The aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the past European and British ice sheets as a basis for forecasting their future. The behaviour of these ice sheets is investigated by simulating them using a numerical model and comparing model results with geological data including relative sea–level change data. In order to achieve this aim, a coupled ice sheet/lithosphere model is developed. Ice sheets form an integral part of the Earth system. They affect the planet's albedo, atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, topography, and global and local sea–level change. In order to understand how these systems work, it is necessary to understand how ice sheets interact with other parts of the climate system. This project does this by simulating ice behaviour as part of the climate system and evaluating model behaviour in relation to evidence of past ice sheets. Ice sheet simulations can be treated with more confidence if they can be evaluated against independent data. A methodology is therefore developed that compares relative sea–level records with simulations of past sea–level which result from modelling past ice sheets with a dynamic, high–resolution thermo– mechanical ice sheet model coupled to an isostatic adjustment model. The Earth's response to changing surface loads is simulated using both a regional, flat Earth approximation and a global, spherical self–gravitating Earth model. The coupled model is tested by initially simulating the past Fennoscandian ice sheet because of the simpler topographic framework and the quality of geological evidence of past fluctuations against which to evaluate model behaviour. The model is driven by a climatic forcing function determined so that the simulated ice sheet resembles the past Fennoscandian ice sheet as reconstructed from geomorphological evidence. The Fennoscandian climate driver is then transferred to the British Isles to simulate the past British ice sheet. Finally, a non–linear regression technique is used to construct future ice sheet drivers from future sea– level change scenarios to forecast sea–level change around the British Isles during the next glacial cycle. The data used for the inversion procedure is limited to southern Scandinavia. Outside this area, the simulation compares poorly with reconstructions based on geological observations. However, model fit within this region is good and the simulation is also in good agreement with features not used during the inversion process. This approach illustrates the benefit of using a model coupling realistic ice physics to a realistic Earth model to help constrain simultaneously unknowns


This paper documents current product solutions offered by the fashion industry for environmental and trend conscious consumers, and determines challenges, to discover product development strategies for more sustainability. This study reviewed green and ethical practices in contemporary fashion products based on literature and brand cases. A classification of main sustainable solutions was adapted, and results were collected accordingly. This study identifies eight solution categories, and most prominent examples of products and brands were highlighted, containing one or more design features. It is important to summarize approaches as there are differing designs due to creators' individuality. The general aim of all presented product examples is the reduced impact on environment and society. Challenges were identified with respect to the total impact of solutions and other product factors such as value, quality, or aesthetics. The results can be beneficial for the future development of new solutions for more environmentally friendly fashion. However, it is suggested that solutions need to be analysed critically to identify the real environmental value.


The Upper Permian (lower Ochoan) Castile Formation is a major evaporite sequence (;10,000 km3) of calcite, anhydrite, and halite in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Traditionally the Castile brine has been considered to have been derived from seawater. This tradition has recently been challenged by two versions of the closed-basin drawdown model. They call for deposition from a mixed brine, in part marine and in large part nonmarine. They propose drawdown of as much as 500 m to form a major sink for ground water issuing from the surrounding Capitan reef complex. A large fraction of the solute in the brine body is inferred to have been recycled from older Permian evaporites on the surrounding shelf. Strontium-isotope analyses show no evidence that meteoric ground water was contributed to the Castile brine. From a stratigraphic, geographic, and lithologic array of 65 samples of anhydrite, gypsum, and calcite, 59 have an 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.706923 (Dsw of 2225.0), a ratio that is the same as that of strontium in early Ochoan ocean water. If considerable (.15%) influx of meteoric water had occurred, enough continental strontium would have been introduced to have resulted in higher ratios. Low bromide values (20–40 ppm) in Castile halite, which have been used to argue for meteoric influx and for recycled salt, probably resulted from diagenesis. During shallow burial by halite, centimeter-size, bottom-grown crystals of gypsum were altered to nodular anhydrite. The rising water of dehydration caused the halite to recrystallize. During the recrystallization, some bromide was expelled. Despite the large volume of water that evaporated annually from its surface (;52 km3/yr, assuming an evaporation rate of 2 m/yr), the Castile brine body never completely desiccated. The surrounding shelf was flat, hot, and generally dry. It probably could not have supplied a significant volume of meteoric spring water to the basin over tens of thousands of years. More likely, during the entire history of the evaporite sequence, influx was dominantly marine. Marine ground water flowed through the Capitan Formation into the evaporite basin along its southern and possibly western margin probably with a rate of flow that was usually fast enough to prevent major drawdown of the brine


The linear birefringences, optic axes, and linear eigenpolarizations that are familiar features of light propagation in transparent optically inactive anisotropic crystals are fully explained by Fresnel's ellipsoid model or the related indicatrix ellipsoid. However, these models cannot account for circular birefringence and the linear birefringences of Lorentz and Jones. All birefringences can, nevertheless, be explained by an appropriate multipole eigenvalue theory, of which the electric-dipole description presented in this paper is the formal basis of the ellipsoid models. This description is analytic in form, as opposed to the mainly geometric treatment of the ellipsoid schemes, and sets the latter in the context of a systematic multipole approach for describing other birefringences. Furthermore, it offers certain new insights and results.


PurposeLeaders, consultants and researchers are increasingly focused on enhancing the adoption of social networking tools to increase knowledge sharing practices and the success rate of organizations. This study was conducted to explore the adoption of social networking applications in public and private sector universities. This paper aims to discover how social networking applications can foster knowledge sharing practices among employees of universities.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on an interpretivist, qualitative research design using grounded theory. Fifty-two semi-structured and non-directive interviews were undertaken with employees of public and private sector universities. Participants were selected using purposive sampling, and thematic analysis was performed using the NVivo 11-Plus.FindingsThe study highlights how social media networking applications can be used effectively and efficiently to foster knowledge sharing practices in the workplace. Five emerging themes are identified as follows. Social media networking tools can enhance new knowledge, increase employee skills, promote a knowledge sharing culture, foster effective communication and increase employee involvement in research activities.Research limitations/implicationsSocial networking applications have received attention because executives and researchers are increasingly focused on finding new ways to use social networking tools in business. The effective and efficient use of social networking tools helps organizations to foster knowledge amongst employees, and can address various critical issues such as knowledge hoarding, lowers levels of skills and knowledge, poor communication and employee involvement, the lack of desire to share knowledge, and resistance toward technology.Originality/valueA brief systematic literature review on social media and knowledge sharing highlights that only 11 per cent of studies found that examined the link between social media and knowledge sharing practices across the world. The study therefore represents an effort to shed new light on the adoption of social networking tools in the context of knowledge sharing among universities employees. Social media applications have become popular across the world, and the speed of their uptake is evolving rapidly. However, their contribution toward organizational change is not yet known.


This Spanish language book makes a contribution in Spanish linguistics by describing lexico-grammatical features of Spanish in oral and written texts in everyday and academic contexts, as it is used by proficient speakers of the language and realized by bilingual students while developing advanced literacy in Spanish. It also addresses the situation of Spanish as the second most used language after English in the United States. It will be of use to advanced students of Spanish or teachers of Spanish and other practitioners who would be interested in using the tools of functional grammar in Spanish for text analysis and interpretation. The ultimate goal of this study is to identify and describe the features of Spanish academic language which impact students' success in their pursuit of advanced literacy.


The aim of the present work was to design and develop Praziquantal (PZQ) loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (PZQ-SLN) to improve the oral bioavailability by targeting intestinal lymphatic system. PZQ is practically insoluble in water and exhibits extensive hepatic first-pass metabolism. PZQ SLN were composed of triglycerides, lecithin and various aqueous surfactants; were optimized using hot homogenization followed by ultrasonication method. The optimized SLN had particle size of  nm, EE of %. The drug release of PZQ-SLN showed initial burst release followed by the sustained release. Inspite of zeta potential being around −10 mV, the optimized SLN were stable at storage conditions (°C and °C/% RH) for six months. TEM study confirmed the almost spherical shape similar to the control formulations. Solid state characterization using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) analysis confirmed the homogeneous distribution of PZQ within the lipid matrix. The 5.81-fold increase in , after intraduodenal administration of PZQ-SLN in rats treated with saline in comparison to rats treated with cycloheximide (a blocker of intestinal lymphatic pathway), confirmed its intestinal lymphatic delivery. The experimental results indicate that SLN may offer a promising strategy for improving the therapeutic efficacy and reducing the dose.


Build, creating software from source code, is a fundamental activity in software development. Build teams manage this process and ensure builds are produced reliably and efficiently. This paper presents an exploration into the nature of build teams--how they form, work, and relate to other teams--through three multi-method studies conducted at Microsoft. We also consider build team effectiveness and find that many challenges are social, not technical: role ambiguity, knowledge sharing, communication, trust, and conflict. Our findings validate theories from group dynamics and organization science, and using a cross-discipline approach, we apply learnings from these fields to inform the design of engineering tools and practices to improve build team effectiveness


This annual series, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, provides a forum for research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. Discussions cover all types of policy that affect the ability of an economy to achieve scientific and technological progress or that affect the impact of science and technology on economic growth. The books are designed to be of interest to general readers interested in public policy as well as to economists.


The paper presents results of a study about design concept development in transportation design. The main question of this study concerns mainly the existence and development of design concepts and its status in the design process furthermore it partially describes its content, manifestation and function.
From the view of industrial psychology, the design concept is one of the most important stages in the design process, because its availability determines the success, regarding the design object. A design concept can be understood as the first solid and focused unit of knowledge in design processes with ill-defined problems. In the Design Process Planning, based on Action Regulation Theory, design concepts act as a compact guiding principle, including the anticipation of the artefact. Using this as a scientific basis a long term study with 25 students including cross section and longitudinal aspects were held from 2005 to 2008.
Three concept types derived from the literature preceded the investigation, whereby the holistic experience-oriented one after Uhlmann (2006a) forms the beginning. This focus was confirmed within the investigation for the majority of the projects, yet one must assume that, functional (construction-oriented) or formal concepts successfully finds to application. Holistic concepts enable a more comprehensive and more balanced treatment within the design process.
Within the work two general methods of generating design concepts: extracting and compiling were defined. Following the typical processes they can be assigned to different fields: transportation design (extracting) and industrial design (compiling). Furthermore three designer types and an open category could be identified. The three types "automobile", "design" and "story" can be clearly and consistently assigned by the students.
The research closes with a recommendation of a hybrid design concept processing using aspects of the two generating methods as well as instruments of different designer types.

Keywords:
Design Concept, Transportation Design, Field study, Early stages


This paper addresses and resolves the issue of microstructure noise when measuring the relative importance of home and U.S. market in the price discovery process of Canadian interlisted stocks. In order to avoid large bounds for information shares, previous studies applying the Cholesky decomposition within the Hasbrouck (1995) framework had to rely on high frequency data. However, due to the considerable amount of microstructure noise inherent in return data at very high frequencies, these estimators are distorted. We offer a modified approach that identifies unique information shares based on distributional assumptions and thereby enables us to control for microstructure noise. Our results indicate that the role of the U.S. market in the price discovery process of Canadian interlisted stocks has been underestimated so far. Moreover, we suggest that rather than stock specific factors, market characteristics determine information shares.


We study blow-ups around fixed points at Type I singularities of the Ricci flow on closed manifolds using Perelman's W-functional. First, we give an alternative proof of the result obtained by Naber and Enders-M\"{u}ller-Topping that blow-up limits are non-flat gradient shrinking Ricci solitons. Our second and main result relates a limit W-density at a Type I singular point to the entropy of the limit gradient shrinking soliton obtained by blowing-up at this point. In particular, we show that no entropy is lost at infinity during the blow-up process.


Advances in technology are having a profound impact on distance education as online learning is becoming a preferred educational option. Within these online learning experiences, the asynchronous online discussion has evolved into one of the most commonly used communication tools. However, a lack of cognitive processing and interaction in the discussions appears to limit the potential benefits as suggested within social constructivist theories. This research analyzed participant responses and postings in online discussions and identified seven stances relative to collaboration and cognitive engagement of participants. A taxonomy was created that allows categorization of participant stances with respect to the two constructs. Implications for teaching and research are presented with attention to facilitative prompts, which are used to enhance collaboration and participation within online discussions.


Structural and functional adaptations of the left ventricle (LV) in response to chronic exercise training termed the "athlete's heart" (AH) are central to a road cyclist's (RC) performance capacity. As a result, RC athletes complete very high training hours, which generate a stimulus for cardiac remodelling. In some cases, the profound adaptation observed in these athletes can mimic pathological processes, presenting a risk of false-positive identification of cardiomyopathy at pre-participation screening or during follow-up. Furthermore, emerging data suggest acute transient post-strenuous exercise reductions in LV systolic and diastolic function termed "exercise induced cardiac fatigue" (EICF) may be extended to short-term periods such as overload training where very high training hours and limited recovery exist (i.e. training camps and/or stage races). The magnitude and possible mechanism(s) responsible for persistent EICF in overload training, and implications for pre-participation screening/follow-up of RC are not fully understood. Based on this, the aims of this thesis were: 1) establish the impact of moderate and very high chronic training hours on structural, functional and mechanical remodelling of the road cyclist's LV, 2) determine how the LV responds to variations in training hours across a competitive road cycling season, 3) assess the impact of short-term overload endurance training on LV structure-function-mechanical relationships of the road cyclist's LV, and 4) evaluate the relationship between LV function and road cycling performance following short-term overload endurance training. Study 1 (Chapter 4) highlighted that LV eccentric hypertrophy is commonly presented by elite cyclists (EC) (35%), but not sub-elite cyclists (SEC) (3%). Increases in LV mass between non-athletes (NA) and SEC (133 ± 24 vs 163 ± 26 g, P<0.001) were predominantly driven by chamber expansion, whereas increased chamber concentricity between SEC and EC (5.85 ± 0.98 vs 7.11 ± 1.08 g/ml2/3, P<0.001) drove further LV mass development (133 ± 24 vs 210 ± 31 g, P<0.001). Marked structural remodelling in EC was also associated with a high prevalence of reduced (<52%) LV ejection fraction (LV EF) (12 %) and mildly reduced diastolic function. Study 2 (Chapter 5) established a progressive increase in LV mass between off-season and end-season in parallel with an accumulation of training hours in RC (143 ± 17 vs 162 ± 31, P<0.05), which was eccentric in nature. Although RC presented mildly decreased early diastolic function during the most rapid increase in training hours, both resting and in-exercise mechanics remained unchanged across all timepoints. In study 3 (chapter 6), 3-weeks of overload (OL) training elicited acute fatigue in RC, which was associated with dilatation of the LV (50.8 ± 2.9 vs 51.8 ± 3.2 mm, P<0.05), a decreased ability to augment LV EF (67 ± 5 vs 63 ± 3, P=0.056), and an increased atrial contribution to diastolic filling in-exercise (9 ± 3 vs 12 ± 2 cm/s, P<0.05). Decreased LV twist (17.7 ± 4.5 vs 15.3 ± 3.3, P<0.05) and global longitudinal strain (GL ɛ) (-20.2 ± 1.0 vs 19.2 ± 1.3, P= 0.063) are indicative of intrinsic contractile dysfunction and suggest similar mechanisms are involved in both acute and persistent EICF. The application of conventional and novel echocardiographic techniques have provided further understanding of normal physiological adaptation of the LV in response to short-, medium- and long-term high training hours in RC. These insights may lead to improvements in pre-participation screening and influence the training practices of this athlete group.


For 30 years it was thought the alphavirus 6K gene encoded a single 6 kDa protein. However, through a bioinformatics search 10 years ago, it was discovered that there is a frameshifting event and two proteins, 6K and transframe (TF), are translated from the 6K gene. Thus, many functions attributed to the 6K protein needed reevaluation to determine if they properly belong to 6K, TF, or both proteins. In this mini-review, we reevaluate the past research on 6K and put those results in context where there are two proteins, 6K and TF, instead of one. Additionally, we discuss the most cogent outstanding questions for 6K and TF research, including their collective importance in alphavirus budding and their potential importance in disease based on the latest virulence data.


: Health information systems (HIS) in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been often implemented under the international pressure of accounting for healthcare investments. The idea behind robust and efficient HIS is that health information can allow healthcare managers and providers to better plan and monitor health services, which may translate into better health outcomes. Yet, researchers have often criticized the use of HIS as accountability tools as being counterproductive by making health information more meaningful to national governments and international agencies than those in charge of local health services. In this paper, I analyze how HIS influence the emergence of local accountability practices and their consequences for healthcare provision. I build a theoretical perspective from structuration theory and integrate it with the technology domain of HIS. I use this perspective to analyze a case study of HIS in Kenya. This study raises implications for the use of structuration theory in understanding accountability and the role of IT materiality in processes of structuration. It contributes to a better understanding of how HIS can foster improved healthcare and human development. It also contributes to the understanding of IS as means not just for governing people's behavior but also of socialization through which users can negotiate multiple accountability goals.


Abstract This investigation examined the impact of dimensions within maltreatment such as the severity, frequency, chronicity, and subtypes of maltreatment and their relationship with child outcome. Children between the ages of 5 and 11 who participated in a summer camp program were assessed on their social competence, behavior problems, and peers ratings of cooperation, disruption, and initiation of aggression. The 235 participants were all from low-socioeconomic status families; 145 children were from families with documented histories of child maltreatment, whereas 90 of the children had no record of maltreatment. The study found that severity of the maltreatment, the frequency of Child Protective Services reports, and the interaction between severity and frequency were significant predictors of children's functioning. Additionally, the chronicity of the maltreatment in the family significantly predicted peer ratings of aggression. Subtype differences emerged as well, with children in the sexual abuse group being more socially competent than other maltreated children, and children in the physical abuse group having more behavior problems than nonmaltreated children. Regression analyses with cooccurrence of multiple subtypes of maltreatment indicated that physical neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse made significant unique contributions in predicting child outcomes. The advantages of exploring multiple dimensions within maltreatment, the necessity of developing better operational definitions of these dimensions, and social policy implications of the findings are discussed.


Mid- to late-season weeds that escape from the routine early-season weed management threaten agricultural production by creating a large number of seeds for several future growing seasons. Rapid and accurate detection of weed patches in field is the first step of site-specific weed management. In this study, object detection-based convolutional neural network models were trained and evaluated over low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery for mid- to late-season weed detection in soybean fields. The performance of two object detection models, Faster RCNN and the Single Shot Detector (SSD), were evaluated and compared in terms of weed detection performance using mean Intersection over Union (IoU) and inference speed. It was found that the Faster RCNN model with 200 box proposals had similar good weed detection performance to the SSD model in terms of precision, recall, f1 score, and IoU, as well as a similar inference time. The precision, recall, f1 score and IoU were 0.65, 0.68, 0.66 and 0.85 for Faster RCNN with 200 proposals, and 0.66, 0.68, 0.67 and 0.84 for SSD, respectively. However, the optimal confidence threshold of the SSD model was found to be much lower than that of the Faster RCNN model, which indicated that SSD might have lower generalization performance than Faster RCNN for mid- to late-season weed detection in soybean fields using UAV imagery. The performance of the object detection model was also compared with patch-based CNN model. The Faster RCNN model yielded a better weed detection performance than the patch-based CNN with and without overlap. The inference time of Faster RCNN was similar to patch-based CNN without overlap, but significantly less than patch-based CNN with overlap. Hence, Faster RCNN was found to be the best model in terms of weed detection performance and inference time among the different models compared in this study. This work is important in understanding the potential and identifying the algorithms for an on-farm, near real-time weed detection and management.


In order to develop novel polymeric supports based on cellulosics, cellulose extracted from pine needles, a perennial resource material available in huge quantities as waste, was graft copolymerized with vinyl monomers. Cellulose, cellulose derivatives, and their graft copolymers with highest percent grafting (Pg) were used as supports for immobilization of an industrially important protease enzyme and the protein bovine serum albumin (BSA) by a specific sorption method. The Manachini method was used to determine activity of the immobilized enzyme. Sorption of protein was characterized by activity of protein concentration by the Lowry method. Cellulose itself was found to be effective as a polymeric support to retain a good amount of protease and BSA, whereas cellulose derivatives were effective to adsorb BSA only. Among cellulose graft copolymers, those based on methyl methacrylate proved to be better sorbents.


By switching fluorophores on and off in either a deterministic or a stochastic manner, superresolution microscopy has enabled the imaging of biological structures at resolutions well beyond the diffraction limit. Superresolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI) provides an elegant way of overcoming the diffraction limit in all three spatial dimensions by computing higher-order cumulants of image sequences of blinking fluorophores acquired with a conventional widefield microscope. So far, three-dimensional (3D) SOFI has only been demonstrated by sequential imaging of multiple depth positions. Here we introduce a versatile imaging scheme which allows for the simultaneous acquisition of multiple focal planes. Using 3D cross-cumulants, we show that the depth sampling can be increased. Consequently, the simultaneous acquisition of multiple focal planes reduces the acquisition time and hence the photo-bleaching of fluorescent markers. We demonstrate multiplane 3D SOFI by imaging the mitochondria network in fixed C2C12 cells over a total volume of 65x65x3.5µm3 without depth scanning.


The landscapes and monuments of the megalithic invoke a distinct remembering of time forgotten. More acutely, these arrangements of standing stones and landscape alignments are arguably temporal technologies with a specific function of memory. They are technical apparatus, recording and anticipating the motion of planets and stars and the passing of years and seasons, complicit with a cyclical and nonlinear deliberation of time. Deploying a mode of what philosopher Bernard Stiegler terms 'tertiary retention', the megalithic structures are prosthesis which inscribe memory upon the landscape, and also inscribe the human a subjectivity of becoming-stellar, invoking a cosmological agency for the human.

In antithesis to the megalithic, the contemporary monument is a temporal device that is linear in condition. The monument or memorial deploys a specific remembering of the past in the present, in order to bear upon the future. These assert specific subjectivities, an ideological function that prescribes the burden of history upon the human witness.

This paper will examine the linear and the nonlinear for the category of the monument. This research will be contextualised by the 'geologic turn' in contemporary art which engage the aesthetics of the Anthropocene through practices in the landscape. In an era where the future of the human species is implicated within the present, the discourse of the Anthropocene provides distinct tools to access the future-to-come. The 'post-monument' is a typology of temporal object that can approach temporality at the scales of the Anthropocene, accessing nonlinear paradigms to manifest futural conditions and post-human ontologies.


Faced with the prospects of slow growth, commoditization and global competition, companies like General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have now emphasized innovation as critical to their future success. But what exactly is innovation? Although the subject has risen to the top of the CEO agenda, many companies have a mistakenly narrow view of it. They might see innovation as synonymous with new product development or traditional research and development. But such myopia can lead to the systematic erosion of competitive advantage. As a result, companies in a given industry can come to resemble one another over time. In actuality, business innovation is far broader in scope than product or technological innovation. In fact, a company can innovate along any of 12 different dimensions with respect to its (1) offerings, (2) platform, (3) solutions, (4) customers, (5) customer experience, (6) value capture, (7) processes, (8) organization, (9) supply chain, (10) presence, (11) networking, and (12) brand. Nissan Motor Co., for example, has innovated along the platform dimension, using essentially the same small engine block to power a variety of models, including an upscale midsize sedan, a large sedan, luxury sedans, a minivan and a sports coupe. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has innovated along the customers and presence dimensions, placing car rental locations in the neighborhoods where people live and work rather than at airports. Together the 12 dimensions of innovation can be displayed in a new framework called the ?innovation radar,? which companies can use to manage the increasingly complex business systems through which they add value.


Provides an operational focus to the Global Employment Agenda adopted by the ILO's Governing Body in March 2003 as the employment component of the Decent Work Programmes. Describes the main components of employment strategies: the basic concepts, the six key policy areas and ILO tools. Discusses the main implementation challenges and reviews some processes that the ILO's Employment Sector has recently put in place or is strengthening to achieve better focus, improve performance and promote continuous learning and knowledge management on employment issues.


The following paper focuses on the incompleteness arising from model misspecification combined with trading restrictions. While asset price dynamics are assumed to be continuous time processes, the hedging of contingent claims occurs in discrete time. The trading strategies under consideration are understood to be self-financing with respect to an assumed model which may deviate from the "true" model, thus associating duplication costs with respect to a contingent claim to be hedged. Based on the robustness result of Gaussian hedging strategies, saying that a superhedge is achieved for convex payoff functions if the "true" asset price volatility is dominated by the assumed one, the error of time discretising these strategies is analysed. It turns out that the time discretisation of Gaussian hedges gives rise to a duplication bias caused by asset price trends, which can be avoided by discretising the hedging model instead of discretising the hedging strategies. Additionally, it is shown that on the one hand binomial strategies incorporate similar robustness features as Gaussian hedges. On the other hand, the distribution of the cost process associated with the binomial hedge coincides with the distribution of the cost process associated with the Gaussian hedge in the limit. Together, the last results yield a strong argument in favour of discretising the hedge model instead of time discretising the strategies.


INTRODUCTION The Price is Right has been a daytime television staple for decades. Many college students have missed a class or two to watch the show. This popularity among college students makes it a convenient example to get students excited about an aspect of mathematics. In 1998, in an attempt to increase the likelihood of winning, The Price is Right changed the rules of one of its pricing games, the Three Strikes game [1]. Is a contestant today better off than one who played the game before the change in the rules? To address this question, one can model the two versions of the game using Markov chains. The Three Strikes game is always played for a car. The five single digit numbers in the price of the car are placed in a bag in the form of tokens with the numbers on them. One token with a strike (X) on it is also placed in the bag. The contestant pulls out one token at a time. If a number is drawn, the contestant guesses which position the number is in the price of the car. If the contestant is incorrect, the number is returned to the bag. If the contestant correctly guesses the placement of the number, the number is not returned to the bag. If the contestant pulls out the strike token, it is returned to the bag. To win the car, the contestant must successfully draw out the five numbers and correctly place them in the price of the car before pulling out the strike three times. Prior to the change in 1998, the Three Strikes game included three strikes placed in the bag. However, if the contestant pulled out a strike, it was not replaced. ASSUMPTIONS For the Markov chains, we need two key assumptions. One is that the contestant does not use logic in guessing the position of the digits in the price of the car. Guessing placements is done at random. In a Markov chain, the probability that one is in state i on the next observation depends only on states i and j (which may be the same state) and not on the history of the process prior to the current observation. For example, a contestant could guess O as the first digit, or a contestant could attempt to place a particular digit incorrectly in the same position more than once. The other assumption is that the five numbers in the price of the car are distinct, as is the case on the show. In addition to the mathematical assumptions, students who were to analyze the two versions of the Three Strikes games or ones with similar analyses (e.g., Money Game, Pathfinder) must have the appropriate mathematical background. At a minimum, students need to be familiar with matrices and their operations and elementary probability. If students have not been exposed to Markov chains in their coursework, then these students would also need to have the ability to learn this material independently. A student who has completed linear algebra and has had probability would have a good foundation. A modeling course or other upper level mathematics course that included Markov chains would also suffice in preparing a student for this type of analysis. MARKOV CHAIN SET-UP Recall that a Markov chain can be used to provide information about the probabilities of events that are described in terms of states or sets of states. In addition to well-defined states, a key ingredient to using Markov chains is the transition matrix. An n x n transition matrix consists of one-step transition probabilities, pij, each denoting the conditional probability that if the system is in state i on one observation it will be in state j on the next observation where 1 ≤ i, j ≤ n. The probabilities are independent of the observation number. The Three Strikes game can be thought of as occurring in states. There are seventeen states. The initial state of a contestant is having zero strikes and zero numbers correctly placed. State fifteen is the winning state, having five correctly placed numbers and two strikes or fewer. State sixteen is the losing state, having three strikes and four or fewer correctly placed numbers. …


With an increasing demand for electrical energy, it is certain that the production will also increase, especially in rapid developing countries like Pakistan. Rapid industrialization is carving for more electrical energy, investment and suitable space for its infrastructure. But this development has to be sustainable keeping in mind the increasing global temperature due to pollution. Pakistan is the six largest populations in the world and hence produces a lot of waste daily. As of now, most of the waste goes to the landfills and gets burnt there or decomposed, either way releasing greenhouse gases in the process and degrading the environment. The municipal waste management is a challenging process in developing countries because of non-availability of proper infrastructure. There are some methods to manage this waste, such as scientific landfills, Incineration, Biomethanation, Gasification, Pyrolysis and Plasma Arc Gasification. By gasification the solid waste is converted into synthesis gas which can be used for chemical industries, power generation, transportation and industrial heating etc. This process shrinks the solid waste to slag or ash which can either be used to manufacture eco bricks or can be disposed of on landfill. Thus saving a lot of place from land filling and if used for power generation it does not release any considerable harmful gases into the environment making it a sustainable process and partially renewable source of energy. This project will estimate the cost and procedure to setup gasification plant. In the study, the generation, composition, treatment and energy potential of solid waste have been studied. The technologies for waste-to-energy conversion have also been studied and the feasibility comparison of two leading technologies has been done.


Agriculture, one of the oldest human occupations, is practised all over the world, using techniques ranging from the profoundly traditional to the most scientifically advanced. Without it we would starve. Yet how many of us understand what is happening in the fields that we see as we drive through the countryside? How often do we think about the origins of the food in our trolley? In this Very Short Introduction Paul Brassley and Richard Soffe explain what farmers do and why they do it. Beginning with the most basic resource, the soil, they show why it is important, and how farmers can increase its productivity, before turning to the plants and animals that grow on it, and tracing the connections between their biology and the various ways in which farmers work with them. The authors conclude by looking at some of the controversial issues facing contemporary agriculture: its sustainability; its impact on wildlife and landscape; issues of animal welfare; and the affect of climate change and the development of genetically modified organisms on farmers. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


This study investigates how seven pre-service English teachers (PSETs) learned classroom language in a Classroom Discourse (CD) unit at Pahlawan University, Indonesia, and used it in sixteen microteaching and seven practicum lessons. Specifically, the research investigates the nature of classroom language taught in the CD unit, how the PSETs learned it and how they implemented it. The data for this case study research were collected in two phases, at the university and in regional schools. The data include a questionnaire, learning and teaching journals, videotaped and audiotaped lessons, interviews, and classroom observation. Seven PSETs, two university staff, and five supervising teachers took part in this research. The analysis of data is both quantitative and qualitative. A review of the literature links the nature of classroom language to theoretical perspectives on learning, which show the importance of language as a tool for mediating learning. It was found that the CD unit curriculum goals refer to scaffolding, yet classroom language taught in the unit focuses on eight Basic Teaching Skills (BTSs) and includes limited content on classroom interaction, including scaffolding. It was further found that PSETs learned classroom language taught in the unit in the form of expressions used for the eight BTSs. They learned to use these by observing other PSETs, and English teachers during the CD unit. They also used these expressions in microteaching at university and in lessons which they taught in the school-based practicum. In their lessons, the PSETs focussed particularly on the use of five of the eight BTSs, including three kinds of lesson management skills, explaining the lesson and asking comprehension check questions. Although the PSETs tended to use English in microteaching, there was a noticeable change to trilingual code switching in the practicum. Three kinds of scaffolding, prompting, extension and modelling were attempted. However, these were used unsystematically.


Recent advances in single-molecule chemistry have led to designs for artificial multi-pedal walkers that follow tracks of chemicals. The walkers, called molecular spiders, consist of a rigid chemically inert body and several flexible enzymatic legs. The legs can reversibly bind to chemical substrates on a surface, and through their enzymatic action convert them to products. We study abstract models of molecular spiders to evaluate how efficiently they can perform two tasks: molecular transport of cargo over tracks and search for targets on finite surfaces. For the single-spider model our simulations show a transient behavior wherein certain spiders move superdiffusively over significant distances and times. This gives the spiders potential as a faster-than-diffusion transport mechanism. However, analysis shows that single-spider motion eventually decays into an ordinary diffusive motion, owing to the ever increasing size of the region of products. Inspired by cooperative behavior of natural molecular walkers, we propose a symmetric exclusion process (SEP) model for multiple walkers interacting as they move over a one-dimensional lattice. We show that when walkers are sequentially released from the origin, the collective effect is to prevent the leading walkers from moving too far backwards. Hence, there is an effective outward pressure on the leading walkers that keeps them moving superdiffusively for longer times. Despite this improvement the leading spider eventually slows down and moves diffusively, similarly to a single spider. The slowdown happens because all spiders behind the leading spiders never encounter substrates, and thus they are never biased. They cannot keep up with leading spiders, and cannot put enough pressure on them. Next, we investigate search properties of a single and multiple spiders moving over one- and two-dimensional surfaces with various absorbing and reflecting boundaries. For the single-spider model we evaluate by how much the slowdown on newly visited sites, owing to catalysis, can improve the mean first passage time of spiders and show that in one dimension, when both ends of the track are an absorbing boundary, the performance gain is lower than in two dimensions, when the absorbing boundary is a circle; this persists even when the absorbing boundary is a single site. Next, we study how multiple molecular spiders influence one another during the search. We show that when one spider reaches the trace of another spider it is more likely not to follow the trace and instead explore unvisited sites. This interaction between the spiders gives them an advantage over independent random walkers in a search for multiple targets. We also study how efficiently the spiders with various gaits are able to find specific targets. Spiders with gaits that allow more freedom of leg movement find their targets faster than spiders with more restrictive gaits. For every gait, there is an optimal detachment rate that minimizes the time to find all target sites.


The perceptions and attitudes of educators towards multicultural education are strongly correlated to the manner in which multicultural education is applied. Previous research indicates that culture undeniably has an effect on education, nonetheless, education administrators may not have enough knowledge about multicultural education practices. The aim of the study was to identify the perceptions and interpretations of multicultural teaching from seventeen respondents employed as educators. These educators were all Maltese, teaching Maltese as a second language to adult learners who originated from diverse cultural backgrounds and were living in Malta. The researcher used a qualitative case study design of online interviews to identify the practices that educators perceive to be the best in promoting effective multicultural education. Based on content analysis, the key concepts and activities defined as effective in maintaining multicultural education performance include equality, democracy and justice. Multi-ethnic teaching offers the opportunity to equitably consider and accept divergent viewpoints, which in turn allows proper cohesion not only among students but also educators. Indeed, multi-ethnic education is essential; individuals with varying backgrounds and experiences deserve equality, and community groups need proper representation. This research thus concludes that the majority of teachers agree that practices such as ensuring equality, democracy and justice for all learners regardless of their ethnic, gender, or religious context are of high significance in encouraging inclusion, multicultural education, and student success.


The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of creative cognition which would enable educators to more accurately and objectively measure the development of creativity in Taiwanese high school students. The instrument was designed to measure the constructs of divergent-thinking and insight, as previous research has suggested that these are the only two dimensions of creativity which can be measured objectively. To overcome problems encountered in previous attempts to measure these two abilities, and to combine the strengths of separate measures of both, a test was developed which involves having students subtract strokes from the Chinese characters "里" to form another legal Chinese character. Responses are scored for fluency (the number of legal responses), flexibility (the variety of perspectives represented in the responses), and originality (statistical infrequency). The stroke-subtraction test offers advantages compared to other measures of creativity in that it emphasizes the novelty and appropriateness of the responses simultaneously. Further, use of the three score indexes simplifies the scoring process. The test was piloted with 1,200 Taiwanese high school students, and this sample was used to establish a norm for the purpose of norm-referenced score interpretations. The results were also compared with those from several other measurements to provide evidence supporting the criterion-related validity of the instrument. Based Corresponding Author: Hsueh-Chih Chen, E-mail: email@example.com 陳學志、洪素蘋、許禕芳、邱皓政、關秉寅、詹志禹 61 擴散與聚斂思考的交會 on the findings, implications for educational administrators, schools, teachers are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are offered.


Numerous studies have concluded that roughly half of all implemented software requirements are never or rarely used in practice, and that failure to realise expected benefits is a major cause of software project failure. This thesis presents an exploration of these concepts, claims, and causes. It evaluates the literature s proposed solutions to them, and then presents a unified framework that covers additional concerns not previously considered.

The value of a requirement is assessed often during the requirements engineering (RE) process, e.g., in requirement prioritisation, release planning, and trade-off analysis. In order to support these activities, and hence to support the decisions that lead to the aforementioned waste, this thesis proposes a framework built on the modelling languages of Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE), and on the principles of Value Based Software Engineering (VBSE).

The framework guides the elicitation of a requirement s value using philosophy and business theory, and aims to quantitatively model chains of instrumental value that are expected to be generated for a system s stakeholders by a proposed software capability. The framework enriches the description of the individual links comprising these chains with descriptions of probabilistic degrees of causation, non-linear dose-response and utility functions, and credibility and confidence. A software tool to support the framework s implementation is presented, employing novel features such as automated visualisation, and information retrieval and machine learning (recommendation system) techniques. These software capabilities provide more than just usability improvements to the framework. For example, they enable visual comprehension of the implications of what-if? questions, and enable re-use of previous models in order to suggest modifications to a project s requirements set, and reduce uncertainty in its value propositions.

Two case studies in real-world industry contexts are presented, which explore the problem and the viability of the proposed framework for alleviating it. The thesis research questions are answered by various methods, including practitioner surveys, interviews, expert opinion, real-world examples and proofs of concept, as well as less-common methods such as natural language processing analysis of real requirements specifications (e.g., using TF-IDF to measure the proportion of software requirement traceability links that do not describe the requirement s value or problem-to-be-solved).

The thesis found that in general, there is a disconnect between the state of best practice as proposed by the literature, and current industry practice in requirements engineering. The surveyed practitioners supported the notion that the aforementioned value realisation problems do exist in current practice, that they would be treatable by better requirements engineering practice, and that this thesis proposed framework would be useful and usable in projects whose complexity warrants the overhead of requirements modelling (e.g., for projects with many stakeholders, competing desires, or having high costs of deploying incorrect increments of software functionality).


This study investigated second-language (L2) learning to gain a better understanding of learning mechanisms that also operate in child first-language (L1) learners. The research was inspired by research on the beneficial effects of child-directed speech (CDS). We tried to examine whether such benefits can be observed in the domain of inflectional morphology in adult L2 learners. Specifically, we investigated whether one typical feature of CDS, diminutivization, can facilitate learning of Russian gender. Diminutives (i.e., the translational equivalent of doggy, birdie, etc.) are a pervasive feature of Russian CDS. Olmsted (1994) suggested that the frequent use of diminutives in Russian CDS may facilitate the child's acquisition of grammatical gender because it eliminates nontransparent morphophonological marking. To examine the effect of diminutives on gender learning directly, adult native speakers of English were taught a variety of Russian nouns, with half of the participants trained on diminutive nouns and half on the nondiminutive base forms. Over 4 sessions, participants learned to use color adjectives to name the color of the objects depicting the nouns. In Russian, adjectives have to agree in gender with the nouns they modify; correct adjective agreement was used as a measure of gender learning. The diminutive training group demonstrated better learning of noun gender and better generalization to novel word forms and novel nouns, thus confirming the beneficial effects of diminutives on gender learning. The observed diminutive benefit for gender agreement has subsequently been demonstrated in Russian children (Kempe, Brooks, Mironova, & Fedorova, 2003), both for familiar and, in even more pronounced ways, for novel nouns, thus confirming the generalizability of the results to L1 learners. In light of these later findings, the present study underscores the importance of complementary research in L1 and L2 learning so that important questions about the nature of L1 acquisition may be answered by means of controlled manipulation of the language input in L2 learning.


A novel approach for bioconjugation associated with a fluorescent conjugated polymer is demonstrated. For this purpose, a conjugated polymer, poly(p-phenylene) (PPP), with lateral substituents, namely primary amino groups and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) chains, as a potential building block for polymer bioconjugates was synthesized and characterized. The synthesis was achieved through Suzuki polycondensation reaction in the presence of Pd(PPh3)4 catalyst by using independently prepared PEG and amino functionalized dibromo benzenes in conjunction with benzene diboronic acid. For the evaluation of the bioactive PPP labeled with folic acid (FA) as a potential targeted cell imaging probe, HeLa and A549 cancer cells were used. Cytotoxicity assay showed that the polymer was not toxic to either of the cells. Additionally, the fluorescence images showed that, depending on the level of the FA receptors on the cell surfaces, the fluorescent intensity in HeLa cells was obviously higher than A549 cells when treated with FA conjugated PPP-NH2-g-PEG polymer. The resulting FA/PPP-NH2-g-PEG conjugate was successfully used as a bioconjugate for targeting and specifically imaging FA receptor positive HeLa human cervical cancer cells.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how digital innovation processes emerge and evolve in organizational settings, and how serendipitous and unbounded digital innovations affect organizations' overall digital directions.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on an interpretive case study of the Church of Sweden, tracing in detail the design, deployment and governance of an interactive website for digital prayer, the Prayer Web (PW).

Findings
The findings show how the site came about in a serendipitous manner, created by an advertising agency as part of a marketing campaign. In turn, the unbounded nature of digital innovation was revealed as the wide and rapid adoption of the PW raised issues concerning the church's overall digital direction linked to centralized control, as well as the nature and role of pastors, prayer and communities, as the site allowed people to post prayers and spread their messages (initially with no moderation).

Originality/value
The authors explore the serendipitous and unbounded ways in which digital innovation emerged and evolved in a traditional organization with a long legacy as an important societal institution. The paper contributes by generating rich insights on the role of the distinct aspects of digital technology in serendipitous and unbounded digital innovation. It particularly highlights how the editability and reprogrammability of digital artifacts triggered unexpected new behaviors and governance requirements in the organization under study. The authors encourage further research into the interrelationship between multiple unbounded and serendipitous digital innovations in an organization over time.


Abstract The application of base isolation to nuclear systems has been limited to date for some important reasons, including the deprivation of sufficient data for the long-term operation of such isolation devices and the lack of specific standards. Moreover, it is difficult to provide seismic protection in the vertical direction and to qualify the large-scale isolators up to experimentally large deformations in real dynamic conditions. The effect of aging on isolators is therefore one of the issues to be considered for the safety and reliability of base-isolated nuclear power plants (NPPs). Accounting for the variations of the post-aging parameters of the isolators on the structural performance of the plant, this study proposes a simplified and efficient method to update the analytical model of base-isolated structures based on mean-iterative neural networks (MINNs). A bilinear model with a zero length element was built to represent the characteristics of lead-rubber bearings for their numerical analysis. Analytical model updating by MINNs has been successfully performed, and the observed results are found to be in good agreement with those obtained from experiments. Additionally, it is observed that the stiffening or hardening with time in the shear properties of isolation devices affects the seismic performance of the base-isolated structure. Seismic design over the service life span of NPP structures should take these aging effects of the isolators into account.


Guggulsterone, a constituent of Indian Ayurvedic medicinal plant Commiphora mukul, causes apoptosis in cancer cells but the sequence of events leading to cell death is poorly understood. We now show that guggulsterone-induced cell death in human prostate cancer cells is caused by reactive oxygen intermediate (ROI)-dependent activation of c-Jun NH(2)-terminal kinase (JNK). Exposure of PC-3 and LNCaP cells to apoptosis inducing concentrations of guggulsterone resulted in activation of JNK and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) in both cell lines and activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) in LNCaP cells. The guggulsterone-induced apoptosis in PC-3/LNCaP cells was partially but statistically significantly attenuated by pharmacologic inhibition (SP600125) as well as genetic suppression of JNK activation. On the other hand, pharmacologic inhibition of p38 MAPK activation in PC-3 or LNCaP cells (SB202190) and ERK1/2 activation in LNCaP cells (PD98059) did not protect against guggulsterone-induced cell death. The guggulsterone treatment caused generation of ROI in prostate cancer cells but not in a normal prostate epithelial cell line (PrEC), which was also resistant to guggulsterone-mediated JNK activation. The guggulsterone-induced JNK activation as well as cell death in prostate cancer cells was significantly attenuated by overexpression of catalase and superoxide dismutase. In addition, guggulsterone treatment resulted in a decrease in protein level and promoter activity of androgen receptor in LNCaP cells. In conclusion, the present study reveals that the guggulsterone-induced cell death in human prostate cancer cells is regulated by ROI-dependent activation of JNK and guggulsterone inhibits promoter activity of androgen receptor.


Since early work in the 1980s, the bile acids have become well established as building blocks for supramolecular chemistry. The author's laboratory has specialised in converting cholic acid, the archetypal bile acid, into macrocyclic and acyclic receptors for anions and carbohydrates. This review highlights the synthetic aspects of this work, especially the use of modern synthetic methodology to perform less obvious structural transformations.


Using a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, we have previously shown that a molecularly cloned isolate of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) can efficiently enter quiescent primary lymphocytes; however, the reverse transcription process is not completed in these cells. In this study, we further characterized the reverse transcription of HIV-1 in quiescent cells, and our results indicate that while initiation of reverse transcription occurs simultaneously in both activated and quiescent lymphocytes, it not only ends prematurely but also proceeds more slowly in quiescent cells. We also performed experiments to address the role of partial reverse transcripts as intermediates in the viral life cycle. We used azidothymidine either before or after infection with HIV-1 to prevent formation of and further DNA synthesis by partial reverse transcripts, respectively. Decreases in virus production from these cells following mitogenic stimulation indicated that partial reverse transcripts can contribute significantly to virus rescue from infected quiescent cells stimulated subsequent to infection. Furthermore, we established that mitogenic stimulation of infected quiescent cells induces reinitiation of DNA synthesis from partial reverse transcripts. However, the virus rescue is inefficient relative to the initial multiplicity of infection, and this is explained by inefficient completion of DNA synthesis from the partial reverse transcript. Thus, the arrest of reverse transcription in quiescent cells may play an important role in HIV-1 pathogenesis by contributing to the inefficient infection of potential target cells in the peripheral blood of HIV-1-infected individuals.


Meeting the needs of present generations while ensuring that future generations can fulfil their needs properly requires sustainable development. Assuming that in the next 50 years the global population will double and global wealth will increase fivefold, while it will be necessary to halve the environmental burden, social needs will have to be fulfilled twenty times more environmentally efficiently by 2050. It requires great changes in consumption and production in the "developed" part of the world. This is the starting point of the EU-funded research project "Strategies towards the Sustainable Household – SusHouse" focusing on what households can contribute to such Factor 20 strategies. This paper describes the participatory approach of the SusHouse project, focusing on the key elements of stakeholder workshops and scenario construction, and presents first results for the household functions (areas) (Clothing Care, and Shopping, Cooking and Eating) studied in the Netherlands and the UK. It is concluded that it is possible to construct scenarios for future sustainable fulfilment of household functions based on the creative ideas and visions of stakeholders from different societal groups attending workshops. The paper ends with a discussion of the relevance of the applied methodology in the field of sustainability research.


Since its formation at the XXVI General Assembly in Prague in 2006, amazing progress has been made by Commission 55, all due to the work of the key activists and enthusiasts. The web-page for the Commission contains a wealth of information and is one of the key foundations and tools for the Commission. The web address is http://www.communicatingastronomy.org


The theoretic foundation of traditional microphone array post-filters is the signal model in which the noise between sensors is assumed to be uncorrelated. However, this model is inaccurate in real environments since the correlated noise exists. In this paper, a more generalized signal model which considers both the correlated and uncorrelated noise is introduced. A general expression of the microphone array post-filter is proposed for this model. For better residual noise shaping, the human auditory property is incorporated into the post-filter estimation process. In experiments with real noise microphone array recordings, the proposed technique has shown to produce impressive results in terms of quality measures of the enhanced speech.


The 2–14C-deoxyglucose method was used to map local cerebral metabolic activity in monkeys performing a unimanual task requiring visually guided arm reaching and key pressing. The study was carried out with monkeys that either had intact brains or had one hemisphere deprived of visual input by unilateral optic tract section combined in some cases with forebrain commissurotomy. The metabolic mapping revealed activation of sensorimotor cortex only in the hemisphere contralateral to the moving forelimb, irrespective of whether this hemisphere was intact or visually deafferented. These results suggest that visually guided reaching with the forelimb contralateral to the "blind" hemisphere is subserved by that hemisphere's sensorimotor cortex and not by the cortex of the ipsilateral, "seeing" hemisphere. Other areas that were more active metabolically in the "blind" than in the "seeing" hemisphere included the supplementary motor, the secondary somatosensory, and certain posterior parietal cortical areas, intraparietal lateral 5 (lateral 5-ip), 7a, and intraparietal 7 (7-ip). It is suggested that the "blind" hemisphere utilizes at least two distinct pieces of information to guide forelimb movements to visual targets: (1) information about the location of the visual target derived from head and eye movements made to this target and mediated via the inferior parietal cortical areas 7a and 7-ip, and (2) information about the instantaneous upper extremity position derived from forelimb proprioceptive mechanisms and mediated via the somatosensory cortex and thereafter via the superior parietal cortical area, lateral 5-ip.


The unitary executive is no longer a theory; it is real. The President operates on the premise that, because all executive power is vested in him, his appointees merely assist him in performing his constitutional duty. The rise of the unitary executive is not a new phenomenon, but it has reached a new pinnacle. This article demonstrates that among the contributing causes to that climb are the judicial rules about rulemaking.
The provisions governing agency rulemaking in the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 are barebones. Congress intended to leave much to agency discretion, preferring agency decisionmaking to the autocracy recently defeated in Europe. In the 70 years since then, Congress has not revised the APA's rulemaking provisions significantly. In the absence of legislative updating, the courts stepped in and imposed rulemaking requirements that contradict the APA's text and history. Rulemaking has become difficult at least in part due to the increasingly onerous judicial rules about rulemaking. As a consequence, agencies are unable to respond to elections and changed circumstances in a timely and effective manner. In recent years, as Congress and agencies have lost their policymaking agility, the President has stepped in to make key decisions himself.
The judicial rules about rulemaking were well intentioned, but their unintended consequences have reached a frightening extreme. Our nation is moving toward the kind of executive authoritarianism the APA was designed to avoid. The courts should retreat and take refuge in the text and history of the APA until Congress amends it, and Congress should require rulemaking procedures that are effective, but not overly burdensome.


UC security realized with setup devices imposes that single instances of these setups are used. In most cases, UC-realization relies further on other properties of the setups devices, like tamper-resistance. But what happens in stronger versions of the UC framework, like EUC or JUC, where multiple instances of these setups are allowed? Can we formalise what it is about setups like these which makes them sometimes hinder UC, JUC, EUC realizability? In this paper, we answer this question. As such, we formally introduce transferable setups, which can be viewed as setup devices that do not (publicly) disclose if they have been maliciously passed on. Further, we prove the general result that one cannot realize oblivious transfer (OT) or any "interesting" 2-party protocol using transferable setups in the EUC model. As a by-product, we show that physically unclonable functions (PUFs) themselves are transferable devices, which means that one cannot use PUFs as a global setups; this is interesting because non-transferability is a weaker requirement than locality, which until now was the property informally blamed for UC-impossibility results regarding PUFs as global setups. If setups are transferable (i.e., they can be passed on from one party to another without explicit disclosure of a malicious transfer), then they will not intrinsically leak if a relay attack takes place. Indeed, we further prove that if relay attacks are possible then oblivious transfer cannot be realized in the JUC model. Linked to the prevention of relaying, authenticated channels have historically been an essential building stone of the UC model. Related to this, we show how to strengthen some existing protocols UC-realized with PUFs, and render them not only UC-secure but also JUC-secure.


The percentage of U.S. adults aged 20-64 years who had a fasting test for high blood sugar or diabetes in the past 12 months increased from 39.7% in 2011 to 45.7% in 2016. From 2011 to 2016, there was an increase in the percentage for all racial/ethnic groups examined: Hispanic (38.3% to 43.0%), non-Hispanic white (39.6% to 46.5%), non-Hispanic black (41.2% to 44.9%), and non-Hispanic Asian (41.5% to 49.6%) adults. In 2011, there was no statistically significant difference among the four groups examined, but in 2016, Hispanic adults were less likely than non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Asian adults to have had a fasting test, and non-Hispanic Asian adults were more likely than non-Hispanic black adults to have had one.


The recent organisational changes in mental health service delivery with their increasing emphasis on implementing and evaluating recovery-oriented practice have implications for ongoing professional development. This study examined the relationship between work-related self-efficacy, organisational climate in terms of perceived service resilience and the organisational conditions of role conflict and role ambiguity. A survey of members of community and hospital mental health multi-disciplinary teams in a Northern Ireland Health and Social Care integrated Trust was conducted. Sixty-seven of a sample of one hundred and ten mental health staff, including social workers, nurses, occupational therapists and day care workers, in three service settings including hospital, community and day care, completed a thirty eight item questionnaire. The questionnaire contained four scales measuring organisational change, self-efficacy, and role conflict and role ambiguity. Results showed that there were strong negative correlations between organisational climate and role stressors, and a negative correlation of moderate significance between self- efficacy and role ambiguity. The researchers suggest that task-specific, self-efficacy measures could be used routinely with increased reflective practice to promote a reduction in role ambiguity. The continued use of personal and professional recovery-enhancing measures as part of service evaluation is also advocated.


Previous research indicates that bilinguals have higher scores in certain personality traits than monolinguals; the present study examines further evidence for this claim. Participants: N = 256 (F = 170, M = 86) completed a questionnaire-based survey asking about language use in up to four of their spoken languages, as well as their reasons for taking up each new language; they then completed the HEXACO 60-item personality inventory (Appendix 2). To compare monolinguals and bilinguals, independent-sample t-tests were used to analyse differences in each of the six personality traits between the two groups. One-way ANOVAs were used to analyse personality differences between monolinguals, balanced bilinguals and unbalanced bilinguals. Content analysis of reasons for speaking a new language resulted in 5 extracted themes: education, relocation, native, leisure, and work. Bilinguals showed significantly higher openness to experience compared to monolinguals; ANOVAs showed that balanced bilinguals were significantly higher in honesty-humility than unbalanced bilinguals; balanced bilinguals were significantly higher in conscientiousness than monolinguals and unbalanced bilinguals; and monolinguals were significantly lower in openness to experience than both balanced bilinguals and unbalanced bilinguals. Content analysis revealed the main reason for taking up a new language was education, followed by leisure - involving reasons such as the longing to take up the language. This study adds to the literature of bilingualism and personality, while suggesting the importance of education in learning languages and highlighting the need to investigate the direction of the relationship between language learning and personality.


Cooperative communications using relays in wireless networks have similar effects of multiple-input and multiple-output without the need of multiple antennas at each node. To implement cooperation into a system, efficient protocols are desired. In IEEE 802.11 families such as a/b/g, mobile stations can automatically adjust transmission rates according to channel conditions. However throughput performance degradation is observed by low-rate stations in multi-rate circumstances resulting in so-called performance anomaly. In this paper, we propose active relay-based cooperative medium access control (AR-CMAC) protocol, in which active relays desiring to transmit their own data for cooperation participate in relaying, and it is designed to increase throughput as a solution to performance anomaly. We have analyzed the performance of the simplified AR-CMAC using an embedded Markov chain model to demonstrate the gain of AR-CMAC and to verify it with our simulations. Simulations in an infrastructure network with an IEEE 802.11b/g access point show noticeable improvement than the legacy schemes.


Dispersion Theory formalizes the structuralist notion of systemic contrast within a constraintbased phonological framework (DT; FLEMMING, 1995, 2002; NÍ CHIOSÁIN & PADGETT, 2001; PADGETT, 2003a,b,c). Bradley & Delforge (in press) propose a DT analysis of sibilant voicing patterns throughout the history of Spanish, from the loss of medieval voiced sibilants through their reemergence in several contemporary dialects. Phonetic effects in sibilant voicing are adequately explained by a distinction between obstruents that are phonologically specified for [±voice] and targetless, neutral obstruents that undergo gradient voicing by phonetic interpolation (ERNESTUS, 2003, STERIADE, 1997, 1999). It is possible to incorporate a noncontrastive phonetic category because in DT, systemic constraints govern the well-formedness of phonological contrasts. The present study focuses in greater detail on sibilant voicing in the Spanish of highland Ecuador and takes into account some additional observations by Robinson (1979) that have not been addressed in the DT approach thus far. First, regional variation in the voicing of prefix-final /s/ is shown to depend on whether prefixes are incorporated in the lexical phonology, where devoicing is favored, or in the postlexical phonology, where voicing serves to distinguish morpheme-final sibilants from morpheme-initial ones in phrasal intervocalic contexts. Second, native speaker intuitions regarding the lack of resyllabification of morpheme-final prevocalic [z] are actually predicted by a theory which acknowledges the role of systemic contrast in the postlexical phonology.


The aims were to explore an appropriate isolating medium for obtaining purple nonsulfur bacteria (PNSB) for use as biofertilizers in saline paddy fields and to obtain pure cultures. We therefore chose a defined isolating medium containing 0.25% NaCl, (Glutamate-Acetate broth, GA) and a rice straw broth to compare them for numbers of PNSB obtained, time to obtain pure cultures, diversity and costs. A total of 30 water and 30 sediment samples were collected from saline paddy fields in southern Thailand and used to isolate PNSB in both the isolating media. Based on 60 samples and a period of 13 days incubation under anaerobic light conditions, a greater number of samples produced PNSB growth in GA broth after only day 3; however, after that the rice straw broth provided about a 2 fold increase in the number of samples that produced PNSB growth. Colonies isolated from GA broth required a significantly higher number of repeated streaking to obtain a pure culture (average 3.5) than those from rice straw broth (average 2.7) and the latter medium also produced significantly (P < 0.05) more isolates per sample. Sixty samples of water and sediment, from rice paddies with salinity (average, 3.43 ± 0.67 mS/cm) and slight acidity (average, pH 5.84 ± 0.42) provided 62 PNSB isolates by GA broth and 210 isolates by rice straw broth, and rice straw broth also produced a greater prevalence of PNSB. Estimates of the costs based on current prices of media, Gas Pak and electricity to obtain PNSB with the use of GA broth was roughly 6 times higher than for the rice straw broth.


Mycolactone is a diffusible lipid toxin produced by Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer disease. Altough bacterially derived mycolactone has been shown to traffic from cutaneous foci of infection to the bloodstream, the mechanisms underpinning its access to systemic circulation and import by host cells remain largely unknown. Using biophysical and cell-based approaches, we demonstrate that mycolactone specific association to serum albumin and lipoproteins is necessary for its solubilization and is a major mechanism to regulate its bioavailability. We also demonstrate that Scavenger Receptor (SR)-B1 contributes to the cellular uptake of mycolactone. Overall, we suggest a new mechanism of transport and cell entry, challenging the dogma that the toxin enters host cells via passive diffusion.


Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy presents some of the ideas of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin concerning dialogism in a way that will engage and inspire those studying early childhood education. By translating the growing body of dialogic scholarship into a practical application of teaching and learning with very young children, this book provides readers with alternative ways of examining, engaging and reflecting on practice in the early years to provoke new ways of understanding and enacting pedagogy. This text combines important theoretical ideas with a practical application to support practitioners who are keen to promote creativity and agency through ethical self-other relations. It provides unique insights into the amazing world of the youngest child, and offers enriched understandings of the profound impact of adults in their journey of becoming (or bildung). Key points covered include: Investigating dialogic philosophy and its application to early childhood education, with an emphasis on notions of justice, democracy, ethics and answerability Considering the relationship between dialogism and pedagogical approaches Theorising a range of approaches to relevant early childhood practice, as pedagogy This accessible and readable guide offers sound theoretical principles with practical suggestions for early years' settings. The book is supplemented by an extensive online video resource website that will bring these revolutionary ideas to life.


Tourists can discover a variety of benefits in tourism products, which are intended to satisfy their needs. However, their preferences differ according to travelers' characteristics. The current study tries to examine favored choices made by tourists as well as their preferences regarding package holidays, and more precisely internal tourism product attributes (i.e. package tour attributes) and external tourism product attributes (i.e. destination attributes). The study attempts to answer the following questions: How are the motives behind traveling and tourism products preferences affected by cultural differences? How do the tourists perceive the importance of particular product attributes depending on the country of their origin? The surveyed sample of 463 tourists spent their holiday on coach tours in Poland in 2014–2015. They participated either in English-guided tours or Spanish/Portugueseguided tours. Two sample groups differ with respect to travel motivations. The US, Canadian, and Australian travelers indicated Polish origins, interest, and family member as main factors influencing their decis ion to visit Poland, whereas tourists from Spain, Brazil, Portugal, and Argentina listed interest as the most important travel motive. Moreover, such factors as recommendations, tourist catalogues and travel agents influenced significantly Spanish and Portuguese speaking tourists' decisions. All surveyed tourists attach high importance to such tour attributes as tour leader, organization and attractiveness of the program, and to the following destination attributes: safety, cleanliness, tourist attractions, and tourist information. However, a great number of product attributes was more important for English speaking tourists (e.g. social factors such as opportunity to meet new people, entertainment, possibility to communicate in English). Managers can draw many conclusions from this study. The most important one, however, is that they should concentrate on offering their clients a tailor-made, and culturally customized packages and adapt product sales strategies and communication strategies to selected target segments. Moreover, it is important to consider cultural differences in the product development process and to emphasize cultural sensitivity and competence as an important factor in providing services for tourists.


The concept of combining bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been identified as one mechanism to achieve energy production with a net negative atmospheric carbon emission. Conventional geological carbon capture and storage involves large capital outlay and recurring expense. Therefore there is increased interest in coupling biological carbon capture and sequestration with biomass production. Systems such as low‐input high‐diversity native grasslands and biochar production have been heralded as carbon negative biofuels. Another potential production system for bioenergy with biological carbon capture and storage (BEBCCS) is the large‐scale cultivation of seaweed (macroalgae) for biofuels. Marine biofuels offer considerable advantages over terrestrial first‐generation biofuels in terms of their low land use, fresh water and fertilizer requirements. In addition, they also offer considerable potential in the field of BEBCCS. Macroalgae rapidly accumulate biomass and as part of this process, a significant proportion (estimates range up to 60%) of the carbon they fix photosynthetically is released into the water. A proportion of this released dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is highly labile and enters the bacterial loop and is rapidly remineralized back to CO 2 . However, a proportion is known to be resistant to biological degradation and enters the refractory DOC pool. The marine DOC pool is the largest organic carbon pool on the planet and the refractory component is known to have a turnover period of 100s‐1000s years. The release of refractory DOC from macroalgae combined with biofuel production offers the potential for large scale carbon negative fuel production. © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd


Every year during Passover Jews commemorate the liberation of their ancestors from Egypt. It was God who 'broke the bars of their yoke' and who 'made them walk erect' (Lev 26:13). Elsewhere, however, the Torah seems to suggest that the redemption from Egypt's service was not so much a release from slavery, as it was a change of master (cf. Ex 4:23 and Lev 25:42). This paradoxical way of thinking about slavery is perpetuated by the early rabbis in the midrashic and halakhic literature of the first centuries C.E. By means of a close reading of a parable from Sifre Numbers (chapter 115) I will clarify the early rabbinic perspective on slavery: becoming a slave of God was the ultimate purpose of the people of Israel, while being a slave of Egypt's ruler formed its ultimate degradation. We will also see that in Sifre Numbers, as in other early rabbinic and early Christian writings, the metaphor of slavery competes with the metaphor of sonship. In Sifre Numbers the metaphor of slavery is preferred over that of sonship, due to the absolute obedience that God expects from his people, an aspect that cannot be sufficiently expressed by the relation between a father and his son. Finally, this paper will also contribute to the way we understand slavery metaphors in the New Testament, especially in Romans 6.


During Women's month in South Africa (August), a group of Sunday school children from the rural congregation of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), Middelburg- Nasaret, got together to read the narratives of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus and the healing of the woman suffering from a blood disease. The exercise which appears to be quite innocent is in a sense subversive in its hidden script. In the Reformed tradition, the pulpit as a centre of reading and preaching the Word has become the 'holy of holiest' which nobody, leave alone children, except the ordained minister could occupy. This is of course contrary to the intention of the Reformation to return the Bible to the people and have the people return to the Bible. The reading exercise of this article goes beyond all exegetical and theological presuppositions, unsettling conventional interpretations of Scripture. The children allow their real life experiences in the township of having witnessed, among others, child and women abuse to inform their reading of Mark 5:21–43. In the process they avoid a linear reading of the Bible which is based on the explication-application scheme of matters. Put differently, instead of doing a deductive reading of the portion, i.e. trying to explain or exegete the text clinically and then applying it to their context, they read it inductively, resulting in a hope sharing and hope giving understanding of the rising from the dead of the 12-year-old girl and the healing of the woman with a blood disease. A major spin-off of such reading of the Bible by children is the unlocking of refreshingly new avenues of reading the Bible and interpreting the text.


Here we analyze how, in an open procurement auction, cost reductions among suppliers bidding to sell to a buyer affect the payoffs to the buyer and suppliers. When a single supplier enjoys a reduction in cost, its increase in expected payoff is equal to the expected increase in total surplus from the cost reduction. The buyer benefits not by capturing a portion of the increase in surplus but instead gains at the expense of the suppliers who do not enjoy the cost decrease. The buyer's benefit from a cost decrease, increases in the concentration among the suppliers who do not enjoy the cost decrease. These results have implications for vertical integration and merger analysis. Increases in concentration increase the incentive of buyers who are integrated upstream to make cost reducing investments in the supply of the good while the investment incentives of non-integrated suppliers remain unchanged. In terms of merger analysis these results suggest that pass through of merger specific cost savings will be higher if the non-merging firms in the market are more concentrated. In addition, mergers increase the incentives for vertically integrated sellers to make cost reducing investments, which may serve to mitigate the anticompetitive effects of a merger.


Congestion on motorways is a serious problem of modern societies. It reduces the nominal capacity of the motorway infrastructure, with serious impact on travel times, traffic safety, fuel consumption and environmental pollution. Various traffic management measures have been proposed to alleviate traffic congestion but are known to face limitations. An integrated motorway traffic flow control concept is proposed in this presentation. It is based on the extension of an existing cascade feedback controller for mainstream traffic flow control with multiple bottlenecks. The new integrated controller remains simple yet efficient and suitable for field implementation. It enables the integration of ramp metering and variable speed limit actions, balancing the delays caused by the different actuators. The controller is evaluated using a validated macroscopic model.


In this project, we are investigating translocation as an adaptation strategy to offset the
impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems. Specifically, we are examining the
scientific, legal and social feasibilities of managed translocation of locally extinct top
predator species or likely future climate migrants, where this would benefit the receiving
ecosystem in terms of enhancing resilience to climate change. As a test case, we are
considering the managed translocation of the Eastern Blue Groper (EBG; Achoerodus viridis)
as a means of pre-adapting coastal reefs to ongoing warming of waters off eastern Tasmania.


Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis are often described as having an 'eye for detail'1. This observation, and the finding that individuals with ASD tend to 'see the trees before the forest' when performing the Navon task2, has led to the proposal that ASD is characterized by a bias towards processing local image details3. However, it remains to be shown that natural image recognition in individuals with autism depends more on fine image detail. Here, we resolve this issue by showing that natural image recognition relies more on details in individuals with an above-median number of autistic traits. Furthermore, we found that reliance on details was best predicted by the presence of the most clinically relevant autistic traits. Therefore, our findings raise the possibility that a wide range of real-life abilities and difficulties associated with ASD are related to an enhanced reliance on visual details.


This paper develops a context aware framework to address the diverse communication needs of a modern enterprise. Such enterprises are characterized by workers in different locations, subject to different policies, using different communication devices, and having varying degrees of skill sets. This diversity poses challenges in finding the most effective human worker (agent) for tasks like fielding a customer request, helping another agent with additional expert knowledge, or more generally help complete a task like a supply chain exception. We focus on the problem of routing communications to the most effective agent using a spectrum of contextual knowledge: availability, media type, activity, expertise, and location. We determine an optimal 'request-to-agent' routing based on several metrics of effectiveness depending on the communication context. The optimal agent is selected to communicate on a specific media who minimizes the expected duration of interaction while maximizes the probability of successful call completion. Based on our model we have conducted simulations involving context aware and non-context aware routing scenarios. The results indicate that the context aware routing outperforms other conventional request-routing techniques. The work presented here can impact routing algorithms, as well as address problems related to enterprise staffing and temporal variation of context for the agent


Considerable popular, academic and policy debate surrounds the alleged decline in cooking skills within contemporary society, the factors influencing domestic food practices and the impact upon diet and health. Often regarded as a global phenomenon, it appeared pertinent to undertake a cross-cultural comparative analysis and compare current domestic food practices in Britain with France. France was selected because, while it shares many similarities with Britain, it possesses a radically different food culture.
The research drew on a range of perspectives and disciplines and the first stage of the fieldwork involved interviewing members of the public in both countries about who cooks what, how, when and why. The second stage asked 'experts' within the policy domain to comment on the emerging narrative and discuss the implications of any 'culinary transitions' for policy development.
Both countries have witnessed changes in food supply, and combined with the demands of modern life, have resulted in a decline in cooking. However, food, cooking and eating remains symbolically more significant to French people's cultural identity. A powerful culinary discourse was widely celebrated and frequently articulated by the State to underpin France's national identity. Such attachment to a deep rooted culinary culture has acted as a bulwark against globalising tendencies within the food system.
Food related policy in France has supported French food and a 'traditional' daily model of three highly structured meals, often consumed in the company of others. In Britain, uncoordinated policies to promote healthier diets, lifestyles and occasionally cooking have occurred but with little focus on culture. The situation in Britain now demands a strategic approach supported via the state, the community and an understanding of how cultural practices, including the ability to cook, underpin how people make the choices they do from their food environment.


The control of biomechanical processes in the tissue-implant interface and thermal changes created by friction or inflammatory processes in the implant and its environment represent the key validating processes of the postimplanting process. It is crucial for a patient and their health to minimize the invasiveness of the temperature measuring processes and the inner mechanical stress in the implant-tissue interface. For the purpose of these measurements, amorphous magnetic glass-coated microwires are the most suitable. Compared with other sensors, such as radio frequency identification sensors, the microwires have a significant advantage due to their dimensions (~2 cm × 50 μm) (because of which the sensor almost does not interfere with the inner implant structures), their production is relatively cheap, and only ~ 20 mm microwire is needed for the functional sensor. This paper is concerned with the testing of more types of microwire fixation in an implant and the impact of the fixation; it deals with necessary magnetic properties of a microwire and their dependence on the temperature. Microwire made of master alloy Fe78W5B17 was created and fixed in four ways: 1) on one end; 2) on two ends; 3) in the middle; and 4) along its full length. The results show that the optimal way of fixation is the one along the full length of a microwire; however, the final signal is influenced by both, the type and volume of the applied fixation material. The highest sensitivity of the designed microwire was in the range of 120-140 °C with no fixation and only with the full length fixation, this sensitivity decreased to 40-50 °C, which is a level close to the level required for biomedical applications (35-42 °C).


BTEC courses have not always been accorded the status for which the Business and Technician Education Council would have hoped. Aspects of the climate into which the precursor BEC courses were introduced are outlined before a presentation of a selection of views on BTEC recently expressed by employers ‐ the "central engine room" which BEC's First Policy Statement identified as the target for its courses. The relationship between BTEC National and A‐levels is highlighted as a critical comparison. Some traditionalist employers are not impressed by the educationally "progressive" aspects of BTEC, but many have now gained a considerable respect for the courses.


A survey was conducted to study production, vending, and consumption of kenkey, a sour dumpling in Ghana. Information was obtained on the socio-cultural profile of the actors, processing technologies, practices which adversely affected product quality, shelf life, and quality attributes important to consumers. Kenkey production and retailing was the domain of women, and carried out mainly as a family business in home-based operations. Three types of kenkey were encountered: Ga-, Fanti-, and nsiho-kenkey. Production was dominated by the Ga and Fanti socio-cultural groups but consumption cut across all socio-cultural groups. The majority of producers processed 10–100 kg of maize per week but frequency of production varied from 1 to 10 times in a week. Unit operations in kenkey production were labour intensive and manually carried out apart from milling. The texture of kenkey was more critical to most consumers than taste and depended on a procedure called aflatalization yielding a product with a semi-sticky...