Written in 1802, Beethoven's "Tempest" piano sonata is the iconic work of the "wirklich ganz neue Manier" the composer announced right after his traumatic seclusion in Heiligenstadt. Suffused with asymmetries and contradictions, the sonata's first movement has long attracted the attention of scholars concerned with the epistemic soundness of sonata form theories. Most conspicuously, the absence in the recapitulation of what seems to be on first hearing the main theme generates a formal paradox that challenges the theoretical models devised to analyze sonata forms. This article reinterprets that paradox through the prism of Friedrich Schlegel's theory of form, formulated in his critique of modern art and literature. In doing so, it recasts Beethoven's "Tempest" sonata and Schlegel's theory in the light of what I call the paradox of mediated immediacy. It further suggests a genealogical homology between the novel and sonata form to advance a historicized model of musical form that contemplates the material conditions accompanying the consolidation of print culture around 1800. Situated in this context, the "Tempest" sonata serves as a case study for exploring how Beethoven's reinvention of the piano sonata reconfigured the interface between form and medium, deploying self-referential strategies that both rendered apparent and resignified the mediations entailed by the compositional practices instituted with the classical style. As a result, Beethoven's piano sonatas came to operate as technologies of the self that became integral to the fashioning of romantic subjectivities. My reading emphasizes the aural experience induced by the form's asymmetries, and contends that the absence delivered at its structural crux complicates sonata form practices to afford an experience of immediacy that captures in the medium of piano music the paradoxical condition Schlegel reckoned immanent to the modern self.


Most evaluators have embraced the goal of evidence-based practice (EBP). Yet, many have criticized EBP review systems that prioritize randomized control trials and use various criteria to limit the studies examined. They suggest this could produce policy recommendations based on small, unrepresentative segments of the literature and recommend a more traditional, inclusive approach. This article reports two empirical studies assessing this criticism, focusing on the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). An examination of outcomes of 252 WWC reports on literacy interventions found that 6% or fewer of the available studies were selected for review. Half of all intervention reports were based on only one study of a program. Data from 131 studies of a reading curriculum were used to compare conclusions using WWC procedures and more inclusive procedures. Effect estimates from the inclusive approach were more precise and closer to those of other reviews. Implications are discussed.


The electro-optic and dielectric properties of organic–inorganic 2-amino-5-nitropyridium dihydrogen phosphate crystals were measured near room temperature at a wavelength of 632.8 nm and as a function of an electric-field frequency that varied from 1 kHz to 40 MHz. The frequency dispersion of the electro-optic coefficients and their comparison with the second-harmonic generation coefficients showed that the largest part of the electro-optic properties is electronic in origin (whereas the piezo-optic contribution is small). Results reveal a large anisotropy of the ionic and electronic contributions that is related to the contributions of the organic molecule to nonlinear polarizability.


ABSTRACT The early Miocene mollusc faunas from the Proto-Mediterranean Sea are still poorly-known. Herein, Aquitanian gastropod assemblages from the Felli section in NW Greece are described. Two assemblages were recovered, a low-diversity coastal mudflat assemblage dominated by Granulolabium plicatum (Bruguière, 1792) and Mesohalina margaritacea (Brocchi, 1814), and a high-diversity marine assemblage dominated by Bittium larrieyense (Vignal, 1911). The marine assemblage yielded 44 species, of which three species are described as new and 23 are left in open nomenclature. A new combination is proposed for Finella perpusilla (Grateloup, 1827). The family Pyramidellidae is exceptionally represented by 15 species. 17 new occurences are reported for the Proto-Mediterranean Sea. Alvania amphitrite n. sp., Homalopoma acaste n. sp. and Pyramistomia aliakmoni n. sp. are introduced as new species.


High speed wireless communication has proven elusive in subsea environments due to the inherent bandwidth limitations of acoustics and range limitations of other transmission modalities. A truly connected subsea system necessitates a high-speed, resilient architecture that can enable the integration of new sensor technologies and edge analytics and allow closed-loop monitoring and control of subsea operations for integrity monitoring and optimization. Like terrestrial Internet of Things applications, the realization of this "digital subsea" vision requires the application of high speed, point-to-point wireless technologies to complement rather than replace "hard-wired" communications such as optical fiber or acoustic systems. This work addresses the development of ULTRA (Underwater LASER Telemetry and Remote Access), an ultra-long range underwater laser communications system for use in critical points of the subsea communications architecture to increase reliability, operational flexibility, and reduce communication system maintenance associated with physical subsea connections.
 To demonstrate the data capacity and range of ULTRA, a subscale laboratory point-to-point wireless laser communication system was constructed with the flexibility to transmit through either air or water. The test system used power and modulation frequencies for air, fresh water, and different qualities of seawater. Optical and RF encoding methodologies were implemented to facilitate and characterize data transmission through the various media. The laboratory experiment used a subscale, filtered, and attenuated 5 mW blue-green laser in a 22-meter folded path configuration to demonstrate real-time data transmission at 312 Megabit per Second (Mbps) data rate using single channel Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation. A field prototype ULTRA system will use an unattenuated 5 mW laser that can reach approximately 280-meter range at 312 Mbps in clear conditions, which are typical of deepwater subsea. The selection of laser power and data rate are considered operational tradeoffs in environments where underwater vehicles operate. The extended range of ULTRA can enable various use cases to greatly augment subsea data communications capacity to enable the "Digital Subsea".


Background: All aerobically growing organisms suffer from exposure to oxidative stress, caused by partially reduced forms of molecular oxygen, known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). These are highly reactive and capable of damaging cellular constituents such as DNA, lipids and proteins. Consequently, cells from many different organisms have evolved mechanisms to protect their components against ROS. It is known to have some genes for resistance to heavy metals and ionizing radiation (IR). Materials and Methods: Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an ideal model organism for deducing biological processes in human cells. In this work, cell viability and gene expression was investigated in yeasts treated with IR, HgCl2, and IR combined with HgCl2. Cell viability was measured by colony forming unit (CFU) method in an YPD medium. Gene expression was analyzed by the Real-time PCR. Results: The viability was lower at the higher dose. At a dose above a certain level, the viability came down to zero. The combined treatment decreased the viability, as well. Metal resistance genes were expressed in the cells treated with HgCl2. In a similar way, irradiation also triggered the expression of some radiation resistance genes. YCF and YAP genes were induced consecutively with the HgCl2 concentration, and also with a higher total dose under a lower dose rate condition. These two genes were, however, expressed differently under the 0.2 mM HgCl2 treatment condition. In the cells treated with 0.1-0.2 mM HgCl2, the viability was higher than with any other concentrations. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that the higher dose induced more expression of oxidative stress resistance genes related to cell survival mechanism. Combined treatment of radiation with mercury chloride resulted in synergistic effects leading to a higher expression of the genes than treatment of a single stressor alone. Iran. J. Radiat. Res., 2009; 6 (4): 161166


Fluctuations of the stored energy and the emitted power of a semiconductor laser are derived by classical corpuscular optical theory. The fundamental noise sources are the shot noise associated with a field's conversion to emitting or absorbing atoms and the mirror loss noise. The latter is taken into account in the form of partition noise forces linked to laser facet reflection. The theory permits the description of the nonclassical states of light, and its results agree with quantum theory. For quiet pumping conditions and for a high-reflection coated Fabry–Perot laser, 50% of internal photon noise suppression is obtained, whereas nonfluctuating optical output is possible for negligible internal loss. The influence of gain suppression on amplitude squeezing is discussed. The effect of attenuation on the propagation of laser fluctuations is studied by use of the concept of optical partition noise. This leads to the invariance of a suitably defined relative intensity noise, which becomes negative for sub-Poissonian photon statistics. The setup for the intensity noise measurement with the balanced detection technique is analyzed by use of optical partition noise.


Abstract. The interactions between turbulence and cloud microphysical processes have been investigated primarily through numerical simulation and field measurements over the last 10 years. However, only in the laboratory we can be confident in our knowledge of initial and boundary conditions and are able to measure under statistically stationary and repeatable conditions. In the scope of this paper, we present a unique turbulent moist-air wind tunnel, called the Turbulent Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator (LACIS-T) which has been developed at TROPOS in order to study cloud physical processes in general and interactions between turbulence and cloud microphysical processes in particular. The investigations take place under well-defined and reproducible turbulent and thermodynamic conditions covering the temperature range of warm, mixed-phase and cold clouds (25∘C>T>-40∘C). The continuous-flow design of the facility allows for the investigation of processes occurring on small temporal (up to a few seconds) and spatial scales (micrometer to meter scale) and with a Lagrangian perspective. The here-presented experimental studies using LACIS-T are accompanied and complemented by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations which help us to design experiments as well as to interpret experimental results. In this paper, we will present the fundamental operating principle of LACIS-T, the numerical model, and results concerning the thermodynamic and flow conditions prevailing inside the wind tunnel, combining both characterization measurements and numerical simulations. Finally, the first results are depicted from deliquescence and hygroscopic growth as well as droplet activation and growth experiments. We observe clear indications of the effect of turbulence on the investigated microphysical processes.


Next generation wireless communication applications require reliable transmission of data at high data rates and a guarantee of quality-of-service over wireless links. However, degradations inherent in wireless channels, such as multipath fading, shadowing, path loss, and noise lead to reduction in the communication capacity and range significantly. One way to combat these adverse limitations is to employ spatial diversity, which can be achieved, for example, by transmitting independent copies of the signal over relay nodes, resulting in improvements in the transmission rates, reliability, and the capacity of the channel under pre-mentioned detrimental effects. In addition to exploiting diversity, the capacity of the channel can be further increased by employing an error correction code such as low-density parity check (LDPC) codes and turbo codes, etc. Throughout this thesis, we consider LDPC coded full-duplex multi-relay channels using Estimate and Forward (EF) and Decode and Forward (DF) protocol. We focus on designing optimal and sub-optimal iterative soft detectors. Although the use of multirelaying improves the channel reliability, the performance of the system is degraded because of the interference caused by multiple received signals coming from all relay nodes. To reduce the effect of the interference, maximum a posteriori (MAP) detector can be employed. Unfortunately, the complexity of the MAP detector grows exponentially as the number of relays increases. In the literature, two computationally efficient sub-optimal detectors have been proposed based on Taylor expansion or Central Limit Theorem (CLT) assumption to alleviate this problem. However, we find out that the correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic information stemming from these suboptimal detectors is very high, and this correlation degrades the detector performance. To remedy that, in this thesis, we developed two new detectors: Soft Decorrelating Detection-Taylor (SODED-Taylor) and Soft Decorrelating Detection-CLT (SODEDCLT), which improves the performance of sub-optimal detectors about 0.8 dB - 1 dB.


In 1950, China's new Communist government created hereditary family class labels intended to promote the advancement of households supportive of the Communist movement along with the economically disadvantaged and to penalize property owners and those associated with the old regime. Researchers have long suspected that the labels rewarded connections to the Communist movement more than the economically disadvantaged, while former middle- and upper-class households continued to enjoy certain advantages. The long-term impact of these labels has yet to be firmly established. The authors examine the factors affecting the initial assignment of class labels and their subsequent consequences for Communist Party membership and educational and occupational attainment. Using data from a 1996 national probability sample survey of China, the authors find that the class labels had a major impact on the life chances of individuals that persisted at least into the mid-1990s, although not always in the ways that were intended.


Traditionally, conventional rubble mound breakwaters are designed with stable armour units, and consequently, very large stones or even artificial armour units are required. Reshaping breakwater designs allow reshaping of the seward slope thus involving stone movements. Ultimately, dependent on the degree of safety in the design, this reshaping process might end up in a stable profile where no changes in the cross sections occur even though stone movements are allowed. Unfortunately, large movements of the protecting stones during the structural lifetime in combination with high stone velocities inherently cause some breakage and abrasion of the individual stones and thereby also reduced stability. In order to avoid excessive abrasion a high stone quality is demanded or larger stones must be applied when constructed. To allow the designer to account for abrasion and armour stone breakage due to the stone motion a description of the overall wave climate during the structural lifetime must be derived involving knowledge of transport rates, movement patterns, stone velocities and stone quality. The main objective of the paper is to describe a tool enabling calculation of the anticipated armour stone movements. Also tensile stresses occur, as a result of stone against stone impact are discussed in order to make a more close connection between wave climate, stone movements and abrasion/breakage. Finally, a comparison to selected prototype structures is made to compare the armour stone movement model with visual profile observations of existing breakwaters.


IZA DP No. 14580 JULY 2021 Intergenerational Educational Mobility – The Role of Non-cognitive Skills* While it has been shown that university attendance is strongly predicted by parental education, we know very little about why some potential 'first in family' or first-generation students make it to university and others do not. This paper looks at the role of noncognitive skills in the university participation of this disadvantaged group in England. We find that conditional on national, high-stakes exam scores and various measures of socioeconomic background, having higher levels of non-cognitive skills, specifically locus of control, academic self-concept, work ethic, and self-esteem, in adolescence is positively related to intergenerational educational mobility to university. Our results indicate that having higher non-cognitive skills helps potential first in family university students to compensate for their relative disadvantage, and they are especially crucial for boys. The most important channel of this relationship seems to be through educational attainment at the end of compulsory schooling. JEL Classification: I24, J24


The occupational field of teaching is under attack as it faces high turnover rates– ultimately resulting in a weakening of the educational system. The present study is rooted in Fredrickson"s Broaden and Build theory and aimed to examine the relationship between occupational stress, psychological capital, happiness and turnover intentions among teachers. Studies have found that positive emotions (psychological capital or happiness) can alleviate turnover intentions among teachers. A quantitative research design was used to collect data. The study took the form of a cross sectional survey design with a random sample (N-140) of teachers from 7 different schools in the Durban, Kwazulu Natal region. The data was collected with the use of five questionnaires. These included a biographical questionnaire, Teacher Stress Inventory, Psychological Capital Questionnaire, Orientation to Happiness Scale and the Turnover Intention Scale. Data analysis included descriptive and inferential statistics which was conducted on the statistical program SPSS 18. The results were as follows: firstly, the teachers in this study reported general work stress (poor organisational management, role ambiguity and job satisfaction) and task stress to be the principle stressors in their occupational field. Secondly, the teachers in the present study reported experiencing positive emotions such as pleasure, meaning and engagement. Third, practically and statistically significant relationships were found between work related stress and task stress, PsyCap and pleasure and meaning, PsyCap and engagement, PsyCap and turnover intentions and between pleasure and meaning and engagement. From the above relationships, it can be seen that PsyCap promotes positive experiences in stressful occupational environments. Hence, the lack of PsyCap has the potential to exacerbate the experience of turnover intentions amongst teachers. Lastly, the results confirmed that psychological capital is a predictor of pleasure and meaning amongst teachers despite their stressful occupational field. Thus, the results showed that positive emotions and psychological capital may have the potential to alleviate turnover intentions amongst teachers. The present study is limited in the following ways: First, is the poor response rate (65%), thus reducing the sample size to 91. Second, this study used a cross-sectional research design as opposed to a longitudinal research design. Therefore, the results of this study cannot determine causality between the variables. Lastly, the data came from self-reported questionnaires, this can affect the reliability and validity of the data. As the participants may have answered the questions to reflect more socially acceptable responses. Although this study has limitations it acts as a starting point for research on the positive psychological perspective on the constructs occupational stress, PsyCap, happiness and turnover intentions. Specifically, future studies should focus on examining and developing hope optimism and self-efficacy amongst teachers as the present study found that the above three constructs of PsyCap contributed to positive emotions such as engagement amongst teachers. An improved understanding of the above constructs is a step toward alleviating turnover intentions amongst teachers and possibly other occupational fields.


This paper presents a distributed knowledge representation and data fusion system designed for highly integrated Ambient Intelligence applications. The architecture, based on the idea of an ecosystem of interacting artificial entities, is a framework for collaborating agents to perform an intelligent multi-sensor data fusion. In particular, we focus on the cognitive layers leading the overall data acquisition process. The approach has been thoroughly tested in simulation, and part of it has been already exploited in successful applications.


This essay aims to demonstrate that the philosophical anthropology of Michael Landmann provides important critical tools and resources for intervening in the debate over the posthuman and the turning point that humanity faces due to the advancing powers of technologies such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. Landmann's view of the human being, which emphasizes the correlative conditions of creativity and culturality, freedom and determinacy, and malleability and fixity, pro vides the grounds on which to critique the current structure of the debate over the posthuman and resituate it in terms of our historicity and self-images. The rhetorically charged trope of the posthuman, with its emphasis on a break or turning point, risks cutting us off from significant resources for understanding human nature, including the resources of philosophical anthropology, and does not advance our understanding of our current situation and the current dilemmas human beings face in light of our advancing technological powers.


The healthcare system in the United States presents inequalities amongst its citizens.  High costs make it impossible for some individuals to ever experience the benefits of state-of-the-art medical facilities and advanced technology. Rising costs of medical services in the U.S., long waiting lists, and insufficient technology in other countries have created an industry of medical tourism.  Individuals choose to leave their resident country to have procedures done such as cardiac surgery, cosmetic surgery, and hip replacement because they are more economically feasible elsewhere.  In efforts to improve the inequalities in the U.S. healthcare system, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed and will be fully implemented by 2014.  If it solves some of the unequal treatment and provides more individuals with access to healthcare, the medical tourism industry may decrease significantly.


In the last decade, a number of scholars have called the American criminal justice system a new form of Jim Crow. These writers have effectively drawn attention to the injustices created by a facially race-neutral system that severely ostracizes offenders and stigmatizes young, poor black men as criminals. This Article argues that despite these important contributions, the Jim Crow analogy leads to a distorted view of mass incarceration. The analogy presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration's historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes while focusing almost exclusively on drug crimes, obscures class distinctions within the African American community, and overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups. Finally, the Jim Crow analogy diminishes our collective memory of the Old Jim Crow's particular harms.


Long before "The Decision," four MVP awards, and back-to-back NBA championships with the Miami Heat, LeBron James opened the 2003--04 season as an untested rookie with the Cleveland Cavaliers. In Tales from the Cleveland Cavaliers Locker Room: The Rookie Season of LeBron James, first published in 2004, readers will find anecdotes about this extraordinary rookie who grew up a stone's throw away in Akron. Fans will read about the rest of the Cavaliers, from celebrations on the day lottery luck shone upon the team and the anticipation of LeBron's debut to disappointments like the season-opening five-game losing streak and 6-19 start; from the excitement of a young team maturing under the guidance of head coach Paul Silas to the shrewd moves of general manager Jim Paxson. There were also the moments bordering on the absurd, like the near-riot on LeBron James Bobblehead Night. And there was the heartbreaking late-season injury to a key player that likely cost the Cavs a playoff berth. Through the eyes and ears of the media, coaches, players, fans, and more, this book is a must-read for any Cavs or NBA fan. It is a whimsical reflection on the rebirth of a forlorn franchise that was quite possibly a ping-pong ball away from relocating to another state. It is a look back at how a team led by a teenage kid with remarkable skills, awesome strength, and incredible poise went from being the laughingstock of the NBA to becoming a true playoff contender. In 2014, LeBron James decided to come home. Tales from the Cleveland Cavaliers Locker Room will make Cavs fans feel as if he never left. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports--books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


The existing international relations literature is characterized by two perspectives on dispute settlement. One perspective views dispute settlement as an enforcement instrument in settings characterized by incentives to violate international law, domestic interest group pressure, and power politics. The other perspective views dispute settlement as a complexity reducing and rule clarification device in settings where international contracts are incomplete. We derive two empirical implications from these perspectives for dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to illuminate the driving forces of dispute escalation and conflict resolution. We test these implications on WTO disputes from 1995 to 2006. To that end we use a novel testing strategy that combines a three step coding of dispute escalation with a strategic bargaining model and statistical backwards induction to account for forward looking behavior of governments. The main implication of our results is that the second perspective, which views dispute settlement primarily as a complexity reducing and rule clarification device, is probably too optimistic, and that the WTO's ability to settle disputes is significantly circumscribed by domestic economic interests.


In this close reading of the first page of Adorno9s "Schubert," one aim is to highlight the sheer intensity of Adorno9s literary ambition, generating a visual poetics that contributes to the text9s striking, and daunting, narrative complexity. With reference to the French poet Louis Aragon, Adorno situates Schubert within a distinctly surrealist landscape--a strategic move that is rhetorically as provocative as it is hermeneutically and methodologically risky. I briefly follow up some of this modernist imagery in Schubert9s Winterreise, envisioned here as a nondevelopmental, glacial compositional canvas across which the wanderer wanders with a single idea in mind, forever repeated in subtle variations, affecting atmosphere ( Stimmung ) but not essence: in Winterreise, as Adorno9s text suggests, the mind is lost in its own idea, accommodating the pre-human or post-human experience: life-in-death in the midst of an apocalyptic landscape. A second aim of this paper is to respond to Adorno9s stylistic provocation: do we need poetry in music criticism, or indeed criticism as poetry? Do we need allegories of death and Utopian landscapes to talk about music? As will be argued, "Schubert" is a text whose author does not deny that his subject matter--Schubert--is, in fact, wholly fictional. Moreover, as Adorno goes on to describe Winterreise as a journey in search of an inner, and de-centered, self, and as we see this journey slowly unfold before our eyes, it becomes more than usually apparent that Adorno9s true subject matter is the admission and expression of emotion. With great poetic acumen, his pen traces like a seismograph the rhythmic pulsations and shockwaves traversing Schubert9s landscape. Adorno9s essay begins with a fully imagined and powerfully articulated landscape, and as he goes on to render "Schubert9s landscape" visible, his text takes on a geography that informs us about the structure of the very selves it describes: first Schubert9s; then Adorno9s; and finally, possibly, our own.


Abstract While there is considerable evidence that the factors involved in hoarding typically begin to manifest early in life (mostly in adolescence), the majority of those sampled in research studies are in their later years. As so much of our understanding of the psychological factors involved in hoarding is derived from those who are older and more chronically affected, the core hoarding psychopathology may have been masked, overlaid or even disregarded in previous research and in our approaches to clinical intervention. That is, factors relating primarily to chronicity of the problem and feelings of demoralization, hopelessness, loss and the extent of the damage caused to the person's life may swamp the processes which led to and maintain the problem. The present review examines the extent to which this is so and considers theoretical and clinical implications. The literature relevant to hoarding in later life was reviewed evaluatively in relation to a number of questions placing hoarding in a lifespan developmental context. Many studies relied on purely descriptive methodologies, meaning that typical case presentations and case histories are well documented, with less attention paid to underlying causal and maintaining mechanisms. Efforts to identify and control for factors relating to age or problem chronicity were minimal. A key future direction is the identification of younger samples of people who hoard in order to identify more clearly the processes which drive acquisition and retention of excessive amounts of material.


This paper examines the well-known literal translation hypothesis and discusses its significance for translation theory. The hypothesis claims that as translators process a given text chunk, they tend to start from a literal version of the target text, and then work towards a freer version. The idea has been implied or explicitly studied by many scholars, and does not seem to have a single source. After some preliminary conceptual analysis an optimal formulation of the hypothesis is proposed. The paper then assesses the hypothesis in terms of the kinds of wider significance any hypothesis can have. The criteria discussed are testability, relations with other hypotheses, applicability, surprise value and explanatory power. Some of Englund Dimitrova's research (2005) on the hypothesis is discussed. A rather different study by Nordman (2009) is argued to have implications for the broader contextualization of the hypothesis.


ABSTRACT Safe water is widely recognized as both a fundamental human need and a key input into economic activity. Across the developing world, the typical approach to addressing these needs is to segregate supplies of water for domestic use from water for large-scale agricultural production. In that arrangement, the goal of domestic water supply is to provide small amounts of clean safe water for direct consumption, cleaning, bathing and sanitation, while the goal of agricultural water supply is to provide large amounts of lower quality water for irrigated agriculture. A new third use of water is now being given more attention by researchers: small amounts of water employed in selected household enterprises. This third use may be particularly important for women. There is a potential, therefore, that provision of modest amounts of water to smallholder farmers can enhance household economic production, save labor time for women and girls, and improve family health. This paper adds to the emerging literature on the multiple values of improved water supplies – improved health, time savings, and small-scale production for individual farmers and collectives – for the case of a rural community in the western highlands of Kenya. With minimum external support, two groups in this community have managed to install and operate systems of spring protection and piped water to their members' homesteads. Members of those households, particularly women, have benefited substantially in terms of time savings, health and small-scale production. The experience of this community also illustrates some of the challenges that must be faced for a community to effectively self-organize the investment and maintenance of a community-based water scheme. There are challenges of finance, gender relations, and conflict over scarce water supplies, group leadership, enforcement of community bi-laws, and policy. Data from a census of springs in the same area show that successful collective action for water management is unusual, but certainly not unique, in this region of Kenya. Although women emerge as the main beneficiaries of improved water management in the community, their substantial contributions are largely hidden behind social norms regarding gender roles and relations. Research methods need to carefully triangulate information sources in order to clarify the very substantial and active roles performed by women. Kenya's water policy should be modified to better recognize and facilitate small-scale community-based water projects. Keywords: gender, Kenya, water, collective action, community organization, community-based organizations, women


In 1961, President John F. Kennedy and his special assistant for national security affairs, McGeorge Bundy, began a fundamental transformation of the National Security Council (NSC) system and the role of the special assistant. A decade later, amid the turmoil of the Nixon-Kissinger White House operation, former secretary of state Dean Acheson (1971, 603) reflected on the change: The new organization, with staffs of size and competence, has now survived a decade of political life and constant criticism. At its head Messrs. McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow and Henry Kissinger, all men of outstanding ability, have served successively to the announced satisfaction of their presidential chiefs. What emotions they stirred in the breasts of their colleagues at the State Department we must wait on future to learn. Meanwhile, we can imagine that there has been strain. (1) Under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, the position had been largely administrative, and special assistants rarely, if ever, participated in shaping the foreign policy of the administration. Under Kennedy, who wanted to act as his own secretary of state and concentrate foreign policy formulation in the White House, McGeorge Bundy fundamentally transformed the post by augmenting to a tremendous extent its power and prerogatives. (2) Although this crucial development has not gone unnoticed by scholars of the period, the change, and its impact on American foreign policy, have yet to be explored in any great detail. (3) Whereas Kennedy's predecessors saw their special assistants as facilitators of national security policy, Kennedy wanted a contributor; whereas Truman and Eisenhower wanted their assistants to be subordinate to the Cabinet, Kennedy wanted his to be equal. Indeed, with his own staff of experts who became policy makers in their own right, and with inclusion in the administration's highest decision-making councils, Bundy performed more like a Cabinet official than a presidential aide, in effect becoming the first "national security adviser" and the progenitor of a straight and narrow line that would come to include Walt W. Rostow, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane. The changes that had occurred at the advent of the Kennedy presidency were accentuated during the next, that of Lyndon B.Johnson. LBJ relied on Bundy to formulate and coordinate foreign policy to an even greater extent than Kennedy had. This was due in large part to the informality and personalization of decision making under Johnson. Paradoxically, as Bundy's authority increased, the scope of his staff's power decreased. Fewer people actually conducted American foreign policy after November 1963, and those who did were concentrated at the highest levels. By 1965, when major foreign policy decisions were made-especially on the perennial crisis in Vietnam-there were very few internal obstacles that blocked the path Bundy advised the President to take. The Evolution of the NSC System, 1947-60 The special assistant for national security affairs had its origins under President Harry S. Truman. In July 1947, at the dawn of the cold war and at the behest of the Truman administration, Congress passed the National Security Act. The act established the NSC as a Cabinetlevel advisory body for the president; the position of executive secretary was created to serve as its administrative head; and Cabinet members constituted the membership of the NSC. The broad scope of the provisions of the act also included the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). (4) The purpose of the legislation was "to provide for the establishment of integrated policies and procedures for the departments, agencies, and functions of the Government relating to the national security," (5) and, as a top-level body that integrated various federal departments and agencies, it was the NSC's duty, when convened, to advise the president on matters of national security. …


Beginning with the early-2016 match between DeepMind's AlphaGo and world champion 9-dan Go player Lee Sedol, this thesis project seeks to expand upon the poetics of interactions with nonhuman intelligences by tracing a path through philosophical, theoretical, and scientific literature. The work of philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers and their theory of an extended mind is used to frame a mind that can recruit external things in the physical world to become part of its own cognitive processes. As this, in principle, includes other minds, the work of postmodern literary critic N. Katherine Hayles is used to expand this world of intelligence beyond conscious beings. And finally, scientific and anecdotal evidence is used to discuss how particular bodies and environments give rise to radically different subjective inner experiences. Several "material approximations" of these concepts, in the form of computer vision, plants, and slime molds, are studied in order to begin framing design activities. The complex and often indeterminate behavior of thinking things challenges the ability to create discrete and logical interactions and is reconsidered through multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway's and philosopher and video game designer Ian Bogost's work on playfulness as a human and cross-species capability. This is demonstrated through a series of design charrettes and a discussion on future work that hints at a vision of minds and intelligence informed by looking around, rather than ahead.


The first workshop of the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment (EFIEA) took place in Amsterdam on 12-14 March 1998. Integrated Environmental Assessment is loosely defined as policy-relevant, multi-disciplinary research into complex environmental issues. The workshop provided an opportunity for EFIEA members to get acquainted with one another and one another's work, and to discuss the goals and challenges in the field of Integrated Environmental Assessment for the next five years. The meeting was hosted by the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Over 45 members of the EFIEA participated in the workshop and all contributed to the discussions and planning activities. Participants included researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as policy makers, DG's and EEA representatives. These various contributions provided the basis of the workshop report. The keynote speeches of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the journal Environmental Modelling and Assessment (EMA).


We build a cartesian closed category, called Cho, based on event structures. It allows an interpretation of higher-order stateful concurrent programs that is refined and precise: on the one hand it is conservative with respect to standard Hyland-Ong games when interpreting purely functional programs as innocent strategies, while on the other hand it is much more expressive. The interpretation of programs constructs compositionally a representation of their execution that exhibits causal dependencies and remembers the points of non-deterministic branching.The construction is in two stages. First, we build a compact closed category Tcg. It is a variant of Rideau and Winskel's category CG, with the difference that games and strategies in Tcg are equipped with symmetry to express that certain events are essentially the same. This is analogous to the underlying category of AJM games enriching simple games with an equivalence relations on plays. Building on this category, we construct the cartesian closed category Cho as having as objects the standard arenas of Hyland-Ong games, with strategies, represented by certain events structures, playing on games with symmetry obtained as expanded forms of these this http URL illustrate and give an operational light on these constructions, we interpret (a close variant of) Idealized Parallel Algol in Cho.


Bats are yet to be incorporated in management plans in Nigeria. This is attributed to dearth in information as well as social stigma. This study was designed to determine bat species diversity, abundance and the relation of both indices to habitat structure. The survey was carried out in Omo forest reserve between May and June. Mist nets were deployed using stratified sampling method to place nets at 20 points. Netted points were set to be at least 200m apart. Total length of net averaged at 60 m, height ranged between 2-4m and set up after sunset from 1800-2300 hrs and before sunrise from 0400-0630 hrs. Sixty-four individuals were trapped belonging to 14 species in 8 genera and 6 families. Two other species were observed but not captured Eidolon helvum (Straw coloured fruit Bat) and Hypsignathus monstrosus (Hammer headed Fruit bat). Identification was based on Mammals of Nigeria and Mammals of Africa. Bat species diversity and bat abundance were higher in the forest compared to plantation but not significantly different. Bat species diversity decreased significantly as density of trees and litter cover increased while bat abundance decreased with increase in tree density but the relationship was not significant. Difference in diversity and abundance of bats is attributed to relative short distance between farmland and forest habitat types which provides easy access to bats for foraging. Habitat type and land usage influences the level of diversity and abundance of wildlife species for which bats are good indicators of habitat suitability.


This article is an attempt to represent Big Data research in digital humanities as a structured research field. A division in three concentric areas of study is presented. Challenges in the first circle – focusing on the processing and interpretations of large cultural datasets – can be organized linearly following the data processing pipeline. Challenges in the second circle – concerning digital culture at large – can be structured around the different relations linking massive datasets, large communities, collective discourses, global actors, and the software medium. Challenges in the third circle – dealing with the experience of big data – can be described within a continuous space of possible interfaces organized around three poles: immersion, abstraction, and language. By identifying research challenges in all these domains, the article illustrates how this initial cartography could be helpful to organize the exploration of the various dimensions of Big Data Digital Humanities research.


Learn the basics of 3D modeling for the popular Farming Simulator game Do you want to get started with creating your own vehicles, maps, landscapes, and tools that you can use in the game and share with the Farming Simulator community? Then this is the resource for you! With the help of Jason van Gumster, you'll get up and running on everything you need to master 3D modeling and simulationand have fun while doing it! Inside, you'll find out how to create and edit maps, start using the material panel, customize your mods by adding texture, use the correct file-naming conventions, test your mod in single and multiplayer modes, get a grip on using Vehicle XML, and so much more. There's no denying that Farming Simulator players love moddingand now there's a trusted, friendly resource to help you take your modding skills to the next level and get even more out of your game. Written in plain English and packed with tons of step-by-step explanations, Farming Simulator Modding For Dummies is a great way to learn the ropes of 3D modeling with the tools available to you in the game. In no time, you'll be wowing your fellow gamestersand yourselfwith custom, kick-butt mods. So what are you waiting for? Includes an easy-to-follow introduction to using the GIANTS 3D modeling tools Explains how to export models to Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, or FBX Provides tips for using the correct image format for textures Details how to use Photoshop and Audacity to create custom mods for Farming Simulator Whether you're one of the legions of rabid fans of the popular Farming Simulator game or just someone who wants to learn the basics of 3D modeling and animation, you'll find everything you need in this handy guide.


Despite being an industry full of bright and qualified people, the shipbuilding industry is often slower to adopt and develop new technologies compared to other sectors such as the plant, aerospace and automotive industries. This paper will explore the trends in the relative adoption of a number of technologies including laser scanning, digital prototyping and shop floor 3D. It will examine a number of contributing factors to the overall slower rate of adoption in shipbuilding and discuss potential strategies and technological developments that could mitigate these factors.


Fullerene derivatives superfamily attracts a serious attention of pharmacologists since some of these variable agents were proven to be not only drug delivery carriers but anti - cancer and immunomodulators as well. Most specifically, photodynamic therapy of malignant tumors is known for the fullerenes engagement. However, there is an obvious deficit of information on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the fullerenes pharmacological effects which is a true obstacle on the way leading to practical medicinal use of the latters. Particularly, the mode of both direct (immediate) and distant side effects origin along with a fullerenes impact on necrosis, apoptosis and cell proliferation processes are no doubt needed to get far more clearified. It is hardly possible to exaggerate a significance of the fullerene nanoparticles functionalization type, their sizes and surface nanotopology for further promoting of either cytoprotective or cytotoxic effects. Noteworthy, the antioxidant properties of some water soluble fullerene derivatives were revealed while the fullerenes induced ROS formation might be also occurred. One of the most intriguing peculiarity of the fullerenes as pharmacophores consists in capabilities of some of them to intervene into the structure domains of functional proteins including enzymes and organelles linked receptors as well as to play a role of intercalators interacting with DNA double helix which, in turn, leads to a number of crucial consequences such as the biopolymer conformational flexibility shifts, catalytic activity changes, ligand docking affinity impacts in cell signaling pathways. Last not least, the fullerens are about to compete with several natural metabolites and effectots which is itself a valid platform for pharmacological outreach. This Review deals with an Authors's original attempt to analyse the above mentioned points with an aim to elucidate those properties, methodological and structural, of numerous fullerene adducts that determine their apoptosis- and cell proliferation – modulating effects with a special respect to a target cell / tumor type.


In general, the hidden Markov random field (HMRF) represents the class label distribution of an image in probabilistic model based segmentation. The class label distributions provided by existing HMRF models consider either the number of neighboring pixels with similar class labels or the spatial distance of neighboring pixels with dissimilar class labels. Also, this spatial information is only considered for estimation of class labels of the image pixels, while its contribution in parameter estimation is completely ignored. This, in turn, deteriorates the parameter estimation, resulting in sub-optimal segmentation performance. Moreover, the existing models assign equal weightage to the spatial information for class label estimation of all pixels throughout the image, which, create significant misclassification for the pixels in boundary region of image classes. In this regard, the paper develops a new clique potential function and a new class label distribution, incorporating the information of image class parameters. Unlike existing HMRF model based segmentation techniques, the proposed framework introduces a new scaling parameter that adaptively measures the contribution of spatial information for class label estimation of image pixels. The importance of the proposed framework is depicted by modifying the HMRF based segmentation methods. The advantage of proposed class label distribution is also demonstrated irrespective of the underlying intensity distributions. The comparative performance of the proposed and existing class label distributions in HMRF model is demonstrated both qualitatively and quantitatively for brain MR image segmentation, HEp-2 cell delineation, natural image and object segmentation.


We investigate the role of learned shape-prototypes in an influential family of hierarchical neural-network models of vision. Central to these networks' design is a dictionary of learned shapes, which are meant to respond to discriminative visual patterns in the input. While higher-level features based on such learned prototypes have been cited as key for viewpoint-invariant object-recognition in these models [1], [2], we show that high performance on invariant object-recognition tasks can be obtained by using a simple set of unlearned, "shape-free" features. This behavior is robust to the size of the network. These results call into question the roles of learning and shape-specificity in the success of such models on difficult vision tasks, and suggest that randomly constructed prototypes may provide a useful "universal" dictionary.


Aerosol complex refractive index (ACRI) has attracted intensive attentions due to its significance in modeling aerosol radiative effects. Determinations of ACRI from surface measurements of aerosol scattering and absorption coefficients as well as number size distributions during June, 2008 based on an iterative Mie algorithm were performed. The aim of our study was to introduce an inversion approach with the merits of high time-resolutions to retrieve the optically effective ACRI, especially its imaginary part. Based on simultaneous measurements of aerosol characteristics, mean ACRI value of 1.50 ( ± 0.34)-i0.025 ( ± 0.015) at 550 nm in Hefei in summer was deducted. The lower imaginary parts with higher single scattering albedos and lower scattering Angstrom exponents were obtained for haze periods compared with nonhaze conditions with similar air-mass back-trajectories, indicating more large and scattering particles contributing to the formation of haze episodes. The derived imaginary parts of ACRI related to agricultural biomass burning were in the range from 0.013 to 0.029 at 550 nm. Significant negative correlations between retrieved imaginary parts of ACRI and measured single scattering albedos indicate that our retrieval approach is a reasonable method for determining the imaginary parts of complex refractive indices of aerosol particles.


Recent theories of the dynamics of the Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) have been building on its multiscale structure. While it is observed that much of the convection within the MJO envelope is related to higher frequency equatorial waves, it is not known to what extent this organization is systematic from one MJO event to another. For instance, it is of interest to know whether MJO favors waves of particular types and propagation direction, and how this variability changes seasonally. This work presents a wavenumber‐frequency spectral analysis of the MJO convective envelope, which indicates that there is no strong preferred scale of high frequency organization that is ubiquitous to the MJO. This null finding supports the use of convective parametrizations in modeling the MJO since, while moist convection is likely critical to its initiation and maintenance, the particular details of that organization may not be critical for its prediction and simulation.


The purpose of the study is to ascertain the job satisfaction among the library professionals. Survey method was carried to achieve the goal study besides questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. The study shows both positive and negative signs of satisfaction among the professionals but the dominant signs were positive job satisfaction among professionals. This paper may benefit society by encouraging librarians to contribute more to their jobs and may help them in their personal growth and development. Hence, it is essential for library administrators to motivate their library professionals to work hard for achieving the organizational goals and objectives.


Border Writing was first published in 1991. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Until recently, literary theory has been grounded in the histories of English, French, German, and Spanish literature. The terms and models for the production of literature and its function in culture and society were decided in Western Europe, and any deviations were immediately marginalized. This Eurocentric view has been widely attached by postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial political practices. Drawing on a variety of critical and theoretical sources, D. Emily Hicks employs the concept of border writing to consider the complexities of contemporary Latin American writing. With its emphasis on the multiplicity of languages and the problems of translation, border writing connotes a perspective that is no longer determined by neat distinctions. Hicks combines Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "deterritorialization" (the geographic, linguistic, or cultural displacement from one's own country, language, or native culture) with a holographic metaphor in provocative readings of Latin America writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Luisa Valenzuela, and Julio Cortazar. The result is a volume that forces the reader to consider the development of literature in terms of strategies and tactics that contribute to the production of meaning in culturally complex and politically repressive societies. D. Emily Hicks is associate professor of English and comparative literature and a member of the Latin American studies faculty at San Diego State University. Neil Larsen is associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Northeastern University and the author of Modernism and Hegemony: A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies (Minnesota, 1990).


We describe a simple technique for simultaneously imaging multiple layers within an object field onto a single camera. The approach uses a binary diffraction grating in which the lines are distorted such that a different level of defocus is associated with each diffraction order. The design of the gratings is discussed, and their ability to image multiple object planes is validated experimentally. Extension of the technique for spherical-aberration correction is described, and it is shown how the gratings can be used as part of a wave-front-sensing system.


CV, V1CV2- and V1#CV2-sequences of reading material of six speakers of Standard Austrian German have been analysed. V1 was a pre-palatal, constricted vowel /i/ in unstressed position. C was an alveolar consonant. V2 was either a pre-palatal, constricted vowel /i/, or a back, rounded vowel /u, o/ in a stressed position. F1, F2, F3, and VOT measurements were performed. Lip protrusion starts at consonant release and may affect the transconsonantal vowel, as long as V1 and C are not separated by a word boundary.


Run-to-run (RtR) control plays an important role in semiconductor manufacturing processes. In this paper, RtR control methods are classified and evaluated. The set-valued RtR controllers with ellipsoid approximation are compared with two typical RtR controllers: the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) controller and the optimizing adaptive quality controller (OAQC) by simulations according to the following criteria: a good RtR controller should be able to compensate for various disturbances, such as small drifts, step disturbances and model errors; moreover, it should be able to deal with bounds, cost requirement and multiple targets that are often encountered in semiconductor processes. Based on our simulation results, suggestions on selection of a proper RtR controller for a semiconductor process are given as conclusions.


Roller bearings operating under light loads may suffer from skidding. The latter is more pronounced as the speed increases and may result in extensive wear and reduced service life of the bearing. The main objective of this study is to analyze skidding occurrence in a custom-made all-steel M50 bearing and a hybrid roller bearing subjected to the same operating conditions. The test bearings have a bore diameter of 90 mm, an outer diameter of 125 mm and 26 rollers. The hybrid bearing features silicon nitride (Si3N4) rollers and steel rings (M50 outer ring and M50-NIL inner ring). The bearings feature special channels to allow for under race lubrication of the bearing components in relative motion. A suite of sensors were used and installed to detect skidding and monitor the overall performance of the test bearing such as vibrations and temperature. The effect of the radial applied load, shaft rotational speed and oil flow rate on roller skidding have been investigated and discussed. Slip ratio for each of the bearings under various speed-load combinations was also determined and analyzed. Turbo oil 2380 was used to lubricate the test bearings at a constant temperature of 77°C. Tests were conducted on a high-speed rolling bearing test rig and data was recorded using a 24-bit data acquisition system.


The intent of this study was to examine how a theoretically-designed subject in an undergraduate teacher education course impacted on the learning and confidence of pre-service teachers in catering for the needs of students with diverse needs. The subject design utilised theoretical principles of self-organisation that were incorporated with the teaching and application of three evidence-based pedagogies of inclusion: explicit teaching, cooperative learning and collaborative practice. The study examined how the principles were enacted throughout the delivery of the subject and sought pre-service teacher reflections after completion. Initial findings suggest that embedding these principles and incorporating practical application throughout the subject assisted pre-service teachers with their learning, the completion of assessment and enhanced their confidence in being able to meet the needs of students with diverse needs.


Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impact technology integration in public schools has on the academic performance of public school students. Method: Data for this study were obtained from the Texas Education Agency. The study uses data measuring the level of technology integration in over 6,654 Texas public school campuses as well as TAKS scores of 4 th , 8 th , and 11 th graders in the subject areas of reading, math, and science. Four areas of technology integration are identified and examined for their possible impact on the academic performance of public school students. A multiple regression analysis was used to assess the impact of the four areas of technology integration on academic performance. Results: The results show that overall the integration of technology in the classroom impacts the academic performance of students in the subject areas reading, math, and science. Conclusion: This research study provides valuable information regarding the necessity of integrating technology into public schools. While this field of research is still in its infancy, this study conveys the impact technology has on academic performance and the importance of further research in examining its effects.


The need to develop household personal finance literacy is an increasingly important issue in many countries, especially in the wake of the latest financial crisis. The literature broadly demonstrates that most individuals do not have an adequate level of financial literacy. A number of initiatives aimed at different groups (usually defined by gender, age, work status and income) have been developed. The present paper is part of a strand of literature that focuses on the financial literacy of university students, and in particular, the potential benefits of their participation in investment simulations, in terms of improved skills and knowledge. It analyzes an innovative online portfolio management competition for graduate students, the Fund Management Challenge, which is promoted by the CFA Society Italy. The results demonstrate how this Challenge, and investment simulations in general, set with specific rules to mitigate opportunistic behaviors, can help to improve participants' financial literacy levels. In addition to this, the use of quality indicators encourages students to learn and helps mentors and educators to better allocate resources to those in need of assistance. The study represents an original analysis of the Challenge. If further analysis supports this preliminary evidence, the Challenge could become a reference point for future investment simulations targeting university students.


This article deals with the problem of radical Islam in the Fergana valley. Main characteristics of the region and the factors that contribute to the spread of extremist religious movements have been identified and described by the authors. The region that already has a high potential for confliction because of unresolved inter-state, inter-ethnic issues is a storm center of radical religious movements' development. The revival of Islam has predetermined its further politicization, and then because of objective and subjective reasons its radicalization. The processes of re-islamization typical for Central Asian countries in the late twentieth century, accompanied by attempts of the leaders to get the support of the population. Radical Islam, in turn, became widespread in the territory of neighboring countries, in particular the Russian Federation. Thus, it should be noted that improper treatment of the foundations of traditional Islam, the spread of radical ideas represent a threat to stability and security not only at national but also at regional and global levels. Causes of the radical extremist movements, as well as increasing number of followers of these organizations in the Fergana Valley are important part of the article. The authors of the paper have assessed the activities of Islamic movements in the three countries of the Central Asian region, as well as a comparative analysis of the situation in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been provided. The article presents the differences in the approaches and methods of struggling of the governments of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan against nonconformist religious movements. The main conclusion of the article is the recognition of the diversity within the accepted approaches of neighboring states to solve the problem of radical Islamist movements. The article notes the high probability of downfall of the "fragile stability" that occurred in the Ferghana Valley.


Background. In the modern competitive age, reading is the cornerstone for success in all academic disciplines. Objectives. The study sought to find out the literature reading habits and preferences of adolescent students, and the promotional tactics of authors to attract these students towards reading. Methods. The data was collected in the Delhi Public School, Srinagar in India, from students of 11th and 12th classes (grades), aged between 14-16 years. A questionnaire survey was administered to 150 students who were systematically sampled. Results. The study found that adolescents of both genders like reading (69% of girls; 65% of boys) on electronic media. Adolescents have varied tastes in reading. Fiction is the most preferred genre of literature read by respondents, followed by non-fiction. However, girls have a greater preference for fiction compared to boys. Similarly boys have a greater preference for non-fiction compared to girls. Among the various genres of fiction, crime/detective is the most read genre, followed by realistic teen fiction. Romance and poetry are more popular among girls, whereas crime/detective, horror, and realistic teen fiction are more popular among boys. For non-fiction, the respondents generally read selfhelp/personality development books, followed by personalities and historical literature. Boys prefer to read about personalities whereas self-help/personality development is the first preference of girls. To attract adolescents, authors include aggression and violence, romantic language, explicit content (sexuality), and slang/crude language amongst other tactics in their writings (literature).


A high efficiency CdS/CdTe solar cell was designed with a reduced CdTe absorber-layer thickness and a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) as an optical reflector and a ZnTe layer as back surface field (BSF) layer. Simulation results showed that with combination of DBR and BSF layers and 0.3 µm thick CdTe, the conversion efficiency was increased about 3.2% as compared with a reference cell (with 4 µm thick CdTe layer). It was also shown that the efficiency can be increased up to 6.02% by using a long carrier lifetime in the absorber layer. Under global AM 1.5G conditions, the proposed cell structure had an open-circuit voltage of 1.062 V, a short-circuit current density of 24.64 mA/cm², and a fill factor of 81.3%, corresponding to a total area conversion efficiency of 21.02%.


Conformational changes make the comparison of protein structures difficult. Algorithms that identify small differences in protein structures to identify influences on specificity are particularly affected by molecular flexibility. However, such algorithms typically compare proteins with identical function and varying specificity, causing them to focus on closely related proteins rather than the remote evolutionary homologs sought by most comparison algorithms. This focus inspired us to ask if structure prediction algorithms, which more accurately predict the structures of close evolutionary neighbors, can be used to "remodel" existing structures with the same template, to make the comparison of their binding sites more accurate. Our results, on the enolase superfamily and the tyrosine kinases, reveal that this approach to error reduction is indeed possible, enabling our methods to identify influences on specificity in protein structures that originally could not be compared.


We introduce the Android Security Framework (ASF), a generic, extensible security framework for Android that enables the development and integration of a wide spectrum of security models in form of code-based security modules. The design of ASF reflects lessons learned from the literature on established security frameworks (such as Linux Security Modules or the BSD MAC Framework) and intertwines them with the particular requirements and challenges from the design of Android's software stack. ASF provides a novel security API that supports authors of Android security extensions in developing their modules. This overcomes the current unsatisfactory situation to provide security solutions as separate patches to the Android software stack or to embed them into Android's mainline codebase. This system security extensibility is of particular benefit for enterprise or government solutions that require deployment of advanced security models, not supported by vanilla Android. We present a prototypical implementation of ASF and demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency by modularizing different security models from related work, such as dynamic permissions, inlined reference monitoring, and type enforcement.


Abstract Purpose: To provide a review of the 2nd International Symposium on Gait and Balance in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), emphasizing interventions in gait and balance for people with MS. Method: Review of current research on interventions used with people having MS and with people having other disorders that may provide novel insights into improving gait and balance and preventing falls in people with MS (pwMS). Results: Nine speakers provided evidence-based recommendations for interventions aimed at improving gait and balance dysfunction. Speaker recommendations covered the following areas: balance rehabilitation, self-management, medications, functional electrical stimulation, robotics, sensory augmentation, gait training with error feedback and fall prevention. Conclusions: The causes of gait and balance dysfunction in pwMS are multifactorial and therefore may benefit from a wide range of interventions. The symposium provides avenues for exchange of evidence and clinical experience that is critical in furthering physical rehabilitation including gait and balance dysfunction in MS. Implications for Rehabilitation Approaches to improve Gait and Balance dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis. Balance exercises that include training of sensory strategies. Self-management and self-management support. Pharmacologic intervention, such as Dalfampradine. Functional electrical stimulation that may provide the extra stimulation to influence coordinated leg movements needed for walking.


An understanding of nature and extent of nucleotide sequence variation is required for programmes of discovery and characterization of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which provide the most versatile class of molecular genetic marker. A majority of higher plant species are polyploids, and allopolyploidy, because of hybrid formation between closely related taxa, is very common. Mutational variation may arise both between allelic (homologous) sequences within individual subgenomes and between homoeologous sequences among subgenomes, in addition to paralogous variation between duplicated gene copies. Successful SNP validation in allopolyploids depends on differentiation of the sequence variation classes. A number of biological factors influence the feasibility of discrimination, including degree of gene family complexity, inbreeding or outbreeding reproductive habit, and the level of knowledge concerning progenitor diploid species. In addition, developments in high-throughput DNA sequencing and associated computational analysis provide general solutions for the genetic analysis of allopolyploids. These issues are explored in the context of experience from a range of allopolyploid species, representing grain (wheat and canola), forage (pasture legumes and grasses), and horticultural (strawberry) crop. Following SNP discovery, detection in routine genotyping applications also presents challenges for allopolyploids. Strategies based on either design of subgenome-specific SNP assays through homoeolocus-targeted polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, or detection of incremental changes in nucleotide variant dosage, are described.


The study of Jean Guehenno in the inter-war years is divided
into three main parts. The first deals with the development of
Gw!henno's personality and ideas, which preceded the publication
of his major works, and explores his debt to certain literary
figures. The second deals with the main texts Caliban parle
and Journal d'un homme de 40 ans, whilst the third explores his
role as editor and director of Europe and Vendredi respectively.
The first chapters consider the difficulties Guehenno encountered
in reconciling academic success with his poor origins. Moreover they
present the problem of his experience of the First World War, his
decision to become a teacher and the influence of Daniel Halevy
in his early literary career.
The second part is an analysis of Guehenno's two most important
texts. With respect to Caliban parle the issues raised include
co-existence in a world without God, the solution of a contractual
society with all its implications for culture, and the problem of
revolution as a personal spiritual ideal. In the case of Journal
d'un homme de 40 ans, where Guehenno reaffirms his earlier
individualism, his discovery of a style to suit his intellectual
preoccupations is considered, as is the fact that his work is
primarily a personal protest against war.
The third section of the thesis deals with Guehenno's role in
Europe as well as in Vendredi and with the extent to which these
papers reflected the interests of his major works. Furthermore,
in the case of Vendredi the problem of the confrontation between
idealism and political necessity posed by "engagement" is examined,
using Guehenno's articles on the Front Populaire and the U.S.S.R.
The conclusions drawn are that Guehenno is an important
influential and representative member of the group of "intellectuels
engages" which worked in France in the inter-war years, because his
work raises their common problems of intellectuality, class, culture
and pacifism. Equally importantly however, his case illustrates
the dangers posed by intellectual commitment to a political cause -
dangers which led him to adopt an ultimately conservative position,
and which on a more general level led to the dispersal of the
"intellectuels engages" as a group.


Extreme habitats are characterized by the presence of physio-chemical stressors, but also differ in aspects of the biotic environment, such as resource availability or the presence of competitors. The present study quantifies variation in trophic ecology of a small livebearing fish (Poecilia mexicana, Poeciliidae) across four different habitats that included nonsulphidic and sulphidic surface waters, as well as a nonsulphidic and a sulphidic cave. Resource use in different habitat types was investigated using gut content analysis. Populations diverged in resource use from a diet dominated by algae and detritus in nonsulfidic surface habitats to a diet including invertebrate food items in the other habitats. Poecilia mexicana in cave habitats further exhibited a higher dietary niche width than conspecifics from surface habitats. The condition of P. mexicana was analysed using storage lipid extractions. Fish from sulphidic and cave habitats exhibited a very poor condition, suggesting resource limitation and/or high costs of coping with extreme conditions. Finally, divergence in resource use was correlated with variation in viscerocranial morphology. A common garden experiment indicated both a genetic and plastic basis to the morphological variation observed among field populations. It is suggested that the morphological diversification is an adaptation to the differential use of resources among populations. © 2008 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2008, 95, 517‐528.


Educative curriculum materials provide teachers with authentic opportunities to learn new skills and practices. Yet, research shows teachers use curriculum in different ways for different reasons, and these modifications could undermine the learning goals of the curriculum. Little research, however, has examined the variation in teacher use of educative curriculum and the impact on teacher learning. In this article, we use organizational theory's concept of sensemaking to examine teacher learning from educative curriculum. Utilizing a multiple-case study methodology, we explored the variation in how teachers utilized the same educative, reform-oriented science curriculum to plan for instruction in addition to the differences in teacher interpretation and learning about argumentation from the curriculum. Participants included five middle school science teachers who differed with respect to teaching experience, prior exposure to argumentation, and school settings, including suburban and rural and public and private schools. Findings indicate that some teachers used the curriculum as a resource solely to support student learning, and consequently did not utilize the educative aspects or recognize the intended support for teacher learning. Second, we found that the teachers who actively engaged in their own learning while adapting the curriculum to their context made learning gains, indicating a need for teacher active reflection to learn new practices. Our findings suggest a need to shift teachers' perspectives from viewing curriculum as a source of activities to a resource to support their own learning and professional goals. This study raises questions and makes suggestions for future educative curriculum development and teacher preparation. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54: 141–168, 2017


Few studies have evaluated the comparative long-term effectiveness of antipsychotics in preventing relapse, but a 2017 study from Finland published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin by Heidi Taipale and colleagues did just that, and found that clozapine and long-acting injectable antipsychotic drugs were most effective at preventing psychiatric re-hospitalizations. The Finnish health care registry was used to prospectively collect data on the treatment of every person who received inpatient care for schizophrenia between 1972 and 2014. The patients totaled 62,250 including 8,719 in their first episode of schizophrenia. Followup to evaluate antipsychotic use began at 1996 for those with ongoing treatment, and upon first discharge from the hospital for those patients in their first episode. The follow-up time ranged from 6.9 to 20 years with an average of 14.1 years. During the follow-up period, 59% of patients were readmitted to psychiatric inpatient care. Among the drugs with the lowest rates of relapse, olanzapine longacting injection, clozapine, and paliperidone long-acting injection were associated with the least risk of psychiatric re-hospitalization. Among patients in a first episode, taking flupentixol long-acting injection, olanzapine long-acting injection, or perphenazine long-acting injection had the lowest risk of psychiatric rehospitalization. Clozapine and the long-acting injections also had the least risk of hospitalization for any cause.


Two cases of acute myocardial infarction occurred in association with myocarditis, which was confirmed by biopsy. The first patient suffered an anteroseptal and the second patient an inferior wall myocardial infarction shortly after an acute viral illness. In both patients, coronary angiography showed normal coronary arteries, and right ventricular endomyocardial biopsy confirmed myocarditis. Histological abnormalities attributable to ischaemic heart disease were absent. The first patient's condition became stable after immunosuppressive treatment. Myocarditis resolved spontaneously within three months in the second patient. Coronary artery spasm and myocardial involvement with a systemic disease were unlikely. Endomyocardial biopsy in patients with acute myocardial infarction and normal coronary arteries may be useful in identifying myocarditis associated with myocardial necrosis. Myocarditis in acute myocardial infarction in the absence of coronary artery obstruction has not previously been documented during life.


This paper analyzes the role of far right in the Ukrainian politics during the "Euromaidan" and the war in Donbas. The issue of the involvement of Ukrainian far right organizations in the "Euromaidan" and the war in Donbas have been politicized and polarized. Russian and separatist politicians and the media often presented the "Euromaidan" as a "fascist coup" and the Maidan government as a "fascist junta." In contrast, the governments and the mainstream media in Western countries tended to present the role of the far right in the "Euromaidan" and in post-Maidan Ukraine, specifically in the conflict in Donbas, as marginal. Previous academic studies generally reached similar conclusions. They focused on numerical strength and electoral support for the far right parties and ignored other aspects of influence of the radical nationalist and neo-Nazi parties, specifically their role in the political violence, such as the Maidan and Odesa massacres and the war in Donbas. However, the number of academic studies of the contemporary far right in Ukraine is generally limited. The research question is as follows: What is the role of the far right in the Ukrainian politics during and after the "Euromaidan"? This study analyzes the involvement of specific Ukrainian radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations in the "Euromaidan," the Odesa massacre, and the war in Donbas, their performance in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014 and the 2015 local elections in Ukraine. The analysis focuses on major Ukrainian far right organizations, such as Svoboda (Freedom), the Right Sector, the Social-National Assembly, the White Hammer, the UNA-UNSO, Bratstvo, and C14, and paramilitary formations or special police and National Guard units organized and controlled to various extent by them, such as the Azov regiment, Dnipro, Donbas, Aidar, Sich, and St. Mary's battalions, and the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. It uses various sources of data, such as online recordings of live broadcasts and videos of the Maidan and Odesa massacres and the war in Donbas, official database of court decisions in Ukraine concerning investigations of the involvement of the far right in major cases of political violence, video recordings of the Maidan massacre trial, information posted on websites and social media groups of far right organizations, and media reports in Ukrainian, Russian, and English languages. The study shows that the far right organizations had significant but minority representation among the Maidan leadership and protesters, the post-Maidan governments, and in the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections. However, the analysis also shows that the far right organizations and football ultras played a key role during violent attacks, such as attempts to storm the presidential administration on December 1, 2013 and the parliament of Ukraine in January and on February 18, 2014. There is also various evidence of the Right Sector involvement in a violent attack of the Berkut police during its highly publicized dispersal of protesters on November 30, 2013. The Right Sector and Svoboda and smaller organizations had a crucial role in the violent overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovych government, in particular, in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police on February 18-20, 2014. The study demonstrates that the Right Sector, the Social-National Assembly/Patriot of Ukraine, and groups of football ultras were involved in the Odesa massacre on May 2, 2014. This paper also shows that the far right organizations and their volunteer battalions and paramilitary units had a significant role in the civil war in Donbas but a comparably minor role in fighting with several regular Russian military units during direct military interventions by Russia in August 2014 and February 2015. Major implications of this study for the Ukrainian politics and the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine are discussed in the conclusion. This paper implies that the far right has significant but not dominant role in the Ukrainian politics during and after the "Euromaidan." But far right organizations and their armed units had a key role in major cases of political violence during and after the "Euromaidan," and they attained ability to overthrow by force the government of the one of the largest European countries.


Lessons learned from Social and Legal Approaches Employed in The United States, Great Britain, and Sicily Organized crime has become one of the major problems facing the modern world. It no longer exists within the boundaries of individual countries; today, primarily because of advances in communication and transportation technology, the organized criminal has become a citizen of the world, unwelcome, but nonetheless there. It is naive to view the phenomenon of organized crime in provincial terms as has become the fashion of those who point to Russia as experiencing a volatile and unique epidemic of this form of criminality.(1) Every major country--the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Columbia, China, and Japan, to mention only a few--is engaged in its own war on organized crime. In responding to the specific and rapidly increasing threat of organized crime currently facing Russia and the Russian people, we believe it to be a challenge and obligation of social scientists, along with specialists from other disciplines, to offer solutions. In that spirit and framework, we seek to offer solutions to the problem of Russian organized crime by drawing comparisons with the results of measures that have been attempted in the United States. Although we respect the conclusion drawn by scholars at the conference "The Black Market as a Political System," as reported in the Moscow News,(2) that there is no sociological solution to the mafia problem in Russia, we believe that there is a solution. However, that solution depends solely on the sincere involvement of the Russian government and the individual Russian citizen. In opposition to the conclusion that there is no possible solution to the mafia problem is a statement made by Russian sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya in 1989: Perestroika is like a spring bursting from the rocks in this mountainside of ours.... It comes from an underground stream flowing somewhere beneath the surface of the soil.(3) Despite the brutal depredations from black market and other criminal enterprises in Russia today, we outside observers cannot help believing that there is indeed "a stream flowing," starting with perestroika, in the direction of increased privatization and the growth of individual rights and enterprises. That force, once it begins to manifest itself, as history has shown us, can generate its own irresistible power. It was that force that generated democracy and capitalism in the United States. We in America, like the Russians, have had our own robber barons and problems with outbreaks of rampant criminality. It is not an outside enemy that Russia is fighting in the fight against organized crime; rather, the criminal is a Russian. As individuals, Russians must learn that successful economic and individual competition is based on self-interest. But, to be effective as a social process, that self-interest must show respect and concern for the ultimate welfare of others and of society as a whole. Only then can competition exist in the spirit of free enterprise rather than an oligarchy of terror, power, and force employed and enjoyed only by certain individuals and groups. Russia is in a stage of transition. The average Russian has not considered the fact that a form of commercial enterprise in the exchange of goods and services was taking place during the Communist era, and its current presence in Russian society is nothing new. The process was and is called the black market, and the institution to be feared and deceived in this process was and is the government. Ironically, as numerous students of the subject such as Rosner(4) and Simis(5) have shown, many aspects and agencies of the government itself were involved in the process. So who, in fact, was being cheated and deceived? Today, Russians must learn and adjust to the fact that in every case of black market enterprising it is ultimately the individual Russian citizen who is paying the price. …


Mycobacterium tuberculosis, one of the deadliest human pathogens, causes several million new infections and about two million fatalities annually. The cell wall of M.tuberculosis is endowed with a highly impermeable, complex array of diverse lipids such as mycolic acids, which bestow the bacterium with not only virulence, but also
resistance to host immunity and antibiotics. Mycobacterial lipid metabolism has thus emerged as an attractive target for the design and development of novel anti-mycobacterial therapeutics. The first committed step in the biosynthesis of long-chain fatty acids – the carboxylation of acetyl-CoA to malonyl-CoA - is catalysed by the multi-functional multi-subunit acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) enzyme. Some ACC
complexes, especially from actinobacteria, are active on diverse substrates and are generally referred to as acyl-CoA carboxylases (YCCs). Typically, YCCs are composed of biotin carboxylase, biotin carboxyl carrier protein (collectively known as alpha) and carboxyltransferase (beta) subunits. Interestingly, the genomes of most
mycobacteria code for three alpha subunits (AccA1 - AccA3), six beta subunits (AccD1 - AccD6), and a unique epsilon subunit (AccE5) while most other forms of life possess not more than two YCCs. Despite the significant roles of YCCs in
mycobacterial fatty and mycolic acid biosyntheses and hence in cell wall integrity and antibiotic resistance, a comprehensive understanding of their properties and functions is lacking.

This dissertation is focused on the structural and functional characterisation of the essential components (AccA3, AccD4 - AccD6, and AccE5) of M. tuberculosis YCCs
implicated or known to be involved in fatty acid metabolism. X-ray crystallography and complementary biophysical and biochemical approaches have been employed in
an attempt to address questions concerning interactions between YCC components and differences in beta subunit substrate specificity.

Multiple co-expression and co-purification strategies yielded YCC complexes (the propionyl-CoA carboxylase AccA3-AccD5 and the putative long-chain acyl-CoA carboxylase AccA3-AccD4) that were catalytically active but did not assemble into stable forms amenable to structural analyses; possible explanations for these observations have been discussed in detail. Significant effort was invested in the production of the epsilon subunit AccE5, but its association with its interacting partners (AccA3 and AccD5) could not be investigated due to technical impediments
stemming, presumably, from the intrinsic disordered nature of the protein.

Biophysical studies of AccD4 and AccD6 (the beta subunit of ACC) revealed unexpected structural diversity in the M. tuberculosis YCC beta subunit subfamily. Unlike all other actinobacterial homohexameric beta subunits characterised to date, AccD4 and AccD6 were found to function as lower oligomers, highlighting that hexameric assembly is not a requisite for carboxyltransferase function. Endeavours to crystallize AccD4, in apo-form or in complex with substrate/cofactor analogs, were unsuccessful. The high-resolution crystal structure of AccD6, on the other hand, was determined by the method of molecular replacement. The structure of AccD6 has elucidated the molecular basis of homodimeric arrangement, besides throwing light on the conserved and non-conserved features of the active site, and the putative determinants of substrate specificity.

Taken together, the findings of this study have added to the existing knowledge of the M. tuberculosis structural proteome and have furthered our understanding of the
biophysical attributes and functions of YCC beta subunits, validated anti-mycobacterial drug targets. Interesting insights into the likely molecular evolution of YCC beta subunits have been acquired.


Fetal period of time during which the fetus grows rapidly and the organs are formed. The prenatal and postnatal analyses of the fetal structure provide information as to fetal growth, growth retardation, gestational age and congenital malf ormations. The development of the skeletal system during the intrauterine period takes place in an orderly manner as it also does in other sy tems. It was aimed that the morphometric development of the forearm in human fetuses during the period between 20-40 gestational week s be radiologically investigated and that its clinical importance be evaluated, as well. A total of 100 fetal forearms (50 fetuses: 23 male, 27 female), the ages of which varied between 20-40 gestational weeks, without having any external pathology or anomaly were incorp orat d into the study. The fetuses were separated into groups according to weeks, trimesters and months. After the general external me asur ments of the fetuses had been performed, the mammographies and forearm radiographies of the fetuses were shot in the way that the for earms would remain in a prone position. Morphometric measurements pertaining to forearm structures were taken from the forearm radiog r phies that were shot with the help of a digital compass. Later on, the morphometric measurements in question were statistically evalu ated. The mean values and the standard deviations of the measured parameters were determined according to gestational weeks, trimesters a nd months. There was a significant correlation between the measured parameters and the gestational age (p<0.001). In the compariso n of the measured parameters between trimesters and months, it was observed that there was a statistically significant difference betwee n th groups (p<0.05). Separately, it was also determined that there was no statistically significant difference in the comparison of the parameters, which was made between genders and right-left forearms (p>0.05). As for the results obtained in our study, we are of the opinio n at the data obtained during this study period will be beneficial for the involved clinicians, such as those in charge of gynecology, r adi l , forensic medicine and perinatology, in terms of evaluating the clinical studies related to the morphometric development of the forearm throughout the fetal period, in determining the fetal age and sex, and also in determining the pathologies and variations regar ding the development of fetal skeletal system.


This study proposed (a) to identify the most important attributes of effective college teachers as perceived by students in Taiwan, (b) to investigate the influence of different factors on students' perceived attributes of effective college teachers, and (c) to determine if the students in various Taiwanese teachers colleges differ in their opinions of the most important attributes of effective
college teachers. Students identified these factors as attributes of effective college teachers: rapport, effective teaching
methods, enthusiasm, fairness, interaction, practical experiences, personality, clarity, and being well-prepared. The fact that sophomore students and freshman students value some factors differently was discovered in this study. In addition, students who have previous teaching experience value all of the important attributes higher than those who do not have teaching experience before they attended
teachers colleges.


The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires -- for example, the actions of a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works.