Spatial distribution and modelling of liquefaction induced permanent large ground deformation are presented. The permanent large ground displacement patterns required for the safety assessment of buried pipelines are idealized on the basis of case history information of the 1964 Niigata Earthquake and the 1983 Nihonkai Chubu Earthquake. The idealized patterns are simply presented as function of spatial extent of longitudinal transient zone, lateral spreading zone and ground settlement and the maximum displacements. The margin of safety of the continuous buried pipelines of 12- and 24-in. outside diameters subject to the permanent ground deformation are demonstrated in comparisons with the local buckling strength of the pipes.


Abstract Introduction: Toxoplasma chorioretinitis is a leading cause of infectious posterior uveitis worldwide. Methods: We report an atypical presentation of Toxoplasma chorioretinitis presenting after uneventful cataract surgery in an 81-year-old male, with known hypernephroma and rheumatoid arthritis, treated with prednisolone and methotrexate. Results: He was treated for acute retinal necrosis and cytomegalovirus retinitis before Toxoplasma chorioretinitis was confirmed by vitreous biopsy 11 months after presentation. He developed a secondary rhegmatogenous retinal detachment, treated successfully with pars plana vitrectomy, silicone oil and endolaser. Visual acuity at discharge was 6/12 following silicone oil removal. Discussion: Necrotising chorioretinitis in immunosuppressed or elderly patients may present with an atypical phenotype. Clinical diagnosis in this context remains challenging. We discuss the clinical reasoning behind investigation and management of this patient group in whom viral and Toxoplasma retinitis may be clinically indistinguishable. The significance of vitreous PCR results in clinical decision making in the context of infectious posterior uveitis is discussed.


This Article asks whether violence or subversion of the criminal justice system are morally acceptable tactics to change racially discriminatory laws. It examines two provisions of federal criminal law that some people perceive as discriminatory against African Americans. The relevant laws involve the death penalty and the differing punishments for crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The Article considers the permissible range of tactics that concerned citizens can use to change those laws, if the traditional methods of petitioning the political and judicial branches of government seem ineffectual, or to take too long. The Article rejects the instrumentalist approach inherent in Malcolm X's famous recommendation that blacks use "any means necessary" to combat discrimination. It recommends that minorities consider the full range of their powers, but that they be guided, and ultimately limited, by morality. Morality does not, however, mandate acquiescence to race discrimination, or even a moderate response to it. The Article advises that, for guidance on morally appropriate tactics, minorities consult the international law doctrine of "just war." In applying this doctrine to American race relations, interesting questions are raised. If, for example, the death penalty discriminates against African-Americans (and especially if some blacks are executed when similarly situated non-blacks are not executed), how far can concerned citizens go in preventing its administration? Should they lie to get on death penalty juries? Should they commit terrorist attacks against executioners? In the case of lesser discrimination, such as that perceived in the crack cocaine laws, would the same tactics of violence or subversion be acceptable? The Article considers whether a cost of being an unpopular minority in a democracy is that the minority must suffer some discrimination, even in those cases in which the minority believes it can end the discrimination by using radical means.


Ionizing radiation during pregnancy may impair brain development resulting in microcephaly and mental retardation. These effects might be related to the targeting of highly proliferating NSPC during brain development. These cells give rise to the main types of neural differentiated cells of the brain. Tritium which is the radioactive hydrogen isotope emitting -particles is either of natural origin or is produced by nuclear facilities for fusion and fission reactions. Tritium dispersion around nuclear facilities may result in people exposure to very low doses of tritium in different chemical forms (tritium gas, tritiated water or organically bound tritium). Today, low dose exposition to tritium and its consequences on human health are still poorly known, in particular for the developing brain. By contrast, previous studies have shown that prenatal exposition to high doses of tritiated water or tritiated thymidine induce microcephaly and neurobehavioral changes in rat and mice models [1-3]. We have thus investigated the effects of tritiated thymidine on primary cultures of human neural stem and progenitor cells from several donors. Tritiated thymidine is incorporated in DNA during replication leading to chronic irradiation of the contaminated cells and their progeny. We have shown that tritiated thymidine incorporation led to dose-dependent decrease of cell proliferation in NSPC. This effect was due to inhibition of cell cycle progression and induction of apoptosis and premature senescence. Tritiated thymidine also impaired neural stem cells functions by triggering their premature differentiation. Intracellular tritium dosimetry based on autoradiography revealed that cellular effects were only associated to high levels of tritiated thymidine incorporation. We then compared the chromosome instability induced by tritiated thymidine after several rounds of replication. Cytogenetic analysis of metaphase spreads evidenced that tritiated thymidine induced chromatid-type aberrations after the first round of incorporation, consistently with the tritiated thymidine incorporation in the newly synthesized DNA strands. Tritium dosimetry revealed that one chromatid break was detected for about 50 tritium disintegrations occurring during S and G2/M phases. Both chromatid-type and chromosome-type aberrations are detected in -irradiated cycling cells, resulting from DNA damage induced before or after DNA replication respectively. Interestingly, chromatid-type aberrations were still mainly induced by tritiated


I INTRODUCTION In England and Wales, offenses typically have fixed maximum penalties assigned to them, usually in the form of a length of custody or fine amount, and some offenses may also have mandatory minimum sentences. (1) In addition, the available sentencing options (for example, custody, community penalty, fine, and compensation) may differ for offense type (that is, summary and indictable offenses) and for adult and youth (aged under seventeen) offenders. (2) Despite this, sentencers are afforded considerable discretion in the sentence they choose to pass. When applying their discretion to sentencing decisions, it is intended that sentencers use legal factors such as the nature and seriousness of the offense and the defendant's criminal history. (3) The sentencer is also obligated to take into account any aggravating and mitigating factors. (4) For instance, in England and Wales, aggravating factors include the vulnerability of the victim, whether the victim was racially or religiously targeted, the offender's leading role in the offense, and her profit from the offense (5) Mitigating factors include whether the offender was provoked, the offender's minor role in the offense, and her acceptance of responsibility or show of remorse. (6) The sentencer may also have access to sentencing recommendations provided in a pre-sentence report prepared by a probation officer or other such expert. (7) Finally, sentencers may also be required to give a discount for a guilty plea, (8) and consider the "totality" of a sentence if the offender is to be sentenced for more than one offense. (9) Research on sentencing decisions in jurisdictions such as England, Wales, and the United States, however, reveals that actual sentencing behavior can diverge dramatically from that which is intended. Evidence suggests that sentences may be based on factors such as the defendant's sex, race, and age. (10) Sentences may also be influenced by wider contextual factors, such as the court, and geographic region or jurisdiction. (11) Finally, sentences may be affected by the characteristics of the sentencer such as his race, age, education, or training. (12) Thus, discretion in sentencing appears to lead to unwanted disparities and unfairness in sentencing. Sentencing guidelines have been introduced in some jurisdictions to focus sentencers' attention on legal factors and to promote rational and consistent decision-making, with transparency and accountability. (13) Guidelines sometimes also aim to achieve effective sentencing in terms of reducing crime and increasing public safety, as well as acting as a resource-management tool by increasing the cost-effectiveness of sentences. Finally, guidelines may also aim to increase public understanding and confidence in sentencing, as well as victim satisfaction. The aim of the present article is to critically review the development of sentencing guidelines in England and Wales. Specifically, it is argued that the revision of existing guidelines and the development of new ones could be beneficially informed by (1) a psychological understanding of human judgment and decision-making, (2) the experience of guideline development and implementation in other domains, and (3) listening to sentencers' views on the guidelines. II SENTENCING GUIDELINES IN ENGLAND AND WALES A. The (Old) Sentencing Guidelines Council and the (New) Sentencing Council In England and Wales, under provisions made by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, (14) since March 2004, sentencing guidelines were produced by the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) after recommendations from the Sentencing Advisory Panel (SAP). However, these bodies were replaced by the Sentencing Council (SC) in April 2010 following provisions made by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (2009 Act). (15) As with the SGC, the SC has representation from all the major interested parties, including victim services, police, prosecution, magistrates' court, and Crown Court. …


Background: A significant change in family structure in the United Kingdom (UK) has been the increase in lone parent families. It is strongly predicted that the population of lone fatherheaded families will continue to grow in the UK. Of all dependent children living in lone parent families in Britain, 8% currently live in a lone father household. However, research on lone fathers remains scarce. Indeed, there is limited research that recognises the wide diversity of fatherhood, including the specific needs different fathers might have. Research findings suggest that lone fathers often face difficulties that are linked to structural and personal factors. They also emphasise how gender stereotypes further influence their experiences. Nonetheless, research has shown that lone fathers are able to plan a healthy developmental and functional environment for themselves and their children. This challenges the notion that men are emotionally detached and the exclusive importance of mothers as salient carers for children, a concept that is deeply embedded within psychoanalytic theory.

Rationale and aims: There is very little known about the psychological well-being of lone fathers in the UK. Yet, studies have found higher rates of distress in lone fathers as a result of separation or divorce when compared with married fathers, widowers and the general population. Studies have suggested that lone father families as a result of separation or divorce are not a homogeneous group. For instance, those fathers who insisted on or fought for the custody of their children must be distinguished from those who, differently, had no adjustment period in taking over the care of children. Indeed, it has been argued that a parent's initial attitude and feelings about his child might be influenced by whether or not he wanted sole responsibility. Earlier research findings have suggested that lone fathers feel unhappy and depressed at the point of separation and are of vulnerable mind and susceptible to forms of depressive mental illnesses, enough to impede their ability to acknowledge that they need help, to know where to ask for it, and then, to ask for help . Although there is a very small body of research exploring lone fatherhood after separation or divorce in the UK, this is not necessarily a disadvantage as it may place the field of counselling psychology in a more qualified and unique position to explore the experiences of lone fathers from a fresh perspective. The current study, therefore, focuses specifically at men raising children alone after divorce or separation in a UK context. The study aims to elicit a better understanding of this specific group of fathers. This study aims to explore how men understand their experience of becoming lone fathers after separation or divorce, the challenges that they might face and how they might work through them. The current study also intends to address how they understand the relationship with their children.

Method: This current enquiry is a qualitative study and uses a constructivist grounded theory method to generate data examining social psychological processes involved.

Results: The results highlight that the transition to lone fatherhood occurs from a variety of positions and in different ways that seem to influence the emotional, practical and social experiences of participants. Nonetheless, the men in this study demonstrate a propensity to self-realise and self- transform.

Discussion: The participants of this study understand their experiences as a lone father in terms of; first, the complexities that they faced; second, how they managed their lone fatherhood experience; and last, through re-inscribing fatherhood, whilst simultaneously reflecting on gender and masculinities, all of which were influenced by the situational context that preceded lone fatherhood, as well as the relationship with their children. Findings are discussed in relation to these influential contexts, with an exploration of what they mean in light of existing theory and research. The men in this study not only appear to be changing traditional social and cultural norms for fathers but, they further challenge the prevalence of the heterosexual matrix that characterises the oedipal triad. The implications for theory and practice are outlined, emphasising how counselling psychologists could make a difference.


Technical freediving can be defined as freediving augmented by the use of oxygen-enriched gases or oxygen before, during, or after a freedive. As a result of these techniques, breath-hold divers can visit and enjoy underwater wrecks, reefs, and other diving locations previously located at depths unreachable to apnea divers. By pre-breathing oxygen-enriched gases in conjunction with hyperventilation—which decreases the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PCO2)—the technical freediver now has additional oxygen to facilitate aerobic respiration during the dive. In addition, pre-breathing oxygen decreases tissue nitrogen tensions, which limits inert gas loading and decreases the risk of decompression sickness (DCS). Finally, this technique decreases PCO2, which diminishes the urge to breathe. Consequently, a diver may be able to dive longer before critical hypoxia or hypercarbia forces an ascent. Technical freediving can also be complemented by the use of a diver propulsion vehicle to increase the speed of descent and ascent and minimize exertion. The techniques of technical freediving may be associated with increased risks in central nervous system oxygen toxicity, DCS, and arterial gas embolism. As the boundaries of apnea diving continue to expand, there will be considerable opportunities to investigate the physiological limits of the human body and to determine the safest methodologies to practice this evolving discipline.


The character of continental-interior paleoclimate at mid-latitudes, especially the aspect of temperature, has been a major source of debate in modeling and paleontologic communities over the past few years. A recent climate modeling study provides new insight into the issue of climatic conditions of early Eocene North America. Model cases with six times the present level of CO 2 , or with doubled present CO 2 and a large lake in western North America, produced results most similar to proxy paleoclimate interpretations. It is significant that the North American continental-interior climate responded as strongly to the existence of the lake as to the atmospheric CO 2 level. The large lake deflects the winter-freeze line poleward of the region containing most paleoclimate data site locations, producing above-freezing winter temperatures and providing a possible solution to the minimum-temperature difference that exists between models and data. The effect of the lake upon regional climate is significant and proves to be critical to reproducing the early Eocene climate of North America.


Multimorbidity, that is, the coexistence of chronic diseases, is associated with mental health issues among elderly people. In Sweden, seniors with multimorbidity often live at home and receive care from nursing aides and district nurses. The aim of this study was to describe the variation in how community-dwelling seniors with multimorbidity perceive the concept of mental health and what may influence it. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were analysed using a phenomenographic approach. Six qualitatively different ways of understanding the concept of mental health and factors that may influence it, reflecting key variations of meaning, were identified. The discerned categories were: mental health is dependent on desirable feelings and social contacts, mental health is dependent on undesirable feelings and social isolation, mental health is dependent on power of the mind and ability to control thoughts, mental health is dependent on powerlessness of the mind and inability to control thoughts, mental health is dependent on active behaviour and a healthy lifestyle, and mental health is dependent on passive behaviour and physical inactivity. According to the respondents' view, the concept of mental health can be defined as how an individual feels, thinks, and acts and also includes a positive as well as a negative aspect. Social contacts, physical activity, and optimism may improve mental health while social isolation, ageing, and chronic pain may worsen it. Findings highlight the importance of individually definitions of mental health and that community-dwelling seniors with multimorbidity may describe how multiple chronic conditions can affect their life situation. It is essential to organize the health care system to provide individual health promotion dialogues, and future research should address the prerequisites for conducting mental health promotion dialogues.


Osteosarcoma is the most frequent primary malignant bone tumor in children and adolescents with a high propensity for lung metastasis, the major cause of disease‐related death. Reliable outcome‐predictive markers and targets for osteosarcoma metastasis‐suppressing drugs are urgently needed for more effective treatment of metastasizing osteosarcoma, which has a current mean 5‐year survival rate of approximately 20%. This study investigated the prognostic value and the biological relevance of the extracellular matrix‐associated growth factor Cyr61 of the CCN family of secreted proteins in osteosarcoma and metastasis. The prognostic value of Cyr61 was assessed with Kaplan‐Meier analyses based on Cyr61 immunostaining of a tissue microarray of osteosarcoma biopsies collected from 60 patients with local or metastatic disease. Effects of Cyr61 overexpression on intratibial tumor growth and lung metastasis of the low metastatic human SaOS‐2 osteosarcoma cell line were examined in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice. Cyr61‐provoked signaling was studied in vitro in nonmanipulated SaOS‐2 cells. Cyr61 immunostaining of osteosarcoma tissue cores correlated significantly (p = 0.02) with poor patient survival. Mice intratibially injected with Cyr61‐overexpressing SaOS‐2 cells showed faster tumor growth and an increase in number and outgrowth of lung metastases and consequently significantly (p = 0.0018) shorter survival than mice injected with control SaOS‐2 cells. Cyr61‐evoked PI‐3K/Akt/GSK3β signaling in SaOS‐2 cells resulted in a subcellular redistribution of the cell cycle inhibitor p21Cip1/WAF1. Cyr61 has considerable potential as a novel marker for poor prognosis in osteosarcoma and is an attractive target for primary tumor‐ and metastases‐suppressing drugs. © 2012 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research


Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) is expressed when infected males are crossed with either uninfected females or females infected with Wolbachia of different CI specificity. In diploid insects, CI results in embryonic mortality, apparently due to the the loss of the paternal set of chromosomes, usually during the first mitotic division. The molecular basis of CI has not been determined yet; however, several lines of evidence suggest that Wolbachia exhibits two distinct sex-dependent functions: in males, Wolbachia somehow "imprints" the paternal chromosomes during spermatogenesis (mod function), whereas in females, the presence of the same Wolbachia strain(s) is able to restore embryonic viability (resc function). On the basis of the ability of Wolbachia to induce the modification and/or rescue functions in a given host, each bacterial strain can be classified as belonging in one of the four following categories: mod+ resc+, mod− resc+, mod− resc−, and mod+ resc−. A so-called "suicide" mod+ resc− strain has not been found in nature yet. Here, a combination of embryonic cytoplasmic injections and introgression experiments was used to transfer nine evolutionary, distantly related Wolbachia strains (wYak, wTei, wSan, wRi, wMel, wHa, wAu, wNo, and wMa) into the same host background, that of Drosophila simulans (STCP strain), a highly permissive host for CI expression. We initially characterized the modification and rescue properties of the Wolbachia strains wYak, wTei, and wSan, naturally present in the yakuba complex, upon their transfer into D. simulans. Confocal microscopy and multilocus sequencing typing (MLST) analysis were also employed for the evaluation of the CI properties. We also tested the compatibility relationships of wYak, wTei, and wSan with all other Wolbachia infections. So far, the cytoplasmic incompatibility properties of different Wolbachia variants are explained assuming a single pair of modification and rescue factors specific to each variant. This study shows that a given Wolbachia variant can possess multiple rescue determinants corresponding to different CI systems. In addition, our results: (a) suggest that wTei appears to behave in D. simulans as a suicide mod+ resc− strain, (b) unravel unique CI properties, and (c) provide a framework to understand the diversity and the evolution of new CI-compatibility types.


This thesis deals with data structures that are mostly useful in the area of string matching and string mining. Our main result is an O(n)-time preprocessing scheme for an array of n numbers such that subsequent queries asking for the position of a minimum element in a specified interval can be answered in constant time (so-called RMQs for Range Minimum Queries). The space for this data structure is 2n+o(n) bits, which is shown to be asymptotically optimal in a general setting. This improves all previous results on this problem. The main techniques for deriving this result rely on combinatorial properties of arrays and so-called Cartesian Trees. For compressible input arrays we show that further space can be saved, while not affecting the time bounds. For the two-dimensional variant of the RMQ-problem we give a preprocessing scheme with quasi-optimal time bounds, but with an asymptotic increase in space consumption of a factor of log(n).

It is well known that algorithms for answering RMQs in constant time are useful for many different algorithmic tasks (e.g., the computation of lowest common ancestors in trees); in the second part of this thesis we give several new applications of the RMQ-problem. We show that our preprocessing scheme for RMQ (and a variant thereof) leads to improvements in the space- and time-consumption of the Enhanced Suffix Array, a collection of arrays that can be used for many tasks in pattern matching. In particular, we will see that in conjunction with the suffix- and LCP-array 2n+o(n) bits of additional space (coming from our RMQ-scheme) are sufficient to find all occ occurrences of a (usually short) pattern of length m in a (usually long) text of length n in O(m*s+occ) time, where s denotes the size of the alphabet. This is certainly optimal if the size of the alphabet is constant; for non-constant alphabets we can improve this to O(m*log(s)+occ) locating time, replacing our original scheme with a data structure of size approximately 2.54n bits. Again by using RMQs, we then show how to solve frequency-related string mining tasks in optimal time. In a final chapter we propose a space- and time-optimal algorithm for computing suffix arrays on texts that are logically divided into words, if one is just interested in finding all word-aligned occurrences of a pattern.

Apart from the theoretical improvements made in this thesis, most of our algorithms are also of practical value; we underline this fact by empirical tests and comparisons on real-word problem instances. In most cases our algorithms outperform previous approaches by all means.


Continued loss of biodiversity from urban areas is regarded as a critical issue. It is recognised that community education is required to improve awareness about environmental impacts and to achieve behavioural change to reduce environmental impacts.

A program to engage communities in restoration of biodiversity in urban gardens has been implemented by Greening Australia (WA) in a local government area. The concept of 'Discovery – Understanding – Action' leads participants through a process of learning, enabling learners to think of their own garden as a 'stepping stone' of habitat and encouraging them to accept responsibility for management of this habitat resource while also making connections with each other and the community. This paper presents the results of a smallscale evaluation of this program, including the significant positive changes captured by the pre and post program survey of knowledge, attitude, skills and empowerment.

Key outcomes of the interview analysis are also presented, highlighting participant views regarding major barriers to conserving urban biodiversity.


This book provides a critique of deterrence policy; that is, the use of the stick, to fight terrorism. Coercion or negative sanctions are found to have little effect and, in important instances, are even counterproductive. The same holds, on the whole, for economic sanctions imposed on countries supporting terrorists. Using coercion is useful only under very specific conditions. This conclusion stands in stark contrast to the anti-terrorist policy undertaken all over the world. It is therefore important to seriously consider alternative antiterrorist policies going beyond coercion. Such an alternative view is presented here. Most importantly, the book demonstrates that there are viable and effective policies using a positive approach, that is, using carrots, to fight terrorism. Three specific anti-terrorist policies are proposed.


Although it is established that Alzheimer's disease (AD) leads to cerebral macrostructural atrophy, microstructural diffusion changes have also been observed, but it is not yet known whether these changes offer unique information about the disease pathology. Thus, a multi-modal imaging study was conducted to determine the independent contribution of each modality in moderate to severe AD. Seventeen patients with moderate-severe AD and 13 healthy volunteers underwent diffusion-weighted and T1-weighted MR scanning. Images were processed to obtain measures of macrostructural atrophy (gray and white matter volumes) and microstructural damage (fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity). Microstructural diffusion changes independent of macrostructural loss were investigated using an ANCOVA where macrostructural maps were used as voxel-wise covariates. The reverse ANCOVA model was also assessed, where macrostructural loss was the dependent variable and microstructural diffusion tensor imaging maps were the imaging covariates. Diffusion differences between patients and controls were observed after controlling for volumetric differences in medial temporal, retrosplenial regions, anterior commissure, corona radiata, internal capsule, thalamus, corticopontine tracts, cerebral peduncle, striatum, and precentral gyrus. Independent volumetric differences were observed in the entorhinal cortex, inferior temporal lobe, posterior cingulate cortex, splenium and cerebellum. While it is well known that AD is associated with pronounced volumetric change, this study suggests that measures of microstructure provide unique information not obtainable with volumetric mapping in regions known to be pivotal in AD and in those thought to be spared. As such this work provides great understanding of the topography of pathological changes in AD that can be captured with imaging.


The dot matrix hologram (DMH) has been widely used in anti-counterfeiting label. With the same technology and cell array configuration, we can encode to the incidence beam. These codes can be some image matrix grating with different grating gap and different grating orientation. When the multi-level phase diffractive grating is etched, the incidence beam on the cell appears as an encoding image. When the encoded grating and DMH are used in the same label synchronously, the technology of multi-encoded grating array enhances the anti-counterfeit ability.


The rocks of the Jos – Bukuru area in North Central Nigeria is characterized by negative and positive gravity residual anomalies ranging from –25 to +20 mGals. Lineaments were extracted from the gravity residual anomaly map for the purpose of assessing the groundwater resources in the area. The region is marked by more than one set of lineaments, each with its distinctive orientation and probably spacing. Lineaments shorter than 20 km in length are shallow structures suitable for this exercise because of their importance in groundwater recharge, transmission and discharge. In a bin size of 15oone major and one minimum striking directions between 000o and 030o were obtained. The major type lies between 000o and 015o, while the minimum one is oriented within the 015o and 030o direction. These directions correspond to the stress axis of the essentially north – south trending geological structures of Nigeria. Invasions of mineralizing fluids might had sealed some of the joints and other fractures, however where the open spaces are not sealed, weathering and erosion widen and deepened the joints paving routes for surface water flows and direct seepage into the underlying strata. On the lineament density and lineament intersection maps the closures suggest probable discontinuity of the aquifer units. On this basis of the lineament density and the lineament intersection results, the area was divided into three hydrogeological zones. Site 1 is considered most favourable for water well development, while site 3 may result in low yields or even in abortive water wells.


Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties, including: if and how fast they converge to a globally optimal solution or how they cope with approximation error due to using a restricted class of parametric policies. This work provides provable characterizations of the computational, approximation, and sample size properties of policy gradient methods in the context of discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We focus on both: "tabular" policy parameterizations, where the optimal policy is contained in the class and where we show global convergence to the optimal policy; and parametric policy classes (considering both log-linear and neural policy classes), which may not contain the optimal policy and where we provide agnostic learning results. One central contribution of this work is in providing approximation guarantees that are average case -- which avoid explicit worst-case dependencies on the size of state space -- by making a formal connection to supervised learning under distribution shift. This characterization shows an important interplay between estimation error, approximation error, and exploration (as characterized through a precisely defined condition number).


Flexible rotor-bearing system stability is a very important subject impacting the design, control, maintenance and operating safety. As the rotor bearing-system dynamic nonlinearities are significantly more prominent at higher rotating speeds, the demand for better performance through higher speeds has rendered the use of linear approaches for analysis both inadequate and ineffective. To address this need, it becomes important that nonlinear rotor-dynamic responses indicative of the causes of nonlinearity, along with the bifurcated dynamic states of instabilities, be fully studied. The objectives of this research are to study rotor-dynamic instabilities induced by mass unbalance and to use smart materials to stabilise the performance of the flexible rotor-system. A comprehensive mathematical model incorporating translational and rotational inertia, bending stiffness and gyroscopic moment is developed. The dynamic end conditions of the rotor comprising of the active bearing-induced axial force is modelled, the equations of motion are derived using Lagrange equations and the Rayleigh-Ritz method is used to study the basic phenomena on simple systems. In this thesis the axial force terms included in the equations of motion provide a means for axially directed harmonic force to be introduced into the system. The Method of Multiple Scales is applied to study the nonlinear equations obtained and their stabilities. The Dynamics 2 software is used to numerically explore the inception and progression of bifurcations suggestive of the changing rotor-dynamic state and impending instability.
In the context of active control of flexible rotors, smart materials particularly SMAs and piezoelectric stack actuators are introduced. The application of shape memory alloy (SMA) elements integrated within glass epoxy composite plates and shells has resulted in the design of a novel smart bearing based on the principle of antagonistic action in this thesis. Previous work has shown that a single SMA/composite active bearing can be very effective in both altering the natural frequency of the fundamental whirl mode as well as the modal amplitude. The drawback with that design has been the disparity in the time constant between the relatively fast heating phase and the much slower cooling phase which is reliant on forced air, or some other form of cooling. This thesis presents a modified design which removes the aforementioned existing shortcomings. This form of design means that the cooling phase of one half, still using forced air, is significantly assisted by switching the other half into its heating phase, and vice versa, thereby equalising the time constants, and giving a faster push-pull load on the centrally located bearing; a loading which is termed 'antagonistic' in this present dissertation. The piezoelectric stack actuator provides an account of an investigation into possible dynamic interactions between two nonlinear systems, each possessing nonlinear characteristics in the frequency domain. Parametric excitations are deliberately introduced into a second flexible rotor system by means of a piezoelectric exciter to moderate the response of the pre-existing mass-unbalance vibration inherent to the rotor. The intended application area for this SMA/composite and piezoelectric technologies are in industrial rotor systems, in particular very high-speed plant, such as small light pumps, motor generators, and engines for aerospace and automotive application.


This dissertation develops the conceptual framework of landscape political ecology (LPE) to consider particular forms of socio-ecological transformation resulting from the relatively re- cent but heavily contested practice of ?swiftlet farming? in Malaysian cities. Swiftlet farming is a colloquial term given to the semi-domestication of edible-nest swiftlets (aerodramus fuciphagus) in converted buildings within urban areas in order to harvest their nests. These nests have long been a highly sought-after delicacy in China and overseas Chinese communities, and subsequently fetch over US$2000 on the international market. The primary research question investigated asks how the industry has been perceived and contested on an everyday basis in Malaysian cities. Engaging these controversies provides the opportunity to capture the significant negotiation that is embedded in the mechanisms of landscape production and capital accumulation as they take place through struggles over swiftlet farming in contemporary Malaysian cities. This research also seeks to understand how the swiftlet farming industry has transformed not only the cities in which it has been located, but also the ecology of swiftlets and their breeding patterns.The dissertation is centered on a six-month participatory ethnography which took place primarily in the city of George Town, Penang, but also investigated other related sites in peninsular Malaysia. I maintain that such ?co-productive? research has enabled a more situated view of socio-ecological transformations that have transpired through urban swiftlet farming in Malaysia, and the controversies surrounding them. The empirical chapters aim to unpack the controversies and discourses that emerged in response to swiftlet farming in the study areas, primarily its perceived impact on urban health, forms of cultural heritage, and the wider implications of ?farming? such animals in urban residential areas. In exploring these topics, LPE provides a cohesive and integrated approach that helps to untangle the interconnected economic, political, ecological and discursive processes that together form increasingly heterogeneous socio-natural landscapes. The implications of this thesis thus speak to the fraught cultural politics underlying processes of urban socio-ecological transformation in contemporary Southeast Asian cities.


Modular inversion is a fundamental process in several cryptographic systems. It can be computed in software or hardware, but hardware computation has been proven to be faster and more secure. This research focused on improving an old scalable inversion hardware architecture proposed in 2004 for finite field GF(p). The architecture comprises two parts, a computing unit and a memory unit. The memory unit holds all the data bits of computation whereas the computing unit performs all the arithmetic operations in word (digit) by word bases such that the design is scalable. The main objective of this paper is to show the cost and benefit of modifying the memory unit to include shifting, which was previously one of the tasks of the scalable computing unit. The study included remodeling the entire hardware architecture removing the shifter from the scalable computing part and embedding it in the non-scalable memory unit instead. This modification resulted in a speedup to the complete inversion process with an area increase due to the new memory shifting unit. Several design schemes have been compared giving the user the complete picture to choose from depending on the application need.


Epidemiology is the study of patterns of health-related states or events in populations. Statistical models developed for epidemiology could be usefully applied to behavioral states or events. The aim of this study is to present the application of epidemiological statistics to understand animal behavior where discrete outcomes are of interest, using data from guide dogs to illustrate. Specifically, survival analysis and multistate modeling are applied to data on guide dogs comparing dogs that completed training and qualified as a guide dog, to those that were withdrawn from the training program. Survival analysis allows the time to (or between) a binary event(s) and the probability of the event occurring at or beyond a specified time point. Survival analysis, using a Cox proportional hazards model, was used to examine the time taken to withdraw a dog from training. Sex, breed, and other factors affected time to withdrawal. Bitches were withdrawn faster than dogs, Labradors were withdrawn faster, and Labrador × Golden Retrievers slower, than Golden Retriever × Labradors; and dogs not bred by Guide Dogs were withdrawn faster than those bred by Guide Dogs. Multistate modeling (MSM) can be used as an extension of survival analysis to incorporate more than two discrete events or states. Multistate models were used to investigate transitions between states of training to qualification as a guide dog or behavioral withdrawal, and from qualification as a guide dog to behavioral withdrawal. Sex, breed (with purebred Labradors and Golden retrievers differing from F1 crosses), and bred by Guide Dogs or not, effected movements between states. We postulate that survival analysis and MSM could be applied to a wide range of behavioral data and key examples are provided.


We study the concept of propagation connectivity on random 3-uniform hyper-graphs. This concept is inspired by a simple propagation algorithm for solving instances of certain constraint satisfaction problems. We derive upper and lower bounds for the propagation connectivity threshold. Our proof is based on a kind of large deviations analysis of a time-dependent random walk. Based on the analysis, we also give an upper bound on the expected running time of the simple propagation algorithm.


Nine species of the genus Spinibarbus Oshima, 1919 (Cyprinidae, Cypriniformes) are found in Vietnam, of which one is new species of subgenus Spinibarbichthys ; distributed in China, Laos and North of Vietnam. The description of the new species and a key to identify the known species of subgenus Spinibarbichthys of Spinibarbus genus are given in the paper. New species name : Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) maensis H. D. Nguyen, Q. N. Duong & D. H. Tran sp. nov. Holotyp : one scantling (female) is found in Ma river (Camthuy district, Thanhhoa province) of Vietnam. Paratyp : one scantling is found in Nganpho river (Huongson district, Hatinh province) of Vietnam. Etymology : the name maensis refers to the locality of this species. Description : body high and thin. Head high and short. Mouth subanterior. Two pair of barbels. Gill rakers on first arch 10. Last dorsal simple ray osseous, with 19 pair  serrae. Origin of dorsal fin behind of ventral fin and its origin near of origin of caudal fin than top of the nostril. Lateral line complete, pored scales in lateral series 27 - 28; Circumpeduncular scales 14, predorsal scales 8 + 5. Pharyngeal tooth three rows, 2.3.5-5.3.2. Coloration : body light roseate. Pectoral, ventral and anus fin are dark roseate. Distribution : lower and midle section of Ma and Nhatle rivers, Vietnam. Remarks : Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) maensis sp. nov. is near with Spinibarbus (Spinibabichthys) denticulatus and Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) namauensis by origin of dorsal fin behind of ventral fin . But there are some different characteristics: the number of lateral line scales are less, body is higher and thinner, head is higher in comparison with species Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) denticulatus and Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) namauensis . Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys)  maensis differed with Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) sinensis and Spinibarbus (Spinibarbichthys) ovalius by: origin of dorsal fin, number of gill ranker of first branchial, number of scales in front of dorsal fin, head is shorter and higher.


Traditionally, interference protection is guaranteed through a policy of spectrum licensing, whereby wireless systems get exclusive access to spectrum. This is an effective way to prevent interference, but it leads to highly inefficient use of spectrum. Cognitive radio along with software radio, spectrum sensors, mesh networks, and other emerging technologies can facilitate new forms of spectrum sharing that greatly improve spectral efficiency and alleviate scarcity, if policies are in place that support these forms of sharing. On the other hand, new technology that is inconsistent with spectrum policy will have little impact. This paper discusses policies that can enable or facilitate use of many spectrum-sharing arrangements, where the arrangements are categorized as being based on coexistence or cooperation and as sharing among equals or primary-secondary sharing. A shared spectrum band may be managed directly by the regulator, or this responsibility may be delegated in large part to a license-holder. The type of sharing arrangement and the entity that manages it have a great impact on which technical approaches are viable and effective. The most efficient and cost-effective form of spectrum sharing will depend on the type of systems involved, where systems under current consideration are as diverse as television broadcasters, cellular carriers, public safety systems, point-to-point links, and personal and local-area networks. In addition, while cognitive radio offers policy-makers the opportunity to improve spectral efficiency, cognitive radio also provides new challenges for policy enforcement. A responsible regulator will not allow a device into the marketplace that might harm other systems. Thus, designers must seek innovative ways to assure regulators that new devices will comply with policy requirements and will not cause harmful interference.


Music was the first mass-market industry to be completely restructured by digital technology, and today we can have access to thousands of tracks stored locally on our smartphone and millions of tracks through cloud-based music services. Given the vast quantity of music at our fingertips, we now require novel ways of describing, indexing, searching and interacting with musical content. In this thesis we focus on a technology that opens the door to a wide range of such applications: automatically estimating the pitch sequence of the melody directly from the audio signal of a polyphonic music recording, also referred to as melody extraction. Whilst identifying the pitch of the melody is something human listeners can do quite well, doing this automatically is highly challenging. We present a novel method for melody extraction based on the tracking and characterisation of the pitch contours that form the melodic line of a piece. We show how different contour characteristics can be exploited in combination with auditory streaming cues to identify the melody out of all the pitch content in a music recording using both heuristic and model-based approaches. The performance of our method is assessed in an international evaluation campaign where it is shown to obtain state-of-the-art results. In fact, it achieves the highest mean overall accuracy obtained by any algorithm that has participated in the campaign to date. We demonstrate the applicability of our method both for research and end-user applications by developing systems that exploit the extracted melody pitch sequence for similarity-based music retrieval (version identification and query-by-humming), genre classification, automatic transcription and computational music analysis. The thesis also provides a comprehensive comparative analysis and review of the current state-of-the-art in melody extraction and a first of its kind analysis of melody extraction evaluation methodology.


PURPOSE
To develop a novel web-based tool for VMAT/IMRT treatment plan evaluation and to design a unique plan Quality Index (QI) quantifier to aid in decision-making for SRS, SBRT, and ENT treatment planning and evaluationMethods: A high level Python web-framework, Django, is used to develop the web application. Django uses an SQL-like database for data storage and retrieval. The front-end of the web application is styled with CSS and written in HTML. Tumor site dependent evaluation templates for SRS, SBRT and ENT plans are created in collaboration with physicians at our institution. Previously approved treatment plans are imported into the web application to populate the database for analysis. With physician feedback, retrospective treatment plans are subjected to scoring algorithms to develop a plan QI.

RESULTS
The web tool is currently deployed internally at our institution for VMAT treatment planners. The web site also serves as a portal for site-specific treatment planning instructions. Specific plan details are imported to an SQL-like database when treatment plans are pushed to the tool. The electronic nature of the database allows new retrospective studies to be easily conducted. A site specific QI is developed to quantify SRS, SBRT, and ENT plan quality. When the tool is used, QIs are generated automatically and a histogram of site specific QIs is produced. This information can then be used to evaluate the best candidate plan for treatment approval. The database can be used to query legacy plan specific details in order to extract the optimization objectives that best fit the anatomy and prescription doses from a new planning case.

CONCLUSION
The full implementation of the tool aims to standardize and unify the planning and evaluation of IMRT/VMAT techniques. Validation of the QI robustness will include correlation with clinical outcome and inter-institutional case studies.


This article explores the acquisition of Japanese vowel and consonant quantity contrasts by Cantonese learners. Our goal is to examine whether transfer from first language (L1) is possible when L1 experience is phonemic but restricted to a small set of sounds (short vs. long vowels) and when the experience is non-phonemic, derived only at morpheme boundaries (short vs. long consonants). We recruited 20 Cantonese learners (beginner and advanced learners) and 5 native speakers of Japanese, who produced target stimuli varying in consonant and vowel quantity framed in a carrier sentence. The resultant data were converted into several durational ratios for analyses. Results showed that both the beginners and advanced learners were able to distinguish between short vs. long vowels and consonants in Japanese, but only the native speakers enhanced the contrasts in slower speech. It was also found that in most cases the learners were able to lengthen the vowel before a geminate (i.e. long consonant), a secondary cue to Japanese consonant quantity known to be rare across languages. These results are discussed in terms of current theories of second language acquisition.


The IceCube neutrino observatory is a 1 km$^3$ detector deployed in the ice at the South Pole. While it has observed an astrophysical flux of neutrinos, individual sources have yet to be identified and the high-peaked BL Lac object 1ES 1959+650 is an intriguing candidate. It exhibited an ``orphan flare'' in 2002: a TeV gamma ray flare without a simultaneous X-ray flare, behavior that is hard to accommodate in leptonic synchrotron self-compton models. This suggests that it is a potential site of hadronic acceleration and thus a prime source candidate for neutrinos.
A recently observed increase in gamma ray activity from 1ES 1959+650 between May and July of 2016 has provided a new opportunity, prompting a dedicated search in IceCube data for neutrinos correlated with the flaring states during this period.
We present results based on two model-independent approaches which look only for an excess of neutrinos from the source, as well as a more targeted search for a direct time correlation between neutrino events observed by IceCube and gamma ray emission observed with the FACT and MAGIC telescopes.


Ethnographic research is often multilingual, requiring the researcher to work in two or more different languages, if necessary with the assistance of an interpreter. Given this, surprisingly few ethnographers have attempted to discuss in detail how their own knowledge of different languages and their decisions to use interpreters and/or translators during fieldwork have affected the research they have conducted. Drawing on material from our own research, as well as from published accounts by other ethnographers, we aim in this article to dispel some of the 'silence' or 'mystique' surrounding such matters. More specifically, we argue for the importance of documenting and analysing not only the process of language learning in ethnographic research but also the ways in which levels of fluency in a second or additional language can affect the research process, including the writing of ethnographic fieldnotes and forms of self and other identification. We suggest that a heightened awareness of these issues can help researchers make more informed choices when carrying out and writing up ethnographic research using different languages.


Computing motion blur is important not only in video games and movie rendering, but also in physical simulations where the effect of the movement has to be calculated and compensated. One such application is dynamic Positron Emission Tomography (PET), which is one of today's most important medical imaging techniques. When studying neurological disorders like epilepsy with PET, the involuntary movement of the patient during a seizure can ruin the examination results. Because of this, motion compensation should be incorporated into the reconstruction process. When the movement is rapid, accurate motion blur presents a challenge even if only 2D image space results are needed and hardware capabilities can be exploited. However, in the case of PET, the blurred result is expected in the 3D space. Blurring the motion of a 3D object in the 3D space can be done by dividing its bounding box into homogeneous voxels and tracking the path of each voxel independently. As low execution time is crucial, simplifications must be applied at the expense of accuracy. The solution proposed in this paper approximates the path of each voxel with a sequence of line segments. The segments can then be sampled by properly adapted 3D line drawing algorithms such as the Antialiased Bresenham Algorithm. Implementation is accelerated by parallel execution on GPU using the CUDA platform.


Background: Positive intersexual genetic correlations are typically viewed as constraining the evolution of sexual dimorphism, when traits are subject to sexually antagonistic selection. Our study species, the damselfly Ischnura elegans, has a female-limited colour polymorphism with three female colour morphs (males are monomorphic), one of which is considered to be a male mimic. Questions: Are there morph-specific differences in the magnitude of intersexual genetic correlations in I. elegans? Specifically, do male-mimic (Androchrome) females have higher intersexual genetic correlations for morphological traits than non-mimic (Infuscans) females? Methods: We collected copulating pairs in the field and raised offspring from these pairs in the laboratory. We measured five morphological traits in both parent and offspring generations and investigated their heritabilities and genetic correlations. Results: We found a negative overall relationship between the degree of sexual dimorphism for a trait and its intersexual genetic correlation. But the magnitude and direction of intersexual genetic correlations depended on the female morph. As expected, male mimic (Androchrome) females had higher intersexual genetic correlations. In addition, the genetic correlations between the morphs were in all cases significantly lower than unity. Male mimic (Androchrome) females had higher mother–son covariances than the non-mimic (Infuscans) morph, and this difference is the proximate explanation for the difference in intersexual genetic correlations between the morphs.


The data on the web, in digital libraries, in scientific repositories, etc. con- tinues to grow at an increasing rate. Distribution is a key solution to overcome this data explosion. However, existing solutions are mostly based on architectures with a single point of failure. In this paper, we present Armada, a model for a database architecture to handle large data volumes. Armada assumes autonomy of sites, allowing for a decentralised setup, where systems can largely work independently. Furthermore, a novel admin- istration schema in Armada, based on lineage trails, allows for flexible adaptation to the (query) work load in highly dynamic environments. The lineage trails capture the metadata and its history. They form the basis to direct updates to the proper sites, to break queries into multi-stage plans, and to provide a reference point for site consis- tency. The lineage trails are managed in a purely distributed fashion, each Armada site is responsible for their persistency and long term availability. They provide a minimal, but sufficient basis to handle all distributed query processing tasks. The analysis of the Armada reference architecture depicts a path for innovative re- search at many levels of a DBMS. Challenging many conventional database assump- tions and theories, it will eventually allow large databases to continue to grow and stay flexible.


A simple and effective method for linearization of power amplifiers (PAs) is proposed. The method is based on the second harmonic injection into the input of the PA. The second harmonic is generated in a feedback path by taking the low-power transistors of a pseudo-differential pair amplifier to their nonlinear regime. The amplitude and phase of the second harmonics are controlled by tunable matching networks of the pseudo-differential pair which include trimmer capacitors. Using a theoretical analysis, we show that the proposed method is capable of canceling the third-order intermodulation signal at the PA output. As a proof of concept, a 10-W PA in a frequency band of 1.4 - 1.6 GHz is designed and linearized. By fabricating both the reference and linearized PAs and performing measurements under several conditions, it is experimentally demonstrated that applying the proposed scheme, thanks to its adjustability, highly linearizes the PA in a wide bandwidth and a wide range of output power.


Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring network that is formed automatically via wireless links by a collection of mobile nodes without the help of a fixed infrastructure or centralized management. The mobile nodes allow communication among the nodes outside the wireless transmission range by hop to hop and the forward packets to each other. Due to dynamic infrastructure-less nature and lack of centralized monitoring points, the ad hoc networks are vulnerable to attacks. The network performance and reliability is break by attacks on ad hoc network routing protocols. AODV is a important on-demand reactive routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. There is no any security provision against a "Black Hole" and "Wormhole" attacks in existing AODV protocol. Black hole nodes are those malicious nodes that conform to forward packet to destination. But they do not forward packet intentionally to the destination node. The black hole nodes degrade the performance of network eventually by participating in the network actively. The propose watchdog mechanism detect the black hole nodes in a MANET. This method first detects a black hole attack in the network and then provide a new route to this node. In this, the performance of original AODV and modified AODV in the presence of multiple black hole nodes is find out on the basis of throughput and packet delivery ratio. In a wormhole attack, intruders tunnel the data from one end of the network to the other, leading distant network nodes to trust they are neighbors' and making them communicate through the wormhole link.


In this paper bus voltage improvement of distribution systems with series Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices is facilitated by a formulation of power flow equations with bus voltage magnitudes and line flows as independent variables. Since control variables such as the line and bus reactive powers figure directly in the formulation, handling the control action of FACTS devices in distribution systems is direct and easily implemented. Using the Breadth-First-Search (BFS), the bus incidence matrix of a radial distribution system is first rendered strictly upper diagonal, leading to reduced computational effort. All the common FACTS device models under steady-state conditions are easily incorporated in the new framework by a simple process of "variable swapping." Using IEEE standard systems, the line flow-based (LFB) formulation is shown to provide easy implementation with multiple series FACTS devices in the system and enable direct evaluation of the FACTS device ratings.


Nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) pension schemes have been successfully implemented since the mid-1990s in a number of European countries such as Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. The NDC approach features the lifelong contribution-benefit link of a financial defined contribution (FDC) personal account scheme, but is based on the pay-as-you-go format. At its start-up, the pay-as-you go commitments of the preceding defined benefit (DB) system are converted into individual personal accounts, allowing for a smooth transition from the DB to the DC format, while avoiding the very high transition costs inherent in a move from a traditional pay-as-you-go DB scheme to a fully funded FDC scheme. The NDC approach implemented by the rule book is able to manage the economic and demographic risks inherent to a pension scheme and by design creates financial sustainability. As in any pension scheme, the linchpin between financial stability and adequacy is the retirement age; in the NDC approach the individual retirement age above the minimum age is by design self-selected and by incentives should increase the effective retirement age in line with population aging. As a systemic reform approach NDC has become a strong competitor to piecemeal parametric reforms of traditional nonfinancial DB (NDB) schemes. While frequent, these reforms are far from transparent and usually too timid and too late to create financial sustainability while providing adequate pensions for the average contributor. This paper offers a largely nontechnical introduction to NDC schemes, their basic elements and advantages over NDB schemes, the key technical frontiers of the approach, and the experiences of NDC countries.


This book introduces the reader into the field of the physics of processes occurring in porous media. It targets Master and PhD students who need to gain fundamental understanding the impact of confinement on transport and phase change processes. The book gives brief overviews of topics like thermodynamics, capillarity and fluid mechanics in order to launch the reader smoothly into the realm of porous media. In-depth discussions are given of phase change phenomena in porous media, single phase flow, unsaturated flow and multiphase flow. In order to make the topics concrete the book contains numerous example calculations. Further, as much experimental data as possible is plugged in to give the reader the ability to quantify phenomena.


Although the European Union (EU) and the United States (USA) share common values of democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, there is a critical importance of providing a high level of effective protection of personal data, in particular in the international financial transactions (SWIFT). In a globalizing economy a widespread increase in the availability and use of computers and computer networks creates threats to the privacy. To protect individuals against inappropriate uses of personal data and to ensure the economic benefits of trade liberalization, a more stringent protection of data privacy is needed. The aim should be here protection of personal data while processing and exchanging information for law enforcement purposes. European Commission's Communication from 10 June 2009 states that "Union must be a driving force for behind the development and promotion of international standards for personal data protection and in the conclusion of appropriate bilateral or multilateral instruments. The work on data protection conducted with the United States could serve as a basis for future Agreements."1 The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the current legal framework on data protection in the EU and USA.


Relationships between local annual immigration and extinction rates of plant species and total species richness were determined from long-term data in permanent plots in tallgrass and shortgrass prairies in Kansas. Combining plots resulted in higher equilibrium numbers of species as predicted from immigration and extinction rates. Immigration and extinction rates also increased with scale. Extinction rates are higher because the regional scale supports more rare species which, in turn, have high probabilities of extinction. We also tested the hypotheses that extinction rates would be higher on burned versus unburned grasslands, and that immigration rates would be higher on grazed versus ungrazed grasslands. Extinction rates were positively correlated with the number of species at a site, and this relationship was not altered by burning or grazing. Immigration rates were variable, but were sometimes positively correlated with growing season precipitation. Immigration rates decreased in years sites were burned. Therefore, after fire, the number of species going locally extinct was still dependent on earlier species richness, but the number of species added to the site was reduced. Variances in immigration and extinction rates were high, therefore, confident predictions regarding the effects of burning or grazing regimes on species richness could not be made. Variance in rates of immigration and extinction results in a range of values within which the equlibrium number of species fluctuates randomly.


Abstract : This research looks at the issue of risk tolerance, and analyzes its role in U.S. Army Special Forces (SF). More specifically, it assesses the degree to which senior members of an organization allow junior members to make autonomous decisions, and argues that the unconventional warfare (UW) mission and nature of SF call for a higher degree of risk tolerance than is seen in conventional forces. A longitudinal case study of the conflict in Afghanistan shows that in 2001 SF had a long leash to allow for autonomy and flexibility, which was necessary to succeed in a UW environment. However, by 2006, the leash was shortened and more control measures were implemented. While a short leash may be appropriate for a conventional battlefield, it adversely impacts SF effectiveness in a UW environment. The three main reasons that induce risk aversion in SF leaders are exogenous political factors, organizational considerations including chain of command, and organizational culture, which is reinforced by the current Army officer evaluation system. This analysis suggests that the deleterious impact of these factors needs to be addressed in SF.


We quantify the presence of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in a mass-complete (M* > 5 × 1010 M☉) sample of 123 star-forming and quiescent galaxies at 1.5 ⩽ z ⩽ 2.5, using X-ray data from the 4 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) survey. 41% ± 7% of the galaxies are detected directly in X-rays, 22% ± 5% with rest-frame 0.5–8 keV luminosities consistent with hosting luminous AGNs (L0.5–8 keV > 3 × 1042 erg s−1). The latter fraction is similar for star-forming and quiescent galaxies, and does not depend on galaxy stellar mass, suggesting that perhaps luminous AGNs are triggered by external effects such as mergers. We detect significant mean X-ray signals in stacked images for both the individually non-detected star-forming and quiescent galaxies, with spectra consistent with star formation only and/or a low-luminosity AGN in both cases. Comparing star formation rates inferred from the 2–10 keV luminosities to those from rest-frame IR+UV emission, we find evidence for an X-ray excess indicative of low-luminosity AGNs. Among the quiescent galaxies, the excess suggests that as many as 70%–100% of these contain low- or high-luminosity AGNs, while the corresponding fraction is lower among star-forming galaxies (43%–65%). Our discovery of the ubiquity of AGNs in massive, quiescent z ∼ 2 galaxies provides observational support for the importance of AGNs in impeding star formation during galaxy evolution.


Domain-Specific Modelling Languages (DSML) allow software engineers to use the techniques and tools of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) to express, represent and analyse a particular domain. By defining DSMLs as UML profiles, i.e. domain-specific extensions of the UML metamodel, development time for DSMLs can be greatly reduced by extending existing UML tools. In this paper, we reflect on our own experience in building rbacUML, a DSML for Role-Based Access Control modelling and analysis, as a plugin for a UML modelling platform. We describe what motivated our choice, and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of using an existing platform to develop a DSML on top of UML and additional analysis tooling.


ABSTRACT In the current context, the need for marketing in institutions of higher education is undeniable. The specification of the student not merely as a 'customer' means that traditional marketing no longer has sufficient capacity to explain the behavior of the student body. In this study, a four-level relationship marketing model is tested to check the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived employability on identification with the institution and the perceived price-quality ratio and how these influence student satisfaction. In addition, the constructs prior to POS and perceived employability are identified, which are explicit enough to enable specific marketing actions to be carried out. As POS is a construct defined for the labor market, its use applied to relational marketing comes up as something innovative. To this end, Likert scales have been designed and validated to measure these constructs. The results of this test show how the perception of organizational support depends on the relationship of the student body with the administration and management of the center. Likewise, the perception of employability depends on the perceived reputation and the perception of the promotion of employability. Furthermore, it is confirmed that satisfaction is positively related to identification and the perceived price-quality ratio, which in turn are positively related to organizational support and perceived employability.


The article investigates the peach as symbol of the forbidden fruit in Milton's Paradise Lost, Marvell's "Garden," and Eliot's "Prufrock." Milton focuses on the fruit's appearance as "downy," Marvell refers to the peach as "curious," and Eliot worries that to "dare" to eat a peach could disturb the universe. Milton's choice of "downy" fits the peach better than what we would now call an apple. Marvell's choice of "curious" fits the Christian world's long-held belief that curiosity was the vice that led Eve to try the forbidden fruit. Eliot's choice of "dare" fits Eve's having "dar'd" to eat the forbidden fruit in Paradise Lost, for daring to eat the fruit can disturb the universe, as, for example, Eve's eating did. These three points are supported by context, analysis, explication, connections, etymology, and more. Noted in passing are a few brief references in art and literature to the peach as the forbidden fruit, and these are treated merely to show that such identification is not unheard of. More important are the connections drawn between the fruit in the three poems, for such connections are the focus of this paper.


Abstract This paper uses panel data over the 1960–2000 period, a modified neoclassical growth equation, and a dynamic panel estimator to investigate the effect of higher education human capital on economic growth in African countries. We find that all levels of education human capital, including higher education human capital, have positive and statistically significant effect on the growth rate of per capita income in African counties. Our result differs from those of earlier research that find no significant relationship between higher education human capital and income growth. We estimate the growth elasticity of higher education human capital to be about 0.09, an estimate that is twice as large as the growth impact of physical capital investment. While this is likely to be an overestimate of the growth impact of higher education, it is robust to different specifications and points to the need for African countries to effectively use higher education human capital in growth policies.


Large myelinated club endings of the goldfish eighth nerve arise in the sacculus and establish mixed electrotonic and chemical synapses with the distal part of the Mauthner (M-) cell's lateral dendrite. We show here, using paired pre- and postsynaptic recordings, that depolarizing currents generated postsynaptically (specifically, the mixed synaptic potential produced by activation of part of the afferent population) can in some cases excite the presynaptic fibers and cause them to backfire. Strikingly, while in some systems junctional properties prevent the antidromic spread of depolarizing currents, physiological properties of these afferents and the gap junctions promote backfiring: the amplitude of the coupling potential recorded from an afferent fiber is voltage dependent, increasing with depolarization and being reduced during hyperpolarization. Two mechanisms, with different kinetics, underlie this voltage dependence. One, a nonlinear membrane property of the afferent fiber itself, enhances the coupling potential as the afferent membrane depolarizes. The second mechanism, which is less sensitive to voltage and is symmetric about the resting potential, most likely represents voltage dependence of the junctional membrane. Additionally, we also show retrograde diffusion of low molecular weight substances, as the fluorescent dye Lucifer yellow and the tracer Neurobiotin were found in the terminals of afferent fibers after being injected postsynaptically into the M-cell. These results suggest that the gap junctions in these primary afferents are not only involved in fast anterograde synaptic transmission but also provide the substrate for a retrograde intercellular communication. The electrical coupling may modify the input-output relation between eighth nerve afferents and the lateral dendrite by synchronizing the population of already active fibers and by promoting the recruitment of new fibers via backfiring, such that weaker inputs produce relatively larger responses.


The Great Ice Age documents and explains the natural climatic and palaeoecologic changes that have occurred during the past 2.6 million years, outlining the emergence and global impact of our species during this period. Exploring a wide range of records of climate change, the authors demonstrate the interconnectivity of the components of the Earths climate system, show how the evidence for such change is obtained, and explain some of the problems in collecting and dating proxy climate data.

One of the most dramatic aspects of humanity's rise is that it coincided with the beginnings of major environmental changes and a mass extinction that has the pace, and maybe magnitude, of those in the far-off past that stemmed from climate, geological and occasionally extraterrestrial events. This book reveals that anthropogenic effects on the world are not merely modern matters but date back perhaps a million years or more.


We compared solid and liquid precipitation mass output from three categories of common model precipitation phase determination schemes (PPDS) to the recorded precipitation phase in a set of 45 years of 3-hour manual meteorological observations from 19 Swedish meteorological stations. In the first category of rain/snow thresholds, it was found that rain/snow air temperature threshold (ATT) is a better precipitation phase indicator than a rain/snow dew point temperature threshold. When a rain/snow ATT of 0.0 °C (a default value used in some recent models) was replaced by 1.0 °C, misclassified precipitation was reduced by almost one half. A second category of PPDS use two ATTs, one snow and one rain, with a linear decrease in snow fraction between. This category identified precipitation phase better than a rain/snow ATT at 17 stations. Using all observations from all the meteorological stations, a final category using an air-temperature-dependent snow probability curve resulted in slightly lower misclassified precipitation mass at 13 of the 19 stations. However, schemes from the linear decrease in snow fraction category had the lowest misclassified precipitation mass at four meteorological stations.


The present thesis was concerned with the possible constraints set by visual and attentional pre-orthographical factors on visual word recognition in dyslexic individuals. In a first study, we investigated the visual word recognition ability of MT, a young boy with surface dyslexia, by means of a paradigm that measures performance as a function of the eye fixation position within the word, known as the "viewing position effect" paradigm. In well-achieving readers, the viewing position effect is mainly determined by factors affecting letter visibility and by lexical constraints on word recognition. We further quantified MT's sensory limitations on letter visibility by computing visual span profiles, i.e. the number of letters recognizable at a glance. Finally, in an ideal-observer's perspective, MT's performance was compared with a parameter-free model combining MT's letter visibility data with a simple lexical matching rule. The results showed that MT did not use the whole visual information available on letter identities to recognise words. These results can be best accounted for by a reduction of the number of letters processed in parallel. Accordingly, there is growing evidence that some dyslexic children suffer from a deficit in simultaneously processing of multiple visually displayed elements. The aim of the remaining studies was to investigate possible cognitive impairments at the source of the multi-element visual processing deficit in dyslexic children. A computational model of the attentional involvement in multi-object recognition [TVA: Bundesen, C. (1990). A theory of visual attention. Psychological Review, 97(4), 523--47] served as framework for this investigation. In a second study, we used TVA to investigate multi-element processing in two young dyslexic participants, AB and PA. By combining psychophysical measurements with computational modelling, we demonstrated that this multi-element processing deficit stems from two distinct cognitive sources: a reduction of the rate of visual information uptake, and a limitation of the visual short-term memory capacity. These deficits were replicated in a third study, in which the multi-element processing was investigated in three dyslexic individuals, FA, LT and YC. The last study further demonstrated that the multi-element processing deficit observed in dyslexia is not simply due to a sluggish activation of items names, instead of visual processing difficulties. Finally, the generalisability of the multi-element processing deficit has been assessed by comparing report performance of letters vs colour patches. Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive. Taken together, the results of these different studies point to a reduced capacity of processing visual information in parallel (at least for letters), that might constrain visual word recognition.


This article is based on an ethnographic study of childrens everyday life in Swedish preschools. The ethnography is used to explore childrens strategies for influencing, defending and constructing the social order of a preschool institution. The focus of our concern is on how the children, in their interactions with each other and with the preschool teachers, manage the collective regulation and how they negotiate their participation in collective activities. There is an inherent tension between free play and the high degree of routinised and collective activities within the preschool institution. The study shows that children are active in playing at the border, acting as if the institution is the childrens place. It also shows how they draw on different strategies as resources for managing the regulations, accounting for personal autonomy and negotiating the social order. In taking a child perspective and acknowledging children as active agents, it is possible to see how they influence and shape their everyday life in a preschool context. In addition, the article illustrates individual childrens strategic and pragmatic use of resources and in doing so contribute to their own childhood and thereby become part of a social and cultural construction process.


Following the visits of the Cameroonian president and Hu Jintao in 2006 and 2007 respectively, the Cameroonian president in his speech "called for Chinese companies to come and invest in Cameroon". Today, there is a large number of Chinese working in almost all the private sectors of Cameroon involving in activities such as road, bridges, stadia construction, agriculture and small scale businesses. However, this paper seeks to explore the contributions or impacts of Chinese investment in Cameroon as mixed blessings to the Cameroonian economy. Although there is no clear records of Chinese investment at the moment, the government is no doubt benefitting from revenue derived from tariffs and business taxes and the government is losing revenue that was to be derived from the local firms which are being closed down thus, low living standard. The population also benefits from quality health and transfer of technology and.


Borderline ovarian tumours generally affect women of reproductive age. The positive prognosis is related to the fact that over 80% of cases are diagnosed at an early stage of the disease. Although radical surgery is the standard of care for this disease, fertility-sparing surgery can be performed in selected cases. Since it was first described in 1929, the knowledge of the molecular and histologic characteristics has been significantly improved. In this review, advances in the clinical behaviour, pathologic characteristics, prognostics factors, and different strategies of treatment are discussed.


Recently a humanoid robot known as Sophia has gained a lot of attention in net (see the ¡A HREF="http://tinyurl.com/y9cawkh3"¿article¡/A¿ by Ben Goertzel, Eddie Monroe, Julia Moss, David Hanson and Gino Yu titled with title "¡I¿ Loving AI: Humanoid Robots as Agents of Human Consciousness Expansion (summary of early research progress)"¡/I¿ . ¡/p¿¡p¿ Sophia uses AI, visual data processing, and facial recognition. Sophia imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer questions and make simple conversations on predefined topics. The AI program used analyzes conversations, extracts data, and uses it to improve responses in the future. To a skeptic Sophia looks like a highly advanced version of ELIZA. ¡/p¿¡p¿ Personally I am rather skeptic view about strong AI relying on a mechanistic view about intelligence. This leads to transhumanism and notions such as mind uploading. It is however good to air out one's thinking sometimes. Computers should have a description also in the quantal Universe of TGD and this forces to look more precisely about the idealizations of AI. This process led to a change of my attitudes. The fusion of human consciousness and presumably rather primitive computer consciousness but correlating with the program running in it might be possible in TGD Universe, and TGD inspired quantum biology and the recent ideas about prebiotic systems provide rather concrete ideas in attempts to realize this fusion. TGD also strongly suggests that there is also what might be called Natural Intelligence relying on 2-D cognitive representations defined by networks consisting of nodes (neurons) and flux tubes (axons with nerve pulse patters) connecting them rather than linear 1-D representation used by AI. The topological dynamics of these networks has Boolean dynamics of computer programs as a projection but is much more general and could allow to represent objects of perceptive field and number theoretic cognition.


In this chapter we try to determine whether there is a relationship between the mastery of LSQ (langue des signes quebeoise 'Quebec Sign Language') and written French, acquired respectively as L1 and L2 by Deaf children educated bilingually. More precisely, we evaluate reading comprehension in French and mastery of space in LSQ. Indeed, the use of space in that language is hypothesized to be an appropriate indicator of global competence because it is not only involved in all forms of co-indexation but also is the means by which the language establishes relations between lexical elements. Reading comprehension is evaluated through the ability to locate and infer information in a text. Statistical analysis (Spearman correlations) show that mastery of LSQ is related to reading comprehension.


Image retrieval, using either content or text-based techniques, does
not match up to the current quality of standard text retrieval. One possible
reason for this mismatch is the semantic gap – the terms by which images are
indexed do not accord with those imagined by users querying image databases.
In this paper we set out to describe how geography might help to index the
where facet of the Pansofsky-Shatford matrix, which has previously been
shown to accord well with the types of queries users make. We illustrate these
ideas with existing (e.g. identifying place names associated with a set of
coordinates) and novel (e.g. describing images using land cover data)
techniques to describe images and contend that such methods will become
central as increasing numbers of images become georeferenced.


The government needs to spell out who will be responsible for coordinating health services across London when the capital's strategic health authority is abolished in April 2012, says the healthcare think tank the King's Fund.

A report from the fund warns that the situation raises "a real risk of declining financial performance and a failure to tackle unacceptable variations in the quality of care in the reformed NHS."

The Health and Social Care Bill, which is currently before parliament, does not deal with what the fund refers to as "a strategic vacuum" in the coordination of London's health services. …


Argument In this paper, I examine the treatment of mathematics in the definitive 1599 Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuit Order and in the preliminary drafts of the Ratio that were done in 1586 and 1591. Drawing on some additional writings of the Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius and his view of the importance of mathematics in a university curriculum, I suggest that the inclusion of mathematics as a standard part of the curriculum in Jesuit schools at the beginning of the "scientific revolution" was of significant importance in a climate that often demeaned the work of mathematicians. Jesuit schools were being founded around the time of Galileo and other key figures who influenced the scientific revolution. The introduction of mathematical sciences into universities and the textbooks of Clavius laid the groundwork for generations of students to become better acquainted with mathematics and the sciences that were being developed during that period of history.


The transmittance characteristics of ZnS ceramics with infrared (IR) (3 - 5 and 8 - 12 ?m) antireflective coatings are studied. The film designs are optimized with programmed software. A double-side and double-layer scheme is employed. Two different double-layers with proper parameters are coated onto each side of a ZnS substrate. The measurement methods for transmittance are investigated. The measured transmittance for IR (3 - 5 and 8 - 12 ?m) surpasses 70%.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), an inherited vascular dysplasia, is caused by mutations in endoglin or activin receptor-like kinase (ALK)-1. Haploinsufficiency for these genes is thought to result in an imbalanced angiogenic activity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the plasma levels and the expression profiles of angiogenic and angiogenesis-related factors in the context of HHT.

DESIGN AND METHODS
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta1 plasma concentrations were determined in 31 HHT patients and 40 healthy controls by ELISA. VEGF and TGF-beta1 plasma concentrations were correlated with the patients' clinicopathological features. Tissue expression of angiogenic and angiogenesis related proteins was determined by immunostaining on nasal cryostat sections from 13 HHT patients and 5 healthy controls.

RESULTS
Of the 31 patients, 29 had statistically significantly raised plasma concentrations of VEGF and TGF-beta1 but there was no correlation with specific clinicopathological features. Increased VEGF, TGF-beta1 and ALK1 immunostaining was seen in all 13 investigated patients. beta-smooth muscle actinin immunostaining was increased in 12 patients. Increased endoglin immunostaining was seen in only 9 patients.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
This study provides evidence of the role of VEGF and TGF-beta1 in the pathogenesis of HHT. Plasma concentrations of these two factors may serve as further diagnostic criteria for HHT. For the first time, we report increased TGF-beta1 plasma concentrations and increased TGF-beta1 and ALK1 tissue expression in HHT, which appear not to be specifically associated with either endoglin or ALK1 mutations. The data suggest that HHT is an angiogenic disorder characterized by an over-expression of VEGF, TGF-beta1 and ALK1.


Optical beam steering can find applications in several domains such as laser scanning, LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), optical switches and interconnects. Present beam steering techniques such as liquid crystals or MEMS-technology are limited in speed and/or performance. Therefore we have studied the possibilities of the silicon photonics platform in beam steering applications. In this paper, we have investigated a 16 element one-dimensional optical phased array on silicon-on-insulator with a field-of-view of 23◦. Using thermo-optic phase tuners, we have shown beam steering and shaping over the complete field-of-view. This clearly shows the potential of silicon photonics in beam steering applications.


The Afrikaans speech community is characterized by a long-standing rift between Whites and Coloureds, and is for a large part bilingual, with English being increasingly integrated in its stylistic repertoire. Yet, the history of English is different across the White/Coloured divide, as in particular in terms of diffusion and in terms of ideological associations. The question we wish to ask is twofold. First, how far may there be a question of ethnic norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching? Second, if norms of code-switching are different across the ethnic divide, is code-switching used differently in the negotiation of White and Coloured identities? This contribution is organized in three main parts. First, we give an overview of the different norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching encountered across Whites and Coloureds on the basis of a corpus of informal speech data. Then we give an overview of the sequential patterns of Afrikaans-English code-switching following a CA methodology. Finally, we determine with the help of macrosocial knowledge in how far these different forms and functions of Afrikaans-English code-switching are made relevant to the projection of White and Coloured identities in South Africa's current post-Apartheid context on the basis of select individual examples. The results of our analysis indicate that Afrikaans-English code-switching in the Coloured data displays the features of a 'mixed code', which is perceived as a 'we-code', where English input tends to be stylistically neutral. By contrast, English input is more syntactically and sequentially salient in the White data, and more visibly serves purposes of identity-negotiation. Despite those differences, there remains a clear correlation in both White and Coloured samples between the use of English monolingual code and affiliation with 'New South African values'.


The authors propose a synthesis of power resources theory and welfare production regime theory to explain differences in human capital formation across advanced democracies. Emphasizing the mutually reinforcing relationships between social insurance, skill formation, and spending on public education, they distinguish three distinct worlds of human capital formation: one characterized by redistribution and heavy investment in public education and industry-specific and occupation-specific vocational skills; one characterized by high social insurance and vocational training in firm-specific and industry-specific skills but less spending on public education; and one characterized by heavy private investment in general skills but modest spending on public education and redistribution. They trace the three worlds to historical differences in the organization of capitalism, electoral institutions, and partisan politics, emphasizing the distinct character of political coalition formation underpinning each of the three models. They also discuss the implications for inequality and labor market stratification across time and space.


The relationship of alterations in blood flow with changes in cell distribution has been studied in an inflammatory site and its draining lymph node during the induction of an immune reaction with oxazolone in mice. The cells which move to the site of inflammation are predominantly lymphoblasts and their increased localization in the inflamed ear is significantly correlated with increased regional blood flow to the inflamed tissue. The existence of this correlation is not antigen dependent although there is a relative increment of lymphoblasts which are specifically primed to the inflammatory agent. The localization of nonblastic (small) 51Cr-labeled lymphocytes on the other hand is substantial only in lymphoid tissue and during the induction of an immune reaction after oxazolone application, the increase in localization of these cells in the draining lymph node is positively correlated with increased blood flow to the node. Furthermore, the probability of finding 51Cr labeled lymphocytes in a particular lymph node is related to the regional blood flow which that node receives.


In this first complete English translation of one of Alexandre Dumas's "causeries," a kind of familiar essay likely originated by Dumas, the author provides one of the earliest examples of gastronomic journalism. Part memoir, part travelogue, part critique, it recounts the origins of Dumas's love of good food, tells of his early experiences with cooking, narrates a culinary adventure in North Africa (where he learned the local technique for roasting a lamb in its skin, which he later applied to rabbit), and offers advice for ordering a meal at the Restaurant de France in Paris. The second part of the essay describes his quest for a recipe for the "real Neapolitan macaroni" among Italian celebrities then living in Paris (including a failed attempt to acquire one from the composer Rossini), and finishes with purchasing recommendations and a detailed recipe for the dish for a party of twelve.


A growing polarization of society accompanied with an erosion of the middle class experiences more and more attention at least in the recent German economic and social policy discussion. Our study contributes to the polarization discussion with respect to multidimensional theoretical measurement and empirical application in two ways: First, we propose extended multidimensional polarization indices based on a CES-type well-being function and present a new measure to multidimensional polarization, the mean minimum polarization gap 2DGAP. This polarization intensity measure provides transparency with regard to each singular attributes – important for targeted policies – and ensures at the same time its interdependent relations. Second, the empirical application – in addition to the traditional income measure –incorporates time as a fundamental resource for any activity. In particular, genuine personal leisure time will take care of social participation in the spirit of social inclusion/exclusion and Amartya Sen's capability approach. Instead of arbitrarily choosing the attributes' parameters in the CES well-being function the interdependent relations of time and income will be evaluated by German Society. With the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and detailed time use diary data of the available German Time Use Survey (GTUS) 1991/92 and 2001/02 we quantify available and extended multidimensional polarization measures as well as our new approach for the polarization development of the working poor and the working rich in Germany. Three prominent empirical results appear: Genuine personal leisure time in addition to income is an important polarization attribute. Compensation is of economic and static significance. In particular supported by the new minimum 2DGAP approach, multidimensional polarization increased over that decade in Germany.