Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.


The aim of this research was to determine the effectiveness of tumeric and tamarind to relieve dysmenorrhoea. The method was quasy experiment by giving tumeric and tamarind stew to the experimental group. The research was conducted on SMAN 9 Pekanbaru, toward 30 respondent which devided into two group. The first group was experimental group and the second group was control group. The sampling used purposive sampling technique, the measurement was a numeric rating scale to measure the intensity of pain. The analysis were univarite and bivariate analysis by using t-dependent sample test and mann whitney. The result showed there was a significant reduction of the intensity of pain to the experimental group after the group had taken the tumeric and tamarind stew ( p < α  0,05). Its mean that the stew was efective to relieve dysmenorrhoea. Its recomended to female student to apply the tumeric and tamarind stew as herbal medicine to relieve the dysmenorrhoea. Keywords : dysmenorrhoea, turmeric, tamarind


The factors controlling the reactivity and endo/exo selectivity of Lewis acid-catalysed Diels–Alder reactions between highly substituted open-chain 1,3-dienes and α,β-enals have been explored computationally by means of density functional theory calculations. In agreement with previous experimental observations, it is found that the B(C6F5)3-catalysed cycloaddition reaction leads almost exclusively to the corresponding exo-cycloadduct, whereas the analogous AlCl3-mediated process is highly endo-selective. The effect of Lewis acid bulkiness on stereoselectivity has been quantitatively analysed by means of a combination of the activation strain model of reactivity and the energy decomposition analysis methods. In contrast to the current view, the exo-selectivity promoted by the bulky B(C6F5)3 catalyst does not result from the steric destabilization of the corresponding endo-transition state but from the interplay between the less destabilizing strain energy and the stronger interaction between the deformed reactants along the entire reaction coordinate. In addition, non-covalent interactions are found to play a crucial role in stabilizing the exo-approach. These results allow us to not only quantitatively understand the effect of the Lewis acids in the process, but also predict new catalysts leading to highly exo-selective Diels–Alder reactions.


Background Pregnant women and infants under 6 months are at risk of influenza-related complications. Limited information exists on their community burden of respiratory viruses. Methods and Findings This prospective, observational open cohort study was conducted in Baganuur district, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia during 2013/14 and 2014/15 influenza seasons. Influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (sARI) were identified by follow-up calls twice a week. For those identified, influenza and respiratory syncytical virus (RSV) were tested by point-of-care test kits. We calculated overall and stratified (by trimester or age group) incidence rates (IR) and used Cox proportional hazard regression for risk factor analyses. Among 1260 unvaccinated pregnant women enrolled, overall IRs for ILI, sARI and influenza A were 11.8 (95% confidence interval (C.I):11.2–12.4), 0.1 (95%C.I:0.0–0.4), and 1.7 (95%C.I:1.5–1.9) per 1,000person-days, respectively. One sARI case was influenza A positive. IRs and adjusted hazard ratios (Adj.HR) for ILI and influenza A were lowest in the third trimester. Those with co-morbidity were 1.4 times more likely to develop ILI [Adj.HR:1.4 (95%C.I:1.1–1.9)]. Among 1304 infants enrolled, overall ILI and sARI IRs were 15.2 (95%C.I:14.5–15.8) and 20.5 (95%C.I:19.7–21.3) per 1,000person-days, respectively. From the tested ILI (77.6%) and sARI (30.6%) cases, the overall positivity rates were 6.3% (influenza A), 1.1% (influenza B) and 9.3% (RSV). Positivity rates of influenza A and RSV tend to increase with age. sARI cases were 1.4 times more likely to be male [Adj.HR:1.4 (95%C.I:1.1–1.8)]. Among all influenza A and RSV positive infants, 11.8% and 68.0% were respectively identified among sARI hospitalized cases. Conclusion We observed low overall influenza A burden in both groups, though underestimation was likely due to point-of-care tests used. For infants, RSV burden was more significant than influenza A. These findings would be useful for establishing control strategies for both viruses in Mongolia.


This is a study entitled "threats in livelihood among adult". A major purpose of this study is to assess the level of the threats of livelihood in the near future among the adults. The study was carried out among the Facebook users who were connected with the researcher's account having at least +2 completed. This is a quantitative study and used cross-sectional descriptive research design to answer research question. Among the users, 113 were selected randomly and survey form prepared in google form share to them for data collection. Researcher succeeded in gathering data from 100 respondents with a 88.5 percent response rate. Collected data were analysed through quantitative methods like; frequency distribution, diagrams, etc. and MannWhitney U test and Chi-square test are applied to test the hypothesis formulated in the study. The study found the highest responses from age group 20-24 which consists of 38 percent. Similarly, the study found the highest percentage (54%) in the Brahmin group in the caste/ethnic character of the population and Hindu group in religious characteristics. About 84 percent population used the Nepali language as a mother tongue. Furthermore, about 35 percent study population found completion of Master's level education and about 47 percent population reported that work problem is the major reason for not involving a further higher level of education. From the study, it is found that all the individuals of the study population has threats of livelihood in the near future. That treats found high in the factor of increasing the price of goods and services but in all the factors threats of livelihood found the medium. The statistical test proved that there is no significant association between threats in livelihood and caste/ethnicity of the study population. Similarly, the study also found that the average level of threats in livelihood does not vary by male and female.


Abstract Appeals to intuitions as evidence in philosophy are challenged by experimental philosophers and other critics. A common response to experimental philosophical criticisms is to hold that only professional philosophers' intuitions count as evidence in philosophy. This 'expert intuitions defence' is inadequate for two reasons. First, recent studies indicate significant variability in professional philosophers' intuitions. Second, the academic literature on professional intuitions gives us reasons to doubt that professional philosophers develop truth-apt intuitions. The onus falls on those who mount the expert intuitions defence to meet these objections because it is implicitly being claimed that training and practice caused professional philosophers to acquire reliably accurate intuitions and we are owed an account of how this transformation takes place. A possible response to this situation is to attempt to reform philosophical practice to improve the quality of intuitions. Another possible response, advocated here, is to avoid appeals to intuitions as evidence.


The fact that terminal cancer patients experience considerable psychological distress is now undisputed, but the effectiveness of psychological treatments in relieving this suffering is less clear. The aim of the present research was to evaluate the efficacy of clinical hypnosis in the enhancement of quality of life of patients with far-advanced cancer. Fifty terminally ill cancer patients were randomly assigned to two groups: standard care and hypnosis. Patients in the standard care group received routine medical and psychological care. Their medical treatment included pharmacological management of pain and other symptoms following the World Health Organization's model of palliative care (WHO, 1990). The psychological support consisted of supportive counselling based on the cognitive existential therapeutic tradition. In addition to the standard care, patients in the hypnosis group received weekly sessions of hypnosis with a therapist for four weeks. Outcome measures included quality of life, as measured by The Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (DeHaes, Olschewski, Fayers, Visser, Cull, Hopwood and Sanderman, 1996), and depression and anxiety, as measured by The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Zigmond and Snaith, 1983). Results demonstrated that at the end of intervention patients in the hypnosis group had significantly better overall quality of life and lower levels of anxiety and depression when compared to the standard care group. It is concluded that hypnosis is effective in the enhancement of quality of life in terminally ill cancer patients.


South Gippsland Region Water Authority experience manganese problems in most of their surface water reservoirs. Manganese is present in the form of manganese(II) ions and manganic dioxide solids. At low dissolved oxygen levels, the manganic dioxide is reduced to the manganese(II) ion. If not oxidised, the manganese(II) ion escapes through water treatment facilities and enters the supply system. Once in the system, the manganese ions are gradually oxidised to insoluble manganic dioxide causing dirty water problems which can stain clothes and bathing equipment. As part of the water treatment process, manganese(II) can be oxidised to insoluble manganic oxide and then removed by clarification and filtration. Generally, oxidation can be achieved by aeration or chemical oxidation by addition of an oxidising agent such as potassium permanganate (KMnO 4 ) or chlorine. However, due to fluctuations of manganese levels in raw water, treatment techniques are often very difficult. This paper shares the experiences of South Gippsland Water in using potassium permanganate as part of the water treatment process to remove manganese in its surface water reservoirs. Whilst consideration is given to the advantages and disadvantages of alternative oxidation methods, this paper primarily focuses on the use of KMnO 4 to remove manganese and the resulting analytical problems associated with monitoring manganese levels.


Abstract. Ouratea spectabilis is a ubiquitous tree species in the Brazilian savannas, or Cerrados, where it plays an important ecological role. We studied its anthesis phenology, pollination biology, pollen viability, and pollen tube growth, and executed a set of intra- and interspecific experimental crosses to determine its mechanisms of incompatibility and reproductive ecology. The species presents a specialized buzz pollination syndrome and is served by a small array of specialized pollinator species. It is a mostly self-incompatible species, and although self-pollination is possible, it strongly reduces fertility, with reproductive outputs for hand self-pollination similar to those of interspecific crosses with the co-generic species O. hexasperma. Incompatibility with another commonly co-occurring co-generic species, O. floribunda, was complete, with a null fruit set, as occurred for the autonomous apomixis tests. Our pollen tube growth observations indicate that incompatibility occurs at the style, and is thus pre-zygotic. All three Ouratea species presented very high pollen viability. Manual pollen supplementation did not increase seed sets. Nevertheless, even after excess manual pollen supplementation, seed-to-ovule ratios were only 30%. Such limits are common in stressful environments, and fruit production for most Cerrado species is reported to be regularly under those levels. The apparent ubiquity of this fertility limit among Cerrado species poses interesting ecological questions, such as the role of environmental stress on reproduction and the potential overproduction of ovules as an evolutionary strategy to deal with seed predation – questions which deserve further research in the future.


The constituents of soft matter systems such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, polymers, and biological tissues undergo microscopic random motion, due to thermal energy. They may also experience drift motion correlated over mesoscopic or macroscopic length scales, e.g. in response to an internal or applied stress or during flow. We present a new method for measuring simultaneously both the microscopic motion and the mesoscopic or macroscopic drift. The method is based on the analysis of spatio-temporal cross-correlation functions of speckle patterns taken in an imaging configuration. The method is tested on a translating Brownian suspension and a sheared colloidal glass.


The increasing demand for on-line collaborative applications has sparked the interest for multicast services, which in many cases have to guarantee properties such as authentication or con dentiality within groups of users. To do so, cryptographic protocols are generally used and the cryptographic keys, in which they rely, have to be managed (e.g. created, updated, distributed). The procedures to perform these operations are determined by the so-called Group Key Management Schemes. Many schemes have been proposed and some of them have been proven to be vulnerable. This is the case of the Piao et al. scheme, whose scalability/e ciency is very good but it is vulnerable to many attacks because its security is based on a weak mathematical problem, so it can be broken in polynomial time. Inspired by the concepts proposed in the Piao et al. scheme we have redesigned the protocol and we have founded it on a hard mathematical problem and tweaked some of the procedures. This way, we propose a new scheme that is e cient, collusion free, and provides backward and forward secrecy.


Enterprise Architecture (EA) is introduced as a general approach to aligning business and IT within an organization. Therefore, EA should guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. The developments in the various layers (business architecture, IS architecture and IT architecture) influence each other and, consequently, architectural matters are critical for achieving alignment between the business and its information systems. An essential component of EA is design principles, which strive to manage the complexities in business processes and IT systems. Some scholars argue that design principles are the essence of EA. Design principles can either align, or misalign, IT/IS artefacts with the architecture. If the principles are aligned, they will have a positive impact on the organizational effects and values, but if they are misaligned, they will have a negative impact on effects and values. Unfortunately, EA principles have not yet received much research attention, although there are a few scholars addressing EA principles from a conceptual point of view. Empirical insights regarding the role and usefulness of EA principles in practice are still lacking. The purpose of this empirical study is to describe how various dimensions of alignment are considered by design principles. One crucial design principle will be mainly highlighted, namely the delineation principle. Delineation principles focus on how to delineate IS or business domains and create "systems of systems" that are in harmony with different requirements of the business. A case study of a large Swedish insurance company is used as a basis for the analysis. The result shows that the IS and business delineation principles do not mirror each in regards of the dimension of alignment. The result also shows that design principles mainly consider the functional dimension of alignment. This paper argues that it is essential to evaluate IS and business design principles against each other based on functional, structural, socio-cultural and infological alignment.


Abstract Two new targeted agents have been approved for pediatric and adult patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors with neurotrophic receptor tyrosine kinase (NTRK) gene fusion without an acquired resistance mutation. Larotrectinib and entrectinib are the second and third agents to be approved as tissue agnostic treatments, respectively. NTRK gene fusion is now a targetable biomarker for patients who may otherwise be devoid of satisfactory alternative treatment options. In this article, the safety and efficacy trials of each medication, and the initial and ongoing monitoring required for patients on these treatments will be discussed.


Energy is the input in which modern society depends the most for life standard maintenance besides economic and social activities, however, it is also one of the major sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, especially the electric sector, due to a world energy matrix concentrated on oil and coal resources. Hereby, impact analysis is essential for policy making focused on sustainable energy systems, once it provides ex ante evaluations for the diverse effects of new projects, being especially important in relation to large infra-structure investments as power plants. In the Brazilian case, although the current electrical matrix is primarily renewable and has low GHG intensity, the required expansion of generation capacity leads to rediscuss power plants' alternatives and their externalities. Due to the transient and heterogeneous demand of these projects, economic, environmental, energy and social impacts must be assessed dynamically and spatially. This study proposes a social-environmental economic model, based on Regional Sequential Interindustry Model (SIM) integrated with geoprocessing data, in order to identify economic, pollution and public health impacts in state and county levels for energy planning analysis. Integrating I-O framework with electrical and dispersion models, dose-response functions and GIS data, this model aims to expand policy makers' scope of analysis and provide an auxiliary tool to assess energy planning scenarios in Brazil. Moreover, a case study for wind power plants in Brazil is performed to illustrate its usage.


Probabilistic databases (PDBs) are usually incomplete, e.g., containing only the facts that have been extracted from the Web with high confidence. However, missing facts are often treated as being false, which leads to unintuitive results when querying PDBs. Recently, open-world probabilistic databases (OpenPDBs) were proposed to address this issue by allowing probabilities of unknown facts to take any value from a fixed probability interval. In this paper, we extend OpenPDBs by Datalog+/- ontologies, under which both upper and lower probabilities of queries become even more informative, enabling us to distinguish queries that were indistinguishable before. We show that the dichotomy between P and PP in (Open)PDBs can be lifted to the case of first-order rewritable positive programs (without negative constraints); and that the problem can become NP^PP-complete, once negative constraints are allowed. We also propose an approximating semantics that circumvents the increase in complexity caused by negative constraints.


The selachians found in the Shotgun Member of the Fort Union Formation indicate that the waters in which the deposits were formed were saline. The suggestion is made that during middle and possibly late Paleocene a remnant of the Cannonball Sea prevailed in the western Plains region. It is postulated that periodic flooding from the Cannonball Sea of parts of the Wind River basin took place to produce significant salinity to support a selachian fauna in Waltman Lake.


In this paper we introduce the dynamic semiparametric factor model (DSFM) for electricity forward curves. The biggest advantage of our approach is that it not only leads to smooth, seasonal forward curves extracted from exchange traded futures and forward electricity contracts, but also to a parsimonious factor representation of the curve. Using closing prices from the Nordic power market Nord Pool we provide empirical evidence that the DSFM is an efficient tool for approximating forward curve dynamics.


The emotional euphoria of the East European regime changes in 1989-1990 and the subsequent implosion of the Soviet system led to a widespread view in both West and East that communist parties would disappear and become a matter of only historical interest. Closer analysis of political processes raised doubts about this view. Whatever rational or irrational reactions emerged about the post-Soviet communist parties, they were forces deeply rooted in twentieth century history and were unlikely to disappear in a quantum leap of change. It is the hypothesis of this inquiry into the radical left, which had enjoyed considerable support in the aftermath of World War II, that it was capable of surviving the crisis and may remain a part of the political realities for some time to come.


Core routers perform longest prefix matching (LPM) using content addressable memories (CAMs). With the rapid growth of the Internet, LPM has become the bottleneck in network traffic management. In the previous publication, we have proposed an area-efficient and highperformance CAM emulator using an LUT cascade based on an edgevalued multi-valued decision diagram (EVMDD (k)). In the internet, registered vectors must be updated frequently. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to update an LUT cascade. We implemented the proposed algorithm on the ARM processor. Its update time is shorter than the peak update time of the BGP protocol. Also, we analyzed the power consumption of the LUT cascade with respect to both the static and the dynamic power. Experimental results show that, as for the lookup speed per area and the power consumption, our architecture outperforms existing CAM realizations on FPGAs.


In this paper an Evolutionary Computation based energy efficient novel key organization (ECEEKO) policy has been proposed by incorporating computational safety, power management and restricted usage of memory in wireless communication. Generating functions of secured key are generated from the sink node through evolutionary computation and distribute to the header and sensor nodes. On agreeable particular power consumption constraints each potential key generating function (KGF) is encoded as a chromosome. Using entropy measure fitness is calculated to assess key distribution. Common keys are assembling by headers and sensor nodes. Performance analysis of the ECEEKO approach and comparison study with several existing methods has been done.


A study was made of the adaptation to dietary protein of nitrogenous components in blood and urine of rats and humans. Forty-four mature male rats "ere adapted to a low protein diet (10 per cent casein diet) for three weeks before they were divided into two groups. Four rats were then killed for a control, and twenty of the remaining rats were switched to a high protein diet (40 per cent casein diet) and the other twenty continued to be fed the low protein diet. Four rats fed each level of protein were killed 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 days after they were divided into two groups. A study similar to that carried out on rats was conducted on six male college students who were living in the same unit of a cooking dormitory. Blood and urine samples were taken when they were eating a normal diet as a control and then they were adapted on a low protein dict providing 12 per cent of the calories as protein for two weeks. They were then switched to a high protein diet containing 30 per cent protein calories for four consecutive days. The rats fed the 40 per cent casein diet had a higher rate of weight gain and increased amounts of urine per 24 hours than the rats fed the 10 per cent casein diet. Urinary output of the human subjects on the diets containing 30 per cent protein calories was greater than when they received the 12 per cent protein calorie diet. There was a significant increase in total nitrogen and urea in serum and urine of rats and humans as the dietary protein level increased. The urinary excretion of uric acid, of creatinine in humans, and of urinary amino nitrogen and total serum protein in rats and humans were also increased appreciably as the protein intake increased. Ko significant effects or trends in serum amino nitrogen of humans, or serum creatinine in rats or humans were observed with the change in the level of dietary protein. The high casein diet fed to rats reduced the excretion of creatinine and serum uric acid, while the high meat intake increased the excretion of creatinine and of uric acid in the humans. It was also found that there was a high negative correlation between serum uric acid and urinary uric acid of rats, and between serum amino nitrogen and urinary amino nitrogen of human subjects. This study indicates that the body rapidly adjusts to an altered level of protein intake by changing the level of nitrogenous components in blood and urine.


In this paper, the density of states and the mobility of an extra electron or hole are calculated in the atomic limit of the Hubbard model. Both the half-filled single-band and multiple-band situations are discussed. The problem is formulated in terms of the number of paths which return to the origin leaving the spin configuration unchanged. The density of states then depends on spin configuration and we have considered the random (R) (high-temperature) and antiferromagnetic (AF) arrangements. Examination of the first five nonzero moments for the simple cubic lattice indicates that the bands are narrowed by a factor of 0.745 (AF) and 0.805 (R). However, the exact bands have tails extending out to the full free-particle width for both spin arrangements. An approximate one-particle Green's function is obtained by summing all graphs with no closed loops. Such paths give a density of states that is independent of spin arrangement and is relatively flat with a sharp square-root edge at $2{(z\ensuremath{-}1)}^{\frac{1}{2}}t$. Here $z$ is the coordination number and $t$ is the nearest-neighbor hopping integral. Within this approximation, we have calculated the mobility of an extra hole and have found typical values to be \ensuremath{\sim}1 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$/V sec so that the mobility is rather small, even though the density of states has a width of order \ensuremath{\sim}1 eV. Intra-atomic exchange is shown to give a further narrowing of the band [a factor of ${(2)}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ in the two-band large-intra-atomic-exchange example]. The effect of finite $\frac{t}{U}$ is considered, where $U$ is the intra-atomic Coulomb interaction, and is shown to have a strong effect on the band tail but relatively weak effects on the bulk of the band. Finally, we make a few remarks comparing our results with the observed mobilities in NiO and the relevance of intra-atomic exchange to the behavior of the dioxide and sesquioxide series.


We propose SCENT, an innovative, scalable spectral analysis framework for internet scale monitoring of multirelational social media data, encoded in the form of tensor streams. In particular, a significant challenge is to detect key changes in the social media data, which could reflect important events in the real world, sufficiently quickly. Social media data have three challenging characteristics. First, data sizes are enormous; recent technological advances allow hundreds of millions of users to create and share content within online social networks. Second, social data are often multifaceted (i.e., have many dimensions of potential interest, from the textual content to user metadata). Finally, the data is dynamic; structural changes can occur at multiple time scales and be localized to a subset of users. Consequently, a framework for extracting useful information from social media data needs to scale with data volume, and also with the number and diversity of the facets of the data. In SCENT, we focus on the computational cost of structural change detection in tensor streams. We extend compressed sensing (CS) to tensor data. We show that, through the use of randomized tensor ensembles, SCENT is able to encode the observed tensor streams in the form of compact descriptors. We show that the descriptors allow very fast detection of significant spectral changes in the tensor stream, which also reduce data collection, storage, and processing costs. Experiments over synthetic and real data show that SCENT is faster (17.7x--159x for change detection) and more accurate (above 0.9 F-score) than baseline methods.


A two-dimensional transient model has been developed using COMSOL Multiphysics modeling software to simulate the heat transfer processes from a row of heated pipes in horizontally layered media consists of two porous sublayers with different permeabilities. The application of the present study is related to thermal energy storage or radiant floor heating system using the embedded piping system as the heat source. The present numerical simulation was first compared and validated using a parallel experimental work. The transient temperature profiles of the layered system obtained from both the experimental and numerical work are in good agreement. Once the numerical code is validated, a parametric numerical study has been performed to investigate the effects of layered system configurations on the heat transfer characteristics. Porous media with different properties were modeled using the subsurface flow (Brinkman's model formulation) and heat transfer module. Different layered system configurations were simulated by adjusting the sublayer thicknesses and using different permeability ratios for the layered system. For a layered porous system with different permeabilities, the dominant mode of heat transfer changes from heat conduction to heat convection depending on the ratio of the porous layer permeabilities. The interface location of the two media relative to the depth of the embedded heated pipes also plays an important role in the heat transfer results. The numerical results are presented in contour plots to examine the temperature distribution within the layered system (for energy storage application) as well as along the top surface of the system (for radiant floor heating application). The heat transfer results suggest that the layer configuration of the media plays an important role in the performance of radiant floor heating system.


This paper studies the links between public spending, good governance, and its outcomes which measured by performance of local governments. This paper aims to examine the effect of government spending and good governance on performance of local government and whether good governance can strengthen the effect of government spending on performance. This paper based on 1,044 observations of local governments in Indonesia from 2009 until 2012. This paper contributes by providing an understanding of the relationship between public spending, governance, and government performance and provides explanation of the mixed evidence that public spending often does not yield the expected outcomes. This research provides interesting empirical evidence that the expenditure of local government in Indonesia is inefficient in increasing performance. In the contrary, the result shows the negative effect of government spending on performance. The good public governance influenced positively toward performance and reduced the inefficiency of government spending.


Objective: To compare the diagnostic performance of CT angiography (CTA) and exercise electrocardiography (XECG) in a symptomatic population with a low–intermediate prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD). Design: Prospective registry. Setting: Tertiary university hospital. Patients: 471 consecutive ambulatory patients with stable chest pain complaints, mean (SD) age 56 (10), female 227 (48%), pre-test probability for significant CAD >5%. Intervention: All patients were intended to undergo both 64-slice, dual-source CTA and an XECG. Clinically driven quantitative catheter angiography was performed in 98 patients. Main outcome measures: Feasibility and interpretability of, and association between, CTA and XECG, and their diagnostic performance with invasive coronary angiography as reference. Results: CTA and XECG could not be performed in 16 (3.4%) vs 48 (10.2%, p<0.001), and produced non-diagnostic results in 3 (0.7%) vs 140 (33%, p<0.001). CTA showed ⩾1 coronary stenosis (⩾50%) in 140 patients (30%), XECG was abnormal in 93 patients (33%). Results by CTA and XECG matched for 185 patients (68%, p = 0.63). Catheter angiography showed obstructive CAD in 57/98 patients (58%). Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of CTA to identify patients with ⩾50% stenosis was 96%, 37%, 67% and 88%, respectively; compared with XECG: 71%, 76%, 80% and 66%, respectively. Quantitative CTA slightly overestimated diameter stenosis: 6 (21)% (R = 0.71), compared with QCA. Of the 312 patients (66%) with a negative CTA, 44 (14%) had a positive XECG, but only 2/17 who underwent catheter angiography had significant CAD. Conclusion: CTA is feasible and diagnostic in more patients than XECG. For interpretable studies, CTA has a higher sensitivity, but lower specificity for detection of CAD.


The investigation of the impact of Global Change on the basic resources on which life, and man, depends, is the main objective of the environmental science community at the beginning of the 21st century. Advances in information technology, new methods of spatially distributed data retrieval and increased understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes in the Earth system facilitate integrative models of the dynamic processes under change. Together with the integration of deep actors models from social and economical sciences into a common model framework, scenario runs based on inputs from Regional Climate Models (RCMs) and constrained by prognoses of the future developments in demography, economy and human behaviour are now possible.
The objective of the integrative project GLOWA-Danube is the development of such a modelling system and its application on the mesoscale catchment of the Upper Danube river with an area of about 77,000 km2. The decision support system DANUBIA is designed for plausible predictions of the impact of changes in climate, human behaviour and land use on the future of the water and related matter cycles. DANUBIA is able to assist knowledge-based management decisions, by predicting the effects of adaptation and mitigation strategies on the natural resources of the Upper Danube basin.
The closure of the water, energy, nitrogen and carbon cycles in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system relies on the adequate representation of all processes involved and their interaction. To close the energy cycle in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system and provide valuable input data for biochemical models of soil nitrogen and carbon transformation, this thesis presents the Soil Heat Transfer Module (SHTM) together with an energy balance algorithm of the soil surface for regional scale simulations.
SHTM combines simplified physical algorithms for the computation of the actual temperature in the upper soil layers and a dynamic lower boundary condition to represent Climate Change conditions. Changes in soil moisture and soil freezing are explicitly taken into account. The surface ground heat flux as the driving force of the model is provided by an explicit solution of the soil surface energy balance and a snow-soil coupling algorithm, respectively.
This thesis shows, that the soil temperature and energy balance modules developed as extensions of PROMET (PROcesses of Matter and Energy Transfer) are ready to bridge the gap between regional scale (up to 100,000 km2) application and the requirement of physical process models in predictive, coupled modelling systems like DANUBIA.


This book seeks to comprehend the evolving nature of the European Union following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failure of the European Constitution. Its prime focus is the last wave of enlargement that has profoundly transformed the EU. Although there are many parallels between the European integration process and state building processes, the Union is nothing like a Westphalian super state. The new emerging polity resembles a kind of neo-medieval empire with a polycentric system of government, multiple and overlapping jurisdictions, striking cultural and economic heterogeneity, fuzzy borders, and divided sovereignty. The book tries to spell out the origin, the shape, and the implications of this empire. The aim of this book is to suggest a novel way of thinking about the European Union and the process of European integration. The book shows 'two Europes' coming together following the end of the cold war. It proposes a system of economic and democratic governance that meets the ever greater challenges of modernization, interdependence, and globalization. It identifies the most plausible scenario of promoting peaceful change in Europe and beyond. The author argues that mainstream thinking about European integration is based on mistaken statist assumptions and suggests more effective and legitimate ways of governing Europe than through adoption of a European Constitution, creation of a European army, or introduction of a European social model. The book covers many fields from politics, and economics to foreign affairs and security. It analyzes developments in both Eastern and Western Europe. It also gives ample room to both theoretical and empirical considerations.


Amphiphilic reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is an efficient emulsifier for water-in-divinylbenzene (DVB) high internal phase emulsions. The polymerisation of the continuous DVB phase of the emulsion template and removal of water results in macroporous poly(divinylbenzene) (polyDVB). Subsequent pyrolysis of the poly(DVB) macroporous polymers yields 'all-carbon' foams containing micropores alongside emulsion templated-macropores, resulting in hierarchical porosity. The synthesis of carbon foams, or 'carboHIPEs', from poly(DVB) produced by polymerisation of rGO stabilised HIPEs provides both exceptionally high surface areas (up to 1820 m2 g−1) and excellent electrical conductivities (up to 285 S m−1), competing with the highest figures reported for carboHIPEs. The use of a 2D carbon emulsifier results in the elimination of post-carbonisation treatments to remove standard inorganic particulate emulsifiers, such as silica particles. It is demonstrated that rGO containing carboHIPEs are good candidates for supercapacitor electrodes where carboHIPEs derived from more conventional polymerised silica-stabilised HIPEs perform poorly. Supercapacitor devices featured a room-temperature ionic liquid electrolyte and electrodes derived from either rGO- or silica-containing poly(DVB)HIPEs demonstrated a maximum specific capacitance of 26 F g−1, an energy density of 5.2 W h kg−1 and a power density of 280 W kg−1.


The North China craton is the only known place where an Archaean craton with a thick tectospheric root lost half of that root in younger tectonism by processes such as delamination, convection, hydration-weakening, compositional change or some other mechanism. In this volume, authors provide data constraining the geometry and timing of root loss, aimed at understanding why and how continental roots are lost in general. Modelling how often this process may have occurred in the geological past, and how much lithospheric material has been recycled to the convecting mantle through this mechanism, could drastically change our current understanding of crustal growth rates and processes. Possible triggering mechanisms for root loss include collision of the South China (Yangtze) and North China cratons in the Triassic, the India–Asia collision, closure of the Solonker and Monhgol–Okhotsk oceans, Mesozoic subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath eastern China, impingement of mantle plumes, mantle hydration from long-term subduction and several rifting events. In this volume, we link studies of crustal tectonics with investigations aimed at determining the nature of and timing of the formation and loss of the root, in order to better-understand mechanisms of continental root formation, evolution and recycling/removal.


Risk-based Authentication (RBA) is an adaptive security measure to strengthen password-based authentication. RBA monitors additional features during login, and when observed feature values differ significantly from previously seen ones, users have to provide additional authentication factors such as a verification code. RBA has the potential to offer more usable authentication, but the usability and the security perceptions of RBA are not studied well. We present the results of a between-group lab study (n=65) to evaluate usability and security perceptions of two RBA variants, one 2FA variant, and password-only authentication. Our study shows with significant results that RBA is considered to be more usable than the studied 2FA variants, while it is perceived as more secure than password-only authentication in general and comparably secure to 2FA in a variety of application types. We also observed RBA usability problems and provide recommendations for mitigation. Our contribution provides a first deeper understanding of the users' perception of RBA and helps to improve RBA implementations for a broader user acceptance.


APPROXIMATE DISASSEMBLY by Dhivyakrishnan Radhakrishnan For the past two decades, computer viruses have been a constant security threat. A computer virus is a type of malware that may damage computer systems by destroying data, crashing the system, or through other malicious activity. Among the different types of viruses, metamorphic viruses are one of the most difficult to detect since such viruses change their internal structures with each mutation, making signature-based detection infeasible. Many construction kits are available that can be used to easily generate metamorphic strains of any given virus. Previous work has shown that metamorphic viruses are detectable using Hidden Markov Models (HMM). In such an HMM-based approach, instruction opcodes are observed and a model is trained to detect a given virus family. These instruction opcodes are obtained by disassembling the binary executable file. However, the disassembling process is time-consuming, making the process impractical. In this project, we develop and demonstrate a technique to derive an approximate opcode sequence directly from the executable file, which, in general, reduces the time required as compared to a standard disassembly process.


This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of blockholders (large shareholders) in corporate governance. We start with the underlying property rights of public corporations; we discuss how blockholders are critical in addressing free-rider problems and why, like owners of private property in general, blockholders are likely to be active in firm governance. We then examine what distinguishes a blockholder from an ordinary shareholder and advocate additional definitions from the typical threshold of 5% ownership. We next present new evidence on the frequency and characteristics of blockholders in United States corporations. Then we develop a simple unifying model to present theories of blockholder governance through both voice (direct intervention) and exit (selling one's shares). We survey the empirical evidence on blockholder governance, emphasizing the empirical challenges in identifying causal effects involving blockholders. We highlight the lack of credible instruments for blockholders and argue that exogenous variation should not be a prerequisite for research --- a narrow focus on identification may lead to a focus on identifying narrow questions. We emphasize the value of descriptive research with blockholders and how endogeneity concerns can be addressed with economic logic and by directly testing alternative explanations. We close with suggestions for future research.


A method was developed to inoculate and establish infection of detached apple fruit with the bull's eye rot pathogen, Phlyctema vagabunda (syn: Neofabraea alba), without wounding. Mycelial cultures of P. vagabunda did not produce conidia on commonly used potato dextrose agar, or several other tested media. Growth on corn meal agar resulted in the highest conidial yield, and maximum production was achieved after 5 days. These conidia were placed on water agar, and apple fruit were placed on these spores for at least 5 days for establishment of infections. Reliable infection of 66—100% of apples required 14 days of contact. The ability to rapidly produce copious quantities of conidia and inoculate without wounding facilitates a number of other postharvest control and epidemiology studies.


Leaf size and shape are strongly influenced by the growth patterns of the epidermal tissue. Pavement cells are the prevalent cell type in the epidermis and during cell expansion they undergo a drastic shape change from a simple polyhedral cells to puzzled-shaped cell. The role of these cell protrusions, more commonly referred to as lobes, remains unknown but their formation has been proposed to help increase the structural integrity of the epidermal tissue. How the symmetry breaking event that initiates a lobe is controlled remains unknown, however pharmacological and genetic disruption of the microtubule system has been shown to interfere not only with lobe initiation but also with lobe expansion. Additionally, the role of microtubules in the pattering of microfibril deposition, the load-bearing structure of the cell wall, makes the microtubule system a good candidate to evaluate its dynamics as a function of shape change. Two main mechanical models for lobe initiation are evaluated here, one where microtubules serve as stable features suppressing local expansion and one where microtubules, similarly to the anisotropic expansion patterning in hypocotyl cells, pro-mote the local anisotropic expansion of the cell resulting in lobe formation. The main method to evaluate these models was through the use of long-term time-lapse image analysis using a plasma-membrane marker for accurate shape change quantification and a microtubule marker to quantify their location, persistence, and density as a function of cell shape change. Using the junctions where three cells come together,cells were sub-divided into segments and the shape of these segments were tracked using a new coordinate system that allowed the detection of new lobes as which can arise from ∼300 deflections. By mapping sub-cellular processes, such as microtubule persistence, to this coordinate system, correlations of microtubule organization and shape change was possible. Additionally, a subset of microtubules bundles that splay across the anticlinal and periclinal walls, perpendicular and parallel to the leaf surface respectively, were identified as marking the location and direction of lobe formation.Disrupting the cell boundary by partially digesting pectin, a main component in the middle lamella, revealed the cell-autonomous morphogenesis mechanism in pavementcells. Under pectinase treatment, cell invaginations were produced and similarly to lobes their initiation was microtubule and cellulose dependent. Lastly, stress prediction using finite-element models, based from live-cell images, co-localized regions of high cell wall stress with both microtubule persistence and shape shape locations in both lobing and invaginated segments. Together, a model of cellular shape change is presented where microtubules translate cell wall stresses to tissue morphogenesis.


We give a generalization for the Deza-Frankl-Singhi Theorem in case of multiple intersections. More exactly, we prove, that if ${\cal H}$ is a set-system, which satisfies that for some $k$, the $k$-wise intersections occupy only $\ell$ residue-classes modulo a $p$ prime, while the sizes of the members of ${\cal H}$ are not in these residue classes, then the size of ${\cal H}$ is at most $$(k-1)\sum_{i=0}^{\ell}{n\choose i}$$ This result considerably strengthens an upper bound of Furedi (1983), and gives partial answer to a question of T. Sos (1976). As an application, we give a direct, explicit construction for coloring the $k$-subsets of an $n$ element set with $t$ colors, such that no monochromatic complete hypergraph on $$\exp{(c(\log m)^{1/t}(\log \log m)^{1/(t-1)})}$$ vertices exists.


ABSTRACT After the release of ISIS's 'Salil Al-Sawarem' promotional and motivational video with its famous religious chant, hundreds of Arab YouTubers started mocking it by editing its chant and including it in funny dancing clips which they called 'the popular edition'. Also, some Arabic and Kurdish TV channels produced shows that aimed at mocking the radical group. Since ISIS regards dancing as a religious taboo, these popular and official media productions represent a cultural resistance force and a rejection of ISIS and its extremist ideology. I argue in this article that these active involvements in ridiculing, countering, and discrediting the terrorists' ideology are cultural resistance efforts that aim at countering terrorism and raising awareness about its dangers in the Middle East region.


For many problem domains, practitioners are faced with the problem of ever-increasing amounts of data. Examples include the UniProt database of proteins which now contains ~6 million sequences, and the KDD '99 data which consists of ~5 million points. At these scales, the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques are not applicable since the multiple passes they require through the data are prohibitively expensive, and a need for different approaches arises. Another issue arising in real-world tasks, which is only recently becoming a topic of interest in the machine learning community, is distribution shift, which occurs naturally in many problem domains such as intrusion detection and EEG signal mapping in the Brain-Computer Interface domain. This means that the i.i.d. assumption between the training and test data does not hold, causing classifiers to perform poorly on the unseen test set. We first present a novel, hierarchical, one-pass clustering technique that is capable of handling very large data. Our experiments show that the quality of the clusters generated by our method does not degrade, while making vast computational savings compared to algorithms that require multiple passes through the data. We then propose Voted Spheres, a novel, non-linear, one-pass, multi-class classification technique capable of handling millions of points in minutes. Our empirical study shows that it achieves state-of-the-art performance on real world data sets, in a fraction of the time required by other methods. We then adapt the VS to deal with covariate shift between the training and test phases using two different techniques: an importance weighting scheme and kernel mean matching. Our results on a toy problem and the real-world KDD '99 data show an increase in performance to our VS framework. Our final contribution involves applying the one-pass VS algorithm, along with the adapted counterpart (for covariate shift), to the Brain-Computer Interface domain, in which linear batch algorithms are generally used. Our VS-based methods outperform the SVM, and perform very competitively with the submissions of a recent BCI competition, which further shows the robustness of our proposed techniques to different problem domains.


The main subject of the present thesis is the experimental study of the scaling properties of DNA knots of different complexities by tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM) in air. Homo- or heterogeneous mixture of DNA knot types were deposited onto mica in regimes of (i) strong adsorption, which induces a kinetic trapping of the molecules, and of (ii) weak adsorption, which permits relaxation on the surface. The contour of each knotted molecule was analyzed by a box counting algorithm, giving the number of boxes containing a part of the molecule, N(L), as a function of the box size, L, allowing to recover the relation N(L) ≈ L-df, where df is the fractal dimension and ν = 1/df is the scaling exponent. This relationship is complicated by the presence of a persistence length of DNA (about 50 nm) which introduces a crossover from a rigid rod behavior to a self-avoiding walk behavior. In (i) the radius of gyration of the adsorbed DNA knot scales with the 3D Flory exponent ν ≈ 0.58 within error. In (ii), the value ν ≈ 0.66, intermediate between the 3D and 2D (ν = 3/4) exponents, was found, indicating an incomplete 2D relaxation or a different polymer universality class. A different analysis, where the fractal dimension was determined by a customized box counting algorithm giving the knot mass as a function of the box size, yielded compatible results. In the case of weak binding conditions, AFM images show evidence of the localization of knot crossings, which is an effect theoretically predicted for knotted polymers confined in two dimensions (flat knots). Part of this thesis is dedicated to a fascinating application of AFM: the imaging of biomolecules in an aqueous buffer. In particular, images of plasmids adsorbed to mica strong enough to be visualized and loosely enough to see them moving in consecutive scans will be shown. The possibility of imaging under buffer molecules loosely anchored to the substrate opens the way to the investigation of biological processes near physiological conditions. The first step of the study of homologous recombination will be presented. We will also show images concerning our study of the activity of topoisomerase I on supercoiled plasmids. Clusters of DNA molecules and proteins were found when imaging in presence of magnesium, in agreement with recent findings by AFM in air. The research on topoisomerases and their interactions with inhibitors or poisons is a hot topic, being these enzymes targets of anti-cancer drugs. Our study paves the way to the investigation of the activity of topoisomerase II, the enzyme which removes knots from DNA. Finally, the principles of static and dynamic light scattering, and the results of dynamic light scattering on latex beads of known size will be presented. Particular emphasis will be given to the discussion of the contribution of light scattering techniques for future experiments on the study of the static and dynamic properties of DNA knotted molecules in solution. These experiments would contribute to shed light on the possible dependence of the gyration radius of knotted polymers on the knot type, and would allow testing theoretical predictions about their relaxation time.


This research is intended to test several factors affecting profitability that can impact the value of the company in the banking industry in Indonesia. Exogenous variables used are company growth, capital adequacy ratio (CAR), nonperforming loan, loan to deposit ratio, operational cost to operating income, deposit growth, with endogenous variable in first research model using return on assets while in second research model using company value. The type of data used onto this study is secondary data in the form of time series and cross section with research objects of banking companies in Indonesia stock exchange (BEI) during the period 2010–2015 with a population of 42 companies. Of the population selected as a sample of 27 companies. Analysis of research results using multiple regression at the level of ? = 10% with Eviews9 application which resulted random effect model estimation. The result of the research with partial test of the first research model is the variable of company growth significantly influence to profit return on assets (ROA) with positive correlation. Variable CAR, non-performing loan, DPK growth significantly affects ROA profitability with negative correlation. The company with the highest level of sensitivity is Bank International Indonesia with BNII trading code, while the smallest sensitivity is Bank MNC International with BABP trading code. This research model can be used significantly and the exogenous variable can explain the endogenous variable of 25.2%. In the second research model, the partial test produced non-performing loan variable significantly influences the negative correlation between corporate value, as well as the growth of DPK significantly affects the firm's value with positive correlation, but ROA profitability as intervening variable does not function as mediation to explain to the value of the company. Although this second research model can be used significantly but the extent of exogenous variables can only explain the endogenous variable of 10.6%.


Tunability of the properties of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) films is required for use as flexible substrates in many applications aimed at exploiting their unique mechanical, optical, and degradation properties, such as bioelectronic and biomedical devices. Here, a new approach for programing these properties is demonstrated based on molecular interactions between fibroins and functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs), combined with microwave heating. RSF-CNT composite films were irradiated with microwaves, resulting in local heating and local structural transition of amorphous silk fibroin molecules to stable helical structures. Upon microwave irradiation, a significant increase of helix secondary structure between 18.9% and 35.5% was observed with increasing CNT content. By further methanol vapor-treatment, the composite films with different helical content exhibited controllable mechanical and degradation properties combining the higher extensibility and faster degradation of α-helix structures with th...


The implementation of a revised government strategy for UK health research led to a reorientation of primary care research, largely focused on recruitment to, and involvement in, clinical trials. This reorientation prompted consideration of new approaches to developing clinical research facilities able to deliver this agenda. The provision of local enhanced services (LES) allow primary care organizations to provide additional services and thereby offer potential for involving primary care staff in clinical research. This paper describes the development and evaluation of one such LES scheme in the East of England, and highlights potential barriers and facilitators to progress.


Reward-free exploration is a reinforcement learning setting recently studied by Jin et al., who address it by running several algorithms with regret guarantees in parallel. In our work, we instead propose a more adaptive approach for reward-free exploration which directly reduces upper bounds on the maximum MDP estimation error. We show that, interestingly, our reward-free UCRL algorithm can be seen as a variant of an algorithm of Fiechter from 1994 [11], originally proposed for a different objective that we call best-policy identification. We prove that RF-UCRL needs O (SAH 4 /e 2) log(1/δ) episodes to output, with probability 1 − δ, an e-approximation of the optimal policy for any reward function. We empirically compare it to oracle strategies using a generative model.


Ensemble-averaged genome profiling of diagnostic samples suggests that acute leukemias harbor few somatic genetic alterations. We used single-cell exome and error-corrected sequencing to survey the genetic diversity underlying ETV6-RUNX1 acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at high resolution. The survey uncovered a vast range of low-frequency genetic variants that were undetected in conventional bulk assays, including additional clone-specific "driver" RAS mutations. Single-cell exome sequencing revealed APOBEC mutagenesis to be important in disease initiation but not in progression and identified many more mutations per cell than previously found. Using this data, we created a branching model of ETV6-RUNX1 ALL development that recapitulates the genetic features of patients. Exposure of leukemic populations to chemotherapy selected for specific clones in a dose-dependent manner. Together, these data have important implications for understanding the development and treatment response of childhood leukemia, and they provide a framework for using population genetics to deeply interrogate cancer clonal evolution. One-Sentence Summary APOBEC and replication-associated mutagenesis contribute to the development of ETV6-RUNX1 ALL, creating massive leukemic population genetic diversity that results in clonal differences in susceptibilities to chemotherapy.


Smallholder farming constitutes an important but marginalized sector, responsible for most of the world's agricultural production. This has a significant influence in the land use/cover change process and agrobiodiversity conservation, especially in mountainous regions of the developing world. Thus, the maintenance of sustainable smallholder farming systems represents a key condition for sustainable land management and to safeguard the livelihoods of millions of rural households. This study uses a combination of biophysical and socioeconomic data based on household interviews to compare 30 highland agroforestry systems and 30 conventional agriculture systems, to determine which system provides better conditions to support sustainable livelihoods for smallholder farmers. The interview data is based mainly on the perceptions of Kayambi indigenous farmers who use these farming systems to support their livelihoods. Independent-Samples t Test and descriptive statistics were applied to analyse the data from 60 farms. The results indicate that agroforestry systems contain greater agrobiodiversity; more diversified livelihoods; better land tenure security and household income; more diversified irrigation sources and less dependency on rainfall than conventional systems. These findings highlight the role of agroforestry systems in supporting sustainable livelihoods of smallholder farmers in mountainous areas.


In recent years, autonomic and organic computing have become areas of active research in the informatics community. Both initiatives aim at handling the growing complexity in technical systems by focusing on adaptation and self-optimisation capabilities. A promising application for organic concepts is the control of road traffic signals in urban areas. This article presents an organic approach to traffic light control in urban areas that exhibits adaptation and learning capabilities, allowing traffic lights to autonomously react on changing traffic conditions. A coordination mechanism for neighbouring traffic lights is presented that relies solely on locally available traffic data and communication among neighbouring intersections, resulting in a distributed and self-organising traffic system for urban areas. The organic system's efficiency is demonstrated in a simulation-based evaluation.


In this Environmental Transmission Electron Microscopy (ETEM) study we examined the growth patterns' of uniform distributions of nanoparticles (NPs) using model catalysts. Pt/SiO2 was heated at 550 degrees C in 560 Pa of O-2 while Pd/carbon was heated in vacuum at 500 degrees C and in 300 Pa of 5%H-2 in Argon at temperatures up to 600 degrees C. Individual NPs of Pd were tracked to determine the operative sintering mechanisms. We found anomalous growth Of NPs occurred during the early stages of catalyst sintering wherein some particles started to grow significantly larger than the mean, resulting in a broadening of the particle size distribution (PSD). The abundance of the larger particles did not fit the log normal distribution. We can rule out sample nonuniformity as a cause for the growth of these large particles, since images were recorded prior to heat treatments. The anomalous growth of these particles may help explain PSDs in heterogeneous catalysts which often show particles that are significantly larger than the mean, resulting in a long tail to the right. It has been suggested previously that particle migration and coalescence could be the likely cause for such broad size distributions. We did not detect any random migration of the NPs leading to coalescence. A directed migration process was seen to occur at elevated temperatures for Pd/carbon under H-2. This study shows that anomalous growth of NPs can occur under conditions where Ostwald ripening is the primary sintering mechanism.


This thesis presents the voices of 17 pioneers of the organisation parents' Centre, founded in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1952. They reflect on Parents' Centre's contribution to the welfare and happiness of young children and their parents, and the challenges and satisfactions for them as 'movers and shakers' of an entrenched system. The pioneers, 13 women and 3 men, were a group of professionals and parents educated in the progressive tradition who worked as volunteers to found and develop the organisation. They challenged the well-established and generally respected views of the policymakers of the 1950s about the management of childbirth and parent education for young children. They believed that the education and care of the child from birth to three needed to be brought into line with the progressive principles and practices which had been gaining ground in the schools and pre-schools of New Zealand since the 1920s and which emphasised holistic development, especially the psychological aspects. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory I set the study within the social climate of the 1950s to assess the contribution the changing times made to the success of the organisation. I identified the social and economic forces which brought change both in the institutions of society and within every day family life, particularly for young children and their parents. As researcher, I added my voice to their reflections while also playing the role of analyst. The study used an oral history method to record the stories of the participants from a contemporary perspective. My involvement in the organisation over 50 years gave me insider knowledge and a rapport with the people interviewed. Using a loosely structured interview I adopted a collegial method of data gathering. A second interview, two years after the first, informed the pioneers about my use of the interview material and gave opportunities for critical comments on my analysis. It became apparent that under the leadership of Helen Brew, parents' Centre was able to influence change. Analyses of the background of the pioneers and of the educationalists who influenced them in training, career and parenthood show that key influences on the pioneers were lecturers at Wellington and Christchurch Training Colleges and Victoria University of Wellington. The liberal thrust of these educational institutions reinforced similar philosophical elements in the child rearing practices experienced by the pioneers. Overall, the pioneers expressed satisfaction with the philosophies and practice they advocated at that time, their achievements within Parent's Centre, and pride in founding a consumer organisation effective for New Zealand conditions. They saw Parents' Centre as having helped to shape change. This study documents the strategies used by Parents' Centre to spread its message to parents, policy makers and the general public. At the end of the study the pioneers were in agreement that the change in the role of women, particularly as equal breadwinners with men, presented a challenge to the consumer and voluntary aspects of the organisation of Parents' Centre today. Some felt the organisation had lost its radical nature and was at risk of losing the consumer voice. Nonetheless, all the pioneers felt that Parents' Centre still had a part to play in providing effective ante-natal education 'by parents for parents' and a continuing role in working for change in the services in accordance with the needs of parents and children under three.


The number of Americans eligible to receive Social Security benefits will increase from forty-five million to nearly eighty million in the next twenty years. Retirement systems must therefore adapt to meet the demands of the largest aging population in our nation's history. In Developments in the Economics of Aging , David A. Wise and a distinguished group of analysts examine the economic issues that will confront policy makers as they seek to design policies to protect the economic and physical health of these older Americans. The volume looks at such topics as factors influencing work and retirement decisions at older ages, changes in life satisfaction associated with retirement, and the shift in responsibility for managing retirement assets from professional money managers of traditional pension plans to individual account holders of 401(k)s. Developments in the Economics of Aging also addresses the complicated relationship between health and economic status, including why health behaviors vary across populations and how socioeconomic measures correlate with health outcomes.


BACKGROUND: The burden of critical illness in low-income countries is high and expected to rise. This has implications for wider public health measures including maternal mortality, deaths from communicable diseases, and the global burden of disease related to injury. There is a paucity of data pertaining to the provision of critical care in low-income countries. This study provides a review of critical care services in Ethiopia. METHODS: Multicenter structured onsite surveys incorporating face-to-face interviews, narrative discussions, and on-site assessment were conducted at intensive care units (ICUs) in September 2020 to ascertain structure, organization, workforce, resources, and service capacity. The 12 recommended variables and classification criteria of the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine (WFSICCM) taskforce criteria were utilized to provide an overview of service and service classification. RESULTS: A total of 51 of 53 (96%) ICUs were included, representing 324 beds, for a population of 114 million; this corresponds to approximately 0.3 public ICU beds per 100,000 population. Services were concentrated in the capital Addis Ababa with 25% of bed capacity and 51% of critical care physicians. No ICU had piped oxygen. Only 33% (106) beds had all of the 3 basic recommended noninvasive monitoring devices (sphygmomanometer, pulse oximetry, and electrocardiography). There was limited capacity for ventilation (n = 189; 58%), invasive monitoring (n = 9; 3%), and renal dialysis (n = 4; 8%). Infection prevention and control strategies were lacking. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights major deficiencies in quantity, distribution, organization, and provision of intensive care in Ethiopia. Improvement efforts led by the Ministry of Health with input from the acute care workforce are an urgent priority.


Significant challenges are faced by front-line hospitality and tourism employees interacting with customers on a daily basis. These challenges and the ways they are dealt with form the focus of this thesis. As they interact, a range of incidents may arise from highly satisfactory encounters to service failures. It has been argued that in order to achieve satisfactory service encounters, employees need to feel in control, satisfied and motivated as well as being given appropriate assistance, information and training. Front-line employees in hospitality and tourism are focused on here due to the complex nature of the industry. It is commonly agreed that it is characterised by poor working conditions such as anti-social working hours, part-time and/or seasonal work, minimal on-the-job training and low levels of pay. These are all factors which may affect employee work satisfaction and motivation as well as recruitment and retention. The thesis is comprised of four studies. In Study I, hospitality and tourism employee work motivation is analysed. Study II examines front-line hotel restaurant employees' experiences of service encounters. How the skills utilised by employees during these service encounters are acquired and developed is then explored in Study III. Study IV concludes by examining employee informal information sharing activities, which offer one way of developing these skills. The thesis' findings paint a more positive picture of work and workers in hospitality and tourism than suggested in some of the earlier published research. This could be explained by the fact that the thesis utilises an employee perspective in its truest sense. The findings of the thesis show that employees are motivated (to large extent by factors that have been pointed out in earlier published work motivation research) and that they are active in the pursuit of developing skills necessary to create satisfactory service encounters. Another conclusion of the thesis' findings is that the interaction between workers and guests in the service encounter provides an important opportunity for workers to feel satisfied at work.


Bacterial secondary metabolites are widely used as antibiotics, anticancer drugs, insecticides and food additives. Attempts to engineer their biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) to produce unnatural metabolites with improved properties are often frustrated by the unpredictability and complexity of the enzymes that synthesize these molecules, suggesting that genetic changes within BGCs are limited by specific constraints. Here, by performing a systematic computational analysis of BGC evolution, we derive evidence for three findings that shed light on the ways in which, despite these constraints, nature successfully invents new molecules: 1) BGCs for complex molecules often evolve through the successive merger of smaller sub-clusters, which function as independent evolutionary entities. 2) An important subset of polyketide synthases and nonribosomal peptide synthetases evolve by concerted evolution, which generates sets of sequence-homogenized domains that may hold promise for engineering efforts since they exhibit a high degree of functional interoperability, 3) Individual BGC families evolve in distinct ways, suggesting that design strategies should take into account family-specific functional constraints. These findings suggest novel strategies for using synthetic biology to rationally engineer biosynthetic pathways.


Does it matter which electoral districts Members of Parliament (MPs) represent when participating in parliamentary debates? We suggest that the party leadership, in particular in governing parties, will try to keep MPs off the floor if they come from regions with economic problems, because such MPs are more likely to deviate from the party line. This should be especially likely when MPs are directly elected and have incentives to create a personal platform. The characteristics of the German electoral system allow for evaluating this argument. By analysing 9824 speeches in Bundestag debates focusing on economic issues and 8357 speeches held in debates on societal, foreign and education policy, we find support for our hypotheses that directly elected MPs deliver significantly fewer speeches in economic debates the worse the economic situation is in the district they represent. However, there is no clear pattern when differentiating between MPs from the government or opposition camp in terms of the number of delivered speeches in parliamentary debates.


Purpose- The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of a bank's internal and external factors on net core operating margin in Indonesia's Islamic commercial bank's companies.
Methods- A quantitative approach by using panel data regression with a period from 2nd quarter 2010 to 2nd quarter 2015. The object of this study is eight Islamic commercial banks companies which were listed in sharia bank directory of Central Bank of Indonesia and Financial Services Authority of the Republic of Indonesia, those selected by purposive sampling technique with specific criteria.
Findings- This study can be concluded that capital adequacy ratio and average operational cost have a positive and significant impact on the net core operational margin. On the contrary, financing to deposit ratio, bank size, operational efficiency ratio, and BI rate have a negative and significant impact on net core operational margin.
Research implications- The management needs to create an efficient banking system by reducing operational costs and improving management quality. Banks are also advised to increase the prudential principle in managing finance so that the risk of default can be minimized.


Heading date is a major determinant of the regional and seasonal adaptation of barley varieties. The dogma is that introduced germplasm is more likely to be adapted if it is derived from a similar latitude. However, barley germplasm introduced from similar latitudes of South-East Asia is extremely early heading in the Australian environments and vice versa. A doubled-haploid population from a cross of an Australian barley Galleon and a Japanese barley Haruna Nijo was evaluated for heading date in Australia (Perth, 31°56′S) and China (Wuhan, 30°33′N) under normal autumn sowing, late sowing in the field, and extended-light glasshouse conditions. One major QTL was identified on chromosome 5H under the three conditions in China. The single QTL accounted for up to 50% of phenotypic variation for heading date. The Australian variety contributed to late heading date. Two QTLs on chromosomes 4H and 5H were detected for controlling heading date in Australia. The QTL/QTL interaction contributed up to 35.8% of phenotypic variation for heading date in Australia, which is the major reason for the extremely early heading date of the Japanese variety in the Australian environment. The chromosome 5H QTL was detected at the same chromosomal location when the population was grown in either China or Australia. In both environments the Australian variety contributed to the late heading date. Selection against the Japanese alleles of chromosomes 4H and 5H QTLs could eliminate the extremely early genotype in Australia and selection against the Australian allele of chromosome 5H QTL could eliminate the extremely late genotype in China when Australian and Japanese germplasms are used in the breeding programs.


Objective: This study aimed to analyze the morphology of the hypoplasic mandible and its evolution during the growth period to better understand how it differs from the pediatric healthy mandible. Method: Three-dimensional mandibular models of hypoplasic and healthy children aged from 39 gestational weeks to 7 years old were analyzed with a morphometric method including data clustering. Morphological distinctions between pathological and healthy mandibles were highlighted. Bilateral and unilateral mandibular hypoplasia were distinguished. Results: The study sample was composed of 31 hypoplasic children and as many sex- and age-matched healthy children. Morphological distinctions between pathological and healthy mandibles were highlighted only from the first year of life. In bilateral hypoplasia, the overall mandibular dimensions were reduced while there was only a ramus asymmetry in unilateral mandibular hypoplasia (mean ± SD of the difference between the Grp03c and Grp03b subgroups: 6.80 ± 6.37 – P value = 1.64e–3 for the height of the left ramus versus 0.18 ± 4.18 – P value = .82 for the height of the right ramus). Supervised classification trees were built to identify the pathology and discriminate unilateral from bilateral mandibular hypoplasia (prediction rates = 81% and 84%, respectively). Conclusions: Based on a morphometric analysis, we demonstrated that mandibular hypoplasia significantly impacts the mandibular morphology only from the first year of life, with a distinction between bilateral and unilateral hypoplasia.


How do states manage disagreements about the application and interpretation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)? As countries find themselves embroiled in conflicts across the globe and in need of allies' political, economic, and military support, this question is important from a practical standpoint as well as a theoretical one. This essay provides one set of answers by looking at the United States' approach to potential IHL disputes with its allies. It opens with an exploration of the issues most likely to create divergence: the existence, typology, and scope of armed conflicts; the interaction between IHL and International Human Rights Law, as well as disagreements about permissible means and methods of warfare. I use modern examples from the war on terror to then illustrate how other states can manifest their preferences for the United States to follow or accommodate a distinct IHL approach. In particular, allies may significantly constrain the United States' ability to maintain a divergent approach by: limiting interoperability; restricting territorial access; refusing to cooperate on intelligence matters; and denying access to individuals. This Essay concludes by dissecting the United States' options for managing potential IHL divergence and identifying the costs and limitations of various strategies. In the war on terror, the United States sometimes uses secrecy and obfuscation; legal precommitments; and political or economic persuasion to get other states to accept its position on IHL. In other cases, the United States may abandon its IHL approach and harmonize out of deference to an ally. And lastly, the United States may, of course, continue to use its existing interpretations and maintain its preferred behavior without the support of specific allies. But even then, divergence may shape U.S. national security policy by encouraging it to find new partners for particular activities or forcing it to go it alone on activities and procurement for which it would prefer to have support.


Micro-Raman spectroscopy enables precise non-destructive analyses of CO 2 density in a very small volume. By applying this method to CO 2 fluid inclusions in minerals, a contrast is apparent in the CO 2 density specific to mineral species in a mantle-derived spinel lherzolite xenolith entrained by ascending magma. The rock investigated in this study comprises four mineral species: olivine, orthopyroxene (opx), clinopyroxene (cpx), and chromianspinel (spinel). The CO 2 densities in the fluid inclusions in these minerals are 1.006–1.035, 1.148–1.154, 1.150–1.154 and 1.189–1.194 g/cm 3 , respectively. During transport of the rock by magma and subsequent cooling, the CO 2 fluid inclusions change their volume due to both elastic and plastic properties of the host mineral, which are sensitive to differential pressure between internal pressure of the CO 2 fluid inclusion, and stress in surrounding crystal lattice. We tested the possibility that the volume of CO 2 fluid inclusion changes by the differential pressure. Existing models dealing with the volume change of fluid inclusion in response to deformation of host mineral do not explain the density gradation, particularly that between pyroxenes and spinel. We propose that combination of precise determination of fluid density in mantle-derived minerals and observation of microstructure in the host mineral provides a deep insight into the deformation mechanism of natural minerals under high differential pressure and temperature.


academic) The treatment of water and wastewater is energy intensive, and there is an urgent need to develop new approaches to address the water-energy challenges. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are energy-efficient technologies that can treat wastewater and simultaneously achieve multiple functions such as energy generation, hydrogen production and/or desalination. The objectives of this dissertation are to understand the fundamental microbiology of BES, develop cost-effective cathode catalysts, optimize the process engineering and identify the application niches. It has been shown in Chapter 2 that electrochemically active bacteria can take advantage of shuttle-mediated EET and create optimal anode salinities for their dominance. A novel statistical model has been developed based on the taxonomic data to understand and predict functional dynamics and current production. In Chapter 3, 4 and 5, three cathode catalyst (i.e., Nand Sco-doped porous carbon nanosheets, N-doped bamboo-like CNTs and MoS2 coated on CNTs) have been synthesized and showed effective catalysis of oxygen reduction reaction or hydrogen evolution reaction in BES. Chapter 6, 7 and 8 have demonstrated how BES can be combined with forward osmosis to enhance desalination or achieve self-powered hydrogen production. Mathematical models have been developed to predict the performance of the integrated systems. In Chapter 9, BES have been used as a research platform to understand the fate and removal of antibiotic resistant genes under anaerobic conditions. The studies in this dissertation have collectively demonstrated that BES may hold great promise for energy-efficient water and wastewater treatment. Bioelectrochemical Systems: Microbiology, Catalysts, Processes and Applications


Qualitative and quantitative histological alteration was taken to analyze in fish Oreochromis mossambicus collected from Kedilam River at three stations, which receive mostly industrial effluent and municipal runoff. Histoarchitecture of tissue alteration and percentage of prevalence was used as protocol for analysis. Results showed that number of histological alteration observed in gill like structural alteration of epithelium, epithelial lifting, fusion of secondary lamellae and hyperplasia. In liver blood congestion, regressive changes like degeneration of hepatocytes, vacuolation, and necrosis observed where as in kidney it shows glomerular congestion, tubular degeneration, progressive changes like hypertrophied epithelial cells, haemorrhage in bowman's space. Among the three stations severe histological alteration and percentage prevalence was observed in order of station 1> station 2 >station 3. Highest histological alteration and percentage of prevalence in three organs of fish o. mossambicus are kidney >gill >liver. The major reason for this histological alteration and contamination of fish is mostly due to industrial effluent. Repeated and continuous monitoring is must needed to protect the aquatic organism.


The article presents the changes in the nature of the market relationship that are induced by the expansion of fair trade. It shows that the increase in outlets leads to challenging working with "small producers", the payment of a "fair price" that cannot be totally disconnected from market forces, and the rising impersonality of the producer-consumer relationship. Several types of fair trade on several scales are possible. The transition from a direct chain to an intermediated chain and then to a labelled chain increase the efficiency of trade but is accompanied by less opposition to the characteristics that fair trade activists attribute to the conventional market.


AGNs and GRBs produce powerful relativistic jets and their central engines share the same basic astrophysical ingredients, despite the vastly different mass scales. Using Fermi and Swift observations, we find evidence that the jets produced by blazars and GRBs follow the same correlation between the gamma-ray luminosity and kinetic power. This result suggests that jet production and energy dissipation mechanisms are remarkably similar over 10 orders of magnitude in jet power, establishing a physical analogy between AGN and GRBs. We discuss the implications of these results and the road ahead.


Material toughening due to crack surface friction under mixed mode loading is studied. A mechanistic model is developed for a crack with an intergranular fracture surface under mixed Mode I/Mode III loading. The model takes into account several microstructural and material parameters such as grain shape and friction coefficient between grain boundaries. By employing a self-consistent, fracture mechanics approach, the governing integral equation with a singular kernel is obtained. A special numerical technique is used to solve the integral equation. The frictional stress distribution along the crack face is obtained for different grain shapes and frictional coefficients. The results show that, because of crack surface friction, the material toughens significantly. The toughening ratio increases rapidly with the relative magnitude of the Mode III component of the applied load. Moreover, two parameters, the oblique grain boundary angle and the friction coefficient, are identified as the controlling parameters for the toughening behavior. Using an energy-based crack tip fracture criterion, fracture loci in K I - K I I I space are constructed to serve as a failure criterion for mixed mode fracture. The model predictions are also compared with experimental measurements. Good agreement is obtained. Potential applications of the model to surface crack growth under rolling contact loading in the presence of lubricating fluids are discussed.


Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a promising Artificial Intelligence (AI) method that is applied for problem solving tasks. This approach is widely used in order to develop Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS). A CDSS for diagnosis and treatment often plays a vital role and brings essential benefits for clinicians. Such a CDSS could function as an expert for a less experienced clinician or as a second option/opinion of an experienced clinician to their decision making task. This paper presents the case studies on 3 clinical Decision Support Systems as an overview of CBR research and development. Two medical domains are used here for the case studies: case_study_1) CDSS for stress diagnosis case_study_2) CDSS for stress treatment and case_study_3) CDSS for postoperative pain treatment. The observation shows the current developments, future directions and pros and cons of the CBR approach. Moreover, the paper shares the experiences of developing 3CDSS in medical domain in terms of case study.


These three essays are the fruits of a little Winter Study, in December 1981, which enabled Mary Douglas and James Douglas (both of Northwestern University, Illinois, USA) to visit the System and Decision Sciences area at IIASA, there to collaborate on an interdisciplinary (or, more properly, non-disciplinary) task. 'Institutional bias' was the provisional title for what we had in mind and our aim was to try to wrap some cultural and political context around the paradoxes of social choice.

The Western liberal tradition holds rationality and individuality in high regard. It has to; otherwise it would not be liberal, nor would it cohere long enough to become a tradition. But too high a regard for reason may exaggerate the part played by conscious design in the conduct of human affairs, and too high a regard for the individual may exaggerate both his ability to identify the things that he values and his scope to arrange them in an order of his own choosing. The unity of these essays lies in their common critical theme; all three, in their different ways, take issue with the liberal tradition.

James Douglas' point of departure is the recognition that actual political systems coped very effectively with the paradoxes of social choice long before Condorcet and Arrow revealed that those paradoxes existed. Since they could not have been consciously designed to do this, these systems must have evolved. The lowly dung beetle, as it decides whether to try to find a new and untenanted cow-pat or to stick with the ever crustier one that it has, follows a personal strategy so subtle as to require integral calculus in its solution. Could it be that we are no better equipped to design our political institutions than is the dung beetle up to doing 'A level' mathematics? Trial and error -- success and failure over countless generations -- we conclude, is what has led the individual dung beetle to the so-sensible strategy that it shares with every other dung beetle. The rational-choice theorist, if he could bring himself to study so distasteful a subject, would have to conclude that, with such a lack of variation in the preference orderings of cow-pats as we go from one individual to another, there is some form of dictatorship operating within the dung beetles' social system. Of course, in the dung beetle case, the lack of individuality -- the dictatorship -- is about as extreme as it could possibly be and it would be foolish to pretend that it provides a more valid model of human social life than does the theory of rational choice. No, our aim is not to jump to the dung beetle's extreme but, rather, to ask: 'extreme from what?' The answer has to be: 'from a situation in which, because the individual preference orderings are so gloriously varied that no parallelisms -- no little clumpings or mutual alignments -- can exist, there can be no dictatorship'. We would argue that such a situation, though intellectually intriguing, has nothing to do with the description of the life of man in society...apart, that is, from saying that it is not like that.

The "invisible dictators"' that the rational-choice theorist conjures up in response to the parallelisms -- the departures from individual perfection -- that he continually bumps up against are, collectively, an old friend of the anthropologist. They are culture. The only trouble is that invisible dictators are plural and culture is singular. To resolve this paradox we begin by defining our extreme at the opposite pole to that defined by the theory of rational choice. Instead of the fine independence of the individual we take as our model the dung beetle. 'To what extent, and in what ways, does our behavior distance us from it?' we ask, rather than 'to what extent does our behavior fall short of the individualist ideal?'. But are not these differences, like a knot in a length of string, simply different ways of measuring the same thing? No, because there is no continuum -- no measuring scale -- between these two extremes. Total dictatorship is attainable; perfect individuality is not. We can measure our divergence from the attainable but not from the unattainable, and the attempt to do the latter we label 'the individualist fallacy ' .

The dung beetle has, over the generations, adapted so as to take advantage of the adoptive possibilities of an environment within which certain laws (such as the progressive drying out of cow-pats) hold inexorable sway. In much the same way, actual political systems have evolved to take advantage of an environment wherein Arrow's impossibility theorem holds away. But what is particularly interesting is that, though all these systems cope with the paradoxes of social choice, they do not all cope with them in the same way. Mary Douglas comes in at this point and, venturing into the untrodden terrain that lies between cultural anthropology and organization theory, sketches out a three-fold typology of socially viable organizations, each one of which stabilizes itself with the aid of its appropriate and distinctive cultural bias. So it is culture -- man's self-reflexive ability -- that distances him from the dung beetle. At the same time, this idea of cultural biases stabilizing their appropriate social organizations ('departures from individual perfection' from the rational-choice viewpoint) allows us to reconcile a plurality of invisible dictators with a singular culture.

The final essay explores the way in which these two levels -- the cultural biases that always intervene to prevent the attainment of perfect individuality and the political systems that cope with the paradoxes of social choice -- fit together. Cultural biases, it argues, are in perpetual contention. One organizational form may, for a time, gain dominance but it can never permanently eliminate the others. Within this flux certain conjunctions of cultural biases (and of their associated organizations) are stabilizable (or, at any rate, change only in slow time) and these persistent regularities we label 'political regimes.


This paper questions the binary of material and immaterial labour in the information era. Instead, we propose a "circuits of labour" model, a holistic framework that helps connect various concepts and traditions in the study of labour and ICT (information and communication technology). Inspired by du Gay et al's "circuit of culture", we argue conventional frameworks need to be synthesized and updated to reflect fundamental changes and persisting issues of labor in our contemporary era, of which the iPhone is emblematic. On the one hand, our model consists of formal circuits, in which hierarchical domination is imposed by capital over the body of labour. On the other hand, it consists of informal circuits where relationships are defined communally between embodied practices and social and communicative capital. The informal and formal circuits of labour are "short-circuited" by survival labour and 'playbour', meaning either circuit may absorb productive energy from the other. This article then uses the case of Foxconn, the world's largest electronic manufacturer that also produces iPhones, to illustrate the usefulness of the "circuits of labour" model. We finally discuss the broader implications and questions for future research.