Conciliation is a dispute resolution mechanism which is broadly and globally to settle disputes. It is referred to in case of the desire to reach an amicable way of resolving disputes for example, business disputes. Dispute resolution mechanisms that are used in the international sphere can be classified into two categories, adjudicative and diplomatic resolution mechanisms. Adjudicative mechanisms are those involving a neutral third party who resolves the issue by rendering a decision that is binding on the parties, for example, judicial settlement and arbitration. In contrast, the diplomatic mechanisms of dispute resolution, some of which involve a third party, result in outcomes that are always non-binding in effect. Diplomatic mechanisms of settlement can be divided into two branches; on the one hand those that involve only the parties of the disputes themselves, for example, negotiations and consultations and those that engage a third party in the process on the behest of or with the consent of the disputants, for example, conciliation mediation, good offices and inquiry. This paper focuses on conciliation as a diplomatic mechanism of foreign direct investment dispute settlement. First, it sheds light on the nature and elements of conciliation compared to other mechanisms that engage a third party, mainly mediation. Second, it identifies the major advantages of conciliation. Third, it identifies cautions that accompany resorting to conciliation as a dispute resolution mechanism. Fourth, it identifies some concluding remarks.


In this numerical study, an optimal energetic control model applied to local heating sources to prevent black-ice occurrence at transport infrastructure surface is addressed. The heat transfer Finite Element Model developed and boundary conditions hypothesis considered are firstly presented. Several heat powering strategies, in time and space, are then introduced. Secondly, control laws are presented with the objective of preventing ice formation while avoiding excessive energy consumption by taking also into account weather forecast information. In particular, the adjoint state method is adapted for the case of an operation without some continuous properties (discontinuous time heat sources). In such case, a projection from the space of continuous time functions to a piecewise constant one is proposed. To perform optimal control, the adjoint state method is addressed and discussed for the different powering solutions. To preserve some specific technical components and maintain their lifetime, operational constraints are considered and different formulations for the control law are proposed. Time dependent convecto-radiative boundary conditions are introduced in the model by extracting information from existing weather databases. Extension to updated inline weather forecast services is also presented and discussed. The final minimization problem considered has to act on both energy consumption and non-freezing surface temperature by integrating these specific constraints. As a consequence, the final optimal solution is estimated by an algorithm relying on the combination of adjoint state method and gradient descent that fits mathematical constraints. Results obtained by numerical simulations for different operative conditions with various weather conditions are presented and discussed. Finally, conclusion and perspectives are proposed.


Early detection of tumors is today a major challenge and requires sensitive imaging methodologies coupled with new efficient probes. In vivo optical bioluminescence imaging has been widely used in the field of preclinical oncology to visualize tumors and several cancer cell lines have been genetically modified to provide bioluminescence signals. However, the light emitted by the majority of commonly used luciferases is usually in the blue part of the visible spectrum, where tissue absorption is still very high, making deep tissue imaging non-optimal, and calling for optimized optical imaging methodologies. We have previously shown that red-shifting of bioluminescence signal by Fluorescence Unbound Excitation from Luminescence (FUEL) is a mean to increase bioluminescence signal sensitivity detection in vivo. Here, we applied FUEL to tumor detection in two different subcutaneous tumor models: the auto-luminescent human embryonic kidney (HEK293) cell line and the murine B16-F10 melanoma cell line previously transfected with a plasmid encoding the Luc2 firefly luciferase. Tumor size and bioluminescence were measured over time and tumor vascularization characterized. We then locally injected near infrared emitting Quantum Dots (NIR QDs) in the tumor site and observed a red-shifting of bioluminescence signal by (FUEL) indicating that FUEL could be used to allow deeper tumor detection in mice.


Purpose
Management education trainers are increasingly called upon to train students to devise interventions for sustainable development in business settings. Due to the dominant reductionist paradigm, these interventions may lead to unwanted side effects. Teaching students about unacknowledged feedback loops in complex systems should prevent them from choosing "the most obvious" intervention without considering unwanted side effects.The current study aims to report the effects of teaching a systems perspective, applied to transport systems, on students' opinions and expressed paradigms. The following questions are addressed: Do students adhere to the techno-centric paradigm, believing technology, innovation and growth can solve all types of threats for sustainable development, while neglecting low probability, high impact events? Are paradigms held by students coherent? Can teaching lead to a change in opinions and paradigms held by students?

Design/methodology/approach
Measures for several systems concepts (i.e. functional stupidity, paradigms and fragility) are taken across a wide sample of university students. Posttests of some key items are taken for a subsample that followed a sustainability and systems perspective in a course on transport economics.

Findings
A large share of students think that technology can solve different types of problems in sustainable development (a kind of weak sustainability), but their paradigms tend to be a mix of conflicting opinions. Though student opinions on topics that were explicitly treated in the course have changed, neither a wider paradigm shift nor significantly more coherent paradigms can be confirmed.

Originality/value
The results show that even though students can be taught about the unwanted side effects and limitations on specific techno-fix interventions, this does not automatically translate into a critical mind-set toward techno-fixing in general.


The Thesis is the last major step toward graduation with a first professional degree, or Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.), which traditionally prepares students for practice. As a threshold between directed studios and independent thought, the Thesis provides an opportunity for the student to systematically explore a coherent line of investigation of issues relevant to the field of architecture. The Thesis is an intellectual position laid down or to be advanced. It is the first stage of the dialectic–discussion, that is, discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation. An architectural thesis demands that a student take a position and have something to say that is relevant to the discursive field that it inhabits and/or its wider cultural context. In the field of architecture such intellectual positions have implications that result from a critique and re-examination of the role of architecture as a critical participant in the conditioning of public and private space. Thus, while an undergraduate architectural thesis originates in a determinate intellectual position, it culminates in a designed artifact, but rarely the artifact itself. This paper takes a step in characterizing architectural research, where the interaction of Theorem and Practicum is used not only as a guiding principle in the critical thinking process, but also as a springboard for constructive practices in the built realm. This particular reading is an inquiry into the importance and influence of interaction between Theorem and Practicum, as well as, the importance of which is observed through different modes of cross-pollination occurring in various aspects of architectural discourse and practice. This investigation is explored in four perspectives, labeled 'order', 'values', 'results' and 'interaction' are categorized according to their relationship to the investigation of Theorem and Practicum. Furthermore, these four attributes permeate and connect the diverse areas of research explored, which in combination provides an argument that rather than questioning: "is doing architecture doing research" as articulated by Jeremy Till, instead asks: "is doing research doing architecture". Our aim is to expand the pedagogical field where the interaction of Theorem and Practicum is not an isolated act, but one of making.


Shear banding is frequently observed in complex fluids. However, the configuration of macromolecules in solutions undergoing shear banding has not yet been directly observed. In this study, by using the fact that F-actin solutions exhibit shear banding and actin filaments are visualized by fluorescent labels, we directly observed the intrinsic states of an actin solution undergoing shear banding. By combining the 3D imaging of labeled actin filaments and particle image velocimetry (PIV), we obtained orientation distributions of actin filaments in both high and low shear rate regions, whose quantitative differences are indicated. In addition, by using the orientation distributions and applying stress expression for rod-like polymers, we estimated stress tensors in both high and low shear rate regions. This evaluation indicates that different orientation distributions of filamentous macromolecules can exhibit a common shear stress.


To determine whether the isoform of UDP‐glucuronosyltransferase which catalyzes the formation of bilirubin monoglucuronide also mediates the formation of bilirubin diglucuronide and other specific sugar conjugates of bilirubin, Wistar rats were treated with clofibrate (300 mg per kg i.p. × 7 days); this resulted in a 200% increase in hepatic transferase specific activity for bilirubin. Proteins from hepatic microsomal fractions were solubilized, and the transferase isoform with activity toward bilirubin was purified by a combination of chromatofocusing, affinity chromatography and hydrophobic chromatography, to apparent homogeneity as judged by sodium dodecyl sulfate‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The purified isoform catalyzed the formation of monoglucuronide and diglucuronide (with UDP‐glucuronic acid as a cosubstrate), and glucoside and xyloside (with UDP‐glucose and UDP‐xylose as respective cosubstrates) of bilirubin and glucuronidation of the carcinogen metabolite 4′‐hydroxydimethylaminoazobenzene. It also catalyzed the conversion of bilirubin monoglucuronide to diglucuronide (with UDP‐glucuronic acid as cosubstrate, pH optimum 7.8), to mixed glucuronide‐glucoside conjugate (with UDP‐glucose as a cosubstrate) and to unconjugated bilirubin (with UDP as a cosubstrate, pH optimum 5.5). Each transferase activity was copurified at each purification step. Results of enzyme kinetic studies suggest that UDP‐glucuronic acid, UDP‐glucose and UDP‐xylose recognize a common site. Transferase activities toward bilirubin were not detectable in homozygous Gunn rats liver microsomal fractions; in heterozygous Gunn rats, these activities were reduced by 40 to 60%. The results suggest that conjugation of bilirubin with glucuronic acid, glucose or xylose is catalyzed by a single transferase isoform.


This article analyzes the relationship between price improvement and price discovery on American Stock Exchange. The authors present empirical evidence based on October 1996 quote and transaction data on the magnitude and frequency of price improvement and on price improvement's relationship to price discovery. Price improvement in the period was substantial, averaging 1.43 cents per share for orders delivered by the Amex's electronic order delivery system (PER) and 6.81 cents per share for orders entered non-electronically. The empirical evidence presented suggests that buy an sell orders are selectively price-improved at the Amex, depending on current market conditions, and thus that price improvement is linked to price discovery. These findings have implications for order flow consolidation in a major market center.


Abstract In 2006, a single mandatory private health insurance scheme with flat-rate contributions and tax compensation was established in the Netherlands. All health insurers now operate under private law, compete with other private insurers and are allowed to make profits and pay dividends to shareholders. The implementation of the scheme shows that an incremental approach to reform can bring about fundamental changes, and that while such a change is demanding on all stakeholders, it is manageable. The reform has had great influence on the relative positions and roles of health insurers, patients and healthcare providers, illustrated by the fact that around 20 per cent of citizens changed insurer within one year. The empowered insured are the clear winners, as they now have more choice and influence. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see whether a government looking to reduce its role in the healthcare system can truly safeguard the accessibility and quality of the system when the players increasingly start behaving as market-driven for-profit companies. In this regard, the question whether a health insurer can be the agent for patients and the insured, ie whether their interests are truly aligned, will be crucial to the long-term success of this reform.


We examined victims' perceived responsibility and bystanders' anticipated risk of being victimized themselves when others associate them with the victim (stigma by association, SBA) as possible antecedents of bystanders' helping behaviour towards a victim of workplace mobbing, and explored the effects of gender. Guided by the attribution model of social conduct (Weiner, 2006), a 2 × 2 vignette experiment was conducted. Participants were Dutch regional government employees (N = 161). Path analyses generally supported the hypotheses, but showed different results for women and men. In the strong (Vs. weak) responsibility condition, women reported less sympathy and more anger and men only more anger, which resulted in lower helping intention. Additionally, for men the results showed an unexpected direct positive effect of responsibility on helping intention. Furthermore, in the strong SBA condition, women and men reported more fear and men, unexpectedly, more anger. Consequently, helping intention decreased. The findings on gender are discussed in the context of social role theory, gender and emotion. Our findings suggest that to prevent and tackle mobbing, organizations and professionals should be aware of the attributional and emotional processes and gender differences in bystanders' helping behaviour.


The Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) fishery is one of the highest value fisheries in the US Pacific Northwest, but its catch size fluctuates widely across years. Although the underlying causes of this wide variability are not well understood, the abundance of M. magister megalopae has been linked to recruitment into the adult fishery 4 years later. These pelagic megalopae are exposed to a range of ocean conditions during their dispersal period, which may drive their occurrence patterns. Environmental exposure history has been found to be important for some pelagic organisms, so we hypothesized that inclusion of recent environmental exposure history would improve our ability to predict inter-annual variability in M. magister megalopae occurrence patterns compared to using "in situ" conditions alone. We combined 8 years of local observations of M. magister megalopae and regional simulations of ocean conditions to model megalopae occurrence using a generalized linear model (GLM) framework. The modeled ocean conditions were extracted from JISAO's Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction of the Ecosystem (J-SCOPE), a high-resolution coupled physical-biogeochemical model. The analysis included variables from J-SCOPE identified in the literature as important for larval crab occurrence: temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen concentration, nitrate concentration, phytoplankton concentration, pH, aragonite, and calcite saturation state. GLMs were developed with either in situ ocean conditions or environmental exposure histories generated using particle tracking experiments. We found that inclusion of exposure history improved the ability of the GLMs to predict megalopae occurrence 98% of the time. Of the six swimming behaviors used to simulate megalopae dispersal, five behaviors generated GLMs with superior fits to the observations, so a biological ensemble of these models was constructed. When the biological ensemble was used for forecasting, the model showed skill in predicting megalopae occurrence (AUC = 0.94). Our results highlight the importance of including exposure history in larval occurrence modeling and help provide a method for predicting pelagic megalopae occurrence. This work is a step toward developing a forecast product to support management of the fishery.


To justify their authority, international organizations (IOs) have long relied on a functional narrative that highlights effective problem-solving based on rational-legal expertise and neutrality. Today, IOs increasingly legitimize their authority in the language of democracy. Yet not all of them do so to the same extent, in the same manner, or consistently over time. In this article, we offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of democratic legitimation in global governance. Our analysis builds on a new dataset, measuring the extent to which global IOs use democratic narratives in legitimizing their authority throughout the period from 1980 to 2011. The central findings are threefold. First, our data reveal a far-reaching rise of democratic legitimation in global governance. For many organizations, this increase remains relatively modest; for others, the democratic legitimation narrative becomes central. Second, this variation is mainly explained by a combination of two factors: (a) public visibility and protest constitute the driving forces of democratic legitimation and (b) IOs' reaction to these legitimacy pressures unfolds in a path-dependent manner. Once organizations begin to take up democratic narratives, it seems to become costly to leave this path and shift to yet another set of norms. By contrast, the conventional wisdom that democratic legitimation follows in the footsteps of internationalized authority is not supported by our analysis.


Efforts toward improving the quality of waste containing high chitin through bioprocess shrimp waste utilizing Bacillus licheniformis, Lactobacillus sp. and Saccharomyces cereviseae, in order to obtain the product (Nutrient Concentrate) quality in order to meet the nutritional needs of local poultry (native chicken). Biological test products in the ration to determine its effectiveness towards achieving the optimal performance needs to be done. Native chicken has an important role as a provider of meat and eggs to be relied. The study was conducted using a laboratory experiment using a completely randomized design, consisting of 6 treatments rations and each repeated four times. Ration treatment: R0 = control diet (15% protein and ME 2,750 kcal/kg); R1 = rations containing 5% Nutrient Concentrate (Protein 15% and ME 2,750 kcal/kg); R2 = ration containing 10% Nutrient Concentrate (Protein 15% and ME 2,750 kcal/kg); R3 = rations containing 15% Nutrient Concentrate (Protein 15% and ME 2,750 kcal/kg); R4 = rations containing 20% Nutrient Concentrate (Protein 15% and ME 2,750 kcal/kg); and RS = standard ration (Protein 18% and ME 2,750 kcal/kg). Variables observed that the performance of native chicken layer phase (egg weight, number of eggs, daily egg production and feed efficiency) and hematological values chicken blood (erythrocytes, leukocytes, and blood hematocrit). Data were analyzed by analysis of variance and differences between treatments were tested by Duncan's multiple range test. The results obtained by the performance of native chicken layer phase with the use Nutrient Concentrate at the rate of 20% in the ration equivalent to the standard ration, the weight of the eggs ranged from 40.51 to 43.46 g/grain, the number of eggs from 32.37 to 33.16 grains/2 months, han-day 53.95% 55.26% and feed efficiency of 54.02% 58.95%. ). Values range chicken blood hematological phase layer in the normal range, the number of erythrocytes ranged from 2.06 to 2.16 ×10 /mm; leukocytes from 36.42 to 37.27 ×10 /mm; and hematocrit 33.25% 34.25%. Nutrient Concentrate can be used as a source of animal protein in the ration formulation native chicken layer phase and use up to the level of 20%.


Forests provide essential biodiversity, ecosystem and economic services. Information on individual trees is important for understanding the state of forest ecosystems but obtaining individual-level data at broad scales is challenging due to the costs and logistics of data collection. While advances in remote sensing techniques allow surveys of individual trees at unprecedented extents, there remain significant technical and computational challenges in turning sensor data into tangible information. Using deep learning methods, we produced an open-source dataset of individual-level crown estimates for 100 million trees at 37 sites across the United States surveyed by the National Ecological Observatory Network's Airborne Observation Platform. Each canopy tree crown is represented by a rectangular bounding box and includes information on the height, crown area, and spatial location of the tree. Tree crowns identified using this technique correspond well with hand-labeled crowns, exhibiting both high levels of overlap and good correspondence in height estimates. These data have the potential to drive significant expansion of individual-level research on trees by facilitating both regional analyses at scales of ~10,000 ha and cross-region comparisons encompassing forest types from most of the United States.


This article addresses a specific issue, namely the ramifications for theology practised at a public university under (post)-apartheid conditions. In South Africa, scholarly opinion has not paid sufficient attention to what "transformation" entails for theology under these circumstances. The article describes transformation in detail by clarifying the main referents for this notion and attending to discourses in higher education. Heuristic categories such as inclusivity, alterity, critique, freedom and flourishing are identified that should inform multi-level and comprehensive embodiment in terms of knowledge, people and practices. The article identifies several critical issues such as the plurality of intellectual traditions and identity formation that should be explored in more detail. It also emphasises the distinctive theological task of theology at a public university – the articulation of transcendence and the construal of a non-naturalistic symbolic interpretation of reality.


Introduction This article reports the results and the lessons learned from implementing the decentralized approach to tuberculosis (TB) detection and treatment, embedded with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) co-infection in health district. The objective was to increase the TB screening indicators in the district using the common ways for offering care to patients in health district. Methods Conducted from August 2006 to July 2007, this large-scale intervention using Non-experimental study Designs has implemented a decentralized approach for fighting against TB in Orodara Health District (OHD), Burkina Faso. Pretest-posttest design has been used for quantitative part using indicators in one hand, and postests-only design for the qualitative part in other hand. In the pretest-posttest design, the TB indicators from years before 2006 (from 2002 to 2005) were used as earlier measurement observations allowing examining changes over time. The decentralized approach was incorporated into the annual planning of the OHD. For the quantitative study design, indicators used were those from National TB Program in Burkina Faso: TB detection rate, incidence density of TB per 100,000 inhabitants per year, and HIV prevalence in incident TB cases with positive smears. Data entry and analysis employed Microsoft Access and Excel software. For the qualitative, in-depth interview was used in which a total of 16 persons have been interviewed. Discussions were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis using the computer-based qualitative software program named QSR NVIVO Results There were a total of 99,259 outpatient visits during the study period: the7,345 patients (7.43%) presented with cough. Of the 7,345 patient having cough, 503 cases (6.8%) were declared chronic coughing. These 503 patients were screened for TB, including 35.59% whose coughing had lasted 10 to 15 days. We observed an increase in a measured variable was observed. The TB detection rate and incidence-density rate based on positive smears were 16.11% (11.00% in 2005) and 10.42 per 100,000 inhabitants per year (6.88 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005), respectively. There were 29 patients positive for TB: 41.37% of these had cough lasting 10 to 15 days, 10.34% were also positive for HIV, and 68.97% were from rural areas. Health workers and patients reported satisfaction with the intervention. It was found that implementing a decentralized approach to TB prevention in rural areas is plausible and effective under some conditions: considering that health district system is functional; carefully designing the intervention for TB case management; setting up and implementing of decentralized approach including strong monitoring; and taking into account the all financing, community and volunteer involvement, evaluation of the cost savings from integrating specific donor funding, and being supported by regional and central levels including National TB program. Conclusion The study has shown that TB detection rate can be increased by implementing a decentralized approach to primary care. When carefully implemented, a decentralized approach is a suitable approach to TB and HIV prevention in rural and inaccessible settings.


This thesis addresses the difficulties related to measuring of bedload transport in steepmountain rivers. It is important to learn more about how eroding particles move in rivers because of the problems countries like Norway might face with increasing flood events in the future. The main focus for this thesis is to study the bedload transport in Vekveselva in Trollheimen, Norway. The problems to be discussed are (1) which of the tracer methods, passive integrated transponers or visuall tracers, give the best data for analyzing bedload transport, and (2) if the methods used in this investigation are able to determine if the two theories, size-selective or equal mobility, best describes the bedload transport in Vekveselva. Other methods used are impact sensors, pebble counts and grain distribution analysis. The results were difficult to interpret due to three major flood events during the summer of 2010 causing the loss of many tracers. Still there is reason to conclude that which the literature suggests; (1) that passive integrated tranpondertags gives a bigger percentage of recaptures of tracers than with visual tracers and therefore more data to analyze at a later stage, and (2) that size selective is the main form for bedload transport during low flow and equal mobility is more relevant during flood events.


In the 1990s, the CIS region experienced a painful transformation following the collapse of the USSR and the command economy. For the less developed republics of the former USSR, this process was even more dramatic as they lost subsidies from the Union's budget and some of them suffered devastating conflicts. In the 2000s, after overcoming the adaptation output decline and the consequences of the 1998-1999 financial crises, these economies started to grow rapidly, reducing poverty and macroeconomic imbalances. However, their future growth prospects are increasingly vulnerable due to their strong dependence on commodity exports, a poor business and investment climate, endemic corruption and weak governance. Quite recently, fighting high inflation has returned to the policy agenda. The modernization and diversification of the low-income CIS economies requires further market and institutional reforms aimed at overcoming the Soviet legacy of a repressive and inefficient state. The international community can help by resolving regional conflicts, assisting with trade and economic integration, and offering well-targeted development assistance.


Abstract Short-term variations in horizontal and vertical surface motion were studied with high temporal resolution during the ablation season in Lauteraargletscher, Bernese Alps, Switzerland. Horizontal surface flow speed oscillated diurnally, showing a correlation with the water level in a borehole. Flow speed increased as a function of the water level, with an asymptote at the ice overburden level. This observation implied that the flow variations were principally controlled by the local water pressure which enhanced basal motions. Detailed examination of the diurnal variations, however, showed that the speed was larger when the pressure was increasing than when it was decreasing. Greater speed with increasing pressure was interpreted by subglacial water-cavity opening and/or longitudinal stress coupling with the upper reaches of the glacier. Upward surface movements were observed when the glacier flow speed increased. Simultaneous measurement of internal vertical strain in a borehole showed that the uplift had two different sources: vertical straining of ice and volume increase of subglacial water cavities. The vertical surface movement was largely affected by the vertical strain, and the uplift events could not be simply attributed to cavity opening.


The overarching discipline of the study is the sociolinguistics of law in which the analytical methods of discourse, genre and narrative analysis are brought together in the enterprise of describing language in its social context. The issues addressed in this study relate to communication processes in a court of law in Gaborone, Botswana. These have been identified as issues relating to the various stages of the trial process that some writers have labelled sub-genres of the courtroom genre and some have simply labelled discourses. The process typical to the Botswana courtroom are the administrative processes of Mentions Reading of Charge Sheets and Readings of Facts and the substantive processes of Direct and Cross Examinations, Submissions and Judgements.

The study also includes the description of the bilingual nature of the Botswana courtroom including code switching and courtroom interpreting. The views and awareness of the legal practitioners - police prosecutors and lawyers - on and of the uses of language in the courtroom were sought and tested by a short questionnaire. These are cross-referred with observations and recordings of the court's proceedings with the aim of revealing the nature of bilingualism in this court.

Many studies have described and critique different aspects of the trial such as courtroom questioning and jury summations, but few have attempted to describe the trial as a whole as this study has done. This broad focus has enabled the perception of the trial as a site for interlocking discourses, which together bring about the outcomes of trials. It has found out, for example, that while some processes are, ordinarily, unacceptably coercive of witness, like cross examinations, some are empowering, for instance, direct examinations. In which witnesses are allowed longer turns at talk where they give narrative accounts. The data comprises forty hour of recordings transcribed into texts comprising several examples of each of the stages of the trial.


new assimilation its Abstract: Migrant networks—webs of social ties between migrants in destination and individuals in origin—are a key determinant of the magnitude and direction of migration flows, as well as migrants' adaptation outcomes. The increasing emphasis on migrant networks represents a new approach to migration research, which until the late 1980s, had been dominated by economic or political explanations of migration. This entry summarizes findings on migrant networks from relevant areas of research in anthropology, sociology, demography and economics; identifies the promising lines of inquiry recently undertaken; and points to key issues for future research, such as understanding how migrant networks impact migration behavior and migrants' experiences. Such research into the specific mechanisms of social transmission will need to engage with the on-going discussions on networks effects and their identification in the social science literature at large, and will necessarily require the interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers.


A Jamin interferometer was used to measure the thermal coefficient of the refractive index of water for sodium light (λ=5893A) from −5°C to +25°C. From this was calculated the index-temperature curve over the same range. The results agree with those found by the Bureau of Standards for water within the experimental error, which is between 1×10−6 and 2×10−6 index unit per degree centigrade. No differences were found between samples of water from different sources, nor was any change observed in the same sample over periods of weeks. No anomalies or irregularities in behavior were found in the average dn/dT. The possibility of a small consistent difference between the dn/dT versus T curves taken with rising and falling temperatures near 0°C is still under investigation.


The aim of this study was to perform an embryology analysis of South-American hystricomorph rodents (paca, agouti, capybara, and rock cavy) to compare these data with the ones from other rodents and with the human embryologic morphogenesis. We used 8 samples of rodents, 2 embryos for each species, collected during early gestation. The embryos were removed from the pregnant uterus through partial ovarysalpingohysterectomy, followed by fixation in 4% paraformaldehyde solution. For crow-rump measurements, we had as reference the nuchal crest at one extremity and the last sacral vertebra on the opposite side. The embryos examined showed the following morphological characteristics: Division of the branchial arches, the cranial neuropore open in some embryos studied, the cranial curvature developed, and the somites delimited and distinct. The hindlimb and forelimb were in development, and showed "row" form; so we found the cardiac impression and the liver region. In the caudal region we observed the head-flow curve, the optic vesicle with and without pigmentation of the retina, the opening of neural tube in the fourth ventricle region of the brain, the nasal cavity, and the encephalic vesicles formation. We conclude that the embryo development of hystricomorph rodents can be compared with the morphogenesis in rats, guinea pigs, rabbits and humans in the early stages of development, being aware of the particularities for each species, in addition to the implementation of reproductive technology, especially of embryos, what requires knowledge of the pre-implantation stages for the different development phases.


Modification of the fabric is one of the best routes to improve the affinity between dye and fabric. In this study, chemical modification of organic cotton fabric has been done by the greener way with the use of �-cyclodextrin and chitosan and the modification level were measured by dyeing with natural dye (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis) parijataka. Results of dyeing showed better dye uptake after modification on organic cotton fabrics, especially in chitosan modification. SEM and FTIR studies reveals about the surface modification and the presence of �-cyclodextrin and chitosan moiety on the modified fabric. CCM studies of modified and unmodified fabric reported that chroma (C*) values were found to be higher with modified fabric than unmodified fabric. Since the dyeability and other fastness properties of organic cotton are having better results. From an ecological point of view, organic cotton may be a better alternative to conventional cotton.


In this paper, we investigate the limitations of capacity-based random code constructions for the wiretap channel, i.e., constructions that associate to each confidential message a subcode whose rate approaches the capacity of the eavesdropper's channel.

Generalizing a previous result for binary symmetric channels, we show that random capacity-based codes do not achieve the strong secrecy capacity over the symmetric discrete memoryless channels they were designed for. However, we also show that these codes can achieve strong secrecy rates provided they are used over degraded wiretap channels.


In Rome's Christian Empress, Joyce E. Salisbury brings the captivating story of Rome's Christian empress to life. The daughter of Roman emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia lived at the center of imperial Roman power during the first half of the fifth century. Taken hostage after the fall of Rome to the Goths, she was married to the king and, upon his death, to a Roman general. The rare woman who traveled throughout Italy, Gaul, and Spain, she eventually returned to Rome, where her young son was crowned as the emperor of the western Roman provinces. Placidia served as his regent, ruling the Roman Empire and the provinces for twenty years. Salisbury restores this influential, too-often forgotten woman to the center stage of this crucial period. Describing Galla Placidia's life from childhood to death while detailing the political and military developments that influenced her-and that she influenced in turn-the book relies on religious and political sources to weave together a narrative that combines social, cultural, political, and theological history. The Roman world changed dramatically during Placidia's rule: the Empire became Christian, barbarian tribes settled throughout the West, and Rome began its unmistakable decline. But during her long reign, Placidia wielded formidable power. She fended off violent invaders and usurpers who challenged her Theodosian dynasty; presided over the dawn of the Catholic Church as theological controversies split the faithful and church practices and holidays were established; and spent fortunes building churches and mosaics that incorporated prominent images of herself and her family. Compulsively readable, Rome's Christian Empress is the first full-length work to give this fascinating and complex ruler her due.


The expected return on equity capital is possibly the most important driving factor in asset allocation decisions. Yet, the long-term estimates we typically use are derived from U.S. data only. There are reasons to suspect, however, that these estimates of return on capital are subject to survivorship, as the United States is arguably the most successful capitalist system in the world; most other countries have been plagued by political upheaval, war, and financial crises. The purpose of this paper is to provide estimates of return on capital from long-term histories for world equity markets. By putting together a variety of sources, we collected a database of capital appreciation indexes for 39 markets with histories going back as far back as the l920s. Our results are striking. We find that the United States has by far the highest uninterrupted real rate of appreciation of all countries, at about 5 percent annually. For other countries, the median real appreciation rate is about 1.5 percent. The high return premium obtained for U.S. equities therefore appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Our global databases also allow us to reconstruct monthly real and dollar-valued capital appreciation indices for global markets, providing further evidence on the benefits of international diversification.


Seismic hazard deaggregation has become a standard part of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA). The first product of PSHA is calculation of the likely severity of ground motion at a given range of annual probability levels, and this is extremely important for seismic design of structures to be built at the site under examination. However, for full analysis of proposed structural designs, engineers also need to examine scenario events to produce detailed time histories. To select such scenarios, a deaggregation of the hazard is performed, whereby the details of sources that contribute to the annual frequency of exceeding specified levels of ground motion, or P exc, are identified. A common format for such a deaggregation is shown in Figure 1. This relates to the 475-year peak ground acceleration (pga) at Wellington, New Zealand (41.28°S 174.77°E), and shows the distribution in magnitude and distance of sources that contribute to P exc. Return period is approximately the reciprocal of P exc. Stiff soil site conditions (Standards New Zealand 2004) were assumed.

The analysis in Figure 1 used the interim version of the updated seismic hazard model for New Zealand (Stirling et al. 2007), with the attenuation function developed by McVerry et al. (2007). Based on a Poisson time dependence model, a return period of 475 years corresponds to a 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years.

From Figure 1, it is apparent that for this site the main contribution to ground motion of this severity is from earthquakes of magnitude about 7.6 less than 10 km from the site (blue), and there is another strong contribution from larger events in the distance range 10 to 20 km (red). These correspond to the Wellington and Wairarapa faults, respectively (see Table 1). There are other events less than 10 …


Abstract Cell division is a key biological process in growth, morphogenesis, and reproduction. Despite our improved understanding of the genetics and dynamics of cell division in all major groups of living organisms, paleontological evidence for cell division is largely restricted to silicified (and some carbonaceous) algae and vascular plants where three-dimensional observation is possible. Animal cell division has been documented in the fossil record to a lesser extent; however, such knowledge is highly desirable in the recently revitalized field of evolutionary developmental biology. Two fundamentally different mitotic cell division topologies are preserved in late Neoproterozoic Doushantuo phosphorites (ca. 550–600 million years old) in South China. Doushantuo algal cells (∼20 μm in diameter) are successively cleaved by mitotic division planes that are offset but not deformed by subsequent cytokinesis. Mitotic division planes in successively cleaving Doushantuo animal embryos (several hundred microns in diameter) are also offset. However, in sharp contrast to Doushantuo algae, Doushantuo animal blastomeres repeatedly shift to mechanically stable configurations by disturbing preexisting division planes. This divergence reflects the underlying cytological and developmental differences between algae and animals. Specifically, the presence/absence of rigid cell walls and different cytokinetic mechanisms, coupled with mechanics at mitotic offsets, contribute to the diverging mitotic topologies in Doushantuo algae and animal embryos. These findings not only confirm previous interpretation of Doushantuo fossils but also provide direct paleontological evidence of cell movement in the development of these early animal fossils.


It is generally assumed that socioeconomic development interventions for the poor will enhance their material and social capacities to prevent ill health and to seek appropriate and timely care. Using cross-sectional data from surveys undertaken in 1995 and 1999 as part of the BRAC-ICDDR,B Joint Research Project in Matlab, Bangladesh, this paper explores patterns of health-seeking behaviour over time, with the hypothesis that exposure to integrated socioeconomic development activities will enhance gender equity in care-seeking and the use of qualified medical care. While there is tentative evidence of greater gender equity in treatment choice among households benefiting from development interventions, a preference for qualified medical care is not apparent. Findings reveal a striking and generalized rise in self-treatment over the 4-year period that is attributed to the economic repercussions of a major flood in 1998, and greater heath awareness due to the density of community health workers in Matlab. Also noteworthy is the substantial reliance on informal and often unqualified practitioners (over 20%) such as pharmacists and itinerant drug sellers. Factors associated with the type of health care sought were identified using logistic regression. Self-care is associated with female gender, the absence of low cost health services and illnesses of relatively short duration. Medical care, on the other hand, is positively predicted by male gender, geographic location, greater socioeconomic status and serious illness of long duration. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of enhancing local capacities to determine whether self-treatment is indicated, to self-treat appropriately, or in cases where health care is sought, to judge provider competence and evaluate whether treatment costs are justified. The provision of pharmaceutical training to the full spectrum of health care providers is also recommended.


Large-scale, high-resolution, photometrically calibrated images are key for many astrophysical problems. The INT Photometric Hα Survey has imaged the entire northern Galactic Plane in r, i and Hα filters. However, these images suffer from a number of common imaging problems, including, most critically, large-scale gradients due to scattered moonlight. The objective of this work is to produce an automated method for cleaning this data so that it can be used to produce large-scale and reliable Hα mosaics for scientific use. We created dark-time templates to account for airglow, fringing, and other sources of dark-time counts in the images and then used a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to fit a linear, 2-dimensional model to the scattered moonlight. Bright stars in the images are censored from the fitted images so they do not influence the fit. Other types of model were explored, as well as a method that employed Fourier transforms to clean the data, but without fruition. The method to fit the model to the moonlight background was originally tested in the i-band, before moving onto the the r-band, subtracting scaled Hα images to remove nebulosity. An empirical scaling factor was then used to translate the model fit from the r-band to the Hα band, necessary because of varying atmospheric conditions. Finally, the cleaned data were shifted onto a common zero point before mosaicking into large scale images. The result is a strong groundwork for cleaning astronomical images by accounting for the various components to sky background but preserving features of interest. The results of this process applied to images that cover supernova remnant Simeis 147 show a substantial improvement over uncleaned imaging data. We also illustrate the versatility of this process by applying it, unprepared, to other regions in the Galactic Plane.


In January 2011, a review about teacher education in Scotland included 50 recommendations designed to improve the learning of young people in Scotland. A feature of the recommendations was enhancement of teacher education via new national initiatives and strengthened partnerships between schools, local authorities and universities. The Scottish Baccalaureate is a new national initiative that could be used as a method for implementing recommendations made by Donaldson. The aim of this report is to describe a model of learning and teaching involving the Baccalaureate in Science that demonstrates how 14 Interdisciplinary Projects could be managed within a semi-rural secondary school and, through a 'whole-school' approach, be used to enhance pupil learning and teacher education while encouraging partnerships between the school and outside agencies. While this model addresses recommendations made by Donaldson, it also embraces the essential elements of Curriculum for Excellence


The ultrastructure of endogenous stages of Cryptosporidium muris in the stomach of laboratory mice was studied by transmission electron microscopy. Electron microscopy showed the various developmental stages as free in the gastric gland lumina and attached to the mucus cells. The changes in organelle composition and structure of various stages from the sporozoite to young trophozoites and matured oocysts were demonstrated in detail. Two types of the meront were discriminated. The finding of a microgamete on the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane surrounded a macrogamont was interesting for the stage of fertilization in C. muris. Types 1 and 2 wall-forming bodies were present in fertilized macrogamete or zygote. During sequential development of the endogenous stages, the zygote was separated from the attachment organelle by the clefts, the sporogony process simultaneously appeared when the wall formation progressed, and the sporoblasts were enveloped by budding from the sporont. As a result, thick and thin walled oocysts were found in the parasitophorous vacuole. The interaction of C. muris to mucus cells were quite different from those of other protozoans including Crytosporidium parvum. Each developmental stages of the parasite contained a unique "attachment organelle" which is characteristic of the base of their parasitophorous vacuole. This organelle consisted of a well-developed feeder organelle and the filamentous process. In the free stage of the parasite, it was observed that the zoites developed a surface membrane complex. It was thought that this membrane complex is involved in the building of the attachment organelle.


The article is based on a longitudinal study of Chinese college students who studied abroad as part of their BA programme in Preschool Education. It first examines the Chinese discourse on preschool education in order to understand the current situation in the students' professional field. The main section then discusses students' attitudes to what they perceived to be key values and principles in early childhood education in the West: freedom, individual rights, equality, and creativity. Students generally expressed strong support for these values and wanted to reform Chinese institutions accordingly. The article argues, based on this case, that while Chinese students abroad may not see themselves as the vanguard of macro-level political reforms, some of them certainly want to play a role in the gradual transformation of Chinese institutions in their respective professional fields.


Navajo peacemaking is one of the most renowned restorative justice programs in the world. Neither mediation nor alternative dispute resolution, it has been called a ?horizontal system of justice? because all participants are treated as equals with the purpose of preserving ongoing relationships and restoring harmony among involved parties. In peacemaking there is no coercion, and there are no 'sides.? No one is labeled the offender or the victim, the plaintiff or the defendant. This is a book about peacemaking as it exists in the Navajo Nation today, describing its origins, history, context, and contributions with an eye toward sharing knowledge between Navajo and European-based criminal justice systems. It provides practitioners with information about important aspects of peacemaking'such as structure, procedures, and outcomes that will be useful for them as they work with the Navajo courts and the peacemakers. It also offers outsiders the first one-volume overview of this traditional form of justice. The collection comprises insights of individuals who have served within the Navajo Judicial Branch, voices that authoritatively reflect peacemaking from an insider's point of view. It also features an article by Justice Sandra Day O Connor and includes contributions from other scholars who, with the cooperation of the Navajo Nation, have worked to bring a comparative perspective to peacemaking research. In addition, some chapters describe the personal journey through which peacemaking takes the parties in a dispute, demonstrating that its purpose is not to fulfill some abstract notion of Justice but to restore harmony so that the participants are returned to good relations. Navajo Nation Peacemaking seeks to promote both peacemaking and Navajo common law development. By establishing the foundations of the Navajo way of natural justice and offering a vision for its future, it shows that there are many lessons offered by Navajo peacemaking for those who want to approach old problems in sensible new ways.


INTRODUCTION: Penetrating oesophageal injuries are extremely rare. Their timely recognition can be difficult and optimal treatment remains controversial. Early recognition of injury is possible with the help of a high index of suspicion and early radiological and endoscopic examinations. Prompt surgical intervention with primary repair of injury, should be the goal. PRESENTATION OF CASES: We describe two cases of penetrating oesophageal trauma where T-Tube placement through the oesophageal defect, was successfully employed. Both cases proved to be challenging due to time lapse after injury and anatomical location. DISCUSSION: Penetrating injuries to the Oesophagus are rare with a reported incidence of 11–17%, most are due to gunshot injuries or stabbings, cervical followed by the thoracic Oesophagus are most at risk. In delayed presentations and sepsis related multi-organ instability, diversion and drainage are considered appropriate. T-tube placement through defects in difficult situations of delayed presentation is well described in setting of iatrogenic perforations. Their use has been described in penetrating injuries but much less frequently. CONCLUSION: T-tube placement though oesophageal defects can prove to be an effective treatment option to repair both iatrogenic and penetrating injuries of the Oesophagus, whether early or delayed. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IJS Publishing Group Ltd. This is an open access article he CC under t


ABSTRACT The aim of the research is to determine the effective storage technique between the air cooling and vacuum cooling technique during storage process (0, 4, 8 and 12 weeks) and to increase the shelf life of kabocha pumpkin. Parameters measured during storage process were β-carotene and proximate content (water, pH, protein and sugar). β-carotene content was analyzed by Spectrophotometer UV-VIS followed by validation method, water content by Gravimetric method, pH by pH meter, protein by Makro Kjehldal method, and sugar by Luff Schrool method.   The validation method showed good result which is proved by linearity, accuracy, precission, LOD, LOQ, and recovery values were 0.988, 98.8%, 3.39-7.73%, 0.011 ppm, 0.016 ppm, and 112% respectively. During storage process, β-carotene content was greater decreased on air cooling storage. For proximate content showed that water content was greater decreased on vacuum cooling storage. pH and the protein content was decreased on  air cooling or vacuum cooling storage, but on air cooling was greater. Sugar content was increased during eight weeks and decreased on last week. From the result it can be seen that vacuum cooling storage was better technique for kabocha pumpkin. Keyword: β -carotene, air cooling, proximate, vacuum cooling


The phenomenon of death at high temperatures in the blowfly Calliphora vicina has been studied, with particular emphasis on the respiratory activity of isolated flight muscle mitochondria (sarcosomes). These sarcosomes showed differential sensitivity towards several factors when different substrates are being repired. In the presence of α-glycerophos-phate as substrate lower values for Q0(_2) , RCI and ADP : 0 are obtained when the sarcosomes were isolated using the proteolytic enzyme 'nagarse' as compared with values obtained when the sarcosomes were prepared in the absence of 'nagarse'. It was also found that isolated sarcosomes respiring different substrates require different reaction conditions in order to show maximal respiratory performance. Sarcosomes isolated from lethally heat treated flies showed impaired oxidative phosphorylation and loss of respiratory control when α-glycerophosphate is respired. However, in the presence of pyruvate and proline as substrates coupling is impaired but is still demonstrable. Experiments were carried out to determine the effect of heat treatments when the heat dose is split by an interval of recovery. It was found that the dose is accumulative unless the recovery period extends to 6 hours or more. Recovering of flies from a heat shock (L.D.(_0_), is temperature dependent withal high value for Q(_10). The effect of temperature on isolated sarcosomes indicated that the loss of respiratory control observed at the higher reaction temperatures might not be due to a general deterioration of the sarcosomal membranes, unless temperatures about 40oC or higher are used. Sarcosomes are more sensitive to heat in vitro than in vivo. Sarcosomal α-glycerophosphate dehydrogenase has been studied following in vivo and in vitro heat treatment, and it was found to be relatively thermostable. Its specific activity and allosteric behaviour were not abolished by temperatures that are lethal to the whole animal. Ultrastructural studies show that isolated sarcosomes exhibited changes in their morphology in different respiratory states. Work with sarcosomes from heat dead flies support the biochemical data, showing a differential thermosensitivity of sarcosomal respiration with α-glycerophosphate as compared with pyruvate and proline respiration. Loss of the energized conformation seems to occur only in sarcosomes isolated from heat treated animals respiring on of-glycerophos-phate. No difference was seen in the appearance of the brain neurosecretory cells of control, lethally heated, or recovering flies. It is concluded that α-glycerophosphate dehydrogenase may not be the temperature –sensitive site, and that thermal injury is a membrane- phenomenon. The significance of the results is discussed, and suggestions are made for future work.


Anyone seeking health-care services should receive comprehensive, unbiased, medically and factually accurate information. Women facing unintended pregnancy deserve no less. When women are fully informed, they are better able to make the best decision for themselves about their reproductive health. Mindful of this, the anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and manipulate the information women facing unplanned pregnancies receive. To do so, they have built a national network of anti-choice organizations, some of them posing as comprehensive health-care clinics – called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs).


Oliewenhuis, a neo-Dutch-style mansion, was designed by William Mollison, Head Architect of the Department of Public Works and his assistant, John Stockwing Cleland in 1935. This mansion, completed in 1941, served as residence for the Governor General of the Union of South Africa from 1942. After the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1961, Oliewenhuis became the official Bloemfontein residence for the State Presidents of South Africa. The residence was used approximately every four years for this purpose.


A report (Binnie and Partners, 1965) on the water resources of the Great Ouse Basin put forward proposals for storage in the Wash of fresh water from the four rivers draining into the bay. The scheme suggested was to take the form of a barrage, enclosing about a third of the area of the bay, behind which fresh water would be stored in raised impoundments. Four years later (Binnie and Partners, 1970) this proposal was superseded by a scheme for storage in bunded reservoirs built on the foreshore at the head of the bay. The current Wash Feasibility Study (commenced in 1971) is expected to highlight the most suitable scheme of this sort following a programme which includes field data collection, hydraulic and mathematical model testing and site investigations. The scheme as currently envisaged would take the form of bunded reservoirs built (largely from dredged sea bed material) on the foreshore close to the outfall of the river Great Ouse and connected by tunnel to intakes on that river, and later on the river Nene. To meet increasing demand further impoundments could be built along the foreshore to store water drawn from the other rivers draining into the Wash. Figure 1 shows a possible reservoir scheme which is among those being considered. Continuous sea level observations have been made at 4 points in the Wash bay (figure l) using automatic level recorders. The purpose was to provide information on tides and surges in connection with the feasibility study.


In this article we use network theory to explain the adoption of the Protestant Reformation. We use new historical data on the connections between Hansa towns that allow us to conduct the first social network study of the Protestant Reformation. Based on an analysis of cities in central and Western Europe between 1517 and 1530, we find evidence for diffusion through both simple and complex contagion. Our operationalization of network data based on medieval Hansa Diets points to the complex association between tie weights (i.e., the strength of ties) and numbers of ties in network diffusion. Using optimal tuning parameters for simple adoption models, we show that a combination of strong ties and weak ties fostered Protestant adoption in northern cities.


In order to understand why so little media attention was paid to risks in the banking sector in the run up to the financial crisis, we need to understand the framework of law, regulation, self-regulation and professional incentives that structure the practice of financial and business journalism. This paper focuses in particular on what role financial journalists play in the system of corporate governance, the ways in which law and regulation recognize that role, and the extent to which this role is accepted and understood by financial journalists themselves. The first part of the essay reviews recent debate on financial journalism and investigates the role of financial journalism from a systemic perspective: looking at its role in corporate governance, and its impact on market behaviour. I develop the notion that financial and business journalists operate within a framework of rights and duties which institutionalize a particular ethical approach to their role. The second half of the article, which draws more extensively on interviews conducted with journalists and editors, asks how journalists themselves understand and describe their role and what they see as the key challenges they face as they attempt to perform it. It emerges that there is no consensus among financial and business journalists about their "watchdog" role in relation to markets and corporate behaviour, and whilst the financial journalists interviewed tended to agree on the key challenges they face, they are uncertain how to respond to them.


Photoinduced structural changes (PSC) is one of the fundamental excited-state dynamic processes, and yet often very challenging to distinguish from competing electronic excited-state relaxation channels having similar or even comparable timescales. Here, we report a detailed study on the PSC of a pyrazolate bridged platinum(II) binuclear complex, BFPtPZ (C^NPt(μ-pz')2 PtC^N, C^N=2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)pyridine, pz'=pyrazolate), a molecular butterfly, using time-correlated single photon counting measurements at different wavelengths and sample temperatures. Analysis of the results obtained using dichloromethane (DCM) and ethylene carbonate (EC) as solvents enabled us to reveal an unexpected, strong solvent effect on the PSC processes. We show that a rapid PSC process with a characteristic timescale of 323 ps is observed in DCM, which leads to an excitation equilibrium between the ligand center/metal-to-ligand charge transfer (3 LC/MLCT) and metal-metal-to-ligand charge transfer (3 MMLCT) triplet states. The subsequent relaxation from these electronic states to the ground state takes place in several nanoseconds. In contrast, the corresponding PSC process in EC appears slow at all temperatures studied in our experiments and showed no sign of such excitation equilibrium. The observed solvent effect is found to arise from distinct solvent properties including their viscosities and polarities as well as the peculiar electronic excited-states of the butterfly-like molecules with charge transfer character.


Individuals suffering from locked-in syndrome are completely paralyzed and unable to speak but otherwise cognitively intact. Traditional assistive technology is ineffective for this population of users due to the physical nature of input devices. Brain-computer and biometric interfaces offer users with severe motor disabilities a non-muscular input channel for communication and control, but require that users be able to harness their appropriate electrophysiological responses for effective use of the interface. There is currently no formalized process for determining a user's aptitude for control of various biometric interfaces without testing on an actual system. This study presents how basic information captured about users may be used to predict their control of a brain-computer interface that is based on electrical variations in the motor cortex region of the brain. Based on data from 55 able-bodied users, we found that the interaction of age and daily average amount of hand-and-arm movement by individuals correlates to their ability in braincomputer interface control. This research may be expanded into a more robust model linking individual characteristics and control of various biometric interfaces.


Abstract We present an inventory of the spider species of the municipality of Barcelonnette (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France), based on the material collected during the "Explor'Nature Barcelonnette" event, organised by the Mercantour National Park, from 30th June to 2nd July 2017. We report a total of 120 species, representing 83 genera and 25 families. For each species we provide faunistic/taxonomical remarks and detailed information about sampling localities, distribution, preferred habitat. Most of the species have a Palearctic distribution, followed by European and Holarctic chorotypes. We recorded a small percentage of endemic species, including rare elements occurring only in high-alpine habitats, such as Drassodex simoni Hervé, Roberts & Murphy, 2009 and Vesubia jugorum (Simon, 1881). Twenty-six species are recorded for the first time in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Department. Two species, Chrysso nordica (Chamberlin & Ivie, 1947) and Urozelotes trifidus Tuneva, 2003, are recorded for the first time in France. The sampling carried out in wet grasslands provided the highest number of species, followed by riparian habitats and shrublands. In addition, we provide a revision of the taxonomic position of Piniphantes agnellus (Maurer & Thaler, 1988) n. comb., including the first description of the male and illustrations of the palp morphology. Remarks on the ecology of the species and new drawings of the female genitalia are also given. Although the biological diversity of the study area is largely unknown, this faunal inventory enhances the knowledge of the biological richness of the area of Barcelonnette.


Over the course of his thirteen years as president of Duke University, Richard H. Brodhead spoke at numerous university ceremonies, community forums, and faculty meetings, and even appeared on The Colbert Report . Speaking of Duke collects dozens of these speeches, in which Brodhead speaks both to the special character and history of Duke University and to the general state of higher education.

In these essays, Brodhead shows a university thinking its way forward through challenges all institutes of higher education have faced in the twenty-first century, including an expanding global horizon, an economic downturn that has left a diminished sense of opportunity and a shaken faith in the value of liberal arts education, and pressure to think more deeply about issues of equity and inclusion. His audiences range from newly arrived freshmen and new graduates—both facing uncertainty about how to build their future lives—to seasoned faculty members. On other occasions, he makes the case to the general public for the enduring importance of the humanities.

What results is a portrait of Duke University in its modern chapter and the social and political climate that it shapes and is shaped by. While these speeches were given on official occasions, they are not impersonal official pronouncements; they are often quite personal and written with grace, humor, and an unwavering belief in the power of education to shape a changing world for the better.

Brodhead notes that it is an underappreciated fact that a great deal of the exercise of power by a university leader is done through speaking: by articulating the aspirations of the school and the reasons for its choices, and by voicing the shared sense of mission that gives a learning community its reality. Speaking of Duke accomplishes each of those and demonstrates Brodhead's conviction that higher education is more valuable now than ever.


Concrete is the world second generally used and well-known material after water, utilized as a center fixing in the development business. It is a blend of concrete, sand, total, water, and some admixture which causes it to receive any shape and size and afterward in the wake of solidifying it become rock-like structure. Concrete has great compressive quality however less rigidity that is the reason some specialized improvement required for improving their properties. In this examination work; jute fiber is utilized as support material alongside Hypo-Sludge (misuse of Paper Industry). Both the material is blended in concrete in various rate and mixes. For the examination reason a few physical tests like compressive quality test, flexural and split elasticity test performed on the examples and a near report directed between the outcomes.


Dynamic pricing has been used by Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) to achieve a balance between the volume of ride requests with numbers of available drivers on two-sided TNC markets. Given the desire to reduce operating costs and the emergence of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), the introduction of TNC-owned AV fleets could convert such services into one-sided markets, where operators have full control of service supply. In this paper we investigate the impact of utility-based dynamic pricing for Autonomous TNCs (ATNCs) in one-sided markets. We test the method using an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of Greater London in conditions of monopoly and competition, focusing on a statically priced ATNC service that offers a mix of private and shared ride services. Public transport is considered as an alternative mode of transportation in both scenarios. Results indicate that in monopoly, dynamic pricing provides higher revenues than static pricing at non-peak hours when average waiting times are low. On the contrary, in competition, dynamic pricing is superior at peak hours where increased waiting times are observed, thus increasing the value of low waiting time rides. Overall, in both market structures, it is found that shared trips are more popular in dynamic pricing compared to static pricing.


Precisely defining how viral mutations affect HIV's sensitivity to antibodies is vital to the development and evaluation of vaccines and antibody immunotherapeutics. But despite great effort, a full map of escape mutants has not yet been delineated for even a single anti-HIV antibody. Here we describe a massively parallel experimental approach to quantify how all single amino-acid mutations to Envelope (Env) affect HIV's sensitivity to a neutralizing antibody. We applied this approach to PGT151 and identified novel sites of escape in addition to those previously defined by structural and functional studies, such as glycans at sites 611 and 637, residue 647, and sites in the fusion peptide. Evaluating the effect of each amino acid at each site lends insight into the biochemical basis of escape throughout the epitope. Thus, comprehensive mapping of HIV antibody escape gives a quantitative, mutation-level view of the ways that Env can evade neutralization.


Tuberculosis (TB) remains the largest cause of adult deaths from any single infectious disease, and ranks among the top 10 causes of death worldwide. When TB and war occur simultaneously, the inevitable consequences are disease, human misery, suffering, and heightened mortality. TB is, therefore, one of the most frequent and deadly diseases to complicate the special circumstances of warfare. Written by internationally acclaimed experts, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the status of TB before, during and after WWII in the 25 belligerent countries that were chiefly involved. It summarizes the history of TB up to the present day. A special chapter on "Nazi Medicine, Tuberculosis and Genocide" examines the horrendous, inhuman Nazi ideology, which during WWII used TB as a justification for murder, and targeted the disease by eradicating millions who were afflicted by it. The final chapter summarizes the lessons learned from WWII and more recent wars and recommends anti-TB measures for future conflicts. This publication is not only of interest to TB specialists and pulmonologists but also to those interested in public health, infectious diseases, war-related issues and the history of medicine. It should also appeal to nonmedical readers like journalists and politicians.


We show results on how the morphology of a ZnO layer can have a big impact on the random lasing threshold of the material. Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition method is used to grow ZnO layers on sapphire substrates. The morphologies and structures of ZnO are observed to undergo transition when growth temperature decreases from 750 to 100 °C: the deposited ZnO changes from crystalline films to nanocrystalline films with columnar-shaped grains, then to well-aligned ZnO nanorods, and finally to randomly oriented irregular-shaped grains. ZnO nucleation and surface diffusion rates, coalescence between crystal grains, and preferential growth along c-axis play important roles in this transition from continuous films to nanorods. Random lasing properties of our ZnO films and nanorods are studied. The scattering ability of ZnO is critical to control the lasing properties. The lowest lasing thresholds are observed for ZnO films grown between 500 and 600 °C when the films have columnar-shaped grains and not at 750 °C when the ZnO layer has a continuous crystalline film. Calculations based on quasi-2D random lasing are consistent with the experimental results of lasing threshold measurements.


Cannabis has become a major commodity in much of North America, and is one of the most highly taxed and regulated agricultural products. Yet there is little research on the economic implications of cannabis taxes and regulations, which limit the availability of cannabis from legal licensed suppliers. Taxes and regulations generally raise the price and reduce the availability of licensed cannabis, which may increase the demand for unlicensed cannabis. In many states, the result is that licensed cannabis is more expensive and less available to consumers than unlicensed cannabis. This paper explores the impacts of several taxation and regulation alternatives that would likely increase the quantity of licensed cannabis relative to cannabis from unlicensed suppliers. Given the lack of cannabis data and confidence about the most important parameter estimates, we document confidence intervals around our simulation outcomes. Our simulated outcomes focus on policy-relevant market shares, government revenues, and welfare aggregates.


Providing a robust and reliable estimation of a patient's prognosis is necessary to make a qualified selection of the appropriate treatment for that patient. Digital image analysis of cancer cell nuclei is useful to make such estimation. In particular, texture analysis of the DNA organisation of nuclei has through a substantial number of studies proved to provide quantitative information of prognostic relevance. Most previous studies have used the first, second or higher order statistics to estimate the prognosis, i.e. applied statistical texture analysis. We will in this study take a different approach where we attempt to exploit the internal structure of DNA-specific stained nuclei. In our novel approach, we apply a novel, refined adaptive segmentation method to extract small dark and bright structures within the nuclei, and estimate the spatial entropy of the dark or bright structures of each nucleus based on the area of the segmented objects. Finally, we will use the spatial entropies to obtain some very few, but powerful novel adaptive texture features by adaptively estimating the discrimination value of each spatial entropy using the combined knowledge of all relevant spatial entropies of all nuclei across a number patients. We have analysed our novel approach on a dataset containing 134 patients with early ovarian cancer when using a proper evaluation method based on statistical bootstrapping. The results are very promising. Our method performs significantly better than the previously most promising method based on texture analysis. Moreover, it performs consistently at least about equally well as all other approaches based on image analysis. Combining the best feature of our novel approach with a single other feature, we also obtain the best performance among all approaches based on image analysis. If selecting a subset of the dataset based on a set of predefined criteria unrelated to digital image analysis, our novel approach attains a correct classification rate of 84 %. This facilitate to a two-step recognition system. Again, our novel approach is consistently better, perhaps also significantly better, than all other approaches based on image analysis. In conclusion, our novel approach seems to hold a promise of reliable estimation of the prognosis, which is necessary to make a qualified selection of the appropriate adjuvant treatment. Due to a very low dimensionality and the use of proper performance estimation, we expect that our approach will generalise well on an independent validation dataset. Moreover, because of the combination of high adaptivity in all stages of our approach and an addressed concern for the overfitting problem, we expect relatively good generalisation beyond the case under study. Nevertheless, caution must be called for, and new proper tests must as always be performed in the case of generalisations.


A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management


OBJECTIVES
We examined hospital- and patient-related factors associated with discharge against medical advice (termed self-discharge) after emergency admission to acute-care hospitals.

METHODS
We analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project using logistic regression models to assess the relationship between self-discharge and a set of patient and hospital characteristics.

RESULTS
Of 3,039,050 discharges in the sample, 43 678 were against medical advice (1.44%). In multivariable modeling, predictors of self-discharge included having Medicaid insurance (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=3.32; 95% confidence interval [CI]=3.22, 3.42), having Medicare insurance (AOR=1.64; 95% CI=1.59, 1.70), urban location (AOR=1.66; 95% CI=1.61, 1.72), medium (AOR=1.25; 95% CI=1.20, 1.29) or large (AOR=1.08, 95% CI=1.05, 1.12) hospital (defined by the number of beds), shorter hospital stay (OR=0.84; 95% CI=0.84, 0.85), and African American race (AOR=1.10; 95% CI=1.07, 1.14). Teaching hospitals had fewer self-discharges (AOR=0.90; 95% CI=0.88, 0.92). Other predictors of discharge against medical advice included age, gender, and income.

CONCLUSIONS
Approximately 1 in 70 hospital discharges in the United States are against medical advice. Both hospital and patient characteristics were associated with these decisions.


Many community‐based internists and family physicians lack familiarity with geriatrics knowledge and best practices, but they face overwhelming fiscal and time barriers to expanding their skills and improving their behavior in the care of older people. Traditional lecture‐and‐slide‐show continuing medical education (CME) programs have been shown to be relatively ineffective in changing this target group's practice. The challenge for geriatrics educators, then, is to devise CME programs that are highly accessible to practicing physicians, that will have an immediate and significant effect on practitioners' behavior, and that are financially viable. Studies of CME have shown that the most effective programs for knowledge translation in these circumstances involve what is known as active‐mode learning, which relies on interactive, targeted, and multifaceted techniques. A systematic literature review, supplemented by structured interviews, was performed to inventory active‐mode learning techniques for geriatrics knowledge and skills in the United States. Thirteen published articles met the criteria, and leaders of 28 active‐mode CME programs were interviewed. This systematic review indicates that there is a substantial experience in geriatrics training for community‐based physicians, much of which is unpublished and incompletely evaluated. It appears that the most effective methods to change behaviors involved multiple educational efforts such as written materials or toolkits combined with feedback and strong communication channels between instructors and learners.


The paper argues that the concept of trust is inevitably latent in every contractual relationship, and is best understood as a comprehensive theory and justification of contract law as both trust and contracts (more than any other legal action) are aiming toward the same universal goal of cooperation, risk-taking, and fulfillment of reasonable expectations. Contract law, per se and through its "good faith" doctrine, could then function as an expressive, coercive, and thus corrective legal tool, serving to symbolize, build, and internalize a culture of trust wherever it has failed to develop. Accordingly, while viewing the corporation as a nexus of contracts and as a voluntary organization based on cooperation and consent, trust can thus function as an axis that best fits corporate law, and also serves to justify it. The paper is organized as follows. Part I, briefly considers the essential role of trust. Although trust is discussed in this paper as a crucial concept in the corporate arena, some interdisciplinary insights about the "axiomatic" necessity of trust are cited in order to substantiate its systematic and universal role. The major theoretical claim of the article is then been outlined, namely, that the concept of trust serves as a comprehensive theory of contract law. Since the claim is that contract law is justified and also serves as the main legal bridge toward substantiating the social norm of trust, reference is also been made to the recent literature discussing the interaction between social norms and the law. Part II, illustrates the doctrinal ways by which the Israeli supreme Court integrates between the concept of trust, contract law and corporate law and substantiate the social norm of trust in the corporate context. Israeli precedent resorts rather extensively to the "good faith" doctrine of contract law in corporate contractual settings, explicitly justifying this recourse by reference to the trust principle, and stressing the implicit obligation of the corporation and its organs to fulfill the reasonable expectations of all corporate actors. Part III, points out some preliminary thoughts concerning specific issues in corporate and securities law that seem best suited for a research project based on the trust theory of contract and corporate law outlined here, such as issues of comparative corporate law, the search for an efficient corporate governance structure, the scope of mandatory rules in corporate law, the justification and content of the disclosure philosophy in securities regulation and legal methods for the protection of mixed investors within a corporate law model of shareholders supremacy. Part IV concludes with a discussion about the potential role of the corporation in generating an environment of universal trust, which is crucially important in the global economy.


Oxalate from Air In light of increasing concerns about the consequences of excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide, there is demand for methods to use carbon dioxide in the preparation of more elaborate compounds. Though reactions with hydroxide salts to form carbonates tend to proceed fairly cleanly, reductive processes to form carboxylic acids, esters, and alcohols are often rather unselective. Angamuthu et al. (p. 313; see the news story by Service) discovered that a copper complex exhibited remarkable selectivity in reductively coupling carbon dioxide to form oxalate through coordinative electron transfer, even in the presence of excess oxygen, normally a much more potent electron acceptor. Precipitation of the oxalate as a lithium salt and electrochemical re-reduction of the copper produced a preliminary catalytic cycle, demonstrated through six turnovers. A copper complex can reductively couple carbon dioxide, even in the presence of oxygen. Global warming concern has dramatically increased interest in using CO2 as a feedstock for preparation of value-added compounds, thereby helping to reduce its atmospheric concentration. Here, we describe a dinuclear copper(I) complex that is oxidized in air by CO2 rather than O2; the product is a tetranuclear copper(II) complex containing two bridging CO2-derived oxalate groups. Treatment of the copper(II) oxalate complex in acetonitrile with a soluble lithium salt results in quantitative precipitation of lithium oxalate. The copper(II) complex can then be nearly quantitatively electrochemically reduced at a relatively accessible potential, regenerating the initial dinuclear copper(I) compound. Preliminary results demonstrate six turnovers (producing 12 equivalents of oxalate) during 7 hours of catalysis at an applied potential of –0.03 volts versus the normal hydrogen electrode.


This volume examines the major trends in public finance in developed capitalist countries since the oil crisis of 1973. That year's oil shock quickly became an economic crisis, putting an end to a period of very high growth rates and an era of easy finance. Tax protests and growing welfare costs often led to rising debt levels. The change to floating exchange rates put more power in the hand of markets, which corresponded with a growing influence of neo-liberal thinking. These developments placed state finances under considerable pressure, and leading scholars here examine how the wealthiest OECD countries responded to these challenges and the consequences for the distribution of wealth between the rich and the poor. As the case studies here make clear, there was no simple 'race to the bottom' in taxation and welfare spending: different countries opted for different solutions that reflected their political and economic structures.


Aim/Purpose The aim of the present study was to examine peer interactions and the instructor's facilitation of online asynchronous group discussions on free writing among 20 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) joining one Saudi university over one academic semester. The study also attempted to explore the views of the learners on the online interactions. Background Peer interaction has been one of the interesting topics for research on the applications of computer mediated communication (CMC) tools among learners in different domains, including language learning and writing. However, most of the EFL classroom practices lack such peer interactions and are dominated by teacher-centered approaches. Moreover, although CMC tools serve as interactive platforms for online peer interaction, such interaction needs to be cultivated and maintained by instructors. Methodology The study was conducted among 20 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in one Saudi university over one academic semester. The instructor of the writing course facilitated the asynchronous group discussions of free writing. The data was collected from (l) learners' peer interactions, (2) instructor's comments in the discussions and (3) learners' follow-up individual interviews. A qualitative content analysis of online interactions and a thematic analysis of the students' responses to the interview questions were performed. Contribution The use of technology reported in this study maximizes the opportunities for teacher-learner and learner-learner interactions, which are restricted or almost lacking in the EFL writing classroom. The findings of the present study also contribute to previous research on learners' peer interactions and instructors' facilitation of asynchronous group discussions. More specifically, the study informs us of the role of peer interactions through asynchronous tools in language learning, EFL Learners' and Instructor's Interactions 506 including writing. It also highlights the role of instructors in facilitating asynchronous group discussions. Findings The findings showed that the EFL learners posted 1702 comments distributed among eleven patterns in terms of its language functions: evaluation, problem identification, alterations, clarification, suggestion, justification, agreements and disagreements, comprehension check, procedural, error acknowledgement and others. Analysis of the foci of peer interactions illustrated that the learners engaged in task-oriented interactions: content, organization, purpose, grammar, vocabulary and spelling and punctuations and non-task-oriented interactions: task management and socialization. Based on the analysis of the instructor's comments, the instructor played an important role in facilitating the group discussions as indicated through his various comments (n=852) on the learners' discussions. Although the learners expressed their positive views on the role of peer interactions and learner-instructor interactions in enhancing language learning, including writing, grammar and even reading, some of them were challenged by the flow of online interactions, weak net connection and sensitivity to peer feedback. Recommendations for Practitioners The findings of the study provide valuable recommendations to both learners and instructors who are interested in using asynchronous tools for language learning and, in particular, writing through interactions. The application of such tools is promising, and its value is maximized with instructor's facilitation of peer interactions. Recommendations for Researchers The study provides valuable insights into how peer interactions and instructor's comments are both important when investigating asynchronous group discussions in EFL learning. Therefore, researchers should search this interesting research topic further to enrich our knowledge of it. Impact on Society Since the study focuses on one country of the EFL context, it is expected to have an impact on the society, particularly university learners and instructors by raising their awareness of the role of technological applications in learning and teaching. Future Research Future researchers should focus on how peer interactions are distributed among individual learners and how the instructor's facilitation affects peer interactions in asynchronous group discussions over time.


The androgen receptor (AR) has been proposed as a candidate gene for several cancers (breast, prostate, uterine endometrium, colon, and esophagus). Ethnicity is considered an associated risk factor for some of these cancers. Several case‐control genetic studies have been focused in samples of the main ethnic groups, but little is known about the distribution of risk polymorphisms in current populations with accurate ethnic and/or geographic origins. The A allele of the G1733A polymorphism of the AR gene has been associated with increased risk of prostate cancer. We provide data from this marker in 12 samples from 7 Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy (Sardinia), Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt. A sample from Ivory Coast has also been analyzed. The A allele distribution shows a frequency in the Ivory Coast population (65.17%) that contrasts with the low values found in Northern Mediterraneans (mean average value of 13.98%). North African populations present two‐times higher frequencies (average value of 27.19%) than Europeans. The wide population variation range found for the A allele strengthens the potential interest of further screening as a baseline to the design of future preventive and population health programs. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 17:690–695, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


In this paper, three-dimensional incompressible laminar fluid flow in a rectangular microchannel heat sink (MCHS) using Al2O3/water nanofluid as a cooling fluid is numerically studied. CFD prediction of fluid flow and forced convection heat transfer properties of nanofluid using single-phase and two-phase model (Eulerian-Eulerian approach) are compared. Hydraulic and thermal performance of microchannels are investigated according to the results of the friction factor, pumping power, average heat transfer coefficient, thermal resistance, average temperature of the walls and entropy generation. In addition, due to the CFD results, two correlations for predication of Nusselt number and friction factor are presented. Comparing the predicted Nusselt number using single-phase and two-phase models with experimental data shows that the two-phase model is more accurate than single-phase model. The results show that increasing the volume fraction of nanoparticles leads to increases the heat transfer coefficient and reduces the heat sink wall temperature, but it leads to the undesirable effect of increase in pumping power and total entropy generation.


Ecological forecasting is difficult but essential, because reactive management results in corrective actions that are often too late to avert significant environmental damage. Here, we appraise different forecasting methods with a particular focus on the modelling of species populations. We show how simple extrapolation of current trends in state is often inadequate because environmental drivers change in intensity over time and new drivers emerge. However, statistical models, incorporating relationships with drivers, simply offset the prediction problem, requiring us to forecast how the drivers will themselves change over time. Some authors approach this problem by focusing in detail on a single driver, whilst others use 'storyline' scenarios, which consider projected changes in a wide range of different drivers. We explain why both approaches are problematic and identify a compromise to model key drivers and interactions along with possible response options to help inform environmental management. We also highlight the crucial role of validation of forecasts using independent data. Although these issues are relevant for all types of ecological forecasting, we provide examples based on forecasts for populations of UK butterflies. We show how a high goodness-of-fit for models used to calibrate data is not sufficient for good forecasting. Long-term biological recording schemes rather than experiments will often provide data for ecological forecasting and validation because these schemes allow capture of landscape-scale land-use effects and their interactions with other drivers.


Learning from unordered sets is a fundamental learning setup, recently attracting increasing attention. Research in this area has focused on the case where elements of the set are represented by feature vectors, and far less emphasis has been given to the common case where set elements themselves adhere to their own symmetries. That case is relevant to numerous applications, from deblurring image bursts to multi-view 3D shape recognition and reconstruction.
In this paper, we present a principled approach to learning sets of general symmetric elements. We first characterize the space of linear layers that are equivariant both to element reordering and to the inherent symmetries of elements, like translation in the case of images. We further show that networks that are composed of these layers, called Deep Sets for Symmetric Elements layers (DSS), are universal approximators of both invariant and equivariant functions. DSS layers are also straightforward to implement. Finally, we show that they improve over existing set-learning architectures in a series of experiments with images, graphs, and point-clouds.


In the solar power and conservative energy, our basic mission was to build things that don't use any sort of fuel that harms the environment. One of the most well-liked ways of conserving energy is using solar panels. Solar panels capture light, and transforms that light into electrical. The first objective in this research was to build an electric car that uses solar panels. To do so we connected a solar panel to a motor which rotates a series of gears that turns the wheels. We used a lot of sunlight though to power the motor enough were the gears spins fast enough to move the car. Capacitors store electric energy, and we could store this electrical energy by taking electrical energy from a source; such as a battery. Another way we produced conservative energy is the use of windmill/wind turbines. For this case we used a wind turbine to rotate a series of gears (similar to the solar power car) which could turn a coil inside a generator (counter clockwise), which produced an electrical energy.