INTRODUCTION: With over 160 million Americans currently in the workforce, employee wellness programs have proven to be a viable method of reaching a large population with an objective of improving health outcomes. These programs can encourage the awareness of health-related issues including nutrition, physical activity, preventative health screening, and stress management, and they also can serve to improve employee morale and/or engagement. Moreover, they can often help to reduce healthcare costs to both the organization and the individual employees. AIM: The purpose of this capstone was to design a framework for an employee wellness program that could be utilized within a mid-sized private logistics company with multiple locations across the United States. METHODS: The program was developed using the Precede portion of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model as the guiding framework. An essential first step of the program development involved a synthesis of published evidence involving published reports, reviews, and evaluations of other previously implemented worksite wellness initiatives. RESULTS: A worksite wellness plan was proposed for a midsize company that addresses incentive policies, environmental changes, and recommended health education and behavioral structures for enhanced health and wellness among a workforce of approximately 800 employees. DISCUSSION: The Proceed model steps will ensure a comprehensive evaluation of the program's immediate impacts and long-term outcomes over time. It is important that the short, medium, and long term goals of the program are identified so that an evaluation process can be implemented to see if these specific objectives are met through the initiatives implemented in the program.


The history of the piston seal may be traced far beyond the Industrial Revolution, for the problems inherent in sealing a moving piston within a cylinder were well known to the early Greek and Roman engineers. Substantial progress in piston sealing technology was not made, however, until the 17th and 18th centuries, and it was the advent of the steam engine that was to spawn the many and elaborate piston packings of the reciprocating engine. The invention of the modern piston ring is generally attributed to John Ramsbottom, who announced his self-tensioning device in the mid-19th Century. In some respects, the piston ring used in current engineering practice is superficially the same as the Ramsbottom ring, but it is important to note that many of the features of piston rings in reciprocating machinery emerged in the steam rather than in the internal combustion engine age. In this paper, we trace the history of the piston ring from the early civilizations to the present day and establish the current state of technology of piston rings in the light of their varied history. It is widely recognized that a substantial proportion of the power loss within a reciprocating engine is attributable to piston-ring-liner interactions, and there is a pressing need for a better understanding of the sealing and lubrication process in order to minimize these losses. Much of the progress in piston ring technology is attributable to materials, but important and recent developments in the field of lubrication analysis have enhanced our understanding of piston ring operation. It is now possible to identify the role of geometrical features of the rings in determining important operating characteristics of a ring pack such as sealing, lubrication and lubricant transport and there are indications that novel design features will further enhance piston ring performance in the future. In addition to providing the historical background to piston ring development, this paper will also serve to introduce some of the basic concepts of piston ring operation developed in recent years which form the basis for the analysis presented in detail in Parts II and III.


In the past 15 years, the nations of the Western Hemisphere have staged a remarkable revolution --in the way they trade with their neighbors. First, after decades of restrictive import policies, several countries began to liberalize their trade and investment regimes. Then, beginning a decade ago, numerous bilateral and sub-regional trade agreements were achieved, to serve as vital complements to domestic reforms and to foster trade flows among member countries. At the Second Summit of the Americas in 1998, negotiations among 34 democracies were launched to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This report takes stock of the remarkable progress to date in the development of free trade in the Western Hemisphere. It examines trade flows between countries in the same regional groupings and between members of different sub-regional arrangements. The report describes the main characteristics of the trade arrangements signed between countries of the Hemisphere and explores the development of trade rules in these arrangements. Finally, the report details recent advances in the construction of the FTAA.


Toxic effects of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon fluoranthene (FLU) on life-history traits and their demographic consequences were investigated in 3 non-interbreeding Capitella sib- ling species with different physiological tolerances and developmental modes: sensitive Capitella sp. S from oxygen-rich intertidal sediments of the North Sea (Germany); tolerant Capitella sp. M from sediments near shallow hydrothermal vents off Milos (Greece), a habitat low in organic matter with steep abiotic gradients and high sulfide concentrations; tolerant Capitella sp. I from New York (USA), known to dominate eutrophicated/polluted environments. Both Capitella spp. M and I can develop into hermaphrodites and have lecithotrophic larval development. In contrast, Capitella sp. S appears to be dioecious and has direct development with benthic juveniles. In life-table-response experi- ments (LTRE), juveniles from the 3 species were raised under different FLU concentrations (0 to 95 µg g -1 FLU), and data on age-specific survival, growth and life-history parameters were recorded at weekly intervals. Under control conditions, the 3 Capitella species differed markedly in a number of life-history traits and population growth rates (λ), with Capitella sp. S showing the lowest λ (1.05), and Capitella sp. M the highest (1.42). Chronic exposure to inreasing FLU concentrations also revealed species-specific differences in individual- and population-level toxic responses. Highest FLU con- centrations (95 µg g -1 ) markedly reduced juvenile survival and completely inhibited reproduction in Capitella sp. S, whereas individual life-history traits in Capitella spp. M and I were affected little, if at all. At the population level, the highest FLU exposures resulted in λ values of effectively zero in Capitella sp. S, whereas λ of Capitella spp. M and I remained >1. In conclusion, the combination of opportunistic life-history features, reproductive flexibility, and physiological adaptations enables Capitella spp. M and I to colonize habitats rapidly after local disturbance and to persist in stressed and unpredictable environments; whereas in Capitella sp. S, population extinction under toxicant stress mainly results from its physiological sensitivity.


The new CFTR modulator combination, elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (Trikafta) was approved by the FDA in October 2019 for treatment of Cystic Fibrosis in patients 6 years of age or older who have at least one F508del mutation in one allele and a minimal-function or another F508del mutation in the other allele. However, there is a group of patients, in addition to those with rare mutations, in which despite the presence of a F508del in one allele, it was not possible to identify any mutation in the other allele. To date, these patients are excluded from treatment with Trikafta in Italy, where the CF patients carrying F508del/unknown represent about 1.3% (71 patients) of the overall Italian CF patients. In this paper we show that the Trikafta treatment of nasal epithelial cells, derived from F508del/Unknown patients, results in a significant rescue of CFTR activity. Based on our findings, we think that the F508del/Unknown patients considered in this study could obtain clinical benefits from Trikafta treatment, and we strongly suggest their eligibility for this type of treatment. This study, adding further evidence in the literature, once again confirms the validity of functional studies on nasal cells in the cystic fibrosis theratyping and personalized medicine.


The theme of this collection is a discussion of the notions of 'norms' and 'standards', which are studied from various different angles, but always in relation to the English language. These terms are to be understood in a very wide sense, allowing discussions of topics such as the norms we orient to in social interaction, the benchmark employed in teaching, or the development of English dialects and varieties over time and space and their relation to the standard language. The collection is organized into three parts, each of which covers an important research field for the study of norms and standards. Part 1 is entitled "English over time and space" and is further divided into three thematic subgroups: standard and non-standard features in English varieties and dialects; research on English standardization processes; and issues of standards and norms in oral production. Part 2 deals with "English usage in non-native contexts," and Part 3 is dedicated to "Issues on politeness and impoliteness." The notions of standards and norms are equally important concepts for historical linguists, sociolinguists with a variationist background, applied linguists, pragmaticians, and discourse analysts.


This paper tackles the problem of usability and security in access control mechanisms. A theoretical solution for this problem is presented using the combination of automatic rule learning and user interaction. The result is the interactive rule learning approach. Interactive rule learning is designed to complete attribute-based access control to generate concise rule sets even by non-expert end-users. The resulting approach leads to adaptive access control rule sets that can be used for smart products. Keywords-adaptivity; usability; access control; rule learning.


About the book:
The Presidentialization of Politics shows that the politics of democratic societies is moving towards a presidentialized working mode, even in the absence of formal institutional changes. These developments can be explained by a combination of long-term structural changes in modern politics and societies' contingent factors which fluctuate over time. While these contingent, short-term factors relate to the personalities of office holders, the overall political agenda, and the majority situation in parliament, there are several structural factors which are relatively uniform across modern nations. First, the internationalization of modern politics (which is particularly pronounced within the European Union) has led to an 'executive bias' of the political process which has strengthened the role of political top elites vis-a-vis their parliamentary groups and/or their parties. Their predominance has been amplified further by the vastly expanded steering capacities of state machineries which have severely reduced the scope of effective parliamentary control. At the same time, the declining stability of political alignments has increased the proportion of citizens whose voting decisions are not constrained by long-standing party loyalties. In conjunction with the mediatization of politics, this has increased the capacity of political leaders to by-pass their party machines and to appeal directly to voters.
As a result, three interrelated processes have led to a political process increasingly moulded by the inherent logic of presidentialism: increasing leadership power and autonomy within the political executive; increasing leadership power and autonomy within political parties; and increasingly leadership-centred electoral processes.
The book presents evidence for this process of presidentialization for 14 modern democracies (including the US and Canada). While there are substantial cross-national differences, the overall thesis holds: modern democracies are increasingly following a presidential logic of governance through which leadership is becoming more central and more powerful, but also increasingly dependent on successful immediate appeal to the mass public. Implications for democratic theory are considered.

Contents
1. The Presidentialization of Politics in Democratic Societies: A Framework for Analysis The Presidentialization of Democracy in Democratic Societies , Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb
2. The British Prime Minister: Much More Than nullFirst Among Equalsnull , Richard Heffernan and Paul Webb
3. A Presidentializing Party State? The Federal Republic of Germany , Thomas Poguntke
4. Presidentialization, Italian Style , Mauro Calise
5. The Presidentialization of Spanish Democracy: Sources of Prime Ministerial Power in Post-Franco Spain , Ingrid van Biezen and Jonathan Hopkin
6. The Low Countries: From nullPrime Ministernull to President-Minister , Stefaan Fiers and Andre´ Krouwel
7. Denmark: Presidentialization in a Consensual Democracy , Karina Pedersen and Tim Knudsen
8. nullPresident PerssonnullnullHow Did Sweden Get Him? , Nicholas Aylott
9. Canada: Executive Dominance and Presidentialization , Herman Bakvis and Steven B. Wolinetz
10. Dyarchic Presidentialization in a Presidentialized Polity: The French Fifth Republic , Ben Clift
11. Finland: Let the Force Be with the Leadernull But Who Is the Leader? , Heikki Paloheimo
12. The Presidentialization of Portuguese Democracy? , Marina Costa Lobo
13. The Failure of Presidential Parliamentarism: Constitutional versus Structural Presidentialization in Israelnulls Parliamentary Democracy , Reuven Y. Hazan
14. The Semi-Sovereign American Prince: The Dilemma of an Independent President in a Presidential Government , Sergio Fabbrini
15. The Presidentialization of Contemporary Democratic Politics: Evidence, Causes, and Consequences , Paul Webb and Thomas Poguntke
Index


Recent studies showed that photochemical breakdown (photodegradation) of plant material accounts for a substantial portion of litter decomposition and subsequent trace gas release in ecosystems under high radiative load and low precipitation. In the absence of solar radiation, thermal degradation may also cause trace gas release at temperatures below the ignition point. These observations suggest that the abiotic processes of photodegradation and thermal degradation of plant litter may be important in understanding global trace gas budgets. In a laboratory incubation study, we performed a simultaneous carbon (C) accounting of CO2, CO, and CH4 produced as a byproduct of photodegradation and thermal degradation of six different plant litter types that varied in chemical composition. The patterns of trace gas release during photodegradation and thermal degradation differed considerably across the six plant materials, suggesting that chemical composition of litter may influence the rates of abiotic degradation. There was a strong positive correlation between the rates of trace gas release during photodegradation and temperature. A significant portion of trace gases were produced during low temperature (< 100 °C) thermal degradation of litter in the absence of solar radiation, which was also positively correlated to temperature. In addition, both thermal degradation and photodegradation occurred in the absence of O2. This indicates that the mechanism formerly accepted as photo‐oxidation may only be one of several photodegradation processes. We speculate that the direct breakdown of chemical groups such as carboxyl, carbonyl, and methoxyl groups may result in CO2, CO, and CH4 release. We suggest that the combined processes of thermal and photodegradation of litter may be a previously under accounted source of C‐based trace gases from terrestrial systems.


Kernel methods are powerful tools in various data analysis tasks. Yet, in many cases, their time and space complexity render them impractical for large datasets. Various kernel approximation methods were proposed to overcome this issue, with the most prominent method being the Nystr{\"o}m method. In this paper, we derive a perturbation-based kernel approximation framework building upon results from classical perturbation theory. We provide an error analysis for this framework, and prove that in fact, it generalizes the Nystr{\"o}m method and several of its variants. Furthermore, we show that our framework gives rise to new kernel approximation schemes, that can be tuned to take advantage of the structure of the approximated kernel matrix. We support our theoretical results numerically and demonstrate the advantages of our approximation framework on both synthetic and real-world data.


In mice, the pace of recovery from jet lag is partly determined by vasopressin signaling in a certain region of the brain. Fatigue and other symptoms of jet lag arise when the body's internal circadian clock is out of sync with environmental light-dark cycles. Studying genetically modified mice lacking two receptors for the peptide hormone vasopressin under experimental conditions simulating jet lag, Yamaguchi et al. (see the Perspective by Hastings) concluded that vasopressin signaling in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)—a region of the brain known to control circadian rhythms—impedes adjustment to the environmental clock. Infusion of vasopressin receptor antagonists directly into the SCN of wild-type mice accelerated their recovery from jet lag, suggesting that this pathway may merit further investigation as a pharmacological target for treating jet lag. Y. Yamaguchi, T. Suzuki, Y. Mizoro, H. Kori, K. Okada, Y. Chen, J.-M. Fustin, F. Yamazaki, N. Mizuguchi, J. Zhang, X. Dong, G. Tsujimoto, Y. Okuno, M. Doi, H. Okamura, Mice genetically deficient in vasopressin V1a and V1b receptors are resistant to jet lag. Science 342, 85–90 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text] M. H. Hastings, A looser clock to cure jet lag. Science 342, 52–53 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Coupled-microdisk photonic molecules with high-symmetry geometries that support nondegenerate whispering gallery modes with high quality factors are numerically designed, based on a two-dimensional model. Dramatic enhancement of calculated Q factors of nondegenerate modes as compared with single-microdisk whispering gallery modes of the same radial order is achieved by tuning the intercavity coupling distances. Potential applications of this work to the design of single-mode coupled-microdisk structures with large spontaneous emission factors and low threshold lasing operation and to random laser simulations are discussed.


While many have celebrated India's accelerating economic growth, some have expressed concern about the distributional impacts of the growth process. Cognizant of the vulnerability of its large population below poverty, India's authorities have made faster and more inclusive economic growth the primary goal of their development strategy. This paper aims to document how the benefits of economic expansion were shared across the income distribution over the last two decades using disaggregate household level data. Experiences across Indian states suggest an important role for economic policy in shaping the inclusiveness of growth. States with higher financial development, more flexible labor markets, and higher average education experienced greater relative gains for the poor. Improving infrastructure may also lead to a growth process that is more inclusive of the poor.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
In many patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), one symptom is predominant (e.g., diarrhea, constipation, meteorism, or alternating stool consistency). For IBS therapy, probiotic drugs such as Mutaflor (active ingredient: Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917 [EcN]) are also being used. A systematic survey on the efficacy and safety of EcN in different IBS subgroups is still missing.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
In a gastroenterologic outpatient practice, results of 150 IBS patients treated with EcN were evaluated retrospectively. Most IBS patients enrolled belonged to the subgroups "diarrhea", "meteorism", and "alternating stool consistency".

RESULTS
Regarding the diarrhea subgroup, not only a statistically significant improvement in stool frequency was observed, but also a marked improvement in concomitant symptoms such as abnormal urge, flatulence, and abdominal fullness. These complaints improved under EcN therapy in the other IBS subgroups as well, so that efficacy was assessed as "good to very good" in 73.4% of all cases. Tolerance to treatment was "good to very good" in 97.9% of the cases.

CONCLUSION
The results point to the possibility of EcN being a therapeutic option for patients of various IBS subgroups which is almost free of side effects.


Revealing the sketching sequence of a line drawing can be visually intriguing and used for video-based storytelling. Typically this is enabled based on tedious recording of artists' drawing process. We demonstrate that it is often possible to estimate a reasonable drawing order from a static line drawing with clearly defined shape geometry, which looks plausible to a human viewer. We map the key principles of drawing order from drawing cognition to computational procedures in our framework. Our system produces plausible animated constructions of input line drawings, with no or little user intervention. We test our algorithm on a range of input sketches, with varying degree of complexity and structure, and evaluate the results via a user study. We also present applications to gesture drawing synthesis and drawing animation creation especially in the context of video scribing.


Autoencoders are the simplest neural network for unsupervised learning, and thus an ideal framework for studying feature learning. While a detailed understanding of the dynamics of linear autoencoders has recently been obtained, the study of non-linear autoencoders has been hindered by the technical difficulty of handling training data with non-trivial correlations - a fundamental prerequisite for feature extraction. Here, we study the dynamics of feature learning in non-linear, shallow autoencoders. We derive a set of asymptotically exact equations that describe the generalisation dynamics of autoencoders trained with stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the limit of high-dimensional inputs. These equations reveal that autoencoders learn the leading principal components of their inputs sequentially. An analysis of the long-time dynamics explains the failure of sigmoidal autoencoders to learn with tied weights, and highlights the importance of training the bias in ReLU autoencoders. Building on previous results for linear networks, we analyse a modification of the vanilla SGD algorithm which allows learning of the exact principal components. Finally, we show that our equations accurately describe the generalisation dynamics of non-linear autoencoders on realistic datasets such as CIFAR10.


Method of moment estimators exhibit appealing statistical properties, such as asymptotic unbiasedness, for nonconvex problems. However, they typically require a large number of samples and are extremely sensitive to model misspecification. In this paper, we apply the framework of M-estimation to develop both a generalized method of moments procedure and a principled method for regularization. Our proposed M-estimator obtains optimal sample efficiency rates (in the class of moment-based estimators) and the same well-known rates on prediction accuracy as other spectral estimators. It also makes it straightforward to incorporate regularization into the sample moment conditions. We demonstrate empirically the gains in sample efficiency from our approach on hidden Markov models.


Purpose: To investigate the recovery period of overcorrection and related factors after surgery in pediatric patients with basic intermittent exotropia (XT). Methods: Retrospective chart reviews of the medical records of patients who underwent bilateral lateral rectus recession for basic XT were analyzed. Preoperative age, sex, angle of deviation (prism diopters [PD]), and suppression at distance were measured. Patients were observed every week when the angle of deviation was > 2 PD of overcorrection at postoperative day 1. Recovery of overcorrection was defined as improvement of overcorrection with orthotropia. Patients were divided into two groups according to age: younger (group 1) and older (group 2) than 10 years of age. Success was defined as an angle of deviation between 10 PD of exodeviation and 5 PD of esodeviation at the final visit. Results: A total of 88 patients were included. At postoperative day 1, the angle of deviation at distance was -6.9 ± 2.2 PD, and the near angle of deviation was -6.9 ± 2.4 PD. Esodeviation presented as a minus value. The recovery period of overcorrection was 1.9 ± 3.9 weeks and the success rate was 80.7% (71 patients). The success rates of group 1 and group 2 were not statistically significant (p = 0.51). The recovery period of overcorrection in group 2 (2.7 ± 5.9 weeks) was significantly longer than in group 1 (1.8 ± 3.4 weeks) (p = 0.02). Conclusions: In pediatric adolescents with basic XT, the surgical success rates did not differ significantly according to age, but recovery of overcorrection after strabismus surgery took longer in patients ≥ 10 years of age. J Korean Ophthalmol Soc 2019;60(2):176-180


In the presence of strong density stratification, hydromagnetic turbulence attains qualitatively new properties: the formation of magnetic flux concentrations. We review here the theoretical foundations of this mechanism in terms of what is now called the negative effective magnetic pressure instability. We also present direct numerical simulations of forced turbulence in strongly stratified layers and discuss the qualitative and quantitative similarities with corresponding mean-field simulations. Finally, the relevance to sunspot formation is discussed.


This environmental assessment document has been prepared pursuant to the requirements of
Section 102 (2)(c) of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 (PL 91 -190, 42
USC 4321 et. seq.), Tide V of the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of 1982 (PL 97 -248,
as amended by the Airport Safety and Capacity Act of 1987), and other laws as applicable.
The format and subject matter included in this report conform to the requirements and
standards set forth by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as contained principally in
Order 5050.4A, Airport Environmental Handbook, but also addresses appropriate items in FAA
Order 1050.1 D, Policies and Procedures for Considering Environmental Impacts.


One metric used to evaluate the myriad ranking systems in college football is retrodictive accuracy. Maximizing retrodictive accuracy is equivalent to minimizing game score violations: the number of times a past game's winner is ranked behind its loser. None of the roughly 100 current ranking systems achieves this objective. Using a model for minimizing violations that exploits problem characteristics found in college football, I found that all previous ranking systems generated violations that were at least 38 percent higher than the minimum. A minimum-violations criterion commonly would have affected the consensus top five and changed participants in the designated national championship game in 2000 and 2001-but not in the way most would have expected. A final regular season ranking using the model was perhaps the best prebowl ranking published online in 2004, as it maximized retrodictive accuracy and was nearly the best at predicting the 28 bowl winners.


For the first time to our knowledge, we demonstrate a collinear frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) technique that is suitable for the characterization of sub-10-fs pulses. This FROG variant does not suffer from geometrical blurring effects, and a temporal resolution of 1 fs can be achieved without the need for additional aperturing. The apparatus is suitable for subnanojoule pulse energies. We apply this technique for the full characterization of pulses from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser.


The cloze test usually consists of a graded reading passage from which words have been deleted according to some methodical strategy. such as every fifth word. every tenth word. every pronoun. etc. The deleted words are replaced with blanks of a uniform size. and the student is asked to fill in the blanks with the most appropriate word. CLOZE ENCOUNTERS OF A DIFFERENT KIND


Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by William B. Quandt. Revised Edition. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2001. xii + 396 pages. Notes to p. 462 pages. Bibl to p. 468. Index to p. 488. $45 cloth; $19.95 paper. Reviewed by Yehuda Lukacs The revised edition of the Peace Process includes not only an autopsy of the Clinton presidency and its quest for ArabIsraeli peace, but also incorporates newly available material into chapters dealing with presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. As such, this new volume constitutes a highly comprehensive and balanced analysis by one of the most seasoned and nuanced observers of American policy towards the Middle East. The last section contains two new chapters covering the Clinton presidency and concludes with a penetrating analysis of Clinton's grand failure to broker Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Quandt advances a four-fold framework in his analysis of Clinton's shortcomings: the role of presidential character, the influence of the Congress and domestic politics, underlying assumptions about strategy, and the role of the parties to the conflict. Bill Clinton assumed office in January 1993 under the most favorable circumstances for advancing peace in the Middle East. Israel and Egypt had signed a peace treaty (in 1979); the Cold War had ended; the Gulf War (1991) had been won and Saddam Husayn had been contained; the Madrid peace conference, convened in 1991, had led to bilateral and multilateral negotiations between Israel and her neighbors; and Yitzhak Rabin had defeated hawkish Yitzhak Shamir in the 1992 Israeli elections. Yet, when Clinton left office eight years later, the Oslo accord, negotiated during his tenure, had been derailed, the Israeli-Palestinian Camp David negotiations had collapsed, a Palestinian uprising was in full motion with hundreds killed, and the few glimmers of optimism and hope shared by many inside and outside the Middle East in the early 1990s had all but vanished. Quandt makes a persuasive argument that Clinton's tendency to waver was debilitating and prevented him from acting decisively and confronting either Israel or the Palestinians. He had a soft spot for Israel, despite being the first president to legitimize the idea of a Palestinian state. The second possible explanation in Quandt's search for an answer takes him to Clinton's so-called permanent campaign, which precluded him from "testing the limits of the possible or engaging in an effort to ease the constraints under which any president must operate in dealing with Congress" (p. 375). Moreover, Clinton was unwilling to mobilize Jewish-American public opinion against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's harsh polices toward the Palestinians, especially the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Quandt also probes the impact of the "ripeness" theory advanced by Clinton's advisors. This theory implies that the peace process advanced according to an almost pre-determined pace in which the "United States could do little to accelerate the ripening process." This faulty approach, according to Quandt, prevented President Clinton from fully seizing the moment in 1993 and 1995, that is, pursuing a vigorous approach towards Israel and Syria. …


This volume is a research monograph analysing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from an ethnographic/linguistic point of view. The central proposition of this book is that the TRC can be regarded as a mechanism that leads to the hegemony of specific discourses, thus excercising power. The analysis illustrates how, through a certain type of reconciliation discourse constructed at the TRC hearings, a reconciliation-oriented reality took shape in post-TRC South Africa. Basically, the study points to the long-term implications a truth commission can exert on a traumatised post-conflict society. The book is unique on several levels: TRC discourse is explored in-depth on the basis of personal stories from TRC testifiers; a combination of Poststructuralist and Critical Discourse Analysis approaches form the theoretical foundations; and an extensive bibliography provides an impressive database of TRC publications.


Digital pathology is becoming more widely used in clinical practice. More generally, there is also a trend to extract genomic and proteomic information from primary tissues at a single cell level. Recently developed technologies enable this type of analysis while preserving the overall integrity of the tissue. Imaging plays a crucial role as it establishes the context of the individual cell and the overall architecture of the tissue. Here we present a set of image analysis concepts for generating tissue maps that effectively enable the linking of the extracted information. This summary discusses examples of novel biological methods for tissue cytology and new algorithms that have been developed at GE Global Research to enable quantitative analysis of such complex specimens.


Smartphones are now equipped with various location sensing capabilities that allow the phone to accurately detect a user's physical location. Combined with other context data, this has provided a great deal of potential for developing context-aware mobile applications, which will greatly improve and change how users interact with mobile devices. An activity that can be greatly enhanced with the addition of context awareness is mobile tourism. Context-aware applications currently exist for a number of major cities worldwide. However, a common characteristic of these applications is the provision of too much irrelevant information. This is due to an over-reliance on location as a context and the lack of adequate information content filtering. A deluge of irrelevant or only partially relevant information can cause information overload for tourists using the application. Other context data can assist these applications in reducing information overload, but traditional implementations have tended to lack an adequate degree of personalisation. This research focuses on implementing context by building a level of intelligence into tourist based context-aware applications. This facilitates personalisation and provides focused and timely updates related to the tourist's current environment. This will be achieved through the application implicitly learning over time and dynamically updating personalisation settings. The application will present points of potential interest to the tourist based on their current personalisation settings. This should significantly improve the tourist experience when interacting with a context-aware mobile device. When the user initially launches the application there will be no historic data available for personalisation and so this paper explores the possibility of using social network data to build an initial information based stereotype for personalisation purposes. Another benefit of this approach is integrating the social aspect of tourism between willing participants. This facilitates real-time interaction between tourists as they traverse their current environment. This will in turn lead to valuable synergistic information flows between tourists as they explore their surroundings and hence lead to a better, more informed and rewarding tourist experience. These information flows can also be valuable for the tourist information service when analysing qualitative data regarding tourists visiting their city. Therefore, it is also imperative that mobile technology and social media are embraced by the tourism industry.


The number of published PDF documents in both the academic and commercial world has increased exponentially in recent decades. There is a growing need to make their rich content discoverable to information retrieval tools. Achieving high-quality semantic searches demands that a document's structural components such as title, section headers, paragraphs, (nested) lists, tables and figures (including their captions) are properly identified. Unfortunately, the PDF format is known to not conserve such structural information because it simply represents a document as a stream of low-level printing commands, in which one or more characters are placed in a bounding box with a particular styling. In this paper, we present a novel approach to document structure recovery in PDF using recurrent neural networks to process the low-level PDF data representation directly, instead of relying on a visual re-interpretation of the rendered PDF page, as has been proposed in previous literature. We demonstrate how a sequence of PDF printing commands can be used as input into a neural network and how the network can learn to classify each printing command according to its structural function in the page. This approach has three advantages: First, it can distinguish among more fine-grained labels (typically 10-20 labels as opposed to 1-5 with visual methods), which results in a more accurate and detailed document structure resolution. Second, it can take into account the text flow across pages more naturally compared to visual methods because it can concatenate the printing commands of sequential pages. Last, our proposed method needs less memory and it is computationally less expensive than visual methods. This allows us to deploy such models in production environments at a much lower cost. Through extensive architectural search in combination with advanced feature engineering, we were able to implement a model that yields a weighted average F1 score of 97% across 17 distinct structural labels. The best model we achieved is currently served in production environments on our Corpus Conversion Service (CCS), which was presented at KDD18. This model enhances the capabilities of CCS significantly, as it eliminates the need for human annotated label ground-truth for every unseen document layout. This proved particularly useful when applied to a huge corpus of PDF articles related to COVID-19.


A new treatment strategy has had astonishing success against extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), which kills more than 70% of patients. XDR and other drug-resistant forms of TB are burgeoning among people with HIV, and current treatments are so prolonged and toxic that many patients fail to adhere to them. But a small study now shows that a simpler, safer regimen can cure the disease. Called Nix-TB, the trial has had 34 people in South Africa with XDR on three antibiotics that have never been combined before to treat TB. After 6 months, the TB bacillus could not be cultured from anyone's sputum, a sign that they had cleared the infection. More impressive, 20 people stopped taking the drugs at that point and none relapsed.


Abstract An anterior (distal) rostrum (MMNS 2957) from the Moodys Branch Formation (late middle Eocene), Tesheva Creek, Yazoo County, Mississippi, U.S.A., is described and identified as Xiphiorhynchus cf. X. eocaenicus. The specimen is compared to various secies of Xiphiorhynchus, especially the holotype of X. eocaenicus (BMNH 25744), Bracklesham Group, early middle Eocene, England. This represents the first record of a species of Xiphiorhynchus in deposits on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean. Xiphiorhynchus eocaenicus is thought to have had similar environmental preferences and habits as the extant swordfish, Xiphias gladius. Since the swordfish prefers oceanic water and makes transatlantic movements, then distribution of a xiphiorhynchin on both sides of the Atlantic is not unexpected. The environment at Tesheva Creek and the type locality in England were both shallow, nearshore, tropical to subtropical habitats. The holotype was probably transported into shallow water either as stomach contents or by ocean currents, whereas the Tesheva Creek specimen was either the remains of a stranded individual or of an animal that died in shallow water after being impaled.


In many current dynamic global vegetation mod- els (DGVMs), including those incorporated into Earth sys- tem models (ESMs), terrestrial vegetation is represented by a small number of plant functional types (PFTs), each with fixed properties irrespective of their predicted occurrence. This contrasts with natural vegetation, in which many plant traits vary systematically along geographic and environmen- tal gradients. In the JSBACH DGVM, which is part of the MPI-ESM, we allowed three traits (specific leaf area (SLA), maximum carboxylation rate at 25 C (Vcmax25) and maxi- mum electron transport rate at 25 C (Jmax25)) to vary within PFTs via trait-climate relationships based on a large trait database. The R 2 of these relationships were up to 0.83 and 0.71 for Vcmax25 and Jmax25, respectively. For SLA, more variance remained unexplained, with a maximum R 2 adjusted of 0.40. Compared to the default simulation, allow- ing trait variation within PFTs resulted in gross primary pro- ductivity differences of up to 50 % in the tropics, in > 35 % different dominant vegetation cover, and a closer match with a natural vegetation map. The discrepancy between default trait values and natural trait variation, combined with the substantial changes in simulated vegetation properties, to- gether emphasize that incorporating climate-driven trait vari- ation, calibrated on observational data and based on ecolog- ical concepts, allows more variation in vegetation responses in DGVMs and as such is likely to enable more reliable pro- jections in unknown climates.


Despite its status as one of the oldest and most enduringly popular sports in history, wrestling has been pushed to the background of the current American sports scene. Most people today would have a hard time even considering wrestling (with some of its modern theatrics) in the same terms as track and field or boxing. But until the 1920s, wrestling stood as a legitimate professional sport in this country, and a widely practiced amateur one as well. Its past respectability may not have endured, but the advent of cable television in the 1980s offered the sport a renewed opportunity to play a determining role in American popular culture. This opportunity was not wasted, and wrestlers now assume places in politics and film at the highest levels. Ringside, the first work to fully examine the history of professional wrestling in this country, provides an illuminating and colorful account of all of the various athletes, entertainers, businessmen, and national outlooks that have determined wrestling's erratic route through American history. This chronological work begins with a brief account of wrestling's global history, and then proceeds to investigate the sport's growth as a specifically American institution. Wrestling has continued to survive in the face of technological developments, scandals, public ridicule, and a lack of centralized control, and today this supremely adaptable entertainment form represents, in sum, an international industry capable of attracting enormous television and pay-per-view audiences, along with massive amounts of advertising and merchandizing revenue. Ringside focuses on the business of wrestling as well as on the performers and their in-ring antics, and offers readers a fully nuanced examination of the development of professional wrestling in America.


In this lively book, Michael Lewis' explores a topic that would seem of interest only to sports fans: how Billy Beane, the charismatic general manager of the Oakland Athletics, turned his baseball team around using, of all things, statistics. What next an inspirational tale about superior database management? But there are some general lessons in Lewis's book that make it worth the attention of people who do not know the difference between a slider and a screwball (a group that, unfortunately, includes many lawyers and law professors). Those lessons have to do, above all, with the limits of human rationality and the efficiency of labor markets. If Lewis is right about the blunders and the confusions of those who run baseball teams, then his tale has a lot to tell us about blunders and confusions in many other domains. In that sense, the tale bears directly on continuing debates about behavior, cognition, and law.2


At present there is no theory which describes fully observations of weakness and anomalous slip behaviour on many faults. Recent field studies upon such faults indicate that reactions which generate frictionally weak phyllosilicate minerals, including talc, may be significant. A series of experiments was carried out on a deionised water fluid medium triaxial deformation apparatus to investigate the effect of the syntectonic generation of talc upon fault strength and slip characteristics, where talc is produced by the reaction: lizardite + quartz ? talc + H2O. Experiments to investigate reaction kinetics were performed on lizardite and Brazilian quartz powder samples. Talc is generated by this reaction within 72 hours under hydrothermal conditions between 350�C and 500�C and effective pressures of 5 to 50 MPa. Microstructural study shows porous talc overgrowths surrounding lizardite and quartz grains suggesting an armouring effect with progressive reaction.Constant displacement rate tests and subsequent stress relaxation tests were performed upon cylindrical samples of lizardite and Hodge quartzite saw-cut at 35� juxtaposed across the shear zone. Some samples were assembled with pure talc or lizardite gouge between the forcing blocks. Tests were carried out under hydrothermal conditions: 450 �C, 50 to 150 MPa effective pressure and 4.64 x 10-4 mm s-1 shear surface displacement rate. Some samples were deformed at once to assess frictional properties of the starting materials. Other samples were held at hydrothermal conditions for 72 hours prior to deformation, to allow the blocks and gouge to react to talc. Continued reaction to talc was expected during stress relaxation. All samples displayed stable sliding behaviour, with little strain hardening. Friction coefficients averaged from varied effective pressure tests were largely in line with previous studies. A strength contrast is shown between talc gouge (average �=0.11) and talc grown as a thin veneer between lizardite and quartz forcing blocks, (average �=0.22) which is likely to be due to asperity effects including the variable contiguity of the talc veneer. Lizardite gouge gives a value of �=0.45, but when partially reacted to talc gives �=0.23. This is significantly weaker despite representing perhaps less than 15% talc.Stress relaxation data initially shows similar behaviour for all sample geometries, with a temperature-controlled dominant deformation mechanism. Lizardite gouge with ongoing reaction to talc shows enhanced shear stress reduction at low strain rates (stress exponent falls from n=12 to n=5.5). This is ascribed to the effect of reaction via production of a weaker phase, leading to reduction of frictional strength and grain size, compaction and pressure solution effects. Pure lizardite gouge also shows a reduction in stress exponent to n=7.5, attributed to dissolution-precipitation of lizardite. Microstructural study shows that talc grows as a thin veneer along the quartzite forcing block indicative of localisation of deformation with foliated talc and recrystallised lizardite present within Riedel shear structures in the lizardite gouge. The talc veneers are deformed and may be subject to mechanical smearing, enhancing their contiguity. Results of this study highlight the significance of both mechanical smearing and incongruent pressure solution creep as potential mechanisms for weakening and aseismic creep-of particular interest is the rate of strength reduction versus the rate of reaction and whether this can be extrapolated fully to creep rates on the San Andreas Fault. Similar weak phases of hydrothermal origin have been identified by other studies and the contiguity of these phases is thought crucial to their impact upon weakness, and may be enhanced greatly by the joint effects of syntectonic reaction and mechanical smearing.


Governments have become increasingly interested in the 'explosion' of research into taxpayer behaviour. This article briefly reviews two main theories of tax compliance ('deterrence' and 'non-deterrence'), before discussing the recent rapid rise of natural field experiments (NFEs) in this area. These NFEs represent a 'win–win' for policy-makers and academics, since they can test theories while also evaluating the impact of a specific intervention in the real world. The evidence from NFEs shows that deterrence approaches improve compliance, while the case for non-deterrence approaches is less conclusive at the moment. NFEs could be improved by paying more attention to findings from behavioural science that apparently incidental factors, such as timing, framing, and complexity, substantially affect whether compliance occurs or not. New directions for future studies include: network effects, tax payments (in addition to declarations), the behaviour of firms, the provision of public goods, and the relationship between attitudes and behaviour.


In several applications, the trajectory of an entity, a feature or an object has to be tracked over a sequence of image frames. When the processing is to be performed in real time, there are important constraints leading to the parallelization of tracking algorithms. This paper presents the results of a concrete implementation, which deals with the particular case of simple objects moving in an context reachable by the vision element (video camera). The steps involved in the solution development are detailed, specially in relation to their parallelization by using a computer heterogeneous network and MPI (Message Passing Interface) support. Finally, an analysis of the different algorithms behavior is carried out together with the obtained results assessment, which allows knowing the performed parallelization efficiency, and determining under which conditions this solution turns out to be the best one.


Objective In this study, ingestion of Staphylococcus aureus and "bacteria killing" (BK) were measured to evaluate polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) phagocytic functions and chemiluminescence response (CL) to phorbolmyristic acetate (PMA) as respiratory burst activity with regard to metabolic control parameters in diabetic patients. Research Design and Methods PMN phagocytic functions were assessed in 40 diabetic patients, all receiving insulin and in poor metabolic control, with 3H-thymidine-labeled Staphylococcus aureus in a modified radiometric assay. Bacteria killing was determined by pure-plate counting of surviving bacteria (colony-forming units [cm]) and luminol-enhanced CL in response to PMA as a measure of respiratory burst. PMN function data were correlated to HbA1 as parameter of recent metabolic control. Results PMN of diabetic patients showed a significant reduction in Staphylococcus aureus (50.7 ± 4.1%) and BK (29.4 ± 4.2%) compared with healthy nondiabetic control subjects (76.6 ± 4.6% and 16.3 ± 3.1%, respectively, P < 0.001), and PMN CL response was markedly reduced in diabetic patients also. Linear regression analysis showed a highly significant negative correlation of HbAi versus Staphylococcus aureus (r = -0.67, P = 0.001) and a positive correlation for BK (r = 0.73, P < 0.001). This was also true for CL, although this did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.06). Conclusions The data obtained demonstrate impaired PMN phagocytic functions and CL response in diabetic patients. These findings suggest inhibitory effects of elevated glucose concentrations on PMNs, a possible role of protein glycosylation for impairing PMN function, thus contributing in part to altered host defense.


Clinical and experimental evidence indicates that inflammatory processes contribute to the pathophysiology of epilepsy, but underlying mechanisms remain mostly unknown. Using immunohistochemistry for CD45 (common leukocyte antigen) and CD3 (T-lymphocytes), we show here microglial activation and infiltration of leukocytes in sclerotic tissue from patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), as well as in a model of TLE (intrahippocampal kainic acid injection), characterized by spontaneous, nonconvulsive focal seizures. Using specific markers of lymphocytes, microglia, macrophages, and neutrophils in kainate-treated mice, we investigated with pharmacological and genetic approaches the contribution of innate and adaptive immunity to kainate-induced inflammation and neurodegeneration. Furthermore, we used EEG analysis in mutant mice lacking specific subsets of lymphocytes to explore the significance of inflammatory processes for epileptogenesis. Blood–brain barrier disruption and neurodegeneration in the kainate-lesioned hippocampus were accompanied by sustained ICAM-1 upregulation, microglial cell activation, and infiltration of CD3+ T-cells. Moreover, macrophage infiltration was observed, selectively in the dentate gyrus where prominent granule cell dispersion was evident. Unexpectedly, depletion of peripheral macrophages by systemic clodronate liposome administration affected granule cell survival. Neurodegeneration was aggravated in kainate-lesioned mice lacking T- and B-cells (RAG1-knock-out), because of delayed invasion by Gr-1+ neutrophils. Most strikingly, these mutant mice exhibited early onset of spontaneous recurrent seizures, suggesting a strong impact of immune-mediated responses on network excitability. Together, the concerted action of adaptive and innate immunity triggered locally by intrahippocampal kainate injection contributes seizure-suppressant and neuroprotective effects, shedding new light on neuroimmune interactions in temporal lobe epilepsy.


Airway epithelial cells (AEC) and airway macrophages (AM) represent major targets of influenza A virus (IAV) infection in the lung, yet the two cell types respond very differently to IAV infection. We have used RNA sequencing to define the host transcriptional responses in each cell type under steady-state conditions as well as following IAV infection. To do this, different cell subsets isolated from the lungs of mock- and IAV-infected mice were subjected to RNA sequencing. Under steady-state conditions, AM and AEC express distinct transcriptional activities, consistent with distinct physiological roles in the airways. Not surprisingly, these cells also exhibited major differences in transcriptional responses following IAV infection. These studies shed light on how the different transcriptional architectures of airway cells from two different lineages drive transcriptional responses to IAV infection. ABSTRACT Airway epithelial cells and macrophages differ markedly in their responses to influenza A virus (IAV) infection. To investigate transcriptional responses underlying these differences, purified subsets of type II airway epithelial cells (ATII) and alveolar macrophages (AM) recovered from the lungs of mock- or IAV-infected mice at 9 h postinfection were subjected to RNA sequencing. This time point was chosen to allow for characterization of cell types first infected with the virus inoculum, prior to multicycle virus replication and the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the airways. In the absence of infection, AM predominantly expressed genes related to immunity, whereas ATII expressed genes consistent with their physiological roles in the lung. Following IAV infection, AM almost exclusively activated cell-intrinsic antiviral pathways that were dependent on interferon (IFN) regulatory factor 3/7 (IRF3/7) and/or type I IFN signaling. In contrast, IAV-infected ATII activated a broader range of physiological responses, including cell-intrinsic antiviral pathways, which were both independent of and dependent on IRF3/7 and/or type I IFN. These data suggest that transcriptional profiles hardwired during development are a major determinant underlying the different responses of ATII and AM to IAV infection. IMPORTANCE Airway epithelial cells (AEC) and airway macrophages (AM) represent major targets of influenza A virus (IAV) infection in the lung, yet the two cell types respond very differently to IAV infection. We have used RNA sequencing to define the host transcriptional responses in each cell type under steady-state conditions as well as following IAV infection. To do this, different cell subsets isolated from the lungs of mock- and IAV-infected mice were subjected to RNA sequencing. Under steady-state conditions, AM and AEC express distinct transcriptional activities, consistent with distinct physiological roles in the airways. Not surprisingly, these cells also exhibited major differences in transcriptional responses following IAV infection. These studies shed light on how the different transcriptional architectures of airway cells from two different lineages drive transcriptional responses to IAV infection.


The ancient Oriental art and science of acupuncture, known in the U.S. for a decade, still is practiced here only to a limited extent and does not seem likely to spread. The primary reason, this article hypothesizes, is the stifling effect of acupuncture regulation, which typically prohibits trained nonphysician acupuncturists, mostly Orientals, from performing the therapy. Although all states permit licensed physicians to practice acupuncture with little or no training, few physicians have shown any interest in learning acupuncture and adding it to their practice. The result is that acupuncture services are scarce or unavailable in most states, and the public's newly recognized right to acupuncture treatment is therefore burdened or effectively denied. Current statutory and medical board regulation of acupuncture is described and evaluated from the standpoint of whether it encourages the practice of acupuncture by persons trained in the therapy. The article finds that both physician-limitation and supervised-practice regulations inhibit or eliminate acupuncture services, while acupuncture licensing laws foster availability of the therapy. The article recommends that states establish autonomous boards of acupuncture to license practitioners, and concludes that a coordinated national effort by acupuncturists and their lay and medical supporters will be necessary to achieve widespread adoption of licensing laws.


In Swedish administrative law, there are numerous opportunities for authorities and others who fulfill public tasks to correct decisions. As an important limitation of this power, there are general principles on the immovability of administrative decisions. As a general rule, a favorable decision may not be corrected. Some would say that this position is based on the principle of protection of legitimate expectations, a principle which is recognized in many legal systems. Individuals should be able to rely on the fact that decisions rendered by authorities will not suddenly be withdrawn.This thesis examines rules and principles on the immovability of administrative decisions (res judicata) and the conditions under which such decisions can be corrected by the authorities. The issue of res judicata in general administrative law has not been investigated deeply in jurisprudence over the past sixty years. However, Swedish administrative law has been influenced by the administrative codifications in the 1970s, the expanding public sector and legislation, the introduction of the mandatory two-party procedure and by Sweden's EU-membership in the 1990s. An overarching purpose of the thesis is therefore to investigate the extent to which the concept of res judicata has been affected by these factors or events. Further, the thesis takes up the issue of concept formation, both in terms of res judicata and in terms of the correction rules, which have a variety of designations such as: amendment; review; modification; and withdrawal.It can be concluded that it is, and has been, difficult to agree on the content of the res judicata concept. This is also manifested in the absence of a general res judicata rule in the Administrative Procedure Act (1986:223). Based on the investigation undertaken and the results that emerged, a possible categorization of the res judicata concept is presented. The categorization made comprises three different models. Finally, an integration of the models is recommended.


Abstract During the Ordovician Radiation, domination of benthic marine communities shifted away from trilobites, toward articulated brachiopods, and, to a lesser degree, toward bivalves and gastropods. Here, models are formulated that mathematically represent alternative hypothesized causes of this transition. These include models in which per-genus origination or extinction probabilities were constrained to be (1) constant, (2) diversity-dependent, (3) productivity-dependent, or (4) jointly dependent on productivity and diversity. Using a method adapted from capture-mark-recapture (CMR) population studies, we estimate origination, extinction, and sampling probabilities jointly in order to avoid confounding patterns in turnover probabilities with temporal variation in the quality of the fossil record. Using Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), we assessed the fit of the alternative causal models relative to one another, and relative to a noncausal "phenomenological" alternative that placed no constraints on the pattern of temporal variation in origination or extinction. There were differences among taxa in the relative fit of these models, suggesting that the effects of productivity and diversity varied among higher taxa. In the aggregate, however, there was strong support for diversity-dependent origination. For extinction, poor fit of the alternative causal models suggests that we lack a good explanation for extinction patterns. These analyses support the hypothesis that diversity-dependent origination, particularly in trilobites, contributed to the Ordovician faunal transitions. By contrast, the effects of increased productivity, if indeed they were large enough to influence global diversification patterns, did not proceed in the hypothesized manner.


Abstract High soil temperatures influence seedling emergence as well as the performance of plant organs and yields. Temperatures of above 40°C were recorded in the topsoil of the Ferralsols of the semi-arid areas of SE-Kenya during the rainy season. Experiments were conducted in the climatological laboratory of the University of Trier, Germany, on two legumes (green grams and common beans var. kathika), grown by smallholder farmers in the study area under varying soil temperature conditions. The main objective was to examine the effect of soil temperature on various parameters: seedling emergence, crop water requirements, leaf area index and phenology of the two legumes. The simulated climatological laboratory conditions were similar to those at Kiboko, SE-Kenya. This study confirmed that under high soil temperature conditions, green grams are well adapted to semi-arid and hot tropical lowlands as well as lower midlands due to low water requirements, high seedling emergence rates and good yield performance. However, kathika beans were very susceptible to the simulated extreme climatic environment. By means of crop simulation modelling, a temporal differentiation for potential growth of green grams is presented for the long and short rains according to different rainfall conditions (ENSO, antiENSO, normal) over a period of 31 years.


In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and liberalism, Turkey is at the epicenter. And at the heart of Turkey is its right-wing populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Since 2002, Erdogan has consolidated his hold on domestic politics while using military and diplomatic means to solidify Turkey as a regional power. His crackdown has been brutal and consistent scores of journalists arrested, academics officially banned from leaving the country, university deans fired and many of the highest-ranking military officers arrested. In some senses, the nefarious and failed 2016 coup has given Erdogan the license to make good on his repeated promise to bring order and stability under a 'strongman'. Here, leading Turkish expert Soner Cagaptay will look at Erdogan's roots in Turkish history, what he believes in and how he has cemented his rule, as well as what this means for the world. The book will also unpick the 'threats' Erdogan has worked to combat from the liberal Turks to the Gulen movement, from coup plotters to Kurdish nationalists all of which have culminated in the crisis of modern Turkey.


Introduction: Endometrial stromal sarcomas usually arise in the uterine corpus while it is rare in extra-uterine sites. The most common extra-uterine site is the ovary. However, primary endometrial stromal sarcoma of the ovary rarely arises in a serous tumor. We report a case of primary ovarian ESS presenting in the wall of a serous cyst along with a synchronous endometrial stromal nodule (ESN).
Case report: A 50 year old woman presented with lower abdominal pain and fullness. On radiological examination, a left ovarian, predominantly cystic mass about 10cm in diameter was found along with an uterine nodule, 1.5cm in diameter, presumed to be a leiomyoma. The ovarian cyst on histology was diagnosed as ESS arising in a serous cystadenoma. The uterine nodule was diagnosed as ESN since there was no myometrial or vascular invasion.
Discussion: Endometrial stromal sarcomas pose a diagnostic challenge at extra-uterine sites. Malignant mixed mullerian tumor and sex cord stromal tumor are close differential diagnoses. The other problem is deciding whether the tumor is primary or secondary. The problem of diagnosis is compounded if the presentation is cystic.
Conclusion: We concluded that primary ovarian ESS should be diagnosed after excluding possible metastatic spread from uterine ESS. In cases with an uterine nodule, the periphery of the lesion should be thoroughly sampled to exclude ESS. We also suggest that an ovarian cyst is not necessarily epithelial.


Multiple attribute search is a central feature of economic life: we consider much more than price when purchasing a home, and more than wage when choosing a job. Nevertheless, while single attribute search problems have been studied extensively, little is known about optimal search in multiple attribute environments. I introduce a partial characterization of optimal sequential search in a problem with multiple searchable attributes and alternatives, no order restrictions on search, and full recall. Upon applying the partial rational benchmark to a rich dataset I find that subjects systematically deviate from optimal sequential search by: (1) searching too deeply within alternatives and (2) switching too adjacently between alternatives. I explore how these deviations affect payoffs, and discuss why they may be boundedly rational.


A fragmented JPEG image is currently not possible to reassemble without knowing the ordering of the fragments. This is a problem for the police when they search for illegal digital images. This paper presents a method to reassemble fragmented JPEG images containing restart markers. Empirical evaluations show that it is possible to reassemble images taken from a set containing fragments of several images.


Advanced numerical simulation models can potentially help improve guidelines for irrigation and salinity management. Many simulation model parameters have considerable uncertainty, and ideally that uncertainty should be reflected in model predictions and recommendations. In this work, we investigate solute transport predication intervals that can be generated by propagating model parameter uncertainty using Monte Carlo techniques. Flow and transport is simulated with a standard numerical model, while soil parameters and their uncertainty are estimated with pedotransfer functions. Generalized global sensitivity coefficients are computed to determine the parameters having the greatest impact on transport prediction and uncertainty. Simulations are compared with Br transport measured under unsaturated conditions in large lysimeters packed with clayey soil materials. In a 48 cm tall, homogeneous soil profile, model prediction intervals provided a reasonably good description of a single, relatively "noisy" breakthrough curve. In replicated 180 cm tall, layered soil profiles, model structural errors limited the accuracy of the prediction intervals under one irrigation water treatment, whereas under another treatment the predictions tracked the time course of the data reasonably well but tended to overestimate solute concentrations. The width of the prediction intervals tended to be small relative to the range of transport variability that existed across replicated lysimeters, particularly at shallow depths. Additional work aimed at operational field testing of model prediction uncertainty is needed if advanced water management models are to reach their full potential.


Daily setup for head and neck (HN) radiotherapy (RT) can vary randomly due to neck rotation and anatomy change. These differences cannot be totally corrected by the current practice of image guided RT with translational repositioning. The authors present a novel rapid correction scheme that can be used on-line to correct both interfractional setup variation and anatomy change for HN RT. The scheme consists of two major steps: (1) Segment aperture morphing (SAM) and (2) segment weight optimization (SWO). SAM is accomplished by applying the spatial relationship between the apertures and the contours of the planning target and organs at risk (OARs) to the new target and OAR contours. The new target contours are transferred from planning target contours to the CT of the day by means of deformable registration (MIMVISTA). The dose distribution for each new aperture was generated using a planning system with a fast dose engine and hardware and was input into a newly developed SWO package using fast sequential quadratic programming. The entire scheme was tested based on the daily CT images acquired for representative HN IMRT cases treated with a linac and CT-on-Rails combo. It was found that the target coverage and/or OAR sparing was degraded based on the CT of the day with the current standard repositioning from rigid registration. This degradation can be corrected by the SAM/SWO scheme. The target coverage and OAR sparing for the SAM/SWO plans were found to be equivalent to the original plan. The SAM/SWO process took 5-8 min for the head and neck cases studied. The proposed aperture morphing with weight optimization is an effective on-line approach for correcting interfractional patient setup and anatomic changes for head and neck cancer radiotherapy.


Humans are traditionally depicted as suboptimal decision-makers, since they often fail to maximize expected utility. However, recent studies claim people choose optimally in tasks called motor lotteries, where participants reach to different targets within a maximum time window in order to get a reward. A difference is that, while in classical tasks probability information is explicitly given, in motor tasks it is implicit in each participant's motor variability. Once this variability is known, a target can be designed to match a specific probability of being hit. This manipulation is normally implemented through size, but little has been done to explore other ways to represent probability in a motor task: for instance, through distance. Our experiment studied differences in expected utility maximization between these two ways of representing probabilities. In each of our two different conditions, trials consisted in the presentation of two targets, one with a lower probability to be hit but higher gain (risky) and another with higher probability and lower gain (safe). Participants decided to reach for one or another. In the size condition, both targets appeared at the same distance, but the risky was smaller. In the distance condition, both targets had equal size, but the risky was further away. Probabilities were manipulated to sample various expected gain differences between both targets. Results showed clear differences. Risk aversion was more present in the distance condition: participants tended to reach for the safe target even if the optimal choice was the risky target. In the size condition, participants were more sensitive to expected value differences: the more this difference favored the risky target, the more it was chosen. These differences may be interpreted as participants considering additional cost functions (e.g. biomechanical) in the distance condition not captured by the mere probability of hitting. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


In 1969, Strassen shocked the world by showing that two n x n matrices could be multiplied in time asymptotically less than $O(n^3)$. While the recursive construction in his algorithm is very clear, the key gain was made by showing that 2 x 2 matrix multiplication could be performed with only 7 multiplications instead of 8. The latter construction was arrived at by a process of elimination and appears to come out of thin air. Here, we give the simplest and most transparent proof of Strassen's algorithm that we are aware of, using only a simple unitary 2-design and a few easy lines of calculation. Moreover, using basic facts from the representation theory of finite groups, we use 2-designs coming from group orbits to generalize our construction to all n (although the resulting algorithms aren't optimal for n at least 3).


Stromatolites are laminated, lithified (CaCO3) sedimentary deposits formed by precipitation and/or sediment accretion by cyanobacterial-bacterial mat communities. Stromatolites have been associated with these communities as far back as the Precambrian era some 2+ billion years ago. The means by which microbial communities mediate the precipitation processes have remained unclear, and are the subject of considerable debate and speculation. Two alternative explanations for microbially mediated precipitation include: (i) cyanobacterial photosynthesis increases pH in a system supersaturated in respect of CaCO3, resulting in CaCO3 precipitation and then laminated lithification, and (ii) decomposition of cyanobacterial extracellular organic matter (e.g. sheaths, mucilage and organic acids) by microheterotrophs leads to release of organic-bound Ca2+ ions and CaCO3 precipitation. We evaluated these explanations by examining metabolically active, lithifying stromatolitic mat communities from Highborne Cay, Bahamas, using microautoradiography. Microautoradiographic detection of 14CO2 fixation and 3H organic matter (D-glucose and an amino acid mixture) utilization by photosynthetically active cyanobacteria and microheterotrophs, combined with community-level uptake experiments, indicate that bacteria, rather than cyanobacteria are the dominant sites of CaCO3 deposition. In the oligotrophic waters in which stromatolites exist, microheterotrophs are reliant on the photosynthetic community as a main source of organic matter. Therefore, autotrophic production indirectly controls microbially mediated precipitation and stromatolite formation in these shallow marine environments.


The growing demand for customer-responsive, made-to-order manufacturing is stimulating the need for improved dynamic decision-making processes in commercial fleet operations. Moreover, the rapid growth of electronic commerce through the internet is also requiring advanced and precise real-time operation of vehicle fleets. Accompanying these demand side developments/pressures, the growing availability of technologies such as AVL(Automatic Vehicle Location) systems and continuous two-way communication devices is driving developments on the supply side. These technologies enable the dispatcher to identify the current location of trucks and to communicate with drivers in real time affording the carrier fleet dispatcher the opportunity to dynamically respond to changes in demand, driver and vehicle availability, as well as traffic network conditions. This research investigates key aspects of real time dynamic routing and scheduling problems in fleet operation particularly in a truckload pickup-and-delivery problem under various settings, in which information of stochastic demands is revealed on a continuous basis, i.e., as the scheduled routes are executed. The most promising solution strategies for dealing with this real-time problem are analyzed and integrated. Furthermore, this research develops. analyzes, and implements hybrid algorithms for solving them, which combine fast local heuristic approach with an optimization-based approach. In addition, various partitioning algorithms being able to deal with large fleet of vehicles are developed based on 'divided & conquer' technique. Simulation experiments are developed and conducted to evaluate the performance of these algorithms.


Abstract. The unprecedented use of Earth's resources by humans, in combination with
increasing natural variability in natural processes over the past century, is
affecting the evolution of the Earth system. To better understand natural
processes and their potential future trajectories requires improved
integration with and quantification of human processes. Similarly, to
mitigate risk and facilitate socio-economic development requires a better
understanding of how the natural system (e.g. climate variability and
change, extreme weather events, and processes affecting soil fertility)
affects human processes. Our understanding of these interactions and feedback
between human and natural systems has been formalized through a variety of
modelling approaches. However, a common conceptual framework or set of
guidelines to model human–natural-system feedbacks is lacking. The presented
research lays out a conceptual framework that includes representing
model coupling configuration in combination with the frequency of interaction
and coordination of communication between coupled models. Four different
approaches used to couple representations of the human and natural system are
presented in relation to this framework, which vary in the processes
represented and in the scale of their application. From the development and
experience associated with the four models of coupled human–natural systems,
the following eight lessons were identified that if taken into account by
future coupled human–natural-systems model developments may increase their
success: (1) leverage the power of sensitivity analysis with models,
(2) remember modelling is an iterative process, (3) create a common language,
(4) make code open-access, (5) ensure consistency, (6) reconcile
spatio-temporal mismatch, (7) construct homogeneous units, and
(8) incorporating feedback increases non-linearity and variability. Following a discussion of
feedbacks, a way forward to expedite model coupling and increase the
longevity and interoperability of models is given, which suggests the use of
a wrapper container software, a standardized applications programming
interface (API), the incorporation of standard names, the mitigation of sunk costs by
creating interfaces to multiple coupling frameworks, and the adoption of
reproducible workflow environments to wire the pieces together.


Purpose Elastin is a major arterial structural protein, and elastin-derived peptides are related to arterial change. We previously reported on a novel assay developed using aortic elastin peptides; however, its clinical implications remain unclear. In this study, we assessed whether anti-elastin antibody titers reflect the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) or its characteristics. Materials and Methods We included 174 CAD patients and 171 age- and sex-matched controls. Anti-elastin antibody titers were quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Parameters of arterial stiffness, including the augmentation index (AI) and heart-to-femoral pulse wave velocity (hfPWV), were measured non-invasively. The clinical and angiographic characteristics of CAD patients were also evaluated. Associations between anti-elastin levels and vascular characteristics were examined by linear regression analysis. Results The median blood level of anti-elastin was significantly lower in the CAD group than in the controls [197 arbitrary unit (a.u.) vs. 63 a.u., p<0.001]. Levels of anti-elastin were significantly lower in men and in subjects with hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, or high hfPWV. Nevertheless, anti-elastin levels were not dependent on atherothrombotic events or the angiographic severity of CAD. In a multivariate analysis, male sex (β=-0.38, p<0.001), diabetes mellitus (β=-0.62, p<0.001), hyperlipidemia (β=-0.29, p<0.001), and AI (β=-0.006, p=0.02) were ultimately identified as determinants of anti-elastin levels. Conclusion Lower levels of anti-elastin are related to CAD. The association between antibody titers and CAD is linked to arterial stiffness rather than the advancement of atherosclerosis.


Background: Primary implant stability (PIS) depends on surgical technique, implant design and recipient bone characteristics, among other factors. Bone density (BD) can be determined preoperatively in Hounsfield units (HUs) using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). Reliable prediction of PIS could improve the assessment of implant prognosis, guide treatment decisions and improve success rates. We sought to assess whether PIS is associated with recipient bone characteristics, namely, BD and alveolar ridge width (ARW), measured preoperatively by CBCT and thereby investigate whether PIS could be predicted by this type of radiological analysis of the edentulous alveolar ridge prior to implant placement.
Methods: We studied 160 implants placed in 48 patients in 2016 and 2017. All patients underwent CBCT with a radiological/surgical guide. ARW and BD were calculated using a radiology viewer. PIS values were determined by resonance frequency analysis (implant stability quotient, ISQ) and insertion torque (IT). Contingency tables were constructed with appropriate statistical procedures: tests for differences in the mean, with estimation of effect sizes (R2), scatterplots, Pearson's and Spearman's correlation coefficients, and chi-square tests of independence. P values < .05 were considered significant.
Results: IT was most influenced by the HU value at 0.5 mm outside the implant placement area, followed by the HU value within this area, these values explaining 39.8% and 35.3% of the variance respectively. The explanatory factors that most influenced ISQ were the HU value at 0.5 mm outside the implant placement area, followed by the anatomical implant placement site and apical ARW. ISQ values were significantly related to ARW in coronal (p <.05), middle (p <.01) and apical thirds (p <.01). ISQs were higher with 4.1-mm than 3.25- or 3.75-mm diameter implants (p <.01). ISQ and IT were strongly correlated (p <.001).
Conclusions: PIS assessed in terms of ISQ and IT is positively correlated with edentulous alveolar ridge BD measured by CBCT, implying that implant stability may be predicted preoperatively. Wide alveolar ridges favour lateral PIS, but have no effect on rotational PIS. The most significant predictor of lateral and rotational PIS identified was the HU value at 0.5 mm outside the implant placement area.


Purpose
Commercial entities (e.g. health and life insurance, airlines and supermarkets) in different countries have recently begun to introduce wearable technology as part of the consumer journey and as a means of enhancing the business value chain. While a firm's decision to adopt such new technologies as wearable devices is often based on financial factors such as return on investment, costs and impact on profits, consumers may hold a different attitude toward the value of using smart wearables and sharing their personal data as part of their business-client relationships. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer perceptions of and reactions to persuaded self-tracking (PST) – a practice in which businesses actively encourage consumers to monitor, collect and share personal biometric data through wearable technologies in exchange for personalized incentives and rewards.

Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative research approach and a purposeful sampling method, the authors conducted personal in-depth interviews with 24 consumers (both users and non-users of wearable devices). Interviews were recorded and transcribed, resulting in 600 pages of transcripts comprising more than 203,000 words. Data coding and analysis were facilitated by using NVivo.

Findings
Consumers' assessment of PST is based on perceived value-in-use, privacy/security concerns and perceived fairness/justice, resulting in four types of reactions to adopt or use PST (embracing, considering, debating and avoiding). Specifically, the authors identified two individual determinants (intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation) and four firm-related determinants (design of wearable device, assurance, transparency and controllability) that influence consumer perceptions of PST.

Research limitations/implications
Results of this study have implications for both vendors of wearable devices and firms trying to leverage smart wearables in their value chains. Identifying consumers' perceptions, as well as barriers and enablers of acceptance, will help firms to more effectively design and develop wearable device-based services, thus gaining consumer support for using fitness trackers. The primary limitation of the study is that using a thematic analysis method diminishes the generalizability of our findings.

Originality/value
This study addresses an under-researched area: the integration of wearable technologies in a firm's value chain through the lens of the consumers. This study is one of the first, according to authors' knowledge, to investigate consumer perceptions of PST.


It is difficult or impossible to use the Lutheran idea of 'Law and Gospel' as a guide to the theological content of the Bible. The idea has poor biblical support and accounts for a number of ambiguities in Lutheran theology relating to sanctification (including simul justus, 'law always accuses', inabilities to understand the Sermon on the Mount as a message of discipleship). Furthermore, the idea has received quite different interpretations from various Lutheran theologians. However, one fruitful approach is to use 'Law and Gospel' as a guide to measure the impact of a text or message on a specific audience, as is demonstrated with Luther's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. But even so, 'Law and Gospel' must be supplemented by the important category of 'discipleship' and other categories in order to encompass the possibilities of the Bible's message. Recommended Citation Hordern, Richard P. (1983) "Law and gospel as hermeneutic: Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition," Consensus: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol9/iss1/1 I S S N : 2 3 6 9 2 6 8 5 Journal Home About This Journal Aims & Scope Editorial Board Policies


The area of the Longi-Galati-S. Salvatore di Fitalia-Frazzano quadrangle in the Peloritani chain, already the subject of about ten conflicting chartographic interpretations, presents several different stratigraphic successions of the basement's cover, in spite of its limited areal extent. Analysis of these successions and comparison between them ad with those of neighbouring and distant zones has allowed a reconstruction of the palaeophysiography and of the facies palaeodomains and their original locations. During Early and Middle Liassic times the palaeodomains were characterised by physiographic and structural evolution, which forced them around rhombocasms from possible transtensions (e.g. the palaeodomain of Longi) surrounded by carbonate platforms. In the Middle Jurassic the platforms (e.g. of Galati) were drowned to become ensialic seamounts with condensed pelagic sedimentation; in the Late Cretaceous, following the sharp rotation of the Africa v/s Europe drift direction, «push-ups» and/or «flowers» structures developed; subsequent detachment of megabreccias, which were deposited in the adjacent depressions, and sedimentation of Scaglia occurred simultaneously. During the Early to Middle Miocene, the change in compressional regime from Alpine to Mediterranean (specifically to the Ionian trend related to emplacement of the whole Calabrian Arc) caused overthrusting of the materials of the mesozoic palaeodomains, in a system of three Nappes and two secondary tectonic units, respectively Galati, Longi, Fondachelli-Maudrazzi and Frazzano and P.so d'Armi. These units were thrust on to the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Argille Varicolori of the Sicilide domain. The Fondachelli-Mandrazzi Nappe would at least have supplied the detritus for the Oligocene-Aquitanian Frazzano Flysch on the palaedomain of Longi; the Aspromonte Nappe - probably already in place outside the Longi area - would have supplied the detritus for the so called Capo d'Orlando Flysch molasse that mantles previously emplaced nappes. The position of the «Sicilidi» materials occurring both under (as in the Longi area) and above the Calabride layers (in the latter case structurally designated the «Antisicilidi», as in the south-eastern-most zone under examination) will be attributed to the twisting course of the «Taormina line» during the migration of the Calabrian Arc towards the Ionian Basin. The proliferation of incompatible geological maps is considered to be the result of both the inadequacy of facies analysis on the varied and newly described stratigraphic columns, derived from lithoformational assemblages, and from the difficulty of discriminating between stratigraphic and structural parameters.


I INTRODUCTION In the landmark decision of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (1) the United States Supreme Court empowered federal judges to reject irrelevant or unreliable scientific evidence. Daubert has given the judiciary a mandate to foster "good science" in the courtroom and to reject expert testimony not grounded in scientific methods and procedures. Federal agencies--in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA")--have been widely criticized for lacking a commitment to sound science. Too often, federal courts have upheld agency decisions that are based on faulty scientific evidence or unsupported assumptions and conclusions. The courts' responsibility to engage in meaningful judicial review of agency action, together with Congress's recent directive calling for agencies to issue data quality guidelines, strongly points to the need for a mechanism to enable more rigorous, consistent review of agency science. Daubert provides a suitable framework for reviewing the quality of agency science and the soundness of agency decisions consistent with the standards established for review of agency rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"). (2) While the Daubert line of cases arises in connection with the admissibility of evidence in litigation governed by the Federal Rules of Evidence, the same "good science" rationale should also apply to judicial review of the science underlying regulatory decisionmaking. Indeed, if private litigants are entitled to rules requiring sound science to protect parochial interests, certainly the public should be equally assured that good science is the foundation for national action. The regulatory science used to justify agency decisions that commit society's public resources and allocate social priorities should be no less rigorous than the litigation science that is currently tested according to the methods and procedures prescribed in Daubert. To date, two courts have specifically rejected the application of Daubert in cases governed by the APA, (3) and no court has directly accepted the proposition that Daubert principles should apply in the context of administrative law. In 1999, however, a D.C. Circuit judge on the panel that decided American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. EPA cited Daubert favorably in his dissenting opinion. (4) In Daubert itself, the Supreme Court cited and relied on a scholarly book by a former EPA official discussing regulatory science. (5) One would therefore imagine that the Supreme Court would be receptive to extending Daubert principles to review of federal agency science. Indeed, the criteria for judicial review of agency action established in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Ass'n v. State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Co. (6) and its progeny under the APA are substantively consistent with the "relevance" and "reliability" themes of Daubert. This Article argues that Daubert principles should apply to the review of agency rulemaking under the APA because these principles are consistent with the APA requirement that agencies engage in reasoned decisionmaking, would assure better documentation of agencies' scientific decisions, and would enhance the rigor and predictability of judicial review of agency action based on scientific evidence. Judges would evaluate the scientific methods and procedures employed by agencies but would not substitute their own policy preferences or conclusions for those chosen by the agencies. The fundamental goal of "regulatory Daubert" is, quite simply, to encourage reviewing judges to be less deferential, and thus more probing, of agency science and related administrative justifications for regulatory action. Incorporating Daubert principles into administrative law would improve agency decisionmaking and enhance accountability. Agencies would be compelled to identify the most reliable and relevant scientific evidence for the issue at hand and disclose the default assumptions, policy choices, and factual uncertainties therein. …


Testing for invariance of measurements across groups (such as countries or time points) is essential before meaningful comparisons may be conducted. However, when tested, invariance is often absent. As a result, comparisons across groups are potentially problematic and may be biased. In the current study, we propose utilizing a multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to provide a framework to explain item bias. We show how variation in a contextual variable may explain noninvariance. For the illustration of the method, we use data from the second round of the European Social Survey (ESS).


This paper presents a modular approach to motion planning with provable stability guarantees for robots that move through changing environments via periodic locomotion behaviors. We focus on dynamic walkers as a paradigm for such systems, although the tools developed in this paper can be used to support general compositional approaches to robot motion planning with Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs). By formulating the planning process as a Switching System with Multiple Equilibria (SSME) we prove that the system's evolution remains within explicitly characterized trapping regions in the state space under suitable constraints on the frequency of switching among the DMPs. These conditions encapsulate the low-level stability limitations in a form that can be easily communicated to the planner. Furthermore, we show how the available primitives can be safely composed online in a receding horizon manner to enable the robot to react to moving obstacles. The proposed framework can be applied in a wide class of 3D bipedal walking models, and offers a modular approach for integrating readily available low-level locomotion control and high-level planning methods.


This study of winning reaction times in Elapsed Time Bracket Racing in the National Hot Rod Association used elimination data, consisting of more than thirty five thousand total runs, gathered from ten of the 117 NHRA member tracks in 2013. Nearly eighteen thousand "winning" runs were used for analysis of the following questions: (1) Are the mean reaction times of the three classes (sportsman, pro, and super pro) different; (2) Do reaction times change from earlier rounds to later rounds. A 2x3 ANOVA was used for analysis and the Fisher's LSD test was used for the post hoc analysis of differences among classes. In all cases the results were statistically significant. Super pro reaction times were twenty thousandths of a second faster than pro, which was twenty thousandths of a second faster than sportsman. The results of this study serve to validate and distinguish the separate classes of competition. Further investigation is necessary to better understand the relationship between reaction times and track as well as round interaction with tracks and classes.


Progress towards controlling and eliminating parasitic worms, including schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, and lymphatic filariasis, is advancing rapidly as national governments, multinational NGOs, and pharmaceutical companies launch collaborative chemotherapeutic control campaigns. Critical questions remain regarding the potential for achieving elimination of these infections, and analytical methods can help to quickly estimate progress towards—and the probability of achieving—elimination over specific timeframes. Here, we propose the effective reproduction number, Reff, as a proxy of elimination potential for sexually reproducing worms that are subject to poor mating success at very low abundance (positive density dependence, or Allee effects). Reff is the number of parasites produced by a single reproductive parasite at a given stage in the transmission cycle, over the parasite's lifetime—it is the generalized form of the more familiar basic reproduction number, R0, which only applies at the beginning of an epidemic—and it can be estimated in a 'model-free' manner by an estimator ('ε'). We introduce ε, demonstrate its estimation using simulated data, and discuss how it may be used in planning and evaluation of ongoing elimination efforts for a range of parasitic diseases.