Objectives: To present the functional outcomes of elderly patients treated with percutaneous acetabular surgery and compare them with those treated with traditional open reduction and internal fixation in previously published series. Design: Retrospective. Setting: University level I trauma center. Patients: All patients aged 60 and older treated with percutaneous screw fixation for acetabular fractures from 1994 to 2007 were included. Seventy-nine consecutive patients were identified. Thirty-six patients died before functional outcomes were obtained, leaving 43 patients and fractures in our study group. Functional outcomes were obtained in 35 of 43 (81.3%) patients at an average of 6.8 years after the index surgery. Intervention: Minimally invasive reduction and percutaneous fixation of acetabular fractures. Main Outcome Measurement: Short musculoskeletal functional assessment and Harris Hip Score. Results: One-year mortality was 13.9% (11 of 79). Average short musculoskeletal functional assessment dysfunction and bother indices were 23.3 and 21.3, respectively, in 24 patients who maintained their native hip. When compared with Short Musculoskeletal Functional Assessment data from 2 other series of patients treated with formal open reduction and internal fixation, no differences existed in the dysfunction (P = 0.49) or bother (P = 0.55) indices. Conversion to total hip arthroplasty occurred in 11 of 36 patients (30.6%). Average Harris Hip Scores in patients with their native hip was 77 (range, 33–100). In the 11 patients converted to total hip arthroplasty, average Short Musculoskeletal Functional Assessment dysfunction and bother indices were 24.3 and 23.9, respectively. No differences were found in the dysfunction (P = 0.93) or bother (P = 0.16) indices when compared with patients converted from open reduction and internal fixation to total hip arthroplasty. Average Harris Hip Score in patients converted to total hip arthroplasty was 83 (range, 68–92), and this was not significantly different from the best scores reported with acute total hip arthroplasty. Conclusions: Functional outcomes and rates of conversion to total hip arthroplasty of acetabular fractures in elderly patients treated with percutaneous reduction and fixation show no significant differences when compared with published series of patients treated with formal open reduction and internal fixation. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


State of the art query by example spoken term detection (QbE-STD) systems in zero-resource conditions rely on representation of speech in terms of sequences of class-conditional posterior probabilities estimated by deep neural network (DNN). The posteriors are often used for pattern matching or dynamic time warping (DTW). Exploiting posterior probabilities as speech representation propounds diverse advantages in a classification system. One key property of the posterior representations is that they admit a highly effective hashing strategy that enables indexing a large audio archive in divisions for reducing the search complexity. Moreover, posterior indexing leads to a compressed representation and enables pronunciation dewarping and partial detection with no need for DTW. We exploit these characteristics of the posterior space in the context of redundant hash addressing for query-by-example spoken term detection (QbE-STD). We evaluate the QbE-STD system on AMI corpus and demonstrate that tremendous speedup and superior accuracy is achieved compared to the state-of-the-art pattern matching so-lution based on DTW. The system has the potential to enable massively large scale spoken query detection.


"Wonderfully erudite, humorous, and easy to read." --KDNuggets In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.


The Sharpe ratio is a common financial performance measure that represents the optimal risk versus return of an investment portfolio, also defined as the slope of the capital market line within the mean-variance Markowitz efficient frontier. Obtaining sample point and confidence interval estimates for this metric is challenging due to both its dynamic nature and issues surrounding its statistical properties. Given the importance of obtaining robust determinations of risk versus return within financial portfolios, the purpose of the current research was to improve the statistical estimation error associated with Sharpe's ratio, offering an approach to point and confidence interval estimation which employs bootstrap resampling and computational intelligence. This work also extends prior studies by minimizing the ratio's statistical estimation error first by incorporating the common assumption that the ratio's loss function is the squared error and second by correcting for overestimation through an approach that recognizes that the negative covariance between the variables representing the estimate of the Sharpe ratio and the standard deviation can be used for corrective purposes. Results of an accompanying empirical simulation study indicated improved relative efficiency of point estimates and the coverage probability, coverage error, length, and relative bias of confidence intervals.


Analysis of January and February 1979 Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) data has revealed discrepancies in the responses of vertically and horizontally polarized brightness temperature ( T B ) data to snow in the state of Indiana. Ten satellite overpasses were analyzed between January 8 and February 21, 1979. In four cases, the horizontally polarized T B s correlated with snow depth significantly better than did the vertically polarized T B s. These four overpasses occurred either when the snowpack was building up or when it had metamorphosed and/or was melting. For example, on February 17, the coefficient of correlation, R , between vertically polarized T B and snow depth was R = -.46 while it was R = -.86 for the horizontally polarized T B data. Just prior to February 17, air temperatures rose above 0°C in the study area causing melting of the snowpack. On February 17, air temperatures dropped well below 0°C and the snow and water in the snowpack froze causing a metamorphosis of the snowpack. It is concluded that horizontally polarized T B data may be more useful than vertically polarized data for analysis of snow in regions in which there are a range of snowpack conditions, or where a snowpack undergoes rapid metamorphosis. However, analysis of both polarizations may reveal information concerning the structure of a snowpack.


Nowadays the number of thefts and identity fraud has become a serious issue. In order to avoid these thefts and identity fraud, a face recognition system must be established. The scope of this project is to develop a security access control application based on face recognition. The haar-like features is used for face detection and HOG +SVM algorithm is used for face recognition. In order to achieve a higher accuracy and effectiveness we use OpenCV libraries and python computer language. Training and identification is done in embedded device known as Raspberry Pi.


Self-supervised representation learning with deep neural networks is a powerful tool for machine learning tasks with limited labeled data but extensive unlabeled data. To learn representations, self-supervised models are typically trained on a pretext task to predict structure in the data (e.g. audio-visual correspondence, short-term temporal sequence, word sequence) that is indicative of higher-level concepts relevant to a target, downstream task. Sensor networks are promising yet unexplored sources of data for self-supervised learning—they collect large amounts of unlabeled yet timestamped data over extended periods of time and typically exhibit long-term temporal structure (e.g., over hours, months, years) not observable at the short time scales previously explored in self-supervised learning (e.g., seconds). This structure can be present even in single-modal data and therefore could be exploited for self-supervision in many types of sensor networks. In this work, we present a model for learning audio representations by predicting the long-term, cyclic temporal structure in audio data collected from an urban acoustic sensor network. We then demonstrate the utility of the learned audio representation in an urban sound event detection task with limited labeled data.


HIV and AIDS is recognised as not only a global public health problem, but also as a problem that is embedded in and influenced by cultural, social and economic factors. Conventional public health preventive interventions and awareness campaigns, focusing on improved knowledge and individual behavior change, have largely failed to reduce the transmission of HIV. This observation has required national and international health authorities as well as NGO´s in particularly affected areas, such as South Africa, to revisit how they communicate relevant, consistent and correct information about HIV and AIDS. Due to this global crisis, practitioners and theorists need to rethink about the creative application of communication strategies. Communication serves as a means to discuss health problems, and specific determinants of health with a final goal of "translation of science into practice" (Parvanta, 2011:84). One of the most promising communication approaches to address HIV and AIDS, and in South Africa more specifically, has been Entertainment Education (EE), a creative and engaging communication strategy used to bring about behavioural and social change mainly addressing development and health issues. EE, as a strategy, acknowledges that HIV and AIDS interventions must integrate both cultural and structural (social change) concerns. Yet, ambiguity surrounding how to design and implement culturally appropriate projects has made it more difficult to develop programmes in this manner. This study revisits perceptions of EE from a global audience perspective, using a South African developed EE television series, Intersexions, as a case study. The overall objective of the study is to explore what these perceptions can tell us about the application of EE in various countries and socio-economic and cultural contexts. Young people from Universities in Malaysia, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, , the Netherlands and Sweden, between the age of 18-25 participated in focus group discussions after the screening of two episodes of Intersexions. The data collected from various countries offers empirical motives, using a mixed methods approach to revisit how we define EE, and how EE in practice can inform further theoretical developments in the field. The research employs an interpretivist approach and takes the form of a reception analysis of participant responses to the Intersexions episodes, and particularly from the media-culturalist perspective and media-materialist approach.


ABSTRACT Shekhovtsov suggests that there are two types of radical right-wing music that are cultural reflections of the two different political strategies that fascism was forced to adopt in the 'hostile' conditions of the post-war period. While White Noise music is explicitly designed to inspire racially or politically motivated violence and is seen as part and parcel of the revolutionary ultra-nationalist subculture, he suggests that 'metapolitical fascism' has its own cultural reflection in the domain of sound, namely, apoliteic music. This is a type of music whose ideological message contains obvious or veiled references to the core elements of fascism but is simultaneously detached from any practical attempts to realize these elements through political activity. Apoliteic music neither promotes outright violence nor is publicly related to the activities of radical right-wing political organizations or parties. Nor can it be seen as a means of direct recruitment to any political tendency. Shekhovtsov's article focuses on this type of music, and the thesis is tested by examining bands and artists that work in such musical genres as Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, whose roots lie in cultural revolutionary and national folk traditions.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important nosocomial pathogen, especially in individuals who are immunocompromised. This study investigates pseudomonas infections in burn wounds of patients at the Menoufiya University Hospital. Pseudomonas isolates were identified to the species level using automatic Sensititre, subjected to antibiotic susceptibility testing. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the predominant (56.5%) species of Pseudomonas while mixed excellent group, Pseudomonas putida and Pseudomonas fluorscens constituted 19.6%, 15.2% and 8.7% of the isolates respectively. All Pseudomonas isolates were resistant to sulphamethoxazole trimethoprim (SXT), amoxycillin (AML), ampicillin + sulbactam (SAM), cefepime (CP), tetracycline (TE). Most of the strains were resistant to erythromycin (E) (91.3%), amoxycillin + clavulanic acid (AMC) (74.9%), ceftriaxone (CRO) (63%), azetreonam (ATM) (56.5%).Most of the strains were sensitive to amikacin (AK), tobramycin (TOB), gentamicin (CN), cefoperazone (CFP), and piperacillin (PRL) (91.3%, 89.2%, 69.6%, 58.7%, 56.6%) in this descending order of activity. Twenty isolates (43.4%) were ? lactamase producer, out of these isolates, 16 strains (80%) contained plasmids, while 4(20%) were plasmidless. Extended spectrum ? lactamase (ESBLS) was demonstrated in 4(8.6%) of isolates. Plasmid profile analysis showed that 18 isolates (39.1%) harboured plasmids with molecular weight ranging from 1.4 140 MDa. The number of plasmids, ranged from one to five, 8 strains (44.4%) contained 3 plasmids while 7 (38.9%) had one plasmid. 2(11.1%)had 2 plasmids, and one (5.5%) contained 5 plasmids. Resistances to AK, TOB and ATM were associated with the existence of large molecular weight plasmids. Moreover, resistance to increasing number of antibiotics was associated with high molecular weight plasmids. In conclusion, the burn wound represents a susceptible site for opportunistic colonization and multidrug resistant strains, Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection is particularly problematic, plasmid may be responsible for resistance to antibiotics. Resistance to ESBLS is an important problem in Egypt. Implementation of infection control measures may help in reducing further transmission of Pseudomonas clones within the burn units.


Abstract Mining has always played a significant role in the urbanisation of Zimbabwe. That Zimbabwe's most urbanised province has the highest concentration of mining settlements is no accident. Whereas mining initially gave impetus to urbanisation, economic growth and prosperity, its decline precipitated urban shrinkage and poverty. In the wake of the post-2000 crises, shrinking mining towns have become havens. This discussion unravels the nexus of mining, urbanisation, governance and poverty. Using the case of chromite and copper mining, the article examines how mining, initially a driver of urbanisation and prosperity, later became the catalyst for decline and impoverishment. It argues that the fate of mining towns cannot be explained without reference to the intersection of national governance, local conditions and globalisation. The article makes two central observations: mining settlements are an integral part of the urban hierarchy; and the resurgence of mining towns is more of a mutation than a revival.


The real-time simulation of analog circuits by digital systems becomes problematic when parametric components like potentiometers are involved. In this case the coefficients defining the digital system will change and have to be adapted. One common solution is to recalculate the coefficients in real-time, a possibly computationally expensive operation. With a view to the simulation using state-space representations, two parametric subcircuits found in typical guitar amplifiers are analyzed, namely the tone stack, a linear passive network used as simple equalizer and a distorting preamplifier, limiting the signal amplitude with LEDs. Solutions using trapezoidal rule discretization are presented and discussed. It is shown, that the computational costs in case of recalculation of the coefficients are reduced compared to the related DK-method, due to minimized matrix formulations. The simulation results are compared to reference data and show good match.


Nearshore rocky ecosystems along exposed shorelines experience frequent disturbances due to turbulent swells and wave action. These disturbances directly affect subtidal algal communities that provide biogenic habitat along the coast. This habitat shapes faunal communities by providing refuge through structural complexity. In central California, kelps are the most notable providers of biogenic habitat, but, seasonally, a prolific fucoid, Stephanocystis osmundacea, adds a considerable amount of habitat into the environment. While diminutive and bushy during the winter, this alga produces canopy-forming reproductive fronds during the spring and summer months that add to the biogenic refuge. The purpose behind this study was to understand how the frequency and timing of disturbances affect the physiology of Stephanocystis. This was accomplished by performing manipulations on the reproductive and vegetative tissues of the alga, including: full reproductive removal (-R), haphazard vegetative blade damage (-V), no removal (C), and damage of both reproductive and vegetative structures (All). By using measurements of changes in total length (cm) as a proxy for biomass we provided an in situ assessment of the response to disturbance by the alga. This external growth response was coupled with stable isotope analysis of changes in carbon and nitrogen isotopes as a bioindication of fitness. Removal of reproductive fronds during spring elicited a dormancy response, while damage to the vegetative tissue reduced growth, possibly by limiting overall photosynthetic capacity. These results suggest that spring frond growth is important to reproductive fitness and removal can stimulate a life history trade-off between reproduction and survival. Winter manipulations elicited no response due to the dormancy period of this species. Enrichment values for ∂ 13 C and ∂ 15 N were consistent with reported values for growth in other brown algal species but, because of the timing of extraction, the internal chemistry of the individuals rebounded and the ability to detect a response was lost. Both the natural and manipulated populations had similar ∂ 13 C and ∂ 15 N values when separated by tissue and time of year, which indicates that while the alga may be impacted from an external perspective, it will recover internally and stay as a viable part of the reproductive population. Understanding how these seaweeds respond to biomass loss provides a better perspective of disturbance effects on this species and the ecosystem it helps support.


ABSTRACT Injury burden is greater in children from vulnerable and disenfranchised populations. This systematic review aimed to describe injury related Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and function outcomes in children through a health equity lens. A systematic review was conducted focussed on HRQoL and functional outcomes in children (≤16 years) following injury. We applied PRISMA-E 2012 guidelines, the RTI (Research Triangle Institute) item bank for risk of bias and measured equity using PROGRESS-PLUS with a narrative synthesis. Of 3013 articles, 24 were eligible for inclusion. Most assessed outcomes following traumatic brain injury or burns over a 12-month period. Reduced functional and HRQoL levels pre-injury or baseline, longer hospitalisation, and lower socioeconomic status were linked to poorer long-term outcomes. Measures of equity in methodology, reporting and discussion were limited. Equity variables, such as prior disability, were points for participant exclusion. Ethnicity was often reported only in dominant cultural terms. The equity impact of injury in children remains largely unexplored. Worse injury outcomes were reported in low socioeconomic families, but the relationship to other equity variables was not routinely reported. This could significantly inhibit development of targeted preventative programs and health care for those most in need. Injury research agendas need reform, we provide guidance for research teams to assist in including equity in their research and outcomes.


We study the Max k-Cut problem and its dual, the Min k-Partition problem. In the Min k-Partition problem, given a graph G=(V,E) and positive edge weights, we want to find an edge set of minimum weight whose removal makes G k-colorable. For the Max k-Cut problem we show that, if P!=NP, no polynomial time approximation algorithm can achieve a relative error better than (1/34)k. It is well known that a relative error of 1/k is obtained by a naive randomized heuristic. For the Min k-Partition problem, we show that for k<2 and for every epsilon<0, there exists a constant alpha such that the problem cannot be approximated within alpha|V^(2-epsilon)|, even for dense graphs. Both problems are directly related to the frequency allocation problem for cellular (mobile) telephones, an application of industrial relevance.


The Nigerian economy is currently characterized by intolerable inflation, continuous devaluation of the local currency, the Naira, capital flight, falling the standard of living of the populace, slow rate of industrial development and very poor shipping business. All these factors coupled with worldwide economic recession culminated into adverse fall in the Nigeria shipping business as witnessed in the decrease in ship and cargo traffic in recent years and high cost of transporting export cargoes. In this review, factors that influence the shipping market and current issues facing Nigerian ports are highlighted. Keywords: Shipping, transport sector, port, privatization, out sourcing International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences , 7(1): 47 - 53, 2011


The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of migrants in innovation in Europe. We use Total Factor Productivity as a measure of innovation and focus on the three largest European countries – France, Germany and the United Kingdom – in the years 1994-2007. Unlike previous research, which mainly employs a regional approach, we analyse the link between migration and innovation at the sectoral level. This allows us to measure the direct contribution of migrants in the sector in which they are actually employed. Moreover, it allows a distinction between the real contribution of migrants to innovation from possible inter-sectoral complementarities, which might as well foster innovation. We control for the different components of human-capital, such as age, education and diversity of origin. To address the possible endogeneity of migration we draw on an instrumental variable strategy originally devised by Card (2001) and adapt it at the sector level The results show that overall migrants are relevant in all sectors, but some important differences emerge across sectors: highly-educated migrants show a larger positive effect in the high-tech sectors, while middle- and low-educated ones are more relevant in manufacturing. The diversity of countries of origin contributes to innovation only in the services sectors, confirming that in empirical analyses at the regional or national level the diversity measure might capture the complementarity between sectors rather than the contribution of different national skills. This implies that the diversity should not guide the migration policy which instead should be linked to the specific demand for labour of firms and not to pursue a generic search for highly skilled migrants.


Institutional amnesia can be defined in simple terms as an organization's inability to recall and use historical knowledge for present-day purposes. However, the concept requires to be defined more expansively so that its causes and effects can be fully understood in relation to crises and crisis management. This means conceptualizing institutional amnesia in broader terms as something that influences individual crisis managers, the formal institutional aspects of crisis management agencies, the cultural dimensions of those agencies, and the wider systemic location within which both actors and agencies reside. The analysis of the effects of amnesia in each of these areas reveals the profound effects that it can have on various aspects of crisis management.

Institutional amnesia can affect the performance of crisis management policies and the politics of crises more generally. In particular, memory loss can be seen to influence crisis decision-making that relies upon historical analogy, crisis learning which demands that learned lessons are formally institutionalized across time, and meaning-making efforts, which draw upon recollections of the past to justify political projects in the present. The effects that institutional amnesia has on these three important areas illuminate its relevance to crisis analysis. Yet amnesia, and to some extent memory, continue to be concepts that are neglected, or referred to tangentially, by mainstream crisis scholars.


We present a model of the galactic habitable zone (GHZ), described in terms of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the Galaxy that may favor the development of complex life. The Milky Way galaxy was modeled using a computational approach by populating stars and their planetary systems on an individual basis by employing Monte Carlo methods. We began with well-established properties of the disk of the Milky Way, such as the stellar number density distribution, the initial mass function, the star formation history, and the metallicity gradient as a function of radial position and time. We varied some of these properties and created four models to test the sensitivity of our assumptions. To assess habitability on the galactic scale, we modeled supernova rates, planet formation, and the time required for complex life to evolve. Our study has improved on other literature on the GHZ by populating stars on an individual basis and modeling Type II supernova (SNII) and Type Ia supernova (SNIa) sterilizations by selecting their progenitors from within this preexisting stellar population. Furthermore, we considered habitability on tidally locked and non-tidally locked planets separately and studied habitability as a function of height above and below the galactic midplane. In the model that most accurately reproduces the properties of the Galaxy, the results indicate that an individual SNIa is ∼5.6× more lethal than an individual SNII on average. In addition, we predict that ∼1.2% of all stars host a planet that may have been capable of supporting complex life at some point in the history of the Galaxy. Of those stars with a habitable planet, ∼75% of planets are predicted to be in a tidally locked configuration with their host star. The majority of these planets that may support complex life are found toward the inner Galaxy, distributed within, and significantly above and below, the galactic midplane.


Sociological research is hard enough already—you don't need to make it even harder by smashing about like a bull in a china shop, not knowing what you're doing or where you're heading. Or so says John Levi Martin in this witty, insightful, and desperately needed primer on how to practice rigorous social science. Thinking Through Methods focuses on the practical decisions that you will need to make as a researcher— where the data you are working with comes from and how that data relates to all the possible data you could have gathered. This is a user's guide to sociological research, designed to be used at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Rather than offer mechanical rules and applications, Martin chooses instead to team up with the reader to think through and with methods. He acknowledges that we are human beings—and thus prone to the same cognitive limitations and distortions found in subjects—and proposes ways to compensate for these limitations. Martin also forcefully argues for principled symmetry, contending that bad ethics makes for bad research, and vice versa. Thinking Through Methods is a landmark work—one that students will turn to again and again throughout the course of their sociological research.


Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? asserts that the Republican Party has forged a new "dominant political coalition" by attracting working-class white voters on the basis of "class animus" and "cultural wedge issues like guns and abortion." My analysis confirms that white voters without college degrees have become significantly less Democratic; however, the contours of that shift bear little resemblance to Frank's account. First, the trend is almost entirely confined to the South, where Democratic support was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era of legalized racial segregation. (Outside the South, support for Democratic presidential candidates among whites without college degrees has fallen by a total of one percentage point over the past half-century.) Second, there is no evidence that "culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern" among Frank's working-class white voters. The apparent political significance of social issues has increased substantially over the past 20 years, but more among better-educated white voters than among those without college degrees. In both groups, economic issues continue to be most important. Finally, contrary to Frank's account, most of his white working-class voters see themselves as closer to the Democratic Party on social issues like abortion and gender roles but closer to the Republican Party on economic issues.


Children are the most valuable part of every society, regardless of culture, religion and national origin. Given the rapidly increasing digitalisation of their lives, it seemed important to assess risks related to internet usage and, in particular, the risk of become a victim of online grooming and cyber bullying activities. Today's kids are living in an environment that is radically different from that of their parents; virtual environments are increasingly prevalent in private and education environments. This development is detrimental to their physical activities, social skills and the behavioural model that prevailed in previous generations. ENISA has formed a Working Group consisting of international experts in various disciplines related to the area of children's online protection. Interdisciplinary knowledge and relevant experience in the area were the criteria of their engagement. During the selection phase of the scenario to be assessed, the expert group has identified cyber bullying and online grooming as an area that requires further elaboration. With this assessment we aim to demonstrate how attacks based on misuse of data (i.e. data mining and profiling) can affect minors. Although the issue of children's exposure to internet risks has been addressed in great depth by many organisations (also during the generation of this report), we have performed this risk assessment in order to point out emerging risks and issue non-technical recommendations for their mitigation. Thus, we believe that the findings of this assessment will help in triggering further activities at various levels of society, while contributing to the necessary awareness of the online protection of minors.


BACKGROUND
The REGAIN (Regional versus General Anesthesia for Promoting Independence after Hip Fracture) trial found similar ambulation and survival at 60 days with spinal versus general anesthesia for hip fracture surgery. Trial outcomes evaluating pain, prescription analgesic use, and patient satisfaction have not yet been reported.

OBJECTIVE
To compare pain, analgesic use, and satisfaction after hip fracture surgery with spinal versus general anesthesia.

DESIGN
Preplanned secondary analysis of a pragmatic randomized trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02507505).

SETTING
46 U.S. and Canadian hospitals.

PARTICIPANTS
Patients aged 50 years or older undergoing hip fracture surgery.

INTERVENTION
Spinal or general anesthesia.

MEASUREMENTS
Pain on postoperative days 1 through 3; 60-, 180-, and 365-day pain and prescription analgesic use; and satisfaction with care.

RESULTS
A total of 1600 patients were enrolled. The average age was 78 years, and 77% were women. A total of 73.5% (1050 of 1428) of patients reported severe pain during the first 24 hours after surgery. Worst pain over the first 24 hours after surgery was greater with spinal anesthesia (rated from 0 [no pain] to 10 [worst pain imaginable]; mean difference, 0.40 [95% CI, 0.12 to 0.68]). Pain did not differ across groups at other time points. Prescription analgesic use at 60 days occurred in 25% (141 of 563) and 18.8% (108 of 574) of patients assigned to spinal and general anesthesia, respectively (relative risk, 1.33 [CI, 1.06 to 1.65]). Satisfaction was similar across groups.

LIMITATION
Missing outcome data and multiple outcomes assessed.

CONCLUSION
Severe pain is common after hip fracture. Spinal anesthesia was associated with more pain in the first 24 hours after surgery and more prescription analgesic use at 60 days compared with general anesthesia.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.


The current research was conducted to quantify the heavy metals accumulation in vegetables imported from India and compared with same vegetables collected from vegetable market in Pakistan. Green chili, capsicum, tomato and ginger were selected to analyze their heavy metal contents by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Samples were prepared by dry ash method and wet digestion method to find out the efficient method for heavy metals analysis. Maximum concentration of heavy metals detected by dry ash method in Indian vegetables were of Cu (0.34ppm) in capsicum, Cd (0.0ppm) in capsicum, Cr (0.22ppm) in Ginger, Pb (0.22ppm) in ginger and Ni (0.14ppm) in Ginger while in Pakistani vegetables, it were of Cu (0.62ppm) in Tomato, Cd (0.04ppm) in Capsicum, Cr (0.17ppm) in Tomato, Pb (0.36ppm) in Ginger. Heavy metal contents determined by wet digestion method were of Cu (0.57ppm) in Ginger, Cd (0.01ppm) in capsicum, Cr (0.17ppm) in Ginger, Pb (0.27ppm) in capsicum while in Pakistani vegetables these were of Cu (0.19ppm) in Ginger, Cd (0.04ppm) in green chili, Cr (0.09ppm) in Tomato, Pb (0.25ppm) in Ginger. It was found that the concentrations of these heavy metals in vegetables of both the countries were within WHO/FAO permissible limits so at present these are not hazardous but long term use of these vegetables can magnify heavy metals contents in human body. For statistical analysis two factor ANOVA was run, which indicated that almost all the vegetables had accumulated heavy metals but there was a difference in the uptake of Indian and Pakistani vegetables.


The assignment problem originally arising from parallel and distributed computing has been investigated intensively since the 70's when Harold Stone proposed a method to solve it with the aid of network flow algorithms. In this paper, we discuss this problem under a mobile environment with limited capacity of wireless links. The assignment problem is to schedule a group of related objects from a resource-constrained mobile device to its powerful proxy machine so that program activity migrates among processors as execution proceeds, and hence the overall performance will improve. First, we reduce this optimization problem to the 0/1 knapsack problem, and therefore show that it is NP-hard. Second, two heuristic algorithms are proposed. One is an adaptive heuristic algorithm with complexity O(NE), here, N and E represent the number of nodes and edges in the object graph abstracted from the mobile application. The other is a non-adaptive heuristic algorithm with complexity O(E), i.e, N times faster than the adaptive counterpart. Finally, we provide a simple distributed algorithm based on Raymond's tree-based distributed mutual exclusion algorithm for solving this problem with message complexity O(N/sup 2/ log N).


Gorgeous words and stunning illustrations combine in a book for anyone aged 8-80, by internationally renowned papercut artist Rob Ryan. Rob Ryan has collaborated with Paul Smith, Liberty, Fortnum and Mason and Tatty Devine, amongst others. This is a story about a prince. He lived in a palace that seemed to have been specially designed to make someone who already felt small feel even smaller. He rarely saw his parents, who were always busy being the King and Queen; and, unlike other children, the Prince never spent time dreaming about what he would be when he grew up because he knew that when his father died, he would become King. It was his destiny. The only person who treated the Prince like a normal child was the Bootman. Understanding that everyone needs something to call their own, the Bootman gave the Prince a pen with invisible ink and a special torch that allowed him to create a world that only he could see. One night, as the Prince was drawing on the curtains that surrounded his bed, he noticed a small hole and beyond that a trapdoor, which led to the attic. And in the attic he found a window and a way to sneak out of the palace and experience the real world...The Invisible Kingdom is about a small boy, a big imagination and learning to be your own person.


We present an all-optical mass spectrometry technique to identify trapped ions. The new method uses laser-cooled ions to determine the mass of a cotrapped dark ion with a sub-dalton resolution within a few seconds. We apply the method to identify the first controlled synthesis of cold, trapped RaOH^{+} and RaOCH_{3}^{+}. These molecules are promising for their sensitivity to time and parity violations that could constrain sources of new physics beyond the standard model. The nondestructive nature of the mass spectrometry technique may help identify molecular ions or highly charged ions prior to optical spectroscopy. Unlike previous mass spectrometry techniques for small ion crystals that rely on scanning, the method uses a Fourier transform that is inherently broadband and comparatively fast. The technique's speed provides new opportunities for studying state-resolved chemical reactions in ion traps.


An integral technique suggested for the analysis of turbulent jets by Corrsin & Uberoi (1950) and Morton, Taylor & Turner (1956) is re-examined in an attempt to improve the description of the entrainment. It is determined that the hypothesis of Priestley & Ball (1955)) that the entrainment coefficient is a linear function of the jet Richardson number, is reasonable, and that two empirically determined plume parameters are sufficient to describe the transition of buoyant jets to plumes. The results of a series of experiments in which both time-averaged velocity and time-averaged temperature profiles were recorded in a substantial number of plane turbulent buoyant jets of varying initial Richardson numbers are used to verify the basic ideas. In addition, measurements of the mean tracer flux in a series of buoyant jets indicate that as much as 40 % of the transport in plumes is by the turbulent flux.


An anti-conference: Three days of collaborative work in the Kirchner Museum and surrounding. Unable to attend, Kivland acted as a radio operator, receiving and reporting back on reports submitted.

The World Ornamental Forum (WOF) at the Kirchner Museum in Davos, Switzerland, is an international biannual format that operates beyond, or before, economic interests bringing together individuals and communities for the effectuation and exploration of today's paradigm shifts.

WOF leaves space for contingent research by exploring the state of its own actualization. Thus every gesture reaches a double status, one that is both the activity of making the WOF (method) and the actually made WOF (object of research). Models also have such a double status as both being a contingent reality and representing something else. By building models of the state of WOF's actualization it was possible to gain insights about the state of our world in which, presumably, a major paradigm shift towards practice is taking place.

Participants 2016:

Alessi, Alberto
Professor of Theory of Architecture. UL University of Liechtenstein.

Beutler, Martin (tbc)
Artist, Firma fur soziale Plastik, Bern, Switzerland.

Chapuis Schmitz, Delphine
Artist, Philosopher, Zurcher Hochschule der Kunste, Switzerland.

Christensen Blair, Sara
Artist, Associate Professor of Art. Northern State University, Aberdeen, SD, USA.

Economides, Aliki (virtual)
Researcher. Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, U.S.A.

Egger, Salome
Performance Artist and Textile Designer, PhD cand. Nottingham Trent University.

Gfader, Verina (tbc)
Artist, Lecturer. Goldsmiths University of London, and University of Huddersfield, UK.

Harboe, Julie (team)
Lecturer. Future Laboratory CreaLab, Lucerne School of Business, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (LUASA), Switzerland.

Hardliz, Ronny (team)
Artist, Berne, Switzerland.

Kader, Hadas (tbc)
Artist, Curator, Fine Art Lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel.

Kivland, Sharon (virtual)
Artist, Reader in Fine Art. Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Mac Namara, Aoife (tbc)
Artist, Dean Visual Art and Material Practice. Audain School of Visual Art, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada.

Maharaj, Sarat (tbc)
Professor of Visual Arts & Knowledge Systems. Lund University, Malmo Art Academy, Malmo, Sweden.

Marinov, Nicolay (tbc)
Architect, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Sadowsky, Thorsten
Director of Kirchner Museum Davos. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Platz, Davos, Switzerland.

Schuchert, C. Lars (team)
Scientific research assistant. LUASA – School of Engineering and Architecture, CC Typology & Planning in Architecture (CCTP), Horw, Switzerland.

Simon, Joshua
Director and Chief Curator, MoBY – Museums of Bat Yam, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel.

Streuler, Sandro
Artist, Zurich, Switzerland.

Zellweger, Christoph (tbc)
Artist, Dozent MA Design (HSLU) / Professor of Art and Design, Senior Resarch Fellow (Sheffield Hallam University). Hochschule Luzern, Design und Kunst, Luzern, Switzerland.


This paper provides evidence on the nature of returns to education in Ghana and confirms the emerging empirical literature on the convexity of returns to education in Ghana. Using a basic Mincerian, model we find that returns to education more than triples from primary to secondary level or higher––an indication of a rather strong convex relationship. The results point to the importance of higher education in productivity. Nonetheless educational policies should not only be directed at increasing enrolment and quality of education at the secondary and higher educational levels but also at improving the quality of basic education.


Deoxypodophyllotoxin, a lignan, was afforded from the bioassay-guided
fractionation of the EtOAc soluble part of the leaves and twigs of Juniperus
chinensis. The fractionation was directed by microtitration cytotoxicity assay
employing human cervical adenocarcinoma (HeLa) cell line. The activity was visible
by fixing and staining the cells and comparing the number of cell reduction by the
active agent with the confluent controls. A judicious combination of chromatographic
techniques was adopted in purifying the active compound from the crude complex.
The structure of the isolated lignan was elucidated using spectroscopic techniques
including ultraviolet spectroscopy (UV), infrared spectroscopy (IR), nuclear magnetic, resonance spectroscopy (¹H and ¹³C-NMR), mass spectroscopy (MS), and also by
comparison with the literature.The cytotoxic concentration of deoxypodophyllotoxin which caused up to
almost 100% reduction of HeLa cells was determined as 0.004 Jlg/ml. Cytotoxic
activity of this lignan was further evaluated on different types of specific human organ
tumour cell lines: KU8 12F (Chronic mylogeneous leukemia), TK-10 (Renal
carcinoma), UACC-62 (Melanoma) as well as CEM-SS (T-cell lymphoblastic
leukemia). All of the tumour cell lines studied were found to be susceptible to
deoxypodophyllotoxin, nevertheless, the degree of susceptibilities was different
between cell lines. Minimum effective concentration (MEC) with almost 1 00%
reduction of the cells were observed in HeLa (0.004 µg/ml), TK-10 (0.01 µg/ml),
UACC-62 (0.004 µg/ml) and CEM-SS (0.01 µg/ml). Whilst KU8 12F (0.04 µg/ml)
inhibited only 50% the cell growth (ECso). Thus, the most sensitive cell l ines towards
the treatment of the lignan were HeLa and UACC-62.
Antimicrobial disc diffusion assay (Bauer et al., 1966) on
deoxypodophyllotoxin was carried out employing gram positive bacteria (Bacillus
megaterium, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, Flavobacterium meningosepticum,
Slaphylloccus aureus, Micrococcus luleus, Chrysomollas leuteola and Aeromonas
salmonella), and gram negative bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudomonas
paucinobilis, Pseudomonas capacia and Escherichia coli), and on yeast (Torulopsis glabrata, Crytococcus neoformans, Saccharomyces lipolytica, Candida albicans,
Candida lipolytica and Candida inlermedia), and also a fungi (Aspergillus
ochraceous). The growth of most of the organisms were inhibited by deoxypodophyllotoxin at the concentration of 10 mg/ml by producing a clearing zone
with diameter ranging between 8 to 12 mm with the exception of Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, P. paucinobilis, Aeromonas salmonella and Candida intermedia.


We study the intermittency and field-line structure of the MHD turbulence in plasmas with very large magnetic Prandtl numbers. In this regime, which is realized in the interstellar medium, some accretion disks, protogalaxies, galaxy-cluster gas, the early universe, etc., magnetic fluctuations can be excited at scales below the viscous cutoff. The salient feature of the resulting small-scale magnetic turbulence is the folded structure of the fields. It is characterized by very rapid transverse spatial oscillation of the field direction, while the field lines remain largely unbent up to the scale of the flow. Quantitatively, the fluctuation level and the field-line geometry can be studied in terms of the statistics of the field strength and of the field-line curvature. In the kinematic limit, the distribution of the field strength is an expanding lognormal, while that of the field-line curvature K is stationary and has a power tail ~K-13/7. The field strength and curvature are anticorrelated, i.e., the growing fields are mostly flat, while the sharply curved fields remain relatively weak. The field, therefore, settles into a reduced-tension state. Numerical simulations demonstrate three essential features of the nonlinear regime. First, the total magnetic energy is equal to the total kinetic energy. Second, the intermittency is partially suppressed compared to the kinematic case, as the fields become more volume-filling and their distribution develops an exponential tail. Third, the folding structure of the field is unchanged from the kinematic case: the anticorrelation between the field strength and the curvature persists, and the distribution of the latter retains the same power tail. We propose a model of back-reaction based on the folding picture that reproduces all of the above numerical results.


A useful synthesis technique, shock synthesis of bulk nanomaterials from nanopowders, is explored here with molecular dynamics simulations. We choose nanoporous Cu (∼11 nm in grain size and 6% porosity) as a representative system, and perform consolidation and spallation simulations. The spallation simulations characterize the consolidated nanopowders in terms of spall strength and damage mechanisms. The impactor is full density Cu, and the impact velocity (u_i) ranges from 0.2 to 2 km s^(−1). We present detailed analysis of consolidation and spallation processes, including atomic-level structure and wave propagation features. The critical values of u_i are identified for the onset plasticity at the contact points (0.2 km s^(−1)) and complete void collapse (0.5 km s^(−1)). Void collapse involves dislocations, lattice rotation, shearing/friction, heating, and microkinetic energy. Plasticity initiated at the contact points and its propagation play a key role in void collapse at low u_i, while the pronounced, grain-wise deformation may contribute as well at high u_i. The grain structure gives rise to nonplanar shock response at nanometer scales. Bulk nanomaterials from ultrafine nanopowders (∼10 nm) can be synthesized with shock waves. For spallation, grain boundary (GB) or GB triple junction damage prevails, while we also observe intragranular voids as a result of GB plasticity.


The objectives were to determine the prevalence of fibrinonecrotic enteritis (FNE) on a farrow-to-finish farm of 1,000 sows, to categorize the pathological changes, and to to investigate the lesion associated agents Isospora suis and Clostridium perfringens. Causes of preweaning mortality (PWM) were classified into 8 categories including FNE. Obtained data were evaluated for statistical significance by adjusted Chi-square analysis. Samples of FNE were taken for complementary studies including a PCR technique for genotyping toxin genes of Clostridium perfringens from gut samples fixed in 10% neutral formalin. From 3,153 piglets examined, less than 1% was classified as FNE. FNE prevalence increased progressively from the first to the third week, the last differing statistically from the others. Eighty percent of gut samples with FNE lesions were positive to Isospora suis, when examined by PCR from 9 severe FNE lesions detected 7 positive samples only for a toxin gene, characteristic of C. perfringens type-A.


The fundamental physical process underlying all consumer electronics on the market today is the (electric-)field effect. In the broadest sense of the word, it encompasses tuning the properties of a material by an electric field, which is usually done by externally applying a voltage. The elementary electronic building block, the field-effect transistor, nowadays comes by the billions on the size of a postage stamp, and is conventionally based on the material silicon. Replacing silicon by a different material may lead to electronic devices with novel functionality, such as devices that compute more efficiently or in a different way: for example, future devices may closely resemble the way nature 'computes' interactions between atoms and molecules; the realization of such devices is projected to enable breakthroughs in medical and material sciences. In this light, the conducting interface between lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3) and strontium titanate (SrTiO3) is especially appealing: it exhibits exotic phenomena like superconductivity and magnetism, which are highly tunable by an externally applied voltage. These unique characteristics make this interface a promising platform for better understanding these phenomena on a fundamental level, as well as for creating new electronic devices for innovative computing methods. The main result of this thesis is that the field effect at the LaAlO3 - SrTiO3 interface goes beyond accumulating and depleting charges in a channel. Correlated-electron phenomena such as superconductivity and magnetism are deeply connected to the electronic band structure; the magnetotransport studies described in this thesis show that an externally applied gate voltage can change the band structure of this interface; a direct manifestation of the Schrodinger equation, this premier result establishes electrostatic control over the fundamental electronic properties of a material. The following chapters show that this evolution of the band structure with gate voltage is closely related to tuning superconductivity in this system, and that the electrostatic confinement is the main factor distinguishing bulk and surface states. Finally, the limits of complex-oxide field-effect devices are explored in terms of electric field strength, dielectric layer thickness, and lateral dimensions. In general, this thesis contributes both to the fundamental understanding of the field effect in advanced materials, and to the boundary conditions of using such materials in functional devices.


Objective: Emerging adults in late adolescence and early adulthood are particularly vulnerable to mental health problems as research shows that three quarters of all adult mental health issues commence by the age of 24. It is essential that mental health services are developed that are appropriate and effective for this age group, yet the mental health recovery literature has been largely dominated by studies conducted on adult mental health consumers, particularly with long-term psychosis-related mental disorders. Key recovery processes relevant for adult mental health consumers are connectedness, hope, identity, meaning, and empowerment. Identity is likely to be a particularly salient process for emerging adults as it is during this lifestage that identity formation needs to be achieved. The current study aimed to understand the relationship between identity and mental health for emerging adults by examining the effect of identity self-discrepancies on psychological distress and the mediating effects of key recovery processes.
Research Design and Methods: A self-report questionnaire was completed by 244 young people aged 15 to 25 years experiencing mental health problems in Australia.
Results: Expected and ideal self-discrepancies were associated with higher levels of psychological distress, but not future self-discrepancies. Higher levels of hope were associated with lower levels of psychological distress and being at a further stage of recovery.
Conclusions: The important role of identity in recovery from mental health problems for emerging adults is discussed.


With a Saturnian magnetopause average stand-off distance of about 21 planetary radii, Titan spends most of its time inside the rotating magnetosphere of its parent planet. However, when Saturn's magnetosphere is compressed due to high solar wind dynamic pressure, Titan can cross Saturn's magnetopause in the subsolar region of its orbit and therefore to interact with the shocked solar wind plasma in Saturn's magnetosheath. This situation has been observed during the T32 flyby of the Cassini spacecraft on 13 June 2007. Until a few minutes before closest approach, Titan had been located inside the Saturnian magnetosphere. During the flyby, Titan encountered a sudden change in the direction and magnitude of the ambient magnetic field. The density of the ambient plasma also increased dramatically during the pass. Thus, the moon's exosphere and ionosphere were exposed to a sudden change in the upstream plasma conditions. The resulting reconfiguration of Titan's plasma tail has been studied in real-time by using a three-dimensional, multi-species hybrid simulation model. The hybrid approximation treats the electrons of the plasma as a massless, charge-neutralizing fluid, while ion dynamics are described by a kinetic approach. In the simulations, the magnetopause crossing is modeled by a sudden change of the upstream magnetic field vector as well as a modification of the upstream plasma composition. We present real-time simulation results, illustrating how Titan's induced magnetotail is reconfigured due to magnetic reconnection. The simulations allow to determine a characteristic time scale for the erosion of the original magnetic draping pattern that commences after Titan has crossed Saturn's magnetopause. Besides, the influence of the plasma composition in the magnetosheath on the reconfiguration process is discussed in detail. The question of whether the magnetopause crossing is likely to yield a detachment of Titan's exospheric tail from the satellite is investigated as well.


Context: Maternal anxiety has an association with low birth weight. However, studies are scarce to determine any association between maternal anxiety and fetal growth. Aims: This study aims to determine the effect of maternal anxiety on fetal growth, measured by gestational age-dependent increase in fetal abdominal circumference (AC). The secondary objective is to determine the effect of maternal anxiety on other fetal parameters (biparietal diameter [BPD], head circumference [HC], femur length [FL]). Settings and Design: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital, Kolkata. Materials and Methods: Four hundred and ten pregnant mothers, between 14 and 40 weeks of gestation, were interviewed with socioeconomic and obstetric profile questionnaire and examined for anthropometric profile and presence and severity of pallor. Anxiety was assessed using Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD) questionnaire. HC, AC, BPD, and FL were measured by ultrasound biometry. Analysis Used: A multivariable logistic regression analysis was done to determine the predictors of small-for-gestational-age (SGA). A robust mediation analysis was done to determine mediating effect of anxiety on gestational age-dependent increase in fetal AC. Results: Mild (odds ratio [OR]Adjusted = 6.23, [2.41, 16.15]) and moderate (ORAdjusted = 22.42, [5.00, 100.57]) anxiety was significantly associated with SGA fetus. Anxiety increased with the progression of gestation (βGAD: 0.011 [0.007–0.015]) and it had a negative effect on fetal growth (standardized indirect effect of gestational age-mediated by anxiety on AC: −0.037 [−0.059, −0.022]). Anxiety also attenuated gestational age-dependent increment of HC. Conclusion: Mother's anxiety has a gestational age-dependent temporally incremental negative effect on fetal growth and brain development.


The PLATeau Observatory (PLATO) is an automated self-powered astrophysical observatory that was deployed to Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau, in 2008 January. PLATO consists of a suite of site-testing instruments designed to quantify the benefits of the Dome A site for astronomy, and science instruments designed to take advantage of the unique observing conditions. Instruments include CSTAR, an array of optical telescopes for transient astronomy; Gattini, an instrument to measure the optical sky brightness and cloud cover statistics; DASLE, an experiment to measure the statistics of the meteorological conditions within the near-surface layer; Pre-HEAT, a submillimeter tipping radiometer measuring the atmospheric transmission and water vapor content and performing spectral line imaging of the Galactic plane; and Snodar, an acoustic radar designed to measure turbulence within the near-surface layer. PLATO has run completely unattended and collected data throughout the winter 2008 season. Here we present a detailed description of the PLATO instrument suite and preliminary results obtained from the first season of operation.


Adding roughness to hydrophilic surfaces is generally expected to enhance their wetting by water. Indeed, global free energy minimization predicts decreasing contact angles when roughness factor or surface energy increases. However, experimentally it is often found that water spreading on rough surfaces is impeded by pinning effects originating from local free energy minima; an effect, largely neglected in scientific literature. Here, we utilize Laplace pressure as a proxy for these local minima, and we map the transition to a superwetting state of hydrophilic nano-textured surfaces in terms of surface chemistry and texture geometry. We demonstrate the effect for polymer model surfaces templated from block-copolymer self-assembly comprising dense, nano-pillar arrays exhibiting strong pinning in their pristine state. By timed argon plasma exposure, we tune surface chemistry to map the transition into the superwetting state of low contact angle, which we show coincide with the surface supporting hemiwicking flow. For the near-ideal model surfaces, the transition to the superwetting state occurs below a critical material contact angle of ∼50°. We show that superwetting surfaces possess anti-fogging properties, and demonstrate long term stability of the superwetting effect by coating the nanotextured surfaces with ∼10 nm thin films of either tungsten or silica.


The root causes of the ongoing crisis in Northern Mali lie in the region's underdevelopment, exacerbated by longstanding, if recently decreasing, neglect of the central government; the complex social relationship between the largest minority, the Tuareg, and the majority population, which has worsened since a largely unresolved crisis in the 1990s; and the growing interest of a small but growing number of actors involved in the drug trade and other criminal activities in the absence of the state. Among the latter have been a growing number of Jihadists, at first mostly from Algeria, who have been taking Western citizens hostage and therefore caused the US and France to pressure the Malian government to re-establish a presence of the state in the North. The clash was all but inevitable when several thousand heavily armed Tuareg fighters came to Mali after the defeat of Gaddafi in Libya. A new element of the crisis is the growing number of jihadists among the Tuareg rebels and other Malians, but neither Tuareg irredentism nor Islamic fundamentalism has more than minority support in Mali, Northern Mali, or among the Tuareg. The coup d'etat against the president, while most likely a spontaneous reaction to the inability of the government to fight the rebellion, uncovered a structural crisis of Malian democracy and society. The disintegration of Mali's long-praised formal democratic institutions after the coup showed fundamental problems. However, political supporters of the coup who assumed that the population's tacit support of the coup could be turned into a movement for fundamental social change, had to find that it was largely an opportunistic and diffuse expression of general discontent.


The Espírito SantoBay is located in Espírito Santo state in the eastern part of Brazil. It is surrounded by the city of Vitória on one side and by the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Superficial sediments of Espírito Santo Bay were analyzed at 12 (western shallow silt sediments) + 8 (eastern sandy sediments and relatively deep sampling stations) = 20 uniformly distributed sampling points, where geochemical analysis was performed. Nineteen elements were analyzed: Mo, Cu, Pb, Zn, Ag, Ni, Mn, Fe, As, U, Th, Sr, Cd, Sb, Bi, V, Cr, Ba, and Al. This selection was made based on the most representative heavy metals present in this area and according to the results obtained from the geochemical analysis. Their concentrations were compared with metal contamination benchmarks such asscreening quick reference tables (SQuiRTs), effects rangelow (ERL), effects range median (ERM), threshold effects levels (TELs), probable effects levels (PELs), and apparent effects thresholds (AETs). The results indicated that there was no particular pollution condition able to alter the condition of any part of this water body. The authors conclude that the Espírito Santo Bay is only moderately polluted, and some elements are virtually absent.


Innovative smart parking system works on sensor based IOT technology and cloud computing data collection to direct the driver to the particular parking spot. This paper implements an agile algorithm that improves the efficiency of the present cloud-based parking system and builds a
 network architecture based on the IOT technology. This paper introduces a system that helps users find a parking space at the least cost based on new efficiency constraints to calculate the user parking cost by considering the dimensions and the total number of free spaces in each car park.
 This cost will be used to offer a solution of finding an available parking space upon a request by the user and a solution of suggesting a new car park if the current car park is full. The simulation results convey that the algorithm helps improve the stability of successful parking and minimizes
 the user waiting time at the same time avoiding congestion. We also successfully implemented the algorithm virtually. Existing systems implement first come first serve algorithms to allocate parking space to cars which arrive to parking space, hence wasting a lot of space at the time costing
 efficiency to the parking lot. The proposed algorithm first sorts the cars based on their size, hence efficiently using the space available and balancing load at the parking side. Also separating the parking space for both large and small cars can help improve the parking congestion and price
 per space utility factor. The algorithm uses batch algorithms knowingly used in operating systems to arrange tasks and processes in an effective manner. It divides the cars into small and large categories alike the processes in operating systems, which helps to deal with the cars better. The
 whole system is also backed by low power IOT hardware like Arduino® Uno, NodeMCU® ESP8266, ZigBee networks and cloud computing solutions like Google© Firebase® and Thing Speak®.


Alison Kadlec brings Deweyan Pragmatist principles to bear on the challenge of overcoming power asymmetries in public deliberation. This enables the design of settings and processes in which citizens of every social class, educational level, and cultural background can participate effectively. These ideas, on the design of democratic deliberative forums, appear as the concluding chapter of a larger work devoted to elaborating a "critical pragmatism." Kadlec addresses the frequent criticism that Dewey is insufficiently critical – that he lacks a theory of social structures of power, and of the distortions of communication that result from the exercise of that power. She does a great service in bringing out the politically critical dimension in Dewey's thought, and systematically refuting the mistaken reading of Dewey as insensitive to power relations. This exploration of Dewey's critical pragmatism generates a lively comparison and contrast with Habermasian critical theory.


To the Editor.—We appreciate the thoughtful comments of Drs. Burg, Kelley, and Lane. We agree that it was unfortunate that adequate comparison studies of large numbers of medical students and pediatric residents could not be utilized, but studies of this type are not available in the literature. We also agree the number of child health associates was small and that it would have been desirable to have a larger number of child health associates from more than one program participate in this study, but there was only one child health associate program in existence at the time the studies were carried out and all of the students enrolled in that program were included. The population pools from which the comparison subjects were drawn were carefully evaluated, and the number of comparison subjects was appropriate for the number of experimental subjects studied. Since pediatric interns at the University of


Increasing energy demand has created the challenge of supplying safe, economical, and durable energy with minimal impact on the environment. Therefore, governments have developed and executed several strategies such as increasing efficiency in energy systems in addition to replacing existing sources with renewable energies. One of the most important renewable energy sources that have a competitive advantage compared with other resources is solar energy and its related technologies. However, development of this technology, its related products, and their competitiveness in the market has created a plethora of challenges. In this study, the focus is on the analysis of photovoltaic technology development in the context of different technology generations. The S-shape curve of each generation and sub-technologies of photovoltaic is designed and analyzed. Results show that the first generation of photovoltaic technology is in growth and early maturity stage. The second generation is also in growth stage, but t...


Researchers from many different disciplines rely on social media data as a resource. Whereas some platforms explicitly allow data collection, even facilitating it through an API, others explicitly forbid automated or manual collection processes. A current topic of debate within the social computing research community involves the ethical (or even legal) implications of collecting data in ways that violate Terms of Service (TOS). Using a sample of TOS from over one hundred social media sites from around the world, we analyze TOS language and content in order to better understand the landscape of prohibitions on this practice. Our findings show that though these provisions are very common, they are also ambiguous, inconsistent, and lack context. By considering our analysis of the nature of these provisions alongside legal and ethical analysis, we propose that ethical decision-making for data collection should extend beyond TOS and consider contextual factors of the data source and research.


We present a pilot-assisted method for estimating the frequency selective channel in a MIMO-OFDM (Multiple Input Multiple Output - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) system. The pilot sequence is designed using the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) of the Golay complementary sequences. Novel exploitation of the perfect autocorrelation property of Golay complementary sequences, in conjunction with OSTBC (Orthogonal Space Time Block Code) based pilot waveform scheduling across multiple OFDM frames, facilitates simple separation of the channel mixtures at the receive antennas. The DFT length used to transform the complementary sequence into the frequency domain is shown to be a key critical parameter for correctly estimating the channel. This channel estimation scheme is then extended to antenna arrays of arbitrary sizes.


Background : The number of indicators aiming to provide a clear picture of healthcare needs and the quality and efficiency of healthcare systems and services has proliferated in recent years. The activity of the National Observatory on Health Status in the Italian Regions is multidisciplinary, involving around 280 public health care experts, clinicians, demographers, epidemiologists, mathematicians, statisticians and economists who with their different competencies, and scientific interests aim to improve the collective health of individuals and their conditions through the use of "core indicators". The main outcome of the National Observatory on Health Status in the Italian Regions is the "Osservasalute Report – a report on health status and the quality of healthcare assistance in the Italian Regions". Methods : The Report adopts a comparative analysis, methodology and internationally validated indicators. Results : The results of Observatory Report show it is necessary: • to improve the monitoring of primary health care services (where the chronic disease could be cared) through implementation of clinical path;  • to improve in certain areas of hospital care such as caesarean deliveries, as well as the average length of stay in the pre-intervention phase, etc.; • to try to be more focused on the patients/citizens in our health care services; • to practice more geographical interventions to reduce the North-South divide as well as reduce gender inequity. Conclusions : The health status of Italian people is good with positive results and outcomes, but in the meantime some further efforts should be done especially in the South that still has to improve the quality and the organization of health care services. There are huge differences in accuracy and therefore usefulness of the reported data, both between diseases and between Regions.


This research critically examines ways in which highly popular yet relatively under theorised leisure experiences inform and are informed by the social and political governance of our everyday lives. Specifically, online social networking, as seen through Facebook, actively produces leisure spaces, even if these spaces are primarily constituted through their discursive dimensions. By introducing the critical lenses of Marx's notion of immaterial labour and Foucault's biopolitics, we describe the ways in which leisure engagement with Facebook produces new forms of often hidden labour from users, thereby further contributing to the biopolitical control over many of our everyday experiences. These increasingly nuanced assemblages of leisure–labour relationships further destabilise any contention that leisure and labour are distinct sociological dimensions in people's lives. We consider ways in which Facebook can counter various problematic hegemonic global structures, incorporating Hardt and Negri's hopeful ideas of the multitude as a form of resistance toward global neoliberal capitalism. From this critical perspective, we explicitly politicise Facebook and layer the ways in which Facebook is currently working (and not working) with Hardt and Negri's ideas of a more-realised democracy in order to illuminate some of the flaws in Facebook's structure and typical operation. Such overtly critical scholarship can contribute to further positioning leisure as a dynamic social institution that constantly becomes conscripted into capitalist structures in increasingly covert ways. Such politicised understandings of leisure, broadly, and individuals' social media experiences, more specifically, offer substantial direction for leisure understanding, scholarship and critique.


The industrial sector is one of the main energy-intensive sectors, and it accounted for 35.2% of total energy consumption in 2017. In terms of electricity consumption, the building sector was the largest electricity consuming sector, and it accounted for 57.4% of total electricity consumption in 2017. The objective of this paper is to assess the long-term energy policy in the building and the industrial sectors during 2005-2050 through a perspective of energy saving potentials and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation by using the Long-range Energy Alternative Planning system (LEAP). Results indicate that energy labeling and monetary incentive in the energy efficiency plan (EEP2015) and renewable energy plan (AEDP2015) are the most effective measures in the building and industrial sectors. This study discloses that plans are effective policies to reduce not only energy demand but also GHG emissions. Therefore, such reduction potentials can meet Thailand's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) target. In 2050, the deployment of biogas will significantly reduce GHG emissions in the residential sector. The GHG emission reduction from the non-metallic, papers and pulps, and chemical industries will be diminished by the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in 2030 onwards. This study also considers energy security by focusing on economic and environmental aspects.


An important conservation question for grazed areas of lowland subhumid
Tasmania is 'what effects do different, practical disturbance regimes have on native vegetation?'
An experiment designed to determine the single and interactive effects of fire and sheep
grazing was established at four sites with distinct vegetation types. There were significant
interactive effects of fire and sheep grazing on vegetation attributes at all sites. An analysis
of published and new data indicated that there were several vascular plant species that
appeared dependent on sheep grazing for their persistence in the present landscape, while
there were others that were intolerant of this disturbance but required other types of disturbance,
such as mowing. However, most native species appeared to survive in a wide variety
of disturbance regimes short of ploughing and fertilization. The implications of these results
are that a variety of disturbance regimes is necessary to maintain biological diversity in this
environment, and that the naturalness of the regime is not necessarily relevant to its use for
conservation.


This paper presents a novel rough-based feature selection method for gene expression data analysis. It can find the relevant features without requiring the number of clusters to be known a priori and identify the centers that approximate to the correct ones. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a prediction scheme that combines the rough-based feature selection method with radial basis function neural network. For further consider the effect of different feature selection methods and classifiers on this prediction process, we use the Naive Bayes and linear support vector machine as classifiers, and compare the performance with other feature selection methods, including information gain and principle component analysis. We demonstrate the performance by several published datasets and the results show that our proposed method can achieve high classification accuracy rate.


"The relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes in space and in time. The development of historical geographical information systems (HGIS) and other methods from the digital humanities have revolutionised historical research on cultural landscapes. Additionally, the opening up of increasingly diverse collections of source material, often incomplete and difficult to interpret, has led to methodologically innovative experiments. One of today's major challenges, however, concerns the concepts and tools to be deployed for mapping processes of transformation—that is, interpreting and imagining the relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes, both in space and in time, at micro- and macro-scale. Mapping Landscapes in Transformation gathers experts from different disciplines, active in the fields of historical geography, urban and landscape history, archaeology and heritage conservation. They are specialised in a wide variety of space-time contexts, including regions within Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and periods from antiquity to the 21st century."


Developers in open source projects must make decisions on contributions from other community members, such as whether or not to accept a pull request. However, secondary factors-beyond the code itself-can influence those decisions. For example, signals from GitHub profiles, such as a number of followers, activity, names, or gender can also be considered when developers make decisions. In this paper, we examine how developers use these signals (or not) when making decisions about code contributions. To evaluate this question, we evaluate how signals related to perceived gender identity and code quality influenced decisions on accepting pull requests. Unlike previous work, we analyze this decision process with data collected from an eye-tracker. We analyzed differences in what signals developers said are important for themselves versus what signals they actually used to make decisions about others. We found that after the code snippet (x=57%), the second place programmers spent their time fixating is on supplemental technical signals (x=32%), such as previous contributions and popular repositories. Diverging from what participants reported themselves, we also found that programmers fixated on social signals more than recalled.


This article describes the grammatical resources available to speakers of Lao for describing situations that can be described broadly as 'reciprocal'. The analysis is based on complementary methods: elicitation by means of non-linguistic stimuli, exploratory consultation with native speakers, and investigation of corpora of spontaneous language use. Typically, reciprocal situations are described using a semantically general 'collaborative' marker on an action verb. The resultant meaning is that some set of people participate in a situation 'together', broadly construed. The collaborative marker is found in two distinct syntactic constructions, which differ in terms of their information structural contexts of use. The paper first explores in detail the semantic range of the collaborative marker as it occurs in the more common 'Type 1' construction, and then discusses a special pragmatic context for the 'Type 2' construction. There is some methodological discussion concerning the results of elicitation via video stimuli. The chapter also discusses two specialised constructions dedicated to the expression of strict reciprocity.


The neurotransmitter mechanisms that process acid hypercapnia in the mammalian carotid body (CB) are poorly understood. Using a co-culture model containing rat CB chemoreceptor (type 1 cell) clusters and petrosal neurons (PN), we tested the hypothesis that co-released ACh and ATP was an important mechanism. Sensory transmission from type I clusters to PN in co-culture occurred at chemical synapses via co-release of ATP and ACh because isohydric hypercapnia depolarized and/or increased firing in co-cultured PN, but not in PN cultured alone; PN chemoexcitatory responses were inhibited by decreasing the extracellular Ca(2+):Mg2+ ratio; partial inhibition of these responses occurred during separate perfusion of cholinergic (hexamethonium or mecamylamine) and P2X (suramin) receptor blockers, although inhibition was often complete with both blockers present; and rapid chemoexcitatory responses to hypercapnia were inhibited by acetazolamide (10 microM), an inhibitor of carbonic anhydrase, localized in type I cells. Acidosis (pH = 7.0, 7.2) enhanced the ATP-induced whole cell current in functional PN relative to that at physiologic pH (7.4), suggesting that increased sensitivity of postsynaptic P2X receptors may contribute to acid chemotransmission. Type I cells in CB tissue sections expressed vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), a cholinergic marker, as revealed by confocal immunofluorescence. Thus co-release of ACh and ATP is an important neurotransmitter mechanism for processing isohydric and acidic hypercapnia in the rat carotid body.


A wealth of evidence indicates a strong link between type 2 diabetes (T2D) and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although the precise mechanism remains unclear, T2D can exacerbate neurodegenerative processes. Brain atrophy, reduced cerebral glucose metabolism, and central nervous system insulin resistance are features of both AD and T2D. The T2D phenotype (glucose dyshomeostasis, insulin resistance, impaired insulin signaling) also promotes AD pathology, namely accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) and hyperphosphorylated tau and can induce other aspects of neuronal degeneration including inflammatory and oxidative processes. Aβ and hyperphosphorylated tau may also have roles in pancreatic β-cell dysfunction and in reducing insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake by peripheral tissues such as liver, skeletal muscle, and adipose tissue. This suggests a role for these AD-related proteins in promoting T2D. The accumulation of the islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP, or amylin) within islet β-cells is a major pathological feature of the pancreas in patients with chronic T2D. Co-secreted with insulin, amylin accumulates over time and contributes to β-cell toxicity, ultimately leading to reduced insulin secretion and onset of overt (insulin dependent) diabetes. Recent evidence also suggests that this protein accumulates in the brain of AD patients and may interact with Aβ to exacerbate the neurodegenerative process. In this review, we highlight evidence indicating T2D in promoting Aβ and tau mediated neurodegeneration and the potential contributions of Aβ and tau in promoting a diabetic phenotype that could further exacerbate neurodegeneration. We also discuss underlying mechanisms by which amylin can contribute to the neurodegenerative processes.


This article examines the impact of the UK Government's Transparency agenda, focusing on the publication of spending data at local government level. It measures the democratic impact in terms of creating transparency and accountability, public participation and everyday information. The study uses a survey of local authorities, interviews and FOI requests to build a picture of use and impact. It argues that the spending data has led to some accountability, though from those already monitoring government rather than citizens. It has not led to increased participation, as it lacks the narrative or accountability instruments to fully bring such effects. Nor has it created a new stream of information to underpin citizen choice, though new innovations offer this possibility. The evidence points to third party innovations as the key. They can contextualise and 'localise' information as a first step in more effective accountability.The superficially simple and neutral reforms conceal complex political dynamics. The very design lends itself to certain framing effects, further compounded by assumptions and blurred concepts and a lack of accountability instruments to resolve problems raised by the data.


With the advent of advanced technologies, including big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, biometric technologies enter in a whole new era. Great limitations regarding their applicability, robustness, effectiveness and efficiency can now be overcome bringing biometric systems much closer to large-scale deployment and application. Meanwhile, the major social issues related to biometrics stem from the irrevocable tight link between an individual's biometric traits and informational trails of this person, either in the form of records or within the biometric traits themselves, which raise serious debate and cause important restrictions in the realization of their full potential. This chapter will present Information and Communications Technology (ICT) developments, such as cloud computing, IoT and big data, which drive the way for the large-scale operation of robust biometric systems, as well as real world examples of biometric solutions. Moreover, it will analyse the privacy and ethical concerns and the societal implications of the introduction of biometrics systems for society as a whole and individually for citizens.


Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases today, affecting over a million people in the UK. Numerous medical complications, such as heart disease, are regularly associated with diabetes. Despite advances in methods of diagnosis and treatment there is still a need for greater understanding of these diseases. This will include research directed towards the influence of specific treatments and reasons for the high incidence of diabetes and heart disease in 'at risk' populations. Changes in elemental status are associated as the cause or effect of various diseased states. Elemental imbalance in diabetics can result in impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance and in sufferers of heart disease elemental changes impair heart rate and elasticity of blood vessels. In the UK 10,000 patients with Ischaemic Heart Disease undergo coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery each year. Elemental analysis has been carried out on blood samples collected from a group of patients admitted to hospital for bypass surgery. Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) have been applied as complementary analytical tools for determining elemental concentrations. Differences have been examined between CABG patients with and without diabetes. Both experimental methods have been used to investigate elemental levels in whole blood, erythrocytes and plasma. Elemental concentration varied according to the blood constituent and reflected short and long-term influences on elemental homeostasis. Plasma was found to concentrate Na, Mg and Ca the highest using both experimental techniques. All blood samples were collected and prepared at St. George's Hospital, Tooting in the UK. An additional study was conducted to investigate the influence of the bypass operation on the patient's elemental status. Whole blood was obtained at pre (1h before operation), post (1-2 hours after operation) and recovery (24 hours after completion of the operation) stages of bypass surgery. Differences between the three phases were observed, individual variations have been plotted so rates of change can be seen and evaluated with the particular medical history. Concentrations of Na, Mg, Al, P, S, Cl, K, Ca and Fe in whole blood were determined. The two measurement techniques found different concentrations however results showed a general trend that post operative concentrations were elevated compared to pre operative values. Analysis of blood drawn during the recovery phase, 24 hours after the surgery, found that concentration were typically approaching pre operative levels. Both PIXE and INAA found concentrations of Na, Mg and Al peaked post operation and then decreased in the recovery phase, towards values measured pre surgery. Various factors may be responsible for the elemental changes occurring during surgery including, hormone production, routine administration of intra-operative fluids and contact of blood with non- endothelial surfaces. Hierarchical cluster analysis has been used to confirm differences between elemental levels in pre, post and recovery stages of bypass surgery. The dendograms produced indicate significant distinction between the three stages. The explosive impact of diabetes in the UK resident Asian population is discussed and the influence of diabetogenic agents introduced. Examination of research literature revealed that betel nut has been implicated as a causative agent in several medical conditions. Samples of Betel nut and six associated chewing materials widely used in Asian communities has been collected and prepared for analysis. Instrumental neutron activation analysis has been used to determine the concentration of Na, Mg, Al, Cl, Ca, V, Mn, Cu and Br in the samples by means of short-lived radionuclides.


Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no meaningful generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics. The study also concluded that the post-secondary students at the institution in question use a limited set of ICTs and their use is driven by three key issues: familiarity, cost, and immediacy. The findings are based on focus group interviews with 69 students and survey responses from a random sample of 438 second year students in 14 different programs in five schools in the institution. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of research that questions the popular view that generation can be used to explain the use of ICTs in higher education.


Water movement can influence the distribution of benthos, in part, by increasing food delivery; however, the impact of advective transport and turbulent diffusion on organic matter flux to nearshore benthic communities is not well quantified. In this study, we measured the vertical particulate organic carbon (POC) and particulate phosphorus (PP) flux in nearshore Lake Michigan using two naturally occurring daughter/parent radionuclide pairs (234Th/238U and 90Y/90Sr) and compared these fluxes to coincident benthic chamber estimates of respiration and total phosphorus efflux by quagga mussels on the lakebed. We found that advective onshore transport and vertical convective mixing increased POC and PP flux to the nearshore benthos by a factor of ∼ 15 and ∼ 30 over offshore trap‐derived estimates of flux. From these results, we hypothesize that high benthos population densities are related to an edge effect created when the dominant mechanism of particle delivery transitions from gravitational settling to convection.


Journal of clinical and translational nephrology (JCTN) is the official online journal of Malaysian Society of Nephrology. It is a free and fully open access, online only journal publishing biannually. The journal will serve as an essential nephrology educational and training resource and it publishes original peer-reviewed research articles in all aspects of the basic clinical science research, prevention, diagnosis and management of kidney and associated disorders, translational research as well as related molecular genetics, pathophysiology, and epidemiology study in the field of renal disease.


This paper outlines the rationale for an open online course for teachers, Enhance your Mentoring Skills, aimed at addressing the UK National Mentor Standards (2016), and describes how this was put into practice. The professional needs of school-based mentors and how these were met in the design for learning are examined alongside a consideration of the efficacy of the curriculum and associated pedagogy of the course. Drawing on the evaluations of 73 teachers who have completed the course in 2017 and their contributions to individual and communal learning activities the paper develops an impression of mentoring practice that represents mentors' theories-in-use. Teachers' accounts of the value of the course suggest considerable effect on their levels of confidence and some evidence of impact on their mentoring practice. However, findings also indicate that participants' understandings of their mentoring role lacks a clearly defined model for mentoring relationships and that mentors welcome greater opportunity to reflect on their practice and to share this with others discursively. The paper discusses the extent to which the course offers a bridge between mentors' wishes and intentions and how they are realised in practice. Recommendations for future iterations of the course are made, with proposals to develop this case study further, as an instrumental form of theory building (Stake, 1995), in order to better understand how mentors understand and develop their practice.


A theory of electromagnetic surface-wave propagation on a plane superconductor–vacuum interface is presented. On the basis of a nonlocal description taking into account the finite size of the pair-bound state, the transverse and longitudinal parts of the conductivity response tensor are analyzed. Special emphasis is given to a study of the quasi-particle scattering and the two-quasi-particle emission and absorption processes in the near-local regime, i.e., the regime where nonlocal effects are incorporated in lowest order. Within the framework of the well-known semiclassical infinite-barrier model, the hydrodynamic model, extended to include nonlocal effects in the divergence-free part of the response, is used to establish a simple analytical expression for the dispersion relation of surface waves on a Cooper-paired superconductor. Attention is paid to the frequency dispersion of the waves near the superconducting gap.


This paper evaluates the transparency aspect of regulation by contract as applied in Jakarta's water services sector. Transparency is categorized into active and passive disclosure. The former uses publication of contract, service level/customer service and investment planning as a proxy for transparency whereas the latter measure transparency using the applicability of freedom of information law. The result is that transparency is lacking in Jakarta where regulation by contract is employed. In Jakarta, contracts are not published, service level/customer service information not available to the public and investment planning process only negotiated bilaterally without any public involvement. In terms of passive disclosure rules, the Freedom of Information Law is also not applicable to regulatory body in Jakarta (JWSRB). The paper also apply similar framework to water services regulation in Bogor, Victoria and England. Unlike Jakarta, contracts are published in Victoria. In both Victoria, England and Bogor service level/customer service information is published as they are part of public document and investment planning process is open and transparent. The Freedom of Information Law is also applicable to regulatory bodies in Victoria (ESC) and England (OFWAT). The paper confirms various hypothesis that regulation by contract decreases transparency and elaborates strategies to mitigate such lack of transparency.


A wealth of research has investigated how good people are at being eyewitnesses. This involves investigating how accurate witnesses are at correctly identifying a previously seen culprit from a line-up, and also whether witnesses choose someone from a line-up, even if the culprit is not there. Many of these studies have found that children and adults over the age of 60, are more likely to make false identifications when shown a line-up that does not contain a culprit. To reduce false identifications a new technique called the Mystery Man procedure was developed, which involves placing a silhouette in the line-up. The two studies discussed here, found that using the mystery man procedure can significantly reduce false identifications, without reducing correct identifications, for both children and older adults. The results of this research suggest that this technique could easily be implemented in police line-ups to make eyewitness identifications more accurate.