This thesis attempts to recover the voice of those termed 'delusional' and gives reasons why they should have a place in the 'conversation of humanity'. It does this by challenging what I identify as a view of language use that I call the 'monological (as opposed to dialogical) folk-scientific observer' picture. I argue that it is the poverty of this picture that leads to the idea that delusions are empty speech acts, incomprehensible, or irrational and incorrigible false beliefs. These conceptions of delusions stand in the way of people labelled as 'delusional' being considered as competent partners in conversation.
In the place of such a picture, I draw analogies with poetical uses of language and outline a view of language as a means of organising experience. The experience of those classified as 'insane' is particularly chaotic and an ethical stance to them involves trying to imagine how their words can have sense. The thread that is followed throughout the thesis is that it is reciprocal trust that allows us to remain in a common sense orientation to the world and it is this that breaks down when people start to say things that are considered delusional. Trust provides an epistemic frame that rules out certain possibilities for making sense of the world. A breakdown in trust occurs because of a disruption of the person's perceptions of salience which prevents the person from being attuned to interpersonal situations.
Following on from this depiction of delusions, it follows that re-establishing trust with the sufferer is crucial to overcoming delusions and that the stigma attached to being seen as 'delusional' can stand in the way of this. It is argued that the person's existential stance can be understood as ironic and so an earnestly ironical approach to the person is ethically justified.


"The Politics of Bad Faith" brings into the open the refusal of the political Left -- including those who describe themselves as liberals -- to learn from the past, specifically from the checkered history of progressive movements for social justice and equal outcomes. This refusal shapes agendas that Horowitz describes as part of a new "cold war" against America -- a culture war that pits "progressives" and "multi-culturalists" against America's founding principles and ideas. Horowitz traces the radical project from its origins in 19th-century socialism to the disastrous excesses of such current "progressive" causes as political correctness, radical feminism, racial preferences, and what he describes as the nihilistic campaign to "deconstruct" the American idea itself.


You will never believe what happened at the party yesterday! Ellen kissed Ruben and Peter…. Suppose this is the last thing you read in your friend's e-mail before your computer breaks down. If you have some prior knowledge regarding the situation described, you would be able to guess how the interrupted sentence could continue without great difficulty. For example, if you know that Ellen was secretly in love with both Peter and Ruben and you know she has a certain reputation, she may have kissed them both, but if you know she has a crush on Ruben, but definitely not on Peter, the remaining part of the sentence would more likely be something like (Ellen kissed Ruben and Peter) smiled his approval from a distance. The main question of the research presented in this dissertation is whether readers' knowledge of a situation immediately affects the structural analysis (i.e. parse) of a sentence. This knowledge is called situational knowledge and is provided by means of discourse context. More generally, the question is whether non-syntactic factors immediately affect the initial parse of a sentence or whether it is solely determined on the basis of syntax-based parsing preferences. Syntactic ambiguity, specifically, the NP-/S-coordination ambiguity, is used as a research tool. The aim is to demonstrate effects of situational knowledge not only at the point of disambiguation, but also at the onset of the ambiguity. A second question is how situational knowledge interacts with other, particularly syntactic factors. In order to investigate this question, the influence of situational knowledge is not only investigated in isolation, but also in contrast to another factor, viz. subject-verb agreement. In particular, it is investigated which factor outweighs the other if both factors conflict. Results of a series of off-line experiments, self-paced reading experiments and an eye movement experiment are discussed. The results show that the parsing process is immediately affected by situational knowledge, a non-syntactic factor that is often even considered non-linguistic. Furthermore, it turns out that a syntactic constraint (in this case subject-verb agreement) eventually overrules the initial analysis of the critical sentence as determined by situational knowledge. On the basis of these results, parsing is argued to be a highly interactive, dynamic process that changes in response to the strength of various sources of information. This dissertation should be of interest to those interested in sentence processing and its interfaces with discourse representation.


The last decade of geophysical seafloor mapping in the Arctic Ocean from nuclear submarines and icebreakers reveals a wide variety of glaciogenic geomorphic features at water depths reaching 1000 m. These findings provide new and intriguing insights into the Quaternary glacial history of the Northern Hemisphere. Here we integrate multi‐ and single beam bathymetric data, chirp sonar profiles and sidescan images from the Chukchi Borderland and Lomonosov Ridge to perform a comparative morphological seafloor study. This investigation aims to elucidate the nature and provenance of ice masses that impacted the Arctic Ocean sea floor during the Quaternary. Mapped glaciogenic bedforms include iceberg keel scours, most abundant at water depths shallower than ∼350–400 m, flutes and megascale glacial lineations extending as deep as ∼1000 m below the present sea level, small drumlin‐like features and morainic ridges and grounding‐zone wedges. The combination of these features indicates that very large glacial ice masses extended into the central Arctic Ocean from surrounding North American and Eurasian ice sheets several times during the Quaternary. Ice shelves occupied large parts of the Arctic Ocean during glacial maxima and ice rises were formed over the Chukchi Borderland and portions of the Lomonosov Ridge. More geophysical and sediment core data combined with modeling experiments are needed to reconstruct the timing and patterns of these events. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


ABSTRACT-Throughout his time on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens consistently took the "strict separationist" approach to the Establishment Clause. This led him to write and join opinions that stated that the Establishment Clause is violated by religious activity in public schools, by religious symbols on government property, and by government support for parochial schools that could be used for religious education. Justice Stevens adhered to these views throughout his thirty-five years on the Court. Although the strict separationist approach was the dominant view on the Court for several decades, those appointed after Justice Stevens rarely held this view. Some, like Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer, believe that the government violates the Establishment Clause only if it symbolically endorses religion or a particular religion. Others, like Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas, believe that little violates the Establishment Clause: the government acts unconstitutionally only if it literally establishes a church or coerces religious participation. The result is that, while Justice Stevens remained consistent, the Justices around him became much more conservative on this issue. Justice Stevens's approach to the Establishment Clause has great virtues in protecting freedom of conscience and providing inclusiveness in a religiously pluralistic society. INTRODUCTION In March 2005, I argued Van Orden v. Perry1 before the Supreme Court. The case involved the constitutionality of a six-foot high, three-foot wide monument of the Ten Commandments that sits exactly at the corner between the Texas State Capitol and the Texas Supreme Court.2 As I prepared for the oral argument, I knew that Justice John Paul Stevens would likely vote to declare the monument unconstitutional as violating the Establishment Clause. Throughout his time on the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens had been a consistent vote and voice for a wall separating church and state. I also knew that, no matter what, Justice Stevens would treat every advocate with decency and respect. Although he had a laser-like ability to get to the heart of the case and ask the most difficult questions, he always did so without rancor or sarcasm and in the best possible tone of intellectual engagement. The argument went as I expected, but the ultimate result surprised me. The Court voted 5-4 to uphold the monument, which I certainly regarded as possible, but with Justice Breyer concurring in the judgment and providing the critical fifth vote.3 As I, and everyone, predicted, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas voted to uphold the monument. Had the case been argued when Justice Stevens came on the bench in 1975, I have no doubt that it would have come out the other way. At that time, a majority of the Court continued to believe in the strict separation of church and state. It was just four years after the Court decided Lemon v. Kurtzman,4 which has been described as embodying this strict separationist approach to the Establishment Clause.5 On the other hand, if the case were argued today, I think I would have little chance of prevailing. The replacement of Justice O'Connor with Justice Alito means that there now are five justices who are likely to find that little violates the Establishment Clause.6 Justice Stevens came on to the Court as a moderate Republican and was perceived as a moderate justice, but by the time he retired he was perceived as a strong liberal voice.7 Upon his retirement, there was much discussion as to whether Justice Stevens changed over his thirty-five years on the Supreme Court or whether the Court changed around him. Undoubtedly, it was some of both. In some areas, such as affirmative action, Justice Stevens changed over time.8 But in the area of the Establishment Clause, it was not Justice Stevens who changed, but the Justices around him. From the time he came on to the Court, Justice Stevens always voted to enforce a strict separation of church and state. …


The purpose of this paper, based on a doctoral study, is to examine how teachers in the Foundation Phase of schools in the Free State province perceived, conceptualised and implemented Developmental Appraisal System (DAS) as a component of the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS). The epistemological and ontological perspectives pertaining to both quantitative and qualitative approaches compelled the researcher to choose the Mixed Method Research (MMR). Data analysis consisted of the inferential and descriptive statistics for quantitative data analysis and, themes, patterns and behaviours for qualitative data analysis. Unbalanced two-way ANOVA, T-test and frequency distributions were used in analysis of quantitative data while themes and patterns resembled qualitative data analysis. The majority of teachers perceived DAS as a developmental process while a sizable minority claimed to the contrary. The Department of Basic Education did not provide direct training to teachers on matters pertaining to both the DAS and IQMS. Furthermore, the money reward earned through the process of DAS was perceived to be a source of conflict between teachers and school management.


ABSTRACTFog is a situation when the visual range, which is the horizontal visibility, is reduced to less than 1000 m near the Earth's surface by the presence of cloud droplets. Fog trend analyses are reported in the literature for hundreds of stations worldwide, the majority of which showing a considerable reduction of fog. Although fog is often associated with conditions at which cloud condensation nuclei had been activated at rH (relative humidity) > 100% and rapid growth had lead to the formation of fog droplets, this study focusses on urban air masses and conditions when rH is just below 100%. Mie scattering analysis shows that fog can form under such conditions and the reduction of the visual range is mainly caused by submicron aerosol particles which grow to diameters around 1 µm through deliquescence. The liquid water content itself is poorly correlated with the visual range. Assuming equilibrium conditions, both an increase of the air temperature and a reduction of the aerosol particle concentration lead to reductions of fog. In our example case, the increment for a temperature increase by 0.1°C had about the same effect as the reduction of aerosol concentrations by 10%. Care must be taken in projecting this result to actual conditions because the system is non-linear. However, physical evidence is presented which confirms that both climate change and an improvement of air quality are mechanisms that can contribute to the reduction of fog.


This paper discusses the characteristics of the optoacoustic response to the laser ablation of a steel target under a thin layer of liquid by the radiation of a pulsed fiber laser in the range of power densities 107–2×108   W/cm2. The dependence of the intensity of the principal peak (5.6 kHz) of the Fourier spectrum of the optoacoustic signal on the power density of the laser radiation is determined. It is established that the character of the growth of the acoustic signal amplitude substantially depends on the properties and conditions of the appearance of a near-surface plasma.


Although logic and proof theory have been successfully used as a framework for the specification of computation systems, there is still an important gap between the systems that logic can capture and the systems used in practice. This thesis attempts to reduce this gap by exploiting, in the context of the computation-as-proof-search paradigm, two non-canonical aspects of sequent calculus, namely the polarity assignment in focused proofs and the linear logic exponentials. We exploit these aspects in three different domains of computer science: tabled deduction, logical frameworks, and algorithmic specifications. This thesis provides a proof theoretic explanation for tabled deduction by exploiting the fact that in intuitionistic logic atoms can be assigned arbitrary polarity. A table is a partially ordered set of formulas and is incorporated into a proof via multicut derivations. Here, we consider two cases: the first case is when tables contain only finite successes and the second case is when tables may also contain finite failures. We propose a focused proof system for each one of these cases and show that, in some subsets of logic, the only proofs and open derivations available in these systems are those that do not attempt to reprove tabled formulas. We illustrate these results with some examples, such as simulation, winning strategies, and let polymorphism typechecking. We show that linear logic can be used as a general framework for encoding proof systems for minimal, intuitionistic, and classical logics. First, we demonstrate that with a single linear logic theory, one can faithfully account for natural deduction (normal and non-normal), sequent calculus (with and without cut), natural deduction with general elimination rules, free deduction and tableaux proof systems by using logical equivalences and different polarity assignments to meta-level literals. Then we exploit the fact that linear logic exponentials are not canonical and propose linear logic theories that faithfully encode different proof systems; for example, a multi-conclusion system for intuitionistic logic and several focusing proof systems. The last contribution of this thesis investigates what type of algorithms can be expressed by using linear logic's non-canonical exponentials. In particular, we use different exponentials to "locate" multisets of data, and then we show that focused proof search can be precisely linked to a simple algorithmic specification language that contains while-loops, conditionals, and insertion into and deletion from multisets. Finally, we illustrate this result with several graph algorithms, such as Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the shortest distances in a positively weighted graph and an algorithm for checking if a graph is bipartite.


Abstract
 Species of Dothiorella are common plant pathogens or saprobes found mainly on a variety of woody hosts, with a cosmopolitan distribution. Strains of Dothiorella were isolated from the stems of Symphoricarpos sp. and Cornus sanguinea in Italy. Morphological characters, as well as phylogenetic analyses of the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS4, ITS5) and partial sequences of the translation elongation factor 1-&agr; genes were used to characterize and distinguish the two isolates. One is conspecific to D. sarmentorum previously from Menispermum canadense collected in Sweden, and a description for this species is provided. The second species could not be assigned to any known species of Dothiorella. Dothiorella symphoricarposicola sp. nov. from Symphoricarpos is described and illustrated herein, and compared with similar Dothiorella taxa.


We introduce a new "Monotonic Imbalance Bounding" (MIB) class of matching methods for causal inference with a surprisingly large number of attractive statistical properties. MIB generalizes and extends in several new directions the only existing class, "Equal Percent Bias Reducing" (EPBR), which is designed to satisfy weaker properties and only in expectation. We also offer strategies to obtain specific members of the MIB class, and analyze in more detail a member of this class, called Coarsened Exact Matching, whose properties we analyze from this new perspective. We offer a variety of analytical results and numerical simulations that demonstrate how members of the MIB class can dramatically improve inferences relative to EPBR-based matching methods.


Studies were conducted at three activated sludge treatment plants during normal operation. The heavy metals were measured in the influent to each plant, the primary sedimentation effluent where applicable, the discharge after activated sludge treatment and secondary sedimentation, and in one case after a final polishing filter. Both the soluble and the total portions were measured. Beryllium, nickel, and thallium were not found in detectable levels in any of the plant influents. Mercury was found in only trace amounts. The removals of the other metals varied considerably. No consistent conclusions can be made from the data; each metal, soluble or total fraction, and unit treatment operation must be interpreted individually. The only metal in the plant effluents consistently above the recommended limit was arsenic, and this barely above the limit, and the lead content from Fitchburg, despite 83% removal.


Usability and usefulness have made the spreadsheet one of the most successful computing applications of all times: millions rely on it every day for anything from typing grocery lists to developing multimillion dollar budgets. One thing spreadsheets are not very good at is manipulating symbolic data and helping users make decisions based on them. By tapping into recent research in Logic Programming, Databases and Cognitive Psychology, we propose a deductive extension to the spreadsheet paradigm which addresses precisely this issue. The accompanying tool, which we call NEXCEL, is intended as an automated assistant for the daily reasoning and decision-making needs of computer users, in the same way as a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel assists them every day with calculations simple and complex. Users without formal training in Logic or even Computer Science can interactively define logical rules in the same simple way as they define formulas in Excel. NEXCEL immediately evaluates these rules thereby returning lists of values that satisfy them, again just like with numerical formulas. The deductive component is seamlessly integrated into the traditional spreadsheet so that a user not only still has access to the usual functionalities, but is able to use them as part of the logical inference and, dually, to embed deductive steps in a numerical calculation.


Recent research has challenged the ability of sticky price general equilibrium models to generate a contract multiplier, i.e., an effect of a monetary innovation on output that extends beyond the contract interval. We show that a simple dynamic general equilbrium model that includes "Taylor-style" (1980) wage and price contracts can account for a substantial contract multiplier under various assumptions about the structure of the capital market. Most interestingly, our results do not rely on a high intertemporal labor supply elasticity or elastic supply of capital: our preference specification is standard (logarithmic), and we can account for a strong contract multiplier even when the aggregate stock of capital is fixed. Finally, our analysis highlights the importance of the income elasticity of money demand in accounting for output persistence.


Planning under model uncertainty is a fundamental problem across many applications of decision making and learning. In this paper, we propose the Robust Adaptive Monte Carlo Planning (RAMCP) algorithm, which allows computation of risk-sensitive Bayes-adaptive policies that optimally trade off exploration, exploitation, and robustness. RAMCP formulates the risk-sensitive planning problem as a two-player zero-sum game, in which an adversary perturbs the agent's belief over the models. We introduce two versions of the RAMCP algorithm. The first, RAMCP-F, converges to an optimal risksensitive policy without having to rebuild the search tree as the underlying belief over models is perturbed. The second version, RAMCP-I, improves computational efficiency at the cost of losing theoretical guarantees, but is shown to yield empirical results comparable to RAMCP-F. RAMCP is demonstrated on an n-pull multi-armed bandit problem, as well as a patient treatment scenario.


The photonic band structures of two-dimensional square lattice photonic crystals made of anisotropic materials with one of the principal axes oriented along the extension direction of cylinders are studied. The band structure of the photonic crystal can be substantially engineered to achieve large bandgaps by reorienting the other two principal axes of the anisotropy media in the periodic plane of the photonic crystal. In particular, it is shown that large full bandgap for H polarization can be created for a photonic crystal with circular holes in an anisotropic matrix medium. For pillar-type photonic crystals, we show that large partial bandgaps for H polarization can be created in half of the irreducible Brillouin zone. With the use of anisotropic materials and the flexibility of arranging the principal axes, the requirement on the filling ratio, refractive index and anisotropy to achieve the largest bandgap is greatly alleviated.


Objective: The aim of this work was to describe the prevalence of Canine parvovirus type 2 (CPV-2) infection in young dogs of clinical cases presented at the National School of Veterinary Medicine clinic coming from four different governorates of Tunisia, according to epidemiological parameters: sex, breed, age, period, and vaccination status. Materials and methods: 168 domestic juvenile dogs aged between one and seven months were selected based on their pattern of consultation (diarrhea or anorexia with or without vomiting). Data were collected from the database during the period going from September 2012 to July 2013. Results: The overall prevalence of CPV-2 was 32.14% (n=54/168). A total number of 54 young dogs, aging 1 to 7 months, of American Staffordshire terrier, German shepherd, Rottweiler and Spaniel breeds were affected. There was no sex predisposition and German shepherd was the over-represented breed (n=33/54; 61.11%). The prevalence of clinical cases below the three months old was 70.37% (n=38/54) with autumn (n=27/54; 50%) as the most common season of infection. Furthermore, the study showed that 87.04% (n=47/54) of CPV-2 unvaccinated young dogs were positive. Conclusion: This work was a new descriptive study concerning canine parvovirus infection in the Grand Tunis; further studies are required to better characterize the epidemiology of CPV-2 infection in Tunisia. http://doi.org/10.5455/javar.2018.e251


The presidents who routinely are judged the greatest leaders are also the most heavily criticized by legal scholars. The reason is that the greatest presidents succeeded by overcoming the barriers erected by Madison's system of separation of powers, but the legal mind sees such actions as breaches of constitutional norms that presidents are supposed to uphold. With the erosion of Madisonian checks and balances, what stops presidents from abusing their powers? The answer lies in the complex nature of presidential leadership. The president is simultaneously leader of the country, a party, and the executive branch. The conflicts between these leadership roles put heavy constraints on his power.


Photo by Gunter Valda on Unsplash
"Should we call ethics?" I don't remember if it was the day nurse or myself, the night nurse, who articulated the question. I do remember that we both thought it was a good idea. We had been "handing off" the same patient for the past several days as each of us worked several consecutive 12-hour shifts. "Jordan" was critically ill and wasn't getting better.  My fellow bedside nurse and I shared concerns that Jordan's parents had unrealistic expectations regarding possible outcomes and that Jordan was unnecessarily suffering. During one of our handoffs, the critical care resident came up to us to check in on how Jordan had done overnight, and one of us posed the question to him: "Should we call ethics?" We expressed our concerns about unattainable goals and our discomfort with the amount of suffering Jordan was enduring, and our participation in prolonging Jordan's suffering. The resident did not agree that an ethics consultation was warranted. He listened to our concerns and talked through his reasoning. I understood his point but wasn't sure I agreed. Yet, neither the other nurse nor I called ethics ourselves, thinking that the physician's decision was the determining factor.
That experience, and my surrounding uncertainty, was one of the events that led me to become an ethicist several years later. Currently, I work both as a nurse and as a clinical ethicist. My roles overlap and inform each other. I spend a lot of time learning about and addressing barriers to ethics consultations. Many staff express uncertainty about when a consult is needed, and many non-physician staff think that a physician should decide whether to call for a consult. Some staff members are even unaware that any member of a patient's healthcare team can request a consult. Despite often being earlier identifiers of ethical issues, research shows that nurses often do not address ethical issues. When they do address issues, they may not fully explore the ethical issue and all its facets.[1] Nurses also often face organizational and structural barriers to addressing and resolving ethical issues.[2]
Ethics consultations should be a safe moral space where ethical issues are robustly discussed and fully explored.[3] An important part of ethics work is overcoming barriers to the discussion and fostering a sense of belonging at ethics consultations for all relevant participants. We may often talk about who to include in an ethics consultation, which is a necessary discussion to ensure key people are present in the discussion. Inclusion is important. Healthcare ethics consultation teams are obligated to ensure access for healthcare providers, patients, and any other members of patients' healthcare team.[4] A broad goal of ethics consultations is to aid in the resolution of ethical conflicts and concerns. This involves understanding diverse perspectives and bringing these perspectives together in a respectful dialogue that seeks to understand different views, enlighten the understanding, and work toward a resolution. Ethics consultants and committee members have diverse backgrounds and experience; yet, they may struggle to fully include a similar diversity level from patient care teams. A while back, an ethics consultant colleague of mine was scheduling a consult for a patient.  The patient's primary inpatient nurse had requested the consult. One of the ethics team members strongly expressed that the attending physician needed to be at the consultation, but not as much effort was put into enabling the requesting nurse or another direct care nurse who knew the patient well to participate.
Physicians are the primary requesters of ethics consultations even though other staff, patients, and family members also identify ethical concerns. Certainly, multidisciplinary discussion among the patient care team precipitates many requests. The culture of the physician as a leader lends itself to the physician being the consult requester. However, this tendency is potentially problematic as the requester is then deemed the "point person" and is the first to share the narrative from their perspective, leading to an anchoring bias. Ethics consultants must be aware of their biases and actively seek to overcome them. Another colleague of mine once shared a case prompted by a question from the nurses, but the formal request came from the attending physician. The consult was via telephone and somewhat informal due to the immediacy of the issue. As the ethics consultant, my colleague spoke only to the attending physician. During the case review, another colleague asked what the nurses thought about the outcome. The consultant admitted that he had not talked with them as part of the process or followed up regarding the outcome and suggested he would strive for better follow up in the future.
Yet, inclusion by itself is not enough. We must go beyond simply having diverse representation within consults. All participants must know that their insights and perspectives matter and impact the decision. Ethics consultants must go beyond inclusion to generate a sense of belonging. While inclusion is inviting someone to speak, belonging generates a sense of value and acceptance of someone's voice. Everyone involved should feel empowered to speak and share their thoughts and ideas. Yet, if those ideas are not valued, discussed, and fully considered, empowerment will disintegrate, and inclusion will have little substantive value. These important voices will be lost, and we will have less depth and robustness to our discussion. Patients, families, and staff will suffer from this inability to reach the best outcomes.
Belonging fosters acceptance and valuing of others' ideas and perspectives. Having thorough insight and understanding of the ethical issue at hand helps ensure the best decision is made for the patient. Ensuring that the participants feel valued and understand the decision also promotes support of the decision, could reduce the risk of moral distress, and fosters better interdisciplinary communication. Another colleague recently shared a case that a nurse called. Several nurses attended the consult. During the case review, someone asked what the nurses thought about the outcome. There was a pause, then the consultant carefully replied, "They appreciated that their voices were heard." I wondered whether the nurses felt more than heard and whether they supported the decision made. Did these nurses find the consultation to be successful? Would they request an ethics consultation again?
Participants in ethics consults should understand the rationales used in decision-making. The ethics consultant must synthesize the various perspectives and mediate reasonable recommendations. They must also provide discussion and education to promote understanding of the issue and the ethical recommendation. All parties may not agree, but we can work towards better understanding and acceptance. An important outcome of ethics consultation is the satisfaction of participants.[5]  Feeling like one belonged in the discussion and that one's insights and comments matter promotes satisfaction and increases the chance that ethics consultation services are evaluated to be useful and likely to be sought again. Agreeing that the conflict is resolved can reduce moral distress and enhance communication going forward.
Sometimes, I think about Jordan, the ethical concerns myself and my fellow nurses had about Jordan's care and our associated moral distress. Jordan died peacefully a few weeks after my nursing colleague and I brought up our ethical concerns to the resident. Some might say it was the best outcome we could have hoped for given the circumstances and that an ethics consult may not have changed the outcome: Jordan would still have died, perhaps a little sooner, probably just as peacefully. But an ethics consult could have helped the healthcare team talk through and understand options. It could have helped the staff navigate our own moral distress. It could have facilitated interdisciplinary communication and understanding. Those are important outcomes, too, and we need to be careful not to overlook them.
[1] Pavlish, Carol et al. "Nursing priorities, actions, and regrets for ethical situations in clinical practice." Journal of nursing scholarship: an official publication of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing vol. 43,4 (2011): 385-95. doi:10.1111/j.1547-5069.2011.01422.x
[2] Haahr, Anita et al. "Nurses experiences of ethical dilemmas: A review." Nursing Ethics vol27,1 (2020): 258-272. doi:10.1177/0969733019832941
[3] Walker, Margaret Urban. "Keeping moral space open. New images of ethics consulting." The Hastings Center report vol. 23,2 (1993): 33-40.
[4] American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation, 2nd Edition. Chicago, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, 2011.
[5] ASBH. Core Competencies.


We conducted experiments to examine the effect of amphibole-forming hydration reactions on mineral fabric development and the strength of mafic rocks. Both hydrostatic and general shear deformation experiments were conducted on powdered basalt with added water at lower continental crust conditions (800 °C, 1 GPa). Amphibole that formed under hydrostatic conditions exhibits a random lattice-preferred orientation (LPO). In contrast, amphibole formed during deformation exhibits both a strong shape-preferred orientation (SPO) and LPO with a [001] maximum aligned subparallel to the shear direction. Plagioclase in both hydrostatic and deformed samples shows a very weak to random LPO. At low effective strain rates (10−5 s−1 to 10−6 s−1), the stress exponent is ≈1–1.5, consistent with deformation accommodated by diffusion creep. The correlation of the SPO and LPO coupled with the rheological evidence for diffusion creep indicates that the amphibole fabric results from oriented grain growth and rigid grain rotation during deformation. The experimentally produced fabrics are strikingly similar to those observed in amphibolite-grade natural shear zones, supporting interpretations that such rocks deform by diffusion creep. In addition, the rheology of the fine-grained experimental amphibolite is comparable to that predicted using flow laws for wet anorthite. Thus, both our experiments and field analyses indicate that wet plagioclase rheology provides a good constraint on the strength of hydrated lower crust.


Programs of a software product line can be synthesized by composing features which implement a unit of program functionality. In most product lines, only some combination of features are meaningful; feature models express the high-level domain constraints that govern feature compatibility. Product line developers also face the problem of safe composition - whether every product allowed by a feature model is type-safe when compiled and run. To study the problem of safe composition, we present Lightweight Feature Java (LFJ), an extension of Lightweight Java with support for features. We define a constraint-based type system for LFJ and prove its soundness using a full formalization of LFJ in Coq. In LFJ, soundness means that any composition of features that satisfies the typing constraints will generate a well-formed LJ program. If the constraints of a feature model imply these typing constraints then all programs allowed by the feature model are type-safe.


We deployed a dense linear array of 45 seismometers across and along the San Andreas fault near Parkfield a week after the M 6.0 Parkfield earthquake on 28 September 2004 to record fault-zone seismic waves generated by aftershocks and explosions. Seismic stations and explosions were co-sited with our previous exper- iment conducted in 2002. The data from repeated shots detonated in the fall of 2002 and 3 months after the 2004 M 6.0 mainshock show 1.0%-1.5% decreases in seismic-wave velocity within an 200-m-wide zone along the fault strike and smaller changes (0.2%-0.5%) beyond this zone, most likely due to the coseismic damage of rocks during dynamic rupture in the 2004 M 6.0 earthquake. The width of the damage zone characterized by larger velocity changes is consistent with the low-velocity waveguide model on the San Andreas fault, near Parkfield, that we derived from fault-zone trapped waves (Li et al., 2004). The damage zone is not symmetric but extends farther on the southwest side of the main fault trace. Waveform cross- correlations for repeated aftershocks in 21 clusters, with a total of 130 events, located at different depths and distances from the array site show 0.7%-1.1% increases in S-wave velocity within the fault zone in 3 months starting a week after the earthquake. The velocity recovery indicates that the damaged rock has been healing and regaining the strength through rigidity recovery with time, most likely due to the closure of cracks opened during the mainshock. We estimate that the net decrease in seismic velocities within the fault zone was at least 2.5%, caused by the 2004 M 6.0 Parkfield earthquake. The healing rate was largest in the earlier stage of the postmainshock healing process. The magnitude of fault healing varies along the rupture zone, being slightly larger for the healing beneath Middle Mountain, correlating well with an area of large mapped slip. The fault healing is most promi- nent at depths above 7 km.


Considerable experimental evidence indicates that ion association occurs in solid polymer electrolytes. This work provides a thorough theoretical analysis of the effect of ion association on the conductivity, general current-potential behavior, and limiting current density in a solid polymer electrolyte. The model employs dilute solution theory to describe the fluxes of cations, anions, and ion pairs in a motionless continuum but neglects higher order association. The predictions of the model highlight the effects of the relative diffusion coefficients and dimensionless association constant on concentration distributions of simple ions and ion pairs, the limiting current density, and the potential drop required to drive a specified current density. If ion pairs have a diffusivity comparable to those of cations and anions, increasing ion association leads to a continuous decrease in molar conductivity and current density at constant applied potential. If the ion pairs have a diffusivity that is large compared to cations, the situation is quite different. In this case, ion association increases the limiting current density to values that may be several times that found in the case of full dissociation. Furthermore, the model predicts maxima in the molar conductivity and current density at fixed potential drop as the degree of ion association increases.


This paper applies an extension of classical averaging methods to hybrid dynamical systems, thereby achieving formally specified, physically effective and robust instances of all virtual bipedal gaits on a quadrupedal robot. Gait specification takes the form of a three parameter family of coupling rules mathematically shown to stabilize limit cycles in a low degree of freedom template: an abstracted pair of vertical hoppers whose relative phase locking encodes the desired physical leg patterns. These coupling rules produce the desired gaits when appropriately applied to the physical robot. The formal analysis reveals a distinct set of morphological regimes determined by the distribution of the body's inertia within which particular phase relationships are naturally locked with no need for feedback stabilization (or, if undesired, must be countermanded by the appropriate feedback), and these regimes are shown empirically to analogously govern the physical machine as well. In addition to the mathematical stability analysis and data from physical experiments we summarize a number of extensive numerical studies that explore the relationship between the simple template and its more complicated anchoring body models.


This Article employs a social network perspective to revisit the best known example of successful private ordering in the economics literature — the case of the Maghribi Jewish merchants who engaged in both local and long distance trade across the Islamic Mediterranean in the eleventh century. Drawing on a case study of the over 200 Maghribi merchant letters available in English, it reveals the ways that a bridge-and-cluster configuration of ties among traders known as a "small-world network" can be effective in supporting trade over long distances, even in an environment of noisy information. Recognizing the contract governance properties of small-world networks is important for three core reasons. First, because the underlying economic forces that give rise to small-world networks are quite common, and they are often associated with innovation related benefits, exploring their governance properties should make it possible to better understand the ways trade is, and can be, supported in a variety of modern markets. Second, understanding the ways small-world networks function can contribute to the design of formal and informal institutions to support exchange. Finally, understanding the governance power of small-world networks reveals that the small, geographically concentrated, close-knit groups (cliques) that the legal literature has long associated with successful private ordering are not in fact a precondition for well-functioning private order, as small-world networks can effectively support trade among large numbers of traders operating at considerable distances from one another.


From Communists to Foreign Capitalists explores the intersections of two momentous changes in the late twentieth century: the fall of Communism and the rise of globalization. Delving into the economic change that accompanied these shifts in central and Eastern Europe, Nina Bandelj presents a pioneering sociological treatment of the process of foreign direct investment (FDI). She demonstrates how both investors and hosts rely on social networks, institutions, politics, and cultural understandings to make decisions about investment, employing practical rather than rational economic strategies to deal with the true uncertainty that plagues the postsocialist environment. The book explores how eleven postsocialist countries address the very idea of FDI as an integral part of their market transition. The inflows of foreign capital after the collapse of Communism resulted not from the withdrawal of states from the economy, as is commonly expected, but rather from the active involvement of postsocialist states in institutionalizing and legitimizing FDI. Using a wide array of data sources, and combining a macro-level account of national variation in the liberalization to foreign capital with a micro-level account of FDI transactions in the decade following the collapse of Communism in 1989, the book reveals how social forces not only constrain economic transformations but also make them possible. From Communists to Foreign Capitalists is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the social processes that shape economic life.


The ability to manipulate gene expression levels has been essential to the study of gene function and biological processes. Classically, whole body deletions of genes were generated via homologous recombination. Over the past two decades, the development of Cre-Lox and flippase/flippase recombinase target based gene inactivation technologies allowed researchers to closely regulate the location and timing of gene expression. However, these methods are costly and time consuming. The last few years have seen a revolution in the approaches scientists use to inactivate gene expression, such as the development of highly efficient ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) delivery systems and the groundbreaking genome editing technologies. Here, the authors describe the recent updates on small interfering RNA (siRNA) in vivo delivery as well as the methodologies and applications of zinc-finger nucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Equipped with these powerful tools, scientists can now rapidly modulate the expression of genes of interest and precisely modify the genomic sequences in virtually any organisms.

Key Concepts:

RNA interference (RNAi) is an endogenous post-transcriptional gene-regulatory mechanism mediated by noncoding RNA molecules to regulate gene expression.

Chemical modification on siRNA reduces off-target effect, improves RNAi efficiency and enhances the stability of siRNA for in vivo applications.

Genome editing is a genetic approach used to directly manipulate an organism's genome by inserting, replacing, or removing DNA sequences.

Engineered nucleases, such as zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and the bacterial clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas (CRISPR-associated) system enable targeted genetic modifications in cells, tissues and organisms.

Keywords:

gene inactivation;
RNAi;
siRNA delivery;
genome editing;
programmable nucleases;
ZFN;
TALEN;
CRISPR


We report on the investigation on the resolution of optical sensors exploiting Bloch surface waves sustained by one dimensional photonic crystals. A figure of merit is introduced to quantitatively assess the performance of such sensors and its dependency on the geometry and materials of the photonic crystal. We show that the figure of merit and the resolution can be improved by adopting a full ellipsometric phase-sensitive approach. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by experiments in which, for the first time, such type of sensors are operated in the full ellipsometric scheme.


This is the entry for "Consumer Bankruptcy, Doctrinal Issues In" in the Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives. This entry provides a summary and overview of the law and policy of consumer bankruptcy. First, it summarizes the American bankruptcy law legal regime. Second, it explores the competing hypotheses for the rise in bankruptcy filings during the past three decades, contrasting the "traditional" or "distress" model of consumer bankruptcy with the "incentives" or economic model. Third, it describes the recent amendments to the American consumer bankruptcy regime. Finally, it provides a comparative view of consumer bankruptcy law by comparing the American system and trends in American bankruptcy law and policy with Europe and other areas of the world.


Graphs have been widely used in data mining and machine learning due to their unique representation of real-world objects and their interactions. As graphs are getting bigger and bigger nowadays, it is common to see their subgraphs separately collected and stored in multiple local systems. Therefore, it is natural to consider the subgraph federated learning setting, where each local system holds a small subgraph that may be biased from the distribution of the whole graph. Hence, the subgraph federated learning aims to collaboratively train a powerful and generalizable graph mining model without directly sharing their graph data. In this work, towards the novel yet realistic setting of subgraph federated learning, we propose two major techniques: (1) FedSage, which trains a GraphSage model based on FedAvg to integrate node features, link structures, and task labels on multiple local subgraphs; (2) FedSage+, which trains a missing neighbor generator along FedSage to deal with missing links across local subgraphs. Empirical results on four real-world graph datasets with synthesized subgraph federated learning settings demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed techniques. At the same time, consistent theoretical implications are made towards their generalization ability on the global graphs.


Crude, palm oil (CPO) has the highest content of carotenoids
(500-700 ppm), a precursor of vitamin A. The only commercially
viable method, so far, is transesterification followed by phase
separation. However, the edible oil used as raw material has to be
converted to methyl ester, therefore destroying the oil into non-edible
product.
The present study on carotene extraction from CPO focussed
on adsorption using synthetic adsorbent followed by solvent
extraction. By this method, the carotene can be recovered without
destroying the oil therefore it can be used for food applications. The objectives of this study were mainly to find out the suitable
adsorption process that selectively extracts the carotene from CPO
and to determine the effect on CPO quality after going through this
process.
Based o n the studies conducted, it was found that the
synthetic adsorbent SP850, SP825, HP20, Relite Exa 32 and Relite
Exa 50 were capable of adsorbing carotene from CPO. The percentage of
carotene extracted varied from 10 to 80% with the carotene concentration
ranging from 1000 to 20,000 ppm depending on the process conditions.
Combinations of adsorbent HP 20 and SP 850 slightly increased the
percentage of carotene extracted. Adsorbent/CPO ratio of 4 was most
suitable for this process for optimum recovery and concentration of
carotene. The minimum adsorption time required was 0.5 hr. The IPA
extraction time was determined based on the final carotene concentration
required. The suitable temperature for adsorption and solvent extraction
process was at 40°C. There is no significant different on the percentage of
carotene extracted and carotene concentration between with and without
agitation during IPA extraction process.The quality of CPO after going through the carotene extraction
process slightly deteriorated in terms of moisture content, impurities,
peroxide value (PV), anisidine value (AV). discriminant function (OF) and
deterioration of bleachability index (DOBI). However changes in the chemical properties of the oil such as triglyceride (TG)carbon number and fatty acid composition (FAC) and it can be refined to
produce refined bleached deodorized palm oil (RBDPO) that is able to
meet Palm Oil Refinery Association of Malaysia (PORAM) standard
specifications.


Ubiquitous or Pervasive Computing is an increasingly used term throughout the technology industry and is beginning to enter the consumer electronics space in its most recent form under the umbrella term: "Internet of Things". One area of focus is in augmenting the home with intelligent, networked sensors and computers to create a Smart Home which opens a host of possibilities for the role of tomorrow's dwelling. As the world's population continues to live longer and consequently experience more medical-related ailments, at the same time institutional healthcare is struggling to cope, the role of the Smart Home becomes paramount to monitoring a dweller's health and providing any necessary intervention. This study looks at the history of Smart Home Healthcare, current research areas, and potential areas of future investigation. Unique categorisations are presented in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Personal Sensors, and a thorough look at the application of Smart Home Healthcare is presented. Technology can augment traditional methods of healthcare delivery and in some cases completely replace it. Costs can be reduced and medical adherence can be increased, all of which contribute to a more sustainable and effective model of care.


Over the last decade data have been published that demonstrate that natural attenuation of hydrocarbons in the subsurface is dominated by anaerobic processes. Some data have indicated that benzene is recalcitrant; some have shown it degrades but at a slower rate than alkyl benzenes (primarily TEX) under anaerobic conditions. Many natural attenuation studies have pointed to the sequential order of attenuation. This paper evaluated data from four sites in the Midwestern U.S. (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri) that explain and contrast existing impressions. Although the actual attenuation rates varied from site to site, primarily dependent upon the relative availability of electron acceptors, data from these sites indicated that attenuation of BTEX compounds under anaerobic conditions is concurrent. The benzene attenuation rate appeared to be a function of the relative abundance of TEX. The ratios of attenuation rates between the compounds, however, appear to be relatively constant within certain brackets. For example, of the BTEX compounds, at the four sites in this study, toluene attenuated at the highest rate followed by benzene which attenuated at average rates between 70 and 80% of toluene, xylenes which attenuated at average rates between 60 and 70% of toluene (which may be dependent upon which xylenes are most abundant), and lastly ethylbenzene which attenuated at average rates 50 to 60% as high as toluene. These were observed at both natural and sulfateenhanced attenuation sites.


Energy information systems are the web-based software, data acquisition hardware, and communication systems used to store, analyze, and display building energy data. They often include analysis methods such as baselining, benchmarking, load profiling, and energy anomaly detection. This report documents a large-scale assessment of energy information system (EIS) uses, costs, and energy benefits, based on a series of focused case study investigations that are synthesized into generalizable findings. The overall objective is to provide organizational decision makers with the information they need to make informed choices as to whether or not to invest in an EIS--a promising technology that can enable up to 20 percent site energy savings, quick payback, and persistent low-energy performance when implemented as part of best-practice energy management programs.


Online learning has altered music education remarkable in the last decade. Large and increasing amount of music performing learners participate in online music learning courses due to the easy- accessibility and boundless of time-space constraints. However, online music learning cannot be extended to a large-scale unless there is an automatic system to provide assessment feedback for the student music performances. Singing can be considered the most basic form of music perform- ing. The critical role of singing played in music education cannot be overemphasized. Automatic singing voice assessment, as an important task in Music Information Research (MIR), aims to extract musically meaningful information and measure the quality of learners' singing voice. Singing correctness and quality is culture-specific and its assessment requires culture-aware methodologies. Jingju (also known as Beijing opera) music is one of the representative music traditions in China and has spread to many places in the world where there are Chinese communities. The Chinese tonal languages and the strict conventions in oral transmission adopted by jingju singing training pose unique challenges that have not been addressed by the cur- rent MIR research, which motivates us to select it as the major mu- sic tradition for this dissertation. Our goal is to tackle unexplored automatic singing voice assessment problems in jingju music, to make the current eurogeneric assessment approaches more culture- aware, and in return, to develop new assessment approaches which can be generalized to other music traditions. This dissertation aims to develop data-driven audio signal processing and machine learning (deep learning) models for automatic singing voice assessment in audio collections of jingju music. We identify challenges and opportunities, and present several research tasks relevant to automatic singing voice assessment of jingju mu- sic. Data-driven computational approaches require well-organized data for model training and testing, and we report the process of curating the data collections (audio and editorial metadata) in detail. We then focus on the research topics of automatic syllable and phoneme segmentation, automatic mispronunciation detection and automatic pronunciation similarity measurement in jingju music. It is extremely demanding in jingju singing training that students have to pronounce each singing syllable correctly and to reproduce the teacher's reference pronunciation quality. Automatic syllable and phoneme segmentation, as a preliminary step for the assessment, aims to divide the singing audio stream into finer granularities – syllable and phoneme. The proposed method adopts deep learning models to calculate syllable and phoneme onset probabilities, and achieves a state of the art segmentation accuracy by incorporating side information – syllable and phoneme durations estimated from musical scores, into the algorithm. Jingju singing uses a unique pronunciation system which is a mixture of several Chinese language dialects. This pronunciation system contains various special pronounced syllables which are not included in standard Mandarin. A crucial step in jingju singing training is to pronounce these special syllables correctly. We approach the problem of automatic mispronunciation detection for special pronunciation syllables using a deep learning-based classification method by which the student's interpretation of a special pronounced syllable segment is assessed. The proposed method shows a great potential by comparing with the existing forced alignment-based approach, indicates its validity in pronunciation correctness assessment. The strict oral transmission convention in jingju singing teaching requires that students accurately reproduce the teacher's reference pronunciation at phoneme level. Hence, the proposed assessment method needs to be able to measure the pronunciation similarity between teacher's and student's corresponding phonemes. Acous- tic phoneme embeddings learned by deep learning models can cap- ture the pronunciation nuance and convert variable-length phoneme segment into the fixed-length vector, and consequently to facilitate the pronunciation similarity measurement. The technologies developed from the work of this dissertation are a part of the comprehensive toolset within the CompMusic project, aimed at enriching the online learning experience for jingju music singing. The data and methodologies should also be contributed to computational musicology research and other MIR or speech tasks related to automatic voice assessment.


Leadership-in-interaction is a somewhat underdeveloped area of research which to date has concentrated on talk-in-interaction to the detriment of other modalities. Consequently, this paper seeks to illustrate how social actors make use of different modalities to accomplish leadership, which we conceptualize as the creation of direction, alignment, and commitment. Through multimodal conversation analysis this paper explores interactions between actors in virtual contexts, a particularly interesting empirical setting as the context offers specific constraints on everyday workplace interaction. By zooming in on the interaction using transcripts of naturally occurring interaction, we find that the accomplishment of leadership, direction, alignment, and commitment, in a constrained virtual context can appear mundane. However, at the same time the accomplishment of leadership calls for the mobilization of several multimodal resources (both talk and information and communication technology objects). The analysis makes it evident that the actors mobilize objects to draw on their situated affordances, in the accomplishment of direction, alignment, and commitment. With a fine-grained analysis of naturally occurring data, we illustrate that leadership is a collective achievement. We also expand the understanding of leadership in practice, especially in virtual contexts, by demonstrating how actors utilize objects and verbal resources in the co-production of leadership.


Less than a year after the outbreak of the Great (First World) War, the sinking of the passenger ship, RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland and the death of 1 198 of its passengers and crew, including at least 128 from the then still neutral United States of America, led to much condemnation. In many Allied countries there also followed anti-German protests and riots, including in the Union of South Africa. On 13 May 1915, anti-German riots and the concomitant torching of German businesses took place even in Bloemfontein, where for many decades, people of various cultural groups had lived together in harmony. In this article the reasons for and consequences of the riots in Bloemfontein are analysed. Emphasis will, in particular, be placed on the way in which the local newspapers portrayed the events.


In a research world where many human-hours are spent labelling, segmenting, checking, and rechecking various levels of linguistic information, it is obvious that automatic analysis can lower the costs (in time as well as funding) of linguistic annotation. More importantly, automatic speech analysis coupled with automatic speech generation allows human-computer interaction to advance towards spoken dialogue. Automatic intonation analysis can aid this advance in both the speaker and hearer roles of computational dialogue. Real-time intonation analysis can enable the use of intonational cues in speech recognition and understanding tasks. Auto-analysis of developmental speech databases allows researchers to easily expand the range of data which they model for intonation generation. This paper presents a series of experiments which test the use of acoustic data in the automatic detection of Tilt intonation events. A set of speaker-dependent HMMs is used to detect accents, boundaries, connections and silences. A base result is obtained, following Taylor [8], by training the models using fundamental frequency and RMS energy. These base figures are then compared to a number of experiments which augment the F0 and energy data with cepstral coefficient data. In all cases, both the first and second derivative of each feature are included. The best results show a relative error reduction of 12% over the baseline.


"Brave New Avant Garde is a collection of essays that ask the questions: what is an adequate model of contemporary avant garde practice and what are its theoretical premises? With this it asks the related question, echoing Alain Badiou: must the avant garde hypothesis be abandoned? Brave New Avant Garde stands in opposition to postmodern post-politics and the view that radical practice has no other future than its reduction to the workings of the free market in the form of the simple process of cultural production or to variations on the cultural politics of representation. Today s avant garde, formed in the wake of the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of the anti-globalization movement, represents a counter-power that rejects the inevitability of capitalist integration. The way out for artists in today's world of creative industries is defined in these pages as a psychoanalytically informed sinthomeopathic practice, a critical identification with prevailing conditions of production that avoids the surplus enjoyment of the ideology of postmodern pluralism." -- p. [4] of cover.


Classification of very large datasets is a challenging problem in data mining. It is desirable to have decision-tree classifiers that can handle large datasets, because a large dataset often increases the accuracy of the resulting classification model. Classification tree algorithms can benefit from parallelization because of large memory and computation requirements for handling large datasets. Clusters of shared-memory multiprocessors (SMPs), in which each shared-memory node has a small number of processors (e.g., 2–8 processors) and is connected to the other nodes via a high-speed inter-connect, have become a popular alternative to pure distributed-memory and shared-memory machines. A cluster of SMPs provides a two-tier architecture, in which a combination of shared-memory and distributedmemory paradigms can be employed. In this paper we investigate decision tree construction on a cluster of SMPs. We present an algorithm that employs a hybrid approach. The classification training dataset is partitioned across the SMP nodes so that each SMP node performs tree construction using a subset of the records in the dataset. Within each SMP node, on the other hand, tasks associated with an attribute are dynamically scheduled to the light-weight threads running on the SMP node. We present experimental results on a Linux PC cluster with dual-processor SMP nodes.


Lifecycle health management plays an increasingly important role in realizing resilience of aging complex engineered systems since it detects, diagnoses, and predicts system-wide effects of adverse events, therefore enables a proactive approach to deal with system failures. To address an increasing demand to develop high-reliability low-cost systems, this paper presents a new platform for operational stage system health management, referred to as Evolving Design Model Synchronization (EDMS), which enables health management of aging engineered systems by efficiently synchronizing system design models with degrading health conditions of actual physical system in operation. A Laplace approximation approach is employed for the design model updating, which can incorporate heterogeneous operating stage information from multiple sources to update the system design model based on the information theory, thereby increases the updating accuracy compared with traditionally used Bayesian updating methodology. The design models synchronized over time using sensory data acquired from the system in operation can thus reflect system health degradation with evolvingly updated design model parameters, which enables the application of failure prognosis for system health management. One case study is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach for system health management.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


In the present master's thesis we investigate the connection between derivations and
homogeneities of complete analytic algebras. We prove a theorem, which describes a specific set of generators
for the module of derivations of an analytic algebra, which map the maximal ideal of R into itself. It turns out, that this set has a structure similar to a Cartan subalgebra and contains
information regarding multi-homogeneity. In order to prove
this theorem, we extend the notion of grading by Scheja and Wiebe to projective systems and state the connection between multi-gradings and pairwise
commuting diagonalizable derivations. We prove a theorem similar to Cartan's Conjugacy Theorem in the setup of infinite-dimensional Lie algebras, which arise as projective limits of finite-dimensional Lie algebras. Using this result, we can show that the structure of the aforementioned set of generators is an intrinsic property of the analytic algebra. At the end we state an algorithm, which is theoretically able to compute the maximal multi-homogeneity of a complete analytic algebra.


The tropics strongly influence the global atmospheric chemistry budget. However, continuous in-situ observations of trace gases are rare especially in equatorial Africa. The WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme aimed to close this gap with the installation of the Mt. Kenya (MKN) baseline station. Here, the first continuous measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O 3 ) at this site covering the period June 2002 to June 2006 are presented. The representativeness of the site was investigated by means of statistical data analysis, air mass trajectory clustering, interpretation of biomass burning variability and evaluation of O 3 -CO relationships. Because of its location in eastern equatorial Africa, the site was rarely directly influenced by biomass burning emissions, making it suitable for background observations. Located at 3678 m above sea level the night-time (21:00–04:00 UTC) measurements of CO and O 3 were in general representative of the free troposphere, while day-time measurements were influenced by atmospheric boundary layer air. Increased night-time concentrations were observed in 25% of all nights and associated with residual layers of increased CO and water vapour in the free troposphere. Six representative flow regimes towards Mt. Kenya were determined: eastern Africa (21% of the time), Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan (16%), northern Africa free tropospheric (6%), northern Indian Ocean and India (17%), south-eastern Africa (18%) and southern India Ocean (21%) flow regimes. The seasonal alternation of these flow regimes was determined by the monsoon circulation and caused a distinct semi-annual cycle of CO with maxima during February (primary) and August (secondary, annually variable) and with minima in April (primary) and November (secondary, annually variable). O 3 showed a weaker annual cycle with a minimum in November and a broad summer maximum. Inter-annual variations were explained with differences in southern African biomass burning and transport towards MKN. Although biomass burning had little direct influence on the measurements at MKN it introduces inter-annual variability in the background concentrations of the southern hemisphere that subsequently reaches Kenya. The measurements at MKN were representative of air masses with little photochemical activity as indicated by weak O 3 -CO correlations, underlining the baseline character of the site. Inter-comparison of O 3 at MKN with sounding data from Nairobi revealed a positive offset of the sounding data, most likely due to additional photochemical production of O 3 in the Nairobi city plume. Future extensions of the measurement programme will provide better understanding of the atmospheric chemistry of this globally important region.


We show how the age pro le of earnings, retirement rules and retirement behavior are tightly linked through the general equilibrium of the economy. Generous Social Security bene ts nanced by large Social Security taxes discourage human capital accumulation. In Social Security systems where Social Security bene ts prioritize redistribution less productive workers with lower levels of human capital tend to retire earlier. These out ows of workers from the labor force tend to generate wage pro les that are monotonically increasing over age and labor markets that display larger seniority premia. This paper theoretically rationalizes the links between retirement rules and the wage structures over the life cycle and uses data on European countries to show how social security taxes, the age pro le of earnings, and retirement behavior are related.


Background Laparoscopic surgery can be demanding, resulting in longer operating time and a longer time before reaching proficiency compared with open surgery. Robotic assistance allows stereoscopic vision and improves dexterity, potentially leading to faster and safer laparoscopic surgery and a shortening of the learning curve. Methods Duration and accuracy were measured in inexperienced participants, performing basic and advanced laparoscopic tasks using both conventional laparoscopy and the daVinci Surgical System. Results Eight participants performed 176 laparoscopic tasks. Robotic assistance resulted in faster and more accurate performance of laparoscopic tasks. However, conventional laparoscopy showed faster skill acquisition. Conclusions Robotic assistance resulted in faster and more accurate performance of laparoscopic tasks. However, learning curves favored conventional laparoscopy. These data suggest robotic assistance might be most beneficial in inexperienced subjects. The relatively flat learning curve in robot-assisted laparoscopy suggests robotic assistance might be less (or marginally) beneficial in experienced surgeons. This could explain why robotic assistance has failed to show clear benefit in several clinical studies. Extensive conventional laparoscopic training might lead to faster, safer, and less expensive surgery, further marginalizing the role for robotic assistance in laparoscopic surgery.


Sergio trilobata is a common burrowing crustacean found in Tampa Bay, Lemon Bay, and Miami, Florida, where it inhabits mainly intertidal soft sediments (Biffar 1971, Manning and Lemaitre 1993). Although S. trilobata is a dominant member of the benthic community, very little is known about population dynamics and reproduction of these thalassinideans. The population biology of this ghost shrimp was examined over a period of a year and a half to gain understanding of its life history. Seasonal variation in the proportion of individuals in each size class was observed during the study, suggesting that there may be environmental factors affecting the ghost shrimp. Additionally, a life span of approximately two years is indicated by the seasonal variation in the proportion of individuals in each size class. The population was biased toward females with a 1:1.81 male: female ratio, and the mean total length of females (68.2 mm) was larger than the males collected (54.6 mm) (P = 0.0001). Collection of ovigerous females were directly correlated with an increasing ovary width of females during the preceding months, and the total length of S. trilobata was positively correlated with the number of eggs produced. Mean number of eggs per female S. trilobatd was 197 with a maximum of 412 eooc.


Digital or electronic lexicography has gained in importance in the last few years. This can be seen in the growing list of publications focusing on this field. In the OBELEX bibliography (http://www.owid.de/obelex/engl), the research contributions in this field are consolidated and are searchable by different criteria. The idea for OBELEX originated in the context of the dictionary portal OWID, which incorporates several dictionaries from the Institute for German Language (www.owid.de). OBELEX has been available online free of charge since December 2008. OBELEX includes articles, monographs, anthologies and reviews published since 2000 that relate to electronic lexicography, as well as some relevant older works. Our particular focus is on works about online lexicography. Systematically evaluated sources are relevant journals like International Journal of Lexicography, Lexicographica, Dictionaries, Lexikos; furthermore Euralex-Proceedings, proceedings of the International Symposium on Lexicography in Copenhagen as well as relevant monographs and anthologies. Information on dictionaries is currently not included in OBELEX; the main focus is on metalexicography. However, we are working on a database with information on online dictionaries as a supplement to OBELEX. All entries of OBELEX are stored in a database. Thus, all parts of the bibliographic entry (such as person, title, publication or year) are searchable. Furthermore, all publications are associated with our keyword list; therefore, a thematic search is possible. The subject language is also noted. With this type of content, the OBELEX bibliography supplements in a useful way other bibliographic projects such as the printed 'Internationale Bibliographie zur germanistischen Lexikographie und Worterbuchforschung' by H. E. Wiegand (Wiegand 2006/2007), the 'Bibliography of Lexicography' by R. R. K. Hartmann (Hartmann 2007), and the 'International Bibliography of Lexicography' of Euralex (cf. also DeCesaris and Bernal 2006). OBELEX differs from all these bibliographic projects by its strong focus on electronic lexicography and its ability to retrieve bibliographic information.


Abstract. To optimise the use of limited available land, land-scarce cities such as Singapore are increasingly looking towards the underground in search of more space. A good understanding of what already exists underground is essential for the planning of underground spaces. In particular, utility services make up a significant part of what exists underground. To meet planning needs, the Singapore government has initiated efforts towards bringing records of existing utility networks together in a single database and share its contents to support planning, design, and construction of underground developments. However, these records can not be relied on to support these critical processes: They are not guaranteed to represent today's state of the underground, are not accurate or of unknown accuracy, are inconsistently modelled, and may indicate as-design information instead of as-built information. This lack of reliability leads to an increase in cost and a loss in efficiency caused by the need to repeatedly survey to locate existing utility services on-site, and can have potentially disastrous outcomes when an excavation would damage existing services. Technological advances in utility surveying and mapping devices such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and gyroscopic pipeline mapping devices offer the potential of accurately mapping utilities in three dimensions (3D) at a large scale and high speed. However, a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of these technologies in a practical context is needed, as well as their suitability for mapping to support applications such as urban planning and land administration. The Digital Underground project is a collaboration between Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore Land Authority and the City of Zürich that aims to develop a roadmap towards a reliable 3D utility map of Singapore. To enable the development of utility mapping standards and guidelines, the 3D mapping workflow for underground utilities is studied extensively based on market research, literature study, and case studies. This work presents the beginnings of a framework for 3D mapping of underground utilities as one of the initial results of the Digital Underground project as it is in progress. From these experiences, it can be concluded that, together with existing data, data captured using various surveying methods can indeed contribute to the establishment and maintenance of a consolidated and reliable utility map. To this end, a multi-sensor, multi-data 3D mapping workflow is proposed to integrate data captured using different surveying techniques during different moments in the development lifecycle of utilities. Based on this framework, this work also identifies areas for improvement and critical gaps to be bridged that will ultimately form part of the roadmap.


The paper describes a system that automatically detects themes in a textual corpus and characterizes them by sets of keywords, that is, words whose co-occurrence in a paragraph indicates that this paragraph tackles a certain theme. (Pichon and Sebillot, 2000) presents a first version of it where those sets are obtained with the help of the CHAVL hierarchical clustering algorithm, grouping words that have a similar repartition over paragraphs. The weaknesses of the system (quality of the classes highly dependent on manual parameter settings, relevant classes in the classification tree hardly pointed out automatically) are largely reduced here by using a combined classification of the paragraphs based on their lexical cohesion. This new classification first allows to densify the processed data, thus helping CHAVL produce more satisfying classes; it also gives a means to establish an original statistical quality measure that can be exploited both to point out the relevant classes in the tree and to reorganize some of the mergings proposed by CHAVL.


There is a considerable difference between the linguistic content of listening exercises and that of natural, spontaneous speech. The discrepancies that exist stem from the pedagogical practice of 'cleaning up' language for classroom use - i.e. ridding it of distracting noise, repetition, irrelevancies, and so on - and also from an unwillingness to expose learners to unfamiliar lexis and grammatical structures ahead of their treatment within the syllabus. Although such an approach is effective in teaching specific language items, it does not prepare learners for the natural discourse that hey will encounter outside the classroom or self-access centre.
Natural, spontaneous speech is often too difficult for B1 students to understand, not simply because of its speed and lexicogrammatical content, but also, and more importantly, because of the presence of linguistic noise (repetitions and corrections, pauses, unfinished sentences), and implicit knowledge, i.e. that which is not stated rather than that which is. This paper will critique extracts of listening exercises from existing textbooks, demonstrating some of the problems with listening materials in general. This will be followed by a brief exposition of the salient features of natural discourse, as demonstrated through the analysis of spoken corpus data. The author's proposed compromise between the extremes of cleaned-up classroom language and the messiness of natural speech, will be presented in the form of some dialogues created for the ALTAIR project at the University of Bologna.


In cancer treatment, there is a need to improve chemotherapeutic drug uptake at the local tumor site to both enhance dose efficacy and minimize any toxic side effects. It is well known now that stably cavitating microbubbles (MBs) in an ultrasound (US) field can increase the permeability of tumor blood vessel walls. This consequently can enhance the extravasation and accumulation of a circulating anticancer drug. Reconstituted high-density lipoprotein (rHDL) nanoparticles (NPs) allow selective delivery of anticancer agents to tumor cells via the overexpressed scavenger receptor class B type 1 (SR-B1). The goal of this study was to evaluate the potential of US-stimulated drug delivery for improving tumor uptake of rHDL NPs that were preloaded with IR-780 dye (i.e., drug surrogate). Mice implanted with human breast cancer cells were divided into five groups: control, and low- or high-dose rHDL NPs ± US therapy. In vivo fluorescence optical imaging was used to quantify intratumoral NP accumulation at baseline and again at 1, 30, 60 min, 24 and 48 h after dosing. At 48 hours after treatment, tumors were resected and subjected to a fluorescent dye extraction study. Results of in vivo optical imaging revealed that the US therapy group animals exhibited stronger rHDL dye localization in the tumor area comparing to non-US groups. Moreover, in the dye extraction study, higher dye levels were detected in the US therapy groups compared to the non-US exposed animals given the same rHDL doses. Meanwhile, administration of a higher dose of rHDL NPs promoted dye accumulation in tumor sites. Overall, US-stimulated drug delivery can noninvasively promote the improved local tumor uptake of rHDL NP vectors.


Empirical studies suggest the following main conclusions: functional somatic symptoms are extremely common; a large proportion appear to be caused by physiologic activity and tend to be aggravated by emotion. Hypochondriacal patients misunderstand the nature and significance of these symptoms and believe that they are evidence of serious disease. Hypochondriasis can be a part of another syndrome, usually an affective one, or it can be a primary disorder. The prevalence differs between cultures and social classes. Constitutional factors, disease in the family in childhood, and previous disease predispose to hypochondriasis. Various stressors can be precipitating events. Selective perception of symptoms, motivated by fear of disease, and subsequent increase in anxiety with more somatic symptoms appear to be links in the vicious cycle of the hypochondriacal reaction. Psychotherapy as well as psychotropic drugs are effective in the treatment of functional somatic symptoms. There are no adequate controlled studies of psychotherapy in hypochondriasis, and the recommended treatments are based on studies with similar disorders. The prognosis of treated hypochondriasis is good in a substantial proportion of patients.


Aphid-AutoEPG is a new software program, developed to acquire and automatically analyse electrical penetration graph (EPG) signals used for monitoring plant penetration by aphids. Characteristically EPG signals include waveforms that allow one to study the effects of plants on the acquisition and transmission of viruses, plant protection substances on pests and identify the location of resistance in plants to aphids. The success of electrical monitoring arises from the fact that different species of aphids generate similar EPG patterns. But the visual analysis of EPG waveforms in recorded signals is very time consuming, which has greatly hampered the wider application of EPG technology. To overcome this Aphid-AutoEPG software was developed, which has been extensively tested using data files for several different species of aphids, M. persicae , A. frangulae gossypii , M. albifrons , S. avenae , B. brassicae and N. ribis-nigri . The results have also been compared with visual analyses using Stylet+ software. When used in combination with the user friendly correction options Aphid-AutoEPG is not only easy to use but can also result in a considerable saving in terms of time.


This doctoral thesis, written in French and entitled « La Représentation du local, de l'universel et de la réalité dans Rue la Poudrière, Le Voile de Draupadi et Le Sari vert d'Ananda Devi », is an in-depth historico-sociological analysis of Mauritian writer Ananda Devi's three novels published in 1988, 1993 and 2009 respectively. Having Mauritius as their background, these three novels introduce themes such as slavery, the trans-oceanic experience of Indian indentured labourers, prostitution, rape, domestic violence and homicide, through female protagonists in Rue la Poudrière and Le Voile de Draupadi, and a male protagonist in Le Sari vert.  Existing research on Devi's work concentrates mostly on the plight of women, who are victims of a Mauritian patriarchal society. Moving away from this approach, my research focuses on the spatial, historical and sociological dimensions in order to closely analyse the surroundings of the characters. The first focus of this research is to see whether these three novels exclusively allude to Mauritian society or also deal with universal concepts. The second focus is to determine the degree of realism of these three fictional works. Thus, the overall focus of this research is to scrutinise the degree of particularism, universalisation and realism in the geographical, historical and social dimensions of the novels.  I begin with a brief presentation of Ananda Devi and her place in Mauritian literature. Then, I explain the objectives of the thesis and introduce my methodologies, which include the theories of Tzvetan Todorov and Jean-Marc Moura used to analyse the local and universal aspects, and the theories of Guy de Maupassant, Roland Barthes, Maureen Ramsden, Vincent Jouve, Michael Riffaterre, Mark Sainsbury, Névine El Nossery used to frame the examination of realism. Sociological theories of Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton are also elaborated, to support the analysis of the social dimension. In order to better scrutinise the historical dimension of the novels, I have used the work of Mauritian and international historians as well as Mauritian and international governmental reports. Khal Torabully's notion of coolitude is also discussed to evaluate how different ethnic groups are represented in the novels. I have in addition coined the term "le rêve mauricien", in relation to the social dimension of the novels. Finally, I conclude with issues of realism, the local, the universal and fiction.


We propose an e-Learning platform or a web-based application for texture image analysis and classification using algorithms that assess fractal methods like: fractal dimension, lacunarity and succolarity. Fractal dimension measures the geometrical complexity of an object and is used as a tool for texture classification assignments. The lacunarity property can improve texture characteristics determined with fractal dimension by the fact that it specifies the texture orientation and shows how texture elements fill space (lacunarity reveals the gap distribution of the texture), while the fractal dimension measures how much space is occupied by texture elements. Succolarity is the fractal property that presents the percolation degree of a fluid flowing around and through an object in an image on a given direction. Various input texture images can be used in the application and the application itself can make automated conversions, adjustments or even offering advises. For classification purposes, multiple algorithms and strategies can be tested and the highest accuracy rate will be chosen for the best classification model. We are using Matlab web server technology to develop the application, mostly because Matlab is a solid and stable environment to develop such applications and one can benefit from the built-in image analysis routines. We intend that this e-Learning platform can be used in educational field for teaching students on image analysis and classification, image segmentation or object recognition issues. Other applicable cases for using this web-based application are research domains where generic or specialized datasets like phytopathology and entomology, tree bark or generic agricultural datasets are used.


This paper investigates the magnet as a classic "boundary object" of modern technoscientific culture. Equally at home in the nursery, dynamo, measuring instrument and navigational compass, its capricious performance nevertheless persistently eluded the powers of nineteenth century electromagnetic expertise in pursuit of the completely "permanent" magnet. Instead the untamed magnet's resilient secularity required its makers to draw upon ancient techniques of chemical manipulation, heat treatment and maturation to render it eventually sufficiently stable in behaviour for orderly use in modern engineering. The precise methods for accomplishing this quasi-permanence were typically protected by trade secrecy – until that is Marie Sklodowska Curie's first research publication opened up this topic for rigorous comparative research in 1898. Nevertheless, over the next quarter century her work in this field was gradually eclipsed by heavily gendered citation practices, just as the futility of attempting to accomplish complete permanency in magnets was eventually established by Sydney Evershed in the 1920s.


Molecular epidemiology is a discipline that uses molecular microbiology tools to study the distribution and determinants of diseases in human populations and veterinary animals. Our understanding of epidemiology of infectious diseases has evolved with technological advancements made in molecular biology that refine our perception of the identity and dynamics of microorganisms. This review is an introduction to the Microbiology Spectrum Curated Collection: Advances in Molecular Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases that will discuss how these advancements have contributed to investigations of infectious disease outbreaks/epidemics, surveillance, transmission dynamics, risk factor identification, pathogenesis, and etiologic attribution of bacterial, viral, protozoan, and helminthic pathogens to a disease. Here we define "molecular epidemiology" and distinguish it from other disciplines that use many of the same molecular biology tools-taxonomy, phylogenetics, and molecular evolution of microorganisms. The Curated Collection will be spread throughout multiple issues of Microbiology Spectrum and will be divided into four general sections: (i) laboratory methods used to strain type microbial pathogens, (ii) methods used to analyze genotyping data, (iii) examples of molecular epidemiologic investigations of bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases, and (iv) applications of molecular epidemiology to address new research questions in communicable and noncommunicable diseases. The major theme of this Curated Collection is to address the following question frequently asked by clinicians, clinical microbiologists, and public health professionals: what is the advantage or unique contribution of molecular epidemiology in solving infectious disease problems in the clinical and public health arenas? *This article is part of a curated collection.


This investigation examined squat strength and muscle activation during jump landings between female athletes who landed with a varus knee position versus a valgus knee position. Twenty-one female athletes were recruited from Appalachian State University. Subjects had at least two years of resistance training experience, and played basketball or volleyball at least 4 hours per week. All subjects performed a one repetition maximum (1RM) in the back squat and performed three of each of the following jumps: countermovement jump, 20 cm, 40 cm, and 60 cm drop jumps. Knee position was calculated using 3D videography at the moment of peak knee flexion. EMG activity was collected on the Vastus Lateralis (VL), Vastus Medialis (VM), Biceps Femoris (BF), and Gluteus Maximus (GM) using wireless electrodes. Average muscle activity for 100 ms prior to peak knee flexion was averaged for the left and right leg and EMG activity of the VL and VM were averaged together to represent quadriceps activity. Activation of quadriceps, BF, GM, absolute 1 RM and relative 1RM were not significantly different between the valgus versus varus knee angle groups. Significant differences were observed in knee angles between the valgus and varus groups in all jump conditions (p =0.05).


An interior point method (IPM) defines a search direction at each interior point of a region. These search directions form a direction field which in turn gives rise to a system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The solutions of the system of ODEs can be viewed as underlying paths in the interior of the region. In [C.-K. Sim and G. Zhao, Math. Program. Ser. A, 110 (2007), pp. 475-499], these off-central paths are shown to be well-defined analytic curves, and any of their accumulation points is a solution to a given monotone semidefinite linear complementarity problem (SDLCP). The study of these paths provides a way to understand how iterates generated by an interior point algorithm behave. In this paper, we give a sufficient condition using these off-central paths that guarantees superlinear convergence of a predictor-corrector path-following interior point algorithm for SDLCP using the Helmberg-Kojima-Monteiro (HKM) direction. This sufficient condition is implied by a currently known sufficient condition for superlinear convergence. Using this sufficient condition, we show that for any linear semidefinite feasibility problem, superlinear convergence using the interior point algorithm, with the HKM direction, can be achieved for a suitable starting point. We work under the assumption of strict complementarity.