A new mutual information (MI)-based feature-selection method to solve the so-called large p and small n problem experienced in a microarray gene expression-based data is presented. First, a grid-based feature clustering algorithm is introduced to eliminate redundant features. A huge gene set is then greatly reduced in a very efficient way. As a result, the computational efficiency of the whole feature-selection process is substantially enhanced. Second, MI is directly estimated using quadratic MI together with Parzen window density estimators. This approach is able to deliver reliable results even when only a small pattern set is available. Also, a new MI-based criterion is proposed to avoid the highly redundant selection results in a systematic way. At last, attributed to the direct estimation of MI, the appropriate selected feature subsets can be reasonably determined.


Compared with the stelae of the Akkadian period, Akkadian royal statues have received little scrutiny beyond the question of style. This article brings together the numerous visual and verbal fragments from the statues of Manishtushu to reconstruct their forms and textual components and to assess their role in the practice of Akkadian kingship. The king's multiple, nearly identical statues participated in his effort to maintain authority over cities incorporated into the nascent Akkadian state. Through the standardization and replication of statues erected in the temple precincts of various cities, Manishtushu displayed an equitable allegiance to the gods of the cities now under his rule. As an expression of the relationship between the king and the gods, this evenhanded treatment represents an intermediate stage in a transformation of kingship that would culminate in the deification of Naram-Sin, Manishtushu's successor.


Abstract : In the companion paper, we addressed the low-power DCT/IDCT VLSI architectures of linear complexity increase based on the multirate approach. In this paper, we will discuss other aspects of the low-power design. Firstly, we consider the design of low-power architectures that can lower the power consumption at only O(log M) increase in hardware complexity. Next, we will extend the low-power DCT design to other orthogonal transforms such as Modulated Lapped Transform (MLT) and Extended Lapped Transform (ELT). A unified programmable IIR low-power transform module, which can perform most of the existing discrete sinusoidal transforms, is also proposed. Finally, we perform the finite-precision analysis of the DCT architecture under the normal and multirate operations. In VLSI design, the assignment of the system word length will directly affect the total switching events and routing capacities, hence the power consumption. Using the analytical results, we can choose the optimal word length for each DCT channel under required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraint. The material presented in this paper, together with the multirate architectures in the companion paper, provides a framework for the algorithm-based low-power transform coding kernel design.


While thousands of environmental metagenomes have been mined for the presence of novel biosynthetic gene clusters, such computational predictions do not provide evidence of their in vivo biosynthetic functionality. Using fluorescent in situ enzyme assay targeting carrier proteins common to polyketide (PKS) and nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS), we applied fluorescence-activated cell sorting to tunicate microbiome to enrich for microbes with active secondary metabolic capabilities. Single-cell genomics uncovered the genetic basis for a wide biosynthetic diversity in the enzyme-active cells and revealed a member of marine Oceanospirillales harboring a novel NRPS gene cluster with high similarity to phylogenetically distant marine and terrestrial bacteria. Interestingly, this synthase belongs to a larger class of siderophore biosynthetic gene clusters commonly associated with pestilence and disease. This demonstrates activity-guided single-cell genomics as a tool to guide novel biosynthetic discovery.


In library catalogs as much as on the web, metadata acts as a transparent language through which concrete objects are looked for, found and obtained. Past decades have seen web browsing evolving so as to, by reducing query time to a slight amount, make web surfers forget that they are looking for things online: through this, online querying has become as trivial and invisible as would be the use of a currency as a medium of exchange. In fact, metadata sets and currencies share in the contemporary world a common nature, or at least universal principles: both are measuring the value of things in regard to people's need (of which search engine queries can be seen as a manifestation), and both can be viewed as temporary substitutes to those needed things before their obtention. The following article will thus examine both the transparency and materiality of bibliographical data firstly by demonstrating its monetary aspect, secondly by showing its materiality, and thirdly by explaining how the adoption of Linked Open Data standards contributes to the reification of data itself. Its argumentation is for its bigger part drawn from the data.bnf.fr experiment, which has been launched in 2011. This website is a project of the National Library of France, aiming at disseminating data from the BnF various catalogs and applications while constituting a single point of access for users from the web to collections descriptions scattered across many search tools. As this website principles are based on both online visibility and linked open data dissemination, this article will try to demonstrate how those two principles are going hand in hand.


One of the major applications of Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRPs) in construction is in the confinement of reinforced concrete (RC) columns. The performance of FRP-confined concrete in circular columns has been extensively investigated in literature and the efficiency of the available models is nowadays considered to be satisfactory. However, the case of confinement of rectangular RC sections with FRPs is a more complex problem, the mechanism of which has not yet been adequately described. The aim of this work is to simplify the problem by proposing an iterative procedure based on the results of a three-dimensional finite element (3D FEM) analysis. An interesting finding is that the arching effect is not observed: indeed, the unconfined regions are partially confined and contribute a certain amount to the overall strength of the rectangular RC sections. Based on (a) a system of 'generalized' springs, (b) well-known stress-strain laws and (c) a failure criterion, a simplified mechanical model which gives the stress-strain behaviour of a rectangular RC section confined by FRPs under concentric load is proposed. The algorithm takes into account all parameters available to designers, such as corner rounding radius, stiffness of the FRP and concrete strength, while it can be easily understood and implemented. Its results are found to correlate adequately to recent experimental data yielded by large-scale tests on FRP-confined rectangular RC columns. Finally, in order to further evaluate the performance of this material model, it was implemented in the simulation of a series of experimental tests of FRP-retrofitted square RC columns under cyclic lateral loading simulating earthquake loads and simultaneous constant axial compression. In particular, all specimens were simulated using nonlinear fiber elements, in which the FRP-confined concrete was modelled using the aforementioned material model. Comparison between the numerical and experimental hysteresis of the column is indicative of the effectiveness of the implemented modelling.


Video game accessibility may not seem of significance to some, and it may sound trivial to anyone who does not play video games. This assumption is false. With the digitalization of our culture, video games are an ever increasing part of our life. They contribute to peer to peer interactions, education, music and the arts. A video game can be created by hundreds of musicians and artists, and they can have production budgets that exceed modern blockbuster films. Inaccessible video games are analogous to movie theaters without closed captioning or accessible facilities. The movement to have accessible video games is small, unorganized and misdirected. Just like the other battles to make society accessible were accomplished through legislation and law, the battle for video game accessibility must be focused toward the law and not the market.


Plasma, often referred to as the fourth state of matter, is ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons. Specifically, a glow discharge is a glowing plasma formed by a voltage across a low pressure gas. The area of the glow discharge of interest in this study is the positive column, a relatively long column of pink, glowing plasma, and its bright and dark striated patterns. The striated positive column resembles pattern phenomena caused by standing pressure waves. These pressure wave patterns are due to the length of the tube in which they are contained. However, in past plasma research, the relation between striations and plasma tube length has been a neglected parameter. This study investigates how altering the spacing between electrodes, in e↵ect altering the length of the tube, causes a change in the positive column. This parameter is changed by utilizing four tubes of di↵erent lengths and a movable cathode. Research was conducted in both air and argon gas. It is found that changing electrode spacing does not alter the distance between striations, suggesting the analogy between standing pressure waves and the mechanisms of the positive column do not align along this parameter. Yet, a change in electrode spacing does alter the length of the entire positive column, falling along a clear linear relationship. This relationship is used to suggest the minimum spacing needed to achieve a positive column in both air and argon gas.


Often during an outbreak of foodborne illness, there are health officials who have data indicating that there is a risk prior to notifying the public. During the lag period between the first public health signal and some release of public information, there are decision makers who are weighing evidence with the impacts of going public. Multiple agencies and analysts have lamented that there is not a common playbook or decision tree for how public health agencies determine what information to release and when. Regularly, health authorities suggest that how and when public information is released is evaluated on a case-by-case basis without sharing the steps and criteria used to make decisions. Information provision on its own is not enough. Risk communication, to be effective and grounded in behavior theory, should provide control measure options for risk management decisions. There is no indication in the literature that consumers benefit from paternalistic protection decisions to guard against information overload. A review of the risk communication literature related to outbreaks, as well as case studies of actual incidents, are explored and a blueprint for health authorities to follow is provided.


Consistent monitoring of vital health parameters is an important issue in the medical industry. With recent technologies we are able to carry out remote monitoring of physiological parameters in patients. This allows communication between a patient and medical personnel using a smart-phone, which will collect, analyze and transfer heart rate and oxygen saturation data for subsequent review by a medical professional. Before any on-line analysis is performed on the phone it is necessary to clarify the nature of the correlation between these medical parameters. In the current thesis we establish connection between a patient wearing a pulse-oxymeter and a smart-phone running Android and perform continuous data collection. All measurements were done in consultation with medical facility and involved real patients. This data is subsequently analyzed using change point detection and anomaly detection algorithms in off-line mode. Both techniques are complementary to each other and showed reliable results which could be useful for a medical review.


Teaching music in primary school, especially in class teaching,
encounters a number of problems that need to be resolved adequately
and timely in order to avoid students' aversion to musical arts, to
enable diagnosis, following and development of elementary musical
skills, necessary to receive musical messages, to enable students to
skillfully manage musical text and to become a part of an overall
musical culture. If the way of gaining musical knowledge and skills is
not to become constrained, as it often happens, it is necessary to rely
on what is familiar and known to the student at that age, and by
applying adequate procedures to interdisciplinary discover new
connections between the teaching contents, that produce an active,
interested student in gaining practical and permanent musical
knowledge.
The subject of study of this research is integrative teaching of
music culture, i.e. factors that provide its realization. We extracted the
most important factors that enable qualitative teaching of music:
teaching contents given through the curriculum; concept of music
class by creating the models of integrative classes with various
subjects in class teaching; teachers, from whom we wanted to get an
attitude about integrative teaching, and, reversely, about the readiness
to realize it; students, whose engagement in integrative teaching
should be an indicator of efficiency of this kind of teaching.
Existing factors were examined and the structure of the base of
integrative approach to initial teaching of music in primary school. By
analyzing the contents, interviewing, testing and scaling, we obtained
data on a sample of surveyed students - future teachers. By a detailed
statistic analysis of obtained results we proved that the existing
factors and the base structure correspond to integrative approach to
initial teaching of music in primary school.
More broadly, correlation among the most important factors was
established, that is among the teaching units: student - teacher -
contents, and some new questions in the field of music pedagogy
were also initiated.


This article describes the R package mcglm implemented for fitting multivariate covariance generalized linear models (McGLMs). McGLMs provide a general statistical modeling framework for normal and non-normal multivariate data analysis, designed to handle multivariate response variables, along with a wide range of temporal and spatial correlation structures defined in terms of a covariance link function and a matrix linear predictor involving known symmetric matrices. The models take non-normality into account in the conventional way by means of a variance function, and the mean structure is modeled by means of a link function and a linear predictor. The models are fitted using an estimating function approach based on second-moment assumptions. This provides a unified approach to a wide variety of different types of response variables and covariance structures, including multivariate extensions of repeated measures, time series, longitudinal, genetic, spatial and spatio-temporal structures. The mcglm package allows a flexible specification of the mean and covariance structures, and explicitly deals with multivariate response variables, through a user friendly formula interface similar to the ordinary glm function. Illustrations in this article cover a wide range of applications from the traditional one response variable Gaussian mixed models to multivariate spatial models for areal data using the multivariate Tweedie distribution. Additional features, such as robust and bias-corrected standard errors for regression parameters, residual analysis, measures of goodness-of-fit and model selection using the score information criterion are discussed through six worked examples. The mcglm package is a full R implementation based on the Matrix package which provides efficient access to BLAS (basic linear algebra subroutines), Lapack (dense matrix), TAUCS (sparse matrix) and UMFPACK (sparse matrix) routines for efficient linear algebra in R.


With some airplanes the approach to the stall is accompanied by changes in the behavior, such as tail buffeting or changes in the control characteristics of the airplane so that the pilot obtains a warning of the impending stall. Vith other airplanes it is possible to approach the stall without any perceptible warning other than the reading of the air-speed meter, in which case the danger of inadvertent stalling is considerably greater. Although it is not within the scope of this paper to discuss stalling characteristics, it is desired to point out that in general the danger of inadvertent stalling is greatest with those airplanes that behave worse when the stalling occurs; that is, with airplanes in which the stall starts at the wing tips. A warning of the impending stall is desirable in any case, but is particularly desirable with airplanes of the latter type.


A Clinical Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Nursing-Family Nurse Practitioner


We consider the problem of inferring the values of an arbitrary set of variables (e.g., risk of diseases) given other observed variables (e.g., symptoms and diagnosed diseases) and high-dimensional signals (e.g., MRI images or EEG). This is a common problem in healthcare since variables of interest often differ for different patients. Existing methods including Bayesian networks and structured prediction either do not incorporate high-dimensional signals or fail to model conditional dependencies among variables. To address these issues, we propose bidirectional inference networks (BIN), which stich together multiple probabilistic neural networks, each modeling a conditional dependency. Predictions are then made via iteratively updating variables using backpropagation (BP) to maximize corresponding posterior probability. Furthermore, we extend BIN to composite BIN (CBIN), which involves the iterative prediction process in the training stage and improves both accuracy and computational efficiency by adaptively smoothing the optimization landscape. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets (a sleep study and a dermatology dataset) show that CBIN is a single model that can achieve state-of-the-art performance and obtain better accuracy in most inference tasks than multiple models each specifically trained for a different task.


Morphological features of 17 sweet basil cultivars as well as essential oil content and composition were determined. The study clearly indicated great variability of Ocimum basilicum L. The content of essential oil in the dried herb was high and varied from 0.75% (O. basilicum var. piperita) to 1.89% (O. basilicum var. cinnamon). Based of the primary components, three chemotypes were distinguished: citral ('Lime', 'Lemon' and var. citriodorum), E-methyl cinnamate/linalool ('Licorice', var. cinnamon) and methyl chavicol ('Tai').


Three-dimensional (3D) characterisation and modelling of cracking in concrete have been always of great importance and interest in civil engineering. In this study, an in situ microscale X-ray computed tomography (XCT) test was carried out to characterise the 3D microscale structure and cracking behaviour under progressive uniaxial compressive loading. The 3D cracking and fracture behaviour including internal crack opening, closing, and bridging were observed through both 2D tomography slices and 3D CT images. Spatial distributions of voids and cracks were obtained to understand the overall cracking process within the specimen. Furthermore, the XCT images of the original configuration of the specimen were processed and used to build microscale realistic 3D finite element (FE) models. Cohesive interface elements were inserted into the FE mesh to capture complicated discrete crack initiation and propagation. An FE simulation of uniaxial compression was conducted and validated by the in situ XCT compression test results, followed by a tension simulation using the same image-based model to investigate the cracking behaviour. The quantitative agreement between the FE simulation and experiment demonstrates that it is a very promising and effective technique to investigate the internal damage and fracture behaviour in multiphasic composites by combining the in situ micro XCT experiment and image-based FE modelling.


Rajasthani women typically leave school early and marry young. We develop a novel discrete choice methodology using hypothetical vignettes to elicit average parental preferences over a daughter's education and age of marriage, and subjective beliefs about the evolution of her marriage market prospects. We find parents have a strong preference for delaying a daughter's marriage until eighteen but no further. Conditional on a marriage match, parents place little intrinsic value on a daughter's education. However, they believe the probability of receiving a good marriage offer increases strongly with a daughter's education but deteriorates quickly with her age on leaving school.


In this study an attempt is made to develop an econometric model for fiscal policy for Greece. The model explains all government revenues on a consolidated account within a macroeconomic framework. The main purpose is to measure the ef¬fects of government revenues and expenditures on the most important macroeconomic variables. The estimation of such a model is believed to be of great importance for Greece. Firstly, in order to be able to choose the appropriate fiscal policy for correcting a probable disequilibrium in the economy it is necessary to know much about the main characteristics of the economic system as well as the basic effects of the alternative fiscal policies. However, only if accurate forecasts are available it is possible to adopt the appropriate corrective policies. Secondly, the relative importance of the government sector has increased in Greece. The provision of infrastructure and the increase in transfer payments that have been experienced in the last fifteen years, together with similar movements on the revenue side of the budget have considerably influenced the role that is assigned to the government nowadays. However, despite these changes we still do not have a precise idea of the main macroeconomic effects of these policies. Finally, we should take into consideration that the use of quantitative techniques in developing countries is still not very widespread. Thus, despite the various shortcomings of the present model there are still some benefits to be drawn. Macroeconomic models for the Greek economy were constructed in the early 1960's, though these were rather long-term planning models. The model proposed here is specified in such a way that it may be used for evaluating the impact of alternative fiscal policies. Since interest centers on ttors are unavoidable. Another reason for placing more emphasis on the government sector is that the statistical data are believed to be of a better quality than those of other sectors. The construction of a sophisticated model requires a vast amount of information. However, in constructing a model for a developing country one faces the problems of availability and unreliability of the existing data. In many instances measurements for important variables do not exist while in some cases figures provided by the same body and referring to the same concept and year differ considerably from each other.


Focusing on the bribery scandal plaguing global healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline LLC (GSK), this manuscript documents and offers proposals to redress the myriad of harms caused when multinational corporations (MNCs) accept bribery as an unspoken cost of doing business in connected societies. Despite its history of being a connection-based society, Chinese culture does not condone commercial bribery. Recognizing this important distinction, we argue that bribery committed by MNCs is a threat, not only to China's burgeoning market economy, but also to Chinese culture. Responding to this threat, and drawing on international anti-corruption regimes, our manuscript outlines reforms that GSK and other MNCs might adopt in order to prevent their employees and directors from falling prey to unspoken rules of corruption.


The modern electron microscope, as a result of recent revolutionary developments and many evolutionary ones, now yields a wealth of quantitative knowledge pertaining to structure, dynamics, and function barely matched by any other single scientific instrument. It is also poised to contribute much new spatially-resolved and time-resolved insights of central importance in the exploration of most aspects of condensed matter, ranging from the physical to the biological sciences. Whereas in all conventional EM methods, imaging, diffraction, and chemical analyses have been conducted in a static - time-integrated - manner, now it has become possible to unite the time domain with the spatial one, thereby creating four-dimensional (4D) electron microscopy. This advance is based on the fundamental concept of timed, coherent single-electron packets, or electron pulses, which are liberated with femtosecond durations. Structural phase transitions, mechanical deformations, and the embryonic stages of melting and crystallization are examples of phenomena that can now be imaged in unprecedented structural detail with high spatial resolution, and ten orders of magnitude as fast as hitherto. No monograph in existence attempts to cover the revolutionary dimensions that EM in its various modes of operation nowadays makes possible. The authors of this book chart these developments, and also compare the merits of coherent electron waves with those of synchrotron radiation. They judge it prudent to recall some important basic procedural and theoretical aspects of imaging and diffraction so that the reader may better comprehend the significance of the new vistas and applications now afoot. This book is not a vade mecum - numerous other texts are available for the practitioner for that purpose. It is instead an in-depth expose of the paradigm concepts and the developed techniques that can now be executed to gain new knowledge in the entire domain of biological and physical science, and in the four dimensions of space and time.


The switching linear dynamical system (SLDS) is a popular model in time-series analysis. However, the complexity of inferring the state of the latent variables scales exponentially with the length of the time-series, resulting in many approximation strategies in the literature. We focus on the recently devised expectation correction (EC) approximation which can be considered a form of Gaussian sum smoother. The algorithm has excellent numerical performance compared to a wide range of competing techniques, exploiting more fully the available information than, for example, generalised pseudo Bayes. We show that EC can be seen as an extension to the SLDS of the Rauch, Tung, Striebel inference algorithm for the linear dynamical system. This yields a simpler derivation of the EC algorithm and facilitates comparison with existing, similar approaches.


Due to its importance, the Internet topology at the Autonomous System(AS) level has been attracting much attention from the research community for over a decade. Internet connectivity is increasingly recognized as a fundamental lever for development, triggering socio-economic progress in the society as a whole. Rich local interconnections between the ASes within a region make up a reliable Internet environment, which further helps to foster the Internet business in the region by promoting innovation and empowering local Internet entities to grow.
We propose an empirical study of the topological organization of the Internet ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
While basic connectivity to the global Internet exists throughout the region, the availability and quality of the infrastructure varies widely between different countries or even between different geographical areas within the same country. Using BGP routing data and information about the business relationship between ASes active in the region, we build the graph of Internet connectivity at the country level. We identify how many international ASes operate locally, connecting the local network to other countries within the region and to the global Internet. Based on this information, we analyze how prone a country is to disconnection, both as a consequence of government censorship or external attacks on the local Internet ecosystem. Next, we characterize Internet performance in LAC and observe very high latency between different countries and, sometimes, even within the same country. We observe that a large fraction of paths interconnecting different destinations circuit through the US, and quantify the fraction of destinations in the LAC region that are possibly affected by this phenomenon.


This thesis aims to illuminate the economic and social world of the Glasgow-West India merchants, planters and the temporary economic migrants who travelled across the Atlantic during the period, 1776-1846. The city of Glasgow and her satellite ports was the premier Scottish transatlantic hub with connections across the British Atlantic world. This thesis has focused on the period after the American War of Independence ended the city of Glasgow's tobacco monopoly. Thus, the rise to prominence of the city's West India elite is assessed as well as the social, political, financial and commercial networks that underpinned their rise. This thesis offers new insights on religious affiliations of the merchants of Glasgow and traces the exportation of Presbyterianism to Jamaica in 1814.

This thesis has implications for other aspects of the incipient Scottish-Atlantic historiography. In particular it contributes to T.M. Devine's recent view that Caribbean slavery made Scotia great. However, this thesis is deliberately placed into a British-Atlantic context. Although this research demonstrates how a distinctly Caledonian operation promoted the flow of capital to Scotland, the 'Glasgow West India interest' themselves were part of a wider international network which in turn dictates the scope of this thesis and the historiography with which it engages.

Specifically, this body of research traces direct investments of capital by West India merchants into Scottish industry and land, thus providing qualified support for Eric Williams' main thesis in Capitalism and Slavery. However, this work goes significantly beyond the work of Williams to trace the connections between commerce and banking institutions in Scotland and the plantations of the West Indies. This thesis has examined in some detail the political activities of the Glasgow West India Association from inception in 1807 up to 1834. The Association's sophisticated operations at a national and regional level supported the exploitative activities of the Glasgow-West India elite. Indeed, this research demonstrates that the members of the Association collected the bulk of the compensation awarded to individuals resident in Glasgow on the emancipation of slavery in 1834.

This thesis has adopted a transatlantic approach that connects Scotland and the West Indies. In particular, these connections are illuminated through the prism of the careers of the young Scotsmen who sojourned to Jamaica and Grenada in particular. This thesis suggests there were increasing levels of emigration to the West Indies in this period and the skilled and educated young men sought economic opportunities not available at home. By examining wealth repatriation in life and post-mortem property transmission strategies, this thesis offers a revision on the view that such young men struggled to repatriate colonial profits. This has implications for the work of Alan Karras and others. The transatlantic approach is developed in case study examinations of Glasgow-West India merchant houses. This connects Scottish banks, commerce and industry with the British Parliament and the planters of the West Indies.

The world of Scottish planters, merchants and sojourners is now becoming increasingly well known. The life, wealth and legacy of the Glasgow West India elite traced here provide innovative insights into their living conditions and material culture. It is further argued that a West India career could propel even those of modest means into the British super-wealthy. Finally, this thesis recognises the contribution of enslaved peoples to the economic development of Scotland which will hopefully stimulate further research in a Scottish-Atlantic context.


This paper introduces a novel congestion detection scheme for high-bandwidth TCP flows over optical burst switching (OBS) networks, called statistical additive increase multiplicative decrease (SAIMD). SAIMD maintains and analyzes a number of previous round-trip time (RTTs) at the TCP senders in order to identify the confidence with which a packet loss event is due to network congestion. The confidence is derived by positioning short-term RTT in the spectrum of long-term historical RTTs. The derived confidence corresponding to the packet loss is then taken in the developed policy for TCP congestion window adjustment. We will show through extensive simulation that the proposed scheme can effectively solve the false congestion detection problem and significantly outperform the conventional TCP counterparts without losing fairness. The advantages gained in our scheme are at the expense of introducing more overhead in the SAIMD TCP senders. Based on the proposed congestion control algorithm, a throughput model is formulated, and is further verified by simulation results.


Oxygenic photosynthesis, which provides the biosphere with most of its chemical energy, uses water as its source of electrons. Water is photochemically oxidized by the protein complex photosystem II (PSII), which is found, along with other proteins of the photosynthetic light reactions, in the thylakoid membranes of cyanobacteria and of green plant chloroplasts. Water splitting is catalyzed by the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of PSII, producing dioxygen gas, protons and electrons. O_2 is released into the atmosphere, sustaining all aerobic life on earth; product protons are released into the thylakoid lumen, augmenting a proton concentration gradient across the membrane; and photo-energized electrons pass to the rest of the electron-transfer pathway. The OEC contains four manganese ions, one calcium ion and (almost certainly) a chloride ion, but its precise structure and catalytic mechanism remain unclear. In this paper, we develop a chemically complete structure of the OEC and its environment by using molecular mechanics calculations to extend and slightly adjust the recently-obtained X-ray crystallographic model [K. N. Ferreira, T. M. Iverson, K. Maghlaoui, J. Barber and S. Iwata, Science , 2004, 303 , 1831-1838]. We discuss our mechanistic hypothesis [J. P. McEvoy and G. W. Brudvig, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. , 2004, 6 , 4754-4763] with reference to this structure and to some important recent experimental results.


One of the major successes of advanced quantitative methods has been its seeming ability to provide unbiased determinations of which education practices are effective for education in general and for improving the educational achievement and opportunity of the neediest students.  The power of this methodology as applied in the top education research journals has led to periodic implementation of federal and state effective practices policies. In such policies the government or its proxy determines which programs are effective and then requires or encourages schools to spend its funds exclusively on those proven programs. For example, the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) initiative requires those applying for its largest dissemination grants to have had their intervention validated as effective by the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). Some are now even advocating that all expenditures of federal funds by school districts be restricted to purchasing research validated programs. While this seems like rational policy, between 1998 and 2002 I produced a series of articles that showed that the most research validated program to develop the reading skills of students born into poverty was not actually effective in practice. Was this dichotomy between published research proving something to be effective and what was happening in the real world an anomaly or a more widespread problem? This article (a) analyzes the validity of the gold standard scientific methodology used by the top research journals and WWC to determine whether practices are effective, and (b) examines the history of effective practices policies and their actual effectiveness. I conclude that the increasingly sophisticated methods used to assess the effectiveness of practices (a) are flawed and exaggerate actual effectiveness, and (b) do not provide the type of information practitioners need. As a result, research on effective practices tends to mislead rather than inform practice and are a major reason why efforts to reform high-poverty schools have had limited success. I therefore conclude that effective practices policies should not be implemented. I then suggest ideas for reforming the scientific process used to assess the effectiveness of education interventions.


Hierarchical neural networks are often used to model inherent structures within dialogues. For goal-oriented dialogues, these models miss a mechanism adhering to the goals and neglect the distinct conversational patterns between two interlocutors. In this work, we propose Goal-Embedded Dual Hierarchical Attentional Encoder-Decoder (G-DuHA) able to center around goals and capture interlocutor-level disparity while modeling goal-oriented dialogues. Experiments on dialogue generation, response generation, and human evaluations demonstrate that the proposed model successfully generates higher-quality, more diverse and goal-centric dialogues. Moreover, we apply data augmentation via goal-oriented dialogue generation for task-oriented dialog systems with better performance achieved.


Biosolids from a municipal sewage treatment plant were studied from the standpoint of characterizing the matrix as well as targeting specific substances. Part of this interest stems from the land application of biosolids thatmay contain pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). Targeted analytes were subjected to higher specificity than usual, and this was achieved either through multidimensional chromatography or through high resolution mass spectrometry (accurate mass determination) or both. The bacterial endpoints consisting of fecal sterols and fecal steroneswere present as expected and were generally greater than ppm levels meaning that they could pose significant interferences to target analytes at low ppb levels. Thus, one of our goals in characterization was to identify some of these major components as an aid in formulating cleanup strategies for the determination of PPCPs. Target analytes included nonyl phenols, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and estrogens. These ranged from ppm levels for the first two groups to low or sub ppb levels for the estrogens. The nonyl phenols were further confirmed using high resolution voltage scanning and mass peak profiles at high resolution. The PBDEs were further confirmed using high resolution selected ion recording as were the estrogens.


Equations to approximate the effective size (Ne) of populations under continued selection are obtained that include the possibility of partial full-sib mating and other systems such as assortative mating. The general equation for the case of equal number of sexes and constant number of breeding individuals (N) is Ne = 4N/[2(1 - alpha I) + (Sk2 + 4Q2C2) (1 + alpha I + 2 alpha O)], where Sk2 is the variance of family size due to sampling without selection, C2 is the variance of selective advantages among families (the squared coefficient of variation of the expected number of offspring per family), alpha I is the deviation from Hardy-Weinberg proportions, alpha O is the correlation between genes of male and female parents, and Q2 is the term accounting for the cumulative effect of selection on an inherited trait. This is obtained as Q = 2/[2 - G(1 + r)], where G is the remaining proportion of genetic variance in selected individuals and r is the correlation of the expected selective values of male and female parents. The method is also extended to the general case of different numbers of male and female parents. The predictive value of the formulae is tested under a model of truncation selection with the infinitesimal model of gene effects, where C2 and G are a function of the selection intensity, the heritability and the intraclass correlation of sibs. Under random mating r = alpha I = -1/(N - 1) and alpha O = 0. Under partial full-sib mating with an average proportion beta of full-sib matings per generation, r approximately beta and alpha O approximately alpha I approximately beta/(4 - 3 beta). The prediction equation is compared to other approximations based on the long-term contributions of ancestors to descendants. Finally, based on the approach followed, a system of mating (compensatory mating) is proposed to reduce rates of inbreeding without loss of response in selection programs in which selected individuals from the largest families are mated to those from the smallest families.


China's spectacular economic progress has led some security analysts and policy makers in the North and the South to question Beijing's intentions in other parts of the world. This paper examines the extent to which China's engagement with Africa has produced mutual benefits for both and whether Africa is reaping the necessary benefits required for poverty alleviation and economic development. Chinese state-owned enterprises have invested billions of dollars in foreign reserves, construction, and engineering resources assisting African oil-producing exporters. While many in the west have started to question China's extraordinary level of interest in Africa - in particular, its economic engagement with perceived repressive regimes - African leaders view China's entry as a means of pulling Africa onto the path of globalization. It is thus important that African leaders and policy makers ensure that Chinese trade and investment bring reciprocal and tangible benefits for Africans, and contribute to economic stability and good governance.


The pathogenic bacteria Yersinia are causative agents in human diseases ranging from gastrointestinal syndromes to bubonic plague. There is increasing risk of misuse of infectious agents, such as Yersinia pestis, as weapons of terror as well as instruments of warfare for mass destruction. Because the phosphatase activity of the Yersinia protein tyrosine phosphatase, YopH, is essential for virulence in the Yersinia pathogen, potent and selective YopH inhibitors are expected to serve as novel anti-plague agents. We have identified a specific YopH small molecule inhibitor, p-nitrocatechol sulfate (pNCS), which exhibits a Ki value of 25 μm for YopH and displays a 13–60-fold selectivity in favor of YopH against a panel of mammalian PTPs. To facilitate the understanding of the underlying molecular basis for tight binding and specificity, we have determined the crystal structure of YopH in complex with pNCS at a 2.0-Å resolution. The structural data are corroborated by results from kinetic analyses of the interactions of YopH and its site-directed mutants with pNCS. The results show that while the interactions of the sulfuryl moiety and the phenyl ring with the YopH active site contribute to pNCS binding affinity, additional interactions of the hydroxyl and nitro groups in pNCS with Asp-356, Gln-357, Arg-404, and Gln-446 are responsible for the increased potency and selectivity. In particular, we note that residues Arg-404, Glu-290, Asp-356, and a bound water (WAT185) participate in a unique H-bonding network with the hydroxyl group ortho to the sulfuryl moiety, which may be exploited to design more potent and specific YopH inhibitors.


The testing of physical analogues has been shown to be important in the development of theoretical models describing the relationships between fluid flow in fracture systems, and the state of stress and deformation within the host rock of the fracture. The flow and transport characteristics related to fracturing are often enhanced by the effects of the state of stress in the rock walls, which may open up secondary pathways and cause chemical alterations in the wall rocks. -- The objective of this study was to describe the influence of two, parallel, large scale fracture roughness asperities on: 1) the fracture stiffness, displacement and hydraulic transmissivity, 2) the local stress field in the adjacent wall rock, 3) the mode and patterns of secondary fracturing, and 4) the effects on host rock permeability all as a function of changes in both normal and shear stress. The overall study approach included a series of experiments on an instrumented high strength concrete model of a fracture plane in a stiff biaxial loading frame, and comparison of the experimental data with numerical model simulations. -- The concrete model (200 x 200 x 300 millimetres) was cast with 92 strain gauges mounted on concrete coupons embedded along the centre of the model, and 17 manometer ports intersecting the fracture plane to measure the fluid pressures across the length of the model. The fracture plane was formed by pressing an aluminium plate matching the form of the asperities into the wet concrete. This plate was separated from the wet concrete by a piece of geotextile. When the concrete was set, the second half of the model was cast on the geotextile (which was left in place). This geotextile provided the form of a uniform small scale roughness on the fracture surface after the blocks were separated. Four 6.4 millimetre diameter wells were drilled into the top of the model. These wells were used to estimate the matrix permeability changes of the concrete of the model as it was subjected to changing load conditions. -- Results of the study confirmed that the large scale asperities had a significant influence on the local strain field, as seen in the data recovered from the 78 strain gauges that survived the casting and pre-test processes. Three normal and four shear loading cycles showed repeatable internal strain patterns that reflected the effects of the applied boundary conditions. Fracturing in the model was assumed to be caused by tensile stress concentrations at the base of the asperities, and at the ends of the sample. -- Displacement data indicate permanent normal closure of the fracture was greatest for the first normal loading cycle, and decreased over the following two cycles. During the final four cycles, the permanent fracture closure became essentially identical at about 20 per cent of the original closure. This suggests that fracture seating occurred during the first normal loading cycle, which is consistent with other experimental work. -- Fracture transmissivity was seen to decrease logarithmically with the cube root of the normal stress applied to the sample, and decreased further as the sample was sheared, causing closure of the aperture at the large scale asperities. -- The four wells drilled into the top of the model were pressurised with 345 kPa (50 psi) water, and shut in. The pressure decline of each well was monitored sequentially throughout the shear cycles and these data were used to estimate the relative permeability of the concrete. All four wells showed similar decline curves over the periods that each well was monitored. There was no indication that the permeability of the concrete was enhanced by the shear stress applied except by the propagation of secondary fracturing through the wells as the concrete failed. -- The post-test finite element analysis confirmed the assumption that induced tensile fracturing was the primary mode of failure in this experiment. Under normal load, finite element analysis showed that the large scale asperities caused local changes in the orientation of the stress field. Under combined normal and shear load, there were significant tensile stress concentrations associated with the restraining and releasing bends of the fracture, which provided the focus points for the onset of failure of the blocks.


The advent of the internet and digital technologies has given rise to a number of new economic models. These have often been applied to education, but either through faults in the initial models or differences in the characteristics of the education sector, they have not proven to be widely applicable. The use of digital, network technologies combined with open licences is one area that has seen particular success in educational application. This field offers an economic model that has particular application to education, through the reallocation of finances to the production of openly licensed resources instead of the purchase of copyrighted ones. This has potential significant impact across a range of educational practices and beyond.


Background : adolescent migrants are in a state of double vulnerability because of their age and migration experience. The purpose of this review was to identify risk and protective factors serving as a base for health promotion of young recent migrants. Methods : we assessed 95 papers identified through a MEDLINE search. Thirty-five papers were retained for review and analysed within the following themes: general health, mental health, cigarette smoking and sexual health. Results : young migrants' health was considered good at arrival, but deteriorated with length of stay due to factors linked to migration. Mental health was determined by pre-migration factors, such as violence, and was strongly related to post-migration factors, such as asylum procedures, discrimination and low socio-economic status. Social support and family cohesion were identified as protective factors. We found a lack in epidemiologic data about tobacco use and sexual health issues. Results from North America indicated less frequent smoking in certain groups of immigrants. Some data suggested more frequent teenage pregnancies and abortions in young refugee women as compared to the host population. We also found some evidence about increased risk of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS in certain immigrant populations. Conclusions : migrant adolescents are generally healthy at arrival. The migration process and social inequalities after arrival influence their long-term health. A comprehensive approach to health promotion is necessary, taking into account risk and protective factors. More research is needed, in order to obtain more specific epidemiologic data about adolescent migrants, as well as longitudinal and qualitative data.


For Frank Lloyd Wright, every item inside a house or an office building was as important as the outside. As this book demonstrates, all Wright's furnishings were meant to be integral parts of the whole composition - works of art in themselves. The furnishings shown here range from Wright's world-famous tall-back chairs to ingenious combination pieces, from his revered art glass windows to lamps that have become classics, and from vases to china to spectacular textiles patterns. Throughout his long career, spanning the years 1887 to 1959, this internationally renowned architect worked to persuade homeowners to simplify and beautify their lives by simplifying their furnishings. Choose just a few good things, Wright suggested, and go to the woods and fields for colours and materials that bring nature home. A showcase for these and many more of Wright's most important ideas for interiors, the book illustrates how the architect clothed his buildings as well inside as outside.


Axisymmetric mirrors can be MHD-stabilized by end losses. Neutral-beam-sustained operation to β~0.6, and Te~0.2 keV, with 5 ms 5 MW neutral beams on the Gas Dynamic Trap (GDT) has been demonstrated at the Budker Institute in Novosibirsk, Russia. Applications of this concept can reduce risks in the fusion program. A GDT-scale facility could test plasma-material interactions (PMI) at up to 400 MW/m2 and 5 s pulse duration for divertor development. Extrapolation of the GDT to a Dynamic Trap Neutron Source, DTNS, provides a DT-fusion neutron flux of 2 MW/m2 over 1 m2, at a power-plant efficiency of Q ~ 0.07. (A DTNS enables development and testing of materials and sub-component structures, for fusion power plants, MFE or IFE. A DTNS functions regardless of whether the tested components work. These developments would reduce risks for a tokamak Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF)). Further extrapolation to 0.2 ≤ Q ≤ 10 single-cell or tandem mirror yields several fusion-fission hybrid applications. Further extension to a pure-fusion axisymmetric-tandem-mirror power plant, requires Q>10. Tandem mirrors demand the use of different stabilization techniques that are not dependent on out-flowing plasma, a number of which have been proposed, and could be experimentally tested on the GDT.


From the late 1950s until 1975, the war between North and South Vietnam had both domestic and international consequences. Unlike the Cold War divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, the Communist North) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, the non-Communist South) was an armed conflict between two polities that both identified themselves as Vietnamese. In this twenty-year-long struggle, the fates of the DRV and the RVN were tied to their success in producing new generations who would subscribe to their respective agendas. This was done through many venues, of which education was one of the most important. Relying on archival materials and published documents, this article compares the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the period 1965–1975.


We model the interior dynamics of a relativistic radiating fluid in a nonstatic spherically symmetric spacetime. The matter distribution takes the form of an imperfect fluid with a nonvanishing radially directed heat flux. The fluid pressure is isotropic and the spherically symmetric spacetime manifold is described by a shear-free line element. In our investigation, the isotropy of pressure is a consistency condition which realises a second order nonlinear ordinary differential equation with variable coefficients in the gravitational potentials. We examine this governing equation by imposing various forms for these potentials and review classes of physically acceptable models that are applicable in relativistic astrophysics. Several new classes of new exact solutions to the condition of pressure isotropy are also found. A comparison of our solutions with earlier well known results is undertaken. A physical analysis of two of the new models is performed where the spatial and temporal evolution of the matter and gravitational variables are probed. We demonstrate that the fluid pressure, energy density and heat flux are regular and well behaved for both models throughout the interior, and our results indicate that one of the models is consistent with the well established core-envelope framework for compact stellar scenarios. We also analyse the energy conditions for the radiating fluid and demonstrate consistent behaviour, with only the dominant condition being violated. Finally, an analysis of the relativistic thermodynamics of two solutions is undertaken in the Israel-Stewart theory and the temperature profiles for both the noncausal and causal cases are presented.


− ESG–Agency scholars have embraced the notion that agent influence is complex, contingent, and context dependent, with the success of environmental governance depending considerably on propitious environmental and social conditions. − Scholars have shifted from an earlier focus on how agents influence behaviours and environmental quality in earth system governance to how they influence governance processes, with increasing focus on democracy, participation, legitimacy, transparency, and accountability. − ESG–Agency scholars employ increasingly diverse methods to integrate insights from case studies, interviews, surveys, statistical analyses, and other approaches leading to deeper and more nuanced understanding of agency in earth system governance. − Adopting more interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to evaluating agency can foster future understandings of and contributions to earth system governance.


This paper investigates both the effects of domestic monetary policy and external shocks on fundamental macroeconomic variables in six fast growing emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Turkey - denoted hereafter as BRICS_T. The authors adopt a structural VAR model with a block exogeneity procedure to identify domestic monetary policy shocks and external shocks. Their research reveals that a contractionary monetary policy in most countries appreciates the domestic currency, increases interest rates, effectively controls inflation rates and reduces output. They do not find any evidence of the price, output, exchange rates and trade puzzles that are usually found in VAR studies. Their findings imply that the exchange rate is the main transmission mechanism in BRICS_T economies. The authors also find that that there are inverse J-curves in five of the six fast growing emerging economies and there are deviations from UIP (Uncovered Interest Parity) in response to a contractionary monetary policy in those countries. Moreover, world output shocks are not a dominant source of fluctuations in those economies.


The microsurgical technique witch until the 1980's was an exclusion procedure, only chosen in extreme cases, due to easily observed advances seen in innumerous current publications, has become in various procedures the first surgical option, practically compelling all doctors who practice in the field of Plastic Surgery to perform training in the referred technique. The current article presents an easy executed model of microsurgery basic training.


Despite the fan studies emphasis on participatory culture, much of the current work on vids (and in fan studies broadly) treats fans more as readers than as producers. To help us examine the relationships between fannish reading practices and fannish creative processes, we turn to composition studies and Marilyn Cooper's concept of an ecology of writing. We argue for an ecological model of vidding, an approach that enables us to explore the collaborative nature of vidding without erasing individual authorship; to investigate the relationships not only between vids and media texts but also between vidders and their audiences; and to treat fan conversations both as responses to mass media and as sites for the generation and circulation of interpretive conventions that guide both the creation and reception of vids.


Most proposed geodynamic models integrate the northern Sierra Nevada and eastern Klamath Mountains in a single island-arc system. New petrological and geochemical data show that the Upper Devonian Sierra Buttes Formation of the northern Sierra Nevada displays important differences from the Lower Devonian Balaklala Formation of the eastern Klamath Mountains. The cale-alkalic affinity of the Sierra Buttes rhyolites (light rare earth element [REE] enriched, low e Nd ) suggests that they were erupted in a continent-based island arc. In contrast, the Lower Devonian Balaklala low-K tholeiitic rhyolites (light REE depleted, high e Nd ) are considered to be part of an intraoceanic island-arc sequence. Moreover, the Paleozoic tectogenesis of these two island-arc sequences is different. The Lower Devonian Balaklala rhyolites were affected by the Late Devonian-Early Carboniferous orogeny, whereas the Sierra Buttes Formation is on basement already affected by a pre-Late Devonian deformation. Therefore, at least after Carboniferous time and before Late Triassic time, the eastern Klamath and northeastern Sierra Nevada island arcs cannot be considered lateral counterparts.


Gas-solid fluidized beds are widely used in petroleum, chemical, mineral, pharmaceutical, and power plant applications. The performance of fluidized bed reactors strongly depends on the flow dynamics. Characterization of a particle-laden flow has been one of the challenging issues in fluidization research. The simulation of flow in such processes is challenging as the complex dynamic systems comprised of numerous particles and fluidizing gas confined in specific devices. Nonlinear particle-particle/wall and particle-gas interactions lead to complex flow behavior of the gas-solid flows. We used MFiX to simulate a gas-solid flow in fluidized beds. A data-driven framework is trained with the data from MFiX-PIC simulations. The trained and tested machine learning model is used to characterize the flow regimes in fluidized beds. In the present study, the void fraction is used to characterize the flow regimes. However, others in the literature have used pressure, temperature, heat transfer coefficient, acoustic emission, vibration, and electrostatic charge for the characterization of flow regimes.


Originally created for agile software development, scrum provides project managers with the flexibility needed to meet ever-changing consumer demands. Presenting a modified version of the agile software development framework, Scrum Project Management introduces Scrum basics and explains how to apply this adaptive technique to effectively manage a wide range of programs and complex projects. The book provides proven planning methods for controlling project scope and ensuring your project stays on schedule. It includes scrum tracking methods to help your team maintain a focus on improving throughput and streamlining communications. It also demonstrates how to: Combine traditional project management methods with scrum Adapt the familiar work breakdown structure to create scrum backlogs and sprints Use a "scrum of scrums" to manage programs Apply earned value management, critical path, and PERT in the context of scrum Having successfully deployed and implemented scrum across multiple companies and departments, the authors provide valuable insight into how they achieved their past successes and how they overcame the trials involved with the deployment of a scrum environment. Throughout the text they discuss improvisation, creative problem solving, and emergent phenomenadetailing the methods needed to ensure your team achieves project success.


Across the world, 'green grabbing' – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on 'land grabbing' already highlights instances where 'green' credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for 'more efficient farming' or 'food security', but also to 'alleviate pressure on forests'. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or 'offsets' related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do 'green grabs' constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?


Mechanical resonance is the tendency of a mechanical system to absorb more energy when the frequency of its oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration than it does at other frequencies. It may cause violent swaying motions and even catastrophic failure in improperly constructed structures. When designing objects, engineers must ensure the mechanical resonance frequencies of the component parts do not match driving vibrational frequencies of oscillating parts, a phenomenon known as disaster. Different techniques, experimental and theoretical have been developed to analyze problems related to vibration. But in the present era computational techniques are quite common and are very reliable as far as the vibration analysis is concerned. In this work, the turbine of turbocharger is analyzed for its vibration behavior using finite element method (FEM).The turbine was modeled in Pro E and meshed in ANSYS. Modal analysis was conducted to calculate few initial natural frequencies. Results were studied in depth against operating frequency of the turbine. After carrying out the modal analysis, harmonic analysis was done to see the response of the turbine under dynamic loading. Nature and cause of the dynamic loading is also discussed in relation to dynamic behavior. It was observed that turbine is safe in its entire range of operation as far as phenomenon of resonance is concerned. Also it was observed that maximum harmonic response of the turbine on the application of dynamic loading is far lesser than its failure limit within specified operating range.


The South African city we experience today did not simply manifest in a vacuum outside of the social
injustice of the last 400+ years of colonial and Apartheid 'development'. The four-hour commute that
the average Johannesburg city user experiences, the sense of fractured locality across the
metropolitans of Durban and Pretoria and the intact socio-economic segregation of townships to
suburbs seen in Cape Town are all the tangible legacies of the Apartheid city design that we complicity
accept as our South African city on a daily basis.
The knee-jerk reaction by built environment practitioners to this observation is typically a technocratic
response to suggest an addition of infrastructure and implementation and not a reform of the practice
of city-making. The fact remains that among the large-scale projects our democratic government has
implemented we sit with infrastructure deficits larger today than 1994.
The practice of 'making city' in South Africa requires some form of radical change, one that calls on all
city makers to re-conceptualise how we see, make and manage our spaces. While technical skills and
competencies are vital to this approach, the immediate challenge for built environment practitioners can
be seen in the lack of skills or willingness of individuals and institutions to engage with the socio-political
complexity of our cities. The misnomer that we are dealing with a homogenous technical challenge for
a homogenous social demographic of people (or the 'community') that can be solved through a 'better
house/shack/dwelling', a more efficient toilet system or solar panel array, is damaging and criminally
myopic in its lack of imagination, creativity or recognition of the situation.
The paper offers a structured reflection on an eight-year case study conducted by the author and his
colleagues. The argument of the paper is centred around a critique on the often-misused terms of
'informality', community', 'participation' and 'development' in the built environment sector of spatial
development. The case study unpacks the approach and methods used within the Socio-Technical
Spatial Design practice of 'Neighbourhood Making' and offers a reflection on critical skills and lessons
gathered from the experience. The intent of this reflexive study is to offer a working reference for privatesector practitioners, government officials and grassroots practitioners who are looking to engage
informal neighbourhood upgrading in South Africa.


This study evaluates an investment project concerning the redevelopment of the public lighting of the Municipality of Rome. In particular, we consider the replacing of the traditional lamps of the system with light emitting diodes lamps. We consider the factors that affect this kind of project: The cost of energy, the manteinance cost, the investment cost and the weighted average cost of capital. Our results underline the reduction of energy consumption and of the maintenance costs, lower emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, the reduction of light pollution, the positive effects on road safety and the indipendence by incentives


This study was undertaken to optimize the production of probiotic in a milk-based medium and to establish process parameters for the batch cultivation of Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum G4. The locally isolated strain exhibited high tolerance to pH 1.0-3.0 and fulfilled other probiotic criteria. Identification of the organism was done using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based method. A defined band at 1.35 kb and 289 bp were produced using genus-specific and species-specific 16S rRNA primers, respectively.
An initial screening of bacteria were done using 23 full factorial design in order to identify the effect of medium components consisting of skim milk, yeast extract and glucose towards biomass production. Results showed that yeast extract had a significant positive effect on viable cell count whereas glucose resulted in a negative effect, which was then eliminated from the study. Response surface methodology (RSM) was then applied to optimize the use of skim milk and yeast extract. A quadratic model was derived using a face-centered central composite design to represent cell mass as a function of the two variables. The optimized medium composition of 2.8% (w/v) skim milk and 2.2% (w/v) yeast extract gave the maximum biomass concentration of 1.3 x 109 cfu mL-1, which was 3 log unit higher compared to the commonly used 10.0% (w/v) skim milk (6.3 x 105 cfu mL-1). The application of RSM resulted in an improvement in biomass production in a more cost-effective medium, where the skim milk composition was reduced by 71.8%.
Further improvement on the biomass production was carried out in a 2-L stirred tank bioreactor. The highest viable cell count was obtained at pH 6.5, with 0.56 ms-1 impeller tip speed. Scaling-up fermentation to a 10-L stirred tank bioreactor based on constant impeller tip speed (0.56 ms-1) successfully yielded reproducible fermentation kinetic values. The results were similar to the smaller-scale reactor. Under this condition, the following were obtained: maximum biomass concentration, Xmax (1.4 x 109 cfu mL-1), maximum specific growth rate, μmax (0.48 h-1), biomass productivity, Px (7.70 x 107 cfu mL-1 h-1), and biomass yield, Yx/s (9.46 x 1010 cfu g lactose-1).
The survival of B. pseudocatenulatum G4 during freeze-drying and spray-drying processes was also evaluated. During freeze-drying, the strain exhibited high percentage survival (71.7 - 82.1%) when different combinations of skim milk and sugar solutions (glucose, sucrose and lactose) were used as cryoprotectants. The viable cell counts of 2.1 x 109 cfu g-1 to 3.1 x 109 cfu g-1 were obtained after the lyophilization process. Since the addition of sugar did not result in higher percentage survival, 10.0% (w/v) skim milk was suggested as a suitable cryoprotectant. On the other hand, the strain experienced over 99.0% loss in viability after spray-drying regardless of the spray-drier air outlet temperature and use of heat-adaptation treatments.


Current B-cell disorder treatments take advantage of dose-intensive chemotherapy regimens and immunotherapy via use of monoclonal antibodies. Unfortunately, they may lead to insufficient tumor distribution of therapeutic agents, and often cause adverse effects on patients. In this contribution, we propose a novel therapeutic approach in which relatively high doses of Hydroxychloroquine and Chlorambucil were loaded into biodegradable nanoparticles coated with an anti-CD20 antibody. We demonstrate their ability to effectively target and internalize in tumor B-cells. Moreover, these nanoparticles were able to kill not only p53 mutated/deleted lymphoma cell lines expressing a low amount of CD20, but also circulating primary cells purified from chronic lymphocitic leukemia patients. Their safety was demonstrated in healthy mice, and their therapeutic effects in a new model of Burkitt's lymphoma. The latter serves as a prototype of an aggressive lympho-proliferative disease. In vitro and in vivo data showed the ability of anti-CD20 nanoparticles loaded with Hydroxychloroquine and Chlorambucil to increase tumor cell killing in comparison to free cytotoxic agents or Rituximab. These results shed light on the potential of anti-CD20 nanoparticles carrying Hydroxychloroquine and Chlorambucil for controlling a disseminated model of aggressive lymphoma, and lend credence to the idea of adopting this therapeutic approach for the treatment of B-cell disorders.


Budding yeasts have a rigid cell wall that the yeast must be able to remodel during vegetative growth and pheromone-induced morphogenesis. Wsc1 and Mid2 are cell surface transmembrane proteins with an O-glycosylated extracellular NH2-terminal domain and an intracellular COOH-terminus, which are proposed to serve as sensors for cell wall integrity. Philip and Levin showed that the cytoplasmic domains of Wsc1 and Mid2 were able to interact with Rom2 (a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rho1, which is crucial for cell wall remodeling) and that Wsc1 and Mid2 stimulated Rho1 activation (measured as loading of guanine triphosphate analog). The authors identified PMT2, which encodes a protein mannosyl transferase, as a gene that yields an additive cell lysis defect in a wsc1Δ background. Pmt2 was exclusively responsible for catalyzing the glycosylation of Mid2, and defective Mid2 glycosylation resulted in impaired Mid2 stimulation of mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 in response to pheromone. Philip, B., and Levin, D.E. (2000) Wsc1 and Mid2 are cell surface sensors for cell wall integrity signaling that act through Rom2, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rho1. Mol. Cell. Biol. 21: 271-280. [Abstract] [Full Text]


Jouk P.-S., Mourad A., Milisic V., Michalowicz G., Raoult A., Caillerie D., Usson Y. Analysis of the fiber architecture of the heart by quantitative polarized light microscopy. Accuracy, limitations and contribution to the study of the fiber architecture of the ventricles during fetal and neonatal life. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg. 2007 May ; 31(5):915-21.


The main function of radiochemical surveillance in a nuclear power plant is to monitor the transport of radioactive materials in and out of various systems, including the fuel integrity evaluation and the control of radioactive material release to the environment. Radiochemical analyses of iodine activities in the reactor coolant to assess fuel integrity during normal operation and to characterize the nature of fuel failure are demonstrated. Assessment of fission products released by the so-called recoil process is emphasized in the study. Measurements of 91Sr and 92Sr in reactor water are recommended as the recoil indicators and to determine the fuel particle contamination on fuel surfaces. In an operating BWR/6 with a recoil level at ~1.2 × 1013 fission/s operated at ~2980 MW(thermal), ~30 g of fuel particle contamination was estimated.


The aim of this study is to find out what are the project success factors that may play significant role in knowledge management dissemination through the Malaysian Institute of higher learning. In general this study wish to build a research framework based on a strong theoretical and literature review background. The survey instruments employed in Malaysian Higher learning Institutes knowledge management practices. To show the current situation and future prediction it was necessary to examine variables through Statistical analysis with the software package for windows. This paper reviews and identifies required variables that are associated with the successful knowledge transfer and project success in Malaysians Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL). Knowledge Management Independent variables should reflect successful knowledge transfer and project success, as direct and indirect relationships exist between procure proper knowledge and practices, Strong leadership, Robust ICT Infrastructure, Value based organization, Successful knowledge Sharing and project success. The proposed model idea & elements emerged from successful frameworks and partially tested in Malaysians Institute of higher Learning. Due to the small number of sample size and the convenient method of data collection, the possibility of biases of the authors may play a major role of the study output. The focal objective of the research is that it's proposing a new model for gaining project success through successful knowledge transfer. This study proposed a conceptual framework that requires further exploration and leading away for future research.


The knowledge on thermal properties of food material to be preserved is considered
as one of the basic requirements for conducting heat transfer studies and hence to
design proper heat transfer equipments such as refrigerators, freezers and cold
storages. The local designers obtain those thermophysical properties data from
Europe and America (Ansari et al., 2002).
Experimental measurements have been carried out for the specific heat, mass
density, water content, thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of Malaysian
freshwater Pangasius Sutchi fish during precooling process. The mass density was
determined by measuring mass and volume of the fish samples and the water content
was measured gravimetrically through drying of fish samples in oven. The remaining
properties were calculated by empirical formula, which correlated these properties
with water content of fish.
The most significant part in the experimental work was designing and fabrication of
an air blast cooling plant of constant 1 O C air stream temperature. This plant has played the vital role in minimizing the error of the used techniques as well as thermal
diffusivity determination.
A non-dimensionalized mathematical model of temperature variation with time and
spatial coordinates was made and solved by finite difference method. Factors
affecting the solution have been investigated thoroughly to deliver the most accurate
and reliable results with the shortest computational time. The r,alculation procedure
has been developed and proposed for heat transfer and simultaneous heat and mass
transfer model. The proposed scheme showed more superior results when compared
with the results reported in the literature and yielded consistently good agreements
with the measurements.
Three approaches of estimating the surface film conductance (h) during air-blast
cooling process were developed by the present author. Based on the above
mathematical model, a comparison between the developed and five of the existing
literature approaches was made to identify the best one. A thorough investigation
was conducted to establish the most suitable and reliable method of measuring the
thermal diffusivity of Pangasius Sutchi out of important methods reported in the
literature. Due to its superiority, Ansari's method was adapted to calculate the
thermal diffusivity, through the transient temperature measurements at five known
locations in the fish flesh and at the surface. The estimated h was used in this method
to deliver reliable values of a.
Four lots of fish samples were preserved in 4 chillers set at 0, 3, 5 and 10°C for 28
days according to normal practice. During the course of cold preservation, the which comprises overall acceptance (consumer acceptability acc). Secondly,
chemical tests, which included the pH and Thiobarbituric acid (TBA) tests. These
tests play the main role in determining the development of rancidity evolution in the
fish under present investigations. ?he last type of test was the thermal diffusivity
determination through transient temperature measurements across the muscles
orientation, as well as along the n~uscleso rientation.
The above study has revealed that the consumer acceptability (acc), pH and TBA
value were found to be strongly dependent upon temperature and time of cold
preservation. The results of acc and PH led to yield a graphical solution by which the
consumer acceptability and the shelf life of the fish, during cold storage, could be
predicted.
TBA was correlated with thermal diffusivity ratio (a/a) to develop a tool by
which rancidity of fish could be predicted without going through the chemical test,
hence, a new quality deterioration index was developed. When the value of
a 1a ,+sh= 1.0 indicates absolutely fresh sample, and a/a pex>, 1 . O the lesser the
freshness.


Concerns over the impacts of fishing practices, especially bottom trawling, on the ocean environment have been expressed at the local, national and international scale. While physical alterations of the seabed by bottom trawling are known to occur, the biological effects on benthic communities and their recovery rates depend on substrate types, depth, and natural disturbance in the fishing area, as well as how trawl gears are designed and operated. In this thesis, I investigate different key research aspects regarding the subject of development of seabed friendly bottom trawls, in particular shrimp trawling in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The complementary use of different research approaches (e.g., underwater video observations, numerical modeling and simulation, flume tank testing, and at-sea experiments) were applied for each of the research questions.
First, I investigated the behavioural interactions of individual snow crab in response to the rockhopper footgear of a traditional inshore shrimp trawl used in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. I found that snow crab were quickly overtaken under the footgear of the approaching trawl and over half of the snow crab (i.e., 54%) observed experienced an encounter with the rockhopper footgear components. The majority of the snow crab observed appeared to be aware of the trawl and were actively responding and/or reacting to the approaching threat. Second, the strengths and limitations of different commercially available trawl simulation software (i.e., DynamiT, SimuTrawl, and Trawl Vision PRO) in terms of design capability, simulation capability, and reliability of results, were investigated and interpreted. The study provides valuable knowledge and reference for stakeholders (e.g., gear designers, researchers, and educators) who are considering using numerical simulation methods to optimize their gear design concepts during the early stages of development of seabed friendly bottom trawls (e.g., predict expected mechanical stresses of trawl components on the seabed). Next, I addressed the question of how well computer simulation and flume tank testing of scale engineering models actually predict full-scale at-sea performance of bottom trawls. The results demonstrated that the complementary use of two or three methods should be encouraged for assisting the gear development cycle given their own weakness and merits. For instance, the flume tank testing method was successfully utilized to estimate the percentage of contact area made by trawl footgear with the seabed, while at-sea experiments were not designed to measure such impacts. Moreover, I clarified that the precision and accuracy of the predictions depends on many factors. Thus, thoroughness and care must be emphasized in order to reduce bias in predicted performance. Finally, I examined the effectiveness of a reduced seabed impact footgear (i.e., drop chain) over a traditional rockhopper footgear on identical bottom trawls targeting northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The results demonstrated that seabed impacts of shrimp trawling can be reduced if the trawl footgear is made lighter and/or designed to have less contact with the seabed. In particular, it was revealed that with the experimental drop chain footgear trawl we are able to reduce the interaction or encounter of snow crab.
In summary, the knowledge presented in this thesis is believed to significantly contribute to the research and development of low-impact bottom trawls both in theoretical and practical aspects. While the potential impact of bottom trawling activities on habitats and benthic communities is not easy to predict and characterize for various reasons, I do believe that further development and application of fishing gears and techniques that reduce impacts on seabed habitats and associated benthic communities will be essential to achieve ecosystem objectives.


Acrylamide is a chemical compound formed when carbohydrate-rich food is placed in the heating process with temperatures above 120°C. Many studies have discussed the toxicity and carcinogenicity effects of acrylamide producing neurotoxin, genotoxin, and cytotoxin. After ingestion, acrylamide undergoes metabolism which is catalyzed by the CYP2E1 enzyme into its epoxide compounds, glycidamide. Both acrylamide and glycidamide are very reactive to DNA and can form DNA-adducts, which are known to be genotoxic and cytotoxic. Glycidamide is known to have a higher affinity for DNA compared to its precursors, so it can be said that glycidamide is the ultimate carcinogen of acrylamide. Human exposure to acrylamide can be obtained from a few factors, such as occupational exposure, food exposure, and cigarette smoke. However, studies found that dietary intake is the major source of acrylamide and glycidamide exposure. To determine the risk of acrylamide and glycidamide exposure to humans from dietary intake, it is necessary to analyze its concentration levels in the blood. One of the biosampling methods that can be used is Dried Blood Spot (DBS). The quantitative analysis was conducted using Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). This article review aims to analyze the bioanalytical method that is most suitable for the analysis of acrylamide and glycidamide in DBS using LC-MS/MS. Furthermore, it is necessary to examine the relationship between dietary intake with acrylamide and glycidamide levels in the blood, as well as knowing the potential carcinogenicity of both analytes to humans, especially glycidamides.


Abstract As a result of the Securities and Exchange Commission's relaxation of its prohibition against the marketing of private placements, investors will soon be exposed to a broad array of syndicated commercial real estate investments. Private placement commercial real estate investments are illiquid and so cannot be easily valued by reference to frequent transactions in the same asset in active markets. We have reviewed over 200 syndicated commercial real estate private placement memorandums and find that virtually all include projected cash flows. This study explains how investors and their advisors can use these projections to develop estimates of investment value. We determine a lower bound for discount rates applicable to the cash flows derived from commercial real estate and apply the methodology to an actual commercial real estate private placement investment. Our findings suggest significant overvaluation by commercial real estate private placement investment sponsors even when using conservative estimates of discount rates.


Virtual Teams (VTs) offer great advantages but have different challenges compared with co-located teams. This study explores using blogs and email to see if improvements can be made to virtual team effectiveness. This preliminary study is qualitative in nature and uses a quasi-experiment to compare 2 teams performing the same project; one uses email while the other uses a blog tool. Once the project was complete the participants filled out a Q-sort and a short survey. Additional analysis of the artefacts generated by the experiments also form part of the result set. The key benefits of using the blog were hoped to be; increase team trust, increase team performance and output, increase team satisfaction and realise a communication tool that could be used in a virtual team environment. The main findings were; the qualities of the output deliverable from both teams were nearly the same; those using the blog reported 'having a sense of fun' and 'individual satisfaction', while the email team reported 'the current status of the project was easily viewed'.


In this paper we introduce the ISW (Interval Sliding Window) algorithm, which is applicable to numerical time series data streams and uses as input the combined Hoeffding bound confidence level parameter rather than the maximum error threshold. The proposed algorithm has two advantages: first, it allows performance comparisons across different time series data streams without changing the algorithm settings, and second, it does not require preprocessing the original time series data stream in order to determine heuristically the reasonable error value. The proposed algorithm was implemented in two modes: off line and online. Finally, an empirical evaluation was performed on two types of time series data: stationary (normally distributed data) and non stationary (financial data).


Abstract The widespread leiodid genus Agyrtodes Portevin is revised. All known species are redescribed and illustrated, and the following new species are described: A. flaviceps Seago, A. globosus Seago, A. monteithi Seago, A. newtoni Seago, A. variabilis Seago (all from Australia, northern Queensland), and A. lescheni Seago (New Zealand, South Island). A lectotype is designated for Mesocolon varius Broun, a previously-recognized junior synonym of A. nebulosus (Broun). Agyrtodes disparatus Szymczakowski is synonymized with A. monticola (Broun). Agyrtodes is expanded to include species without a lacinial spore-brush, as this otherwise diagnostic character is absent from the koebelei species-group. A key is provided to the world species of Agyrtodes, and the morphology of the genus is described and illustrated.


Energy wasting charge recombination is an efficiency limiting process in efforts to achieve solar energy storage. Here, density functional theory is used to explore the thermodynamics of photochemical energy storage reactions in several ruthenium polypyridyl complexes where heterolytic halogen-carbon bond scission occurs after light-induced formation of the triplet metal to ligand charge transfer ((3)MLCT) state, as seen in the following reaction: [Ru(II)(A)(n)(L-X)](2+) + hν → [Ru(III)(A)(n)(L-X)(•-)](2+)* → [Ru(III)(A)(n)(L·)](3+) + X(-) (L = polypyridine ligand; X = Cl, Br, and I; A = ancillary ligand). A thermochemical cycle is employed to determine structural and electronic factors influencing ΔE(rxn). Significant energetic penalties in the oxidation of the metal center are mitigated through methylation of ancillary ligands or introduction of amine ancillary ligands. Methylation of the halogenated ligand maintains energy stored in the (3)MLCT state. Reduction in ΔE(rxn) is obtained by exploiting strain in the coordination geometry or in sterically encumbered ligands that is released upon bond breaking. Formation of a contact ion pair is significantly more favorable than complete separation of charged products, and shows negative ΔE with respect to the (3)MLCT state in certain cases. Future tunability in stored energy may be achieved through careful manipulation of ligand structure and charge on ancillary ligands.


This paper employs an analytic framework based on organizational incentives to explain the failure of recent welfare reform efforts. The data consists of observations, interviews, and routine inhouse reports collected on a federally funded program, Project STAR. The project was developed with the aim of mobilizing lower-class and minority families of the mentally retarded in support of reform of mental retardation services in five cities in the U.S. A service-inducement strategy was pursued by the reform organization to overcome the difficulties of enticing lower-class families of the retarded to participate in organizational activities. This strategy appears to have had several unintended consequences on the reform project. The concern with identifying and providing social services became a major preoccupation of the reformers. To the extent to which parents did participate because of the receipt of welfare benefits, this diminished the reform organization's autonomy relative to the existing welfare network. A further impact of this serviceinducement strategy was political demoralization of the parents of the retarded. The "service" focus appears to have attracted parents the least predisposed towards community change. Once involved in the organization, the impact of organizational activities was of reinforcement of this predisposition. Analysts of welfare reform organizations need to pay greater attention to the cooptative impact of welfare benefits. The data suggests the failure of community mobilization can be explained by the organizational incentives used. The problem reform organizations face is in finding the proper mix of purposive, material and solidary inducements which both recruit and retain participants, at the same time allowing the pursuit of mobilization goals.


1) Background and Objectives: Position in space and passage of time are encoded in the firing of thalamic, hippocampal and entorhinal cortices in rodents. Head direction cells have been reported in freely moving monkeys, and differential brain patterns have been observed in humans while playing a navigation video game and in response to changes in electromagnetic fields. The sensitivity of organisms to environmental and electromagnetic cues could explain recommendations from a traditional system of architecture, Vastu architecture, which recommends aligning homes to the cardinal directions. 2) Hypothesis: Vastu architecture predicts that facing east and north are more advantageous than facing west and south. If facing east and north are more advantageous, then subjects should show distinct EEG patterns and improved performance when facing east and north compared to west or south. 3) Materials and Methods: EEG coherence patterns from 32-channel EEG and time-to-complete jigsaw puzzles were compared while subjects faced the four cardinal directions. 4) Results: When facing east and north, subjects' frontal beta2 and gamma EEG coherence were significantly higher, and they assembled jigsaw puzzles significantly faster than when facing west or south. 5) Discussion: The brain findings fit the performance data. Better focus, which would reasonably be related with faster performance, is associated with higher levels of beta2 and gamma coherence. 6) Conclusion: These data support the possibility that the human brain may be sensitive to cardinal directions. This highlights how intimately we are connected to the environment and suggests a factor that may be important in orienting work spaces and designing class rooms.


This research aims to investigate the contributions of Turkish pre-school children's levels of positive/ conflicting relationships with their mothers and close/conflicting relationships with their teachers in predicting their adjustment to school. The sample of the study consists of 190 six-year-old children attending public preschools in Adana (a city in southern Turkey), as well as their mothers and teachers. For the data analysis, hierarchical regression analysis has been conducted. The results of the study show the positive relationship established with the mother and teacher to be related to an increase in children's school-adjustment behaviours. A positive relationship has been noted for positive mother-child relationships with children's cooperative participation, self-directedness, and total school adjustment. The results indicate a positive link for closeness in the teacher-child relationship with school liking, cooperative participation, self-directedness, and total school adjustment. Additionally, a positive relationship has been observed for the conflictive teacher-child relationship with school avoidance. An inverse relationship has also been observed for the conflictive teacher-child relationship with cooperative participation, self-directedness, and school adjustment. As conflicts with a teacher increase, the child's school adjustment decreases.


Projected rainfall decline in southern Africa is likely to be highly sensitive to subtleties in the local atmospheric circulation. In an effort to understand the regional circulation complexities, a novel algorithm is developed to identify the Congo air boundary (CAB) in ERA-5, a high-resolution reanalysis dataset. The CAB, a forgotten feature of the circulation, is defined in the austral spring and early summer, using surface humidity gradients and near-surface wind convergence lines, and it is found to be an indicator of the location of the southern edge of the African rain belt. A related convergence-line and dryline feature, described in this paper as the Kalahari discontinuity (KD), is also identified. It is established that either a dryline CAB or KD is present in southern Africa for over 95% of days between August and December, with arc lengths typically exceeding 10°. The seasonal and diurnal cycles of the CAB and the KD are presented, and their prevalence in station observational data is confirmed. The interannual variability of the CAB latitude and detection frequency is found to explain at least 55% of interannual spring rainfall variability in southern Africa between 15° to 25°S. Links are established with the Angola and Kalahari heat lows and tropical temperate trough events.