1,3-dihydro-2H-benzimidazole-2-one ring system represents the core skeleton of a large number of biologically active, structurally intriguing compounds found in a multitude of pharmaceutically important compounds. The development of efficient and practical methods for construction of this important heterocyclic remains as an active area of synthetic research. The present paper describes the synthesis and antibacterial activity of some novel 1,3- dihydro-2H-benzimidazol-2-one analogs 6a -6g (Scheme 1) from commercially available 1,2-phenylenediamine as starting material. The newly synthesized compounds, 6a-6g were screened in-vitro at a concentration of 100 μg/mL for antibacterial activity against two Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus pyogenes) and two Gram-negative strains (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). It was observed that among all the compounds tested, compound 6e, 6f and 6g showed high activity against all the tested bacterial strains.


Modern America owes the Roman Empire for more than gladiator movies and the architecture of the nation's Capitol. It can also thank the ancient republic for some helpful lessons in globalization. So argues economic historian Harold James in this masterful work of intellectual history. The book addresses what James terms "the Roman dilemma"--the paradoxical notion that while global society depends on a system of rules for building peace and prosperity, this system inevitably leads to domestic clashes, international rivalry, and even wars. As it did in ancient Rome, James argues, a rule-based world order eventually subverts and destroys itself, creating the need for imperial action. The result is a continuous fluctuation between pacification and the breakdown of domestic order. James summons this argument, first put forth more than two centuries ago in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , to put current events into perspective. The world now finds itself staggering between a set of internationally negotiated trading rules and exchange--rate regimes, and the enforcement practiced by a sometimes-imperial America. These two forces--liberal international order and empire--will one day feed on each other to create a shakeup in global relations, James predicts. To reinforce his point, he invokes the familiar bon mot once applied to the British Empire: "When Britain could not rule the waves, it waived the rules." Despite the pessimistic prognostications of Smith and Gibbon, who saw no way out of this dilemma, James ends his book on a less depressing note. He includes a chapter on one possible way in which the world could resolve the Roman Predicament--by opting for a global system based on values as opposed to rules.


Background Assessment of DNA profile quality is vital in forensic DNA analysis, both in order to determine the evidentiary value of DNA results and to compare the performances of different DNA analysis protocols. Generally the quality assessment is performed through manual examination of the DNA profiles based on empirical knowledge, or by comparing the intensities (allelic peak heights) of the capillary electrophoresis electropherograms. We recently1 developed a ranking index for unbiased and quantitative quality assessment of forensic DNA profiles, the forensic DNA profile index (FI). Core of presentation FI uses electropherogram data to combine the intensities of the allelic peaks with the balances within and between loci, using Principal Components Analysis. Here we present the construction of FI. We explain the mathematical and statistical methodologies used and present details about the applied data reduction method. Thereby we show how to adapt the ranking index for any STR-based forensic DNA typing system through validation against a manual grading scale and calibration against a specific set of DNA profiles. 1 Hedman J, Nordgaard A, Rasmusson B, Ansell R, Radstrom P (2009), Improved forensic DNA analysis through the use of alternative DNA polymerases and statistical modelling of DNA profiles, Biotechniques 47, 351-358.


ISSUES OF ETHNICITY AND RACE in the United States often dominate the national consciousness. Americans are generally aware that issues of ethnicity and race matter in our culture. The institution known as the mass media is one of several ideological institutions in society conveying values from one generation to the next. Values are powerful words in languages, which motivate actual behavior by individuals (Hall 1986). In the complex area of issues related to ethnicity and race, the more traditional ideological institutions of family, school, and the church are joined by the media in the recreation of prejudice and discrimination. Media and the other ideological institutions share also in the creation and recreation of the values of tolerance and equality. One way of analyzing the media's role in conveying values is to analyze the content of mass media by looking at the representation of Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans in radio, television, film, and music in the United States (Croteau and Hoynes 1997, 133-61). The conclusions in mass media research are three: 1. The representations of ethnic minorities in the media in the United States do not accurately reflect the actual social relations. For example, the frequency of the appearance of minorities in the media is less than their actual representation in the population. Ethnic minorities are portrayed as criminals or victims at a higher frequency that their actual representation in the population. 2. Minorities are underrepresented on the boards of directors of media corporations and underrepresented in production roles. 3. Issues relevant to minorities are underrepresented in media content. As a result of the misrepresentation of ethnic minorities in us media, the dominant culture is misinformed about ethnic minorities, is prejudiced against ethnic minorities, and discriminates against minorities by denying access to valued social resources such as jobs, housing, education, health care, etc. Lacking authentic role models in the mass media, members of minority groups surfer a loss of self-respect, loss of cultural values, and, in some cases, loss of language. There have been some improvements in the United States during the past fifty years in regard to civil rights and representation in the mass media. Although Nat King Cole could not find a place in network television in the 1950S, Bill Cosby broke a racial barrier on network television in the show "I Spy" by playing a role that did not require a black actor. Many gains in the 1960s and '70s disappeared in the 1980s in the face of increased commercial pressures, corporate demands for profit, and "deregulation" of broadcasting. At least most major markets and national news broadcasts include minorities either as anchors or correspondents. Prejudice and discrimination are by no means eliminated in the United States. Witness the recent gruesome murders in Wyoming and Texas based on race or sexual orientation. Similar issues of representation, prejudice, and discrimination face Sami culture and media in Norway. The topic can easily be expanded to include Sami culture and media in Sweden and Finland or all minority groups in all of Scandinavia. To understand Scandinavian culture, it helps to look to the border regions between dominant Scandinavian culture and the indigenous Sami culture. One gets a more complete understanding of Scandinavia by looking also at minority cultures. In this paper I will discuss three major issues related to Sami culture and media: 1. The dominant Norwegian culture knows little about Sami Culture. 2. Sami are underrepresented in national Norwegian media content and production. 3. Sami culture and media lack human resources necessary for development. The author collected data on Sami culture and media during a period of five years when he lived in Norway (1988-93), a research trip to Sapmi in December 1997, and from the "Seminar on Sami Media" held at Rovaniemi University in September 1998. …


INTRODUCTION
The prevalence of childhood obesity in the UK and in many countries worldwide remains high. Behavioural interventions to modify lifestyle, such as diet and physical activity, usually form part of weight management strategies for obese children. Whether or not surgical interventions are effective and safe in treating childhood obesity is unclear.

METHODS AND OUTCOMES
We conducted a systematic overview, aiming to answer the following clinical question: What are the effects of surgical interventions for the treatment of childhood obesity? We searched Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to August 2014 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this overview).

RESULTS
At this update, after deduplication and removal of conference abstracts, 67 records were screened for inclusion in the overview. Appraisal of titles and abstracts led to the exclusion of 19 studies and the further review of 48 full publications. Of the 48 full articles evaluated, two systematic reviews were included at this update.

CONCLUSIONS
In this systematic overview, we categorised the efficacy for two comparisons based on information about the effectiveness and safety of bariatric surgery versus no intervention and different types of bariatric surgery versus each other.


Homosexuality is something that is still in debate in some countries until now. Even so, western country like USA is now more open and accept the phenomena. Those phenomena can happen among public figures. Frequently, most public figures are connected to the world by using social media. Ellen DeGeneres is one of the famous American gay artists and comedians. She also uses Instagram actively to show her post including photos. One of the photos that she posted on her Instagram, that showed the action when she kissed her wife, Portia de Rossi, has come up with various comments left by netizen. Those comments used various kinds of speech acts. This paper aims to find what kind of speech acts that often appear on Ellen DeGeneres', October 11 - 13, 2018 post's comments and to describe the reason why they used those kind of speech acts. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative since it describes certain phenomenon qualitatively. J.L Austin's theory regarding speech act is used as the framework of this study. Firstly, several comments on October 11 - 13, 2018 were collected. Then, those comments were analyzed and classified into the type of speech acts. The results showed that the type of speech acts mostly appear in the comments are representative and expressive. Through their comments, it can also be inferred that netizen want to state their opinions show their feelings towards Ellen as a gay.


This edited collection is designed to explore the ethical nature of judicial decision-making, particularly relating to cases in the health/medical sphere, where judges are often called upon to issue rulings on questions containing an explicit ethical component. However, judges do not receive any specific training in ethical decision-making, and often disown any place for ethics in their decision-making. Consequently, decisions made by judges do not present consistent or robust ethical theory, even when cases appear to rely on moral claims. The project explores this dichotomy by imagining a world in which decisions by judges have to be ethically as well as legally valid. Nine specific cases are reinterpreted in light of that requirement by leading academics in the fields of medical law and bioethics. Two judgments are written in each case, allowing for different views to be presented. Two commentaries - one ethical and one legal - then explore the ramifications of the ethical judgments and provide an opportunity to explore the two judgments from additional ethical and legal perspectives. These four different approaches to each judgment allow for a rich and varied critique of the decisions and ethical theories and issues at play in each case.


BACKGROUND
Mucopolysaccharidosis type II (Hunter syndrome, or MPS II) is an X-linked lysosomal disorder caused by the deficiency of iduronate-2-sulfatase, which leads to the accumulation of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in a variety of tissues, resulting in a multisystemic disease that can also impair the central nervous system (CNS).

OBJECTIVE
This review focuses on providing the latest information and expert opinion about the therapies available and under development for MPS II.

METHODS
We have comprehensively revised the latest studies about hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), enzyme replacement therapy (ERT - intravenous, intrathecal, intracerebroventricular, and intravenous with fusion proteins), small molecules, gene therapy/genome editing, and supportive management.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Intravenous ERT is a well-established specific therapy, which ameliorates the somatic features but not the CNS manifestations. Intrathecal or intracerebroventricular ERT and intravenous ERT with fusion proteins, presently under development, seem to be able to reduce the levels of GAGs in the CNS and have the potential of reducing the impact of the neurological burden of the disease. Gene therapy and/or genome editing have shown promising results in preclinical studies, bringing hope for a "one-time therapy" soon. Results with HSCT in MPS II are controversial, and small molecules could potentially address some disease manifestations. In addition to the specific therapeutic options, supportive care plays a major role in the management of these patients.

CONCLUSION
At this time, the treatment of individuals with MPS II is mainly based on intravenous ERT whereas HSCT can be a potential alternative in specific cases. In the coming years, several new therapy options that target the neurological phenotype of MPS II should be available.


Hypertension is a worldwide health problem affecting developed and developing countries, and Pakistan is no exception. Nishtar Hospital Multan is categorized as one of the biggest hospitals in South Asia. The objective for this study was to describe medication decision-making, dispensing, and utilization for patients diagnosed with hypertension at this patient care facility. The study was conducted by 5 trained pharmacists working in collaboration with prescribers who met with study participants when they visited the hospital. All interview questions were asked in Urdu during the hospital visit. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics. A total of 301 patients who visited the hospital agreed to participate in the study. The findings showed that prescribers spend little time with patients and rarely follow guidelines for decision-making. Regarding the dispensing of medications for the treatment of hypertension, none of the dispensing was completed by a pharmacist and none of the patients received counseling about medications at the time of dispensing. Most patients reportedly do not take their medication as prescribed. Regarding outcomes, 20% of the patients had pre-hypertension, 47% stage 1 hypertension, and 33% stage 2 hypertension. Great improvements are possible in the treatment of hypertension at the hospital we studied through application of standard treatment guidelines, patient education, and adjustments to work system processes so that alignment of provider's skills with opportunities in improving the patient care process can be achieved.


In this paper we examine how Afghan women resist, strategize and negotiate family and societal constraints to take advantage of the expanding education and employment opportunities in the post-Taliban era. We focus on how these women exercise agency and what resources they mobilize to maximize their opportunities in the face of potential constraints. We argue that to understand women's agency and changing gendered power relations in the family, it is crucial to examine every day individual behaviors that deviate from prescribed dominant gender behavior and infuse altered meanings to dominant gendering discourses. Our research highlights that gendered power is partial, interrupted by situated emotions and relationships. Afghan women employ a range of resistance methods to overcome constraints placed in their way, and we discuss them through three thematic frameworks of resistance in acts of submission, sacrifice and situated agreement, resistance in acts of open defiance, and resistance in acts of negotiation. The analyses is based on in-depth interviews with 64 women from 40 households in Kabul, and illustrate the significance of the family as a site in which gendered power and subordination are disrupted, fragmented, negotiated, and interdependent, challenging assumptions of the family as a site of monolithic oppressive power against women.


Loneliness in the workplace has received relatively little attention in the literature. The research surrounding loneliness tends to focus almost exclusively on personal characteristics as the primary determinant of the experience, and largely ignores the workplace as a potential trigger of loneliness. As such, personality tends to be overestimated as the reason for loneliness, whilst only modest emphasis is given to environmental factors, such as organisational environments. Therefore, the overall aim of this thesis was to explore the notion of loneliness in the workplace, with a particular emphasis on examining the antecedents and outcomes of its development in work contexts. The first stage of the research included the development and empirical examination of a scale measuring work-related loneliness. A 16-item scale was constructed and tested for its reliability and factor structure on a sample of 514 employees from various organisations. Exploratory factor analysis indicated two factors best represent the data, namely Social Companionship and Emotional Deprivation at Work. For the main study, a theoretical model was constructed whereby various antecedents (personal characteristics, social support, job characteristics, and emotional climate) were hypothesised to influence the development of work-related loneliness, which in turn was thought to affect employee attitudes and wellbeing. Employees from various organisations were invited to participate in the online research via email, which generated 362 submissions from diverse occupational groups. Structural equation modelling techniques were used to assess the hypothesised model, which was evaluated against a number of fit criteria. The initial results provided limited support for the Loneliness at Work Model. Consequently, a number of adjustments were necessary to obtain sufficient fit. The modified model suggests that organisational climate (comprising climate of fear, community spirit at work, and organisational fit) serves to simultaneously predict the emotional deprivation factor of loneliness (made up of seven items) and employee attitude and wellbeing. The results indicate that environmental factors such as fear, lack of community spirit, and value congruence play a role in the experience of workrelated loneliness and have an overall negative effect on employee withdrawal behaviours and job satisfaction. The findings from this study offer insight into possible areas for organisational intervention and future research.


Sustainable utilization of the limited land parcels is an important element in resource poor countries whose populations depend on agriculture for sustenance. In East Africa, collard vegetable production has been a venture for many small-scale farmers. Since no approaches are possible in expanding the land resource, improved crop production techniques and management promise better yields. We report a potential and sustainable approach for collard production. We compared the productivity of growing collards in an intercrop with chilli or spring onions, and varying nitrogen levels in each cropping system in terms of land equivalent ratios (LER). Our two - season data show that farmers can obtain higher yield in a unit of land when they intercrop collards with spring onions as indicated by a LER of 1.06, and that growing collards in an intercrop with Chilli leads to a 14% wastage of land resource compared to growing the crop as a monoculture. Further, we reveal that application of nitrogenous fertilizer might lead to increase in yield but it does not have a statistically significant benefit on the land resource use. There were no statistically significant relationship between the yield of collards and their heights in all cropping systems, but a non-significant(r=-0.29, p=0.164) decline of yield was observed under collard + chilli intercrop. The number of collard leaves was significantly negatively correlated (r=- 0.456, p=0.0249) with yield LER under collard + chilli intercrop but it did not influence the LER under collard + spring onion intercrop. These findings demonstrate the need for proper resource application, and that collard + spring onion intercrop has a potential to improve collard yield per unit piece of cultivated land without a need for increasing the rate of nitrogenous fertilizer application.


Nanopowders of pure nickel were directly synthesized for the first time by conventional solution combustion synthesis (SCS) method. In this article, a specific reaction pathway is suggested to describe the metallic phase formation during SCS. It is proposed that the exothermic reaction between NH3 and HNO3 species formed during the decomposition of glycine and nickel nitrate acts as the source of energy required to achieve the self-sustained reaction regime. A thermodynamic analysis of the combustion synthesis reaction indicates that increasing glycine concentration leads to establishing a hydrogen rich reducing environment in the combustion wave that in turn results in the formation of pure metals and metal alloys. TGA of reaction systems and XRD analysis of products in the quenched combustion wave show that the formation of oxide phases occurs in the reaction front, followed by gradual reduction of oxide to pure metallic phases in the postcombustion zone. A methodology for SCS of pure metals and metal alloys nanoparticles can be inferred from the results presented. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2011


It is hypothesized that bivalve-inhabiting hydroids originated from colonial, free-living eirenid hydrozoans, initially appearing as an Eutima species with solitary hydroids producing immature medusae with tentacles and manubrium, and also with derived characteristics of the marginal warts of the mature medusae as the remnants of the tentacular bulbs of the ancestral eirenid, and decreased number of statocysts. The derivate eumedusoid-producing Eugymnanthea evolved then. Deduced from the morphology, life cycles, and geographical distributions of this group and of all the known extant Eutima species, it is proposed that parallel, paedomorphic evolution took place in the marginal regions of the area of distribution of the ancestral-like Eutima at least in the northern hemisphere of both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. Eugymnanthea appeared as a polyphyletic taxon as a result of the parallel evolution of different species of Eutima. It is pointed out that Eugymnanthea and Eutima are to be merged into a single genus in the future.


The thesis analyses the relationship between shop-floor militancy and union politics in the period after the birth of "new unionism" in Brazil in the 1980s and addresses the problems and dilemmas faced by this new type of union movement. It is based on a case study of steelworkers at the National Steel Company and their representative union, the Metal workers' Union of Volta Redonda, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The research design has emphasised qualitative methods such as in-depth interviewing and field observation. The researcher has also made use of the computer in the analysis of data, through a new type of computer software which is being introduced in sociological research. The objectives of the thesis are two-fold. First, it offers an in-depth study of the relationship between shop-floor politics and union politics in a steel plant. The theoretical framework is based on the concept of "politics of production" introduced by Michael Burawoy, and on the debate around levels of leadership representation of union members, as inaugurated by Robert Michels. The second objective is to assess the developments of "new unionism" in Brazil, ten years after its birth, and to discuss the extent to which it has actually broken with populist and bureaucratic types of unionism and advanced towards more democratic forms of union politics. With the knowledge available today of national level politics, it is possible to argue that in the course of the 1980s the "new unionist" movement developed a significantly more legitimate and democratic relationship between union leaders and their base, and that this helped to break with the "regulated citizenship" of working-class groups in society by expanding their labour rights, by successfully pressing for changes in the Labour Code and by participating in national level politics. The analysis of the case study suggests that the contribution of the new union movement was especially significant in the politicised use of the CIPA (Internal Committee for the Prevention of Accidents) and in the innovative use of the Labour Courts. The significance of these dimensions was that they involved an attempt to expand workers' rights as well as to create new bases under which the rights were granted. On the other hand, the case study suggests that the internal dynamics of the "new union" movement still have elements which may be characterised as non-democratic, and that this generated a new set of problems and dilemmas for organised labour in Brazil for the 1990s.


Although the mechanism is unknown, recent studies have indicated that seawater with reduced pH may affect the behavior of marine species. Ocean acidification resulting from increasing amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from car exhausts, factories, and other sources may therefore affect a marine animal's food location ability and locomotion. In this experiment, the effect of seawater at different pHs on the food location behavior and locomotion of the long-clawed hermit crab (Pagurus longicarpus) was assessed. The hermit crabs were exposed for 5 and 19 days to seawater with pH levels predicted to be equivalent to the worldwide average pH in approximately 100 and 150 years (pH 7.85 and 7.75, respectively), as well as to seawater at the worldwide pH found today (approximately pH 8). On average, the hermit crabs traveled significantly faster in tests with food present than in tests with no food available. There was no statistically significant effect of lowered pH water on hermit crabs' average time to reach a piece of food, their speed, or their path length. Hermit crabs kept in lowered pH water for 5 days did take longer to reach a piece of food than their counterparts kept in untreated seawater, although the differences were not significant. Thus, it cannot be concluded that decreased pH has an effect on hermit crabs' food location behavior and locomotion. This is not surprising since they tend to inhabit intertidal zones and estuaries where they withstand a wide range of environmental conditions. Further studies, including those with longer treatment durations and a wider range of pHs, are needed to determine if and how ocean acidification will alter hermit crabs' food location abilities.


ABSTRACT How does the presence of independent lists influence voter turnout in municipal and sub-municipal elections? Despite the persistence of independent lists in local elections of European countries, this question has remained underexplored. Our paper examines the influence of independent lists on voter turnout both theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical discussion, we outline two competing hypotheses. On one hand, the best of both worlds hypothesis predicts that owing to increased choice for the voters, the presence of nonpartisan lists would increase voter turnout. On the other hand, the competing hypothesis suggests the opposite due to higher information costs associated with independent lists. We test our hypotheses using data from four election cycles of Portuguese municipal and sub-municipal levels of government. Since 2001, Portugal's electoral law allows the participation of nonpartisan lists of candidates in local elections. The empirical analysis employs fractional probit and beta regression models and finds strong support for the best of both worlds hypothesis, both at the municipal and the sub-municipal levels.


The contribution of information and communication technologies to pedagogical innovation is understood from the cognitive and social perspectives on learning. The notion of networked communities is put forward and three application models are presented: the classroom-based learning community, the community of practice, and the knowledge building community. These three models are illustrated: context, participants, cultural artifacts, and digital tools. These emerging models and related social technical designs are in the reach of those willing to use the Internet for their own learning and for helping others to learn in a collaborative manner.


Permeable keepers are used in a plated-wire memory to reduce the adjacent bit interference and the current requirement. Computations of a magnetic field have been performed to determine the quantitative effect of the keeper size on the field enhancement in the region where the information is to be stored and on the field reduction outside this region. The field enhancement can be interpreted as the reduction in current for a given magnetic field, and the reduction of the fringing field as the reduction in adjacent bit interference. The numerical results which represent valuable design considerations for a plated-wire memory are presented in graphical form.


In order for all of a cell's genetic information to fit inside its nucleus, the chromosomes must undergo extensive folding and organization. Just like in origami where the same piece of paper folded in different ways allows the paper to take on different forms and potential functions, it is possible that different genomic organizations (or architectures) are related to various nuclear functions. Until recently, it has been impossible to comprehensively investigate this relationship due to the lack of high-resolution and high-throughput techniques for identifying genomic architectures. The recent development of a technique called Hi-C, which is a derivation of chromosome conformation capture, has made it possible to detect the complete set of interactions occurring within (intra-interactions) and between (inter-interactions) chromosomes in the nucleus. Many computational methods have been proposed that use these analytical results to infer the rough threedimensional (3D) architecture of the genome. However, the genomic architecture also impacts additional types of nuclear interactions and techniques exist that are able to capture and measure these interactions. Unfortunately, it is difficult to incorporate these additional datasets into the existing tools. To overcome this, a novel application of constraint logic programming (CLP) was used to develop a new program for the prediction of the 3D genomic architecture. The unique representation used in this program lends itself well to the future incorporation of additional genomic datasets. This thesis investigates the most efficient way to date to represent and optimally solve the constraint satisfaction problem of the 3D genome. The developed program was used to predict a 3D logical model of the fission yeast genome and the results were visualized using Cytoscape. This model was then biologically validated through literature search which verified that the prediction was able to recapitulate key documented features of the yeast genome. Future work will utilize this tool as a computational framework and extend it to incorporate additional genomic datasets and information into the prediction and visualization of the 3D genomic architecture. The development of the CLP program described here is a step towards a better understanding of the elusive relationship between the 3D structure of the genome and various nuclear functions.


Zircon, apatite (U-Th)/He, and apatite fission-track age data record a rapid cooling event in the Ladakh batholith of northwest India ca. 22 Ma. A combination of inverse and forward modeling of the data confirms this qualitative interpretation. Combining the thermochronometric data with structural evidence, we propose that exhumation was due to south-directed thrusting of the batholith along a north-dipping structure, coupled with erosion to bring the rocks to the surface. The rapid exhumation recorded in Ladakh is contemporaneous with exhumation of the High Himalaya. This focused surface denudation and structural shortening north of the Indus suture zone in early Miocene time implies that the actively deforming and eroding Himalayan thrust wedge extended farther north than channel flow models currently predict.


We introduce and study new models for learning from contagion processes in a network. A learning algorithm is allowed to either choose or passively observe an initial set of seed infections. This seed set then induces a final set of infections resulting from the underlying stochastic contagion dynamics. Our models differ from prior work in that detailed vertex-by-vertex timestamps for the spread of the contagion are not observed. The goal of learning is to infer the unknown network structure. Our main theoretical results are efficient and provably correct algorithms for exactly learning trees. We provide empirical evidence that our algorithm performs well more generally on realistic sparse graphs.


The given paper focuses on the theoretical approaches that enable to estimate the influence of the development of small business on the factors of the economic growth. It discusses the evaluation of the role of small business in the context of the theories of reforms at the present stage. It is proved that the functioning technology of the short-term and medium-term forecasting hardly takes into account the enterprising potency of the population and it leads to the reduction of efficiency of the taken decisions both on the federal and regional levels. It is shown that the decisions to change the conditions of the functioning of small business should account for the estimation of the labour market and the regional peculiarities. It is necessary to develop and expand the existing practice of the medium-term forecasting with the procedures and methods that allow to estimate the decisions taken by the authorities regarding small business from the position of their influence on the factors of the economic growth. These approaches and procedures are performed on the formal level using the methods of econometric simulation, and they will considerably facilitate the process of complex expert analysis of consumer demand and income which usually was executed. Within the frame of the short-term forecast, it is offered to develop the procedures and methods that make it possible to modify the rational correlation of small forms and large enterprises in accordance with the tasks of the modernization period of the country. CORRELATION OF SMALL AND LARGE ENTERPRISES; NATIONAL FORECAST; ECONOMIC GROWTH; REGIONAL FACTORS; ECONOMETRIC MODELS; ESTIMATION OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF DECISIONS.


Dr. Jonathan J. Dutton, a world leader in orbit surgery, presents "Radiology of the Orbit and Visual Pathways". This new and unique diagnostic guide offers expert guidance on the strengths and weaknesses of CT and MRI, the two main methods of orbital radiological imaging. An atlas style approach provides the essential text you need to accurately diagnose 130 of the more common disorders you'll come across in your daily routine, and lavish illustrations enhance your visual guidance. Plus, with Expert Consult functionality, you'll have easy access to the full text online, as well as all of the book's illustrations at expertconsult.com.


The importance of the submersion regime for the physiology, behavior and ecology of intertidal organisms, as well as limitations of available measurement methods, motivated us to develop a new remote sensing method. This new method is based on video monitoring of visual references installed at interest positions in the intertidal zone. Video imagery processing algorithms discriminate between states of submersion and emersion. The signal is based on the fluctuation in the color contrast between the visual reference and the adjacent rock. Our remote sensing method was validated favorably by comparing with direct field observations of submersion time series and comparison of different submersion metrics, including submersion percentage and maximum emersion duration. Since the remote sensing method captures and stores imagery remotely, obtaining long records of high temporal resolution is facilitated and the risk of discontinuity of time series is reduced in comparison to the use of sensors at the zone of wave impact. The high temporal resolution is critical for environments with high exposure to waves and allows for reliable estimates of a wide variety of relevant submersion metrics. This low cost remote sensing method should encourage quantification of submersion regimes of organisms inhabiting rocky intertidal zones, as well as the exploration of physiological, behavioral and ecological consequences of these regimes. Identifying the character of the forces underlying submersion regimes, together with critical environmental variables, such as temperature and solar radiation, will allow better hind‐casts and forecasts of the ecological consequences of past and future climate change on these communities.


"Would the world be in this financial mess if it had been Lehman Sisters?"In February 2009, this question was asked at The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos during one of the panels. In a New York Times article, journalist Katrin Bennhold describes this incident and adds that it "certainly hit a nerve with some of the more defensive male participants at the WEF". The article in the New York Times continues with some interesting quotes from people present at the Davos panels. Micro-financing pioneer Muhammad Yunus, for example, said the current crisis would almost certainly not have happened if women had shaped financial practices. According to Yunus, women "wouldn't have taken the enormous types of risks that brought the system down." Neelie Kroes, previous Minister for the Dutch Government and European competition commissioner, was "absolutely convinced that testosterone was one of the reasons the financial system had been brought to its knees". Kroes added that "in general terms, females are a bit less ego-driven and a bit more responsible than men." Subsequently, an interesting quote comes from Christine Lagarde, current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, but at that time Minister of Finance in the French Government. She comments on the very few women being present at the WEF and said that this "illustrated two shortcomings of the past years, one, this is a world where there is too little diversity, and two, there is too much herding behavior." One might believe that due to these kinds of discussions, arguments and the renewed attention about gender diversity, particularly when also driven by the financial crises, that the number of women directors since 2008 would have increased. In this paper I will show that, at least in The Netherlands, this is not the case for Dutch-listed companies.


SUMMARY

The propagation of elastic waves is modelled in media with a random distribution of fluid-filled circular cavities, which display high physical impedance in contrast to background media. Theoretical attenuation expressions for media with circular cavities, which may be filled with any material (e.g. vacuum, fluid, elastic materials), are formulated using an ensemble treatment for first-order transmitted waves. Numerical estimates of scattering attenuation rates agree with the theoretical results well. The scattering attenuations (Q−1) are proportional to the scale of cavities and the number density (η, number of cavities per area in a medium). The decrease of primary energy with the size of cavities does not result in the increase of coda energy owing to the increase of both purely backscattered waves from cavities and the trapped waves inside cavities. Scattering properties (e.g. scattering attenuation, coda energy, phase fluctuation of primary waves) in media with randomly distributed cavities are very different from those in stochastic random media. It appears that heterogeneities with high impedance in the earth may not be well represented with stochastic random heterogeneities.


The longterm performance of multi-generations or life span was assessed using genetically modified (GM) insect-resistant Bt11 corn. Diet containing 68% of GM Bt11 or non-Bt isoline with sufficient nutrient composition was fed to male and female ICR mice through 5 generations. The results of growth, mating, gestation, milking periods, reproduction and life span were not different between the GM Bt11 and non-Bt fed groups. The percentage of embryonic death, litter size, newborn sex ratio and body weight (21-60 days after birth) were not different between these groups. The life span of the third-generation mice did not differ over 1,072 days of observation. In addition, there was a tendency for a weight decrease among each group as the generations progressed, but there was no significant difference in performance among each group in each generation of mice.


The Reverend W.B. Clarke remains something of an enigma in the annals of Australian science, despite the publication of numerous books and articles on his life and times. The author argues that this is mainly due to the deficiencies of previous researchers in addressing the full gamut of that Reverend gentleman's work. Though the basic details of Clarke's life are clearly known, numerous significant gaps exist in the surviving archive. For example, his personal collection of rocks, fossils, geological maps and library was destroyed in the Garden Palace fire of 1882; his large corpus of work which appeared in Australian newspapers between 1839-78 has only recently been identified; and a collection of personal correspondence awaits 'translation' and publication. Until these omissions are addressed, the jury must remain out as to whether W.B. Clarke deserves the title 'Father of Australian Geology' or any similar accolade. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details This article was originally published as Organ, MK, "...a small fish in a small pond..." The Reverend W.B. Clarke (1798-1878): 200 Years On [Parts I & II], Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 131, 1998 and 132, 1999. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/24 "...a small fish in a small pond...." The Reverend W.B. Clarke (1798-1878): What did he actually


There is legitimate concern that, within the next few years, the Internet will provide a fertile medium for new breeds of computer viruses capable of spreading orders of magnitude faster than they do today. To counter this threat, we have developed an immune system for computers that senses the presence of a previously unknown, pathogen, and then within minutes automatically derives and deploys a prescription for detecting and removing it. The system is being integrated with a commercial anti-virus product, IBM AntiVirus, and is expected to be offered as a pilot in late 1997.


Pulpitis is an inflammation process on dental pulp tissue, and usually as the continuous of caries. The microorganism in the caries is a potential immunogenic triggering the immune respons, both humoral and celluler immune responses. The aim of this research is to explain the humoral immune response changes in the dental pulp tissues of pulpitis. This research was done on three group samples: Irreversible pulpitis, Reversible pulpitis and sound teeth as the control group. The result showed that there were three pulpitis immunopathologic patterns: the sound teeth immunopathologic pattern showing a low humoral immune response, in a low level of IgG, IgA and IgM, the reversible pulpitis pattern showing that in a higher humoral immune response, IgG and IgA decreased but IgM increased, the irreversible pulpitis pattern showing that IgG and IgM increased, but it couldn't be repaired although it has highly immunity, and it showed an unusually low level of IgA. This low level of IgA meant that irreversible pulpitis had a low mucosal immunity.


Patient cost sharing for contraceptive prescriptions was eliminated for certain insurance plans as part of the Affordable Care Act. We examined the impact of this change on women's patterns of choosing prescription contraceptive methods. Using claims data for a sample of midwestern women ages 18-46 with employer-sponsored coverage, we examined the contraceptive choices made by women in employer groups whose coverage complied with the mandate, compared to the choices of women in groups whose coverage did not comply. We found that the reduction in cost sharing was associated with a 2.3-percentage-point increase in the choice of any prescription contraceptive, relative to the 30 percent rate of choosing prescription contraceptives before the change in cost sharing. A disproportionate share of this increase came from increased selection of long-term contraception methods. Thus, the removal of cost as a barrier seems to be an important factor in contraceptive choice, and our findings about long-term methods may have implications for rates of unintended pregnancy that require further study.


While supervised corpus-based methods are highly accurate for different NLP tasks, including morphological tagging, they are difficult to port to other languages because they require resources that are expensive to create. As a result, many languages have no realistic prospect for morpho-syntactic annotation in the foreseeable future. The method presented in this book aims to overcome this problem by significantly limiting the necessary data and instead extrapolating the relevant information from another, related language. The approach has been tested on Catalan, Portuguese, and Russian. Although these languages are only relatively resource-poor, the same method can be in principle applied to any inflected language, as long as there is an annotated corpus of a related language available. Time needed for adjusting the system to a new language constitutes a fraction of the time needed for systems with extensive, manually created resources: days instead of years. This book touches upon a number of topics: typology, morphology, corpus linguistics, contrastive linguistics, linguistic annotation, computational linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Researchers and students who are interested in these scientific areas as well as in cross-lingual studies and applications will greatly benefit from this work. Scholars and practitioners in computer science and linguistics are the prospective readers of this book.


In response to the problem of shrinking birthrates in the country, in October 2007, the head of the Georgian Orthodox church announced that he would personally baptize any third and further baby born to Orthodox families from that time. This study uses the initiative as a natural experiment to explore the economic consequences of religious activity. This analysis uses individual level survey data from the Caucasus Resource Research Center (CRRC) Georgia on fertility before and after the initiative for Orthodox Christians (treatment group) and Non- Orthodox Christians (control group) population to identify the effect of the church leader's promise on birth rates. Difference-in-differences estimation procedure is employed to examine the potential causal effect. This analysis does not find evidence that the church initiative had an effect on fertility.


Seasonal variation in water table depth (WTD) determines the balance between aggradation and degradation of tropical peatlands. Longer dry seasons together with human interventions (e.g. drainage) can cause WTD drawdowns making tropical peatland C storage highly vulnerable. Better predictive capacity for effects of WTD on net CO 2 exchange is thus essential to guide conservation of tropical peat deposits. Mathematical modelling of basic eco-hydrological processes under site-specific conditions can provide such predictive capacity. We hereby deploy a process-based mathematical model ecosys to study effects of seasonal variation in WTD on net ecosystem productivity (NEP) of a drainage affected tropical peat swamp forest at Palangkaraya, Indonesia. Simulated NEP suggested that the peatland was a C source (NEP ~ −2 g C m −2 d −1 , where a negative sign represents a C source and a positive sign a C sink) during rainy seasons with shallow WTD, C neutral or a small sink (NEP ~ +1 g C m −2 d −1 ) during early dry seasons with intermediate WTD and a substantial C source (NEP ~ −4 g C m −2 d −1 ) during late dry seasons with deep WTD from 2002 to 2005. These values were corroborated by regressions ( P 2 fluxes which yielded R 2 > 0.8, intercepts approaching 0 and slopes approaching 1. We also simulated a gradual increase in annual NEP from 2002 (−609 g C m −2 ) to 2005 (−373 g C m −2 ) with decreasing WTD which was attributed to declines in duration and intensity of dry seasons following the El Nino event of 2002. This increase in modelled NEP was corroborated by EC-gap filled annual NEP estimates. Our modelling hypotheses suggested that (1) poor aeration in wet soils during shallow WTD caused slow nutrient (predominantly phosphorus) mineralization and consequent slow plant nutrient uptake that suppressed gross primary productivity (GPP) and hence NEP (2) better soil aeration during intermediate WTD enhanced nutrient mineralization and hence plant nutrient uptake, GPP and NEP and (3) deep WTD suppressed NEP through a combination of reduced GPP due to plant water stress and increased ecosystem respiration ( R e ) from enhanced deeper peat aeration. These WTD effects on NEP were modelled from basic eco-hydrological processes including microbial and root oxidation-reduction reactions driven by soil and root O 2 transport and uptake which in turn drove soil and plant carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus transformations within a soil-plant-atmosphere water transfer scheme driven by water potential gradients. Including these processes in ecosystem models should therefore provide an improved predictive capacity for WTD management programs intended to reduce tropical peat degradation.


Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, two competing conceptions of suffering in wartime have dominated western thought about the laws of armed conflict. One conception views suffering – and especially suffering in war – as an evil in itself. Those who take this view, like Henri Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross and inspiration for the Geneva Convention of 1864, typically adopt the minimization of suffering as the principal goal for a law of war. Another conception of suffering in war, however, sees the experience of pain as an inevitable and sometimes even ennobling accompaniment to the hard work of bringing about just ends in the world. This latter view rejects the idea that one can evaluate suffering or its legal significance without knowing why the suffering exists. This approach has a long tradition, too, one that stretches back through Dunant's contemporary the Prussian-American Francis Lieber, drafter of the Union's rules of engagement in the American Civil War. These two ways of making sense of human suffering (and the conflicts between them) have animated legal efforts to manage warfare ever since Dunant and Lieber launched the modern chapter of the laws of armed conflict a century and a half ago. And for good reason. Each of the two dominant conceptions of suffering contains inescapable limits and indispensable moral insights. The difficulty – our difficulty – is to capture their insights while containing their flaws.


SATPLAN is currently one of the fastest planning systems for domain-independent planning. In nearly all practiced applications, however, there exists an abundance of domain-specific knowledge that can be used to improve the performance of a planning system. This knowledge is traditionally encoded as procedures or rules that axe tied to the details of the planning engine. We present a way to encode domain knowledge in a purely declarative, algorithm independent manner. We demonstrate that the same heuristic knowledge can be used by completely different search engines, one systematic, the other using greedy local search. This approach greatly enhances the power of SATPLAN: solution times for some problems are reduced from days to seconds.


This chapter applies the theory of the firm to argue that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) might more effectively influence international climate change negotiations if it were directly subordinate to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The chapter begins by describing the IPCC's organization, as well as several recent challenges to the credibility of its work, most notably the "Climategate" scandal. The IPCC is an "epistemic institution" — an intergovernmental organization that assimilates basic scientific and/or technical research and applies it to specific legal or policy problems. States create epistemic institutions when unorganized epistemic communities cannot provide policy and law makers with a relevant, credible, and accessible scientific record. Such a record can improve law and policy making by 1) making it more responsive to scientific facts, but just as importantly, by 2) providing policymakers with a common factual basis for negotiations, 3) channeling disagreements into disputes about facts rather than values, and 4) publicly legitimating scientifically-based policies. States must decide whether epistemic institutions like the IPCC should be independent or integrated into a lawmaking institution like the UNFCCC. This chapter argues that epistemic institutions should be integrated into legal institutions when states face a collective action problem, as they do in the climate change context. In these situations, coordinating environmental policies across countries cannot proceed unless a critical mass of states agree. Yet developing states frequently lack the capacity to evaluate the scientific record supporting proposed regulations. They may therefore fear opportunism by developed states in the form of a biased scientific record aimed at encouraging particular outcomes. Developing states may block the adoption of legal rules in part because they do not view the scientific record as credible. Hierarchical control of epistemic institutions can overcome this problem by allowing developing states a role in overseeing the scientific assessment process. By contrast, where a collective decision by a legal institution is not necessary to coordinate state behavior, the decentralized adoption of policy-relevant scientific recommendations signals to developing states that the scientific record is credible, thereby eliminating the need for hierarchical controls to perform the same function. Applying this theory to the IPCC suggests that the IPCC might more effectively influence international climate negotiations if it were integrated into the UNFCCC. Such integration might make it more difficult for climate skeptics to attack the credibility of the IPCC. To be sure, such integration would likely entail costs in terms of the independence of the IPCC and its ability to remain above the political dynamics that have frustrated climate negotiations within the UNFCCC. But because a collective decision on climate change is necessary, bring science closer to politics may counter-intuitively improve the ability of science to influence politics.


Many Jewish Americans noted with hope that the inspiring sight of thousands of peaceful demonstrators seeking greater opportunity and freedom in squares and streets across the Middle East was not obscured by smoke billowing from burning American or Israeli flags, nor banners denouncing Western powers or their Jewish ally. As the inimitable journalist Mona Eltahawy put it, "None of this is about Israel.... For once it's not about you. Be happy it's not about you."1 Yet, as we celebrate the historic successes and honor the selfless sacrifices of those giving voice to our shared values in their own countries, the American pro-Israel community-and American Jews in particular- cannot help but wonder what this transformative process will mean for the homeland of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, to whose security and survival we have an unwavering commitment. Naturally, difficult questions arise: will a new Egyptian regime maintain its critical peace with Israel? Will more open elections bring extremist groups opposed to Israel's existence into power? Will the tide of revolts wash away the moderate leadership of the Palestinian Authority? All are valid inquiries, but another of equal, if not greater importance to Israel's long-term security and survival, is also being asked within the American Jewish community: what should be done about the Israeli- Palestinian peace process? Contrary to long-held beliefs in American politics, the overwhelming majority of American Jews not only supports a two-state resolution to the conflict, but wants the U.S. Government to assertively push the parties to achieve it. According to a 2010 election night survey of 1,000 American Jewish voters commissioned by J Street, 83 percent of American Jews want the administration to play "an active role in helping the parties to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict." More tellingly, however, 71 percent would still support active American leadership if it meant "publicly stating its disagreements" with both Israelis and Arabs, while 65 percent would still support such leadership even if it meant "exerting pressure on both the Israelis and Arabs to make the compromises necessary to achieve peace."2 This data reflects a growing sense of urgency in the American pro- Israel community over the consequences of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-referencing previous statements by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and others-called "the inexorable mathematics of demography," 3 which will see Arabs outnumber Jews in Israeli-controlled or garrisoned territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River within a generation. At that moment, Israel will have to choose between relinquishing its Jewish character by granting all Palestinians full political rights, or abandoning the Zionist and Jewish ideal of democracy by denying such rights to the new majority, inviting condemnation and, inevitably, isolation and sanction from the international community. Either scenario is unacceptable to those who support Israel and its right to exist as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people. That is why our community was energized, twenty months before thousands of voices sounded from Cairo's Tahrir Square, by the voice of a single reformer filling a university hall elsewhere in Egypt's capital. In his June 2009 address on American relations with the Muslim world, President Obama pledged to Israeli and Arab leaders that, in pursuit of a two-state resolution to their conflict, "America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs... It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true."4 Unfortunately, this would-be Middle East revolution never made it out of the roundabout, with the United States driving in circles, perpetuating the status quo in the conflict. In March 2010, Israeli, announced the approval of new housing units for its citizens in occupied East Jerusalem during Vice President Biden's visit, which triggered a diplomatic spat. …


Insight in the lifecycle dynamics of long term care costs is important to understand the effect of policy changes, such as the design of co-payments, on the costs and welfare across income and wealth groups. Modeling long term care expenditures over the lifecycle is challenging because of their very uneven distribution. We find that the low and middle income and wealth groups use substantially more long term care over their life than the high income and wealth groups. The Dutch system of income- and wealth-dependent co-payments offers substantial protection against high costs for these groups, especially compared to a flat-rate co-payment. The middle groups benefit the most from the current system: as they do not qualify for income support, a flat-rate co-payment system would mainly burden them. Only the group with the highest financial means would benefit from the introduction of a flat-rate co-payment.


The calculation of 1995 pollutant loads from the Conner Creek Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) discharging to the Detroit River is presented in this work. The chemical analysis of selected heavy metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Pb, Zn) which have a high toxic potential for the Detroit River is given. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) measurement data ( 1995) is utilized to compute the load of these toxicants to the Detroit River. These data include the concentrations of constituents and the volumetric discharge flow rates ofthe CSOs. The 1995 concentra~ tions and loadings are compared with 1979 measurements and calibrated computer predictions. The results show that the 1995 concentrations and loadings for CSOs to the Detroit River are less than the 1979 concentration and loading estimations for most of the selected contaminants at the Conner site.


With their delicate foliage, seasonal color changes, and intricate pattern of branching, Japanese maples are among the most popular and suitable plants for bonsai design. In this long-awaited book, internationally renowned expert Peter Adams discusses both the specific horticultural needs of Japanese maples as bonsai subjects and illustrates proven techniques for creating and maintaining beautiful specimens. Although aimed at an audience that has some familiarity with bonsai techniques, the book deliberately shows a mix of bonsai at different stages in their training, so that less experienced enthusiasts can gain new ideas and inspiration from trees that are "works in progress." Much more than a mere "how-to" book, "Bonsai with Japanese Maples" is a forthright attempt to look at bonsai as art objects and to critique and assess them from an artist's perspective.


This paper presents a Cloud-based system computing customized and practically fast driving routes for an end user using (historical and real-time) traffic conditions and driver behavior. In this system, GPS-equipped taxicabs are employed as mobile sensors constantly probing the traffic rhythm of a city and taxi drivers' intelligence in choosing driving directions in the physical world. Meanwhile, a Cloud aggregates and mines the information from these taxis and other sources from the Internet, like Web maps and weather forecast. The Cloud builds a model incorporating day of the week, time of day, weather conditions, and individual driving strategies (both of the taxi drivers and of the end user for whom the route is being computed). Using this model, our system predicts the traffic conditions of a future time (when the computed route is actually driven) and performs a self-adaptive driving direction service for a particular user. This service gradually learns a user's driving behavior from the user's GPS logs and customizes the fastest route for the user with the help of the Cloud. We evaluate our service using a real-world dataset generated by over 33,000 taxis over a period of 3 months in Beijing. As a result, our service accurately estimates the travel time of a route for a user; hence finding the fastest route customized for the user.


This paper reports the development of a system for the automated interpretation of sector scan sonar data. It proposes the use of a new combination of feature measures derived from sequences of sonar scans to characterize the behaviour of targets' returns over time. Previous research used grey-scale and shape descriptors derived from single sonar scans. However, problems were experienced with targets whose return varied significantly over time (such as divers, UUV's, and ships' wakes). Hence a new set of temporal feature measures has been developed by combining existing one-dimensional temporal measures and two-dimensional object descriptors. These new features provide a quantitative description of the behaviour of a target's two-dimensional returns over a sequence of sonar scans. Experiments with a limited but real data set have shown that classification accuracy can be significantly improved by the use of these new features. The use of "static" feature measures (derived from a single scan) was observed to give classification errors of between 7% and 10% when they were applied to the data set. In contrast, the use of temporal measures reduced this error rate to 1% or 2% and in some cases reduced it to zero.


The distance of a Fermi-detected blazar γ-ray emission site from a supermassive black hole is a matter of active debate. Here we present a method for testing if the GeV emission of powerful blazars is produced within the subparsec-scale broad-line region (BLR) or farther out in the parsec-scale molecular torus (MT) environment. If the GeV emission takes place within the BLR, the inverse Compton (IC) scattering of the BLR ultraviolet (UV) seed photons that produces the γ-rays takes place at the onset of the Klein–Nishina regime. This causes the electron cooling time to become practically energy-independent and the variation of the γ-ray emission to be almost achromatic. If, on the other hand, the γ-ray emission is produced farther out in the parsec-scale MT, the IC scattering of the infrared (IR) MT seed photons that produces the γ-rays takes place in the Thomson regime, resulting in energy-dependent electron cooling times, manifested as faster cooling times for higher Fermi energies. We demonstrate these characteristics and discuss the applicability and limitations of our method.


The subject matter of the present paper is Irish English as the starting point of
teaching and learning German as a second language. This symbiosis of the study of
the varieties of English and the study of second language acquisition (SLA) adds an
aspect to the latter which has been widely neglected. Second language teaching usually
starts with a look at the unfamiliar features in the target language (L2) and then
focuses on their dissimilarities with familiar features in the mother tongue (L1).
Moulton (1968) states:
When a Student sets out to learn a new language, he is willing – intellectually –
to accept the fact that it is different and that he must learn some new and unfamiliar
sounds to speak it properly. At the same time, he is so imprisoned within the
world of his native English that learning these new sounds can be a very formidable
task indeed (Moulton 1968: 2).
With this statement Moulton complies with the common view at the time
which originated in the contrastive analysis hypothesis (Lado 1957). Foreign sounds
were claimed to be difficult to acquire due to their dissimilarity with L1 sounds.
However, as will be discussed in the course of the present paper, this view changed
over time. Flege (1995) postulates that L2 sounds are fitted into L1 categories
through equivalence classifications and that L2 sounds which are similar but not
identical with L1 sounds actually pose more difficulties to learners than totally different
ones (Flege 1995: 239; Siegel 2010: 141). Irish English and Irish as the starting
point of the acquisition of German will serve as an example to put these approaches
into a real-life perspective.
Why is Irish English highlighted here? Usually, the subject matter of the process
of SLA are the mother tongue (L1) and the target language (L2), which would
be English and German in this case. Nonetheless, if we take into account that there
are over 350 million native speakers of English in over 40 countries in the world,
we arrive at a wide range of national and even regional dialects with their individual
L1 sound categories. In other words, native speakers from Australia or England
will find the German vocalic realisation of /r/ after vowels rather unproblematic as
this feature exists in their own varieties. Learners from Ireland or the USA, by contrast,
have to overcome their muscular habit of pronouncing a retroflex sound instead.
Another example are the allophones of /l/. People from Ireland sound a nuance
more German by nature as Irish English knows the German-like alveolar /l/
in all positions, whereas English English shows strong velarisation after long vowels
in Scottish and American English show it in all positions.
With these examples the present author aimed to introduce the concept of native
varieties as the starting point of SLA. The coming section will accommodate a
contrastive description of selected phonemes in Irish1, Irish English2 and German.
This will be followed in section 2 by an overview of relevant theoretical approaches
in SLA taking into account the previously listed sound features. The paper will
come full circle in section 3, as these approaches will help us to position the linguistic
framework of Ireland in teaching German as an L2.


There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of "data subjectivity" responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce.


[Purpose] The purpose of this meta-analysis was to assess the effects of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) on reducing spasticity immediately and 4 weeks after application of ESWT. [Subjects and Methods] We searched PubMed, TCL, Embase, and Scopus from their inception dates through June 2013. The key words "muscle hypertonia OR spasticity" were used for spasticity, and the key words "shock wave OR ESWT" were used for ESWT. Five studies were ultimately included in the meta-analysis. [Results] The Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) grade was significantly improved immediately after ESWT compared with the baseline values (standardized mean difference [SMD], −0.792; 95% confidence interval [CI], −1.001 to −0.583). The MAS grade at four weeks after ESWT was also significantly improved compared with the baseline values (SMD, −0.735; 95% CI, −0.951 to −0.519). [Conclusion] ESWT has a significant effect on improving spasticity. Further standardization of treatment protocols including treatment intervals and intensities needs to be established and long-term follow up studies are needed.


ABSTRACT Scorpions of the genus Buthacus Birula, 1908 (Buthidae C.L. Koch, 1837), commonly known as "sand scorpions," are widespread in the sandy deserts of the Palearctic, from West Africa to India. Although many new species of Buthacus were described in recent years, no modern revision exists for the genus and the limits of many infrageneric taxa remain unclear. The present contribution addresses the species of Buthacus recorded from the Levant, defined here as the region of the Middle East including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt). Prior to this study, five species and subspecies, including several synonyms, were recognized from the region. Based on extensive new collections, a reassessment of the morphology (including multivariate statistical analysis), and a phylogenetic analysis of morphological and DNA sequence data, published elsewhere, seven species of Buthacus are now recognized from the Levant, raising the number of species in the genus to 30. Three new species are described: Buthacus amitaii, sp. nov., endemic to Israel; Buthacus arava, sp. nov., endemic to Israel and Jordan; and Buthacus levyi, sp. nov., endemic to Egypt, Israel, and perhaps Libya. Buthacus arenicola (Simon, 1885) is redescribed and restricted to northeastern Algeria and central Tunisia, and Buthacus leptochelys (Ehrenberg, 1829) redescribed and restricted to Egypt, Sudan, and perhaps Libya. Buthacus armasi Lourenço, 2013, stat. rev., from southern Algeria, and Buthacus spatzi (Birula, 1911), stat. rev., from southern Tunisia and western Libya, are revalidated, and Buthacus fuscata Pallary, 1929, stat. nov. et stat. rev., from southern Algeria, revalidated and elevated to the rank of species. Buthacus nitzani Levy et al., 1973, stat. nov., currently restricted to Israel but probably present in the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), is elevated to the rank of species. Buthacus tadmorensis (Simon, 1892), stat. rev., recorded from Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, and Buthacus yotvatensis Levy et al., 1973, stat. rev., endemic to Israel and Jordan, are redescribed and revalidated. Three new synonyms are presented: Androctonus (Leiurus) macrocentrus Ehrenberg, 1828 = Buthacus leptochelys (Ehrenberg, 1829), syn. nov.; Buthus pietschmanni Penther, 1912 = Buthacus tadmorensis (Simon, 1892), syn. nov.; Buthacus granosus Borelli, 1929 = Buthacus leptochelys (Ehrenberg, 1829), syn. nov. Buthacus arenicola and the seven species of Buthacus occurring in the Levant are diagnosed and illustrated to modern standards, with updated distribution maps. A list of the currently recognized species of Buthacus, and a key to identification of the species occurring in the Levant are also presented.


With the availability of more and more cores within architectures the process of extracting implicit and explicit parallelism in applications to fully utilise these cores is becoming complex. Implicit parallelism extraction is performed through the inclusion of intelligent software and hardware sections of tool chains although these reach their theoretical limit rather quickly.
Due to this the concept of a method of allowing explicit parallelism to be performed as fast a possible has been investigated. This method enables application developers to perform creation and synchronisation of parallel sections of an application at a finer-grained level than previously possible, resulting in smaller sections of code being executed in parallel while still reducing overall execution time.

Alongside explicit parallelism, a concept of high level design of applications destined for multicore systems was also investigated. As systems are getting larger it is becoming more difficult to design and track the full life-cycle of development. One method used to ease this process is to use a graphical design process to visualise the high level designs of such systems.
One drawback in graphical design is the explicit nature in which systems are required to be generated, this was investigated, and using concepts already in use in text based programming languages, the generation of platform-independent models which are able to be specialised to multiple hardware architectures was developed.

The explicit parallelism was performed using hardware elements to perform thread management, this resulted in speed ups of over 13 times when compared to threading libraries executed in software on commercially available processors. This allowed applications with large data dependent sections to be parallelised in small sections within the code resulting in a decrease of overall execution time.

The modelling concepts resulted in the saving of between 40-50% of the time and effort required to generate platform-specific models while only incurring an overhead of up to 15% the execution cycles of these models designed for specific architectures.


In this paper we inquire why after more than 25 years of domestic agricultural reforms in Mexico and 15 years of trade liberalization of maize under NAFTA –a non-competitive crop and the major staple in Mexico–domestic production of this field crop has increased. We present new empirical evidence showing that, as expected, maize prices in Mexico dropped until 2006 and have experienced a process of convergence with USA prices, and maize imports from the USA increased. However, despite lower prices, maize production in Mexico rose and has experienced a positive structural change since 1992, two years before the beginning of NAFTA's implementation. Based on the heterogeneity of maize production in Mexico, three possible explanations are proposed to explain this unexpected outcome: government supports to big commercial farmers in the agriculturally rich North of Mexico; the persistence of maize production by subsistence farmers; and to a lesser degree, increasing yields on some irrigated maize farms. We finish the paper by drawing lessons from the experience of Mexico for other Less Developed Countries.


A study was conducted by staff and students from the Department of Industrial Design in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg on alternative charcoal stove design under the title Manica Charcoal Stove Project for developing communities. The project was started in support of the principle designs developed for the Maputo Ceramic Charcoal Stove, now known as the Poupa Carvao (POCA) charcoal stove, developed by Crispin Pemberton-Piggott of the Program for Biomass Energy Conservation (ProBEC) which is supported by GIZ. A research group consisting of two academic staff members and four 3rd year Industrial Design students visited the town of Manica in Mozambique in 2008 to complete user field testing and use these results to inform alternative charcoal stove designs. The project falls under the broad area of design for social development and expands on aspects of community centred design developed within the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Johannesburg. This paper briefly describes the research method and the design process used to develop the stove concepts. It discusses aspects related to the design of new charcoal burning stoves and touches on the manufacturing systems available for stove production in the region. It evaluates the principles of user centred design in developing community projects and gives direction to further studies of this kind.


Stable democratic regimes depend heavily on the "consensual unity" of national elites. So long as elites remain disunified, political regimes are unstable, a condition which makes democratic transitions and democratic breakdowns merely temporary oscillations in the forms unstable regimes take. Disunity appears to be the generic condition of national elites, and disunity strongly tends to persist regardless of socioeconomic development and other changes in mass populations. The consensually unified elites that are necessary to stable democracies are created in only a few ways, two of the most important of which involve distinctive elite transformations. After elaborating this argument, we examine the relationship between elites and regimes in western nation-states since they began to consolidate after 1500. We show that our approach makes good sense of the western political record, that it does much to clarify prospects for stable democracies in developing societies today, and that it makes the increasingly elite-centered analysis of democratic transitions and breakdowns more systematic. DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS AND DEMOCRATIC BREAKDOWNS:


Explosive progress in networking and outsourcing storage increases the use of information retrieval technologies, in massive datasets. Nowadays, there are varieties of storage-providers through the internet, such as e-mail accounts and public database, which are convenient to store and exchange electronic files and medias. Typically, the storage-provider offers users the capability to collect, retrieve and search, however, privacy issues are rarely considered at the same time. For example, it is unknown how to prevent some curious storage- provider from learning the private information of the user, such as, searching criterion and access pattern, as well as contents. In CRYPTO'07, Boneh et al. put forward a privacy-preserving solution to this problem, with the help of public key cryptography. In their work, the authors made use of PIR (Private Information Retrieval) and several combinatoric techniques, which are theoretically interesting and likely to be the best approach in the literature. In this paper, however, we show that their proposal seems unlikely to be implementable with the latest technology, due to a large amount of computation cost involved. Then, we provide an improved method to turn the keyword search more practical, which cannot only avoid the expensive computation cost caused by operations of public key encryption, but enable the privacy-preserving information retrieval, as well.


Prostate cancer is a frequently diagnosed malignancy which ranges from an indolent asymptomatic tumour to an aggressive, rapidly lethal systemic disease. Determination of chromosomal, genetic and epigenetic alterations associated with prostate carcinogenesis have led to the characterisation of functional consequences of these alterations, thereby elucidating pathways contributing to malignant growth that can be utilised clinically and therapeutically.

FLJ22318 is a novel hypothetical protein that was identified by yeast two-hybrid analysis to interact with the prostatic homeodomain protein, NKX3-1. Expression of NKX3-1 is largely restricted to epithelial cells of the adult prostate where it is involved in maintaining the prostatic phenotype, while NKX3-1 expression is reduced or absent in prostate tumours. In contrast, FLJ22318 expression is documented in cDNA libraries derived from a variety of human adult and foetal tissues including the prostate, suggesting that it may be ubiquitously expressed and that it potentially interacts with a number of proteins in addition to NKX3-1. FLJ22318 expression is undocumented in human prostate tumours.

Bioinformatic analyses have postulated multiple FLJ22318 mRNA transcripts however the proposed open reading frames encoded by these transcripts predict the FLJ22318 protein to contain three strong protein-protein interaction domains, a Lissencephaly type-1-like homology (LisH), a C-terminal to LisH (CTLH) and a CT11-RanBPM (CRA) domain. Of the 44 single nucleotide polymorphisms identified within the FLJ22318 gene, none are located within the protein coding region suggesting that FLJ22318 may be critical for cell survival and/or function. Comparison of the amino acid sequence between human FLJ22318 and its orthologues in a diverse range of mammalian species identified >97% sequence homology, providing further strong evidence of the critical cellular function of FLJ22318.

To characterise the biological activity of FLJ22318 in prostate cancer cells, the FLJ22318 coding region was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and ligated into mammalian and bacterial expression vectors to encode V5-, myc-, GFP-, HA-, and GST-FLJ22318 fusion proteins. Interaction between FLJ22318 and NKX3-1 was confirmed using (reverse) yeast two-hybrid, GST pull-down and co-immunoprecipitation assays. These data were supported by confocal microscopy which demonstrated the perinuclear and nuclear co-localisation of FLJ22318 and NKX3-1 in prostate cancer cells. Northern blotting identified expression of ~2Kb and ~4Kb FLJ22318 mRNA's in prostate cancer cell lines, which was consistent with bioinformatic analyses of mRNA species. Transfection of prostate cancer cells to overexpress FLJ22318 did not alter endogenous NKX3-1 levels, however FLJ22318 exhibited transcriptional repressor function on an NKX3-1 responsive element and increased NKX3-1 transcriptional repressor activity on this element.

To further investigate FLJ22318 function, additional yeast two-hybrid analyses were performed in prostate cancer cells to identify potential FLJ22318 binding proteins. These studies isolated cDNA's encoding 33 different proteins involved in cell metabolism and apoptosis as well as transcriptional regulators associated with control of cellular proliferation. One of the candidate FLJ22318 interactors, protein kinase, interferon-inducible double stranded RNA dependent activator (PRKRA/PACT) was shown using confocal microscopy to extensively co-localise with FLJ22318 in the cytoplasm and perinuclear regions of prostate cancer cells. Preliminary co-immunoprecipitation and GST pull-down assays have provided additional evidence of the interaction of PRKRA and FLJ22318.

Results of this thesis have generated important information characterising the structure of the FLJ22318 gene and protein, the interaction between FLJ22318 and NKX3-1 and the potential functions of FLJ22318 in prostate cancer cells. As the FLJ22318 gene is located on 5q35, a chromosomal region frequently disrupted in a variety of tumours, future studies of the biological activity of FLJ22318 will clarify its normal cellular functions and its contribution to tumorigenesis or malignant progression in the prostate and in other tissues.


BACKGROUND
While intracellular buffers are widely used to study calcium signaling, no such tool exists for the other major second messenger, cyclic AMP (cAMP).

METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
Here we describe a genetically encoded buffer for cAMP based on the high-affinity cAMP-binding carboxy-terminus of the regulatory subunit RIbeta of protein kinase A (PKA). Addition of targeting sequences permitted localization of this fragment to the extra-nuclear compartment, while tagging with mCherry allowed quantification of its expression at the single cell level. This construct (named "cAMP sponge") was shown to selectively bind cAMP in vitro. Its expression significantly suppressed agonist-induced cAMP signals and the downstream activation of PKA within the cytosol as measured by FRET-based sensors in single living cells. Point mutations in the cAMP-binding domains of the construct rendered the chimera unable to bind cAMP in vitro or in situ. Cyclic AMP sponge was fruitfully applied to examine feedback regulation of gap junction-mediated transfer of cAMP in epithelial cell couplets.

CONCLUSIONS
This newest member of the cAMP toolbox has the potential to reveal unique biological functions of cAMP, including insight into the functional significance of compartmentalized signaling events.


This paper addresses remarks made by Flemming (2003) to the effect that his analysis of the interaction between retroflexion and vowel backness is superior to that of Hamann (2003b). While Hamann maintained that retroflex articulations are always back, Flemming adduces phonological as well as phonetic evidence to prove that retroflex consonants can be non-back and even front (i.e. palatalised). The present paper, however, shows that the phonetic evidence fails under closer scrutiny. A closer consideration of the phonological evidence shows, by making a principled distinction between articulatory and perceptual drives, that a reanalysis of Flemming's data in terms of unviolated retroflex backness is not only possible but also simpler with respect to the number of language-specific stipulations.


ABSTRACT China plans to launch its nationwide Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2017. Uncertainty in China's future economic growth rate and its effect on underlying emissions may need to be addressed to ensure stability of the scheme. This article investigates an ex-post cap adjustment mechanism for China's ETS. An applicable rule for indexation of emissions targets to gross domestic product (GDP) adjustment is presented. Such an ex-post optimal emissions intensity target is estimated in an empirical simulation of the Hubei ETS, a large pilot scheme in a fast-growing Chinese province. And its implications for China's planned national ETS have been discussed. The article finds that by correcting the emissions cap for the difference between expected and realized GDP, the ex-post adjustment can minimize the abatement costs. It can also limit the influence of uncertainties, as it minimizes the standard deviation of realized abatement, abatement cost, and allowance price for a given expected emissions reduction. In addition, with a limited number of parameters requiring estimation, the ex-post cap adjustment mechanism is feasible. It is consistent with the anticipated design of China's planned national ETS and could be used alongside other design options such as price corridors. POLICY RELEVANCE It will be important for the stability of China's planned national ETS to address uncertainty about future GDP growth which can significantly affect underlying emissions growth. This paper proposes a specific solution, namely an ex-post cap adjustment mechanism for the ETS cap. This method provides flexibility with transparent rules, would be consistent with China's overall ETS policy design, and could be implemented in practice as the required parameters can be readily estimated.


The compression deformation behavior of elastomeric materials under large strain is still far from being understood today. A substantial body of research work on rubber blocks compressed between rigid plates has been developed, although many of the problems remain unsolved. Compression and shear deformation behavior of vulcanizates of natural rubber blend with different filler have been evaluated experimentally in this investigation for their nonlinear characteristics. The maximum bulge radius obtained by this method has been checked for its consistency with the established analytical models and are in good agreement. A significant increase in contact area has been observed in the images under large compressive strains. The compression and shear deformation behavior of rubber blocks under higher strain which have been evaluated experimentally could further support the currently adopted approximate analytical methods.


In this work we explore new techniques for building short signatures from obfuscation. Our goals are twofold. First, we would like to achieve short signatures with adaptive security proofs. Second, we would like to build signatures with fast signing, ideally significantly faster than comparable signatures that are not based on obfuscation. The goal here is to create an "imbalanced'' scheme where signing is fast at the expense of slower verification. We develop new methods for achieving short and fully secure obfuscation-derived signatures. Our base signature scheme is built from punctured programming and makes a novel use of the "prefix technique" to guess a signature. We find that our initial scheme has slower performance than comparable algorithms (e.g. EC-DSA). We find that the underlying reason is that the underlying PRG is called ~l2 times for security parameter l. To address this issue we construct a more efficient scheme by adapting the Goldreich-Goldwasser-Micali [16] construction to form the basis for a new puncturable PRF. This puncturable PRF accepts variable-length inputs and has the property that evaluations on all prefixes of a message can be efficiently pipelined. Calls to the puncturable PRF by the signing algorithm therefore make fewer invocations of the underlying PRG, resulting in reduced signing costs. We evaluate our puncturable PRF based signature schemes using a variety of cryptographic candidates for the underlying PRG. We show that the resulting performance on message signing is competitive with that of widely deployed signature schemes.


Fantasy sport has seen substantial growth over the last several decades, provoking research on how participation impacts the perceptions of teams and players. Following research in the field of economics, which has found that contexts promoting the assignment of economic value to humans result in dehumanization, the authors explored the dehumanization of professional athletes among fantasy football participants. Specifically, given that fantasy football requires participants to view players in terms of value in drafts, trades, and waiver claims, this should theoretically force participants to view them as commodities more so than humans. Across three implicit association test experiments and a qualitative study, the authors found fantasy football participants to be more apt to associate humanness with athletes on their fantasy roster(s) than non-fantasy-eligible athletes. Furthermore, qualitative insights indicate that participation in fantasy can serve to humanize players in a way that traditional sport consumption does not. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.


HIGH-TECH PUBLIC RELATIONS From Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, to Silicon Valley in Northern California; from the languishing minicomputer scene in the East to the flourishing workstation business in the West; high-tech public relations, like the industry it serves, is growing up. Despite the ups and downs in one segment or another as the high-tech field matures, the overall pace continues to be fast and furious. The electronics industry, which includes computers, components, communications, instruments and TV and radio, reached $266 billion in factory shipments in 1989, according to the Cahners Publishing Economics Department. It is now the largest manufacturing industry in the country, and is growing twice as fast as all other manufacturing businesses. That rapid expansion, along with the far-reaching implications of new technology for all businesses and for our individual lifestyles, have made high-tech one of the most fertile and challenging specialties for public relations practitioners. When high-tech companies create or react to technological changes, the public relations professional must anticipate, define and communicate the implications of these changes. "Communication is going to be the next really important discipline to assert itself in top management" at high-tech companies, says Robert Strayton, APR, former executive vice president and director of advanced technology, Hill and Knowlton, Waltham, Massachusetts. Strayton, who recently founded the Strayton Group, a public relations consulting firm, says that, by the year 2000, there will be a chief communications officer in virtually every important high-tech company - and that that person will have power comparable to the head of finance or MIS or operations. But at the same time that they find their abilities increasingly in demand and their status on the rise, high-tech public relations firms and corporate practitioners find themselves struggling to balance traditional and nontraditional techniques, broaden their skills and expertise, and convince clients or managers of the need for greater investment in public relations programs. Improving on the basics In the '60s and '70s, and even into the '80s, public relations professionals engaged in what James Helbig, principal for Regis McKenna, Inc., Dallas, terms "meat and potatoes PR." A new product introduction consisted of a press release disseminated to the trade press, followed up with specification sheets. Products were defined only as being faster, smaller or requiring less power. While there's still no substitute for strong publicity, as the industry has become more competitive and a company's ability to get its message across more difficult, practitioners have fine-tuned and adapted their messages and their use of basic publicity and media relations techniques. "Technology is moving much, much faster than people's ability to absorb or use it," comments Robbin Goodman, senior vice president, Makovsky & Company, New York. "The companies that are going to prosper are those that are able to communicate how to use their technology and the benefits of that technology. You can't just have a product anymore; you've got to have a position, a message and a way to get it out there to persuade people." Bylined articles, application stories, media tours and press seminars and other staples remain important, but the selection and timing of these are now very much tied to specific objectives and analyses of which will pack the most punch at strategic points. The major product launch continues to be a very successful tactic for some companies, but a ho-hum campaign is unlikely to generate a response that justifies the high costs involved. Oracle Corporation, Belmont, California, recently made the most of a product introduction when it announced its relations database management system. Oracle's message was that its product was very fast among products that are traditionally slow. …


Miss Medina presents a case study of the action of SERVIVIENDA after the disaster created by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia. She shows the ways the action was locally controlled and the idea of creating a revolving fund based on the large amounts of help that arrived to help the local communities affected by the disaster. The whole project was dismantled by the intervention of one of the large donors which simply skipped local channels and institutions and destroyed the whole idea of the revolving fund, frustrating any further intention of permament funding for local development.