The central thesis of the study is that social and economic policy are
two sides of the same coin and that at the heart of any functional
regional integration is the recognition of this dualism. The study takes a
critical look at the debate vis-a-vis, trade, investment and labour and
its implication for occupational health and safety standards for
developing countries.
Regional integration among developing countries is part of a wider
strategy to promote equitable growth and not an end in itself. The
thesis contends that effective regional integration for SADC will
increase competition, reduce private transaction costs, and enable
firms to exploit economies of scale, encourage inward foreign direct
investment and facilitate macroeconomic policy coordination.
Through out the thesis the author maintains that regional groupings
must be open towards the world market in the sense of keeping tariffs
at a level that does not encourage trade diversion. They should not
attempt a form of regional autarky that has led to past failures. Open
regionalism complements unilateral liberalisation. Without regional
coherence, unilateral liberalisation may imply negative spill-over
effects. A regionally coherent liberalisation strategy will cushion the
shocks of adjustment to a global economy. The high adjustment cost of
unilateral liberalisation has been a cause of policy reversal in the region
in the past. The discussion is set against a background of possible tensions between
social and economic policy and priorities and attempts to indicate
that in real terms there is no conflict rather only complimentarity exists.
It submits that, it is the understanding of this relationship that is often
wanting. The study is set in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC). It traces SADC's social and economic policy in
historical context in an attempt to diagnose the problem. Although the
findings and conclusion of the study may not be representative of
developing countries generally and geographically specific, they do
illuminate some of the regulatory dilemmas developing countries face
in their endeavours to dock themselves to the global economy and the
task of complying with norms and standards obtaining therein.
The thesis proposes a policy formula that recognises the dualism of
social and economic policy in SADC's integration programme. This is
premised on the assertion that economic gains of integration are likely
to be wiped out by adverse social effects of economic integration if
the social considerations are subordinated to the economic concerns
for integration. A holistic approach to regulation, promotion and
reconciliation of potentially completing social and economic priorities
is proposed involving civil society and social partners (state, employers
and employees).
Background
Globalisation of the world trading system and economic order is
revolutionizing and redefining traditional legal borders and has raised
the need for sector specific legislation to respond to specific
complexities in particular areas, while on the whole the dynamic
nature of modern economic activities give way to a need for an
evolutionary regulatory system that could swiftly respond to changes in
the world of work.
It can not be disputed that general labour law could in a majority of
cases be unsuitable to the day to day occupational health and safety
problems. The same could be said of the health and safety law in
general, vis-d-vis, sector specific health and safety issues. This is not to
suggest that government should legislate for everything, as that would
be an impossible task. However as a starting point, there is need for a
framework legislation that would give guidance and leadership in as
far as health and safety management is concerned.
The process of globaliation 11 has brought another dimension to the
problem. There is a global dimension which demands a global or a
multifaceted approach to regulation of occupational health and
safety standards involving government and its social partners.
Unfortunately in most cases the law has not kept pace with socioeconomic
changes. In such a scenario, in pursuit of corporate profit
and foreign direct investment, worker welfare sufferes and
unscrupulous businessmen exploit state systems while governments do
little towards the welfare of the workforce.
Multinational corporations with sophisticated networks working in
developing countries and transitional economies have at times
managed to escape effective regulation with adverse consequences
for the workforce, the environment and the public in general. As the
opposition to linkage rages on, the quest for effective management of
health and safety standards remains a contentious issue.
What role can the economics of occupational health and safety
standards and practices play in SADC's regional integration and how
can economic forces can be brought to bear on the social regulation
of the market? Can SADC as a regional bloc press on with a social and
economic programme that makes it attractive as an investment
destination whilst minimizing adverse social effects of the process?
In view of the complex nature of the issues involved, the sheer scale of
financial and human capital required and the supranational nature of
the problem, a supranational approach to the problem is ideal.
This thesis advocates the dualism of social and economic policy and its
interplay in regional integration. The thesis finds that the problem in the
past has been a policy misconception. There was a misplaced hope.
that economic progress would naturally translate into social progress. In
this formula social policy was to evolve as a by-product ot economic
policy, which has proved to be wrong.
The study argues that social and economic policies are two sides of the
same coin. It displaces the World Trade Organisation's argument or
reluctance to link labour with trade and investment. The central
argument is that the international trading community can not only be
interested in 'products' and ignore the 'production process'. The
author uses SADC as a microcosm of the global political economy and
places the discussion in that context.


This paper analyzes the link between Kamakura Risk Information Services (KRIS) data on megabank default probabilities and credit spreads. It develops an "eye-ball" test for the extent of individual-bank "zombieness" whose grade turns on how weakly a bank's credit spread responds to movements in KRIS default probabilities calculated over different horizons. The intuition underlying the test is that the more decapitalized a bank is allowed to become, the more creditors must be relying on someone other than stockholders to absorb the firm's risk of default. The tests show that the recovery of European megabanks from the 2008-09 crisis has been incomplete. Creditors of Europe's giant banks still seem to be relying on implicit guarantees. In particular, credit spreads on the bonds of these banks appear to be relatively insensitive to the level of the issuer's longer-term probabilities of default. Coupled with the high pairwise correlation that KRIS default probabilities show between major US and European banks, this finding suggests that creditors do not expect the EU's bail-in requirements to play much of a role in resolving megabank insolvencies during the next crisis.


This paper analyzes changes in the gender earnings gap in urban China over the period 1988–2004 using urban household survey data. The mean female/male earnings ratio declined from 86.3% to 76.2%. Mainly responsible for this diverging trend were rapid increases in returns to both observed and unobserved skills, which accentuated the disadvantage associated with women's lower skill levels. The gender gap in observed skills such as education narrowed over the study period, but did not close, and there is evidence that the gap in unobserved skills widened considerably. Increased discrimination may also have served to widen the gender earnings gap. Analyses by earnings percentile and by sub-period show that although the gap widened much more at the lower end of the earnings distribution than at the upper end over the period as a whole, it widened greatly at the upper end in the most recent years (2001–2004).


This project is a component of a three-part project with the umbrella name BIOFOREST, funded by the National Development Plan through COFORD and the EPA. The three
organisations conducting the work were University College, Cork, Trinity College, Dublin and Coillte Teoranta. The objectives of this project were to assess biodiversity in a range of important habitat types which are frequently afforested, to develop methodologies and indicator species for the assessment of biodiversity and to assess the efficacy of the Forest Biodiversity Guidelines (Forest Service 2000c) and make recommendations for their improvement. The project involved a review of assessment practices in other countries (Gittings et al. 2004), a review of literature published on the relevant habitats and field surveys of habitats likely to be used for afforestation and of these habitats five years after afforestation with Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis). A major database was developed during the project and all data from the project, including geographical information, are stored in that.


On September 20, 2004, Indonesia held its first direct presidential election in which former General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono defeated incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri by a landslide margin of 60.6 percent to 39.4 percent. While many expected the landmark election to be prime ground for chaos and ballot-tampering, the polls calmly hosted 116 million of the country's 212 million people while posting an accuracy rate of around 99 percent. The US-educated Yudhoyono, who was sworn in on October 20, promises to fight the corruption that has plagued Indonesia's government for the past 10 years and to boost a struggling economy in which 40 percent of people are either unemployed or underemployed. Reaction to the election results was certainly upbeat. At the prospect of five years under Yudhoyono, people celebrated in the streets, Indonesian stocks, bonds, and currency all increased in value, and foreign businessmen renewed their interests in Indonesian investments. The next year will be crucial for Yudhoyono, who intends to prove naysayers wrong by demonstrating his political prowess in addition to his appealing personality. However, the latent party-dueling and corruption will prove a tough challenge. Though Sukarnoputri's ousting was fairly pronounced, she does deserve some credit for putting Indonesia back on track. Her term began soon after Indonesia former President Suharto's 32-year dictatorial rule, which ended in 1998 amidst political and economic chaos. Sukarnoputri, who was elected by the legislature in 2001, oversaw economic recovery, a decrease in separatist, religious, and ethnic violence, as well as a smooth transition to a democratic constitution and free elections. The contest was won on differences in personality and leadership style. Sukarnoputri and Yudhoyono differ little on the issues; they both wanted to raise workers' income, improve domestic investment, and fight terrorism. Yudhoyono was Sukarnoputri's security minister until his political aspirations forced their parting. Sukarnoputri's passivity in public office, which alienated her from the people, proved to be her Achilles heel. In contrast to the charismatic and personable Yudhoyono, who entertained the public with his fluent English and guitar-playing skills, Sukarnoputri was seen as elitist, aloof, and a poor communicator. While Yudhoyono has promised great leaps forward, he faces an uphill battle. His challenges center on the dueling parties and the inherent corruption in Indonesia's Parliament. Yudhoyono has proposed a number of reforms, including centralizing policy making, streamlining regulations for businesses, forming an economic committee of advisors, and appointing a new attorney general. …


Extracellular matrix stiffness has a profound effect on the behaviour of many cell types. Adherent cells apply contractile forces to the material on which they adhere, and sense the resistance of the material to deformation - its stiffness. This is dependent on both the elastic modulus and the thickness of the material, with the corollary that single cells are able to sense underlying stiff materials through soft hydrogel materials at low (<10 μm) thicknesses. Here, we hypothesised that cohesive colonies of cells exert more force and create more hydrogel deformation than single cells, therefore enabling them to mechanosense more deeply into underlying materials than single cells. To test this, we modulated the thickness of soft (1 kPa) elastic ECM-functionalised polyacrylamide hydrogels adhered to glass substrates and allowed colonies of MG63 cells to form on their surfaces. Cell morphology and deformations of fluorescent fiducial-marker labelled hydrogels were quantified by time-lapse fluorescence microscopy imaging. Single cell spreading increased with respect to decreasing hydrogel thickness, with data fitting to an exponential model with half-maximal response at a thickness of 3.2 μm. By quantifying cell area within colonies of defined area, we similarly found that colony-cell spreading increased with decreasing hydrogel thickness but with a greater half-maximal response at 54 μm. Depth-sensing was dependent on ROCK-mediated cellular contractility. Surface hydrogel deformations were significantly greater on thick hydrogels compared to thin hydrogels. In addition, deformations extended greater distances from the periphery of colonies on thick hydrogels compared to thin hydrogels. Our data suggest that by acting collectively, cells mechanosense rigid materials beneath elastic hydrogels at greater depths than individual cells. This raises the possibility that the collective action of cells in colonies or sheets may allow cells to sense structures of differing material properties at comparatively large distances.


Abstract It is now commonplace for political discourse, news reports, and popular fictions to draw on themes of political violence and threats to national and individual security as mechanisms for the perpetuation of fear. Stories (whether fictive or factual) of terrorism, crisis, surveillance, racial stereotyping, and the fallibility of law have become a very real part of the mediated experience of fear for the public, and they provoke a number of questions surrounding complex issues of protectionism, identity, trust, and the conflation of law and justice. It has been argued that such stories are constructed and utilized by key decision-makers as effective politicking in order to promote protectionist policies and activities. In recognizing that this "politics of fear" rests upon public assumptions and beliefs concerning safety and risk, it is important to understand how a public experience of fear is actually expressed and constituted in the public imaginary. Using social media as an interesting lens through which we can understand how fear is defined and realized in everyday social interaction, the paper will demonstrate that in times of high alert Twitter provides access to an articulated experience of fear. This paper will qualitatively explore the co-production and (re)circulation of these assumptions and beliefs through one particular story: the "Sydney Siege" hostage event of December 2014. By focusing on the Twitter response to this event, the paper provides an empirical account of public critique of law's justice narrative through the emotional experience and expression of fear. Drawing on critical content analysis and the Aristotelian discourse analysis method, the paper illustrates the complicity of social media, emotion and a prevalent rhetoric of fear in the reinforcement of law's justice narrative during times of high alert or crisis.


The daily working hours of long-life mobile robots are limited primarily by battery life. Most systems use a combination of hard thresholds and fixed periods to decide when to charge. This produces charging behaviour that ignores high-value tasks that must be performed within time-windows or by deadlines. Instead the robot should schedule charging adaptively, taking into account the times of day when it is expected to be given more valuable tasks to perform. This paper proposes an approach that exploits the fact that, during long-term deployments, the robot can learn when it is most probable that valuable tasks are added to the system, thus it can plan to charge on times that are expected to be less busy. We pose the problem of scheduling battery charging as a multi-objective sequential decision making problem over a time-dependent Markov decision process model of expected task rewards and battery behaviour. We compare a typical rule-based approach to our multi-objective scheduler and show that our approach enables for more flexible and efficient robot behaviour, which takes into account both the value of current available tasks and the predicted value of future tasks to decide whether to charge at a given time.


Abstract : Nineteen months of temperature and salinity data were recovered from North Brazil Current (NBC) Rings Experiment Mooring S1. The mooring, located east of Barbados at 13 deg 00'N, 57 deg 53'W between November 1998 and June 2000, consisted of a vertical array of five temperature/conductivity recorders, five temperature recorders, one 150 kHz acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), and one 260 Hz RAFOS sound source. This instrumentation was distributed over a depth interval (500-1100m) coincident with the low-salinity core of Antarctic Intermediate Water. Due-to low concentration of scattering particles at 1000 m, the ADCP failed to return useful velocity data. Heading, pitch, and roll data were successfully recorded, however, and provide coarse measurement of current intensity. Four anomalously low temperature, low salinity, and (inferred) high-velocity events appear toward the end of the record. The temperature and salinity fluctuations observed during these events are most likely due to a combination of vertical instrument excursions due to current-induced mooring tilt and advection of anomalous NBC ring-core water past the mooring site. Anomalous conditions persist for a period of 2-3 weeks and appear, based on simultaneous surface drifter trajectories and satellite ocean color observations, to be associated with the passage of NBC Rings near Barbados.


The history of fascism in Italy has been extensively covered while fascist Italy's role in colonies before the war, and occupied areas during it, have only been touched upon. There has been little or no coming to terms with fascist crimes comparable to the French concern with Vichy or even the Japanese recognition of its wartime and pre-war responsibilities. This article uses Italy's internment policy in Africa before the war and in the Balkans and Italy during the war to illustrate the repression of historical memory. On the one hand, foreign Jews were interned to protect them from deportation by German, Croatian or Vichy French forces. The reasons were political and humanitarian. On the other, Balkan civilians were interned in conditions that led to the death of thousands. Similar and worse policies had been carried out in Africa before the war. There is some excellent specialist work on Africa which is not part of general knowledge; the Balkans have not even been covered by specialists. This article puts forward some explanations for the repression of the recent past.


We study aspects of the combinatorial and graphical structure shared by a certain family of recursively generated arrays related to the operation of Nim-addition. In particular, these arrays display periodic behavior along rows and diagonals. We explain how various features of computer-generated graphics depicting these arrays are reflections of the theorems we prove.


Few large institutions have changed as fully and dramatically as the US healthcare system since World War II. Compared to the 1930s, healthcare now incorporates a variety of new technologies, service-delivery arrangements, financing mechanisms and underlying sets of organizing principles. This book examines the transformations that have occurred in medical care systems in the San Francisco Bay area since 1945. The authors describe these changes in detail and relate them to both the sociodemographic trends in the Bay Area and to shifts in regulatory systems and policy environments at local, state and national levels. But this is more than a social history; the authors employ a variety of theoretical perspectives - including strategic management, population ecology and institutional theory - to examine five types of healthcare organizations through quantitative data analysis and illustrative case studies. Providing a thorough account of changes for one of the nation's leading metropolitan areas in health service innovation, this book is a landmark in the theory of organizations and in the history of healthcare systems.


We investigate an underlying mathematical model and algorithms for optimizing the performance of a class of distributed systems over the Internet. Such a system consists of a large number of clients who communicate with each other indirectly via a number of intermediate servers. Optimizing the overall performance of such a system then can be formulated as a client-server assignment problem whose aim is to assign the clients to the servers in such a way to satisfy some prespecified requirements on the communication cost and load balancing. We show that 1) the total communication load and load balancing are two opposing metrics, and consequently, their tradeoff is inherent in this class of distributed systems; 2) in general, finding the optimal client-server assignment for some prespecified requirements on the total load and load balancing is NP-hard, and therefore; 3) we propose a heuristic via relaxed convex optimization for finding the approximate solution. Our simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm produces superior performance than other heuristics, including the popular Normalized Cuts algorithm.


Abstract. A global time series of total columnar water vapour from combined data of the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) onboard ESA's Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT) and the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) onboard the satellite series of the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) is presented. The unique data set, generated in the framework of the ESA Data User Element (DUE) GlobVapour project, combines atmospheric water vapour observations over land and ocean, derived from measurements in the near-infrared and the microwave range, respectively. Daily composites and monthly means of total columnar water vapour are available as global maps on rectangular latitude–longitude grids with a spatial resolution of 0.05° × 0.05° over land and 0.5° × 0.5° over ocean for the years 2003 to 2008. The data are stored in NetCDF files and is fully compliant with the NetCDF Climate Forecast convention. Through the combination of high-quality microwave observations and near-infrared observations over ocean and land surfaces, respectively, the data set provides global coverage. The combination of both products is carried out such that the individual properties of the microwave and near-infrared products, in particular their uncertainties, are not modified by the merging process and are therefore well defined. Due to the global coverage and the provided uncertainty estimates this data set is potentially of high value for climate research. The SSM/I-MERIS TCWV data set is freely available via the GlobVapour project web page ( www.globvapour.info ) with associated doi:10.5676/DFE/WV_COMB/FP . In this paper, the details of the data set generation, i.e. the satellite data used, the retrieval techniques and merging approaches, are presented. The derived level 3 products are compared to global radiosonde data from the GCOS upper air network (GUAN), showing a high agreement with a root-mean-square deviation of roughly 4.4 kg m−2 and a small wet bias well below 1 kg m−2. Furthermore, the data set is shown to be free of seasonal biases. The consistency of the MERIS and SSM/I retrievals is demonstrated by applying the MERIS retrieval to sun glint areas over ocean.


The same open source philosophy that has been traditionally applied to software development can be applied to the collaborative creation of non-software information products, such as books, music and video. Such products are generically referred to as open content. Due largely to the success of large projects such as Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, open content has gained increasing attention not only in the popular media, but also in scholarly research. It is important to rigorously investigate the workings of the open source process in these new media of expression. This paper introduces the scope of emerging research on the open content phenomenon, other than open source software. We develop a framework for categorizing copyrightable works as utilitarian, factual, aesthetic or opinioned works. Based on these categories, we consider the applicability of some implications of findings from open source software research for open content. We review some key theory-driven findings from open source software research and assess the applicability of extending their implications to open content. We present a research agenda that integrates the findings and proposes a list of research topics that can help lay a solid foundation for open content research. We also briefly review the literature for some specific directions of open content research, involving the quality of products, the marketing of digital music, and open content in developing countries.A shorter version of this paper was published in conference proceedings: Okoli, Chitu and Kevin Carillo (2013). Beyond open source software: framework and implications for open content research. Proceedings of the 21st European Conference for Information Systems. Utrecht, Netherlands. June 5-8, 2013.


Introduction and objectives Influenza vaccination is offered annually in the UK to high-risk individuals such as those with asthma as a preventive measure against influenza infection and influenza-related complications. However, the effectiveness and safety of influenza vaccination in people with asthma is not well established.1 Methods We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing the overall quality of evidence using the GRADE methodology. Published literature was searched through 13 electronic databases from Jan 1970 to Jan 2016 for clinical trials and epidemiological studies. Unpublished or ongoing literature was searched through references and citations of key publications, and by contacting influenza vaccine manufacturers. The screening for eligible studies, data extraction and quality appraisal was conducted by two reviewers independently. Separate meta-analyses were undertaken for observational and experimental evidence using random-effects models. Results We identified 35 eligible studies, and four contributed to the meta-analyses. Risk of bias was high for one randomised controlled trial (RCT), unclear for 11 RCTs, and low for eight RCTs. The quality of five non-RCTs, four cohorts, and two case-control studies was strong. Moderate quality was found for one non-RCT, and three cohort studies. In people with asthma, pooled vaccine effectiveness (VE) was 45% (OR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.44 to 0.69; I2 = 0%) for laboratory confirmed influenza. Pooled effectiveness of live vaccines was 81% (RR: 0.19; 95% CI: 0.06 to 0.67; I2 = 0%) for influenza infection (confirmed by cell culture or rise in antibody titre) and 72% (RR: 0.28; 95%: 0.10 to 0.80; I2 = 0%) for influenza-like illness. VE was also observed against asthma attacks. No increased risk of vaccine-induced asthma symptoms and attacks was identified. The quality of the body of evidence was considered very low for all outcomes. Conclusions Evidence on VE in people with asthma against influenza, asthma exacerbations, and other clinical outcomes is limited and of very low quality. Thus, better quality evidence is required, especially in adults with asthma. Vaccination with inactivated or live vaccines was found to be safe and well tolerated in patients with asthma. Reference Cates CJ, Rowe BH. Vaccines for preventing influenza in people with asthma. Cochrane Database Sys Rev 2013;2:Cd000364.


In the past decades, diversity has become a popular catchphrase in theoretical, policy and public discourses in Canadian cities. Toronto is Canada's most diverse city, wherein a long-standing immigration history coupled by the introduction of the Canadian Multiculturalism policy in the 1970s have rendered diversity a prominent value for the city's inhabitants (Ahmadi and Tasan-Kok, 2014). Celebration of diversity has become a popular theme in Toronto's policy and image making, such that many policy documents have proclaimed diversity as the city's biggest strength. However, while the celebration of diversity has attracted funds and services to inner city Toronto, stereotyping based on different categories of diversity (particularly ethnicity and class) has resulted in the stigmatization and criminalization of poor racialised neighbourhoods located at the edges of the city.

Diversity in urban areas may derive from multiple factors such as behaviour, lifestyles, activities, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality profiles, entitlements and restrictions of rights, labour market experiences, and patterns of spatial distribution. Research on diversity in the past decades has resulted in the creation of an extensive body of work on the notion. However, there are a few gaps in theory which the present study seeks to address, namely: (a) Research on diversity often overlooks the complexity and dynamic nature of diversity and maintains an overemphasis on ethnicity. (b) Despite plentiful evidence for the diversification of peripheral neighbourhoods, the available body of research focuses primarily on inner-city areas, leaving out the more remote rural and suburban areas (Humphris, 2014). (c) There is a tendency to present a 'flat' or 'horizontal' type of differentiation of diversity, which does not account for the various positions and hierarchies within and between different categories of difference.

In light of these gaps, this study seeks to add to our understanding of urban diversity, as perceived and experienced by those who inhabit, frequent and govern urban areas. It answers the following primary research question: How is diversity experienced at the neighbourhood level, as (a) discourse, (b) social reality, and (c) practice? Diversity as discourse refers to the public narratives around diversity, while diversity as social reality concerns the descriptive characteristics that render an area diverse. Diversity as practice refers to policies, programs and local practices that aim towards managing diversity (see also Berg and Sigona, 2013). The research question is investigated in four interconnected chapters, which engage with the three formerly mentioned dimensions to various degrees. The study further makes use of a variety of qualitative and participatory techniques (i.e. qualitative interviews, roundtable talks, participant observations, and focus groups) to gather rigorous empirical data on living with and managing diversity in an inner-suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, namely Jane-Finch.


The article deals with the issues related to analysis of domestic engineering problems with the assessment of the current state of the industry as a whole. Considering the prospects of exiting the current crisis, as well as long-term economic growth we expect general welfare within the sector. As the object of the study the authors have selected the engineering industry of the country. The subject of research is the economic relations between producers and consumers of engineering products, as well as issues of strategy formation and development of the engineering industry. The authors analyzed the state of machine-manufacture and highlighted the problems, the solution of which is most relevant given the government policy of increased import substitution and enhanced productivity. Further analysis was carried out in the sphere of sources of financing and attraction of investment resources for all kinds of enterprises of mechanical engineering, on the basis of which economic development strategy for the industry may be constructed. In addition, the authors propose measures and concrete ways of solving the problems identified by the formation of economic strategy of development of the industry, involving plans of achievement of all the defined targets. As a result of the study authors concluded that the need to stop subsidizing loss-making enterprises, creating a favorable climate for the development of venture companies, in order t introduce innovative technology as soon as possible. These technologies could subsequently be exported together with products of greater added value.


We develop a model of relational contracts with moral hazard and asymmetric persistent information about an employee's type. We find that the form of the optimal contract depends on the job characteristics and the distribution of employees' talent. Bonus contracts are more likely to be adopted in complex jobs and when high talent is not too common or too rare. Firms with 'normal' jobs are more likely to adopt termination contracts. In labor market equilibrium, different contracts may be adopted by ex ante identical firms. Hence, we offer an explanation for the co-existence of different employment systems within the same industry.


Dues and taxes, as a component part of cash flows can be managed according to general procedures of payment; this is the hypothesis, from which it starts, in what follows, in the assessment of payments management. A technique that characterizes especially the qualitative aspect of payments management is based on the formation of certain indexes, in terms of other numeric variables (patrimony value, turnover, equity ownership, profit etc.) that express, in relative expression, the correlation between payments and limits taken into consideration. These indexes form the analysis of rotation of patrimony elements by creating a link between balance sheet and profit and loss account. This analysis has as purpose establishing the necessary time to cover all steps of the economic circuit by capitals involved by the economic entity.


This paper proposes a novel Bayesian approximation inference method for mixture modeling. Our key idea is to factorize marginal log-likelihood using a variational distribution over latent variables. An asymptotic approximation, a factorized information criterion (FIC), is obtained by applying the Laplace method to each of the factorized components. In order to evaluate FIC, we propose factorized asymptotic Bayesian inference (FAB), which maximizes an asymptotically-consistent lower bound of FIC. FIC and FAB have several desirable properties: 1) asymptotic consistency with the marginal log-likelihood, 2) automatic component selection on the basis of an intrinsic shrinkage mechanism, and 3) parameter identifiability in mixture modeling. Experimental results show that FAB outperforms state-of-the-art VB methods.


We study the chaotic-like behavior of cosmological simulations by quantifying how minute perturbations grow over time and manifest as macroscopic differences in galaxy properties. When we run pairs of "shadow" simulations that are identical except for random minute initial displacements to particle positions (e.g., of order ), the results diverge from each other at the individual galaxy level (while the statistical properties of the ensemble of galaxies are unchanged). After cosmological times, the global properties of pairs of "shadow" galaxies that are matched between the simulations differ from each other, generally at a level of ∼2–25%, depending on the considered physical quantity. We perform these experiments using cosmological volumes of evolved either purely with dark matter, or with baryons and star formation but no feedback, or else using the full feedback model of the IllustrisTNG project. The runs cover four resolution levels spanning a factor of 512 in mass. We find that, without feedback, the differences between shadow galaxies generally become smaller as the resolution increases—but with the IllustrisTNG model, the results mostly converge toward a "floor." This hints at the role of feedback in setting the chaotic properties of galaxy formation. Importantly, we compare the macroscopic differences between shadow galaxies to the overall scatter in various galaxy scaling relations, and conclude that, for the star formation-mass and the Tully–Fisher relations, the butterfly effect in our simulations contributes significantly to the overall scatter. We find that our results are robust to whether random numbers are used in the subgrid models or not. We discuss the implications for galaxy formation theory in general and for cosmological simulations in particular.


Text input is an important part of the data annotation process, where text is used to capture ideas and comments. For text entry in immersive virtual environments, for which standard keyboards usually do not work, various approaches have been proposed. While these solutions have mostly proven effective, there still remain certain shortcomings making further investigations worthwhile. Motivated by recent research, we propose the speech-based multimodal text entry system SWIFTER, which strives for simplicity while maintaining good performance. In an initial user study, we compared our approach to smartphone-based text entry within a CAVE-like virtual environment. Results indicate that SWIFTER reaches an average input rate of 23.6 words per minute and is positively received by users in terms of user experience.


OBJECTIVE
To explore factors associated with household coping behaviours in the face of health expenditures in 15 African countries and provide evidence for policy-makers in designing financial health protection mechanisms.

METHODS
A series of logit regressions were performed to explore factors correlating with a greater likelihood of selling assets, borrowing or both to finance health care. The average partial effects for different levels of spending on inpatient care were derived by computing the partial effects for each observation and taking the average across the sample. Data used in the analysis were from the 2002-2003 World Health Survey, which asked how households had financed out-of-pocket payments over the previous year. Households selling assets or borrowing money were compared to those that financed health care from income or savings. Those that used insurance were excluded. For the analysis, a value of 1 was assigned to selling assets or borrowing money and a value of 0 to other coping mechanisms.

FINDINGS
Coping through borrowing and selling assets ranged from 23% of households in Zambia to 68% in Burkina Faso. In general, the highest income groups were less likely to borrow and sell assets, but coping mechanisms did not differ strongly among lower income quintiles. Households with higher inpatient expenses were significantly more likely to borrow and deplete assets compared to those financing outpatient care or routine medical expenses, except in Burkina Faso, Namibia and Swaziland. In eight countries, the coefficient on the highest quintile of inpatient spending had a P-value below 0.01.

CONCLUSION
In most African countries, the health financing system is too weak to protect households from health shocks. Borrowing and selling assets to finance health care are common. Formal prepayment schemes could benefit many households, and an overall social protection network could help to mitigate the long-term effects of ill health on household well-being and support poverty reduction.


The Northeast Arctic cod is one of the few fish stocks with a long time series of landings, stock size, recruitment and rate of exploitation. This paper discusses how this stock and the catches it supports have developed since 1900. Both catches and the stock increased from 1900 until after the Second World War. After the war the stock declined and so did the catches from the late 1950s. A rising rate of exploitation is the most likely explanation. Norway and the Soviet Union assumed joint control of the stock after establishing Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) in 1977, but they failed to take advantage of this and reverse the declining trend until 1990. The stock has not yet been rebuilt to the levels of the 1950s or 1960s. Norway subsidised its fisheries generously in the 1970s and 1980s, which retarded the exit of labour from the industry. This policy has now been abandoned and structural changes such as closed entry and individual transferable quotas have been implemented in order to increase economic efficiency.


OBJECTIVE: To assess variation among hospitals on pediatric readmission and revisit rates and to determine the number of high- and low-performing hospitals. METHODS: In a retrospective analysis using the State Inpatient and Emergency Department Databases from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project with revisit linkages available, we identified pediatric (ages 1–20 years) visits with 1 of 7 common inpatient pediatric conditions (asthma, dehydration, pneumonia, appendicitis, skin infections, mood disorders, and epilepsy). For each condition, we calculated rates of all-cause readmissions and rates of revisits (readmission or presentation to the emergency department) within 30 and 60 days of discharge. We used mixed logistic models to estimate hospital-level risk-standardized 30-day revisit rates and to identify hospitals that had performance statistically different from the group mean. RESULTS: Thirty-day readmission rates were low (<10.0%) for all conditions. Thirty-day rates of revisit to the inpatient or emergency department setting ranged from 6.2% (appendicitis) to 11.0% (mood disorders). Study hospitals (n = 958) had low condition-specific visit volumes (37.0%–82.8% of hospitals had <25 visits). The only condition with >1% of hospitals labeled as different from the mean on 30-day risk-standardized revisit rates was mood disorders (4.2% of hospitals [n = 15], range of hospital performance 6.3%–15.9%). CONCLUSIONS: We found that when comparing hospitals' performances to the average, few hospitals that care for children are identified as high- or low-performers for revisits, even for common pediatric diagnoses, likely due to low hospital volumes. This limits the usefulness of condition-specific readmission or revisit measures in pediatric quality measurement.


Studies on World Englishes focus on variations in the use, meanings and structures of Englishes as they have evolved in different parts of the world. However, World Englishes is not the only framework used by linguists to study variations in the English language. This chapter introduces a three-dimensional framework of language variation that allows us to place the various traditions of studying language variation in relation to each other. The chapter then considers the implications of studying language variation in educational contexts, using the three-dimensional model. In doing so, the chapter examines how language variation operates in Pakistani English language textbooks at a discursive level and discusses the implications of these variations.


Atlantic minke whales are important predators in the Barents Sea ecosystem; capelin Mallotus villosus, krill Thysanoessa sp. and Meganyctephanes norvegica and herring Clupea harengus are their major prey. Their consumption of commercial species may present an economic problem for the local fishery. In order to estimate this consumption and understand the potential con- sequences for prey dynamics, it is essential to determine the multispecies functional response of the whales. The parameterisation of a functional response requires measurements of consumption rates and prey availability. In this localised study, undigested stomach contents were used to assess the amount of each prey that had been consumed immediately prior to capture. To determine the avail- ability of prey to the whales, standard acoustic surveys were run in the same area within 2 d of the capture of the whales. The spatial distribution of prey was modelled using generalised additive mod- els (GAMs). In order to generate a measure of prey availability and the uncertainty in this value, a simple model was assumed for whale movement, and prey abundance was sampled over space according to a Gaussian kernel. A multispecies functional response (MSFR) model was then fitted to the consumption and prey availability data using Bayesian methods. Simple simulations, based on the fitted MSFR, indicate that minke whales may deplete local capelin aggregations at small spatial scales. This is the first time that a multispecies functional response has been fitted for a cetacean predator, and the methods outlined here may prove useful for modelling marine mammal-fish inter- actions in other systems.


ABSTRACT

A Series of Distractions
Lisa Sookraj

 "A Series of Distractions" is a novella that examines the fragmentary nature of the sentence, the story, the photograph and life itself. Montreal writer Gail Scott refers to works created in the middle space, the in between. This is where my writing exists, between genres and between situational states in characters' lives [stuck between a rock (youth) and a hard place (well-adjusted adults)]. To illustrate the disjointed way thoughts tend to connect under pressure, the prose is interspersed with shorter lines that appear like poetry on the page.
 The narrative follows Julie Watt, a struggling young photographer in Montreal, and focuses on her shifting relationships (to herself, her work and her boyfriend Felix). Julie seeks progress in place of redundancy, but while clinging to stasis. As such, the writing often examines moments of 'unplot' – the minute events of daily life accompanied by the inner associations of the protagonist. The writing conveys 'the real' in a charged way, revealing the complexity of situations which seem simple on the surface. A quote from Susan Sontag is fitting: "Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality."
 The notion of time and the speeds at which it moves in differing stages of our lives and psychologies is integral to the story, at the heart of which lies uncertainty and anxiety. Theories on photography (from Sontag and Roland Barthes) offer insight as to how Julie views the various aspects of her life, and often, how the author perceives prose.


Intestinal villus oxygen tension (PO2) is decreased from normal values of 14-17 to 4-7 mmHg, and blood flow is nearly doubled during glucose absorption. The current study evaluated The role of oxygen supply to the mucosa in the absorptive hyperemia mechanism. With a constant PO2 (40-45 mmHg) over the intestinal muscle layer, the mucosal tissue PO2 increased only 4-5 mmHg, and intestinal blood flow decreased from about 125 to 65% of control (PO2 = 4045) as the mucosal solution PO2 increased from 5 to 75 mmHg. When glucose was present (100 mg/100 mL), mucosal tissue PO2 was s-7 mmHg at mucosal suffusion PO2 of s-75 mmHg. When glucose was present (100 mg/100 mL), mucosal tissue PO2 was s-7 mmHg at mucosal suffusion PO2 of s-75 mmHg. Blood flow in the presence of glucose was 210 and 110% of control at a solution PO2 of 5-10 and 70-75 mmHg. Tissue PO2 in the vicinity of the submucosal series arterioles was only slightly affected by all of the manipulations described. At rest or during glucose exposure, elevation of mucosal solution PO2 caused constriction, and lowering the mucosal solution PO2 caused dilation even though tissue PO2 in the various regions of the bowel wall remained nearly constant. The data indicate that the supply of oxygen available for the tissue rather than the actual tissue PO2 is best correlated to oxygen's role in control of arterioles throughout the intestine during absorptive hyperemia.


A major role of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Electra aircraft during the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) was to measure fluxes of momentum, sensible and latent heat, carbon dioxide, and ozone on a transect that crossed the entire boreal forest biome. The observations spanned the growing season (late May to mid-September 1994) and extended the fluxes obtained in two intensive study areas to larger spatial scales to help provide a data set that is useful for comparison with and validation of large-scale models and satellite retrievals. We found the deciduous forests to be more photosynthetically active than nearby coniferous forests. Coniferous forest fluxes across the transect from the BOREAS southern to northern study areas show no apparent spatial trend, though smaller-scale variability is large. The fluxes make a smooth transition from the BOREAS northern study area to the subarctic tundra. Typical midsummer, midday, large-scale net ecosystem exchanges of carbon dioxide were about -10 μmol m -2 s -1 for primarily deciduous forests, about -6 μmol m -2 s -1 for the primarily coniferous regions between and including the two BOREAS study areas, and about -2 μmol m -2 s -1 for the subarctic tundra. The first two values are similar to those observed by flux towers in the region. Throughout the boreal forest the fluxes are influenced by the presence of lakes. Lake fraction is found to be a dominant source of variability in the fluxes observed along the transect. Lakes are also found to be large sinks of available radiant energy. Regional ground storage of heat is estimated to be about 30% of the net radiation over the forest, and 40% over the subarctic tundra, largely due to the presence of lakes.


With the production of this special issue of Workplace , we hope to contribute to a negative critique of academic labor that not only helps make such "productive" social relations more transparent, but situates academic labor as an object of critique within the discourse of recent developments in Marxist praxis. To undertake this, we sought papers that acknowledge the foundational work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for labor theory and engaged closely and critically with the critique of political economy. Marx regarded his discovery of the "dual character" of labor in capitalism (i.e. concrete and abstract) as one of his most important achievements and "the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns." (Marx, 1996, 51) With this in mind, we sought contributions that employ Marx's and Engels' critical categories of labor, value, the commodity, capital, etc. in reflexive ways which illuminate the role and character of academic labor today and how its existing form might be, according to Marx, abolished, transcended and overcome ( aufheben ).


- There are different reasons for which people need an artificial of locomotion such as a virtual keyboard. The number of people, who need to move around with the help of some article means, because of an illness. Moreover, implementing a controlling system in it enables them to move without the help of another person is very helpful. The idea of eye controls of great use to not only the future of natural input but more importantly the handicapped and disabled. Camera is capturing the image of eye movement. First detect pupil center position of eye. Then the different variation on pupil position get different command set for virtual keyboard. The signals pass the motor driver to interface with the virtual keyboard itself. The motor driver will control both speed and direction to enable the virtual keyboard to move forward, left, right and stop.


Headwater streams are essential to downstream water quality, therefore it is important they are properly represented on maps used for stream regulation. Current maps used for stream regulation, such as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) soil survey maps, are outdated and do not accurately nor consistently depict headwater streams. In order for new stream maps to be used for regulatory purposes, the accuracy must be known and the maps must show streams with a consistent level of accuracy. This study assessed the valley valley presence/absence and stream length accuracy of the new stream maps created by the North Carolina Center for Geographic Analysis (CGIA) for western North Carolina. The CGIA stream map does not depict headwater streams with a consistent level of accuracy. This study also compared the accuracy of stream networks modeled using the computer software program, Terrain Analysis using Digital Elevation Models (TauDEM), to the CGIA stream map. The stream networks modeled in TauDEM,also do not consistently predict the location of headwater streams across the mountain region of the state. The location of headwater streams could not be accurately nor consistently predicted by solely using aerial photography or elevation data. Other factors such as climate, soils, geology, land use, and vegetation cover should be considered to accurately and consistently model headwater stream networks.


Currently, it is clear that female reproduction is regulated by the hypothalamic–pituitary- ovary axis, which produces many hormones that control reproductive stages. It is there-fore important to have knowledge of new regulators/hormones controlling reproduction in domestic animals. In female animals, energy metabolism and fertility are tightly con-nected, and reciprocally regulated. The adipose tissue is well known to be implicated in the secretion of several hormones, such as the adiponectin, resistin, chemerin, visfatin, vaspin and apelin, the so-called adipokines or "adipose tissue-derived hormones". Many reports indicate that adipokines regulate the ovarian follicles' development, the onset of puberty and/or ovulation. This chapter summarizes that several adipokines are expressed in the ovary and that they can regulate ovarian physiology such as the steroid hormone production, cell proliferation, apoptosis and oocyte maturation in different domestic animals like pigs, cows, goats, ewes, chickens and turkeys.


An increasing number of distributed real-time systems face the critical challenge of providing quality of service guarantees in open and unpredictable environments. In particular, such systems often need to enforce utilization bounds on multiple processors in order to avoid overload and meet end-to-end deadlines even when task execution times are unpredictable. While recent feedback control real-time scheduling algorithms have shown promise, they cannot handle the common end-to-end task model where each task is comprised of a chain of subtasks distributed on multiple processors. This paper presents the end-to-end utilization control (EUCON) algorithm that adaptively maintains desired CPU utilization through performance feedbacks loops. EUCON is based on a model predictive control approach that models utilization control on a distributed platform as a multivariable constrained optimization problem. A multi-input-multi-output model predictive controller is designed based on a difference equation model that describes the dynamic behavior of distributed real-time systems. Both control theoretic analysis and simulations demonstrate that EUCON can provide robust utilization guarantees when task execution times deviate from estimation or vary significantly at runtime.


PSMD3 encodes subunit 3 of the 26S proteasome, which is involved in regulating insulin signal transduction, and dietary factors could potentially regulate the function of this gene. We aimed to investigate the associations of PSMD3 variants with glucose-related traits and the interactions of those variants with dietary fat and carbohydrate for glucose-related traits in the Genetics of Lipid Lowering Drugs and Diet Network (GOLDN) study and to replicate the findings in the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study (BPRHS). Ten single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected, covering 90% the genetic variations in or near PSMD3. Minor allele (C) carriers of rs4065321 had higher homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) than noncarriers in males of both the GOLDN (P = 0.022) and BPRHS (P = 0.036). Minor allele (T) carriers of rs709592 had significantly higher HOMA-IR (P = 0.032) than C homozygotes in the GOLDN, whereas the T allele carriers of rs709592 tended to have higher HOMA-IR (P = 0.08) than C homozygotes in the BPRHS. In the GOLDN, there was an interaction between rs709592 and dietary carbohydrate on HOMA-IR (P = 0.049). Subjects carrying the T allele of rs709592 had higher HOMA-IR compared only with noncarriers with low carbohydrate intake (≤49.1% energy; P = 0.004). SNPs rs4065321 and rs709592 both significantly interacted with dietary MUFAs and carbohydrate on glucose concentrations in the GOLDN. Our study suggests that PSMD3 variants are associated with insulin resistance in populations of different ancestries and that these relationships may also be modified by dietary factors.


This book is designed for people who want to pass the Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 8 Programmer exam (Exam 1Z0-808). It includes an extensive Java refresher written as a tutorial and two full mock exams. The Java refresher includes all the materials and exam objectives you need to master to pass the exam. It explains the concepts very clearly and in detail and provides examples that are easy to follow even to those with no programming experience. Each of the ten chapters in the Java refresher comes with ten questions to test your knowledge on the subjects discussed in the chapter. These questions are similar to what you would expect in a real exam and the answers and explanations to the questions follow. Here are some of the topics covered in the refresher. - Java language fundamentals - Object-oriented programming - Core classes - Arrays - Error handling - Interfaces and abstract classes - Working with dates and times - Lambda expressions The mock exams are an effective way to prepare for the real exam. Without sufficient preparation, you might still fail even if you have several years of experience in Java. Why? Because there may be questions that might surprise you, that you as a developer may never have thought about. The mock exams help you score your highest.


Through official maps, this book looks at how government presentations of Paris and environs change over the course of the Third Republic (1889-1934). Governmental policies, such as the creation of a mandatory national uniform educational system that will eventually include geography, combined with technological advances in the printing industry, to alter the look, exposure, reception, and distribution of government maps. The government initially seemed to privilege an exclusively positive view of the capital city and limited its presentation of it to land inside the walled fortifications. However, as the Republic progressed and Paris grew, technology altered how Parisians used and understood their urban space. Rail and automobiles made moving about the city and environs easier while increased industrialization moved factories and their workers further out into the Seine Department. During this time, maps transitioned from reflecting the past to documenting the present. With the advent of French urbanism after World War I, official mapped views of greater Paris abandoned privileging past achievements and began to mirror actual residential and industrial development as it pushed further out from the city center. Finally, the government needed to plan for the future of greater Paris and official maps begin to show how the government viewed the direction of its capital city.


Background: It is recognized that engineering control measures are needed to reduce occupational exposure to engineered nanomaterials (NMs): of these, fume hoods are among the most widespread collective protection equipment used while handling NMs in occupational settings. It is known that in some circumstances, handling NMs in fume hoods can result in a significant release of NMs. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of fume hoods in reducing exposure while handling graphene nanoplatelets and to define the conditions that result in a lower dispersion of particles and thus less operator exposure. Methods: An experimental protocol was established to monitor the variations of airborne particle concentrations while handling graphene in fume hoods (transferring and pouring). The measurement locations were at the laboratory, inside the hood and at operator's breathing zone. Handling tasks were performed under different operating conditions: the variable factors included hood face velocity and sash height. Results: Results of this study indicate that the handling of graphene nanoplatelets may pose a potential risk of contamination of the work environment and hence exposure of the involved operators, if adequate control measures are not taken. In fact, when inadequate or not sufficiently cautionary operational conditions were utilized, non-negligible increases in airborne graphene particle concentrations during the nanomaterial manipulation phases were observed. Conclusions: Some operating conditions (e.g., face velocity, sash height) can be adjusted to avoid relevant personal exposure conditions and contamination of the work environment by NMs, thus ensuring safer conditions.


Using an interpersonal conception of shame, this paper draws on research data and critiques of the medicalization of distress to explore how mental health services risk exacerbating the very emotional problems they are charged to address.

Prior research provides compelling evidence that shame is central to many of the psychological difficulties for which people seek help from mental health services. Although shame has sometimes been conceptualised as negative self-evaluation, other perspectives, and recent research data, suggest the value of understanding shame as a painful awareness of one's devaluation before potential or actual others. This underscores the importance of social contexts, and one's perceived position within them, for the development and repair of difficult-to-manage feelings of shame. However, those using mental health services have often described ways in which the services leave them feeling devalued. In our study of experiences of accessing mental health services, although at times participants talked positively about the support and validation they had received from staff, elsewhere they referred to shame-like experiences of feeling demeaned, disempowered, exposed or rejected. We argue that one key factor in such paradoxical 'care' is the dominance of diagnostic approaches. Although some service-users may find elements of psychiatric diagnosis helpful, it promotes practices such as disconnection from, objectification of and silencing of service-users, which are diametrically opposed to conditions necessary for repair of shame. Instead, collaborative and sensitive psychological formulation may offer service-users better opportunities to connect with others and contextualise and normalise their difficulties.


Over the past decade, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that across the UK cohabiting couples have more than doubled in number, making it the fastest growing family form. The context of cohabitation is becoming increasingly diverse; with socio-economic factors, religion and ethnic background all playing an important role in the decision of whether or not to marry. In comparison to their married counterparts, cohabiting couples have little financial protection when the relationship ends or upon the death of a partner. It is not that cohabitants do not have any legal rights; instead the law has not yet developed a comprehensive approach to cohabiting couples. In some contexts, they are treated as if they were married, in others they are accorded lesser rights, and in others they have no rights at all, or at least none that are specific to their status as cohabitants. As a result, cohabiting couples have to resort to piecemeal legislation and a legal framework which often produces undesirable outcomes. Instances of inequity and hardship are widespread, and the results have been described as confusing, complex, usually inferior and hardly ever automatic.
Proposals for reform have intensified in recent years, but as yet no action has been taken. This article does not presuppose what policy would be ideal for cohabitants, but instead examines the criticisms of the existing law and considers a possible way forward.


Mice lacking the Axl receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) and its family members exhibit detrimental effects on their reproductive ability. AXL is localized to Sertoli cells, which are the major nurturing cells in the seminiferous epithelium. A sequence homology search identified an uncharacterized protein, AXL-LIKE, which we hypothesize is an endogenous dominant-negative of AXL. The structure of AXL-LIKE is essentially identical to AXL in the extracellular domain, but the intracellular portion of AXL-LIKE lacks the tyrosine kinase domain. The purpose of this study was to determine the expression of Axl-like within early developing testes, as well as its interaction with AXL and the role of AXL-LIKE in AXL function.   Relative Axl and Axl-like mRNA transcript levels were highest in early postnatal testes, specifically at 7 days post partum (dpp), compared to 14dpp and 21dpp. Axl transcript levels on embryonic day 15 (e15) were significantly less than on 7dpp for Axl, but not Axl-like. Overexpression of AXL in COS-7 cells increased filopodial number, which was suppressed by co-expressing AXL-LIKE. Cells co-expressing AXL and AXL-LIKE were smaller and rounded compared to control or AXL only overexpressing cells. There was a redistribution of AXL localization, from cell membrane to vesicular bodies, when AXL-LIKE and AXL were co-expressed. Immunoprecipitation studies determined AXL and AXL-LIKE were not associated with one another; however introduction of AXL-LIKE reduced the amount of AXL present within cells as determined by western blot analysis. Overexpression of AXL increased cellular protein phosphorylation and this effect was eliminated when AXL-LIKE was co-expressed.  The mRNA transcript levels detected in the testes and embryonic tissue using real time-PCR appear to be correlated with the number of Sertoli cells. This suggests a role for AXL-LIKE within this cell type. This study is the first to show that expression of AXL-LIKE, an endogenous truncated isoform of Axl, inhibits the function of AXL in vitro. Though no direct interaction was observed between the two proteins, AXL-LIKE may affect a downstream signaling pathway of AXL or cause alterations in the recycling of AXL.


Tapered optical fibers offer easy access to the evanescent field of their guided modes which is ideal for sensing applications. We introduce a soft-landing technique utilizing a linear Paul trap to select and place a single microparticle on the surface of a tapered optical fiber. This approach allows on-demand functionalization of fragile nanophotonic components with arbitrary particles, e.g., for advanced nanosensors.


The AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition is a network of scientific membership organizations that recognize a role for science and scientists in efforts to realize human rights. The Coalition's Science Ethics and Human Rights Working Group is primarily dedicated to identifying, analyzing and reinforcing the links between international human rights law and the ethical principles guiding the conduct of scientific research, the practice of science and the use of science and technology. We pursue this aim by engaging professional scientific, engineering and health associations in an ongoing dialogue about the relationship of human rights to research ethics.


In first-year civil procedure, students spend a great deal of time parsing an "answer" to a deceptively simple question: When may a state exercise its adjudicatory authority over an out-of-state defendant? Since Pennoyer v. Neff, the United States Supreme Court has addressed the issue of personal jurisdiction in at least thirty-five cases spanning three centuries. Following the Court's decision in International Shoe Co. v. Washington, a state's exercise of personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant must satisfy two requirements. First, the state must have a statutory basis for asserting adjudicatory authority over a foreign defendant. Second, if the claims satisfy the statutory requirements for jurisdiction, the state must further determine whether the foreign defendant has established "minimum contacts" with the forum "such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend 'traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.'" Rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, this second inquiry places a limit on the state's adjudicatory authority in order to ensure the "fair and orderly administration of the laws."


In 1995 the streamlined British national curriculum defined outdoor education as "outdoor and adventurous activities" (OAA) and placed it within the physical education (PE) curriculum. However, many PE teachers lack a knowledge of outdoor education and, when faced with limitations in time, resources, facilities, and expertise, may choose alternative options in the national curriculum. This paper shows how PE staff in secondary schools can deliver an OAA program in an urban environment. A program is outlined for a typical secondary school campus in Bedford (England). The activities described could be undertaken in the classroom, gym, "hard area," campus and playing fields, city parks and outlying commons, and the nearby river. With regard to staffing, the PE department must decide whether to use existing staff expertise, train staff to the standard required, or hire an external specialist to cover safety and organizational aspects. The great advantages of an urban-based OAA program are accessibility combined with low costs and the imaginative use of everyday settings and equipment. Constructing programs around such an environment develops lateral thinking and imagination in both students and staff. Seasonal limitations are less of a problem than in wilderness areas, thus allowing for educational progression, continuity of teaching, and cross curricular links. (Contains 23 references.) (SV)


Early detection and localization damage allow increased expectation of reliability; safety and reduction of the maintenance cost. Modal tests including intact and simulated damage state was proposed to investigate steel beam health monitoring. It consists mainly of piezoelectric accelerometers, impact hammer, pulse analyzer with (modal analysis consultant software) and laptop for three cases. The first case is free-free vibration. The second case is boundary condition. The third case is boundary condition with static load. Artificial crack was cut in lower beam flange at mid span. Sensitivity of modal parameters to change of steel member condition was studied for natural frequency, mode shape and damping factor. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) using (ANSYS11) was conducted to study natural frequencies, mode shape and stresses. The steel beam is modeled by three dimensional structural solid element (solid 45). Finite Element results from (ANSYS11) are used to make comparisons between numerical solutions and experimental results in terms of natural frequencies and mode shapes. Improved FE to compute damping matrices is proposed and discussed. Results show that, modal frequencies, mode shapes and damping factor may be used to identify structural damage with saving time. Sensitivity of damping ratios is more sensitive than that of natural frequency.


The global financial crisis has accelerated the shift of economic power from the West to the East. The emerging markets have become the main engine of global economic growth and firms from emerging markets are playing an increasingly important role in global competition. This volume of "Advances in International Marketing" is focused on issues that have been largely ignored by the main stream literature in international marketing to emerging markets and by firms from emerging markets. The papers presented report a variety of studies examining: international marketing behaviour of firms from emerging markets; market environments and consumer behaviour in emerging markets; and, MNCs' international marketing in emerging markets. Collectively they offer significant insight into emerging markets and point to new directions for future research.


This thesis describes a method of collaborative ground vehicle navigation utilizing shared radar data to provide observations during periods of GPS degradation. Navigational errors that typically arise from degraded GPS signals can be reduced by providing relative observations between vehicles from an Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) radar tracking filter. Loosely coupled GPS/INS Extended Kalman Filters provide navigation solutions for each vehicle. When a vehicle experiences GPS outages, other vehicles provide external observations from the IMM tracking filter to correct the INS solution and bound error growth during the outage. The IMM tracking filter uses constant velocity, constant acceleration, and constant turn models in combination to generate a tracking solution. An evaluation of the performance of the proposed method is presented using both simulated and experimental data. The IMM tracking algorithm is implemented using range, range-rate, and azimuth data from a Delphi electronically scanning radar. Results show improved navigation performance when utilizing the relative observations during GPS outages. Specifically, the drift of the INS solution is bounded by the external measurements provided by the IMM tracking filter when GPS is unavailable. Results from both simulated and experimental data sets show that the system provides drastic improvements over standalone INS navigation, with up to a 94% decrease in error on position. These results demonstrate that the proposed combination of GPS/INS and Radar IMM algorithms constitute a feasible method of maintaing navigational accuracy during GPS outages.


Nqosa L Mahao argues that the concept of the constitutional state has its genesis in the evolution of constitutionalism in Europe. Its basic elements – the rule of law, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary – were born of a specific agenda of restraining the holders of political power and building a state based on liberal foundations that would play only a limited role in social affairs. During the 20th century this ideology was substantially reversed with the development of the notion of a broad social writ enabling the state to harmonise formal and substantive equality.

The author argues that this trend has been the principal casualty of globalisation. Globalisation has redefined the role of the state in the developing world, weakening its mission of providing public goods and mediating social justice. In this context, it is suggested, democracy is reduced to little more than a ritual in electoral proceduralism. To combat these trends the article advocates a number of reforms, including the constitutionalisation of elements of direct public participation in certain spheres of public life and reviewing the borrowed Westminster constitutional model that has become institutionalised in many countries, to ensure effective parliamentary oversight of the executive.


The 1990's witnessed a historically unprecedented number of personal bankruptcy filings. In response, congressional debate over bankruptcy law has recently led to several proposals aimed at making it more difficult to exempt wealth in bankruptcy. In this paper, I evaluate uniform exemption policy primarily within the context of the recent congressional proposal H.R. 975. I develop an incomplete markets model where secured and unsecured assets coexist and are treated differentially in a bankruptcy proceeding. I find that exemptions are associated positively with filing rates and the amount of equity held at the time of filing. Conversely, exemptions are strongly negatively associated with the availability of unsecured credit. The welfare consequences of exemptions, while small, are positive for high exemptions and negative for low ones. Steady state welfare is maximized under a full exemption, and is worth $28.24 annually to the average household. The results are robust, and show that increases in bankruptcy exemptions beyond current state averages are largely a matter of indifference, and do not merit the heated debate they have generated.


Growing evidence indicates an important link between gut microbiota, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. Alterations in exocrine pancreatic function are also widely present in patients with diabetes and obesity. To examine this interaction, C57BL/6J mice were fed either a chow diet, high-fat diet (HFD) or HFD plus oral vancomycin or metronidazole to modify the gut microbiome. HFD alone leads to a 40% increase in pancreas weight, decreased glucagon-like peptide-1 and peptide YY levels, and increased glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide in the plasma. Quantitative proteomics identified 138 host proteins in fecal samples of these mice, of which 32 were significantly changed by HFD. The most significant of these were the pancreatic enzymes. These changes in amylase and elastase were reversed by antibiotic treatment. These alterations could be reproduced by transferring gut microbiota from donor C57BL/6J mice to germ-free. By contrast, antibiotics had no effect on pancreatic size or exocrine function in C57BL/6J mice fed a chow diet. Further, one week vancomycin administration significantly increased amylase and elastase levels in obese prediabetic men. Thus, the alterations in gut microbiota in obesity can alter pancreatic growth, exocrine function and gut endocrine function, and may contribute to the alterations observed in patients with obesity and diabetes.


How do ideas become accepted by the scientific community? How and why do scientists choose among empirically equivalent theories? In this pathbreaking book translated from the Italian, Marcello Pera addresses these questions by exploring the politics, rhetoric, scientific practices, and metaphysical assumptions that entered into the famous Galvani-Volta controversy of the late eighteenth century. This lively debate erupted when two scientists, each examining the muscle contractions of a dissected frog in contact with metal, came up with opposing but experimentally valid explanations of the phenomenon. Luigi Galvani, a doctor and physiologist, believed that he had discovered animal electricity (electrical body fluid existing naturally in a state of disequilibrium), while the physicist Alessandro Volta attributed the contractions to ordinary physical electricity. Beginning with the electrical concepts understood by scientists in the 1790s, Pera traces the careers of Galvani and Volta and explains their laboratory procedures. He shows that their controversy derived from two basic, irreducible interpretations of the proper nature of a common domain: Galvani saw the frog phenomenon as the work of biological organs, Volta as that of a physical apparatus. The initial preference for Volta's theory, maintains Pera, depended not on clear-cut methodological rules, but on a dialectical dispute for which the renowned physicist was better equipped, partly because he shared the dominant metaphysical views of his time.


The complexity, variability and vastness of the northern Australian rangelands make it difficult to assess the risks associated with climate change. In this paper we present a methodology to help industry and primary producers assess risks associated with climate change and to assess the effectiveness of adaptation options in managing those risks. Our assessment involved three steps. Initially, the impacts and adaptation responses were documented in matrices by 'experts' (rangeland and climate scientists). Then, a modified risk management framework was used to develop risk management matrices that identified important impacts, areas of greatest vulnerability (combination of potential impact and adaptive capacity) and priority areas for action at the industry level. The process was easy to implement and useful for arranging and analysing large amounts of information (both complex and interacting). Lastly, regional extension officers (after minimal 'climate literacy' training) could build on existing knowledge provided here and implement the risk management process in workshops with rangeland land managers. Their participation is likely to identify relevant and robust adaptive responses that are most likely to be included in regional and property management decisions. The process developed here for the grazing industry could be modified and used in other industries and sectors.

By 2030, some areas of northern Australia will experience more droughts and lower summer rainfall. This poses a serious threat to the rangelands. Although the impacts and adaptive responses will vary between ecological and geographic systems, climate change is expected to have noticeable detrimental effects: reduced pasture growth and surface water availability; increased competition from woody vegetation; decreased production per head (beef and wool) and gross margin; and adverse impacts on biodiversity. Further research and development is needed to identify the most vulnerable regions, and to inform policy in time to facilitate transitional change and enable land managers to implement those changes.


This Article focuses on Members of Congress and their widespread practice of holding personal investments in companies that are directly and substantially affected by legislative action. Whether entirely accurate or not, congressional officials with investment portfolios chock full of corporate stocks and bonds contribute to a corrosive belief that lawmakers can – and sometimes do – place their personal financial interests ahead of the public they serve. Fiduciary principles provide a practical solution to this classic agency problem. The Article first explores the loyalty-based rules that guard against self-interested decision-making by directors of corporations and by government officials in the executive and judicial branches of the federal government. It then contrasts the strict anti-conflict restraints in state corporate law and federal conflicts-of-interest statutes with the very different set of ethical rules and norms that Congress traditionally has applied to the financial investments held by its own members and employees. It also confronts the parochial view that lawmakers' conflicts are best deterred through public disclosure of personal investments and the discipline of the electoral process. The Article concludes with a proposal for new limitations on the securities that lawmakers may hold during their congressional service. Specifically, and as a starting place, Congress should prohibit its members (and their staffs) from holding securities in companies substantially affected by the work of any congressional committee on which they hold membership. But Congress should also explore the adoption of even stricter anti-conflict restraints, such as a statute or rule that would, subject to some narrow exceptions, prohibit members and senior staff officials from owning any securities other than government securities or shares in diversified mutual funds.


Background Independently of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, cognitive ability may account for some of the excess risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) associated with lower education. We aimed to assess how late adolescence cognitive ability and midlife CVD risk factors are associated with the educational gradient in CHD in Norway. Methods In a cohort of 57 279 men born during 1949–1959, health survey information was linked to military conscription records of cognitive ability, to national educational data, to hospitalisation records from the Cardiovascular Disease in Norway (CVDNOR) project and to the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry. Results Age and period adjusted HR for incident CHD events was 3.62 (95% CI 2.50 to 5.24) for basic relative to tertiary education, and was attenuated after adjustment; to 2.86 (1.87 to 4.38) for cognitive ability, to 1.90 (1.30 to 2.78) for CVD risk factors, and to 1.84 (1.20 to 2.83) when adjusting for both. Age and period adjusted absolute rate difference was 51 (33 to 70) incident CHD events per 100 000 person years between basic and tertiary educated, and was attenuated after adjustment; to 42 (22 to 61) for cognitive ability, to 25 (7 to 42) for CVD risk factors, and to 24 (5 to 43) when adjusting for both. Conclusions Late adolescence cognitive ability attenuated the educational gradient in incident CHD events. CVD risk factors further attenuated the gradient, and to the same extent regardless of whether cognitive ability was included or not. Cognitive ability might be linked to the educational gradient through CVD risk factors.


Real-time ultrasound information taken on beef heifers prior to backgrounding is used to develop a logit model to aid heifer retention decisions. The value of ultrasound data is calculated as the difference in certainty equivalents between a decision rule incorporating ultrasound information and one using only visual cues. The value of ultrasound data is found to be around $10 per head but is influenced by heifer value and backgrounding costs.


We consider the problem of training a neural network to store a set of patterns with maximal noise robustness. A solution, in terms of optimal weights and state update rules, is derived by training each individual neuron to perform either kernel classification or interpolation with a minimum weight norm. By applying this method to feed-forward and recurrent networks, we derive optimal models, termed kernel memory networks, that include, as special cases, many of the hetero- and auto-associative memory models that have been proposed over the past years, such as modern Hopfield networks and Kanerva's sparse distributed memory. We modify Kanerva's model and demonstrate a simple way to design a kernel memory network that can store an exponential number of continuous-valued patterns with a finite basin of attraction. The framework of kernel memory networks offers a simple and intuitive way to understand the storage capacity of previous memory models, and allows for new biological interpretations in terms of dendritic non-linearities and synaptic cross-talk.


Bacteraemia was reported to be associated with false-positive 1→3-β-D-glucan (BG) assay results. We thus prospectively assessed the reactivity of the BG (Fungitell) in samples of 21 adults with bacteraemia: . BG was negative in all and is s therefore an unlikely cause of false positive BG in adults.


Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is one of the most intractable and fatal cancer. The decreased blood vessel density displayed by this tumor not only favors its resistance to chemotherapy but also participates in its aggressiveness due to the consequent high degree of hypoxia. It is indeed clear that hypoxia promotes selective pressure on malignant cells that must develop adaptive metabolic responses to reach their energetic and biosynthetic demands. Here, using a well-defined mouse model of pancreatic cancer, we report that hypoxic areas from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma are mainly composed of epithelial cells harboring epithelial-mesenchymal transition features and expressing glycolytic markers, two characteristics associated with tumor aggressiveness. We also show that hypoxia increases the "glycolytic" switch of pancreatic cancer cells from oxydative phosphorylation to lactate production and we demonstrate that increased lactate efflux from hypoxic cancer cells favors the growth of normoxic cancer cells. In addition, we show that glutamine metabolization by hypoxic pancreatic tumor cells is necessary for their survival. Metabolized glucose and glutamine converge toward a common pathway, termed hexosamine biosynthetic pathway, which allows O-linked N-acetylglucosamine modifications of proteins. Here, we report that hypoxia increases transcription of hexosamine biosynthetic pathway genes as well as levels of O-glycosylated proteins and that O-linked N-acetylglucosaminylation of proteins is a process required for hypoxic pancreatic cancer cell survival. Our results demonstrate that hypoxia-driven metabolic adaptive processes, such as high glycolytic rate and hexosamine biosynthetic pathway activation, favor hypoxic and normoxic cancer cell survival and correlate with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma aggressiveness.


Heterosis is the increase in vigor that is observed in progenies of matings of diverse individuals from different species, isolated populations, or selected strains within species or populations. Heterosis has been of immense economic value in agriculture and has important implications regarding the fitness and fecundity of individuals in natural populations. Genetic models based on complementation of deleterious alleles, especially in the context of linkage and epistasis, are consistent with many observed manifestations of heterosis. The search for the genes and alleles that underlie heterosis, as well as for broader allele-independent, genomewide mechanisms, has encompassed many species and systems. Common themes across these studies indicate that sequence diversity is necessary but not sufficient to produce heterotic phenotypes, and that the molecular pathways that produce heterosis involve chromatin modification, transcriptional control, translation and protein processing, and interactions between and within developmental and biochemical pathways. Taken together, there are many and diverse molecular mechanisms that translate DNA into phenotype, and it is the combination of all these mechanisms across many genes that produce heterosis in complex traits.


Measuring the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) for community development is critical, yet it remains elusive. This article presents findings from an exploratory study of public access computing (PAC) services in Colombia, South America, conducted by University of Washington researchers and local partners. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the study explores perceptions of the impact of ICT on people's lives from the perspective of users of libraries, telecenters, and cybercafes around the country. Understanding the broader dimension of PAC services, instead of focusing on only a single type of venue (i.e., only libraries, telecenters, or cybercafes), offers a more complete picture of both how people use PAC and the types of benefits they derive from PAC services. Four types of perceived benefits emerge in the study: increased information, stronger relationships, better learning opportunities, and easier transactions. In addition, some negative consequences are identified. Findings question the notion that PAC has a direct impact on development by offering access to jobs, agriculture, health, employment, or other development resources. Rather, we suggest that PAC can have an indirect contribution to development by offering users benefits, such as easier access to more information and communication resources, better social connections with friends and family, and increased opportunities for education and learning.


A new 10 meter diameter telescope is being constructed for deployment at the NSF South Pole research station. The telescope is designed for conducting large-area millimeter and sub-millimeter wave surveys of faint, low contrast emission, as required to map primary and secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. To achieve the required sensitivity and resolution, the telescope design employs an off-axis primary with a 10 meter diameter clear aperture. The full aperture and the associated optics will have a combined surface accuracy of better than 20 microns rms to allow precision operation in the submillimeter atmospheric windows. The telescope will be surrounded with a large reflecting ground screen to reduce sensitivity to thermal emission from the ground and local interference. The optics of the telescope will support a degree field of view at 2mm wavelength and will feed a new 1000-element micro-lithographed planar bolometric array with superconducting transition-edge sensors and frequency-multiplexed readouts. The first key project will be to conduct a survey over &dbigwig;4000 degrees for galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect. This survey should find many thousands of clusters with a mass selection criteria that is remarkably uniform with redshift. Armed with redshifts obtained from optical and infrared follow-up observations, it is expected that the survey will enable significant constraints to be placed on the equation of state of the dark energy.


This reader has been assembled to help teachers wishing to use computers in a learner centred way with children aged five to thirteen. The editors take a learner centred approach to education to involve an interest in the development of: problem-solving skills, creativity, effective cooperation, decision-making skills, independent learning strategies, a capacity for systematic enquiry and information handling ability.

Many of the papers are about the ways in which these target aims can be conceived, built into CAL packages and pursued in the classroom. Also included are a number of papers on the social context of computer use, in work and beyond. The editors' main concern is with the skills individuals need to gain so as to develop their full potential, but they feel that this can only be properly understood within the context of the groups and society to which the individual belongs. In particular, they encompass the question of whether computers are equally enabling (in terms of individual development) to all groups in society, or whether they merely accentuate patterns of disadvantage that already exist. They believe that the teacher needs not only to consider the classroom situation but should also see how the development of such skills and capacities is distributed within society, and how these capacities might be used or misused in adult life. This collection is designed to help with these tasks.


A universal and consistent stage classification system, which describes the anatomic extent of a cancer, provides a foundation for communication and collaboration. Thymic epithelial malignancies have seen little progress, in part because of the lack of an official system. The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer and the International Thymic Malignancies Interest Group assembled a large retrospective database, a multispecialty international committee and carried out extensive analysis to develop proposals for the 8th edition of the stage classification manuals. This tumor, node, metastasis (TNM)-based system is applicable to all types of thymic epithelial malignancies. This article summarizes the proposed definitions of the T, N, and M components and describes how these are combined into stage groups. This represents a major step forward for thymic malignancies.


The article presents the results of a survey on users' education services and information literacy classes offered by Italian academic libraries. The survey was conducted between June and July 2011 with a specific questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire were then combined with the analysis of the University libraries' websites, in order to obtain a clear "snapshot" of information literacy in Italian academic libraries, and to find out if these services are effectively communicated to library users. The research shows that only one university out of four explicitly mentions the students' training on its website - or on its library systems' website: although it's undoubtedly a developing field, there isn't yet a constant and widespread offer on the subject


Formalism has returned, displacing the flexible, functionalist separation-of-powers analysis that often characterized the Supreme Court's separation-of-powers decisions during the Rehnquist Court. Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board provides powerful evidence of this emerging trend. Moreover, a reliable majority of the Justices have strongly embraced formalism in other important separation-of-powers decisions as well. A new formalism now appears to govern the Court's contemporary separation-of-powers jurisprudence — with the defenders of more flexible, functional approaches to separation-of-powers questions relegated to writing dissents. The Roberts Court, however, has failed to elucidate fully the precise scope and meaning of its new formalist vision for separation-of-powers doctrine. Even so, if the Roberts Court's decisions mean what they appear to say, serious constitutional questions exist about the constitutional validity of cooperative federalism programs in which states have primary responsibility for the administration of important federal labor, environmental, and healthcare programs. Simply put, the new formalism renders such programs open to serious constitutional attack on separation-of-powers grounds because the president arguably lacks sufficient direct oversight and control of the state-government officers who administer and enforce federal law on a day-to-day basis. But the Supreme Court need not follow the logic of its more recent separation-of-powers decisions to this ultimate conclusion; plausible arguments exist to support the claim that cooperative-federalism programs do not violate separation-of-powers doctrine even under a demanding formalist analysis. Until the full implications of the Roberts Court's embrace of the new formalism are known, legal scholars, federal judges, and administrative-law practitioners should consider carefully whether cooperative-federalism programs can successfully be reconciled with the imperatives of the unitary executive and its requirement of direct presidential control and oversight of the administration of federal law.