Depending on the goals to be achieved, there are many ways to calculate a company's profits. This is to a great extent due to the different aims of financial and tax accounting. Financial accounting is undergoing a growing influence of IAS/IFRS. IFRS is also exerting a growing influence on tax accounting. This is especially visible in the European development of a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) for multinational corporate entities. Although no formal link exists between IAS/IFRS and CCCTB, IFRS will likely be a strong material influence on various key elements of the CCCTB. Many tax professionals (and Member States) fear the influence of IAS/IFRS on tax accounting mainly given the divergent aims of IAS/IFRS and tax accounting. The introduction of IAS/IFRS will have significant consequences for tax accounting, disclosure and corporate law accounting concepts in individual Member States. Since IAS/IFRS is strongly influenced by the Anglo-American view on accounting, a question arises regarding its potential influence on the various continental disclosure, tax and financial accounting systems. In other words, one can readily envision a confrontation of systems with totally different backgrounds. This insightful work focuses on the consequences of this 'clash of cultures' for tax accounting, disclosure and corporate law accounting concepts.


Complexes of 3- (4'-pyridyl)-4-phenyl-1,2,4-triazole-5-thione (PpytTH) have been prepared with Cr (III), Zr (IV), V (V), Nb (V) and Ta (V) ions and the structures of the complexes have been investigated by physico-chemical methods. All these complexes are diamagnetic except the Cr (III) complexes, which has magnetic moment equal to 3.79 BM corresponding to octahedral sp3d2 hybridization. In all the complexes, bonding to the metal ions has occurred through sulphur. This has resulted in the blue shifting of thio amide band I, band II and band III, splitting of band II and red shifting of the thio amide band IV from 785 cm-1 in the ligand to 770-750 cm-1 in the complexes. UV and visible spectra of complexes have been interpreted and crystal field calculations have been done for Cr (III) complexes only.


Identifying topics and concepts associated with a set of documents is a task common to many applications. It can help in the annotation and categorization of documents and be used to model a person's current interests for improving search results, business intelligence or selecting appropriate advertisements. One approach is to associate a document with a set of topics selected from a fixed ontology or vocabulary of terms. We have investigated using Wikipedia's articles and associated pages as a topic ontology for this purpose. The benefits are that the ontology terms are developed through a social process, maintained and kept current by the Wikipedia community, represent a consensus view, and have meaning that can be understood simply by reading the associated Wikipedia page. We use Wikipedia articles and the category and article link graphs to predict concepts common to a set of documents. We describe several algorithms to aggregate and refine results, including the use of spreading activation to select the most appropriate terms. While the Wikipedia category graph can be used to predict generalized concepts, the article links graph helps by predicting more specific concepts and concepts not in the category hierarchy. Our experiments demonstrate the feasibility of extending the category system with new concepts identified as a union of pages from the page link graph.


In this thesis, a face recognition system based on swarm intelligence is developed. Swarm intelligence can be defined as the collective intelligence that emerges from a group of simple entities; these agents enter into interactions, sense and change their environment locally. A typical system for face recognition consists of three stages: feature extraction, feature selection and classification. Two approaches are explored. First, Bacterial Foraging Optimization(BFO), in which the features extracted from Principal Component Analysis(PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA) are optimized. Second, Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO), which optimizes the transform coefficients obtained from the Discrete Cosine Transform(DCT) of the images. PCA, LDA and DCT are all appearance-based methods of feature extraction. PCA and LDA are based on global appearance whereas DCT is performed on a block by block basis exploring the local appearance-based features. Finally, for classification Euclidean distance metric is used. The algorithms that have been applied are tested on Yale Face Database.


The shortage of fully certified special education teachers is a significant problem in the United States that may jeopardize the quality of education for students with disabilities. This shortage is most evident in areas where children are living in poverty. The goal of this study was to better understand the shortage issue from the perspective of highly qualified special education teachers' regarding why they remain teaching students with disabilities in low-income schools.
The study involved nine Nationally Board Certified special education teachers from Cook County, Illinois, who were teaching students with disabilities in low-income schools in kindergarten through eighth grade and teaching students with various disabilities across multiple settings. All the participants were special education teachers for six or more years and had expressed their intent to remain in the field. Study participants were selected purposefully based on certain characteristics relevant to the study. Participants were interviewed twice face to face, utilizing a narrative interview, a general interview guide, and follow-up phone interview.
Particular themes were identified as a result of participants' frequent comments upon a certain topic that became central to understanding why experienced special education teachers remain teaching students with disabilities in low-income schools. The result of this process is represented by seven themes that emerged from the data revealing certain qualities. Two central categories represent the themes that captured experienced Nationally Board Certified special education teachers' perceptions of why they remain teaching students with disabilities in low-income schools. The two central categories that synthesize and explain the research findings are labeled: "Go-Getter" and "Professional Fit." The "go-getter" qualities these participants believed they possess as well as the extent to which teaching is a good "professional fit" appeared to play a large role in teachers' decisions to remain in the field.
A better understanding of why good teachers choose to remain has implications for recruitment and retention policies at the school district level, and for the design of professional development activities that may encourage teacher candidates, novice teachers, and experienced teachers to remain teaching students with disabilities in low-income schools.


In this essay, Luévano initiates a theological reflection on the cases of the approximately 250 missing and 500 murdered women of Juárez-Chihuahua, Mexico. The women are victims of femicide, the murder of women by men. Luévano's main purpose is to engage femicide as a theological challenge. After presenting a brief description of the social, political, and economic conditions that have fostered violence against women in Northern Mexico, the author focuses on exploring how the mutilated and dismembered bodies of these women call for an appropriate theological analysis. Finally, the essay concludes with a reflection on the power and the necessity of developing theological and ethical responses to the reality of femicide.


Professional document editing tools require a certain level of expertise to perform complex edit operations. To make editing tools accessible to increasingly novice users, we investigate intelligent document assistant systems that can make or suggest edits based on a user's natural language request. Such a system should be able to understand the user's ambiguous requests and contextualize them to the visual cues and textual content found in a document image to edit localized unstructured text and structured layouts. To this end, we propose a new task of language-guided localized document editing, where the user provides a document and an open vocabulary editing request, and the intelligent system produces a command that can be used to automate edits in real-world document editing software. In support of this task, we curate the DocEdit dataset, a collection of approximately 28K instances of user edit requests over PDF and design templates along with their corresponding ground truth software executable commands. To our knowledge, this is the first dataset that provides a diverse mix of edit operations with direct and indirect references to the embedded text and visual objects such as paragraphs, lists, tables, etc. We also propose DocEditor, a Transformer-based localization-aware multimodal (textual, spatial, and visual) model that performs the new task. The model attends to both document objects and related text contents which may be referred to in a user edit request, generating a multimodal embedding that is used to predict an edit command and associated bounding box localizing it. Our proposed model empirically outperforms other baseline deep learning approaches by 15-18%, providing a strong starting point for future work.


The Blackburn Buccaneer was the first jet aircraft that was especially designed for very low flying under the radar at high subsonic speeds. It was developed in the fifties and entered service at the Royal Navy in 1962. Later, it also flew as an attack bomber at the R.A.F. and it even played a role during the Gulf War in 1991, before being retired in 1994 after an operational career that spanned three decades.


Insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 1 (IGFBP-1) is important in regulating minute-to-minute IGF bioavailability in the circulation and is primarily an inhibitor of IGF action systemically and in most cellular systems. Understanding regulation of IGFBP-1 is, thus, important in understanding regulation of IGF actions. The IGFBP-1 promoter contains a cAMP response element, and cAMP stimulates IGFBP-1 gene expression at the transcriptional level. Recently, we have found three consensus sequences for the hypoxia response element in intron 1 of the IGFBP-1 gene. Herein, we have investigated the effects of hypoxia and a cAMP analog, 8-bromoadenosine-3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (8-Br-cAMP), on IGFBP-1 expression in HepG2 cells, a model system for IGFBP-1 gene regulation. HepG2 cells were exposed to normoxia (20% pO2) or hypoxia (2% pO2) for 24 h in the absence or presence of 8-Br-cAMP (0.1, 0.5, and 1 mM). Western ligand blotting revealed IGFBP-1 as the predominant IGFBP in HepG2-conditioned media, which increased in a dose-dependent manner after incubation with 8-Br-cAMP in normoxia and hypoxia (3-fold and 7-fold at 1 mM, respectively). Under hypoxic, compared with normoxic, conditions, IGFBP-1 protein and messenger RNA (mRNA) levels increased approximately 10-fold and 20-fold, respectively. In normoxia, 8-Br-cAMP stimulated IGFBP-1 protein and mRNA levels in a dose-dependent manner (7-fold and 10-fold at 1 mM). Hypoxia and 8-Br-cAMP showed additive stimulatory effects on IGFBP-1 protein and mRNA levels (35-fold and 50-fold at 1 mM) that were time and dose dependent. Primary transcripts of IGFBP-1 mRNA were increased concordantly with IGFBP-1 mRNA. The half-life of the IGFBP-1 mRNA was markedly increased (approximately 6-fold) by hypoxia, and cAMP minimally enhanced this effect. These results demonstrate that hypoxia and compounds that increase intracellular cAMP additively regulate IGFBP-1 gene expression by transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms. Regulation of IGFBP-1 mRNA and protein by cAMP and hypoxia may be important for understanding the physiologic and pathophysiologic roles of IGFBP-1.


Southern Ocean (S. Ocean) clouds are important for climate prediction. Yet previous global climate models failed to accurately represent cloud phase distributions in this observation‐sparse region. In this study, data from the Southern Ocean Clouds, Radiation, Aerosol, Transport Experimental Study (SOCRATES) experiment is compared to constrained simulations from a global climate model (the Community Atmosphere Model, CAM). Nudged versions of CAM are found to reproduce many of the features of detailed in situ observations, such as cloud location, cloud phase, and boundary layer structure. The simulation in CAM6 has improved its representation of S. Ocean clouds with adjustments to the ice nucleation and cloud microphysics schemes that permit more supercooled liquid. Comparisons between modeled and observed hydrometeor size distributions suggest that the modeled hydrometeor size distributions represent the dual peaked shape and form of observed distributions, which is remarkable given the scale difference between model and observations. Comparison to satellite observations of cloud physics is difficult due to model assumptions that do not match retrieval assumptions. Some biases in the model's representation of S. Ocean clouds and aerosols remain, but the detailed cloud physical parameterization provides a basis for process level improvement and direct comparisons to observations. This is crucial because cloud feedbacks and climate sensitivity are sensitive to the representation of S. Ocean clouds.


A great story has drama, mystery, conflict, interesting characters, intrigue, and excitement. The story of tuberculosis (TB) has all of these. It is a story of epic proportions. Carol Dyer's Tuberculosis (Biographies of Disease) is not a textbook or a history book; it tells us the story of this fascinating but deadly disease.

Dyer, a science writer, takes us from the mummies of ancient Egypt, with their visible signs of TB, to the skepticism that met Robert Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus, to today's global TB public health emergency. Thought by many to be a disease of the past, the final chapters of the book jolt us into today's reality.

As the drama unfolds, Dyer describes how TB ravaged Europe's working class during the industrial revolution. More personal accounts from the Romantic Age are especially interesting. She tells us how 6 siblings of the famed literary Bronte family died of TB. She describes the tragic death from TB of the poet John Keats at age 26. And the personal anecdotes continue; from the scientists who advanced our knowledge of TB to the artists whose lives and art were affected. By describing its influence on literature and the arts, Dyer brings to life the profound effects of TB on humanity.

Her discussion of the victories and setbacks in the fight against TB provide a context for what she considers to be the story's main plot: how is it possible that TB remains a leading cause of death from infectious disease globally? Her description of the complex biology of the organism and the societal characteristics of the disease help us understand why, despite the discovery of effective chemotherapy, TB continues to devastate.

The final chapters provide a sobering picture of the current state of TB. Dyer describes the serious effect of the HIV epidemic on TB and warns of the alarming rates of more dangerous forms of drug-resistant TB. However, the story she tells ultimately becomes a hopeful one. She discusses how the world community has come together, leading to new funding initiatives and prevention and control strategies.

This book is a quick and easy read (120 pages). However, the organization of its 8 chapters is peculiar. The reader might be tempted to skip to the third chapter on the history of TB or even stop reading, as he or she get bogged down in some of the medical details in the first 2 chapters. Occasional overuse of technical detail gets in the way of the story. Sidebars with anecdotes and scientific summaries, scattered throughout, are a nice addition to the format of the book. The timeline at the end is also helpful.

The book falls short in describing the epidemiology of TB. More quantitative information would provide the reader with a better understanding of the magnitude of the problem. Despite this issue and several minor technical inaccuracies, the book is informative and at times exciting. It captures all the elements of this great story. Overall, this book is a great read for public health professionals and the general public. For the reader engaged in global public health efforts, the book should be a call to action.


ABSTRACTMonitoring atmospheric deposition fluxes (dry and wet deposition) is of great importance in tracing the environmental fate and behavior of PCDD/Fs. To further understand the characteristics of both dry and wet PCDD/F deposition in Northern China, two cities, namely Harbin and Shijiazhuang were investigated. During 2014, in Harbin, the monthly dry deposition fluxes of total-PCDD/Fs-WHO2005-TEQ ranged between 308 and 1290 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 month–1, with an annual flux of 8240 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1; however, in Shijiazhuang, the dry deposition fluxes ranged from 699 to 2230 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 month–1, with an annual 15400 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1. Monthly dry deposition velocities of particle phase total-PCDD/Fs-WHO2005-TEQ are similar, ranging between 0.42 and 0.94 cm s–1 (average 0.59 cm s–1) and between 0.42 and 0.92 cm s–1 (average 0.6 cm s–1) in Harbin and Shijiazhuang, respectively. Due to the low level of rainfall in Northern China, the monthly wet deposition fluxes were in the range of 3–79.9 (369 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1) and 0–140 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 month–1 (622 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1) in Harbin and Shijiazhuang, respectively. In addition, the average scavenging ratios of total-PCDD/Fs-WHO2005-TEQ were 31900 and 30700 in Harbin and Shijiazhuang, respectively. Combined with dry and wet deposition, the annual total (dry + wet) deposition flux in Shijiazhuang (16100 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1) is 1.9 times of magnitude higher than that in Harbin (8610 pg WHO2005-TEQ m–2 year–1). The results indicated that the dry deposition flux was the major mechanism for removal of PCDD/Fs from the atmosphere in Northern China. By examining both the PM2.5 level and total-PCDD/Fs-WHO2005-TEQ deposition in Northern China, and comparing the values with those found in other places, it is clear that there is an urgent need to control the particulate emissions in this area.


At the August 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the White House brought together government officials from 50 African countries. The historic gathering in Washington focused on trade and investment in Africa, drawing scores of investors and American business executives. During the summit, Milken Institute staff members had the opportunity to attend these two events: the Institute's Corporate and Investor Roundtable, and Doing Business in Tanzania, organized by the Corporate Council on Africa.The roundtable gathered leaders in the business and governance community, while Doing Business in Tanzania addressed that country's focus on investing in infrastructure. In this white paper, we explore the importance of infrastructure in the growth of East African countries, the role of pension funds in infrastructure development, the emergence of a new East African bloc, and the emerging role of Tanzania in East Africa.We found compelling arguments for the tremendous potential of the East African Community (EAC) if Tanzania were to become more active member. Looking at the success of pension funds stimulating infrastructure growth in Chile as well as examining current prospects in the EAC countries, it has become apparent that a well-connected EAC could lead to exceptional economic opportunity.


This paper attempts to analyze and isolate the effects of income inequality on the difference between poverty rates amongst the Black and White population by state in 2010, using each state's GINI coefficient estimate as the inequality measurement. In addition, the author proposes an alternative income distribution measurement to try and further interpret the effects of a particular state's income allocation on its poverty rate differential. This paper will also discuss, and attempt to quantify, other factors that could affect disparity in poverty rates between Black and White Americans, such as incarceration rates. The author finds that there is some evidence that a higher state GINI coefficient corresponded with a smaller magnitude of difference between Black and White poverty rates, while a higher variance in allocation amongst income brackets corresponded with an increase in the magnitude of the poverty rate differential. This article is available in The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/ur/vol17/iss1/7 Inequality, Incarceration, and Black-White Poverty Rate Differentials


INTRODUCTION
Exposure to continuous or impulse noise may lead to High Sound Pressure Induced Hearing Loss (HSPIHL) or to acoustic trauma in soldiers. Auditory evaluation by means of evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAE) has been demonstrating its importance in the detection of subtle changes in cochlear function still unidentified in threshold tone audiometry in subjects exposed to noise.

OBJECTIVE
Studying Distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) before and after exposure to impulse noise in soldiers of the Brazilian Army.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
This is an analytical, observational, longitudinal and prospective study. Auditory evaluation was performed by means of DPOAEs in 60 soldiers before and after exposure to impulse noise, of whom 30 were reevaluated immediately after exposure and 30 were reevaluated 24 hours after exposure.

RESULTS
The statistical analysis revealed that both groups reevaluated after exposure to impulse noise showed a decrease in amplitudes in comparison with the tests before exposure. As for the signal/noise ratio, there was a significant difference at the frequencies of 6 and 8KHz and there was a significant association between a tinnitus complaint and the group reevaluated immediately after exposure to noise.

CONCLUSION
The DPOAE test proved sensitive to detect subtle shifts after exposure to impulse noise, both with regard to the amplitude criterion and with regard to the signal/noise ratio even 24 hours after exposure. This demonstrated the applicability of the DPOAE test in monitoring the hearing of soldiers exposed to impulse noise.


Residual cysts are inflammatory odontogenic cysts that are usually asymptomatic and present on a post-extraction site. Mostly incidentally detected on imaging, or expansion of affected region, or pain and drainage, these cysts may arise from inflammatory fibrous and granulation tissue at the apex/ periapical region of a tooth not curetted at the time of dental extraction. A 50-year-old Iranian man complaining of absence of tooth in the upper front jaw region. Radiograph revealed the presence of a well-defined well-corticated radiolucent lesion in the area underlying the edentulous ridge, suggestive of a residual cyst. Presentation, diagnosis and management of the lesion followed by prosthetic rehabilitation are discussed.


One in 68 children has been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a disorder defined by 1) deficits in social-communication and social interactions and 2) restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities. Research has shown that children with ASD who receive high-quality early intervention (EI) services in university-based research trials can make large gains in cognitive, communication, and adaptive behaviors skills, with positive long term effects. However, less is known about the outcomes for the over 50,000 children who receive EI in community settings. This dissertation provides initial evidence of the current state of community-based EI for children with ASD. Chapter 1 presents a meta-analysis of cognitive, communication, social, and adaptive behavior outcomes for children with ASD in community-based EI programs, and demonstrates that the gains made in the community are much smaller than those observed in university-based trials. In Chapter 2, prospective, longitudinal data collected from a local EI system is studied to understand which characteristics of preschool EI predict cognitive gains for 79 preschoolers with ASD that received publicly-funded services in classroom placements. The best predictor of gains was the utilization of recommended intervention practices to support the development of social and peer relationships. Chapter 3 discusses measurement of executive functioning (EF) among preschoolers with ASD, as executive functioning skills likely play an important role in response to EI. However existing EF measures have not been validated for use with low-functioning, nonverbal preschoolers with ASD. Results are presented from the development and the validation of a battery of nonverbal, performance-based EF tasks. These measures can be utilized in future community-based treatment trials. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor David S. Mandell


Mixtures of starch and lignocelluloses are available in many industrial, agricultural, and municipal wastes and residuals. In this work, dilute sulfuric acid was used for simultaneous pretreatment of lignocellulose and hydrolysis of starch, to obtain a maximum amount of fermentable sugar after enzymatic hydrolysis with cellulase and β-glucosidase. The acid treatment was carried out at 70-150°C with 0-1% (v/v) acid concentration and 5-15% (w/v) solids concentration for 0-40 minutes. Under the optimum conditions, obtained at 130°C, 1% acid, and 7.5% solids loading for 30 min, the starch was almost completely converted to glucose. However, the acid treatment was not successful for efficient hydrolysis of pure cellulose. A mixture of pine softwood and potato as representatives of lignocellulosic and starch components, respectively, were treated at the optimum conditions for acid hydrolysis of starch. The dilute-acid treatment resulted in 1.2, 60.5, and 23.6% hydrolysis of glucan, xylan, and mannan of pine wood and 67% of potato starch to fermentable sugars. After the acid treatment, the solid residue of the mixture was subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis. The enzymatic hydrolysis under the optimum conditions resulted in conversion of 76% of the glucan in the treated softwood. Therefore, using acid treatment of the mixture is a promising process for pretreatment of wood in addition to the hydrolysis of starch.


The bovine enzootic hematuria is a chronic disease that causes tumors in the bladder, and the cytophatologic test could assist in the early diagnosis. Aimed to standardize the technique of harvesting, obtaining samples and cytophatologic evaluation of bovine urinary bladder washing with bovine enzootic hematuria, 10 adult cows were divided into two groups: A (all the liquid infused in the bladder was recovered) and B (only the latter liquid was recovered). Liquids recovered were subjected to cytophatological evaluation. It was observed that the final volume of bladder liquid was higher in group A, however, in relation to the number of cells, no significant difference (p > 0.05) was observed between groups. The amount of inflammatory cells and epithelial cells obtained per sample revealed that in both groups all animals had more inflammatory cells than epithelial cells, however, there was no difference between the type of washing done. The epithelial cells were found in 60% of cases, the alterations observed were discretes and it was not possible to classify any sample as hyperplastic or neoplastic. Data from this study showed that the cytophatological examination of bovine urinary bladder washing may aid in the diagnosis of bovine enzootic hematuria and the two harvesting methods employed were adequate for obtaining viable samples. Cytopathological evaluation allowed the identification of non-neoplastic lesions predominantly inflammatory. It is believed that the use of molecular markers in cytological samples is important for early detection of pre-neoplastic or neoplastic lesions in these animals.


The Climie Formation, which is about 460 metres thick in the type section of the
Dundas Group, contains the youngest known fossils within the Dundas Group. Just south
of the Murchison Highway bridge over the Dundas Rivulet the Climie Formation is overturned,
sheared and contains poorly preserved fossils in two main horizons, which are
well exposed in road cuttings.
The lower fauna occurs about 200 metres below the top of the formation, while the
upper fauna occurs about 145 metres below the top of the formation. The lower fauna
contains the inarticulate brachiopods Angulotreta(?) sp., and Lingulella(?) sp., plus
the trilobites described herein as Olenus sp., Neoagnostus sp., Agnostus sp., and
Ceratopygidae, gen et sp. indet. Five fragmentary trilobite specimens are left in
open nomenclature. The upper fauna contains the inarticulate brachiopods described
herein as Lingulella(?) sp., and Acrotretidae, incertae sedis plus the trilobites
Agnostus sp., Lotagnostus(?) sp., Peltura(?) sp., and an unassigned member of the
Olenidae. It is suggested that the lower fauna is probably of early post-Idamean age,
with the higher fauna being slightly younger. Both faunas are of a cosmopolitan
nature and indicate easy communication with the open ocean at the time of deposition.


Abstract The study examines yes/no questions in the Ẹ́dó language with the aim of identifying the morphemes that function as yes/no question markers. Relying on primary data generated from a survey, the study proposes that there are five overt yes/no question markers in the language. Four of these question markers (té, yí, rà, and kué) have been discussed in the literature, but this study provides a different account of the role of té in polar questions, and suggests that another morpheme, i.e., nè can be classified as a yes/no question marker. Furthermore, the study reveals that the question markers are homonyms of other lexical and functional words. This has implications for the distribution of the question markers, as the co-occurrence with their homonyms yields unacceptable sentences. The paper describes this constraint on the use of the markers within the framework of Distributed Morphology.


The paper explores the impact of export diversification on the economic growth in Pakistan. Augmented Dickey Fuller unit root test Bound F test results, estimated long run coefficients and ARDL short run Error Correction Model (ECM-ARDL) results applied for the empirical estimation of the study. Gross domestic product per capita, export diversification, is stationary at first difference and real effective exchange rate and population density are stationary at level. Export, real effective exchange rate and population density positively effect on economic growth. Human capital formation is negatively affected on economic growth. The bound testing approach to Co integration is used during 1980 to 2015. This test suggests that in long run series of interest are linked together. In the mid of year equilibrium is fairly fast and restored. Government should increase discoveries because about foreign demand would lead to imitation and therefore increased local production for exports and higher growth. Government should therefore intervene by creating the right incentives for investment.


Species-specific equations to predict uncompacted crown ratio (UNCR) from compacted live crown ratio (CCR), tree length, and stem diameter were developed for 24 species and 12 genera in the southern United States. Using data from the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis program, nonlinear regression was used to model UNCR with a logistic function. Model performance was evaluated with standard fit statistics (root mean squared error, mean absolute error, mean error, and model efficiency) and by comparing the results of using the observed and predicted UNCR values in secondary applications. Root mean squared error for the regression models ranged from 0.062 to 0.176 UNCR and averaged 0.114 UNCR across all models. Height to live crown base calculations and crown width estimations based on the observed and predicted UNCR values were in dose agreement. Overall, the models performed well for the Pinus and Taxodium genera and several individual hardwood species; however, model performance was generally poar for the Acer, Quercus, and (arya genera.


This In Brief highlights local ni-Vanuatu support structures initiated through workers' participation in Australia's Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme (RSE). It draws on recent interviews with workers, families, recruiters, leaders, chiefs and a support group in Vanuatu. In May 2016, more than 600 RSE workers and 64 SWP workers returned to Vanuatu. During a field trip in April 2016, just before their return, stakeholders insisted RSE and SWP were detrimentally affecting family structures. The social impacts of seasonal labour mobility schemes are described in various academic works; however, they are yet to be investigated in detail.


INTRODUCTIONIntramedullary spinal cord tumors (IMSCTs) are difficult lesions to treat given their recurrence rate and limited treatment options. Absence of an adequate animal model, however, has hindered the development of new treatment paradigms. In this study we describe the technique for intramedullary injection of two experimental rodent gliomas (9L and F98), and present the methodology for functional and histopathological analysis of tumor progression. METHODSF344 rats (n = 24) were randomized into three groups. Group 1 (n = 8) received a 5μl intramedullary injection of Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM), Group 2 received a 5μl intramedullary injection of 9L gliosarcoma (100, 000) cells and Group 3 received a 5μl intramedullary injection of F98 glioma (100, 000) cells. Animals were anesthetized, a 2 cm incision was made in the dorsal mid-thoracic region, and the spinous process of the T5 vertebrae was removed to expose the intervertebral space. The ligamentum flavum was removed and an intramedullary injection was made into the spinal cord. Animals were evaluated daily for signs of paralysis using the Basso, Beattie, and Bresnahan (BBB) scale and euthanized after onset of deficits for histopathological analysis. RESULTSAnimals injected with 9L-gliosarcoma had a median onset of hind limb paresis at 12 ± 2.9 days. Animals injected with F98 glioma had a median onset of hind limb paresis at 19 ± 3 days. Animals injected with DMEM did not show neurological deficits. H & E cross sections confirmed the presence of intramedullary 9L and F98 tumor invading the spinal cord. Control animals had no significant histopathological findings. CONCLUSIONSAnimals injected with 9L or F98 consistently develop hind limb paresis in a reliable and reproducible manner. The progression of neurological deficits is similar to that seen in patients with IMSCTs. These findings suggest that this model mimics the behavior of IMSCTs in humans and may be used to examine the efficacy of new treatment options for both low and high grade intramedullary tumors.


A hands-on guide to creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA) using BlazeDS BlazeDS enables you to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real time to Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR applications in order to garner more responsive Rich Internet Application (RIA) experiences. It is a scalable option for Flex and Java integration and allows you to create excellent RIAs with both Flex and Java. This informative resource provides you with detailed examples and walkthroughs that explain the best practices for creating RIAs using BlazeDS. You'll begin with the essentials of BlazeDS and then more on to more advanced topics. Along the way, you'll learn the real-world concerns that surround enterprise-based Java and Flex applications. BlazeDS enables you to connect to back-end distributed data in order to garner more responsive Rich Internet Application (RIA) experiences Begins with an introduction to BlazeDS, and explains the necessary features for integrating new and existing Java data sources and applications with Flex-based RIAs Provides hands-on examples and addresses real-world concerns surrounding enterprise-based Java and Flex applications Serves as a comprehensive walk through for creating RIAs using BlazeDS If you're looking to create rich, productive, and engaging applications, then this book is for you. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.


Refactorings are behaviour-preserving program transformations, typically for improving the structure of existing code. A few of these transformations have been mechanised in interactive development environments. Many more refactorings have been proposed, and it would be desirable for programmers to script their own refactorings. Implementing such source-to-source transformations, however, is quite complex: even the most sophisticated development environments contain significant bugs in their refactoring tools.We present a domain-specific language for refactoring, named JunGL. It manipulates a graph representation of the program: all information about the program, including ASTs for its compilation units, variable binding, control flow and so on is represented in a uniform graph format. The language is a hybrid of a functional language (in the style of ML) and a logic query language (akin to Datalog). JunGL furthermore has a notion of demand-driven evaluation for constructing computed information in the graph, such as control flow edges. Borrowing from earlier work on the specification of compiler optimisations, JunGL uses so-called `path queries' to express dataflow properties.We motivate the design of JunGL via a number of non-trivial refactorings, and describe its implementation on the.NET platform.


Abstract. Every day new tools and algorithms for automated image processing and 3D reconstruction purposes become available, giving the possibility to process large networks of unoriented and markerless images, delivering sparse 3D point clouds at reasonable processing time. In this paper we evaluate some feature-based methods used to automatically extract the tie points necessary for calibration and orientation procedures, in order to better understand their performances for 3D reconstruction purposes. The performed tests – based on the analysis of the SIFT algorithm and its most used variants – processed some datasets and analysed various interesting parameters and outcomes (e.g. number of oriented cameras, average rays per 3D points, average intersection angles per 3D points, theoretical precision of the computed 3D object coordinates, etc.).


The objective of this work is to investigate the degree of integration of national pigmeat markets in the EU. This is pursued using monthly wholesale prices from seven major markets and the statistical tool of mixed R-vine copulas. The empirical results suggest that the markets considered do not constitute a great pool in which prices move, boom, and crash together. The markets of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands exhibit a higher degree of integration relative to the others, whereas the Italian market exhibits a lower degree of integration. Also, there is an indication that, in certain cases, the benefits of free trade may be unequally distributed between the trading partners.


According to the European Association for the Study of the Liver, hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the main causes of chronic liver disease in the world, with about 3% of the population infected, many unknowingly. Most new cases of HCV are transmitted through intravenous or nasal drug use and to a lesser degree medical or blood transfusions. The standard of care for people with chronic HCV is pegylated interferon and ribavirin. HCV has been categorised into six genotypes (1–6), with the majority of cases being genotype 1. Typical treatment duration for HCV should be 48 weeks for type 1 and 24 weeks for types 2 and 3.

Telaprevir would seem to be the preferred product of the two medications. The telaprevir formulation has a few advantages compared with boceprevir. Boceprevir has to be stored in the refrigerator and patients have to take six more tablets per day. In addition, the duration of treatment for boceprevir requires it to be used for the full 48 weeks compared with just 12 weeks for telaprevir. Both of these medications are the start of groundbreaking advances in the treatment of HCV, with second-generation products already in the works! The second generation are predicted to decrease the treatment time of HCV to just 12 weeks. In the meantime, these products will bring a …


Introduction Fluoride in drinking water is known to exert both beneficial and detrimental effects on health. When consumed in excess, it is known to cause adverse effects including dental fluorosis, hip fracture, bone cancer, lower intelligence, and kidney toxicity plus goiter. Aim This study was carried out to determine the histological changes that might occur on thyroid follicular cells after the administration of sodium fluoride and evaluate their reversibility. Materials and methods To conduct the experiment, 30 healthy adult male albino rats were randomly divided into three groups: group I (control group), group II (experimental group), which received sodium fluoride water (200 ppm) daily through an orogastric tube for 1 month, and group III (withdrawal group), which received sodium fluoride water similar to group II, and were then killed 1 month after fluoride withdrawal. Rats were killed under ether anesthesia and blood samples were subjected to hormonal assays of T3, T4, and TSH thyroid stimulating hormone. The thyroid gland tissue samples were removed and processed for light microscopic examination of toluidine blue-stained semithin sections and electron microscopic examination (TEM). Results Sodium fluoride significantly decreased T3, T4, and TSH levels in group II, which did not revert to normal levels in group III. Examination of semithin sections of thyroid glands of group II showed distension of follicles that were lined with flattened cells. Most of the follicles showed shedding of the epithelial lining and others showed focal stratification with papillary formation. Follicular cells had dark pyknotic nuclei and vacuolated cytoplasm. Ultrastructural changes included loss of apical microvilli, dilated rER rough endoplasmic reticulum, many lysosomes, irregular dark nuclei, focal loss of epithelial lining or focal proliferation, and papillary formation. Group III showed the same changes as the control group, which indicated no recovery. Conclusion The results of this study question the validity of fluoridation of drinking water, milk, fruit juices, and salt by public health authorities and also the steps taken to prevent the side effects of excess fluorine and iodine deficiencies in endemic fluorosis areas.


For sexual health organisations, establishing a safe space to talk about sensitive topics is an important prerequisite for information exchange and open dialogue. With the popularity of social media and mobile phones, these safe spaces are moving online. This article examines one of these spaces, the Love Matters Kenya Facebook page, as an example of a sexual health organisation using social media to discuss sexuality with young people. We observed interactions on the Facebook page over a period of six weeks, and also led an online focus group discussion. The results showed that the key elements of a safe space are: good moderation; users' ability to create their own online personas; and a community atmosphere that enables trust and social relationships to grow.


Fibromyalgia (FM) is a pathology that is manifested by a spectrum of heterogeneous symptoms that are difficult to frame, from both a diagnostic and therapeutic point of view. On one hand, the clinical features are highly variable, and on the other, the pathophysiology has yet to be fully clarified. This paper aims to highlight how oxygen ozone – administered using a precise protocol from the Scientific Society of Oxygen Ozone Therapy – is able to act on several levels of the pathophysiology of FM by virtue of its intrinsic biochemical mechanisms, making it a viable option for treating the disease. The following case study – a 45 year old woman who came to our attention due to diffuse pain and a feeling of general tiredness – responded positively to a standard treatment with oxygen-ozone therapy delivered via bi-weekly sessions, for a total of 12 sessions from September to October 2016. The treatment was followed by a maintenance therapy of about one session a month. One month after the end of the 12 sessions, the patient reported a significant improvement in pain, mood, and a significant reduction in fatigue, a new feeling of well-being and an improved quality of sleep. In the light of these results, oxygen-ozone therapy emerges as a viable therapeutic option for the treatment of FM patients.


To the extent concurring opinions elicit commentary at all, it is largely contempt. They are condemned for muddying the clarity of the law, fracturing the court, and diminishing the authoritative voice of the majority. But what if this neglect, or even disdain, of concurring opinions, is off the mark? In this article, we argue for the importance of concurring opinions, demonstrating how they serve as the pulse and compass of legal change. Concurring opinions let us know what it is happening below the surface of the law, thereby encouraging litigants to push the law in particular directions. This is particularly true of a type of concurrence we identify here for the first time: the "pivotal" concurrence. Pivotal concurrences occur when one or more members of a court majority also choose to write separately, undercutting the majority's rule in the case. Under the Supreme Court's "rule of five," lower courts ought to disregard pivotal concurrences and adhere to the majority opinion. But as we show here, that is hardly the case.
Utilizing a dataset created for this purpose, we demonstrate that pivotal concurrences are more common than one might think, are becoming yet more so, and — despite the Supreme Court's admonition to the contrary — taken quite seriously by lower courts. Especially in constitutional, salient cases, lower courts appear to disregard a binding majority opinion in favor of the path offered by the concurrence. Rather than condemning this, we rely on the historical development of concurrences to show the vital function they play in motivating and smoothing the way for legal change. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we argue, there is beauty in a fractured court. Precisely in those cases that are most high-stakes and most contentious, it is important that the Justices reveal their individual views. Those views publicly send essential signals to litigants and lawyers about where legal change is possible, and where it is not, helping both to temper expectations, and to move the law itself.


Conventional interpretation workflows require a limited number of key horizons to be mapped. These are used to construct a generalized geologic model on the basis of which economic decisions are made. In the process, gigabytes of data are reduced to just a few kilobytes of interpreted data, during which potentially valuable information is often lost.


The use of cell phone text messaging to improve access to continuing healthcare education in under-resourced settings is not well documented. We aimed to assess whether this method of education is acceptable to South African midwives in both the public and private sectors. Essential healthcare lessons from the Maternal Care book of the Perinatal Education Programme (PEP) were delivered via text message to more than 2 500 midwives each week for a period of 6 months. Each message concluded with a link to a website, where additional information about each lesson could be accessed. Results of a survey, conducted with 50 of the message recipients, demonstrated that the text messages were well received by the midwives; the information was widely shared with colleagues and was believed to improve learning and patient care. Lack of access to the internet, or failure to utilise this facility to obtain additional information, indicated that limitations still exist in internet-based distance education, especially in the public sector. The use of text messaging promises to provide cost-effective learning opportunities, and improve a wide range of clinical services, such as the management of HIV-infected children and adults.


The main goal of our studies has been to use MRI, FDG‐PET, and CSF biomarkers to identify in cognitively normal elderly (NL) subjects and in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the earliest clinically detectable evidence for brain changes due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). A second goal has been to describe the cross‐sectional and longitudinal interrelationships amongst anatomical, CSF and cognition measures in these patient groups. It is now well known that MRI‐determined hippocampal atrophy predicts the conversion from MCI to AD. In our summarized studies, we show that the conversion of NL subjects to MCI can also be predicted by reduced entorhinal cortex (EC) glucose metabolism, and by the rate of medial temporal lobe atrophy as determined by a semi‐automated regional boundary shift analysis (BSA‐R). However, whilst atrophy rates are predictive under research conditions, they are not specific for AD and cannot be used as primary evidence for AD. Consequently, we will also review our effort to improve the diagnostic specificity by evaluating the use of CSF biomarkers and to evaluate their performance in combination with neuroimaging. Neuropathology studies of normal ageing and MCI identify the hippocampal formation as an early locus of neuronal damage, tau protein pathology, elevated isoprostane levels, and deposition of amyloid beta 1‐42 (Aβ42). Many CSF studies of MCI and AD report elevated T‐tau levels (a marker of neuronal damage) and reduced Aβ42 levels (possibly due to increased plaque sequestration). However, CSF T‐tau and Aβ42 level elevations may not be specific to AD. Elevated isoprostane levels are also reported in AD and MCI but these too are not specific for AD. Importantly, it has been recently observed that CSF levels of P‐tau, tau hyperphosphorylated at threonine 231 (P‐tau231) are uniquely elevated in AD and elevations found in MCI are useful in predicting the conversion to AD. In our current MCI studies, we are examining the hypothesis that elevations in P‐tau231 are accurate and specific indicators of AD‐related changes in brain and cognition. In cross‐section and longitudinally, our results show that evaluations of the P‐tau231 level are highly correlated with reductions in the MRI hippocampal volume and by using CSF and MRI measures together one improves the separation of NL and MCI. The data suggests that by combining MRI and CSF measures, an early (sensitive) and more specific diagnosis of AD is at hand. Numerous studies show that neither T‐tau nor P‐tauX (X refers to all hyper‐phosphorylation site assays) levels are sensitive to the longitudinal progression of AD. The explanation for the failure to observe longitudinal changes is not known. One possibility is that brain‐derived proteins are diluted in the CSF compartment. We recently used MRI to estimate ventricular CSF volume and demonstrated that an MRI‐based adjustment for CSF volume dilution enables detection of a diagnostically useful longitudinal P‐tau231 elevation. Curiously, our most recent data show that the CSF isoprostane level does show significant longitudinal elevations in MCI in the absence of dilution correction. In summary, we conclude that the combined use of MRI and CSF incrementally contributes to the early diagnosis of AD and to monitor the course of AD. The interim results also suggest that a panel of CSF biomarkers can provide measures both sensitive to longitudinal change as well as measures that lend specificity to the AD diagnosis.


AbstractThe use of a human-rights-based approach to the analysis and interpretation of age-related issues has marked a paradigm shift with regard to a stage of life that has traditionally been associated with a wide range of unmet needs, and the United Nations has made an extremely valuable contribution to this change. In the case of older persons, however, there is no legally binding instrument that protects their rights, as there is for other groups that are subject to discrimination. In order to remedy this situation, the extremely disparate norms that now exist will have to be consolidated.The Brasilia Declaration, issued in 2007 at the Second Regional Intergovernmental Conference on Ageing in Latin American and the Caribbean and ratified the following year by ECLAC in resolution 644(XXXII), gave rise to two important mandates for addressing this situation, inasmuch as it called upon participating governments to work towards the development of an international convention on the rights of older persons and to designate a special rapporteur to look into relevant issues.This publication seeks to supplement earlier contributions made by CELADE in respect of the first of those mandates. To that end, it begins by examining the conceptual and theoretical models underlying the approach taken to issues on the academic and political agendas that are of concern to older persons. An overview is then provided of international and regional norms relating to the promotion and protection of the rights of older persons. This discussion is accompanied by an analysis of national laws for the protection of the rights of older persons in Latin America. Arguments for an international convention on older persons' rights are then put forward from the perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean, together with a discussion of the essential components of such an instrument. Finally, the discussion turns to measures for moving towards the approval of such a convention that could be taken at a regional level. In addition to the full texts of the Brasilia Declaration and general recommendation No. 27 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, there are two other annexes that provide very useful information on possible components of a future international convention on the rights of older persons and their sources and on the content and sources of legislation on the rights of older persons in the countries of the region.


A slide preparation method for seawater samples preserved in acid Lugol's is presented here as an alternative to the traditional Utermöhl settling chamber method for microplankton analysis. This preparation maintains the integrity of fragile cells, such as ciliates, resolves issues associated with the transience of samples prepared in settling chambers, and allows the use of automated image acquisition methods. Samples are filtered onto polycarbonate membranes and analyzed with transmitted light microscopy. The visibility of pore outlines is minimized by using mounting oil (Cargille Series A immersion oil, Certified Refractive Index, nD25°C 1.5840 ± 0.0002) with a refractive index matching that of the membrane material. We assessed the efficacy of this new method by comparing abundance and biomass estimates for ciliates in settled and filtered samples. Acceptable results were found for the most delicate of samples stored long‐term in acid Lugol's. Some cell shrinkage occurred during the filtration and brief drying steps. Therefore, corrections for ciliate length and width measurements in filtered samples were determined to counteract this effect on total cell biovolume. Overall, the method provides a simple and stable alternative to settling chamber analysis for ciliates preserved in acid Lugol's.


Empirical analyses of cases from federal courts have attempted to determine the effect ofjudges' political ideology on their decisions. This question holds interest for scholars from many disciplines. Investigating judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies should provide strong evidence on the question of political influence because applicable rules of judicial deference to administrative decisions ought to lead judges to reach politically neutral results. Yet several studies have found a strong correlation between results in these cases and proxies for political ideology. Cases involving the interpretation of environmental law have been of particular interest as a subset of this research because political ideology is also thought to predict views on environmental regulation. Nevertheless, an earlier work offered initial evidence that this phenomenon may not hold in cases involving review of agency decisions administering the Wilderness Act of 1964. Indeed, the cases showed a pro-wilderness tilt in the outcomes, rather than a pro-agency tilt. This Article builds on that earlier evidence. It first provides an overview of empirical studies of environmental decisions in federal courts and then reviews the Wilderness Act and current problems arising in the administrative application of it. The Article then analyzes whether ideological proxies employed in earlier studies strongly correlate with the outcome of the Wilderness Act cases using standard statistical analysis. The analysis shows a lack of correlation between politics and the aggregate outcome of wilderness decisions, namely a tilt in a pro-wilderness direction.


Equity does not exist for all citizens with access to a clean, safe, and stable environment. In our present day, a number of urban populations suffer from the effects of heavy and disproportionate pollution from our major roadways and systems. Institutionalized racism and classism are pervasively linked to the development of large scale infrastructure in the United States. This thesis explores the historic roots of environmental racism through an assessment of the placement of the United States Interstate system, an infrastructural juggernaut which provided employment and an incentivized lifestyle for millions of upper class white Americans at the cost of minority neighborhoods, cultural hubs, and business centers. Using an assortment of quantitative data from sources such as the New York City 2010 Census, this thesis tracks racial and class demographics along the Interstate system, drawing a link between proximity, race, and socioeconomic status. At the same time it keeps in mind the modern contexts environmental racism has, highlighting the impact of highway placements on the health of those forced to live in close proximity to its margins, from increased rates of asthma and heart disease to psychological fragmentation as a result of noise pollution. It also addresses the economic motivations and implications of the Interstate system, as well as other urban infrastructural systems and discusses policy tools such as subsidies and eminent domain which have lawfully permitted racial and classist discrimination. In assessing both the history of environmental racism, the contemporary manifestations of it, and the correlation between policy and pollution, this thesis provides a number of policy solutions in an attempt to chip away at the systems which manipulate the environment to satisfy their own greed at the cost of millions of low income and minority lives.


Background
The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA)
was founded in the United States of America in 1898 as the National Association of Retail Druggists (NARD). It represents pharmacist owners, managers, and employees of more than 23 000 independent community pharmacies in the USA. The independent pharmacies, independent pharmacy franchises, and independent chains dispense nearly half of the retail prescription medicines generated in the USA.


In relation to developing leadership skills during tertiary studies, this paper considers the leadership pathway afforded by a Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) program which includes the traditional PASS Leader role and a more senior PASS Mentor role. Data was collected using a structured survey with open-ended questions designed to capture the personal experiences and self-reported learning outcomes of students undertaking leadership roles within the PASS program. Twelve aspects of leadership are presented from twenty-three Leaders and Mentors: organisation, facilitation, support, attitude, relationships, role model, collaboration, communication, responsibility, decision making, pedagogy, and session management. The qualitative differences between the comments of the Leaders and the Mentors highlight the pathway of growth students undertaking the PASS roles may experience as they move from Leader to Mentor. The more senior PASS Mentor role provides an avenue for developing leadership capabilities beyond the traditional PASS Leader role. In contributing to peer learning in higher education, this study positions leadership within the PASS/SI context and potentially alongside tertiary leadership programs more generally.


ABSTRACT Background: The consumption of fruits, vegetables, and dietary supplements correlate. Most previous studies have aimed to identify the determinants of supplement uses or the distinct features of supplement users; this literature lacks a discussion on dietary supplement consumption as a predictor of fruit and vegetable consumption. Objective: This study examines how dietary supplement consumption correlates with fruit and vegetable consumption by combining scanner data and surveys of Korean household grocery shopping. Methods: Propensity score matching (PSM) is used to identify the relationship between dietary supplement consumption and fruit and vegetable consumption in a household. A logit regression using supplement consumption as the dependent variable is used. Then, the supplement takers (the treatment group) are matched with non-takers (the control group) based on the propensity scores estimated in the logit regression. The fruit and vegetable consumption levels of the groups are then compared. Results: We found that dietary supplement use is associated with higher fruit and vegetable consumption. This supports the health consciousness hypothesis based on attention bias, availability heuristics, the focusing effect, and the consumption episode effect. It rejects the health substitute hypothesis based on economic substitutes and mental accounting. Conclusions: Future research on the health benefits of dietary supplements should address the complementary consumption of fruits/vegetables and their health benefits to avoid misstating the health effects of supplements.


This thesis considers multi-prover commitment schemes
 whose security is based on restrictions on the communication between the
 provers. The results are applicable to so-called relativistic commitment
 schemes: schemes whose security is guaranteed by the fact that information
 does not travel faster than the speed of light.
 A commitment scheme is a cryptographic protocol solving the following
 problem: One party, the prover, has selected a value which he wants to keep
 secret at first. The prover wants to have the option to reveal it to the
 other party, the verifier, at a later time, but the verifier wants a
 guarantee that no value other than the originally selected one can be
 revealed.
 Standard commitment schemes can only be proven secure with computational
 hardness assumptions. This can be circumvented by splitting the prover into
 multiple entities and restricting their communication, e.g., no communication
 at all, or communication only with a delay (as in relativistic commitment
 schemes).
 This dissertation introduces new methods for analyzing and designing such
 multi-prover schemes. As an application, we show that the Lunghi et al.
 commitment scheme from 2015 has much stronger security that their original
 analysis indicated.


Background: The enhancement in the performance of the myoelectric pattern recognition techniques based on deep learning algorithm possess computationally expensive and exhibit extensive memory behavior. Therefore, in this paper we report a deep learning framework named 'Low-Complex Movement recognition-Net' (LoCoMo-Net) built with convolution neural network (CNN) for recognition of wrist and finger flexion movements; grasping and functional movements; and force pattern from single channel surface electromyography (sEMG) recording. The network consists of a two-stage pipeline: 1) input data compression; 2) data-driven weight sharing. Methods: The proposed framework was validated on two different datasets- our own dataset (DS1) and publicly available NinaPro dataset (DS2) for 16 movements and 50 movements respectively. Further, we have prototyped the proposed LoCoMo-Net on Virtex-7 Xilinx field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform and validated for 15 movements from DS1 to demonstrate its feasibility for real-time execution. Results: The effectiveness of the proposed LoCoMo-Net was verified by a comparative analysis against the benchmarked models using the same datasets wherein our proposed model outperformed Twin- Support Vector Machine (SVM) and existing CNN based model by an average classification accuracy of 8.5 % and 16.0 % respectively. In addition, hardware complexity analysis is done to reveal the advantages of the two-stage pipeline where approximately 27 %, 49 %, 50 %, 23 %, and 43 % savings achieved in lookup tables (LUT's), registers, memory, power consumption and computational time respectively. Conclusion: The clinical significance of such sEMG based accurate and low-complex movement recognition system can be favorable for the potential improvement in quality of life of an amputated persons.


The peer review focused on occupational safety and health of posted workers (OSH) in the European Union (EU), an issue rarely addressed so far. The presentations and discussions during the peer review focused on the legal framework at both the EU level and the national levels. OSH related vulnerabilities of posted workers were systematically analysed and explained, and employer's role and responsibilities in relation to the OSH of posted workers discussed. As an illustrative example, a case of a work accident of a posted worker from Slovenia was presented. After the Slovenian case, the Italian and German cases were introduced. Discussions during the working groups additionally addressed legal and health care mechanism and practices in case of work-related accidents. Furthermore, ideas and suggestions on measures to prevent or reduce OSH-related vulnerabilities were exchanged.


The automatic inference of image semantics is an important but highly challenging research problem whose solutions can greatly benefit content-based image search and automatic image annotation. In this thesis, I present algorithms and statistical models for inferring image semantics and aesthetics from visual content, specifically aimed at improving real-world image search. First, a novel approach to automatic image tagging is presented which furthers the state-of-the-art in both speed and accuracy. The direct use of automatically generated tags in real-world image search is then explored, and its efficacy demonstrated experimentally. An assumption which makes most annotation models misrepresent reality is that the state of the world is static, whereas it is fundamentally dynamic. I explore learning algorithms for adapting automatic tagging to different scenario changes. Specifically, a meta-learning model is proposed which can augment a black-box annotation model to help provide adaptability for personalization, time evolution, and contextual changes. Instead of retraining expensive annotation models, adaptability is achieved through efficient incremental learning of only the meta-learning component. Large scale experiments convincingly support this approach. In image search, when semantics alone yields many matches, one way to rank images further is to look beyond semantics and consider visual quality. I explore the topic of data-driven inference of aesthetic quality of images. Owing to minimal prior art, the topic is first explored in detail. Then, methods for extracting a number of high-level visual features, presumed to have correlation with aesthetics, are presented. Through feature selection and machine learning, an aesthetics inference model is trained and found to perform moderately on real-world data. The aesthetics-correlated visual features are then used in the problem of selecting and eliminating images at the high and low extremes of the aesthetics scale respectively, using a novel statistical model. Experimentally, this approach is found to work well in visual quality based filtering. Finally, I explore the use of image search techniques for designing a novel image-based CAPTCHA, a Web security test aimed at distinguishing humans from machines. Assuming image search metrics to be potential attack tools, they are used in the loop to design attack-resistant CAPTCHAs.


Electric traction machines have been applied to both industrial variable-speed applications and electric vehicles. The induction machine (IM) is a potential candidate for traction machines due to the established industrial base. However, most of the existing studies on traction IM design rely on optimization algorithms or iterative calculation programs that subsequently give no clear understanding of the design requirements for field-weakening or extended speed operation. Hence, published procedures to guide IM design for traction applications are somewhat ad hoc to date. This article identifies the key IM design parameters required to achieve a traction characteristic within power supply constraints. As an example, a 120-kW electric vehicle traction machine is studied as a benchmark machine and then the proposed design procedure is employed to redesign the machine to improve its extended speed performance. Improvements in terms of efficiency and field-weakening capability are presented. The experimental results from the benchmark machine are used for validation of the subsequent simulation studies reported in this article. Finally, the identified parameters are shown to be similar with brushless permanent magnet machines. Thus, a generalized machine design philosophy can be concluded.


A plane jet is a statistically two-dimensional flow, with the dominant flow in the streamwise (x) direction, spread in the lateral (y) direction and zero entrainment in the spanwise (z) direction respectively (see Figure 1). A plane jet has several industrial applications, mostly in engineering environments, although seldom is a jet issuing through a smooth contoured nozzle encountered in real life. Notably, the Reynolds number and boundary conditions between industrial and laboratory environments are different. In view of these, it is important to establish effects of nozzle boundary conditions as well as the influence of Reynolds number, on jet development. Such establishments are essential to gain an insight into their mixing field, particularly relevant to engineering applications. To satisfy this need, this thesis examines the influence of boundary conditions, especially those associated with the formation of the jet and jet exit Reynolds number, on the flow field of a turbulent plane air jet by measuring velocity with a hot wire anemometer. A systematic variation is performed, of the Reynolds number Re over the range 1,500≤Re ≤16,500, the inner-wall nozzle contraction profile r* over the range 0≤r*≤3.60 and nozzle aspect ratio AR over the range 15≤AR≤72 (see notation for symbols). An independent assessment of the effect of sidewalls on a plane jet is also performed. Key outcomes are as follows: (1) Effects of Reynolds number Re: Both the mean and turbulence fields show significant dependence on Re. The normalized initial mean velocity and turbulence intensity profiles are Re-dependent. An increase in the thickness of boundary layer at the nozzle lip with a decrease in Re is evident. This dependence appears to become negligible for Re ≥10,000. The centerline mean velocity decay and jet spreading rates are found to decrease as Re is increased. Furthermore, the mean velocity field appears to remain sensitive to Reynolds number at Re = 16,500. Unlike the mean velocity field, the turbulent velocity field has a negligible Re-dependence for Re ≥10,000. An increase in Reynolds number leads to an increase in the entrainment rate in the near field but a reduced rate in the far field. The centerline skewness and the flatness factors show a systematic dependence on Reynolds number too. (2) Effects of the inner-wall nozzle exit contraction profile r*: The inner-wall nozzle exit contraction profile r* influences the initial velocity and turbulence intensity profiles. Saddle-backed mean velocity profiles are evident for the sharp-edged orifice configuration (r* ≈ 0) and top hat profiles emerge when r* ≥1.80. As r* is increased from 0 to 3.60, both the near and the far field decay and the spreading rates of the plane jet are found to decrease. Hence, the sharp-edged orifice-jet (r* ≈ 0) decays and spreads more rapidly than the jet through a radially contoured configuration (r* ≈ 3.60). The asymptotic values of the center-line turbulence intensity, skewness and flatness factors of the velocity fluctuations increase as r* tends toward zero. The non-dimensional vortex shedding frequency of StH ≈ 0.39, is higher for the sharp-edged orifice nozzle (r*≈ 0), than for the radially contoured (r* ≈ 3.60) nozzle whose StH ≈ 0.24. Thus, the vortex shedding should be strongly dependent on flow geometry and on nozzle boundary conditions. (3) Effects of nozzle aspect ratio AR: The initial velocity and turbulence intensity profiles are slightly dependent on nozzle aspect ratio of the plane air jet. It is believed that a coupled influence of the nozzle aspect ratio and sidewalls produce changes in the initial flow field. The axial extent over which a statistically 'two-dimensional' flow is achieved, is found to depend upon nozzle aspect ratio. This could be possibly due to the influence of the evolving boundary layer on the sidewalls or due to increased three-dimensionality, whose influence becomes significantly larger as nozzle aspect ratio is reduced. A statistically two dimensional flow is only achieved over a very limited extent for AR = 15. In the self-similar region, the rates of centreline velocity decay, spreading of the mean velocity field and jet entrainment increase with an increase in nozzle aspect ratio. An estimate of the critical jet aspect ratio, where three-dimensional effects first emerge and its axial location is made. Results show that the critical aspect ratio increases with nozzle aspect ratio up to AR <30. For AR≥30, the critical aspect ratio based on jet half width, attains a constant value of about 0.15. Thus, it appears that when the width of the flow approximately equals the spacing between the sidewalls, the plane air jet undergoes a transition from 2-D to 3-D. A distinct hump of the locally normalized turbulence intensity at an axial distance between 10 to 12 nozzle widths downstream, characterizes the centerline turbulence intensity for all nozzle aspect ratios. This hump is smaller when nozzle aspect ratio is larger. (4) Effects of the sidewalls: A jet issuing from a nozzle of AR = 60 and measured at Re = 7,000 is tested with sidewalls, i.e. plane-jet and without sidewalls, i.e. free-rectangular-jet. It is found that the entire flow field behaves differently for the two cases. The initial velocity profiles are top hat for both jets. The free rectangular jet decays and spreads more rapidly in both the near and far field. It is found that the free rectangular jet behaves statistically two-dimensional up to a shorter axial distance (x/H = 70) as opposed to the plane jet whose two-dimensional region extends up to x/H = 160. Also noted are that the axial extent of the two-dimensional region depends strongly on nozzle aspect ratio. Beyond the 2-D region, the free rectangular jet tends to behave, statistically, like a round jet. The locally normalized centerline turbulence intensity also depend on sidewalls. Turbulence intensity for the plane jet asymptotes closer to the nozzle (around x/H = 30) whereas for the free rectangular jet, turbulence intensity varies as far downstream as x/H = 100, and then asymptotes. A constant StH of 0.36 is found for the free rectangular jet whereas an StH of 0.22 is obtained for the plane jet. It is noted that the effects of jet exit Reynolds number, inner-wall nozzle exit contraction profile, nozzle aspect ratio and sidewalls on the plane air jet are all non-negligible. The effect of viscosity is expected to weaken with increased Reynolds number and this may contribute to the downstream effects on the velocity field. Both the nozzle contraction profile and nozzle aspect ratio provide different exit boundaries for the jet. Such boundary conditions not only govern the formation of the initial jet but also its downstream flow properties. Hence, the initial growth of the shear layers and the structures within these layers are likely to evolve differently with different boundary conditions. Thus, the interaction of the large-scale structures with the surroundings seems to depend on nozzle boundary conditions and consequently, influences the downstream flow. In summary, the present study supports the notion that the near and far fields of the plane jet are strongly dependent on Reynolds number and boundary conditions. Therefore, the present thesis contains immensely useful information that will be helpful for laboratory-based engineers in selection of appropriate nozzle configurations for industrial applications.


The main theme of this paper is that livestock production can make a significant contribution to the livelihoods of the poor and offers substantial scope for expansion to alleviate poverty. This potential is far from being realized, however, and there is much wider scope for the promotion of livestock, especially among poor rural communities, by national and international policy makers. Using Viet Nam as case study, this paper describes how information distilled from a variety of sources can be combined in an analytical approach termed 'integrated poverty assessment of livestock promotion' (IPALP), which aims at improving the general understanding about the role of livestock in poverty alleviation, while at the same time strengthening the basis of evidence on how policies can best support pro-poor development. Using a national and a sub-national social accounting matrix, policy experiments are conducted to assess the impact of an economy-wide policy of WTO-style trade liberalization, with and without concomitant livestock promotion. The results indicate trade liberalization with concomitant livestock promotion has higher overall positive impacts and plays an important role in offsetting adjustment costs. Tools for this kind of ex ante assessment can support more effective policies for outward oriented growth and poverty alleviation. PPLPI Research Report


Dealing with component interactions and dependencies remains a core and fundamental aspect of engineering, where conflicts and constraints are solved on an almost daily basis. Failure to consider these interactions and dependencies can lead to costly overruns, failure to meet requirements, and lengthy redesigns. Thus, the management and monitoring of these dependencies remains a crucial activity in engineering projects and is becoming ever more challenging with the increase in the number of components, component interactions, and component dependencies, in both a structural and a functional sense. For these reasons, tools and methods to support the identification and monitoring of component interactions and dependencies continuesto be an active area of research. In particular, design structure matrices (DSMs) have been extensively applied to identify and visualize product and organizational architectures across a numberof engineering disciplines. However, the process of generating these DSMs has primarily used surveys, structured interviews, and/or meetings with engineers. As a consequence, there is a high cost associated with engineers' time alongside the requirement to continually update the DSM structure as a product develops. It follows that the proposition of this paper is to investigate whether an automated and continuouslyevolving DSM can be generated by monitoring the changes in the digital modelsthat represent the product. This includes models that are generated from computer-aided design, finite element analysis, and computational fluid dynamics systems. The paper showsthat a DSM generated from the changes in the product models corroborates with the product architecture as defined by the engineers and results from previous DSM studies. In addition, further levels of product architecture dependency were also identified. A particular affordance of automatically generating DSMs is the ability to continually generate DSMs throughout the project. This paper demonstrates the opportunity for project managers to monitoremerging product dependencies alongside changes in modes of working between the engineers. The application of thistechnique couldbe usedto support existing productlife cycle changemanagement solutions,cross-companyproduct development, and small to medium enterprises who do not have a product life cycle management solution.


The largest gabbroic intrusion, Jiaoziyan, in the Northern Orthogneiss of the Dabie Shan was investigated to test whether such intrusions represent arc-related or collision-related magma, as postulated in recent regional tectonic models. The Jiaoziyan intrusions comprise a gabbro-monzogabbro suite and are locally characterized by cumulus textured anhydrous silicates. Petrologic indications against arc magmatism include (1) coexisting olivine-plagioclase compositions beyond the documented range of arc gabbros, and (2) a compositional trend of Al/Ti ratios in the gabbroic clinopyroxenes that is significantly different from subduction-related gabbros worldwide. In contrast, the Jiaoziyan rocks are mineralogically similar to rift gabbros. Geochronologic and geometric arguments against collision-related magmatism (i.e., as a consequence of slab breakoff) include the following: (1) crystallization of the Jiaoziyan mafic intrusion postdated the Triassic (245–240 Ma) subduction and peak orogenic metamorphism by ∼100 m.y. and (2) the rocks of the Dabie Cretaceous magmatic suite, including Jiaoziyan, are on the footwall plate, rather than on the hanging wall, of the Triassic subduction-zone framework and do not show a linear distribution. These observations argue that the voluminous Early Cretaceous magmatism in the Northern Orthogneiss is geodynamically unrelated to the Qinling-Dabie orogeny, but was caused by extensional tectonism related to regional magmatic underplating beneath the thinned Dabie crust.


Drawing on interviews with 16 lesbian mothers and co-parents, this paper considers the tension between law's recognition of the social and genetic aspects of parenting. Through findings from the interviews, it will be demonstrated that law remains unable to distinguish adequately between different dimensions of parenthood, and the rights and responsibilities that should be attached to each. The innovative approach lesbian parents take to defining and practicing parenthood is considered and it is suggested that some way of separating legally the fact of genetic parentage from the act of social parenting would be beneficial for all families.


Atmospheric flow over Iceland has been simulated for the period January 1961 to July 2006, using the mesoscale MM5 model driven by initial and boundary data from the ECMWF. A systematic comparison of results to observed precipitation has been carried out. Undercatchment of solid precipitation is dealt with by looking only at days when precipitation is presumably liquid or by considering the occurrence and non-occurrence of precipitation. Away from non-resolved orography, the long term means (months, years) of observed and simulated precipitation are often in reasonable agreement. This is partly due to a compensation of the errors on a shorter timescale (days). The probability of false alarms (the model predicts precipitation, but none is observed) is highest in N Iceland, particularly during winter. The probability of missing precipitation events (precipitation observed but none is predicted by the model) is highest in the summer and on the lee side of Iceland in southerly flows.


Ginkgo biloba is an ancient plant; leaves of this plant have been used in asthma and bronchitis for many centuries. A model of lung eosinophilia based on the repeated exposure of mice to allergen ovalbumin (OVA). This model was used to investigate the effect of Ginkgo biloba leaf powder extract (GBE) on airway inflammation and asthmatic lung. Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by reversible airway obstruction. Airway inflammation is the key factor in the pathogenesis of asthma and current strategies for the management focus on suppressing airway inflammation. Eotaxin is an eosinophils specific chemo attractant that has been recently identified in rodent models of asthma. Cytokines IL-4 or IL-13, especially in combination with tumor necrosis factor alph (TNF-α), resulted in substantial release of the potent eosinophil chemoattactic factor, eotaxin. Eosinophilic leukocytes accumulate in high number in the lungs of asthmatic mouse and are, believed to be important in the pathogenesis of asthma. To observe the effects of GBE on asthmatic mice, leukocytes and eosinophils migration were counted in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) . The production of IL-4, IL-13, and TNF-α were estimated in BALF. Moreover, the mRNA expression of eotaxin was analyzed in BALF by RT-PCR. The present study showed that, there was correlation between eotaxin level and eosinophils infiltration in the allergen OVA exposure group. The results revealed that, GBE markedly inhibit cells migration in BALF, in addition to, reduce the levels of IL-4, IL-13, and TNF-α . This reduction extends to the mRNA expression of eotaxin in BALF. The present results demonstrated that GBE can decrease the severity of asthma not only by suppressing eotaxin but also by inhibiting cytokines production In this research, we address the question of whether Ginkgo biloba leaf powder extract (GBE) can inhibit the eosinophils infiltration, eotaxin and cytokine production in asthmatic lung. (Ghada Tabl and Abd El-Hamid Mohamed Elwy. Evaluation of Ginkgo biloba as Alternative Medicine on Ova- Induced Eotaxin and Eosinophilia in Asthmatic Lung. Life Sci J 2013;10(1):2131-2136) (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 301


The object of this work (featuring the study of alignment of lines in
space) is to produce a novel system for automatic production of
optoelectronic components. It begins by reviewing the different
components associated with optical fibre transmission and examines
the existing laser-fibre coupling methods. The manual alignment
technique adopted by STC to align a laser beam with a monomode
optical fibre is then presented.
The various interpretations of alignment are explored. The results
obtained from the analysis determine the type of manipulator required
for laser to optical fibre coupling. The central axis of a divergent
beam emitted by a semi-conductor laser diode is manipulated for
alignment with the axis of the fibre. Such an alignment places
stringent displacement tolerance and accuracy demands on the
manipulator.
To construct a manipulator, actuators need to be coupled together.
The coWling methods are studied and presented. Prior to this study,
commercially available actuators are surveyed leading to the
selecticin of the Oriel Encoder Mike actuator. This actuator exhibits
some inherent control problems but meets the laser-fibre coupling
accuracy demands. Various types of couplings are also examined based
on the expansion of the Kelvin coupling for the construction of a
four degree of freedom manipulator. A computational algorithm
analogous to that used to solve two plane balancing problems is
sucessfully tested on this manipulator for alignment of a
conventional He-Ne laser beam with the centres of two transparent
screens. This algorithm requires linearity for its success. For this
reason and for purposes of completeness, spatial displacement
characteristics of the manipulator are analysed and confirmed
experimentally.
This work ends with the ocnstruction. and testing of a program based
on a hill climbing technique for the control of a three degree of
freedom (Oriel Encoder Mike) manipulator to align a laser beam
emitted by a semi-conductor laser diode with a monomode optical fibre.


Constituency campaigns are important phenomena for students of political parties, voting behaviour as well as political communication. These research communities perceive constituency campaigns as parts of centralised high-tech campaigns aiming in strategic ways at the efficient mobilisation of voters. We propose in this paper an alternative understanding of constituency campaigns using the case of the German parliamentary elections in 2005 to empirically test this understanding. We perceive constituency campaigns as phenomena signalling a relative independence of individual candidates from the national party campaign. We label this phenomenon individualised campaigning. We argue that individualised campaigning is driven among others by electoral incentives. We test this hypothesis with regard to the German mixed-member electoral system and on the basis of a survey of all candidates standing for election in 2005.


The aim of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of debridement, antibiotics, irrigation and retention (DAIR) in patients who developed a periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) after primary hip or knee arthroplasty in two community hospitals in the Netherlands. We retrospectively collected data in two hospitals in the Netherlands on all episodes of PJI after primary hip (THA) and knee arthroplasty (TKA) from 1998-2012. In 109 of 8234 THA (1.32%) and 65 of 5752 TKA (1.13%) a PJI developed. DAIR was used as treatment in 84 patients after THA (77.1%) and 56 patients after TKA (86.2%). 34 Patients only received antibiotics or were immediately revised. After 1 year follow-up, prosthesis retention was achieved in 81 THA patients (74.3%) and 48 TKA patients (73.8%). Acute infections showed a better survival compared to late infections (84.0% vs 46.6% respectively; p<0.01). Furthermore, a young age was associated with an increased revision risk (p<0.01). In conclusion, debridement, antibiotics and irrigation in acute PJI may lead to retention of the prosthesis in a majority of cases. Large patient cohort studies can provide data on PJI outcome, complementing National Registries which have limited detail.


The context of this research is testing and building software systems and, specifically, software language repositories (SLRs), i.e., repositories with components for language processing (interpreters, translators, analyzers, transformers, pretty printers, etc.). SLRs are typically set up for developing and using metaprogramming systems, language workbenches, language definition frameworks, executable semantic frameworks, and modeling frameworks. This work is an inquiry into testing and building SLRs in a manner that the repository is seen as a collection of language-typed artifacts being related by the applications of language-typed functions or relations which serve language processing. The notion of language is used in a broad sense to include text-, tree-, graph-based languages as well as representations based on interchange formats and also proprietary formats for serialization. The overall approach underlying this research is one of language design driven by a complex case study, i.e., a specific SLR with a significant number of processed languages and language processors as well as a noteworthy heterogeneity in terms of representation types and implementation languages. The knowledge gained by our research is best understood as a declarative language design for regression testing and build management, we introduce a corresponding language Ueber with an executable semantics which maintains relationships between language-typed artifacts in an SLR. The grounding of the reported research is based on the comprehensive, formal, executable (logic programming-based) definition of the Ueber language and its systematic application to the management of the SLR YAS which consists of hundreds of language definition and processing components (such as interpreters and transformations) for more than thirty languages (not counting different representation types) with Prolog, Haskell, Java, and Python being used as implementation languages. The importance of this work follows from the significant costs implied by regression testing and build management and also from the complexity of SLRs which calls for means to help with understanding.


This paper presents a novel approach to language modeling for voice search based on the idea and method of statistical machine translation. We propose an n-gram based translation model that can be used for listing-to-query translation. We then leverage the query forms translated from listings to improve language modeling. The translation model is trained in an unsupervised manner using a set of transcribed voice search queries. Experiments show that the translation approach yielded drastic perplexity reductions compared with a baseline language model where no translation is applied.


This study describes a comparison between melts and simulated stabilities of the same RNAs that could be used to benchmark RNA force fields, and potentially to determine future melt-ing experiments. Using umbrella sampling molecular simulations of three 12-nucleotide RNA hairpin stem loops, for which there are experimentally determined free energies of unfold-ing, we projected unfolding onto the reaction coordinate of end to end (5′ to 3′ hydroxyl oxygen) distance. We estimate the free energy change of the transition from the native con-formation to a fully extended conformation—the stretched state—with no hydrogen bonds between non-neighboring bases. Each simulation was performed four times using the AM-BER FF99+bsc0+χOL3 force field and each window, spaced at 1 Å intervals, was sampled for 1 μs, for a total of 552 μs of simulation. We compared differences in the simulated free energy changes to analogous differences in free energies from optical melting experiments using ther-modynamic cycles where the free energy change between stretched and random coil sequences is assumed to be sequence independent. The differences between experimental and simulated ΔΔG° are on average 1.00 ± 0.66 kcal/mol, which is chemically accurate and suggests analo-gous simulations could be used predictively. We also report a novel method to identify where replica free energies diverge along the reaction coordinate, thus indicating where additional sampling would most improve convergence. We conclude by discussing methods to more economically perform such simulations.


We examine the role of investor relations (IR) executives in the top management team and find that firms incorporating the IR function in their top management team are more likely to beat analysts' estimates and exhibit more downward earnings guidance. We also provide evidence that these firms manage analysts' expectations rather than manage earnings and are more likely to have lower analyst forecast dispersion, a lower probability of informed trading, and fewer earning restatements, all of which suggest that IR executives tend to reduce information asymmetry. Consistent with this, we also find that firms with IR executives experience less capital constraints and lower litigation risk. For identification, we first provide results using a difference-in-difference framework that stock return volatility and idiosyncratic volatility are lower in firms with IR executives following the 2008 financial crisis relative to firms without IR executives. We also document a faster decrease in option market implied volatility following the exogenous shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in firms with IR executives in the top management team relative to firms without. Overall, the evidence is consistent with IR executives improving the alignment between management and investors.


The experiments reported in this paper are similar to the famous Abbe experiments. However, they were done for quite different reasons, namely, to perform certain information processing operations by optical means. Our technique, called theta modulation, allows production of a color image from a black and white film, on which the color object is recorded in encoded form. Furthermore, nonlinear characteristics (H & D curves) of any shape can be realized. A special application of theta modulation, called multiplex storage, will be described. By this technique, more than one image can be recorded in the same area on a piece of film. Subsequently, the individual images can be recovered with a minimum of crosstalk.


This study investigates the surface albedo of the sea ice areas adjacent to the Antarctic Peninsula during the austral summer. Aircraft measurements of the surface albedo, which were conducted in the sea ice areas of the Weddell and Bellingshausen Seas show significant differences between these two regions. The averaged surface albedo varied between 0.13 and 0.81. The ice cover of the Bellingshausen Sea consisted mainly of first year ice and the sea surface showed an averaged sea ice albedo of α i = 0.64 ± 0.2 (± standard deviation). The mean sea ice albedo of the pack ice area in the western Weddell Sea was α i = 0.75 ± 0.05. In the southern Weddell Sea, where new, young sea ice prevailed, a mean albedo value of α i = 0.38 ± 0.08 was observed. Relatively warm open water and thin, newly formed ice had the lowest albedo values, whereas relatively cold and snow covered pack ice had the highest albedo values. All sea ice areas consisted of a mixture of a large range of different sea ice types. An investigation of commonly used parameterizations of albedo as a function of surface temperature in the Weddell and Bellingshausen Sea ice areas showed that the albedo parameterizations do not work well for areas with new, young ice.