This study aims to investigate the relationship between Board of Director characteristics and CEO compensation. This is semi-empirical study and statistical sample of research was based on 95 companies listed on the Tehran stock exchange from 2010 to 2014. Variables examined include the ratio of non-executive board members, CEO duality, ownership of institutional shareholders and managerial ownership as independent variables. Factors influencing CEO compensation were considered and the relationship between these variables was studied using multivariate regression. The findings indicate that there is a negative relationship between CEO compensation and managerial ownership. There is also a significant positive relationship between CEO compensation and CEO duality. However, there was no evidence for a significant relationship between ratios of non-executive board members and CEO compensation.


The recent evolution of productivity has been a puzzle for economists. After a period marked by historic growth (1987-1997), aggregate productivity stagnated (1998-2012). The analysis in this paper focuses on productivity in nine major sectors of the economy to establish tentative hypotheses to try to explain the recent behavior of productivity at the aggregate level. The evidence suggests that it is necessary to deepen the analysis of the labor market and the cost of energy as potential barriers to productivity growth.


Introduction. Studying the adolescent's risk and resilience factors towards drug use is an important step in understanding and developing functional prevention strategies.
Aim. The present study assesses the risk and resilience factors towards drug use in an adolescent population from Romania.
Methodology. The current study is nested in the Working in Europe to Stop Truancy Among Youth (WE-STAY) Framework Programme 7 project, funded by the European Commission. A total number of 1730 adolescents were included. The mean age was 16.6 years old, with a standard deviation of 0.6 years. A total of 980 participants (56.9%) were females. We used the WE-STAY baseline questionnaire to collect the data. WE-STAY specific questions were used to assess age, sex, if the participants lived with both parents, if any of the parents worked abroad, if the participants considered they were religious persons, having a stable boyfriend/girlfriend, bulliyng perception, alcohol consumption, if they ever used drugs, what type of drugs, if a family member used drugs, physical injury related to risk behaviors, if they smoked, and if a family member smoked.
Results. Out of the total sample, 8.3% reported having used drugs. The category of drugs most frequently reported were cannabinoids, and the least frequently reported were opiates. The adolescents who used drugs registered significantly higher conduct problems, hyperactivity, externalising and total difficulties scores, while also registering significantly lower prosocial scores.
Conclusions. Some of the highest risk factors for adolescents to ever use illicit drugs in Romania are: 16+ years old, male gender, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, previous drug use, and family members using drugs.


Recent scholarship has tended to focus on the perceived inadequacies of recording to represent live jazz performance. Nevertheless, recordings are dominant in the dissemination of jazz and as such demand our critical attention to understand the social potential of jazz in the twenty-first century. This chapter examines the ability of recordings to influence perceptions of jazz when evaluated in different ways: firstly, retrospectively, for example when writing jazz history; secondly, historically, within their original context (that is at the time at which they were first disseminated); and thirdly, in their present context, when they are encountered by new audiences. In this chapter, these three particular temporal perspectives of listeners are explored in relation to recordings chosen deliberately for their quantifiable status in the jazz canon: 'Livery Stable Blues' (1917) recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New Orleans is widely cited as the first jazz recording; Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue (1959) is understood as the best selling and most popular jazz recording of all time.


Lignin is the most recalcitrant part of woody biomass yet is one of the few natural aromatic resources available in abundance. There is huge potential for this material to be used as a key feedstock in future applications however a conversion route to fine chemicals must first be established. In this thesis, a methodology to take raw wood sawdust and convert its lignin component to value added products whilst avoiding a pyrolysis route has been reported.
During biofuel processing, lignin is subjected to a number of pretreatment steps in order to separate it from the lignocellulosic material and it is during these steps that modification of the lignin can occur. The aim of this project was to selectively cleave the dominant β-O-4 linkage using heterogeneous catalysis to form functional aromatic monomers. It was found to be imperative that an appropriate pretreatment was firstly identified in order to avoid depletion of this dominant alkyl-aryl ether bond where, for example, the lignin isolated using an ammonia pretreatment from poplar wood gave an uncondensed structure in comparison to the condensed lignin produced using an organosolv pretreatment. We have shown that lignin can be effectively depolymerised to low molecular weight compounds when the starting material is rich in β-O-4 bonds and we were able to verify this finding using a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst under hydrodeoxygenation/hydrogenolysis conditions. Organosolv lignin from Poplar sawdust was found to have a low β-O-4 content (9.2 %) and subsequently gave limited conversion to fine chemicals (9.0 %) in comparison to the ammonia lignin with a high β-O-4 content (28.9 %) which gave much higher conversion to monomeric product (16.4 %). Further work using lignins isolated using different pretreatment methods supported this conclusion. Whilst GPC was used to give an overview of the initial cracking to breakdown products, GC-MS analysis enabled us to successfully identify 21 monomeric products.
Optimisation work using a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst with the ammonia lignin was carried out in order to minimise char production and maximize the yield of the fine chemical products to varying success. Experimental conditions were altered in terms of the solvent used and its composition, reaction temperatures, pressures, time and stirring rates, as well as changing the pH and active metal. It was found that the use of 100 % methanol under the standard conditions yielded the highest amount of monomeric product (43.5 %), whilst the use of 100 % water alternatively gave the highest char production (47.1 %). This knowledge obtained during the initial lignin conversion study was then used to tackle a sulfur-containing lignin known as Kraft lignin. This lignin is readily available as a by-product of the dominant pulping technique adopted by the paper and pulp industry but due to the nature of the technique used to isolate the lignin, the Kraft lignin often incorporates sulfur onto its structure. Such impurities could prove detrimental to the catalytic depolymerisation reaction via catalyst poisoning but it was found that the Kraft lignin behaved in a similar manner to the other condensed lignins under the standard conditions in terms of the total monomeric yield obtained. The Kraft lignin produced 9.2 % of alkylphenolic product in comparison to 7.4 % produced from the standard reaction with soda lignin. It was also noted that the optimised conditions found for the benchmark ammonia lignin did not depolymerise the Kraft lignin to the same extent where, for example, using 100 % methanol with the Kraft lignin hindered the reaction and gave an overall monomeric yield of 5.6 %. This highlighted the fact that whilst one set of conditions may be efficient for the conversion of one type of lignin, this may not be the case for another.
This work was followed by an isotopic labelling study to investigate the reaction mechanism which indicated an inverse kinetic isotope effect and that the depolymerisation reaction occurred in two steps. These two steps involved an initial cracking step of the entire lignin molecule to fragmented lignin pieces followed by conversion to monomeric product. Some post-catalyst analysis was also carried out using XRD, BET, TPO and Raman analysis in order to analyse the catalyst surface. The work showed that during the reaction, the lignin deposited onto the catalyst surface and formed a carbonaceous layer which was graphitic in nature. Some samples were found to be more ordered in nature but no obvious trend with respect to the type of lignin used was established.


When learning from actions, language can be a crucial source to specify the learning content. Understanding its interactions with action processing is therefore fundamental when attempting to model the development of human learning to replicate it in artificial agents. From early childhood two different processes participate in shaping infants' understanding of the events occurring around them: Infants' motor system influences their action perception, driving their attention to the action goal; additionally, parental language influences the way children parse what they observe into relevant units. To date, however, it has barely been investigated whether these two cognitive processes – action understanding and language – are separate and independent or whether language might interfere with the former. To address this question we evaluated whether a verbal narrative concurrent with action observation could avert 14-month-old infants' attention from an agent's action goal, which is otherwise naturally selected when the action is performed by an agent. The infants observed movies of an actor reaching and transporting balls into a box. In three between-subject conditions, the reaching movement was accompanied either with no audio (Base condition), a sine-wave sound (Sound condition), or a speech sample (Speech condition). The results show that the presence of a speech sample underlining the movement phase reduced significantly the number of predictive gaze shifts to the goal compared to the other conditions. Our findings thus indicate that any modelling of the interaction between language and action processing will have to consider a potential top-down effect of the former, as language can be a meddler in the predictive behavior typical of the observation of goal oriented actions.


Wind-tunnel experiments were carried out to better understand boundary layer effects on the flow pattern inside and above a model wind farm under thermally neutral conditions. Cross-wire anemometry was used to characterize the turbulent flow structure at different locations around a 10 by 3 array of model wind turbines aligned with the mean flow and arranged in two different layouts (inter-turbine separation of 5 and 7 rotor diameters in the direction of the mean flow by 4 rotor diameters in its span). Results suggest that the turbulent flow can be characterized in two broad regions. The first, located below the turbine top tip height, has a direct effect on the performance of the turbines. In that region, the turbulent flow statistics appear to reach equilibrium as close as the third to fourth row of wind turbines for both layouts. In the second region, located right above the first one, the flow adjusts slowly. There, two layers can be identified: an internal boundary layer where the flow is affected by both the incoming wind and the wind turbines, and an equilibrium layer, where the flow is fully adjusted to the wind farm. An adjusted logarithmic velocity distribution is observed in the equilibrium layer starting from the sixth row of wind turbines. The effective surface roughness length induced by the wind farm is found to be higher than that predicted by some existing models. Momentum recovery and turbulence intensity are shown to be affected by the wind farm layout. Power spectra show that the signature of the tip vortices, in both streamwise and vertical velocity components, is highly affected by both the relative location in the wind farm and the wind farm layout.


Abstract The timing and duration of the coldest period in the last glacial stage, often referred to as the last glacial maximum (LGM), has been observed to vary spatially and temporally. In Australia, this period is characterised by colder, and in some places more arid, climates than today. We applied Monte-Carlo change point analysis to all available continuous proxy records covering this period, primarily pollen records, from across Australia (n = 37) to assess this change. We find a significant change point occurred (within uncertainty) at 28.6 ± 2.8 ka in 25 records. We interpret this change as a shift to cooler climates, associated with a widespread decline in biological productivity. An additional change point occurred at 17.7 ± 2.2 ka in 24 records. We interpret this change as a shift towards warmer climates, associated with increased biological productivity. We broadly characterise the period between 28.6 (± 2.8) – 17.7 (± 2.2) ka as an extended period of maximum cooling, with low productivity vegetation that may have occurred as a combined response to reduced temperatures, lower moisture availability and atmospheric CO2. These results have implications for how the spatial and temporal coherence of climate change, in this case during the LGM, can be best interrogated and interpreted.


Viewed through the lens of public health, sports-related concussion or mild traumatic brain injury is an epidemic health problem. This paper commences with a scoping review of sport-related concussion and mild traumatic brain injury considering its historical background, clinical definitions, epidemiology, and pathophysiology and treatment. The second section assesses the complex interplay of intrapersonal and interpersonal, community, and societal factors that influence sport-related concussion and mild traumatic brain injury. The third section concludes with recommendations for policy changes and further research to mitigate the health impact of sports-related concussion in adolescent school-age children. The optimal management of sports-related concussion requires care going beyond the acute injury, and into the school setting to maximize their academic and social outcomes. This is more likely to occur when healthcare and educational systems are optimally coordinated.


Future wireless communication system have to be designed to integrate features such as high data rates, high quality of service and multimedia in the existing communication framework. Increased demand in wireless communication system has led to demand for higher network capacity and performance. Higher bandwidth, optimized modulation offer practically limited potential to increase the spectral efficiency. Hence MIMO systems utilizes space multiplex by using array of antenna's for enhancing the efficiency at particular utilized bandwidth. MIMO use multiple inputs multiple outputs from single channel. These systems defined by spectral diversity and spatial multiplexing. The aim of this paper is to design and implement of channel estimation method and modulation technique for MIMO system. The design specifications are obtained using MATLAB. The RTL coding is carried for the design to be implemented on Xilinx FPGA.


Alan Sugar was born in 1947 and brought up on a council estate in Clapton, in Hackney. As a kid he watched his dad struggle to support the family, never knowing from one week to the next if he'd have a job. It had a huge impact on him, fuelling a drive to succeed that was to earn him a sizeable personal fortune. Now he describes his amazing journey, from schoolboy enterprises like making and selling his own ginger beer to setting up his own company at nineteen; from Amstrad's groundbreaking ventures in hi-fi and computers, which made him the darling of the stock exchange, to the dark days when he nearly lost it all; from his pioneering deal with Rupert Murdoch to his boardroom battles at Tottenham Hotspur FC. He takes us into the world of The Apprentice, and describes his appointment as advisor to the government and elevation to the peerage. Like the man himself, this autobiography is forthright, funny and sometimes controversial.


A large body of research uses data from social media websites to predict offline economic outcomes such as sales. However, recent research also points out that such data may be subject to various limitations and biases that may hurt predictive accuracy. At the same time, a growing body of research shows that a new source of online information — search engine logs — has the potential to predict offline outcomes. We study the relationship between these two important data sources in the context of sales predictions. Focusing on the automotive industry — a classic example of a domain of high-involvement products — we use Google's comprehensive index of internet discussion forums, in addition to Google search trend data. We find that adding search trend data to models based on the more commonly-used social media data significantly improves predictive accuracy. We also find that predictive models based on inexpensive search trend data provide predictive accuracy that is comparable, at least, to that of social media data-based predictive models. Last, we show that the improvement in accuracy is considerably larger for "value" car brands, while for "premium" car brands the improvement obtained is more moderate.


We fabricated nanoporous microcantilevers using anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) and measured the variations in the resonance frequency and deflection of the cantilever during the adsorption and desorption of water vapor. The high surface area and low modulus of the AAO cantilever, due to the presence of the nanopores, permitted the simultaneous measurement of both the changes in mass and surface stress with high sensitivity. The cantilever deflection at the resonance frequency revealed a large deflection change during the early stages of water adsorption and a small deflection change during the later stages. These effects were attributed to the transition from a sub-monolayer water film to a multilayer water film.


This paper uses the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the effects of the Italian reform of 1990 on worker and job flows. We exploit the fact that this reform increased unjust dismissal costs for firms below 15 employees, while leaving dismissal costs unchanged for bigger firms, to set up a natural experiment research design. We find that the increase in dismissal costs decreased accessions and separations for workers in small relative to big firms, especially in sectors with higher employment volatility. Moreover, we find that the reform reduced firms' employment adjustments on the internal margin as well as entry rates while increasing exit rates.


INTRODUCTION
The optimum supply of an allied health workforce in rural and remote communities is a persistent challenge. Despite previous indicative research and government investment, the primary focus for rural and remote recruitment has been on the medical profession. The consequent shortage of allied health professionals leaves these communities less able to receive appropriate health care. This comprehensive review incorporates a literature analysis while articulating policy and further research implications.

METHODS
The objective was to identify drivers to recruitment and retention of an allied health workforce in rural and remote communities. This issue was observed in two parts: identification of barriers and enablers for students accessing allied health undergraduate tertiary education, and barriers and enablers to clinical placement experience in rural and remote communities. A search of empirical literature was conducted together with review of theoretical publications, including public health strategies and policy documents. Database searches of CINAHL, Medline, ERIC, PsychInfo and Scopus were performed. Selection criteria included Australian research in English, full text online, keywords in title or abstract, year of publication 1990 to 2012 and research inclusive of rural and remote context by application of the Australian Standard Geographical Classication (ASGC) Remoteness Structure. Theoretical publications, or grey literature, were identified by broad Google searches utilising a variety of search terms relevant to the review objective. Allied health professions were defined as including audiology, dietetics, occupational therapy, optometry, orthoptics, orthotics and prosthetics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, psychology, radiography, social work, speech pathology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers.

RESULTS
A total of 28 empirical publications met the selection criteria with a further 22 grey literature texts identified with relevance to the research objective. Patterns of barriers and enablers for rural and remote student transition in the allied health professions were identified in the literature. Recruitment pathways to allied health tertiary studies in rural and remote communities are vague and often interrupted, and the return of graduates is haphazard. Students from rural and remote communities face an assembly of barriers. They often experience secondary education disadvantage with inadequate subject choices, pathways and opportunities. Programs designed to facilitate transition to tertiary study are often limited in their capacity to address cumulative concerns. Students also face financial imposts and are confronted by daunting social isolation, and separation from families and support systems. In regard to clinical placement, the disincentives weigh heavily. The financial burdens of a rural placement offer little inducement. Social isolation associated with a placement far from home is more acutely felt by students when there is inadequate administrative support and consequent disillusionment. Students also lack a frame of reference to pursue a rural placement option, and are often discouraged by the cumulative commitments involved.

CONCLUSIONS
Clear and accessible pathways to allied health training for students from rural and remote communities are pivotal to a stronger representation of this cohort among graduates. Similarly, greater representation of rural and remote clinical placements for allied health undergraduate students is an important facilitator. Despite regional coordination and strategies designed to promote a broader range of placement opportunities, the problems remain. This review has consequences for policy and program development for growth of the rural allied health workforce in Australia, as well as identifying knowledge deficits to guide future research endeavours.


Despite the diverse biological activities of the glycosaminoglycan (GAG) antagonist surfen, the molecular details of its interaction with biomacromolecules remain poorly understood. Therefore, heparin and DNA binding properties of surfen were studied by circular dichroism (CD) and UV absorption spectroscopy methods. High-affinity (Ka  ~ 10(7)  M(-1)) association of surfen to the chiral heparin chain gives rise to a characteristic biphasic CD pattern due to the conformational twist of the aminoquinoline moieties around the central urea bridge. At higher drug loading, intermolecular stacking of surfen molecules alters the induced CD profile and also provokes strong UV hypochromism. In contrast to the right-handed heparin template, binding of surfen to the left-helicity chondroitin sulfate chains produces inverted CD pattern. Large UV hypochromism as well as polyphasic induced ellipticity bands indicate that surfen intercalates between the base pairs of calf-thymus DNA. Extensive CD spectroscopic changes observed at higher drug binding ratios refer to cooperative binding interactions between the intercalated drug molecules. The inherent conformational flexibility of surfen demonstrated here for the first time is important in its binding to distinct macromolecular targets and should be considered for rational drug design of novel GAG antagonists.


We present measurements from the ESA/NASA Cluster mission that show in situ acceleration of ions to energies of 1 MeV outside the bow shock. The observed heating can be associated with the presence of electromagnetic structures with strong spatial gradients of the electric field that lead to ion gyro-phase breaking and to the onset of chaos in ion trajectories. It results in rapid, stochastic acceleration of ions in the direction perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field. The electric potential of the structures can be compared to a field of moguls on a ski slope, capable of accelerating and ejecting the fast running skiers out of piste. This mechanism may represent the universal mechanism for perpendicular acceleration and heating of ions in the magnetosphere, the solar corona and in astrophysical plasmas. This is also a basic mechanism that can limit steepening of nonlinear electromagnetic structures at shocks and foreshocks in collisionless plasmas.


The introduction of conservation agriculture (CA) for smallholders increased the competition for crop residues between crop and livestock enterprises of the mixed smallholder farming system. Smallholders practicing CA have resorted to using grass and leaf litter in addition to available crop residues. The effect of these different mulching materials on maize ( Zea mays L.) growth and yield is not well documented in smallholder CA systems of southern Africa. A two-year experiment was run in 2012/13 and 2013/14 seasons to evaluate the effect of maize residues, grass ( Hyparrhenia filipendula (L.) Stapf.) and leaf litter that farmers are currently using and residues from leguminous species, sunhemp ( Crotolaria juncea L.) and Tephrosia ( Tephrosia vogelii ((Hook) f. )) on maize nitrogen (N) uptake, growth and yield. Significant differences in soil water content across treatments were only observed during March in 2012/13 season. Maize residues retained more soil water and Tephrosia had the lowest soil water content when seasonal rainfall pattern was erratic. Grass and Tephrosia treatments had the lowest chlorophyll content. Conventional ploughing, maize residues and leaf litter had similar chlorophyll content which was significantly higher than grass and Tephrosia treatments. At a site with higher initial soil fertility conventional ploughing treatment out yielded the other treatments by 727–1265 kg ha −1 . With more degraded sandy soil conventional practice had 119–430 kg ha −1 more maize grain than the CA treatments. With adequate fertilization, the mulching materials have a similar effect on maize growth in basins and direct seeding. Further studies on different application rates of mulching materials and mineral N fertilizer, and nutrient release patterns of these residues are critical in order to better understand soil fertility management under smallholder CA systems.


1. Proximal tubular fluid flow rate was deliberately reduced to control values in rats after acute volume expansion with hyperoncotic albumin, to determine if the depression of reabsorption by albumin-induced expansion could be uncovered by preventing the associated increase in filtrate delivery. Tubular fluid flow was reduced either by reducing renal perfusion pressures or by diverting fluid from early proximal tubular sites. 2. In the absence of controlled delivery, expansion with hyperoncotic albumin increased nephron filtration rate, reduced the TF/P inulin ratio, but had no effect on absolute reabsorptive rate. When proximal tubular flow rate was returned to control values by a simultaneous early collection, fractional reabsorption remained depressed. By contrast, when tubular flow was maintained at control values by reducing renal perfusion pressure, the large fall in fractional reabsorption was blocked. 3. The results indicate that expansion with hyperoncotic albumin depresses proximal tubular reabsorption independently of delivery rate into the proximal tubule, but that this effect can be reversed by a reduction in renal perfusion pressure. These observations unify the results of previous studies and indicate the presence of a delivery-related influence on proximal reabsorption. The inability to detect a reduction in absolute reabsorption when nephron filtration rate is increased during expansion with hyperoncotic albumin is probably due to the countervailing influence of increased delivery rate, which raised reabsorptive rate.


"Working in the Reggio Way" helps teachers of young children bring the innovative practices of the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, to American classrooms. Written by an educator who observed and worked in the world-famous schools, this groundbreaking resource presents the key tools that will allow American teachers to transform their classrooms, including these: Organization of time and space Documentation of children s work Observation and questioning Attention to children s environmentsThis workbook also contains interactive activities for individual or group reflection.Julianne Wurm works as an instructional reform facilitator in the San Francisco Unified School District. She lives in San Francisco, California."


Discretization of numerical data is one of the most influential data preprocessing tasks in knowledge discovery and data mining. The purpose of attribute discretization is to find concise data representations as categories which are adequate for the learning task retaining as much information in the original continuous attribute as possible. In this article, we present an updated overview of discretization techniques in conjunction with a complete taxonomy of the leading discretizers. Despite the great impact of discretization as data preprocessing technique, few elementary approaches have been developed in the literature for Big Data. The purpose of this article is twofold: a comprehensive taxonomy of discretization techniques to help the practitioners in the use of the algorithms is presented; the article aims is to demonstrate that standard discretization methods can be parallelized in Big Data platforms such as Apache Spark, boosting both performance and accuracy. We thus propose a distributed implementation of one of the most well‐known discretizers based on Information Theory, obtaining better results than the one produced by: the entropy minimization discretizer proposed by Fayyad and Irani. Our scheme goes beyond a simple parallelization and it is intended to be the first to face the Big Data challenge. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2016, 6:5–21. doi: 10.1002/widm.1173


The Pleistocene mammoth steppe was a vast biome that stretched from northwestern Europe to central Canada. A diverse set of megaherbivore and megacarnivore species lived within this biome and there was significant ecosystem faunal and floral homogeneity. At the end of the Pleistocene, this biome disappeared, with the extinction or extirpation of many of the megafaunal species that inhabited it. This thesis reconstructs the ecology of the mammoth steppe using the isotopic compositions of carbon and nitrogen from megafaunal collagen. The reconstruction is done at a variety of ecological scales, beginning with individual animaland season-specific isotopic studies of antlers, and then comparison to bones from the same species. This provides a framework to understand the habitat and diet of antlered species through the Pleistocene and into the Holocene. Non-ruminant species ecology is assessed using the carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of the individual amino acids that comprise their bulk collagen. The compound-specific technique allows metabolic and habitat or dietary effects to be separated and diets to be classified. These studies indicate woolly mammoths ate a distinct diet, likely comprising decayed plants, and that some horses shared this dietary niche. The Pleistocene giant beaver consumed aquatic plants, while the mastodon consumed unmodified terrestrial plant material. Finally, the bulk collagen isotopic compositions measured in this work as well as reviewed from the literature are compiled and the mathematical tool SIBER (Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R) is used to define the isotopic niche for multiple megaherbivore species at different times and sites across the mammoth steppe. This, combined with the dietary and habitat information gleaned from the antler and amino acid isotopic measurements, allows an in-depth analysis of mammoth steppe ecology. Before the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum), most species occupied consistent isotopic niches between sites across the mammoth steppe, suggesting consistent diets or habitats during the pre-LGM period. These isotopic niche patterns changed during the LGM, and the patterns were not re-established post-LGM or in the Holocene. These changes suggest that the ecosystem suffered a major disturbance during the LGM, before the extinctions that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene.


Computer vision has undergone a dramatic revolution in performance, driven in large part through deep features trained on large-scale supervised datasets. However, much of these improvements have focused on static image analysis; video understanding has seen rather modest improvements. Even though new datasets and spatiotemporal models have been proposed, simple frame-by-frame classification methods often still remain competitive. We posit that current video datasets are plagued with implicit biases over scene and object structure that can dwarf variations in temporal structure. In this work, we build a video dataset with fully observable and controllable object and scene bias, and which truly requires spatiotemporal understanding in order to be solved. Our dataset, named CATER, is rendered synthetically using a library of standard 3D objects, and tests the ability to recognize compositions of object movements that require long-term reasoning. In addition to being a challenging dataset, CATER also provides a plethora of diagnostic tools to analyze modern spatiotemporal video architectures by being completely observable and controllable. Using CATER, we provide insights into some of the most recent state of the art deep video architectures.


We propose a novel system for visual overlay of 3D virtual object onto real environment observed by tablet PC with camera. This system allows us to visually simulate the layout of virtual 3D objects such as furniture in the real environment captured by the tablet PC. For estimating the pose and position of the tablet PC in the 3D structure of the target environment, we propose and implement the 2 procedures using the captured image and using the motion sensor in tablet PC. Those performances are presented in the demonstration.


What is leisure? How does leisure relate to leading a good life? This critical and intelligent study interrogates the basic principles of leisure and demonstrates the continuing relevance of these questions for our society today. It not only explores the traditional philosophical concepts at the heart of leisure studies, but also pursues new possibilities for reconceptualising leisure that have emerged from recent developments in society, technology and the broader discipline of philosophy itself. Approaching leisure from a philosophically inquisitive perspective, the book argues that leisure revolves around the pursuit of happiness, human flourishing and well-being, making it both a state of mind and a state of being. Its exploration of the meaning of leisure addresses key issues such as identity, ethics, spirituality, human experience, freedom, technology, embodiment, well-being, the fundamental properties of leisure and the challenge of offering a meaningful definition. Revitalising the subject of leisure studies with its originality, Philosophy of Leisure: Foundations of the Good Life is fascinating reading for all students and scholars of leisure studies, philosophy, sociology, psychology and ethics.


Purpose: To evaluate the impact of preoperative corneal thickness on visual outcomes following Descemet's stripping endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK) or Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK). Methods: This retrospective, observational study included patients aged > 18 years that underwent a posterior lamellar graft surgery (DSAEK or DMEK) for Fuchs dystrophy, pseudophakic endothelial decompensation or other endothelial dysfunction from October 2013 to November 2016. Exclusion criteria were the technical inability of preoperative CCT measurement, a history of penetrating keratoplasty in the study eye, the need for a penetrating keratoplasty following endothelial graft failure, preexisting stromal scarring before surgery (clinically assessed by the slit-lamp exam) and severe postoperative complications resulting in unquantifiable visual acuity. Visual acuity, central corneal thickness (CCT) and graft thickness were measured preoperatively and at postoperative day 7 and months 1, 3 and 6. Results: Forty-seven eyes (40 patients) were included in the final analysis. No significant association was observed between preoperative CCT and visual acuity at any postoperative time up to month 6 (r = 0.01; p = 0.94 at month 6). Preoperative CCT showed no association with visual acuity gain at any time up to month 6 (r = -0.02; p = 0.91 at month 6). Conclusion: Preoperative CCT does not predict the visual results achievable at 6 months after DSAEK or DMEK


Cotton water productivity was studied in Fergana Valley of Central Asia during the years of 2009, 2010 and 2011. Data was collected from 18 demonstration fields (13 in Uzbekistan, 5 in Tajikistan). The demonstration field farmers implemented several improved agronomic and irrigation water management practices. The average values of crop yield, estimated crop consumptive use (ETa) and total water applied (TWA) for the demonstration sites were, respectively, 3700 kg/ha, 6360 m3/ha, and 8120 m3/ha. The range of values for TWA and ETa were, respectively, 5000 m3/ha to 12,000 m3/ha and 4500 m3/ha to 8000 m3/ha. A quadratic relationship was found between TWA and ETa. The average yield of the adjacent fields was 3300 kg/ha, whereas the average yield of cotton in Fergana Valley as a whole was 2900 kg/ha, indicating 28% and 14% increase in crop yield, respectively, from, demonstration fields and adjacent fields. There was no significant difference in crop yields between the wet years (2009 and 2010) and the dry year (2011), which is explained by the quadratic relationship between TWA and ETa. The water productivity values ranged from 0.35 kg/m3 to 0.89 kg/m3, indicating a significant potential for improving water productivity through agronomic and irrigation management interventions. The ratio of average ETa divided by average TWA gave an average application efficiency of 78% (some fields under-irrigated and some fields over-irrigated), the remaining 22% of water applied leaving the field. Since more than 60% of the water used for irrigation in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is pumped from, even if all this 22% of water returns to the stream, substantial energy savings would accrue from improving the average application efficiency at field level. The range of values for TWA indicates the inequity in water distribution/accessibility. Addressing this inequity would also increase water productivity at field and project level.


This paper seeks to assess the potentials of countries to grasp value from nanoscience and nanotechnology (N&N) opportunities as reflected in the crucial, but mostly overlooked, field of micro and nanofabrication technologies. N&N potentials are assessed relative to the paths along which the nano knowledge structures are being channelled. Conceptually, this is visualised in terms of the interplay between the patterns of nano competence building for relevant countries and the paths of nano knowledge evolution. Hereby, higher N&N potentials are expected to ensue the closer both aspects follow each other. To analyse the case, this research makes use of intensive bibliometric and social network methods based on scientific publications. A series of implications for policy makers and researchers on the critical role of micro and nanofabrication technologies within the N&N field will be described in this paper.


In this paper, a possible applicability of artificial neural networks to predict the elastic modulus of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions is investigated. Besides it, based on the general micromechanical unit cell approach, theoretical formula is also developed, for effective elastic modulus of composites containing randomly dispersed ellipsoidal in homogeneities. Developed theoretical model considers the ellipsoidal particles to be arranged in a three-dimensional cubic array. The arrangement has been divided into unit cells, each of which contains an ellipsoid. Practically in real composite systems neither isostress is there, nor isostrain, and besides it due to the effect of random packing of the phases, non-uniform shape of the particles, we are forced to include an empirical correction factor. We are forced to include an empirical correction factor in place of volume fraction which provided a modified expression for effective elastic modulus. Empirical correction factor is correlated in terms of the ratio of elastic moduli and the volume fractions of the constituents. Numerical simulations has also been done using artificial neural network and compared with the results of Halpin-Tsai and Mori-Tanaka models as well as with experimental results as cited in the literature. Calculation has been done for the samples of Glass fiber/nylon 6 composite (MMW nylon 6/glass fiber), Organically mod-ified montmorillonite (MMT)/High molecular weight (HMW) nylon 6 nanocomposite ((HE)2M1R1-HMW nylon 6), Epoxy-alumina composites and MXD6-clay nanocomposite. It is found that both the theoretical predictions by the proposed model and ANN results are in close agreement with the experimental results.


Background: Primary schools need well informed and highly motivated teachers to meet the evolving demands of the education system. Professional development is essential to equip primary school teachers to change practice to meet these challenges (Guskey, 2003; Villegas-Reimers, 2003). The purpose of this study was to describe, analyse and understand teachers' and children's experiences of a contextualised, whole school professional development programme (PDP) in primary physical education.

Research Design: A case study methodology was employed informed by social constructivist theory. The study was broken into four phases. Phase one described the case and provided an in-depth professional development needs analysis of the teachers. Phase two resulted in the development of a school specific, contextualised PDP on Outdoor and Adventure Activities. This programme was based on features of effective professional development (e.g. Armour & Duncombe, 2004; Desimone, 2009; Garet et al, 2001; Guskey, 2002; 2003; O' Sullivan & Deglau, 2006; Wayne et al., 2008) and was informed by professional development instructional models (Caffarella, 2002; Collins et al, 1991; Joyce & Showers, 1988; Maldonado, 2002). Phase three was the implementation of stage 1 of the PDP, this phase included a process evaluation. Phase four involved stage 2 of the PDP, where the teachers taught the O&AA unit with less intense support. It included both process and impact evaluation of the PDP. Teachers were supported for one hour during their timetabled physical education lesson each week for six weeks during stage 1 and again at stage 2. Further support was provided when requested by teachers outside of these times.

Methods: The research methods selected were primarily qualitative due to the exploratory nature of the study however quantitative methods were used in order to provide a more generalist picture when relevant. This mixed methods approach allowed for i) an in-depth understanding of the research environment and ii) a full analysis of how the PDP was impacting primarily on the teachers, but also on the children. The methods of data collection employed were specific to the research questions in each phase and included questionnaires, physical health and fitness measurements, focus-group discussions, semi-structured interviews, field notes, lesson evaluations and systematic observations of teachers and children.

Analysis: All quantitative data were analysed using SPSS for Windows, version 14.0. Data were presented descriptively as means, standard deviations and percentages and where appropriate gender- and age-specific means and standard deviations were calculated. The Pearson, chi-square statistics with standard residuals was used to investigate any categorical relationships in the data. Paired sample t-tests, or Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted to compare differences. All qualitative data were coded and categorised using constant comparative technique, facilitating the identification of similarities and differences, the grouping of data into categories and the development of propositional statements.

Findings: A single, suburban mixed gender primary school [Principal, teachers: N=28 (year 1), N=27 (year 2) and pupils: N=780 (year 1), N=800 (year 2)] participated in the study. Prior to the PDP the teachers taught a narrow programme of physical education using direct teaching styles. Teachers reported lacking content knowledge and confidence in teaching O&AA (pedagogical content knowledge). Children, prior to the PDP, enjoyed physical education and expected lessons to include moderate to vigorous levels of physical activity. They met normative standards for physical fitness for their age and gender. However, they described their physical education experiences as predominantly 'games' and recreational rather than educational. Both the teachers and the children had a confused understanding of physical education with discourses focussing on health and physical activity.
Following implementation of the PDP the findings indicated that for the PDP to be effective and change to occur key features were necessary (described using the developed propositional statements). These were: a) The teachers reported that the provision of resources played a strong role in the adoption of the PDP; b) The support provided by an external expert through modelling lessons, explaining activities and providing feedback impacted positively on teachers' teaching; c) The support allowed teachers to build on their content knowledge and they gained confidence to use already developed classroom pedagogical strategies in the physical education context; d) Organisational changes within the school, such as timetabling and access to equipment, were necessary for the PDP to be successful: e) The PDP impacted positively on children's perceived learning and engagement in physical education lessons; f) Both teachers and children began to re-conceptualise physical education, from a games orientated, recreationally focused subject towards an understanding of physical education as a subject where teaching and learning happened; g) Collegiality and collaboration amongst teachers in physical education, and in other subjects, was an outcome of the PDP and was an important change strategy.

Conclusion: This research confirms the importance of resource provision, contextualised and individualised support to develop teachers' content and pedagogical content knowledge in the design of a PDP. It also provides evidence of the teachers themselves being an important resource and the need for future professional development to incorporate opportunities to facilitate communication and collaboration and formalise communities of practice. Teacher change is underpinned by the features of the PDP and the research indicates that change is multi-directional. Although the literature highlights the necessity to focus on the learning outcomes of the child in designing PDPs, it is imperative that we do not ignore the learning outcomes of teachers. If there is no teacher learning, this could potentially limit children's learning.


The machine learning community has recently had increased interest in the climate and disaster damage domain due to a marked increased occurrences of natural hazards (e.g., hurricanes, forest fires, floods, earthquakes). However, not enough attention has been devoted to mitigating probable destruction from impending natural hazards. We explore this crucial space by predicting building-level damages on a before-the-fact basis that would allow state actors and non-governmental organizations to be best equipped with resource distribution to minimize or preempt losses. We introduce PreDisM that employs an ensemble of ResNets and fully connected layers over decision trees to capture image-level and meta-level information to accurately estimate weakness of man-made structures to disaster-occurrences. Our model performs well and is responsive to tuning across types of disasters and highlights the space of preemptive hazard damage modelling.


Distributional data Shapley value (DShapley) has been recently proposed as a principled framework to quantify the contribution of individual datum in machine learning. DShapley develops the foundational game theory concept of Shapley values into a statistical framework and can be applied to identify data points that are useful (or harmful) to a learning algorithm. Estimating DShapley is computationally expensive, however, and this can be a major challenge to using it in practice. Moreover, there has been little mathematical analyses of how this value depends on data characteristics. In this paper, we derive the first analytic expressions for DShapley for the canonical problems of linear regression and non-parametric density estimation. These analytic forms provide new algorithms to compute DShapley that are several orders of magnitude faster than previous state-of-the-art. Furthermore, our formulas are directly interpretable and provide quantitative insights into how the value varies for different types of data. We demonstrate the efficacy of our DShapley approach on multiple real and synthetic datasets.


This article explains how the aberrant nature of electronic contracts has unique implications, which contract law should recognize. Companies, taking advantage of these unique implications, may use electronic contracts in an unfair and coercive manner, which is why this article proposes expanding the definition of duress to include "situational duress." Situational duress would not encompass all electronic contracting scenarios, but would be limited to situations where (1) a drafting company uses an electronic contract to block consumer access to a product or service; (2) the consumer has a "vested interest" in that product or service; and (3) the consumer accepts the terms because she was blocked from the product or service after attempting to reject or decline them. Thus, situational duress would be limited to those situations where consumers are uniquely vulnerable because of the nature of their interest in the product or service. In these situations, the consumer's action should not be effective as a manifestation of assent and the contract should be void, not voidable.


The present study examined the role of trust in marital satisfaction in a sample of 50 couples including 25 single & 25 dual-career couples. Moreover, gender differences were also studied. Enrich Marital Satisfaction Scale (Fowers & Olson, 1993), and Trust Scale (Rempel, Holmes & Zanna, 1985) were used to measure the constructs. The age of the sample ranged from 18 to 55 years .Multiple regression analysis demonstrated trust as significant predictor of marital satisfaction for single career couples, dual-career couples and for the whole sample respectively. Significant gender differences were found in trust for both single and dual-career couples. Implications of results as well as directions for future empirical research are discussed.


In this paper we show how team work between participants can be facilitated through the use of principles from autopoietic theory and modern WEB2.0 technologies like social networks, forums, semantic wiki systems, podcasting as well as social tagging in order to provide a suitable environment for knowledge management. We argue that leadership is an important factor for autopoiesis emergence as well as project success. Results form an experiment conducted on 160 students show that teams that were able to find a leader during the first week of collaboration were successfull while teams who didn't had problems in establishing creative collaboration. In the end we argue that by providing facilities for a dynamic leadership role one indirectly can facilitate the emergence os autopoiesis in such an environment.

Keywords: autopoiesis, information system, social network, knowledge management, fishnet, WEB2.0


Deep learning based salient object detection has recently achieved great success with its performance greatly outperforms any other unsupervised methods. However, annotating per-pixel saliency masks is a tedious and inefficient procedure. In this paper, we note that superior salient object detection can be obtained by iteratively mining and correcting the labeling ambiguity on saliency maps from traditional unsupervised methods. We propose to use the combination of a coarse salient object activation map from the classification network and saliency maps generated from unsupervised methods as pixel-level annotation, and develop a simple yet very effective algorithm to train fully convolutional networks for salient object detection supervised by these noisy annotations. Our algorithm is based on alternately exploiting a graphical model and training a fully convolutional network for model updating. The graphical model corrects the internal labeling ambiguity through spatial consistency and structure preserving while the fully convolutional network helps to correct the cross-image semantic ambiguity and simultaneously update the coarse activation map for next iteration. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method greatly outperforms all state-of-the-art unsupervised saliency detection methods and can be comparable to the current best strongly-supervised methods training with thousands of pixel-level saliency map annotations on all public benchmarks.


The changes of cell membrane permeability caused by dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) and ethanol, two commonly used solvents in study of water-insoluble elicitors, were investigated in suspension cultures of Taxus cuspidata. The extracellular medium became alkalinized in the case of DMSO while the medium pH fluctuated upon the addition of ethanol. When the content of DMSO or ethanol was larger than 2% (v/v), the concentration of intracellular malonyl dialdehyde (MDA) increased remarkably at day 5 compared to that of the control, while that of the extracellular MDA less changed at a DMSO content of below 2% (v/v) and increased rapidly within 15 min at a DMSO content of 4% (v/v). The electrical conductivity (EC) decreased slightly when DMSO content was below 2% (v/v) but increased markedly at day 5 when DMSO content reached 4% (v/v). EC less varied when the content of ethanol was below 0.4% (v/v) but changed obviously when the ethanol content was larger than 1% (v/v). The cell membrane integrity hardly broke in the case of small concentration of DMSO (below 1%, v/v), but the presence of even small amount of ethanol (0.4%, v/v) caused cell membrane integrity lost partly, especially long time contact. It is thus concluded that DMSO is a more suitable solvent for water-insoluble elicitors compared to ethanol especially at low concentration levels.


Reducing dietary saturated fatty acid, increasing dietary polyunsaturated fatty
acid together with the presence of naturally occurring plant minor components in
fats and oil have been shown to be able to reduce plasma cholesterol level. In
this study, the hypocholesterolemic effects of rice bran and blended rice bran oils
were investigated. In an animal study to determine the effect of defatted and
fullfat rice brans, hypercholesterolemia-induced male Sprague Dawley rats
(n=77) were divided into five groups receiving diets containing; normal chow
(Control), defatted rice bran diet (10% TDF; DFBC), full-fat rice bran diet (10%
TDF; FRBC), cellulose diet (10% TDF; CC) and normal chow containing
cholesterol (NC). All experimental diets contained 0.3% cholesterol and 0.1 %
cholic acid except for the Control group. Blood samples were collected at week 3
for lipid profile determination. Results of this study showed that animals on FRBC
diet had lower plasma total and LDL cholesterol levels compared to animals on DFBC and CC diets. Animals fed both DFBC and CC diets, however had higher
plasma total and LDL cholesterol levels compared to the NC group. These
results demonstrated that only full-fat rice bran diet caused significant reduction
(pc0.05) in plasma total and LDL cholesterol. The higher content of unsaturated
fatty acids (75%) and the presence of high unsaponifiable matter in the rice bran
lipid fraction are suggested to contribute to the cholesterol reduction. In
summary, local full-fat rice bran could be used as a good agent to reduce plasma
cholesterol level.
A human feeding study was carried out to determine the effects of experimental
oils [palm oil (100% PO), rice bran oil (100% RBO) and blended rice bran-palm
oils; 45% RBO and 60% RBO] on CHD indices of norrnocholesterolemic to mild
hyper cholesterolemic subjects (n=18). The subjects received normal diets
prepared using each experimental oil for 5 weeks in a single blind crossover
design. In this study, diets prepared using experimental oils, did not significantly
(p>0.05) alter the plasma lipid profile of subjects. However, blended oil diets
(45% and 60% RBO) improved the LDUHDL ratio of subjects with 45% RBO
favourable for normo- and 60% RBO favourable for mild hyper cholesterolemic
subjects. Other indicators such as apo A?, apo B, Lp(a) and plasma antioxidant
enzymes (glutathione reductase and glutathione peroxidase) of subjects were not
affected by the dietary changes induced in the experimental oils used. The 45%
RBO and 60% RBO diets also caused significant reduction ( ~ ~ 0 . 0i5n) p lasma
conjugated diene and malondialdehyde levels of subjects. Plasma total
antioxidant status of subjects increased following intake of blended oil diets with the highest total antioxidant status level during intake of 60% RBO diet. The
increased total antioxidant status was related to significantly (pc0.05) higher level
of plasma tocotrienol (5.19 ppm) compared to other diets (<2 ppm). These results
demonstrated that both blended oils (45% RBO and 60% RBO) have shown
some functional properties (relative to 100% RBO and 100% PO) in improving
indicators of CHD. Blending of RBO and PO at specific ratios improved the fatty
acid composition and antioxidant contents of the resulting oils. There could be
some interactions between palm tocotrienol and rice bran oryzanol in the blended
oil diets that resulted to these beneficial effects. In future, further studies are
needed to determine the exact mechanisms involved.


VISCOELASTIC RELAXATION IN BOLTED THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITE JOINTS Ron R. Schmitt, M.S. Department of Aerospace Engineering The Wichita State University, 1991 Results from a research program to investigate the long term effects of through-the-thickness fastener clamp-up force (preload) relaxation on the strength of mechanically fastened joints for two graphite/thermoplastic composite materials (Dupont's IM6/KIII and ICI-Fiberite's IM8/APC(HTA)) are summarized and compared with analytical methods. An experimental program was conducted in which 56 mechanically fastened single-shear joints were tested. Phase I static tests established joint bearing strength as a function of clamp-up force for two types of fasteners (protruding head and countersink) with no relaxation of preload. Phase II testing monitored short-term fastener preload relaxation (up to 1 ,000 hours), with special bolt force sensor washers. In service parameters included were temperature, in-plane loads, and torque. The jOints were tested to failure at the end of the relaxation time period to determine any subsequent effect on joint strength. Phase I test results indicated that joint bearing strength increased by as much as twenty-eight percent over the clamp-up force range of a Ibs (finger tight) to 3,500 Ibs for both materials. Fastener head type, material, and temperature also affected the resultant bearing strength. For Phase II, fastener clamp-up force at room temperature (78°F) relaxed an average of six percent from the initial value during the short-term test period. The relaxation was projected to be as high as fourteen and sixteen percent at 100,000 hours for HTA and Kill, respectively. The elevated temperature condition (250°F) significantly increased the relaxation rate with the projected 100,000 hour relaxation amount being as high as thirty-seven percent for HTA and sixty percent for Kill. Comparison of the Phase II bearing strengths to the Phase I results indicated that portions of the data correlated well, while others did not. It was concluded that relaxation of the clamp-up force over the short-term time period did not significantly lower the bearing strength of either material, however an extended exposure to 250°F could affect the bearing strength.


In the literature of psychology and economics it is frequently observed that individuals tend to imitate similar individuals. A fundamental question is whether the outcome of such imitation can be consistent with self-interested behaviour. We propose that this consistency requires the existence of a Nash equilibrium that introduces a partition of the player set into relatively few groups of similar individuals playing the same or similar strategies. In this paper we define and characterize a family of games admitting existence of approximate Nash equilibria in pure strategies that introduce partitions of the player sets with the desired properties. We also introduce the Conley-Wooders concept of 'crowding types' into our description of players and distinguish between the crowding type of a player - those characteristics of a player that have direct effect on others - and his tastes, taken to directly affect only that player. With the assumptions of 'within crowding type anonymity' and a 'convexity of taste-types' assumption we show that the number of groups can be uniformly bounded.


A
considerable amount of literature has been published about election studies
around the world. An area that interests
many scholars in those studies is the influence of voters' social-economic
status on the party of choice they voted for in elections (Coffe, Voweles & Curtin, 2014).
Therefore, this research intends to identify if the social-economic status of
voters influenced their voted choice of party in New Zealand's 2017 election.

It is significant to
conduct this study because all political parties present themselves as
universal with policies that are beneficial to all citizens (Afnoso, 2016).
However, an increasing gap between the rich and the poor should question those
policies. It should concern the government, the bureaucrats, and the public because
it can affect the social, political, and economic participation of disadvantage
groups (Szewczyk,
2015). And because inequality affects all spheres of
life, it can influence voters' party choices. The party choice is so
significant because it is the party with the majority of candidates that
eventually forms the government and which decides on all of the country's
affairs which will affect every individual citizen and future generations too.

Because
of its significance, much research has been conducted in different countries to
identify the influence that voters' social-economic status has on their party
choice. For example, Winters et al. (2017) conducted a related study in Britain, Pietsch (2017) in Australia
and Suryanarayan (2018) in
India and they discovered that there was strong
correlation between the social economic status of voters and their party
choice. However, a comparable study conducted in the United States by Gelman,
Kenworthy and Su (2010) found that there was no clear pattern of relationship
between voters' social economic status and their party choice. Gelman et al. (2010) suggest that the
influence must be due to other factors such as religion, education, or gender.
In New Zealand, Coffe et al.
(2014) conducted similar research and found
that inequality does affect the party choice of voters and is a significant
issue to be addressed. The inequality factors include income inequality, gender
inequality, and inequality in the status of other minority groups.

Because
gender inequality exists just like income inequality, the probability of gender
inequality influencing an election outcome is also high. Coffe et al (2014)
explain that it is the support of equality that was widely accepted, giving
rise to gender equality rights, income equality rights and the equality and
respect for minority groups. Even today, these groups still demand more
recognition from the state and the desire of achieving their demands can
influence their party choices. Therefore, this research tries to establish the
relationship between voters' social-economic status and the party they voted
for (their party choice) in the 2017 election. Because of the nature of the
issue, gender inequality might also influence voters' choices. Gender is used in this study as an
interfering variable in the relationship between social-economic status and
party-choice.


Abstract A global database of gastropod sizes from the Permian through the Middle Triassic documents trends in gastropod shell size and permits tests of the suggestion that Early Triassic gastropods were everywhere unusually small. Analysis of the database shows that no specimens of unambiguous Early Triassic age larger than 2.6 cm have been reported, in contrast to common 5– 10-cm specimens of both Permian and Middle Triassic age. The loss of large gastropods is abrupt even at a fine scale of stratigraphic resolution, whereas the return of larger individuals in the Middle Triassic appears gradual when finely resolved. Taphonomic and sampling biases do not adequately explain the absence of large Early Triassic gastropods. Examination of size trends by genus demonstrates that the size decrease across the Permian/Triassic boundary is compatible with both size-selective extinction at the species level and anagenetic size change within lineages. Size increase in the Middle Triassic resulted from the origination of large species within genera that have Early Triassic fossil records and the occurrence of new genera containing large species during the Middle Triassic. Genera recorded from the Permian and Middle Triassic but not the Early Triassic ("Lazarus taxa") do not contribute to observed size increase in the Middle Triassic. Moreover, Lazarus taxa lack large species and exhibit low species richness during both the Permian and the Middle Triassic, suggesting that they survived as small, rare forms rather than existing at large sizes in Early Triassic refugia. The ecological opportunities and selective pressures that produced large gastropods during most intervals of the Phanerozoic evidently did not operate in Early Triassic oceans. Whether this reflects low predation or competitive pressure, r-selection facilitated by high primary production, or physical barriers to large size remains poorly understood.


Studies of major hydropower projects such as that at the Grand Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) stress generation capacity and call for regional integration. They make little reference, however, to the potential for co-operation in energy policy that goes beyond the construction of energyrelated infrastructure. Concentrating on the Inga site's existing and future dams, this paper identifies several challenges to an emerging energy dialogue between Inga's regional stakeholders. It questions whether the recent energy deal between South Africa and the DRC has opened a path towards further regional energy co-operation.


China has been experiencing extraordinary economic growth for over two decades. Behind the remarkable statistics, however, it is facing a pressing issue: balancing its economic development needs with protecting its environmental resources. The environmental issue in China has a profound impact on the rest of the world as well, in such concerns as global warning and ethical and legal considerations about environmental enforcement. This book covers a broad range of topics, from specific environmental assessments in key sectors (i.e. desertification) to the policy implications of China's entry into the WTO. The contributors include scholars, government officials, business consultants, environmental science and technology experts, and others based in China and the United States. Sharing perspectives that reflect their diverse backgrounds, these experts offer valuable insights for handling the emerging opportunities and challenges of doing business in China.


The currently mainstream mobile application development became part of several programming classes, and courses are being developed focused on mobile app development. There are fundamental differences in programming topics for mobile, including the small screen and finger-based interactions, connectivity using different communication channels, and a large number of sensors. Because of these differences, there is a need to explore different approaches to teach the concepts of mobile development. Integrated approaches and collaborative learning are key to handle the multi-platform environment of mobile development and the diversity of its devices. One practice that has been used in educational contexts for collaborative learning is Pair Programming (PP); an approach that features two developers working on the same development task. Since it became popular in the 1990s, Pair Programming (PP) has been used by developers who worked on desktop and web applications. During the past two decades, PP has been studied in both industrial and classroom settings. Several studies have shown that PP is a pedagogical tool that can help students enhance their productivity and performance. However, PP has not been studied for mobile development courses before. With the challenging nature of mobile development topics, we saw potential benefits for pair-based learning. To cover the challenges of mobile development, we developed an approach that integrates Lectures, hands-on Tutorials, and in-class Pair Programming (PP) sessions (the LTP approach). Although PP has been studied previously in classroom settings, LTP provides an adapted version that better fits the requirements of mobile application development. Integrating PP as a core element of mobile development classes aims at giving opportunities to students to collaborate, share experiences, and solve problems together. Moreover, providing multiple teaching approaches ensures that students would benefit from the variety of education methods. The LTP approach aims at helping Computer Science (CS) educators to develop curricula and manage classes for teaching mobile app development. Multifaceted Approach for Teaching Mobile Software Development: Class Experiences with Lectures, Tutorials, and Pair Programming


This paper was written for a symposium on judicial accountability and independence, in response to Charles Geyh's paper, "Rescuing Judicial Accountability from the Realm of Political Rhetoric." Geyh's article is a valuable and ambitious effort to bring some substance and clarity to the overused, under-theorized notion of judicial accountability. In service of this goal, Geyh suggests a taxonomy for organizing judicial accountability into three categories: institutional, behavioral and decisional. He argues that sanctions for decisional errors may be appropriate in the rare instances in which those errors are not honest mistakes but deliberate usurpations of political power. In this article I raise concerns about both the taxonomy and the defense of sanctions for intentional error. As to the first, I argue that Geyh's proposed taxonomy both overstates the demarcation among the types of accountability it lists, and fails to adequately define the underlying notions of politics and activism so essential to the author's argument. My second concern follows from the first. Without a theory for what counts as political in the sense of inappropriately non-judicial, it is difficult to evaluate whether willful disregard of the law should be characterized as a deliberate usurpation of political power or whether sanctioning such acts will further accountability's proper purposes. I conclude that it is neither possible nor desirable to isolate the category of decisions that are inappropriately political and deserving of sanctions.


The design of kite forms is born from my inclination for combining the disciplines of digital imaging, printmaking, and sculpture. I employ digital tools to appropriate, composite, and manipulate elements of photography, drawing, and synthetic images, which are applied onto natural-fiber paper using wide-format inkjet printers. Design variables and elements are also derived from historic Chinese, Japanese, and German kite design. Older technologies such as woodworking, knot-tying, and paper folding help complete the manifestation of each object, which originates only as a technological virtual vision. The forms are partly influenced by the structures and rigging of fishing vessels in my home city, New Bedford. The surface designs are created for both close and distant viewing from layered photographic elements of natural and industrial forms, and textures are selected and altered primarily for overall color effect. The shapes of the kites and individual sails are drawn to create an asymmetrical yet emblem-atic implied relationship with flight and wind. I print on a small variety of Japanese papers that I pre-coat to improve the surface reception of ink. I typically design in series, where each group of two or three share a common structure in evolution. Light and shadow may also play a role in displays. Ultimately, the alliance of digital design, quality paper, and sculpture becomes the medium that I am able to express myself best with, as I am able to draw directly on a variety of old and new technologies including photography, three-dimensional design, and printmaking.


A much-needed historical perspective in the highly relevant contemporary debates around these two notions by contextualising their discussion from ancient Greece to Soviet Russia.


Much of the research on the economic integration of immigrants centers on educational and occupational mobility from the first through third generation. Although intermarriage is a key component of both old (Gordon 1964) and new (Alba and Nee 2003) perspectives on immigrant assimilation, the role of intermarriage in the economic integration of immigrants remains poorly understood. As the population of immigrants and children of immigrants has increased in the past few decades, the increasing availability of marital partners with the same national origin has led to an increase in endogamous marriages in the second generation. What are the implications of the decline in intermarriage for the economic outcomes of the second generation of post-1960s immigrants? We use pooled cross-sectional data from the IPUMS-CPS 1996-2010 to investigate the relationship between assortative mating by national origins and the economic well-being of adult children of immigrants. We find that (1) children of immigrants who partner with members of the same national-origin group have lower income and living standards relative to those who intermarry; (2) children of immigrants who partner with a native-born spouse or cohabiting partner are not economically advantaged as compared to those who partner exogamously with first and second generation immigrants; and (3) the economic gains from intermarriage depend on the race and ethnicity of both partners, with Asian immigrants the only group to show no effect of assortative mating.


Various aspects of three-dimensional spin foam models for quantum gravity are discussed. Spin foam models and graphical calculus are introduced via the Ponzano-Regge model for 3d gravity and some important properties of this model are described. The asymptotic formula for the 6j symbol found by Ponzano and Regge is generalised to include the Ponzano-Regge amplitude for triangulations of handlebodies. Some simple observables are computed in a model for fermions coupled to 3d gravity. The result is a sum over spin foam models with certain vertex amplitudes which are described. An explicit example is given and the vertex amplitudes expressed in terms of 6j symbols. Finally, a group field theory for this spin foam model is described.


The striped goby, Gobius vittatus Vinciguerra, 1883 is a Mediterranean gobiid species considered to be rare with very little data on its biology and ecology. A sample of 704 specimens of G. vittatus was collected by SCUBA diving at three locations in the northern Adriatic Sea (Kvarner area) from April 2001 to March 2002. The present paper provides the first information on age structure, lifespan, growth and mortality of G. vittatus. The size range of individuals was between 19.2 and 54.0 mm. The maximum estimated age was 4 and 3 years for females and males respectively. The total mortality rate (Z) was estimated to be from 0.94 to 1.08 for females and from 0.99 to 1.43 for males. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters estimated from the mean monthly age-length data were significantly different between sexes (females: L8 = 50.96, K = 1.02 and t0 = -0.47; males: L8 = 50.13, K = 1.18 and t0 = -0.42).


A new male condom made of polyurethane will be marketed in 1994 for those who do not like latex condoms according to officials at London International U.S. Holdings in New York City, the manufacturing firm. The company makes well-known latex condoms, including Ramses, Sheik, Durex, Hatu, and London. Company officials expect it will be more acceptable to men because it is more comfortable to those who have objections to using latex condoms. The major objections include odor and decreased sensitivity. The new plastic condom will probably cost more than latex condoms but less than natural skin condoms. The condom will be made from a new material called Duron and it received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for market several years ago. In company-conducted tests, the new condom's failure rate was no different than for top-quality latex condoms. Because the new material is thinner and stronger than latex, it can be made to fit looser than a latex condom. The new condom will be slightly bigger than its latex counterpart. Polyurethane will not cause problems for those allergic to latex, and it will not break down when used with oil-based lubricants. The new material is expected to last longer than latex, but for safety it probably should be treated like a latex condom in terms of heat exposure. A new plastic condom is being studied at Family Health International (FHI), a nonprofit medical research organization located in Durham, NC. In June 1992, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, awarded FHI $1.3 million to develop and test over a 4-year period a condom made of soft, thin plastic. FHI has developed several prototypes and is evaluating them in ongoing clinical trials. Another nonlatex condom, called Tactylon, is still awaiting FDA approval. The FDA has called for several tests to rule out cancer risk from the product and to clarify any shelf-life hazards.


Although the use of sugar and sugar derivatives has been documented in polymer research for many years, there are no reports that would utilize these species as polymerization sites of colloidal polymeric particles that, later on, may be released during particle coalescence to form films with surfaces that differentiate protein adsorption. These studies show that, when n-dodecyl-beta-D-maltoside (DDM) is utilized for the synthesis and stabilization of poly[methyl methacrylate-co-(n-butyl acrylate)] (p-MMA/nBA) colloidal particles, upon particle coalescence DDM stratifies near the film-air (F-A) interface. By using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR FT-IR) spectroscopy and internal reflection infrared imaging (IRIRI), comparative adsorption studies on p-MMA/nBA surfaces exposed to globulin (Glo), fibrinogen (Fib), and bovine serum albumin (BSA) reveal that the presence of DDM selectively inhibits Glo and Fib adsorption, but does not affect BSA. The presence of DDM also enhances the rate of mobility of sodium dioctylsulfosuccinate (SDOSS) resulting from interactions between DDM and SDOSS moieties, and the surface morphologies change as a result of concentration variations of DDM in the colloidal dispersions.


The growing literature on undergraduate teaching and learning currently lacks an organising framework. This article sets out to provide one, distinguishing between hard pure, soft pure, hard applied and soft applied fields of study, and hence making it possible to highlight generally unremarked similarities and differences between the various research findings. In doing so, it draws extensively on the relevant literature, offering separate analyses of knowledge-related and socially related studies. The former embody curriculum, assessment and cognitive purpose, while the latter encompass group characteristics of teachers, types of teaching method and student learning requirements. The concluding section draws out the main implications for policy and practice related to staff development, computer-based learning, assessment of student learning and quality measures.


This work reports the stability of the resonant characteristics in multimode interferometer coupled square ring semiconductor cavities. Based on the analysis of single square ring cavities, the single mode operations in the multimode interferometer coupled ring cavities are analyzed and the devices are demonstrated on the semiconductor multiple quantum well epitaxial structure. By varying the lasing conditions such as substrate temperature and input pump power, single resonant mode operations are also observed.


ABSTRACT:San Francisco's continued economic boom threatens to displace much of its culturally diverse population, including LGBTQ residents who have made the city a center of the national and international struggle for civil rights and equitable treatment. Queer activists and their preservation allies have worked together to apply several new cultural preservation strategies to help LGBTQ people maintain their place in the city and preserve their significant local cultural heritage. This article examines three particular strategies – the Legacy Business Program, a Citywide LGBTQ Cultural Heritage Strategy, and a series of Cultural Districts – to consider their effectiveness in preserving the tangible remains of LGBTQ heritage and sustaining contemporary queer culture in an increasingly unaffordable city. The analysis yields several recommendations for advocates of preserving LGBTQ culture in rapidly-changing, high cost communities: develop tools that move beyond traditional preservation methods to capture the intangible aspects of culture; act at a citywide scale and in a manner that includes the broad range of LGBTQ practices and perspectives; integrate economic and community development strategies into standard preservation methods; and recognize the salience of identities other than and in addition to queer as part of an intersectional approach to sustaining the city's diverse cultural heritage.


Abstract Objective: The research objective was to identify processes that could either facilitate or hinder clinical implementation of an Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy intervention for tinnitus in the UK. This was done by exploring the research context, the intervention components and the factors that contributed to the outcomes obtained. Design: This study investigated eight processes including the recruitment strategies, reach, research context, treatment dose delivered and received, implementation fidelity, barriers to implementation and effectiveness of the intervention. Study sample: Of the 169 registered participants, 146 were randomly assigned to the experimental or control groups (23 were excluded). The mean age was 55.57 years with an average tinnitus duration of 11.63 years. Results: The intended sample of people with distressing tinnitus who were underserved with evidence-based tinnitus interventions was reached. The full guided intervention was delivered. The recommended modules were read more than the optional modules. Intervention components such as the easily readable format and the benefits of the applied relaxation programme facilitated significant positive post-intervention outcomes. Barriers hampering the intervention application included time pressures and low self-motivation. Conclusions: Results of this process evaluation together with the outcome data can be used to facilitate translating this research into clinical practice.


The Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis of the hydrodynamic performance of two America's Cup design candidates is presented. Two fully appended hulls were tested in a free to sink and trim condition. The experimental data of one of the two hulls was known a priori and was used to investigate several computational parameters, which are discussed in the present paper. The validated numerical model was used to predict the performance of the second hull, whose experimental data were unknown a priori. The a posteriori numerical/experimental comparison showed that the numerical model was able to predict the performance of the two hulls with a level of accuracy of the same order of magnitude of the experimental test.


We performed a bibliographic electronic search of MEDLINE and Cochrane databases on breast cancer in the elderly. In the adjuvant setting aromatase inhibitors are more effective than tamoxifen with an acceptable profile of toxicity. In aged, poorer risk, patients adjuvant chemotherapy is feasible but organ function and comorbidities have to be considered. Adjuvant trastuzumab is also an option for the treatment of Her2 positive aged breast cancer. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy ± HER2-targeted treatment is today a possible treatment for triple negative and HER2-positive disease, respectively. Older women are more likely than younger women to present with more advanced breast cancer. Hormone therapy is the treatment of choice for older women with hormone receptor positive metastatic breast cancer until they develop resistance. When appropriate, polychemotherapy may be employed but unfortunately we have a lack of data on this matter. However, because fit women older than 70 years of age have similar results with chemotherapy as their younger counterparts most oncologists tend to propose this option to their patients. Trastuzumab has proven to be effective and well tolerated in elderly patients (older than 60-70 years), but caution is needed due to the risk of heart failure. Recently, an all-oral combination of capecitabine and vinorelbine demonstrated good acitivity and tolerability profile in patients older than 70 years. Nab-paclitaxel has shown a safer and more active profile compared with the q3w taxanes in such population. There is, therefore, an urgent need to study anticancer agents in the elderly within large randomized controlled trials.


From the Publisher:
Meta-heuristics have developed dramatically since their inception in the early 1980's. They have had widespread success in attacking a variety of practical and difficult combinatorial optimization problems. They incorporate concepts based on biological evolution, intelligent problem solving, mathematical and physical sciences, nervous systems, and statistical mechanics. Since the 1980's, a great deal of effort has been invested in the field of combinatorial optimization theory in which heuristic algorithms have become an important area of research and applications. This volume is drawn from the first conference on Meta-Heuristics and contains 41 papers on the state-of-the-art in heuristic theory and applications. The book treats the following meta-heuristics and applications: Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, Networks & Graphs, Scheduling and Control, TSP, and Vehicle Routing Problems. It represents research from the fields of Operations Research, Management Science, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science.


The relationship between dementia and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) cerebral load is not clearly understood. We used immunohistochemistry and competitive polymerase chain reaction to evaluate the density ofgp 41 immunostained cells and the amount of HIV-1 DNA and RNA in the midfrontal gyrus of 21 HIV-1 infected patients, nine of whom were demented. The amounts of HIV-1 DNA and RNA, and the density of gp 41-positive cells were significantly linked. In this small series of cases, (1) although as a mean, there was a larger viral load in demented patients than in nondemented, this did not reach the significance level (2) discrepancies appeared in the population under study, some demented patients having low viral loads.


Objective. The aim of the study was to investigate the role of malondialdehyde, nitric oxide and adrenomedullin in the etiopathogenesis of preeclampsia. Material and Methods. Forty-two pregnant women with preeclampsia and 30 healthy pregnant women were involved. The plasma concentrations of malondialdehyde, nitric oxide, and adrenomedullin were compared between the study group and the control group. Results. In women with preeclampsia the plasma concentrations of malondialdehyde was higher while nitric oxide and adrenomedullin concentrations were lower compared to control subjects. Conclusion. We concluded that the plasma levels of ADM and NO are decreased while MDA levels are increased in subjects with preeclampsia and that might contribute to the pathophysiology of preeclampsia through the lack of a paracrine vasodilatory effect on uteroplacental blood flow.


We describe the design and implementation of a collaborative, computer-based finger painting program for children using a new hardware input device called a MultiTouch Surface (MTS). The MTS uses a flat surface about the size of a keyboard to track multiple, simultaneous finger motions, which we transform into paint strokes on a screen. We describe related work and explain how our program design was guided by the suggestions of children. We discuss the hardware and software of the MTS and the challenges of designing our program. Finally, we present the Finger Painting Table, a collaborative, embedded application built using the MTS, and discuss future work.


The research presented in this thesis describes a framework for database implementation of EXPRESS information models. EXPRESS models describe complex structures and correctness conditions for engineering activities, and are defined by the ISO-10303 Standard for Product Data Exchange (STEP). These models are a substantial engineering resource, and industry desires to use them to integrate design and manufacturing processes. Databases built around STEP models are essential because they provide content that integrated engineering processes understand.
The Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) is a STEP API for EXPRESS-defined data. Prototypes have attempted to provide SDAI access by implementing each SDAI operation as one or more native operations directly upon the database. A direct binding can be costly, as it requires completely new software for each database. This work proposes several SDAI implementation architectures that offer alternatives to a direct binding.
To evaluate the real-world performance of implementations, this work defines a set of representative benchmarks on the STEP AP-203 information model. AP-203 contains information such as CAD geometry and product configuration that is common to all of the STEP models. The STEPStone benchmarks cover information that is modeled in an existence dependent style (PartStone, part versions), a navigational style (NURBStone, geometry), and a mix of the two (BOMStone, bill of material).
The results of timing experiments using these benchmarks are presented. The experiments evaluate the performance of direct-binding SDAI implementations built on relational and object-oriented databases, and examine the effect of various optimizations on binding performance. Analysis of the timing results provide the relative cost of access for each system, and allow us to determine when each implementation style will be most advantageous. In addition, these experiments provide insight about the use of SDAI access versus traditional access strategies.


Market-oriented approach is an effective method for resource management because of its regulation of supply and demand and is suitable for cloud environment where the computing resources, either software or hardware, are virtualized and allocated as services from providers to users. In this paper a continuous double auction method for efficient cloud service allocation is presented in which i) enables consumers to order various resources (services) for workflows and coallocation, ii) consumers and providers make bid and request prices based on deadline and workload time and in addition providers can tradeoff between utilization time and price of bids, iii) auctioneers can intelligently find optimum matching by sharing and merging resources which result more trades. Experimental results show that proposed method is efficient in terms of successful allocation rate and resource utilization.


Introduction: Appendicitis is one of the most common causes of acute abdominal pain requiring surgical intervention, but the variability of diagnosis and management continue to challenge the surgeons. Aim: This study assessed patients undergoing appendectomy to identify opportunities to improve diagnostic accuracy and outcomes. Methods: An ethically approved retrospective cohort study was undertaken between March 2016 and March 2017 at a single university hospital of all consecutive adult and paediatric patients undergoing appendectomy. Demographic data including age, gender, co-morbidities, presentation and triage timings along with investigation, imaging and operative data were analysed. Appendicitis was defined as acute based on histology coupled with intraoperative grading with the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) grades. Complications using the Clavien–Dindo classification along with 30-day re-admission rates and the negative appendectomy rates (NAR) were recorded and categorised greater and less than 25%. The use of scoring systems was assessed, and retrospective scoring performed to compare the Alvarado, Adult Appendicitis Score (AAS) and the Appendicitis Inflammatory Response (AIR) score. Results: A total of 201 patients were studied, 115 male and 86 females, of which 136/201 (67.6%) were adults and 65/201 (32.3%) paediatric. Of the adult group, 83 were male and 53 were female, and of the paediatric group, 32 were male and 33 were female. Median age was 20 years (range: 5 years to 81 years) and no patient below the age of 5 years had an appendectomy during our study period. All patients were admitted via the emergency department and median time from triage to surgical review was 2 h and 38 min, (range: 10 min to 26 h and 10 min). Median time from emergency department review to surgical review, 55 min (range: 5 min to 6 h and 43 min). Median time to operating theatre was 21 h from admission (range: 45 min to 140 h and 30 min). Out of the total patients, 173 (86.1%) underwent laparoscopic approach, 28 (13.9%) had an open approach and 12 (6.9%) of the 173 were converted to open. Acute appendicitis occurred in 166/201 (82.6%). There was no significant association between grade of appendicitis and surgeons' categorical NAR rate (p = 0.07). Imaging was performed in 118/201 (58.7%); abdominal ultrasound (US) in 53 (26.4%), abdominal computed tomography (CT) in 59 (29.2%) and both US and CT in 6 (3%). The best cut-off point was 4 (sensitivity 84.3% and specificity of 65.7%) for AIR score, 9 (sensitivity of 74.7% and specificity of 68.6%) for AAS, and 7 (sensitivity of 77.7% and specificity of 71.4%) for the Alvarado score. Twenty-four (11.9%) were re-admitted, due to pain in 16 (58.3%), collections in 3 (25%), 1 (4.2%) wound abscess, 1 (4.2%) stump appendicitis, 1 (4.2%) small bowel obstruction and 1 (4.2%) fresh rectal bleeding. CT guided drainage was performed in 2 (8.3%). One patient had release of wound collection under general anaesthetic whereas another patient had laparoscopic drain placement. A laparotomy was undertaken in 3 (12.5%) patients with division of adhesions in 1, the appendicular stump removed in 1 and 1 had multiple collections drained. Conclusion: The negative appendectomy and re-admission rates were unacceptably high and need to be reduced. Minimising surgical variance with use of scoring systems and introduction of pathways may be a strategy to reduce NAR. New systems of feedback need to be introduced to improve outcomes.


»Erdbebenvorhersage im Japan der Okkupationszeit«. In the span of the first few years after Japan's defeat in World War II, five of Japan's leading earth scientists came forward to warn the nation that major earthquakes would soon occur. They (almost) never did. This article focuses on those predictions to highlight the debates that shaped early postwar efforts in Japan to make scientists, and earth scientists in particular, guardians of the public's safety. It draws on multiple archival collections, participant accounts and popular media coverage to explore the tensions between individual scientists and newly formed, officially sanctioned bodies charged with coordinating earthquake prediction research. These tensions, I argue, reflect both a long-standing ambivalence within the field toward prediction's legitimacy, and the emergence of a new set of research and policy imperatives for Japan's earth scientists that privileged it. The legacies of the Occupation-era encounters with prediction include the 1962 publication of Earthquake Prediction: Current Status and a Plan for Development, the formation of the Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction in 1969 and the passage of the Large-Scale Earthquake Countermeas-