OBJECTIVE
To assess the association of subsequent pregnancy with subsequent metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes mellitus after a pregnancy complicated by mild gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).

METHODS
We conducted a prospective observational follow-up study of women with mild GDM randomized from 2002 to 2007 to usual care or dietary intervention and glucose self-monitoring. Women were evaluated 5-10 years after the parent study. Participants were grouped according to the number of subsequent pregnancies (group A, none [reference]; group B, one; group C, two or greater). Serum triglycerides, glucose tolerance, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference were assessed. Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed by American Heart Association and National Heart Lung and Blood Institute criteria. Multivariable regression was used to estimate adjusted relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

RESULTS
Of 905 eligible women from the original trial, 483 agreed to participate, 426 of whom were included in this analysis. Groups A, B, and C consisted of 212, 143, and 71 women, respectively. Of women with subsequent pregnancies, 32% (69/214) had another pregnancy complicated with GDM. No difference between groups was observed for metabolic syndrome (group A, 34%; group B, 33%; group C, 30%). Subsequent pregnancies were associated with diabetes mellitus outside of pregnancy (group A, 5.2%; group B, 10.5%, RR 2.62, 95% CI 1.16-5.91; group C, 11.3%, RR 2.83, 95% CI 1.06-7.59), and if complicated with GDM (no subsequent GDM pregnancy, RR 1.99, 95% CI 0.82-4.84; subsequent GDM pregnancy, RR 3.75, 95% CI 1.60-8.82).

CONCLUSION
In women with prior mild GDM, subsequent pregnancies did not increase the frequency of metabolic syndrome, but subsequent pregnancies with GDM increased the risk of diabetes mellitus outside of pregnancy.


In the stochastic linear contextual bandit setting there exist several minimax procedures for exploration with policies that are reactive to the data being acquired. In practice, there can be a significant engineering overhead to deploy these algorithms, especially when the dataset is collected in a distributed fashion or when a human in the loop is needed to implement a different policy. Exploring with a single non-reactive policy is beneficial in such cases. Assuming some batch contexts are available, we design a single stochastic policy to collect a good dataset from which a near-optimal policy can be extracted. We present a theoretical analysis as well as numerical experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets.


The basis of this methodology process is base on the constructivism theory: all knowledge resulting from previous knowledge and new experiencies, which will contribut to conform a novel knowledge. The work proposal of this Method is based fundamentally on the John Dewey´s learning theory; he believed that teaching experiences should arouse curiosity, enhance personal initiative, and allow free expression of learners' ideas. In explaining the importance of individual experiences on the development of expertise, he wrote, "What [the student] has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations which follow".


This article explores how Athenian university students "manage" their privacy on Facebook while socially interacting with other users. Survey data of undergraduate students in Athens reveal that the social network site use "validates" and enhances the pre-existing social context and that the relationship level has an impact on the way users contact other users on it. We find that Facebook users feel that they are able to use most of the privacy settings to protect their personal data. Yet, they are concerned about the disclosure of their personal information which is perceived to be their primary responsibility. Despite these concerns, they appear to feel in control of their privacy through the abilities they are offered by the social networking site (SNS). We also argue that even if they realize that they are disclosing their personal information, this doesn't cause a great deal of insecurity.


Background and objectives: The thalamus exerts a pivotal role in pain processing and cortical excitability control, and migraine is characterized by repeated pain attacks and abnormal cortical habituation to excitatory stimuli. This work aimed at studying the microstructure of the thalamus in migraine patients using an innovative multiparametric approach at high‐field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Design: We examined 37 migraineurs (22 without aura, MWoA, and 15 with aura, MWA) as well as 20 healthy controls (HC) in a 3‐T MRI equipped with a 32‐channel coil. We acquired whole‐brain T1 relaxation maps and computed magnetization transfer ratio (MTR), generalized fractional anisotropy, and T2* maps to probe microstructural and connectivity integrity and to assess iron deposition. We also correlated the obtained parametric values with the average monthly frequency of migraine attacks and disease duration. Results: T1 relaxation time was significantly shorter in the thalamus of MWA patients compared with MWoA (P < 0.001) and HC (P ≤ 0.01); in addition, MTR was higher and T2* relaxation time was shorter in MWA than in MWoA patients (P < 0.05, respectively). These data reveal broad microstructural alterations in the thalamus of MWA patients compared with MWoA and HC, suggesting increased iron deposition and myelin content/cellularity. However, MWA and MWoA patients did not show any differences in the thalamic nucleus involved in pain processing in migraine. Conclusions: There are broad microstructural alterations in the thalamus of MWA patients that may underlie abnormal cortical excitability control leading to cortical spreading depression and visual aura. Hum Brain Mapp 35:1461–1468, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


This paper discusses theories of memory as developed by philosophers and medical writers from Graeco -Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. While philosophers had much to say on the nature of memory and recollection, their epistemological role and their relationship to other functions of the soul, medical writers concentrated on the anatomy, physiology, pathology and indeed the therapeutics of memory and recollection. Yet the close relationship between philosophical and medical approaches was most clearly visible in discussions about the bodily location of memory, where theoretical concepts of the hierarchy of faculties of the soul were connected with clinical observations of memory failure as a result of injury or disease .


Sediment yields from the world's rivers are generally highest from steep drainage basins with weak lithology, active tectonics, or severe land-use impacts. Here, we evaluate sediment yields from the Western Transverse Ranges of California in an attempt to explain why they are two- to tenfold greater than the surrounding areas of California. We found that suspended-sediment yields across the gauged basins of the Western Transverse Range during 1969–1999 varied by approximately an order of magnitude (740–5300 t/km2/yr). Similarly, fine-sediment concentrations for normalized discharge rates varied by almost two orders of magnitude (e.g., 1.3–110 g/L for the mean annual flood) for 11 previously unmonitored drainages of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Areas with high sediment yields consistently have weakly consolidated bedrock (Quaternary-Pliocene marine formations) and are associated with the highest rates of tectonic uplift of the region (>5 mm/yr). These regions are important to the sediment discharge budgets, because ~50% of the total suspended-sediment discharge from the Western Transverse Range is estimated to be generated within these regions, even though they represent only ~10% of the total watershed area. Previous estimates of suspended-sediment discharge from the Ventura River have likely been underestimated by ~50% because the gauging station is located immediately upstream of a high sediment yield region. We also found a significant and positive correlation between sediment yield and the percentage of a watershed with grassland and agricultural land use. These results suggest that there is adequate variation within the lithology, tectonics, and land use of the broader Western Transverse Range geologic province to induce large variations in sediment yield at the local scale.


Pervasive computing promises to make life simpler via digital environments that sense, adapt, and respond to human needs. Yet we still view computers as machines that run programs in a virtual environment. Pervasive computing presumes a different vision. A device can be a portal into an application-data space, not just a repository of custom software a user must manage. An application is a means by which a user performs a task, not software written to exploit a device's capabilities. And a computing environment is an information-enhanced physical space, not a virtual environment that exists to store and run software. Pervasive computing is close to technical and economic viability.


The modal group delays (GDs) are a key property governing the dispersion of signals propagating in a multimode fiber (MMF). An MMF is in the strong-coupling regime when the total length of the MMF is much greater than the correlation length over which local principal modes can be considered constant. In this regime, the GDs can be described as the eigenvalues of zero-trace Gaussian unitary ensemble, and the probability density function (pdf) of the GDs is the eigenvalue distribution of the ensemble. For fibers with two to seven modes, the marginal pdf of the GDs is derived analytically. For fibers with a large number of modes, this pdf is shown to approach a semicircle distribution. In the strong-coupling regime, the delay spread is proportional to the square root of the number of independent sections, or the square root of the overall fiber length.


We explore the possibility of leveraging accelerometer data to perform speech enhancement in very noisy conditions. Although it is possible to only partially reconstruct user's speech from the accelerometer, the latter provides a strong conditioning signal that is not influenced from noise sources in the environment. Based on this observation, we feed a multi-modal input to SEANet (Sound EnhAncement Network), a wave-to-wave fully convolutional model, which adopts a combination of feature losses and adversarial losses to reconstruct an enhanced version of user's speech. We trained our model with data collected by sensors mounted on an earbud and synthetically corrupted by adding different kinds of noise sources to the audio signal. Our experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to achieve very high quality results, even in the case of interfering speech at the same level of loudness. A sample of the output produced by our model is available at this https URL.


This work proposes and analyzes an anisotropic sparse grid stochastic collocation method for solving partial differential equations with random coefficients and forcing terms (input data of the model). The method consists of a Galerkin approximation in the space variables and a collocation, in probability space, on sparse tensor product grids utilizing either Clenshaw-Curtis or Gaussian knots. Even in the presence of nonlinearities, the collocation approach leads to the solution of uncoupled deterministic problems, just as in the Monte Carlo method. This work includes a priori and a posteriori procedures to adapt the anisotropy of the sparse grids to each given problem. These procedures seem to be very effective for the problems under study. The proposed method combines the advantages of isotropic sparse collocation with those of anisotropic full tensor product collocation: the first approach is effective for problems depending on random variables which weigh approximately equally in the solution, while the benefits of the latter approach become apparent when solving highly anisotropic problems depending on a relatively small number of random variables, as in the case where input random variables are Karhunen-Loeve truncations of "smooth" random fields. This work also provides a rigorous convergence analysis of the fully discrete problem and demonstrates (sub)exponential convergence in the asymptotic regime and algebraic convergence in the preasymptotic regime, with respect to the total number of collocation points. It also shows that the anisotropic approximation breaks the curse of dimensionality for a wide set of problems. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical results and are used to compare this approach with several others, including the standard Monte Carlo. In particular, for moderately large-dimensional problems, the sparse grid approach with a properly chosen anisotropy seems to be very efficient and superior to all examined methods.


The efficacy of diets containing 40%-50% wheat, barley, or oat grains, fermented by a solid-state fermentation process, on bird performance, carcass yield, digestive organ development, and intestinal viscosity was tested. Compared with broiler chicks fed unfermented grains, those fed fermented oats had increased feed intake, and treatment with fermented wheat and barley improved the feed conversion ratio at days 21 and 42. Treatment with fermented barley and oats resulted in increased body weight at day 42. Treatment with fermented wheat and oats increased the percentage of carcass yield. Birds fed unfermented grains had highly viscous digesta, not seen among birds fed fermented grains. Compared with those fed unfermented grains, birds fed fermented grains had reduced (P < 0.05) size and weight of the digestive tract, but increased liver weight. In conclusion, feeding broiler chicks diets of fermented grains, particularly wheat and barley, yielded certain performance and carcass benefits, promising a growth-stimulating effect.


In this study, the shape, localization, and arterial vascularization of the gl. adrenalis were examined in 6 donkeys. It was observed that the internal side of the gl. adrenalis sinistra was located against the aorta abdominalis and the caudal aspect of the gland was in the ventral aspect of the a. renalis sinistra. The length of the left adrenal gland was approximately 41.49-47.44 mm, while its width was about 21.70-26.24 mm, and the thickness was nearly 4.65-7.56 mm. The shape of the left adrenal gland was oval or nearly circular. The gl. adrenalis sinistra was vascularized by the rr. adrenalis caudales and a. adrenalis media that were separated from the ventral side of the aorta abdominalis. The latter took part in the vascularization of both materials. The vena cava caudalis was seen in the ventral side of the gl. adrenalis dextra, and the cranial border of the gland was seen in contact with the renal impression of the liver. The right a. renalis was observed on the caudal border of the gland. The length of the right adrenal gland was approximately 43.13-56.49 mm, while the width was about 14.40-30.27 mm, and the thickness was nearly 4.74-7.68 mm. The general shape of the right adrenal gland was ranging from oval to nearly circular in outlines; however, a typical bean shape was seen only in one specimen and an elliptical gland was seen in another specimen. The gl. adrenalis sinistra was vascularized by the rr. adrenales caudales and a. adrenalis media, the latter was originated from the ventral aspect of the aorta abdominalis to participate partly in the vascularization of this gland in a specimen.


Non-base building compensation is a temporary increase in salary and take-home pay for an employee. This extra compensation is removed after the allotted time has expired, and/or the work has been completed. This is not taken into consideration when determining base building compensation as part of a promotion or position reclassification. Being temporary in nature, these increases typically last 12 months or less.


Some of the major outstanding problems in biology are related to issues of emergence and evolution. These include: (a) how populations of organisms traverse their adaptive landscapes; (b) what the relation between adaptedness and fitness is; and (c) the formation of multicellular organisms from basic units or cells. In this article we study these issues using a model that is both general and simple. The system, derived from the CA (cellular automata) model, consists of a two-dimensional grid of interacting organisms that may evolve over time. We first present designed multicellular organisms that display several interesting behaviors, including reproduction, growth, and mobility. We then turn our attention to evolution in various environments, including an environment in which competition for space occurs, an IPD (Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma) environment, an environment of spatial niches, and an environment of temporal niches. One of the advantages of artificial life (AL) models is the opportunities they offer in performing in-depth studies of the evolutionary process. This is accomplished in our case by observing not only phenotypic effects but also such measures as fitness, operability, energy and the genescape. Our work sheds light on the problems raised above, and offers a possible path toward the long-term, two-fold goal of ALife research: (a) increasing our understanding of biology, and (b) enhancing our understanding of artificial models, thereby providing us with the ability to improve their performance.


My purpose in this article is not to offer any original insights into Hegel's ethics, but merely to provide a brief overview that draws upon the most reliable secondary sources. In order to help organize the material, I compare Hegel's views with the communitarian critique of liberalism. Following this, there is a brief account of the relation between Hegel's ethical and religious thought. Hegel's philosophy is one of reconciliation. He is both a follower of Kant and a sharp critic of Kant. With Kant, he affirms the idea of moral autonomy, that moral agency requires us to think for ourselves and impose moral obligations upon ourselves. Unlike Kant (at least as usually interpreted), however, he does not think that this means that the only motivation for moral behavior should be the will to do one's duty. Because of the antinomy of free will and determinism, Kant concluded that agency springs from a noumenal realm beyond the phenomenal world. Hegel seeks to reconcile freedom with causal constraints in a form of compatibalism that differs fundamentally from the soft determinism of the empiricist tradition. Kant argued that morality must derive from reason. Hegel agrees, but he understands reason as a process in which the finite self overcomes itself through its identification with others. My indebtedness to Robert Wallace's recent book on this topic will be obvious; my gratitude to him should be, as well


The purpose of this study is to determine the criteria and process used in gatekeepers' decisions at three major daily Ohio newspapers for choosing international stories. What qualifies these individuals to be gatekeepers and how are their daily decisions made? Why do they make the choices they make? And how are these gatekeepers determining the needs of the American public? The gatekeeping process in choosing international stories at three Ohio - The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland - is reviewed to determine what criteria are used in the selection process. This study found that gatekeepers do follow a specific, though unwritten, process in the selection of stories. With a one month content analysis followed by observations and interviews of gatekeepers at the newspapers reviewed, it was learned that not just international coverage is shrinking but the entire news hole at these daily newspapers is becoming increasingly limited as today's newspapers work with less staff and space on the page. While international news may have been limited in the past for other reasons, this study presented documented reasons why world coverage today is decreasing in the daily newspaper.


We argue that the cosmological constant problem can be solved in a braneworld model with infinite-volume extra dimensions, avoiding no-go arguments applicable to theories that are four-dimensional in the infrared. Gravity on the brane becomes higher-dimensional at super-Hubble distances, which entails that the relation between the acceleration rate and vacuum energy density flips upside down compared to the conventional one. The acceleration rate decreases with increasing the energy density. The experimentally acceptable rate is obtained for the energy density larger than (1 TeV)$^4$. The results are stable under quantum corrections because supersymmetry is broken only on the brane and stays exact in the bulk of infinite volume extra space. Consistency of 4D gravity and cosmology on the brane requires the quantum gravity scale to be around $10^{-3}$ eV. Testable predictions emerging within this approach are: (i) simultaneous modifications of gravity at sub-millimeter and the Hubble scales; (ii) Hagedorn-type saturation in TeV energy collisions due to the Regge spectrum with the spacing equal to $10^{-3}$ eV.


The addition of certain antibiotics to the diet at low levels increases the rate of growth of young animals and the efficiency with which they utilize food as measured by the ratio between food intake and increase in body weight. This effect of antibiotics is not obtained in environments in which bacteria are absent, such as in the chick embryo or in "germ-free" chicks, and the effect may be reduced when the animals are kept under highly sanitary conditions. Evidently certain widely-distributed types of antibiotic-sensitive intestinal microorganisms interfere with the utilization of food. Aureomycin, terramycin, penicillin, streptomycin and bacitracin produce the "antibiotic growth effect" in chicks when added to the diet at levels as low as 1 to 20 parts per million. The effect with other species of animals depends on the antibiotic used; the "wide spectrum" antibiotics produce the most consistent effects over a range of species. A decrease in gut weight without a change in length has been reported to be associated with the antibiotic growth effect in chicks; Coates (50) has recorded a decrease of 18% in gut weight accompanying an increase of 9% in body weight. This gives rise to the speculation that a mild "early-sprue-like" condition, engendered by certain intestinal bacteria, may exist in so-called normal animals and that this condition is corrected by the dietary use of antibiotics which inhibit or eliminate the causative bacteria. Such a change might account for some of the "dietary" effects reported for antibiotics, including improvements in the utilization of food, sparing effects on the requirement for proteins and for certain minerals and vitamins, and anti-anemic effects under conditions which respond to folic acid. However, it is possible that other dietary additions may give rise to decreases in gut weight without increasing body weight (150a) The antibiotic growth effect may be obtained when the diet is supplemented with more than sufficient amounts of the known vitamins. The tissues of antibiotic-fed animals are of normal composition. The practice of feeding antibiotics to farm animals is widespread. No untoward effects on public health have resulted; for example, detectable amounts of aureomycin are not found in meat even when the animals are fed antibiotics at levels far higher than usual; furthermore, many antibiotics are destroyed by cooking. In any event, the daily administration of small amounts of aureomycin for prolonged periods to children has not been found to have untoward effects. Resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria have not been reported to have made their appearance in animals as a result of feeding antibiotics. Reproduction in animals does not appear to be affected by feeding antibiotics, except that 1) hatchability of hen9s eggs may be improved if the hens are on certain deficient diets, 2) the survival and early growth of young pigs and rabbits may be improved when an antibiotic is fed to the mother, perhaps because the number of pathogenic bacteria in the environment of the young animals is thus reduced.


The shift from a bipolar to a multipolar and multi-faceted world has reduced the risk of conventional inter-state wars, but has been the cause of several intra-state armed conflicts with an even higher risk of regional instability. Such conflicts and the resurgence of a global activism have produced a dramatic growth in peacekeeping requirements since the end of the previous decade. The international response, mainly through the United Nations (UN), has been to promote preventive diplomacy and, in a number of cases, to conduct peace-support operations. In brief, this paper points out that each UN peace-support operation places an extremely high premium on UN administration, organisation, coordination and resources. To this end, a multiplicity of contributions from various role-players is needed. It also points out that peace-support operations require significant commitments on the part of participating states, specifically the willingness to accept financial costs and fatalities in the interest of promoting international and regional stability. This is especially true in the case of African peacekeeping. This paper, furthermore, underscores the fact that the undertaking of peace-support operations in Africa is by no means a simple and easy task. The nature of peacekeeping missions in certain African countries have, in fact, resulted in an increasing reluctance on the part of the major powers and some of the other traditional troop-contributing nations to deploy on African soil. It concludes that the real impact of the post-Cold War era is that the burden of resolving African conflicts rests more and more on Africans. African countries and organisations are accordingly compelled to take measures and develop strategies to address the peacekeeping requirements on the continent.


The past decade has witnessed a dramatic invasion of mobile technology into the lives of people. Among those who appear to be most affected by this invasion are university students who are the most 'connected' generation. Research has found that in excess of 60% of students have access to either a desktop computer or a laptop and about 90% of them own a cellular phone. With university students being increasingly immersed in the latest social media such as Facebook, Sim City, MySpace and World of Wars there may possibly be serious social effects as a consequence. The purpose of this research is therefore to determine the social effects of mobile technology on Generation Y students. A quantitative research approach involving the administration of a structured questionnaire to Generation Y university students was used to collect data for the study. Data was collected by a trained research assistant who personally administered the questionnaire at the different university campuses. The data were analysed in the following ways: a descriptive analysis of the sample composition was undertaken and exploratory factor analysis was undertaken to establish the social effects of mobile technology. Seven factors, namely self-esteem and confidence, recreation, family interaction, social interaction, attentiveness, personal well-being and peer relationships were extracted. These factors are likely influence their lives as well as their behaviour. The overwhelming majority of respondents that own mobile mtechnology suggest how indispensible it has become as a mechanism to communicate, surf the net and engage in entertainment activities. Given the critical role that mobile technology plays in the lives of Generation Y students' lives, it is important for them to create an appropriate balance between their usage, attention to their academic programmes and their social lives. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p282


Abstract A sound gradual type system ensures that untyped components of a program can never break the guarantees of statically typed components. This assurance relies on runtime checks, which in turn impose performance overhead in proportion to the frequency and nature of interaction between typed and untyped components. The literature on gradual typing lacks rigorous descriptions of methods for measuring the performance of gradual type systems. This gap has consequences for the implementors of gradual type systems and developers who use such systems. Without systematic evaluation of mixed-typed programs, implementors cannot precisely determine how improvements to a gradual type system affect performance. Developers cannot predict whether adding types to part of a program will significantly degrade (or improve) its performance. This paper presents the first method for evaluating the performance of sound gradual type systems. The method quantifies both the absolute performance of a gradual type system and the relative performance of two implementations of the same gradual type system. To validate the method, the paper reports on its application to 20 programs and 3 implementations of Typed Racket. Video Abstract A video abstract can be found at: https://youtu.be/7d6iJdSRFtQ


We consider the computational complexity of probabilistic inference in Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). First, we study the problem of finding the maximum a posteriori (MAP) assignment of topics to words, where the document's topic distribution is integrated out. We show that, when the effective number of topics per document is small, exact inference takes polynomial time. In contrast, we show that, when a document has a large number of topics, finding the MAP assignment of topics to words in LDA is NP-hard. Next, we consider the problem of finding the MAP topic distribution for a document, where the topic-word assignments are integrated out. We show that this problem is also NP-hard. Finally, we briefly discuss the problem of sampling from the posterior, showing that this is NP-hard in one restricted setting, but leaving open the general question.


Abstract Ionizing radiation exposure to the lens of the eye is a known cause of cataractogenesis. Historically, it was believed that the acute threshold dose for cataract formation was 5 Sv, and annual dose limits to the lens were set at 150 mSv. Recently, however, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has reduced their threshold dose estimate for deterministic effects to 0.5 Gy and is now recommending an occupational limit of 20 mSv per year on average. A number of organizations have questioned whether this new threshold and dose limit are justified based on the limited reliable data concerning radiation-induced cataracts. This review summarizes all of the published human epidemiological data on ionizing radiation exposure to the lens of the eye in order to evaluate the proposed threshold. Data from a variety of exposure cohorts are reviewed, including atomic bomb survivors, Chernobyl liquidators, medical workers, and radiotherapy patients. Overall, there is not conclusive evidence that the threshold dose for cataract formation should be reduced to 0.5 Gy. Many of the studies reviewed here are challenging to incorporate into an overall risk model due to inconsistencies with dosimetry, sample size, and scoring metrics. Additionally, risk levels in the studied cohorts may not relate to occupational scenarios due to differences in dose rate, radiation quality, age at exposure and latency period. New studies should be designed specifically focused on occupational exposures, with reliable dosimetry and grading methods for lens opacities, to determine an appropriate level for dose threshold and exposure limit.


Since it began in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to considerable concerns about the viability of local food systems and rural livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa. This paper presents the results of a three-round assessment of the effects of COVID-19 on the farming, labour and marketing practices, food and nutrition security, and well-being of over 800 male- and female-headed rural households in eight countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In this paper, we argue that when we closely examine the lived experiences of people in different country contexts, results suggest that the immediate restrictions and strict control measures imposed by governments at the start of the pandemic on social and commercial activities acted as a major shock to the well-being of many rural households and communities. Furthermore, while some households and communities were able to find ways to cope or adapt to the COVID-19-related disruptions, for others the pandemic coincided with a number of other shocks and stresses (extreme weather events, locust infestations, conflict and insecurity, or a combination of these), exacerbating some of the observed risks.


Semantic argument structures are often incomplete in that core arguments are not locally instantiated. However, many of these implicit arguments can be linked to referents in the wider context. In this paper we explore a number of linguistically motivated strategies for identifying and resolving such null instantiations (NIs). We show that a more sophisticated model for identifying definite NIs can lead to noticeable performance gains over the state-ofthe-art for NI resolution.


An original methodology, called backward model tracing to model student performance which features a profitable integration of the bug collection and bug construction techniques is presented. This methodology has been used for building the modelling module of a new version of ET (English Tutor), an ITS aimed at supporting the learning of the English verb system. Backward model tracing is based on the idea of analyzing the reasoning process of the student by reconstructing, step by step and in reverse order, the chain of reasoning (s)he has followed in giving his/her answer. In order to do this, both correct domain specific knowledge and a catalogue of stereotyped errors (malrules) are utilized. When the system is unable to explain the student behavior by exploiting its previous knowledge, new malrules are generated dynamically, by utilizing explanation-based learning techniques. The overall process is based on a deep modelling of the student problem solving and the discrimination among possible explicative hypotheses about the reasons underlying the student behavior is carried on nonmonotonically through a truth maintenance system. The proposed approach has been fully implemented in a student modelling module developed in PROLOG.


Objective video quality assessment (VQA) is the use of computational models to evaluate the video quality in line with the perception of the human visual system (HVS). It is challenging due to the underlying complexity, and the relatively limited understanding of the HVS and its intricate mechanisms. There are three important issues that arise in objective VQA in comparison with image quality assessment: 1) the temporal factors apart from the spatial ones also need to be considered, 2) the contribution of each factor (spatial and temporal) and their interaction to the overall video quality need to be determined, and 3) the computational complexity of the resultant method. In this paper, we seek to tackle the first issue by utilizing the worst case pooling strategy and the variations of spatial quality along the temporal axis with proper analysis and justification. The second issue is addressed by the use of machine learning; we believe this to be more convincing since the relationship between the factors and the overall quality is derived via training with substantial ground truth (i.e., subjective scores). Experiments conducted using publicly available video databases show the effectiveness of the proposed full-reference (FR) algorithm in comparison to the relevant existing VQA schemes. Focus has also been placed on demonstrating the robustness of the proposed method to new and untrained data. To that end, cross-database tests have been carried out to provide a proper perspective of the performance of proposed scheme as compared to other VQA methods. The third issue regarding the computational costs also plays a key role in determining the feasibility of a VQA scheme for practical deployment given the large amount of data that needs to be processed/analyzed in real time. A limitation of many existing VQA algorithms is their higher computational complexity. In contrast, the proposed scheme is more efficient due to its low complexity without jeopardizing the prediction accuracy.


The authors of the best-selling book PID Controllers: Theory, Design, and Tuning once again combine their extensive knowledge in the PID arena to bring you an in-depth look at the world of PID control. A new book, Advanced PID Control builds on the basics learned in PID Controllers but augments it through use of advanced control techniques. Design of PID controllers are brought into the mainstream of control system design by focusing on requirements that capture effects of load disturbances, measurement noise, robustness to process variations and maintaining set points. In this way it is possible to make a smooth transition from PID control to more advanced model based controllers. It is also possible to get insight into fundamental limitations and to determine the information needed to design good controllers. The book provides a solid foundation for understanding, operating and implementing the more advanced features of PID controllers, including auto-tuning, gain scheduling and adaptation. Particular attention is given to specific challenges such as reset windup, long process dead times, and oscillatory systems. As in their other book, modeling methods, implementation details, and problem-solving techniques are also presented.


This article examines the impact of Phoenix's light rail system, which opened in 2008, on new firm formation in specific industries. Individual business data from 1990–2014 are used in a quasi-experimental adjusted-interrupted time series (AITS) regression to compare the impact of the transit system's construction on new business starts in 'treatment' and 'control' areas before and after the opening of the line. Findings show that the transit adjacency is worth an 88% increase in knowledge sector new starts, a 40% increase in service sector new starts and a 28% increase in retail new starts at the time the system opened, when compared with automobile-accessible control areas. However, the light rail also appears to suffer from a 'novelty factor'– after the initial increase in new establishment activity in adjacent block groups, the effect diminishes at the rate of 8%, 6% and 7% per year, respectively. The results also provide insight into the spatial extent of light rail impacts to new business formation, with areas 1 mile from stations observing 21% fewer retail new business starts and 12% fewer knowledge sector new starts than areas within a quarter of a mile of stations.


Abstract. We present statistical methods to determine climate regimes for the last glacial period using three temperature proxy records from Greenland: measurements of δ18O from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2), the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) and the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) using different timescales. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is presented to infer the number of states in a latent variable model along with their associated parameters. By using Bayesian model comparison methods we find that a model with 3 states is sufficient. These states correspond to a gradual cooling during the Greenland Interstadials, more rapid temperature decrease into Greenland Stadial and to the sudden rebound temperature increase at the onset of Greenland Interstadials. We investigate the recurrence properties of the onset of Greenland Interstadials and find no evidence to reject the null hypothesis of randomly timed events.


In the year to March 2018 there were 65,833 arrests of children and young people (YJB/MOJ 2019). The majority of these young people will have been detained as suspects in police custody; yet there is very limited empirical evidence as to how young people experience detention in the police station, and how the custody process functions for them from arrival to release.

This qualitative study makes an original contribution to police custody literature by exploring, from the perspective of the young suspect, the experiences of children and young people detained in the police station. The study draws on 41 semi-structured interviews with children and young people with experience of detention in police custody, supplemented by observations conducted in six police custody suites across three force areas, and by interviews and discussions with adults who engage with children in that setting: officers, healthcare practitioners, legal representatives, appropriate adults and Independent Custody Visitors.

The picture which emerges of young suspects' experiences in police custody is deeply troubling. Many young research participants struggled to cope with a detention experience which is punitive, unnecessarily lengthy and very minimally adjusted to account for their youth. Their accounts are dominated by feelings of uncertainty, helplessness and desperation to "get out" of the cell. The protections which should be in place to support them through the process are often not implemented, or function ineffectively. In addition, their accounts raise real concerns about their abilities, in that setting, to make the significant decisions required of them in custody and to participate effectively in police interview. The findings call into question the fairness of the custody process for young suspects and the reliability of the evidence produced.


On average seventy to eighty percent of employment is found through networking and of those positions only twenty percent are advertised publicly. With a national recession, most college graduates or professionals experiencing a career change are facing increasingly stiff competition. It is important to find a way to make yourself stand out in the pack. This article addresses a few simple, non-traditional techniques to securing the job you want. By taking a closer look at your individual motivation for the position and examining what employers value over experience and knowledge, this article gives some suggestions to help modify your job search.


THE STUDY OF GREEK HISTORY IN ENGLAND AT THE CLOSE OF THE 18TH CENTURY By the end of the eighteenth century the growing regard for the wider Hellenic world among the English intelligentsia was not yet strongly reflected in the educational curricula of either the English Universities, the Public Schools or the endowed grammar schools. The teaching of the Classics generally looked to the model earlier provided by the prodigious efforts of Richard Bentley (1662-1742) in the field of Latin and presently emulated by Richard Porson (1759-1808) in Greek (Ogilvie 87). It was an approach primarily focused on syntax, accidence, and grammar with little attention focused on the culture, art, philosophy, science, religion, or the general society of ancient Greece and Rome. Textual criticism and emendation was the order of the day for scholars, with translation, prose and verse composition, and the study of metrical forms being the staple for students. The curriculum at the school level had changed little since the days of the Renaissance. This prevailing linguistic approach to the Classics meant that the study of Ancient History was well nigh ignored in the Public Schools. The works of such historians as Eutropius and Cornelius Nepos, who were considered to have written easy Latin, were studied mainly as reading-books (Clarke, Classical Education 51). Ancient History was neglected even in the Universities, apart from the reading of selected works of a few ancient historians. Even when such history was studied, more often than not it was that of Rome. Moreover, for the most part ancient historians were studied for their language and writing rather than for their historiography. This practice continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Of course, some Greek history was written in Britain during the eighteenth century, but it was generally produced outside the university by amateurs rather than academics. History "was considered a branch of belles-lettres. It was the occupation of the dilettante, of the gentleman of leisure, and occasionally of the dignified statesman or the ambitious literary worker" (Thompson 280). As M. L. Clarke observed of Oxford at this period, "In ancient history, apart from Dodwell's chronological studies, Oxford had little or nothing to show" ("Classical Studies" 531). And Cambridge was not much better. Furthermore, what little Greek history was written in the eighteenth century was generally rudimentary, a major problem of the time being that it "lacked the fruits of special research" (Thirlwall 97). The French Charles Rollin's Histoire Ancienne des Egyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Medes et des Perses, des Macedoniens, des Grecs, which began to be published in 1730, and which was translated into English, covered the Greeks among many other ancient peoples. Though this was an extremely popular work, Rollin was essentially a compiler, not a real historian. In 1774 Oliver Goldsmith wrote another popular compilation, The Grecian History, From the Earliest State to the Death of Alexander the Great, on contract for money, but the Edinburgh Review, over a century later, was just in dismissing it as "a popular and entertaining schoolbook" (Plumptre 295). Temple Stanyan's two volume The Grecian History: From the Original of Greece, to the Death of Philip of Macedon, published in 1707 and 1739 respectively, was naive, anecdotal, lacking in criticism, and was strongly influenced, both stylistically and thematically, by Plutarch (Clarke, Greek Studies 104). Indeed, a reading of Plutarch's Lives was the closest most people, even the better educated ones, came to Greek history in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the Germans, so proficient and prolific in Classical scholarship, had as yet produced no comprehensive history of Greece. All in all, commentaries on the ancient historians were far more common than original historiography (Watson 32). …


Cost management is important for every transport company. Increasing competition in road freight transport forces companies to cost-effectiveness, so they need to know their costs of carrying out the transport service. The article aims to illustrate the structure of costs in road freight transport and analyze the changes in fixed and variable costs for different annual kilometers traveled. Traditional accounting was used to calculate the total and average costs. In the research, we determined the changes in total and average costs for different annual kilometers, which are expected and comparable with other countries. From the transport company's point of view, the structure of costs is also important, and the finding that the highest of the costs are fuel, labor and toll costs. The research enables transport companies to understand the cost structure and provide opportunities for increasing competitiveness based on cost control. Further research is aimed at determining the cost structure of different types of transport vehicles and the changes of fixed and variable costs in the case of different mileage with using ABC costing methods.


The article shows how the discourses of trauma, victimhood and silence regarding local agency contributed to the production of the nationalist master narrative in post-colonial Namibia. However, I point out repositories of memory beyond the narratives of victimhood and trauma, which began to add different layers to the political economy of silence and remembrance in the mid-2000s. Through revisiting visual forms of remembrance in northern Namibia an argument is developed, which challenges the dichotomy between silence and confession. It raises critical questions about the prominent place that the trauma trope has attained in memory studies, with reference to work by international memory studies scholars such as Paul Antze and Michael Lambek (1996) and South African researchers of memory politics, particularly the strategies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The fresh Namibian material supports the key critique of the TRC, which suggests that the foregrounding of pain and victimhood, and rituals of therapy and healing entailed a loss of the political framings of the testimonial moments.


Background von Hippel-Lindau disease is characterized by a spectrum of hypervascular tumors, including renal cell carcinoma, hemangioblastoma, and pheochromocytoma, which occur with VHL genotype-specific differences in penetrance. VHL loss causes a failure to regulate the hypoxia inducible factors (HIF-1α and HIF-2α), resulting in accumulation of both factors to high levels. Although HIF dysregulation is critical to VHL disease-associated renal tumorigenesis, increasing evidence points toward gradations of HIF dysregulation contributing to the degree of predisposition to renal cell carcinoma and other manifestations of the disease. Methodology/Principal Findings This investigation examined the ability of disease-specific VHL missense mutations to support the assembly of the VBC complex and to promote the ubiquitylation of HIF. Our interaction analysis supported previous observations that VHL Type 2B mutations disrupt the interaction between pVHL and Elongin C but maintain partial regulation of HIF. We additionally demonstrated that Type 2B mutant pVHL forms a remnant VBC complex containing the active members ROC1 and Cullin-2 which retains the ability to ubiquitylate HIF-1α. Conclusions Our results suggest that subtypes of VHL mutations support an intermediate level of HIF regulation via a remnant VBC complex. These findings provide a mechanism for the graded HIF dysregulation and genetic predisposition for cancer development in VHL disease.


To evaluate the outcome of Bracka's procedure in management of patients with penile hypospadias admitted at Liaquat University Hospital Jamshoro. Observational (analytical) Study. The study was conducted at Urology Department, Plastic surgery Department and Pediatric Surgery Department of Liaquat University Hospital Jamshoro from October 2007 to September 2008. All the patients with penile shaft hypospedias were included in this study and those patients who were above age 15 years, other congenital and already circumscribed penis were excluded from this study. All the patients were operated under general anesthesia. Then the detailed examination on the table is carried out regarding the position and size of abnormal meatus, the presence of chordee, the quality and width of urethral plate and the configuration of glans penis. The surgical technique applied on the basis of stage 1 and 2. The data were entered and analyzed in Statistical Program SPSS version 16.0. Total number of 30 cases were included in this study. 21(70%) patients had the Distal Penile Hypospadias, 6(20%) had the Proximal penile and 3(10%) patients had mid penile Hypospadias. Various post operative Complications were included Chordee 6.7%, Infection 3.3% and loss of split thickness skin graft 3.3% and after stage II 6.7% developed fistula formation and edema in 6.7% of patients. In this study the outcomes of Bracka's procedure include Voiding direction and meatal opening, 29 out of 30 patients had straight voiding direction and only one patient had deviated voiding direction, similarly 29 out of 30 patients had near normal meatal opening and only one had abnormal meatal opening. From this study we concluded that Bracka's technique gives good result. Its versatility enables its use in all types of hypospadias with consistently reproducible results with minimal complications. At the end of the second stage a circumcised penis with naturally looking vertical slit neo-meatus at the apex of the glans is produced.


Abstract: Zircons from nine Palaeoproterozoic granitoid intrusions within the southern part of the Fennoscandian Shield have been studied by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma source mass spectrometry to obtain U–Pb ages (in the range 1.88–1.68 Ga) and Hf isotope compositions. Six granitoids are from the 1.85–1.65 Ga Transscandinavian Igneous Belt; during that period more than 106 km3 of granitoid magma intruded the pre-existing crust. The large majority of magmatic zircons from the nine granitoids have a limited initial range, 176Hf/177Hf = 0.2816–0.2818, and define an evolutionary trend given by an initial value of εHf(1.88Ga) ≈ +2 ± 3 at an average 176Lu/177Hf = 0.015. These data show that a geographically extensive, long-lived, relatively homogeneous, and dominant magma source resided within 2.1–1.86 Ga Svecofennian juvenile crust between 1.88 and 1.68 Ga. Zircon xenocrysts (1.91–1.98 Ga) with initial εHf = +0 to +2.5 from one of the intrusions provide additional evidence for such a long-lived crustal source of granitic magmas in central Fennoscandia. The granitoids were emplaced during a period of active mafic underplating that supplied heat to the anatectic zone in the lower–middle crust, but little or no mantle-derived Hf to the granitic magmas, in contrast to many mixed intermediate rocks. Supplementary material: U–Pb analyses, age calculations and Lu–Hf data are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18330.


There are numerous calls in the literature for research into the flipped learning approach to match the flood of popular media articles praising its impact on student learning and educational outcomes. This paper addresses those calls by proposing pedagogical strategies that promote active learning in 'flipped' approaches and improved practice of educational design in ICT supported learning environments. This paper makes two main contributions. It situates flipped learning strategies within a pedagogical framework, thus linking them to higher-level pedagogy. Additionally, it proposes an approach to both analysing and designing flipped learning strategies. This exploratory approach provides a guide for educators to map how their tactics fit amongst other instances of flipped learning. Examples of flipped learning approaches are provided to illustrate this mapping. The Flipped Learning Matrix, developed by this SoTL inquiry, is a tool for both critical reflection of existing approaches and course design, empowering the educator to design their own flipped version that is pedagogically sound and fit for purpose.


Phalaenopsis is one of the most interesting genera of orchids due to the members are often used as parents to produce hybrids. The establishment and development of highly reliable and discriminatory methods for identifying species and cultivars has become increasingly more important to plant breeders and members of the nursery industry. The aim of this research was to develop sequence-based microsatellite (eSSR) markers for the Phalaenopsis orchid designed from the sequence of GenBank NCBI. Seventeen primers were designed and thirteen primers pairs could amplify the DNA giving the expected PCR product with polymorphism. A total of 51 alleles, with an average of 3 alleles per locus and polymorphism information content (PIC) values at 0.674, were detected at the 16 SSR loci. Therefore, these markers could be used for identification of the Phalaenopsis orchid used in this study. Genetic similarity and principle coordinate analysis identified five major groups of Phalaenopsis sp. the first group consisted of P. amabilis, P. fuscata, P. javanica, and P. zebrine. The second group consisted of P. amabilis, P. amboinensis, P. bellina, P. floresens, and P. mannii. The third group consisted of P. bellina, P. cornucervi, P. cornucervi, P. violaceae sumatra, P. modesta. The forth group consisted of P. cornucervi and P. lueddemanniana, and the fifth group was P. amboinensis.


Tracking new topics, ideas, and "memes" across the Web has been an issue of considerable interest. Recent work has developed methods for tracking topic shifts over long time scales, as well as abrupt spikes in the appearance of particular named entities. However, these approaches are less well suited to the identification of content that spreads widely and then fades over time scales on the order of days - the time scale at which we perceive news and events.
 We develop a framework for tracking short, distinctive phrases that travel relatively intact through on-line text; developing scalable algorithms for clustering textual variants of such phrases, we identify a broad class of memes that exhibit wide spread and rich variation on a daily basis. As our principal domain of study, we show how such a meme-tracking approach can provide a coherent representation of the news cycle - the daily rhythms in the news media that have long been the subject of qualitative interpretation but have never been captured accurately enough to permit actual quantitative analysis. We tracked 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs over a period of three months with the total of 90 million articles and we find a set of novel and persistent temporal patterns in the news cycle. In particular, we observe a typical lag of 2.5 hours between the peaks of attention to a phrase in the news media and in blogs respectively, with divergent behavior around the overall peak and a "heartbeat"-like pattern in the handoff between news and blogs. We also develop and analyze a mathematical model for the kinds of temporal variation that the system exhibits.


The results of investigations of natural groundwater treatment containing increased manganese and ammonia nitrogen concentrations are presented. The main aim of the work was to show the influence of changes in water composition on manganese and ammonia nitrogen removal from groundwater on second-stage mature quartz sand filters. According to the results obtained, the efficiency of manganese elimination from water did not depend on periodic changes in ammonia nitrogen or dissolved oxygen concentrations. However, if low oxygen concentrations (lower than 2 mg/dm 3 ) were maintained for a longer time, the manganese concentration in the filtrate gradually increased. The ammonia nitrogen concentration in the filtered water appeared to be the most relevant factor affecting the efficient removal of manganese and the dissolved oxygen concentration was less important. The nitrification process appeared to be vulnerable to changes in the concentrations of the substrates: ammonia nitrogen (either an increase or decrease) and oxygen (an decrease). It was observed that it is necessary for nitrifying bacteria to adapt (lag phase) to rapidly changing water composition. Due to the sorption process, the inhibition of nitrification on the filtering beds did not significantly influence the efficiency of ammonia nitrogen removal.


For a noetherian scheme that has an ample family of invertible sheaves, we prove that direct products in the category of quasi-coherent sheaves are not exact unless the scheme is affine. This result can especially be applied to all quasi-projective schemes over commutative noetherian rings. The main tools of the proof are the Gabriel-Popescu embedding and Roos' characterization of Grothendieck categories satisfying Ab6 and Ab4*.


In this contribution, we differentiate the meaning of online participation based on a qualitative study (focus groups, online communities) with 96 individuals from a broad range of social backgrounds in Germany. Our contribution is twofold: First and in line with other recent research, we posit and show that online participation and non-participation can be active or passive. Especially the forms of active non-participation and passive participation are noteworthy because they challenge existing notions of participation as a voluntary active act of engagement. Second, we argue that the "dark sides" or socially undesired forms of online participation need to be taken into account more strongly. Such a critical perspective can question the often enthusiastic and strongly positive twist prevalent in the discourse around online participation.


Malaria driven pathophysiology inimically conjoined to systemic inflammation response cascade in a vicious feed-forward cycle destined to a terrible debilitation or demise of the host. The Plasmodium parasite initiates physiologi-cal changes when it is transmitted into the human host by intermediate host and vector. Sporozoites injection elicits immunological and inflammatory response suppression facilitating movement into the blood stream undetected, destined to hepatocyte. Subsequently, hepatocyte invasion culminates in intracellular growth and conversion of the parasites rapturing hepatocytes releasing merozoites into the extrahepatic circulation. Inflammatory and immunological response initiation results in overt malarial disease symptoms. Initially, inflammatory response alleviates and curtails infection. Activation of leukocytes, lymphocytes, monocytes, and phagocytes secretes inflammatory mediators, chemokines, cytokines cytoadhering molecules which accelerate infection patency. Hormonal processes influence disease tolerance without necessarily interfering with parasitemia. Current treatment is anti-parasitic. Phytotherapeutic intervention in malaria is anti-parasitic and anti-disease effects that terminate the vicious cycle and alleviating disease. The phytochemicals, in malarial experimental and clinical work, include asiatic acid, maslinic acid, oleanolic acid, and inflammatory and immunological aberrations evolving in malaria and the effects of phytochemical therapeutics in the alleviation of the disease to enable leverage of future treatment regimens through harnessing existing plants materials is explored.


This article assesses the intraday price‐reversal patterns of seven major currency futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange over 1988–2003 after 1‐day returns and opening gaps. Significant intraday price‐reversal patterns are observed in five of the seven currency futures contracts, following large price changes. Additional tests are conducted in three subperiods (1988–1992, 1993–1998, and 1999–2003) to examine the impact of the introduction of electronic trading on GLOBEX in 1992 (to assess how a near 24‐hour trading session might impact the next‐day opening and closing futures prices) and the introduction of the euro in 1999 (to assess its impact on price predictability in other futures markets). It is found that the introduction of the GLOBEX in 1992 significantly reduced pricing errors in currency futures in the second subperiod, making the currency futures markets fairly efficient. However, the introduction of the new currency, the euro, and the disappearance of several European currencies in 1999, resulted in significant price patterns (mostly reversals and some persistence) in most of the currency futures, indicating inefficiencies in the third subperiod. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:1089–1130, 2006


Interest among employers is growing in employee financial wellness programs (EFWPs), a new type of benefit to address financial stress among employees. EFWP benefits include financial counseling, small-dollar loans, and savings programs that address employees' nonretirement financial needs. Little evidence exists concerning the availability and use of and outcomes associated with EFWPs, especially among low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers who may be in the greatest need of these benefits. We present findings concerning awareness and use of EFWPs from a national survey of LMI workers (N = 16,650). Availability of different EFWP benefits ranged from 11 to 15% and over a third of workers were unaware of whether their employer offered an EFWP. Experiencing financial difficulties predicted both EFWP awareness and use suggesting that employers should take time to assess employees' specific financial challenges to select benefits. Yet, use of EFWPs by LMI workers may suggest the need for better compensation and work conditions.


Abstract This article explores the nexus between mobility, livelihoods, and socioeconomic status of refugees in the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana. Currently, refugee livelihoods are increasingly characterized by multi-directional movement and multi-locality, coupled with complex social networks. Given the relative freedom of movement for refugees in Ghana and the subregion, certain groups in Buduburam were engaged in mobile livelihoods, including cross-border trading of cell phones, used clothing, and jewelery across West Africa. Given these 'glorious' examples, promoting refugees' movement is seen by the UN refugee regime as an important means of enabling their access to sustainable livelihoods in the subregion. However, this research reveals that mobile refugee entrepreneurs were predominantly well-to-do individuals with a robust asset profile, primarily because engaging in mobile economic strategies requires substantial resources. Conversely, for the majority of 'ordinary' refugees, these kinds of mobile livelihoods were not feasible due to a lack of access to the necessary capital or assets; rather, these poorer refugees survived by combining sedentary subsistence within the settlement. Given the different degrees of access to mobility, the article highlights the risks of over-emphasizing mobility as a panacea for refugees' economic plights.


Many studies of secular population cycles in historical China conclude that when popula- tion is large — relative to the land's carrying capacity — further population increase can lead to mortal- ity crises through war, famine and epidemics, resulting in subsequent population decline. In these studies, population cycles are thought to be driven primarily by population growth. Nevertheless, some scholars have noted a strong correlation between deteriorating climate, dynastic change, and popula- tion collapse in historical China. They suggest climate forcing as the underlying driver of population cycles, but quantitative evidence has been lacking to date. In the present study, we employed high res- olution temperature data, reports on mortality events, and population datasets to quantitatively exam- ine the extent to which climate change was responsible for Chinese population cycles. Results show that there were 5 major population contractions in China between 1000 CE and 1911, and all of them occurred in periods with a cold climate, when mortality crises triggered population collapses. Never- theless, the climate-population association is non-linear, because it is mediated by population pres- sure. Although social buffers were increasingly effective in dissipating climate forcing, they could not prevent population collapses from occurring during periods of long-term cooling. Our results challenge classic Malthusian and post-Malthusian interpretations of historical Chinese population cycles.


As enterprises begin to increasingly conduct their businesses over multiple interconnected networks spanning many countries using large computer systems, there is a need to be able, to specify, represent and manipulate enterprise policies in these systems so as to be able to efficiently monitor and regulate enterprise processes and business transactions. A large enterprise typically comprises of hundreds of smaller units that to a large extent operate independently but within the overall goals of the enterprise. To reduce any bottlenecks or delays in everyday operations of enterprise units, it should be possible for various enterprise unit heads to create, delete or modify policies relevant to them with minimum reliance on a centralized policy administrator. However, when multiple users begin to manage enterprise policies, there is a need to identify "who can create policies on what resources" and "who should follow these policies". Also, when multiple units compete for common resources, policy conflicts may arise. It is important to detect and resolve conflicts between policies before accepting them for enforcement. An Enterprise Policy Specification Tool (PST) is introduced in this thesis that provides a solution to the above problems. The tool is unique since it provides a model-driven policy specification language that incorporates constructs to denote the enterprise model in the specified policies. We have defined policy conflicts that can arise and provide a mechanism to detect and resolve them at the time of specification. Although our proposed model is domain independent, the implementation and testing have been carried out in the context of a Message Notification System. A Java-based partial implementation of our proposed architecture has demonstrated the feasibility of the model-based approach to policy specification


Rather than critiquing social institutions and practices that have historically excluded lesbians and gay men, as did earlier social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, since the 1990s the politics of sexuality has increasingly been about demanding equal rights of citizenship. These citizenship demands have, at least to a degree, been answered via a raft of recent legislation in the UK including the Adoption and Children Act 2002, Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004, and by associated changes in policy making and practice that emphasize 'Equality and Diversity'. In this article we consider how the implementation of sexualities equalities policies is related to processes of privatization and individualization. This is illustrated by using sexualities equalities work in local government as a case study to indicate how processes of change and resistance are aided by these processes. The article draws on findings from a study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equalities initiatives in local government in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which examined the views of those who now have a public duty to implement recent legislative and policy shifts and are obliged to develop equalities initiatives concerning 'sexual orientation' and 'gender reassignment'.


Single reel abridgements of commercial feature films are entering moving image archives
because home movie collections that contain them are slowly increasing in archival
representation. The abridged commercial films occupy a liminal space in between sustained
preservation efforts that focus on studio films and the current interest paid to preserving home
movies. As a result, the abridged films are being neglected. The films' liminal status stems from
a dearth of information regarding their relationship to the original films and a clear definition of
what they are narratively and aesthetically. After analyzing fourteen abridged horror and science
fiction films found in the Ryerson Moving Image collection and comparing them to their original
counterparts this project finds that the abridged films are heavily altered in terms of narrative,
characters, and causality, and should be treated as individual objects instead of derivative
works, thus absolving their liminal status.


BACKGROUND/AIM
In this era of evidence-based practice, Australian occupational therapists largely accept scientific perspectives of the quality of evidence and 'what makes a strong study'. Yet unequal power relationships are usual between funders who set the research agenda, researchers and people who are the subjects of research. Emerging policy now mandates partnerships with consumers in any health and research projects about them. Are we person-centred in our research practices? What difference would increased consumer direction make to our research methods, scope and outcomes? This lecture describes some of the benefits and challenges of collaborative or inclusive research partnerships with consumers and outlines where this may take occupational therapy in future.

METHODS
The disability community's calls for inclusive research will be contrasted with mainstream research approaches and with occupational therapy's commitment to person-centredness. An example of inclusive research undertaken by the author and colleagues with disabilities which posed the question: 'What difference does assistive technology make to life for people living with impairment?' will be presented.

RESULTS/IMPLICATIONS
Collaborative research is best conceptualised as a mutually productive journey, with many factors influencing how fully inclusive research principles can be realised. The possibilities and complexities of conducting research which has inclusive credentials are outlined.

CONCLUSION
Inclusive research principles provide a means to enact person-centredness in research as well as practice. Following these principles challenges occupational therapy practitioners and researchers to address nexus issues: that is, intersections between and beyond research, policy and practice.


The timeless classic -- the perfect gift for everyone's favorite child.The Little Fur Family tells of a little fur child's day in the woods. The day ends when his big fur parents tuck him in bed "all soft and warm," and sing him to sleep with a lovely bedtime song.


The motion of an initially spherical capsule in a wall-bounded oscillating shear flow is investigated via an accelerated boundary integral implementation. The neo-Hookean model is used as the constitutive law of the capsule membrane. The maximum wall-normal migration is observed when the oscillation period of the imposed shear is of the order of the relaxation time of the elastic membrane; hence, the optimal capillary number scales with the inverse of the oscillation frequency and the ratio agrees well with the theoretical prediction in the limit of high-frequency oscillation. The migration velocity decreases monotonically with the frequency of the applied shear and the capsule-wall distance. We report a significant correlation between the capsule lateral migration and the normal stress difference induced in the flow. The periodic variation of the capsule deformation is roughly in phase with that of the migration velocity and normal stress difference, with twice the frequency of the imposed shear. The maximum deformation increases linearly with the membrane elasticity before reaching a plateau at higher capillary numbers when the deformation is limited by the time over which shear is applied in the same direction and not by the membrane deformability. The maximum membrane deformation scales as the distance to the wall to the power 1/3 as observed for capsules and droplets in near-wall steady shear flows.


Following the partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, the residents of Leh, Ladakh became citizens of the Indian nation-state and residents of Jammu and Kashmir.  Partition introduced Buddhists in the region to what Dipesh Chakrabarty refers to a political modernity: "rule by modern institutions of the state, bureaucracy, and capitalist enterprise…"(Chakrabarty 2000, 4).  In response to the new prospects, promises, and possibilities of Ladakh's political modernity, political leaders and religious reform group have attempted to mobilized local Buddhists around a common core sense of Ladakhi Buddhist identity.  These dynamic have engendered a variety of debates and dialogues in the public sphere over what it means to be a good Buddhist and what local practices and traditions constitute bad Buddhism.


This paper seeks to examine the rise of vertical farms, and the ways in which they advance the corporate food regime and encourage urban elite consumption. It will discuss two contemporary 'localizing' trends: the call for local food systems and local urban restructuring in the era of neoliberalism. I argue that the intersection of these two trends, spatially and temporally, created market opportunities for capital to appropriate social movement demands for local agricultural production, and encouraged the rise of capitalist forms of local food production (vertical farms). I will first introduce the vertical farm concept and currently operating vertical farms referred to throughout the paper. Then, using a theoretical tool developed by Robbins (2013), I will differentiate these farms as local food projects that reproduce the capitalist industrial system, rather than challenging it. In the third chapter, I discuss the analytical frameworks used in the paper: uneven geographic development and food regime analysis. The next chapter discusses how class struggle produced the calls for local food movements, as a response to inequity in the global corporate food regime. I then detail how devalued built environments and labor surplus, characteristics of cities under "actually existing neoliberalism", facilitated corporate appropriation of the local foods concept by producing profitable conditions for capitalist urban agriculture, which was hailed as local economic development. In the last chapter, I will discuss how these farms serve to reproduce troubling trends in the corporate food regime, and signify new developments in capital's ability to standardize the food cultivation process, and to incorporate it into factory like production systems.


This paper presents the 2008 version of the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), a nationally representative survey developed by the Consumer Payments Research Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and implemented by the RAND Corporation with its American Life Panel. The survey fills a gap in knowledge about the role of consumers in the transformation of payments from paper to electronic by providing a broad-based assessment of U.S. consumers' adoption and use of nine payment instruments, including cash. The average consumer has 5.1 of the nine instruments, and uses 4.2 in a typical month. Consumers make 53 percent of their monthly payments with a payment card (credit, debit, and prepaid). More consumers now have debit cards than credit cards, and consumers use debit cards more often than cash, credit cards, or checks individually. Cash, checks, and other paper instruments are still popular and account for 37 percent of consumer payments. Most consumers have used newer electronic payments, such as online banking bill payment, but they only account for 10 percent of consumer payments. Security and ease of use are the characteristics of payment instruments that consumers rate as the most important.


The South West Coast Path followsBritain's stunning coastline for 630 miles around the southern tip ofBritain. This volume covers the 172 miles of the National Trail along the south Cornwall and Devon coast from Falmouth to the mouth of the Exe. It takes in some of Britain's most popular beaches and resorts, as well as arresting clifftop scenery, romantic coves and the spectacular 'drowned' estuaries of the Fal, the Yealm and the Dart. Whether you want golden sands, the steep streets of picturesque fishing villages, or a sight of the rare cirl bunting, this book is all you need as your guide to this wonderful walk. This new edition has been fully revised and updated for 2010 and completely resdesigned to feature many more colour photographs and much added information on the history, wildlife and cultural asociations of the landscape this stretch of the Trail traverses. National Trail Guides are the official guidebooks to the fifteen National Trails in England and Wales and are published in association with Natural England, the official body charged with developing and maintaining the Trails.


Objectives To determine how important governmental, social, and economic factors are in driving antibiotic resistance compared to the factors usually considered the main driving factors—antibiotic usage and levels of economic development. Design A retrospective multivariate analysis of the variation of antibiotic resistance in Europe in terms of human antibiotic usage, private health care expenditure, tertiary education, the level of economic advancement (per capita GDP), and quality of governance (corruption). The model was estimated using a panel data set involving 7 common human bloodstream isolates and covering 28 European countries for the period 1998–2010. Results Only 28% of the total variation in antibiotic resistance among countries is attributable to variation in antibiotic usage. If time effects are included the explanatory power increases to 33%. However when the control of corruption indicator is included as an additional variable, 63% of the total variation in antibiotic resistance is now explained by the regression. The complete multivariate regression only accomplishes an additional 7% in terms of goodness of fit, indicating that corruption is the main socioeconomic factor that explains antibiotic resistance. The income level of a country appeared to have no effect on resistance rates in the multivariate analysis. The estimated impact of corruption was statistically significant (p< 0.01). The coefficient indicates that an improvement of one unit in the corruption indicator is associated with a reduction in antibiotic resistance by approximately 0.7 units. The estimated coefficient of private health expenditure showed that one unit reduction is associated with a 0.2 unit decrease in antibiotic resistance. Conclusions These findings support the hypothesis that poor governance and corruption contributes to levels of antibiotic resistance and correlate better than antibiotic usage volumes with resistance rates. We conclude that addressing corruption and improving governance will lead to a reduction in antibiotic resistance.


Defined as environmentally-sensitive marketing, green marketing is applied as a green hotel by accommodation establishments, and as a result of this application, hotels are entitled to be awarded a green star certificate. While those international hotel establishments which have become a brand are carrying out important activities with respect to the green hotel practice, it might be stated that hotels in Turkey are at the beginning level concerning sensitivity to the environment. In the study, the literature on the subject was examined and it was focused on the green hotel practice in accommodation establishments. In the rest of the study, it was dealt with the legal regulations on green hotel practice and the green star practice in Turkey. Best Western President-Istanbul Hotel, one of two hotels with a green star in Turkey, was specified as a sample, and the applications of the sample hotel were studied.


We used high‐resolution paleoecological records of environmental change to study the rate and magnitude of eutrophication over the last century in two contrasting coastal ecosystems. A multiproxy approach using geochemical and biological indicators and diatom‐based transfer functions provides a long‐term perspective on changes in nutrient concentrations and the corresponding biological and sedimentary responses. In Roskilde Fjord, Denmark, total nitrogen (TN) increased 85% during the last century, with the most rapid increase occurring after the 1950s, corresponding to the postwar increase in N fertilizer use. In Laajalahti Bay, an urban embayment near Helsinki, Finland, total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) increased with growing wastewater inputs and decreased with the remedial actions taken to reduce these discharges. These changes are small relative to the order of magnitude increases in nutrient loading that have occurred in northwestern Europe, where the dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) load has increased more than threefold in certain areas.


Estimate of sediment load is required in a wide spectrum of water resources engineering problems. The nonlinear nature of suspended sediment load series necessitates the utilization of nonlinear methods to simulate the suspended sediment load. In this study Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are employed to estimate daily suspended sediment load. Two different ANN algorithms, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Radial Basis Functions (RBF) were used for this purpose. The neural networks are trained using water discharge and suspended sediment discharge data from the Kasilian Catchment, which is located in north of Iran. In this research, daily water discharge and suspended sediment load data was collected for 41 years (1964-2005) period which includes 509 experimental data in total. From this set of data, 70% were used in the training phase, 20% for testing and remaining 10% were used in validation phase. The results showed that the RBF algorithm provided slightly better results than the MLP algorithm to estimate suspended sediment load.


The Pharo Smalltalk-inspired language and environment started its development with a codebase that can be traced back to the original Smalltalk-80 release from 1983. Over the last years, Pharo has been used as the basis of many research projects. Often these experiments needed changes related to the compiler infrastructure. However, they did not use the existing compiler and instead implemented their own experimental solutions. This shows that despite being an impressive achievement considering its age of over 35 years, the compiler infrastructure needs to be improved. We identify three problems: (i) The architecture is not reusable, (ii) compiler can not be parametrized and (iii) the mapping between source code and bytecode is overly complex. Solving these problems will not only help researchers to develop new language features, but also the enhanced power of the infrastructure allows many tools and frameworks to be built that are important even for day-to-day development, such as debuggers and code transformation tools. In this paper we discuss the three problems, show how these are solved with a new Compiler model. We present an implementation, Opal, and show how Opal is used as the bases for many important tools for the everyday development of Pharo 3.


Abstract Many foreign aid donors brand development interventions. How do citizens in the donor country react to seeing this branding in action? We test the proposition that citizens will express higher levels of support for foreign aid when they see a branded foreign aid project relative to seeing the same project without branding. We present results from a survey-based laboratory experiment conducted in the United Kingdom where subjects learned about a typical foreign aid project and received a randomized UK branding treatment. Our results suggest that the branding treatments increase the likelihood that donor country respondents believe that aid recipients can identify the source of the foreign aid. Only among conservative respondents, however, does the evidence imply that branding increases support for foreign aid. "UK aid" branding increases conservative opinion that aid dollars are well spent and increases support among this group for the expansion of foreign aid.


The aim of this paper is to investigate the relative contribution of technical efficiency, technological change and increased input use to the output growth of the Tunisian citrus growing farms using a stochastic frontier production function approach applied to panel data for the period 2003-2005. Knowledge of the relative contribution of factors productivity and input use to output growth and improvements in technical efficiency is crucial to provide a comprehensive view of the state of the citrus producing sector in the country and help farm managers and policy makers draw appropriate policy measures. The proposed methodology is based on the use of a flexible translog functional form. Results indicate that technical efficiency of production in citrus producing farms investigated ranges from a minimum of 11.19% to a maximum of 96.82% with an average technical efficiency estimate of 49.97%. This suggests that citrus producers may increase their production by as much as 50.03% through more efficient use of production inputs. Furthermore, the production is characterized by increasing returns to scale, which on average was 1.057. Finally, investigation of the sources of production growth reveals that the contribution of total factor productivity is found to be the main source of that growth.


Inclusive education tries to enhance education of students with disabilities among regular students. The attitude of regular students toward peers with disabilities is an important challenge for inclusive education. This study aims at exploring the attitudes of fifth level students at elementary schools toward peers with disabilities. Hence, 300 fifth level students were selected at elementary schools affiliated to 10 districts of education organization in Tehran in academic year 2010-2011. "The children attitude toward people with disabilities questionnair" designed by Kamali and solimani was utilized to determine the participant's attitudes. Correlation coefficient was detected as 0.73 which shows a high reliability of the questionnair. Also, this study explored the effect of friendship with people with disabilities and demographic variables on student's attitudes to peers with disabilities. Approximately, half of participants had negative attitudes and the other half had positive attitudes toward peers with disabilities (The negative attitudes were a little more than the positive attitudes). There weren't significant differences between the students' attitudes and demographic variables including sex, job and parents' studies. Also from three switch under examination for friendship and fellowship variables including having handicaped friends, talking to handicaped people and friendship to feature of handicaped people, only having handicaped friends had a significant difference with attitudes of students (P=0.045). The findings showed having friends with disabilities leads to attitude improvment towards them. This study highlights that communication experience and friendship with students with disabilities can effect on attitudes toward them. Limitations of this study indicate the necessity of conducting further studies especially appropriate interventions to attitude improvement.


The 4.2 Berkeley Software Distribution of the Unix operating system (4.2BSD for short) features an extensive body of software based on the "TCP/IP" family of protocols. In particular, each 4.2BSD system "trusts" some set of other systems, allowing users logged into trusted systems to execute commands via a TCP/IP network without supplying a password. These notes describe how the design of TCP/IP and the 4.2BSD implementation allow users on untrusted and possibly very distant hosts to masquerade as users on trusted hosts. Bell Labs has a growing TCP/IP network connecting machines with varying security needs; perhaps steps should be taken to reduce their vulnerability to each other.


Epidemiological and experimental evidence indicates that aspirin can protect against colorectal cancer. Aspirin inhibits cyclooxygenase enzymes and blocks prostaglandin (PG) biosynthesis. Using rectal PGE2 levels as a mucosal biomarker, we sought to determine the optimal aspirin dose that would significantly suppress PGE2 levels for chemoprevention trials. We conducted a randomized, double-blinded study in 60 subjects with prior sporadic colorectal adenoma(s) and evaluated three aspirin doses (81, 325, and 650 mg) or placebo taken daily for 4 weeks. PGE2 levels in rectal biopsies performed at baseline and week 4 were analyzed by competitive immunoassay. Plasma salicylate levels, pill counts, and subject calendars were used to assess compliance. The 81-mg aspirin dose significantly suppressed PGE2 levels relative to placebo (P 0.005) and did so to an equivalent extent as did higher doses (P > 0.4) in evaluable subjects (n 55) over a 4-week treatment period. Serum salicylate levels were associated with aspirin dose (P 0.0002). Pill counts and calendars indicated that >98% of doses were taken by all subjects. No adverse events occurred in this short-term study. The 81-mg daily aspirin dose suppressed PGE2 levels to an equivalent extent as did the 650-mg dose and supports the use of this dose for chemoprevention trials.


It is well established in the hydroclimatic literature that the interannual variability in seasonal streamflow could be partially explained using climatic precursors such as tropical sea surface temperature (SST) conditions. Similarly, it is widely known that streamflow is the most important predictor in estimating nutrient loadings and the associated concentration. The intent of this study is to bridge these two findings so that nutrient loadings could be predicted using season-ahead climate forecasts forced with forecasted SSTs. By selecting 18 relatively undeveloped basins in the Southeast US (SEUS), we relate winter (January-February-March, JFM) precipitation forecasts that influence the JFM streamflow over the basin to develop winter forecasts of nutrient loadings. For this purpose, we consider two different types of low-dimensional statistical models to predict 3-month ahead nutrient loadings based on retrospective climate forecasts. Split sample validation of the predictive models shows that 18–45% of interannual variability in observed winter nutrient loadings could be predicted even before the beginning of the season for at least 8 stations. Stations that have very high coefficient of determination (> 0.8) in predicting the observed water quality network (WQN) loadings during JFM exhibit significant skill in predicting seasonal total nitrogen (TN) loadings using climate forecasts. Incorporating antecedent flow conditions (December flow) as an additional predictor did not increase the explained variance in these stations, but substantially reduced the root-mean-square error (RMSE) in the predicted loadings. Relating the dominant mode of winter nutrient loadings over 18 stations clearly illustrates the association with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. Potential utility of these season-ahead nutrient predictions in developing proactive and adaptive nutrient management strategies is also discussed.


Students' conceptions of the equals sign are related to algebraic success. Research has identified two common conceptions held by children: operational and relational. The latter has been widely operationalised in terms of the sameness of the values on each side of the equals sign, but it has been recently argued that the substitution component of relational equivalence should also be operationalised (Jones, Inglis, Gilmore, & Dowens, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.05.003). In this study, we investigated whether students' endorsement of the substitution definition of the equals sign is a unique predictor of their algebra performance independent of the other two definitions (operational and sameness). Secondary school students were asked to rate the 'cleverness' of operational, sameness, and substitution definitions of the equals sign and completed an algebra test. Our findings demonstrate that endorsement of substitution plays a unique role in explaining secondary school students' algebra performance above and beyond school year and the other definitions. These findings contribute new insights into how students' algebra learning relates to their conceptions of the equals sign.


Most structural models of default preclude the firm from altering its capital structure. In practice, firms adjust outstanding debt levels in response to changes in firm value, thus generating mean-reverting leverage ratios. We propose a structural model of default with stochastic interest rates that captures this mean reversion. Our model generates credit spreads that are larger for low-leverage firms, and less sensitive to changes in firm value, both of which are more consistent with empirical findings than predictions of extant models. Further, the term structure of credit spreads can be upward sloping for speculative-grade debt, consistent with recent empirical findings. Copyright The American Finance Association 2001.


The light losses have been studied in composites of glass with a single- or double-layer coating of composition SiO2 and/or TiO2 obtained by sol–gel technology. The measured absorption of the composite always differs from the theoretically calculated value as a consequence of the inhomogeneity and the different degree of porosity of the nanosize film and the diffusion of oxides from the substrate. The barrier properties of the SiO2 layer in double-layer composites largely depend on the rheological characteristics of the film-forming solution and the deposition regime.


Do corporations have any social responsibilities? Those who have argued both sides of this debate have failed to focus their attention sufficiently on the common law rules governing market relations, especially the law of torts, contracts, and property. This article argues that these three foundational legal institutions are all premised on a fundamental obligation of attentiveness. Actors are obligated to attend to the likely consequences of their actions on others and refrain from actions that impose unreasonable risks of harm or which impose harms that individuals are entitled to be protected against. If this is so, then the argument that corporations cannot reasonably respond to vague duties of social responsibility becomes less powerful, given the pervasive duties of all market actors to consider whether they could justify their harm-producing conduct to an impartial decision maker - in other words, whether they could explain their actions as reasonable. We want clear rules to give us guidelines about what we are and are not allowed to do. But we also want a fuzzy edge of substantive standards to induce us to think before we act - to be attentive to the ways in which our actions affect others. Such fuzzy edges create appropriate incentives to think about the effects of one's actions on others and to consider the judgments that others would make about the justice or appropriateness of our own conduct, given the impact it will have on others who, after all, have equal rights. And we care so much about this that we have enshrined it in the basic law governing the market system.