Background and objective: Non specific occupational related back pain is a common disorder affecting workers. It has multifactorial contributing factors mainly those performing physically demanding task, adopting awkward posture and carry out task is static position for longer period of time. Globally such condition caused serious burden in operation cost and productivity. The aims of study is to evaluate the relationship of sitting posture and occupational related back pain among white collar workers. Methods: This is a cross sectional descriptive types of study. Sitting posture is determined using self – administered close ended questionnaires. The questionnaires was distributed to workers experienced an occupational related back pain for the past 4 months. Results: A total of 140 respondents involve in this study and had an experience of non specific occupational related back pain. Majority of them is female (50.9%) and work as administration assistance (29.3%). Pain intensity is varies with 75.7% and 17.2% complain of moderate and severe pain respectively. There is no statistically difference (P > 0.05) between sitting posture and occupational related non specific back pain among them. Conclusion: The sitting posture was assessed through self – administer close ended questionnaires and didn't reveal their exact sitting posture at work. Relatively, occupational related non specific back pain is high among them. Preventive measures need to be considered in order to empower employees on safety at workplace.


OBJECTIVES
New Zealand lacks comprehensive statistics on work-related injury and illness, and the impact of adverse work conditions on health is therefore not known. The objective of this study was to make quantitative estimates of the annual number of deaths from work-related disease and injury in New Zealand, as well as estimate the number of incident cases of work-related disease and injury.

METHODS
Wherever possible, specific data for New Zealand were used, but, where adequate national data were lacking, a combination of New Zealand data and extrapolations from other countries was used. For work-related injury mortality and incidence, published studies and reports of the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation were primarily used. For work-related disease mortality, the likely population attributable fractions from overseas studies were mainly used, together with mortality data from New Zealand. For work-related disease incidence, both approaches were used.

RESULTS
In New Zealand about 700-1000 deaths were estimated to occur annually from work-related disease and about 100 deaths from work-related injury. About 17 000-20 000 new cases of work-related disease occur annually and about 200 000 work-related accidents result in claims made to the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite their imprecision, these conservative estimates indicate the burden of work-related death, disease, and injury in New Zealand. The estimates by gender, industry, and disease types provide useful information for policy priorities.


Background : The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012 released that 26,4 % of world population suffer from hypertension. One of the contributory factors to blood pressure is stress. The level of blood pressure can be reduced by lowering down the stress level. A non-pharmacology effort to decrease stress level is through relaxation techniques such as back massage and dhikr. Objective : The aim of this research was to reveal the influence of back massage and dhikr to the level of stress of hypertensive patient. Method : This research applied quasi experiment design by using pretest-posttest intervention with control group. The samples of this research were 60 respondents divided to 30 respondents as intervention group and 30 respondents as control group. The intervention group given was a back massage and dhikr as well as anti-hypertension therapy for 3 days consecutively while the control group was only given anti-hypertension therapy. Mann-Whitney test was used to analyze the influence of combination therapy. Result : Test normality using Shapiro Wilk with p=0,012, which means the data is not normally distributed.Wilcoxon test for the influence of the intervention group with p value of 0,008. Back massage and dhikr was proven to decrease the level of stress (p=0,011) by Mann Whitney test in two groups. Conclusion : Back massage and dhikr was proven to significant decrease the level of stress. Decrease stress that occurs is a positive effect of the combination of relaxation . In the next step is expected to decrease stress will affect also to a decrease in blood pressure in patients with hypertension.


A polymer is described that is conductive and stretchable, which can lead to electronics that can conform to the human body. Previous breakthroughs in stretchable electronics stem from strain engineering and nanocomposite approaches. Routes toward intrinsically stretchable molecular materials remain scarce but, if successful, will enable simpler fabrication processes, such as direct printing and coating, mechanically robust devices, and more intimate contact with objects. We report a highly stretchable conducting polymer, realized with a range of enhancers that serve a dual function: (i) they change morphology and (ii) they act as conductivity-enhancing dopants in poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS). The polymer films exhibit conductivities comparable to the best reported values for PEDOT:PSS, with over 3100 S/cm under 0% strain and over 4100 S/cm under 100% strain—among the highest for reported stretchable conductors. It is highly durable under cyclic loading, with the conductivity maintained at 3600 S/cm even after 1000 cycles to 100% strain. The conductivity remained above 100 S/cm under 600% strain, with a fracture strain of 800%, which is superior to even the best silver nanowire– or carbon nanotube–based stretchable conductor films. The combination of excellent electrical and mechanical properties allowed it to serve as interconnects for field-effect transistor arrays with a device density that is five times higher than typical lithographically patterned wavy interconnects.


The Ohio Balanced Growth Program is a voluntary, locally-driven, incentive-driven program which aims to encourage compact, nodal development patterns. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) provided support for this research to evaluate potential links between Balanced Growth-type policy, land use and development patterns, and transportation benefits. A literature review was completed to understand the existing body of knowledge regarding the connection between policy, land use, and transportation. This included a scan of Balanced Growth-type programs across the U.S. Twenty-six U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) were selected and reviewed for general geographic and policy characteristics. Land use and transportation outcome data were examined via scatterplot and linear regression across all of the MSAs. The results were evaluated broadly in light of policy frameworks in effect in each MSA, by categorizing land use policy into "tiers" based on voluntary vs. mandatory provisions, and applicability to private and public investment. Finally, a policy review was completed to understand the potential benefits of policy change at the state, regional, and local agency levels. Significant relationships were found between land use patterns, measured in terms of a sprawl composite index, and transportation outcomes for freeway lane miles, hours of delay, vehicle miles traveled, emissions, and safety. MSAs with "Tier 3" policies (mandatory, rigorous policy affecting both public and private investment) clustered together on both axes (transportation outcomes and sprawl); and MSAs within states clustered together along the sprawl score axis. Otherwise, there was no apparent pattern in the location of policy tiers along either the transportation or land use axes. Possible alternative explanations that could be evaluated in the future include overall transportation investment levels; inter-state and inter-regional travel demand; size and shape of the MSA; and market, economic and social factors. Conclusions included policy recommendations for ODOT in supporting compact, nodal development at the local, regional and state levels. Future study recommendations include pursuing future data collection, monitoring and evaluation over time.


This paper investigates an open issue related to false discovery rate (FDR) control of step-up-down (SUD) multiple testing procedures. It has been established in earlier literature that for this type of procedure, under some broad conditions, and in an asymptotical sense, the FDR is maximum when the signal strength under the alternative is maximum. In other words, so-called \Dirac uniform congura- tions" are asymptotically least favorable in this setting. It is known that this prop- erty also holds in a non-asymptotical sense (for any nite number of hypotheses), for the two extreme versions of SUD procedures, namely step-up and step-down (with extra conditions for the step-down case). It is therefore very natural to con- jecture that this non-asymptotical least favorable conguration property could more generally be true for all \intermediate" forms of SUD procedures. We prove that this is, somewhat surprisingly, not the case. The argument is based on the exact calculations proposed earlier by Roquain and Villers (2011), that we extend here by generalizing Steck's recursion to the case of two populations. Secondly, we quantify the magnitude of this phenomenon by providing a nonasymptotic upper-bound and explicit vanishing rates as a function of the total number of hypotheses.


This article provides a description of a land surface temperature (LST) data set generated (and provided in near-real-time or offline) based on infrared data from sensors onboard different geostationary (GEO) satellites: Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), and Multifunction Transport Satellite (MTSAT). Given the different characteristics of the imagers onboard each GEO platform, different algorithmic methodologies for the retrieval of LST are presented and implemented – namely the Generalized Split-Window (GSW) algorithm and the Dual Algorithm (DA) in its mono- and dual-channel forms – using semi-empirical functions that relate LST to top-of-atmosphere brightness temperatures in infrared window channels. The assumptions and physics underlying each methodology, as well as the uncertainties of LST estimates, are discussed. The formulations are trained using a data set of radiative transfer simulations for a wide range of atmospheric and surface conditions. The performance of each algorithm is then assessed by comparing its output against an independent set of simulations, suggesting that product uncertainties range from 2°C (for GSW and the two-channel algorithm) to 4°C (for the one-channel algorithm). Finally, LST retrievals from different GEO satellites are merged into a single field. In overlapping areas, the average discrepancies between LST products derived from GOES and from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard MSG are within 1°C during night-time, but may reach 3°C during daytime. Over those areas, the merged LST field is obtained as a weighted average of available LST retrievals for the same time slot, taking into account the respective error bar.


Abstract. Multiple, linear regression is employed to attribute variability in the global surface temperature to various forcing components and prominent internal climatic modes. The purpose of the study is to asses how sensitive attribution is to long-range memory (LRM) in the model for the temperature response. The model response to a given forcing component is its fingerprint and is different for a zero response time (ZRT) model and one with an LRM response. The fingerprints are used as predictors in the regression scheme to express the response as a linear combination of footprints. For the instrumental period 1880–2010 CE (Common Era) the LRM response model explains 89 % of the total variance and is also favoured by information-theoretic model selection criteria. The anthropogenic footprint is relatively insensitive to LRM scaling in the response and explains almost all global warming after 1970 CE. The solar footprint is weakly enhanced by the LRM response, while the volcanic footprint is reduced by a factor of 2. The natural climate variability on multidecadal timescales has no systematic trend and is dominated by the footprint of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The 2000–2010 CE hiatus is explained as a natural variation. A corresponding analysis for the last millennium is performed, using a Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. The Little Ice Age (LIA) is explained as mainly due to volcanic cooling or as a long-memory response to a strong radiative disequilibrium during the Medieval Warm Anomaly, and it is not attributed to the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum.


Lorant, T. 2002. Studies of Rejection in Experimental Xenotransplantation. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1211. 60 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-5476-3. One main hurdle to xenotransplantation, i.e. transplantation between different species, is the immunological barrier that the organ meets in the recipient. The aim of this thesis was to characterise xenogeneic rejection mechanisms by using the concordant mouse-to-rat heart transplantation model. Graft-infiltrating immune cells could be isolated from both rejecting and nonrejecting grafts using ex vivo propagation, a technique based on incubation of graft biopsies in culture medium for 48 hours. The numbers of recovered T lymphocytes were considerably higher in grafts undergoing cell-mediated rejection than in grafts undergoing acute vascular rejection (AVR) or in non-rejecting transplants. Thus, ex vivo propagation should be a valuable tool for further studies of cell-mediated rejection. Cytokine patterns in the grafts, as measured by a quantitative real-time RT-PCR method, showed that AVR and cell-mediated rejection are associated with an increase of both pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1 and TNF) and more specific cytokines (IL-2, IL-10, IL-12p40 and IFN). These data differed considerably from the patterns seen in the spleens of the recipients. Cell-mediated xenograft rejection was also found to be associated with a local accumulation of hyaluronan. Oral administration of xenogeneic cells stimulated a production of antibodies that could induce hyperacute rejection of cardiac xenografts when passively transferred to graft recipients. This is in contrast to several models for autoimmune diseases and allogeneic transplantation where oral administration of antigens is an effective way to induce unresponsiveness. Hence, future attempts to induce oral tolerance in xenotransplantation should be done with caution.


Platelet consumption in platelet-fibrin aggregates leading to thrombocytopenia and small vessel obstruction are major features of the hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Although thrombocytopenia has been correlated to poor prognosis, the mechanisms by which thrombocytopenia develops in HUS have not been completely elucidated. However, plausible explanations have been platelet contact with thrombogenic surfaces and/or direct contact with an aggregating agent. This article summarizes several mechanisms of platelet activation, interactions with leukocytes, chemokine release, complement activation, and antimicrobial defense. Specific mechanisms are outlined by which platelets may be activated, leading to thrombocytopenia during HUS. In diarrhea-associated HUS Shiga toxin has been shown to injure the endothelium, thus exposing the subendothelium, releasing tissue factor, and rendering the vessel wall prothrombotic. Shiga toxin also binds to and activates platelets. The toxin may activate endothelial cells and platelets simultaneously. In atypical HUS the alternative complement pathway is activated because of mutations in complement regulatory proteins. Mutated factor H does not bind to endothelium and platelets efficiently, enabling complement activation on these cells. In thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, intravascular platelet clotting occurs due to dysfunction of the von Willebrand factor (VWF) -cleaving protease ADAMTS13. Thrombi are formed by binding of platelets to ultralarge VWF multimers.


This paper presents a number of methods for finding sequential circuit output probabilities using regular expressions. Various classes of regular expressions, based on their form, are defined and it is shown how to easily find multistep transition probabilities directly from the regular expressions. A new procedure for finding steady-state probabilities is given which proceeds either from a regular expression or a state diagram description. This procedure is based on the concept of synchronization of the related machine, and is useful for those problems where synchronization sequences exist. In the cases where these techniques can be utilized, substantial savings in computation can be realized. Furthermore, application to other areas such as multinomial Markov processes is immediate.


For developing countries, the textiles and clothing industries have traditionally been an important gateway to industrialization and increased exports. With the expiration of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, the quota system originally set up through the Multifibre Arrangement was phased out. This has important implications for the allocation of export-oriented production and is likely to affect in various ways a large number of developing countries that rely heavily on such exports. Drawing on a wide range of studies as well as on original research, this volume shows that transnational corporations (TNCs) are likely to play a critical role in determining the future global production structure in these industries. First, the sourcing strategies of a small number of very large retailing companies (based in the United States, Europe and Japan) place stringent requirements on the locations in which textiles and clothes will be produced. Second, the investment strategies of large transnational producers (mostly based in East Asia) will also affect the final outcome. Foreign affiliates of such developing-country TNCs already account for the bulk of exports from many developing economies. The growing role of TNC producers is still not well understood, and more research is needed on their strategies and the impact of their international investments. As TNCs become more important at the production stage, their bargaining power increases vis-a-vis retailers in developed economies. With the removal of quotas, sourcing and investment decisions are affected more by economic fundamentals. But low labour costs alone will not be sufficient to attract investment. There is likely to be more consolidation of production into larger factories in a smaller number of locations. China and India are likely to be in a particularly strong position in this new geography of production, but various factors may also work against too much consolidation. Proximity to markets continues to play an important role for some product categories, and some producers have signalled that they will retain several production bases in order not to become too dependent on a single source country. Moreover, various trade policy measures also influence sourcing and investment decisions. Data on foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in textiles and clothing manufacturing show that China, Bulgaria, the United States, Hungary, Brazil and India attracted the largest number of such projects in 2002–2004. The removal of quotas generally means intensified competition for FDI in textiles and clothing.To become or stay competitive as host locations, countries will need to develop their ability to move away from simple assembly to "full-package" production and eventually original brand manufacture. But replicating the success of East Asia will be difficult. Key policy areas in this regard include identification of specialized niches; skills training and technological upgrading; investment in information technology; improvement of infrastructure such as ports and export processing zones; and leveraging of existing tariff preferences in the global trading system. Moreover, investment promotion agencies may identify some of the major transnational producers as key addresses for future marketing activities.


This paper considers the transient stability enhancement of a power system containing large amounts of solar and wind generation in Japan. Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster there has been an increasing awareness on the importance of a distributed architecture, based mainly on renewable generation, for the Japanese power system. Also, the targets of CO2 emissions can now be approached without heavily depending on nuclear generation. Large amounts of renewable generation leads to a reduction in the total inertia of the system because renewable generators are connected to the grid by power converters, and transient stability becomes a significant issue. Simulation results show that sodium-sulfur batteries can keep the system in operation and stable after strong transient disturbances, especially for an isolated system. The results also show how the reduction of the inertia in the system can be mitigated by exploiting the kinetic energy of wind turbines.


As agricultural options markets grow, perceptions of overpricing persist among market participants. This study tests the efficiency of corn, soybean, and wheat options by computing trading returns. Several call and put option strategies yield significant profits, but returns are influenced by movements in the futures price, and straddle trading does not lead to significant returns. The combined analysis of put, call, and straddle returns indicates that significant returns can be attributed to drifts in the underlying futures, and that the corn, soybean, and wheat options markets are efficient.


"Carine, and her vision of French Vogue, embodies all that the world likes to think of as Parisian style: a sense of chic that's impeccable and sometimes idiosyncratic and which forever lives on a moonlit street as seen through the lens of Helmut Newton."--Anna Wintour Karl Lagerfeld once said that if you close your eyes and imagine the ideal French woman, it would be Carine Roitfeld. She is a fashion visionary and a muse. Since the start of her career in the early 1990s, through her collaborations with the legendary photographer Mario Testino, Roitfeld has been credited with launching Tom Ford's career at Gucci, as well as turning "French Vogue" into one of the industry's most worshipped magazines. This elegant volume is a visual history of Roitfeld's fearless career. A daring instigator, she is known for pushing the limits with her subversive styling ideas. Featuring a selection of 250 magazine tear sheets and covers from pivotal editorial shoots and advertising campaigns, as well as intimate visual ephemera, this book gives an inside view into Roitfeld's creative thought process and sensibility. A must-have for those interested in cutting-edge fashion and femininity, this book will empower women to follow Roitfeld's lead and take risks with their personal style.


We investigated the seasonal carbonate chemistry variability within a semi-enclosed tropical mangrove lagoon in southwestern Puerto Rico. Biweekly measurements of seawater temperature, salinity, total alkalinity (TA), and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) were conducted from 2014 to 2018. We describe the possible mechanisms driving the observed variability by correlating the DIC/TA ratio with pH and Ωarg, suggesting that the mean pH (7.87 ± 0.09) and aragonite saturation state (Ωarg, 2.96 ± 0.47) of the mangrove lagoon negatively affected calcification. The measured pCO2 and DIC/TA ratios indicate that heterotrophic activity was the primary driver for persistent acidification, which reached its maximum expression during the wet season. We conclude that mangrove lagoons with limited seawater exchange and high carbon input will not mitigate ocean acidification.


It is a stylised fact that financial "repression" retards economic growth. Hence, financial liberalisation is advocated to remove the stranglehold on the economy. Financial liberalisation policy argues that deregulation of interest rate would result into a higher real interest rate which would lead to increased savings, increased investment and achieve efficiency in financial resource allocation. Past studies have reported inconclusive results regarding the interest rate effects on savings and investment. This paper examines the financial liberalisation hypothesis by employing autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling approach on Nepalese data. Results show that the real interest rate affects both savings and investment positively.


In the field of traffic monitoring systems, shadows are the main causes of errors in computer vision-based vehicle detection and classification. A great number of  research have been carried out to detect and remove shadows. However, these research works only focused on solving shadow problems in daytime traffic scenes. Up to now, far too little attention has been paid to the problem caused by vehicles' reflections in rainy conditions. Unlike shadows in the daytime, which are homogeneous gray shades, reflection shadows are inhomogeneous regions of different colors. This characteristic makes reflections harder to detect and remove. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to develop a reflection detection and removal method from single images or video. Reflections are detected by determining a combination of L and B channels from LAB color space and H channel from HSV color space. The reflection removal method is performed by determining the optimal intensity of reflected areas so that they match with neighbor regions. The advantage of our method is that all reflected areas are removed without affecting vehicles' textures or details.


Remote laboratories using real equipments for engineering studies is becoming popular in recent time. Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden has pioneered developing remote laboratories through VISIR project and its collaboration with other universities. Active control of sound and vibration is one area in which BTH has substantial research background and provides courses like adaptive signal processing, sound and vibration analysis, optimum signal processing and so on. The fact that these courses need extensive use of real hardware and equipments in laboratory and lack of remote laboratory for such courses encouraged development of remote active noise control (ANC) laboratory. In this thesis, development and usage of prototype for remote ANC laboratory is discussed. The remote laboratory is aimed at performing all the general steps in ANC experiment, like design, implementation of algorithm and configuration of hardware system. The prototype development has three important steps i.e. selection of appropriate hardware that suits remote ANC system, software development for measurement and equipment server and remote development environment that helps web-based debugging. In addition to ANC experiments the remote laboratory presented can be used for a wide variety of courses both at university level and high school level.


In visual journalism, the adoption of new technologies often leads to renegotiation of normative boundaries, and the case of 360° video is no exception. Two normative paradoxes emerge in journalists' attempts to deploy 360° video to provide emotionally engaging and factually relevant content. The first paradox is that the 360° view is considered to provide a more accurate representation of events, but the viewer's freedom to choose the field of view can lead to a less accurate picture of the story. The second paradox is that, by manipulating authentic imagery in the pursuit of more accurate and objective reporting, journalists compromise on traditional notions of accuracy and objectivity. These paradoxes push visual journalism away from the "as is" and toward the "as if," detaching visual journalism from its naturalistic claims. This leads to increasingly blurred boundaries between journalism and other communication practices such as advertising and propaganda.


During the Pliocene, along the Apennines front of Southern Italy (Acerenza area), a sector of the wedge-top basin hosted shallow-marine siliciclastic-carbonate (-bioclastic) sedimentation. Sediments consist of mixed arenites and rudites forming an up to 30 m thick unit. Based on the recognition of textural features, sedimentary structures, and degree of segregation between siliciclastic and bioclastic particles, facies analysis revealed 10 facies grouped into 5 associations. They suggest the occurrence of either wave or current dominated environments, showing different degrees of heterolithic segregation between siliciclastic and bioclastic particles. The depositional system was characterised by a gentle sloping profile irregularly undulated by syndepositional gentle folds. Waves dominated the shallowest areas of the mixed system and the terrigenous fraction derived mainly from wave erosion of substrate (arenaceous) rocks. These areas were located at the top of anticlines at depths corresponding to that of an upper shoreface sector of a classic coastal profile. The bioclastic fraction derived from the fragmentation of an in situ heterozoan skeletal-carbonate factory. Almost constant waves activity prevented segregation of the siliciclastic and bioclastic fractions in the lower shoreface zones. In relatively deeper environment of the mixed system (offshore transition), persistent unidirectional currents dominated, with development of tide-influenced 2D and 3D dunes. Repeated oscillations of the water column in the sheltered coastal areas produced modulation of current velocity favouring segregation of the heterolithic fractions along the dune foresets. Finally, in the deepest sector of the system (offshore), pervasive bioturbation dominated causing unsegregation of the siliciclastic and bioclastic fractions.


PSPICE circuit parameters of the blue laser diodes grown on wurtzite AlGaInN multiple quantum well structures were extracted directly from the three level rate equations. The relevant optical gain parameters were separately calculated from the self-consistent multiband Hamiltonian. The resulting equivalent circuit model for a blue laser diode was schematically presented, and its modulation characteristics, including the pulse response and the frequency response, have been demonstrated by using a conventional PSPICE.


Utilizing the sulfur-containing gases of garlic as probes, we investigated the gut versus mouth origin of odoriferous breath gases. Five individuals ingested 6 g of garlic, and sulfur gases in mouth, alveolar air, and urine samples were measured. The mouth normally contained low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol, and dimethyl sulfide. Immediately after garlic ingestion, transient high concentrations of methanethiol and allyl mercaptan and lesser concentrations of allyl methyl sulfide (AMS), allyl methyl disulfide, and allyl disulfide were observed. With the exception of AMS, all gases were present in far greater concentrations in mouth than alveolar air, indicating an oral origin. Only AMS was of gut origin as evidenced by similar partial pressures in mouth, alveolar air, and urine. After 3 h, AMS was the predominant breath sulfur gas. The unique derivation of AMS from the gut is attributable to the lack of gut and liver metabolism of this gas versus the rapid metabolism of the other gases. Breath odor after garlic ingestion initially originates from the mouth and subsequently from the gut.


The crustal structure of the continent-ocean transition zone in the South Atlantic salt basins is poorly understood. Current interpretations place the limits of oceanic crust at the distal salt limits, with sub-salt crust consisting of rifted continental crust and, in some versions, varying amounts of exhumed mantle. Plate reconstructions that map these limits of oceanic crust onto appropriate-age restorations show poor geometric fits, with unexplained gaps and overlaps. One possible reason for the poor fits is that the distal salt limits are not the real limits of oceanic crust. In this paper we investigate this option by mapping rift basins and seaward-dipping reflectors whose seaward edges mark significant structural boundaries as much as 300 km inboard of the distal salt limits. We interpret these boundaries, which match geometrically in a salt-age (Aptian) plate reconstruction, to be the limits of oceanic crust. We suggest that salt was deposited as seafloor spreading commenced and that, as the South Atlantic opened, salt flowed over the ridge axis, sealing off the extrusive component of oceanic crust, resulting in formation of intrusive oceanic crust. Seafloor spreading eventually broke through the thinning salt, forming breakthrough volcanoes preserved today as basement ramps at the distal salt limits. These ramps formed diachronously, so the distal salt limits are not isochrons, explaining the poor fit of these features in plate reconstructions.


Students of American administrative law often notice a striking anomaly in judicial deference to agency decisions: Judges are experts in interpreting statutes yet give great deference to agencies' legal interpretations, whereas judges closely review agencies' policy determinations despite the agencies' superior expertise and accountability.1 Scholars and judges have long noted this anomaly, observing that one might expect precisely the opposite - that courts would review questions of law de novo but generally defer to agencies' policy decisions.2 After all, why should courts give substantial deference to the statutory interpretations of agencies when statutory interpretation is a core judicial function?3 Conversely, why should unelected judges exercise a strict standard of review over policy decisions made by agencies when agencies are subject to political pressures from the two elected branches of American government?4 This Note offers one explanation of the anomaly through a comparative analysis of American, British, and Australian political institutions. The anomaly is conspicuously absent in the United Kingdom and Australia.3 Judges in those countries give no deference to administrative interpretations of law but grant substantial deference on policy decisions.6 One important factor underlying this dichotomy is that the emergence of the administrative state has generated more significant institutional tensions in the United States than in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the British and Australian parliamentary systems, the executive and the legislature are functionally fused: the Prime Minister controls both government as well as Parliament.7 As a result, there are no interbranch power struggles over control of the administrative state. In contrast, American administrative agencies are often caught in a tug-of-war between the President and Congress.8 Furthermore, unlike the unitary executives of both Australia and the United Kingdom, the American Executive is bifurcated between the President and the administrative agencies.9 Therefore, the American system is also more prone to intra-Executive discord than are the British and Australian systems, where executive power is more consolidated. Thus, the American anomaly has its origins in the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers and the difficulties of applying our three-branch system of checks and balances to a fourth branch - the administrative state. The framers of the U.S. Constitution devised an ingenious system of checks and balances between the three branches of government. However, the framers did not envision the massive growth of the administrative state. The British and Australian legal systems were able to assimilate the administrative state with less complexity, in that administrators are situated squarely under the control of the executive.10 As a result, the United Kingdom and Australia have largely avoided the contentious issues of accountability and deference that plague American administrative law.11 The principal difference between the American system on the one hand and the two parliamentary systems on the other hand is the issue of electoral accountability. Voters in the United Kingdom and Australia know whom to hold accountable for administrative action: the party in power. American voters, in contrast, cannot attribute the blame or credit for administrative action quite as clearly: is Congress primarily responsible - since it passed the relevant legislation - or is the President responsible, since the Executive implements the legislation? The seemingly inconsistent American deference doctrines for questions of law and policy actually represent rational judicial responses to imbalances created by the unanticipated growth of a fourth branch in a three-branch system of checks and balances. The resulting institutional tensions inherent in American administrative law cannot be resolved by current judicial doctrines alone. …


Variability of large-scale and regional South Atlantic circulation is investigated using TOPEX/POSEIDON sea level observations. Interannual variations are identified from empirical orthogonal functions of gridded sea level fields, year-to-year fluctuations of root-mean-square sea level variability, and variability of Agulhas eddies evaluated from the along-track data. Two modes of variability are identified. A basin-scale mode indicates that sea level in the eastern South Atlantic underwent a transition from a state of high sea level and enhanced gyre-scale geostrophic circulation in 1993 and 1994, to a state of lower sea level and more sluggish circulation in 1996. The dominant mode of basin-scale zonal wind has the same temporal signature, suggesting a link between the observed variation of gyre-scale circulation and the regional wind forcing. Time variations of this mode also coincide with a transition from a broad Agulhas eddy corridor observed in 1993 and 1994 to a narrower corridor observed in 1996. The input of salt and vorticity to the South Atlantic subtropical gyre via Agulhas eddies may therefore be partially controlled by interannual variations of the wind-forced, large-scale circulation. A second mode isolates interannual variations in the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence region. During 1993, eddy variability along the Brazil Current extension was relatively strong and variability along the continental slope was weak. The opposite pattern was observed in 1995. These variations may be related to interannual variations of the latitude of the confluence. While variations associated with both modes are smaller than those observed on seasonal timescales, these interannual variations contribute significantly to the total South Atlantic variability.


The modern concept of the wealth of nations emerged by the early twentieth century. Capital embodied in people—human capital—mattered. The United States led all nations in mass postelementary education during the "human-capital century." The American system of education was shaped by New World endowments and Republican ideology and was characterized by virtues including publicly funded mass education that was open and forgiving, academic yet practical, secular, gender neutral, and funded and controlled by small districts. The American educational template was a remarkable success, but recent educational concerns and policy have redefined some of its "virtues" as "vices."


In distributed training of deep neural networks, parallel minibatch SGD is widely used to speed up the training process by using multiple workers. It uses multiple workers to sample local stochastic gradients in parallel, aggregates all gradients in a single server to obtain the average, and updates each worker's local model using a SGD update with the averaged gradient. Ideally, parallel mini-batch SGD can achieve a linear speed-up of the training time (with respect to the number of workers) compared with SGD over a single worker. However, such linear scalability in practice is significantly limited by the growing demand for gradient communication as more workers are involved. Model averaging, which periodically averages individual models trained over parallel workers, is another common practice used for distributed training of deep neural networks since (Zinkevich et al. 2010) (McDonald, Hall, and Mann 2010). Compared with parallel mini-batch SGD, the communication overhead of model averaging is significantly reduced. Impressively, tremendous experimental works have verified that model averaging can still achieve a good speed-up of the training time as long as the averaging interval is carefully controlled. However, it remains a mystery in theory why such a simple heuristic works so well. This paper provides a thorough and rigorous theoretical study on why model averaging can work as well as parallel mini-batch SGD with significantly less communication overhead.


The loss from natural disasters is extensive. Earthquakes, windstorms, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and insect infestations have caused the deaths of nearly three million people, and the injury or displacement of more than 800 million over the past 20 years. Knowing this, National Academy of Sciences president Frank Press, in a speech at the 1984 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, called for an international effort to reduce devastation. The United Nations General Assembly has now declared the 1990s as the Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction and has encouraged member countries to form national committees. The United States Committee (led by Dr. Richard E. Hallgren, executive director of the American Meteorological Society) hopes that the decade will become a tool in educating the general public and lawmakers as to available hazard reducing methods. Disaster resistant construction, retrofit techniques, land planning, erosion control, reforestation, dam and levee construction, and early warning systems are all available, but not always employed due to economics, politics, or ignorance.


Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) ingestion on muscle damage and inflammation during the first two weeks of a novice resistance training (RT) program. Methods: This study was a placebo-controlled, double-blind design. Forty-one healthy untrained males between the ages of 18 and 28 years consumed 2,000 mg/d of either DHA or corn oil (PCB) for 44 days including a 28 day loading period. Serum fatty acids were analyzed to determine treatment efficacy. During the 17 day training period, an acute eccentric exercise bout was implemented followed by a full-body RT regimen thrice weekly. Six fasted blood draws (days 1, 2, 4, 7, 12, and 17) during this exercise period were analyzed for creatine kinase (CK) and C-reactive protein (CRP). Maximum isometric strength (ISO) of the elbow flexors, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and range of motion (ROM) were measured on day 1 prior to exercise and also on days 2, 3, 4, 7, 12, and 17. Results: The CK response and the area under the curve (AUC) analysis for DOMS trended to decrease in the DHA group in comparison to placebo (p=0.0925 and p=0.0536, respectively). Treatment showed no effect on CRP levels. DHA supplementation significantly increased serum DHA by 380% as a proportion of total fatty acids (p<0.0001). Conclusion: This study does not demonstrate convincing benefits of DHA ingestion to recovery from a new resistance exercise program but does suggest a need for further investigation.


This research study is a critical analysis of the law relating to mortgage repossessions. The main focus is on residential mortgages, where one charge has been granted by the occupiers of the residence. Buy to let mortgages are commercial loans secured on land and therefore fall outside the scope of the study. In order to analyse mortgage repossessions, it is important to study the Law of Mortgages which consists of how it may be defined, the types of mortgages and the formalities for registration.The study focusses on the rise of repossessions during the years 2011-2014 and the legalities surrounding this area. The statistics can be correlated to the law in place during a particular period. This in turn, allows for an evaluation of whether the existing laws in place are adequate. In relation to this assessment various social issues impact on the statistical data. This data may be considered alongside the economic data and the law in place in order to achieve a conclusion.It is important to analyse the law and how the courts apply the law in relation to both the mortgagor and mortgagee. It is also necessary to consider the rights of any occupier who is not a party to the mortgage but who may nonetheless possess certain rights in relation to the mortgaged property. A combination of statutory and non-statutory guidance has shaped this area of law. The impact the Human Rights Act 1998 has had in this context will also be considered.The study involves an exposition of statutory provisions and key cases relevant in this area. Whilst certain common law principles remain crucial in respect of the law which governs domestic mortgage repossessions, various legislative measures and extra-statutory guidelines have also been introduced over time. It is an interesting and important area which will continue to develop. However, in the short term, there is still scope for some drastic change which may come in the near future.


P-wave modelling of the continent ocean transition of the East Greenland volcanic margin north of Jan Mayen Fracture ZoneThe volcanic rifted margin off Norway between the Jan Mayen and Greenland-Senya Fracture Zone is a very well explored and studied by academia and industry. The geophysical and geological data reveal important vertical and lateral variations in crustal structure and composition resulting from a complex history of rifting prior to and during the Late Cretaceous- Early Tertiary rift episodes that led to break-up and volcanic margin formation. OBS data modelling on the Voring and Lofoten margin show a high velocity body in the lower crust along and across the margin with varying thickness.The continent ocean transition off East Greenland is less well known. The existence of a conjugate volcanic feature to the Voring Marginal High at the Norwegian margin is of special interest. Gravity and magnetic data off East Greenland do not support the presence of such a feature.Although MCS and potential field data exist along the East Greenland margin, the data density is insufficient to image lateral variations in deeper structure, which can be expected from comparison with the conjugate margin off Norway.In 2003, new seismic refraction data were acquired on four profiles by RV Polarstern to investigate the deep structure of the east Greenland continental margin and its transition from continental to oceanic crust. Most transects were located in the prolongations of the fjord profiles of earlier investigations between 72°N and 76°N. Parallel to the deployment of ocean-bottom-hydrophones and seismometers, MCS data were recorded with a 3000m streamer along the 300 - 450 km long profiles. Recording units in the onshore prolongation of the seismic transects, a high resolution aeromagnetic survey and ship borne gravity measurements, yielded new information on the source of the pronounced negative magnetic anomaly that runs parallel to the shore. All recorded data are of excellent quality and provide a clear and detailed insight into the crustal structure and architecture.On the two southern profiles, 29 (30) OBS/OBH and 4 (7) Reftek land stations were deployed, and data were obtained with 100 to 180km offsets. The first breaks from deep sea recording stations are mostly clear, while from recording stations on the shelf the data are more ambiguous. On both profiles, the data indicate a complex continent ocean transition zone.Preliminary results of p-wave modelling of the profile in the prolongation of the Godhab Golf show a basement high, which almost reaches the seafloor close to the coast. The thickness of the continental crust is 19 km, while the thinned oceanic crust has a thickness of only 3 to 4 km. Beneath the transition zone, a lower crustal body with velocities of 7 km/s extends to a thickness of up to 9 km, which is direct evidence of rift-related magmatism.The standard corrected aeromagnetic data show high frequency variations in the area of the almost 50 km wide negative anomaly close to the coast of the Godhab Golf. The anomalys position correlates with the basement high derived from the seismic refraction data, and the high frequency changes in the magnetic field suggest the presence of shallow dykes in the basement high.


This report examines the possible evolution of emissions of primary particulate matter in Europe up to 2020 as a consequence of further economic development and progressing implementation of emission control legislation, in particular of the Protocols that also influence primary emissions of PM. Furthermore, it explores the potential for further PM emission reductions through extensions of the existing protocols (i) to additional countries, (ii) by stricter emission limit values, and (iii) to other sectors.

Based on the implementation of the RAINS model as it was used for the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE) program of the European Commission, the report analyses three emission control cases: (i) the situation in the year 2000, (ii) the current legislation case for 2020, and (iii) a case with further control measures.

Results are presented for three groups of countries: (i) the 15 old Member States of the European Union, Norway and Switzerland, (ii) the 10 new Member States, and (iii) the other countries in Europe including the European area of Russia and Turkey.

The analysis concludes that primary emissions of PM are expected to decline in the future due to current legislation, between 2000 and 2020 by approx. 40-45 percent in the EU-25 and by 8-9 percent in the non-EU countries. Tightened emission limit values in a potential revision of the Heavy Metals and Gothenburg Protocols would have a relatively small effect on total PM emissions in 2020, especially if the protocols would not receive ratifications from additional Parties. In the EU-25, PM2.5 emissions would decline in 2020 at maximum by an additional 7 percent if the most advanced technical measures were implemented.

A significantly larger reduction potential could be harvested through ratification and subsequent implementation of the Heavy Metals and Gothenburg Protocols by additional Parties. This could reduce PM2.5 emissions in the non-EU countries by up to 25 percent in 2020 compared to the current legislation situation.

While the Heavy Metals and Gothenburg Protocols contain obligations for PM emissions from certain emission sources, in 2020 the majority of PM emissions is expected to originate from sources for which these protocols do not specify emission limit values. For the EU-25, about 80 percent of the identified technical potential for further PM reductions emerges from sources that are not covered in the Protocols. In the non-EU countries, more than 60 percent of the technical reduction potential relates to these sources. Approximately two thirds of this technical reduction potential from the non-protocol sectors emerge from small non-industrial combustion sources, especially wood and coal stoves.


This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of what may be termed pedagogy-driven corpus-based research; that is, research which is situated at the intersection of language description, pedagogical grammar, and pedagogical materials evaluation (e.g. Kennedy, 1992; Owen, 1993; Hunston & Francis, 1998; Harwood, 2005; Romer, 2004, 2005). The paper is based on an ongoing study of conditional sentences in the British National Corpus and examines the representation of the typology used in a number of English language teaching (ELT) coursebooks, with reference to a random sample of 1,000 if-sentences from the written sub-corpus of the BNC. The paper reports on the frequency of the ELT types in the sample and outlines the cases that the ELT typology does not cover. It also focuses on the use of modality and modal expressions, as well as what ELT treats as 'special cases', such as 'if + Past tense' with past time reference, and (semi-)fixed expressions (e.g. if any, if not, if so). Overall, current ELT coursebooks essentially use the typology in Logic (real, counterfactual and hypothetical), which they term first, second and third types respectively, with the addition of two more types, zero and mixed. In addition, they adopt a restricted (and restricting), if not naive, approach to modality, in that only central modals feature in the definitions and examples for each type. Normally, ELT materials present specific combinations of verb forms and modals in the two clauses, as well as the time reference and attitude to likelihood that each combination, rather than each clause, expresses. That is, they instruct learners what combinations of tense-aspect marking and modal auxiliaries to use in the protasis and apodosis, as well as what attitude to possibility and time reference each resulting combination expresses. They also outline 'special cases' which the ELT typology presumably does not cater for. A number of studies have reported that the ELT typology fails to account for a large number of attested if-conditionals, and provides learners with a narrow and inaccurate view of if-conditionals (Hwang, 1979; Maule, 1988; Fulcher, 1991; Wang, 1991; Ferguson, 2001). The study findings corroborate these conclusions, while providing more detailed quantitative information. However, this study differs from those cited above in two respects. It adopts a modular approach to analysis; that is, the if-clause and main clause of the conditionals in the sample were annotated manually for, on the one hand, the tense-aspect marking of the main verb and the modal expressions, and, on the other, the modality marking and time reference. Also, the study examines the ELT typology on its own terms, and distinguishes four levels of inclusion, determined on the basis of the information given in a sample of ten coursebooks for advanced learners. Previous pilot examinations of ten ELT coursebooks for upper-intermediate and advanced learners published between 1998-2002 (Gabrielatos, 2003a,b, 2004) showed that even if no distinctions were made on the basis of the semantic/pragmatic relation holding between the two clauses, and even if the typologies given in all ten coursebooks were conflated into an inclusive one, this typology would only account some 44% of the cases found in the sample. The introduction of the mixed type does not seem to be an educationally sound decision, as this type showed a mere frequency of 1.5% in the sample, and it would become obsolete if a more data-based approach to a pedagogical typology were adopted. The distinction between the traditional first type and the newly introduced zero type, too, proves to be unnecessary and confusing, as the difference between the two has nothing to do with the presence/absence or nature of modalization in the two clauses. Rather the distinction is one of time reference; specifically, the distinction is between timelessness (zero) and future reference (first). It seems educationally sound, then, to conflate the two in one category, corresponding to what Quirk et al. (1985) term open conditionals. One of the most significant limitations of the ELT typology, arguably inherited from the typology in Logic which it is based on, is that it distinguishes types only in terms of modality marking and time orientation. More specifically, it ignores the category of conditionals termed indirect conditionals (Quirk et al., 1985), speech act conditionals (Sweetser, 1990), or pragmatic conditionals (Athanasiadou & Dirven, 1997). This paper will examine current editions of the same coursebooks (when applicable) or current coursebooks of the same type and level as those used in the pilot studies. It will report on any adaptations in their treatment of conditionals - thus also examining to what extent ELT coursebooks seem to become informed of corpus findings. It will also provide a more detailed analysis, which also takes account of the semantic/pragmatic relation between the two clauses. The paper will conclude that the present treatment of if-conditionals in the ELT coursebooks examined is characterised by the following basic shortcomings: a. It provides learners with an incomplete, and in some cases distorted, picture of if-conditionals, in terms, on the one hand, of their morphosyntactic patterns and modality marking, and, on the other, the link between morphosyntax and the semantic/pragmatic relation between the clauses. b. It tends to overwhelm learners with long lists of 'special cases' or 'exceptions' (when rules of some description are given), or by offering a piecemeal account of possible combinations without showing how they may fit a coherent framework. c. It potentially limits the learners' language production by restricting their repertoire to a small number of pre-fabricated combinations of protasis and apodosis, which, in addition, may not be among the most frequent ones.


Pelagic Cretaceous sediments, deposited in a range of palaeotectonic and palaeogeographic settings, from continents to oceans, are commonly black and bituminous. 3 particular time-envelopes define the major occurrences of such facies: late Barremian-Aptian-Albian, the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary and, to a lesser extent, the Coniacian-Santonian. These intervals define the duration of so-called Oceanic Anoxic Events during which global marine waters were relatively depleted in oxygen, and deposition of organic matter, derived from both terrestrial and planktonic sources, was widespread. Cretaceous OAEs correlate closely with transgressions, and such a correlation exists throughout the stratigraphical column. Flooding of land-masses is thought to have transported much terrestrial plant material seawards; the progressive increase in shelf-sea area is thought to have stimulated production of marine plankton. Bacterial consumption of this organic matter favoured the development of poorly oxygenated mid-to late Cretaceous waters in which many of the characteristic facies of the Period, including glauconitic sandstones and phosphatic chalks, were deposited.


Accumulation of opportunistic pathogenic bacteria in the aquatic environment may lead to the changes in the structure of the surface cover microbiocenosis as well as the fish intestinal tract. In its turn, it causes the growth of pathological processes in the fish organism, reduces the barrier functions of tissues and mucus and, as a consequence, may induce the spread of bacterial infections. Thus, assessing the state of fish organism, it is necessary to take into account the analysis of the epizootic situation in water (i.e. presence of infectious and invasive diseases of fish, death of fish) as well as condition of the skin, gills and gastrointestinal tract. The results of bacteriological studies of washes from the skin, gills and intestines showed that in the conditions of farming among rainbow trout of different age groups, E. coli, low fermented E. coli, Enterobacter spp., Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus spp., Flavibacterium spp., Enterococcus spp. and Citrobacter spp. For the purposes of determining the sensitivity of isolated cultures to antibacterial drugs, it was found that Enterobacteriaceae are sensitive to enrofloxacin, cotrimoxazole, doxacillin, chloramphenicol, gentamicin, ceftriaxone, cefoperazone, ceftazidime and cefpiromycin and resistant to oxytetracycline, amoxicillin and ampicillin sulbactam. E. coli also demonstrated resistance to amoxicillin and cefpirome and sensitivity to enrofloxacin, oxytetracycline, cotrimoxazole, doxacillin, chloramphenicol, ampicillin sulbactam, gentamicin, ceftriaxone, cefoperazone, ceftazidime. Klebsiella pneumoniae was resistant to enrofloxacin, amoxicillin and ampicillin sulbactam, while Flavobacteriaceae were resistant to amoxicillin and ampicillin sulbactam and sensitive to all other antibacterial drugs.
Key words: rainbow trout, microflora, skin, gills, intestines, antibacterial agents, resistance, sensitivity.


Formation of broad plasma depletions (BPDs) at night in the equatorial F region is understood in association with plasma bubbles. However, we report BPDs that do not show a connection with bubbles. The characteristics of BPDs are investigated using the observations of the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite on 31 December 2008, 28 July 2010, and 1 February 2011. On those days, BPDs are detected in the longitude regions where C/NOFS did not detect bubbles prior to the detection of BPDs. The coincident C/NOFS and radar observations over Jicamarca in Peru show the occurrence of BPDs at the time when backscatter echoes are absent and at the height below backscatter echoes. These observations indicate that bubbles are not a prerequisite for those BPDs. The detections of those BPDs can be explained by the uplift of the equatorial F region peak height above the satellite orbit.


In recent years, M&A litigation has experienced a dramatic increase, culminating with a peak in 2015, when over 96% of publicly announced mergers were challenged in a shareholder lawsuit. A large number of these lawsuits were frivolous and vexatious, since most claims were filed by plaintiffs' attorneys just to extract some fees with little effort. Some abusive practices emerged, signalling an alarming exploitation of the system. One scheme that plaintiffs' attorneys put in place was the disclosure-only settlement. There, the stockholders obtained some modest supplemental disclosures, the plaintiff's attorneys got significant fee awards from the defendant directors and the defendant directors secured some blanket class releases from future claims. The scheme relied upon courts' routine practice of approving any settlement, even when there is no benefit for the corporation or its stockholders. A correction became critical. At the beginning of 2016, the Delaware Court of Chancery with In re Trulia marked a doctrinal shift in the standard of judicial review for disclosure-only settlements, by requiring that supplemental disclosures deliver a "plainly material benefit" to stockholders and that any releases from liability be "narrowly circumscribed". But the approach in Trulia is not without some limitations. Whilst federal courts have soon followed Trulia with In Re Walgreen, other states have been slow and sometimes reluctant to do so.

Even if Trulia succeeds in restricting disclosure-only settlements, another tactic has arisen to replace it: the mootness dismissal – that is a voluntary dismissal coupled with the payment of mootness fees to plaintiffs' attorneys by the defendant. Data on merger litigation show that, like on a roller coaster, after a decline post Trulia, the number of litigated deals rose again in 2017. Notably, 87% of these claims were brought in a federal court and only 10% in Delaware. This trend is becoming more pronounced. A few of these lawsuits were settled; most cases were voluntarily dismissed, and plaintiffs' attorneys received a mootness fee. Clearly, plaintiffs' attorneys developed an adaptive response to the Trulia standard and devised the new scheme to replace the old stratagem. Unlike in the disclosure-only settlement cases, the mootness dismissal is without prejudice for the class, since the defendant obtains no release from future claims. Mootness fees are also on average much lower than the attorneys' fees granted in a typical disclosure-only settlement. But, apart from that, the scheme is not less detrimental to corporations and stockholders. What is more, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not explicitly allow a court to review mootness fees. Hence, in federal courts the new scheme can bypass any judicial scrutiny. This results in an additional opacity in the practice and explains the migration of cases to federal courts.

In June 2019, in House v. Akorn, a U.S. District Court in Illinois invoked its equitable powers and scrutinised the mootness fees. The judge extended the Trulia-Walgreen standard and, accordingly, ordered the plaintiffs' attorney to return the fees to the corporation. An appeal is pending before the 7th Circuit, and a landmark decision could be in the offing. We predict that the appellate court will affirm the district court's decision. Yet, the affirmation may not be enough to halt overlitigation. On the face of it, it would discourage plaintiffs' attorneys from starting a lawsuit just to extract mootness fees. But plaintiffs' attorney could continue in mootness fee practice, exploiting the lack of transparency. In fact, courts could apply Akorn only if they become aware of the mootness fee. Plaintiffs' attorneys could also revert to the scheme of disclosure-only settlements and file claims in those jurisdictions that have a more tolerant standard for these agreements.

Trulia, Walgreen and Akorn (as well as other decisions) prove that the courts are reacting and correcting the abuse of litigation. Nevertheless, these decisions need to be confirmed, implemented and complemented. A failure by Trulia and Akorn to adequately address the issues could call into question the regulation-by-litigation model adopted by U.S. corporate law. The challenge cannot be underestimated, since some commentators are already advocating for a radical shift to a pure regulatory approach, such as the Anglo-Irish code and panel-based model.

The overlitigation, with its significant costs and non-existent benefits for corporations and shareholders, is the manifestation of the crisis of a litigation system which has devolved into a non-adversarial process. We argue that such devolution is the outcome of the delayed and ineffective management – by legislatures and courts – of some conflicts of interest and of some incentives to collude in the process. But we also contend that the courts are currently addressing those conflicts, collusions and procedural gaps. The roller coaster of M&A litigation is likely to continue but, hopefully, it will be a gentler ride.


A five-center collaborative study was undertaken to develop quality control and specific interpretive criteria for susceptibility testing of Streptococcus pneumoniae against 12 antimicrobial agents. MICs were determined for 248 pneumococcal clinical isolates (with an emphasis on resistant strains) by use of the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS)-recommended broth microdilution procedure incorporating lysed horse blood-supplemented Mueller-Hinton broth. NCCLS disk diffusion testing was also performed for each isolate by using Mueller-Hinton sheep blood agar incubated in 5% CO2. Repetitive testing of S. pneumoniae ATCC 49619 with different sources and lots of media and disks allowed development of quality control ranges which encompassed approximately 95% of MIC and zone size values observed in the study. Good intra- and interlaboratory reproducibilities were seen with these testing methods and all of the drugs examined. On the basis of the results of this study, MIC interpretive criteria are proposed for 11 agents. Comparisons of MICs and disk diffusion zone sizes allowed disk diffusion zone size interpretive criteria to be proposed for five drugs and confirmed the use of the oxacillin disk test for prediction of penicillin susceptibility among pneumococci. Excessive numbers of minor-category interpretive errors precludes recommendation at this time of the disk diffusion method for testing of pneumococci against five of the drugs. Use of these proposed quality control and interpretive criteria should provide for reproducible test results and allow recognition of recently emerging resistance among pneumococcal clinical isolates.


Japan's traditional long-term employment practice, loosely termed "lifetime employment," once attracted much attention, but its fortunes have not been tracked since the 1990s. The authors use micro data from the Japanese government's Basic Survey on Wage Structure to estimate permanent full-time workers' tenure patterns in the years during and following Japan's decade-long recession. Mean tenure, they find, grew for both genders between 1990 and 2003. The main explanation for this trend was a changing relationship between tenure and the attributes of workers and firms, rather than changes in the attributes themselves—although the importance of the latter increased for some women. Beyond the tendency at the mean, the authors find substantial variation. Notably, workers who had gained employment protection under the traditional system, mostly in large firms, saw larger gains in mean tenure than did other workers. This divergence, the authors suggest, could eventually exacerbate lifetime income inequality in Japan.


Executive Overview IT organizations constantly seek technology that can lower the cost and complexity of managing ever-expanding compute environments. Toward that end, enterprises need strategies and tools that help maximize the use of every compute asset and improve operational flexibility. Virtualization enables organizations to extract value maximum value from IT assets while creating an infrastructure capable of rapidly adapting to today's dynamic business environment.


Effective initiation and execution of IS/T projects and systems has become a critical core competence for many organizations. One key to this is the influence of the senior executive responsible for IS/T, often called the Chief Information Officer (CIO). This paper explores the notions of influence and influence behaviors, top executive influence behaviors, how CIOs influence peers in the top management team, and reports the findings from an exploratory study. Contrary to some of the extant literature, the findings suggest that CIO influence can vary both in terms of how it is utilized and its effectiveness. Furthermore, CIO influence is exercised for the initiation of information systems projects, the implementation of these projects, and on overall business strategy. The paper concludes with a series of observations that summarize the findings.


Extensive qualitative & quantitative risk assessment and followed by integrity assessment (ECDA, ICDA, SCCDA, mechanical integrity, geohazard study) have currently been performed on West Java Gas Pipeline- Indonesia. Almost 780 Km length of pipeline becomes a backbone that is transmitting natural gas collected from many resources in northern part of Western Java to Jabotabek until Cilegon heavy industry areas. Result from the assessment shows that under existing working pressure around 20 Ksc, the aging pipeline (25 years of age) generally still has a very high reliability and mechanical integrity. It is expected to have a long remaining life time (> 30 years). However the right of way is constantly facing third party damage threats since it consist of various populations, densities along pipeline routes associated with illegal occupation practices caused by recent heavy urbanization. To mitigate the risk and to manage the pipeline integrity associated with this potential third party damage, various practical solutions and recommendations are proposed so that the pipeline can safely be operated.


Today's Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) only integrate the tools and knowledge of a single user and workstation. This neglects the fact that the way in which we develop and maintain a piece of software and interact with our IDE provides a rich source of information that can help ourselves and other programmers to avoid mistakes in the future, or improve productivity otherwise. We argue that, in the near future, IDEs will undergo a revolution that will significantly change the way in which we develop and maintain software, through integration of collective intelligence, the knowledge of the masses. We describe the concept of an IDE based on collective intelligence and discuss three example instantiations of such IDEs.


Graph Signal Processing generalizes classical signal processing to signal or data indexed by the vertices of a weighted graph. So far, the research efforts have been focused on static graph signals. However numerous applications involve graph signals evolving in time, such as spreading or propagation of waves on a network. The analysis of this type of data requires a new set of methods that takes into account the time and graph dimensions. We propose a novel class of wavelet frames named Dynamic Graph Wavelets, whose time-vertex evolution follows a dynamic process. We demonstrate that this set of functions can be combined with sparsity based approaches such as compressive sensing to reveal information on the dynamic processes occurring on a graph. Experiments on real seismological data show the efficiency of the technique, allowing to estimate the epicenter of earthquake events recorded by a seismic network.


Using a pure ionic liquid-assisted solid-state-like synthesis method under 80 degrees C, high quality zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods in 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium and bromide anions ionic liquids C(n)mimBr-+(-) (n = 2, 4, 6, 8) were realized. The size effect of the N-alkyl chains of ionic liquids hindered the further growth of ZnO nanorods and the aspect ratio (length/diameter, L/D) of ZnO nanorods (from 40 : 1, 20 : 1, 10 : 1, to 5 : 1) were realized by rationally tuning the length of the organic cation groups. Long octyl chains (9.93 angstrom) resulted in short ZnO nanorods (with L/D = 5 : 1), otherwise, short ethyl chains (2.53 angstrom) resulted in long ZnO nanorods (with L/D = 40 : 1). The growth mechanism of the above ZnO nanorods was mainly due to electrostatic interactions between cations of the ionic liquids and the ZnO crystal nucleus, causing the preferential growth on the 0001 directions of the hexagonal ZnO. The as-obtained short ZnO nanorods (with L/D = 5 : 1) exhibited defect-related green-yellow emission under UV excitation, and acted as effective recyclable photocatalysts during six photodegradation cycles of the organic dye molecule Rhodamine B, suggesting promising potential for environmental applications. This systematic study highlighted that the structures and morphology of ZnO nanomaterials could be controllable via specifically varying the molecular structure of 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium cation-based ionic liquids, and then with the tuned photocatalytic properties and optical and electronic functions of them.


The remarkable development and refinement of the Cre-loxP system coupled with the nonstop production of new mouse models and virus vectors have impelled the growth of various fields of investigation. In this article, I will discuss the data collected using these genetic tools in our area of interest, giving specific emphasis to the identification of the neuronal populations that relay leptin action in reproductive physiology. A series of mouse models that allow manipulation of the leptin receptor gene have been generated. Of those, I will discuss the use of two models of leptin receptor gene reexpression (LepR(neo/neo) and LepR(loxTB/loxTB)) and one model of leptin signaling blockade (LepR(flox/flox)). I will also highlight the differences of using stereotaxic delivery of virus vectors expressing DNA-recombinases (Flp and Cre) and mouse models expressing Cre-recombinase. Our findings indicate that leptin action in the ventral premammillary nucleus is sufficient, but not required, for leptin action in reproduction and that leptin action in Kiss1 neurons arises after pubertal maturation; therefore, direct leptin signaling in Kiss1 neurons is neither required nor sufficient for the permissive action of leptin in pubertal development. It also became evident that the full action of leptin in the reproductive neuroendocrine axis requires the engagement of an integrated circuitry, yet to be fully unveiled.


Transparent laminates are widely used for body armor, goggles, windows and windshields. Improved understanding of their deformations under impact loading and of energy dissipation mechanisms is needed for minimizing their weight. This requires verified and robust computational algorithms and validated mathematical models of the problem. Here we have developed a mathematical model for analyzing the impact response of transparent laminates made of polymeric materials and implemented it in the finite element software LS-DYNA. Materials considered are polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC) and adhesives. The PMMA and the PC are modeled as elasto-thermo-visco-plastic and adhesives as viscoelastic. Their failure criteria are stated and simulated by the element deletion technique. Values of material parameters of the PMMA and the PC are taken from the literature, and those of adhesives determined from their test data. Constitutive equations are implemented as user-defined subroutines in LS-DYNA which are verified by comparing numerical and analytical solutions of several initial-boundary-value problems. Delamination at interfaces is simulated by using a bilinear traction separation law and the cohesive zone model. We present mathematical and computational models in chapter one and validate them by comparing their predictions with test findings for impacts of monolithic and laminated plates. The principal source of energy dissipation of impacted PMMA/adhesive/PC laminates is plastic deformations of the PC. In chapter two we analyze impact resistance of doubly curved monolithic PC panels and delineate the effect of curvature on the energy dissipated. It is found that the improved performance of curved panels is due to the decrease in the magnitude of stresses near the center of impact. In chapter three we propose constitutive relations for finite deformations of adhesives and find values of material parameters by considering test data for five portions of cyclic loading. Even though these values give different amounts of energy dissipated in the adhesive, their effect on the computed impact response of PMMA/adhesive/PC laminates is found to be minimal. In chapter four we conduct sensitivity analysis to identify critical parameters that significantly affect the energy dissipated. The genetic algorithm is used to optimally design a transparent laminate in chapter five.


Introduction: The aim of the present study is to identify clinical, laboratory and radiological factors that can predict which patients may develop cholangitis. Methods: This is a retrospective case-control study based on patients admitted to Hamad Hospital from June'06 to November'10 with a diagnosis of AC secondary to CBD stones. The control group included patients with obstructive lithiasic jaundice not complicated by cholangitis. Both groups were compared and analysed with respect to demographics, previous medical/surgical history, laboratory investigations and surgical/endoscopic procedures. Results: The study comprised of 112 patients of 24 different nationalities. 53 patients presented with AC and 59 were admitted for management of obstructive jaundice. Although Asians had a greater prevalence of cholangitis (57.4%) compared to Middle Easterners (35.7%) and Africans (33.3%), this was not statistically significant (P=0.066). Laboratory tests significantly correlated to AC were leukocytosis (P<0.001), elevated Bilirubin (P=0.005), prolonged prothrombin time (P=0.001), elevated INR (P=0.001), elevated serum Creatinine (P=0.001) and BUN (P=0.001). In univariate analysis the logistic regression model showed that dark urine, fever, elevated WBC and BUN were strongly associated with cholangitis. Conclusions: Typical clinical signs of acute cholangitis, history of chronic liver disease, together with certain biochemical criteria are strongly associated with occurrence of acute lithiasic cholangitis. A larger prospective study may probably confirm these findings and help create a reproducible and simple predictive scoring system.


Background: A significant proportion of vehicle accidents in the UK are caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel and these accidents often occur at high speeds and result in fatalities (Home & Reyner, 1995b). Research has shown that driving after 15 or more hours of wakefulness increases the risk of being involved in a sleep-related vehicle accident (Stutts et al., 2003). Further, young and elderly adults have been found to have more sleep-related accidents between midnight and 6am and between 3pm and 6pm, respectively (Summala & Mikkola, 1994). An extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB; Ajzen, 1988,1991) was used to understand the reasons why young, middle-aged and elderly adults drive while sleep impaired with a view to reducing the incidence of this behaviour. Specifically, the determinants of driving after 15 or more hours of wakefulness, between midnight and 6am and between 3pm and 6pm were explored. Methods: A preliminary study in which sleep duration and quality were measured in young, middle-aged and elderly adults established the validity of actigraphy to reliably differentiate periods of sleep and wake. After identifying the accessible beliefs underlying each specific behaviour and constructing questionnaires tailored to each age group and behaviour, the main study was conducted. Two hundred and ten young, middle-aged and elderly adults completed TPB questionnaires in relation to driving after being awake for 15 or more hours in the following week. Measures of behaviour (using both subjective and objective methods, i.. e., actigraphy) were obtained eight days later from the young adults. Additionally, the young and elderly adults completed TPB measures regarding driving between midnight and 6am and between 3pm and 6pm, respectively. The young adults provided behavioural data prospectively. The ability of anticipated regret, impulsive sensation seeking, past behaviour and gender to account for additional proportions of variance over and above the TPB was also explored. Results: The TPB explained significant proportions of variance in intention to drive after 15 or more hours of wakefulness in all three age groups. Injunctive norm was a consistent predictor in all groups. The model predicted a subjective measure of driving after 15 or more hours of wakefulness but failed to predict a more objective measure, obtained from the young adults. Both the young adults' intentions to drive between midnight and 6am and their self-reported behaviour were successfully predicted by the TPB, as were the intentions of elderly adults to drive between 3pm and 6pm. Several beliefs which discriminated those who did and who did not perform (or intend to perform) the behaviours were identified. Anticipated regret independently predicted the intentions of young adults to drive after 15 or more hours of wakefulness and between midnight and 6am, as well as the intentions of elderly adults to drive between 3pm and 6pm. The TPB failed to mediate the effect of gender on driving between midnight and 6am in the young adults. Conclusions: The TPD provided useful, but not sufficient, accounts of the determinants of intentions to drive while sleep impaired. The model was able to predict subjective measures of sleep impaired driving but failed to predict a measure based on more objective methods. This research can be used to inform interventions attempting to reduce sleep impaired driving. A number of possible behavioural change strategies are proposed based on the empirical, theory-based results obtained here.


The Soviet Union executed an apparent about-face in its traditional anti-Zionist position when the Palestine issue came before the United Nations in 1947. In addition to political support at the UN from May 1947 to May 1949, important military assistance was rendered to the Jewish Palestinian Yishuv throughout 1948 by the Eastern bloc. Toward the end of that year, however, indications of change became apparent, and the Soviet Union began criticizing Israel. This book studies the USSR's attitude toward the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the immediate post-World War II period and toward Israel in the first years of its existence, and it investigates the complex of considerations that caused the initial apparent reversal of traditional Soviet anti-Zionism. The author contends that this support for Israel contributed considerably to the evoking of Soviet Jewry's enthusiastic reaction to the establishment of the State. But this very reaction resulted in turn in Moscow changing its tactics again, since it could not allow its Jewish citizens to identify with a state outside the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit. During the few years after the Israeli War for Independence, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict was relatively low key, the USSR adopted a position of seeming neutrality between two sides--while quietly wooing the Arab nations. Ro'i examines how toward the end of the Stalin period the Jewish problem again intervened with the infamous' 'Doctor's Plot," and how early in 1953 the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel. One year later the USSR cast its first two pro-Arab vetoes in the UN Security Council, and from this point on Soviet-Israeli relations openly became a function of the increasingly cordial Soviet friendship with the Arab world.


At several ridge segments along the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the lithosphere appears to be cooled by centrally located, isolated hydrothermal fields, hundreds of meters wide, extracting as much as 1000 MW from the lithosphere and hosting very large (>106 m3) sulfide edifices. These fields are possibly fueled by subseafloor hydrothermal cells cooling and leaching the lithosphere up to a few tens of kilometers along axis. However, the detailed mechanisms by which such hydrothermal heat extraction takes place are not well constrained. It is postulated that melt focusing and preferred cooling near transforms result in a thinner lithosphere at the center of slow-spreading ridge segments. In this configuration, and with a depth of penetration controlled by brittle lithospheric thickness, the base of the hydrothermal system is not at constant depth. Here we present models of along-axis hydrothermal circulation showing that pressure gradients generated along this basal slope influence flow dynamics. We show that the size of hydrothermal cells increases with the basal slope α. For α 15°–20°, the circulation reaches steady state and is composed of a single cell with a broad recharge and a focused discharge. Although our models make several simplifying assumptions, we propose that along-axis variations in lithosphere thickness associated with the magmatic and tectonic segmentation of slow-spreading ridges should favor the formation of large and centrally located vent fields, mining heat on several kilometers along axis. We also predict that more short-lived and weaker vent fields may develop away from the segment center.


The first series tube of the gyrotrons for the 10-MW electron cyclotron resonance heating system of the stellarator W7-X was tested at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) and yielded a total output power of 0.98 MW, with an efficiency of 31% (without a single-stage depressed collector) in short-pulse operation and of 0.92 MW in pulses of 180 s (efficiency of almost 45% at a depression voltage of 29 kV). The Gaussian mode output power was 0.91 MW. The pulselength at full power (1 MW) is limited at FZK by the available power supply. At a reduced electron beam current, it is possible to operate at longer pulselengths. At an output power of 0.57 MW (electron beam current of 29 A), the pulselength was increased to 1893 s. There was no physical reason for a limitation of this pulse: The pressure increase during the pulse was less than a factor of two and ended up at a very low value in the 10-9 mbar range. The tube was delivered to Max-Planck-Institut fuumlr Plasmaphysik Greifswald for tests at full power and up to 30-min pulselength. The Gaussian mode RF output power, measured in a calorimetric load after a 25-m-long quasi-optical transmission line (seven mirrors), was 0.87 MW at a total output power of 0.92 MW in 30-min pulses. Again, no indications for a limitation in pulselength were found. The second series tube was tested in short-pulse operation and showed a strange behavior concerning a mode hopping which has not yet been understood. The third series gyrotron delivers up to now 0.65 MW at a pulse duration of 180 s. Preliminary operation of the prototype tube as a two-frequency gyrotron delivered 0.41 MW in 10-s pulses at 103.8 GHz (TE21,6 mode)


The Joint European Torus (JET) is currently undertaking an enhancement program which includes tests of relevant diagnostics with real-time processing capabilities for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Accordingly, a new real-time processing system was developed and installed at JET for the gamma-ray and hard X-ray profile monitor diagnostic. The new system is connected to 19 CsI(Tl) photodiodes in order to obtain the line-integrated profiles of the gamma-ray and hard X-ray emissions. Moreover, it was designed to overcome the former data acquisition (DAQ) limitations while exploiting the required real-time features. The new DAQ hardware, based on the Advanced Telecommunication Computer Architecture (ATCA) standard, includes reconfigurable digitizer modules with embedded field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices capable of acquiring and simultaneously processing data in real-time from the 19 detectors. A suitable algorithm was developed and implemented in the FPGAs, which are able to deliver the corresponding energy of the acquired pulses. The processed data is sent periodically, during the discharge, through the JET real-time network and stored in the JET scientific databases at the end of the pulse. The interface between the ATCA digitizers, the JET control and data acquisition system (CODAS), and the JET real-time network is provided by the Multithreaded Application Real-Time executor (MARTe). The work developed allowed attaining two of the major milestones required by next fusion devices: the ability to process and simultaneously supply high volume data rates in real-time.


The filter paper method is probably the simplest of the methods available for estimating the suction of a clay soil. The method measures soil suction indirectly by simply measuring the moisture content of a filter paper having been brought to the same suction as the soil. Calibration of representative specimens of the filter paper over a range of known suctions defines the suction-moisture content characteristic of the material. The calibration must be carried out in a closely temperature-controlled environment using various apparatus depending on the particular level of suction. There have been a number of impediments to the wider application of the filter paper method. One of these is the need to have access to a closely temperature-controlled laboratory with a range of specialist calibration apparatus. This difficulty has been exacerbated by the belief that to account for the possible variability of filter papers between boxes, even from the same production batch, representative specimens from each box require separate calibration. Based on the results of careful calibration and subsequent analysis, it appears that, provided the boxes are all from the same production batch and are purchased from the same outlet at the same time, the calibration of only one box is necessary.


One of the greatest challenges of this time is providing the world with the energy it needs to sustain human kind's current standard of living. Solar energy is the most abundant and ubiquitous renewable energy source available, and as such it holds great promises. Traditionally, the field of solar energy conversion has been dominated by solid-state semiconductor technology. However, the need for high-purity materials makes these single junction solar cells expensive and unlikely to reach cost parity with fossil energy in the near future. The dependence on high purity materials can be substantially decreased by physically separating the charge separation and transport functions of the solar cell. This vital insight stands at the cradle of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), in which a large bandgap semiconductor is sensitized by a sensitizer molecule. Producing a DSSC is a relatively simple and cheap process compared to low bandgap solid-state semiconductor cells based on silicon. Demonstration kits for home-built DSSCs are commercially available which use harmless components and colorants such as berry juices. However, the highest efficiencies, up to 11 % power conversion, are typically reached using polypyridine complexes of ruthenium as sensitizers. Unfortunately, issues related to the efficiency for the conversion of red light as well as long term stability are still associated with these complexes. This thesis describes our efforts towards using cyclometalation as a new design paradigm to address these issues. A two-step upconversion would allow the use of photons below the operational threshold set by the bandgap energy but requires new types of sensitizer. Our efforts in the design and characterization of potential dyes for this process are also described. Cyclometalated complexes contain at least one covalent carbon-to-metal bond in a multidentate ligand. The interaction between the strong sigma-donor carbon atom and the metal center affects the electronic properties of the resulting complexes, red-shifting the absorption characteristics. The red-shift of the absorption features in the standard dyes for DSSCs is typically achieved with monodentate thiocyanate ligands, which are sensitive towards decomposition processes associated with dissociation. In contrast, the polydentate nature of cyclometalated ligands make these complexes inherently long-term stable. This thesis uses experimental and theoretical tools to study the fundamental influence of cyclometalation in polypyridine-type ruthenium complexes on the electronic and photophysical properties, as well as their chemical consequences. It is demonstrated that cyclometalation is a very promising technique in the design of new sensitizer molecules. It is also concluded that extensive knowledge of the complexes' photophysical properties is a prerequisite to the de novo design of efficient systems. Finally, the possibility to use photons of energy below the operational threshold of the DSSC is explored using a two-step upconversion scheme. To study this upconversion scheme several dinuclear redox unsymmetrical ruthenium complexes have been studied in solution as well as incorporated in a DSSC, demonstrating the necessary individual processes.