Abstract Miconia (Miconia calvescens DC.) is a tropical tree species from South and Central America that is a highly invasive colonizer of Hawaii's forested watersheds. Elimination of satellite populations is critical to an effective containment strategy, but extreme topography limits accessibility to remote populations by helicopter operations only. Herbicide Ballistic Technology (HBT) is a novel weed control tool designed to pneumatically deliver encapsulated herbicide projectiles. It is capable of accurately treating miconia satellites within a 30 m range in either horizontal or vertical trajectories. Efficacy was examined for the encapsulated herbicide projectiles, each containing 199.4 mg ae triclopyr, when applied to miconia in 5-unit increments. Experimental calibrations of the HBT platform were recorded on a Hughes 500-D helicopter while conducting surveillance operations from November 2010 through October 2011 on the islands of Maui and Kauai. Search efficiency (min ha−1; n  =  13, R2  =  0.933, P< 0.001) and target acquisition rate (plants hr−1, n  =  13, R2  =  0.926, P< 0.001) displayed positive linear and logarithmic relationships, respectively, to plant target density. The search efficiency equation estimated target acquisition time at 25.1 sec and a minimum surveillance rate of 67.8 s ha−1 when no targets were detected. The maximum target acquisition rate for the HBT platform was estimated at 143 targets hr−1. An average mortality factor of 0.542 was derived from the product of detection efficacy (0.560) and operational treatment efficacy (0.972) in overlapping buffer areas generated from repeated flight segments (n  =  5). This population reduction value was used in simulation models to estimate the expected costs for one- and multi-year satellite population control strategies for qualifying options in cost optimization and risk aversion. This is a first report on the performance of an HBT helicopter platform demonstrating the capability for immediate, rapid-response control of new satellite plant detections, while conducting aerial surveillance of incipient miconia populations. Nomenclature: Miconia, Miconia calvescens DC. MICA20 Management Implications: Herbicide Ballistic Technology (HBT) is a novel application technique designed to deliver encapsulated herbicide projectiles with long-range accuracy and precision. We report on the performance of an HBT platform providing immediate control of miconia (Miconia calvescens DC.) satellite plants, detected while conducting helicopter surveillance calibrations in Hawaii's remote watersheds. Flight calibrations (n  =  13) generated efficiency parameters related to the functionality of the platform. Plant target density was a significant variable for determining search efficiency (min ha−1), target acquisition rate (plants hr−1) and herbicide use (g ae ha−1). The product of detection efficacy and treatment efficacy estimated population mortality (i.e. reduction) as another operational parameter used in simulation models to project feasibility and expected cost of different population reduction strategies based on cost optimization and risk aversion. This research is critical to our technology transfer program that includes development of the standard operating procedure for safe use of the HBT platform, which has been approved by the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawaii and approval by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture for a FIFRA Section 24c Special Local Needs registration for HBT-G4U200 with Garlon® 4 Ultra (EPA SLN Reg. No. HI-120001), with miconia listed as a target species.


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Problems in machine vision that are posed as variational principles or partial differential equations can often be solved by local, iterative, and parallel algorithms. A disadvantage of these algorithms is that they are inefficient at propagating constraints across large visual representations. Application of multigrid methods has overcome this drawback with regard to the computation of visible-surface representations. We argue that our multiresolution approach has wide applicability in vision. In particular, we describe efficient multiresolution iterative algorithms for computing lightness, shape-from-shading, and optical flow, and evaluate the performance of these algorithms using synthesized images.


Title of Thesis: A QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION-BASED LIVED EXPERIENCES OF NONAGGRESSIVE SOCIALLY ISOLATED STUDENTS Carl Robert Bencal, Master of Arts, 2003 Thesis directed by: Professor Catherine D. Ennis Department of Kinesiology Teachers perceive non-aggressive socially isolated (NASI) students to be socially estranged from a majority of their peers. Unfortunately, these students are often actively or passively removed from the social aspects of school because they demonstrate selfisolating behaviors or face the exclusionary behaviors of peers. This qualitative research examined four, fifth grade NASI students' physical education-based lived experiences. Participants were the researcher, who was also the physical education teacher, two fifth grade teachers, and 51 fifth grade students with varying degrees of peer-related social acceptance. Data were collected over an 11 week period using interviews, journal entries, and observations and analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding. Results indicated that NASI students seemed to experience elements of social estrangement while participating in collaborative learning tasks. Although NASI students, at times, appeared to be social estranged, they chose to connect with a select few close friends who helped them to feel included. A QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION-BASED LIVED EXPERIENCES OF NON-AGGRESSIVE SOCIALLY ISOLATED STUDENTS by Carl Robert Bencal Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2003


This paper reports findings from the first phase of a four-year research project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Teaching and Learning Research Programme. The major component of this project is a longitudinal study of trainee accountants, graduate trainee engineers, and newly qualified nurses in England. This critical period of introduction to professional work has not been previously studied by a longitudinal series of observations and interviews, though a number of one-off surveys have been conducted. The three professions have been chosen for three reasons: (1) they play key roles in the UK economy and public services, (2) they use contrasting approaches to professional formation and (3) the applicants have prior experience of working with them and were able to find user partners wanting to participate in the research. The accountants and engineers are formally contracted trainees, for whom employers have developed systems of organised training support. Hence we have added a second, action research, component to the study, which uses the findings of the first phase to assist our partner employers to make appropriate modifications to their first year support arrangements for new recruits. The evaluation of such modified arrangements with a new first year cohort will start in Autumn 2003, and findings from the second two-year phase of the longtitudinal study will also be too late for inclusion in this paper. Research Questions The first question comes from Eraut et al's (2000) study of mid-career professionals' learning in the workplace, while the second is a natural extension of that previous work: 1) To ascertain what is being learned, how it is being learned and the factors affecting the level and direction of learning effort; and contribute to theoretical understanding of learning in non-formal contexts. 2) To further develop research methods for investigating learning in the workplace.


Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) in south Florida is often subjected to flooding due to intense summer rainfall or tropical storms. While there has been considerable research on the response of sugarcane cultivars to high water tables, there is a lack of information on cultivar morphological adaptation to long-term flooding. An experiment was established in Belle Glade, FL to examine: (i) effects of a July-September flood on the morphological characters of cv. CP 80-1743 and CP 72-2086 and (ii) significant flood x cultivar interactions that could be used to screen sugarcane germplasm. Sugarcane leaf, stem, primary root, adventitious root, and aerenchyma development were measured in the plant cane (2003) and second ratoon crops (2005). Morphological changes in response to flooding were similar in both years, with flooding leading to a 38% reduction in leaf weight, 4 to 15 times greater adventitious root development, 108% greater aerenchyma pipe extension, and 115% greater aerenchyma pipe diameter. Both cultivars responded to flooding by producing aboveground adventitious roots at the expense of belowground primary root biomass. A significant cultivar X flood interaction on aerenchyma extension and diameter was noted. Under nonflooded conditions, CP 72-2086 produced constitutive aerenchyma more than halfway up the stalk, whereas CP 80-1743 produced aerenchyma only 10% up the stalk. Aerenchyma development up the stalk may be a useful screening tool to identify flood-tolerance in sugarcane cultivars.


Context: Dental caries is a disease of multifactorial etiology. A variety of potential predictors have been examined for the association with caries increments in longitudinal and cross-sectional studies. Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the possible relationship among salivary cariogenic microflora, buffer capacity, secretion rate, and caries experience among 6-year-old school-going children in Davangere city, India. Settings and Design: A total of 196 6-year-old school children were selected by a two-stage random sampling method. Materials and Methods: Parents were interrogated regarding sociodemographic details. Clinical examination of children was conducted to assess dental caries experience, and stimulated saliva was collected to assess S. mutans levels, lactobacilli, salivary flow, and buffering capacity of saliva. Statistical Analysis: The difference in proportions was tested using Kruskal–Wallis analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by the Mann–Whitney U-test for intragroup comparison, and the difference in mean was tested using ANOVA and independent sample t-test as necessary. Caries experience was correlated with salivary factors using Spearman's correlation coefficient. Results: Out of 196 children, 96 were boys and 100 were girls. Overall, 97 (49.49%) children were caries free (dmft, DMFT = 0) and 99 (50.51%) children presented with caries (dmft, DMFT>0). The mean dmft and dmfs score for the overall group was 3.20 and 5.43, respectively. The mean DMFT and DMFS score was 0.23 and 0.25, respectively. A highly significant correlation was seen between mean the caries score and salivary variables. Conclusions: High levels of salivary microbiological counts in correlation with the caries data stress the importance of these factors and urge the necessity of elective preventive programs in this region.


Understanding lower-crustal deformational processes and the related features that can be imaged by seismic waves is an important goal in active tectonics. We demonstrate that teleseismic receiver functions calculated for broadband seismic stations in Southern California reveal a signature of pervasive seismic anisotropy in the lower crust. The large amplitudes and small move-out of the diagnostic converted phases, as well as the broad similarity of data patterns from widely separated stations, support an origin primarily from a basal crustal layer of hexagonal anisotropy with a dipping symmetry axis. We conducted neighborhood algorithm searches for depth and thickness of the anisotropic layer and the trend and plunge of the anisotropy symmetry (slow) axis for 38 stations. The searches produced a wide range of results, but a dominant SW-NE trend of the symmetry axis emerged. When the results are divided into crustal blocks and restored to their pre–36 Ma locations, the regional-scale SW-NE trend becomes more consistent, although a small subset of the results can be attributed to NW-SE shearing related to San Andreas transform motion. We interpret this dominant trend as a fossilized fabric within schists, created from top-to-the-SW sense of shear that existed along the length of coastal California during pretransform, early Tertiary subduction or from shear that occurred during subsequent extrusion. Comparison of receiver-function common conversion point stacks to seismic models from the active Los Angeles Regional Seismic Experiment shows a strong correlation in the location of anisotropic layers with "bright" reflectors, further affirming these results.


Brown treesnakes (Boiga irregularis) are an invasive species to the island of Guam. Because they have extirpated the native forest avifauna on Guam and are a threat to other Pacifi c islands, the development of effi cient and cost-effective methods to control them is desired. We compared the effi cacy, cost, and effort required to remove brown treesnakes on 6-ha plots in forest scrub on Guam, using 2 methods: trapping and poison baiting. Toxic baits consisted of dead neonatal mice adulterated with 80-mg acetaminophen. To assess effi cacy, we used mark-recapture methods to estimate snake abundance on plots 12 days before and 12 days after treatment. We also monitored bait-take or trap success for 20 days during treatment. From 6,304 trap-nights, we recorded 801 captures of 504 snakes on 6, 6-ha plots during a 51-day period. Snake populations on plots ranged from 41 to 107 prior to treatment. Using trapping to gauge survival of marked snakes, the 2 methods (trapping and baiting) had similar effi cacies (0.05 to 0.1). Based on trapping, post-treatment population estimates ranged from 26 to 40, yielding reductions from estimated pre-treatment populations of 7 to 68% for both types of snake-removal treatments. Using post-treatment bait-take of unadulterated mice as an index of effi cacy, poisoned baiting was twice as effective as trapping in diminishing snake activity. Trapped plots had post-treatment bait-take rates similar to reference plots (75%), whereas poison-baited plots had bait-take rates of 38%, suggesting that some snakes cannot be trapped and that baiting affects a wider range of the snake population. Because of the potential for baiting to impact more snakes, this method was about 1.67 times more cost effective than trapping. If baiting were to occur via aerial drop rather than via bait stations, the economic incentive for using baiting as a control strategy would be even greater. These observations will prove useful for managers making decisions about appropriate methods for control of brown treesnake populations.


With the sheer complexity of the built environment, understanding the aspects of the building that directly impact the occupants can be prohibitively difficult. Previous methods have been largely split between low-number, high-detail methods (photo-surveys or interviews), or high-number, low-detail methods (questionnaires). This study presents an alternative to these methods; creating an online tool that represents a navigable building, enabling the occupants to freely identify any aspect of the building that they feel is important. This online tool deliberately works in a manner similar to Google Street View, taking advantage of this familiarity to reduce the learning curve and maximise immersion. Using spherical images captured with a special camera or smartphone, each space in the building is captured and then uploaded into the online tool. Whilst in the online version of their building, the respondent can navigate through the building, make unguided comments about any part of the building. Using this tool, four recently built secondary schools were imaged and online versions created. In each school, students from three ICT lessons aged between 11 and 14 explored the online version of their school and marked parts of the building that were important to them. The students were asked to follow a typical day in the school, moving from lesson to lesson and to the spaces they use at breaks. The tool collected both the movement data and the comments, allowing analysis of not just the occupant attitudes, but also the route the students take through the building. The movement data for each school was compared to the visual graph analysis of the building, showing that the movement of the students within the tool resembles patterns seen elsewhere; configurational logic with attractors. The rich data that is generated in parallel with the movement data allowed insights into the way in which the students moved through the space and what was important to them.


Aim: This study aimed to explore the clinical efficacy of Intravitreal injection of Conbercept (IVC) in Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) based on the morphological pattern on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).
Methods: In total, 111 cases (115 eyes) with DME were enrolled. They were classified into three groups based on their OCT patterns: Diffuse Retinal Thickening (DRT), Cystoid Macular Edema (CME), and Serous Retinal Detachment (SRD). All cases were treated with IVC (0.05 mg/0.01 ml). The central foveal thickness was measured using OCT. The proportion of capillary nonperfusion was assessed using OCT angiography.
Results: The 115 eyes consisted of 34 DRT, 47 CME, and 34 SRD cases. After IVC, the central foveal thickness in all the groups reduced, and the best-corrected visual acuity increased. The baseline of the DRT group was better than that of the other two groups. The SRD reaction was poor after IVC, and significant differences were found between SRD and DRT or CME. SRD showed statistical significance, but CME and SRD had no significance after 12 months. Foreign body sensation was found in 17/111 cases, conjunctival congestion in 9/111 cases, subconjunctival hemorrhage in 22/111 cases, and postoperative intraocular pressure elevation in 2/111 cases after 12 months. The size of the foveal avascular zone and total avascular area were the same or even greater in eyes with diabetic retinopathy after IVC treatment.
Conclusions: IVC is effective in all three morphological patterns on OCT with fewer complications. In this study, the DRT group showed the best effect.


Sensor fusion and virtual sensors have been extensively used in applications requiring the use of high-level abstract information derived from multiple sensory inputs, ranging from defence systems to intelligent environments. In this paper, we present distributed mechanisms for enabling virtual sensors in intelligent environments using service oriented sensor networks (SOSNs). A SOSN brings the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) into the sensor network domain, where each sensor is represented as a software service. A SOSN enhances the programmability of sensor networks by decoupling sensor deployment from application development and allows applications to dynamically discover, access and compose sensor services. In our previous work, we had proposed a framework model running inside the service layer of a SOSN for querying virtual data and on-demand creation of virtual sensors. However, the service layer of a SOSN is centralized and this leads to scalability and latency issues in large scale deployments. In this paper, we address the issues of scalability and latency and propose distributed algorithms for in-network creation and execution of virtual sensors. We also present mechanisms for monitoring data quality and provide fault tolerance techniques utilizing sensor-based approximation for coping with the loss of multiple physical sensors. These algorithms not only allow us to reap the benefits of SOSNs but also prevent potential scalability and latency issues. We also show through simulation experiments that our mechanisms require minimal involvement of the service layer and result in significantly lower latency and energy consumption as compared to the centralized stream-based approach.


Prediction and forecasting have now fully reached peace and conflict research. We define forecasting as predictions about unrealized outcomes given model estimates from realized data, and predictions more generally as the assignment of probability distributions to realized or unrealized outcomes. Increasingly, scholars present within- and out-of-sample prediction results in their publications and sometimes even forecasts for unrealized, future outcomes. The articles in this special issue demonstrate the ability of current approaches to forecast events of interest and contributes to the formulation of best practices for forecasting within peace research. We highlight the role of forecasting for theory evaluation and as a bridge between academics and policymakers, summarize the contributions in the special issue, and provide some thoughts on how research on forecasting in peace research should proceed. We suggest some best practices, noting the importance of theory development, interpretability of models, r...


The early 21st century saw Australia experience its largest and longest terms of trade boom. This paper places this recent boom in a long-run historical context by comparing the current episode with earlier cycles. While similarities exist across most episodes, current macroeconomic policy frameworks and settings are quite different to those of the past. This mitigated the broader macroeconomic consequences of the upswing and as the terms of trade decline may do likewise.


The exhibition's title, Warp and Weft, refers to the process by which threads are held in tension on a frame or loom to create cloth. Himid chose the title for its reference to Colchester's important position in the wool trade between the 13th and 16th centuries, and its complex history of race and migration that is reflected in the productive tensions of Himid's work.
Naming the Money (2004) is the largest installation to make use of Himid's 'cut-outs' that viewers can walk amongst. At Firstsite, seventy cut-outs represent African slave servants in the royal courts of eighteenth century Europe. The work features a soundtrack which gives voice to the figures, and shifts between their original African names and trades and the new names and professions imposed upon them in Europe.
The monochromatic Cotton.com (2002) is inspired by a little known act of solidarity enacted by Manchester mill workers at the time of the American Civil War (1861-64). As President Lincoln moved to abolish slavery, raw cotton supplies from the plantations to British mills dried up, resulting in mass unemployment – an event known as the Cotton Famine. Despite the high personal cost, the workers' unions passed a motion in support of Lincoln's efforts to end slavery. In Cotton.com Himid imagines a conversation carried out between labourers on both sides of the Atlantic, an exchange dependent not upon language but rather pattern. Pattern plays a key part in Himid's painterly grammar; it operates in the work as a means of non-literal communication. 'I love the language of pattern, its immense potential for movement, illusion, colour experiments and subliminal political messaging. This…is just part of the exploration of how to imply invisible influences without explanation but without slipping into the abstract. The patterns are narratives.' The work is completed by a text adapted from one written by a plantation inspector and selected for its perverse romanticisation of a woman's enforced labour.
The exhibition also includes the series Negative Positives: The Guardian Archive (2007 – 2016). For ten years, Himid has collected every daily edition of The Guardian, her newspaper of choice, building up a comprehensive archive. For Negative Positives the artist selects pages in which photographs of black politicians, athletes and celebrities appear, to highlight what she interprets as a routine association of such images with negative headlines, news stories or
editorials, often entirely unrelated to the person depicted. The artist paints over sections of the newspaper layouts with bright patterns, geometric shapes and imagery that migrates from advertisements on the page. Himid views this painterly intervention as an 'attempt to reclaim the portrait of the person [and] restore the balance.'
'The point I am often exploring vis-a-vis the black experience is that of being so very visible and different in the White Western everyday yet so invisible and disregarded in the cultural, historical, political or economic record or history.'


The main contribution of this research work is the demonstration that a highly rigid polymer can be electrospun into nanofibers using judicious combining of a good and a bad solvent. This research project is also a comprehensive examination of the dielectric and rheological properties of binary solvent poly(etherimide) (PEI) solutions and the influence of these properties in the formation of nanofibers via the electrospinning process. PEI is a high heat resistant polymer with rigid-rod chain orientation. Electrospun nanofiber mats of PEI have potential to be used in a myriad of applications including high efficiency air filtration in high temperature environments, such as industrial smokestacks as well as fire resistant layering. Through carefully structured combinations of polymer, good solvent and bad solvent a full range of electrospun morphologies were created, evolving from beads to uniform fibers, which were mapped to the polymer and solvent concentrations. Previous work has shown that rigid-rod PEI nanofibers could be electrospun by blending PEI with more flexible polymers, such as poly(etheretherketone) (PEEK). It is proposed that a positive alternative to polymer blending would be the replacement of a percentage of the good solvent with a miscible bad solvent. The advantage of the proposed approach is that the resulting fibers are composed of 100% PEI hence avoiding the compromise on the PEI's thermal and mechanical properties induced by a polymer blend with a flexible polymer. This projected used dimethylacetamide (DMAc) as the good solvent and tetrahydrofuran (THF) as the bad solvent. Dynamic rheological measurements were used to evaluate how the addition of a bad solvent to polymer-good solvent solutions modified the resulting electrospun nanofibers. Also, the bad solvent was used to dissolve polymer into the good solvent at percentages higher than the good solvent super saturation point. It was demonstrated that although THF lowers the viscosity of PEI/DMAc solutions, the addition of THF produces better PEI electrospun nanofibers. Because of THF's effect on the PEI chain volume and dissolution, and its high evaporation rate, the addition of THF and other "bad" solvents may add a new degree of freedom to the formation of nanofibers from rig-rod polymers via electrospinning.


Twenty-four ancient genomes with an average sequencing coverage of 0.85±0.25 X were produced from the Mokrin necropolis, an Early Bronze Age (2,100-1,800 BC) Maros culture site in Serbia, to provide unambiguous identification of biological sex, population structure, and genetic kinship between individuals. Of the 24 investigated individuals, 15 were involved in kinship relationships of varying degrees, including 3 parent-offspring relationships. All observed parent-offspring pairs were mother and son. In addition to the absence of biological daughters, we observed a number of young women and girls with no biological relatives in our sample. These observations, together with the high mitochondrial diversity in our sample, are consistent with the practice of female exogamy in the population served by Mokrin. However, moderate-to-high Y-chromosomal diversity suggests a degree of male mobility greater than that expected under strict patrilocality. Individual status differences at Mokrin, as indicated by grave goods, support the inference that females could inherit status, but could not transmit status to all their sons. The case of a son whose grave good richness outstrips that of his biological mother suggests that sons had the possibility to acquire status during their lifetimes. The Mokrin sample resembles a genetically unstructured population, suggesting that the community's social hierarchies were not accompanied by strict marriage barriers.


Aim Current pricing of commercial mechanical ventilators in low-/middle-income countries (LMICs) markedly restricts their availability, and consequently a considerable number of patients with acute/chronic respiratory failure cannot be adequately treated. Our aim was to design and test an affordable and easy-to-build noninvasive bilevel pressure ventilator to allow a reduction in the serious shortage of ventilators in LMICs. Methods The ventilator was built using off-the-shelf materials available via e-commerce and was based on a high-pressure blower, two pressure transducers and an Arduino Nano controller with a digital display (total retail cost <75 USD), with construction details provided open source for free replication. The ventilator was evaluated, and compared with a commercially available device (Lumis 150 ventilator; Resmed, San Diego, CA, USA): 1) in the bench setting using an actively breathing patient simulator mimicking a range of obstructive/restrictive diseases; and b) in 12 healthy volunteers wearing high airway resistance and thoracic/abdominal bands to mimic obstructive/restrictive patients. Results The designed ventilator provided inspiratory/expiratory pressures up to 20/10 cmH2O, respectively, with no faulty triggering or cycling; both in the bench test and in volunteers. The breathing difficulty score rated (1–10 scale) by the loaded breathing subjects was significantly (p<0.005) decreased from 5.45±1.68 without support to 2.83±1.66 when using the prototype ventilator, which showed no difference with the commercial device (2.80±1.48; p=1.000). Conclusion The low-cost, easy-to-build noninvasive ventilator performs similarly to a high-quality commercial device, with its open-source hardware description, which will allow for free replication and use in LMICs, facilitating application of this life-saving therapy to patients who otherwise could not be treated. Patients in under-resourced areas cannot be treated by mechanical ventilation given the unaffordable cost of conventional devices; here a low-cost, easy-to-build ventilator with open access details for free replication is designed and tested https://bit.ly/34UcbWp


Municipal bankruptcy's recent prominence has stimulated academic interest in the workings of Chapter 9, much of it critical, but no general framework has been developed against which scholars and policymakers can evaluate the law's performance. This article offers a normative, economic account of municipal bankruptcy and uses that account to assess current law and suggest changes. It contends that bankruptcy's singular aim should be to preserve spatial economies—the advantages to locating within a municipality's unique geographic boundaries—where large public debts, by discouraging investment, threaten to dissipate them. Judged with this end in view, it is argued, Chapter 9 is a marked failure. The law's compass is so narrow that intervention comes, if at all, only when spatial economies are likely to have been squandered and economic dysfunction taken hold. Municipal bankruptcy, as it now exists, serves mainly as an ad hoc and ill-conceived subsidy program. This article outlines changes to the law that could hasten debt relief, while acknowledging potential objections.


After considerable controversy over the bold appraisal of Riefenstahl in his first two editions, Hinton continues to celebrate the life and films of this brilliant woman in the absence of the repetitious cliches that so often accompany a discussion of such a controversial filmmaker. Provided with access to Leni Riefenstahl's personal archives and film collection, the author explores her career. In addition to examining her most famous wartime works, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, the author also investigates her less recognized Tiefland, her unrealized film projects, and her African and underwater films. David B. Hinton drew on recent interviews with the filmmaker to update this edition. (Previous edition is No. 29 in The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series.) Reviews of the Previous Edition: "Raises significant issues involving the relationship between art and politics." -CHOICE "...a solid piece of research...the author is able to illuminate aspects of the production of Triumph of the Will and Olympia previously unknown." -FILMS IN REVIEW "It's best to read her [Leni Riefenstahl] memoirs, anybody's memoirs in fact, with some independent scholarship at hand, and the best place to start is David B. Hinton's thoroughly researched The Films of Leni Riefenstahl."-THE MAGAZINE


The introduction of Enterprise Identity Management Systems (EIdMS) in organizations even beyond the purely technological level is a costly and challenging endeavor. However, for decision makers it seems difficult to fully understand the impacts andopportunitiesarising from the introduction of EIdMS. This book explores the relevant aspects for an ex-ante evaluation of EIdMS. Thereforeit examines this domain by employing a qualitative expert interview study to better understand the nature of EIdMS, as they are situated between security and productive IT systems. To this regard, the focus is put on the general nature of EIdMS projects and the constructs being relevant for analyzing such projects in the decision support phase. Based on the derived constructs and thematic topics from the interviews, an explanatory model for EIdMS introductions is derived and iteratively improved and evaluated. Finally, a possible application use-case for the creation of adequate decision support tools is presented.


In an effort to improve the adhesive bonding between wood–plastic composites (WPCs) formulated with polypropylene and a commercial epoxy adhesive, surface treatments were performed to chemically and/or physically modify the surface of WPCs. The treatments were performed on extruded WPC that had been planed and consisted of chromic acid treatment, flame treatment, water treatment, flame then water treatment and water then flame treatment. The strength of the adhesive bonds of the treated samples was tested following ASTM D 905 and the maximum shear stress was calculated for each treatment. The chromic acid and flame treatments increased their respective average shear strengths by 97% and 67% compared to an untreated control group. The increase in bond strength due to these two treatments is believed to be a result of their oxidative mechanisms. The water treatment, which consisted of covering the planed surface of a WPC with water for 10 min, resulted in an increase in shear strength of 31% relative to the control. Characterization of the water-treated WPC surface with profilometry and scanning electron microscopy indicated that the likely mechanism for the increase in bond strength was the absorption of water and subsequent swelling of the wood present in the WPC, creating greater surface area for bonding. The combination of flame and water treatments showed increased shear strength relative to the individual treatments alone, indicating that the two processes might act synergistically to facilitate the formation of stronger adhesive bonds.


While participants in clinical oncology trials are essential for the advancement of cancer therapies, factors decisive for patient participation have been described but need further investigation, particularly in the case of phase 3 studies. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in trial knowledge and motives for participation in phase 3 clinical cancer trials in relation to gender, age, education levels and former trial experience. The results of a questionnaire returned from 88 of 96 patients (92%) were analysed using the Mann-Whitney U-test. There were small, barely relevant differences in trial knowledge among patients when stratified by gender, age or education. Participants with former trial experience were less aware about the right to withdraw. Male participants and those aged ≥65 years were significantly more motivated by a feeling of duty, or by the opinions of close ones. Men seem more motivated than women by external factors. With the awareness that elderly and single male participants might be a vulnerable group and participants with former trial experience are less likely to be sufficiently informed, the information consent process should focus more on these patients. We conclude that the informed consent process seems to work well, with good results within most subgroups.


Objective International and national recommendations for brain imaging in patients planned to undergo potentially curative resection of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are variably implemented throughout the United Kingdom [Hudson BJ, Crawford MB, and Curtin J et al (2015) Brain imaging in lung cancer patients without symptoms of brain metastases: a national survey of current practice in England Clin Radiol https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crad.2015.02.007]. However, the recommendations are not based on high-quality evidence and do not take into account cost implications and local resources. Our aim was to determine local practice based on historic outcomes in this patient cohort. Methods This retrospective study took place in a regional thoracic surgical centre in the United Kingdom. Pathology records for all patients who had undergone lung resection with curative intent during the time period January 2012–December 2014 were analysed in October 2015. Electronic pathology and radiology reports were accessed for each patient and data collected about their histological findings, TNM stage, resection margins, and the presence of brain metastases on either pre-operative or post-operative imaging. From the dates given on imaging, we calculated the number of days post-resection that the brain metastases were detected. Results 585 patients were identified who had undergone resection of their lung cancer. Of these, 471 had accessible electronic radiology records to assess for the radiological evidence of brain metastases. When their electronic records were evaluated, 25/471 (5.3%) patients had radiological evidence of brain metastasis. Of these, five patients had been diagnosed with a brain metastasis at initial presentation and had undergone primary resection of the brain metastasis followed by resection of the lung primary. One patient had been diagnosed with both a primary lung and a primary bowel adenocarcinoma; on review of the case, it was felt that the brain metastasis was more likely to have originated from the bowel cancer. One had been clinically diagnosed with a cerebral abscess while the radiology had been reported as showing a metastatic deposit. Of the remaining 18/471 (3.8%) patients who presented with brain metastases after their surgical resection, 12 patients had adenocarcinoma, four patients had squamous cell carcinoma, one had basaloid, and one had large-cell neuroendocrine. The mean number of days post-resection that the brain metastases were identified was 371 days, range 14–1032 days, median 295 days (date of metastases not available for two patients). Conclusion The rate of brain metastases identified in this study was similar to previous studies. This would suggest that preoperative staging of the central nervous system may change the management pathway in a small group of patients. However, for this group of patients, the change would be significant either sparing them non-curative surgery or allowing aggressive management of oligometastatic disease. Therefore, we would recommend pre-operative brain imaging with MRI for all patients undergoing potentially curative lung resection.


Lithium niobate is a key material for photonics with applications in optical modulators and light frequency converters. Present lithium niobate optical devices are realized in bulk lithium niobate single crystals while interests in higher integration and also better performance derives efforts towards high quality epitaxial lithium niobate thin films. In the past, epitaxial lithium niobate thin films obtained using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), pulsed-laser deposition and crystal-ion slicing. Among these methods CVD is the one that can provide large area growth. Optimizing films properties stays an issue in CVD because in CVD of multi-element oxides using multiple precursors the stoichiometry of the film does not reflect the precursor ratios and additionally it varies with precursors total flux values. In this thesis optimization and discovery of multi-element oxide thin films were performed in a high-vacuum CVD reactor that is capable of performing combinatorial experiments. Using this reactor epitaxial lithium niobate thin films were obtained on sapphire {001g} and lithium tantalate {001} substrates with rocking curve full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) values of 0.03° and 0.024° respectively. The epitaxial growth of lithium niobate films was confirmed from X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and transmission-electron microscope (TEM) observations. Niobium tetra-ethoxy-di-methy-amino-ethoxide (Nb(OEt)4(dmae)) and lithium tert-butoxide (Li(OBut)) were used as precursors. Optically induced inhomogeneities, also known as optical damage, in lithium niobate limit its usage for high laser intensity applications. Lithium niobate single crystals doped with hafnium showed improved optical damage thresholds. Therefore combinatorial HVCVD experiments were conducted and textured {001} hafnium-doped lithium niobate films, with about 6 [mol%] hafnium, were obtained on sapphire f001g. Although the crystalline quality of the film is not high (rocking curve FWHM 0.8°) its Raman spectrum is still quite close to lithium niobate single crystal and epitaxial lithium niobate films on sapphire. Hafnium tert-butoxide (Hf(OBut)4) was used as precursor for hafnium. In the HVCVD reactor, a precursor transport system was applied such that spatial control of the precursor impinging rate on the substrate can be tailored. The precursor flux distribution that was mostly used in this thesis was a linear gradient with ratio of three across a 150 mm diameter circular area. In fact combinatorial experiments were performed by producing a linear gradient for individual precursors over the substrate with a certain angle between the gradient directions. The linear gradient feature was used to perform efficiently the systematic study of single precursors providing the benefit that one deposition at certain substrate temperature gives information about deposition kinetics for a vast range of precursor flux values. A systematic study of the Nb(OEt)4(dmae) precursor was performed using this feature and chemical-reaction-limited, mass-transport-limited, and desorption-limited regimes of CVD process were identified. The possibility of screening a large range of precursor flux values led us to discovering a CVD regime in which deposition rate is decreased by raising the precursor flux. A model was proposed for interaction of gas with surfaces that can explain all the different CVD regimes observed. The precursor molecules in HVCVD reactor reach the substrate with nearly no gasphase collision. Based on this fact a lift-off process was proposed for large-area in-situ patterning of multi-element oxide thin films.


ABSTRACT Aim: CAVATAK, an oncolytic immunotherapy, is a bio-selected oncolytic strain of Coxsackievirus A21. Following intratumoral injection, CAVATAK preferentially infects ICAM-1 expressing tumor cells, resulting in cell lysis and a systemic anti-tumor immune response. We here report on the key secondary endpoints in the Phase II CALM study. Methods: The CALM study investigated the efficacy and safety of intratumoral CAVATAK in 57 patients with treated or untreated unresectable Stage IIIC-IVM1c melanoma. Patients received up to 3 x 108 TCID50 CAVATAK intratumorally on study days 1,3,5 and 8 and then every three weeks for a further 6 injections. Patients displaying immune-related progression-free survival (irPFS) or better at 6 months were eligible for 9 additional injections. Key eligibility criteria were ECOG 0-1, and at least 1 injectable cutaneous, subcutaneous, or nodal melanoma metastasis >1.0 cm. The primary endpoint was to achieve >9 of 54 evaluable patients with irPFS at 6 months. Secondary endpoints included median irPFS, 1-year survival, median time to response, irRECIST 1.1 best overall response (BORR) and safety. Results: The primary endpoint of the study was achieved with 19 of 51 (37.3%) evaluable patients displaying irPFS at 6 months. Preliminary analysis of secondary endpoints showed: median irPFS of 4.2 months (95% CI 2.8, 8.3), 1-year survival 61.5% (16 of 26 pts), on-going BORR (irRECIST 1.1) 26.3% (15 of 57 pts) with responses seen in both injected and non-injected lesions, median time to response 2.8 months. To date 15 patients have received additional series of CAVATAK injections. The most common patient side effects observed were Grade 1 local injection site reactions, fatigue, chills and fever. There were no Grade 3 or 4 product-related AE's. Conclusions: Intralesional CAVATAK is a promising novel oncolytic immunotherapeutic agent with limited toxicity and robust responses in both injected and non-injected lesions in patients with advanced melanoma. The effectiveness of CAVATAK warrants additional investigation as monotherapy and in combination with other targeted immunotherapies such as immune checkpoint blockade. Disclosure: R.H. Andtbacka: Travel honorarium–Viralytics; K. Zhou: Salary - Viralytics J.I. Weisberg: Salary–Viralytics; D. Shafren: Stock, salary–Viralytics. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


The intensity of the residual singular stress distribution can be quantified by the residual notch stress intensity factor (R-NSIF), which might be a useful stress parameter to include in local approaches for fatigue strength assessments of welded joints. In order to calculate the residual stress fields by means of welding process simulations, the mesh adopted in numerical models has necessarily to be very fine. Unfortunately, the nonlinear and tran- sient behavior of the welding simulation makes numerical analyses extremely demanding in terms of computational time, particularly, if large welded structures and/or multipass welds have to be simulated. In this scenario, the use of methods aimed at reducing the computational effort to estimate local stresses and strains in welded structures can be effective. Among these, the peak stress method has been proposed to estimate the notch stress intensity factors (NSIFs) at sharp V-notches, using coarse finite element patterns. In this work, the peak stress method (PSM) has been used to calculate the R-NSIF of a full penetration welded T-joint. It has been shown that the PSM can successfully be used to estimate R-NSIFs values, provided that the stress redistribution induced by plasticity in the zone very close to the notch tip is negligible.


The risk parity asset allocation methodology has recently increased in popularity, as such strategies have in general avoided the hefty drawdowns during the recent volatile market periods. Even the most fervent critics appreciate the diversifying potential historically provided by risk parity concepts. However, they point out that the tide may be turning. It is often stated that the past merits of the strategy may be its future challenges. Concerns raised relate to issues like: While being of inestimable value during the subprime crisis, isn't it overly risky to be considerably exposed to government bonds in light of uncomfortably high sovereign debt? Having successfully exploited dynamic correlation relationships in the past, can the concept still provide a diversified portfolio even with the virtual outage of fixed income instruments as a source of return because of record low yields? In spite of facilitating the equalisation of risk contributions, does the leverage usually employed not expose the portfolio to heightened tail risks? The responses brought forward to these legitimate criticisms, are as diverse as the group of discussants is numerous. The objective of this note is, therefore, to contribute to the discussion by taking a general point of view. What can be inferred from empirical evidence in order to judge the future attractiveness of the risk parity concept relative to alternative asset allocation strategies in general? And how does the concept compare with respect to the specific concerns highlighted above? In order to answer these questions, we contrast three different yet popular allocation styles, namely a traditional balanced strategy, the minimum variance concept and the risk parity methodology. The results suggest that while the current criticism has its warrants, empirical evidence points towards the expectation that risk parity strategies may further climb up the wall of worries.


We compare non-experimental impact estimates using propensity score matching with those from a social experiment to determine whether this non-experimental approach can 'match' the gold standard. The social experiment we use was carried out to evaluate a conditional cash transfer program implemented in Nicaragua in 2000. The outcomes we assess include total and food expenditure and a variety of children's health outcomes including vaccinations, morbidity, and breast feeding. We find that PSM does better at replicating the benchmark for individual outcomes but does poorly for expenditure outcomes. Judicious choice of sample improves the performance of PSM for all outcomes. A more detailed analysis of the components of expenditures shows the degree of bias is related to the importance of the item in the household budget and persists even when differences in prices and consumption habits are controlled for by comparing households from the same geographic region. The PSM technique seems most promising for evaluating individual, and easily measured outcomes, such as those related to child schooling and health, but less so for more complex outcomes such as expenditures. JEL Classification: I18, I38, C9


ABSTRACT Several sequence stratigraphic analyses have been conducted on the Eocene-Oligocene rocks of the San Diego region and of the western Transverse Ranges in southern California. Recently developed magnetic stratigraphy and 40Ar/39Ar dates, as well as previously neglected biostratigraphic data, provide a high-resolution chronostratigraphic framework to test correlation of these sequence stratigraphic interpretations to the global onlap-offlap chart (Haq et al. 1987, 1988; Hardenbol et al. 1998). In the San Diego area, previous stratigraphic analyses miscorrelated nearly all sequences and sequence boundaries to the global time scale; some correlations are off by as much as ten million years. In the western Transverse Ranges, three contradictory sequence stratigraphic analyses are evaluated. The revised dates of the sequence boundaries show poor correlation with the onlap-offlap chart of Haq et al. (1987, 1988) or Hardenbol et al. (1998), and some units are misdated by as much as six million years. In both regions, few sequences were correctly predicted by the onlap-offlap chart, suggesting that tectonic controls were more important than eustatic controls in this tectonically active region. The errors in so many sequence stratigraphic correlations when tested by high-resolution chronostratigraphic data should caution geologists about using sequence stratigraphic age assignments uncritically. Sequence stratigraphic correlations are only as good as the chronostratigraphy on which they are based.


This thesis is concerned with the educational response to the concept of the 'knowledge
economy'. The thesis argues that:
ri this concept, which originated in social and management theory, has been framed in
terms of the Cartesian conception of the 'two worlds of knowledge': knowledge of
natural and social structures and everyday knowledge;
u these two worlds have been perpetuated in educational policy, for example, in
curricula through a strong emphasis on 'knowledge' and 'skifis' and in pedagogy
through the development of 'pedagogies of reflection'.
Consequently, educational policy has:
u missed that the knowledge economy is making the interdependence between the
two worlds of knowledge more explicit in economic and cultural activity;
u failed to appreciate that this development presupposes 'pedagogies' that support to
overcome the two worlds of knowledge to respond to the challenges posed by the
knowledge economy.
The thesis argues that Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (hereafter CHAT) provides a
conceptual framework for going beyond the two worlds of knowledge in social and
management theory as well as in educational research, policy and practice. It explores
this claim by arguing that Vygotsky's concept of mediation and its extension and
elaboration by a number of post-Vygotskians and neo-Hegelians introduces a way of
conceiving the relation between activity, thought, language and mind which does not
split mind from world. It then uses this reformulation of the conceptual of mediation as
a foundation to formulate a pedagogy of mediated activity which it maintains is the
basis of overcoming the two worlds of knowledge and responding to the challenge
posed by the knowledge economy.


The present study attempts an interfacing between the theory of law and democracy of Jurgen Habermas and the Philippine style of democracy based on the latter's constitutional vision and the actual political reality in the country. Habermas constructs his philosophy as a critical theory to advance the cause of human freedom. Such pursuit of philosophy as emancipation is what underlies the theory of law and democracy which he articulates in Between Facts and Norms. The first part of the present study elaborates his theory with emphasis on his assertion of the equiprimordial relationship between the private autonomy of individuals and the public autonomy of citizens. The study also highlights his proceduralist paradigm through which Habermas proposes to uphold the normative demands of democracy in the face of the myriad difficulties that confront democratic practice in modern society. The second part of the present study discusses certain provisions of the Philippine constitution. Since it was promulgated immediately after the success of the Filipinos' struggle to bring down a dictatorship, the said constitution contains provisions expressly intended to restore the democratic institutions and processes that were almost destroyed by decades of Martial Law. These provisions reflect some of the features proposed by Habermas in his proceduralist theory of modern democracy. The analytical framework used to discuss the Philippine constitution is therefore based on the Habermasian template for the rule of democracy. The analysis is further situated within actual political realities in Philippine society at present. By looking at the Philippine constitution through the normative principles of habermasian democratic theory, the present study hopes to generate a keener appreciation of the dynamics of Philippine democratic politics in order to underscore its possibilities as well as its deficiencies. By employing the theoretical assertions of Habermas in examining the actual workings of Philippine democracy, this study seeks some validation of his arguments and proposals, a modification perhaps of some tentative views, and possibly an affirmation of his advocacy of democracy. There have been many studies of Habermasian theory of law and democracy, as there have been countless studies on the Philippine constitutional and democratic experience. There has not been until this study a work that employs the theory of Habermas as a framework to analyze an actually existing democracy, using it both as an exemplar and criterion for critique and evaluation of the democratic potential and practice in a particular country. There has never been a study, moreover, of the Philippine constitutional and political institutions and processes from the viewpoint of Habermas, which is to say, in terms of their commitment to and actualization of the democratic ideals and principles that he advances. The present study stakes a modest claim as a pioneering effort in this regard.


The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), or ACA, requires that U.S. citizens either purchase health insurance or pay a fine. To offset the financial burden for lower-income households, it also provides subsidies to ensure that health insurance premiums are affordable. However, relatively little work has been done on how such affordability standards should be set. The existing literature on affordability is not grounded in social norms and has methodological and theoretical flaws. To address these issues, we developed a series of hypothetical vignettes in which individual and household sociodemographic characteristics were varied. We then convened a panel of eighteen experts with extensive experience in affordability standards to evaluate the extent to which each vignette character could afford to pay for one of two health insurance plans. The panel varied with respect to political ideology and discipline. We find that there was considerable disagreement about how affordability is defined. There was also disagreement about what might be included in an affordability standard, with substantive debate surrounding whether savings, debt, education, or single parenthood is relevant. There was also substantial variation in experts' assessed affordability scores. Nevertheless, median expert affordability assessments were not far from those of ACA.


The paper presents some evidence on the overwhelming relevance of systemic risk and the lesser importance of US interest rates in the global transmission of shocks. This evidence suggests that the literature could benefit from incorporating global confidence variables into global frameworks in the study of the global transmission of shocks. As framework, we used a global semi-structural model (GSSM) augmented with common factors for country risk and country credit. We approximated country risk with historical stock volatility, a measure that is uniform and available across countries; in addition, we measured spillovers as the share of forecast error variance explained by different volatility factors. We found that systemic risk is the main volatility factor in all systemic economies, and also accounts for the bulk of spillovers into non systemic economies. Other volatility factors such as global credit, foreign interest rates and trade-related factors rarely accounted for shares of forecast error variance above one percent.


The active ingredient of chilli pepper, capsaicin, produces dose-dependent vasoconstriction in experimental animals (Griffiths et al., 1996). Although application of capsaicin locally to the skin induces vasodilation (Munce & Kenney, 2003), there is no information available on the effects of regular capsaicin consumption (in the form of chilli) on vascular function in humans. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of chilli supplementation on endothelium-independent and endothelium-dependent vasodilatation. Fifteen non-smokers (M/F 7/8; aged 47.3 +/- 11.8 (+/- SD) years; weight 78.9 +/- 14.2 kg; body mass index 27.3 +/- 3.7 kg/m2) with no history of hypercholesteremia, diabetes mellitus or renal dysfunction consumed a chilli-free diet (normal diet with no chilli and minimal black pepper, ginger, etc) or chilli-supplemented diet (normal diet plus 30g/day Freshly chopped chilli(MasterFoods, Australia) for three weeks each. After three weeks on each diet, fasting peripheral and central (aortic) blood pressure, augmentation pressure (AP), augmentation index (AIx), AIx@HR75, heart rate and subendocardial viability ratio (Buckberg index) were determined using a sphygmomanometer and pulse wave analysis (SphygmoCor, AtCor, Australia) (Wilkinson et al, 2002). After adjusting for order and period of diet, mean (+/-SD) baseline AIx (27.97+/-2.70) and AIx@HR75 (19.40+/-2.00) were significantly lower (P<0.05) after the chilli diet compared to control diet (AIx, 23.97 +/- 2.73; AIx@HR75, 15.77 +/- 2.22). All parameters were then measured at regular intervals for 30 min after sublingual GTN (600 ug) and for 20 min after inhaled salbutamol (200 ug). Compared with the chilli-free period, there was no difference in the maximal change in any measured parameter or overall vasodilator response (AUC) in response to GTN or salbutamol after the chilli diet. These results suggest that regular chilli consumption reduces baseline vascular stiffness but has no significant effect on either endothelium-independent or -dependent vasodilatation.


This research is carried out to evaluate the accountability of government agencies, emphasizing the completeness of financial information in providing financial report. Due to the implementation of regional autonomy, accountability becomes one of the most important principles. The accountability principle requires transparent and complete information in every aspect, especially in managing funds, as reported in the financial report. The main research is the financial report of Unit Psat Pertokoan dan Perbelanjaan (UP-4) Pasar Turi. The methods used are, deskriptive analysis and the comparison of Pasar Turi as a Central Store and shoping unit (Unit Pusat Pertokoan dan Perbelanjaan (UP-4) with Pasar Turi as an Ideal Regional Company (Perusahaan daerah Imajinasi). The out come of the research shows that the accounting method used in recording financial transactions for Pasar Turi as a Perusahaan Daerah Imajinasi can give more detail information in the financial report than the information provided by the financial report of pasar Turi as a UP-4. The reference used to rearrange the financial statement of Perusahaan daerah Pasar Turi Imajinasi is the financial statement of Perusahaan Daerah Pasar Surabaya. Based on this research, the financial statement of UP-4 Pasar Turi can reflect a higher level of accountability by implementing accrual basis accounting in recording every economic transaction which occurrs. The conclusion is that the used of the accrual basis accounting in recording economic transactions provides a higher level of accountability than the uses of the cash basis accounting does. It supports the implementation of regional autonomy which regards the accountability as one of the most important principles in running a country.


Neural networks are nowadays highly successful despite strong hardness results. The existing hardness results focus on the network architecture, and assume that the network's weights are arbitrary. A natural approach to settle the discrepancy is to assume that the network's weights are "well-behaved" and posses some generic properties that may allow efficient learning. This approach is supported by the intuition that the weights in real-world networks are not arbitrary, but exhibit some "random-like" properties with respect to some "natural" distributions. We prove negative results in this regard, and show that for depth-$2$ networks, and many "natural" weights distributions such as the normal and the uniform distribution, most networks are hard to learn. Namely, there is no efficient learning algorithm that is provably successful for most weights, and every input distribution. It implies that there is no generic property that holds with high probability in such random networks and allows efficient learning.


The use of liquid crystal devices for wavefront control has been suggested and implemented by several authors. In this paper we report some preliminary results on the use of Nematic based liquid crystal devices. Several experimental efforts have been carried out in the past few months. One of the main aims was to characterize a new device that uses dual frequency nematic material in a closed loop arrangement.


More and more organisations purchase software "off-the-shelf" as an alternative to developing new systems either internally or through outsourcing. This trend, which began with generic software aimed at supporting major organisational processes such as payroll or debtors and creditors ledgers, is now spreading to strategic information systems. This article attempts to investigate the reasons why managers would adopt such an option and seeks to identify the factors which determine the success or failure of such projects. We focused on SOCRATE, the reservation system of the SNCF (the French railroad company). This system is indeed the most famous instance of purchase of a strategic information system to date. On the one hand, we sought to understand the context in which SOCRATE has been implemented and the state of mind of the project leaders. On the other hand, we also sought to identify the risks inherent in such projects. The opposition between the point of view of the leaders of the project and the traditional risk analysis techniques sheds some light on the problems encountered as the project unfolded, but it also indicates a number of ways that the management of such projects could be improved.


It has been a challenge to use transition metal oxides as anode materials in Li-ion batteries due to their low electronic conductivity, poor rate capability and large volume change during charge/discharge processes. Here, we present the first demonstration of a unique self-recovery of capacity in transition metal oxide anodes. This was achieved by reducing tungsten trioxide (WO3) via the incorporation of urea, followed by annealing in a nitrogen environment. The reduced WO3 successfully self-retained the Li-ion cell capacity after undergoing a sharp decrease upon cycling. Significantly, the reduced WO3 also exhibited excellent rate capability. The reduced WO3 exhibited an interesting cycling phenomenon where the capacity was significantly self-recovered after an initial sharp decrease. The quick self-recoveries of 193.21%, 179.19% and 166.38% for the reduced WO3 were observed at the 15th (521.59/457.41 mA h g-1), 36th (538.49/536.61 mA h g-1) and 45th (555.39/555.39 mA h g-1) cycles respectively compared to their respective preceding discharge capacity. This unique self-recovery phenomenon can be attributed to the lithium plating and conversion reaction which might be due to the activation of oxygen vacancies that act as defects which make the WO3 electrode more electrochemically reactive with cycling. The reduced WO3 exhibited a superior electrochemical performance with 959.1/638.9 mA h g-1 (1st cycle) and 558.68/550.23 mA h g-1 (100th cycle) vs. pristine WO3 with 670.16/403.79 mA h g-1 (1st cycle) and 236.53/234.39 mA h g-1 (100th cycle) at a current density of 100 mA g-1.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: SARS-CoV-2 antigen-detection rapid diagnostic tests can diagnose COVID-19 rapidly and at low cost, but lower sensitivity compared with reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has limited clinical adoption. Methods: We compared antigen testing, PCR testing, and clinical judgment alone for diagnosing symptomatic COVID-19 in an outpatient setting (10% COVID-19 prevalence among the patients tested, 3-day PCR turnaround) and a hospital setting (40% prevalence, 24-hour PCR turnaround). We simulated transmission from cases and contacts, and relationships between time, viral burden, transmission, and case detection. We compared diagnostic approaches using a measure of net benefit that incorporated both clinical and public health benefits and harms of the intervention. Results: In the outpatient setting, we estimated that using antigen testing instead of PCR to test 200 individuals could be equivalent to preventing all symptomatic transmission from one person with COVID-19 (one "transmission-equivalent"). In a hospital, net benefit analysis favored PCR and testing 25 patients with PCR instead of antigen testing achieved one transmission-equivalent of benefit. In both settings, antigen testing was preferable to PCR if PCR turnaround time exceeded 2 days. Both tests provided greater net benefit than management based on clinical judgment alone unless intervention carried minimal harm and was provided equally regardless of diagnostic approach. Conclusions: For diagnosis of symptomatic COVID-19, we estimated that the speed of diagnosis with antigen testing is likely to outweigh its lower accuracy compared with PCR, wherever PCR turnaround time is 2 days or longer. This advantage may be even greater if antigen tests are also less expensive.


Thomas Wijck's painted alchemical laboratories were celebrated in his day as "artful" and "ingenious." They fell into obscurity along with their subject, as alchemy came to be viewed as an occult art or a fool's errand. But these unusual pictures challenge our understanding of early modern alchemy-and of the deeper relationship between chemical workshops and the artists who represented them. The work of artists, like the work of alchemists, contained intellectual-creative and manual-material aspects. Both alchemists and artists claimed a special status owing to their creative powers. Wijck's formation of an artistic and professional identity around alchemical themes reveals his desire to explore this curious territory, and ultimately to demonstrate art's superior claims to knowledge and mastery over nature. This book explores one artist's transformation of alchemy and its materials into a reputation for virtuosity-and what his work can teach us about the experimental early modern world.


"Gleaning" refers to the mandate within the Mosaic Law that harvesters should leave behind "gleanings" for the sake of the poor who subsist on the literal and figurative margins of society. Although this biblical mandate is generally neglected and considered irrelevant in modern business practice, it holds powerful lessons to help guide modern businesses into transformational solidarity with the poor and marginalized. This paper interprets the biblical significance of gleaning, to discern how the principles of gleaning, though rooted in ancient agrarian culture, might be applicable to modern business which is generally far removed from agriculture. The exegesis and analysis presented here leads to the conclusion that the operative impact of gleaning can be described in terms of guiding principles that can be applied in presentday businesses. Thus, gleaning is shown to be a formative concept for business in every age, as an illustration of God's will for a healthy economic system that intentionally invites the participation of those on the margins of society. In the course of this analysis, we develop a useful taxonomy of business practices pertaining to the principles of gleaning. This taxonomy is expressed in the form six characteristics: (1) sustainability for business, profits, market and society; (2) experiential links with the poor; (3) enhancement of human dignity; (4) disruption of the cycle of poverty; (5) grace-infused economy (caritas); and (6) revelation of transformational power (transformatio mundi). We illustrate these characteristics by examining several business case studies, using the rubric to arrive at an assessment of business relationships with those on the margins.


This literature review examines the factors influencing the elevated emission levels from vehicles associated with the cold start phenomenon. Of the factors known to influence cold start emissions, it appears that among the most important are the cooling down period of the engine prior to restart, and ambient temperature. The state of cold start modelling is discussed. It is argued that current cold start models are inadequate and must be improved in order to determine the changes in emission levels associated with traffic management. Future models could include a method to represent the engine warm-up and cool-down profiles at a range of ambient temperatures, coupled with information on vehicle usage. Some thought is also given to how traffic management schemes may affect cold start emissions, although for all types of scheme the effects are currently unknown. (A)


Does your Rails code suffer from bloat, brittleness, or inaccuracy? Cure these problems with a regular dose of test-driven development. Rails 4 Test Prescriptions is a comprehensive guide to how tests can help you design and write better Rails applications. In this completely revised edition, you'll learn why testing works and how to test effectively using Rails 4, Minitest 5, and RSpec 3, as well as popular testing libraries such as factory_girl and Cucumber. Do what the doctor ordered to make your applications feel all better. Side effects may include better code, fewer bugs, and happier developers.Your Ruby on Rails application is sick. Deadlines are looming, but every time you make the slightest change to the code, something else breaks. Nobody remembers what that tricky piece of code was supposed to do, and nobody can tell what it actually does. Plus, it has bugs. You need test-driven development, a process for improving the design, maintainability, and long-term viability of software.Containing both practical code examples and discussion of why testing works, this book starts with the most basic features delivered as part of core Ruby on Rails. Once you've integrated those features into your coding practice, you'll learn how to use popular third-party testing tools such as RSpec, Mocha, Cucumber, and factory_girl. You'll test the component parts of a Rails application, including the back-end model logic and the front-end display logic. Using Rails examples, you'll learn how to use testing to enable your code to respond better to future change. Plus, you'll see how to handle real-world testing situations.This completely revised edition contains a new tutorial, as well as new examples throughout the book. Many chapters, including the JavaScript chapter, have undergone major changes to reflect new tools and new practices. And there are brand new chapters on testing for security, and testing external services.What You Need:Ruby 2.1, Rails 4


We have developed a structural model to explain defined benefit (DB) pension funds' investment behaviour. The model is calibrated to the aggregate UK DB pension fund and four different cohorts of funds. We use the model to estimate how pension funds can be expected to adjust their asset portfolios in the face of different exogenous shocks. Our results suggest that pension funds are sensitive to shocks that change their funding ratios — that is, the ratio of pension assets to liabilities. Deteriorations in funding ratios encourage pension funds supported by financially weaker corporate sponsors to switch some equity holdings into bonds. This is because reduced funding ratios weigh on the perceived vulnerability of already weak corporate sponsors. But similar deteriorations in funding ratios encourage funds supported by financially stronger corporates to increase their equity holdings to benefit from their higher expected returns. In contrast, shocks that result in material improvements in funding ratios — for example, resulting from a large rise in interest rates — encourage all pension funds to increase their bond holdings to 'lock in' those improved positions.


The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the civil regulatory agency responsible for helping to defend and protect the American investor. One significant threat to investor security occurs when an individual, acting as an officer or director, violates a fiduciary duty to his or her employer and its shareholders, risking investor money. These actions could involve insider trading, fraudulent statements in public filings, or other self-serving conduct. Recognizing the importance of deterring such misconduct, Congress gave the SEC the authority to bar certain individuals from serving as officers and directors of public companies. An individual should be barred if he has demonstrated unfitness to serve in that capacity. Unfortunately, the current standard has resulted in inconsistent applications across different types of misconduct and has been unresponsive to both legislative enactments and widespread management misconduct leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, which has eroded its effectiveness as a key deterrence mechanism in the SEC's arsenal. This Note begins by exploring the roles held by directors and officers and why effective corporate governance is critical to the functioning of the capital markets. Next, this Note discusses how the existing unfitness standard has failed to address Congress's intent to deter misconduct and has not appropriately responded to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which amended the statutory requirement for granting a bar. Ultimately, this Note proposes a new standard for officer and director unfitness that gives less opportunity for inconsistent results, focuses on the risk of future misconduct, and properly responds to recent legislative enactments and market events such as the 2008 financial crisis.


The Allied victory in 1945 - though comprehensive - was far from inevitable. By 1942 almost the entire resources of continental Europe were in German hands and Japan had wiped out the western colonial presence in Asia. Democracy appeared to have had its day. In this remarkable study, Richard Overy provides a reinterpretation of the war through an account of the decisive military campaigns that created the astonishing revival in Allied fortunes. He also explores the deeper factors that determined success and failure: industrial stength, fighting ability, the skills of leaders and the moral contrasts between the two sides. Today the modern world is once more in the throes of painful transformation. It is essential to establish why and how the last great war was won. Richard Overy casts a brilliant light on the most important turning-point of the modern age.


Motion tracking and object recognition often use cameras that are mounted in motion platforms like pantilt units, linear tables and even robots. Tracking can be automated by visually servoing the platform's degrees-of-freedom (DOF) thus keeping the camera's point-of-view directed at the target. Tracking quick moving targets often demands faster bandwidth platforms. However biology suggests a redundant approach where DOF, like the eye and head, cooperate to direct vision systems and overcome joint limits. This paper illustrates the efiectiveness of this concept using a robot-mounted camera.


Space-time coded cooperative transmission has been proposed as a means to prolong the battery lifetime of conventional single-antenna energy-constrained wireless sensor nodes. However, newly proposed smart-antenna sensor prototypes enable the existence of more than one antenna within a single-radio transceiver architecture. Exploiting such capability, this paper proposes simple non-cooperative space-time techniques for single-RF switched-antenna systems that reduce significantly both the transmission and the circuit energy consumption. The energy savings of the suggested schemes are shown not only against conventional SISO systems, but also against cooperative diversity schemes in Rayleigh and log-normal shadowed Rayleigh fading channels with distance-based path loss.


We present the first near-infrared scattered-light detection of the transitional disk around V1247 Ori, which was obtained using high-resolution polarimetric differential imaging observations with Subaru/HiCIAO. Our imaging in the H band reveals the disk morphology at separations of similar to 0.'' 14-0.'' 86 (54-330 au) from the central star. The polarized intensity image shows a remarkable arc-like structure toward the southeast of the star, whereas the fainter northwest region does not exhibit any notable features. The shape of the arm is consistent with an arc of 0.'' 28 +/- 0.'' 09 in radius (108 au from the star), although the possibility of a spiral arm with a small pitch angle cannot be excluded. V1247 Ori features an exceptionally large azimuthal contrast in scattered, polarized light;the radial peak of the southeastern arc is about three times brighter than the northwestern disk measured at the same distance from the star. Combined with the previous indication of an inhomogeneous density distribution in the gap at less than or similar to 46 au, the notable asymmetry in the outer disk suggests the presence of unseen companions and/or planet-forming processes ongoing in the arc.


In many applications of heuristic search, insufficient time isavailable to find provably optimal solutions. We consider thecontract search problem: finding the best solution possible within agiven time limit. The conventional approach to this problem is to usean interruptible anytime algorithm. Such algorithms return a sequenceof improving solutions until interuppted and do not consider theapproaching deadline during the course of the search. We propose anew approach, Deadline Aware Search, that explicitly takes the deadlineinto account and attempts to use all available time to find a singlehigh-quality solution. This algorithm is simple and fully general: itmodifies best-first search with on-line pruning. Empirical results onvariants of gridworld navigation, the sliding tile puzzle, and dynamicrobot navigation show that our method can surpass the leading anytimealgorithms across a wide variety of deadlines.


Multiple sequence alignment is one of the most widely used techniques in bioinformatics for discovering functional, structural, and evolutionary information of biological sequences. Multiple sequence alignment is NP-complete problem and a challenging area of bioinformatics. Classical approaches are not efficient for such type of problem because of the increased time and space complexities. Hence, enormous metaheuristic are being applied in this field. Particle swarm optimization is one of the best developed and popular metaheuristics employed for various application domains. This paper discusses the Particle swarm optimization variants and their applications for multiple sequence alignment.


Coins and coin finds can be used to initiate interdisciplinary dialogues especially between numismatics and archeology. One fruitful way to accomplish this is to regard coins both as texts and material culture. Coins comprise textual qualities which in certain respects remind of the written sources. From this angle coins can be associated with their original monetary context. On the other hand, coins are also material objects reappearing in different contexts carrying with them earlier monetary ideas and concepts. Coin finds also reveal the ongoing strife between coin issuers trying to establish their authority and coin users who react on the legislation of coin use imposed on them. Coins embody the dynamic concepts of medieval particularism and the quest for control and sovereignty over land and people. Rather than regarding the establishment of coins as a general means of payment as a straightforward and continuous process, coin use during the Middle Ages is to be understood as chaotic and discontinuous.


The first in situ sounding of a post‐seismic infrasound wavefront is presented, using data from the GOCE mission. The atmospheric infrasounds following the great Tohoku earthquake (on 11 March 2011) induce variations of air density and vertical acceleration of the GOCE platform. These signals are detected at two positions along the GOCE orbit corresponding to a crossing and a doubling of the infrasonic wavefront created by seismic surface waves. Perturbations up to 11% of air density and 1.35 × 10 − 7 m/s2 of vertical acceleration are observed and modeled with two different solid‐atmosphere coupling codes. These perturbations are a due to acoustic waves creating vertical velocities up to 130 m/s. Amplitudes and arrival times of these perturbations are reproduced respectively within a factor 2, and within a 60 s time window. Waveforms present a good agreement with observed data. The vertical acceleration to air density perturbation ratio is higher for these acoustic waves than for gravity waves. Combining these two pieces of information offers a new way to distinguish between these two wave types. This new type of data is a benchmark for the models of solid‐atmosphere coupling. Amplitude and frequency content constrain the infrasound attenuation related to atmosphere viscosity and thermal conductivity. Observed time shifts between data and synthetics are ascribed to lateral variations of the seismic and atmospheric sound velocities and to the influence of atmospheric winds. These effects should be included in future modeling. This validation of our modeling tools allows to specify more precisely future observation projects.


Neuropeptide S receptor 1 (NPSR1, GPRA 154, GPRA) has been verified as a susceptibility gene for asthma and related phenotypes. The ligand for NPSR1, Neuropeptide S (NPS), activates signalling through NPSR1 and microarray analysis has identified Tenascin C (TNC) as a target gene of NPS-NPSR1 signalling. TNC has previously been implicated as a risk gene for asthma. We aimed therefore to study the genetic association of TNC in asthma- and allergy-related disorders as well as the biological and genetic interactions between NPSR1 and TNC. Regulation of TNC was investigated using NPS stimulated NPSR1 transfected cells. We genotyped 12 TNC SNPs in the cross-sectional PARSIFAL study (3113 children) and performed single SNP association, haplotype association and TNC and NPSR1 gene-gene interaction analyses. Our experimental results show NPS-dependent upregulation of TNC-mRNA. The genotyping results indicate single SNP and haplotype associations for several SNPs in TNC with the most significant association to rhinoconjunctivitis for a haplotype, with a frequency of 29% in cases (P = 0.0005). In asthma and atopic sensitization significant gene-gene interactions were found between TNC and NPSR1 SNPs, indicating that depending on the NPSR1 genotype, TNC can be associated with either an increased or a decreased risk of disease. We conclude that variations in TNC modifies, not only risk for asthma, but also for rhinoconjunctivitis. Furthermore, we show epistasis based on both a direct suggested regulatory effect and a genetic interaction between NPSR1 and TNC. These results suggest merging of previously independent pathways of importance in the development of asthma- and allergy-related traits.


EAP Within the Higher Education Garden: Cross-Pollination Between Disciplines, Departments and Research This volume consists of 21 papers from the BALEAP Biennial Conference held at the University of Portsmouth in the UK in 2011. The papers contribute to a wide range of current debates within English for Academic Purposes and reflect the eclectic theme of the conference: 'EAP Within the Higher Education Garden: Cross-Pollination Between Disciplines, Departments and Research'. The volume reflects the strength and vitality of EAP research, which is in part a consequence of its heterogenous nature and willingness to draw on a wide variety of scholarship. In the first plenary paper, Janette Ryan outlines the changing institutional context created by the popularity of an international education. In the second, Ian Bruce shows how negotiating texts within specific disciplines is made easier through a genre-based pedagogy. Several papers show how discipline-specific pedagogies can be implemented, but there is also a section demonstrating successful corss-institutional approaches. The specific/general distinction is taken up and developed in papers which focus on assessment and argumentation. The volume is rounded off by papers presenting work which encourages professional development and good practice in learning, teaching and research. BALEAP, the global forum for EAP professionals, brings together practitioners to share, critique and cultivate EAP practice and develop good quality teaching and research of academic English, study skills and the wider student experience.


Automatic emotion recognition has become a trending research topic in the past decade. While works based on facial expressions or speech abound, recognizing affect from body gestures remains a less explored topic. We present a new comprehensive survey hoping to boost research in the field. We first introduce emotional body gestures as a component of what is commonly known as "body language" and comment general aspects as gender differences and culture dependence. We then define a complete framework for automatic emotional body gesture recognition. We introduce person detection and comment static and dynamic body pose estimation methods both in RGB and 3D. We then comment the recent literature related to representation learning and emotion recognition from images of emotionally expressive gestures. We also discuss multi-modal approaches that combine speech or face with body gestures for improved emotion recognition. While pre-processing methodologies (e.g., human detection and pose estimation) are nowadays mature technologies fully developed for robust large scale analysis, we show that for emotion recognition the quantity of labelled data is scarce. There is no agreement on clearly defined output spaces and the representations are shallow and largely based on naive geometrical representations.


Can rapid increases in agricultural productivity lead to improved nutritional outcomes for children in developing countries? In the 2005-06 growing season, the Malawi government introduced the Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP), a high-profile and large-scale agricultural inputs subsidy targeting small farmers. This paper links new data on sub-district subsidy allocation across Traditional Authorities -- an administrative level beneath districts and above the village in Malawi -- to more than 20,000 observations of anthropometric outcomes for children born in rural Malawi between 1995 and 2010. We use the considerable spatial variation in TA-level per household fertilizer voucher allocation and the differences across birth cohorts introduced by the timing of FISP to study the effect of the program on child anthropometrics. We find a small, positive effect of Malawi's farm subsidy program on child anthropometric outcomes in Malawi's Central region -- the region with the the historically highest stunting and underweight rates. Our estimates suggest that the Malawi fertilizer subsidy has increased child height-for-age z-scores in the Central Region by approximately 0.04 standard deviations, a two percent increase, on average. We investigate mechanisms of the effect and discuss its potential significance.


Regional Citizens' Advisory Councils in Alaska, created in the wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill of 1989, have provided citizens in Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet with a meaningful role in oil spill prevention and cleanup plans. Although the history of these RCACs show that their formation left room for improvement, in the wake of the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010, it is clear that innovative and creative solutions involving those most affected by oil spills are desperately needed throughout the country to prevent such disasters in the future. Moving forward, future RCACs should be created that build on the successes of the existing Councils, while fixing their three primary shortfalls: (1) their reliance on the oil industry for funding; (2) their "advisory" function limitations; and (3) their lack of subpoena power.