Concrete grinding residue (CGR) is a slurry waste consisting of water and concrete fines generated from diamond grinding operations that is used to smooth a concrete pavement surface. During this process, CGRs are mostly disposed along the roadside, which can influence soils and plant communities along the roadways. To understand the effects of CGR on soil physical and chemical properties and plant growth, a controlled field site at the Kelly Farm in Iowa was used with CGR application rates of 0, 10, 20, and 40 dry ton/acre to test properties of soils and plants before the application and one month, six months and one year after the CGR application. Two roadsides along Interstate 90 in Minnesota where CGR material was applied in the past were investigated as well. Laboratory and field experiments were conducted to measure plant biomass, bulk density, hydraulic conductivity, infiltration, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), alkalinity, metals, cation exchange capacity (CEC), exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), and percentage base saturation (PBS) of soil samples collected from the test sites. Statistical analyses were conducted to correlate the CGR additions to the properties of soils and plants. The results of statistical analyses from the Kelly Farm indicated that CGR material did not significantly affect soil physical properties and plant biomass but impacted the chemical properties of soil. Changes in some soil properties such as pH and percent base saturation (PBS) due to CGR did not persist after one year. The results from two Minnesota roadsides indicated that the areas receiving CGR applications in the past did not negatively affect soil quality and plant growth.


In this work, we consider second order elliptic problems arising in the modeling of single phase flows in porous media in 2D and in the analysis of transverse electromagnetic modes in wave guides using a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method, the so-called Local Discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method. We designed and developed an object oriented framework for performing DG computations on unstructured meshes that allows the use of arbitrary degree in the polynomial approximations and non conformal meshes with an arbitrary number of hanging nodes per edge. We present numerical studies of an automatic mesh adaptation technique and a semi-algebraic multilevel preconditioner for the LDG method.
DG methods may be viewed as high-order extensions of the classical finite volume method. Since no inter-element continuity is imposed, they can be defined on very general meshes, including non-conforming meshes, making these methods suitable for h-adaptivity.
Our adaptive algorithm starts with an initial, conformal spatial discretization of the domain where the numerical solution of the partial differential equation is obtained using the LDG method. In each step, the error of the solution is estimated and the mesh is modified successively by performing two local operations: refining a fraction of the cells where the estimated error is greater and agglomerating a fraction of the cells where the estimated error is smallest. This procedure is repeated until the solution reaches a desired accuracy.
It has been recently shown that the spectral condition number of the stiffness matrix exhibits an asymptotic behavior of O (h-2) on structured and unstructured meshes, where h is the mesh size, making the use of effective preconditioners a practical requirement.
We present a semi-algebraic multilevel preconditioner for the LDG method and show through several numerical experiments that its performance does not degrade as the number of unknowns augments.
The performance of these techniques is explored on problems with high jumps in the coefficients, which is the typical scenario of problems arising in practical applications.


Jointly matching of multiple graphs is challenging and recently has been an active topic in machine learning and computer vision. State-of-the-art methods have been devised, however, to our best knowledge there is no effective mechanism that can explicitly deal with the matching of a mixture of graphs belonging to multiple clusters, e.g., a collection of bikes and bottles. Seeing its practical importance, we propose a novel approach for multiple graph matching and clustering. Firstly, for the traditional multi-graph matching setting, we devise a composition scheme based on a tree structure, which can be seen as in the between of two strong multi-graph matching solvers, i.e., MatchOpt (Yan et al. 2015a) and CAO (Yan et al. 2016a). In particular, it can be more robust than MatchOpt against a set of diverse graphs and more efficient than CAO. Then we further extend the algorithm to the multiple graph matching and clustering setting, by adopting a decaying technique along the composition path, to discount the meaningless matching between graphs in different clusters. Experimental results show the proposed methods achieve excellent trade-off on the traditional multi-graph matching case, and outperform in both matching and clustering accuracy, as well as time efficiency.


The construction industry leads the private sector with the most fatalities of any industry in the United States. With an expected growth of the industry in the next century, safe work environments are imperative. They will impact the bottom line of the industry through the reduction of fatal and non-fatal injuries. Although the causes of injuries and illnesses in construction have long been tracked, reported and researched, the industry continues to lead in occupational related fatal and non-fatal injuries. It is critical to understand if a tradeoff exists between safety and productivity to avoid shortcut behaviors in the field. This is specifically important due to the number of contractors, subcontractors and laborers that participate in the different projects. The overall objective of this research was to increase the understanding of the relationship between perceived and observed safety and productivity and to understand the variability in perception and behavior between crews working for the same general contractor in the homebuilding construction industry. For this research, questionnaires and behavioral observations were employed. The results demonstrated a significant moderate positive relationship between safety climate and perceived risk behavior at the crew level. A model was developed that suggests that safety climate and work ownership are predictors of perceived risk behaviors. This relationship is important to understand since employee attitudes, safety commitment and organizational factors may affect acceptability of safety processes and procedures. The differences among construction crews were evaluated at two levels, individual crews and critical path groups. All tests were significant for differences among crews. To further understand these differences, crews were grouped in accordance with the critical path of a homebuilding schedule. A significant difference existed for risk behavior, productivity loss and work ownership. Behavioral observations were used to evaluate crew performance. Top contributing behaviors of productivity, safety and waste were identified. The top behaviors provide improvement areas for productivity, safety and waste. Overall, learning from this research provided insight into the relationships between safety climate, risk behavior, productivity and work ownership. Understanding this relationship can contribute to the design of safety interventions, and consequently, the reduction of injuries and fatalities.


In the present study, we aimed to describe dietary changes made post-diagnosis and current dietary supplement use by survivors of colorectal cancer (CRC), and explore the underlying motives for these lifestyle habits. Cross-sectional analyses were performed for 1458 stage I–IV CRC survivors of the Patient Reported Outcomes Following Initial Treatment and Long-Term Evaluation of Survivorship (PROFILES) registry, diagnosed between 2000 and 2009. Lifestyle, sociodemographic and clinical information was collected. Prevalence of and motivations for dietary changes and supplement use were assessed. Associations between lifestyle, sociodemographic and clinical variables were analysed by multivariable logistic regression. CRC survivors (57 % male) were on average 70 (sd 9) years of age and diagnosed 7 (sd 3) years ago. Dietary changes post-diagnosis were reported by 36 % of the survivors and current supplement use by 32 %. Motivations for dietary changes were mostly cancer-related (44 % reported 'prevention of cancer recurrence' as the main reason), while motivations for supplement use were less frequently related to the cancer experience (38 % reported 'to improve health and prevent disease in general' as the main reason). Dietary changes were significantly associated with dietary supplement use (OR 1·5, 95 % CI 1·1, 2·1). Survivors who had received dietary advice, were non-smokers, under 65 years of age, and had no stoma were more likely to have changed their diet. Survivors who were female, had multiple co-morbidities, and no overweight or obesity were more likely to use supplements. In conclusion, many CRC survivors alter their diet post-diagnosis and use dietary supplements, in part for different reasons. Insights into motivations behind these lifestyle habits and characteristics of CRC survivors adopting these habits can improve the tailoring of lifestyle counselling strategies.


In food handling industry, grading of granular food materials is necessary because samples of material are subjected to adulteration. In the past, food products in the form of particles or granules were passed through sieves or other mechanical means for grading purposes. In this paper, analysis is performed on basmati rice granules; to evaluate the performance using image processing and Neural Network is implemented based on the features extracted from rice granules for classification grades of granules. Digital imaging is recognized as an efficient technique, to extract the features from rice granules in a non-contact manner. Images are acquired for rice using camera. Conversion to gray scale, Median smoothing, Adaptive thresholding, Canny edge detection, Sobel edge Detection, morphological operations, extraction of quantitative information are the checks that are performed on the acquired image using image processing technique through Open source Computer Vision (Open CV) which is a library of functions that aids image processing in real time. The morphological features acquired from the image are given to Neural Network. This work has been done to identify the relevant quality category for a given rice sample based on its parameters. The performance of image processing reduced the time of operation and improved the crop recognition greatly. Grading results obtained from Neural Network system shows greater accuracy when compared with the outputs from human experts.


Groundwater law in India gives individual landowners overwhelming control over groundwater. This is inappropriate in a context where groundwater is now the main source of water for the realisation of the human right to water. This also fails to provides the basis for effective protection of groundwater at aquifer level. Increasing dependence on groundwater for all the main water uses has made the need for reforms of the legal framework increasingly acute. This article argues that groundwater law must be reconceived around a new set of principles that recognise the common nature of groundwater, its importance in realising the human right to water, the need for a governance framework starting at the local level and the need for a strong aquifer protection regime. The proposed new framework is then examined in the context of the Groundwater Model Bill, 2011 that reflects in large part this new framework.


Studies of the relationship between human resource management and establishment performance have heretofore focused on the manufacturing sector. Using a unique longitudinal dataset collected through site visits to branch operations of a large bank, the author extends that research to the service sector. Because branch managers had considerable discretion in managing their operations and employees, the HRM environment could vary greatly across branches and over time. Site visits provided specific examples of managerial practices that affected branch performance. An analysis of responses to the bank's employee attitude survey that controls for unobserved branch and manager characteristics shows a positive relationship between branch performance and employees' satisfaction with the quality of performance evaluation, feedback, and recognition at the branch—the "incentives" dimension of a high-performance work system. In some fixed effects specifications, satisfaction with the quality of communications at the branch was also important.


Cotton Root Rot (CRR), caused by Phymatotrichopsis omnivora, is a problem across the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, commonly killing plants in infected portions of fields and greatly reducing overall yields. Over several decades a few studies have attempted to determine how soil properties influence the incidence of CRR, but no consistent associations have been found. Recent technological improvements allow for rapid collection of high-resolution disease damage estimates from aerial photography and of soil-property data, most notably with devices that measure apparent electrical conductivity (ECa). These technologies provide another avenue for evaluation of possible relationships between disease damage and soil properties. Data were collected from three geographically separated fields in Texas known to exhibit CRR: (1) aerial imagery to document CRR infection, (2) ECa data of soils with an electromagnetic induction device, and (3) several physical and chemical soil properties measured on soil cores sampled from the sites. Images were analyzed for incidence of CRR, and all other data were geographically overlaid for comparison among data sets. A significant relationship was found between ECa and CRR at one site but was not found at the others. The relationship between ECa and other soil properties tended to involve hydrologic factors such as clay and sand contents, which affect soil water holding capacity, and depth to soil matrix effervescence and inorganic carbon content, which indicate relative water movement through the soil profile. Soil properties that were significantly related to CRR incidence included soil pH (two of three locations) and clay and sand contents (at one site only).


In this piece, I argue that the city of Cairo has witnessed unprecedented urban transformations for the past 4 years, owing to urban wars and confrontations during the two regimes that followed Mubarak's ouster. Street politics, although mesmerizing, have been highly exhausting. With the reemergence of the army in civil life, after the ousting of President Morsi, street activism is becoming hazardous and highly costly in terms of human life. Whether Egypt is witnessing the persistence of a counter-revolutionary moment, firmly marching toward the uncompromising neoliberal city, exemplified in Dubai as a model and planned prior to 2011, will be difficult to answer, precisely because Cairo is not Dubai. Experts on Arab revolutions have spoken of the emergence of new "subjectivities" that have opened novel mental, visual, and physical interactions in the city, perhaps encouraging optimism in the long term.


The Brazilian Workshop on Semiconductor Physics is a biennial workshop initiated in 1983 with the goal of gathering the Brazilian semiconductor physics community to a series of lectures on the most important and timely topics in the area. BWSP is currently the premier national meeting for reporting all aspects of semiconductor physics including electronic, structural, optical, magnetic and transport properties. The workshop will reflect the state of art in the semiconductor physics and will serve as a forum where scholars, researchers, and specialists can interact to discuss future research directions and technological advancements. In this edition, the BWSP will be organized by professors from the Institute of Physics of the University of São Paulo (IFUSP). We will continue to cover a broad range of topics such as low dimensional systems, topological insulators, graphene, twodimensional systems beyond graphene, wideand narrow-gap semiconductors, spin manipulation, organic and biological related semiconductors, among other traditional topics in semiconductor physics. Moreover, we will include tutorials on growth, spin-orbit coupling and two-dimensional materials.


In this paper, we present a novel method for pose invariant face detection in color images. The novelty in our method of face detection arises from the integration of evidence from various independent sources such as color, frequency response and geometric shape information. Skin color is detected in the Y-Cb-Cr color space using a RPROP neural network. The shape information is derived from a novel ellipse area criterion and then it is formulated to compute a probabilistic score of the connected components that represent the faces in the images. The third source is based on Gabor 2D filters that are used to obtain frequency signatures of faces in the images. The final likelihood of a face is a combination of the individual probabilities of color, shape and Gabor response.


Online shopping often requires consumers to choose among multiple products without detailed information about the quality. Herding is common in such situations which require consumers to infer product quality from other consumers' choices and incorporate that information into their own decision-making process. The Internet affects the herding phenomenon in two ways. On the one hand, it provides more information about other consumers' choices, making herding more feasible. On the other hand, the Internet provides more details about product quality, thus making herding less desirable. In this paper, we empirically examine those two effects in the context of online software downloading. We collected data on daily software downloads and studied how the daily download market share is related to the cumulative number of downloads and to the professionals' and users' ratings. We find significant herd behavior in our analysis of customers' software choices. Surprisingly, the provision of professional product reviews or user reviews does not have a significant influence on the herding phenomenon. Our results suggest that consumers are in favor of information inferred from others' behavior, but choose to ignore other sources of information. Such results are consistent with the predictions of the informational cascades literature. Our results also indicate that the vast amount of information provided on the Internet may not have as great an impact on consumer decision-making as previously expected. This paper contributes to e-commerce and Internet marketing research by investigating and offering a more in-depth understanding of online consumer behavior. This paper also contributes to the emerging literature on the impact of virtual communities.


American plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides) on the Grand Bank (Divisions 3LNO) and Flemish Cap (Div. 3M) are thought to represent separate populations. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a change in the distribution of American plaice in the region. They were found in the deep waters of the Flemish Pass and in addition, the Grand Bank population as a whole was found in deeper waters. This raises the possibility of mixing between the two populations, at least in the area of the Flemish Pass. The purpose of this study was to examine the distribution, size and maturation of American plaice in the Flemish pass to help determine if fish in that area are a mix of fish from the two adjacent populations or if the fish remain separated there. American plaice collected from the western (Div. 3L) and eastern (Div. 3M) sides of the Flemish Pass were clearly different in mean length-at-age and in their maturation, with fish from the eastern side being larger at age and females maturing at a smaller size than those from the western or Grand Bank side of the Flemish Pass. Further, American plaice were not collected in the deepest part of the Pass that was surveyed. Thus it seems that fish in the Flemish Pass area are not mixing but rather are separate groups.


Universities globally are increasingly seeking to improve the international mobility of their students. There are several latent benefits that accrue to a university whose students and staff actively participate in international exchange programs. Essentially this can lead to an increase in the university's international reputation, opportunities for benchmarking against best practices, capacity to develop international relationships, diversity of student population with all the benefits that accrue from diversity, and access to potential recruitment markets. In this paper we review extant literature to elicit the range of practical factors that play a role in the decision of students to study abroad. We also discuss results from a recent survey among Australian students that revealed their preferences for international work placements.


ABSTRACT With reference to the Technology-based Learning model for flipped classrooms, a literature review on Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) papers published in the Web of Science (WOS) database was conducted, with the application of flipped learning in science education as the research topic. The study analyzed the existing research on author nationalities, application domains, research methods, participants, learning strategies, and research issues. Based on the analysis data, starting from 2015, there have been a large number of flipped classroom studies in science education. The studies were mainly from the United States; the application domains were mostly chemistry, physics, biology, and natural science and ecology. Over half of the studies adopted quantitative methods, and participants were mainly college students. In the before-class stage, the flipped classroom studies in science education mainly adopted instructional videos as the learning materials and used online learning systems as the medium for materials and online discussion. In the in-class stage, the major learning strategy was problem-based learning, while over half of the studies did not employ educational technology. In the after-class stage, most studies administered examinations to explore the learning outcomes. Accordingly, Potential research issues are proposed as a reference for future studies.


This paper deals with the goodness of the Gaussian assumption when designing second-order blind estimation methods in the context of digital communications. The low- and high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) asymptotic performance of the maximum likelihood estimator - derived assuming Gaussian transmitted symbols - is compared with the performance of the optimal second-order estimator, which exploits the actual distribution of the discrete constellation. The asymptotic study concludes that the Gaussian assumption leads to the optimal second-order solution if the SNR is very low or if the symbols belong to a multilevel constellation such as quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) or amplitude-phase-shift keying (APSK). On the other hand, the Gaussian assumption can yield important losses at high SNR if the transmitted symbols are drawn from a constant modulus constellation such as phase-shift keying (PSK) or continuous-phase modulations (CPM). These conclusions are illustrated for the problem of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple digitally-modulated signals.


In present study examination of fishes, present in 15 fish ponds, were done for the infestation of EUS in Chitwan, Nepal. Nine ponds or 60% of them were recorded infested and confirmed to be EUS positive. Among 1491 fish samples examined, 170 fish samples were found with lesions and 165 of them were confirmed to be EUS-positive. Two culture fish species like Labeo rohita and Catla catla was found to be containing lesions among different fish species. So, they were sampled for histological study. Other fish species like common carp, silver carp, grass carp and big head carp were not found to be EUS positive. The risk of EUS infestation was found high in fish ponds connected with paddy fields and flooded water supplying wild fish species. Ponds with poor management and use of contaminated nets also had a high risk of EUS infestation.


Racism is a social construct that has had significant and negative impacts on Indigenous peoples across Canada. These effects are evident in the Indigenous and non- Indigenous health, education, and income gaps (Bourassa, McKay-McNabb & Hampton, 2004; King & Gracey, 2009; King, Smith, & Gracey, 2009; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). The study of racial prejudice and its mediation are informed by Western theories of knowledge so strongly that other ways of knowing such as Indigenous theories of knowledge are marginalized. How might the inclusion of Indigenous theories and knowledge impact experiences of racism? This research study examines this question. It interweaves a postcolonial theoretical framework and Indigenous knowledge with Grounded Theory Methodologies and Indigenous Methodologies to examine a cohort of 21 Indigenous students' lived experience with a school program, the Photography Class, designed to mediate students' experience of racism. This program was of particular interest because it utilized a combination of oral teachings and photography to provide students with a more accurate, positive, and more complete understanding of what it means to be Nehiyaw/Cree and to mediate racist narratives circulated through mainstream media. This study documents how the Nehiyaw/Cree practice termed Kisewatotatowin/awakening Kiskisohkemowin/remembering was mobilized through the Photography Class. Specifically, the research findings illustrate how Canada's colonial legacy of racism and its learned practice of hate can be redressed by: (1) awakening and reminding the students of their inherent love for themselves, their family, community, and all beings (human and non-human) and (2) fostering space for the students to create a more accurate, positive, and complete narrative about who they are. The data analysis presented from those findings contribute to the study of racial prejudice through the documentation of a mediation process for racism grounded in Indigenous theories of knowledge, Nehiyaw/Cree in particular. More important, it provides insight into what constitutes racism from an Nehiyaw/Cree worldview and how an integration of Indigenous knowledge and practices extend Western theories of racial prejudice and its mediation.


Integration is a crucial step in the reconstruction of complete 3D surface model from multiple scans. Ever-present registration errors and scanning noise make integration a nontrivial problem. In this paper, we propose a novel method for multi-view scan integration where we solve it as a labeling problem. Unlike previous methods, which have been based on various merging schemes, our labeling-based method is essentially a selection strategy. The overall surface model is composed of surface patches from selected input scans. We formulate the labeling via a higher-order Markov Random Field (MRF) which assigns a label representing an index of some input scan to every point in a base surface. Using a higher-order MRF allows us to more effectively capture spatial relations between 3D points. We employ belief propagation to infer this labeling and experimentally demonstrate that this integration approach provides significantly improved integration via both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.


BACKGROUND
Multidomain interventions which incorporate exercise and dietary supplementation to target both cognitive and physical health domains may be an important approach to delay cognitive decline.

OBJECTIVE
The Protein Omega-3 aNd vitamin D Exercise Research (PONDER) study investigated the effects of a 6-month multifaceted intervention in community-dwelling older adults with subjective memory impairment on cognition (primary outcome), physical function, and body composition with a further 6-month follow up for cognition (secondary outcomes).

METHODS
Single-center, community-based, parallel-group, randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial involving a 6-month multifaceted intervention with a further follow-up at 12 months. A total of 147 participants [mean age 70.2 years (SD 6.1), 70% female] were randomized to a multimodal exercise program consisting of twice-weekly supervised resistance and aerobic training, combined with a daily omega-3 (900 mg EPA, 600 mg DHA), vitamin D (1000 IU) and protein (20 g) supplement (n = 73), or a control condition (n = 74) comprising stretching/flexibility sessions combined with a placebo. The primary outcome was a composite CogState measure and Trail-Making Test B-A.

RESULTS
There were no significant between-group differences in the change of cognition at 6 or 12 months or physical function outcomes at 6 months, but the intervention significantly improved total lean mass compared to controls [0.72 kg (95% CI 0.26-1.19), p = 0.001].

CONCLUSION
A multi-faceted intervention including an omega-3, vitamin D and protein-enriched supplement with twice-weekly exercise training did not provide any benefits to cognitive or physical function in older adults with subjective memory impairment, despite improvements in lean mass.


The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina drew attention to commonplace landscape markers that create for a community a sense of place—that connection between people and places crucial to a sense of corporate and individual identity and heritage. There is a legal context for sense of place within extant federal preservation legislation. Nevertheless, many such markers with special meanings for residents have been overlooked in federal documentation, the cornerstone of which is the National Register of Historic Places. Grassroots efforts and national media coverage have helped forge a niche for sense of place within the recovery plans and policy emerging in the affected region. However, it is unclear whether this will carry over into practice. In terms of long-term policy shifts, remedying the shortcomings highlighted by Katrina may require changes to the National Historic Preservation Act and its associated guidelines and regulations, or it may entail a new approach altogether.


In "The Ku Klux Klan at Home in Hillsdale," author Aife Murray travels to Bergen County to reckon with a dramatic set of events that occurred during her father's Hillsdale youth when his family was attacked by the Second Ku Klux Klan; long-held by historians as this country's most powerful far right movement. Through the author's quest (including interviews with her father's contemporaries on both sides of the Klan equation), she uncovers a Klan story that, in artifacts and acts, has been preserved within a larger, more common frame of America's failure to come to terms with what occurred in the early 20th century. Within the long shadow of all-American terrorism, a tale is revealed of shifting power in the Pascack Valley with a local KKK populated by community leaders fearing changes that included Catholic encroachment. After the Klan's demise, some victims, refusing to forget, kept the story alive while living beside their former terrorizers. The author notes that a mass movement of millions of otherwise ordinary white Protestants should be remembered not only for its legacy of terror (with which Americans continue to wrestle) but for how their fires forged an unintended consequence: subsequent storytellers, historians, and resistors like her father who made a life of civil rights activism.


The transformations (i) SMEMAX (ii) Modified SMEMAX (iii) Power and Probability Distributions (iv) Weibull (α,β,γ) or Extreme value type III (v) Weibull (α,β,0) (vi) Log Pearson Type III (vii) Log Boughton are considered for the low flow analysis. Also, different parameter estimating procedures are considered. Both the Weibull and log Pearson can have positive lower bounds and thus their use in fitting low flow probabilities may not be physically justifiable. A new derivation generalizing the SMEMAX transformation is proposed. A new estimator for the log Boughton distribution is presented. It is found that the Boughton distribution with Cunnane's plotting position provides a good fit to low flows for Virginia streams.


Problem. The increasing emphasis on school counseling by the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago highlights the need to clarify and standardize the role of the counselor in the secondary schools. The satisfaction of these needs can be facilitated by determining the perceptions held by counselors, principals, teachers, and students about the counselor's role in the school system; by clearly articulating this role; and by identifying the relationships between the counselor's role and the counselor's job satisfaction. The burden of this study was to determine these perceptions and relationships. Method. A descriptive mode of inquiry was used to explore respondents' perceptions. Questionnaires were sent to 370 subjects: 35 counselors, 35 principals, 100 teachers, and 200 students. The counselors were given two questionnaires; the Counselor Function Inventory (77 items covering seven major counselor services) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (20 items covering different aspects of job satisfaction). Principals, teachers, and students were given only the Counselor Function Inventory, which sought to gauge respondent perceptions about counselors' actual (real) role and ideal role in secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago. Findings. The results showed significant perception differences between counselors, principals, teachers, and students about counselors' actual and ideal role. The perceptions of counselors and principals tended to be more similar than dissimilar; the perceptions of teachers and students tended to be quite similar; and the perceptions of counselors tended to be quite different from those of teachers and students. Counselors' discrepancy in their perception of actual and ideal counselor services tended to have little relationship with their job satisfaction, except in the cases of placement services and follow-up services. The study found that secondary-school counselors in Trinidad and Tobago experienced high levels of job satisfaction generally. Conclusions. The study revealed a need for consensus in perception and definition of the counselor's role by the counselor's professional colleagues and other role-definers. This situation seems to suggest a need for standardization of the counselor's role in secondary schools of Trinidad and Tobago. As a result of this study, professional role definers (and determiners) are made more aware of the need for concerted efforts toward standardization and more harmonious participation in the education process. The level of satisfaction registered by secondary-school counselors should serve as an incentive to educational planners to provide strong professional support for counselors.


First and foremost, the development of a modem using the USRP has applications in oceanographic monitoring and communication. Improved acoustic connecting would allow more efficient transfer of information between Underwater Acoustic (UWA) equipment such as autonomous vehicles, piloted vehicles, and underwater profilers. Therefore it can easily be modified in order to be employed for the testing of different UWA. This project describes the full system of an underwater acoustic modem with underwater wireless connection starting with the most critical component of the system which is the USRP amplifier for the receiver and the transceiver. In this project we focused on the development of the USRP amplifier. This amplifier is expected to enhance the signal of the transceiver to Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) modem and the GNU radio. The platform that we proposed uses the Software Defined Radio (SDR) as the main controller. This is due to its flexibility in modulation and able to support coding. Since this is an initial stage, in this work we only use Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) as the modulation techniques. The performance of the UWA platform had been tested and we found that as the frequency increases the attenuation increased as well but with the USRP amplifier we have managed to decrease it. UWA communication research will benefit greatly from the adaption of the USRP as an underwater acoustic modem. The USRP amplifier amplifies the signal that has send by the transceiver and detected by the receiver will effectively demodulate the signal and analyze the received data in the USRP modem. GNU radio and USRP SDR has been successfully implemented. The results demonstrate that the objectives of this research are archived. It is proved that by implementing GNU radio and USRP SDR in the new generation of underwater acoustic communication technology, and improves the utilization of the underwater communication. We conclude that the proper design of the USRP Amplifier is crucial to obtain high quality performance. This project has successfully developed a USRP amplifier and the underwater acoustic communication testbed with expected results.


This thesis is an enquiry into the psychoanalytic concept of transference. The
`transference' refers to a particular kind of relationship that a patient develops towards
his therapist and is found, to a greater or lesser degree, in all psychotherapeutic
encounters. Psychoanalysis claims that its understanding and handling of the
transference relationship provides an unrivalled access into the unconscious mind.
Using an historical approach, I examine the pre-history of psychoanalysis from
Mesmer to Freud. I then look at the subsequent development within psychoanalysis
up to the present, as represented by the school of psychoanalysis known as Object
Relations (OR). What I set out to demonstrate, through a critical examination of the
psychoanalytic literature, is that the concept of transference does not achieve the
epistemological breakthrough for psychoanalysis that is claimed. Firstly I show that
the observation connecting transference with the unconscious is by no means a new
idea. This connection had already been noted in relation to the concept of the
`rapport' developed by Mesmer and his followers some 150 years prior to the advent
of psychoanalysis. Secondly I show that the explanation that psychoanalysis gives in
terms of the `unconscious phantasies' said to underlie transference, is mistaken. I
show that both the formation of transference in terms of ideas about the therapist, and
the psychoanalytic interpretation of these ideas in terms of `unconscious phantasy', in
fact deny the real nature of the unconscious. This leads me to the development of my
central argument against psychoanalysis. Firstly I argue that the real nature of the
unconscious is structured around affectivity not ideas. Secondly, I argue that because
psychoanalysis misunderstands the real nature of the unconscious, its therapeutic
method offers no significant advantage over hypnosis, out of which it directly
developed.


Familiarity is not our problem. Our problem is the birds in the tree next door—all winter, squawking deep in the only green. By April, so loud I can barely hear you. On the ground they wobble, tails cocked like skewed keels, the sheen of their feathers like oil on wet asphalt. White-eyed, their sockets look pecked clean. At dusk, at dawn, they shriek the soundtrack to the shower scene in Psycho, violins composed to screech like grackles, like a knife ripping flesh: rank-rank-rank-rank, reek-reek-reek-reek-reek, the sound you make when you mean to say a woman's crazy. If you could hear me, I'd say it's a woman being murdered. You'd say too dumb to lock the door. I'd say don't go. You'd say lock the door. Even now, ornithologists disagree over what Linnaeus meant by Quiscalus—maybe an onomatopoieticon, maybe early Portuguese for quail, or maybe from the Spanish quisquilla: a trifling dispute, a triviality, or the Latin quisquiliae for refuse, dregs, the small twigs and leaves which fall from trees. So the birds are fighting over nothing, as we do. Or the Latin quis for who. We hear it all day and all night, that stabbing arm raised, a whirlpool of blood down the drain, reek-reek-reek-reek— and even now, I hardly know you. Who is crazy? Who to blame? Quis? . . . these vagabond troopers, so common everywhere as to come under the contempt of familiarity. —The Coues Check List of North American Birds, 1882


This paper tries to answer two questions. First, how to infer real-time air quality of any arbitrary location given environmental data and historical air quality data from very sparse monitoring locations. Second, if one needs to establish few new monitoring stations to improve the inference quality, how to determine the best locations for such purpose? The problems are challenging since for most of the locations (>99%) in a city we do not have any air quality data to train a model from. We design a semi-supervised inference model utilizing existing monitoring data together with heterogeneous city dynamics, including meteorology, human mobility, structure of road networks, and point of interests (POIs). We also propose an entropy-minimization model to suggest the best locations to establish new monitoring stations. We evaluate the proposed approach using Beijing air quality data, resulting in clear advantages over a series of state-of-the-art and commonly used methods.


Abstract. The aim of the paper is to apply an object-based geomorphometric procedure to define the runoff contribution areas and support a hydro-geomorphological analysis of a 3 km2 Mediterranean research catchment (southern Italy). Daily and sub-hourly discharge and electrical conductivity data were collected and recorded during a 3-year monitoring activity. Hydro-chemograph analyses carried out on these data revealed a strong seasonal hydrological response in the catchment that differed from the stormflow events that occur in the wet periods and in dry periods. This analysis enabled us to define the hydro-chemograph signatures related to increasing flood magnitude, which progressively involves various runoff components (baseflow, subsurface flow and surficial flow) and an increasing contributing area to discharge. Field surveys and water table/discharge measurements carried out during a selected storm event enabled us to identify and map specific runoff source areas with homogeneous geomorphological units previously defined as hydro-geomorphotypes (spring points, diffuse seepage along the main channel, seepage along the riparian corridors, diffuse outflow from hillslope taluses and concentrate sapping from colluvial hollows). Following the procedures previously proposed and used by authors for object-based geomorphological mapping, a hydro-geomorphologically oriented segmentation and classification was performed with the eCognition (Trimble, Inc.) package. The best agreement with the expert-based geomorphological mapping was obtained with weighted plan curvature at different-sized windows. By combining the hydro-chemical analysis and object-based hydro-geomorphotype map, the variability of the contribution areas was graphically modeled for the selected event, which occurred during the wet season, by using the log values of flow accumulation that better fit the contribution areas. The results allow us to identify the runoff component on hydro-chemographs for each time step and calculate a specific discharge contribution from each hydro-geomorphotype. This kind of approach could be useful when applied to similar, rainfall-dominated, forested and no-karst catchments in the Mediterranean eco-region.


Background Increased serum interleukin (IL)-33 predicts poor outcomes in patients hospitalised with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We examined the efficacy and safety of tozorakimab, a monoclonal antibody that neutralises IL-33, in improving outcomes in ACCORD-2 (EudraCT: 2020-001736-95). Methods ACCORD-2 was an open-label, phase 2a study in adults hospitalised with COVID-19. Patients were randomised 1:1 to tozorakimab 300 mg plus standard of care (SoC) or SoC alone. The primary end-point was time to clinical response (sustained clinical improvement of ≥2 points on the World Health Organization ordinal scale, discharge from hospital or fit for discharge) by day 29. Other end-points included death or respiratory failure, mortality and intensive care unit admission by day 29, and safety. Serum IL-33/soluble stimulated-2 (sST2) complex levels were measured by high-sensitivity immunoassay. Results Efficacy analyses included 97 patients (tozorakimab+SoC, n=53; SoC, n=44). Median time to clinical response did not differ between the tozorakimab and SoC arms (8.0 and 9.5 days, respectively; HR 0.96, 80% CI 0.70–1.31; one-sided p=0.33). Tozorakimab was well tolerated and the OR for risk of death or respiratory failure with treatment versus SoC was 0.55 (80% CI 0.27–1.12; p=0.26), while the OR was 0.31 (80% CI 0.09–1.06) in patents with high baseline serum IL-33/sST2 complex levels. Conclusions Overall, ACCORD-2 results suggest that tozorakimab could be a novel therapy for patients hospitalised with COVID-19, warranting further investigation in confirmatory phase 3 studies.


The United States' current financial conditions notwithstanding, climate change remains at the forefront of our national policy agenda. Congress has already considered comprehensive climate legislation in the recent past; during the 110th Congress, three climate change bills were considered in the U.S. Senate: the Bingaman-Specter bill (S. 1766), the Lieberman-Warner bill (S. 2191), and the Manager's Amendment to the Lieberman-Warner bill (S. 3036). In the midst of partisan disagreements and the urgency of the U.S. economic crisis, the Senate was unable to pass a climate change bill during the 110th Congress. This analysis compares the three bills to derive insights regarding the structure and merits of alternative approaches to climate legislation. The discussion first establishes a framework that can be used for systematically evaluating the relative merits of the bills and then describes, compares and evaluates the major components of each bill. The analysis has immediate value to those involved in the ongoing debates about climate legislation, but also provides insight to anyone studying the development of broad environmental legislation. Comparison of the bills and consideration of their timing suggests that the Senate was evolving toward an increasingly sophisticated and cost-effective approach to climate legislation. Important developments included a shift of focus to upstream regulation, increased use of allowance auctions for general revenue raising, and an approach to offsets that required independent reproducibility of evaluations.


Historically PbSe has underperformed PbTe in thermoelectric efficiency and has been regarded as an inferior relative to its telluride congener. However, the fifty-fold greater natural abundance of Se relative to Te makes PbSe appealing as a thermoelectric material. We report that the n-type GeSe-alloyed PbSe system achieves a peak figure of merit, ZT, of ∼1.54 at 773 K and maintains ZT values above 1.2 over a broad temperature range from 623 K to 923 K. The highest performing composition is Sb-doped PbSe–12%GeSe, which exhibits an ultralow lattice thermal conductivity of ∼0.36 W m−1 K−1 at 573 K, close to the limit of amorphous PbSe. Theoretical studies reveal that the alloyed Ge2+ atoms prefer to stay at off-center lattice positions, inducing low frequency modes. The Ge atoms also cause the unexpected behavior where the next nearest atom neighbors (6 Pb atoms) oscillate at lower frequencies than in pure PbSe leading to a large reduction of the Debye temperature and acoustic phonon velocity. The Pb0.9955Sb0.0045Se–12%GeSe system also shows Ge-rich precipitates and many aligned dislocations within its microstructure which also contribute to phonon scattering. The resultant average ZT (ZTavg), a broad measure of the material's potential for functional thermoelectric modules, is 1.06 from 400 K to 800 K, the highest among all previously reported n- and p-type PbSe. This value matches or exceeds even those of the best n-type PbTe-based thermoelectric materials.


Aim: In Turkey, as throughout the world, the incidence of scorpion sting cases and the wide-ranging clinical table, extending from local symptoms to death have not been previously estimated. Therefore, through an examination of patients followed up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the complications, the aim of this study was to evaluate the indications for acceptance of these cases into ICU.

Method: A retrospective examination was made of 59 patients admitted to the ICU of Adiyaman Training and Research Hospital because of a scorpion sting between 2013 and 2016.

Results: All the patients had a unilateral extremity sting, presented at the Emergency Department within 8 hours and were administered anti-venom. In respect of local or systemic complications, thrombus developed in the proximal of the extremity in only 2 patients. With the exception of these 2 patients, all the other cases were discharged within 2 days without complications.

Conclusion: Although the most poisonous scorpion in the world can be found in our region, no case admitted to the ICU in this 3-year period experienced any systemic complications. This is thought to be due to the early presentation at ED within the first 8 hours and that antivenom is produced in our region. In conclusion from this study, it can be recommended that patients with no requirement for the equipment of ICU should not be admitted and patients with local symptoms only should be monitored on the ward.


Critical thinking is closely aligned with the higher in higher education – as a core element of 'graduateness' and a cornerstone of the mission of higher education institutions. Yet while critical thinking is very much 'part of the furniture' in the teaching and learning landscape of higher education, I argue that behind this seemingly good, everyday intellectual value lies further complexity and this research re-thinks how critical thinking is a highly contextualised and embodied set of practices.

My fieldwork involved qualitative research with first-year undergraduate students at a research-intensive UK university. I conducted 3 months of loosely structured observation of students in their weekly lectures and seminars for a compulsory module. I focused on two cohorts of students – named as a professional – or applied social science subject and a more traditional academic social science discipline. I also interviewed 15 of these students at the beginning of their first year at university and conducted focus groups with 4 of these students at the end of their first year. These research encounters explored how undergraduate students understand what critical thinking means, what it requires, what it makes possible and its role in their studies, lives and futures. These data were then analysed using a critical, feminist sociological theoretical framework, informed by post-structural and new materialist theorisations. It drew specifically on the theoretical insights offered by Karen Barad and Sara Ahmed and how the connections and clashes in their work offer generative potential for re-thinking critical thinking. I argue that a specifically feminist analysis of critical thinking allows both a deeper exploration of how critical thinking legitimates itself through different bodies, as well how it gets constituted through higher education's structures of power and inequality.

The thesis makes four analytical claims. Firstly, rather than critical thinking representing a cognitive act by reasoned, detached bodies, this thesis explores how it emerges both through the web of social, material and discursive knowledge practices that constitute critical knowledge and with different bodies that enact it. Instead of understanding pedagogical practices in higher education as fixed and stable, I highlight how the experience of critical thinking shifts in accordance with the social, embodied and relational contexts in which one is entangled at any particular moment. Secondly, I explore how critical thinking is an intensely affective experience. Students appeared to feel their way through complex affects of both desiring the transformative power of criticality whilst also wishing to resist it and apply it selectively as a consequence of its negativity. Such concerns over embodying the right kind of critical persona, demonstrate how becoming a critical thinker is not a simplistic act of thought and action but deeply affective processes of becoming critical. Thirdly, critical thinking is not undertaken by generic 'critical beings' but critical bodies located in the particularities of their social characteristics and differences and the multiple intersecting impacts of these upon their own experiences. Critical thinkers are not neutral subjects but gendered, classed and raced beings and becoming a critical thinker is inseparable from the ways bodies are unequally positioned in the academy. Finally, this thesis explores how neoliberal higher education produces an increasingly narrow economic vocabulary for talking about education's value and values and a limited grammar for understanding the contextual and contingent nature of critical thinking.


A widebandwidth optical delay line is a useful device for various fascinating applications, such as optical buffering and processing of ultrafast signal. Here, we experimentally demonstrated effective slow light of sub-picosecond signal over 10 THz frequency range by employing the wide slow light modes in thick symmetrical metal-cladding optical waveguide (SMCOW). Ultrahigh-order guided modes travelling as slow light in waveguide together with strong confinement provided by metal-cladding makes this scheme nearly material dispersion independent and compatible with wide bandwidth operation.


Many people assume that it is challenging to maintain the intimacy of a long-distance (LD) relationship. However, recent research suggests that LD romantic relationships are of equal or even more trust and satisfaction than their geographically close (GC) counterparts. The present diary study tested an intimacy-enhancing process, in which LD couples (a) engage in more adaptive self-disclosures and (b) form more idealized relationship perceptions than do GC couples in the pursuit of intimacy across various interpersonal media. The results demonstrate the effects of behavioral adaptation and idealization on intimacy, and suggest that the two effects vary depending on the cue multiplicity, synchronicity, and mobility of the communication medium employed. Implications for understanding LD relating and mix-mode relating are discussed.


Streaming media is everywhere. Corporations, entertainment media, news media and educational institutions use it. The explosion of technology has raised the question: "What does research say about streaming media?" How effective is the use of streaming media? Streaming media offers the learner a capacity for interaction in a dynamic new learning environment. Implemented effectively, the use of streaming media as an instructional tool can free both the instructor and the learner from the traditionally embedded constraints of time and place. When you look at streaming media in the educational setting, there are many factors to consider. The face-to-face student-teacher relationship is taken out of the equation. The student has the experience of being "there" in the classroom, but, in reality is quite free of traditional temporal and locative restraints. With the use of streaming media, a class session can be uploaded to a student's computer and the entire class lecture-any visuals and any animated demonstrations that a teacher uses-can be seen and viewed at optimally convenient times for the learner. If you have watched any video material on the Web lately, you have probably experienced streaming media. Many web content providers are using this technology to provide material to people visiting their sites because it is one of the most effective ways to communicate information. For example, news media sites offer video segments from their coverage of current events. Hollywood studios promote movies with trailers for upcoming releases. Corporations deliver on-demand staff training and vendors promote their products through the use of commercials. Educational administrators, professional faculty, corporate managers and line personnel are finding all kinds of ways to utilize streaming media. Today, course sites are providing links to streamed course lectures to broaden their audience and allow students to review material. Instructors are providing students with convenient access to video materials both in and out of the classroom; researchers are providing links to streamed content related to their projects, results, and much more. In higher education there are currently two primary ways in which streaming technology is utilized. These modes are determined by the objectives of the user. Streaming technology is used "...as a learning resource to be 'pulled' by the learners and as a delivery mechanism 'pushed' by the teaching team" (Fill, K. & Ottewill, R., 2006, p. 399). It is important to note that a student's participation in accessing and learning from the streaming video plays a large part in the learning process. Students will probably not look at educational streaming video any differently than entertainment streaming video. This point is echoed by Looms (2002) who argues that: As teenagers move on to college and university, they will be taking with them skills and attitudes acquired both in and out of school that will influence how they judge teaching and learning resources. Watching, playing and connecting account for a substantial proportion of our students' waking hours. Those in tertiary education will need.. .to exploit synergies with out-of-school pastimes, to build upon what has already been learnt and to make allowances for what has not (pg. 10). The uses and benefits of streaming video have been well documented. According to Zenios (2002), Michelich (2002), and Fill and Ottewill (2006), the uses of streaming media include: * "increased learner control: flexibility with respect to accessing, starting, stopping and searching the video, which echoes two questions-relating to student access and control-from Race's list about video and learning (Race, 1995, p. 81); * 'bite size' delivery: splitting the video content into smaller, more 'digestible' sections; * synthesis: incorporating all or parts of the video into multimedia learning resources; * speeding up processes: particularly those that take longer than a typical laboratory or other practical class; * easier and cheaper updating: changes to a single copy instantly available to all; * changing the perceptions of students: specifically regarding the value of technology-mediated learning. …


Method : The aim of this study was to explore the systematic follow up of supportive activities in non-profit organizations targeted at children as next of kin. Managers and group leaders were interviewed, and findings were content analysed. Results : The findings indicated that a child focus, education, safety and trust were important. These factors were observed as the primary tasks and the key reason for being involved in supportive activities. Managers expressed concern about not retaining funding, if the organization was unable to demonstrate the effects of their activities. Namely, to enhance the health and wellbeing of children. In order to continuously develop their work most organisations explained that they used some form of system for follow up. However, there was a wide variation in how non-profit organizations worked with follow ups. Conclusion : Overall, it was evident that there was a major need for education and support in this area.


This research examines the changing nature of the Asian online gaming
industry and the position of Taiwan in the regional market. The evidence used was
gathered through fieldwork conducted in Taiwan, Beijing and Shanghai from January
to October in 2007.
Firstly, it explores the situation from the perspective of political economy in
order to understand the process of commodification, including production, marketing
and distribution. The research establishes that the game industry operates within a
highly competitive market requiring substantial investments. Since game production
requires complex technological skills, there is a high capital cost, and the process is
very time consuming. Today's online gaining business has segmented into different
sectors with varying roles, i.e. developer, publisher, distributor and operator,
controlled by different players in the business. The research shows that Asian game
firms seek vertical synergies by expanding complex collaborative networks of
production, marketing and operation in order to minimize costs and maximize
profits. This implies that an international value chain has been established within the
regional economy due to that the capacity of modern East Asian cities to accelerate
the integration of the online gaming industry into regional economic activity.
Secondly, online gaming overall is a popular form of interactive
entertainment in the intra-Asian market. The key theories used to understand digital
games are debated between narratology and ludology. However, neither is capable
of providing an explanation for the Asian gaming culture. On further examination,
certain types of game genres, 'wuxia' and 'cute' games, are found to have a
particular appeal for Asian users. The wuxia genre is exclusively circulated in the
greater Chinese cultural arena. The 'cute' game originates from the protagonists and
themes of Japanese video games. This genre is well accepted by Asian users living in
urban environments, and has become a force to unite city gainers in different Asian
countries.
Lastly, the thesis explores the unique position of Taiwan's game industry,
which has been transformed from a test-bed for games aimed at the Chinese market
into an intermediary between China and the rest of the world. Before 2002, Taiwan
was regarded as a springboard for foreign firms wishing to enter the big Chinese
market. Now, China's game industry has emerged and Chinese games have been
exported to other Asian countries. Currently Taiwan is the biggest export market.
The sophisticated features of the Taiwanese market mean that it can act as a stepping
stone for Chinese game firms wishing to expand into wider regional and global
markets.


Lyme disease is the most common zoonotic bacterial disease in North America. It is estimated that >300,000 cases per annum are reported in USA alone. A total of 10%–20% of patients who have been treated with antibiotic therapy report the recrudescence of symptoms, such as muscle and joint pain, psychosocial and cognitive difficulties, and generalized fatigue. This condition is referred to as posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome. While there is no evidence for the presence of viable infectious organisms in individuals with posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome, some researchers found surviving Borrelia burgdorferi population in rodents and primates even after antibiotic treatment. Although such observations need more ratification, there is unmet need for developing the therapeutic agents that focus on removing the persisting bacterial form of B. burgdorferi in rodent and nonhuman primates. For this purpose, high-throughput screening was done using BacTiter-Glo assay for four compound libraries to identify candidates that stop the growth of B. burgdorferi in vitro. The four chemical libraries containing 4,366 compounds (80% Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approved) that were screened are Library of Pharmacologically Active Compounds (LOPAC1280), the National Institutes of Health Clinical Collection, the Microsource Spectrum, and the Biomol FDA. We subsequently identified 150 unique compounds, which inhibited >90% of B. burgdorferi growth at a concentration of <25 µM. These 150 unique compounds comprise many safe antibiotics, chemical compounds, and also small molecules from plant sources. Of the 150 unique compounds, 101 compounds are FDA approved. We selected the top 20 FDA-approved molecules based on safety and potency and studied their minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration. The promising safe FDA-approved candidates that show low minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration values can be chosen as lead molecules for further advanced studies.


Pressure on natural communities from human activities continues to increase. Even unique ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), that until recently were considered near-pristine and well-protected, are showing signs of rapid degradation. We collated recent (1996-2006) spatiotemporal relationships between benthic community composition on the GBR and environmental variables (ocean temperature and local threats resulting from human activity). We built multivariate models of the effects of these variables on short-term dynamics, and developed an analytical approach to study their long-term consequences. We used this approach to study the effects of ocean warming under different levels of local threat. Observed short-term changes in benthic community structure (e.g., declining coral cover) were associated with ocean temperature (warming) and local threats. Our model projected that, in the long-term, coral cover of less than 10% was not implausible. With increasing temperature and/or local threats, corals were initially replaced by sponges, gorgonians, and other taxa, with an eventual moderately high probability of domination (> 50%) by macroalgae when temperature increase was greatest (e.g., 3.5 degrees C of warming). Our approach to modeling community dynamics, based on multivariate statistical models, enabled us to project how environmental change (and thus local and international policy decisions) will influence the future state of coral reefs. The same approach could be applied to other systems for which time series of ecological and environmental variables are available.


Advances in organic photovoltaic technology for improving the power conversion efficiency (PCE) towards the theoretical maximum require efficient light-absorbing polymers, a high alignment-level of selective contacts, and an easy manufacturing process with low cost to reach them. The halide salts constitute a highly promising class of materials that can produce better selective contacts in solar cells for improving the PCE. In this article, we demonstrate and report the use of a haloid salt in organic solar cells utilized as an interlayer. The haloid salt is deposited on top or below of polyfluorene polymer (PFN) layer and after it is placed on a transparent conductive oxide (TCO). Thermal evaporation of LiF layers is carried out to deposit ultrathin films of 0.5 nm to 0.8 nm thickness. As a photoactive layer we use the low-bandgap PBDTTT-EFT:PC70BM bulk-heterojunction. Among the different architectures analyzed we obtained a PCE of 11.00%, with an outstanding fill factor of FF = 73.5%, which is among the best reported for solar cells. This new stacking of a halide salt with polyfluorene materials could find use in fully exploiting the potential of various halide systems, and also opens up new opportunities to improve OSCs with a view to achieving record efficiencies.


Recent developments in laboratory analytical techniques, when combined with application of multivariate statistical analyses allow differentiation and delineation of comingled NAPLs and resultant contaminant plumes. The increase in laboratory expertise and a growing body of relevant studies in case literature have made possible evaluation of petroleum impacted media through relatively standard techniques a reality, and well within the realm of economical site assessments. The application of several methods to determine the number, type, and timing of multiple NAPL releases at a commercial facility in an urban setting will be summarized. The combination of chemical, historical, and statistical techniques has allowed for a more complete evaluation of NAPL sources and release histories than was initially thought possible. In the examined case, overlapping NAPL plumes are defined, delineated, and identified; and source identifications for individual releases are completed. These evaluations resulted in identification of previously unconfirmed sources, improved characterization of the nature of NAPL present, and refined fate, transport, and feasibility evaluations for the conceptual site model.


Humic and fulvic acid can be combined under the term 'humic substances' and are natural substances with a complex structure. The structural details are not known, however, due to the functional groups present in these compounds the formation of hydrogen bonds is easily attained. Several humic substances were investigated for their potential use as compounds, which are applicable for tritium enrichment from aqueous solution. For comparison a simple compound, malonic acid, representing only few functional groups was investigated. The experiments were performed using a cryosublimation apparatus, which was run well below equilibrium vapor pressure to avoid any isotope fractionation of HTO and H2O. A higher enrichment factor was found for natural humic acid compared to fulvic acid, however, no enrichment could be found for a synthetic humic acid and malonic acid. Interpretation of the results is difficult since no detailed information on the chemical structure of humic substances is known.


This paper reviews current criminal justice reforms that have been initiated in recent years under the governance platform Governing the Nation in Accordance with the Law [ yifa zhiguo ]. 1 These initiatives are helping to reframe criminal justice processes to correspond with the broad governance intentions of President Xi Jinping: finessing center-local power relations, making the authorities in the justice system more accountable for their decision-making, and improving procedures that aim to bring about greater fairness and efficiency. We examine these ongoing reforms in two main areas: the handling of minor crimes and the punishment of serious offenses. We find that yifa zhiguo and the reforms made in its name continue to reflect a highly legalist and instrumentalist vision of law whose goal is to enhance Party-state governance to control dissent and crime more effectively through criminal law, to enhance politico-legal institutional credibility, and, ultimately, to sustain Party supremacy and social stability.


An important topic of financial and investment service provider is how to offer clients more attractive services to increase their psychological switching costs. Mobile trading services bring investors freedom from site restrictions, which may have impact on their trading behaviors and judgment patterns. This study employs expert knowledge analysis to explore whether there is any difference between investors with experience using MTS (mobile trading systems) (Type I) and investors without such experience (Type II) in terms of individual trading signal systems when buying/selling stocks. The research findings suggest that the two types of investors differ significantly in trading signal judgment patterns. Type I investors attach greater importance to information integration and performance of individual stocks relative to the general market; whereas, Type II investors are in favor of analysis of insider share holdings and the general performance of the industry for the composition method of decision-making. With regards to factorial relationships that affect the overall decision-making judgment of the two types of investors, the trading judgments of Type I investors are centered on the cross-analysis of information with share hold changes as the key factor of investment signals. The trading judgments of Type II investors are mainly centered on the cross-analysis of share ownership changes, taking advantage of share hold changes as the overall judgment basis, which is a rather simple method of forming a trading signal judgment system. Financial and investment service providers may use the findings of this study to adjust the content of mobile trading programs in order to create better benefits.

 Key words: Mobile trading, e-banking, financial marketing, trading signal, investors' behavior.


Background: Phragmites australis dieback syndrome, recently reported for the Mediterranean basin, features several symptomatic traits among which the clumping habit seems to be one of the most diagnostic. Aims: We evaluated the effect of water depth on the intensity of the clumping habit and evaluated the diagnostic role of other traits. Methods: We investigated patterns of macro-morphological (culm height and diameter, flowering head and dead apical bud rates) and demographic (density) traits of P. australis in function of submersion (PF-permanent vs. NF-temporary) at five Italian wetland sites. We related the occurrence of clumping and its frequency with water depth. Results: There were clear trends, modulated by site-specific effects, for most of the considered traits in function of the duration of submersion. The clumping rate was close to zero in NF-stands, reached high values in PF-stands and was positively correlated with water depth. Conclusions: We have shown that permanent submersion with deep water levels plays a crucial role in the occurrence of reed dieback. As all other considered traits, with the exception of the occurrence of dead apical buds, well correlate with the clumping habit, we propose using clumping as a key indicator for detecting potential reed dieback.


Nuclear astrophysics is the study of how all naturally occurring elements formed and evolved into our present universe via nuclear processes, beginning with the big bang and continuing today in astrophysical objects such as stars, x-ray bursters, and supernovae. Emerging from traditional studies in astrophysics and particle research, this cross-disciplinary field touches upon astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics. In "An Introduction to Nuclear Astrophysics", author Richard N. Boyd includes basic nomenclature and information so that students from astronomy or physics can quickly orient themselves in the material. Subsequent chapters describe earthbound and space-borne instruments operating in service to nuclear astrophysics worldwide; background topics such as nuclear and neutrino physics, scattering formalism, and thermonuclear reaction rates; and information on galactic chemical evolution, solar nucleosynthesis, s- and r-processes, and gamma-ray bursts. Each chapter includes problem sets so that students can test their knowledge before moving ahead, and the author has included copious references intended to guide students to further study. "An Introduction to Nuclear Astrophysics" is an essential textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in astronomy and astrophysics. It is also an invaluable overview of the subject for researchers in nuclear astrophysics and related fields.


FRB/US is a large-scale quarterly econometric model of the U.S. economy, developed to replace the MPS model. Most behavioral equations are based on specifications of optimizing behavior containing explicit expectations of firms, households, and financial markets. Although expectations are explicit, the empirical fits of the structural descriptions of macroeconomic behavior are comparable to those of reduced-form time series models. In most instances, tests do not reject overidentifying restrictions of rational expectations or the hypothesis of serially independent residuals. As modeled, private sector expectations of policy constitute a major transmission channel of monetary policy.


Ohmura, Tomoko. The Long, Long Line . Toronto, ON: OwlKids Books, 2013. Print. "Thank you for waiting, and welcome aboard! One at a time, please!" mentions the bird, who is the ride guide on this mysterious ride for which 50 different animals have patiently lined up. As they wait, the bird flies amongst them, offering reassuring words as they guess as to what they may be in line for and play word games to pass the time.  The anticipation builds, and finally they start boarding the ride, which turns out to be a very large whale on which the animals ride while the whale performs somersaults, dives and sprays. Children will be delighted by all 50 animals represented on the large gatefold spread in the center of the book, from the smallest frog to the largest elephant. Children will love the small details such as the tail of the next animal in line 'peeking' around the corner of the page and the size of the animals increasing as they get closer to the ride giving perspective of size. A list of all 50 animals is included at the back for easy reference when young readers get stumped by a species. While this is indeed a picture book aimed at young children it is no quick read – children will want to hear every word of the animals' conversations as they wait and will want to count as they go, and likely once all the animals are aboard the whale they will want to confirm there are indeed 50 animals present, perhaps multiple times. The colourful illustrations by the author are cute and engaging and show a wide range of expressions and interplay between the animals.  The language felt slightly unnatural but this may be a result of this edition being a translation of the original Japanese work Nanno Gyoretsu? A fun book for public and elementary schools as well as a nice addition to science or math based storytime in lower elementary grades. The Long, Long Line was selected as one of the best children's books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Debbie Feisst Debbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta.  When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.


Rote learning of facts is boring. Here, we present a way to make it more efficient so facts are learned faster. Learners usually need to repeat facts multiple times to learn them well. The optimal timing of these repetitions depends on the facts that are studied and the characteristics of the learner. Learning software that takes such differences into account is called adaptive. Here, we show that the adaptive system developed in our lab outperforms a flashcard system often utilized by students: on average, students learn more and make fewer errors during learning if they use the adaptive system. This improvement is possible because the system simulates a very simplified version of each learner's memory and can predict when individual facts are forgotten. We show that parameters estimated during learning can predict test performance but are not related to intelligence or working memory capacity (in the tested sample). We also demonstrate that the parameters estimated for one learner are stable over time but differ slightly over materials. Finally, future developments and improvements of the system are discussed. For example, the adaptive system's capabilities should be extended to multi-session learning. Gaining access to large amounts of data collected in realistic (educational) settings will be the key to these developments. Collaborations with Noordhoff and HoeGekIsNL? and a RUG-funded project called Rugged Learning will provide such data and will enable us to verify and test additional assumptions that should further improve the system.


Skeletal muscle is the most abundant tissue in the body and it plays a central role in whole-body metabolism. Physical inactivity and obesity are associated with poor metabolic health due to insulin resistance of peripheral tissues, in particular skeletal muscle. Conversely, a physically active lifestyle or formal exercise training are associated with adaptations in skeletal muscle that improve its substrate metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Such changes in muscle function are underpinned by changes to the muscle proteome, i.e. relative increases or decreases in the abundance of select proteins. Proteomic analysis of human muscle biopsy samples involves non-targeted analysis of a large number of proteins and can generate new hypotheses. To date, the majority of proteomic studies report protein abundances only and the dynamic aspects (i.e. synthesis and degradation) of proteins in human muscle has seldom been investigated, but it is likely that the quality of muscle proteins i.e. turnover rate may also contribute to muscle function. We have used deuterium oxide to label newly synthesised proteins in vivo and then analysed muscle biopsy samples using peptide mass spectrometry techniques that are capable of identifying individual proteins and measuring their relative abundance and fractional rate of synthesis. We have used this method to investigate 2 research questions: (i) what changes occur in the skeletal muscle proteome associated with sedentary lifestyle and obesity, and (ii) what is the dynamic proteome response of human muscle to high-intensity interval training? Our cross-sectional study of obese vs trained individuals (N = 4, in each group) revealed novel proteins that had differences in abundance and synthesis rate. Proteins including carbonic anhydrase 3, heat shock protein β-1, glyceraldehyde 3 phosphate dehydrogenase, sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPase 1, creatine kinase muscle type, and type IIx myosin heavy chain) are more abundant and have a lower rate of turnover in the muscle of individuals with obesity. Therefore, these may be more likely to accrue deleterious posttranslational modifications that may affect their activity or interaction with other proteins. We then performed a longitudinal study to investigate responses to 10-week high-intensity interval training (HIT) programme in the muscle of participants with obesity. HIT increased the turnover rate of individual muscle proteins and in particular we discovered greater abundance of 2 novel proteins, desmin and α-actinin-3, which have not been previously reported in regard to endurance exercise. In conclusion, we have applied a new dynamic proteome profiling method to investigate complex physiological responses associated with obesity and exercise training in human muscle in vivo. Our data support the hypothesis that obesity is associated with changes to the turnover rate as well as abundance of muscle proteins. Our findings bring new insight and a new avenue of research investigating protein quality control as a mechanism underpinning the deleterious effects of obesity and physical inactivity. HIT training was able to counter some of the effects associated with obesity and sedentary behaviour and this thesis highlights a number of key muscle proteins that are suitable for future targeted research.


Online advertising platforms in partnerships with media companies typically have access to an online user's history of viewed articles. If a concerned brand (advertiser) plans to run advertisement campaigns on users exposed to negative articles, it is essential to first identify articles with negative sentiment about the brand. For an advertising platform, scalable identification of such articles with little human-annotation effort is necessary for launching campaigns soon after an advertiser signs up. In this context, generic sentiment analysis tools suffer from the lack of contextual world knowledge associated with the advertiser. Human annotation of articles for supervised approaches is laborious and painstaking. To address these problems, we propose the use of publicly available Wikipedia footnote references for an advertiser, and propagate their sentiment to several articles related to the advertiser. In particular, our proposed approach has three components: (i) automatically find Wikipedia references which have negative sentiment about an advertiser, (ii) learn distributed representations (doc2vec) of article texts referred in footnotes and other unlabeled articles, and (iii) inferring sentiment in unlabeled articles using label propagation (from references) in the doc2vec space. Our experiments spanning three real brands, and data from a major advertising platform (Yahoo Gemini) show significant lifts in sentiment inference compared to existing baselines. In addition, we share valuable insights on how article sentiment influences the online activities of a user with respect to a brand.


The study was aimed at optimizing surgical treatment management of elderly patients presenting with pathological tortuosity of the internal carotid artery (ICA). We examined a total of 94 patients with unilateral haemodynamically significant tortuosity of the ICA. Depending on the age, the patients were subdivided into two groups: Group One comprising forty-six (49%) 50-to-60-year-old patients and Group Two consisting of 48 (51%) patients above 60 years (from 61 to 84 years). 37% of patients had were found to have pathological tortuosity combined with haemodynamically significant ICA stenosis. In these patients linear blood velocity in the zone of the largest deformation was by 15% less than in patients with isolated tortuosity (p<0.05). All patients underwent reconstructive operations of carotid arteries with a good clinical effect. A combination of stenosis and pathological tortuosity of the ICA was treated by eversion carotid endarterectomy with lowering down and reimplantation of the artery into the previous ostium; microaneurysms present in the ICA wall were managed by resection of the artery's portion with autovenous prosthetic repair or bringing down the artery into the previous ostium. In 77% of patients above 60 years the operation was carried out under regional anaesthesia. According to the findings of duplex scanning, rectilinearity of the ICA after surgery was restored in 100% of cases, blood flow was of major type, with no turbulence registered. It was demonstrated that surgical management of elderly patients with pathological tortuosity is an effective method of prevention of ischaemic stroke. The complications rate in patients presenting with combined atherosclerotic lesions of the ICA and its pathological tortuosity, should adequate surgical policy be employed, falls within the framework of the accepted standards and does not depend on the type of ICA lesion.


Vibrating beam technology offers a significant advancement in the field of accelerometers for inertial navigation. The inherently digital output of the vibrating beam accelerometer eliminates the cost, size, weight, power consumption, and performance errors associated with digitizers. The crystalline quartz vibrating beam sensing elements are extremely stable and are compatible with low-cost, high-volume production techniques developed in the watch crystal industry. Low power consumption is common to this type of device.

The Sundstrand vibrating beam, force-to-frequency converter utilizes two slender beams in a geometry analogous to a double-ended tuning fork. This configuration provides perfect dynamic balance of the resonator, which eliminates coupling and energy loss to the connecting structure. The slender beams of the crystal change frequency as a function of force in a manner similar to a musical stringed instrument.

The Superflex mechanism design is an innovative approach which combines the unparalleled bias stability of an amorphous quartz flexure suspension with the scale factor stability of the crystalline quartz vibrating beam force sensor.


Limited information from existing data sets and the tremendous amount of diversity in number and kind within the chiropteran family Vespertilionidae (about one-third of all bat species) have hampered efforts to provide adequate assessments of long-standing genealogic hypotheses (e.g., monophyly of the family and of the five subfamilies). We generated approximately 2.6 kilobase pairs of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence ecompassing three adjacent genes (12S rRNA, tRNAVal, 16S rRNA) for 120 vespertilionids representing 110 species, 37 of 44 genera, and all subfamilies. We assessed monophyly of Vespertilionidae in initial analyses of 171 taxa including representatives of all bat families (except the monotypic Craseonycteridae), and assessed lower-level relationships by analysis of several truncated taxon sets. Phylogenetic analysis of ribosomal gene sequences provides well-supported resolution for vespertilionid relationships across taxonomic levels. Furthermore, the resolution is not heavily burdened by alignment of ambiguous regions of the ribosomal gene sequences, and topologies and levels of support produced by two phylogenetic methods (Bayesian and Parsimony) agreed markedly. Our analyses suggest relationships that support many parts of the traditional classification but which also support several changes. The majority of these changes also receives support from other data sources, particularly bacular and karyotypic data. We make more than 20 taxonomic conclusions or recommendations and construct a working classification for vespertilionoid bats. Highlights include: Miniopterus (subfamily Miniopterinae) is recognized in its own family, Miniopteridae, as it represents an extremely divergent lineage relative to other vespertilionids, and in some analyses is sister to the molossids and natalids; all other vespertilionids examined form a well-supported clade; two of the traditional subfamilies within Vespertilionidae (sensu stricto) are monophyletic, Murininae and Kerivoulinae; Nyctophilinae has no validity and Vespertilioninae is paraphyletic relative to the position of Myotis; Myotis is sister to a clade containing Kerivoulinae and Murininae and is recognized in its own subfamily, Myotinae; Myotis subgenera Leuconoe, Selysius, and Myotis are polyphyletic, and a subgeneric classification reflecting geography is suggested, broadening subgenus Myotis to include the sampled Old World species, and allocating the sampled New World species to another subgenus (Aeorestes Fitzinger, 1870); Vespertilioninae (excluding Myotis) is monophyletic; Pipistrellus-like bats (i.e., the traditional tribe Vespertilionini) are divided into three tribes (Nycticeiini; Pipistrellini; Vespertilionini); and support for three tribes of Pipistrellus-like bats has several implications at the genus level. Overall, this study offers a robust working hypothesis for vespertilionid relationships and provides a good starting point for new investigations into the evolutionary history of Vespertilionidae.


This thesis investigates the combined influence of river flow, tide and surge on the
frequency of extreme water levels in tidal rivers and estuaries. The estimation of flood
risk may depend on extreme combinations of these variables rather than individual
extreme events, but these relationships are complex and difficult to quantify. A
probabilistic approach traditionally involves an assumption of independence between
these primary hydrological variables, which can lead to the underestimation of the level
of risk where river flow and tidal surge are often linked to the same low pressure weather
system. This research develops a new methodology which combines traditional flood risk
modelling techniques with statistical dependence to define the relationship between the
hydrological variables. Dependence between river flow, tide and surge is assessed for a
case study area of Lewes, East Sussex, UK, a town which is prone to both tidal and
fluvial flooding. Bivariate and trivariate daily and extreme joint exceedance methods are
developed and used in conjunction with a one-dimensional hydraulic model to analyse
the interaction of river flow, tide and surge to predict the joint probability of potential
flood events occurring in Lewes. The approach is validated using existing historical
water levels observed in Lewes. The results demonstrate that the joint exceedance
approach can be successfully employed to model the frequency of flood events caused by
tide and river flow. The incorporation of a third variable of surge refines the approach
further, and identifies the zone where the interaction of the variables has the greatest
impact on resultant flood water levels.


Further serious offences committed by those released early from custody is the subject of intense media scrutiny. This accessible text examines the subject of further serious offending through the medium of major inquiries, inspections and reports. Inquiries discussed include the Clunis Inquiry, the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry, the Marchioness Inquiry and the Anthony Rice Inquiry. This book explores the extent to which recommendations are implemented and their impact on the development of public protection policy. Reviewing all the major inquiries relating to further serious offending, the authors highlight commonalities that emerge from these reports, such as the nature of the offence and the type of response, as well as organisational and individual failures. By identifying similarities and themes across a range of agencies, the authors explore the nature of organisational and personal failure and blame. Whilst most responses to further serious offending are organisationally based, they rarely refer to personal failings on the part of agency workers. This title does both, whilst providing an outline of the constitution and culture of inquiries and the development of the multi-agency approach. This book also argues that the public protection edifice is built upon perceptions of danger which rarely reflect the true nature of dangerous behaviour. The authors propose that many inquiries refer to incidents that do not meet the stereotypical profile of a dangerous predator; subsequently the construction of dangerousness is re-examined in the light of Inquiry findings and recommendations. This title is a thought-provoking and topical book of great interest to probation practitioners and students alike.


American society has come to presuppose the efficacy of the collateral legal consequences of criminal conviction. But little attention has been paid to their effects on the reintegration efforts of the formerly incarcerated and, in particular, formerly incarcerated women. An 1848 case, Sutton v. McIlhany, affirmed collateral legal consequences as constituting an important part of criminal punishment. More recent cases, such as Turner v. Glickman, in which a class of people convicted of drug crimes were subsequently denied food stamps and other government benefits, have upheld the constitutionality of imposing these legal penalties on an individual even after she has served her prison sentence.This Article argues that the collateral legal consequences of criminal conviction represent a "modern day scarlet letter" that lingers with the formerly incarcerated woman for life and that serves to circumscribe those individuals' economic and social opportunities. Calling upon critical legal theory and empirical social science research, this Article argues that the collateral legal consequences of conviction exact a disproportionate cost on formerly incarcerated women. Expanding upon the understanding of Professor Kimberle Crenshaw's critical legal theory of "intersectionality," this Article discusses the predominant intersectional identities that formerly incarcerated women embody and examines how these identities compound the impact of collateral legal consequences. This Article finds that Black women are most negatively impacted by the collateral legal consequences of incarceration. This Article proposes a model of reentry that is cognizant of the increased vulnerability of formerly incarcerated women and that is better designed to accommodate the exigencies that are intrinsic to their intersectional identities.


This contribution examines women's access to and control over land in Botswana. It explores the dynamics creating a transformation in women's relationship to land that have come about over time. These include better education and formal- and informal-sector employment that have enabled some women to be more proactive, along with a shift in social attitudes towards the role of women in society. The article highlights the importance of family networks in promoting women's acquisition, development and control of land, revealing diverging trajectories based on family - or genealogical histories that reflect processes of social stratification within the country.


Creeping dislocations in an elastic half-space are commonly used to model interseismic deformation at subduction zones, and might also apply to major intracontinental thrust faults such as the Main Himalayan Thrust. Here, we compare such models with a more realistic 2-D finite element model that accounts for the mechanical layering of the continental lithosphere and surface processes, and that was found to fit all available constraints on interseismic and long-term surface displacements. These can also be fitted satisfactorily from dislocation models. The conventional back-slip model, commonly used for subduction zones, may, however, lead to a biased inference about the geometry of the locked portion of the thrust fault. We therefore favour the use of a creeping buried dislocation that simulates the ductile shear zone in the lower crust. A limitation of dislocation models is that the mechanical response of the lithosphere to the growth of the topography by bending of the elastic cores and ductile flow in the lower crust cannot be easily introduced. Fortunately these effects can be neglected because we may assume, to first order, a stationary topography. Moreover, we show that not only can dislocation models be used to adjust surface displacements but, with some caution, they can also provide a physically sound rationale to interpret interseismic microseismicity in terms of stress variations.