Abstract. In this paper we show results from numerical simulations carried out with a complex biogeochemical fluxes model coupled with a one-dimensional high-resolution hydrodynamical model and implemented at three different locations of the northern Adriatic shelf. One location is directly affected by the Po River influence, one has more open-sea characteristics and one is located in the Gulf of Trieste with an intermediate behavior; emphasis is put on the comparison with observations and on the functioning of the northern Adriatic ecosystem in the three areas. The work has been performed in a climatological context and has to be considered as preliminary to the development of three-dimensional numerical simulations. Biogeochemical model parameterizations have been ameliorated with a detailed description of bacterial substrate utilization associated with the quality of the dissolved organic matter (DOM), in order to improve the models capability in capturing the observed DOM dynamics in the basin. The coupled model has been calibrated and validated at the three locations by means of climatological data sets. Results show satisfactory model behavior in simulating local seasonal dynamics in the limit of the available boundary conditions and the one-dimensional implementation. Comparisons with available measurements of primary and bacterial production and bacterial abundances have been performed in all locations. Model simulated rates and bacterial dynamics are in the same order of magnitude of observations and show a qualitatively correct time evolution. The importance of temperature as a factor controlling bacteria efficiency is investigated with sensitivity experiments on the model parameterizations. The different model behavior and pelagic ecosystem structure developed by the model at the three locations can be attributed to the local hydrodynamical features and interactions with external inputs of nutrients. The onset of the winter/spring bloom in the climatological simulations is primarily driven by local stratification conditions. During summer the major carbon-transfer pathway developed by the model is the microbial web at all the sites, indicating that a large fraction of organic matter is processed through bacteria during productive periods, as suggested by field observations. The site directly influenced by riverine inputs differs from the others, showing a more alternate shifting among trophic pathways. Applying the conceptual scheme proposed by Legendre and Rassoulzadegan (Ophelia, 41, 153-172, 1995), it can be recognized as a herbivorous spring phase tightly followed by a microbial loop development, a summer microbial web phase and a multivorous trophic web pattern during autumn with a subsequent recovery of microbial processes. Results are discussed in terms of regime shifting from transient to stable water column conditions. Key words. Oceanography: general (continental shelf processes; numerical modelling) – Oceanography: biological and chemical (biochemistry and food chains)


d 18 Obenthic values from Leg 194 Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1192 and 1195 (drilled on the Marion Plateau) were combined with deep-sea values to reconstruct the magnitude range of the late middle Miocene sea-level fall (13.6‐11.4 Ma). In parallel, an estimate for the late middle Miocene sea-level fall was calculated from the stratigraphic relationship identified during Leg 194 and the structural relief of carbonate platforms that form the Marion Plateau. Corrections for thermal subsidence induced by Late Cretaceous rifting, flexural sediment loading, and sediment compaction were taken into account. The response of the lithosphere to sediment loading was considered for a range of effective elastic thicknesses (10 , Te , 40 km). By overlapping the sea-level range of both the deep-sea isotopes and the results from the backstripping analysis, we demonstrate that the amplitude of the late middle Miocene sea-level fall was 45‐68 m (56.5 6 11.5 m). Including an estimate for sea-level variation using the d 18 Obenthic results from the subtropical Marion Plateau, the range of sea-level fall is tightly constrained between 45 and 55 m (50.0 6 5.0 m). This result is the first precise quantitative estimate for the amplitude of the late middle Miocene eustatic fall that sidesteps the errors inherent in using benthic foraminifera assemblages to predict paleo‐water depth. The estimate also includes an error analysis for the flexural response of the lithosphere to both water and sediment loads. Our result implies that the extent of ice buildup in the Miocene was larger than previously estimated, and conversely that the amount of cooling associated with this event was less important.


Complexity in how mechanistic variation translates into ecological novelty could be critical to organismal diversification. For instance, when multiple distinct morphologies can generate the same mechanical or functional phenotype, this could mitigate trade-offs and/or provide alternative ways to meet the same ecological challenge. To investigate how this type of complexity shapes diversity in a classic adaptive radiation, we tested several evolutionary consequences of the anterior jaw four-bar linkage for Lake Malawi cichlid trophic diversification. Using a novel phylogenetic framework, we demonstrated that different mechanical outputs of the same four jaw elements are evolutionarily associated with both jaw protrusion distance and jaw protrusion angle. However, these two functional aspects of jaw protrusion have evolved independently. Additionally, although four-bar morphology showed little evidence for attraction to optima, there was substantial evidence of adaptive peaks for emergent four-bar linkage mechanics and jaw protrusion abilities among Malawi feeding guilds. Finally, we highlighted a clear case of two cichlid species that have independently evolved to graze algae in less than 2 Myr and have converged on similar jaw protrusion abilities as well as four-bar linkage mechanics, but have evolved these similarities via non-convergent four-bar morphologies.


This paper analyses creolisms in a set of conversations among educated Jamaicans. It focuses on morphology and syntax but lexis is also considered. Two different approaches are applied: a quantitative approach in the framework of the creole continuum and a qualitative, interaction-based approach. The quantitative approach is useful to locate the set of data within the continuum – between the upper mesolect and the high acrolect – and to determine the relative "creoleness" of different features. The qualitative approach focuses on the fine details of variation within the data such as code-switching and helps to explain speakers' choices. The paper concludes that the creole continuum and individual agency complement each other as approaches to stylistic variation in Jamaican speech.


Abstract. This paper presents an analysis of fatalities attributable to weather conditions in the Czech Republic during the 2000–2019 period. The database of fatalities deployed contains information extracted from Pravo, a leading daily newspaper, and Novinky.cz, its internet equivalent, supplemented by a number of other documentary sources. The analysis is performed for floods, windstorms, convective storms, rain, snow, glaze ice, frost, heat, and fog. For each of them, the associated fatalities are investigated in terms of annual frequencies, trends, annual variation, spatial distribution, cause, type, place, and time as well as the sex, age, and behaviour of casualties. There were 1164 weather-related fatalities during the 2000–2019 study period, exhibiting a statistically significant falling trend. Those attributable to frost (31 %) predominated, followed by glaze ice, rain, and snow. Fatalities were at their maximum in January and December and at their minimum in April and September. Fatalities arising out of vehicle accidents (48 %) predominated in terms of structure, followed by freezing or hypothermia (30 %). Most deaths occurred during the night. Adults (65 %) and males (72 %) accounted for the majority of fatalities, while indirect fatalities were more frequent than direct ones (55 % to 45 %). Hazardous behaviour accounted for 76 %. According to the database of the Czech Statistical Office, deaths caused by exposure to excessive natural cold are markedly predominant among five selected groups of weather-related fatalities, and their numbers exhibit a statistically significant rise during 2000–2019. Police yearbooks of the fatalities arising out of vehicle accidents indicate significantly decreasing trends in the frequency of inclement weather patterns associated with fatal accidents as well as a decrease in their percentage in annual numbers of fatalities. The discussion of results includes the problems of data uncertainty, comparison of different data sources, and the broader context.


The environmental impacts of genetically modified crops is still a controversial issue in Europe. The overall risk assessment framework has recently been reinforced by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA) and its implementation requires harmonized and efficient methodologies. The EU-funded research project AMIGA − Assessing and monitoring Impacts of Genetically modified plants on Agro-ecosystems − aims to address this issue, by providing a framework that establishes protection goals and baselines for European agro-ecosystems, improves knowledge on the potential long term environmental effects of genetically modified (GM) plants, tests the efficacy of the EFSA Guidance Document for the Environmental Risk Assessment, explores new strategies for post market monitoring, and provides a systematic analysis of economic aspects of Genetically Modified crops cultivation in the EU. Research focuses on ecological studies in different EU regions, the sustainability of GM crops is estimated by analysing the functional components of the agro-ecosystems and specific experimental protocols are being developed for this scope.


Requirements management (RM), as practised in the aerospace and defence sectors, attracts interest from construction researchers in response to longstanding problems of project definition. Doubts are expressed whether RM offers a new discipline for construction practitioners or whether it repeats previous exhortations to adopt a more disciplined way of working. Whilst systems engineering has an established track record of addressing complex technical problems, its extension to socially complex problems has been challenged. The dominant storyline of RM is one of procedural rationality and RM is commonly presented as a means of controlling dilettante behaviour. Interviews with RM practitioners suggest a considerable gulf between the dominant storyline in the literature and how practitioners operate in practice. The paper challenges construction researchers interested in RM to reflect more upon the theoretical debates that underpin current equivalent practices in construction and the disparity between espoused and enacted practice.


Abstract. Passive air samplers (PAS) were deployed at 86 European background sites during summer 2006 in order (i) to gain further insight into spatial patterns of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in European background air and, (ii) to evaluate PAS as an alternative sampling technique under EMEP (Co-operative programme for monitoring and evaluation of the long-range transmissions of air pollutants in Europe). The samples were analyzed for selected PCBs, HCHs, DDTs, HCB, PAHs and chlordanes, and air concentrations were calculated on the basis of losses of performance reference compounds. Air concentrations of PCBs were generally lowest in more remote areas of northern Europe with elevated levels in more densely populated areas. γ-HCH was found at elevated levels in more central parts of Europe, whereas α-HCH, β-HCH and DDTs showed higher concentrations in the south-eastern part. There was no clear spatial pattern in the concentrations for PAHs, indicative of influence by local sources, rather than long range atmospheric transport (LRAT). HCB was evenly distributed across Europe, while the concentrations of chlordanes were typically low or non-detectable. A comparison of results obtained on the basis of PAS and active air sampling (AAS) illustrated that coordinated PAS campaigns have the potential serve as useful inter-comparison exercises within and across existing monitoring networks. The results also highlighted limitations of the current EMEP measurement network with respect to spatial coverage. We finally adopted an existing Lagrangian transport model (FLEXPART) as recently modified to incorporate key processes relevant for POPs to evaluate potential source regions affecting observed concentrations at selected sites. Using PCB-28 as an example, the model predicted concentrations which agreed within a factor of 3 with PAS measurements for all except 1 out of the 17 sites selected for this analysis.


Sediment cores from the Gotland Basin were studied for their siliceous microfossil assemblages and organic carbon content to compare recent environmental changes in the Baltic Sea with its natural long-term history. Age models were constructed using 210Pb, 137Cs and corrected and calibrated 14C dates. The transgression that marks the onset of the Ancylus Lake stage is recorded in the sediments as a small increase in organic carbon coinciding with a peak in diatom abundance and increased diatom diversity. A minor occurrence of brackish-freshwater diatoms is recorded in the Ancylus Lake c. 9950–9750 cal. yr BP (c. 8900–8800 14C yr BP), correlating with the onset of the Initial Litorina Sea in the Bornholm Basin. A high-productivity event is recorded in the end of the Post-Litorina Sea and corresponds to the Mediaeval warm event. An alteration in the diatom assemblage contemporaneous with a decrease in organic carbon, interpreted as representing a deterioration in the climate, correlates with the start of the 'Little Ice Age' about 850–700 cal. yr BP. A change dated to ad 1950–1960 is probably an effect of increased nutrient availability in the open Baltic Sea. This effect of eutrophication was probably caused by increased discharge of nutrients deriving from fertilizers, as the responding diatom species partly indicate a cold climate rather than a warm one, as would have been expected if this had been only a response to the warmer climate documented during the last 100 years or so.


Northern fulmars and Manx shearwaters are pelagic seabirds of the Order Procellariiformes, a group that is characterised by extreme life-history traits. Many of these traits have been associated with the unpredictability of marine food sources. However, fulmars and Manx shearwaters feed their chicks at relatively frequent intervals compared with other procellariiforms, and the life-history implications of this strategy are poorly understood. In this thesis I examined food provisioning and chick growth strategies in fulmars and Manx shearwaters, and discussed these strategies in the context of life history - environment interactions. 1 tested the efficacy of a periodic weighing method for assessing food provisioning, and found that this gave a very similar estimate of the frequency and size of feeds compared to periodic weighing combined with data on parental attendance, determined by radio tracking. However, periodic weighing was much less effective at distinguishing meals from one or two parents. In Manx shearwaters, chick growth was highly correlated with food provisioning rate, and both variables showed significant annual variation. Both individual and environmental effects contributed to this variation, and in particular, peak mass showed highly significant repeatability coefficients. Fulmars showed significant variation in breeding success, diet and chick growth between two years, but chicks were apparently heavier in a very poor year. This was caused by differential mortality of chicks in poor condition. In Manx shearwaters, male parents visited the nest more frequently and made a greater contribution to food provisioning than females, a strategy that has seldom been reported in sexually monomorphic seabirds. I used a cross-fostering experiment to examine the parent-chick interactions responsible for the mass recession period prior to fledging in Manx shearwaters. Both parents and chicks had an active role in controlling food intake, and the results indicated that mass recession was not caused by parental desertion as previously thought.


Abstract:This article reveals the formative interplay between the queer art of gossip and poetic practice in James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover, a sprawling verse trilogy composed with the unlikely assistance of a Ouija board. The poem's extensive gossip with the dead is often dismissed as mere surface. Yet Merrill, the article contends, indulges in what he calls the Ouija's "backstage gossip" both to establish a queer relationship to poetic tradition and to confront the pervasive menace of the Cold War discourse of the Lavender Scare, which haunts the trilogy's 1950s origins. Arguing that midcentury American attitudes about sexuality inflect—productively as much as disastrously—the relationship of lyric privacy to gossipy publicity in Merrill's poem, the article shows how gossip, in its rich afterlife in Sandover, emerges not so much as a normative threat to be overcome but as a mode of fostering and preserving nonnormative voices, converting the privacy imposed on the homosexual into the conditions for creating queer worlds. Gossip concomitantly provides Merrill with a model of poetic self-performance that at once pushes against and embraces New Critical ideals of lyric subjectivity—a way of telling one's own scandalous story through someone else's words, even words intended as hostile, discovering poetic and sexual pleasures where others see only anxiety and dread.


An abstract of the dissertation of Erik Terdal for the Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Sciences and Resources: Biology presented November 22, 1995. Title: Captive Environmental Influences on Behavior in Zoo Drills and Mandrills (Mandrillus), a Threatened Genus of Primate Drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus) are an endangered species of African monkey (Cercopithecidae), and their sole congener the mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) is vulnerable to extinction. Both species are threatened in the wild by deforestation and hunting. Drills have a poor record of captive reproduction. Many individuals appear to have behavioral deficiencies which interfere with reproduction. Thus, the zoo population of drills does not serve as a "hedge" against the species' total extinction: drills are endangered in captivity as well as in the wild. Mandrills, by contrast, reproduce well in captivity. Information on the behavior of mandrills in captivity may help zoo managers improve husbandry for both species. The intent of this research was to study the relationship between aspects of the captive environment and behaviors which lead to reproduction. A review of the literature on both drills and mandrills, in the wild and captivity, was used to suggest "essential characteristics" of the captive environment that may encourage animals of both species to engage in natural, active behaviors, to form cohesive dyads with opposite-sex adults, to develop affiliative bonds, and to engage in sexual behavior. Sixty-two drills and mandrills in 14 groups in the U.S. and Germany were studied with behavior sampling methods, using the Drill Species Survival Plan ethogram. Data were analyzed by multiple regression using transformed variables. No over-all species differences in behavior were found. Results suggested that two factors promoted natural activity: 1) environmental enrichment which provides positive reinforcement for active behaviors, and 2) an affiliative husbandry style by the animal's keepers. Active animals were more likely to engage in social behaviors leading to copulation. Many of the non-reproducing drills appeared to be "passive and withdrawn," and shared a constellation of signs that appeared to be analogous to human clinical depression. An etiological model for "passive and withdrawn" Mandrillus, based on biobehavioral theories of human depressive disorders, was developed to link early rearing conditions and environmental enrichment. This model was then used to develop a historicdemographic hypothesis for why mandrills have historically had greater reproductive success than drills in zoos.


The main focus and aim of this master thesis is to write about the nature of friendship and experiences of the Southeast Asian immigrant children in Norway. The overall methodological perspective of this study is based on the philosophy of the new social studies of childhood where children are constructed as social actors, listening to their voices, seeing them as active agents in their daily lives who are able to choose their friends and form friendship in their new country. I conducted semi-structured interview and observation with my participants and informal discussion with the parents. I interviewed eight children from ages 8 to 14 years old.In the analysis chapter I discussed about my participant's idea of friendship or the meaning of the concept for them, I also talked about the activities they do together to nurture the friendship. I wrote down some quotations from my participants to illustrate their own words on the matter. I also discuss ways my participants formed friendship with the other children, and in doing so, it became evident to me that my younger participants form friendship with other children differently than my older participants. I further discuss the differences of friendship relations of my participants across different age groups, factors how they view friendships. I also discussed my participant's friendship at home, in school and their neighborhood and their parent's earlier influence on friendship formation. I also talked about my participant's groups, their experiences of conflicts and disputes with friends. I also talked about gendered friendship because it is an important area to help us understand the nature of children's friendship.I conclude my research with the results that among the challenges my participants experienced as an immigrant, learning the language spoken in the country where they live is the most important aspect to enable the children to form friendship with other children. My research also documented that my participants are competent children capable of adapting to a new society by learning the language, making new friends and nurture friendship. This thesis therefore confirm the new social studies of childhood where children are social actors who are active agents in their daily lives able to choose their friends and form friendship in their new country.


Background Although active travel (walking and cycling) is increasingly touted as an effective strategy to reduce noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) globally, there is little published data on the potential health benefits in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study examined: (1) socio-demographic correlates of walking or cycling for travel; (2) associations between active travel and overweight and hypertension. Methods Data come from the World Health Organisation Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) of China, India, Mexico, Ghana, Russia and South Africa. Data come from 40,687 respondents to the survey between 2007 and 2010, aged 18 years and older, selected using a stratified random cluster design. Being overweight was defined using nurse-measured height and weight. Hypertension was defined as ≥140/90 mm Hg from three nurse measured blood pressures. Active travel for at least 30 min a day was categorised based on the question "How much time would you spend walking or bicycling for travel on a typical day?" Logistic regression assessed associations between active travel and socio-demographic factors, as well as likelihood of being overweight or having hypertension. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, marital status, time in education, living in an urban or rural area, minutes of work and leisure physical activity and household wealth, as well as smoking and fruit/vegetable consumption. Results 56.8% of the sample undertook active travel for at least 30 min a day, ranging from 30.3% in South Africa to 73.0% in Russia. In pooled analyses those in wealthier households were less likely to use active travel (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) 0.66, p < 0.001 for wealthiest fifth versus poorest), although this was not universally true (e.g. AOR 0.84, p = 0.621 for Mexico). Use of active travel for at least 30 min a day was associated with a lower likelihood of being overweight (AOR 0.79, p = 0.001), although effects varied, from AOR 0.54, p < 0.001 (Ghana) to AOR 1.12, p = 0.739 (South Africa). Active travel was associated with reduced odds of having hypertension in pooled analyses (AOR 0.84, p = 0.019) although results from individual countries were not statistically significant. Conclusion Use of active travel is more common among those from lower socio-economic groups in most LMICs studied and appears to confer similar health benefits to those identified in high income settings. Efforts to maintain active travel levels should be integral to strategies to maintain healthy weight and prevent NCDs in LMICs.


The presence of ionospheric perturbations in possible association with two huge earthquakes (Noto-hanto peninsula and Niigata-chuetu-oki earthquakes) in 2007 was studied on the basis of a conventional statistical study for a particular propagation path from the JJI transmitter in Miyazaki, Kyushu, to Moshiri in Hokkaido. This is based on automatic routine-based signal processing, in which the trend as the average nighttime amplitude is significantly decreased, with almost simultaneous significant enhancement in the night-time fluctuation as the night-time integration of negative fluctuation from the average. It is, however, shown that this routine-based signal analysis sometime suffers from artificial (or man-made) effects. Thus, in this study, we propose an additional use of principal component analysis (PCA) for simultaneous observation of a few VLF/LF propagation paths. With the application of this PCA method to multi-path data, the artificial effects can be reasonably removed, and also only the geophysical effects associated with earthquakes are detected, by focusing mainly on the third principal component. The satisfactory separation of the principal components is made possible by pre-analysis of the VLF data (extraction from the raw data of the average over a whole year). This PCA method enables us to identify the seismogenic effects in association with earthquakes with smaller magnitudes, down to M 5.5 or M 5.0.


The objective of this thesis is to examine the information content of stock options in financial markets. A key question in financial economics is how information diffuses across markets and how quickly it is reflected in security prices. This thesis aims at exploring this question by investigating the informational role that options play in financial markets. This is achieved by exploring the joint cross section of option and bond prices, the informational role of options in seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), and the information content of options trading prior to announcements of changes to the S&P 500 Index. The thesis comprises three essays, each exploring the information content of equity options trading from a different angle. The first essay examines the joint cross section of option implied volatility and corporate bond returns. Theoretical and empirical work in finance suggests that stocks and bonds of the same issuing firm should share common risk factors. Therefore, new information about a firm should affect both its stock and bond prices. However, if one market offers trading incentives over other markets, informed traders and traders with better ability to process information may choose to trade in that market over the others. As a result, markets that provide advantages to informed traders will incorporate information prior to other markets. The empirical analysis in this chapter reveals that options trading is strongly predictive of corporate bond returns. A strategy of buying (selling) the portfolio with the lowest (highest) changes in option implied volatility yields an average monthly excess bond return of 1.03%. This strategy is statistically highly significant and economically very meaningful and indicates that information is incorporated into option prices prior to bond prices. In contrast, I find no evidence that bond prices incorporate information prior to option or stock prices. Since bond investors are generally sophisticated institutional investors who process information efficiently and the predictive ability of options is persistent, I conclude that informed trading rather than superior information processing abilities is responsible for the predictive ability of options. The second essay explores the information content of option implied volatility around the announcements and issue dates of SEOs. The literature on SEOs indicates that announcements and issue dates contain important information about firms and therefore provide profitable opportunities for traders with private information. While prior research has focused on the information content of short sales around SEOs, this study focuses on the information content of options which can act as an alternative for short selling. The empirical analysis provides evidence of informed trading in the options market around SEO announcements. Around SEO issue dates, I find that higher demand for put options is significantly related to larger issue discounts which is consistent with the manipulative trading hypothesis. The results in this study indicate that regulators should consider extending the short-sale restrictions of Rule 105 to restrict trading in related securities. Finally, the third essay investigates the information content of options prior to the S&P 500 Index inclusion and exclusion announcements. These announcements are unique events since they are not announced by the firm and, as stated by S&P, they should convey no new information. In addition, the large abnormal returns observed following these announcements make them distinctive ground for testing the informational role of options. Consistent with the notion that informed traders operate in the options market, the empirical results in this essay indicate that there is a significant relationship between options trading preceding index inclusion announcements and abnormal returns following these announcements. In contrast, I find no evidence for a relationship between options trading and abnormal returns following exclusion announcements.


Abstract We empirically investigate potential determinants of the allowance price dynamics in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme during Phase II. In contrast to previous studies, we place particular emphasis on the fuel price selection. We show that results are extremely sensitive to choosing different price series of potential determinants, such as coal and gas prices. In general, only the influence of economic activity in Europe and hydropower provision in Norway is robustly explaining allowance price dynamics. The influence of fuel switching on allowance prices and, therefore, equalization of marginal abatement costs - in particular in the long run - is still rather small.


A new strategy applicable to the synthesis of indoloquinolizine natural products has been developed. A cyanide-catalyzed intramolecular imino-Stetter reaction of aldimines, derived from 2-aminocinnamic acid derivatives and 2-pyridinecarboxaldehydes, provided indole-3-acetic acid derivatives bearing a pyridyl ring at the 2-position. Reduction of the carboxylic acid moiety to an alcohol followed by activation of the resulting alcohol with Tf2O or TsCl generated indoloquinolizinium salts, which were utilized as precursors for indoloquinolizine natural products. The advantage of this protocol was successfully demonstrated in the total syntheses of arborescidine A and nauclefidine.

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We report on the synthesis, microstructure and mass transport properties of a colloidal hydrogel self-assembled from a mixture of colloidal silica and nontronite clay plates at different particle concentrations. The gel-structure had uniaxial long-range anisotropy caused by alignment of the clay particles in a strong external magnetic field. After gelation the colloidal silica covered the clay particle network, fixing the orientation of the clay plates. Comparing gels with a clay concentration between 0 and 0.7 vol%, the magnetically oriented gels had a maximum water permeability and self-diffusion coefficient at 0.3 and 0.7 vol% clay, respectively. Hence the specific clay concentration resulting in the highest liquid flux was pressure dependent. This study gives new insight into the effect of anisotropy, particle concentration and bound water on mass transport properties in nano/microporous materials. Such findings merit consideration when designing porous composite materials for use in for example fuel cell, chromatography and membrane technology.


Objective: This study investigated how upper limb post-operative patients defined quality care. We specifically assessed the following three aims: (1) determining patient expectations following upper limb surgery, (2) identifying patient recognized barriers to receiving quality care, and (3) analyzing patient identified areas of improvement in patient education. Method: In total, 52 patients, aged 19 – 89 years (mean age: 48 years) who received upper limb surgery were surveyed with an open-ended questionnaire during their six to eight week post-operative visit at Stanford Medicine Outpatient Center in Redwood City or Stanford Orthopaedic Surgery Clinic in Los Gatos. Responses were electronically transcribed to REDcap, Research Electronic Data Capture System, for analysis of responses to demographic questions. Open-ended questions were evaluated by thematic analysis until data saturation was reached. Results: Thematic analysis of open-ended responses revealed three main themes: (1) Pain, (2) Function; and (3) Patient Unpreparedness. Both pain and function involved preand post-operative factors. Of our three identified themes, elimination of pain and regaining function were the two main health-outcomes that upper limb patients identified vi as successful treatments of their condition. Patient unpreparedness was recognized as a main barrier in patients receiving quality care and an important area to improve patient education about their problem and treatment. Conclusion: By understanding the desired health outcomes and limitations in achieving those outcomes for post-operative upper limb patients, we can improve how medical care is practiced. Our results highlighted that both process and outcome domains of care are important elements in patients' definition of quality care when seeking medical treatment for their upper limb problems. Specifically, patients identified that elimination of pain and regaining function were important health outcomes during their care. In order to achieve those desired health-outcomes, we recognized that improvements need to be made with regard to patient education about their health condition and treatment process, in order to foster better physician-patient communication. Overall, our findings support the need for continued focus on patient-centered care to ensure the delivery of quality healthcare to all patients.


The transport of viruses in unsaturated porous media has been a subject of great interest in recent years because of the enhanced removal of these microorganisms compared with saturated conditions. We studied the transport of bacteriophages MS2 and ϕX174, used as surrogate pathogenic viruses, at various water contents and solution chemistries in terms of pH and ionic strength (IS). The objective was to explore the interaction of viruses with the solid–water interfaces (SWI) and air–water interfaces (AWI) for a range of conditions. The experimental data were fitted with a transport model to determine the adsorption (attachment and detachment rate) parameters. Our results show that the retention of viruses in the soil column increases as water saturation decreases when the chemical conditions are favorable for adsorption (pH 7 and relatively high IS). Our analysis indicates that the enhanced retention of ϕX174 viruses at lower water contents is caused by increased attachment to the SWI and that retention by the AWI is not significant. Results obtained from a first series of experiments (pH 9 and low IS) showed insignificant attachment of MS2 viruses to both the SWI and the AWI. The MS2 breakthrough data for a second series of experiments (pH 7 and high IS) did not allow us to separate out the role of the AWI. Although attachment of MS2 viruses to the AWI cannot be ruled out in our experiments, we suspect that the increased retention of this phage under unsaturated condition was also due to enhanced attachment to the SWI. Increased attachment to the SWI under unsaturated conditions is attributed to increased mass transfer of viruses to the SWI due to a reduced diffusion length at lower water contents. Our results demonstrate that if there is any attachment to the AWI, it is reversible. When unfavorable conditions occur for attachment to the SWI, the attached viruses may be detached by moving solid–water–air contact lines (SWA).


The directed acyclic graph (DAG) associated with a parallel algorithm captures the order in which separate local computations are completed and how their outputs are subsequently used in further computations. Unlike in a synchronous parallel algorithm the DAG associated with an asynchronous parallel algorithm is not predetermined. Instead it is a product of the asynchronous timing dynamics of the machine and, as such, it is best thought of as a pseudorandom variable. In this paper we present a new tighter bound on the rate of convergence of asynchronous parallel Jacobi (APJ), which is based on statistical properties of the DAG and is valid for systems which satisfy a standard sufficient condition for convergence. We also describe an experiment in which we make a precise log of the calculations taking place during an implementation of APJ on a distributed memory multicore machine, which enables us to reconstruct and study the DAG. We demonstrate that our bound provides a good approximation of the true rate of convergence in these examples and show how problems in the algorithm's implementation can affect the asynchronous timing dynamics and in turn the rate of convergence of the algorithm.


While the actor Sessue Hayakawa (1886–1973) is perhaps best known today for his Oscar-nominated turn as a Japanese military officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), in the early twentieth century he was an internationally renowned silent film star, as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin or Douglas Fairbanks. In this critical study of Hayakawa's stardom, Daisuke Miyao reconstructs the Japanese actor's remarkable career, from the films that preceded his meteoric rise to fame as the star of Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat (1915) through his reign as a matinee idol and the subsequent decline and resurrection of his Hollywood fortunes.

Drawing on early-twentieth-century sources in both English and Japanese, including Japanese-language newspapers in the United States, Miyao illuminates the construction and reception of Hayakawa's stardom as an ongoing process of cross-cultural negotiation. Hayakawa's early work included short films about Japan that were popular with American audiences as well as spy films that played upon anxieties about Japanese nationalism. The Jesse L. Lasky production company sought to shape Hayakawa's image by emphasizing the actor's Japanese traits while portraying him as safely assimilated into U.S. culture. Hayakawa himself struggled to maintain his sympathetic persona while creating more complex Japanese characters that would appeal to both American and Japanese audiences. The star's initial success with U.S. audiences created ambivalence in Japan, where some described him as traitorously Americanized and others as a positive icon of modernized Japan. This unique history of transnational silent-film stardom focuses attention on the ways that race, ethnicity, and nationality influenced the early development of the global film industry.


Modal change nodes play a relevant role in urban passenger mobility. The main aim of this work is to analyse different pricing tools aimed at minimizing the negative components of the transition costs from the private modality to the mass transit one at the modal change nodes. In particular, we compute and compare the generalized cost of origin-destination paths in the case of both multimodal and private networks. We report on some data related to the city of Genoa, Italy, in that for its topological and geographical structure, and the wide offer of the public transportation system, it is well suitable for intermodality. We perform some scenario analysis using the spreadsheet Excel considering different origindestination paths and different pricing policies. In particular, we investigate some possibilities that reflect two different government policies: 1) to increase the cost of the private paths by introducing road fees and increasing the cost of the car parks in the main central areas; 2) to reduce the cost of intermodal paths by reducing both the parking fee and the bus ticket. Results obtained by using these different policies depend on many factors, among others the perception of the services offered by the mass transit transport and the cost of the transaction arcs at the modal change nodes. For these reasons, in the scenario analyses we evaluate the effect of the different pricing policies when varying the weight of two main components of the generalized cost function: the cost components and the time ones.


the degeneration of postovulatory follicles (PoFs) in time and at different temperatures was studied for the Bay of Biscay anchovy. For this purpose a key of 7 PoF stages, solely defined on the basis of their histological degeneration characteristics, was applied. the novelty of this procedure is that it separates staging of PoFs from their ageing process. the female gonads, taken from several captivity experiments and field samples, were classified in this way. Water temperature in captivity tanks corresponded to high values (17-21oc), except for one case in which different day and night temperatures were applied. in addition, 472 field samples (11948 anchovy females) from several cruises were examined; of these, 126 samples (3348 females) were identified as coming from areas of high sea surface temperature (weighted mean =17.76oc, s.d.=0.84) and 131 samples (3181 females) as coming from areas of low sea surface temperature (weighted mean =14.42oc, s.d.=0.75). there was close agreement in the succession of PoF stages over time after spawning between the experiment and the field samples. the first four stages of PoF degeneration occurred in less than 24 h, and by the end of the first day the PoFs were mainly in stage V. stages Vi and Vii showed their highest occurrence during the first and second half of the second day after spawning, respectively. Full resorption of PoFs was achieved in about 55-60 h. For the range of temperatures examined (13-19oc), little effect of temperature on the degeneration of PoFs over time was noticed. the advanced degeneration stages were found all day round, showing some overlapping periods when successive spawning cohorts co-occurred. the application of these results for ageing PoFs is discussed.


We survey chief financial officers from 29 countries to examine whether and why firms use lines of credit versus non-operational (excess) cash for their corporate liquidity. We find that these two liquidity sources are employed to hedge against different risks. Non-operational cash guards against future cash flow shocks in bad times, while credit lines give firms the option to exploit future business opportunities available in good times. Lines of credit are the dominant source of liquidity for companies around the world, comprising about 15% of assets, while less than half of the cash held by companies is held for non-operational purposes, comprising about 2% of assets. Across countries, firms make greater use of lines of credit when external credit markets are poorly developed.


The International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health supports programs designed to promote wellness and to improve health care for HIV-infected individuals and families around the world. By providing a continuum of services from patient education to HIV-specific treatment programs such as the MTCT-Plus Initiative and the Multicountry Columbia Antiretroviral Program (MCAP) support the provision of high quality family-focused care for HIV-infected adults and children. Patients enrolled in ICAP programs have access to regular clinical and laboratory assessments nutritional support diagnostic testing family planning services prophylaxis and management of opportunistic infections and antiretroviral treatment (ART). Multidisciplinary teams empower patients through psychosocial assistance patient education peer support outreach programs and counseling adapted by sites to meet the needs of specific cultural environments. The programs also support community outreach and education and work to build linkages to local organizations and resources. (excerpt)


Many classification systems rely on clustering techniques in which a collection of training examples is provided as an input, and a number of clusters c1, . . . cm modeling some concept C results as an output, such that every cluster ci is labeled as positive or negative. In such a setting clusters can overlap, and a new unlabeled instance can be assigned to more than one cluster with conflicting labels. In the literature, such a case is usually solved non-deterministically by making a random choice. This paper introduces a novel, hybrid approach to solve the above problem by combining a neural network N along with a background theory T specified in defeasible logic programming (DeLP) which models preference criteria for performing clustering.


Juvenile spiny lobsters Jasus edwardsii,
grown in tanks for 1 yr following capture as pueruli,
may be released to coastal reefs in Tasmania, Australia,
to offset possible stock depletion resulting from
the harvest of pueruli for commercial culture. We
assessed the utility of tethering experiments for selecting
sites with low predation pressure appropriate for
lobster releases, and address a concern that experimental
artefacts are likely to vary across sites, providing
biased estimates of relative mortality. A multicamera
surveillance system used to observe tethered
juvenile lobsters at 4 isolated reefs revealed lowdiversity
of predators, which included wrasse (45%
of observed predation events), octopus (21%), crabs
(17%) and large lobsters (16%). Wrasse and octopus
were the dominant predators at 3 of the 4 sites, while
crabs and large lobsters dominated the fourth. Survival
rates in 48 h tethering trials varied substantially (24.4
to 62.2%) among sites. Tethers substantially increased
the success rates of all predators in a reef mesocosm.
The magnitude of the tethering effect was similar for
wrasse and octopus, while large lobsters caught relatively
few untethered juvenile lobsters, and crabs
appeared incapable of catching untethered lobsters.
Survival rates for each site were adjusted by applying
a site-specific correction factor calculated using knowledge
of predator suites at each site and magnitude of
tethering bias for each predator. Corrected survival
rates did not vary among sites, and the rank order of
sites in terms of predation rates did not change following
correction; overall, there was a significant correlation
between adjusted and unadjusted values. Our
results suggest that tethering trials are appropriate as a
tool for selecting release sites only if complementary
data on predator assemblages and tethering artefacts
are collected with sufficient rigour to enable calculating
site-specific correction factors.


Ultra-high-speed data transmission (terabit-per-second per channel) is urgently required in optical communication systems to fulfill the emerging demands of 3D multimedia applications, cloud computing, and bandwidth-hungry applications. In one way by using singlecarrier optical communication systems for the data transmission rates ≥ 1 Tb/s, we need the high baud rate and/or the high-order modulation formats (i.e. 512-QAM, 1024-QAM). Another way is to group the data carrying subcarriers without a guard bands (tightly spaced) to form a superchannel which gives increase in channel capacity. In a superchannel, the requirements of high-order modulation formats and high baud rates are relaxed. In an alloptical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (AO-OFDM) system, the subcarriers are orthogonal and closely packed which gives more suitability to form superchannel. This thesis focuses on the time and frequency offsets in AO-OFDM systems. A theoretical model to investigate the performance of on-off-keying (OOK) modulated AO-OFDM system is developed for analytical simulation. The analytical (statistical) model considers the random characteristics of time and frequency offsets in adjacent subcarriers as well as the common noise sources such as shot and thermal noises to calculate the interference variances for evaluating the BER performance. The effects of time and frequency offsets on the BER performance of AO-OFDM system is evaluated with the number of optical subcarriers (NSC), receiver bandwidth (BWRX ), and cyclic prefix (CP) We further develop an analytical model to evaluate the performance of AO-OFDM system with advanced modulation format (M-QAM) in the presence of time and frequency offsets, and the performance is compared with numerical simulations of other emulation setups (oddand-even subcarriers and decorrelated systems). The performance is investigated with NSC, BWRX , and CP in AO-OFDM system. A delay-line interferometer based all-optical method to reduce the effects of time and frequency offsets is proposed and evaluated. Finally, performance of demultiplexed subcarriers from an optical discrete Fourier trans-


This paper proposes a strategy for transporting a large object to a goal using a large number of mobile robots that are significantly smaller than the object. The robots only push the object at positions where the direct line of sight to the goal is occluded by the object. This strategy is fully decentralized and requires neither explicit communication nor specific manipulation mechanisms. We prove that it can transport any convex object in a planar environment. We implement this strategy on the e-puck robotic platform and present systematic experiments with a group of 20 e-pucks transporting three objects of different shapes. The objects were successfully transported to the goal in 43 out of 45 trials. When using a mobile goal, teleoperated by a human, the object could be navigated through an environment with obstacles. We also tested the strategy in a 3-D environment using physics-based computer simulation. Due to its simplicity, the transport strategy is particularly suited for implementation on microscale robotic systems.


To develop a numerical model of icing on wind turbine blades, a CFD simulation was conducted to investigate the effect of critical ice accretions on the aerodynamic characteristics of a 0.610 m chord NACA 0011 airfoil section. Aerodynamic performance coefficients and pressure profile were calculated and compared with the available measurements for a chord Reynolds number of 1.83x106. Ice shapes were simulated with flat plates (spoiler-ice) extending along the span of the wing. Lift, drag, and pressure coefficients were calculated in zero angle of attack through the steady state and transient simulations. Different approaches of numerical studies have been applied to investigate the icing conditions on the blades. The simulated separated flow over the sharp spoilers is challenging and can be seen as a worst test case for validation. It allows determining a reliable strategy to simulate real ice shapes [1] for which the detailed validation cannot easily be provided.


Throughout the world, major climate-related catastrophic events have devastated lives and livelihoods. These events are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity across the globe, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to accumulate in our atmosphere. The causes and consequences of these disasters are not constrained to geographic and political boundaries, or even temporal scales, increasing the complexity of their management. Differences in cultures, governance and policy processes often occur among jurisdictions in a transboundary setting, whether adjacent nations that are exposed to the same transboundary hazard or across municipalities located within the same political jurisdiction. Political institutions and processes may vary across jurisdictions in a region, presenting challenges to cooperation and coordination of risk management. With shifting climates, risks from climate-related natural hazards are in constant flux, increasing the difficulty of making predictions about and governing these risks. Further, different groups of individuals may be exposed to the same climate hazard, but that exposure may affect these groups in unique ways. Managing climate change as a transboundary natural hazard may mandate a shift from a focus on individual climate risks to developing capacity to encourage learning from and adaptation to a diversity of climatic risks that span boundaries. Potential barriers to adaptation to climate risks must not be considered individually but rather as a part of a more dynamic system in which multiple barriers may interact, impeding effective management. Greater coordination horizontally, for example through networks linking cities, and vertically, across multiple levels of governance (e.g., local, regional, national, global), may aid in the development of increased capacity to deal with these transboundary risks. Greater public engagement in management of risks from climate change hazards, both in risk mitigation and post-hazard recovery, could increase local-level capacity to adapt to these hazards.


Protection of the environment can be regarded as representing a substantial cost to business. However, it is typically considered from the point of view of effect on company profitability, rather than its relative importance to human kind. This paper estimates the value of Scotland's natural environment by applying the methodology developed by Costanza et al (1997a and b) for estimation of the value of the earth's ecosystem services. Ecosystem services provide the vital functions to support life on Earth, such as flows of materials and energy. Since the study's publication, further research has sought to apply this global methodology to a regional and national level (for example Loomis et al, 2000, Farber and Griner, 2000 and Stevens et al, 2000). The value derived for Scotland provides a useful context for understanding the scale and importance of Scotland's natural habitats and it helps to reinforce the message that the environment is central to human welfare (Williams et al, 2003). The valuation of ecosystem services in monetary terms provokes theoretical, practical and philosophical arguments. This paper does not seek to revisit in depth these debates; rather the valuation should be taken as a starting point for setting the importance of Scotland's ecosystems in an interesting perspective. A recent edition of the journal Ecological Economics (Costanza and Farber, 2002) was devoted to considering some of these issues and providing many avenues for further exploration.


Since their introduction by Moulinec and Suquet [1, 2], FFT-based full-field simulations of the mechanical properties of composites have become increasingly popular, with applications ranging from the linear elastic behaviour of cementitious materials [3], to the plasticity of polycrystals [4]. Recently, the authors have proposed [5] a new formulation of these numerical schemes, based on the energy principle of Hashin and Shtrikman [6]. While similar in principle to the original scheme of Moulinec and Suquet, the new scheme was shown to be much better-behaved. Indeed, convergence of the scheme is guaranteed for any contrast, without having to resort to augmented Lagrangian approaches [7]. Besides, convergence of the new scheme is generally much faster. However, the new scheme has two drawbacks. First, the reference material must be stiffer (or softer) than all constituants of the composite; this is not always possible, for example when the composite contains both pores and rigid inclusions. Second, the scheme requires the preliminary computation of the so-called consistent Green operator, which turned out to be a difficult task in three dimensions. In order to relax these requirements, an in-depth mathematical analysis of these schemes was carried out by the authors [8]. In this paper, the Lippmann-Schwinger equation and its variational form will briefly be recalled. The Galerkin approach will then be adopted for the discretization of this equation, and it will be shown that the basic scheme of [1] as well as the energy scheme proposed in [5] can both be viewed as well-posed Galerkin approximations of the Lippmann-Schwinger equation. Contrary to what was previously believed [7, 5] these approximations are convergent, regardless of the reference material (provided that its stiffness is positive definite). Comparison of these two approximations leads to the derivation of the so-called filtered, non-consistent approach, which combines the assets of the two former methods. Finally, some applications will be shown. In particular, the important problem of heterogeneous voxels will be addressed.


What is meant by pedagogy? How does our conception of pedagogy inform good teaching and learning? Pedagogy is a complex concept of which student and practising teachers need to have an understanding, yet there remain many ambiguities about what the term means, and how it informs learning in the classroom. Understanding Pedagogy examines pedagogy in a holistic way, supporting a more critical and reflective understanding of teaching and learning. It considers pedagogy as a concept that covers not just teaching approaches and pupil-teacher relationships but one which also embraces and informs educational theory, personal learning styles, assessment, and relationships inside and outside the classroom. A detailed consideration of what it means to be a professional in the contemporary climate, Understanding Pedagogy challenges student and practising teachers to reappraise their understanding and practice through effectively linking theory and practice. Key issues explored include the importance of understanding a learning styles profile, the application of cognitive neuroscience to teaching, personalised learning, assessment and feedback, and what we mean by critical reflection. Using the Personal Learning Styles Pedagogy, the authors make explicit the integration of theory and practice and the many decisions and selections that teachers make, their implications for what is being taught and learnt, how learners are positioned in the pedagogical process, and ultimately, how learning can be improved. Understanding Pedagogy will be essential reading for student and practising teachers, as well those on Education Studies courses and undertaking masters level courses, involved in the endeavour of understanding what constitutes effective teaching and learning.


Epitaxial growth of heterostructure nanowires allows for the definition of narrow sections with specific semiconductor composition. The authors demonstrate how postgrowth engineering of III-V heterostructure nanowires using selective etching can form gaps, sharpening of tips, and thin sections simultaneously on multiple nanowires. They investigate the potential of combining nanostencil deposition of catalyst, epitaxial III-V heterostructure nanowire growth, and selective etching, as a road toward wafer scale integration and engineering of nanowires with existing silicon technology. Nanostencil lithography is used for deposition of catalyst particles on trench sidewalls and the lateral growth of III-V nanowires is achieved from such catalysts. The selectivity of a bromine-based etch on gallium arsenide segments in gallium phosphide nanowires is examined, using a hydrochloride etch to remove the III-V native oxides. Depending on the etching conditions, a variety of gap topologies and tiplike structures are observed, offering postgrowth engineering of material composition and morphology.


Patients in the intensive care unit frequently develop low-output syndromes due to cardiac dysfunction, myocardial injury and activation of inflammatory cascades. Pharmacological agents, including vasodilators, inotropes and vasopressors, are frequently used in the critical care setting for the management of unstable cardiac patients. These medications are used to elicit varying effects on vascular resistance, myocardial contractility and heart rate to achieve desired hemodynamic and clinical end points. Conventional inotropic agents appear to be useful in restoring hemodynamic parameters and improving peripheral organ perfusion, but they can increase short-term and long-term mortality in these patients. Novel inotropes may be promising in the management of cardiogenic shock patients without serious adverse effects. The present review summarizes the current knowledge about the pathophysiology and evidence-based use of conventional and novel inotropic agents in various clinical scenarios associated with cardiovascular diseases.


An 18-yr-old black woman in good general health was found to lack serum hemolytic complement activity. The sixth component of complement (C6) was undetectable by functional assay of serum or plasma and by immunoprecipitin analysis of serum. Functional titers of all other complement components were normal. The absence of C6 in the patient's serum could not be accounted for by a circulating C6 inhibitor, and addition of functionally pure C6 to the patient's serum restored hemolytic activity to normal. Both parents of the proband and five of six available siblings had approximately half the normal levels of functional C6. The other sibling had a normal C6 level. These data suggest that both parents and five siblings are heterozygous for C6 deficiency, while the proband is homozygous and one sibling is normal. Thus, C6 deficiency appears to follow classic mendelian inheritance, with all three possible genotypes recognizable within the family. Functional properties of the proband's C6-deficient serum included total absence of bactericidal activity against Salmonella typhi 0 901 and Hemophilus influenzae, type b, and inability to mediate lysis of red blood cells from patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria in either the acidified serum or "sugar water" tests. The proband's serum did, however, exhibit a normal capacity (a) to generate chemotactic activity during incubation with bacterial endotoxin or aggregated IgG, (b) to mediate the immune adherence phenomenon, and (c) to coat human red blood cells, sensitized by cold agglutinins, with C4 and C3.


Event-based data are encountered daily in many disciplines and are used for various purposes. They are collections of ordered sequences of events where each event has a start time and a duration. Examples of such data include medical records, internet surfing records, transaction records, industrial process or system control records, and activity diary data. This thesis is concerned with the exploration of event-based data, and in particular the identification and analysis of sequences within them. Sequences are interesting in this context since they enable the understanding of the evolving character of event data records over time. They can reveal trends, relationships and similarities across the data, allow for comparisons to be made within and between the records, and can also help predict forthcoming events.The presented work has researched methods for identifying and exploring such event-sequences which are based on modern visualization, interaction and data mining techniques. An interactive visualization environment that facilitates analysis and exploration of event-based data has been designed and developed, which permits a user to freely explore different aspects of this data and visually identify interesting features and trends. Visual data mining methods have been developed within this environment, that facilitate the automatic identification and exploration of interesting sequences as patterns. The first method makes use of a sequence mining algorithm that identifies sequences of events as patterns, in an iterative fashion, according to certain user-defined constraints. The resulting patterns can then be displayed and interactively explored by the user.The second method has been inspired by web-mining algorithms and the use of graph similarity. A tree-inspired visual exploration environment has been developed that allows a user to systematically and interactively explore interesting event-sequences.Having identified interesting sequences as patterns it becomes interesting to further explore how these are incorporated across the data and classify the records based on the similarities in the way these sequences are manifested within them. In the final method developed in this work, a set of similarity metrics has been identified for characterizing event-sequences, which are then used within a clustering algorithm in order to find similarly behavinggroups. The resulting clusters, as well as attributes of the clusteringparameters and data records, are displayed in a set of linked views allowing the user to interactively explore relationships within these. The research has been focused on the exploration of activity diary data for the study of individuals' time-use and has resulted in a powerful research tool facilitating understanding and thorough analysis of the complexity of everyday life.


We report on the first microsecond doubly resonant optical parametric oscillator (OPO). It is based on a nested cavity OPO architecture allowing single longitudinal mode operation and low oscillation threshold (few microjoule). The combination with a master oscillator-power amplifier fiber pump laser provides a versatile optical source widely tunable in the 3.3-3.5 μm range with an adjustable pulse repetition rate (from 40 to 100 kHz), high duty cycle (~10(-2)) and mean power (up to 25 mW in the idler beam). The potential for trace gas sensing applications is demonstrated through photoacoustic detection of atmospheric methane.


Human vision greatly benefits from the information about sizes of objects. The role of size in several visual reasoning tasks has been thoroughly explored in human perception and cognition. However, the impact of the information about sizes of objects is yet to be determined in AI. We postulate that this is mainly attributed to the lack of a comprehensive repository of size information. In this paper, we introduce a method to automatically infer object sizes, leveraging visual and textual information from web. By maximizing the joint likelihood of textual and visual observations, our method learns reliable relative size estimates, with no explicit human supervision. We introduce the relative size dataset and show that our method outperforms competitive textual and visual baselines in reasoning about size comparisons.


The key question asked by standard monetary models used for policy analysis is how do changes in short term interest rates affect the economy. All of the standard models imply that such changes in interest rates affect the economy by altering the conditional means of the macroeconomic aggregates and have no effect on the conditional variances of these aggregates. We argue that the data on exchange rates imply nearly the opposite: fluctuations in interest rates are associated with nearly one-for-one changes in conditional variances and nearly no changes in conditional means. In this sense standard monetary models capture essentially none of what is going on in the data. We thus argue that almost everything we say about monetary policy using these models is wrong.


Innovation is crucial to economic growth – the essential path for lifting much of the world population out of dire poverty and for maintaining the living standard of those who already have. To stimulate innovation, the legal system has to support the means through which innovators seek to get rewarded for their efforts. Amongst these means, some, such as the first mover advantage or 'lead time,' are not directly legal; but secrets and intellectual property rights are legal institutions supported for the specific purpose of stimulating innovation. Whilst the protection of secrets has not changed very much over recent years, intellectual property (or IP) has. IP borrows some features from ordinary property rights, but is also distinct, in that, unlike physical goods, information, the object of IP, is not inherently scarce; indeed as information and communication technologies expand, the creation and distribution of information is becoming ever cheaper and in many circumstances abundant, so that selection is of the essence ('on the internet, point of view is everything'). Where rights on information extend too far, their monopolising effect may hamper innovation.The paper investigates the underlying structure of IP rights and surveys what we know empirically about the incentive effects of IP as about industries that flourish without formal IP.


SYNOPSIS In 2009, South Africa's health-funding system teetered on the verge of collapse. Despite the adoption of a transparent and credible budget framework in 1994, large parts of the public health system suffered from chronic overspending and poor financial control. As wage hikes and supply costs ate into the health budget and as government revenues plummeted in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the national health department had to find ways to preserve priorities, linking them more effectively to the budget. The department won agreement on a list of non-negotiable expenditure items to protect in provincial budgets, used earmarked conditional grants to channel funds to key programs, cut medicine costs by improving central procurement, rolled out a new information technology system, and improved its monitoring of provincial finances. Although the country's nine provincial health departments had important roles to play, most of them struggled. However, the Western Cape was able to set a model by controlling personnel costs, improving monitoring, and creating incentives for health facilities to collect fees. Nationally, total per-capita government revenues dropped by 5% in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis and grew only slowly thereafter, but the health sector's strategy helped ensure progress on its key priorities even as resources fluctuated.


It is now widely accepted that it is important to understand the 'human dimensions' of wildlife management issues in order to achieve management goals. This growing field of study was born in the 1960s and involves an examination of societal values, knowledge and behaviours associated with wildlife and wildlife management issues. This paper provides an overview of the history and directions in human dimensions research, focusing specifically on its application for wildlife population management in Australasia (in particular, Australia and New Zealand). It also provides a 'toolkit' of methods and approaches for those wishing to undertake, interpret or utilise human dimensions enquiries.


Transcription and translation (TX-TL) can be performed in vitro, outside of cells, allowing the assembly and analysis of genetic networks. This approach to engineering biological networks in a less complex and more controllable environment could one day allow rapid prototyping of network designs before implementing them in living cells. Furthermore, the in vitro approach provides insight into how natural biological systems are built and is instructive to define the rules for engineering biological systems from bottom up. Despite progress in engineering TX-TL mixes for higher yields and longer synthesis times it remains challenging to implement complex genetic networks, such as oscillators, in vitro. The reason is that the reactions are usually performed in a batch format, where reaction products accumulate and synthesis rates decline over time. We addressed the problems associated with batch reactions by developing a microfluidic chip with nanoliter-scale reactors that exchange reagents at dilution rates matching those of dividing bacteria. In these nano-reactors we can run TX-TL reactions in continuous mode keeping synthesis rates at constant steady state levels for more than 30h. The setup allows close control over the reaction conditions such as dilution rates and DNA template concentration, and to monitor mRNA and reporter protein levels in real time. We can test any genetic program of our choice just by adding the DNA templates coding for the desired functions. We implemented diverse regulatory mechanisms on the transcriptional, translational, and posttranslational levels, including RNA polymerases, transcriptional repression, translational activation, and proteolysis. As a proof of concept for this reactor-based approach to engineering genetic networks we designed and implemented a novel genetic oscillator. Its network architecture consists of a positive feedback loop coupled to delayed negative feedback. Varying dilution rates and DNA template concentrations we mapped its phase diagram showing that steady state conditions were necessary to produce oscillations. The period of oscillations could be tuned by dilution rate. To demonstrate that in vitro synthetic biology is useful for prototyping of dynamic genetic networks, we compared the behavior of biomolecular ring oscillators in a cell-free framework and Escherichia coli. We implemented and characterized the "repressilator", a three-node negative feedback oscillator in vitro. We then used our cell-free framework to engineer novel three-node, four-node, and five-node negative feedback architectures going from the characterization of circuit components to the rapid analysis of complete networks. We validated our cell-free approach by transferring the three-node and five-node oscillators to E. coli, resulting in robust and synchronized oscillations reflecting our in vitro observations. Our results demonstrate that comprehensive circuit characterization can be rapidly performed in a cell-free system and that these in vitro results have direct applicability in vivo. The reactor-based approach to in vitro synthetic biology, which was developed in this thesis, will thus enable a quantitative and more complete characterization of synthetic and natural genetic networks.


IntroductionCoach-athlete sexual relationships (CASR) have been suggested to harm athlete welfare, sport performance, and to inherently constitute an abuse of power, trust and professional ethics by coaches (e.g. Brake & Burton Nelson, 2012; Toftegaard-Nielsen, 2001). However, very little is known about CASR, especially consensual romantic relationships between athletes and coaches of legal age (Johansson, 2013). The purpose with this research is to explore female elite-athletes' stories of CASR, emphasizing functional and dysfunctional aspects associated to athlete wellbeing and sport performance.MethodsIn-depth interviews included five female elite-athletes aged 23-30 with experience of CASR, i.e., boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and unattached sexual relations. Readings of interview transcripts and coding into functional and dysfunctional themes were conducted to generate the stories. Storying the athletes' experiences thus served to contextualise functions and dysfunctions on a within-case basis.ResultsThe athlete's stories yield insights of qualitatively different functions and dysfunctions of CASR. Functional elements include specific components such as care, trust, sense of value and security, and a unique support and understanding. These elements were described to have a positive effect on the athletes' wellbeing and performance. Dysfunctional elements found in the athletes' stories comprised e.g., a need for secrecy in fear of negative reactions causing unhealthy restraints, career disruption due to break-ups and dependency tied to the partner/coach synthesis.DiscussionThe diversity of functions and dysfunctions of CASR addressed in this study dispute the assumptions and normative notions that CASR are inherently harmful and abusive. The stories illustrate that female athletes can recognise consensual, mutually desired CASR. Importantly, functions and dysfunctions are not necessarily distinct, uniform or constant, but can transform and differ before, during and after the sexual relationship. This study emphasise the need to further examine how CASR can affect athlete wellbeing and sport performance in both functional and dysfunctional senses.ReferencesBrake D, Burton Nelson M (2012). Staying in bounds. Kansas City: National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators.Johansson S (2013). Coach–athlete sexual relationships: if no means no does yes mean yes? Sport, Education and Society, 18, 678-693.Toftegaard Nielsen J (2001). The Forbidden Zone. Intimacy, Sexual Relations and Misconduct in the Relationship between Coaches and Athletes. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 36, 165-182.


Abstract Objective: To assess the prevalence of elevated body mass index and to establish whether there was an association between raised body mass index (BMI) and high blood pressure (BP) and hyperglycaemia in the rural population of Ga-Mothapo village, Limpopo province. Design: Cross-sectional and prospective in nature. Setting: Ga-Mothapo village, a rural settlement with a population of 11 000, situated in the Capricorn region of Limpopo province, approximately 28 km east of Polokwane. Subjects: The study sample comprised 382 participants, of whom 286 were females (74.9%) and 96 males (25.1%), aged 18–65 years. Outcome measures: Fasting blood glucose samples were analysed using the ILab 300 Plus®. BP pressure was measured using an automatic BP monitor. Height and weight were measured using a height-measuring rod and weighing scale, respectively. The BMI was calculated. Results: The overall prevalence rates of overweight, obesity, high BP and hyperglycaemia were 30.6%, 23.6%, 27% and 11.8%, respectively. The prevalence rates of overweight, obesity, high BP and hyperglycaemia in females were 34.6%, 29.4%, 27.3% and 13.6% respectively. They were 18%, 6.3%, 26.1% and 6.3%, in the males, respectively. Conclusion: The study revealed high prevalence rates of raised BMI, high BP and hyperglycaemia in the Ga-Mothapo population. Females had higher prevalence rates of raised BMI and hyperglycaemia than males. The study highlighted the fact that raised BMI and hyperglycaemia were significantly associated with high BP.


In the A/E/C industry, design review techniques are used to improve design quality, insure compliance with current codes and standards, improve design constructability, and meet project's goals and owner's objectives. Design review is a multi-tasking approach; information from various independent sources (e.g. building codes and standards, design specifications, design manuals, etc.) needs to be referenced concurrently while reviewing and coordi-nating plans of various design disciplines. Current common design review methods rely mainly on paper-based checklists and 2D plans to perform the review. Several disadvantages of these manual methods can be identified, including: 1) checklists are generic and reviewers need to identify the guidelines that apply to a given review; 2) checklists are also linear in nature which may force the review to follow a pre-defined top-to-bottom sequence; 3) current methods do not allow for a structured automated approach to capturing and sharing reviewers' comments and feedback; 4) information may not be retrieved quickly and efficiently within the limited review time frame. This renders the design review process time- and resource-intensive which may force reviewers to sacrifice the thoroughness of their reviews. This paper describes an information-rich virtual environment (VE) framework for design review. The framework util-izes a real-time intelligent algorithm to access needed data and information to perform a design review while viewing the 3D model. The algorithm provides various search and retrieval modes to assist the user in filtering, querying, sort-ing and displaying data and information during the 3D model walkthrough. Reviewer's comments and changes are cap-tured and shared by others. A proof of concept prototype is being implemented using the Torque 3D Game Engine.


The political geography of Late Bronze Age Crete has been the subject of much recent research. In this article, I argue that the well-known painted sarcophagus from Ayia Triada dates to the earliest period of a Mycenaean presence on Crete and is an artifact connected to an emergent Mycenaean ideology. A contextual analysis of the burial chest is presented by examining it not as an isolated work of Aegean "art" but as an expression of power by sophisticated Mycenaean elites who were asserting political, ideological, and economic dominance by means of cultural hybridity. Similarly, the architecture of LM III Ayia Triada retains Minoan features that forge a strong link with its past. By appropriating images from the Minoan past and combining them with contemporary Mycenaean elements, the creators of the sarcophagus produced a monument that linked the Late Bronze Age present on Crete with a well-crafted view of the Middle Bronze Age past.


Bipolar material impedance measurements are easier to implement than tetrapolar measurements but are more affected by electrode impedance. This effect can be reduced by measuring at a high-enough frequency albeit with the risk of deviations due to stray capacitances. High frequency measurements intended to reduce the influence of material conductivity when its permittivity is of interest also suffer from the effects of parasitic capacitances. In this paper, the effect of stray capacitance to ground in bipolar material impedance measurements implemented with direct-contact electrodes has been analyzed to identify the relevant parameters that determine the best frequency range to measure the conductivity or permittivity of the material when impedance analyzers based on an auto-balancing bridge are used. Stray capacitance to ground yields inductive effects proportional to it and also resistive and capacitive effects. If the ratio between this stray capacitance and the capacitance of the material under test is high enough, the modulus of the measured impedance can display a peak at relatively low frequency (about 100 kHz) and its phase angle can become positive. The consequences are that the best estimate of the conductivity of the material is that obtained from the modulus of the impedance at about midrange between the characteristic frequency of electrodes and that of the material, whereas the permittivity cannot be estimated from the impedance modulus measured at high frequency unless the sample capacitance is much larger than its capacitance to ground and propagation effects are negligible.


This document describes a Cisco Systems protocol that can be used to
detect and disable unidirectional Ethernet fiber or copper links
caused, for instance, by mis-wiring of fiber strands, interface
malfunctions, media converters' faults, etc. It operates at Layer 2
in conjunction with IEEE 802.3's existing Layer 1 fault detection
mechanisms. This document explains the protocol objectives and
applications, illustrates the specific premises the protocol was based
upon, and describes the protocol architecture and related deployment
issues to serve as a possible base for future standardization. This
memo provides information for the Internet community.


Hardware multithreading is a well-known technique to increase the utilization of processor resources. However, most studies have focused on superscalar processor organizations. This paper analyzes which type of hardware multithreading is most suitable for a VLIW architecture and proposes two buffers to increase the efficiency of hardware multithreading. An important goal of our work is that no software changes should be necessary so that legacy code can be executed without change. In order to achieve this we show that there must be a maximum amount of time a hardware thread may be active. The experimental results show that the implemented technique attains a maximum speedup of 27% compared to the single-threaded VLIW processor.


AbstractThe goals of this study were: (a) to test whether objective narrative variables can be reliably applied to commonly used clinical assessment tasks, (b) to assess the relative stability and differences in mean levels of narrative performance in participants' stories across assessment tasks, and (c) to assess the degree to which levels of psychopathology can be predicted by objective narrative measures. Stories were elicited from 31 substance abuse patients using 4 different narrative tasks. The 124 stories were coded using 5 measures that assess levels of structural connectedness, subjectivity, and complexity. Results, based on the reliably coded narrative measures, indicated that (a) participants displayed stable individual differences, whereas mean performance levels varied systematically across the story-elicitation tasks; and (b) a substantial amount of variance in depressive, anxious, and cognitive mediation symptoms could be predicted using these measures. Results are discussed in terms of the need to further develop objective measures of narrative performance and narrative assessment tasks. (Psychology)


ATTIOGBE, CYRIL EFOE. On Characterizing Nilpotent Lie algebras by their Multipliers. (Under the direction of Ernest L. Stitzinger.) Authors have turned their attentions to special classes of nilpotent Lie algebras such as two-step nilpotent and filiform Lie algebras, in particular filiform Lie algebras are classified up to dimension eleven [8]. These techniques have not worked well in higher dimensions. For a nilpotent Lie algebra L, of dimension n, we consider central extensions 0 M C L 0 with M⊆ c∩Z(C), where c is the derived algebra of C and Z(C) is the center of C. Let M(L) be the M of largest dimension and call it the multiplier of L due to it's analogy with the Schur multiplier. The maximum dimension that M can obtain is 1⁄2 n(n-1) and this is met if and only if L is abelian. Let t(L) = 1⁄2 n(n-1) dimM(L). Then t(L) =1 if and only if L=H(1), where H(n) is the Heisenberg algebra of dimension 2n + 1. A recent technique to classify nilpotent Lie algebra is to use the dimension of the multiplier of L. In particular, to find those algebras whose multipliers have dimension close to the maximum, we call this invariant t(L). Algebras with t(L) ≤ 8 have been classified [10]. It's the purpose of this work to use this technique on filiform Lie algebras along with three main tools namely: Propositions 0, 3, and theorem 4. All algebras in this work will be taken over any field whereas in previous works, they have been taken over the field of real and complex numbers. ON CHARACTERIZING NILPOTENT LIE ALGEBRAS BY THEIR MULTIPLIERS by CYRIL EFOE ATTIOGBE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy


We review a method providing explicit formulas for the Jack polynomials. Our method is based on the relation of the Jack polynomials to the eigenfunctions of a well-known exactly solvable quantum many-body system of Calogero-Sutherland type. We also sketch a generalization of our method allowing to find the exact solution of the elliptic generalization of the Calogero-Sutherland model. We present the resulting explicit formulas for certain symmetric functions generalizing the Jack polynomials to the elliptic case.


Natural mineral fracturing in rocks is evaluated in terms of anisotropic thermal and elastic properties of crystals; models are proposed for calculating anisotropic thermal stresses. Computed thermal stresses that result from differential thermal contractions, with reasonable temperature change, between different coexisting minerals or between the same minerals of different orientation are adequate to cause brittle rupture of the crystals or provide elastic strain energies for annealing recrystallization. Thermal strains are relieved by brittle rupture in the ferromagnesian minerals, whereas in the quartz-feldspar system, annealing recrystallization is the mechanism. Fracture stress is evaluated in terms of theoretical cohesive strength of minerals. It is proposed that the modulus of rigidity, less than half the value of Young9s modulus, be substituted for it in the descriptive fracture stress equation.


During the past year, the Islamic State (IS) has taken control of extensive areas of the Middle East. Its military achievements, extreme and historically unprecedented barbarism, success in recruiting thousands of young people from around the world to its ranks in Iraq and Syria, its store of financial resources and, above all, its skilled use of social and other media to publicize its terrorist acts and spread its propaganda, have all made IS an increasing and alarming threat to global security. Although experts on terrorism, security officials and decision makers worldwide concur that IS poses an unparalleled threat, they disagree about the answers to the following four key questions: What is the nature of the Islamic State?; Are the doctrines of the Islamic State an innovation?; What are the Islamic State's aspirations? and; What is the Islamic State's strategic situation? How we answer these four questions will affect not only our understanding of the nature, aims and activities of the Islamic State; it will also dictate what counter-strategy should be implemented in order to stop, if not trounce, the Islamic State.


We estimate the relationship between urban spatial expansion and its socio-economic determinants in Lombardy, the most urbanised region of Italy (and one of the most urbanized of the European Union), at the municipality level. Test results suggest that this relationship varies significantly among municipalities of different size and findings support the hypothesis that larger ones are more efficient in managing land take. In particular, we find that the marginal land consumption per new household is inversely related to the size of the municipality and we link this evidence to the fact that, since more space is often available, small municipalities pay less institutional attention to the issue of land take and consequently internalise less the environmental externalities. This evidence calls for a reflection on the role of planning policies and the effectiveness of undifferentiated measures to contain land take, especially in the case of Italy, where the municipalities, more than 99% of which have less than 50,000 inhabitants, decide on land use transformations.


The need for a flexible in-vehicle radio platform is growing with the expanding market for automotive "infotainment," which encompasses all of the electronic information, communications and entertainment devices inside the automobile. For multi-standard radio head-units, the deployment of advanced system architectures relying on multi-purpose DSPs could help solve design problems for automotive OEMs.


This thesis is concerned with the detection of very high energy cosmic gamma-rays from isolated pulsars and X-ray binary sources using the atmospheric Cerenkov technique. A general introduction to gamma ray detection techniques is followed by adscription of the properties of atmospheric Cerenkov radiation and a discussion of the principles of the atmospheric Cerenkov technique. The Mark I and Mark II gamma-ray telescopes operated in Dugway, Utah by the University of Durham between 1981 and 1984 are briefly described. There follows a discussion of the results from observations at many different wavelengths of Cygnus X-3. This object was observed by the Durham group between 1981 and 1983 in Dugway Utah and also in Durham during autumn 1985. The detection in the Dugway data of the 4.8 hr X-ray period and the possible detection of a19.2 day intensity variation are considered. The discovery of a 12.59 ms pulsar in data taken on Cygnus X-3 in 1983 is described. Evidence is presented which suggests this periodicity is also present at a weaker level in earlier data and also in the data taken in Durham in 1985.Results from observations of PSR1937+21 , PSR1953+29and six radio pulsars , are presented. The design and construction of the Mark III telescope, now operating in Narrabri , N.S.W. , is described in detail. Preliminary results from observations with the Mark III telescope of three objects, LMC X-4, the Vela pulsar and CentaurusX-3, are presented, with particular reference to periodicities inherent in the sources. An observation of the supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud is discussed. A brief discussion of the mechanisms by which V.H.E. gamma-rays may be produced in isolated pulsars and X-ray binary pulsars is given, followed by a description of the future prospects for the Mark III and Mark IV telescopes.


This volume offers a unique insight into the social and cultural hybridity of the Uyghurs, an officially recognised minority mainly inhabiting the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, with significant populations also living in the Central Asian states. It seeks to bridge a perceived gap in our understanding of this group, which too often has fallen between two regional traditions of scholarship on Central Asia and China: Central Asian studies, with its focus on the post-Soviet Central Asian states, and Sinology.Drawing together twelve international scholars, the volume is comparative and interdisciplinary in focus: Historical chapters explore the deeper problems of Uyghur identity which underpin the contemporary political situation; and sociological and anthropological comparisons of a range of practices from music culture to life-cycle rituals illustrate the dual, fused nature of contemporary Uyghur social and cultural identities. Meanwhile, contributions by 'local' Uyghur authors working within Xinjiang demonstrate the possibilities for Uyghur advocacy in social and cultural policy-making, even within the current political climate.


Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean) is an important food crop in Sub-Saharan Africa. Low soil nitrogen limits the productivity of P. vulgaris in Kenya and a greater exploitation of symbiotic nitrogen fixation, resulting from interactions with rhizobia, has the potential to improve yields. To enable the increased use of the symbiosis in Kenyan agriculture in the future, studies in this thesis examined the genetic diversity of rhizobia that nodulate P. vulgaris in the central and western parts of Kenya, their nitrogen-fixing capabilities, and their competitiveness against Rhizobium tropici CIAT 899, a leading commercial inoculant strain for P. vulgaris. Lastly, studies investigated the relative importance of the genotypes of resident soil rhizobia, soil rhizobial population densities, inocula densities, and levels of soil nitrogen, in determining nodule occupancy by R. tropici CIAT 899 inoculated onto P. vulgaris.

Phylogenetic studies using 16S rRNA and recA genes indicated at least five species of Rhizobium viz., R. sophoriradicis, R. phaseoli, R. leucaenae, R. paranaense and R. etli nodulate P. vulgaris in Kenya. In addition to the five species, strains that likely belong to new species in the genus Rhizobium also widely nodulate P. vulgaris in Kenyan soils. In glasshouse studies, recovered strains were variably effective on Kenyan cultivars of P. vulgaris and 11 fixed as much nitrogen as R. tropici CIAT 899. From the 11, strains such as NAK 227, NAK 288, NAK 214 and NAK 157 were also highly competitive in liquid co-inoculation assays, carried out with the aid of gusA and celB marker genes, and are potential future inoculants for P. vulgaris in Kenya. The genotype of the rhizobia in the soil was found to be the primary determinant of the nodule occupancy achieved by the inoculant strain, a finding that conflicts previous reports that indicated nodule occupancy was mainly determined by soil rhizobial densities. The rhizobial genotypes varied in their rhizosphere competence and in their ability to preferentially nodulate the host, suggesting these two traits are important for the successful colonization of P. vulgaris nodules by rhizobia.

It is anticipated that future studies will leverage on the results in this thesis, to develop locally-targeted inoculation solutions that optimize nitrogen fixation in P. vulgaris in Kenya, and to elucidate the molecular basis for preferential nodulation in P. vulgaris.


This paper addresses the problem of estimating a linear function of the states of a system with unknown inputs using descriptor system approach and sliding mode technique. Sliding mode functional observers proposed in this paper are of low-order and do not include the derivatives of the outputs. New conditions for the existence of sliding mode functional observers are derived. A design procedure for the determination of the observer parameters can also be easily derived based on the derived existence conditions.