in the amplitudes of paleointensity features. NRM/SIRM and NRM/χ are not coherent with their normalizers but are both strongly coherent with independent grain size proxies such as the median destructive field of the NRM and HCR. We successfully removed the grain size dependences from NRM/SIRM by applying a correction function based on the linear relationship between normalized intensity and the median destructive field of the NRM.


The goal of this Article is to promote an emerging field of legal writing scholarship: the empirical study of legal writing. Reading this Article should not make you an expert in qualitative or quantitative research methods. Instead, it should highlight the possibilities for future empirical legal writing scholarship and offer enough of an introduction to inspire new empirical researchers. Even if you do not plan to conduct your own empirical research, this Article should make you a more informed consumer of empirical scholarship. This Article does not suggest that empirical research is easy. However, with careful attention to methodology, empirical research methods can yield potentially valuable findings. Given the talent and energy among legal writing faculty, we are well positioned to study what lawyers write, and the lawyers who read and write it.Part I introduces empirical research methods. This part first locates empirical methods within the existing fields of legal writing scholarship and then offers an overview of the three empirical research strategies: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. Parts II, III, and IV examine how researchers can apply quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research strategies to study legal writing. Each part describes key features of each research method and illustrates those features by describing prior empirical studies of legal writing. Part V offers practical advice to new empirical researchers about potential questions for empirical research, data collection issues, the role of institutional review boards and methodologists, and writing up a study. Finally, the Appendix is a bibliography that presents general references on empirical research methods and lists existing empirical studies of legal writing.


Abstract. In recent years, we have seen an explosion in location-based services. Whether it is maps, cadastral data or land registration, geospatial information is driving applications to realise social, economic and environmental benefits for us all. Yet in the age of 'Big Data' and the 'Internet of Things', how can we know which data sources are reliable and how easy is it to find accurate, high-quality and detailed information that we can trust? Knowing that reliable sources exist, and where to obtain them, is essential for governments and those making critical decisions that affect all our lives. As the official bodies responsible for national cadastre, land registration, geodetic surveying and mapping activities in Europe, European national mapping and cadastral agencies (NMCAs) fulfil an essential role providing definitive and detailed geospatial information. In an ever-changing world, NMCAs play an important and often critical role in helping to address the key global and regional issues that affect society, such as climate change, sustainable development, a digital economy, migration, security and health. With these challenges extending beyond national borders, society now expects a borderless digital economy and property market, as well as fully connected national databases for stronger cross-border emergency planning and environmental monitoring. As their membership association, EuroGeographics is committed to supporting European NMCAs as they improve access to their rich source of trusted, authoritative geospatial information. EuroGeographics is an independent international not-for-profit organisation representing Europe's National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authorities. We believe in a society empowered by the use of trusted geospatial services from these official national sources. EuroGeographics strength lies in our extensive membership and we are proud to represent more than 60 organisations from 46 countries covering the whole of geographical Europe. We deliver benefits for each regardless of the geographical, technical, political, organisational, linguistic and business parameters in which they work. We support the public good by representing our members' interests, maintaining networks that help our members improve their capabilities and role, and by facilitating access to and use of our members' geospatial data and services. EuroGeographics' has the strategic objective of facilitating access to our members' authoritative data for international users of harmonised, pan-European, geospatial information and services. It coordinates the compilation and production of pan-European datasets, and has been active in exploring the development of online services. The Open European Location Services (Open ELS) project has developed services to demonstrate and test the level of interest in pan-European authoritative geospatial information. EuroGeographics has coordinated this two-year project which was co-financed by the European Union's Connecting Europe Facility working with partners from member organisations in Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands. The Project has focused on facilitating access to, and encouraging the take up and use of this information, and is strongly user orientated with a programme of activities to support the digital economy. As well as test services, an Open ELS data policy has been developed which applies only to the geospatial pan-European data and services developed and maintained by EuroGeographics and its members through the Open ELS Project. The Policy was drafted using research which revealed the scope of open geospatial data from official national sources across Europe, and revealed the diversity of policy, business and legal approaches across Europe to what is 'open' data. Additional research, carried out by Deloitte and EuroGeographics, found that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe have a strong appetite for more cross-border authoritative data which could help them improve their product and service offerings, save money and become more competitive. The research highlighted four potential benefits from providing harmonised single access to pan-European geospatial information: The possibility to improve existing products and services offering; the possibility to develop new products and services; the reduced time and costs of dealing with different national mapping and cadastral agencies; and the reduced time and costs for acquiring and accessing data. Key findings from these research activities will be presented, along with an outline of the project, and what it has achieved.


This report assesses the evidence on the extent and prospects of an HIV/AIDS epidemic in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the impact this will have on the economies of those countries. The main focus of the report is the Russian Federation. The economic and demographic context against which the epidemic is developing is first discussed. All of the states of the FSU have suffered unprecedented falls in employment and output and a collapse in many of the state institutions that might determine or implement public health policy. Russia in particular is suffering from falling life expectancy and general declines in health that are untypical for countries with high HIV prevalence. The epidemic is still largely confined to high-risk groups such as Intravenous Drug users (IDUs) in Russia and the Ukraine. Infectivity is high in such groups and concentration of HIV among IDUs is one of the reasons the disease is spreading so rapidly. There is evidence of high recruitment and casual drug use suggesting the lines between IDUs, Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs) and the general population are more blurred than in a western country. The epidemics in the other former Soviet republics are less developed than in Russia but they exhibit many of the same risk factors and the trade and migratory links between them and Russia suggest they will suffer epidemics of similar magnitude.


Morpho Challenge is an annual evaluation campaign for unsupervised morpheme analysis. In morpheme analysis, words are segmented into smaller meaningful units. This is an essential part in processing complex word forms in many large-scale natural language processing applications, such as speech recognition, information retrieval, and machine translation. The discovery of morphemes is particularly important for morphologically rich languages where inflection, derivation and composition can produce a huge amount of different word forms. Morpho Challenge aims at language-independent unsupervised learning algorithms that can discover useful morpheme-like units from raw text material. In this paper we define the challenge, review proposed algorithms, evaluations and results so far, and point out the questions that are still open.


Osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) of the capitellum is an uncommon disorder seen primarily in the adolescent overhead athlete. Unlike Panner disease, a self‐limiting condition of the immature capitellum, OCD is multifactorial and likely results from microtrauma in the setting of cartilage mismatch and vascular susceptibility. The natural history of OCD is poorly understood, and degenerative joint disease may develop over time. Multiple modalities aid in diagnosis, including radiography, MRI, and magnetic resonance arthrography. Lesion size, location, and grade determine management, which should attempt to address subchondral bone loss and articular cartilage damage. Early, stable lesions are managed with rest. Surgery should be considered for unstable lesions. Most investigators advocate arthroscopic débridement with marrow stimulation. Fragment fixation and bone grafting also have provided good short‐term results, but concerns persist regarding the healing potential of advanced lesions. Osteochondral autograft transplantation appears to be promising and should be reserved for larger, higher grade lesions. Clinical outcomes and return to sport are variable. Longer‐term follow‐up studies are necessary to fully assess surgical management, and patients must be counseled appropriately.


Morphological, geometrical, and rheological properties of the GAP A3 hybridoma cell line have been evaluated as a function of the cell cycle. Interference contrast video microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that a sample of cells taken from the middle of the exponential growht phase displayed a range of cell morphologies, consistent with a heterogeneous growing culture. Micropipet manipulation was used to measure the geometrical (cell volume) and mechanical (cortical tension and apparent cell viscosity) properties of single cells selected at random from a sample in the middle of the exponential growth phase. Consistent with the range of morphologies, cell volumes (1400 to 5700 μm3) and apparent viscosities (430 to 1.2 × 104 P) showed a wide range of values at 37°C, demonstrating that a hybridoma cell line cannot be characterized by a single value for any one property, and that properties must be related to their cycle dependence when considering proliferating cells. Direct, video‐microscopic observation of synchronized cells, and of individual cells that were followed throughout their cell cycle, allowed us to correlated distinct morphologies with phases of the cell cycle. As the cell cycle progresses, an increase in cell volume by a factor of 3 to 4is accompanied by an overall increase in apparent cell viscosity by approximately the same ratio, consistent with an accumulation of more cytoplasmic material in the older cells. Also, a decrease in average apparent viscosity by a factor of 10. These results are important in order to evaluate the possible role of certain structural, cell‐cycle dependent features in shear and abrasion sensitivity. This is a problem of current concern in the bioreactor culture of mammalian cells.


The Bix family of homeobox-containing proteins are transcriptional regulators involved in early embryonic development. Trindade et al. report that misexpression of Bix3 by microinjection of RNA into Xenopus embryos causes different phenotypes from Bix1, with Bix3 causing cell disaggregation, stimulation of a different gene profile, and cellular apoptosis. Injection of antisense oligonucleotides that inhibited both Bix1 and Bix3 also stimulated apoptosis; however, only Bix3 rescued the embryos from increased cell death, suggesting that the effect was due to loss of Bix3. Apoptosis-inducing activity of Bix3 did not correlate with transcriptional activation activity based on analysis of mutants or deletion constructs. If the C-terminal 25 residues of Bix1 were deleted, then this truncated version of Bix1 could also promote embryonic apoptosis. Thus, Bix proteins may be dual-functional proteins with roles in transcriptional regulation and cell survival. M. Trindade, N. Messenger, C. Papin, D. Grimmer, L. Fairclough, M. Tada, J. C. Smith, Regulation of apoptosis in the Xenopus embryo by Bix3. Development 130, 4611-4622 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Stone for the construction of buildings and monuments has been locally quarried from most parts of Britain's lithologically diverse geological succession starting about 3500 years ago. Each part of the geological column, from the Precambrian to Quaternary, has yielded stone for building, providing a colourful palette for Britain's stone architecture and monuments. For those involved in conserving these structures this diversity of stone types has become an increasing problem as many of the original quarries have long since stopped working and the stones have disappeared from the marketplace. This lack of an adequate range of indigenous stones suitable for conservation repair and for sympathetic new-build projects is a continuing concern for heritage organizations, property owners and developers in Britain. There are a number of ways in which this problem is being addressed. It is clearly important to demonstrate the scale of the problem by collating sufficient information to identify those stones (and, therefore, those stone structures) most under threat. Although some vernacular stones were often used widely others appear in only a small number of buildings. A national database of all indigenous stone sources and an assessment of their extent of use is, therefore, essential. Subsequent analysis of the data gathered will then allow those stones that are of critical concern to be identified, which might generate sufficient interest and economic potential for quarry operators to consider reopening sites for new stone production. This contribution is an attempt to give an overview of the former extent of the building stone resources of Britain to illustrate the magnitude of the current problems of stone supply.


Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs) have several superiorities over conventional stiff and non-back-drivable actuators in force control, e.g., lower reflected inertia, low cost force measurement, high force fidelity, safety, and so on. However, their position control applications significantly suffer from low performance and disturbances due to insufficient controller designs. In this paper, a new Active Disturbance Rejection (ADR) controller is proposed for the robust position control problem of SEAs by combining Differential Flatness (DF) and Disturbance Observer (DOb) in state space. The trajectory of the actuator is generated by using DF and is tracked by using a conventional state feed-back controller. The state and control input references of a DF-based trajectory tracking controller are modified by using estimated disturbances so that the robustness is achieved. The proposed controller provides high performance position control for SEAs when they suffer from plant uncertainties and external disturbances such as inertia variation, backlash, friction and external load. Experimental results are given to validate the proposal.


It is known that a high-dimensional sparse vector x* in TV can be recovered from low-dimensional measurements y = Ax* where Am×n(m <; n) is the measurement matrix. In this paper, with A being a random Gaussian matrix, we investigate the recovering ability of ℓp-minimization (0 ≤ p ≤ 1) as p varies, where ℓp-minimization returns a vector with the least ℓp quasi norm among all the vectors x satisfying Ax = y. Besides analyzing the performance of strong recovery where ℓp-minimization is re quired to recover all the sparse vectors up to certain sparsity, we also for the first time analyze the performance of "weak" recovery of ℓp -minimization (0 ≤ p <; 1) where the aim is to recover all the sparse vectors on one support with a fixed sign pattern. When α(:= m/n) → 1, we provide sharp thresholds of the sparsity ratio (i.e., percentage of nonzero entries of a vector) that differentiates the success and failure via ℓp -minimization. For strong recovery, the threshold strictly decreases from 0.5 to 0.239 as p increases from 0 to 1. Surprisingly, for weak recovery, the threshold is 2/3 for all p in [0, 1), while the threshold is 1 for ℓ1-minimization. We also explicitly demonstrate that ℓp-minimization (p <; 1) can re turn a denser solution than ℓp-minimization. For any a G (0.1), we provide bounds of the sparsity ratio for strong recovery and weak recovery, respectively, below which ℓp-minimization succeeds. Our bound of strong recovery improves on the existing bounds when a is large. In particular, regarding the recovery threshold, this paper argues that ℓp-minimization has a higher threshold with smaller p for strong recovery; the threshold is the same for all p for sectional recovery; and ℓp -minimization can outperform ℓp-minimization for weak recovery. These are in contrast to traditional wisdom that ℓp-minimization, though computationally more expensive, always has better sparse recovery ability than ℓ0 -minimization since it is closer to ℓ1-minimization. Finally, we provide an intuitive explanation to our findings. Numerical examples are also used to un ambiguously confirm and illustrate the theoretical predictions.


Some analysts see the expansion of the 1990s as uniquely long and strong. Moreover, according to one popular view, the noninflationary boom can continue indefinitely. To shed some light on this debate, this paper compares the 1990s systematically with two previous long economic expansions, using 31 variables on real activity, inflation, productivity, wages, profits, interest rates, stock prices, foreign trade, and fiscal and monetary policies. Contrary to the popular conception, the cumulative gains in activity were greater in the 1960s and even in the 1980s than in the 1990s. This is because the recovery of 1991-1992 was unusually sluggish, and despite the fact that lately U.S. growth was indeed remarkably high and stable. Inflation was decreasing or stable, a fact which is new for the post-World War II period (but not for the longer historical perspective). Disinflation or deflation abroad contributed much to this outcome, as did the new technologies. The declines of interest rates reflected mostly reductions in inflation and the national debt. Profit margins increased strongly. Still, there are potential imbalances from overborrowing, overspending and undersaving, and rising current account deficits. Overvaluation in some parts of the stock market is probable and worrisome, but hard to evaluate.


Rare earth elements were investigated for their potential to determine provenance and depositional environments of vertebrate fossils found as float in creeks of the Tunica Hills region of Louisiana. Elemental analyses are used to test the hypotheses that fossils span multiple time periods, from late Miocene to late Pleistocene, and that elemental profiles can distinguish terrestrial depositional settings from possible estuarine deposits. In addition, the animals present were then used to test the hypothesis that Tunica Hills had late Pleistocene environmental conditions much like the modern Great Lakes region. This study is important because it provides new insight on the vertebrate fossils of Louisiana to better the current understanding of the paleontology of the central Gulf Coast region. Calcium is replaced by similar-sized rare earth elements in bone and tooth dentine very quickly upon death (10,000-30,000 years), and the signature is not altered by additional diagenetic effects. The change in source of sediment supply from the Tennessee River, a postulated source during the Miocene, to the average Midwest continental signature, during the late Pleistocene, would have affected the overall rare earth element compositions available during fossilization. The loess material may not have had enough to complete the uptake of REE, which would have an influence on the profiles seen. The 38 fossils analyzed from the Pascagoula Formation, Peoria Loess and intermediate beds included horses, mastodons, ground sloths, a rhinoceros, a large felid, a giant armadillo, and a grouse. The first occurrence of Synthetoceras in Louisiana is represented by one analyzed fossil specimen. Cluster analysis separated in situ fossils from loess deposits from the Pascagoula Formation fossils, based on rare earth element profiles. The results on lithologically diverse and stratigraphically complex intermediate deposits, including reworked Citronelle Formation, are vii viii less clear, and shell material and nodules analyzed were not useful for stratigraphic control. In situ samples from the Pascagoula Formation support an estuarine depositional environment in the Tunica Hills during the late Miocene or early Pliocene. Rare earth element analysis shows promise, but more comparative data is needed to help unravel the history Gulf Coast region. CHAPTER


This paper discusses various examples of selection, bibliographic description of electronic resources, and how the mediation provided by librarians can help users with their choices during searching. Users are confronted with more information than ever before, and their expectations are becoming increasingly diverse. This article presents several observations gathered from public libraries and considers the conditions of access and description to electronic resources in various French libraries. Finally added value in authority records is discussed, with particular reference to URLs.


Natural product drug discovery programs often rely on the use of silica (Si) gel, reversed-phase media, or size-exclusion resins (e.g., RP-C18, Sephadex LH-20) for compound purification. The synthetic polymer-based sorbent Diaion HP20SS (cross-linked polystyrene matrix) is used as an alternative to prepare purified natural product libraries. To evaluate the impact of chromatographic media on the isolation of biologically active, yet chromatographically unstable natural products, Diaion HP20SS was evaluated side-by-side with normal-phase sorbents for irreversible binding of extract constituents and their effects on bioactivity. An array of chemically diverse natural product-rich extracts was selected as a test panel, and a cell-based reporter assay for hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) was employed to monitor potential change(s) in bioactivity. Silica gel caused significant irreversible binding of three out of 10 extracts. Curcuma longa, Saururus cernuus, and Citrus reticulata extracts showed decreased HIF-1 inhibitory activity after elution through Si gel. An additional nonpolar column wash of HP20SS with EtOAc retained considerable bioactivities of active extracts. In general, Si gel produced the greatest loss of bioactivity. However, HP20SS elution reduced significantly HIF-1 inhibitory activity of certain extracts (e.g., Asimina triloba).


We study the problem of specifying and verifying properties of pi-calculus processes while relying on a bisimulation semantics. As our property specification language we use a version of the modal mu-calculus adapted to the pi-calculus. We show that the logical language is sufficiently expressive to characterize by means of a finite formula a process up to any approximation of the bisimulation relation. We consider the problem of checking that a process of the pi-calculus satisfies a specification expressed in this modal mu-calculus. We develop an algorithm which is sound in general, and complete for processes having a finite reachability property. Finally, we present a proof system which can be applied to prove non-recursive properties of arbitrary processes. We show that the system is complete on the non-recursive fragment of the logical language.


The dynamic of a cavitation bubble inside a water drop is investigated in microgravity in order to analyze the interaction between the collapsing bubble and a quasispherical free surface. Tests are carried in the frame of the 42nd parabolic flight campaign organized by the European Space Agency (ESA). High-speed visualization revealed a significant influence of isolated, finite liquid volumes and spherical free surfaces on the bubble growth and collapse In particular; collapsing bubbles eject two liquid jets escaping from the drop in antipodal directions. The bubble lifetime is significantly shortened in good accordance with a herein derived analog of the Rayleigh- Plesset equation for bubbles in water drops. The spherical free surface leads to a broader counter jet than previously studied for flat free surfaces. The shock waves generated at the bubble collapse are spatially confined, which leads to the formation of a large number of transient micro bubbles. This phenomenon is hardly visible in the ground based experiments when bubbles are collapsing near a flat free surface within a large liquid volume.


This paper addresses the problem of Through-the-Wall Radar Imaging (TWRI) using the Multiple-Measurement Vector (MMV) compressive sensing model. TWR image formation is reformulated as a compressed sensing (CS) problem, seeking a sparse representation in the spatial domain. In traditional CS-based through-the-wall radar imaging (TWRI) methods, the measurement matrix is vectorized so that a single measurement vector (SMV) model is applied to generate a sparse solution, which represents a scene comprising point-like targets. For multiple measurement TWRI problems, the SMV model may produce a sub-optimum sparse solution. On the other hand, the proposed MMV model for TWRI generates a more sparse scene by processing all the measurements simultaneously. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, it is applied to fuse multiple polarization data to form the radar image. Based on simulated data with different number of measurements and noise levels, the proposed MMV-based TWRI method produces better TWR images in terms of image quality and detection accuracy.


SPEECH THERAPY TODAY has suffered because many speech-language pathologists misunderstand Wendell Johnson's teachings on "stuttering." They believe that Johnson taught that assigning the label stuttering to a speaker's repetitions of sounds and syllables and other hesitancies actually caused the disorder. They could not be more mistaken. Johnson examined how human responses to an event can reinforce it; he did not specify labeling as a cause. As a general semanticist, Johnson hated such word magic (the belief that we can speak things into existence); for correct evaluation, the event or thing had to precede the word. Johnson faced a world that believed what many people believe today, that stuttering is a speech disease. Popular wisdom says that everybody can recognize the symptoms, because all repetitions of sounds or syllables that occur frequently in a child's speech are "stuttering" and these indicate that the child has the disease as certainly as the presence of blisters indicate the presence of chicken pox. What Johnson Believed In contrast with the popular superstitions of his day, Johnson believed that instrumental conditioning caused problematic "stuttering." Parental responses to their children's early speech efforts were mediated by their "diagnoses" of this speech as the disorder "stuttering," and this led to chronic "stuttering." (1) It was not the word stuttering that caused "stuttering": it was reactions to the word that created the undesirable reinforcement of stuttering. While Johnson may not have discovered why all children begin to "stutter," he certainly understood how stuttering, whether "organic" or normal, becomes chronic. (2) One of today's most widely used speech pathology texts (Guitar, 1998) reports that around 80% of all children who begin stuttering overcome it spontaneously. Guitar asserts that only those children who fail to adjust to what he calls "core stuttering" (repetitions of sounds and syllables) go on to become chronic stutterers. This suggests that chronic stutterers were taught (by themselves or others) to become frightened, ashamed, and guilt ridden when they stuttered and as a result attempted to avoid these feelings by avoiding stuttering, creating the vicious cycle called "stuttering." Stuttering, as Johnson maintained, became an "anticipatory, apprehensive, hypertonic avoidance reaction." When persons behave in this way, they have "maladjusted" to their stuttering. However, if they do not fear their stuttering, if they accept it, do not anticipate it, do not try to avoid it (and therefore create it), they have "adjusted" to it. The anticipation of making a series of repeated sounds that stutterers experience as stuttering does not always involve a specific word. It can be a feeling of anxiety associated with certain speaking situations. Stutterers cannot always predict the specific words on which they will stutter; however, a generalized feeling of fearful expectancy exists. Many experts today attribute chronic stuttering to speakers' efforts to avoid painful emotions created by their evaluations of stuttering: fear of guilt, fear of shame, fear of fear, etc. Attempts to avoid these feelings result in efforts to avoid stuttering, and these efforts, along with repetitions of sounds and syllables and prolongations of sounds, appear as stuttering. The British call these reactions stammering and evidently regard the repetition of sounds or syllables as just one symptom of the disorder. This seems like a useful approach to me. The Map is Not the Territory Some young children who begin to repeat sounds and syllables at the beginning of words will adjust to this by making it a non-issue and disregarding it or by considering it normal, not shameful, disgusting, or wrong. Most importantly, they never become self-doubters because of it. Johnson taught that false belief causes irrational conduct. …


Buildmax, the beleaguered construction company once owned by controversial Malaysian businessman Samsudin Bin Abu Hassan's SMG Holdings, appears to have turned the corner with last December's announced reverse listing and acquisition of the Buildco Group of companies. Buildmax listed on the JSE's main board in July 1996 and control shifted shortly thereafter to Malaysian company Mycom and two years later to Samsudin's SMG Holdings. Samsudin became embroiled in a string of dodgy deals and was forced to step down as chairman of Buildmax in 2003 when details of his part in the theft of funds in his native Malaysia unfolded.


Mixed-Integer Programming has been a vital tool for the chemical engineer in the recent decades and is employed extensively in process design and control. This dissertation presents some new Mixed-Integer Programming formulations developed for two well-studied problems, one with a central role in the area of Optimisation, the other of great interest to the chemical industry. These are the Travelling Salesman Problem and the problem of scheduling cleaning actions for heat exchanger networks subject to fouling. The Travelling Salesman Problem finds a plethora of applications in many scientific disciplines, Chemical Engineering included. None of the mathematical programming formulations proposed for solving the problem considers fewer than O(n) binary degrees of freedom. The first part of this dissertation introduces a novel mathematical description of the Travelling Salesman Problem that succeeds in reducing the binary degrees of freedom to O(ndlog2(n)e). Three Mixed-Integer Linear Programming formulations are developed and the computational performance of these is tested through computational studies. Sophisticated methods are now available for scheduling the cleaning actions for networks of heat exchangers subject to fouling. In the majority of these, only one form of cleaning is used, which restores the performance of the exchanger back to its clean level. Ishiyama et al. [2011b] recently revised the scheduling problem for the case where there are several cleaning methods available. The second part of this dissertation extends their approach, developed for individual units, to heat exchanger networks and explores the concept of selection of cleaning techniques further. Mixed-Integer Programming formulations are proposed for the scheduling task, for two fouling scenarios: (i) chemical reaction fouling and (ii) biological fouling. A series of results are presented for the implementation of the scheduling formulations to networks of different sizes.


Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City focuses on the controversial, neglected theme of citizenship. It examines the changing role of citizens; their rights, obligations and responsibilities as members of nation-states and the issue of accountability in a global society. Using this interdisciplinary approach, the book offers an innovative collection of work from Robert A. Beauregard, Anna Bounds, Janine Brodie, Richard Dagger, Gerard Delanty, Judith A. Garber, Robert J. Holton, Warren Magnusson, Raymond Rocco, Nikolas Rose, Evelyn S. Ruppert, Saskia Sassen, Bryan S. Turner, John Urry, Gerda R. Wekerle and Nira Yuval-Davis.


Purpose: This phase I trial evaluated intraperitoneal (i.p.) pemetrexed, cisplatin, and paclitaxel in optimally debulked ovarian cancer. Experimental Design: Dose escalation of day 1 i.p. pemetrexed accrued three patients to each of five dose levels (60–1,000 mg/m2), along with day 2 i.p. cisplatin (75 mg/m2) and day 8 i.p. paclitaxel (60 mg/m2). The goals were to determine maximum tolerated dose (MTD), 18-month progression-free survival (PFS), and pharmacokinetics of i.p. pemetrexed. Results: Cycles, given every 21 days, had an 80% 6-cycle completion rate. There was minimal grade III toxicity in the first 4 dose levels and remarkably an almost complete absence of peripheral neuropathy and alopecia. At the highest dose level, two of three patients experienced ≥grade III and dose-limiting toxicity (DLT; hematologic, infection, gastrointestinal). There was a pharmacokinetic advantage for i.p. pemetrexed with an intraperitoneal:plasma area under the concentration–time curve ratio of 13-fold. Neither analysis of pharmacokinetic nor homocysteine levels explains the unexpected severity of toxicity in those two patients. On the basis of plasma C24h levels, the 42 cycles at ≥500 mg/m2 i.p. pemetrexed without DLT, the MTD appears to be 500 mg/m2. Median PFS is 30.1 months; 18-month PFS is 78.6% (median follow-up 22.4 months). Conclusions: This i.p.-only regimen in front-line ovarian cancer is feasible with PFS in line with recent literature. We suggest phase II trials of this regimen in this population with i.p. pemetrexed at 500 mg/m2. The favorable toxicity profile at doses <1,000 mg/m2, which needs to be confirmed, appears to compare well with standard combination i.v./i.p. platinum/taxane chemotherapy in this disease. Clin Cancer Res; 18(9); 2668–78. ©2012 AACR.


In this paper, I provide a response to papers that were written in response to the keynote I presented at the 2017 ICPIC conference in Madrid and to the written version of this keynote, published in this journal. I try to clarify what was 'at stake' in the paper, namely an attempt to respond to Adorno's question about the (im)possibility of education 'after Auschwitz,' and highlight that the main theme underlying my arguments concerns the difference between immanence and transcendence and how this 'reflects' upon education. I try to show why (the possibility of) transcendence matters, educationally and for our existence as subject. I try to clarify that the interest in what it means to exist as subject and what education may have to do in relation to this is not meant as another normative blueprint for education but rather tries to engage with the 'experience of freedom,' the experience that we can act and can act differently. And I try to clarify that all this is not an attempt to determine what the subject is , but an attempt to come to terms with the question -- which is there for each of us – as to what it might mean to exist as subject.


Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Plant Health (PLH) Panel performed a risk
assessment for Ceratocystis platani in the EU with the aim to assess the effectiveness of risk reduction
options (RROs) on the basis of the mechanisms of spread identified in the pest categorisation (natural
and human-assisted means, including waterways, root anastomosis, contaminated pruning tools,
machinery, insects, contaminated insect frass and sawdust). C. platani is a destructive pathogen of
Platanus trees, which is currently present in the EU (in France, Greece and Italy). Three scenarios were
considered: the current situation (A0 scenario); the situation without RROs (A1); and the application of
additional RROs (A2). The risk of new introductions into the EU of C. platani by means of the main
pathways of entry (i.e. plants for planting, wood and machinery, e.g. construction machinery and
pruning/cutting tools) is relatively limited, but about 250 times higher for the A1 scenario compared to
the A2 scenario (median numbers of established populations). The risk of spread from already affected
EU regions is higher, but varies depending on the scenario. Machinery is the most important mechanism
of long-distance spread. Focusing the additional RROs in A2 scenario on this mechanism of spread –
which is not currently regulated – would be an effective way to reduce the likelihood of further spread
and thus impacts of C. platani to not yet affected EU regions. The emergency measures applied by the
C. platani-affected EU Member States (France, Greece and Italy) could be harmonised and improved.
An enhanced programme could be developed which includes surveillance, early detection of the disease
foci, effective eradication measures and planting resistant Platanus clones in new plantations in affected
areas. Surveillance could also be intensified in the EU MSs not yet known to be affected by the disease.


The article analyzes trade union action that seeks to influence processes of technological and organizational innovation in companies in Brazil. The System for Monitoring Collective Bargaining, under the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Economic Studies (SACC-Dieese), was used to analyze collective bargaining clauses (1990- 2005) that deal with innovative processes. Interviews were held with leaders of unions belonging to the SACC-Dieese, seeking to understand what actually occurred following formal agreement to the clauses. We observed that the agreed-upon terms were not enforced in practice, revealing that the trade unions' influence in innovative processes was merely "apparent". The article seeks to demonstrate that the limited success of Brazilian trade unions in affecting technological and organizational innovations has been due not only to external constraints, but also to the unions' own limitations in formulating and interacting with technical and organizational changes.


One of the critical and costly components in digital cellular communication systems is the RF power amplifier. Theoretically, one of the main concerns in an RF power amplifier design is the nonlinear effect of the amplifier. Quantitatively, so far, no explicit relationship or expression currently exists between the out-of-band emission level and the nonlinearity description related to the third-order intercept point (IP3). Further, in experiments and analysis, it was discovered that, in some situations, using IP3 only is not accurate enough to describe the spectrum regrowth, especially when the fifth-order intercept point (IP5) is relatively significant compared to the third-order intermodulation. In this article, we analyze the nonlinear effect of an RF power amplifier in the MIRS M-16-QAM system, give an expression of the estimation of the out-of-band emission levels for an MIRS signal power spectrum in terms of the IP3 and the IP5, as well as the power level of the signal. This result will be useful in the design of RF power amplifier for the MIRS M-16-QAM system and other wireless communication systems.


Datasets involving irregular occurrences of different types of events over the timeline are increas-ingly commonly available. Proximal graphical event models (PGEMs) are a recent graphical representation for modeling relationships between different event types in such datasets. Existing algorithms for learning PGEMs from event datasets perform poorly on the task of structure discovery, which is particularly important for causal inference since the underlying graph determines the effect of interventions. In this paper, we explore causal semantics in PGEMs and study process independencies implied by the graphical structure of the model. We introduce (conditional) process independence tests for causal PGEMs, deploying them using variations of constraint-based structure discovery algorithms for Bayesian networks. Through experiments with synthetic and real datasets, we show that the proposed approaches are better at balancing precision and recall, demonstrating improved F1 scores over state-of-the-art baselines.


A thesis was completed as part of the requirements of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Having previously worked with young people who self-harmed, the author was interested in the impact of work on professionals. When reading around the subject, it was possible to identify that whilst a wealth of research has been undertaken into healthcare professional attitudes towards self-harm, few studies have explored the impact of such work on staff. The impact of work with self-harm on professionals is an important area of enquiry as it is acknowledged that mental health workers are vulnerable to compassion fatigue (Figley, 2002) and vicarious traumatisation (McCann & Pearlman, 1990) through their empathy with those who are suffering. This impacts on staff well-being and morale, as well as service users' experience and outcomes. A review of the literature was conducted in order to ascertain what was already known and where gaps existed. Nine studies were identified and evaluated. Working with self-harm had both an emotional and cognitive impact on professionals, with work eliciting strong emotions and some staff describing responses such as sleep disturbance and relational conflict that were consistent with compassion fatigue (Bride, 2004). Most research had been carried out with qualified staff working with adults who self-harmed. Therefore, a gap was identified around unqualified staff experience of working in inpatient settings with adolescents who self-harm. Since the aim was to explore staff experience, a decision was made to use Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the experience of healthcare support workers (HCSWs) in an inpatient unit. Six HCSWs were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Four superordinate themes were found: trying to make sense of self-harm, emotional impact, relationships, and HCSW role. Participants' responses were reflective of components of compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatisation, highlighting the profound impact of such work and the need for structured training and support. Findings were supported by research with qualified staff. However, existing knowledge was extended by providing detail of the meaning of experience for HCSWs. The thesis concludes with the author's reflections on her own experience of working on an inpatient unit with adolescents who self-harm.


Almost three years after the Euromaidan protests in 2013-2014, the circumstances in East Ukraine seem to be burdened by a frozen conflict. Russia is still holding on to the story that the annexation of Crimea was a "free referendum" of Ukrainian people expressing their desire to belong territorially to Russia. Unsolved conflicts and the future architecture of relations between Russia, Ukraine and the EU need to be redefined and remain a key strategic challenge for the EU. "A consistent and united approach must remain the cornerstone of EU policy towards Russia" (EEAS 2016). As suggested by the EU Global Strategy, to develop a dialogue-led, two-way interaction between equal partners is recognised as promising and, on the other hand, strenuous. The elites within the EU as well as the media should perceive the deficits in their own behaviour and develop new strategies on the ground. This paper presents a media perception study. The central question of this research is how Ukraine and the EU are perceived in Russian media. Three leading Russian newspapers (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Kommersant, Komsomolskaya Pravda) have been selected to analyse the Russian media perception. The study coded over 500 articles that were published in May, September and October 2015.


Pixelated Cd(Zn)Te radiation detectors are a promising technology for X-ray imaging applications but their areas are limited to 5 cm2. Active-edge sensors, without guard bands,are explored and characterised in this work to produce a large panel pixelated Cd(Zn)Te detector built of tiled modules with minimal gaps between them.
The characterisation of an active-edge sensor fabricated using present processing technologies showed that 87 % of all edge pixels had excellent spectroscopic characteristics for X-ray imaging. However non-uniformities in the charge collection were observed in 34 % of the pixels. These were attributed to regions with poor charge collection efficiency up to 200 µm from the edge due to a low electric field strength near the edge that was caused by the high edge surface leakage currents. New techniques for the processing of the crystal edges were investigated with the aim of improving the sensitivity of the detectors up to the edge of the crystal. The leakage current was significantly reduced when the diced edges of CdTe sensors were lapped with a 3 µm alumina slurry followed by a polish with a 0.3 µm
alumina slurry. This resulted in 60 % of edge pixels with excellent characteristics for X-ray imaging. The remaining 40 % presented poor spectroscopy due to damaged pixels, as a consequence of the difficulties in handling the 1 mm thick crystal whilst manually processing
the edge surfaces. The polished and diced surfaces were illuminated edge-on, between the cathode and the anode, for the first time ever in CdTe. Poor detection and charge collection efficiency were observed within 12 µm from the polished edge surface and 80 µm from the
diced edge surface. This was attributed to a high density of electron traps at the crystal edge due to dicing and processing that originated multiple trapping and de-trapping of charge carriers.
This work concludes that active-edge CdTe radiation detectors are a promising technology for the production of a large Cd(Zn)Te radiation detector for X-ray imaging. The nonuniformities seen in the edge pixels are related to the high edge surface leakage currents due to the introduction of trap states during dicing. These are reduced by edge processing which creates active-edge pixels sensitive to radiation within 12 µm from the edge surface.


Long-period EUV pulsations, recently discovered to be common in active regions, are understood to be the coronal manifestation of thermal non-equilibrium (TNE). The active regions previously studied with EIT/SOHO and AIA/SDO indicated that long-period intensity pulsations are localized in only one or two loop bundles. The basic idea of this study is to understand why. For this purpose, we tested the response of different loop systems, using different magnetic configurations, to different stratifications and strengths of the heating. We present an extensive parameter-space study using 1D hydrodynamic simulations (1,020 in total) and conclude that the occurrence of TNE requires specific combinations of parameters. Our study shows that the TNE cycles are confined to specific ranges in parameter space. This naturally explains why only some loops undergo constant periodic pulsations over several days: since the loop geometry and the heating properties generally vary from one loop to another in an active region, only the ones in which these parameters are compatible exhibits TNE cycles. Furthermore, these parameters (heating and geometry) are likely to vary significantly over the duration of a cycle, which potentially limits the possibilities of periodic behavior. This study also confirms that longperiod intensity pulsations and coronal rain are two aspects of the same phenomenon: both phenomena can occur for similar heating conditions and can appear simultaneously in the simulations.