Conformal maps are considered very desirable for planar deformation applications, since they allow only local rotations and scale, avoiding shear and other visually disturbing distortions of local detail. Conformal maps are also orientation-preserving C∞ diffeomorphisms, meaning they are extremely smooth and prevent unacceptable "foldovers" in the plane. Unfortunately, these maps are also notoriously difficult to control, so working with them in an interactive animation scenario to achieve specific effects is a significant challenge, sometimes even impossible. We describe a novel 2D shape deformation system which generates conformal maps, yet provides the user a large degree of control over the result. For example, it allows discontinuities at user-specified boundary points, so true "bends" can be introduced into the deformation. It also allows the prescription of angular constraints at corners of the target image. Combining these provides for a very effective user experience. At the heart of our method is a very natural differential shape representation for conformal maps, using so-called "conformal factors" and "angular factors", which allow more intuitive control compared to representation in the usual spatial domain. Beyond deforming a given shape into a new one at each key frame, our method also provides the ability to interpolate between shapes in a very natural way, such that also the intermediate deformations are conformal. Our method is extremely efficient: it requires only the solution of a small dense linear system at preprocess time and a matrix-vector multiplication during runtime (which can be implemented on a modern GPU), thus the deformations, even on extremely large images, may be performed in real-time.


Introduction: Oral steroids are not commonly used because of fear of side effects. A study was conducted to find out if a short course of 1 week of oral steroid without tapering is effective and safe for the treatment of common eczemas. Materials and Methods: Patients with common eczemas were included in the study. There were five groups. One group each received tablet prednisolone 15 mg morning and 10 mg after dinner for 7 days, tablet methylprednisolone 16 mg morning and 8 mg night for 7 days, and tablet betamethasone 2 mg morning and 1 mg night for 7 days. One group received tablet betamethasone 3 mg once a day as a single morning dose for 7 days and the last group received tablet deflazacort 18 mg morning and 12 mg night for 7 days only. All the patients also received topical clobetasol propionate cream for 1 month. However, the maximum permissible amount of topical clobetasol propionate was 30 g in a month. Basal serum cortisol at 8 am along with ACTH stimulation test was carried out in all the patients on day 10th. The tests were repeated on 30th day if negative on day 10th. Results: In all groups, rapid improvement was seen at visit 2, which further continued at visit 3. No suppressive effect on hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis was seen. Conclusion: A short course of oral steroid of 25 mg of prednisolone equivalent for a period of 7 days was found to be effective and safe, and 7 days of oral steroids do not need tapering.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how young female fashion consumers assessed the facial attractiveness of an advertising model. The study focused on the consumers exposed to both local and foreign fashion advertising.

Design/methodology/approach

The study sample consisted of 161 young female (18-30 years old) university students from the State of Qatar. A research questionnaire was designed to assess the perceptions of young Qatari females toward the facial features of a cluster of international fashion models representing a variety of looks. Due to the cultural sensitivity of the research topic, data were collected online using SurveyMonkey. Apart from the key demographics, the research questionnaire captured the respondent's own self-assessed facial profile, an ideal facial profile, and the facial profile of the most preferred model from a set of choices. The authors analyze the similarities and differences between the three profiles collected from each respondent: self, ideal and choice.

Findings

The findings indicated that a mix of facial features (a blend of classical Arabic looks and contemporary Western looks) is preferred by most respondents. This matches the expectation of consumers exposed to local as well as international fashion advertising.

Practical implications

In developing markets (such as Qatar), preference for fashion models is shaped by a combination of local and foreign advertising influences. Hence, it is likely that hybrid models (i.e. representing a combination of Eastern and Western looks) appeal to young female consumers within these markets. Retailers of fashion clothing and accessories can use this information to select models who maximize the appeal of their brands.

Originality/value

The research sheds light on how judgments about the attractiveness of female models are made by triangulation among the self, the ideal and the selection of models available to choose from. The research provides a window into how young women make judgments of physical attractiveness based on facial features.


Bringing together the work of over eighty leading academics and researchers worldwide to produce the definitive reference and research tool for the social sciences, The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods contains more than 230 entries providing the widest coverage of the all the main terms in the research process. It encompasses philosophies of science, research paradigms and designs, specific aspects of data collection, practical issues to be addressed when carrying out research, and the role of research in terms of function and context. Each entry includes: - A concise definition of the concept - A description of distinctive features: historical and disciplinary backgrounds; key writers; applications - A critical and reflective evaluation of the concept under consideration - Cross references to associated concepts within the dictionary - A list of key readings Written in a lively style, The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods is an essential study guide for students and first-time researchers. It is a primary source of reference for advanced study, a necessary supplement to established textbooks, and a state-of-the-art reference guide to the specialized language of research across the social sciences.


Design research environments are becoming visible in many places, in universities, in design schools, in companies and in public organizations. What most of them have in common is a commitment to the exploration of the possible rather than the factual. We have for several years been part of such an environment. A core concept of our programmatic practice has been the design laboratory. In this article we will position our work in the larger context of constructive design research.  First we will trace other 'living labs' that our particular design laboratory must link up to. Secondly we will make the claim that any programmatic design research needs a laboratory with instruments and techniques that match the program.


A diversely polarized antenna array combines signal processing in the spatial and polarization domains for significant improvement in receiver robustness against interference. The C/N0 of line-of-sight components is improved since the receiver can use the power present in the left-hand circularly polarized channels, and also interference mitigation improves.


Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) must be strongly evaluated in every case of upper limb complain as TOS is often the underlying cause of refractory upper limb conditions facing neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon like frozen shoulder, cervical disc (as a double or a multiple crush syndromes) or carpal tunnel syndrome that frequently defy standard treatment protocols and surgeon must select the safest surgical approach for surgically indicated cases. The aim of this study is to evaluate supraclavicular scalenotomy for true neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Patients and Methods: twenty patients with neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome were operated on between 2008 and 2011. Mean age was 38.05±8.85 years (range, 17 to 58 years); female/male ratio was 17/3. The most frequent symptom was paresthesia (75.0%). Seven patients (35%) had bilateral symptoms. All cases (20 cases) were true neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome (excluding disputed cases). Lower plexus (C8-T1/ulnar nerve) compression was present in 18 patients and upper plexus (C5-C7/median nerve) compression in 2 patients. Preoperative evaluation was done for all patients and includes plain radiography, nerve conduction velocity and MRI cervical, and MRI angiography for selected cases (not all). The indication for surgery was failure of conservative treatment for 6 months. The decision to operate was made if symptoms persisted after conservative therapy in a patient with true neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Cervical rib cases, radiographic occurrence of cervical rib alone is not an indication for surgery unless associated with symptoms. Results: there were clinical and electrophysiologic improvement of the preoperative complaint in all cases (Mean ulnar nerve conduction velocity was 58.0±6.07 m/s, range, 43 to 68 m/s) preoperatively and 66.55±5.63 m/s (range, 47 to 70 m/s) postoperatively (p < 0.05) ) without any recorded complications nor recurrence during 1 year follow up period. Conclusion: Surgical decompression for thoracic outlet syndrome by only scalenotomy and release of associated bands(without interruption of osseous elements) is efficient and safe for true neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. [Mohamed Hasan, Mustafa Alwalily, Mostafa Elsayed, Mohamed Elgebale, Abdelbaset Saleh, Adel Ragab, Hamdy Behary, Bokhary Mahmoud, and Hatem Elkhouly. Scalenotomy for neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. J Am Sci 2013;9(3): 168-172] (ISSN: 1545-1003). http://www.jofamericanscience.org 21 Keyword: thoracic outlet syndrome, anterior decompression,TOS diagnostic scale.


Abstract. Coral reefs occupy only ~ 0.1 percent of the ocean's habitat, but are the most biologically diverse marine ecosystem. In recent decades, coral reefs have experienced a significant global decline due to a variety of causes, one of the major causes being widespread coral bleaching events. During bleaching, the coral expels its symbiotic algae, thereby losing its main source of nutrition generally obtained through photosynthesis. While recent coral bleaching events have been extensively investigated, there is no scientific data on historical coral bleaching prior to 1979. In this study, we employ high-resolution femtosecond Laser Ablation Multiple Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-MC-ICP-MS) to demonstrate a distinct biologically induced decline of boron (B) isotopic composition (δ11B) as a result of coral bleaching. These findings and methodology offer a new use for a previously developed isotopic proxy to reconstruct paleo-coral bleaching events. Based on a literature review of published δ11B data and our recorded vital effect of coral bleaching on the δ11B signal, we also describe at least two possible coral bleaching events since the Last Glacial Maximum. The implementation of this bleaching proxy holds the potential of identifying occurrences of coral bleaching throughout the geological record. A deeper temporal view of coral bleaching will enable scientists to determine if it occurred in the past during times of environmental change and what outcome it may have had on coral population structure. Understanding the frequency of bleaching events is also critical for determining the relationship between natural and anthropogenic causes of these events.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
In the United States population, high dietary fiber intake has been associated with a lower risk of inflammation and mortality in individuals with kidney dysfunction. This study aimed to expand such findings to a Northern European population.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS
Dietary fiber intake was calculated from 7-day dietary records in 1110 participants aged 70-71 years from the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men (examinations performed during 1991-1995). Dietary fiber was adjusted for total energy intake by the residual method. Renal function was estimated from the concentration of serum cystatin C, and deaths were registered prospectively during a median follow-up of 10.0 years.

RESULTS
Dietary fiber independently and directly associated with eGFR (adjusted difference, 2.6 ml/min per 1.73 m(2) per 10 g/d higher; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.3 to 4.9). The odds of C-reactive protein >3 mg/L were lower (linear trend, P=0.002) with higher fiber quartiles. During follow-up, 300 participants died (incidence rate of 2.87 per 100 person-years at risk). Multiplicative interactions were observed between dietary fiber intake and kidney dysfunction in the prediction of mortality. Higher dietary fiber was associated with lower mortality in unadjusted analysis. These associations were stronger in participants with kidney dysfunction (eGFR<60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2)) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.35 to 0.98) than in those without (HR, 1.30; 95% CI, 0.76 to 2.22; P value for interaction, P=0.04), and were mainly explained by a lower incidence of cancer-related deaths (0.25; 95% CI, 0.10 to 0.65) in individuals with kidney dysfunction versus individuals with an eGFR≥60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2) (1.61; 95% CI, 0.69 to 3.74; P value for interaction, P=0.01).

CONCLUSIONS
High dietary fiber was associated with better kidney function and lower inflammation in community-dwelling elderly men from Sweden. High dietary fiber was also associated with lower (cancer) mortality risk, especially in individuals with kidney dysfunction.


Climate change has had a significant impact globally on the timing of ecological events such as reproduction and migration in many species. Here, we examined the phenology of reproductive migrations in 10 amphibian species at a wetland in South Carolina, USA using a 30 year dataset. We show for the first time that two autumn-breeding amphibians are breeding increasingly later in recent years, coincident with an estimated 1.2°C increase in local overnight air temperatures during the September through February pre-breeding and breeding periods. Additionally, two winter-breeding species in the same community are breeding increasingly earlier. Four of the 10 species studied have shifted their reproductive timing an estimated 15.3 to 76.4 days in the past 30 years. This has resulted in rates of phenological change that range from 5.9 to 37.2 days per decade, providing examples of some of the greatest rates of changing phenology in ecological events reported to date. Owing to the opposing direction of the shifts in reproductive timing, our results suggest an alteration in the degree of temporal niche overlap experienced by amphibian larvae in this community. Reproductive timing can drive community dynamics in larval amphibians and our results identify an important pathway by which climate change may affect amphibian communities.


In various circumstances, it is possible to arrive at the need to specify sequences of operations that a "machine" has to perform to achieve a purpose. This paper will present VISPS, a visual system originally designed to specify mission plans for the SARA autonomous submarine robot. Although this is the particular setting for which the system had been initially devised, thanks to its flexibility it can be easily configured to adjust to different contexts and situations, even if it is always based on the same simple basic visual mechanism.


The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act implemented value-based purchasing to raise the bar on quality care and patient satisfaction in healthcare facilities. The time has come to educate graduate nursing students on the reality of quality indicators and the impact that advanced practice nurses will have on these initiatives. This educational brief describes implementation of an educational session developed for graduate nursing students on VBP and the APN role. The content for the education was derived from an extensive literature review, The Essentials of Master's Education in Nursing, and the clinical experience of the author. The education was presented to 12 Master's in nursing students utilizing a presentation with a pre-/post-test, followed by a question and answer session. Pre/post test scores showed an average increase in mean score of 17 points. Students' enthusiasm indicated that the content would be of benefit to them as they transitioned to the APN role. Consistent with The Essentials of Master's Education in Nursing, specific to Essential III (Quality Improvement and Safety), it is recommended that current quality initiatives specific in the APN role be integrated into the curriculum. Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge Judy Murphy Phd, RN, CNE and Cynthia Padula, Phd, RN CNS for all their guidance and collaboration in the development of this educational brief. Table of


There are several formalisms that enhance Bayesian networks by including relations amongst individuals as modeling primitives. For instance, Probabilistic Relational Models (PRMs) use diagrams and relational databases to represent repetitive Bayesian networks, while Relational Bayesian Networks (RBNs) employ first-order probability formulas with the same purpose. We examine the coherence checking problem for those formalisms; that is, the problem of guaranteeing that any grounding of a well-formed set of sentences does produce a valid Bayesian network. This is a novel version of de Finetti's problem of coherence checking for probabilistic assessments. We show how to reduce the coherence checking problem in relational Bayesian networks to a validity problem in first-order logic augmented with a transitive closure operator and how to combine this logic-based approach with faster, but incomplete algorithms.


A Q model of investment is estimated using data for an unbalanced panel of UK companies over the period 1975-86. Correlated firm-specific effects and the endogeneity of Q are allowed for using a Generalised Method of Moments estimator. In the calculation of Q we estimate the tax incentives available to individual companies. Q is found to be a significant factor in the explanation of company investment, although its effect is small and a careful treatment of the dynamic structure of Q models appears critical. In addition to Q, both cash flow and output variables are found to play an independent and significant role.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Progressive hip subluxation or dislocation leading to degenerative disease, in neuromuscular disease, is a significant cause of morbidity to the patient and burden to the caretaker. Surgical salvage procedures have unpredictable success. We hypothesized that modifying the Castle-type proximal femoral resection by securing a retained greater trochanter with its musculature to the capsular arthroplasty and femoral shaft would compartmentalize the femur to decrease proximal femoral migration and heterotopic ossification (HO), thereby precluding the need for traction and HO prophylaxis while improving pain and caretaker satisfaction. The purpose of this report is to describe the novel trochanteric-sparing proximal femoral resection (TS-PFR) technique. Seventeen hips in 13 patients were treated by the TS-PFR procedure. Twelve of 13 patients experienced complete pain relief, and all had improved sitting tolerance and perineal care. These results represent an improvement from prior salvage operations, without increase in blood loss, length of stay, proximal femoral migration, or HO. One patient underwent revision for failed soft tissue envelope. A retrospective review of patients treated at 2 institutions identified those who underwent TS-PFR for arthritic spastic hip. Perioperative course, radiologic evaluation for migration and HO, and caretaker satisfaction were compared with prior published surgical techniques. The TS-PFR technique is a safe alternative to previously described spastic hip salvage procedures and may improve upon them by creating a compartment for the proximal femur that precludes the need for traction and decreases HO. The technique improves patients' pain, sitting tolerance, perineal hygiene, and caretaker satisfaction.


The case-selection policy of the ICC is questioned by various scholars, criticizing the application of legal criteria defined or condemning the Court's special interest in Africa. However, no work focused on the role of media coverage over case-selection by the Court. Therefore; this study examines the Court's use of media as a tool of selection when deciding upon formal investigation cases. In this sense, it proposes that the more coverage in media to the cases, the more likely that the Court could take them for formal investigation. Most of the cases forwarded to the Court include violations happened in the countries. So far, the Court opened investigations into the situation in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Cote D'Ivore, Central African Republic and Libya while it rejected the cases - Iraq, Venezuela and Palestine. Moreover, the ICC is still examining the situations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, South Korea, Nigeria and Mali. The news data collected shows that most of formal investigation cases received higher levels of coverage in media from various channels. Additionally, deep analysis of news reports to Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, reveals that Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo are selected by the Court because of the media's higher coverage to violations in these countries whereas Iraq is rejected due to low reporting to the violations occurred during the intervention. Consequently, a positive relationship between the level of media coverage to the cases and their likelihood selection by the Court emerges.


Halo electron velocity distributions have been surveyed during the first full Ulysses southern polar pass from January 1994 through April 1995. The data examined range from approximately 50◦ S heliolatitude to the maximum poleward extent of the Ulysses orbit, approximately 80◦ S, and then back through the solar equator to 35◦ N heliolatitude. During this traversal the radial distance of Ulysses ranged from 3.8 to 1.3 AU, allowing the same heliolatitude to be sampled at two different distances. The angular width of the electron strahl is found to be broader throughout the coronal hole region than that reported for high speed streams by in-ecliptic spacecraft during the mid 1970's. The average strahl width (full width at half maximum) extrapolated to 1 AU is found to be 49◦ for 77 eV electrons. The strahl width broadens substantially between 1.3 and 2.3 AU after which the width is approximately constant. The broadening is greatest for the lower energy (77 eV) electrons. One might expect a broadening of the strahl if scattering dominates magnetic focusing of electrons caused by the decreasing magnetic field magnitude with increasing solar distance. The results presented here suggest that substantial wave-particle scattering of the electron strahl occurs, consistent with interpretations of the reduction in electron heat flux with increasing heliocentric distance measured by Ulysses.


This paper presents an ad-hoc sensor network especially developed for a disaster relief application that provides the rescue teams with a quickly deployable, cost-effective and reliable tool to collect information about the presence of people in a collapsed building space and the state of the ruins. The hardware/software architecture of the wireless sensor nodes is developed for a low cost design implementation. Energy efficiency is another objective of this paper, achieved by the combination of a low power mode algorithm and a power aware routing strategy. A selected set of simulation studies indicate a reduction in energy consumption and a significant increase in node lifetime whereas network performance is not affected significantly. Finally, a lightweight management architecture is presented to facilitate autonomous management of ad-hoc sensor networks


It is clear that the simple dasiaperfect repairpsila assumption is not immediately applicable to any of the studied types of hardware, i.e. cooling turbine., high-voltage generator, hydraulic accumulator, and radar transmitter. Hence, the assumption of 'perfect repair' needs to be validated for each specific type of item. Assumptions based on the type of physical hardware (e.g. mechanical item or avionics item) are not always trustworthy. Strangely enough the 'perfect repair' assumption fits best for the cooling turbine, which is a highly stressed mechanical item, while the fit is much poorer for the radar transmitter, which is an avionics item and for the hydraulic accumulator. For the radar transmitter the trend seems to be very scattered. For items with a large number of failures early in their life-cycle, repair is 'better than perfect', i.e. the items become more reliable after repair, presumably by elimination of less reliable subcomponents. However, this effect is not seen for items with few failures early in their life-cycle. For these items 'perfect repair' initially seems to be a valid model. However, in many casesrepair becomes 'less than perfect' later in the life-cycle. For the hydraulic accumulator this trend is even more accentuated and individual items seem to fall into two distinct subpopulations with opposite reliability trends.


Commentators have often characterized Hernando de Soto's advocacy of formalization of title for landless squatters as right-wing. And de Soto seems to understand himself as an advocate of individual property rights and free markets. But his analysis of informality and redistribution has a subtext with potentially progressive implications. Although de Soto sometimes reflexively attributes informality to overregulation, informality can always also be characterized as the consequence of being too poor to afford regulated goods. Indeed, for any particular regulation that puts the regulated good out of reach of the poor, we can either attribute this consequence to the cost of the regulation or to the consequences of a distribution of wealth that makes the regulated good unaffordable to those at the bottom. Thus, if the regulation is a good one, its effect on price, and therefore on informality, may argue in favor of keeping the regulation but redistributing purchasing power to blunt its pernicious impact on informality. What we need is a way of evaluating regulations that goes beyond merely observing their impact on the cost of goods and, indirectly, on the prevalence of informality. Specifically, we need to be able to evaluate four different possibilities: (1) regulation with redistribution to offset the impact of the regulation on the poor; (2) regulation without redistribution with its attendant increase in informality; (3) redistribution without regulation; and (4) no redistribution and no regulation. Choosing among these options is the domain of applied political theory. The choice is a far more complicated and demanding task than merely observing that regulation without redistribution increases informality.


The present experiment was conducted to determine the efficiency of microbial protein production in the rumen and intake by cattle fed high-molasses diets. Intake and microbial crude protein (MCP) production were measured along with the concentration of rumen ammonia-nitrogen (N) and volatile fatty acids (VFA), pH and the rate of digestion of roughage in the rumen. Eight Brahman crossbred steers weighing 211 ± 19.3 (± s.d.) kg were used in a double 4 × 4 Latin square design. Steers were allocated to one of four total mixed rations: control (pangola hay only), 25M (25% molasses/urea mix + 75% hay), 50M (50% molasses/urea + 50% hay), and 75M (75% molasses/urea + 25% hay). The production and efficiency of production of MCP (EMCP) of the diet increased quadratically as the level of molasses in the diet increased. The EMCP from the molasses/urea mix was estimated as 166 g MCP/kg digestible organic matter (DOM), a relatively high value. Intake of dry matter (DM) and DOM increased quadratically, reaching a peak when molasses was ~50% (as fed) of the ration. Digestibility of DM increased quadratically and that of neutral detergent fibre decreased linearly with increasing level of molasses in the diet. Molasses inclusion in the diet had no effect on rumen pH, ammonia and VFA concentration in the rumen fluid, plasma urea-N, urine pH or ruminal fractional outflow rate of ytterbium-labelled particles and Cr-EDTA. It was concluded that a diet with a high level of molasses (>50%) and supplemented with adequate N had high EMCP, and that low MCP production was not a factor limiting intake or performance of cattle consuming high-molasses diets.


Collisions between haulage equipment and pedestrian workers or other vehicles claim an average of five lives each year in surface and underground metal/nonmetal mining operations. Many more workers are severely injured, Although technologies exist that could prevent these collisions, (radar, closed-circuit TV, and backup alarms), they do have limitations and are not being used widely. New developments in radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems show promise for reducing the number of collisions. This paper, originally presented in 1998, describes tests conducted on off-the-shelf RFID systems and the subsequent development of a custom RFID system that could be used for both surface and underground mining equipment.


. Recursive types extend the simply-typed lambda calculus (STLC) with the additional expressive power to enable diverging computation and to encode recursive data-types (e.g., lists). Two formulations of recursive types exist: iso-recursive and equirecursive. The relative advantages of iso- and equi-recursion are well-studied when it comes to their impact on type-inference. However, the relative semantic expressiveness of the two formulations remains unclear so far. This paper studies the semantic expressiveness of STLC with iso- and equi-recursive types, proving that these formulations are equally expressive . In fact, we prove that they are both as expressive as STLC with only term-level recursion. We phrase these equi-expressiveness results in terms of full abstraction of three canonical compilers between these three languages (STLC with iso-, with equi-recursive types and with term-level recursion). Our choice of languages allows us to study expressiveness when interacting over both a simply-typed and a recursively-typed interface. The three proofs all rely on a typed version of a proof technique called approximate backtranslation. Together, our results show that there is no difference in semantic expressiveness between STLCs with iso- and equi-recursive types. In this paper, we focus on a simply-typed setting but we believe our results scale to more powerful type systems like System F.


We analyze a model of voluntary disclosure by firms and the desirability of disclosure regulation. In our model disclosure is costly, it has private and social value, and its precision is endogenous. We show that (i) a convexity in the value of disclosure can lead to a discontinuity in the disclosure policy; (ii) the Nash equilibrium of a voluntary disclosure game is often socially inefficient; (iii) regulation that requires a minimal precision level sometimes but not always improves welfare; (iii) the same is true for subsidies that change the perceived cost of disclosures; and (iv) neither regulation method dominates the other. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.


The rigorous application of static timing analysis requires a large and costly amount of detail knowledge on the hardware and software components of the system. Probabilistic Timing Analysis has potential for reducing the weight of that demand. In this paper, we present a sound measurement-based probabilistic timing analysis technique based on Extreme Value Theory. In all the experiments made as part of this work, the timing bounds determined by our technique were less than 15% pessimistic in comparison with the tightest possible bounds obtainable with any probabilistic timing analysis technique. As a point of interest to industrial users, our technique also requires a comparatively low number of measurement runs of the program under analysis, less than 650 runs were needed for the benchmarks presented in this paper.


The aim of this paper is to analyze the requests of asymmetric decentralization that have been recently proposed in Italy by Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna in light of the tiny economic literature on asymmetric federalism, and the current institutional setup. On the basis of article 116, paragraph 3 of the Italian Constitution, we retrace the steps that have been made up to now: from the three original regional requests to the Preliminary Agreements signed in February 2018, and the following Preliminary Agreements signed in February 2019. Attention is focused on three of the subject matters for which a higher degree of decentralization has been requested: health, education, and public finance and regional fiscal coordination. We then analyze the types of funding which could be given to regions to finance their additional supply of goods and services by focusing on three specific criteria: historical costs, national average costs, and regional government expenditure standard needs.


Due to the mass accumulation of digital documents in nowadays research environment, related statistical or content mining methods for analyzing, organizing, and accessing information from the document collections are in great need. This research aimed to: (1) identify the core journals in the field of educational evaluation research through cross-verification of questionnaire survey and database searching; (2) find out major research topics and their evolutions by analyzing the publications in the core journals based on scientometrics methods such as citation analysis and text mining techniques. Based on the findings, the major salient research topics include principal's leadership, class size, evaluation, reform, teacher certification, opportunity to learn, retention, and voucher. And as to the issue of the evaluation methods, the studies conducted by Chen, Weiss, and Rossi are identified as newer ones than those by Cook and Compbell, which coincides with the fact shown in the evaluation theory tree (a sort of topical tree) organized by Marvin Alkin, an experienced expert in the field. Besides, with this topic trend analysis, it is also found that the number of papers dealing with the major research topics seems to be decreasing. However, all these results need to be interpreted by domain experts to reveal their true meanings. The methodology presented in this research may be applied not only to improve the efficiency of content analysis, but also to facilitate regular tracing of topic evolution, to spot the positions of important researchers in the field, and therefore to provide relevant clues or materials for further studies.


Insects have various gaits with specific characteristics and can change their gaits smoothly in accordance with their speed. These gaits emerge from the embodied sensorimotor interactions that occur between the insect's neural control and body dynamic systems through sensory feedback. Sensory feedback plays a critical role in coordinated movements such as locomotion, particularly in stick insects. While many previously developed insect models can generate different insect gaits, the functional role of embodied sensorimotor interactions in the interlimb coordination of insects remains unclear because of their complexity. In this study, we propose a simple physical model that is amenable to mathematical analysis to explain the functional role of these interactions clearly. We focus on a foot contact sensory feedback called phase resetting, which regulates leg retraction timing based on touchdown information. First, we used a hexapod robot to determine whether the distributed decoupled oscillators used for legs with the sensory feedback generate insect-like gaits through embodied sensorimotor interactions. The robot generated two different gaits and one had similar characteristics to insect gaits. Next, we proposed the simple model as a minimal model that allowed us to analyze and explain the gait mechanism through the embodied sensorimotor interactions. The simple model consists of a rigid body with massless springs acting as legs, where the legs are controlled using oscillator phases with phase resetting, and the governed equations are reduced such that they can be explained using only the oscillator phases with some approximations. This simplicity leads to analytical solutions for the hexapod gaits via perturbation analysis, despite the complexity of the embodied sensorimotor interactions. This is the first study to provide an analytical model for insect gaits under these interaction conditions. Our results clarified how this specific foot contact sensory feedback contributes to generation of insect-like ipsilateral interlimb coordination during hexapod locomotion.


A novel scheme for quantitative calibration of a phase-shift formed in a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating is numerically and experimentally demonstrated, which is based on the utilization of either a wavelength- or a power-interrogated fiber ring laser. Moreover, an application example of the proposed phase-shift FBG to temperature measurement has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated.


Microservices is an architectural style that provides several benefits to develop applications as small, independent, and modular services. Building Microservices Architecture (MSA)-based applications is immensely supported by using software testing fundamentals. With the increasing interest in the development of MSA-based applications, it is important to systematically identify, analyze, and classify the publication trends, research themes, approaches, tools, and challenges in the context of testing MSA-based applications. The search yielded 2,481 articles, and 33 articles were finally selected as the primary studies with snowballing. The key findings are that (i) 5 research themes characterize testing approaches in MSA-based applications; (ii) integration and unit testing are the most popular testing approaches; and (iii) addressing the challenges in automated and inter-communication testing is gaining the interest of the community. Additionally, it emerges that there is a lack of dedicated tools to support testing for MSA-based applications, and the reasons and solutions behind the challenges in testing MSA-based applications need to be further explored.


Manfred Pfister's classic concept of perspective within drama (Pfister 1993 [1977]) defined perspective as the relation between the knowledge and/or intention of figures on stage on one hand and the knowledge and/or intention of the author on the other. This implies that the whole of the text has a certain meaning and that characters function to represent that meaning and to make it clear to both audiences and readers. In this chapter, it will be argued that this concept needs to be modified: the underlying notion of perspectivization makes it possible to describe the dynamic relation between different levels of dramatic text that can link action, structure, and the aesthetic concept of a drama. The chapter initially summarizes Pfister's concept and then discusses different forms of perspective and perspectivization within drama in order to show the importance of re-thinking 'perspective' as an essential term within a systematic approach to analyzing dramatic texts.


The shape of the end-systolic tension-length relationship (ESTLR) changes when contractile state is changed, whereas the end-systolic pressure-volume relationship (ESPVR) remains linear despite changes in contractility. To investigate this disparity, the ESPVR was determined with contractility altered extensively by dobutamine, BAY K 8644, nifedipine, lowering coronary blood flow, and the introduction of extrasystolic and postextrasystolic stimulations. The ESPVRs were fitted by nonlinear regression analysis to the parabolic equation Pes = aVes2 + bVes + c, where Pes is end-systolic pressure, Ves is end-systolic volume, and a, b, and c are parameters. There was a negative, statistically significant correlation between a, which serves as a shape index of the ESPVR, and E'max, the slope of the ESPVR in a low volume range. When E'max was large a was negative, indicating increasing concavity of the ESPVR to the volume axis at high contractility. When E'max was small a was positive, indicating convexity of the ESPVRs to the volume axis at low contractility. Within the average range of E'max between 3.4 and 7.8 mmHg/ml, however, the parabolic fit to the data was not statistically better than a linear fit over the range of volumes testable in the isolated heart. We conclude that the shape of the ESPVR measured in the isolated canine heart changes with contractile state. In accordance with previous interpretations of shape changes in the muscle ESTLR, these results are consistent with the existence of length-dependent activation of cardiac muscle in the intact heart.


ABSTRACT Teacher educators need to better understand how pre-service teachers make decisions that lead them to enact particular content knowledge in their lessons. Lesson observations can be used to examine the content knowledge manifesting in teaching actions and stimulated recall interviews can offer insights into teaching decisions. However, methodological approaches are needed that use strategic combinations of data collection and analysis techniques to illuminate connections between teaching actions and decisions. This paper describes one such methodological approach that investigates (i) pre-service teachers' content knowledge that manifests in their live teaching actions and (ii) the decisions that lie behind those actions including the influences on those decisions. The approach is illustrated using data from a study of secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the analytical approach described and the potential for findings produced using this approach to inform the design of teacher education experiences.


FutureFactories is an exploration of flexible design and manufacturing made possible by digitally technologies: principally, but not exclusively, rapid prototyping (RP). The aim is individualised production, the industrial scale manufacture of 'one-offs' via an element of computer generated random form. Designs exist in a state of constant metamorphosis morphing within an envelope set by the designer. FutureFactories aims to overcome the split between artistic creativity and machine production; blurring the boundaries between traditional interpretations of 'Craft' and 'Design' (and even Art). The project began as a design residency at the University of Huddersfield in the summer of 2002, it has now been expanded into a practice-based PhD study.
Computer generated artwork has become commonplace. The creation of three dimensional artifacts from this artwork however imposes considerable limitations and is consequently rare. Advances in digital technologies have made the creation of 'one-off' products from computer generated models, a realistic, affordable, possibility.
FutureFactories is very much a practice based study. The target of the residency program was an exhibition featuring a collection of 3D designs. Five design 'templates' were created for the exhibition which toured regionally from Autumn 2003 to Spring 2004, before going on to Milan and London. There was constant tension between desired aesthetics and what could be achieved with an embryonic design system. Budgetary considerations resulted in pushing the boundaries of the cheaper 3D printing processes. As the project has gained momentum, support from the RP Industry has allowed the use of more exotic RP methodologies and materials. Models that had hitherto required considerable post-finishing were now ready straight from the machine, proving FutureFactories a viable production concept. Evolution versions of the first collection were exhibited in London Design week, September 2004, and at the time of writing they are on display in New York


According  to  a  basic  prediction  made  by  the  Revised  Hierarchical  Model  (RHM),  at  early  stages  of language  acquisition,  strong  L2-L1  lexical  links  are  formed.  RHM  predicts  that  these  links  weaken with  increasing  proficiency,  although  they  do  not  disappear  even  at  higher  levels  of  language development. To test this prediction, two groups of highly proficient and two groups of elementary L2 learners were tested on noncognate stimuli with episodic recognition tasks in both forward (L1-L2) and backward  (L2-L1)  directions.  The  pattern  observed  for  the  elementary  L2  learners  in  both  directions wasconsistent  with  the  prediction  of  the  RHM.  The  results  showed  the existence of  strong  lexical  links  in  the  backward  direction  at  the  elementary  level  but no such links  were  found in the forward direction. Contrary to the predictions of the RHM, however, L2-L1 lexical links are lost at higher levels of proficiency.


From the Publisher:

Set up your home wireless network-the quick and painless way
Learn time-saving tricks and troubleshooting tips from an expert
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Get simple instructions and tips for Windows 98 through XP

Fast, reliable, secure home wireless networks-the easy way!
Today's home wireless networks offer tremendous advantages over hard-wired networks-among them, unprecedented portability and, of course, the freedom from wires strung all over your house! Unless you have a firm grasp on all the latest networking technologies, though, wireless networks won't free you from digging your way through a collection of confusing, jargon-riddled manuals; dealing with obscure configuration modes; and finally, hoping somehow it will all work once you flip the switch.
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Adding and sharing peripherals andInternet connections, step by step
Maximizing and troubleshooting wireless connections
Using vital security tools such as firewalls and data encryption, and much more!

This book is intended for anyone who wants to get a home wireless network up and running in no time, with no previous experience in networking required. You'll find simple instructions and tips for computers running Windows 98 through XP, including how to make them peacefully co-exist.


Based on the 'universal' values of economic development, democratic governance and cultural diversity promoted by UNESCO, the official policy of the Federation of Malaysia, known as Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020), promotes modernization with an emphasis on democracy, tolerance, culture and economic development, and asserts the multicultural character of Malaysian society while upholding the peaceful coexistence of its three largest communities (Malays, Chinese and Indians). The joint inscription of the two historic Straits cities of Melaka and George Town on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2008 was a reaffirmation of that policy. Our study illustrates the construction of this social model through the heritage process which was based on the tangible as well as the intangible heritage of the different ethnic groups that make up the Malaysian nation. Dubbed the 'Rainbow Nation' by the British during the colonial era, postcolonial Malaysia has reappropriated the label to construct its present and future identity. We focus on the agency of civil society activists, government officials and international experts in the process that mobilised, in turn, the values of nationalism and internationalism, communitarianism and multiculturalism, and universalism and cosmopolitanism.


This paper aims to analyse the readability of literary texts in Malaysian lower secondary schools. A quantitative research method took place to find out students' views on reading the literary texts prescribed in terms of: i) readability of the texts ii) cultural familiarity of the texts iii) physical features of the texts iv) interest and motivation v) preferred literary texts.. A cross-sectional survey was conducted. A set of questionnaire containing 127 questions was distributed to 450 respondents in five districts of Perak. Data from 450 questionnaires were used in the SPSS statistics software version 20.0 to analyse students' views in five aspects of the literary texts prescribed and presented in the form of percentages. The findings indicate students are positive on the readability of literary text especially the prose forms, they understand the culture portrayed in the novel, on physical aspects, the cover of the texts for Form Two and Three do not seem to attract them. Besides, students are motivated and interested in the literary texts prescribed for them and much preferred prose themes among students is on family. The implication of the research indicates readability of literary texts depends on text and reader factors. Both the factors play a significant role in the process of reading and understanding the literary texts.


We consider the problem of quantizing data generated from disparate sources, e.g. subjects performing actions with different styles, movies with particular genre bias, various conditions in which images of objects are taken, etc. These are scenarios where unsupervised clustering produces inadequate codebooks because algorithms like K-means tend to cluster samples based on data biases (e.g. cluster subjects), rather than cluster similar samples across sources (e.g. cluster actions). We propose a new quantization technique, Source Constrained Clustering (SCC), which extends the K-means algorithm by enforcing clusters to group samples from multiple sources. We evaluate the method in the context of activity recognition from videos in an unconstrained environment. Experiments on several tasks and features show that using source information improves classification performance.


Purpose: The democratisation of the health system was a cornerstone of post-apartheid South Africa. Primary healthcare (PHC) was adopted for increased access, broader participation, and equity in health. Hereafter, physiotherapy and other health sciences curricula, research function, and teaching staff would have to be re-oriented towards enabling implementation and sustainability of the new model. This is an important consideration for the design of clinical education programmes, a learning trajectory within professional curricula that is fundamental to the education, training, and professional socialisation of emerging healthcare personnel. This study explored how student-physiotherapists experienced clinical education practice within the model of PHC. Methods: The perspectives of students of a physiotherapy clinical education programme at a South African university were examined within a qualitative research framing. Forty-two final year student physiotherapists participated in the study. Employing narrative inquiry, data were produced through reflective journals and focus group interviews. Interviews were audio-taped and verbatim transcripts of the interviews were produced. Interview data and journal entries were analysed inductively using thematic coding and categorisation. Results: Broad themes that emerged included programme design, content, pedagogy, and assessments. Strong adherence to the medical model and under-emphasis of PHC as a guiding philosophy for curriculum development resulted in participants reporting they were under-prepared for autonomous practice within multidisciplinary teams and in contexts that were under-resourced and outside of hospital-based settings. Conclusion: To develop skilled and competent physiotherapists for a transformed model of healthcare practice in South Africa, the physiotherapy education programme needs to be grounded in principles of PHC.


Looking at a current architecture, there are many examples of glass load bearing structures such as beams, panes, balustrades, columns or even stairs. These elements are mostly made of laminated glass panels. Panels are bonded together with polymer interlayer significantly influencing a shear forces transfer between them. There is still overall lack of knowledge in the task of shear forces transfer between these panels. It principally depends on the polymer stiffness, which is affected by an ambient temperature, humidity and load duration. Civil engineers currently tend to design laminated glass members on the safe side, generally not taking laminated panels interaction provided by the interlayer into account. This approach leads to uneconomical and robust glass bearing members significantly preventing the use of laminated glass more extensively. There are many polymer interlayers made for structural laminated glass applications available on a market. Most of them differ in stiffness and other important properties therefore these must be experimentally examined to design safer and more economical laminated glass members. This paper is focused on the shear modulus of PVB (polyvinyl-buthyral) and SentryGlasO (ionoplast) experimental investigations as a function of temperature and loading ratio. It is possible to find out these functions by static creep or relaxation tests as well as by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis-DMTA. A lot of DMTA experiments in shear with the aforementioned interlayers in various loading conditions have been performed in order to determine their shear stiffness. It also enables to identify their Prony parameters as a part of the next survey. Experimentally verified common polymer interlayer stiffness helps engineers to design safer and cheaper glass constructions. This is the way how to extend the use of laminated glass in a current architecture.


Technology road mapping has emerged in recent years as a key management tool in formulating the link between technological resources and the exploitation of market opportunities. A powerful aid to strategy formulation and communication, the technique has the major advantage of bringing many functions within a business together around a common plan. Although there is no definitive guide to road mapping practice, the application in many different businesses has revealed a number of generic aspects. A major common factor is that technology road maps are concerned with the introduction of technology change into an organisation. This paper proposes a conceptual model of the factors significant for the successful introduction of technology change. The relevance of this framework to technology road mapping is discussed based on the in-depth experience of developing and implementing TRMs for three large companies. Also discussed briefly are results of questionnaires sent to these three companies to obtain a feedback on their post-implementation experiences.


The 1920 Svalbard Treaty conferred full and absolute sovereignty on Norway but paradoxically limited that sovereignty by conferring on states party to the treaty equal enjoyment and liberty of access provisions on Svalbard and in its territorial waters. Whether these provisions now extend to geographic areas adjacent to Svalbard's territorial sea—specifically to Svalbard's oil-rich continental shelf and abundant fishing stock of the superjacent waters of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—is a matter of considerable debate. Norway repudiates the dynamic legal extension of the Svalbard Treaty to these geographic areas, which post-date the treaty; other Arctic stakeholders, notably Russia, disagree. This Article concentrates on the problematic meaning of full and absolute yet qualified sovereignty within the context of the Svalbard Treaty. Focusing on the factual and historical circumstances, or effectivites pertaining to the archipelago's 400 year human history are of essential but limited use given competing historical narratives. Instead, this Article concentrates on the historical and legal development of the concept of terra nullius, a term more elusive than commonly thought, and the ways in which states historically made use of that concept to forward territorializing interests over Svalbard's newly emerging resources, even when pronouncing or professing interest in shared or condominium-like resource management arrangements. In an age of rapid ice melt in the cryosphere, accompanied by emergent technology and increasing access to previously unavailable or uncontemplated resources, Svalbard's extended geographical area challenges global governance regimes and presents a cautionary tale about territorial temptation in the High Arctic's diminishing global commons.


Many small regulatory noncoding RNAs act by base-pairing with their target RNAs and interfering with their translation and/or affecting their stability, but not all such RNAs act in this way. The highly conserved prokaryotic 6S RNA interacts with and inhibits Escherichia coli σ70-containing RNA polymerase (RNAP). 6S RNA contains a single-stranded RNA bulge structure that mimics a gene promoter "open complex" and suggests that it might compete with promoters for RNAP. Wassarman and Saecker show that the bulge does indeed bind in the active site of RNAP in a manner analogous to the open complex, which prevents RNAP binding to legitimate targets. In the presence of nucleotides, the RNAP can synthesize short product RNAs from the 6S RNA template, which causes the RNAP to dissociate, freeing it to restart transcription during outgrowth from stationary phase and in response to nutrient availability. K. M. Wassarman, R. M. Saecker, Synthesis-mediated release of a small RNA inhibitor of RNA polymerase. Science 314, 1601-1603 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


In this paper I discuss a structural problem facing the United States with respect to our policy responses in the context of trade and technological change and their impact on workers. Both trade and technological change have put enormous pressure on the U.S. economy to raise the skill level of the workforce. But the supply of skilled workers in the U.S. is just not keeping pace with the changes in demand due to technology and trade. Fixing this crisis requires us to understand both the skill quality of workers entering into the labor market and the nature of the stock of skills of workers already in the job market. This paper summarizes our knowledge on where workers get skills training and the returns to this training – both private and public. It then discusses how the academic research has informed the policy process and provides some suggestions on how academic economists can get involved in the policy debate to influence the direction of policy.


The problem we address is how to find interesting but previously unknown implicit information within the scientific literature. Useful information can go unnoticed if it is not explicit within any single article, but can be inferred by considering together two (or more) separate articles. We have conducted numerous link analyses of title words and phrases within the MEDLINE database in order to detect complementary relationships that reveal or suggest new information. We have used the computer to identify and construct suggestive juxtapositions of medical article titles in an attempt to enhance the ability of biomedical researchers to detect new and useful relationships that otherwise would be very difficult to uncover. This software is also a tool for investigating the process and problems of link analysis in natural language text. It is available for free public use on the web.


Darwin acknowledged contrasting, plausible arguments for how species invasions are influenced by phylogenetic relatedness to the native community. These contrasting arguments persist today without clear resolution. Using data on the naturalization and abundance of exotic plants in the Auckland region, we show how different expectations can be accommodated through attention to scale, assumptions about niche overlap, and stage of invasion. Probability of naturalization was positively related to the number of native species in a genus but negatively related to native congener abundance, suggesting the importance of both niche availability and biotic resistance. Once naturalized, however, exotic abundance was not related to the number of native congeners, but positively related to native congener abundance. Changing the scale of analysis altered this outcome: within habitats exotic abundance was negatively related to native congener abundance, implying that native and exotic species respond similarly to broad scale environmental variation across habitats, with biotic resistance occurring within habitats.


This paper describes characteristics of 313 client members of 17 therapeutic communities (TCs) in England and Scotland. These data were collected in a research project evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic communities in treating people with personality disorders. Everyone admitted to these communities between 2 April 2001 and 30 September 2002 was invited to complete a set of questionnaires. We report their scores on a measure of personality difficulties (PDQ4+) and on two measures of state distress (CORE-OM and Brief Symptom Inventory) to provide a description of members willing to participate in the study. This dataset complements information from the same measures reported previously for everyone who was in these therapeutic communities on 1 April 2001 (Lees, Evans & Manning, 2005) giving a snapshot of the composition of the communities on that day; this sample gives a picture of the new arrivals as they arrived subsequently. One of the significant findings of this study is that the women in addiction therapeutic communities have much the highest scores on all the PDQ scales used but do not have particularly higher BrSI or CORE scores than the other therapeutic community groups. The next significant finding, replicating the snapshot data, is that the men in the prison therapeutic communities appear to score rather lower than might have been expected on the PDQ. Finally, the scores are generally higher in this sample than in the snapshot sample.
The biggest limitations of the dataset are the missing data. The outstanding question is whether the snapshot sample scores lower than sequential admissions because of improvement in treatment, attrition of those with higher scores, or some combination of both.


The industrial demand on good dynamical simulation models is increasing. Since most structures show some form of nonlinear behavior, linear models are not good enough to predict the true dynamical behavior. Hysteresis is a highly nonlinear phenomenon which occurs in for example dampers and mechanical joints. This paper presents a method for parameter estimation on nonlinear systems under harmonic excitation. By using the principle of harmonic balance or multi harmonic balance a theoretical frequency response function of the studied system can be estimated. This frequency response function can, in conjunction with measured nonlinear transfer functions, be used to make parameter estimations of the nonlinearity present in the system. A major benefit using this method is the ability to use arbitrary nonlinear functions. This means that the method can be applied to nonlinear systems with memory, for instance systems with hysteresis effects. The method is applied to both simulated systems and an experimental test rig.


Rising energy prices will alter water allocation and distribution. Water extraction and conveyance will become more costly and demand for hydroelectric power will grow. The higher cost of energy will substantially increase the cost of groundwater, whereas increasing demand for hydroelectric power may reduce the price and increase supply of surface water. High energy prices and geopolitical considerations drive investment in land-and water-intensive biofuel technology, diverting land and water supplies to energy production at the expense of food production. Thus, rising energy prices will alter the allocation of water, increase the price of food and may have negative distributional effects. The impact of rising energy prices and the introduction of biofuels can be partly offset by the development and adoption of new technologies, including biotechnology. The models considered here can be used to determine the effects of rising energy prices on inputs, outputs, allocation decisions and impact on distribution.


Culture and Climate Change: Scenarios presents reflections on scenario-making in the context of climate crisis. Scenarios have played a prominent role in climate research, policy and communication. However, we were also interested in their potential as stories and speculative fictions, for both imagining and responding to climate futures. Our challenge was to open up thinking on climate change scenarios in the wake of the Paris Agreement that emerged from COP 21. The book includes a series of essays from across a network of climate researchers along with accounts of the Culture and Climate Change 'networked' arts-research residency programme. Together these contributions invite transformational thinking on unpredictable climate-changed futures. Our hope is that collective scenario-making can help to animate careful but purposeful action. After all, when we generate scenarios we are asking ourselves what kind of future do we want.


This paper presents results from the first rational model of eye movement control in reading to make predictions for the full range of the eye movement record. The model identifies the text through Bayesian inference and makes eye movement decisions to maximize the efficiency of text identification, going beyond leading approaches which select model parameters to maximize the fit to human data. Two simulations with the model demonstrate that it can produce effects of word predictability and frequency on eye movements in reading similar to those produced by humans, providing evidence that many properties of human reading behavior may be understood as following from the nature of efficient text identification.


Abstract. The heterogeneous reaction of OH radicals with sub-micron squalane particles, in the presence of O2, is used as a model system to explore the fundamental chemical mechanisms that control the oxidative aging of organic aerosols in the atmosphere. Detailed kinetic measurements combined with elemental mass spectrometric analysis reveal that the reaction proceeds sequentially by adding an average of one oxygenated functional group per reactive loss of squalane. The reactive uptake coefficient of OH with squalane particles is determined to be 0.3±0.07 at an average OH concentration of ~1×1010 molecules cm−3. Based on a comparison between the measured particle mass and model predictions it appears that significant volatilization of a reduced organic particle would be extremely slow in the real atmosphere. However, as the aerosols become more oxygenated, volatilization becomes a significant loss channel for organic material in the particle-phase. Together these results provide a chemical framework in which to understand how heterogeneous chemistry transforms the physiochemical properties of particle-phase organic matter in the troposphere.


This book investigates cases in which national and international activities have gone massively wrong, entailing seriously negative consequences, and in which the sophisticated analytical models of social science have ceased to be helpful. Illustrations range from the global financial crisis to the failure to achieve speedy systemic change in the Former Soviet Union and the failure to achieve development in the Third World. The analysis uses as a backdrop long-term Russian history and short-term Russian encounters with unrestrained capitalism to develop a framework that is based in the so-called new institutionalism. Understanding the causes of systemic failure is shown to require an approach that spans across the increasingly specialized subdisciplines of modern social science. Demonstrating that increasing theoretical sophistication has been bought at the price of a loss of perspective and the need for sensitivity to the role of cultural and historical specificity, the book pleads the case for a new departure in seeking to model the motives for human action.


This paper proposes phoneme clustering methods for multilingual language identification (LID) on a mixed-language corpus. A one-pass multilingual automated speech recognition (ASR) system converts spoken utterances into occurrences of phone sequences. Hidden Markov models were employed to train multilingual acoustic models that handle multiple languages within an utterance. Two phoneme clustering methods were explored to derive the most appropriate phoneme similarities between the target languages. Ultimately a supervised machine learning technique was employed to learn the language transition of the phonotactic information and engage the support vector machine (SVM) models to classify phoneme occurrences. The system performance was evaluated on mixed-language speech corpus for two South African languages (Sepedi and English) using the phone error rate (PER) and LID classification accuracy separately. We show that multilingual ASR which fed directly to the LID system has a direct impact on LID accuracy. Our proposed system has achieved an acceptable phone recognition and classification accuracy in mixed-language speech and monolingual speech (i.e. either Sepedi or English). Data-driven, and knowledge-driven phoneme clustering methods improve ASR and LID for code-switched speech. The data-driven method obtained the PER of 5.1% and LID classification accuracy of 94.5% when the acoustic models are trained with 64 Gaussian mixtures per state.


This paper discusses reception practices for unaccompanied minors in Italy by juxtaposing legislative changes, ideas about and social representations of the condition of minors, contingent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the refugee crisis along the Euro-Mediterranean border. This crisis is particularly key for interpreting migratory processes involving unaccompanied foreign minors because it has framed migrant minors in a morally ambivalent and polysemous way. Of the many formulas and practices involved in minor migrant reception, the analysis focuses on a shared housing project in Bologna called Vesta in which young migrants about to reach the age of majority, a moment that marks a sudden change in their lives, are temporarily placed in Italian citizens' and families' homes. Through an anthropological lens, we examine how welfare policies involving citizens and spaces of social relations and cohabitation create commonly overlooked spaces in which intersecting individual and collective claims condition the pathways of young migrants, steering them in the arrival society, and give rise to diverse ideas and imaginaries about family ties.


OBJECTIVES
To test whether or not a one- (S1) and a two-piece (S2) dental implant systems render the same biological, technical, and esthetic outcomes regarding implants and implant-supported reconstructions over an observation period of 4 to 6 years.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Sixty patients were randomly assigned to receive S1 or S2 implants. The implants were restored with either fixed or removable prostheses. The insertion of the final reconstruction was chosen as baseline. One-year and 4- to 6-year (FU-5) measurements included biological (e.g. marginal bone level, probing pocket depth, peri-implant mucositis, and peri-implantitis), technical (e.g. fracture or loosening of prosthetic screws, fracture or loosening of abutments, fracture of framework, and/or veneering ceramic (minor, major), loss of retention for cemented restorations), and esthetic parameters (visibility of the crown margin, shimmering of the implant through the mucosa, the level of the facial margo mucosae compared to the contralateral tooth or implant site and the modified papilla index) for implants and reconstructions. Survival and success rates of implants and reconstructions were calculated. Because of the asymmetric data distributions, nonparametric statistical methods were applied.

RESULTS
The implant-based analysis revealed a cumulative implant survival rate of 97.9% (S1: 96.6%; S2: 98.9%) at FU-5. The median marginal bone level for group S1 changed from 0.51 mm at baseline to 0.49 mm at FU-5 and for group S2 from 1.02 mm to 1.35 mm (P < 0.001). Patient-level analyses demonstrated a frequency of peri-implant mucositis of 7.7% (S1) and 10.0% (S2) and for peri-implantitis of 7.7% (S1) and 13.3% (S2) at FU-5. The patient-based cumulative implant survival rate was 94.6% (S1: 92.3%; S2: 96.7%). The overall patient-based biological complication rate amounted to 15.4% (S1) and to 23.3% (S2) (P = 0.517), whereas the overall technical complication rates were 30.8% (S1) and 13.3% (S2) (P = 0.349). The prosthetic survival rates were 93.1% for S1 and 100% for S2 (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
Both implant systems reveal high survival rates on the implant and prosthetic level. Apart from marginal bone-level changes, biological and technical outcomes did not reveal significant differences between the two implant systems.


Synthetic zeolite is the candidate material of the separation column of the gas chromatograph for the hydrogen isotope analysis. Mordenite (MOR) is one of the zeolite, and has been reported that the MOR column can separate hydrogen isotope at about 200K. So, the present authors have investigated the adsorption capacities of H2 and D2 on MOR at various temperatures, and have predicted the adsorption isotherms of HD, HT, DT and T2. In this work, the adsorption capacities of tritium on MOR at 77K and 87K were investigated, and they were compared with the predicted isotherms. The observed isotherm at 87K agreed with the predicted isotherm well in low pressure region. However, at 77K, the adsorption capacity at low pressure region was smaller than that of D2.


This work aimed to evaluate the efficiency of fruit bagging with different materials on the protection of apples against pests and diseases, as well as its influence on the quality, maturity and calcium (Ca) content of apple fruit. The experiment was carried out in 2007/2008 and 2008/2009, in an organic apple orchard located at Sao Joaquim region, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Ten year-old 'Fuji Suprema' apple trees grafted on 'Marubakaido' rootstock, with a 'EM-9' interstem, had their fruits bagged with a transparent micro-holed plastic and non-textured fabric bags. Fruits were bagged right after hand-thinning, from nearly 40 days after flowering until harvesting. The control treatment consisted of unbagged fruit. At harvest, fruits were assessed for damages caused by fruit-fly (Anastrepha fraterculus), oriental fruit moth (Grapholita molesta) and apple leafroller (Bonagota salubricola). The incidence of apple scab (Venturia inaequalis), bitter rot (Colletotrichum gloeosporioides), and moldy core (Alternaria sp.; Fusarium sp.) diseases, and of physiological disorders (russeting and bitter pit) were also assessed. The physico-chemical attributes of maturity and quality, and fruit Ca content were evaluated. Regardless of the bag material used, bagged fruit were protected against insect damages, but not against diseases caused by the evaluated fungus. In 2008/2009, bagged fruit showed a significantly higher Ca content and lower incidence of bitter pit and higher incidence of russeting than the control treatment. Bagging advanced fruit maturity, especially in transparent micro-holed plastic, and reduced skin red color, mainly in non-textured fabric bag.


Aggressive and invasive tumor cells often reside in hypoxic microenvironments and rely heavily on rapid anaerobic glycolysis for energy production. This switch from oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis, along with up-regulation of the glucose transport system, significantly increases the release of lactic acid from cells into the tumor microenvironment. Excess lactate and proton excretion exacerbate extracellular acidification to which cancer cells, but not normal cells, adapt. We have hypothesized that carbonic anhydrases (CAs) play a role in stabilizing both intracellular and extracellular pH to favor cancer progression and metastasis. This is likely in concert with the ion transport family. Here, we examined the patterns of selected ion transporter expression, the mechanisms underlying alterations in glucose metabolism, and pH regulation in human breast cancer cells. Our results show that members of the proton transport family are differentially expressed within the molecular subtypes of breast cancer. The most aggressive form of breast cancer, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), appears to coordinately express monocarboxylate transporter 4 (MCT4) and carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX). Proton efflux, as measured by the glycolytic rate assay, showed pH dependence and a requirement for CA IX expression. Isoform selective sulfonamide-based inhibitors of CA IX did not alter proton flux, which suggests activity is not necessary for this regulation. This supports a mechanism that utilizes the intramolecular H+ shuttle system in CA IX to facilitate proton efflux.


Exploring AutoCAD Map 3D 2014 is a textbook that has been written considering the needs of the users who wish to learn and develop their skills in using AutoCAD Map 3D. The book is composed of 11 chapters arranged in a pedagogical sequence covering the basic as well as advanced GIS concepts. In addition, this book contains a student project, based on the real world scenario, which allows you to practice your spatial analysis skills. After completing this book, you will be able to Work with the coordinate reference system in AutoCAD Map 3D Create and edit spatial features and attribute data (Object Data table and external database) Attach external drawings Connect to the datasets data using FDO data connection Apply Object Classification Create and manage topologies Perform data analysis Output generation using the paper and electronic media Salient Features of the Textbook Comprehensive coverage of concepts and tools Heavily illustrated text supported by over 36 tutorials, 22 exercises, and a student project Step-by-step explanation to guide the users through the learning process Additional information provided throughout the book in the form of tips and notes Self-Evaluation test, Review Questions, and Exercises are given at the end of each chapter so that the users can assess their knowledge Free teaching and learning resources are provided for the faculty and students


BIG MEN ON CAMPUS: ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSE TO TITLE IX AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMEN'S SPORTS IN THE BIG TEN CONFERENCE, 1972-1982 Jeffrey T. Ramsey, B.A., M.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2014 Signed into law in 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments was designed to eliminate gender discrimination throughout the American educational system. Title IX applied to all educational programs at any level of schooling including admissions, financial aid, academic programs, and social organizations. However, Title IX has primarily been associated with college sports. Since 1972, female participation in intercollegiate athletics has increased dramatically. Yet additional opportunities for women in sports have not come easily. Significant battles between university leaders and the government about how this piece of legislation was to be enforced have persisted throughout the decades since passage of Title IX. The first ten years after Title IX was enacted marked the height of controversy over women's athletics and gender equality. The Title IX Era (1972-1982) in the Big Ten clearly highlighted the practical challenges of achieving gender equity in athletics. While certain administrators undoubtedly held chauvinistic positions, it is equally clear that these attitudes were not the sole reason for the slow development of women's sports. The stilted growth of women's athletics at these institutions was directly related to the financial and logistical burdens of adding an entirely new program. Thus, during the Title IX Era, Big Ten officials were less focused on limiting female participation in sports than on the legitimate practical issues they faced. More importantly, the controversy over Title IX also revealed the limits of government involvement in higher education. Big Ten leaders opposed the rules established by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) and rejected the notion that the federal government could tell them how to run their program. However, these same officials consistently argued that their opposition to HEW's Title IX regulations did not mean that they were against the ideal of gender equality in athletics. Ultimately, response to Title IX in the Big Ten was based on administrators' assertions that they supported the spirit of equality, while at the same time denouncing the letter of the law as dictated by the government.


Foundations of Fuzzy Control: A Practical Approach, 2nd Edition has been significantly revised and updated, with two new chapters on Gain Scheduling Control and Neurofuzzy Modelling. It focuses on the PID (Proportional, Integral, Derivative) type controller which is the most widely used in industry and systematically analyses several fuzzy PID control systems and adaptive control mechanisms.This new edition covers the basics of fuzzy control and builds a solid foundation for the design of fuzzy controllers, by creating links to established linear and nonlinear control theory. Advanced topics are also introduced and in particular, common sense geometry is emphasised.Key featuresSets out practical worked through problems, examples and case studies to illustrate each type of control systemAccompanied by a website hosting downloadable MATLAB programsAccompanied by an online course on Fuzzy Control which is taught by the author. Students can access further material and enrol at the companion websiteFoundations of Fuzzy Control: A Practical Approach, 2nd Edition is an invaluable resource for researchers, practitioners, and students in engineering. It is especially relevant for engineers working with automatic control of mechanical, electrical, or chemical systems.


Juju music as a unique Nigerian popular genre has so many African phenomena inculcated into its performance though it has some western touches in its scale and some other features. Hence this paper examined one of the African phenomena – directing, in the performance of juju music. This write up was based on the conducted research and in order to present a genuine report, live performances and the recordings of juju exponents such as King Sunny Ade, Obey Fabiyi, and others were collected and analyzed. It was discovered that directing is rooted in African performance. It is locally known among the Yoruba people of Nigeria as "titokun" – directing and "atokun" – director. The same ideology was brought into the performance of Juju music. At first, Juju musicians employed western musical instrument such as Guitar to achieve directing and later began to make use of more African oriented media. Hence, three basic forms of directing were identified as prominent ways of directing the performance of Juju music. This paper concluded by submitting that 'directing' is quite different in concept and practice from the western form of conducting. Hence, there is need for standardization of processes of the concept in terms of usage, application of terms, and definition of terminologies in use as further research and modification of terms are practically inevitable.

 Key words: Juju music, directing, titokun, atokun


Determining the capacity of multi-receiver networks with arbitrary message demands is an open problem in the network coding literature. In this paper, we consider a multi-source, multi-receiver symmetric deterministic network model parameterized by channel coefficients (inspired by wireless network flow) in which the receivers compute a sum of the symbols generated at the sources. Scalar and vector linear coding strategies are analyzed. It is shown that computation alignment over finite field vector spaces is necessary to achieve the computation capacities in the network. To aid in the construction of coding strategies, network equivalence theorems are established for the decomposition of deterministic models into elementary sub-networks. The linear coding capacity for computation is characterized for all channel parameters considered in the model for a countably infinite class of networks. The constructive coding schemes introduced herein for a specific class of networks provide an optimistic viewpoint for the application of structured codes in network communication.


A BSTRACT Background Previous studies have found concurrent declines in blood pressure, serum cholesterol levels, and the incidence of and mortality from coronary disease. However, the effects of changes in diet and lifestyle on trends in coronary disease are largely unknown. Methods We followed 85,941 women who were 34 to 59 years old and had no previously diagnosed cardiovascular disease or cancer from 1980 to 1994 in the Nurses' Health Study. Diet and lifestyle variables were assessed at base line and updated during follow-up. Results After adjustment for the effect of age, the incidence of coronary disease declined by 31 percent from the two-year period 1980–1982 to the two-year period 1992–1994. From 1980 to 1992, the proportion of participants currently smoking declined by 41 percent, the proportion of postmenopausal women using hormone therapy increased by 175 percent, and the prevalence of overweight, defined as a bodymass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) of 25 or more, increased by 38 percent. During the study period, diet improved substantially. Statistically, changes in these variables — when considered simultaneously — explained a 21 percent decline in the incidence of coronary disease, representing 68 percent of the overall decline from 1980–1982 to 1992–1994. Taken individually, the reduction in smoking explained a 13 percent decline in the incidence of coronary disease; improvement in diet explained a 16 percent decline; and increase in postmenopausal hormone use explained a 9 percent decline. On the other hand, the increase in body-mass index explained an 8 percent increase in the incidence of coronary disease. Conclusions Reduction in smoking, improvement in diet, and an increase in postmenopausal hormone use accounted for much of the decline in the incidence of coronary disease in this group of women. An increasing prevalence of obesity, however, appears to have slowed the decline in the incidence of coronary disease. (N Engl J Med 2000;343:530-7.)


Abstract Attempts to measure psychological agency have drawn on social psychology scholarship. Nonetheless, it is well documented that the Euro/American psychology paradigm is challenged by its tendency to universalise its theories. This raises a challenge for development scholars trying to measure the psychological domain; especially regarding understanding what the psychological domain may mean to people outside the Western liberal tradition. We examine the use of theoretical measures of psychological agency against local concepts of psychological agency from a neighbourhood on the urban fringe of Bamako. We conclude that there is no clear association between local and theoretical measures of psychological agency and therefore there is a need to include local and theoretical measures in the study of agency.


One of the goals in Ambient Intelligence is to enable Intelligent Environments to take decisions based on the perceived context. In our previous work, we successfully explored how the inhabitants can communicate their own preferences with the environment using Event-Condition-Action ECA rules. The easiness of the communication language combined with an appropriate explanation mechanism gives trust to the Intelligent Environment actions. However, defining every preference, and maintaining them up-to-date can be cumbersome. Therefore, a complementary mechanism is required to learn from user behavior and adapt to small changes without being explicitly requested for. Inferring behaviors effectively from data collected from sensors in an Intelligent Environment is a challenging problem. The main issues include primitive representation of data, the necessity of a high number of sensors, and dealing with few training data collected in a short time. We present MFE3/GADR, an evolutionary constructive induction method to ease inferring inhabitants' preferences from data collected from simple sensors. We show that this method detects successfully relevant sensors and constructs highly informative features that abstract relations among them. The constructed features, in addition to improving significantly the learning accuracy, break down and encapsulate the performance of inhabitants into decision trees that can easily be converted to ECA rules for further use in the Intelligent Environment. Comparing the empirical results show that our method can reduce a large set of complex ECA rules that represent the preferences to a smaller set of simple ECA rules.


The discovery and visualization of temporal sequence of personalized academic research can enhance the ability for discovering the latent trend of interests to information seekers. In this paper, we propose a definition of weighted co-occurring keywords time gram and use it as a basic unit to analyze the temporal information in existed keywords collection. We further propose a method to get the temporal sequence and temporal network based on these time grams. An application of the proposed method in discovering academic research temporal sequence is discussed, which includes techniques for acquiring extended keywords, assigning weight to each keyword and co-occurring weight to each keyword pair. A visualization tool is designed for browsing the temporal networks identified. Finally, we report an experiment in the area of library and information studies. The experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in helping users analyzing and portraying the evolution pattern and developing trend of corresponding academic research.


Gaining insight to pathologically relevant processes in continuous volumes of unstained brain tissue is important for a better understanding of neurological diseases. Many pathological processes in neurodegenerative disorders affect myelinated axons, which are a critical part of the neuronal circuitry. Cryo ptychographic X-ray computed tomography in the multi-keV energy range is an emerging technology providing phase contrast at high sensitivity, allowing label-free and non-destructive three dimensional imaging of large continuous volumes of tissue, currently spanning up to 400,000 μm3. This aspect makes the technique especially attractive for imaging complex biological material, especially neuronal tissues, in combination with downstream optical or electron microscopy techniques. A further advantage is that dehydration, additional contrast staining, and destructive sectioning/milling are not required for imaging. We have developed a pipeline for cryo ptychographic X-ray tomography of relatively large, hydrated and unstained biological tissue volumes beyond what is typical for the X-ray imaging, using human brain tissue and combining the technique with complementary methods. We present four imaged volumes of a Parkinson's diseased human brain and five volumes from a non-diseased control human brain using cryo ptychographic X-ray tomography. In both cases, we distinguish neuromelanin-containing neurons, lipid and melanic pigment, blood vessels and red blood cells, and nuclei of other brain cells. In the diseased sample, we observed several swellings containing dense granular material resembling clustered vesicles between the myelin sheaths arising from the cytoplasm of the parent oligodendrocyte, rather than the axoplasm. We further investigated the pathological relevance of such swollen axons in adjacent tissue sections by immunofluorescence microscopy for phosphorylated alpha-synuclein combined with multispectral imaging. Since cryo ptychographic X-ray tomography is non-destructive, the large dataset volumes were used to guide further investigation of such swollen axons by correlative electron microscopy and immunogold labeling post X-ray imaging, a possibility demonstrated for the first time. Interestingly, we find that protein antigenicity and ultrastructure of the tissue are preserved after the X-ray measurement. As many pathological processes in neurodegeneration affect myelinated axons, our work sets an unprecedented foundation for studies addressing axonal integrity and disease-related changes in unstained brain tissues.


This review volume is devoted to a discussion of analogies and differences of complex production systems - natural, as in biological cells, or man-made, as in economic systems or industrial production. Taking this unified look at production is based on two observations: Cells and many biological networks are complex production units that have evolved to solve production problems in a reliable and optimal way in a highly stochastic environment. On the other hand, industrial production is becoming increasingly complex and often hard to predict. As a result, modeling and control of such production networks involve many different spatial and temporal scales and decision policies for many different structures. The common themes of industrial and biological production include evolution and optimization, synchronization and self-organization, robust operation despite high stochasticity, and hierarchical dynamics. The mathematical techniques used come from dynamical systems theory, transport equations, control theory, pattern formation, graph theory, discrete event simulations, stochastic processes, and others. The application areas range from semiconductor production to supply chains, protein networks, slime molds, social networks, and whole economies.


Accurate light measurements are important in the analysis of photosynthetic systems. Many commercial instruments are available to determine light; however, the comparison of light estimates between studies is difficult due to the differences in sensor types and their calibrations. The measurement of underwater irradiance is also complicated by the scattering and attenuation of light due to interactions with particulates, molecules, and the bottom. Here, three sensor types are compared to evaluate the calibration of light intensity loggers to estimate photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). We present a simple calibration of light intensity loggers that agree within 3.8% to factory‐calibrated scalar PAR sensors under a wide range of environmental conditions. Under the same range of conditions, two identical factory‐calibrated PAR sensors showed a similar difference of 3.7%. The light intensity loggers were calibrated to a high‐quality PAR sensor using an exponential fit (r2 = 0.983) that accounts for differences in sensor types with respect to the angle of incoming light, scattering, and attenuation. The light loggers are small, robust, and simple to operate and install, and thus well‐suited for typical subsurface research. They are also useful for small‐scale measurements, when broad spatial coverage is needed, or in research requiring multiple sensors. Many studies have used these simple light intensity sensors to estimate PAR, yet their limitations and advantages in mimicking PAR have not been well defined previously. We present these small and user‐friendly loggers as an excellent alternative to more sophisticated scalar PAR sensors.


Recombinant proteins that combine different functions required for cell targeting and intracellular delivery of DNA present an attractive approach for the development of nonviral gene delivery vectors. Here, we described a novel protein termed ATF-Iys 10 which facilitated cell-specific gene transfer via receptor-mediated endocytosis. ATF-Iys 10 was composed of the amino-terminal fragment of urokinase and ten lysines at the carboxyl terminus. Bacterially expressed ATF-Iys 10 protein existed in soluble form, and had antigenicity of human urokinase. Purified ATF-Iys 10 specifically bound to uPAR-expressing cells and formed protein-DNA complexes with plasmid pGL3-control. After neutralization of excess negative charge with poly-L-lysine, these complexes served as a specific gene delivery vector for uPAR-expressing cells. Lysosomotropic compounds, such as chloroquine, drastically increased the ATF-Iys 10 mediated gene delivery efficiency. Our results suggest that the recombinant protein ATF-Iys 10 with the properties of DNA binding and tumor cell targeting represents a promising method for gene transfer and expression in tumor cells.