Important claims have been made regarding the contrasting profiles of linguistic and cognitive performance observed in two genetically based syndromes, Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). Earlier studies suggested a double dissociation, with language better preserved than nonverbal cognition in children and adults with WS, and an opposite profile in children and adults with DS. More recent studies show that this initial characterization was too simple, and that qualitatively different patterns of deficit observed within both language and visual–spatial cognition, in both groups. In the present study, large samples of children and adolescents with WS and age-matched DS are compared with typically developing (TD) controls matched to WS in mental age, on receptive and expressive lexical and grammatical abilities, semantic and phonological fluency, digit span and nonverbal visual–spatial span, and on 2 visual–spatial construction tasks. Study 1 confirmed distinct profiles of sparing and impairment for the 2 groups, within as well as between language and nonlinguistic domains, even after IQ variations were controlled. In Study 2 we compared performance of the children, adolescents and young adults with DS and WS included in the first study, divided on the basis of the chronological age of the participants (under 8 years; over 12 years). Although it is important to stress that these are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data, the results demonstrated that the profile of younger children is different in respect to those of the older children; initial states of the system cannot be inferred by the final state. Possible neural substrates for these profiles and trajectories are discussed. (JINS, 2004, 10, 862–876.)


Do you find yourself battling for your partner's attention? Between work, dealing with the kids, and all of life's many challenges, finding time for each other can often be a challenge. If you are finding that your spouse has little or no time for you during the week, the following information will be helpful for you.


Single-particle diffraction imaging experiments at free-electron lasers (FELs) have a great potential for the structure determination of reproducible biological specimens that cannot be crystallized. One of the challenges in processing the data from such an experiment is to determine the correct orientation of each diffraction pattern from samples randomly injected in the FEL beam. We propose an algorithm (Yefanov et al 2010 Photon Science—HASYLAB Annual Report) that can solve this problem and can be applied to samples from tens of nanometres to microns in size, measured with sub-nanometre resolution in the presence of noise. This is achieved by the simultaneous analysis of a large number of diffraction patterns corresponding to different orientations of the particles. The algorithm's efficiency is demonstrated for two biological samples, an artificial protein structure without any symmetry and a virus with icosahedral symmetry. Both structures are a few tens of nanometres in size and consist of more than 100 000 non-hydrogen atoms. More than 10 000 diffraction patterns with Poisson noise were simulated and analysed for each structure. Our simulations indicate the possibility of achieving resolution of about 3.3 Å at 3 Å wavelength and incoming flux of 1012 photons per pulse focused to 100×100 nm2.


Small-Scale Enterprises (SSEs) are acknowledged as significant contributors to economic growth through their perceived critical role in providing job opportunities, poverty reduction and their acting as intermediaries in trade. However, the International Labor Organization (2010) estimates that two-thirds of the enterprises generate incomes equal to or below the minimum wage, a sobering finding that must temper one's enthusiasm for the growth of SSE's as a solution to the country's poverty and employment problems. Inventory constitutes much of the working capital held by SSEs and poor working capital management has been identified as one of the major causes of SSE failures. With this backdrop, this study investigated the relationship between inventory management practices and the business performance of SSEs in Kisii Municipality, Kenya. The relationship was probed based on primary data gathered by use of a structured questionnaire from 70 SSEs. The empirical results revealed a positive significant relationship between business performance and effective inventory management practices at 0.05 significance level. Further, they showed that inventory budgeting had the largest effect on business performance with a beta coefficient of 0.329, followed by shelf-space management with a beta coefficient of 0.30. Inventory level management had the least but significant effect with a beta coefficient of 0.297. The study suggests that owners/managers of SSEs embrace effective inventory management practices as a tactic to further their business performance. Keywords: Inventory Management practices, Business Performance, Small Scale Enterprises


The intracorporate conspiracy doctrine immunizes an enterprise and its agents from conspiracy prosecution based on the legal fiction that an enterprise and its agents are a single actor incapable of the meeting of two minds to form a conspiracy. The doctrine, however, misplaces incentives in contravention of agency law, criminal law, tort law, and public policy. As a result of this absence of accountability, harmful behavior is ordered and performed without consequences, and the victims of the behavior suffer without appropriate remedy.The vacuum at the center of American conspiracy law has now warped the doctrines around it. Especially in the wake of the financial crisis, prosecutors and the public are searching for new tools to combat corporate conspiracy. The most obvious and tested tool would be to roll back the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine. In the absence of this solution, frustration with applying the doctrine has led to over-reliance on alternative methods to hold agents of enterprises responsible for their actions. Examples of such alternative doctrines include piercing the corporate veil doctrine, the responsible corporate officer doctrine, and unusual approaches such as denying the retroactive imposition of the corporate veil and adopting reverse piercings of the corporate veil.But these doctrines were developed in and adapted to other circumstances. They do not take into account the coordination of actions within an enterprise and the unique nature of conspiracy that fall — and should fall — into the heart of behavior that would trigger liability if not for the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine. Using alternative doctrines to impose liability on behavior that would otherwise be recognized as an intracorporate conspiracy results in inconsistent decisions and disproportionate awards. In sum, not calling a conspiracy a conspiracy asks the wrong questions and sends the wrong signals throughout the law on corporate and individual responsibility.


The threat on the survival of animal species due to intensive use of natural resources is incorporated within resource management models, paying special attention to uncertainty regarding the conditions that lead to extinction. The manner in which the potential benefits forgone due to the species extinction (denoted extinction penalty) induce more conservative exploitation policies is studied in detail. When the extinction penalty is ignored, the optimal policy is to drive the resource stock to a particular equilibrium level from any initial state. When the extinction penalty is considered and the conditions that lead to extinction are not fully understood (i.e., involve uncertainty), an interval of equilibrium states is identified, which depends on the penalty and the immediate extinction risk.


OF DISSERTATION EXPLORE THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG LUNG CANCER STIGMA, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND PSYCHOSOCIAL DISTRESS There is longstanding causal relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Smoke-free policies and anti-smoking campaigns have been linked to the decline in smoking acceptance and contribute to the unintended consequence of stigmatizing smokers. Lung cancer is viewed as a self-inflicted disease and patients' feel judged in a manner different from other cancers affecting social interactions between family, friends, and healthcare professionals. Lung cancer stigma contributes to depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, guilt, shame, blame, threatens a person's social identity, and limits social support that deeply affects patients and their support persons. This dissertation contains a review of the literature related to smoking and stigma, an evaluation of the psychometric properties of an investigator-developed instrument, "Lung Cancer Stigma Scale" (LuCaSS) and the main findings from a cross-sectional observational study of 104 lung cancer patients assessing factors associated with lung cancer stigma. The Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat provides the framework to examine stigma and the relationship between social constraints, self-esteem, and smoking and to test whether social support mediates the relationship between stigma, and depression/anxiety. The LuCaSS was a reliable and valid instrument measuring lung cancer stigma (alpha = 0.89). The principle components analysis determined three subscales measuring internalized stigma: social rejections/judgment, blame/guilt, and shame. Social constraints, self-esteem, smoking each significantly contributed to the prediction of stigma controlling for SES. Lung cancer patients with greater social constraints and lower self-esteem and who were smokers scored higher on stigma. Social support was a mediator for the relationship between stigma and depression but not for anxiety. The findings are consistent with Stigma Induced Identity Threat Model. A stigmatized identity can lead to stress-related health outcomes such as depression. A lung cancer diagnosis has numerous negative psychosocial effects on patients. Integrating stigma tools (i.e. LuCaSS) in practice settings may assist with determining potential stigma related distress among lung cancer patients. Emphasizing the need for social support and implementing more advocacy efforts may also help minimize the effects of stigma and depression. Future studies are necessary to further examine the role of social support in minimizing stigma and psychosocial distress.


Drawing on seminal works in the literature (e.g. Foley et al. 1998; Gupta 1994; Platt & Weber 1980), this chapter presents a historical account of the sociolinguistic landscape of Singapore from the time of post-British colonial rule to the present day. It examines how English use in Singapore has undergone rapid change because of the speed at which Singapore has developed as a nation (Lim & Foley 2004), and the way in which globalization has accentuated the duality of roles of English, as a local bridge language and as a "cash language". Such development is examined against the background of national language policies enforced through the education system to serve Singapore's political agenda and economic interest, but which marginalizes the cultural role of English as a local language.


The on-demand use, high scalability, and low maintenance cost nature of cloud computing have attracted more and more enterprises to migrate their legacy applications to the cloud environment. Although the cloud platform itself promises high reliability, ensuring high quality of service is still one of the major concerns, since the enterprise applications are usually complicated and consist of a large number of distributed components. Thus, improving the reliability of an application during cloud migration is a challenging and critical research problem. To address this problem, we propose a reliability-based optimization framework, named RO Cloud, to improve the application reliability by fault tolerance. RO Cloud includes two ranking algorithms. The first algorithm ranks components for the applications that all their components will be migrated to the cloud. The second algorithm ranks components for hybrid applications that only part of their components are migrated to the cloud. Based on the ranking result, optimal fault-tolerant strategy will be selected automatically for the most significant components with respect to their predefined constraints. The experimental results show that by refactoring a small number of error-prone components and tolerating faults of the most significant components, the reliability of the application can be greatly improved.


We investigated microcystin (MC) production by four cyanobacterial strains (three Microcystis aeruginosa and one Planktothrix agardhii) in response to different grazer densities (direct exposure: zero, two, four, or eight individuals per 300 mL) and infochemical concentrations (indirect exposure: 0%, 10%, 25%, and 50%) of Daphnia magna and Moina macrocopa. MC production increased after direct exposure to both zooplankton species and was higher with increasing concentration of infochemicals. This MC production was significantly different among the control and three zooplankton treatment levels. Upon direct and indirect exposure of cyanobacteria to zooplankton, intracellular MC peaked on days 3 and 4. In most cyanobacterial strains, the peak MC contents were significantly higher in direct treatment with the highest zooplankton density and in indirect treatment with the highest concentration of zooplankton culture media filtrate than with treatments with the lowest density and concentration, respectively. Extracellular MC concentrations were much lower than intracellular ones, but both showed similar temporal patterns over the course of the experiment. Cyanobacteria directly exposed to Daphnia released greater amounts of extracellular MC than did those exposed to Moina. This is the first study to provide evidence of an induced defense of increased MC production by cyanobacteria in response to increasing zooplankton grazer density and increased concentrations of infochemicals released by zooplankton. In addition to the induction of tolerance in Daphnia to toxic Microcystis, we discuss how these reciprocal defenses may explain the coexistence of zooplankton and toxic cyanobacteria in eutrophic freshwaters.


Introduction Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is a major public health problem in India and especially harmful in early childhood due to its impact on cognitive development and increased all-cause mortality. We estimate the cost-effectiveness of price subsidies on fortified packaged infant cereals (F-PICs) in reducing IDA in 6-23-monthold children in urban India. Materials and Methods Cost-effectiveness is estimated by comparing the net social cost of price subsidies with the disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) averted with price subsidies. The net social costs correspond to the cost of the subsidy minus the monetary costs saved by reducing IDA. The estimation proceeds in three steps: 1) the current lifetime costs of IDA are assessed with a health economic model combining the prevalence of anemia, derived from a large population survey, with information on the health consequences of IDA and their costs in terms of mortality, morbidity, and DALYs. 2) The effects of price subsidies on the demand for F-PICs are assessed with a market survey among 4801 households in 12 large Indian cities. 3) The cost-effectiveness is calculated by combining the findings of the first two steps with the results of a systematic review on the effectiveness of F-PICs in reducing IDA. We compare the cost-effectiveness of interventions that differ in the level of the subsidy and in the socio-economic strata (SES) eligible for the subsidy. Results The lifetime social costs of IDA in 6-23-month-old children in large Indian cities amount to production losses of 3222 USD and to 726,000 DALYs. Poor households incur the highest costs, yet even wealthier households suffer substantial losses. The market survey reveals that few households currently buy F-PICs, with the share ranging from 14% to 36%. Wealthier households are generally more likely to buy FPICs. The costs of the subsidies per DALY averted range from 909 to 3649 USD. Interventions targeted at poorer households are most effective. Almost all interventions are cost saving from a societal perspective when taking into account the reduction of future production losses. Return per DALY averted ranges between gains of 1655 USD to a cost of 411 USD. Conclusion Price subsidies on F-PICs are a cost-effective way to reduce the social costs of IDA in 6-23-month-old children in large Indian cities. Interventions targeting poorer households are especially cost-effective.


Fatigue loads represent a critical element in several aeronautical applications and Wind Turbines (WTs) are not an exception. Their evolution over the machine service life usually determines its life span, hence their behavior knowledge can cause a relevant economic impact on the Cost of Energy (CoE). Nevertheless, their measurements are frequently difficult or expensive and estimations arising from other known signals can be carried out instead.
This thesis aims to design a load estimation model using standard signal as inputs by means of statistical and machine learning procedures. It includes an input selection stage and the models layout arrangement and assessment, which are based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs).
The whole process is described in the following lines. First of all, data from simulations is gathered and examined. Damage Equivalent Load (DEL) (fatigue indicator which acts as target) and stats (statistical parameters from standard signals that constitute possible model inputs) are computed and their cross relationships analyzed. Secondly, input dimensions are reduced due to their great volume. In this regard several input subsets formed by small quantities of stats are built using two different filters: Correlation (COR) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Once this done, each subset estimation power is compared along with a great variety of ANNs configurations. Eventually, an innovative input selection method is developed using a genetic optimization.
The outcome of this process allows several observations. On one hand, estimation results seem promising as long as all of them fall below 4%. On the other hand, multilayered nets with a neurons number between 30 and 60 seem a suitable configuration for these purposes. Furthermore, the genetic optimization results also show a great performance without the necessity of the preliminary work carried out by filters (which in fact is bias ed by some a priori assumptions).
To sum up, inside the wind power field -where lifespan is an important factor due to its influence on the CoE- this method may promote a more efficient usage of structural parts enhancing their service life.


Email spam or junk e-mail (unwanted e-mail "usually of a commercial nature sent out in bulk") is one of the major problems of the today's Internet, bringing financial damage to companies and annoying individual users. Among the approaches developed to stop spam, filtering is an important and popular one. Common uses for mail filters include organizing incoming email and removal of spam and computer viruses. A less common use is to inspect outgoing email at some companies to ensure that employees comply with appropriate laws. Users might also employ a mail filter to prioritize messages, and to sort them into folders based on subject matter or other criteria. Mail filters can be installed by the user, either as separate programs, or as part of their email program (email client). In email programs, users can make personal, "manual" filters that then automatically filter mail according to the chosen criteria. In this paper, we present a survey of the performance of five commonly used machine learning methods in spam filtering. Most email programs now also have an automatic spam filtering function.


Executive Summary

"Our students have changed radically. Todayi?½s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." (Prensky 2001 p1)

1. There is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place.

2. The complex changes that are taking place in the student body have an age related component that is most obvious with the newest waves of technology. Prominent amongst these are the uses made of social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), uploading and manipulation of multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and the use of handheld devices to access the mobile Internet.

3. Demographic factors interact with age to pattern studentsi?½ responses to new technologies. The most important of these are gender, mode of study (distance or place-based) and the international or home status of the student.

4. The gap between students and their teachers is not fixed, nor is the gulf so large that it cannot be bridged. In many ways the relationship is determined by the requirements teachers place upon their students to make use of new technologies and the way teachers integrate new technologies in their courses. There is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that teachers and universities cannot meet.

5. Students persistently report that they prefer moderate use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their courses. Care should be taken with this finding because the interpretation of what is i?½moderatei?½ use of ICT may be changing as a range of new technologies take off and become embedded in social life and universities.

6. Universities should be confident in the provision of what might seem to be basic services. Students appreciate and make use of the foundational infrastructure for learning, even where this is often criticised as being an out of date and unimaginative use of new technology. Virtual Learning Environments (Learning or Course Management Systems) are used widely and seem to be well regarded. The provision by university libraries of online services, including the provision of online e-journals and e-books, are also positively received.

7. Students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the most discussed new technologies such as Blogs, Wikis and 3D Virtual Worlds. The use of 3D Virtual Worlds is notably low amongst students. The use of Wikis and Blogs is relatively low overall, but use does vary between different contexts, including national and regional contexts. Students who are required to use these technologies in their courses are unlikely to reject them and low use does not imply that they are inappropriate for educational use. The key point being made is that there is not a natural demand amongst students that teaching staff and universities should feel obliged to satisfy.

8. There is no obvious or consistent demand from students for changes to pedagogy at university (e.g. demands for team and group working). There may be good reasons why teachers and universities wish to revise their approaches to teaching and learning, or may wish to introduce new ways of working. Students will respond positively to changes in teaching and learning strategies that are well conceived, well explained and properly embedded in courses and degree programmes. However there is no evidence of a pent-up demand amongst students for changes in pedagogy or of a demand for greater collaboration.

9. There is no evidence of a consistent demand from students for the provision of highly individualised or personal university services. The development of university infrastructures, such as new kinds of learning environments (for example Personal Learning Environments) should be choices about the kinds of provision that the university wishes to make and not a response to general statements about what a new generation of students are demanding.

10. Advice derived from generational arguments should not be used by government and government agencies to promote changes in university structure designed to accommodate a Net Generation of Digital Natives. The evidence indicates that young students do not form a generational cohort and they do not express consistent or generationally organised demands. A key finding of this review is that political choices should be made explicit and not disguised by arguments about generational change.


DNA replication is a key cellular process and is the basis for cell division. In order to understand replication initiation in mammalian cells, viral systems such as bovine papillomavirus (BPV) are used as simplified models of the process. BPV uses a single protein E1 to perform both DNA binding and unwinding functions essential for the initiation of replication (Figure A). Biochemical assays for a cell‐free replication initiation system has been established for BPV. To have a clearer understanding of a biological process at a molecular level, it is essential to determine the three‐dimensional (3D) arrangement and dynamics of molecules and how macromolecular machines are assembled. Electron microscopy (EM), single particle analysis and image processing have been used in this work to reveal the structures of the BPV E1 helicase domain (E1HD), full‐length E1 (E1FL), a single‐labelled E1FL‐replication fork DNA complex with monovalent tetrameric streptavidin (MTS) on the dsDNA of the fork and a double‐labelled E1FLwith MTS on the dsDNA and FAB on the ssDNA of the fork.

The structure of BPV E1FL in complex with DNA was initially determined by EM both by applying 6‐fold symmetry and without applying any symmetry. EM demonstrated that the E1FL helicase forms a hexamer that has a diameter of 130A and a height of 100A, consistent with an overall mass of ~410 kDa. The oligomer has a central channel inside the molecule, with a variable diameter. E1FL is a single polypeptide chain, and the OBD domain can be fitted into the structure in two different ways. In one case the DNA binding site would be located on the inner surface and in the other case it would be on the outer surface of the complex. To determine the orientation of the OBD domain, a 12‐residue epitope sequence GGYPYDVPDYAG was inserted into the OBD domain after the residue 226. EM has demonstrated that the antibody was bound to the E1FL. That proves that the binding site for AB is located on the outer surface of E1FL (Figure B). The points of the entrance of dsDNA and exit of 5′ ssDNA were also determined in the complex of E1FL and DNA. Labelling with streptavidin was performed to reveal the position of the dsDNA, whereas ssDNA was labelled with DIG‐FAB to reveal the 5′ ssDNA position in an asymmetrical structure of the BPV E1 hexamer bound to a replication fork DNA substrate. Comparison of the 3D structures showed that dsDNA enters the molecule between the N‐terminus and oriDNA‐binding domain (OBD), and the 5′ ssDNA exits the molecule between the collar domain and OBD. The angle between the point of dsDNA entrance and 5′ ssDNA exit was ~170°.

Prior to our research, the most accepted model of "steric exclusion" for dsDNA unwinding suggested that the active 3′ ssDNA strand is pulled through the helicase motor and dsDNA is wedged apart outside the protein assembly (Figure C). Our structural observations indicated that strand separation is taking place inside E1 in a chamber above the helicase domain and that the 5′ passive ssDNA strand leaves the assembly through a channel located on the opposite side to dsDNA entry. Therefore, our data suggest an alternative model for DNA unwinding by this general class of replication enzymes.


To be useful, theories of punishment must speak to the issues of their times. Predominant modern theories centering on desert and proportionality took shape in the 1970s when they spoke to concerns about racial disparities, procedural unfairness, and beliefs in the ineffectiveness and injustice of rehabilitative programs. None of those concerns continues to galvanize policymakers, practitioners, or the general public. Punishment theories are stuck in the 1970s, speaking still to 1970s issues and unable satisfactorily to address contemporary developments such as burgeoning interest in restorative and community justice, renewed faith in the effectiveness and appropriateness of rehabilitation, and proliferation of drug and other courts aimed at changing offenders. Punishment theories sometimes influence policymakers, and often they clarify understanding of the implications of policy choices. Consequently, there is a need for the development of new theoretical frameworks that can speak to the issues and temper of these times.


In recent years, various researchers have come up with different ways and means to integrate CAD and CAM. Automatic feature recognition (AFR) from a CAD solid model for down stream applications like process planning and NC program, greatly contribute to the level of integration. When generating G&M codes from CAD DXF file, it leads to the loss of geometric information and the user is to edit and fills the details of the lost data. STEP is an international standard for geometric and non geometric data transfer between CAD, CAE and CAM and it replaces the IGES and DXF. For that reason this paper proposes an automatic feature recognition methodology to develop a feature recognition system using STEP file. The proposed methodology is developed for 3D prismatic parts that are modeled any CAD software having STEP output file format. A JAVA program is used to implement the geometric data extraction algorithm, which has been developed for extracting the geometric information from the STEP file. A feature recognition algorithm is used to recognize the different features of the part such as slot, pocket etc based on geometric reasoning approach by taking B-rep data base as input. The authors present an example to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology.


: Canine and human atopic dermatitis (AD) are multifaceted diseases which clinical development may be influenced by several factors such as genetic background, environment, secondary infections, food and psychological effects. The role of the environment has been extensively examined in humans but remains unclear in dogs. The aim of the present study is to examine environmental factors in 2 genetically close breeds: Labrador and Golden Retrievers. Using standard criteria, atopic dogs were selected and compared to healthy individuals. Information on environmental factors was collected using a questionnaire. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression was subsequently used in order to assess the association between all potential risk factors and the disease status. The following parameters, resulting from the multivariable logistic regression, were associated with an increased risk of disease development: living in a shed during puppyhood, adoption at the age of 8 to 12 weeks and washing the dog regularly. On the contrary, the following factors were associated with a lower risk: living in a rural environment, living in a household with other animals and walking in the forest. These associations do not prove causality but support the primary hypothesis that certain environmental factors may influence canine AD development. Further studies are warranted to confirm the current results and conclusions. Abstract Canine and human atopic dermatitis (AD) are multifaceted diseases which clinical development may be influenced by several factors such as genetic background, environment, secondary infections, food and psychological effects. The role of the environment has been extensively examined in humans but remains unclear in dogs. The aim of the present study is to examine environmental factors in 2 genetically close breeds: Labrador and Golden Retrievers. Using standard criteria, atopic dogs were selected and compared to healthy individuals. Information on environmental factors was collected using a questionnaire. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression was subsequently used in order to assess the association between all potential risk factors and the disease status. The following parameters, resulting from the multivariable logistic regression, were associated with an increased risk of disease development: living in a shed during puppyhood, adoption at the age of 8 to 12 weeks and washing the dog regularly. On the contrary, the following factors were associated with a lower risk: living in a rural environment, living in a household with other animals and walking in the forest. These associations do not prove causality but support the primary hypothesis that certain environmental factors may influence canine AD development. Further studies are warranted to confirm the current results and conclusions. Abstract Canine and human atopic dermatitis (AD) are multifaceted diseases which clinical development may be influenced by several factors such as genetic background, environment, secondary infections, food and psychological effects. The role of the environment has been extensively examined in humans but remains unclear in dogs. The aim of the present study is to examine environmental factors in 2 genetically close breeds: Labrador and Golden Retrievers. Using standard criteria, atopic dogs were selected and compared to healthy individuals. Information on environmental factors was collected using a questionnaire. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression was subsequently used in order to assess the association between all potential risk factors and the disease status. The following parameters, resulting from the multivariable logistic regression, were associated with an increased risk of disease development: living in a shed during puppyhood, adoption at the age of 8 to 12 weeks and washing the dog regularly. On the contrary, the following factors were associated with a lower risk: living in a rural environment, living in a household with other animals and walking in the forest. These associations do not prove causality but support the primary hypothesis that certain environmental factors may influence canine AD development. Further studies are warranted to confirm the current results and conclusions.


This report presents the findings of the 2012 pilot assessment of the school health policies for the following Caribbean community (CARICOM) countries: Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The objective of this exercise is to help countries to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their school health policy frameworks, with the understanding that sound a policy framework is a critical component of effective school health programming. The result is a preliminary report on the status of development of the school health policy framework in the six countries. Section one gives introduction. Section two briefly discusses the importance of school health programs in contributing to education sector goals and the development of international consensus on the basic building blocks of effective school health programs. Section three discusses the conceptual framework of system assessment and benchmarking for education results (SABER) - school health, and introduces the components of the SABER - school health framework and scoring system. Section four provides the context for and objectives of this assessment as well the methodology used for data collection. Section five presents the results for the six countries: first by individual country and then as a comparative analysis across each of four policy domains.


BACKGROUND
Caffeinated beverages are widely consumed among women of reproductive age, but their association with reproductive hormones, and whether race modifies any such associations, is not well understood.

OBJECTIVE
We assessed the relation between caffeine and caffeinated beverage intake and reproductive hormones in healthy premenopausal women and evaluated the potential effect modification by race.

DESIGN
Participants (n = 259) were followed for up to 2 menstrual cycles and provided fasting blood specimens for hormonal assessment at up to 8 visits per cycle and four 24-h dietary recalls per cycle. Weighted linear mixed models and nonlinear mixed models with harmonic terms were used to estimate associations between caffeine and hormone concentrations, adjusted for age, adiposity, physical activity, energy and alcohol intakes, and perceived stress. On the basis of a priori assumptions, an interaction between race and caffeine was tested, and stratified results are presented.

RESULTS
Caffeine intake ≥200 mg/d was inversely associated with free estradiol concentrations among white women (β = -0.15; 95% CI: -0.26, -0.05) and positively associated among Asian women (β = 0.61; 95% CI: 0.31, 0.92). Caffeinated soda intake and green tea intake ≥1 cup/d (1 cup = 240 mL) were positively associated with free estradiol concentrations among all races: β = 0.14 (95% CI: 0.06, 0.22) and β = 0.26 (95% CI: 0.07, 0.45), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
Moderate consumption of caffeine was associated with reduced estradiol concentrations among white women, whereas caffeinated soda and green tea intakes were associated with increased estradiol concentrations among all races. Further research is warranted on the association between caffeine and caffeinated beverages and reproductive hormones and whether these relations differ by race.


Cell-to-cell cadherin adhesions play an important role in regulating the behaviour of neural progenitor
cells as well as providing the structural framework of the niche in which they reside. Cadherin
de-adhesion can occur aberrantly and has significant consequences on the regulation of
neural progenitor cells and disease progression. This work specifically investigated what are the
consequences of cadherin de-adhesion on neural progenitor cell positioning and how changes
in positioning affect neural progenitor cell maintenance. Cadherin de-adhesion was induced in
the hindbrains of chick embryos through the expression of dominant negative N-cadherin and
γ-catenin, two important components of cadherin adhesion. Cadherin de-adhesion caused the
mispositioning of neural progenitor cells outside of the niche, this change in positioning resulted
in diminished proliferation and activation of cell death. The results suggest cadherin adhesions
control the positioning of neural progenitor cells and are a fundamental component of the neural
progenitor cell niche. Cadherin de-adhesion also inhibited the induction of homeodomain expression
in ventral neural progenitor cells, which is likely due to a reduction of notch signalling in the
niche and subsequent de-sensitisation of neural progenitor cells to Shh. A model for cadherin
adhesions as spatial regulators of neural progenitor cell maintenance is proposed.
The mechanisms of how cadherin de-adhesion occurs remain poorly described and this work
explored the significance of changes in calcium-cadherin binding in cadherin de-adhesion. This
work demonstrated that an extracellular acidic pH alters calcium-cadherin binding interactions,
which negatively affects cadherin-mediated cell adhesion. Additionally, cadherin calcium-binding
sites are shown to be promiscuous to other metal ions but cadherin function is not. Cell aggregation,
trypsin protection, and FRET binding assays demonstrated that the close calcium analogue,
the trivalent ion of the lanthanide element terbium, can bind to cadherin calcium-binding sites but
cannot induce rigid and adhesive cadherin molecules. Trivalent terbium, which has been previously
proposed as an anti-cancer agent, therefore inhibits cadherin-mediated cell adhesion by
competitive binding with calcium at cadherin calcium-binding sites. Together, the results reveal
how changes to calcium-cadherin binding interactions affect cadherin adhesion and the possible
significance of such changes to cadherin de-adhesion in cancer is described.


Supply chain management in construction continues to attract considerable academic and industry interest. With its origin in manufacturing, successful implementation of supply chain management is argued to enhance customer value whilst simultaneously reducing business costs. In the UK construction industry, supply chain management strategies remain largely synonymous with best practice initiatives such as construction partnering, strategic alliances and more recently construction framework agreements. In contrast to this arguably misleading and impoverished viewpoint, the purpose of this research is to develop fresh perspectives and present a contextually sympathetic typology of supply chain management in construction. Drawing on new organizational institutionalism, economic governance and transactional cost economics (TCE), the utility and performance of supply chain management in construction is portrayed as rational choice among multiple strategies, instrumentally bound by contract and context. This contextually sensitive interpretation of supply chain management captures complex, diverse and often unique characteristics of construction practice. Challenging mainstream assessment of supply chain management can clearly help construction stakeholders focus attention on discrete supply chain strategies that best suit their organizational and project needs.


This article examines the shifting  territorial goals of two of the most electoral- ly successful and politically relevant nationalist parties in Spain: the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) and Convergencia i Unio (CiU). Whilst both parties have often co-operated to challenge the authority of the Spanish state, their territorial goals have varied over time and from party to party. We map these changes and identify key drivers of territorial preferences; these include party ideology, the impact of the financial crisis, the territorial structure of the state, party competition, public opinion, government versus opposition, the impact of multi-level politics and the particularities of party organisation. These factors interact to shape what nationalist parties say and do on core territorial issues, and contribute to their oscillation between territorial accommodation and secession.  However, the way in which these factors play out is highly context-specific, and this accounts for the different territorial preferences of the PNV and CiU. These findings  advance our understanding of persistent territorial tensions in Spain, and provide  broader theoretical insights into the internal and external dynamics  that determine the territorial positioning of stateless nationalist and regionalist parties in plurinational states.


We present the third and final data release of the K2 Galactic Archaeology Program (K2 GAP) for Campaigns C1–C8 and C10–C18. We provide asteroseismic radius and mass coefficients, κ R and κ M , for ∼19,000 red giant stars, which translate directly to radius and mass given a temperature. As such, K2 GAP DR3 represents the largest asteroseismic sample in the literature to date. K2 GAP DR3 stellar parameters are calibrated to be on an absolute parallactic scale based on Gaia DR2, with red giant branch and red clump evolutionary state classifications provided via a machine-learning approach. Combining these stellar parameters with GALAH DR3 spectroscopy, we determine asteroseismic ages with precisions of ∼20%–30% and compare age-abundance relations to Galactic chemical evolution models among both low- and high-α populations for α, light, iron-peak, and neutron-capture elements. We confirm recent indications in the literature of both increased Ba production at late Galactic times as well as significant contributions to r-process enrichment from prompt sources associated with, e.g., core-collapse supernovae. With an eye toward other Galactic archeology applications, we characterize K2 GAP DR3 uncertainties and completeness using injection tests, suggesting that K2 GAP DR3 is largely unbiased in mass/age, with uncertainties of 2.9% (stat.) ± 0.1% (syst.) and 6.7% (stat.) ± 0.3% (syst.) in κ R and κ M for red giant branch stars and 4.7% (stat.) ± 0.3% (syst.) and 11% (stat.) ± 0.9% (syst.) for red clump stars. We also identify percent-level asteroseismic systematics, which are likely related to the time baseline of the underlying data, and which therefore should be considered in TESS asteroseismic analysis.


The European Union has become an important leader in international environmental affairs – particularly through the negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) with favourable terms. In this article, EU environmental leadership is studied from a new perspective, focusing on the ratification stage of environmental regime formation. Specifically, it investigates whether the EU is also capable of motivating third states to join its preferred MEAs. It is argued that third states join the EU's preferred MEAs to signal their compliance with EU environmental standards in an effort to become eligible for various rewards that the EU could potentially offer, including a credible membership perspective, access to its lucrative markets, and aid and assistance. The argument is tested by examining the ratification behaviour of 25 non-EU Member States with regard to all 21 MEAs negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The results provide robust support for the theory that EU rewards motivate third states to ratify these treaties. The results withstand a number of statistical tests, even when alternative explanatory factors such as trade intensities, transnational communication and geographic proximity are controlled for. The study is the first large-scale demonstration of the EU's external influence at the ratification stage of environmental regime formation. By identifying three different channels of EU influence, the research permits a more refined understanding of the EU's role as a promoter of environmental protection standards.


Pyrite oxidation in coal-bearing strata is recognised as the main precursor to Acidic Mine Drainage (AMD) generation. Predicting AMD quality and quantity for remediation, or proposed extraction, requires assessment of interactions between oxidising fluids and pyrite, and between oxidation products and groundwater. Current predictive methods and models rarely account for individual mineral weathering rates, or their distribution within rock. Better constraints on the importance of such variables in controlling rock leachate are required to provide more reliable predictions of AMD quality. In this study assumptions made during modelling of AMD generation were tested including; homogeneity of rock chemical and physical characteristics, controls on the rate of embedded pyrite oxidation and oxidation front ingress. The main conclusions of this work are:• The ingress of a pyrite oxidation front into coal-bearing strata depends on dominant oxidant transport mechanism, pyrite morphology and rock pore-size distribution.• Although pyrite oxidation rates predicted from rate laws and derived from experimental weathering of coal-bearing strata agree, uncertainty in surface area of framboids produces at least an order of magnitude error in predicted rates.• Pyrite oxidation products in partly unsaturated rock are removed to solution via a cycle of dissolution and precipitation at the water-rock interface. Dissolution mainly occurs along rock cleavage planes, as does diffusion of dissolved oxidant.• Significant variance of whole seam S and pyrite wt % existed over a 30 m exposure of an analysed coal seam. Assuming a seam mean pyrite wt % to predict net acid producing potential for coal and shale seams may be unsuitable, at this scale at least.• Seasonal variation in AMD discharge chemistry indicates that base-flow is not necessarily representative of extreme poor quality leachate. Summer and winter storms, following relatively dry periods, tended to release the greatest volume of pyrite oxidation products.


Experiments to create spaces for social-ecological transformation are multiplying. These experiments aim at transcending traditional spaces for rational deliberation, planning, and participatory decision-making. We present a methodological approach for triggering the emergence of "transformation laboratories" (T-labs), which are participatory spaces where new agency is activated in relation to a stagnant sustainability challenge to generate intentional bottom-up transformations. We applied a set of participatory research tools to elicit current perceptions and foster personal involvement in transforming the ongoing urbanization of a culturally and ecologically significant historical wetland in Mexico City. Given that the emergence of T-labs as genuine bottom-up transformative spaces involves changes at multiple levels (individual, collective, and social-ecological), our approach was designed to promote a safe space that stimulates openness and personal interaction. We posit that through enabling participants to reformulate their connections to the system, to others in the system, and to themselves, the system may be transformed from the inside out. We argue that transformation, in this sense, is essentially about how changes in perception about one's own role in the system's dynamics translate into changes in agency. Our T-lab brought in 19 agents involved in the use and management of the Xochimilco urban wetland. Through a set of research tools, we elicited and presented information that helped agents to see their social-ecological position and role and to identify the practices they share with others within specific social networks and spaces of action. We argue that the process of collaboration initiated by our application of these tools and communication of their results are key for advancing initiatives that seek to create conditions for endogenous transformations.


Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is the new emerging paradigm for Distributed computing and e-business processing that is changing the way software applications are designed, architected, delivered and consumed. Services are autonomous platform-independent computational elements that can be described, published, discovered, orchestrated and programmed using standard protocols for the purpose of building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Engineering and modeling service-oriented architectures need extensions to existing modeling techniques and methodologies. In this paper, we propose a UML profile for service-oriented architectures. We consider this a step towards properly engineering web-services.


Across the developed world, most of us who work now earn our living in the service sector. However, the issue of what kind of service economy is sustainable and desirable, both in economic and social terms, is rarely debated. This book argues that this needs to change. National governments have emphasised the role of skills in achieving international competitiveness, higher living standards, and social inclusion. However, even prior to the 2008 financial crisis, problems of over-qualification, skills wastage, and poor job quality were becoming difficult to ignore. This raises important questions about what kind of service sector jobs will be on offer to meet the aspirations of an increasingly qualified workforce and what role can governments play in raising the skills required in jobs and the quality of jobs and services? Work organisation and job design are key factors shaping the skill content of work and the opportunities workers have to deploy their skills and capabilities. Through cross-national comparative research, this book examines whether and why service sector jobs vary across countries. Drawing upon detailed empirical research, the jobs of vocational teacher, fitness instructor, and cafe worker in the UK, Norway, and France are compared, allowing an exploration of the role of national institutions, sectors, and organisations in shaping work organisation and job quality. The findings contribute to the comparative study of work organisation, the relationship between skills and performance, the role and purpose of education and the prospects for better jobs in 'the age of over-qualification'.


A covariance-stationary vector of variables has a Wold representation whose coefficients can be semiparametrically estimated by local projections (Jorda, 2005). Substituting the Wold representations for variables in model expressions generates restrictions that can be used by the method of minimum distance to estimate model parameters. We call this estimator projection minimum distance (PMD) and show that its parameter estimates are consistent and asymptotically normal. In many cases, PMD is asymptotically equivalent to maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and nests GMM as a special case. In fact, models whose ML estimation would require numerical routines (such as VARMA models) can often be estimated by simple least-squares routines and almost as efficiently by PMD. Because PMD imposes no constraints on the dynamics of the system, it is often consistent in many situations where alternative estimators would be inconsistent. We provide several Monte Carlo experiments and an empirical application in support of the new techniques introduced.


Background/Context Previous research has focused on the importance of a social justice leadership approach to improve schools that serve marginalized students, but less attention has been focused on potential dilemmas associated with social justice leadership and the ways in which principals prioritize when dilemmas or challenges arise. Principals may be frequently confronting challenges and dilemmas when they lead for social justice, especially considering the pressures and unintended consequences of high-stakes accountability, dwindling school budgets, and increased teacher turnover rates. By examining the nature of social justice leadership in a high-poverty elementary school located along the U.S./Texas–Mexico border, this study explores how certain facets of social justice generate contradictions, tradeoffs, and dilemmas that have implications for marginalized student groups and communities. Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore one principal's enactment of social justice leadership, particularly in relation to how emergent circumstances influence the way social justice challenges are identified, prioritized, and addressed. Setting Data were collected at one predominantly Hispanic serving elementary school located along the border: Saenz Elementary Schools (pseudonym). Research Design In this study, I employed a qualitative case study methodology and conducted ongoing interviews and observations with the school's principal (Ms. Uribe) to see how she enacted social justice leadership over the course of one school year. Additionally, I interviewed and observed teachers, the school's assistant principal, and other staff to explore alternative perspectives of Ms. Uribe's leadership. Findings Findings reveal the specific leadership actions Ms. Uribe applied to create a more socially just school, but also highlights the complicated nature of social justice leadership. Contextual circumstances associated with the school and community, as well as Ms. Uribe's own personal and professional experiences and worldviews influenced the way she identified, prioritized, and addressed the many social justice challenges present in her school. Conclusions/Recommendations Major conclusions and recommendations from this study include the importance to further explore the way school context and principal experience influence the enactment of social justice leadership, the importance of ongoing critical refection for school leaders addressing issues of marginalization, and the necessity to further consider how principal preparation programs can prepare principals with the knowledge, expertise, experience, and habits of mind to recognize and grapple with competing facets of social justice as well as the challenges and barriers to educational equity.


This paper describes a multiobjective approach for melody harmonization in evolutionary music. There are numerous methods and a myriad of results to a process of harmonization of a given melody. Some implicit rules can be extracted from musical theory, but some harmonic aspects can only be defined by preferences of a composer. Thus, a multiobjective approach may be useful to allow an evolutionary process to find a set of solutions that represent a trade-off between the rules in different objective functions. In this paper, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm defines chord changes with differing degrees of simplicity and dissonance. While presenting such an algorithm, we discuss how to embed musical cognizance in Genetic Algorithms in a meta-level. Experiments were held and compared to human judgment of the results. The findings suggest that it is possible to devise a fitness function which reflects human intentions for harmonies.


The dependence of the radiative emission and the non-radiative (energy transfer to the metal) relaxation rates of a molecule near a small metal particle on the molecule-to-particle distance and on the molecular orientation is calculated using a numerical solution of the Maxwell equations for a model that described the metal as a dispersive dielectric particle and the molecule as an oscillating point dipole. The emission rate is obtained by evaluating the total oscillating dipole in the system, while the non-radiative rate is inferred from the rate of heat production on the particle. For the distance dependence of the non-radiative rate we find, in agreement with experimental observations, marked deviation from the prediction of the standard theory of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). In departure from previous interpretations, we find that electromagnetic retardation is the main source of this deviation at large molecule-particle separations. The radiative emission rate reflects the total dipole induced in the molecule- particle system, and its behavior as function of distance and orientation stems mostly from the magnitude of the oscillating polarization on the metal particle (which, at resonance, is strongly affected by plasmon excitation), and from the way this polarization combines with the molecular dipole to form the total system dipole.


We argue here that public space research might benefit theoretically from the Southern Turn in urban studies. Our first objective is theoretical and methodological: unpack the idea of public space to make it suitable beyond its original location. Détienne's work on Comparing the Incomparable, combined with Staeheli and Mitchell's notion of "regimes of publicity" offer the theoretical tools for such a displacement. We end up thinking about public space as various, context-specific configurations of loosely structured, juridical, political, and social elements that take on new shapes and are prone to partial dislocation when dis-located. We test this model by displacing it to a piece of vacant land—Rondebosch Common in Cape Town. In so doing, we deal with our second objective: offering a detailed empirical analysis of the Occupy Rondebosch Common 2012 events, which relates to broader public space debates in contemporary, liminal, South Africa.


Public participation has become an important task for urban planning projects, but due to a lack of interactivity, immersion and feedback on the tools that has been utilized so far for this purpose, the current practice is limited. In providing a web-based virtual solution the current limitations can be reduced and transparency in the planning process can be increased. This paper presents the outcomes of a small study where three online options were tested by various stake holders.


ABSTRACT The Bolivar Archaeological Project exemplifies the possibilities of archaeology as service, incorporating descendant communities and local stakeholders into the fabric of the research design and planning for a state infrastructure project. This collaborative, multidisciplinary project attends to marginalized histories to offer a model for how publicly funded cultural resources management archaeology can serve multiple goals. The Bolivar Archaeological Project was conceived as a public archaeology project, with dual goals of being community driven and yielding scholarly contributions. In the shifting rural–urban landscape of Denton County, a Texas Department of Transportation road improvement project has supported archaeological investigations of two nineteenth-century sites—a blacksmith shop and hotel—associated with the historic Chisholm Trail. The blacksmith shop belonged to Tom Cook, an African American freedman, whose descendants reside nearby and became active participants in the investigations, including as collaborative authors in this article. The project illustrates the importance of representation and praxis to realize inclusive community engagement, with this article outlining the development of the project and ongoing research. Informed by Black feminist archaeologies, the project works at the intersections of local communities and state infrastructure while navigating landscapes of fraught histories and presents to forge an archaeology for the twenty-first century.


A manufacturing machine at the engineering company Sandvik Coromant has a positioning table which task is to move an item linearly. The positioning table has a linear motor capable of high velocity and acceleration. This makes it possible to achieve short cycle times and a more profitable production.The purpose of this thesis is to bring forward a new concept which is more adapted to the requirements of the positioning table. The reason is that the current positioning table provides an unnecessarily positioning accuracy of 0.01 mm, while the requirement for the positioning accuracy is just 0.1 mm. The goal is to reduce manufacturing and component costs.To develop a suitable solution an approach for the concept development process has been performed. The concept development process has been decomposed thoroughly to the positioning table's basic functions where critical sub-problems have been identified. The information has been retrieved both internally and externally through interviews, literature, benchmarking, discussions and observations. A brainstorming has been performed where the different sub-problems were discussed. The brainstorming was used to create different ideas through sketches. This resulted in eight concepts. The developed concepts were later evaluated in a concept evaluation method called Concept scoring to select the best concept.Calculations were performed on the force caused by the surrounding equipment of the positioning table. The calculations were used as a basis when designing the different concepts.The best concept was found based on the Concept scoring and refined to meet all the requirements of the positioning table. The selected concept has a more compact solution with a shorter length and fewer components. This means that the installation of the new positioning table becomes easier. The new concept has a considerably simpler design than the current positioning table leading to a much cheaper solution. The current positioning table has a cost of 155 000 SEK while the new concept will cost about 60 000 SEK, a reduction of 61 %. The current positioning table and new concept requires same type of maintenance.


Two methods coupling ion chromatography with inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) were developed for the simultaneous separation and determination of Cr(III) and Cr(VI) species. In the first method, anion chromatography with sodium bicarbonate/carbonate solution as the eluent was utilized. Cr(III) species were protected from precipitation by complexation with ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid (EDTA) prior to analysis. The detection limits were determined experimentally as 0.05 mg L-1 for both species. Most of the common cations were found to interfere with the accurate determination of Cr(III) when present in excess of 50 mg L-1. In the second method using cation chromatography, a guard column was employed in conjunction with a stepwise elution programme to elute the chromium species. The detection limits were experimentally determined as 0.1 mg L-1 for both species. South African Journal of Chemistry Vol.57 2004: 8-14


Understanding the values and impact for a hallmark event is crucial knowledge not only for the event managers but also for the public planners of the host region.The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare values of a music event using on the one hand two non-market valuation techniques; and on the other hand individual measures of subjective well-being or happiness. We use survey data collected from 716 visitors to the Peace & Love music festival held in Borlange, Sweden, in 2011. The survey contains questions about the actual behaviour of the respondents such as expenditure patterns and travel behaviour but also questions on individuals' subjective wellbeing (SWB) and willingness to pay (WTP) for certain features of the festival like "other people attending" and "length of the festival". These data allow us to estimate consumer surplus for the event by applying the travel cost method but also average and individual measures of SWB. The latter can be used to explore correlations between individual's SWB and individual socio economic characteristics but also consumer behaviour patterns.The preliminary findings of our study are that the consumer surplus value indicates an overall consumer value between 27 - 89 MSEK for the festival. The measure of happiness shows an average subjective wellbeing of 7.94 (likert scale 0-10) and correlations with a number of interesting variables. This paper contributes to the literature on valuation of tourism and events by highlighting the potential for using measures of consumer surplus in combination with actual visitor data on preferences to understand current and future impact and values of an event.


Employing a transregional and interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores indigenous and black confraternities –or lay Catholic brotherhoods– founded in colonial Spanish America and Brazil between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. It presents a varied group of cases of religious confraternities founded by subaltern subjects, both in rural and urban spaces of colonial Latin America, to understand the dynamics and relations between the peripheral and central areas of colonial society, underlying the ways in which colonialized subjects navigated the colonial domain with forms of social organization and cultural and religious practices. The book analyzes indigenous and black confraternal cultural practices as forms of negotiation and resistance shaped by local devotional identities that also transgressed imperial religious and racial hierarchies. The analysis of these practices explores the intersections between ethnic identity and ritual devotion, as well as how the establishment of black and indigenous religious confraternities carried the potential to subvert colonial discourse.


How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing the level of labor income taxes? In this paper, we argue that the degree of tax progressivity is a quantitatively important determinant of the answer to this question. To make this point, we develop a large scale overlapping generations model with single and married households facing idiosyncratic income risk, extensive and intensive margins of labor supply, as well as endogenous accumulation of human capital through labor market experience. We calibrate the model to U.S. macro, micro, and tax data and characterize the labor income tax Laffer curve for various degrees of tax progressivity. We find that the peak of the U.S. Laffer curve is attained at an average labor income tax rate of 58%. This peak (the maximal tax revenues the government can raise) increases by 7% if the current progressive tax code is replaced with a flat labor income tax. Replacing the current U.S. tax system with one that has Denmark' s progressivity would lower the peak by 8%. We show that modeling the extensive margin of labor supply and endogenous human capital accumulation is crucial for these findings. With joint taxation of married couples (as in the U.S.), higher tax progressivity leads to significantly lower labor


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A manufacturing process can be described by a sequence or combination of production steps. Based on this approach a manufacturing system has been developed that is capable to produce several different products in parallel. A batch size of one unit is possible and the production is pull-driven. The manufacturing system is based on agent technology and a special so-called product agent collects information about the assembly process. This agent will be connected to the actual product and can guide the disassembly process at the end of the products life. The agent will show the inverse steps to be taken to take a product apart. This approach can be used in the agent based manufacturing process described in this paper but the concept can also be used for other manufacturing systems. The paper discusses the possibilities as well as the restrictions of the method proposed here.


Here, we present the surface functionalization of anisotropic in form ferri-magnetic Fe3O4-nanorods (NRs) with a diblock copolymer, having a PMMA- or PDEGMEMA-block, for solubilization, and a dopamine anchor block. These polymers were synthesized through RAFT polymerization via a macro-initiator approach. The successful surface functionalization, performed via a grafting-to method, was monitored using TGA, IR and TEM measurements. The NRs were very soluble in organic solvents after functionalization. Afterwards, the liquid crystalline (LC) behavior was investigated. During solvent evaporation, birefringent domains were formed. The self-assembly into lyotropic LC structures could be observed with PEG 400 as a non-evaporating solvent. Thereby the anisotropic in form NRs aligned themselves along a director without the loss of mobility, as observed in POM, TEM and SEM images. Magnetic fields have a strong influence on the LC phases formed. They not only lead to macroscopic orientation, but also to phase separation into highly concentrated LC phases and an isotropic phase, mostly free of NRs. This can be reversed by demagnetizing the nanoparticles. We also investigated PDEGMEMA-functionalized NRs with excess PDEGMEMA polymer as solvent, and liquid crystalline phases were also observed.


Roads can negatively impact the survival of wildlife populations through additional mortality from road kill and population fragmentation caused by road avoidance behaviors. The 11.9 mile section of State Route 101 between the towns of San Luis Obispo and Atascadero, CA, USA, crosses a mountain lion movement corridor and an area important to maintaining ecological connectivity between protected lands in the Los Padres National Forest to the north and south. I examined the spatial patterns and landscape and roadway factors associated with road kill occurrence for six taxa; large mammals, mesocarnivores, squirrels, rabbits, birds and raptors. road kills were documented using vehicle-based surveys. Small mammals were the most common road kill (58.3%), followed by mesocarnivores (10.9%), birds (10.6%), rabbits (5.1%), large mammals (3.3%) and raptors (3.2%). Twenty-nine large mammal road kills were observed; eighteen mule deer, six black bears and five feral pigs. Road kill was highest in the middle of the survey area between the top of Cuesta Grade and the southern edge of Atascadero and lowest along the Cuesta Grade. I modeled road kill occurrence using logistic regression to identify landscape and roadway characteristics that were associated with road kill locations. Large mammal and mesocarnivore road kills were more likely to occur near riparian corridors. Mesocarnivore and squirrel road kills were associated with locations with greater roadside tree cover. Squirrel and rabbit road kills were more likely to occur along sections of the road with large grassy center medians. I documented animal activity patterns around the roadway during three survey periods (summer 2009, fall 2009 and spring 2010) using remote cameras placed on game trails and underpasses along the roadway. Mule deer displayed crepuscular activity patterns with peaks in activity in the morning between 05:00h and 07:00h and in the evening between 16:00h and 18:00h. Mesocarnivores generally displayed a nocturnal activity pattern with most activity occurring between 18:00h and 06:00h. I used logistic regression to determine if there was a relationship between animal activity patterns and traffic patterns while controlling for time of day, day of the week, and season. Mule deer and mesocarnivore activity patterns varied significantly by time of day and mule deer activity also varied significantly by season; however only mesocarnivore activity varied significantly in relation to traffic volume suggesting that mesocarnivores were less active when traffic volume was high. Using traffic volume and animal activity patterns I calculated a collision potential value for both …


DeLone and McLean (1992) model of information system success has much adopted by information researchers to test information success model. This study is purposed to adopt DeLone and McLean model to test the relationship of antecedents (system quality, information quality), and the consequences (individual impact and organizational impact) of the information success (user satisfaction, intended to use). There were 150 responden participated in this study. Data were collected by surveys and analized by Structural Equatin Model. The results show that of the eight hypothesized relationships tested, two were found to be significant, and the remainder (six relationships) were not significant. The model provided strong support for the influence of intended use on the individual impact, and the individual impact influenced on the organizational impact. On the other hand, system quality and information quality did not influence on the user satisfaction. Furthermore, the user satisfaction did not influene on the individual impact. Further research is required to improve model and sampling methods. The limitation and the discuss is also supported.

Key words: informatin success, individual impact, organizational impact, system quality, dan information quality.


We examine the impact of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on college students' drinking behavior using a nationally representative sample of American institutions. While success in intercollegiate athletics may augment the visibility of a university to prospective students and thereby benefit the school, it may also have a negative effect on the current student body by influencing risky behavior, especially the consumption of alcohol commonly associated with game day festivities. Using the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), we find that a school's participation in the NCAA Tournament is associated with a 30% increase in binge drinking and a 9% increase in self-reported drunk driving by male students at that school. The results suggest that this increase is not offset by less alcohol use before or after the tournament (intertemporal substitution) but instead seems to represent a net increase in the amount of alcohol consumed by students at participating schools.


Abstract Sweep net sampling of canola (Brassica napus L.) was conducted in 2002 and 2003 to determine Lygus (Heteroptera: Miridae) species composition and parasitism levels in four regions of Montana. Regardless of region or seasonal change, Lygus elisus (Van Duzee) was the dominant species in all canola fields sampled, averaging 60–99% of the total adult populations. Lygus borealis (Kelton), Lygus keltoni (Schwartz) and Lygus lineolaris (Palisot) were detected at much lower levels. Total lygus population density was greatest in the southwest and central regions. The northeast and southwest regions had the greatest lygus species diversity. The proportion of L. elisus increased from early to late crop maturity stages in the southwest and central regions while there was no change in northeast and southwest canola production regions. Nymphal stages III–V were dissected to detect parasitism in 2003 only. Parasitism was found to be negligible in the dissection of 1,230 nymphs. Lygus population densities in canola indicate the potential for economic impact on Montana canola, especially in years when moisture is limited.


A pool of low‐ozone air resides in the Arctic stratosphere in summer. Its formation and maintenance arise from a combination of chemical ozone‐destruction and transport processes. The summertime ozone destruction is induced by gas‐phase chemistry dominated by nitrogen and hydrogen catalytic cycles, which are efficient due to long summertime insolation at high latitudes. It is shown that, during events referred to as low‐ozone episodes (LOEs), column ozone can locally decrease to values comparable with the seasonal minimum. A combination is used of (i) assimilation of satellite ozone observations from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment, (ii) chemical trajectory modelling, and (iii) the gathering of new lidar and in situ ozone observations in the European Arctic in summer 2000. Hence it is shown that such LOEs involve the displacement of the pool of low‐ozone air in the middle stratosphere, which is more dynamic than previously thought and undergoes pronounced meridional excursions, in particular towards northern Europe. The thinner the ozone layer, the more ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaches the ground, where it can impact on human health and ecosystems. Erythemal UV dose enhancements of the order of 10–15% were observed in northern Norway during the LOEs in summer 2000. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society


X-ray crystallography is a foundation of the modern structural biology. Thus, refinement of crystallographic structures remains an important and actively pursued area of research. We have built a software solution for refinement of crystallographic protein structures using X-ray diffraction data in conjunction with state-of-the-art MD modeling setup. This solution was implemented on the platform of Amber 16 biomolecular simulation package, making use of graphical processing unit (GPU) computing. The proposed refinement protocol consists of a short MD simulation, which represents an entire crystal unit cell containing multiple protein molecules and interstitial solvent. The simulation is guided by crystallographic restraints based on experimental structure factors, as well as conventional force-field terms. We assessed the performance of this new protocol against various refinement procedures based on the Phenix engine, which represents the current industry standard. The evaluation was conducted on a set of 84 protein structures with different realizations of initial models; the main criterion of success was free R-factor, R_free. Initially, we performed the re-refinement of the models deposited in the PDB bank. We found that in 58% of all cases our protocol achieved better R_free than Phenix. As a next step, we conducted the refinement on three different sets of lower-quality models that were manufactured specifically to test the competing algorithms (average C^α RMSD from the target structures 0.75, 0.89, and 1.02 A). In these tests, our protocol outperformed the refinement procedures available in Phenix in up to 89% of all cases. Aside from R-factors, we also compared geometric qualities of the models as measured by MolProbity scores. It was found that our protocol led to consistently better geometries in all of the refinement comparisons.Recently, a number of attempts have been made to fully utilize the information encoded in protein diffraction data, including diffuse scattering, which is dependent on molecular dynamics in the crystal. To understand the nature of this dependence, we have chosen three different crystalline forms of ubiquitin. By post-processing the MD data, we separated the effects from different types of motion on the diffuse scattering profiles. This analysis failed to identify any features of the diffuse scattering profiles that could be uniquely linked to certain specific motional modes (e.g. small-amplitude rocking motion of protein molecules in the crystal lattice). However, we were able to confirm the previous experimental observations, made in the combined X-ray diffraction and NMR study, suggesting that the amount of motion in the specific crystal is reflected in the amplitude of diffuse scattering.


Copyright systems traditionally adopt one of two approaches to locating the parody defence - either by creating a special exception from copyright infringement, or by treating it as part of a general exception from copyright infringement, such as fair use or fair dealing. This article examines the position in the United States of America, some European countries, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, with reference not only to copyright law but also to the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. The author concludes that an express parody exception should be enacted in South African copyright law. Such an exception should be in line with the three-step test in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of lntellectual Property Rights. It should apply to an uthor's 'exclusive; (economic) rights only, as the narrow scope of the protection of an author's moral rights in South African law effectively remove these rights from the parody context.


The problem of the construction of Diophantine m-tuples, i.e. sets with the property that product of any two of its distinct elements is one less then a square, has a very long history. There are some new results in this area, but many open problems and unproved conjectures still remains. In this survey we explain the main problems and results concerning Diophantine m-tuples.


The Foundations in Software Testing workbook supports students and self-studiers who want a context-driven introduction to black box software testing. Used in parallel with the instructional materials provided at the Center for Software Testing Education and Research (testingeducation.org/BBST), readers will learn basic testing terminology and consider fundamental challenges in software testing. These challenges include: the mission of testing, the oracle problem, the measurement problem, and the impossibility of complete testing.


The development and validation of hierarchic monitoring concepts is essential for detecting and assessing possible leakages from storage formations, especially for carbon capture and storage (CCS) applications. Joint interpretation of various techniques (such as carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration
and flux measurements, self-potential (SP) and geoelectrical surveys) showed that the combination of geophysical methods with soil-gas analysis for mesoscale monitoring of the shallow subsurface above geologic CO2 storages can be a valuable tool for mapping and monitoring potential CO2 spread in the subsurface. Three measurement campaigns were undertaken – May 2011, July 2011 and April 2012
– at an analogue site in the Cheb Basin, Czech Republic, with the aim of studying CO2 leakages and their temporal and spatial behaviour. Results of geoelectrical investigations give an insight into the structural features of the subsurface. CO2 discharge into the atmosphere is mostly impeded by shallow,
clay-rich, partly water-saturated zones, which can be seen in the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) results. Several transport processes can be identified based on SP measurements. The SP results highlight the complex behaviour of temporal variations for the flow patterns. In particular, coupled
migration of gas and water plays an important influencing role in this process. Site-specific, near surface geological features and meteorological conditions seem to exert great influence on the degassing pattern and measured CO2 values. Therefore, soil-gas measurements represent a snapshot which illustrates both a distinct typical pattern of the soil-gas distribution in the near subsurface and certain differences caused by soil and meteorological conditions. Observed CO2 soil-gas anomalies and modelled results suggest that the occurrence of gas discharge is much more localized around restricted areas, often controlled by local permeability contrasts. Hence, our results show that a proposed monitoring
concept should integrate SP, time-lapse ERT, meteorological parameters and soil-gas measurements to provide a comprehensive insight into the subsurface structures and processes.


Politicians generally favor hosting mega sports events despite the discouraging evidence of financial benefits or direct economic gain. This paradox is surveyed from two different perspectives. First, we weighed the merits of the most prominent methods of economic analysis of mega sports events. Then, we discuss the ways in which politicians still manage to infer positive gains from hosting this type of event from the literature. Next, we look at a range of frequently intangible effects that could be used in the public debate before submitting a bid but that, paradoxically, rarely are. The most promising of these is making the people proud and happy. However, economists have so far been incapable of adequately valuing the effect of hosting a mega sport event based on happiness. Second, we analyzed the political process parallel to preparing a bid to understand why politicians are persistently keen to host, despite the bleak economic prospects.


Uncertainty quantification of predictive models is crucial in decision-making problems. Conformal prediction is a general and theoretically sound answer. However, it requires exchangeable data, excluding time series. While recent works tackled this issue, we argue that Adaptive Conformal Inference (ACI, Gibbs and Cand{\`e}s, 2021), developed for distribution-shift time series, is a good procedure for time series with general dependency. We theoretically analyse the impact of the learning rate on its efficiency in the exchangeable and auto-regressive case. We propose a parameter-free method, AgACI, that adaptively builds upon ACI based on online expert aggregation. We lead extensive fair simulations against competing methods that advocate for ACI's use in time series. We conduct a real case study: electricity price forecasting. The proposed aggregation algorithm provides efficient prediction intervals for day-ahead forecasting. All the code and data to reproduce the experiments is made available.


A method is developed to detect GNSS spoofing by processing beat carrier-phase measurements from a pair of antennas in a CDGPS-type calculation. This system Copyright © 2014 by Mark L. Psiaki, Brady W. O'Hanlon, Steven P. Powell, Jahshan A. Bhatti, Kyle D. Wesson, Todd E. Humphreys, & Andrew Schofield. All rights reserved. Preprint from ION GNSS+ 2014 detects spoofing attacks that are resistant to standard RAIM technique, and it can sense an attack in a fraction of a second without external aiding. The signal-in-space properties used to detect spoofing are the relationships of the signal arrival directions to the vector that points from one antenna to the other. In the un-spoofed case, there are a multiplicity of relationships between the interantenna vector and the arrival directions of the multiple signals, which results in a quantifiable multiplicity of carrier-phase single-differences between the antennas. In the spoofed case, there is a single direction of arrival, assuming a single spoofer transmission antenna, and the carrier phase single-differences are identical for all channels, up to an integer cycle ambiguity. A real-time implementation of this detection method has been developed, and it has been tested against live-signal spoofing attacks aboard a superyacht that was cruising around Italy en route from Monaco to Venice. The prototype system demonstrated an ability to detect spoofing attacks in a fraction of a second, though lags in the system's signal processing lengthened the detection delay to as much as 6 seconds. The system experienced challenges during the initial phase of a spoofing attack if the spoofer power was not much greater than that of the true signal. The true and spoofed signals interfere in a beating pattern in this case, making the composite signal harder to track and harder to classify as being either spoofed or non-spoofed. After the spoofer drags the victim receiver off to an erroneous position or timing fix, the beating subsides, and the new spoofing detection system performs well.


In 1999, an unusually strong, teleseismically registered earthquake swarm at the volcanic complex at 85°E/85°N gave first signs of an ongoing spreading episode at Gakkel ridge, one of the World's slowest spreading ridges (full spreading rate about 9mm/yr). Due to the remote location of Gakkel ridge in the ice covered Arctic ocean, an immediate on-site investigation was not possible. Following a first expedition to the 85°E/85°N volcanic complex in 2001, the 2007 AGAVE expedition recorded more than 300 local earthquakes during 21 days of recording with three arrays of seismometers mounted on ice floes.

We localized the microearthquakes with the least-squares routine Hyposat and a local velocity model compiled from the nearest seismic surveys, and then identified reliable good quality events. These best events were used to test a suite of velocity models for the smallest overall rms and define the velocity structure in a 1D layered model for the 85°E/85°N volcanic complex. We localized the whole suite of local earthquakes with this velocity model. Most of the events were localized directly in the rift valley, though some epicentres extended as far as 88°E and had shallow hypocentres <10 km depth.


Catherine Mavrikakis's Deuils cannibales et melancoliques , published in Spring of 2000, is a fascinating first novel by this professor of French literature. The 'story', which comprises a series of anecdotes, hovers between fiction and autobiography, though the reader is never sure where one ends and the other begins. Mavrikakis's subject matter--death and mourning--is an extension of her previous academic work, particularly her study of the renowned French author, Herve Guibert, who wrote a trilogy of novels based on his personal battle with AIDS. Critics responded favourably to Mavrikakis's new work, praising the superior quality of the author's writing, the sardonic humour she maintains in the face of all the dying, and her interesting use of cultural allusions that demand of both reader and translator a familiarity with intellectual and popular icons. The preface of this thesis places Mavrikakis's new work within the context of new and established literary genres: thanatological writing, elegy and plague fiction, and AIDS-infected literature, and specifically, Herve Guibert's novels, which Mavrikakis imitates in a curiously anthropophagic way. The final section of the preface examines the difficulties and challenges met during the translation process, such as a shifting level of language and a mercurial narratorial voice. The bulk of the thesis is the English translation of the first half of this remarkable book, newly titled A Feast of Lamentations . Also included are two excerpts from the second half of the novel, which have special significance to the thrust of Mavrikakis's fiction.


The application of an unstructured grid methodology on a three-dimensional high-lift configuration is presented. The focus of this paper is on the grid generation aspect of an integrated effort for the development of an unstructured-grid computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capability at the NASA Langley Research Center. The meshing approach is based on tetrahedral grids generated by the advancing-front and the advancing-layers procedures. The capability of the method for solving high-lift problems is demonstrated on an aircraft model referred to as the energy efficient transport configuration. The grid generation issues, including the pros and cons of the present approach, are discussed in relation to the high-lift problems. Limited viscous flow results are presented to demonstrate the viability of the generated grids. A corresponding NavierStokes solution capability, along with further computations on the present grid, is presented in a companion SAE paper.


This paper empirically investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on the real exports in India using the ARDL bounds testing procedure proposed by Pesaran et al. (2001). Using annual time series data, the empirical analyses has been carried out for the period 1970 to 2011. The study results confirm that real exports are cointegrated with exchange rate volatility, real exchange rate, gross domestic product and foreign economic activity. Our findings indicate that the exchange rate volatility has significant negative impact on real exports both in the short-run and long-run, implying that higher exchange rate fluctuation tends to reduce real exports in India. Besides, the real exchange rate has negative short-run and positive long-run effects on real exports. The empirical results reveal that GDP has a positive and significant impact on India's real exports in the long-run, but the impact turns out to be insignificant in the short-run. In addition, the foreign economic activity exerts significant negative and positive impact on real exports in the short-run and long-run, respectively.


The Don Manuel igneous complex and associated porphyry copper mineralization in the Andean Cordillera of central Chile demonstrate similarities between intrusive complexes associated with porphyry copper deposits and arc volcanoes that generate porphyritic volcanics. The Don Manuel igneous complex intrusions progressed from quartz monzonite through rhyolite and biotite tonalite to intermediate porphyritic and basaltic andesite dikes, which intrude the older units. Mineralization is associated with the biotite tonalite and intermediate porphyries, which also contain the greatest abundance of mafic enclaves. Zoning patterns within plagioclase phenocrysts suggest that the later intermediate porphyries comprise a hybridized suite formed by magma mixing. New zircon U-Pb ages and whole-rock Ar-Ar ages indicate that the Don Manuel igneous complex was emplaced between ca. 4 and 3.6 Ma. The time scale for the episodic intrusion of the Don Manuel igneous complex units is similar to observed episodicity of eruption and degassing events in active arc volcanoes. Observations from the Don Manuel igneous complex are consistent with the close spatial and temporal association of mineralization with episodic intrusion and interaction between silicic and mafic magmas during emplacement. The observations are also consistent with the hypothesis that mafic magma provides a source of sulfur for porphyry copper deposit formation.


The main objective of factorial design is to construct an empirical model to understand complex phenomena such as a purification process up to a given level of accuracy. The present study aimed to investigate the adsorption of Neutral Red dye (NR) from an aqueous solution onto sepiolite using 24 full factorial design. The combined effect of initial dye concentration, adsorbent dosage, pH, and particle size on adsorption of the dye was studied. The results were analyzed statistically using the student's t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and an F-test to define important experimental factors and their relative levels of importance. A regression model which may be used to estimate the removal efficiency of NR without performing any experiments was suggested. The coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.9938) indicated that <1% only of the total variations remain unexplained by the regression model. The experimental factors selected were determined to influence the adsorption process, but their relative importance varied according to the following sequence: pH > adsorbent dosage > particle size > initial concentration. The magnitude of the effects measured in this work can be used as a guide for how to adapt the adsorption process for different process conditions. The results also indicated that natural sepiolite is a suitable adsorbent for NR.


Eclogites and garnet pyroxenites from the Seve Nappe Complex in the Jämtland area of the Scandinavian Caledonides give Sm–Nd mineral ages (garnet–clinopyroxene–whole rock ± orthopyroxene ± amphibole) that are identical within error and give a weighted average age of 457.9 ± 4.5 Ma (95% confidence). The age is 50 Ma younger than ages determined from eclogites from the apparently similar Norrbotten terrane, roughly 200 km to the north. Both terranes are correlated with the western margin of Baltica, suggesting that at least two eclogite-facies metamorphic events affected this margin prior to the final closure of Iapetus during the 430–400 Ma Scandian Orogeny. The c. 458 Ma ages are nearly identical to ages determined from the eclogite-bearing Tromsø Nappe of the uppermost allochthon. The uppermost allochthon is generally considered part of the Laurentian margin, which, if true, requires that it evolved independently of Baltica until the Scandian Orogeny, when Laurentia and Baltica collided. Thus high-pressure eclogite-facies metamorphism and the introduction of mantle peridotite bodies into the crust appear to have occurred concurrently on opposite sides of Iapetus. We suggest that the HP collision recorded in the Jämtland area be called the 'Jämtlandian Orogeny' if further studies confirm its Early Ordovician age.