A number of commercially available on-line disinfection residual analysers were evaluated using a test rig under laboratory conditions. The methodology used for this trial was based on the following two standards: ISO Standard 15839 (2003), "Water Quality – On-line sensors/analysing equipment for water – Specifications and performance tests" and ISO 8466-1 (1990), and "Water Quality – Calibration and evaluation of analytical methods and estimation of performance characteristics. Part 1: Statistical evaluation of the linear calibration function". The assessment of each analyser involved the determination of a set of performance characteristics including response delay, rise and fall times, linearity, limit of quantification and day–to-day repeatability. The effects of likely interferences were also covered. Results obtained from this trial for two total chlorine monitors were compared with the technical specifications as supplied by their respective manufacturers. This study concludes that persons responsible for instrument procurement should be cautious when relying only on manufacturers9 technical specification claims. A more informed selection can be made by undertaking an evaluation study similar to the one described in this paper, as this will confirm the performance of a monitor under particular operating conditions. In general, residual disinfectant monitors utilising the colorimetric measurement method showed better performance than those employing amperometric/polarographic methods.


The research hypothesis of the thesis is that "an open participation in the co-creation of the services and environments, makes life easier for vulnerable groups"; assuming that the participatory and emancipatory approaches are processes of possible actions and changes aimed at facilitating people's lives.
The adoption of these approaches is put forward as the common denominator of social innovative practices that supporting inclusive processes allow a shift from a medical model to a civil and human rights approach to disability.
The theoretical basis of this assumption finds support in many principles of Inclusive Education and the main focus of the hypothesis of research is on participation and emancipation as approaches aimed at facing emerging and existing problems related to inclusion.
The framework of reference for the research is represented by the perspectives adopted by several international documents concerning policies and interventions to promote and support the leadership and participation of vulnerable groups.
In the first part an in-depth analysis of the main academic publications on the central themes of the thesis has been carried out.
After investigating the framework of reference, the analysis focuses on the main tools of participatory and emancipatory approaches, which are able to connect with the concepts of active citizenship and social innovation.
In the second part two case studies concerning participatory and emancipatory approaches in the areas of concern are presented and analyzed as example of the improvement of inclusion, through the involvement and participation of persons with disability. The research has been developed using a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, aimed at providing a knowledge-base that fosters a shift from a situation of passivity and care towards a new scenario based on the person's commitment in the elaboration of his/her own project of life.


Digital financial statements have been designed under two main hypotheses: The first one considers that human beings are their target audience and the second one assumes that users belong to a specific accounting jurisdiction or capital market. Obviously, these hypotheses are no longer accepted. The former because it is necessary to make machines understand the accounting language to facilitate the automatic exchange of information between softbots and/ or software applications. The latter because in order to facilitate securities markets globalization it is necessary to adopt a unique set of international accounting standards. These two needs have to be satisfied. The response to the first one is XBRL, the Extensible Business Reporting Language. The European solution to the second one, is going to be the adoption of the IASB's International Accounting Standards. In this paper, the role of XBRL in the European solution is analyzed. The main conclusions are that the adoption of IAS and the use of XBRL will facilitate the communication of information in a homogeneous way, that they will allow the interchange of data between software applications and also the automatic analysis of financial information. In summary, they are going to play a key role for the development of the global European Stock


Many states passed legislation in the 1990s to address the problem of violent sex offenders. While academic inquiries into the nature and extent of sexual offending have revealed some interesting findings, very little is known regarding how communities address the issue of managing violent sex offenders. This account documents how the state of Wisconsin attempted to manage violent sex offenders once released from prison and civilly committed under a sexually violent person statute. It chronicles the experience of a committee charged with locating possible sites for a facility for sexual predators under supervised release to the community. In addition, this account shows the problematic nature of implementing a state statute in a large county and identifies barriers inherent to this process. The concept of political failure is introduced to describe why sex offender legislation is difficult to implement.


As HPC systems grow, the distributed file systems serving these systems need to handle an increased load of data. In order to maintain performance, these underlying file servers need to distributethe load of data volumes efficiently over available disks. This is particularly true at CERN, the European European Organizationfor Nuclear Research, which expects to behandling Pentabytes of data in the near future. In this thesis, new utilities that analyze file serverdata which is then used to semiautomatically tune thefiles system, are developed. This is achieved using a commercial database to store the dataand then integrating it with the file server. This requires a database and a system design that can handle a large amount of data. File server data collections associated with aprocess known as "volumes", can vary in size, and be accessed at any time. To increase the overall system performance, volume history data is analyzed to locate volumes that may be gathered for increased system performance throuhgh load balancing. For instance, using the volume history data, it is possible to detect and gather volumes that are most accessed during the day with volumes that are most accessed during the night on one file server. The file server capacity is hence optimized. As part of this work, a user interface which can visualize the history data for volumes and partitions, is designed and implemented on top of the AFS file system at CERN. Our initial results presented in this thesisreveal that it is possible to locate volumes that have a repeating access period, and thus, gather them on the same partition. Other analyses and suggestions for future work will also be discussed.


This study was set out with the aim of investigating the extent to which young learners' textbooks reflect and engage multiple intelligences (MI). Furthermore, the current study considered the frequency with which each type of intelligences was presented in young learners' textbooks at four different levels. In particular, it was an attempt to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the currently used books to determine whether the books should be reconstructed to boost MI varieties in the content and to what extent teachers are required to utilize supplementary materials to cover the deficiencies. To this end, a multiple intelligences checklist was developed, based on the framework of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, to examine the selected textbook in relation to different intelligences as reflected through various activities and tasks. Accordingly, eight textbooks which are currently taught at a language institute young learners' department have been analyzed according to the aforementioned MI checklist. Careful analysis of the selected textbooks revealed that the intelligence profile of these textbooks is primarily verbal/ linguistic. Naturalistic intelligence is recognized as the least intelligence type provided only at intermediate and advanced levels textbooks, and no example of spiritual and existential intelligences was found. However, a fair percentage of distribution for the remaining intelligence types was reported. Pedagogically, the findings of the study hold the implication that policy makers, administrators, and materials developers especially those involved in developing materials for EFL young learners, consider the necessity of applying all intelligence types in designing young EFL learners' textbooks.


When Justinian became sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 527, he ordered the preparation of three compilations of Roman law that together formed the Corpus Juris Civilis. These works have become known individually as the Code, which collected the legal pronouncements of the Roman emperors, the Institutes, an elementary student's textbook, and the Digest, by far the largest and most highly prized of the three compilations. The Digest was assembled by a team of sixteen academic lawyers commissioned by Justinian in 533 to cull everything of value from earlier Roman law. It was for centuries the focal point of legal education in the West and remains today an unprecedented collection of the commentaries of Roman jurists on the civil law. Commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund in 1978, Alan Watson assembled a team of thirty specialists to produce this magisterial translation, which was first completed and published in 1985 with Theodor Mommsen's Latin text of 1878 on facing pages. This paperback edition presents a corrected English-language text alone, with an introduction by Alan Watson. Links to the three other volumes in the set: *Volume 1 [Books 1-15]*Volume 2 [Books 16-29]*Volume 3 [Books 30-40]


Carbon nanomaterials have found numerous applications in various fields. However, their synthesis and functionalization usually require complicated procedures or tough experimental conditions. Herein, we report for the first time the synthesis of a new type of functional nanomaterial, quaternized carbon nanospheres (QCNSs), with superior antibacterial activity via a one-pot hydrothermal treatment of chitosan and hexadecylbetaine (abbreviated as BS-16). During the hydrothermal process, the direct reaction and carbonization between the amine-containing chitosan and the carboxyl-containing BS-16 were realized within only one step. The as-prepared QCNSs feature a well-defined spherical morphology and a homogeneous size distribution with an average diameter of ∼110 nm. In particular, the QCNSs could effectively kill Gram-positive bacteria with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 2.0-5.0 μg mL-1. Meanwhile, the QCNSs showed excellent cytocompatibility towards normal human liver and lung cells and good hemocompatibility towards red blood cells. Moreover, in bacteria-infected macrophage cells, the QCNSs could selectively kill bacteria while the macrophage cells remained unaffected, which further confirmed their biocompatibility. Besides, we have also elucidated the antibacterial mechanism of the QCNSs by disrupting the bacterial cell walls/membranes via the bacterial adsorption and insertion of the long alkyl chain-containing quaternary ammonium groups on the particle surface. The present work provides a novel method for the preparation of functional carbon nanomaterials, which may promote the development of metal-free antibacterial agents.


Aims. Gravitational settling of 22 Ne in cooling white dwarfs can affect the outcome of thermonuclear supernovae. We investigate how the supernova energetics and nucleosynthesis are in turn influenced by this process. We use realistic chemical profiles derived from state-of-the-art white dwarf cooling sequences. The cooling sequences provide a link between the white dwarf chemical structure and the age of the supernova progenitor system. Methods. The cooling sequence of a 1 Mwhite dwarf was computed until freezing using an up-to-date stellar evolutionary code. We computed explosions of both Chandrasekhar mass and sub-Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs, assuming spherical symmetry and neglecting convective mixing during the pre-supernova carbon simmering phase to maximize the effects of chemical separation. Results. Neither gravitational settling of 22 Ne nor chemical differentiation of 12 Ca nd 16 O have an appreciable impact on the prop- erties of type Ia supernovae, unless there is a direct dependence of the flame properties (density of transition from deflagration to detonation) on the chemical composition. At a fixed transition density, the maximum variation in the supernova magnitude obtained from progenitors of different ages is ∼0.06 mag, and even assuming an unrealistically large diffusion coefficient of 22 Ne it would be less than ∼0.09 mag. However, if the transition density depends on the chemical composition (all other things being equal) the oldest SNIa can be as much as 0.4 mag brighter than the youngest ones (in our models the age difference is 7.4 Gyr). In addition, our results show that 22 Ne sedimentation cannot be invoked to account for the formation of a central core of stable neutron-rich Fe-group nuclei in the ejecta of sub-Chandrasekhar models, as required by observations of type Ia supernovae.


The European Food Safety Authority has angered environmental and consumer groups by ruling that genetically modified organisms and artificial sweeteners pose no health risks—advice governments sometimes choose to ignore. It has been attacked by advocacy groups and politicians for not being totally independent from industry—a charge that inquiries have found not entirely baseless. EFSA has also upset the food and supplement industry by pushing some of the most aggressive evidence-based policies in the world. Starting on 14 December, manufacturers will no longer be able to tout the health effects of thousands of their products on labels and in ads, because EFSA says they have not been proven. Yet the agency has managed to stick to the scientific data despite the pressures.


It is important to know and to quantify the liquid holdups both dynamic and static at local levels as it will lead to understand various blast furnace phenomena properly such as slag/metal.gas.solid reactions, gas flow behaviour and interfacial area between the gas/solid/liquid. In the present study, considering the importance of local liquid holdup and non-availability of holdup data in these systems, an attempt has been made to quantify the local holdups in the dropping and around raceway zones in a cold model study using a non-wetting packing for liquid. In order to quantify the liquid holdups at microscopic level, a previously developed technique, X-ray radiography, has been used. It is observed that the liquid flows in preferred paths or channels which carry droplets/rivulets. It has been found that local holdup in some regions of the packed bed is much higher than average at a particular flow rate and this can have important consequences for the correct modelling of such systems.


Compressed sensing (CS) provides an elegant framework for recovering sparse signals from compressed measurements. For example, CS can exploit the structure of natural images and recover an image from only a few random measurements. CS is flexible and data efficient, but its application has been restricted by the strong assumption of sparsity and costly reconstruction process. A recent approach that combines CS with neural network generators has removed the constraint of sparsity, but reconstruction remains slow. Here we propose a novel framework that significantly improves both the performance and speed of signal recovery by jointly training a generator and the optimisation process for reconstruction via meta-learning. We explore training the measurements with different objectives, and derive a family of models based on minimising measurement errors. We show that Generative Adversarial Nets (GANs) can be viewed as a special case in this family of models. Borrowing insights from the CS perspective, we develop a novel way of improving GANs using gradient information from the discriminator.


Abstract We explore an alternative definition of unit in a monoidal category originally due to Saavedra: a Saavedra unit is a cancellable idempotent (in a 1-categorical sense). This notion is more economical than the usual notion in terms of left-right constraints, and is motivated by higher category theory. To start, we describe the semi-monoidal category of all possible unit structures on a given semi-monoidal category and observe that it is contractible (if non-empty). Then we prove that the two notions of units are equivalent in a strong functorial sense. Next, it is shown that the unit compatibility condition for a (strong) monoidal functor is precisely the condition for the functor to lift to the categories of units, and it is explained how the notion of Saavedra unit naturally leads to the equivalent non-algebraic notion of fair monoidal category, where the contractible multitude of units is considered as a whole instead of choosing one unit. To finish, the lax version of the unit comparison is considered. The paper is self-contained. All arguments are elementary, some of them of a certain beauty.


Participatory approaches to forest management have been promoted as a means of returning rights historically removed, and as a way of managing natural resources sustainably, fairly, and to improve livelihoods in communities. Top-down models of community-based forest management take the perspective that if people feel ownership over, have a voice in decisions about, and can benefit from surrounding ecosystems, then they will be motivated to maintain and protect them. However, even participatory approaches, such as community-based forest management, may not always result in clear positive outcomes for involvement in decision making and forest conservation. We examine whether an Indonesian government initiative for community-based forest management was positively associated with community members' participation in local decision making and support for conservation and sustainable management of forest resources, in the context of state-owned lands. We used household questionnaire data to compare villages with and without a community forest, and community forests over time in a case study region of West Kalimantan. Analyzing forest visitations, conservation support, and indicators of procedural equity, we found no consistent association between having a community forest and higher levels of participation in decision making or household support for forest conservation. However, well-being indicators were positively associated with more active participation. The level of support for forest conservation was also positively related to households' leadership in village institutions and higher levels of well-being, particularly subjective well-being, land tenure, and material wealth. These social-demographic factors are important considerations when designing and implementing community-based forest management, which strives for fair and just decision-making processes along with forest conservation. The findings highlight how existing socioeconomic contexts factor into local institutions, and that accounting for these in program design and implementation may help address existing social inequalities that influence achieving joint social and ecological objectives.


Background and Purpose: Nosocomial infection is a threat to patient safety. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of alcohol-based handrub solutions recommended by the World Health Organization on skin integrity of health care providers. Methods: This experimental study was carried out on 40 healthcare personnel of 17 Shahrivar Hospital, Amol, Iran, in 2016. The subjects were selected through convenience sampling method. The participants used the recommended solution for one month. The participants' skin condition was evaluated by using two questionnaires filled out by the observer and participants in the first week and after one month. To analyze the data, the phi coefficient and Cochran's Q test were used in SPSS, version 19. Results: The results of the objective skin evaluation showed that there was no significant difference between the evaluations regarding skin redness (P=0.846), scaliness (P=0.276), and visual scoring of the skin (P=0.5). However, a significant difference was observed in terms of skin tears (P=0.05). The visual skin evaluation (P=0.001), skin disorders (P=0.006), moisture content (P=0.001), sensation (P=0.004), and overall skin integrity (P=0.023) showed a significant change after the use of the solution. Conclusion: The results indicated that the recommended solution was compatible with the hand skin of the participants. We highly recommend the authorities to provide the necessary education for health personnel to improve compliance.


Abstract—Hybrid fiber-wireless (FiWi) networks, which benefit from high bandwidth and ubiquitous access of optical and wireless networks, have been identified as a promising technology candidate for next-generation broadband access. As various component/fiber failures may occur in hybrid FiWi networks, thus affecting huge numbers of end users, survivability has become one of the key important deployment considerations in such networks. This paper focuses on developing optimal network planning strategies to achieve survivable hybrid FiWi networks. In particular, to address the additional cost involved in deploying backup fibers in previously proposed redundancy strategies against distribution fiber failures, we propose the use of wireless routing through the ubiquitous wireless coverage of end users in a hybrid FiWi network. We present an optimization framework to optimally plan and deploy a survivable hybrid FiWi network, where traffic from an affected optical network unit (ONU) can be effectively rerouted to backup ONUs through wireless connections in the event of a distribution fiber failure. However, focusing only on the resilience of a network without considering its cost, and ignoring the resultant capacity, latency, and coverage under normal and protection operating conditions, is impractical. Our proposed framework therefore ensures maximum end-user coverage whilst satisfying survivability, connectivity, delay, and capacity constraints of the network, by optimizing the placement of passive optical splitters, ONUs, and wireless routers in conjunction with fiber and wireless connections. Moreover, we demonstrate the feasibility of our framework in the context of an urban deployment under different deployment scenarios. In particular, our results provide insight into how survivable FiWi networks can be deployed without compromising on the latency, coverage, and capacity requirements of such networks.


Strombolian and fire fountain activities represent a common expression of explosive basaltic eruptions. However, the transition between these two eruptive styles and their source mechanisms are still debated. We use textural and compositional studies to characterize pyroclastic material from both the Strombolian and Hawaiian-style fire fountain phases of the January–June 2000 Etna activity. We find that basaltic scoria presents distinctive textural and compositional features that reflect different modes of magma vesiculation and crystallization in the two eruptive regimes. Overall, magma that forms Strombolian scoria is far more crystallized, less vesicular, and more evolved, indicating strong volatile depletion and longer residence time before being erupted. Fire fountain scoria indicates a fast-rising magma with evidence of moderate syneruptive volatile exsolution. The new textural and compositional data set is integrated with previous volcanological and geophysical investigations to provide further insights into the dynamics of fire fountains, and to frame the transition from Strombolian explosions to fire fountain activity into a model that may apply to future eruptions at Mount Etna as well as other active basaltic volcanoes.


Abstract In recent years, extensive thermal-hydraulic experimental tests have been performed on the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE)–cooled, wire-wrapped fuel assembly (FA) of MYRRHA. These thermal-hydraulic tests were performed using FA mock-ups in large-scale LBE experimental test facilities at SCK•CEN (Belgium), ENEA (Italy), and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). The FA pressure drop characteristics and flow-induced vibration (FIV) characteristics were tested with a full-scale 127-pin mock-up test section. The existing pressure drop correlations of Rehme and of Cheng and Todreas (simplified model) predict the experimental pressure drop data very well and are considered suitable for use in the design and safety analysis of the MYRRHA system. FIVs are very limited in the wire-wrapped bundle, and fuel pin fatigue damage from vibration during operation is not expected. Further analysis and testing are required to determine if damage from fretting corrosion could be expected. Heat transfer characteristics of the FA were investigated experimentally in two separate 19-pin heated rod test sections cooled by LBE. The existing Kazimi-Carelli correlation predicts the global average Nusselt numbers very well, but the correlation is not developed to capture local hot spots. For the FA safety analysis, to further determine operational safety margins, a hot-spot factor is defined and analyzed to determine the hot-spot temperature penalty.


The prognosis of patients with metastatic cervical cancer is poor, with a median survival of 8-13 months. Treatment with chemotherapeutic drugs alone is rarely curative. In the past few years, the development of immunotherapy, targeted therapy, angiogenesis inhibitors, and tyrosine kinase inhibitors has provided better treatment choices for patients with metastatic cervical cancer.
A 52-year-old woman was diagnosed on July 2001, with locally advanced adenocarcinoma of cervix, stage IIb. She underwent concurrent chemoradiotherapy resulting in complete remission for over 10 years. Unfortunately, she was found to have a late relapse of cervical adenocarcinoma with liver metastases (segments 7 and 8) on June 2013. She underwent segmental hepatectomy and cholecystectomy and was transferred to our gynecologic oncology service for standard chemotherapy with immunotherapy based on her immune risk profile (IRP). Immunomodulatory agents, including picibanil (OK-432), interferon-alpha, celecoxib (cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor), thymalfasin, and aldesleukin (IL-2) were given. Approximately 20 months later, spleen metastasis was suspected by [18F] fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography. The patient underwent gasless laparoscopic intraperitoneal treatment with immunomodulatory agent celecoxib (cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor) and intraperitoneal immunoviral therapy to create host immunosurveillance for consolidation therapy. Three months later, there was complete remission of the metastatic splenic nodule on repeat imaging.
Our case demonstrates the dramatic promise of immunomodulatory therapy to induce complete remission of a metastatic cancer nodule. This case suggests the potential value of immunotherapy to augment host immunosurveillance to improve survival of metastatic cervical cancer.


This paper studies content strategies for online publishers of digital information goods. It examines sampling strategies and compares their performance to paid content and free content strategies. A sampling strategy, where some of the content is offered for free and consumers are charged for access to the rest, is known as a metered model in the newspaper industry. We analyze optimal decisions concerning the size of the sample and the price of the paid content when sampling serves the dual purpose of disclosing content quality and generating advertising revenue. We show in a reduced-form model how the publishers optimal ratio of advertising revenue to sales revenue is linked to characteristics of both the content market and the advertising market. We assume that consumers learn about content quality from the free samples in a Bayesian fashion. Surprisingly, we find that it can be optimal for the publisher to generate advertising revenue by offering free samples even when sampling reduces both prior quality expectations and content demand. In addition, we show that it can be optimal for the publisher to refrain from revealing quality through free samples when advertising effectiveness is low and content quality is high.


Sitting on the terrace of the royal plantation Frederiksgave, his favourite retreat, Governor Edward Carstensen came to see the inevitable: Denmark had to give up her "possessions" in Africa. As fate would have it, he came to be the instrument by which two centuries of Danish involvement on the Gold Coast was terminated, thereby making way for the emergence of the colonial system that developed there. After the abolition of the slave trade, Denmark had struggled to find ways and means to legitimate her continued stay at the Coast. At an early stage the Danes initiated a number of attempts to establish experimental plantations to cultivate export crops such as cotton, coffee and sugar. But a transition from slave trade to "legitimate" products required stability and peace, and a need for control, which the rather limited Danish presence was not able to maintain. Closing the Books comprises a compilation of the official reports that the last Danish Governor sent home during his term of office at the Gold Coast. The reports reflect his personal views regarding the economic and political situations there, as well as his ideas on the "civilization of Africa".


Constituents that encode information that is salient in the discourse or "given" are often prosodically reduced and remain unaccented. What is given and new is usually defined at the level of meaning: given expressions are those that refer to salient referents or predicates that have been made salient by the previous discourse. This paper presents evidence from two production studies that sometimes, a constituent that semantically should be contrastive, and hence accentable, is treated prosodically as if it was given, and placing an accent on it is consistently avoided—an illusory case of givenness. This effect can be explained by assuming that givenness is not only evaluated in terms of semantic content, but also at the phonological level. Prosodically marking a semantic contrast requires the presence of a phonological contrast. This effect thus provides evidence that the notion of "antecedent" relevant for prosodic givenness-marking needs to include reference to linguistic form, and not just to referential meaning.


The application of probability to issues of proof and evidence is now a well-developed academic field, forming as it does a central part of the 'science of evidence'. But how far has that science developed in the practical setting of the court room? Starting from its roots and reviewing its progress to the present day, it is argued that while the science which supports statistical evidence has become ever more sophisticated, almost nothing has changed in English courts so far as what happens during the process of a trial. In this respect, the formal court dress worn by English advocates, largely unchanged since 1685, is emblematic of the lack of progress of probability theory since its inception.


Panicum mosaic virus (PMV) (genus Panicovirus, family Tombusviridae) and its molecular parasite, Satellite panicum mosaic virus (SPMV), synergistically interact in coinfected proso and pearl millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) plants resulting in a severe symptom phenotype. In this study, we examined synergistic interactions between the isolates of PMV and SPMV by using PMV-NE, PMV85, SPMV-KS, and SPMV-Type as interacting partner viruses in different combinations. Coinfection of proso millet plants by PMV-NE and SPMV-KS elicited severe mosaic, chlorosis, stunting, and eventual plant death compared with moderate mosaic, chlorotic streaks, and stunting by PMV85 and SPMV-Type. In reciprocal combinations, coinfection of proso millet by either isolate of PMV with SPMV-KS but not with SPMV-Type elicited severe disease synergism, suggesting that SPMV-KS was the main contributor for efficient synergistic interaction with PMV isolates. Coinfection of proso millet plants by either isolate of PMV and SPMV-KS or SPMV-Type caused increased accumulation of coat protein (CP) and genomic RNA copies of PMV, compared with infections by individual PMV isolates. Additionally, CP and genomic RNA copies of SPMV-KS accumulated at substantially higher levels, compared with SMPV-Type in coinfected proso millet plants with either isolate of PMV. Hybrid viruses between SPMV-KS and SPMV-Type revealed that SPMV isolates harboring a CP fragment with four differing amino acids at positions 18, 35, 59, and 98 were responsible for differential synergistic interactions with PMV in proso millet plants. Mutation of amino acid residues at these positions in different combinations in SPMV-KS, similar to those as in SPMV-Type or vice-versa, revealed that A35 and R98 in SPMV-KS CP play critical roles in enhanced synergistic interactions with PMV isolates. Taken together, these data suggest that the two distinct amino acids at positions 35 and 98 in the CP of SPMV-KS and SPMV-Type are involved in the differential synergistic interactions with the helper viruses.


Representative diastereomeric, erythritol and threitol polyhydroxylated pyrrolidine imine scaffolds have been rapidly elaborated to diversely functionalized aza-sugars through highly diastereoselective organometallic (RM) additions (R=Me, Et, allyl, hexenyl, Ph, Bn, pMeO-Bn). The yields for these additions have all been substantially enhanced from previously optimised levels (<58 %) for normal additions using a reverse addition procedure (e.g. R=Ph; 44 % normal mode --> 78 % reverse mode). The high diastereoselectivities (>98 % de for all except R=Me) are consistent with additions that are controlled by the configuration of the C-2 centre adjacent to the azomethine imine carbon and the conformation of the pyrrolidine imine. The high potential of this method was demonstrated by concise syntheses of 1-epi- and 2-epi-desacetylanisomycins. In addition, the late stage addition of hydrophobic substituents, which this imine addition methodology allows, enabled the preparation of novel aza-sugars with enhanced inhibitory potential. This was highlighted by the screening of a representative selection of these "hydrophobically-modified" aza-sugars against a diverse panel of 12 non-mammalian and human carbohydrate-processing enzymes. This identified a novel nanomolar alpha-galactosidase inhibitor (IC(50)=250 nM) and a novel highly selective glucosylceramide synthase inhibitor (IC(50)=52 microM, no alpha-glucosidase inhibition at 1 mM). Furthermore, analysis of the structure-activity relationships of racemic series of inhibitors allowed some validation of Fleet's mirror-image enzyme active site postulate.


Abstract There is a lack of data about oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) among the parents of pre-school children, especially in Lithuania and the relationships among socio-economic status, oral care habits and OHRQoL. Research questions: is OHRQoL influenced by socioeconomic status or oral care habits? Research focus – oral health-related quality of life among the parents of pre-school children. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationships among socioeconomic status, oral care habits and oral helath-related quality of life among the parents of pre-school children in Klaipeda. The study sample consisted of 375 parents (mother or father) of pre-school children. The questionnaire survey was conducted at randomly selected 23 kindergartens in Klaipeda city. The questionnaire consisted of sociodemographic and oral care habits questions. All the participants were examined by self-administered OIDP questionnaire, which measured oral impacts on physical, psychological and social aspects of daily performances. The highest overall impact on OHRQoL among the parents of pre-school children was observed in the domain of Carrying out major work or role (73.0), the lowest one in the Eating and enjoying food (25.74) domain. Mean OIDP score was significantly higher among the parents whose socioeconomic status was low (35.44), reflecting poorer OHRQoL, as compared with high (8.07) socioeconomic status. Parents with poor oral care habits significantly more frequently were affected (79.2%) in Smiling, laughing domain, as compared to the parents whose oral care habits were good (20.8%). Lower socioeconomic status and poorer oral care habits were related with worsened oral health-related quality of life, especially in the area of psychological performances.


Zooplankton samples were collected in Annaba Bay (Algeria) from January 2009-March 2011 at three coastal sites differ- ently affected by estuarine plumes and external currents. Aim of this survey was to analyze zooplankton composition, abundance and biomass and compare the results with previous studies to reveal possible populations and environmental changes. The mean zooplankton abundance varied between 1,200-6,000 ind. m -3 and biomass 6.70-25.70 mg DW m -3 , according to the site. Copepods constituted the main fraction of zooplankton community, and Oithona similis and Paracalanus indicus successively dominated during autumn-winter and spring-summer. The dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans was one of the major zooplankton components, and developed high numbers during February-April, becoming common in neritic and coastal regions. The singularity of the zooplankton from Annaba Bay is the prevalence of P. indicus throughout the entire bay and the decrease in Acartia (Acartiura) discaudata and Acartia (Acartiura) clausi (with respect to previous years), possibly replaced by A. negligens . Additionally, Oi- thona nana abundance markedly decreased with the large development of O. similis . Annaba Bay also differs from other similar Mediterranean coastal areas by the large development of Centropages ponticus populations during the warm period. Among the identified copepod species, the alien species Pseudodiaptomus australiensis and P. arabicus are reported for the first time in the Mediterranean Sea. The occurrence of copepodid V stages of P. australiensis suggests that this species survives and reproduces in Annaba Bay, but so far without developing an abundant population.


This paper provides a numerical analysis of the influence of photonic crystal etching depth on the confinement factor, slope efficiency, emitted power and tuning range of single mode VCSELs. Several mechanisms were used to determine the level of power emission, namely: selective leakage, thermal focusing, the waveguide effect induced by the photonic-crystal, gain spectrum red shift, and its maximum reduction with the increase of driving currents. We show that careful design of the photonic crystal allows for a 10% increase in the emitted power of a single-mode regime and for a broad range of steering currents from 5 to 50 mA. Such attributes support tuning of a single-mode emission beyond the 20 nm spectrum range.


Virtual Machine (VM) environments (e.g., VMware and Xen) are experiencing a resurgence of interest for diverse uses including server consolidation and shared hosting. An application's performance in a virtual machine environment can differ markedly from its performance in a non-virtualized environment because of interactions with the underlying virtual machine monitor and other virtual machines. However, few tools are currently available to help debug performance problems in virtual machine environments.In this paper, we present Xenoprof, a system-wide statistical profiling toolkit implemented for the Xen virtual machine environment. The toolkit enables coordinated profiling of multiple VMs in a system to obtain the distribution of hardware events such as clock cycles and cache and TLB misses. The toolkit will facilitate a better understanding of performance characteristics of Xen's mechanisms allowing the community to optimize the Xen implementation.We use our toolkit to analyze performance overheads incurred by networking applications running in Xen VMs. We focus on networking applications since virtualizing network I/O devices is relatively expensive. Our experimental results quantify Xen's performance overheads for network I/O device virtualization in uni- and multi-processor systems. With certain Xen configurations, networking workloads in the Xen environment can suffer significant performance degradation. Our results identify the main sources of this overhead which should be the focus of Xen optimization efforts. We also show how our profiling toolkit was used to uncover and resolve performance bugs that we encountered in our experiments which caused unexpected application behavior.


The traditional trade theory predicts that trade in goods perfectly substitutes for direct movement of factors. This equivalence between goods trade and factor movements, however, depends crucially on assumptions about the production. This paper establishes necessary and sufficient conditions which describe the relationship between goods trade and capital mobility in a 2x2x2 trade model with internationally mobile capital. It identifies possible ways of incorporating capital mobility into a multi-regional, multi-sectoral Computable General Equilibrium framework. The consideration of capital mobility leads to other allocational and distributional outcomes of policy scenarios if there exists differences in production technologies across regions, trade impediments, or distortions in product or factor markets.


This article analyzes the law and economics of market internalization: the capability of markets to both penalize and reward firms for their environmental, health and safety performance. As for market sticks, the article maintains that market transactions - both private and public sales of corporate assets as well as transactions in publicly traded securities - are an important avenue through which firms realize comparative advantages in regulatory compliance, and that such transactions have the potential to significantly enhance corporate environmental and social performance. Asset transactions tend to drive environmental cleanup and transfer assets to firms that are better able to know about and comply with relevant regulatory directives. On public securities markets, the very fact that traders are imperfectly informed about firm-specific regulatory risk causes disproportionately large market reaction to the revelation of such risks. The incentive to avoid such large, negative market reactions to the revelation of negative information leads may induce a higher level of compliance than were no such market reaction anticipated. Incentives for voluntary disclosure of negative information are complex, but as is true of financial disclosure, mandatory disclosure requirements may be crucial in allowing firms to make such credible commitments. As for the potential positive rewards (in the form of price premia) that SR consumers and investor offer to firms that they perceive to be pursuing CSR, the fundamental problem is that CSR cannot be directly observed by consumers and investors. Unless firms can find a credible signal of CSR, the positive potential of the market may go unrealized. Inevitably, much corporate communication regarding CSR is (from a game-theoretic point of view) cheap talk. There is likely to an uninformative, pooling equilibrium in which only firms in industries with well-recognized, large SR impacts are likely to engage in CSR cheap talk, so that such reports do not generate information on the relative economic and social performance of firms within the category of firms that report. The article's policy conclusions include the following: - The SEC's standard requiring the disclosure only of those environmental regulatory costs and liabilities that are "probable" and "reasonably estimable" is sensible as tracking the market's limitations in coping with risk versus uncertainty, but the SEC's almost complete failure to enforce its rules regarding the disclosure of environmental risks has made it impossible for corporate managers to credibly commit to being one of the "good guys" by voluntarily disclosing such bad news. - As for the potential for legal liability for false assertions of CSR to deter "bad" companies from pretending to be "good" ones via their CSR communications (thus destroying the uninformative (or babbling) market equilibrium, the optimal liability system involves potential liability (because it gives plaintiffs access to civil discovery that allows for the discovery of information regarding corporate labor and environmental practices that otherwise would be asymmetrically available only to the corporate speaker), but liability that is strictly limited in amount. The market alternative of private, third party certification of CSR disclosures and assertions - a market response to SR consumers' and investors' demand for credible, reliable firm-specific information - is effective only if itself credible. While market reputation clearly helps ensure the truthfulness and credibility of private auditors' CSR reports, the risk of collusion between audited companies and their auditors is just as great when it comes to CSR as it is in the traditional area of financial report auditing. Just as with financial reports, the threat of holding auditors legally liable for intentionally or negligently false CSR audit reports may be necessary for private CSR auditing to generate credible information.


Admissions models facilitate the selection of MSW candidates who are both academically prepared for graduate study and professionally suited to social work, characteristics often referred to as fit-to-the-profession. This study attempted to identify the relationship between the criteria used in the admissions model of a medium-sized MSW program and student success in the program. Specific criteria and the associated measurement tools within the model were evaluated in relation to student success. The study found that undergraduate grade point average is significantly associated with MSW grade point average while neither academic criteria nor fit to the profession criteria were predictive of graduation. The study also offered new information regarding the admission of students with a criminal history. Students with a criminal history were eight times less likely to graduate than their non-offending peers, even when controlling for age, gender, race, and program type. The study supports the development of new fit-to-the-profession criteria with the possible elimination of the written statement.


This report presents results of a peer review of MQPs conducted within the Computer Science Department during the Summer of 2001 as part of a campus-wide MQP review. The goal of the report is to assess whether the department MQPs are accomplishing their educational goals. An additional goal of this year's report is to examine the MQP role in ful lling department-de ned student learning outcomes. The report identi es problems that need to be addressed and trends that need to be continued to make the MQPs a worthwhile learning experience. It re ects data and evaluations for 47 MQPs, involving 104 computer science students, that were completed between the Summer of 2000 and the Spring of 2001. The report also makes comparisons to similar reviews done in the past. Overall, the large majority of the projects are meeting the educational goals of the department. The reviews indicate that the overall quality of the projects is up a bit from the 1999 MQP Review with 92% of the projects rated as at least adequate with 19% judged to be excellent. The report draws a number of conclusions about the success of the projects based upon the data collected and evaluations done for this review. The report concludes with recommendations for future reviews as the department continues to use the MQP Review as part of a larger department assessment e ort.


Rapid turning and swimming contribute to ecologically important behaviors in fishes such as predator avoidance, prey capture, mating, and the navigation of complex environments. For riverine species, such as knifefishes, turning behaviors may also be important for navigating locomotive perturbations caused by turbulent flows. Most research on fish maneuvering focuses on fish with traditional fin and body morphologies, which primarily use body bending and the pectoral fins during turning. However, it is uncertain how fishes with uncommon morphologies, are able to achieve sudden and controllable turns. Here we studied the turning performance and the turning hydrodynamics of the Black ghost knifefish (Apteronotus albifrons, N=6) which has an atypical elongated ribbon fin. Fish were filmed while swimming forward at ∼2 BL s-1 and feeding from a fixed feeder (control) and an oscillating feeder (75 Hz) at two different amplitudes. 3D kinematic analysis of the body revealed the highest pitch angles and lowest body bending coefficients occurred during steady swimming. Low pitch angle, high maximum yaw angles and large body bending coefficients were characteristic of small and large turns. Asynchrony in pectoral fin use was low during turning, however ribbon fin wavelength, frequency, and wave speed were greatest during large turns. Digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) showed larger counter-rotating vortex pairs produced during turning by the ribbon-fin in comparison to vortices rotating in the same direction during steady swimming. Our results highlight the ribbon fin's role in controlled rapid turning through modulation of wavelength, frequency, and wave speed.


Many computer vision applications require solving multiple tasks in real-time. A neural network can be trained to solve multiple tasks simultaneously using multitask learning. This saves computation at inference time as only a single network needs to be evaluated. Unfortunately, this often leads to inferior overall performance as task objectives can compete, which consequently poses the question: which tasks should and should not be learned together in one network when employing multi-task learning? We systematically study task cooperation and competition and propose a framework for assigning tasks to a few neural networks such that cooperating tasks are computed by the same neural network, while competing tasks are computed by different networks. Our framework offers a timeaccuracy trade-off and can produce better accuracy using less inference time than not only a single large multi-task neural network but also many single-task networks.


Free as in Freedom interweaves biographical snapshots of GNU project founder Richard Stallman with the political, social and economic history of the free software movement. It examines Stallman's unique personality and how that personality has been at turns a driving force and a drawback in terms of the movement's overall success.Free as in Freedom examines one man's 20-year attempt to codify and communicate the ethics of 1970s era "hacking" culture in such a way that later generations might easily share and build upon the knowledge of their computing forebears. The book documents Stallman's personal evolution from teenage misfit to prescient adult hacker to political leader and examines how that evolution has shaped the free software movement. Like Alan Greenspan in the financial sector, Richard Stallman has assumed the role of tribal elder within the hacking community, a community that bills itself as anarchic and averse to central leadership or authority. How did this paradox come about? Free as in Freedom provides an answer. It also looks at how the latest twists and turns in the software marketplace have diminished Stallman's leadership role in some areas while augmenting it in others.Finally, Free as in Freedom examines both Stallman and the free software movement from historical viewpoint. Will future generations see Stallman as a genius or crackpot? The answer to that question depends partly on which side of the free software debate the reader currently stands and partly upon the reader's own outlook for the future. 100 years from now, when terms such as "computer," "operating system" and perhaps even "software" itself seem hopelessly quaint, will Richard Stallman's particular vision of freedom still resonate, or will it have taken its place alongside other utopian concepts on the 'ash-heap of history?'


The Ordos basin is the oldest and still an important hydrocarbon province in central China. It is a typical cratonic basin developed on the Archean granulites and lower Proterozoic greenschists of the North China block. The development of the Ordos basin during the Paleozoic–Mesozoic can be divided into three evolutionary stages: Cambrian–Early Ordovician cratonic basin with divergent margins; Middle Ordovician–Middle Triassic cratonic basin with convergent margins; and Late Triassic–Early Cretaceous intraplate remnant cratonic basin. Two hydrocarbon systems are present in the basin: the Paleozoic gas and Mesozoic oil systems. In the Paleozoic gas system, the Lower Ordovician marine carbonates and Pennsylvanian–Lower Permian coal measures serve as source rocks. The Lower Ordovician karst-modified dolomites and Pennsylvanian bauxitic mudstones form a significant reservoir-seal association, and the Pennsylvanian–Lower Permian deltaic sandstones and Upper Permian lacustrine mudstones form another effective reservoir-seal association. In the Mesozoic oil system, the Upper Triassic lacustrine mudstones are mature source rocks. The Upper Triassic deltaic sandstones and overlying shallow-lacustrine and swamp mudstones form a reservoir-seal association, and the Lower Jurassic fluvial sandstones and overlying shallow-lacustrine and swamp mudstones form another reservoir-seal association. In both hydrocarbon systems, the stratigraphic variations provide the principal traps. The Ordos basin is characterized by a stable tectonic setting that controlled the distribution of depositional systems and the development of erosional surfaces and ultimately governed the distribution of oil and gas fields and trap types.


Sociologists have frequently noted the relationship between fiscal institutions and the development of national financial markets, but the centrality of national budgets for structuring that relationship has received scant attention. This article uses a historical case study from the United States to address that gap. A 1960s political battle between the federal government and the Johnson administration over asset sales and the budget culminated in a reorganization of U.S. housing finance policy: Fannie Mae was "spun off" and authorized to issue mortgage-backed securities. This case study situates the early days of the modern U.S. securitization market within a broader political effort to use financial engineering and liberalization to avoid the redistribution of wealth, revealing how the effort to mobilize capital and influence outside of budgetary constraints can organize government engagements with finance. Implications are drawn for fiscal sociology, the sociology of finance, and the interaction between fiscal and financial systems over time.


Controlling indoor humidity is important in homes, because high indoor humidity is associated with occupant health and building durability issues. Ventilation is often used to avoid peaks of moisture in homes, such as in kitchens and bathrooms. However, in hot-humid climates, outdoor air can have higher humidity than indoors, and continuous whole house ventilation can lead to increases in indoor humidity levels. This problem is exacerbated in high performance homes, because their efficient building envelopes limit the operation of the cooling system, which also provides incidental dehumidification. This paper analyzes a time-shifting approach to smart ventilation control that takes advantage of changes in outdoor and indoor humidity, essentially venting more when dryer outside and less when more humid outside. The changes in whole house airflow are controlled in such a way that exposure to air pollutants is equivalent to a continuously operating, fixed airflow system. Specifically, this paper presents the development and initial testing of a seasonal smart ventilation controller, based simply on the month of the year and the net-humidity balance for the month between inside and outside. We assessed high performance test homes with varying floor areas and moisture generation rates across a variety of hotand mixed-humid climates in the south-eastern U.S., using ventilation simulation software specially adapted for this analysis. We present the results from baseline simulations, with continuous fans sized at 0%, 50% and 100% of the ASHRAE 62.2-2013 fan flow rates. From this analysis, we develop a seasonal control strategy. Finally, we present preliminary results from use of the proposed seasonal controller. The results include comparisons of IAQ, energy use and indoor humidity levels.


This research seeks to understand the landscape of local immigration policies in the United States and asks, what role do municipalities have in immigration policy? To what extent can municipalities be involved in the cooperation or noncooperation with national immigration laws? Specifically, what kind of municipal actions or inactions are associated with the classification of certain immigration policy responses and is this generalizable? The aim of this thesis is to establish a typology of municipal responses culminating in the production of a static four quadrant – matrix model within which cities can be located. In order to test this model, case studies will be systematically examined for internal validity across samples, and for external validity in the replicability of the exercise. Four US cities will serve as case studies: Detroit (Michigan), San Francisco (California), Hialeah (Florida), and Mesa (Arizona). These municipalities were selected because they have not been previously studied in this regard and because they represent the multi-dimensional nature of factors affecting local immigration policies. This thesis proceeds by (1) exploring the context of immigration policy and settlement in the United States, (2), reviewing the literature on local immigration policies in the US, and (3) examining the characteristics and policies of the case studies. The output consists of a typology of municipal responsiveness on the subject of inclusionary and exclusionary immigration policies and a generalizable model within which other cities can be situated. It is the intention of this work, that a more comprehensive and multidimensional approach to municipal policy analysis can create the circumstances for a new evaluation of immigration policy localism in a global governance perspective.


Abstract The interpretation of fossil eggshells can be problematic because eggshells may be transported by hydraulic flow in floodplains, making it difficult to interpret the reproductive behavior and ecology of parent animals. A series of flume studies was conducted to establish analytical techniques for assessing eggshell hydraulic transport in the fossil record. We investigated preferred eggshell orientation after transport, the relationship of flow competence with eggshell height and volume, and the size of clastic sediment expected to be associated with transported eggshells. Goose, emu, and ostrich eggshell fragments were released in a flume with decelerating flow. The transport of each eggshell was observed five times on each of four substrates (coarse sand, sparse gravel, dense gravel, and polyvinyl chloride). At eggshell deposition, eggshell orientation and flow depths were recorded. Critical bed shear stress for eggshell deposition was estimated based on the flow depth at the point of eggshell deposition, tested relative to eggshell height and volume, and used to estimate the size of hydraulically equivalent particles. The probability of concave-down orientation after transport was > 85% regardless of eggshell type or substrate. The bed shear stress at eggshell deposition reflected the eggshell height and volume. The estimated size of hydraulically equivalent particles was coarse sand or larger. A high proportion of concave-down eggshells in a fossil assemblage may indicate transport. In addition, eggshells may be sorted according to their height and volume. Coarse sand or larger particles observed in a matrix of fossil eggshells may suggest eggshell transport.


Transient homogeneous nucleation is studied in the limit of large critical sizes. Starting from pure monomers, three eras of transient nucleation are characterized in the classic Becker-D\"oring kinetic equations with the Turnbull-Fisher discrete diffusivity. After an initial stage in which the number of monomers decreases, many clusters of small size are produced and a continuous size distribution is created. During the second era, nucleii are increasing steadily in size in such a way that their distribution appears as a wave front advancing towards the critical size for steady nucleation. The nucleation rate at critical size is negligible during this era. After the wave front reaches critical size, it ignites the creation of supercritical clusters at a rate that increases monotonically until its steady value is reached. Analytical formulas for the transient nucleation rate and the time lag are obtained that improve classical ones and compare very well with direct numerical solutions. In addition, we propose and solve numerically a modified Becker-D\"oring model having a discrete diffusivity proportional to the area of a spherical cluster with $k$ monomers for small $k$ (as in the Turnbull-Fisher case) and to the cluster radius for large $k$ (as in the case of diffusive growth of clusters).


1. Root feeding insects can influence foliar quality of the host plant, which can affect the development and behaviour of leaf herbivores and parasitoids. Thus far, such interactions have been reported in situations where root and leaf associated organisms share a host-plant. We tested whether root herbivory influences searching behaviour of an above-ground parasitoid when the foliar feeding host of the parasitoid and the root herbivore are feeding on different plants. 2. We manipulated the proportion of 25 plants (ranging from 0 to 1) exposed to root herbivory by Delia radicum (neighbouring-plants). Five additional plants were infested above-ground with Pieris brassicae larvae (host-infested plants) and were placed in-between the neighbouring plants. We then released females of the parasitoid Cotesia glomerata which attacks P. brassicae and studied foraging efficiency of the parasitoid. 3. Overall, parasitoids located more host-infested plants during the maximum allowed searching time, and found their hosts about three times faster when neighbouring plants were exposed to root herbivory, than when neighbouring plants were not infested with D. radicum. Similar results were found when the host-infested plants were also exposed to root herbivory. 4. Our results show that the interaction between an above-ground foliar feeding insect and its parasitoid can be influenced by the presence of non-host herbivores feeding on the roots of neighbouring conspecific plants.


Querying the ever-growing Web of Data poses a significant challenge in today's Semantic Web. The complete lack of any centralised control leads to potentially arbitrary data distribution, high variability of latency between hosts participating in query answering, and, in the extreme, even the (sudden) unavailability of some hosts during query execution. In this thesis we address the question of how to efficiently query the Web of Data while taking into account its scale, diversity and unreliable and uncontrollable nature. We begin by first introducing Avalanche, a federated SPARQL engine which: 1) makes no assumptions about RDF data distribution to SPARQL endpoints, 2) is adaptive to changing network conditions, i.e, can adapt to slow network connections or endpoint unavailability, 3) retrieves up-to-date results from SPARQL endpoints, and 4) is flexible by making limiting assumptions about the structure of participating triple stores.

Tailored to address the semantic heterogeneity derived from the Web of Data's rich and broad semantic diversity, coupled with its characteristic lack of guarantees, Avalanche employs a fragmented query planning approach, under a concurrent and parallel execution model. By fragmented execution, we refer to the fact that the original SPARQL query is rewritten as the union of all fragments which comprise it. A query fragment is defined as the conjunction of all query triple patterns, where a triple pattern can be resolved by only one endpoint.

As the Web of Data continues to grow, we postulate that so is the likelihood that large numbers of endpoints will index data, sharing the same vocabularies, thus forming semantically homogenous partitions of the Semantic Web. Focusing on this scenario and in order to address some of Avalanche's limitations, we introduce x-Avalanche an extension of our original system. Here, we add support for disjunctions by using a distributed union operator capable of scaling to hundreds or thousands of endpoints. Furthermore, we enhance the distributed state management with: a) remote caches aimed to reduce the high latency typical of SPARQL endpoints, b) multicast parallel bind-joins exploiting the SPARQL 1.1 VALUES clause, and c) proxy based execution of x-Avalanche operators.

Finally, in x-Avalanche, we introduce a novel and parallel-friendly optimisation paradigm designed not only to offer an optimal tradeoff between total query execution time and fast first results, but also to consider an extended planning space unexplored so far, thus taking the fragmented execution model first introduced in Avalanche to its logical conclusion. Combined, x-Avalanche's enhancements and optimisations can lead to dramatic performance improvements over top performing state of the art federated SPARQL engines. To conclude, our results show that on average x-Avalanche can be more than one order of magnitude faster when executing SPARQL queries.


Proposals to "improve" a pocket beach at Kaimu, Hawaii have been under active consideration for a decade. The beach, which is famous for its jet black color has been receding for at least a century. The plans proposed have called for its enlargement, and most of them for its protection by an offshore breakwater. Advantages of a larger beach area, and of the improvement of swimming conditions if the breakwater were constructed, are undeniable. Loss of surfing sites would, however, have resulted from the adoption of any of the plans involving breakwater. Other disadvantages associated with some of the plans proposed would have included alteration of beach color, other visual impacts, and threats to archaeological sites from the quarrying of breakwater stone. Sand-loss estimates and breakwater construction criteria dependent on them were based on probably erroneous interpretations of historical evidence. Possible alternative sites for the provision of the swimming opportunity were not investigated. Serious question was raised whether the project would result in overall improvement. However, recent coastal subsidence has rendered all of the plans obsolete and the question is probably moot. Fig. 1 Photograph of Kaimu Beach in 1968 (Corps of Engineers) •Respectively Environmental Center, Department of Ocean Engineering, and Look Laboratory of Ocean Engineering; University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA


Impedance control is a commonly used control architecture for robotic manipulation. For increased flexibility, the impedance can be programmed to vary during the task. This has important implications on the stability properties of the control system, which are often overlooked in practice. In fact, the standard stability analysis is not valid in the case that the impedance parameters vary over time. Simulations show that, depending on how the impedance parameters are varied, stable or unstable behavior can arise even in regulation without contact. In this paper, we elucidate this issue and propose a state-independent stability constraint that relates the stiffness, and also the time derivative of the stiffness to the damping. Our approach is illustrated and evaluated in comparison with an online stabilization method [8] which uses a tank-based stability criterion.


Efficient operation of water distribution systems is linked with the assurance of water availability to the population. In general, the operational rules applied to water distribution networks have as a sole objective the continuity of the water supply and disregards saving energy costs related to the operation of the pumps. The task of determining optimal operational procedures involves several elements such as the daily variation of water consumption, energy cost rates and the level of the tanks and reservoirs. This work presents a hybrid genetic algorithm which is connected to the widely known software EPANET, in order to determine operational strategies in water supply with reduced energy costs. The model is applied to a hypothetical example and to a real water distribution network located in the city of Ourem, in Portugal.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the relevance and completeness of the comprehensive International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Core Sets for patients with rehabilitation needs in acute hospital care.

DESIGN
Multi-centre cohort study.

PATIENTS
A total of 391 patients (50.1% female, mean age 63.4 years) from 4 university hospitals in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and one Austrian general hospital.

METHODS
Data on functioning were collected using the respective comprehensive acute ICF Core Sets. Data were extracted from patients' medical record sheets and interviews with health professionals and patients.

RESULTS
Most of the categories of the comprehensive ICF Core Sets describing impairments, limitations or restrictions occurred in a considerable proportion of the study population. The most outstanding limitations and restrictions of the patients were problems with sleep and blood vessel functions, walking and moving and self-care. Thirty-eight aspects of functioning not previously covered by the comprehensive ICF Core Sets were ranked as relevant.

CONCLUSION
Categories of the comprehensive ICF Core Sets for the acute hospital situation were confirmed. Some additional categories not covered by the Set in its present version emerged from the interviews, and should be considered for inclusion in a finalized version.


Vidy Bay (Lake Geneva, Switzerland) is the site of a sewage outfall, located 700 meters offshore at a depth of 30 meters. Estimates of water circulation in this area are required to assess the transport and fate of water quality components. Numerical simulations and field measurements were carried out to examine current patterns in this area. A commercial 3D finite-difference hydrodynamic model (Delft3D-FLOW) was used. The simulations, which incorporated a non-uniform grid system, sigma coordinates and high-resolution bathymetry, covered all of Lake Geneva. In addition to local stream and River Rhone inflows, detailed, spatially distributed lake-wide wind, temperature and humidity data were used as model boundary conditions. Several scenarios based on typical meteorological conditions were simulated to determine the water currents in the lake and, particularly, in Vidy Bay. Different patterns were found depending on the wind regimes and lake thermal structure. A Lagran-gian drifter experiment was conducted in the bay to capture current patterns and to measure local air and water temperature, as well as wind velocity. The modeling results and field data compared well. The results demonstrate that Vidy Bay displays high temporal and spatial variability due to the vari-able forcing and relatively rapid hydrodynamic response to changing conditions.


The article emphasizes the importance of the role of the information component of the environmental policy of the modern state within the context of the reorientation of human-nature relations towards sustainable development. The existing approach of the Ukrainian lawmaking body to the determination of environmental information, the features of environmental information relations and the state-regulatory mechanism of its control are analyzed. The emphasis is placed on the existing ineffective system of collecting, analyzing, processing and transmitting information, which actually brings to naught the fairly broad rights of citizens in the environmental information sphere. A new differentiated approach is proposed to determine the structural elements of the information component of the environmental policy in Ukraine, based on which the main existing gaps of the modern state policy of Ukraine in this field are emphasized. Their solutions are proposed, among which are: the creation and organizational support of the automated information and analytical systems and other objects (sources) of providing access to environmental information; optimization of the existing procedural order for obtaining environmental information by contacting the public authorities and local governments in obtaining environmental information by the interested parties; responsibility tightening of public officials of executive and local authorities for failure to comply with the requirements of the law, for the timely provision and reliability of environmental information; adaptation of the national regulatory framework to international standards for environmental management and environmental labelling of products, etc.


We investigate whether the measurement and reporting of comprehensive income in financial statements systematically affects commercial bank equity analysts' investment risk assessments and valuation judgments. In an experiment in which 80 buy side analysts specializing in banking and financial institutions participated, we vary whether a bank is exposed to or hedged against interest rate risk across three different comprehensive income accounting regimes - piecemeal fair value accounting with comprehensive income reported in the statement of changes in equity, piecemeal fair value accounting with comprehensive income reported in a separate statement of performance, and full fair value accounting with comprehensive income reported in a separate statement of performance. When fair value changes are measured and reported on a piecemeal basis, we find no investment risk or valuation judgment differences across CI reporting regimes. Although we find that the analysts' investment risk judgments are influenced by the banks' risk management strategies, their valuation judgments are not. Only when fair value changes are measured completely and reported transparently (i.e., full fair value accounting) do analysts' valuation judgments distinguish between banks with different levels of risk. The study contributes to three avenues of literature concerned with financial-reporting transparency, risk, and fair value accounting. First, our ex ante evidence informs accounting standard setters as they evaluate whether to move to full fair value accounting for all financial instruments, and assess the degree to which differences in comprehensive income measurement and reporting affect the information analysts obtain from financial statements. Second, the study adds to the experimental accounting literature that examines comprehensive income reporting format effects and valuation judgments. Third, we add to archival accounting research on the information in comprehensive income by testing market participants' judgments under different comprehensive income reporting regimes, which cannot be directly investigated with archival data.


DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification critical for normal development and diseases. The determination of genome-wide DNA methylation at single-nucleotide resolution is made possible by sequencing bisulfite treated DNA with next generation high-throughput sequencing. However, aligning bisulfite short reads to a reference genome remains challenging as only a limited proportion of them (around 50–70%) can be aligned uniquely; a significant proportion, known as multireads, are mapped to multiple locations and thus discarded from downstream analyses, causing financial waste and biased methylation inference. To address this issue, we develop a Bayesian model that assigns multireads to their most likely locations based on the posterior probability derived from information hidden in uniquely aligned reads. Analyses of both simulated data and real hairpin bisulfite sequencing data show that our method can effectively assign approximately 70% of the multireads to their best locations with up to 90% accuracy, leading to a significant increase in the overall mapping efficiency. Moreover, the assignment model shows robust performance with low coverage depth, making it particularly attractive considering the prohibitive cost of bisulfite sequencing. Additionally, results show that longer reads help improve the performance of the assignment model. The assignment model is also robust to varying degrees of methylation and varying sequencing error rates. Finally, incorporating prior knowledge on mutation rate and context specific methylation level into the assignment model increases inference accuracy. The assignment model is implemented in the BAM-ABS package and freely available at https://github.com/zhanglabvt/BAM_ABS.


To the Editor:— Several years ago a professor of sociology at an American university who is a self-appointed expert on drug addiction, after interviewing a few drug addicts, wrote an article in which he advocated that the United States adopt the British system of handling drug addicts by having physicians write prescriptions for addicts. He reported that this system had abolished the "black market" in narcotics and that consequently there were only 326 drug addicts in the United Kingdom. The professor followed the method used by dictators to "make it simple, say it often"; true or false, the public will believe it. "Adopt the British system" is now urged by all self-appointed narcotic experts who conceal their ignorance of the problem by ostentation of seeming wisdom. The statement was recently used by a Columbia University professor on a television program and in a national press release in advocating this system.


With overview essays and more than 400 A-Z entries, this exhaustive encyclopedia documents the history of Asians in America from earliest contact to the present day. Organized topically by group, with an in-depth overview essay on each group, the encyclopedia examines the myriad ethnic groups and histories that make up the Asian American population in the United States. "Asian American History and Culture" covers the political, social, and cultural history of immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and their descendants, as well as the social and cultural issues faced by Asian American communities, families, and individuals in contemporary society. In addition to entries on various groups and cultures, the encyclopedia also includes articles on general topics such as parenting and child rearing, assimilation and acculturation, business, education, and literature. More than 100 images round out the set.


Spacecraft charging due to the natural plasma environment found in all orbits is known to produce many of the observed spacecraft anomalies and failures. A primary factor in adverse spacecraft charging is the secondary electron emission of differing materials on the spacecraft. Precipitating electrons and ions from the plasma to spacecraft surfaces can result in varying amounts of charge being released, depending on the secondary electron yield of the materials; this can lead to arcing between surfaces. NASA's Space and Environments Effects (SEE) program has recognized the need to improve their current materials database for modeling spacecraft charging and have chosen the surface science group at Utah State University to carry out electron emission studies on spacecraft materials as well as other research related to spacecraft charging. The instruments being used at USU are specifically designed to study the problem of spacecraft charging and the contributions of the group will continue after my research on secondary electron emission funded by the Rocky Mountain Space Grant Consortium is completed. In addition to improving NASA=s ability to model spacecraft charging, my secondary electron research has the potential to benefit numerous other fields, such as scanning electron microscopy.


This volume is the editorial product of the project "Gentrification and Crime. New Configurations and Challenges for the City" started by a public conference held on May 6, 2019 at the Municipal Historical Archive of Palermo. This event was organized by Locus and endorsed by private and public bodies. During the conference, four presentations were given by distinguished academics of main fields investigated: Giovanni Semi, Marco Picone, Adam Asmundo, Antonio La Spina. Journalist Elvira Terranova moderated the event. This publication was born from the desire to investigate gentrification and crime through a multidisciplinary approach. It draws inspiration from the urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre and his fundamental work The Production of Space on how the subject in its corporeality and in its interactions with the other integrates and produces spaces. The people involved in the project stem from different fields: geographers, urban sociologists and criminologists, architects and urban planners, historians, and other representatives of civil society. That being said, given this project's cross-disciplinary nature, contributors are given some creative freedom to flesh-out their own conceptualizations. As such, it is appropriate to cultivate an understanding of the intellectual framework and foundation underpinning this work.


America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But ordinary Americans aren't buying it. They see what the rosy statistics hide: We are all struggling under the weight of terrifying economic instability. No matter how well educated and hard working we are, we know that the bottom can fall out at any moment. Meanwhile, the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family. In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose. The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions. Hacker concludes by advocating an "insurance and opportunity society" that would safeguard economic security and expand economic opportunity, ensuring that all Americans have the basic financial security they need to reach for and achieve the American Dream. Jacob Hacker brings into focus as never before the pressures that the Great Risk Shift exerts on our pocketbooks and on our lives. Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world.


A novel method for semantic action recognition through learning a pose lexicon is presented in this paper. A pose lexicon comprises a set of semantic poses, a set of visual poses, and a probabilistic mapping between the visual and semantic poses. This paper assumes that both the visual poses and mapping are hidden and proposes a method to simultaneously learn a visual pose model that estimates the likelihood of an observed video frame being generated from hidden visual poses, and a pose lexicon model establishes the probabilistic mapping between the hidden visual poses and the semantic poses parsed from textual instructions. Specifically, the proposed method consists of two-level hidden Markov models. One level represents the alignment between the visual poses and semantic poses. The other level represents a visual pose sequence, and each visual pose is modeled as a Gaussian mixture. An expectation-maximization algorithm is developed to train a pose lexicon. With the learned lexicon, action classification is formulated as a problem of finding the maximum posterior probability of a given sequence of video frames that follows a given sequence of semantic poses, constrained by the most likely visual pose and the alignment sequences. The proposed method was evaluated on MSRC-12, WorkoutSU-10, WorkoutUOW-18, Combined-15, Combined-17, and Combined-50 action datasets using cross-subject, cross-dataset, zero-shot, and seen/unseen protocols.


Worker's perception of being supported by organization may lead for them to feel safe, display positive attitude toward organization and even see themselves as part of the organization. On the other hand, lack of support that workers expect from job environment and the lack of the necessary job satisfaction may lead them to display emotional behaviors and, over time, fatigue, dissatisfaction and depending on those, alienation may emerge. In this context of study, the relationships between the perception of organizational support, job satisfaction, and alienation of academic staff in a state university in Turkey were tried to reveal. In this study, data from 269 academic staff were analyzed. In the results of those analysis, it was determined that there is positive relationship between perceived organizational support and job satisfaction, negative relationship between perceived organizational support and alienation, a negative relationship between job satisfaction and alienation. Those relationships are statistically significant.


Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisational in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations. In a unique account of, and critical reflection on, the process of theoretical improvisation in ethnographic research, the authors demonstrate how both objects of analysis and our ways of knowing and explaining them are created and discovered in the give and take of real life, in all its immediacy. "Improvising Theory" centers on the year-long correspondence between Cerwonka, then a graduate student in political science conducting research in Australia, and her anthropologist mentor, Malkki. Through regular e-mail exchanges, Malkki attempted to teach Cerwonka, then new to the discipline, the basic tools and subtle intuition needed for anthropological fieldwork. The result is a strikingly original dissection of the processual ethics and politics of method in ethnography.


Over the past several decades, considerable effort has been expended toward the successful cryopreservation of various cells. While attempts at cryopreservation have been directed at different tissue types, one of the most vigorously pursued targets has been reproductive tissue. Historically, cryopreservation of sperm has existed for several decades. The earliest reports of pregnancies (Trounson et al., 1983) and births (Zeilmaker et al., 1984) from the cryopreservation of embryos occurred in the early 1980s. Presently, the freezing and storage of embryos following in vitro fertilization (IVF) is standard practice at most fertility clinics. In 2003, the CDC Assisted Reproductive Technology success rates report stated that 4,246 live births occurred out of 17,517 non-donor frozen embryo cycles. . Because the egg is a relatively voluminous cell with abundant cytoplasm, crystallization at the time of freezing may result in damage to the organelles. Secondly, a mature metaphase II oocyte contains a fragile spindle apparatus involved in cleavage. The purpose of this research study is to evaluate a method of freezing and thawing oocytes. This evaluation will be made by comparing the survival rates and rates of fertilization, cleavage and embryo quality of fresh oocytes and frozen-thawed oocytes which will be inseminated during the IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatment cycle. In addition, the same comparisons will be made between frozen oocytes from infertile women and those of egg donors. You are being asked to be in this study because you are currently undergoing in vitro fertilization


Objective. Management of gout is frequently suboptimal. The aim of this study was to determine the proportion of patients presenting to Christchurch Hospital for a gout flare and to determine whether management for both acute flares and urate lowering was in accordance with international recommendations. Methods. A retrospective audit was undertaken of all admissions to Christchurch Hospital from June 1, 2013, to May 31, 2014, in which gout was coded as a primary or secondary discharge diagnosis. Information including demographics, comorbidities, concomitant medications, treatment of acute gout, and urate lowering was collected. Results. A total of 235 acute admissions for gout in 216 individuals were identified. Eleven individuals had 2 admissions and 4 individuals had 3 admissions. In 95/235 admissions (40.4%), gout was the primary diagnosis. Gout accounted for 95/77,321 (0.12%) of acute admissions. The treatment of acute gout was prednisone monotherapy in 170/235 (72.3%) of admissions. Serum urate was measured at some point during 123/235 (52.3%) of admissions, with only 19/123 (15.4%) at target urate level (< 0.36 mmol/l). At 60 of the 235 admissions, urate-lowering therapy was already being prescribed. Nine out of 175 patients (5.1%) not treated with urate-lowering therapy at admission commenced allopurinol and 32/174 (18.4%) had commencement of urate-lowering therapy recommended in the discharge plan. Conclusion. Rates of admission for gout are similar to that observed in other studies. Failure to initiate, change, or recommend alterations in urate-lowering therapy to achieve target urate in people with gout admitted to hospital represents a significant lost opportunity to improve longterm gout management.


In this paper the author sets out the experience gained while undertaking two milestone performance benchmark studies in the US water industry: Performance Benchmarking for Water Utilities, funded by the AWWARF (American Water Works Research Foundation); and Benchmarking Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations, funded by the WERF (Water Environment Research Foundation)

The paper identifies two separate, but complementary components, to benchmarking, i.e. metric benchmarking and process benchmarking. The former comprises a range of quantitative assessments and comparisons including performance ratios and performance models. The latter focuses on how to make improvements in existing work processes by mapping current activities and then comparing to similar activities in 'best in class' service providers.

The paper concludes with a summary of the key results from the two studies, including the presentation of performance ratios, performance models and good management practices.


In common with ongoing research into human resource management (HRM), there are attributes of jobs that are associated with job quality, which are considered important in attracting and retaining employees. To date, however, analysis has omitted the fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workforce. It is important to consider whether it is possible to develop a strategic HRM approach for FIFO workers where commuting arrangements deviate from the norm. This article fills a gap in the literature by using a four-dimensional job-quality(JQ) framework to analyse factors associated with job quality and HRM. There search was undertaken at two FIFO-dependent workplaces in Western Australia. The findings show that one workplace was using bundles of HR practices that spanned all four JQ dimensions; the other concentrated mainly on two dimensions, a consequence which is the potential to lead to suboptimal outcomes for the organisation and their FIFO employees.


Information access by mobile devices is becoming available for anybody at any time in any place. We can clearly see the trend that learning can be happened in the so exciting 4A mode. Mobile computing technology will accelerate the progress and help to build a more convenient learning environment for learners. Web 2.0 websites allow learners to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing learners to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Learners can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages learners to add value to the application as they use it.

A comment card system that is compatible with mobile phones (NTT i-mode, ez-web, and vodafone) was developed and has been used for six years since 2002 as part of university lectures with large attendance. As per the approach adopted in these lectures, the lecturer poses a question and the students connect to the comment card system Web site from their mobile phones and submit their opinions or questions. The submitted opinions and questions are categorized according to their themes and are displayed on a large LCD screen facing the students in a lecture room in real time. The lecturer then draws attention to these opinions and questions and uses them to develop the lecture. The system was further improved to enable pictures taken from mobile phones equipped with a digital camera to be submitted along with a title and a comment, which the SQL server automatically stores in a picture database. This enabled the students to search for, extract, and view the pictures and the accompanying comments submitted by themselves and others in a ubiquitous learning environment. The application of this system in actual mass lectures indicates that it can promote the exchange of opinions between students and assist those lectures that aim to realize knowledge sharing.


Background Shared understanding between GPs and hospital specialists concerning when patients need specialised mental health care is important to ensure patients receive appropriate care. The large amount of rejected referrals often indicates a lack of such shared understanding. Aim To explore how patient representatives, GPs, and mental health specialists understand 'need for specialised mental health care', meaning that primary care is no longer sufficient. Design & setting This qualitative study was conducted in western Norway. The study has a service user-involved research design in which GPs and patient representatives participated in all stages of the research process. Method Six semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted. The groups were homogenous as they included only the perspectives of either GPs, mental health specialists, or patient representatives. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results The need for specialised mental health care was assessed using two continuums: (a) the patient's level of functioning and symptoms; and (b) characteristics of the healthcare system and the patient's informal support networks. Assessment along these continuums were often overruled by the evaluation of expected usefulness of specialised mental health care. In addition, all participants reported they often adapted their definition of need to fit other stakeholders' interpretations of need. Conclusion Evaluation of need for specialised mental health care is complex and depends on several factors. This may explain some of the current challenges that exist with regard to equity and timely access to appropriate healthcare interventions.


How do photojournalists get the pictures that bring us the action from the world's most dangerous places? How do picture editors decide which photos to scrap and which to feature on the front page? Find out in Get the Picture, a personal history of fifty years of photojournalism by one of the top journalists of the twentieth century. John G. Morris brought us many of the images that defined our era, from photos of the London air raids and the D-Day landing during World War II to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He tells us the inside stories behind dozens of famous pictures like these, which are reproduced in this book, and provides intimate and revealing portraits of the men and women who shot them, including Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and W. Eugene Smith. A firm believer in the power of images to educate and persuade, Morris nevertheless warns of the tremendous threats posed to photojournalists today by increasingly chaotic wars and the growing commercialism in publishing, the siren song of money that leads editors to seek pictures that sell copies rather than those that can change the way we see the world. "His best stories from the field are not tagging along with Capa and Hemingway...or having drinks at the Ritz in Parts with Marlene Dietrich; they are his less flashy but moving descriptions of the Japanese internment camps in California." - Leslie Cockburn, Los Angeles Times Book Review