Background: The global pandemic of metabolic disease is worsening. The metabolic theory of obesity proposes that hormonal changes, especially hyperinsulinaemia, precede metabolic disease development. Although quality sleep is recognised as a key factor for good health, less is known about disrupted sleep as a risk factor for hyperinsulinaemia. Aim: To explore the relationship between sleep, especially sleep architecture and the nasal cycle, on insulin secretion in obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) with comorbid metabolic disease. This review includes a discussion of the potential role of Rest-Activity-Cycler positive airway pressure (RACer-PAP), a novel non-pharmacological OSA treatment strategy. Methods: A narrative review of all the relevant papers known to the authors was conducted. This review also included results from a polysomnographic sleep clinic pilot study (n = 3) comparing sleep efficiency of RACer-PAP to nasal continuous positive airways pressure (n-CPAP) in OSA patients. Results: Metabolic disease is strongly associated with disturbed sleep. Sleep architecture influences cerebral hormonal secretion, lateral shifts in the autonomic nervous system and nasal airflow dominance. Disturbed sleep shortens short-wave sleep periods, decreasing insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. Improvements to metabolic function during n-CPAP treatment are inconsistent. If RACer-PAP demonstrates superior effects on sleep architecture and autonomic function, it may offer advantages in OSA patients with comorbid metabolic disease. Conclusion: Improving sleep architecture by maintaining the nasal cycle proposes a novel non-pharmacological treatment paradigm for treating OSA with comorbid metabolic disease. Research is required to demonstrate if RACer-PAP therapy influences whole night sleep architecture, sympathovagal balance and markers of metabolic disease.


If then the accomplishment of the divine counsel is the deification of our nature, and if the goal of the divine thoughts is the completion of what we ask for in our life, then it is profitable to know the full importance of the Lord's Prayer, to put it into practice and to write about it properly. (1) THE LORD'S PRAYER has always been the model of Christian prayer, since it comes from the teachings of Jesus himself: "Therefore you are to pray in this way" (Mt 6:9). The Church made it part of its liturgical life early on, even reserving the sacred words to the baptized faithful. (2) Its importance in the life of the Church led such Fathers as Origen of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, and Maximus the Confessor to compose rich meditations to help the faithful to appropriate and live out this holiest of orations. The Lord's Prayer contains many grammatical and hermeneutical problems even for the modern exegete. This article considers one of these issues, the second "we" petition regarding the forgiveness of debts or sins, by examining the three early commentaries of Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor. While these Fathers did not share all of the tools available to contemporary scripture studies, their attentive reading of the prayer and spiritual acuity allowed them to provide important--even radical--insights into the significance of this petition for Christian life. I. Problems in the Interpretation of the Texts of Matthew and Luke Before examining the petition in the light of these three fathers, some significant differences between the two versions of the prayer must be taken into account. Scholars tend to hold that the Lukan version, written for a Gentile audience, represents the original structure and length of the Aramaic, while the Matthean offers a more developed version of the prayer for liturgical use in a Jewish-Christian community. Yet, Matthew seems to have preserved a wording closer to the Aramaic, while Luke adapted the vocabulary for his non-Jewish audience. (3) Note some of the key differences in the second "we" petition of the prayer: For the purposes of this article, there are three variants of particular note. First, both Matthew and Luke use the verb [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] for "forgive," but they use different tenses of the verb in the apodosis of the petition: "as we too forgave/have forgiven" and "for we ourselves also forgive." Matthew has an aorist "we forgave," implying an action anterior to that of God's forgiveness (4); Luke uses the present, "we forgive," implying a continuous action simultaneous with God's act of mercy. Thus in the Matthean variant, if one assumes the force of the aorist active, it seems that the petitioner must perform the act of forgiveness before God can respond in kind. (5) In the Lukan variant, however, the present active implies a continuous act of forgiveness that accompanies the definitive act of forgiveness on the part of God (aorist imperative). Second, Matthew refers to the forgiveness of "debts" and "debtors," a possible reflection of the Aramaic ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which could mean both debt and sin. (6) Luke, however, perhaps attempted to express the double meaning of the Aramaic for the gentile audience by first using the word "sin" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and then using the participle for the verb "to owe" or "to be in debt" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (7) The implied relationship between debts and sins would become a key part of the Fathers' reflection upon this verse. Finally, the main problem addressed in this article emerges from the relationship between the protasis ("forgive us our debts") and apodosis ("as we too forgave," "for we also forgive"). Matthew creates a very strict relationship between the two by [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "as we too forgive. …


In the past, many have avoided nuts because of their high fat content. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, however, recommends regular consumption of this food along with seeds and dried beans (4–5 servings per week) as part of a diet to control hypertension. Nuts are nutrient‐dense and most of their fat is unsaturated. They are also perhaps the best natural source of vitamin E and are relatively concentrated repositories of dietary fiber, magnesium, potassium, and arginine, the dietary precursor of nitric oxide. Human feeding studies have demonstrated reductions of 8–12% in low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol when almonds and walnuts are substituted for more traditional fats. Other studies show that macadamias and hazelnuts appear at least as beneficial as fats in commonly recommended diets. Whether consuming modest quantities of nuts daily may promote weight gain is not known with certainty, but preliminary data suggest that this is unlikely. Four of the best and largest cohort studies in nutritional epidemiology have now reported that eating nuts frequently is associated with a decreased risk of coronary heart disease of the order of 30–50%. The findings are very consistent in subgroup analyses and unlikely to be due to confounding. Possible mechanisms include reduction in LDL cholesterol, the antioxidant actions of vitamin E, and the effects on the endothelium and platelet function of higher levels of nitric oxide. Although nuts may account for a relatively small percentage of dietary calories, the potential interacting effects of these factors on disease risk may be considerable.


A 16-year-old healthy white male adolescent presented with an asymptomatic swelling behind his ear. The lump was superimposed on what was thought to be a congenital nevus that had been present since birth. His family history and medical history were noncontributory. Physicalexaminationrevealeda largebrown-blackhyperpigmented plaque involving the posterior aspect of the neck and extending up to the mastoid and occipital region of the scalp (Figure 1). The plaque was of varying thickness, being macular on the inferior portion and spongy and infiltrative near the superior and mastoid portions. This variation in thickness was a continuous, gradual change. The lesion also demonstrated some variation in pigment and moderate hypertrichosis. A diffuse spongy nodule behind the ear was more palpable than the rest of the plaque (but not visible on the photograph). No other lesions were found. Two punch biopsy specimens were obtained: one from the thick, spongy area behind the ear and the other from the proximal area of the occipital region of the scalp, which was macular and thin and resembled the majority of the plaque (Figure 2 and Figure 3). Neither specimen was obtained from an area that was particularly dark. What is your diagnosis?


Plex housing is a type of collective housing that bears common facilities and buildings such as structures and conveniences, as well as a semi-private social interaction space. These sets can be organized into groups of two to six units. Plexiglas has been proposed as a new approach that has positive aspects of biological complexes and saves energy consumption and is in harmony with nature. The need for housing, per capita shortage of urban land, economic efficiency in construction and the use of modern technology in construction, makes it necessary to offer a type of design that is superior to traditional systems. Based on this, a multi-unit housing design model is proposed. This article intends to explain the principles and criteria of design in Plex housing in order to achieve the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the ideal design. These quantitative factors include alignment with the environment, climate and region, reducing energy consumption of the building during heating and cooling, saving per capita use of urban land, and qualitatively, promoting social sustainability is a determining factor. The research findings present the principles of Plex housing design in three dimensions: climate, social and sustainability. This can meet the requirements of the collective housing criteria and the principles and benefits of using the Plex housing as a new method in residential housing in the country. Research aims: 1. To review the positive aspects of Plex housing 2. To provide a model for the principles of Plex housing design in order to achieve quantitative and qualitative design dimensions Research questions: 1. What are the positive aspects of Plex housing? 1. What criteria and standards can be effective in plex housing design?


This chapter analyzes the economic consequences of external and internal asset partitioning, and it considers implications of this analysis for creditor remedies. External partitioning refers to the legal boundaries between business firms and their equity investors, while internal partitioning refers to the legal boundaries within corporate groups. The chapter begins by cataloguing the benefits and costs of corporate partitioning; it then employs this catalogue to analyze the relative economics of external and internal partitioning. Non-partitioning functions of subsidiaries also are identified. The chapter then considers whether cost-benefit analysis predicts how courts actually apply de-partitioning remedies, with particular emphasis on veil piercing and enterprise liability. The chapter concludes by arguing that courts should employ the distinction between external and internal partitioning when applying creditor remedies that disregard corporate partitions, and it identifies factors — in addition to whether a partition is internal or external — that courts should consider when deciding whether to de-partition.


In 2017, Internet ad spending reached 209 billion USD worldwide, while, e.g., TV ads brought in 178 billion USD. An Internet advertising campaign includes up to thousands of sub-campaigns on multiple channels, e.g., search, social, display, whose parameters (bid and daily budget) need to be optimized every day, subject to a (cumulative) budget constraint. Such a process is often unaffordable for humans and its automation is crucial. As also shown by marketing funnel models, the sub-campaigns are usually interdependent, e.g., display ads induce awareness, increasing the number of impressions-and, thus, also the number of conversions-of search ads. This interdependence is widely exploited by humans in the optimization process, whereas, to the best of our knowledge, no algorithm takes it into account. In this paper, we provide the first model capturing the sub-campaigns interdependence. We also provide the IDIL algorithm, which, employing Granger Causality and Gaussian Processes, learns from past data, and returns an optimal stationary bid/daily budget allocation. We prove theoretical guarantees on the loss of IDIL w.r.t. the clairvoyant solution, and we show empirical evidence of its superiority in both realistic and real-world settings when compared with existing approaches.


With the increasing rate of land development, consumption of natural resources, and destruction of ecosystems in the United States today, it is crucial to investigate sustainable alternatives to current development practices and patterns of settlement. This thesis proposes strategies for environmentally responsible land use and partial development of 40 acres of overgrown, family-owned farmland in rural Pennsylvania. It investigates ways in which the creation of community can help to promote sustainable patterns of development for this rural landscape. The proposal aims to strengthen connections within the community as well as between the community and natural environment. By questioning current zoning codes and existing values surrounding land ownership and dwelling, we can design and develop in less invasive ways that help to preserve the beauty of the landscape and the places that we love.


We have analyzed the detectability limits of network communities in the framework of the popular Girvan and Newman benchmark. By carefully taking into account the inevitable stochastic fluctuations that affect the construction of each and every instance of the benchmark, we come to the conclusion that the native, putative partition of the network is completely lost even before the in-degree/out-degree ratio becomes equal to that of a structureless Erdös-Rényi network. We develop a simple iterative scheme, analytically well described by an infinite branching process, to provide an estimate of the true detectability limit. Using various algorithms based on modularity optimization, we show that all of them behave (semiquantitatively) in the same way, with the same functional form of the detectability threshold as a function of the network parameters. Because the same behavior has also been found by further modularity-optimization methods and for methods based on different heuristics implementations, we conclude that indeed a correct definition of the detectability limit must take into account the stochastic fluctuations of the network construction.


Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based positioning is experiencing rapid changes. The existing GPS and the GLONASS systems are being modernized to better serve the current challenging applications under harsh signal conditions. These modernizations include increasing the number of transmission frequencies and changes to the signal components. In addition, the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite system (BDS) and the European Galileo are currently under development for global operation. Therefore, in view of these new upcoming systems the research and development of GNSS receivers has been experiencing a new upsurge. In this article, the authors discuss the main functionalities of a GNSS receiver in view of BDS. While describing the main functionalities of a software-defined BeiDou receiver, the authors also highlight the similarities and differences between the signal characteristics of the BeiDou B1 open service signal and the legacy GPS L1 C/A signal, as in general they both exhibit similar characteristics. In addition, the authors implement a novel acquisition technique for long coherent integration in the presence of NH code modulation in BeiDou D1 signal. Furthermore, a simple phase-preserved coherent integration based acquisition scheme is implemented for BeiDou GEO satellite acquisition. Apart from the above BeiDou-specific implementations, a novel Carrier-to-Noise-density ratio estimation technique is also implemented in the software receiver, which does not necessarily require bit synchronization prior to estimation. Finally, the authors present a BeiDou-only position fix with the implemented software-defined BeiDou receiver considering all three satellite constellations from BDS. In addition, a true multi-GNSS position fix with GPS and BDS systems is also presented while comparing their performances for a static stand-alone code phase-based positioning.


This study contributes to the literature on public debt sustainability and investigates whether European
countries manage primary surplus also through interest rate swaps. Since the 1990s European countries
have extensively employed Over The Counter (OTC) contracts such as swaps to smooth the financial
costs of debt, shift part of debt forward, and exploit the lack of accounting transparency of these
contracts. One of the primary goals of the EU fiscal framework is to ensure public debt sustainability.
Several proposals have been considered to improve the current framework, yet none of them has
addressed the issue of debt sustainability when countries use swaps. This is the first empirical
investigation that confirms the use of swaps by European countries in the 2006-2018 period to improve
the primary balance. According to panel data results, EU countries increased the primary surplus in the
2006-2018 period following a rising debt and took corrective action by actively managing their debt with
swaps; this evidence is in line with the hypothesis of the strategic use of swaps by public administrations
widely described in the theoretical literature on debt management. Policy implications and proposals to
improve the current European fiscal framework are provided.


The cost and complexity of administration of large systems has come to dominate their total cost of ownership. Stateless and soft-state components, e.g. Web servers or network routers, are easy to manage: capacity can be scaled incrementally by adding more nodes, rebalancing of load after failover is easy, and reactive or proactive ("rolling") reboots can be used to handle transient failures. We show that it is possible to achieve the same ease of management for the state-storage subsystem by subdividing persistent state according to the specific guarantees needed by each type. While other systems [19,17] have addressed persistent-until-deleted state, we describe SSM, a store for a previously unaddressed class of state - user-session state - that exhibits the same manageability properties as stateless nodes while providing firm storage guarantees. Any node can be proactively or reactively rebooted at any time to recover from transient faults, without impacting online performance or losing data. We exploit this simplified manageability by pairing SSM with an application-generic, statistical-anomaly-based framework that detects crashes, hangs, and performance failures, and automatically attempts to recover from them by rebooting faulty nodes. Although the detection techniques generate some false positives, the cost of recovery is so low that the false positives have low impact. We provide microbenchmarks to demonstrate SSM's built-in overload protection, failure management and self-tuning. We benchmark SSM integrated into a production enterprise-scale interactive service to demonstrate that these benefits need not come at the cost of significantly decreased throughput or response time.


Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM)has recently attracted vast research attention from both academia and industry and has become a part of new emerging standards for broadband wireless access. Synchronization at receiver end represents one of the most challenging issues and plays a major role in physical layer design.This paper presents design and implementation of a Channel estimation algorithm which successfully achieves minimization of Timing and Frequency offsets at receiver end. Also it has been synthesized and simulated on Virtex 6 device.


Climate projections indicate that rising temperatures will affect summer crops in the southern Iberian Peninsula. The aim of this study was to obtain projections of the impacts of rising temperatures, and of higher frequency of extreme events on irrigated maize, and to evaluate some adaptation strategies. The study was conducted at several locations in Andalusia using the CERES-Maize crop model, previously calibrated/validated with local experimental datasets. The simulated climate consisted of projections from regional climate models from the ENSEMBLES project; these were corrected for daily temperature and precipitation with regard to the E-OBS observational dataset. These bias-corrected projections were used with the CERES-Maize model to generate future impacts. Crop model results showed a decrease in maize yield by the end of the 21st century from 6 to 20%, a decrease of up to 25% in irrigation water requirements, and an increase in irrigation water productivity of up to 22%, due to earlier maturity dates and stomatal closure caused by CO2 increase. When adaptation strategies combining earlier sowing dates and cultivar changes were considered, impacts were compensated, and maize yield increased up to 14%, compared with the baseline period (1981-2010), with similar reductions in crop irrigation water requirements. Effects of extreme maximum temperatures rose to 40% at the end of the 21st century, compared with the baseline. Adaptation resulted in an overall reduction in extreme Tmax damages in all locations, with the exception of Granada, where losses were limited to 8%.


I would claim that the main feature of the general intellect, in all its forms, is its indeterminacy. Neither defining individuality nor a specific group, the general intellect represents a sort of passage between the singular and the multitude. Until now, the discussion of the concept of the general intellect has been the prerogative of economists, sociologists, philosophers and historians. I intend to demonstrate how this notion has also influenced the literary field, and, in particular, how the general intellect is an active element in the narration of Q , the novel written in 1999 by the writers' collective 'Luther Blissett Project'.


BACKGROUND
Dihydrotestosterone mediates androgen-dependent diseases, such as acne, hirsutism, and androgenetic alopecia. This hormone is produced from testosterone by the 5alpha-reductase enzyme. There are 2 isozymes of 5alpha-reductase (types 1 and 2) that differ in their localization within the body and even within the skin. Activity of the type 1 isozyme predominates in sebaceous glands, where it may be involved in regulation of sebum production. Since specific inhibition of 5alpha-reductase type 1 may represent a novel therapeutic approach to acne, it is important to define the localization of these isozymes in normal sebaceous follicles and acne lesions.

OBSERVATIONS
Skin biopsy specimens were obtained from the backs of 11 subjects: 8 with acne and 3 without acne. Sections of normal follicles, open comedones, closed comedones, and inflammatory lesions were incubated with antibodies to types 1 and 2 5alpha-reductase. In all samples, the type 1 antibody localized specifically to sebaceous glands, and the type 2 antibody localized to the companion layer of the hair follicle (the innermost layer of the outer root sheath) and granular layer of the epidermis. Localization of the type 2 isozyme was also noted within the walls of open and closed comedones and in endothelial cells from sections of inflammatory lesions.

CONCLUSIONS
The immunolocalization of 5alpha-reductase isozymes in normal sebaceous follicles and acne follicles is similar to the pattern described in terminal hair follicles and corresponds with the findings of biochemical studies that have demonstrated predominance of type 1 activity in sebaceous glands. The function of type 2 5alpha-reductase in comedones or endothelial cells in inflammatory lesions is unknown.


PURPOSE
To maximize the benefits of respiratory gated radiotherapy (RGRT) of lung tumors real-time verification of the tumor position is required. This work investigates the feasibility of markerless tracking of lung tumors during beam-on time in electronic portal imaging device (EPID) images of the MV therapeutic beam.

METHODS
EPID movies were acquired at ∼2 fps for seven lung cancer patients with tumor peak-to-peak motion ranges between 7.8 and 17.9 mm (mean: 13.7 mm) undergoing stereotactic body radiotherapy. The external breathing motion of the abdomen was synchronously measured. Both datasets were retrospectively analyzed in PortalTrack, an in-house developed tracking software. The authors define a three-step procedure to run the simulations: (1) gating window definition, (2) gated-beam delivery simulation, and (3) tumor tracking. First, an amplitude threshold level was set on the external signal, defining the onset of beam-on/-off signals. This information was then mapped onto a sequence of EPID images to generate stamps of beam-on/-hold periods throughout the EPID movies in PortalTrack, by obscuring the frames corresponding to beam-off times. Last, tumor motion in the superior-inferior direction was determined on portal images by the tracking algorithm during beam-on time. The residual motion inside the gating window as well as target coverage (TC) and the marginal target displacement (MTD) were used as measures to quantify tumor position variability.

RESULTS
Tumor position monitoring and estimation from beam's-eye-view images during RGRT was possible in 67% of the analyzed beams. For a reference gating window of 5 mm, deviations ranging from 2% to 86% (35% on average) were recorded between the reference and measured residual motion. TC (range: 62%-93%; mean: 77%) losses were correlated with false positives incidence rates resulting mostly from intra-/inter-beam baseline drifts, as well as sudden cycle-to-cycle fluctuations in exhale positions. Both phenomena can lead to considerable deviations (with MTD values up to a maximum of 7.8 mm) from the intended tumor position, and in turn may result in a marginal miss. The difference between tumor traces determined within the gating window against ground truth trajectory maps was 1.1 ± 0.7 mm on average (range: 0.4-2.3 mm).

CONCLUSIONS
In this retrospective analysis of motion data, it is demonstrated that the system is capable of determining tumor positions in the plane perpendicular to the beam direction without the aid of fiducial markers, and may hence be suitable as an online verification tool in RGRT. It may be possible to use the tracking information to enable on-the-fly corrections to intra-/inter-beam variations by adapting the gating window by means of a robotic couch.


PURPOSE
To quantify the locomotor demands of college female soccer matches and compare the relative proportion of distances in specified velocity bands between players completing an entire half with substitutes.

METHODS
College female soccer players (n = 113) were assessed during a regular-season match using global positioning system technology. An ANCOVA was used to compare the locomotor characteristics for positions and substitutes, adjusting for duration played. Paired t tests compared the proportion of distances for players substituted out and back into the second half.

RESULTS
Defenders covered less total absolute distance than midfielders (first half) and midfielders and forwards (second half) with concomitantly lower work rates. Moderate- and high-intensity running were similar between positions within each half. Midfielders substituted into the match had a lower proportion of moderate-intensity running than those substituted out (15% ± 1.8% vs 19% ± 0.9%), and defenders completing an entire first half had a lower proportion of high-intensity running than defenders substituted in or out (6% ± 1.0% vs 11% ± 1.0% and 16% ± 2.8%). There were no differences in the proportion of distances covered within each velocity band for any position in the second half or for the players substituted out and then back in during the second half.

CONCLUSIONS
The current findings provide novel insight linking the developmental progression between youth and high-level matches for overall demands and work rates. Moderate- and high-intensity distances cumulatively range from 2100 to 2600 m (26-28% total distance) in female college matches. The high amount of consistency observed for the proportions of distance covered suggest that substitution patterns have little impact on locomotor distribution.


NAMDis a molecular dynamics program designed for high-performance simulations of very large biological objects on CPU- and GPU-based architectures. NAMD offers scalable performance on petascale parallel supercomputers consisting of hundreds of thousands of cores, as well as on inexpensive commodity clusters commonly found in academic environments. It is written in C++ and leans on Charm++ parallel objects for optimal performance on low-latency architectures. NAMD is a versatile, multipurpose code that gathers state-of-the-art algorithms to carry out simulations in apt thermodynamic ensembles, using the widely popular CHARMM, AMBER, OPLS, and GROMOS biomolecular force fields. Here, we review the main features of NAMD that allow both equilibrium and enhanced-sampling molecular dynamics simulations with numerical efficiency. We describe the underlying concepts utilized by NAMD and their implementation, most notably for handling long-range electrostatics; controlling the temperature, pressure, and pH; applying external potentials on tailored grids; leveraging massively parallel resources in multiple-copy simulations; and hybrid quantum-mechanical/molecular-mechanical descriptions. We detail the variety of options offered by NAMD for enhanced-sampling simulations aimed at determining free-energy differences of either alchemical or geometrical transformations and outline their applicability to specific problems. Last, we discuss the roadmap for the development of NAMD and our current efforts toward achieving optimal performance on GPU-based architectures, for pushing back the limitations that have prevented biologically realistic billion-atom objects to be fruitfully simulated, and for making large-scale simulations less expensive and easier to set up, run, and analyze. NAMD is distributed free of charge with its source code at www.ks.uiuc.edu.


Autonomous tractor-trailer systems have become more and more popular in real life. This dissertation focuses on control and estimation for the path following problem where space-based path is used as reference. The goal is to make the trailer path follow the reference path as closely as possible. A kinematic model is derived and is applicable when the tractor velocity is relatively low. To reduce tracking error near the intersection between two different kinds of reference paths, a new approach is first developed based on a proper local coordinate transformation. Then, an alternative solution based on model predictive control is developed to solve the challenge mentioned above in an optimal way. Two linearization methods for the nonlinear model, based on current measurements and steady-state values of time-varying terms, are given. The result shows that both of these two approaches can greatly reduce the tracking error near the intersections of different reference paths. For the trailer far from the reference, a controller focusing on heading control is then proposed. Two methods are then given to eliminate the steady-state error for curved reference path. One is to add a feed-forward part in the control law. The other is to use tractor steering rate as the control input instead of steering angle. The steady-state error may exist when there is a bias in the measurement and process. An additional integrator is added in the model and adaptive integral separation is applied to accumulate position error only when it is close to zero. The proposed approaches are verified by simulations. To reduce the sensor cost, an estimator based on adaptive unscented Kalman filter is proposed when the positions of the trailer are measurable. Simulation results verify the proposed algorithm.


This article explores the relationship between transnationalism and integration by examining the determinants of remittance-sending practices. We base our analysis on the premise that remittance-sending is shaped by a combination of the capacity and the desire of migrants to remit. The capacity to remit depends on access to funds that can be remitted, be it through wages, other income or savings. The desire to remit determines how remittance-sending is prioritised in relation to alternative expenditures. We assume that capacity is shaped by circumstances in the country of residence while desire depends on attachment and commitments in both the country of residence and the country of origin. Our analysis is based on survey data on immigrants in Norway (N=3,053). We find that economic integration is important for remittance-sending, and point to different mechanisms through which this effect could operate. Migrants' socio-cultural integration, however, appears not to have significant effects on remittance-sending. Our approach and results illustrate how different aspects of integration can have divergent impacts on transnationalism.


The study of sound change in progress in Philadelphia has been facilitated by the application of forced alignment and automatic vowel measurement to a large corpus of neighborhood studies, including 379 speakers with dates of birth from 1888 to 1991. Two of the sound changes active in the 1970s show a linear pattern of incrementation in succeeding decades. The fronting of back upgliding vowels /aw/ and /ow/ shows a reversal in the direction of change, beginning with those born after 1940. The study also finds a general withdrawal from two salient features of local phonology, tense /æh/ and /oh/, led by those with higher education. Younger speakers with higher education have also reorganized the traditional Philadelphia tense/lax split of short-a to form a nasal system with tensing before all and only nasal consonants. The development of the Philadelphia vowel system can be understood in the geographic context of neighboring dialects. Features in common with North and North Midland dialects have accelerated in use while features in common with South Midland and Southern dialects have been reversed in favor of Northern patterns. The microevolution of a linguistic system can be seen here as subject to phonological generalizations but driven by social evaluation as features rise in level of salience for members of the speech community.


In this paper we discuss the bounds of and relations among various kinds of intersection numbers of graphs. Especially, we address extremal graphs with respect to the established bounds. The uniqueness of the minimum-size intersection representations for some graphs is also studied. In the course of this work, we introduce a superclass of chordal graphs, defined in terms of a generalization of simplicial vertex and perfect elimination ordering.


The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has developed a new thermal conductivity reference material, NPL code 2S09 that is based on Stainless Steel 304. This batch of material has been thermally and electrically characterised over the temperature range 100 °C to 500 °C. The primary thermal conductivity measurements used to generate the certified values used the NPL Axial Heat Flow apparatus, which is based on a steady-state absolute technique and is suitable for measuring specimens with thermal conductivities in the range 10 W m-1 K-1 to 240 W m 1 K-1. Comparisons were made between the reference thermal conductivity values and derived thermal conductivity values obtained from two indirect methods based upon electrical resistivity and thermal diffusivity measurements respectively. The reference thermal conductivity values of NPL 2S09 compare with those calculated from the measurements of electrical resistivity within 2 % and those calculated from the measurements of thermal diffusivity, specific heat capacity, density and thermal expansion better than 4 %. The new reference material NPL 2S09 is available from NPL and can be used to calibrate or check apparatuses that provide measurements of thermal conductivity from 16 W m-1 K-1 to 22 W m-1 K-1 covering the temperature range 100 °C to 500 °C. The overall uncertainty on the certified values is estimated to be within ±4.8 %, based on a standard uncertainty multiplied by a coverage factor k = 2, providing a level of confidence of approximately 95 %.


We describe the implementation of an intrusion tolerant system for providing Internet services to known users through secure connections. Network attacks are treated as maliciously devised conditions to exploit design, implementation, or configuration faults, intrusions (successful attacks) are treated as failures, and their effects are mitigated by using the three pillars of fault tolerance: detection, isolation, and recovery. Fundamental to our approach is the use of diverse process pairs, which provides partial solutions to detection and isolation problems. The architecture uses the comparison of outputs from diverse applications to provide a significant and novel intrusion detection capability. The diverse applications also strengthen isolation by forcing attacks to exploit independent vulnerabilities. The isolation of intrusions is mainly achieved with an out-of-band control system. The control system not only provides separation between the primary and backup system, it also initiates attack diagnosis, attack blocking, and recovery, which is accelerated by on-line repair.


The rates of warming in the Arctic are double the average increase on the rest of the planet. The Arctic is especially vulnerable and climate change is already affecting this region. The melting of polar ice and land ice due to climate change, especially in Greenland, also exacerbates climate change amounting to a positive feedback loop. Oil and gas exploitation in the Arctic has additional environmental impacts affecting the marine environment and the atmosphere in the form of pollution in the oceans and a haze in the air space in the lower atmosphere affecting Arctic populations. The Arctic also has an indigenous population of 400,000, many of whom depend on the land and marine resources to uphold their subsistence livelihoods. The environmental and social impacts for these indigenous groups should be integrated into any energy development project in the Arctic. According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), fossil fuel production will not be able to continue as it is now if we are to stay below the two-degree Celsius increase in temperature relative to pre-industrial levels. A fundamental shift from fossil fuels to renewables is necessary, with the majority of known fossil fuel reserves needing to remain in the ground. With this backdrop, the article's main question is whether new and large-scale oil and gas exploitation in the Arctic is lawful under international law and domestic law. The article focuses especially on the case of Norway as one of the Arctic states. Starting on the level of international law, the article argues that oil and gas exploitation in the Arctic on a large scale, although not expressly prohibited, would defeat the object and purpose of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), general legal principles relating to climate change, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Biodiversity Convention and international human rights agreements and declarations, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It also breaches the spirit of the EU Treaties' goal of sustainable development. On the national level, Norway's constitutional provision on environmental rights was amended in May 2014. With this amended provision the people of Norway on their own behalf and for future generations have a stronger possibility of enforcing their right to a liveable environment. At a minimum, a right to a liveable environment includes safe-guarding critical environmental processes that regulate the stability of the life-support systems on Earth. The planetary boundaries framework defines nine parameters of the earth system to indicate a safe operating space for humanity, including climate. The June 2015 victories in the Dutch Urgenda case and the U.S. Our Children's Trust case are inspiring indications of an emerging international trend of using the courts as the guardians of this aspect of the very basis of our existence. Assessing the question of new and large-scale oil and gas exploitation in the Arctic in light of Norway's international law obligations, its EU law obligations (through the EEA agreement) and notably the enhanced provision of its Constitution, leads to the conclusion that exploiting oil and gas on a large scale in the Arctic is unlawful. This is based on the knowledge that the majority of known fossil fuel reserves need to remain in the ground if we are to have any chance of staying below the two-degree limit. Logical and obvious consequences are that we must refrain from exploiting fossil fuels with the most polluting exploitation methods and in the most vulnerable areas, where exploitation will have the worst environmental and human rights impacts and in areas where exploitation contributes most to climate change. Continuing with the Norwegian fossil fuel industry on a large scale will make it impossible for Norway to fulfil its obligation to ensure a liveable environment. Not exploiting oil and gas in the Arctic is an obvious first place to draw the line (along with unconventional methods of exploitation, such as the tar sands in Canada). Norway therefore, as a matter of law, cannot lawfully award any additional licenses for fossil fuel exploitation in the area of the Arctic where it has jurisdiction. Norway is also obligated to prevent Statoil, where Norway is the majority shareholder, from applying for or using licenses in other areas of the Arctic. On a general note, the authors argue that rather than allowing a new fossil fuel boom, the nations surrounding the Arctic must be incentivised to move to renewable energy through more effective legal regulation of environmental protection and the promotion of human rights. The authors briefly discuss the limitations of the Arctic Council's role in achieving an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development of the Arctic, with the implications this has for the responsibility of the Arctic states. The article concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the potential that lies in achieving the transition towards sustainable low-carbon societies.


Long-term success of family firms is of utmost social and economic
importance. Three of its determinants are in the center of this Dissertation: firmlevel entrepreneurial orientation (EO), managers' entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating attitudes of non-family employees. Each determinant and respective research gaps are addressed by one paper of this cumulative dissertation.
Referring to firm-level EO, scholars claim that EO is a main antecedent to
firms' both short- and long-term success. However, family firms seem to be
successful across generations despite rather low levels of EO. The first paper
addresses this paradox by investigating EO patterns of long-lived family firms in
three Swiss case studies. The main finding is that the key to success is not to be as entrepreneurially as possible all the time, but to continuously adapt the EO profile depending on internal and external factors. Moreover, the paper suggest new subcategories to different EO dimensions.
With regard to entrepreneurial behavior of managers, there is a lack of knowledge how individual-level and organizational level factors affect its evolvement. The second paper addresses this gap by investigating a sample of 403 middle-level managers from both family and non-family firms. It introduces psychological ownership of managers as individual-level antecedent and investigates the interaction with organizational factors. As a central insight, management support is found to strengthen the psychological ownership-entrepreneurial behavior relationship.
The third paper is based on the fact that employees' justice perceptions are
established antecedents of value-creating employee attitudes such as affective
commitment and job satisfaction. Even though family firms are susceptible to nonfamily employees´ perceptions of injustice, corresponding research is scarce. Moreover, the mechanism connecting justice perceptions and positive outcomes is still unclear. Addressing these gaps, the analysis of a sample of 310 non-family employees reveals that psychological ownership is a mediator in the relationships between distributive justice perceptions and both affective commitment and job satisfaction.
Altogether, the three papers offer valuable contributions to family business
literature with respect to EO, entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating
employee attitudes. Thus, they increase current understanding about important
determinants of family firms' long-term success, while opening up numerous ways of future research.


Copper ions (Cu2+) play a critical role in biological processes and are directly involved in β-amyloid peptide (Aβ) aggregation, which is responsible for the occurrence and development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, combined determination of Cu2+ and Aβ in one analytical system is of great significance to understand the exact nature of the AD event. This work presents a novel ratiometric electrochemical biosensor for the dual determination of Cu2+ and Aβ1-42. This unique sensor is based on a 2,2'-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonate) (ABTS) and poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA)-bi functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (ABTS-PDDA/CNTs) composite. The inclusion of ABTS not only enhanced the sensitivity, but it also acted as an inner reference molecule to improve detection accuracy. The specific recognition of Cu2+ was realized by neurokinin B (NKB) coatings on the ABTS-PDDA/CNTs surface to form a [CuII(NKB)2] complex with Cu2+. The ABTS-PDDA/CNTs-NKB modified electrode also displayed an excellent electrochemical response toward the Aβ1-42 monomer, when a certain amount of the Aβ1-42 monomer was added to Cu2+-contained PBS buffer, which was due to the release of Cu2+ from the [CuII(NKB)2] complex through Aβ binding to Cu2+. Meanwhile, our work showed that Cu2+ bound Aβ1-42 was concentration-dependent. Consequently, the presented electrochemical approach was capable of quantifying two important biological species associated with AD by one single biosensor, with the detection limits of 0.04 μM for Cu2+ and 0.5 ng mL-1 for Aβ1-42, respectively. Finally, the ratiometric electrode was successfully applied for monitoring Cu2+ and Aβ1-42 variations in plasma and hippocampus of normal and AD rats.

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The method of diagnosis, management and outcome in 18 patients with symptomatic early gastric cancer presenting to the Department of Surgical Oncology were studied. The age range was 56-84 years. There were 12 mucosa only cancers and 5 with N1 nodal metastases. The diagnostic accuracy of initial endoscopy was 38% rising to 61% when combined with histology. The remaining 8 patients required a median of 2.5 (2-5) endoscopies before the diagnosis was made. Concurrent symptomatic therapy in 7, produced complete resolution of symptoms in 6 and improvement in remaining case. Resection was undertaken in 17 patients and endoscopic excision in 1. The actuarial survival rate was 89% at a median follow up of 27 (1-80) months. Patients considered 'at risk' of early gastric cancer should undergo serial investigation if initial endoscopy is non diagnostic even when therapy cures their symptoms. Surgery for symptomatic early gastric cancer is associated with a survival rate similar to that reported in Japanese series.


Nearest-centroid classifiers have recently been successfully employed in high-dimensional applications, such as in genomics. A necessary step when building a classifier for high-dimensional data is feature selection. Feature selection is frequently carried out by computing univariate scores for each feature individually, without consideration for how a subset of features performs as a whole. We introduce a new feature selection approach for high-dimensional nearest centroid classifiers that instead is based on the theoretically optimal choice of a given number of features, which we determine directly here. This allows us to develop a new greedy algorithm to estimate this optimal nearest-centroid classifier with a given number of features. In addition, whereas the centroids are usually formed from maximum likelihood estimates, we investigate the applicability of high-dimensional shrinkage estimates of centroids. We apply the proposed method to clinical classification based on gene-expression microarrays, demonstrating that the proposed method can outperform existing nearest centroid classifiers.


This work examines how Roman marble were reused into religious and civil buildings beetween the IVth-Xth / XIth-XVth centuries in some centers of Campania. The aims of this research were threefold: I. to establish a corpus around the spolia of old centers of Campania. II. to consider the problem of continuity and the revival of the past in new buildings through the codification of new religious and politic aesthetic. III. to demonstrate the origin of spolia from ancient centers of Campania and not only from Lazio' centers. The evidence of some unpublished materials (as sarcophagi and capitals), preserved mainly in local Museums, or reused in Medieval Churches and in the streets of cities, contribute to better delineate our knowledges about Campania spolia, before known from authoritative studies on the subject. The use of spolia in Campania is interesting to understand the survival of the ancient Roman society of Campania during the Longobard and Norman dominations. We can also describe the difference between the reuse of earlier building materials or decorative sculpture on new momuments in South and North Campania, looking at the spolia found in Capua (for example, coming from the marbles of the Amphitheatre or Theatre in Santa Maria Capua Vetere), Sessa Aurunca and Teano and Salerno-Amalfi' coast. The origins of spolia are from imperial-roman Theatre and Amphitheatre very rich in marble to be reused, from imperial necropolis of republican centers of Campania, restored by Traiano and Adriano emperors, but also from important villae around Naples and Flegrean Bay. In the Medieval age, the coastal cities acquire the materials through maritime trade: from Paestum to Salerno-Amalfi to Naples-Pozzuoli-Ostia-Roma, but also through regional routes: Nuceria-Capua-Benevento, full of roman spolia.


A short Pest Risk Analysis (PRA) was made for the leaf-roller moths Platynota rostrana and P. stultana following findings of these organisms on imported lots of plants for planting in the Netherlands and in the field in southern Spain, respectively. The PRA does not include a pathwayanalysis but used information on pathways from PRAs made by the United Kingdom and Spain. The PRA assessed the potential impact of P. rostrana and P. stultana for the European Union (EU). P. stultana has been present in Spain for several years and it was assessed that both species can likely establish outdoors in southern parts of the EU. P. stultana can possibly also establish in commercial greenhouses in northern Europe while P. rostrana may not or at much lower population densities. The potential impact of P. rostrana and P. stultana was assessed "Minor" and "Medium" respectively in commercial crops with a medium uncertainty. In tropical greenhouse (e.g. botanical gardens, zoos,...), P. rostrana may have more impact. The potential environmental impact was assessed "Minimal" with medium uncertainty for both species. Risk reduction options were briefly evaluated. Visual inspections of plants for planting and plant products that may carry the species are not considered very effective because low infestation levels can easily be missed. Pesticide applications in the countries of origin can reduce the probability of association but can probably not fully guarantee pest freedom. The requirement of a pest free production place would provide higher safeguards than pest control and visual inspections at the level of commodity but can have a large impact on trade of plants and plant products from areas where the species are present.


Supply chains have more and more become global supply chains, due to which it becomes increasingly more difficult for states to monitor whether the production process of goods entering the territory has been free of labour rights abuses. States are less able to hold corporate entities accountable that are knowingly or unknowingly benefiting from labour rights abuses. Transparency measures have been suggested as a way to close this accountability gap and circumvent traditional issues of enforcement when production and consumption of goods takes place in different jurisdictions. This paper discusses whether transparency measures live up to these expectations by assessing the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (California Act). We analyse whether the Act does indeed contribute to greater accountability by filling the existing information gap between companies and consumers. The workings of the Act, as well as its impact on primary stakeholders will be determined. The paper discusses action taken by companies, consumers and non†governmental organizations by looking at the degree to which the new California Act generated differences in behaviour and practices of these affected parties. Based on this information the question is answered which possibilities and limitations are connected to the use of transparency measures in combatting the abuse of labour rights in the global supply chain. It is discussed which lessons can be learned from the California Act and which policy implications this could have for future transparency measures.


In this paper, we present a German supertagger that analyses syntactic functions in linear order. We apply a statistical sequential model, conditional random fields (CRF), to Swiss law texts, in a real world scenario in which the training data of the domain is missing. We show that the small amount of in-domain training data that was informed by linguistic hard and soft constraints and domain constraints achieved a label accuracy of 90% in the domain data, thus outperforming state-of-the-art parsers.


Commercial law expert James J. White has stated that banks and other secured creditors worship security interests with apostolic zeal, and that no one has less power in a debate over the scope of collateral security rules than a law professor with a counterintuitive idea. This essay investigates on what grounds a law professor might take a normative position on secured transactions law that bears no reasonable relationship to politically viable possibilities for Uniform Commercial Code reform. This investigation leads to foundational questions about the nature and purposes of legal scholarship. There seems to be a relationship between crises of legitimacy in law and a need for most legal scholarship to be relevant on some level, however tenuous or imagined, to lawmaking. Theorists have used the concept of loss of reference developed by continental philosophers to show crises of institutional legitimacy in law. Loss of external reference in lawmaking drives a need for sustainable distinctions and non-instrumental conceptions of juridical relations. Legal scholars can play a central role in the project of constructing the types of sustainable differentiations and referents that lawmaking requires. From this vantage point, the space within this project for unrealistic reform proposals such as counterintuitive ideas for secured transactions law becomes interesting to define.


The report assesses the likely impacts of the FTA for environmental policies, regulations and the physical environment. The analysis covers the main parts of the FTA: Trade in goods, trade in services and investments, and is limited to those parts of the FTA that are assumed to have the greatest effects. The analysis is based on scenarios setting out possible results of the negotiations. These scenarios build on existing obligations in the WTO seen in conjunction with the public documents that the negotiations are based upon. The report contains the following core elements: 1. The details of a baseline scenario. 2. Two scenarios based on possible outcomes of the negotiations a free trade scenario and a green trade scenario. 3. Screening and scoping in light of input from consultations with public authorities, non-governmental organizations and the team of Chinese researchers. 4. Five case studies that focus on effects of the FTA on trade and investment between Norway and China, and the resulting environmental consequences. 5. Five regulatory studies that focus on effects of the FTA for environmental rules and policy.


Electrode materials for supercapacitors with one-dimensional porous nanostructures, such as nanowires and nanotubes, are very attractive for high-efficiency storage of electrochemical energy. Herein, ultralong Cu-based porous coordination polymer nanowires (copper-l-aspartic acid) were used as the electrode material for supercapacitors, for the first time. The as-prepared material exhibits a high specific capacitance of 367 F g-1 at 0.6 A g-1 and excellent cycling stability (94% retention over 1000 cycles). Moreover, porous CuO nanotubes were successfully fabricated by the thermal decomposition of this nanowire precursor. The CuO nanotube exhibits good electrochemical performance with high rate capacity (77% retention at 12.5 A g-1) and long-term stability (96% retention over 1000 cycles). The strategy developed here for the synthesis of porous nanowires and nanotubes can be extended to the construction of other electrode materials for more efficient energy storage.


Steam distillation of essential oils of aerial parts of Thymus capitatus and Marrubium vulgare L. collected at North cost of Egypt yielded 0.5% and 0.2%, respectively. Results of Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses of the two samples identified 96.27% and 90.19% of the total oil composition for T. capitatus and M. vulgare, respectively. The two oil samples appeared dominated by the oxygenated constituents (88.22% for T. capitatus and 57.50% for M. vulgare), composed of phenols, mainly carvacrol (32.98%) and thymol (32.82%) in essential oil of T. capitatus, and thymol (34.55%) in essential oil of M. vulgare. It was evaluated the molluscicidal activity of T. capitatus and M. vulgare essential oils on adult and eggs of Biomphalaria alexandrina as well as their mosquitocidal activity on Culex pipiens. The LC50 and LC90 of T. capitatus essential oil against adult snails was 200 and 400 ppm/3hrs, respectively, while for M. vulgare it was 50 and 100 ppm/3hrs, respectively. Moreover, M. vulgare showed LC100 ovicidal activity at 200 ppm/24 hrs while T. capitatus oil showed no ovicidal activity. It was verified mosquitocidal activity, with LC50 and LC90 of 100 and 200 ppm/12hrs respectively for larvae, and 200 and 400 ppm/12hrs respectively for pupae of C. pipiens.


The financial crisis exposed enormous failures of risk management by financial institutions and of the authorities' regulation and supervision of these institutions. Reforms introduced as part of Basel III have tackled some of the most important fault‐lines. As the focus now shifts toward the implementation and evaluation of these reforms, it will be essential to assess where the balance has been struck between the robustness and the risk sensitivity of the capital framework. This paper contributes to this assessment by stepping back from the details of the recent reforms and instead taking a bird's eye view on the fundamental tradeoffs that may exist between robustness, complexity, and risk sensitivity. We review the history of risk sensitivity in capital standards and assess whether a higher degree of risk sensitivity necessarily leads to a better measurement of risk. We also provide evidence that the more risk‐sensitive Basel II framework may have reduced banks' incentives to engage in higher‐risk mortgage lending in the UK. Our analysis suggests the need for a robust regulatory framework with several complementary standards interacting and reinforcing each other, even if, prima facie, subjecting banks to a number of regulatory constraints adds to complexity.


Abstract The terrestrialization of life has profoundly affected the biosphere, geosphere and atmosphere, and the Geological Magazine has published key works charting the development of our understanding of this process. Integral to this understanding – and featuring in one of the Geological Magazine publications – is the Devonian Rhynie chert Konservat-Lagerstätte located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Here we provide a review of the work on this important early terrestrial deposit to date. We begin by highlighting contributions of note in the Geological Magazine improving understanding of terrestrialization and Palaeozoic terrestrial ecosystems. We then introduce the Rhynie chert. The review highlights its geological setting: the Caledonian context of the Rhynie Basin and its nature at the time of deposition of the cherts which host its famous fossils. There follows an introduction to the development of the half-graben in which the cherts and host sediments were deposited, the palaeoenvironment this represented and the taphonomy of the fossils themselves. We subsequently provide an overview of the mineralization and geochemistry of the deposit, and then the fossils found within the Rhynie chert. These include: six plant genera, which continue to provide significant insights into the evolution of life on land; a range of different fungi, with recent work starting to probe plant–fungus interactions; lichens, amoebae and a range of unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes (algae and cyanobacteria); and finally a range of both aquatic and terrestrial arthropods. Through continued study coupled with methodological advances, Rhynie fossils will continue to provide unique insights into early life on land.


(Abridged) The physical structure of deeply-embedded low-mass protostars (Class 0) on scales of less than 300 AU is still poorly constrained. Determining this is crucial for understanding the physical and chemical evolution from cores to disks. In this study two models of the emission, a Gaussian disk intensity distribution and a parametrized power-law disk model, are fitted to sub-arcsecond resolution interferometric continuum observations of five Class 0 sources, including one source with a confirmed Keplerian disk. For reference, a spherically symmetric single power-law envelope is fitted to the larger scale ($\sim$1000 AU) emission and investigated further for one of the sources on smaller scales. A thin disk model can approximate the emission and physical structure in the inner few 100 AU scales of the studied deeply-embedded low-mass protostars and paves the way for analysis of a larger sample with ALMA. While the disk radii agree with previous estimates the masses are different for some of the sources studied. Assuming a typical temperature distribution, the fractional amount of mass in the disk above 100 K varies in between 7% to 30%. Kinematic data are needed to determine the presence of any Keplerian disk. Using previous observations of p-H$_2^{18}$O, we estimate the relative gas phase water abundances roughly an order of magnitude higher than previously inferred when both warm and cold H$_2$ was used as reference. A spherically symmetric single power-law envelope model fails to simultaneously reproduce both the small and large scale emission.


This thesis examines the use of prisoners of war (POWs), agents and other groups of persons as source of information in the British conduct of war against Germany during the Second World War and demonstrates its significance. While the successes of Bletchley Park in decrypting German wireless traffic are well-known, human intelligence (HUMINT) has received considerably less scholarly attention. During the years 1939 to 1945, the British used an extensive espionage network, maintained informal contacts in neutral cities, and questioned refugees, convicted enemy spies and soldiers who had escaped from German captivity. Most notably, the military services established a far-reaching system of interrogation facilities to obtain intelligence from German prisoners of war in all theatres of war. These activities provided a valuable amount of intelligence on German weaponry, tactics, plans and mentality, which not only constituted useful background information in rapidly changing war conditions but also improved decision-making processes and resulting actions.
During the past decades, the main focus of academic research lay on signals intelligence and its influence on British strategy and operations which resulted in a neglect of other forms of intelligence. Recent academic research has not only emphasised a more holistic view of intelligence and its impact on warfare but also points to several successful HUMINT operations such as the international cooperation in espionage and the so-called Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, United Kingdom (CSDIC(UK)). At the same time, studies in intelligence provide an extensive framework dealing with various theoretical, practical and ethical aspects which facilitates the analysis of intelligence in historical context. In light of these developments and the unprecedented access to archival material, a re-evaluation of the role of human intelligence in Great Britain during the Second World War is necessary.
This thesis combines the theoretical approaches of intelligence with an examination of the organisation of human intelligence during wartime. It utilises three case studies covering the tactical, operational and strategic level of war. First, it offers a model of "main areas", collection, analysis, dissemination and use, to examine the intelligence process in historical context. These elements constitute a set of interacting steps which describe the way from a specific piece of raw material to its use as human intelligence in decision-making. The human origin influences the characteristics of the intelligence process such as the interaction of individuals during collection, the inherent problem of reliability and accuracy, and the question of acceptance by potential users. The model also serves as a basis for an evaluation scheme: the internal value addresses the intelligence process itself, whereas the external value measures the effect within decision-making and its impact on resulting actions.
Regarding the organisational aspect, the intelligence agencies responsible for human intelligence used their previous experience from the last war and grew significantly in size during the Second World War. The interrogation of prisoners of war consisted of a multi-step process with the CSDIC(UK) at the top, which over 10 000 POWs passed through. The combination of interrogation techniques – such as the omniscient trick and friendly approach, concealed microphones, and former refugees or prisoners acting as stool pigeons – resulted in a high output of accurate and appreciated HUMINT. The Secret Service (SIS) recovered after some setbacks at the beginning of the war and – supported by contacts in occupied territory – it was able to deliver reports covering a wide range of topics. In addition, the Security Service (MI5) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) supplemented the work of the SIS – besides their primary objectives. In addition to the use of enemy prisoners and agents in the field, there were three other sources for HUMINT: the questioning of refugees in the specifically designed London Reception Centre, regular contacts with interned British soldiers and individual arrangements in neutral countries, most notably in Sweden and Switzerland, which provided the Foreign Office with news of varying quality.
The outcome of these extensive efforts is discussed in the three case studies. The tactical example deals with the defence against German attacks during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz in 1940/1941. POW Intelligence supplemented the other sources of intelligence with the perspective of the enemy: it provided actual data on armament, armour and equipment of German bomber and fighter aircraft; it added details on the order of battle and combat readiness of the German Luftwaffe; and it gave insight into enemy tactics, targeting and the effectiveness of British countermeasures. Therefore, HUMINT made a valuable contribution to the overall intelligence picture which supported and optimised the efforts of Fighter Command. It helped to prepare fighter pilots for their engagements with the enemy and to counter new tactics and technologies such as navigational aids for night bombing.
The operational case study covers the detection of the German plans to use a liquid rocket and cruise missile (the so called V-weapons V1 and V2) against British cities, where human intelligence played a key role. In early 1943, SIS reports and secret records of conversations between German POWs convinced the authorities in London of the danger of a long range weapon of a new type. HUMINT later gave indications of the existence of two distinct weapons and the V1 firing system in Northern France. In 1944, it provided details on the characteristics and launching procedures of the V2. These contributions enabled the British not only to direct other intelligence resources such as aerial reconnaissance towards the new threat but also to develop effective offensive and defensive countermeasures. These delayed the deployment of the two weapons and significantly reduced the inflicted damage.
The strategic example deals with the British efforts to assess the state of morale of the German military and civilian population. This aspect was primarily covered by human intelligence. Although the amount of raw material gradually expanded and the analytical methods became more sophisticated – especially after the drastic increase of prisoner of war interrogations after D-Day –, the impact of HUMINT remained ambivalent. Until 1943, preconceived opinions about an inferior German morale and an especially vulnerable civilian population were not altered by intelligence products provided by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee and a separate "morale committee". The conviction in the second half of 1943 that Germany would collapse from within as it had happened in 1918 was the most visible result. In the following months, intelligence analysis improved considerably and finally falsified previous hopes; however, that development did not restrain British authorities from over-enthusiastic expectations of a rapid end of war in the summer of 1944. Ultimately, human intelligence provided a considerable insight into the inner state of the enemy, but the intelligence task to detect a predefined collapse and the attempt to conceive an elaborated concept of morale overburdened the intelligence services.
This thesis combines theoretical approaches with a historical analysis and shows that human intelligence was a powerful force multiplier which the British early recognized and successfully utilized. Therefore, this thesis offers a new perspective on British intelligence and military history during the Second World War. Furthermore, it seeks to contribute to general discussions about the relevance of intelligence in decision-making up to the present day.


We present a strategy (MIR-GBM v1.0) for the retrieval of column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of methane (XCH4) with a precision<0.3 % (1-σ diurnal variation, 7-min integration) and a seasonal bias <0.14 % from mid-infrared ground-based solar FTIR measurements of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC, comprising 22 FTIR stations). This makes NDACC methane data useful for satellite validation and for the inversion of regional-scale sources and sinks in addition to long-term trend analysis. Such retrievals complement the high accuracy and precision near-infrared observations of the younger Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) with time series dating back 15 years or so before TCCON operations began. MIR-GBM v1.0 is using HITRAN 2000 (including the 2001 update release) and 3 spectral micro windows (2613.70–2615.40 cm −1, 2835.50–2835.80 cm −1, 2921.00– 2921.60 cm−1). A first-order Tikhonov constraint is applied to the state vector given in units of per cent of volume mixing ratio. It is tuned to achieve minimum diurnal variation without damping seasonality. Final quality selection of the retrievals uses a threshold for the goodness of fit ( χ2 < 1) as well as for the ratio of root-mean-square spectral noise and information content ( <0.15 %). Column-averaged dryair mole fractions are calculated using the retrieved methane profiles and four-times-daily pressure-temperature-humidity profiles from National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) interpolated to the time of measurement. MIR-GBM v1.0 is the optimum of 24 tested retrieval strategies (8 different spectral micro-window selections, 3 spectroscopic line lists: HITRAN 2000, 2004, 2008). Dominant errors of the non-optimum retrieval strategies are Correspondence to: R. Sussmann (firstname.lastname@example.com) systematic HDO/H2O-CH4 interference errors leading to a seasonal bias up to ≈5 %. Therefore interference errors have been quantified at 3 test sites covering clear-sky integrated water vapor levels representative for all NDACC sites (Wollongong maximum = 44.9 mm, Garmisch mean = 14.9 mm, Zugspitze minimum = 0.2 mm). The same quality ranking of the 24 strategies was found for all 3 test sites with one optimum, i.e. MIR-GBM v1.0. Seasonality of XCH4 above the Zugspitze (47 ◦ N) shows a minus-sine shape with a minimum in March/April, a maximum in September, and an amplitude of 16.2 ± .9 ppb (0.94± 0.17 %). This agrees well with the WFM-DOAS v2.0 scientific XCH4 retrieval product. A conclusion from this paper is that improved spectroscopic parameters for CH 4, HDO, and H2O in the 2613– 2922 cm−1 spectral domain are urgently needed. If such become available with sufficient accuracy, at least two more spectral micro windows could be utilized leading to another improvement in precision. The absolute inter-calibration of NDACC MIR-GBM v1.0 XCH4 to TCCON data is subject of ongoing work.


In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, Francois Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese stategies work in several domains (the battle-field, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien's brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West.


The use of modified asphalt binder for asphalt mixtures is becoming common to provide a more durable and better performance for flexible pavement surfacing. This study presents the viability of nanopolyacrylate (NP) and natural rubber latex (NRL) as a modifier in asphalt binder and asphalt mixture. The objective of this study is to investigate the properties of asphalt binder mixtures containing NP and NC modifiers and their effect on the asphalt mixture performance of densely-graded (AC) and gap graded-stone mastic asphalt (SMA) according to Marshall mix design method. The study investigates fourteen different asphalt mixtures consists of NP and NC modified asphalt binder formulations. NP polymer modified asphalt binder was prepared by mixing penetration grade PEN 80/100 asphalt binder with 2, 4 and 6 percent NP by weight of asphalt binder at mixing temperature 140°C, mixing time 60 minutes, and mixing speed 1650 revolution per minute. While, Nanocomposite (NC) polymer modified asphalt binder was prepared by mixing penetration grade PEN 80/100 asphalt binder with optimum 6 percent NP with NR at several percentages ranging from 0 to 6 percent by weight of asphalt binder. The physical and rheological asphalt binder characterization and mechanical properties of asphalt mixture were assessed and evaluated with the laboratory tests. Physical asphalt binder tests result using penetration, softening point, storage stability and viscosity indicated that both NP and NC polymer modification improved the asphalt binder physical properties and temperature susceptibility. Rheological test using Dynamic Shear Rheometer also showed that addition of NP and NC to the asphalt binder may enhances the properties of modified asphalt binder. It was found that an increase in the percentage of NP and NC causes an increase in rutting factor (G*/sin 8) and decrease in fatigue factor (G*sin 5) indicating higher resistance against rutting and fatigue cracking. Therefore, it can be concluded that both polymers considerably improve elastic properties and rutting resistance of asphalt binder and thus could be used to enhance the asphalt mixture performance. The asphalt mixture performance of the NP and NC modifiers were investigated by resilient modulus, wheel tracking, dynamic modulus and moisture susceptibility test. The results show that the addition of NP and NC polymer into the mixture has a significant positive effect on the properties of AC 14 and SMA 14 which could improve the mixture's resistance against permanent deformation (rutting), stripping resistance and increase the stiffness of the mix. It was observed that the addition of NP and NC polymer gave better overall performance in the asphalt mixture. Two statistical models were developed in this study to evaluate a statistical relationship between resilient modulus with viscosity and G*/sin5 of asphalt binder. The tests revealed that the models have been successfully developed and validated thus could be effectively used to predict the asphalt mixture performance according to asphalt binder properties. Therefore, it can be concluded that NP and NC polymer is feasible to be used as asphalt modifier and 6 percent NC is the most effective proportion that could gave better asphalt binders and asphalt mixture performance compared to others.


This paper concerns systematic, practical and robust SRM control strategies that achieve very low torque and speed ripple and use the simple position feedback structure. Issues of practical concern include the minimization of voltage input slew rate. Robustness aspects include the accommodation of model inaccuracy and the attenuation of disturbances effects. These control design properties complement and enable successful utilization of the structural advantages of SRM drives. The paper also addresses questions of stability and comparisons with existing position control strategies and feedback linearization based design.<<ETX>>


This paper will address recent debates surrounding the nature and cause of the complex process of disablement and their relevance to understanding calls for a universally accessible physical and cultural environment. It is divided into three main sections. The first part will explore changing perceptions of disability. Attention will centre on the traditional individualistic medical approach, the socio-political understanding or 'social model of disability' and the recent 'biopsychosocial' model of disability exemplified by the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. This will be followed by a discussion of the usefulness of the concept of 'universal design'. The final section will discuss the significance of these developments in light of globalisation, associate economic, political and social crises, and the struggle for a fairer and just global society.


Abstract Prescribed fire is used to reduce the rate of woody plant encroachment in grassland ecosystems. However, fire is challenging to apply in continuously grazed pastures because of the difficulty in accumulating sufficient herbaceous fine fuel for fire. We evaluated the potential of rotationally grazing cattle in fenced paddocks as a means to defer grazing in selected paddocks to provide fine fuel for burning. Canopy cover changes from 1995 to 2000 of the dominant woody plant, honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa Torr.), were compared in three landscape-scale grazing and mesquite treatment restoration strategies: 4-paddock, 1-herd with fire (4:1F), 8-paddock, 1-herd with fire (8:1F), and 4:1 with fire or aerial application of 0.28 kg · ha−1 clopyralid + 0.28 kg · ha−1 triclopyr herbicide (4:1F/H), and a continuously grazed control with mesquite untreated (CU). Prescribed burning took place in late winter (February–March). Droughts limited burning during the 5-yr period to half the paddocks in the 4:1F and 8:1F strategies, and one paddock in each 4:1F/H strategy. Mesquite cover was measured using digitized aerial images in 1995 (pretreatment) and 2000. Mesquite cover was reduced in all paddocks that received prescribed fire, independent of grazing strategy. Net change in mesquite cover in each strategy, scaled to account for soil types and paddock sizes, was +34%, +15%, +5%, and −41% in the CU, 4:1F, 8:1F, and 4:1F/H strategies, respectively. Thus, rotational grazing and fire strategies slowed the rate of mesquite cover increase but did not reduce it. Fire was more effective in the 8:1F than the 4:1F strategy during drought because a smaller portion of the total management area (12.5% vs. 25%) could be isolated to accumulate fine fuel for fire. Herbaceous fine fuel and relative humidity were the most important factors in determining mesquite top-kill by fire.


The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine the impact of unlimited individual access to a laptop computer (one-to-one computing) on student participation and performance in online dual enrollment courses and determine to what degree this technology access impacts students' self-efficacy in college-level coursework and online learning. The secondary purpose of this study was to analyze a select number of representative student interviews to further explore how unlimited laptop access contributes to their online course experience and their belief in their abilities in college coursework and online learning. Student acclimation to online course delivery and their performance in these courses are important indicators of the efficacious nature of one-to-one computing and online dual enrollment course offering programs as viable components of student post-secondary preparation.
This study involved 600 Tennessee public high school juniors and seniors who participated in the Virtual Dual Enrollment Laptop Pilot Project. During the project students were assigned a laptop computer for the purposes of accessing and participating in online college coursework. Students completed a pre-assessment prior to enrolling in their online course and a post- assessment at the conclusion of their course. The quantitative results showed that the laptops had no significant impact on students' performance, participation, and overall technology self- efficacy while taking online dual enrollment courses. However, students' performance in these courses was significantly related to perceptions of college preparedness and online learning.
To further explain the quantitative findings, qualitative analysis of student written responses and select student interviews highlighted students' ubiquitous technology accessibility and usage prior to the project that played a critical role in the laptops' impact on student performance, participation, and self-efficacy. However, students noted other benefits of the laptop, including the expansion of personal development characteristics and online learning self-efficacy.
The study also highlighted an important observation for suggested further research regarding college preparation environment for students participating in dual enrollment programs. Students with established, structured college preparatory environments performed better in online dual enrollment courses and had higher online learning self-efficacy as compared to students with no established, structured college preparatory environments.


The authors develop a general model of local-level bargaining in the multi-plant firm. According to this model, when the parent firm has the ability to allocate production differentially across plants, the local union may be motivated to work with local management to reduce production costs and increase profitability, in order to increase plant employment or minimize reductions in plant employment. A case study using data from General Motors' Lansing Grand River Assembly (LGRA) and United Auto Workers Local 652, collected in part from interviews conducted in 2003–2008, shows how the parties established a joint responsibility system of collective bargaining that encouraged the union to reduce production costs and increase profitability by accepting responsibilities traditionally borne by management. The authors also demonstrate that General Motors, consistent with budget, capacity, and political constraints, invested in LGRA and assigned new product to LGRA, thus supporting the hypothesized incentive structure.


We present in this work a new technique, which combines laser photofragmentation spectroscopy with tandem mass spectrometry, for structural investigations of biomolecular ions in the gas phase. A novel apparatus was designed and built for the implementation of these studies. In this instrument closed shell ions are produced in the gas phase by electrospray ionization and stored in a hexapole ion trap prior to mass selection of a parent beam in a first quadrupole and then irradiation in an octupole ion guide using laser light. Mass analysis of the photofragmentaion products in a final stage quadrupole as a function of the wavelength generates an action spectrum. We applied this new technique to follow the microsolvation of charged amino acids in the gas phase. In these studies, the nanoelectrospray ionization source generates a distribution of water clusters of charged amino acids at various hydration levels. A particular size of cluster is selected and irradiated by infrared laser pulses resulting in the dissociation of one water molecule. Detection of the photofragmentation of this weak non-covalent bond allows us to generate the vibrational action spectrum of this particular cluster. We use a two-stage difference frequency mixing setup to produce laser light in the 2900–3800 cm-1, allowing us to probe the light-atom stretching region. IR photofragmentation spectra have been obtained for the hydrates of protonated and lithiated valine and those of protonated tryptophan. By probing the region of free and hydrogen-bonded N-H and O-H stretch vibrations and with the help of density functional theory calculations at the B3LYP/6-31++G** level, we relate spectral changes to the structure of clusters. In the study of lithiated valine water clusters, we addressed the question of zwitterion formation upon the combined effect of water and an external ion. Our data indicate the presence of the non-zwitterionic form of valine upon addition of up to four water molecules. In all of the species studied here, the hydration process is driven by solvation of the charge, and upon completion of a first shell around it, water preferentially forms a second solvation shell with no strong competition from other hydration sites on the amino acid backbone. Strikingly, similar water network structures have been observed at the highest hydration level of completely different species, probably indicating the existence of stable ordered water structures. We obtained evidence for a structrual change of the valine backbone in lithiated valine upon addition of the third water molecule, while no conformational change has been identified in the clusters of the protonated species. We have thus been able to answer questions related to the conformational preferences of the amino acid and the structuring of the water network.


Abstract. Predictive understanding of northern peatland hydrology is a necessary precursor to understanding the fate of massive carbon stores in these systems under the influence of present and future climate change. Current models have begun to address microtopographic controls on peatland hydrology, but none have included a prognostic calculation of peatland water table depth for a vegetated wetland, independent of prescribed regional water tables. We introduce here a new configuration of the Community Land Model (CLM) which includes a fully prognostic water table calculation for a vegetated peatland. Our structural and process changes to CLM focus on modifications needed to represent the hydrologic cycle of bogs environment with perched water tables, as well as distinct hydrologic dynamics and vegetation communities of the raised hummock and sunken hollow microtopography characteristic of peatland bogs. The modified model was parameterized and independently evaluated against observations from an ombrotrophic raised-dome bog in northern Minnesota (S1-Bog), the site for the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic and Environmental Change experiment (SPRUCE). Simulated water table levels compared well with site-level observations. The new model predicts hydrologic changes in response to planned warming at the SPRUCE site. At present, standing water is commonly observed in bog hollows after large rainfall events during the growing season, but simulations suggest a sharp decrease in water table levels due to increased evapotranspiration under the most extreme warming level, nearly eliminating the occurrence of standing water in the growing season. Simulated soil energy balance was strongly influenced by reduced winter snowpack under warming simulations, with the warming influence on soil temperature partly offset by the loss of insulating snowpack in early and late winter. The new model provides improved predictive capacity for seasonal hydrological dynamics in northern peatlands, and provides a useful foundation for investigation of northern peatland carbon exchange.


The potential existence of buyer market power in UK food retailing has attracted the scrutiny of the UK's anti-trust authorities, culminating in the decision to launch the second of two comprehensive regulatory inquiries in recent years. Throughout, detection of buyer power has been dogged by the paucity of reliable evidence of its existence. In this paper we present a simple theoretical model of oligopsony which delivers quasireduced form retailer-producer pricing equations in which the presence of market power can be detected using readily available market data. Using a cointegrated vector autoregression, we find empirical results that are consistent with the presence of oligopsony power in all six food products investigated.


The term precision linear actuator, direct drive ( PLADD ) refers to a robust linear actuator designed to be capable of repeatedly performing, over a lifetime of the order of 5 to 10 years, positioning maneuvers that include, variously, submicron increments or slews of the order of a centimeter. The PLADD is capable of both long stroke (120 mm) and high resolution (repeatable increments of 20 nm). Unlike precise linear actuators of prior design, the PLADD contains no gears, levers, or hydraulic converters. The PLADD, now at the prototype stage of development, is intended for original use as a coarse-positioning actuator in a spaceborne interferometer. The PLADD could also be adapted to terrestrial applications in which there are requirements for long stroke and high resolution: potential applications include medical imaging and fabrication of semiconductor devices. The PLADD (see figure) includes a commercially available ball-screw actuator driven directly by a commercially available three-phase brushless DC motor. The ball-screw actuator comprises a spring-preloaded ball nut on a ball screw that is restrained against rotation as described below. The motor is coupled directly (that is, without an intervening gear train) to a drive link that, in turn, is coupled to the ball nut. By eliminating the gear train, the direct-drive design eliminates the complexity, backlash, and potential for misalignment associated with a gear train. To prevent inadvertent movement, there is a brake that includes flexured levers compressed against the drive link by preload springs. This is a power-off brake: There are also piezoelectric stacks that can be activated to oppose the springs and push the levers away from the drive link. Hence, power must be applied to the piezoelectric stacks to release the drive link from braking. To help ensure long operational life, all of the mechanical drive components are immersed in an oil bath within hermetically sealed bellows. The outer end of the bellows holds the outer end of the ball screw, thereby preventing rotation of the ball screw. Positioning is controlled by an electronic control system that includes digital and analog subsystems that interact with the motor and brake and with two sensor/encoder units: a Hall-effect-sensor rotation encoder and a linear glass-scale encoder. This system implements a proportional + integral + derivative control algorithm that results in variation of voltage commands to each of the three pairs of windings of the brushless DC motor. In one of two alternative control modes, the voltages are applied to the windings in a trapezoidal commutation scheme on the basis of timing signals obtained from the Hall-effect sensors; this scheme yields relatively coarse positioning - 24 steps per motor revolution. The second control mode involves a sinusoidal commutation scheme in which the output of the linear glass-scale encoder is transposed to rotational increments to yield much finer position feedback - more than 400,000 steps per revolution.


In this article, the central question addressed is: does the business environment entail a complex nexus of political economy and other factors (government, business, ideology, and leadership) that may or may not manifest convergence? Also, the role of metrics and data is appropriately discussed. Current theories fail to impart an understanding of what the nature of the business environment is, or of the multifaceted nexus and convergence (or divergence) that it may entail. The strength of convergence involved is directly related to the integrity of the business environment and also reflects the overall dynamics in the country of focus. Each of the three country cases examined is fundamentally different, but offers important lessons. The overarching conclusion is that political economy and convergence often play a critical role in the business environment—though certainly not always, as in South Africa, where there is divergence, and in the case of metrics and data on the business environment, which, by design, do not focus on convergence.


We study the problem of explainable clustering in the setting first formalized by Dasgupta, Frost, Moshkovitz, and Rashtchian (ICML 2020). A $k$-clustering is said to be explainable if it is given by a decision tree where each internal node splits data points with a threshold cut in a single dimension (feature), and each of the $k$ leaves corresponds to a cluster. We give an algorithm that outputs an explainable clustering that loses at most a factor of $O(\log^2 k)$ compared to an optimal (not necessarily explainable) clustering for the $k$-medians objective, and a factor of $O(k \log^2 k)$ for the $k$-means objective. This improves over the previous best upper bounds of $O(k)$ and $O(k^2)$, respectively, and nearly matches the previous $\Omega(\log k)$ lower bound for $k$-medians and our new $\Omega(k)$ lower bound for $k$-means. The algorithm is remarkably simple. In particular, given an initial not necessarily explainable clustering in $\mathbb{R}^d$, it is oblivious to the data points and runs in time $O(dk \log^2 k)$, independent of the number of data points $n$. Our upper and lower bounds also generalize to objectives given by higher $\ell_p$-norms.


How can we realize and actualize love, reason, and meaningful, productive work? Fromm here offers an Art of Well-Being, a way of living based on authentic self-awareness that comes only through honest self-analysis. He warns of the pitfalls of our attaining enlightenment without effort, or believing that life can be livedwithout pain. The tantalizing 'spiritual smorgasbord' offered by our consumer-oriented world, Fromm maintains, only feeds our illusions of 'easy awareness'. Confronting the psycho-gurus who preach these shortcuts to enlightenment, Fromm offers another way to self-awareness through meditation. If the Art of Being - the art of functioning as a whole person - can be considered the supreme goal of life, a breakthrough occurs when we move from narcissistic selfishness and egotism - from having - to psychological and spiritual happiness - being. The Art of Being is certain to be one of the most important and sought-after works in the Fromm canon for years to come. This volume is a sequel to one of Erich Fromm's most popular works, To Have or to Be. In this new book, Fromm examines the true paths - as opposed to false directions - that will lead us to self-knowledge and enlightenment.